The young woman who showed us round Athens on our Food Tour recently really was delightful: 30, intelligent, articulate, friendly, cute as can be. Her impeccable English resulted from having taken her degree in London – and an earlier year studying in the States on a school exchange program aged 15.
But when she mentioned the latter, she added: “But that was a bit of a painful experience.” She looked so suddenly downcast that both Haron and I wanted to hug her; I think our minds both then headed in the same improper direction.
Why so ‘painful’? That first time she’d been sent to her room by her host family for answering back at the dinner table, to wait until the gentleman of the house followed her upstairs to administer a hard hand spanking? That first switching – sent to the garden to cut rods from the apple tree, after she’d broken their agreed curfew? That trip to the Principal’s office, bending over for a paddling for fighting in the school yard? Sadly, I suspect the reality was rather different – a lonely girl a long way from home – but that’s far less fun to imagine!
Further, more contemporary thoughts, struck us the following day, as we walked back past the restaurant in which our tour had finished. The owner recognised us and greeted us warmly. “Are you coming in for lunch,” he asked. “Not today,” I replied, resisting adding, “because our guide told us that there’s a place further along the street that serves much better food than you.” Oh, but had I done so: picture the conversation at the end of the next tour. “A word before you leave, young lady,” the proprietor would whisper to the guide, before taking her into a back room and spanking her soundly over his knees for her disloyalty and lack of professionalism…