felix.gripe

Πολύ ωραίο. Very good sci-fi! Set on a planet on the far end of the universe, it’s an exciting story about the interactions between the human ambassadors who are all weird twins engineered to be able to speak the double-language of the curious but benign Hosts (Ariekei) – the extremely strange native aliens. The aliens are barely visually described, but the parts that are make them incredibly hard to picture. An exciting and unique sci-fi story, a bit heavy on the linguistic aspects but it…

A fun week here in sunny athens! 21ºC on the balcony at midnight the other day, you can’t beat t-shirt weather at night. Just as well as I’ve been doing a great deal of sitting outdoors and eating as my art teacher from school is in town for 10 days. I’d not seen her for over 30 years, but she’s as fun and sprightly as she was back then. She’s exploring the town with gusto – relentlessly hitting all the museums, antiquities, galleries, and with my help – bars and tavernas. Notes Greek lessons…

Finally unambiguous balcony weather has arrived – currently writing this on mine at 2230h (weirdly for the EU, greeks use the 12hr clock). Mid 20’s and the flowers are looking/smelling amazing. Especially all the jasmine! Last night the much anticipated metallica gig played the olympic stadium ~1km from my house and one could clearly hear the songs and banter from said balcony. I walked the dog to the stadium but I think she prefers more traditional dog music. They played zorba the greek lol.…

Truly superb gig at the Arch club last night! Schlepped my way across all of athens to catch ditz – one of brighton’s finest bands – and they did not disappoint. My first time seeing them live and they put on a great show – huge sound, really tight playing, front-woman amazing with crowd surfing etc. The two warm up bands Chasing Bone and Psychedelic Trips To Death – both from Thessaloniki – were also very good. PTTD were just two people – a bassist and a lead guitarist, with the bassist also…

I very much enjoyed this 1956 autobiographical story by Gerald Durrell, who aged 10 moved to Corfu from england in the 1930’s with his eccentric family. Beautiful descriptions of the idyllic greek island, and his relentless collecting of all the fauna thereon as pets. A bit white-british-colonial but if you can get past that, a v funny book. His older brother, the author Lawrence Durrell, made frequent appearances in The Colossus of Maroussi by Henry Miller (review, ⭐️)

Just when the weather had turned to perfect low-mid 20s, it appears even greece is not immune to the bank holiday weather curse. May day weekend here has been dismal, cold, windy and intermittently rainy. Snow in parts even! Gales and Showers Sweep Across Greece – TO BHMA. Booo! Greek lessons Back to two greek lessons this week, the first on monday put me in a black mood, really struggled to grasp any of the grammar my lovely teacher tried to teach me. Even the warm evening walk around the…

An extremely pleasant sort-of-holiday week here in sunny athens with my parents visiting. It was largely successful – we saw many sights and ate out at different tavernas every day. They’d not eaten a lot of greek food previously, and soon found they couldn’t get enough of it. Monday My Greek class was cancelled so we took a trip along the coast to the Temple of Poseidon in Sounion.

Double greeknotes this week, I failed to write anything last week after a double easter – the greek orthodox easter is a week later than the other easter. Being a freelancer abroad meant that I had to work both good fridays and easter mondays. Easter things: Good friday At 21h I went to see the Epitaphios procession in Iraklio, 100’s of people with candles following a beflowered coffin or something and a load of holy types, the leading chap was banging what I discovered to be a semantron, a…

A towering work of sci-fi. Written in 1930, it charts the history of humanity from the inter-war period to 5,000,000,000,000 AD. The premise is the cycle of human evolution and extinction in 18 civilisations, from current earth to the last men.

Another deadly storm (Erminio) lashes athens. Printed Athens ART Weekend in kypseli, meze at a friend's taverna, and dog sitting one of the biggest dogs I've ever met.

Failing to take advantage of Greek Independence Day, The First Cemetery of Athens, and a piss up in a brewery.

Like a moth returning to a slightly boring and plotless flame, I couldn't resist picking up another one of her books after noticing it had entered the public domain.

A cold and grey week in athens, improved by taverna food, cats, dogs and I suppose, by a half marathon. Although my legs disagree.