In which we find Fourni... an upright family... a corrupt official... nefarious negotiations... civic atrocities... Hellenic dance, a critical summary... the debauch of the Righteous... En-Deering myself... who laughs last?
Fourni is not easy to get to. Having callously deserted my paramour on a distant shore I packed my gear in Poros and endured a fond farewell from Kyria Fotini, who was so enraptured by a house guest for the whole summer who paid monthly in advance that she appeared to have adopted me. Then I caught the old pantouffle Apostolos P up to Piraeus and once again found myself on the creaking old ferry to Samos.
A strong northerly wind was blowing in the Aegean, as it very often does, and the ageing ship rolled extravagantly as she passed the gaps between the islands, through which the seas rolled down all the way from the Thracian coast.
Keeping as far as I could from the many unwell tourists, I eventually landed again in Vathi, which I had last seen through a haze of roasting lamb- and goat- fumes on Easter Sunday. From there I went by bus through the resin-scented pine forests on the mountains of Samos to the little south coast port of Milopotamus, and finally on a tiny, 2-car ferry which corkscrewed alarmingly down to Fourni.
It had taken me a while simply to find Fourni on a chart. It is situated just to the south of the gap between Samos and Ikaria, close to the Turkish coast. A Rorsach blob of an archipelago, it is composed of two principle islands which are so close to each other that, at first glance, they appear to be one fantastically-shaped one. To my eccentric imagination, Fourni appears on a map as having the shape of a lobster, a long central body linked by thin arms to two bulky claws. The port lies approximately in the lobster’s left ear-hole, facing west to see what he has picked up in his left clipper.
The approaches to the port form an unusually spacious anchorage by Aegean standards. There is decent shelter, good holding and good depth in the lee of Akra Paleomilos, and this makes the isolated Fourni Islands an unlikely haven for a large fishing fleet... and by that I do not mean the picturesque, gaily-painted little caïques of the part-time fishermen which cannot be kept off the postcards. Fourni is home to serious, open water boats, a mixture of large traditional caïques and modern steel designs, all with powerful, up-to-date deck equipment and massive nets, uniformly scarred and stained by constant confrontation with the elements.
The appearance of this workaday armada in so rugged, wild and unspoiled an environment was a bit of a shock to me, but the town, behind a charming beach lined with trees, was a pristine delight. Not until I landed did I realise that the shore was lined with large freezer-stores; for they were low, flat-roofed, white-painted structures set about with trees and they fitted in amazingly well with the quaint, traditional village behind.
There was a single jetty in front of the town, one side of which was reserved for fishing boats to unload, and on the other lay two yachts. One of these was the one I had come to find... a forty-foot Sun Fizz containing the family of one Dr Deering.
It seemed to me that Dr Deering, a bespectacled, medium sized chap with thinning sandy hair and a light complexion which had been turned classic crayfish-orange by the sun, couldn’t quite make up his mind whether he was pleased to see me or not. Certainly, if I expected to be hailed as a saviour, I was quickly disabused of the idea, for my greeting was a perfunctory, business-like affair; polite but impersonal. His handshake had the softness of a man who goes out of his way to emphasise that he is intellectual planes above alpha male knuckle-crushing contests: civilised, scientific, analytical, remote. I regret to say that it did him little good... skippering and alpha male behaviour are a bit like party political broadcasts and nausea... you rarely get one without the other. By the time I had interpreted the handshake, he was already massaging the blood back into his fingers and looking at me as if I had escaped from the high security wing of a zoo.
The good doctor (of chemistry, I was quickly informed, presumably in case I was secreting a festering boil about my person) spoke clipped English with a hint of a Midlands accent to it. His good lady had a pleasing, matronly appearance, a soft Scots accent, and was equally reserved. The family was completed by two pretty girls, both in their late-teens, who were so obviously ‘on-their-best-behaviour’ that they could have given deportment lessons to the guards outside Buckingham Palace.
All of the family were about as formally dressed as anyone can be in the Greek sunshine... pressed khaki shirts and neat shorts, matching sun hats; Dr and Mrs D wore sandals with socks, and the girls were in the same style, but with slightly brighter blouses and track shoes.
They also all looked fairly fit. This latter was hardly a surprise... it didn’t take much imagination to see this particular socio-economic co-habiting group doing calisthenics together every morning. I had a mental impression of the Von Trapp family crossing the Alps, slapping their lederhosen and singing uplifting songs about sexually-deprived practitioners of animal husbandry.
We sat down around the cockpit table, and they offered me an orange juice. Now, our destination was Lavrion, which lay on the outside of the Attic peninsula close to Athens, and so the voyage ahead of me involved crossing about a hundred and twenty miles of the Aegean Sea. At first glance, given the prevailing weather and time frame, it was not a daunting prospect; but when I was offered an orange juice at six in the evening, Lavrion suddenly became Paris, Fourni became Moscow, and I felt like Napoleon!
My brief from Rory was that there had been a bit of a bad experience somewhere on the holiday, which had resulted in my call up. They were good clients who had chartered several times in the quieter areas and seasons, and had felt ready to try the central Aegean; Rory wanted them back safely and in time, but most of all he wanted me to try to restore a bit of confidence... he didn’t want to lose the custom.
With this in mind I tried to break the ice by being bright and breezy, to instil confidence by downplaying the difficulties, and I outlined a minimum stress, maximum scenery route to get us back to Lavrion as painlessly as possible. I had spent considerable time on the ferry working this out with the aid of the pilot book, and it included as little upwind sailing as possible and lots of white churches with blue domes. And Dr D wasn’t having any of it.
“We shall go to Patmos tomorrow,” he announced firmly, “I would like to leave early, and be there before noon. I particularly wish to see the Monastery of Saint John the Theologian, and the Cave of the Apocalypse. Then we shall need two nights in Mykonos, in order to have enough time to fully explore Delos. One night in Naxos should be sufficient I think... the harbour is said to be uncomfortable, in any case... and then we need to go to Paros to see the Church of a Hundred Doors.”
Well, that was five of his eight days, and it would leave him a long way downwind of Lavrion and barely half way home. The thing was perfectly possible, even with the current forecast for the strong northerlies to continue or even strengthen, but it was not easy. Tomorrow’s run to Patmos was twenty miles due south with the wind behind us, but the day after we would have to beat up to Mykonos, a run of over sixty miles through all the sea and wind coming through the gap between Ikaria and Tinos. Then we would surrender all our hard won northing to go down to Naxos and Paros, and have only three days to climb up to Lavrion again... the last day of it crossing the notorious Kavo Doro strait where the sea again runs big between Andros and Evia. In the forecast weather, it wasn’t a trip for faint hearts, or for restoring bruised confidences.
I tried to moderate expectations, suggesting that Paros could be visited by ferry from Syros without going so far south, but the adult D’s were firmly insistent and the girls had no say, so I smiled sweetly and said ‘OK’.
“We did want to go to Santorini too,” remarked Mrs D airily, “but one of my secretaries went there last year and she said it was frightfully touristy.”
Thank all the Gods for one of Mrs D’s secretary, I thought... Santorini is another fifty-odd miles south of Paros... getting back from there in this wind would have made the Anabasis look like taking the Jack Russell to the nearest lamp post.
There was no spare cabin, so I installed myself in the saloon and got cleaned up after my travel whilst the family went for a swim exactly in the manner I would have expected... all cleaving the water purposefully, no splashing or sky-larking. Then we ambled up the single street of Fourni, which slopes gently up away from the quay, lined with traditional, white-washed, flat-roofed houses and an abundance of fragrant orange trees. Great, hungry gulls eyed us speculatively as we walked, and cicadas rasped like football rattles.
An excellent and healthy dinner of fresh fish and salad was consumed at a delightful little taverna, and for a moment my spirits rose as Dr D ordered a bottle of wine; but sadly, he was suckered-in by a fancy label, and it wasn’t so much a chateau as a chat eau. Even in my deprived condition I was quite grateful when it turned out that the girls were also indulged with a glass, so my share of it didn’t amount to much. I was uncharacteristically stoical when there was no suggestion of a second bottle.
After the family went to bed, I found a half kilo of decent Samian table wine to lay the ghost of the dinnertime filth. Then I called Rory and let him know what was going on... I didn’t want him thinking I had led them into evil ways, but he was quite relaxed about it.
“OK, chum. Do what you can to make it easy for them. ’Preesh the call! Toodle-oo!” Click. I noted that I wasn’t being ‘whomed’ any more, which seemed, on consideration over the last of the wine, to be a good thing... it sounded as if I was already a part of Rory’s team. As I enjoyed that thought, I noticed that people were stringing flags from the trees as if for a festival.
* * *
The next morning I walked up the street again to the port police office, a single room set far enough into the town to prevent the occupant from seeing anything in the port which might alarm or disturb him. I had slightly ticklish business to transact... I had to get myself entered on the crew list, but I couldn’t do that as a skipper; foreigners were not officially allowed to skipper in Greece.
At that time, probably seventy-five per cent of the skippers in Greece were foreigners, and the authorities knew it perfectly well. The mainland ports of Alimos and Lavrion were chock-a-block with men... and a few women... of all nationalities; some highly regarded and retained by large charter companies, some working from contract to contract, and very, very many trying to break in to the market. I had been fortunate to slide in as serendipitously as I did. There were a good few Greek skippers too, of course, but the majority were xeni.*
Some thought the industry would have collapsed without the incomers, others thought not; but there certainly was plenty of work for the established skippers, and it did seem that they were filling a need and bringing a lot of money in to the country. The authorities ignored the rules or not, as it best suited them... and since inactivity was always an attractive prospect in a hot country, it usually best suited them to do nothing; but some lip-service still had to be granted.
The way this was managed was simply to put the skipper on a bareboat charter crew list as one of the charterers, even if it meant a Kalahari Bushman sailing with a family of Eskimos; and if, for example, a port police official in Alimos Marina happened to notice that he had just signed the same skipper out for the twentieth time in one season... well, coincidences happen. Many people ridiculed the bureaucracy for stupidity, but anyone who thought they were pulling the wool over the authorities’ eyes was very much mistaken: those port policemen never seemed to do very much, but I was often in the port police offices, and as I started to learn the language I quickly became aware that they were well attuned to waterfront gossip. They generally knew who was who... as those characters who carried any dubious activities beyond reasonable limits were apt to find out.
Getting the skipper on the charter crew list at the beginning of the charter was done by the boat’s owner or agent, and was never a problem; but joining the vessel as skipper half way through the charter might make an official suspicious. Greek civil servants didn’t do much, but then they didn’t get paid much either; their lifetime goal was early retirement on a secure pension, which could be seriously affected by missing promotions. They didn’t like irregularities... they then had to make decisions, for which they could be held accountable; so I was being a little cautious as I approached the very young port policeman in the flag-decked Fourni office with a concocted story about being a family friend joining the party and a notarised letter from the boat’s owner.
The port policeman was not only very young; he was also very smart in his pristine white uniform, very merry and very cheerful. At his elbow was a carafe of something which looked like, but certainly wasn’t, water, and he had his feet up on the desk, holding forth volubly to a couple of girls and two or three other men who looked like fishermen.
As I was posing as a family friend joining the holiday I thought it best not to speak any Greek, but the policeman spoke (for those days) unusually good English. He regarded me speculatively, gestured me to a chair, and then sucked his teeth thoughtfully as he flipped through the papers. After a moment or two he filled a small glass from the carafe and pushed it across the desk to me with a friendly smile.
“Drink!” He invited me. “Today is our saint’s day. The church, and also my girlfriend.”
He gestured towards the two girls without distinguishing one from the other... maybe he couldn’t, because they appeared to be sisters and neither could I... and I cheerfully toasted his apparent polygamy. As I had expected, the drink was tsipouro. He nodded his appreciation as I drank it off in one, and refilled it; then he went back to the papers. Whether it was the booze or just natural ability, he had unusual presence for such a young and junior chap.
I could see a frown developing as he flipped the papers back and forth, and did my best to appear unconcerned. Then abruptly, he said to me in Greek, “When you are leaving?”
I almost answered, but just managed to stifle the reply in time. I raised my eyebrows, cocked my head and rotated my palms up to indicate non-comprehension. He smiled slightly. Then it occurred that I had responded like a Greek... a genuinely misunderstanding Brit would have said “I beg your pardon?” or “Oh! Were you talking to me?” Despite my subterfuge, I decided that he had me bang to rights.
The bright, promising future of the port police lowered his feet to the uneven flagged floor, languorously unfolded himself to an impressive height, and handed me back the papers.
“No problem, but tomorrow, Captain. Today, no sailing- too much wind. Not permitted. Please come to the party... and bring your...” he paused for a significant instant; “...Friends”.
“Ah!” I replied, thinking quickly, “...But would it not be possible to sail just to Patmos? The wind will be behind us and my... friends would like to see the churches.”
“Thistichos, ochi. Unfortunately, no. No sailing today. Bring the young ladies, they will like to dance with us.” His friends nodded judiciously, as if that idea had just occurred to them. It was about as convincing as the Munich agreement.
“After all,” he continued, “...You aren’t in a hurry are you? You are on holiday. It is not as if you are a professional captain... that would be illegal, hah ha ha!”
He laughed to show how ridiculous such an idea would be, and then gave me a grin like an enamelled bear-trap and topped up my glass again. I smiled to signify gracious acceptance of defeat and tossed off my tsipouro. It made a good gesture, and also gave me a bit more courage to face Dr D with the news that the mysteries of the Cave of the Apocalypse were going to have to remain that way for another day.
He wasn’t pleased. He was sitting at the chart table measuring distances, and as I broke the news to him... at least, the part about the weather restriction; I didn’t chose to bother him with any discussions on the legality of my status... he pursed his lips, looked down at the chart, and severely positioned all the rulers, pencils and books in neat patterns whilst he listened to my explanation. It appeared that he had a touch of C.D.O.2
“And why can’t we sail?” he enquired analytically.
I confess that I lied, but only with the noblest intentions. My function as a charter skipper, as I saw it, was to be the conduit through which he passed to pleasurable experiences, and I was doubtful whether I would improve his day to any meaningful degree by saying ‘because the port policeman and his friends want to get your daughters drunk and dance with them, and probably your missus too’; so I said, “Strong weather warning.”
Harbour-masters or the coastguard could indeed issue an apagorevtiko, which translates roughly as ‘a forbidding’, which prohibited vessels going to sea. It wasn’t always total; often captains could sail on their own responsibility, but the policeman had not given us that option. He also had not signed me onto the crew list. Officially, we could not leave.
“But,” Dr Deering reasoned, “tomorrow’s forecast is exactly the same. Why can’t we sail today? Or will he stop us tomorrow as well?”
I do so love being piggy-in-the-middle. In common with most people in his situation, Dr Deering did not seem to appreciate that convincing me was as useless as convincing the town hall cat.
“I don’t think he’ll stop us tomorrow,” I replied, and then instead of adding, ‘because I think he’s going to have a hangover’, I tried to put the best gloss on it that I could.
“The town has rather kindly invited us to the panagyri... it is the feast of the local saint. They are interesting folk-culture events... traditional music and dancing, local food and handicraft, and such like.”
Such a festival, known as a glendi, does indeed start culturally, but they tend to get somewhat more Dionysian fairly rapidly. Keeping that to myself, I stressed the cultural aspects which would precede the wassail because I was sure that would appeal to the family’s apparently rather serious appetites. Or perhaps I should say, the parent’s rather serious appetites, because from the corner of my eye I could see the two daughters perking up remarkably at the mention of dancing. It was also egging the pudding somewhat to say that the town had invited us, but I thought it might incline them to accept rather than appear impolite.
“Well, I think it sounds delightful!” enthused Mrs D, to my relief. So we went to the glendi.
* * *
It started at the church, and it didn’t start well. The little building was already full to bursting, so there was no opportunity to examine the icons or frescoes, to Dr D’s dismay. We were kept outside the church with the village menfolk, most of whom preferred to remain in the open air and engage in spirited conversation. The singing was melodic and unexpectedly accomplished for such a small community, but unfortunately was relayed to the listeners outside by a particularly execrable loudspeaker system which howled and rasped, at times, like a soul in torment going through a liquidiser. To converse over this racket the men naturally had to shout, and it was pretty much a cacophony even before the bells got going.
After that, the local dignitaries all took it in turns to make speeches... I don’t suppose this is different in villages in any culture; those who make their way up the organisational ladder love to orate, but if they were any good at it at all they would have progressed beyond village politics. It is a pit of mediocrity from which there is no escape... turgid text delivered in mumbles with abysmal timing, punctuated by blessed lulls as the microphone drifts away from the speaker and then by harsh bellows or outraged screeches as it is brought back. And ever and anon, the hideous uncertainty of never knowing whether the fifth page which was just turned on the speakers notepad is the merciful last, or merely the end of the introduction; or, indeed, how many more assistant deputy vice-busybodies have yet to eat the air.
Through this we all stood more or less stoically. Dr and Mrs D seemed mildly restless, but the girls and I were in much deeper agony. Periodically the dapper port policeman, who stood just outside the church with two ordinary policemen, would turn around and smile at me, as though to say “If I’ve got to sit through this, you can bloody well have some too!” I smiled back and tried not to make it too obvious that I was wishing him in the pit of nether hell.
In fact, when I am bored to tears in speeches, churches, meetings or wherever, I have a self-preservation technique: I block out the sound and start running through Shakespearian soliloquies in my head. That evening I was Macbeth and, had that port policemen but known it, for about an hour he was the King of Scotland.
But eventually it ended, as all good things must. Now came the procession, the icon of the saint being solemnly escorted up and down the street by the priests and the three men in uniform. Some followed in the train, others stood to provide the audience. A pleasing proportion of one to the other was achieved, apparently entirely by chance. The icon was rehoused in the church, and the music began.
Now, I like Greece. It would not be going too far to say that I love the country. I certainly love its people. I have a deep regard for its history, its customs, and its values. And I like its music and dancing too... but I could wish that they would occasionally change the record.
The first twenty minutes of a Greek dance are very fine indeed. The costumes, wherever they are from in the country, are magnificent, and the grace of the dancers is enchanting. The music is fascinating; a wild, harsh mix of melody and cacophony which speaks eloquently of contrasts, of the juxtaposition of civilisation with a pagan past, of a land which has spent centuries at the crossroads of opposed cultures. The tunes are old; very, very old. And forgive me for suggesting it, but frankly, after the first half-hour, it’s time for a new one!
The problem is, to my untutored ear at least, they all sound the same. In western culture, dance music tends to have a central theme from which it wanders away and, usually, later returns. Most traditional Greek dance music is the same phrase, over and over. By the time they start the second one I am starting to look hunted, and by the onset of the fourth I feel as if my dentist is approaching the job through the back of my head instead of the front.
Sadly, it is the same with the dancing... the grace and coordination fascinate me at the outset, but after a while, it is, after all, just people going around and around in a circle for twenty minutes. To an unchanging tune. There are wilder dances to be sure, dances with heel-slapping and jumping, with acrobatics and swirling partners, but they don’t seem to occur at the local glendies. One gets a series of monotonously similar dances executed to monotonously similar tunes, first performed by the kids, then the older kids, then the big kids, and then by various local dance societies, and then the guest dancers. Round and round they go, always the same way it seems, and it can go on for hours and hours.
Possibly my problem with this lies in the perspective. Greek dancing, it seems to me, is certainly a celebration of national traditions but also, I feel, an expression of the dancer’s feelings more than an entertainment. Perhaps it isn’t really intended as a spectator sport. Or perhaps it is just me, because many others seem to enjoy it... Dr D seemed engrossed, and was busy with his camera; but his daughters appeared somewhat jaded by the fourth set, and as for Mrs D... well, she spoke well of it, but methought she did protest too much.
Having found the drinks table I was suffering as stoically as I could, and then I blessedly fell in with the island’s doctor, who was happy to talk to me in French about the massacre of Psara. At least, I think it was the massacre of Psara, but with the strength of the tsipouro, the background noise and my French being what it is, he might equally well have been telling me about his technique for performing appendectomies with a fly-mow. It took my mind off the dancing, however, so I was enjoying the exchange when Dr D interrupted us.
“Have you seen the girls?” he asked with a slightly accusatory edge to his voice and a meaningful glance at the glass in my hand.
I had not, felt inexplicably guilty about the fact, and fought back with a manful, and mendacious, “I saw them standing behind you just a few moments ago.”
He tutted and started doing gopher impressions as he sought out the fruit of his loins. I made an ostentatious show of looking in another direction, and after some fruitless scanning of the crowd I suddenly spotted them exactly where I should have looked in the first place... at the end of the dance-line, firmly attached to either side of a white uniform.
I prodded the peeved parent, wordlessly indicated his springing offspring, and re-engaged in my conversation. As I did so, the dance-line rotated sufficiently to allow me to see the middle; and there, in all her glory, with the hem of her long, narrow skirt carelessly tucked into her waistband to free her rather attractive legs, danced Mrs D, eyes and teeth flashing with pleasure as she received instructions from a couple of fishermen. Her husband clearly didn’t know what to do about this, so I handed him a glass of tsipouro. He was so far out of his comfort-zone that he drank it.
Remarkable stuff, tsipouro. I doubt if it took it more than a couple of hours to transform that primly civilised academic into an exultant, scarlet-faced Neanderthal who bested two brawny fishermen at arm-wrestling outside the kafeneion... a conquest watched with delighted incredulity by his wife and younger daughter. I dare say they related the event to the older daughter later, because she was an even earlier convert to the charms of tsipouro and, having retrieved her almost unconscious from the solicitous care of one of the younger fishermen, I had carried her off fireman’s style. By the time her father came to his triumph, she was already laid out in the saloon of the boat like Kirk Douglas in the final scene of The Vikings. Until early evening her mother made regular checks on her daughter’s welfare, but after that it was left to me to keep an eye on the heir to the Deering overdraft as Mrs D changed into a rather less restricting skirt and abandoned her maternal duties in favour of dancing ‘Good Golly Miss Molly’ style until she had exhausted several partners half her age.
* * *
It was a fragile group who assembled for breakfast the next morning, one which, quite literally, did not know what had hit it. I don’t suppose there was a lot of experience of dealing with blinding hangovers in that family, and I was rather touched by the way they whimpered and tried to help one other... it put me in mind of a litter of new-born pups when their mum goes out for a pee. When I prescribed gallons of sweet tea, toast, and a swim they obeyed with the blind zeal of Prussian guardsmen and showed the most touching appreciation of my solicitude. When I offered to delay the departure to Patmos until the afternoon, they looked at me as if I had just invented a cure for cancer.
The port police beast was made of sterner stuff... he was as dapper, as cheery, and as languidly assured as the previous day. He was also as good as his word, entering me into the crew list without even a smirk, and politely asked if I would be leaving immediately.
“This afternoon, I think...” I replied airily, “my friends want to go to the beach and look around a bit more.”
His smile reflected off the opposite wall.
“You see!” he said with that gargantuan self-confidence which Greek men are so lavishly imbued with, “I told you they would like Fourni!”
* * *
Seven days later I waved the Deerings goodbye at Hellenikon Airport and headed down to the Plum Pudding Club en route to the hydrofoil back to Poros. As I nursed a cold draft beer and waited for Shergar to finish fixing a gin palace’s anchor winch and join me, I reflected on the very pleasant sail we had enjoyed from Patmos. The girls had been relaxed and chirpy, Mrs D bubbly and pleasant, and even Dr D had been civility itself. He had accepted my renewed suggestion not to go south, and we had a night in Ornos Bay on the south side of Mykonos and then anchored overnight at Delos before day-hopping through Syros, Kythnos and Kea. By keeping the wind mostly on the beam we enjoyed fast, exciting passages, and compensated for the lost Church of a Hundred Doors in Paros by visiting the cathedrals of Ermoupolis, the golden beaches of west Syros as immortalised in the song Frangosyriani, the hot baths of Loutra and the lion of Kea.3
I puzzled over Dr Deering’s sudden acquiescence, and after a while decided that it was a man thing... he had, of course, been somewhat crestfallen at having to call in a skipper, and in retrospect I suspected that my patronising ‘there-there-it’s-all-right-now-Julian-will-make-it-better’ approach had probably made him mad enough to eviscerate me with the jam-spoon. In all probability, we would have clashed all the way through the Aegean, but for the fortunate opportunity offered by the licentious fishermen of Fourni for him to display his manly prowess at the arm-wrestling table. Once the lion had roared, however, and the pride had heard him, all was well again. I made a mental memo in neon... when skippering, the man of the party is likely to feel challenged: Take note and give him some opportunity to shine.
*
Two days later, relaxing over a long, exquisite lunch in The Snailery, I took a refreshing mouthful from my icy glass, opened a fax from Rory, and promptly sprayed the paper with cold beer.
‘Congrats! Deerings delighted- have booked 10 days September & want you to skipper. 5% booking commission to you if accept. Itinerary to include 2 days Santorini, Naxos and Church of a Hundred Doors, Paros.’
Dr D, it appeared, had rather more of a sense of humour, and was not so easily diverted, as I had supposed!