A store room in which the ancient Greeks kept wine.
I stayed one winter in a house in Limnos, in the days when the airport was a sandy strip, where the ground floor was the apothiki. In this mysterious room, sacks of beans, dried fruits and flour and huge tins of olives were stacked on an earth floor, while cheeses and meats hung from hooks. A plank went from the door into the dark, mustily aromatic interior of this room. As the only water supply was a cold tap in the kitchen sink, a shower consisted of heating some water on the stove and taking it and a small saucepan into the apothiki. There, you stood in the darkness on the plank and tipped saucepans of water over your body. Outside, the 'lamb', in fact the most malicious creature I have ever met, was tethered on a long rope. Each time I made my excursion to the outhouse, taking with me another saucepan of water for the purposes of flushing, this beast pinned me in, butting the door and stamping his feet, to the general hilarity of the family with whom I was staying. Sometimes they would leave me for some time before mounting a rescue. They didn’t like me, I'm sad to say, and thought that I was a true idiot, as my Greek was that of a child. They were, heavens such a short time ago, unaware that there were other languages, other nations, other lives. The village was remote and oddly dangerous. I was there, of course, because of the son of the house - a most exceptional man. But even he felt that it was safer for me to leave when my few clothes were taken from my bag, cut into ribbons and festooned in the trees around the house. The lamb was the only one with the courage to face me! So I left, and that lovely man raced alongside the aeroplane on his motorbike, waving and crying as we roared along the sandy runway, suddenly outstripping him and launching up into the sky. I've never seen him since.
