Starting slow and quiet with the blog, I’ll try posting what I’ve been busy with week by week. This week it’s been music and insect photography.

I’ve learned a fantastic tune from west Macedonia, a 16:8 dance called Leventikos. It’s counted 9+7 (or 2223+223), which is foreign enough for me that the only way I could get to grips with it was to slow down a recording and write it down myself.

Also in the musical world, new strings for my lavta have arrived. With the help of some photos I think I have it strung correctly this time.

I’ve sent off photos to not one but two photography competitions. I don’t really expect anything of either, but you never know unless you try.

Just today I finally made good on my long-running plans to revisit the owlfly meadow outside Monolofos (close to Melissochori, the last place we lived before Triadi). And indeed, there were owlflies. Also a spectacularly coloured ground beetle which I think was Calosoma sycophanta (the “Agreeable Caterpillar Hunter”) and another bumblebee scarab beetle (probably Eulasia pareyssei) to file together with the Pygopleurus vulpes we get in our back yard.