It’s three days before departure for the UK and we’re still sorting out paperwork. It all started on 1 July last year, our last day in Chania on Crete.

We don’t tend to go hog-wild spending on souvenirs, but we walked past a rack of toy guns, non-working, highly ornamented models of seventeenth century flintlock pistols, reminiscent of Pirates of the Caribbean.

I took a photo of the rack and messaged a couple of young men of my close acquaintance who are into historical re-enactment. “Boys — if you want one, tell me which one and we’ll bring them back for you.” They were selling at 70 Euros each. 

We bought two after the man in the shop said that because these are so obviously toys, replicas of old powder-loading piratical flintlocks from centuries past, we’d have no problems taking them home, even to Australia, as long as we carried them in our check-in luggage destined for the plane’s hold. Our baggage allowance was already close to the wind. These toy guns were like large paperweights.

We flew to Rome with the toy guns in our hold bags. No problems. Good. From Rome, we travelled overland by train across Europe. No problems. We were cursing the added 5 Kg weight, though, especially where we had to lug those bags up stairs or drag them over cobbles. In Venice one bag was damaged by an over-zealous hotel porter dragging it upside down in the rush to the station. We found the damage in Austria. There we asked about posting the toy guns back home and found that because of the weight, it would cost 80 Euros each which was more than they had cost. We were beginning to regret our weighty purchase.

In Paris heading for London by train Jeff went to check seating and found we had to pass a Customs check. No problem. Then yes, problem. Some suspicious shapes had come up on the X-ray scanner. The guns! And … a land mine?

The guns still had their shop label and were wrapped in bubble wrap. The Customs inspectors unwrapped them partly and looked down the barrels. Blind. Absolutely no way these could ever be considered real guns, they said.

And the ‘land mine’? It turned out to be the mount for the GPS. “Free to go,” they said.

Despite arriving two hours early we had missed our train and waited for the next one.

After another fortnight in the UK it was finally time to head home from London. We’d been away a while and looked forward to a touch of luxury at the airport lounge. We planned a leisurely dinner with our hold bags checked in and only our cabin bags to weigh us down for the rest of the trip. With the guns and the landmine-shaped GPS mount safely stowed for the duration, it should be plain sailing, we thought. We arrived at the airport three hours before the flight, to allow for early check-in and a relaxed dinner.

We had two large hold bags, and the smaller (damaged) cabin bag containing the toy guns and GPS mount that we also checked in for the hold. We still had a cabin bag each as carry-on. As the hold bags moved onto the conveyor, Jeff remarked, “I’m glad to see those toy guns safely into the hold. They shouldn’t be a problem now.”

The staff member was fast on the uptake. She leapt for the bag, and missed as it sailed up the conveyor and through the rubber strip curtain.

She reached for the phone. “Security? We’ve just been notified … yes. Oh, it’s flagged already?” She covered the mouthpiece and said, Sorry, we didn’t catch it in time. But you told us before it hit the first alarm. So probably no charges will be laid.” Then back into the phone. “Yes? Level 2 now? Oh, dear …”

Within minutes we’d gone to the top alert level. Level 4.

Head of airline security arrived. A no-nonsense burly Scots bloke called Jock. “Ye’ll have a wee while to wait,” he told us. He was stern to begin with but soon softened, perhaps once he realised we were not the usual run-of-the-mill arms smugglers. Jeff headed off to put through some paperwork for an item of jewellery we were bringing home (we had decided to put it in our cabin bag to keep it safe). “Back in a few minutes,” he said.

Two security guards arrived with the problem bag and Jock asked formally, “Is this yours?”

I nodded.
“What sort of guns are they? You do realize that they have to be seized and destroyed?”

“They’re fake, they’re models of seventeenth century flintlock pistols,” I blubbed.

I made to reach for the bag to show him and was not quite smacked away. “Don’t open it. Sorry. Not until the police get here.” He handed me a tissue.

By now I was thinking about Schappelle Corby being asked to identify her boogie board bag in Bali …

I watched the boys in blue arriving across the full width of the building. Jock the security guy was now joined by Rhys the Welshman and Brian the English bobby. We now only needed Paddy the Irishman for the full UK collectable set. And no sign of the return of Jeff the Aussie husband …

The police explained that they had to take the guns. But the guns could be collected from the police station within 48 hours. After that, they would have to be destroyed.

“But they’re toys!” I exclaimed.

“We get called out for plastic water pistols,” they told me. “Even in the hold bags. And those have to be seized and destroyed too.”

“I bet that makes for some unhappy parents,” I said.

“Aye, about eight times a day on average,” Jock said. “And it’s my job to soothe them down.”

I was upset. I hate guns as a rule, but these were toys, models, and very pretty. Ornaments for looking at. I hated the thought of them being destroyed.

I dialled the relative we’d been visiting. Any chance they could come and take the toy guns from us? Not for two weeks, I was told.

Jock handed me another tissue.

Meanwhile I tried calling Jeff. He was still in a queue. It seemed that there was a flood of tourists trying to go back to their countries with large amounts of jewellery and not all of them had their papers in order. “There’s about fifty still ahead of me,” he said.

I checked my watch. We’d already been here two hours. One hour before the flight. The place was filling with other passengers, all looking at us curiously as they checked in their bags with no problems.

The police allowed me to open my bag in front of them and remove the guns. They had a look at them and said, “We understand now, they’re very unlikely looking weapons. But the law’s the law. We can give your relative two weeks to collect them from us. But after that, they have to go for destruction.”

“Lets go find that stray husband o’ yours,” Jock said, hand on my elbow. “I got a good idea where he’ll be.” He grabbed one of our good cabin bags while I took the other.

We turned a corner to see a long queue of people snaking around the concourse from a small room. I couldn’t see Jeff. It turned out he had finally got to within a couple of people from the front of the line. Jock handed me over, waved goodbye and headed off.

Just then it was Jeff’s turn at the window. His paperwork was in order, but the bloke behind the counter had clearly had a bad afternoon. “Do you have the item?” he asked. “I must see the item to make sure it tallies with the description as filled in by the seller.”

And we so nearly hadn’t had it in the cabin bag! If the bags and I had still been caught up in security …

At the security check-in I felt jinxed. I triggered the alarms and was singled out for a body scan. I was more fortunate than the man behind me — he got pulled aside for a strip search. Considering we’d already had to disrobe significantly by this stage, I wondered how much further the poor guy would have to strip.

By the time we got through it all to the lounge, we didn’t even have time for a coffee.

So for us, that was Gatwick. Level 4 security alert. Police called.

For the record, our relative in England collected the guns. Meanwhile back in Australia, I worked to get them home.

It wasn’t easy. It took six months to find out that bringing them in by plane would be easier than posting them. To post them, we’d have to get a gun dealer involved (another A$150 to the cost). Plus the cost of international post for nearly five kilos of brass and carved timber. We’d have to get licenses and permits, all costing money. And still it was fifty-fifty that Customs would seize them. Information was contradictory.

Finally I was put on to a section of the NSW police dealing with gun licences. “Do you have photos?” I was asked.

One photo. The one I took in the shop back in Chania, the one showing all the guns in the rack. And since the guns stayed wrapped in bubble wrap after we bought them, I can’t even remember which ones we got.

But it was good news, the cop told me. “They’re described officially as imitation antique flintlock pistols. No need for licensing. No need for permits. But you do need paperwork to bring them in — fill in these forms.”

The plan now was, to get the guns on our return trip to UK (the one coming up) and bring them back in in our luggage, WITH the paperwork.

Then the bombshell. “Of course, you’ll need level 2 storage.”

Level 2 storage, I learned, means a gun safe bolted to the floor. You can own these models, it seems, but if you take them out to look at them you’re breaking the law.

“But they’re toys!” I said.

“But they look real,” was the reply. “Technically, you could rob a bank with them.”

I thought about the possibility that someone would try to rob a bank with a real flintlock pistol (and these are not real, the barrel is blind). One shot. They you would have to re-load by pouring powder in, then some shot or whatever, then take aim to fire again. In which time, you would have been jumped by any other person present, including the arthritic granny in the corner (no, wait — that’s me).

You can’t argue with the law. While gun dealers were saying, “You don’t need a gun safe for those,” the cops were saying otherwise. And it’s the cops who would press charges.

So, three days before we leave for England. And this is where we are up to with the guns. Excuse me. Imitation antique flintlock pistols.

Meanwhile our relative in England wants to know when were going to take them off her hands, they’re cluttering up her hall stand …

After all this, Jeff’s idea of chucking them in the nearest skip in the UK is understandable.

However, I had a brainwave. Re-enactor groups! The UK is loaded with them! Last week I put out a call on social media. Within hours, I got a response. Now it looks like we’ll have to collect the guns and somehow get them to Wales.

I’ve never been to Wales …

We’re getting ready to travel again. Only a couple of weeks to go. So much to do!

I know I sound like a seasoned traveller, but this is something new to me. Apart from road trips in Australia, mostly to visit family, we’ve spent decades not going anywhere. An armchair traveller. I’ve written based on what I’ve read.

I’ve already mentioned our trip thirty years ago, to Greece. That was also to visit family —not ours, but they have become our family. My two Greek mythology novels began as a single short story, stimulated by an idea I had while eating a sandwich under a peppercorn tree at the ancient Minoan palace of Knossos. But I needed to go back, to add in some detail. A luxury, but if we were going to Crete to find our friends, then we had to include some time in Heraklion for Knossos and the museum.

I’m thinking back to last year, and the ordeal by fire we inflicted ourselves, in our zeal to learn how to travel. What to do, and what not to do.

Apart from visiting family (adopted and genetic) We wanted to catch up on all we’ve missed out on for so many years. I’ve got books I’ve written which I wanted to research in more detail, and this guided our choice of destination.

We wanted to see so much, and we planned nine weeks—an extravagant amount of time indeed. But when you are flying to the other side of the world, you make it worth your while.

This time we have obligations in UK and France, with more limited days. So we’ll pack in what we can and remember what we learned.

Last year…we arrived in Athens late at night, after 25 hours in the air (including transit in Dubai—never again) and minimal sleep. We took one semi-hysterical selfie in Syntagma Square and went to bed.

The next day we went exploring the Plaka—the old part of Athens, with its tiny lanes, curious shops and very Greek graffiti. Around the corner from our hotel was the Greek Orthodox cathedral of Athens. We went in and lit three candles—one for my father-in-law Red, named Pedro by the villagers; for his friend Apostolis and for my Greek-Australian friend Tina. Red and Apostolis lived long lives despite the war. Tina was brutally murdered while young, with so much life left to live. We travelled to other churches and lit more candles for them wherever we went. This trip was with their memory alongside us. Greece is a place of modern and ancient, you can sense the spirit of the people going back for millennia. Every stone could sing of legends. The concept of “rock god” means something entirely different in Greece.

Because of my Greek mythology novels, I had to visit the places I have written about. The Acropolis was inhabited in mythological times (fourth millennium BC) but was little more than a sanctuary temple on a hill. What we know of today, the marble marvel, was built by Pericles around 450 BC. By that time, my Minoans had risen and fallen; the Myceneans who followed them were also long gone. But the Athenians outlasted them.

At the foot of the Acropolis sits the new museum which we explored thoroughly. In there I found models of the Acropolis through the millennia. My eyes went to the earliest one—this was the Athens of Aegeus and Theseus. Here were the city walls, the foundations of what would have been the palace, originally built by Cecrops, grandfather of Aegeus. This was the period for my first two novels. Here it was real. Where did Talos fall to his death? Where was Daedalus caught, trying to hide the body in a sack? Where did Aegeus sacrifice a dove to Aphrodite to pray for a son?

I am always amazed and delighted by the skill and artistry I find in ancient places. We tend to think of people of the past as being inferior to us; lacking our modern technology or capability. But we must never forget that despite the thousands of years of time that separate us, we have more in common with these ancient peoples, than we have differences. They are us, just separated by time.

To be there, to walk the same paths, to breath the same air—inspirational!

family pilgrimage to Crete

In 1989 we were in Greece for three weeks, with three children. We travelled with my father-in-law who had spent time in Greece during WWII, notably on Crete as a POW on the run. With my parents-in-law we wound our way up into the hills of Crete, to a small mountain village. We’d only gone for lunch, we thought, but we stayed for three days. There we met the man who had become a lifelong friend of my father-in-law, when he and a couple of friends were on the run. Such adventures!

We met the old man, his wife and other nearby family. They took us to meet their family in Paleorchora, a nearby seaside town, and we enjoyed lunch with them in their taverna. Afterwards I spent time with my three children (8, 6 and not quite 4) and three of the Greek children, the oldest of whom, aged 12, could speak a little English. But children need no common language, play is universal.

Time passed, our children grew, my father-in-law died. We wrote to let the old friend know. We always intended to go back one day. My mother-in-law grew old and frail. When she died we found an unopened letter from the old friend in Greece and realised there was a story to uncover. But where were the family? Surely not still in that mountain village. The old man had told us in that long-lost letter to seek out his family. Were his son and children still in Paleorchora?

Social media stepped in. A search of Facebook for the surname came up with one individual only. He might not even be a relative. I sent a message in English; no response. I used Google translate to put my message into Greek; no response. I reached out via Messenger to a Facebook friend in Athens (we’d played Scrabble together) to check that my translation made sense.

My friend in Athens said, “Yes, what you wrote is very easy to understand. But I must know more—what a story!”

My friend tracked the family down through the Greek phone book and my small clues. Their first response was, “When do you arrive?” The old man had always said, “Watch for the family from Australia. They will come. If not this generation, then the next.”

The second response was a Friend request on Facebook—a technology which had not existed on our first visit. Yes, the old man had died, but his son Eftichi was looking after the farm in the mountains while living in the larger coastal town of Paleorchora. Eftichi’s children all nearby too.

So there we were in June 2018 making our way through Greece to meet the now-grown children we’d met for just a few hours, thirty years earlier.

It’s one hell of a story.

There is so much more to tell, of my father-in-law’s experiences in WWII. After a year hiding out in the hills with his new Greek friends, he had to move on but was recaptured. He spent the rest of the war in a number of different POW camps in Europe. He experienced dreadful things. But his Greek village friends were on his mind—were they safe?

After the war, he wrote to his friend and didn’t hear anything for some time. Then a reply—his friend had just been away doing his own military service.

The men wrote to each other for the rest of their lives. My father-in-law went back to visit his old friend several times, taking us on his last trip.

In the time in between, I had become an award-winning writer, and it was particularly my stories of Greece and “our Greek family” that led to this. This journey was even more meaningful.

We had a GPS this time, making our drive easier to navigate. The roads were even better than we remembered, but there were sad reminders all the way of the tragedies, as well as triumphs of the Greek indomitable spirit. We drove through a number of places marked with “martyred village of…” and we know there are likely to be more that are unmarked, buried under the soil. But then we drove into Kandanos. My father-in-law had taken us to Kandanos and told us about it—the village had objected to German occupation and in the skirmish, some German soldiers were killed. The reprisals were brutal – women and children were herded into the town hall and machine-gunned. The buildings were razed. The village was to be eradicated.

Yet here it is. Beautiful, rebuilt, flourishing.

They say that the best revenge is success.

We drove on to the coastal town of Paleorchora, found the family, and realised that in so many ways, we were home. Whenever we could, we went back to the mountain village that was so achingly familiar, and helped (or watched) the goats and sheep being milked. My Greek is minimal. Eftichi’s English is less. But sitting on his balcony looking over the farm and the mountain village, drinking greek coffee and eating his mizithra (an indescribably perfect light cheese, made from the milk, the best in Crete) needed no language.

In the evenings we sat in Paleorchora with his children and their friends joining us, listening to their stories and sharing what we knew.

One evening the faces of the young people were serious, at times with tears, as they related stories from their grandparents of what they experienced. A husband and sons being asked by invading soldiers to step outside for a moment. Maybe to act as guides? The invading officer imperiously demanding a meal be cooked for him. The terrified woman complying – the rule of hospitality dictated it, plus fear for what would happen to her or her men if she refused. The woman asking where her men were. The officer waving away her concerns. “Don’t worry about them.” The woman later finding her sons and her husband dead in a ditch…

So many stories… here, every tree, every rock, every lined face and even the children, carry the stories of the generations.

I have started to write about it. But so much was never told. All we have are tantalising clues. But the story, as always, beckons me on.

We will go back. We have to go back. Just as I must write.

Time for practical research…

Maybe I’m crazy (perish the thought, I hear you say) but I feel it’s time to spread the word. My word. Or words, actually.

Good writing is about research, we are so often told. I’ve been an armchair researcher for too many years and now it’s time to go see for myself.

It’s a big world out there and every street corner has a story to tell.

We actually did our first big trip in 2018. We had a lot of people to visit, places to see and I had writing to be done.

We’re now in the last few weeks’ rundown to doing it again—on a slightly smaller scale, this time. We’ll travel, we’ll see people and places—and I’ll write. And research…

I have several books in this so bear with me, follow the blog trail and let me think at you. With pictures…

You can also add to my inspiration.

Hang on for the ride, it could get a bit bumpy at times. But never boring!

Talk soon!

Helen Armstrong

“And so it begins.”

This is going to be about research, travel, and writing. Yes, I have plans. But as John Lennon said, “Life is what happens when you’re busy making plans.”