Fortunately, very few people remember which soothsayer or astrologer predicted what and we only remember the predictions that come true. So, having been asked to act as The Athenian’s Nostradamus this month, I have decided to play it safe and predict only those things that are certain to happen during the course of the next 366 days — well, almost certain.
In January, for instance, the Kifissia Traffic Police, which is responsible for the northern suburbs, will put up signs in Psyhiko, Filothei and Kefalari turning six more roads into one-way streets.
Mr. Andreas Papandreou will table a question in Parliament asking why the Greek people are still being seduced by the American Armed Forces Radio Station where a disc jockey addresses the listeners with ‘Yia sou, baby moo’, to which the Undersecretary in charge of the General Secretariat of Press and Information will reply: ‘Never on Sunday. Nobody can hear the AFRS on Sundays with all those Greek hams on the air.’
In February, everyone will have a merry time with carnival balls, charity balls, community balls, society balls and all sorts of similar functions. As one Greek teenager put it when writing to his pen pal in Dongling, near Mukden: ‘In February, is in Athens a lot of balls’.
The Kifissia Traffic Police will block off five more streets in the northern suburbs with one-way signs.
In March we may look forward to Clean Monday. This is not the end of the line for people who take a bath once a year but the first day of Lent. On this day, the entire populace will stream out of the cities and head for the countryside to freeze in draughty roadside restaurants or to enjoy a picnic lunch in a damp field.
When they come home from this pleasant outing, residents of Kifissia, Filothei and Psyhiko will find ten more streets blocked off with one-way signs.
In April everybody will put off everything until ‘after’ Easter which occurs on the 25th. The countryside will be redolent with the heady scent of spring blooms while that great, slumbering monster euphemistically known as Έ.Ο.’ will creep out of hibernation and make its insidious way into all public conveyances and meeting places in the city.
Three more two-way streets in the suburbs will join their one-way brethren.
In May this writer will celebrate his birthday on the 9th and will accept greetings, goodies and expensive presents at his home on one-way Kamelion Street in Psyhiko.
The first waves of tourists will flock to Greek shores to spend glorious hours on our sunny beaches with Coppertone on their backs and shoulders and ships’ tar on their feet.
In June, everybody will start thinking about where to spend the summer holidays and begin pulling strings to get into hotels that have been booked solid since the previous year, and on car ferries that ply the Adriatic with more than a thousand excess passengers dangling from their davits. They will all get worked in somehow.
Mr. Andreas Papandreou will table another question in Parliament and accuse Mr. George Mavros of having made a secret deal with the American Armed Forces Radio to replace Mr. Chris Antipas and use the ‘Phrase of the Day’ to spread Centre-Union-New Forces propaganda among American refugees from Beirut. Mr. Mavros will heatedly deny the accusation as he buttons and unbuttons his coat exactly two hundred and forty-six times.
Two more streets become one-way thoroughfares in Kato Kifissia.
In July, a terrible heat wave will prostrate all the tourists in the country who are not staying in air-conditioned hotels as well as those who are staying in air-conditioned hotels where the air-conditioning does not work. At high noon, the only moving things in the streets of Athens will be mad dogs, a few Englishmen and the members of package tours from the Sudan and Sierra Leone snapping the action with Japanese cameras.
In the suburbs, the Kifissia Traffic Police will take advantage of the general prostration to put up one-way signs on a dozen more roads.
In August, Melina Mercouri will finally give up trying to get her TV show on the air. Wearing a seductive summer frock, she will entice the Undersecretary in charge of the General Secretariat of Press and Information into that favourite hang-out of the English-speaking community, The Club ’17’, on Voukourestiou Street, and almost succeed in drowning him in a double dry martini from which the olive has been removed.
Mr. Andreas Papandreou will table another question in Parliament and ask what the Undersecretary was doing consorting with actresses and CIA agents in a ‘well-known hotbed of alcoholic intrigue’ to which the Undersecretary will reply that he has no recollection of the event other than the fact that the double dry martini was the best he ever tasted.
In the ensuing confusion, two more streets in Psyhiko will become one-way avenues.
In September, the first rains will herald the closing of the open-air cinemas and the opening of the indoor ones with a fresh crop of pornographic films which have been passed by the Board of Censors of the General Secretariat of Press and Information. The Public Prosecutor will allow them to be shown for four or five days until all upright citizens have seen them, after which, acting on their complaints, he will arrest the theatre-owners, confiscate the films and order the projectionist to switch to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs or the Andy Hardy series.
In October, schools will open again but only intermittently as a series of teachers’ strikes sweep the country, some of them lasting until a few days before the Christmas holidays. The Ministry of Education will finally succumb to the teachers’ demands that little children should be seen and not heard but will resist the proposal that they should be gagged as well to make sure they are not heard. The dispute will be referred to arbitration in Geneva.
In November, the Traffic Police will have at last succeeded in closing the northern suburbs completely with one-way roads so that cars will only be able to move round and round in ever-diminishing circles until they finally disappear in their own exhaust fumes. The Chief of the Traffic Police will be promoted for solving the problem of traffic congestion and will be presented with a circular gold plaque by the Wankel Rotary Engine Club of Athens.
In December we shall all look back in satisfaction on a year well spent and say to ourselves: ‘January is coming up soon, another new year and more balls for everybody in February. It’s good to be alive!’
