The world from my window

At the Corfu tax office, the staff are dressed in polo shirts, jeans and trainers. A ticket machine spews out a piece of paper with a number on it and we wait in turn, as if we are standing at the deli counter at Morrisons for two Scotch eggs and four slices of ham. A young man with the chiselled face of an ancient Greek shuffles large bundles of paper very loudly, making his presence felt in a hubbub of voices in a foreign tongue. And then, after ten minutes, we are at the front of the queue. A few signatures, lots of stamping and we're done. We emerge from the tax office, a five-storey, grubby building faced with light grey marble, air conditioning units outside every window. Teenage boys use the front courtyard as a skateboard ramp and a melange of mopeds and scooters are parked against a low wall. We take in the hustle and bustle around us - with a tax number we are now part of this, after all - and it begins to rain. And rain and rain and rain. And there's me weari...

New Year's Eve and the shops in My Kind of Town are heaving. Mr Grigg and I go from Lidls to Morrisons, shadowed by a gabbling gipsy family looking for bargains on the salmonella shelf. Mr Grigg hovers closely behind them, puts in a hand and pulls out a tray of pigs in blankets. 'That'll do for tonight,' he says, plucking two half price pork pies and a packet of twelve loaded potato skins from the refrigerated unit. He pulls away from the crowd, the spoils under his arm. The gipsy family look suitably impressed. I struggle to find prunes and cocktail sticks and go back and forth, passing a man who smells like he hasn't had a wash in years who is pondering over whether to buy a 'value' pack of digestives to go with his two tins of new potatoes. After the fifth time of wandering up and down the same aisles, I finally ask a disinterested man stacking shelves. He mutters to himself as if he's remembering the winning numbers of the lottery from a dream. At la...