viola's people watching blog
Why is it we can never tuck away our childhood and forget about it like old toys or even chuck it off like dreaded old school books? Well my childhood was in the 50’s and 60’s on rubber estates in peninsula Malaysia and those experiences had been hanging in the […]
After our friends left on 12 May we had to pack in a hurry because we were leaving for Brussels on Sunday 14 May well before sunrise, to catch the first flight to Athens. We had just one day to throw things into our luggage and it was fine by […]
The first couple of days this week…the Holy Week of the Greek Easter.. and the weather was acting up. It was chucking it down outside and the forecast was that it was going to be sullen and grey throughout the week and our pouting friend had forced me to stay […]
The moon had been waxing and waning in nebulous March skies…sometimes a shining crescent, hanging like a pendant and other times, lying like a cradle, suspended in the darkness, only to vanish behind an inky haze. But there was this one night when Yiannis walked in after concluding his business […]
ARTON, OINON KAI THEAMATA…OF BREAD, WINE AND SPECTACLE. It is what this nation of gods and philosophers is about and if you rub shoulders with them, you will inevitably be drawn into these pleasures of the flesh. We’ve just had…two weeks ago… `Apokries’…the last Sunday before Lent… when after the […]
We’ve had buckets of sunshine the last few days on these…`Alkionides Meres’ or Halcyon Days. Halycon is a kind of kingfisher that nests by the sea and lays its eggs in the frosty month of January. But nature in its mysterious ways, calms the icy winds and cracks open the […]
There we were once again on the early morning flight to Brussels. It was a Saturday before the crack of dawn when we left Chania. I got this déjà vu feeling when we dragged our suitcases behind us, rumbling all the way to Yiannis’ jeep parked outside on the road, […]
I see women come out of the hairdresser’s with a spring in their gait, a toss of their head …a head full of shiny swinging tresses, looking all confident as if they could just take on the world and all its niggly fiddly problems. Well…I wonder why it’s never happened […]
As the summer buzz and dust are washed away by the first rains, I find myself slipping into the quiet pace and beauty of autumn…the rich hues of russet and gold of our vine leaves and the ripening of fruit, sweet and juicy…our pomegranates, apples and oranges. The skies are […]
It was a sunless autumn morning when we travelled through The Black Forest of Germany. The slopes on the right and left for miles and miles were heavily wooded with evergreens…conifers growing close together, tall and straight like sentries reaching for the sky, their conical tops piercing the clouds and […]