Stories from a Greek table and that food advice

 "Keep it simple, keep it fresh and use whatever is available".

Simple dish, 2026

It’s the sort of advice that could roll off the tongue of any one of a range of TV cooks or from the pages of those glossy recipe books.

And just for good measure the message is accompanied by heaps of pictures of far away places and the odd real story of authentic farmers in remote villages as yet untouched by the modern world.

Put all of that together and some happy suburban chef will not only offer up the meal to stun friends and family but regale them with tales of cooking over a stove in a rural village.

Always it will be from a friend of a friend  who passed through the place  before the young villagers disappeared off to the towns and cities.

Leaving the old, less adventurous and traditionalist to live amongst the abandoned cottages falling into ruin.

Abandoned in Assos, 2019

And that brings me tonight’s pasta dish. 

It took roughly 15 minutes to make and transported me back to a tiny taverna off the beaten track on an adventure across one of the Greek islands.

Ten minutes out from the Piraeus, bound for the islands,1981

Back then the holidays like the food we ate were simple.  

You flew into Athens on a midnight flight, waited around the Piraeus till the ferries started and by degree island hopped.

After which you caught a local bus or splashed out on a taxi.

On one occasion the bus set us down in a small town square, and that was where we came across the restaurant.  

It was small, the menu limited to what had been brought in from the fields and the local wine came to the table in an old recycled juice bottle.

The place to eat, beyond the square by the sea, 2017

And on that day in that taverna  what was on offer was pasta tossed in tomato sauce with a handful of olives.

Simple quick and perfect.

And this evening because l had some tomatoes and olives I replicated that dish.

Pasta, tomatoes, olives, capers and cauliflower, 2026

The tomatoes made a light sauce to which I added the olives a handful of capers and some peas, and a bit of  cauliflower. 

It was essentially just bits waiting to be used up, and probably the next time because the bits will be different the dish will also go off in a new direction.

And so to the pasta.

Our cupboard is full of different types and while I know each should be used for different dishes  I just please myself, and so on a whim, I used my new favourite, a thick long pasta with a hollow centre, called Bucatini.  It has that added attraction that bits of the sauce end up in the hollow tube.

It wasn’t quite that long past Greek meal, but it delivered that mantra “Keep it simple, keep it fresh and use whatever is available".

Location; our kitchen

Pictures; scenes from the Piraeus, some Greek islands, and that pasta dish, 1981-2026 from the collection of Andrew Simpson 

Ancient Lives with Mary Beard ..... Being Greek

Now, this is one I will listening to.

It's Ancient Lives with  Mary Beard, Being Greek.*

I am a great fan of Mary Beard, have her books, listened to her on the Romans on the wireless and always follow her TV programmes.

"From Marvel movies to presidential elections their powerful influence endures on our stories, philosophies and politics, but what it was it like to be an Ancient Greek? Scattered clues need to be gathered until they form a living, breathing human, witness to the cultural powerhouse that was Ancient Greece.

In Being Greek, Mary Beard, Britain’s best-selling historian of the ancient world, rebuilds the lives of six people, from a priestess to a murderer. 

Her investigations reveal the limits of female independence and take us deep into the marriage of an Athenian power couple. 

Themes of faith, politics and justice reveal the foundations of Greek society, but it’s the thoughts, feelings and lifestyles of individual Greeks she’s really interested in. Gods and legendary heroes are easy to come by, but Mary looks behind the temples and beyond the classic myths, filling in her stories with the relatable detail of Greek life, uncovering what they ate, how they decorated their homes and raised their children.

Mary visits the sites that help cast fresh light on past lives- the grave of a powerful woman in prehistoric Mycenae, an exquisite temple clutching the slopes of the Acropolis and the dusty plains of Marathon. Experts in Greece and the UK help Mary interpret the clues, along with film director Martin Scorsese who’s fascinated by the story of a gangster of the ancient world who pulled powerful strings to escape imperial justice.

In the first episode we meet Euphiletos, on trial for the murder of his wife's lover. Can he convince the jury that this is a crime of passion, not a calculated act of mob violence?

Producer: Alasdair Cross

Researcher: Anna Charalambou

Expert Contributors: Rosanna Omitowoju, Cambridge University and Rebecca Sweetman, Director of the British School at Athens

Actors: Robert Wilfort as Euphiletos and Laura Dos Santos as the old woman

Translations by Mary Beard

Special thanks to Elizavet Sioumpara and the Hellenic Ministry of Culture".

Leaving me just to fall back on one of my favourite historian of children's books, Looking at Ancient History by R J Unstead

Location; BBC Radio 4

Picture; cover of Looking at Ancient History, R J Unstead, 1959

*Ancient Lives with Mary Beard Being Greek, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002xzjn

** R J Unstead, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/R.J.Unstead

Choose your friends ....The Delian League ....power politics in 5th century Greece on the wireless

Now this is one I am going to listen to.

Hoplite 5th century, 2018

It's the latest offer from In Our Time on BBC Radio 4.

"Misha Glenny and guests discuss the origins and evolution of an alliance which transformed the geopolitics of the classical world: the Delian League. 

Since the start of the 5th Century BCE, city states across Greece had been fighting a series of armed conflicts in the Greco-Persian Wars. 

After the defeat of a second Persian invasion in 478 BCE, a league of cities across Greece came together and formed a new alliance led by Athens. That alliance is now known as the Delian League, after the island of Delos where it was established. 

In the following decades, Athens used the Delian League to grow its own wealth and formidable naval power. But cities who tried to leave the alliance found themselves violently put down and their lands confiscated by the Athenians. 

What had begun as a cooperative alliance sworn to resist the Persian Empire gradually started to seem like it may have created another imperial power: the Athenian Empire.

With Leah Lazar, Lecturer in Hellenistic Culture at the University of Manchester, Polly Low, Professor in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Durham, and, Paul Cartledge, AG Leventis Senior Research Fellow of Clare College, University of Cambridge

Producer: Martha Owen"*

Location; In Our Time, BBC Radio 4

Pictures; Hoplite 5th century, 2018, Jona Lendering, his file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication and the Thermopylae pass at the area of the Phocian Wall, Author Fkerasar, Licensing, I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the following licenses

*The Delian League, In Our Time, BBC Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002xp5l

Walking the islands ….. Greece three decades ago

It is easy to be sniffy about how things were done in the past and even more so in other countries.

So, it now seems very strange that once if you wanted to talk to someone by phone you had to go out and put coins in a machine to do so, and equally strange that packets of unflavoured crisps came with bit of salt inside a twist of blue paper.

All of which makes it less bizarre that this man should be plastering the upstairs outside window by standing on a window ledge.

Or that just down the road in the same Greek village a woman was whitewashing a wall using simple brush made from straw bundled together and tied to a stick with string.

But then back in the early 1970s just outside Seaham Harbour in the North East the scaffolding surrounding a construction consisted of old telegraph poles to which were lashed planks.

At the time I marvelled at the Heath Robinson approach to building but then I had yet to visit Greece.

As I said it is easy to be sniffy, but how things were done in the past was just different.

Location; Greece

Pictures; doing it differently, Greece, 1981, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

A night flight ... the ferry ... and heaps of Greek sun

 I was too young to have gone island hopping  across Greece in the 1960s and a decade later too busy earning a living and making a career.

Ten minutes out of the Pireaus,1981

So it wasn't till 1981 that l did the thing usually reserved for 18 year olds short on money and big on adventures.

By then l was 32, with a bank balance but doing Greece on the cheap still appealed.

Arriving, 1981

It started with one of those midnight flights to Athens and a few hours to kill at the airport before heading to the Pireaus, finding the right ferry and leaving with hundreds of others east for a succession of islands.

Always find the shade, 1981

The trick was to avoid the open deck and go for a seat under canvas. The foolhardy who missed the shade suffered under the relentless sun as one after another island hoved into view and disappeared to be replaced by yet another.

The beach, 2008

The reward of course was the final destination, a week in the sun with cheap booze and amazing food.

Friends still chanced sleeping on the beach but we preferred a bed. Not that the holiday apartments were anything to write home about.

A room, a bed and a basic shower. The rooms were usually over a taverna which solved breakfast and the beach a few minutes walk away.

And that was all you needed.

The apartment above the shop, 1981

The return was much the same with the prospect of hanging around at the airport for another grim flight.

Only improved one year by a late meal in an unpretentious restaurant at the foot of the Acropolis drinking retsina from old glass jars which once held orange juice.

Crossing the island, 2010

Today we fly direct and check the rating of the accommodation and customer comments, book a car to  cross the island, and wonder what it would be like to travel again on those old green and cream buses.

Location; Greece

Pictures; across Greece, 1981-2010, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

The Antikythera Mechanism …… that ancient Greek astronomical analogue computer ......on the wireless ... today

It's the stuff of science fiction and pop history, and I might have turned my back on it, but the discovery of an ancient Greek, astronomical analogue computer is true

And the rest is a fascinating wireless programme on Radio 4.

"Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 2000-year-old device which transformed our understanding of astronomy in ancient Greece. In 1900 a group of sponge divers found the wreck of a ship off the coast of the Greek island of Antikythera. 

Among the items salvaged was a corroded bronze object, the purpose of which was not at first clear. It turned out to be one of the most important discoveries in marine archaeology. 

Over time, researchers worked out that it was some kind of astronomical analogue computer, the only one to survive from this period as bronze objects were so often melted down for other uses. 

In recent decades, detailed examination of the Antikythera Mechanism using the latest scientific techniques indicates that it is a particularly intricate tool for showing the positions of planets, the sun and moon, with a complexity and precision not surpassed for over a thousand years.

With, Mike Edmunds, Emeritus Professor of Astrophysics at Cardiff University ,Jo Marchant, Science journalist and author of 'Decoding the Heavens' on the Antikythera Mechanism, and, Liba Taub, Professor Emerita in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge and Visiting Scholar at the Deutsches Museum, Munich

Producer: Simon Tillotson

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production"

And like all the programmes in the series it is available now and when ever you want to listen, by just following the link.

Pictures; The Pictorial History Book, 1952

*The Antikythera Mechanism, In Our Time, BBC Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0024x0g

The book and the personal story …..... Greece in 1941

History books come in many shapes and sizes, and some start as a contemporary account on events, and only later assume a historical and personal dimension.

The Mediterranean Fleet, 1944

And so, it is with The Mediterranean Fleet Greece to Tripoli, which was the official Admiralty Account of Naval Operations: April 1941 to January 1943.

It was published in 1944, cost 1/6d and carried the request “THERE ARE MANY MEN AND WOMEN IN THE FORCES WHO WOULD WELCOME A CHANCE OF READING THIS BOOK, IF YOU HAND IT INTO THE NEAREST POST OFFICE IT WILL GET TO THEM”.

Now, my  uncle might well have been one of those “in the Forces who would have welcomed a chance to read it”, given that he was part of that account, having been in Greece when it fell to the Axis Powers in 1941, and along with thousands of other “Empire” troops was  evacuated from Crete and the mainland by the Royal Navy.

The book was one of a “job lot” I bought from Bryan the Book in the mid-1980s and made its way from the front room by degree to the cellar where the collection were carefully stored away, unread and then forgotten.

The Return from Greece, 1941

But what is forgotten, is rediscovered and that collection have come back out into the daylight.

Of the half dozen I have this, one caught my eye, because I knew that Uncle Roger had been in Greece.

Indeed as a young RAF aircraft fitter, he travelled from Britain in the January of 1941, down the coast of Africa, through the Suez Canal, and onto Greece, and then back to Egypt, Basra, and finally the Far East where he was captured by the Japanese and died aged just 21 in a POW camp in 1943.

All of this we know, because we have a 23 page letter, written in pencil with accompanying photographs detailing his journey from Britain to the Middle East, with descriptions of Durban, Greece, Egypt and Basra, and including a short account of the Manchester Blitz which he observed from Wilmslow.

The letter was smuggled out of Basra and brought back by a friend to his hometown of Derby and my grandmother.

"After the Raiders had passed", 1941

His time in Greece matches that official account and the photographs from the book showing burning Allied supply ships in Suda Bay are replicated by his own.

The Admiralty account is dense, and I suspect suffers a little from being an official wartime account, but it remains a very personal link to my uncle and in its way is as much a memorial as any tall public monument to those who participated I that campaign.


Location; the Mediterranean, 1941-43

Pictures; cover and the Return from Greece, from The Mediterranean Fleet Greece to Tripoli, The Ministry of Information, 1944, and “After the Raiders had passed”, Greek HQ, Langam, 1941, Roger Hall, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

* The Mediterranean Fleet Greece to Tripoli, The Admiralty Account of Naval Operations: April 1941 to January 1943, Ministry of Information, 1944

Adventures in Greece ........ a ferry and a trip into the unknown

My uncle was just 19 when he washed up in Greece, while I was 32.

Arriving by sea

He went onto Basra, and the Far East having already travelled to Cape Town and up the Suez Canal.

By comparison I had done two long weekends in Paris by the time I was 31.*

But his journey’s had been with the RAF, and South Africa and the Suez Canal were stopping off points on his way to war.  His arrival in Greece coincided with the German invasion, which ended with the Fall of Greece and the British retreat to Egypt, while his arrival in the Far East happened just as the Japanese captured Singapore.

Scenes from off the beaten track

All of which made my travels very tame.

But I did get to Greece in the summer of ’81 and while my contemporaries had blazed a trail back packing across the country a decade earlier, I was happy enough to have got there just forty years after Uncle Roger.

Nothing ever quite prepares you for that wall of heat that meets you as you disembark from the aircraft, or the sight of your first Greek island from a ferry which left the Piraeus in the early hours of the morning.

It is easy after a while to get blasé about the view from the sea of a Greek town with its untidy collection of buildings rising in steps from the harbour up to the skyline.

But every time we have done it I never lose that sense of excitement and while I have done my share of bars and “authentic Greek restaurants” I have also taken myself off and explored the quieter places.

The ferry adventure

Often they are the back streets, which during those hot hours of midday till three are usually deserted, with everyone choosing to rest inside their houses.

But of course tourists and especially those from northern Europe, like the famous song, are the  ones to “go out in the midday sun”, accompanied only by mad dogs and other Englishmen.

Still at the time it fed my sense of curiosity and that was all to the good.

Although left to my own devices I was able on occasion to get hopelessly lost, like the time I took the short ferry ride from where w were staying to the main harbour.  The trip took minutes, but the return journey lasted an hour as I had chosen a ferry travelling around the island.

After a day on the beach

And while I remained calm I did ponder on just how far the journey would take and what I might encounter along the way.

Still to this day I burn with embarrassment at the mistake, but it was an adventure and of those at 73 I still revel in.

Location; Greece, 1981

Pictures; Poros in Greece, 1981 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*It would spoil the story to admit that I had at 19 been taken on a trip across the Mediterranean visiting Naples, Athens, Istanbul and Majorca but I was very young and the attractions of the cruise ship won over the sights of three ancient cities.

Travelling in Greece in the summer of 1981 without a mobile, or a credit card

Travelling in Cephalonia

Now I never did Greece in the 70s.

That was when many of my friends travelled the islands.

Back then it was all pretty much an adventure, starting with the night flight to Athens and then in the early morning the taxi to the Piraeus followed by the ferry and a series of island hopping journeys.

But even in the 1980s when I first began going there was still an element of hit and miss.

The roads and the rail network were yet to benefit from EU money and of course many of the places we washed up in were remote and still fairly basic.

Added to this there was our own lack of knowledge and fore thought like the year we booked two islands on either side of the mainland, opted to do our own transfers and discovered both the delights and the nightmare of a ferry from one island to one Greek port followed by a taxi drive across Greece to another port, another ferry and the second island.

Asos

In the meantime we lost our companions who had all the paperwork for our new accommodation and managed to arrive ahead of them at the island with only a vague idea of where the resort was.

Today our friends would be a mobile call away but 25 years ago that little communication revolution had yet to arrive.

And so once again I am reflecting on the extent to which things have changed.  In Asos on Cephalonia there are two telephone kiosks for those who do not want to use a mobile.

They take telephone cards and are quick and efficient, although I have to say at present the one in the village square is broken.

Back in the 1980s everything was different for once you had found the kiosk you might have to wait in line joining a handful of other tourists and locals wanting to phone off the island.

Nor was this restricted to Greece.  Later in the 1990s in Spain you still had to book an international call, wait to be called by the official, and watch as the minutes shot by and hoping that for some vague and unspecified reason the line would not go dead in mid sentence.

The telephone card

And phones are not the only mark of how things have changed.

Back in Asos there is no bank, post office or cash dispenser, but little over 20 minutes away in the port of Fiscardo I counted several holes in the wall and of course in the capital there are plenty.

All of which means the days of travellers cheques are for all but the cautious traveller a thing of the past.

But how different back in the 1970s when an acquaintance  who had been back packing across Crete one summer ran out of money and opted for the simple expedient of staying over on the island and working on a local farm till the following year.

The farmer’s family treated him very much as their own, and thirty years later they still had his photograph on the kitchen wall.  It was faded and he looked a lot younger but it was him framed by an olive tree and a vine.

There is of course a danger at this point of sliding into romantic tosh.  As a parent with children who did their “travelling year” I would have been mortified at such a turn of events.  But then that is what adventures are about and such concerns have to be put into perspective.

The phone in Asos which didn't work

My own uncle was just 19 when he embarked on a journey which took him by wartime convoy from Liverpool to South Africa and through the Suez Canal to the Fall of Greece in 1940 and back via Egypt to Basra and eventually to the Far East.

And in a little less dramatic way when it was my turn to leave home to pursue a degree course in Manchester in the September of 1969, I left London with just a small suitcase travelling alone and arriving at Piccadilly with only a vague idea of where I was going to stay and how to get to the college the following day.

But enough of such hard worn stories, things move on and usually for the better.

Location; Asos

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Holiday snaps ....... I keep coming back to nu 3 ... the end of the road

We had become grown up and hired a car and this pretty much was the end of the road

Location:; Greece

Tomorrow ............... Rome

Picture, Greece, 2012, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Holiday snaps ....... I keep coming back to nu 2 ... a Greek windmill and some olives

It was one of those places you find by accident.

It had long ceased grinding corn but the enterprising owner had turned it in to a bar and the olives were good.

But the display by four big cargo planes of the Greek air force practising flights over the bay rather spoilt the peace and tranquillity.



Location: Greece


Picture, Greece, 2009, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

On Galatas with a Greek war memorial

It stands in the small harbour of Galatas which is opposite the Greek holiday island of Poros.

I was there 40 years ago with Lois and Michael, but to my shame took very little notice of the war memorial.

To be fair it was my first time in Greece and that potent mix of sun, wine and Greek food would always push everything else to one side.

I am sure if I dig deep enough I will find some information on the memorial, which I am guessing commemorates the war for independence along with the two world wars and the conflict with Turkey.

But I bet there will be someone who can put me right.

I wish I had taken more interest in the memorial, and thinking back it is only an accident that it got included in the shot.

Such are the photographs we take on holiday.


We shall see.

Location; Greece











Picture; Galatas, 1981, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Just how do you serve up a drink on Kefalonia? ..... no. 2

A short occasional series featuring a picture and a memory.

It began as a competition to record as many different glasses at one restaurant as we could over the pace of three days.

We had arrived early, and so choose to have an aperitif in the bar, and both went for an apple spritz.

Location; Lorraine’s Magic Hill, Lourdas Beech, Kefalonia

Picture; glass jar, 2019, from the collection of Balzano


Lorraine’s Magic Hill

Just how do you serve up a drink on Kefalonia?………. no. 1

A short occasional series featuring a picture and a memory.

It began as a competition to record as many different glasses at one restaurant as we could over the pace of three days.

But today it was the jam jar which took pride of place.

Tina liked the jam jar and it reminded me of a similar jar, in a taverna at the foot of the Acropolis in Athens.

It was a full forty-one years ago, and while I have long ago forgotten what we ate, I can remember the ice cold Retsina which was served up in the glass jug.

Location; Lorraine’s Magic Hill, Lourdas Beech, Kefalonia

Picture; glass jar, 2019, from the collection of Balzano

Stories of Solon .... that Greek lawgiver ... on the wireless

So, sometimes you can be pleasantly surprised when a wireless programme turns out to be far more interesting than you thought.

Solon the law giver,  from a Greek original c. 110 BC

And so it was with Solon the Lawgiver which was this weeks edition of in Our Time.

"Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Solon, who was elected archon or chief magistrate of Athens in 594 BC: some see him as the father of Athenian democracy.

In the first years of the 6th century BC, the city state of Athens was in crisis. The lower orders of society were ravaged by debt, to the point where some were being forced into slavery. An oppressive law code mandated the death penalty for everything from murder to petty theft. There was a real danger that the city could fall into either tyranny or civil war.

Solon instituted a programme of reforms that transformed Athens’ political and legal systems, its society and economy, so that later generations referred to him as Solon the Lawgiver.

With Melissa Lane, class of 1943 Professor of Politics at Princeton University, Hans van Wees, Grote Professor of Ancient History at University College London, and William Allan, Professor of Greek and McConnell Laing Tutorial Fellow in Greek and Latin Languages and Literature at University College, University of Oxford

Producer Luke Mulhall"

Picture; by Sailko of Solon,copy from a Greek original (c. 110 BC), from the Farnese Collection, now at the National Archaeological Museum, Naples. Licensing I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the following license: Creative Commons, attribution share alike. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

*Solon the Lawgiver, In Our Time, Radio 4,  https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001k7wb

Calling out a tyrant .......Demosthenes on Athenian appeasement ....... on the wireless

Now the Greek orator Demosthenes was pretty much just a name, but listening to this week's In Our Time radio discussion on the man is to realize I have missed out.

"Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the speeches that became a byword for fierce attacks on political opponents. It was in the 4th century BC, in Athens, that Demosthenes delivered these speeches against the tyrant Philip II of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great, when Philip appeared a growing threat to Athens and its allies and Demosthenes feared his fellow citizens were set on appeasement. 

In what became known as The Philippics, Demosthenes tried to persuade Athenians to act against Macedon before it was too late; eventually he succeeded in stirring them, even if the Macedonians later prevailed. For these speeches prompting resistance, Demosthenes became famous as one of the Athenian democracy’s greatest freedom fighters. 

Later, in Rome, Cicero's attacks on Mark Antony were styled on Demosthenes and these too became known as Philippics.

With Paul Cartledge, A. G. Leventis Senior Research Fellow at Clare College, University of Cambridge, Kathryn Tempest, Reader in Latin Literature and Roman History at the University of Roehampton, and Jon Hesk, Reader in Greek and Classical Studies at the University of St Andrews

Producer: Simon Tillotson"

Picture; Bust of Demosthenes, Roman copy after a Greek Hellenistic original, British Museum, photographed by Marie-Lan Nguyen in 2011 who as  the copyright holder of this work, release this work into the public domain. This applies worldwide.

*Demosthenes' Philippics, In Our Time, Radio 4, Demosthenes' Philippics, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001f4ws

Travels with Friends ...... no.2 .... down a Greek street

It was August 1981 and the first time I had visited a Greek island.

Location; Poros

Picture; coming home with the shopping, Greece, 1981, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

When picture postcards join the 21st century ……

I don’t suppose anyone will be over surprised that this holiday postcard sent on August 25th actually arrived today on October 6th.

Although I must confess I was a tad surprised that we had actually sent one to ourselves, from the Greek island of Kefalonia.

But on closer inspection I realized that “Panorama of Kefalonia” had moved with the times.  

On the reverse was a barcode and that even more technologically 21st century QR code along with the link www.toubis.gr 

All of which would have made my great grandparents take a double take at what you could now access from a humble picture postcard.

That said in their day you could send a postcard after breakfast confident it would arrive later that day, allowing the sender to arrange to meet a friend for tea in the late afternoon.

Not so today when the card might take days to arrive.

But in one-way great grandma’s card and this one remain very similar, and that is simply that the images are not always what they seem.

So, some of the colourful photographs on “Panorama of Kefalonia” were taken decades ago and show landscapes which have changed dramatically.

In the same way those from the early 20th century went through, colorization and retouching to the point where they no longer resembled the original scene.  In one famous case, a picture postcard of Beech Road in Chorlton taken in high summer and been reissued with a Christmas greeting.

And that is it.

Location; Greece

Picture; “Panorama of Kefalonia”, 2022, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

The bits the Greeks forgot ……….

Now Lourdas Bay is pretty typical of most of the Greek resorts we have stayed at over the last forty years.

Amongst the holiday apartments, bars and pop-up restaurants, there are those skeletons of buildings yet to be, which stand against the skyline as bare concrete pillars waiting for something to happen.

But just occasionally tucked away there are a few relics from a bygone time.  

Some are ruined houses which were abandoned decades ago.  Just how long they have been left empty and forlorn is anyone’s guess, and often the old residents you ask are themselves unable to offer a date or a name.

All that remains are a few battered walls, a crumbling fireplace swamped by a mass of undergrowth.

And then there are a few properties which look at first glance to be empty but on closer inspection show signs that someone still calls it home.

We stumbled across this one on our daily walk to the village bakery.  

It stands just a little way down a path whose entrance is barred by a rusty old fence, and several notices warning you to be aware of the dog.

I can’t say it looked either promising or inviting. There was a telly beside the front door and a tired looking skateboard propped up at the side of the house, along with a series of sheds which were all but ready to collapse.

It is the sort of property which makes you wander just what stories lurk behind the door, and what the future holds for both the buildings and the accompanying land.

The speculation hovered on an elderly couple who have seen their children leave the island, heading for a better life in Athens or maybe even abroad.

Then there was the intriguing idea that it had been taken up by itinerant travellers who had chosen long ago to break their journey and somehow never moved on.

Now that was not such a daft idea, because in the 1970s an acquaintance backpacking across Crete had run out of money, and in an age before internet banking, or mobile phones, the only option was to seek employment on a Greek farm and work through the year making up the lost funds.

Likewise, a decade later we ran into a bronzed weather-beaten fisherman.  He had a northern accent and might well have come from Yorkshire.  But he was vague about his time on the island, and sensing that his life was a closed book not to be shared, the conversation dribbled away leaving heaps of speculation about how a middle-aged man had ended up far from home.

And that brings me full circle to the house behind the gate and a heap of possible stories.

Location; Lourdas Bay

Pictures; the house behind the gate, 2022, from the collection of Balzano

 

The Magic on the hill ……..

Now, if I had to nominate one place which combines memorable food, good service and stunning views it would have to be Lorraine’s Magic Hill, a restaurant on Kefalonia which we just keep going back to.*

This year was our sixth on the island, and of the countless Greek restaurants over the last four decades, Lorraine’s is in indeed “magic”.

It starts with the location with its fine views down across the bay and out to sea, made even better by the climb up a series of twisty steps taking you away from the noise and heat of the resort through a collection of trees and fragrant flowers to the restaurant. 

The food is a variation on traditional Greek, but with the added magic of Lorraine’s imaginative style of cooking, who greets all her customers with a description of the specials for the night.

And here Lorraine doesn’t just reel off the titles of the dishes but goes into great detail from what inspired the dish to the combination of ingredients, many of which are sourced from the family farm, and is adamant that when a locally produced ingredient is no longer available the dish is off the menu.

So, last week for those looking for “the Lamb chops topped with lemon, olive oil and oregano, served with oven roasted potatoes and fresh vegetables” they were directed instead to “Chicken Robola”, the Sea Bream or "Gemista", because the only available lamb was from New Zealand and New Zealand lamb ain’t Greek.

As a vegetarian I am always impressed that one of the specials is veggie with a vegan alternative.

And so, on one of our visits last week I swooned over the feta mouse starter, and on another evening was made very happy by the vegan custard pudding. 

Lorraine’s own story helps explain her passion for food.  

She comes from the USA, made her home in Greece, and with her husband and now her children she has worked at offering up Greek food with the Lorraine twist.

At which point I could go off and describe the meals we have eaten, but where would the fun be in that, when the pleasure comes from going there and enjoying it yourself?

All of which just leaves me to say there are plenty of stories on the blog about our visits.** 

And each includes a link to the restaurant which offers up heaps of pictures from happy customers to the food, as well as the menu.

Many who fall across Lorraine’s Magic Hill, go back again and again, like Sid and Sadie from Sale who have returned each year since 1992.  

I call them Sid and Sadie, but we never actually exchanged names, having spent the conversation swopping tales of the food we have eaten.

And that really is how it should be.

Location; Lourdas Bay

Pictures; Lorraine’s Magic Hill, 2018 and 2022, from the collection of Balzano.

* Lorraine’s Magic Hill, https://lorrainesrestaurant.gr/

**Stories from Lorraine’s Magic Hill https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Lorraine%E2%80%99s%20Magic%20Hill