Greek Walls

John Waller

Description

In 1966, John Waller and his Danish wife visit the island of Corfu in Greece. They explore a 'heaven on earth', which has few proper roads and no development. The building of their own modest summer house above the undiscovered west coast and the construction of their friend's own large hotel result in high financial and emotional costs.

Sujets

• Travel writing

Informations

• Publié par: Yiannis Books
• Date de parution: 07 janvier 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783013098
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

GREEK WALLS
An odyssey in Corfu
John Waller
Illustrations by John Chipperfield


YIANNIS BOOKS England
YIANNIS BOOKS
Acknowledgements
I thank my friends and family who have supported me in this project, to Lucy for her skill in the cutting room, to Agalis and Rob for checking everything Greek and for their help with the artwork and to David for his editing. I apologise to Greek speakers for my attempts at their beautiful language.
GREEK WALLS. Copyright 2004 by John Waller
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher except for quotation of brief passages in reviews.
Published in 2004 by YIANNIS BOOKS Strawberry Vale, Twickenham TW1 4SJ, UK
First published in Corfu July 2004 Reprinted in UK September 2004 Second reprint in UK March 2005 Third reprint in UK August 2007 Fourth reprint in UK March 2009
Typeset by Mike Cooper, 25 Orchard Rd, Sutton SM1 2QA, UK. Printed by Antony Rowe, Chippenham, Wiltshire, UK

248pp ISBN 978-0-9547887-0-4 ISBN 978-1-7830130-9-8(eBook)
GREEK WALLS
An odyssey in Corfu
Dedication
The Main Characters
Falling in love
A second date
Exploring
Buying
Planning
Construction
Destruction
Restoration
Separation
Reconciliation
Celebration
Epilogue
Also From Yiannis Books
In memory of George For the love of his island

THE MAIN CHARACTERS
The Manessis family Stephen Eldest brother Theodore Middle brother George Youngest brother, married: Elena having three children: Petros Agalis who marries Rob Tony the champion windsurfer The Waller family Peter John s half brother Steve Peter s partner John The author, married to: Jannie having two children: Louise who becomes engaged to Mark Peter whose friend is James Michael Jannie s brother, married to Lillian Richard John s brother, married to Valerie Greek friends Petros Kardakis Our Engineer Theodoros Doukakis The owner of the taverna Vassilis Doukakis The original owner of the land Stamatis Mussolinis Grammenos Foreman and father of: Spiros Mussolonis Grammenos The owner of the Pink Palace Spiros Grammenos Our neighbour Maria Stini John s Greek teacher Other friends Michael From St. Lucia, married to: Rosa From Spain Brian Irish classics scholar Nigel French Richmond Hockey Club captain Judy George s secretary Hugh John s bachelor flatmate Ole and Sus From Denmark Alan and Sylvia Blanc Architects of the house

Just below an overhanging cliff, we discovered a humble stone building perched above the olive trees overlooking the sea far below ... To the south, we could see the little harbour of Benitses ... From our nest, we thought, could anything be more perfect?
The veranda, roofed with a transparent corrugated sheet with plastic sides, was empty. We opened the door into the single room, which measured three metres by four. It contained the furniture: a bed, a folding table and two chairs plus the current inhabitants-mainly spiders.
Falling in love
It is said that it is best to see an island from the sea. It is like seeing a girl from a distance. As you get closer her features become clearer: the curves of the mountains, the colours of the hills and the sparkle of the windows in little houses, woken by the rising sun.
Nothing could have been better than the sight of Corfu as Jannie and I sailed on the Brindisi ferry through the Corfu Channel early on a June morning in 1966. To our left were the brown menacing mountains of Albania, on the right the gentle green of Corfu and ahead the silver mirage of the shimmering sea. On the island were a fishing village, a little cove with a villa, and then a bay with eight or so small houses with a larger white one at the south end. Way above the bay, two more villages lay on a scar which crossed the mountain - perhaps a new road. Then out of the haze, slowly, magically, appeared Corfu town with her magnificent buildings between two enormous forts. It was love at first sight.
It had been the same four years earlier, when a friend had introduced me to Jannie.
She s different, he had said, a Dane, a red-head. Her name sounds like Yannie but it is spelled as Annie with a J in front. And she s pretty, he added.
Say no more, I replied. Danes, Dutch; they are all the same to me, foreign and exciting.
We met. She was more than just pretty; she was the most gorgeous girl I had ever set eyes on - strawberries and cream, except that her hair was not so much strawberry as flaming red and her skin was more ivory than cream. My name means flagrant flower in Sanskrit, she explained when I queried its origin. Whether that was true or not, it was a perfect description. Two years later we were married. Now, two more years on, Louise had arrived.
Just a month before, my half brother Peter had suggested that I looked worn out. He was right, but it was work not parenthood that was the culprit. I was running a computer company with a national network of on-line users. It was challenging, but also extremely exhausting.
Why don t you go and stay at my place in Greece, Peter suggested. Corfu is such a beautiful island.
It was an offer we couldn t resist. The Danish grandparents would look after Louise and, with a new company car and the AA route planner to take us the 1280 miles through France and Italy to Brindisi, we were off.

Peter had asked his Corfiot friend Theodore Manessis to meet us off the ferry. We had been told that he ran the Mobil services station off San Rocco Square. As we drove off the boat, we scanned the quayside. There were a large number of people welcoming arrivals with much kissing and hugging between men as well as women. I noticed that Greeks were shorter than us Northerners and that they had dark hair and swarthy complexions. One man stood out - he was tall with light brown hair - and he waved. We were the only British car to arrive so it was not difficult to spot us.
He came over and introduced himself. Theodore was in his mid forties and powerfully built. His smile came from bright blue eyes, set beneath substantial eyebrows and above a manly moustache.
You must go through customs, John, he said in perfect English, pointing to a shed where voices were raised in argument. They assume people with foreign cars are trying to import them illegally as the cost of a licence over here is huge. Don t worry, I ll sort it out. Just follow me.
Theodore drove his miniscule car over to the shed and led us past the queue of waiting vehicles, mainly Italian with a few Greek. In the chaos of Brindisi we had noted that it was the Greeks who always pushed to the front. The chief customs officer interrupted his vigorous questioning and came over. Theodore said a few words and pointed to us. The man in uniform smiled at us and took our passports, which he glanced at.
Mr Waller and Mrs Waller, he said, welcome to Greece. I will have your passports stamped. I hope you enjoy your stay.
I then remembered the Manessis Brothers were the Fiat concessionaires on the island, so Theodore knew all about bringing cars to Corfu. He must have been friends with all the customs officers. We followed Theodore in his little Fiat past a fortress and the majestic buildings we had seen from the sea and through an arch to a deserted dusty square surrounded by huge trees. Here we parked.
This is where we play cricket and over there is where we ll have breakfast, said Theodore.
Cricket! I exclaimed in disbelief as we made our way over the stony outfield, I thought cricket was played only in the old British Empire?
You were here for fifty years at the beginning of the last century, he answered. Pointing to the neo-classical building with a Doric colonnade, which we had just passed under, Theodore added. You built that. It is the Palace of St. Michael and St. George; it s very fine.
Ahead of us was a terrace of handsome houses rising above arcades under which hung massive copper lanterns. Did we build that as well? I asked.
No, the French made the Liston before you were here. It looks like the Rue de Rivoli in Paris, don t you think?
We stopped under the arches of the Liston at the Corfu Bar , on the corner of the road leading off from the centre of the parade. Theodore marched inside and gave out orders as if he was the owner. We learnt later that effectively he was: his family owned the freehold. We sat on metal and cane seats at a tin-topped table. Breakfast was ordered and Theodore pointed across the square and smiled.
That s the Old Fort, built by the Venetians in the sixteenth century. We passed the New Fort, which was built just a few years later, also by the Venetians. We have done pretty well out of our invaders, haven t we?
Theodore was proud of his town - but I still couldn t get over Greeks playing cricket.
The ground looks too rough to play cricket on, I said.
That s how we like it, he said with a huge laugh. There are always small stones under the matting. We have very accurate bowlers; they know where the stones are.
Seeing my surprise he continued with a wicked grin. If we bat first, we take it very slowly, siga siga as we say in Greek. Then when the other team bats, it gets dark and the lights of cars sometimes dazzle our opponents.
The Corfiots were clearly a cunning race. At this point our first Corfu breakfast arrived. It consisted of milkless tea, stale bread, rancid butter and a pot of honey plus accompanying wasps. To me it was exciting; but Jannie was disconcerted: she had been looking forward to fresh croissants and coffee to match the French surroundings.
We finished and then found that Theodore had paid. We were soon to realise that in Greece guests simply didn t pay. We followed Theodore out of town, past the airport with its minute terminal building, south towards the mountain of Agii Deka and then up over the hills through Gastouri, past the Achilleon Palace and down towards Benitses. We stopped and Theodore pointed to a path up through the olive groves to our holiday