To acclimatize the population to the new concept, continuous hours were in effect two days a week only: on Mondays, when stores opened around noon and closed at 7:30, and on Fridays, when they opened in the mornings and closed at 3:30. On all other days the split hours would continue to be observed. This curious schedule, it was announced, would be for a trial period only. The split schedule would go into effect across the board once more in summer.
In 1974, as this year, the populace at large was thrown into total confusion. The Athens News on February 10, 1974, reporting on the new hours, noted that ‘this rather mixed arrangement will last until May 31. As from June 1 shops will probably remain closed throughout the week.’ Meanwhile, a baffled storekeeper near Platia Kolonakiou had put up a sign reading: ‘Work hours: 11:30-7:30. All other days: 7:30-3:30.’
Despite repeated postponements, strikes by some shopkeepers, and a few last minute schedule changes, this year’s debut of continuous shop hours is noteworthy for its sheer simplicity. Groceries will close at 2:30 on Wednesdays and dry goods stores at the same hour on Saturdays. Otherwise stores will be open 9 to 5:30 daily. We have never been able to fathom the intricate reasoning behind these formulas but we presume that the rationale in this case is that the current arrangement will allow grocers to dash out at 2:30 on Wednesdays to buy their clothes or whatever, and other shop workers to dash out at 2:30 on Saturdays to stock up on food for the week. Meanwhile, most housewives are shopping in the mornings and napping in the afternoons as usual. To outwit late siesta-risers who may try to catch the shops just before they close at 5:30,, many shopkeepers are taking the precaution of telling customers they close at 4:30. Some butchers, fishmongers and greengrocers, up before dawn to do their shopping at the central market, take advantage of the mid-afternoon lull and close at whim.
The system nonetheless is so uncompromisingly straightforward that most of the labour force need not bother to consult any charts to see when they can shop. With stores open straight through the day during the hours when most workers are at their jobs — and never open in the evenings — and with weary shopkeepers closing at whim, they can abandon all hope of shopping at all.
The Blob
SWISS technicians have proposed the construction of a gigantic transparent dome to cover the entire Acropolis so as to preserve its monuments from the corrosive effects of pollution. The metal frame of the dome will rest on a concrete base which will circle the entire rock. It will have a vast air-conditioning apparatus to change the air within the dome six times each day, and an elaborate cleaning system to keep the inside and outside surfaces spotless. It will also enclose spacious areas for recreation and rest regardless of weather or season.
Yet this breathtaking technical feat which would certainly become the First Wonder of the World, making the monuments beneath it hardly worth a glance, still has its critics who are going about calling this proposed marvel the Egg or the Blob. Who will pick up the forty million dollar tab, they ask, which may grow, Concorde-wise, many times over in the doing? Cultural philanthropists everywhere are the answer. Where will the unwieldy vast air-conditioning apparatus be placed? Clearly it will fit snugly into the Parthenon and hold the building up at the same time. The concrete base on which the frame will rest, say the critics, will destroy other monuments since it will include an arc that will cut right through the Theatre of Dionysos, but, alas, one cannot preserve every fragment of antiquity without abandoning half the city. Doubts about temperature control when the mercury rises to forty degrees centigrade, as it often does in summer, and problems of humidity and noise, can all be entrusted, we feel certain, to Swiss know-how.
If we take a long-term view of the matter, in fact, the cost will seem minimal. There will be no further need to seek funds for long-proposed opera houses, concert halls or cultural centres. The Dome will be the home of them all. And consider the vast saving in pollution control: no reason to move factories, or purchase new buses, or to burn anything costlier than mazout. With interior sound and light, the city and the Attic sky may grow black as pitch but the splendours of the Age of Pericles will still shine forth as a beacon to mankind.
If these arguments still do not convince the cowardly, perhaps the Swiss technicians can be persuaded to expand the base, the frame, and the dome to circle and cover the peaks of Mounts Hymettus, Pendeli, Parnitha and Egalio, thus saving not only the Acropolis monuments but the three million citizens who live around them.
Rebecca the Camel
KYRIA Elsie arrived in the office with one of her epistles recently, explaining that this time she was not taking drivers or other offenders to task, but touting one of her favourite subjects, Animal Welfare. Here is her latest report on the rescue of one of our four-legged friends:
Anyone crossing the bridge at the Corinth Canal will have seen Rebecca the Camel, standing near a restaurant, rather aloof and disdainful as children surround her eagerly awaiting their turn to be photographed on her back. She must often have wondered what she was doing in the midst of such alien crowds far from the peace and quiet of her natural habitat. When her master — imprisoned for some misdemeanour — was taken away from her some time ago, poor Rebecca must have felt more than ever out of place, left as she was to the care of some stranger. Her fortunes had fallen very low indeed when the Hellenic Animal Welfare Society received a letter from her owner in prison, complaining that her new keeper was not only neglecting Rebecca but that she had been virtually abandoned. The Society immediately made inquiries, and discovered Rebecca to be ill, thin and uncared for, but upon attempting to remove her was informed by legal authorities that she could not be moved because she represented a form of collateral. Rebecca’s imprisoned owner, it seems, was in debt to the new keeper.
Weeks passed and Rebecca’s condition worsened considerably until one bright day the Animal Welfare Society was informed that Rebecca could now be removed. At their stables, an examination revealed that Rebecca was exceedingly weak. The services of a veterinarian and devoted nursing care were necessary if she were to recover. Rebecca had obviously not given up hope — perhaps in her delirium she dreamed of the desert and determined to reach it once again? She responded to treatment and put on weight, regaining her former good spirits.
Although her dreams, assuming she did dream of returning to the desert, have not come true, Rebecca is once more the centre of childrens1 happy laughter which may offer her some consolation. On the road to Koropi, just outside Paeania, there is a taverna in front of which is assembled a motley collection of stuffed animals. There, happily not stuffed but very much alive, stands Rebecca. Once more eager children clamber upon her back. Once more the public clusters around her. Once more she is admired and photographed. Gone are the miseries of hunger and abandonment. Rebecca is once again a happy, healthy camel.
Taverna Happenings
WHEN early in March we came upon our stalwart old friend Kyrios Stelios, the unrelenting traditionalist, he handed us an invitation he had been carefully scrutinizing, explaining that someone by the name of Yannis Kounellis was opening a new taverna in Ambelokipi and that we might want to check it out for our restaurant listings. Glancing at the invitation for a second time (we had received a copy in the office), we saw, with a fresh eye, how its simple message might deceive the unwary. It read: Thursday, March 3. Yannis Kounellis. Jean and Karen Bernier. Taverna Ο Karvouniaris, Ambelokipi.
Clearly Kyrios Stelios had not heard of Greek-born Kounellis’s reputation as one of the acknowledged frontrunners of avant-garde art in Europe, nor that a Kounellis ‘artistic event’ had been planned for the opening here in Athens of the new Jean and Karen Bernier art gallery on Marasli Street — an occasion that would take place not at the gallery but at a taverna. Speculation, in fact, had been running rampant in the city about what Kounellis would ‘do’ in the name of art at nothing more, nor less, than a neighbourhood taverna. There had been whisperings about live animals (he was acclaimed in Venice for a gallery-full of horses) and hijacked tavernas. We hastily tried to bring our old friend Kyrios Stelios up-to-date on the art scene, but he remained unimpressed. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he called back as he hurried off, ‘the food should be good.’
That evening we circled through the back streets of Ambelokipi. Eventually. we spotted a cluster of anxious bodies before the entrance of an unmarked taverna. As the front door swung briefly open we caught a glimpse of Jean Bernier and knew we were in the right place. We took our place in line, searching for clues about what Kounellis, the high priest of the avant-garde, could be doing, and for signs of Kyrios Stelios. An intriguingly motley collection of individuals were coming, going, sitting or standing inside, as blue jeans, beards, and the designer clothes of the art set jostled with the rumpled shirts of the neighbourhood regulars.
Near the back wall of the taverna, bodies and tables stopped just short of a clearing that appeared to mark the sacred perimeter of the official exhibition, beyond which no onlooker ventured. At its centre was a figure holding a white mask before its face. This, we were told, was Yannis Kounellis; he had finished his dinner a short time before and was now seated at a bare-topped table which held the caretully arranged pieces of a dismembered, white-plaster torso, A stuffed black raven perched on one of the segments; an unidentified curly-haired young man sat to one side playing a flute.
At the far end of the room was Kyrios Stelios giving a masterful performance. Seated before a table covered with the usual taverna fare, he was enjoying his dinner. His topcoat was draped over his shoulders, the collar raised to function as a muffler and to protect him from any drafts that might have struggled through the milling crowd and sought him out in the corner he had carefully selected far away from the door. The upper half of his torso, slung precariously over an array of dishes, was supported by his left elbow and arm dramatically and firmly planted on the table. Meanwhile, his right hand and arm were in ceaseless motion as they travelled back and forth from the plates to his mouth, in perfect rhythm with the action of his jaw.
We fixed our gaze on the motionless Kounellis who occasionally shifted a foot or moved a finger, and then on our friend, who occasionally paused to glance disdainfully at Kounellis and the murmuring audience standing subdued in the smoky, overheated room. Newcomers entered, stayed for a polite interval and then left. Others remained behind in spellbound curiosity.
As we were about to move to another vantage point, there was a sudden movement in the official exhibition area. Yannis Kounellis had, without ritual, taken off his mask and walked away from his plaster pieces and his raven, and was pushing his way through the crowd. His art event was over. Kyrios Stelios’s muse, however, was still hard at work. He glanced up briefly when Kounellis withdrew, then resumed his rhythmic activity, making his way through an assortment of mezedes, broils, and sweetbreads. With a final flurry of bread he scooped up the last of the tsatziki, emptied his glass of wine, sat back contentedly, reached for a toothpick, and proceeded to the finale. The flautist, unfortunately, had stopped playing some time before to sit down to his own dinner, and was not on hand to offer a fanfare.
The audience meanwhile had taken its cue from Kounellis and begun to disperse. We found ourselves gravitating in unison back to the door and once again out on the sidewalk. ‘It wasn’t the least bit outrageous,’ we were told by a knowledgeable looking young man. ‘It’s nothing but old hat…’ he continued as we nodded in mute agreement.
