4. The Long and Winding Road (Part Deux). Coffee and Inspector Clueless

I pulled the car over to the side of the road, got out and prepared for 15 minutes of angry Greek diatribe and furious arm waving; I've seen it before and knew what was coming. Now bear in mind that this had happened a long, long way from any holiday resort and any ensuing conversation was going to be difficult, given my very limited Greek. Imagine my surprise when the passenger turned out to have some rudimentary English. I asked him to apologise to the driver for my mistake and managed to explain that my insurance would cover the cost of the repairs. The damage to both cars was not serious and thankfully no one had been injured but, naturally I suppose, the driver insisted on calling the police.
15 minutes later a solitary Greek policeman (who, it turned out, knew not one word of English) arrived in a Peugeot midi van, and he was quite obviously very displeased to have his breakfast/morning nap interrupted. The increasingly friendly passenger gave a quick run down of the incident, the PC returned to the van with a scowl on his face, and invited the other driver to join him and start the dreaded form filling!
About 50 mtrs. further down the road was a small mobile coffee and snack shop and, knowing that we were likely to be around for some time, I asked Margaret to get a round in. However, our interpreter would have none of this and marched off and bought everybody a coffee!! Some time later I was invited to join Plod and the driver in the back of the van, which was fitted out with a rudimentary desk, to begin my session of information exchange. At this point the other driver exited via the sliding side door to chat with his passenger whilst I produced my documents. These were copied down extremely studiously by Plod in quite the worst handwriting I have seen since my kids started school; most of it proved to be indecipherable by a Greek friend some days later! Suddenly flicking his form pad back to the other drivers details he barked something to him, and he trotted back to his car to retrieve a document. Returning to the police van, he slid back the door allowing a strong gust of wind to blow through. This lifted the pages of the pad over Plod's coffee cup who, thinking he was going to lose the only breakfast he was going to get this morning, shot out an arm to grab the pages and pull them back. Unfortunately he grabbed the cup as well and proceeded to empty the contents over the forms. Under any other circumstances I would have fallen out of the van laughing!
No amount of mopping up with paper kitchen roll (why do Greek police vans carry this, anybody?) could save the forms from Greek coffee and, with a sigh that expanded the vehicle sides by at least 2 inches, Plod sharpened his pencil and we started all over again!!!!!
An hour and a half after the accident happened my attempt at an apology to Plod for interrupting his breakfast was returned with a grunt, and after shaking hands with our interpreter and apologising once again to the driver, we resumed our journey.
After a while the roads got very twisty in places, and the after effects of the accident, and the increasingly alarming antics of Greek drivers, started to take its toll on Margaret. Her grip on the door arm rest gradually tightened until her knuckles went white and she missed out on most of the stunning scenery we drove through. 10 hours after setting off (it should have been an easy 6-7 hours) we arrived in Anthoussa somewhat battle scarred and very tired.
But we had made it, and our new life could begin!