« Reply #1649 on: March 26, 2012, 08:16:55 AM »
How do you do Divination - reading the future - from Sheep's shoulder blades?
Does anyone have this skill , passed on from Yiayia , perhaps ?
Having slow cooked a half shoulder of lamb last night , on a bed of sliced potatoes and onions , the meat with a coat of mixed herbs and chopped garlic laid on it , and then the ceramic dish wrapped in foil , 20 mins on 200C , then four hours on 125C , the meat just slid off the bone , and aided by a Greek side salad (without the Feta ) and some hot multi-grained bread , I scoffed the lot , with a half litre or so of a thin Spanish red wine to assist it on it's way .
MMMMMMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmmm ! ! !
Leaving me pensively looking at the bone and idly wondering how you go about telling the future from these things .
It has been a Cultural week for me in Greek related things , on Monday the Missus and I took the Eurostar train through the Channel Tunnel to Lille , in the far north of France ( the trip is pretty dull going through , like a 20 minute ride between Monastiraki and Omonia , only much less exciting )
Anyway , apart from eating various meals to die for while there , we went to the Musee des Beaux Arts and found two Paintings by Domeniko Theotokos , El Greco , from Fodhele village in Crete , therein , A study of the Western Church's saint Francis of Assisi , and Christ in the Garden of Olives , which had astonishing use of bright Magenta and Aquamarine pigments - for his epoch .
And yesterday we had our annual " Voices from Greece " event at the University here in Norwich , the UEA , this year looking at topics about Thessaloniki , the history , an account of the life and works of Manolis Anagnostakis , a modern era Poet of the left wing in politics - " Words must be hammered in like nails " he wrote of his writings - but then he was a diasporic Cretan !
And lastly Victoria Hislop was there (who she ? ) author of " The Island " about the leper colony of Spinalonga ( again Crete ) and now made into a 26 part serial by the Greek T V Mega channel .
Her latest book ( in english ) is " The Thread " and is set largely in Thessaloniki .
( Guess who left his copy at home , and so couldn't ask her to sign it ! ) etsi einai H zoi .
And I have just read through Stratis Myrivilis' " Life in the Tomb ",
and have the Communist general Sarafis' book " E L A S " , his history of the resistance and the civil war ,
and a copy of Andreas Franghias' novel about Athens , " the Courtyard " ,
Both to read next , so , - Many thanks for those of you who found me the links to suppliers of translations into english of Greek authors' books !
Nothing about expanding my library on this shoulder-blade , though , as far as I can see ......... .
Not so much
as
IMO!
Logged
"Political Correctness is a doctrine fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end."
Well, someone had to say it!
