November 2022

Kalo mina, as the Greeks say: Have a good month.

Well, I think most people try to do that, but it seems increasingly hard to remain optimistic these days, bombarded as we are by all kinds of reports that are conducive only to gloom and doom. We can’t help but think that civilisation as we know it seems to be becoming a very frail structure. My eldest son once told me that he had not read a newspaper or watched the TV news for a whole year, and that he felt much better as a result, and I can well believe it. But most of us are addicted to being informed, and long ago I read about a paper that was dedicated to reporting only good news. It went broke, a fact that seems to indicate something negative about human nature, to say the least. In these present grim times, the latest fear in the northern hemisphere is that of a bleak and expensive winter.

Here in Greece, however, winter still seems far away, as we are having an autumnal drought. October the 26^th is the feast day of St Dimitrios, and there is often a run of sunny days at about this time, traditionally known as the Little Summer of Saint Dimitrios. But this little summer seems to be a re-run of the big one, as yesterday, for example, saw the mercury rise to 29 degrees. The farmers are worried by the lack of rain, for olives need rain, and there has been precious little for months. But at least people are glad that there was no rain on OXI Day, when parades take place all over the country in memory of the Greek refusal to accept the demand for Italian occupation, which was made on October the 28^th, 1940. OXI means NO.

Across the water to the sceptr’d isle. The sighs of relief that must have been felt by huge numbers of British people when the Queen’s funeral concluded without a security incident, were apparently replaced by sighs of consternation, not to mention the grinding of many molars, over the dire political situation that evolved soon afterwards. Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer lamented the revolving door of Prime Ministers (three in as many months) and the general chaos; he demanded a general election, but of course he won’t get one. Why would anyone want to be a politician? This is a question I often ask myself. The drive to acquire power is a strange and pernicious one.

On a lighter note, the BBC is celebrating its centenary. (The ABC has ten years to go.) There is (naturally) a lot of nostalgia to watch. For example: it hardly seems credible now, but in 1952 the BBC and its supporters had to work very hard in order to get a guarantee that the Queen’s coronation would be telecast the next year. The Queen herself kept out of the squabble, while people as august as Winston Churchill declared their opposition to the idea. The BBC won the battle, fortunately, and so did the purveyors of TV sets.

On the home front, my third grandson, now aged 9, started life with various health problems, with which he copes very well. But now he has to have a bronchoscopy under general anaesthetic, with a camera and all the works. It has to be done, but we don’t like thinking about it, needless to say. We are currently awaiting news of the appointment.

He and his parents have already had a very full day in Athens, consulting with the doctor in charge. O always has a book with him, and whenever the doctor and his parents were deep in conversation, he apparently returned to his book: he is re-reading all the Harry Potter books at present. The doctor was intrigued and said he’d never observed this patient behaviour before. Where does this interest come from? he wanted to know. Not from us, my son and his wife admitted. It comes from his Yiayia (Granny). And I confess I was much the same at his age, and ever after, really. And I now feel quite entitled to take a bow.

O’s sister is six and taught herself to read at kindergarten, as O himself did. (I may have said this before: I am very proud of them both.) She likes me to read to her when I visit. It is highly likely that the seductions of power play a role in this exercise, as the stories are in Greek, and she enjoys correcting my pronunciation. The latest story was Rapunzel. In this Greek version, Rapunzel’s mother craves lettuce. In the version I knew as a child, she wanted radishes, while in the French version on which the Grimm version is based, the pregnant woman wanted parsley. We enjoyed the story, which of course ends happily, and I taught N the English of the witch’s instruction: Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your long hair. 

N herself has corkscrew curls, and I told her to wonder why it always has to be a prince that happens to wander past an isolated tower. Why not a grocer or a carpenter? Subversive Yiayia!