Current
Affairs on a Small Island
1. Crazy Local
Rules!
Takis would
like to do some more renovations BUT, who do you go to? The council? The
planning office? The architect? The land office? These places exist but have
recently moved and have no sign, so you ask a man in a car where they are. And
when you find them you are probably told you need to go to Mytilene, the next
island, where you’ll be told that you have to be the sole owner, or, that you
cannot touch the outside of an old building, though you can rip out the inside
and add as much cement as you like.
2. Our Local Park!
What are
they doing to our park? It is no longer green with trees; though the trees are
there they are surrounded by cement, with many nearby cement seats, and a
cement pond and a cement auditorium. The Greeks love cement!
3. Happy News!
A neighbour
is so happy, today her niece called in unexpectedly, at home from studying in England
I tell the
group about an email from my son in Australia
and his pleasure at the photos sent him from Lemnos ,
including one of our kitchen politics group!
Takis is
happy the chemists are not on strike and he can buy his pills.
4. Politicians
and their Toilets!
Ertogan and
the Golden Toilet
We all agree that a golden toilet is going too far. We've heard that in accordance with the "New Turkey" concept envisaged by
Erdogan the president of Turkey
Syrisa and
the Parliamentary toilets
The latest
buzz about the government is not about ‘The wicked Germans’, or ‘The wicked
EU’, it’s about the toilets in the parliament building. Evidently the security
police are being banned from using them. In a city that does not have public
toilets this is a bit hard to take. My sympathy is with the police on this one.
5. And when
not discussing these topics in our kitchen we find, as always, they crop up on TV.
All news programs are about the ‘Modern Greek Drama’ (sound the horns and beat the
drums!)
The newsreader will speak so quickly urgently you believe that a
solution has been found, or that it’s the end of the world! You’d be forgiven for making this mistake
even if you spoke Greek. But in short, it will be all about the same group of
actors, who have cleverly captured the sound waves, the newspapers, a nation,
the European Union and all in spite of what is going on elsewhere!
Mr. Smiley
Face, the Prime Minister
Dr.
Listen-to-Me, the Finance Minister
Mr.
Soviet-Ally, the Energy Minister
Miss I’m an
Idealist, the Public Relations officer
Mr. Ever Optimist,
the Taxation Officer
6. The Rest of the World
And when
the local TV is not discussing Syrisa (barely ten minutes at the end of an
hour’s news) Takis and I watch worse things happening else where, and I write a
poem.
Flash and a
Crash rents the sky
I close the
curtains switch on the tellie
A falling
tree kills a passerby
Then a
flood sweeps away a group of cars
While in
Nepal Mount Everest quakes
The program
shows eight thousand die
Our windows
creak and the house shakes
But we’re
inside and watching tellie
Drowns out
the news commentary
All we can
do is watch grief and pain
And the
news feed scroll across the screen
We see with
horror youth want to go
To join
with bands of black dressed killers
On one
channel there’s a comedy show
And on yet
another a severed head
We scoff at
his pomposity
An
economist crumbles at a journo’s guile
But we’ve
wised up to media cunning
We all now
live a richer life
Knowledge
increases with our tellie
An almost
eternity of stories and strive
While
sitting and relaxing in front of tellie
In front of
our eyes was anything real
Ah the
storm has passed there’s peace at last
Let’s go to
bed and switch off the tellie
Julia
Catton
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