Our good friends at the
BBC have just announced that water bills are to go up by 3.5% in the spring; in
my dire financial circumstances I think I need a spring (like the fabled Peckham
Spring) to spout forth from the garden with free water. The price rise is all well and good but all
other commodities and utilities are increasingly more expensive whereas my
wages (like many others) will either remain static or rise minimally, which
will barely cover the cost of the price rise in prescriptions or pickled egg
expenses in the Flagon. And on Fungus
Hill it is a flat fee bill so I cannot have a water meter – mind you if they
gave me a meter they would probably take a furlong. The most galling thing about the provision of
water in particular is that is it privatised but I have no choice as to who
supplies it, they have got you both ways.
The only alternative is to utilise the murky looking shopping trolley
laden water running through the river Stour at
the bottom of Fungus Hill (which hardly deserves the grandiose title of “river”
with it being little more than a glorified stream.) Water is an absolute necessity of life and
people are making profit out of us being provided with it which, like my
associate the Frymaster General, is immoral and obscene.
We are all in such a rush
in life of course that we barely notice the price of things going up faster
than Guy Fawkes on bonfire night. I
read my revised water bill and knew it had gone up but it failed to tell me
what I had paid before, so without researching the matter I was ignorant to the
extent of the price rise. I know that
one should not stereotype, but one of the endearing and attractive qualities of
the Greeks is their innate ability not to rush.
Leisurely pottering is almost a national pastime for which they should
receive warm and heartfelt recognition.
At the wedding of my good friend Dustin Scoffman at the beautiful Greek
Orthodox church in Pylos, a gentleman official of the church, who I surmised
was the verger, proceeded throughout the length of the ceremony to display a
world class performance in pottering.
Unlike the tense and edgy verger
Mr Yeatman in the beloved World War II comedy Dad’s Army, his
Greek counterpart could not have been more relaxed, dusting, adjusting the
sacred paintings that adorned the walls, watering plants and even gently and
quietly chatting with the congregation.
He even engaged me in polite conversation at one point, asking where I
derived from, and I did not want to disrespect the ceremony by talking but
equally I didn’t want to disappoint the genial, smiling verger.
Thankfully the one person
who did rush was the Greek Orthodox priest, who was typically adorned with a
big, thick, black beard. If he had been freshly clean shaven I would have been
grossly disappointed. The priest managed
to condense a ceremony that should rightfully last over 2 ½ hours into a
credible 60 minutes by talking faster than the late BBC horse racing
commentator Lord Oaksey at the exciting culmination of the Cheltenham Gold
Cup. For this I was eternally thankful
to the lightning tongued priest as it accelerated our ability to get our dry
lips round the champagne generously supplied by the newly wed Mr & Mrs
Scoffman at the wedding reception, which was much needed, given that in the
time honoured tradition of the British abroad, my travelling companions (my
long time drinking accomplice the Little German and his lovely wife Mrs
Still-in-Fjord) and I were mortally drunk, on Ouzo, the night before the
wedding.
A famous night ensued,
and despite our reservations about Scoffman’s oratory skills he gave a speech
that Anthony Wedgewood Benn would have been proud of. The only slight issue came when the band
(fronted by a Greek style Alvin Stardust) shot its bolt far too early by
playing Zorba the Greek (the Greek wedding equivalent of Madness’s One
Step Beyond) while we were still consuming the impressive and delicious
meal. With the drummer translating I
managed to make Stardust understand the error of his ways and the band replayed
Zorba later in the evening to the ecstatic delight of the merrily drunken
audience. Early the next morning when
the party finished a difficulty arose after we brushed past a drunken man on a
stool, snoozing against the hotel front desk.
We asked the hotelier to order us a taxi to which he replied, “there are
no taxis at the present time as he is the taxi driver” pointing to the man on
the stool. Undeterred, the Little
German and I commandeered two sofas in an L shape in the lobby and we both duly
fell into a blissful sleep on our respective sofas, leaving Mrs Still-in-Fjord
sitting on a hard chair in between us.
If the water rates went
up in Greece
© Dominic Horton, 6th
February, 2013.
No comments:
Post a Comment