There is a restaurant on the upper floor of the brand new Thessaloniki/Macedonia airport thoughtfully and unfortunately and amusingly called the 'Goodbye Cafe'. Students of semiotics stand to attention. Thessaloniki, or Thessalonika, or Macedonia or call it whatever the fuck you like, was one place we were pleased to leave, a cross between Beverley Hills and St Albans in dust which even my Australian hairdresser (yes I do have one- just went there to tidy myself up- recommended- she's called Tegan- next to Coach and Horses Soho- £5 place but please tip heavy) mused as being 'run by the mafia- guys with moustaches'. It's a big place, and makes you want to run a mile to get out of it once you've been scared to death by your taxi driver getting in to it. Where one glass of wine and a beer in a crap bar was ten euro, where the food in the Ohhh Sooo cosmofuckingpolitan 'Bar Kitchen' on the old pier was unspeakable and fifty Euro, where you had to stare at complacent playboys and watch girls on TV twittering seriously about (I assumed) being 'SEXY', like dolls, where on your way out to the airport to escape, you pass mile after mile of kitchen stores and Mercedes dealerships. Made you think that if this is success, we are doomed. We are doomed. And I expect my own stiletto in the back. 

This of course, after the complications of life and death in hospital and the simplicity of fabulous food and hospitality in Volos. Made us re-think Big is Bad, Big is Worse. Should we not encourage a Gordon Ramsay in architecture? We need to get back to good stuff, to simple stuff done well, for people preferably, saying FUCK OFF to every deluded, wannabe fashionable architecture student in London? Oh well, just as well the exam season looms next week.