ευχαριστώ, Athens

I am no longer in Athens. Or Rome. Or the places I visited between. No: I am home. In some ways, it's a relief. A joy, too – the quiet, the stillness, the vast blue sky.

The stop-start rhythm of recent weeks, the prioritising of travel, of seeing and tasting and being and moving, had meant that revisions on my novel had stalled. Now that I'm back, I'm hopeful that I'll slide back into a groove, into ways of working that will (fingers crossed) lead to fruitful accretion rather than scattered, fragmentary, haphazard progress.

It is nice to be back with my books, back with the ink bottles I can replenish my fountain pens with. And yet, there's an ache too. It would be melodramatic to call it bereavement. Certainly, though, there is a sense of loss, of absence. Perhaps I should just note it and leave it to fade away like the Lefko fragrance that I spray on my wrists dissipates. Or maybe I should write and swim my way through it.

Next to me, as I type this: printed treasure I've hauled across the world from Hyper Hypo (my favourite bookshop in Athens): the postcards by Eleanor Lines screen-printed a shocking delicious blue that feature the silhouettes of old Athens doorways. A book about Athens' dense, interminable concrete web of midcentury apartment buildings. Kerkis, a photo essay about a love affair unfolding over a summer on the Aegean island of Samos (that, like the summer, didn't last).

So often I'll take photos and never look at them. And maybe that's okay; after all, if you don't feel compelled to return to them, maybe don't bother? But now, I'm back, and I'm scrolling through them, picking out my favourites. Compelled. They are a salve, of sorts – like a nicotine patch on a smoker's arm perhaps. Or maybe just keepsakes, reminders. Golden, pixellated stabs towards what is left behind, what is longed for and what – maybe one day – I'll return to.