learning – Page 2 – In the Greek Garden

The trick is to keep swimming

Its not the kind of pool you can dive into, so I walked in to the water at the shallow end and started swimming when it reached my hips. Back when it was built in 1992 it was perhaps designed to emulate a beach with its vaguely nauseating tropical colours. It’s now fading a little and showing its age with tiles missing – still functional and happy to be open and being loved by the daily swimmers. Towards the back a wave machine hides behind dark vents in the deep end. Luckily in the 2 hour early morning session, the orange and blue fibreglass slides are switched off and silently snake their way round the high ceilings. I swim towards the floating lane markers and start charting the waters with slow strokes. Although miles away, this local swimming pool here in a corner of zone 5 is in many ways like the leisure pool I learned to swim in as a child. A little too warm and chlorinated, stubbing toes on tiles and showers that frustratingly switch off after 10 seconds, leaving you holding down the button to rinse away the bleachy smell.

I don’t think I come from a ‘swimmy’ family – ok let’s be realistic I don’t come from a sporty family. Although my mum swam for the county as a girl (can we verify this?) and my Dad in his retirement is now a fully-fledged-lycra-clad bike fanatic in a cycling club. My paternal grandma only learnt to swim when she was in her 70s so she could swim with me and my brother.

I think swimming played a big part in my childhood. Water-babies, 100 metre badges, diving classes, life-saving with junior school which seemed to only involve being made to swim a length in your pajamas and dive for a brick made of rubber. We spent a lot of time in that leisure centre as a family and it’s comforting that my nephew learned to swim there 30 years later. Then school swimming galas – breaststroke saw me getting placed last in the heat. Coming home afterwards I sat on the kitchen worktop eating the top half of a white bread bun spread with tomato paste and grilled with grated cheese. I remember feeling sad and sorry for myself for letting everyone down– but I also remember how nice the mini-pizza snack was. The snap of swimming cap, the smell of talc, the humiliation of being forced to the dreaded wear verruca sock and being treated like a leper. I swear everyone had a verruca and those kids that refused to wear the dammed sock were the cause of constant plagues circulating on those wet tiles.

Most people have a similar relationship with exercise. The new year is a time of battles with the body and mind, I have reset my intention and dabbled again with swimming. But its complicated. You love exercise as a kid, because its just activity, fun and freeing, it wears you out. But nothing prepares you when puberty hits like a sledge hammer and the thought of standing in front of your class mates in basically your pants is horrifying. You should have seen the notes I forged at comprehensive school that managed to get me excused from any sporting activity, my fiction was invented here.

I think I stopped swimming at 13 and apart from holidays, didn’t swim properly again until I was 29. By then I was mad enough to sign up for a triathlon and swam in cold water to train at Parliament Lido. That was freezing, in April it was 13c and found myself braced in an expensive (secondhand) wetsuit, neon cap and goggles. Like a superhero armed for the chilly water battle. Slowly in those cold mornings and late evening swims in the lido I learned to fall back in love with the rhythm of swimming. It wasn’t without its humiliation, to be in a lane with the super-triathlon swimmers twice as fast as me, overtaking, splashing their skilled arrogance with arms flying outwards and then under like a pack of wet skinned seals. But I did it, in spite of the mucky smell of the Thames on the day of the race miraculously I didn’t drown or get kicked in the face. The gun set off and 200 people swam like a hungry snapping school of piranhas. I even signed up for other races, even swimming in Dorney Lake smelled much cleaner than the Thames.

I think I had a favourite swim last year. It was on Easter Sunday in Ermoupoli, after sipping hot coffee in Maouli Square. The café owner asked us very sweetly if we didn’t mind just leaving the cups when we’d finished as he wanted to shut up to head home to eat Easter lunch with his family. Who could argue with that? Eventually we sauntered off in the bright sunlight to Vaporia, past the blue domed Agios Nikolaos church. There is a bathing platform here that gets crowded in summer, but here on an Orthodox holiday in spring it was near empty. Just a handful of others sitting in the sun and a brave lady in a flowery bathing cap swimming slow breast-stroke in the turquoise water. I stripped off to my cossie in the breeze and timidly at first dangled a foot in the water. It was fresh, cold and clear. I felt reborn, baptised – my first swim of 2017 in the Aegean in April. Like lizards warming our cold blood, we laid out drying in the sun afterwards on the concrete of the closed Asteria Café.

In the summer I swam over the same section of Kini bay most mornings. Day after day, charting laps between the orange buoys until I had memorised the topography of the rocks and sand and could say greetings to the fishes. Breath and rhythm become an underwater meditation. I kept swimming until my arms were tight and felt strung like a bow. Then I would sit quietly in the beach crunching tiny cracking bubbles in my neck, stretching my legs out on the warming sand.

I think sometimes I have lost my love for exercise and suddenly surprise myself as I fall back in love with its endorphins every so often. I need it the most when it takes me away from the fuzz of every day and creates breathing space.

A few days ago after my morning swim, I stood under the unisex showers with shampoo in my eyes. I glimpsed the future…there it was; a bundle of noise – gossiping, putting on swimming caps, snapping costume straps into place. Loud voices talking over the changing room “How’s slimming world, Pat?’ “I’ve lost 7 pounds!”. Then one lady turned to me “Is the water warm, love?” I beamed back “Positively tropical today!” I was a bit taken aback, having spent a few years of my adult life in posh-gyms, crap pay-as-you-go gyms, try-hard gyms, yoga-death-stare-silence gyms. I hadn’t heard people chat like this in changing rooms ever…well maybe since I was back in the pool of my childhood. This was leisure as it should be – fitness and fun. No pressure.

I longed to stay all morning and hang out with these spirited retirees, all full of life and laughter. As I was leaving, the Shirelles ‘Will you love me tomorrow’ sang out over the loudspeakers and the instructor shouted “let’s get going girls” Aqua-fit is the future, I can’t wait to be retired.

10 meditations on 2017

Christmas is spent with ghosts.
Just like the three ghosts that visit Ebenezer Scrooge (or Frank Cross, played by Bill Murray in my favourite version, Scrooged), the phantoms of our past, present and future haunt us every year. I am not alone in thinking more about the big things in the days after the frivolity of Christmas while awaiting the shiny promise of a New Year.

If Christmas is for nostalgia, the Ghost of Christmas Past has been and gone by the 29^th December, discarded like the turkey bones thrown into the food recycling bin. If you’re lucky to not be back in work this week it is like a no-man’s land, some call it ‘Twixt-mas’ or the in-between days before NYE’s fizz. We sit and watch repeats on the telly, internet shop and wonder what the future will hold. These days are prime hunting ground for the Ghost of Christmas Present, who asks questions about here and now, waiting the future to knock at the door as the clock strikes midnight onto 2018.

Every year I feel berated by the grace of John Lennon’s lyrics; “Its Christmas time and what have you done, another year older, a new one’s just begun”. I can’t help feeling he’s pointing accusations when I hear it. Yes, compared to a member of the Beatles, my life has been quiet from one year to the next. But I think it is fair to say 2017 has been a myriad of adventure between the UK and Greece – one which has given me a lot to be thankful for.

Here is my 10 tiny little meditations on 2017 from the Ghost of Christmas Present:

Action: Things are learnt by action not by indecision. If I kept waiting for the right time – a momentary bliss when the earth aligned on its axis, the moon was cradled softly by a cloud in an open sky and there were no distractions, no moments in which my mind would wander and fill with the voices and dreams of other lifetimes. How long would I wait? Now is the time. Postponement is not a state to relish.
Sunsets: by realising that sunsets are just an illusion of the end of the day as the world continues on round its path, I did not feel cheated. Instead I felt wonderfully relived, that these were not endings but merely intervals like curtains being drawn over one day to the next, they only had meaning when we see them collectively and gave power to them. 2017 was a year of many sunsets, so many beautiful minutes of silence as the earth spun slowly round into the magic of the blue hour where the fading echo of the sun’s light turns the scene sepia gold before turning away into darkness again. To witness this repetition is be sure of nature’s true hold of time.
Language: I am still a beginner at Greek and need way more practice with the language. If I believed in resolutions for 2018, this would be high on the list. Instead I just believe in giving it a go.
Sunrises: also pretty special to witness. Nothing can beat that feeling of excitement holding cups of coffee to keep our hands warm on the deck of the Blue Star Ferry in early April, watching a dawn rising up from the horizon of port buildings in Piraeus with no idea what would happen when we arrived on Syros. Reflecting against the jumbled architecture of Athens port, orange and pink light reflecting off silvery towerscapes and crumbling warehouses, we looked outwards and held expectations against the unknown, fears and hope, not realising the possibilities those months ahead would reveal.
Cats: when a little black and white long-haired furball with a mottle tail and one eye permanently dilated, turned up at the house in Greece, I wasn’t sure what to make of it. It became obvious had moved into its territory and it eyed us up for a few days…slinking from one side of the terrace to the other, nose in the air and sniffing. Eventually she came closer, growing trustful when we responded with saucers of water at first, then later titbit snacks she would devour with her snaggled tooth grin. She sidled up to us and purred, played with string and sticks. I think wherever she is now, she is still a little rebel-rebel like Bowie her namesake.
Books: I have cherished the time alone this year with just a book. Some have moved me to tears, made me angry, hopeful and even disappointed – an act that felt voracious and needy, hungrily devouring their pages. It felt like a good year to a be a reader. I meandered through a range of fiction, biography, history, philosophy and poetry – losing count of numbers, but feel enriched and privileged by the worlds I have peeked into. I have already started hastily compiling a list for 2018. Please send me your recommendations!
Writing: sometimes you come to the page with an intention, a fully-fledged idea and other times I come unstuck with just a few words, allow them to form and take you away. Anything can happen here. Practice, explore, mess around with structure – I am happiest doing this, easing off the pressure. Fight the will to compare or mediate or suffocate the process. Just let it flow. Anything creative with words will be a long battle.
Noise: To take yourself away from the noise, not just the ever-present hum and whirr of traffic, over-crowded cities, distracted by the cacophony of digital attention and the rich/poor, left/right, good/evil, fake/true paradox that entrenches indifference. 2017 was filled with heartache, etched by news that broke at such speed and changed direction from despair to joy in seconds. Most of us prefer to keep up rather than check out – the competitiveness of being busy and misappropriation of information as wisdom. The only thing I needed in this year was to slow down and stop being afraid of what happens away from the noise. The internal noise of my own brain hasn’t yet shut up, chattering over long held beliefs and holding the stick of other people’s success up like a marker. But it is quietening down and allowing me to focus. I now like the sound of a ticking clock, the fierce meltemi wind, the sea waves crashing in a storm and the song of cicadas. This alone won’t solve much in the world but it allows me to think and process what I can do.
Fear: I held so much anxiety inside me in the UK I didn’t recognise another sensation when I wandered round grinning ear to ear, walking over hills scattered with spring flowers and being on the verge of tears of what felt like happiness. The weight of fear and worry is mostly based on imagined threats. By taking away those tiny small stresses that pile up to a mountains, I found myself standing differently, shoulders hang freely and hands that don’t fidget. I found it took me a while to ease into the blankness of living without them. I mean blankness as the only way to describe the feeling when the heaviness goes away and the catastrophe of worry subsides. I will save my worry for things I can change.
Family (and friends): the time I have had with them this year has been up and down, but filled with stories and laughter. The annual Christmas journey from Kings Cross has been done countless times with my backpack, balancing presents and cake tins on my lap on an overcrowded train. The same ritual since I was 21 is still being recreated year after year, a return to a home-town that you no longer know but all is still familiar and steeped in memory. Family waiting by the door, food stock piled, the aging Advocaat bottle in the drinks cabinet, the sprout jokes and plastic After Eight chocolate (apart from that one year it went ‘missing’?). This time of fervent celebration is shaped by nostalgia, that busy time when you try to see everyone, give presents and have long talks over bottles of wine. Amidst the calm currents, loneliness and grief bubble up to surface of our lives. I am thankful for their health, happiness, support and most of all…jokes.

When the clock strikes midnight and we collectively look towards a New Year wrapped up in possibility with its promise of newness, reinvention and satisfaction. I for one will be looking outward thinking about how I can do more in 2018 and keep the Ghosts at bay.

Enough: how I learned to live with less

I have a reoccurring nightmare when you die that you are confronted by everything you ever bought as a massive pile in a stinking landfill. A whole towering pile of plastic shoes, stringy vests and fancy dresses…I often wake up at night imagine being trapped under it unable to breathe.

It started October 2016, not a conscious act of rebellion but a small change of economic means, a way of saving money by not shopping. Not overnight and not completely, we all need to live, eat and function. But stop buying and accumulating the stuff that isn’t a necessity and having less by choice is something I have been working on since then. Progress has been made. My wardrobe is smaller despite getting out those clothes that were packed away in storage. But I have been again confronted by my self-created nightmare. I still have way more than I need.

I am a hoarder with emotional ties to objects and yet I am not one of those women who loves to shop. I love the feel of a newly purchased top, sparkly shoe, statement coat as much as anyone. I hold such good memories with clothes and see them as a way of decoding ones past through dubious fashion choices. Fortunately, (*checks privilege) I live in freedom enough to decide this for myself and not fall for the constant bombardment of images women and men face. A UK woman spends on average £70,294 on their appearance in their lifetime…yes, £70K. That’s £1,352 a year or £112.65 a month. £70K could buy a plot of land somewhere and make that self-sufficient dream come true.

I don’t think I ever fell into that category of spending, but when I was in my early 20s on my first (meagre) wage, I did spend a lot of money on clothes, and shoes, and handbags. (I can’t be alone in the phenomena of earning so little but not living in London meant I had loads of disposable income. It frightens me, where did all my money go?) The thrill of spending it on high-fashion, low-cost goods from Primark or H&M, where quality was an afterthought and all those mini-skirts, bo-ho noughties fashion, and party dresses have trailed around many parties and now long been recycled off or charity shopped. Sadly, these clothes are just fast-fashion-fads, made in dubious sweat shops, producing high pollutants in the atmosphere and most never get recycled. In more recent years I moved towards higher quality clothes in an effort to get my wear out of them. Zara, M&S for staples and second hand clothes for more interesting purchases that last longer, repurposing hand me downs and charity shop finds. I still get excited about my £100 second-hand wedding dress that made me look and feel like a millionaire. The landfill image as a thought alone has been enough to keep me away from the shops on my lunch hour, away from shops on the weekend, and from shifting through online browsers and click-bait shoes.

I think many of us are using purchasing things as an emotional prop, a browse online when feeling low grants an immediate hit, a sugar rush as you check out in 2 clicks to secure that delicious fabric print and high heel. Then another glow when the purchase turns up and you twirl around in it. Social media means we wear more outfits, but repeat them less frequently for fear of being shamed. That makes me sad.

My problem was that high always faded so quickly. I ran through a shopping centre a few weeks ago to go to the chemist and I saw whole families treating shopping as it is was a genuine joyful pursuit of their hard-earned leisure time. Maybe it is. The endless accumulation of material goods is something people aspire too. But when is enough, enough?

I don’t feel my changes are a revelation, more a slow evolution. A quiet adult acceptance of money and spending what I work for. I went completely without buying clothes or make up for 6 months and only bought 5 items of clothing in 2017 (jeans, replacement trainers as I’d ran them out, leathers sandals and 2 shirts). Note: I am really hoping Santa delivers me some new underwear! My trick has been to think about buying something for long enough the moment passes, like anticipation is often better than the event itself. Which is a bit like my desire to write…I mull over it so long the argument against is lost. I take out my battles here on the page. Down-sizing, shedding, getting rid of the extraneous word and thought. I don’t want you to think of me as a puritan nor shameless hippie. Just someone who thinks economically! It is hard to define necessity but that definition helps set boundaries– I do need a travel card to get to work. I need to feed myself but I don’t need to spend £7 on lunch or a £3 coffee. I have ‘finally’ trained my master-of-all-skills-husband to cut my hair instantly saving £45, incidentally I stopped colouring my hair a year ago now – I have cultivated a natural ‘ombre’ look. This isn’t all about appearances either.

In the year we finally spent 6 months living simply in Greece, we earned significantly less and yet lived more – swapping urban life for experiences and simplicity. Which is such a funny thing to admit isn’t – actively scaling back your earning potential marries quite well with stopping spending it on stuff you don’t need. Now we are back in London, the TV lies unplugged, books need to be read (library books encouraged) we make packed lunches, eat seasonal cheap food, shop sensibly and reduce wastage. All tiny little incremental steps.

Standing here almost at the dawn of 2018, with a pervasive global environmental and human crisis at our heels, so much of our consumption is in the endless pursuit of fulfillment and happiness – whole industries thrive on this need. I too seek happiness, but realise I won’t find that on the high street or in ‘self-help’ book or green juice diet.

For me, voluntary minimalism feels right in the season of excess and consumption. Clearing out, letting go and treasuring what we have. Because it is more always more than enough.

Now in November

I have been doing many things over the past 6 weeks, but one of them hasn’t been writing this blog. I have been distracted, open mouthed and furiously plotting. I picked up my old copy of Now in November by Josephine Johnson on Saturday as I sat down to write. Having not read it since university, I was overwhelmed as these lines really centered my thinking.

“Now in November I can see our years as a whole. The autumn is both like an end and a beginning to our lives, and those days which seemed confused with a blur of all things too near and too familiar are clear and strange now. It has been a long year, longer and more full of meaning than all those ten years that went before it.”

Johnson’s first person narrative tells the struggles of a poor white tenant farmer family battling with nature, religion and social class in the Great Depression. Although only 24 when it was written, she won the Pulitzer Prize in 1935 and fair to say coming 5 years before Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, Johnson was ahead of her time. It is an emotionally raw and illuminating read, written from the daughter’s perspective in the landscape of the dust bowl. It felt like a good opener to remind me of the power words can have.

The 11th month of the year marks my birth month, so it also calls for beginnings as well as endings. I always think of November as a reflective brooding time, the shorter days slowly folding itself into Christmas and then a new year. There has been a lot of catching up and family time in the past few weeks, and generally aligning ourselves back into a rhythm that we had lost. I have relished being back in a fully operational kitchen, I even baked a Greek honey and almond cake. As well as trying to replicate the souzoukakia recipe from Stou Zaloni’s. They weren’t bad!

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Now in this November I found myself walking along Regent’s Park with a dear friend in the biting cold on a Sunday afternoon. We walked and talked. Catching up conversations about work and ambition, life, love and all the stuff that chatters around our brains in-between. I hadn’t felt that absorbed for a long time, as we crunched golden leaves beneath our feet and squinted in the sunlight. It was nice to be out in the fresh air, breathing it all in and bathing in daylight. After our taxing walk we found a cosy pub and shared more long conversations over pints and stodgy food. Proving that this is a time for reflection, we managed to put the world to right over kind words and ideas. This is autumn loveliness at its finest.

I am lucky to have been able to walk through St James Park on the way to meetings. Dawdling a while to stare at the ducks around the lake, admire the tourists posing and see how the fig trees are getting on. One of which is reported to be the biggest specimen of Ficus carica (brown turkey) in Britain. I always wonder if the figs are tasty from that big old tree. One day I’ll check them out in season.

I didn’t really appreciate how glorious fig trees are before with their deciduous vast flat leaves. I always thought of the fruit first rather than the tree. How the overripe figs would fall and collect in sad splatted piles, smelling sickly sweet while they rotted. Often they were pillaged by giant ants marching in a line of military precision. I ate dried figs at my parent’s house a few weeks ago when they opened the box of Kini figs from Theresa. They had been sun-dried in the traditional way with sesame seeds with a bay leaf on each layer and wrapped in tissue paper. Their sweet taste made me feel sad and happy all at once thinking of summer.

I do miss the fig trees that leaned over our garden in Syros. By now their leaves will have also turned into shades of golden rust. I keep seeing pictures on social media of northern Greece where the forest leaves are aflame in all the radiant hues of autumn. A November walk in the Greek hills sounds about perfect right now. In Greece the olive harvest is always traditionally done after the first rainfall. Spreading out the nets and raking through the tree branches to make the ripe olives fall, it’s back breaking work. I might sit in an office all day but that’s no comparison to the hard labour of the olive farmers.

I had got used to having a lot of freedom over how I spent my time, which manifests itself in getting frustrated over the constrained time squeezed into work. I relish snatches of time being alone on the train and staring up at the sky whenever the opportunity presents itself.

I miss the sky , the big ol’ blue Hellenic sky – the sheer expanse of the horizon. You don’t get big horizons like that in London… even from the top of the Sky Garden it looked pretty grey.

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I think it is the light and colour I miss the most. I leave in the dark gloom of dawn, a train ride through terraced streets with hues of brown and mud coloured buildings flashing by. If it’s cloudy all day before getting dark at 4pm, a whole day can go by in this strange wishy washy landscape without seeing anything bright and inspiring.

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Compare that London grey smudge with the palette of Ermoupoli in its candy coloured houses and pale blue domes, bright skies and sea of turquoise, dotted with terracotta, bright pops of pink and emerald green. I have been cheering up the dark nights by sorting some of my pictures from walks around the town. These are just a few of my favourites.

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The weather certainly won’t be as nice there now as I remember it, but everyone will be starting to hibernate for winter as the grey skies and stormy weather sets in. But I can look over these pictures to remember the light and hope it keeps me going through the dark days of November.

September: a time of new beginnings

When people ask what I have been up to in Greece, I will refuse to be embarrassed. Despite busying myself with real work, writing and gardening, figuring out hiking trails and petting sweet, but sad cats, I’m happy to admit I spent a lot of time staring into the middle distance, relishing wonder and musing over ideas in a state of under-employment. I take nothing for granted and appreciated how it all worked out, after all time is one of the luxury items in modern life.

One of the things I have used this time for is to consider how life in London worked, and didn’t work. Last week while we were packing up I went through some notebooks I kept last year and earlier this year – I can’t work out if they are the musings of a mad person (likely) or just someone very stuck in a depressive way of thinking (highly likely). It broke my heart to read it and wonder, just how I didn’t address a lot of those things earlier and let them slide? Some of this stuff is just my own ‘over-thinking’. I know I am lucky to have created this breathing space, I have a shit ton of friends who just get on with it and have a far more complex life, juggling illness, complicated families and tiny tots. I also have friends they have so much outside of work that fulfill them on a deeper level that renders the 9-5 into pale insignificance. I am proud to say every woman I call a friend just lives by the GSD motto (gets shit done) without fuss or humble-brag. We are constantly told that being still is an idleness, that you must be in perpetual motion, ‘busyness’ is an aspiration status of being in-demand and working all the hours makes you an ‘important person’. It will make you, not break you.

Yet, a small simple truth I discovered in the act of making life very small and very simple, that time can allow you to refocus and remind yourself what matters – how you want to live.

Our last 10 days on Syros were spent in a way that blurred the lines between a holiday and just enjoying the simple way of life we have relished there for months. Admittedly we went out a bit more and ate out a little more lavishly than before – but still the nagging idea about how we would feel back in the UK sat heavy on the horizon.

There were hikes to Gramatta and Lia beaches, Kambos and Sa Michalis – despite the keenness that Autumn was calling, the temperatures stayed hot and the sun fierce.

There was a calmness to those days, as the traffic reduced and children went back to school, things being put back into places and the fun of summer, not being finished, but certainly winding down. As Syros is mostly visited by Greeks, mid-September is quieter but sees another trickle of tourists arrive from Northern Europe to enjoying the less crowded beaches and off-peak prices. But in the main it was all back to work and school for most people.

We packed up our little Greek house and I tidied the garden – plenty still in flower and the aubergine is still producing fruit. I did a final audit of ‘stuff’, carefully keeping the important things and recycling a lot we didn’t need. I spent a little time coaching the cat about fending for herself, the hypocritically feeding her tuna and other treats the needed using up from the store cupboard…bad kitty parent.

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The day we left was abysmally hot – 33c and humid, like the kind that makes your face sweat, even indoors! We swam early that day – I went out on my favourite bay loop to the two buoys tied together in such a way that they bob together in the waves. I call them the ‘kissing buoys’. In such times there is this horrible adjudicative of naming things ‘the last swim’, ‘the last espresso freddo at KiniTro’, ‘the last sunset’ behind the mermaid statue. It annoyed me by its bell-ringing finality everytime one of us mentioned it as an off-hand comment! By the time we had hugs and well wishes of ‘Kalo himonia’ (good winter), we were in the taxi, the road climbing uphill, the last glance down to the bay, the taxi radio playing ‘Dust in the wind‘ by Kansas (listen to it!) – it was all, just..so, you know…

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The reality is no one knows what will be our last anything, that’s why everything should be cherished. If there’s one lesson the past 6 months, or even year, has taught me, and often is so obviously overlooked as a cliché. But cherish and be present in everything. As I write this I’m sitting here in my garden in the UK – the sun is shining, an almost impossibly perfect late September day which marks the Autumn Equinox. The sun feels warm, hot even, there is dampness and freshness in the air from last night’s rain – I walked barefoot on the lawn this morning, enjoying its bouncy dampness and bright green freshness, colours that are so scarce on the dry and rocky Greek islands, that I forgot how beautiful they were. The colours of leaves are just starting to turn on the cherry tree – they hold fast – the sunlight bounces off the kitchen windows and reflects from the white patio walls. Days like these are to be cherished and luxuriated in every moment.

Like most of us, I find that questions that weigh one’s mind mostly are the ones that reflect an ideal state rather than the present we inhabit. Women (and men) my age spend an awful lot of time considering; is this the right job for me? Am I challenged enough? What will my next career move be? Where will I be in 10 years time? Am I happy with the next promotion/payrise? Would I like to be a parent? Can I ever afford a house? Will i ever be able to retire? These sorts of internal questions and ways of thinking betray a sense of ‘becoming’ all the time – like you are constantly on your way somewhere and waiting to arrive. Steps to a new role or state of being hangs in the distance like a destination to arrive at, rather than just occupying the space you inhabit right now. This journey-mentality might be the one that causes stasis rather than frees you. I can dig out a load of labels I have arrived at, that I am both happy and unhappy with – my job title, my rank in the pecking order of power and decision making, my income, my education, my marital status, my child-free status, my weight, my height, my class, my accent. It makes me wonder, is this who I am? It is, and yet, in so many ways it isn’t. Life is just made up of small grounded moments that take you out to sea, to the shore, to the path, to get lost and feel small because the world is vast. Life should not be lived using time up waiting for something to happen.

With this in mind, we used two days in Athens to break the journey up and relax. It meant we weren’t bothered at all by the late arriving SuperFerry, which although a more comfortable and newer boat than the usual Blue Star that does the daily Syros-Pireaus slog, it takes 45 minutes longer and had difficulties docking in the port which added to the delay. Avoiding any unnecessary baggage pain or stress, G had pre-booked a taxi which greeted us and we then had two nights to ease back into city life. Athens was a small shock to the system and not just because of the heat. The first morning there I awoke and sat with a coffee on the apartment’s small balcony overlooking a cross-street; it was like being immersed in noise and chaos, cars honked and mopeds sped by – police sirens blared and the whole neighbourhood stopped to observe the scene after 2 cars collided in the slow bumper to bumper rush hour traffic. It was certainly an event; builders stopped to shout down what they’d seen, traffic police turned up to cordon off the road and every person stopping at the bakery rubber-necked to see what was going on. I shuddered at the noise of it all. Only 24 hours later I had been listening to nothing more than the rustle in the pine trees and the cicadas’ chirping – cities are a sensory overload.

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We arrived back yesterday under clouded grey skies of late afternoon. Watching the houses fall into focus as the plane descended into Gatwick; England looks mostly grey and green from the air, but has a bizarre imposition of order over chaos – everything here has a place and role, streets that are designed in symmetrical forms, even villages look like miniature worlds. Not at all like the ad-hoc buildings across rural Greece that look like they were built without plans, dotting the hills like wild seeds laying root wherever they landed.

Arriving at our house was strange. It was intact but felt empty, it seems (and smells) different, but it is the same. Like waking up and the past six-months were a dream. G just finished unpacking the kitchen stuff and declared, “it’s the same but different”. I suggested it’s the same space but maybe now he inhabits it differently – maybe nothing stands still. Unpacking the bags and getting out our things will take time. But the act of it all makes me feel un-grounded and all out at sea; going from basics and simplicity, back to luxury items like washing machines and toasters and TV’s and everything we have plenty of. Yet living without has proved to me that we don’t really need them.

I have just pegged the washing out to dry in this sunny weather, it won’t be instantly dry like in Greece, but I can be thankful we can dry them outside still without having to put the central heating on. I feel once that starts, its such a big use of energy and really marks out the seasonal transition.

On the whole, G and I have both found different benefits to being in Greece. For him, and I hope he won’t mind me saying this; it has been an affirmation of his focus and drive. But more importantly it has been the time he needed to climb out from under the shadow of grief after his father’s death. In many ways we learnt to love and respect each other’s space more – when you live in close quarters without the immediate support network that family and friends take up, you learn to talk more and share more with each other. Don’t worry I certainly won’t be dishing out relationship advice anytime soon.

Somehow in this time away I realised I need to give myself more credit… Yes, you heard that right, the eternal pessimist, always second guessing herself, and listening to the nay-sayers, and if there isn’t any actual nay-sayers, I’ll create them like shadows under the bed. Yep, like some self-aggrandizing t*t, I actually am starting arrive at a place where I get it; be nice to yourself. The whole jumbling tumble mystery of life, is just that. A massive mystery – no silver bullet, just evolving and ever changing, challenges to confront, acceptance of the good and being thankful the positive things that comes your way, hiding away good and kind things in your soul for when things won’t be as rosy – but most of all slowing down and being appreciative of everything you have; My family, my husband, my friends, fighting injustice and caring for the natural environment matter to me, as do words that make sense of this chaos. Perhaps one day I will leave the earth a more beautiful place with something I can create.

This isn’t some bold epiphany, I am just ready to make it real – there isn’t any ‘nothing is impossible’ rallying cry or positive affirmation. It’s gentler than that. It marks out a way to live.

In the next few weeks I am making a promise to myself to keep the summer alive by writing out more Syros adventures and editing my 1000s of photos. A small act to stave off the dark days of winter.

Watch this space.

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