Monday 3 January 2011

10p for a cuppa tea, Guv?

Total bail-out package for Greece = € 110 billion
Population of Greece = 11,000,000

simple maths gives us €10,000 per head

Anyone lend me €40,000 before the interest kicks in?

Monday 20 December 2010

Tough at the Top!

Greece is at present a nation in free-fall. Riots are nothing new and I have seen riots about just about everything from globalisation to regimes that have been deposed for nearly forty years. What is more relevant is the action of those who have no time to unite and destroy. Nothing. The majority of the worst hit are doing nothing but trying to get though to the next day, resigned to the belief that resistance is futile. What will be will be.


Tuesday 14 December 2010

Speak up!


Dear Blogees, I have had the stark realisation that genocide and other crimes against humanity may not be the only legacy left by Adolph Hitler, as if they were not enough. Another more diabolical dower struck me recently; Shouting. Mr Hitler didn't invent shouting, admittedly but he did a lot for popularising it as a political tool and by political I mean in its broader sense, as a means to manipulate and influence the populous. Our own Churchill flirted with shouting as a oratorical tool but due to his obvious lack of oral dexterity went back to his pontificant enunciation for his 'fight them on the beaches' speech. Lenin before him had gotten his underclothes in an undulation from time to time but it was the Führer who got it to the masses and really showed its potential to the world.

Tuesday 9 November 2010

Conspiracy, what conspiracy?

Dear Blogees 

Trust me 
I have come to the troubling conclusion that the whole world has gone completely off its trolley. In the old adage of there are more out than in I think that out is in and that in is an asylum of outness, if you get me. I mean, you consider yourself normal right but what is normal if not a synonym for average. If average is a mathematical or statistical concept then normality is just a matter of numbers and as a wise man once observed, there are lies, damn lies and statistics (be it Disraeli, Wentworth Dilke or Twain). So what do I base this thesis on, what else, the NET. Please don't be fooled, for just as the drunken man may become violent or lecherous due to being disencumbered of his inhibitions the Net gives that same freedom of expression and taking the world's cyber pulse you will have to, as I have, accede that the world is paranoid.


Sunday 24 October 2010

cough your way to fitness


STOP! if you're serious about Abs
Dear Blogees, My wife and I have been on a bit of a health kick lately and you'll be please to learn that the swimming that I had to run so hard to be allowed to do is going well, I am the urban dolphin but it is my wife who has discovered probably the most effective total Ab workout I have ever seen. She started nearly a month ago and already her waist has tightened and definition is easily visible. The workout itself can be done anywhere and what's more cannot be denied, when the workout comes you workout, like it or not.


Wednesday 29 September 2010

Chasing paper 2





I am a bureauphobe, a papyrophobe, I am macrophobic, I am frightened of the wait before a rubber stamp thumps a form, even strip lighting in civic offices gives me the heebie-geebies. And yet all I wanted was to go swimming at the new local pool, an innocuous ambition with the goal of putting some shape to the amorphous silhouette that had begun to greet me each morning in the bathroom mirror.



Here it is necessary to get a piece of paper to get a rubber stamp to procure a form to make an application to make a declaration that you require to lodge a petition to get a piece of paper. Trees all over the world shudder at the sound of the Greek language and if you are worried about the greenhouse effect stop hounding Jeremy Clarkson and his cronies, you only have to look to the Greek civil service. The whole world could go to Tescos in Hummers and it would not touch the damage they do every day. Not only is it the obscene consumption of the rainforests but the petrol that is burned collecting and recollecting reams of stamped paper at offices dotted all over the city to find that one has been incorrectly stamped or that that law has is the meantime been changed to include the requirement of 10 years back-tax declarations from your great-grandparents or an autograph from Elvis.
Thank-you very much!


The nice young lady at the pool gave me a booklet and a list informing me that I would be required to obtain a certificate from my doctor and a dermatologist. I didn't have a GP, another phobia, so I had to go to the national insurance offices to have one signed up. The new GP informed me that she required a cardiology check-up and some blood tests, back to the insurance office to sign up a cardiologist.

Well now I'm sitting here with the faint smell of chlorine and a satisfying pertness in my muscles, all my tests were good and I've forgotten most of the road that got me here. Greece has become an a addiction, just as the obese head I carry in the morning doesn't stop me having a couple of glasses of wine at the end of the day, coughing hasn't stopped me smoking and I'm still married. Masochistic tendencies, maybe but at least I get to do it to me before they do.
   

Thursday 23 September 2010

2-stroke and diesel don't mix


ouch!
So there I was buzzing my orange iconic Vespa back up the incline to my beloved mountain, enjoying the wind in my face when it happened. The front wheel rejected the party line and I bounced off the beautifully polished asphalt landing in an undignified heap in a ditch. The screech of still-financed metal shedding paint as we slid to a halt cut me to the quick. I threw my skid-lid at the floor petulantly unable to do anything else save suck the tears through my eye sockets and retain some decorum.


“You alright mate?” a BMW driver enquired (maybe they do have hearts after all).

I want my mum, I thought looking down at my previously unblemished crutch-buzzer. Could he offer tea and Jaffa cakes? No! I nodded that I was relatively unharmed keeping my upper-lip stiff and Britannic.

He pointed out something on the road just in front of his bumper. My Ebay watch, which apart from a broken strap pin was totally unscathed. Is there no justice in the world?

I picked up the bruised scooter, dented near-side bubble and bent leg-shield. Suck suck choke, the saline tears began to sting. She started after a couple of kicks when I realised that I’d broken my big toe. Ouch!

The traffic began to flow and then I realised the cause of my calamity, diesel. Isn't fuel expensive enough without unscrupulous tanker drivers spilling it all over the already treacherous road surface throwing middle-aged reborn Mods bouncing into ditches.

Protect and serve?
I followed the trail of oil up the hill to its ultimate end at the junction for my village.

The next day I stopped on my way past the police station to make a report. I limped in sporting a freshly scabbing elbow and expressed my woe to the desk Sargent who fobbed me off with feigned concern despite the fact that the trail actually past the station. On my way down I saw the aftermath of another bumper-bounce on the same bend.

I've straightened out the worst of the damage now and my elbow will be ready for a new tan soon but I implore drivers to be patient when stuck in a traffic jam caused by a slow moving scooterist on the windy parts of the road to Hortiatis.

Thursday 16 September 2010

Ebay ethics

Ethics begin with an E
Like most expats, I rely heavily on the Internet for my creature comforts. Greece has always been a little expensive for some things but now after incurring the wrath of the IMF and Eurozone central bank for some little accounting errors things are getting out of hand.

From Under Dark Clouds

The Century of DIY