Every cloud

Earlier.

As I stood up, I realised there was something in the pocket of my swimming shorts. It was the hire car keys. “I should put those in the swimming bag” I thought.

****
“Were your car keys so hot that you took them swimming?”

Dimitra from the car hire company is enjoying herself enormously at my expense but fortunately I don’t mind having my leg pulled. And more to the point, her good cheer suggests that all is not lost.

My relief that there was a keyhole in the driver’s door - having initially looked on the wrong side - was short-lived as the immobiliser is doing its job in the absence of a charged up key: we could get in the car but couldn’t go anywhere. That’s when I rang the car hire company.

Dimitra’s initial mindboggling* suggestion - that she give the spare key to a bus driver in Athens who’d hand it to me in Ekrata - has been superseded by her finding a local locksmith and ringing ahead to warn him that I’m on my way.

I give Abi and the miniMinx enough money for food and drink, and set off for Akrata on foot. It’s well after five o’clock, so whilst it’s still hot, the sun is lower in the sky, and the one and a half mile walk is quite pleasant. And, every cloud having a silver lining, I also have a chance to stop on a bridge to take a photo of this dried up river that we drive over quite regularly. I wasn’t sure I’d have a chance to.

Having found the locksmith, I overcome the language barrier initially by getting Dimitra back on the phone, as she’d suggested, and later by using Google Translate**

To my relief, fixing the key - by, in effect, cloning the broken one - is comfortably within the capabilities of the chap, who is then kind enough to drive me back to Scaravaios to ensure that his handiwork passes muster.

On the way, he fiddles with the radio tuning, settling on ‘Electricity’ by Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark, and from then on, everything is OK.

*Mindboggling to me, coming from England. This, apparently, would be entirely practical in Greece.

**Effectively Douglas Adam’s ‘Babel Fish’. What a time to be alive!