Already the sands of time are
running out for the first month of our new year and a new month fast
approaches. For us January passed in a flash: getting back to normal after the
festive season and dealing with medical issues.
For me that meant relatively
minor surgery. For four years we have been following the ‘progress’ of minute
particles in one breast. It was decided that though non-dynamic, the slow proliferation
was enough to justify investigation. Similar action had been taken some years
ago but this time high-tech equipment and techniques meant my experience was
vastly different.
Members of the radiology department
inserted wires to locate these particles with precision. This was done under
local anaesthetic, but with such shoving and squeezing, pushing and pummeling,
I shall never again flinch when undergoing a mundane mammogram! That procedure,
amounting to 80% of the operation per se, allowed the surgeon to extract these
dubious deposits. I guess the instrument he used could be called a ‘boob tube’.
The great thing was that the team, on stand-by to do analysis there and then
while I was completely out, came up with negative results - which means a
positive outcome for me. These were innocent little calcium clusters which
meant the surgeon need probe or extract no further. For me this time the
wonders of medical science generated minimal effects from the anaesthetic, (last
time I had felt really doped) and with the surgery being minimally
invasive, I have had the full use of my arm and negligible discomfort. So, …… all
good.
In the meantime, H suffered a
dental debacle with a molar imploding and a bridge and crown no longer offering
the necessary support. Now that he is wearing temporary prosthetics, eating has
lost its joy for him because of malfunctioning mastication and because of
limited food range - soups, pasta, etc.. Currently our kitchen table looks like
an apothecary’s dispensary but the good thing is we are both moving into a
happier, healthier phase. H has already ear-marked the local restaurant where
he wants to celebrate the end of dental deficiency!
We have had a dip in the weather conditions : here
is our local Chortiatis mountain with a seasonal icing-sugar dusting of snow some days
ago, a view from our kitchen window. But, in fact, we are fortunate. While N Europeans struggle with heavy
snowfalls, floods and sub-zero temperatures, here we are enjoying the Halkyonides meres, the Halcyon days.
This phrase is one which fits the EFL ( English as a foreign language) category
of ‘false friends’ : in this case, terms which derive from Greek and look familiar to Greek learners of English
but in actual fact have now come to mean something altogether different. My
Chambers dictionary entry defines the phrase as ‘a time of peace and happiness’,
and we often use the term to refer with nostalgia to the golden days of our
youth, the ‘best years of our lives’. And this is the irony related to the divergence
of meanings, for originally in Greek these days fell in the depths of winter.
Let’s
look at how it was used by Shakespeare in 1592 in Henry VI , part 1,
…’Saint Martin’s summer, halcyon
days’….
Since the feast is celebrated on November 11th,
this might suggest unseasonably warm weather, which is closer in sense to the Modern
Greek usage.
In Greek literature Ovid probably
gives us the fullest account of the mythological character, Alkyone, the
daughter of Aeolus, god of the winds. She married Ceyx, King of Thessaly, and
they lived happily together but somehow incurred the wrath of Zeus. The
Bibliotheca, the 3-tome comprehensive summary of traditional Greek mythology
written in the first century BC, claims
that they often called each other Zeus and Hera, thus showing disrespect to
these particular gods. Whatever the reason, Zeus punished Ceyx by throwing a
thunderbolt at his ship when, according to Ovid, he was on his way to consult
an oracle. In her grief, on hearing of his death or on seeing his body washed
ashore, depending on which source you read, Alkyone threw herself into the sea.
Out of compassion, the gods changed the pair into birds- the kingfisher now
bears her name. One further divine act of benevolence was to grant the
kingfisher two weeks without storms (traditionally on either side of the winter
solstice in mid-December) in which to build her nest.
Nowadays in Greece, we use the term to refer
to an actual meteorological phenomenon of mild days, mid-winter. We usually
expect them to be at the end of January to early February, though there is no real
consensus on that. Certainly today we
are expecting noon temperatures of around 15 o Celsius.
I like to think that right now that pretty little
bird, presented here courtesy of dreamstime, is constructing her nest on the shoreline.
So let us look forward positively
and ask February to protect us similarly
….. kalo
mas mina !
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