The reason I came to Greece

And why I'm not sure if I should tell you

A black olive rolled down the windscreen, as if to reassure me I was close. After 2500 miles of driving, my destination was just over the next hill, but now Google had awkwardly sent me down a track that only 4x4s could navigate. Squeezing between olive trees that pressed in from both sides, I rolled up the window as little scraping noises told me that my Land Rover would wear the scars from this journey forever.

The track was rough and steeply downhill, requiring low ratio to ensure progress was suitably controlled. I would barely scrape under some of the branches by lowering the air suspension, then I'd have to raise it to off-road height to make sure I didn't ground a sill on a rock or scrape the undertray through a rut. Slow and painstaking. Gratifying though.

I'm using road-biased Michelins so potential punctures are a bit of a concern, but the tread only became obvious at a couple of slippery moments when I squirmed towards the precipitous edge of the track. Just a bit, but enough to spook me. This kind of driving needs more appropriate tyres. I'll upgrade soon.

Deciding what to share with the world

How much of your personal life should you share online? The equation pans out differently for each of us. It can be difficult to resist the narrative often peddled by those with large online followings – an insistence that career success derives from having a large audience, which is built by sharing frequently and openly online. "Document, don't create," as one popular mantra goes, to build your “personal brand”. Success and sharing have become conceptually intertwined, at least in the online spheres that most of us can't fully escape from.

Selection bias is at play here, because you mostly hear this advice from people who have found it to be true. Depending on your social circles, you may rarely encounter a person in real life who has found career success without having a strong social media following; not because such people don't exist but because you can't be part of an audience they don't have.

The result of this narrative is that many of us reveal far more about our lives than has ever been the norm, to exponentially less relevant people as our audience builds. This doesn't sit comfortably with me. I only want to talk about my life with friends over a pint.

So to what extent should you jump on the bandwagon, especially if your living derives from your creative output (or if you would like it to)? Is a “personal brand” really something you want to invest your energy in? I inwardly grapple with this constantly.

(I have drafted a post offering some hypotheses for why many prolific sharers – "content creators" – claim to be introverted, which I'll release at some stage.)

Why I'm in the Peloponnese

I thought I wouldn't write this post, and I still don't know if it's a good idea. Sharing this new part of my life exposes me to ridicule for the mistakes I am bound to make in the coming months and years. Part of my motivation for being here in Greece is a desire for solitude, and I am nervous about undermining that by sharing this publicly. Even though my audience is small, with this post I feel that I may be violating a threshold, and perhaps there is nothing to gain from doing so. But another inner voice believes this to be something worth sharing, and that well-meaning people might like to read it. So before I over-egg this point any further… here goes.

I have bought a little off-grid homestead in the Peloponnese.

It’s an abandoned ruin with holes in the roof, a rotting floor and broken windows, and it has never had electricity or water. But the walls are sound, and it comes with almost three acres of remote hillside containing about 100 neglected olive trees. Buying it outright cost about the same as a small deposit on a semi-detatched box in a grey English suburb.

I had visited a couple of times, but this is my first time here since completing the paperwork. It is the only property I have ever bought, and by far it is the most valuable and intimidating and uplifting thing I own.

So as the Land Rover squeezed down between the scraping branches, crawled across a little concrete bridge over the river (gushing brown after a recent deluge) and clambered its way over the broken rocks up the other side, this was the vision that had brought be me here.

This newsletter will not become a journal of 'My Grecian Life'. That has been done and I have nothing to contribute. (Also, y'know, there's the privacy thing.) Nor will it be a DIY 'how-to' guide to permaculture, timber selection, off-grid water storage and compost toilets, even though all these things are likely to be percolating through the sawdust of my mind for the foreseeable future, so occasional references may pop up. Too much of that quotidian wigwammery (a phrase I have wanted to use for ages) would be tedious, so I will only share what feels meaningful.

I intend to be here for a few weeks at a time, once or twice a year.

So hello from here

My right arm smells of burned hair after a close encounter with a bonfire I lit earlier. I know bonfires feel a bit archaic in 2024, but at this time of year there are constant fires being lit in this valley to deal with the tonnes of off-cuts that are created from pruning the olive trees and clearing the undergrowth between them. (The region is crying out for a local wood-pellet/briquette business to put all this biomass to good use.) Dawn brings an arising cacophony of forest birdsong penetrated by the sound of a distant chainsaw, then another, and the occasional rumbles of old Japanese pick-ups on the move. By lunchtime it is too warm for such work.

I write this from my folding wooden chair in the heat of the afternoon sun. Dogbum Alfie has transmogrified from snoozing sausage into cavorting Balrog wannabe, hurling his squeaky toy at the stone wall of the house. This morning I was clearing more undergrowth, and my outdoor stove (which earlier heated the water I used for washing) is re-loaded with sticks, ready to cook my next meal. My laptop and 12v coolbox and phone and 4G are being powered entirely from the sun, with wattage to spare.

That’s the Instagram version anyway. There is much to do here, but I have the rest of my life to do it.