Weather or not

A weathercock at Limbergalm, Austria.

Last week the weather forecasts for this week were dire. We were due snow, force 9 winds and below freezing temperatures.

Today, I look out of the window and, sure, it's not nice out there - rain and a cold north wind - but it's not what we were bracing ourselves for last week.

As I said in an earlier post the word meteorology, the study of the weather, comes from the Greek for things from on high. That doesn't make Greek weather forecasts any more accurate in the long term than any others.

Even so, I have a certain amount of sympathy with weather forecasters. They are frequently held up to ridicule - just mention Michael Fish to British people - and accused of "never getting it right".

That point of view largely ties in with most people's idea that everything is all about them. In other words, a weather forecast should relate specifically to us precisely where we happen to be. This follows from so many people's belief that they are the centre of the universe. I'm afraid it's time to break the bad news to those people that they're just a few random atoms loosely agglomerated somewhere in the universe and almost certainly not at its centre.

Anyway, if you really want an accurate weather forecast, just look out of the window. That's what I do and that's why I'm just about to light the fire.

There are lots of songs about the weather and it was difficult to make a choice. However, I opted for Crowded House and Weather With You because as the chorus says "Everywhere you go, you always take the weather with you". Not entirely accurate, but the weather is definitely always there.

* Picture of weathercock by Peter Haas / , via Wikimedia Commons

I resolve to do whatever I want

How are you coming on with those New Year Resolutions? As good as that? Well, a week's not bad. To be fair, I didn't bother making any resolutions so that now, nearly two weeks in to January, I'm not sitting around feeling bad at my lack of purpose.

But, hey, if you did set yourself a range of targets for self-improvement then go for it. It is entirely arbitrary that just as the Earth reaches a certain stage in its orbit around the sun we decide to instil a bit of moral fibre in ourselves, but why not? Broadly speaking it's better to try and fail than never try at all.

So if you're trying to give up the ciggies, rein in the drinking and take up regular exercise more power to your elbow. I suppose it's only fair for me to point out that by the end of the month you're likely to feel a complete sense of failure and be full of self-loathing at your inability to exercise even the slightest bit of self-control, but really I don't want to discourage you.

It's easy for me, I'm an ex-smoker so I don't need to give that up and forswearing alcohol in January seems completely nonsensical to me. January is precisely the month when you need a little alcoholic fortification.It's dark, it's cold and spring seems a long way off. I take my break from the electric soup during Lent. No booze from Ash Wednesday to, er, it depends how I feel, but it is usually Easter Day itself.

Anyway, enough of my moral high ground. If I did have any New Year resolutions to make what would they be?

Well, as ever, improve my Greek. This actually has nothing to do with New Year and everything to do with being a lazy arse who should by now be speaking, reading and writing better Greek than he does. To some extent this does take us back to the idea of failure, and to be truthful beating yourself up about your own shortcomings isn't very productive.

Despite all the above, this year I have got two resolutions that I think are worth doing, mainly because they might be judged to be completely pointless. Having said that, I think I can give them a go. They are to read more poetry - let's say one poem a day, and to learn to juggle. I've had a go at the juggling before and gave up just as I was achieving proficiency with two balls - no jokes please.

Question: Can you juggle? If so did it make you want to run away to join a circus?

I like to end with a bit of music and my selection for this posting ties in with my belief that one resolution we could all do with is to watch less television.

Hold on a minute, I'll look it up

I have at least two Greek phrasebooks and somewhere around the house I think there is a third and possibly even a fourth. They are the sort of thing you accumulate over time and jolly useful they are, too. Well, at least in theory.

Nothing can replace having in your head a working knowledge of a foreign language. Even if it's a bit sketchy, I genuinely believe you're better off stumbling along and learning as you go rather than constantly leafing through the pages of a phrasebook.

Yesterday, I successfully purchased a ballcock for our toilet cistern. Ballcock is not a word that appears in either of my phrasebooks nor in my Greek dictionary. Anyway, the transaction wasn't that difficult, I took the broken part with me and in my rough and ready Greek asked: "Have you got one of these, please."

But I still wouldn't be without my phrasebooks, if nothing else they provide plenty of entertainment as I try to work out the sort of situation where I would refer to the book rather than throw myself on the mercy of the Greek person I am trying to communicate with.

The two phrasebooks I have in front of me are a Berlitz, published in 1973, and a Lonely Planet, published in 2006. What a difference more than three decades makes.

The Berlitz book was published when Greece still had the Drachma - something which many Greeks wish was still the case - and besides the usual sections on checking in to hotels includes help on going to the hairdressers. Phrases include how to ask for a pageboy cut and also having ringlets put in your hair.

Having got your hair looking good, you might then want to go to a boxing match. I kid you not, the book even includes a phrase for finding a bout at lightweight. If all that activity leaves you feeling a little peaky, then maybe you need to see a doctor. The book admits it might not be much use in the case of serious injury or illness when you should just let the doctor take over, but the section includes how to explain more minor ailments. My favourite phrase here is one telling the doctor that you've been having nightmares.

In contrast, the Lonely Planet guide reflects the needs of a more modern readership, even including a phrase for explaining that the drugs you are carrying are for personal use. In fairness there is also a section on hairdressing, although no mention of ringlets.

My favourite section in the Lonely Planet phrasebook is the one on sex. While sex might be a universal language, I suppose there are still occasions when you need to make yourself perfectly clear with words. Having said that, I'm not sure that in the throes of passion you'd have either the time or the inclination to look up the phrase or word to say things like "touch me here" or "faster/harder/slower/softer". Maybe actions would speak louder than words.

All this talk of words and love has got me thinking of one of my favourite albums of the 1980s, The Lexicon of Love. Enjoy this video, it's a bit of its time, but the song's a cracker. In fact, the whole album is stonkingly good and I don't care if that makes me sound a bit dated.

Question: What is the most useful phrase you've learned in a foreign language? I make no bones about it, that the phrase which has stood me in good stead in Greek is "I'd like a beer, please". Purely by coincidence it was the first phrase I learned. 

Words we get from Greek: Meteorology

That's the thing with an occasional series, which "Words we get from Greek" most assuredly is, it just happens occasionally. Anyway, to business, meteorology is, as you undoubtedly know, the study of weather and climate. It's Greek roots are τα μετεόρα (things on high) and λόγος (basically word).

I used to think it was only the British that went on about the weather as in the joke that Britain doesn't have climate it has weather, but here on Skopelos people pay great attention to the weather.

It's not surprising really, a lot of Greek life is spent outdoors, tending olive trees, growing vegetables or even just sitting outside drinking coffee or eating. The weather has a bearing on all these activities. Will it rain? When will it rain? Will it be enough rain? People also go on about whether it's too hot or too cold. I suspect it's only human never to be completely satisfied with something such as the weather over which we have no control.

Definitely the wrong sort of rain. A storm in September, 2012.

Of course, it's not just landlubbers who worry about the weather, seafarers also pay great attention to the forecast. Skopelos is an island and the only way to get here, other than for a few exalted types who have access to a helicopter, is by sea. If it gets stormy then shipping can't get through, certainly not to land cargo and passengers and so we go without.

As I write this, we are awaiting high winds and possible snow (more likely to be rain). Friends who needed to get to Athens for a flight left a day early in order to be certain that they could get off the island. As I said, people pay attention to the weather here. On Sunday, the views were crystal clear and we could see all the way to Mount Olympus, the top of which is covered in snow as are the peaks on the nearby island of Evia.

A light scattering of snow from January this year.

The use of the word τα μετεόρα might just have rung a bell with some of you, particularly if I type it as Meteora. This is the site in the middle of Greece famous for its monasteries which are built on top of rocky outcrops. I don't know for sure, but I presume the name derives from "things on high" as does meteorology. Certainly I imagine the monks in their lofty homes paid great attention to the weather, I know I would.

The Holy Monastery of Rousanou at Meteora.

Bye bye Bee-eaters, missing you already

The Bee-eaters are going, as sure a sign of the changing seasons here as the sudden departure of Greek tourists. The birds fly high over Skopelos making their distinctive call which my bird book describes as "quilp" and indeed it is the sound you hear long before you see them heading south back to warmer climes.

I, too, am on the move, even if only temporarily, but unlike the Bee-eaters I shall be heading north to the UK. The Bee-eaters are after winter warmth, something which I fear I am unlikely to experience during the next fortnight. I have been advised to bring layers of clothing and I am more than a little daunted by the number of people I see on Twitter bemoaning the cold and talking of switching on their heating.

As I write this I am wearing shorts and a T-shirt, my standard items of clothing for so long (not the same ones, you understand) that I can't remember the last time I wore a pair of long trousers. Temperatures today are in the high 20s and it is very humid, although none of this seems to have persuaded the Bee-eaters to put off their departure. When I get back to Gatwick tomorrow evening I suspect the temperatures will only just have crept in to double figures, but then as the saying goes "there's no such thing as bad weather, just wrong clothes", so layers it is.

Aside from the weather, I'm not really sure what to expect. It's more than a year since I set foot on UK soil and that time has been spent only on this island with its one-and-a-half main roads and intermittent ferry service. I don't think I'm putting it too strongly when I say I am quite troubled at the prospect of huge numbers of people rushing around.

In addition, for the most part these will be people I can understand. My Greek is coming along painfully slowly. When I hear Greek people talking near me, rather than to me, it is a bit like listening to a badly tuned radio, I get some of it quite well, but I can just as easily let my focus drift and lose myself in my thoughts. No such chance when it is your native tongue and you are quite likely to find yourself privy to a conversation about the rubbish on last night's TV or the goings-on at the local pub. I suppose if these are the biggest problems I encounter over the next fortnight I'll have little cause for complaint.

As for the Bee-eaters, we should see them again around April/May indicating that summer has returned. I may not speak Bee-eater, but I do understand what they say.

A Bee-eater practising saying "quilp".
Pic by Spacebirdy.
//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Merops_apiaster_-_Tiergarten_Sch%C3%B6nbrunn_5.jpg

Words we get from Greek: 4 - xenophobia

Earlier postings in this strand have all been from near the front end of the alphabet (another word we get from Greek) so for this one I've dodged to near the end of the alphabet, but only of the Latin alphabet as the x of this posting's chosen word is found more or less in the middle of the Greek alphabet. Complicated, no? To add to the complication Greek has another sort of X pronounced more like the ch in words such as loch and that does come near the end of the Greek alphabet.

So anyway xenophobia, which in Greek has an x as in fix rather than a z sound (look, just concentrate) is fear or hatred of foreigners. Xenos is the foreign bit and phobia is the fear bit. I suppose it could be racism for posh people. Anyway, I'd be lying if I said that there were not instances where some Greek people didn't like some foreign people, but then, sad to say, that is true of any nationality.

The crisis has certainly played its part in creating xenophobia and naked hostility to people from other countries has been displayed in parts of the country, not least Athens. The rise of Golden Dawn, a political party which denies being neo-Nazi, but which has more than a whiff of the jackboot about it, has coincided with a rise in attacks on people from other countries, especially if the colour of their skin marks them out.

All of this is rather depressing but I would say that broadly speaking most Greeks I have encountered are prepared at the very least to be "live and let live" and many are friendly to you whoever you are (especially, surprise, surprise, if you are friendly to them). This, in turn, brings me to another word linked to our posting's title but which is one of my favourite Greek words....filoxenia (φιλόξενια). This is the spirit of hospitality, friendliness to foreigners, and as we are all foreigners somewhere let's hope for more filoxenia and less xenophobia.

Words we get from Greek: 2 - catastrophe

Straightforward enough, catastrophe in English is a sudden disaster or misfortune and καταστροφή in Greek is destruction, collapse, disaster. Clearly not a word that has changed much in moving from one language to another.

My Chambers dictionary says catastrophe derives from κατά, the Greek for down, and strophe, in Greek στροφή, meaning turning.

My favourite use of the word comes from a plumber I know here on Skopelos who describes difficult plumbing situations as a catastrophe. Particularly difficult plumbing situations he describes as "the full catastrophe". One hopes to avoid those wherever possible.

This particular plumber once explained to me his theory on learning English. "When you have listened to Eric Clapton, Elton John and Rod Stewart, then you can speak English," he stated with absolute conviction, at which point his apprentice added "...and Rory Gallagher". This idea of teaching English using ageing, and in one case dead, rockers is a new one on me, but it's certainly worth a try. What do you think, Mr Gove?

Barking up the wrong tree

'No, I do not want to practise my Greek verbs'

Lately, I've been teaching my dog to speak Greek. Ambitious, I know, and not entirely true - I doubt that she'd ever get the hang of verb endings and the way they change with tense. No my language lesson is more simple. As a dog raised in England, Bonnie says 'woof' and now she lives in Greece she needs to learn that dogs say 'ghav' (γαβ).

Try it and you'll see, or rather hear, that actually when said with a bit of throatiness 'ghav' does indeed sound quite like a dog barking. Silly, you say, well yes, but for me it encapsulates some of the key difficulties I'm having in getting to grips with the language of the country where I now live. I'm no linguist and never have been, but it strikes me that native speakers of every language grow up developing a particular way of making the sounds that combine to form the words of that language.

As far as Greek people are concerned their dogs say 'ghav' and not 'woof'. As an aside, a former colleague of mine who now lives in Catalonia told me that there dogs say 'bup'. I know, hilarious isn't it? But try it with a bit of oomph and suddenly you find yourself coming out with quite a convincing little dog yappy sound.

It's not only Greek dogs that speak Greek. Cats do, too. Here they don't say 'miaow', they say 'niaou' (νιαου). Not totally at odds, but still different. Roosters say 'kikiriku' (κικιρίκου), while birds in general are reckoned to say 'tsiu-tsiu' (τσίου-τσίου). With all these differences it comes as a relief to find that the good old reliable cow largely transcends linguistic barriers and utters an entirely understandable 'moo' (μου).

Obviously, I could have called this posting 'It's All Greek To Me', and in many ways it is, but I remain committed to the idea of being able to hold some sort of stumbling conversation in Greek that goes beyond a request for food or drink. I want to be able to use the Greek language to help me live my life here, this despite one of the very nice ladies who works in my local supermarket, and who speaks near faultless English, telling me: 'You know, Greek is the hardest language to learn, we have so many words for the same thing'. I was only slightly mollified by another Greek person who declared their language to be the 'second hardest' language to learn. Oh well, back to the language tapes.