A Surfeit of Suggestions

Something that never ceases to both dismay and amaze me about the locals, and I rather think that this applies nationwide too, is their preoccupation with things medical. Not health, oh no, don't try getting most Greeks to think about eating healthily, giving up smoking or exercising, but as soon as the slightest ailment rears its ugly head they're simply delighted to get into the subject of how to treat it.

I've mentioned on a few occasions how it first bemused me to find that most Greek housewives have their own blood pressure machine. C'mon guys, you know what I mean here, can you imagine your average regular household in the UK, or anywhere else for that matter, having one of those in a kitchen drawer? The conversation has only to veer in that direction, maybe someone (or their child) locally has come down with something, is feeling a little below par, maybe planning for their diabetes years (you know how the Greeks love their sweet cakes and syrupy stuff, don't you) and the householder, quicker than you can say "snap elections" has whipped open that drawer and is strapping that thing you pump up on to one of the neighbour's arms, or perhaps her own, just to check if she's about to peg out. She'll be vigorously pumping at that rubber bulb-type thingie while she's saying something like "You must have the πίεση' [the pressure, meaning blood of course], I can see it in your cheeks."

I'm not exaggerating when I say I am quite sure that local women gathering for coffee in someone's house probably have regular blood pressure parties.

Something else which every home here has is a medical thermometer. Now, if you've read the "News and Stuff" page lately, you'll know that I've had a touch of the - I hesitate to say it - flu. I don't know what these bugs really give you, but I do know that, when I was a kid, if you had a cold you had a snotty nose for a few days, during which time you still went out to play and carried on with all the normal stuff, but you did it while sticking your tongue out and licking that snot from your top lip that had run down from your nose while you were playing football, right?

Now that was a cold.

What I've had this past few days has been a "rocking" head, a sore throat and chest, catarrh (is that how you spell it? What a ridiculous series of letters…) and an intense desire to stay in bed with a hot water bottle. Of course, you may still class that as a cold. I certainly, as stated above, would hesitate to describe it as full-blown flu, but it's certainly somewhere between the two.

Anyway, my other half, being as yet unsmitten, has been out and consequently talked to a few of our Greek friends, who, of course asked, "Where's Yianni?" Once the response is, "Well, he's in bed ill, he's got a…" you generally don't get much further than that before the suggestions begin pouring in.

In fact, last night a good friend from Rhodes Town called on the phone to ask how I was. Nice thought, granted, but it does seem like there is an official list of things you have to cover if you're a Greek and someone you know isn't well. So, if you wanna be like a Greek and someone you know is slightly unwell, this is what you have to cover:

• Have you a temperature? [Whaddyamean you don't know? How can you not know? You WHAT? You don't have a thermometer? Poh Poh! …and so on.]

• What did the doctor say? [What? you haven't been to the doctor? It's amazing you're not dead already…]

• What are you taking? [Now this one of course is often connected to the "Doctor" point, since they're dying to know what he prescribed, so they can tell you that they wouldn't take THAT if they were on their own death bed. What he SHOULD have given you is… and so on. It also gives them the opportunity to tell you all the things you really ought to be imbibing if you expect to live. These things include a lot of pills I usually can't even pronounce, plus a whole raft of herbal things. My friend who telephoned asked, "Have you got plenty of oranges?" for example. That's OK actually. Then there's the dreaded "chai voonoh" (Mountain tea), which is made out of a selection of herbs you pluck from the mountainsides out here. The main ingredient is sage, but there are a few other leaves in there too. Each time I drink it - and you simply HAVE to have honey in it to avoid gagging as you sip - I fully expect to begin hallucinating quite soon afterwards. Add to the foregoing a whole cornucopia of other drugs that every Greek friend will insist you need to help you get through this and you begin to get the general picture.]

• Assuming you've fended off most of the above, they then crank it up a gear. "If still you have a temperature (assuming of course that you know you have one) after a few days, you make sure you get to the doctor's," And that's said in a manner that suggests that they believe if you don't get there quick enough then you'll run the risk of dying in the car on the way.

See, now, maybe it's just the way I was brung up, but I was always led to believe that if you had a heavy cold (let's settle on that as a description, yeh?) you sweated it out. There is no cure. The best you can do is alleviate the symptoms and wait for it to pass. That's why, despite the constant insistence from well-meaning Greek friends that I'm quite mad not to be taking a cocktail of drugs and also visiting the doctor several times, the only thing I've done by way of acceding in the past few days is take a couple of soluble aspirin in a glass of water to ease my throbbing head, once. Of course, to each and every Greek friend I know that's exceedingly reckless.

Going from past experience, next time I do get out and about and visit with our Greek friends, they'll be astounded to see that I survived. Of course, they'll still want to take my blood pressure no doubt.