sneeze

I bitched about my family, I now have Fresher's Flu before I've even made it back to uni.

Fuck you, karma.

being Greek is shit, #1

The other day my aunt added my on Facebook. Due to etiquette that is universally acknowledged and agreed to be at least as important as, say, the international diplomacy required to avoid nuclear war, I accepted her friend request.

Have you seen My Big Fat Greek Wedding? Being Greek, even just a little bit (my paternal grandfather is Greek Cypriot), is like living in that film. Everyone knows everyone, if you don't eat meat you are regarded with suspicion and worry (and I hate lamb), and all your cousins are named Nick and Diane.

Except that you cannot really remember all your cousins (I have 22 first cousins and many many many second) so when someone Greek adds you on the Gospel according to Facebook you have no idea whether they are actually a blood relative or just someone you are expected to know and submit to when they want to pinch your face and tell you how much you look like your Yaya (who is, at the latest estimation, 90, and has no teeth left).

Apparently, adding one aunt has opened a floodgate for people who I may or may not have met at Uncle Seraphee's sixtieth birthday, or Iaggi's wedding, which I didn't understand because it was conducted in Crazy (i.e. Greek) and I was also only six at the time and being forced to stand still for hours and wear a white dress with pink bows.

It is a testament to their tenacity that they are encroaching on my life when most of them live four hours' flight away.

Let's pretend I now say something begrudging about loving them all anyway.
I am, in fact, sure that being terrified of the familial advance and their consequent access to photos of me in situations that surely compromise my Good Greek Girl ticklist is far more appropriate.

bonjour, kiddo

Springtime in Paris this year sold France to me in a way I'd never expected. When it comes to travel I am apparently a hopeless romantic. All that emotion that most 20-something women expend on men is, in my case, channelled into falling desperately in love with cities.

Bordeaux is seducing me as I type, as my girlfriends tunelessly sing old songs in a kitchen on the Rue Jean Burguet and we chat about what we've done today (an art gallery; an excavation that pertains nicely to my dissertation under a church on the Place des Martyrs de la Resistance; drinking hot chocolate that gave me a shaky sugar rush) and the sun sinks and the gin at my right hand goes straight to my head.

It is beautiful, it is interesting, I am in love.
More soon.

geography 101

Could someone who has a clue about these things please tell me why my handy little stat count code is registering my visits as coming from Birkenhead? I don't live in Birkenhead. I live nowhere near Birkenhead. I had no idea where it was until I Googled it. (It's in the northwest of England, far too close to Liverpool for accented comfort.) I thought for a week (because in theory my visits are actually blocked, my sweet stat counter) that I had a devoted northern fan.

Quite why I have the thing when hardly anyone reads this is entirely due to that self-indulgent smugness that makes anyone start a blog in the first place.

Anyway. The geography thing, it is a recurring problem. My knowledge of English counties and their locations is sparse enough to make the traveller in you fall to the ground moaning. As you will discover when I finally post the next batch of e-mails from my trip to Eastern Europe this summer, my grasp of worldwide geography isn't too hot, either. Let's take, for example, the fact that I had no clue Auschwitz was in Poland until my sister casually dropped it into conversation - as smoothly as you can do so with a death camp, that is - that we could head there from Krakow.

It drives that same sister insane that I will set out for a destination with very little idea of how we will actually get there. But this is the magic of travel for me; to set out in a new city on foot and get lost. You find so much more when you're not bent over a map.

Tomorrow I leave for Northern Ireland to spend two nights with friends. I then fly to Bordeaux for a holiday with some close girlfriends.

I suspect I will have some stories.
Until then.

keeping a promise

Hi. So.

My sister gave me a leather journal for my birthday. I've yet to mark it. Three weeks have gone by and I haven't posted here, either.

All I've written is scribbled notes about chastity and Christian sexuality. Go Google the former. I didn't realise male chastity belts existed, but apparently it's a very technical world.

My entire life revolves around screwing. My dissertation is all about Greeks fucking and Christians... not. There are men here and there but the single life, it does not suit.

I have spent a month working not quite hard enough and drinking just a little (read lot) too much. Writing (about things not related to sex, this is) has fallen by the wayside and this isn't good, says the psychologist in me. Alcohol is not a friendly escape route. Neither is going to bed with men you don't know, no matter how hot that French accent.

I'm back, ladies.

sorry

Back tomorrow.
Promise.