Not long now before I go back to Greece, and see how things have changed since the time I talk about in my blog. There are other years in between these (as is obvious to anyone who has read the earlier parts of this blog) where I put a partial update, but I have refrained from the temptation to talk about Athens' recent, much better airport, for example, or the new metro in Athens, the latter probably given a speed-up kick by the Olympics. These will be inserted in due course; as will a continuation of Thessaloniki 1993-1995, but I may wait until I revisit that city, hopefully within the next couple of months, and can draw direct comparisons.
The main item of news for me has been totally unconnected with travels in Greece; the second round of bombs in London which luckily failed to cause too much damage as they didn't go off as they should have done. However, in Egypt, they have gone off with devastation, and many people have lost their lives there - at the last count, 83. We've got to carry on as normal, and hope for the best.
Roman Polanski has won 50,000 pounds in libel damages from Vanity Fair. Polanski has made some of the greatest movies, but he hasn't been on terrific form recently, and the Polish Jew who had a terrible childhood and studied at Lodz film school (the same place as at least two other great Polish film directors, Andrzej Wajda and Kieslowski) is not at his best when he comes too close to his own predelictions. Bitter Moon , which they were showing on Polish TV recently, is downright bad. But then again, the Pianist, based on Spillmann's book and very faithful to the book, is extremely good. I had the pleasure of meeting one of the actresses who played in the film in Poland - she told us how much she had enjoyed working for Polanski and no, he treated his actors very well. My uncle, who acted in a minor role in a Polanski movie, once told me that he had no problem with Mr. P, but Polanski wanted to put Catherine Deneuve into a filthy mood before filming the scene where she kills a man in Repulsion so as to make her 'hitting' the 'man' (in reality around the camera) convincing. So he wound her up and wound her up and wound her up. In the very, very unlikely event that Mr. Polanski is reading this blog, I apologise if this story is untrue, (it is mentioned in one of the biographies of Polanski, too) but my uncle is now, as they say, in the great pub in the sky, and I have a much, much better story about a great British actor in Poland in the '60s which is my parents' story, and I certainly shan't tell that one here, as it has absolutely nothing to do with anything in this blog.