Five days in Athens

Hello all, I'm back! This is long overdue, so many things happened, but I will try to be succinct!

Yes, both to and fro flights were quite pleasant, especially after listening to the Olympic Airlines' English (letse tsetremen=Ladies and Gentlemen), hilarious.
My important meeting went well, but I can't say anything till I have more news...(yes, the mystery continues)
My sister and nephew came to welcome us at the gorgeous Athens airport and the festivities began...

Saturday 20th of May - Eurovision party at my sister's house

My sister's dog, Norma, shows me how much she's missed me


My nephew, Nicholas, me and the dogs, Bruno and Norma


Me, Nicholas and his best friend Andreas. Last summer they were both shorter than me...


My sister, Liana and her sister, Marietta.
The T-shirts were especially made by Liana for the night

Monday 22nd of May - The big 4-0 my God!

My sister bringing the cake. I invited a few close friends to my house and we had a lovely time.


Never mind the candles, the cake was yummy!


Yes, I made a wish before I blew the candles, but I'm not telling you what!



I'm effing 4o, so, what's with the smile?

I managed to see a lot of friends, unfortunately I visited my good friend Martha in the hospital. The best bit was that I enjoyed driving around Athens and listening to my music. I went to the Olympic Village and to the new shopping mall, called...The Mall. On Tuesday I went to the centre of Athens with the cable car and it was like when I was in a different city, not the Athens I once knew and hated.
The heat was something else. A heatwave that made you ill. I wanted to go to the beach but there was no time.
My next trip will be at the end of July, until the last days of August. I will go to Spetses, like every summer and just bask in the sun. That's all I do!

Hope you're having a fun weekend. Off to do some shopping now, there's nothing in my fridge! I will visit your blogs tomorrow.

Love to all

Hello from Athens

I'm having a great time in Greece.
Today I drove around Athens, listening to my mp3 playlist "In Rachel's Attic" with all my favourite songs and it was fab!
Then I went to my sister's house and watched the Eurovision Song Contest. My sis was giving a Euro party, because Greece was the host of the contest...
I got a T-shirt, many photos et.c.
I even saw all the fireworks...

More details plus photos when I come back, on the 25th.

Have a great week,
sunny kisses
xoxoxo
M

Birthday Boy

TO:

The Musician
The Creator
The Guitarist
The Poet
The Intellectual
The Entertainer
The Writer
The Genius
The Restless Mind
The Most Beautiful Blue Eyes

To Pete

Happy Birthday
with all my love
and devotion

Greece

I am going to Greece for five days. My mp3 player, my digital camera and my chargers will be my only luggage, lol. I have plenty of clothes in Greece.

My 40th birthday is on Monday. On that day I'm having a very difficult task, so wish me luck. More when I come back.

I don't know how often I will have the opportunity to go online, but I'll give you all the details of my birthday bash, if any, when I come HOME.

Strange how I consider London my home, Greece is now my holiday place.

Strange...

See ya all on the 25th...
xoxoxo

Old Joke

Something happened to me.
Twice.
Something that has put me into thoughts and started to make me worry...

First I need to explain a few things:

1. Until I was around 20-21 years old, I looked very, very young, always years younger than my actual age.When I was 14 and my friends and I went to the cinema to watch Endless Love the cashier wouldn't let me in because I looked like 8 or 10! And so it went all my adolescent life. To tell you the truth, I thought it sucked. Like all the little girls, I wanted to look older. But my mom used to tell me "When you're fourty, you'll look like 25". Blame her then! I grew up with the notion that I will look forever young. Oh, what an illusion...

1. In the Greek language, the plural but also the form of courtesy of You is Εσείς(eseis). Between friends we call each other Εσύ (esy), which is the regular You. It's like the french Vous, the spanish Usted, the italian Lei.

So here's what happened:
I have a few Greek friends at work. Most of them are in the middle 20s. We are all friendly and none of us ever felt any age gaps.
A few months ago I met a Greek girl at around 19yrs old. I heard her calling me Εσείς. At first I didn't give any notice, I said I didn't hear correctly. Then she repeated it. I looked behind me to see if there were more of us around. No, just me. She said it a third time.

That's when I asked her. "Why are you keep refering to me as Εσείς?

And that's when she killed me: "Because I respect You (Εσείς)!"

And then I met another Greek girl, in her middle 20s. She also referred to me as Εσείς. Oh, come on... I also asked her why and to refer to me as Εσύ and you know what happened?
She completely ignored my plea.


So mom was wrong, wrong, wrong. I turn 40 next Monday. And although I (will always) feel 16, I think I might look a bit older...

The thing is how big is this bit?

Blessed to be there!

So here we were, mommy and I in Westcliff-on-Sea, in this beautiful hotel. Westcliff is in Southend, just 10 minutes walk on the beautiful promenade you see below. This is actually a Panorama I made from our room window (top middle on the hotel photo)

After a beautiful walk on the promenade we were back to the hotel to get ready for 6pm, when Mark and Jill would come to pick us up (always so nice!) We arrived at the Cricketer's Arms and boom! Tom Matchett (the lovely Mr T, the MC of the Convention) was there, and Ben Reeve and then Charlotte and Cat arrived. Woo hoo, lovely! Such a nice company, and then it got nicer when Mikey and Rene came by and sat with us for a drink! How sweet!!!

Twenty minutes before the show Mikey's family came by. Before I know it, my mom was chatting with Mikey's dad.
I come back from the ladies, and what do I see?
My mom in Mikey's arms! What the?????
Turned out that Mikey with his dad and brother and sis have been going to THE SAME GREEK ISLAND AS US! They have been going for the past six or seven years, we've been going for 35. As Spetses is a small island, we happen to have quite a lot of common friends!
Good God, that's what I call a coincidence!

So here is my mom with Mikey, being old acquaintances, LOL! (this was taken after the show)

But now, it was time for the much anticipated show!!!!



Here are a few pictures of our lovely Mikey singing beautifully his great songs!
I like his voice more and more, his song writing is exquisite and I think last night he gave a tighter performance than the Bedford and Basement Jam.
He gave us 11 beautiful songs and among them, his renditions of Better Me and Clever Girl were amazing.
Also, songs we've learned and loved: We Will Fix It, Tourist, White Stripes, Misery Needs A Friend. There were some people at the back who were rudely noisy, or noisily rude, but when Mikey sang Plasticine they shut up! Hehe...
As a last song Mikey sang Invisible, which I don't think I've heard before and it was a really nice surprise. Overall an honest and very talented performer! (and yes, Mikey, I AM biased, LOL, but I also have very good ear!)





And then Casbah Club came on stage!
Lordy, Lordy! What brilliant musicians they all are! Bruce Foxton was so good, very professional, smiling and feeling the rhythm and also the pulse (huge difference!)
Mark Brzezicki was a master behind the drums, providing great sound.
Bruce Watson was just great! He played lead guitar with such ease and had fun while playing with the band and with the audience. He's so sweet!
Simon was just incredible, so energetic and with that great voice of his!

The songs were all fantastic, I couldn't get enough. They played a couple of new fab songs, and also all my favourites were played: Save Me From Me, Venustraphobia, a mellow Comeback, a rocking (our f...ing b....cks off!) Sex Change, my current fave Vibrate and the highlight for me was when Mark Brzezicki gave a thundering drum solo that led to Any Way She Moves... W-O-O-O-W!








After the show I wanted to say hi to Simon, but our chevalier for the night had to drop us off to the hotel before him and his lovely Jill were to drive back home. I couldn't ask for more from that night, it was PERFECT!
My mom really enjoyed it too, she was dancing and screaming, God!

Thank you to all of you who made this night so special and let's hope we'll all meet again soon!

Two blogs for your pleasure!

I would like to introduce to you a fantastic blog I found on Blogs of Note:
It's called Mighty Optical Illusions and the above picture is from that blog. You can spend endless hours of fun just browsing through its hundreds of entries, all about optical illusions...
Especially with the one below, I spent hours and hours just to find the 75 bands hidden in the picture, from a Virgin Digital Competition. Click on it to enlarge it and play!



After playing, go to the Mighty Illusions entry for that picture, where you'll piss yourself laughing by some of the answers!

Also, today I am officialy launching my Panacea blog! I felt that I'm not accomplishing my mission I had when I first started blogging, which was to talk mainly about music, but I also don't want to miss this fantastic therapeutic interraction. So Panacea will be my blog to talk about the CDs I have put on my MP3 player and it will be updated at least every week, or whenever I'm in the mood of writing about music...

After copying and pasting my previous entries from this blog, I have started with a fine young fellow by the name of Mr David Robert Jones. I will try and make it exciting, with podcasts, links and videos. Go here to find out more!

Tomorrow I'm going to Southend-On-See to see Casbah Club and Mikey! Hurrah!!!!
I'll be back on Monday evening and I'll blog every detail...

I know I'm beeing a horrible blogger and don't visit your blogs regularly enough, but I promise I will, it's not easy with my working hours and my mom being here.
Life will go back to normal on the 24th of May, when I'll be back from Greece.

Kisses to all,
have a lovely weekend
xoxoxo
M