a life in ruins

Happy New Year

tabliope — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 07:04:06 +0000

I pretend that I don’t make new year resolutions but deep down I do. At the end of the old year I imagine the time when I’m going to be a better person, I’m not going to waste time, I’m going to update my blog regularly and I’m probably going to learn how to play the piano. Oh, and I’m definitely going to read Possession by AS Byatt. And then it’s the 6th of January, I’ve huffed at the man who pushed in front of me at the airport and my reading is mostly from a recipe book and my writing is confined to a shopping list. Maybe I should go for a weekly resolution or even a daily resolution. I know! How about an hour? Anyone can be a better person and not waste time for an hour. Can’t they? Hey? Hello?

Greek baked goods

tabliope — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 12:40:38 +0000

a recipe for some traditional Greek baking:

Mix a lot of sugar with even more honey and then add some syrup. Stir in some more sugar and adjust sweetness with honey. Add sugar or syrup to taste.

Yield: More than you could ever think anyone could eat but it probably won’t be enough

Calories: Don’t even go there.

This is particularly good when accompanied by a comprehensive dental plan and some shares in drugs for diabetes.

NaBloPoMo and other jazz

tabliope — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 08:04:37 +0000

Well that was November and I have reinforced that if I say I’m going to do something, then I do it; or perhaps we could call it flogging a dead horse. For me the best thing about blogging was when I was doing it relatively anonymously and I didn’t know any of the people who were reading it. Of course, I need to remember that back in that day I was blogging on a platform that had a fantastic group of people using it and we fired each other up and the community element of it made blogging much more fun. I’ve made some great friends out of that but I don’t want all of them reading all of my stuff all of the time. Perhaps Google + will become something useful although I don’t know.

And I’m not as angry as I was then. I think some of the best blogging comes out of the worst things. That’s certainly true for me and I would say that my Swiss blog and one other that I wrote while I was there are probably the best things that I will ever do.

Although I don’t advertise this blog neither do I hide it and anyone who finds it can read it. That, I think, makes for pretty dull blogging. I can’t tell you about all the different relationships, the petty feuds, the interesting people and the utter lunatics that I meet. That for me is the stuff that interests me and I think it’s what interests other people. I don’t want to write a holiday/travel blog about Greece because I don’t have those talents: Azure, turquoise, blue, green, deep, shallow sea. Islands, beaches, tavernas and more pretty views. Look there’s a white church over there. Blah and more blah.

Far more interesting, I think, is writing about the guy (Russian, I think) who got so fed up of waiting for his souvlaki in our local cafe that he stood around shouting I fucking wait one hour for fucking food, they fucking here and they fucking eating fucking food. Fucking wrong. And he kept walking out and the waiters were being reasonable and he was fucking this and fucking that and I couldn’t see because I had my back to it and Mr T and our friend were doing the running commentary. Although I could hear that he wasn’t happy and that he’d got a more than solid grasp of varieties of using fucking. How proud his teacher must be.

The country will grind to a halt.

tabliope — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 06:01:44 +0000

Masses of public sector workers going on strike means that huge delays will be suffered at aiports. Schools will be closed and emergency cover only in hospitals. The courts will shut along with other government offices. People are planning major demonstrations to protest against the austerity measures and consequent cut in pensions. That’s the UK by the way but don’t worry, it’s ~~strikes~~ business as usual in Greece tomorrow.

Ooops dropped it again.

tabliope — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 07:34:29 +0000

Apart from not being very tall, skinny or possessing overly-developed cheekbones, the other thing that prevented me from making a career as a catwalk model is that I’m quite clumsy. I drop things, trip over my own feet, bump into doorways and I have bruised hips from a lifetime of bumping into tables. I also have poor hand-eye coordination so I was never good at ball games. I’ve never worried too much about any of this and have just got on with being a bit less than elegant.

Yesterday I was at my Pilates class at the gym and my instructor was getting really frustrated by my inability to perform a simple maneuver without falling over and losing my balance. I thought it was hilarious because I really don’t have good balance and I wasn’t too worried if I couldn’t do the exercise and we’d move onto something else. At the end of the session he asked me if I thought I could be dyspraxic. No. I couldn’t be, I’m just clumsy. I was about to go into a rant about applying labels to people who just do normal things not as well as other people might do them but I couldn’t be bothered because I needed a shower.

(Something that annoys me beyond what is reasonable is when people who aren’t very good at spelling have persuaded themselves that they’re dyslexic.)

tabliope — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 10:41:09 +0000

I love the Daily Mail and how it manages to get 1 ounce of truth into a ten ton article.

In case anyone is wondering my carefree weekends haven’t been spent sipping champagne on 65 ft yachts and don’t mention the Maserati and the Volvo.

A confusion of collectives

tabliope — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 09:17:02 +0000

When I was six-years-old I had a teacher called Miss Benzie and she was a saintly both in her love of children and what appeared to be a great love of explaining things to children and encouraging us to continue our own investigations. I clearly remember her explaining the concept of a collective noun after we had had a story which included a flock of sheep. Over the following weeks we added more to the list that she kept on the back wall of the classroom along with the lists of shades of colour and names of mountains. Since then I’ve always enjoyed the idea of collective nouns and was led to this article and then in turn to this.

I have vague memories of someone doing something with collective nouns back in the 20six days. There’s quite a collection for bloggers and I quite like an ‘outrage’ of bloggers but, truthfully, I think a ‘yawn’ might be more appropriate.

More food

tabliope — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 15:20:22 +0000

A recommendation for great yoghurt: Olympus. It is far lovelier than the Total yoghurt which seems to have the largest share of Greek yoghurt in the UK. I’m not a fan of low fat products and tend to see them as low taste with added sweetener but the Olympus 2% yoghurt is fabulous and doesn’t taste like it could be remotely good for you. It’s available in the UK but I’m not sure where. Incidentally one of the quirks of international economics means that you can buy Total Greek yoghurt, made in a factory about 2 kilometers from my place, more cheaply in the UK than you can in the supermarket round the corner from me.

The best yoghurt in the world remains the yoghurt that I ate once when I was visiting Aegina and I intend to return and eat yoghurt in every cafe on the sea front until I find it again. Then I’ll just stay there and eat yoghurt. Forever.

What time do you call this?

tabliope — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 07:57:22 +0000

Difference between Greeks and Brits:

Greek Friend: Hi Tab would you like to meet for coffee next Monday afternoon?

Tab: Yes, love to. Shall we meet at pretentious Italian coffee shop at 3.00pm?

Greek Friend: You want to have lunch?

Tab: No, just coffee is fine.

Greek Friend: Okay so we’ll do the afternoon then – 6.00pm?

Tab: ?

Home and Away

tabliope — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 09:09:05 +0000

Earlier this morning I walked down Kifissia Avenue and cut through the streets of Marousi to my gym. Apart from the dodgy pavements and the even dodgier traffic it’s an interesting city walk with old villas and the old government building on the edge of Kifissia that reminds me of a pineapple. Once you reach the edge of Kifissia and the area referred to as KAT there’s quite a steep downhill stretch which would normally give you a view right across the northern suburbs and down to Athens. It’s the best way of seeing Athens, from a distance with Ymittos mountain to the other side. Because it was a perfect autumn morning with sun straining behind the mist there wasn’t a great view across the city and Ymittos looked like a ghost mountain sketched against the sky. I only knew it was there because I know it’s there.

I like walking in towns or cities early in the morning before everything is set up for the day. In Marousi I walked past the cafe that I sometimes stop at for coffee after my morning swim and the waiters were sitting outside wrapped in heavy coats and scarves, drinking coffee and smoking while shouting something across the road to the man piling his oranges on the table outside his shop. One of them nodded to me and said that it was cold and I felt like a local for a moment.

When I went back to the UK in October I woke up early in the morning and drove down to the little seaside town that’s a few miles away from my place. It was the same weather as this morning with sun struggling against the mist and the autumn leaves drifting across the pavements. The view there is different to that of Kifissia Avenue and Marousi and instead I have Haven Cliff or Beer Head to look at and it’s all much slower with fewer cars and more people walking dogs. But there’s a cafe on the seafront and the staff were wrapped up in coats and scarves, drinking tea, smoking cigarettes and complaining of the cold.