Corfu

~ Life oop t'spout ~

I thought when I started life here I'd have to make my own entertainment repelling boarders with over-worked tales of doom and gloom in the humanitarian cause of keeping Οι Γρωκλοί at bay.

I had reckoned without the plethora of endearing local 'b'logs charting "life" on Prosperonia.

Now and then there comes along a corker that says it all and merits slipping it into every guide book and meddling manual peddling building/buying/ballsing up Zoe Kerkyraïki.

A splendid example just popped into my in-box, all about some geezer's pal who's in the:

" ... final thro's [sic] of a 3-year plan to move to Corfu. Technically he should have arrived today ..."

[What's wrong with retaining the 'e' and spelling throes in full? Nothing wildly cool about snipping off the 'e'. Sounds just the same. - Ed]

Back to the hilarious tale:

"Basically every thing that could go wrong has"

[Good catch - exactly the stuff we ought to be running. Well found - Ed]

"but hopefully we'll complete on the new house (in Corfu) today

[Heaven forfend. Don't we know someone in the Land Office who could mislay a crucial document up the spout? What about that Demetra lass whose dad we helped stitch up that Italian berk? - Ed]

... We have had to do some laughing over last five days. It was that or cry!

[That's what I like to hear - Ed]

Both of us feeling absolutely shattered. Jane is on antibiotics, suffering with tonsilitis, I feel like I've been hit by a car! All the fun of the fair!"

Memo from Editor: Come off it, you're making this up - which is what we pay you to do.

But "absolutely shattered ... antibiotics, suffering with tonsilitis ... hit by a car"?

Jackpot stuff. This is what we light candles to our Main Man Spiridon for - and that other saintly geezer entrusted with making life hell for daft buggers thinking of moving to Mirandaville.

St. Joseph, that's the cove - angel told him to get his ass over to Egypt and then with equally impeccable timing, told him to hie his derrière right back again. My favourite story. Laughed so hard the Samos went down the wrong way.

Cute Comment: Badass Ley bends it like Beckham to deliver a good one:

"Sure he didn't mean Thros?

Scary. Our language. If you put 'thro's' in spellchecker it comes up 'throe's'. So no help there.

My etymology says it's from Middle English 'throwe' or from Old English 'thrawu' (I can hear why that didn't survive!) or 'thraw' (Scottish! Good for Scrabble - (except I hate the game)] which means 'pain' or 'affliction', and it's of unknown origin.

But 'thrawn' means crooked or mishappen as in 'Old Corfiot tiles are thrawn because formed on the thighs of different women...making them trickier to lay."

Response: The Devil take you, Sinbad! Yes, I'm sure because he wrote 'thro' apostrophe 's' which I have decided is the grocer's apo.

But of course I'm *not* sure because I didn't know all that braney stuff wot you wrote up there.

What's the betting Chalky will give you a star for sucking up and being so clever-clogs, then we will bete you up in the playground after prep and you will go blubbing to matron who wont care because Ellison heard her saying to Mr Ozanne, 'Reelly, that Baddeley Minor boy is too sensitive for his own gude.'

And yore not alowed to say 'lay' becoz it is rude.

Oh, OK - I *really* thought that Sinbers was being serious about the tile forming on the women's thighs making the wenches 'trickier' to bed. Didn't bother to ponder why: Maybe gals who formed tiles were cannier to the wicked ways of men; maybe the tiling left the thighs deformed in some way; maybe working all those tiles left the senoritas with such oaken thighs that the guys had to bed them real carefully lest they be pythonised at the moment of ecstacy. Boy was I giving the stalwart a massive benefit of the doubt.