I once found a pile of old photos that had spilled out of a rubbish bin in a quiet suburban street in Athens.
After we had finished laughing, and after poking around in the bin for the rest of them, we realised that we had a family's entire history in our hands. 
From a photo of the port of Pireaus just after it had been decimated by the retreating Nazis, through pictures of a couple getting married in the 70's, to holidays in the Redwoods in California, with them posing proudly next to a ford Capri and ending up with an old couple sitting quietly holding hands in an Athenian park, we had their entire lives in our hands.
It was a very touching moment. And they had just been thrown out.
As if they meant nothing.
I treasure the pictures I kept. I didn't know them, but in some small way their memory lives on in a way it wouldn't have if we hadn't drunkenly stumbled across them.
I learnt so much about the country I love from that pile of randomly discarded photographs.

Bad bad teachers

Many many years ago, I think was 9, or possibly 10 years old, I fell over in the playground and made a lot of fuss about how much my arm hurt. 
Miss Carole Hind made me sit on my hand all afternoon for complaining.

I remember it hurt all weekend but I never got taken to the doctor because my teacher said i was just making it up.

When I was 19 years old I got run over in Crete, (totally my fault) and got taken to several doctors and eventually the hospital in Iraklion, by the incredible, lovely couple who had the misfortune to be driving along the coastal road when an English teenager appeared through their windscreen at 10am.

I got my face stitched up, and my broken wrist was plastered and fixed.

The doctor though, was confused. He said that the break was at least ten years old, a diagnosis later confirmed by a hospital in England.

My point here is , apart from praising the Greek medical services , who do amazing work on budgets that in the rest of the world would be considered laughable, is that perhaps teachers occasionally do and say things that are possibly not in the best interests of the children they are charged with looking after.