Opening the Door

Victoria Square - a hub for many refugees

It’s 10am at Orange House in Athens, and we open up to the day’s first visitors, a family with two small boys. Here to use the hot shower which serves dozens of refugees every week, they prepare with patience in the living room – except for young Sami*, who, I learn too late, flings things about, and is not to be let loose with Lego. His parents tell their story in a single broken sentence. “We pick up our babies, and we run away from war.”

Another clang of the doorbell heralds bigger boys; young men, almost. Momentarily jaunty; briefly polite, they nod, then settle back to smartphones. Orange House offers free WiFi 10 hours a day, a clever way to tempt kids in and off the streets.  

By mid morning, the door swings back and forth nonstop for students. Orange House has free classes daily in languages; guitar; yoga, dance. The youngest learners are 6 or 7, the oldest, 60 or 70; they speak Farsi, Arabic, Linguala; they’re Muslim, Christian, Hindi; some are illiterate, some have PhDs. They’re capable, they’re compromised. They move across our TV news in dusty pickup trucks and rubber dinghies, holding their children hard. They are the refugees.

Banner in Exarchia Square

We are the volunteers. Most of us are not here long, and none for long enough. We get to know them briefly and intensely - the Lego throwers; the villager who dries clothes in the oven; the Palestinian with a scholarship to Athens University. We engage over football and the weather; poetry and philosophy. We listen to tales of inhuman camps and missing family members. We clean, we teach, we pick up little plastic blocks. We direct people to doctors and link them with lawyers. We open the door.
Some say it’s a false dichotomy – whatever boat we came here on, we’re in together now – but we, the volunteers, can choose to leave. Most refugees don't want to stay, but the world has closed its borders, so 60 thousand plus are stuck in Greece, and Greece is stuck with them. Greeks understand migration and unrest, and manage it, in general, with grace, but it’s a tough assignment for a bankrupt nation to take on.

Two small wet boys emerge, hair shining, from the shower. I switch Lego for a race car and instantly regret it, as Sami seizes on his new dream toy and won’t let go. I wonder if he’s traumatized or just a normal, tiresome 2 year old. As the family heads out, we resolve the issue, with a promise of the dream returned tomorrow, in words that no one really understands or much believes.

*Names have been changed

What's a Tyke?

A Tyke is a person from Yorkshire. Per the Urban Dictionary, it is also "a mongrel dog (which maybe why Tyke is also a Yorkshire dialect word for a Yorkshire Terrier dog), originally it was used by the southerners in the 18th/19th centuries as a derogatory term for Yorkshire folk, who they thought of as uncouth and coarse then it went to being a word Yorkshire folk proudly call themselves."

Many a Yorkshire County Cricket Club match is played to the chant of "Come on you Tykes", accompanied by the scent of beer, damp, and freshly cut grass.

Huddersfield Terriers

Huddersfield Town playing Liverpool, February 2018

It's not often Huddersfield is taken seriously. Our town has an unfortunate name - drop the H, guttaralize the U and by birth or bad joke you're a northern nuuuumbskuuuull. So when the pundits relegated David Wagner's Terriers - Huddersfield Town AFC - from the Premier League before they'd kicked off match one, Huddersfudlians shrugged it off and prepared for business, as usual. 
As we'd predict, match reports mostly focused on the opposition - though to give him his due, the Special One credited Huddersfield as the better side when we beat Man Utd 2-1 for the 1st time since 1952. We were still a favourite for going down, even though, as Wagner politely pointed out last week, we were only in the relegation zone once all season. Now, suddenly, we're the poster child of the Premier League, the north star, the real Special Ones. 

Blogger and Town Fan

The team of course isn't all from Town, and German manager Wagner is the 1st non-Brit in that role, but they've drunk the millstone-grit spiked water, and quite brilliantly, Wagner has tapped into the essence of what makes Huddersfield sparkle - yes, sparkle. Thanks to the Premier League, Huddersfield has attracted more visitors lately, but for those who've never been, Huddersfield isn't a bad joke. The town center's not much cop, but the surrounding countryside, especially as it makes its way westward to the Pennines, offers uncrowded and unspoiled reaches glittering with historical gems. And said history is what makes Town special. 
Like the team, Huddersfield has recovered with guts and spirit, over the past century, from depression, grime and gasworks, and poor performance. Soot-blackened Huddersfield, birthplace of Lord Harold Wilson, has been sandblasted into gold. Canals have re-opened as navigable waterways; parks have rebloomed, and old mills have either vanished or reinvented themselves as student housing. Indeed, Huddersfield's University campus is a hub of breathtaking architecture and diversity which makes those of us who grew up here contemplate with awe how such a creature emerged from the literal surrounding rubble.
And yet to be surprised puts us of the same mindset as the outsiders, with disrespectful  expectations and gloomy predictions. From the media coverage, you could be forgiven for assuming Huddersfield would fit into Wembley Stadium, but it's actually the 11th largest town in the UK. And the Terriers were the 1st football team to win the League title 3 times in succession, a feat only equaled since by Man U, Arsenal, and Liverpool. 
We may be the underdogs, but never doubt that we know how to win.