Ever since I can remember my mother would put a real pine tree in the corner of the lounge and decorate it for Christmas. My father would never allow a plastic one, and I feel guilty very year when I haul out my small yuppie plastic tree and light it up near the window of…
Conversations about Dowries
Dowries are just not the done thing in the modern world. The Greeks still do it. My father gifted a dowry for his sister, as he was head of the household after his father died and assumed the traditional duty. I remember part of the wedding gift; really, that is what it was. If it…
Conversations at a Bakery
My mother’s father was a baker. I have his first name, Basil, but a different surname. His was Moutsatsos. He comes from a beautiful seaside village on the eastern phalanx of the Peloponnese, from a village called Velanidia. The story goes that during the invasions by the Spanish fleet the villagers would all run down…
Conversations on Blessings
My father would always say we should count our blessings. We always had to go to church on St. John’s day, 6 January, when the priest blesses everyone in church with Holy Water from the Epiphany sprinkled with a sprig of Sweet Basil. The heady mix of a summer day in South Africa, incense, candle…
Conversations about Divides
The Corinth Canal divides Attica from the Peloponnese. It is over 6 km long, hewn into solid marble. It was dug at the end of the 19th century. When we first crossed the canal in the late sixties there was a single railway bridge of metal framework and a concrete road bridge with a single…
Conversations about Levels
My father was a firm believer in technology and psychology. When we were close to finishing school we were subjected to a battery of tests at the CSIR (Council for Scientific and Industrial Research) for a whole day. Doing tests and answering questions asked by young psychologists. The CSIR was at the bottom end of…
Conversations about Failure
My father started primary school at the White Only Alberton Primary school. The school was two roads down into the valley, in the alluvial plain of the Natalspruit, 5 avenues from the Union Cafe. He started school as an immigrant’s son. The school has had a colourful record after educating the white youth of a…
Conversations about Banks
My father always had various banks as tenants in his buildings. They were good anchor tenants and signed long leases.IN the early days of building societies he also had one or two of those as tenants, and was appointed chairman of the local board of the Prudential Equity Building Society and later a director of…
Conversations on Theft
I remember being very jealous of my cousins who had these amazing toys that we were never given. I must have been about five years old, and I palmed one of the small shiny toys into my pocket at their house and delivered it safely to the darkness of my cupboard when I got home.I…
Conversations Inside a House
To get inside No. 45 Kakouri you have to use a big village key to open the door that lets you enter a tall ceilinged hall with a bathroom on the left, a kitchen in front and a narrow staircase separating the kitchen from the dining room on the right. The hall is not really…
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