LAST ORDERS FOR SUMMER

Still time for plenty of frappe opportunities, lazy swimming, boat trips even - but soon it will be time to keep a watchful eye on the weather and to think about clearing the garden if not actually doing it - well, not yet

One day you open the front door and bleached, brittle leaves blow in on the draught, skittering across the marble floor and terrifying our old blind dog who imagines they are aliens, come to fetch her back to their mother-ship. ‘Games up!’ you can almost hear her say. ‘I’ll go quietly.’ But while there’s life, there’s hope and Loula settles back with a snuffle, on the cushion under my desk.

At least she spends the last of her days in comfort, loved and tended to, not like poor Argus, Odysseus’ faithful dog. You cannot live long in Corfu without tripping over references to Homer’s Odyssey, and the story of the dog is one of the saddest parts. Another time.

But in spite of the first skeletal leaves, Autumn’s advance party, there’s life still in our summer, too, and though the patterns of it shift as the month eases into September, we still have much to look forward to in Corfu.

With kids back at school, beaches are quieter, the better to enjoy the warm sea temperatures, though we miss the sight of children doing what all children ought to be doing in summer – playing in the open air.. Gradually, though, the month cools down, and with the clear atmosphere, intensely blue sky and mellow sunshine, this is the best time for exploring the island on foot or by other means..

I used to accompany cultural coach tours around Greece and this was a favourite time of year. The mountains purple with heather and the valleys fragrant with the intoxicating smell of grapes being pressed. Pale marble columns at Delphi and Bassae, Aegina and Olympia, stark against that azure sky. The restaurant owners knew us well and treated us to the ‘fruits’ of autumn – walnut cake, purple figs, tiny birds more splintered bone than flesh but you had to try them at least once before you could say what you felt. Wild boar appeared on the menu, and a mysterious dessert was proffered – mustalevria.

To say that this is grape jelly is to do it an injustice – it is made from ‘must’ which comes from the first pressing of grapes, it is cleared and cleaned by a semi-mystical process involving wood ash – well, it was in my mother-in-law’s day anyway – it is boiled and allowed to settle into an opaque jelly that is served sprinkled with cinnamon and crushed walnuts. It is quite delicious – the best I ever had was made each year by the local priest who insisted on sharing it with the foreign members of his flock.

Check out this link and you will see I am not kidding about the wood ash!

http://greek.food.com/recipe/moustalevria-grape-wine-pudding-10912

‘Must’ is also a vital ingredient in those delicious cookies that are so popular with kids who grow up in Greece – mustokouloura, slightly gingery in flavour.

A strange sound can be heard – though it is no longer the shrilling of the cicadas. This is the combination of a huge joint sigh of relief from mothers who have had to organize child care for three months, and a deep groan of disappointment from the children themselves.

Some of them, at least, are returning to a school where the Kantounistas group of Corfu have left their mark and made the school yard look more welcoming.

 This has been a rather unusual August. We have seen a full moon not once, but twice, at the beginning and the end of the month, the second one being called, rather romantically, a Blue Moon. Not as rare as the name might suggest, and unfortunately not really blue – but, hey – poetic licence and the songwriters’ boon.

We have been visited by the flaming spears of the Pleiades and by the heavenly bodies of a lesser firmament, namely Hollywood. Gorgeous yachts have called in, fuelling our speculation and our imagination, private jets have landed and left inscrutably, and everything has seemed much as  usual, though of course we know that it is not.

Many arrivals, then in August, and one noteworthy departure – that of Neil Armstrong, astronaut, first man to walk on the moon. He made that unforgettable remark about ‘one small step for a man’ but I like this quote. 

'I was elated, ecstatic and extremely surprised that we were successful'.

I think it reflects the modesty, humility and humour of this true hero.

Not the blue moon, but the blue planet as seen from the Moon

So, August then. The Romans named the month after the Emperor Augustus, just as they named July after Julius Caesar.  August was a popular name in Victorian times often shortened, especially by the Americans, to Gus. My grandmother was called Augusta, but then she was also called Alma  and had several other Christian names, all beginning with A.

Don’t ask me why.

 Alma Augusta Annie etc

My Grandma aged 19

 

Time to sweep up a few leaves. Amazing what you find hidden amongst them in the garden. Things you had forgotten all about.

And things that are unmistakably mean Autumn is not so far away......

 

 

 Photos by the usual suspects - Katy, Joanna, Frosso as we;; as some of my own and a few others.

FROM THE DESK OF GRANDMA

There was a time when some of the Sunday newspaper supplements, and a couple of magazines, used to fill up space, and the dreaded back page in particular, with insightful little articles on such riveting subjects as:

‘The Contents of my Fridge’

‘What’s on my mantelpiece’

‘The Contents of my Handbag’

And so on.

It was, I suppose, a development of the idea that people are fascinated by lists – which is a wholly different subject that has earned certain writers, such as one Schott, a measure of fame and fortune.

I always felt that the minor celebrities called upon to describe the contents of their fridge were always desperately trying to make a good impression, so were unlikely to mention the shapeless ball of suppurating mould that had once been half a kilo of mince, left at the back of a shelf for the tomorrow that never came. They would proudly describe the healthy options that resided therein, which no-one ever believed in and, hoping to earn a laugh, would state with coy charm that they also kept their knickers (wrapped  one hopes) or their Botox injections in there in the height of summer.

 Picture by the late great Beryl Cook

Selected mantelpieces always held invitations to fashionable weddings and ID tags for race-meetings and no-one ever mentioned the vase of Grandpa’s ashes that might have been up there in place of honour.

As for handbags, the only ones that interested me were those of the Queen and Mrs Thatcher, and since their contents were often speculated upon but never revealed, I soon lost interest.

I still think the series could have continued more interestingly with ‘What is on my Desk Today’ to which I would have been delighted to contribute.

My desk has been a source of wonder to my family and work colleagues for many years. What now amuses me is that there is a bit of one’s computer labeled ‘Desktop’ which seems to serve the same old function, only ‘virtual’. as the real thing always did – a repository for the detritus of my daily life and future projects.

There are even annoying little cyber=managers that pop up every now and then to inform me that my Desktop contains too many unused icons and would I please get rid of them. Delighted, you officious little Windows monitor I would say -  make me an offer – icons are going for a good price these days.

Today, our desks have to accommodate the computer and all its accessories, or a laptop which may incorporate some of these accessories into its body but not all.

This is supposed to result in the ‘paperless office’.

Hmm. Not so far in my experience, in fact computers seem to spew out enormous amounts of large pieces of paper covered with faint and thus illegible words and figures. This means that you have to use what you can’t read as scrap paper for jotting down a 'hard' version of what you can’t read.

One person, however, who seems to have it all under control is the President of the USA, but please note that he does not appear to have a computer on that desk.

My boss used to visit my office in Corfu on his whirlwind visits to see how we were getting on, and would sigh and groan when he saw my desk once more. I thought I had tidied it in honour of his arrival, but it was never tidy enough for him

‘It looks as if there has been an earthquake in here!’ he would bluster. ‘How can you find anything?’ And yet the curious thing was that I always could find what I wanted, within seconds. One of those cod-scientific articles appeared in the Daily Mail at that time saying that scientists agreed that an untidy desk was in fact an efficient desk. I don’t think my boss agreed.

 Thing is, desks, like Smarties and seats on aircraft, have got smaller. Look at the fine antique desk above – plenty of room there for papers and files, a plant or two, a coffee machine and a computer and even the office cat and – yes! – even room to perch a buttock on a corner while flirting on the phone with someone thus impersonating a Hollywood secretary and brightening up the day.

Ah yes, the office cat – there is always at least one when I am around.

Felix

Today’s desks are sadly reduced in size and not very attractive.

 No room there for the average daily contents of my desk, which were the initial premise for this blog, and which nowadays include at least two helicopters, a couple of fast cars and a submarine,  a shark, a dinosaur and an alligator.

Of course, as a Grandma, there is bound to be a piece of Bandaid somewhere on that desk, for emergency use only, as well as a recipe for some nice sweet cake. There will be eleven pens, used up by the kids and returned empty to the little box they stand in. There will be hastily scribbled phone numbers without names to identify them, and pieces of string. There will be lists, the purpose of which has now expired. There will be a Memory Stick, the contents of which I can't for the life of me remember.

Welcome to Grandma’s Desk!