I have embarked on a 2-month holiday to glorious
Greece, where the sun shines reliably and my UK obsession with Brexit can be at
least tempered if not entirely eliminated. Greece has her own general election
on 7 July likely to bring the curtain down on the 4-year leftie SYRIZA
experiment and restore a conservative government under New Democracy leader
Kyriakos (“Koulis” to his enemies) Mitsotakis. He is the relatively
inexperienced champion of the Mitsotakis/Bakoyannis dynasty – a late father,
Konstantinos, Prime Minister, a sister, Dora, ex-Foreign Minister, a nephew,
Costas, newly Mayor of Athens. One can only hope the bad old days of serial
corruption do not return to blight Greece’s slow recovery……….the long-suffering
Greeks deserve much better.
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| The senior Mitsotakis clan, the late Konstantinos, Kyriakos and Dora |
We flew to Greece by Swiss via Zurich.
Swiss is the successor to Swissair which stumbled at the financial
crisis and is now a subsidiary of Lufthansa. This is the third time we have
used them and our pampered business class journey was excellent and
comfortable. It is always striking to me how democratically inclusive European
travel is, Brits mixing easily with Germans, French, Swiss, Greeks plus many
Americans, Australians and Arabs. We are part of this – but the Swiss, closer
cousins than we are to the French and Germans, prosper happily outside the
institutions of the EC, as we can too.
Monday was one of the many religious holidays
(Pentecost) in Greece, this time celebrating The Holy Spirit. Oddly, only
intellectually stretching businesses are closed, banks, lawyers, clinics and so
on while supermarkets and “ordinary” shops were open. Anyway, the streets were
deserted as most citizens, both spiritual and prosaic, made a bee-line for the
beach. Sensible fellows!
One of the joys of holidaying is that you read
more than usual. Lately I have been buying popular best sellers, thrillers and
so on, to soften the austerity of my usual fare, histories and biographies. In
anticipation of Greece, I have almost finished erudite Stephen Fry’s Mythos,
a sprightly canter through Greek myth. I have taken to reading Georges
Simenon’s Maigret stories, a vast oeuvre but individually
mercifully short, perfect for my feeble attention-span. To edify and instruct,
I will read 12 Rules for Life by the Canadian savant Jordan Petersen,
who seems to have many admirers. I doubt if I will be an easy convert: I recall
trying to read William Law’s A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life
about 55 years ago and my failure to answer the Call is evident to all my
friends! After all this, I will read Max Hastings’ tome Vietnam, my sort
of book, but inevitably a melancholy and cautionary tale – I hope Donald Trump
reads it in case intervention in Iran or Syria tempts him.
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| The prolific Belgian Georges Simenon |
As I write, we are having a violent
thunder-storm, with intense rain and hail-stones This is not the stereo-typical
June day in Athens and I feel sorry for the swim-suit clad tourists who will be
bothered and bewildered and have to console themselves with ouzo and
hastily-cooked kebabs by the chilly coast. I am sure it will improve soon. I
have my favourite sea-side haunts too and I hope to get to matchless Delphi as
well as a visit to our cherished island of Samos.
Tonight, my thoughts will be on the Tory
leadership race and the elimination process. I do hope Rory Stewart falls by
the wayside soon. He no doubt has many merits but he is a Remainer through and
through and his political future, if he has one, is in a post-Brexit UK,
probably led by Boris Johnson. Enough said.
SMD
18.06.19
Text Copyright © Sidney Donald
2019
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