To compensate for that, my mother used to religiously take me out to the cinema once a month and she continued to do so throughout my childhood. It was the most exciting weekend of each month and we made a big deal out of it and dressed nicely. We often went for a sweet beforehand in a patisserie. Amongst the many films I saw at the cinema were some that were appropriate for children and some that were most probably not; but there was no censoring procedure strictly followed at the time in Athens. As a result I saw some films that I should probably have seen much later. Amongst the films I watched as a kid, some I still remember as part of the whole outing and what we did before and after the film, very very clearly. Such films were Fantasia, Stand by me, The Goonies, Cyrano de Bergerac, Heavenly creatures, Fried green tomatoes, A room with a view, The age of innocence, An angel on my table, A fish called Wanda, Beetlejuice, Who framed Roger Rabbit and the list goes on. Every summer the cinemas in Greece used to close and no more new films were shown. Instead the open air cinemas started and they used to play old films. There you could eat an ice cream or a souvlaki (and if you were an adult smoke) while you were watching a film. We saw such films as Rebecca, From here to eternity, North by Northwest, Some like it hot, The great escape, Rebel without a cause, A fistful of dollars, The Ipcress file, The old man and the sea, Death of a salesman and many Greek, Italian and French classic movies.
When I was age fourteen, we got an old black and white Siemens television set from my father. At that time I had moved from the bedroom I used to sleep with my mother to sleeping in a settee-bed in the living room. I used to read and work for school late into the night and before the television came I used to listen to the radio a lot. But when it arrived everything changed. Late at nights the national Greek channel used to put on old classic movies, mainly French and Italian and I got quite hooked. During the week there were serials on, like Dynasty and Dallas that my Grandmother and mother watched. My Grandmother was very funny with the television; she treated it a bit like a hazardous machine. Literally. When you switched the TV off it had one of those thick, bowed screens that used to glow into the dark for some time afterwards. So my Grandmother used to cover it with all sorts of things, like crochet table cloths, sheets and blankets. She said that stopped the radioactivity spreading to us and put the TV to sleep. The screen used to still glow in the dark through the holes, colours and designs of the fabrics.
The first summer with that TV, I got so obsessed with following an old comedy serial, I dream of Jeannie, that I did not want to go on our usual summer holidays and miss any episodes. My mother was so upset with me I think she was very close to donating this TV set as well. There was no discussion about it though, and I had to go. I now more or less know that if I hadn't gone because of that Siemens television set, I would now be a doctor and probably would never have come to the UK at all. When we arrived for the first time, at a tiny island that summer, I was a grumpy, moody kid who was hoping the lady renting us our room would have a television and maybe let me watch my programme. She did have one and I did watch it once or twice, but soon I took to going around the island and painting my usual landscapes and forgot myself. That year I used actual gouache paints, rather than coloured pencils, and spent lots of time walking around the island to find a good spot. One early evening as I was coming back to our room, I crossed paths with another painter who was also holding his finished picture and bag of equipment. He stopped me very eagerly and was speaking in English wanting to see what I had painted. My English was not that good at the time and I spoke with broken grammar and very little words. From that point onwards we went painting together everyday and finished a very nice set of work, although mine was quite childish with very vivid colours. Towards the end I suffered with a horrendous sun stroke and my mother stopped me from painting further that summer.
He spoke to my mother and I about his studies at a British college in London (he was himself Italian) and how inspirational his stay in the UK had been for him as a young man. For the next four years or so we kept on going back to that island, our friend and his family had built a summer house there in the meantime, so they were always there. We painted a lot every summer and he, very persistently and passionately, discussed with my mother the possibility that I study art. Although I loved painting I had never thought of studying art till that point. I was always somehow meant to become a doctor. I had not questioned it much as I was a good student and quite interested in medicine. My mother was not really taking him seriously, but his determination and my work I think, started to make her entertain such a possibility.
I still have a very funny relationship with the television. For periods of times I get hooked with it, watching lots of things and other times I forget it's there and will not open it for weeks and weeks on end. Below are some images and a few videos using our current television set. I used some lace curtain sections and brown paper cut outs to put in front of the screen, as my Grandmother used to do. In this case the television is still on, but kind of dozing and you can look at it in a completely different way.
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