Work Away Italy - globetrotting slaves for hire!

So, we're off travelling again! It's a new plan for the rest of the summer after my ankle injury. Gone for now is the walk down Italy, although we've kept the mark in the right page and we still mean to read the book (and it's not just one of those optimistic bookmarks littering millions of copies of 'Das Kapital' halfway through the introduction or stuffed with disappointment at page 17 of Lord Jim).

To avoid too much confusion it is best to point out that this was actually written a couple of weeks ago and so any references to 'yesterday' are in no way to be taken as meaning 'yesterday'. Got it? We have got more written and are planning to operate at a slightly smaller lag with reality very soon, 'tomorrow' or sometime...

Returning to what I was saying, what we've got planned now is a month each in Italy, Greece and Spain. We're following this by a winter in the skiing regions of France. How marvellous it is to swan off around the world just for kicks! Well, sometimes I wish my motivations were as easy to untangle as that. Even if they were, we're working all the way.

It's starting to get complicated enough that it's resembling a real life. Let me try to get the boring details of what is swiftly seeming like a workable plan out in the open for you. We're doing workaways for the next three months which I am interspersing with photographing weddings. Following that we're running a chalet over the winter. The hours will vary from light to ridiculous and to top it all off Julia has found a job for her spare time. I'm having to organise contracts, separate flights for me and a shed load of other things related to self-employment – as is Julia. Our administration overhead in terms of time is roughly the same if not higher than it was in the UK. Something tells me that this means we've got it right this time.

It does raise the question of why the hell are we bothering to escape if we've combined all the difficulties of home with all the hardships of travelling?

It's tough to convince myself of an answer at a restless 1.30am sitting in the midst of Gatwick Airport's slumbering quarters. Home, bed, TV, oven and a liberal selection of my general stuff look bloody good when seen through that particular prism.

So why? Actually it's really simple. It's awesome. Any life that aims to be sustainable for more than a few weeks develops strings and with that basic proviso in place it's suddenly all about priorities. Obviously when there are two of you that issue is impossibly obscure but is usually helped by the received priorities of children, love, house ownership, financial comfort and generally a few others inherited for some reason from someone. Julia seems to be happy to place these in abeyance for a couple of years and I am just about confused enough to go along with whatever seems to be happening at the time.

This all leads us here. It's Italy, the weather's about five degrees too hot to permit rational thought and it's still getting hotter. Julia during her siesta looks like she's sleeping off a heavy night on something too good to be legal but all she's really done is a couple of hours weeding. I'm bearing up well and although I sweat like a pig (I have no idea how much pigs actually sweat so it's all bluff) I'm feeling OK.

We're lodged in a swish caravan in an eccentric Umbrian enclave performing a range of marginally specified tasks for an interior designer (who we assume must be brilliant). It's been great fun so far. I've taken over the kitchen by sheer force of control-freakery and Julia is reading a book on drinking your own urine.

The journey was typically, money-savingly awful. Got to the airport the night before for an Easyjet flight at 7.20am. One hour bus ride to Milano Centrale train station. It's a monster. Not content with throwing madly inflated Art Deco at you it then plasters Roman imagery anywhere a clear wall might seem too tasteful; the kind of ego-trip that could only have been possible under Italian fascism. The marble columns that support the entrances to the platforms are now held up by rusting steel beams. Walking through it I understand that I probably should have been impressed; it left me cold.

It turns out we shouldn't be here at all. Due to the kind of mix-up I previously thought only happened in farce we had been double-booked with a couple of Israelis called Ziv and Keren. Our host had been happily communicating with all four of us imagining we were but two and the first time anyone noticed anything was wrong was the day before we got here when the first 'us' – Keren and Ziv – called up to say they would be a day late, while the second 'us' – us – sent an e-mail at roughly the same time to say we would be there at about 7pm and please pick us up from the station. It confused the hell out of everyone but the upshot is there are five of us here instead of three and so we'll probably get more done.

Well, yesterday the other us arrived. Ziv and Keren are leaner and more tanned than Julia or me; they mix this with an aura of general practicality. So far all I've been able to bring to the table is tomato sauce and lemon sorbet. I happen to know for a fact that our host would prefer a two-and-a-half-times-life-sized Elephant that doubles as a viewing platform and venue for drinks receptions.

Our host seems to be one of those rare beasts, a guy with big ideas and the capacity to see them through. One very big physicality he likes wrestling with is his hot air balloon. I am dying to go up in it and take some photos of/from/at/inside it (yes...inside.). To whet my appetite (well, actually it was a 'balloon MOT') he fired her up today and from close up a balloon is one of those things so big that it has wrapped back around from huge or enormous; you just look deeply into the other person's eyes and call it big. The five of us were running around it like ants trying to control a tennis ball while me, Ziv, Keren and Julia were being told that this was in fact a very small balloon.

Much like our little adventure is a very small adventure. I have two friends about to embark on a trip eight weeks long which blows me and Julia out of the water. Callum and Will are embarking on a journey to the “last great unknown” on the planet. One of the few destinations left so unpopular it's without even satellite pictures, let alone traditional cartography. Central Indonesia, home to possibly the last remaining on-foot trade route, cut through jungles and mountains so irrelevant to outsiders that no-one bothered to map them during World War II (when the rest of Indonesia's maps were drawn up). They are being funded by the Royal Geographic Society and have a simple brief; to see what's there. And carry a baby pig – they're being told it's for science but we think it's a late April fool.

Much like us then, or something.

J-P

Ballooning, the heavier than air part.

Our host test fires his burners in front of passengers and ground crew.

Last time around I mentioned that our host was a hot-air-balloonist. Well, a couple of days ago I had my first taste of this most serene of past-times. It wasn't from the gondola (this is the balloonist word for 'basket') but from the ground. There was a flight going up in the morning and I asked if I could tag along and take some photographs. Yes, I volunteered to get up at half-four and watch people mess around a bit with balloons. Those of you that know me well will be as amazed as I was that come 4.45am I was in the shower whistling.

For some reason I partially understand the balloon flights here are restricted mainly to dawn and dusk. I think it's plain less efficient getting a hot air balloon to work when the ambient temperature is already nudging 40ºC.

It's 5am and the day's already an hour old. This is the hard work behind ballooning that you don't normally get to see.

Fuel efficiency matters when your fuel comes in large titanium tanks (or bombs, as they are sometimes called) filled with liquid propane. When you're three thousand feet up running out is not an option. Our host tells us that if the worst did happen the balloon would not come down any faster than a parachute. He says he's never been unlucky enough to test the theory.

Balloon flights tend to be about an hour long (although as Jones, Piccard, Branson and a few others will tell you, they can be much longer). The morning ones start at or just before dawn as the under-slept crew wrestle with an implausibly large piece of fabric (the actual balloon itself is called the envelope, feel free to use that snippet as a weapon while in conversation with ignorant people). The actual inflation is probably best described in photos.

A gondola is still largely the wicker construction that you'd imagine. Apparently they've tried other materials but none of them survives landings as well. It does make them heavy, though.

After laying out the length of the material, all that's needed to inflate it in the first instance is a small petrol-powered wind machine. If only Julia still had her hair, I'd borrow it for a ridiculous photo-shoot.

The balloonist surveys his envelope as the crew await a new posting.

A few blasts of propane soon start to send the envelope upright. Standing in close you can really tell why and even if you're behind the burner each burst feels like a hot desert wind.

Before you know it the balloon is upright. The crown line (so called because it attaches to the crown of the balloon at the top) is used for inflation and deflation and the crew member whose job it is to hold it has a simple brief – keep it taught but be ready to let go. Anyone who has been on a yacht knows you don't wrap a rope around yourself if it's attached to something large and sail-like.

And then they're gone. After a few minutes gazing up at the sky wondering if the wind would carry them anywhere at all suddenly it did and those on the ground had to scramble to catch up, leaving only me and the pilot's dog with nothing to do.

Scruffy as hell but the best player of fetch I have ever seen. Isn't happy unless he has at least one burr on his coat.

We did get a few good views of the balloon while it was up there. Its serene visage belying the raw heat of the burner and the flap of the wind that I am really looking forward to when I get my chance in the gondola.

This balloon is moving at about 10mph but with the right (or wrong!) winds, balloons can travel much faster – in one recent publicised hop from Exeter to Kings Lynn (yes, in one go!) the balloon made it above 50mph in stretches.

After about an hour in the sky, the balloon lands.

A very expensive poly-tunnel.

This was a particularly easy flight to crew, it seems. We had visual contact most of the way and the balloon landed not too far from a road and the ground was easy enough that we could pull it even closer. After that the recovery crew had a quite absurd battle with 90,000 cubic feet of mildly heated air and then the champagne popped and we all lived happily ever after.

Comment? Analysis? Well, I'm not sure about this ballooning lark yet. Maybe I've just been unlucky but of the three planned flights so far only one has happened. That said - the people who went up seemed to really enjoy themselves. I'll keep you posted as to when I finally get up there and see what all the fuss is about.

Going up?

Orvieto - the place where J-P forgot to take enough photos...

Orvieto is just south of Chiusi and we were urged to visit it on our first day off, particularly for the cathedral. Everyone's seen cathedrals. Big, architecturally-rich monsters, with lots of paintings inside.

But this one was different.

Inside out, to be precise.

Here is the fabulously ornate front, where you can exhaust yourself trying to pick out all of the details.

Warily we moved inside, wondering if taking everything in might last the entire day.

And here's the inside, or most of it at least (the outside sides looked the same). This cathedral has a lot of its fripperies (I may get into trouble for calling them that but a better word is not coming to mind) on the outside and then a surprisingly simple inside, helped by chairs being set out in only half the space. The back half is wide open and it made it feel more cavernous and awe-inspiring, at least for me.

There is the altar area...

...which takes some staring too but is not as ornate as the front. There are also two side chapels – when we were there one was dark and in the other photography was strictly forbidden – which catch the light beautifully at the appropriate times of day. The one catching the light and in which photography was forbidden was fenced off and cost a few euros to get into. Our theory was that when the other chapel (opposite it) caught the light, the fences got moved and entrance into the second chapel was charged for while the first became free. Terrible scientists that we are, we didn't hang around to see whether this was true.

All in all, a place with something new to say about how a cathedral could/should look.

Orvieto is a lovely place. There's the new part, at the bottom of a hill and the old part, on the hill, ranging back to the medieval period. We spent the whole day in the old part, taking the 'cable car on tracks' to get up there (yes, Julia and JP in 'not choosing to walk there' shocker).

At the top we discovered a collection of alleyways that led us first to the cathedral, then to a wonderful ice cream shop where we discovered 'mirtillo' ice cream (that's myrtleberries in English, I believe) and a wood turning shop where we resisted the strong temptation to buy everything in sight – beautiful bowls, ladles, bottles, boxes etc etc.

Lunch was wild boar pasta. I had first tried this the night we had arrived in Italy – it's delicious. I had an interesting run-in with the waitress who brought us ¾L of water instead of the litre requested from the menu. When I asked why, she said that they had no litre bottles (fine) but that the price would be the same (not so fine). Apparently, as there is more demand for water in the summer, they cannot always get hold of the litre bottles they have on the menu. As I continued to look unimpressed, the waitress grudgingly suggested that she might charge us less for the smaller bottle. JP, having understood very little of this conversation was left with the “I should think so” that I barked, half at her and half at him, as she walked off. All ended well though as we were not charged the full price and we retired back to the ice cream shop to celebrate.

Unfortunately, there are no more photos to show you as JP was in a 'I'm only taking pictures of spectacular things' mood and Orvieto is not spectacular, cathedral aside, just very pretty. I shall therefore leave you with our other discovery of the day, which was the shop of an Italian artist called Verdirosi. His paintings sell for 600-15,000 euros but for us mere mortals, he also offers prints for 10 euros which is a pretty good deal. We nearly bought one but JP decided that he already has too much to take back to England when he returns in September so we contented ourselves with longing glances and a promise that we'll buy something from the website in the near future.

All the paintings come with poem-like explanations, somewhat wordy and, let's be honest, somewhat pretentious at times but the paintings themselves are wonderful. We were both drawn to several and had settled on two in particular...

The Game
The Journey

Mike Bongiorno: 26th May 1924 - 8th September 2009.

I don't think the name Mike Bongiorno will mean anything to our English readers but if I tell you that he was the Italian Bruce Forsyth, then you may get a measure of why his death is such big news.

I'd seen him on TV many times – not for nothing was he called 'il Re del Quiz', 'the Quiz King' – but even I didn't appreciate how long he'd been around and what he'd been through.

Mike was born in New York. His paternal grandfather was from Sicily and Mike and his Italian mother returned to Turin when he was little. This explains something that I had wondered about before – he's not called Michele on TV or any other similar version, but Mike – Maik, once the Italian accent has been added.

During World War II, Mike left school and, thanks to his knowledge of English, was used as a means of communication between the Allies and a group of Italian partisans. He was captured by the Gestapo but when taken to be shot, was apparently saved because they found American documents on him. Instead, he was held at the San Vittore prison in Milan for seven months before being taken to a concentration camp at Bozen/Bolzano (then in Austria, now in Italy, as you'll know if you read this post by J-P http://www.travels.jptreen.com/node/36 or if you live there as some of our readers do) and then on to Mauthausen in Austria. He was released before the end of the war when a POW exchange took place between the USA and Germany.

Mike worked on radio in New York after the war and returned to Italy in 1953. He presented the first official public transmission ever made by Italian state TV (RAI). It was a programme called 'Arrivi e partenze' – 'Arrivals and departures' (sounds riveting, doesn't it. I do hope the name wasn't a literal description). He then presented Italy's first TV quiz – 'Lascia o radoppia?' ('Stop or double?') in 1955 and went on to present many other quizzes besides.

The most memorable one for me, because I used to watch it with my nonna (Italian grandmother), was 'La Ruota della Fortuna' – 'The Wheel of Fortune', which he presented from 1989 to 2003. In it, contestants essentially played hangman on TV, except that instead of dying, on paper or otherwise, they would be awarded money for guessing letters and, eventually, the phrase correctly. The money awarded per letter depended on what you got when you spun the wheel and whoever had the most at the end, won.

Mike had a very bumbling manner which was analysed by Umberto Eco in the 1960s. Eco concluded that Mike was good at portraying himself as being no better than average in every respect so the viewer could feel that they were more sophisticated than him in some way. 'No effort has to be made to understand him... He represents an ideal that no one has to push themselves to be able to reach because anyone is already at his level. No religion has ever been so indulgent with its faithful. In him is cancelled the tension between 'being' and 'ought to be''. Unsurprisingly, Eco's thesis has been widely considered over the past few days, with most writers disagreeing with it.

Antonio Mazzi said that Mike 'was not a representation of mediocre TV, but of an educated TV without excess... Someone who, through games, united grandparents and grandchildren [well, yes, here I would have to agree, at least in terms of personal experience] and made different generations enjoy themselves [yes] and reflect [er...]... An American was needed to make all Italians unite.' (An American who was at least three-quarters Italian and spend his formative years and most of his life in Italy, but let's not split hairs, eh?) Part of the obituary in the Rome Metro read 'Mike Bongiorno was the very image of Italian TV. An intelligent and educated TV, hidden by reality trash and shouted talk shows.' I do wonder, though, whether that last sentence might be used to describe any country's TV output and therefore any country's favourite TV personality.

Mike had just arranged to move to SKY Italia (Rupert Murdoch) after Mediaset (Silvio Berlusconi) did not renew his contract (who wouldn't want to work for one of these guys?) and was due to begin a new quiz show this autumn – 'Riskytutto' (apparently a modern edition of his show 'Rischiatutto' ['Risk everything'] from the 1970s based on 'Jeopardy!' on which I cannot comment as I have never seen either).

In fact, Mike's long association with Berlusconi served to put some of the younger generation off him. Italian blogger 'Il Russo' ['The Russian'] wrote the following on 9th September. 'Having spent years devastating the intelligence of the media spectator... I will never forgive Mike Bongiorno for making my good grandmother vote for Berlusconi, I won't forgive him for having contributed to the growth of that monster of commercial television which has dumbed-down Italians, making us get to what we are today... Sanctifying him is the national sport. Cry for him again and again; I, thanks to heaven, will not.' When Berlusconi stood to make his part of the eulogy, a voice from the crowd shouted 'Go away'.

Mike died in a hotel room in Monte Carlo, Monaco while on holiday at the age of 85. He was given a state funeral in the Milan Duomo on 12th September. The authorities wanted to bury him in the Cimitero Monumentale where Italy's important people go but his family decided to respect his wishes and bury him with his mother in the family tomb near Lake Maggiore.

The bit between two workaways or Julia has a holiday

We left Tuscany/Umbria on 8th September. JP went to London to shoot a wedding and I went to Rome for a week at the end of which I took a boat to Greece. After a few days, we were reunited in Athens (although we did our damndest to avoid each other at the airport, managing to wait at different gates for an hour before JP twigged that I was in the wrong place) and are now on Syros, an island.

When I left for Rome, we realised that we had never thought to get me a camera as JP would be taking all the photos. As a result, this post will have no photos but in any case, you've probably all seen it all before. In fact, I'm not going to write about most of what I saw as it was all the famous touristy stuff. Instead, I present 'Rome in tips and quotes'.

Tips

If you decide to visit the Vatican Museums, it can be worth taking a tour. I was assured by the guide I spoke to that the tour was needed because there are no information cards in the museum, which turned out to be correct. You also don't have to queue to get in, which is nice. The tour I went with claimed to be the only official one but who knows whether this is true.

If you take a tour and you are not going at a peak time i.e. not during the height of summer or at weekends, it is definitely worth haggling – the group I went in with could have been twice as big and the guide told me that business was a bit slow. I can't claim any credit for haggling, however, as it was rather accidental. Having watched a guide trying to sell the tour to people walking by, I marched up and asked why I should go with them. He gave me the spiel, I said I might return the next day and he, when handing me their leaflet, said 'I'll give you the student rate' (5 euros cheaper). Next to 'student', it also said 'under 26', so I automatically said 'I'm already under 26'. He hesitated but with very little persuasion, gave me another 5 euros off giving a final price of 35 euros instead of 45 (including entrance to the museum which costs 14 euros and two hour guided tour). I think I should have had to show my student ID to get this price when I returned the next day but this had not been stipulated in the hand written offer and no one asked me for it, luckily, as I don't have one. I was asked not to mention the price to anyone else on the tour and the organisers didn't look too happy so I assume it was a very good price!
The tour was very good – led by an ex-history of art student who spoke well and was very entertaining. For 20 euros above the price of the museum, it added a lot to the experience. I recommend it, but haggle!

If you go to the Cistene Chapel, don't bother taking a camera. All photography is banned as a Japanese TV company has all copyright over it since they paid $100 million to have it cleaned in the 1990s. Instead, take binoculars, which I had happened to do. Stare at God and Adam and all the famous bits then look at the point where the ceiling meets the back of the chapel. In the middle is the Pope of Michelangelo's time looking wise, reading something with two boys peering over his shoulder. One of the boys has his arm around the other boy's shoulders. When the chapel was cleaned and restored in the 1990s, having been covered in soot for a long time, the boy's hand was seen up close for the first time. Michelangelo had also darkened the area in case the distance was not enough to make the boy's hand unclear. Even with binoculars, it is difficult to see but the boy's thumb is just discernible between his first two fingers – the then equivalent of sticking your middle finger up. Michelangelo's difficulties with his boss are notorious and who doesn't dream of doing what he did?

Quotes

“2kg for 75 euros” - overheard while walking back to the hostel in the early hours of the morning, I didn't stop to ask what the two guys on the street corner were selling.

“That's what I think of when I think of Rome” - English tourist looking at the spot where Romulus was apparently stabbed by other senators. (Well, I still think he ascended into the heavens, and became a god, just like the nice senator said - J-P) Effect somewhat spoiled by the spot being invisible as it was covered in scaffolding and plastic.

French woman looking at the spot where Julius Caesar is supposed to have been cremated. Flowers and messages on postcards have been left in some form of shrine. Woman's question: “Is it a bin?”

Lastly, I must send my love to my uncle, aunt and cousins in Rome whom I saw while I saw there, some for the first time in over a decade. Each of my three cousins has had a child who also came to the family dinner and it was lovely to meet them all at last. Zio (Uncle) Matteo appears to be quite a fan of this blog, which is gratifying. Spero che continui a piacerti, Zio. E' stato tanto, tanto bello vedervi tutti. Grazie di avermi fatto vedere tante belle cose intorno a Roma e spero che ci vedremo piu' presto la prossima volta! Amore a tutti. (Sorry to all of you who don't speak Italian, learn it, it's a beautiful language...)

an act of stillness (and a load of photos)

It's been a while since my last post. That's not been because there's been little to talk about. For one reason or another life has taken over. I was first tempted to say 'gotten in the way', but that would imply that the desired state is writing lots of blog posts all the time and what actually happened – having a really enjoyable and interesting time – is a somehow less fulfilling enterprise. No matter. Life has afforded a break and I'm here now.

I've got a string of half-completed blog posts from the past couple of months but reading through them never created a huge desire to finish them off. If you're reading this then I suppose I finally found one I liked.

Let's start with a short list. It's been about three months since we arrived in Italy for our first workaway. If anyone's ever looking for a basic guide to working as slaves in foreign countries we have a couple of pointers. Some of these seem desperately simple but remember all it takes for anyone to be stupid is about five seconds of not thinking.

1. Be clear how much you are there to do and don't be blackmailed into doing more than you are comfortable with.

2. When you go shopping, buy what the locals buy. It's cheaper and if you've got to buy something, you may as well try weird stuff while you're at it. The island's local delicacy is Turkish delight (I don't think they call it that here in Greece though!).

Our first host here wanted an animal taxi in Athens and called up a number she found in the phone book. On learning that the dog was coming from Syros the taxi driver's first question was not 'which ferry will you be coming in on?' or 'how big is the dog?', it was 'Syros? You must bring me some Turkish Delight!'. Maybe this is just a reflection on the Greek male's relationship with their stomachs (no comment), but it's a lot better than Fry's. It comes in many flavours including an amazing bitter orange and a lovely strawberry one with nuts and coconut wafers instead of sugar, on the whole, exquisite.

On the other hand, I bought this amazing looking cake from a local bakery. It was covered in this scrumptious-looking icing and these wonderful glazed apples. It was the size of a smallish loaf of bread and cost £5. I got it home in anticipation of great things and it turned out the icing was a revolting excuse for custard, the apples were sparse and flavourless and the cake itself was a stodgy Victoria sponge such as you'd feel cheated by at any church fête.

3. Remember that you are doing them as big a favour (if not bigger, sometimes) as they are doing you – if they're not treating you as equals and it's getting to you then nobody is going to be happy.

4. Don't turn up and expect a holiday. It's not. At the same time don't turn up with the expectation that you'll be doing a 'job'. You're not. It's a 'workaway' – this is distinct and different and the experience benefits from you treating it as such.

5. For proper live streaming news download 'livestation'. Sure, it's not a biggie for most people. On the other hand I think I'm becoming addicted to C-SPAN and Al-Jazeera. This is the place you can find both - legitimately, too. This of course is only relevant if you have internet.

6. Get internet access of some kind but don't use it very much. (don't watch C-SPAN or Al-Jazeera).

7. More of a general lesson for life, this one. You don't have to accept every time someone offers you a drink.

With all this in mind, the whole thing can be really quite special.

Walking dogs along a warm idyllic beach sunset in late October was one of the perks of this particular engagement. The being in another country and not to be working, not to be holidaying, I want to say 'and then just to be living'. It sounds glib, but by 'just to be living' I don't mean to imply a simple existence, that there aren't complications – I mean that there are.

I won't bore you with everything that's happened since last time, so here's the plan. First some photos and then a 'part II' post with the story of the Norlangos dog sanctuary, there's some sadness and there's even a couple of happy endings. I'm experimenting on a new way of bordering the photos and as yet I'm not settled on what to go with. For now, just have some pretty pictures and we'll see how it goes.

First, a couple from our brief jaunt in Athens before we got to the island.

Now I'm saving a lot of animal shots for the next post but there was a blind cat it was our job to look after. She had been abandoned, and instead of doing the humane thing and putting her to sleep the owners had dumped her by the roadside in a plastic bag. When she was found a volunteer pleaded for her life with the runner of the sanctuary and so instead of being run over she was taken in and fed. She is now a part of life there. On this island there is a general poor treatment of animals (which I'll talk about later). For now, let's just say I'm not a maniacal animal rights activist. I would certainly rather give money to the NSPCC than the RSPCA, but the way they treat their pets and strays...well let's just say that 'you wouldn't treat an animal that way.'

As for the Island itself, it's one of those places that veers from total occupation to total wilderness in the blink of an eye. That's a facet I dearly love in places.

There is, as always, more. Stay tuned for part II.

Syros Part II - Norlangos and elsewhere (image dump at the bottom)

and we're off again...

What do you do when a problem is bigger than you can handle? Do you play it like most people and just give up? It would seem the logical thing to do, the reasoning being somewhat straightforward. 'Well, no matter how much I do I can't really make an impact, so I won't bother'. Sound familiar? Here's a little story. A woman looks after stray cats, loves having them around. Late one morning a cat of hers starts giving birth. She hurriedly prepares a space for it, tends to the birth, looks after mother and kittens and then she throws every non-black kitten in a plastic bag and gasses them.

The moral of this story is obscure to me, but it's interesting to bear in mind that killing kittens at birth based on the colour of their coats can conceivably be for the greater good. If you can't afford to look after all of them then you need to have a reason for getting rid of some of them. The more arbitrary it is the better for your sanity.

The kitten-killer made her choice based on the practicalities, thinks collectively for the benefit of the group and the rules she lays down work.

'The rules she lays down work'. That they do, keeping a small animal paradise fenced in against the poisonings, the random dog pound round-ups and more often the general neglect. One can argue with how she cuts her cloth, could she feed more animals? Should she give each dog less space or more? That ignores the point. There's only one place cutting cloth at all on this island. Introducing Norlangos Animal Sanctuary.

After arriving in Greece from the UK I spent a week in Athens with Julia. Great fun at an awesome hostel, residence Pagration Hostel if you want to know. After much enjoyment thereof and having finally (after a good four years of trying) turned Julia on to the joys of the kebab we departed by ferry to the island of Syros, disporting merrily. The only thing I have to say about the ferry is that it was much like other ferries. Arriving in Hermopolis at night we were confronted by Greeks selling rooms with tatty photo albums. The lights of the city dispersed upwards into the enclosing mountains, looming shadows over the lazy seafront promenade. Breaking free of the crowd we encountered our ride, a New Zealander by the name of Carolyn who was taking a few months off from being wildly successful to look after stray dogs. Carolyn, we soon discovered, had taken to the unselfconsciously suicidal Greek style of driving, bringing us into a very close encounter with a lorry while careering round a sharp bend. This was, had we but known it, good preparation for our time at Norlangos.

Our host was a force of nature. The kind of lady who doesn't let anything get in the way. Conversation was an 'audience with...' and debate (debate?! Only if you were feeling brave/stupid - Julia) was a robust affair, starting and ending with compromise and none of it hers. So, as with taking car journeys with Greeks, your best bet is to hold on tight, eyes open if you dare.

Norlangos is a tight ship. It's swept, scrubbed, cleaned and raked, our host, 78, doing far more of this herself than she should rightfully be able to and is more disappointed at not being able to carry around 25kg food bags any more than anything else.

We both had our favourite dogs, you can't work there and not – the difference between me and Julia is wonderfully demonstrated by our respective choices.

Julia

Each week we would resolve that we wanted to adopt this dog or that one. I finally plumped for Domino – one of a pack of 4 setters (or something approaching setters) picked up as puppies from a box at the side of the road around a year ago. Domino has the sweetest nature; in a sanctuary full of 'alpha' and wannabe 'alpha' dogs, Domino was happy to be second during walks and didn't want to run off at a crazy speed, happily walking along beside us (something for which my shoulders were grateful). In a place where the dogs understandably don't get as much attention as dogs need/want, Domino was quiet and gentle, choosing to hug me (two front paws around my waist) rather than knock me over or forcibly clean me. Don't get me wrong, all that was fun too but such gentleness deserves to be looked after. The good news is that when we left the sanctuary, a setter shelter in England had just agreed to take all four dogs with a view to homing them. They won't be leaving for six months because of rules about vaccinations but there is reason to hope that soon after that, they'll be where they deserve.

J-P

A large and powerful mongrel that looks like a pedigree who loves nothing better than to be scary, bark, run around and generally shove people around with great enthusiasm. Some say she is a Boxer cross, some a Doberman cross; to me and to everyone else who has volunteered at Norlangos recently she is just Mabel. We developed a highly complex game whereby I defended territory and she attempted to outflank...who am I kidding, she's a dog. We ran around and made loud noises.

She greets you in the morning with a half-bark, not a 'woof!' but a 'wowowowowowowowoo!' Next time I'm down the pub do ask me to do my impression, it makes me look oh-so-as Dylan Moran once put it in a sketch 'I'm cool, I'm hip, I'm home with the downies.'. Possibly the best thing about Mabel is her almost supernatural ability to gauge the mood. Me and Mabel were playing our game one morning and I tripped and fell on my face. I was expecting to be over-run by outrageous amounts of mad dog, but all she did was sit down next to me and pant, occasionally licking my hand. Mabel is a great dog, the best. She also needs a home. Unfortunately, due to her size and the fact that Greeks hate dogs (not really, but they wouldn't take a fully grown mongrel into their home) she will probably never find one. It makes me sad that we are travelling.

We spent our time there fixing fences and being warned about non-existent hurricanes that would rip everything to shreds and experiencing flash floods that did, all good fun when you have effective waterproofs, which we did have before someone LEFT THE OTHER PERSON'S IN ATHENS, not that I hold a grudge...

It's over a month later now and having had some time to digest it's still upsetting to be leaving the island. We've made decent use of our time, criss-crossing it walking, taking a few photos, relaxing, we made sure to have a good swim too – although our last one was a bit blowy, we thought we really should get some December swimming in.

Back to England now, via a couple of days in Athens. The first year of our travels is drawing to a close. It's been fun, but we can do more, we can do better. Taking the ferry away in the dimming evening sun I'm melancholy but somewhat bouyed by the thought that Syros is going to be a really fulfilling place to miss. Here's a few more random photos of our time in Syros.

Oh the olives, I harvested a couple of trees worth but my attempt to preserve them was totally disasterous. I may write about this at some point. No, I won't. It's depressing to screw up food so badly.

Gotta have a bit of drama!

These people really like their walls. REALLY like their walls.

The last shot of Kini, where we stayed for our last month on the island.

Oh! The noble features of a hound alert to the needs of his master! Or in this case a dog chasing a fly...

Our time in Kini was much improved by the existance of Rabbi, the little kitten who we managed to feed up and socialise.

and finally...leaving the island we sat at the very back outside for the first couple of hours as Syros dissappeared from view. Thanks for the memories Syros, it was great!

'Tear gas really sucks' and other anecdotes

Walking through Athens and what do you see? A dozen masked maniacs throwing chunks of marble at 6,000 armoured doughnut-munchers with shields. Yes, it's one year on from the start of the Greek riots of '08 and some people decided that the anniversary of a boy's death was a good time to chuck some marble, petrol bombs and, most devastatingly, oranges at policemen.

How do I know this? Because I was there. Well, not for all of it, obviously. It was not my protest, it was not my riot. It was however my little two day holiday at the end of our time in Greece and in the manner of any decent tourist I checked out the 'what's on' section and found that this was at number one.

I will make no statements here and to be honest after a close look at both sides I'm not feeling too prone to pick one. I didn't like the behaviour of the police. Bloody unprofessional to pick up marble that has been thrown at you and chuck it back at unarmoured rioters if you ask me (I saw this myself on a number of occasions, by the way), on the other hand some of their comrades had been set on fire earlier in the day with petrol bombs (check some other photos out there, the Times website for one – I wasn't around for this, but it doesn't look so pretty). I only hope that in their position I would have shown more restraint. As a rioter I would probably have been so pissed off at being tear gassed (goes pretty high up on my list of non-recommended activities and I got it lightly) that it would have done the opposite of calming the situation.

Central Athens today felt like a police state. There were six or seven police on every corner. This wasn't like if something mad happens in London, where police huddle in one zone, it would be like 100 rioters ransacking Oxford Street leading to police occupying every street corner out to Camden and Islington in the north and Southwark in the south, etc...

I couldn't really tell how much the locals were on the side of order or chaos. There were enough people in lulls kicking hunks of marble back at the rioters to reinforce them and enough people whose only advice was to steer clear. “Everything's changed.” the owner of the hostel we're staying at said. On the other hand, he grew up in a military dictatorship so it certainly has. The one thing that really has stuck with me was one girl walking hurriedly by when I found myself on the pavement between rioters and police asking me “please don't take photographs of the demonstrator's faces, it could be very dangerous for them. That is unless you are police, and then I do not need to speak to you.” As she spoke she bubbled up with emotion. As she left the police unhelpfully advanced to exactly where I was and I had to duck a hail of marble for a moment or two before both sides decided I wasn't an appropriate focus for the day's events. Good job too.

On TV it will no doubt look mental but those bits didn't last long and it was mostly rather pedestrian. Rioters screaming at the police from the middle of the road were generally flanked by people just going about their business and there wasn't so much the anarchy reported last year but more of an 'if I get the right angle of view here I can sell it to my editor as a real story' kind of riot. It ebbed more than it flowed. Still, it caused a hell of a mess.

Here's a shot from Julia 'telling it how it is'. Riot police legging it towards nobody in particular and a load of rather bored onlookers either too scared to get involved or not scared enough to do anything sensible like, oh, I don't know, NOT be where the riot is.

I'll leave you with the end of the day, a couple of rioter's weapons laying where they were thrown. The oranges, in case you wonder, are apparently highly bitter (although Julia, with no thought of her own safety, intends to try one in the interest of bringing you the full story) and are grown by the city on most streets to provide the old 'boulevard effect' on streets narrow enough to be more like a lane or a passage. The marble might hurt more but slip on half an orange at full pelt and you'll know about it.