2 august 2007

For Arthur Ransome fans.  This is surely what the internet is for.  And few web pages look so good.

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6 august 2007


Edward Lear, View of Kako

** bhikku is off to Crete, to swim in the Libyan sea. Back towards the end of August **

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21 august 2007

seaside lullaby

Mrs Harmattan and Mrs Simoom
are sweeping the sands with a magical broom

Mrs Simoom and her sister Harmattan
are knitting the sea in a shimmering pattern

and like cunning Penelope, they by and by
fall asleep when they finish unweaving the sky.

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28 august 2007

hills like white elephants

Edward Abbey would have been proud of me.
We were staying in a town, so were strangely insulated from the island. But at last I got out of the bus and walked between villages in search of a huge lost city (which I did indeed find some of), and this is what I heard and saw and smelt and ate:
goat bells;  goats;  small birds in bushes;  swallows;  martins;  giant electric-blue bees;  goldfinches;  jackdaws;  hundreds of honeybees on golden roadside thistles;  butterflies: small blue, swallowtail, huge fritillaries;  a soaring falcon;  silence.
Wild figs and delicious tiny wild grapes;  resin and herbs;  camel thorns, and a Roman cistern full of cool clear water and tadpoles.
Mount Psiloritis, where Zeus is said to have spent his childhood.*

* The other, rival mountain where the other people tell you Zeus really spent his childhood was invisible and somewhere else.

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The people of Crete unfortunately make more history than they can consume locally.

- Saki

I was brought up to dislike most things. Enthusiasm, as I remember it, was reserved for rounding things up and driving them over a cliff as amusingly as possible.

- Hugo Williams