I was always envious my father never bought me an Alfa Romeo. I remember when he bought me a new Honda after Uncle Piet’s Peugeot was stolen at medical school, and Uncle Philip asked him why he didn’t buy me a smart car, like a BMW or Alfa Romeo. My father didn’t answer. Although all…

My mom shouted down the passage while my father was still in bed. “Peter, come see. Basil slept with Gina last night.” Not the sort of thing you say in a conservative Greek household when your son is 17 years old. Not just that Gina was Italian and not Greek, but that Gina sounded like…

For most of my school days we were dragged to Greece on holiday for six weeks of the South Africa winter. The trip from Athens was long and windy before the road was improved, and then again before the highway was opened with twin tunnels through Artemision Mountain to cut the trip to less than…

My father had a Portuguese tiler working for him at the time of the main expansions of our house. “Patria”, he would shout as he passed the tiler, and the tiler would give him a broad smile. There was a labourer or two, but they were always in the background.  The tiler did all the…

Mount Olympus is the highest mountain in Greece. It is also the most revered, as home of the gods. I am sure it would be safe refuge from some of the money mongers who have dug Greece into debt. Perhaps they should just let those innocent of any financial misdoing live there peacefully with the…

The carcasses would normally arrive Saturday morning, sometimes three or four of them. They would be laid on the kitchen table, covered by a cool white sheet as we had no cold room. The smell of dead meat and almost rancid fat would pervade the house. As the day wore on specks of blood would…

“An office stores documents. It’s up to us to organise them.” That’s what my father thought of filing. I remember my first job in the office when I was about 12 was filing in the big Lever arch files, placing them in the metal filing cabinets. Each document had to have a section in which…

My father had a diligent team of physician, cardiologist, cardiothoracic surgeon and a cardiologist specialising in arrthymias. They were all top of their game; they excelled in their profession. But before them he had a only physician, in the days when most people had general practitioners. He was top of his game; he excelled in…

Our neighbour, Mr Austen, used to work for MGM, Metro Goldwyn Meyer, in South Africa. In the 70’s my father arranged that he brought films home on the weekend and a projector, and we would show it for the neighbourhood and extended family. Eventually my father bought a Bell & Howell 16mm projector with Cinemascope…