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.

OKI DOKI

DESPITE BEING FORCED, AT GRAMMAR SCHOOL, into studying Latin for seven years, Greek for three and Sanskrit for two, I am unable to understand what on earth the population of Greece will be voting for today. The questions being posed defy intelligent attempts at understanding what the meaning of the referendum is, and then even those who vote "Yes" or "No" are not totally sure of what this decision will mean; it thus falls heavy on the limits of my tolerance to imagine that the Greeks will know what they are doing when they vote later on after they have managed to shuffle themselves out of their hovels, find and fix their dentures and go off to vote in their pyjamas and flip-flops.

IF INDEED IT MEANS ANYTHING AT ALL, now that we know that "noises off", as it is sometimes said in these circles, are 'pointing to' allowing Greece to carry on in the Eurozone even if they do not have Euro as their currency.

 

THIS IS THE MOST BIZARRE OF A SERIES of utterly bizarre 'deliberations' made by the unelected people who for some obscure reason are running Europe. As I write (03.03 GMT) I am watching a gentleman on television stating that the European Union will have to 'remove' the Greek government if the result of today's referendum does not go in the correct manner. This man is Dutch. I presume he was elected by someone at some stage in his lifetime, but I have no idea why he should be 'deliberating' on the present or future of Greece.

 

IT IS UNUSUAL FOR ME to watch the television channel Euronews, but I happened to be watching it this afternoon when the charmingly-named journalist Symela Touchtidou went about the streets of Athens chatting to people on these pressing issues.

 

SKY NEWS AND THE BBC were equally out and about, interviewing gentlemen in their late forties, defined as 'pensioners', who were sitting smoking at tables outside cafés drinking coffee and ouzo, bare-chested, complaining that the European Union had cheated them, and that the Germans should send them some more money.

PERHAPS I AM A BIT OF A SNOB, but I would like to think that a person who wants to be on television would prefer to be wearing a shirt, rather than resting a double chin on a fat beer belly, with the whole picture rubbed in oily sweat. No wonder they vote for people who promise never to wear a tie.

MY BIG FAT GREEK DIVORCE

(PG - Parental Guidance. Cinemas throughout Europe from July 1st)

Starring: Alexis Hoplys, Angela Mercilys, Yannis Motokyklos, Kristina Lagartixis, Jannis-Clotys Junkys, Davos Kameponys, Giorgios Osbronusuponus and Jeroen Dijsselbloem. 

TROUBLE WAS ALWAYS GOING TO HAPPEN when a Greek marries a foreigner, and when penniless Tò Portakabinos (played by Hoplys) gets hitched to German heiress Tamara Würgegriff (played by Mercilys) one can imagine that despite their obvious initial attraction, this will all play out on a downhill route to tears and breaking plates.

WHEN WÜRGEGRIFF ONE EVENING is tidying up the living room she accidentally finds some of Portakabinos's Visa receipts, where she discovers that he has been making mysterious payments to an agency run by a French woman known only as "Madame Fouet". She confronts him over this.

HE STATES THAT THESE BILLS were for his friend and one-time best man Lederjaketos (played by Motokyklos), and indeed this is corroborated by Lederjaketos when he roars up to the family home on his Harley-Davidson to defend his companion, with the perhaps unfortunate explanation of "That's just the way we Greeks are... You can't expect us to behave like Germans!" A wonderful scene is when he confronts Fouet and threatens to blackmail her.

NEVERTHELESS, WÜRGEGRIFF IS HAVING none of this, and immediately announces that she will be consulting her lawyers, played by Osbronusoponus, Kameponys and Junkys, and then finds solace in the arms of an earlier lover of hers Jan van Dykhead, played by Dijsselbloem.

Sunday Morning rating: 3/5. Better than the last good Greek film, "Exzorbitant the Greek".

THE ARTIST FORMERLY KNOWN AS PISS

THERE IS APPARENTLY A GREAT DEAL THAT CAN be said in favour of what the children nowadays call "rap" music or "hip-hop". Unfortunately I am not personally aware of what these positive aspects may be, unless it is an encouragement being presented to young people from challenged backgrounds to invest in gold so as to adorn their sporting outfits.

ALTHOUGH, OVER FIVE DECADES NOW IN WHICH I have seen myself as fashion conscious, I have never wanted to wear apparel that makes me look like I have just come from having or am just about to go to have a 'shower', rather than a bath, nor do I wish to present myself in footwear for the training track when about to go for dinner at a respectable restaurant. Perhaps I am old fashioned. 

YET I FEEL I MUST COMMENT on the latest developments in the life of curiously much-respected singer Sean John Combs, who has latterly been known, as if he were some form of criminal, as Puff Daddy, Diddy, and P. Diddy, in his position as a role model for a vast swathe of our young people in challenged backgrounds and who would wish to find some way to better themselves, given that the education system in the UK and the USA is horrendously biased in favour of people with blond hair, blue eyes and bank accounts.

THIS STATE OF AFFAIRS MAKES IT even more imperative for the Puffs and Diddies of the world of entertainment to behave themselves correctly rather than simply amplifying schoolboy behaviours into fully-fledged crime: a bit of a smacking in the playground at the age of ten, followed by a music career leading to eight million dollars per annum in music royalties, will not, it appears, lead to sensitive, thoughtful enjoyment of this money, but rather to a real "goodstyle assault with a deadly weapon" smacking of a college teacher after an altercation over how the said teacher was talking to his son, and inevitably leading to a 'stretch' indoors. As if that were supposed to be the way.

 

BUT I AM MAINLY INTRIGUED BY THE NAME changes involved in quite a few 'rappers' as they pursue their path through the travails of trying to avoid being arrested on a series of drug crimes, illegal possession of and misuse of firearms, and or domestic violence charges. Some argue that there is a form of deliberate attempt by the authorities to arrest those such as 'Snoop "Doggy" Dogg', later 'Snoop Dogg' and then 'Snoop Lion', as a sign of how maturely he now smokes his joints, in order to make an example of them. Perhaps the policemen who arrest them may be struggling with cases of mistaken identity. But in any case, the example isn't being made by the United States Police Departments.

YOU BETTER SHAPE UP

LIKE A GREAT MANY PEOPLE WITH TIME on our hands, I always enjoy a visit to London in the summertime to take in a show, and each year I am more than pleased to take in a revival of a production I enjoyed some years ago when it was first performed. One such festival of brightness was enjoyed by myself and my good lady wife last Sunday afternoon.

"TIME", AS THEY SOMETIMES SAY, "WAITS FOR NO MAN", and the cast of the musical 'Grease' have certainly aged over the years, but, to my mind, are still able to put on a decent show, even though in the original moving picture version I was somewhat concerned about the age difference between the main characters. The relationship between 'Angie' and 'Alexizuko' may have seemed odd at the time, but they have now comfortably grown into their roles, suggesting that this will run and run as they grow into deafness and dementia together.

OSTENSIBLY, ANGIE AND ALEXIZUKO would have nothing in common, she being a prim and proper 'piano teacher type', while Alexizuko is a drug-snorting Anarcho-Marxist member of a motorcycle gang whose main desire is the end of civilisation as we know it and who spent a large part of his youth hurling Molotov cocktails through the windows of banks, hamburger restaurants and branches of small mutual lending companies.

HOWEVER, THEIR FIRST KISS CHANGES EVERYTHING, after a meeting in Paris, with Angie then weeping on her pillow while singing the beautiful ballad Hopelessly Devoted to EU, as she thinks deeply about the now absent Alexizuko and whether tomorrow his feelings will remain the same.

ANGIE'S WISHES ARE DASHED, HOWEVER, when she hears news of a possible rival, after Alexizuko does not turn up for an arranged meeting with her, instead perhaps falling into the arms of the mysterious "Putzie", about whom extremely little is known except that he too enjoys a bit of dogging and biking. (He is included in the cast list for the moving picture production, but no one of this name appears in the final cut.) News reaches Angie of this "Putzie" and some hangers-on serenading Alexizuko with the song Business School Dropout.

NEVERTHELESS, ALEXIZUKO, TORN BETWEEN two lovers and agonising night after night as to what his future should be, sings the haunting Summer Nights, on Midsummer Night in homage to the midnight meetings held behind the backs of his biking community friends and during which he has sold everyone who previously trusted him down the river.

THE TOUCHING FINAL ACT ENDS with the song that brings both together in a harmony that indicates that all will be well forever. This is You're The One That I Want, the happy end that makes the whole audience go home satisfied; until we get to the sequels "Greece 2", "Greece 3", "Greece 4" and so on.

OUT OF AFRICA

AT THE TURN OF THE 21ST CENTURY when journalists were asking all and sundry for predictions about what might come to pass in the hundred years to come, many political voices seemed to favour the idea that this was finally going to be "Africa's turn", as it was so put at the time. A brief glance at the history of statements about Africa will show that nothing was new about these statements: indeed, as long ago as 1960, the somewhat ill-fated British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan stated that a "wind of change" was "sweeping through Africa".

 

THIS WIND OF CHANGE OF MACMILLAN'S may perhaps be likened to what was said only a few years ago about the so-called "Arab Spring", which would apparently bring democracy, happiness and general lovey-doveyness to nations which had previously been run by tyrants with a taste for the noose, garrotte, lash, scimitar, stone pit, cauldron of oil and, when feeling generous, the firing squad.

 

ALAS, IT WOULD APPEAR THAT THERE has not been a great deal of democratic advance in the North African and Middle Eastern countries covered by the term "Arab", nor has Africa stepped up to the plate to claim its so long announced new dawn of prosperity, with only Tunisia attempting to cut the mustard as a democracy while the other Mediterranean-bathed states have been using pepper spray to stave it off.

 

ONE WONDERS WHETHER THIS IS BECAUSE the African Union, a parallel to our own, much-beloved, European Union, might not be fully enacting its stated aim to "bring peace, prosperity and welfare" to the nations of Africa. The Union in its early days was run by people we now know to have been less than honest, when it is now apparent that its leaders ran a coach and horses through the spirit of its aims. Fortunately it is now in better hands, as my picture shows.

THERE ARE MANY REASONS BEING put forth as to why so many Africans and citizens of the Middle East are fleeing in such numbers, most of whom are relatively well-off males who have paid vast sums of money to smuggler chaps to transport them, instead of staying in their own countries, investing in an AK-70 or any of the easily-available weapons with which the African continent is awash and setting forth to storm the palaces of the disgraceful people who are subjugating them. If someone tells me that 60,000 healthy young men have left a country and spent two years trudging over savannah, Sahara, sea and Italian bureaucracy in order to get a job plucking turkeys in Suffolk, leaving eight children behind with their wives, then I can only see this as an acceptance of the regime in their country of origin.

 

IT HAS BEEN SOME TIME SINCE I HAVE dealt with one of my themes from the past when I wrote columns about the state of the world for a newspaper of some repute, but I feel obliged to return to the issue of the hamburger. In my columns several years ago I mentioned the pernicious effects of the hamburger, and particularly of hamburger gas, a scent released into the air wherever one of the main hamburger-producing "restaurants" were active.

 

I NOW BELIEVE I HAVE EVIDENCE of an even more destructive effect of the hamburger in world migratory terms. Countries which do not have any "franchise representation" for McDonald's include Afghanistan, Eritrea, Somalia and Libya. Countries which have their full allocation of McDonald's restaurants include Cyprus, Malta, Lebanon, Jordan, Greece and Italy.

 

TO MY MIND THERE IS NO DOUBT that the hamburger gases are being wafted over the waves and air routes to the Middle East, encouraging these young men to want to move to Europe and work as slaves, with no contracts, and in permanent fear of being sacked and deported. Yet playing their part in the great new economic success that is the European Union.

ANOTHER REMINDER

RECENT EVENTS ON THE ISLAND OF BORNEO involving photogenic Eleanor Hawkins, 23, and nine other youngsters atop the sacred peak of Mount Kinabalu have set off an intelligent discussion about whether or not the Malaysian authorities, and more particularly the Dasun tribe, for whom the mountain is the home for the souls of their dead ancestors, have overreacted in punishing these youths for playfully getting their kits off.

THE MORNING CHAT PROGRAMMES throughout the week have involved debate about whether or not there was any wrongdoing involved, and, although I tended to detect a certain smugness from some of the invited beardies about a tribe that still sacrifices buffaloes to the gods and believes that an earthquake was caused because of this behaviour, the general consensus of opinion was that we should tolerate other people's beliefs and respect their traditions when in their countries.

THIS SMUGNESS IS RIDICULOUS in the sense that our own sacred and fundamental texts in Western society, such as the Torah, the Christian Bible and the great Graeco-Roman works, suggest a God who destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah for indecent activity and that Mount Olympus was the home of the gods, a mountain one could presumably not climb, lift up one's cloak and show a bit of hairy Greek arse without causing ire.

MILLIONS OF WESTERNERS LISTEN TO READINGS from these texts every weekend, and I imagine there is little laughing in either church or synagogue. And there is not a lot of sniggering when studying classics at university, where the Roman and Greek belief systems are treated with great respect. The system is so much a part of our heritage that our days, months, planets and other matters are still named after them.

BUT THE SERIOUS PARALLELS TO THIS EVENT involve what happened recently with equally photogenic Stephen Fry, 57, and his young husband Elliott Spencer whilst on honeymoon in Honduras, where, according to Spencer, the couple were forced to abandon the country because of intolerance towards a married couple of the same sex. This has not been the subject of the same sort of morning television chatter, although several commentators have lamented the event, with Sebastian Shakespeare in The Daily Mail even referring to the issue as "gay-hating locals" ruining Fry's honeymoon, although homosexuality is not illegal in the Honduras.

APART FROM THE USUAL RABID reactionaries and radicals who write on message boards, I have yet to see anyone come out and defend the devoutly Catholic locals of the Honduras in the same way as our good and great defend the Dasun tribe and their own beliefs.

THE SAD MESSAGE IS CLEAR once again: if a small tribe on a remote island believes that girls taking their bras off above the clouds where no one can see them can cause a deadly earthquake then we must respect their culture, obey their rules and pay a fine so they can buy and kill eight buffaloes and sacrifice them; but if a devoutly Catholic people refuses to accept our own rules about same-sex marriage then they are just backward, gay-hating Nazis.

ONE WONDERS WHAT SORT OF OUTRAGE would be provoked if the people of Malaysia, and particularly the Dasun tribe, were referred to as "girl-hating retrogrades". It is simply another reminder that if one wishes to espouse the mainstream values that have been the foundation and are still the bedrock of our society one is lamentably in the wrong in the eyes of the Media.