Greece, Greece, we must go to Greece, says B.  He’s 91.  I get tickets. Why am we so smitten by Greece?  From the first time I saw Athens, coming in by bus and glimpsing the Parthenon floating on the Acropolis I have loved the place. Forget the slavery, men’s views on women, their bellicosity and infighting, that touchy Achilles, their religion which has nothing of transcendence or universal love, and think of the Greek love of beauty – the sight of a beautiful naked body! (why did this vanish with Christianity?) – their curiosity and friendliness, their openness to every idea. ...

Over the new bridge and the blue Gulf of Corinth onto the Peloponnese.  A peninsula. PATRAS Industrial buildings all the way to the port of Patras, happily not that far.  We are disgorged at the dock for Italian ferries.  No hotel booked, but eventually a taxi comes and I tell him the Astir Hotel because my ipad showed a swimming pool on its roof.  A large, dark, shiny impersonal hotel, used for conventions, weddings and the like.  Yes, a room, and when we get there it is a view (oh how views matter!) across the gulf to Byron’s Messolongi. A day to spare, and I walk – it’s some way – to...