ODDS AND ENDS

As we gird up our loins to end our hols, to re-engage, for some, with our careers and chosen professions, to prepare our children for school and to stagger through the complexities of Brexit and the idiosyncrasies of Donald Trump and Kim Jong-Un, we remember fleeting moments of August pleasure and oddity.

We have been lazing in our sun-kissed summer-house on the Aegean island of Samos. On 27 August the Orthodox world celebrates half-legendary St (Agia) Fanourios, a favourite saint credited with finding lost articles, or even finding a job for someone out-of-work. As Greeks are forever losing their keys, their mobiles not to mention their husbands or their minds, the help of this useful saint is frequently invoked by the faithful.

St Fanourios

 We duly took a taxi up to the chapel of St Fanourios tucked away in the hills overlooking Karlovasi, thronged with the devout. My lovely wife lit a candle and kissed the icon while a young woman kindly gave us Fanourios cake, a tasty speciality that day. The chapel service was being taken by our neighbour, priest Papa Christou, with whom we often have a convivial drink, a fashionable fellow in his youth. The chatty Samiot taxi-driver was called Polycrates, after the dynamic tyrant of Samos who persecuted Pythagoras here in the 6^th century BC. Such are the ancient connections!

Talking about losing one’s mind made me think of the substantial number of mentally deranged people wandering about in Greece, tended by their families but not getting any professional care. A middle-aged neighbour lady in Athens, living with her sister, lurks around accusing any male she encounters of communing with the Devil and plotting her doom. She is probably harmless but rather alarming. Another sad 82-year-old crone here in Samos is stricken with Alzheimer’s and is cared for by her niece. About twice a day she goes out on a flower collecting expedition not by careful pruning but by ripping up roots. The prized blooms of a local lawyer, the local taverna and our local priest have fallen to her depredations to their justified indignation. She made a bee-line for our glorious show of forget-me-nots 2 days ago but we blocked her way – to be rewarded with a shrill stream of insult and blue language. She did not know what she was doing or saying but such encounters may become more common as the health systems of the world struggle to cope with an ageing population beset by chronic disability and helplessness.

Our prized Forget-me-nots

The return to school may be more than usually piquant this term as 4 highly distinguished schools, Eton, Winchester, Radley and Charterhouse so far, seem to be caught up in a series of exam “leaks” involving senior staff which presumably will lead to annulment and disqualifications. So crucial are good exam grades for acceptance to the “best” universities that probably quite a lot hinges on the outcome of current investigations. This obsession with exam grades must distract from a more relaxed approach to the academic subject studied, but that is a longer story. I might have expected malpractice at Bash Street School but not at the flower of The Headmasters’ Conference.

I was rather cheered to read that the EU negotiators were “flabbergasted” when the UK delegation filleted and rejected the EU stance on the Brexit divorce bill. Barnier, Juncker and Verhofstadt will be well advised to study their statutes – the legal basis for any divorce bill is flimsy. For months the EU has been sneering at the UK and reminding us of the need to keep by the rules. Now the tables have been neatly turned and B, J and V have been in the old phrase “hoist with their own petard”. The sooner we see the backs of B, J and V the better!

SMD

31.08.17

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2017