A Kilo of String is a series of short podcasts about my experiences as a Brit living in Greece with the occasional digression into total irrelevances.
Each MP3 podcast can be played directly or downloaded here or from iTunes.
You can also Subscribe in a reader to ‘A Kilo of String’ or Subscribe by email (both free!) to get notifications whenever a new podcast in this series is available.
Loosely based on the podcast series, A Kilo of String is now available as an ebook, paperback and audiobook. Click here for details.
Episode One – The Greek Escape
What’s it really like in Greece? Hague the Vague to the rescue? How do you buy string in Greece? What happened to Greek logic?
Listen to the podcast to find the answers to these and many other important questions about life in Greece.
Click the play button or download the MP3 (11 mins 04 secs – 6.2 Mb)
Episode Two – Snow Going Back
Why are there so many blind people on the Greek island of Zakynthos? What’s all this white stuff? Does your chewing gum lose its flavour on the bedpost overnight?
Listen to the podcast to find the answers to these and many other important questions about life in Greece… Well maybe not the chewing gum one.
Click the play button or download the MP3 (11 mins 02 secs – 6.2 Mb)
Episode Three – Smelly Thursday and Spy Wednesday
What happens at Easter in Greece? Why is the Thursday before Lent smelly? What did the priest say to the vegetarian? How do you make kokoretzi? Would you really want to?
Listen to the podcast to find the answers to these and many other important questions about life in Greece.
Click the play button or download the MP3 (12 mins 47 secs – 7.1 Mb)
Episode Four – Do You Wanna Be In My Gang?
Are elections a waste of paper? Who ate the Acropolis (with chips)? How do you choose when there’s only one candidate? What can you get for two euros in Greece?
Listen to the podcast to find the answers to these and many other important questions about life in Greece.
Click the play button or download the MP3 (13 mins 25 secs – 7.5 Mb)
Episode Five – You Don’t Wanna Do It Like That
How many Greeks does it take to tell you how to prune an olive tree? Why is grass a potentially dangerous word? What exactly is a Grexit? Have you got a light?
Listen to the podcast to find the answers to these and many other important questions about life in Greece.
Click the play button or download the MP3 (12 mins 58 secs – 7.3 Mb)
Episode Six – Houston, We Have a Problem
How hard can it be to type three digits into a computer? Can sitting down regularly in a comfortable chair really rest your legs? Whose gas is it anyway? WTF?
Listen to the podcast to find the answers to these and many other important questions about life in Greece.
Click the play button or download the MP3 (11 mins 44 secs – 6.7 Mb)
Episode Seven – Sinking Ships and Chicken Livers
Who’s over the moon and who’s sick as a parrot? Why are chicken livers useful (and not just to chickens)? Can you slap someone on live TV and get away with it? Is football a game of two Alans?
Listen to the podcast to find the answers to these and many other important questions about life in Greece.
Click the play button or download the MP3 (12 mins 41 secs – 7.2 Mb)
Episode Eight – No Greeks Please, We’re British
What’s Cameron got against Greek people? If ‘No’ is the answer, what was the question? Who shall not pass? What’s Holst got to do with it? How many quarks are there in a Higgs boson?
Listen to the podcast to find the answers to these and many other important questions about life in Greece.
Click the play button or download the MP3 (13 mins 16 secs – 6.4 Mb)
The music at the beginning and end of Episodes 1 to 8 is by
kind permission of Ed Kliman for TexasMusicForge.com
Episode Nine – The Dog Ate My Microphone
Angela Merkel’s jacket – bad taste or deliberate provocation? Greece – still listless after all these years? Are undocumented cheese pies the real cause of Greece’s financial woes? What did Merkel really say to Samaras?
Listen to the podcast to find the answers to these and many other important questions about life in Greece.
Click the play button or download the MP3 (15 mins 54 secs – 5.9 Mb)
Episode Ten – I’d Rather Eat My Own Face
Anyone for olive harvesting? Is there such a thing as a free lunch? Should olive harvesting be classified as a dangerous sport? Was Vasillis right about farmers?
Listen to the podcast to find the answers to these and many other important questions about life in Greece.
Click the play button or download the MP3 (14 mins 14 secs – 5.5 Mb)
Episode Eleven – Angela Merkel And The End Of The World
So this is Christmas, and what have they done? What happened to all the flying saucers? Is anyone listening in Greenland? Does Santa Claus really eat all those mince pies?
Listen to the podcast to find the answers to these and many other important questions about life in Greece.
Click the play button or download the MP3 (13 mins 56 secs – 5.5 Mb)
The Christmas music used in Episode Eleven is ‘A Mini Christmas Song’ by Milton Paredes
Episode Twelve – Play It Again, Samaras
Who was ‘European Politician of the Year’ in 2012? Who got their sums seriously wrong? Who says Germans don’t have a sense of humour? What have you done with my leest? What’s a fiscal multiplier got to do with it?
Listen to the podcast to find the answers to these and many other important questions about life in Greece.
Click the play button or download the MP3 (14 mins 33 secs – 5.2 Mb)
Episode Thirteen – Unlucky for Some
Why is spitting sometimes good for you? How do you get rid of unwelcome guests? How many lives does a Greek cat have? Who put something unpleasant in the Dowager Duchess’s corset?
Listen to the podcast to find the answers to these and many other important questions about life in Greece.
Click the play button or download the MP3 (15 mins 22 secs – 8.8 Mb)
Episode Fourteen – Taxing Times on Terra Firma
Anyone for a coup? Can it pay not to get married? Why is giving blood good for your holiday entitlement? Who’s not leaving on a jet plane? What exactly are they imputing?
Listen to the podcast to find the answers to these and many other important questions about life in Greece.
Click the play button or download the MP3 (14 mins 50 secs – 6.5 Mb)
Episode Fifteen – Cold Off the Press
Who’s been roasting chestnuts on an open fire? Who’s had their electricity cut off? Can deep-fried Mars bars be good for you? What do people do with all that olive oil?
Listen to the podcast to find the answers to these and many other important questions about life in Greece.
Click the play button or download the MP3 (15 mins 0 secs – 9.4 Mb)
Episode Sixteen – Unjust Causes and Non-Impediments
Who’s wrong to be right? What was the Great Envelope Controversy? Was this a marriage made in Milton Keynes? What’s this in my yoghourt? Is this the end?
Listen to the podcast to find the answers to these and many other important questions about life in Greece.
Click the play button or download the MP3 (14 mins 28 secs – 6.2 Mb)
Episode Seventeen – The Audiobook of the Book of the Podcast
Yes, it’s back! Nearly four years since my last ‘A Kilo of String’ podcast episode, I’ve finally got round to recording a new one.
What have I been doing for the past three years and nine months? Audiobook? What audiobook? Who’s been banging on about Brexit? What barely fits and is flimsy? When is a preface not a preface?
Listen to this podcast episode to find the answers to these and many other important questions and hear a sneak preview of my forthcoming audiobook.
Click the play button or download the MP3 (13 mins 41 secs – 6.5 Mb)
The music at the beginning and end of Episode 9 onwards is by
kind permission of Greek five-piece band Strovili.
Two of their complete tracks are available from Greek Jazz Fusion at
http://www.athensvoice.gr/site/city-news-voices/podcast/guest-podcast
Rob Johnson 
Rob
When did you start to sound like Will Self? Oh, I see – he sounds like you!
Nick
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As the Bard put it, “This above all; to thine own or someone else’s Self be true”.
Will Self on ‘Grumpy Old Men’ when the subject was food: “Basically food is just shit waiting to happen.”
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Pingback: You Don’t Wanna Do It Like That – Episode Five of ‘A Kilo of String’ Podcast Series | Rob Johnson
Listened to all five in quick succession – I’m a late arrival at the Kilo of String Ball, or should that be… never mind – but only because I couldn’t listen to them all at once. Excellent stuff.
Jim
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Thanks, Jim. Good to see you still haven’t given up on the apostrophe.
So is ‘wecanreadit’ yours then?
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Enjoying your very enlightening podcasts. Most entertaining!
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Thank you, Tina. Glad you’re enjoying them. New one coming very soon.
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Pingback: Houston, We Have a Problem – Episode Six of ‘A Kilo of String’ Podcast Series | Rob Johnson
this is briliant and very amusing to listen to keep up the good work rob
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Thank you, Margaret. That’s very kind of you. Hopefully Episode 7 will be out by the end of the week.
Rob
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Fab. The experience with British Gas had me laughing out loud. (Should I say lolling? I can’t GTH of all these email acronyms.) I wonder what the record length is for a pointless telephone quest like this.
Glad to hear episode 7’s on its way
Jim
p.s sorry didn’t reply to your question of 2nd June. Yes. Thank’s for kind comment’s about apostrophe.
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Thanks, Jim. I expect most Brits have had similar experiences to my British Gas one, which is why it seems to strike a chord.
As for acronyms, I quite agree. I think it was Oscar Wilde who said, “If there’s one thing worse than a TLA [three letter acronym], it’s an FLA [four letter acronym].”
Episode 7 now up and running.
ATB,
Rob
P.S. I owe you an email. Will get onto it ASAP.
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Ep 7: tee-hee, again. Enough lolling moments to give me a sore neck.
Jim
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Thanks, Jim. Hope the neck gets better soon.
Rob
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Pingback: Rob Johnson…….Episode Ten – I’d Rather Eat My Own Face | A Diary From Greece
Hi Rob – just listened to all the podcasts back to back walking from Miller’s Dale to Monsal Head in the rain. Glad to hear your two impressions making it into #11.
Chris
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Hi Chris. Good to know you had something to entertain (?) you whilst traipsing through all that dull Peak District scenery. I hope you quaffed a pint or two on my behalf at the Stable Bar when you got to Monsal Head.
Impressions? No, they were the real thing. Cost me a fortune!
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Hello Rob,
A friend with long experience of Greece gave me some advice just after we moved to Crete in 2007…
“If you see somebody doing anything, never ask your self why…. Always better to tell your self why not”.
As I struggle through year four of our one year house build in the South of Crete, with my once brown hair now shades of monochrome… I have to admit that I would not be anywhere else…
Beautifully observed, written & presented.
Steve…
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Hi Steve, and many thanks for your kind words of encouragement. Much appreciated, I assure you. 🙂
I love the quote from your friend about “never ask yourself why”. I just wish I’d known it when we first moved to Greece.
Is this house you’re building almost finished then? (Or shouldn’t I ask?) At least building our own house was one thing we didn’t have to do when we came here.
All the best,
Rob
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