It’s the most unusual invitation to a restaurant I’ve ever had. It was made by a man who lost, maybe temporarily, maybe not, the use of both his legs and an arm. He invited me out in order to talk to me about how he is going to decorate a house he’s planning to buy and how he’s going to grow old on the island where the statue of Venus was found in 1820.
They found her in an olive orchard in Greece and, on the way to the Louvre, she lost an arm. Everything starts with the olive trees, as it were.
“Two olive trees. Only two, but good ones. A small house with a 1000 metre garden. And beyond that, you can get a glimpse of the sea”. They set eyes on the property a few years ago. They’re thinking of buying it. “It’s on Milos island, in Greece, where Maria and I have been going on holiday every summer for 10 years”.
The rain is pattering against the thick window pane of the De Hoogstraat clinic in Utrecht. It’s 13 degrees. Mid-September looks like a summer, hugged by winter at a tramway stop, because it doesn’t want it to go away. There are leaves floating in the air.
“We take the fast boat from Piraeus”
The 28-year-old man looks to one side. “The weather’s always like this here”. A local joke says that if you’re on your bike and the wind isn’t blowing in your face, then you’re going in the wrong direction!
“Usually we try to book our holiday early because on the Athens - Milos route there’s only one small plane, with two seats on either side of the aisle. It gets booked up fast. If we can’t find plane tickets, we take the catamaran from Piraeus. It’s super fast! It takes less than four hours”. In kilometres, it does 45 km an hour, which isn’t bad for a boat that’s carrying cars too.
I’m keeping the doors blue
“It was like I had a premonition this year. We hadn’t booked anything. We were go
