The world from my window

They say that good things come in threes... Well, two good things have just happened to me, writing-wise. There's a feature about my year in Corfu in the October issue of Good Housekeeping magazine. One of their feature writers contacted me after reading this blog. I didn't make the front cover but then Tess Daly is rather beautiful, even if I've never actually watched Strictly Come Dancing . And then I had jaw-dropping news that I'd won a holiday for two to Peru (to Peru! ) in a travel writing competition for Saga and The Daily Telegraph. There are two things I'm waiting to hear about, but I won't jinx them by saying what they are.  The moral of this story is you have to be in it to win it - you need to put yourself out there, here and everywhere, if that's what you want. Yes, you'll get rejected - lots of times - and wonder if it's really worth carrying on. But if you love writing, you're passionate about it, you just do it - as w...

The four old friends bob around in the water. Three of them are wearing white hats and all have sunglasses on. It's a daily ritual, this swim in the bay at the bottom of their village. They chat in gabbled Greek, they exclaim, they laugh. And then they swim slowly to the shore, still talking, a loud kalimera! shouted at them by a local fisherman. A cool breeze ripples across the water and what sounds like a tune from a faraway flute winnows across the bay as the wind catches in the wires of the masts of yachts anchored by the Cave of the Nymphs. The clear, blue-green water laps around the boats and on the fine shingle. In the distance, there's a goat bell tinkling I am sitting in the sheltered bay of Polis, on the north west tip of Ithaca. It's not hard to imagine, in this wonderfully peaceful place, that this is the true home of Homer's wandering hero, Odysseus. Like Penelope, I sit and wait patiently. And then Mr Grigg returns with two large bags of bay, ...

Laid-back, Latin music is playing in the little bar by the harbourside on the island of Kastos, Greece. The wooden chairs - directors' chairs - are full of Dutch people speaking a strange, guttural, glottal, purring language only the Dutch understand. There is a blast from a ship's horn down on the quayside and all eyes turn to a twin-masted wooden vessel, a tripper boat called Christina . The Dutch people pay for their beers and coffees, taking their hats, sunglasses and smiles back along the harbour. And now the sound of a Latin trumpet wafts through the bar's shutters onto an empty terrace. A dog barks and the cicadas are like constant maracas accompanying this jazz tune which whirls around in my head and through the clean, warm air. The island hugs its bigger, more rugged brother Kalamos in the wine dark waters of the Ionian Sea, close to the Greek mainland. A kitten snakes its way along the terrace, after jumping from the arms of an America woman who ...