Just because it's better to travel than to arrive doesn't mean it's not nice to arrive in the end... OR Alonissos Travelogue Part 3

Leaving Agios Konstantinos, on the ferry to Alonissos.

I can remember a time, not so long ago, when a journey by ferry was an absolute joy. Not only were you outside, under the sun, up on deck with a 360 degree panorama of the Aegean and it's scattered islands, you could also enjoy that singular atmosphere of camaraderie which comes from being 'all in the same boat'.

These days, however, I more often than not view ferry journeys as a necessary inconvenience. After all, the Aegean has long been the place where older vessels, no longer fit to serve in the North or Baltic Seas, go to cruise the more placid waters of the Mediterranean. By the time they find their way here, consequently, they have seen better days. Not to put too fine a point on it, many of the passenger ferries that link the lesser isles are great, loud lumbering beasts whose rusting funnels belch out a steady stream of acrid fumes that I can never seem to evade no matter where I sit.

However, such aging vessels do have one saving grace: their names. Unlike the modern and sleek "Flying Kat 2", no one who has ever travelled on Dimitroula, Romilda, or Rodanthi can fail to feel at least a little tenderness for their dear rusting hulks.

So passed my journey to Alonissos. Deprived of the most effective means of passing time (I had given up smoking some 4 months previously) I could only attempt to eat up the hours by snoozing in those areas of the ship less plagued by fumes, and fiddling with my ipod... Oh, and scanning the passing islands with my binoculars.

To wit, I must mention the astonishing verdure of Evia's northern coast seen here from the ferry a hour or so after leaving Agios Konstantinos:

The thickly forested northern coast of Evia.

Unused as I was to seeing such greenery on the islands, this really impressed me. Later, on Alonissos, whilst discussing this impression with Greeks and other travellers, I was to find out that northern Evia is renowned for the beauty of its forests as well as its trekking opportunities. Indeed, so intrigued was I by this discovery that we made a snap visit to the island 5 weeks later on my last day in Greece where what I saw was enough to convince me that a walking holiday on Evia may well be on the cards for next year.

(While the fires which blighted Greece in the summer of 2007 did affect considerable regions on Evia, fortunately, they did no significant damage to the forests of north).

All this, however, was an afterthought. At the time, I was as yet unsure how to react to this verdant landscape. Yes, it was impressively green... but wait a minute... that's not any Greece I recognise!

For so long I had associated holidays in the islands with the parched lunar-like landscapes of the southern islands. Whilst they do not exactly conform to the accepted idea of a desert island paradise (not only do they have no palm trees, they more often than not have no trees... period), they do have a stark beauty which exerts itself ever more strongly with each subsequent visit. Quite simply, I was used to associating the pleasures of a holiday in the Aegean with a certain kind of landscape... and it didn't matter how impressive these views were, I felt a little... displaced.

A couple of packets of chewing gum and a paximadhi or two later, I woke up from a fitful snooze to admire the impressively rugged coastline and peaks of Skopelos from close up as the ferry prepared to make the final turn toward nearby Alonissos. Here at least was a feint echo of something that I was used to... exposed limestone rock cliffs interspersed with scree and boulder strewn stretches.

Rock slide on Skopelos as seen from ferry.

The ferry turned... and at last Alonissos swung into sight. Green. Out came the binoculars once more.

I knew roughly what I was looking at from the maps that I had studied and was able to make out the village atop a ridge above the south coast and the scattered southern beaches below. As the ferry drew nearer, I tried to find the campsite, which I knew was somewhere on the south east coast. But it was no use: the tree cover was just too thick.

And then there was no more time to contemplate Alonissos from afar. Despite the captain's thick Greek accent, the wind, and the dodgy tannoy, there could be no mistaking the message: "Would all passengers whose destination is Alonissos kindly make their way to the exits."

Down in the belly of the ship, the doors opened slowly to reveal... the open sea: we were still turning, eventually to back up against the port. As is always the case, the wind had died down now that we were next to land and the temperature had risen noticeably. It had been cool in the morning at Agios Konstantinos and now that it was mid-afternoon, the familiar relentless heat of the Greek summer greeted me like an old friend.

Soon the door was fully open and I could see what I could hitherto only expect.

It was nice... very, very nice.

Disembarking from the ferry, I finally stepped out onto the port. There was the usual hustle and bustle as rooms were touted and passengers vied with vehicles for a way off and on to the ship simultaneously, but Patitiri does indeed please at first sight. Enclosed by steep, markedly striated yellow limestone cliffs on two sides, the town winds around the calm bay. Whilst not the quietest or smallest of places (and let's not forget that I am used to THE quietest and smallest of places!) it was in ample possession of that most important of qualities: atmosphere. The guide books had indeed got it very, very wrong. It was high summer on the islands and what presented itself was a lively and thoroughly charming little port side town, the kind of place where one could sit quietly and comfortably in a harbour-side cafe and pass a good hour or so just soaking it all up.

I didn't have time more to form a fuller impression; the campsite jeep was about to leave. So off we rattled past the brightly painted fishing boats tied up under the cliff, past the central harbour-side cafes, through the winding whitewashed alleys draped with shocking violet bougeanvillea, up onto the narrow winding road flanked by thick scented pines... and all the while a million hot cicadas crackling away.

It doesn't matter how organised you are, some Greek official will bugger things up... but what the hell... it's sunny! OR Alonissos Travelogue Part 2

I more or less consistently subscribe to the belief that it is pointless to look forward to something 'too much'. Such an all consuming desire for things imminent, and the calender watching it entails, can only limit your ability to live in the reality of the present. Nevertheless, I equally consistently find myself counting the days and searching desperately for ways to speed up the passage of time in the pre-summer months.

Maybe it's because I'm a TEFL teacher and that by this time, I am almost convinced that half the words in the English language mean the same thing in the madness of continually approximating meaning through the twin beacons 'good' and 'bad'.

But I had an extra special reason to be restless in the run up to Alonissos, 2007. From late May on it rained almost relentlessly here in Germany such that by mid-July I had begun to suspect that the April heatwave was actually our summer, precocious though it was, and that what we were now experiencing was an equally precocious Autumn. In fact, so pervasive was this sensation that I recall firing off an email to Dave and Gerry, nervously inquiring whether it was 'nice and warm' over there.

In retrospect, as we look back at a summer when Greece was plagued by heatwaves, water shortages and devastating forest fires, this behaviour seems a little neurotic. But in my defence, I would say this: it is difficult to believe sometimes when you are lazing on a quiet island beach in late afternoon, where there is not a breath of wind and the sky above your head melts from deep blue through tourquoise to the fiery red hues of the setting sun, it is difficult to believe in such an environment that the heavy leaden skies of northern Europe could ever exist. The vibrant, heavenly light of the Aegean reveals a very different world.

But finally the day of departure came, and with a somewhat teary goodbye, I left my wife in rainy Marburg and headed south.

The journey from the Eleftheros Venizelos airport to Alonissos can only be described as smooth. After all, I had had about 12 weeks to prepare and had read and re-read (and printed out) Dave and Gerry's advice about this very journey many times. Sure enough we stopped at the Joe 90 cafe and sure enough our departure after much queueing was barely signalled by our driver -- such are the 'hazards' of travelling in Greece that can infuriate the one time visitor, while thoroughly entertaining those who are possessed of a hard won familiarity with the culture.

I should also point out that the trip itself was a pleasure. Even though I was tired from a night flight on which I snatched all of 30 minutes sleep, I found ample energy to marvel at densely forested mountains, (makari na zoun akoma!), lakes and craggy limestone outcrops whose smooth pink to yellow rock and dark fissures stood out in stark contrast against the morning sun.

Only one, slightly awkward part of the journey deserves comment: the bus to boat transfer in Agios Konstantinos. I knew that it would be tight: the first bus rolls in to Ag-Kon at 8.45, the exact time that the first ferry leaves for Alonissos. Now this might not be so bad... if the bus dropped you at the ferry terminal and there was the opportunity to buy tickets quickly from a port-side kiosk for example... or the next ferry left within, say, an hour of the first; but neither of these were the case. As it happened, the next ferry left at 10.30, alright for some, but I really didn't want to wait. And as for the ticket office, well it was in a square on the other side of a busy dual carriage way (in fact the main road north of Athens) with no opportunity for a pedestrian weighed down with a 20 kilo ruck sack to make it across the barrier of the central reservation by any means other than hurdling. As usual, it is that quintessentially Greek approach to organisation where the right hand doesn't know (nor give a shit apparently) what the left hand is doing.

In the end I made the connection,... precisely because I chose to hurdle.

But like I said, after years of travelling in Greece these things only serve to entertain... Besides, if I had got stuck for two hours in Ag-Kon I would have been hard pushed to find anything to do bar sip a frappe and read a magazine whilst looking at the sea... and isn't that what holidays in Greece are all about?

How to go on holiday ... or Alonissos Travelogue Part 1

In April of 2007, Germany experienced a remarkable heatwave. From the middle of the month on, temperatures soared into the high twenties and for a period of 6 weeks, we didn't see a drop of rain.

It was around about this time, sitting by a lake, watching my wife swimming and sipping on a frappe, that my thoughts turned to Greece and my pending summer vacation. Where would I pass my five golden weeks in Elladha? I already knew that I would have to spend most of it by myself as my wife was feeling the squeeze after three years study on her Phd. She just couldn't afford the luxury of five weeks off -- and I couldn't imagine spending any part of my summer vacation in hot, sunny but landlocked Marburg.

So it had to be somewhere like the small, atmospheric, friendly islands with good camping opportunities that I had hopped around before I met Maria: something like Donoussa, Amorgos, Koufonissi, Anafi, Gavdos, Tilos, Kimolos, Karpathos, Lipsoi, Fournoi...

... that was the problem. I had pretty much exhausted the possibilities in this area, sometimes more than once. Or had I?

I had pondered the Sporades before, but had never visited the island chain. Like many aficionados of the islands, I used to land at Eleftheros Venizelos and get the first bus to Piraeus... with the result that I had hopped only in the Cyclades, the Dodecanese and some of the Northern Aegean islands. Moreover, those times that I did consider the group, I recall being put off by disparaging guide book reviews of the touristic horrors of Skiathos, the inaccessibility of Skyros or the infamous earthquake struck, vineyard ravaged and un-Greek Alonissos... Nevertheless, I was intrigued and, knowing how wrong guide books can get it, I turned to the internet for a second opinion...

...And that is how I met Dave and Gerry. There were many internet sites about the island of Alonissos but theirs excelled where it really mattered: it is informative, user friendly, entertaining, comprehensive and so obviously written from the perspective of a couple who have a great fondness for the island. See for yourself:

http://www.ivicourt.com/

I had to get in touch.

A couple of days after I sent them my congratulations on the quality of their site, together with a query re the campsites on the island, I received a friendly, informative and comprehensive reply together with a invitation to meet up with them should I find myself on the island during the summer.

Now this initial contact had a quite magical effect on me. All this research about where to go for my summer vacation boiled down to one thing: I wanted to experience being on the island before I got there. One instinctively knows when something is right and this applies particularly to island hopping. Sometimes, you fall in love with an objectively unremarkable place the minute you step off the ferry. Atmosphere and the idiosyncrasies of subjective experience go a long way to colour one's experience of a place. So it was that on receiving this friendly reply, I had stepped off the boat and knew that it was to be Alonissos, 2007.

A list of things that I find important... and what I actually have

A list of things that I find important:

1. The touch of the sun upon my skin.
2. A certain quality of daylight that makes the colours of the world vibrate.
3. The sensual proximity of the sea.
4. Stimulating friends.
5. Simple wholesome fayre: goats cheese, fresh tomatoes, oregano, whole wheat paximadhia, olives and barelled wine.
6. Maria.

Six should do it. And of the above? What do I have? Well, let me post here something I wrote from around about this time last year. Trust me, nothing has changed: as I look out the window here at work I see rain... and it has been raining for about as long as I can remember.

... I´m sitting in the office at work once more, once more alone, once more bejacketed, once more rubbing my cold fingers and nose and every so often reaching over to the radiator for warmth. It is cold. And what´s more, it is very, very wet. The sky is grey and it feels like it has been raining steadily forever. I cannot believe that I used to walk around outside wearing a swimming costume... and that that was only l0 days ago.

On Friday after work Maria came to pick me up from the school. Whilst walking to a bistro through the pissing rain we decided to go to an industrial park the following morning to pick up some shelves, a mirror and maybe a washing machine.

The next day we woke late and shagged away the morning. So it was that we reached the bus stop - through slanting rain and wind - at 2 o´clock.

On arriving at the bus stop, Maria decided to be hungry and, as we had 20 minutes to spare before the bus, we went in search of Käsestangen (whatever).

On reaching the bakery, it decided to be closed, so we walked for a further ten minutes into town because she wanted a specific kind of Kasestange from a specific fucking bakery. Needless to say that although we got the pastry, we missed the bus.

It was, she assured me, OK. We would take the bus from the other bus stop and make it just the same. We waited under the rain at this bus stop for half an hour before it transpired that in reality, no such busses as the ones we required had ever passed this way nor indeed were planning to do so in the near future. We walked desultorily back through slanting smir to our first bus stop.

When we got to the industrial park, it was even more dark; the rain a little more persistent. We found the warehouse in the bleakest zone imaginable and the mirrors and shelves it contained. But, we thought, we might find something better and cheaper at the recycling centre that we had visited once, briefly, two and a half years ago. We left the shop, centre bound.

Some time later, as we emerged from the relative shelter of an arboreal tunnel which we had found through lack of knowledge about where the fuck we were going, it started to rain heavily. I mean it pelted it down. I mean there was donner and blitzen. I mean
the rain was horizontal. I mean it was a fucking monsoon.

As we sheltered in the doorway of Hansel and Gretel´s hardware store (closed) wondering where the fuck we were and in which direction civilisation might decide to be found, we realised that this was not a hardware store at all but the recycling centre. Hurray! we thought, unbowed by nature´s torments, then, sortly
after: Shite! It had closed down and moved next to my school. This last we knew because we read the sign: "Grand Opening at new premises on Gisselberger Strasse 33, Sat. 7th of September." (naturally, I have translated, but note the date.)

Once more we walked once more through the rain once more desultorily this time back to the grimmest zone of the industrial park. On arriving simply drenched to the skin we bought the said items and emerged out into... more rain.

She took the mirror, I, a large twenty kilogram pack of wood that had the potential to be shelves. We walked to the bus stop through slanting rain.

On arriving at the bus stop, the busses decided not to run after 4:30. It was a quarter to five at this point and though I remained as cheerful as one can be when one is carrying a twenty kilogram block of wood through an industrial estate with wet clothes, I was
becoming a little weary. We walked to another bus stop, only ten minutes away, through slanting rain.

We eventually got home at 6, lay down our things, took off our clothes and sank into the bed. I was bloody knackered and just wanted to sleep. However, unfortunately I had somewhat shortsightedly offered to cook Maria a tortilla when her brolly committed suicide in the monsoon. As I now learned, she had, at the time, fantasised a tortilla with a specific kind of cheese from a specific shop down in the unterstadt. The rain continued. Maria pulled the duvet up around her ears. I pulled on my squelching
shoes and went out once more into slanting rain.

I do not have sun. In fact, I do not even have sky at the moment. Just grey. It is cold and I miss my paximadhia. But I have Maria and all is well.

Like I said, nothing much has changed.

The day I saw a tornado

I saw a tornado once... in Crete.

It was early October of 2005. I was on holiday in Crete with my now wife, backpacking and camping our way along the south west coast. The weather had been terrific the whole time... bright sunny skies, pleasantly warm, hardly any wind. It was an indian summer in Crete, and rainy, dull, cold old-Glasgow seemed to be on another planet.

It was my 5th time on the big island and a time to relax in my favourite region, revisiting old haunts and introducing Maria to the charms of Hania. So it was that we had passed our time in Paleohora, Souyia, Loutro, Frankokastello and were now free camping under a kopse of pines, itself situated on a low lying island at the mouth of a dry river bed just outside the village of Agia Roumeli.

In fact, it was no ordinary dried up river bed, but the seasonal stream - and sometime torrent (of which more later) - which flows through the Samaria Gorge -- the longest gorge in Europe and a world famous tourist attraction. These were the last days of our holiday, a time, for me, of immeasurable sadness as the thought of leaving Greece, the place that permits and embodies all that I feel to be important, looms over my every moment. Being outside, being near the sea, walking in the mountains, walking tall in my shoes, pride and generosity and the importance of gestures, good company and good food, and the wonder that comes from a mythical landscape infused by vibrant, heavenly light. A real life: that was what I had to lose.

As much as I love to spend summer in Greece, so much does it pain me to leave. So we whiled away our last days just being there: I watched Maria swimming, we drank ouzo with octopus for lunch, I read a magazine, we slept in our tent and listened as the wind gently caressed the canvas. And every so often I sighed as the thought of leaving took momentary precedence over the immanence of Crete.

So our last full day swung around... with a surprise. The sky that had for two weeks been blue and clear, had turned a heavy leaden gray. It was to be expected I guess, it was no longer high summer. My mind flit back to landing at Eleftheros Venizelos three weeks before... the storm and the surprisingly cool air that greeted me as I left the airport lounge... Still, there still wasn't a breath of wind... Far from it, it was as still as the grave.

We got up and did what we always did on waking: we went for a swim. Now, I'm not much of one for 'swimming'. Don't get me wrong: I love being in the water, it's just that I seem to spend most of my 'swimming' time expelling stinging salt water from tender orifices. So I usually just do a quick bloom to cool down and spend most of my remaining beach time raking the horizon of the water with binoculars in attempts to find out just where the fuck my dolphin of a wife is. But on this day, there was something in me that did not want to get into the water... period. The sky was bruising further and it was like darkness was descending. Standing by the shoreline, there wasn't a single soul on the beach save us. I looked into the water... no sea bed could be seen beneath the smooth gray glaze of the waveless surface. I felt like some primeval and malevolent force, hardly cognisable, was coiled ready to strike should I get into water...

My wife teases me about my beach habits. Unable to understand how I can simply bloom and watch the sea for the duration of her swim, which has been known to last up to 2 hours, she calls me frightened. And perhaps I am in a way. I can remember as a child visiting a gorge in the highlands of Scotland on a family holiday... again it was dull, again I had planned to swim. But then everything stopped as we stumbled across and read the simple stone memorial next to the shore telling the story of a couple of kids who had drowned at this spot... one trying to save the other.

And then there was Nas, Ikaria at one singularly difficult time in my life, again backpacking in the Aegean, this time alone. On an island infamous for it's huge waves, strong tides and incidence of drowning, I sat on the little beach of Nas, again out of season, again alone, surrounded by the ruins of the temple of Athina, Patroness of Bulls, staring at the sea wondering if I should get in...

Something akin to the feeling that I felt on that occasion did I feel while looking at this smooth metallic sea under the heavy leaden sky of Agia Roumeli... and again I couldn't get in.

Maria was happily splashing away on the mattress, I was rolling cigarette number two, the air was so still I could hear her limbs gently breaking the surface of the water...

... I looked up from the labour of my cigarette to sea a tornado out to sea, it's funnel connecting the sea to the dark mass of the sky.

My heart leapt into my mouth... not out of fear, but rather from the excitement of witnessing something utterly incredible... the confusion of not knowing what to do. I let my half finished cigarette fall to the sand and pointing, shouted at Maria to look at the horizon...

I have never seen her move so quickly to get out of the water, and to tell you the truth, I was panicking too and ran in a little to give her a hand out... then abandoned her to make the last few feet out wearing mask and flippers and carrying a fully blown up mattress... I had something more important to to.

These days, everyone of us has a digital camera. More than this, we seem to pass our entire lives in one endless project of self-documentation at a level of detail that is often hard to justify. Anyone who has ever had to sit in front of a friend's laptop while they go through their 16 folders of photos and videos... from a weekend in Brussels... will know what I mean. But would I, at that point, when it really mattered, when I was standing in front of a fucking tornado... in Crete!... would I have my camera handy and if so, would it have enough battery power or indeed space to document the moment?

I fumbled in my bag, every so often glancing up, half expecting it to just turn tail and disappear. There it was. I pulled it out and switched it on... Fucking shitty machine! It takes so fucking long to power up! If I just manage to take just one photo, I swear to God I'll buy a new one!

Still, the delay did give me time to actually stand and look at the thing. There was no doubt about it: it was getting closer. When first I saw it I could have estimated it's distance from the coast to be something like 10 kilometres. It was easily discernable, but far enough away to be viewed without fearing for one's welfare. Now, as I waited for the tiny green and amber lights on my camera to stop flashing, thus confirming that it actually had enough battery power to take at least one photo, now it had moved a little closer was a little bigger... and now you could actually see it spinning, the look of which I can only compare to a heat haze on a hot asphalt road.

You know those heat hazes which rise from the surface of the road in high summer, you see them best from 50 metres or so away from the point at which the road turns suddenly affording a backdrop of vegetation or buildings to your gaze along the direction of the road. These then seem to bend a quiver as they are distorted by the current of hot rising air. It was like the entire funnel of the tornado was composed of a spinning film of this stuff, moving slowly from the surface of the sea to the darkness of the cloud base in a spiralling motion.

The camera beeped. I had enough juice for a shot... Snap. Got it.

Maria was, as usual, full of questions: Where did it come from? Why does it spin? Do you think it will come further in? Do you think we should run away? What do you think? Are you listening to me? ...

I was, it was just that something else was distracting me...

The locals were running down to the water's edge, to the little harbour where a few rowing boats lay tethered to a small concrete harbour. The sea was still as calm as a sheet of polished steel, but they were taking no chances. They too had watched it move further toward the coast and had decided to get their boats out of the water. We walked towards them.

"Ehete dei pote tetoio pragma;" we asked (Have you ever seen anything like this before?) "Ohi, pote" came the surprising reply. (No, never). It was then that I realised just how special a moment it was. I turned once more to face it. Yep, it was closer, still spinning around itself, now bending slightly in the middle. The locals busied themselves with their boats. I cracked off another shot, framing the phenomenon between a lampost and the harbour side Greek national flag. However, something was different about it. It was changing, turning into something not quite as dense, not quite as as striking. And then, it struck me what was happening: It was beginning to disappear... from the bottom up.

Its contact with the sea had now been broken, and in place of the spinning haze was a clear view of the waves. Above this, the tornado continued to spin, but it would move no closer to the coast.

Soon the horizon was visible, and within five minutes of it beginning to disappear, the whole thing had vanished leaving only a few whisps of cloud rapidly evaporating against a brightening sky. The whole thing had lasted about fifteen minutes.

The sun came out. We continued walking into town towards the taverna where we had passed a pleasant morning the day before. O Kyrios Georgos again was there and again business was slow so again we were treated to coffees in exchange for... having the intimate details of our private and public affairs teased out of us by his endless questioning.

How long had we known each other? Do we plan to get married? What religion was I? What do you think of the war in Iraq? Have you ever been anywhere as beautiful as Agia Roumeli? What do you mean its too early for raki? Min les malakies bre!

O Kyrios Georgos was, of course, 100% Cretan, and a force of nature in his own right.

And when his curiosity had been slaked and we finally had an opportunity to ask HIM something, we asked him if he had ever seen anything like it in his life...

"Ohi", he answered "Pote", and immediately changed the subject in an attempt to scare us with a fictitious story about a sea creature he had once seen in the bay.

That's what I love about Crete: it is awesome and sublime, and nature is at its rawest down there where the White Mountains tumble into the sea. And while its inhabitants have a just reputation for being proud, hardy and phlegmatic souls, they are simultaneously of the most generous, quixotic and playful of people... and for all this I hold them and their land in my heart.

This tale is not yet finished... we had another adventure that day, one which brought us into much closer contact with the powers of nature. But I cannot imagine a better way to end this post than with those words.

UK yet NOT

Being a brit abroad, through choice, one has a certain amount of baggage which must be clarified. Why leave your shores, what attracts you to other climes etc. This will be a running theme, but for now I include my best response to a mate who travelled from UK to Saigon to teach and was feeling a little melancholoy on day 1 in the Nam. 

It could be worse -- you could be here. Today, it rained steadily all day. Needless to say it was not tropical rain but wind whipped drizzle which seemed to wash the very colour out of the world. I taught academic reading for 4 and a quarter hours. The subject was statistics. Just before lunch, I handed back some essay marks. An Iranian man in his forties apologised for having failed to write in paragraphs. He told me that three of his colleagues had died in an industrial accident on the day of the test. In his faltering and barely adequate English he made it know that he was the kind of man who cries when his daughter 'has a headache'. Tears were welling up in his eyes as he struggled to make it known that although he had been reflecting on a personal tragedy, this was no excuse for his poor performance. He had, he said, let me down. At lunchtime a new and highly annoying teacher turned up. He finks he's witty. He ain't. However, this little fact seems to be lost on the other members of staff who encourage him by tittering uncontrollably at the humourless dross that passes for his quips. After lunch the bulb in the overhead burnt out during a vocab pre-teach task for a highly complex text. I was up until mid-night last night making the overheads. They proved to be useless. Went to safeways after work to get some shopping where I was stalked by teenage mums with unfeasibly large prams and a litter of bejewelleried 'will be criminals'. When I say stalked, I mean that they seemed to appear at the end of every aisle in hoplite formation thus blocking my exit and forcing me to brush against their sweaty tereline bodies in order to pass. Like I said, it could be worse -- you could be here. Hope this has helped -- keep on keeping in touch.

Why I had to buy a new mp3 player

Very, very happy about having an mp3 again. Trip into work this morning was a pleasure - despite having to thread the bike through the twin hazards of articulated lorries and thick smir - accompanied as it was by an eclectic mix of cretan folk, Polish dance and 90s indie.

It is also black and shiny and smooth and lights up electric blue when you press a button. Like I said, very, very happy.

Much better than my inert ipod... to which this reference allows me to tell the story of it's demise.

Came back from holiday two weeks ago with a rucksack full of smelly clothes. In fact, so concerned was I for their rabid condition that I had them stuffed into the washing machine within minutes of entering the flat. I think you can see where this is going...

... concept check question: Did he check the pockets?

To be fair, the ipod shuffle is so small that anyone could make the same mistake... and a fair few have. Naturally, when I realised my blunder I went online for an answer and found a veritable community of hapless victims. The general consensus seemed to be that five days drying out assisted periodically by a quick blast from a hairdryer would render it usable once more.

When 12 days passed last Saturday with no signs of life I decided to give in and buy the black one.

Like I said, very happy with it.