Corfusion

The turbulence started when our driver got lost to Gatwick.
The queues were like a Polish supermarket that had one black rye loaf left.
My breathing was shallow and the Northern git had a cough.
Going through security was so rammed the guards just told us to chuck everything in the tray and walk through.
We waited for the plane.
Bags in the hold and my puffy legs under the seat. We paid for food on the plane – I remember when it was all included with metal forks, a linen napkin and little salt and pepper pots.
The the pilot landed us after a stormy entry the whole plane burst into spontaneous applause, it was a relief.
The taxi driver met us in a huge people carrier and drove us round the mountain until we arrived.
It was wet.
Very wet.
It hadn’t rained since April and we were considered the lucky recipients to receive it.
The dawter had organised a 17 day holiday with everything included. The car, the apartment, the beach towels, books, suntan lotion, swimming pool and sun.
We arrived in Aharavi, Northern Corfu, two hours ahead of England. We’d brought the weather with us.
We stumbled up two flights of stairs into a very white kitchen diner, two bedrooms and a shower room.
Perfect for 17 days of sun, sand and sleep.

The morning was grey. Rolling clouds. The palms shaking in the wind. The pomegranates swaying on their branches. The swimming pool filling up with much needed rain. It was too deep a pool for me given that I couldn’t breathe and needed to have my feet on the floor.
Grey was tone, as was the next day and the next.
We drove 20 minutes to the beach. And there was a sandy paradise. Beds and beach restaurants and a swirling Ionian Sea.
She had a Greek coffee for breakfast, I had fruit salad and he had a cheese and ham toasty. Just till we found our feet. We shopped in one of the three supermarkets which had fresh fruit and vegetables, coffee and thirteen thousand bottles of water.

I didn’t know, at that point, that I couldn’t walk more than twenty paces. I didn’t know that much needed sun was hiding behind black storm clouds. I din’t know that all we wanted was rays – we’d only waited for over a decade to get some – I didn’t know that diabetic retinopathy meant I couldn’t read any of my books without a magnifying glass. I didn’t know that we would need blankets and booze. Good for them but not for me.
I survived on Greek salads and hot water with lemon.
I didn’t know how bitter disappointment tasted.
The girl drove us to old towns, and harbours. To her favourite bar. We clutched at the warmth when we got it.
And I also didn’t know my kidneys were failing and that breathing, instead of being automatic, required me to think about how I could drag up some air from my sclerotic lungs. Fucking old age!
We met two old friends – by chance – they took us to a restaurant where we ate in our damp clothes and were told the squid was off for the rest of the year, their frozen haul had been eaten.
Of course there was some sun, and of course we made the most of it, but it turned out to be the worst weather they had had in 20 years, and we got the full force of karma.
Coming back home we were sat on the runway for 50 minutes. My legs twice the size, the old man exhausted from coughing, the first born composing a letter to BA because they had too many lids but not enough mugs so there were no hot drinks.
A bag of corn kernels was handed out and we waited to get back to Blighty.
We arrived around four in the afternoon, our lift had got lost. By 6.00 we were finally on our way home.
A bag full of dirty washing, three bottles of Mataxa, a tea towel with embroidered ‘Corfu’ in yellow and a cat who was so pissed off with us that he’s been sitting under Jane’s tree down the road.

There’d been a power cut so we had no telly, no broadband, flashing clocks and no landline. We were too traumatised to care.

The dust has settled, the Renal Unit dont like the state of my kidneys and all I need now is a holiday. I haven’t seen any newspapers for 17 days and Missiles and madness have dimmed the memory of Grecian life.
What a wash out, but how lucky we were to have glimpsed a little of life without James Cleverly, Netanyahu and gas bills.