Zorba's Taverna: The Trouble With Goats and Mayors, page 25
And then, the unimaginable: she laughed. It was low, a chuckle more than anything. But then it built into a proper laugh – the kind that fills kitchens and knocks dust off old shelves.
“Well,” she said, folding her arms. “At last.”
And just like that, the taverna breathed again. Tension, like steam, rose and vanished.
Mary was dating someone. Mary, who dodged proposals like olive pits. Mary, who once told a handsome waiter from Thessaloniki that she had an allergy to compliments. Mary, who had – until now – shown more affection to the bread basket than any living man.
And here she was.
Sharing olives. Laughing quietly. Letting Paulo pour her wine without biting his hand.
Love, apparently, had entered the taverna. Or at the very least, heavy flirtation with a dessert course.
I’d seen Mary do a hundred things with elegance: carry plates, dismiss advances, silence a room. But I’d never seen her sit through a whole meal with someone, not fidgeting, not performing, just… there. Content.
People buzzed. Chairs creaked as people leaned in. The whispers began.
Zorba said, “About time.”
Eleni crossed out three lines on her spreadsheet and replaced them with a heart.
The goat trotted up, sniffed Paulo’s sandal, and (approvingly, we assume) left it unchewed.
By the time dessert arrived, Mary and Paulo were an institution. Just like that.
A candle, a shared plate of loukoumades, and the kind of silence that said something important had already happened, long before they walked through the door.
Later, as we cleaned up, Claude leaned over to me and whispered, “Think it’ll last?”
I looked towards their table, still full of laughter and crumbs. Still warm with something gentle and real.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But it started with olives. That’s usually a good sign.”
And then Mary winked at us.
Which either meant “thank you”, “mind your business”, or “we’ll talk later”.
Knowing Mary, it was probably all three.
The night ended as all good nights should. With too many empty glasses, not enough chairs, and a goat sleeping on a table.
Alex raised a toast.
“To all of us,” she said. “Especially the stubborn ones.”
And we drank.
Because if there’s one thing we know in Telios, it’s that when everything else falls apart, you feed the people, you dance with the chaos, and you let the goat do whatever she wants.
That’s the law.
And we wrote it ourselves.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Zorba’s at Midnight:
Or “How We Accidentally Became a Metaphor”
By the end, we weren’t the same.
Zorba’s Taverna – the scruffy, sunburned little miracle we’d built from wine crates and stubbornness – had changed. Or rather, the world had changed around it. We were still us. A bit louder, a bit older, but still here. Still standing. Slightly tilted, yes, but still. The pergola now had a permanent lean to the left. The chairs had stories. The tables had scars. The menu was unintelligible by design.
Somehow, we had become fashionable – and we had survived. Depressing, really. Because we only opened Zorba’s to give it back to the village. A place to eat, laugh, argue, dance, cry quietly behind the olive jars, and shout at a plate of fish.
Still, some things hadn’t changed.
Claude still wore mismatched sandals and was halfway through a mural of Spiros made entirely of chickpeas. Maria still took notes at inappropriate moments. Katerina had achieved minor celebrity status and was rumoured to be negotiating a cookbook deal.
And Alex?
Well, Alex was the new mayor.
Alex never really won the election; she was ambushed by it. Spiros played her like a seasoned fisherman teasing a sleepy octopus out of its cave.
She celebrated by announcing no more forms, no more speeches, and free wine on Wednesdays.
Spiros, of course, never stood for office again. He claimed victory by sitting. People still came to him for advice, cigarettes, and something from whatever mysterious jar he kept under the bench.
And Mary? She was still unmarried. Which was fine. Mostly. Probably. But something had shifted. A certain gleam had returned to her eye. She had been seen walking with Paulo along the beach, book in hand, smiling for no reason, and once laughing at one of Claude’s jokes. (It wasn’t funny. That’s how we knew this was serious.)
Theodora was watching. Closely. The kind of maternal stare that could break glassware.
“Maybe,” the village whispered, “it’s time.”
And this time, no one disagreed.
Because in Telios, time wasn’t linear. It moved in spirals, like the dance, like the vines, like the gossip.
And we had other things to worry about.
Our fame, such as it was, had consequences. Bloggers had come and gone. The health inspector had returned, taken one look around, and left trembling – again.
For now, we were safe. But if the fame came back? Next time, we would need to be ready. Prepared. With a plan.
“A second taverna,” Alex suggested. “Somewhere that’ll be a decoy. Preferably uphill so they get tired before they arrive.”
“A travelling food truck,” said Claude, already sketching the logo. “Serving existential gyros – lamb, onion, and one deep personal question per plate.”
“Pop-up dining on the ferry,” offered Dimitri. “They eat, they leave the island, problem solved.”
“No chairs,” said Maria, not looking up from her notebook. “If they can’t sit, they can’t post.”
“An underground taverna,” Zorba added. “Literally underground. Password required.”
“A rogue cooking school for emotionally unstable tourists,” Alex said again, now warming to the idea. “Let them chop onions until they cry out their feelings.”
No one knew which plan was best.
But we could feel it.
Change was coming.
Waiting just beyond the hills – like thunder in the olives.
But for tonight, we sat together beneath a crooked sky of stars and pergola beams, drinking tsipouro and sharing leftovers that tasted better because they’d been argued over.
Claude played the bouzouki badly.
Father Evangelos said a slow, slurred blessing involving Homer, cinnamon, and possibly a chicken.
Alex danced with a stranger and corrected his footwork.
And Mary looked happy. Really happy. And that, honestly, was terrifying.
***
The season had settled. The tourists had thinned, like tzatziki on the last day of a wedding. The sky softened, the sea exhaled, and somewhere, behind the taverna, past the lemon trees, the goat was chewing on the municipal newsletter again.
We sat around one long table, not out of necessity, but habit. Claude had brought his own wine. Zorba was peeling pistachios with the slow precision of a retired titan. Maria scribbled quotes onto napkins “just in case”. Theodora muttered about stock levels. Alex smiled – it was small, but it was there.
Spiros was exactly where he always was, which had now made him a symbol rather than a mystery. Eleni had already begun tracking his bench time like it was a civic duty.
And then, as if summoned by fate or fish guts, Dimitri arrived wearing his best hat, the one with fewer fish scales stuck to it.
He burst through the garden gate as if he’d just solved both love and the secrets of anchovy fermentation. He held aloft a wine glass – half full, mostly of olive pits.
“Friends!” he declared, “And enemies I haven’t met yet!”
We braced. So did the goat.
“I would like to propose a toast,” he continued, standing on a rickety flower crate that once housed tomatoes and, briefly, Claude. “To chaos! To stubbornness! To fish that never arrive and plans that never survive!”
“To your hat falling in the soup,” said Alex, dryly.
He raised the glass anyway. “To us. A village that functions like a broken bouzouki: badly, loudly, but somehow still producing music.”
The table laughed. Even Zorba managed not to roll his eyes.
“And to Peter!” Dimitri added, pointing a grape-stained finger at me. “Our chronicler, our spy with a notebook, the man who came for peace and accidentally became Greek.”
I opened my mouth to object. But… he wasn’t wrong.
“But would you go back?” asked Claude.
I looked at them, this constellation of beautiful disasters. The artists and bakers, the gossipers and guardians. The woman I loved, the goat I’d sort of adopted, the village that had somehow made me one of its own.
I raised my glass.
“I came for peace and quiet,” I said. “I got goats, politics, bureaucracy, health inspectors, three accidental engagements, a nervous breakdown about oregano, and a family.”
Pause.
“And I wouldn’t trade it.”
There was a brief moment. Not long. Not sentimental. Just… right.
Dimitri nodded solemnly, then promptly fell off the crate. The goat tried to eat his shoelace.
Zorba, almost smiling, muttered that phrase again: “It’s good again.”
And it was.
The sun dipped behind the sea.
A cat knocked over a wine glass.
And Telios – glorious, unpredictable, absolutely imperfect Telios – exhaled.
So from all of us, from Claude, from Katerina, from Zorba in his chair and Theodora at her stove, from Alex with her hair wild and her soul louder still, from Mary with a secret revealed and a future, from a village that somehow made it through another summer with only minor property damage… From Zorba’s, we wish you a good night.
And we hope to see you soon.
But not too soon.
We’re trying to keep things under control. Sort of.
End of Book Two
(Book Three? Let’s just say the goat has plans.)
Bonus chapter from
Zorba’s Embrace
Love, Lies and Lemon Groves
The Third Book in the Zorba Series
Chapter TWO
The Warmth You Can’t Order Off the Menu
When I was a child in England, winter mornings arrived quietly, like they were sneaking in before you could protest. You’d wake under a fortress of blankets, exhale, and watch your breath rise in pale clouds, each one a reminder that the fire downstairs hadn’t yet been coaxed back to life.
The frost on the inside of the window was a gallery all of its own: ferns, feathers, and the faint tracery of autumn leaves, painted by an invisible hand in the night. It made the glass opaque, as if winter was determined to keep its own secrets.
I’d press my palm against it. It was always shocking, that first contact. Not quite cold, not quite hot, just that strange, biting burn that made your fingers recoil before you could decide which it was.
Downstairs, the ritual of morning began with the clatter of the coal scuttle, the scrape of the poker, and the reluctant roar of the fire. You learned quickly that “warming your hands” didn’t mean holding them too close, unless you wanted to smell like singed wool for the rest of the day.
And then, years later, I found myself in Greece.
Winter here doesn’t creep in. It sweeps down from the mountains, rattles the shutters, and flings rain against the windows sideways to see if you’re paying attention. The air smells of woodsmoke, oregano, and the occasional whiff of a neighbour’s sheep.
The cold has a different face here. You feel it in the marble floors, in the way the stove breathes unevenly, in the draught that somehow finds its way under the door no matter how many rugs you pile up against it.
But in Greece, winter mornings don’t start with silence. They start with a knock at the back door, or sometimes no knock at all, a neighbour coming in to see if you’ve lit the fire yet, bringing with them gossip, olives, or unsolicited advice about your chimney.
And that’s the difference, really.
In England, winter was something to endure until the spring bulbs pushed through the frost. Here in Greece, winter is something to share, with friends, with the village, with anyone who happens to wander in and claim a seat by the stove.
And the windows? They stay clear. No frost to block the view. Lemon trees swaying in the wind and the sea beyond, reminding you that spring isn’t a promise here, it’s only the next chapter.
It was winter in the taverna, and the weather outside had developed a personal grudge against everyone.
The sea was throwing tantrums at the shore. The wind had teeth. And the rain had moved beyond falling – it now came in diagonals, sneak attacks, and occasional sideways slaps that felt like regional insults.
And yet… we were full.
Packed.
The pergola groaned under its plastic walls, puffing in and out like a stubborn lung. Every table was claimed, layered in coats, elbowed by wine glasses, scattered with olives and theories. Inside, we had people at the bar, behind the bar, and one particularly flexible man on the bar, who insisted it was warmer up there and wouldn’t come down unless promised soup.
There were two stools in the kitchen and someone in a hat asking Theodora if the oregano was seasonal. She gave him a look that suggested he might become seasonal himself, depending on his next sentence.
The storeroom, technically reserved for broken furniture and Alex’s mayoral desk, had been converted into an impromptu backgammon arena. There were five players, which is two too many, and a very old cat serving as referee.
Spiros was out on his bench, as usual. He wore three coats, two scarves, and the distant expression of a man pondering the fall of empires. A large glass of tsipouro steamed gently in his hand. He refused to come in.
“If I give in to the cold,” he said, “it wins.”
We were not sure what “it” was. Possibly the government. Possibly pneumonia.
And then… it happened.
Someone brought a bouzouki.
He arrived like fog: quiet, unexpected, and already part of the evening before anyone realised. He huddled himself against the plastic wall of the pergola, sat down on a wooden box that may once have held aubergines, and strummed a single note.
Just one.
And the whole taverna went still.
It was beautiful – the kind of sound that doesn’t ask for attention but simply collects it. It slipped through the steam and the wine and the arguing, and it settled into the bones of the place like it belonged there all along.
Even Theodora paused.
Even the goat went quiet.
And slowly, as if the weather had been bribed, the cold outside seemed to retreat – not because the stove was working better (it wasn’t), but because something warmer had taken its place.
Someone clapped. Someone else sang half a verse of a song no one remembered learning. Claude added a harmony that was legally questionable but enthusiastic.
Plates clinked. Feet tapped. And for a few glorious minutes, the taverna wasn’t just warmer, it was alive, in that particular Greek winter way where the walls sweat before the people do.
Zorba came in halfway through a rebetiko tune, looked at the chaos, people dancing with spoons, someone cutting cheese with a wood chisel, a pair of pensioners arguing about onions, and nodded.
“Too much joy,” he said. “I’ll eat later.”
And with that, he turned around and went to the kafenio, muttering something about needing peace and the dignity of a proper chair.
Inside, we kept going. The bouzouki player never said his name. He didn’t need to. He just played.
And we – the crowd of villagers, romantics, cynics, accidental dancers, soup thieves, and wine philosophers – we followed. Because that’s what a winter night in Telios is for.
Not tourists.
Not schedules.
Warmth. Music. Nothing more, nothing less.
Just the kind of night that leaves no photos, only stories.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Debbie Chapman – editor, truth-teller, and literary locksmith.
Somehow, she managed to prise open the cluttered cupboards of my manuscript, identify the half-eaten storylines, the forgotten metaphors, and the plot points still wobbling on dodgy legs, then calmly, surgically, and with a frightening level of glee, dismantled the lot.
And then – miracle of miracles – she helped me rebuild something I’m proud to offer my readers.
Thank you for your sharp eyes, your sharper notes, and your infinite patience with both the text and the man behind it.
(And for not once calling me a goat. At least not in writing.)
For my wife Alex
Who makes chaos look like choreography.
Who makes every Greek morning worth writing about, and every Greek evening worth surviving.
Without you, none of this would exist.
Not the story. Not the food. Not the life we somehow built, and certainly not the books.
You are the reason we stayed, the reason we laughed, and the reason the village still believes in small miracles.
You remind me why we started this, and why we never stopped.
This book, like all the best parts of my life, has your fingerprints all over it.
Even if you insist you’re “not really in it”.
(You are on every page. And always will be.)
You carry this whole adventure, and occasionally me, with strength, humour, and a bottomless handbag of solutions.
You find joy in madness. You order chaos. You make it all work.
This book is yours in every way but name.
Also: you were right about the aubergine. And the electrician. And the sign.
And – fine – the goat.
And finally, to the cast.
Please lift your glasses to the to the ones who stayed, the ones who left and returned, and the ones who never quite left in the first place.
And to Katerina the goat.
She knows what she did.
About the Author
“Well,” she said, folding her arms. “At last.”
And just like that, the taverna breathed again. Tension, like steam, rose and vanished.
Mary was dating someone. Mary, who dodged proposals like olive pits. Mary, who once told a handsome waiter from Thessaloniki that she had an allergy to compliments. Mary, who had – until now – shown more affection to the bread basket than any living man.
And here she was.
Sharing olives. Laughing quietly. Letting Paulo pour her wine without biting his hand.
Love, apparently, had entered the taverna. Or at the very least, heavy flirtation with a dessert course.
I’d seen Mary do a hundred things with elegance: carry plates, dismiss advances, silence a room. But I’d never seen her sit through a whole meal with someone, not fidgeting, not performing, just… there. Content.
People buzzed. Chairs creaked as people leaned in. The whispers began.
Zorba said, “About time.”
Eleni crossed out three lines on her spreadsheet and replaced them with a heart.
The goat trotted up, sniffed Paulo’s sandal, and (approvingly, we assume) left it unchewed.
By the time dessert arrived, Mary and Paulo were an institution. Just like that.
A candle, a shared plate of loukoumades, and the kind of silence that said something important had already happened, long before they walked through the door.
Later, as we cleaned up, Claude leaned over to me and whispered, “Think it’ll last?”
I looked towards their table, still full of laughter and crumbs. Still warm with something gentle and real.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But it started with olives. That’s usually a good sign.”
And then Mary winked at us.
Which either meant “thank you”, “mind your business”, or “we’ll talk later”.
Knowing Mary, it was probably all three.
The night ended as all good nights should. With too many empty glasses, not enough chairs, and a goat sleeping on a table.
Alex raised a toast.
“To all of us,” she said. “Especially the stubborn ones.”
And we drank.
Because if there’s one thing we know in Telios, it’s that when everything else falls apart, you feed the people, you dance with the chaos, and you let the goat do whatever she wants.
That’s the law.
And we wrote it ourselves.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Zorba’s at Midnight:
Or “How We Accidentally Became a Metaphor”
By the end, we weren’t the same.
Zorba’s Taverna – the scruffy, sunburned little miracle we’d built from wine crates and stubbornness – had changed. Or rather, the world had changed around it. We were still us. A bit louder, a bit older, but still here. Still standing. Slightly tilted, yes, but still. The pergola now had a permanent lean to the left. The chairs had stories. The tables had scars. The menu was unintelligible by design.
Somehow, we had become fashionable – and we had survived. Depressing, really. Because we only opened Zorba’s to give it back to the village. A place to eat, laugh, argue, dance, cry quietly behind the olive jars, and shout at a plate of fish.
Still, some things hadn’t changed.
Claude still wore mismatched sandals and was halfway through a mural of Spiros made entirely of chickpeas. Maria still took notes at inappropriate moments. Katerina had achieved minor celebrity status and was rumoured to be negotiating a cookbook deal.
And Alex?
Well, Alex was the new mayor.
Alex never really won the election; she was ambushed by it. Spiros played her like a seasoned fisherman teasing a sleepy octopus out of its cave.
She celebrated by announcing no more forms, no more speeches, and free wine on Wednesdays.
Spiros, of course, never stood for office again. He claimed victory by sitting. People still came to him for advice, cigarettes, and something from whatever mysterious jar he kept under the bench.
And Mary? She was still unmarried. Which was fine. Mostly. Probably. But something had shifted. A certain gleam had returned to her eye. She had been seen walking with Paulo along the beach, book in hand, smiling for no reason, and once laughing at one of Claude’s jokes. (It wasn’t funny. That’s how we knew this was serious.)
Theodora was watching. Closely. The kind of maternal stare that could break glassware.
“Maybe,” the village whispered, “it’s time.”
And this time, no one disagreed.
Because in Telios, time wasn’t linear. It moved in spirals, like the dance, like the vines, like the gossip.
And we had other things to worry about.
Our fame, such as it was, had consequences. Bloggers had come and gone. The health inspector had returned, taken one look around, and left trembling – again.
For now, we were safe. But if the fame came back? Next time, we would need to be ready. Prepared. With a plan.
“A second taverna,” Alex suggested. “Somewhere that’ll be a decoy. Preferably uphill so they get tired before they arrive.”
“A travelling food truck,” said Claude, already sketching the logo. “Serving existential gyros – lamb, onion, and one deep personal question per plate.”
“Pop-up dining on the ferry,” offered Dimitri. “They eat, they leave the island, problem solved.”
“No chairs,” said Maria, not looking up from her notebook. “If they can’t sit, they can’t post.”
“An underground taverna,” Zorba added. “Literally underground. Password required.”
“A rogue cooking school for emotionally unstable tourists,” Alex said again, now warming to the idea. “Let them chop onions until they cry out their feelings.”
No one knew which plan was best.
But we could feel it.
Change was coming.
Waiting just beyond the hills – like thunder in the olives.
But for tonight, we sat together beneath a crooked sky of stars and pergola beams, drinking tsipouro and sharing leftovers that tasted better because they’d been argued over.
Claude played the bouzouki badly.
Father Evangelos said a slow, slurred blessing involving Homer, cinnamon, and possibly a chicken.
Alex danced with a stranger and corrected his footwork.
And Mary looked happy. Really happy. And that, honestly, was terrifying.
***
The season had settled. The tourists had thinned, like tzatziki on the last day of a wedding. The sky softened, the sea exhaled, and somewhere, behind the taverna, past the lemon trees, the goat was chewing on the municipal newsletter again.
We sat around one long table, not out of necessity, but habit. Claude had brought his own wine. Zorba was peeling pistachios with the slow precision of a retired titan. Maria scribbled quotes onto napkins “just in case”. Theodora muttered about stock levels. Alex smiled – it was small, but it was there.
Spiros was exactly where he always was, which had now made him a symbol rather than a mystery. Eleni had already begun tracking his bench time like it was a civic duty.
And then, as if summoned by fate or fish guts, Dimitri arrived wearing his best hat, the one with fewer fish scales stuck to it.
He burst through the garden gate as if he’d just solved both love and the secrets of anchovy fermentation. He held aloft a wine glass – half full, mostly of olive pits.
“Friends!” he declared, “And enemies I haven’t met yet!”
We braced. So did the goat.
“I would like to propose a toast,” he continued, standing on a rickety flower crate that once housed tomatoes and, briefly, Claude. “To chaos! To stubbornness! To fish that never arrive and plans that never survive!”
“To your hat falling in the soup,” said Alex, dryly.
He raised the glass anyway. “To us. A village that functions like a broken bouzouki: badly, loudly, but somehow still producing music.”
The table laughed. Even Zorba managed not to roll his eyes.
“And to Peter!” Dimitri added, pointing a grape-stained finger at me. “Our chronicler, our spy with a notebook, the man who came for peace and accidentally became Greek.”
I opened my mouth to object. But… he wasn’t wrong.
“But would you go back?” asked Claude.
I looked at them, this constellation of beautiful disasters. The artists and bakers, the gossipers and guardians. The woman I loved, the goat I’d sort of adopted, the village that had somehow made me one of its own.
I raised my glass.
“I came for peace and quiet,” I said. “I got goats, politics, bureaucracy, health inspectors, three accidental engagements, a nervous breakdown about oregano, and a family.”
Pause.
“And I wouldn’t trade it.”
There was a brief moment. Not long. Not sentimental. Just… right.
Dimitri nodded solemnly, then promptly fell off the crate. The goat tried to eat his shoelace.
Zorba, almost smiling, muttered that phrase again: “It’s good again.”
And it was.
The sun dipped behind the sea.
A cat knocked over a wine glass.
And Telios – glorious, unpredictable, absolutely imperfect Telios – exhaled.
So from all of us, from Claude, from Katerina, from Zorba in his chair and Theodora at her stove, from Alex with her hair wild and her soul louder still, from Mary with a secret revealed and a future, from a village that somehow made it through another summer with only minor property damage… From Zorba’s, we wish you a good night.
And we hope to see you soon.
But not too soon.
We’re trying to keep things under control. Sort of.
End of Book Two
(Book Three? Let’s just say the goat has plans.)
Bonus chapter from
Zorba’s Embrace
Love, Lies and Lemon Groves
The Third Book in the Zorba Series
Chapter TWO
The Warmth You Can’t Order Off the Menu
When I was a child in England, winter mornings arrived quietly, like they were sneaking in before you could protest. You’d wake under a fortress of blankets, exhale, and watch your breath rise in pale clouds, each one a reminder that the fire downstairs hadn’t yet been coaxed back to life.
The frost on the inside of the window was a gallery all of its own: ferns, feathers, and the faint tracery of autumn leaves, painted by an invisible hand in the night. It made the glass opaque, as if winter was determined to keep its own secrets.
I’d press my palm against it. It was always shocking, that first contact. Not quite cold, not quite hot, just that strange, biting burn that made your fingers recoil before you could decide which it was.
Downstairs, the ritual of morning began with the clatter of the coal scuttle, the scrape of the poker, and the reluctant roar of the fire. You learned quickly that “warming your hands” didn’t mean holding them too close, unless you wanted to smell like singed wool for the rest of the day.
And then, years later, I found myself in Greece.
Winter here doesn’t creep in. It sweeps down from the mountains, rattles the shutters, and flings rain against the windows sideways to see if you’re paying attention. The air smells of woodsmoke, oregano, and the occasional whiff of a neighbour’s sheep.
The cold has a different face here. You feel it in the marble floors, in the way the stove breathes unevenly, in the draught that somehow finds its way under the door no matter how many rugs you pile up against it.
But in Greece, winter mornings don’t start with silence. They start with a knock at the back door, or sometimes no knock at all, a neighbour coming in to see if you’ve lit the fire yet, bringing with them gossip, olives, or unsolicited advice about your chimney.
And that’s the difference, really.
In England, winter was something to endure until the spring bulbs pushed through the frost. Here in Greece, winter is something to share, with friends, with the village, with anyone who happens to wander in and claim a seat by the stove.
And the windows? They stay clear. No frost to block the view. Lemon trees swaying in the wind and the sea beyond, reminding you that spring isn’t a promise here, it’s only the next chapter.
It was winter in the taverna, and the weather outside had developed a personal grudge against everyone.
The sea was throwing tantrums at the shore. The wind had teeth. And the rain had moved beyond falling – it now came in diagonals, sneak attacks, and occasional sideways slaps that felt like regional insults.
And yet… we were full.
Packed.
The pergola groaned under its plastic walls, puffing in and out like a stubborn lung. Every table was claimed, layered in coats, elbowed by wine glasses, scattered with olives and theories. Inside, we had people at the bar, behind the bar, and one particularly flexible man on the bar, who insisted it was warmer up there and wouldn’t come down unless promised soup.
There were two stools in the kitchen and someone in a hat asking Theodora if the oregano was seasonal. She gave him a look that suggested he might become seasonal himself, depending on his next sentence.
The storeroom, technically reserved for broken furniture and Alex’s mayoral desk, had been converted into an impromptu backgammon arena. There were five players, which is two too many, and a very old cat serving as referee.
Spiros was out on his bench, as usual. He wore three coats, two scarves, and the distant expression of a man pondering the fall of empires. A large glass of tsipouro steamed gently in his hand. He refused to come in.
“If I give in to the cold,” he said, “it wins.”
We were not sure what “it” was. Possibly the government. Possibly pneumonia.
And then… it happened.
Someone brought a bouzouki.
He arrived like fog: quiet, unexpected, and already part of the evening before anyone realised. He huddled himself against the plastic wall of the pergola, sat down on a wooden box that may once have held aubergines, and strummed a single note.
Just one.
And the whole taverna went still.
It was beautiful – the kind of sound that doesn’t ask for attention but simply collects it. It slipped through the steam and the wine and the arguing, and it settled into the bones of the place like it belonged there all along.
Even Theodora paused.
Even the goat went quiet.
And slowly, as if the weather had been bribed, the cold outside seemed to retreat – not because the stove was working better (it wasn’t), but because something warmer had taken its place.
Someone clapped. Someone else sang half a verse of a song no one remembered learning. Claude added a harmony that was legally questionable but enthusiastic.
Plates clinked. Feet tapped. And for a few glorious minutes, the taverna wasn’t just warmer, it was alive, in that particular Greek winter way where the walls sweat before the people do.
Zorba came in halfway through a rebetiko tune, looked at the chaos, people dancing with spoons, someone cutting cheese with a wood chisel, a pair of pensioners arguing about onions, and nodded.
“Too much joy,” he said. “I’ll eat later.”
And with that, he turned around and went to the kafenio, muttering something about needing peace and the dignity of a proper chair.
Inside, we kept going. The bouzouki player never said his name. He didn’t need to. He just played.
And we – the crowd of villagers, romantics, cynics, accidental dancers, soup thieves, and wine philosophers – we followed. Because that’s what a winter night in Telios is for.
Not tourists.
Not schedules.
Warmth. Music. Nothing more, nothing less.
Just the kind of night that leaves no photos, only stories.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Debbie Chapman – editor, truth-teller, and literary locksmith.
Somehow, she managed to prise open the cluttered cupboards of my manuscript, identify the half-eaten storylines, the forgotten metaphors, and the plot points still wobbling on dodgy legs, then calmly, surgically, and with a frightening level of glee, dismantled the lot.
And then – miracle of miracles – she helped me rebuild something I’m proud to offer my readers.
Thank you for your sharp eyes, your sharper notes, and your infinite patience with both the text and the man behind it.
(And for not once calling me a goat. At least not in writing.)
For my wife Alex
Who makes chaos look like choreography.
Who makes every Greek morning worth writing about, and every Greek evening worth surviving.
Without you, none of this would exist.
Not the story. Not the food. Not the life we somehow built, and certainly not the books.
You are the reason we stayed, the reason we laughed, and the reason the village still believes in small miracles.
You remind me why we started this, and why we never stopped.
This book, like all the best parts of my life, has your fingerprints all over it.
Even if you insist you’re “not really in it”.
(You are on every page. And always will be.)
You carry this whole adventure, and occasionally me, with strength, humour, and a bottomless handbag of solutions.
You find joy in madness. You order chaos. You make it all work.
This book is yours in every way but name.
Also: you were right about the aubergine. And the electrician. And the sign.
And – fine – the goat.
And finally, to the cast.
Please lift your glasses to the to the ones who stayed, the ones who left and returned, and the ones who never quite left in the first place.
And to Katerina the goat.
She knows what she did.
About the Author
