LOO WITH A VIEW

We’re so used to it now that we barely give it a second glance. It’s been there since our very first visit to Kalamos, when we vacationed in Magda’s house, long before we came to live here.

I imagine the enthusiastic hikers who encounter it as they trek along the headland do a double take. Flushed as they are with their exertions, it must rather bring them up short in their tracks.

It’s not exactly what you’d expect to see standing in an olive grove above the rocks and sand that drop away below. The waters of the Pagasitic flow before it and Mt Pelion stares impassively across at it.

In spring it perches proudly among the wildflowers. In summer it hums with bees as the grass and herbs dry out around it. In winter it faces the lashing of the winds and the thrashing of the rains.

I’m grateful to our friend Bryan who provided me with this photograph.

Why it was dumped exactly there and not at the backside of the building we’ll never know, and although it’s hardly private, very few people ever pass that way. There’s a little beach cottage, only suitable for summer use, about fifty yards higher up from it.

Built very roughly of cement block and stone long before any electricity and running water came to Kalamos, not to mention tourists, the tiny house stood in splendid isolation from the world. Fresh water would have been drawn from the well in a deep gully below the house. This is now completely caved in, breached over the decades by the heavy winter waves.

Presumably built as a convenience for those who’ve got to go, the facility’s rather a wee one. Maybe the original owner of the cottage, now long dead, enthroned himself there to contemplate the passage of time? Perhaps he felt bogged down by life but the stunning view surely relieved him.

We’re not privy to what passed through his head, but would not all the ants and other creepy-crawlies have driven the occupant potty? A real pain in the butt.

Though bizarrely placed it isn’t quite as primitive as first appears. Ron noticed that a crude septic tank of sorts – a large barrel – was buried downhill from it. A sort of long drop you could say.

Quite a good job.

Whoever built it took fullest advantage of the view to answer the call of nature.