My Big Fat Greek Nightmare (Part Two of Three)

My first days in Greece were spent with a childish fervour for everything. I spent hours just staring at the blue ocean, walking barefoot in the sand and attempting to cartwheel with joy. The cartwheeling was painful and didn't get me very far, but it seemed necessary in order to capture the feeling. Who could possibly go to Greece and not cartwheel?

 I took pictures of everything. Uploaded them to Facebook and smiled to myself as everyone reported back their jealousy.

It wasn't long before I started to really notice how "hot" it was. I spent much of my time gasping for water and looking a little like this...

I started working and was reintroduced to the brothers. All of whom were as odd as I remembered and all of whom maintained their strange personalities with odd persistence. The grunting brother continued to merely grunt, my boss continued to warble on about all sorts of nonsense, and the other brother spent much of his time waxing lyrical about Jesus being Greek. I was relieved when my boss introduced me to his daughters, but that was short lived as one was the kind of child that spends all her time finding spiders to throw at you and the other had been expecting me to be best friends with One Direction.

Work was boring at first. A simple list of cleaning tasks and then I could go home. The cycle home was to be achieved by cycling on a bike built for a ten year old, it was actually the ten year old's bike as apparently I was short enough not to need an adults one, against a wind that practically stopped the bike in it's tracks.

 . I spent my free hours running up mountains 

And inventing ways of generating air conditioning in my apartment.

It soon transpired that I was allergic to the sun and broke out in a hideous rash. The only way to avoid the rash was to remain inside.

Then work started to get busier. We started to get an assortment of customers. Mostly Greek men who were friends of the brothers and most of them were quite old and creepy. At first I was polite but then things like this started to happen. 

At bar parties I was expected to mingle with the customers and generally make sure they were having fun. This resulted in me being groped on the dance floor while trying to take drink orders. This had not been part of the job description. I became suddenly aware that... 

The men soon got weirder. There was one that came to the bar every day and spoke for five hours straight about Kentucky. Anytime it went silent he would bulge his eyes out and scream "Yee Haw Kentucky". He was to say the least a charmer. 

There were other men too, liberal ones who tried to explain to you that some Greek men acted that way because of the way foreign girls were... 

And then there was just the stereotypical Greek men that tried all sorts of inventive chat up lines on me. 

Finally there was my boss and his mood swings. He would scream relentlessly at me till I cried one minute and the next try to pat me on the back and send me for a walk. It was all getting a little much. 

I began to plot realistically about how I was going to escape the situation...

Thankfully in the midst of everything I realised I could Skype my sisters in pigeon-irish and nobody would know what I was saying. I could tell them what was really happening...

It was obvious I needed to plan an elaborate escape and so, with the help of the Irish language and my sisters, I began to plot.

My Big Fat Greek Nightmare (Part One of Three)

Full time jobs with sensible career options are hard to come by in our current economy. So you can imagine that after I quit mine, in a fit of self-righteous morals, I panicked a little. Actually it might be more appropriate to say that I had a bit of a melt-down. During which I came up with highly probable worst-case scenarios.

Then, as we all do during our various crises, I turned to the master of the universe, the source of all our knowledge and the one that can answer even the most ludicrous questions.

After a while I had figured out what I wanted to do with my life. I did at least half an hour of thorough research on Google images and made sure I had a realistic visualisation of what my plan would result in. 

I was going to spend the summer on what looked to be a small Greek paradise. I would bar tend a little and lounge about a lot. I prepared myself accordingly and so it was that a month or so later I was skipping off to Greece equipped with three bottles of water-proof factor 50 sun block. What could possibly go wrong?

It was all going smoothly until we got to Athens airport and we got to see the rust-bucket that would be transporting us to the tiny island of Karpathos. 

Tactfully the air-crew attempted to distract us for the first five minutes with jellies. Presumably so we wouldn't look out the window and notice that the planes wings appeared to still be under construction.

But I was not fooled. I gaped out the window, knowing I was doomed.

It wasn't long before I forgot all about being in a rust bucket though. I was joined in my tiny seat by possibly the largest women that had ever been on the plane. I tried not to stare, I tried to give her more of my seat and be polite. I was thwarted when our air hostess came down with a seat belt extension. I'd never seen one before and the fact slipped straight from my mouth.

 We sat in the most uncomfortable silence. I thought of ways to make it up to her. Small talk about weight watchers? Maybe ask her about the island? In the end the perfect opportunity arose. We were given complimentary peanuts which my seat-partner managed to swallow in one impressive gulp. 

The way I saw it she really liked peanuts and I really didn't. So considering it a peace offering I brandished my own bag and smiled at her: "Would you like mine too?" It's probably clear to any rational person that this wasn't the brightest move. I was expecting a grateful smile and to see her impressive one-gulp-bag-of-peanut-consumption trick again. But that's not what I got, oh no, this is... 

At this point, I gave up. I sat there in awkward silence and listened to the plane rattle. We eventually landed and hysterical laughter broke out across the passengers. I'm quite glad they waited till we landed to erupt into nervous fits as hysterical communal laughter would have terrified me any earlier in the flight. We had to bus across the car park to get to the airport. It was swelteringly hot and they drove us the impressive distance of fifty meters to the small white building. To be honest I was quite relieved I was already feeling over-heated. 

I landed in Karpathos and waited in baggage collection where I was met by my boss and the chef that would be cooking our meals. 

They took me to eat at the Taverna and to meet the other brothers that helped run the business. The chef was a great big Romanian man who didn't appreciate me telling him that he sounded a little like Dracula. He went off to cook me food, after it turned out that their version of "I can cook you anything," meant " I will make you pasta."

I then sat eating my pasta in front of a row of brothers and the chef. There was one brother who seemed to only know how to grunt and sneer, my boss who rambled on about parties, his other brother that kept talking about God and Greece and then the chef who asked every two minutes "How is the food?"

I tried to remember their names, I tried to imagine who the grunting brother had murdered and why and mostly I thought about getting back on the plane. But it was only day one, so I settled for sitting there and trying not to look like this...

Translation of the Things Parents Say

“Because I said so…” Translation: I have no idea why, but if you don’t I will staple you to a wall and make your life misery.

“In my day…” Translation: Followed by what we can assume is a gross exaggeration.

“Go to your room…” Translation: I have no idea what else to do with you, so go where I don’t have to look at you and consider my incompetence in this situation.

“You can tell me whatever it is…” Translation: You can tell them, however note they've not stated what reaction they will have.

“What did I tell you about that?” Translation: I can’t remember where I stand on this issue please remind me.

Finding Out if Your Hamster is Actually Dead.

I was supposed to be babysitting my youngest sister and mowing the lawn at the same time. At thirteen I was seething with the injustice of having to ensure the safety of my accident-waiting-to-happen sibling and juggle pushing a lawnmower about the same size as me up and down the hill. The hill was too steep to push the lawnmower across without it tipping over and suffering some sort of mechanical combustion. So there I was heaving the damned contraption up the hill when my sister emerged bawling her eyes out.

“Baggins is dead,” Baggins was her beloved hamster who she had long meaningful conversations with. As you do at ten.

Me: “What?”

Her: “He’s dead, he’s not moving,”

Me: “Jesus Nan it’s probably just hibernating, there’s no need to be so dramatic.”

Her: “but…”

Me: “ OK, look, I’ll look at him, he’s probably fine.”

So we went to her room, where she trembled as she pointed at the small furry lump. I examined it closely, tried to feel its heartbeat, gave it a poke in the stomach, lifted up its limp paws.

Then I came to this sound conclusion: “Hmm…we can’t be sure, you don’t want to bury it alive or make a fuss, what if it’s still breathing, when

they hibernate their heart rate goes really low and loads of people bury their pets when they are really alive.”

I was at that age where I spent all my free-time wrapped in a book and I was sure I’d read this somewhere.

“So what do I do?” Nan asked.

“Well don’t tell anyone and if he starts to smell in a few days, then we’ll know he’s dead.”

So that’s what we did and I forgot all about it. In my head the hamster was obviously just napping, no big deal. My sister cheered up by googling stuff about hamsters hibernating and was delighted that her Baggins would wake up any day now.

Then it happened. My mother was cleaning out her room a few weeks later and noticed the smell. She had a look in the cage and was horrified to find Baggins looking like he had been dead for sometime. She came downstairs to ask Nan how she had failed to notice her decomposing hamster.

“Alvy said it was hibernating,” Nan offered.

“Alvy you said what?” my mum screamed.

“Well I said if it started to smell it was dead… we were just waiting…”

“Well it smells, can you not smell that, it’s cold, it’s rigid, how much more dead do you want it to be?”

So the potentially hibernating hamster was buried and my sister was even more upset having had to go through the shock of losing Baggins twice.

In retrospect, given my track record with animals, she probably shouldn't have asked me in the first place.

5 Secret Powers of Mother’s Worldwide

1. Super-Sonic-Selective-Hearing: This is most notable in ones formative years. You could be standing beside your mother screaming about how much you need a new dress for the party and she won’t even blink. But then stand at the other end of the house and whisper that you are bored into a pile of pillows and you will be rewarded with enough tasks to dispel any boredom for the foreseeable future.

2. Something-Bad-Has-Happened-Sense: This might also be described as the capacity to worry far too much. But it results in mother’s ringing up every so often, even when you are in other continents, shrilly asking “Is everything OK  what happened?” You can then update them on the devastating discovery of a worm in your apple earlier that day or perhaps your latest break-up or job loss.

3. Voice-Moderation-That-Always-Heightens-Volume-At-Most-Embarrassing-Sentence: It doesn't matter what age you are this super power has the ability to send you shrinking back into your own skin. Whether it’s a helpful question about whether or not you've remembered to wear underwear when you were eight or shouting down the super Market aisles at sixteen: “Do you need any tampons or anything?”

4. Deluded-Child-Belief: This can be a either a power or a hindrance. All mothers’ think their child is meant for greater things. This spurs their children past their initial inhibitions. However it can result in children pursuing things they are less than suited for in an effort to please their proud mothers.

5. Automated-Tidy-Mode: This seems to be a default setting, where nothing can be done until things are tidy. This is why tidying your bedroom takes up so much of your childhood. It later results in mothers renovating entire rooms of the house for the home-comings of their grown-up children.

How Not to Make Your Holy Communion

When I was seven I made my Holy Communion. It seemed like a big deal at the time, even when I look back it seems kind of like a big deal today. When else do you get to dress up in a big white poofy dress and have money and gifts thrown at you? There’s your wedding, if you want to get all pedantic, but even then you have to share it all with a significant other. But Communions are all about you. And Jesus, I forgot about Jesus.

On my big day there was a series of unfortunate events. Firstly in the run-up, it took tears and sweat and all sorts to find a dress small enough. Back then I was rebelling against growth in general and the top of my head was at the shoulders of everyone else my age. When we found the dress my mother had to saw half the flowers that had been stuck all over it off as she thought they were “tacky”. I remember having to sit around in a dressing gown all morning and not touch things, for fear I would ruin the dress.

Before we got to the church we had to wait for my grandparents to arrive. Presumably they got stuck behind a herd of cows or some other countryside obstacle. This meant we were late. There was the dramatic swinging open of the church doors as I flung my and shuffled into my seat.

When the priest said “I’m glad you could make it Alvy”, I went crimson and remained that way for much of the ceremony.

We had to say small prayers to the congregation and I was first to get it out of the way. Someone complained about my prayer (Who does that? Who makes a complaint mid-ceremony about the way in which a seven year old is delivering her prayer of the faithful?). So when everyone else was finished, they turned the microphone up and I had to repeat the entire thing, shaking and trembling and glowering in the direction of the congregation so that whoever complained would know my wrath.

For whatever reason, I had also imagined that the communion itself would taste like white chocolate buttons. So you can imagine my disgust upon receiving it for the first time to realise it was actually just another piece of dry wafer similar to the ones we had been practicing with. I’m not entirely sure why we were practicing sucking pieces of wafer but the teacher was quite insistent at the time. To save face I still told my younger sisters and brother that it was the best white chocolate that they would ever taste.

My final breech of etiquette came when our neighbour tried to slip me a fiver. I was always listening to her chatting to our mother about her money problems. So it seemed only natural to tell her: “No you’re grand, you can’t really afford it.” Needless to say she didn't take it too well…