It is a dark and stormy night ...

 

YouTube took away the full-length movie, so this trailer will have to do

 

... and I want to be transported back to a time when both the world and I were still young - and decidedly warmer than tonight's "Riverbend".

Greece may still be envisioned by some as old guys in sheets wandering around the Acropolis spouting wisdom before somebody pours hemlock in their ear, but my guess is that they will change their minds after having watched Melina Mercouri do her stuff in "Never on Sunday".

The film is a mix of Pygmalion plus "hooker with a heart of gold", and tells the story of Ilya, a self-employed, free-spirited prostitute who lives in the port of Piraeus in Greece, and Homer, an American tourist and classical scholar who is enamored of all things Greek.

 

Homer Thrace: She killed them. Medea herself, does she not say, “I killed my children”? Ilya: And you believe her? You don’t understand the women. Medea loves her husband, yes? Homer Thrace: Yes. Ilya: Her husband is interested in another woman? Yes? Homer Thrace: Yes. Ilya: So she said to her husband that she has killed her children to frighten him, to get him back. Homer Thrace: No! Ilya: Yes. She gets him back, and everybody go away and everybody is happy and they go to the seashore. And that’s all! Homer Thrace: If I show you that everything that was ever written about Medea talks of her killing her children. If you ask 10 out of 10 people who saw the play and they tell you it’s true, then by simple logic. . .You’re a Greek, you should be logical. Ilya: Why? Homer Thrace: Because the greatest Greek of them all, Aristotle, invented logic. He said – Ilya: Who? Homer Thrace: Aristotle. . . Ilya: Aristotle! The one that the Captain said thinks men are everything and women are nothing? I don’t care what he said, Aristotle. Homer Thrace: It's extraordinary. Where do you learn all those languages? Ilya: In bed.

 

Both Greece’s film industry and the entire nation took centre stage when the film was released in October of 1960, and it led to massive increases in tourism and location-shooting there.

Some twenty years later, I lived and worked in Piraeus by which time Melina Mercouri was already a not-so-sprightly 64 years old. Piraeus was still as lively and, in parts, as bawdy as shown in this movie, but never on Monday when I went back to work in my office at # 3 Agiou Nikolaou to manage my Saudi boss's commodity trading and fleet of bulk carriers.

 

My office at red pin in centre of map: # 3 Agiou Nikolaou;
my apartment at smaller yellow pin at bottom of map: # 2 Voudouri
click here for GOOGLE Map

 

Oh, you can kiss me on a Monday A Monday, a Monday is very, very good Or you can kiss me on a Tuesday A Tuesday, a Tuesday, in fact I wish you would Or you can kiss me on a Wednesday A Thursday, a Friday and Saturday is best But never, never on a Sunday A Sunday, a Sunday, 'cause that's my day of rest Most any day you can be my guest Any day you say, but my day of rest Just name the day that you like the best Only stay away on my day of rest Oh, you can kiss me on a cool day, a hot day A wet day, which everyone you choose Or try to kiss me on a gray day, a May day A pay day, and see if I refuse And if you make it on a bleak day A freak day, a week day, why you can be my guest But never, never on a Sunday   Indulge yourself and listen to the soundtracks here

 

 

"And everybody is happy and they go to the seashore." Some memories can get you through even the darkest and stormiest night.

 

Googlemap Riverbend

 

P.S. See also Armchair-travelling on a windy day

 

Do you really want to delete this Contact?

 

 

Old habits die hard, and it's been several times that I began to write an email to a good friend "up the road" in Wollongong, only to stop at the very last minute. After all, no email will reach him where he has gone, and so I finally deleted his email address from my contacts.

We do not know what awaits each of us after death, but we know that we will die. Clearly, it must be possible to live ethically, and yet the world is simply ablaze with bad ideas. There are still places where people are put to death for imaginary crimes — like blasphemy — and where the totality of a child's education consists of his learning to recite from an ancient book of religious fiction. There are still countries where women are denied almost every human liberty, except the liberty to breed. Man is manifestly not the measure of all things.

 

 

Consider this: every person you have ever met, every person you will pass in the street today, is going to die. Living long enough, each will suffer the loss of his friends and family. All are going to lose everything they love in this world. Why would one want to be anything but kind to them in the meantime?

Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

 

Googlemap Riverbend

 

Long Service Leave is what you get paid for being bored for ten years

 

Ulladulla Harbour

 

We drove to Ulladulla where we had lunch at the local bowling club. Their previous caterers used to make a delicious meatloaf, but the new caterers' bangers and mash also makes a nice change from the homecooking.

And, of course, I washed it all down with a glass (or two) of Chardonnay. The same friendly young man who always collects the empties was on duty. Jokingly, I suggested that he must be due for long service leave soon. "Actually, I am due for it in a few weeks' time," he replied.

I looked at him again and tried to visualise what his life had been like, collecting empty glasses for the past ten years, and what his future would be like. Perhaps, when the old steward behind the bar had retired, our young man would take over as barman, and in due course retire himself and hand over to another young man who has been collecting empty glasses for the past ten years.

Do such men have dreams? Do they live lives of quiet desperation? Or are they happy with their lot? Perhaps they have found the solution to the mystery of existence which is to say that there is no great mystery at all because human existence is mostly about food, sleep, sex, and finding harmless and pleasant ways to fill in the rest.

 

Googlemap Riverbend

 

The End of Faith - Read Sam Harris and wake up

 

 

You would know by now that I call myself an atheist. Of course, as Richard Dawkins said, "We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further." Well, that someone is me!

Richard Dawkins wrote about this book, "The End of Faith by Sam Harris is a genuinely frightening book about terrorism, and the central role played by religion in justifying and rewarding it. Others blame 'extremists' who 'distort' the 'true' message of religion. Harris goes to the root of the problem: religion itself. Even moderate religion is a menace, because it leads us to respect and 'cherish the idea that certain fantastic propositions can be believed without evidence'. Why did men like Bin Laden commit their hideous cruelties? The answer is that they 'actually believe what they say they believe'."

 

Read the book online here

 

At last here is a book that focuses on the common thread that links Islamic terrorism with the irrationality of all religious faith. "The End of Faith" will challenge not only Muslims but Hindus, Jews, and Christians as well. It is a must-read for all rational people.

 

Googlemap Riverbend

 

The lives I haven't lived

 

"Flamme empor" with "Melbourne" in the background

 

Some people had their life flash before their eyes, often during a near-death experience. Gazing into a blazing fire on a cold winter's morning is far from a near-death experience but can induce a similar phenomenon, even more so when fortified with a steaming glass of "Glühwein".

 

My Burn Notification BN0173362

 

By the second glass of "Glühwein" I felt extremely grateful that I was sitting here at "Riverbend" rather than somewhere in (c)old Germany, which would have been the case had I never had the courage to take that first step and leave the "Vaterland" more than sixty years ago.

And, as unlikely as it may seem, I may have continued driving a delivery truck around Canberra, had I not seen that advertisement in the "Canberra Times" which led to my becoming a bank officer with the ANZ Bank, which was a career good enough to aspire to even for an Australian school-leaver, let alone someone whose school education was almost entirely useless by the time he stepped ashore in Melbourne.

I could have seen out my working life, as so many others did, working for the bank and living a good and stable 9-to-5 life until my retirement. I could have accepted my good fortune but I refused what was spread before me and turned by back on it. I refused, so as to better hunger for what had so far been denied me, because to enter the promised land was to despair to ever coming near it. And on I went, holding everything at arm's length, and coming closest to arriving when farthest from it.

I could've started a new life again in Germany when I returned after two years, but both my parents refused to take me back in, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise because I wouldn't have mustered the courage a second time after being spoilt again with three home-cooked meals a day and clean underwear and an ironed shirt every morning.

And so on I went to South-West Africa which was like Germany but with blue skies. I fitted in well but again I refused to accept my good fortune and kept looking for that promised land, which I found a year later in Papua New Guinea. It was everything I had ever wanted from life but it was also too close to arriving, and so, after several years, I left again.

And on and on I went, one country after another, always holding things at arm's length, until, finally, I am sitting here beside a blazing fire on a winter's morning, holding nothing more at arm's length than a steaming glass of "Glühwein". Somehow I've got this far! Sometimes it seemed like driving a car at night. I could see only as far as the headlights, I couldn't see where I was going and very little of what I passed along the way, but somehow I managed to make the whole trip.

Now the only trip left is to the house for another glass of "Glühwein"!

 

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