It’s Oxi Day in Greece, commemorating the day in 1940 when Mussolini demanded that Greece allow entry to the Italian army, and Prime Minster Ionnis Metaxis, awakened in the night and standing in his pyjamas, facing the dark might of fascism, replied “Oxi” (“No!”), and cast the tiny new nation of Greece to stand alone in the Balkans against the invading Axis. It’s a day that always makes me proud of Greece, this odd, noble, growling, cussed little country, and on Oxi Day it’s always a great joy to watch the schoolchildren in their procession and the brass bands marching and the water taxis full to bursting and to sit among the waterfront tables and tavernas laden with friends and families having lunch.