Where's Home?,

I know it's been a long time since I posted a blog and for that I really do have to apologise. Last week, I was over happy and completely distracted by the beauty of the scenery in Greece and almost dying every time we were on the road. I wish I was kidding, but the route between our resort and the airport (and everything else) is littered with blind bends, but the Greeks don't seem to know that means you shouldn't be overtaking on the wrong side of the road. The over happy was added to when Ben arrived. I was so happy and so settled there that I cried getting on the plane and when the plane took off and when the plane flew back for a last look at the town and then turned back towards home. I cried more when Greece got through to the final 16 in the World Cup for the first time in the history of ever though. I was so proud, but it hurt a little inside that I wasn't in Greece to celebrate. I'm just settling down to watch their next game with all spare digits and limbs firmly crossed. I'm getting quite irritated though by all the wrong pronunciations of the Greek names!

Whilst I was out there, my awesome writing equipment collection was expanded by my acquisition of a glass blown quill. My parents and Ben foresaw it sitting at the bottom of drawer in my desk and that I would never use it, but I have been using it so far. It's amazing. It does mean that there are bottles of Quink across my coffee table at the moment though. 

Since I've been back, I've managed to complete a night shift (only the second of my life, and I'm still no fonder of them), join a temp agency, have a completely controlled, yet still unsuccessful trip to Oxford Street and have been given a full time temp job working in a field I'm actually both experienced and interested in! It's wonderful. Well, it will be until I have to get up at 6am again tomorrow. At least yesterday, and the rather soggy trip to Wimbledon, gave me a reminder of what that is like.

So after a fortnight where the biggest events were to do with overly large insects or tortoises or the lack of spinach pies in our favourite eatery, this week has been a pretty big culture shock. 

I have a lot to do at half time. Hopefully this will be a good match. 

Out of the Umberella,

So, as I said in the previous blog, you don't brag about your holiday until it is something to brag about weather wise, so yeah, until yesterday, every day would start brilliant, and then the clouds would start rolling over the paper looking mountains and bring with them a hell of a lot of rain and despair. This is not what we come to Greece for! Thank the Gods, it seems to be all cleared up now. But here is the question, what the hell do you do on a beachy holiday when the weather takes a turn like that? Around here there are a few answers. 

The first full day here, we went down to a lovely little village further up the coast called Kardamilli. There's not mass amounts there, but it's a nice little change of scenery with another square that glorifies the men of the Mani and their part in the libation of Greece from Turkish rule. (As a point of interest, there is also a statue in Kalamata celebrating the women of the Mani, who held the shores of the man, whilst the men took back the mountains). In the end, the best thing to do was to sit on the balcony and watch the world go by, but you can only do that for so long. 

So the next day came, and we decided that, whilst we had the weather, we would walk along the coastal road to Agos Nikalios - a pretty little fishing village about fifteen minutes drive up the coast where there is a taverna that serves cheese pies and spinach pies, and is called Gregg's. They also have some kick ass sangria. We were just about to head back and the weather decided to turn as well, so back to Gregg's we went for tea and biscuits whilst we waited for the worst of it to clear. On the way back, Mum and I saw a tortoise, which made me far, far too excited. 

The rest of the days have been a beautiful amalgamation of sun, sand and sea, with an excessive amount of food for an evening meal. Most have been delightful, only one has been utterly disappointing and even that was more to do with the service because their baked feta was TO DIE FOR. 

By the looks of things, we're about to have a fashion show on the beach, commentated by Takis the parrot. Kalimera. 

From a Little Corner in Paradise,

I think the general rule is that you don't post a blog about your lovely holiday spot until the weather is something to brag about, so ner ner na ner ner, it's been 30* here today, and it made me feel a bit dizzy....

Going back to one place in Greece isn't something my family and I tend to do, but we all agreed that Stoupa was worth it, so here we are, and I can't say that we have been disappointed. Last year we tried to cram an awful lot into one week, so there were a couple of things we unfortunately missed out on, and we're trying to hit them this year in the two weeks we have, as well as repeating some of our favourite things from last year. 

Rather than rely on the tour operators this year, we decided that we were going to hire a car, because the Kalamata one way system really isn't that difficult to navigate, but that wasn't going to be the first problem. Kalamata and Stoupa are both shielded by a pretty vast mountain range that make the weather somewhat unpredictable and also a little bit volatile at times. The Gatwick flight (my flight) was left circling the run way for half an hour as there were two thunder storms over Kalamata airport and there was a German plane that air traffic control wanted to get down and clear of the runway before we made our 'final descent' - otherwise known as that terrifying moment where everyone who doesn't like flying is convinced that they are about to die. 

Last year, I couldn't stop laughing because the customs office wasn't even manned, but this year topped even that, because my mother was waiting for my baggage at the carousel even before I made it through passport control. She later told me that there was a sign that no one was to pass through the sliding doors into the arrivals lounge, but no one was paying attention, so why would she? 

So before too long we were off out of the airport car park and towards Kalamata proper, with my dad and I attempting to remember the way around the one way system ( I have made the round trip more times than my parents, because of the trips I went on last year) but we somehow made a wrong turning through the system, however all was not lost. The general gist of it is to get all the way to the other side of the city and all the way to the sea front, turning up the road that goes into the mountains by the big posh hotel that looks kind of out of place in Greece. When you get onto that road it's pretty much a straight (hahaha, no, like Greek straight) road all the way to Stoupa. As in no junctions. Thankfully we have it about sussed because we're doing another airport run on Sunday to get Ben. 

With the delay and the drive, we didn't arrive 'in resort' as the Thomas Cook people say until about half past three in the afternoon, and with all the stuff like checking into the apartment, unpacking and sourcing water that is actually drinkable, it very soon got to hungry o'clock and we needed to choose which of the tavernas would be the first to stand the test of time, and memory. 

Our apartment is just up the road from two of our old favourites 'Yesterday and Today' and 'Pefko' and no one was really in the mood for a walk (and I was in the mood for my free 'half kilo of wine' as a lifetime member at Pefko so off we went to there. The feeling of 'it's good to be home' doesn't even cover it. Some people think that they were born in the wrong era, I was just born in the wrong country. Everything for the wine to the olives and the stuffed potatoes was utterly divine. I fell into bed more than happy that night. 

I wishi. Could say that the weather for the first two days was as glorious as today, but it wasn't, though my mother and I still managed to get a couple of sun burns to prove the contrary, but more on that later. It's getting close to midnight here and I don't want to be wasting sun light tomorrow morning. 

 

Oh, Well That's Just Flattering,

This might not get done all in one go, because my arms are killing me. I attempted to prune the bushes in my garden (no pun or innuendo; the actual plants in the space outside of my house) and I lack the muscles to be able to do it properly, so it makes me a little bit shaky afterwards. 

I've had a couple of little proud moments this week, including being able to post a present that I made for a friend, so it will reach her in a few days, but the best one has been getting a text from my lovely partner telling me that the guy he was sat next to on the train into work was reading my book on his Kindle. 

My natural inclination was to ask for a description of this person, and after establishing that he wasn't someone I knew, it was actually rather exciting. It's out there, and I forget about it most of the time, but it's nice to know that there are people who actually pay it attention. 

So with exams over, and no lectures until roughly October, I have knitting projects that I'm really excited about, and also a couple of things with writing and editing and maybe even some more self-publishing. It would be lovely, but we'll have to see what happens.

Anyway, my crazy nervousness has led me to have already packed for my TWO WEEKS IN GREECE! and now also have a tiny trot up to Manchester planned for the start of next week. Basically, I'm able to be a bit busy busy for the next few days. Now all I need to sort out is a new screen for my computer.

Panic Stations,

Have you ever noticed that everything seems to always happen at once?

At the moment, I feel like my head is falling off a little bit, because I know that I need to get more revision done for my three exams this week, I need to clean the house before a viewing tomorrow and there is an engineer here to FINALLY attempt to fix our internet. I'm also heading back to Manchester for the weekend on Saturday morning, and on the 8th of June, I'm flying out to Greece for two weeks. 

Now, that doesn't seem like overly much, but up until Saturday, I thought that everything with the house - well, not the internet - was sorted, however after two of my new housemates-to-be dropped out, I'm back on the search for someone to live with. Oh yay. 

I think that I get stressed when I look at a list of things to do and they're all pretty close together, or I feel like they are all pretty immediate, and there are a lot of things that I would rather do instead, and in all honesty, that happens all to often. Right now, all I want to do is carry on writing something I've been working on for a few weeks, but like I said, I have three exams this week, so I can't really. 

Right now, I just can't wait for this week to be over! 

Howdy Partner,

As a writer, I have a real thing about language, and I love over thinking the language which people choose to use when they are describing different things. The one that I will always remember is this gentleman talking about his dog, who was a little over-excited and rather friendly. Rather than telling the people he was sharing the bus journey with that his dog was fond of recieving attention, he announced that the dog liked to be 'appreciated', which I thought was a terribly odd choice of a word for a dog, but I guess that it told me more about the owner than the pooch who was pulling him around.

Sometimes, I think people are very deliberate in which words they choose, whether it's to attempt to hide something or display it with a certain flamboyance, or even just because they prefer the feel of one word on their tongue, or it's connitations in their mind.

I do it as much as anyone else. More often than not, if I meet someone new, I tell them I'm studying Philosophy, because people have an idea of what that is, so you can get into a good discussion with them, whereas if I tell them that I study Philosophy, Religion and Ethics at Heythrop College, most of the conversation is me explaining what that is and where the college is which gets pretty darn boring actually. There's only so much you can jazz up Christology for those who have no interest in religion.

My favourite one though has got to be 'my partner' because it's just so beautifully ambiguous. Really, there is nothing better. One of the reasons I love it is because of the gender ambiguity, which I find lovely, the other reason I love it is because it feels more serious.

My current situation is living in student housing, studying a few hours a week at university, working part time and wondering where on Earth all the time goes, but in the same way, the girlfriend/boyfriend label can sometimes feel a little bit, well, little. In the same way, partner always makes me think of Woody from Toy Story, or like partners in crime or something, because in my head, I'm in Neverland.

I'm Free! -ish,

It's that time of year again when everyone is finishing their school year and getting all exited and there are those lovely...exams...and end of year courseworks...and ridiculously blue air where people haven't been able to keep their language under control. Yeah, I know what it's like, believe me.

Just a couple of hours before the deadline, I finally finished my last coursework piece of this year, and it felt amazing. The last couple of weeks have been dictated by this deadline, and though I still have exams to prepare for, somehow they aren't quite as scary, well, until the day before.

In just over two weeks time I will be free, my second year will be done and out of my hands, and I will be packing for my holiday to Greece. Oh yeah, I'm spending two weeks out there with sun, sea,...and dissertation reading? Maybe. I'll see how dead on my feet I am first. I want to actually kick myself into using all the time I have to write a pretty decent dissertation, but I also want to have time just to recharge a little, so we'll see. I also need to catch up on writing, but there will be no chance of me taking the laptop as it is proceeding with it's going...going...routine. Thankfully, I have a PC pretty much ready to go when this thing finally gives up, but I am impressed that it's managed the last five years.

Anyway, I'm off to play a couple a few rounds of 2048 before settling down for the night.