Visiting the Gods with fewer mortals

Even the mobile home wallahs have pulled out of here. I can’t imagine why, as this spot in Messinia is as close to bliss as a human being could get at the moment.

And not just the humans….of whom there are now very few at all if you’re talking tourists. Dimitris the donkey seems as happy as I’d imagine a donkey could get. He’s been put out to grass in his own personal sanctuary, with – as usual – more than enough caring Greeks to look after him to the end of his days. He ee-orrs away each morning to show his contentment. He is to be seen now wandering up the village main street, now munching some greens at the local supermarket, now promenading up and down the beach dumping unfeasible amounts of dung onto the pebbles.

Then there are the cats. Some almost feral, but most of them rubbing up against one’s ankles in the absence of sentimental holidaymakers to feed them. The local Greeks grumble and shoo them away….but then throw them some bacon rind or uneaten soufflaki. These cats get feline flu, and become involved in fights wherein they lose half an ear or an eye; and yet they seem to survive both quite happily. And of course, we have my landlady’s ever-present dog.

Except that she turns out to be a bitch. The dog, not my landlady. The dog is called Arita, but whatever her bloody gender she keeps on stealing my clothes. Her owner is devastated by this bad habit, which also involves ruining the pegs holding aforementioned clothes on the washing line. The landlady has now supplied me with a whole new pack of pegs, and can constantly be heard chasing Arita round the compound in pursuit of my red trunks or plastic swimming shoes.

The ocean is so calm now, one can stop the car, peer over a cliff – and have the sensation of being in a glass-bottomed boat. Through twenty-foot depths of water, the stones on the sea bed ripple in the refraction, yet with the razor-sharp physical reality of the mountains in the distance. The water itself remains cool and refreshing: it is almost a crime to disturb its tranquility by diving in….but at the same time, the temptation is utterly irresistible. The way I dive these days, the crime practically deserves capital punishment; but the surface soon returns to its natural state. I sometimes think of this as a metaphor about how transient Homo sapiens is. It’s not so much that the waters soon close over each dive, but more that – long after our time is over – Earth’s oceanic surfaces will offer no evidence at all that we ever existed.

In the village, all the shops selling gifts, renting bicycles, and offering artworks have closed. The supermarkets will stay open because there is here a thriving international population which is (I’m glad to observe) becoming Greek –  rather than the other way round. And the serious Cafénions still contain the older blokes with large facial growths playing cards or backgammon, while they discuss a hundred ways to punish the politicians who have almost killed what this culture is about. In these places I sit more and more in the cool mornings, tapping away into an internet that is freely available because there are no media moguls called Rupertis Murdokanopolis in Greece.

Sometimes in my favourite haunt, the television will be on. There is something about Greek news bulletins that makes Sky News seem like an anodyne Anglican sermon, or Bloomberg just a mild version of a Scottish shipping forecast. First off, some things are clearly the wrong way round, in that the studio anchor does almost all the talking, and the interviewees are lucky if they get a “yes” or “no” in sideways. But there is also this Hellenic obsession with The Split Screen.

Some news stations in the West might show you three heads at once, but in Greece nothing is deemed to be happening unless there are at least six faces on the screen at any time. One of these faces will be the anchor, and another will be the station’s roving reporter. The other four contain (variously) police chiefs, demonstrators, doctors and minor politicians, all of whom make a cursory effort not to look bored, but fail miserably.

Occasionally, the anchor/rover shuts up for long enough for one of the other four to say something, at which point the anchor person bellows a near infinite question of such complexity that the target of it stares rabbit-eyed at the camera until somebody else butts in.

Once any politician gets to making a point however, the foreigner is given an instant education as to why the anchor/rovers never pause for breath: for Greek politicians are born with an additional iron lung that means they will blether until something like a Richter 9 earthquake stops them. Indeed, this in turn explains why – when the discussion is confined to the studio – the Station presenter wields a verbal axe at the New Democracy, PASOK or Syriza MP, because this is the only way to stem the volcanic flow of verbosity.

This doesn’t always work, and thus the result is, at times, two voices booming alongside each other for up to thirty seconds….which is a long time on telly, and hysterically funny when you don’t speak the language.

It would be nice if all such crap was funny for the ordinary Greeks: but of course it isn’t, because they are having to live with the sins of crooked pols and their complicit mates in the media. And although Samaras has been caught contriving the demise of the neo-Nazis here, his dishonesty has only added to their support.

But all this mendacity seems a long, long way away tonight. House lights are twinkling in the foothills of the Mani mountains, a generous Moon is throwing shimmering snakes of white reflection across the sea, and late-Summer insects are clicking away like a million mini Geiger counters.

No idiot in Brussels, Berlin, New York or Washington can stop this natural process from unfolding. For me, this represents both a counterculture and – who knows? – a certainty that whatever neo-liberal Man thinks is his rightful destiny, the Gods are about to disabuse him of this silly notion.

Rush hour on a Greek Beach in late October