Two singularly dull photos to start with, darlings, to show you the hay crop on our front field.  Very good, in fact.  Last year it was dreadful, very short and largely nibbled by rabbits.  Fewer rabbits this year (don’t ask) and we’ve had plenty of rain.  There will be a wedding reception held on this field in 6 weeks so some dry weather now to make the grass go dormant would be appreciated.

I’m sure I should know the tree but I don’t, please tell me.  And the required photo of a lovely little bay.

Delicious sardines for lunch at a delightful restaurant.  The proprietor, charming as Greek men are hard-wired to be, called me darling when I went to pay.

Just one day left, when we went to Corfu town.  It’s all diminishing into distant memories already.  I couldn’t live the ex-pat life but I’m starting to understand those who do.  I’m afraid, in my terribly boring and responsible way, I still feel I need to validate myself, do something useful and – awful phrase – ‘make a difference’ but the need to switch off is becoming more necessary to me too.  I think that I’ve worried too much, mostly about the Sage, for the last few months and I certainly haven’t slept enough.  Although I’ve made up for it the past couple of nights, when I’ve gone to bed early and slept for hours and hours.  Yesterday, I hardly did anything.  I read the papers, made soup, went for a walk, pottered in the greenhouse.  Today I’ve been busy.  Music with Year 9, a long meeting with the Head where we each gave the other a long list of jobs to do, I spent the afternoon doing mine.  This evening, the first of two new intake evenings at the school.  I stood and smiled a lot.  Tomorrow, nothing in the diary.  Awfully tempting to curl up in an armchair and read all day and that’s what I’d have done at one time.  Now I’m just so damn responsible that it simply doesn’t happen.  But I still feel useful and that’s the way I like it, reluctant as I am to admit the fact.