I once found a pile of old photos that had spilled out of a rubbish bin in a quiet suburban street in Athens.
After we had finished laughing, and after poking around in the bin for the rest of them, we realised that we had a family's entire history in our hands. 
From a photo of the port of Pireaus just after it had been decimated by the retreating Nazis, through pictures of a couple getting married in the 70's, to holidays in the Redwoods in California, with them posing proudly next to a ford Capri and ending up with an old couple sitting quietly holding hands in an Athenian park, we had their entire lives in our hands.
It was a very touching moment. And they had just been thrown out.
As if they meant nothing.
I treasure the pictures I kept. I didn't know them, but in some small way their memory lives on in a way it wouldn't have if we hadn't drunkenly stumbled across them.
I learnt so much about the country I love from that pile of randomly discarded photographs.

Bad bad teachers

Many many years ago, I think was 9, or possibly 10 years old, I fell over in the playground and made a lot of fuss about how much my arm hurt. 
Miss Carole Hind made me sit on my hand all afternoon for complaining.

I remember it hurt all weekend but I never got taken to the doctor because my teacher said i was just making it up.

When I was 19 years old I got run over in Crete, (totally my fault) and got taken to several doctors and eventually the hospital in Iraklion, by the incredible, lovely couple who had the misfortune to be driving along the coastal road when an English teenager appeared through their windscreen at 10am.

I got my face stitched up, and my broken wrist was plastered and fixed.

The doctor though, was confused. He said that the break was at least ten years old, a diagnosis later confirmed by a hospital in England.

My point here is , apart from praising the Greek medical services , who do amazing work on budgets that in the rest of the world would be considered laughable, is that perhaps teachers occasionally do and say things that are possibly not in the best interests of the children they are charged with looking after.

Summer, once again seems to be well and truly over and it's only early October.
I had my first full week off in a year and needless to say the weather turned bad. Rain, wind and cloudy skies. Equally needless to comment upon, is the fact that as soon as I return to work the weather gets good again. Ah well.
I'm not so sure what is going on with work either. It seems the snake has fulfilled my worst fears and moved in on a permanent basis. So how that works out for me remains to be seen.
Jack and Nikki, Aka Captain Gobshite and Lady Frightwig have just left after a fun filled couple of weeks, but they'll be back again next April to stay, at least for the summer so that's something to look forward to.
Sophy Pottymouth has also been here since Thursday and that has been fun too. She certainly seems to have been enjoying herself, and will no doubt bring a  choice collection of swearwords to the bar in the coming days.
 There's so much to write about since my last spittle fuelled post in May that I really don't know where to begin. So for the moment I won't as I think it's time to go home, lie on the sofa, stuff my face with junk food and luxuriate in equally junky TV for the last time until who knows when. 

2nd time in two days. im going for the record. I fear i will beat it as I know I will have lots to write about in the coming days. Currently we have a lovely couple here who are getting married on Saturday. Unfortunately, their very extended family is with them. the parents of the bride are lovely people, but I am at the moment quite upset  with someone I normally think is one of the best people on the planet. .
"Smile more" , can't you just try and smile"? "Look all i want to say is can you just try a bit harder tomorrow?
Yes, if you try a bit harder tomorrow to understand that running your arse off, trying to be nice to the sort of people who only go out twice a year, and expect everything at the drop of a hat, when cocktails , for eg, take time to be made, isn't the best receipe for a fun filled night at work.
 Funny,, that everyone except you attention demanding twats seems to be so happy that they leave 10 euro tips. I'm so so so sorry that whilst running around like a blue arsed fly, keeping note of what everyone has had to drink, I forgot to flash a smile at the table of stupid oozo drinkers whose combined intelligence would amount to a couple of snails after a good line of salt.
NO, for the third time in two hours, we do not have any fucking cheesecake.Yes, yesterday we did. today we don't. It's not fucking macdonalds, it's a bar on a small Greek island, run and worked by people who give over and above what is called for.

It;s stupid o'clock and I'm writing my first wittering for a long time but i can't do it in facebook posts anymore. there is too much to write about. the horrible granny who looks like the inside of a freshly roasted chicken and makes everyone sit inside every bar she goes to , hence Granny Sunblock, the simpering twat queen who sits and gazes lovingly at me every night, the fat turd, and the other elephant in the room; and the new queen, who escaped from The Whacky Races, only so far as Mutley has not yet caught up.

I did see Dan and Sarah today and whilst their baby like creature has not yet turned into the beautiful human person it is destined to be ( UGLY DUCKLING BABY TIME) did have a moment where i realised that the ugliest baby I have ever seen is in fact human. Very attractive parents.
 Also It was really nice to see  how Dan was with him. I could only wish my father was that good, even though I was a much better looking baby.

The next days are going to be difficult. Irish people, Stoke people, I might as well say , walking piles of nonsense on moneyed legs.

But. It seems that Karen, has tracked down Mr Darren Lockyer.
 And without him I would not be here in Greece now.

Things are now starting to get really frightening. Every day some new  demand is made. People can’t play this game any more. Life in Greece is less a game of Rounders in the summer sun than Rugby on a frozen solid pitch in the middle of a blizzard. It wasn’t exactly easy living here, even in the best of times, but now every day brings a new and scarier challenge. I haven’t been paid more than a month’s wages but my bills still keep coming in, and the supermarket still costs more than double the European average.

I’m recognizing the warning signs that my main job may well soon be coming to a sudden end and trying to work out what to do if, or more probably , when that happens. There aren’t many places left to go. Luckily I still have a couple of sidelines, but that’s really all they are. Extras.  Bits on the side.  Nothing that I can live on.

 In many ways I’m one of the lucky ones. The lovely woman I work for, is I fear, about to lose her bar and home. She has two grown up children to support who along with the other 49% of the under 25s will probably be unable to find work.

Unemployment benefit here lasts  for  5 months maximum, and that’s available only to those who have paid into the system for two consecutive years. Many employers, illegally, refuse to put their staff into the system because of the huge cost involved.  Having been self employed and paying even larger contributions to that seperate insurance fund counts for nothing. You have your own business and it goes bust. Tough. No money. Get a job or starve. Off to the soup kitchen with you.

I worked out some time ago that the Greek Government gets roughly 75% of my wages through tax, whether it be through the extortionate National Insurance payments (round about 110% of my take home wage), or through VAT (23%) on everything including water and power bills, the local taxes levied through the electricity bill, (pay it all or have it cut off), ditto  the TV licence for three shitty channels which have interminable ad breaks, or more optional things like taxing a car or motorbike.

I’d love to know where all this money goes. It’s not into education or health care. Now, in order to go to what passes for the largest hospital in this region of the Cyclades you have to pay a flat fee of 5 euro to get through the door. Children have to have extra lessons at private schools to attain even basic standards of literacy, foreign languages, mathematics, etc, often given by individuals more than qualified to teach public institutions but unable to do so because the state refuses to recognize their privately, or foreign obtained degrees.

In the meantime the (un)civil services employ armies of useless idiots, many of which openly boast about not actually bothering to do the work they are paid to. One employee of the local government here is normally to be found drinking coffee or metaxa in a local café during his working hours in the winter. Or on the beach in summer.

The Greek Orthodox Church is the largest landowner in Greece yet pays no taxes. Better still, the state, that’s to say the likes of me, pays the wages of these fat men in black dresses who also get paid again for everything they do. Weddings,  funerals,  christenings,  the lot. There’s no such thing as a poor priest in Greece.

The local soup kitchen now feeds over 40 people on a daily basis and the numbers are increasing. Supermarkets have trolleys by the door for shoppers to place donations of food for the needy.

This isn’t some African basketcase country ruined buy a mad despotic idiot. This is the birthplace of Democracy, Civilization, the place where Western values are rooted and the word Europe comes from.

It’s also a country where the rich pay little or no tax, doctors have to be routinely bribed with their little envelopes (or fakelakis), to do their jobs, and the police force in its’ upper echelons is largely staffed by leftovers from the time of the dictatorship. The two major political parties here are made up of dynasties that make George Bush look like an innocent bystander pushed into office.

This is country that has had enough, but also is unable to change.

11 years ago when the Samina Express sank off the coast of Paros I remember reading in The Independent a comment from a journalist, that modern Greece was only a veneer covering the swirling pot of corruption that was old Greece.

It’s time to empty that pot and put the shits that caused this mess in the sewer  that  they  so richly deserve.

Hurray. Dear blog I've found you again.

I might even start to be a bit more regular in my posting as my group of 'friends' on facebook includes too many family members, employers and the like who probably shouldn't be reading my 6am rants.

We're now in that strange dead zone after xmas and just before NY. Which I'm looking forward to imensely. Or not as I'm going to have to work now.

Iasbelle is in France and Andreas has gone back to the army, so for now it's just me and Vaya. Normally that would mean that her devil bastard of a father wouldn't be seen in the bar for love nor money but he's taken to wandering at regular intervals, scowling around with a face like a badly made glove puppet, muttering something and then thrusting an empty glass of wine at me.

He's just looking to pick a fight, and soon he's going to get what he wants. For the moment though I'm finding it more rewarding to thoroughly piss him off by openly laughing at him and his antics.

Last night was a goodie when he was actively snubbed by everyone in the bar, left sitting on his own at the end of the bar while the rest of sat as far away as possible. What really upset him was when a big group of Greek friends came in just he was half way through a prolonged mutter about how there were only foreigners present. Not only that but after all the usual kissing and a round of Xronia Polla's they took one look at him and walked to the opposite side of the room without saying a word.

At this he banged his glass down on the bar and stomped off, prompting everyone, his daughter included to breathe a huge sigh of relief.

Well thats it for now as I've just remembered I'm supposed to be writing an article for Paros Life about Granny swimming the channel. And it's um, late. Very late.