My Greek God – MGG – One You Won’t Have Heard Of
Apollo – By Leo Caillard
What made me leave England, leave friends and family behind and jump on a plane to Greece, in the blink of an eye never to return?
Love made me do it:
I met my very own personal Greek God!
Apollo, Greek God of the sun, prophecy, light, poetry and music.
Son of Zeus, twin of Artemis.
You’ve probably heard of the great Greek Gods Zeus, Apollo and Poseidon but I bet you’ve never heard of a Greek God named Anastassios.
Anastassios in Greek means means the resurrection of Christ; my Anastassios, or Tassos, was born at Easter hence his name.
Let me introduce him!
From now on I shall refer to him as MGG – My Greek God.
MGG – My Greek God – looking the part in Rome
(Think Mafia)
Love at First Glance
First off, let me tell you, I didn’t meet MGG on Mount Olympus, the usual hang out for Greek Gods; I met him in the most unlikely of places; Bradford, England.
It all happened in 1975, a glance across a crowded shop, where I happened to be working at the time.
Most days, at around four in the afternoon, a group of boys would make an appearance and mooch around for a while, I had worked out that they were foreign from their rather exotic air and from the fact that they spoke a strange lingo, I knew not which.
One of them caught my eye but who was he and how could I meet him?
The dilemma of how to meet this boy was soon solved, one day, as the unknowns were wandering around in the shop, a co-worker heard me exclaim to my friend, ‘oh, look, he’s here’.
The co-worker piped up, ‘I know him’, after some intense interrogation of said co – worker, I knew where he spent his evenings, that his name was Tassos and he was Greek.
As I lived in Leeds and apart from work, didn’t frequent Bradford much, ‘Kamares of La Ronde’ and ‘Tropicana’ were foreign to me, not surprising; they were Greek nightclubs.
Long story short, I dragged my friend to above dives and they were; the Bradford Greeks!
The Bradford Greeks. MGG on the right
I was in love; not just any love, I was besotted and you could go as far as to say I was in a state of ecstasy!
The Power of Love
MGG – My Greek God
1975 Laisteridge Lane, Bradford, England.
Laisteridge Lane Student Digs, Bradford England
My friends and my family, especially my father, told me to end the affair!
Were they completely mad?
They just knew how devastated I would be when the time came for him to return to Greece after finishing his studies.
The time for him to leave England was closer than I thought, his father died, he returned to Greece for a short while, on his return, he dropped a bombshell, he was leaving England for good; like next month!
I felt as though I had been struck by lightning.
Get ready folks; get the violins out, grab a tissue, Tassos asked me to go to Greece with him!
Think about it, he said, I didn’t need to; I was already on on my way!
The Rest is History
Congratulations Mr & Mrs Greek God
I left England on February 5th 1977 and married my Greek god on March 7th 1980
Actually, I married him twice; just to make sure!
The first time was in England, a civil wedding and 3 years later, the official Greek Orthodox Wedding.
Me and My Greek God, loving Poros. Greece
Birthday celebrations, mine, in Syros
MGG giving a beard a go, didn’t last long.
And I’m still here!
There have been rough patches, no sooner than Tassos returned to Greece, he left to do his national service, two and a half years of it; two and a half years of being alone in a foreign country and not speaking the language.
There were battles with language and my mother-in-law, I missed fish and chips and the Yorkshire Dales but I’m still here and I’m still in love with MGG. (Mostly!)
