Election Day at last - it will be a relief to get it out of the way. Not that there's been much effort to win votes in this area. A couple of incomprehensibly warbling loudspeakers drifting through the town and a few posters and that's it. I cast my vote weeks ago by post knowing I'd be too lazy to get to the polling station.
It won't make much difference who gets in but newspapers and TV will be able to concentrate on something else soon, I hope.
No wind of change here - no wind in fact. We seem to have missed the sunshine but missed the turbulence as well.
My family are all doing interesting things. Sophie-daughter has just finished an Iyengar Yoga intensive in some midlands town; Costa went off to Greece at the weekend, Vassiliki thankfully, for water sports activity, not Athens where the Greeks are dealing with the crisis in their usual emotions-first, logic-later manner; and Chloe-daughter went to a charity dinner-dance at which Sir Robin Knox-Johnston was very entertaining. Ex and wife are in Belgium (well, maybe that's not so thrilling...) I am, as usual, doing nothing of any interest - and wondering why! Only one person to blame for that sadly.
Am I the last person in the world to have heard that May 4th is Star Wars Day - May the Fourth be with you! Yes, I probably am...
The troubles in Greece suddenly reminded me of the time N & I drove into Athens when the country was almost at war with Turkey over Cyprus. We thought Stadiou was unusually deserted but were enjoying the lack of hassle (in those days Greeks drove on their horns and if you didn't hoot they didn't consider you worth avoiding.) Then to our surprise (but being British we didn't react much) burning newspapers started to fall from windows in the buildings either side of the street, evidently aimed at us. We made it the rest of the way to our hotel unmolested, passing tanks that were so small they looked like toys until they trained their guns on us. Later that day, as we ate ice-creams outside Flokka, lounging in their comfortably deep basket chairs, our peace and serenity was again disturbed by these pesky little tanks rushing past chucking tear gas bombs to left and right. They were aiming for groups, perceived or actual, of over three people for fear they were hatching dissident plots. We, along with the rest of the coffee-drinkers and ice-cream eaters, all Greeks (in those days the tourist trade hadn't really got going!) moved with great dignity inside the cafe. The waiters shut the doors and nobody took any more notice of the fuss outside.
The British Embassy advised us to go home but we didn't and had a very nice holiday driving around the Pelaponnesus.
It does me good to remember that I did once have a more edgy sort of life.
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