little boxes

The theme for this post is "Little Boxes" by Pete Seeger. As usual I can`t post the link.. (NO..I MIGHT have been able to add the link...I`ll check..Yessss! It seems to be there.. just press on the link below the title...or maqybe even the actual title) even from hotel in Amphissa. If you can`t get the link please go to You Tube and find any version of Pete Seeger singing -fifty years ago-about houses made of ticky tacky and all looking the same. Then minimise that so you can read the blog while listening to its raison d`etre. BUT PLEASE DO THAT, its incredible how relevant that old protest song is to the detruction of the Greek countryside.. even down to playing GOLF.

The reason this song is this post`s theme is that when I was walking along, somewhere near Allepohori, I found myself tunelessly singing "There`s a green one, and a pink one and a blue one and a yellow one, and they`re all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same"

What could have blasted me back to my youth in that strange way?

Well... I had passed a new holiday home development, and there was SOMETHING about the colours.. (see photo for horrorshow deja view feeling,-for those of us who remember the song from all that time ago, that is. Everyone else can just be amazed that Pete Seeger could predict, with TOTAL accuracy..down to the very colours of the boxes, what would be happening in Greece half a century later)

After that I KEPT on seeing little boxes. Things have only got worse, Pete. Thanks for trying though...

The second little boxes picture I took from Mt Elikonas...Is nowhere safe from ticky tacky? A WHOLE COVE of them..and they all look......-just the same..

After Allepohori we had to think about how to get to Kaparelli. There`s a big mountain in the way.That`s not really a problem, no, the problem is, that last trip I couldn`t find a way to cross Kitharonas without ending up on the great big road that goes from Lamia to Athens, and that was a scarey experience that I didnt want to repeat. At Eva and Babis` we looked at three maps -all interestingly unique in their interpretation of the location, but united in being adamant that you couldnt get across Kitharonas without going on the big road. This is patently absurd. There must be a way.Some blokes at Psatha agreed. They knew the tracks and had ridden them on horseback. You could get to Plataiea no trouble they said. As it was already quite late when I left Psathes,I just looked for a place to stop before nightfall. I would go for the mountain the next day. Night fell when we got to a lovely place called-oh I don`t know what it was called because its not on my map(another deliberate erros from Road?) and I`ve forgotten. We stopped at a house that was being built. Grass for George, shelter from impending crap weather for me. No water though. But I walked up to the church and behind the church there was a well. I got crystal clear icy water for me and George from that. Water from wells is somehow very special.I love it because it shows that the water table is still as it was when the well was built. So many wells have dried up, or you can`t use them because of the dangerous level of nitrates in the water. A usuable well is a GOOD sign.

In the morning a flock of sheep came into the olive grove where George was tethered. I chatted to the shepherd. There were about 100 sheep. 20 of them were rams. I was a bit surprised about this, wondering if perhaps the shepherd`s wife insisted on the ewes having more choice of mate than they are usually afforded.Also, as I know from looking after sheep when I was at school, rams spend most of their time posturing and posing, when they aren`t actually sparring with each other, if there are a lot of them. The shepherd said it wasn`t anything to do with feminism in the flock management, he`d got lots more ewes in another flock, but this wasn`t the right time to keep them with rams, so the rams had to be all together with this flock, where all the ewes were not in breeding condition. A friend turned up in a pickup truck and so the shepherd departed, leaving me to watch the behaviour of the flock. They were fascinating, and somewhere in their strategies for showing dominance, the rams showed that they can teach us a thing or two about avoiding all out war.

You can see a ram with magnificent horns surrounded by admiring ewes. Why him, and not other equally magnificent (to the uninformed eye, that is) rams? Well, a ram starts to attack- a tree, giving it a thoroughly good going over. This attracts the attention of other rams. While I was watching 3 other rams came and also started beating up the tree all from different angles. A couple more rams stood around watching, rather like you see 3 or 4 municipal workers watching a 5th worker digging a hole in the road.

After not very long one or two of the rams withdrew from the struggle, and wandered off. The other two kept at it for longer, until suddenly one of these withdrew from the fray, leaving our hero in possession of the tree. Then all the girls came tripping across the orchard to join him. No wonder he looks smug.

Maybe the politicians at Copenhagen should have used the same method to settle their differences.

If you are a low status ram you don`t seem to be able to set things in motion though.

I saw a whitefaced, big horned creature repeatedly attacking a tree, crashing against it with his horns. No other rams came to check him out, and no ewes fancied him. Milliband in Copenhagen.

Sheep in Greece don`t give the impression of not being bright. The ewe with the big bell had just spotted me on the balcony of the house from where I was studying the sheep. She seems to be sizing me up in a disconcertingly accurate way.

Another way that rams prove dominance is to do competitive eating. The very top photo shows two which are keeping an eye on each other, never letting each other get away to steal some kind of advantage in tree butting. Like politicians at a banquet.

In spite of EXCELLENT instructions given by a variety of local persons I never found the track over the mountain. I spent a lot of time following tracks til they came to dead ends though.

On one of these, a delightful flower filled grassy lane through lovely conifers George met with a terrible adversary. Oh the horror!Look at George`s eye..popping out of his head!

This was rather a militant tortoise though.. it hadn`t reached its great age by not facing up to horses it seems. This is a marginated tortoise (Testudo marginata) these are found as far North as Olympos.. unless someone has moved them for some reason.

After repeated failures to find the right track George and I ended up on the one that I knew from last time led inexorably to the road. I was really really unhappy about this.

But actually, like crossing the bridge over the canal at Loutraki, going down the road proved to be OK. All the traffic was considerate- even, and this is TRULY amazing, KTEL bus drivers showed consideration..and we escaped into Erythres without a single terrifying incident.

But, as in crossing the canal, I was knackered, not from the actuality of the difficult thing we had done, which wasn`t difficult, but by my fears and worries which had worn me out over the course of the day.