There are two things I get used to very fast when I return to Greece: the cocks crowing from 5.00am onwards – the cock on my elderly neighbours small-holding seems to be the sentinel bird for the whole valley – and the lighthouse; every couple of minutes its distinctive pattern of two long flashes and two short sweeps across my bedroom wall.

...This-morning small scuffles outside the front door turn out to be two cats and three kittens sitting round a propitiatory dead rat and below my house a young and smiley Albanian labourer is listening to a badly tuned radio.

...Last year saw whole backstreets of shop closures in Corfu, taxi strikes, ferries suspended because of forged documentation, the occasional appearance of traffic wardens and their portable rules on my small island and the panic when the tax inspectors arrived, unheralded, from Corfu.

...He hopes for a Syriza win as he fears otherwise Syriza as a potential miracle will always be a distraction, but he worries about reaction from the far right: "it could be worse than the civil war", he says. ... A sociologist tells me that the Syriza bloc contains both candidates who have advocated armed protest in the past and those who are respected teachers/lecturers, idealistic and active in their local community, so represent the best and worst of political life.


...A small building down the lane used to be the HQ of the communist party, with a shabby red flag and a painted sickle on the wall, but it was restored to a house last year, its past obliterated.