Going Greek

New Wife sent me this pic, suggesting that it might make a nice break from my usual laptop wallpaper fare of gloomy Paris streets and snowbound European countrysides:

It’s lovely, and it shows a part of the world — the Greek coast or Greek Islands — that I’ve never visited before (I know, I know).  One day, though… and she wants to go (back) very badly indeed (yeah, she’s been there, pout pout).

(cue Greek music)

What gets me is not so much the scenery as what the table evokes in me, which is:  Greek food.

I love it.  One of my favorite restaurants in the world used to be the Greek-Cypriot Kolossi Grill in London (now permanently closed because Covid, apparently grr grrr grrrr), because

Greek food + Greek wine + shouting Greek waiters + Greek atmosphere = Kim In Heaven

There’s not a single Greek dish I don’t enjoy (unless it’s crap like octopus etc. which I won’t eat in any language).  Spicy lamb, Greek salata and souvlakia… my mouth waters as I write the words.  On one of my trips Over There, I found a Greek gyro stand just off Shaftesbury Avenue and ate there four times in a single week.

And let’s hear it for retsina — or, as most non-Greeks cruelly call it, Lysol.  I can’t drink it unless I’m eating Greek food, but as an accompaniment thereof I won’t drink anything else.

Back when I lived in the Chicago area, I had the real pleasure of meeting up with one of my old South African friends, a Greek named (not George but) Paris, and his wife Debbie, who had all just emigrated from South Africa and taken a job in Chicago.  Of course, he wanted to know about things like Greek food stores and restaurants, so I pointed him at those and suggested we try out the nearest Greek restaurant from our houses (and not one of the ones in Greek Town Chicago).

Anyway, we walked in and Paris did the Greek greeting thing with the owner (thereby ensuring that we’d get the good Greek food and not the shit they pass off on non-Greeks — yeah, it happens).  When we sat down, Paris took away my menu and said, “Let me do the ordering” and I acquiesced with pleasure.  We ate Greek style, i.e with huge plates of food in the middle of the table, from which each diner helped themselves according to preference.  I of course had something from every damn plate, and Debbie  said, “Kim, are you sure you have no Greek blood in you?  Because there’s stuff here that I don’t even eat.”  I would have answered except my mouth was full.  And yes, there was retsina, gallons of the stuff;  and at the end of the evening, Paris wouldn’t let me pay for anything because, as he put it, “It’s such a pleasure to see a non-Greek enjoy Greek food as much as you do.”  I would have replied except I was lying on my back, groaning from Teh Gluttony.

Good times, good times.

Where was I?  Oh yes, the Greek thing.

As I said, Greece is the one place in Europe I haven’t been to — no reason, I just never got there for some reason — and I have to admit that I am a little intimidated by the language barrier.  I’m not that way anywhere else in Western Europe because of my French and German, and even in Italy and Portugal I can get by, at least to the point of understanding street signs and menus. But Greek…?  The different-looking alphabet means I’m clueless, and whereas I usually just grab a phrase book and learn a few things in the native lingo before I go somewhere, places that don’t use the Western alphabet are ummm more problematic.  (One of my Greek buddies wickedly suggested that my German would get me around quite well in Athens or the Islands, but I wasn’t born yesterday.)

Not that it matters much.  If I somehow got the opportunity to go to Hellas, I’d be there in a shot.  I can deal with the language problem when I get there.

After all:  how bad could things get?

Revisited

Ask me again why I love Edinburgh…

Okay, here’s the skinny.  As pretty as that picture may be, Edinburgh is not the place to visit in winter.  It’s witch’s tit cold, a kind of damp, raw cold that seems to defeat even Chicago-strength coats and gloves — ask me how I know this — and it turns any kind of pedestrian touring of its gorgeous streets into a series of short dashes between oases of relative warmth, these being shops and pubs (not that the latter is a terrible option).

That’s the physical part of it.  More depressing is the gloom — daytime in winter is technically six hours long — about 9am to 3pm, but “daytime” in wintry Edinburgh seldom involves “daylight” (as seen from my hotel room at about midday):

…and this largely explains why Scots are, by and large, the gloomiest people on the planet and why Scotland’s largest export is not whisky but people.

All that said, I don’t know any Americans who don’t love the place.  It ranks in the Son&Heir’s (and Daughter’s, and her mother’s) top three favorite cities in the world — and they’ve been to many — and it’s certainly in both my and New Wife’s top five, although we prefer summer or fall because Olde Pharttes.  Ditto Doc Russia and his New Wife, who were there in early November last, and who both want to go back, and soon.

With one regrettable fracas excepted (mine), we’ve all found the people to be as friendly as can be.  I remember Connie once asking for directions, prefacing her question with “I feel like such an idiot asking for help in my favorite city in the world [it was], but…” only to be met with a huge smile, a “Dinnawurry, lassie”, followed by a string of directions that we couldn’t understand at all.  Fortunately, there was a lot of arm-waving and pointing, so we got the gist.

I would go back there tomorrow, and it’s January, FFS.  And for the cold, there’s porridge (“parrutch”) and single malt.  Every man should.

Current Wallpaper

It’s another of the Lingmoor Fell series, and I find it extremely restful — on those rare occasions when all the laptop’s windows are closed and I can actually see it.  One day I’m going to go there…

Right-click to embiggen etc.

Relative Pricing

As Loyal Readers all know, New Wife is currently back in the Former Racist Republic to dote over the latest grandson.  While there, of course, she has been shopping up a storm — which I don’t mind because of the exchange rate (R1.00 ZAR = US$0.05).

And as long as she spends it on food, I don’t care.  Here, for example is what she’d pay for pigs-in-a-blanket at the supermarket:

For the mathematically-challenged, that works out to thirty of those freshly-baked puppies for US$5.

When people talk about the evils of inflation, let me remind everyone that when I left the Racist Republic in 1986, the exchange rate was about 50 cents (SA) to the dollar (US).  That’s what an annual “official” inflation rate of ~15% will do to your currency over thirty-odd years.

Anyway, after getting several pics of that nature, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll head over to Dunkin Donuts.  That’ll show her.

Proper Attire

Oh FFS, this just takes the cake:

British Airways bosses have apologized for telling cabin crew members what bras to wear under new ‘transparent’ uniforms which led to comments from passengers.
The see-through blouses were issued as part of a new uniform, unveiled earlier this year, designed to ‘take the airline into the next chapter’ and for a non-binary crew.
Last year BA relaxed the rules around its strict uniform policy and went gender-neutral to allow male pilots and crew to wear make-up and carry handbags.

Lemme just deal with the low-hanging fruit first.

  • Companies have every right to create a “uniform” policy, and to dictate what does and does not constitute “proper” clothing under that policy
  • the corollary is that if the uniform consists of “transparent” clothing, they also have the right to set policy for “proper” undergarments
  • but if they do specify transparent clothing, they deserve everything that comes to them.

Now for the ugly stuff.

I’m sick and fucking tired of companies feeling that they have to apologize to their employees for bullshit like this.  Were the topic that of terrible salaries, foul working conditions and in short things that deserve corporate groveling, okay;  but for causing hurt feeewings?  Screw that.

But in to the topic at hand.

Nothing would make me question the capabilities of an airline’s crew faster than the whole thing turning into some kind of costume party, with the “men” wearing clown makeup and the “women” wearing no bra under a transparent blouse (although at first glance the latter wouldn’t seem too bad, please consider that the average age of trolley-dollies now appears to be 50, and all seem to have been recruited from branches of the Ugly Tree).

And frankly, I’m not sure I want to see any of the flight crew wearing transparent clothing, given that said crew will likely include girlymen and butchygirls, all of indeterminate gender.

I don’t know why I bother fulminating about this stuff anymore, considering that my chances of flying at all are minuscule, and on any British airline even less than that.

I’d give this one a try, though.

Travel Tip

Here’s a little something I picked up on my travels:

Some hotels have some curious ideas about “double beds” — in fact, they’re often just two single beds shoved together, each with a single-sized duvet.  This is fine, unless you and your partner are of the “cuddling” kind.  Also, the duvets are often “European” single-size (i.e. totally inadequate, especially for us fat-ass Murkins).

What I always do now, after my first such experience, is pack a queen-sized duvet cover and about eight safety pins.  Then, if I find the sleeping arrangements as above, I simply pin the two duvets together to make a larger one, and stuff it into the queen duvet cover with the pin mechanism facing up.  Problem solved.

Side note:  Safety pins are an essential travel item anyway. Europeans do not know the concept of “safety pins” (at least, they didn’t in Vienna), and trying to explain what a safety pin is and how it works is in your fractured attempt at a furrin language will just lead to puzzled looks.  Pack your own.