Being a carer: 02 (The ex-teacher) (Greece)

 

The same ex-teacher (from my Year 2 at SOAS [School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London] in 1978-9) whom I’d taken to Paris for two Buddhist art exhibitions said a few months later that she’d like to go to Greece.

    She’d last been in Greece in the 1940s en route to England when she sailed over from Hong Kong, and wanted to see classical Greece again, she said.

    So, once again, I started to organise a trip (no internet in those days, remember?):  air tickets, hotel, etc., this time booking two single rooms to avoid the heart-stopping apnoea episodes that I’d undergone in Paris.

    I went out to her house the night before, to stay over, as we were catching a morning flight, and I wanted to travel out to Heathrow with her, rather than meet her there.

    The next morning, on the taxi ride out to Heathrow, she asked if I’d slept well.  I said yes, but if she wanted me to stay over on a regular basis (she had approached me on this before), could I have a bedside lamp, as I always read at bedtime.

    We arrived in Athens around noon.  Once our rooms were sorted out, I got us booked on a city tour for the afternoon.

    A city tour means leaving the bus whenever we arrived at a particular scenic spot, to follow the guide around, then getting back onto the bus, to be driven to the next spot.

    After a few of these spots, back on the bus to move on to the next one, she suddenly said to me, “When we get back tonight, I’ll get you the bedside lamp.”

Me:  Get back tonight??  What do you mean “get back tonight”?

She:  When we get back to the house tonight.

Me:  But we’re not going back to the house tonight.

She:  Oh.  Are we not?

Me:  No.  We’ve only just arrived in Athens this morning.

She:  Oh, have we?

Me:  Yes, and we’re staying in a hotel for a week.

She:  Oh, are we?

    Oh my goodness, what had I taken on, I thought.

    I’d only been her student for one subject for one academic year (which is only nine months), so it wasn’t like she’d been my teacher all the way through the university course.

    I wasn’t even a distant relative, so what was I to do if something were to happen to her during our time in Greece.  (She had a daughter but she lived in America.)

    The enormity of my taking on the role of volunteer carer started to dawn on me.

(Greece, 1996)