anchors aweigh

there we were – hippolyta and I – relaxing and enjoying a last afternoon of greek sun before we return home early tomorrow...

...when a huge boat comes into the bay with a large letter 'b' on it and hippolyta (wrongly) assumes it must be my personal luxury yacht that has come to collect her as a special surprise on the last day of our hols. buttons hippo does a bit of googling and discovers that it is the 'mayan queen'...

...buttons hippo then and tells her that it belongs to alberto bailleres, owner of one the largest mining companies in the world producing 25,000 kg of gold and 2.5 million kg of silver annually. as if this wasn't enough to excite hippolyta to paroxysms of near delerium, it turns out signore bailleres also owns a chain of department stores, specialising in brand names like Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Burberry and Prada.

i left her on the beach waiting for the mexican millionaire to send a dingy for her... this will not end well...

trekked-off

it's been an exhausting and frustrating few days: i've scarcely managed to to get more than  a few minutes of one-to-one time with hippolyta due to the interventions of brother bruno who is adamant that it is his sacred duty to serve as her chaperone and that it would be quite improper for her to be alone with me in other circumstances. he also insists that she spends those few available moments of the day (after her various beautician appointments) on reading his discourses on the influence of orthodoxy on the shaping of modern christendom and her daily spiritual exercises. I tried to point out that (with all due respect to my dear one) the words 'hippolyta' and 'exercise' are essentially incompatible.

with hippolyta beyond reach, brother bruno has been taking buttons hippo and i on a physically tiring (and mentally numbing) tour of the churches, basilicas and monasteries of kalymnos including extemporised homilies on brotherly love. laudable though such sentiments may be, they do NOT extend, believe me, to brother buno.

however, as this snap by buttons hippo shows, our most recent expedition ended rather unexpectedly...

...i don't remember much about it personally, but i think the photo may prove useful in my negotiations to spend a little quality time with hippolyta.

'blackmail' is, I know, an ugly word, but it does have certain potential virtues...

site-seeing

brother bruno, hippolyta's 'spiritual adviser' (he says), decided to organise a pilgrimage to the site of  Emporios' early christian baths.

  

hippolyta decided against going telling bro bruno that she needed to say her rosary (but i know she was planning on having a facial to regerate after what she calls 'the solar ravages'. foolishly, however, i signed up to go...

i didn't follow everything bruno was wittering on about: quite a lot of it was in greek (at least he claimed it was) and buttons hippo (who insisted on coming, too) kept interrupting to tell us that he was descended (on his father's side) from st augustine of hippo... Anyway, eventually we got there and, frankly, it was boring beyond belief!

i mean, i've seen a few baths during my world travels and i know this about them: they have taps (usually two) and a plug and plug-hole. here there wasn't so much a sign of any such accessories, let alone a soap-dish, loofah or a rubber duckie. and, then, to make matters worse, the bar was shut! 

as i told her when i got back and found her relaxing in the sauna, hippolyta certainly lucked out big time!!

the greeks have a word for it

today's the day...

...she's on her way!