Snork Maiden redux

I read a somewhat satirical account of the middle classes during lockdown.  The author pointed out that people get lyrical over the tiny seasonal changes in their locality.  Guilty!  The Spring is certainly turning into Summer here. There is a whole new look to the roadsides and olive groves.  These purple balls are some sort of Cretan alium. TODAY'S TRACK The light has also been spectacular with the 'magic hour' turnng everything brilliant orange.  These from an evening walk last Monday.  The grasses seem to be on fire and the olive trees glow.  We have been going a bit further afield, in this brief time before the holiday travel begins in earnest.  Everything seems so, well, normal, but to me it still seems lke a lull before the gusts pick up again. People go about their lives seemingly unthreatened. Of course the virus will swan in, without a passport or customs check, invisible and silent until like Alien, it pops out of a someone's belly ...

21 st May 2020 A full 10 days since the last blog - so what has happened?  Here's today's atmospheric track HERE To begin with, Summer is well underway  with the vegetation changing day by day into a glorious backlit mass of creamy colours.  We watch almost no Netflix, just France 24 for news.  We have been swimming in the morning - chilly but deserted, and sometimes the evening, busier with Greek families on the beach and slightly warmer water.  The air temperatures have been in the low 30s. Apparently the weather is due to change again, with some rain tomorrow.  But there's a bigger change, and harder to explain.  We feel as though the protective wall has been stripped away, and that we are more vulnerable now.  There are few masks to be seen in Kissamos, very few.  The guy who pumps the gas handles the petrol cap cover, the credit card.  We enter the bank using 2 stainless steel door handles etc.  We wear 'face coverings', gel ou...

May 15 I am going to start with the atmospheric music link.  Al says I should make my links clearer, so CLICK HERE! I have a personal tradition that when I think summer has arrived, I get a Magnum.  Well, here in Greece they are called ‘Magic’.  They do come in most of the same varieties, except, I think, vegan.  Or maybe there just isn’t a vegan market in Western Crete.  They did have the ruby one, which looks nice and tastes, well, cold.  We took them down to the seaside like proper Brits.  We are not quite dancing in the street, although we did contribute to Rik Lander’s 60th birthday video!  That was nearly a fortnight ago, but we couldn’t release a spoiler until the birthday video had been seen by the birthday man.  If you know Rik, you might want to ask Stella for a link.  Watch for his very cool Dad at the beginning! You can listen to the track we were miming / dancing to HERE . OMG Blogger has changed its tool.  I can't get ...

Monday 11 May This morning we walked to the nearby gorge.  There's a stream fed by a spring and it creates a magical environment, quite different from the often dry, ploughed olive groves around it.  The light was just right this morning.  It's been a few days since our last visit and the path that was flanked by brash yellow flowers is now a delicate purple passage. I have no idea what the flowers are, and however I try to photograph banks of flowers like these, the effect is lost.  You will just have to take my word for it - Crete has a reputation for a huge diversity of wild flowers and herbs.  Every walk reveals a new chapter in the spring story.   Oh, was that very cheesy?  .   To go with the cheese, here's a very old olive tree.  They can live for hundreds of years, and this is one of the oldest I've seen with a beautiful 'woven' trunk.  It looks as though it's been left alone for some time, definitely no visits to the hairdr...

Roses seems to do very well in Crete.  The one is scented and almost the size of my face!  There is also a highly scented hedge bordering the garden of our rented house, as well as honeysuckle.  Fantastic scents in the evening.  The swimming pool is ready to be filled, our box from Bristol (more T shirts, new binoculars, better sun cream, new Greek recipe book, Italian coffee, more tea…) arrived yesterday after a 2-week delay at this end.  Heartfelt thanks to Cleo, our house sitter who packed the box exactly as I would myself!  Monday 4 May, Crete, Greece Today restrictions are lifted on travel within your own prefecture, in our case, Chania.  This gives us access to the city itself, to several beaches, wild mountain and peninsular walks, gorges and villages other than our own.  So what did we do?  Actually we stayed home!  Partly because the weather wasn’t so great, partly though, because going out still seems a little strange an...

Wednesday I was lucky enough to get a ZOOM yoga class with Rajiv Chanchani this morning,  over 5000 miles and a dodgy pipe.  I can’t begin to explain the quality of Rajiv’s understanding and teaching which goes way beyond a ‘what goes where’ approach.  So I will just tell you that in his chat following the class, he said that we all put on a mask: someone asks us how we are, we say ‘fine’, but what is actually going on is a seething mass of emotions, motivations, hopes, wishes, sensations.  It is actually a battlefield.  Anyone who has even a passing interest in techniques like IFS (internal Family Systems) will know exactly what he means.  Probably you all do.  Of course this time is a bit of an emotional rollercoaster.  It is sobering to hear the numbers of dead coming in from the UK.  So far no one we know personally has died, but there are ‘once removed’ people, musicians, scientists, doctors whose names really bring it home.  Of cou...