December 2024
I’m back in Corfu now after a week in UK which always feels too short. The intimacy of friendships and family gatherings and of course The Sex Lectures offers a sense of home and belonging. A chance to have expression of my other life, complementary and different. The Sex Lecs felt like it had a new gravitas and the room was packed. I saw the Hockney immersive which was an hour of colour and aliveness.
So the latest Report from Greco in the period before the Manchester escape, saw Caroline Huyshe and I, working on our to do lists and working out how to chop wood and deal with water. Low on wood and high on water, at one point the waste water from the reverse osmosis system was coming back up the plug hole. It’s pretty wonderful that the previous owner Benjamin Heath lives nearby and came to the rescue.
We’re still ecstatic dancing inside at the tree temple at Soundgarden, and having walks and coffees at the beach. The colours of autumn are breathtaking, and the olives are falling into the nets to be gathered for oil and soap. We shared gratitudes at Thanksgiving with Sumeru and Leena Horner and Anne K Scott, and discovered the walk down the donkey trail from Krini to Agios Giorgios.
Claudia van de Kamp is working magic in orange, pink and blue. I still have silks, artefacts and textiles from previous incarnations of being a nomad in Asia in my younger days, so it’s great to have the space to display beautiful things collected over decades.
And hallelujah of all hallelujahs, a Frenchman has arrived from La Source in France, courtesy of Kalyani Ma Mukti and Nick Hudis, to begin to tackle the shutters. Earlier reports of 56 were exaggerated, we figure there’s 28 in various states of peel-y green (or artistry depending on whether you chat to Zoe Belton). The winter thunderstorms appear sporadically and noisily. Lemons and oranges fall from the trees, I worry about new cracks appearing in the olive press and try not to look too closely though we had new lintels created.
Sometimes I wish I had a chunk of money to do/fix things quickly, and then I remember how the financial imperative and debt have brought so many kind people to help and share the house. The divine Christina-Dorothea Peetz has moved in, and the three of us form a new constellation on the ever-turning carousel.
I love how during the summer, without any advertising, the house was mostly full, most of the time. Good friends and humans taking refuge, and bringing their presence words and gifts. And and the end of my first season, while I may still not have a business plan or profit, there has still been an incredible simplicity, structure and possibility underpinning the breakeven. I’m looking forward to a quiet period and getting on with stuff with fewer distractions. We still have a couple of guest bedrooms so come if you want to work on something and the promise of warmer sunnier days than UK. Yesterday it was 17' just saying. Bring a project and hot water bottle.
