Keep the customer satisfied

Keith in the Spotlights

We love it here....the wine grows on trees!!!!


I’ve lost track off how many gigs we’ve done now, but it has been regularly 4 nights a week, although some venues have switched days, and occasionally it has been, “can we leave it for this week?” the work has come in & we’ve got paid! (Which is not what always happens, according to rumourmongers, when dealing with Greek bar owners) I think maybe other acts haven’t been as successful because they are trying to do a full show (the Elvis acts & the Rat Pack tributes) or they are using backing tracks (of which there are many) if you can’t adapt to the audience or play to what can be sometimes nearly an empty bar then you run the risk of either being paid off or told not come back the following week. (Can you imagine doing a gig in a “fat” Elvis costume in 35º heat with no air conditioning?)

It is true that all the bars, hotels & restaurants are having a hard time of it this year, everyone is trying to make the same living from less tourists & more bars than ever before. June & most of July, the tourist trade has been flat! It seems that now the school holidays are upon us the resorts are finally coming to life, but 6 weeks is not really long enough to make a living for the whole year.
The benefit to us Muso’s is that the bars will try anything to get the punters in! Especially live music. As long as when you play, more people come in & drink, than if just the TV was on, that is when you are seen to be doing your job. Although how these bars are surviving on so few punters & paying the bar staff & me, (who are also employed to “PR” the bars & drag people in off the street) I don’t know.

If you look closely one of the boards outside this bar says Keith Mitchell!!

In the UK the average gig is 45mins per set, with 2 sets a night, but over here you are expected to do 2 one hour long sets, it doesn’t sound much more, only an extra 15mins per set, but it does increase the number of songs you have to play quite dramatically! Also with the number of tourists depleted, if they are in the bar and its coming to the end of your 1st set, you know that the interval is the time you are most likely to lose them so now I’m tending to work through the whole two hours, which can morph into 2 ½ hours if people request songs, and if I am enjoying myself & the drinks are flowing!
A Tourist helps Keith sing Mustang Sally

I’m playing at least 40 songs a night now, sometimes more, mainly because I start off with a list of songs in some kind of order, but then people request songs, and I end up playing stuff that I’d forgotten I knew, or even working out how to play a song that is sort of lodged in my brain but I’ve never got around to playing it before! It keeps me on my toes & I enjoy working in that kind of free flow way.This approach seems to “Keep the customer satisfied”, they get to hear songs they want to hear, they stay in the bar longer, drink more beer, spend more money, so the bar owners are happy too.

30 degrees even when the sun has gone down, but the show must go on, and the bars don't put the air con on!!

Liz has been doing her bit too; about half way through each gig she has been going round the tables trying to sell my CD. This has been going quite well. If you sit in any bar or restaurant for any period of time you get a procession of people trying to sell you stuff! It usually starts with a woman selling roses, then people, selling balloons or cowboy hats. The ones that are the most interesting are the deaf & dumb cigarette lighter sellers. They walk into the bar put a card on the table explaining in several languages that they are deaf ‘n’ dumb they leave a lighter on your table there for several minutes, then come back & try to get you to part with several euros for a fire extinguisher (with a built in siren) or a mobile phone, (with ring tones) lighter. (How do they know they work?)Anyway one night while I was idly playing guitar at a gig, I decided that I would explain to the audience, about the bar sellers & that Liz would move amongst the tables without speaking to them, leave a CD on each table, she would come back later & collect either the money or the CD! This worked quite well we’ve had some good sales, the only problem has been that, as Liz is blonde she sometimes forgets to go back to the tables to collect the cash or CD!!!

Any Requests? …
“Can you play far away?” Yep!!!

Sammie and her friend Lilly are staying with us for 2 weeks as part of their 6 weeks Island hopping

So many beautiful sunsets,

P.S If you want to see more photos you can click onto Lizzy's photos on the right hand side of the blogger page

Love to you all, stay cool, we can't...

In search of the all-over tan

In search of the all over tan In a bid to get away from the noise & bustle of the brits on the beach, we often escape to more secluded beaches where people tend to leave ghetto-blasters lilo’s & clothes behind. & go Naked!! Almiros beach
Being hippies at heart this doesn’t tend to bother us too much, it’s not compulsory
& quite often it’s less offending on the eye than some of the locals & other Europeans (you know who you are) in their Speedo’s & thongs! However there does seem to be a certain culture that goes with this naturism.

The nearest “nudist” beach to us is Almiros, which is at the very end of the large bay that Roda & Acharavi are situated on. And whilst both resorts have sand or shingle with easy access to the water, Almiros is a deserted, rugged coastline, with sand dunes & on windy days almost impossible to get into the sea for the rocks on the waters edge.
This area seems to attract a gay fraternity, there does seems to be a lot more single men sunbathing (or with a friend) than on other beaches, we have noticed there are sometimes more cars on the beach than people, we think they may have chosen to sunbath in the sand dunes? But we haven’t been to look! Shingle gets everywhere!
Anyway coming back to the culture thing on nudist beaches, there seems to be as much posing going on here as elsewhere, for example, you find the majority of males or females seem to have completely removed all trace of any body hair, nice!!
The Alpha males usually aged 40+ seem to spend hours, standing, hands on hips, surveying their territory, occasionally walking down to the waters edge, usually as someone else is walking up the beach towards them. On the more commercial beaches @ Arillas & San Stefanos, you get a more family approach to nudism, but they too behave in unusual ways!

The women folk seem to spend hours making something similar to crop circles on the beach, with stones that they trawl up & down the beach to find, along with copious amounts of drift wood that they attach objects to, making sculptures, hours are spent creating huge constructions & sand sculptures. Its a sculpure Honest!!
But WHY WHY WHY do they do all this, bent double, legs straight like they are playing leap- frog? Anybody with clothes on would dig in the sand with knees bent!!
Also when these people go for a walk down the beach many of them will cover them-selves up by wearing a straw hat on their heads, Why? it must be to keep the harmful suns rays off their body or maybe as some sense of decorum.
Sometimes you see groups of people covering themselves & each other in grey mud, taking group photos then washing it all off again. "I have to say I love you in a Thong"
In the search for the all over tan, it seems just as intense as by the pool bar, legs & arms are held in strange positions & angles for hours, as obviously crevices that never usually see the sun have to be tanned as well as the usual bits.
Anyway enough rambling from me as you can tell by the subject matter of his blog we’re not going to post many pictures on this one, so it’s back to the beach, must get Liz to epilate my bum cheeks tonight!

life's still a beach

Its all Greek to Me

Its all Greek to me

My Greek is starting to come on now, I am trying to learn a new phrase every day. “Can I have the bill please”, “How much is that?” “see you tomorrow”, “what time is it?”, “how are you?” I can count to twenty, say the days of the week and I have been trying to learn how to tell the time

Signs outside bars and restaurants!

An example of Greek Humour
As we travel around the island we get great amusement from some of the signs advertising goods in shops & dishes in tavernas, I wonder if it’s just English they get wrong or do they do pidgin German as well as English, often it’s just slightly wrong with the odd letter out but sometimes it completely changes the meaning of the word.

Whilst driving around passing through the small mountain villages, you often see very elderly looking Greeks sat beside the road with a table full of Olive Oil, Honey, herbs and home made wine for sale. They wave at you to try and get you stop. Liz kept pestering me to stop but I think it was more to do with the fact that when we stopped and bought some honey last year the old Greek guy grabbed her bum.

Think we'll pass on Granmother's fish

Fire in them there hills

Whilst visiting the town of Kassiopi we noticed an unusual amount of small planes about (you may see 1 or 2 light aircraft on a daily basis) but there seemed to be a constant noise of planes flying over- head. Heading back to home we saw a fire in the undergrowth covering a large area of the hillside. The planes we had heard earlier were a form of seaplane, landing on the sea just long enough to fill up the floatation tank with water then flying over the fire & depositing huge volumes of water at low level then returning to the sea for another load.

Sea Plane carrying water to Fire

Hitting the target

New Greek Laws
Many things have changed over here, even in the 6 years we have been coming here, modern cars & scooters are everywhere, large modern villas by the coast, mountain villages are deserted except for very old local people.

All Greek drivers have mobile phones, usually attached to their ears whilst driving @ 20 miles per hour! But on the 1st of June 2007 a new law came out for motorists, they have to wear seat belts, no mobile phones, & motor bikers must wear a helmet, which they do, on their arms usually. This has led to a noticeable increase in the number of police you see on the roads. In previous years, on a 2 week holiday we would have seen maybe 1 police vehicle usually in Corfu town, but this year they are everywhere, even setting up road blocks to spot check for documents & seatbelts, this is causing some concern to locals as they can get an instant fine of 350€ & even lose their license for 10 days.

But generally they are still managing to resist these new laws, driving over-here is still just as crazy as it always was! Everyman, his wife, & his dog on the scooter plus shopping, etc. the other day we even saw someone carrying a huge tree home from a garden centre on his scooter.

Traffic is much slower moving, I don’t think we’ve done more then 45mph all the time we’ve been here, rarely used 5th gear, but if you saw the road surface you’d know why, although people do tend to slow down to about 20mph about 1 mile before their turn off or parking spot.

Pedestrian crossings (or should I say fancy yellow road decorations) were painted on in June, everyone ignored them then & now 2 months on, they have worn away so it’s just a place to cross where it may be less dangerous than elsewhere! One way traffic does work unless you are on a pushbike or an old guy on a scooter then you ignore it & everyone double-parks, even on road junctions & nobody seems to get upset by it, very much like Italy but without the horns blaring away. Rush hour Greek style
It still beats driving or should I say queuing on the UK roads!

Keith's Parents Visit

Keith’s parents arrived in Corfu the day after we flew back to the UK. So we had arranged for them to be collected from the airport and to stay at the Athina hotel in San Stefanos. They had stayed there 2 years ago when we got married so we knew they would be well looked after and made to feel at home.
On the Saturday night there was an earthquake 5.8 on the Richter scale but apparently no damage done, Norman and Marjorie were in bed at the time and they felt the earth move, possibly for the first time in quite some time!

When we returned to Corfu on the Monday, we collected them to come and stay with us for their 2nd week. They fell in love with where we are living, with the mixture of Greek life & a holiday location, also quite important for mobility, all on one level (sea level).

We’ve done some of the tourist locations with them, the picturesque towns of Paliokastritsa and Kassiopi. We took a trip into the mountains, to an ancient crumbling village called Ano Perithia, a small, uninhabited place, but still with 4 tavernas and 3 olive wood shops for the tourists but with 30 to 40 derelict properties. There are references to life there going back over 150 years in some of the taverna’s blurb. The tavernas were full of German tourists & a fleet of 4x4’s were parked up for off road experiences in the surrounding wilderness of the mountain.

We have spent a couple of days on the beach and managed to get my Mum to go in the sea twice, & they even braved coming to 2 of my gigs (there is always a price to pay, even for a free holiday.) We finally christened the small BBQ we bought. Toula gave us a large water bottle full of olive oil, some lemons and a big bunch of oregano from her garden to use to marinade our pork chops, great meal, you know how much I like to BBQ so I think we will be doing this again throughout the summer.

Tuesday 10th July, Norman and Marjorie are flying home tonight, so we took them on a trip round the streets of Corfu town in the evening on the way to the airport. It is such a contrast to the villages round where we are living in the North. It’s bustling and very hot and noisy, this is where the “beautiful people” hang out. The buildings are beautiful, with a Venetian influence in appearance, very weather worn on the outside but apparently very elegant on the inside. I love the way the stone pavements are so shiny and worn.

So we are home alone again for a couple of weeks until Liz’s niece, Sammie and her friend arrive on 23rd. They are Greek island hopping for the summer so they have booked an internal flight to Corfu to stay with us but also to see some friends in Kavos.

Thanks to you guys who have sent comments to the blog, it’s really appreciated, keep them coming. It’s good to know you are reading it!

Bye for now…….. Don’t start work til 10pm…….. So off to the beach………again xxx

Our First Visitors

Family Visitors

Jema, Barry, Caitlyn, Finley, Pippa & Lena have just spent a week over here. They rented a large villa near Sidari with 3 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms, a large garden and its own swimming pool. It was absolutely beautiful. We packed a suitcase and ended up spending the whole week with them in their villa and left our little house empty.

Jema and Barry's Holiday Villa
They arrived in the afternoon on Monday so we went and stocked up the fridge with food and booze in the morning, then collected them all from the airport and back to the villa. The boys did what boys do best, opened a beer each &got the BBQ going! Whilst the girls unpacked, sorted out the rooms, dressed the kids, covered them in suntan cream, prepared food. (a fair division of labour I’d say).The rest of the week ran a similar course, we all played in the pool with Finley & Caitlyn, (Caitlyn organised us all of course)

A mans place is .. @ the BBQ

keith n the grandkids
Pip & Lena went out each night & laid waste to the nearest town, Sidari. They soon found the best bars to get cheap or free drinks & the best bars to dance the night away. They lived the life of vampires for a week, coming home later each morning, to sleep off the nigh-time excesses. Oh to be a teenager.

Glimmer twins ready for the town

We managed to drag ourselves away from the pool sometimes, and made trips to visit Roda, San Stefanos, & our home in Acharavi, we hired a boat one day, and a bit of retail therapy had to be done for Barry in Sidari & a visit to the smallish water park also in Sidari and lots of meals out. It was lovely to have visitors, the more the merrier, so if you are feeling tempted, give us an email.

Meal out with the family

Captain Caitlyn Sails our boat

Keith still did his gigs in the evenings, which are going well, and gradually getting busier. Caitlyn and Finley seemed to enjoy seeing Grandad perform, although Finley was more interested in the boobs on the Greek statues around the bar.

They all flew home on Monday back to the rain in the UK. We also flew home on Monday to be in the UK for a week, for Jonathan’s funeral, a very sad week but my family are so fantastic to be around it got us through it. In fact we have come back here even more convinced that we are right to follow our dream, at the risk of sounding clichéd, life is too short.

This week Keith’s Mum and Dad are here to stay, so we will blog next week to let you know how the first visitors to our own home in the sun got on.