30/01/2017
John Findlater is dead.
So sad, that we have lost our old friend.. The big personality The navigator in life and love, the gardener who created the garden of Ampelos Hotel .
Johnny walker, as he was known all over the Greek island of Folegandros, where you could see him in the furthest end with the hair blowing in the wind, between the rough mountains and the blue beaches. Alone or together with beautiful girls , old friends maybe or young new ones. John the cosmopolite.
Every spring and every autumn John would come to care for the garden of our small hotel Ampelos. Very little land, nearly desert, wind, sun, little water. John what can grow here ? The Greek gardener said plastic flowers. But John made a hole study , Lavender, Aloe Vera, Rosemary, Juka and Oleander , some came with John all the way from England , some from Athens , but the most had their story from Johns stroll to Elenis fine garden in the harbour, Irinis farm café in the village of Ano Meria , the beauties the Agave, the Palm and strong smelling Thyme although from the wild mountains of the the Mediteranean garden. We will plant a tree for John in his garden. One day you should come with James also to see the beautiful garden of his grandfather.
Fotis and I remember our bike trip around in the the oases of Siwa , trying to find the grave of Alexander the Great, many, many hundred kilometers into the Egyptian desert . When we finally came back to Alexandrias old cosmopolitan decadence the waiter asked John : Desert (dessert) Sir ? John replied : No, thank you. We have got enough of it.
In Alexandria John, Fotis and Anne, we visited the house of the old Greek poet Kavafis (Cavafy). . We would like to read one of Kavafis poems in memory of our dear friend John:
VOICES.
Ideal and dearly beloved voices
of those who are dead, or of those
who are lost to us like the dead.
Sometimes they speak to us in our dreams;
Sometimes in thought the mind hears them.
And for a moment with their echo other echoes
return from the first poetry of our lives –
like music that extinguishes the far off night.
Good bye John
❤ Anne
