When the saints go marching in …

Posted on October 22, 2019 by Marjory

THIS Saturday is the feast day of Ayios Dimitrios (Saint Dimitrios), pictured above in his usual guise, a jaunty character in a green cape, riding a sorrel-coloured horse.

It’s a big feast day in Greece (October 26) and the ‘name day’ for anyone with the moniker Dimitris, Dimitrios, or Dimitra for women. There will be a service early at churches named after the saint and then usually a yiorti, a celebration, nearby, especially in rural areas.

I’ve featured a few of these feast days and celebrations in my books as well as the local characters who frequented them. They are one of the best ways for foreigners to get a unique insight into Greek life with some of its pomp but mostly its spontaneity and eccentricity. It’s Greek people in their own world, enjoying the simple pleasures of village and family life with a rural papas, priest, or two in the mix as well. Tables will be spread out under the olive trees, as it was in the hillside village of Megali Mantineia, where we spent our first year in the southern Peloponnese. Locally sourced goat or lamb is often roasted in the village fournos (woodfired oven), or a spit-roast barbecue set up, or food brought from local tavernas. It’s always a nice occasion, unless you’re vegan perhaps!

Villagers, and two local priests, enjoying a yiorti celebration in the southern Peloponnese in front of a mad, smoking fournos

Ayios Dimitrios was a martyr saint who, in the 4^th century AD, was imprisoned and tortured for helping the citizens of Thessaloniki in northern Greece to rise up against the pagan teachings of the Romans. The feast day of Ayios Dimitrios has an added charm because if the weather has turned especially warm in the last two weeks of October, the Greeks call this The Little Summer of Saint Dimitrios. It’s a mellow, euphoric end to the summer season. Traditionally, October us the time for farmers to bring their flocks down from the hills to lower pastures for winter grazing, so the Little Summer is always a welcome occurrence.

The Little Summer of S D featured significantly in my first novel A Saint For The Summer. The Saint in the title has a few different meanings in the narrative but the main allusion is to Saint Dimitrios because his feast day celebration in a Taygetos mountain village is instrumental in the plot, bringing an intriguing World War II mystery to its nail-biting conclusion.

Jim, Marjory and Wallace in the town of Koroni, one of the places featured in Marjory’s Greek trilogy

In my three travel memoirs, I describe other saints’ days because when we first went to the southern Peloponnese on our four-year odyssey we never said ‘no’ to these occasions. St Dimitrios was a favourite because my husband Jim was given the name Dimitris (the Greek equivalent) by villagers, and I was christened early on as Margarita by my goat farmer friend Foteini because she couldn’t pronounce my real name. These names stuck the whole time we were in Greece and seem to fire up again every time we return.

The feast day celebrations were always convivial and Greeks were generous in embracing outsiders in what is essentially a very traditional Greek day. We had good company, great local cuisine and plenty of wine and gossip. More importantly, as foreigners, we learnt a lot from these celebrations.

The tiny chapel of Ayios Yiorgos (above) in the hills behind the village of Megali Mantineia with its flower decked icon. A centuries-old fresco of St George in a Mani monastery (below)

One memorable celebration was for the feast day of Ayios Yiorgos (St George), possibly the biggest of the saints’ celebrations in Greece. St George was another great martyr saint and a tribune living in the first century AD who is always depicted on his white horse, spearing a dragon-like interloper. You can just see the beast above at the bottom of the icon where age and water damage have diluted the colours.

It was at this celebration in 2011 at a small chapel in the hills above Megali Mantineia that we met a businessman called Tassos over lunch who was curious about our odyssey in rural Greece in the midst of the economic crisis.

“Why come to live in Greece now?” he asked. “If weather and the beach is the main reason, there are sunnier and easier places to live than Greece.”

Greece has lovely unspoilt coves like these at Otylo in the Mani but it has many more hidden assets

It was hard to convince him that it was Greece we wanted for this mid-life odyssey and nowhere else. Still puzzled, he then asked: “What do you really seek to find, my friends, in our country that you cannot find in your own?”

It was a very good question. What indeed? And the question remained with me throughout my years in Greece, informing my own search for meaning and fulfilment in this country as well as informing my writing. The scene with Tassos found its way into an early chapter in the second memoir, Homer’s Where The Heart Is, as we took on more adventures in southern Greece and experienced the chaos of an increasingly bitter crisis.

His query is something that many expats ask themselves, if just in the form of ‘What is it about this complex country that I’ve fallen in love with?’ Of course, there’s no simple answer to this. For me, there were many things I sought and found, and loved, about Greece, as you will discover if you read Homer, and the other memoirs of course.

For the feast day of St George, tables spread under the olive trees for villagers, and the priest (left), of Megali Mantineia

It could be that being able to access these unique celebrations on feast days, like the one for Saint Dimitrios, is part of it, an ability to enjoy simple pleasures in beautiful surroundings, embraced by warm, inclusive communities. In our four years in southern Greece, in the Mani and later in the nearby Messinian peninsula, we went to many of these feast days. They were all different in location and intensity, and we enjoyed every one of them.

If you’re in Greece and you get the chance to attend a feast day, or indeed any of the other larger celebrations of Easter and August, do go, and also to the church services preceding them. You don’t have to be especially religious to attend because the services offer unique insights into much more than just the Orthodox faith. It is here that you gain insight into Greek traditions and social life, and rituals that are gloriously diverting and rooted in the Byzantine world. These are rituals that have changed little in the past 500 years. You won’t be disappointed. And Greek people, I promise you, will admire your interest and curiosity.

Χρονια Πολλα!

Happy Name Day/Feast Day!

For more information about Marjory’s books including the novel A Saint For The Summer and the Peloponnese trilogy, above, please visit Marjory’s Amazon page or the books page on our website www.bigfatgreekodyssey.com

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© All rights reserved. All text and photographs copyright of the authors 2010-2019. 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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Cracking Greek Easter: red eggs, euphoria and a touch of madness

Posted on April 9, 2017 by Marjory

Greek Easter service at Ayios Dimitrios, Koroni, Messinia

WHEN I think of Easter in Greece, I think of dyed red eggs, euphoria and feasting. I also think of mutant incense, terrier rebellion and ‘Ecclesiastical Knee Syndrome’.

The Holy Week (Megali Evdomada) is this week, and it’s the most significant date in the Greek calendar. From all my many years of visiting Greece, Easter leaves indelible memories for its sense of drama and anticipation. Much of the drama is supplied by the daily church services that are like small one-act plays of varying intensity and nail-biting climaxes that progress the story of Easter, which seems unique to the Orthodox Church. Even if you’re not religious, it’s a wonderful chance to see Greeks at their most reverent, and at their colourful best, with plenty of pomp, circumstance and sometimes unplanned slip-ups showing that the best rehearsed productions can be derailed.

When we were living in the hillside village of Megali Mantineia in the Mani (southern Peloponnese), the sombre Easter Friday service ran slightly amok when Wallace, our naughty Jack Russell terrier, disgraced himself, slipped out of our village house and raced along with the procession, turning a timeless ritual into a cross between a riot and a Crufts obstacle course for Jack Russells. The Friday service is the grand procession of the Epitafios, where a flower-decked bier, representing the crucified Christ, is carried through villages and cities everywhere in Greece, and is a magical event to witness.

Our village procession started at the main church, went up to the graveyard, so the papas could offer prayers for the dead, and looped back along village lanes towards the church again, with the papas and elders at its head. Wallace managed to invade it early on. I don’t think the villagers had seen anything quite like the hyperkinetic Wallace, weaving his way through the procession, a blur of white fur, and retrieving him required a bit of a miracle. It became one of the chapters in my first memoir Things Can Only Get Feta.

Marjory with naughty Wallace, the Easter procession buster

The services in this Easter week are awe-inspiring for their organisation, their props and those amazing psaltes, chanters, who advance most of the service and seem tireless. Even during the tough economic crisis, no detail was ever spared and for that you can only admire the Greeks. Yet sometimes nerves get the better of everyone. On one of the Thursday services in our first year in the Mani, which is a particularly long and devotional service, the poor deacon, standing beside the local papas, turning over the pages of the old hymn book, overlooked the massively smoking censer in his hand.

“The incense started off with fragrant puffs but quickly increased to billowing acrid clouds that shrouded the first few rows of seating. We started coughing and choking. If this had been an aeroplane, oxygen masks would have dropped from the ceiling by now.” (Things Can Only Get Feta, chapter 25).

Easter Sunday with the family who featured in Marjory’s second travel memoir, Homer’s Where The Heart Is

I have experienced Easter in many locations in Greece, from tiny islands to cities. In each location, the church services have been handled with aplomb. I have also found the same level of hospitality and kindness from locals, with many invitations to share the traditional Sunday roast with an extended Greek family. One of my first Greek Easters was in Crete, which I first visited in the 1970s on my first long odyssey to Greece. I had been living and working in Athens, but before I left I had taken a few weeks’ break in Crete with a friend. We were offered a tiny holiday house by an Athenian colleague. It was opposite the beach in a completely authentic, untouched area of the northern coast, east of Hania. While the area is, sadly, unrecognisable now from what I remember then, it was a glorious piece of old Greece, with a few nearby houses, a taverna across the road, a deserted beach and not much else.

My friend and I had planned to have a quiet Easter as we knew no-one there and we knew very little about Easter customs and protocol. On Sunday morning, however, there was a knock at the door. It was the farmer who lived up the hill behind us. He vibrantly announced Christos Anesti which I knew meant, Christ Is Risen, the salutation after the Saturday night service. He told us that for the traditional Sunday feast he was roasting one of his lambs and that we must come and join his family. There was no way we could refuse. He insisted.

So we went up to his house, where the lamb was turning slowly on a spit outside and the olive groves around us were filled with succulent meaty, herby aromas. A big family had gathered: grandparents, kids, everyone excited to be eating a proper meal after weeks of the strict Lenten fast. We had lunch at a long table surrounded by these wonderful, big-hearted people, whom I could barely talk to as I spoke only limited Greek then. Somehow we managed okay and enjoyed all the conviviality, the laughter and lusty cracking of the dyed eggs, an ancient Orthodox ritual that symbolises eternal life and becomes a contest to see who can crack everyone else’s eggs without cracking their own.

Boiled eggs are dyed red for Easter and decorated with other symbols of the season

Jim and Marjory enjoying the egg-cracking contest at a memorable supper with their Kalamatan friend Kostas and his lovely family

This Sunday lunch experience was during my first long but youthful foray into a foreign culture and I had never come across such inclusiveness and kindness before from strangers, even having grown up in friendly, knock-about Australia. This was unique and the memory has lingered.

Every Easter I have spent in Greece has taught me something more about the Greek spirit, the sense of filoxenia, hospitality and this unique culture. It has also offered me some unexpected, occasionally humorous, outcomes, and the odd devious medical problem which Jim and I came across during Easter, 2014, for our second odyssey in southern Greece, in Koroni. We had decided that we would set ourselves the task for Lent of going to every evening church service of Megali Evdomada, in a different church each night, which we had never done before.

Some of the chanters at an Easter service in Koroni, Messinia

We made it through the first part of the week no trouble, but by Thursday, which is a very long service, nearly three hours, depicting Christ’s crucifixion, we were starting to run out of steam. Jim developed a painful problem which he called Ecclesiastical Knee Syndrome (EKS) because there is so much standing up and sitting down during Greek services, and at this time of year, churches are slightly cold and bone-numbing.

“The service was longer than I ever remembered any to be, full of Greek I couldn’t decipher, and as I glanced around the church I saw many Greeks looking pale and wilted, with many of the men discreetly slipping outside for a quick cigarette in the cool evening air. As foreigners, we felt the need to stay, and endure, lest we be considered slightly soft or disinterested. Nine-thirty came and went in a strange agony of chanting, incense and a babble of high Greek. Unlike Jim, after a while I welcomed EKS, and every opportunity to stand up and feel my legs like an economy passenger on a long-haul flight to Australia which is what the service began to feel like.” (Chapter 2, A Scorpion In The Lemon Tree).

A Byzantine church in the Mani hills

But the Thursday service actually ended with a surprise, slightly controversial, climax that was worth the wait, despite distressed knee cartilage. And it was a dramatic lead-up to the finale of this week, which is the Saturday service. This is something that everyone should experience once in their lives, which in the Orthodox Church represents the resurrection of Christ. And on a less illustrious level, it also represents the end of the Lenten agony for many devout Greeks, who have lived for six weeks on boiled greens and water, or near enough. It represents the end of an ecclesiastical marathon. I have experienced this Saturday service in Greek cathedrals and also in tiny island churches and it never fails to be affecting and inspiring.

The moment when the church is plunged into darkness at midnight and a single lighted candle is brought out of the sanctuary by the papas and its light slowly shared to every other member of the congregation until the church is luminescent is a simple, yet thrilling spectacle. And if you are lucky enough to also hear a particularly good rendition of the hymn Christos Anesti (Christ is Risen) then you are truly blessed.

Happy Easter!

Καλη Aνάσταση! (Kali Anastasi) Have a good resurrection, as they say in Greece!

(To hear the Vangelis rendition of Christos Anesti performed by Greek actress, Irene Pappas, please click on the link below.)

https://youtu.be/AKwizUzyj0I

For more information about Marjory’s three travel memoirs about living in Greece during the crisis, go to the books page on the website www.bigfatgreekodyssey.com or the books page on Facebook www.facebook.com/ThingsCanOnlyGetFeta

The third book, A Scorpion In The Lemon Tree is available on all Amazon sites:

amazon.uk

amazon.com

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

Things Can Only Get Feta

Homer’s Where The Heart Is

Messages are always welcome. Thanks for calling by. x

© 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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Wild woman of the Mani . . .

Posted on January 23, 2017 by Marjory

Readers have made a pilgrimage to a Mani village to see the unique farmer, Foteini

AFTER my three travel memoirs were published from 2013, readers have been in touch to say they visited the locations featured in the books. Many have made it up to the hillside village of Megali Mantineia, in the Mani, where the first book (Things Can Only Get Feta) was set, and mainly in search of the inimitable goat farmer Foteini.

This unassuming rural woman, whom I met at the very beginning of our odyssey on a village road, seems to have struck a chord with many readers, as she has with me. Perhaps it’s her struggle to survive a tough farming life on her own, made harsher still by the Greek economic crisis. It is also, I suspect, her endearing eccentricities, her tendency to wear mismatched layers of clothing and oversized hats, shoes that look like Cornish pasties, and her odd habits, like washing skinned bananas before she eats them.

I recently called one of my favourite friends from the village, the lovely Stavroula (Voula), who lives near Foteini but unlike her, usually answers her village phone. Voula and I hadn’t spoken for a while and at first she thought I must be in Greece. She got excited at the prospect of a visit. When I told her I was in England she shouted vibrantly down the phone: “Well, when are you coming back here? We’ve missed you!”

It’s the quality I most love about rural Greeks, the fact that when they warm to you they are inclusive and caring. Their interest in you is like a big, delicious hug, and is irresistible.

Marjory riding Foteini’s beloved donkey Riko

I was told that all was well in the village and everyone was surviving the crisis, which was good news. The only recent news I could glean of Foteini, however, was that her beloved old donkey Riko, which I rode on my last odyssey in Greece (from 2014 to 2015), has been pensioned out to pastures sweeter and a new beast has taken his place, as Foteini uses her donkeys for her rural work. Riko was a gentle, stoical creature and he made an appearance in all my travel memoirs.

Foteini, however, continues to attract readers to the village. One American Facebook friend told me she went to the village just to find her and was ecstatic when she did, but was then very put out when Foteini rather stubbornly wouldn’t agree to a photo session beside the donkey.

Some readers have told me they have also gone in pursuit of Foteini, waving a copy of Things Can Only Get Feta, which features Foteini and Riko on the cover illustration, which must have amused her, or maybe terrified her perhaps, I can’t tell which. Some have bravely angled for a coffee in her ramshackle ktima, farm compound, which I wrote about at length, but no-one has pulled it off yet, I think. I am left amazed at so many sightings of Foteini when I had always thought of her as somewhat shy!

The village of Megali Mantineia beside the Taygetos mountains where we spent the first year of our odyssey

The church dedicated to the Virgin Mary, in the village

One reader called John recently sent me a long email telling me about his summer visit to Megali Mantineia. He was thrilled to drive along the main village road and find Foteini walking along it with Riko loaded up with wood. John told me that he stopped the car and jumped out, waving Feta, and shouting ‘Good morning’ in his best learner’s Greek.

“She came up to me and put her hand on my shoulder and spoke for about 20 seconds…,” he explained, “though I honestly couldn’t recognise one Greek word. Then she placed one of her big bronze-like hands on my hand. What an amazing experience. To most people this would probably not mean much, but to me it meant a lot. I asked Foteini if I could take her picture alongside Riko and she said ‘yes’. I was totally amazed. It was brilliant. My wife, who hadn’t read Feta at that point, said to me, ‘This has made your holiday, hasn’t it?’ And to be honest, it really had.”

Foteini uses her donkey Riko to transport firewood. Stacking it on a donkey is something of a rural art

At Foteini’s farm there is ingenious plumbing like this hosepipe and a soap holder fashioned from a sawn-off bottle

Recently in East Sussex I was invited to give some talks about my time in Greece at local book groups. I was not surprised to find that it was not Greece in crisis, or the recklessness of Jim and me – and crazy Wallace the dog – going on a mid-life odyssey that piqued their interest so much, but Foteini. They wanted to know all about her: how she lived, what her house was like, and about her outrageous horticultural couture. I passed around photos of her and the village and they were pored over. I imagine the women of peaceful, retiring Sussex have never come across anyone quite like her. Neither had I when we first started our Greek odyssey in 2010 in the remote southern Peloponnese.

Foteini became the most unlikely creative muse for me. From the moment I saw her riding Riko on that village road in 2010, wearing a massive straw hat, her donkey loaded up with ‘half a house’, she stirred my journalistic interest, initially, with her “promise of authenticity, tinged with craziness” as I wrote in Feta. It was Foteini who talked us into renting the small stone house we’d just viewed in the village. We dithered over it for many reasons. She merely said: “But why wouldn’t you take it?” Great journeys can start on such simple promptings as this. It was she who first christened me Margarita, a name that has stuck with me in Greece. But it was also her character that drew me to her, and against the odds, even with my rusty Greek language skills, she and I began the most unusual, and challenging, of friendships, which I described in the books.

Sweet and lovely Voula from the village, giving Marjory a hug

Foteini was not the only villager, however, who we came to love during our time in the Mani, which stretched to three years. There were other Greeks who became an indelible part of our lives, especially dark-haired, gregarious Voula, whom I have already mentioned, and her lovely mother, Nikoletta. When the pair sat side by side, they were like “two voluptuous bookends”. I wrote about them both in my first two books, where I had called them Eftihia and Pelagia, though sadly, Nikoletta passed away in 2012, which was a great loss to the village. There were also many other characters: Voula’s brother Yiorgos, locals who ran the kafeneio and tavernas, the farmer with the Paul Newman eyes, the ever gracious Leonidas. Yet still people contact me about Foteini (not her real name, by the way).

Giving Foteini a copy of Feta

When I first gave her a copy of the book on a visit in 2014, she grabbed it in her big meaty hands, turning it this way and that, with a look of wonder. Having anything published is an incomparable experience, but watching Foteini gripping her copy of Feta, a book she inspired in so many ways, ranks as one of the most satisfying moments of my life.

* * * * *

Riding Riko

When I had the mad urge to ride Foteini’s donkey Riko along the village road from her ktima, it took a bit of persuasion. Jim also needed a bit of prompting too, as I described in this extract from my third memoir, A Scorpion In The Lemon Tree:

“Foteini stared at me hard. ‘You want to ride Riko, on the road? Out there?’

‘Yes, just for 10 minutes. You know I won’t let anything happen to him.’

She scratched at her face, worrying a curly grey hair hanging from her chin.

‘You’d be careful wouldn’t you, koritsara mou? (My girl).’

‘Yes, of course, I will,’ I said, wondering if she felt this nervous when she took him out on the road, or did I just seem like a total rookie.

Jim was watching me with narrowed eyes. ‘What’s going on? I’m having a Greek breakthrough moment. I’m making out words and I’m not well pleased.’

‘I’ve asked Foteini if I can take Riko along the road for a ride.’

‘Oh, no way! You know how people drive in the Mani. A car will hit you both.’

‘Shhh! Stop fussing. Can a woman not have a moment of madness in her life?’ I said, remembering Zorba the Greek’s famous appeal for getting in touch with your inner rebel.

Jim shook his head. ‘Margarita, you have not been a woman bereft of mad moments, I seem to recall.’

‘I won’t be long, I promise.’

‘Okay. Margarita mou,’ Foteini said at last as she led the donkey through the main gate. She handed me the lead rope, which was all I had for reins, and for a crop, she gave me a thin piece of whittled olive wood.

‘Take him,’ she said. ‘You’re always giving me things. This is my gift to you. Enjoy it. And don’t be long.’

I brushed my legs over Riko’s sides to move him quickly down the road. As I went I could hear Foteini and Jim grumbling together, and Wallace whining. It was like a Greek chorus.”

January Promo

My second memoir, Amazon best-seller Homer’s Where The Heart Is, which continues the story of our three years in the Mani, is currently on an Amazon Kindle promo for the rest of January at 99p (UK only). To buy, click the link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00WEC7YCY

For more information about this book and the two others in the series, including the latest, A Scorpion In The Lemon Tree, go to the books page on the website www.bigfatgreekodyssey.com or the books page on Facebook www.facebook.com/ThingsCanOnlyGetFeta

The latest is on all Amazon sites:

amazon.uk

amazon.com

I’m always happy to hear from readers. Please click the comment link on this page. Thanks for calling by.

© All rights reserved. All text and photographs copyright of the authors 2017. 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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New travel memoir set in Greece

Posted on June 18, 2016 by Marjory

Hello, blog readers. I am happy to announce that my third travel memoir, set in southern Greece, is now available for pre-order on Amazon.

Called A Scorpion In The Lemon Tree: Mad adventures on a Greek peninsula, the book charts my second long odyssey in the southern Peloponnese with my partner Jim and our crazy Jack Russell dog, Wallace.

While the first two books were set in the Mani, the central peninsula, this one takes place in and around Koroni at the tip of the Messinian Peninsula, where we stayed for 14 months from early 2014.

Marjory, Jim and Wallace in Koroni.

At the window of Palio Spiti (the old house), described in the new book.

Why we ended up in Koroni, when we had our heart set on living once more in the Mani, forms the basis of the book and reveals how you can plan your life down to the last detail but it will be derailed in the end, especially in the wonderfully spontaneous, and sometimes chaotic, place that Greece is. There are more perilous and funny adventures along the way as we try to find long-term rental accommodation and finally come to terms with living in a house that we didn’t expect we’d end up in. If you read the book, you’ll find out why.

A lemon tree at Villa Anemos overlooking the Gulf of Messinia.

You might be wondering about the title, A Scorpion In The Lemon Tree. There are specific reasons why I chose this title and apart from being unlucky enough to have these pesky critters calling on us quite a bit, the title is a kind of metaphor as well, and you can make your own mind up about what the scorpion represents in the context of the narrative. And in case you’ve missed it, there is a scorpion in the lemon tree on the cover illustration. Can you spot it? Wallace the dog should give you a clue.

View of Koroni from its old Venetian castle.

The artwork was produced by the talented London artist Anthony Hannaford, www.anthonyhannaford.co.uk, who created the fabulous covers for my first two books. Once again, he has managed to capture all the colour and vibrancy of Greece. And cheeky Wallace got a front-row seat this time. I also have to thank Jim Bruce for his great editing and formatting of this edition www.ebooklover.co.uk

In this memoir we will make friends with a new cast of heart-warming characters, while connecting again with old friends in the Mani, including our dear friend, goat farmer Foteini, with whom we have several humorous encounters, as always.

Long sandy beaches along the gulf side of Koroni.

While we may have started our latest odyssey disappointed at not being able to live once more in the Mani, we fell in love with Koroni in the end. What’s not to love? It is in a remote part of the (left-hand) Messinian peninsula and I was surprised that there had been so little written about it in the past, so I am thrilled to be able to highlight this region and I hope I will entice more of you to visit. It is a haven of peace and quiet where you won’t see the outward signs of economic crisis, or the effects of recent migration to Greece.

Koroni is set beside a lovely old harbour, with a castle on a high acropolis above and narrow winding streets ascending to it. It is atmospheric and unspoilt, with the Messinian gulf on one side and the Ionian Sea on the other. On either side of the promontory are wide sandy beaches, old churches, and thriving villages within easy reach.

Over the coming months on the blog, I will focus on other aspects of Messinia, as mentioned in the book including some of the hidden corners of this area, and a few curious and unexplained phenomena, like The Hand of God Tree. Watch this space!

I hope you enjoy this memoir, the third in my Peloponnese series. Like the other two books, the narrative is such that you can read it on its own and understand what our travels in Greece have been all about, but you will get a better understanding of how we connected with this region, and its people, if you read the other books as well, starting with Things Can Only Get Feta. The first two chart our adventures from 2010, when we first left our Scottish village to relocate to a remote hillside village for a year, despite the economic crisis. But the year became four in the end. Four of the most fascinating years of our lives.

Enjoy the new book, which is currently available as an ebook and a paperback on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other outlets. I thank you all for your ongoing support of my work. I always appreciated comments on the blog and if you have liked the books, a small review on Amazon will also be most welcome. It is the lifeblood of authors.

Marjory’s new book is on all Amazon sites:

amazon.uk

amazon.com

On the website www.bigfatgreekodyssey.com you will also find a ‘books’ page with other information about the books. Or visit the Facebook page www.facebook.com/ThingsCanOnlyGetFeta

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

Things Can Only Get Feta

Homer’s Where The Heart Is

Thanks for calling by. x

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Moussaka under the mistletoe . . .

Posted on December 13, 2015 by Marjory

Wallace in a Greek festive mood

“YOU can’t have moussaka for Christmas,” said one of our English expat friends in the Mani just before our second Christmas in the region, as we discussed festive menus.

“Why not? It seems perfectly reasonable for a Greek odyssey.”

“Okay,” he said with a shrug. “But you can get moussaka any time. Christmas calls for turkey, or at least a chicken. It’s tradition.”

Yes it was, but not necessarily here. Of course he thought we were mad opting for moussaka, but madder still was the whole British faff of trying to replicate Christmas in Greece, with turkeys and even Brussels sprouts. One genial expat who lived full-time in the Mani had bemoaned the fact he had not been able to grow a sprout yet in his garden. If there was one thing I didn’t miss about a British Christmas it was the metallic after-taste of a sprout.

It seemed bizarre to even think of a normal Christmas when some years you can swim until the end of the year ̶ in the southern Peloponnese at least. And if had been any hotter that particular December we may have plumped for a day at the beach, like some of my teenage Bondi Beach Christmases, when I was growing up in Sydney.

That was because the traditional Christmas in Australia is bizarre as well. I had plenty of those in my childhood from my Scottish family keen to stick to the rules of the ‘homeland’, with turkey or a fat chook (chicken) in 100-degree heat, watching the tree ignite from overheated festive lights, and all the oldies squabbling and then passing out in front of British Christmas reruns on the TV.

Christmas in Greece is a quiet time and revolves around family and the church

Christmas in Greece is refreshingly and sensibly low-key, no hysterics, no burn-out. It’s more about family, a time of reflection and religious observation. Greeks do buy presents but they are exchanged mainly on New Year’s Day, which is the feast day of Ayios Vassilis, the Greek version of Santa Claus, without the red suit and reindeer mates.

Villages still opt for the old tradition of a decorated boat like this one in the square at Koroni, Messinia

Some younger Greeks, particularly in towns, have slowly adopted elements of the western Christmas, and having a decorated tree is something of a status symbol now, despite the economic crisis. However, the old ways remain, especially in villages. You still see illuminated boats in a village plateia because this symbol is associated with Ayios Nikolaos, whose feast day is earlier in December, and he’s the patron saint of sailors. You will also hear kids shuffling about the streets on Christmas Eve singing the kalanda song, a kind of Greek carol which might earn them a coin or a sweet.

Christmas decorations with a rural Greek flavour

Our first Christmas in the Mani had been in 2010, the year we moved into the hillside village of Megali Mantineia. On Christmas Day there was a morning service, which was hard to ignore as the sound of the chanting rolled out over the entire village. After this, there were quiet preparations for the long family lunch.

In the morning some village friends had brought us gifts of olive oil and kourabiedes (shortbread) with a thick dusting of powdered sugar. We had visited our farming friend Foteini in the morning and took her a small gift. She was having her Christmas lunch with a neighbour Eftihia and her family but, as with most rural Greeks it would be a modest meal, probably roast goat, since everyone here kept goats.

Foteini insisted we come with her to Christmas lunch and it was tempting but we had already accepted lunch with an expat friend further down the Mani. She had recently retired to Greece and perhaps it was an attempt to summon up the familiar, but it was a proper British meal with all the trimmings and plenty of wine. It, too, seemed bizarre and slightly out of place, but at least we could work off the lipid overload by pacing round the nearby olive groves after lunch.

During the second Christmas we were living down the hill from Megali Mantineia in the seaside village of Paleohora. We were renting a house from a genial Greek couple, Andreas and Marina. On Christmas Day, while they stayed at their home in Kalamata for a family gathering, we planned to have a quiet lunch this time, and make the moussaka, for which we had bought all the ingredients. But it was such a gloriously sunny day, despite being cool, that even after all the fuss we had made about the moussaka, we changed our minds.

We drove instead up to Megali Mantineia to have lunch in one of our favourite tavernas, the Iliovasilema (Sunset taverna). The place was open though the whole family was gathered at one long table to eat their lunch of succulent oven-roasted goat and lemony potatoes. There were several other people dining, a few expats and Greek couple from Athens with a house in the village, but somehow we were all annexed to the family proceedings and it turned out to be one of our loveliest Christmases: traditional, with plenty of parea (company) and no fuss.

Our lovely Greek landlords in Paleohora, making Christmas wreaths

During our second Christmas in Paleohora, however, we did discover one surprising thing about our landlord Marina. She had a secret obsession for some of the rituals of Christmas and it all started way ahead of the festive season. It became one of the chapters in my sequel Homer’s Where The Heart Is, which, to end my Christmas blog, I would like to share in a small excerpt:

“One Saturday there was a knock at the front door. It was Marina and Andreas. Marina was loaded up with things in baskets and myriad plastic bags hooked over her wrist. I was very afraid though when I saw the big pointed red hat of what appeared to be a papier maché Santa Claus.

“Good morning, I’ve brought some Christmas things. I will just sort them out, yes?” she said.

With her usual proprietorial charm that we had fully accepted now, she barged passed us. I assumed she was taking them to the apothiki (store room) to leave until Christmas. Andreas stayed on the doorstep because his feet were muddy and handed us a bag of sweet oranges from his trees. We stood outside, talking and leaning on the wrought-iron railing on the top steps.

While we chatted outside we forgot all about Marina. Suddenly I became aware of furious scurrying and hammering going on behind us.

“What’s happening inside, Andreas?”

He rolled his eyes. “Marina has just decorated your place for Christmas.”

“What?”

We turned around and the living room, which had looked atmospheric and Greek, now resembled Santa’s Grotto at a John Lewis store. The big red Santa was on the dining table and tinsel was strung up over the fireplace, with Christmas lights, candle stands and a dozen statues of Santa Claus striking various festive poses.

“Here,” said Marina, pushing two festive woollen socks towards me. “For Christmas Day.”

“But Marina, it’s only November. Too early for Christmas, surely?” I pleaded.

Andreas shook his head. “I agree, Margarita, but Marina loves Christmas, you have no idea.”

Oh yes I did! The living room − lit up and pulsating, lacking only a sound system for Christmas carols − told me so.

“This old place looks better now, don’t you think?” said Marina, hands on hips like the presenter of a TV home makeover show.

One of the things we liked about being in Greece at Christmas was the lack of commercialism and houses lit up like Blackpool seafront. It was a quiet, reflective time instead. But now we had the whole Christmas fizz inside the house. We laughed over it all later and slowly began to dismantle the effects, leaving some of Marina’s festive tat in place and hiding the rest in the apothiki, hoping she wouldn’t notice….”

Wallace the lovable Jack Russell sends love and licks for Christmas

Well that’s it for the year. To all readers, I would like to thank you for your continuing interest and support of the blog and my Greek books. I wish you a very happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year. If you happen to find yourself in Greece at Christmas, go for the roast goat every time, or have an Aussie beach Christmas instead.

(Text: © Marjory McGinn)

See you all next year.

Χρονια Πολλα. X

Homer’s Where The Heart Is

TO read more about living in Greece during the crisis in the southern Peloponnese, read my second travel memoir Homer’s Where The Heart Is.

This book is the sequel to the first, Things Can Only Get Feta (published in 2013) about the start of our long odyssey in the rural Mani.

To those who have already read the latest book, thanks for your kind comments and Amazon reviews, which are always appreciated.

Both books are available on all Amazon’s international sites 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.

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 2015. 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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New book – Homer’s Where The Heart Is

Posted on April 20, 2015 by Marjory

FOR all blog readers who have read and enjoyed my Greek travel memoir, Things Can Only Get Feta, I am very pleased to announce that the sequel is now available as a Kindle and paperback on Amazon worldwide.

Called Homer’s Where the Heart Is, the story takes up where Feta left off, as we decide to stay longer in the Mani in southern Greece after our first amazing year, despite the economic crisis becoming more severe.

Caption here for the local cove near Paleohora

A quiet cove near Paleohora with Mount Kalathio in the distance.

We rent a house in a slightly different location, but nearby the first village of Megali Mantineia. In Paleohora, we share an olive grove with our Greek landlords and their crazy collection of animals, including a she-wolf with a shady past.

It’s a fabulous new chapter in our odyssey but, typically for Greece, not everything goes to plan, although there’s plenty of entertainment as we deal with Greeks on the edge, gun-toting farmers and Wallace, our much loved Jack Russell dog, is up to a few of his tricks as usual. But he also faces one of his most challenging problems yet.

Caption here for Wallace surfboard riding

Wallace our Jack Russell can’t help getting up to a bit of mischief in the sequel.

I hope readers of the first book will be pleased to find that some of the original Greek characters from the hillside village of Megali Mantineia are very much part of this book, as we keep in close contact with them and take part in more of their village activities. Foteini the goat farmer, who charmed readers in Feta, is still one of the stars of this book, with her endearing and eccentric rural ways and her sense of fun.

We also explore more of the southern Peloponnese, and visit new locations, including ‘Little Australia’, the charming island of Kythera, and the wonderful house of the late Patrick Leigh Fermor in Kardamili, while researching a feature article on the famous travel writer’s home.

The famous stone arcade in the late Patrick Leigh Fermor’s Greek home.

There is also a grittier side to this book as the economic crisis intensifies and Greece edges closer to bankruptcy. Interwoven with the narrative of the book is my own back story from another troubling era in Greece’s history, which provides an interesting parallel to current events.

In the early 1970s, as a young woman fresh from high school, I travelled to Greece and spent a year in Athens during the military dictatorship. This was an edgy and fascinating time that I have never written about before. It will reveal as much about Greece as it does about my own personal journey and my continuing love affair with this country.

I hope you enjoy this book, and in the coming months I will share with blog readers some pictures and stories from behind the scenes that might help you to get a broader idea of what life has been like in Greece during the crisis.

Lastly, I must thank the very talented English artist Tony Hannaford for his absolutely gorgeous illustration for this book. Tony has a great love of Greece and has the ability to capture the vibrancy and beauty of this country to perfection, as he also did with the cover of Things Can Only Get Feta. To see more of his work on Greece and the Mediterranean in general, please visit his website www.anthonyhannaford.co.uk

The editing and formatting for the Kindle was done by ex-journalist Jim Bruce and I can’t praise his work enough. For more information on his service please visit www.ebooklover.co.uk

Please let me know how you like the book, and if you do, please think about leaving a review on Amazon. Writers are always very appreciative of this. And comments to the blog are also very welcome.

As always, I thank you for your ongoing interest in our Greek odyssey and for support of Things Can Only Get Feta and all your very kind messages to the blog.

* To buy the new book Homer’s Where The Heart Is in Kindle or paperback in Britain or the US, please click on one of these links: amazon.co.uk or amazon.com The book is also available on European and most other international sites as well.

For more information about the books and about our time living, firstly in the Mani and currently in Koroni in Messinia, visit our website www.bigfatgreekodyssey.com

© All rights reserved. Text and photographs copyright of the authors 2015. 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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Searching for the real Arcadia …

Posted on November 7, 2014 by Marjory

Stemnitsa nestles on the edge of the Lousios Gorge.

ARCADIA! The word suggest images of pastoral bliss and goat-legged Pan, the god of shepherds, twirling around olive trees, playing his pan-pipes. It was a place that inspired the European poets and painters of the 18th and 19th centuries and suggested an innocent, golden age. It sometimes seems more of a mythical place than a real province. So, on a cool autumn day, we set off from the tip of the Messinian peninsula and drove north to discover what Arcadia is all about, and if it still has mythical charm. The excellent Cadogen guidebook, Peloponnese and Athens, describes Arcadia as “one of the best kept secrets of the Peloponnese … a place that seemed ancient even in ancient times”. I know just what that means now as Arcadia has a certain timelessness, sitting snug amid mountains and ravines in the centre of the Peloponnese.

Gerousia kafeneio, a little piece of traditional Greece

We were heading for the mountain eyrie of Stemnitsa, west of Tripolis. It is one of several mountain outposts in this region, including Dimitsana and Karitaina, but Stemnitsa is also claimed to be one of the 15 most beautiful villages in Greece. Dating back to the Middle Ages, Stemnitsa is built in giddy tiers up a precipice on the western slopes of Mount Menalo, at 1,100 metres, with a view down the long, deep Lousios Gorge.

Gerousia promises to be cosy in winter with its wood-burning stove

On the day of our visit it had a wintry feel so high up, despite being a warm day elsewhere. The main square is the heart of this old village, with tables and chairs under the walnut and cherry trees, an old church nearby, and a few tavernas and kafeneia. The Gerousia is an elegant old kafeneio with outdoor seating, but it wasn’t hard to imagine how, in deep winter, villagers would be huddled around the central wood-burning stove inside. It has a feel of how kafeneia used to be in Greece, and in case you can’t imagine it, there is a wonderful collection of old photos around the walls showing groups of villagers from last century sitting outside the main door. Sophia, the owner’s mother, is very friendly and obviously proud of the establishment, as it featured not long ago in a travel story in a popular Greek magazine. Along with coffee she serves some of the local sweets like skaltsounia, pastry shells filled with walnuts and honey. She was very taken with our Jack Russell dog Wallace hiding under the table. “He’s very quiet,” she said. I knew she was tempting fate and the minute her back was turned he sprang to life, like Pan chasing a woodland nymph and barked loudly, scattering a group of passers-by. Just another day in Arcadia! Before we left, Sophia gave us a small container of cherry tomatoes from her garden to take away, and insisted we try a couple first. They were sweet and delicious and it was a nice gesture of hospitality. But coffee followed by tomatoes? Don’t try it at home!

One of the arty village gates

The village is full of old-world charm with some quirky rural corners – great stacks of olive wood for the winter, donkeys tethered in gardens, gates and fences seemingly fashioned by crafty elves from sticks. It could have been a setting for a Brothers Grimm fairytale, without all the scary stuff. The village is best appreciated by walking up the narrow streets bordered by solid stone houses with heavy wooden shutters built for winter weather.

Cute donkey with a fringe on the top, and a traditional wooden saddle still favoured by villagers

The village is also renowned for its gold and silver smithery and there is school here in an old renovated building that teaches the craft. Several shops selling items made there and also a range of other traditional and modern jewellery, and at least one with more folky designs called the Politimes Dimiourgies.

Politimes Dimiourgies, one of several jewellery shops in the village near the silversmithery school

There are 18 churches here, from the 12th century to 17th century, though you will need to ask around or the keyholders. The church in the main square, Ayios Yiorgos, is open most mornings and has a nice collection of frescos and an intriguing relic in a silver box which is a piece of bone from the 13-century Peloponnesian saint Leontios. Most of the village is open in the winter and has some nice boutique hotels.

The spectacular Prodromou monastery hanging onto a rockface on the Lousios Gorge

One of the more curious attractions of this area are the three amazing monasteries built along the side of the Lousios Gorge, particularly the monastery of the Timios Prodromou. You can’t see the monastery from its parking area at the top of the gorge and a sign sends you on to a cobbled path that leads down the side of the gorge. Just when you think it can’t possibly be here, because there’s nothing but a steep-sided ravine, and trees, you look up and there it is, above you, a long mass of buildings clinging like limpets to the rockface, with some tiny, box-like structures with wooden buttresses underneath. It’s eerily quiet in the afternoon, hours before the monastery opens for visitors, and all you can hear are the sounds of birds and the Lousios river gushing way below, and maybe even Pan pipes when the vibes are right.

The bullet-scarred door of the monastery church hints at turbulent times

The Prodromou monastery was established in the 12th century and its church is also built into the rockface, with frescos from the 16th century. It hasn’t always been as quiet though. This area was the haunt of hero and clan chief Theodoros Kolokotronis, who was one of the leaders of the Messinian uprising against the Ottoman Turks that kicked off the War of Independence in 1821. During the war, he took refuge in this area and in the Promdromou church, securely locked by an impenetrable thick wooden door which was repeatedly shot at by the invading Turks and still bears the bullet holes to this day (see photo above).

Marjory and her woodland sprite Wallace at the ancient site of Gortys

A trip to this region wouldn’t be complete without a visit to the site of Ancient Gortys, further down the gorge from Stemnitsa. The site was established in 335 BC and was once an important shrine and centre of healing. In the river Lousios below, Zeus, the father of the Gods, was said to have been bathed as a child. Alexander the Great was so impressed with the site he offered his breast plate and shield as a tribute.

Some of the ruins of Ancient Gortys with the Lousios Gorge behind

There’s not much to see here now apart from fallen columns and crumbling walls amid ancient olive trees and clumps of wild sage. The original ‘spa’ and bathing area is still visible, with a curious wall of ‘cublicles’, each with a small stone depression in front, which may have been for foot bathing, and I can only assume the ancient Gortyians had tiny feet.

Bathing cubicles of ancient Greece?

Arcadia is an enchanting place that does feel rather ancient, a small corner of Greece that probably won’t change much because of its mountainous terrain. Perhaps the minxy nymphs and sprites that inhabit this blissful zone had taken control of our sense of direction but when we left late in the afternoon, with a long drive back to Koroni, we ended up driving west past the equally alluring town of Karitaina, with its massive castle atop a craggy hill, instead of heading south, and added another hour on to our journey. For more information about Arcadia and what to see, visit the Greek government website www.mythicalpeloponnese.gr

Wallace goes large in his backpack

He ain’t heavy, he’s a Jack Russell!

AFTER my book about living in the Peloponnese, Things Can Only Get Feta (Bene Factum Publishing), came out last year, a few readers contacted me about one of the chapters. They doubted that you could get a Jack Russell terrier to sit still in a rucksack. Readers might recall that we smuggled Wallace into an archaeological site near Kalamata after being told dogs were not allowed in. So, here’s a picture that shows it’s possible. But how did we keep him quiet for a while once he was inside? Well, you’ll just have to read the book … For details about the book and where to buy it and its sequel, Homer’s Where the Heart Is, Big Fat Greek Odyssey website, book page.

Visit Amazon to buy the book (Kindle version – new edition). A new edition is also available. Please remember that reviews on Amazon are always much appreciated, however small they are. Thanks for stopping by and your comments on the blog are always welcome too.

© All rights reserved. Text and photographs copyright of the authors 2016. No content/text or photographs may be copied from the blog or used in any way without the prior written permission of the authors. This applies to all posts on the blog.

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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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