Farewell to 'Grassmead'

The deliciously velvety feel of grass between my toes as I turned clumsy somersaults on the lawn. Hunting for frogs in the flower beds. Fighting my sister for the bolster in the double bed in the back room. These are just some of the flashbacks to my grandparents' house during my 1970s childhood that I have been having over the past week or so.

I've never considered myself someone who forms emotional attachments to things or places, so I've been shocked by my reaction to the news of the house I know better than the back of my hand is on the market.

Built by my grandfather for his new bride in 1935, "Grassmead" has simply always been there. My mother and her younger brother were born there. They lived through the Second World War there, with Grandad away goodness knows where (he ended up in Greece, strangely enough). As Doodlebugs buzzed overhead (or worse, stopped and came whistling down) and the Battle of Britain raged in the Sussex skies, Nana and her two young children took shelter in the bunker in the garden. When the war ended, it was there that Grandad returned to, and struggled to forget the horrors he had seen by getting back to his life as a good ole countryman, gardener, occasional angler and master builder. The air-raid shelter was covered over, and a proper brick Wendy House built atop of it.

It was in Grassmead's lounge that my Dad proposed to Mum just days after they met (her response was "I'll put the kettle on, shall I?"). And it was from its snow-covered driveway that she left as a white-clad bride with drop-dead red hair, siren-scarlet lipstick and a matching bouquet of carnations in February 1962.

Faded family photos show me and my cousins posed in Grassmead's trim front garden after being baptised at the local church. I was the first grandchild, and every successive christening portrait witnesses my progress: from white lace-clad babe in arms; to a bouncy toddler flashing her knickers as she dashed around adults' ankles; to an Alice-banded schoolgirl doing handstands on the lawn despite being told not to dirty her best dress. The grown-ups parade a series of mini-skirts, Dame Edna spectacles, dodgy looking hats and geometric prints that held sway in middle England during the '60s & '70s.

Whenever we were there, I would go and stand in the greenhouse to breathe in the smell of the prize tomato plants - or sneak into the garage, aromatic with the scent of freshly-sawn wood from Grandad's bird boxes.

Every autumn, we would beg our Mum to let us stay over at Nana & Grandad's on a Saturday night, so we could get up at the crack of dawn and head for the fields to gather mushrooms, which we would fry up for the best breakfast ever. And as the acrid smell of bonfires filled the air we would head for the lanes to gather blackberries (which we smeared over our hands, face & t-shirts) or scale the trees then in the back garden to collect apples for our Sunday treat (apple pie, blackberry & apple crumble, toast with jam).

It sounds like something out of Enid Blyton, and in many ways it was. An idyllic rural childhood with plenty of adventures - thanks to a mischevious grandfather - and a reliable supply of sponge cakes from Nana. Only the lashings of ginger beer were missing.

Even after Grandad died on Christmas Eve '89, it remained a magical place for me. A haven of homemade shortbread and tea served in porcelain cups and saucers. With a narrow staircase we had all taken a tumble down at least once. With a special scent of Nana's pink Rimmel rouge and the matching bathroom. With the little spare room where Grandad used to make his flies for trout fishing (one dubbed 'Moggler' after his nickname for me).

And now, nearly 75 years later, it's on the market. Nana, through still brilliant at 99, has had to move into a home and "Grassmead" is to be sold to help pay the fees.

I just hope that any children in its future - and I hope there WILL be children - will have as much fun, adventure and love as we did there.

Ocean's 65+

From the way they huddle together in confidential little all-male groups, they could be planning a daring bank raid – or how to rob an unscrupulous casino-owner of the ill-gotten gains that rightfully belong to the little guy.

In other words, the very stuff that light-hearted, good-natured Hollywood block buster serials are made of.

Trouble is, most of them bear a much stronger resemblance to Elliott Gould than they do to George Clooney or Brad Pitt. They're those gangs of granddads you see at parks or beaches, keeping a wary eye on their grandchildren cavorting around. Silver-haired and sporting proud pot bellies, but mostly hale and hearty despite the occasional elevated cholesterol or teetering blood sugar levels, they are the appointed guardians of the future generation when Mum & Dad are at work and the kids are shooed out of the house so granny can prepare the midday meal.

In the summer, they’re easiest to spot at the seaside. As the youngsters splash about like rampant dolphins in the surf, a gaggle of grandfathers forms a few feet away, chest-high in the waves, to catch up with the latest gossip and moan about “her indoors”.

Throughout the other seasons of the year they can be found at parks and playgrounds - so long as the weather is fine enough to let the offspring out for their ration of fresh air - gathered in intimate knots by the swings, keeping half an eye on the sprogs as they get caught up in a passionate debate about the merits of rival football teams or political parties.

They go through all the motions of being less than happy about their role as senior bodyguards for the youngest generation. But the truth is that, though they carry a few centuries of experience on their collective backs and have more than their fair share of aches and pains, they would gladly walk through fire and gargle razorblades for the grandchildren they moan about and bark orders to.

Despite their carefully cultivated tough image, they’re biggest push-overs out - classic soft-centres with a deceptively crusty exterior. And their grandkids know it. It’s no coincidence that most children follow the mantra of “If Dad says no, I ask Grandpa”.

Now, the way that Clooney & Co have been churning out Ocean sequels over the past few years, we may be treated to the sight of a gang of granddads on the silver screen in ‘Ocean’s 65+’ in a couple of decades. And it’s a movie I would gladly see (especially if reminiscent of Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau in ‘Grumpy Old Men’).

It's the way I tell 'em

You can forget the quotable quotes of the celebs that bombard us through the press.
"I feel so pure and happy", "Jesus is the only guy for me" and (my personal favourite) "I'm attracted to dolphins" are nothing on me....

Who needs the likes of Gwyneth, Miley and Drew when you can enjoy gems like "How can I discretely fish salad out of my bra?" from me?

It's all go in my world.

Lost in Translation

There are some who say that humour doesn't travel. Others claim that good comedy, like good wine, can travel well when handled properly.

The truth is that sometime language conspires against you. Linguistically, some jokes just cannot work in another language.

The genderisation of the definite article (to you, me and other English-speakers that means "the" is either male or female - or perhaps, in the case of Greek and German, neuter) is a case in point. Because of that, I can't use half of my best one-liners (most Greeks laugh at me for OTHER reasons).

Let me explain. The Greek for God is "O Theos" ("O" being the masculine definite article) which completely scuppers one of my favourites. I get nothing when I say it to my friends here (in Greek) - nothing except puzzled looks that say "Huh??".

So, I'm gonna try it out on you - here goes: When God made man, She was only joking.

(Geddit? Yes? No? Maybe not?)
Oh dear, seems that no-one understands me (yup, THAT old chestnut). Perhaps language isn't the problem after all?

When is a bad word not a bad word?

When it's uttered by the leader of the Tory Party... or my Mum.

Bless him, David Cameron was not aware that the "T" word (the one that rhymes with 'that') he said TWICE during an interview about Twitter on the BBC is not what middle-aged matrons want to hear coming from the lips of "that nice young man who wants to be Prime Minister".

According to one theory, his touching innocence is proof-positive of his poshness, for some reason. Seems that hoorays can use obscenities in a 'nice' way that escapes the rest of us plebs.

But he's is good company. My Mum also suffers from this form of word-blindness. Despite her pillar of community-ness, high standards, well-spokenness and Surrey respectability, she is not averse to a heartfelt, rip-roaring expletive now and then.
Specifically one expletive - Bugger!

Whether the spuds have boiled dry leaving a black crust on the saucepan bottom, the heavens have opened 10 minutes after she's hung the washing out, some well-meaning but useless helper has pulled up her prize peony thinking it's a weed, or someone has the bare-faced gall to steal her parking space, Mum's verbal response is the same.

"Bugger it!" she'll spit, making the very most of the two passion-filled syllables.
(In the case of the stolen parking spot, she'll follow up by winding down the window to deliver a torrent of middle-class abuse, as whoever is in the car with her tries to sink out of sight).

All this from the woman who washed my mouth out with soap (a fresh new bar of green Fairy, I remember it well) when I silently stuck two fingers up at her in a fit of teenage pique years ago. I tried reasoning with her that my mouth wasn't the guilty party - at the most, she should wash my hands - but to no avail.

But no, Mummy dearest (and believe me, she is the best Mum and friend that a gal could have) just will not accept that "Bugger" is a bad word. I tried shoving dictionary defitions in her face, but she just says "Yes, yes. I know what it means".

And yet, ten minutes there'll be a screech of "Buggeration!" from the kitchen as her grip on the baking pan slips and roast spuds bounce across the lino.

But that's OK. It makes her human, it makes her real, it makes her warm and passionate, and it gives me a bargaining chip when my 12-year-old threatens to tell Nana about my frequent use and love of the word "Bollocks".

I'm not sure if it has the same endearing effect for Mr "just call me Dave" Cameron...

Friends indeed?

Who you befriend has always been something that requires care and judgement. And that has never been more true than today, with the plethora of chat rooms and personal home pages we all love to surf. And just like surfing the waves in Hawaii, surfing Cyberspace requires caution – because there are sharks out there swimming amongst the angel fish and friendly dolphins.

Of course, I’m not talking about you LOVELY people but a certain brand of annoying anonymous idiots... I’m sure you know who I’m on about.

Most ladies on-line face a constant barrage of unsolicited messages from would-be Romeos (who seriously need to get a life) wanting to flirt, flatter and bombard us with images - both mental and physical - that we frankly are not in the market for.

No, thank you very much, I have no desire to see a close-up of what really - I mean REALLY - should be kept within the comfines of your Y-Fronts. Nor do I want to add to your "Naughty Gallery".
What I DO want to do is reach my arm through Cyberspace, wring your scrawny neck, slap some sense into you and give you a wedgy to remember me by.
So, please, just GO AWAY!

I am online to air some of my views and hopefully have some intelligent conversation with like-minded folk that I would otherwise probably never have the chance to meet. My profile and blog entries make it very clear I’m not in the market for cyber-nooky or anything approaching it, and yet I still have to ward off stupid messages starting with “Hello pretty eyes” and “I dream about you all the time” (No, you bloody well don't!).
Oh god, how boring!

Not only are these online Lotharios irritating, they’re also horribly unoriginal. They all come out with the same lines. I mean, honestly, at least try and come up with something a little more inspired that the cyber equivalent of “Do you come here often?”

Whenever one of THOSE messages pops up I get a mental image of the sender. Deep in the bowels of their darkened bedroom, surrounded by piles of dirty underwear and discarded comic books, ignoring pleas from their Mum to go out and get some fresh air, slathering over the keyboard as they obsessively send moronic messages to people they’ll never meet and desperately beat the meat at the thought that someone might just respond.

Does ANYONE respond to these modern-day creatures from the Black Lagoon and their ridiculously unoriginal opening gambits? I mean….. really?

Most of us come ready equipped with my degree of common sense and judgement – and we know how to hit the “Delete” and “Block” buttons. And so, the folk I call my online friends are genuinely smart, interesting and decent people.

It just takes one pervo to ruin the whole experience, and in our eagerness to reach out and connect with others, its scarily easy to reveal much more about ourselves that we realise. So let's be careful. It’s sad that we should have to be so wary of the friends we make in Cyberspace, but the truth is that there is just an “r” separating the friends from the fiends.

Athens Portraits: The self-made tyrant

You’ll see them if you take a stroll around some of Athens' more affluent suburbs. There they are, hiding conspicuously behind the darkened windows of their shiny perfomance cars, expensively but not necessarily well dressed, preening themselves like peacocks amid a flock of sparrows as they bathe in the glow of their own self-satisfaction.

They’ve 'made it' and they want to make damn sure that it shows.

They are that select group of Greek businessmen who have built successful enterprises over the past two or three decades through a combination of hard work, vision, good luck and sheer guts. But if you look a little closer, you’ll see that - for some at least – there's a dark side to their success too.

They are that particular breed of tycoon that personifies the rise of the self-made tyrant.

They've built their empires – and amassed a considerable personal fortune – on the strength of their momentous egos and on the backs of the little men they have trampled all over to reach the top of their particular tree.

They're the ones whose companies are household names within Greece, but who haven't cracked the international market thanks to their refusal to accept that global standards of business conduct apply to them. Not for them those faddy new business 'philosophies'. Not for them the 'touchy-feely' management practices that seem to be all the rage. They have no need to adapt to the so-called 'new reality' where there's more to making money than bottom-line sales. To them, all this talk about standardised procedures, treating your workforce as team-mates, or connecting with the online community is nonsense that only fools will swallow.

But – really - who can blame them? Even in today's cash-strapped days when small businessmen and mere employees are feeling the pinch, they’re still sitting pretty, with wads of influential people in their pockets, trophy wives (and ex-wives) and pampered neglected kids, a stable of conspicuously luxurious homes - most of which stand empty for much of the year, a fleet of fancy cars and maybe a private yacht or two.

What need do they have to leave the small pond where they’re the ruling barracudas to become mere sardines in the oceans of international commerce?

So, they keep on ruling by fear rather than consensus, treating their staff like dirt, paying minimal wages, reneging on promises and cutting corners that would have any business consultant worth his or her salt running for the hills.

And in true tyrant style, they hold endless meetings – sometimes into the small hours – where they get to enjoy the sound of their own voices as they pass down their 'wisdom' (yet again) to their hapless employees, without ever reaching any concrete conclusion.

It matters not a jot to them that their staff have homes and families to go to. The way they see it, their minions should count themselves lucky to be working for such a prestigious name. And anyway, who needs family? Their own marriages that collapsed under the weight of their megalomania didn’t do them any harm, did they?

To them, mere mortals like you and me are about as important as ants. So, the emerging social conscience or democratic business approach of some of the new-style global tycoons are not for them. No, the way they see it, such nerds and aging hippies are fools who cannot even approach the dizzying heights of their own success.

But if one day they stumble from the lonely peak of the mountain they've built from loose morals and broken promises, it’s a long way to fall and there’s a chance that it will all come tumbling down on top of them.

Which is why, I guess, Greece's self-made tyrants seem hell-bent on enjoying their conspicuous wealth at the expense of the little man – while it lasts.