A couple of nights in one of our favourite anchorages gave us such a peaceful and still night. We sat in the cockpit and listened to the layers of evening noises whilst the stars appeared like bright, freshly popping corn. From the mainland we could hear one bird relentlessly calling for a mate with such sad notes of pessimism. I managed to locate the species…scops owl….then suddenly he was gone.
Sleeping under an open hatch with a gentle breeze is wonderful, a restless mid-sleep shuffle gives glimpses of an unpolluted sky strewn with mysterious galaxies which suddenly vanish as the dawn paints them out.
I have just returned from a stroll around the backstreets and found the brown tangle of lifeless stems where nasturtiums once flourished. Now our little French yoghurt-pot vases are filled with fragrant white jasmine and bridesmaid-blue plumbago which now billow extravagantly over steeply rising stone walls.
There is something wistfully vanishing about Greece….chattering walks with Simon are regularly punctuated with utterances of ‘where?’ And ‘well, I can’t see it!’
The cat which is stretched and sunning on a hot rock… The dozing old man seated under an olive tree, stick supporting one hand whilst the other rests on his knee… One turn of the head… and he’s gone. The aproned lady shaking the mats over her balcony… so briefly. Shooting stars… Turtles rising for air…and kids making faces at nothing in particular. So many sights and sounds to share but some to be savoured and enjoyed like choice morsels for one.