by Marc Ottaway

(article published in the Sunday Times in 1998)

The day I first sat outside Spiro Petrou's changed my life. Tourists were serendipitous arrivals on the Greek island of Paxos then and in 1971 Spiro's was not only Lakka's café but also its post office, telephone office and, it was rumoured, bureau de change. Could he, I hazarded, possibly change some money?

Spiro looked regretful, explained he didn't know the exchange rate, and disappeared indoors, only to re-emerge with a fistful of notes, ask how much I needed to tide me over until he had the necessary intelligence, and start peeling them off.

Spiro had never seen me before, save half an hour earlier, in the company of one of his flock Peter Bull the English actor and first foreign resident. But that had been enough for him. My credit in friendship was good and he was going to help.

This was not an isolated experience. In the five years or so I had been wandering Greece I had been captivated by their way with strangers. Maybe I had yet to learn about their way with neighbours or to witness what would happen when tourists became an uncaring flood, but I was already well into a love affair which despite the inevitable ups and downs has endured to this day. And if I had to choose the moment at which I became hopelessly and irrevocably smitten with Greece it was then, when Spiro subbed an almost perfect stranger for the day. I have taken my summer holidays in Lakka ever since.

Since then much has changed, yet little has changed. Spiro's is no longer the hub of all life. Most tourists and some locals, especially the younger ones, prefer the new breed of waterfront café with their more international (for which read "could be anywhere") feel. Spiro, now 72 and officially retired (his wife's name is over the door) has shed the functions of post office, bureau de change, cinema, electricity bill payment point and sole telecommunicator. Home telephones have eroded the café's function as person locator and gossip exchange, while television has wrought its usual havoc with the arts of conversation, mischief and fun. The traditional Greek kafeneion, in short, is something of an endangered species nation-wide.

And yet should they find it unexpectedly closed Spiro's remains the one place whose absence can induce acute disorientation in Lakkiots. Happily, so far, and for all the years I have known it, it is also the place most likely to be open: at dawn, after church on Christmas Day, at just about any time save mid afternoon when all real Greeks are abed or by the sea. And it is still where all local, or at least public, life unfolds. Sit here long enough and you will see it all.

Here major announcements and political speeches are made by visiting and local dignitaries, clinics political and occasionally even medical held, election watches and Socratic dialogues conducted, village opinion sounded and formed, papers delivered, anyone who cannot be reached by phone first sought, fish sold, messages and items for third parties left, shopping and luggage parked, cards and backgammon waged, taxis and buses waited for and intelligence on these and indeed almost anything else garnered. Church services, wakes and council meetings adjourn to here, itinerant vendors set up camp outside, casual labour is sought and engaged here, and shopping and other commissions for Corfu or beyond accepted. This too is where returnees receive homage, farewells are taken, and even, and more familiarly to us, the odd drink or coffee is consumed, row erupts and soccer match is partisanly followed (I could divine World Cup fortunes from a mile away last summer).

The old folk remember this as a place of theatre, their prime venue for public entertainment, where complex  pranks were played out with hilarious or sometimes unhappy consequences for winding people up is the lynchpin of much Greek humour. Once too this was the right wing café while Diogenis' over the road was the left wing one. But now Diogenis' is a restaurant and Spiro's a broad church, its semi official status reinforced by its position at the entrance to the village where buses stop, taxis wait, cars park and official notices (political, municipal, judicial, church, deaths and scholastic) are posted.

On a September day Spiro rises shortly before dawn, delivers the previous day's rubbish to the skip by the nearby olive press on an old Nivea suncream sales rack with wheels, greets and is greeted (noisily) by Moukas his donkey in the stables round the back and leads him out into the olive groves for a day's grazing.

Back at base at 7 a.m. he lights the candle below an icon of St Andreas, engages in a little light dusting, and passes essential supplies (crisps etc) through the window to children and Albanian labourers waiting for the school bus and builder's lorries respectively. More favoured regulars nip in through the back door for the day's first cup of coffee.

These include such village stalwarts as Pano Aronis, Spiro's son in law and founder and co-owner of Planos Holidays who has turned conventional tourism on its head by starting his company here, bringing tourists from England via his operation in Bath, personally greeting every arrival as they step ashore and throwing a drinks party for them in his own home. Then there is Andreas Petrou, our sea taxi man, famed for braving all weathers, closely followed by Yanni and George Grammatikos who own Routsis the other village travel agency. Pano Vassilas, taxi driver extraordinary (he once hijacked some elusive officials for me) turns up fresh from delivering passengers to the morning boat to Corfu.

Spiro has a kettle permanently on simmer and coffee making jugs  arrayed in one to seven cup sizes. There is a whole lore and mystique to Greek coffee making, involving the thickness of the cup, the amount and type of surface bubbles, as well as strength and sweetness. As far as I am aware Spiro and his customers concern themselves only with sweetness and the choice between cup and, for those who like to add water, glass.

All half chat half watch "Good Morning Greece" on the telly and then, having taken the measure of the day, depart for work. Or in the case of taxi drivers, await it. They may now have mobile phones but old habits (and a taste for backgammon and cards) die hard. Besides this is where tourists look for them.

Shortly after nine the day's catch starts to arrive, nets having been lifted at dawn and their contents painstakingly extracted. Pickings tend to be slim these days. The most eagerly awaited arrival (it is performed on this occasion aboard the pillion of one restaurateur's motorbike while another jogs watchfully alongside) is that of Akis Petrou, Spiro's son and our most successful fisherman. He alone sells his fish in the back yard rather than at the front of the cafe. So swiftly, wordlessly and eagerly is this transaction performed, so rapidly do customers appear and then so silently disappear that any alert to it might imagine shady deals afoot. The restaurateurs take the best. On days when Akis fishes by line, two kilometres long with hundreds of hooks, the 'arrivage' is towards noon.

On Sundays at around 10 the church congregation withdraws here and Lakkiots may be viewed at their smartest and most genteel (card playing and tv are banned until later). If there has been a memorial service brandy is ritually served in winter, cherryade in summer.

By mid morning the card players are in situ. Two tables bear unobtrusive little stickers certifying that they are thus licensed. Though primarily a revenue raising wheeze, public order issues are also perceived. It is, for instance, illegal to make comments on public card games in Greece lest one or more participant takes offence. "You shouldn't have played that king Yanni" being equally construable as an insult to Yanni or a tip off re his opponent's hand. Except on Sundays our stately local priests (the incumbent Papa Diamantis, and the retired Papa Mandela) may join in.

Spiro's decor is a palimpsest of his life. Paintings, many by his brother, adorn walls not occupied by the wonderful wood panelled shelves with their multicoloured array of bottles. Some, such as the ouzo he bought on his demob in the 40s, the Old Crow sent from America to celebrate the first moon landing and the 20 year old bottles of Metaxa brandy will either never be sold or await some unspecified special event.

In the centre of the room is the table where shopping is parked, items left for third parties and cats slumber. Moutsos ("cabin boy") Akis' aged dog favours the warmth between two fridges where he can get under the feet of those making phone calls.

The built in wooden benches around the walls are ideally situated to monitor events within whilst passing comment out through the windows. The front of house outdoor tables tend to be favoured by leisured locals in the morning and tourists in the evening, whilst the side ones facing the car park are the daytime preserve of those with business to do: gypsies looking fresh from Rajasthan selling live poultry and bad taste crockery and taxi drivers in a noisy needle match of backgammon. By night Albanians regroup here: a sombre almost dark age presence they do Greece's dirty jobs today. Spiro's is the only establishment to afford them the traditional right to just token consumption, which is all they can afford as an exploited underclass (the Greeks are building up trouble for themselves here.)

One of Greece's traditional strengths, and charms, has always been the way it enfolds newcomers. Tourists too have their role to play in Spiro's café, often with all the zeal of converts. We can be misty eyed in our winter reminisences of the sound of Spiro's shuffling feet, the miracle of his memory (no need for a local phone book in Spiro's) and the complex matter of the use, balancing and repair of his various spectacles.

With the waterside cafes taking the breakfast trade tourists rarely check in before noon, and again in early evening, when he re-opens, until around midnight. A moment I loved from last year: a widow from Carlisle, her husband had fought in Burma and his very heaven until his 80s was to tramp Paxos by day and sit in Spiro's at night. They were plain north country folk who felt at home here and she was making only her second hesitant visit since his death. Spiro colluded in, or possibly concocted, an elaborate plot to deliver drinks to her with messages from "admirers" the better to induce her chemical and genuine happiness.

The card games are more ferocious at night, the telly (especially the 9 pm weather forecast) more avidly watched, subject to Spiro's veto by remote whenever one of his beloved wildlife programmes is due. As midnight approaches Greekness re-asserts itself. Albanians must rise early, tourists head for late night spots. The last few frames I have of a day in Spiro's are a reverse of the first, the early morning characters dropping in on their way home for a final glass and some light controversy,of Spiro closing the doors at 12.30 am. "I hope" he smiles "you enjoyed the theatre".

| 08/10/2011 | Print |