Sunday, 31st August, 2025
August is on its way out with warmth and sunshine. Didn’t drop below 18C/65F over night. The aim is to stay in shorts and tee shirts, to keep the window vents open and not to get the quilt on the bed until we return from Tenerife in December.
Don’t you just love human beings and their idiosyncrasies. We are all weird when you focus down on us. OK, I may be more weird than most but it is our differences as much as our similarities that make us what we are – human. The longer we live together, there is a chance our tastes become integrated but there are also many indivdual things we cling to and require negotiation.
We have done six flights so far this year and we’ve got a couple more (so far) which will be the longest by some mark. The Tenerife flights are 4hrs 35 mins which can get boring. I usually try to catch up on sleep but my travelling companion has decided she wants to watch a Netflix film to get her through the time. That means downloading it to her iPad and then wearing ear phones to listen silently. She hates ear buds so I’ve had to buy her noise cancelling, blue tooth Headphones. I am persisting with ear buds because I want to look young and cool!
I have an EE account with two smartphones on it. They are both Samsung S24 Ultra 5G on which I have a 2 year contract at 2 x £80.00 per month. It ends soon and I will be offered an upgrade for each phone to Samsung S25 Ultra 5G, each of which would cost me £1,250.00 to buy but will be free from EE on another two year contract at 2 x £90.00 per month. That contract gives me free roaming as if I was in UK where I have unlimited calls, texts and data. The difference is that the new phones come ‘free’ but the current ones remain my property and I can sell the two for £1000.00. Discussions suggest that one of us will require a transparent phone cover while I will be getting another new, green one
Feel really tired today. Had to really push myself to do stuff. My 90 mins walk felt like 90 hours. I have a cold and my ears are blocked. I’m very rarely ill but, when I am, I’m ILL and it affects everything.
Just to make things worse, the new artificial lawn sweeper arrived yesterday and I had the impossible job of constructing it this afternoon. Well, I must admit I was forced to watch a friend construct it for me while I supplied the brute force in screwing it together. Made in China guarantees the instructions are impossible to follow and we had to intuit the process. Intuition is my middle name, of course. Constructed and working, I’m pleased with my efforts and could get round to using it when I feel better.
M&K continue their road trip from Surrey to Florida via Newfoundland, New Jersey, Washington D.C., North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. It’s beginning to sound epic!
Monday, 1st September, 2025
And so it is just like you said it would be
Life goes easy on me
most of the time
And so it is the shorter story
No love, no glory
No hero in her sky
And so it is Time goes on. Summer morphs into Autumn. Warm fades out into cool. Youth fades into Age. And so it is. Yes, Life goes easy, maybe too easy because reality requires the rough edge of experience, abrasive and sharpening perspectives. And so it is.
It is has been a popular belief that time – day and night, Summer and Autumn, Waves and Tides, Life and Death are immutable truths. The movement of time weaves through them all so that poets, writers, artists, composers have used one to describe the other across the ages from Chaucer’s 14th Century Canterbury Tales: “Time and Tide wait for no Man” to Larkin’s 20th Century Days: “What are days for?
Days are where we live.“
The hypnotic to & fro of the metronome, the tick of the clock, the roar, crash and withdrawal of the waves on the shingle beach where the sea meets the sky and clouds bring winds and changing seasons from across the continents and the hemispheres of the globe.
The sea and the tides have always had a hypnotic attraction for human beings just as the changing skies, stars and moon have too. Nobody says it better than Eliot.
The menace and caress of wave that breaks on water,
The distant rote in the granite teeth,
And the wailing warning from the approaching headland
Are all sea voices, and the heaving groaner
Rounded homewards, and the seagull:
And under the oppression of the silent fog
The tolling bell
Measures time not our time, rung by the unhurried
Ground swell, a time
Older than the time of chronometers, older
Than time counted by anxious worried women
Lying awake, calculating the future,
Trying to unweave, unwind, unravelT.S. Eliot – Four Quartets 3: The Dry Salvages
We may not all consciously think about it, reason it out but we all, at the very least, subconsiously feel the temporal nature of our existence and the circularity of our lives – Dust to Dust, Ashes to Ashes. The phrase born from the sea and return to die in the sea is a common metaphorical concept, especially in Buddhist philosophy, where a life is seen as a wave returning to the ocean.
Just as in the macrocosm, so we humans mirror that need to return in the microcosm. I see it in myself and the people of my life. After living and working a large, central part of my life I have spent recent times going back to people and places of earlier times. I’m not the only one. We all seek out and attempt to define the significance of our experiences, to reconnect, re-examine and re-evaluate.
I was amused and provoked by this group photo repeated almost 40 years apart. These people were standing where I stood but many years earlier. Their impulse, like mine and others of my experience is to do just that: to reclaim the past before we are all engulfed by the tsunami of time.
Tuesday, 2nd September, 2025
At 9.30 am on the second day of Meteorological Autumn, we’ve just had a incredible cloud burst. Everywhere, the trees are looking stressed and aging. We are told that they have advanced two months ahead of ‘normal’ seasons because this has been the hottest year on record and I remember the long, hot, lonely Summer of 1976. I spent it doing my English Degree, going to Keele University and running to get fit. It was long, hot and lonely but productive and effective. Just looking up the link for the university led me back into a longing for academic work again.
I looked up Research for a Doctorate in the History of Political Thought which I would have to do from a distance. There is no way I’m going to rough it on a student campus at my age. It would take 6 years. I would be 80 by then and it would cost a fortune although I could get a University grant if my topic hit the right spot. It certainly wouldn’t be from Keele. Anyway, I’m too old don’t you think, Dear Reader? Have to try and dismiss it from my mind. Maybe I could do it in Manchester ….
Actually, one of my tasks for this week is to prepare a starter pack for my sister in law who is going to Athens for the first time and will only be there for two days en route to a Cruise ship which she picks up in Piraeus. I found her a hotel and now need to give her advice on how to make the most of such a short time in the city. Wherever she goes in Athens, it will certainly be a culture shock.
As a long term Grecophile, I had grown up with the belief that, unlike UK, Greece lacked the variation of Seasons. Sixteen years ago, was the first time I could test that theory and it wasn’t true. Having retired and spent 6 months in our house, I recorded the last week of August with this photo from the patio on a hot, dark night across the port ….
…. and one week later, at the beginning of September, this scene quite shocked me as sea mist thickened and filled the valley, rain came and washed the island of its Summer dust.
Here the rain clouds scurry across the sky, occasionally choosing to douse us in showers and sometimes more. Our lovely neighbours, who have just returned from sunny Corfu, chose to day to hold a Coffee Morning in an aid of the local Hospice. It looks like they are rapidly trying to construct an awning in their garden for guests to shelter. Good luck with that. I’m going in the Gym.
Wednesday, 3rd September, 2025
A very warm but windy night. We didn’t drop below 18C/65F. It is grey and uninviting and rain is forecast. It will be a Gym day today. I’m quite happy about that because I’m watching a facinating serialisation of Joseph Conrad’s novel, The Secret Agent.
It was the sort of novel and novelist that was popular in my educational youth. Joseph Conrad was a Polish émigré born Józef Konrad Korzeniowski and is regarded as one of the greatest writers in the English language even though he did not speak English fluently until his twenties and he died in 1924 but his writing seems to have anticipated later world events reflecting aspects of a European-dominated world—including imperialism and colonialism.
I’m afraid, my experience of this novel goes back to a small, tutorial room in 1970. I was one of five students asked to read and discuss The Secret Agent and I had been given a week to do it. I am a very slow reader. I don’t read fiction out of choice and, to be honest with you, I had much more enjoyable things to do, Dear Reader. When it came to my turn, I just winged it. Remember, we had no internet to ask. I talked for about 10 mins about a book of which I had only read the blurb on the back. I came out quite pleased with myself. I thought I had got away with it and went back to enjoying myself. It was only on the day I left that my tutor confirmed she knew I hadn’t done the reading
I still haven’t but I am trying to make up for it by watching a dramatisation on Netflix while on the Treadmill in the Gym. It is quality Drama made by the BBC and doesn’t require the effort of reading. What it has done is transport me back to that Tutorial Room and my shallow sensation of deception and the callow arrogance of youth. Very little mattered back then. Now, everything matters desperately. I have to be honest, to be true to myself. Deception is no longer necessary. I wear my heart on my sleeve.
Outside the warm rain is falling already. The wind is blustering off the sea. Inside, the soft, warm memories of youth are folding over me. The Secret Agent is calling, searching, looking for me with gentle reproach. Can’t take my mind off of you. Can I rise to the challenge? I will not let it go by unanswered. Joseph Conrad has been dead for 100 years but I am still here.
I went down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky. It was warm, windy and wet and very deserted.
Thursday, 4th September, 2025
The weather in September is certainly hitting back with variety. At 5.00 am, a cloudburst hit the house. Torrential rain bouncing on the earth. By 8.00 am, clear blue skies and strong uninterrupted sunshine bathed the earth in warm light. It is almost Mediterranean in its pattern.
This morning, I’ve been buying the Mediterranean in the form of a return to Athens for the 81st time. At the risk of sounding monotonous, I have secured a suite in Thessaloniki and a suite in Athens for 2026. It is important to keep in touch with old friends and that is a sign of optimism. I will book a month in Spain as soon as the bookings are released and then think about the later part of 2006 and where we want to be.
By 10.00 am and a trip to the beach for fresh fish, I parked up and remotely opened the tailgate so a shopping bag could be picked up. Before I could, the skies opened and a cloudburst deluged the area. I sat in the car. When it was over, I went to get the bag and realised I’d forgotten to close the boot. Looked almost as if I could catch my own fish in it.
About 40 years ago, I did the same in the school carpark. I parked up and forgot I had the sunroof open on a cold but sunny morning. I got back in the evening to find the seats covered in an avalanche of snow. Anyway, not a problem. I have a little woman for these crises. All sorted out. Even managed to walk along the Marina in the lovely warm sunshine before the next downpour.
One of my tasks today is to prepare a guide for an Athens novice who only has two days to see the sights. Impossible but I’m trying to help so I’m giving a number of suggestions to choose from. There are the formal places people like to say they’ve seen – The Acropolis and it’s new Museum, the Parliament Building, changing of the Guard and Syndagma Square and Metro.
Then, of course, there are the cultural places that really describe Athens like the Plaka (Flea Market), Ermou Street (Athens Oxford Road) and the Central Fish & Meat Market.
White Horse
Small Taster Dishes
Cicada & Ant
Finally, I am offering some eating places of differing types and prices. There is one, old style taverna opposite their hotel but the more ‘reliable’ ones are a short walk away in Mitropoleos Street. It is so difficult to recommend to other people.
There is one way they might ‘See Athens’ in a day and it would be to take the hop-on-hop-off Bus. I’ve not done it myself and it would be exhausting but, if you’re desperate to see everything, that would be it.
Friday, 5th September, 2025
Gorgeous morning as Summer returns for a few days. At 11.00 am, we are feeling warm and content with 22C/70F. Down at the sea, the scene is glorious … so I turned my camera the other way.
Of course, this is the best time to see the beach. All the little, noisy sods are back annoying teachers and the world is left to the adults to enjoy.
About 8 years ago, I had an automated garage door installed. The company tried to get me to sign a maintenance agreement but I resisted. What can go wrong with a garage door? Yesterday, I began to question the wisdom of that idea. We both have a remote control on our car fobs and neither worked. I had visions of major and costly refurbishment but my resident technical adviser suggested checking and replacing the batteries. The nearest place to get them from was Argos. I ordered and paid for them online to collect in my local store.
There is definitely something wrong with me at the moment. I presented my code at the Argos in Rusting Sainsburys/Argos only to be told I had ordered it from an Argos miles away in Littlehampton. Argos is inside Sainsburys there as well. It made quite a change to come down to this rather quaint, old fishing town and in such lovely weather. And it soon proved that new batteries were the solution. The whole problem solved at the cost of £5.00. My sort of solution!
At last this afternoon I can get on with some gardening. Today is public space day. I will mow the street’s lawns and tidy up the flower beds. Tomorrow will be private space day. I will tidy up the beds and sweep/renovate the lawn/carpet. It’s a pleasure to be active in the sunshine.
Saturday, 6th September, 2025
A lovely, warm morning and now we learn that this will go on until at least Wednesday so there is plenty of time to get garden jobs completed. What I do outside in the street; what I did yesterday mowing and tidying in the sunshine which does me good is so appreciated by my neighbours. They are lovely people and are constantly messaging with thanks. I would do it anyway but it is nice to be appreciated.
Fourteen years ago – can hardly believe that now – we were having a new pergola errected on our patio in Greece. The Mediterranean is famously mañana. Greece was at the extreme end of that. We had been asking the Woodman to come and fit a new pergola for us since the first week we arrived in April. Of course he would. He’ll be with us tomorrow. He wasn’t, of course. Nor was he there in May when we called round to talk to him.
A more lovely man you could not meet. We arrived at his workshop and he insisted we sit down with a glass of wine and some mezzedes – bread, cheese, tomatoes, olives. We would talk for an hour and then say we had to go. He swore he would be there tomorrow but this would happen every month for the next six. The shock was when he arrived at the start of our last month in October before we left for UK. He turned up with his brother without any warning and proceeded to fit the new structure.
After a couple of days and less than five days before we left, he told us that we must get it waterproofed against the winter rains by having a rubber solution installed on top. That was something he didn’t do. He suggested a friend who would do it at a price and we were left to organise it. Our new pergola also needed painting. Fortunately, the rubberisation was done and I had a resident painter to do the rest. It all got done at the last minute just as Greeks like it but a ‘planner’ like me was developing an ulcer with anxiety.
The other thing we were anxious about was the fact that we were leaving, driving home and not returning for 6 months. We had to appoint a caretaker to look after things. For a long period, our friend, Stavros, did that but, eventually, I had to pay people to take over. The other concern was the three ferral cats which had adopted us. They had to be left to cope in the Winter months. Little Ginge is just about 10 months old here with gorgeous, big eyes sent by the others to beg for food. They knew how to seduce me. She is almost certainly dead now, 14 years on.