Lazy Sunday

F appeared on my balcony just after 0600 this morning; early for any day but on a Sunday???

She even served my first breakfast early. The day was still mild, so I was mildly interested.

We get a short break in the 'cruise-by' traffic on a Sunday morning; a break that gets shorter and shorter as the Summer progresses. By 0800 it's building again but for a while in the early half light the air is soft and we can hear pigeons hoo-hooing. Canaries too of course - they never let-up. (Tweety bird - I fully understand why Sylvethter Puddy Tat got so frustrated with the wee blighter).

A lone swimmer drags a giant V across the bay.

F goes out on her bike, and by the time she returns the motor traffic has reclaimed the streets, the fishermen have resumed their vigils on the headlands that define the inlet, and the first sunbathers are staking claims and laying out their camps.

Churches have come back to life, along with the cafes next door. Bells at Agia Pareskavi were peeling across the neighbourhood as F departed on her bike, followed before long by the amplified echoes of chanted prayer from others nearby.

We walk (well F walks, I ride) a little before the day heats up again. Chairs are lined up in a church courtyard, and on cafe patios - straight lines, carefully spaced.

Congregations gather outside churches and cafes both - seekers in need of the reassurance of return to the familiar, restoration of the reliable order of things; still afraid however, and still distant from one another and from the comfort and blessing they came out to find.

Sunday is housework day. Today F washed the balcony - I mean really washed. Our plants have been plagued by woolly aphids this year and today she discovered that the sap-sucking pests have tucked a reservoir of themselves away under the lip of every tray that sits under a pot. So every tray was tipped up and scrubbed both sides, and under the lips of all the pots. All the furniture except my CONDO was moved indoors and the whole place scrubbed and squee-geed.

I stayed a safe distance away on my 'high place' - and supervised.