It was one of those moments when you see something and you just want to laugh, but it's only you, by yourself, and the person you want to laugh at... so you act mature and appropriate and smile sweetly, chuckling to yourself on the inside.
I was walking to work and passed a man with a Glassons bag. He was well dressed in dress pants and jacket, and I recall he was wearing a tie. His hair was nice, freshly washed and styled and his skin looked well kept. Moisturised. Possibly exfoliated. He was standing on the footpath beside a busy road into the city, as though waiting to be picked up. In his hand, which was resting at his side, he held the handles of a Glassons bag, which hung flat and uncrinkled. Inside, visible through the opaque bag decorated with green designer florishes and swirls, I could see a lone banana.
I am all for carpooling, cleanliness, taking pride in ones appearance and fresh fruit snacks at work. Great! But, seriously, this guys looked distinctly emasculated. I think it was the ever phallic symbol of the banana, carefully held in the well-cared-for popular young woman's shop bag that really made the the scene for me.
I'll be walking by the same spot next week, but this time I'm taking my camera!
*Glassons; a popular New Zealand fashion shop for young women, tween-twenties. Sizes 6-16. www.glassons.co.nz ...I tried to find an image of the bag, to no avail.
Friday, 9 November 2007
Wednesday, 7 November 2007
Athens (or roasting and toasting in the old city, back on the Continent)
July and August are typically summer months in Europe. 2007 was no exception. I know; I was there and summer was most definitely out in full force. There were, in fact, many places of notable roasty-toastiness experienced by myself and the husband on our sojourn but none that sticks in the mind with such sweaty lethargy as dear old (indeed, ancient!) Athens.
Geography and latitudinal placement converged on this ancient city to make it a sweltering sauna of ruins, marble and grime. I'm not partial to saunas or grime, but it seems those little gems never make the advertising brochures, or the super adventure stories you hear from well-traveled folk. So here I am, suitably well traveled for the bank account to call me home and armed with some hard-hitting hot truth I'm going to share with you.
Marble. We've seen it in expensive bench-tops and pompous old busts. There's an amount of elitism that colours our perception when we see a place adorned with marble. Not so in Athens. Bricks in buildings and paving are replaced by marble. Concrete steps down to the underground train stations are marble. There is no sand on the beaches but marble pebbles. The gravel on the walkways up to the ancient ruins is marble. School-yard games of marbles are not played with glass balls, but with marble. Holigans avenging themselves throw, not bricks, but marble through the windows of their enemy.
It's everywhere.
Like a noxious weed, only mineral, not vegetable. And the bloody bugger is reflective! So, if you weren't hot already, you have the addition of the sun's burny bright rays bouncing up at you from below as well.
And as well as being a public nuisance and halving the burn time there's the added bonus of it's wear-away-ability and slipperiness. With Aristophanes and Plato and all their mates and all of everyone's family trees ever since running up and down all the pretty marble steps since the dawn of whenever, they're no longer flat. Quite warn away in some places. Once, while resting and hydrating ourselves in a much coveted pool of shadow, we witnessed a sweet defenseless young Asian woman slip and fall, painfully and embarrassingly hurting her ankle.
As if to mock her we came upon a European woman (possibly Italian) prancing 'round the Acropolis in crazy heels. How she got there, or whether she escaped in full possession of both of her legs is anyone's guess.
My only thought is that perhaps she was a professionally-trained, well-paid stunt woman there to inspire and annoy...
Like many much-visited spots the Acropolis boasted a teeming horde of hawkers and sly, over-friendly salesmen. The common object of sale were parasols. There was much to covet in a parasol; their bright colours gave a feeling of laughter and holiday gaiety rarely available outside of Lesbos, and when placed against the shoulder of a young woman there was a sense, by me anyway, of that lady being cared for; treasured; loved- lest the sun should shine down upon her and taint her precious face. Obviously the salesmen were not sly as they could have been for there was a considerable absence of hand-held fanning devices, of both the manual and electronic varieties. Though with heat like we experienced it is quite possible the entire stock of fans had sold out!
Grime was ever-present, but definitely exacerbated by comparison to the gloriously clean, marble underground train stations freshly chiseled into the Ancient soil for the Olympic Games in 2004. It wasn't horrific, but it felt like the whole place had spent a week playing a jolly exciting game of backgammon and not bothered to shower afterwards.
Another contributing factor to grime issue may well have been the blanket ban of toilet paper in toilets and the scent related. After wiping the toileter was required to place soiled paper into the wee bin (lid? no, sorry) beside the loo. To counteract the immanent stink in this hot humid environment there is an sickly sweet artificial scent pervading any and all ablutions facilities.
But, all in all, the stinking hot, griming place is jolly old and, if you're in the neighbourhood, do swing by. But don't get carried away, you'll only need one day, possibly one night if you can't avoid it. And perhaps when you go they will have finished the restoration of the Parthenon and have taken down the scaffolding and shade cloth that got in the way of all the photos but none of the sun.
Geography and latitudinal placement converged on this ancient city to make it a sweltering sauna of ruins, marble and grime. I'm not partial to saunas or grime, but it seems those little gems never make the advertising brochures, or the super adventure stories you hear from well-traveled folk. So here I am, suitably well traveled for the bank account to call me home and armed with some hard-hitting hot truth I'm going to share with you.
Marble. We've seen it in expensive bench-tops and pompous old busts. There's an amount of elitism that colours our perception when we see a place adorned with marble. Not so in Athens. Bricks in buildings and paving are replaced by marble. Concrete steps down to the underground train stations are marble. There is no sand on the beaches but marble pebbles. The gravel on the walkways up to the ancient ruins is marble. School-yard games of marbles are not played with glass balls, but with marble. Holigans avenging themselves throw, not bricks, but marble through the windows of their enemy.
It's everywhere.
Like a noxious weed, only mineral, not vegetable. And the bloody bugger is reflective! So, if you weren't hot already, you have the addition of the sun's burny bright rays bouncing up at you from below as well.
And as well as being a public nuisance and halving the burn time there's the added bonus of it's wear-away-ability and slipperiness. With Aristophanes and Plato and all their mates and all of everyone's family trees ever since running up and down all the pretty marble steps since the dawn of whenever, they're no longer flat. Quite warn away in some places. Once, while resting and hydrating ourselves in a much coveted pool of shadow, we witnessed a sweet defenseless young Asian woman slip and fall, painfully and embarrassingly hurting her ankle.
As if to mock her we came upon a European woman (possibly Italian) prancing 'round the Acropolis in crazy heels. How she got there, or whether she escaped in full possession of both of her legs is anyone's guess.
My only thought is that perhaps she was a professionally-trained, well-paid stunt woman there to inspire and annoy...
Like many much-visited spots the Acropolis boasted a teeming horde of hawkers and sly, over-friendly salesmen. The common object of sale were parasols. There was much to covet in a parasol; their bright colours gave a feeling of laughter and holiday gaiety rarely available outside of Lesbos, and when placed against the shoulder of a young woman there was a sense, by me anyway, of that lady being cared for; treasured; loved- lest the sun should shine down upon her and taint her precious face. Obviously the salesmen were not sly as they could have been for there was a considerable absence of hand-held fanning devices, of both the manual and electronic varieties. Though with heat like we experienced it is quite possible the entire stock of fans had sold out!
Grime was ever-present, but definitely exacerbated by comparison to the gloriously clean, marble underground train stations freshly chiseled into the Ancient soil for the Olympic Games in 2004. It wasn't horrific, but it felt like the whole place had spent a week playing a jolly exciting game of backgammon and not bothered to shower afterwards.
Another contributing factor to grime issue may well have been the blanket ban of toilet paper in toilets and the scent related. After wiping the toileter was required to place soiled paper into the wee bin (lid? no, sorry) beside the loo. To counteract the immanent stink in this hot humid environment there is an sickly sweet artificial scent pervading any and all ablutions facilities.
But, all in all, the stinking hot, griming place is jolly old and, if you're in the neighbourhood, do swing by. But don't get carried away, you'll only need one day, possibly one night if you can't avoid it. And perhaps when you go they will have finished the restoration of the Parthenon and have taken down the scaffolding and shade cloth that got in the way of all the photos but none of the sun.
Tuesday, 6 November 2007
Thanks for the welcome home, Harry
So I've been round the wide world, singing with the choir and holidaying and generally checking out the place with my man. It was really great, as you'd expect 3 months abroad would be! We've been back for about 5 (or is it 6) weeks now and beginning to feel normal again. It's funny cos you don't think about the shock it's going to be coming back, but you sure notice it pretty quick.
We read a lot while we were traveling, sitting in trains relaxing... it was great. But we managed to hold ourselves back from reading the final Harry Potter book (though we saw it everywhere! and no matter what the currency, it always seemed rather expensive!) Part of the reason for the holding off was due to our (Jay and my) great and epic plan to read the whole series before reading the final book (because we couldn't differentiate what had happened in which books, and details were sketchy...) which we quickly got started on once we got home. We borrowed books from family and friends and read our way through in just over 4weeks. I'm sure how many pages it was but it was quite a few! I noticed aching hand muscles from the bigger books being held in one hand (a must when trying to eat meals and read!) I also utilized my skill at the art of walking and reading thus combining my desires for Harry and physical wellbeing into one constructive use of time. (One kid at a bus stop was moved to utter "Harry Potter!" as my strides took me by him.)
Now, having the read the whole series back to back in all my spare time (including work time when the scanner was scanning and I was otherwise sitting, waiting, doing nothing) I feel refreshed. It is over and done. Harry fought the fight and I was with him til the end. I saw flashes and reflections, echoes of such epics as Lord of the Rings and Star wars (I was anticipating a "Harry, I am your father" from Snape for a moment or two there before I remembered Harry was the spitting image of James!) and other fables and tales I can not name but are familiar (like an ancient lullaby). It was great.
And now, time to move on. To go through and weed out the good photos from the trip, catch up with friends, scrabble through the festive madness and plan for the year to come without the shadow of Voldemort hanging nearby. I can only hope the steps I have taken with Harry will help me tread the ones I have ahead of me with a little more courage, daring and love. Thanks Harry.
We read a lot while we were traveling, sitting in trains relaxing... it was great. But we managed to hold ourselves back from reading the final Harry Potter book (though we saw it everywhere! and no matter what the currency, it always seemed rather expensive!) Part of the reason for the holding off was due to our (Jay and my) great and epic plan to read the whole series before reading the final book (because we couldn't differentiate what had happened in which books, and details were sketchy...) which we quickly got started on once we got home. We borrowed books from family and friends and read our way through in just over 4weeks. I'm sure how many pages it was but it was quite a few! I noticed aching hand muscles from the bigger books being held in one hand (a must when trying to eat meals and read!) I also utilized my skill at the art of walking and reading thus combining my desires for Harry and physical wellbeing into one constructive use of time. (One kid at a bus stop was moved to utter "Harry Potter!" as my strides took me by him.)
Now, having the read the whole series back to back in all my spare time (including work time when the scanner was scanning and I was otherwise sitting, waiting, doing nothing) I feel refreshed. It is over and done. Harry fought the fight and I was with him til the end. I saw flashes and reflections, echoes of such epics as Lord of the Rings and Star wars (I was anticipating a "Harry, I am your father" from Snape for a moment or two there before I remembered Harry was the spitting image of James!) and other fables and tales I can not name but are familiar (like an ancient lullaby). It was great.
And now, time to move on. To go through and weed out the good photos from the trip, catch up with friends, scrabble through the festive madness and plan for the year to come without the shadow of Voldemort hanging nearby. I can only hope the steps I have taken with Harry will help me tread the ones I have ahead of me with a little more courage, daring and love. Thanks Harry.
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