Clean Monday

Monday 7 March 2011

We did some more on the land on Sunday, but Monday was a holiday.  The first day of Lent in the Greek Orthodox calendar is known as ‘Clean Monday’.  For some reason, this is a festival of kite flying.  We were invited with a group of friends to have a (non-Lenten) barbeque on a quiet beach in the Meganissey channel, and fly some kites. 

I wanted to buy one of the bright coloured kites in all the shops, but Dave had different ideas.  To the amazement of all, he produced a bin bag, two sticks of bamboo, some string and sticky tape and started to construct a kite from scratch.  The dogs were most fascinated, and kept trampling over the bin bag to inspect the sticks.

First attempt took off like a rocket, but nose-dived.

So Dave increased the length of the tail, and tied some paper bag bows into it, and tried again.

Here he is, controlling the kite with half a fishing rod and reel.  It flew brilliantly, fifty metres up, then the wind strengthened and a gust took it.  We last saw it disappearing into trees high up the hill.  A bit of littering, unfortunately, especially as I wanted to keep it.

Here we are, shivering a bit.  Someone phoned to say it was snowing in Karia – the village up in the mountains.  Very British, barbequeing in the cold.  Kelvin put his 4x4 where we could serve salad off the back and shelter the bbq.  But as the wind got up over the sea, we called it a day and went somewhere warm.