The Blue at Stonehenge

Stonehenge is not a place you'd expect to find a whale story - the county, Wiltshire, is landlocked - but here it is again: a book on the loose.

I went to Stonehenge when I was 11 and recollect only grassy plains and the imposing stones growing out of a windswept plateau. It was the sort of place my mother insisted we go because she loves to touch and hold history as much as she loves singing oratorios. She made us wait until the light fell just so, that way we'd see the small dagger carved into one of the stones. I think we saw it. It felt like we did.

The experts have found other carvings since using special equipment rather than the naked eye. The latest literature also seems to point to the stones being a burial site for Kings rather than some sort of aid to astronomy.

Thanks to travelling friends Debbie and Alan for the photograph, and Lily for holding the book.

Janet Frame in full remarkable voice

A Night at the Opera
by Janet Frame
New Yorker June 2 2008

We acted the cliché. We melted with laughter. Not the prickly melt that comes from sitting on a hot stove but the cool relaxing melt, in defiance of chemistry, like dropping deep into a liquid feather bed. We did not know or remember the reason for laughing. There was a film, yes: a dumb sad man with hair like wheat and round eyes like paddling pools; another man with a mustache like a toy hearth brush; and many other people and things—blondes, irate managers, stepladders, whitewash, all the stuff of farce. And there was a darkened opera house growing cardboard trees and shining wooden moons.

I shall never know why we laughed so much. Perhaps other films had been as funny, but this one seemed to contain for us a total laughter, a storehouse of laughter, like a hive where we children, spindly-legged as bees, would forever bring our foragings of fun to mellow and replenish this almost unbelievably collapsing mirth.

Nor was it the kind of laughter that cheats by turning in the end to tears, or by needing reinforcement with imagery. It was, simply, like being thrown on a swing into the sky, and the swing staying there, as in one of those trick pictures we had seen so often and marvelled at—divers leaping back to the springboard, horses racing back to the starting barrier. It was like stepping off the swing and promenading the sky.

After the film, we managed somehow to walk home. The afternoon was ragged with leaves and the dreary, hungry untidiness of a child’s half past four. Faces and streets seemed wet and serious. The hem of sky, undone, hung down dirty and gray.

To read the full story online link here to The New Yorker.

Thanks to Graham Beattie for pointing me to it and Bill for telling Graham. The story is unspeakably good.

ILLUSTRATION BY ZOHAR LAZAR, PHOTO COURTESY MGM/PHOTOFEST

LATE NOTE: A discussion on the story on leafsalon has revealed via Janet Frame's niece that Night at the Opera was probably written about 1954. Follow this link to see more.

Our Poet Laureate: every bravery coming

"Do you see me? I am falling out of a blue sky where my days were as dancers in a maze, sure-footed and smiling . . .
Then a pair of taxis went head to head in a distant country so suddenly I didn’t see the difference but it was a wide white threshold. When I couldn’t thread a needle, when I could no longer see the faces of my children or trim their nails, when the colour of money disappeared (and I bare-headed in the midday sun) then falling began and I cried out against it. . .
. . .There is a way, I said, but this is only the first gate. I give what is left of the light of my eyes, I have fallen out of a clear sky. "
from Michele Leggott's poetry collection As Far as I can See (AUP 1999. )



Leggott is the first NZ Poet Laureate (before that they were called Te Mata Laureates). She has a blue tekoteko to prove it. She is rapidly losing her eyesight to the condition called retinitis pigmentosa but she continues to write and to rage.

Her poetry is a visceral rush or a feather falling, it's the 'ear' in heart and the gaps between words where people fall. If you'd only gone to her presentation at the Auckland Writers Festival, and nothing else, you'd have still left satisfied. When Leggott talks you can feel poems in the air whispering, screaming, laughing, there for the plucking. She has to print them out in extra large font now and reads standing. There is still nothing to prepare the listener for the shock of the poem quoted at the start of this post. That final line: 'I have fallen out of a clear sky.'


Audacious? Leggott invented the word. She's written poems that have circumnavigated an art gallery, turned in circles, been tucked into boxes and pop-up books. With her sight dimming she's turning to a more digital mode of expression. Now her words can actually move. On the Auckland stage she showed us a heart box she'd made years before with a felt heart inside it: heartfelt.

And pictured here a piece she made for Valentine's Day once with, she said, all that needed to be said about love: 'Every bravery coming stars love's heartfelt red.' For more on her try Poet Andrew Johnston's Landfall review and the Poet Laureate website where Leggott talks about her projects and the Auckland festival.

And here's one of those digital poems.

I have owned Leggott's collection Milk & Honey for a while now, I bought As Far as I can See in Auckland. I try and read it every day to be reminded of the excitement and energy and courage of words.

A Perfect World

My friend David Cohen's book A Perfect World, a father's quest to unriddle the mysteries of autism has been shortlisted for the BPANZ Book Design Awards. The designer is Catherine Griffiths. David is quite rightly chuffed about the honour mentioning it in his 'This is not a blog post'. It is a good-looking sort of book to have and to hold although I'm not an expert on book design.

I do know that what's inside is worth reading for its insight into autism and for its take on the way we deal with those on the rim of the society wheel classified as 'different'. David's audacious way of telling a story can wrap up politics, history, culture, fiction, non-fiction and the personal in one magnificent swoop, and leave you in no doubt that what you have met is both a fascinating intellect and a father who won't rest until he's found some answers to explain the riddle of his own small son. Highly recommended. And if you want to know more about Autism or order the book, try human.org.nz .

The Blue goes to University

The first night of Massey University's Writers Read series at the Wellington campus went off with a bang. Fifty people filled the campus venue: students, academics, writers, readers, the curious. They came to hear, well, The Blue.

The event was an hour long with quarter of an hour to read so I managed to fit in a domestic scene (Lilian and the chickens) and a whaling scene. I'm always torn about which way to go at readings, if I go one way it seems to edge out the other important aspect of the book.

There was a q & a led by Massey's Dr Ingrid Horrocks (also a writer and my boss -- she lectures on creative writing and she and I and short story writer Anna Horsley take the workshops).

Ingrid's questions were subtle and insightful, and the audience bailed in wonderfully too. The Blue came out of it well I think. Always nice for a book to get an outing like that and in such sympathetic company. So huge thanks to Massey Uni and especially Ingrid for her hard work on this one. Nice to see some of my students there...

Next up: essayist/memoirist Martin Edmond reading from his work on Thursday August 21 and novelist James George on Thursday September 25. Worth a trip into town for that. You go to Wallace Street, Entrance A, Room 5D16 i.e. Block 5, Level D, Room 16. RSVP to J.W.Fink@massey.ac.nz

Auckland Writers and Readers Festival Highs & Lows

HIGHS:

*The enthusiastic crowd including these two audacious festival goers Gael (left) and Mary who came down from Mangawhai, Northland, for the event. They were spotted every day watching the author talks and lining up to get books signed (evidence of only some of their haul in photo). If you look hard enough you will see Gael is holding The Blue. She insists she was planning to buy it before she met me.

*Festival organisers including the titian-haired Shona Gow, Jill Rawnsley and Annaliese Prickett.

*The Blue on a panel with other sea-going books (by authors Joan Druett and Barbara Else), chaired by the colourfully clad, cheerful and efficient Graham Beattie . For more details and photo follow the link to his site.

*Junot Diaz the wildly unpredictable, funny, generous, honest, Pulitzer winner from the Dominican Republic. It took him 11 years to write his novel (when Kim Hill on opening night suggested this was a long time, he said 'that's abuse!') Oscar Wao is a transliteration of Oscar Wilde. The hero is a ghetto nerd living with his Dominican family in New Jersey. And that's just the beginning of what sounds like a wacky ride.


*The Michael King Lecture by brilliant and witty literary biographer Hermione Lee (Virginia Woolf, Edith Wharton), and then a session later with Lee and biographer Simon Montefiore (Young Stalin). Montefiore has a racier approach to the tricky biography genre but the same rigour and wit. Lee noted that she never expected Edith would be on the same stage as Stalin, but then again at another similar event Virginia stood side by side with Hitler. Our own literary biographer Harry Ricketts steered this discussion with his usual gentle aplomb.


*Talking to Booker Winner Anne Enright late one night outside our hotel. Just her and me. Later having her sign my copy of The Gathering with a quote from her book: 'I lay them out in nice sentences, all my clean white bones.' I liked her take on Irish literature vs. English: that the latter is about clarity and the former about confusion. And hear this from her mother who used to say: ''Write what you know', then, 'how do you know that?'' (imagine it said with an Irish roll)


*NZ Poet Laureate Michelle Leggott with her pale blue tekoteko who stalked the stage hunting down words and making them squeal and hiss and weep. I wept too, and wasn't the only one, when she read a poem about losing her sight which ended: 'I have fallen out of a clear sky.' Poet Chris Price was Leggott's partner in crime as session chair.


*Hearing writers Shonagh Koea and Peter Wells in conversation -- they are friends and made the audience feel like we were in her pretty house taking tea. The Koea quote that stays with me: when she sees people who look like nothing has gone wrong in their lives and everything has gone right, Koea wants to ask, 'What do you know of dread?'


*Talking to Peter Wells in the hotel lift and the later meeting his proud Mum after a gentle revelatory session about writers and writing led by Kate de Goldi with Wells (Lucky Bastard), Laurence Fearnley (Edwin + Matilda) and Peter Ho Davies (The Welsh Girl).


*Sitting next to Witi Ihimaera at a dinner for Penguin authors which also boasted Maxine Alterio, Duncan Sarkies, Paula Morris, Vanda Symon, Kapka Kassabova, Laurence Fearnley. I am biased but I wonder if any other festival attendees noticed Penguin boss Geoff Walker up the front of every event his authors performed in, grinning from ear to ear?


*Owen Scott on his memoir Deep Beyond the Reef with snippets from Annie Goldson's movie.


*NZ authors Fearnley, Sarkies, Carl Nixon and Louise Wareham Leonard speaking passionately in defence of THE BOOK. Funny moment: a member of the audience asking if any of the panel had used a Kindle, after a pause Nixon said, 'a what?' Good to see Book Council head Noel Murphy taking to the stage as chair.


*Luke Davies, Sarah Hall and Simon Montefiore discussing History and the Novel with Fiona Kidman whose face was a picture when Davies launched into a reading of a mile-high Howard Hughes sex scene.


LOWS:

*The Opening Night which was badly managed by a provocative Kim Hill.


*Nobel prize and double Booker winner J.M. Coetzee who wins no awards for his people skills, and was a thoroughly self-centred and disappointing guest. He refused to answer questions and would only read from his work. At Opening Night he was the last of four authors to speak and he sat so still with his eyes lowered I heard someone behind me say: 'has he died?'


WRAP-UP:

I've probably forgotten something. Astoundingly there was a lot I didn't get to see. You'll have to go elsewhere for that. Graham Beattie's website is a good start. Thanks to other Festival companions: Adina, John, Fiona et al., and to Dave and Angela for putting me up one night.

I hope Gael and Mary got back to Mangawhai okay.

Let's Go Down to the Sea Again Panel L-R Joan Druett, Barbara Else, Mary McCallum, Graham 'Bookman' Beattie. Photo by Bookman Beattie

The Blue and I are off to the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival. The panel we are appearing on is called Let's Go Down to the Sea and it's with Barbara Else and Joan Druett, chaired by Graham Beattie, it's on Friday 10-11 at the Aotea Centre in the NZI Lower Room. Authors will be thick on the ground there for the next four days including J.M.Coetzee who has won the Nobel Prize and is one of only two authors to win the Man Booker Prize twice. Disgrace is in my handbag (that would make a great title for a book.)

Antarctic Blue

Tamsin Falconer sent this shot of The Blue in Antarctica. She said it wasn't quite as cold as it looks but then locals think of minus 6 as a balmy day.

I don't know her at all but she looks an audacious sort, and she knows writer Kate Duignan who sent the photo on. Thanks Tamsin! I am both grateful and envious.

There's something apposite about a photo like this considering the whales in my novel come from Antarctica and the people on the island are constantly aware of the closeness of the vast southern continent.

In a southerly buster, they smell it on the wind.



Tamsin's email went like this:

Please pass the photos on to your friend & let her know that I am enjoying The Blue very much, though mostly reading it in my bunk, not outdoors.

Interestingly, when I posed for the photo, I opened it up to a page that had at the top a phrase about there being a storm on the horizon and the weather coming in, which is exactly what it was doing.

You can't see it too well in the photo, but there was a lot of snow blowing around.

A Breed Apart

This book is audacious because the author is audacious and because her first novel A Breed of Women published in 1979 was considered wildly audacious. With Sharon Crosbie telling her radio listeners: ‘Darlings I’ve got the book we’ve all been waiting for. This book is about us. We’re all in it', A Breed of Women by Fiona Kidman was snapped up by 9,000 buyers in three days and continued to sell well for years afterwards.

After reading At the End of Darwin Road (2008) I had to read A Breed of Women, and what do you know, I found a first edition hardback for sale on Trademe for $9 today. So I bought it. [It’s one of the first 9,000 hopefully.] The Book Council website tells us A Breed of Women is the story of an unconventional young woman’s confrontations with a narrow-minded small town society characterised by the grim judgment, ‘There’s no way outa Ohaka, ’cept by flying young, or dying here.’

Fiona knows small town NZ society – she was in it in Kerikeri as a child, Waipu as a teen and Rotorua as a young woman. In her memoir, she talks of the trouble she had conforming. Always feeling like an outsider looking in, she yearned to be a real writer and worked her way up from book reviewer through play and script writer to poet to novelist. It was tough going at times and Fiona has met with her fair share of humiliation, antagonism and maliciousness along the way, but she stuck to her knitting --actually she confesses to disliking knitting -- make that her two-finger typing, and is now a Dame and in 2006 she was the Katherine Mansfield fellow in Menton.

At the End of Darwin Road is the first part of Fiona’s memoir. It explores her life up to the publication of Mandarin Summer and the death of her father, but it also skips back and forward to the place she wrote the book: Menton France. It is a fascinating, unsettling and moving exploration of a woman writer at a time in New Zealand of tremendous social change, when being a woman writer was more of a dream than a reality. Fiona is a recent friend of mine [both of us have written novels set on Arapawa Island which led to the meeting], but until I read At the End of Darwin Road I didn’t know how privileged I was to be able to say that. Recommended.

Sunflower Sestina

A quick break-out from the tale of the travels of The Blue to talk about an audacious poem rather than a book. It is Andrew Johnston's The Sunflower which is a simply stunning poem. It is about the poet's father who died and the grief he felt, and it uses as its structure a double sestina.

This is the audacious thing about this poem. The sestina is one of those poetic forms which has a defined pattern the poet must meet. There is a certain predictability about it which is like the heart pumping blood through the body so it can do magnificent things, and at the same time each time the repeated word is used its meaning is subtly changed, which seems to me (and apologies for shifting metaphor here) to be like looking into a kaleidescope. The marvel is that the same small beads can - with one small movement of the hand - form so many different and gorgeous shapes.

The sestina is six 6-line stanzas, each stanza with the same end words but in a different order, the final end word in each stanza being repeated at the end of the first line of the next, and the poem ending with all six end-words inside the body of the last stanza. The double sestina is twelve 12-line stanzas each one with the same rearranged end words (and same end sounds, too, so 'sunflower' can become 'hour' and 'her' 'brother'.) The final six-line stanza (ideally) pulls together all 12 end-words. This repetition and subtle shifts in The Sunflower, and the final gathering together of all 12 words at the end, echoes the relentless persistence of grief and it's sister, memory.

Johnston's mastery of the sestina form fills me with wonder. He has drilled to the core of his relationship with his father, and to the core of grief itself in all its hatefulness, meaninglessness, significance and bizarre beauty, and come up with something that will surely become a classic. Here's a taste: 'Death /brings lilies, but someone has sent a sunflower:/this is our penance, staring at the sun,/its blind eye, its ragged halo.'

Andrew Johnston is a New Zealand poet who lives in Paris. On the Best NZ Poems website he comments: ‘The Sunflower is woven from many strands. In 1991 I read John Ashbery’s book-length poem “Flow Chart” and was struck by the double sestina embedded in it (pp. 186-193), which borrows its end-words (among them, 'sunflower') from a poem by Swinburne.

'In January 1997, newly arrived in the depths of a London winter, I was bowled over by an exhibition of Anselm Kiefer’s sunflower paintings. When my father died in 2004, my brother Peter suggested two passages from the King James Bible for the funeral service; their language stayed with me.

'I spent November 2005 at a writer’s residence in the north of France. On a trip back to Paris one weekend, I had a revelation in the train: I could use the double-sestina structure, and even Ashbery’s (and Swinburne’s) end-words, plus bits of the King James psalms and Kiefer’s sunflower image, to write the poem I needed to write about my father (there are echoes of many other sources in there, too). I went back to the Villa Mont-Noir and wrote The Sunflower.'

Read it please.

True Love behind the Taj

After Greece, The Blue somehow made its way to India and the Taj Mahal. Well, the back of the Taj! Is that audacious or what? Who needs the fountainy-thing at the front when you can get a unique view of the Monument of Love's back fence draped in early morning mist?

Here's what happened -- courtesy of intrepid traveller Mark Penlington who snapped The Blue at the Taj Mahal. He says he's not much of a storyteller but I'll leave you to decide that. The story involves a mad dawn dash, a misfiring tuk-tuk, morning mist, misunderstandings, a missed boatman, and a monk in love.

MARK:
"Having being primed all trip to take a photo of The Blue at the Taj, I arrived there on the Thursday afternoon and realised, in all the excitement, that I had left it in the hotel room. Charmayne and I had a fantastic afternoon there and took zillions of photos, all without the most important feature in them i.e. Mary's book. However we knew that all was not lost. Even though we had already determined to spend as little time in Agra as possible, we planned to visit the Taj twice - once in the afternoon for the sunset and once in the morning for the sunrise. We also knew that the Taj was closed on Fridays (i.e. for our sunrise) but that was no problem as 'the thing to do' is to get shots from across the Yumana river. So the plan was to wake early, book in hand, and get the 'other' famous photo.

The first part of our plan goes well (us waking up at the crack of dawn). I had placed the book and camera at the exit door the night before so I couldn't possibly forget them.

Indians seem to wake up at about 10am and don't seem to go to sleep until 2am. We think that Agra being a major major tourist destinations they will still have tuk-tuks (3-wheeled lawnmowers) at our hotel in the morning, especially as we are on the main hotel strip. But nope, it's deserted. Across the road a (very) young boy excitedly runs to the only tuk-tuk around. First problem overcome.

Second problem is that, if the boy goes to school, they definitely don't teach English there. My Hindi doesn't go as far as being able to say "Take us across the river to see the back of the Taj." My charades of "Taj" "Yumana" "Us" (indicating the other side) don't seem to be anymore comprehensible to him. Two security guards come over and seem to have a reasonable grasp of English and where we want to go. Translations and nods and grunts of understanding are forthcoming. Second problem overcome.

Third problem - it is actually quite cold in the mornings and the tuk-tuk will not start. I end up pushing the tuk-tuk down the road until it splutters into life. Third problem overcome .... for about 50 meters. I spend the whole 2 kms pushing the tuk-tuk to our destination. I hadn't anticipated having an early morning run.

4th problem (or concern) is that I'm sure I'm not pushing the tuk-tuk in the right direction. To get where we want to go involves going back into the city, across the bridge - a trip of about 5kms. I'm sure we are heading away from the city but I assume, being a local, that the boy knows where he is going. As we get closer and closer to the Taj it seems more and more unlikely we are going the right way. He drops us right at the Taj entrance. We protest but he points to a path and says 'under'. Maybe there is a walkway under the river? Unlikely. Assistance again is at hand and a nice young boy in a cycle rickshaw says, yes this is the right way, and he'll cycle us the rest of the way as it is still quite a distance. Excellent.

5th problem - we follow the path and end up at the river behind the Taj but there is no sign of any miraculous underground walkway to the other side where we need to be. And the views from where we are not exactly brilliant. Once again we protest that we aren't where we are supposed to be but at least we can point to our destination. Ah yes, he'll cycle us there no problems. I calculate he would get us there by NYE. But never mind, once again 'assistance' is at hand. There are quite a few people at the banks of the river with us including some officials with guns (not looking very alert) and also a young man about the age of 35 :-). He advises us not to go by cycle rickshaw but to wait as the 'boatman' comes at 7am and ferries people across the other side. He even points to the boat. Charmayne and I agree that this sounds like fun and is preferable to cycling back and trying to find a tuk-tuk and explaining once again where we are going. 5th problem solved.

6th problem - no 'boatman' arrives or looks likely to appear today, the sun is coming up and the views of the Taj aren't great. I take some snaps 'just in case'. we get talking to our new advisor, ask him his name plus if he is a local. No he is from Maharastra. I ask him why he is in Agra and he says he was actually a monk but was asked to leave the monastry. He became a doctor and is in Agra because he had to meet the father and brother of the the woman he wants to marry. He has known her for 9 years but her father didn't know of his existence until now. He says the meeting went well but there are problems as the 'organisations' oppose their marriage. You can tell he's anxious and a little despondent. I mention it is auspicious that he's at the greatest monument to love.

As we are about to cut our losses and head back to the hotel for breakfast, word arrives that there's a brilliant viewing spot of the Taj through the bushes and up on a hill. We, Charmayne and I, the Doctor and the Cycle Rickshaw boy, head into the bushes. As the bushes get thicker and thicker the view of the Taj gets less and less, as does the likelihood of us coming across a hill with an excellent view. After about 10 minutes of forlornly crashing through the bushes we decide that it ain't going to happen so we make an exit stage left. The Rickshaw boy cycles us back to the hotel from which another story begins but we won't go there.

And that's India in a nut-shell really. Every time you plan to do something, you end up being kidnapped and do something completely unexpected. And the journey's just as much fun as the destination, as long as you take things as they come. We might not have got to go where we wanted to go and missed our only chance to get 'the other famous shot of the Taj' but we both thoroughly enjoyed the whole episode of meeting the Monk turned Doctor who was at the greatest monument to love to seek permission to marry his loved one. He was such a nice guy. Shame his promise of the boatman didn't eventuate though.

And hence why the photo of me at the Taj is fantastic and the photo of The Blue could have been better."

What a tale. Thank you Mark! And Charmayne. And Noeline, Mark's mum, for giving him The Blue and suggesting he take it with him.

The Blue 's Odyssey

Since The Blue was published in July last year it has travelled the world. That's the way of a books I suppose. They can slip into suitcases, bags and pockets. They're fairly compact and unlikely to set off alarms. Forced to share space with a make-up bag, three moleskine notebooks, a pen, a camera, an ipod, a cellphone, an unpaid parking fine, and a hairbrush, a book will squeeze its pages together, loosen its binding and hunker down.

The first photograph of The Blue away from home was taken on Andros, Greece, shortly after publication. The fishing boat looks like it's called George. Sue and John took the snap and sent it to me (he's a doctor, a Shakespearean actor and a tango dancer, and she's one of the best midwives in the world and a tango dancer). I was delighted. I was seriously jealous. I could smell the sea, see the pelican, hear the Greeks: Ti kanees simera? Eise trelos?

My father is part Greek, you see, and my Yiayia (grandmother) and Aunts Mary and Chryssoulla lived there. Dad left from Pireaus as a WWII refugee with his family at the age of six. Another boat leaving at the same time was bombed. There was nothing for him to eat but triangles of processed cheese. They went to Egypt, then South Africa and eventually England. Yiayia and his sisters returned to live, Dad didn't. He visited, though, and once when I was there. We went to Delphi with Chrys. We stood in rare air, amongst ancient stones, and breathed in the muses. At the Greek Easter celebrations, we walked home in the dark with our candles and made a smoky cross above the door for luck.

My husband Ian and I lived in Athens for nine months. It was over twenty years ago and we weren't married yet. We stayed with Chrys in her small apartment on Argolidos Street, drinking cafethaki, smoking Karelia Lights, breathing in the diesel rising from the streams of traffic below, watching our clothes drying on the balcony and playing Beriba (cards). We ventured out into the markets with the leafy oranges piled on tables, we passed the butchers with the whole carcasses of lamb, we breathed diesel fumes, we sat on buses to the sound of old men clicking kobboloi (worry beads), we drank wine that tasted of resin and chicken that tasted of fish, we bought koulouria in Syndagma Square and ate outside in the Plaka, when Yiayia hurt her hip we gave blood so the doctors would operate and took small fried fish into the hospital for her to eat.

We worked -- I taught English to small children whose parents sold fur coats and Ian held conversation classes with DHL couriers. We drove to Delphi, we skied down Mount Parnassus, we went to Olympia via Sparta, and took a boat to Mykonos and Santorini and Rhodes. We rode a donkey on a cliff edge, stayed in a white-plastered house high above the Aegean, saw dancing bears, swam naked in a turquoise sea, stood amongst ruins and poppies and in the cool of Orthodox churches. My friend Sandra came over and the three of us went to Crete. We rode bikes and fended off Greek men who wanted to even the numbers. We went to Rethymnon where Yiayia's family came from. Later, she told us her family actually came from a little village outside Rethymnon which we never got to.

Another time, Ian and I crossed the border to Turkey where we went to the library at Ephesus, spent New Year underground at Urgup, and swam in water the deepest inkiest blue. All the songs there were about love and involved clapping. Tea was in glasses with sugar lumps. We saw the Agia Sofia and the Black Sea. On the way back to Athens I had food poisoning and the bus crashed. Nobody was hurt. In the still night, by the side of the empty road, just across from what appeared to be a chasm, beside a roadside altar, we stood in silence crossing ourselves and considering our good luck. Until one of the German tourists farted. And it wasn't any old fart. It was a bounce-off-the-mountains, echo-to-the-bottom-of-the-chasm sort of fart. Everybody -- Greeks, French, English, Germans, Turks, tourists, businessmen, drug dealers, families -- laughed and laughed. And then I was sick, all the way to Thessaloniki.

John and Sue didn't know any of this when they sent the photo. And now they've started something. I have over a dozen photos of The Blue's travels which I'll post in coming weeks sent by people I know and people I don't. India, the Middle East, and the US are just some of the backdrops. And there are stories to go with each of them. I promised a prize for the 'best photo', so I will deliver on that. I'm not sure how to judge it but I'll work something out.