Tuesday 22 August 2017

Finding a balance

It's two nights since we were on the boat but I still feel as if I'm bobbing about in the water.  It's odd how long it takes for one's sense of balance to adjust.
We wandered round Split yesterday, discovering how wildly international its life has been. There are carvings in Catalan, French, Hebrew, and of course in Italian. For 400 years it was Venetian - not captured in war but sold outright by the King of Croatia to the most serene city for gold. Napoleon ran it for a while between 1806-13, straightening roads, modernising, improving the drains and (according to a pamphlet from the Tourist Office) introducing electricity, which must have been nothing short of a miracle at that date. We went to various museums - the Old  Town Hall to see a good collection of  20th century art by local makers, deciding not to go into the Fine Art Museum partly because the woman in the shop was so rude. We decided not to seek out the piano festival because it appeared that today would still be the finalists' heats. Then we walked through the inner suburbs to the Maritime Museum, meeting a charming lady en route who used to live in Belgium, so we resorted to the language of diplomacy and chatted in French for a while.
The Maritime Museum is not too big and very interesting, filled with reasonably or intermittently well-labelled items including a huge ancient pithoi later drilled with holes to be used as a keepsafe for fish, a fine collection of 20th c blocks (pulleys), many models, instruments, various small boats, and culminating in a detailed account of the history of torpedoes - we had on a previous trip to Croatia learned about Robert Whitehead in Rijecka, further up the coast, and how he invented, manufactured and developed these dramatic weapons ready for the great powers to seize them and proceed to blow each orher's fleets to bits, killing thousands of people in the process. The photographs and explanations from the factory in Rijecka are very good and there are various darkly beautiful torpedo cases and component there to see.
Somehow and quite inadvertently we jumped the queue for lunch at a popular cafe called Fife, which has an impressively long and interesting menu including various low dishes such as tripe, liver, veal tongue, etc - none of which were actually available. So we resorted to more usual choices which tasted ok but were a bit cold, and there was in any case a smell of drains along the seafront which slightly reduced our enjoyment.
We found a nice plaque saying Sigmund Freud stayed here in 1898, and it's tempting to speculate whether this is where he came up with the idea of the Split personality......
I made some sketches and paintings, we walked some more, and then we went to rest for a while - venturing out later for supper. It's so easy to overeat when the restaurants bring you extra dishes and tastes, and so-called appetisers are just huge.  A musical stage set up beside us attracted some delighted children when the acts arrived for the sound balance. We had the start of several numbers, a kind of sample of what would be played in full later. Not too loud, thank goodness.
For these last hours we wandered under and around Diocletian's Palace, and heard some wonderful piano playing coming from somewhere in the open-air ruins. The gate leading to the performance was locked but we stood leaning on the gritty walls listening to the glories of Bach and Liszt shimmering round the acoustic space, competing with children calling and passers-by talking too loudly. At the interval we went to enquire - who was the pianist? A tall young man who was locked out as we were, explained it was part of the Piano Loop festival - a recital by a star player called Kemal Gekić. He himself was not only a participant in the competition but a student at the Royal College in London. His girl friend was on the other side of the locked railings. He led us round to the other side of the whole building, round the beautiful Roman remains, through the courtyard filled with merry tourists and their banging street music, and into the performance area inside the Ethnographic Museum. We found seats, and sat to listen to an amazing second half of music. Gekić is a Croatian-born American classical professional, now Professor of Performance at the U of Florida. He looks a bit like Liszt with a great mane of long hair like a lion. His playing is powerful - had to be to drive out the pop music and crowd noises outside. I drew his portrait as he played.  He gave three encores to the small but enraptured audience, and later we showed him the drawing - which he signed.
We came home walking on air. It has been a magic day.
Now - Wednesday morning - is our last day. The church bells have been summoning worshippers. Other residents in this building have been clumping up and down stairs, although it's quite early. We fly home this afternoon, so we'll take our things to the left luggage office by the port bus station, walk up to the Archaeological Musem, find lunch, then head to he airport. We've crammed so much in during this visit.

Monday 21 August 2017

Split

We've sailed a few times on the Lady Olivia, and of course her owners have other guests from time to time. It's quite funny imagining how this hosting experience must be different for them with the varying personalities, and also odd thinking about 'others' being in 'our' cabin. 
After a very pleasant riverside meal to say 'thank you' on our last evening, we packed our bags and bade farewell to our friends yesterday morning to head off to Split. The bus station was thronged with young people, the bus claimed to have wifi, the journey was smooth enough - first winding along the coastal roads, then  skirting huge rich horticultural plains, and finally getting into the heat and crowds of Split. 
The journey was surprisingly tiring - five hours of looking, and swaying about.
En route we had a shifty picnic of pies stuffed with cheese and meat, formed as elongated spirals of flaky pastry, and then a nectarine each. A sign on the stairwell of the bus showed a burger with a red line through it - we weren't sure if this meant NO FOOD or was merely a patriotic attempt to deter MacDonalds. Sadly when we left the bus at Split Docks we forgot the remaining nectarines and cashew nuts in our picnic bag and left them to their fate.
It was not hard to find our apartment which to our pleasure and surprise is actually right inside Diocletian's Palace. An old door leads up a pretty and narrowing wooden staircase. The key is under the mat. The apartment is small, old-fashioned, well-appointed, clean, comfortable and brilliantly locked. It has a tiny washroom with shower, good wifi, and a free litre bottle of Merlot from Istria to welcome us. 
We wandered out int the heat. 
It really is a nice place - with shining well-worn paving, happy crowds but a sense of the real life of the city separate from tourism.  It's also a great place to find novel images of Flatman, the international hero of my new project, who adorns road signs and toilet doors.  I am enjoying describing how he is looking for love, having terrible accidents, running a lot, and trying to understand how we live in our 3D world, which is as difficult for him as quantum mechanics is for us.
We shopped for yoghurt, croissants ( which are heavier than their French cousins and stuffed with 'marmalade' aka apricot jam, or chocolate), nectarines, some milk for morning coffee. We wandered into a lovely old-fashioned art shop selling paints and papers and apparently running a cat-rescue charity, and strolled around. We chose a resto for supper because the greeter said the take cards.... That turned out to be either a lie or inaccurate - we had to scrape cash together. Our neighbours a table were three young Luxembourgian business or banking types - we had a great chat about Brexit. British businesses are queuing up to register in Luxembourg, and ever Brit they've met says (as we do) that it's a disaster. One of them was born in Bosnia, two are Portuguese. They said almost no-one in Luxembourg was born there. 
Back at the flat, we shut out the jubilant noise of the streets with our heavy windows, switched on the aircon, and slept. 
This is the last day of our holiday. I am thinking of all the other travelers who come to stay in this dear little apartment. They leave happy reviews on Airbnb (tho' that is not where we booked it). Like our cabin on the Lady Olivia, there is a stream of people who come to stay. If places have souls, and they may, they must find it funny accommodating us all. The tiny shower-room here has an almost-hidden medieval stone archway over the door. How many people have walked through it? Who were they? 

Sunday 20 August 2017

What could be more exciting than quails eggs?


I thought yesterday's highlight in a peaceful day would be to say that we had quails' eggs for lunch but that was totally beaten by the episode in Cavtat harbour. The rules in Croatia are that you must call in to the first available point of entry to check in to the country (with the Immigration, Customs, Police, etc). Leaving Montenegro therefore we  went in to the charming and ancient little harbour of Cavtat which is not far from Dubrovnik (and incidentally directly under the flight path of planes coming in to land). 

Swinging round the headland we saw a fleet of maybe 8 or 9 sailing charter boats, all flying one flag - clearly a flotilla. Beyond them, the tiny quay had no space. One catamaran at the dock, with the charter colours, was skippered by a man who was trying to keep all his charges in order from a fair distance by waving his arms at them and shouting a lot. It took a while for us to work out what was going on. Another yacht (not in the flotilla) was also trying to get in, as was a big solo catamaran which would take a bit more room than we would. But - we all had to queue for our turn, which meant motoring around quietly to be ready to nip in, but without hitting anyone else. 

On the quay, the shouty man was apparently trying to teach the flotilla skippers from a distance about what they should do. They mostly looked like complete novices. At the quay a very very large shiny white (Russian?) show-off boat had two smart crew members using giant black fenders to protect the sides of their vessel as one by one the queuing boats took their turn to tie up.  This means backing in, using a dropped anchor at the nose, and getting two lines secured at the stern - all in a steady cross wind which tended to push everyone sideways in a bunch (not good).

We saw our chance after about twenty minutes, going in after the two other solo boats had berthed plus one flotilla boat. We were alongside the big white smart job, and we got in with no fuss and well-fendered. Our skipper went off to check us all in - we expected a long wait even though 'our papers were all in order'. The solo boat beside us left. Another flotilla boat decided to come in, encouraged by the shouty man on the flotilla catamaran. This boat headed for the quay backwards at quite high speed and a lot of revs. They dropped their anchor much too late, and the wind started blowing them sideways. Amazingly they got in to the narrowing space beside us and the shouty man but at an angle, much too fast and heading to the stone dock.  The marinero on land started shoving to keep them off. Passengers started throwing ropes at him but missed - each time the ropes had to be fished out, to try again. With the anchor so poorly positioned they had to go out and try again. The shouty man was nearly apoplectic. (He still had another half dozen or so of these manoeuvres to supervise with the rest of his fleet).

The yacht tried again - once more far too fast and out of control. We had extra fenders on the starboard to keep them off. The chap throwing lines to the marinero had no idea what he was supposed to be doing - the ropes went into the water and he kept throwing them but had them the wrong side of the rails and had to undo everything and start again. The engine was being revved like a racing car. We worried that their anchor had gone over ours as it was so random. The crew on the big yacht was looking appalled. Our lunch (quails' eggs) went unattended.....  

We were all watching to see what would happen next. In the bay, more of the flotilla were roaming round, waiting to come in. Small ferries went back and forth from their terminal in the far corner of the quay. A very pretty girl in huge sunglasses was tenderly helped off the big smart yacht by the crew. They said they had an important guest aboard for lunch, and would then be heading to Montenegro.

Amazingly our captain came back much sooner than expected. Check-in negotiations had gone very smoothly and swiftly. The official had even said 'Everything is in order!' (a running joke for us after our experiences in Albania and Montenegro - where it was pretty well impossible to say what order our papers should be in).  

We wanted to get out. The shouty man was still shouting at his flotilla. The fleet-boat beside us was tied up at a weird angle. The smart crew in the big yacht helped fender us out and said sorrowfully they wished we were staying longer as they knew more of the flotilla would be coming in beside their immaculate gleaming sides. Miraculously our anchor had not been crossed by the boat beside us so we edged out, into the seething swirling mass of flotilla boats whose captains were shouting to their crews and to the shouty man at the quay, and barely able to see each other for waving arms and circling round each other. One started backing in towards the quay - but we still had to get our anchor up, and he came faster and faster at us backwards, screaming at us in Italian. We - and the marinero, and the shouty man, and the crew on the smart yacht - were all shouting at him to go forward. It seemed like collision was unavoidable but at last our anchor was up, we could swing away to port, and by a hair's breadth we missed him.

We were legally checked in, and on our way. The marina at Dubrovnik is a little way up river in a high gorge and very peaceful. During the night the Bora arrived - a fierce wind swooping down the Adriatic from the Alps. The temperature dropped from about 32 to 22 degrees, much more bearable. This travel blog started with discussions about wind noises in the rigging of adjacent yachts - we have the same song again now. We leave our friends today to bus into Split for a couple of days. 
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Paperwork

The amount of paperwork and the formalities required to arrive at or depart from a port or a country along here would be enough to make a person weep if time was important. And that it might be, if the passage is to be smooth before the heat of the sun has conjured up winds and swell to make the movement of a small vessel across the waters uncomfortable. Leaving before 6am is a way of grabbing calm, but that is more difficult if the Harbour Master, the Customs Official, the Chief of Police, and the Immigration Control Officer are - as is usually the case - unminded to be helpful. It's a powerful lesson in how beneficial it is to be in a customs union. Maybe here they are looking out for gun-runners or smugglers, but they take their roles very seriously, while at the same time using their considerable powers to sleep at their desks, go to lunch, or something - anything to be invisible while the time ticks past. Each of these officials usually operates from a different building. Yesterday, coming into the pretty bay of Bar - the principal port of beautiful Montenegro - with the help of the marinero - we tied up in the marina but he refused to let us land until we had a crew list. That meant unberthing, sailing right out of the marina and round to the police station on the far side of the port, and getting all our papers in the correct order. 
This took an hour, two hours.... Who knows? 
Eventually our captain got the papers, everything was in order, we could go back to the pontoon. 
But we would need to get the personal attention of the Police Chief, the Customs man, the Harbour Master and Uncle Tom Cobbleigh to be allowed to leave in the morning. It is - frankly - ridiculous.
It's not at all clear what is required at any one port or even within one country. Some ports require you to check in and out as if they were independent kingdoms. Some will be content with a blanket-pass, so within that country you can go in and out of neighbouring ports without formalities each time. Printed guides and navigation sources have differing opinions and these change according to (presumably) which Police Chief was on duty on any day.
It was baking hot. Fires burned in the rocky wastes above the town, smoke careening upwards in columns which created a great haze in the valley and actually generated proper little cumulus clouds above them.
The guide book warned that it would all be very crowded being August, but for whatever reason, the town was quiet, even when the evening crowds started to appear. 
We found wifi to conduct our business and socialising with friends and family back home, and walked to see the extraordinary Orthodox Church across the main road. This (I think) was rebuilt after the devastating earthquake of 1979, and us a huge gleaming edifice absolutely covered in modern icons and portraits of every saint that ever lived. It is gorgeous, with sculpted bronze doors, many domes, huge hanging circular candle-holders, opportunities to kiss the icons or their frames, and (yesterday afternoon) a big box of grapes for you to help yourself. 
We cruised round a circular supermarket which had more shelves of bottled drinks than a logistics centre in the West Midlands, and eventually found a restaurant with an Italian theme (one of dozens) where we had an excellent meal.
Many of the other restaurants are Russian, by the way, but also serve pizza and pasta. 
Getting back to the yacht in the soft night darkness, we saw the huge flames of the fires on the mountain high above. Only smoke is visible by day but this great chain of fire looked like a volcano in full eruption. No-one took any notice. The barmaid in the Yacht Club cafe - who once sailed to Ramsgate and had fond memories of the place - said the fires happen every summer. 


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Saturday 19 August 2017

The spirit of Albania

We've just left the great harbour of Durres. The sun rose red as we pulled away from the quay, and a dog which I thought of as 'The Spirit of Albania' came to see us off. She was a sweet-faced bitch running on three legs, her teats enlarged and her manners perfect.
She greeted us with yelps of welcome and supplication as we arrived at the port yesterday afternoon after a calm day motoring up from Orikum - the swell wasn't too bad, and we had the mainsail and even the foresail up for part of the voyage, not so much for assistance with speed and passage but to steady the vessel as she worked her way up along the flat marshy Albanian coast.
The contrast between Orikum and Durres is almost hilarious. Orikum Marina may have been a naval base though there's little to see now - a new floating pontoon, some smart buildings, an attractive green layout of marsh and riverbank (if you push through a wire fence topped with spikes), and Audis and BMWs racing down the road. In a lane between fields a goat chomped at a hedge, watched by an old man with a stick. At a junction a little further along, a car crumped into another, and a small crowd gathered to watch. No-one hurt. Rough stalls by the roadside were selling fruit, bread, beach-toys, and the pathway led to a series of smart cafes and restaurants with large terraces, and suites of sun loungers protected by thatched sunshades, all low key, low level. These were nearly empty during the fierce heat of the afternoon, filling up with groups of teens, or families, around 6pm onwards. All sleepy, happy, a country producing a new middle class, with the old peasant rural life just about visible.
We crept along this marshy landscape all day - slipping out from our berth at quarter to six, the engine purring away, the sea shining calm. Eight hours motoring over a calm sea, where the waters changed from chalky green to postcard blue, and the day passed sleepily enough till we approached Durres. This great harbour is marked with buoys and beacons, marked out as a 'fairway' for the ferries and cargo ships which are constantly on the move. (One fine vessel was called Claudia Gas, a name I shall incorporate into a sequence of stories I am writing which already features a lady called Saskia Pants. Claudia can be one of her sisters).
Our skipper was radioing ahead: 'Durres Port, Durres Port. This is yacht Lady Olivia... '   Even the printed guidebooks say you may not get a response. We came into the lea of the headland where the waters were shining smooth, and eventually a torrent of words came back from the radio. 'Grundooa dellari speely tonka craddio ferthi passtipop grelling intardlio cappidock pesto!' 'Durres Port, this is Lady Olivia. Can you repeat please?' This went on for a while as we slid in on the left hand side under a huge line of quay-cranes. Eventually we made out the words 'by the tug' and came alongside the vast empty quay, tying up with springs and lines. After ten minutes the port agent arrived with his briefcase, sorrowfully explaining we were near a fishing boat, not a tug, and further for him to walk. The sun was fiercely hot now that we were stationary. The little dog was yelping, looking for love (or water, or food). Her left hind leg did not touch the ground. Her grizzled coat was rough and not in great shape but she was so glad to see us.
The agent came aboard, opened his briefcase, and our skipper had to go through the paperwork. Pages of it. Names, ages, boat details, engine, home port, destination, colour of hair - God knows - all filled out by hand on his dossier. He took our passports, said he'd be back in 30 minutes ... He had to go and see in another motor boat which had followed us in. We could hear that they were equally baffled by their instructions about where to berth - probably even more difficult for them as they were Russian.
Andrew and I set off in the scorching heat to explore - walking under the giant deserted cranes, making acoustic tests of a huge empty and rather beautiful concrete warehouse by calling out and listening to the echoes. Five seconds of reverb at least. It was a fine deco building in three great vaults.
It took ten or fifteen minutes to walk out of the docks.
We found the little Venetian tower, the old city walls, the Roman amphitheatre complete with Byzantine church inserted into its centre. We saw the oldest mosque in Europe.  We saw another bridal shoot (there had been one at Orikum). My phone/camera packed up - wouldn't work. We strolled on to the long promenade lying north of the harbour and had orange juice, used the wifi, waited for K&A who eventually arrived having waited for the agent yo return our passports.
How pleasant. A wide promenade, gradually filling with happy holidaymakers and families as the temperature and the light slid down. We had a drink, and watched a wedding party. We strolled and admired the architecture, the great white marble steps on a rock, which look like a low cruise ship and made everyone climbing onto them look marvellous - like statues silhouetted against the sky.
Then we sought a meal - all the restos were ready to serve now and we had a lot to choose from.
A youngish man in a green shirt lured us in to his very smart terrace, offering us a free raki. This was his restaurant. He'd spent 12 years in Belgium, Antwerp, a culinary capital. He'd decided to come back and help launch his country's economic revival. His ingredients were superior to the fish in Belgian restaurants. He found it hard to get staff. The notorious Albanian mafia mostly operate outside the country which gives Albania a bad reputation abroad but means life is pretty safe and content in the country itself. They want to join the. EU and think we' re mad to want to leave. He comes from Buron (?), a lovely unspoiled medieval city. He had run two marathons. There are no cyclists in Albania, no cycling culture. He said you could live entirely on the fruits grown in Albania. He said twenty years ago they had ten days of frost which killed lots of orange trees and palm trees. He thinks no-one grows avocados in Albania.
A young woman - a girl - wandered in holding a sleeping child on her shoulder. A beggar. He chased her away, saying these beggars all work for a man 'over there', and see nine if the money. The baby was patently drugged.
The meal was lovely - a rich seafood antipasto, then fishy pastas and salads. With wine and water it came to just over fifty euros....
We wandered back to the docks along that broad promenade, which like the slightly older one in Sarande was filled with people. Among the dozens, hundreds, of happy children out with their loving families, I saw a few more if the Dickensian waif-girls, carrying those tiny immobile babies. A man (looking as dark as an Indian) sat on a scrap of blanket with a fat baby in front of him on the ground. The baby moved a bit. He massaged it? Hit it? It was hard to know.
No-one paid any attention to any of this. Children everywhere in nice clean clothes, in Disney costume, holding hands, being joyfully carried - all moving forward, with an old, dark, desolate life going on beside them - fading away as the population makes more money, we have to hope.
The little dog ran along in front of us as we came back in the warm dark air back to the yacht.
She was there again to wave goodbye as we left our moorings just three hours ago, ragged, thin, optimistic.
That's why I called her 'The Spirit of Albania'.


Friday 18 August 2017

Trying

They're trying hard in Albania to jump into the modern world, and I'm trying to communicate with the world in trying circumstances. However I can't really complain as it's warm or hot and sunny, the boat is behaving beautifully, the swell was less nauseating today and we reached the huge port of Durres without mishap. Luigi the port agent was charming and only required 7 pages of paperwork to be filled in. He took our passports away and will be there for us to leave at 5.45 tomorrow mornjng, he says, with a policeman to make sure we go. It's very old fashioned.
We saw the Roman amphitheater, the ancient city wall, and the Venetian tower. Now having a fresh orange juice on the prom.
My scared moment yesterday has receded into a plausible therapeutic event - more work needed there.
We are liking Albania very much. All the people we've met so far have been lovely. I even quite like the two very dark men who sprang to their two windows when we walked into their yard to admire their motorbike-pushcart. They loomed out if the squalor and gloom of their house like wild beasts, glaring-staring at us through the ancient iron bars on the right dies. A girl moved silently behind them. I smiled, pointed at the bike, and eventually they smiled back. I am wondering who are the two dark men in my unconscious.

Thursday 17 August 2017

Anxiety - part 2

So - I know it's foolish but there it is.
I did manage - FOUR TIMES - to walk that plank.
The police scrutiny was balanced by the hilarity of watching our crew rig up a way of connecting y the electrics - cannibalising an old toothbrush charging seat - until we found a more reputable plug in a hardware shop. 
We found Sarande to be a lovely place -peaceful and joyos in holiday mood, with cafes, hotels, fruit market, archaeology, kindly people, wonderful food at half the price we'd paid in Corfu, nice wine, beautiful views and beaches, and a carnival atmosphere along the promenade with hundreds if not thousands of happy families enjoying the night air. So, I overcame my fears, enjoyed myself, and we went to sleep back on board (that gangplank again, in the dark!), to the sound of explosions - fireworks to round off the evening. 
Today on the long haul motoring up to Orikum I have had a long time to consider what happened and why. It's annoying I had to end the main blog before it really finished and I had to write it twice as I managed to lose it the first time.
Now at a lovel beach bar. Wifi helps. Have seen the scan of our new grandchild sent from Kilkenny today. Fantastic.

Anxiety

Having just written a lengthy blog about Albania and my anxieties - I managed to lose it all. So this is an attempt at a rewrite.

As we came into port yesterday in the pretty port of Sarande I was overtaken by a huge wave of anxiety, paralysing. This is so unusual for me I found myself quite unprepared for it and unable to respond apart from going below deck to try to think what had happened.   It was a much more forceful episode than my 'normal' pre-holiday packing nerves, where I find myself wandering round the house aimlessly and repetitively, worrying about things I know are irrational but still agitated. This time, my route was interrupted by Andrew losing his 'foreign' wallet and we spent our fins hour at home searching fruitlessly everywhere. It turned up in the end in his bumbag inside his suitcase, safe but rather inaccessible.
I thought I had escaped my worries but they were just lying in wait.
So - we finally managed to leave Gouvia Marina later than planned because mysteriously the water taps wouldn't work so we couldn't fill the yacht's tanks. The reception girls refused to believe it, treated our captain as if he knew nothing..... In the end, from a different pontoon, we found the water, completed the paper work and set off north.
Past the extraordinary Jeff Koons boat, past the beautiful bays and headlands, past the high peak of Mount Pantokrator where we had been two days before, and away from beautiful Corfu.
Into Albanian waters.
Why should Albania make me so uneasy?
It is a small poor country right in the middle of the European continent, hoping to join the EU one day, but still held back by its dreadful decades under communist rule and then the despot and ductatir Enver Hodja who died only about 20 years ago. It is very left-behind, racing to catch up, but with a long way to go. Today by a main road we saw a goat chomping on a hedge with an elderly goatherd in attendance. The Albans have flooded into Greece where they have a terrible reputation as thieves and robbers. All the copper communication wires were stolen from alongside a railway. And the theft blamed on the Albans. We have seen them clustered at Athens bus station - dishevelled, dirty, clutching cardboard boxes tied up with string, and rough bundles of belongings. None of this is bad but it is all in 'the past' for us, we are accustomed to smoother things. The Greeks will allow that one percent of Albans are 'good' but the rest are all terrible.
It was (is?) a police state.
It is like Tintin country, and looks risky......
Even our own Foreign Office advises caution if you are planning to visit.
I have never before knowingly met an Albanian.
So - it's to be approached carefully.
You can add in to this my anxiety about being in a very small boat in a treacherous sea - and of course the boat is safe and the captain and crew skilful and experienced - but it turns out I am what they call 'an anxious passenger' - there it is.
We headed into the lovely bay of Sarande with its tall apaertment blocks parading up the hot hillside, and pretty palm-fringed beaches. The skipper radioed in for a berth - but we had to wait. It's not a large place and the quay is really designed for ferries and small cruise-ships. It's not ideal to berth a yacht among such large vessels as any slight mistake by one if them could be disastrous for smaller boats. We were told to wait - and eventually, rather chaotically, and watched by the police out if the corner of their eye, so to speak. We backed in, and we were to be held steady by our own anchor from the bows, dropped in line with our allocated space. In we went. But our skipper dropped anchor too early and we were just a bit too far from the high concrete quay. The height of this landing made me quake - another peril to be faced. But it was clearly best to go out and start again.....
At that point, and for no reason that I could have explained at that moment, I had to go below and sur quietly alone, so I missed all the fun of doing it right.
Then I had to face that gangplank..... It rose from the stern of the Lady Olivia at a steep angle up to the quay, sliding backward and forwards and side to side with the swell. Moreover, it could not be fixed because it might all to easily grate against the yacht's rails and lever them out. So although I 'know' I could walk it, would have someone to hold my hand, could take my time - still I was reduced to blubber inside.
It makes my cringe to think about this. I feel small, stupid, useless, unworthy. A long list of critical and humiliating feelings.n

Wednesday 16 August 2017

Remoteness

We called to see the Durrells - or at least to see their house, which as they say does look like a sugar cube on the beach - brilliantly located and now a villa-to-hire, restaurant, cafe, film-location and general point of pilgrimage down in its pretty bay.  There is a huge carpark nearby, and a sign saying which film stars have been to visit. This is the power of books and films to keep places alive, or at least to give them a new lease of life when other economic fountains have dried up.    We had drinks and looked out at the water with small boats bobbing about and children playing with floating bananas, a scene replicated in the many other beautiful bays which now play host to the tourist hordes each summer. Every bay has to find something unique to promote.... Some bays have only low-rise buildings, some have big hotels, some have old fishing villages converted to selling tat, some present restaurants lined up end to end. It's the modern way. The kitchens of the restaurants are hot and dark, whereas the terraces filled with carefree diners are light and airy.  Each greeter invites you to come and inspect how fresh the fish is in the kitchen - bream, mullet, bass - all from the fish farms further along the coast.  If I spoke Greek I would ask the girls in the kitchens how fresh they feel.
The roads are pretty good, and the driving is surprisingly smooth (compared with my previous terrifying drives around Athens a few years ago). We duck down to see Ag. Stephanos, and Ag. Nicholas - thriving tourist villages now with pleasure boats all around the water's edge, and (I notice) always one or two beautiful old boats made of wood and to an exquisite shape, professional antique fishing boats... Who knows if they're still working? They look right.
In a taverna, we see a party of priests having lunch after the special celebrations of Assumption Day. A man sits at another table playing an accordion and bellowing out some some traditional music. Posters advertise an event later in the day - the meeting of nine choirs, or something like that.
We eat, we stroll around. K swims, I attempt some drawing and painting - never enough time.
The day's excursions end with a trip back up into the glorious mountains, covered in olive groves. Someone said it was the Venetians who paid the farmers a euro for every tree they planted - well, it can't have been euros, and it must have been a long time ago, but it is striking how green this island is compared to (say) Cyprus or the hills of Croatia. A few of the olive orchards have been recently pruned, with tall trees halved and new growth sprouting out - more accessible for harvest, and also they could get all that lovely old wood to carve into spoons, bowls and chopping boards. One grim stretch had recently been burned - trees reduced to black sticks, everything destroyed, with black ash and rocks the only thing to see for hundreds of acres.  Such a fire must be devastating - the wind to push it forward and no escape if you're in the wrong place.
Higher than the fire is an abandoned village - Old Perithia - which had 130 houses, 8 churches, 15 wells, 3 threshing floors and spectacular views - until the 60s. Then for whatever reasons, it was left to rot. Not enough work, no beaches, too far away, life too hard.  The buildings are said to be 'Venetian' and indeed are very very pretty. In 2009 a pair called Mark and Saskia (and I am sorry I do not know anything else about them) set themselves to save the village. They did up one of the houses, and started encouraging others to do the same. They have signposts up asking people not to drop litter - hoorah! - and also not to fly drones which invade the privacy of others. Archaeologists have been to explore and record, the church has been spending money on the icons in at least one of the churches. There are several taverna now, and holiday cottages, and horses to hire. The twists and turns of the streets are delightful, and trees grow everywhere - it's green! Mark has written a book about it, capturing the village's history before it's too late - presumably interviewing the families of people who lived there and still remember it.  In a strange way, the death and rebirth of the village has preserved more of its genuine character than you'd find in the villages which have enjoyed continuity of purpose.
The glories of the island are spoiled by an ongoing saga or row with the company providing my mobile phone service aka access to the Internet and the ability to post these bulletins. Incompetence, stupidity, bad systems, all these combine to induce rage and/or despair.
The old life - before mobiles and computers - is still visible and tangible, with electric wires, telegraph wires, air conditioning units, aerials, dishes, all manner of 20th century gadgetry draped over and nailed to the older buildings. Up in Perithia you get none of that. You can see the monastery and radio masts of Pantokrator up on the horizon.  We were up there the day before of course, looking down on the village without knowing we'd be calling in there the next day. Pantokrator is an extreme example of the new being smashed onto the face of the old.

Monday 14 August 2017

Rubbish

We are really no better in the UK than in Greece as regards our rubbish management, just better at hiding it. We pretend we can go on forever creating mountains of plastic, waste food, barely used glass and metal.... But it's hidden in bins, lorries, closed yards. In Greece, in these tourist districts, if you're lucky it's bundled up into plastic bags and then put into dumps beside the road.  I am amazed the piles of rubbish aren't bigger, the wasteful way we live. There has to be a better way than this. The blatant disrespect for the earth, wildlife, health, the landscape, for ourselves is - frankly - staggering.  I suppose everyone feels helpless to do anything different. We buy our food instead of growing it. We choose it from gleaming shelves which are clean and orderly. We lug everything home in neat non-spill packages. We are totally disconnected from the real means of production, the costs and the downsides.  We could have street composting systems.  In the old days there was the pigswill man. I think (cannot prove) that we ate proportionately more vegetables and meat, fish or eggs were for high-days and holidays. I sometimes get into a rage walking into so-called 'supermarkets' which are nothing of the sort. A market implies choice and variety, options. The industrialisation of our food supplies - while it has fed billions of us - has in fact diminished our choices. It would be wonderful if a supermarket chain started to take real responsibility, made its buildings into real markets, encouraged local growers and suppliers, paid a living wage, ran plausible recycling systems for the packaging and waste, encouraged communities to take responsibility instead of persuading us to wear blinkers and pretend that everything is alright.  I guess living in a marina for a few days - a hothouse of leisure, 'escape', irresponsibility - focuses the mind somewhat.
Our trip by hire-car up into some of Corfu's northern villages provided a welcome change into a real and seemingly more natural landscape. Olive groves, stone walls, hamlets clinging to the mountainsides, spectacular views, winding roads, cypress trees like pencils punctuating the wobbles and undulations of the tree canopies.... So beautiful and it was not difficult to imagine that the Romans or ancient Greeks had seen identical vistas in their day.  We passed long distances without really seeing a single bit of evidence of modern life, nothing more recent than, say, 1500.
The summit of the day was a trip to the mountain, church and communications centre of Pantokrator ('the Almighty'), which is Corfu's highest peak. The holy church was founded in the late 14th C, rebuilt in the last years of the 17th. I suppose the original was reached by pious monks on mules and donkeys, lugging the timber and stone up that precipitous pathway - now a road capable of taking coaches and HGVs, and thus not feeling so very remote.   What the 20th C added was a gargantuan array of masts, towers, aerials, wires, girders, pylons, spikes, receivers, transponders, god-knows what, stuffed into the cloister and garden, and onto the slightly lesser hilltop immediately facing the gate.  The little church is a glory of painted icons depicting the transfiguration of Christ, and is adorned with countless lamps, silver panels, carved and coffered woodwork, a little loft filled with mattresses, and a chance to buy  and light some tiny tapering candles. Outside you might be in the back yard of GCHQ or an ancient BBC transmitter station such as Daventry. Weird, man.
It's another clash between an old, staid, and rather beautiful way of life and a crashing ugly purposed industrial modern way of doing things.  I wonder which will last the longer (she says).

Stronger winds

To fit this many boats into the marina, they have to be tightly fitted together, which works ok if you don't mind hearing your neighbours' conversations and smelling their breakfast, and so on.  And it's all perfectly alright if the weather stays calm. But if the wind gets up, things can get a bit more worrying.
We spent the day doing quiet local things - coffee by the pool (wifi access), a bit of shopping (for us, fresh mint for tea and some figs for Andrew), and lunch on the boat using up the abundant and delicious left-overs from the night before.  Then we walked in the mid afternoon to the tiny village on the headland beside the marina bay.... Just getting the lie of the land, unwinding.
By the time we got back to the boat, the song of the wind in the thousand or so yacht masts in the marina was positively orchestral. With fluctuating power its harmonies rose and fell, sometimes just whispering and clanking, sometimes a full bellowing roar. Looking at the masts, their collective personality seemed to be thrilled and excited. 'This is what we're for', they seemed to be saying as they breasted into the gale. 'Show us the wind! Give it to us! We love it! We are all for wind!' And they stretched up taller and straighter, and if masts can smile, these hundreds and hundreds of masts were grinning. Their stays and yards and fixtures were with them, and they loved it.
The hulls, meanwhile, were stirring and bumping about. Where we are, about three piers back from the bay, in the middle of the marina, things were pretty up-and-down, but we and our immediate boatly neighbours are well-berthed with tightish lines. Across the pontoon, two Italian boats were less well secured, one of them swaying and bashing about in the wind, only a couple of fenders protecting its companion. The owners of this victim boat came back, looked, tried moving some fenders, drank coffee, looked some more. Their friends arrived. The badly-moored boat continued to bash into them. K&A said, if this was Split, the marinero would come and re-secure the problem boat, but here in Greece it's less well managed.
The wind roared and gulped. The masts were proud. The sky was blue but darkening into night-time (no shooting stars last night).
K&A (but stupidly not me) went for a walk further out into the marina - where the wind was taking some of the yachts broadside, and the waves were piling up over the jetties. 'No sleep, no staying aboard there.....'
For this to happen in a marina, a safe haven, is quite something.
Our berth, on pier N, berth 20, is about quarter of a mile or so from the actual quay. You get some idea of the scale of the place.
I woke smelling smoke about 1am. The people on the boat next to us, also Italian, were smoking and that had drifted into my cabin and woken me up. The wind had died down, to an almost eery quietness.  Today, the sky is blue and the airs calm. We're off by car to tour a bit of the island.

There is a great storm - a depression - swirling its way to the east somewhere far to he north of us, and so the winds which flood out from its southern skirts are channelling down the Adriatic Sea, powerful northerlies bringing rain and thunder with them. This makes our planned voyage up towards Croatia pretty well unbearable to contemplate so we will stay where we are for a while and wait for it to pass. The danger zone is called the Straits of Otranto where weather such as this concentrates itself, and the shores on either side offer little or no shelter. Last night, as we rocked very gently in our berth here at Gouvia Marina, we could see occasional distant flashes of lightning far over the horizon mountains, and an app told us this was 70miles away. We heard no thunder but the plain malevolence of those flashes was clear and made me feel glad to be this far away.
This is the largest marina in Greece, we are told - though other ports may claim a similar status. It is pretty well astonishing - like a plantation of regularly spaced but irregularly tall stiff white masts and attendant wires. The wind soughing through this hedgehog's back of bristles makes a constant cooing or humming noise, punctuated by the very occasional clanking of unsecured lines bashing against some other percussive material. 
The layout is practical - hard piers lead out into the bay - as far as the eye can see, with floating pontoons at right-angles and these packed on either side, barely an inch between them, with white plastic leisure boats of varying sizes and splendour. Some are weekly hire boats, and yesterday was change-over day. As the parting holidaymakers left, crews of young people swarmed onto the boats, chucking out mountains of laundry onto the pontoons, scouring and swabbing and cleaning the decks and saloons.   As we came back after our day out, the new parties of sailors were arriving, with their trundle suitcases and plastic bags of groceries. There are a lot of Italians and Brits, some French, some Greeks of course. Few Germans or Dutch. I think the Russians are all on the huge pointy scary-looking mega-yachts further out on the bay.  Prince Charles and Camilla are said to be up the coast on the Rothschild estate, staring at Albania. Our friend and neighbour at home, the painter Tony Bream (brother of guitarist Julian) told us how he had stayed on that estate some time ago....  
We didn't get as far as that part of the coast yesterday, but nearly. We went for lunch to a beach taverna called Nikolas' at Agni Bay, and tiny and charming little bite out of the cliffs now filled with cabins, pergolas, sun-loungers, pleasure boats, tables and chairs, signboards in various scripts, and the smell of cooking.  We motored up there because there was no wind..... We passed a particularly interesting and uber-expensive big boat painted as op-art camouflage (later learning it was Jeff Koons who designed it). It's a paradox - screaming 'Look at me!' while also saying 'You can't see me because I'm camouflaged...'   
We moored up at one of the little wooden jetties. We jumped into the warm sea, and swam about for a bit. Then we sauntered into the restaurant for lunch - a feast of dishes and tastes, all delicious. Our party was K&A, K's cousin Jules and her Greek husband Stephanos, and their 9-year old daughter Isabella, and Andrew and me. We over-ordered but loved it.  I particularly liked the little rolls of fried aubergine stuffed with cheese (called Boureki), and fingers of fried cheese and ham, and an illegal dish of fried baby calamari. Divine. Then, back aboard and with the wind coming up, we made our way out into the bay and sailed back to Gouvia.  To the east, we saw the painful islands where lepers were segregated (by 19th century officials mistakenly following medieval advice about how to treat such people), and where young people were imprisoned (by the British) and later locals were shot (by the Germans). 
Back into the marina, literally backing into our berth with nary and knock. Jules, Stephano and Isabella went for a swim in the marina pool, and I made a painting of the scene. These travelling sketches displease me because I see all my bad habits writ large, but it's all practice.  
Eventually, with all attempts to connect with the Internet failing, we went back to the Lady OIivia and eventually out again for supper to a taverna by the marina gates. Once again the food was marvellous - cheap and made on the premises and absolutely delicious. We took some back - too much to eat all in one sitting.   Back on the yacht, we saw that evil looking lightning in the distance, and some shooting stars overhead. The wind was gradually increasing, hustling and sighing through the forest of masts.  



Sent from my iPad

Sunday 13 August 2017

Winds

There is a great storm - a depression - swirling its way to the east somewhere far to he north of us, and so the winds which flood out from its southern skirts are channelling down the Adriatic Sea, powerful northerlies bringing rain and thunder with them. This makes our planned voyage up towards Croatia pretty well unbearable to contemplate so we will stay where we are for a while and wait for it to pass. The danger zone is called the Straits of Otranto where weather such as this concentrates itself, and the shores on either side offer little or no shelter. Last night, as we rocked very gently in our berth here at Gouvia Marina, we could see occasional distant flashes of lightning far over the horizon mountains, and an app told us this was 70miles away. We heard no thunder but the plain malevolence of those flashes was clear and made me feel glad to be this far away.
This is the largest marina in Greece, we are told - though other ports may claim a similar status. It is pretty well astonishing - like a plantation of regularly spaced but irregularly tall stiff white masts and attendant wires. The wind soughing through this hedgehog's back of bristles makes a constant cooing or humming noise, punctuated by the very occasional clanking of unsecured lines bashing against some other percussive material. 
The layout is practical - hard piers lead out into the bay - as far as the eye can see, with floating pontoons at right-angles and these packed on either side, barely an inch between them, with white plastic leisure boats of varying sizes and splendour. Some are weekly hire boats, and yesterday was change-over day. As the parting holidaymakers left, crews of young people swarmed onto the boats, chucking out mountains of laundry onto the pontoons, scouring and swabbing and cleaning the decks and saloons.   As we came back after our day out, the new parties of sailors were arriving, with their trundle suitcases and plastic bags of groceries. There are a lot of Italians and Brits, some French, some Greeks of course. Few Germans or Dutch. I think the Russians are all on the huge pointy scary-looking mega-yachts further out on the bay.  Prince Charles and Camilla are said to be up the coast on the Rothschild estate, staring at Albania. Our friend and neighbour at home, the painter Tony Bream (brother of guitarist Julian) told us how he had stayed on that estate some time ago....  
We didn't get as far as that part of the coast yesterday, but nearly. We went for lunch to a beach taverna called Nikolas' at Agni Bay, and tiny and charming little bite out of the cliffs now filled with cabins, pergolas, sun-loungers, pleasure boats, tables and chairs, signboards in various scripts, and the smell of cooking.  We motored up there because there was no wind..... We passed a particularly interesting and uber-expensive big boat painted as op-art camouflage (later learning it was Jeff Koons who designed it). It's a paradox - screaming 'Look at me!' while also saying 'You can't see me because I'm camouflaged...'   
We moored up at one of the little wooden jetties. We jumped into the warm sea, and swam about for a bit. Then we sauntered into the restaurant for lunch - a feast of dishes and tastes, all delicious. Our party was K&A, K's cousin Jules and her Greek husband Stephanos, and their 9-year old daughter Isabella, and Andrew and me. We over-ordered but loved it.  I particularly liked the little rolls of fried aubergine stuffed with cheese (called Boureki), and fingers of fried cheese and ham, and an illegal dish of fried baby calamari. Divine. Then, back aboard and with the wind coming up, we made our way out into the bay and sailed back to Gouvia.  To the east, we saw the painful islands where lepers were segregated (by 19th century officials mistakenly following medieval advice about how to treat such people), and where young people were imprisoned (by the British) and later locals were shot (by the Germans). 
Back into the marina, literally backing into our berth with nary and knock. Jules, Stephano and Isabella went for a swim in the marina pool, and I made a painting of the scene. These travelling sketches displease me because I see all my bad habits writ large, but it's all practice.  
Eventually, with all attempts to connect with the Internet failing, we went back to the Lady OIivia and eventually out again for supper to a taverna by the marina gates. Once again the food was marvellous - cheap and made on the premises and absolutely delicious. We took some back - too much to eat all in one sitting.   Back on the yacht, we saw that evil looking lightning in the distance, and some shooting stars overhead. The wind was gradually increasing, hustling and sighing through the forest of masts.  



Sent from my iPad

Saturday 12 August 2017

Corfu, war, a miracle and bank notes

On 11th Augut 1716 a Turkish fleet was besieging the city and fortress of Corfu. The population - despite its impressive zigzag fortifications - was hopelessly outnumbered and could expect only death or slavery. But a huge storm swept the invaders away and saved the city. The residents ascribed this miraculous salvation to their patron saint Spyridon, and have thanked him on that date ever since with a litany or procession through the town. It is not all that different from saint-parades found in other Mediterranean and ancient towns and villages - such as that of San Felice de Circeo on the island of Ponza - said to be where Circe enticed Odysseus, and where the tiny streets are filled with joyous families and an effigy of their saint is shouldered through the crowds.   However, Spyridon's joyful and respectful annual parade is marked by a splendid and frightfully British accompaniment of dozens of marching bands. This relic of British rule is both bonkers and marvellous. 'We' gave up our ownership of the island way back in the mid-nineteenth century and thus our military bands were withdrawn. But they had rooted themselves in the hearts and minds of the locals who promptly decided to create a local substitute. But one band was not enough. Nor was two or three sufficient. They ended up with nineteen, twenty, more...  Each was equipped with startlingly splendid arrays of instruments - the bigger the better. Each had its own uniform with splendiferous hats and helmets, so that each band is arrayed in scarlet, or white and blue, or black, or green.  Children were set to learn instruments. Retired bandsmen from the Yorkshire pits came to settle here to keep standards up. And on St Spyridon's day, these bands all gather and march, interspersed with police, Boy Scouts, various public functionaries, and watched by large and happy crowds along the way.  The crickets in the trees on either side are - as ever - fantastically noisy, but they cannot drown out the sound of several bands all playing their own tunes at the same time.   There is a kind of order, and a lot of stopping and waiting, and impatient drummers practice their bashing and rolling noises to keep their fellows on their toes.  The march lasts for about two hours and is one of the finest and funniest things you can see. 
Now that we live in the space age, possession of such minor fortresses and islands is of no real consequence. Wars and strategies are conducted by satellite, drone, stealth bombers and computers at vast distances. Places like Corfu don't really matter any more except to refugees and tourists, and their old status has shrunk to a kind of 2-D account.
This can be readily understood if you go - as we did - into the the Museum of Ionian Bank Notes, a free and fascinating series of rooms owned by Alpha Bank. Mr Constantine showed us round - a charming and academic historian who loved his subject and was prepared to explain everything in detail.  The museum is the history of money, empire, war, pride, inflation, technology, art, Greece, peace and futility....   It starts at the time of Croesus, the first tiny blobs of silver stamped with some sort of mark, moves on through flimsy but gold coins, imprints of heads and horses, and then the great leap of faith into paper money. Design, ownership and instruction are spelled out ('it is forbidden to cut this note in half'). Kings come and go. Printing plates are laid out - sometimes with as many as forty engraved duplicates on a sheet, all done individually and identically by eye.  They moved from copper to steel. The printing was done by Americans, Brits, French. In times of crisis when there was not enough metal for coins, tiny teeny notes were printed instead of cash. Patriotic designs invoking Alexander the Great, Socrates, Sophocles and the rest sprang to the fore, and architecture of course.  While the Germans ran Greece during the last world war, hyperinflation ransacked the value of any kind of money - within weeks or days, prices leapt from a few hundred drachma to three trillion. When the Germans slunk away, a British Military currency came into use - locals would then gladly accept a low value note rather than a high one, because they believed it would stay true to its worth.
The Greeks have always been traders. They invented money and always needed it.  A fascinating theme was the recurrent dream of nations - for one universal currency, held together by agreements which crossed boundaries and languages. So, long before the EU and the Common Market, there was in the 19th century a Latin Monetary Union based on silver - the French, Belgians, Swiss and Italians ran it. But it didn't last long because the Germans and the British were using the gold standard, and so it all fell to bits. 


The past is the future. Storms and wars bash through and grand ambitions are swept aside. The Bank Note Museum tells the whole story. 

Thursday 10 August 2017

Travel

I do wonder sometimes how long peasants like me will be allowed to travel. One way or another they'll find a way to stop us. One the one hand it's 'easy', affordable, accessible, etc. You book online, 'check in' yourself, go to any of hundreds of glamorous destinations, get your few days in the baking heat.....   A massive, colossal infrastructure is there to support all this - motorways, airports, lounges, retail cities at the aiports including those astonishing wandering lanes through an unbelievable perfume quarter, with a wiggling black marble pathway marked out in gleaming stone flecked with millions of diamonds..... This chicane is a kind of hellish condensation of the whole thing - the corralling of the mob, entirely artificial, like a cattle run leading to the abbatoire entrance but with a horrible stench of expensive artificial smells.  Then there are the planes themselves, tin tubes hurling themselves up into the thinner air to save fuel, bashing through invisible waves of thick and thin air, up over the blissful blankets of cloud into baking hot light.... shooting us in a great arc through the atmosphere towards our distant holiday destinations.  The planes are a marvel, those huge fleets of them, carting millions of us, squashed into our tiny perches, every day, zigzagging across the planet.
It's all astonishing, and rather ghastly. This is what we call our 'holidays'.
Yestertday's trip to Stansted was by train - change at Stratford East (including walking through the shopping mall to the other station, which is huge and sprawls out like a great fat Victorian great-aunt, so many platforms and destinations...... Then up to Tottenham Hale, into the unsuspected greenery and almost rural old fields and marshes around the R Lea where they used to make gunpowder.  The platform there is made of hundreds of small bricks, and a huge number of passengers are heading as we were to the airport, and so are dragging their pull-along suitcases - hence the noise of all those hard little wheels thumping over the bricks is like a vast choir of huge crickets........   Then the Stansted Express with electric sockets to recharge your computer or phone....  So, a slightly tortuous but useful old route to the plane.
We had a delicious lunch at Leon - vegan salad and a fish curry - all made and served with pride, and then met our friends K and A, whose boat we will be sailing on.  The flight was 4 hours, the children aboard remained resolutely cheerful (kicking the back of my seat), the air was terrifically bumpy at first, the light over the clouds was dazzling.    The air in Corfu was like a steam bath.  Hotel Dalia is ten minutes walk from the airport and surprisingly quiet. Very elegant and nice.  We walked through the muggy air to find supper near the sea under the trees. Another marvellous salad, some garlic purée, hummus, fried shrimps.  The moon was a disgusting yellow hanging over the water. Bed was utterly blissful.. Today is the feastday of Corfu's patron saint, Ag. Spyridon. We are going see his litany - a procession round the old town.