BLOGG # CHIVALRY IS NOT DEAD

The week before Christmas, having nothing to do, I decided to go to Vancouver to visit my good friend and companion in Burnaby.  I have reached the delightful age where I no longer am obliged to: bake artery clogging festive goodies,decorate seven foot trees,wrap in  Martha Steward influenced manner, useless gifts or stuff  over sized birds.  Instead I was free to take long walks in Burnaby Central park among snow laden forests or wander through the metrotown mall looking in awe at the decorations and admiring the fashionably dressed shoppers. We both spend Christmas day with our own children and darling grandchildren and not with each other-knowing full well that the darling grandchildren are darling only in our own eyes.  However because it was so Christmassy, we decided to have a pre-pre-Christmas dinner just for ourselves and decided to go to a restaurant with a lovely view of the inlet and mountains. It was indeed a lovely view, cold brisk with new fallen snow on the mountains. We chose to sit in the covered patio beside a roaring fireplace and ordered a festive meal. We had coconut covered prawns-as all good writers do, I like to describe good meals in detail, knowing my readers like to live vicariously through the written word, crab dip, and for the main course tuna cooked very rare.and I advise you to order it cooked very rare too when you order it as my companion pointed out. We did not order dessert as it puts on pounds. Indeed it has been known to put on pounds even to the readers. Of course we also had  a bottle of lovely white wine. This blogg however is not about gourmand food, but about chivalry and I must explain: while my companion was seating me at our table, he put me into the chair facing the window saying " Sit here so you can look at the view while you are eating" This was very nice and I suggested he sit next to me so he could look at the view too but he,good man and rightly so, promptly sat opposite me saying" I would rather look at you." I was pleased. I was charmed and I bloomed and became even more vibrant and entertaining than I usually am. So listen to me. Don't despair, don't give up hope, never give in and remember -Chivalry is not dead

Chivalry is not dead

BLOGG# CHIVALRY IS NOT DEAD

BLOGG # 70 AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR

And a Happy New Year! It is a well known fact that -another of my "questionable well known facts" dear readers-believe it if you wish- the way your new year unfolds depends on how well you have celebrated the New-Year Eve. If that would be the case, my life the past seventy odd years should have been passed in Hell. I don't know about you, but I have never been successful with my New Year Eve's choices. My childhood and early teens were spent-having no choice - with my religious family in the only proper way- on my knees in church listening to the twelve strokes of midnight and then listening to the minister praying to absolve us of our sins-in German.- not much fun -and looking back on those years, especially my teen years, the above fact is indeed proven. In my student years I fared not much better. With my usual luck I was often assigned to work the New Year Eve. In fact that is how I lost my then boyfriend, for what boy would tempt fate by not having a date on that most important night thus insuring a sexless year! My early twenties are not remarkable for any outstanding New Year’s Eve bashes. I was married in Greece and every one knows the Greeks start a card -playing frenzy the beginning of December which ends in the biggest longest card playing night on New Year's Eve. And you better believe the Greeks definitely hold with that well known fact, as the financial success for the whole year depends on the success of that night. Once the children arrived, New Year's Eve became a blur of playing monopoly or something in a desperate attempt to help the kids stay awake until about 10.15pm in their hopeful quest to see the New Year in. It was in the heyday of my Divorce Years that I thought my luck would change. Believe me –Not! My wisest choice then was to elect to work the Eve thus, at double time and a half I could at least insure an easier financial year. When I did choose to test the New Year Eve waters, they were disasters. One was while in Toronto, when five of us decided to go to the trendy opening of a “Harbour Front” bash. By a quarter to midnight we had managed to get through the crush and get three glasses of warm champagne served in plastic glasses. We all left before midnight and spent the crucial midnight hour in a Tram. The worst one was in Vancouver when three of us were invited to a house party in trendy Kitsilano, Vancouver. . We arrived at 11pm-the earliest time possible fashionably. The house was suitably dark, with subdued music and packed with aging forty-something people trying to look cool. By 11.30 someone came around with a handful of pills. I recognized the powerful sodium amytal sleeping pill, my friend the pharmacist, recognized them all except one which he took home to analyze. At ten minutes to twelve the whole house was quiet with somnolent half-heartedly amorous pairs coupled- not a pretty sight. We left before midnight- again! The next morning my friend called me at an early hour and said "get up! I refuse to have my Year destroyed because of that lousy New Year’s Eve. We are going out to celebrate with brunch to change the luck." So we did and drank much Champagne and orange juice. Did it make the new year better? I don't remember. So take my advice and choose wisely this New Year's Eve—and a HAPPY NEW YEAR to you -your faithful blogger

BLOGG #70 AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR

BLOGG # 69 DECK THE HALLS..

"We wish you a Merry Xmas” versus "Silent Night Holy Night" Here it is the week before Christmas and I am in the Christmas mood again as all right living people should be. This means of course, blatant commercial activities with no guilt attached and here I am tripping gaily off to the malls with unfortunately not a full pocket but with a generous spirit. So far I have been malling- love that word- in Victoria’s  two major malls and have even visited the two major ones in the great metropolis of Vancouver—the sophisticated Downtown exclusive Eaton’s mall where you can buy $600 shoes-I asked- and the super crass Metrotown for an orgy of wishful vicarious shopping in the fast lane. During all these indulgent hours I have been serenaded by the latest “Christmas music” piped in via loudspeakers at the highest volume. Now I happen to love Christmas Carols –the true ones- and don’t really mind the shrill newer ones either, but it is a pity that I can not remember when I last heard “Silent Night” in a Canadian mall. I suppose it has become politically incorrect to play these songs in commercial spaces but I miss hearing them. The pros and cons of political correctness regarding the playing of carols is not what this is about -not at all- it is about the “topsdurvyness of the cultural customs of our present planet. Years ago when I lived in Greece the Christmas festivities were strictly religious and subdued and only the New Year was celebrated with gifts. The western Christmas with great spending was unknown.  Four years ago I was in Athens, Greece for Christmas and we did a lot of “Malling”. There are many new huge malls in Athens since entering the E.U. and Christmas really underlines this new way of living. The malls in Athens and suburbs were an hyperbole of over the top commercialization—the Santas were bigger, the reindeer cuter, the tinsel more vulgar than any I had ever seen, and all the time –interlaced with the excited shouting of eager Greek consumers, I could hear the sounds of the original sacred Christmas music of old so banned in North American malls.  Here at last I got my fill of my favourite Christmas music - nary a note of “We wish you a merry Christmas” or “I am dreaming of a White Christmas” or “Deck the Halls” instead the sounds of the beautiful old carols and especially “Silent Night” filled the air. Why was it that here in Greece I could hear all my old favourites?  Of course, the Greek people, happily shopping, had no concept of the significance of these sacred pieces, nor did they listen to the words.  No, they shopped to their hearts’ content imbued with the materialistic Western Christmas Spirit inspired by these foreign and beautiful songs unaware of political correctness or sacrilege. When I left Greece I was satisfied and satiated because I finally had had my fill of favourite Christmas Music. However last week I had to walk down Fisgard street in the centre of Victoria’s Chinatown on an errand and again I heard the old ones loudly blaring on the street and my heart lifted.  I love our present cultural “topsydurvyness” in our great planet where you can find the unexpected adoption of  music of others in the oddest places and advise you, dear readers, to embrace it also and have a wonderful shopping- indulged Xmas.

BLOGG # 69 AT LAST I GOT TO SEE "TOSCA"

For years now I have been wanting to attend the great tragic opera-"Tosca" and last Saturday, finally , there I was at Silver City Cinema listening to and watching this great production  by the wonderful Metropolitan opera of New York. Tosca by Puccini is one of the great tragedies in opera. The music is wonderful, the singing glorious and the plot as usual in opera somewhat trite, but there is nothing trite about the glorious heroine Tosca- she is dynamite. There is great love, jealousy, betrayal and murder. The murderer is Tosca,a sensitive artiste and singer in love with a painter, pushed to jealousy by the arch villain Scarpia and- wouldn't you know it- the chief of police and a barrel of a baritone- who drives her to jealousy and betrayel of her lover's hiding place. Poor Tosca is torn between listening to her lover being tortured and yielding to this dastardly-and ugly- villian's lust. The drama  is pitched very high, the music and voices ascending to passionate heights ending in Tosca, hampered by a voluminous very decollete gown, stabbing  Scarpia.  I have watched many a violent movie, stabbing being a rather tame method in our high definition movies, but never have I felt such horror. Tosca, her voice soaring, repeatedly stabbed him using both arms in violent thrusts, her hatred overflowing along with the bloody stabbing action as she kills this powerful despot. Immediately after she collapses,shocked at what she has done, her voice dropping at least three haunting registers with  her despair as she sings"and all Rome feared him." I found this very moving because as she sang she acknowledged the horror of murder-so unlike modern movies,where the murderer rushes off blithely to other mayhem. Up to the moment of the stabbing Tosca acted as victim responding to things out of her control, but Tosca is a modern woman, a famous singer in charge of her life, and when she grabs that knife she rejects the victim role and takes charge of her life. Unfortunately , this is a tragic opera, and she is one of Opera's major tragedians.  She does not conquer all-again just like a modern woman who can't "have it all"- and finds that Scarpia betrayed her even in death and her lover is shot anyway. Trying to escape her tyrant's lackey she plunges to her death-and that is the story of the Great Tosca- a modern woman.  I know the story is indeed trite but take my advice dear readers,and try to attend" Tosca" at least once in your life and be thrilled to the marrow of your bones.