Irish music and life in northern Greece
It has been a busy few days here. Sunday, June 23rd, was Pentecost so Monday was a bank holiday. We have had a lot of tourists from Serbia, North Macedonia and Bulgaria. As most of them are Orthodox like the Greeks, they also took advantage of the long weekend. I haven’t found much of personal... Continue Reading →
The reason why I didn’t go to Evosmos is because I looked at the map and saw that it was very built-up. I thought parking would be difficult and queuing long. Moreover, I couldn’t find information on which vaccine they were doling out. I decided to stick with my local health centre and finally managed... Continue Reading →
I have briefly referred to the problems with Radio Arvila in GW 26/2021. Greek Reporter has covered the story in depth and goes out of its way to show how people have been driven to suicide on discovering intimate images and video clips of themselves have been uploaded. https://greekreporter.com/2021/12/15/revenge-porn-greece/ The other three presenters of Radio... Continue Reading →
πέφτουλας – peftulas - (plural: πέφτουλες): a sexual chancer, someone who makes uninvited passes or advances on women. One of the presenters of Greece’s most popular TV satirical shows Ράδιο Αρβύλα has been sacked following the discovery of revenge porn clips he uploaded. Αρβύλα is a military boot but it has the additional meaning of... Continue Reading →
2nd December 21. Sadly, the 38-year-old that I referred to in IMLiNG #25 has died. Her name was Parthena “Patty” Koutmeridou. Even while the poor woman’s corpse is still warm, a huge row has broken out. And in these circumstances the favourite weapon of choice is the blame-thrower. Some say it was her gynaecologist who... Continue Reading →
Thessaloniki 26th November 2021 A headline in a newspaper the other day claimed: “Matters are getting out of hand”. A customer, denied access to a café because he did not have a Covid certificate, bit the proprietor on the cheek. The full story is here: https://www.iefimerida.gr/ellada/andras-naoysa-dagkose-idioktiti-kafe-magoylo Even more surreally (the apt word), a young actor... Continue Reading →
χριστοπαναγία or χριστοπαναγίες - Christopanayia or Christopanagies = cursing and swearing. Χριστοπαναγία is a composite of the Greek words for Christ (Χριστός) and the Virgin Mary (Παναγία). A common Greek curse is “Χριστός και Παναγία”, which reminds me of my Catholic mother’s frequent imprecation “Jesus, Mary and Joseph”. At home there was a distinction between... Continue Reading →
Monday 22 November 2021. A bad day for Covid. Nearly 7,300 cases, 608 intubated and 105 dead – the highest daily death toll since 3rd May when 135 died. In spite of these numbers, there are some facts which seem to be immutable. These include: slightly more men than women are infected, intubated or dead... Continue Reading →
ψεκασμένος – psekazmenos – literally “sprayed” from the verb ψεκάζω. By extension, a conspiracy theorist. A frequent sight during Greek summers is the yellow aircraft with red tips on their way to fight another forest fire. Inevitably, there are those who believe that more than fire retardants are being sprayed from the skies. Anything from... Continue Reading →
Irish Music Scene & Life in Northern Greece 23/2021 Sunday 14th November. Our second session went very well. Encouragingly, at least four of the ten players were Greeks under 30 years old. I say that because it is pleasing to witness people with no connections to Ireland getting into the music. The second reason is... Continue Reading →
1st November 21: I feel as if I’m between a rock and a hard place or – to show off a little classical education – between Scylla and Charybdis, the Scylla of British infection insouciance and Charybdis of the looming Corona crisis in Greece. Yesterday witnessed the highest infection figures since the start of the... Continue Reading →
ντελιβεράς – deliveras – a delivery person A couple of weeks ago, a friend visited us quite late, so we ordered pizza. When the order arrived, the delivery ‘boy’ turned out to be a man in his fifties. More on this below. The Greek purists will be up in arms over yet another borrowing from... Continue Reading →
As an addendum to my Greek Word 19/2021, γυναικοκτονία, it saddens me to report that yet another woman has been murdered by her ex. This time in Crete. Anyway, my latest choice is: κιοτεύω – kiotevo – to shrink from, to balk at, to be cowardly or to behave in a cowardly way. It was... Continue Reading →
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 →
γούβα – ghouva – a hole, depression or sinkhole. Last week it rained most of the time. It does not take long for the roads, even main roads, to fill up with water. The incident in the article below happened on Ethnikis Antistaseos (National Resistance Street) the main east-west artery if you are driving into... 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 →
γυναικοκτονία – yinekoktonia – the killing of women: femicide, feminicide or uxoricide. A depressing choice of word chosen only because the word has been used a lot in the Greek media recently. Why? Because, in the past nine months, thirteen women have been killed by their partners or ex-partners. Of the three English words above,... Continue Reading →
τσουμπλέκι – tsubleki. A large earthenware pot. It seems to come from the Turkish çömlek Tσουμπλέκι can also refer to a style of cooking where the vessel becomes synonymous with the food that is cooked in it, much like our use of, for example, chicken casserole. In fact, there are a few mouth-watering recipes online... Continue Reading →
21st September 21. Two bits of bad news today. The local paper Makedonia says the Health Secretary and his deputy are on their way to Thessaloniki to discuss possible local lockdowns. Now iefimerida – my go-to online newspaper has the panicky headline “The nightmare awakens in Thessaloniki – Red with 449 cases, 544 in Attica.”... Continue Reading →
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