The Greek Hovel sits on top of a hill. On the hill opposite, the one heading towards Kambos and which is  a bit lower, stands the abandoned convent. As you head up into the mountains behind us the dips between hills get shallower and the climbs steeper. The mission Joshua and I undertook was to discover an 1850s bridge and a route behind our hill and the next one “up” to the village or Orova. What follows is a record of our failure.

Another begging email arrives in my inbox from woke hustlers Avaaz. It tells me that European floods are unprecedented and a sign of climate change. Of course you and I know that German flood levels have been much higher many times in the past. It is just that flood defence work (so passe) and listening to warnings about rising river levels (so last millennium) have been abandoned as the powers that be wet their knickers about climate change & spunk taxpayers cash accordingly. Meanwhile Avaaz wants me to look at temperatures in North America and panic. We have literally months to save the planet so how about I send some of my hard earned cash to Avaaz so that it can pay its woke staff a fecking fortune, oops I meant save the planet. It all sounds so simple but it is a lie.

If you want to get from the top floor to the three bedrooms on the bottom floor here at the Greek Hovel you normally just go out of the front door and down the stairs to enter via either the bat room or the rat room, Joshua’s bedroom, which leads onto the main master bedroom. But there is a plan B.

The gorge into which those chaps murdered by a lad from Kambos a few years ago, had their bodies thrown stretches from the sea right up to the higher taygetos. On the way to Kambos the main road passes over the gorge just above a stunning 1850s bridge I visited a few years ago. Last night we headed for supper with Guardian reading loons L&G in their home village of Vorio, much higher up in the mountains. Their view over the gorge is quite amazing as you can see below.

Not Byron and Cam Hobhouse in Zitsa but cats Sian and Quincey back in Wales and snapped by a kind friend who went round to talk to them. No doubt someone in Holt will be dobbing them in on the village facebook group for non mask wearing and a failure to social distance. These cats are what i miss most about life back in Blighty which tells you a lot about how Airstrip One appears from abroad right now.

There was a pressing urgency in heading down early to the little village of Kambos for our Sunday lunch. We are now being good about eating breakfast and at least one other meal each day up at the hovel where – at some expense – I have installed a full kitchen imported from across Europe with a Range Cooker, a Belfast sink and other facilities. But once a day we eat out.

I should stress that there are few out and out loons in the village of Holt in which I live when not here in Greece. But, as there are in every village in England and Wales, there are some and the covid scandemic has allowed such souls to flourish showing virtue as they boast of wearing masks in the bath and tut tutting at anyone who dares question the cult. As I did yesterday with my “modest proposal.”

I have long gazed at olive terraces on the other side of the valley and elsewhere in Greece and wondered, with some envy, at how flat and clean they look when compared to my frigana strewn land. But this year, my business partner in olive harvesting, Nicho the Communist, engaged some Albanians to clear our terraces out and the result is a wonder to behold. The first photo is the view from directly behind the house. 

Provoked by the sheer silliness of some of my neighbours back in the last village in Wales, I signalled my opposition to mask wearing on the village Facebook site last night. The response, as you’d imagine, has been Orwellian. And as such, I have a modest proposal for the face nappy jihadists…