September 2021

I feel as if I’m coming up for air after having my daughter-in-law and the three children under this small roof for four weeks: they have not been able to move into their Kalamata flat until early this month. Although the whole venture did me good, and the children are endlessly entertaining, I confess I’d forgotten how constant the care of small children has to be. A matter of eternal vigilance, and that is only one part of the whole business. The default setting for parents is fear, I think, and I now know that the setting does not change for grandparents: I kept the phone numbers for the ambulance service and the local hospital handy at all times.

Still, the entertainment: my elder granddaughter is now 5, and has always been a wag. The dialogue between the wag and her mother one evening:

You’re the best mother in the world.

But there are no flies on Nina, who asked What do you want? The answer came smartly: Popcorn.

Of course we all fell about laughing, and soon the atmosphere was predictably redolent of corn popping.

A lot of time was spent at the beach, naturally enough. In Greece, the beach scene is not usually a simple time-honoured one, as in other countries, with tartan rugs and picnic hampers well to the fore. Here, we have to have the full coffee bar set-up, with a copious snacks menu, music playing, and parties of men (usually men) playing cards or backgammon. As the whole nation has a hopeless caffeine addiction, these beach places do well.

The one we favoured also featured a volleyball court, which naturally added to the general appeal, with young and older people (who should have had more sense) competing under a relentless sun. In this neck of the olive groves the extended family remains important, so that the grandchildren had the benefit of the company of first, second, and even third cousins. (I know I have third cousins in Australia, but have little clue as to who or where they are.) My grandson cried buckets on leaving Athens, but seems to have made a sound adjustment to his new life in the provinces. At least so far. And watched the volleyball matches very keenly.

Despite my poor nerves (to quote Mrs Bennett) and my weight of responsibility, all was well, and the family is soon to move. Fire-fighter Alexander, after years spent at an Athens station, where he was on duty for all of August, starts work at the Kalamata fire station early this month. At this point the fires that have ravaged the nation for a month are largely under control. Huge areas of forest were burned out, but the death toll was very low: surely something to be deeply thankful for.

Now the Delta variant is the greater threat. Messenia, the province of which the city of Kalamata is the capital, is currently a hotspot. At this stage I am being a bit of an ostrich, and really do not want to know about numbers, mystery cases, and so on. Alexander’s latest rapid test was negative, so we are all relieved. The children will be tested before they return to school on the 13^th, and then regularly after that date. We are still better off in the quieter, open-air life of the provinces, I think. And people continue to be conscientious about wearing masks, although it is hard for gregarious Greeks to get the knack of social distancing.

I find myself bemused by the fuss about ‘our freedoms,’ vaccination passports and the like, and am even more bemused by the anti-vaccination movement.  I’m old enough to remember the polio epidemic in Australia, and the fear associated with it, but can’t remember any idea that we might have to learn to live with polio. And when the Salk vaccine was developed, people were simply thankful that something so efficacious had arrived. As for vaccination passports, it’s not so long since every Australian traveller had to carry a little folder in which was a series of stamps, there to indicate the inoculations and vaccinations the individual had had. And once again, I can’t remember any fuss.

It’s been good to be able to be with the children, a source of hope in an increasingly sad world. I find myself switching news programmes off half-way through these days, something I never used to do. But who can cope with the heartbreak that is Afghanistan at present? And which Australian can cope with the shameful behaviour of the federal government, which could have done so much more to help those Afghans who helped Australian servicemen? In some cases for years.

I know expatriates view the land of origin through rose-coloured spectacles, but my particular pair shattered long ago. I may have ground them underfoot.