We have been wondering what happened to the proof copy from Lightning Source of THE JOURNEYS WE MAKE so Douglas did some investigation and discovered it has been sitting in Heraklion for a week! Now it will have to be mailed back to him in England from whence it came, what a flaming nuisance. Still it will give him something to read in hospital if he’s up to it. Talking of books have just read two I can thoroughly recommend to anyone interested; firstly Helen Dunmore’s beautiful novel about Leningrad, THE SIEGE and then, if you’re into thrillers with some substance, Jesse Kellerman’s seamless page turner, THE BRUTAL ART.
It would appear that the fires that ravaged Greece a short while back have been the last straw for Prime Minister Karamanlis who has called a general election. These summer fires, so many of them, Athens evidently was virtually ringed with them, are an intractable problem because it would be simply economically impossible to have on stand- by all year forces large enough to cope and for most of the time probably unwanted and idle. The money would have to come out of peoples pockets either in taxes or rates and there would be howls of anguish but, come summer and come the fires, there are still howls of anguish and questions of why once more hasn’t the government been prepared for this emergency? Now of course California is suffering horrendous fires with mass evacuations and people losing their homes as they did here, and France and Spain have also had their summer disasters. Is it global warming? And here in Greece, a country with (up to now anyway) no land registry the question always is, is it arson on the part of developers?
We were in Kalyves yesterday, a seaside town which at this time of the year should be bustling with holiday makers and it was practically dead with weeks of the season still to go. There could not have been more than about thirty people on the beach, very few in the town itself and in the kafenios and restaurants hardly a customer in sight. I kept on thinking of that song from LA MIZ, empty tables, empty chairs, and there were an awful lot of them. It would seem it’s not been much of a year for anybody. As Her Maj would say – an annus horribilis, probably a misspelt one, my Latin never was up to much. Check with Mary Beard. Hi, Mary! Been reading your book reviews. Maybe you’ll do mine in a couple of months time. Yes? Cheekyi