Wild, wonderful tales in new book

AFTER a few months of silence on the blog, I’m pleased to tell you all that I have in fact been scribbling away and my latest travel memoir is now published.

Wake Me Up For The Elephants: Comic tales of a restless traveller, is a collection of eight adventure stories with the same humour and flavour of my best-selling Greek memoirs but with a bigger canvas this time.

Elephants strolling the grasslands of Kenya.

While I will continue to be inspired by Greece (and there’s one story from Greece in this new collection), and set my books there, I also wanted to entertain readers with stories from some of my other favourite locations: Africa, Australia, Fiji, Ireland, Scotland.

Jim and Marjory riding in Connemara, led by a lobster fisherman!

They are romantic, exotic locations based on real journeys and they introduce the reader to some eccentric and wild fellow travellers and to some hilarious and scary scenarios: dodging wild animals on safari, and one male ‘stalker’ in Mombasa, Kenya; dance torment in tropical Fiji; a supernatural mystery in the Australian bush; a beach gallop in Ireland led by a lobster fisherman; and a funny boating mash-up on gorgeous Paxos island, Greece, where the recent hit Greek drama series Maestro in Blue was filmed.

The harbour of Loggos, Paxos island, Greece.

The stories span the period from 1992 to 2006, with the narrative moving from Australia to Scotland (where I was born) to reflect my own huge move ‘home’ with my husband Jim and where we lived and worked for 10 years. And one story will include dear Wallace, our Jack Russell terrier, not long after he was born. In its way, this book is also a prequel to the Greek memoirs, revealing what unforgettable adventures and huge life changes I’d experienced even before the four-year odyssey to Greece kicked off in 2010, which I’ve written about at length in my four Greek memoirs.

A comical sign on Qamea island in tropical Fiji.

Some of the trips in this collection, including Kenya and Fiji, were inspired by media travel trips I’d undertaken, particularly as a feature writer on a Sydney Sunday newspaper. I travelled with groups of other Australian writers – usually outspoken, eccentric, game for anything – with hilarious outcomes. On the Kenyan trip, it had curiously been an all-women group, but a very disparate bunch of females, and one male ‘stalker’, who tagged along with unexpected results. The trip was high on adventure, with several safaris at wildlife parks, including the inimitable Masai Mara. There were stays in historic hotels like the famous Treetops, where Princess Elizabeth in the 1950s became Queen on the sudden death of her father George VI.

Fiji, a place where you feel you’re deliciously trapped in the old Hollywood musical South Pacific

In Fiji, with another group, I visited some exotic tiny islands in the Pacific and trekked to a remote village on a river, where the chief and elders had organised our ‘entertainment’, though it wasn’t quite what we expected and where we were given the infamous brew of kava. Although it’s not alcoholic, kava has various disturbing side-effects but is popular throughout the South Pacific. (Read my amusing extract of this scenario, below).

The settlement of Milovaig in the west of the Isle of Skye, where boats float in fields and waterfalls spin backwards.

However, this collection of stories is not all fun and frolics. In one of the stories from Scotland (Hysterics in the Heather), I take my mother, Mary, on a sentimental journey back to the wilder parts of our homeland, including the remote Outer Hebrides islands and while it has amusing shades of Thelma and Louise (with electric bagpipes!), it is also undercut with nostalgia. I grapple with the notion of where a restless traveller really belongs when the wandering, and the laughter, stops. In another story, I spend an unforgettable day with one of the last great (and very entertaining), lairds of Scotland, Ninian Brodie, at his ancestral home in Morayshire.


Best-selling author Peter Kerr (Snowball Oranges) has described Wake Me Up For The Elephants as “travel writing at its best”.


Extract from the chapter, Going Troppo in the South Pacific:

(In a traditional village on the Navua River on Fiji’s main island, our media group has been invited to meet villagers and take part in a meke (local song and dance), but not before we are offered a bowl of fiendish kava, with outlandish consequences.)

“Two young men fetched guitars and strummed tunes that seemed to be Fijian mixed with early western pop classics, which was strange and oddly unnerving. We were embarrassed at first, so the chief got up and elbowed some of the young men and women to partner us on the dance floor, which they did timidly, like teenagers at a school dance.


It was hot and airless in the hall and the kava had really kicked in now in weird ways. We started dancing around, improvising, while the locals did a peculiar version of sixties’ dance moves: the pony, the jerk, their grass skirts flailing, their chests sweating. My partner was young and eager and the frantic swish of his grass skirt at least provided something of a cooling breeze. But in no other way was this enjoyable.


Other villagers, at loose ends, piled into the back of the hall to watch and I realised finally that this crazy performance in a sleepy village, upriver, so far from the modern delights of Fijian towns, was probably fashioned for their entertainment entirely, rather than ours, but in a benign way, surely, not an Evelyn Waugh, hell-in-the jungle kind of way.


All the same, we were dying on the dance floor, apart from Cheryl, whose arms were flailing everywhere but whose legs, in her droopy wide trousers, were moving heavily, like a weightlifter’s. It was bizarre. And we all looked the same, dancing with arms possessed, but dragging our feet. It was as if kava made you ‘drunk’ from the legs up, and your head would likely be the last thing to shut down, unless you got lucky and just fell on the floor catatonic, and didn’t have to dance any more — or live, more likely. I’d never seen anything quite like it — and I don’t want to, ever again.


After some 15 minutes of this, while Cheryl’s arms were still jittering and angsty, Corinne, whose partner had finally taken refuge with a few other warriors at the back of the hall, was now beginning to buckle.


‘I’ve seen tipsy goannas look saner than we do,’ she groaned.


…. Through the madness I could see the chief was still smiling, totally oblivious to the state we were in. When will this dance torture end? I thought. But I kept going, coaxing my legs about the room, dripping flop sweat, and feeling queasy in the stomach. Corrine and Joe began to slow dance, which in this frenetic set-up seemed radical.” ….


(Extract from Wake Me Up For The Elephants: © Copyright of the author, Marjory McGinn)


To read the rest of the chapter, and the book, it’s available as an ebook on all Amazon sites (currently for £1.99) and the paperback will follow in a week or so.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0C2N788HD
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C2N788HD

Do let me know how you like the book and have fun reading it. And if you do, please consider putting a review on Amazon sites. It helps a book become more visible and is always appreciated by the author.

Thanks for stopping by.

For other books by Marjory McGinn visit her Amazon page: https://www.amazon.com/author/marjory-mcginn

Or visit my website: https://www.bigfatgreekodyssey.com

All photos in this blog are copyright of the author, Marjory McGinn.

© All rights reserved. All text and photographs copyright of the authors 2010-2023. No content/text or photographs may be copied from the blog without the prior written permission of the authors. This applies to all posts on the blog.

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Is a dream life in the sun the high road to happiness?

Caption here for Marjie and Jimmy and Wally

Marjory, Jim and Wallace the Jack Russell terrier in front of Koroni castle, Messinia

BEFORE Jim and I set off on our mid-life adventure to Greece in 2010, a friend commented on our plan with a yearning look in his eyes. “I can only wonder what it must be like to divest yourself of everything and take off into the wild blue yonder.”

As a successful professional with a lovely house and two young children, his comment was motivated mainly by a wish to be free of nine-to-five pressure for a while, nothing more complicated than that.

But many other people said very similar things as we moved closer to our departure date. One professional guy, stuck in a difficult job and with children to support, asked me rather sadly: “Where is our mid-life odyssey? When can we do what you’re doing?”

I felt for his predicament. “You can do it one day if you really want it badly enough” was all I could offer him. But it did become our kind of stock answer to these unexpected comments, because that statement had been true for us.

We had put in a huge amount of planning and time into the proposed odyssey, putting our personal possessions in storage, renting out our house in Scotland, as well as all the nagging issues involved in leaving the UK for a while. Our to-do list before we left was four A4 pages long. But not once did we doubt we were doing the right thing, even though Greece was moving into the first stages of its economic crisis.

Caption here for castle in Ochils

Castle Campbell in the spectacular Ochil hills above our former village in Scotland

We wanted it badly enough, but we didn’t seek out the odyssey because we hated our lives, or where we were living, which was in fact a very picturesque village outside Stirling. We just wanted to live for a while under a “wandering star”. And who doesn’t?

Sadly, the subtext to a lot of the comments we heard over and over again were that many other Brits were desperate for an overseas odyssey, or in some cases a permanent move abroad, because they were innately unhappy and they believed life would be happier if only they were some place else.

But is this true? Can your life be happier just because you change location, particularly to a warm sunny country like Greece, for example? I don’t think so. It will be different, for sure, but not necessarily happier, or better.

Caption for Koroni harbour here

The lovely harbour of Koroni where we spent the last year of our Greek odyssey 

caption for taverna here

A taverna by the water at Limeni Bay, the Mani. The casual Greek lifestyle has a massive pull for foreigners

Our years in Greece brought us in contact with a lot of British, American and other expatriates, who told us they came to live in Greece to ‘escape’ their old, humdrum lives. Many of them obviously thrived in the gorgeous climate with a better lifestyle than they had back home, particularly the Brits, as if they were permanently on holiday, and no-one should blame them for wanting easier lives and sun and sea.

Many confessed to being happier in their new location, and said it was the best move they had ever made. However, those who sought Greece for a particular reason rather than the expectation of being happier, were probably the most successful resettlers, especially those who managed to assimilate well.

The American artist and writer Pamela Jane Rogers, who has written a fascinating memoir Greekscapes: Journeys With An Artist, left America after the break-up of her marriage and ended up settling on Poros island. She has been living there for 26 years. Mostly, she came to Greece for its beauty and as an inspiration for her painting. She has built up a great reputation for her work worldwide and is thriving in Greece. www.pamelajanerogers.com

The Scottish crime writer Paul Johnson has lived in Greece for some years, which has been the inspiration for many of his novels. Many other writers and artists also find that Greece provides a sunny muse and have no intention of leaving, despite the crisis.

caption here for tsapi beach

Tsapi cove, Messinia. Who can resist the lure of enless sun and sea?

But a move to Greece is not always the answer to everything. Some British expats told us that although their lifestyle was easier, they weren’t as happy as they thought they’d be. The same problems that plagued them back home, plague them in Greece, as well as the fact that in Greece there is no financial safety net, a poorer health system, and their extended families are not around for support.

Many of those who escaped to Greece have ultimately returned home.  One British expat I interviewed in 2010 for a freelance story about Greece had gone there with her husband where they built their ‘dream’ home near Kalamata, only it turned out to be anything but. It was planned as a retirement home, but after a heartbreaking series of bungles with builders, bureaucracy and other disasters, they sold up and moved back the UK, and have no further plans to pursue a dream life abroad.

Wally on sunbed caption

Wallace our Jack Russell enjoying life as a Greek beach bum

Perhaps it shows that you can’t ramp up happiness just by changing location. It’s something deeper, more intrinsic. There’s a line in a poem by famous Greek poet Konstantinos Kavafis which sums it up. It loosely translates as: “You can change your skies but not your soul.”

To a great extent that’s true. The old life will follow you about wherever you go. A broken heart will be a broken heart wherever you are. A failure to relate with others, or to feel fulfilled on many levels, won’t change just because you go to Greece, or another sunny location.

The Greek/American travel writer Matt Barrett, who has an informative and popular Greek travel website www.greecetravel.com also had similar thoughts recently on his blog, written while on the island of Lesvos. In many ways he inspired me to write this piece.

Having lived for many years in Greece, he made this astute comment about those who want to leave their old life and move there: “The truth is that you only think you want to throw it all away and move to Greece because you are not taking the time to appreciate the things you have that you would absolutely miss if you did … If you are happy, with yourself then it does not matter if you are in Greece or Nebraska.”

The search for happiness is only part of it, of course. People are seeking different things when they go to Greece, and sometimes it’s not all that straightforward. It was one of the themes of my second travel memoir, Homer’s Where the Heart Is, after a Greek businessman had posed a question to me at a village celebration in the Mani. Apart from sun and sea, he asked, “what is it you (foreigners) seek to find in our country that you cannot find in your own?”

It’s not an easy question to answer and it is one of the things I thought about a great deal while in Greece, the illusive thing we are seeking there, and I am not sure I’ve really found it yet. Or that it can be found.

We went to the southern Peloponnese for a year and ended up staying for four. Although we never went seeking greater happiness and contentment I think we were unintentionally happier overall, despite the fact that not all our experiences were positive. We didn’t always get things right. We had tough times in the crisis, like everyone. We found it hard adjusting to another culture, and in our case a very traditional rural culture in the hillside village of Megali Mantineia. We found it tough renting abroad, without all the comforts and security we take for granted in Britain.

But in the end, we went without any illusions or expectations and we were constantly surprised and delighted by everything we found, helped in no small part by the wonderful Greeks we met (and occasionally expats, too), who shared their lives and their stories. Because we never sought happiness in a different location, I believe we found it and that may be the only thing I learnt after four years in Greece.

The place really isn’t the thing. It doesn’t set the agenda I believe.

The expat I mentioned earlier who built her dream home near Kalamata later told me that when she returned to the UK she realised perhaps for the first time what positive things the country had to offer her. So her story really did have a happy ending but not in the way she expected.

Of course, I’m not saying, don’t go abroad to search for the dream life, or have a long adventure – especially in warm and welcoming Greece, and even though it is still in crisis. But don’t go expecting it will change your life forever. As Kavafis indicated, it may only change your ‘sky’ and nothing more – unless that’s really all you want.

Travel Memoirs

TO read more about living in Greece during the crisis in the southern Peloponnese, read my travel memoirs, Things Can Only Get Feta, Homer’s Where The Heart Is and A Scorpion in the Lemon Tree.

The books are available on all Amazon’s international sites, Barnes and Noble and also on the Book Depository www.bookdepository.com (with free overseas postage). On the website  www.bigfatgreekodyssey.com you will also find a books page with other information about the books.

New Book

Marjory has just published a debut novel, set in southern Greece, called A Saint For The Summer. This is a contemporary tale with a narrative thread back to the Second World War, a “tale of heroism, faith and love” described by a recent reviewer as “entertaining, enthralling”. For more information, see the books page link, above.

The book is available on all Amazon sites.

A Saint For The Summer 

If you have liked my books please think of adding a small review on Amazon sites which is always very welcome. Thanks for calling by. x

You can also find me on Twitter @fatgreekodyssey

And my books page on Facebook www.facebook.com/ThingsCanOnlyGetFeta

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© All rights reserved. All text and photographs copyright of the authors 2010 to 2018. No content/text or photographs may be copied from the blog without the prior written permission of the authors. This applies to all posts on the blog

 



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