MYKONOS Mykonos, gay capital of the Cyclades. We arrive at the New Port, and a bus takes us to the outside of the traffic free Old Port. Slowly, we walk along, stopping for a drink en route, and find the Hotel Manto, very central and earlier booked on line. Small, boutiquey, and it is fun to sit at a restaurant on the harbour front and watch the beau monde go by. On these cobbles one beauty is wearing red suede stilettos as she flaunts along her handsome lover. Another decoratively tattooed lies on the adjacent beach, near three tubby men. Manto, whose statue is in the square, gave her considerable...

SANTORINI ‘Santorini is for the hoi polloi’ says Kevin as he drives us to the airport. ‘Mykonos is for gays.’ We are late at Gatwick, our fault, and delayed even more by a jobsworth pulling out a phial of Dream Satin and admonishing me for not placing it in a plastic bag – this takes fifteen minutes, and then we rush through a chicane of unguents and perfumes and barely get to our Gate in time. Flight, oh fine now, above the clouds, pure and beautiful, and the flare of red red red as the sun goes down, soaking us in last light. At Santorini, officials spot us with Bob limping at the back...

NOVEMBER 2018.  What the guide books don’t say,  the best bits dug from the Wall, like  a beautiful cameo brooch, a sculpture of Mithras slaying the bull – can you see he’s pulling the bull’s mouth open? –  as he creates the world watched by a dog, snake and scorpion, and another one of him surrounded by symbols looking almost like a risen Christ – at in the Great Northern Museum in Newcastle, where there is also a splendid long mock up of the Wall itself.  Mithras was a mysterious god from the east, introduced by Syrian soldiers. Stayed at the Royal Station...

No seeds this year.  Sheer laziness, no, just lack of time.  And so, Plants!  Container annuals from Sarah Raven, and leeks, golden beetroot and a variety of lettuce from Mr Fothergills.  Handy research for Gardening Forever.

  COPTIC CAIRO Off to the Coptic Museum in Old Cairo, which in etchings appears a village but is now an integral part of this dry dusty flat metropolis bumped by the Turkish Citadel.   It’s in a sumptuous building costing millions, and with a very ecumenical photo of President Sisi, a mullah and an archbishop cheery together at its opening. What’s fascinating here is the link between Pharaonic past and Christian and Muslim futures, quite apart from the exquisite wood carved ceilings and jalousie windows from Coptic palaces (=? So the website says) into the building) to hide those...