BONUS EPISODE: Wild In Greece 2

The one we recorded in the shadow of the Acropolis, on a balmy evening in Athens.

We meant to upload this way earluer - it was recorded in September 2025, but hey, better late than never!

Enjoy

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:14

Each appetite will dive into the water's book of branding, visibility, content, business, and wherever else our ADHD brand title. This is unfiltered, unscripted, occasionally unhinged and totally out. So here we are in Athens, we're into our second week and we've just come out of a beautiful show.

SPEAKER_00 0:37

Where have we been, T, somewhere you've always wanted to go? It's been a real bucket list adventure for me tonight. We've just seen the most beautiful show with a classical orchestra and all kinds of uh instruments from different countries that are all connected around the Mediterranean, and it was this ode to the sea with I don't I couldn't even name half of the instruments, but I want to find out about them now.

SPEAKER_01 0:59

Fascinating watching them on stage, aren't they?

SPEAKER_00 1:01

Well it's been in the Odeon of Herodius Atticus, which is the huge theatre you can see in the Acropolis. Not the first one you come to, the theatre of uh Dionysus, the the great big one, partially partially up the Acropolis, which is a little bit later in time, it's a Roman-built one, um, but I've always always wanted to see a live show there, and we had no idea when we were coming this time that there would be shows on there, and it turns out that it's the middle of um it's called the Festival of Epidavros, and these amazing live shows are on through the week, and after this season there will be no more shows on at the Odeon for the next five years because it's going into a period of renovation. So I've been so lucky we've seen a classical show tonight, and on Friday we're seeing a rock show, but backed by the uh Greek National Orchestra, I think. So it's I it's been absolutely magnificent. The sound in there is just wonderful, and to think that that's thousands of years of people watching shows in in that Odien, it's just and of course it's all open air, you're amid the ruins of the Acropolis, it's it are we're sitting actually now out of this world.

SPEAKER_01 2:15

We're at the foot of the Acropolis. Um there's a beautiful walkway, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 2:19

Yeah, a beautiful pedestrianised boulevard that walks alongside that runs alongside.

SPEAKER_01 2:23

So um, yeah, it's really beautiful, it's lovely to walk in this area and um whatever time of night, and lots of people coming out of the show. That's if you can hear the background noise, that's what's happening at the moment. A lot of people stroll along here. I can imagine doing this into my 80s and my 90s. Um, you certainly have to be quite physically fit because there's a lot of um a lot of hills to and a lot of steps to deal with. Um I had a little bit of a moment because we um had our seats and were only less than halfway up the Odien, but it was high enough for me. And the trouble is because it's quite narrow, you can only get one person.

SPEAKER_00 2:59

Well, it's the it's the original marble steps and marble seating, so you've got to really watch his watch your step there.

SPEAKER_01 3:04

So I was a little bit nervous by the time we got to our seat. I was sweating like a I don't know what. Um, and um yeah, it took me a while to settle in, but once I was in, my goodness me, what a beautiful show, and the voices um of both the male lead and the the female, the ladies singing as well was absolutely amazing, wasn't it? Beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 3:22

And you such a blend Arabian as well, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_01 3:25

Such a blend of music, and you could hear it a lot of the drumming and the drums were so it could be it could be at a um an Irish festival that's on the Broadway.

SPEAKER_00 3:33

You can really see the influences, can't you? You can really hear them.

SPEAKER_01 3:37

It's lovely, and it was just a lovely way to spend an evening. So that's not my normal show that I'd go to, that's not what we'd normally do, but as we said, the one that was coming up for us on Friday is going to be very different, I think. Yeah, but we're slightly lower down in the theatre, which I'm quite relieved about. But the feeling when we went in and looked up above us to see all this original beautiful building in all its glory, all lit up wonderfully, was just something I'll never forget. So, what an opportunity to do that. Um, and it was worth the slightly achy back, because with your bad back, you're sitting out with the.

SPEAKER_00 4:09

Because there are no backs on the seats, of course. Remember, it's it's if you think about uh a Bronze Age or a very, very old Odeon, one of the kind of semi-circular theatres like the one at Epidavros, if you've been there or seen that as well. There's no backrests apart from the very very bottom row. You've literally just you're just on curved marble benches. So yeah, my uh my back's screaming at me a little bit, but it's worth it. And we're currently sitting just behind the tree line, so the pedestrian walkway is in front of us. Um there's then a row of trees, and literally just behind us is is the Acropolis. If I look just behind me, I can see some of the shrines toward the bottom, I can see a covered area where they've got some of the uh some of the stones, some of the um that I think over in that place there, that's where they have a lot of the satyrs, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 5:00

And a lot of the house is pointing now, just beyond the fence that we're in front of.

SPEAKER_00 5:05

Sorry, um that's where they have a lot of the statues and the remains that were brought out of the theatre of Dionysus, I believe, over in that part just behind us.

SPEAKER_01 5:14

And it's gorgeously knit as well, so when you're walking along, you can just take a look as you walk past, it's lovely.

SPEAKER_00 5:19

And it's the feeling along here though, isn't it? It's just magical, and and this might be just me. I know I'm a bit of a Greece nerd and a mythology nerd, but every time I'm in Athens and just suddenly realise, oh my goodness, there's the Acropolis, there's the Parthenon, there's there's the Temple of Athena Nike, there's just oh it blows my mind every time. And I'm the same with all Greek temples to be fair, but this one in particular, I've probably been here before, I think.

SPEAKER_01 5:49

So we've had a lovely evening, we've got a few more nights before we come back to the UK, haven't we? Yeah, we've obviously been doing some work while we're here, which has been fantastic. We're slowly building the so what do I mean, not the agenda task, what's the word? The itinerary. The itinerary, that's the word, for our um work now workshop and um retreat next year.

SPEAKER_00 6:08

We went over yesterday to Vuliamani Lake, which is a beautiful natural lake that you can swim in. We're talking to them about hiring a private area there for the retreat when we run that um next year. So that's going to be really, really special as well. I'm trying to persuade Ash to go back there tomorrow. I also want to get in the sea tomorrow because of course in Athens you're in the city centre, and I can't come into Greece and not go and meet Poseidon, so I need to try and hop on a tram or hop on a bus and or a train and go and go and get into the sea as well.

SPEAKER_01 6:43

Talking about that, we've been using quite a lot of public transport this time, haven't we? We've got braver each time we've come over here. So, as we know, yesterday was an interesting day. Anybody that's been following Taz on on Sachal will see that she wrote a little bit about um the challenges of working with things around ADHD, as of just having cramped by the looks of it on her face over that or something else is going on.

SPEAKER_00 7:05

I was trying to straddle the bench, then realised this is quite a wide concrete bench.

SPEAKER_01 7:10

Let's not say anything else. So, but you were talking about, weren't you, some of the things that came up yesterday because we got a bit lost, didn't we?

SPEAKER_00 7:18

Yeah, yeah, we accidentally, bearing in mind that we've we've stayed in Glafarde, which Glafarda, which is part of the Athenian River Riviera, which is there's a tram that runs straight along the ocean line, straight through into Athens, uh, straight along the seafront. Um we stayed in Glafarde a few years back and trammed it into Athens regularly. And last night we came out of Vuilliamani Lakes, and rather than coming all the way back, we'll stop in Glafada and go and eat there. Um but we got on the tram at a different place, and I checked with ChatGPT before I went on, so I wasn't quite sure. I took a picture of the stop, I told him the name of the stop, and even though the tram that was coming did not have Syntagma Square on the front, um Chat GPT insisted it was the right one and it joined up with the track. And then we got onto the tram and we carried on, and Ashk was saying, I'm I'm I'm not sure, I don't recognise this, and I was going, No, this is fine, this is fine. I remember that, I remember that. And then every now and then I'd feel a little bit unsure, so not wanting to worry Ash, I'd secretly check with Chat GPT and it would insist we were definitely on the right line. I even at one point downloaded a PDF of the tram line, sent it to ChatGPT and said, Look, where we need to go is not on here. And it came back again and insisted that not all the names were on there, and it was only when we went all the way around and Asher recognised it that we'd we'd been to some of the same stations, we'd been through them more than once.

SPEAKER_01 8:48

Whoops, weird.

SPEAKER_00 8:49

But um, I argued with ChatGPT, it told me to get off and then get on one getting on into the other di into the opposite direction, so we did that for a while, and that was still wrong, and it still kept insisting we were right.

SPEAKER_01 8:59

I felt like I was in one of those weird kind of time loops that you see on the sci-fi. Yeah. Because I swear I saw the same people even though it was a different train. And in one of those moments, I was going into this.

SPEAKER_00 9:08

Yeah, it's the tram, wasn't it, rather than the train?

SPEAKER_01 9:10

Yes, sorry.

SPEAKER_00 9:10

So anyway, eventually we get off. I'm at a stop I don't recognise. We're in the middle of somewhere between the Riviera and Athens. We're two hours ahead here, so it was almost midnight. I knew the tram stopped running at about 12. I didn't know what to do because Chat GPT was still insisting we're on the right line. And it was only when I got really cross with it I gave it quite a I gave it a bit of a bollocking, shall we say, told it point blank it was wrong, that it suddenly caught up. Um but by that time Ash had found a lovely local who didn't speak very good English, but his English was better than our Greek.

SPEAKER_01 9:46

Of course.

SPEAKER_00 9:46

And he got his phone out and looked at the timetable and worked out where the next bus stop was where we could get onto a bus that would be a 24-hour service. So between that and speaking to Emma Savage, our wonderful travel expert back at home who's helping us to organise the retreat, we got back in one place. But it was really, really stressful. So my my lesson from that is as much as I love AI, and particularly large language models, you know, they've conf consumed far more information than we we ever will. You can't beat human contact on the ground and human gut feel and information that's that's live and playing out. Um I've had Ash has dropped a bottle. I've had and picked it up again, so that's cool. We've had quite a good um wash-up meeting with Chat GPT in terms of how that happened and how to avoid it happening ever again. But yeah, it's definitely helped us to find some of the trip wires with Chat GPT and reminded us that even though it may know more than us in terms of having more capacity to check lots of different sources, it ain't always right. So don't trust it 100% to with travel information if you're in, particularly if you're you're somewhere that you don't know. What made it worse is that where we'd been communicating with it, our mobiles were nearly out of juice, and not only that, but the power bank that we'd we'd taken for backup was nearly out of juice. So I really was having a panic, a a real world panic. But yeah, that was that was an interesting experience.

SPEAKER_01 11:17

But what I'm saying as well is today we've had some I've had some big realisations on this holiday around um.

SPEAKER_00 11:25

You mean working outing, surely?

SPEAKER_01 11:27

Sorry, working outing, yes. Well it is part work, part holiday. But in the holiday bit, when we've sat down talking about various things, as well as work stuff, I've found that I've realised how much I get myself into a state wherever I may be when I get stressed, as much as this is beautiful, if I'm having a bad day, I'm having a bad day. I could be on the Athenian Riviera, I could be at the foot of the Acropolis as I am now on a beautiful night where I don't need a cardigan, or I've got you know short sleeves on, it's been a beautiful sunny.

SPEAKER_00 12:01

It's 72 degrees now at midnight. Three minutes to midnight.

SPEAKER_01 12:05

Yeah, and I'm and it's and I I'm grateful for all this wonderful beauty around me. Met some wonderful people, really lovely stuff at the place where we're staying, and I can still be in not a good space, and I've realised now that that issue around my mental health has been around since forever. But now I have some more tools in the toolbox to help me with that. But what was the point I was making with that? I thought it was about coming down from yesterday and having the stress of thinking shit, we're lost, it's gone midnight, and yeah, or it's almost midnight. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it was gone midnight by the time we actually got on.

SPEAKER_00 12:38

Totally right. There's been some big realisations from that as well because we couldn't understand why we were still so taut and tense this morning. And on having some doing some research, of course, with ADHD brains, it works very, very differently when you've had quite an quite an intense, stressful situation. And the idea of being stranded in the middle of Greece and not in a touristy area without any transport, without a phone, that brought up a lot of triggers for me. And today we've both been really achy, really really tired, and apparently it's been it's been a cortisol and adrenaline flood. And for people with ADHD and lot and and other um neurodivergent elements as well, uh the cortisol and the the the the chemicals our bodies release rent when we get stressed don't leave the body as regularly and as swiftly as they do for a neurotypical person. So it's kind of colloquially known as as a cortisol hangover.

SPEAKER_01 13:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:38

And it's been really interesting today. And I think it was the contrast, because we said earlier, we were at Villiamani Lakes yesterday for most of the day, which was absolutely beautiful, and it was the contrast between the beauty and the absolute relaxation there, and then going into this very high stress situation.

SPEAKER_01 13:56

I agree.

SPEAKER_00 13:56

Late night revellers.

SPEAKER_01 13:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:59

Um speaking of Greece, um, I I do need to make a huge, huge apology uh for the wonderful people of Greece. I don't know why I said it, but on our last off the cuff podcast, I said that Greece was a Catholic country, and the second I listened to it back, I went, no, it's not, it's Greek Orthodox. So I'm really, really sorry for the majority of people in Greece for for somehow getting you christened in in Italy. Um I know it's not. I think Catholicism is something like two per cent in our Greek. Baptise too. Possibly. But yeah, that's a huge apology for me. It's not uh Catholic, it's Greek Orthodox. So um again, I know this, I don't know why I said it. I don't think Ash caught it either in the moment. We were just so in flow and and out it tripped. I don't know, Greek Orthodox, massive, massive, huge apologies to anyone I've inadvertently offended with that. It was absolutely um unplanned, of course. Of course. But that aside, beautiful, beautiful country. We're so pleased to be here. We've got so many ideas coming through, and you were talking about the realisations you'd had, Ash. I think where you were gonna go, that's the off topic bit. Okay, one of the realisations was about you externalising things and it being an inside job. I think that's gonna help us a lot when we get home.

SPEAKER_01 15:18

Well, every time I hear that when people say it's an inside job, yeah, exactly that. It's so fucking oh I swore, sorry. The F-Red too. Such a cliche, isn't it? It is, it's a cliche, and it's like it makes me groan a bit and go, but actually, yeah, yes, it is. Um, but it's a realisation for me. Exactly, they agree. I realize it for me that it has been an inside job and it always has been, and it's down to me to to not to project and not to put my shit onto other people or or blame exterior.

SPEAKER_00 15:50

So for instance, when you get stressed at home, you'd say things like, Well, we've got too much stuff in the house, it's because we haven't cleared this, that's because we're in a mess, we've got too much stuff.

SPEAKER_01 15:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:59

It's because the dogs are barking, it's because Tilly's getting older and he's waking us up in the night, all of these things which can be factors that don't help you mood.

SPEAKER_01 16:06

No.

SPEAKER_00 16:07

But that's not what's at the root of it, you've realise.

SPEAKER_01 16:10

No, and that's a massive one for me, and it may sound I'm sure but anybody that knows me will go, Damn, it's obvious. But it's for me, it's a real moment of clarity on that. So that's really encouraging because often when we get to the point where we're about thinking about going back to the UK, doing all of you know, getting back into the routine of stuff in the UK, and if I'm not mindful of that, you know, the stress can build, we can go both get a bit stressed before we leave the airport on that day when we go back. Um, and I don't want that, I don't want to create that before we even get home because you know I do love our home and I love our life and I love our family. Um so it's a real one for me to work with, and it's been really good. And I've just sat here just over dinner. You know, what I love about Greece as well is it's not you know, in the UK you can sit out for a while, but obviously A, you haven't got the weather very often, but even if you have sometimes it's that oh must you've eaten now, move on, move on. Here anybody who's spent time in Greece, you will know you can sit with one glass of wine or a or a bottle of water and just sit and just chat away and just chill for hours if you want to, they're not gonna chase you on. I love that. So, of course, that's given us lots of time outside of yes, talking about loads of work stuff and getting loads of plans going, but also talking about really personal stuff that impacts us individually, but also us as a couple, um and uh you know, our future together. So there's lots of exciting things we've been talking about, loads of dreams and things that we've kind of clarified and talked about, and uh who knows what's next. You know, there's some exciting things, some scary things, but some exciting things too. So I can't wait to see where we go with things that we've talked about here.

SPEAKER_00 17:55

So, what can we share with with our listeners that might actually help them? What's something that they could perhaps learn from or action or look at from the experiences we've been having this this past few weeks?

SPEAKER_01 18:05

It's taking the time, it's taking time for you. I've realised that certainly in the last I'd say the last couple of months at home before we came out here, as usual, what happens is we are working like Trojans. Anybody that works for yourself, you'll know this one. You've got your own business, you're self-employed, you haven't got anybody else on the team, you've got a very small team, so you've got limited amount that you've outsourced, so there's a lot that's on you, and we were running ourselves ragged trying to get ready to go away. Um, but up until that point, really knowing that this was coming up in September, really, I think it's about taking stock early on so that you can prepare for the fact that you know that last week or so is going to be a little bit tougher because you're trying to just get things sorted out before you leave. That's one of the things I've learned. Also, about daily checking in with yourself. How many times do we hear people saying you should be doing this and start the day and get you know devoted stuff for you for your own self-care? And I that had gone out the window for me the last few months, couple of months I'd say, particularly before we left for here. So it's a reminder to do that. Take that time in the morning, journal. I've been journaling here, which is fantastic because we've got this lovely apartment, and I just sit there on this fantastic sofa. One day I hope to have a sofa just like it because it's great for my back. Wasn't that also part of your realisation? What's that?

SPEAKER_00 19:21

Carpenter.

SPEAKER_01 19:22

That when you when it's little moped.

SPEAKER_00 19:25

When we first turned up here on the first night, you hated the apartment because you said it was like a cement mixer. Yeah, I did.

SPEAKER_01 19:36

I'm not proud of that.

SPEAKER_00 19:37

It makes me laugh. It's very modern and and furnished with very, very you know, that furniture that's that's that's a piece of art in its own right. It's like that.

SPEAKER_01 19:47

Well, you did one of the things, should we confess to that? One of the things we did, because you knew I'd was down with it overnight the first night. Yeah. Until I warmed to it and now I love it, of course.

SPEAKER_00 19:56

Like I'm like I'm like that with most things. But let's just go into that for a moment. That was part of the realisation, wasn't it, that you came from home with your stress and looked for things that were wrong.

SPEAKER_01 20:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:07

And now you love it. So how's that switched to you? You came here, you looked around the apartment, you found some you found some chips on the base of some of the chairs.

SPEAKER_01 20:15

Yep. So what? You know. And also the fact that there's only one big picture in there, and I said, look, that's all grey, and why can't that be another there should be another picture there and another picture there?

SPEAKER_00 20:26

The guy on one of the electric scooters going for.

SPEAKER_01 20:28

Yeah, there's not enough colour, there's not enough colour in this apartment, and the one next door I know because I've seen it on the website, has been green, it's lime green, that would have been much nicer. So there I go.

SPEAKER_00 20:37

How did you move from that finding fault to recognising you're in a beautiful place?

SPEAKER_01 20:43

I just had a word with myself. I mean I before we came away, um, I've been having regular um therapy sessions for the last, I don't know, four or five months now, must be six months now, I think. Yeah. And my therapist is bloody brilliant, he's absolutely brilliant, um, and he's lovely. He knows how to be there for me and work with me in a way that is that challenges me a bit. But on that last session before I came away, I was talking about various things, and he said to me, he was not letting me get away with stuff, he was saying to me, Where's your evidence? Where's your evidence for that? You know, thoughts, feelings, all the rest of it. We're talking about all of that. Um, and that was one of the things that came through again. It was like, Where's your evidence for that? You know, you've got this beautiful place, it's not this is your stuff, your internal shit, you're not processing, you're throwing it all out and putting it on this wonderful apartment. You've got staff here that are doing everything they can to make your stay as pleasant as possible. Um, the first couple of days they do it every day. They always ring us up if we're not out of the apartment. Not to check up on us, no, but just to see if we're gonna have to do it. Do we want any service? Can we help in any way? You know, do we need some nice new dressing gowns, you know, some clean new ones, new slippers, anything else? Do we need anything else for the room? Um I've forgotten the point I was making. No, it's gone.

SPEAKER_00 22:00

But you've m you went from hating your surroundings and finding fault with it to realising that it was beautiful.

unknown 22:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:08

And it was how you had that flip because you were talking about happiness being an inside job, that cliche.

SPEAKER_01 22:13

I think there's a lot of fear, there's a lot of anxiety. What happens is when I'm anxious, I project out. So for instance, tonight, as a classic example, one of my things that I've got to say, this holiday I've noticed I've had a few balance problems, and because I've put on a bit of weight, I've noticed it's been a bit tougher to walk around this time. Yeah. Um so I've had a few times when I felt a bit out of control. Getting in there tonight, knew it was quite a height, not particularly good with heights. Going up on that staircase somewhere and worrying that I was going to overbalance, I'm immediately going, Well, they should have had some handrails. I'm swearing again, for goodness sake. Handrails and an ancient. I know, for goodness sake. Something, something I did. Exactly. Why would you? Um so and realising that's ridiculous. I should just get a hold of yourself. Come on, work this through. It's just fear. You're just anxious and you're fearful. So you've got to, what can you do to calm yourself down and help yourself to feel calmer so you can you can stop blaming exterior factors? External factors. Stop doing that, stop projecting it out, stop throwing it at anybody that just gets in the way. And unfortunately for you, that's very often you. I'm sorry for that. No, but it's but it's a big realisation. So that you know, combined with that realisation on the holiday and then working holiday, um, that is has been massive. So that's helped me flip it. So now the challenge is to take that home when I go home because it's not anything about the house. Yes, the house does need decluttering a bit, it does need redecorating, etc. But none of it is a massive job.

SPEAKER_00 23:50

And none of it is actually the the the your your mood is not actually the result of any of it. No. So your message for people listening that's you know, when you're feeling in a bad mood, when you're feeling grumpy or anxious or stressed, look at where you are knee-jerking into blame, yeah, and recognise that however you are feeling that comes from you, yeah, not from the outside. It's a huge thing. It is massive.

SPEAKER_01 24:16

And I think it's just as part of it, I think, is learned behaviour. Yeah. Because I think you know, I've been around people in the past, maybe, have also done that, yeah. And that's not taking it away from me. I own that because I need to learn from that too, and I need to work on it. It's something that I need to work with and work on continually, it's a continual thing. But the fact that that's come up again this time, and what I find fascinating is that the first week we were here, I think we mentioned it in the first podcast, was the thing around the masks. We went to see this wonderful theatrical show, didn't we? With the within with all the masks on, and that for me was all about you know taking those masks off, and I feel like I feel like I have quite a bit this um working holiday. It's been a real it's been a real I own now. So I thank Greece for that. It just gives you the time and the space to be able to go a bit deeper, and the journaling aspect, that's what I was going to say as well, is journaling aspect. Journaling is so important. I can remember the first session I had with um with my therapist, and it was all about do you journal occasionally and I poo-fooed it for years. I can remember having a conversation with somebody I know quite well in a similar line of business to me, and she was very you know enthusiastic about Germany. I was like, oh for goodness sake, everybody's talking about it, blah blah blah. You know, really cynical about it. And actually, it's been really helpful for me to the point where I've actually taken a course and I'm you know midway through a qualification for a German for that reason because I know the benefits it's had for me, so I want to share that with other people.

SPEAKER_00 25:46

And again, it's a lot of it's something that a lot of people book against, especially those of us who are neurodiverse, and it's usually because we think we've got to do it in a certain way, but it hasn't. And the interesting thing again for this working holiday is we deliberately have been doing a lot of the exercises that we want to build into the retreat. I love that too. That was really lovely when we took that into the agora. Yeah, so we have been, although there's been downtime, when there's been downtime, we've still been building in a lot of the practices that we want to bring onto the retreat when we run that here, which is why we're kind of tripping up and saying holiday, like when it is a working holiday, we haven't a lot of it hasn't felt like work, so we've had a lot of different days, isn't that good though? Because surely when you love what you do, can you all say that there's another cliché, but when you love what you do, it doesn't feel like work. No, and there's a danger in that too for another podcast. Um, but we've had lots of meetings with different venues that we're going to. We've been checking out lots of different again venues as well. We've been checking out different routes to get to and from the different attractions, we've been practicing and trying out the exercises we want to bring into the retreat next year.

SPEAKER_01 26:53

It's only got a few new ones since we've been here.

SPEAKER_00 26:55

Yeah, and that's actually brought up a lot of stuff for us, including you know the stress and the anxiety and some of the stuff around that. So it's been it's been really, really worthwhile. So uh on that note we've been talking for for nearly half an hour now. We weren't planning on recording any podcast while we're here, this will be the second one, and we are planning to go back to the ancient Agora again before we come home and maybe record another one in there. Um, but I hope you've got something from this. It might not be quite as high-tech as the podcast we do at home, which are already really lo-fi, because we haven't brought microphones or anything. This is literally just us talking into a recording on my iPhone and then running it through a sound balancer later. But we'll get this uploaded and we hope that we hope that you'll enjoy listening. Yeah, we hope you'll get something from it.

SPEAKER_01 27:45

It's been good. We're hoping we've given you a taste of Greece and a taste of Athens and some of the lessons that we've learnt so far from being here. And as I said, we've got a few more days here which we're looking forward to, and bringing back all the stuff that we've discussed so that we can get this lovely retreat underway for next September. So if you're interested, anybody seriously, we're gonna have a limited number of spaces on that.

SPEAKER_00 28:06

I think we're nearly full already, so you've got to register your interest quickly. It's a bit like Heart of Speaking next year. That's that's already filling up. Um so absolutely that. So let us know. Um, drop us a line quickly if you want to be part of it. And thank you for listening.

SPEAKER_01 28:21

Yeah, it's been lovely, hasn't it?

SPEAKER_00 28:22

Or as in Greece, Efkalistal.

SPEAKER_01 28:26

You say it's so much better than I can't I can't get the accent. I've got to learn Greek. I think you were, and I've got to look I've got to learn the language, because I can say yeah, you know, yes, no, and thank you, and that's it. So rude. I know that's very rude. I know that. You heard somebody say that the other day. Oh, was it the taxi driver?

SPEAKER_00 28:47

It's one of those words that you can kind of say in just somebody described it online a few days back as it being in uh used in the same way that a gay man uses the word bitch. Oh, okay, right, okay. So it's one of those that can either be used in seriousness or in jest or as a term of endearment. Um but yeah, malacca.

SPEAKER_01 29:05

Well that's I've learned everything today, really, haven't I?

SPEAKER_00 29:08

It's a very, very rude word, but it's it's one of those. In the same way that um people from um Essex like my favourite C-word, favourite one-syllable C word. And of course that's a terrible word, but depending on the tone and the intonation when it's used, it can be everything from a friendly gesture through to teasing through to uh an insult.

SPEAKER_01 29:30

So anyway, on that note, um we didn't do that together. Should we do it again?

SPEAKER_00 29:37

If not before. Because we're of course we're we're giving all these bonus ones at the moment, so it might not be a change.

SPEAKER_01 29:42

What day is it? It's a Wednesday. Wednesday, so this probably won't go. This will probably go tomorrow. You're not going to do that tonight now, Ted, because it's late. It's now quarter past twelve, and if you want to go back to the lovely lake tomorrow, and the beach. And the bit of crumbs, we've got lots to do tomorrow.

SPEAKER_00 29:59

Yeah, but the beach is over the road from the lake.

SPEAKER_01 30:01

This is a question for our listeners. Are you more of a kind of hotel pool kind of person or lake kind of person rather than the ocean?

SPEAKER_00 30:08

You don't tend to have hotel pools in Athens because we're just down from the Riviera.

SPEAKER_01 30:12

No, I know, but I'm just thinking about because for me personally, I think I'm more of a pool and a lake kind of person, rather than a sea kind of person because of all the sand just gets everywhere, and that just I get it.

SPEAKER_00 30:24

So my ideal tomorrow would be pop over to the beach, have a quick dip in there. Be in the sun for long enough to my for my cosy to dry off a get bit, put my clothes on over the top and then pop over the road to get back into really many lakes.

SPEAKER_01 30:36

And also, it wouldn't be like that that kid on TikTok. Has anybody seen that this week? I saw it this morning. The kid that had a little tiny had something in his ear, went to get it checked out and it was a little tiny crab in his ear. I mean that's you know, that's why I prefer the I don't think you're gonna get those.

SPEAKER_00 30:52

If I ever get crabs in my ears, I'm gonna be asking you who you've been naughty with. Anyway, on that note, see you next Tuesday, if not before. You've been listening to Awesomely Off Topic with Townshawn and the Gluaton. Follow or subscribe so you don't miss whatever one tangent we want to then next. And if you want to find us, you can. We're very Googlable.