The world from my window

We've just picked up a vehicle for my big brother from Kostas and Antonis at the appropriately-named Sunrise Car Hire.   They're nice people, give us good rates and Kostas always comes out with something he has grown in his garden. Yesterday, it was fresh figs. As with anywhere, you have to drive carefully. But when we moved here in October last year, we thought the Corfiot drivers had turned over a new leaf. No tailgating, no overtaking on blind bends and everyone driving much slower than in the summer. Ah, we thought, they're economising, because driving slower uses less petrol. And then came the summer. 'The drivers are still crazy, y'know,' said our friend, Canadian George, a Corfiot who spent more than twenty years in Vancouver. 'You have to stay close to the side of the road. It can be dangerous. You don't know what's coming round the corner.' It could be a dog, a tortoise, a hedgehog, a hare or a horse on a long tether. We...

There is a shovel waiting on the upstairs balcony, ready to deal with our latest visitor. It's not for my big brother, although I must admit that, at times when I was younger, I could quite happily have hit him on the head with a garden implement, preferably something pronged. No, our latest visitor emerged one night not long after a small white cat appeared mewing in the garden, closely followed by a bat. With Doctor Seuss timing, something that rhymes with mat suddenly appeared in the vine overhead. And it was not a hat. I could cope with the edible dormice in the roof. They have an interesting and noble history (they were once eaten on sticks by ancient Romans). And even ordinary mice I can put up with. But. Not. A. Rat. There it was, looking down on the family gathering on the outside terrace with cold, beady eyes. And then, once we'd spotted it, it shot off, like the proverbial rat up a drainpipe, although it found its way up by shinning up a pillar...

There were long faces outside the kafenion. The village panygyri, the long-awaited festival to celebrate St Paraskevi, was off. With a week's notice, the organisers were told by the owner of the field where the festival has been held for years: 'Oxi.' Which, in Greek, means no. It was a blow for the village, for community life. It was a blow for the organisers, who work hard to put on these events for the benefit of all. And it was a blow to us, too, as my brother and his family had booked their holiday dates around it. They're due in later today and were looking forward to the festival tomorrow night. When you see this YouTube video, you can see why. The reasons for the refusal, as conveyed to Mr Grigg and me, seem pretty petty. You couldn't make it up. Village politics, eh? Still, there are always two sides to every story and this blog is not the place for a rant. But to say we were excited about the event was an understatement. We have walked pas...

They call Corfu The Garden Isle. It is lush and green, even at this time of year when the sun is baking hot and visitors and locals dive into the sea to cool off. Gerald Durrell described it as The Garden of the Gods. You could imagine them strolling around, plucking an apricot from a tree and cavorting with nymphs through the olive groves, a Hellenistic pastoral romance, where everything in the garden is lovely. Of course, it's Greece and everything in the garden isn't lovely. Times are hard, politicians are 'dirty' and ordinary people struggle to keep their heads above water. And it's in the cities where they feel it most. Here on the island, there are people we know who are pleased to have a job even though they're getting way below the minimum wage. In the villages, people cultivate their patches of land and live a life more simple. The ground is fertile here and fruit and vegetables grow in abundance. Our own plot of land is yielding aubergin...

At last, my blog book,  A Year in Lush Places: Tales from England's Rural Underbelly , is out in paperback. It's been available in Kindle format for a little while now and I've been like an ant with a overdose of formic acid as I waited for the 'proper' book to arrive. And now it has, thanks to the good folks at FeedaRead .  It will also be available from leading booksellers. It's a slim little number - it's a novella, you see. Sneeze and you might miss a vital bit of the plot. But if you enjoy the Dorset part of this blog, I think you'll enjoy the book. Here's the blurb: Immersed in a sea of Barbour wearers and waves of Daily Mail readers, Maddie Grigg charts the highs and lows of a Dorset year as she attempts to swim against the tide in the lively and lovely village of Lush Places. From singing groups, book clubs and point-to-point, not to mention election wars, the village has it all. A quiet rebel, Maddie is married to a charmer, a m...

The world is full of coincidences and my life is full of them. There are a number of serendipitous moments connected with my Big Fat Greek Gap Year. Coming across the journalist Marjory McGinn is one of them. We have a number of things in common, not least of which is a love of all things Greek. And both of us have actually taken the plunge and moved here for a year. In Marjory's case, she and her partner, Jim, planned on staying in the Peloponnese for twelve months, taking their crazy dog, Wallace, along for the ride. They ended up living there for three years. She's just brought out a book, Things Can Only Get Feta , about the first year living in a rural village in the Mani. It is available now on Kindle and will be out in a paperback version later this month. In an interview for this blog, she shares the highs and lows of her Greek odyssey. Q: What makes a couple exchange life in a quiet Scottish village for Greece in crisis? Madness I guess...

Up at the plateia, the mandolins did a sound check to Zorba's Dance. Children tore around the square's twin trees and toddlers bobbed up and down on bended knees while devoted mothers and grannies looked on. Old men sat outside the kafenion, clacking their worry beads, gazing out at the scene unfolding before them. The butcher arrived in his van with two crates of souvlakia as the barbecue began to smoke. The wine and beer and Coca Cola was flowing and plates and plates of souvlakia, oily roast potatoes with aubergines, chicken and peppers kept arriving on our table. 'You want wine? I bring you wine,' said an important villager, who wandered down the road to his house to bring back a fancy decanter of his home made brew, his own feta and green olives.   'Why do they keep giving us all this?' said our children, who are staying with us for the week. 'Shouldn't we be paying for it?' Mr Grigg was happy. What with the children buying tw...

There is something very special about sailing around the Ionian islands . I'm a reluctant sailor. I scare easily and would rather be attached to the earth by an invisible umbilical cord than be immersed in the wine dark sea. But there is much to be said for bobbing gently around at anchor in a secluded bay, with only cicadas for company during the daytime and a family of five large owls at night. Sleeping by the light of a supermoon on midsummer's eve... ...and waking up to a Homeric dawn... This sun and moon, this sea, these mountains, these islands, they all connect us to the magical and lyrical but brutal times of years gone by. You just have to close your eyes to re-emerge in the age of myths. It is there in your head, in your heart. You just have to believe. The ancient, mythical past is all around us, in place names like Ithaca, in ancient ruins of temples to the gods, in our offerings of broken pottery on the mantelpiece, a gift to Hestia, the goddess ...