This is my third consecutive night at the Dafni Wine Festival on the outskirts of Athens. My aim to to sample wine from 36 different barrels. You gotta aim high! In the end, it turns out that I started at Barrel 36 and ended at Barrel 18. There were two I was unable to sample because they were empty by the time I reached them. This took me just over an hour, after which…
…I was pretty drunk!
My travelogue/alcologue also records that I…
..was with Winnipeg from Beverley, or vice-versa.
Beverley and I met at the festival last night and got on really well. However, our attempt tonight to find somewhere a little quieter in the grounds was disturbed by festival officials. As I look back down the now overgrown and tangled path that has led me to the present day (14th July 2025), it confirms the essential truth of le plus ça change.
This exercise of revisiting the past through the notes I made at the time has revealed many surprises about the nature of memory, especially of autobiographical memory. As a psychologist, this should not really be so surprising to me. But, as a psychologist, I do not live outwith the flow of normal life. We all have a narrative about our lives, and sometimes we discover things that can change this narrative – giving us a different perspective of our past and ourselves. Herein, of course, lies the magic of counselling and psychotherapy.
We can see our lives unfolding in a series of repeating patterns, as revealed by the choices we make and how we react to what the world offers us or confronts us with. Someone’s personality allows us to predict quite accurately how they will respond in given situations. We notice when the responses do not match our predictions – the person is behaving out of character. Although we tend to see personality as a constant, it is in fact a moveable feast. It is situation-dependent and subject to change in response to the unfolding of life events – especially those that could be classified as traumatic.
Recounting my experiences as a 19 and 20 year old has highlighted some of the patterns that have repeated down the years. Maybe this is something I will return to at the end of the series. For now, I note that I spend tomorrow afternoon and evening in the park with Beverley – no wine barrels in sight! My next post will be for Day 97, that includes a reference to leaving Athens again on Day 96. But for where??!
Psychologist on the Move 