I is for Instagram

from Edward Gorey's Gashlycrumb Tinies - because I can.

Instagram's a funny old thing.  I recently started using it after I heard someone talking about how it was a GREAT tool for promoting one's business (www.sophandson.com) particularly image based businesses (like mine).  It dawned that I may well be missing a really fabulous (not to mention) free means of putting my artwork "out there".  So, resurrecting my elderly and dormant account, I fumbled about in the unfamiliar architecture and got myself to posting the odd design.

And while I tried to get the hang of hashtags and filters, enter stage left Puppy Pluto.  And well, you know, animals and Instagram go together like dog-sausage* and stinking farts (sorry to be uncouth).  So before I knew what had happened I had daily Instagram fodder.  And new people "liking" my pictures.  And it was good and fun.

Puppy Pluto, 10 April 2015

Every time the phone would ping to advise that someone new had "liked" a picture I'd experience a happy and expectant little tingle and I'd click on their name, be they oskarcutiepaws, xplosivepants666, marsiegarcia, cultapparel or getlikesalot (no judgements here) to see who they are and whether I'd like to follow them...  

What I found was largely unexpected.  Sure, there were a number of entities who fitted the demographic  I expected my artwork and/or puppy photos would appeal to –  which is cool and makes sense.  But there are also

• a disproportionate number of very saucy ladies with photos of their bikini'd bottoms and close ups of their bosoms, at dusk, at the beach; 
• several continental and middle-eastern young men with what I can only imagine are aspirational stock images of luxury cars, jet planes and extreme close ups of their three day growths (very manly!); 
• a few very enthusiastic and seemingly successful American Pentecostals with only a couple of posts but thousands of followers (not that I'm impressed by numbers but how do they DO that?);
• more foodies than you'd think;
• quite a few party girls who post photos of themselves drinking a lot with their party girl, gal pals; and
• quite a few stoners with pics of smokey, hazy, leafy, darkened rooms.

It's very strange out there in Instagram world.  I don't quite feel yet that I've landed properly.  I'm confident at this point that I've got enough of a grasp not to commit some heinous gaffe or naive mip to be swallowed up by the thing as I may've had Instagram been my first social media foray. (That's a whole other story for a whole another day.)  But that said, I'm standing outside the process watching the oddness, because that's what this is.  It's strange.  I rejoice in it most of the time.  But sometimes it gets a bit scary...

*Dog sausage is not sausage made from dog (heaven forbid) rather, it is that rolled meat stuff that used to be called Chub and smells like hell - and that's before it's even been through the dog's digestive tract.

H is for Hector.

Despite my family going back eight generations or so into the priesthood (hence Papageorge - Father George), this branch, my branch, are Hellenes and are no longer Christian, so all our names are from historical or mythological rather than biblical sources, so we go to lengths to find names outside of the box (or the book) so to speak.

There was a suggestion when my brother was born that he be named traditionally.  That is, as the first born son, named after the father's father which would've made him Cosmas Cosmas.  Not to put too fine a point on it, Dad thought that was a bit of overkill in the Cosmas department.  So another option was sought.   

He was eventually named after my Aunty Ethel's husband, Hector (not to be confused with Dad's childhood dog, who was also Hector).  The human Hectors were differentiated in the family as Big Hec and Little Hec.  And so they were.

* * *

 
When we watched Romper Room in the '70s, Hec always bemoaned the lack of Hectors amongst the abundant Jameses, Johns, Judys, Janes, Katies, Rachels, Rebeccas and yes, even the occasional Sophie in Miss Helena's Magic Mirror.  It was the first grave injustice of his life.

Miss Helena and the Magic Mirror on Romper Room

In fact, the only time Hector was ever represented in popular culture was in the form of "Hector the Road Safety Cat", who even in his prime, had a particularly, unfriendly, uncatlike voice and was very, very daggy.

Hector the Cat
You can watch the video!

Despite this, in fact, because of its rarity, Hector eventually grew very fond of his name: a noble prince, bravest Trojan warrior and favourite of his totem Apollo.  Not to mention (although I am) an instantly recognisable, one-namer: in the club with Madonna, Elvis, Cher, Sting, Bono, Twiggy, Liberace, Prince, Oprah...

And there he was also a contradiction, because unlike what his name has come to mean in contemporary terms, he was the person least likely ever to hector, badger or bully.  Instead, blessed with extraordinary wit and skill, he'd just scratch the very top of his tilted head with his middle finger and the diplomatic way forward would simply come to him... La!*

Hector
July 3, 1966 – March 8, 2012

*For example, as my companion at a raucous Hunters and Collectors gig in 1987 (was there any other kind?) where I was being buffeted quite violently, rather than telling a giant meat–axe he was standing on me and to back off and give me room, Hec very gently explained to the drunken giant that it was I who was standing UNDER his foot and would he please oblige by shifting ever so slightly so I could get myself out of his way?  And perhaps, as I was short, could I stand in front so I didn't bother him again.  And before you knew it, Hec was cracking jokes and making new friends.  And the M'Axes then protected us from the rest of the crowd for the remainder of the gig and bought me drinks, so I had a nice time.  Finesse.  That's what that was.  But it wasn't a con.  Hec was sincere.  He knew how to reach people.  And he did.


 

G is for George

From Edward Gorey's Gashleycrumb Tinies

The name "George" is significant to my family.  As mentioned in an earlier post, [here] my family name, before it was changed in the 1950s to Cosmas was Papagiorgiou or Papageorge or by by the time Dad was at school in the 1940s and '50s, just George.

There was also my Papou's older brother George.  He was a bastard.  Not literally, but the sort of psychotic, evil, misanthrope that you're not really surprised when you hear he's driven someone to murder. Him. And not just that. To cleft him in twain, so to speak.  Leaving his head in a sack in one place, and the balance of his person in another place. Quite different.  Quite remote.  Quite damp.  Quite definitely sure to be left undiscovered until it's riddled with maggots and other creepy, crawly critters the likes of which you'd like to see feasting on a person like George.

He wasn't nice, you see.  He was a troublemaker.  He took after his mother, Madeleine.  She wasn't nice either.  

As the story goes, George's sister, Sophia, had married a lovely fellow from a neighbouring village. Let's call him Andrea (Andrew)*.  Sophia and Andrea hadn't been able to have children but they were a lovely, loving couple, and he was devastated when Sophia, without word or warning, upped and died.  

Now, according to local law, if there are no "issue" from a marriage, the family of the bride is entitled to reclaim the dowry. So barely was the last sod turned on her grave, literally that very day, dear George, attended bravely by his posse, knocked at the widower's modest door, to demand return of the cutlery, linens and goodness knows what other else bollocks had been given with Sophia when she and Andrea had been joined together in their heavenly lifelong union.  And from which he had been cruelly, prematurely and most suddenly wrenched.

Incredulous at the gall and insensitivity of his brother-in-law and out of his mind with grief, Andrea threatened to kill George! And sure enough, before the week was out he found himself secreted in the bushes on a lonely road waiting for his quarry to pass.  As the light faded and George ambled past on his way to a small hut where he would sometimes stop to spend the night, Andrea jumped out, and DID HIM IN and then CHOPPED HIM and BAGGED HIM and DUMPED HIM HITHER and YON.

And of course he wasn't found for days and days because everyone knew he'd gone away and no-one missed him, so he was well and truly as rotten dead as he was alive by the time the sacks of his remains were located. 

Poor Andrea didn't get away with the deed though.  He had made the threats to kill in front of George's friends who, of course, were more than happy to testify against him.  The court didn't take any extenuating circumstances into consideration, so Andrea was hanged for murder, and one can only hope he was reunited with his darling Sophia in the afterlife.**

***

Ever since Uncle George I don't think there have been any subsequent George's in this branch of the family. He tortured my Papou; drove him out of home when he was just a little boy, enough to leave quite a bad taste!  And probably another good reason our family name was changed. Come to think on it.  Hmm...


*We don't actually have his name recorded and I'm still on the hunt for it - but half the men from Pitsilia seem to be called Andrea, so it's a fair guess!


**No good came to the hanging judge and the foreman of the jury. They both met untimely deaths shortly after Andrea's hanging. They were cursed by a member of his family for the lack of compassion they showed Andrea at the trial, and one way or another those afflictions were realised and thus it didn't end well for them.

F is for Frustration

from The Gashleycrumb Tinies by Edward Gorey

Frustration

I was going to write a moving piece about feeling like a foreigner in your homeland.  But I'm not in the damn mood. For the last three days we have had at best dribbling internet.  Dribbling that eventually stopped.  In that time I have been trying to make the deadlines for this blog challenge, and I have also been trying – even more importantly (I KNOW!  What could be more urgent?) – to get my elderly Dad checked in online, to his overseas flight to ensure that his precious, hard fought for, aisle seats are not given away.

This afternoon I was finally advised that the assurances I'd been given about technical failures in the area and overloads due to the introduction of Netflix were indeed a shiteload of malarky because there's not a thing wrong with the line or the network or the exchange or the provider or the wholesaler or any body.  Nothing.  What has failed, it seems, is my own freaking modem.

So I've gone and bought a new modem and now I'm trying to connect it.  And I've hit a stinking hurdle because I don't know how.  And I'm waiting for the ISP helpline to call me back while I cook dinner before I take Dad to the airport.  And why the heck is the puppy chasing his tail?  The sound of the tappy tappy on the tiles is making me stupidly tense.  And why are those little stars twinkling just within my periphery?  I don't have time.

E is for Emigrant

E is for Emigrant.

Before the turn of the twentieth century my grandfather, Cosmas Papagiorgiou, was born on a hilly outcrop in the village of Palechori in the region of Pitsilia, Cyprus.  Not a lot would grow there – except rocks and disgruntled sons.

 

Palechori, Pitsilia, Cyprus.

He was driven away by a sociopathic older brother and the ambivalence of his bitch of a mother, Madeleine, when he was thirteen (he was away from home, alone in Larnaca for a year!) and he left Cyprus permanently in his early 20s, seeking a life off the barren land and away from all the misery.  

Cosmas' father and older brothers,
all dressed up and smiling for the photo.

His options were Russia or Australia.  He chose the latter (warm and sunny) over the former (bleak and grey). Apparently he was impressed by the Australians he'd met while he was in Egypt who he'd found to be aristocratic and refined... 

Although Papou (for that is what we call "Grandpa" in Greek) and his family hadn't had a great time under British occupation (we had cousins who were terrorists/freedom fighters – depending on which side of the conflict you stood) I would've thought coming to a former British colony might've put him off, but the time he spent in Egypt amongst the European colonials  ­­– "upper class" and pretentious – I suspect made going with devil you know a more attractive proposition.

Papou in 1921 on arrival in Australia.  Seriously.

Anyway.  Papou eventually arrived in Australia in 1921.  He worked tirelessly building trainlines and down saltmines to provide security to bring out his brothers  in 1925 (no one spoke a word to him for the first six months, not one word) and in 1928 he crossed over to New Zealand and with the purchase of Kilburnie Fish Supply began to build what would become an empire of sorts designed to support and sustain himself and his brothers and their families into the future.

He travelled back to Athens, Greece to find a wife in 1929.  Sophia (nee Maheras), turned 18 as she disembarked from the boat at Wellington Harbour.  She was sweet and fun loving, educated and refined and blessed with a moral compass of unshakable strength.  Where Papou was hard edged and unyielding she was loving and kind.  They complemented one another completely.

In 1935 a mysterious* family feud caused Papou to pack up his wife and two small children and leave everything he had built in Wellington.  He started again in Melbourne and in the mid 1950s he even formally ditched the family name:  Cosmas Papagiorgiou became by deed poll John Cosmas. 

And thus his emigration was complete.

*All the parties who were alive at the time of the feud are now deceased, so we're unlikely to ever know what happened.  What we do know is that when my brother was born and it was suggested he be named after Papou's younger brother, Peter, my grandmother shut down that suggestion very promptly saying that Cosmas would not approve at all.  And nothing more was to be said about it!  Perhaps the key lies there.

D is for Dolly

from Edward Gorey's Gashleycrumb Tinies

I am the second child of two.  But the first girl.  So from the moment I was born I was adoringly, affectionately addressed by my mother as her "real, live Dolly".  I think it goes without saying that my parents were really happy to have a girl: to make up the pair, to have one of each, to finish the set.

So what does a person usually do with one's Dolly? 

At this juncture I should declare that I'm probably not the best person to ask.  I always loathed dolls.  Give me some pencils and paper and I could entertain myself for hours, nay, days.  A doll however, was only fun for as long as it took for me to:

1. dismember it,
2. render it Yul Brynner bald, and then be freaked out by those giant, creepy hair follicles, or
3. invent some horrible disease to justify my total rejection of it for all eternity.

So to return to the question, what to do when it comes to playing with dolls (and I'm casting my mind back to Mum with me) there was a lot of being dressed up with ribbons and frills and other extreme manifestations of prettiness.  Which for me was utter torture because I was the child least likely to want to be preened and fussed over.  Pathologically practical and desirous of invisibility, the very idea of a frock with adornments was pure hell and culturally something I simply had to wordlessly endure.
Same went for my unruly curls.  There was a lot of combing and controlling and attempting to smooth stray strands into place with spittle.

"Don't worry," my father would taunt. "It's only her dribble."

Me aged 7, 1975

Then there was an uncharacteristic optimism on Mum's part that Dolly (for that was my nickname, too) would like to play dress ups with her own little dollies.  So when I was given dolls for gifts (not by Mum) she would lovingly spend hours sewing miniatures of the handmade clothes she'd made me, so I'd have outfits for my babies in case I ever changed my mind about them.  Which sadly I never did.  

Ironically the last dolls I were ever given I love and cherish.  They were given to me in 1993.  

I arrived home to the home phone ringing. (It was before the days of mobile phones.)  It was my brother.  VERY EXCITED.  

"Are you home?"
"Yes."
"Have you been in the garage?"
"No."
"Go. Go. Go and look!"
"Why?"
"Go and look!  And come back!"  

 (I don't think we had a cordless phone either.)  
The garage was the domain of my housemate who was restoring a 1961 Volvo P1800 so when I opened the door I was greeted with sight of the gleaming, red icon with a complete set of Beatles dolls carefully arranged atop the boot.  I nearly peed my pants.  It was the nicest thing anyone had ever done.  And it wasn't even my birthday or anything.   

My Beatles dolls are just like these. 
Hec bought them on a whim and brought them to my place but I wasn't home
so he set them up in the garage and went home and started phoning until I answered.

So there you have it.  Despite my antipathy I have come to terms with dolls.  Pencils and paper are still my friends, but I remain to this day and for ever and always my Mum's real live Dolly.  And I wouldn't have it any other way.  

And at least she doesn't try and pull off my arms and legs.  (Or she hasn't yet.)

C is for Castration

from Edward Gorey's Gashleycrumb Tinies

Yesterday we took out dear, bolschie, bursting with personality puppy, Pluto, to the vet for "the snip". That is, not to put too fine a point on it, to be castrated.  

Pluto (28 March 2015)

He's only 13 and a half weeks, but from all my research* I found early age desexing (EAD) has a reduced recovery time, is less traumatic and also offers some other significant positive longer term health outcomes.  

So it was with heavy hearts we dropped our littlest family member off at the RSPCA for his procedure.  It was horrible leaving him. I'm bad at being brave with animals. But at least we'd organised for Milo to go to a gym for the day so he wouldn't spend the day at home fretting. And I looked forward to filling the void with the sound of vacuum cleaner, a noise that has been somewhat absent since it became apparent that Pluto has serious issues with it (and the broom, and the dishwasher, and the dustpan and brush, and the cheese grater, and his reflection in the windows, and the hairdryer  – although I hasten to add we don't avoid using everything just because of the quirks of the pup).

Anyway, the surgery all went well.  And on discharge we were advised:

"He might be sleepy for the next few days, and off his food.  But that's ok.  Just keep him warm and let him rest."

So.  We gingerly wrapped him up and brought him home, expecting a quiet convalescence...

Shhhh.

But since he lost his nuts, Pluto's gone stark raving bonkers.  He's not supposed to run or jump.  But I don't think he got that memo because he's tearing about like a thing possessed.  He just won't settle.  When in a relatively quieter state he's rolling about making guinea pig noises and when he's being loud he's shouting Shouting SHOUTING!  

When I tried to put him to bed last night he went crackers and threw Truffles (his companion piggie) out of the pen and then demolished the whole set up with a vigour and relish I've not previously witnessed.  In the end, all I could do was cuddle him to try and restrain and stop the crazy.  We slept for about three hours.

I hope it's not because he's in some really bad pain.  I hope he finds today a little easier.  This morning was berserk again.  I fed him early and adminstered the pain relief that supposed to last for 24 hours. and he's resting now.  So I hope that continues for a little bit at least.  Poor little man.  Doesn't know just now if he's Arthur or Martha.

With the sleep deprivation and the tinge of worry I feel a bit that way too.


*RSPCA Research Report on Early Age Desexing