November 2021

November, and I’m wondering where 2021 has gone; no doubt it has disappeared into the giant hole that is the business of coping with Covid. It is hard to believe that it is nearly six months since I had my second jab, but this means I am due for a booster before Christmas. I feel ambivalent about this, and have a lot of mates in worrying about the low rate of vaccination in poorer countries. However, once past a certain age, people start becoming concerned about being burdens on their families, and this been a worry of mine for quite some time. So I will go ahead. In any case, one wonders what happens to supplies of vaccine that are not used within a defined time? Richer countries apparently over-order, so there are literally millions of doses that can be sent elsewhere before their expiry date. Whether they will be or not is another matter.

Winter has yet to start, but in general the weather has been very up and down, reminding me of patterns in my home state of Victoria. One recent spate of storm conditions here in Greece earned the population the warning message from the Ministry of Civil Protection. Such messages (we had a couple during the summer fires) are transmitted via mobile phones and are heralded by a prolonged buzz heard by even the most aurally challenged. And today I’ve just caught up with reports of violent storms in Victoria. Fallen trees and power cuts seem to be the main problems, so we have to be thankful the whole episode wasn’t worse.

Since then there has been a return to the soft and sunny days of autumn here, but in the meantime my youngest grandson, who is now eight, developed pneumonia. He had a rocky start to life, and seems prone to infection. He spent four days in Kalamata hospital, which my son says is much improved since he himself languished, also at the age of eight, needing an appendectomy. Greek custom decrees that the child is never left without a parent at such times, so my son was also in hospital. Needless to say, they were both very glad to leave. Grandson is now well again, but had to convalesce at home for ten days: fortunately, he is a great reader and very good at entertaining himself, while his two little sisters undoubtedly helped.

Speaking of children, my young married neighbours have just had their first child, a girl. She is a first grandchild for both sets of grandparents, so excitement has been running high. The paternal grandfather visits every day, and gives me a running report. Here tradition has it that mother and child stay at home for 40 days, and it looks as if tradition is still the thing in this particular case. But the modern thing was done on the day that Angeliki and her baby came home from hospital. There were pink, white, and pale mauve balloons all over the front of the house, and a pink helium one announced ‘It’s a girl!’ As both grandmothers (yiayiathes) are called Maria, the baby will have that name. Tradition again, although I can’t help thinking that Greece is in a fair way to be swamped by Marias.

OXI Day (October the 28^th) has come and gone. This is a proud day in modern Greek history and commemorates the occasion when Greek dictator Metaxas said a resounding NO (OXI) to the Italian ambassador’s request to occupy Greece. (Metaxas was in fact a nasty piece of work, but remains famous for this refusal.) Greece defeated the Italians, and Hitler was reportedly very annoyed when he had to rescue them, and of course the Greeks had little hope against the Nazi war machine. Military parades took place this year, but most student parades were cancelled because of the pandemic: the Delta variant seems to be raging everywhere.

Well, the climate change conference is coming up in Glasgow. I try to hope for the best, but it’s hard going, particularly when I know that Australia is a pariah nation, with so-called plans that experts consider worse than meaningless. I would say what I think of the Federal Government, but I like to think this is a family column.

Winter is obviously approaching. Like clockwork, the temperature drops every year on November the 20^th, signalling the start of serious cold. Not to mention wet. I wonder if this year will be any different. I do not like to think of ‘the bare ruin’d choirs’, with boughs ‘shaking against the cold’ and am distracting myself by returning in a big way to the novels of that redoubtable English writer Penelope Lively. Expert at dissecting families, she is also very at peeling back layers of time and history. She established herself as a writer of children’s books and then moved into fiction for adults. Start with The Road to Lichfield, her first.