A six week holiday turns into a year – in Greece. How did that happen? Well I have a little bolt-hole in Porto Heli, a Greek fishing village in the Peloponnese - sea breezes, open spaces, not many people, so it seemed a good place to weather out the epidemic prowling our city streets. So from a full on life in London packed with endless tube journeys to meet people, see shows, readings, perform, to a quiet life in a corner of the mountainous Peloponnese.
It wasn’t all Greek summer paradise. From October 2020 everything closed, so when my friends tweeted, lucky you, I wanted to say, hey, there’s lockdown here in Greece too, tavernas bars, shops, closed, compulsory masks, social distancing, the sea too cold to swim in, early curfew, obligatory SMS forms to police every time you went out. But, of course, there was also openness and beauty, the sea, mountains, olive trees, orange and lemon groves, friendly neighbours. And spectacular storms, sudden, fierce that rushed in over the mountains or across the sea and blew the old runaround, gadabout, urban me away. And who is the new me? Not sure yet. I’m trying to find out through my poetry.