Getting me to Greece took a Herculean group effort

AH, that’s better. Back in front of the old word-lathe again after a two-week break in the diary. Life certainly has gone on since I last went on the epistle.

I spent seven days in northern Greece but I very nearly didn’t get to the land of the Hellenes. Days before departure from the nightmare that is Manchester Airport, alarm bells rang.

A what? An NHS Covid passport to travel? Nobody mentioned that, or, if they did, my mind was on other things. To be fair, there have been a lot of those other things, and they haven’t gone away.

But they’re no excuse. I should have known. Trouble is, I am – or, at any rate was – an inveterate traveller, with more than 100 countries under my belt.

It was all so easy then. I took off with a change of shirt and a stash of books, usually solo, and always in the Balkans: Greece or the former Yugoslavia.

But not in the time of restrictions.

It took the combined efforts of the entire Old White Bear Travel Agency to get me to Thessaloniki.

My techy whizz-kid landlord Adam navigated the NHS website to rustle up a digital Covid passport, printed on the spot.

Clifford ran off the Greek government demands, and finally Mick drove me to the airport at 4.30am for a Jet2 take-off. At times, it felt like the whole village was shoving me up the mobile stairway into the plane. Maybe they just wanted rid of me for a week but it was a great collective effort, for which I’m hugely grateful. That’s the thing about village life.

If you don’t know somebody who can help, there’s always someone who knows somebody who can.

After a lifetime in London, it’s a revelation.