Monday 18 April 2016

To the Mani

I'm flying to Greece in the small hours of tomorrow morning (and by EasyJet - oh joy) for a few days' walking in the Mani - yes, Patrick Leigh Fermor country. Sunshine, butterflies and flowers await, DV... I'll be back at the weekend.

4 comments:

  1. Hope you're enjoying the trip Nige. Thought you'd be interested, as you make the occasional foray to Chichester, that, at Portsmouth (where I live) City Museum, for a year, an exhibition of around 40 paintings by Edward King (1862-1951). Admission is free. I'm sure I'm telling my Grandmother to suck eggs but King was admired by Whistler and Van Gogh and a friend of Sickert (one of whose paintings - Belgian Cocottes features in the exhibition). King spent the last 25 years of his life in Portsmouth's St James Lunatic Asylum after a breakdown occasioned by his wife's death in 1924. As an inmate, gradually permitted to strike out into town,he continued to paint. The paintings split into half of bomb-damaged Portsmouth in WW2. These feature wonderful colouring - especially red brick against eggshell blue skies. These paintings have a solidity and a loneliness that reminds me of Hopper. The other half are of the Hospital, its farm and houseboats on nearby Langstone Harbour. Thoroughly recommend it. Pictures below. http://www.ataleofonecity.portsmouth.gov.uk/people/edward-king/

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  2. Fascinating - thanks Guy, I think I feel a trip to Portsmouth coming on...

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  3. Went the trek well, Nige? Thirty years ago, my bride and I spent our honeymoon hiking in Crete and the northern Peloponnese. We ran out of time before we could get to the Mani, and have been planning to return every few years since. But family, jobs, life in general seem always to interfere. And now that flights are available to St. Helena, we have yet another destination beckoning!

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  4. Just back Waldo, and well it went - will be reporting soon. I must say I like the idea of St Helena...

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