lifestyle – Maddie Grigg

The Odyssey and my Greek obsession

We’re off to see the new film, The Odyssey, on Monday night.

I’m very excited – and a bit relieved too.

It’s the kind of epic that needs to be seen on the big screen but I’m currently in south west France, so where to see it as VOST (original version with French subtitles)?

The town Cahors is about fifty minutes away but there’s a cinema there, the film is on so I’ve booked tickets to see it.

It tells the ancient Greek myth of Odysseus and his epic ten-year voyage from Troy to his island kingdom of Ithaka. I know know it’s a Hollywood blockbuster treatment of the story and the characters will all be speaking with American accents, but I really don’t care.

Homer’s Odyssey is, in my opinion, the greatest story ever told but it’s one of those movies that directors have shied away from making for far too long.

Director Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer, The Dark Night and the wonderful Interstellar) has already caused controversy among people who haven’t even seen it yet, mainly because a Black woman (Lupita Nyong’o) has been cast as Helen of Troy.

The Odyssey is, of course, a classic Greek myth – probably grounded in some historical truth but lots of it made up and embellished along the way. It’s a story.

(If you want to know about the ‘real’ Helen, I thoroughly recommend the excellent book, Helen of Troy by Bettany Hughes.)

I suspect the ranting against the film tells us more about the people complaining and their lack of imagination than it does about the director’s casting choices.

And anyway, in Homer’s Odyssey, Helen doesn’t have much of a part to play – that’s all done and dusted in The Iliad (which was reflected in the film Troy, with Brad Pitt as Achilles and Sean Bean as the wily Odysseus rather than Matt Damon who takes the lead role in this latest film).

Greek mythology has been told and retold ever since ancient ‘Greek’ tribes first sat round a fire and listened to a storyteller taking them on a magical journey.

My first brush with Greek mythology was through Enid Blyton’s Tales of Long Ago, a literary gem (not) but, as a child, I loved it. The stories sparked an obsession with the ancient Greeks, leading me to quietly convince myself that Jason and the Argonauts was the best film of all time.

Much later, as a confirmed landlubber, I learned how to sail so I could act as Mr Grigg’s first mate and potter around the Ionian just so I could feel part of ancient Greek mythology or at least its landscape.

He’d bought a share in a yacht called Nestor, the elderly warrior who features in both The Iliad and The Odyssey, in partnership with the aptly-named Odysseus Sailing.

Sailing towards the wild pig island of Atokos. I’m not sure where from, it could be Ithaca.

We – and family and friends – had many happy weeks over the years on this boat, until she sank in 2020 in a rare medicane – a tropical-like cyclone – called Ianos. She had been tied up to a jetty in Kioni, Ithaka. Luckily, we weren’t on her at the time and neither was the family that chartered her. But Nestor was unsalvageable.

Before then, in 2012, not long after Mr Grigg retired, we let our house in Dorset and went to live in Corfu for a year, close to the beach that lays claim to being the one where a naked Odysseus washed up and was taken in by Princess Nausicaa.

Thanks to a laptop and an internet connection, I could carry on working and swan around during my coffee break, imagining myself in a diaphanous gown like a Greek goddess.

Blatant plug alert, I wrote a book about our twelve month adventure: Good Morning Corfu: A Year on a Greek Island. (Living the dream was great but not quite like I imagined. Be careful what you wish for.)

Later, we renamed our new rescue dog Artemis after the goddess of hunting, wild animals and nature and then wondered why she’d wander off in the olive groves at the first opportunity.

We’ve gone up the River Acheron (near Parga) towards the entrance to the Underworld. We ducked under a fence to visit the then-closed Necromanteion and imagined Odysseus summoning up the spirit of the blind prophet Tiresias to tell him how to get home.

We’ve visited the oracle at Delphi, the royal tombs at Vergina – the site of ancient Aigai, final resting place of Philip II, the father of Alexander the Great – and trudged up Mount Olympus almost as far as the Plateau of the Muses but were thwarted by deep snow.

We went on a cheap coach holiday to Turkey just so I could visit the site of Troy. We went on a similar tour to Sicily mainly for the Greek temples.

Mr Grigg knows I get much more excited wandering around a hot amphitheatre than going to a fancy restaurant.

In 2011, I even studied classics and ancient history at graduate level as a mature student. This was a mistake, to be fair, as I really struggled with learning ancient Greek. I was in over my head, the other students at Exeter University were way too clever and I realised with a heavy heart that I wasn’t up to it and that academia was just not my natural neighbourhood.

But I still love anything to do with Greek mythology. I’m particularly taken with modern interpretations and retelling, particularly novels by women like Margaret Attwood (The Penelopiad), Pat Barker (The Voyage Home) and Natalie Haynes (A Thousand Ships), and also Claire North and The Songs of Penelope trilogy.

My favourite poem is Ithaka by C P Cavafy, a metaphor for savouring life’s journey. I read it at my nephew’s wedding last year.

The Odyssey is an adventure story. It’s full of monsters, trials and tribulations, desire, determination, courage, folly and the burning need to get back home. There is something in it for everyone. And that’s the whole point.

The story has been – and will continue to be – presented in so many ways. This fantastic tale is kept alive by the retelling and reshaping.

There is no ‘right’ interpretation.

I hope I will enjoy this almost three-hour film on Monday. I’m sure I will as long as the seats are comfortable. I’ll just suspend my disbelief, immerse myself in a powerful soundtrack and let the story take me to Ithaca.

A visit to Plymouth

I’ve just been to see the Beryl Cook exhibition, Pride and Joy, at The Box in Plymouth.

As it happens, it was just in the nick of time because it ends at the weekend.

It’s a wonderfully thought-out display of Cook’s work. It makes you appreciate her influences and great skill as an artist.

I loved the paintings of her family in particular and everyday scenes like the market and a car boot sale. The details in some of the paintings are tremendous. Little warm and comedic asides playing out alongside the main event.

I have never seen so many people smiling and giggling as they walk around an art exhibition. Sheer joy.

Beryl Cook (1926-2008) was a quiet, private person but one of life’s great observers, going out and about from her Plymouth guest house and finding inspiration in pubs, clubs and on the seafront.

Plymouth was my stomping ground from 1979-1982 when I was doing my training. It was fascinating to think I might have seen some of these real-life tableaux unfolding around me.

But back then I was coming up to twenty and only interested in live bands and having fun with my fellow trainees.

When we left the exhbition yesterday, I followed my memories to drive along the back of the Hoe, turning left into Lockyer Street where I remembering once sitting one of many Teeline shorthand exams until I hit the magic spot of one hundred words a minute which meant I’d passed.

At the junction, we had to wait while a Beryl Cookesque woman – large and colourful – crossed the road. It was perfect timing.

Down at the Barbican, we strolled to our lunch stop overlooking the boats in the harbour.

At one point, I was sure I’d spotted a fellow trainee, wandering around the Barbican in shorts and a sun hat.

I chased after her, shouting ‘Susan, Susan!’ but it wasn’t Susan, which is not surprising because Susan lives in Scotland and would not be in Plymouth unless we were having a reunion.

The thing is, this Susan looked like my Susan only maybe thirty or forty years younger, just as I remembered her.

I even asked the woman if she was sure she wasn’t Susan but she didn’t understand me because she was Spanish.

Then it was a fish and seafood lunch overlooking the boats and a stroll to see the work of another Plymouth artistic genius, Robert Lenkiewicz (1941-2002).

Like Cook, his work at the time was unfashionable in high art circles but popular with the public.

When I was in Plymouth in 1979, the Barbican Mural next to his studio – where a fellow trainee the year above me had a flat – was truly wonderful.

Now, it’s been allowed to fade and rot, which is an absolute travesty and so very sad.

My paternal grandfather was born in a pub run by his parents in Martin Street, Plymouth, just off Union Street. Family legend has it that, as a child, he set the cannon balls that formed part of a monument on the Hoe rolling down the hill. This can’t be true because they are glued together, or maybe it is and the glueing happened after Grandpa’s childhood exhuberance.

So what with my grandfather’s Janner status and my own connection to Britain’s Ocean City, Plymouth holds a very special place in my heart.

Come into the garden, Maud…

Apologies for the dearth of posts this past week or so.

We’ve done a bit of travelling and are now heavily involved in a village event coming up at the end of May.

The weather here in Dorset is absolutely splendid and it’s wonderful to get out in the garden and soak up the sights and sounds. Flowers are bursting forth from lush green foliage, bees are buzzing and blackbirds are singing their dear little hearts out.

I made the mistake of watching some of the Chelsea Flower Show programmes on the BBC this week.

One was probably enough, to be honest.

I mean, I love seeing the incredible gardens and plants on display but there is only so much I can take of grinning presenters we are clearly meant to know (their names only appear in the credits at the end) and celebrities I have never heard of.

Grayson Perry described Chelsea along the lines of being Middle England’s ‘Glastonbury for people who wear linen’, and he’s not wrong.

There is no way I could cope with all those crowds. I get slight agoraphobia just by watching it on the telly.

So this spring bank holiday weekend, I’m looking forward to spending time in my own glorious garden -small but on the way to being perfectly formed – as the sun beats down from a clear blue sky.

Enjoy the weekend, where ever you are.

Stepping out

I’m determined to up my steps each day so I hit the magic 10,000, a figure dreamed up by a marketing campaign but not a bad one to aim for.

It’s the equivalent of 3.9 to 4.9 miles, depending on your stride length, speed and height.

I walk a couple of miles every day with the dogs but it’s not quite far enough, so I need to add a section at the beginning and end of the day to cover it.

Or otherwise achieve 7,000 steps every day, which the experts say is enough, especially when combined with some real bursts of energy.

I like what the British Heart Foundation has to say about walking: To boost the health benefits, aim to walk at a brisk pace, meaning you can talk comfortably but would be too out of breath to sing.

As someone who had a surprise heart attack ten years ago when I was fifty-four, that hits home.

Having had a bit of a slothful week of editing, where I mostly exercise my fingers while sitting at a laptop, I know I need to keep my body moving to improve my general fitness.

There’s more I can do but this is a good start. I’m not one for the gym or joining a class, preferring my own company and that of the dogs. I’m not an introvert exactly, and certainly not an extrovert but more of an omnivert, apparently.

Maybe I should lift a few weights next, or schedule my own personal dance class in the confines of my own home. Perhaps I should ask my old friend, over-50s fashion and lifestyle blogger Gail, at Is This Mutton?

All suggestions gratefully received.

In any case, eating more healthily and not drinking so much alcohol should help me achieve my goals.

I have a ‘health’ app on my phone but I don’t think it’s very accurate. I walked 3,790 steps this morning and several hours later it’s not showing any increase, even though I’ve got the phone in my pocket so steps around the house and up the stairs ought to count.

So I’ve ordered a ‘non-smart’ pedometer watch to help me in my quest.

It’s non-smart because I don’t want a watch to pay bills or receive calls and messages. For me, it’s better to be away from all that constant interruption, hence the need (I think) for a simple pedometer which also tells the time.

Along with that, I want to eat more healthily, cut down my alcohol intake and engage in constructive pursuits when I’m not reading and writing, rather than doom scrolling on my phone or laptop and getting depressed by a word gone mad.

I want to learn and see new things, whether it’s visiting an art exhibition or getting a close-up view of a golden beetle. I want to hear and identify birdsong and possibly learn the ukelele, although I don’t think I’m quite ready for that just yet.

Maybe just soak up the beauty of nature, as and when it happens. Live in the moment.