They will be departing as well from the international scene to retire to the quiet and civilized tranquility of a Kentish village — Kent, that garden of England, that old kingdom facing the Continent which gives England its finest fruit — including hops, so vital in the production of the English ‘pint’ — that part of the island whose white cliffs stood out so defiantly in the ‘Forties’.
It was then that Sir Robin Hooper earned the initials following his name which puzzled many among the diplomatic community here. DFC: Distinguished Flying Cross which is awarded to officers of the Royal Air Force for acts of exceptional valor, courage and devotion to duty while flying in active operations against the enemy. DSO: Distinguished Service Order awarded to officers of the three services for meritorious action in the face of the enemy.
What Sir Robin actually accomplished was best picked up from his casual remarks. On learning that he had been in France during the Occupation, someone once asked him what he had been doing there. Ί was up to no good, I can assure you that,’ was all he would say. Later we heard of that incredible aircraft called ‘Lysander’ one of those high-wing monoplanes that used to fly agents and their equipment into France and very often pick up people whose presence was required in London. It had floodlights to guide it to a landing at night and an ability to fly as slowly as 55 miles an hour, a handy speed for picking up messages or dropping supplies.
KCMG? That is the ‘Greek connection.’ Few Greeks know of their country’s involvement in a British Order of Chivalry, but the order of St. Michael and St. George had its origins in Corfu. Founded in 1818, it was to provide a mark of honor for ‘Natives of the Ionian Islands’ and other subjects of ‘His Majesty as may hold high and confidential situations in the Mediterranean.’ The Palace of the Order, which has been restored to its former glory, is still one of the most impressive buildings in the town of Corfu. It was officially opened on St. George’s Day 1823 when, we are told, the dancing continued until five in the morning.
After the war the French Government awarded Sir Robin the Croix de Guerre with two Palms and made him a Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur. He subsequently served in Paris, Lisbon and Baghdad. In 1960 he returned to Paris where he spent six years as Assistant Secretary General (Political) of NATO. Later he became Ambassador to Tunisia and subsequently the first British Ambassador to the newly-independent Republic of Yemen.
Sir Robin married in 1941. They have three sons. Lady Hooper has shown a keen interest in welfare work, particularly with handicapped children.
On the eve of his departure Sir Robin warned that pessimism in the world today is exaggerated. ‘We used to have a governess for our children,’ he declared, ‘who used to say, “Isn’t it absolutely awful about everything.” Sir Robin and his wife were the sort of people who went about the world disproving this.
Back in Kent an English gentleman and his lady will enjoy a wellearned retirement.
OLD prints of street vendors hawking their wares in London are eagerly sought today. Some have value as well. Has anyone ever illustrated the street cries of Athens? Just as colorful as the London cries, they are, alas, becoming just as rare, now that traffic fills the streets. Walking down the middle of the street is no longer a way of life in Athens today, but a way of death. Men calling out their wares can still occasionally be heard above the cacophony of motors, but the old street cries of Athens are being drowned out.
Not many years back, just waking up in Athens was a delight to surprise the traveller on his first visit. First the cock-crows — it seemed everyone kept chickens in their back yard — then the shepherds urging their flocks on to the slopes of Philopappou, and then the vendors. “Seeka! Seeka!” cried the man leading a donkey from whose either side hung baskets laden with figs. There was the yaourti man, too, whose mournful cry sounded like a soul lost in limbo. “Skee-no noma!” shouted the earth and pot man.
Nowadays only the paliadzis can make his voice heard above the traffic, and even he is getting mechanized. He’ll take anything: iron, wood, paper, mattresses, old bath tubs, the lot. Where it all goes is a mystery. What it becomes eventually is a secret known only to him.
The knife-grinder can still sometimes be found at a corner turning the wheel with his foot, honing down the knives and scissors brought to him by the neighboring housewives. It’s the fishmonger who has sadly disappeared. Holding a portable weighing machine in one hand and a basket of fish in the other, he used to balance his wares in the middle of Kolonaki. Now he’s respectably clad in a white apron, sells fish in a shop and delivers it in a taxi.
What has happened to the umbrella man? People used to pass their broken umbrellas out of the windows of their ‘garconieras’ right into his hands. Sometimes he repaired them with very colorful patches. Most of the cane-chair and canvas-chair menders have moved indoors and are working in plastic.
An organ grinder has lately made his reappearance in Kolonaki, and as the tune of ‘Oh, how we danced on the night we were wed’, followed us by the street, we were reminded of our youth — and of the roving gypsy musicians with their monkeys and bears.
Downtown a variety of men sell a variety of wares in the streets; sponges, lavender and so forth, but they are not the street sellers in the old way, crying out their services as they make their rounds.
A few more years will see the last of them go, and we wish some artist would quickly sketch what remains so that we too, in Athens, should have a record of Old Athens Street Cries.
IF we in Athens are raising our voices in protest against the rising cost of food, we are only part of an international chorus. In fact we have less reason to shout than a great number of other cities. According to that Sacred Text of economics, The Financial Times, Athens comes rather low on the list of European capitals.
This investigation was carried out by taking as a standard ‘a typical shopping basket’ which included nominal amounts of chicken, beef, eggs, rice, potatoes, cooking oil, butter, bread, coffee, sugar, salt, beer, wine, toothpaste, razor blades, soap, toilet paper and aspirin.
By this standard, the Athens shopping basket proved to be 23.6 percent cheaper than Amsterdam, 39.1 percent cheaper than Copenhagen, 11.1 percent cheaper than Brussels, 30.9 percent cheaper than Stockholm, 6.9 percent cheaper than Moscow, 0.7 percent cheaper than Vienna, and 18.9 percent cheaper than Paris.
We are pondering why vegetables and fruit are missing from the list, and can only conclude that the editors of The Financial Times are on some interesting new diet.
SPEAKING of Paris and food, we take strong issue with The Financial Times. A typical Parisian shopping basket clearly consists of dolmades, feta cheese, olives, sheets of filo, retsina, and skewers.
This summer you can hardly see across the square to St. Germain de Pres for the smoke rising from the souvlaki stalls. The Vietnamese restaurants we hear are empty as well as the Algerian joints and all Paris is eating a la Grecque.
It is interesting to learn, too, that those who are behind the times and keeping to the French cuisine may be eating a la Grecque as well. For the true provenance of most dishes like escargots a la bourguignonne and grenouilles a la provencale is neither Burgundy nor Provence but Messolonghi, Arta and Thessaly.
In 1973 Greece received the equivalent of one million dollars exporting frogs, snails and turtles, mostly to France. This included over one hundred tons of frogs and 5000 turtles each weighing over a kilo and a half. This year a ban has been put on the export of turtles in order to protect the species.
There are, by the way, no organized frog farms in Greece. It seems that frogs suffer severe emotional stress when out of their natural surroundings.
OUR friend Kyria Elsie visited us the other day to deliver another letter. She sat down slowly and stiffly as she explained the reason for her latest epistle: to lend moral support to those women determined to hold out against the custom which demands that the house be transformed for the summer.
As she rose stiffly from her chair to take her leave we asked if there was anything wrong and she confessed she had wrenched her back while supervizing the removal of the carpets from her house. It seems she gave up the battle years ago and practises only* token resistance in the form of one rug left lying in the sitting room. As we watched her make her way painfully towards the door we decided it was time we all rose-up against the Rites of Spring and herewith produce her letter:
About the middle of May, when the weather is just off the chill, friends begin to ask, ‘When are you going to take up your carpets?’ If you have recently moved you might well reply, ‘But I have only just put them down.’ ‘But you can’t have CARPETS in Athens in the summer’ “they” will explain.
Where did this custom originate and why is it so faithfully adhered to? People in far hotter climates than Athens, and in equally hot climates in Europe, manage to survive the summer without stripping their homes bare. Householders in other countries do not take down their curtains, thus removing the softening effect they give to a living room, let alone the muting of noise. Nor do they cover their pretty lampshades with hideous plastic and veil their pictures with muslin. ‘DUST!’ it is explained. ‘It gets into everything you see’ It probably does, but not as much now as when this custom probably originated, in the days of unpaved streets which caused clouds of it to rise. Yet a little dust is preferable to the empty house atmosphere, the ‘we are just about to go away’ feeling in a home with no carpets, curtains or ornaments.
There are those with special summer curtains and special summer covers for their chairs and sofas which soften the outlines but create an enormous amount of work. Every May and October (though I know a family that does not revert to normal until December, apparently fooling themselves that summer lasts eight months) extra cleaning ladies and some strong men are needed to lift the large carpets. They descend upon the household and bring a reign of chaos for days. The mistress of the house cancels her engagements, like Royalty when it is expecting a happy event, and remains unseen, in purdah, until the metamorphosis is complete and a gentle welcoming home is transformed into a sort of barracks.
Perhaps the increasing shortage of inexpensive help and the rise in the cost of living and all services will put an end to this practise. Then homes will feel like our castles and not mausoleums in which the sound of a spoon laid down on marble or a fork falling will not clatter through the house like thunder.
GOING to the dogs is an annual occurrence in Athens. Every year the Greek version of the S.P.C.A. (Etairias Prostasias Zoon) sends its travelling van to all the suburbs and outlying areas of Athens from May through September to offer to the dogs their rabies shots. Dog owners pay a small fee, up from last year’s 35 drachmas to the present 80.
The scene in Flesvos, Old Phaleron, on the designated day was typical: a line about a block long (and dogs don’t keep in lines any better than their Greek masters) resembling the ‘big dog party’ in that well-known children’s book, Go Dog. Go! There were ‘big dogs and little dogs, black and white dogs…’ in fact dogs of all sizes, shapes, colors, and possible breeds — and then some impossible breeds.
These dogs exhibited varying moods. Some waited dejectedly in the heat, others sniffed or snarled at their nearest neighbors. Some barked, others fought, all panted. Yips, growls, piercing cries (dogs don’t like getting their shots any more than children do) filled the air.
The thing we found heartwarming about all this was the devotion shown by all the masters to their animals — encouraging them to stay calm, patting them, bragging about them. This affection was extended not only to the proudest ‘skill ratsa’ (Pedigreed dog) but to the humblest and homeliest mutt. In a country not celebrated for its love of dogs, this was indeed an encouraging sight.
