July 2022

Summer is really here, with people being at the beach at 8 o’clock in the morning. And school has ended, so I’ve been doing the things that grandmothers do. My elder granddaughter had her last day at kindergarten, and I was there. I can’t say I recall a great deal about the occasion, as I was minding my younger granddaughter. She is almost 18 months, and is already very determined, and with a purposeful walk. That day she had her sights set on the slide that is in the kindergarten playground. Heart in mouth, I watched her while she negotiated the steps, and was very grateful that her 9-year-old brother stationed himself at the bottom of the slide and caught her every time. And there were many of them: toddlers need to prove they can repeat important acts X number of times. At the end of the proceedings, the kindergarten graduate came away with a paper scroll to prove her period of attendance. She seems to have enjoyed it all and, like her brother before her, has taught herself to read.

The next thing was the break-up concert for various groups that practise rhythmic gymnastics. I wasn’t sure what this entails: I’m so old that I can still remember the advent of the hula hoop in the 1950s, when most little girls were subject to this craze, and pestered their parents until they had a hoop: my sister was a whizz at the whole thing, I recall. And my elder granddaughter tries hard to master her hula hoop. Her item went well: there they were, little girls in purple spangly dresses, and walking on tippy-toe, and somehow managing to do cartwheels and somersaults. (At one point it occurred to me to wonder why there were no little boys taking part, but then I decided simply to be glad that the girls had something of their very own to concentrate on.) The best item was put on by five older girls who did amazing things with golden hoops: the choreographer deserved a medal.

Like many Greek events, this one was somewhat chaotic, mainly because of the audience. The programme and participants were very well organized, but the parents in the audience let their children run wild. At this stage of life I envy the tots their energy, and wish they could somehow bottle it. Ola yia ta paithia, is what Greek parents say, and they certainly try to live up to this idea: everything for the children. There were doting parents seated next to me, and at one point they produced a Tupperware container full of pasta, which they fed to their little girl in the intervals of her running up and down like a mad thing. I suppose they thought she needed to keep her strength up, although she had no related problem that I could discern.

On Saturday I went to the beach, and managed to avoid the commercial spots where the young gather to drink coffee, play loud music, and have a go at volleyball or bat tennis. Sometimes they even go in the water. The place I went to was not too far away, was shaded by trees, and had no commercial ambience whatsoever. Nothing to buy. Just a whitewashed old building, some old wooden seats and numerous notices exhorting the public to look after the environment and keep the area clean. It turns out that the place is the brainchild of the local community, quite a few of whom were seated under umbrellas with their picnic baskets and hampers within handy reach. Mostly men: I always assume the women are at home, slaving over various hot stoves. And these men had the vague air of ageing hippies: one even sported a grey pony-tail. The biggest surprise of all was a book exchange, with books in Greek, German, and English. Being a complete book addict, I found two novels, and have read one already.

Speaking of books (do I speak of much else?) I learned today that a celebration was held recently on the island of Kalymnos, one of the Dodecanese group. The reason for this was the publication in Greek of Charmian Clift’s Mermaid Singing for the very first time. Clift and her husband George Johnston lived on Kalymnos briefly before settling for much longer on the less remote island of Hydra, which is in the Saronic Gulf. It was there that Johnston wrote his best-known work, My Brother Jack. The couple seems to have entered the world of myth now, and was part of the Bohemian set that frequented Hydra in the 1950s and 60s. Clift wrote Mermaid Singing in 1955, but was unknown in Greece then. So it’s nice to know that the Greek reading public can have access to her work at last.