Lesley Walker — How to see Pothia?

View from my balcony facing east

Through your eyes only, your voice guiding me at every turn. Mountains folded on mountains, cloud-shadowed, sage and salt and pepper, cube houses piled on houses ascending step by steep step up the mountain, each tier above the next to keep a tenuous view of the white and blue below. Always a kind of symmetry; window, door, window, faces watching the town below, shuttered against life or the sun, or open to face St Nickolas behind me and the fading of the light.

View from my balcony facing west

First bougainvillea, shocking pink against salmon walls, then stone and tile, iron lace and the spindly spikes of palm and yucca, the soft shade of salt trees and the rust orange of pomegranates. As the rising sun hits the rocks they move from grey to gold, thrusting up behind the dark green cypresses. Washing flaps from balconies and the scent of jasmine moves with the breeze stirring the eucalypts outside my window.

Lesley says: ‘I am not an artist and this is a very amateurish attempt to capture the view from my balcony looking east… I have never drawn with pen before.’