Читать книгу The Journey: How an obscure Byzantine Saint became our Santa Claus - David Price Williams - Страница 23

the best aroma, whilst others vehemently argued that it was that one from further up the valley, or that the best flavour could be got by cooling the wine, adding ice brought down during the winter from the mountains and stored in one of our ice houses.

The shallower parts of the river mouth were crowded with other tiny craft, especially the fishing boats that would go out during the night and come back just after dawn to land their catch for our market before the sun was up. We had a plentiful supply of fish, from red and grey mullet to huge grouper with their big ugly mouths, long-snouted barracuda, silvery sea bass and colourful bronze headed bream, not to mention buckets of cuttlefish, octopus and hard-shelled flapping cray fish. They were whisked from the bottom of the rowing boats up to the fish market and, apart from a few buckets of sardines, they had usually all been sold before breakfast and the market washed down for the day.

* * * * *

I must have been about seven or eight years old when my father Aquila engaged a tutor for me.

“What that boy needs is some discipline,” he ruled. “Let him learn something useful instead of spending so much time at the harbour all day long!”

So, much to my discomfort, for the next few years I had to spend every morning learning Latin irregular verbs, reading

DAVID PRICE WILLIAMS