you say smile i say cheese

I’m not sure if “you can’t have too many bikes” is like the more well known quote, ”you can never have too many hats” but I suppose if the cap fits, then wear it.

In my case I’ve a modest selection of bikes and today should really have taken one with mudguards because of the drizzling rain as I set out. Instead I have returned with an exclamation mark painted on my back in the colour of damp road surface.

The exclamation mark is quite appropriate at the moment, given that I’m going through another one of my experimental phases partly as an attempt to rebalance my busy working schedule with some other activities.

I’m thinking ‘portfolio lifestyle’ as a phrase for it, but there’s probably already a marketeers’ abbreviation which will become clear to me after I post this and take a look at the spam comments.

Quite simply it’s about reclaiming some bits of time.

I’m very aware that I get to travel and see places because of what I do, but mainly at a speed that makes everything quite blurry. Two weeks ago in Brussels. Did I see the town? Nope. What about when I was in the Haag just before that. I saw a sunlit square on the walk to a taxi. How about Oslo? Oh yes, I walked around the block outside of the meeting area for ten minutes before we were due to start. Greece was different, but I suppose that was on my own time.

But all of this is the problem with cycling. It gives me time to think. To watch the world and consider options. Just like I was doing whilst studying the sky in Mykonos.

Time for some changes.

But first I must get out of this T-shirt with the rainy exclamation mark on it.

londonist on ipod music choices

A fun post from the Londonist about the music choices of Londoners with their iPods. A mini spin around the central areas included.

Play 'spot the landmark'.

ride on the chrome horse with your diplomat

Friday morning eight a.m. and I'm on the phone to an American in a car. The roads around me don't look so bad, but I know I'm in a bubble.

He's on a handsfree and we're talking about some deal or other. Then I hear a woman's voice. Something about turn left. He mutters "I've never been to Cambridge before" and then "that was the turning, I've just missed it."

Great city, Cambridge.

I muse on the times I've spent there and the right way to stand on a punt.

Three more calls and then I'm on the road. My own sat-nav tells me a different way to somewhere I've visited before. A few red Xs on the map tell me there's a block on the usual route.

So then it's my turn to miss the junction. A right at a roundabout and then onto an elevated section. Except I should have gone hard left after the junction.

I pay the ten minute penalty as I follow an escape-free dual carriageway bypassing Windsor to the M4, where I traverse about four sets of lights while I think about no direction and rolling stones.

waterloo rain set

Even more Rivers of London. This time it's Waterloo, with plenty of water running down from the trains and onto the tracks.

I've just arranged to meet someone around here early next week and am hoping for slightly better weather at a spot about two or three minutes walk from the station.

Now what was my weather a week ago?

Ah, yes, I remember.

a ride across a River of London

Keeping a slight 'Rivers of London' theme going, I spotted this on The Londonist and thought it was worth a ride across the Virtual Thames.

I finally read the Rivers of London and have already seen one of the ghosts

I took some books away last week, including one recommended by fellow blogger Nikki-ann.

Well, actually Nikki-ann wrote about the second book in the series but I thought I'd follow her advice and start at the beginning.

'Rivers of London' is by Ben Aaronovitch and a sort of London detective tale, mixed with urban fantasy.

There's parts where the storyline and descriptions are very 21st Century detective and then other parts where it all goes quite wibbly. The main character seems fairly unruffled as he learns about ghosts, mystical rivers and ways to conjure fireballs.

If that stuff is of the heavens, then there's some counterbalance with likably realistic scenes of down-to-earth police processes.

Its also set in the middle of London, with plenty of references to the area around Covent Garden, which should ensure a good number of readers will recognise the venues. Imagine the area between the Punch and Judy pub and the adjacent Actor's church(outside which the jugglers perform for tourists) as the epicentre.

The story clicked into supernatural almost from the start although the expected reactions from the main protagonist were surprisingly restrained considering the alarming and gory events unfolding. Also a revealed plot-line which I then found a tad too predictable - although I guess the point was to speculate how it would be accomplished.

I also found myself studying the dialogue; Aaronovitch writes with a tight style that cracks the pace along nicely. He's written a fair few screenplays and scripts and this shows through in the craft of his writing style.

That created the necessary page turner effect which was very compatible with the beach.

I must admit that when I bought it, the next book was also available as a twoofer so I suspect that the 'Moon over Soho' will be amongst my next reads. Thanks, Nikki-ann, for the suggestion.

And weirdly, when I was in Covent Garden recently, I saw the man in the picture below leaning against the columns, right underneath the Punch and Judy pub and across from St Paul's Church.

Spooky?

hold that hippy fish thought

Today was a suitably hectic restart after a few days on a sunny island in Greece.

Firstly, the rain. Then my sat-nav awakening with little red cars all over the routes to where I needed to be. An extra hour blended onto the journey.

Discovering two last-minute meetings had been snuck onto my schedule.

One was for most of the morning, with a visitor who had flown over specially from Sweden on some kind of Swedish public holiday and the second was for me to present to a group of around 20 people on an unexpected topic.

Before this, my PC decided it was important for me to immediately change my password and follow complicated instructions to press my nose, pat my head and turn around three times before anything would work again.

Fortunately I managed to swerve my way through all of it, and could still smile at then end. I'll admit that thoughts of last week's time at Hippy Fish helped.

nose approaching grindstone again

Back to base today and a reasonable amount of unpacking.

Just emptying a pocket produced an interesting mix of items ahead of the re-filing of everything into separate compartments, including (don't laugh) the Euro coins back into a Ziploc bag.

I've just rebooted the work PC and am waiting for about 35Mb of messages to tumble in. I'll quietly admit to taking my blackberry along but also to being rather selective about the ones I opened.

I fear my nose may be as ground as the statue of Artemis in Delos by the end of tomorrow. I see I'm back to 19:30-20:00 meetings again already.

sunset over Mykonos

Watching the sun go down for the last time before the return trip to the UK.

Of course, we found a beach taverna to sit in with candles on the tables and flaming torches along the shoreline. Add some Greek music, good wine and local food and we were all set.

The next morning didn't need a particularly early departure to catch the plane so we could enjoy the start of another fine and sunny day before packing the few remaining items and heading for the airport.

It rained slightly when we got back to Athens, but we were sure that the weather would remain fine at the little crossroads of the Mediterranean and Aegean where we'd spent the last week.

Delos weaves its spells

I've managed to load some of the pictures from Delos. The first one is of the hilltop sanctuary to Zeus, on Mount Cynthia. This is where Leto gave birth Apollo and was the reason for many early pilgrimages by the Naxians to Delos.

But let's go back in time - it's a complex plot.

Delos started out as Adelos which was an invisible island floating in the sea.

It was made by King of the gods Zeus when he amorously pursued Titan goddess of the night Asteria. She escaped his advances by turning into a bird and diving towards the sea. But Zeus was angry and turned her into the rock that became the invisible island.

Unabashed, Zeus then turned his attention to Asteria's sister Leto, who he made pregnant.  This somewhat annoyed his wife Hera who cast a spell to stop Leto from giving birth anywhere in the world under the sun.

Leto's labour lasted nine months, whilst Zeus sought a solution so that Leto could give birth. He asked his brother Poseidon, god of the sea, to help and Poseidon took the invisible rock of Adelos (not of this earth or under the sun) and made it stable with four columns of diamond chains. He renamed it, removing the 'A' which is like removing the 'in' in invisible and so the rock became anchored and visible as Delos.

Leto was grateful and immediately pledged to the island that in return for safe birth she would help the inevitably barren island become the richest part of the realm.

Leto found a safe spot to give unaided birth (Hera's spell also prevented Eileithuia - goddess of midwifery from visiting) and the goddess Artemis was born, in the area now known as the Sacred Lake.


A single palm tree marked the spot. Nine days later, the newly born Artemis helped Leto give birth to her twin brother Apollo.

Apollo was the god of light and that's another of the powers of Delos. It’s in the sunniest part of Greece and has a light quality all of its own. It became a place of pilgrimage, a place of sport and celebrations and a great trading power of many civilisations through to Roman times.

And to illustrate, further down the hill can be spotted the remains of the much later Roman temple to Isis - an Egyptian goddess.

Isis was the goddess of motherhood but also knew the secret names of gods, giving her great magic protection powers, which was significant in the eventual downfall of Delos.

Despite its great economic power, Delos defended itself with mysticism and magic, rather than conventional fortifications. This made it a pushover when Mithridates, a duplicitous enemy of the Romans looted and destroyed the whole island in 88 BC.

Also take a look at the picture below. It’s of a small part of the island close to the harbour. See the columns rising from what was once a huge and bustling metropolis.There's the remains of a massive sanctuary (forum) area for multiple generations of gods, a complete multi-storied town, a theatre, a huge hippodrome and a huge gymnasium for games of Olympian stature.

Greek mythology and a civilization rise and fall over a 9000 year period, and all occurring before the modern western calendar even started.

Delos and Delightful

We hopped a boat to Delos today, but I can't post any pictures because my Windows notepad won't accept the Lexar Media Jumpshot CF card reader as a USB device. I'd forgotten the intricacies of this compared to my more usual Mac, which just works.

Never mind; the above is a Myconian church.

Delos is the tiny island at the centre of the Cyclades and was once the epicentre of international trade between many empires, helped no doubt by its tax free status. But I'm talking about a couple of millenia ago, when the around 166BC the Romans created the tax avoidance mechanisms to encourage trade.

But to be fair, it had been doing quite well before that when it already operated as a confederacy, driven from the nearby island of Naxos. The Delian Confederation prospered in the circa 1000-500BC period and amassed plenty of cash, which was eventually removed 'for safe keeping' by the Athenians, who took it to Athens and after counting it decided they would spend it on building their Acropolis, Parthenon and so on.

Early politics, eh?

To add to it, the clever Pisistratus, who was the chief Athenian involved, decreed a form of purification for Delos which meant that everyone buried there was moved to the adjacent island and then in a second purification they added that no-one could be born or die on Delos.

Apart from any mystical qualities, this meant that no-one could claim to be from Delos and therefore have claim over any of the borrowed money.

But before any of this - and we are now going back to around 3000 BC, Delos had already built an advanced civilisation, with temples, shops, theatres and major sporting arenas. The remains of this is again visible on the island, which today has a population of about 10 archeologists, but in its heyday from 3000-88BC had a population of around 25,000-30,000 people from the very wealthy to regular citizens as well as a regular quota of slaves.

And even before this, the piece de resistance of the island would be its claim as the birthplace of not one but two of the Greek gods. Firstly Artemis (the huntress - Diana later in Roman) and  secondly Apollo, her twin and the god of light.

There's a proper tale to tell about how all of that came about and how the isleand eventually settled down in it's current location, but I think I'll save that fascinating tale for a day when I have some pictures.

pass the ice and another lemon sorbet sounds good

Sometimes its good to step back from the daily rushing around.

My work pattern can be somewhat 25x8 so its good to appreciate a few days of 0x0. Well okay, I've had a few texts and the emails are still coming through to my blackberry evben when it does have an 'out of office' message switched on.

This break is also a chance to step back and review options.

We shall see...