For the rest of us, there are maps, reruns of travel programmes and armchair fantasies fuelled by photographs. I miss travel. It has been such a normal part of our lives. We thought nothing of going abroad. In 2019, we spent almost as much time overseas as we did at home. Every year we had scaled new heights of adventure. Since I kissed Tanya by the river Tees in 2015 that fateful day in August, we have travelled the globe with our little troupe. A six week road trip around New Zealand. A three quarter circumnavigation of Sicily. Paris. Rome. Marrakesh. Another six weeks driving the Atlantic coast down France, Portugal and Spain to Morocco. Prague. Budapest. Munich. Moscow. Kiev. Yaroslavl. Singapore. Sailing the Greek Islands. Skiing in the French Alps. Trips to see Josh in Shanghai and Barcelona. Vietnam for my sister’s sixtieth. St. Petersburg.

The last plane we caught was to Budapest in September 2019. That’s eighteen months without a single trip abroad. Tanya is deprived of her family and her parents and brother are deprived of contact with their grandchildren. The Earth has stood still. Holidays last summer, in the brief excitement of thinking all this virus stuff had gone away, were British affairs: Bath, the Cotswolds, Suffolk, Yorkshire. Wales and Scotland had to be abandoned because no one wants to go camping in the Western Isles when the weather forecast predicts rain for three weeks. And everyone wanted to go to Wales so there wasn’t even a spare tent pitch to be had in any campsite throughout the Principality. Yes, we discovered Sussex. And she is very beautiful.

But.

But, I hanker for foreign affairs. I feel like a diplomat put under house arrest. The world is tantalisingly near but we are all prisoners in our little house boxes and our only connection to the outside world is through another little box of electrical tricks called a computer. Everything else is banned. “Stay home, save lives” is now the mantra, and has been for damn near a year. So any travel has to be travel of the mind. Books, ballet, film, concerts, documentaries, plays, audio, BBC Sounds, podcasts, papers. Our entertainment is merged with our work. Seemingly, the only people excused this confinement are the TV presenters and journalists, who roam at will all over the globe to cover the US election, coups in Myanmar, fires in California and write unnecessary pieces about hotels we cannot visit in countries we cannot get to. Our travel, for now, is piloted from our armchairs. It is a poor substitute. If travel broadens the mind, then lack of travel narrows it. All our minds feel narrower. More petty, less tolerant. Irascible. Cantankerous. Super sensitive. Unstable. On a knife edge. This confinement is getting awfully tedious. The papers say that lockdown fatigue has kicked in. Anxiety levels are up. Tanya’s blood pressure is high. We go out less and less. When we do, the only question is left or right?

Modern day travel is claustrophobic. We are prisoners. And I, for one, need to break out.

I didn’t want to wake the children, though the lullaby sea took care of their slumber. The water was welcomingly cool and calm. The white sparks of the phosphorescence lit up the sea with every stroke and I submerged myself in its glow. A few strokes and I was with her. “Thank you for getting me up”, I said. There is little more magical than being afloat in a sea with your lover, striking distance from the shore of an Ionian Island. Every movement bringing a cascade of minute water sparks that mirror the canopy of Heaven above – like swimming in the night sky as an Olympian God, wreaking havoc in the Universe. Our limbs entwine under the water and send galaxies cannoning into one another.

We look up to the sky and smile. There is just love in the air around us. Our little boat rises and falls ten feet distant, a home adrift in space. We are cosmonauts of the ocean. As we tread water, we hold hands. This is bliss. Our quiet words float over the tips of the swell and we move back towards the boat. Pulling our bodies up the ladder in the stern, the evening air makes us sigh with pleasure. The warmth envelopes our wet skin and we are cool at last. The heave of the deck beckons us to sit in the stern and just breathe it all in.

Wrapped in a toga’d bedsheet, she whispers to our boy to come up from his sleep and swim. Blearily, he slides into the water. The spectacle of a billion creatures illuminating his limbs at every glide of his hands lights up his face. It is an unforgettable first and only adds to his smittenness with all things sea-soaked. Our sailor lad. Swimming like the Ancients on a third watch around our slumbering vessel. It is our night swim. Gentle, calm and ocean free.

The Ionian Sea, off the coast of Keffalonia, August 2019.

Bryan didn’t respond. Very deliberately he put down his newspaper on his lap and reached for his boarding pass – lodged conveniently in his shirt breast pocket. Ostentatiously he took it out and checked it. Inclining his head up in order to look down his nose through the half moon spectacles at the boarding pass, Bryan smiled politely. With the quizzical assuredness of one who knows he is in the right, Bryan showed his boarding pass to the the stewardess and then to the American. B21.

“This is ridiculous”, bellowed the American. “He’s in my seat – they gave me this seat at check in. My secretary booked this seat. I always have a window seat.”

The stewardess looked at Bryan’s boarding pass and at the one the increasingly irate American was brandishing in front of her face. ” This shouldn’t be happening”, the man pointlessly pointed out. “I guess I should expect it from British Airways.” He spat out the insult, letting the implication that no self respecting US carrier would make such a slip up. He rumbled on – now the centre of attention for all the other passengers who watched the unfolding saga over their magazines. “I have to be in New York for a very important meeting. It’s imperative I get there on time.”

Bryan remained calm. Possession being nine tenths of the law, he wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry, however imperative this man felt it was for him to arrive in New York. The stewardess poured verbal balm on the situation and said to the American that she quite understood and that she was terribly sorry there had been a mix up.

“Mix up! Is that what you call it?” the American boomed. “Look, I’ve had about of much of this as I can stand. What are you going to do about this? This man is in my seat. I demand he vacates it. As I have said, I need…”

“…To be in New York for a very important meeting. Yes sir, I do appreciate that. ” Her face was a model of smiling charm. Her voice was the quintessence of British iciness. She turned her gaze onto Bryan and instantly changed from sub zero to radiant sunshine.

“I happen to know this flight is full so I cannot offer either of you gentlemen an alternative seat. I do apologise. Given this unfortunate situation, I have to ask if either of you gentlemen will give way and I will endeavour to get you on the very next flight leaving for JFK?”

The American was almost beside himself. “I already told you, I booked on this plane for a reason: I want to be in New York, I need to be in New York in the morning. ”

“Mr. Endrell?” she entreated Bryan with her eyes and gave him her most brilliant smile.

“Well”, began Bryan, ” I might be able to rearrange a few things if it makes things easier for everyone.”

“Oh, thankyou, sir”. The stewardess beamed. The American looked victorious.

“If you would like to start gathering your things, Mr. Endrell, just give me a moment and I will call Flight and see what we can arrange for you. Bryan folded his glasses and put them in their case. Slowly, very slowly, he collected his papers, his bits and pieces and started putting them away. As he did this, the large presence of the American businessman slowly simmered in frustration, impatient to get into his seat, which, apparently, was still so obviously occupied by this stuck up Brit.

The stewardess returned. “Mr. Emsell. Have you got everything? Would you like to follow me? I’ve got you on Concorde. “

Bryan rose from the seat. As he pushed out in to the aisle, he smiled at the American. “Enjoy your flight” he said.

You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. It pays to be nice. It pays to show grace. And you’ll probably get there quicker, too.

Flight takes you away. And parting is such sweet sorrow. On the one hand, I was leaving my little family behind and whilst that isn’t too terrible on short haul excursions, it was painful for the sort of three week extravaganzas I had when we lived on the Western tip of Cornwall and I earned my living as a consultant in far flung locations. On the other hand, it is always easier for the departing for they have exciting adventures ahead of them whilst those left behind just have ordinary existence with which to entertain themselves.

In my heady days working for the advertising group Omnicom (2000-2007), a Gold BA Executive Club card came with the job. Before that, I had only worked in London agencies with predominantly domestic clients, so air travel was rare other than for the odd flight to Dublin or European HQ in Paris (before Eurostar) or for family holidays. I did once fly to New Zealand on a TV commercial shoot for Irn Bru where the client insisted on attending and, as the Account Manager on the business, I was forced to go in order to keep the client away from the film crew so he couldn’t interfere. Luckily, he got bad sun stroke on day 1 and was in bed for the next 8 days, so I got to go diving with dolphins, whale watching and exploring whilst he nursed his beetroot coloured face in his bedroom. And there was a nice car shoot in Nice, a speech in Helsinki. And a training course in Chicago. But apart from that, it was mainly road trips up the M1 to Luton or flights to Manchester and Edinburgh. Nice, but no cigar.

The cigars started in earnest when I started at Omnicom. On day 3 of my new job I was flown to NYC for the annual Omnicom golf day at a country club in Connecticut. At Heathrow, I deposited my car at valet parking – your PA pre-books, you drop the keys off at a special location and walk into the terminal. When you arrive back, your car is waiting and you drive off home. I made my way to the Gold Executive Club checkin (there is only one run higher and that is First Class and Concorde), waltzed through Fast Track security to the Executive Lounge and tucked in to the free booze and newspapers. When we were called to our gate, I enjoyed the thrill of turning left onto the plane – Business class. In my seat, always window (BA log your preferences) I was offered Champagne and I settled in to my entertainment. I felt like Hunker Munker in Beatrix Potter’s tale Two bad mice, like a house breaker who shouldn’t be there carried away with excitement at the prospect of all this luxury.

At JFK we were picked up in a Lincoln, the sort of plush American automobile they use for executive chauffeuring Stateside, by a besuited Omnicom driver. Mineral water in the back, padded leather seats and aircon.

A drive into Manhattan and the New York Palace Hotel in Midtown. Forty stories of Madison Avenue Mad Men living beckoned as the huge doorman opened our car door and bellowed “Welcome to the New York Palace, gentlemen”, for which he palmed a $5 tip from my colleague. I love New York, I remember thinking. It was like plugging yourself into the mains electricity – a charge of raw voltage you get nowhere else on Earth. Check in and then the express elevator to the thirty second floor. The suite was huge. You could have landed a plane in it. Two double beds. Window overlooking Rockerfeller Plaza and the skyscrapers of the City with a marbled bathroom and plush carpet. I had clearly arrived.

The day before the golf day we had a Board meeting in the Omnicom boardroom. The furniture was all French polished wood and dark mahogany – what passes in corporate America for classy. The chairs looked like they had been inflated by an overenthusiastic body builder – they were so plush that my feet literally didn’t touch the ground. It was like being back at school on your first day when your uniform is two sizes too big and so is everything else. Before the meeting, my British colleague took me to Delmonico’s down the road from the hotel for a foil wrapped bagel with cream cheese and bacon, a gourmet coffee and a fresh juice. It was a proper American breakfast. I returned to my room with it and devoured it, revelling in the executive lifestyle that was now so clearly mine.

The following day we were ferried up to Westchester Country Club for the golf tournament. A lot of WASP men smoking stogies vied for the attentions of the CEO, whose club this was. It was the nearest thing I can imagine to what it must be like in Hollywood when you go to a party and people are curious to know who you are – you’re a fresh face after all – and then drop you the moment they find out you’re not important at all. A few people turned their back on me that day. That’s ok. I remember who they were. That kind of information always comes back to be helpful.

And so on. NYC was a regular trip. I must have travelled there forty times. Twice a year we took our roadshow to Milan, Paris, Madrid, Amsterdam, Munich, Brussels and Frankfurt, always first class travel in a first class way. But turning left at the gangplank got serious when I started travelling for Caffeine, the business consultancy I started with Chris Cowpe and Andy Milligan in 2007. My first gig was Cambodia. Then Singapore, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Goa, Cape Town and Jo’burg, Shanghai, NYC, LA, Atlanta, Milwaukee, Istanbul, Bahrain, Dubai, Jeddah, Beirut, Bangkok and Macau. It was heady.

Always the client forked out for business class travel and turning left became a lifestyle. A lovely lifestyle. I got used to metal cutlery and linen napkins, to Wedgewood China and smiling service. I got blase about comparing the standards and expressing a preference for Singapore Airlines over Cathay or Virgin over BA. I caught up on films with the in flight entertainment as I drank fine Bordeaux or Rioja and ate my rare steak. I never said no to a top up. It never lost its thrill but it didn’t do to show too much excitement. It became my right. My just desert (and the desserts were good, followed by a little cheese).

This way of travelling became the norm. But even by these standards, the iconic BA001 flight was exceptional. In 2020, BA retired its all business class flight to NYC on the A318. I flew this route just once, one way, but it was magnificent. Flying from City airport in London, you fly to Shannon in Ireland where the plane refuels and you go through US customs so that you arrive in NYC as a domestic flight. This saves oodles of time in immigration as the line in Shannon isn’t quite as long as in JFK. I flew the Westbound leg in 2012 and even got to sit in the pilot’s seat and wear his cap – an impossible feat in today’s air security conscious world.

Turning left is habit forming. There was an old ‘suit’ in the legendary agency Collett Dickenson Pearce called Nigel Clarke who only ever turned left. God alone knows what his driving was like. I got the habit. But those days are gone. Of course, there are other ways to fly, when flying returns. Private jets are a different proposition altogether and I do know a couple of people who indulge this luxury. They are both utter dickheads. And easyjet pioneered the era of very cheap air travel, with none of the bells and whistles I like. When the dot com bubble burst and all the jet setting, high fallutin’ travel junkets changed, the Omnicom CFO issued a memo inviting people to sit at the back of the plane in economy. “If I’m on the plane, you’ll definitely be more comfortable there”, he wrote, menacingly. We obliged. It was a foretaste of what was to come with the crash of 2008, but no one saw the near terminal Covid effect on flight coming. Flight will return, but it will likely as not never return to the excesses of frequency (taxi service) and take-it-all-for-granted luxury that I enjoyed. So I raise my Martini and drink to ‘Turning left’ – one of the nicest, if not the only, ways to travel.

All my children have been brought up with the myths of the Ancient World and they have known the names of the Greek Heroes and the Gods from Mount Olympus from a very early age. But my eldest son took them to heart. His favourite family quiz question to set is to name the twelve labours of Hercules. One of his favourite films to watch is Harryhausen’s classic Jason and the Argonauts. Another is the more recent ‘300’ – the bloody, hyper-reality biopic about Leonidas and the 300 Spartans who blocked the pass at Thermopylae and died heroically, delaying Xerxes’ progress into mainland Greece to buy time for the City States to rally an army. So when, one summer, I suggested a tour around the ancient sites of the Peloponnese, he leapt at the chance. It was our very own pilgrimage back to the stories of his childhood.

An hour from the airport, we pulled up to have a drink overlooking the Corinith canal. We travelled on to our hotel – the bedroom window overlooked a compound where, it seemed, all of the stray dogs in the town of Tripoli, congregated to sleep. This was a no frills adventure. The focus was on the history. We slept, ready for our immersion into 3500 years of time travel the following morning.

Our guide, Dimitris, was a curious mix of Greek and Alabama in the Southern United States. He had some controversial views about the Confederate flag – the notorious ‘Stars and bars’ emblem of the slave owning States was being removed in all the Southern State flags back then, due to its racist connotations. Dimitris felt this was historical revisionism and a denial of history. We, and our fellow travellers, a retired middle aged couple, he with bladder issues, she mouselike and meek, went silent. Dimitiris was on his own with this view, but, being Brits, after Dimitris’ rebuttal of a tentatively phrased “do you not feel that maybe some people find its associations a little, er, offensive, possibly a bit strong?” we kept our own counsel. We didn’t want to piss off our guide on Day One. Plus, this was a tour of places which would also not bear scrutiny under modern day morality.

We hit the outskirts of Sparta. Sam and I were smiling. A dream come true. We asked to stop the minibus so he and I could have our photo taken standing by the plinth depicting the legendary city name. The man with bladder issues disappeared into a local shop to attend to his needs. Hopefully not on the floor. We re-bussed and progressed to the theatre of the ancient town, which, like everything around us, was reduced to the dark stone rubble of ruins. Big, rectangular black stones littered the ground and, in some places, raised one atop the others for maybe three or four blocks to shape an arc of seats where, we were assured, the nobles and notables would have sat. Even though it was a heap of stones lying amongst the tall wild grass, in this blistering midday heat you could hear and feel the ancient warrior culture seeping out of every corner. We marvelled. And then, piece de resistance, we stood at the feet of the King who is Sparta’s most famous and bravest son: Leonidas. Towering above us, a bronze statue of the man who understood the meaning of ‘come back with your shield, or on it’. A man who went to certain death and took 300 of his kinsmen with him in defiance of the ephores – elders – to delay the mightiest army in the world. Sam re-enacted Leonidas kicking the Persian envoy down the bottomless well, having come to ask Sparta to bend the knee to Xerxes with an offering of earth and water. (The Athenians were not quite so preemptory – they put the envoys on trial first, then threw them down a hole in the ground to their deaths. Athenians – always more legalistic and due process-like.)

Guess who played the role of the Perisan envoy.

This was a particularly cruel fate given that my dearest wish when I went away to boarding school at the age of 8 – one year after Spartan boys were taken away from home to attend the Agoge – was to be a Spartan, as my two older brothers had been. I was made a Corinthian. (The school was divided into ancient Greek city states, called ‘houses’.) Twice denied. Although a Corinthian was probably more suited to my personality given it was a trading city rather than a military one. Maybe the great Sorting Hat of the School could tell my future, who knows.

From Sparta to Mycenae and to Agamemnon’s tomb. Each time we stopped, Bladder Man immediately headed for the nearest convenience. It became a ritual. From there to wonderful Epidaurus, the ancient site of the biggest and most complete theatre in the ancient world and where the practice of medicine began. Asclepius, God of Medicine, and the now international symbol of medicine, the snake, lived here. Maybe our friend with the weak bladder could see someone here? Maybe a kindly snake would bite him and cure his wonky waterworks?

Sam and I take turns to stand in the centre of the stage and speak, gently whilst the other climbs to the very top and back row of seats in the semi circular stalls. You can hear every word as if they were being spoken directly into your ear. And we clap over the stone circle to hear the magnificent echo that reverberates around the theatre and surrounding cypress trees. I was last here in 1976 on an educational cruise on the SS Uganda. The next time I return to this magically wonderful place, I would like it to be to attend a concert or a play – which they still put on every summer. Yes, I would like that to be my final trip to Epidaurus.

Back at the hotel and we learn how to make spinach pie – a recipe we try out on our family at Thorpeness the following year as an homage to the trip we are both loving so much. The conversation is of history and ancient times and we both ply Dimitris with questions in the minibus on our travels between sites and over beers and wine. He takes us to a wine maker where I develop a fondness for the family and the woman who offers us her different wines for tasting. It is her ancestral winery and the wines are good. We travel on to a cave complex which is as cold as it is mysterious and which is home to white, silken thin spiders which prey here in the dark waiting patiently for anything which wanders by and might make a meal. It is a ghostly place and they clearly wait many moons for a meal – which is why they are so thin and translucent. We stop for lunch at a tavern where our chair and table legs are literally lapped by the sea. The prawns are pink and the fish eaten head and all. It is a feast and enjoyed after a hard day’s travails.

We stop in mountain villages and take that black, strong Greek coffee as the Greek airforce, now surely bankrupt (this is the middle of the Euro crisis as Greece is bailed out with one loan after another by the EU, but which is really Germany) serenades us with not one, or two or three overhead passes, but four. The Starfighters, a pair, silver and ear splittingly loud, scream over the village and head down the gorge in a low level pass that enables us to see the pilots in their perspex domed cockpits. They are having fun. We – and all the villagers – are enjoying them having fun and the free air display.

The tour progresses. A trek through the gorge to see a monastery carved out of the precipice, where we drink cooling mountain water from a fish-shaped brass tap in the wall.

We pass wild horses in the canyon and take a picnic by an ancient stone bridge. Sam swings on a rope suspended from a tree across the river from the little stone beach where we eat and drops, with a splash, into the icy clear green-tinged water. I join him to cool off from the heat of the trek.

We visit Byzantine ruins with the ornate and still vivid wall paintings of icons and saints and we go to a place where, in the war of independence between 1821 and 1830, they manufactured gunpowder to fuel the struggle against the Ottoman Empire. It is a lovely mix of ancient and modern and an education in the history and culture of the Greek nation.

Later on in the evening of that day, Sam and I stroll through Triploi to the town square where, it seems, the children of the entire vicinity are at play. It is 10 o’clock at night. This is Mediterranean culture and children are not merely adults in waiting, as they are in the Protestant countries. They are children and they dart from playground to table as their elders sit and drink and dine and talk. It is the fabric of a nation which has seen it all before – disaster and triumph – and knows that life goes on. We wander to a restaurant and meet Dimitris’ wife and children. They are so welcoming but we leave them to their time together – we take her husband away from her enough without imposing on their family time, too.

To Delphi and the Oracle. High up the mountainside, here is this fabled place. A place where so many famous figures have sought their fate and guidance. We walk up past the little temple where the Delphic Oracle dispensed her sagacity and saw into the future, however obliquely and with whatever consequence. Up and on we go to the top, up the shining rocks of the Phaidriades to where the hippodrome lies. The view is across the plain to the Gulf of Corinth and it shimmers in the heat. You can imagine the ancient hotels bustling with tourists and seekers after help as they disgorge from the caravans that have now been replaced with coaches and cars. It is Disneyland for Rome and a place of prayer for Greeks.

On we go. To Olympia, site of the ancient Olympic Games and the place where, every four years, the Olmpic flame is lit from the sun and carried on torches from this place of origin to the venue for the modern games, wherever in the world that might be. Here we are met by the irrepressible guide, Mario. Mario is a musical orator, so full of life and knowledge that we soak up his stories with relish. He is a character. Ebullient, extravagant with gesture, he carries his learned guidebooks and official passes and maps under his arms as he unveils the stories of this magnificent place.

Only 12 people were ever convicted of cheating in the ancient games, and their names live on in notoriety, he says. He shows us the plinths on which the heroes of old, the athletes who competed for honours, would have stood, triumphant in their immortal victory. They are all gone now. I ask Sam if he would like to stand on one and strike a pose for the camera, but he declines – it would, he feels, signify a lack of respect for the athletes who competed here for glory. It is a nice historical sensibility. We stand under the gate where the athletes entered the arena. You can feel our excitement. Sam is beaming. This, for a sportsman, is it. It. This is where it all began. We walk in. Sam turns around in a circle to savour the atmosphere. It is palpable. Mario enjoys our enjoyment. He asks if Sam would like to run up the track and points to the lines of stones in the sandy gritty surface which signal the start line for all the races. Sam hunkers down in the starting position. On your marks, get set..go! He’s off, running – well, jogging – down the track to the end. On his return he asks if I want to have a run. “My joy is seeing your joy”, I reply. And it is. It truly is. To see his animation at being in this place is one of those moments only a parent can understand.

We round off our time in the stadium with a Usain Bolt style salute of the victor, both of us on the podium used by the Greats of Old when they received their crown of olive leaves in recognition of victory. No historical sensibility here – it is too good an opportunity to be true. Our triumphalism done, Mario escorted us to the Mayor’s cafe where I buy a bronze warrior head in Spartan helmet as a commemoration of the trip for Sam’s Sacred shelf of Remembrance – the shrine of memorabilia that Sam has collected over the years. A sort of Aladdin’s Cave of Historical G(r)eekism.

Athens beckons as the final leg of our whistle stop tour. We travel there with an overnight stop at the Ganimede hotel the town of Galaxidi. The B&B is welcoming and quaint. Old school – doilies, dark, heavy sideboards and robust beds with simple, pretty bedspreads. The owner is a Greek woman in her late thirties. In the evening we wander through the village to the quayside and have a swim from the jetty as the townsfolk sip their coffee or wine and look on. It is clear water and cooling from the day’s travel. A lovely, peaceful oasis. We join Dimitris and the weak-bladdered man and his wife for dinner. The hum of the village on the harbour side. Life is at ease this evening.

Athens. We are on the roof terrace of our hotel and the view is one of the most famous views in all of history – the Parthenon atop the Acropolis, floodlit in an orange glow as the dark night sky provides a backdrop. Normally, the canopy of stars in a night sky would eclipse any Earthly view. Not so tonight. This ancient and magnificent Metropolis lies beneath Athena’s temple, waiting for us. We are here. We finish our drinks and walk in to the heat of the night and the noisy, crowded streets and arcades. A restaurant beckons and we have our final dinner of this very Greek adventure. I am reminded of Dimitris’ ridiculing of the Turks’ naming of what is modern day Istanbul. “They called it Constantinopolis – polis is the Greek word for ‘city’. So they called their main city, “city”. ” He laughs and raises his eye brows as if this is self-evidently stupid. As ever in this tale of perpetual enmity between the two nations, this is only half true. The city of Constantine is a perfectly legitimate title for a great city founded by an Emperor. We let Dimitris have his victory. There are 400 years of suffering behind it, so it is a legitimate snipe. And we are in his homeland, so we are partisan tonight.

The female academic is serious but has a light touch. She is very Greek. We are in the Acropolis Museum at the foot of our intended target. We are shown the different stages of the Greek statuary – the Geometric, Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic. We see the remains of a statue of the Roman Emperor Hadrian, his breastplate a dead giveaway of his allegiances: Romulus and Remus suckling at the Capitoline Wolf underneath the full length image of the goddess Athena. Athens over and above Rome – a very significant message: Hadrian was a big fan of this City. As we progress around the museum Sam and I keep glancing, longingly, out of the panoramic windows up at the Parthenon. And at our watches. We have a deadline. Eventually I say something. “We love this and it is all fascinating but we are worried we will run out of time to visit the actual star of the show. We have to get up there and look around and that is where we would like to be now, please.” A half smile of amusement played across her mouth. “So Anglo-Saxon. What is the rush?” “We have a plane to catch.” “It will wait. Ten minutes. Fifteen minutes. What’s the rush. ” She carried on with her tour of the artefacts. “No. Really, we want to go up there to the Parthenon now. Please.” She stopped. The half smile. “Ok.” Her body said “Philistines”. Her lips said:”Rush, rush. The plane will wait.” Er. No it won’t. Cue muttered remarks between us Brits about how this approach might explain the current mess of the Greek economy. It was a sour note. But it was also a little glimpse into two totally contrasting ways of living. My feeling is that Spartans and ancient Athenians were also in a hurry. But there is also a lot to be said for laissez-faire fatalism. She was laconic, elegant and unhurried. The experience was to be savoured and here we were, we Anglo-Saxons, devouring it without relish. The tortoise and the hare.

We hares half walked, half ran up to the summit. There it was – right up close. Beautiful. Awe inspiring. Vast. We breathed it in and revelled in the sight. This was the climax of our trip – to be here, in front of this building. This building which has not only borne witness to the history of the Western World, but is that history, incarnate. I replaced a splinter of marble that I had appropriated on my 1976 visit as a boy, which I had packed especially for this moment. If the British Museum won’t return the fabled Elgin Marbles, the least I can do is give back my booty from three and a half decades ago. The piece goes back on the ground. In reality, it is probably just a fragment of paving stone, a chip of building material, but it feels like a homecoming. The flag of the modern greek state flies in a beautiful flutter of blue and white at the far end of the Acropolis. It is a place of significance, for here, the Evzones soldier, Koukidis, made his last stand against the Nazis on 27 April 1941.

Guarding the Greek flag, he was commanded by the German officer to lower it and run up the Swastika of the occupying army. Koukidis lowered the Greek flag, wrapped it around his body, leapt over the wall and fell down the mountainside to his death rather than surrender it to the fascists. Here was our modern day Leonidas. The heroism of the Ancients clearly lives on to this day.

The sojourn in this loved land was done. The stories of Sam’s youth had come alive in him and me and it was a journey of and to treasure. We returned home and delivered our bottle of tsipouro to Georgios at the Archipelago restaurant. He reminisced about his school years friend and we stayed for lunch. Whenever I feel in need of sunshine or stories, whenever my world needs a lift, I head for the taverna, for kleftiko, spanakopita, fried feta or souvlaki. And a bottle of Dogmatikos. Greece is where it all began. And I hope it is where it all ends. Some places are magical, especially in the company of a son who loves those places with a shared fervour. Yamas.

We were staying at the Casa del Mar hotel. Every morning we were picked up by limo and taken to the client’s offices. All we had to do was stand outside the hotel and get in the car. And get out at the other end. For five days we worked with the leadership team on their business development strategy – prospecting, pitching, growing existing clients, client clinics and setting up the Way to Win system. I flounced about around the flip charts, Cowpey did all the intellectual heavy lifting and writing up of what we agreed at the end of every day. He was always the consummate pro. Thorough. Logically tough. No detail escaped his attention. The relaxed vibe of the place meant we were usually done by 6pm, which gave us five free nights. Cowpey would always need to go to his room for a smoke (have you tried smoking in California?), to call Jane and to write up the notes from the day and email them to the client. He was always done by 7.30pm. The night was ours.

We would meet up in the hotel bar. Of course. A horse shoe affair, with TV screens at various vantage points on which played an unending stream of baseball – it was the season. One night, when I was fed up with watching indecipherable innings without understanding a word of the commentary, Chris painstakingly explained the rules to me. I doubt I could regurgitate them now but then they were crystal clear. He was good at making the complicated seem simple and at making the convoluted straightforward. As many clients and colleagues would attest. It was his gift. We followed our preliminary beers with a stroll. The stroll always led to the same door. Via the boardwalk and the pretty people, we unCalifornians ambled – Chris, rumpled, ash splattered, ebullient. Me, un-chiseled, pale, looking forward to another round.

On our second night we happened upon a raw bar. One of those fantastic, welcoming, informal seafood places right on the foreshore. The guy welcomed us at the door and had us at ‘hello’. He got we were English and talked us through the menu. We had a beer in our hands before we even sat down. It was the shank of the day and the orange glow of Pacific coast sunlight bathed everything in a moment of divine content. The menu included chowder, steamers, mussels, clams, cracked crab and oysters. Oysters. Oysters and a bottle of white. Then another. We drank a prodigious amount, but it never felt like too much with Chris. Not that night. Or the subsequent three. And in the morning, we waited for the car to pick us up. Undamaged but stored with the sunlight, wine and conversation from the night before.

It was a glorious time spent with one of my favourite people ever.

Cowpey. My but he was good company. I loved him – his irascibility, his generosity, his intellect, his compassion. His urge for fun. Ed Docx, the author and one time account man at our old advertising agency, once said of Cowpey that he was ‘the only man you could catch a heart attack from’. It was the best description of a man who was as intense and as frenetic as a double espresso. He was always a powder keg of brains only seconds away from combustion. Those who worked late into the smoking fuelled night with him, as he furiously scribbled pitch charts, could almost feel the intellectual energy coursing through his bloodstream but hardening their arteries. He was dangerous to be around. And, when in full verbal flight, he was marvellous to behold, too.

I vaguely remember the day times and the work we did. But the velvet evenings walking, talking, laughing, eating, drinking and, well, just sitting in ease together, they were time out and time away from all cares. Chris and I travelled mile after air mile together in our work for Caffeine. We shared shisha pipes by the Bosphorus on the day Chris spotted 17 briefs hidden in the speech we had heard from the head of Unilever when no one else in the audience had spotted one.

We spent too many but not enough well lubricated evenings at Airedale Avenue and at Alverne Hay in my Penzance home. We flew to Hong Kong and straight off the plane to a party. He gave a tour de force of a presentation at the Entrepreneurs Club there the next day and again in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. We stood in front of Lenin’s mausoleum in Moscow in a photo taken by my future wife (we met on that day). We burnt midnight Chardonnay at the Chocolate Factory on 11th avenue working on some of the biggest pitches in our careers.

We were in the lobby of the Atlanta hotel at 0500 hours to clap the Ogilvy team out of the door on their way to make the pitch for UPS. We wept with laughter at the hopeless decisions we had made about the business. We blew along the gale storm promenade of Penzance many times and were crestfallen when we challenged the cafe owner on Praa Sands to guess what work we did and he guessed ‘you be advertising types’ first go (was it the clothes?). We drank our way through board meetings in Bath, Exeter, York, Plymouth, the Soho Grand. And through it all, Chris was always the voice of reason, of caution, often of Cassandra. And Cassandra, as we remember, was always right.

I was always Sergeant Lewis to Chris’ Inspector Morse. Luckily, I have a box set of memories. But when Morse went to LA, it was a particularly special episode. Glass in hand, the day’s work done, discoursing on a favourite topic, he was the most alive of men. Like the sun that was our backdrop on those LA evenings, he could be fiercely bright. But in his setting, he was even magnificent – gentle and kind and friend to all.

We are at Russia-Fest, or Russian Camp, a biannual throng of Russian ex-pats living in the UK. They call this sort of gathering a “slyot”. A field on a farm hidden down a labyrinth of back lanes of rural Suffolk is where this Fahrenheit 451-like community of emigre intelligentsia protects, nurtures and passes on the Russian language and best bits of old Soviet life to the next generation. A sociologist farmer, a fellow emigre, but from Germany, lets the Russians use this field; he likes the spirit of the occasion and comes to sit around the camp fire with his wife when the singing begins. An ostentation of peacocks preside, imperiously, over the whole farmyard, and their ‘Mow’ cry punctuates the early evening and morning air. There is a magical feel to the place.

My daughter will be brought up with this event. Like her, the other kids here flip between Russian language and English with accent-less ease. They are all bilingual. They play with each other in English but switch without noticing to Russian when they speak with their families. Their parents speak English with an accent, some heavy, some slight. To a man and woman they all chose to come and live in the UK. There are about a hundred of them, each with their own story and each with their own reason for emigrating. They gather here, in this bucolic setting, to enjoy the simple pleasures that characterised their youth as the last generation brought up in the Soviet Union. When I asked one of them, a history teacher and a psychologist, if she missed the Soviet Union, she pondered and said: “I miss my childhood”. They have been recreating their childhood for 16 years now.

A Soviet childhood sounds to have been a sort of Swallows and Amazons like experience, but with algebra and physics thrown in. It was outdoorsy. A good part of the three month long summer holidays were spent at camps in the forests and by the lakes. Apart from swimming and trekking and games, there were science classes, maths taught as fun, nature trails. There was music and campfires and cooking outside. And for adults, getting into the wilds was a chance to be away from the normal strictures of life; camping meant freedom, a place to let your hair down. And for the intelligentsia, it was a place you could talk as well as sing.

As with any camping field, the cars and tents are ranged around the perimeter. There are only very basic facilities but here are many tents which could double as marquees. This is professional camping. All the kit. Not itty-bitty, single-serve stuff you get at Cotswold Outdoor or Mountain Warehouse; this is equipment of industrial proportions – great big Kazan, specialist gas burners, effortlessly assembled with Kalashnikov precision in the semi-darkness. There is a communal area, in the middle of the field. In the late afternoon, as we arrive, there are a few people there. They are mainly involved in the cooking. The fire burns to grey ash and in the ashes the plov cooks. And cooks. The mutton meat fatty, as it needs to be to impart proper flavour to the rice and bouillon. The promise of a bowlful of plov, good company and song attracts more people to the fireside. By dark, each of the families gathered has had its fill and made its way to the communal fire. Chairs are gathered in. Children slide between the seats to toast marshmallows or curl up in vacated chairs. Some have ukuleles – they will sing later, when the adults’ guitars have a rest.

As it grows darker, the chairs are pulled in tighter to be nearer the warmth. (Russians hate the cold – they wrap up; our desire to wear shorts come rain or shine is a mystery to them.) Done with its cooking duties, the fire is stoked with thick logs collected from the meadows around the farmstead. People bring their guitars and the singing begins. It rarely stops. A fiddler accompanies them, picking up the tune and then, sensitively, unobtrusively, adding another level of tone to the melody. The songs were not the songs I had expected. If you had asked me beforehand, I would have expected tales of Norse myth – songs of heroism and derring do. These songs are not like those. These are songs called up from this generation’s common past – Mary Poppins (the Russian version, not the Julie Andrews one we all know here), a cartoon animation of the Musicians of Bremmen. A comic song about a man cooking and messing it all up, another about a self-deluded opera singer who cannot sing which gets gales of laughter from the now capacity crowd. Everyone – everyone – knew the words. The melancholy songs are sung staring into the fire with trance-like expressions of remembered yesterdays. There are songs about gypsies and pirates. Russians seem to love gypsy songs – maybe there is something about the music which is wild and free and dancers reeling around the sparking flames of a bonfire in the night that animates the Russian character. It is deep within them.

There are male and female voices and most songs are led by five or so of the crowd with others chipping in and singing along, filling in the gaps where a phrase or part of a line is forgotten. The mood of the camp lifts and quiets with the lilt of the lyrics. And all the while I watch the glowing faces and the stars above. It is a clear, moon-filled night. There is a meteorite that appears from the heavens and shoots straight for us; there is the faint reflection from a satellite traversing above – is it a Russian one come to join in or an American one keeping an eye on this gathering of aliens in the British countryside?

It is the children’s turn. Nervously they keep counting in to a song which never starts – every time one of them gets to 1,2…they collapse in a hesitation of self-doubt. Eventually, an adult helps to get them started. They sing in English. Then in Russian – a home made composition sung to the tune ‘Don’t worry, be happy’ about life in lock down. It is charming and witty and each child – from the youngest to the eldest – is perfectly cast for their solo. The children’s singing is a lovely boost of contemporariness. This is a living thing; it is not pickled in decreasingly relevant nostalgic aspic. There is a balance of the modern and the old, the lyrics of the old country mingled with the melodies of the adopted home – the only home the next generation have ever known.

The singing and the mulled wine go on into the small hours. Children drift off to their sleeping bags or nuzzle in their parents’ softness by the fire. Two days and two nights twice a year, in sympathy with the pagan timetable of the seasons, these families from far afield come together to share their common heritage. To speak their mother tongue live to another native speaker. To abide by their own cultural norms rather than those of their adopted country – no need for small talk, no circuitous conversational niceties, plain speaking, common reference points. A veneration for education – Russians of this ilk share an obsessive love of learning. These are not your everyday Russians. They are academics, economists, teachers, musicians, artists, scientists. The average IQ in this field is far north of normal. They are the intelligentsia – a nomenclature we have no equivalent for in Britain. (In fact, when you Google the word ‘intelligentsia’ it says “a distrust of the intelligentsia and of theoretical learning”, which just about sums up the view of Brits to intellectuals – or ‘experts’.) The intelligentsia in this field are not pompous academics or self-promoting business types; they are not stereotypes recognisable to Brits. They love learning and invest everything into helping their children get into grammar schools, learn musical instruments, speak several languages, paint, draw, dance, excel in their studies; but they are also tethered to the ground. They have a taste for participating and contributing rather than spectating and paying to be entertained, for being connected to nature rather than protected from it, for company rather than comfort, for singing rather than shopping. They congregate far from the madding crowd because here they can be themselves. This is the real Russia I experience. I wish you could be a firefly on the wall around the camp, as I am; you would see a very different view from that shown on the news every night on your TV screen.

Ice sculptures of fierce jungle animals and swans grace every turn as the guests wind their way into the heart of the temple where scores of tables, laid in white linen and for a banquet are tended by liveried staff. Cocktails. Small talk. A speech of thanks from the CEO to the regional Governor, whose largesse has made this inaccessible historical site miraculously open for the night. It is a feast for the eyes and a triumph of spectacle as well as visible proof of what wealth can buy. It is the nearest thing I have ever seen to how I imagine the ancients might have lavished hospitality on their guests in Rome or Persia. In my imagination it is the setting of the banquet where, encouraged by wine and heady with power, Thais led Alexander to the burning of Persepolis. A banquet for the damned.

The occasion was my first gig as founder of my own company – I had been invited to speak at the Asia regional conference of a large multinational advertising agency. The venue was Siep Reap – all of it. They had taken over the town and the expected boost in local income made the unattainable ours for the taking. It was as if the circus had come to town and the bars all did good trade.

The banquet progressed through the night and was as lavish as it was heretical. I felt as if I was at the pomp of empire. Western excess on display in all its insensitive, arrogant, violating magnificence. When the eating was done and the ballet had been performed, the tuk-tuks ferried many to the Correspondents’ Club. Heaven knows what this place had seen in the days leading up to the Khmer Rouge take-over and their Killing Fields. Reporters from all over the world, many famous war photographers and journalists must have taken refuge here. It was a slice of the past heroics of journalism. Now it is an hotel. Not a correspondent in site.

There were few Cambodians over 40 anywhere to be seen – so many were wiped out in the genocide. The people are smiling and beautiful, but many have the scars and wounds of war and the missing limbs bore witness to the preponderance of land mines which litter the land and cause injuries every year. I fell in love with Cambodians. The temples at Angkor Thom and Angkor Wat show Ozymandian-scale accomplishment and power as they are reclaimed by nature, and I am lucky to see them both without the hordes of tourists that usually congregate at these sites.

It is said that the ancient Khmer people were ruthless in war, forcing prisoners to the front line to kneel and cut off their own heads as a warning to the enemy facing them across the battlefield. As in most civilisations, immense cruelty sits side by side with friendliness and hospitality. And I wondered, as I ate at the banquet, what the warlords of old would have made of the spectacle of soft handed advertising folk filling their faces at a sacred place in their jungle. Maybe the pen really is mightier than the sword: there are worse fates than hosting people who come up with fairly harmless slogans to sell soap and beer and don’t make other people cut their own heads off.

When we were all assembled we put on our white clothes and the house was smudged with a bundle of smoking sage leaves to help our wishes ascend and to purify the environment. A little gong sounded and we gathered for the tea ceremony, all of us kneeling at the end of our mattresses. The two bottles of liquid were blessed and we were summoned, one by one, to come up and imbibe the muddy liquid followed by the ayahuasca. We were going to get blitzed three times tonight and the same again over the next two nights.

I downed the mud. It lines your stomach so the ayahuasca doesn’t just run through you like a dose of salts. If it doesn’t stay inside you for long enough, the active ingredient – DMT – doesn’t get a chance to trigger hallucinations in your brain. Then came the stuff itself, bitter to the taste. Not a flavour you would ever forget. I returned to my mat.

I lay down, placed the blanket over myself and lowered the eye mask. Darkness helps. The music began. Ayahuasca responds to music. The music was transcendental, sacred music. The one I remember most was Snatam Kapur – soul opening music. I expected it to be like a cinema show. The curtains would go back and the show would begin. Like you were watching it from outside. Nothing. I lifted my eye mask to see if anyone else was drawing blank. Relax. Stop trying. Just lie and be patient.

Then, from the corner of my mind, a glimpse. An impression. A stirring. Something. Something is there. Something that isn’t normally there. What was it? Little by little, the show begins. But it isn’t outside. It’s in my head. Right in the centre of my brain. In my body. Deep inside. Purple haze twisting into recognisable form. Suddenly it gains momentum and is fast. It zeroes in, a snake, straight to a door, behind which is my inner most secret. The snake head turns and looks me in the eye: do you want to go in? The door is one I recognise from a recurring dream I have and behind it – with its elaborate up and down, hidden from view, protective configuration – are two bodies lying under black plastic sheeting. They are quite dead. They are the souls of children. It is the most powerful way this medicine could have announced itself to me. I am in awe. The ayahuasca has taken hold of me now. I am in its grip and we travel on. It is like having your hand held by a spirit of the universe and being whisked from one place to another – much as Ebenezer Scrooge was transported to his childhood in the cartoon depiction of the ghost of Christmas Past.

There is my father, his torso cavity split apart and his two kidney laid bare with my name engraved on one. He died of renal failure and I took this to mean I was engraved into him, with fatal love. Here was my mother, viewed from my fly on the ceiling vantage point, sobbing and bloodied as the doctor callously pronounced “it’s dead” of the baby, stillborn, just ejected from her womb. It is heart rending. Her suffering is unbearable. Here is my first wife, mother of my children, her arms wrapped around our two toddler sons in protection and bathed in an orange-yellow translucence which is her love and protection made manifest.

Before we had started, a woman had asked if she needed a notebook to record her visions. No notebook required. These are glimpses of your life you will not forget because they come from inside you, deep, deep down. They are you, your memory, your wiseness. There are people who have made this trip over 100 times. It is not for the faint hearted – medically or metaphorically – and you also need a strong stomach constitution because in order to take effect, the body has to purge the drug, at one end or the other. The sound of quiet vomiting into the aforementioned buckets is usually a precursor to people’s crossing over into nirvana.

Ayahuasca is affected by your psychological state. I had just returned from a winter working in the Alps and had a broken foot. I had also had a very traumatic break up in a relationship three months earlier, so I wasn’t in the best of states to do this. Nonetheless, I wanted to do it. That first night’s trips – you return to the bottles of liquid for topping up twice more – were profound and afterwards, at about 1.30am, people emerge to sit by the camp fire outside and either exchange feelings and experiences or, like me, sit very still and quietly. There was little else I was capable of doing. Some are euphoric – there was a couple who were doing it together and they turned out to be quite irritating if you weren’t having the greatest of times yourself.

After some soup and a little decompressing, you go back to your mattress and sleep. At 11 o’clock the next morning, everyone gathers to share their experiences. Some people have met God. Some people have travelled to the edge of the Universe and looked back. Some have met all their previous Earthly manifestations, and their future ones. One person experienced themselves as the opposite sex. Some laughed, some cried, all were moved. The Shamans listen attentively. There are four of them and they are gentle souls, well versed in the medicine and its effects. They are vegan and you stick to their diet as they are the cooks.

The second night approaches after a day of floating around the grounds or going for a walk – they discourage travelling away or driving as you will bring impurities back in to the haven and will have to be re-smudged. At 6pm, the gong sounds again and it starts all over again. By now, some have the measure of the liquid. They ask for stronger and stronger doses. I stay as I was. It reeks havoc with your innards and I do remember sitting on the loo at about 4am, hallucinating and thinking how perverse this experience was – debasing as well as divine. It is difficult to feel divine on the porcelain.

The second night was Hell. At one point I had all four of the Shamans kneeling round me and one was wafting smudge smoke in my face. I was climbing up the wall using my back to move, like some broken footed, demon-possessed casualty from The Exrocist. I remember thinking “stop blowing smoke in my face and call an ambulance”. They didn’t, I calmed down. The medicine had conjured up my pain-body – that shrivelled negation of yourself we all carry around which whispers in your sub-conscious how futile you are. The hallucination had started well. As you lie on your mattress, you present the medicine with a question. Mine had been “why am I here?” As soon as the ayahuasca kicked in, it answered: “To be re-born”. I felt I was spiralling up and up, an energy force of purple plasma in a black but electric coloured universe, up and up to a purple phoenix at the top of the trip. I felt expanded and part of everything. I can relate to people saying they felt at one with the universe, and since this experience I have no fear of death because I feel I have had a glimpse of where we all go. It is like being converted into pure energy.

Things took a turn for the worse. I found myself witnessing an elaborate, Pharoah-like funeral procession for my own pain body. The music was clashing, loud, significant and sonorous, like a Russian Orthodox male choir – all deep resonance and vibration. The tableau was gold, Imperial purple and black; the sarcophagus had the pain body in it, being walked ceremoniously to the edge of a fiery pit. Inside the coffin, the small, black creature laughed. “This will make me stronger”. It was scornful. My nightmare caused consternation amongst the Shaman and they sat with me until dawn.

The final night was quiet and I had just a small dose with no top ups. They sprayed the air around us with a perfume which my body yearned for and which transported you away to Heaven. It must heighten your senses to almost unbearable extremes. Which was pure joy. In the morning, one of the Shaman gave me Reiki and I departed after hugs with the other participants and a chat with the head Shaman, who was a kind soul and had tended to me on the middle watch of the middle night. Then I was out in to the real world. It was sobering. I drove past the entrance gates to the golf club. Can there be a more antithetical juxtaposition than an ayahuasca retreat and a golf club? It was like two worlds clashing – both of them mine.

I found my time there to be both comforting, revelatory and mind opening. You are warned not to urge anyone to take the ‘tea ceremony’ or to recommend it. Only when people feel the call themselves is it right to attend. I cannot hope you will feel the call or not feel the call. I can only tell you I felt it and heeded it, and that when the time is right, it might call to me again. I will answer.

The two old Greek men sit with their back to the wall, in the shady corner. The oldest is singing in a high pitched lilt – some sort of island song. It sounds like he is in pain, but it is recognisably a song. The woman cleaning is sassy – I like her. I ask about the old man singing in the corner. “He is 86. He was in the war. In the partisans. He killed two fascists. He has photographs. He might show you his gun”, she says, with a gesture towards a bandolero hanging from the beam over his head. It seems I am supping with killers.

We slide into conversation but her broom rarely rests. Sofia is her name. She has three sons. All born in the month of February. One was born prematurely at only 5 and a half months. I tell her about my niece’s baby, born prematurely too. “Boy or girl?” she asks. “Girls are stronger.”

“Always”, I respond.

Sofia’s eldest son runs a beach restaurant at Antisammos, out of the harbour and round to the right. Sofia is divorced. And she says she is known for speaking her mind, which, she says, doesn’t go down well around here. I say she sounds like a handful. I bet she is but I love talking to this woman. Every sentence is a story; she has been up all night to see her brother to the airport. He lives in Montreal and renovates houses.

I met Sofia last night when we walked into town for a few drinks after dinner. We walked away from the town and this strip was humming. When I asked a waitress for directions to the loo, Sofia interrupted: “She doesn’t speak English”, she said. We flirted some. Next morning I wanted to come back – I hoped she would be there.

“The life of the bar – too much routine”‘ she laments. I tell her that I clean, too, in the winter. “I clean every day!” she retorts, emphatically. She has the spark of life, this one.

The two old gents have been joined by a third. The cigarettes are on, even though it is only coming up to 9am.

The town’s priest sing-chants his morning prayers and they echo around the whole bay, carried to everyone by microphone. It is that Orthodox mix of the Imam in his minaret and the medieval Christian plainsong.

The other accompanying sound in the background is the continual phut phut phut of the fishing boat engine, idling in harbour about a half a click away. The town is waking.

A woman on her way to work parks up on the far side of the road, leaves her engine running and driver door open, to come in and get a coffee. A few cars drive by. A moped. Then another one. It is quietly getting hotter and the sun is beginning to burn into my back. I would keep talking with Sofia but don’t want a third coffee as the caffeine is really kicking in. It is time to get back to the boat. No one will be up but they might be stirring. Probably disturbed by the priest’s prayers on loudspeaker and complaining of the incessant calling to a diety they don’t believe in and who seems intent on ruining their Sunday. Bloody God.

The watermelon man is here. He whistles to Sofia, exchange a few words in Greek and he moves on. I pay my five euros sixty cents plus two extra for the entertainment. A half hour that will stick around in my memory as a charming highlight of that voyage around the Ionian. But which I will not share with my crew because they would not understand and only misconstrue. I peel myself away and bid her “antio sas”.

Maybe the Universe will bring me a woman like Sofia, if I meet it half way.