LUCKY TO BE HERE

Here it is at last. The book about my life in Skiathos that I have been promising to write (& have been working on) for the last 7 odd years.

It is the story of how I came to Skiathos in 1972, what made me decide to stay here, and most of what happened to me here. (If I tried to write down everything, the book would never get finished!)
I have not written it in a definite chronological order, as I find that rather boring and, to be frank, I cannot remember a definite timeline for everything. So it is split up into sections that I think are relevant to each other: "Fire," and "Water", and "Animals", for example.

In all my time here and with all our building, working and gardening projects, I have been helped by a huge amount of people. People who have worked with me and people who have given me some lessons in life.
I cannot possibly list everyone, but you all know who you are, and if you are reading this, you all have my everlasting thanks.

It is a free book, that is to say, I am not charging for it, I am publishing it here on this site (with many more photos than in the other versions), and it will also be available as EPUB, PDF, MOBI (for Kindle), & MS Word formats as free downloadable files. It is also published as a physical book, using Amazon's publishing facilities, but obviously, this has a cost and therefore will not be free (as Amazon, at least, wants its cut!).

Why am I publishing it for free?

Well, during my researches of publishers, I discovered that they all wanted to edit or change what I had written. This goes right against my nature (I hate to be directed or "edited"). As readers of my Skiathos Newsletters will know, my writing is very spontaneous (rather as my life has been) & I think (perhaps mistakenly, & possibly with a certain amount of hubris) that I write better this way.
- An addendum here: after feedback from writer friends and a professional editor friend, I had to accept that the book DID need some editing. So my friend, Angie, who lives in Amsterdam and translates books, etc, from Dutch to English, offered to edit the book for me for free. The result is available in the Downloads section and in the Amazon books section. However, the editing was done in Word, and that is an awful program to try to turn into html, so my original version is still available to read online in the Web Book section. My greatful thanks to Angie. Here is a link to her web site: http://angietranslates.nl/

Subsequently, my good German friend and windsurf guru, has taken the time and effort to translate the book into German and you can download a Word version of that on the Downloads page.

However, this book (& the web site) has cost me a lot of effort and time, so there is a little "DONATE" button on each page, just in case you feel that I am deserving of some recompense. If nobody sends me anything, that's alright too. As Lida has told me many times, "Just get it written down.", so at least my children and grandchild can know the story behind their lives.

If you want to read this online, just click on the "Web book" link. The web version has many more photos than the book and ebook versions. To download it for your favourite ereader, click on "Ebook downloads", and if you would like to read it as an old fashioned (but still very fashionable) book, click on "Physical Book".

I have also made a page of many photos, some from our earliest days (& not in great condition, rather like the one on this page) and many from later times, all the way through to the modern day. Click on "Gallery" to see these.

In addition, I have made a page where you (the reader) can give me some of your memories, or disagree with my memories ('cos we all know what a faulty and selective thing memory can be). There is also the possibility to upload photos which have some relevance to my story. As a web site is a responsive and flexible medium, I might well modify some of my pages and may make another gallery page for other people's photos.