HOME FROM THE HOLIDAYS

ONE OF THE OCCASIONALLY INTRIGUING aspects of taking a holiday is that of wondering whether all will be well on one's return; this is sometimes turned into an understandable worry on the part of those insecure people who fear that their world may have either changed beyond recognition in their absence or at least have managed to get along perfectly fine without them -- indeed not noticing their absence at all.

ON RETURN FROM MY OWN restful fortnight or so on a secluded beach, with occasional forays into the local hills, beyond the reach of electronic devices of any kind, I am pleased to see that nothing much has changed in my absence.

THE COUNTRIES IN EAST AFRICA and the Middle East continue on in their several different manners of attempting to turn themselves into unpopulated stretches of skeleton-strewn rubble; the United Kingdom and the European Union are still at loggerheads; and immigration is still the prime issue on the table in the offices of The Daily Mail.

INDEED, A MORE DISTRACTED LOOK might allow one to believe that the world and time have moved back a generation, given that the Labour Party is about to split itself again over whether to choose a lady or a left-wing lunatic in order to lead it to certain defeat for the next fifteen years, the transport unions are on strike, Cilla Black is in the hit parade and Greece is on the verge of revolution.

"BEING HOLIDAY, THE BEGGAR'S SHOP IS SHUT," announces Romeo in Act V Scene 1 of Shakespeare's turgid and unlikely soppy tragedy Romeo and Juliet, but although it is holiday time in Greece the begging knows no end; nor does the patience of the kind-hearted naïve politicians who continue to give money to a country full of mendicants that hasn't invented anything since geometry. 

AS THE POLITICAL COMMENTATOR GARY GULMAN has wisely pointed out, a civilisation that managed to invent maths, science, astronomy and democracy must surely be a good investment. Unfortunately this activity stopped around two thousand years ago, when the leaders of Greece seem to have held a meeting in which it was decided that all this inventing was hard work and they would keep to one simple project called "salad". Although in principle salad was never going to be as profitable as the above-listed sciences it may in all fairness have looked like the Greeks were onto a winner, even if they were putting all their cubes of Feta in one basket.

I HAVE A JAR OF FETA in my fridge at the moment, along with a quart tub of "Greek-style" yoghourt, their latest capital venture, but -- alas! -- both of these products were bought from my local branch of the supermarket Lidl, the modern equivalent of the German storm troopers trampling across Europe.