The world from my window

We've got a table reserved for four and we're in poll position. Once we've feasted we'll be out of the starting blocks and sitting on the wall overlooking the beach. We're in Paleokastritsa in north west Corfu and we're getting ready for the Varkarola. I've blogged about it before and all the background you need to know is right here . I am a sucker for ancient mythology and the story of Odysseus is one of my favourites Tonight, it's a re-telling of one of the hero's many adventures on his ten-year journey from Troy to the kingdom of Ithaca. In the bay at Paleokastritsa, to the soundtrack of 1492: Conquest of Paradise by Vangelis, he has a massive fight with Poseidon, the god of the ocean, played by a diver who pops up from nowhere out of the sea and then sets Odysseus' raft alight. Odysseus is shipwrecked and surprises the Phaeacian princess, Nausikka, who had been playing on the shoreline with her handmaidens after doing their washin...

Something for the weekend... Featuring our local beach here in Corfu. That's about it. Love Maddie x

There's something about this place, this magical place. OK, so we have sun, sea and sand. And plenty of it. But Corfu is so much more. Despite all the obvious influences of its conquerors, the island is just like this graffiti on a hillside crash barrier. It assaults your senses, everywhere you go. This morning, the swallows dart in and out, looking for a suitable place to nest. Oh please come, please . There's a cuckoo in the olive groves, a cockerel crowing, dogs barking, a dove in a palm tree and sparrows chirping in a lemon tree laden with sweet-smelling blossom. Our neighbour is next door building an apothiki and his little Chewbacca dog, who is just getting used to a drastic haircut, has just popped over the say hello. The azure water is crystal clear down at Paleokastritsa. The monastery's beautiful gardens smell of cat pee but you can forgive them for that when you see what's being taken care of in a box. A door looks out onto the courtya...

There is a dancer here (he looks like a clothed  kouros  statue), leading the line and swirling around rather daintily. His long ringlets sway and he is the centre of attention, just as he likes it. I attempt to capture this young man's image with my camera but the battery packs up and he is consigned to ancient history. So we will have to make do with what the camera saw before it stopped working. Not quite a kouros , but equally impressive. This is our first panegyri of 2014. It's held on New Friday, in the week after Easter, up on the monastery car park in Paleokastritsa, on Corfu's north west coast. There's a bus taking people up the hill. We wait patiently for it to return and then fifty Greeks turn up from nowhere and barge right in. It's standing room only so we forget about the bus and walk up the road. It's not so bad. We can see the bright lights and hear the familiar music of the Skolarikis brothers. They look at least twenty years o...

It's a story I know so well. Odysseus, shipwrecked after battling with Poseidon who is angry at the hero for blinding his son, the cyclops Polyphemus, lands, naked and exhausted, on the shores of Scheria, the home of the Phaeacians. He surprises the young princess, Nausikaa, who is taking a break from doing her washing on the shore and is playing ball with her handmaidens. It's a dangerous place, the water's edge, for ancient Greek maidens. It's where they get ravished by gods and demi-gods. Look what happened to Europa . Anyway, Nausikaa takes Odysseus home to meet the parents, the gentle King Alcinous and Queen Arete. In this video, they make their way along the shore to the palace. And then, Odysseus tells the story of the things that have happened to him since leaving Troy ten years earlier. The Phaeacians provide him with a boat so he can sail back to his kingdom of Ithaca and his patient wife, Penelope, who has been waiting for him for twenty years. ...

There is a place near my Dorset home of Lush Places where the fairies live. I've blogged about it before but I am not going to say where it is because these things are enjoyed best when they are exclusive and magical and not advertised to the world and his wife. This is not Disney, it's Dorset. It is a lovely spot, with dozens of fairy doors to be found at the foot of sturdy trees. And when you open a door, there are often things left behind for the little people. This sprang to my mind last week when I was introduced to the world of Geocaching . According to the website this is a treasure hunting game where you use a smartphone or GPS to hide and seek containers. The containers can be all shapes and sizes and concealed behind rocks, on posts or ingeniously inserted into hollowed-out pine cones. Once you find the geocache, you can sign the logbook and see if the last person to find the hidden container  has left anything behind. If you take it, you need to leave some...

 The church clings to its rock like a limpet mine on a ship's hull. There is a sense of danger up here in the clouds. Any minute now you could topple right over the edge. Nausea overwhelms you as you peep out over the sheer drop to the valley floor below. In the distance you can see Paleokastritsa harbour, the monastery and not Homer's wine dark sea but your own. And that speck on the beach, it's probably just a pile of debris washed up by the storms. But maybe, just maybe, it could be the ghost of Odysseus waiting to be discovered by Nausikaa . It doesn't pay to look too closely. There's many a slip... To the south is the village of Liapades marching up the hill and to the left the fertile plains of the Ropa Valley, with its gypsies and market gardens. Out across the olives and cypress trees there is Corfu Town, the old fort, the islands of Lazaretto and Vidos sitting in the water and, across the channel, the snow-capped mountains of the mainland and ...