I’m officially homeless. I’ve rented out my London flat to a lovely Chilean couple, been out for goodbye drinks with all my friends, taken a long, last, nostalgic walk round my neighbourhood and said a sentimental see you later to the routines of my life: goodbye favourite pub, ciao delicious deli, auf wiedersehen Hampstead Heath swimming ponds.
And then I jump on a plane and head off to Greece. I love Greece. Randomly, I choose to go to Leros, a tiny island at the end of the Dodonoese in the far south east of the Greek archipelago. It’s just a few miles from the Turkish coast and one warm sunny day with deep blue skies and azure sea blends into another and another and another.
I find an apartment on the hill in a small town called Alinda. The rooms are surrounded by a garden lush with bougainvillea and seductively scented flowers. From the balcony a riot of colours frame the sea and I have views across the bay to the capital of the island Agia Marina, which tumbles down a steep mountainside to the water below.
I sit for hours in beach side cafes, the water lapping gently against the sand, watching the sun set, drinking cold beer and eating smoky grilled squid, mopping up olive oil with crusty bread.
Leros turns out to be a friendly place.
On the bus into Agia Marina I meet Ingrid, a beautiful German woman who’s about to celebrate her 70th but looks 15 years younger – bright blue eyes, amazing cheek bones and white hair, stylishly short. We chat on the bus and then, when the journey is too short to contain our stories, sit outside a cafe with coffees and keep talking.
She tells me that she lives for six months of the year on the island and spends six months in Zurich. She speaks Greek, has numerous friends on the island and considers it her second home. She invites me to dinner with a big group of her friends, all of whom like her call Leros home, at least for the summer. Swedish couple Bo & Margaretha (who has the most amazing red hair I’ve ever seen) have been dividing their time between Sweden and Leros since 1976; they are not short term second homers. We drink wine and Retsina and eat too much.
I get talking to another Swedish couple, Christian and Lise, who are both talented artists. Lise tells me she needs both places in her life. She spends the summer in Leros, then, in a dramatic counterpoint to the sunshine and light, heads back to the Swedish winter. ‘I need the dark too,’ she says, it feeds her creative spirit and is just as necessary as light.
I start to realise that home isn’t always fixed, it can be in two places at once.
Later in the week I meet a group of British ex-pats drinking beer and eating lunch on the square in Agia Marina. They love it here, they tell me. They spend the whole year here. ‘It would be perfect if only it weren’t for all the Greeks,’ says one. He’s only partly joking. They all nod and start what sounds like a familiar litany of the difficulties negotiating Greek bureaucracy. This leads on to a moan about England, which has ‘gone to the dogs’.
They’re not at home here but, after years away, they’re not at home in England either. They long for a time and place that doesn’t exist anymore. Their self-imposed exodus has made them into exiles. And now I’m confused again.
What’s the difference between these two groups? One has acknowledged that they belong in two places, has embraced aspects of both. The other has rejected ‘home’ but finds the alternative equally unappealing. Is it just mindset or is it something more?
Maybe it’s good to belong in more than one place. Maybe it’s good not to know exactly where home is.
No comments:
Post a Comment