Could there be anywhere in the world free of corruption in one way or another? While the world is full of ultra-greedy “snout in the trough” hogs I guess financial scandals will keep popping up. British politicians and MEP’s seem to be the latest in a long line of I’m all right Jacks.

Greece and Albania evidently being the only two countries in Europe without a land register, Greece was given an enormous sum of euro by the European Union to create one. The money seems to have disappeared, apparently without trace, or so we are informed, and Greece has been ordered to pay it back. Consequently we, the householders, now have to individually foot the bill for this creation, face enormous fines if we do not, and some of the poorest Greeks are going to be in a lot of trouble. But the problem is not just in the financial outlay but in good old Greek bureaucracy because the three page form is so complicated not even the Greeks themselves seem to understand it, let alone us expats who are what you might call deficient in the language and no one seems to know exactly what is gong on.

For weeks The Athens News has been full of questions and answers and I have no doubt there will be a whole lot more. What for example do the people who have property in Greece but who do not live in Greece do about it? A Greek neighbour in Athens is so bemused by it all she has decided to pay a lawyer (adding to the initial cost but relieving herself of the burden) to do it for her and, thankfully, she will get him to do ours which still leaves us floundering as to exactly what we have to do, if anything, in Crete because there are evidently areas where it isn’t happening at all! Supposedly it will all be wound up by the end of September. After that beware the fines!

Anyone having anything to do with Greek red tape knows how frustrating it can be. At the moment my sister and her husband hope to visit us from South Africa in September and have for weeks been trying to sort out visas. The amount of information required is out of all proportion for a simple two week holiday in this beautiful country which, at the moment is bewailing the drop in tourists and holiday makers. The latest bit of nonsense from the embassy in Cape Town which was not stated earlier is for proof of identity of the person standing guarantor who two weeks ago dispatched a letter of invitation, duly stamped. The Greeks love rubber stamps – desks sometimes hold carousels of them and in one government office I visited the girl attending my needs had a shoe box full and couldn’t find the one she wanted.

When the electricity in this house was transferred into my name I paid a not inconsiderable sum for it to happen; for the box, the plan of the house, the signature of the man who affirmed the plan to be accurate, the electrician who supervised everything and gave the okay, settling of the previous owner’s bill and a required donation to the electricians’ trade union, all in all a hefty sum. Having paid this at the cashier I had to go over to a desk to have the paper stamped at which the gentleman extended his hand and said, “Two hundred drachmas.”

‘Two hundred drachmas! What for?’

“For the stamp.”

‘I’ve just paid out thousands of drachmas and you want another two hundred for the stamp?’

“It’s the law.”

Two movies, well one and a third actually as the second one I couldn’t finish and switched off. The first one I would have switched off as well if it hadn’t been for the English subtitles we added ten minutes after the start because once again the modern bugbear of movie-making struck and we could not understand a word of the dialogue, well hardly a word. What is it about modern actors that they simply do not know how to use their mouths except for, I take it, eating and possibly other things, but certainly not for saying their lines? What one gets are grunts, groans murmurs and mumbles.. The whole phenomenon started, as most things seem to do these days, in the states, but unfortunately British actors have taken it up and are almost as incomprehensible. There was a time if you slammed a door, scraped back a chair or rattled a teacup in the middle of a sentence the sound engineer would demand a retake. These days it would seem the writer is wasting his time with dialogue because no one is going to hear it anyway. With Nicole Kidman usually I can understand one word in eleven. It’s no use telling me that, as almost a geriatric, I am deaf as a post because that is not the case. A little hard of hearing for which I laid out the magnificent sum of 1200euro for a state of the art hearing age which should enable me to hear every word Nicole Kidman says. I am informed that possibly her voice is in an awkward (that’s putting it nicely) range for my ears. Now it may not be entirely her fault. It could be the director, it could be the sound engineer and editors – background music has become thump thump thump in your ear foreground music with dialogue relegated to the far distance, or it might partly be the reception. Whatever the cause, and I still believe it is mainly due to bad diction, it puts one off movies unless one can have the cushion of subtitles. Take for example Saving Private Ryan which we actually saw in the cinema rather than on DVD, the only person whose dialogue we could hear was the actress playing the mother. Now if, in a scene involving two people, you can hear one quite clearly but not the other, where does the fault lie? The first film I am talking about is Signs, not a bad movie on the whole despite the holes but could I hear a word of Mr Phoenix’s dialogue? Could I hell! Take any film of the forties, fifties or sixties and you hear what actors are saying without over-enunciating but now we have what is called modern film-making, and don’t tell me it’s all about moving pictures because one still needs to follow the plot if there is one. The Victorians didn’t used to say as we do that they were going to see a play, but they were going to hear a play. I wish I could say the same thing about modern cinema. Less might be more but too much less fades into obscurity.

The second movie, of which I watched about one third, was called Mists of Avalon and was the biggest load of hooey imaginable. The myth that there was an English king named Arthur round about, let’s see now, was it 5^th century? 6^th? Maybe a wee bit earlier or a wee bit later? Who knows? With all his knights, his Camelot, his round table it has certainly given film makers a lot of mileage. Pity it’s all such bunkum. Oh yes, there was an Arthur, there was a Gwenivere, there was a Lancelot du Lac. There was even a Merlin and a King Llyr but they lived and died round about the time of the Emperor Claudius. There was no round table, no Camelot. Just because a medieval writer used the words “fought like an Arthur” does not necessarily mean Arthur was a medieval king. It wouldn’t be so bad if the films were up to scratch as films but, alas, mostly they’re crap. In my humble opinion so is the musical.

Following on yesterday’s blog, my sister e-mailed me a dozen photographs of Mugabe’s new palace, a building of such outrageous and tasteless opulence it is hard to imagine. The man is completely out of his mind. Only a megalomaniac in the fullest sense could dream of living in these marble halls. He is so out of this world I really am surprised that, like Bokasa before him, he hasn’t proclaimed himself Emperor. The cost of this building and its furbishing must have been astronomical in a country that he has evidently led to bankruptcy and starvation.

Yesterday our neighbour Jannis died aged 93 so this morning I will attend his funeral. This happens very fast here. You die, you’re gone, no hanging about. On returning from a swim and a lunch date we found their gate open and knew immediately what had happened without even noticing the coffin lid standing behind it so, as soon as we had parked the car and changed into suitable clothes, we went across to pay our respects. He had only been dead about five hours. This is the fifth death of an immediate neighbour since our arrival here but they have all been of a ripe old age. The family would have kept an all night vigil with him and I shall miss his cheery greeting of an evening when he saw me watering the terrace. Chris, Douglas and Diane will be on their way by ferry to Athens, all previously arranged and can’t be rearranged for the funeral especially as the reason for the trip is to attend the Bolshoi production of Boris Godunov, a once in a lifetime experience.

Have just finished reading Peter Godwin’s remarkable book WHEN A CROCODILE ATE THE SUN. I wonder if anything will ever be done about Robert Mugabe, now into his eighties, or whether he will die a natural death and someone equally evil, if not worse, will take over. What is it about Africa that it throws up these hideous monstrous creatures? Mind you, reading in Godwin’s book about happenings in the Treblinka death camp, too horrible to even credit that it was being done by so-called human beings, Africa is not alone.

Two things I think about from when I was a kid. One – my Jewish school friend, Peter Lasker telling me the family, mother and two sons,( the father was killed in the desert fighting with the Eighth Army), were moving from South Africa to Rhodesia because that was the country of the future. Mother of course must be long since dead but where are the Lasker boys now I wonder in the country of the future, modern Zimbabwe? Two – we had a saying which went “sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me.” A bit simplistic maybe but when one thinks of Mugabe’s thugs using sticks stones and, of course the ubiquitous AK47 in Zimbabwe and someone in Britain or the US wailing about being called a name they object to, for example “Paddy” or “Taffy” and receiving thousands in compensation for hurt feelings, it rather puts the compensation culture into perspective does it not?

I understand the aims and objects of political correctness but I so sincerely hope the pendulum, if it hasn’t already, will start to swing in the opposite direction. I’m also fully in accord with men and women being treated as equals, even though it’s perfectly obvious in the nature of things that they’re not, men cannot have babies for example, I am old-fashioned enough to wish that when, as a gentleman, I open a door for a lady or make a similar gesture, that I am greeted with a thank you and possibly a charming smile rather than a scowl and a growl. The former helps the day along. The later does nothing for anybody, male or female. And how about jokes that used to go “there was an Irishman, A Welshman and A Scot and …?” Perish the thought. It’s no wonder modern comedians seem to make jokes only about sex. There’s nothing else to make jokes about in this pc world of ours. Shame really.

Back to Blogsville after a short absence (since Sunday) caused by the excruciatingly painful condition suffered by Blogmaster Douglas. He had been complaining for a couple of days about what he thought was possibly a strained muscle but it turned out to be a vicious abscess in that place where the sun does not shine, as we used to say. Sunday morning he was standing naked in the kitchen literarily howling in agony and yelling, “It gets worse! It gets worse! So it was to the Health Centre for a pain killing injection and from there to the hospital. He wouldn’t let me drive because he said he wouldn’t be able to sit in our car and he wouldn’t let me call an ambulance because he said it would take too long coming. Anyway, I was by now in such a state I couldn’t even remember the Greek for ambulance although it was a word I knew perfectly well. Our own doctor had just started her holiday and was away but fortunately good friends were on hand with a large 4WD to do the necessary. Now he is back home and can perform his blog duty. There was no need for an operation as modern antibiotics do the trick and that is a great relief all round. Since coming out of the hospital we keep hearing of people who have suffered the same complaint, one as young as 12, though we learn in Wikepedia it is usual in the third or fourth decade of one’s life, so it would appear to be much more common than thought, though not talked about unless one has suffered it and brings it up in the conversation. After all who wants to go around discussing ailments of the a…….? It strikes me that when God tried to create us in His image, or so we are informed (erroneously I think) he either did a rushed or a lousy job. Whatever, something went disastrously wrong and he really should have gone back to the drawing board or waited until He had a bit more experience in creationism.

Happy celebrations to all our American friends and let us hope your next president turns out to be a great statesman and worthy of the position and not another George Bush. How is it that America seems to be in the habit of electing the worst candidates to be their leader and commander in chief? They’ve had Nixen, Clinton, Bush to name but a few! Mind you the British aren’t that far behind. From this distance it looks as though, is it ten years? of New Labour have sent the quality of life in the UK plummeting to an extraordinary degree, and these are supposed to be socialists!

Greece is a great place in which to live if you can put up with the interminable red tape, the litter, the graffiti, the topsy-turviness of it. Mind you all that can apply to so many places, especially the litter and the mindless graffiti which is sheer vandalism. The one thing it is difficult for a soft-hearted Anglo to live with is the careless, sometimes horrifying ill-treatment of animals and the fact that it would seem that for most Greeks laws are passed for people who don’t include themselves unless it’s to their personal advantage. Driving is a subject all on its own.

It would seem also that the Greeks to whom tourism and holiday making is a major contribution to the exchequer also go out their way to put prospective visitors off from the start. This is part of the bureaucracy mentioned above . My sister and her husband wish to visit us from South Africa in September. For their visa the Greeks require a letter of invitation stating they will be housed and looked after, medical insurance (that’s okay), forms stating mother’s and father’s full names (these intended visitors are in their late sixties/ seventies) plus a whole of other information and THREE MONTHS bank statements! Does any other country have such rigid requirements? This summer the big complaint has been the drop in tourism and it is not all down to the rising cost of oil or the weak exchange rate with the pound. There are other factors involved like putting up prices more than is necessary purely out of greed. There are cheaper destinations – Turkey for a start. And, of course, there’s all the red tape.

More than half the year gone! Vicky’s three week holiday over in a flash. It is startling how quickly time is now flying. Douglas and I have gone on a diet. This is the third day. I think it is a Transylvanian diet for vampire slayers as whoever wrote it spelt steak ‘stake.’

The diet consists mainly of stake - whoops! steak, ham, lettuce and eggs. In other words 99% protein, almost the Atkins diet really. He got it off the internet. It’s quite amazing now what one can get off the internet, and very depressing. The amount of information on books, printing, publishing; there are hundreds, no thousands of writers producing thousands of books in English and how do you get anyone interested enough to buy the ones you produce yourself, starting with publishers in their ivory towers – money money money as the song goes, probably more than one. Of course one wants to make money but on misery memoirs? Chick lit? Now you see them, now you don’t Celebs? It was incredible that Wayne Rooney was paid £5000000 for a possible three books on his eighteen year old life and now a tennis player still wet behind the ears gets a whopping £75000 advance. Does that include the ghost writer’s fee? Meanwhile what is happening in the world of literature? Well … I struggled through Ian McEwen’s Saturday, a book so portentous, pretentious and boring it left me with absolutely no desire to read anything else by this author despite the highest praise he has received, especially I gather for Atonement so I will probably get the film on DVD.

Starting to go through the April/May CULTURES I see Jeffrey Archer’s new book has received a panning and in its first week went right to the top of the best seller list.. Po po po! as the Greeks say. I once tried to read an Archer novel that appeared to me to have been written by a not too bright sixth former so, again, there’s never been any desire to read another. Same applies to Dan Brown. Okay so okay, whatever the quality of their writing these guys are al laughing their various ways to their various banks and no doubt in line for prestigious prizes which still doesn’t explain their popularity. Oh, I admit The Da Vinci Code is a fantastic page turner (Douglas nearly suffered sunstroke sitting on the harbour in Xania whilst he was turning those pages) but the writing is crap. There’s no other word for it. Don’t know what editors are paid for these days. Am reading an American crime novel at the moment one chapter of which starts of “She met him at the door wearing an apron.” What kind of aprons do doors prefer to wear I wonder? Another book on Shakespeare (how man books on Shakespeare do we need?) refers to Hackney carriages in Elizabethan London. Oh, boy! There’s an anachronism for you.

But just in case all this sounds too much like sour grapes, what books have I enjoyed? Whose writing do I love? I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the Shardlake novels by C.J. Sansom. I’ve actually enjoyed the Harry Potter books; yes, all of them bar one, which I found a wee bit over complicated and unnecessarily so. I was totally enraptured by the Irish author Jamie O Neill’s At Swim Two Boys and the South African writer’s Embrace. I loved the Colleen McCullough Roman novels and am a terrific fan of Donna Leon and her Venetian detective Commissario Guido Brunetti and Boris Akunin’s Russian detective, Fandorin. There are more of course but these are the ones that spring immediately to mind.