Here I am in Chania, Crete, outside the Diporto Guesthouse and the ceramics shop next door. This is the site of the renowned/infamous To Diporto (Two Doors) restaurant, where I worked, forty-five years ago, as the restaurant’s sole waiter, an experience I drew upon for my novel Deep Hanging Out (2007). The restaurant was named ‘Two Doors’ because it had two entrances: this one on Bettolo Street, and the main one on Skridlof, the street lined, then as now, with shops selling leather goods.
It was one of the weirdest jobs I’ve ever had, taking orders from the most diverse clientele imaginable: stoned hippies on their way back from India; no good boyos on the run from Thatcher’s Britain; prostitutes and their pimps from the nearby red light area; young Greek naval recruits doing their obligatory three years of military service, and (mostly black) crewmen from the U.S. Sixth Fleet stationed at nearby Souda Bay. Oh, and a smattering of bewildered regular tourists who tended not to return. Since the owner and chef — a stocky, mustachioed Cretan named Michalis — know no foreign languages, my job was (a) to transcribe orders onto a pad in Greek with a pencil that I kept behind my ear, and (b) attempt to keep some kind of order when trouble broke out, as it frequently did, between mutually hostile groups of punters.
It was hard work, and long hours, but no doubt it was also character-building. Among the more memorable customers, two stand out: the artist John Craxton, who lived nearby, in an old house behind the Venetian harbour — always polite, but possessed of a withering sense of humour; and a German man in his sixties, an ex-parachutist who had been a part of the invasion force that landed in Crete in May 1941, and who had subsequently been sent off to fight on the eastern Front. The man had enjoyed his first posting so much more than the second that he had started coming back for holidays. Given the brutality of the Nazi occupation, his nostalgia was, let’s say, a little tone-deaf. But since the theme of this year’s Festival was ‘Worlds in Conflict’, this memory seems apposite.
Being invited to participate in the 5th Chania Book Festival was a genuine pleasure. I took a writing workshop with the Syrian/Palestinian poet Ghayath Almadhoun on the theme of Conflict, chatted about ‘Minotaurs crossing the sea’ with Greek author Christiana Lambrinidi and spoke about my translations of Latin American poetry on a panel exploring the theme of translation and gender. But, as the photo suggests, the trip also allowed me to connect with my Cretan past, proving that yesterday usually comes back round, in some form or other.
Richard Gwyn, June 2026
Postcard from Chania
Here I am in Chania, Crete, outside the Diporto Guesthouse and the ceramics shop next door. This is the site of the renowned/infamous To Diporto (Two Doors) restaurant, where I worked, forty-five years ago, as the restaurant’s sole waiter, an experience I drew upon for my novel Deep Hanging Out (2007). The restaurant was named ‘Two Doors’ because it had two entrances: this one on Bettolo Street, and the main one on Skridlof, the street lined, then as now, with shops selling leather goods.
It was one of the weirdest jobs I’ve ever had, taking orders from the most diverse clientele imaginable: stoned hippies on their way back from India; no good boyos on the run from Thatcher’s Britain; prostitutes and their pimps from the nearby red light area; young Greek naval recruits doing their obligatory three years of military service, and (mostly black) crewmen from the U.S. Sixth Fleet stationed at nearby Souda Bay. Oh, and a smattering of bewildered regular tourists who tended not to return. Since the owner and chef — a stocky, mustachioed Cretan named Michalis — know no foreign languages, my job was (a) to transcribe orders onto a pad in Greek with a pencil that I kept behind my ear, and (b) attempt to keep some kind of order when trouble broke out, as it frequently did, between mutually hostile groups of punters.
It was hard work, and long hours, but no doubt it was also character-building. Among the more memorable customers, two stand out: the artist John Craxton, who lived nearby, in an old house behind the Venetian harbour — always polite, but possessed of a withering sense of humour; and a German man in his sixties, an ex-parachutist who had been a part of the invasion force that landed in Crete in May 1941, and who had subsequently been sent off to fight on the eastern Front. The man had enjoyed his first posting so much more than the second that he had started coming back for holidays. Given the brutality of the Nazi occupation, his nostalgia was, let’s say, a little tone-deaf. But since the theme of this year’s Festival was ‘Worlds in Conflict’, this memory seems apposite.
Being invited to participate in the 5th Chania Book Festival was a genuine pleasure. I took a writing workshop with the Syrian/Palestinian poet Ghayath Almadhoun on the theme of Conflict, chatted about ‘Minotaurs crossing the sea’ with Greek author Christiana Lambrinidi and spoke about my translations of Latin American poetry on a panel exploring the theme of translation and gender. But, as the photo suggests, the trip also allowed me to connect with my Cretan past, proving that yesterday usually comes back round, in some form or other.
Richard Gwyn, June 2026