March 2020

Today is February 29, so we are in a Leap Year. This day occurs only every four years, its purpose being to synchronise the calendar year with the astronomical or seasonal one. Human nature will out, of course, so a whole body of superstition grew up around this day. People born on February 29 are supposed to be unlucky. The gloomy Scots, for example, believe that people born on this day are going to have lives that are continual streams of suffering.

On a more cheerful note, this is the only day on which women were permitted by custom to propose to men. In this free and easy day and age, this idea probably strikes young people as being quite odd, but it is only very recently that women have felt enabled by society to make a marriage proposal. The Scots again: a woman was supposed to wear a red petticoat while proposing. Presumably this practice was based on the belief that the colour red inflames men’s passions, although I cannot claim that I have ever noticed this to be the case. In other traditions, if a man refused a woman’s proposal, he was duty bound to present her with a pair of white gloves, at the very least. Pretty gowns were another, more expensive choice.

Human nature, I said, didn’t I? Some manifestations of the way we are are downright weird. The USA is apparently edging into panic over the Covid-19 outbreak: the number of cases stood at 60 two days ago, with the authorities trying to keep the public calm, and the President announcing the outbreak is yet another hoax perpetrated by the Democrats (!!) But the great American public seems to remain eerily calm in the face of just on 40,000 gun deaths a year, and in their tolerance of the most damaging, divisive President in history.

In the meantime, sales of that popular beer, Corona Light, have been falling everywhere. What’s in a name? Plenty, apparently. I wish people in general would calm down, but this is a vain wish, it would seem. My youngest son reports bare shelves in his local Athenian supermarket, and so the fear grows. But seasonal flu kills thousands every year, and we simply accept or ignore the fact. In any case, Covid-19 has a long way to go before it catches up with the 1918 Spanish flu, which killed 50 million people. That’s a conservative estimate: some studies put the number at up to 100 million.

Pity poor Chinese restaurateurs, as reports of Chinese restaurants closing abound in all big cities. So I was pleased to read a morning report on Twitter: in Melbourne an event called Scientists Support China Town was held recently, in which prominent scientists, including Nobel Prize winner Peter Doherty, were shown dining at a Chinese restaurant. And having a thoroughly good time, judging by the photograph. I hope they spent a lot of money! 

Here in Greece we are nearing the end of the Carnival period, with Clean Monday almost here. This is the start of Lent, and people make sure they have a celebratory meal before gradual austerity takes over. Meat, cheese and eggs are naturally off the menu, but there is plenty of seafood as compensation. It is traditional for children to fly kites (those March winds!) at this time, so I was not surprised to see a kite vendor on my afternoon walk today. There he sat, waiting, with his kites of various colours and designs all lined up in a row. Alas, he did not seem to have any customers as I walked by. Perhaps his luck improved later.

Sad to report, this period has not started well in northern Greece. The week has featured protests against the building of a new refugee camp on the island of Lesbos, where existing camps are under great strain because of over-crowding. The locals argue that the camps are a threat to health and safety, and one can see their point of view; the tourist livelihood of many is also inevitably affected.

Now the spotlight has shifted to the mainland and the Greek-Turkish border, which the Greeks have closed. President Erdogan of Turkey is no longer preventing people from trying to enter Europe. Turkey is feeling the strain of trying to cope with 4 million refugees, and is now using would-be immigrants to Europe as leverage: he wants more European support against Syria and Russia. If I’ve understood the situation correctly.

But as I write about a thousand people, including families with young children, are stranded in a kind of no man’s land, and have had to cope with clouds of tear gas. Supplies of food and water are low, and the nights are cold up there. It’s a suffering and often indifferent world they’re in, and not one of their making.