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TOUPHA
«Κάτσι βρε πιδάκι’μ για όνουμα τ’Θιού να σι χτινήσου. Τούφις τούφις γίνκαν τα μαλλιά’ς!» It was with these words that my grandmother would initiate a daily chase around the house, brandishing a...
View ArticleHOLY WEEK
"For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures; and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according...
View ArticleΚΙΤΣΑΡΙΑ
Kitsch is one of my favourite modern Greek words. Rendered as «κιτς» for Athenians who struggle to pronounce the requisite voiceless postalveolar fricative consonant, the word can take on a...
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AΡΡΑΒΩΝΑΣ
This week, we are long overdue in honouring an αρραβώνα with gentle readers, arranged in March of last year, through the diatribe: 'Greco-Persian'. We hasten to point out that the diatribist has not...
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ΟΙ ΑΠΕΛΠΙΣΜΕΝΟΙ
There is a finance minister, a school teacher, a married couple, a young man and an air steward. They are flying on a Boeing 747 from Athens to New York when suddenly their aeroplane crashes and they...
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ORTHODOXY AND SUICIDE
A few decades ago, a distant relative here in Melbourne committed suicide. At the time, he was afflicted by a debilitating mental illness that altered his perception of reality. His death was...
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RECOGNISING GENOCIDE: PART 1
Here is a question for the gentle reader: How many countries around the world do not recognize FYROM as Macedonia? The answer is a mere seventeen. On the other hand, some one hundred and thirty three...
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RECOGNISING GENOCIDE PART 2
To date, other than the extremely brave Turkish scholars such as Taner Akcam, Selim Deringil and some journalists who lament the demise of a multicultural Turkey, there have been few efforts by Greece...
View ArticleRECOGNISING GENOCIDE PART 3
“ It is believed that in Turkey between 1913 and 1922, under the successive regimes of the Young Turks and of Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk), more than 3.5 million Armenian, Assyrian and Greek Christians were...
View ArticleRECOGNISING GENOCIDE PART 4
Advancing further and further away from the coastline, the Greek army, which was drawn inland into Asia Minor in order to fight the nationalist Turks who did not accept Greece’s occupation of the zone...
View ArticleNORTHERN EPIRUS AND GOLDEN DAWN
Recently, a friend from Northern Epirus remarked to me that in the recent European elections, he intended to vote for a Golden Dawn candidate. He also observed that not a few Greeks from Northern...
View ArticlePHILOGELOS AND THE DEAD PARROT SKETCH
One of the most outstanding evidences of comic genius humanity has ever produced would undoubtedly have to be Monty Python’s Dead Parrot Sketch. In the sketch, a Mr Praline enters a pet shop to...
View ArticleKEEPING IT IN THE FAMILY
A cursory glance of the surnames of august Greeks whose posteriors have perched upon the benches of the Parliament throughout the ages is instructive. It presents as a vast family tree of interlocking...
View ArticleGARDENING BYZANTIUM
«Τα διαφόροις των παλαιών περί τε γεωργίας και επιμέλειας φυτών και σπορίμων και ετέρων πολλών χρήσιμων ειρημένα συλλέξας εις εν, τουτί το βιβλίον συντέθεικα.»Γεωπονικά.On the extraordinary rare...
View Article3ZZZ Forty Years On
My first introduction to Radio 3ZZZ took place in 1990, as an emendation to my morning pre-school ritual. Since I can remember, while eating breakfast, I would listen to the news and the sparsely...
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CYPRUS SATURATION
The photographs accompanying this diatribe were taken last year by Turkish photographer Bastermur Bilal. They depict a couple of semi-nude stick figures attempting to assume languid attitudes of...
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CONVERT OR DIE
He was warned not to go out onto the street, even for the weekly shop but his brother laughed and told him not to stop fretting like an old woman. Confidently, they walked out of their house and...
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CACOPHONY OF DIVERSITY
“O wily painter, limiting the scene,From a cacophony of dusty forms,To the one convulsion.”Thomas Gunn Growing up, my favourite Asterix character, from the eponymous comic series, would have to have...
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DORMITION OF THE THEOTOKOS
"If her Fruit, Whom none may comprehend, on Whose account she was called a heaven, submitted of His own will to burial as a mortal, how should she, who gave Him birth without knowing a man refuse...
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TAMATA
The recent theft of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of jewellery and other votive items dedicated to the Panayia from the monastery of Panayia Kamariani has shocked members of the Greek...
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