Today has been a very quiet day and one where I've had to consider the true meaning of 'stranded'. There were no flights today so we went to the Milatos cave. Here, in 1823, up to 2,700 Greek men, women and children hid from the Ottoman Turk overlords during an uprising. The cave is in a remote bay, up a precipitous mountain road that even the goats see as a mite hairy to negotiate. The cave itself is extremely low and very deep. In this cave the Cretans hid until discovered by the Turks and besieged. Finally, the captives were offered safe passage by the Turkish officer in charge. On surrendering the Cretans were massacred or sold into slavery. A chapel built into the cave entrance stands testament to the struggle and the visible bones of the slaughtered in the ossuary gives one a chilling understanding of exactly what truly being unable to escape is.
I'm trying to learn to be more calm about the situation. I cannot get myself home any more quickly by stressing. My kids are being taught by my colleagues who are probably better teachers than I. If I could get home today I would. But I can't. I learnt a valuable lesson from the Taverna by the sea at which I ate my lunch. The name?
Whilst my northern European soul thinks it's my duty to endlessly recriminate to myself about the way I'm wantonly failing to do my duties, the southern European surroundings are trying to teach me to sit tight, calm down and not to stress about things that I cannot change. This holiday I've learnt about the numbing and inconceivably vast number of centuries between my own time and that of the proud Minoans who inhabited Crete. Pompeii's eruption in AD79 is as distant from the Minoans in one direction as I am from the Pompeians in the 21st century. In a timescale as vast as that 12 days of being stranded seems wafer thin and insubstantial. No stress.
Yamas!
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