Last year, the last 2 0r 3 days were a tale of torrential rain, slippery surfaces and odd power failures. Well. we have seen all of the above (not much to see during the power cut but it was mostly at night) during the last few days but today there is strong wind and wild sea and a sense that you need to hold on tight if you can. We breakfasted at Agios Nikolaos at the cafe called Greggs. Gregg and Cathy are good friends of Mick's sister Sheila. They are originally from South Africa, settled in Greece some 14 or 15 years ago and we hit it off with them when we first sampled their cafe, right by the little harbour in the middle of Ag Nik. The handful of boats tethered there were all rising and plunging wildly . No boats or people bold enough to be out on the water. We decided to park in the carpark rather than just by the seawall, in order to avoid an unplanned (and probably uncomfortable) carwash.
The breakfast (veggie for me, Greek omelette for Mick plus latte and hot chocolate respectively) was excellent as on all previous visits. We managed to chat with both Gregg and Cathy to tell them our house news: they wished us well and urged us to come and see them next time we come back. Then I had a chat with one of the older ladies who are generally in there mid-morning (the eldest is 98!!!) who wanted to know a bit more about about what we are doing and why. She invited us to join 2 of the groups of, mainly, expats who meet on Monday morning mainly for Greek conversation and on Thursday mainly for knitting and, presumably, even more conversation. Mick's contribution is that he would probably fish rather than knit. Weil of course the story is "sometimes I sits and fishes, sometimes I just sits".
Back at our apartment, in one of the highest locations in the Stoupa, the wind is certainly wuthering around the building with what, sometimes, sounds like distant voices. The row of boats that normally nestle alongside the harbour wall at this end of the bay are rocking and leaping and banging into each other on and sometimes under the violent waves. The skies over the hills around the bay are dark and heavy over land and cloudy with the odd scrap of blue sky over sea. None of it looks at all welcoming! I trust it will be calmer when our plane lifts above the cloud layer tomorrow.
Meanwhile Mick is trying to arrange our required PCR test for 2 days after we return (the rules will change at 4am tomorrow morning). He is being offered the same product at minimum £1 with prices varying up to £79
per person.
Maybe we need to go home for a rest.

Well, the live band of aged rockers were performing again this evening but this time at the large restaurant in the centre of Stoupa called Melissa. In the last few days, the owner has put in blinds and see-through screens, to conform with the new regulations about having a breeze in public places. However, given its size, when there are a lot of people in the restaurant, some dancing, it gets pleasantly warm. The main dish on offer this evening was chicken roasted on a spit: wonderfully tasty and tender. I was reminded of how fond Charles has always been for roast chicken: I think Melissa could meet his needs!

There were a lot of old rockers and hippies there, mainly Brits, some German, even some Greeks, plus the waiters zooming around the room, who were stopping to greet people or even to dance for a few beats, and the band did a lot of requests for songs from our collective past - Stones, Beatles, Animals etc etc. "Live band" is probably an exaggeration. The players and singer are quite definitely alive, backed up by an extensive library of recorded music. This allows the guitarist (who is actually rather good) to take extensive beer breaks. It can be disconcerting to catch a good guitar riff and then realise that the man who is putatively delivering this is actually glaring grimly through the window into the restaurant and keeping time with his beer bottle. The other members of the band have clearly spent a lot of time training the audience to respond to the most minimal of signals by approaching the players' zone and re-filling their glasses appropriately.

Several groups of friends and the odd couple showed off their dance skills. A lovely white-haired lady with a stick, who is definitely older than me was up dancing with the best of them!
Mick wanted to join in but I thought perhaps we should put in some practice back at the flat first.

By the time we left (maybe 9.30?) it was cooler and darker and definitely starting to rain, so we did not hang about!

We came away from our first viewing of the house we are hoping to buy thinking that it was lovely. Having talked about it for about 3 days, we decided to organise another viewing and to make a list of all the questions, mainly practical, that we wanted to ask. Mick has posted a good description of the house and garden and the opportunities we can see there. There are steps, but nothing like as many as at Owlers, and delivery of almost everything can be done on the level. Given the size of the house and grounds, there should be no problem in constructing a lift if that should be necessary in the future: we can also see the possibility of a ground source heat pump, more solar panels and, to complete the Owlers experience, a sauna!
The estate agent and Janet and Terry who own the house indulged us with a long tour of the house and garden and answered all our questions. The agents will also help us with the legal and practical steps we now need to take, including recommendations of local professionals who have a track record of dealing with house purchases and immigration law, including how to get the magic "golden visa".
It is all beginning to feel possible, which is really good!
For friends and relatives who are thinking about visiting in the future, the restaurants, beach and sea are great. There are lots of places to rent rooms, apartments or entire houses. Prices here are reasonable. We will need to create our own local map of Stoupa as we become familiar with the paths and cut-throughs: it isn't a big place! As for getting here from the UK or elsewhere in Europe, Greece is accessible by road, air, rail or rail + sea. There are long distance cross-country buses as well as some local services. On the whole, in our experience, people are helpful.

We saw one house yesterday, courtesy of one of the men we know in the village. As Mick has posted, some of the rooms seem a bit gloomy and it needs some improvements (which the owner has offered to do prior to the sale:he is apparently a bit cash-strapped and keen to sell.). There is a sufficient land to build another house along the same access which offers the tantalising possibility of building and selling a second property and thus reimbursing ourselves for buying the main house + land. Of course, that would mean living in a building site for most of a year!
Today we were taken round by a helpful English lady called Joanna from the Greekscape agency. She did take us one place we had already seen and it did not improve on a second viewing. Of the others: the first one was a furnished house in a fairly new development of 4 houses. It was not very large, but well laid-out and finished off inside. There's enough land for a small - and flat - garden and there looks to be sufficient access for installing a round-source heat-pump. It was also quite close to the coast, walking distance into the main area of Stoupa. The other houses were all a bit further out, so we would need to think about buying a car. Of course, installing a domestic car-charging point might fill out our investment to help us get the "golden visa". The first of these was quite large but very well laid out, finished and organised. The "mature garden" (as it said in the details) was quite big and on 2 or 3 terraces, but not as big as our garden at Owlers.
The house is in a large site, currently planted with masses of olive trees. Joanna told us that it would be feasible to build 1 or more houses in this land, but we would need to take advice about local planning rules.
So another possibility of paying for the house by means of building another! This house also has a small swimming pool and sufficient space to build a sauna, either inside or out. It is certainly grabbing our interest, but it was over-shadowed by the last house we viewed.
We had not actually booked to see this one but it was literally just round the corner from the previous one, so Joanna offered to ring up on spec to see if the owners were in and would be willing for us to look round. They were very chatty and welcoming and certainly had a wonderful house to show us. It has 3 bedrooms., 3 bathrooms, lots of balconies, electric gates and outside lighting and is very well laid out and finished. There's another mature garden, part of which is all down to olive trees. The current owner processes them himself, with help from some other people who own olive plots and claims that it is not too arduous and is usually enjoyable! I think we were both very taken with this house. It has only just come on the market so we might be able to get in with an early offer.
This morning our landlady Voula took us to meet the notary she has used for many years to deal with all her property transactions. This lady has offices in Kalamata but is in a nearby village, Agios Nikolaus, 2 days a week. She explained the processes we will need to go through and offered her services when we will need them. When we got back to Voula's place, she floated another suggestion. She has for some time thought about building a house in her garden and she wondered if we might be interested in buying a suitably sized plot from her and building a house for us to live in. We would be in walking distance of the beach and the sea front and in a fairly sheltered position. I am a bit concerned that there is only limited space and we might be too close to the neighbouring houses, but I am sure it is worth finding out all the possibilities for this and considering it alongside the houses/plots we get to view.
Now it is November, the weather has suddenly got warmer and sunnier, so I actually ate my breakfast outside today.

Our last week at home was busy and stressful.
Some of it was lovely: my niece in France got in touch to announce the birth of her first child - a daughter, who makes me a great-aunt!
On the Friday, Mick and I went to visit his niece, who lives in Manchester with her husband and toddler son: she is about to give birth to a daughter, so Mick will be a great-uncle again! We had not met the little boy before, as he was born early in lockdown. He is very lively and full of smiles. The journey took me past places I knew well 50 and more years ago, all re-built, re-arranged and re-purposed. Only the names remain .
We enjoyed our visit but came home rather tired.
Then on the Saturday we had the long-delayed Mayor-making day. This never happened when I was Mayor of Todmorden because there was no safe and suitable time to arrange an event for a large number of people. So this Mayor-making included a proper handover from the Mayor who preceded me to me, and from me to the current Mayor (who is another Lib Dem, called Pat Taylor, representing the same ward as I do). We each got a short time for a personal speech about our hopes and achievements as Mayor. So now, in a sense, we have caught up, but it was a busy day filled with conversation and it utterly exhausted me.
On Sunday, Mick and I flew to Athens. As he has posted elsewhere, it was a day of late arrivals and fast changes and minimal assistance from the staff at Charles de Gaulle airport, Paris. I ended up running past about 50 gates in the last 15 minutes before our flight to Athens closed, while Mick took charge of our backpacks after security had emptied them out and examined everything minutely (although - or possibly because - we told them we had a really tight connection ). Thankfully, the staff at our gate were really good, very reassuring and made sure that we had everything and that we got onboard.

So I was delighted to have a couple of nights and a lazy day in a hotel not far from Athens Airport before we collected our hire car and set off for Stoupa. Since we got here, staying with our friend Voula as we did last year, we have slept and rested a lot, eaten wonderful food and have visited all the local estate agents and made appointments to view the houses that look like good prospects. We are being inundated with advice and offers of help so we will spend a bit of time viewing then visit the lawyer and the engineer we will need to assess any property we seriously think of buying.

Today we had a late tea in one of the many restaurants that will be closing for the winter after the coming weekend. We watched the sun sliding down into the sea while we finished our beer and chatted to the owner who is a friend of Mick's sister Sheila.

Stoupa is a great place for recovery and recuperation. People are friendly and encouraging and will offer to help with whatever you need. The scenery is great and the weather is warm. The accumulated stress is slowly melting away and I am starting to feel that I can cope with all the things I need to do.

I finally did a Covid test (because the Delta variant has been rising lately where I live) and it was negative. I realise that I have been managing my risks largely by avoiding going anywhere and I am really angry that I now have to attend Council meetings at the Town Hall (suitable masked and sanitised) because the Government has refuse to renew permission for Zoom meetings in England (they are legal in Scotland and Wales).
We have now asked the Government to allow hybrid meetings because the average Councillor is over 60, in a more vulnerable age-group, and many of them are managing their risks by avoiding direct contact with people. Cold weather, old age, regular illnesses such as colds or flu plus the general fear factor in the community are all likely to bring attendance in person way down, both for Councillors and for the local people who have attended meetings in the past. (They continued to attend our local Council meetings via Zoom throughout lockdown but no-one has come to any of the meetings-in-person.)
Democracy in this country is already in a mess. If it grinds to a halt at grass-roots level, will that make things worse or will it motivate people to do something about it?

This will be shared with people during the Christmas Service at Todmorden Parish Church (St Mary's) and will be posted on the Council website.

2020: a year to remember - or perhaps a year to forget. A year in which millions of people throughout the world found themselves facing the fact that our world is very fragile and that there will be no future for the human race unless we work together to build that future.

This has been a very difficult year for so many people, with the natural disasters such as flooding: the way our normal lives, work, schooling, travel and so on has been turned upside down by the covid pandemic, which has brought death or disablement to many of our fellow citizens: and, of course, coping with the economic dislocation that Brexit is bringing. It is not surprising that people are losing hope for the future.

I was born shortly after the second world war ended. Although, in my earliest years, life was often difficult, there was an underlying sense of hope. The country had survived a terrible past and was building for the future, and people were building it together.

During 2020, I have been very much encouraged by the people and organisations here in Todmorden who have been working hard to make the lives of other people better, to give them advice, support and practical help to get them through their bad experiences and rebuild their lives.

Earlier this week, at the Town Council meeting, I had great pleasure, as Mayor, in giving Citizenship Awards to several people and organisations who have transformed life here in Todmorden. I have also been issuing Certificates of Recognition to those who have gone the extra mile and made a difference to others during the pandemic. If there is anyone, or any organisation, that you would like to nominate, please let me know. It is a way of saying thank you on behalf of the community.

So, to the future: I hope that you all enjoy this season of Christmas and have a chance to speak to those you love even if you cannot meet. I hope that the New Year, 2021, will be a year of recovery, progress and peace on earth.

For us, Nov 30th started at 5.00am Greek time (3.00am UK), enough time to eat, clear the rubbish, stack the car and be off by 6.00 to drive across Greece to Athens. The overnight thunderstorm, which had woken us occasionally, was still rumbling and we had to step carefully outside as the tiles on the terrace were awash with rain. I'll admit to more than a few prayers as Mick drove up the mountain road round hairpin bend after hairpin bend in pitch darkness, and I was much relieved when we reached more level ground and the odd streetlight.
In the beginnings of dawn light, the road started to level out and suddenly we were out of the storm, out of the rain and joining the motorway. Fog kept us slow for a time, but we had left it behind by the time we saw the first service station. Breakfast food and drinks were available, but no chairs or tables provided, inside or out, so we took our latte and hot chocolate back to the car, where we had sandwiches made from the last of the bread and cheese and a few pieces of fruit.
Greece has both a lockdown and a curfew. We were reminded frequently by public information boards that we must have permission to travel during the curfew. Mick had painstakingly prepared a letter of explanation for our journey - in Greek! - but nobody ever asked to see it. Curfew and lockdown had swept away the traffic, so we zoomed across Greece on a pleasant, if cool, day without seeing more than a handful of other vehicles.
The Manager of the car-hire firm told us that they were doing very little business so he would come in specially to meet us, check the car and drive us over to the airport. No problems there, so we found ourselves at the airport in very good time, so early that Air France had not yet opened its check-in desks! When we booked, we paid (quite a lot) for only one bag to go in the hold, but at check-in they were keen to take all our bags at no extra cost. We didn't put up much resistance!
We dozed through the 3 hour flight to Paris, but woke at the right moment for cheese sandwiches and red wine/G & T. Plane less than half-full, Charles de Gaulle airport well-nigh deserted. Cafes, buffets and even Starbucks were closed, but the Relay mini-supermarket, familiar from many stations, garages and side streets, provided a variety of made-up snacks or dishes plus a microwave to heat them up. Hot choc on the menu but not available so Mick had to stick to water.
The whisky shop included a litre of very decent Talisker for around £50 so we decided to indulge ourselves.
Not so many people on the flight to Manchester, few other flights landing, airport largely empty. The passport machine wouldn't recognise my face in the photo, even when I took my mask off, so I had to wait in a queue for a few minutes to see a human being. Then out into the cold Northern English night to meet Mick's son Dan, who drove us home. We arrived about 11.30pm, some 20 hours after we woke up in Stoupa.
It's Wednesday afternoon 2nd Dec now, so I am almost functioning and remembering our lovely relaxing holiday in a place which has yet to have its first Covid case. It is already becoming a dream.

I have just attended a poetry workshop run by one of the local writers groups I attend at home, facilitated by Zoom, during which we sent poems to each other, edited them, shared them with other participants and discussed different techniques for enhancing the impact of the words within them. Not mind-blowing techniques, but lots of little pieces of communication that have become familiar during the Covid era.

I am a Zoom fan. It opens up access to events and will be, in my view, as powerful a force towards diversity and integration as any of the skills we have worked on in the past. Zoom events are readily accessible and avoid the need for waiting for buses in the cold, cramming into inadequate meeting places, or travelling for many hours to attend a fundamentally unsatisfying occasion. Zoom allows people who are sick or disabled to attend on equal terms to most others and it is a great equaliser in that nobody looks very clever or beautiful or well-dressed in a Zoom screen: the need to dress up for meeting people has been eliminated.

If Covid continues in its present devastating form, we could be Zooming for a long time. The promise of vaccines and more reliable testing brings face-to-face meetings closer, but I think the very real savings created by Zoom meetings, as well as the better rate of attendance for many events will keep Zoom competitive. The reduced costs for a business based on home-working, both in terms of the health risks to commuting workers and the high costs associated with town centre HQs will, I am sure, persuade many chief execs to think differently about their future business model.

Human beings are great at learning and evolving. We have been fighting against a dreadful threat to our very existence as a species, but dreadful threats are the kind of evolutionary pressure that stimulates us to adapt and change. As a result of Covid, we are going to be different. Get ready for the future!

This is our fourth visit to Stoupa in the Peloponnese. In summer it is pleasantly busy, but not packed with visitors: we think this is due to its remoteness. There are mountains and a road bristling with hairpin bends between Stoupa and the rest of Greece.
Every day since we arrived on Monday, there has been a scattering of people on the beach or walking along the narrow road between the beach and the shops and cafes, plus a few intrepid souls in the sea (which is jolly warm compared with English sea). Today there is hardly anyone to be seen.
A strict lockdown started at 6am. Only food shops and chemists are open, and banks by arrangement. If you want to go out, you have to text a Government number giving your name and stating which permitted activity applies:
1) visit to Doctor/Pharmacy:
2) buying essential supplies:
3) visit to Bank if e-banking not possible:
4) visit to people needing assistance or escorting children to/from school:
5) attending a funeral or visiting children if you are a separated/divorced parent:
6) physical exercise outdoors or taking a pet for a walk with 1 other person, observing a 1.5m distance in either case.
Since Greece has handled Covid quite efficiently and there has only been one possible case here (a German tourist arrived, got a message from home that someone he had been in contact with was a Covid risk and promptly returned home) this feels like overkill. Our landlady, who briefed us on this yesterday, believes that the Government is giving itself emergency powers so that it can control the people in the event of (unspecified) problems.
Sitting on our balcony in the sunshine, consuming the supplies we sensibly bought in before lockdown began, all this control and fear feels like a panic. But looking down at the deserted little town feels like the opening of a 1950s end-of-the-world film.