Day 205

The wind is blowing any number of leaves round the streets and gardens. The trees are distressed, losing leaves and condition, bowing down in the face of the climate catastrophe. We had a torrential downpour on Tuesday night, but hardly any of it reached the ground. The plants look like they’ve been fried, stalks and leaves all crispy and overdone. And the wind is not a breeze, it’s a gale, created, no doubt, by the unnatural temperatures and the way they’re interacting miles up in the sky, and being forced down to earth. They’re not meant to be here. And no matter how much M and I might like heat, this heat is unnatural for this part of the world. Today, I’ve also realised I have many fewer places to hide from the sun than I did in Agios Nikolaos. Speaking of which, last night, during a directionless web search, I found a webcam that looks out over our beach in AN, showing, side on, George’s bar, and, full on, the balcony of the room we inhabited for those two blissful weeks – thank God we did nothing on that balcony we shouldn’t have been doing, not that I think any archive footage of the live webcam footage exists.

Over the last two days, I’ve spent well over an hour and a half in Greek lessons on my phone, and have reached “legendary level” (ha!) in two areas. I think it’s actually a relatively superficial way of trying to learn a language, but I can see the value in allowing myself to be flooded by the new alphabet and its various uses. I see it more of a familiarisation exercise than real learning at this point. I must admit, though, it is a wonderful way to spend some time, playing with linguistic puzzles.

For most of today, I have been transcribing all the handwritten writing I did in AN for The Mortality Code, which amounted to just over 3,500 words. Still astounding that it probably took me longer to transcribe than it probably took me to write in the first place, on my sun lounger by George’s bar, surrounded by the buzz of people, and with the Cretan mountains off in the distance, to which I would always raise my eyes in awe. I can now start working on progressing that novel, as well as Aggie, as well as the AN short story that’s sitting on this machine somewhere, and that I’ve not touched since we got back (almost four weeks ago!).

Thinking about moving there is, of course, tempered with the realisation that my Freedom of Movement has been stolen from me by Brexit, and that any such move will be fraught with difficulties, and will probably mean having to give up a lot of the things we have accumulated over the course of our life together. We will see – but at least we have visions of a different and new beginning.

AGGIE’S ART OF HAPPINESS – CHAPTER 158