Status-Q

You can be confident that you are no longer in land-locked Cambridgeshire…

when you pop to the nearest recycling bins, and there are three: one for glass, one for aluminium, and one for fishing nets.

I’ve spent the last week or so sailing around the Aegean in my friend Philip’s 32-foot boat. I’ve done this once before, and he was kind enough to invite me back for a second visit. It was once again a wonderful trip, admittedly involving, at times, some sweaty cramped conditions and some rather primitive harbourside sanitation, but any such drawbacks were massively outweighed by the adventure, education and cameraderie as we explored parts of the Dodecanese and Cyclades islands.

I will remember some very fine dining and drinking.

Some stunning views, especially around the amazing volcanic caldera that is Santorini,

Dolphins leaping and playing under our bows:

(Thanks to Pilgrim Beart for the clip)

Some adventurous sailing on the high seas — sometimes more adventurous than we wanted!

Archaeological sites with intact multi-storey houses more than twice as old as the Old Testament.

Plunging into warm seas from the back of the boat before breakfast, and again before bed.

Labyrinthine three-dimensional hillside towns with barely a straight line to be found.

And the millennium-spanning delight of reading Emily Wilson’s translation of The Iliad, on my Kindle, recently recharged by solar panels, while enjoying the breeze blowing off the sparkling blue sea.

And now I’m home, and I need to mow the lawn before it starts raining.