Here are some photos taken in the square, and at Georgio’s on Tuesday evening. The concert was given by a local singer, so local in fact that his house was directly opposite him and his parents could have sat on their balcony and been in the royal box.
We were taken to donner at Georgio’s and the group of us decided on a kind of ‘pig in a poke.’ I had one of these once in a pub somewhere in England, can’t remember where. I was young and had never seen it before: a blackboard on the bar advertising today’s specials which included ‘A pig in a poke.’ You probably know that it’s an expression meaning something bought or accepted without being vieed first, a lucky dip kind of thing. I now suspect that it’s a way to get rid of dishes that are fast approaching their sell by date, but that’s me being cynical. Here’s some more info:
The idioms pig in a poke and sell a pup (or buy a pup) refer to a confidence trick originating in the Late Middle Ages, when meat was scarce, but cats and dogs were not. The idiom ‘pig in a poke’ can also simply refer to someone buying a low-quality pig in a bag because he or she did not carefully check what was in the bag. A poke is a sack or bag. It has a French origin as “poque” and, like several other French words, its diminutive is formed by adding “ette” or “et”—hence “pocket” began life with the meaning “small bag”. Poke is still in use in several English-speaking countries, including Scotland and the USA.
The scheme entailed the sale of a suckling pig in a poke. The bag, sold unopened, would actually contain a cat or dog, which was substantially less valuable as a source of meat. The French idiom acheter (un) chat en poche (to buy a cat in a bag) refers to an actual sale of this nature, as do many European equivalents, while the English expression refers to the appearance of the trick.
In Greek: αγοράζω γουρούνι στο σακκί – I buy a pig in a sack
So, did we get served a pig, cat or dog at the taverna? Certainly not, and not anything that was approaching it’s sell by date either, everything was freshly made. What we did was ask for two mezethes each, plus one salad. That, between six people came to 12 small plates and a salad and we shared things around. The fun part is you don’t know what plates will turn up, but the good part is you know that everyone will be able to eat something. And the plates were? Well, if I can remember: mushrooms, cheese balls, courgette fritters, calamari, spinaches fritters, liver, chips (x2), prawns in pastry, stuffed peppers, the salad and two other things that escape me at present. It’s just another way of enjoying a night out on Symi. And has nothing to do with cats, pigs, dogs or pokes.
