I prefer not to elaborate on the various stages of our dealings over the next few days – disbelief, anger, recrimination, the raking up of old sores, bitter silence and so on – but I can say that they gave lasting strength to our relationship, like a thick scar is stronger than the skin around it.

It was my first dead body and I waited for the appropriate feelings. I didn’t know what feelings to expect, which was worse than realising that I had none.

Greek has a formula for every event – weddings, christenings, buying a new dress, having a haircut, talking about children, going away, coming back, leaving a house, leaving a home. Kalo risiko is for a new house. Kalo means good. Risiko means fate, but sounds ominously like danger.

It often happens that when you look at familiar things through someone else’s eyes you see them as you have never seen them before.

One of the first lessons of life in Greece is that everything is difficult and nothing is impossible.

Where I come from money isn't to be talked about or flaunted in front of strangers. But Ajax snatched up the wad and counted it out loud, ceremonially, slapping the notes down on the table while the witnesses mouthed the amounts. It was all so public and embarrassing.

Greeks and foreigners lived in parallel universes separated by language and custom. Greeks started work at seven, foreigners at nine. Greeks finished at three and came home for lunch. Greeks went to bed for the afternoon and got up for coffee when the foreigners were having drinks. Greeks went out to dinner when the foreigners were coming out of the taverna to go home to bed.

I was sometimes irritated by the unrelenting inquisitiveness and criticism, but there was no shortage of help or advice or just someone to talk to if I needed it. It was hard to imagine a foreigner descending on an English community and being welcomed with such immediate acceptance and hospitality.

It often happens that when you look at familiar things through someone else's eyes you see them as you have never seen them before.

When we westerners pray we join our hands, close our eyes, kneel, hunch up and put our hands over our faces to close up our bodies. Our God is inside us, his universe inside our heads. When Orthodox Christians pray they keep their eyes open. They hold their heads up and open up their senses to the universe. Their God is outside in a real world.