GEORGE SFOUGARAS ARTWORKS

The miraculous encounter. Manolios was walking slowly and deliberately across the quiet path that led to the edge of the village and the allotments. A man in his mid-thirties and a keen loafer, he sported the unofficial uniform, facial expression and physical demeanour acquired after many years of strategic inactivity. He was dressed in his hardly used farming clothes comprising faded blue dungarees, orange sunhat, and ill-fitting wellies. A costume akin to a spy's disguise, enabling him to mingle in strange and unfamiliar worlds. A man incognito. Dressed for a higher purpose, a mission...well you get the idea.  He was clearly nervous as he made his usual little throaty sounds, which were the cause for his nickname in the village: ‘Choiros’ (hog). He was not happy about the nickname nor the connotations, but sadly this annoying habit (amongst many others, it has to be said) was so deeply ingrained, that he simply could not stop. Also, to be fair, he was similar to a pig in...

Today I walked to the studio today, but really, I walked past and through peoples' dreams. Not the sleeping kind, but the 'One day I will -kind of dream'. Small shops, someone's life project, a vision, a prayer of something beyond the daily grind. Words on boards and little quaint signs in windows. 'The day starts after coffee'. 'You will never want to leave'. 'Mother left me her recipe book and now it's yours'. 'The best is here', 'Come in and stay a while'. 'Thin people are easi er to kidnap, come in and have cake'. The list of the dreams, shops, ideas, hopes and the quips endless, like a warm comforting south wind in the cold January day. On and on it went all around town, swirling past the corners and up the steep walls of the Town Hall. I felt very moved by all this; the dreams we hold in our heart are so special, no matter if they involve saving the world, or....frying the best chips. I have no scale f...

We arrived with a spectacular bump at Heraklion airport. The plane was rattling like a toy train for the last stretch and it put my minor worries in perspective. We are like fragile fluffy stuff on an extra thin silk thread and life can summon up an f****** major storm at any second. So why sweat the small stuff? But oh my God, I was so glad to be here. Collected the car from Hertz, an absolute dream with a few hundred miles on the clock. The woman that served me was so ki nd. She sustained eye contact, all the time. It is the cultural norm here. A small thing but big, in fact. She spoke of her daughter who loves art. I was relieved. I tried to make conversation on the plane, but it is hard when folks won't engage. Absolutely fine, of course, but what lonely lives people must lead, without the capacity to talk cobblers to one and all when the opportunity arises. But, what blessed relief, landing and being here. One could never feel lonely on Crete unless you tried extra ...

The captain of our airplane is a woman. I find that hugely reassuring. I have come to expect that if a woman is in charge, things will simply run better and safer. (I live with a woman and my daughters are women, so I know what I am talking about). I have also started to think that since men pilots stopped appearing in cigarette adverts alongside unfeasibly manicured admirers of fag smoke, or as heroic characters in disaster movies, being a pilot is no longer a male fantasy,  but ranks alongside veterinarian science as a career choice. Marvelous being a vet, amazing for sure, but, you know, it is slightly less photogenic than piloting. I think that the perceived loss of poseur power has discouraged a certain demographic from applying to attend pilot school. Our aforementioned womanly pilot stepped out of the cockpit ( shouldn't that be the henpit?) to reassure us as we sat on the plane waiting for a 'window' to take off. Using incomprehensible but impres...

I used to love airports. There, I could blend in, another exotic foreigner globe-trotting, a rich, interesting citizen of the world, (probably) embarking on a fabulous adventure. I have written before of the wonderful romanticism that travel always held for me. Mystery and a sense of endless possibilities evoked the essence of Aladdin, James Bond, Thomas Cook and Marco Polo. (All men). The women were the cause of the travel, muses, beloved, lost loves, and exotic destinations  for a male ego stinking to high heaven of Brut or High Karate. Maybe cigar smoke, possibly Brylcream, or extra strong mints. Ready for any occasion, the lonely (for the time being) seasoned traveler smelling of synthetic aromatic concoctions, ever ready for that elusive kiss, despite his poor 1970's dental hygiene, would shuffle his way through oriental markets, arid deserts and secret caves of wonder. It was a cheap teenage fantasy (with some cynical elements thrown in through a revisionist lens...

I barely knew my maternal Yiayia (grandmother), but she was a significant figure in our family and was often spoken of with reverence after she died.  She spoke little and in my young eyes was a mysterious figure in the black clothes of a widow; I can still see her wandering in their enclosed garden, the mulberry trees heavy with fruit. Last summer, I set off trying to discover who she was, because no one knew her unmarried name. Through a set of events that I can only describe as very fortunate, I did. In the archival subterranean storage area in the Central Library in Heraklion, the list of passengers that were 'repatriated' to Greece from the war-torn Aegean coast of Turkey and Anatolia, gave me the answer. Her married name was listed there, wrongly recorded as they entered the country as Georgiou, but I knew that she was with her husband several children and I recognized their names. Anastasia my mother and her two sisters, Stella and Dimitra. An...

I am sitting at a Costa coffee house having a cortado. I drink this frothy drink because it is a small beverage of coffee and froth. Unlike the other gigantic and gut bloating concoctions on offer, this is just enough of a drink without the gaseous aftermath of a cappuccino. The young woman who served me made a beautiful little drink. On the froth a sweet little flower. My toasted cheese sandwich, also lovely. Fresh and hot. Maybe a little bland, but really quite perfect. A small beautiful oasis of corporate food and coffee. A place for those of us who are ' self-employed' and can regulate the start of our day and can avoid the weekend crowds. I grew up around a more leisurely way of life on a Greek island.  For the last 40 years, living and working in the UK made cafe-culture feel alien and unnecessary. Indulgent. A bit lazy.  That feeling is hard to shake off, regardless of the fact that I know how hard Greek people work. Funny thing, conditioning, and habit. And c...