Sleeping on the deck of the ferry from Pireus to Iraklion. Dawn rising in July 1973, me a kid with a bunch of radio-astronomers, on an unlikely adventure to the far south of Crete. (All of these photos © Ralph Grey, photographer extraordinaire).

A lotus-eating, Numero Ena-smoking, sociable, frying-in-the-sun and who knows what kind of week. Songbirds offered to us cooked on a bed of rice. (Couldn’t manage that). Concrete floors to the Leonard Cohen room and a kind of anguish that couldn’t find a name for itself. No idea that Greece was in the grip of its greatest political upheavals since the War. So much to digest. So much to make a story from. Thank you and hail to the memory of Prof Davis, as he became.

You find yourself in the end:

We (a different we),

found ourselves forty something years later,  a new place to eat lotuses, and moved in two weeks ago.

Each of these images carries a little story of connection, patience, perseverence, imagination… I’ll tell them, bit by bit.

The car? Madalena and Iannie sold us the car, got me the AFM number in one hour flat after landing at 7.00  am… and Giorgos (on the insurance front), kept us safe while we dithered over third party/comprehensive/photographs and all that joy.

The wifi? Father Athanasios and the Power of the Almighty, produced OTE engineers after a welter of coming on Tuesday, no Thursday? Thursday – but next week. Yes! Erxhomei – we’re coming, came the welcome text that day.

The shower bracket? Came the same day as the wifi, fitted by lovely Andreas, son of Stavros at the taverna by the sea.

The curtains – see Maria’s glorious emporium in Spili, and she fashioned me rufflette tape to the lace curtains and, a little grumpily, sewed a loop at the top of beach towels to make the window curtains.

So the scene is set. The story begins. This is my blog about a Writing Life in Crete, now that I’m ‘sintaxiouchos’ – ‘retired’. But only from that bit of my life which involved the law. Now, the real stuff begins.