Dining on Ithaca

True colours will out, and this blog is slowly veering towards the foodie side of life. I have already written about the restaurant Ta Kalamia. But of all the meals we had in Greece, for me the one that sticks out was the lunch we had on the island of Ithaca.

It wasn’t just the food, which was fine, but the associations, and a pleasant sense of a circle being completed.

Ithaca is the home of Odysseus in Homer’s tale The Odyssey. In fact the whole story is Odysseus’s attempt to get back home to Ithaca, and the problems that present themselves on his journey. It is a theme that has been repeated from Lord of the Rings to Die Hard, via Blade Runner and the Wizard of Oz.

For me, too, dining on Ithaca was completing a circle.

I had an unorthodox education, leaving my rather posh grammar school at the age of thirteen. Although I grew up in the inner city, my first school was almost like a village primary. All the children were local, we all knew each other and lived the same sort of lives. My grammar school was something else. We were the cream. In my primary school year of thirty-five children, only two were selected to go there. (We still had the “Eleven Plus”, an exam we all had to take which determined who would be “academic” and who would sweep the streets). The grammar school was all mortar boards, gowns and House Songs.

“Elysians, Elysians, Elysians are We,

The Red, The Green, The Buff, The Blue,

Sons of the Old Oak Tree”…

They played Cricket and Rugger. They wore blazers and ties that would guarantee victimisation by Comprehensive School children. They could just have printed targets on the back….

Not for me.I started missing lessons. I used the excuse of getting lost on the adjoining Hampstead Heath. After a while I just didn’t go back at all…

Eventually the Education Authority realised I was slipping through the net. I spent a couple of years going to a private tutor. She was a pleasantly eccentric Scotswoman with a cut glass English accent who lived in a genuine cottage in Hampstead Garden Suburb. We got on well. She provoked me. I provoked her. Out of contrariness I became the youngest person to pass English “O Level” in London that year, just to show my old school I could.

At fifteen She suggested I might prefer the atmosphere at Kingsway College. This was a Further Education College in Kings Cross. Leafy Hampstead it wasn’t.

It suited me down to the ground. The whole place was full of misfits. John Lydon (“Johnny Rotten”) and Poly Styrene, both leading punk rockers, pierced their first curled lips at the college.

The place seemed to specialise in the slightly rebellious offspring of famous (and rebellious) writers. I was friendly with the children of Arnold Wesker, Fay Wheldon and Alan Sillitoe.

And this makes the circle. The first class I ever took where I felt alive, treated as an individual, and respected, was at Kingsway. “Greek Myths and Legends”. It was an “Extension” course. In other words it was taught to round-out the student. No exams, no hassle. Each week I would turn up and hear Steve Haskell, the tutor, telling stories. Old stories. For the love of words and language. Steve started with The Odyssey. I was gripped….

Thirty years on. I am working at a Further Education college myself. Some of the students can be a bit difficult, but then I remember what I was like at that age.

And just a few weeks ago, on Odysseus’ Island, I felt I had come home. The circle was complete.

Dining on Ithaca.