Body and soul

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Nearby I see a little old church, a tiny walled enclosure perched on the edge of the cliff, though still well within the built-up area of the modern town, and I go over to have a look. I've read somewhere that there's so little earth in Greece that the bodies of the late departed get to rest for no more than three years before their bones are reinterred (deterred?!), washed and preserved above ground.

But such is certainly not the case here in Sitia: I don't know what's inside, of course, but these marble mausoleums look all pretty permanent to me, all cheek-by-jowl at slightly odd angles to the perpendicular - odd, they had left no space to walk between them, you have to clamber over all the neighbours to reach your own late lamented, so you have the impression that they were really trying to use every centimetre there was, but you could have got several more in there if they had been quite straight.

Many of them have photos mounted as part of the permanent exhibition; they create rather a homely atmosphere at first, but after a while it feels odd that you can't get into church without eye contact with a load of people who actually aren't part of life's dynamic any more.

Or perhaps the point is that they are ...