Attitudes

I haven't yet understood attitudes in Greece, or Crete if there's a difference - there's a lot of things people don't bother about here which would be carefully regulated in more-western countries: I'm thinking of things like parking styles, queueing, erotica - not only Penthouse and Playboy but even 'hard' stuff like Anal Sex are on full view in the supermarkets.

Yet they're so concerned about the moral depravity which might result if anyone - even a man - were to show his knees in church, that they pollute their entrance areas by putting up notices proclaiming that you're not allowed to do it; and on the boat, neither the male steward nor the arriving male passenger would come into the four-berth cabin when they saw that I was changing my trousers ... It would have been interesting to see how my three cabin-mates managed the embarassing business of getting dressed next morning, but sadly I slept through it all ...

Of course I know perfectly well that every society is made up of many different people who have a wide variety of attitudes - those who park wherever there's a space, who jump queues, and who read Playboy are perhaps not the same as those who believe that God panics at the sight of a man's knees.

Strange that I should fall into the trap of thinking that attitudes could be something universally 'Greek' or 'Cretan' ...