Sophia, Telemachus, Ypatia ....And How To Cope With Them!

Sophia,Telemachos and Ypatia – why have they been in the news here recently? What do they have in common, apart from being names from Ancient Greece?

Sophia was to become the goddess of wisdom, her name coming from the Greek word sophia for wisdom, from which the word philosopher, or lover of wisdom, is derived. Incidentally, Pythagoras (c 570BC - c 495 BC) was the first to call himself a philosopher.

Moving on to Telemachus who, in Greek mythology, was the son of Odysseus and Penelope He was the central character in Homer’s Odyssey where he went in search of his father who had been in combat in the Trojan Wars.

Finally, we come to Ypatia, a very progressive lady for her time. She lived in Alexandria, Egypt and was a Hellenistic philosopher, astronomer and mathematician. Held in great esteem, she was, unfortunately, killed at the hands of a Christian mob.

We have a tendency to anthropomorphise – to confer human attributes to animals or inanimate objects. This has become particularly evident in the case of meteorological phenomena. And what these three names have in common is that they were names given to the extreme cold fronts visited upon Greece recently.

Whether some form of harbinger for what lies ahead in the new year, Sophia soon made her presence known by a sudden drop in temperature and a pretty light dusting of icing-sugar snow on the mountain tops. Pretty - but there was more to come!

                                                 

 On Friday 4^th, I made my way in a bitterly, cold wind to the surgery for my 7^th acupuncture session. There I lay, needles in situ, power-plugged-in, covered in a gossamer-light scarf, a heat-ray lamp trained on me, with feng shui background music playing. Could it get any more relaxing? And that was when it began to snow, in the fullest sense of the word. No piddling little polka-dot stuff, no dandruffy dusting, but the real deal: down-feathers fluttering down and lying firmly afoot with no intention of melting away.  Cocooned in the warmth, I joyously welcomed the arrival of Telemachus, our first really cold front. Session over, reality kicked in as I stood waiting for 20 minutes on a sea-front being attacked by the blizzard, for a local bus which came packed to the gunnels and making heavy weather - no pun intended - of the road conditions which were fast becoming treacherous. 

 

     

 I did, fortunately make it home safely, but very shortly afterwards, several local roads were declared impassable. Fortunately, too, Z had just done a big shop, so we lit the fire, and prepared to hunker down for the week-end.     

                       

                    

Safe inside and in the knowledge that Leon was protecting us and the homestead from this strange white stuff covering the garden.

                

Staying warm was the obvious priority and we all of us have different ways of getting there. I really appreciated my Christmas-gift slippers while Z downed a wee ouzo – or two – along with a meze mound.

                            

                                  

 

Continuing on the food topic, in a warm kitchen it’s a joint effort to produce the Greek dish youvarlakia, meatballs cooked in a broth and served with an egg and lemon sauce. This dish is just right for cold weather - sorry we’d already had large helpings of it before we took the picture! :o  After that, we had a clootie dumpling that I had stuffed full of lots of spices, dates, prunes, cranberries and sultanas and several glugs of brandy. Served hot with ice-cream.

                           

The cats expected – and demanded - extra portions of food during the cold spell, but they chose their snoozing areas carefully: Mr Mao has snuggled into a warm shawl, while Prunella has cleverly found a little window of sun rays playing on a warm duvet cover.

   

 

Outside the birdies have ruffled their down feathers to keep warm as they perch on our wild rose briars.  We can’t bring ourselves to prune them as they are regularly used as sparrow swings. Fortunately their red berries can still provide a nibble for our wee neighbours.

                                      

And we have other, closer neighbours. One little bird has been coming to roost over the winter months in our upper balcony for several years now – well, we assume it is the same one. He is very resourceful and managed to find a way in even after we closed off the area with perspex blinds as a wind shield. He perches on the rafters just under the roof. But in this bitterly cold spell, another little bird came in to roost on a spar above the window.

                             

 

We hope to share our accommodation with their treasured company for many a long winter.