IN THE COOLER FOR A CUCUMBER
Rowlinson Carter explains
the perils of expatriate enterprise in Greece
`WHERE ELSE', Air Chief Marshal Sir Christopher Foxley-Norris, GCB, DSO, OBE, MA, RAF wanted to know, 'would your bank manager offer to toss you double or quits when you cash a cheque?' He was as enthralled by a rat trap which, having been robbed of its cheese two nights in a row, on the third night then caught two mice when he set it without any bait. Last week, a quarter of a century after the Air Chief Marshal described the delights of expatriate life on a Greek island, Mrs Molly Huddleston was in a cell in Rhodes asking herself where else a London grand- mother would be contemplating a five- month stretch for crimes concerning cucumbers, among other vegetables.
Mrs Huddleston took her life savings of £30,000 to the island expecting to earn a new living serving 'traditional British food' to tourists as an antidote to all that oily Greek stuff. It didn't work out exactly as planned. She was arrested for not putting cucumbers and tomatoes into her salads and for charging more than the fixed price of 35 pence for a potato when she added some chilli sauce. She can buy off the sentence for £1,000, do five months or, as she says she might, take the case to the Europea 7ourt of Human Rights.
During a year just spent on one of the smaller islands, I watched the procession of foreigners, the large majority middle-aged British, who had uprooted themselves and were planning to buy a business, usually a restaurant or bar, which would enable them to spend the rest of their lives there. I am quite certain that as I write the thought crossing the minds of thousands of Brits on island holidays is that they, too, would like to have a shot at it. There are one or two things they ought to know.
My own experience at the hands of the natives, officialdom included, was of no- thing but kindness and generosity, but then my work was not seen to be snatching bread out of their mouths. As the summer approached, the English newspapers went on sale, and I was summoned one day to explain to Greek friends an article that had appeared in the Sunday Telegraph. The gist was that Greece's performance as a transitional member of the Common Mar-
ket was so deplorable that a growing opinion in Brussels wanted Greece thrown out of it. That shook them, but what was absolutely unbelievable was the further suggestion that Greece's departure would make room for a more welcome and worthwhile Turkey.
It so happened that the article coincided with discontent about tourism on the is- land. In general, it was felt that the government should step in to restrict the number of frugal Brits on cheap package holidays. The void would be filled im- mediately — no one doubted the logical imperative — by Germans and Swedes willing to make everyone on the island much richer. One barman I spoke to was more moderate: he would settle for a ban on charter flights from the North of Eng- land. Northerners, he said, either didn't spend enough money in his bar or, if they did, became so intolerable that his other customers fled.
The taxi drivers, many of whom are mainlanders who switch to the island for the season, were complaining about pri- vate cars at the airport. They were not accusing them of picking up fares (they would have ways of dealing with that); it was bad enough that the drivers were either delivering or meeting family or friends. The taxi drivers felt they had a strong case for a law which would impose a limit of one passenger per private car, that passenger being necessarily and verifiably a close relative of the driver by blood or marriage. At the same time, the boats running ferry services to beaches along the coast were not doing too well (there were twice as many as there had been the previous year) and the owners were asking whether it would be possible to compel visitors to use them.
The Greeks, I suggested to the friends clutching the Sunday Telegraph, conducted business according to a set of rules which outsiders, not to mention the EEC, had difficulty in following. They seemed to believe in, for instance, the inalienable, unarguable and non-reciprocal right to other people's money. Fat Ronnie, an American chef who had arrived on the island and was trying to run a restaurant. was in deeper trouble than was in store for Mrs Huddleston on Rhodes. The inspec- tors had raided him four times in his first month, and already he had logged no fewer than 107 technical violations which, if they were all pressed, would have him put away for the rest of his life. Perhaps so, they replied, but Greeks were equally ruthless when they spotted an opportunity to take money off fellow Greeks or to put them out of business.
There may be some slight truth in that, as there was in the statement issued by the Ministry of National Economy in connec- tion with Mrs Huddleston that the laws affecting the contents of salads and the price of potatoes were intended to protect tourists from profiteering, whatever the nationality of the culprits. A Greek I knew had been fined £500 for overpricing his chicken curry by a few pence more than the controlled price of a chicken dish, any kind of chicken, and a number of locally-owned establishments were temporarily closed down for various offences.
I suspect that Mrs Huddleston noticed the depressing sameness of the food served in local restaurants and thought she was staring at a huge gap in the market. So did Fat Ronnie, but the elaborate Franco- Italian menu he devised to fill it was rejected by the man in charge as a violation of the island's cultural integrity. The menu was reprinted with a preponderance of Greek dishes Cif anyone asks, we'll say they're sold out'). The last time I spoke to Fat Ronnie, he was about ready to throw in the towel. Not only was there the possible life sentence attached to the 107 alleged violations (`Shuchs, 300 bucks' worth of lobster was still kickin' when the inspectors chopped them up because they said they weren't fresh enough'), he had calculated that the categorical price controls meant that he was having to sell the dishes he was proud of at a loss.
I tried to console Fat Ronnie with the fate of one of his predecessors, an English divorcee who invested her alimony in a restaurant. The inspectors jumped on her too, and she was soon weighing up the choice between a stiff fine and prison. The arresting officer intimated that there was a third course of action which could settle the matter privately and efficiently. She concurred (`he wasn't bad looking'), little expecting that within a week she would be arrested by a different officer who was also . open to the third option. 'I could see it then,' she said. was going to be arrested one after another by every policeman on the island.' Was a backhander in cash not possible, I asked, to which the reply was that I didn't begin to understand the principles of doing business in Greece. She packed up and went home.
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