Kokimedes - Some photos here

This carries on from the eight a.m. episode of 24.

It’s 10.30 in the morning and we’ve walked up to Kokimides monastery for the celebration of the name day of Michaelis Kokimides.

            We spend the first hour or so sitting under the tree and smiling and nodding, waving even, to various people we know as the churchyard fills up with families. Children play football behind us, mothers sit and chat while the men are over to the left doing something promising with a barbeque. After the service is finished and we’ve lit candles and been blessed, we join everyone else in taking sweet coffee and donuts and generally feel good about life. Particularly as the views from up there are wonderful and the sky is clear. It’s also very warm and there is a real danger of sunburn.

            Later Hugo and his party arrive having stopped at another Michaelis on the way. By this time the wine and ouzo is flowing and lunch is almost ready. We’ve realised some time ago that we seemed to be sitting in the women’s section and so moved over towards the barbeque area. Here we find the likes of Yianni Rainbow, Alexis and the other usual suspects from the bar. Someone’s got a bottle of whisky out and someone else tops his glass up from the water jug, which unfortunately contains Tsipero (Raki). Within a few minutes he’s happily horizontal.

            Yianni the teacher asks me if I can drive. Whenever asked this question I always reply ‘yes… why?’ Because he is catching the boat back from Panormitis later in the afternoon (there are no boats leaving from the main harbour that day) and needs someone to drive his car back from Panormitis to the village. I consider my options: spend the day sober before driving a left hand drive car that belongs to someone else the entire length of the island or… not. I decide on not and that’s o.k. we’re sure he’ll find someone else to take it back for him.

            I ask Hugo the derivation of the name Kokimides and he’s heard one story that I have probably remembered inaccurately: Many centuries ago (just prior to 1697 I guess as that’s when the chapel was built) the family that lived up on this mountain were happily getting on with life. Until one day pirates invaded the island and started ransacking the place, as pirates did in those days – not Pirates of the Caribbean type pirates you understand, anyone who wanted to pillage and plunder was called a pirate. Apparently the mountain ran read with blood and everyone was killed apart from one girl who found a cleft in the tree in which to hide. The tree grew around her and she was therefore saved. It let her go again when it was safe to come out. Because of this miraculous escape the church was built and dedicated to Saint Michael; the Kokimides part comes from the Greek word for the colour red, Kokkinos.

            Tales of the past are forgotten as lunch is served. We muscle in on the Rainbow table where I become particularly Greek and ask for the wine by saying (lit. trans:) ‘Yianni, give me wine,’ with a grunt and a nod. I become particularly un-Greek by declining the fish from the barbeque – by that time I’m full up with other goodies. The food just keeps coming. Katina, the seamstress from the village, passes out plates of all kinds of wonderful stuff and everyone tucks in. She deals with the washing up by throwing the used plates over her shoulder, narrowly missing Manolis at the grill, and smashing them amid shouts of ‘oopah!’

            We left before the real partying started. Word had got around that we had walked up to the party but for the return trip we had an offer of a lift. The combination of wine, sun and walking had got to our feet so they weren’t working properly. As we said goodbye to friends old and new several folk tentatively asked if we were walking down and treated us like people who had forgotten to take their medication. We explained that we had a lift and everyone seemed very relieved at the news.