Attempts at Countrification

23 November 2011 at 10:16 pm (Britain, Greece, Nature, Places, Plinky Prompts, Self, Wellbeing)
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I was born and raised in Athens. A sprawling metropolis of about four million souls, spectacularly magnificent in places and spectacularly repellent in others. I guess it spoiled me for any smaller place.

Athens

I used to say that, as a dedicated city girl, I couldn't see myself living in a smaller place. Well, I'd jump at half a chance to live in Edinburgh, despite it being about 1/10 the size of Athens, but beyond that, I'd only leave for an even bigger place, like London, Paris or New York. I couldn't even imagine then that I would end up in semi-rural Essex, coping with life out in the fringes of a modestly sized town. And really, coping is the word.

You see, I'm definitely not cut out for life in the wild. Even if that means a housing estate a short bus ride from town, as wild as a domesticated mouse. I miss being able to pop out to the shops at a moment's notice, or finding myself among people with a few minutes' walking. We're on a dorm estate, where I can go for half a mile or so without meeting a soul on the street, and I resent having to plan a bloody journey on the bus to get into town. The local lifestyle is heavily skewed in favour of drivers; walking is a desolate experience and public transport combines extortionate fares with unreliable timetables. If we didn't have a huge supermarket, that allows lots of browsing, close by, I wouldn't have anywhere at all to go, outside town limits. I'm still wondering at a retail estate with several furniture, furnishings and DIY stores, but no bookstore.

I've spent long periods of time in the real countryside, in a house without hot water or an indoor bathroom, where we still gathered our dinner ingredients from the garden. I know I'd make a lousy farmer's wife; I've even lost the feeble interest in gardening I used to have, much as I would like a chance to grow some of our own food. But I'm no good even in the faux countryside of the boonies. I just miss people too much. It's bad enough that there is absolutely nothing to do in town once the shops close. (By 6pm. Which, in high summer, means long hours of empty streets in broad daylight. Creepy.)

I know now that I could live in an even smaller town. I'd just have to be smack in the middle of it all.

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The Best, for Less

19 November 2011 at 11:31 pm (Food, Greece, Places, Plinky Prompts, Wellbeing)
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Sandwich bars don't have a reputation for being posh eateries. Swing by an Everest, though (they're all over Greece), and you won't care about posh again. Too delicious for nitpicking.

Chachi’s Sandwich Bar

Everest redefined the tradition of the 'quickie bite', taking it from cheese and spinach pies and sausage rolls (greasy and occasionally dodgy) to full meals, with a lot of room to go healthy and with more than decent prices. Where else can you get a filling meal, a dessert and a drink, and still keep the bill in the single digits?

There are traditional-style pies and ready-made cold sandwiches, to be sure, but the great strength of Everest is the completely customisable toasted sandwiches. Basic white bread rolls, but the choice of fillings is entirely up to the customer's whim, and I all staff have had to deal with some pretty daft combinations. I'm not sure if I've ever had the exact same sandwich twice myself, and believe me, I've had hundreds. (Nothing better after a night of clubbing, to keep the post-drinking munchies at bay.)

In more recent years, they have introduced customisable salads as well – pick a (sealed) bowl of greens – spinach and rocket, or a medley – and add your choice of extras and dressing. I used to have a lot of such salads for dinner when I worked evenings. Spinach and rocket, with roast chicken fillet chunks and honey-mustard dressing, or with red beans, sweetcorn, diced peppers and a vinaigrette. If I was extra hungry or it had been a particularly nasty day, I could add a slice of carrot or marble cake. And their 'chococaramel con panna' (hot chocolate with caramel syrup and whipped cream) was comfort in a paper cup in any but the hottest weather.

My husband, who was not yet my husband at the time and enjoyed ping-ponging emails with me during the hours of low activity in the evenings, never stopped being bemused at how little I had to pay for my dinners, compared to how many things I piled into either my salad or my sandwich. All until he came to visit and had the experience himself. It is really the only way.

I miss Everest. I haven't been to one since August 2010, and I plan to indulge fully when I find myself in Athens again.

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Citizen of the World

11 November 2011 at 10:21 pm (Britain, Family, Multilingual, Places, Plinky Prompts, Travel)
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I'm already living in a country other than the one I was born and raised in, so that already puts me into a minority. But changing countries again? Well, never say never…

Lost in translation

Taking the plunge and moving to the UK from Greece at 35 was a big adventure, make no mistake, especially for someone like me, who is not overfond of change. The fact that I was moving to start my own family made things at once easier (because I had the undivided support of at least one person) and harder (because it would be for life and would require some permanent adjustments).

The last few months, however, have forced me to consider moving to another country again, at least for a few years. With the husband, the family's sole breadwinner, out of work for a few months, we had agreed we would accept any position that would have him, no matter where it demanded us to move to. Most opportunities would not take us beyond the UK borders, but there have been several overseas cases that we considered quite seriously.

Mind you, my opinion weighed more in each decision than husband's. He would do his thing among people little different than those back home; I would be the one dealing with the daily vagaries of life abroad, so I'd be the one that would need the most support to cope.

France, Italy and Spain were all quite possible. I speak all three languages (my Italian is still a bit weak, but immersion would work wonders); husband's French is chancy, but he'd be able to learn anyway, and so would our son. I wouldn't mind him growing up trilingual at all. And I would be grateful to go further south again, somewhere with decent day and night lengths at all seasons, and enough sunlight.

Austria is somewhere I'm sure husband would love to live, especially since he already speaks decent German. Unfortunately, I don't, and I refuse to learn it. German is the one language I've tried my hand at and gave up because I didn't enjoy it. I don't think I could live somewhere where I'd have to deal with it every day. I'd rather go to Sweden, although practical considerations (language barrier and climate issues more severe than here) made us drop that option early.

There were even positions in China and Nepal, as well as around the Arab world and southeastern Asia, places where neither of us would go, no matter how good the money might be. I come from the country that invented democracy, and has taken it all the way to anarchy several times in its history – totalitarian regimes disagree violently with me. Not to mention I don't look good in hijab.

No matter where we ended up, though, it would have to be for at least a few years. Moving house is an ordeal when you go to the next town over; I wouldn't care to pack up and go back a couple of years later. Not to mention the damage to the young one's development if he were shifted from one culture and language to another before really settling down anywhere. I can't quite imagine living permanently in any of those countries, but then I've never been in any, not even as a tourist. I want to leave my options as open as possible, anyway.

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Slice of Life: The Setting

5 November 2010 at 10:31 pm (Britain, People, Places, Plinky Prompts, Writing)
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Write of what you know, they say. Or at least start there. Close to home.

Stone Clad Cottage, Roseland Terrace,E11

This is a little housing estate, a decent one, in the outskirts of a solid, prosperous university town with a good chunk of history in its past. It is considered part of the village, although it’s a good walk away from the old main street with the Victorian stuccoed semi-detached cottages.

It’s just housing, and a small ‘retail park’ with a few food and home stores. There is a McD, of course – McD are everywhere – and a swish pharmacy that can do nicely as an outing venue for the girly girls, although it is always left out of the promotion event schedules that more urban branches host. There are a couple of watering holes within walking distance, handy for the times when one wants to get hammered, but the library is tucked away in a corner of the main village and all the local churches seem to be along the road that leads into town.

It’s a nice place, really, not one of the run-down estates that cater to people who depend on housing benefit to keep a roof over their heads. Most people own their houses here, whether terraced two-story dollhouse cottages, bungalows with sprawling lawns, and the odd apartment complex – ‘courts’ they call them in England. There are a few big detached houses, and the quaintly curving streets, all named after flower varieties and called Ways, Ends, Walks, Lanes, or Closes, rather than Streets, are lined with well-cared lawns and trees, but the whole is by no means posh. Just a comfortable, safe place for children to play and grow up in.

But it’s a lonely place to spend one’s days. Most of the people living there don’t work in town but actually commute to London, which means long hours away and being rarely seen going about, excluding the shops. Children stay with childminders after school, a thriving industry in the area, and the streets are empty more often than not. That can get eerie in summer, when the sun is still high in the sky but there is not a soul to be seen around.

Most of the residents, those who are to be seen, at least, are retirees, seen early in the morning walking their dogs, or semi-retirees whose children come down from university for the holidays, or frazzled stay-at-home mums schlepping around two or three kids, quite close together in age. Few dads are seen around, and those are usually the grown-up skinhead type, complete with tattoos, piercings, and white scruffy wifebeaters; the kind that might make you consider crossing the street to avoid them if they are alone, but are complete life-size teddy bears when their kids are around.

Everyone has a car, and perhaps half of everyone have two. Bus service into town is expensive and not very reliable, and it’s really much more cost-effective to drive. Cars live in driveways, and garages are invariably converted to storage units. Of a weekend morning, people can be seen sorting them out, when they’re not working in their gardens. Assuming it doesn’t rain, of course, which for half of the year is a rather bold assumption to make.

It may not be Wisteria Lane, but you can bet your bottom banknote of choice that there is more drama than you can imagine brewing behind the lace-curtained bay windows…

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The One Who Got Away

1 November 2010 at 9:49 pm (Britain, Education, Places, Plinky Prompts, Travel, Work)
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What if I’d taken the other fork in the road?
Edinburgh’s Royal Mile during the Festival Fringe

I never understood why ‘the one who got away’ is implicitly understood to mean a person, and one of erstwhile romantic interest to boot. Do people, as a matter of course, log their conquests? More importantly, do people, as a matter of course, meet with rejection only once in their, hemhem, careers? If either of them is true (or, worse, both), then both my circle of friends and I have been a really sorry lot. But I digress.

To my mind, the only thing that can well and truly get away from one is an opportunity. It’s the one thing, that combination of time, place, and situation, that is entirely irreplaceable. The place and situation can be duplicated, but time waits for no one, and the person who comes across the same thing a year later is no longer the same person. The chance is well and truly gone.

In the summer of 1995, just before graduating university, I did a two-week stint of summer school in Lancaster University. Its English department is twinned with the respective department of Athens University, and the trip was an annual event. 1995 was its 17th year, and for all I know, the tradition remains unbroken.

It was my first time away from home, since I had missed the big five-day trip that marks the end of high school and I had never afforded to go on holiday without family since. Being unsupervised abroad was an intoxicating experience; the fact that we stayed on campus, way out of town and with few opportunities to be reckless, did nothing to dampen my enthusiasm.

I remember very little of the lectures; I blame it on the windowless amphitheatre and the growing sleep deprivation caused by the brief English summer nights. What I do remember is the places I went to and the things I did there. Wandering about Chester High Street, the quaintest I’ve seen, even with my current exposure. Promenading atop the Conwy Castle walls. Seeing Julius Caesar in Stratford, with Hugh Quarshie as Marcus Antonius. Sailing over Lake Windermere on a steamboat and enjoying high tea at the Old Dungeon Ghyll in Grasmere.

The opportunity I let fly through my fingers came during a day trip in Edinburgh. I had been very keen to see a bit of Scotland, and I wasn’t disappointed. Edinburgh is very much my kind of city; I thought, sitting on top of the city tour bus, that I could easily live there, if I got fed up with Athens, tiny as it is by comparison.

The shops I’m most likely to raid, whenever I am, are bookstores, and with my interest in languages, I’d naturally gravitate to some Gaelic resources. And there it was, on the door of a multi-lingual bookstore on the Royal Mile, an advertisment for ‘staff wanted’. At that moment, there was nothing I wanted more in the world than to walk in, get the job (with my four languages, I had no doubt I would), and stay there for good.

What stopped me? The fact that I had one more exam to take in order to get my degree. If I didn’t, six years of work would go down the drain. I’m ashamed to admit it, but leaving my mother alone weighed less with me as a deterrent than dropping out of university while the end was so close.

So back I went, convinced that I’d never be given such a chance again. I took the exam, and the hoops that our amateurish professor made us jump through is ranting matter in itself. I got my degree and continued in a sort of half-life of poverty, tedium, and growing frustration for another 12 years…

Of course I did get to move to the UK eventually, though Edinburgh is still far away and I’m nowhere near using my linguistic skills as much. But that’s a story for another entry.

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