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...

And with the last day of carnival came music and dancing, games and singing all across the island. In Agios Magikades, the children got hold of the bell ropes, a man dressed as a cow helped grill the souvlaki, a complaint was made to the DJ when Turkish music wove its way around the plateia and, as daylight faded and turned into night, my very own Zorbas gave me my first Greek dance lesson. 'You have to feel the music,' he said. To dance is to live. A purist of the Corfiot dance, he took it all around the world. Joy of joys, he once performed at Sidmouth . He bowed to a greater skill, however, when he introduced us to a large, yellowing moustache trying its best to conceal the bulk of a smiling, elderly man called Nikos, whose English stretched to 'very good' and 'problem'. 'When he was younger,' Zorbas said. 'he could do the scissors.' 'Very good,' Nikos winked. 'Problem.' But it was a sedate and graceful dance in t...