I know I am going to struggle to find content for the blog on days, such as today, when the most exciting incident of the day has happened before I have even finished my morning cup of coffee. That’s what happened today.
At 9.42 am, or thereabouts, I was sitting drinking my morning espresso, soaking up the sun in my comfy outdoor chair, when, without warning, a small cloud drifted across the orb of the star, that is the centre of our solar system, depriving me of warmth for 30 seconds, before the little cloud drifted off to ruin someone else’s morning. I was outraged. A cloud. How dare it. That’s the kind of day Saturday 8th April 2017 has been.
I was too slow to catch a shot of the cloud
Sarah tried her hardest to give me some more exiting content. She did the washing and put the €5 token in the drying machine rather than a washer. There was briefly the potential for Laudrygate II, but the site owner was having none of it. He calmly handed over a replacement token free of charge and even came up with the bottle of wine he promised us yesterday.
Wash Day
A Scops Owl made an appearance, its monotonous “twooot” trying its hardest to upset my equilibrium, but if failed.
I did some serious planning. I have identified six or seven “must see” sites on the Peloponnese, mostly archeological remains, starting with Olympia tomorrow. We will spend about a month mooching about the Peloponnese and then move onto Northern Greece.
I spent a pleasant hour wandering around with my telephoto lens trying to get some bird photographs. Mostly only sparrows obliged, but I managed some good shots of a swallow, who posed very nicely.
Swallow
The campsite is steadily gearing up for summer. The swimming pools are being filled today. When we arrived we were the only people on the “A” pitches next to the beach. Now there are six of us a rainbow of nations. A Brit, a Belgian, two Danes, a German and an Italian. Our Belgian next door neighbours are actually a Dutch husband and Belgian wife with three Belgian children.
There’ll be swimming tomorrow – but we will have gone
Shot across the sea to Zakynthos
I will finish with one of my occasional series of observations made on the basis of very little evidence. Today is car washes. As anyone in Britain knows there is only one way to wash a car these days, unless you are that rare breed who still washes their own car on a Sunday afternoon, in which case there’s two. I am of course referring to the phenomena which is East European car washing businesses.
For non Brits, who are unfamiliar with this, every town in Britain has one or more businesses, usually set up on old garage forecourts, where you can get your car hand washed by East European migrants, for £4.99. It is one of the few examples of de-mechanisation. We invented perfectly good machines for washing cars and these have been put out of business by people washing the cars by hand.
The reason I bring this up is that from what we have seen these businesses do not exist in France, Italy or Greece. This poses an interesting question, which may, or may not, go to the heart of differences between European cultures. Is the explanation for this that Britain is more encouraging of entrepreneurship or is some other mechanism at work?
If anyone knows why car wash entrepreneurs have not set up in France, Italy or Greece, please let me know. It strikes me as an interesting difference between countries that at the moment should operate on similar rules regarding freedom of movement of people and business establishment.