Silhouettes

I've always liked doing black and white drawings but recently I have got into doing silhouettes. They're easy once you've done the outline-you just colour everything black! Our friend and erstwhile neighbour, Alicia is getting married in the (not very) near future. But because she is an organized Shirley girl (like me) she asked if I could work on a design for a wedding invitation and I did this bride for her. Later I also added a groom!

For this one I started with a simple cat and then added a (rather wonky) window and then the vase of flowers and the butterflies and then the cobweb tablecloth.

Having done the cobwebs I then graduated to fairies. Fairies and elves and toadstools are made for silhouettes. 

These little gnomes  and the snail look as if they have just arrived at a friendly toadstool inn for the night. Could be the beginning of a story...who knows!

Colour works well in combination with black silhouettes. Jan Pienkowski has done wonderful work with this and I have bought his book First Christmas and stowed it away to read to the girlies in December. http://www.amazon.co.uk/First-Christmas-Jan-Pienkowski

And then my old school friend, Janet Braund Few, sent out a plea for someone to help with a logo for her new venture, Swords and Spindles. https://swordsandspindles.wordpress.com/ I was happy to be able to help. I tried to introduce a row of lace on a petticoat but Janet said her alter ego, Mistress Agnes couldn't be doing with that  so I blacked it out :) 

Mad March

Much of March was taken up with travelling around promoting Learning Stars, the three-level course for very young learners of English, which Jill Leighton and I have written for Macmillan. First stop was Dubai for the TESOL Arabia conference at the very plush and v large Hyatt Regency Hotel. My only previous experience of Dubai was of stop-overs at the airport, which screams BUY SOMETHING NOW! So I was expecting a glorified mall and there is obviously a lot of money around-all the cars are big, new, clean and shiny. But there are also colourful old wooden dhows in the harbour, kids playing cricket in car parks, men haggling at shabby stalls and so on.Plus the trip got off to an excellent start when I arrived at the hotel just before midnight and found that not only were the Macmillan team still up, they were all in the bar drinking wine.

Conference was v well attended and TESOL Arabia gave us all v snazzy delegate bags, filled with goodies :) The only downside was that we all had very short slots for our talks-30 minutes each so you had to cut things down to the bare minimum. 

From Dubai to Cairo. Cairo is pretty chaotic to say the very least-the traffic is crazy and I don't think I've ever seen a car without a dent or a scratch-most are completely bashed about. It's the kind of place where you think, 'Yes! Let's meet at the air-conditoned mall! That sounds perfect!' 

And here is a pic of me and Amany having a delicious bun in the huge mall next to the Holiday Inn. The choice was limited; you could have tea and a bun, coffee and a bun or hot chocolate and bun. But in fact the bun was great :) 

This was my fourth time in Egypt and so it was v nice to meet up with the Macmillan Egypt team again. How do they stay sane in the midst of such muddle? Well, they do and, as usual, arranged amazing events at three luxury hotels in Cairo, Giza and Alexandria. 

The trip ended in Alexandria with a meal at a Bedouin restaurant with the Macmillan Egypt team. No wine at this meal of course, but plenty of tea!

And then to Russia! I had a quick trip back home to change all the warm weather clothes to jumpers, jeans, Uggs and a warm coat and off to Moscow. Then immediately off to Samara . Well, not quite immediately-I had a six-hour wait in Domodedovo Airport which has, incidentally, been done up and is now v modern and spacious, free Wi-Fi  and nice restaurants everywhere and the awful queues at immigration and passport controls are much reduced. My colleague Sergey and I arrived in Samara around 23.00 and scooted off in a taxi to meet Irini, who had persuaded a local restaurant to stay open just for us, where we had meat and olives soup and tea. Then to the Hampton Hotel-which is a perfect exanple of a business hotel which has got it right-everyhing you need when you arrive late at night after a long trip, including a little tray thing for your laptop on the bed :) 

Event the following morning in Samara was in an old theatre and we had a full house of lovely teachers. 

. Then off to the airport again and back to Moscow for the evening, staying at the fabulous Garden Ring Hotel-more luxury! 

Moscow event the next morning was in a huge old Soviet cinema-packed to the rafters. Also talking was my dear friend and colleague, Malcolm Mann, He also lives in Greece but of course I never see him there-we have to meet in Moscow :) 

And then, straight after the event, off to Yekaterinburg in the Urals. My last trip there has passed into Macmillan Russia legend as the temperarature then was -30C and I had to be lent a fur coat :) This time it was milder-only about -6C but we arrived to steadily falling snow It was like arriving in Narnia-so beautiful. 

I was with another Macmillan colleague now-Natalia and we had a late dinner in the restaurant which, rather bizzarely, had those lightbulbs which give out a daytime glow. It was nearly midnight when we ate but it felt like ten o'clock in the morning. I had a cheese platter! 

Next morning the event was at the Urals University-dept of Humanities and also v well-attended. 

Many of the teachers remembered me from previous talks on Brilliant and had brought along copies of the book to be autographed, So that was v nice and very kind of them. 

And then for a quick car ride around Yekaterinburg in the bright, cold sunshine with Natalia and our other colleague, Natasha. We went to the site of the murder of the Romanovs-there is a church on the site and (rather weirdly if you ask me) they have been canonized now. There are statues of Nikolas Romanov and his family and people crossing themselves and bowing to them in the church. The church is mixture of piety and commercialism-stalls as you go in selling very expensive and not very nice souvenirs and, further back,  a priest telling you off if your head is uncovered (mine, for example! )I'd actually deliberately taken off my hat thinking that would be respectful but no-that would have been respectful if I had been a man. For a woman-no!  

Exhibition of prints and cards

The fabulous space which our friend Kostas Houpas has created in Lamia, Studio Project Photography, inspired me to arrange an exhibtion of prints and cards this February. That sounds like a  major undertaking but in fact it all happened really easily, surrounded as I am by proactive and creative people. The Vittas brothers undertook all the printing-everything on canvas and wrapped around light wooden frames with hanging wires,  Kostas H did the actual hanging and Grace made an amazing cake.

I decided not to display too many different prints but to repeat many of them in different sizes. The thinking behind that was mainly aesthetic but also because I thought it would be easier for people to visualize the works in their homes that way.

So, we had lots of Whirling Dervishes...

 A herd of colourful elephants...

four sea turtles...

a pod of whales...

lots of cards....

seahorses...

black and white pebbles, shells and seweed and an illuminated seahorse. 

The star of the show proved to be this little elephant....

He attracted lots of buyers-some wanted small prints and others ordered larger ones and one family asked for him to be made into a plexiglass light box, with just one Led lamp within it so that he can be useful as night light in a child's bedroom . Blue Elephant was very pleased with himself :) 

Above all, it was such a nice way to spend a week in chilly February-great excuse to dress up, get out be with old friends and make new ones. Huge thanks to everyone who helped and who came, including my friend Elaine, who popped over from the UK for the weekend :) 

How our house was built

Work on our house began in 1999. 

Here's the plot of land. 

First step: clearing the land. Very exciting day when the bloke with the digger came hurtling onto the plot, hair and beer belly flying in the wind.  

 Next came the foundations. We did the traditional Foundation Blessing Ceremony. Step away from the blog now if you are an ardent vegetarian or cockerel lover. 

It involved slaughtering a white cockerel and then pouring its blood onto the foundations. Then, at the four corners, we laid four coins. The priest said prayers and whisked incense around and we all went for a meal with friends and family. 

 First floor built. 

Now it starts to look like a house.  

 







The garden stayed as messy land for quite a while but here you can see work beginning to transform it. Laurence is sitting on the truck, enjoying watching the paving stones being unloaded.

The wooden pergola looks wonky here but that is my bad camera angle.  



We had a fountain built. It turned out rather larger than I had envisaged. The poor guy who built it has since passed away. He was so slight that I felt very sorry for him every time he hauled another rock into position. Maintaining the fountain turned out to be costly and difficult-everything kept breaking down so now I have turned it into a Flower Folly.  

Here the Pichas brothers are putting up the railings at the front of the house. Sadly Thanasis Pichas (wearing the cap) has also since passed away.  

Garden is shaping up.  

And here is the finished product-view from the back...

view from the side... 

And the garden in all its glory. 

We moved into the house in July 2000 so the whole thing took about 18 months. Garden obviously took somewhat longer for everything to grow. I think this garden pic was taken around 2006. 

Saint Friday and Saint Sunday

There are two churches in the village of Moskohori; one in the fields and one on the main square. The one in the fields, below, is dedicated to Agia Kyriaki, or Saint Sunday, so called because she was finally born on a Sunday after her parents had waited forever for their longed-for child. As you might guess (since she ended up as a saint), she didn't have an easy ride. Having decided that she wanted to devote her life to Christ, she refused to marry the son of the local judge in Izmit, where they lived. To cut a very long and grizzly story short, she managed to escape execution three times. Once by managing to trigger an earthquake, which destroyed the temple where she was to have been killed, then by making the flames of a fire fizzle out and finally by dying of her own accord just as she was about to be beheaded. Despite all these tumults, this little church is a very peaceful and beautiful place, surrounded by trees and cotton fields and next to a river. 

Agia Kyriaki

The main church in the village is dedicated to Agia Paraskevi, or Saint Friday. She also had a tough time of it. Born to Greek parents in Rome, she dedicated her life to Christ and faced tortures because of her preaching. The Emperor Antonius tried to finish her off with a cauldron of burning tar and oil but it didn't harm her. Surprised at this, the emperor tried the mixture on himself and chucked it as his own face. Why? We really don't know. Sure enough it was boiling and he blinded himself and immediately begged Friday to baptize him. She not only agreed to this but she also cured his eyes. 

Storks arrive every spring and nest on the roof of the church. This year Mum and Dad Stork have had four babies and they are already full grown. When you see them flying, they look pre-historic; just as you imagine a pterosaur might have been. They will be off again in the autumn. 

The Bridge at Gorgopotamos

This is the railway bridge in Gorgopotamos, which neighbours our village of Moskohori*. It has historic importance. In 1942, Greek partisans and British soldiers (including Major Christopher Woodhouse) worked together in what, by all accounts, was a complicated, dangerous and 'Boy's Own' type of mission to blow up the bridge and thus prevent the transportation of enemy supplies. The partisans were in two groups, both of them led by very colourful and controversial characters: Aris Velouchiotis led the Greek Liberation Army and Napoleon Zervas headed the National Republican Greek League. The fact that Velouchiotis and Zervas were seldom in agreement didn't help matters. As you can see from these library pics, it must have been tricky to know who was who! 
Here is Aris Velouchiotis. 

And this is Napoleon Zervas.

Christopher 'Monty' Woodhouse grew a beard to fit in. 

The fighters were aided and sheltered by the villagers of Gorgopotamos as they planned and planted explosives. Legend has it that Granny Tembelis (from a local family who still own a taverna in the village) almost scuppered the whole operation by calling out to a shepherd lad 'Don't take the goats to graze there-they're going to blow up the bridge tonight'. 
Apart from the bridge, Gorgopotamos is famous for its rushing river and the ice cold springs. 

* I always spell the name of our village Moskohori. If it was properly transliterated, it would be Moschochori [ΜΟΣΧΟΧΩΡΙ] but that always looks such a mouthful and you have to keep explaining that it's 'ch as in loch'. So I go for the more pronouncable approximation. 

British Cemetery of Bralo

Up in the mountains near here, on the outskirts of the village of Gravia is a 'corner of a foreign field that is forever England.' Or more specifically Britain and Russia. It's the British Cemetery of Bralo and it houses the graves of 102 soldiers who died during the First World War-most of them, apparently, from the influenza epidemic which hit the hospital where they had been sent to recover from war injuries. 
It's amazingly well-maintained and really does look like a little bit of England in the middle of the Greek countryside. 

The springs of Thermopylae

The hot, sulphuric springs of Thermopylae are a 15 minute drive from where we live, in Moskhori. Which explains why I have only been once in my entire 25 years here in the village! Oh well, I went on the first day of this year and it was wonderful. The springs are almost completely as nature intended-in the rocks-you step through mud and then down some dangerously rotting wooden steps to get into the pool. This means that no-one who is actually in serious need of therapy can benefit from them-you have to be very able-bodied to get into the water. The upside of the total lack of organization is that they are free-you just stumble and slither in. The temperature of the water is about 40c. People come from miles around to bathe here and some park caravans and stay for a while. Of course they are right by the site of the famous Battle of Thermopylae, where Leonidas and the Spartans said 'Molon Leve' (Come and get it) to the Persian invading forces in 480BC.