Illness is the travel of the poor, they say, and I meanly agreed.  I thought how people like Mary Hillier, my daily, lovingly discussed the symptom of illnesses, like places visited on holiday. Corona virus, or Covid 19. We’re still in the middle of Corona lockdown, and I told Geordie (15, in Edinburgh) to keep a diary of this weird time, then thought, I’d better make a note myself, since I have actually – I presume – had it. Symptoms are so varied – you can have it without knowing, you can have it badly, and you can have it lightly. Me? No tests, I haven’t officially had it. Most...

2020 Jan to Feb. EGYPT BLOG Egypt keeps calling.  We want to go to Luxor. But, return flights to Luxor are about £750.  So, we got return flights to Hurghada, diving resort on the Red Sea, for about £240.  Because Bob’s walking is poor, I asked for Assistance going through Gatwick, normally the most horrid airport around, with spiteful sadistic Security.  Assistance was bliss – ah the luxury of being treated as a sweet harmless imbecile – Security so gentle, and then a large area with padded chairs where we sat until called, and then carried on a buggy outside which dodged round...

Greece – the islands, the churches, Athens, the air, the little lanes creeping up the green sides of the Acropolis. ATHENS In the isle of Tinos, Bob is  feeling unwell, he thinks he may have appendicitis. (When we get home, they say it’s gallstones, but it isn’t and the whole thing fades away. I think he feels he can do more than he’s up to, he gets so excited by the thought of all these places, Delos etc). So, I say we’d better skip any idea of Andros, and get home. I buy ferry tickets to Piraeus, and from there we get a taxi to Athens and the Jason Inn, which has no room, but sends...

TINOS   Small ferry to another marble island, Tinos, the Lourdes of Greece. Or Knock of Ireland, or Fatima of Portugal. In 1822, time of Greek reunification, a nun Pelagia had a vision in which she saw a buried icon painted by St Luke. (Bernadette, other young women, children, it’s amazing how these visions all over the place fire up pilgrimage sites). Pelagia got everyone digging, and the was duly unearthed. A slew of miracles, particularly healing and rescuing ships at sea, was effected through its intervention. A massive church was built for it, and today pilgrims come en masse (we were lucky...

The sacred island of Delos, birthplace of Apollo and Artemis. Centre of the world, and after wandering through the sea the island was pinned where it now is by Neptune. No one could profane it by birth or death, for which people had to go to the adjacent island of Rheneia. ‘Oh how I wish I had listened to Whitfield lecturing on the Delian league’ says Bob. (That was over sixty years ago)… Today no one is allowed to spend the night here – and the only way to visit is a day trip from Mykonos. Which we do. First time we go Bob stumbles and hurts his Achilles tendon, so I go alone –...