Musíkk!

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Once on the boat, I find I'm sharing a cabin with three large Cretan peasants who smell strongly of onions. Having checked with reception that a wake-up call will be audible at 5 am, I settle down for the sound night's sleep I know I need with another 28 hours of travelling ahead of me.

Around 10 pm, when I've slept for a couple of hours, Cretan Peasant 1 presses a button, expressing childlike delight that "musíkk!" can come out of a hole in the wall, ignoring or misunderstanding my protest that it's time for sleep rather than musíkk.

Thereupon Cretan Peasant 2, who - immune to the seduction of sheets and blanket - is asleep on top of his bunk in vest and trousers, wakes and rolls over with a smile equally delighted, equally childlike, but rather more toothless, and reaffirms the delights of "musíkk!", turns over again and is snoring heavily before a dozen bars are passed.

Cretan Peasant 1 then goes into the shower, leaving the musíkk at full blast; I feel at something of a disadvantage, clearly outvoted two-to-one and without the most basic communication skills which the situation demands, apprehensive of being seen as a kill-joy in someone else's culture. I hear CP 1 come out of the shower, but then go back in and turn on the water again, apparently not satisfied with his first efforts.

After seven of those hot-garlic bouzouki songs, interminable and indistinguishable, a full 20 minutes, I can stand it no longer, and get up to have a look around. CP 1 isn't in the shower at all, he's gone up on deck, it must have been the shower from the next-door cabin I heard ... CP 2 is still snoring and CP 3 has disappeared long before the musíkk episode started.

So I feel morally justified in simply turning the stuff off: no bogey-man jumps out at me, no-one accuses me of being a kill-joy in a language I don't understand, in fact everything is just fine and I sleep till morning as soundly as any Cretan peasant ...