Ann Cockerill’s little boat that “begged to have it’s portrait painted.’
From an answer Ann gave to a question someone on the UnTours Cafe asked here about the lovely paintings she makes while on UnTours, and in this case, about this boat, that she found while on a Greek Untour. We think it speaks very much to that spirit of philotimo…that we wrote about last week. One definition of philotimo is ” It is the feeling of not being able to “give back” enough.” The man that Ann meets in this story seems to embody this spirit, and if you could talk with many of our Greek Untourists, we think it’s likely that each one has a story like this. Apparently, random acts of kindness are woven into the Greek psyche.
“This was one of those special days that only UnTours can give you. We were looking for a flower market you had suggested in Leonedia, Greece. We had stopped at a tower on the side of the road to have a picnic lunch and try to translate what had happened at the tower.
A Greek man and his son stopped to fill his radiator with water. When we asked him if he could speak English and to tell us about the tower, he told us ( in his broken English and our worse Greek) that his brother and father had been killed there by the Nazis- it had been a look out tower. When we asked him about the flower market he motioned to follow him in our car and a gave us an incredible warm loaf of the best oatmeal bread I had ever tasted fresh from his wife’s oven.
We followed him to his other brother’s cheese shop. There he showed us a picture of his brother and father in their uniforms while his brother gave us some free cheese for our bread. He gave his brother the rest of the loaves his wife had made and we bought some delicious cheese to take with us. Next stop was the flower shop where another relative gave us some stones she had painted. We had a cup of tea at the little restaurant.
We had asked about where to buy a little Greek coffee pot- he said wait here. A few minutes later he was back with a copper pitcher and insisted it was a gift. To finally get to your question- the last stop was this quiet stony beach outside of Leonidia. He told us it was the purest water in Greece because it came from a spring in the mountain. There was a little restaurant where we had gelato and I could not resist swimming. The cold blue water was so exhilarating! In the distance, I could here bells around the necks of sheep grazing. The little boat begged to have its portrait painted.
This is why once you have done an Untour, you will never go back to be herded like cattle on a bus or ship. You would never discover the people or experiences awaiting you in these tiny villages.”
Ann is an incredibly talented artist who has traveled with us, and other Untour artists to our Provence Untour, Umbria Untour, Tuscan Untour and. of course Greek Untour. Here is a slideshow of her paintings and pictures on the UnTours Cafe. You can purchase Ann’s paintings and learn more about her life and work here.