March 2021

Well, I was wrong about February. It has not been nearly as bad as I feared, although there was a very sharp cold snap in the middle of the month. The Peloponnese escaped fairly lightly then, although one day was very miserable; points further north, however, endured 36 hours of a snow storm christened Medea. Reports from Athens indicated a huge amount of snow dumped quite suddenly: no. 3 son lives in the northern suburbs, and photos of gardens in his area resembled German Christmas cards. His household coped well, as there were no power cuts, and grandchildren Orestes and Natalia were able to make a snowman.

Bad weather is supposed to return in March, but in the meantime it looks as if spring has sprung. The chamomile reported last month has thickened, and now the red anemones are everywhere. And the wattles have started, right on schedule, so that an Australian friend resident in England is envious; she says she has never stopped missing wattle trees, as the English equivalents are simply not the same. Of course they wouldn’t be.

I still haven’t been able to get to Athens, and so have still not seen new granddaughter Aphrodite. But I’m told she is doing all the right things. The problem is not a surprise: Covid numbers are not looking good, although Greece is still managing fairly well in comparison with the rest of Europe. But ICUs in Athens are at 90% capacity, a very worrying sign. The authorities decreed a hard lockdown for the province of Attica on February the 11^th; this was supposed to end today, the 28^th, but has now been extended until the 8^th of March. And who can tell whether it will end then? The neighbouring province (Arcadia) to this one of Messenia has also started a hard lockdown, so we must keep our fingers crossed.

In so-called normal times, this month would be one of great celebration and commemoration, for it is now 200 years since the War of Independence started against the Turks. (Greeks always call this years-long event the Revolution.) It began officially on March the 25^th, 1821, but got off to an early start in Kalamata two days beforehand: there is a square in town called March the 23^rd. This happened because a sharp-eyed Turk had caught sight of a trail of gunpowder where it had no business to be. He set off to warn the Pasha in Tripolis, a hundred miles away. He never got there, but the local insurgents realised they had to act quickly, and so they did. Kalamata was the first city in Greece to fall to the rebels; the revolutionary movement widened rapidly after Lady Day, March the 25^th, which remains the official day of commemoration. The Square of March the 23^rd is usually packed for a re-enactment of events, but this year will see a break with tradition. Inevitably, and of necessity.

This year is also notable for marking 200 years since the death of John Keats, English Romantic poet, who died in Rome on the 23^rd of February 1821. He was only 25, but had no hope against the scourge of tuberculosis. His poetry did not receive much recognition during his short life, but its worth was acknowledged not too long after his death, and he has been seen as an iconic figure in the Romantic movement for most of the aforesaid 200 years.

The Guardian newspaper recently published an article that featured five poets, each of whom chose their favourite Keats poem. Ode to a Nightingale of course featured, but my favourite is probably Ode to Autumn, which I first came across at school, predictably enough. There was a lot of teaching about techniques and conventions then, so we had to learn what constituted an ode and a sonnet, that sort of thing. This ode was our introduction to personification, as there was Autumn himself, with his ‘hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind,’ and as he is by the cider-press, where he watches ‘the last oozings hours by hours.’ You may forget the technical terms, but the richness of the language and its evocation of that particular season stays with you for years.

There was another splendid full moon very visible early this morning. It seems so close, a huge silvery orb high in the sky. But it doesn’t take long for it to move towards the horizon. And as it does, it changes colour from a silver white through to a pale orange. It’s easy to understand why all sorts of cultures have been entranced by this sight, for just about forever. I remember being excited by the moon landing all those decades ago, but can’t say that I am excited about the Mars exploration. It’s one thing to push the boundaries of science and exploration, but quite another to have these processes funded by competing billionaires very often, as well as by governments. I tend to think of all the earthly ills that the enormous amounts of money spent on space ventures could be achieving here on earth, and I don’t think I am the only one to be having these thoughts.