66) Australian dangerous animals and Cypriot solons.

What you already know about Australia is that it is literally full of dangerous animals, among deadly jellyfishes, crocodiles that indifferently stir in salty water or in sweet water, sharks, deadly spiders and snakes among the most poisonous of the world, there less lethal human beings absolutely, perhaps not to fear but absolutely to respect.

The name already arouses a certain respect; “Solon.” Σόλων from the Greek, this illustrious Athenian, statesman, legislator, reformer and poet lived between 638 and 558 B.C.

The solon that will welcome you is surely the nicest person that you will find inside the Internet Cafe at 265 of Flinders Street.

A big man that you will always find suit with shirt, shorts and slippers a big man that to distractedly look at him could arouse fear but in the reality it is instead able to unsheathe a winning smile as that of a cheerful and playful child.

You can only see him become serious if you talk about taxes or if you refuse his coffee.

Is not a chance that the solon’s name is Solon but for the friends it is only Sol, is he a synthesis of efficiency, liking, reception and savoir-faire. Only fault? He’s a Cypriot. but it is not even perhaps a fault, we can say that he’s the more sympathetic Cypriot in the world.

In full his name is Solon Paschalis.

He immediately taken me in liking, and treated me like an old friend despite my nature was still not easy going like Australiana, I think too much formal.

Every time that I went to his shop he has offered me the coffee, and insisted for doing me a discount and every time there was the opportunity he introduced me to the various Italian that transited in his shop.

One day, showing his showy belly, laughing told me that he was eating too much and that he needed a diet, we joked alot about it and he told me that he had started to go by bicycle on the Strand, just as me.

Since every day I went on the Strand spending some hours riding, I met him and we stopped there so I decided to reverse my turn and to follow him homeward, also because the weather threatened rain.

At the end of the Strand we met his brother-in-law and his nephew that Sol didn’t miss to introduce me, then we continued toward the center, so he invited me to his house, not very far away from Flinders Street.

The road to arrive to his house was so steep that also standing on the pedals the back wheel of the bicycle started to skid, therefore gone down by the bike taken to push it and I looked back, Solon had already gone down of saddle before me and also he was pushing his hand bike, but he had remained very back clearly.

We did in time to arrive on the door of house that the downpour began, then we took the bikes and we brought them in the house.

Sol, visibly heated up, removed the shirt and literally thrown under the downpour and had a good a fast shower.

It entered house to take some towels and he asked me if I also wanted to take a shower, but I refused not having so much desire of it I followed him outside the house.

In the house it also had a beautiful well furnished bathroom, almost fine, in comparison to the type of house, an old and characteristic wooden Queenslander, very well maintained inside with a splendid wooden floor and ethnic furnishings with so much of embalmed crocodiles and tribal tools a lot of cd and dvd everywhere, but the outside of the house was instead in bad state, therefore where did he go to take a shower?

Under the house had been drawn a place, we say a porch, where had been installed a rudimentary and effectiveness shower, a thing that you can find in a camping in Versilia (Tuscany), certainly not here, in the City of Townsville.

Meanwhile it was stopping raining and therefore I told him that I would have gone back home, but Sol invited me to stay and with that expression of his bonaria I felt obliged to not refuse, he told me that he was waiting for a friend with which he would have looked at a soccer play, don’t ask me more about teams or something like this, he also offered him to cook something, but to this point I taken in hand the situation (you know Australian cooking it’s dangerous for italians as poison).

Entered kitchen it made me see where it held the food, but I saw that the sink was litterally hidden under a pile of pots and wares and a stain on the wall on the stove where the aspirator was.

I asked him what it had happened to the aspirator, candidly he explained me that a possum entered through the fireplace and it had been imprisoned in the aspirator and then killed by the fans and everything this was manifested with the smell of “dead body” that the house had pervaded and that the dismantlement of the same aspirator had required.

I washed some frying pan and some flat and I cooked a pasta dish, I didn’t succeed particularly well but Sol instead appreciated and thanked me. Meanwhile the friend that was waiting had arrived and therefore I said good bye both, and I went back home. letting them watching at the soccer game.

This is Sol, a big man that arouses respect, but in the reality a heart of little boy inside the body of a spitfire.

If you will visit Townsville and want to use Skype to call Italy or simply to surf on the net come to Den’s computer cafe and you ask for him, you will perhaps find Rainer a nice German guy or Alvaro a less nice but however always very kind Chilean, but if you have time, wait for Sol and tell him that you are my friend.

The Internet Den

Flinders Mall / 265 Flinders Street

Townsville 4810

Ph: 07 47214500

Map

Because Sol is my friend, he’s a solar person, a person available and devoted to people just as his illustrious homonym that he wrote:

πολλοὶ γὰρ πλουτεῦσι κακοί, ἀγαθοὶ δὲ πένονται:
ἀλλ’ ἡμεῖς αὐτοῖς οὐ διαμειψόμεθα
τῆς ἀρετῆς τὸν πλοῦτον: ἐπεὶ τὸ μὲν ἔμπεδον αἰεί,
χρήματα δ’ ἀνθρώπων ἄλλοτε ἄλλος ἔχει.
Some wicked men are rich, some good are poor;
We will not change our virtue for their store:
Virtue’s a thing that none can take away,
But money changes owners all the day.[

ἔστην δ’ ἀμφιβαλὼν κρατερὸν σάκος ἀμφοτέροισι:
νικᾶν δ’ οὐκ εἴασ’ οὐδετέρους ἀδίκως.
Before them both I held my shield of might
And let not either touch the other’s right

χαῦνα μὲν τότ’ ἐφράσαντο, νῦν δέ μοι χολούμενοι
λοξὸν ὀφθαλμοῖς ὁρῶσι πάντες ὥστε δήϊον.
Formerly they boasted of me vainly; with averted eyes
Now they look askance upon me; friends no more but enemies

Solon, by now elderly, upon hearing the song, asked the boy to teach him to sing it. When someone asked, “Why should you waste your time on it?” Solon replied ἵνα μαθὼν αὐτὸ ἀποθάνω, “So that I may learn it then die.”

~ di Sorrentino Davide su 5 gennaio 2010.