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GOODY'S GOODY'S YUM YUM
Many years ago, when first invited to eat at Goody’s, I was enraptured, labouring as I was under the misapprehension that in fact, I was being conveyed to a BBC ‘Goodies’ themed restaurant, where...
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SMYRNA UNPUNISHED
“What thou seest, write in a book, and send it unto the seven churches which are in Asia; unto Ephesus, and unto Smyrna, and unto Pergamos, and unto Thyatira, and unto Sardis, and unto Philadelphia,...
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ΚΗΔΕΙΑ
“I need to change my will,” the old man said, his eyes glistening. “I’ve just come from Thymio’s funeral.In my experience, there is nothing like the loss of a friend to make one consider, not only...
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A WOG LETTER OF LOVE
Dearest mainstream journalists who posit that ‘wog’ is a term of endearment,One of the first “wogs” I met, was my father, who at the tender age of six was ordered off a Melbourne tram, along with his...
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NOTED TRANSPARENCIES
“Within the dark of anguish/ I inhabited your footsteps/ these you told me/ are the yeast of resurrection.” The above lines could easily have been written by Saint Isaac the Syrian, John of Dalyatha or...
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GREEKS AND DECIBELS
The revelation that the members of my tribe were possessed of a certain renown with regard to the resonance of their voices, came to me early in my youth. An exogenous friend from school was over, and...
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ΒΕΥΟND THE POSEIDONIANS
Whereas in the Poseidonians, the Greek poet Cavafy portrays a group of Greeks on the verge of assimilation aping old customs without knowing exactly what they signify, (an immensely strong metaphor of...
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OXI
In 1960, Warren Cowgill theorized that the strange, un-Indo-European οὐχί, from which the modern όχι is derived, stems from an early form of proto-Greek: “ne hoyu kwid,” a double negative like the...
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ON NANNIES, CORPOSES AND FAILED STATES
In his masterful foray into the theatre of the absurd, Ὁι Νταντάδες" (The Nannies), Giorgos Skourtis casts the everyman as defenseless prisoners of a thoroughly degraded society, which is so morally,...
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THE HELLENISTIC AGE
Ὁ αετός πεθαίνει στον αέρα, ελεύθερος και δύνατος,’ crooned Notis Sfakianakis. In that, the year of our Lord 1998, Sfakianakis’, name was so holy that it could not be pronounced in full, being...
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DI PASTA GRECA
“Seriously, the way you Greeks carry on about inventing everything!” my Italian school friend observed. “But you haven’t invented anything that people actually like. Look at us Italians. No we didn’t...
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ΠΑΡΑΜΥΘΙΑ
My three and a half year old daughter’s favourite bedtime story goes something like this: There was once a little girl, paradoxically enough sharing the same name as her, who, in contravention of her...
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GREEKS AND COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY
The inscription goes further to say that the purpose of the Zosimas brothers’ sponsorship is to ensure that the book, which is a philosophical treatise summarizing the major currents of thought...
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SHORT CHANGED
The last time I saw the august leader of the opposition, Bill Shorten, I was just tucking into a feast of roast lamb at the glorious Philhellene restaurant in Moonee Ponds. In he walked, and a barely...
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AUSTRALIAN HELLENISM REBOOTED
I drive past the Nisyrian Society club building on Sydney Road, Brunswick at least once a week. On its be-curtained door, a sign proclaims forbiddingly, “Members Only.” This, I find interesting,...
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A PENTELIC CHRISTMAS DIALECTIC
«Καλά δε νιώθς; Μη μ’ βανς ομελέττα, αφού δεν αρταίνουμι».My grandmother placed the pan on the table and stared at me in horror. If looks were capable of parakinesis, then that stare would have had me...
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THE APOTHEOSIS OF EPIRUS
The diminutive old man with the care-worn, drawn cheeks and the aquiline nose kneels rhythmically as he lovingly lowers his ear over the mouth of the clarinet. Then, slowly, his eyes half closed in...
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THE QUICK GUIDE TO HELLENISM
When I was a lad, the way we distinguished the inner circle from the outer, was by discerning people’s ability to speak in the Greek tongue. Once in a while, we would come across a strange phenomenon,...
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ΨΩΜΙ ΠΑΙΔΕΙΑ ΕΛΕΥΘΕΡΙΑ
“One of the worst things about being a young refugee in Greece, is the knowledge that your life has suddenly been paused, as if God is holding an immense remote control,” Nineveh, who in her early...
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DOUBLE HEADED BOGEY MEN
Talented photographer Ari Hatzis once related how, on a trip to Antarctica, he took with him a Greek flag. His plan was to unfurl the flag once on the icy continent’s surface and take a photograph of...
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