Irish music and life in northern Greece
April 17th, 2024: In this update I will talk rubbish. In a previous post I spoke of Greeks’ penchant for dumping crap on the pavement. I attached a news report with household effects dumped on what Greeks call the pavement or sidewalk, το πεζοδρόμιο. Within 50 metres of my home in one in one direction... Continue Reading →
Another borrowing from English that is being used instead of κυλάω. Κύλιση (scrolling) is also losing out to σκρολάρισμα.
In the passive (μπουρδουκλώνομαι) it means ‘trip’, often as a result of having one’s feet among cables and wiring. It’s a word that would have come handy in our last gig when six of us were occupying a small stage with instrument, mic and electric cables posing a real trip hazard.
I took this photo of a tree in our communal garden. This was at the end of February. Apparently, it is a Japanese acacia. I’ll take another pic when it flowers. It’s a lovely tree whose branches are very long-reaching, the length far exceeding the height of the tree. Winter is now well and truly... Continue Reading →
March is always a good month. Plenty of practice and a couple of gigs, Sadly, our little adventure in Grevena didn’t happen. I don’t know if we asked for too much money or if the festival suffered from a lack of sponsorship. Or maybe accommodation was an issue. A brief look at www.booking.com suggests there... Continue Reading →
24/004 Greek Word – κουνουπίδι = cauliflower… … but on overhearing two young gentlemen in conversation, I learnt that κουνουπίδι as in έγινα κουνουπίδι means “I got hammered” ie very drunk. The discussion became livelier when one of them described his inebriation as έγινα κωλοτρυπίδι, an unlisted variant of κωλοτρυπίδα (literally arsehole). The best English... Continue Reading →
Our first example of “Greeklish” of 2024. I was discussing some of the latency problems we experience when having a Zoom music session with friends in Malta. The normal Greek for ‘latency’ is καθυστέρηση, but Greeks prefer to use the noun λαγκ (τρώω λαγκ) and the verb (λαγκάρω)
In LinNG 24/002 I talk about how an “I-don’t-give-a-fuck” attitude still prevails in Greek public life. As long as my house and immediate environment are OK, fuck everything else. The Greeks have borrowed the term ζεμανφουτισμός from the French je-m’en-foutisme, but they have a much better one of their own: σταρχιδισμός, a noun derived from... Continue Reading →
In the UK the illegal dumping of rubbish is called ‘fly-tipping”. You take the unwanted items to a remote area and dump them. The ‘fly’ refers to the sly illegality of the practice. No such problem here in Greece where we have blatant tipping. Just throw everything in the street. https://seleo.gr/seleo-thema/%CE%B8%CE%B5%CF%83%CF%83%CE%B1%CE%BB%CE%BF%CE%BD%CE%AF%CE%BA%CE%B7-%CF%80%CE%AD%CF%84%CE%B1%CE%BE%CE%B1%CE%BD-%CE%BF%CE%BB%CF%8C%CE%BA%CE%BB%CE%B7%CF%81%CE%BF-%CE%BD%CE%BF%CE%B9%CE%BA%CE%BF%CE%BA/ There are some great... Continue Reading →
18th February. I am in Toroni with the dog. I came here just after Christmas to make sure the house was OK, and this weekend is my first outing of 2024. The winter months can cause a lot of damage to vacant properties. We’ve been lucky this year as, to date, winter has been quite... Continue Reading →
15th February 2024: I have had problems with WordPress’s labyrinthine renewal processes and their access-unfriendly procedures. 6th of January. The Christmas Season has concluded. We rounded off the season with a Twelfth Night gig in the Dubliner yesterday evening. It was a good performance. We are also saying goodbye to the current set and introducing... Continue Reading →
A nice bowl of tripe μπάκα – a pot belly A late start to the year. My apologies. However, μπάκα is an appropriate start as many of us will have put on a little weight due to Christmas and New Year excesses. Bruce Willis’s annoying girlfriend in Pulp Fiction says at one point that she... Continue Reading →
31st December 2023. A mild winter so far. It would be perfect if Covid was not making a comeback. My daughter, who loves her granny and who prefers to stay with her rather than with her beloved parents, discovered late on Christmas Eve that she was positive. Not willing to put her grandmother at risk,... Continue Reading →
On Saturday 9th December, exactly one calendar month after my surgery, I went to bed at 8pm. Headache, dizziness, tearing eyes, a sore throat. I wasn’t feeling any better the next morning so I sent a message on Viber to say I would be unable to play at our session. I also suggested Giannis, our... Continue Reading →
τεμπελόπιτα = lazy pie. A combination of τεμπέλης (indolent) + πίτα (pie or pita bread). What it means is any pie that avoids the hassle of making a pastry. And here is a recipe with the added attraction of tsipouro (τσίπουρο) among the ingredients: https://www.bovary.gr/living/taste/tempelopita-i-paneykoli-pita-me-feta-kai-tsipoyro
κατσιβέλα – a gypsy woman. Not a compliment. The masculine equivalent is κατσίβελος. My interlocutor said the word is used in Xanthi, and www.slang.gr supports this: Συνώνυμο του γύφτος, ευρέως γνωστό στην Θράκη. - Δες τον κατσίβελο τι φοράει!- Κατσιβέλια ρε, τι περίμενες;... As you can see from the above example, being a bad dresser is... Continue Reading →
I find the unpredictability of our sessions a little stressful, but our November session turned out to be great fun. For me personally, the presence of another two fiddlers made my day. The pub was really busy too. Our band, ThessHooley, made its debut on 26th November. Of course, we had our entourage and camp... Continue Reading →
The excrement was everywhere. On the floor. On the door. On the walls. On the toilet seat. In and around the lavatory bowl. Add a little blood to the recipe to complete the scene. The Charge of the Shite Brigade. A fellow patient had fallen in the toilet. Following surgery to remove my gall bladder,... Continue Reading →
επαναχρησιμοποιήσιμος – a 10-syllable monster that means ‘reusable’. A Greek advert for the ‘braless bra’ crops up on my Twitter/X feed. I don’t know why as most of my tweets (now posts) relate to Ireland. Apart from the length of the word, it is noteworthy that the prefix επανα- and the suffix ιμος correspond reliably... Continue Reading →
28th October. Greece’s second National Day, the first being the 25th of March, the start of the revolution against the Turks in 1821. Today marks No Day (Όχι Μέρα), 28th October 1940 when Greece’s dictator, Ioannis Metaxas, said ‘No’ to another dictator, Mussolini. The Italian ultimatum was not exactly a demand to surrender – the... Continue Reading →
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