Tag: wine

Yassou Old Friend

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

September along with April and May is probably the best time to be in Greece. The second half of September in particular. The most extreme elements of the Greek summer have subsided; the heat, the tourists and the stressed Greeks trying to make money. This year is a little different but it seems to be following the usual pattern. There is a lot in this country that can frustrate a person, Greek or non-Greek, but it has more than enough to keep bringing people back. Secretly I love the place more than I’m frustrated by it but don’t tell anyone, sentiment like that gets in the way of being able to complain which is a favourite past time out here.

The plan is to fix up a boat. I’ll be sanding, painting, servicing engines and trying to work out why there’s water in the sail drive. The last will be the most challenging mentally but I’m not looking forward to being stuck down in the tiny engine compartments under the baking sun trying not to flood the engines with my sweat. It’ll be a good boat learning experience though. I’m a believer in the holistic approach to life so it is important to understand sailing isn’t just trying to catch the perfect angle to the wind with our sails or drinking gin and tonic in the sun. Watching everyone on their boats doing exactly that in the port today did make me a little envious though, there is something slightly unnatural about a boat out of water.

These thing I can worry about tomorrow though. Today has been about catching up on and ruining any notion of a sleep pattern as well as getting my bearings in this new place. In a way I’m back where I belong. I know despite my desires for a normal life I thrive in new lands. I enjoy finding my bearings and working out what is going on. I’m not always the best at chatting with everyone but I wouldn’t say I’m unsocial either. I got a good deal on a car rental and spent too much in the supermarket on food. In response I decided not to eat dinner in the taberna and ate a couple of kebabs washed down with a couple of beers in my car while watching people fish. It doesn’t sound like it should be a stand out thing but there was a reasonably attractive woman on her own fishing. It stood out because usually it’s old or middle aged couples and single men doing this kind of thing. It’s not a big thing and perhaps a subtle example but somehow Greece manages to find a way to provide moments which make you take notice. It’s what makes the place so interesting, and admittedly occasionally frustrating.

It would be nice to be out on the water though. I have some slight ideas of plans forming but will keep it all open. Jumping on a boat would certainly be an option I’m open to once I finish these repairs. Anyone going to the Canary Islands? I will say though as my feet and ankles experience that familiar feeling, I don’t miss mosquitoes when I’m not here. They do serve a purpose, I’m not someone who thinks they should all die but certainly I’m ready to discover the secret to what it is they’re attracted to and make the necessary changes in my life. The boat is at the far end of a huge boatyard and I’m hoping they don’t know I’m there. There’s nothing worse than one of those night sleeps. I’m sure it’ll give me something to complain about. Well, it is Greece, you have to do something in between all the enjoying life.

Absolved From Pain

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

I’m a tall man. Not an abnormally tall man but tall enough to be completely at ease describing myself as such. I was about to suggest abnormal was such a strong and negative word but as it turns out, abnormally for myself, I checked online for something and didn’t just try to wing it. It turns out the prefix ab- simply means ‘away/from’ and as such looking at examples like abrasive, abdicate, ablution, absolve, they don’t seem to have a contrary and therefore aren’t able to be viewed in the binary positive and negative. To abdicate is to step away from power, to be abrasive is to take away the smooth, to absolve is to distance from guilt or punishment and ablution is to wash away the dirt. A cloth would absorb the water but the word sorb refers to “the fruit of the true service tree” which is Biblical and which means the two words aren’t related and cannot be compared to the negative prefix un- in nature.

I digress.

Being tall I hit my head a lot, I am also prone to hurting my back. I managed to hurt it badly about five or six years ago when I was trimming grapes in France. You spend eight hours Monday to Friday bent low trimming leaves off vines which are about one to two feet from the ground. That is a lot of moving while being bent over, and after four weeks strained my lower lumbar, slightly stretching the space between and pinching a nerve in the process. I tried over the time yoga and Pilates, went to a chiropractor, but never managed to quite shake the awareness of something not being quite right. In times of inactivity it would start hurting and I discovered over time the busier I was the less I felt it. Eventually I remembered a treatment I was given by a friend in Australia called Bowen Therapy, which is a very subtle process, don’t worry I’m not about to meander through the meaning of sub, which involves rolling the muscles and in a way activating them, allowing them to recover themselves. I could barely move before that first time in Australia and the next day I had returned to about 75% which felt at the time like a miracle. I don’t necessarily automatically believe in certain treatments, different people react differently and stronger to different things, I never got much from acupuncture for example while others swear by it. I would comfortably swear by Bowen, nearly on par with my exclamation over my height.

I discovered a woman in Scotland near me who practices it and had my first treatment with her prior to a lengthy period of active life on a sail boat. I felt my back had recovered. It felt good and strong for the first time in a few years. About six months ago though as my friend attempted to convince me to appreciate not just Crossfit but Crossfit done to create a rugby player style body, I over did myself on a sit up bench. My back ever so slightly clicked, not painfully at all but I knew I had done something. Right enough I had shifted and unbalanced my lumbar and hip. With my hips now negative and unaligned the old pain subtly returned until a few days ago when I twinged something moving a particularly heavy bread basket. Yesterday I strained it further and was in crippling pain. This is a very long winded back story for something that is supposed to only be around the five hundred word mark so I have little more space to talk about Bowen other than I went today again and while I can still feel it, usually the day after is when you really notice the change. I will return next week and have a second session soon after the first which I have never done before. I just want to be really sure. In the meantime yoga must return to habit status. Ultimately I simply attempted to create context and a backstory to a therapy which few know about but I fully believe many could benefit from. Why it’s not more commonly practised is beyond me.

Life’s Twists & Turns

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

I was going to talk about something important, as always, but I’m currently wallowing in the post breakfast euphoria of this…

Focaccia eggy bread, with blue cheese, wild smoked salmon and a ‘garnish’ of rocket

I’m so painfully middle class I’m not even fighting it anymore. I also managed to remember that I was going to talk about different and uncontrollable paths in life. I realised last night that had this virus not become a thing I would have just been departing an Easyjet flight from Edinburgh to Athens, ready to say hello to some old faces and getting excited about a summer sailing around Greek islands drinking beer and wine, and eating too much of the world’s best cuisine. Yes I just made that statement. But that was what could have been.

I’m currently making pizzas as previously mentioned. This won’t go on forever and the lifting of lockdown will have an affect upon it but at most it’ll be a summer gig until the schools go back and the tourists disappear. This was never meant to be the plan as I said but it’s just what I’m doing now. Maybe in July I’ll have had enough of it and realise I’m wasting my time but that is something for future me to deal with. The point is that we clearly can’t control life’s ever evolving patterns. We can influence certain elements of it but let’s be honest in most things we’re pretty powerless. If you can’t sail, you just do something else. You meet other people, make other bonds. And you go with that and see what happens.

The truth is that while undeniably I’m longing for a holiday sitting on a beach somewhere in the sun and waking up whenever it pleases me, I’m perfectly content with this version of existence and how it’s unfolding. Maybe something will ruin that contentment, maybe something won’t. The point is not to tell you I’m living some kind of perfect life because I’m not, there’s no such thing, but there’s a good chance the whole world is doing something completely different in this Covid-19 version of existence and I just enjoyed the fact that last night I was sitting there and had a fairly good idea of exactly what I would have been doing. That I think is a rare pleasure, and a pleasure because I’m not longing for either. If we make the most of whatever we do end up doing we’re less likely to long for anything else.

And that goes for my breakfast too. It is Sunday today and while I love to think I would be in the Koukaki district of Athens looking for some little hipster brunch place, most likely I would be grabbing a spanakopita from the first bakery I could find from the few that open on a Sunday in Greece before driving to Preveza and fixing up a boat. Yes I desire that, but I’m pretty happy with whats sitting in my belly currently too.

As I read over that I felt at one point I wanted to vomit on myself. Don’t get me wrong the sentiment about uncontrollable existence and riding it’s wave still stands. It’s just I’m painfully aware that the two possible versions of existence I know of are pretty decent and there are plenty out there who don’t even have one decent version. “If you can’t sail, you just do something else“, I mean come on, what a wanker. But I don’t feel guilty, I don’t feel bad and I don’t feel I want to give up my blue cheese, what would that achieve. I’m just aware I’m incredibly lucky. Maybe I should find a way to share my blue cheese instead.