marramgrass

Megalochori, Santorini, June 2008.

Oia, Santorini, June 2008.

This is the view that has become the clichéd representation of Santorini in guidebooks, paintings and on postcards sent all over the world. Of course I had to shoot it for myself. It felt very strange to be standing looking through the lenses of all those other photographers, almost all of whom did better with the scene than I managed.

Something to know about me: I don’t travel well. I get nervous, my sense of direction is abysmal, I’m picky about food. I just don’t have the wanderlust.

None of which is to say I don’t enjoy seeing new places — I do — more that I need to build myself up to it, and then survive on adrenaline when I’m there. I haven’t travelled much outside the UK; a few European city-breaks, and one short visit to Kenya when my wife was doing her medical school elective there. That was more than five years ago, so I may not be remembering it clearly but I think our most recent trip, to Santorini, has trumped Kenya on unfamiliarity. Maybe it’s because it’s still part of Europe (Greece), so psychologically the differences were more visible.

Getting there is a bit of a nuisance. The way the connections worked out coming from Belfast we had six or seven hours sitting in Athens overnight before the 05.45 flight to Santorini, getting us on the ground on the island before 06.30. When we collected the hire car and drove from the airport it was still soon enough after dawn that we saw the rising sun catching the mountains and east-facing cliffs, with the small whitewashed buildings and blue-domed churches scattered everywhere. The sight was stunning, but for this Belfast boy it felt completely alien.

Santorini is formed from the edge of a volcanic crater peeking out from the sea. (The volcano is still active, so I guess there was a chance the whole place would explode while we were there. I’m pleased to report that it didn’t.) Across the road from our hotel we could stand and see the various islands around the caldera. Two islands in the middle are where the volcano still vents. There’s something satisfying about being able to stand and look at the islands and connect them easily with the map on the wall of the hotel dining room.

Our Lonely Planet guidebook advises that when you hire a car on Santorini (which is refreshingly affordable) you should approach the roads with patience and caution. Not only are they narrow and winding, with markings faded as a rule to near-invisibility, but each spectacular view seems placed perfectly to distract from an upcoming bend or crossroads (I never did figure out who has right of way at any given crossroads). Add that the fact that I’ve never had to drive on the right-hand side of the road before and I found my adrenaline!

Fira, the capital, hangs off the cliff inside the caldera, as does the village of Oia on the northern horn of the island. Where Fira has a fast, crowded atmosphere, Oia is much more relaxed — even when we were there and it was mobbed with cruisers from the ships resting in the caldera. It’s very easy to pass a day (or more) exploring either place, where the whitewashed alleyways are lined with shops from expensive jewelers to three shops in a row selling the same selection of baseball caps, shards of rock dancing donkeys on a string. The alleys seem to catch and hold the sun and the heat, and I was glad that almost everywhere had an air-conditioner over the door.

One of the owners of our hotel explained to me that the blue domes are all churches, although not all churches have the distinctive blue-domed roof. She told us that each town or village has a main church that gets used regularly, then many smaller ones that will only get used for special occasions, perhaps for a given family’s name-day celebrations. As she told us, “In Santorini there are more churches than houses, more wine than water and more donkeys than people. Maybe not the donkeys any more, but the other two… yes.”

Highlights of our trip included dinner at Ambrosia & Nectar in Oia, reliably beautiful sunsets over the caldera, another spectacular view around every bend in the road, Greek hospitality, no more than four drops of rain and the compliant way my hayfever switched off for a week!

I’d love to return to Santorini, either for a holiday or specifically to photograph all the churches — that would be a very enjoyable project indeed.

For a couple of weeks, including while I was in Greece on holiday, I kept thinking in my idle moments that I hadn’t heard Highland Cathedral in ages. My mind sometimes works that way. Pipes, be they of the organ or bag variety, are rarely my kind of thing, but there’s something stirring about Highland Cathedral that grabs me and holds me.

Enjoying a friend’s birthday celebration at the weekend, his iPod shuffled to Amy Grant’s Christmas album (yes, in June), which includes a recording of the tune. When I got home, I went straight to the iTunes store to choose from the many available renditions (mainly on bagpipes, although it’s great on a pipe organ).

In among the crush, for there are many versions available, was something wholly unexpected. I’ll let you find it yourself: the album is Scottish Clubfever and the artists include DJ Frasier!

:-o

Oia, Santorini, June 2008.

Oia, Santorini, June 2008.

A few weeks later and the Irish Water Spaniel pups are getting bigger. Their eyes are open, they’re very mobile, and discernable individual personalities are starting to develop. Of course, given that there are six of them together with bladders proportional to their still-small body size, there is often a bit of a whiff — you can’t bath them too often because their skin and coats aren’t up to it.

But from a distance, especially by photo, very endearing.

I have a long list of books that I mean to read. I’ve just started one of them (Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle, if you want to know). The last one I read was John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids.

I’d pigeon-hole it as SF/horror that is disarmingly well-written — Wyndham’s skilfull use of language emphasises the stark environment he describes.

I won’t give too much away (follow the link above to Wikipedia for all kinds of detail), but I’ll make this observation: writing almost 60 years ago, Wyndham hits many of the now well-known post-apocalyptic tropes (did he originate them?). Reading Triffids, I found myself remembering its echoes in 28 Days Later, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, Land of the Dead… all kinds of others. I found it a pleasure to read a tale from before many of its key points became hackneyed.

There’s a paranoia that runs through the novel that at first felt a little dated, but quickly seemed to me to take on a new, modern relevance. No-one’s quite sure where the Triffids (man-eating, walking plants) came from, but genetic splicing by foreign government scientists is implicated. The disaster that leaves humankind vulnerable may even have been man-made, too.

Thoroughly recommended.

I’ve finally got round to upgrading to the latest WordPress.

Apparently it’s quite a major upgrade from where things were, and I always find it a pretty nerve-wracking process, so I’d be grateful if you could do me a favour:

If you notice anything screwy around here (more so than usual, I mean), please drop an email to blog AT marramgrass DOT org DOT uk and let me know.

Ta.

(This post also checking that MarsEdit will still get through ;-)

T o follow up on my previous post, today I paid 116p a litre for unleaded, and then I read about the end of the Hummer!