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Care in the community

by Ann Lisney

Although living in Crete is idyllic, as life-long sufferers of horizonitis (always wondering what’s happening everywhere else) we sometimes like to leave the island and get away on holiday. All the locals in our village find this concept difficult to grasp – by comparison with theirs, our life is one long holiday anyway – and earlier this year, when we decided to go to India, they were flabbergasted. Why India? And where is India anyway? Is it near England? Probably some of this dearth of knowledge about the rest of the world is due to the lack of documentary programmes on national television channels, but the Greeks are also famous for taking holidays mainly in their own country. After all, Greece has so much to offer – why else are do so many foreigners come over here?

As our son’s New Zealand girlfriend finally had her way and persuaded him to up sticks and change hemispheres, our trip to India had to be via the UK to fit in their farewell bash. I won’t go into the details of our hysterical night spent in their house in a leaky inflatable bed (!), but will just say that the farewells went well, and we went on to have a wonderful – if exhausting – couple of weeks in India.

Now, as we are in daily contact with the matriarch of the village – my adopted ‘Mama’ – and had also provided all details of our trip to the elderly couple who run the kafenio (the source of all news), we did not think our absence from the village would be of particular interest to anyone else.

We were wrong.

On our return, ‘Mama’ clutched me to her bosom and explained through gales of laughter that the police had been looking for us!  We had gone away leaving our car outside the house, as we had been given a lift to the airport by friends. Seeing our car outside the house and there being no sign of us for several days, a near neighbour had been sufficiently concerned to call the police and report us missing! Apparently a police car arrived; two policemen walked all round our house peering in through the windows, then did door-to-door questioning in the village!  Someone eventually had the sense to point them in the direction of ‘Mama’, who was able to give them chapter and verse about our movements and reassure them of our well-being.

The day after we returned we went out for the first time in the car. We were flagged down on the road by our concerned neighbour, who almost climbed through the car window in her attempt to reassure herself that we were really who we appeared to be, and that we were truly home safely. She was effusive in her relief and kept grabbing at us to make sure we were substantial and not a figment of her imagination. We felt terribly guilty to have caused her any worry, apologised, and promised we would fill her in on our plans the next time we went away.

We were immensely touched by all of this concern and have taken it to mean that we are now fully accepted in the village and are really part of the community. We couldn’t help but contrast it with some places back in the UK where elderly people have died in their homes and not been missed for months. It’s a nice feeling to know that it won’t happen here in our village, as everyone is looking out for us!