Away From It All
What an Idyllic View!
Hola both my reader! I am being back from have having had my busman’s holiday, which as you know was to be spent on a lovely driving tour of the Greek islands. In retro specs, it was perhaps a too ambitious itinerant, especially the driving bit, since the Greek islands are mostly separated by water, an oversight on my part which I put down to poor research, the stupid Greek language, and badly drawn maps.
My original intention was that I would visit all 6 of the original Greek islands: Crete, Kos, Ikea, Kikidiki, Skankarino, and Sark (you can tell if an island is historically Greek because it have a K sound in it. Islands like Aegina, Hydra, and Poros all historically belong to Turkey; the jury is still out on Mykiniki). What happen, however, is only goes to show, in the words of the Bard, Robert Burns, that the best-laid plans of mice-like men gangs oft to Gley, which is in Scotland.
You can understand my anticipation and escitement when I arrive first in Crete, which was the scene of a wonderful victory by the German Nazis over the Allies in the Second World War. Even today, the Crete peoples have not forgotten the hiding they took and also went into following the German liberation of the islands from the natives. All along the north coast of the island is some lovingly preserved battlegrounds, where thousands of brave, courageous, idealistic Nazis were shot down even before they landed, hanging from their parachutes and dying glorious warrior deaths screaming in patriotic agony and covered immediately in their shrouds of silk made from ladies’ underwear. Also where the cowardly English Tommies from New Zealand and Australia ran away petulantly and hid in the Cretans’ mud huts and caves. My chest swelled with emotion as I stood on Maleme airfield, where was the Nazis’ first landing, my throat was become choked with dryness, and my eyes was become moist with tears. Yes, the saddle had come off my bicycle again. Bloody cheapskate hire company. But when I have recomposed myself and resaddled, I cycle up and down the runway inspecting for bullet holes and any remaining ladies’ underwear, with little success, especially because the runway is still in service and I have to dodge several times the Jumbo Jets. However, while I was sprawled one time after a close shave, I notice, reclining in the long grass, a dishevelled old veteran who was swigging from a jug of raki and soaking up the sun. And also the raki.
“If you are want to see the real cost of this battle,” he say to me in his alliterate pidgin English, “You must go to the cemetery up there on the hill. It will make you really think about the meaning of war.”
Of course he was a drunken buffoom, and I am already know what the meaning of war is. As the old song goes: “War! What is it good for? Weeding out the weak, reinforcing orderliness and discipline, legitimating the necessity of authority, social cleansing, raising the spiritual and moral health of the nation, and fertilizing the soil with the blood of martyrs.” Still, it was useful information to know that the cemetery was only just up the road, so I take a cycle up there with plans to stop off at a Kafeneion on the way to buy spinach and cheese pies, retsina, dolmades, tapas, and brandy so that I could salute the dead Nazis in picnic form.
As you can see from the above photograph, the cemetery is a beautiful place for a picnic and also a pleasant final resting place. However, as you can also not see, and to my horror I discover it when I get there, there have been a total whitewash and covering up of history by the so-called authorities. I am not needing to name names. Suffice to say that on the headstones of the Jewish soldiers you will see the stars of David, and on the headstones of all the Freemason soldiers you will see the set square and eye of Solomon. Yes! Is a big disgrace. Is almost as if those in power do not want us to remember who these victims of Allied butchery really were and the cause that they died for. They have just become anonymous corpses in a bucolic picnic area.
Well, it made my blood boil, and also roil and bubble a bit, and also my nose fester, which may have been the sun, but you all know me by now and realize that there are some kinds of injustice that I will not stand for. And this is one of them. So I cycle back down to the village, which is being called Kolymbari, and I make some discrete enquiries, and then I go to the local mongers and I buy black paint and stout paintbrushes, and also spray cans of black paint, and then I lie in wait. I lied in wait until about when it was getting late and the cemetery gates have been closed. And then I sneak in under the cloak of darkness and also my duffel coat, concealing my virtuous mission until I can get inside with nobody seeing me, and then once I am certain that nobody else is there, I spend the next couple of hours spraying and painting swastikas on all the headstones.
How I am wake up in the prison cell the next morning I am not sure. I can only think that the fumes from the paint that I was inhaling while I worked (I pulled my duffel coat over myself and the headstone so that nobody could see me) must have driven me demented until I pass out with exhaustion and also hallucinations. In fact, now I think about it, perhaps I was not in a Cretan prison for two weeks after all, but I only hallucinate it! That would all make sense. After all, why would the people in the prison, the warders and the screws and the guards and also the governor, all be laughing themselves nonstop for two weeks unless I was imagining it? What is funny about daubing swastikas on the graves of German war dead? Surely is what they would have wanted!
So, after my two weeks planned for my holiday was over, the Cretan authorities have decide that it was time for me to be exported back to Spain, so I did not get to visit the rest of Greece after all. But that is probly just as well. While I was in prison, they held the general elections in Greece, as a result of which the useless atheist communist socialists get back into power. I think the authorities was realizing that if I had got anywhere near the mainland, the result could have been a hole lot different.
I would show you all the photos from my holiday, but they are all pretty much the same as my profile picture on this site, which was taken in the cell of the local police station in Lanzarote. So just use your imagination, squint a little bit, and imagine that the toilet in the corner is Greek instead of Spanish. As for the contents of the toilet: That is what I did on my holidays.
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