Despina visited me in Thessaloniki. She would shake her long brown locks at me as we both tried to squeeze pleasurably onto the tiny balcony and look out over Thess, without falling over the railings. Here, as in Kastoria, you could see women coming out to beat carpets, Occasionally Despina would hint that the one rug in my tiny flat could do with at least a good shakeout. I did not want to be observed by my neighbours, and I suspected that all the dust would simply be carried by the breeze down onto the balcony below, so I sneaked out onto the balcony and I shook out the rug and watched crumbs, old bits of dirt and any other filth that had gathered float away in the wind. Of course, some of it settled on the balcony below. Very occasionally, the view had its Rear Window moments.

It was a September evening and I had just got back from a Greek island holiday, and though the islands are kept cool by the meltemi, and Thessaloniki is cooler than Athens, you could not say by any stretch of the imagination that it was merely warm. As I sat there on the balcony. I realised that the evening heat had made everyone open their shutters and I could see into the window of almost every flat down below. On top of that, others were doing exactly what I was doing; enjoying the evening on their balconies. Now, am I an accidental voyeur, or a deliberate one? It certainly felt like Rear Window. Here, a man played backgammon quite vociferously with his neighbour; there, a woman did physical exercises, over there, someone chatted on the phone; a family sat down to eat dinner. No one was doing anything extraordinary like shooting people, or cutting them up, or raging around the flat pulling their hair out, or indulging in some very unusual form of matrimony.
At least I had a choice, and so I could avoid all of this by simply looking at the immediate view rather than the view down below, so to speak.
Just then, someone knocked at my door. So I went and answered it.