The Island Stories … Part Two, number one (fiction, sort of)

ERESSOS. Picture it.

Autumn licks the sky, clouds white-grey, the Aegean stirs its choppy ripples into summer’s past.

Blue, Aegean blue, clear Blue Flag water laps the footprint shore, swirls sighs around the little stones.

Goodbye.

Umbrellas spike the sand and billow into frilly shade. Not too many now.

The car parks start to clear. The streets, the alleys they breathe again.

In the village, the plane tree leaves shrink and curl, they wither lifeless and drop, quite dead, their usefulness spent.

The cicadas cacophonous in their heated cry, soon too they’ll be gone. Went.

Eressos, cradled by the mountains: a palette of pinks curve soften glow in shortening sunset. Daytime’s scrubby shrubs brown dusky delicious they draw moon slice new slim moon blinks at dark’s secrets.

The stage is set: The Sappho International Women’s Festival starts on Saturday (www.womensfestival.eu).

That means lots of parties and lots of different things to do, and lots of women ambling about, their eyes do the roaming.

Ogle ogle.

I’m keen on the olive talk, the laughing yoga, and the art and music. Oh, and the fashion show.

I may even go swimmin with the wimmin, to the rock.

One thing’s for sure, I’ll be at Portokali in the village at 11 o clock on Wednesday.

The festival is a big girl now. She has a fringe, events that are not part of the official programme.

And the first one is Alessandra Pagani’s photographic exhibition, The Washing Line.

She’s hosting it, from Wednesday September 3, in her Obiettivo Studio, a dream space in her beautiful garden.

I’ll meet people at Portokali every day, at 11am, she says, leaning out the top window of her stone house.

It’s not far from mine but the houses don’t have numbers and the streets and alleys are nameless.

But everyone knows where Portokali is, in the village, just off the plateia.

In Skala, the Queen Bee (www.sapphotravel.com) was busy at her desk last night, as usual.

The festival, the 14^th in a row, is the culmination of summer’s sweat.

Already the Flamingo Bar has hosted a party with the tagline: Take a Chance on Me.

Clearly there’s more than ogling going on.

And with three big parties thundering in the silence of Skala – one on Thursday (Flamingo) and another on Friday (Belle Ville) and the big big festival opening of Saturday at the open air cinema … if punters don’t grab the take me tooshes on the dance floor, maybe they’re out of step.

(ends)