About this time last year I was in Los Angeles. Staying with a very good friend who was a Getty scholar at the time. When I asked her which buses or trains perhaps served the area, she quite rightly looked blank and admitted she didn’t have a clue. But Ah! She said, I have a British colleague and he can tell you all about routes and how to use the buses. And he did indeed. Adding that here, public transport was only used by the unemployed and academics. After having used the splendid service the City of Los Angeles does in fact provide, I had to correct him. It wasn’t the unemployed, it was those in domestic service, and visiting academics that used public transport. Now, a year late, having moved to a northern residential suburb in Athens, I have discovered the same thing. We might just as well be in Los Angeles here too. The buses are only used by domestic help… I don’t know of any visiting academics, but maybe I should add to the list, those who grew up in London.

Okay, so we’re back in business (I hope). Quite a madhouse with plumbers bashing down bits of wall all over the place, and painters painting them up again. BUT we are thereby doing our bit to get the economy going again. Now, though everywhere else a great effort is being made to provide the middle classes with greater liquidity so that we can spend our way out of the recession, here in Greece we are being taxed and taxed and taxed some more because we have an enormous deficit hole to fill. However, how can you tax more when people are earning less? Now, the intricacies of the Greek Economy are such that nothing ever works as it’s supposed to. That is because we have an enormous black economy (bequeathed to us from the Nazi occupation when this pursuit began to thrive) so those who get taxed, are those who are honest, have nothing to do with the black economy and earn so much less than those who get away with murder, just about (and sometimes literally too). Which means, that any Minister of the Economy can do very little. Unless he tackles the real problem, which they rarely do. Why? Well, because as recent scandals of the current government indicate, these Ministers often form the very core of this black economy. We even had one ex Minister bragging that he used off shore companies to avoid paying tax, which, he rightly said, was a perfectly legal thing to do. As to the morality of the situation? Ah. He had an answer for that too. Whatever is not illegal is moral too.

I have just moved to my new home, which used to be my old home! I am so happy! I have to do some repairs, but it’s a very pretty house!

The picture above, is not the way to my house, but it’s a pretty picture all the same!