"Back to reality"

Dassia beach ~ "Oliver! To make castles you must add water to your sand"

I mistook the old bloke with a flat cap, a fag in his mouth, shuffling by my borrowed chair in the airport car park, for a local.
"Kalimira"
"Are you waiting for a car?" he said
"Ah yes. Yianni told me he's just coming"
I glimpsed the wife with luggage ready. Yianni drove up, shook the old man's hand, patted his back, kissed his wife.
"Back to reality" I heard the man say.
Yianni saw them off; strolled over to deal with my paperwork; licence details.
"Hullo, Simon. How are you?"
"Not so good"
"Why?"
"Seeing off my family"
"Ah you will see them soon"

All that's true, so why do I feel the old sadness of separation in my stomach? It's unavoidable. Cole Porter ...'how strange the change from major to minor, every time we say goodbye?'
It matches the joy of arrival, smiles and laughs.

In one way I'll be glad to get back to just-us-two routines with time to make toast with butter and anchovy paste in the morning while Lin sleeps. Good too to take down that inconvenient safety gate at the top of the stairs, disposing of nappies and food strewn in bits on the floor - and cigarette butts; quiet in the house instead of ....

Bed invasion

....yelling, weeping, whinging, pattering feet and bumps on the ceiling and shrieks at Oliver's new invention - 'spiderdirt!'..which of course is everywhere, imagined and for real.

Hannah and Oliver with Amy

We've been together to Sidari, Kouloura, Kalami...

Kouloura

Palia Perithia, Ermones, Kanoni, Vlacherna, Sokraki...

Sokraki

...Dassia, the pool at Dominoes - still chilly - near Ipsos...

Kanoni where we watch the planes taking off and landing

...Gouvia, Faliraki, places in the delightful city, and at Piatsa in the village where the children are made much of and we watch people and cars and bikes go by. Oliver's been to the shop with me to buy bread. He can say "psomi", ''efxharisto"and "yasoo" and cope with being hugged by - to him - strangers. Oliver and Guy came with me to Pirate Island in the boat.
Last night - their last night - we had Mark and his parents for supper. Lin made two kinds of meat loaf with tasty tomato sauce, baked potatoes with butter, runner beans and carrots, and lots of bread before that to mop the mix of balsamic vinegar and olive oil that came with wide plates of tomatoes and mozzarella, like abstract patterns.
I imagine Oliver, especially, as a camera  '..with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking' starting an album that will last his life.

Faliraki below the city

*** ***
The day before they left my ache began, adding to the joyful taste of every moment. The still summer air within the shade of the cottage hallway was suffused with the unmistakable smell of a live brown trout just caught, held, to keep it pristine, in a small sheaf of fresh grass laid in Bignall's kreel. On such days as this when departures approaches the little dying comes in small sensations that touch every sense and cue timeless associations. What is beautiful in the day becomes even more beautiful.
This is when memories are made that last until old age, until death I suspect, hung in the memory gallery; sometimes still pictures, to be evoked by a smell, or hung in the hall of continuity open all day and night for life - awake and asleep - the palette of every sense, separate and together - the latter the mysterious ingredients of déjà vu.

At Emeral after taking the family to the airport

'The sea is calm tonight'

Innocent as artists but without the craft. Nothing is significant – expect food and love and attention – nothing is insignificant. Nought selected, everything relevant, all is fecund with intimations. Later the children will select, learning the necessary understanding of common sight, which so few slough, to recover glimpses of celestial light, dreams that recur, gloriously fresh.

The bridge over the brook at Ermones

*** *** ***
I had a frantic text from Winnie...

...the bees had caused her problems. She and Dennis had been stung; she twice. I phoned and emailed Gill, my neighbour apiarist. She said the bees population was expanding beyond the hive on Plot 14. She halved the colony. That vexed the remaining bees, hence the text from Winnie. More phone calls. I told Winnie she must stay away from the allotment but she went back and called me again and sent me a clip from her phone...

"Winnie! They're swarming"
"They're dangerous"
"No not while they're swarming. It's OK but phone Gill now"
Later Gill told me that thanks to Winnie she'd caught the swarm and temporarily moved the colony.
"There should be an almost entirely new lot and I'll bring them back"
"I so hope so. I do not want to lose our bees"

A universe of children

(Photo: Lin Baddeley)

Once upon a time in a universe of children, we direct their sagas; stories full of half-human noises – a script of monosyllables, mingled with wailing and laughing. Late evening, the stars at last in their trailers, cossetted, coaxed, fitfully dreaming tomorrow’s lines, the crew eat, drink, talk and play cards, tired from another long day on set.

Another morning. Our stars don’t, like Achilles, sulk in their tents. They rise early to stir their staff, invade their beds, prise open their eyelids. The canteen is fired up. The house creaks. Shooting recommences at dawn. Nappies, potties, bottles, toast and cereal on plastic plates and dishes. Breasts pressed into service; sacred objects clutched. Somewhere in the long morning the scene shifters, grips and gaffers; take a breather, a smoke and a chat about their encounters with particular actors – a mix of bemoaning, boasting and largely unheeded advice. 
“But she’s always sweet with me!”
 “You’re joking. I get it like this every morning” 
“Just don’t let him get away with it.” 
“I don’t but I think he had a bad night” 
“Yes but you’ve got to let them know the limits” 
I’m an assistant, of little importance on set, with fantasies of how I’d direct the situation; a roadie goffer making cheese toasties, tea and coffee for colleagues, washing up, carrying trays, bagging the extra rubbish, wiping surfaces, straining at my traces, longing for my own place in the sun between the shadows cast by this trio of stars. The work is constant, prolonged, detailed and tedious with much standing around, much sentry duty. To get these children from the house into the car takes several hours. There’s the complicated business of assembling clothes, shoes, beachwear, sun cream – factor 50, hats, picnic things. For days until now the weather has been sublime, the far mountains hazed above a gently ruffled sea – scuffed blue velvet. In the foreground, green lemons, green oranges just above the balcony, with wisteria and bougainvillea; with silver and green of olives and cypress stretching to the near horizon. I’m assembling things for others, things that have little to do with me. It’s a lesson in humility; a lesson in what is for me the ill-practised art of caring for others.

I could be off walking, cycling, sailing, reading, even writing. It takes this family, this household – four grown-ups, my wife, my daughter – mother to Oliver in his third year, and Hannah two months – Liz, Amy’s best friend and mother to one year old Sophia, all morning and into the early afternoon, to be ready for “what we’ll do today” – go to the grassy beach at Dassia....

....have a swim in the lovely empty - end of season - pool at Dominoes in Analipsi, 

walk on the cricket ground opposite the Liston...

Oliver, Sophia. Liz and Hannah on the cricket pitch in Corfu

...stroll in the evening by the pebbled shore below Faliraki in the city...

Gazing towards Mother Greece from Faliraki

...find this early October and almost empty beach near Canal D’Amour at Sidari. 


The actual shoot is hardly a quarter of the day. I want to start my story, my once upon a time at dawn and let it run until I sleep, waited on as I wait now, my grandchildren’s sentry. 

(Photo: Lin Baddeley)

Did Hitler ever rise early to make someone’s breakfast? I know Heracles, followed by paparazzi, diverted a river to clear the Augean stables but did he ever just bag domestic rubbish and take it daily to the wheelie bins – unsung – or ever change a nappy? Did Voltaire ever have to oversee the assembling of the shoes needed by four adults and a toddler planning a couple of hours on the beach? 

Robespierre. Did he empty a potty and clean it? "Great Alexander! Hold this baby. Can you calm her as you did Bucephalus?" Shakespeare knew what I’m going on about; knew about mewling and puking. I’d trust him above Rousseau for all his influential theories about raising children.