It's Still Greek to Me!
August 2020
A peculiar summer, as the Coronavirus pandemic drags on. I suppose many people, like me, thought that things would improve with time, but instead they seem to be getting worse, with fears of a so-called second wave growing apace. My home state of Victoria, Australia, has made it to the BBC World News on the day that I write, because of a sudden and very worrying spike in new infections, and 13 deaths. And Australia in general had been doing quite well until very recently. It is a very sad situation, made worse by determination in some quarters, such as the Murdoch press, to politicise not only the issue but the handling of it.
It seems I am always outraged by something, with this tendency being exacerbated by age. I have been very exercised by the conversion of Aghia Sophia into a mosque: more politics. I wrote about this, but the piece has not seen the light of day, so I will post it here. I’ve called it Change in the City.
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July 2020
We live in troubled times, and Time itself does not seem to be behaving normally. Although, what do the words normal and normally mean any more? It seems to be quite difficult to remember those good old pre-Covid days, which were often not all that good, but at least free from the sort of suspense and necessary discipline that we are enduring at present. Most people I know have the same view of time, and also bemoan the fact that they have not spent their extra helping of this commodity in lockdown as profitably as they had planned and hoped. But some people seem to have done well, working hard in house and garden. I have made a few feeble efforts in the direction of book shelves, but that’s about it.
June 2020
Another month has gone by, one in which the Covid-19 pandemic again dominated the news, and most of life itself. It was often hard to find out what else was happening in this troubled world: Brexit hardly rates a mention at present, and climate change seems to have slipped off the global agenda, a worrying trend that one can only hope is very temporary.
May 2020
May the 1st is a public holiday in Greece, but we will be forced to regard it as being like any other day. People will be able to decorate their front doors with May Day wreaths, but that is all: the authorities have exhorted us, as they do regularly in these troubled times, to stay at home. On the 4th a cautious emergence from lockdown will begin, in that we will be able to go out, in a limited fashion, without permits. According to law, Greek citizens are required to carry their ID cards with them at all times, but presumably citizens of other countries will no longer be compelled to carry their passports. Some small businesses will re-open, including hair salons (thank goodness), but masks must be worn in shops and in taxis and on public transport. I’m sure many women will join me in being glad about being able to get a haircut at last: for the first time in about 60 years I am using bobby pins, which now come in rainbow colours! My grandmothers used them regularly, but they were always a sombre dark brown or black.
April 2020
April Fools’ Day used to be a day of general hilarity in Australia when I was a child, with children and yes, adults, trying to catch each other out. I was no longer a child, though, when numbers of people were duped by the idea of a spaghetti farm. This seems hard to believe in these very much more sober times. Greece has never made a great deal of the day, at least not in my experience, and at present there is little trace of festive mood anywhere in the land. Or anywhere on earth, if it comes to that.
March 2020
Today is February 29, so we are in a Leap Year. This day occurs only every four years, its purpose being to synchronise the calendar year with the astronomical or seasonal one. Human nature will out, of course, so a whole body of superstition grew up around this day. People born on February 29 are supposed to be unlucky. The gloomy Scots, for example, believe that people born on this day are going to have lives that are continual streams of suffering.
February 2020
I was in Athens for the first week of the New Year. The weather was cold, wet, and generally miserable, and I wasn’t too happy, either, fast becoming a Twitter tragic in order to keep up with the ever-worsening news about Eastern Australia’s bush fires. Not to mention the reports of smoke haze in Sydney, Canberra, and Melbourne, with face masks not to be had for love or money. And here we are in February with danger still present. Small wonder, as February and March are often the hottest months of the year in the Wide Brown Land. As I write on January 30, Melbourne is expected to have a top temperature of 42 tomorrow.
January 2020
I must say that 2020 has a nice ring to it: I do so like symmetry. Let us hope for a year in which good things happen, and outweigh the bad. The BBC, as you would expect, showed excerpts from the Queen’s speech on the news, and she, as dignified and sensible as ever, referred to 2019 as involving a somewhat bumpy path. And she wasn’t wrong. Poor woman: I can’t imagine she ever wanted Brexit, and certainly can’t have wanted the political mess that preceded it. And of course another protracted mess is just beginning. Added to which: who could possibly cope with the irreparably stupid Prince Andrew at any stage and age, let alone at 93?
December 2019
The olive harvest is upon us again, and I am so glad that my participation in it is a thing of the past. It is very hard work, very dependent on the state of the weather, and there is a kind of suspension operating while it is in progress: nothing else happens, and there is no other topic of conversation. At least that’s the way it used to be. One of my old neighbours, who can no longer harvest olives, told me what good work it is, and I concede that there is a certain satisfaction, on a good day, in working long hours in the open air and feeling a healthy fatigue when afternoon moves into evening. But I sniffed at the idea of ‘good work,’ and then felt ashamed, for not so long ago the olive harvest was almost literally a matter of life or death. A couple of years ago, my eldest brother-in-law, then in his early 80s, was very upset. When I asked the reason, it turned out that he had had to buy olive oil, something he had never had to do in life before.
November 2019
The months are speeding by: where has 2019 got to? I seem to be asking that question every year now. I’ve just re-read last year’s column and am struck by how little has changed. We have had a golden autumn, with tawny chrysanthemums and tiny wild cyclamens blooming in mad profusion, and with the beautiful days slipping peacefully by. This is when Kalamata has an influx of older tourists, the ones who do not like the extreme heat of summer, and are fairly confident they can get a fair number of swims in before October moves into November.
October 2019
I’m wondering where this year has got to: it seems to have galloped past, and already commercially minded people are telling us that there are only 13 weeks to Christmas. Rather too soon to be thinking about it, in my view. For here we are in the Greek autumn and in golden October. The leaves are turning colour, the figs are bursting on the trees, and the pomegranates are getting redder and plumper by the minute.
September 2019
The feast day of the Dormition of the Virgin, the most important Orthodox feast after Easter, which is the Feast of Feasts, took place on August the 15th. I’m not at all sure, but I suspect that the population of Kalamata and environs practically doubled at that time; in any case, churches were packed with families observing this sacred tradition. I know my sons and their families did the right thing. The Falling Asleep of Mary, known to Catholics as the Assumption, marks the end of the holiday period: on the 16thof August the roads to Athens are always clogged, and traffic is heavy for some days afterwards.
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