Cretan-homes, Crete property estate agents

Hot stuff at cards

by Ann Lisney

Our home telephone stopped working one Monday evening in the depths of winter. This had happened previously, and service had not been restored for almost a week. We went into OTE the following morning to report the problem and were told that the whole village was affected and that it would be fixed ‘tomorrow’.

Well, we should have known better than to reckon on ‘tomorrow’ as being the following day. ‘Tomorrow’ in Crete means ‘sometime in the future, definitely not today’. It was hardly critical for the two of us, apart from having no internet access, as we have a mobile phone. It was more serious for the rest of the village as we have several very elderly ladies who live on their own, and our near neighbour Gerasimos had just been rushed into hospital with a critical heart condition. His wife, Popi, needed to telephone for a taxi every day to take her down to Kastelli to catch a bus to Chania to visit him in hospital.

Having found out that one day she had walked the four kilometres down into town, we promptly offered her a daily lift into town until telephone service was restored. Which it duly was – on the Friday!

As a ‘thank you’ for the lifts, Popi invited us round on the Saturday evening to play cards at her house with the usual suspects from the nightly kafenion card school. This comprises Dimitri and Katina who run the kafenion, Mama and Popi herself.

Gerasimos and Popi live in a typical village house – with one door and no visible windows. When we arrived the others were already there, huddled into the end of the room furthest from the door. On one side was an archway through to an alcove with an old bread oven, with the fire burning brightly, and in front of everyone on the floor was an old metal tray piled high with red-glowing embers. Central heating, Cretan-style!

We joined the crew and huddled around the fire pit. Very shortly, a cloth-covered plastic table appeared and was perched over the top of the tray of coals. Snacks were served and eaten in record time so we could get on with the serious business of the evening – cards.

Before we started to play, Popi sealed off the room to exclude even the tiniest draught by pulling full-length curtains across the half-way point. The six of us hunkered down in the remaining space as the embers beneath the table were renewed. I could feel the skin on my legs shrinking in the heat and drew back as far as I could into the corner away from the furnace.

The evening wore on; as soon as the coals near our feet cooled to a comfortable temperature, they were topped up with a fresh supply of lava-hot charcoal. The plastic cloth on the table became uncomfortably sticky and the cards were increasingly difficult to separate from each other. Richard and I were beginning to feel like spit-roasted piglets, but everyone else – especially Dimitri, who still had his coat on – was revelling in the heat.

Despite the fact that they play every night, everyone was endearingly useless at the game, so Richard and I were able to pick up the basics fairly easily and were not conspicuously worse than anyone else.  It seems that the idea of winning and losing is much less important than being with friends and having a pleasant evening.

A couple of times during the shuffling of the cards there was a panic-stricken flurry as half the pack fell to the floor under the table. Everyone had to grab quickly in case the cards fell in the fire. It may be my imagination, but the pack seemed to get smaller as the evening wore on – perhaps when people were dealt cards they didn’t like they threw them under the table!

I thought I was safe by shrinking into the corner away from the heat, but every so often Katina lifted up the tablecloth and fanned it in our direction. Talk about hot flushes!

We eventually made our farewells and dragged ourselves out of the sauna before the table itself melted. How wonderfully cool it was outside!