VOTING - GREEK STYLE

Over the long years we have been coming here we have witnessed many elections. Almost biblical in their nature: hundreds of thousands of Greeks transport themselves back to the villages of their birth to exercise their franchise. Planes and ferries are full. Transport systems creak and many local businesses close completely to allow people to vote. Among Greeks voting is seen as a civic responsibility rather than as a right and you must remember that these are a people who have, in recent history, been denied the vote.

And so this time around being entitled to vote ourselves felt something like a privilege. How different to the meaningless (in terms of required outcome) process that voting in the UK had become. To vote or not to vote had been a difficult decision for us. As relatively recent full time arrivals we were anxious to understand both the system itself and the perceptions of locals as to us voting. On the latter point we were surprised: every local Cretan we spoke to applauded the idea. Some even went as far as to say that it should be mandatory: as part of the community it was important, almost mandatory, they said, that we vote.

Registering to vote was, as are all things bureaucratic in Greece, complex and form laden but register we did: with 3 days to spare. Trying to assess what was on offer and from whom was more difficult but suffice to say that last evening we had a phone call from one of the mayoral candidates asking whether we wanted any part of his programme explaining or expanding!

After a week of rain, today dawned dry and with the sun playing peekaboo throughout the morning it seemed as though the old gods were smiling on the election. As in London our polling station was the local school - if only education and politics were more regularly linked than just at election time. And so - although the polling stations are open, literally and biblically, from dawn to dusk we drove off up to Kournas around one this afternoon (the local school is a good few kilometres away - and up a mountain).

We parked up by the church and as we left the car we noticed that everyone was in Sunday best rig. The smell of roasting lamb filled the nose. A middle aged man dressed head to toe in black stood on his drive. We had parked opposite his drive and when we checked politely whether it was OK to leave the car there he assured us that it was and enquired whether we were going to vote. Our answer clearly pleased him and he pointed the way down a steep path toward the school but not before telling us who we should vote for.

As we reached the foot of this steep and precarious descent the smell of roasting lamb grew more intense and a background hubbub of voices came to greet us. Men and women stood beside the path to the school talking in properly animated Greek fashion. Voices were raised and hands flew hither and yon in making points political and personal. Friends and acquaintances popped out of the huddles to welcome and congratulate us. Someone offered lamb - another a slice of pizza. Much shaking of hands and slapping of backs: much advice on how to vote and for whom.

Our names symbolically lined through on the very short page of xeni registered to vote and, our passports returned only after casting our secret votes, we left to much good humour and more congratulations. And somehow it felt, for the first time in a long while, as though we had done something both politically meaningful and civically responsible.