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Pot throwing during the Easter Parade in Old Corfu.
It took an hour for the entire musical procession to pass where I stood, and as it fanned out into the wider street the crowd moved in behind it, following it round to the cathedral. After the service, the citizens of Corfu celebrated the Christian resurrection with a pagan ritual. In the times of the ancient Greeks, whenever someone died a member of the family would stay behind as the body was taken away and, as the cortege moved off, would throw an earthenware pot from the house so that it smashed on to the street, warding away evil spirits from the dead and bringing good fortune to the bereaved. Today, of course, this is just a piece of folklore but it’s mightily impressive. Many of the houses in the Old Town are three or four storeys high, all with balconies. Everybody gathers on their balconies and hurls huge clay pots on to the road below. I was doing a piece to camera, pretending to be a famous war correspondent explaining this ritual, when I was actually saved by a Greek policeman who rugby-tackled me out of the path of a down-coming missile. It was damned funny! The crew enjoyed it.
For the next 24 hours, virtually every street in Old Corfu was covered in shattered clay pots. It was like walking on a gravel beach and was hugely good fun. And the sun was shining now, and it really was a pretty place. I believe there were 40,000 people in the streets that day, all crossing themselves as the various parts of the procession passed, and virtually all of them were Greek. The celebration was no cheapskate performance put on for tourists; it was done out of deep belief and longheld tradition.
A priest relaxes, while awaiting the Easter parade.
We broke for lunch and I found a little taverna opposite a vegetable shop that had just opened – luckily, so I could buy food for my cooking sketch. It was a curious restaurant, openfronted, very friendly but they didn’t have a kitchen. All the food came from a sort of shed down an alleyway. We had a wonderful plate of grilled octopus, shrimps and sardines and, as it turned out, the only good moussaka that I was to eat on my whole trip. Really delicate, fresh, finely minced lamb topped with a light, cinnamon-flavoured béchamel sauce and served with a crunchy salad of sweet onions, tomatoes, excellent olive oil and good feta cheese. It was delightful and our spirits were high because the procession had been so dramatic – full of pathos yet also a celebration.
That evening there was another Mass, and at 11 o’clock the priests, maybe 120 of them, sort of marched, sort of shambled, sort of glided even, from the church to the bandstand in the park, where all of the bands from the morning were gathered. After a blessing on the tens of thousands of people present, the bands began to play and the music was simply fantastic. Then, as one, they stopped and at that moment a huge red crucifix was switched on, high up on the hill. Simultaneously the night sky erupted in explosions of brilliant fireworks.
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