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Continue reading →: Le Samouraï
or, The Godson – 1967 Directed by Jean-Pierre Melville and starting Alain Delon This classic Gallic noir inspired many directors around the world in the following decade. Simply put, it is the journey of a hired killer after a botched job. A plot used many times before, but Melville’s approach,…
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Continue reading →: Childhood: The Biography of a Place by Harry Crews
Second time of reading this.. Ranked by many of the media as Crews’s masterpiece, I appreciated this greatly, but prefer his novels. Some say to read this first, as an introduction to Crews’s books, but I’m going to disagree with that also.. better to read it last, and it gives…
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Continue reading →: Meeting More MonksI expected a quiet day today, a chance to catch up on a bit of reading and a few other bits of administration. In the end, it was anything but quiet. This village, Ambelakiotissa, more than most, suits a walking circuit, set as it is over a height difference of…
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Continue reading →: The Werewolf of Paris by Guy Endore
This 1933 novel, which amazingly lay dormant, out of print, for more than 40 years, concerns Bertrand Caillet, the unwanted result of a lecherous and sinister priest with a murky and wolfish background raping a 14 year old French peasant girl in the early 1850s. Caillet is raised by Aymar…
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Continue reading →: Villages of the Kravara – AmbelakiotissaTemperatures up high at this time of year are difficult to predict. At 10 pm last night, up at Veluchio, at 1850 metres, it was 3C, but it didn’t get any colder. With the sun up at 7:30, it had warmed to 9C by 8am, and the van solar certainly…
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Continue reading →: The slow road south down the spine of the PindosThe most unforgettable thing about a memorable visit to Katarraktis was the almost vertical wall of the Tzoumerka mountains to the east. I hardly took my eye off them. There’s a reasonably easy route to the ridge, possible I would think to ride on a mountain bike. A trail that…
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Continue reading →: An annual celebration in Katarraktis
I awoke just after 7:30. Had I been dreaming? I thought I had heard a rhythmic hand clapping. Roja had done a double-take also. Then, just as I put it to the back of my mind and dozed, there it was again. No mistake this time. I sat up and…
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Continue reading →: A Haunting in Venice
This is the third in Kenneth Branagh’s Porto series, following Orient Express and Death on the Nile, and in which Branagh directs and plays the lead role. Since I was a teenager I have throughly enjoyed Agatha Christie’s writing and adaptations, of which I think I have read, and seen,…
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Continue reading →: Recital of the Dark Verses by Luis Felipe Fabre
(translated from the Spanish by Heather Cleary) Its a hot August in 1592 in Úbeda in Andalucia as a bailiff and two recruited civil servants, Ferran and Diego, arrive at a monastery for a secret mission, to transfer the body of Saint John of the Cross, Fray Juan de la…
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Continue reading →: Back to KatarraktisFrom the chapel at the top of the mountain it is said that your prayers can be heard more clearly. Though that might not have been the case today. Up at almost 1400 metres the weather was what one might expect in the hills of the UK, windy, with squally…
To live more widely
supera superiora sequi
SafeReturnDoubtful is my alias.
Where is Andy?
I was so much older then…
Quote of the Week
Alice asked the Cheshire Cat, who was sitting in a tree, ‘What road do I take?’ The cat asked, ‘Where do you want to go?’ ‘I don’t know,’ Alice answered. ‘Then,’ said the cat, ‘it really doesn’t matter, does it?’
Lewis Carroll
Safe Return Doubtful 