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.

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.

 

 

 

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: ?

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.

Recently I’ve been thinking more and more about being middle-aged; if I’m honest, I mean I’ve thinking more about myself  and how I feel about being middle-aged.  I know all the stuff about it being a state of mind and being as old as you feel and all these things that people say  but when you get down to it, you’re still middle-aged and there’s a downward slide approaching.  Several years ago I remember some older friends of mine suddenly being so old and I couldn’t quite work out what had happened.  That certainly wasn’t going to happen to me and I was perfectly sure of that in the same way that I was perfectly sure that if I had had children they wouldn’t have been sat in front of the telly with a bag of sweets.  No, I was going to be entirely different and would break the mould.  Except here I am dithering about turning off the lights and finding my keys and checking that I switched the heating off and I’ve turned into my mother.  My middle-aged mother.

Middle-aged is never really used as a compliment especially not if you’re a woman.  I know that I’ve used it to be derogatory about behaviour that I think is a bit slow or sensible.  I joked about knowing that I was middle-aged because I was buying shoes for comfort and not style but that’s not entirely true.  I do have my comfy shoes that I wouldn’t have been seen standing next to , far less wearing, when I was twenty  but I still have shoes that my hips regret.  The thing I hate the most is that I think I feel either invisible or patronised.

I googled ‘positive images of middle-aged women’ and this is what I got.  I’d heard the term ‘cougar‘  before (I think it’s mostly used in the US, isn’t it?) but I’d never really bothered to look at what it meant, exactly but I think it’s a shocking term.  I like that they refer to ‘wearing of animal print clothing by older and more sexually aggressive women’ just as I’ve bought a grey, animal print, silk scarf.  (It looks better than my description).  It’s odd that I never found the expression ‘being Mrs Robinson’ offensive in the same way that I find the cougar expression.  Perhaps it’s my loathing of adopting Americanisms or maybe it’s one more example of being middle-aged.

 

 

 

 

 

 

There’s a bit in the ‘Add New Post’ of my Word Press setup that allows you to request feedback on your draft before publishing.  Where on earth does it go?  Who looks at it?  Do they mark it out of ten or perhaps advise you to sell the laptop and cancel your internet connection?  Is it a person or more of a ‘computer says no’ type of thing?   I’m terribly tempted to send this in just to see if I get any answers.

 

According to Mr T’s colleagues he drinks coffee like an Italian; this isn’t a compliment.

According to the shoe mender I speak Greek like an Australian; I’m not entirely sure that’s a compliment either.

We are mocked because we eat English dinner at 8.00pm when any self-respecting Greek might just be finishing his afternoon espresso.

 

 

 

 

In the cooler months we’ve got into the habit of taking the bus downtown and walking around different parts of the city before ending up somewhere in Monastiraki or Thiseo for lunch.  If we want souvlaki then we head down to Monastiraki otherwise we go to one of our favourite places on Ariadnou near the Agora.  Although it’s tourist central there’s still some good food to be had especially at Thannassos in Monastiraki.

Today Ariadnou was filled with people walking slowly along checking out the various stalls with trinkets for sale and most of the cafes and bars were full with no available seats.  Crisis, what crisis?  But only four weeks ago I was downtown with a friend during a 48-hour museum strike and it was virtually empty with hardly anyone in the shops or cafes.  We got great views of the Parthenon but it seemed odd with no one walking around high up there on the rock.

We ate a huge lunch and walked it off by going up Philapapou Hill walking past the Melina Mercouri Cultural Centre and along the pathway that goes past the Roman Agora.

Have a bit of the lovely Melina Mercouri:

This morning I visited a supermarket that I haven’t been to for a few months and in that time they’ve brought some changes in but because they’d neglected to send me a personal note outlining these changes, I found myself confused by what was going on.  When I took up my post at the deli counter which involves arms akimbo to prevent anyone standing too close (southern Europe and northern Europe have different ideas about personal space; I’d prefer you were in another room and our hosts would like to sit in my pocket).  Anyway, I’m at the deli counter in the middle of the scrum that passes for a queue and I’m distracted by deciding what I want to buy and how I’m actually going to say what I want to buy.* After I came out of my trance and found that shouting what I wanted at every counter assistant I saw wasn’t getting me anywhere ** I noticed that a system had been put into place.  Now we had to take a ticket and wait until our number was called and then we’d be served.  It was almost like being in Waitrose for a moment.

Except it wasn’t.  Everyone was taking their number and seeing that there were at least two people ahead of them, decided that that was having to wait and almost like queuing so they went off to do more shopping, drink coffee, phone their mother, buy a house and then return and shout their order at any passing counter assistant.   When this failed they produced their ticket with a number that went back to last week and shouted at anyone with a higher number than them that they were taking this person’s turn and they weren’t happy.  So there’s a system but no one cares and it’s the usual bun fight at the deli counter but with the added fun of numbers that mean nothing.

* Shopping became a lot easier and less expensive when I learnt how to say ‘half’ and ‘quarter’.

** This is not me being rude, I’m actually fitting in and doing what the locals do.  If I stood there politely, smiling and waiting to be served then I’d grow roots.

 

November feels like a very long month this year and blogging ideas have gone into hibernation so I had a quick look at the prompt of the day on BlogHer and saw that yesterday’s was to write a list of everyone you’ve ever had a crush on in your life , you then had to choose just one from the list and describe them in great detail.  How much time do they think that I have?  Besides most of my crushes were highly inappropriate and would embarrass me beyond words just thinking about it on my own and I can feel myself blushing now remembering David McCallum and the man from U.N.C.L.E debacle.  I think I was about eight-years-old then but now I’ve moved on all the way to someone much more appropriate.

My first crush was when I was in nursery school and we sat down for story time.  There were benches for about half of the children to sit on and the rest had to sit on the floor.  One of the boys gave me his place on the bench and I was in love with him for the rest of the week and asked my mum if we could make him a sandwich for me to take to nursery for him.  Somehow I’d got the idea that making someone a sandwich was the perfect way to demonstrate your admiration for them but my mother wasn’t having any of that nonsense.   I can’t even remember his name now and all I can really remember is that moment of him standing up to give me his seat and then, wow – sandwiches.