December 2019

The olive harvest is upon us again, and I am so glad that my participation in it is a thing of the past.  It is very hard work, very dependent on the state of the weather, and there is a kind of suspension operating while it is in progress: nothing else happens, and there is no other topic of conversation.  At least that’s the way it used to be. One of my old neighbours, who can no longer harvest olives, told me what good work it is, and I concede that there is a certain satisfaction, on a good day, in working long hours in the open air and feeling a healthy fatigue when afternoon moves into evening. But I sniffed at the idea of ‘good work,’ and then felt ashamed, for not so long ago the olive harvest was almost literally a matter of life or death. A couple of years ago, my eldest brother-in-law, then in his early 80s, was very upset. When I asked the reason, it turned out that he had had to buy olive oil, something he had never had to do in life before.

I have had to go to the dentist. As an old Aussie, I am surprised that I still have my own teeth at my advanced age, my parents and grandparents having parted company with theirs when much younger than I am now. When I was first in the village, the dental surgery resembled nothing so much as a den of horrors. The machinery was primitive, saliva and blood were mopped up with paper table napkins, there was no autoclave, and the dentist smoked as a matter of course: when he had to investigate a mouth or otherwise do some work, he parked his cigarette on a nearby bench and carried on regardless. My second son, aged about eight, had a problem in that two of his second bottom teeth had grown quite large, but his equivalent baby teeth refused to fall out. Very reluctantly, on the only occasion any of us went, I took him to this dentist, who inspected his mouth and then whipped out the baby teeth. With a pair of ordinary pliers, I swear. Niko, made of stern stuff even then, did not flinch or emit so much as a murmur; later I thought this episode must have been good training for the soldier he later became. 

Way back then it was an ordeal even to pass the dental surgery: such were the screams and moans that could be heard even in the street. But those days are gone: the dentist retired long ago. I never went to him, as a new dentist happened along just when I needed him. And now I go to a delightful and very competent woman in Kalamata, who works in a surgery that is the last word in high-tech state of the art. In between the business of probing and repairing teeth we discuss all sorts of matters such as the effect of sun on the complexion and the old custom of arranging marriages. Things have certainly looked up.

Clive James, Australian writer, critic, TV presenter and polymath, died in England on November the 24^th.  It is probably no exaggeration to say that he will be missed by millions. It has been reported that his friend Germaine Greer cried at the news: she and James were born in the same year, and had lived in England for much the same length of time. He was diagnosed with his terminal illness ten years ago, and eventually said it had become embarrassing, the fact that he was taking so long to die. Up-to-the-minute medical techniques helped keep him alive, but so did his own positive attitude and steely will to live. While many other people would have wound down slowly, James entered a new period of creativity. During his illness he completed a translation of The Divine Comedy, which was very well received, and kept on writing poetry, releasing an acclaimed volume called Sentenced to Life. 

Even though he had lived in England for about 55 years, James always saw himself as being Australian; it was one of his great griefs that his illness prevented him from visiting Sydney again. In touching lines from one of his poems he writes: 

The sky is overcast/Here in the English autumn, but my mind/Basks in the light I never left behind.

Being an expatriate himself, he understood what we all go through in leaving; he understood the desire to return. He wrote about this more than once, and imagines Sydney Harbour, with its crushed diamond water under a sky the texture of powdered sapphires. It would be churlish not to concede that the same abundance of natural blessings which gave us the energy to leave has every right to call us back.

That’s exactly the way it is.

Vale, Clive.