Can’t remember if we said ‘thank you’ to everyone for the Christmas messages and emails, but in case I didn’t get to reply, ‘thank you!’ to everyone who sent them in. And thanks for your Su, which we received yesterday:
“Just wanted to give you a big thank you for your blog which I read every day before breakfast! I particularly love the descriptions of your walks this winter…” The walk episodes seem to be very popular, and we are aiming to try a walk every week, or roughly, with photos, so there should be more over the coming winter period, weather permitting. There are some more shots today taken last Sunday.
And thank you also to Gwenda and Pete for the survival box of cheese and onion crisps and wine; we are planning our own cheese and wine celebrations, though I suspect that at least one or two of the packets will be gone by the time this post gets online. Very kind of you!
And now for something completely διαφορετικό: Turkey. Well, it’s seasonal. One of our gifts this year was a book, ‘1,411 facts’ from Jenine – I mean the book was from Jenine, the facts are from all over the place. I stumbled upon the entries about Greece, after extensive searching in the index, and found it mentioned on a page bearing this rather amusing set of facts:
In Turkey the word for ‘turkey’ means ‘Indian bird.’ The Indian word for turkey means ‘Peruvian bird.’ While here in Greece the word for ‘turkey’ means ‘French bird.’ And in Malaysia it translates as Dutch chicken, just to confuse the issue. Oh, and the world’s largest chicken nugget is twice the size of the world’s largest chicken, which just goes to prove you should NEVER eat them as they are made out of all kinds of thing which clearly don’t come from a chicken.
Also from the same book, between 1920 and 1983, in Greece, leprosy was grounds for divorce, and Greece is the only country in the world whose name, ironically enough, does not contain any of the letters in the word ‘Olympiads.’
And Greece is the only country in the world where, to pass the equivalent of a GCSE at school, you only need to speak enough Greek to discuss football and politics. (I made that one up.) No doubt there will be more factual nonsense in the future as I dip in and out of this new book, such as: according to Julius Caesar the most civilised people of Britain lived in Kent. (I am a Man of Kent after all.) And the only desert in Britain is Dungeness nature reserve, in Kent, and where I used to play as a boy. Now you know you can get on with the rest of your day as I am heading off to do just that and prepare for New Year’s Eve, and that is a fact.
