...Being the unedited notes of an errant mariner since unheard of... The '---' mark prior to a paragraph indicates the beginning of a new entry. The whole adventure appears to have been undertaken within around a fortnight. Or it may not have occurred at all.
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Today's notes - this new island appears to be covertly micro-managed by a cabal of feral kittens, herding witless humans into acts of unspeakable squalor. Permitted our escape, we'll be proposing Obamacare, and for the entire island to be nuked before the cat mafia extends their regime of backhanders and threats to the neighbouring oases.
These Grecian kittens are gangsta-as-fuck. The humans are terrified of them. Cold malevolent glare. The one on the left is known locally as The Don and is suspected to feast on asthmatic babies while failing to complete the Sudoku.
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After fending off the feral gangsta kittens we took to the wild Ionian sea, powered solely by Jacques Brel and a robust Mythos hangover. Ralph The Cicada, famous for having been used as percussion on a recent Demis Roussos b-side, advised us on the whereabouts of a local dragon. We'll explore this new island tomorrow..
This is the mayor of the island, Earnest Samuel Saghound. He keeps everything in order and greets weary-legged newcomers with a droopy smile and a thin phial of grappa. He also boasts the power of omnipresence.
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On this new island, Joe and I, as committed adventure boys, took ourselves on a grand constitutional whose revelations encompassed such dawning a as - and I shall on this rare occasion bullet-point -
. Ok gals, it seems that Leann doesn't in fact Rime at all, with ANYTHING
. However many cabbage whites you might glimpse, butter just doesn't fly.
. Whatever it is, It's just another Mister Lizard.
. Sometime a profane and aggressive cat will guard a gigantuam cactus. When said cat does indeed blurt profanity, this is known locally as a cat-cuss.
. And we saw a train of army ants efficiently and militantly (obviously, duh, they're a fucking army, dickhead) ferrying the gutted funnel of a dead worm from one road side to another!
. Longos is UTTERLY beautiful and concluded our minor tour of this labyrinthine little island...
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Today we sailed from Lakka, on Paxos, to Preveza, departing at 8am and arriving at 5:30pm, covering around 40 miles of really rough, choppy seas with high winds. I helmed for the first time, for one of this hours, and utterly loved it. Consequently my giblets ache. We re-christened the boat Joanna Lumley, having been dissatisfied with her given appellation of Sue from day one. Joe Nockles and I found our first Grecian ACAB. We're all experiencing seal eggs. Or something. Anna Nockles has proven herself a robust high priestess of the waves. We have yet to identify which animal governs this new island but shall report as this information presents itself.
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On this new island we learned that bearded, bald, lobster-frazzled ex-pat alpha twats still consider the 31-year-old me a young'un not worth murdering, which is at one reassuring and a little disturbing. I hope, for the rest of my living days, to resemble an organism very much of an age not worth destroying by alpha mariners.
We started the day with a colossal supermarket shop the journey home from which gave us a glimpse at last of the governing animal - apparently Preveza is home to the Octopi Movement. Hence the ACAB graffito.
It turned out the aggressive ex-pat mentioned earlier is the modern-day leviathan transmuted into vaguely human form. We've seen cats scale trees with squirrel agility. And the skipper introduced us to a card game that boasts more arbitrary and convoluted rules than Greenaway's Hangman's Cricket. Which is fine.
Oh yeah!!! And, yeah, right, get this! So, yeah, seriously, no word of a fucking lie, there a motherfucking bridge guarding the entrance to the Lefkas canal that when it's feeling kind suddenly turns into A MASSIVE BOAT AND GETS OUT OF YOUR WAY allowing boats manned by only kindly folk to pass!
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Today, we turned the engine off and sailed, aided by nature's Enya-fuelled breath, into Kioni, quite truthfully one of the most beautiful places I've ever been to, thus far. It boasts my dream home and is governed by a lizard who's stationary zen composure is talked about with much genuflexion in various of Homer's short-story collections, recently translated by Hilary Mantel. The genoa as we pulled out of Meganisi prompted a brief and respectful eclipse of the sun. We picked fresh lime with which to augment the gin later. Enya, Exalted Queen Of The Dolphins, failed to manifest the gleaming bottle-nosed regiment as guaranteed in her record company contract and so we WANGED HER IN THE SEA.
We've also ALL become terracotta paid-up members of the pantheon of sex-gods. To. And cat mafia (miaowfia) watches our every move to ensure the demands of The Lizard King are met with relish.
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This morning I helmed the good ship Joanna Lumley for the 17 mile leg between Vathy and Kefalonia. We're moored at Sami, it's stunning. Just before lunch we were rowed around an underground lake by a Grecian tenor, whose songs echoed about the cavern. Stalactites, grey mullet and yellow wagtails all presented themselves for our entertainment alone. Nature does that. We walked back into town, stumbling across glances of lizard, butterfly, scuba diver, gangsta coke stately enclosure, and the tiny wooden waterwheel that POWERS THE WHOLE ISLAND.
The whole of Greece thus far had fondly brought to mind the sheer acting of Meryl Streep.
Worked a little on a string arrangement earlier for the album I'm definitely not making.
Later, we're off fencing with sword fish.
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A second daily report to compensate for yesterday's errant log.
This afternoon, Adrian and I scaled the oxygen-thin crazy altitudes of the profusely-feared Mount Goat, upon which reside the bearded, horned, bell-endowed ones in whose sacred crucible is distilled the wisdom with which they best direct the island and its islanders. These hallowed creatures, fellows of Pan, daughters of Dionysus and sons of Metaxa, are protected by very thick hydes and a waxen cloak of lice.
IN SHORT: GOATS! GOATS! GOATS! GOATS! GOATS! GOATS!
Yep. Since embarking on this perilous excursion, I've been yearning to but glimpse a goat.
Today, this aspiration were met.
GOAT
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Today, after raving, hooligan seas we threw our anchor down at Fiscardo, a town of surfaces, behind which lie sinister and uncouth secrets. Here ladies with teeth and hair dine incessantly and wave shawls at their zombie husbands, each of whom idly clutches a carrier bag full of shit. These damned automatons have been walking the town looking for a bin in which to deposit their boat refuse for many weeks and have lost sight of their original goal to such an extent that they are mindless, ambling viscera. Joe and I nearly found ourselves succumbing to the same fate this evening, attributing the condition to a) the emanations of a sinister black obelisk and b) there being no fucking bins in this town because presumably a receptacle for waste articles would constitute a blight on the pristinely-maintained image of the place. Even the Port Police had no clue as to where there might be a bin when we enquiries.
Nicholas Tavern looms over the North-Southerly shore of the bay, the briars of its unkempt hedge maze glistening under the callow gloaming moon. Uneasily we set upon the place looking for a night cap, only to be confronted with a) finally a fucking bin and b) ominous rumbling and finally c) a portly service gibbon with a meat cleaver who told us that the tavern is closed for the season and that the new caretaker will soon be installed to see it through the harsh winter season.
Three menacing ducks, their bills stitched together in some malefic pagan ritual lay in our path as we tried to flee the South-Northerly shore. We kicked their faces off and followed the faint tinkling of goat bells back to the boat. Joe proved himself a valiant marine adventurer. He's been a very nautical boy. As soon as these mute, malign ducks had been dispensed with, it seemed a spell were lifted, as all the menfolk hitherto shambling, bag-clutching wretches, abruptly and at once gained wakefulness, and gleefully threw their litter into the sea, upon which a ring of magical dolphin guardians carouselled atop the waves, chewing through the litter and regurgitating it instantly into little protein cakes that may one day save a nation.
It's been quite a day.
Also, GOAT
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On this new island we climbed a billion small feet to a windmill wherein we found four huge beetles and a werewolf that resembled Jamie Bell under an uncertain light. I climbed the unrailed spiral staircase and got that particularly vertiginous ditzy chill in my hands and legs, goated it back to terror, firmer.
Joe made out with a beautiful cat and soon the two are to be wedded. Best of luck to the two lovebirds in their desperate, confused plight.
Meanwhile, Cat On Plinth looked on enviously, though whether his eyes of verdant want took in Joe or his felancé remains to be seen...
The incessant boat-rocking wind nearly made me puke entire countries today. Nevertheless we love Ithaca and at least cat marriages are legal here.
And, and, and, I watched the sun unsheath itself from a shit of cloud earlier, with a front of the most ravishingly textured luminescence.
And, yeah, obviously, a whole load of GOAT kicking out at y'all.
PS. Petrol station directed by David Lynch. Cinematography by The Almost-Full of Moons.
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On this new island there is a smooth, muscular dog with an excellent jawline.
On this new island there is a rough, muscular fisherman boy with an excellent jawline.
On this new island the moon rises fat as soap and white as wine and almost full over a silhouetted hill.
Keith Richards, in the neighbouring boat, has a great bandana and sells knots on the black market.
We're nearly at the end of our two-week sojourn. Some of the knots we bought are starting to fray. A beautiful, wondrous and mad fortnight.
With a sky vista lit and staged by Robert Wilson we ended our two-week Grecian sojourn on this new island of Dennis Nedry.
I think we'll be very happy in our new home.
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The totally full, bloated, sagging, yellow moon rose over a black mountain with an illusion of proximity so bonkers-ly close it may well have been a looming comet.
The waiter in this closing night restaurant does not look like Alain Delon but DOES boast a similar sense of effortlessly seductive physical irresistability.
Joe Nockles and I have only gotten through about half each of the seventeen-foot cigars that we bought on day one, in preparation for closing night.
On this new island, the gaudy, high-kitsch boats rule.
This pizza, accompanied by the soothing syrupy baying of Katie Melua, is the closest thing to calzone that I've ever known.
Thank-you, Greece.
It's been electrifying.
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Last night in Greece, Keith Richards plied me with so much Metaxa that instead of doing karaoke I sprayed rainbow chunks up a u-bend. Then an ex-CIA agent told me how he had to go under the radar after loudly vocalising his protests against waterboarding.
Headed back to the UK after two weeks of glorious, bonkers, hilarious, often sublime holiday.
Our half-finished cigars are soaked.
The Scottish guys who attempted to bribe lead crew into letting them steal a boat have been so staggeringly wankered throughout that when one of them injured his leg, the island doctor took one look and said 'your liver is fucked! Stop drinking, you mad, parodical Caledonian clown!'.
They're sitting opposite me drinking orange juice as Bon Jovi soothes us into oblivion.
Mine's a Metaxa, ta.
I'd like to thank the sheer acting of Meryl Streep.
But I'm not going to.
