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find out. And it opened its eyes. That was his problem.'
    27 Chapter Four
    THE SECOND DIALOGUE
    It's me again. How's it going?
    Remember our riddles? Here's a new one.
    One for the living, one for the dead, Out on the moor I -wind about Nor rhyme nor reason in my head Yet reasons I have -without a doubt.
    Deep printed on the yielding land Each zig and zag makes perfect sense To those who recognize the hand Of nature's clerk experience.
    This tracks a chasm deep and wide, That skirts a bog, this finds a ford, And men have suffered, men have died, To learn this wisdom of my Word- - That seeming right is sometimes wrong And even on the clearest days The shortest way may still be long, The straightest line may form a maze.
    What am I? You were always a smart dog at a riddle! I've been thinking a lot about paths lately, the paths of the living, the paths of the dead, how maybe there's only one path, and I have set my foot upon it. 1 -was pretty busy for a few days after my Great Adventure began, so I had little chance to mark its beginning by any kind of celebration. But as the weekend approached, I felt an urge to do something different, a little special. And 1 recalled my cheerful AA man telling me how chuffed he'd been on his return from Corfu to discover that a new Greek restaurant had just opened in town. 'In Cradle Street, the Tavema,' he said. 'Good nosh and there's a courtyard out back where they've got tables and parasols. Of course, it's not like sitting outside in Corfu, but on a fine evening with the sun shining and the waiters running around in costume, and this chap twanging away on one of them Greek banjos, you can close your eyes and imagine you're back in the Med.' It was really nice to hear someone being so enthusiastic about foreign travel and food and everything. Most Brits tend to go abroad just for the sake of confirming their superiority to everyone else in the world.
    Down there too? There's no changing human nature. Anyway, 1 thought I'd give the Tavema a try. The food wasn't bad and the wine was OK, though 1 abandoned my experiment with retsina after a single glass. It was just a little chilly at first, sitting outside in the courtyard under the artificial olive trees, but the food soon warmed me up, and with the table candles lit, the setting looked really picturesque. Inside the restaurant a young man was singing to his own accompaniment. I couldn't see the instrument but it gave a very authentic Greek sound and his playing was rather better than his voice. Eventually he came out into the courtyard and started a tour of the tables, serenading the diners. Some people made requests, most of them for British or at best Italian songs, but he tried to oblige everyone. As he reached my table, the PA system suddenly burst into life and a voice said, 'It's Zorba time!' and two of the waiters started doing that awful Greek dancing. I saw the young musician wince, then he caught my eye and grinned sheepishly. 1 smiled back and pointed to his instrument, and asked him what its name was, interested to hear if his speaking voice was as 'Greek' as his
    29 singing voice. It was a bazouki, he said in a broad Mid-Yorkshire accent. 'Oh, you aren't Greek then?' I said, sounding disappointed to conceal the surge of exultation 1 was feeling. He laughed and admitted quite freely he was local, born, bred and still living out at Corker. He was a music student at the university, finding it impossible like so many of them to exist on the pittance they call a grant these days and plumping it out a hit by -working in the Tavema most evenings. But while he wasn't Greek, his instrument he assured me certainly was, a genuine bazouki brought home from Crete by his grandfather who'd fought there during the Second World War, so its music had first been heard beneath real olive trees in a warm and richly perfumed Mediterranean night. I could detect in his voice a longing for that distant reality he described just as I'd seen in his face a