Bucket To Greece Volume 13 by V.D. Bucket

Author:V.D. Bucket [Bucket, V.D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-12-17T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

Living in Greece for Sixteen Years

Strolling home through the village, I reflected that the Albanian shed dweller’s diverse set of peculiarities never failed to surprise me. His earlier nonsense had at least steered me in Spiros’ direction, which had in turn resulted in some flowery lines that I could conceivably mould into vows to wow Marigold, if I got really desperate. Deep in thought, I walked slap-bang into a man hurrying out of one of the houses close to the village square.

“Sygnomi, den se eida ekei,” I said, telling him I was sorry, I didn’t see him there. Despite my apology, I considered that he should be the one apologising since he had backed out of the house with total disregard for any random passerby being knocked off their feet.

“Sygnomi, den koitaxa pou pigaini,” he said, telling me he hadn’t looked where he was going. The Greek words were pronounced with a distinctive west country accent that instantly gave him away as a fellow Brit.

“Ah, you’re British,” I said.

“Indeed, but we have lived in Greece for sixteen years,” he said in a slightly miffed tone, before repeating his sentence in some semblance of mangled, grammatically incorrect Greek.

Perchance he was the type who became impatient when his attempts to converse in Greek were met with a response in English. I could sympathise with his frustration: often when I was out and about beyond the confines of the village, I would try out my Greek language on Greek shopkeepers, waiting staff, and office bureaucrats, only to have them reply in English. Of course, I recognised that they welcomed the opportunity to try out their own skills in a foreign language. However, I never engaged in conversations in Greek with fellow Brits, believing such an exercise to be the height of pretension.

“Ah, I…”

The stranger interrupted me before I could continue my sentence. “I say, in all modesty, that when British people hear me speaking Greek, they often presume eimai Ellinas.”

I found it hard to believe that anyone could mistake him for Greek when he paired his socks with sandals, a habit I had recently dispensed with when I realised it made me look like a tourist. Marigold liked to take credit for this change, assuming her repeated assertions that I was a walking fashion disaster had finally sunk in. The stranger’s pronunciation of the words ‘I am Greek’ was a dead giveaway that he was a foreigner. Still, I supposed, people not familiar with the language may well assume he spoke it with some competence. Certainly, from the little he had said, I gauged that his Greek language skills were about on a par with my own; that is, sadly lacking but passable. There is no point in denying the fact that every time I open my mouth to speak Greek, I sound like an Englishman trying out a foreign tongue; it would be the height of delusion to imagine otherwise. In my defence, I haven’t been living in Greece for sixteen years like this chap claimed.

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