LUSH BLOGGINGS

MAGIKADES MOMENTS

Friendly little blog popped up on the radar the other day that struck me as interestingly literate:

The World from my Window

~ Tales from a Big Fat Greek Gap Year ~

with the somewhat pleading message on the Corfu Grapevine,

"Please leave a comment - it makes this needy blogger feel wanted and worthwhile."

Hmm - if not ugh.

To show how soft I've become, I even dropped a comment about what a pleasant, literate surprise to come across her dulcet writings. Later removed, natch.

But the the Viners were on it like Flint, challenging the very existence of any such Dorset village as Lush Places and also querying Agios Magikades.

Rumbled and busted but no harm done because it turns out to be none other than Margery Hookings one-time editrice of the Bridport and Lyme Regis News ... and much else.

See for yourself, and also watch out for the nom-de-blogue Maddy Grigg.

No wonder Ms Hookings came across as the sort of canny scribbler for whom my agenty publishy pals west and westerer ask me to keep an eye peeled.

Actually, the peeling eye is becoming less and less APPealing as I grow grouchier and defatigabler and impossibler to please.

When I mentioned 'Worldy Window' to a soi-disant literatus up in the wilds of Acharavi, I made the mistake of expressing myself 'pleasantly surprised' to come across such literate and precise prose.

"Why surprised?" he pounced, "don't you think people write out here?"

I assured him I was all too aware that the island was stuffed with tappers, just that I didn't mix in those circles or they kindly kept damn'd quiet about it.

But my book-biz Bloomsbury confrères are right: they have to prise suggestions/recommendations from my keyboard.

But at least they've stopped accusing me of daily coming across gems and keeping them hidden for thicker pickings via those Young Turk thrusters they breed across the Pond.

But back to Bridport Marge multi-Musing from her Magi-cadenced fenêtre:

"In October 2012, I'm exchanging my life in the Dorset village of Lush Places, in the heart of England's rural underbelly, for twelve months in the north Corfu village of Agios Magikades. It's going to be My Big Fat Greek Gap Year."

Good for her and possibly good for us.

Quite a gal, she turns out ...

• 1999, first female editor of the Bridders & Lymers
• Worked on the Gemma Lawrence abduction story - the first journa to sleuth it after a tip-off
• The 'sad case' of Jo Ramsden, a young Bridport woman who went missing in 1992.
• "As editor, she instigated the Terry Collin Award - a competition to recognise sporting stalwarts.

An energetic lady and versatile: also run a pub and worked in PR.

Bit of a pity her cover has been blown because I would have liked to read what she posted from anonymity ~ not that anyone lettery becomes inconveniently lionised or recognised over here.

I expect she'll settle down as a favourite Grape Vine mascot and commentateuse; I just hope not yet.

Some promising signs that'll keep me reading more - apart from her sharp eye and pleasant style:

• I absolutely applaud the campaign to restore The Spirit of Bridport on signs welcoming visitors to the town.

  The image of the flaxen-haired woman sitting on a throne is a detail from a mural in Bridport Town Hall painted by Fra. Newbery, a founder of the renowned Glasgow School of Art.

  In the 1950s/'60s, it was adapted for the town road signs.

• It was Margery who mistress-minded a Facebook campaign calling for the town’s symbol to be returned to its rightful place.

• Said Margery:

  “This town deserves better – she’s beautiful and we want her back.”

• I like it that she has time and space to plug one of my favourites, The Ionian Magazine
• Lawd have merceh! Even the corfu blueshombre makes mention of Maddie Magikades! Lucky I checked; for that matter, lucky I've updated him on my sidebar.

  Oh well, she's laffing then, in't she? Calls for a song.

  
• Quirky Imagination: My eye was particularly caught by Hookings' LinkedIn entry where she answers the question,

  "My goal?

  To continue what I do and do well, quietly, methodically and with a constant supply of quirky imagination.

  My work, rather than me, tends to shout for itself.

  Now living and writing in Corfu, Greece."

Rather good. Interesting to see which way this one goes.

THE TRUE SIZE OF AFRICA

Sent me by clever Gwyn Headley, lord of fotolibra and HeritageEbooks.

Quoth Gwyn:

"What an amazing, humbling graphic this is.

I thought we were the little bit of Morocco at the top, wrongly labelled B & NL, but then I spotted we (and Ireland) had become Madagascar.

Kai Krause is the chap who most influenced the GUI of current computers. Clever lad."

Fotolibra

Heritage ebooks

Check these links out.

BOWIE BACK ON STORMING FORM

WHERE ARE WE NOW?

WHAT HAPPENS IN KAVOS

Oh boy oh boy ... 'Shagos', indeed ...

Club 18-30 rides again.

Oh to be a centipede on the wall when Mum n Dad settle down with sweet Fenella and freckly tousled Alasdair to enjoy these balmy memories of their Ionian Idyll.

The trailer

Club 18-30 sex shows ~ see the date of the Mail's scoop? This year 2013.

The gutter press have been running stories like this every year since i remember.

Is this some ongoing marketing campaign?

Where is 18-30 these days, anyway?

I never run into them, not like the old days ...

Spiro's BBQ

Whizz over to 18-30 in the BuzzBox, check out the orgy

Pick out some jaunty juicy little number

Vroom down to the real action chez D@Barbati

PIMP MY 'PUTER

Upgraded my gear.

Book to write, advance to plough back into top gear.

Did you see that wanker with the gall to bandy βήταs with me?

Saw him off; these children.

HITHER AND THITHER

Had it coming.

I'm always using 'flowery' language around her because ... well, she herself is flowery.

I mean, it's not flowery lingo t'εσάς ή εμένα because we're all purple and prosaic and write with goose quills and call each other Esquire ... but to Mamzel Luluthian and Kruel, it gets up her nose, all my

"Whither Julian? I thought he was joining us for a spot of tiffin"

or

"Whereupon he clouted me one, grabbed his bird, and flounced back yonder to join his mates in the Snug Bar."

I bet she crowed with triumph when she stumbled on this ... good one, and I told her so.

COUNTING BLESSINGS

Driving aimlessly the other day, it occurred to me for the umpteenth time what a lovely place I live in and how easy it would be to have sad memories of those 5 years 8 months.

My Anna was here for a mere 2 months and I'm always passing places we visited and lumps jump. Even songs on the radio kick-start smiles and humming and steering wheel drumming.

I shouldnt really be able to go about my routine day without sinking reminiscenty and wistful - but God works in His mysterioso way and both savaged, enslaved - saved me.

I don't, obviously, set foot around the garden because every prospect displeases, every path carries an enraging reminder of some unwilling chore on that treadmill of futility.

But even driving around, I remember some argument or misleading instruction, some blah blah fah blucking fah drone burble about gardenry; the shopfront I was chauffeuring past when the topic turned to my daughters; the Kommeno garden centre to which i was summarily instructed to drive during my agreed 'work' period when I'd been doing accounts or wrestling with some legal tangle.

The wonderful moment when maman appeared in the doorway, bag in hand, and said she was "waiting" to go to town.

"Well, this is my time in the 'office' and we did agree to economise on petrol by making journeys with at least three objectives ... but sure I can make time - see? Easily done."

With that, I lifted the papers on my desk and dumped them in the waste-bin. Her face! Fire with fire.

I'm asked, "I expect you're hoping to leave as soon as possible ... the memories?" - but I assure them that it seems not to be working like that for me: now free, I'm able to 'live' the house and the island and erase the unpleasantnesses simply by making new memories and stamping on old bitterness.

The wonderful image of the garden being a brutish retainer able to bully me under the old patronage, now left to rot and starve somewhere out there. Payback time. How are the mighty fallen! The treadmill rotting.

Glorious day today - but no summons to grab trowel or clipper and waste the hours. Glorious.

And the silent meals!

No sitting there trapped under a deluge of rambling dementia repeatia 'til i rose from the firing line and sauntered over to the bookshelf

Down with a suitably glossy book, preferably one that sounded as if it also covered the subject I had just walked away from in the kitchen - then calming rip wrench of however many pages I clenched ... then back to the drone, clear plates, fill dishwasher, still full mumble, sucking the life out of me.

A little music to go with the mood and the day.

... and with the music, gorgeous photo by Sinbad, much praised in the comments and rightly so.

Πότε είναι Ελληνικό Πάσχα;

Fresh from his triumph with the Car Tax online crib-sheet - Aleko Damaskinos does Orthodox Easter!

Easy-to-use formula! Everyone can use it, provided you can hack long divisions!!

NB: vital you can keep track of those pesky 'remainders'.

1. The year ÷ 4. Carry A
2. The year ÷ 7, carry B
3. The year ÷ 19, carry C (phew!)

Form: (19 X C + 16, ÷ 30, carry D

Form: 2 X A + 4 X B + 6 X D, the sum ÷ 7, carry E - (2 X A + 4 X B + 6 X D) ÷ 7, carry E

N = D + E + 3

N = Days after the 31st March (where N ≤ 30)

Where N is greater than 30, Easter falls on the (N-30) May (as it does this year)

You will have fun!

If a number is indivisible by another, continue, such as putting a decimal point, then you will have a remainder!

VERY IMPORTANT! DON'T ERR IN YOUR CALCULATIONS!!!

Final example ~

Take the year 2013.

÷ 4

Carry A = 1

÷ 7

Carry B = 4 2013 ÷ 19, carry C = 18

19 X 8 + 16 = 358

358 ÷ 30 = remainder D = 28

2 X 1 + 4 X 4 + 6 X 28 = 186 ÷ 7 = remainder E = 4 ~ N = 28 + 4 + 3 = 35

Since N is greater than 30, that means that Easter falls on the N-30 of May, ie 35-30 = 5 May.

By the Calculus of Copernicus! That was hard enough to format and insert the HTML symbols, let alone wonder how it reads on the page.

I suggest you trust Aleko's original Facebook message over my transcription.

PERFECT YORKSHIRE PUDDING

Scientific formula for perfect Yorks pudding - like my Gan-Gan used to make?

Now to teach it to Tasia and have her make it for me.

THE YEAR IN VIRAL

Prince Charles, wonderful

Pursuing duckling, cute

Always love seeing the ice-skidding kraut

Boris dangling

Some wonderful 'fails'

Even better in the year to follow, I vow.

AN UNQUIET HISTORY OF GREECE

"Is the spectre of Greece's unstable past haunting its current nightmares?"

Remarkable remarkable radio, well posted by Democracy-Street-wise Simon Baddeley

Writer Maria Margaronis [opposite] asks if Greece's unstable past haunts current angst.

BBC Broadcast, Radio 4, 20:00hrs, Sat, 31 Mar 2012

Available until 12:00AM Thurs, 1 Jan 2099

Producer: Mark Burman.

"Middle-class, anti-Greek, communist media propagandist"

And how's about this? ~ What Metapedia says about Ms Margaronis.

Alarming stuff. Well commented, Susanna.

Συνασπισμός ~ click on Metapedia's link and it leads nowhere

Margaronis' writings

BBC * Greece * further clickings

Radio 4 guide to Greece broadcastings

Links from Simon

• Metapedia
• Maria writing bravely ~ Fear and Loathing in Athens
• also, Profile

Metapedia retaliation: See 'sibad' Baddeley's report/comment following his 'polite comment on the anti-semitic language in metapedia's nasty description of Maria Margaronis'.

WHO ALL?

Vowed to start 2013 in dulcet fashion with at least one entry in the 'Piece of Work' canon.

I don't feel much like writing but needs must.

Now and then when discussing the theft, I'd quote some opinion or observation that I'd heard from one of the Corfu crowd ... usually referred to as 'everyone', as in "Everyone keeps asking me 'What news of the theft?', which they did each time my brother came over and especially when Anna was over and 'everyone' thought the thieves might spot her as a good way of returning the jewels via her rather than suffer the excruciating shame and excrement of handing them back direct to me. (Didn't happen; excrement still dripping off them)

In knee-jerk panic, shock and shame, they'd go "Who all?", as if it was inconceivable that anyone else could be interested.

I got so fed-up with reeling off the different communities I kept regularly updated, I came up with a list that I thought might be easy to remember.

GOD
GROG
GRUB
GARDEN
GAB
GIRLS
GUITAR

In other words, pillars of the community I'd meet at

Apres Church
Drinkies
Dinners chez Sans Lucre
Garden visits
Gossiping chatting
Chats about my girls
Guitar strummeries.

SYNONYM ALTERNATIVES FOR THEFT: to my disgust, a few people couldnt even hear the story of the double theft without shuffling nervously and looking away at the use of 'thieving'. Fucking wimps.

So I'd have a list ready to shove at them, "Go ahead, choose your preferred description, but remember, it can't be 'borrow' or 'relocate', it has to have the same weight of taking behind the owner's back, transporting on the sly, and then handing it over also on the sly with no intention of letting slip that you'd done the deed.

Here're some suggestions, choose but make sure it stinks the same.

"Appropriation, cheating, filch, fleece, grab, heist, hustle, job [or Piece of Work], larceny, lift, loot, pilferage, pinch, purloin, rob, score, snatch, **steal**, swiping, thievery, thieving"

Chitter-chattering today at the usual debonair new year drinksies, suddenly I felt it, the same emptying blow to the plexus.

I'd been watching Thank you for Smoking, marvelous witty movie, then i noticed my jewel box on the dresser. Didnt think it was mine, of coure, so i ignored it, didnt dare look inside ... in case.

It was and my emotions were 'mixed' ... rage, murderosity, the lot.

Up I trod the stairs to my bro's study where both thieves were there ... oh, where was my Bushranger?

Now, here's the deal. As I went up the stairs I felt more scared than violently angry. Scared of what might come out in my anger? Say something I might regret?

These were people I trusted and counted on ... had spent my life caving in and kow-towing to.

What was I going to say?

I entered the room and looked left and straight ahead at the people who'd had the cheapness to perpetrate this casual offnce ... and all moral authority drained from them. It was a physical feeling as wrenching as a violent bowel movement. Utterly unforeseen and gut-wrenching. I probably lost a bit of balance, certainly my voice must have lost some resonance of indignation.

I saw their faces as they realised they'd been totally busted, the cake-mouth guilt and lack of words, and I felt the utter disgust and nothingness of looking at nobodies.

In one fell swoop, I was no longer interested in a single thing they were selling.

This stayed with me, a distance that could not be crossed because I wasn't going to set one foot in the slime and excrement of their world.

Nothing ever made me re-think or revise my opinion, not the gyaku gire shouts of cornered protestations, not their refusals to return the girls' property or refusals to explain ... empty. In an instant. Not a single damn'd thing more on offer to the world you and I live in.

Standing there today exchanging the usual waffle banter, I remembered the thud and drain ... a space craft loosing its capsule ... dump of a turd.

GENDER BENDER

From the wonderful Taki's Magazine (he of The Spectator column), a welcome addressing of one of my rant bugaboos.

Sex, not Gender.

"First, let’s get one thing straight: We humans don’t have a gender; we have a sex — until recently, just one each.

Gender is a grammatical term used in languages such as French and Spanish to describe the differences between such things as masculine and feminine nouns, and adjectives that agree with them.

Examples are la grande fille and le grand garçon.

English has gender in such words as waiter/waitress and actor/actress ...

Gender was meant to work the way “race as a social construct” works.

Race, the lefties tell us, is a sociological optical illusion that has nothing to do with biology. We may think there are racial differences, but it’s all in our minds.

That’s exactly what feminists wanted us to think about sex.

“Gender” means “sex as a social construct.”

It’s only brutish custom, not biology, that makes men into soldiers and women into nurses."

Άλφα βήτα SHOPPERY FOPPERY

Sabbato 29th, drank too much a-Skyping a fave lady.

Felt dicey next morn and decided to venture abroad in search of some bijou corner store thence to buy summat solid for luncheon.Not sure if the AB before the airport road can be described as 'corner' or bijou but it was open and packèd for the nones.
My dears, just like Piccadilly Circus, everyone was there - muchas kissing and chronia polla-hing.

Actually, remember campissimi butch omis Julian and Sandy from Round the Horne? They had all the palare, so it should be "chronia palaring".
Snapped the busy scene including a lovely Greek sign that I sent my gals, explaining that it doesnt mean to turn right but that oncoming cars are to veer to their left to give way.

Speaking of Grik driving ~ One-way street etiquette ~ when I was taking driving lessons, I reminded my instructor of the well-known rule when proceeding down a 1-way street,

"Always leave room for traffic come from the other direction."

Never heard of it. "You must know that one."Coupla metres on and sure enough puttered a bike coming towards us. 'There you are.' He just hooted and guffawed and called a pal there n then.
When i took my test, Niko sat in the passenger seat with the two stern instructors in the back seat reading the sports pages. As we drove along Nik suddenly adjusted my mirror: "Is not straight.".
'Yo! Dude! Who the fuck's driving this car?'
The two instructors burst into laughter. "Bravo! We think you pass - for safety."
Also snapped a snoozing cat atop the perfect number plate.
Well, I thought it quite funny.
Bet you if I sent it to the Acharavi Clarion [incorprating the Skripero Scallywag] they'd pay me a couple €s for it. Hyper Skyper - the gal who got me so drunk on the phone is and favourite love of mine, same humour. A top top lawyer, mid-forties, looks 18, with the most stunning breasts that saggeth not, even in a Force 9 gale.
Very very clever and would make mince-meat of the jokers in the old Navigators.
Maman adored her and a game i'd play would be to shove on one of the weirdy CDs she'd send me.

"I cannot stand this music"
'OK. Leila sent it to us'
"Oh. OK, leave it on for a bit longer so i can get used to it"

They were a bit outta left field - Ute Lemper, anyone?
We'd been sharing bed secrets and agreeing that with age came baggage (theirs) that made it a bit ominous for the two of us as the years crept by. We'd share our probs and give each other advice on how to handle our partners of the time.
Drove home where my tenants' cat was resting on our neighbours' voiture. Catty sort of day.
I call him Hitler, which they dont like, but one day when it went missing, they posted and added 'distinctive Hitler mooustache'. Found the same day.
Finally home and debated opening Kosta/Tasia's gift of Southern Comfort.
Suddenly all a tizzy how one drank or mixed it.
Plectrum Potts woulda known, all that sippin' with the good ol' boys on the stoop outside Sun studios, comparing flat pickin' styles and remembering the good old days when they used real strong chicken wire between you and rowdies.
Shores of Jordan - dug out a bottle of fruity vin blanc and a jar of olives and chunks of cheese and plunked along to Iris.

Sang a bit, too.

Keep the blues at bay.

βuffoonery ~ I didn't want to slow the story over mere juvenilia but do look at the comment some prissy miss from Purley has posted.

'LOL', as I'm sure she Twitters hither and thither.

It's always the schoolmarmly types, isn't it, that rush in where angels fear? And then they wonder why they end up as Exhibit A.

Chronia Cross-Pollinating

My favourite janus job of the new year - sitting down with a new calendar and the previous year's and deciding which events or reminders to carry forward.

When I arrived in March 2006, I knew nothing and had to take my mother's word and what was happening round me.

As is my wont, I copied and noted everything: birthdays, Saints Days, strike days, Oki Days, festival days, departures and arrivals, dinner dates ... the lot. A right magpie, I am, which is how I made such a perfect toady of a PR, by remembering what to remember.

As the years advanced, each calendar improved on the previous one, at the same time as being edited and pruned ... except for irrepressible Sod's Law that declares that,

"Yea, tho' ye keep close a document unto the fifth generation, and transfer it hither and yon, and file begat file, verily it is written that thou shall'st not need it until the day after you have finally chuck'd it in the wagga. Yea, even tho' thou consulteth the ruby of your eye saying "Wife! Surely we dont need this after all this time?" and she agrees and says she's always wondered why you kept lugging it around, and lo! thou castest it into the darkness and even louder lo, on the day after, lo!, a messenger from the magistrate arrives demanding but one document to save you from the scarlet ribbon of the Pharisees and yea, thou guess'd right that it was the self-same papyrus cast into the dumpster that the council removedeth'd to the furthest pit.

Then riseth angry words between husband and wife, verily the silly moo should have known you'd need that particular document, so WTF did she agree you should throw it away?" and all the rest of that crap that we know so well, oh my goodness, yes.

So where was I, apart from trying to be too clever by half with the old Good Book lingo spoof?

Right, Transfer of the Calendars (alarums off ~ bet you never expected to link to that goody)

Aye, serious business when a man plays God.

Three shots problem minimum.

Who's in, who's out; score settlin' time.

Da boithdays One by one:

• Keep her in?
• Poh poh, he's definitely out. Bastard. Didn't invite us to the All-white frolics by the sea.
• Her dead, she's on her last legs.
• Fancy her, one last toadying email good wish and chuck her next year.
• Same with name days ~ I tell you, a well-timed chronia polla and you're up from #6 in the charts to nudging #3. I tell you, truth, I was sitting in a bar once and a strapping lass I'd coveted from afar came over and planted a stunner of a smooch bang on the old bouche,

  "You are the sweetest man for remembering my day. That swine Leo? Never remembered it in all our years together. Anyway, he's gone; last straw. Decided when I read your email. Fancy a drink?"

• Deadlines: bills to pay, car to service, money to transfer, water filters to change. That ilk.

But here's a rum note, sub-section of Sod: invariably when I noted a date in advance - birthday - I'd fall out with the person in question. Over-preparing the event.

THEFTDAY ~ the very first reminder that went in after the jewel theft of April 2007 was April 8 to commemorate the filcherie and remind me to buy a bouteillaki of champers to toast 'absent friends'. Used to drive Mum mad because once April came and the page stared her in the face, she was daily reminded of the disgrace.

The Law - once something was noted, it was gospel. I would dismiss with glee my mother's assumption that her calendar came first. I'd tell her, 'You can insist all you like that we're going to the Warrington's but it ain't down here and my guitar gig has been there for 5 weeks. Sure, you go but i'm not chauffeuring.

I would tell people that it was no use giving dates to my mother because it would be forgotten in an instant. Tell me and it would go on the calendar for me to keep tabs and remind.

The joy of sitting at table having my nerves shredded with maman going on and bloody on with droning gardenry - phone - "Chris? We're sitting here wondering where you are." - 'Nuthin' on the calendar, old boy - "But we invited your mother several weeks ago" - 'Ah! That's it, then. Wouldnt matter if it was several seconds ago. I'll hand you over'

They never fucking learned, and i loved it.

Wonderful history books, they became. Like this past year when i've tried to re-live each day according to what was screwed up in years gone by.

Late Decembers - wondered why it was empty round Xmas - but of course! The house fielded a full complement of thieves from Villa Thefti, requiring me to be here to thwart the handing over of my good stuff.

Today, bliss. My own master.