The world from my window

A smell of garlic began to make my nostrils twitch. I was inside the house, the shutters were closed to keep out the sun and mosquitoes and I didn't know where it was coming from. The aroma grew stronger and stronger until it became overpowering. Like some bloodhound, I tracked it all through the house, to the utility room and out through the other side to the home of Spiros, our neighbour. 'You want some skordalia, Margarita?' he said, rhythmically mashing boiled potatoes with a cup full of two bulbs of pureed garlic and lashings of lemon juice. He added some olive oil, potato water and more lemon juice. 'You try,' he said. It was smooth, spiky and pungent. There was no way a mosquito would touch me now. In my skordalia armour, I was invincible. It was on, then, to Gialiskari, a secluded beach near Pelekas. It's one of our favourite spots, the beach now replenished naturally with sand after last year when shingle and rocks took over the small cove for t...

We walked past the bandstand on our way to the pictures, intrigued by a pair of plimsolls just hanging there. On arrival at the Orpheus Cinema, we walked in through the lobby, paid five euros each for our tickets and settled down to watch a film. It was James Bond and For Your Eyes Only . Unlike Mr Grigg, I’m not a huge Bond fan, even though I share a birthday with Sean Connery. All those scantily-clad women, machismo, male chauvinism and car chases leave me cold. And Roger Moore makes me cringe. But tonight I was prepared to make an exception. Because this particular motion picture, you see, was filmed on Corfu and was the last showing of the season for a new English language film club.  The previous week it was Some Like It Hot , one of my all-time favourites. But it clashed with something else so, sadly, Marilyn and Co didn’t get a look-in. Pity really. Still, nobody's perfect. For the first time, I actually enjoyed a James Bond film, seein...