No Olives (Part 1 of 2)

Matthew John Ellis
Nov 7 · 9 min read

olive

/ˈɒlɪv/

noun

  1. a small oval fruit with a hard stone and bitter flesh, green when unripe and bluish black when ripe, used as food and as a source of oil. “a dish of cauliflower with black olives”
  2. the small evergreen tree which produces olives and which has narrow leaves with silvery undersides, native to warm regions of the Old World such as Greece.
  3. something that leaves a horrible taste in Matthew’s mouth.

As I sit in another unknown coffee shop in an area of London I’m not too familiar with, toying with the idea of searching for an actual job or writing a (don’t like the term) blog, I reflect back and try to look forward at everything that’s going on whilst trying to ignore the most obnoxious of drink orders, “a skinny venti with almond milk kept in a refrigerator under -2 degrees”. I look over pictures from my recent Mediterranean trip and realise tomorrow that I will fully be off my happy pills. I tend to use the beginning of the month or even the end to ponder or figure out what I’ve achieved or what I need to accomplish, whether it’s eternal happiness or world domination. I’m the kind of guy who has weird nuances, idiosyncratic behaviours that most people don’t understand too well. My least favourite day of the year is the 1st of October, I find it hard to trust woman with the letter K at the start of their first or last name and I don’t like olives. There’s a hell of a lot more but this is a (manuscript) blog, not a memoir of why I constantly Google, “am I a freak?”, being reminded by my mother that ‘labels’ are for jars.

There was a reason and then a real reason to go to Greece. It was the only country in the Balkan region that I hadn’t visited and I had a long desire to visit the birthplace of Western civilization. Then the real reason was to stupidly make a fly in visit to the ex-girlfriend who had made a move to the country next door, a place which I hadn’t particularly liked the last time I had visited, weirdly enough after first meeting her. A little place called Istanbul, the connection between Europe and Asia and the broken bridge between us.

“No olives” was a constant part of my lingo in Athens when it came to ordering the one or if I was lucky, second meal of the day. Most meals didn’t come with olives but I had to make sure that not one olive would touch my dish. You see, I hate olives as they taste like urine to me. It leaves a horrible taste in my mouth, much like most of my past relationships have done. Bitter. Yes, that’s the word I’m looking for. Bitter. It leaves a bitter taste in my mouth those pesky olives. The other term was “Yamas”, the local cheers for when I was drinking lukewarm beers with snowflaky backpackers in the cheapest hostel way out of town. Drowning my boredom with Efes lager to rebuke being constantly bombarded with questions on Brexit and why I didn’t sound proper “Scottish”. Beer was followed by more beer, only leading to me barking at some dumb white 18 year old American girl who believed the word ‘Cunt’ being thrown around was like the N word to her. It’s a term of affection by my S people you dumb cunt.

Greece’s capital was epic. The history, the architecture and the hordes of people who wanted to feel apart of something that was 2500 years old. But I shan’t bore you with tales of Zeus or Athena but regale you in anecdotes of hedonism, the real stuff that you really want. There were woman of course, there was black-out drunk Matthew and I even smoked a fucking joint of filthy bush weed that we got for free from anarchists in Exarchia, the lawless area of mid-town Athens. All this whilst jamming out to ‘Zorba the Greek’. I even found myself sleeping in a park on my second day there, awoken by the sound of screaming Arabian children as I tried to procure some saliva to my arid mouth to tell them to be silent. Many people travel to experience local cuisine, the well kept sights or how vibrant the night life is. I like to embrace all three — cheap kebabs, finding gaps in fences and getting smashed with strangers and trying to see who’s leg I can hump as the night recedes.

Three days of partying and clocking up my pedometer with ancient ruins, I was late for my hire car at the airport and also down a debit card, being pretty much my only source of capital. The car was a pile of shit, so shit that she was the first car in my history of cars not to be named. I had amassed a large collection of beautiful Greek mythological names to give her but my ‘Opel Corsa’ would become the horse with no name. It took two fuc…frustrating hours to find my way out of Athens. I was bursting for the toilet, sat-nav wasn’t working and I was down to one cigarette. Now all of these first world problems aside, I wanted to ride my cheap chariot out of here and head to the coast to familiarise myself with the ocean, somewhere I hadn’t been in quite a while. A place of solace for me, a position of true unperturbed pleasure.

I found this point of peace nearby the site of Ancient Olympia. There were older Europeans in their trustworthy camper vans stationed in a local car park by a small town along the shore line. I decided to drive further down to find my own home for the night. I had stocked up at the one convenient store with a loaf of day-old hardened bread, one euro ham (not even dogs would eat this), a bag of crisps and a litre of bottled wine. Fermented grapes and the soothing sounds of waves under a bright moonlight could awaken anyone’s inner Lord Byron *chosen poet if you know your Temple of Poseidon knowledge (I’m incredibly lonely). Now, when your (sometimes misplaced) morals can justify putting £50 up your nose but live on 22p noodles through the week or have holes in your work shoes that your boss keeps busting your balls about but spunk rent money on trips throughout the year to countries people ain’t really heard of, then you know this person’s phone is probably gonna be shit, dated and have a tendency to break at the most unfavourable of times.

It had been such a long, hungover day that all I wanted to do was briefly plan the following day to a small island and get so drunk that I could sleep in the passengers side of a car with a towel and sheet that I had stolen from the previous night’s hostel to use as a make shift bed. The phone charged as I purchased the earliest possible ferry to the island of Zakynthos. Now, most cars can have the keys in the ignition whilst small amounts of wattages charge items in a small period of time. Not my unnamed wagon. As the digital clock struck 2300 military hours and I was away to crack open the seal of my bleach-tasting beverage, I decided to roll the windows up a bit to stop the irritating insects from biting me. The only problem was that those windows didn’t want to go up, nor did the other side, nor did the car want to start up in general. This is karma for stealing a 12 year old, semen covered sheet from a grimy hostel in Athenshire. I constantly have to tell myself to stop stealing stuff as destiny reminds me that there ARE repercussions. I plodded down to the campsite gaining the help of an elder German man whom was only in pants and crocs. He looked startled as a hairy, young/middle aged manchild with breadcrumbs and cheetos still in his beard was asking to have his car pushed. We tried for 20 minutes but Dieter confirmed it was the battery, much like my feelings towards this car, was in fact dead.

I hiked up to the local town looking for the bistro that Wolfgang had told me to search for. I was awarded with a table full of aged gentleman drinking white spirits from tall glasses. As I gesticulated and used those useful movement classes from drama school, I was able to order a fish on a violin along with bucket full of leather belts. Through more confusion with translating and the old ‘rub of the finger/I have money technique’ they allowed me to jump in the back of their pick up truck as they came down to resuscitate my automobile. Twenty minutes later and lots of laughter directed my way (I blame the piece of shit car), I followed them back to the bar to buy them a round of beers as a thank you for getting it started. However they would not accept my currency which was great as there were six of them. Instead they gave me a glass of their moonshine that they had been consuming before, Ouzo. “Yamas”. One thing I love about people from around the world is that they try their hardest to communicate with you with the tiniest word they may know or the slightest knowledge of your country. Luckily I’m not from Bhutan because whisky, Nessie and male skirts are rather universal. And then you have his drunk friend who continues to only speak in his language, full power at you whilst you nod and attach that fake smile to your face allowing him to have his first attempt at being the town’s next tourist information delegate. I left my new friends, headed back to the beach and guzzled down half the bottle of wine before I fell asleep into an intoxicated slumber by the sea.

The following day was a peaceful retreat to what I thought was the idyllic island of Zakynthos but it actually turned out to be the loutish, English orientated hub of home-cooked breakfasts and pints of Stella, Zante. Throughout the day I made it my mission to avoid anything ‘Brits Abroad’ as I rode along the windy roads on my hired moped. A slightly better vehicle this time, however I also had to remind myself of the countless accidents I’ve had on 2 wheel operated machines. I jumped on a boat that was heading to a picture I had seen in the travel books, the shipwreck on Navagio Bay. An old steel ship that was hiding out from the Greek Navy whilst it was smuggling Black Market cigarettes found itself marooned in a small alcove on the North West part of the island. Lonely Planet made it look deserted in it’s well edited shot, but really it was completely inundated with tourists by the time I got there in the hot afternoon. This only encouraged me to get into the ocean and swim out as far as I could, slowly immersing myself into the cold water, cursing the hard stones under my feet, getting ball-deep before the initial countdown before throwing myself in and embracing the delicate touch that the ocean has upon your body.

Besides ‘Little Britain’, the island was beautiful. I left feeling refreshed, my connection with the sea always strong. I left knowing that I still had half a litre of wine to enjoy when I found somewhere later that night to park up and sleep. Once the ferry dropped me off I would spend an hour max in the direction of central Greece as I had had such a relaxing day, the concept of driving in the dark was completely undesirable.

Fast forward five hours later and I’m still on the god dam road. Because I had 5 euros left to my name, I had to detour off the main highways and travel along the toll free back roads. I still don’t know if my back up card that I’ve never used before would work. I’m on less than 10% of petrol. My piece of shit phone wont charge whilst the car is in motion and it’s sitting on 4%. I’m bursting for a piss but I fear if I get out, then the car might not start again. Oh, and did I forget to mention that I’ve been driving pretty much uphill non stop through a darkened forest for the past 2 hours and only passed one old ass serial killer looking car that just had one working light. The 20 pack I had purchased just off the boat had depleted to three cigarettes. The idea of peaceful wine was spoilt as I kept picturing what the rapey truck driver would do with my insides. There was nowhere to stop, 10% shifted to 5% and sat-nav had left its last destination at the earlier ferry port. Would he wear me like a hat or would he make a traditional Byzantine head dress out of my skin. How could I go from such a relaxing day to now deciding which exotic name I should give to my hire car in the hopes that she would get me to safety….

…in the famous words of Gordan Matthew Thomas Sumner’s hit ‘Roxanne’, “you don’t have to put on the red light” was exactly what I was praying for but that filthy whore decided she would sell her body to the night. I’m trying to drone out the constant petroleum alarm, alerting me that I’m fucked whilst screaming (my autistic nature unfortunately makes me hyper sensitive to most noises bar my own) and smashing my hand against the steering wheel hoping that we make it somewhere that isn’t a curved road and someplace that wont be my shallow grave…

Matthew John Ellis

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