Last night was one of those evenings that people go on holiday to get ....so calm it was almost breathless, mild enough to sit outdoors until late (without a fur coat), peaceful.....so peaceful we could hear wavelets tickling on our beach and Summer's first cicadas ratcheting away in the acacia along the beach.
We could hear fishing boats puttering in the darkness.
"Menoume spiti - we stay home" hasn't been a terrifically successful campaign if the crowds wandering past here, sunbathing on the rocks, and riding by on motor-bikes is anything to go by, but it has dramatically reduced the number of travelling cars. Car traffic is reduced to the point where we can occasionally describe our scene a peaceful; peaceful enough to hear the cicadas.
Even the dogs whose barking from balconies around the inlet are a constant sound track to our daily (and nightly) lives seemed for once to respect the unexpected calm of the evening.
Just as the sun was going down the army of house-martins sweeping the air for tiny insects, were replaced by legions of bats flitting about over the acacias. That always makes F excited and happy.
F commented that she could even smell vegetation. There we go again - that's human noses for you! The smell of vegetation is always there. It's what she couldn't smell that made the difference - traffic fumes. We do need to work on the motor-cyclists though. Perhaps THEY take their exercise riding a motorbike; and most of those seem to be unnecessarily noisy in this strange unaccustomed calm.
There are many, many more bicycles silently gliding by now that the streets are safer - even well after darkness fell and a glowing half moon buttoned itself to the middle of the clearest of skies.
F murmured to me stories of places visited and the music of nature. She said this, the warmth, the smell of vegetation and the chirping sounds, was almost like being in the Caribbean except that there the chirping in the trees is frogs.
Frogs?! Frogs that climb trees?! Tree-climbing frogs that chirp like cicadas?!!!
F slept on the balcony. I was a bit concerned about this break with routine. There is no tent over the bed for a start. I prodded her a few times to tell her to get up and go indoors but she wasn't having it. She said it was nearly as good as sleeping on deck but unfortunately it didn't move - whatever she meant by that. The hammock moves, that should be enough movement for anyone.
In the end I sat on her and we listened to and inhaled the dark rich silence together.
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