Ohi day

 28th October - Hora and Livadi

One of the things they have here, is  actually more common in other countries than you might realise. Name days. So this is like a second birthday, except here, the birth day is not celebrated so much.  You can look them up a bit more here, but there are plenty of other resources of course. You might have to find the Greek version of your name too, like John is Ionassis. Last night I had a thoroughly enjoyable chat with my friend in the US, he used to be a work colleague, but we don’t talk about work, he is recovering from an emergency operation and it’s good to hear he is on good form.

So after a bit of a dodgy nights sleep, I did a bit of guitar practice before I walked down for the march.  The main problem I have apart from the coordination of my two hands, is the two biggest fingers on my left hand fouling another string, when holding one string down. That causes the fouled string to sound bad. I am also not sure about how I am wrapping my hand around the neck. Anyway I did some practice with the three chords I know. I walked down the path to the school, I saw this lovely painted wall, in fact the whole house is really nice, even the broken wooden chair seems right. It is very windy.

Here is the description about todays holiday day.  I got to the school before ten, there were some Greek flags decorating the war memorial. Gradually children of all ages and parents turned up, but it was clear the event wasn’t going to start at ten, more like eleven. Some people carried Laurel leaf wreaths. 

The event started with a service, around the memorial, with three priests, the children and some parents. Were the priests from different denominations? They were all dressed differently. Each took their turn to sing, chant, speak during what  must have been a service of some description. There must have been some kind of prayer said by everyone, the Lord’s Prayer maybe? There was also a minute silence. It all reminded me of remembrance day events in the UK. Afterwards three military people each took turn to place a wreath on the memorial, after each was put down,  we all clapped. Then grown ups and children put down their wreaths, as someone ( the mayor?) called out their names in turn. More clapping. Then we all left and went down to the road where more bunting had been  put up.

The children all walked around the corner, to be out of sight, and military music played out of a speaker, and first the youngest children appeared with Elena, and groups of other children appeared gradually going up in age, to teenagers I guess. Once this was completed, we all went our separate ways.

I walked the rest of the way to Livadi and went down the slip road so I could walk along the beach. Even more tavernas have removed their chairs from the beach area, I think there is only one taverna with seats on the beach now. I went to Grans as I wanted to sit inside, it being so windy. The guy from the hire car company was there and I have now established he wasn’t the hire car company owner, he just worked there. His name is Chris. He now works at Grans. Coffee drunk, I went into the passenger shelter to do my Greek. The Dionisios Solomos turned up, I watched its arrival a bit more carefully, the two people who catch the ropes that the ferry crew throw off the boat, I recognise them  now. At the end of the rope is the thick rope, that gets secured on those rusty lug things on the  port concrete apron, once done the ferry pulls in the slack to help hold it steady, before people disembark. There are two officials who handle when people can get off and on the boat, plus vehicular traffic. 

As people get off, you can see couples being united, children seeing their dad, as he walks off the ferry and so on. It’s really nice to see. Reminds me when my friends from Sifnos came back from their holiday and Ronnie being so pleased to see them. I did my Greek in the shelter, but I made a few mistakes, a bit tired I think. While I was waiting for the march to start I watched a YouTube video that warned about pressing too hard on the strings. You only need to press hard enough for the string to be held against the fret. You should be able to do that with your fingertips. You don’t need to press so hard so as the string is touching the fretboard. That’s probably what I am doing, by the string indentation  I usually get on my fingers after playing! 

After walking back home, I wrote this, and decided to relax for the rest of the day. The wind is going to be strong for the next few days. Hopefully by Monday it will have died down, so my friend from  Sifnos get leave on the  ferry. I am hoping that I can use my super zoom camera to snap a photo of the moon over the mountains, I saw it last night, it looked great at sunset time.