Recipe for a fanatastic week: Take a dozen fresh writers, a feverishly blue sky and a fig-tree terrace above the Aegean sea. Bake at 30 degrees. Garnish with wonderful words & laughter and serve daily.
I've never not had a great time in Skyros (double negatives are such an English thing, Canadian Craig reminds me) but this course is seriously special. And I'm here with Hazel Carey, who is one of those people you get the "Some people touch your lives" fridge-magnets about. What could make the week more perfect? Well, solid sunshine, swimming in warm sea each afternoon, full moon at night, solstice dawn, mellow music in the bars and the occasional crazy night... that does it for me.


'Appreciations and suggestions for improvement?' is the traditional request as we start the second week, meeting with "If it aint broke don't fix it" and general agreement that friendship has been the key.


Hazel ends our brief breakfast meeting with the words of George Eliot: "Oh the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness blow the rest away."