December 2021

I suppose we are all asking ourselves the same question: where has this year gone? Into the effort of just keeping going, I suspect. And as I write, the world is feeling threatened yet again because of the discovery of the Omicron variant of Covid. More restrictions, more uncertainty. And more need to convince grandchildren and children everywhere that life is good (most of the time) and that Christmas is coming and they are going to enjoy it. 

I was present when my grandchildren wrote their letter to Father Christmas on Saturday in the confident belief that their father would post it on Monday: I must say I noted that the address was a little vague, but of course I made no comment. The older ones had fun decorating the Christmas Tree, while trying to cope with their 10-month old sister, who is now quite mobile and is inclined to think of her new mission in life as being one of tree-wrecking.

In spite of the pandemic and the indisputable fact that the world is getting messier, a pattern is somehow maintained, at least in some parts, by those people who still keep a traditional life-style, or engage in a balancing act: many restaurants are closed in the middle of the day so that the owners and workers can get on with the olive harvest, which has been in full swing and will continue for some time yet. It has been varied, as usual; some areas have had a good harvest, others not. But it is somehow comforting to observe the ritual: the nets spread under the trees, the sustained beating, the pitter-patter of the fruit dropping on to the nets. And I’m looking forward to the sampling of fresh oil: there’s nothing quite like it. Especially when slathered on toast. And guess what? The day after writing the above passage, I was presented with a big can of new olive oil!

We have had a beautiful autumn, on the whole. It’s been punctuated every now and then by gale-force winds and torrential rain, but what can we expect? Our temperatures are still in double figures, unlike the temperatures further north. It’s just a matter of choosing the day, really, and this past week my friends and I chose well. We were able to have a coastal walk in bright sunshine, not too far from where great travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor lived in Kardamili. It’s hard to describe the scene without lapsing into cliché. The sun sparkled on the water. There was not a cloud in the sky, and the sea was pleasingly flat: san lathi, as the Greeks say: Like oil.

Of course idylls like this do not last. A few days later I was in the dentist’s chair. How times have changed, and how well I remember the village dentist of decades ago. He saw nothing wrong with smoking throughout any procedure, and would park his cigarette on any convenient bench only when absolutely necessary. He had no cloth or paper bibs; instead he had a pile of paper table napkins handy. There was no sign of an autoclave, and he had a foot-operated drill which, I imagine, was extremely slow. I never went to that dentist: the prolonged screams emanating from his so-called surgery could be heard very clearly in the street. That was enough to put this devout coward completely off.

But the dentists of today are very different. Mine is an elegant woman who has always taken every precaution even pre-pandemic. Everything was swathed in plastic, and still is. She now wears a mask and a plastic face shield as well. Of course communication is thus made more difficult, but nobody communicates much at the dentist’s, anyway. For obvious reasons. I had to have a broken tooth repaired, and felt only a twinge or two. I’m so amazed to have teeth at all at this stage that I’m willing to put up with quite a lot. In the Australia of my childhood, most adults over the age of 40 had false teeth. ‘They don’t hurt,’ my mother used to say. In country townships way back then many people had their teeth removed as a weird preventative measure and rite de passage: you never knew when you would see a dentist again. But one of my friends has just turned 100, and she still has her own teeth. Her dentist is very admiring, and rightly so.

I am off within the hour to book an appointment for my booster vaccination, while wondering whether I’ll have to have another in three, rather than in six, months’ time. The Greek government is introducing stern measures against anti-vaxxers, and I believe the German government is doing the same. Here anybody over the age of 60 who is not vaccinated will have to pay a monthly fine of 100 euros. That should make such people review their ideas. I wish they would also do some reading about the whole concept of liberty. J.S. Mill’s On Liberty would be a good starting-point: in this work Mill stresses the importance of not harming others, and the notion that sins of omission, as well as those of commission, can be harmful to others: he would argue that people who are not vaccinated are putting vulnerable groups of people at risk.

Well, after all that: best wishes for Christmas and the New Year. Chronia Polla!