We are looking for a house. It has been revelatory, if not apocalyptic.
For one, all flats look the same. Same tiles in the bathroom, same colours in the kitchen, except for the one with the pink walls that would have made a lucrative brothel.
I swear there was one with not a single straight wall. “Where am I going to put the bed?” I asked. “Placing furniture against walls is very passé,” the owner said and the estate agent nodded in agreement.
Unfortunately my sofa is not polygonal. It’s just a regular sofa, boring perhaps but it allows you to sit at a right angle if you want to.
Another one had the fireplace in the kitchen. What am I going to do with a fireplace in the kitchen? Put the copper pot on every morning to prepare a hot bath? Dry my socks at night?
Up to now, there was one that M liked and I hated. I hated it because it had a view to the aerials of other apartments. It was on the top floor but in its case, that was a disadvantage.
“Actually, it does have a nice view” the owner said. “You can see it from the roof” (we have flat roofs to stick our aerials on). The roof had been turned into the Greek equivalent of the English backyard. Each family was entitled to a couple of square meters of space. There was a short wall around that space. The owner said we could have summer lunches there under the (imaginary) tent. What if other families are having their bbq next to ours? I don’t even know the proper etiquette for that. Would I have to offer them some of my vegetarian commixtures? What if they are having fish? That would stink, wouldn’t it?
 The other problem is that M and I have very different views on what a nice flat looks like. I thought we had the same beliefs more or less, because when we started living together, he found the place, I saw it and said okay, and the next day I brought my suitcase and gnome collection in.
It’s different now. I see a place and imagine where everything goes, whereas he inspects the windows and says “Nah, let’s go, the windows are rounded, I don’t like rounded windows”. Or, “did you see the mirror in the entrance downstairs? So last year”.
So, we are still looking. Sometimes I think M is one of those weird people who like to see houses without any intention of living in them. Add the credit crunch to that, and you have a nice, big, fat zero.

Where Dark Lord Sauron shakes the ground

There was a big earthquake here in Greece a couple of days ago and it was felt in Italy and Malta too, or so Reuters said. It was 6.5 on the Richter scale and lasted for 10 seconds. That’s years in earthquake time. Nobody was hurt, because although that was a very strong earthquake, its epicenter was somewhere in middle earth so the Hobbits dealt with it, or something like that.
We were asleep and we jumped out of bed and as soon as the quake was over we went out on the street barefoot and in mismatched pyjamas.
To be more precise, my son and I went barefoot while M instinctively ran to save his laptop. After he had saved it he brought us socks and coats. This goes to prove my beliefs about the human male, which I am not going to dwell on right now, but has something to do with prioritizing.
It gets better. Read on.

Where somebody’s tears are wetting my new shirt

Today, I had to take a taxi to go to the nutritionist. It was going to be a very early appointment and as I have to wait for my son to leave for school, there was little time left to take the bus.
If you have been reading this page for more than a month, this is the point where you are beginning to suspect something is going to go wrong.
Yet, in spite of your guessing powers, you aren’t even close. Because you are basically good people, and good people’s minds turn to good things, maybe with a little spice, but essentially good.
The taxi driver would make Britney Spears look sensible and sober by comparison. Because I was running late, I asked KINDLY, if he could maybe not stop every 10 m. to fish for more clients (he had already stopped for two) and make it quicker since “I have an appointment with the doctor”.
Exactly, you need to validate your wish to be on time.
His answer was: “The horsewhip is in the trunk of the car, so I can’t go any faster.”
In other taxi driver posts, I would go on to describe the dirty car, the cigarettes, the loud radio with the people who curse other people’s football teams, the seatbelt that didn’t work and the subzero temperature. However, I won’t, because I want to jump to the point where the taxi driver cannot find the street, starts swearing at other drivers and possibly me, drives past a hospital and not looking ahead or keeping his hands on the wheel for that matter, turns back and keeps telling me louder and louder “I am going in there, in there, right NOW, I can’t take it anymore” meaning the hospital if I am not mistaken. And then he starts crying, stops the car and starts banging his head on the wheel, and yells “I’ve been driving for 20 years, I’ve never had a worse day in my life”.
Boohoo.
So I got off and walked the rest of the way, feeling like a hunted animal.
Next, I am going to tell you what happened at the nutritionist’s. That’s another unhappy ending altogether.

Where he is acting high and mighty in sweatpants

Once at the nutritionist’s –my sister’s nutritionist, whom she introduced to me- I felt better. My last check-up hadn’t come out so fantastic, so I was hoping (am hoping) to change those numbers.
I didn’t like the nutritionist. Not at all. He was very patronizing and in his sweatshirt and sweatpants. But maybe that outfit is a ploy to make the client feel that the nutritionist is practising what he is preaching, so okay, let’s not judge him (I thought).
After I had to listen to him insist that there is real coffee (black) and fake coffee (sugar), after some bullying I got for saying I don’t want to use aspartame (“nothing proves that it causes cancer” he said), after some insults (“do you know what a cup is?”), I was told that he cannot “co-operate” –his words- with me, because I am a vegetarian, and he doesn’t do vegetarians. He only “does” people for whom he doesn’t have to devise a whole new plan, but one that he can print out in 2 minutes. Do you have a problem with that?

Oh and the phone at home doesn’t work.
I went to collect my payment. The cheque wasn’t ready. Next week.
The printer is acting up too.

P.S I found another nutritionist who says he’s okay with me not eating any members of the animal kingdom (maybe he feels safer that way).

“What would happen if a fairy touched you with her magic wand and turned you into a man, and your man into a woman? Would you still be together?” she asked me. She is a friend of a friend and we were discussing gender issues over dinner last night. She has a Phd in gender studies. My MA was about modernism and gender, and I thought we had a few things in common. She had made that question in the past, while participating in a conference. “We wouldn’t. I don’t have a single girlfriend that resembles M in character” I said. “Which means, I don’t like women who resemble M. M’s friends do not resemble me either.”

She looked at me in disbelief. “What difference would it make? You’d still be people!” And with that, she stopped the conversation there, not being able to find anything in common with me anymore. Although, the fact that she listens to Deep Purple and doesn’t know who Radiohead are, while being only 30, was a point of no return to me too. I thought it was obvious we were not the same, males and females, or that we expect different things from men and women. I wouldn’t be with a man solely for the universal qualities of compassion and truth I look for in all people. I am sick of political correctness when it is stretched to ridiculous lengths.

Epiphanies come at the most unexpected moments. One came for me when I was 20 and on holiday with my then friends. The three of us were sharing a room and a fridge. Writing my name on my water bottle was frowned upon as definitely not the cool thing to do. So I would cheat by tearing the label a bit.

One of my friends was what you’d call an alpha female. A queen bee. I was oblivious to the fact I had to celebrate her, not because of any huge sense of self worth, but because I was in love with someone with my head in the clouds and oblivious to most things: eating, calling my parents and the like. Queen bee used to bring boys to our room when we weren’t there. We didn’t mind as long as they used her bed. But one night, while I was battling insomnia again (yes, from an early age) I heard her laughing in the corridor and talking to her German lover. Her lover annoyed me immensely because

a. he was dirty b. he was loud and rude c. he would always address me in german

It was clear they were going to have sex while I was in the room, supposedly sleeping. Other people may find this infuriating, and I do too, but the worst part was that the german lover, took off his Doc Martens and left them near my bed. Under my nose. Which was not a sexy thing to do. I am going to spare you the details, but to understand what is to follow, I am just going to say that they had oral sex. I know because she kindly asked him and he kindly said “yes”.

Merciful morning came and the German lover put his boots on and left. The queen bee related all the details of her night of passion, with some added sauce. “I am so thirsty” she said. “Give me your bottle from the fridge”. “I don’t have a glass” I answered. “I don’t need a glass, I can drink straight from the bottle, silly” she winked. “No you won’t. If I wanted a taste of him, I’d ask him too.” “You are JEALOUS!” she shouted. “I am going thirsty because you are paranoid and jealous of me”. And that was my moment of epiphany. I realized then that with people who have to be right by all means, I’d rather be called jealous, paranoid and silly, and have it my way.

He prefers briefs

There is this annoying family that lives upstairs. Among other things, they always hang their clothes so loosely that many socks especially, land on my kitchen balcony. Today I heard a horrible noise. Someone was banging the balcony rail with a broom stick. I looked up and there he was, the annoying neighbour, red as a fire truck. On my balcony floor there was his delightful underwear. Underwear as in white cotton briefs (I prefer boxers, you?). He was trying to make it fall in the garden below, so that I wouldn’t see it. I waved it a bit and asked "is this yours?" And he lowered his broom stick and I hung it there and up up up it went, like a seagull.

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Now, my Goth friends used to live in an area of Athens that is renowned for gathering many people who practise the occult in many ways. Some of these ways are illegal. That Saturday night we went to a party in the area. I was dancing to a merry old song by Christian Death when a friend whispered in my ear "a sorcerer wants to see you privately upstairs". Would I go upstairs if you whispered that to my ear today? I most definitely would, so I can’t blame alcohol or folly, just my curiosity.

There he was in the dark room, standing near the bed, a boy not older than 17, tall and from what I could see, handsome. I remember, the fashion conscious voice inside me shouted "he is wearing the reversed cross, that’s so last year." Only cheap rock bands would wear the reversed cross as an emblem of Satanism, which to my mind was a ridiculous thing to believe in. I had a hard time believing in the existence of God, let alone satan. He said some silly things. That he had felt my presence from afar, that he needed to know me but then knew he would harm me, things I laughed at. A little before I left he tore a little paper with my telephone number in pieces and scattered them around the room. He was furious. It was the first and the last time I ever saw him. I didn’t need to ask about him. Everybody knew he was practising black magic and was killing roosters. As a vegetarian I was appalled. I didn’t pay attention to the black magic part. A few days later, he called me really late. He asked me if I could feel his presence around me. He said he was in my room and was sitting by my bed. He certainly wasn’t and I said I couldn’t feel anything.

Being a Goth, I had tasted a bit of my own blood and had used it to write a couple of words in my diary, but this is something Angelina Jolie did a few years later too, so it is rather mainstream in my mind. But seeing people that aren’t there was beyond me. I didn’t believe a word he was saying and frankly he looked amateur to me. He said he wanted to meet me and then he would explain everything. I never went on that date, nor did I answer any of his phone calls. And I forgot completely about him.

A few years later, he was arrested, stood trial and convicted, along with a couple of his friends, for the ritual killings of two young women he had offered to the devil. One wasn’t even a virgin. She was a mother. I am not going to write his name -and if greek readers know it, please don’t write it either, I don’t want my blog to be connected to him in any way- but anyone familiar with the most sensationalist trials of the last 50 years in Greece, knows him. He serves life and from what I read in newspapers he receives fan mail in prison.