Stars Hollow vs Melissia

Lately I've been spending my every waking hour watching the Gilmore Girls. Highly addictive, highly recommended. I realised yesterday, as I was half way through the third season, that is has started to rub off on me. I found myself not only agreeing to escort my dad at a pointless town meeting, but also looking forward to it. I was hoping there would be some sort of speech involved by the guy who was to announce his candidacy for mayor (hopefully someone like Taylor), but it was soon clear that this was a gathering of shaking hands and exchanging surnames. The meeting was taking place in a cafeteria I didn't know existed on the main square. All the tables outside were taken so we sat at the table nearest to the kitchen, bathroom and, I had some vague hope, nearest to the fire exit. Then I remembered, this is Greece, there are usually no fire exits. I suggested that we play backgammon, the boards were right next to us and the temptation severe, but my dad thought we'd look unsociable so we sat like the old men on The Muppet Show instead, debating the term 'βλαχοδήμαρχος' and silently estimating the average age of the attendees (my estimate was somewhere between 60 and 65). Suddenly, men started coming our way, stating their surname (which my dad who's hard of hearing never caught) and shaking our hands, and briskly walking away to the next table. Fascinating. Finally one of them suggested we move to join a group at a more central table. As we were still feeling adventurous, we agreed and sat with three nice people with whom we had cordial conversation for over an hour. As it turned out, their house is very close to ours and they moved to the area at the same time as we did, which meant that we could reminisce about how things used to be when there were still trees in the area, and sheep and flowers and that we could gossip about the old neighbours, especially the one responsible for the slaughtering of the last sheep, a horrible stain in our neighbourhood's history, which led to the chronic depression of Mr Sotiris the shepherd, another favourite subject of mine. My dad got invited to join the gang of pensioners at their daily meetings in that very same cafeteria, and as we were driving back, he mumbled 'well, it was better to have gone than to have stayed in', which coming from my dad means a lot, and which is now my new philosophy. Be it a town meeting, a traditional music fair, an amateur dance performance, hell, even a christening, almost everything is better than staying in.