High life
Ionic column
Taki
Zakinthos hehe Venetians called my father's birth- place the Flower of the Levant, but that was a long time ago. The 1953 quake brought down all the grand houses and the urban developers managed to do the rest. Still, the place is a haven compared to the mainland, with orchards, olive groves and vineyards galore, and even a nightclub which still plays tangos and waltzes.
The main square has been reconstructed in a historically respectful way, although the block-booked hotels that line the har- bour remind me more of Cromwell Road that Death in Venice. Zante, as the Italians call the island, has produced more poets than any other town or isle in Greece, the three greatest being Solomos, Kalvos and Foscolo. It also boasts, along with Corfu, a Veneto-Hellenic aristocracy, an unheard- of species in the Olive Republic. The wily old fox Aristotle Socrates Onassis knew a good thing when he saw it, and picked up the island of Scorpios for a song a quarter of a century ago.
Yes, the Ionian islands may be Greek, but they have their own history, where the prevailing influence is from the West and not from Turkey. The people have none of the harshness of the neo-Greeks, although the ruling socialists are trying their dam- nedest to change them. As I dropped anchor early this week, I teased a friend waiting ashore that Papandreou had drop- ped dead and this was the reason we were all drunk and celebrating. He fell for it and began to jump for joy. Not for long. In two minutes the fuzz had arrived, boarded my gin palace and asked all of us to apologise or spend the night in the nick.
Now I might be reckless but I ain't stupid. With a karate buddy along, and a few other male friends, I told the cops that not only would we not apologise but we would give them a ride up the coast to Italy if they persisted in bullying us. Sure enough it worked. They got off and even apologised for the inconvenience.
It seems Andreas passed a law seven years ago that makes it a crime to insult the prime minister, a law which as far as I'm concerned is unconstitutional and one that deprives every stand-up comedian in Greece of their livelihood. Yet the 'Green Guards', as the Pasok thugs are known, insist on trying to enforce a law that's unenforceable, especially now that even government ministers admit that the reg- ime has robbed the country blind. The people who boarded my boat were Green Guards posing as cops, but we didn't find this small detail out until later. A pity, because it would have been great fun to keelhaul them.
My plan is to visit my oldest friend, Zographos, who has an ancestral seat in Cephalonia, but there could be a hitch. There are two ghastly brothers, the Mar- chessini, who come from that island, two of the most boring men I have ever had the bad luck to meet, and if my spies tell me they're in residence, I shall skip the visit. Further north, in Scorpios, my presence would be as welcome as Mrs Thatcher's would be chez les Pinters. For some strange reason Ms Onassis doesn't fancy me. It might have something to do with the `Twelve o'clock and all is not well...' fact that I criticised the Onassis Founda- tion for giving away hundreds of thousands of dollars to hustlers like that Tutu fellow, and other left-wingers. Or perhaps because I always refer to her family as Turks. (Little do they know that I like Turks, at least I prefer them to the neo-Greeks.) So there's only Corfu left, but now I remember that Jacob Rothschild has a house there, so Corfu is out, too. Oh, well, I just might sail up to Tuscany and see my old friend Lord Lambton.
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