Phew! 42 degrees and that is hot in anybody’s language. Poor animals. We humans can at least strip off, take a cool shower, or sit in front of a fan or the air conditioning or plunge into a pool if you have a pool in which to plunge but cats can’t cast off their fur and just collapse on any piece of cold floor they can find. Ice cold water and plenty of it has never tasted so good. The year we came out on holiday and found this house we deliberately came in August and went house hunting in the middle of the day (mad dogs and Englishmen) to make sure we could take the heat and I don’t remember it ever being as fierce as this. The Russian fires are evidently still burning, Poland has been experiencing devastating blazes, and now Brazil and Spain are added to the list. So far there doesn’t seem to be any news of fires in Greece. Maybe after the disastrous fires of yesteryear people are being just that bit more careful but with this heat who’s to know where and when one or more might break out? Last years fires almost reached the outskirts of Athens.
So what has been happening otherwise in the great wide world in this summer of Greek discontent? I hate to mention strikes yet again but evidently airport workers in Britain have voted in favour of strike action and because they include firemen and security staff six major UK airports might have to close. Nice going lads. What else is happening in that overcrowded island? Well there have been the usual spate of knifings and shootings and various other killings, some apparently just for the hell of it, putting the boot in as it were and the victim just happening to be in the wrong place at the wrong time; baby battering, rape, and more ghouls emerging from the woodwork. A girl of fifteen threw herself from a building, evidently because of the break-up with her boy friend and, as she lay on the pavement dying, bystanders stood around taking photos on their mobile phones. Is that sick or what? ‘Hey look at this, you guys, that kid is about to snuff it.’
Evidently the bonus culture is back with a vengeance, denizens of the city greedily and gleefully grabbing with both hands, forgetting it was they who nearly brought the house tumbling down only a short while ago and had to be bailed out with public money. Whatever happened to morality?
I didn’t produce him deliberately but there is an my screen an animated paper clip with big eyes and Groucho Marx eyebrows that like Groucho he raises quite effectively. He appears from a sheet of paper with a sort of squishy noise and into which he also disappears. Like I say, I don’t remember ever bringing him to life but now he’s here I’ve grown quite fond of him.