The world from my window

I'm up here in shorts, a floral top and Birkenstocks. New shorts and bright pink Birkenstocks, it's true, but I'm feeling rather under-dressed. Up in the plateia, in this heat, this death/life defying heat (it's said Greece will reach 42 degrees at the heatwave's peak on Saturday), and the women are dressed up to the nines. Immaculately coiffured hair, sleek and shining, teetering in strappy sandals and glammed up in off-the-shoulder dresses. Beside me, the village president tops up Mr Grigg's glass with retsina, while my husband queues at the barbecue, desperate to buy some souvlakia to repay the villagers the hospitality we have been shown since arriving in Corfu late the previous night. Plates of souvlakia, feta cheese and briam  are plonked on the table in front of us. 'Go on,' the people say. 'You eat.' Xenia is a concept from Greece's ancient past. And it's still practised to this day. And you can never, should never ,...

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...