Assorted keys to overseas bolt-holesI think I'm finally landing this one: a 'rolling thunder' summary update/tranquil over-view of the whole elginiasmos fracas.
Hence the punning 'peace' of work, calm recollection of key moments in this slimey saga.
Speaking of key calm tranquil memories, take a look at this joyous Feast from Famine post from just this last week of June.
Wonderful wonderful feeling. Unfelt and unsupected these last five years.
People said I'd surface, burrow my way up out of this serf-suppurating dignity-denied treadmill of futility and humility, but i didn't believe them.
What 'people'? Fuck them, too. They stood by and let themselves be waited and fawned on.
You look at those poolside photos, and think that this is the same property on which someone standing three feet from a fridge of tsitsibirra could allow another person to be summoned and serve them. The disgrace is abysmal.
Chauffeur on tap: Or mutter about a lift home being such a help, and be told
"Oh, Chris can do that."
Duhh! Doesnt take much to twig that 'Chris' hasnt yet heard of the new chauffeur duty, so how the fuck does anyone but 'Chris' know if it fits his schedule?Some sensible folks - and you know who you are, bless you, being wired or RSS'd or mailing listed on to this blog - would say 'wait, shouldnt we check with 'Chris' first?'
FUGGEDIT: I quickly got wise to this and would say to people that my mother had to learn. If they hadn't heard me consulted, then forget it. Whatever had been promised behind my back, fuck-4-get it.
Sorry, but who in this day and age can hear another person deputised without confirmation that it suits them?
I warned anyone flat, if you don't see and hear me asked, it's not gonna happen.
Same as I delighted in calls,
"Hello? We're all seated, wondering where you are?"
"I'm sorry, when did you tell me about this?"
"We told your mother, she said she looked forward to it."
"If you didnt tell me, it wasnt told. I'm terribly sorry but the day people factor in my mother's dementia memoria, the easier it'll be on their plans. We're sitting at the kitchen table enjoying our briam. Let me put her on."
Wham slam, bam mum's face into remembering the useful - nay, esential - courtesy of using me for what I came out to do.
Dither ponder surprise.
"Why're you so surprised? I've been on the patio and in the kitchen watching you cook for the last 50 minutes, and you've not remembered from 10 minutes to another that you've been repeating the same blah. Of course you can't remember a dinner invitation requiring a Memory Wizard feat of carrying it for 20 minutes to the car. What the fuck do you think i'm here for?"
Drove me the crazy to which I've been reduced.
So nice to be mellow again (see photos of pals a-pool)
Early April 2007 snap of maman's jewelry drawer in Thief Alley connecting our bedrooms. Taken the day I got back from Italy and Villa Thefti, still reeling and revolted.
The year Anna was over, during an amiable supper on the patio, Mum had been wearing the coral bracelet which she said she'd leave to Anna in her Will. The unspoken question was, how about first leaving Anna my 'lucky red coral' cufflinks - a perfect pairing - that I'd noted for her in my 2003 Will?
Later, we went to Thief Alley and looked at the bracelet again in the drawer."Do you sense that it is we who are being dishonest?," I asked.
"Just looking at a bracelet that has already been promised to you? Now imagine the strength of mind to overcome revulsion and actually remove my entire collection of preciousest possessions and 'fence' them with impunity to my brother."
The shelf of gew-gaws in my mother's room from which I choose little revenge 'sacrifices' (see elsewhere, the broken fish saga et al)
'For the next generation' ~ excellent Patek watch advert that featured in the Thefti saga.
After the original April theft I was reluctant to return to the Thefteria for Xmas, not just because it reeked of the filch but because nothing whatsoever happens there and one needs to fairly fluent at a witless twittery combined with ability to find endless amusement in wine labels and to slide the bottle across the table. Once you have that, you have Villa Thefti.
I was going to have a nice holiday from the dementia repeatia but the girls were convinced that a face-saving solution had been found whereby the jewels could be handed back and all would be well. I should go.
Nothing of the sort seemed to have been reached; in fact, no mention was being made of either. One evening round the table we started discussing the back page of the Spectator and the Patek advert.
I observed to myself the irony that here we were under the same roof as an entire set of personal jewelry that had itself been safely looked after for another generation until swiped by the very people so complacently and unawaredly sitting round the table.
My dream intention was to track down certain jardinerie books beforehand and when the meal-time dementia drone got too much to bear, to stride to the book-case and seize a book on the topic from which to rip a few pages to even the tedium score.
~ I did however want to be able to snatch the right volume to match the drone. In the end, I decided that in view of my gardenry ignorance and unwillingness to give the subject a single more wasted second, there was no mileage in ripping up specific books and that a steady random vandalising was the way to go.
Acton blah blah Yakton ~ a good match of pic and text. Maman would burble endlessly about the Acton books and this is surely one I could have had at hand for ripping to pieces when the umpteenth drone became too much.
Blah blah fah blucking fah ~ almostr as soon as I arrived to take up the job of caregiver, I felt the strain of the 1:1 inescapable dementia drone.
Her pals seemed genial enough so i canvassed them one day when we were alone and my mother button-holing unfortunates elsewhere.
All i was after was any advice or anecdotes on how to ease or temper the endless repetition.
Of course, no-one was going to tell tales out of school so all i got was fond waves of hands and the vaguest of anodyne suggestions. Until i came to one urbane chap whom i thought would prove the silentest and least helpful. But no sooner had I told him what I was researching when his face went deep red and he hopped around in rage as he spluttered
"oh good god! my GOD! your mother repeating herself? [splutter gurgle] sometimes i just want to turn to her and shout 'change the record, marjorie ... CHANGE THE FUCKING RECORD!!'"
I just hooted, as he danced about in remembered rage and tried to calm down. As i pointed out that *I* was the one damaged by sitting with the demens repeatens every frocking day - not HIM, who only saw maman every month or so and could easily walk away or sit elsewhere. But funnily, this violent reaction from someone else she drove crazy was in a way soothing, albeit not for long.
The placing of the jewel box on my bedside shelf.
To show from where the baubles were filched, and a good illustration for this recollection.
Face and standing and 'respect' are pretty important in my family, altho' we need to be careful about bandying around the R word since the Grande Filche.
We're also not so hot on communicating skills which is why i had to keep searching for new ways of phrasing the same old stuff in case one of them got through.
With my humiliated role of filchee, i put the question on day,
"In how high standing or regard would the Holmes family hold someone who, not even a year after arriving as in-house Caregiver, was calmly and with impunity relieved off his most precious personal possessions that were then taken off to another country and placed there for safer keeping.And never a word of explanation and never a move to return a single piece.
How respected and feared would one say was such a milksop within the family unit?"
This always teased and taunted everyone because it held up a mirror in which they could recall what they had done.
One guest had the very clever idea of breaking the theft down into easy pieces and asking in turn, what of my brother's possessions would my mother reciprocally remove on the sly and bring back to Greece.
Not as easy as it sounds because Villa Thefti is childless and hence without precious heirlooms or others to suffer. (I hadnt the faintest idea what maman would bring back to balance the 'disappearing' of my goods, but it was always good for a parlour game and kept the memory alive.
One of the volumes that caught my eye for checking out the chapters in case there was one i could bookmark for smooth grabbing when the gabbing got rough, gliding into the kitchen with the page open and just slicing the artwork paper as one might scrape a garden trowel over pristine vinyl of Callas or Klemperer.
In the end i settled for cracking n smacking bijouterie altho' it had crossed my mind that i could use a gardenry tome as a hammer with which to bust the chinoiserie.
Busted! - have to take more snaps of this scenario. It's meant to be me bursting in to Thief Alley on hearing suspicious scratchings.
Before the April '07 theft, i thought nothing of sound sounds of maman shuffling and ruffling and going thru her clothes and bling. Of course, after the theft, i realised that some of the shuffling and grubbing would have been my and my girls jewels being transferred to a suitcase bound for Italy. Ever after, at even the lightest larcenous sound, I would try to fling the door open wide sans warning.
I had the perfect excuse to investigate: there'd been thievery before in the self same corridor and I wanted to check that those possessions on the shelf - Parker pen, photos, silver paper knife, rare paperback - were disposable enough to suffer the same fate as my girls' heirlooms. Sometimes there genuinely was something i'd forgotten and I'd have sorely missed, but mostly it was to keep me in practice. Also, it was a way of monitoring which of her own jewels my mother was shuffling around. I'd noticed that she liked to make a package of jewelry each time Villa Thefti visited and I needed to keep tabs of what went in and what stayed safely home for bundling off in the direction of my own girls as originally promised in happier times.
Fin Fracture - Wish i'd started earlier and smashed up more while the going was rough. As it is, it seems to be the solo memory of some vileness recollected in tranquillity over 1 too many Jack Daniels that has me on my feet and striding down the corridor to snatch some harmless object from the shelves, marching back to the kitchen tattle torture table and whamming it down with a retroactive "Garden this!" Or "Dementia-nalyse THIS!"
ANNA & UNCLE ~ By heck, there's a handsome couple if e'er I saw one. My Spitfire Cost Centre #2 younger gal, Anna, and her uncle Peter who is, of course, delighted with the snap because it shows him with a younger chick but he looking in good shape, too.
After the Theft and all the wranglings and roarings and years of pleadings and petulanting, quite a few of us thought that Anna's visit to Corfu coinciding with her uncle and aunt's might provide them with a face-saving chance to return Anna's and her sister's heirloom jewelry. The popular choice was their gentle aunt Coy who was relatively blameless in the theft - altho' some there were and are who point out that my jewel box is still somewhere in the house and must have been discovered by now.
Anyway, we all reckoned the selected scenario would be aunt-to-niece at a private moment away from the throng.
Loipon, drama and held breaths as the Villa Thefti contingent pulled up and we tiptoed around giving them every chance to take Anna to one side and slip her the bling. I'd told her to express no opinions but thank her aunt prettily and remove herself and my jewels without further ado.
Result: Nothing. Throughout the whole stay, not one hint at the fate of my jewels, Anna returned to the USA and that was that, a plum opportunity missed.
WOMEN'S JEWELRY - i refer to the theft as being of my girls' jewelry rather than paltry possessions of my own (which clearly meant nothing in my mother's decision to snaffle.) Also, I wanted to ram home the ramifications of the filch.
At some point I remember my brother exclaiming in defensive exasperation that there'd been NO women's jewelry in the box, and then twigging that I was referring to jewels being guarded for my girls (see Patek advertisement).
One of the bunch I was boring with this story exclaimed what an idiot idea to hand a father's heirlooms to a childless type who didnt even have the vocabulary and might not have a clue how to handle the booty.
When I teased my mother later over this clod-hopping handling, I did point out that the luxury of to whom to pass my jewels was strictly limited to accomplices who could be relied on not to explode with disgust on learning the nature of the theft.
2nd time lucky ~ I'm trying to fix a ferry agreeable to my brother's timetable and alerted the girls that this time round we may get lucky and their aunt be carrying my jewel box for a simple ceremony of return. I've alerted interested parties and will be updating my FaceBook accordingly. Otherwise, they can bally well have that branch of the family round for cocktails and nibbles and ask direct.
Fun.
FEAST FROM FAMINE
Sluiced truced n abused. 
For the first time, I'm living in Greece. Living in me and for me.
For the first time the pool has echoed to happy laughter. 
Easy chatter, 21st century chatter, said once and moved on. No repetitious regurgitation.
68 months of simpering guests who couldn't identify a fridge and needed me summoned to point it out, pluck a tsitsibirra and show them how to take the cap off. (OK, so it frothes mightily but, like, they can't stain their party frocks.)
Strum Pert ~ no big deal. I strewed the strings around and those who could did and those who couldn't still did. 
We twanged of youth and self-respect and even-handed dignity.
We cosseted, cuddled, huggled and muggled. 
Everything was new and possible.
The house lived and we lived in it and for it. 
The kids all cool in Gouvia,
