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When I was teenager, every evening after supper I had a cup of instant coffee while I watched TV. That was always the best cup of coffee in the day. You can never recover the tastes of yesteryear, but this week I’ve been having a cup of instant coffee after dinner, and through some alchemy, some magic that I hope never runs out, it tastes exactly the same as that coffee I had every night, sitting on my dad’s old cream-coloured leatherette La-Z-Boy recliner.

There are some days when you should stay away from your laptop and your phone because everything that comes through a screen from the world of people who work with cellphones and computers will be bad news or frustrating news or some kind of problem. On days like that, to be able to go out onto your land and work with your hands and your back and your legs and your body for hours and hours until you’re sweating and tired – that is the greatest kind of luck.

When it has been raining and a dirt road has become muddy and a car has driven down that dirt road, creating ridges, and the sun has come out and has dried the mud, when you walk down that dirt road a day or so later you can step on the ridges and feel them crunch and crumble under the soles of your shoes with a most satisfying sound and feeling, like walking on sugar-icing.

In the weekly market in Nafplio I lingered at the honey stall, inspecting the jars, and the old man with the Auden-creased face hesitated, before telling me that he has a special honey, “but it is more expensive”. He reached into a cardboard box and produced a hand-bottled kilogram jar. It is Vanilla Fir, he told me, and solemnly offered me a taste. Vanilla Fir is the most prized honey produced in Greece, harvested from the forests of black fir in the Arcadian mountains at high altitudes above 2000 metres, The bees make the honey directly from the sap of the tree rather than the nectar of the flowers, so it has a low sugar and moisture content and never crystallizes, and they don’t do it every year so it’s very rare and supply is very unpredictable. The vanilla in its name refers to the pearlescent shimmer of the honey, not the flavour, which is a sort of light, bright caramel. In Europe, a retail jar of Vanilla Fir can set you back 50 euros to 80 euros per kilogram. in the US, with its greater economies of scale, a kilogram will be around $35 to $40. The old man didn’t tell me any of that, he just said, apologetically, “It costs 18 euro.” And then, immediately, as if shamed of his rapaciousness, he blurted, “But I sell it to you for 15 euro!” We counted our coins, and told we only had 14 euro, and would go to draw some more money, but he shook his head and took the coins and pushed the jar across the table to us. His wife, sitting on a low stool behind him, shook her head in affectionate exasperation.

In our Greek lesson, Maria the teacher mentioned that there are many superstitions in Greece. Like what? Well, for instance it’s bad luck to give someone eggs after dark. Bad luck for them? No, bad luck for you. If someone wants to borrow eggs from you, you must wait till the morning before you hand them over, otherwise you’ll have terrible misfortune. I would have liked to have spent the whole hour discussing this, but we had to move onto conjugating verbs.

When you’re reading but you’ve been lying on that particular pillow for too long and it has become hot and you’ve flipped it a few times now so the other side isn’t cool enough either, what a delight it is to reach for another pillow, even fuller and firmer than this one, its white linen pillowcase crisp and cool against your neck and the back of your head.

When you walk on the hillside above the house to inspect the olive trees you step on carpets of wild thyme, and it makes a fine, satisfying crunch beneath your feet and the air is filled with a heady fragrance that makes you smile.

I love the feeling of the page as I’m reading. When I’m reading the left-hand page, the thumb of my right hand is lightly on the right-hand page and my right index finger rests on the top, measuring out with satisfaction the pages still to be read, from time to time lightly riffling them like a gambler with his deck of cards. When I’m approaching the bottom of the right-hand page I slide my index finger overleaf, separating the single page from the sheaf to come, ready to turn. The finger makes a slight sssshushhh sound as it slides between the sheets, and I can feel the grain of the paper against the edge of my finger, and the finger-pad against the page, and my thumb is still on this page, ready to help turn. All this without looking, almost absent-mindedly but not at all absent of mind. I like the feel and sound of it, the lightness and pressure of the paper. As we were reading, Jo said: “I like the sound of you turning the page.”