Thinking about 2013

This week I spent a happy evening after work drafting a home-made calendar for next year.

I found when I moved in May that my wall calendar was one of the very few things I could not accommodate in any sensible (i.e. useable) way.  There are no hooks on the walls, or nails in the walls, no picture rail, and nowhere to put up a pin board; so, nowhere to hang my calendar. 

I bluetacked it to the wall, but it was too heavy, and kept dropping off with a crash at odd moments.  Including the inevitable middle-of-the-night crash.  Shriek, thrash about, sit up, bang head on cupboard.  Bah, that's not on.

So I disemboweled it, and have been sticking up individual 1-month sheets.  It works, in a rough and ready way, but when you've removed the staples and separated a calendar into individual sheets, sometimes the picture that comes with a month is rather unsuitable for that month (snowdrops in August and so forth).  They're still lovely pictures, but it looks stupid sometimes.

I was thinking rather crossly that maybe I would have to manage without one next year.  But then it hit me that I could make my own, and print it on light-weight paper that wouldn't crash to the floor.  Ah-ha!

It took about ten minutes to do the grids and fill them in.  And then I had a nice mooch in Google images, and one or two other places online, and made up a selection of pictures.  I'm going to be alternating Greek islands (and beaches I want to swim from) with food, plants and handsome men.  Since they're all loose-leaf pages, I can change the images around every week - even every day if I want. Or put up two or more at a time.  I can mix and match; Renner with cherries, McRae with scarlet buckeye leaves, Stepanek with Antipaxos...  Have Crete with the cherries.  Thassos with daffodils.  Renner with daffodils.  Heavens, the possibilities are endless.  Happy, silly Dent.

Luckily I don't have Photoshop, or the possibilities really would be endless.

If anyone would like to borrow the grids, and then make up their own image selection, let me know and I can copy them to you.  It's easy, cheap and can be custom-made to your personal tastes.  Maybe I should go into business? - the Dent patent loose-leaf customised pick-your-personal-porn calendar.  What do you think?

Writing update; last night I wiped out the Big Evil Bad Guy.  Oof, got there.  Now I only have a couple of scene to do, and I'm done.  Apart from the revisions.  And typing up.

It's been a fun ride, and to my amusement I can see sequel possibilities.  How daft is that?! 

Nostalgia

I've just been uploading some of my holiday photographs from Thassos onto Facebook.  Gasp! Good grief, Imogen does something technical using a computer!  Very nostalgic looking at them again.The blue skies, the turquoise sea, coffee on the beach; the deserted village in the mountains, the dramatic silhouette of the island of Samothrakí in the distance; olive trees and pines, flowers, beaches, and mountains shining in the sun... 

The highest peak on Thassos, Mt Ipsarion, is slightly higher than Snowdon.  Magic. 

Oh England, my England...

How grey and damp it feels here, how cold, how flat.

The temperature on Thassos was about 33 degrees C, almost fifteen degrees hotter than here, and the humidity was about half this.  The sky was huge and blue and the sea like sapphire (albeit rather rough at first - I was semi-surfing rather than swimming for a couple of days).  My studio had a view across olive groves to the sea, one way, and across olive groves to the mountains in the other direction.  At night, the full moon shone on the mountainside like fairy dust, and fireflies hung in the trees.  Swifts and swallows, which had left the UK a couple of weeks ago, swooped over the valley at morning and dusk, and the terracotta roof tiles housed a cheerful sparrow colony.

I ate too much, and probably had too many cold beers.  I swam (or hurled myself about in the breakers) every day.  I did some rather bad watercolours, and read a nice fat fantasy novel, and did a bit of walking and a lot of sitting looking at the view.  I took a tour into the mountains by jeep, bouncing along unsurfaced tracks to a deserted village, a beautiful country church with a fifteenth century painted iconostasis, a hidden mountain lake, spectacular stands of old-growth forest full of birds and wildflowers and with resin-perfumed air, and finally right to the very top of the tallest mountain, Ipsario - which is slightly higher than Mt. Snowdon. 

England feels so grey, so dark, so damp and cold in comparison.  London seems all grey concrete and grey faces, yellow brick and yellowing leaves.  Greece is blue and white and brilliant gold and clear green.  Greece is light itself, and England is dimness and the approach of winter.

Last night I had booked a ticket for the first night of a new dance adaptation of Kafka's "The Metamorphosis".  I had a feeling I might have post-holiday blues (and boy was I right!).  It was good to remind myself, with supper at Patisserie Valerie and a trip to the theatre, that after all it is not the end of the world to have had to come home. I think there are probably very few minor blues that would not be eased at least a little by eggs benedict and buttered spinach, fresh-pressed orange juice, tarte aux framboises and a hot chocolate, followed by Edward Watson being a giant beetle.  Edward Watson coated in treacle, what's more.

But oh, how dark and damp it is in my own country.  A part of my heart belongs in Hellas, and cannot credit it has to live here... 

Holiday!

On Sunday morning I’m flying out to Greece for a week; after eight years, I’m finally going back to the lovely northern Aegean island of Thassos.   I would have preferred, truth to tell, not to fly this Sunday, as I imagine that airport security will be even more hectic than usual on September the 11^th.   But as things worked out, that’s the day the holiday begins.  Charter flights to Thassos are on Sundays; end of story.

To be precise, it’s a charter flight to Alexander the Great Airport, which is on the mainland at Kavala. From the airport there’s about a thirty minute journey to the small port of Keramotí.  From Keramotí, opposite Thassos, another thirty minutes by ferry takes one to Limenas, the main town of the island.  From there, about another thirty minutes takes one to where I am staying, the resort of Chrisi Amoudiá, aka Golden Beach.  The name says it all, really; Chrisi Amoudiá has one of the most beautiful beaches I’ve ever seen.  I tried to upload a picture, but blogger has come over all queer and won't let me.  Never mind...

In forty-eight hours I’ll be there - what a blissful thought.   I will have stood at the bow of the ferry, watching the silhouette of the island approaching; the little white and terracotta town, the green hills behind, the central mountains soaring above.  I will have walked down onto the white marble quay, and been put in a coach and driven up across the nearest ridge of hills, and have been deposited at my studio.  I will have discovered what the view from my window is like, the view I will live with for the next week.  I will have sorted out how far it is to the nearest minimarket, to the nearest cafés and tavernas.  And I will have walked down to the beach, and swum in the warm, blue Aegean Sea.

See you all when I get back!

After the four days...

It’s hard sometimes coming back to work after a Bank Holiday weekend. I took an extra day off this time, which gave me four days to flop. The problem is that that’s enough time to begin to relax, but not really to recharge; one needs a few days to get right down the hill, as it were, before one can begin to come up again. So I came back to London yesterday thoroughly relaxed but not much recouped.

The gynae problems took advantage of my relaxing to come on again, and I ended up having to talk to my mother about them before I had planned to (I’ve learned over the years that presenting Mum with a problem without also having a solution in place is simply inviting her to worry, and then work herself into a state of misery trying to find a solution and force one to implement it). I think when my GP gets to the bottom of it (pun not intended, sorry!) the issue is probably going to come down to my age and my hormones; but as I’d feared, Mum is now convincing herself that it’s going to be cancer or coronary heart disease or some other horror. I’ve provided various samples to my doctor and have another appointment next week, at which I fully expect to be told that A) I have had a bacterial infection and B) my oestrogen levels are down. We’ll see, anyway.

It was still good to chill out at Mum’s and do very little.

My brother Steve collected me from work on Friday evening, in the middle of a dramatic thunderstorm. Strangely, despite the atrocious weather and the fact it was the eve of a bank holiday weekend, we had a very smooth easy drive down to Kent. This time last year, trying to do the same journey, the traffic heading south through Richmond and Kingston was barely crawling; after leaving Kew by 5.15 we found ourselves just outside Banstead at about 9.00pm, and parked up for a while in the large Asda supermarket there to get a sandwich and a drink, use the loo, and stretch our legs, before embarking on another two hours drive to Canterbury. Kew to Banstead, about fifteen miles, had taken us over 3 ½ hours - we could have walked it quicker. So this year we set off with a certain frisson of dread, and the speed and ease of the journey was all the more wonderful for it.

Saturday – what did we all do on Saturday? Lie in, lazy breakfast, bit of light gardening, lazy lunch, walk by the sea, tea and cake, large G&T, supper with a bottle of wine. Sunday? The same, with a giant crossword thrown in. Monday, which was Mum’s birthday, same again, only with Stephen and me doing all the cooking. And Tuesday?- still more laziness and another walk by the sea, and for me another G&T (Steve was driving). Then the drive back to London, which again went off smoothly and in excellent time.

Now I’m back at work, and the weather is okay, and I was able to spend my lunch break today sitting in the sun eating rice cakes and melitzanosalata among the magnificent semi-hardy tropical flowers of the Duke’s Garden. The taste of melitzanosalata takes me back with a lovely sensual swoop of memory to Greece, and reminds me that in ten days I’ll be flying out to Thassos for a week. The weather in Kavala (nearest weather station the BBC link up with) at the moment is hot and dry – averaging 28 degrees with about 30% humidity and clear skies. The place I’m staying is five minutes’ walk from the magnificent beach of Chrisi Amoudia. I will swim and read and paint watercolours, and sit at beachside cafés, and relax again… for a whole week… and I can hardly wait.

And a couple of cool dreams...

Someone just told me they dreamed last night that they had garlic growing out of their arm. I like that - I could eat myself all day (sorry, that sounds really kinky). My dream last night was less edible, or edible in a different way (hmm, shading towards the kinky again here). I was an officer in the Metropolitan Police and had been assigned to the Royal Protection Squad; I was looking after Princess Anne's grandchildren. They were lovely, luckily. But they were being pursued by a terrorist who could take the form of a lion - so I was sent lion hunting with Zachary Quinto. I am not into blood sports, so I will interpret this as being about the need to recover my inner power. With Zachary Quinto.

I love dreams.

I also love the day-dream/long-term-plan type of dream. The novels, published and selling, being read and enjoyed. The art works, framed and exhibited, selling and being enjoyed. The house and garden, my own, instead of rented and falling to bits because the landlord has no money for renovations. The Café and Vegetarian Bistro with attached bookshop, small press, gallery and artists' studios, set in a small botanical garden on the island of Thassos (on the east coast between Alikí and Paradeissos, to be precise). My Favourite Baritone giving a private recital at my wedding, to someone talented, interesting, intelligent, articulate, presentable, solvent, and of course crackers about me. And singing "Oh, Du, mein Holder Abendstern" forty years later at my funeral... Slight problem with this last, in that Favourite Baritone is six years older than me, so he will be a very old gentleman indeed if I get another forty-odd years after the wedding to the as-yet-hypothetical, hopefully wonderful (even maybe hothothot) future partner.

Ah, but still - a girl can dream.

Kew is now officially 250 years old.

..and I saw the Queen at the birthday party. My goodness, she's short. She had on a wonderful hat, though; shocking coral pink with a black band, and assymetric. Very dashing.

Ate too much cake at the Reception, afterwards. Almost flirted with the head of catering. Had an interesting chat with David Shipp, a bloke I met three years ago at a training session on "making the most of your annual appraisal" (yecch). The other Kew staff at said training session were the only good thing about it, and I've often wished I'd had a chance to follow through on more of these brief aquaintances - but this venerable place practices some rather arcane operational blocks to fraternisation between departments. Result; I have (I think) chatted to David three times in as many years. Whereas The Geek, who was also at the training day but was also in the same department as me, went on to become a friend (& a good thing too).

An odd weekend. Tried twice to book a holiday; balked both times by the ridiculous prejudice more and more package tour companies have against single travellers. All I want is to go to Greece for a week and have a clean warm sea to swim in and wonderful scenery to walk in and sketch; good Greek food is another vital element, and that's about it. I want to eat, drink, walk, sketch, swim, eat, swim, sketch, walk back, eat again, and sleep. In the sun, if possible. Good birdwatching and wildflowers a plus.

Now I'm reduced to trying to book something independently, at twice the cost, knowing that if I fall down and sprain a wrist (not impossible, sadly) I do not have the safety net of a rep in the resort to whom I can turn and say "Take me to the nearest doctor". If I were part of a couple, I could not only go to my favourite Greek island for £225, but stay in my favourite resort of Skala Potamia, on Thassos, and be in a lovely apartment place I've stayed in once before that is literally twenty yards from the beach, with swallows nesting under the eaves and dozens of cats, lounging on the balconies and drinking out of the swimming pool like rock stars. They have plenty of availability; but they "never undersell"; company policy. I was sitting there in the travel agents saying "Please, take my money, I want to give it to you!" - but the computer says "no" and there's no arguing with the computer. Company policy.

Stuff them, then.

Never mind; I'll sort something out. I also planted a lot of dahlia tubers, did some more writing and made a cake, and went to a very enjoyable if slightly crazy late First-of-May picnic on Monday, which was forever threatened by rain but never quite got soaked, only dampened a little in places.

Going home to make a loyal toast, since I missed that bit of the celebrations, and to eat picnic leftovers, and no doubt do some more writing. "Café Tano" is proceeding into chapter three. I'm not entirely sure it may not be in fact "writing-as-therapy", which I believe is generally deplored as being a Bad Thing and jolly poor show, what, what?... "Café Tano" is proceeding anyway. Face it, no-one will never write a believable character that isn't created in large part through their knowledge of human nature; and my knowledeg of human nature comes from the people I have known and the relationships (small "r" as well as capital) I have had with them. So it is unavoidable that at times I will hear echoes of the voices and see flickers of the reflection of people I have known, as I write. That's my excuse, anyway.