Back in Greece & barking mad to travel with a Jack Russell!

Posted on April 27, 2014 by Marjory

The coastal town of Koroni nestling under the mighty walls of its 12th century castle

WELL that’s us back in Greece for another adventure, but more of an Odyssey-Lite compared with last time. We went by car again so we could accommodate the great travel mutt Wallace and, as before, it created scenes of joy and angst. The joy was seeing how well he behaved in a car packed to the gunwales and how he slept the whole way and only barked at motorway toll collectors. We are in accord on this one.

Wallace the Jack Russell scaling the peaks of travel in Switzerland

The angst came in the form of a check-in at an Italian hotel (part of a big chain) that claimed to “take dogs, of course!” We got told off in the foyer by the manager when Wallace did a round of screamy barking at two teenagers who were shouting and skittering about, making Wallace nervous. They were making me nervous as well. One thing I’ve discovered about Wallace over the years is that he’s really quite conventional for a fizzy Jack Russell and, apart from people shouting and screaming, he doesn’t like folk wearing outlandish clothes: funny big hats, eye-watering colours, and so forth. I think most of all he barked because he didn’t like the hotel manager’s outfit: apple green trousers; loafers, no socks; a blueberry-coloured jacket. And I have to agree! What was this? Horticultural couture? But all went well really, most especially when we quit the establishment, our foreheads beading with sweat and Wallace muzzled up this time, and looking like a detained psychopath.

The pretty town of Bellagio on Lake Como

On the trip, we had our first ever satnav and discovered that telling it to find the quickest route anywhere isn’t always a good idea. On our way to a hotel above the shores of Lake Como, the satnav arrow pointed straight across the lake at one stage. What? Did it think we had an amphibious vehicle?

“What’s it trying to tell us here,” said Jim plaintively as we followed the lakeside road, getting closer to the predicted lake plunge. All was revealed, however, when we came to a dead end at a small ferry terminal where it was explained by a grumpy ticket seller that this was the quickest way to the hotel, down the wrong side of the lake and across on the ferry to the town of Bellagio on the other side, where the hotel is situated. How were we to know? But if we’d been much later we’d have missed the last ferry. That wouldn’t have been quick!

The Pappas at the church of the Panayia Eleistria in Koroni handing out the ‘holy light’ on Easter Saturday

Jim guarding his flames after the spectacular climax of Greek Easter

Greek drama

Lovely to be back in Greece in spring, and at Easter. We managed three swims in the first week and almost an Easter service every night of Holy Week, and enjoyed the high drama of Great Saturday, outside the church as people held their candles with the “Holy Light” first brought out by the Pappas at midnight and shared to the congregation from there. Bells tolled and fireworks boomed on the periphery and everyone went home, well resurrected, but with their ears ringing.

Koroni has a nice feel, with its harbour and narrow streets winding up to the castle on the top, which was once a stronghold of the Venetians. It’s easy to see why various imperial groups wanted to control it because the castle was almost impregnable and the town out of sight from the sea, cuddled by a high, wooded headland.

The town reaches up to the castle walls which encloses a monastery at the top with superb views on all sides

A tiny chapel at the monastery of Timios Prodromos with stunning views down to Zaga beach

The castle has been razed now apart from its massive walls but inside is the delightful leafy monastery of the Timios Prodromos, which has only six nuns left. It’s a peaceful, dreamy spot, and the small shop near the entrance has a phenomenal range of items hand-made by these industrious nuns.

It’s one of those monasteries that posts a list of what you can’t do, or wear, inside the monastery church. No trousers for women, which ruled out a church visit for me, though there is still plenty to see here with a fragrant garden with fruit trees and flowers. There are various nooks here to wonder around and touches of drama amid the foliage. A tiny courtyard had a stone entrance with a carved lintel saying: Orthdoxia i Thanatos Orthodoxy or Death. There is also the tiny Byzantine church of Ayia Sophia built beside the ruins of an ancient temple dedicated to Apollo. Some of the original remnants of this temple have made their way into the later walls of the castle.

Caption here for Koroni wall at monastry

Remnants of Apollo’s temple at the Prodromos monastery have been cleverly inserted into the later castle walls

Jim was left at the monastery gates with Wallace because we assumed the nuns wouldn’t permit dogs, JRTs especially, but when I mentioned this to one of the nuns later she surprised me by gripping my arm and saying: “Bring him in, we don’t mind.” Ah bless! But take Wallace to a quiet monastery with six genteel nuns wearing unfamiliar headgear, long flappy skirts, and half a dozen aging Easter pilgrims outside the shop trying to enjoy their delicious loukoumi (Turkish delight) and glasses of chilled water? I think not! Maybe on a quieter day.

Wallace comandeering my work station and chair on the balcony with its view towards Koroni

The house we are staying in here has a wonderful view of Koroni and the sea. My current workplace, a table on the balcony for the laptop, is possibly the best I’ve had for a while but the only problem is keeping Wallace off my chair. He won’t hand it over until I confess what I’m writing about him next. Has he lost the plot? I’ll let you all know soon enough…

GREEK BOOK IN NORTH AMERICA

I AM thrilled to announce that my book about living in the Mani, called Things Can Only Get Feta (Bene-Factum Publishing), is now available in North America, paperback and Kindle. It’s available on Amazon.com and through Barnes & Noble and Longitude Books in America. Longitude has kindly run a story about the book on its blog page called A Favourite Spot.

The go-to blog for writing tips

I was recently interviewed by Athens-based writer Maria Messini on her fascinating blog MM Jaye Writes, under the category Work In Progress. The blog is geared towards writers, their methods, tips, networking secrets and is a fabulous resource for all writers whether they have publishers or are making their own way in the self-publishing world. Read the interview here:

For details about my book Things Can Only Get Feta and other places to buy it please visit our Big Fat Greek Odyssey website, book page

Visit Amazon to buy the book (Kindle version – new edition). A new edition of the paperback will also be available shortly.

Thanks for stopping by.

© Text and photographs copyright of the authors 2014. 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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The real Greece: How hard is it to find?

Posted on March 19, 2014 by Marjory

Independence Day on March 23 in Kalamata is a great opportunity to see traditional folk costumes and customs and the day ends with festivities and fun.

SOME people have written to me lately asking how they can go on holiday and find the real Greece, something closer to the unpredictable, plate smashing Zorba-style Greece of old, before mass tourism and the spread of EU cultural blandness.

It’s impossible to turn the clock back but obviously you’ll get a head start with this one if you steer away from popular destinations that attract most tourists, and particularly at the height of summer, even if these are often the most picturesque places, like Santorini or Mykonos.

If only a Greek island will do, then pick one without an airport so it’s harder to get to, like gorgeous Symi in the Dodecanese, or Serifos and Sifnos in the Cyclades, tiny Paxos, near Corfu, though there are numerous others. These islands will give you a better chance to conjure up a more traditional Greece, and engage with the locals. Tourists often avoid the mainland and yet it’s here you can still find towns and villages that are more authentically Greek, especially if you go off-season.

Jim and I spending a happy Easter Sunday with a lovely Greek family in the Mani.

I am biased after spending three years in the wonderful, unspoilt southern Peloponnese, but you can really get away from it all here and tackle a slightly more raw side of life. Away from the more popular tourist areas, you will find hill villages galore where life moves to a slightly different beat and hasn’t really changed that much in centuries. In the Mani hinterland you will find small Greek communities, olive farmers, goat herders, and at least one tiny cove where the real George Zorbas, who inspired the book and film character, hung out and danced the sirtaki along the shoreline. In search of old Greece? It doesn’t get better than that.

I’ve put together a few things you can definitely do if meeting locals and learning about the Greek way of life is your objective.

Two happy villagers taking part in a saint’s day parade.

Get spiritual

1. If you find yourself in Greece at Easter, do take part in some of the celebrations, as this is the most important time of the year for Greeks. Whether you’re religious or not, it’s worth going to some of the daily Orthodox Church services that lead up to Easter Saturday for their sheer spine-tingling drama, ritual and the Byzantine chanting. In fact, any time of the year it’s worth going along to a Sunday service to observe Greeks in their own unique setting. No-one will mind if you just go for 10 minutes because in this respect the Orthodox service is much more flexible than our services, but don’t push your luck by dropping in on the way to the beach dressed in shorts and flip-flops.

Feasts and fairs

2. During the summer months, paniyiria (fairs) and saint’s day ‘feasts’ are held all over Greece, particularly in the villages. In the southern Peloponnese alone there are 64 different paniyiria for various saints and to mark other religious events. There are also festivals commemorating different foods and crops: a Potato Festival in the Mani, an Onion and Tomato Festival in the Messinian peninsula and others to honour bread, wine, figs, fish, to name a few. Many of these fairs last several days and are the best place to rub shoulders with locals, and are great fun. For details of various festivals held in the southern Peloponnese visit the Costa Navarino website www.costanavarino.com Ask at your local kafeneion, council office or tourist office about festivals and fairs.

Off season, volunteer to help a farmer with his olive harvest. It’s hard work but you’ll feel like a local.

Try an olive harvest

3. If you are in Greece in November or later, especially in olive growing areas like Crete, southern Peloponnese or some of the islands, offer to help at a local olive harvest to get a feel for this ancient practice which is vital to the local economy. There are plenty of farmers in Greece still suffering because of the economic crisis who will be happy for you to help – and you might get some olive oil at the end of it all. Ask around your local village.

Food for thought

4. Seek out tavernas and coffee shops where only Greeks go because the food will probably be more authentic for a start and you will soak up some local colour. If you’re in a city, try to find the small street stalls selling souvlaki and gyros (slices of grilled meat in pitta bread), favoured by locals. In Kalamata try Jimmy’s, near the Archaelogical Museum in 23^rd March Square. And in towns and cities try an old-style ouzerie which sells ouzo and other drinks, as well as serving meze (appetisers) to go with them. Plenty of interesting characters congregate in these places.

Market forces

5. If you’re in a town or city, seek out local fruit and veg markets where you can soak up some Greek vibes. In Kalamata there is a fabulous laiki community market on a Wednesday morning in the city, not far from the historic centre. There’s a vibrant camaraderie among the sellers and Greeks from all walks of life do their weekly shop here. You’ll pick up colourful stories, bargains and the odd freebie. There are also nice bars and cafes nearby.

Find a fisherman in the harbour to take you out on his boat. You never know how the story might end.

Float your boat

6. If you’re staying in or near a fishing village, go down early in the morning to where the boats are landing fish for a real local experience and try to find a fisherman who will take you out for a morning to experience a traditional way of earning a living. Ask in your local kafeneion about this. In fact, the kafeneion is the best place to go for almost any inquiry in Greece.

Talented iconographer Maria Tsiboka creating a Byzantine masterpiece in her workshop in Mystras.

Icons of style

7. Try to find art and crafts studios, or jewellery workshops in villages and towns where you can watch someone carrying out a traditional skill. Although I have mentioned her a few times before, one of my favourite people in the southern Peloponnese is Maria Tsiboka, a traditional icon painter and a lovely soul with excellent English who will demonstrate how a Byzantine icon is produced, at Porfyra Icons, her studio and shop in the town of Mystras (near Sparta). The town is beside the hillside famous as the last outpost of the Byzantine Empire. Maria also has a lovely collection of icons at reasonable prices and will paint one to your own specifications and post it back home for you. www.porfyraicons.gr (003) 27310 82848.

Learn the lingo

8. It might seem obvious but try to learn some Greek if you can and use it everywhere even if your efforts are riddled with mistakes. I have made many howlers of my own over the years but Greeks will only love you all the more for trying and it’s your first step in engaging with the culture. You might even make a new Greek friend and be invited to their home for a family celebration or for Easter Sunday lunch with spit- roasted lamb and red-dyed eggs to crack for good luck. You know you’ve done something right in Greece when this happens. Enjoy it!

A book about living in Greece

For more details about my book, Things Can Only Get Feta based on three years living in the Mani, southern Greece during the crisis, visit my website www.bigfatgreekodyssey.com or visit Facebook www.facebook.com/ThingsCanOnlyGetFeta

Visit Amazon to buy the book (Kindle version – new edition). A new edition of the paperback will also be available shortly.

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Scotland’s role in an Elgin Marbles mystery …

Posted on February 25, 2014 by Marjory

Broomhall House in Fife, historic home of the Earls of Elgin

I AM standing within sight of Broomhall House in central Scotland on a bitterly cold day and marvelling at how this grey, slightly dour stately home has been at the centre of one of the most heated cultural debates of modern times.

This is the house built by Thomas Bruce, the 7^th Earl of Elgin, which he planned to adorn with his vast heist of Parthenon sculptures, and other antiquities that are now known as the Elgin Marbles. It amounted to some 220 tonnes and nearly half of what the Parthenon was decorated with up to the late 18^th century, as well as other significant items from the Acropolis and other sites around Athens.

Broomhall House, near the village of Charlestown, Fife, is fenced off to the public, so you can’t get too close, yet even from a distance the house seems vast: a huge frontage, Grecian-style columns at the entrance, large windows, but Downton Abbey it is not!

And so I find it hard to fathom the aristocratic folly of Lord Elgin, or the hubris in wanting to hack apart some of Greece’s great cultural achievements, just to impart Grecian splendour to rural Scotland. The plan failed, as we know, yet the house has become home to some of Lord Elgin’s antiquities at least. Though which ones exactly is still a bit of a mystery.

Marjory in front of Broomhall House, the centre of a cultural debate

In the late 18^th century, Lord Elgin was British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, which ruled Greece at the time, where he got permission to remove some items from the Parthenon by using what is now considered to be a dodgy ‘firman’, official authorisation. In the end he took as much as he could, also by bribing workers on the Acropolis to help in the removal.

It was all bound for Broomhall House, and much of this was financed by his wealthy Scottish heiress wife, Mary Nisbet. What he mainly took was nearly half the frieze from the Parthenon, which depicts a religious procession, as well as some carved metopes from above the columns and 17 stunning life-sized statues from the gable ends, depicting scenes from Greek mythology. He also took a huge amount of objects, plundered from ancient Athenian burial sites and the graves of prestigious Athenians, and other Acropolis temples.

Copy of the horse of Selene on the east pediment of the Parthenon

The top of the Parthenon was once decorated with carved metopes, and sculptures on the gable ends

Lord Elgin arrived back in Britain in ill health, due to syphilis. He was about to be divorced by his wealthy wife, and he was also broke. He ended up having to sell the Marbles to the British Museum for £35,000, half what he wanted.

His justification for his heist was to preserve the items for posterity because the Acropolis by the 18^th century had become a seedy garrison, with Turkish soldiers using the antiquities for target practice. Yet the Marbles, after being shipped from Athens, had a worse fate, being stored in a damp shed in central London for years and later said to be over-cleaned and bleached by over-zealous BM staff.

Greeks have been campaigning for years for the return of the Marbles, especially since the elite Acropolis Museum has a top floor gallery specially designed to house them in their original positions. There has also been a groundswell of international support, especially as celebrities come on board, like actor George Clooney, who made a recent plea on the subject while promoting his latest film about art theft, The Monuments Men.

And the collection of overlooked antiquities in Broomhall House would be welcome in Greece as well. These were items that Lord Elgin squirreled away here after the BM rejected them as too small, damaged or insignificant and are said to include some steles (grave markers) and pieces of sculpture. Not that you will ever see them because the house is not open to the public.

I rang the Edinburgh property management company that handles inquiries about the house, to request a comment from the current Elgin family about their collection of antiquities, and possibly as visit to the house. All the voicemail messages I left went unanswered. When I eventually tracked down a phone number for Broomhall House, I was told by a member of staff the family wouldn’t speak about the Marbles under any circumstances.

The Earl of Elgin in his study during a rare magazine interview

A picture taken in 1998 (above) of the current Earl of Elgin (Andrew Bruce) in his study (courtesy of Freemasonry Today magazine), shows what is believed to be a carved stele and some other items mounted on the wall. Small pickings of course compared to what Elgin looted in the early 1800s, but for Greeks these are significant items.

One local man I spoke to in the nearby village of Limekilns, who asked not to be named, has been inside the house fairly recently, in a professional capacity, and told me there are many pieces lying about.

“They are all around the house, scattered informally like bits of the furniture, but they are quite striking. The Earl of Elgin will give you the history of the items, though I can’t claim to really know their significance. His attitude to them is very relaxed and open because he doesn’t feel he has anything to hide. What he will say is that he agrees with the 7^th Lord Elgin in that they were brought to Britain for preservation and that’s what he’s been brought up to think. The Elgin family are very close to the (British) Royal Family and they just have a different way of looking at things,” he said.

Nearby Limekilns village on the Firth of Forth

Tom Minogue is a crusading retiree from Dunfermline, who grew up near Broomhall House and has been researching and writing about the Marbles for a decade on his blog www.tomminogue.com which has a great deal of interesting material and a history of the Elgin Marbles.

He says: “I believe there could be a lot more of the original pieces inside the house, especially smaller pieces because there was so much material taken from Athens, like funerary urns and items taken from the graves of some of Athens’s greatest heroes.”

Certainly there are antiquities that appear to be unaccounted for. While researching this article, I came across an old library document dated 1810 with an inventory of Elgin’s “Museum” which his collection seems to have originally been called. This inventory predates the list of items presented at a Parliamentary debate in 1816 before the BM sale. Some items on the 1810 list are not in the later one, like a large sarcophagus from an Athens grave site. Also, there are some unique items on the 1816 list that are also unaccounted for, like three ancient cedar wood musical instruments, including a lute, taken from an Athens location. When I rang the BM I was told there was no record of them, or the sacrcophagus. Where are these things now?

Tom Minogue has felt so strongly about the Greek antiquities currently in Broomhall House that he took the unusual step of writing to the police in Fife and London in 2004 and again in 2009 requesting that they investigate the matter, but so far the police haven’t acted on his letters. You can read more about this on Tom’s website.

There are those who would say it’s not fair to hold the current Earl of Elgin, who fought valiantly at the Normandy landing in 1944 and recently turned 90, responsible for the sins of his forebear. However, with increasing calls for reunification of the Parthenon art works, perhaps it’s the right time for someone else in the family to engage in the argument and at least exonerate Scots from this ‘heist’.

Tom Minogue says: “Scotland’s reputation has become a byword for imperial looting and it is hoped that with the restoration of the Parthenon Marbles, the reputation of Scotland as a compassionate and fair nation would also be restored.”

A copy of part of the frieze from the original inside ‘cella’ of the Parthenon showing a religious procession

Certainly it’s a sentiment the great philhellene Lord Byron expressed in the early 19th century when he carved onto the side of the Acropolis the Latin for: “What the Goths have spared, the Scots have destroyed.”

Dr Nikolaos Chatziandreou is a Greek research scientist and cultural resource manager who also runs the very informative website www.AcropolisofAthens.gr. He spent several years studying at St Andrews University, Scotland, and is one of the main campaigners for the reunification of the Sculptures. He thinks that Scotland can play a catalytic role in this regard because the Scots can relate with the issue in yet another dimension.

He draws a poignant link between Scotland and Greece, between the historic struggle for the return of the Stone of Scone, once used for the coronation of Scottish monarchs, and the quest to reunite the pieces of the Acropolis to “restore conceptually the symbol of democracy”.

“The Acropolis sculptures are to the Greeks what the Stone of Scone is to the Scots. It is this strong historic, symbolic, emotional link between ourselves and pieces of heritage that help us define our life experience and sense of self […] Is it a coincidence the Stone of Scone is also called the Stone of Destiny? When it comes to the sculptures of the Acropolis, whose destiny should we see in them?” says Dr Chatziandreou.

The Scottish Stone of Destiny eventually went back home. What about the Marbles? I hope the guy at Limekilns isn’t right when he says the attitude of the Elgins was one of “finders, keepers”. The same could easily be said for the BM and the current British Government.

* To read a more detailed account of why the Scots are uniquely placed to lead the return of the Parthenon Sculptures, click this link http://www.acropolisofathens.gr/aoa/reuniting-the-sculptures/a-plea-for-support-from-the-scots/

For information about the new Acropolis Museum www.theacropolismuseum.gr

Books about living in Greece

For more details about my travel memoirs, Things Can Only Get Feta and Homer’s Where the Heart Is based on three years living in the Mani, southern Greece during the crisis, visit the ‘books’ page on my website www.bigfatgreekodyssey.com

Both books are available on all Amazon’s international sites and also on the Book Depository www.bookdepository.com (with free overseas postage).

To buy either of my books please click on the Amazon links below:

Things Can Only Get Feta

Homer’s Where The Heart Is

You can also find me on Twitter @fatgreekodyssey

And Facebook www.facebook.com/ThingsCanOnlyGetFeta

www.facebook.com/HomersWhereTheHeartIs

© Text and photographs copyright of the authors 2010 to 2019. 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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Greece and food – a seductive partnership

Posted on January 29, 2014 by Marjory

Tables for four with a view at Taki’s Taverna, Limeni Bay in the Mani.

WHAT happens when a few hungry friends get together on Twitter one afternoon and start talking about food – more particularly, Greek food? A global event is hatched! And that’ s pretty much what happened when the group, including a couple of Greek Americans, toyed with the idea of holding a huge Greek dinner Stateside.

One of the group, Keri Douglas, editor of a popular news and culture website based in Washington, took it up a notch and said: “Well, why not make it a global Greek event?” Why not indeed, and the event was launched.

She put the call out on her website and on social media for people to host a dinner at home, or in a favourite Greek restaurant. The idea was to connect Greeks and philhellenes everywhere on one evening (January 15) and help promote Greek produce, restaurants, recipes, food and wine businesses, as well as authors, bloggers and, well, everyone who wanted to join in. The condition was that everyone should Tweet and Facebook their event and share pictures.

The idea quickly went viral and by the time the dinner evening arrived there were four continents involved, 14 countries and 52 cities. And no-one was more surprised than Keri Douglas at how many people had jumped on board, giving their time, their cookery expertise, and even free produce. All for a good cause – Greece.

Yiouvetsi and moussaka at the restaurant we picked, Mediterranea, Stirling, Scotland.

Keri summed up the Greek Dinner on her website (www.9musesnews.com) saying: “Imagine a paradigm of connecting the culinary dimension of Greek culture with the intangible Greek heritage that influences people around the world!” Well, we couldn’t imagine it before, but we can now. And this amazing event looks set to become the first of many. Opa!

The Greek art of simplicity: fresh Mani figs, peaches and Feta cheese.

How food lies at the heart of Greekness

Greek holidays! What do you always remember, apart from the sun and sea, the laid-back lifestyle? Most people remember the fabulous meals they ate at sunny, beachside tavernas: Greek salad with feta, souvlaki, juicy stuffed peppers, fresh green olive oil, carafes of local wine. Food and Greece have always had a sensual partnership, but it’s more than just the joy of eating wholesome fresh produce in fabulous surroundings. The ritual of the long Greek meal is a social and cultural mainstay.

Through good times, and especially bad (and Greece has had its share of catastrophe), the Greek meal has been the thread that has united the community, family, the generations from the yiayia, who has passed down precious recipes, to the youngest children who will carry the traditions on. And it’s also about parea, company.

Villagers and priests from Megali Mantineia in the Mani celebrating a saint’s day and toasting their new village oven (behind).

To me the most enduring symbol of Greek life is the village yiorti (celebration), usually the feast day of a saint, where tables are set under the olive trees and you will see the local priest and village elders sitting beside goat farmers, olive harvesters, the rich, the poor, and all enjoying lively parea, good village food, and some local wine, of course.

In Greece, food shared together can be sumptuous or simple, like the vegetable dishes eaten by the more devout during Lent – a platter of horta (wild spring greens) collected from hillsides and fields, boiled and served with lemon juice and a drizzle of olive oil.

My own memories of holidays in Greece will always be bound up with the meals we shared with Greek friends.

Fish, salad, wine and good company, with Artemios on his Santorini balcony.

In 2003, Jim and I were visiting the island of Santorini and became friends with a farmer called Artemios who was 80 years old but energetic and spry for his age. He rode a donkey, kept goats, grew his own food in the rich volcanic soil around his small rural home, and also made his own wine.

The first time he invited us for lunch on the tiny balcony of his house, he made us fried fish, roasted eggplant and Greek salad, with a jug of his own wine. A simple meal, bursting with flavour. More than just the food, it was the length of time we sat eating, talking, sharing stories – despite my stuttering Greek. And also the time it took him later to sit and peel the spiky, fiddly fruit of the frangosika (prickly pear) for us to try for the first time.

I will always remember his words on that first occasion. It sums up the Greek philosophy of food and parea exactly.

“Now that we have shared a meal together at my house, we are friends forever,” he said.

And he meant it. On subsequent visits to Santorini we went to see him and shared other meals, sometimes at his house, sometimes in the nearby villages, and we remained great friends. It’s an ethos that Greeks all over the world share, which was reflected in last month’s event. Friendships forged on that January night will hopefully last a long time.

Artemios and Marjory sharing a Greek coffee on the island of Santorini.

I have enjoyed many, many fine meals in Greece with some wonderful people, but the meals Artemios gave us remain closest to my heart.

There have been entertaining meals as well in Greece that I remember for different reasons, like the meal Jim and I shared with a big-hearted family in the village of Megali Mantineia during our three-year stay in the Mani.

It was during a scorching, August lunch where we had to try tsikles, the little picked birds with the heads left on, so loved by the Maniots but not to everyone’s taste. Not to have tried one would have been an insult, and so we went through a kind of TV Bush Tucker Trial in front of all the other guests, with amusing results. The experience formed one of the chapters in my book Things Can Only Get Feta.

To share a meal with Greeks, or anyone for that matter, and then be friends forever. In this life, it doesn’t get much better than that!

For a full report on the Greek Dinner Around the World, visit Keri Douglas’s site www.9musesnews.com click here

If you share notes and pictures on Twitter about your Greek dinner, use the hashtag #GreekDinner to connect with international followers.

Books about Greece

To find out more about my two travel memoirs set in Greece Things Can Only Get Feta, and Homer’s Where the Heart Is, please visit the books page on the website www.bigfatgreekodyssey.com

To buy either of my books please click on the Amazon links below:

Things Can Only Get Feta

Homer’s Where The Heart Is

You can also find me on Twitter @fatgreekodyssey

And Facebook www.facebook.com/ThingsCanOnlyGetFeta

www.facebook.com/HomersWhereTheHeartIs

Thanks for calling by.

© All rights reserved. All text and photographs copyright of the authors 2016. 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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American poet inspired by the mythical Mani in Greece

Posted on January 7, 2014 by Marjory

Otylo Bay in the Deep Mani, close to Areopolis.

I’M delighted to welcome Katie Aliferis to the blog this week. Katie is an American writer and poet whose family originally came from the Mani peninsula in the southern Peloponnese. She is passionate about her Greek ancestry, and in particular the Mesa Mani (Deep Mani) region itself. Yet, surprisingly, she has never been to Greece – so far.

That’s a remarkable fact, given that her love for this country has inspired some of her poetry to date. She may not have seen the Mani region yet, but she has managed to capture its ravishing, pared-down beauty so eloquently in her work.

The Deep Mani is the remote lower part of the middle peninsula, a region of untamed beauty dominated by the Taygetos Mountains. It is a place of stony fields, ruined towers, sheltered coves and, to endorse its mythical stature, the ancient Cave of Hades (Entrance to the Underworld) lies at its southernmost point, Cape Tainaron, and features in one of Katie’s poems, Pilgrimage.

It’s little wonder then that the Mani has been the creative muse for much of Katie’s life and I am very pleased to share with readers three of her lovely poems below, following the interview. I hope you enjoy them!

Katie Aliferis

1. Katie, tell us a little about yourself.

In 1906, my pro-papou (great grandfather) came to America from the village of Areopolis, in the Deep Mani, and eventually settled in Cleveland, Ohio. My grandparents were the first generation born in America, which makes me 4^th generation Greek-American. I was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay area and graduated from Sonoma State University with a degree in history.

2. Was your Greek heritage an important part of your early life?

Yes it was, and much of it was passed down to me through my yiayia (grandmother) Viola. She was an amazing woman. She worked hard to keep the traditions alive, telling me stories about the village, cooking Greek dishes and teaching me some of the language. Occasionally, she made me traditional Greek costumes for Halloween and I would go as the “village girl”.

Some of my favourite memories are of the family cracking the traditional red-painted eggs at Easter Sunday lunch to see who would have good luck for the year ahead. Yiayia’s love for our heritage was always contagious.

Narrow street in Areopolis

3. I’m surprised to learn that despite your passion for Greece, you haven’t been there yet!

Most people say that! It is surprising, but I haven’t gone…yet! Throughout my life, I’ve seen many pictures of the Mani and our family’s house and even the family chapel that still stands in the centre of Areopolis. My yiayia and other family members who have been back, or lived there for a time, have told me countless stories of the area and our family history. In my heart, a fire ignites whenever I think of the Mani, Areopolis, our house and the chapel. It is a feeling that is hard to describe, that many people may not understand, but it’s a passion that, when ignited, helps produce some of my best writing.

The family's chapel in the heart of Areopolis

The family chapel in the heart of Areopolis

4. Did you start writing as a way of expressing your love for the Mani and your heritage?

Not exactly. When I was 10 years old, my papou and one of my uncles passed away and I needed an outlet for my grief. A family member suggested I write a poem about my feelings and after that the poetry took off. Writing became a source of catharsis and pleasure.

5. Apart from writing about it, how do you maintain the older ways of Greek culture in such a modern, vibrant place like America?

Interesting question! I am incredibly proud to be a Maniatissa (woman of the Mani). After I learned about the history of the Maniots and their ways I began to understand more about myself. As you know, from your time in the Mani, Maniots are proud and fierce. We fight for what is right and are (stubbornly) committed to protecting home and family. Every day I work to keep my Greek identity alive by honouring my ancestry and heritage with my actions, passions and writing, of course!

A typical fortified Mani tower built by one of the area’s clan chiefs

6. Hopefully, you’re planning a trip to Greece in the future?
Yes! I want to go sometime soon. Without a doubt, I will be there for Greek Independence Day in 2021, which is the 200th anniversary of the Greek War of Independence, which was started in Areopolis. The war against the Ottoman Turks was first declared there in 1821. My dream is to own our family’s house and live in the village, or at least visit yearly.

7. How do feel about the economic crisis Greece has suffered for the past four years?

It makes me sad to see Greece in crisis, but I hope the worst is behind them and I am optimistic that the Greek people can use their passion and determination, and their kefi (high spirits), to get the country back to a glorious, positive and powerful state.

8. What do you like doing when not working or writing?

I love spending time with family and friends, reading (I’m a sucker for good murder mysteries), travelling and tasting wines and artisan cheeses.

*Katie’s writing has appeared in various journals and websites including: 9 Muses News, Voices of Hellenism Project: Voices (Volume I, Number I) and Velvet Revolution Reading Series. Her poetry is forthcoming in Voices of Hellenism Project: Voices (Volume I, Number II).

Follow Katie on Twitter: @KatieA_SF and visit her website: http://KatieAliferis.com

www.9musesnews.com is a respected American arts and culture website.

Old bakery in Areopolis and below, a traditional, hand-painted shop sign

Χωριό Μου (Horio Mou: My Village)

Deep in my soul
A pulse beats for a
Place I have never visited
A town I have never seen

Blue waves beat against the
White rocks that litter the shore
Cleansing the heart of all who
Rest upon the land

In the center of town
A square of stone acts as the
Focal point of this village
A place where all gather

For coffee, for bread, for ouzo
Just off the square
Rests a moderate home
Made of stone

Slightly white-washed
Slightly dingy, beige
In this house my soul rests
My heart resides

Surrounding the house
Brown and green land
Stands strong
United in stubbornness

Crowned by a majestic mountain
My soul, my heart
My village
My pulse.

Near the entrance to the Cave of Hades

Pilgrimage

I left the world
To see you smile
I journeyed into
The underworld

Past Cerberus
To hear you
Laugh

I abandoned my
Family and home
To feel your
Skin against mine
Every choice was
Right, every
Decision valid.

Asomati Bay at Cape Tainaron

The Boat

Curves of brass rust in the wind
Solid base of wood glides over the
Salty white rolling waves while a
Man searches for his destiny
His dinner, his day, his freedom
Gales of might shake and rattle the
Frame that survives these conditions
Simple, this vessel is so simple
Yet so complex to the one who pulls its ropes.*

Thanks for talking to me today, Katie and I look forward to reading more of your work in the near future.

* The poems here are copyright of Katie Aliferis. Not to be copied or used in any other way without permission of the author.

To leave a comment about the blog or to ask Katie a question, please scroll down to the end of this post and click on the ‘comments’ link which you will find at the end of the ‘tags’ listing.

A book about living in Greece

Visit Amazon to buy the book (Kindle version – new edition). A new edition of the paperback will also be available shortly.

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Christmas in Greece? It’s another world!

Posted on December 15, 2013 by Marjory

Kalamata’s main square at Christmas draws the crowds. Picture courtesy of the Tharros Newspaper.

I HAVE fond memories of our Christmases in the rural Mani, southern Peloponnese. Mainly because they weren’t like any others I have ever had, anywhere. And the rules were slightly, and sometimes amusingly, different.

Christmas in Greece has traditionally been more of a religious observance, with big family gatherings and a special meal after church to mark the occasion. In rural areas it’s more devout and Greeks here often fast in the lead-up to Christmas Day. After years of Christmas pizzazz in Britain and the usual shopping frenzy, this low-key celebration seemed refreshing.

The decorated boat preceded the northern European import of the Christmas tree.

A decorated boat was once the main symbol of Christmas festivities in Greece and every house would also sport a small wooden craft lit with candles. This ties in with the Orthodox feast day of Ayios Nikolaos (St Nicholas), the patron saint of sailors, early in December. Kalamata (the capital of this region), as in other Greek cities, has given way now to more European decorations with trees and lights, but it’s rather nice that the emphasis is still on family and the community, especially in these difficult times.

There is a fabulous Christmas fair in Kalamata with small festive houses trying to outdo each other for cuteness, set up along the main square on Aristomenous Street, where hand-made gifts are sold for charity.

A festive house in the main square, Kalamata, for a community group in Mikra Mantineia, Avia.

We spent our first Mani Christmas in the remote hillside village of Megali Mantineia where the church bells rang out at seven in the morning and the melodious chanting of the priest and kantors floated down the hill towards our stone house. After church there was a knock at the door. One of the village farmers had brought us a huge can of fresh olive oil from the recent harvest and a plate of festive kourabiedes biscuits, and other villagers gave us small gifts of food which was generous indeed since the crisis had begun to bite in hard.

The giving of gifts is a low-key affair and usually takes place on New Year’s Day, which is the feast day of Ayios Vassilis (St Basil), the Greek version of Santa Claus.

Foteini our charming goat farmer friend preferred the gesture of giving, if not the gifts.

I had planned to give small presents to a couple of the farming women I liked, including our eccentric and wonderful friend Foteini. I had brought an expensive woollen scarf with me from Scotland (Royal Stewart) – and don’t ask why. Did I think I’d be homesick? But I had heard the winters were perishing, which they were. Yet, I had never worn it and decided to wrap it up and give it to Foteini because she seemed to have thing about tartan, as I wrote in my book Things Can Only Get Feta.

Foteini often wore big mannish plaid shirts for working round her ktima (farming compound), so I thought she’d love this cosy Scottish gift. How wrong I was! I went up to her house later on Christmas morning, where she was outside feeding her donkey, her black church clothes replaced by the usual thick layers, and stout wellies. When I gave her the small offering she pulled off the paper and beamed at the bright woollen scarf and then squeezed it all over in her big meaty hands as if giving it a bit of rural quality control.

“It’s not for wearing to church of course,” I said, trying to show her that I knew the limitations of tartan in Greek culture. “It will keep you warm in the ktima on a winter’s day.”

She gave me a bemused look and then bear-hugged me, wishing me Happy Christmas and ran off to show her neighbours this unexpected gift from her new foreign friends.

Yet I never saw Foteini wearing the scarf, not once, even in her ramshackle ktima, even though the plaid work shirts of indeterminate Scottish clan design continued to make a regular appearance. One day, months later, curiosity got the better of me and I asked her if she liked the tartan scarf. Had she worn it? She squirmed a bit.

“It’s the colour. Bad things happen to me when I wear anything with red in it.”

I was amused by the response. This was either a bit of folk nonsense or she hated the gift and was too polite to say anything. But Foteini often gave away things that other people offered her, for reasons I could never fathom, whether it was scrumptious cakes or chocolates or other offerings. I expected to see one of the other farmers about the village sporting the Royal Stewart one day, but I never did. Yet it was refreshing that in this corner of rural Greece it seemed the gesture of giving created the most response. The gift was incidental.

Wallace our cheeky Jack Russell sorting out his Christmas decorations.

We wish you a wonderful Christmas and a prosperous New Year wherever you are. xx

A book about living in Greece

Visit Amazon to buy the book (Kindle version – new edition), or any of my other books.

If you have already read my books set in Greece, and liked them, please think about leaving a small review on Amazon. It will be very much appreciated.

I always love to hear from blog readers. To leave a comment, please click on the ‘comment’ link at the end of this post, right under the ‘tags’ list.

Thanks for calling by.

© 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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T-shirts just got feta & olive envy begins in Greece …

Posted on November 19, 2013 by Marjory

Christina Kakavas with her Greek-inspired T-shirts

Christina Kakavas with Greek-inspired T-shirts

A COUPLE of weeks ago I was delighted to receive an unusual present in the mail from across the pond – a ‘feta’ T-shirt made by Greek American businesswoman Christina Kakavas. Christina, from Chicago, started her company a few years ago, when she recognised a gap in the market for original T-shirts with a Greek theme and created her company Loukoumaki, which means sweet treat.

She now has a delightful range of T-shirts for kids and adults with Greek words and logos featuring feta (which I love, with its neat drawing of a feta slice) and other indelibly Greek symbols: the octopus, owl, and also the blue-eyed ‘mati’ (good luck) charm.

Marjory in feta T-shirt

Christina is a warm, fun-loving Greek whose roots are in the southern Peloponnese. Her mother is from Kalamata, her father was from Messini, just north of the city. They migrated to Montreal, later moving to Chicago, but Christina says she has never forgotten her Greek heritage. She has had many summer holidays back in the Mani and also got married there, in the lofty village of Verga, overlooking Kalamata and the Messinian gulf.

The idea for the company came about after the birth of one of her nephews. “I looked for some cute Greek baby gifts after his birth but I couldn’t find any. When it was my turn to populate the earth with Greek babies (she now has two children, 8 & 5), the quest resumed. With some gentle pushing and prodding from friends and family, I decided to put my art degree to good use and started Loukoumaki,” she says.

Apart from wanting to have a business that would “proclaim my Greek heritage”, she also wanted to have some fun with the venture. “I wanted people to embrace their inner child and let it all out.”

To see Christina’s range of Ts and other accessories visit: www.loukoumaki.com

The good oil

Villager Foteini up her wobbly ladder harvesting olives

Villager Foteini climbs up her wobbly ladder to harvest her olives

IT’S tedious, back-breaking work but also fabulous when the sun’s shining and fat crimson olives are raining down on you. Olive harvest! Nothing like it! We well remember from our time in the Mani how the harvest dominates all of life from now until the beginning of February, especially in this region, which produces some of the best olive oil in Greece from the koroneiki variety of fruit, and of course the chunky Kalamata eating olives.

It’s also a time of olive angst and envy, with farmers arguing over sizes: “Mine are bigger than yours”, “His are as small as sultanas and wouldn’t even oil a bicycle wheel.” On and on it goes.

I can vouch for how hard the harvest is as we helped our farming friend Foteini, who does the work the traditional way with a katsoni stick, bashing the olives down from the branches on to ground sheets, bagging them and dragging the ground sheet from tree to tree. Foteini does more than 100 trees herself, unless she gets some help from rookies such as us. Most people now use petrol-motored combs that whirr the olives from the branches and mechanical trays that shoogle olives from cut branches. You can cover more distance this way.

Harvesting olives the modern, mechanical way

Harvesting olives the modern way

Because of the economic crisis, olive production has come to mean more to rural Greeks, who can sell their surplus. Many Greeks we spoke to in Kalamata in 2011/2012, facing unemployment and wage cuts, told us they were thinking of moving back to their ancestral villages to work the land again and harvest their own olives.

The humble olive tree has always sustained Greeks in the past and nothing is ever wasted. The branches are gathered after the harvest, dried and used as fuel for heating in winter, more so now than ever before with the price of heating oil rising to around 1.30 euro a litre.

Wallace plays peek-a-boo in an old olive tree

Wallace peeps through an ancient, hollowed-out olive tree

There’s something about olive trees that makes them uniquely appealing. Perhaps it’s their almost human shape – the stocky trunk and branches like sticky-up hair. Some of the trees around the Mani are hundreds of years old. Some of the oldest trees in the Mediterranean region have been dated to the early 11^th century. A recent report on some of the olive trees in the Garden of Gethsemane at the foot of the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, where Christ prayed the night before his crucifixion, are said to be at least 1,000 years old and directly related to the original family of trees that grew there at the time of Christ, which is an awesome link with the past.

Greeks are passionate and fearless about their trees and the harvest. Foteini, whose olive exploits were mentioned in my book, Things Can Only Get Feta, was expert at shimmying up through the branches wearing old welly boots, a hacksaw in her holster, singing folk songs and generally not giving a damn for health and safety, which is the endearing trait of most Greeks.

When we helped her, she was using an old patched-up ladder with thin metal strips bound around splintered rungs. When I asked her if she was worried about falling off her dilapidated ladder she simply slapped a big hand on her thigh and said: “Ach, I’ll worry about that when it happens.”

Sacks of olives and a katsoni stick used to beat them down from the tree

Sacks of olives and an old katsoni stick used to beat the fruit down from the trees

After the harvest, the olives have to be taken to an olive press pretty soon, before the fruit deteriorates, and tins of fresh, bright green oil can be back in the farmer’s hands in days.

I still remember the first time that Yioryia, the owner of the Iliovasilema (Sunset) taverna in our village of Megali Mantineia, gave us a bottle of oil straight from the press that day. When we took the top off it, the air zinged with a ripe, fruity aroma. It’s hard to describe just how delicious this fresh olive oil is drizzled on a simple plate of tomatoes and a slice of feta cheese.

Juicy Kalamata olives in a Greek salad

Fresh olive oil is a ‘super food’. And it was no surprise to us that many of the older folk in Megali Mantineia were very spry, even in their 90s, with some of them still doing olive harvests and climbing trees.

Olive oil from this southern region is considered to be one of the purest, and Kalamata eating olives among the best in the world. Read British nutritionist, Nina Geraghty’s recent blog (in Food News) about the quality of these olives:

www.goodfoodandnutrition.com

Having lived in Greece for a few years, I feel that the olive tree defines this land and is rooted deep in the Greek psyche. Beautiful, hardy, life-sustaining, the olive tree to most Greeks is a metaphor for their ability to survive and maintain their cultural identity whatever history throws at them. Never more so than now.

A book about living in Greece

Visit Amazon to buy the book (Kindle version – new edition). A new edition of the paperback will also be available shortly.

If you have already read the book and liked it please think about leaving a small review on Amazon. It will be very much appreciated.

I always love to hear from blog readers. To leave a comment, please click on the ‘comment’ link at the end of this post, right under the ‘tags’ list.

Thanks for calling by.

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Village that inspired Things Can Only Get Feta …

Posted on October 9, 2013 by Marjory

THANKS to everyone who has read the book so far, and put excellent reviews on Amazon and sent comments to the website. Very much appreciated.

Quite a few people have asked about the hillside village, Megali Mantineia, where the book is set, and asked to see photos of it. So I’ve selected a few favourite images that give a sense of what this rural retreat in the north Mani (southern Peloponnese) is really like. Apart from its setting, the expanse of olive orchards, the fabulous views of the Taygetos mountains and the Messinian gulf, some of my favourite parts of the village are also its quirky, rough edges as well.

I have included a few photos of the villagers, the ones who were happy to be photographed, because in a small traditional settlement, not everyone is. Delightful Foteini, the goat farmer who has a starring role in the book, was generally always up for a photo.

In the three years we were in the Mani I have photographed her riding her donkey, harvesting olives, singing, dancing, carrying out the painstaking business of clothes washing, under her mulberry trees using an ancient cauldron, with plenty of repartee and laughter to break the monotony. I’ve also taken pictures of her small donkey loaded up with olive wood and a vast array of other rural and household goods – and even wearing a makeshift ‘raincoat’. Prada – not.

Most of the hundreds of pictures I took are a delightful portrait of village life but will remain unpublished for the time being. Since the book came out in July, Foteini has been somewhat mystified by the attention she’s had because of it, and because of the illustration on the book jacket of her on the donkey which appeared in newspaper articles and news websites around Greece in August. It was a wave of attention that neither of us expected. Some people, including foreign tourists, have recognised her on the donkey and stopped her on the road to show her articles and wave copies of the book, which, mostly, has made her smile.

The last time I spoke to her on the phone, I asked her what she thought of her overnight celebrity. She was sweetly disinterested. “When are you coming back to Greece?” was her slightly gruff response.

The picture below is the village on the hillside taken from a nearby ridge, with the Taygetos mountains behind. The gorgeous olive orchards are a feature of this part of the Mani. The bottom picture shows a typically old village house that now sits empty but gives some idea of Megali Mantineia’s thriving past when it had many fine stone villas, several shops, and even a police station.

The village church is where all the Sunday services take place. It was here on the forecourt (just to the left) we gathered at Easter before Wallace escaped from the house and gatecrashed the Good Friday procession, where the flower-decked Epitafios is carried through the village.

The kafeneion, the Kali Kardia (Good Heart), with its old stone archway, is the heart of the village in many ways. It was the scene of many summer evening get-togethers and humorous discussions with its owners Angeliki and Ilias.

Foteini is one of many goat farmers in the village with her own rambling olive groves as well. Few do as much work on their own as Foteini, pictured on her farm with me, below. And carrying olive wood on her donkey. Bottom, a typical rural scene, with a goat tap-dancing on an abandoned car.

Like all Greek villages, Megali Mantineia celebrates plenty of feast days to honour different saints. The picture below shows a group of villagers and the two local papades (priests) at the feast of Ayios Yiorgos (St George’s day). The villagers collected money that year to build a fabulous new wood-fired oven (pictured, left) to serve trays of baked lamb and goat at regular festivals here. The events continued during the crisis, food provided by the four generous local taverna owners, and served by uncomplaining local teenagers.

Here’s another celebration beside the small church of Ayia Triada with a view towards the Messinian gulf.

The village is visited every week by friendly Vassilis the manavis (grocer) in his truck where women gather round for a bit of gossip as much as a weekly shop. Here he is with Maria, a sweet elderly lady who was one of the regular church-goers, mentioned in the book.

The village has views of sea and mountains and never more spectacular than in winter with the nearby snow-capped Taygetos mountains.

In the village, Wallace our Jack Russell was one of the few domesticated dogs but there were plenty of cats, including Cyclops, the one-eyed moggie who lived on our rented property and had a few steeple chases through the garden with Wallace.

The village has some quiet, peaceful spots. Here’s a favourite of mine, a bench outside the walls of the old cemetery, overhung with bougainvillea. It was always a nice place to sit and watch village life stream on by.

A BOOK ABOUT LIVING IN GREECE

If you want to know more about life in a traditional rural village in the Mani and about the wonderful local characters we met, it’s all in my book: Things Can Only Get Feta: Two journalists and their crazy dog living through the Greek crisis (Bene Factum Publishing, London).

For details about the book go to the home page of our website www.bigfatgreekodyssey.com

Visit Amazon to buy the book (Kindle version – new edition). A new edition of the paperback will also be available shortly.

If you have already read the book and liked it please think about leaving a small review on Amazon. It will be very much appreciated.

I always love to hear from blog readers. To leave a comment, please click on the ‘comment’ link below. Thank you.

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Writer Chris Hill talks about his new book …

Posted on September 20, 2013 by Marjory

This week I am delighted to welcome English writer Chris Hill to the blog – in the second of the series of writers’ interviews – to talk about his new novel Song of the Sea God, which has been described as darkly intriguing and visionary.

Tell me a little about yourself.

I work in PR for a UK children’s charity called WellChild and before that I was a regional newspaper journalist for many years, mostly in Cumbria and later Gloucestershire. It’s a job where you meet all manner of people, which I think helped me as a writer. I spent my childhood in Barrow-in-Furness, in north-west England, actually on a small island just off the coast, called Walney, which became the setting for Song of the Sea God. At home in Gloucestershire, I have a busy family life with two sons. I go out for a run sometimes, when I have the time, and I did the London Marathon a couple of years ago.

What made you start to write and how has it developed?

As a child, I remember writing on scraps of paper in the back of old school notebooks – not proper stories or poems, but attempts at fiction certainly. I can’t remember why I started but I always loved reading and I guess it grew out of that.

In my 20s, my writing began to take on proper shape and structure and eventually I started writing stories I felt were good enough to enter competitions, then I started winning some (including the Bridport Prize), which was obviously encouraging. I still write short stories now and would like to have a collection published at some point.

Later on I started writing novels. I’ve completed three so far, but this current one (Song of the Sea God) is the first to be published. One of the novels I wrote was a romantic comedy called The Pick Up Artist and I’d quite like to see it in print, if I can find a publisher to take it on. It was a light, commercial type of thing, but there’s a sense of irony in it since it’s about someone who dreams of being successful with women but isn’t really.

What is your new book about?

Song of the Sea God is a book about a man who comes to a small island off the coast of northern England and tries to convince the locals he is a kind of god. In some ways I suppose it’s a book about the nature of religion – what it means to people, how it works.

I’d like to think there’s humour in there, particularly in the narrative voice, but it’s quite a dark book as well and delves into some quite murky places. It was published by Skylight Press at the end of 2012 and I’ve been delighted by the kind and thoughtful response it’s had from readers in terms of reviews and the discussion it’s provoked on blogs and social media.

Author Chris Hill

What made you want to write a novel with such a big theme?

I decided to write about religion because I wanted to explore that ‘god-shaped hole’ that I feel many of us sense in our lives, especially these days when the old certainties of organised religion are retreating for many people and leaving only questions in their wake. I’m not particularly religious. I’d describe myself as an agnostic.

But saying that I don’t know the answers to the mysteries of the universe is definitely not the same as saying I think there are no mysteries. I did quite a lot of research and reading around ancient religious beliefs and traditions, some of the strange and alarming things which happen in the novel echo those primal beliefs.

A book about a god has been a big jump then from your earlier, lighter novel.

Well yes, you could say I’ve written a book about a god with no god in it, and a book about sex with no sex in it!

Where is Song of the Sea God set?

It’s set on Walney Island, where I was born and grew up. I wanted the action in the book to take place somewhere I knew well – I think it helps if you are writing fiction with a fantastic, almost magical, element to it if you base it somewhere which feels very real.

There’s also something special about an island, I think, as you are very connected to the community there but also a little cut off from everyone else. The geography of Walney, and the feel of the place, features heavily in the book but the people are definitely fictional and bear no relation to the lovely people I grew up with. Walney is a chilly, windswept place but full of character, which I hope I’ve managed to capture in the book, as I do love a novel with a strong sense of place.

What are you working on now?

I am currently writing a short story collection. My stories tend to deal with ordinary people at important and emotional moments in their lives. To an extent I’ve been influenced by American writer Raymond Carver, who’s a master of the short story. After that I will probably start another novel.

Where can I buy your book?

It can be ordered at all bookshops plus found at many places online including Barnes and Noble, Waterstones and of course it’s available on Amazon.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Song-Sea-God-Chris-Hill/dp/1908011556/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1349468028&sr=1-1

How can I find out more about you and your work?

I have a blog here, which I update every week: http://songoftheseagod.wordpress.com/ I spend a lot more time than I should on twitter @ChilledCH and on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/?ref=tn_tnmn#!/chris.hill.3726

Thanks to Chris for this thought-provoking interview and I wish him great success with his book. Please send him a comment or question by clicking on the ‘comments’ link below.

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My big fat Greek love affair …

Posted on September 2, 2013 by Marjory

LAST week started off quietly enough, writing a few stories to promote my book here and there; some social networking. But by Monday night all that had been swept away. I found myself in the centre of a mini media frenzy in Greece. As a journalist, I am used to being on the other side of the notebook, so this was something new.

It followed a recent interview I’d done with the editor of Australia’s esteemed Greek newspaper Neos Kosmos about why I and my partner Jim, and our dog Wallace, went to live in the wild Mani region of Greece for three years during the economic crisis, which became the subject of my book, Things Can Only Get Feta.

I was sent a link on Monday to the published story in the Greek edition of the newspaper. But it wasn’t quite the story I’d expected. The Mani adventure was certainly there, but this had a different spin. Here was a story that exposed me irrevocably as a woman who has had a long love affair – with Greece. Outed!

I blushed as I read about “the unbelievable story” of my “erotic relationship” with the country, and that I had been “besotted with the place” from the first moment I had set foot on Greek soil as a youth.

All true, and the feature was written affectionately and without irony by Greek-Aussie editor Sotiris Hatzimanolis. I have indeed been in love with Greece all my life, from a fateful childhood friendship with a Greek girl called Anna in Australia, as a shy Scottish migrant, to my regular jaunts there ever since.

I didn’t think for a minute that Greeks would be moved by the passion of one foreigner for Greece. Boy, was I wrong, as the response to the story proved. Sotiris had known something about the Greek psyche at this moment in time that I didn’t.

The article in Australia’s Greek newspaper Neos Kosmos, with the headline “An Australian journalist in love with Greece”.

The Neos Kosmos piece was picked up quickly by an Athens press agency and sent out everywhere in Greece. By Monday evening it was on most internet news site and blogs – splashed with a similar headline “A Scottish journalist’s love affair with Greece”. One headline simply yelled, “Marjory McGinn in love with Greece”, like something you might have seen scrawled on the bike sheds in primary school.

The stories were sometimes revamped and occasionally in English, with a quaint Google-style translation. In one instance I was described as having “the most erotic relationship with Greece”, as if I’d just written a novel called Fifty Shades of Greece. I wish!

Greece and I do have a history, yet I have skirted around the issue of my affection for Greece most of my life because I’ve found that other people feel uncomfortable when you confess your love for a country, especially one that’s not yours.

By Tuesday, several Greek newspapers had contacted me for interviews and ran features in the following days, and one Athens TV station was keen for a live interview, but there were problems with the link-up and it’s still pending. Which is just as well. I think the Greeks have enough problems at present without having to listen to my less-than-perfect Greek.

Another feature in Athens daily newspaper Dimokratia

But this welcome publicity for the book isn’t the main point I want to make here.

The story Sotiris wrote had struck a chord with Greeks still suffering through the crisis, jaded and tired with their troubles. And the response to it was enormous. Our website, named in the stories, suddenly had 150,000 hits in three days – which crashed the site at one point. And there was a flood of emails, mostly from Greeks, with messages of thanks to an unknown foreigner for saying something nice about Greece for a change.

It made me realise how, over the past four years, there has been so little written about Greece that hasn’t been pessimistic, blaming, insulting at times.

Greeks have suffered critically during the crisis, as has been well documented already, but what I don’t think has been conveyed so accurately in the international media is how the crisis, and the effect of the austerity measures, has crippled their self-confidence as well as their standard of living. Many Greeks told us, when we were living in the Mani, they were ashamed of how low their country had sunk, even though it wasn’t all their fault.

So I want to share a few of those thoughts and wishes (both serious and light-hearted) from my recent correspondents (full names withheld). All the emails sent were sent in English.

“Thank you for being gracious toward Greece in these difficult times. We Greeks have been subjected to pure and evil racism because of the crisis, with an intensity that we never expected. In (some European countries), patients in hospital have said they don’t want to be examined by Greek doctors just because they are Greek. Greeks have been bullied because of the usual stereotypes. Greece is not perfect and there are many things to be corrected, but it is very unfair for Greece to be demonized the world over.” – Stergios

“Your story has made me really happy. It is an inspiration to Greek readers who really need something like this right now.” – Kelly

“I felt proud and grateful when I read about you and your love for Hellas (Greece). I would like to thank you for coming to my country and wishing that Greeks would love this country as much as you have.” – Giorgos

“Any anthropos (person) who falls in love with this place isn’t (doing it) by accident. For your information, Hellas (Greece) loves you back. We are living the economic nightmare here that those who would call themselves “human” have played out on us. I know we will win as long as we are together and help each other.” – Stephanos (Greek American living in Greece)

“I am so proud that you would visit my country, my people, my beloved places. Thank you so much for what you have done for us. I want you to come here again to love us more, to feel the Greek hospitality.” – Olga

From a woman who thought we were still in the Mani: “We will be beside you and protect you as guests. Greek hospitality is great to those who respect us. Our country is your country.”

And lastly, a comment sent to my Facebook page from Kyriacos: “Way to go, Marj! You are a pure Hellenic lady. Be well.”

So, what’s not to love about Greece and its warm-hearted people? Here’s my similar wish for the country. Be well! Or, as they say in Greek, na eiste kala.

For details about the book visit www.bigfatgreekodyssey.com and www.facebook.com/ThingsCanOnlyGetFeta

Visit Amazon to buy the book (Kindle version – new edition). A new edition of the paperback will also be available shortly.

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