"THE AXINOI" club, Greek for sea urchins

I have just become a member of a new club THE AXINOI, as a matter of fact I am one of the founding members. There are four of us and there may not be any others, we will though have invited guests.

The President is eighty-six years old, I am seventy-two, another member is seventy and the kid, the youngest member, is only sixty. Our first meeting was at a beach side taverna, where we ate grilled octopus, drank ouzo, ate tomatoes and fresh onions, discussed the world affairs, our lives and talked about our experiences in Africa, something we all shared.

We occasionally, discreetly watch beautiful German tourists on the beach.

All clubs seem to have an objective, usually noble. We at the moment do not have one, and we may never have one, but I will keep you informed when and if we have decided on one.

There are no wives and they will not be involved in the club. We have been involved in their clubs and spend enough time with them, going to supermarkets and doing other chores, as well as the role of appendage to their clubs.

No cooking group, bridge club or even a book club. Ours has no reason to be except to be.

Why did we pick the name the AXINOI? Very simply, they are rare, delicious, hard to find, expensive, and illegal to catch without a license. But most of all, they are prickly. They seem to be pretty much like us, rare, expensive, hard to find, prickly and pretty delicious.

There are two photos on this blog, one shows the urchins, ready to eat, open with a little lemon, having first been rinsed in seawater, they taste absolutely amazing, one of the best mezedes imaginable. Extremely hard to come by, especially like this; maybe our objective was to include this in our mezedes repertoire. Seems like a pretty good objective. The other photo is whole, as they are in the sea, alive, prickly and rather gorgeous.

Sounds like us.