At some point during this period, I returned to Thessaloniki airport, cargo section.

"But I can't pay," I complained to the woman in room 22, who I had never seen before. She explained that the main two people I had been dealing with - the assistant to the director, and the blonde lady - were on holiday, and she was not entirely aware of the case. But after heaving a ledger designed to be carried by a donkey from one iron-doored cupboard to a desk, and then lugging another, equally weighty office tome from another iron-doored cabinet to the same desk, she pored over documents taken from files stashed away in a third cabinet, and made some languid internal phone calls. She suddenly got the gist.
'Ah! You're the British teacher who was planing to sell a computer to the Albanians..."
"I was not planning to sell anything!" I said.
"Just joking," she said with a mirthless smile and a look of concrete, "I'm a bit new around here and I'm trying to get used to it. I'm sorry if I seem a little sardonic..." she pored over one ledger then the other ledger and reached for a third ledger before changing her mind. Shaking her head, she wiffled through a couple of documents, passed her finger along pagagraph 14, section 4, clause 28 of the rules and regulations about payment and non-payment, decided that was no good, went through another document, and appeared eventually to find what she was looking for.
"Well, it appears that theoretically, I can give you another three months in which to pay at my discretion," she said, slamming first one, then the other ledger shut. She ignored half of the documents, but put the others into a neat pile on the side of her desk. "So, this is what I will do, yes, this!" Her smile was as if she was trying to prevent someone from forcefeeding her while at the same time modelling for a leading photographer.
"I see," I said. "So I can come back in three months time to argue my case again?"
"Yes, simple as that, really," she said. Now her more serious, stone look had returned. With her jet-black hair and dark brown eyes, she was drop- dead gorgeous in spite of her smile. And young. And bewildered. What would confident, pretty, brown-haired, brown eyed, amusing and adorable Despina say, I asked myself, as I left the building, repressing treacherous thoughts about goings-on with strange women behind severe desks, and in front of steel-doored cabinets, coffee cups clattering, planes roaring off overhead, and the strange combination of woman's perfume, dust flying from the ledgers, the sunlight glancing into the corners of this closed, kafkaesque world of conspiratorial documents.

* * * * * * * *

So, a few months later, I returned, for what I hoped was the final time, to the Cargo section of Thessaloniki airport. The blonde lady was there. The assistant director was there. They were waiting.
"Er,look, I'm sorry but I really am broke and I really can't..."
The blonde lady gave me a huge smile. "Okay, okay, you're part of the family now, we've got used to you."
"Er....?"
"You're even pretending not to understand! Well, let me explain," she took me aside, as if to give me a grave secret that even the assistant director should not know. "What you did, didn't you , was take the computer out of the country the last holidays which was Easter, yes?"
"Er... did I?"
"Oh, yes, you did. You decided to export it back to England at Easter time, didn't you? We know, we're your family! Well, extended family, let's say."
I cottoned on. "Oh, yes, of course I left Greece for the Easter break and took my computer with me! Er...?"
"Now, all you have to do," she said, taking my passport out of my hand, "is to get the assistant director to stamp it here," she pointed at the last page," and then you must go to the police chief in the main airport and he'll sign it and stamp it. He'll ask you: "did you really take the computer with you when you left for England for the Easter break? You'll reply, 'Yes!' Make sure you reply 'yes'! If you say 'No', then you'll have to pay a lot of money. And don't forget, we didn't stamp your departure date and return date in your passport, did we, because we're all EU now, aren't we, so we're taking it on your word that you went to England for Easter?"
"I think this is a splendid arrangement," I said.

A few minutes later, I ambled over to the main building of the airport, and found the chief of police.
'So, when you went to England last, was it Easter by any chance?" he asked. I could have sworn he winked.
"It was!"
"That is ... Greek Easter, yes?"
"Yes!"
He said the date, and I replied in the affirmative.
"And you did take the computer with you, didn't you?"
"Indeed I did!"
He signed it. My computer no longer officially existed in Greece. I was free. I did not have to pay a thing.