UNORTHODOX EASTER

I and my Greek-born wife Betty have been in Athens many times for Orthodox Easter but we have never been on the Aegean island of Samos for the great festival. This year we thought we would take our summer trip to Samos early and on the Monday before Easter we embarked on the venerable (1974 vintage) Ro-Ro car ferry from Piraeus bound for Karlovasi in Samos. The previous ferry (a 1968 vintage converted Japanese freighter) had finally been pensioned off and although the European Express is also elderly and not very smart, it got us there in the scheduled 12 hours as we lazed in our cabin. The crew were unsurprisingly a little distant, but so would we all be if we had not been properly paid for 8 months and only kept going by occasional employer subventions in the dire ongoing Greek/EU crisis.

The ferry was packed with passengers as in Greece many return to their family birthplace at Easter like so many instinct-driven salmon – the Samiot diaspora was returning to its ancestral home, a scene repeated throughout rural Greece. Our Karlovasi friends gave us a warm welcome (chicken soup at 2am and an impeccably tidy house) and we awaited the onset of Easter. Like all of Europe religious observance is fitful in Greece but the priesthood maintains the unaltered Easter Liturgy, starting on Monday, chanting the words rather monotonously from the Psalms and the Gospels as did the Byzantines.  Indeed on Easter Sunday itself they sing the widely used Liturgy of St John Chrysostom from the 5^th Century.

Most Greeks at least observe Easter to some degree – not eating meat during Great Week, but not actually fasting even on Good Friday. A number pop into their local church and light a candle, kissing the icons and admiring the flower-bedecked biers awaiting the body of Christ. On Good Friday itself the atmosphere is sorrowful with a lone church bell tolling dolefully all day. Much more impressive is the Good Friday Epitaphion, the funeral procession of Christ; in Karlovasi 4 churches carried their finely decorated biers through the streets, led by the local brass band playing solemn music and followed by clergy in their spectacular robes, icons, flags and crosses much in evidence. About 500 locals followed the biers slowly in the dark and the proceedings end with a short service at the war memorial. All generations partake in this ceremony but quite a few resolutely ignore it.

On Easter Saturday the observant fast until midnight but I confess to eating delicious octopus and squid and drinking cold local white wine, but then I am beyond redemption – and it was our 45^th wedding anniversary too! The Easter Saturday service used to be well organised, but organisation is not Greece’s strongest suit these days. What should happen is that the populace assemble quietly in the dark in front of a church – we were at the Panayia Cathedral – carrying decorative unlit candles with wind covers. At midnight the priest carries out a lone candle and cries “Christos Anesti” (Christ is Risen): he passes on the supposedly “divine” light to all the assembled who light their candles, making a suddenly delightful illuminated picture, and it is good luck to take the candle back to their houses unextinguished. For days the Paschal Greeting is repeated “Christos Anesti” answered with “Alithos Anesti” (Surely He has Risen).

Sadly in Karlovasi, the script went agley: various members of the congregation emerged well before midnight with lighted candles and passed the light around. A cacophony of fireworks broke out prematurely so that when the priest did eventually appear his words were drowned by bangers, fizzers and rockets. The Greeks don’t really do dignity. Another tradition perhaps fading is the breaking of the fast after midnight by eating mayiritsa, a nourishing soup made of chopped lamb’s lungs and “lights” on a rice base. Many ladies dislike handling these offally ingredients and we had to make do with a beef and rice soup, perfectly palatable but not quite the real thing.

Easter Sunday is given up to feasting. Provisions have been stocked up and kebabs prepared but left untouched all week. Red-coloured eggs are boiled. With our ever-kind and energetic neighbours Theofilaktos and Christina, we had organised a barbecue, attended by 11, on tables set out on the Painted Courtyard (which I had written about on the Blog on 5.11.13). The Courtyard was looking well – pansies tumbling from hanging baskets, the red blooms of dipladenia, wild strawberries’ first ripening, fragrant hybrid lemon-and-thyme, Busy Lizzies in profusion, winter basil and a whole selection of cottage garden comestibles – potatoes, chili, lettuce, rocket and tomatoes all adding to last year’s goodies. 

The BBQ was stoked up with wood for its aroma and charcoal for heat and slowly the meat revolved on the spit, lamb, goat and pork, to be supplemented by piping hot garnished potatoes and grilled peppers. No guest came empty-handed – George with home-brewed wine and bottles of beer, Michaelis and Maya brought goat and chocolate cake, not to mention their splendid wines, but all took along something. We started at 12noon and continued convivially and tastily until 1am with many a toast, joke and uncontroversial discussion. The party was a great success.

I wish I could say that it all ended happily, but it was not to be. We were tidying up and leaving, when my lovely dynamic Betty returned to the Courtyard to say her final thank-yous to Theo and Christina. She slipped on the surface, earlier rain-watered, and could not get up. We called an ambulance and eventually at 2am she was driven the 25 miles or so to the hospital at Vathi. She had cracked a bone above her knee. Her fall was exactly on the spot where an Evil Eye was painted on the floor, supposedly to ward off evil spirits, but it had failed on this occasion. I am glad to report that yesterday Betty had an op to mend her leg and all seems to have gone well, and we hope she will be home next week: but she may not be walking properly for at least a month. Such undeserved bad luck!

SMD

25.04.14

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2014

COMEDY DOUBLE ACTS: Celebrities of Stage and Screen (8)

[This is the eighth in an occasional series describing British actors and performers who achieved fame in the theatre or in the movies.]

There was a long tradition in British music hall and American vaudeville of the double act, of two artistes of similar type but of uneven attainments sparking comedy from this imbalance. This translated well into the cinema and in my view the best of all double acts came from America (though Stan was English-born) with Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. Their hilarious escapades and close relationship lifted and warmed the hearts of several generations.

Laurel and Hardy

America kept up the tradition on TV with delightful cigar-smoking George Burns and Gracie Allen, forever scatter-brained. In the movies, the double act had mixed success. Bob Hope and Bing Crosby were certainly popular but Crosby’s self-admiring persona was not always attractive to me. Slapstick Bud Abbott and Lou Costello made me laugh immoderately as a child (aged 7, I even obtained Lou’s autograph when he hosted a children’s party in honour of his young daughter in a Bournemouth hotel!) but Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis were implausible buddies and the balance there was never quite right.

But this series is supposed to be about British artistes. The music hall tradition was powerful and no less than 3 double acts, Flanagan and Allen, Naughton and Gold and Nervo and Knox made up the original rib-tickling Crazy Gang, fixtures at the Victoria Palace theatre for about 30 years from 1931. The Northern comedians Jimmy Jewel and Ben Warriss trod the boards successfully after WW2 but the 1960s ushered in an edgier, more aggressive type of comedy, epitomised by Peter Cook and Dudley Moore (“Pete ‘n’ Dud”) philosophising satirically over a pint of bitter or sat on a park bench.

The comedy duo that became a British national institution was Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise, a seasoned music hall act which so captivated the BBC TV audience that their Christmas TV Special became an unmissable event. Bespeckled Morecambe’s tomfoolery carried the act as Wise was little more than an amiable feed. Their guests, including André Previn, Glenda Jackson and Shirley Bassey much enlivened proceedings.

Morecambe and Wise

Others tried to emulate their success but a discreet veil is needed to cover the rather dire efforts of Mike and Bernie Winters, Cannon and Ball and Little and Large. A Scots audience much enjoyed the impenetrable Glasgow patois of Francie and Josie played by Jack Milroy and Rikki Fulton.

In my view, even Morecambe and Wise were eclipsed by The Two Ronnies, Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett, whose TV show ran from 1971 to 1987. They were both the liveliest of performers but their greatest strength was in their verbal felicity and originality. I still laugh at the sketches where Barker asks Corbett for Fork Handles (misunderstood, the first of many, as “Four Candles”) at the hardware store and then the Mastermind spoof where Corbett, with hilarious inappropriateness, answers the previous question in the famous quiz. Ronnie Barker was also a script-writer and many gems emanated from him.

(see     
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cz2-ukrd2VQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0C59pI_ypQ )

Ronnie Corbett and Ronnie Barker

The ladies contributed raucously to this genre with Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders, although both now do their own thing. Mel Smith and Griff Rhys-Jones (Alias Smith and Jones) were often in good form, raising many a  belly-laugh. There are now new kids on the bloc like Baddiel and Skinner and Reeves and Mortimer but these days I see so little UK TV I am not qualified to pass a judgment.

While these leading British artistes gave much pleasure, I still believe the first prize belongs to Stan and Ollie. Who can forget the pair trying to deliver a piano up a mountainous set of steps, or selling Christmas trees and getting drawn into manic escalating hostilities with unfriendly householder James Finlayson? Their fun had global appeal and their gentle personalities are best illustrated by their charming song-and-dance performance of The Trail of the Lonesome Pine in Way out West in 1937, never to be surpassed.

SMD

16.04,14

Text Copyright Sidney Donald 2014

HARRODS and SELFRIDGES: London's Finest (4)

Visitors to London will, out of deference to their parents, their schoolteachers or a maiden aunt, dutifully gaze upon the glories of the National Gallery, admire the Mallard Ducks at St James’s Park or catch that brittle Coward revival in Theatreland. Left to their own devices however, there is only one thing on their minds – ecstatic retail therapy in the grand department stores, spend, spend and spend again – with huge temples to Mammon Harrods and Selfridges there to fulfil their wildest dreams and ignite their plastic cards. Harrods, with 1m sq ft of retail space is the largest store in Europe and Selfridges, though half the size, is still the second largest store in the UK and third in Europe. Both have their supporters and detractors but in most people’s view both are splendid emporia catering to every whim of the Consumers, kings and queens of the modern economy.

Harrods Store in Knightsbridge

With its wonderful dome and opulent red terra-cotta façade, the 5 acres and 7 floors of Harrods totally dominates Brompton Road; a little off-centre but who cares? The devotees enter to the sight of shirts, ties and suits of impeccable quality, stumble into the fragrant Food Hall with joints of beef, lamb and pork hanging invitingly among the pheasant and grouse, huge rounds of cheese from every corner of the world, glide up escalators to dozens of (actually 330) other departments including couture and every kind of fashion, books, furniture, antiques, electricals, household goods – even still animal furs, but no longer live pets. There is a Harrods Bank, an estate agency, travel bureau, all manner of restaurants and convenient eateries catering for a clientele which expects, and is willing to pay for, the best.

Harrods is a colossally successful retail operation and on a busy day an astonishing 300,000 people will enter its portals. The business was founded as a grocer and haberdasher by Charles Henry Harrod in 1824, flitting from Southwark to Clerkenwell to Stepney before arriving in Brompton in 1851. It was expanded by the founder’s son Charles Digby Harrod and employed 100 people in 1880 but burnt down in 1883. Digby Harrod persisted, the business floated on the stock market in 1898 and the present spectacular building was erected by architect Charles William Stephens between 1894 and 1905. The upper classes flocked in, enjoying the store’s famed service levels.

Harrods bought up many other department stores but eventually was taken over by the elder Hugh Fraser in 1959 who had built up a retail empire in Scotland and the North of England. His son, Sir Hugh Fraser managed Harrods well but he was afflicted by the gambling bug, a high roller regularly losing £250,000 a night at the roulette tables of the Clermont or Les Ambassadeurs casinos. Fraser had to raise money personally and was courted by mega-mogul Tiny Rowlands of Lonrho (once described by Edward Heath as “the unacceptable face of capitalism”) who eventually made a failed hostile bid and in 1985 Harrods fell amid much acrimony to the Egyptian Al-Fayed brothers for £615m probably secretly financed by the wealth of the Emirates princely families.

The leading brother Mohammed Al-Fayed was a colourful character once working for the Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, marrying his sister, much involved in Middle Eastern construction companies and with Lonrho. He was nonetheless a brilliant retailer and showman, upgrading and re-invigorating Harrods at great expense. He had a megalomaniac streak, posing as a new Pharaoh.

The Golden Pharaoh at Harrods

Mohammed Al-Fayed

 

The tragic 1997 death in a Paris motor accident of Princess Diana and Mohammed’s son Dodi Al-Fayed seems to have unbalanced Mohammed. He stated that Dodi had been assassinated in a plot dreamt up by Prince Philip and MI6, contrary to all the evidence. He did all he could to belittle the monarchy and English politicians; destroying Harrods Royal Warrants, trapping two MPs in the cash-for-questions imbroglio and supporting Scottish independence, after much beautifying his Highland estate. Harrods itself was probably not much effected but Al-Fayed’s paranoia, long reinforced by British refusal to grant him a passport, was an unhappy factor. Aged 80 in 2010, Al-Fayed sold Harrods well for £1.5bn to the sovereign wealth fund of Qatar, the ultimate “trophy” acquisition. 

Harrods remains one of the glittering glories of London

--------------------------------------

Selfridges and Co at 400 Oxford Street has slightly more recent origins. It was established by the American entrepreneur Gordon Selfridge, who had worked at what became the department store Marshall Field and who had married into the rich Buckingham family of Chicago in 1890. On a holiday to London, Selfridge noted the relative lack of decent department stores in central London and invested £400k of his own money in building a store in the then unfashionable West end of Oxford Street. It followed US practice in being steel framed and he used the eminent Chicago architect Daniel Burnham. In 1909 Selfridge opened his palace.

Selfridges, Oxford Street

It was an immediate success and Selfridge mounted one of his typical exhibitions - Louis Bleriot’s plane which had just flown across the Channel. Selfridge wanted shopping to be fun, an experience in itself. He had coined the phrase “The customer is always right” and insisted on high service standards. The life and loves of Gordon Selfridge are currently enthralling TV audiences in the series Mr Selfridge as he lost his wife in the 1918 flu pandemic and had many later amours. He was a big spender and gambler and fatally did not curb these habits in the Depression. The extravagant marble clock over the entrance of the store dates from 1931 and he was deposed from the board in 1941, dying quite poor in 1949. The store was eventually bought by Sears Holdings, the vehicle for property ace Charles Clore, and is now owned by the mogul Galen Weston of the immensely rich Canadian Weston bakery family.

The Clock at Selfridges

Gordon Selfridge in 1910

                                                             

Selfridges is always a pleasure to enter, its prominent perfumery counters evoking the aromas of the East. I enjoy the salt beef bar on the ground floor while my dear wife revels in the enormous shoe department. Selfridges' spectacular window displays, especially at Christmas, are legendary. It has all anyone would ever want and its yellow carrier-bags are a contemporary symbol of the good life.

Both Harrods and Selfridges deliver huge satisfaction to visitors to London. It would be a pity if some visitors actually found them the principal attractions of the place, but many of us live on the shallow surface of existence and must take our pleasures when and where we can.

SMD

11.04.14

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2014