Glorious Pas, Shiteous Present, Future Unknown

Since we hadn't already had enough fun going round the economic hell-hole merry-go-round, all of Greece has been given a one-way seemingly never ending ticket to ride (except for the rich, who are, as they ever were, untouched by such crises). Things are just getting worse, and as the European Union stands shooting at Greece's feet and screaming "Dance, bitches!" suddenly everyone has an opinion about Greece.

I have to say, by the far the best analysis I have read to date was not in a newspaper or a magazine. It was this post on a blog, written by a Greek no longer living in Greece. The link was sent to me by a friend and I read it with fascination. It's the most concise summary of Greece's debt crisis to date, even if the checklist of how to rectify the situation is wishful thinking purely because as most Greeks will tell you, Greece's biggest problem is that it's filled with Greeks.

I'm not going to get all sentimental about the future of my child in a country like Greece. If push comes to shove, he can always live and work somewhere else, and that somewhere else will probably be South America or Asia, since Europe's glory days are now well and truly over. What I will say is that I pray he doesn't end up in a situation like Mr Zeus, on the verge of a nervous breakdown from busting his ass in the private sector. He pretty much missed out on the first two months of his child's life, and was called to come into a meeting ON THE DAY HIS SON WAS BORN while he was at the hospital with me. He said no.

Of the 25 days of holiday he is entitled to, he has only 9 left for the rest of the year. Why? Because his private sector company makes him take each strike day as a day off. Our son's passport reads Unbaptised Zeus because neither of us has the stamina at the moment to deal with the public sector to-ing and fro-ing that would be involved in declaring his name without him being baptised. We looked into the process and decided he'd just have to be known as little Mr Unbaptised until we get around to baptising him. Glorious, ain't it? Two of the biggest parasites of the Greek state, the Orthodox Church and the public sector, working in cahoots. It's kind of beautiful, really.

But these are small fry in the face of how bad things are going to get for Greece. Oh well. Excuse me while I go bury my head in a watermelon.

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