Journal

Post 3 of 7

On the slopes of Mount Helicon today, we visited the monastery of Hosios Loukas. Charming. Indeed, a vision of heaven on earth, or at least of heaven as seen in the past by some of those then on Earth.

By way of a stupefying contrast, on the way across we stopped off for a coffee in Distomo, the site of an horrendous massacre by Waffen-SS troops in June, 1944. Truly a vision of hell on earth. Some further background here.

Even if these events happened five years before I was born, it’s not hard to see why Greece’s relationship with Germany remains an often troubled one to this day.

Later, as our small group headed towards the Peloponnese, some of us were busily monitoring what looks set to be one of the biggest shocks to the global economy since WW2, the coronavirus outbreak now ripping into Italy – and set to turn Europe into its new incubator and transmission hub.

It’s all-too-tempting to fall back on a Manichean view of this world of ours, with an ongoing battle between the forces of good and evil. But such terms, as a certain U.S. President demonstrated with his “axis of evil” ideology, are all-too-easy to pervert.

Post 2 of 7.

Finally made it to Delphi, 50 years after we arrived to find the site closed – as explained in a previous post. The site was simply humming with bees this time, though the sight of pine processionary moth cocoons in some of the trees was distressing. The museum closed before we could get to it – and not too long afterwards the site as a whole was closed. But we had moved on by then.

A truly wonderful visit, with relatively few other people visiting such sights as the temples of Athena Pronaia and, higher up, of Apollo. A fuller account of the site’s history can be found here. One bit of the recent story that Jeremy (Paterson) challenged was the idea that gases from a chasm under the site had helped induce a state of trance in the priestesses. I confess, though, that I still find the explanation seductive – even if many shamans can get there unassisted.

As we travel, with a fair number of books in our baggage train, I have been reading A Rising Man, by Abil Mukherjee. A wonderfully engaging portrait of Calcutta back in 1919, just after WWI, with a simmering independence movement that would take another 30 years to come to blood-spattered fruition.

And I find myself constantly wondering what it is about today’s world, apart from COVID-19, the gathering climate emergency and the exponential undermining of the natural world, that we ought to be paying more attention to as clues to the future in the present?

Post 1 of 7

In 1970, in my father’s Landrover (see below), on a month-long journey en route for a month on Skiathos, six university friends (Rex, Ian, Martin, Jan, Elaine and I) arrived at the gates of Delphi, to find the site closed. Ever since I have longed to try again.

Now, 50 years later, Elaine and I finally made it, courtesy of a ‘The Glory That Was Greece’ tour organised by Travel Editions, led by Jeremy Paterson. The coronavirus contagion sweeping the world severely disrupted – and ultimately truncated – the trip, but the net result was glorious. Some glimpses are afforded in this short series of six posts.

Drove across with Elaine to the Talos Art Foundry this morning, located outside the village of Quarley, Hampshire, near Andover.

Nicola (Godden) was putting the final touches to the first two castings of our Green Swan trophies. Wonderfully, one of the first two awardees, Sasha (Dench), had also driven across from Dartmoor to see the pieces come together.

Delightful team at the foundry, which itself is part of a cluster of artistic studios and endeavours at Lains Farm. Geoff Moate took us under his wing and steered us around the various stages of the mould-making and casting processes.

Had genuinely never realised how much effort goes into making a bronze sculpture. Afterwards, Elaine, Nicola, Sasha and I repaired to The Hawk Inn in the nearby village of Amport.

Wish I had had time to tramp down to see the swollen stream that runs alongside the village, with glorious kingcups (aka marsh marigolds) flowering on its banks. Seemed a little early for them – but happy to see them whenever they grace the landscape.

As someone who has long loved both biomicry (having served on Biomimicry 3.8’s board for some years, for example) and flight (from Leonardo via Otto Lilienthal to Bertrand Piccard of the Solar Impulse, who I met some years ago via Covestro), I was thrilled to see a piece in the latest Financial Times ‘How To Spend It’ supplement on the MetaFly.

Flight is built into our 12-year-old Volans branding.

And I always remember the ornithopters in the science fiction novel Dune, by Frank Herbert, who I also had the privilege of meeting way back. Here, finally, is a living (well almost), working example of ornithoptering. Well done Bionic Bird – and well done KickStarter, for helping fund.

Am sure these plastic wonders will cause unintended consequences, but I love the spirit of the thing. And given the way we are going, who knows, but we may well end up with similar nanorobots pollinating future landscapes …