Swish, Swish, Swish by Patrick Lee Furmer, read by Dominic West.

Where are you off to? Sit down. One of the two cheerful old men who were smoking cross-legged under the branches patted the ground beside him.

Silvery vistas of gnarled and half-hollow olive trees opened fan-wise all round them, and

there was a cicada grinding and scraping on every branch.

A donkey, under a wooden saddle, grazed a little way off, trailing his long rope through

the stubble.

A wide hat with green muslin sewn to the brim lay beside one of the old men, and a rusty tin smoke gun, fitted with primitive bellows that beekeepers fuel with dried dung.

He was on his way to his beehives, one of those rows of faded blue wooden cubes that one sees high up in the heather in the summer months.

When I was beside them on the ground and about to light a Papistratus number one,

the mule owner said, put it back, boy, try one of ours from Kalamata.

I took a Corellia from his packet. He lit it with flint and steel and a long yellow wick,

and I lay back in an aromatic cloud.

It was a baking day, with long needles of sunlight piercing the brittle shade of the leaves,

the deep mahony. It had never seemed hotter.

The beekeeper took a pitcher of water out of a little cave among the roots and passed it.

I took a long pull of water from the cool and clammy vessel.

There's nothing worse than thirst, he said, putting it back.

I'll never forget when we were fighting the Turks on the river Sangarios.

The day we captured the mountain of Chattel Dag.

You remember Petro?

Petro nodded.

The confusion was terrible.

...