Echo and sound

My past few days were full of parties so I found the opportunity to engage in the sport most I like. I was gliding through social gatherings, listening and constantly accessing my surroundings: How people dress up, how they behave, flirt and talk. This time I concentrated on the sound of the language and once more I noticed that the English language can be exciting, it can be fun and chic. It is for sure a language of offence and the same time of cordiality but it is barely the language of love and passion!!!
P.S. Johnny is taking intensive course in speaking Greek!!!

 

New Year Resolution

And now it’s over! And now the first glimpse of depression! The Christmas tree and decoration starts to look a little bit kitsch! This period between Christmas and New Year it’s a little bit puzzling whatever concerns the greetings, Merry Christmas wishes after the Christmas day seems to me a little bit odd, the ‘Happy New Year’ wish before the actual day doesn’t fit the bill either for a protestant country (England) , the superstitions are in gear !!! What’s left then? Only the Greek Xronia Polla which is not understandable... to this anglophone country! Anyway I have to keep the hype feelings floating so there we are with my New Year resolution.
1.Try to acquire Penelope’s Cruz body!!!!(double ha,ha)
2.Try to acquire an oxfordian English accent!!!!(triple ha,ha,ha)
The following are more attainable targets
3. Care more about the environment from two days up to the hill to four days a week (this will help the first target as well)

and the last and not the least

4. Be nicer to Johnny even when he is behaving in his utmost English way!

Christmas insanity

The electric cheer that possesses me during the Christmas period has the same urgency to it as a love affair. I do believe that Christmas is a time for going, well, insane! And England is the right place to indulge yourself in this love affair ‘insanity’. We start with the ‘war’ of cards. We send cards to everybody we know or not. The only prerequisite is to know name and address. Today I received the first card in the size of A4 from a couple who they say they are ‘friends’(johnny’s friends) I have never seen them! They refuse to meet up despite they live 30 km away, but they never forget to send their card with their credentials (their posh address and posh names of their offsprings like they are descendants of the Tsar). Anyway, after we have to post the cards. So we go altogether happy clappy in the post office and we are standing in a long queue chatting about the quirks of the weather. And this is only the start of the Christmas extravaganza ..... (to be continued)
p.s I am taking part in this love affair!

The name

My relationship with my name ‘Penelope’ was always controversial I loved to hate it for various reasons. In Greece was a dated name from the Greek mythology. The children in school didn’t care about this detail and deformed it without mercy, penelo (brush in greek). When arrived in England I had the same flashbacks from childhood. The name I had nursed for so long and I though I had cured it, now in the new country it has had a relapse again. The English Penelope was different from the Greek Pinelopi, different intonation different pronunciation. I was behaving as an Alzheimer’s patient in the public places, when they call my name. Simply I didn’t recognize it and I didn’t respond. I had a new identity to conform to in the new country.

Greenglish

"Where are you from"? I am asked. More my accent rather than my colour complexion triggers this question. For me, Greek-raised, the question becomes one of torn loyalties. Trying to belong here, belong there, belonging nowhere. For a time I felt I was constantly shifting allegiances, searching for connection in groups that inevitably excluded me for being different.I shuffled back and forth in identity the way I did in languages. If the right definition didn't come one way, it would come another. Always a minority back to my biological country and here to my adopted country. But there are bits and pieces of me that belong everywhere, and just as many that belong nowhere and sometimes I feel wonderfully flexible and sometimes I just feel disconnected.

English Language

The best classroom to learn a language is mother’s lap as the connoisseurs say. In that warm , secure place a child will learn anything, and very quickly, too. Next best they say –an improvement , they think after puberty – is the lap of someone we are sexually involved with.
In my case my mother the only language ever taught to me was Greek.The English language came later in my ears through the film movies like James Bond and television series Simon Templar,the Saint. And ofcourse I realised straight away that I knew English. Give me subtitles and I give you basic language comprehension. The next step was a series of lessons with Greek-Greek teachers, American-Greek, Australian-Greek British-British and American-American...etc. So when I moved to England from the sophisticated metropolis- Athens to the English suburbia, I foresaw no problem that I could not understand some of the inhabitants nor they understood me.. I knew this noncommunication was related to underdevelopment. Obviously not mine! So I moved to the next step as the connoisseurs advise. I found Johnny. But again there we are, I thought I found a man with a permanent teeth problem, he was speaking like he had a recent injection in his lips. It was not me again but his Oxford accent the fault!
Speaking- as opposed to understanding-English was almost the same. What came out of my mouth and reached my ear was perfect English. That’s how it sounded to me. What an auditory hallucination!!!

"Expat" and "Immigrant"

AUTUMN IN ENGLAND
When I arrived in England some years ago was autumn just like this in the photo. As the years flowed like a brook, two words come to my mind and I contemplate about them. The word "expat" and "immmigrant". The word "expat" evokes aloof, wealthy outsiders; high tech people, people working in big corporation, diplomats; people to whom the place they live remains foreign no matter how long they stay. It is the opposite of "immigrant", which implies large families or big number of people crammed into small apartments, perhaps not legal, hampered by their foreign accents and perhaps by their dark skin and recently amazingly they are even paler (East Europe). Immigrants miss their own country-maybe they didn't want to leave it in their first place; expats love the adventure of being away. "Expat"can always go home again. "Immigrant" is close to "refugee" Maybe these two opposites sometimes share the same word "nostalgia" for their biological country.

Girlfriends night out

Last night was a night out with the girlfriends. It was magnificent, it reminded me of old days in Athens. We spoke about men, marriage and Hugh Grant... The mention of the latter made them start to have hallucination. The Natassaki (in Greece the diminutive suffix -aki is quite popular among women, gives a sense of tea and sympathy and probably it has replaced the old suffix -oula) was quite captivated by him. The host of the conversation the naughty Rits who was trying to calm us down including herself because the temperature was starting to be elevated. The time was passing and the conversation was going on and on, in the other 'window' the Brainy So-Far was asking me why I am not writing so often... Maybe my english adopted reservation or avoiding dependence! This was my virtual night out with the girls. I was lying down to the sofa with my laptop and next to me Johnny in the opposite sofa with his laptop and at the same time he was watching Jeremy Paxman to sneer at his guests –he is one of these old-style Don-presenters of the BBC, who has lost touch with reality(according to me of course, the rest probably adore him because of this “sneering” behaviour). Johnny asked me why I am so concentrated on my laptop and what I am writing so fast. I wanted to say we speak about you darling and your compatriots but he seemed quite annoyed because I was not watching to the programme he chose to watch!“I have a night out with the girls darling” I said to him. I think I need to have a look again in this old book by Aldous Huxley “The brave new world”!

Frieze Art Fair

We managed to arrive quite early at the coolest fair in Town the "Frieze art fair" in London. The crowd is totally different from those of music concerts. Maybe the slogan could be "show me the money" rich people, collectors, dealers and more... The British dressed down and the Europeans dressed up. The majority of galleries are based in London and New York. As always I managed to spot the only gallery from Athens "The Breeder" in the region of Psyri. "Aha darling Johnny I found it" and of course I went to find my compatriot. Johnny, of course, dissapeared. Very embarrasing for him my enthusiasm to talk to every single Greek person I meet. The compatriot was exactly the figure I was expecting to see in whatever concerns the colour complexion and dimension! I congratulated him and wishing him success looking with doubt the big cross made by rusty rail tracks. To whom he will sell it, I don't know. But it is art after all!

Sophocles versus Shakespeare

Upset upset upset! Horrid criticism in the English newspapers against Greece,the Greeks... about the fires! Go downstairs, Johnny is diving into the newspapers...More angry grrrrrrrrrr...... Sit down next to him saying with a pompous style "Johnny darling, do you know Sophocle's is better than Shakespeare?" Thinking this will divert the subject of the conversation in favor of me and the Greeks (actually, between us, dear reader, I believe it and I have strong arguments)
Johnny was totally focused on his newspaper and muttered gently "Bravo Sophocles" meaning "do not disturb me"
Feel helpless, angry... about the fires my tribe and Johnny.Ggggrrrrr...

To say the truth, I am never sure about Johnny's reactions. Every other day I discover something new about him and his habits. And I am suspecting this is the same, the other way around. He taps the side of his nose with his finger to show to me, he masters the subject he is talking about ,and I think he is suffering from nose's allergy. I heightened my eyebrows to indicate "No" and he thinks that I am surprised with his question!