How to sign a contract when you're in Australia and your publisher is in New York

Australia, like any civilized country, uses metric paper sizes.  The US still uses mediaeval letter-sized paper measured in inches.  All they need is the last page printed and signed.  All I need is one letter-sized page.  Here's how you do it:

1. Go insane trying to find letter-sized paper in Australia.
2. Send wife out to find letter-sized paper.
3. Give up.
4. Buy some A3 sketching paper.
5. Get the last contract, which is printed on letter-size.
6. Trace around the old contract onto the A3.
7. Cut out the tracing with scissors.
8. Place custom-built page into home printer paper tray that's designed for A4.
9. Print and send.
10. Resolve to buy sheaf of letter paper next time I'm in the US.

That contract takes me out to Book 4, with an option on Book 5, so the tale of Nico and Diotima continues.

Book 4's working title is The Marathon Conspiracy.  Working titles almost never survive, so it might appear next year under a different name.  I don't yet have a stable working title for Book 5.  I normally cycle through a few before I find something that feels right.  

But the next book of course is Book 3, and that's on sale in May.  It's called Sacred Games.

Ancient Greek toilets

There was no such thing as a flushing toilet in Ancient Greece.  Remarkably, there was a flushing toilet 1,200 years before that, at the Palace of Knossos, in Minoan times, and it's the oldest known flushing toilet in Europe.  It probably worked by having a slave pour buckets of water into the drain.

But in Classical times, when Nico and Diotima are at work, they had no plumbing into the home.  All water was carried in from public fountains, and that was intended for drinking and washing.  If you needed to go to the toilet, well, that was what the chamber pot was for.

If you lived in the city, then the bad news was that there was no garbage collection service.  There was however a drain that ran down the middle of every street.  That's where the contents of the chamber pot went.  I've made use of this fun fact without any mercy for Nico.  Whenever he gets knocked down in a street fight, he invariably goes straight into that drain.

In fact we can be quite certain that's where the waste went, because eventually the Athenians passed a law forbidding citizens to dump their waste in the street.  The same law created the world's first public landfill site outside the city walls (another first for Athens!) and required all rubbish to be dumped no closer than that.  However this all happened in 400BC, sixty years too late to save Nico from going into the poo.

Now as to the delicate problem of a world without toilet paper...you won't be surprised to hear that this is not a well-documented subject.  The Romans famously used a sponge tied to the end of a stick.  The Greeks might have used a sponge too, when one came to hand.  But there's evidence to suggest that a handful of clay was more common.   An interesting alternative was the leaves of vegetables such as leeks.

I must mention in passing that in the absence of washing powder, the next best thing to keep your clothes clean is urine.  (It's acidic.)  They actually had collection jars to store it in.

2013

Welcome to 2013!   It's the first year to consist of four digits that can be arranged consecutively (0,1,2,3), since the year 1432!

We live at a privileged time, because like the people in the 1400s, we'll see this unusual phenomenon twice.  Next stop: 2031.

Modern Greek toilets

So with all of us recovering from excessive New Year partying, I think it's time to talk about going to the toilet.

Let me start with some modern travel advice:  it's a little known but quaint custom of modern Greece that you do not put the used paper in the toilet and flush it.  This is because Greek sewerage pipes are half the width of pipes anywhere else on the planet, and if you flush the paper, then the drain will block and that with which you thought you were permanently parted will make an unwelcome return.

Modern Greek toilets have a bin next to the bowl.  The paper goes in there, and is disposed with the other trash.  I mention this little detail because many tourists find it impossible to believe, despite the numerous signs put up by the locals begging people not to flush the paper.  (Recent buildings don't have this problem...sometimes.)

Another interesting custom is the bathroom attendant, who is to be found at many conveniences throughout the eastern Mediterranean.  Bathroom attendants have approximately the worst job in the world.  You pay this nice person a small sum at the entrance, in return for which you are given the toilet paper which you otherwise will not find within.  Tourists who don't know the system will sometimes be heard from within toilet stalls, calling plaintively for help after it's too late.

Of course, the attendant system leaves the question of how much paper you get for your money.  I recall this being a particular problem in Yugoslavia in the years before that sad country imploded.  It was quite normal to hand over your cash and receive three thin squares of forlorn paper that weren't going to stretch the distance, so to speak.  The value of the dinar was in free-fall at the time due to hyperinflation.  For the cost of the toilet paper, we calculated that it was cheaper to cut out the middleman and just use your paper money.

This is why backpacker guides sometimes advise you to carry your own rolls of paper, which then become the target of desperate thieves.

Io Saturnalia!

Happy Christmas!

Or, as it should more properly be said, Io Saturnalia!

Because Christmas is a pagan Roman festival in honour of the god Saturn.  The Io is pronounced Yo, making ancient Romans sound somewhat like rappers.  Saturnalia was appropriated by early Christians for the birth of Jesus, because there wasn't the slightest hope of getting people to give up their beloved Saturnalia.

Saturnalia was the Time of Misrule.  All normal order disappeared.  Masters were expected to serve their own slaves.  Saturnalia began on what we'd call 17th December and carried on for a week or more of non-stop partying.  Several Roman emperors tried to limit the time of Saturnalia, but everyone ignored them.

The official last day of Saturnalia was our 23rd December, called Sigillaria, when people gave each other gifts.

Does this sound familiar?  Christmas/Saturnalia is such an ancient festival that no one has the faintest clue when it first began.  When you gather round on Christmas Day with your friends and family and exchange gifts and happiness, you'll be carrying on a human tradition that's been going for thousands of years.

Keep up the good work.

Io Saturnalia!