By the Dart • Postcard from Leonie


103


May Day horse riding on the beach at Vonitsa


noise and faces. The Easter procession was in full swing, with marching brass bands and choirs from the town’s 13 main churches parading the ancient streets, along with parishioners carrying icons and symbolic coffins of Christ aloft, priests swinging incense, old men and women sheltering flickering candles in the palms of their hands and serious looking primary school children carrying small baskets of bright, spring flowers. A riotous tradition took place on Easter Saturday


morning, which attracted national TV crews and even bigger crowds. We joined the crush of bodies staring up at the balconies, windows and roofs of the tall buildings in the old town and gasped and laughed as the first earthenware pot was hurled from the heights and came crashing down to earth. A huge roar erupted and didn’t stop until the last water-filled pot (some took two people to manhandle into the air) was smashed 30 minutes later. The origins of the hedonistic rite are unknown.


Some say it is connected to the biblical passage “Thou, oh Lord, raise me up, that I may crush them as a potter’s wheel.” Others believe it dates back to ancient times when old food storage pots were destroyed to be replaced by new ones. Or it may have pagan roots, in that the noise wakes Persephone, the Goddess of Spring. It had been well worth going back to Corfu and we thanked Jeff and Helen for the suggestion when we returned to Paxos. We also met Kingsbridge couple, Pauline and Charles, who house-sit in Paxos during the winter and who kindly gave us some island- grown bitter oranges so we could make a big batch of


marmalade onboard Leonie. May Day was another local holiday that saw us in


the right place at the right time to enjoy some more Greek festivities. We had entered Vonitsa harbour the evening before after spending a few days in splendid isolation in the serene Gulf of Amvraki, where we sailed alongside dolphins and turtles and watched pelicans flying gracefully overhead. We joined the townspeople and bussed in visitors lining the beach to watch big men on delicate, pretty horses cantering up and down the shingle shore. Behind us hundreds of tables and chairs had been set up in a wooded glade and 50 lambs were barbecuing on a huge chain driven spit in a sectioned off area to the right. We joined the ‘queue’ for meat and spent an hour inching forward, slowly being crushed by the bodies in front, behind and on either side of us, squeezed ever tighter and tighter together as we neared the serving table. Carl suddenly surged forward as, for some reason, the men surrounding him pushed him towards the front. I managed to thrust my BBQ ticket into his hand as he hurtled away, and somehow escaped sideways out of the suffocating throng to wait for him by the exit gate. He emerged with a huge pile of cold meat, bone, fat and gristle wrapped in greasepaper, along with a few chunks of dry white bread. We grabbed a couple of cold beers and ate our lunch in a daze at one of the tables in front of the stage featuring a band and a large woman in a colourful billowing blouse singing traditional Greek folk songs on what seemed like a loop.


Carl standing among the broken pottery debris in Corfu Old Town


May Day meat feast in Vonitsa


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