Drepano is a funny little village on the coast of the Argolid. It has one big church in the middle, surrounded by cafes full of old blokes, a decent baklava shop, no police, and one benign, homeless chap with a mental health problem and a lot of different hats. There’s also an old, nay positively ancient, lady who sits in front of her house and gives you sweets as you pass by. The sweets are mastic masquerading as mints, and there’s a skip you can spit it into just up the road, so no worries. Once, when we passed, I glimpsed her through the doorway. She was trying to sweep around a series of cloth-covered tiny tables that were groaning with stuff, and was so hunched, I think the broom may have been holding her up. Another time I saw a woman leave a plate of Spaghetti Bolognese on her doorstep.
One of the local restaurants is manned by Stephan: the owner’s son and a really nice lad. He’s shy to start with, but when he gets to know you he opens up more. We also found that, the more he got to know us, the cheaper our meals became. I think he works by assessing how much trouble it is to make, and if he likes you, then it’s barely any trouble, is it?
The beach
When we first arrive we try several times to go to another restaurant nearby, but it is either shut, has odd opening hours, or we’re turned away. Then one day we met the proprietors on the beach – Vicelis and her husband. They have brown plastic ‘milk churns’ beside them, and are standing out on a rock, heaping things into a big garden sieve and swooshing it through the seawater. It’s the olive harvest from their small plot of land, yielding masses of fruit from five different varieties.
We help sort out bruised or damaged fruit, bits of stalk, and leaves, then Vicelis rinses them in the sea before tipping them into the churns. Her husband fills my pockets with olives. He says I must slice five cuts down the sides and put them in salt water. The slits will speed the curing process and they’ll be ready for Christmas. If I leave them uncut, then they’ll take three months.
I am very excited by this. I race home and put them in seawater, one lot cut, and one lot left whole. After a week they’ve developed a rather unhealthy-looking froth on the water, which has also gone distinctly murky. I ask Janine for her thoughts and she suggests I put more salt in. So I get fresh seawater, add more salt, and wait for Christmas, to be impressed by my olive-curing prowess.
But ready by Christmas, my arse. I try one then and it is absolute pants. Rock hard, bitter, not good at all. Obviously the instructions I was given were for someone who has at least a basic knowledge of the process, or perhaps just far more common sense.
Because I just checked them again, and now our van smells as if the King of the stink bombs has been released. Only from one jar, mind you. The other jar with the slit olives are pretty much there, if rather over-salted. However, smell is a strange thing – it hit me just after I’d taken a bite of the devil’s fruit. So, if I don’t finish this blog it’s because I’m doubled up with food poisoning, ok?
That walk on the beach yielded more than olives, though. I also found a shell as big as my foot. It was beautiful – orange and spiny on the outside, with a mother-of-pearl coloured core. I had to wade out to get bits of it, but it was worth it.
We Googled it and found it’s called a Pinna Nobilis, or Pen Shell, and it’s a type of clam that grows upwards from the rocks, by attaching itself with hair-like fibres that are known as sea-silk. This is where it gets special: the shell is rare, and has been sought after for thousands of years because the sea-silk is incredibly fine. A pair of gloves made from them can fit into half a walnut shell. And when the fibres are treated with lemon juice (of which, plenty around here) they turn golden and never fade.
Christmas prep
In December I start to decorate Georgie. I have a small box of decorations that are lightweight, unbreakable, or made by the kids (felt Xmas trees, that sort of thing). I also have a cardboard reindeer that flat-packs, courtesy of M&S.
So I go for a walk to pick some evergreen stuff with which to make a wreath to hang around Rudolph. I didn’t want to scalp any of the bushes on site – that feels a tad like taking the piss. On the beach I find an old, broken, Japanese fan wall-decoration that will provide the struts I need to make the wreath foundation. Then I pick some green frondy things and head back to the campsite.
There, I bump into Christina, the owner, and she is horrified that I’ve gone elsewhere. She insists I go into her own back garden and take as many branches as I want from her fir tree. Far superior, she says. And do I like lemons? Yes, I do. Well here you are, she says, piling me up an armful, because the ones on her personal tree are the best.
I find this level of generosity incredibly touching. Especially from a woman who, soon after we parked up, replenished all the gravel around our van causing us to live in the world’s biggest cat-litter tray because of the sixteen cats. We are very careful where we walk, and avoid anything hilly.
So, van duly decorated, I set about finding some games for us to play at Crimbo. I download some pictures of celebrities as kids for Steve to guess. He does very badly at this. Here’s a few of them, have a go if you like, you can’t do worse than him.
(guy on the left) 
Shopping
I take Steve into our local town of Nafplio, where one of the cafes gives you a bowl of lovely, sticky little doughnuts with every coffee. Once fortified, I set him a budget of no more than fifteen euros, and send him off to buy a silly present for me.
I know exactly what to buy for him, and head straight for the pet shop to buy a cat toy for when Velcro shimmies under the toilet door. Then I spot a truly hideous travel mug that I just have to get as well.
He finds me an exceptionally kitsch candle – purple, and glittery, with odd flowery shapes and bits of driftwood. If anybody out there actually likes it and wants me to keep it for them, let me know, because Steve will bin it on Boxing Day.
Santa makes an appearance for the kiddies in town, but he arrives by pirate ship (as you do), his reindeer, perhaps, having taken a break in the Caribbean. He has this elf-man/MC hybrid inviting them in.
Later that day, I bump into Santa packing up for the day. In typical Greek-waiter fashion, he gives me a lascivious wink and says, ‘welcome to my boat.’ Er, no thanks, matey.
Celebrations
On Christmas day I cook a chicken, which is the only thing our oven does well (it thinks it has to melt The Terminator with every meal), and ignore the packet of stuffing mix that, according to Google Translate, requires me to add 12 hard-boiled eggs and 750g of rats. Feeling happily fat, we walk along the beach after lunch, and cut through the orange orchard to pick mandarins to eat on the way home.
Then we play the games I’ve prepared, including Make your own Christmas Jumper out of plastic carrier bags. Now I know I have an unfair advantage here as I’ve made my own clothes before (and I know that the pattern for a sleeve is much bigger than you’d expect). But to be honest, not giving Steve that information is part of the fun. We follow it up by watching Groundhog Day. Perfect.
For New Year, these perky chaps fetch up at the campsite and serenade Christina. Afterwards they sit on her doorstep, counting their spoils. They see me watching them, and promptly swoop over and sing their tuneless and incomprehensible New Year song (with triangle accompaniment, no less). They are great. I bloody loved them. Then they get on their knees and take photos of all the cats under the van.
In the evening we glam up as best we can, considering that it’s a bit parky. For Steve this means a clean jumper, and for me, well I wash my hair. We go to a restaurant that does a special New Year meal deal, where we’ve previously had coffee, and I admired the lighting.
The deal includes a piece of the traditional cake that, like our Christmas pudding, traditionally contains a coin. In our case, that would’ve been a sixpence (2.5p), whereas this coin is worth 60 euros.
Everyone else has made a bit more of an effort dress wise. These glamour-pusses are at the table next to us. And no, we don’t find the coin. We do find a lot of Sambuca though, so happy days.
2018
And after that it is back to real life. We discover a liquer (oh thanks, Stephan) called Tsipouro, which is 44% awful. I buy worry beads from a lady who writes my name in Greek for me. And Christina’s husband, Vangelis (I know), gets out the big tools, digger and forklift and – with scant regard for health and safety – trims the palm trees and levels our bit of the beach.
. . . . . . . . . .
Well, I appear to have survived the evil olive, so that’s it for now. Next time I’ll write about Nafplio and the 1,000 steps.
P.S. The celebrities are: – Meg Ryan, Benedict Cumberbatch, Freddie Mercury and Keira Knightly.
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