Chilean Memories #6: Child of Frost
Chilean Memories #5: Albatross
Chilean Memories #4: Fire and Ice
Chilean Memories #3: Petaca
Chilean Memories #2: Firecrown
Chilean Memories #1: Under a Cloud
End of the Line
Flight EZY2804 to Bristol, Somewhere over Greece. 13.08.
Inch by inch, mile by mile, the wild ride of the summer of โ26 is drawing to a close. Outside itโs approaching the high 30s again, but the fierce heatwave that has held the British Isles in its grip all summer is being swept away by the first cool winds of autumn. Over the last two months Iโve seen it all: scorching heat, howling blizzards, thunder, rain and snow; mist, fog and diamond dust. It seems only right that as my life settles back into some kind of order, the weather should follow suit.
It took just shy of two hours to get from the apartment to Eleftherios Airport, but I did add to the commute by walking to Syntagma Station via the National Garden. I didnโt want my last memory of Athens to be the air-conditioned carriage of the underground, and I needed a wake-up. A steady drip on the plastic roof over the patio beside the bedroom kept me up late last night, until I used a bit of science and drowned it out with a rain track, after which I fell asleep in seconds. Fun fact: the constant change from sound to silence in a steady leak triggers the bodyโs defence mechanisms, anticipating a threat for as long as the sounds continue to change. White noise, on the other hand, is far less threatening, no matter the volume. The signal wasnโt superb, so thank goodness somebody thought to upload several hoursโ worth of rain recordings to Spotify – I wouldnโt have cared much for a YouTube ad waking me up every five minutes.
August is nearly over. Just over a week of summer remains – but itโs certainly been a summer to remember. Iโm not sure I deserve even half of the miracles Iโve had the good fortune to witness since I stepped out of the door back in July with a backpack, a suitcase full of winter clothes and a smart new wedding suit – but Iโm grateful for every single one of them.
Itโs very easy to hit thirty-two and look around at your world with a rising sense of anxiety as everyone marries off and starts to lay down roots. Find them while youโre young, they say – and yet here you are, single and rootless. When will it be my turn, you catch yourself asking. But I think Iโve cracked it. The question you should be asking yourself is very different. Would the child I was look at me now and take heart?
I think he would. I havenโt found Her, but I have found my way back to the thing that made me happiest: the wild. If the eight-year-old me knew that in my thirties Iโd be traveling the world in search of pumas, albatrosses and giant tortoises, I think heโd be ecstatic. Nobody could ever dream of replacing Sir David Attenborough or Valmik Thapir (or any of the great wildlife presenters of my childhood) but the fact that I get to live in the world they showed me when I was just a boy is the greatest gift of all.
What was the highlight of the summer? Itโs such a difficult question. Dancing with Alex and Elena at their wedding? Teaching my first ever English Literature class? Celebrating Spainโs victory over Argentina in the World Cup Final? Swimming with turtles, sailing with albatrosses or watching a fully-grown mountain lion tread through the snow just feet away? Every one of them has been written upon my heart, which is now so very full. I thought my happiness was conditional upon finding my other half, wherever She may be, but this year Iโve learned to find it in myself by allowing me to be me, the way I always wanted to be.
September is always a bumpy landing. September brings Inset, the annual safeguarding talk that makes me question whether I believe in this job, and the return of a fresh-faced generation of students that remind me that Iโm in the best line of work in the world. September will be familiar – I know what to expect – but this time, something feels different. I donโt think Iโve ever gone into the start of a new school year quite so positive. I just have a feeling that, finally, things are going my way.
Oh, for sure. There will be trials ahead. There always are. But I know I can face them head-on as a man, supercharged by a summer of light and life and animal encounters.
In many ways, I havenโt changed since I was eight. Iโm still writing the same book about a a brave hero and a red-haired princess. Iโm still listening to Juan Martรญn and Michael Jackson. Iโm still singing in school choirs, dancing with every fibre of my being when the beat comes on and playing a passable passage on the violin when the occasion demands. Iโve added a few languages to my roster since then, changed my look a few times, and loved and lost and learned to live again – but fundamentally I still hold true to the same values I built up as a kid. Teaching has allowed me to hold onto these things, and for that much I am truly grateful.
England welcomed me home with golden fields and petty public transport pencil-pushers. The bus driver from Bristol wouldnโt let a girl on the bus because she didnโt have the right ticket and wasnโt helpful at all when she looked distressed, there being few other buses around on a Sunday afternoon. Three of us got up to help her out but the man in front got there first and bought her a single ticket. On top of that, I arrived just in time to catch an earlier train, but the man at the ticket barrier at Bristol Temple Meads wouldnโt let me through on account of the fact that my ticket was for an hourโs time – โyou donโt need to be on the platform yetโ. With two thirds of the southbound services cancelled, he was probably trying to stop me from using my Advance Single ticket on board an earlier train where there would almost certainly be no ticket checksโฆ but really. Iโm out of the country for nearly two months and the most trouble I have with public transport is back to back on the day I get homeโฆ? If thereโs one thing I canโt stand itโs jobs-worthiness, and we English are especially bad at it. When I manage to escape this country, that kind of behaviour will be top of the list of the reasons that drove me away.
Anyway. Iโm home, in the familiar comfort of my flat, and July Me had the common sense to stock up so Iโd have something to eat when I returned in case the supermarkets were closed – which, being a Sunday afternoon, they inevitably are. Just occasionally I surprise myself by planning ahead.
Here ends the Great Adventure of 2026. Itโs been a blast. To those of you who have been reading my adventures, known and unknown, thank you for coming along for the ride! Itโs nice to know Iโm not always speaking into the void. Iโll write a little less when term kicks off, but do stick around for the next adventure – whenever that may be! BB x
Grand Tour
Smile Restaurant, Athens. 20.02.
I was half-tempted to go to bed without eating this evening, but after walking past a sign in a shop window saying LOOK AFTER YOURSELF in big white print and then seeing a team of chefs preparing sea bass in the next window along, my instincts got the better of me. Chances are this will be my last meal out of the summer, so I might as well make it a memorable one.
I got to bed shortly after six fifteen, after Thomas and Maria dropped me off at the apartment. The wedding festivities went on until well into the early hours of the morning, with the last of the dances wrapping up around half three. Alex, Peter and company enjoyed a few Cuban cigars, blowing liquid smoke rings into the night sky, while the venue staff slowly started to pack up. There was talk of a swim to cool off – had I brought my swimsuit? No, I hadnโt! But that didnโt seem to be a problem. A short pit-stop at Elenaโs parentsโ house sourced me a pair of trunks and then we found a parking space down by the beach.
Naturally, at half past four in the morning, it was nearly deserted. Just a couple of Greeks listening to trap music over a boombox and a lonely soul sitting on the breakwater and watching the stars.
Iโve never done a night swim before – at least, not in the Mediterranean. I might have gone for a dip after dark with Lucy and Emily many years ago in the summer I left school, but those memories are hazy now – and the cold waters of Whitstable are incomparable to the Aegean. It felt like stepping into a bath. The water was so clean and so clear that I could see all the details of my toes and the ripples in the sand below by the distant lights of the beachfront alone.
My mother used to tell me stories of starlight swimming in the Mediterranean in Barcelona back in the 80s. Iโve clearly been missing out. These beaches are absolutely rammed during the day, but by night you pretty much have the place to yourself, and the water is only slightly less warm. To the Greeks, perhaps, it might have been tepid, but after the chill of the North Sea and the cool waters of the Humboldt Current, it felt incredible. I didnโt feel in the least bit tired, either, though that may have more to do with the fact that Iโm almost certainly still on South American time rather than the restorative properties of the Mediterranean Sea.
I slept until noon and waited out the heat of the midday sun in the cool of the apartment. I ummed and ahhed about going up to the Acropolis and ultimately decided Iโd be mad to be in Athens and not see its most iconic feature up close. Missing Machu Picchu wasโฆ a choice, Iโll admit. But Machu Picchu costs hundreds to see, whereas the Acropolis is a flat 30โฌ. So I packed a bottle of water and set out into the afternoon.
Athens is very quiet around four in the afternoon in August. Most of the city folk are sensibly avoiding the lingering heat. Itโs only when you reach Makrigianni Street and the Acropolis Museum that the city suddenly springs to life – with tourists, that is. Germans with peaked caps. Koreans with parasols. Spaniards with GoPros and Americans with sweat-stained XXL tee-shirts and portable fans. All of them defying the 37ยฐC heat to see one of the most famous architectural treasures in the world.
You have to meet your timeslot with these Acropolis tickets, but once youโre in, you can spend as long as you like in the area. The city seems to descend en masse shortly before sunset around 7pm – the lines were immense as I left – so I wouldnโt recommend leaving your visit to the last minute.
With time on my hands, I hunted for cicadas in the olive trees along the path. It wasnโt hard. Once you get your eye in, theyโre very easy to spot, despite their cryptic camouflage. You just need to listen closely and look for the little white stripe at the bottom of their abdomen.
Check the trunks from different angles at first as your eyes adjust, because they really can disappear against the surface of the bark. Once you recognise the white stripe, youโll see them everywhere. I found four on a single trunk by the Sanctuary of Dionysus.
It can be hard to find peace and quiet within the Acropolis complex, as its swarms with tourists at almost all hours of the day. But there are quieter spots. Curiously, the Erechtheion doesnโt get as crowded, despite being directly opposite the Parthenon itself. I suspect many tourists only go up to the great temple itself and then come straight back down.
An olive tree grows in its ruins, in the same spot where the sacred tree that was the symbol of Athenaโs gift to her namesake city once stood. A couple of Americans called it a cicada (sick-aider) tree when asked. Two others said they were glad theyโd got ChatGPT to give them the lowdown so they didnโt have to hire a guide. I even heard one family – specifically the adults – opine that the only way they could have got a crane inside the Parthenon was by airlifting it into the centre by jet.
Sometimes – just sometimes – Iโm extremely grateful that my American adventure ended in heartbreak. Some of the most intelligent people Iโve had the fortune to encounter are from the States, itโs true, but also, some of the dumbest things Iโve ever heard have been said in that American drawl.
Iโm always terribly conscious that Iโm just another tourist with a smartphone in places like this, so I sat in the shadow of one of the Parthenonโs colossal columns and sketched the temple ruins in my journal. Iโd like to think somebody might have sat here doing just that a hundred years ago, and perhaps a hundred years before that, in the time of the Grand Tour, before Apple put a camera into every hand on the planet.
That being said, it is a fantastic place for people watching. So many different people from so many different parts of the worldโฆ You could come up here with a sketchbook and spend hours drawing, if you had the time.
The internet seemed to think that wild tortoises might be found around the boulder-strewn path up to the Eptathrono, just opposite the Acropolis. I looked everywhere, but I didnโt find any. I guess I lucked out with the giant tortoises last week, which are – admittedly – a heck of a lot easier to spot. Still – you should always leave something to come back for, right? The view from the top was worth the climb, too.
Iโve made it back to the apartment and have managed to put my feet up at last. Iโm quite happy with this afternoonโs adventure. This time tomorrow – for the first time in nearly two months – Iโll be back home in Somerset. All good things come to an end eventually, right? But not before their time – and it really has been a truly wonderful time. The very best of times.
I might post once more tomorrow to hit a 50-day streak. Itโs been fun writing every day all summer, but it does help when you have something to write about.
See you in the UK! BB x
Guest of Honour
Lake Vouliagmeni, Athens. 22.10.
Iโve been to a couple of weddings in my thirty-two years – one intimate, one magnificent – but Iโve never been to one quite like this. The backdrop is totally different. No Ed Sheeran, no Pharrell Williams, no Walk the Moon. Instead, the haunting double-reeded hum of a zurna floating over the hypnotic beat of a daouli drum. Cicadas screeching in an almost perfect polyrhythm. Every now and then, an enormous praying mantis – known to the Greeks as the Virgin Maryโs little horse – flutters past the blue lights, casting a fleeting shadow over the dancefloor.
I did always love a ceilidh, but this is something very different. It feelsโฆ older, somehow.
The festivities started last night, with a motorcade ride to the brideโs house to dance by the light of a scarlet flare. Summoned by the revving of no less than six motorbike engines, the bride and her family came down into the street to dance with the groom, his brother and Peter, a colourful character from Naxos. It was only a flying visit – some lingering tradition of not spending too much time with the bride the night before the wedding, perhaps – and after the dances were over and the flares were used up we rode back home.
I spent the morning recovering lost sleep (Iโm still adjusting to European time) and made it over to Alexโs flat just after three oโclock in the afternoon – in perfect time to catch the ritual shaving of the groom. There seem to be all sorts of traditions to a Greek wedding. As one of the guests of honour, I had to offer him one of his wedding shoes, while his parents set his suit upon his shoulders.
Alex is something of a motorhead, so a motorcade was waiting once again as we set out for the wedding. Each motorcycle had a white ribbon trailing from the handlebars, but the jewel in the crown was a shining scarlet Cadillac hired out for the occasion. Alex insisted I sit in the front, so I had front row seats – quite literally – to the wedding procession as it sped down the highway through central Athens and beyond to the coast.
Alex and Elena chose a beautiful little chapel on a forested hill at the southernmost point of Glyfada. The priest – a young man, but the perfect caricature of an Eastern Orthodox saint – arrived dressed all in blue and smoking a cigarette, but for the ceremony he reappeared in black and gold.
The Greeks seem far more interested in the ritual over the written word: there donโt appear to be many speeches at all in these proceedings, beyond the magic of the Orthodox ceremony itself – which is sung almost in its entirety. No hymns, no readings from the family and friends, no sermon. Just the magic of tradition.
The celebration is taking place just a few minutes away by the shore of Lake Vouliagmeni, under the illuminated walls of a great limestone cliff. The music is predominantly Greek – only every so often does an English or Spanish song slip through the cracks. It feels like being back in the Middle East – a reminder that, in spite of the apparent universality of English, our dominion extends only so far as our influence. Here, as in Jordan, Morocco and Spain, there is a fierce devotion to the ways things were.
In our rush to become a cosmopolitan country, I sometimes feel we lost some of this magic back home in England.
I have no idea what my wedding would look like, because – frankly – I have no idea where I will be. I have dated an Afrikaner, a Pole, a Brazilian, an English girl, an Iraqi and an American – each a different nationality, with radically different perspectives on the future. I suppose Iโd like something traditional – being an incorrigible romantic at heart – but until she appears, I remain open to seeing where the winds of fate carry me.
The only thing I know for certain is that, if and when my time comes, it will not be in England. Somehow Iโve always known.
If it could be even half of what Iโve been a part of today, it would be the wedding of my dreams.
Friendship in the old mould. The kind you read about in books. In the decade weโve known each other, Alex and I have seen each other four times. Once, when we worked together for a couple of weeks at a summer school many years ago. Twice, when he was in London for a show last year. Three times, when he flew out to London with Elena to invite me to the wedding, and here we are at number four. Friendships that survive time, distance and the silence of working life are the most precious of all.
I have already had the most incredible summer of my life, but this just puts a seal on the whole thing. Thereโs not a day of the last seven weeks that I wouldnโt relive. And you know what? After eight years shut away in a boarding school, I think Iโve earned it.
Hereโs to the summer of 2026. A red letter year in every possible way. May it be the first of many more to come. BB x
Boundaries
Gatwick Airport South Terminal, England. 11.19.
Iโm on my way to Athens to celebrate with an old friend who is tying the knot with his long-time partner in a beautiful ceremony in a chapel that looks out over the Aegean Sea. I should be ecstatic but Iโm feeling downhearted at the moment on account of the GCSE results. They werenโt shoddy, by any stretch, but they were way off what we hoped theyโd be – and it all comes down to the grade boundaries.
Itโs got me thinking a lot about how we treat languages in the UK.
Back in 2006, an article by the BBC reported that the study of foreign languages had reached the โpoint of no returnโ. Only two years prior, Tony Blairโs Labour government had taken the decision to make MFL non-compulsory post-14, after which thousands of students elected to ditch French, Spanish and German from their curricula. While Spanish has seen a decent recovery from the initial โfreefallโ recorded – bouncing back from 62.413 in 2006 to 132.680 in 2026 – German has been less fortunate, continuing to decline in popularity nationwide: the relatively healthy 90.311 studying German in 2006 have been whittled down to 32.525 this summer. Some schools are now considering whether it is economically viable to continue to offer languages, which command smaller and smaller classes by the year. Northern Ireland is thinking of scrapping the study of German altogether.
As a language teacher, I naturally donโt like where this is going. What makes things worse, however, are the barriers within the surviving MFL syllabi. There are a number of factors blighting the study of languages that arenโt helping us to promote them in lieu of the flashier, brash-ier and cash–ier subjects like Economics and Business Studies.
The MFL GCSEs are a mixed bag. Sometimes they feel formulaic and predictable. At others they can be surprisingly progressive, asking candidates to describe a photograph about sports where half the players on a basketball court are in wheelchairs, or a family scene showing a same-sex couple and an adopted child of a totally different ethnicity. This yearโs Listening dictation task in the Pearson Edexcel features the infamous โMa petite sลur est bisexuelleโ, read by a childlike voice that really threw my students, who might well have spent the two repeats wondering how and why a little girl would have already decided to self-identify as bisexual – and in the middle of their GCSE exam, no less. Iโm glad weโre on the frontier of pushing positive representation, but I can imagine the response in the nationโs more conservative Muslim students and their families.
Recruiting for A Level is an uphill task with or without the competition from maths and the three sciences – especially with Further Maths elbowing a fourth subject out of the picture so often – since MFL A Levels can be fiendishly hard, relying more on the candidateโs ability to retain a vast breadth of knowledge both historical, political and literary in both spoken and written formats. Add to that the sky-high grade boundaries driven at least in part by the large number of native speakers who take the subject for an easy A and you have a whole host of reasons why students think twice about studying languages. Theyโre definitely a hard A Level, Iโm not about to deny that, but if we donโt get the numbers, we run the risk of leading our country and its children into even more of a monolingual and inward-facing nightmare than the one weโre already weaving, spurred on by the global ill-sentiment toward the ongoing refugee crisis and the perceived erosion of our national identity.
Iโm not sure what to suggest. I do what I can to make learning languages as fun and inclusive as possible. Iโm sure Iโm not the best at what I do – especially since Iโve always seen languages as a pathway to meeting people and telling stories, rather than finding any particular joy in their acquisition for its own sake – but I work hard together with my colleagues year on year to try and convince our students that speaking a second language competently (that is, post-GCSE) is an increasingly rare gift among the English which will take them so far.
I might use this trip of mine as an example. For the first time in a long time, Iโm going to be completely at sea. I might be able to speak seven languages with varying degrees of fluency, but I donโt speak a word of Greek. Iโm so used to being able to muscle in and go native in Spanish, French and Italian that suddenly finding myself in a situation where I canโt manage much more than thank you and goodbye is extremely disorienting. Sure, I could speak English at them and expect to be understood – but that just strikes me as rude at best and colonial at worst.
Iโm tuning in, slowly, but itโs hard from zero. Alex is my host, but heโs the one getting married, so I canโt expect him to spend his weekend translating for me. Thereโs so much Iโd love to do. Iโd love to know what Petros from Naxos is recounting, since he seems to have a raft of stories with proper Greek gusto. Iโm dying to know what Alexโs brother is saying when heโs clearly running through some of the steps for the dances. Iโd like to ask Alex who the girl is with the smile of an angel in the corner of the room. But I canโt do any of these things, because I canโt speak Greek.
Monolingualism is an enormous handicap. Even a capable linguist should remind themselves of the gift they have earned by putting themselves in a position where they are truly lost every so often, if only as a reminder of how precious the ability to move from one language to another really is.
Iโll paraphrase the above for my students when I get back. Whatever it takes to buck the national trend and fight the death of MFL, Iโll do it. I just wish weโd been given a fair idea of the new spec grade boundaries a year ago, so our students knew just how much harder they had to work to get what they deserved.
My body clock is all over the place. Three hours ago I was in the UK, two hours behind Greece – but five hours ahead of Chile, and seven hours ahead of the Galรกpagos Islands, where I was until Saturday. Little wonder Iโm having trouble sleeping.
Iโll report on tonightโs events together with tomorrowโs in one big fat Greek wedding post. I just thought Iโd sandwich my thoughts on languages into my funk over the grades.
Itโs gone two in the morning, which is approaching my usual bedtime in the UK, but probably only halfway through tomorrow nightโs festivities which are due to go on until the dawn. Iโd better try to get some sleep tonight at least. BB x
The Book of Barnabas 