‘I heard you were down in Grace?’

‘That’s right.’

‘What were you doing there?’

‘Meeting the Grakes.’

            As regards football, I am an atheist: I don’t really believe it exists. Thankfully, the Scottish football fan flying down to Athens beside me (AEK Athens and Aberdeen; score 6-0.) didn’t get into the beautiful game. I caught the bus to Kifisiou terminal after the flight and had a pleasant wait for a couple of hours. Kifisiou is a charmingly down-at-heel, friendly and safe bus station. And they have a particularly nice café where I chugged back a late-night coffee and Tiropita (cheese pie with filo pastry). Waiting for the bus, I watched an elderly Orthodox priest pace the floor as he waited for his bus. An older lady, with wonderful English, chatted to me, bitching sweetly about a particular taxi driver who had overcharged her.

            ‘Who does he think he is?’

Indeed. And who does anyone they are (is) anyway? Bit too philosophical that.

            And then my bus to Argos in the Peloponnese was there. I slept for most of the nearly two-hour journey, aided by the couple of glasses of wine on the plane. In Argos, getting in around 11.30 in the PM, I hotfooted it up into the centre of the little city and my little hotel. The night porter spoke a mere five languages: Kurdish, Arabic, Turkish, Greek and English.  I was standing there checking in when a voice to my right said

            ‘Do I hear an Irish accent?’

            So, I had a fellow traveller to chat with and have severeal (sic) drinks with over the next couple of evenings. And then there was Argos itself. 

My day was simple. I dawdled around the everyday streets of Argos, took the odd photograph, coffeed and ate and read. I had passed through Argos three years earlier and always wanted to go back. Its ordinariness and diurnal warmth were welcome as was the average 25 degrees heat. Argos has an amphitheatre, an ancient agora (ruins of), a temple to Hera and probably a whole lot more buried beneath. Its recorded history goes back to 7^th century B.C. And it’s on the up. I could see a few changes in the three years since I last visited, all good. What hadn’t changed was the general air of calm, local commerce and decent food. This time I had my coffee in one of the cafes frequented by older men in suits and jackets. I might have been in a Sunday morning Irish pub in 70’s Kilburn or Cricklewood, London. Minus the stout. 

My early dinner was at a lovely spot run by an elderly couple. He cooked and she waited tables and chatted. One thing I know to be true now: my love for lamb is as strong in Argos as it was in Izmir. 

Bellies don’t know borders.