On my outward bound journey from theWelsh Hovel I brought 25 kg of books in my hold bag and in my computer bag. It was a bit of a pain. Going back to Airstrip One on Tuesday I shall be carrying 15 kg of Greek Hovel olive oil and …

The South Africans tell us, as do US and EU authorities that the Omicron variant of covid is really not very harmful at all. And what is more they have data which supports this as you can see below. As Omicron started there the South Africans have real data. This was dismissed today by one of the doom-mongers advising our wretched Government as merely “anecdotal.” But it is not, what you see below is hard facts.  What can be dismissed are claims by the experts who always get it wrong, such as Professor Pantsdown Ferguson,that 75,000 of us will die from this variant by the spring.  Ferguson has a track record of forecasting which, over many, years is unbelievably consitent. He is always wrong.  Yet Boris Johnson et al do not look at facts on the ground, hard data, they believe the“experts” who ignore this hard data and their ludicrous predictions.

You think the Aegean is always blue, calm and warm? Think again. I took harvester B to visit the house of his hero Paddy Leigh Fermor in Kardamili. We peered over the walls and I told a few stories and then wandered around a tourist town which was dead. There was just one place to eat andf we both enjoyed a cold cheese and spinach pie. The beach at Kardamili has no sand just stones at one end and rocks at the other. The near end ( stones) is normally accessed across a dry river but it was in full flood so we accessed further along, driving past the Police station of which I have such unhappy memories. At the far end by the rocks, the sea was raging, as you can see below. Hardly flat and blue.

The dry river runs through the valley beneath the Greek hovel and you must cross it to get up here. It is just beneath snake hill. It is almost always dry but as the storms lash Greece it is filling up rapidly. The photos below were take at 3PM today and the water was six inches deep at the crossing point. Since then it has absolutely bucketed it down with rain, almost non stop.  The wind is also howling. Up in the mountains where this river starts the rain is even heavier. In a few minutes, harvester B and I will head into Kambos for supper. I suspect that it will be rather deeper now. And by the time I have to take B to catch a bus in Kalamata to start his way back to Airstrip One, at 7 AM tomorrow, God only knows.