Sandy told me that what Nikos and Ada had said about the piano was true. It was lying idle with no one playing on it in the bar at the Anerousa hotel. She told me she would tell the staff there that a pianist was looking for a job, and advised me to ring them in a couple of days.

And so I had done this, and as a consequence I now walked from the bus-stop in Batsi to the Anerousa for my audition. I was introduced to the staff, and then put through my paces at the piano. It had a good tone, was in tune, so I had no excuse; I had to play something. So I interspersed bits of improvised Gershwin with something that sounded faintly like Zorba the Greek, threw in a bit of bad Beethoven for good measure, lolled through a couple of Beatles numbers, and just to give this the feel of an eclectic mess, balanced snatches of Vivaldi with a souped-up Rebetika song, followed with Nana Mouskouri (sort of) and triumphantly ended with a blitkrieg-medley of Led Zeppelin meets Miles Davis meets Albinoni.
To my astonishment, they liked this soup.
"Yes, we'll take you on," said Yiannis, stubbing out his Papastratos cigarette in an ashtray in the balcony above the floor where the bar also lay. "But we only need you for one night at the moment. If it goes well, then we may ask you back. A word of advice; even though you are background music, make sure you occasionally startle the people who are sitting in the bar. We liked the sudden Beethoven Fifth."
"Oh." I said. I knew that when it came to the night I wasn't going to startle anybody; I was only the (background) piano player, not the London Symphony Orchestra, Dave Brubeck, Mikis Theodrakis, or U2. And I thought that people expected the (background) piano player to be - well -background. I wondered how the 'startle' factor would go down.
But I left the Anerousa hotel with high hopes that I would make myself a little niche for the spring and summer.