Clik here to view.
Time
Our Christmas tree in Birmingham In Athens in 2008 the Municipal Christmas tree had rubbish thrown at it and was set on fire. This year the City has not put up a Christmas tree and has cut back...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A memory in black and white
I was so delighted to find this record of the Christmas party held at Fasnakyle House by my aunt and uncle in about 1950. Victorian aristocracy including the Queen herself embraced the Scottish...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Black Patch Park - striving to renew a place
The Friends of Black Patch park meet in the Soho Foundry Pub A few days before Christmas I met up with my friends Andrew Simons and Phil Crumpton to design a tour of Black Patch Park. They, I and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
New Year 2014
Sunday afternoon before last I was planting winter onions – against instructions on the pack – along with broad beans. A call from Crete.“Your ferry from Venice has been cancelled. Can you get to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Greece in winter - "Start with the shoe"
Angeliki and Irini met at the museum this Saturday Last November I had an exchange of emails with Jim Potts, husband of the Corfiot writer Maria Strani, about Ano Korakiana’s self-taught sculptor,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Winter in Greece
“IUD? IUD? What’s it stand for? 'Unexploded'. Yes. 'Device'. What’s the ‘I’? Ahah. 'Improvised'. I'm mulling this. Why IUD?"I’m going over this between waking and dreaming and then I’m failing to get...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Mimosa
Mimosa - the tree that knows you're there I feel this place fixing in memory, filling up those parts of my head that store happiness, edging out others once in fuller occupation – places now so changed...
View ArticleClik here to view.
'Greece offers you something harder'
The start of Lawrence Durrell's first book Prospero's Cell: A guide to the landscape and manners of the island of Corcyra 1945Somehow I know Lawrence Durrell’s family didn’t engage in anything so banal...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Eleni and Popi - 'A few good men'
...two women are rapidly becoming symbols of a justice system that is seeking to reassert itself and (finally) do its duty, perhaps not righting the wrongs of the past but at least holding those...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Up the Adriatic
Southerly blow through the Straits of Otranto - a glimpse of the Karaburun Peninsular A sturdy blow from the south as the ferry rolls gently north, all but immune to weather.Adriatic afternoon - 24...
View ArticleClik here to view.
It's good to be in England
...even though we are missing Ano Korakiana's Carnival and Pancake Day... ΤσικνοΠέμπτη ΤσικνίσματαΓράφει ο/η Κβκ 20.02.14Τσικνοπέμπτη απόψε και η Αρκούδενα απέκτησε ασυνήθιστη για την...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Ήμασταν στην Αγγλία για το Καρναβάλι
Τελευταία βδομάδα του Καρναβαλιού και οι προετοιμασίες για την τελευταία Κυριακή, εναλάσσονται με τη διασκέδαση…Rehearsing for Carnival in kafeneio KefallonitiΤελευταία βδομάδα του Καρναβαλιού και οι...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Recognisable
Royal navy postcard - written on the back 'Smyrna in Flames Sept 1922'Nigel Farage isn’t a nasty man. He's popular in sections. Married to a German, parent of two children, cricketer, no thug, not...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Executive summary
I caught this morning ... I rose in the morning sun shone through the stained glass of our house. I saw the dress Lin had bought in Corfu in January. I felt prescient; a micro-second of incandescent...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Order
The smell of mildew was increasing inside my smallest shed. Everything is so jumbled up in there, it’s taking me ages simply to assemble the tools I need for a job. It's worse than I realised“That...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Making tea on the allotment
I begin to get a sense the soil on Plot 14 is improving. Before Christmas I invested in manure and topsoil. Since then Taj has been helping dig and weed out... ...the white rhizomes of couch grass...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Wet
Plot 14 on the Victoria Jubilee Allotments I'm making a more robust surround for the beehive on the allotment, before Jill finds a new swarm to replace the hive lost in the wet; four 75mm x 75mm steel...
View ArticleClik here to view.
"Unrecognisable"
Royal navy postcard - written on the back 'Smyrna in Flames Sept 1922' I got the train the other night, it was rush hour, from Charing Cross, it was the stopper going out. We stopped at London Bridge,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Executive summary
I caught this morning ... I rose in the morning sun shone through the stained glass of our house. I saw the dress Lin had bought in Corfu in January. I felt prescient; a micro-second of incandescent...
View Article