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Sun,
Sheep and Sea, Ruins,
Retsina – and Real Greeks.
A
love affair with Greece...
buy a copy
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| ..a
little whitewashed house with a blue door and blue shutters on an
unspoiled island in a picturesque village next to the beach with a
taverna round the corner... |
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...in
your dreams Moley. Welcome to a
tumbledown ruin on a hillside with no road, no water, no electricity, no
roof, no floor, no doors, no windows and twenty years
of goat dung... |
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| "Like
Odysseus making his legendary way home to his birthplace Ithaca, the
island of Evia was the goal of my life’s journey. It was better
than Birmingham."
John
Mole has been at home in Greece for thirty years. Homes are for leaving
as well as going back to - he has had a varied international career,
from banking in the USA to jacket potato restaurants in Russia.
Meanwhile he published comic novels and management books, including the
perennial best-seller Mind Your Manners. . more... |
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Welcome to our village. Meet
Elpida, who cures bad backs with a raw egg and spells ...Ajax the death-dealing
butcher... Saint John the goat-headed saint... beautiful Eleni yearning
for Düsseldorf...old man Christos, dug up on a sunny summer
morning...sun-touched Dionysos dancing like an English tourist...a
family saved from a watery grave ...and Hector their dog, a mutant
specially bred to frighten little children, who met his destiny on Evia
Here is timeless, rural Greece - catch it
before it goes.
read the prologue
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a
taste of Greece...
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| ...food |
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They
were not tourist taverna keftethes, lumps of clay swimming in sump
oil. They were light and fragrant and melted like truffles in the mouth With
them was rice flavoured with goat's butter, fresh wild greens dug out of
the hillside... |
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| ...wine |
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cheek
puckering, lip curling, gum shrivelling, tongue gagging, tooth
aching, head shuddering, throat burning, stomach churning, bowel
trembling, squit shitting, arse burning turpentine |
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| ...culture |
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"Evripos
means fast current in Ancient Greek,”
“Fat lot they knew,” said Kate and tossed an empty Smarties
tube into the historic waters to bob aimlessly on the spot. |
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| ...music |
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The
tormented wail of an amplified violin cut through the hubbub like cheese
wire. An electric bouzouki played the sound track to a nervous
breakdown. The trilling clarinet, its bell wrapped round the ball of a
microphone, aroused a secret and unwanted excitement, like pulling wool
through teeth... |
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| ...history |
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Tassos
N Petrisa: "The emperor Justinian fortified Halkida in the 5th century.
There then follows a period of some centuries during, which very little
of importance seems to have happened." |
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| ..folklore |
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For haemorrhoids, fry an onion in pork fat and leave as long as possible
in the affected place. Sfikas is silent about the size but presumably
you should take measurements. He advises letting it cool down first -
you wouldn’t want to burn your fingers |
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