Stelios

Karveli means loaf and the Karvelis family are the largest bakers on the island. It is rather fun to go to buy your bread from Mr Loaf the baker.

Stelios Karvelis, of the same family, was our very charismatic neighbour. He was born in 1916 and died in 2010, though I don't think that Stelios was ever a baker himself. Like most locals he had a house in the village where he lived all winter plus a cottage out on his agricultural land which he might stay at sometimes during the summer if there was too much work to do to bother trekking back into the village to sleep. Stelios could talk the hind legs off a donkey and one day in 2005 he stopped us in the street to offer us a bag of plums. We accepted, he asked if we would like to visit his cottage for a glass of water and ninety minutes later we left with encyclopaedic knowledge of his family and his life. During the war he used to take pot-shots at the Luftwaffe, he had three children, Yiannis, Linda and Socrates, There were enough rope swings from trees around the cottage for the whole family including all the grandchildren and when dinner was served his wife used to call out each swing in turn by its number, not knowing who was occupying each swing. In that way there could be no arguments about who got what food.

He loved his land and maintained it beautifully, just as Nikos Drosakis and Yiannis Maroulis did. But Stelios could see animals and people in stones and whenever he found one that tickled him, he would add a bit of paint to help others to see what he could.

He began this shrine in 2000, when he was 85 years old and it is a shrine to life. Initially he is celebrating being 85, then, some years later he has added “I came to life and I walked. I do not know where I will arrive” and later still he has added “Leaving this life I am forgiving all those who have bitterness” But this was all still several years before he became too frail to continue. He has added a chicken and a whale and a squirrel, perhaps an amoeba and a ferrety-thing. There is a scroll which I cannot interpret. Further up the hill his children are standing looking down towards the road.