Something other than "the situation"

It has been a glorious Spring here in Greece – as though Nature insists on proving that as long as there are flowers, bees, butterflies and lots of cheeky, noisy blackbirds then there is Hope. And the flowers, blossom and shiny new leaves have been quite breathtaking this year!

So I walk the dog in the cool of the morning, with my camera ready to snap away at wisteria, lilac, roses, poppies and chamomile, just to record the extraordinary splendour of being part of the rebirth after the cold winter when most people piled on the jumpers instead of using priceless heating fuel and, as I walk, I put the world to rights.

At one section of our daily stroll there are banks of acanthus plants with their huge, glossy, lush leaves and stiff pokers of white and grey flowers and it made me wonder if a Greek sculptor back in 500BC, possibly also walking his dog in Corinth, looked at the same leaves and flowers and thought to himself “oh they’d be good on top of a column, bit tricky to carve, well, much harder than a Doric and quite a bit harder than the symmetrical curves of an Ionic – but it would be fun to try and think how grand they’d look – wonder if it would catch on?”

  

 Well, we know the answer to that as there are Corinthian columns all over the world, no self-respecting neo-classical building would be complete without them so as I continue to walk the dog and put the world to rights I will say a special ‘thank you’

 to that unknown craftsman, his Eureka moment,

and the beauty that he created that lives on today.

Corinthian Columns, Temple of Zeus, Photography: stevetopper.com

www.stevetopper.com