KINDLE, CRETE AND THE GOLDEN SNITCH
We are on the threshold of the first real Kindle summer – the Battle of the Beaches. It’s an exciting time for readers and writers.
Ereaders went mainstream at Christmas when sales in the UK rocketed to five times higher than a year earlier. Some estimates reckon one in 20 Brits now own a Kindle.
After all that rain, Kindle owners will want a holiday.
And they’ll need books.
There has never been more choice. In a saturated market there are bestsellers from top novelists battling with excellent titles from independent authors.
And – in what can only be described as a shameless plug – I urge holidaymakers to download my two Danny Lancaster crime-thrillers – The Wreck Of the Margherita and Death Squad. Hours of sexy page-turning thrills for less than £4 the pair is the perfect holiday insurance against boredom and the odd cloudy day.
TOURIST TRENDS: Latest figures say tourism in Greece was down five per cent in the first five months of this year but Crete bucked the trend with a rise of 15 per cent.
Still, things seemed pretty quiet there to me last week. Resort and tourist centres didn’t look busy and the roads were empty.
The headline-grabbing riots happen in Athens but it can put holidaymakers off. Tourism is vital to Greece. It’s the main industry alongside shipping.
There are a lot of good-value packages to Crete now but eating and drinking on a budget is not cheap, in many cases the same or more than home.
How this summer’s holidays will be affected by Sunday’s rerun election is anyone’s guess.
I still have a few Drachma in a drawer somewhere.
SHOTGUN WEDDING: There was a Cretan wedding nearby, happy gunfire popping half the night, then the crackle of red tracer bullets slashing the starry sky. What goes up…
GOLDEN BALLS: Standing on the tarmac at Athens airport, my jaw dropped. A sparkling ball of gold light with two frantically blurred wings hovered a few feet away. I watched, stunned, at what looked like the Golden Snitch from a game of Quidditch. It was only when it landed on my trousers that I saw a big beetle with a brilliant metallic green and bronze shell. Googling, it seems to have been Cetonia aurata, a rose chafer beetle. Airborne in the Greek sunlight it was magical.
HOLIDAY REP: I ran a tab at my favourite taverna. When I finally got the long and untidy account of our eatings and drinkings I noticed something scrawled across the top of each page. As best we can tell it’s a dialect word meaning “well known” or “notorious”. My daughter thinks it’s cool that I’m now Notorious B.I.L.
MARTENI ANYONE?: A pine marten is about the size of a cat and belongs to the badger and weasel family. They avoid human habitation and dogs. But one visited our taverna every night, ducking and diving through the car park and down an alley to a mulberry tree at the rear. Given the amount of fallen fruit fermenting on the stone patio our visitor either had a sweet tooth or a drink problem.
DIVINE COMEDY: The Gods of Olympus have a sense of humour. I limped home from Greece with injuries to my Achilles tendons.
SECRET PARADISE: It’s a small place. Farmers sip coffee outside the taverna. On the patio, tourists eat goat-in-the-pot, horta or stuffed aubergine. In the distance a wall of mountains, like beefy monks hunched in a row, line the horizon. The other way, an arrowhead of golden sand nudges into shallow paddling waters. The huge sky is empty. The only marks on the vast sea are a handful of fishing boats and two islands hazy in the distance. The only sounds are cicadas and the breeze. It’s paradise. And I’m not saying where.
… And finally, fish foot therapy is huge in Crete this year. My top prize goes to the one in Chania with the slogan, “For once, you’re the fish food.”