Carly has grown up with myths about fire. The dominant one was “Those who play with fire, wet their beds!” Even as a paediatrician, Carly has not been able to determine if there is any truth in this myth. Certainly, this hasn’t happened to her. She is happy to light fires when making a BBQ and particularly likes to burn incense and tea lights to ‘ground’ herself. She finds physically igniting things using lighters is tricky and she regularly burns herself inadvertently. And, moreover, feels like she might be thought of as a smoker. Carly has never even learnt to smoke. So this is an association she finds abhorrent. She has been a campaigning anti-smoker for decades. At work, in the mess, not long after she qualified as a doctor, she led a movement to make the mess smoke-free. It was seen as quite revolutionary at the time. She smirks, as now smoking really isn’t allowed anywhere inside. Not even in cars, if you have a child with you.
Carly often cycles around with her phone at-the-ready to photograph inconsiderate parents subjecting their children to passive smoke. Colleagues warn her against this as she is unprotected when on a bike. However, she is committed to helping anyone who has made a decision to quit smoking. Her father did it. Her son did it. And she is very prepared to have that conversation around the hospital when people are brazenly smoking next to the NO SMOKING signs.
But this story is about matches, and not an anti-smoking tirade. We have established Carly is not keen on using lighters. Mostly because she burns herself when trying to obtain a flame. But more because matches are nice and old-fashioned. She remembers fondly the match-seller in Oliver. “Who will buy…” Oh no. Carly’s memory is shot to pieces. It is actually “Who will buy my sweet, red roses?”
Any day, she would prefer a box of matches. There is something comforting in them. Short, long, but pretty much dependable, unless the side of the box where you strike the matches has worn off. But these are only on her very favourite matchboxes. Especially as Carly has taken to refilling them with standard matches from large, utilitarian boxes. She only really keeps matchboxes she has bought in Greece. More recently she bought some signature boxes from Mexico. They have wonderful vibrant emerald-green tips. But the wooden part of the match is so thin and bendy. And yet again, Carly is prone to burning her fingers.
Mostly, she lights the tea lights next to her bed. They sit on small velvet square samples you can get for free from various sofa bed places. When she visited her friend Melinda in Manchester, they often went there with the purpose of pretending to look for sofas, but really to collect these sumptuous squares. Carly would like to make a quilt, but that is probably a bit cheeky. Not that it has stopped her in the past…
“Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm” thinks Carly, “An idea?” Unfortunately, Melinda has dropped Carly as a friend. She felt that Carly was not sympathetic enough when she was ill. Carly feels guilty about this but always does find it hard to be overly caring when a friend has a psychosomatic illness. Anyway, Carly has the lovely squares to remember her and has made new friends instead. Besides the tea lights, Carly often has candles she lights that she made herself. In old-fashioned teacups. She learnt this on a course and uses soya wax as it is less carcinogenic. She has a box of small bottles with different essential oils to add wonderful fragrances to the candles. Mostly she makes them lilac in colour and adds in lavender flowers with the matching scent. She often lights one tall taper as well. In a pretty bottle that once contained wine or a spirit. But you must be careful to blow them out before falling asleep.
She vividly remembers a fire in her flat in Tel Aviv caused by dodgy candlesticks which melted. Her entire family woke up covered in smoke. The wiring in the building directed the night porter to the wrong floor. They were on the 14th, and he thought the fire was on the 7th. Unreliable wiring by a factor of two. Carly later found out that this wasn’t the only fire caused by these candlesticks. Unsurprisingly, the company that made them went out of business in the end. Carly would like to have said to herself “Good job” but actually she was sad as she loved how pretty they were. Just not made for candles. Her children loved fires. Planned ones, anyway!
Every summer, Carly’s children would stay with their favourite babysitters in Poland. And each time they set up a huge bonfire, coated themselves in protective water and would then jump through it. But Carly had to put a stop to this when her oldest son’s armpits caught fire. Even this was too much for Carly to condone.
Instead, she encourages everyone to burn incense, as this is safer but still enjoyable. She once went to a market whilst on a knitting holiday in Mysore, India, and helped make some sticks. It was really just a ruse to ensure she bought lots of them from the stallholder. But it really was fun. She rarely goes anywhere without her trusty incense burner and sticks. Recently she succumbed to an advert on YouTube and bought a special incense burner called a spirulina. The cone-shaped incense had a hole in the middle and the smoke released tumbled down the device a bit like running down a steep slope with switchbacks.
Bringing herself back to matches. Carly’s current favourite ones (as she has already mentioned) she buys in Greece. Mostly because you can collect different characters on them. They are hilarious and based on Asian shadow puppets. Carly fondly remembers seeing a number of shadow puppet plays in Java, Indonesia. She went there with her new boyfriend, Ades. He became her old boyfriend, then fiancé, then husband and now he is her newly remarried ex-husband. Hey ho!
Regarding the characters on the Greek matchboxes, Carly finds out the main protagonist is a fellow called Karagiozis, meaning ‘dark eye’. He was very popular because of his scatological language and protruding phallus. Carly had done some investigation into this Karagiozis character. She knew what the word phallus meant. Most people do. But scatological? What on earth is that? Oh, it is an obsession with excrement. Great, thought Carly. Now, not quite such a loveable rogue anymore. She delves into Karagiozis, and he is usually depicted as a poor hunchbacked Greek, his right arm is always depicted long, his clothes are ragged and patched, and his feet are always bare. Because of his poverty and laziness, Karagiozis uses mischievous ways to get money to feed his family. He lives in a cottage with his wife Aglaia (who constantly nags him from inside their cottage) and his three sons (known collectively as Kollitiria) during the time of the Ottoman Empire.
Carly feels some sympathy for Aglaia, who has a husband who only lives to eat and sleep. “What can she do other than nag?”, questions Carly. Hadjiavatis is Karagiozis’ childhood friend and sidekick, an honest and serious figure, who often ends up unwittingly being wrapped up in Karagiozis’ schemes. Barba Yorgos (Uncle George) is a sturdily built dairy farmer who wears the traditional kilt. Despite knowing Karagiozis is a crook, he sometimes helps him out, beating opponents black and blue with his staff. Carly is a little sad as she had previously seen Barba George on matchboxes, but she hadn’t started her collection at that time. Since then it has eluded her. The minor characters include Stavrakas who has only one overly long independent arm, Sior Dionysios, an Italian gentleman who pretends to be a nobleman, Morfonios, is both vain and ugly with a huge head and bulbous nose; still, he considers himself to be handsome and keeps falling in love. He often shouts out a sound like ‘whit’ Carly loves this as she works at a hospital locally known at The Whit. She wonders what this exclamation noise sounds like.
Finally, there is even a Jew, Solomon, from Thessaloniki. Carly is delighted that it isn’t Solomon who has the large nose following age-old antisemitic stereotypes. The Visier announces trials, deeds or tests to which Karagiozis usually decides to become involved and Fatme is his beautiful daughter playing either obedient roles or rebellious ones.
Carly finds out there are a number of myths about how Karagiozis seems to have come to Greece. Some say it was during Ottoman rule for the entertainment of the sultan, whilst others say that Greek merchants brought him and his legends from China. Furthermore, Carly discovered that ‘The Legends’ are divided in two major categories: the ‘Heroics’ and the ‘Comedies’. A bit like Shakespeare, thinks Carly. The tales are wonderfully formulaic, have audience participation and usually have the following layout.
Karagiozis appears with his three sons dancing and singing. He welcomes the audience and holds a comical dialogue with his children. He then announces the title of the episode and enters his cottage. The Vizier meets Hadjiavatis and reports that he has a problem and needs someone to perform a deed. Karagiozis hears about it and decides it is an opportunity to gain money. The regular characters appear one at a time in the scene, Karagiozis has a funny dialogue with them, mocks them, fools them, or becomes annoyed and ousts them violently. Finally, Karagiozis is either rewarded by the Vizier or if his mischief is revealed he is punished.
Carly notes that Karagiozis will often take on roles inappropriately. He certainly doesn’t seem to suffer from imposter syndrome as he can be seen variously as a doctor, cook, senator, scholar, and fisherman. And then he appears with gorillas and ghosts when he surely cannot have seen either.
Carly has learnt so much from her investigations into Karagiozis inspired by her matchbox collection. Or is it an obsession? Really it is mind-blowing.
Carly has grown up with myths about fire. The dominant one was “Those who play with fire, wet their beds!” Even as a paediatrician, Carly has not been able to determine if there is any truth in this myth. Certainly, this hasn’t happened to her. She is happy to light fires when making a BBQ and particularly likes to burn incense and tea lights to ‘ground’ herself. She finds physically igniting things using lighters is tricky and she regularly burns herself inadvertently. And, moreover, feels like she might be thought of as a smoker. Carly has never even learnt to smoke. So this is an association she finds abhorrent. She has been a campaigning anti-smoker for decades. At work, in the mess, not long after she qualified as a doctor, she led a movement to make the mess smoke-free. It was seen as quite revolutionary at the time. She smirks, as now smoking really isn’t allowed anywhere inside. Not even in cars, if you have a child with you.
Carly often cycles around with her phone at-the-ready to photograph inconsiderate parents subjecting their children to passive smoke. Colleagues warn her against this as she is unprotected when on a bike. However, she is committed to helping anyone who has made a decision to quit smoking. Her father did it. Her son did it. And she is very prepared to have that conversation around the hospital when people are brazenly smoking next to the NO SMOKING signs.
But this story is about matches, and not an anti-smoking tirade. We have established Carly is not keen on using lighters. Mostly because she burns herself when trying to obtain a flame. But more because matches are nice and old-fashioned. She remembers fondly the match-seller in Oliver. “Who will buy…” Oh no. Carly’s memory is shot to pieces. It is actually “Who will buy my sweet, red roses?”
Any day, she would prefer a box of matches. There is something comforting in them. Short, long, but pretty much dependable, unless the side of the box where you strike the matches has worn off. But these are only on her very favourite matchboxes. Especially as Carly has taken to refilling them with standard matches from large, utilitarian boxes. She only really keeps matchboxes she has bought in Greece. More recently she bought some signature boxes from Mexico. They have wonderful vibrant emerald-green tips. But the wooden part of the match is so thin and bendy. And yet again, Carly is prone to burning her fingers.
Mostly, she lights the tea lights next to her bed. They sit on small velvet square samples you can get for free from various sofa bed places. When she visited her friend Melinda in Manchester, they often went there with the purpose of pretending to look for sofas, but really to collect these sumptuous squares. Carly would like to make a quilt, but that is probably a bit cheeky. Not that it has stopped her in the past…
“Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm” thinks Carly, “An idea?” Unfortunately, Melinda has dropped Carly as a friend. She felt that Carly was not sympathetic enough when she was ill. Carly feels guilty about this but always does find it hard to be overly caring when a friend has a psychosomatic illness. Anyway, Carly has the lovely squares to remember her and has made new friends instead. Besides the tea lights, Carly often has candles she lights that she made herself. In old-fashioned teacups. She learnt this on a course and uses soya wax as it is less carcinogenic. She has a box of small bottles with different essential oils to add wonderful fragrances to the candles. Mostly she makes them lilac in colour and adds in lavender flowers with the matching scent. She often lights one tall taper as well. In a pretty bottle that once contained wine or a spirit. But you must be careful to blow them out before falling asleep.
She vividly remembers a fire in her flat in Tel Aviv caused by dodgy candlesticks which melted. Her entire family woke up covered in smoke. The wiring in the building directed the night porter to the wrong floor. They were on the 14th, and he thought the fire was on the 7th. Unreliable wiring by a factor of two. Carly later found out that this wasn’t the only fire caused by these candlesticks. Unsurprisingly, the company that made them went out of business in the end. Carly would like to have said to herself “Good job” but actually she was sad as she loved how pretty they were. Just not made for candles. Her children loved fires. Planned ones, anyway!
Every summer, Carly’s children would stay with their favourite babysitters in Poland. And each time they set up a huge bonfire, coated themselves in protective water and would then jump through it. But Carly had to put a stop to this when her oldest son’s armpits caught fire. Even this was too much for Carly to condone.
Instead, she encourages everyone to burn incense, as this is safer but still enjoyable. She once went to a market whilst on a knitting holiday in Mysore, India, and helped make some sticks. It was really just a ruse to ensure she bought lots of them from the stallholder. But it really was fun. She rarely goes anywhere without her trusty incense burner and sticks. Recently she succumbed to an advert on YouTube and bought a special incense burner called a spirulina. The cone-shaped incense had a hole in the middle and the smoke released tumbled down the device a bit like running down a steep slope with switchbacks.
Bringing herself back to matches. Carly’s current favourite ones (as she has already mentioned) she buys in Greece. Mostly because you can collect different characters on them. They are hilarious and based on Asian shadow puppets. Carly fondly remembers seeing a number of shadow puppet plays in Java, Indonesia. She went there with her new boyfriend, Ades. He became her old boyfriend, then fiancé, then husband and now he is her newly remarried ex-husband. Hey ho!
Regarding the characters on the Greek matchboxes, Carly finds out the main protagonist is a fellow called Karagiozis, meaning ‘dark eye’. He was very popular because of his scatological language and protruding phallus. Carly had done some investigation into this Karagiozis character. She knew what the word phallus meant. Most people do. But scatological? What on earth is that? Oh, it is an obsession with excrement. Great, thought Carly. Now, not quite such a loveable rogue anymore. She delves into Karagiozis, and he is usually depicted as a poor hunchbacked Greek, his right arm is always depicted long, his clothes are ragged and patched, and his feet are always bare. Because of his poverty and laziness, Karagiozis uses mischievous ways to get money to feed his family. He lives in a cottage with his wife Aglaia (who constantly nags him from inside their cottage) and his three sons (known collectively as Kollitiria) during the time of the Ottoman Empire.
Carly feels some sympathy for Aglaia, who has a husband who only lives to eat and sleep. “What can she do other than nag?”, questions Carly. Hadjiavatis is Karagiozis’ childhood friend and sidekick, an honest and serious figure, who often ends up unwittingly being wrapped up in Karagiozis’ schemes. Barba Yorgos (Uncle George) is a sturdily built dairy farmer who wears the traditional kilt. Despite knowing Karagiozis is a crook, he sometimes helps him out, beating opponents black and blue with his staff. Carly is a little sad as she had previously seen Barba George on matchboxes, but she hadn’t started her collection at that time. Since then it has eluded her. The minor characters include Stavrakas who has only one overly long independent arm, Sior Dionysios, an Italian gentleman who pretends to be a nobleman, Morfonios, is both vain and ugly with a huge head and bulbous nose; still, he considers himself to be handsome and keeps falling in love. He often shouts out a sound like ‘whit’ Carly loves this as she works at a hospital locally known at The Whit. She wonders what this exclamation noise sounds like.
Finally, there is even a Jew, Solomon, from Thessaloniki. Carly is delighted that it isn’t Solomon who has the large nose following age-old antisemitic stereotypes. The Visier announces trials, deeds or tests to which Karagiozis usually decides to become involved and Fatme is his beautiful daughter playing either obedient roles or rebellious ones.
Carly finds out there are a number of myths about how Karagiozis seems to have come to Greece. Some say it was during Ottoman rule for the entertainment of the sultan, whilst others say that Greek merchants brought him and his legends from China. Furthermore, Carly discovered that ‘The Legends’ are divided in two major categories: the ‘Heroics’ and the ‘Comedies’. A bit like Shakespeare, thinks Carly. The tales are wonderfully formulaic, have audience participation and usually have the following layout.
Karagiozis appears with his three sons dancing and singing. He welcomes the audience and holds a comical dialogue with his children. He then announces the title of the episode and enters his cottage. The Vizier meets Hadjiavatis and reports that he has a problem and needs someone to perform a deed. Karagiozis hears about it and decides it is an opportunity to gain money. The regular characters appear one at a time in the scene, Karagiozis has a funny dialogue with them, mocks them, fools them, or becomes annoyed and ousts them violently. Finally, Karagiozis is either rewarded by the Vizier or if his mischief is revealed he is punished.
Carly notes that Karagiozis will often take on roles inappropriately. He certainly doesn’t seem to suffer from imposter syndrome as he can be seen variously as a doctor, cook, senator, scholar, and fisherman. And then he appears with gorillas and ghosts when he surely cannot have seen either.
Carly has learnt so much from her investigations into Karagiozis inspired by her matchbox collection. Or is it an obsession? Really it is mind-blowing.
