Monday, 25th October 21: This afternoon Fofi Gennimata, the leader of KINAL (formerly PASOK), died. She was relatively young, a month shy of her 57th birthday. Her father, Georgios Gennimatas, also died young, being only 54 when cancer took him back in 1994. Georgios Gennimatas’s main achievement lay in setting up the National Health System... Continue Reading →

What a joy it was to write in my last post about something other than Covid but, as the saying goes, all good things must come to an end. Vaccination uptake is well below the hopes of the authorities, particularly in Northern Greece. In a small town called Drama, only about 40% of the adult... Continue Reading →

Success and lift-off. The inaugural Dubliner Session kicked off around 5pm on Sunday, 17th October. It was great to see a full pub. We were seated in a corner and, true to session “format”, we were facing in all directions. I think I was right to make sheet music available as several of the participants... Continue Reading →

2nd September: It has just been announced that the composer, Mikis Theodorakis, has died at the age of 96. Three days of national mourning have been declared. He is most famous for the music of the film, Zorba the Greek. His was a full life: imprisonment and exile during the dictatorship; a move from the... Continue Reading →

An encounter with the Greek health system. On August 2nd or 3rd, I left our first floor flat to do some shopping. Halfway downstairs I realised I’d forgotten my mask and charged back to the flat. By the time I got to the door I was completely out of breath and finding it hard to... Continue Reading →

We’ll start with Covid. Yesterday, Tuesday July 27th, saw a significant rise in cases – just a whisker short of 3,600 cases yesterday, of which 15 (0.4%) were detected at border entry points. A few weeks back, the government was panicking as intubations rose to nearly 800, but on Monday there were only 142 in... Continue Reading →

Saturday 5th June. It is becoming harder to get basic Covid facts from the Greek Press, by that I mean the Greek-language press. Covid continues to abate with 932 new cases recorded today, 35 deaths and 445 undergoing “invasive treatment” as it says in the English-language Greek Reporter. One consistency over the past few weeks... Continue Reading →

Despite the country opening up to tourism and despite the increasing air of normality, there has been a steady decrease in Covid. Today’s figures are 1,007 new cases, 41 dead and 480 in intensive care. Of the new cases, only one was detected at a border entry point. The press seems puzzled that over half... Continue Reading →

Hurrah for tourists. May they come in droves. The Greek government, I believe, would have kept us in lockdown indefinitely were the economy not so dependent on tourism. The number of new Covid cases, deaths and patients in intensive care has not really gone down as much as the authorities would like, but the gates... Continue Reading →

Orthodox Easter is on May 2nd and very few people will be travelling for the second successive year. A drip-drip of ministerial leaks and utterances have prepared us for the non-surprise announcement by the Prime Minister yesterday, an unfortunate date as 21st April 1967 was the date of Greece’s last military coup. The date for... Continue Reading →

My original intention when creating this blog was to focus on Irish music and life in Northern Greece, specifically on Thessaloniki. Circumstances that we are all aware of have limited musical performance. Moreover, my comments on Greece have focused on the country as a whole and its response to Covid 19. This has meant that... Continue Reading →

It’s been a great week in terms of discovery. I have always poo-pooed the idea of ABC musical notation, failing to understand why anyone would choose to labour over the differences between G, (the G below middle C [the comma is a symbol, not punctuation]), G and G’ instead of “learning the dots” as it... Continue Reading →

The music scene has blossomed technically and online. My lack of computer savviness (apparent in the design of this blog) has improved. I’m downloading video clips, converting them to mp3 or mp4, changing the key or tempo as and when necessary, converting PDFs to jpeg. Small beer, admittedly, but a big personal improvement. Our Sunday... Continue Reading →

While it is true that Greece has handled the Covid-19 crisis better than most other EU member-states, the vaccination rate has been lagging. Unlike Hungary, Greece hasn’t gone rogue and started importing the Chinese or Russian vaccines. I did a little online research to estimate where I stand in the queue. The population of Greece... Continue Reading →

My original aim in this blog was to talk about Irish citizens and Irish music in Northern Greece with some observations on Greek life thrown in. Covid has severely affected developments in Irish music. Moreover, the Irish community has shrunk since 2008 and, combined with the ravages of Covid, those of us who remain are... Continue Reading →

There seems to be a general panic in government circles. The panic has been caused, not by the number of cases, but by the levels of Covid in the city’s effluent. Some scientists believe there are 80,000 infected people in the capital area. Accordingly, the curfew in the Athens area and Thessaloniki has been extended... Continue Reading →

Not too much to report. We are still in lockdown. Cases and fatalities are much the same as last week, but ten mutations were found today (28th January 2021). How is Greece doing? According to this study by the Lowy institute https://interactives.lowyinstitute.org/features/covid-performance/ the answer is very well. 32nd in a list of 98 countries, and... Continue Reading →

Just a couple of questions on the Epiphany diving accident I mentioned in my last post. The report below does not really give much information, and most of the pertinent questions are raised in comments following the article: https://www.iefimerida.gr/ellada/amarynthos-tetrapligia-24hronos-boytixe-theofania Why did the dive take place given there was a ban?Was the dive moved to Amarynthos... Continue Reading →