The Day the Blue Palm Went Down

 

Early in December, the days were a dose of pure tranquillity.

I worked until late in the evening, the wood burner with its new chimney making the kitchen cosy. When I stepped outside before going to bed, I noticed it wasn’t really cold, and stars shone brightly in the sky. It was completely quiet.

Sometime after seven in the morning, my dog Lisa tiptoed through to my bedroom to say hello. The cat, locked in the kitchen overnight as it still couldn’t be trusted not to leap up and scratch or bite, started crying for food. There was plenty of food in the house for them and for me too, apple cake, fresh bread, a brick of feta and a cornucopia of vegetables, so no need to go shopping. At lunchtime I had a long walk to Eristos with Lisa, meandering in sunshine down tracks with the mellow greens of bushes and trees in every direction. At the beach, a few other people were enjoying the balmy day, but so distant I couldn’t even make out who they were; at this time of year, there are no strangers. Most locals were in various stages of the olive harvest. On the way back I waved to anyone I passed, and otherwise let my thoughts wander.

I worked late again, finishing off the edit of one book in preparation for starting another. My work is editing books, often travel and adventure, and I’d taken on more than usual since I’d have to stay at home rather than travel to other islands as I like to do in winter. This year, I was very happy on my little island, travelling through books. In the morning, the client hadn’t yet sent the file I was due to start on, giving me a blessed excuse for a lazy morning.

After coffee and emails, I went out into the sunshine in my wellies to do some weeding of my vegetable patches and thin out some seedlings. Maybe I’d get a few jobs done around the garden and enjoy the day. I noticed the fishing boat that had been out at sea had now come into the harbour. A little while later I heard a truck pass, and then reverse, and knew that a moment later I’d hear Nikos the fisherman shouting, ‘Jennifer!’ while Lisa erupted in a cacophony of barking. I bought a couple of kilos of fresh sardines. I’d grill a few later in a little olive oil.

It wasn’t long after, around midday, when I heard a vehicle approach from the other direction; I looked up and saw a flatbed truck loaded with logs. A week or so earlier, I’d heard that Yorgos was offering good firewood, and said I’d take a truckload. Yorgos, in his late fifties, usually lived on Rhodes and worked in tourism, but given the lack of work this year he’d come to Tilos and started taking care of his parents’ long-neglected land, which had hundreds of trees, some very old. I was happy to see the field being worked and the little house restored, and Yorgos was always very friendly. The firewood would top up my supply and prepare me for January and February. I was therefore delighted when Yorgos arrived with Kostas and the wood. They told me to open up the gate so that Kostas could back his truck in. It wouldn’t open all the way because of the palm tree, but I did my best.

I inherited several palms when I bought my house two years earlier, and three of this shorter type, which grow to just over the height of a person, originally stood by the gate. Because the house had been empty for five years, they’d encroached onto the path and gate, causing some damage. I’d managed to wrangle the smallest out of the ground, which had taken me several days of battling half an hour at a time. The trunk of the largest one had assumed a surreal shade of bright blue since Dinos spray-painted the gate. Because of the blue palm, I didn’t think Kostas’ truck could get very far, but Yorgos gave expert instructions and, with just a whisker of spare room on either side as I held the gate, Kostas managed to back the truck into the garden.

Kostas has dark hair and eyes and a cheeky boyish smile that lights up his face. Not that I would normally have noticed, of course, but he’s quite alluring to watch when showing off his traditional dance skills at summer festivals. An opportunity to help out his mate on a sunny day by making a delivery to an appreciative female was probably too good to miss. And there I was in dirty old clothes and wellies and probably mud on my nose or grass in my unbrushed hair, more likely both. It was amusing as together we all threw logs and banter here and there.

‘In the winter we work! In the summer we dance! Have I danced with you yet? How’ve you escaped me? You’ve probably always got company…’

I retorted wryly that he was the one who always had plenty of company. He grinned and then, ducking under the overhanging palm branches, changed the subject.

‘That needs pruning,’ he said, and when I agreed, he whipped out a saw from his truck and cut the palm branches back, nonchalantly sliding the pruning saw into his back pocket afterwards. I thanked him and added, smiling, that maybe he could cut down the whole tree. It probably needed to go at some point.

‘You need a chainsaw for that. Stelios has got one. He’s got a big one,’ he said, winking at Yorgos. He walked back to the truck, grabbed a few heavy logs and added emphatically, ‘We work with our hands.’

The innuendo was being laid on with a trowel.

As they unloaded the last few logs, I went inside to get some cash, but realised I didn’t have the right change. Neither did Yorgos, and while both of us were happy to sort it out another time, Kostas suggested that instead of change, they could bring me some more wood, another half-load. That sounded a great idea.

‘We’ll be back!’ they said. They weren’t sure when. I continued working in the garden and as the sun got warmer and I started on some messier jobs, I changed into a paint-covered shirt and similarly paint-covered pair of shorts. I was just thinking I’d call it a day and take Lisa for a walk when the guys returned.

We opened the gate again and Kostas backed in. We continued the unloading and the chat, and then as we were finishing up, Kostas looked at the palm tree and said, ‘You’re right, that needs to go.’

At this point I started thinking, ‘Well, it doesn’t really... It gives the house some privacy from the road. It needs to go one day, but not yet.’

But of course, it was too late. Kostas grabbed a long rope from his tuck and tied it around the trunk, and I was despatched to the road to check for cars coming around the corner as the truck was put in gear. It pulled the tree a little and then the wheels span. Again. And again. The tree was rocking and the concrete driveway lifting slightly and I worried for the gatepost.

‘Don’t scratch your head!’ mock-ordered Kostas, seeing me do exactly that. ‘You see all the work we do for you?!’

‘Be careful of the gate, I need it…’ I said but my words were lost.

‘Have you got another rope?’ asked Kostas. I fetched one that had been rescued from the beach, and that was attached.

‘Again!’ shouted Yorgos as the wheels span. Then since the tree roots were beginning to emerge from the ground, another strategy was mooted by Kostas.

‘Stand on top of it! All together!’

Soon two grown men were standing on the trunk of a leaning palm tree, now at 45 degrees but firmly hanging on as they rocked up and down, hanging onto the top of the gate. I didn’t join them. I was quite worried about my gate and gateposts, all essential for keeping Lisa safely in the garden apart from the fact that they’d cost me a fair bit.

When Kostas asked for some kind of garden tool, I thought that was an excellent idea, retreated to the apothiki and brought out various – an axe, an old pickaxe and some other thing with a serious blade, which they found very impressive. They set to whacking the roots with glee.

Then one of them thankfully realised we were wielding heavy-duty blades with gay abandon within centimetres of the main water supply to the house.

‘It’s OK, we’d better stop,’ I said, ‘let’s leave it for now.’

‘What, halfway?!!’ laughed Kostas with a determined look. Of course. It was as if they were drinking whisky. This thing now had to run its course.

I suggested it might be a good idea now to push the tree the opposite way, but that idea was instantly dismissed. More pulling with the rope, more standing on the palm tree, more bashing with implements…

‘It’s going! The tree’s going,’ said Kostas, grinning, ‘the gate’s going, the driveway, the house…’

At that point Dimitris, friend and neighbour, drove by on his way back from working at the doctor’s surgery and paused outside the gate. I was laughing but my nervousness must have showed when I explained what was happening, as no sooner had he disappeared than he was back to join the team. Despite his more controlled, serious demeanour, the situation had by then reached such a point of frenzy, a crazed level of violent activity that Lisa was barking and, probably afraid, she bit him on the bottom.

Dimitris stepped in and assessed the situation, then calmly said the tree needed to be pushed the opposite way now. Three, two, one… And it worked.

For better or worse, the tree was down. The gate and the post were still intact. Yorgos sat back, looking very red and dazed. Kostas was barely able to speak. With bits of palm tree strewn all around, it looked as if a hurricane had passed through. Which in a way it had.

Dimitris gradually walked back to his car. Then he called over, and I heard him say something about the car window. It was stuck.

‘Have you got a screwdriver?’ shouted Kostas.

Snippets from my Notebook

I haven’t been blogging very much recently, because it’s so much faster and easier to add some words and pictures to Facebook. But fast isn’t always the best, is it? My fast laptop has, once again, stopped connecting to the internet and will need servicing, so for the time being I am back to my slow, cheaper backup laptop, and perhaps it’s a good opportunity to slow down for a bit.

Life has been full and fulfilling as ever, with my lovely Lisa waking me up in the morning for her breakfast, and the new kitten a.k.a. Fishbags seeming to attack everything except the small creatures he’s supposed to; with major work happening on my house finally thanks to Dinos and Stelios, including a bathroom floor being entirely removed because tree roots had grown through the old lead pipes; with my work on other people’s books, and my own new book needing to be promoted; with a garden that needs watering, and of course beaches that need walking to and sea that needs swimming in.

Since I’ve only been blogging when I have a long story to tell, I’ve found no place for those lovely little snippets of life that otherwise remain as mere scribbles in my notebook, e.g. ‘Savvas licking the stamps,’ which I wrote one of those mornings when I’d gone down to Livadia to the post office so I could send some parcels to people who had ordered books from me.

I had done my best to re-use envelopes, some of which were already re-used envelopes. After all I’ve written in my book about the things we leave behind on the earth today, it wouldn’t have felt right to use a load of unnecessary new bubble-wrap. I even used the non-plastic tape I’d ordered from &Keep. I hoped the post office would be open because I live on the other side of the island from Livadia, 10 km or so. I used to be frustrated when I got there and it was closed, but I’ve come to appreciate that on an island where there’s just one postmaster, and he has two children and a dog, if the family need to go to Rhodes then Savvas can’t work.

But he was there, and as I stood watching him weigh the parcels and figure out the postage, I noticed he then licked all the stamps – sometimes about six per parcel.

‘Isn’t it horrible,’ I asked, ‘having to lick all the stamps?’

‘No. But it does make me mad,’ he said, pulling a crazed expression. ‘But they don’t stick on properly otherwise.’

I was very grateful, if I did feel a little guilty. 

Another incident of island life made it into my notebook as ‘car story’ and made me even more grateful. It went something like this.

I don’t own a car, because I don’t like to use one all the time (and who needs extra expense, not to mention paperwork?), but it’s very useful to share a car with my Dutch friends who can only spend a few months a year on the island. I was due to leave it at the harbour in Livadia in late morning the next day for Rob’s arrival, but in the meantime I thought I’d use it for a walk to Lethra.

The Lethra walk is one of the best for Lisa during the warmer months because close to the start, as you pass by all the gnarled old olive trees and delightful old stone walls, set amongst the pink rocks is a constantly flowing spring with a trough under it, which is just the right size for a medium-sized dog to lie in and cool off before we make our way through the valley.

Having parked the car at the start of the path, I walked with Lisa to the beach for a relaxing hour, around the headland to Livadia, then back up to the car, and had just set off driving again when I realised from the curious sound that I had a flat tyre.

I’ve never had a flat tyre before, and rather than start messing around learning what to do, I called our island mechanic and asked if he could help. He said he could, but the best person to replace a tyre would be Zafiris at the petrol station the next morning. I wasn’t far from the venzinadiko so I slowly drove back and left the car there, and set off walking, calling Eleftheria along the way. She said she would call her brother Zafiris, and he’d take a look the next day. I sent an apologetic message to my Dutch friend Rob, explaining that he would have to take the bus.

Bright and early the next morning, Zafiris reported through Eleftheria that the new tyre would take a day to arrive on the boat; however, five minutes later, he found a reconditioned one for a very reasonable price and fitted it – and I was just in to catch the bus down.

‘Your car’s ready!’ shouted Pavlos the bus driver as Lisa and I embarked. I collected the car, thanked Zafiris profusely, and drove down to the harbour to pick up Rob – and even had time to sit and have a coffee at Rementzo while I waited, where Annie told me to call her if it happened again, as she had a tool for fixing punctured tyres. 

This month has been a wonderful time for appreciating the strength of this island community, and the ingenuity of its inhabitants. The final story I’ll mention is ‘Mavis’s glasses’.

My mum and her friend Mavis come to Tilos at least twice a year for several weeks, and this September they really needed the break. Not only had they been stuck at home all year, like most people, but they’d had more than their share of challenges to deal with. So to say that we were good customers at the kafeneio in Megalo Horio in September is something of an understatement. After the first couple of nights, as soon as Telis saw us walk through the door, he’d immediately reach for a litre-jug and fill it with cold white wine.

A kafeneio is traditionally more than just a café; it’s a gathering place, a centre of village life. In Megalo Horio, the kafeneio’s upstairs terrace looks out over Eristos valley to the sea, and up to the castle above the village, and down to the church and its pebble-mosaic courtyard, and to mountains all around, and is a favourite place to sit and eat mezes for many – Greeks and Europeans who live here or visit. Just below on the enclosed terrace sit the men of the village every evening with their drinks, with not such a good view of the surrounding landscape, but arguably a better one of the ladies’ legs as they walk up the stairs. Not that they would.

Telis was busy in the kitchen every evening since he no longer had his summer help, and so tolerated me wandering in and re-filling our wine jug or grabbing another beer or retsina from the fridge. At the end of the evening, he had to ask me what we’d had to eat and drink. But he hadn’t forgotten that Mavis had broken her glasses, having lost the little screw that holds them together. He sent us back out onto the terrace with a last jug of wine on the house as he set to work with some pliers, instructing Antoni to find a bit of wire he was sure he had somewhere… Lo and behold, even if we couldn’t see very well by the time he kicked us out, Mavis had no excuse because her glasses were fully functioning, and remained so for the duration of her stay, until she passed by an optician’s in Rhodes on the way to the airport.

I said that was the last story, but just one more: as I started writing this, early this Sunday morning, a red pickup truck arrived at my gate and started beeping its horn, prompting the usual barking from Lisa. It was Nikos and Rena. Yesterday evening, when I stopped at the village shop to buy fresh eggs after spending a couple of hours on Eristos beach, they didn’t have any left. Nikos said I should go and get them direct from Rena as she was down at the smallholding where she keeps her hens, and it’s on my way home. But it was hot and sultry evening and I didn’t pass that way, as I took the mountain path instead for the breeze.

So this morning, that’s why Nikos and Rena were here: to bring me a handful of fresh eggs.

Thanks to all my friends and neighbours on this little island.

And thanks to all who have bought and read my new book, Wild Abandon. It would help me out if you could post a review on Amazon (or Goodreads if you’re not on Amazon). The more reviews posted, the more likely it is that others will discover it and buy it and then perhaps my publisher will let me write another one. Of course, if you’d rather I didn’t, that’s quite understandable… And I do have plenty of other things to do, so I'm not in any rush...

Voyage to Nisyros

The plan to sail to Nisyros – Georges, Mark, the salty dog Lisa and I – was thought up over beers on the rooftop of Mikro Kafe, and decided over a good dinner of tiny shrimp and courgette fritters at Blue Sky.

Georges’ partner Mona, being American, is restricted from travelling to Greece at present, so Frenchman Georges was at a loose end alone on his yacht. Mona gave us her blessing to go to Nisyros without her, as long as we didn’t have too much fun. I’m usually happy travelling by ferry and taking my time, without having to worry about what to do with ropes and sails. But it seemed too good an opportunity to miss – and it’s hard for me to pass up a chance to go to one of my favourite islands.

After a busy morning preparing, we set off just before midday with the sea a glorious clear blue, Georges giving Mark instructions on how to help with the anchor and leaping about to deal with the dinghy and various ropes. It felt exciting to be so close to the sea. A brisk cool wind was against us, so the engine did the work and we crashed through waves in an exhilarating way for a few hours, along the east coast of Tilos and then six miles to the south of Nisyros.

Pachia Ammos beach had a line of tents evenly spaced close to the shore, and shelters were dotted along Liess beach too, Greeks taking advantage of the free camping. We glimpsed Emborio up on the ridge before mooring up in Pali harbour. I’d been there with my dad the year before and seen locals gathering at Aphrodite taverna, so we headed there for lunch and found it already full. We feasted on chick peas baked in the oven in tomato sauce, stuffed vegetables and beetroot and the best chips any of us had ever tasted.

The hillside above Pali looks amazingly green, even in the middle of August when the islands are at their driest. Mike, the owner of Eagle’s Nest Car & Bike Rentals, where we went to find transport, explained it’s because the pumice soaks up moisture in the air.

Mike, a native of Nikia village, is a someone I definitely should have spoken to before writing the Nisyros chapter of my new book. Having lived in the United States for 30 years, he returned in 1999 and not only became involved with the local government but worked hard to protect the island’s eagles. He also raised funds, mostly from Nisyrians who had emigrated to New York, to restore monasteries around the island, the old school and the mayor’s office in Nikia. He raised most of the money to build the chapel high above the caldera where I first started thinking about the abandoned places in these islands, the people who left and those who came back.

At Mike’s suggestion, that’s where we headed first for a panoramic view. I offered to be the driver because I know the roads, though I immediately took us the wrong way, and stalled once or twice while getting used to the gears. As we headed around the rim of the caldera, Georges went quiet when I got distracted by cows browsing from the trees at the roadside, reminding me which one was the brake pedal as we took the precipitous track to the chapel. But it did have an incredible view straight down into the caldera and the craters, and for once there were no tour buses at all.

I’ve never experienced so many vehicles on the roads of Nisyros as I did that afternoon and evening, though – the island was full of Greeks, not least because it was 15 August, the festival of the Panayia, although the nights of dancing have been forbidden this year. We drove to Emborio and stopped at Apiria taverna, where a dozen tables were already set up outside by the ruined buildings for the evening’s celebrations.

We were all wilting in the heat, and in need of a swim, and perhaps Georges needed to forget for a while that we were nonchalantly wandering around an active volcano. We drove down the winding road to the coast again, parked at the entrance to Mandraki, then followed the sea to Hoklaki beach just in time for a sunset swim. Then it was time for an ouzo, the waves sending spray over us as they crashed up on the sea wall.

After a dinner of horta, goat cooked in the oven and veal in lemon sauce, Lisa helping us out to finish it all, we made our way back to the car, full and content. But hark… Music? I told the boys I’d be back in a moment, and followed the sound to a terrace, where I found some people I know sitting around a table, while a man played the laouto and sang. We were invited to join the company – two brothers with their wives and their 90-year-old father, friends celebrating a birthday. We had cake and raki and partisan songs… When we drove back to the boat in the early hours, we stopped to watch a group of young people dancing across the road.

The raki must have been good because when I woke in the cabin in the morning as it got light, my head wasn’t actually hurting. I went up on deck and slept some more in the cool air until people were up and about, then went off for a swim. Maybe the raki was still having an effect, though, because I felt slightly anxious about being followed and surrounded by a group of large bream… I got out swiftly and found some breakfast at the bakery overlooking the sea.

When we went to check that we had parked the rental car intact outside Eagle’s Nest the previous night, Mike was there and as we chatted, he told me more about the Pantelidis Baths a little down the coast. The reason for the abandonment of the thermal spa was a freak storm in the 1920s, destroying half of the building; in an effort to try to save it, the founder, Hippocrates Pantelidis, got sick and died. His children, not disposed to take over his grand venture, auctioned off the fittings and the land piece by piece. In the 1980s, a grandson spent 10 million euros restoring it, buying everything back, and was in the process of building wave breaks in front to protect the building from any other freak storms when a disgruntled neighbour decided to cause trouble, and the restoration had to be abandoned again.

We left at midday, hoping for just enough of a wind to let us sail swiftly back to Tilos. The sails were unfurled and we went up to five knots, six, seven… We detoured around the south coast to see the cliffs and rock formations, and the wind dropped and picked up, dropped again: five knots, then three, then two... There was manoeuvring of ropes and sails, until at last the engine had to be deployed, and the hoped-for crossing of an hour or so turned into three. I lay down and slept, lulled to sleep by the rocking of the boat… Lisa slept too, sliding around on the deck.

Finally the wind picked up again and Georges decided we should do the final stretch in style, so the sails were unfurled again magnificently and we swept into the bay. Reaching the marina, Georges opted for a narrow space with inches to spare. ‘Oh, I made a mistake,’ he said somewhat unnervingly. But it didn’t matter: he had been a splendid and generous captain, it had been a unique voyage to Nisyros and back. 

From Autonomy to Absolute Dependence

 

A few months ago, I came across a Greek article that fascinated me. It concerned something I've explored in my new book about the deserted places of the Dodecanese: the fact that the islands were once self-sufficient and supported thousands, and the evidence of that way of life can be traced on the empty landscape today.

I took some Greek lessons in June and with my teacher’s help I started translating the article for my own interest. Then I realised the author was the director of Archipelagos, the Aegean-based Institute of Marine Conservation, which I’ve also mentioned briefly in the book.

The organisation agreed to let me post an extract from it here, and when the full piece is published in English I’ll add a link. I’m happy to say that here on Tilos, the situation is not as extreme as that described in the article, but Tsimpidis’ arguments are enlightening.

Wild Abandon: A Journey to the Deserted Places of the Dodecanese is being published in paperback in the UK on 1 September, to be distributed worldwide over the following months. Advance copies are available now on Tilos and by ordering direct from me. Thank you to anyone who’s already ordered it and to those who’ve already read and reviewed it!

 The story of a catastrophe – from autonomy to absolute dependence

Thodoris Tsimpidis

Have we ever asked ourselves how, within a few years, our islands were transformed from exemplary models of management and self-government to utterly dependent places, no longer productive, most without even drinkable water? It’s worth noting that in the old days, often ships did not stop at the islands for many weeks, a fact that had no negative effect on the availability of goods and the daily lives of the islanders.

Those of us who lived on the islands in the decades 1960 to 1970 and earlier, even if we were young at the time, experienced the end of a period of autonomy that for thousands of years had characterised the Aegean.

I remember how in my village, Raches in Ikaria, in every home people took care each season to store what they had produced so that they had something to live on in the following months, therefore giving them a form of self-sufficiency and independence.

The few things that the islanders did not produce, such as sugar, rice, coffee and the indispensable kerosene for lamps, were sourced from the few shops that existed with what little money they had at their disposal, or by means of exchange of goods. The ship from Piraeus would come to the island sporadically, whenever the weather conditions allowed, unloading not only few passengers but also few goods on the island, because the locals had little need for consumer goods.

Conversely, when the ship travelled towards Piraeus, usually they despatched many different types of local produce, either for sale or for relatives who lived in Athens and Piraeus.

For centuries, all the islands lived from what they produced themselves, not only for local consumption but also for export. The bigger islands, such as Lesbos, Chios and Samos, were for centuries important regions of production and export for all type of agricultural and animal products, with important small industrial units (e.g. tanneries and soap-makers).

Ikaria exported raisins, the famous kaisi (a type of apricot), almonds and many other agricultural products. Kythnos even up to the end of the 1970s produced the equally famous ‘Therma’ barley, which covered the entire production of the beer FIX, occupying through contract farming the majority of the island’s residents. Paros exported large quantities of wheat and Naxos exported potatoes, fruit and vegetables. Many islands exported also primary materials (e.g. charcoal, lime or mineral kaolite – the basic ingredient of porcelain).

There was equivalent production and export of different products on all the inhabited islands, while small trading boats travelled between the islands throughout the year to sell or to exchange products. The last trading boats remaining in the Aegean stopped their voyages around fifteen years ago.

In previous decades even the small islands had a plentiful supply of water. They made use of the springs and the groundwater, while there was also a system for collecting rainwater.

The question, then, is this: How in the space of 40-50 years we managed to go from complete autonomy to complete dependence, disdaining a wise system of management which should have become a teaching model in all the environmental schools on the planet?

Many times we search for the causes in financial interests, but I fear that in this case the cause of this loss is not only financial interest. The state of the islands today reflects not only the policies of the previous years but also the displacement of the political persons who were chosen to manage that unique place. And in doing so they devalued the culture of management. The only thing which they had to recommend and apply was to transform the islands into a monoculture of tourism, which gave the final blow to the culture of self-sufficiency and wise management of the natural resources.

Most of the cultivated lands were deserted and replaced by small and large tourist units. The systems for preventing erosion on the islands were abandoned, increasing the incidence of erosion on most of the islands. Thus, along with the fertile soil of the islands, the groundwater is also lost.

The traditional method of raising animals was also destroyed, which incorporated through experience the understanding and knowledge of how many cattle should graze in an area, in which seasons and when they should transfer the animals elsewhere to avoid the negative consequences of over-grazing.

These were not ecological practices but based on common sense, the knowledge and experience of many years (which today we place no value on) and naturally on the necessity of survival. They did not exhaust nature because they knew that they would be harming themselves in the end. The remains of this traditional method of raising animals we see even today on all the islands, with the dry-stone walls and the stone pathways which they used to divide up the grazing areas.

 

Wild Abandon

In this weekend’s newspaper, my attention was drawn to the name St Kilda in a tiny almost-hidden paragraph. It was ninety years ago today, in 1930, that the last 36 residents of St Kilda, a Scottish archipelago 100 miles west of the mainland, ‘asked to leave because life was not sustainable’. The islands are now a World Heritage Site, home to the world’s largest colony of Atlantic puffins.

Abandoned homes, villages and ways of life in the Dodecanese islands of Greece are the subject of my new book, Wild Abandon, so I’d been interested to find a book on Mark’s shelves about St Kilda. I read a lot of books about wild, semi-abandoned Scottish islands during the writing of mine, from Sea Room by Adam Nicolson about the Shiants, to The Outrun by Amy Liptrot about Orkney. There are many similarities with the Dodecanese, which are also remote from the Greek mainland and whose populations were reduced during the twentieth century, often from several thousands to next to nothing; and those deserted places, slowly reverting to the wild, also provide safe havens for wildlife.

One thing that struck me about the people of St Kilda was that, according to the book, the people who left didn’t do well on the mainland. The people of the Dodecanese, from what I’ve discovered, thrived when they left, many of those from Kalymnos and Nisyros, Karpathos and Rhodes becoming successful businesspeople in America and Australia and Africa. And some who left have fulfilled their longing to return. I was fascinated by the variety of stories I discovered, and I loved talking to those who stayed, who lived through the times when – as one man on Kastellorizo said – ‘there wasn’t even earth to bury us!’

Another news story caught my attention in the previous weekend’s Times (the newspapers have become something of a weekend treat during lockdown in the UK, especially for the crosswords). In Italy, the semi-abandoned rustic villages, emptying for years, are being seen in the wake of the Covid-19 crisis as the country’s future as Italians flee the crowded cities to work from home. As in Greece, the half-deserted villages have attracted only foreigners in recent years, but now urban Italians are beginning to see the appeal.

Here’s an excerpt from Wild Abandon, talking about the village on Tilos that was well populated and full of life until the mid-twentieth century, a place some of you will know well if you’ve been following my blog for a while:

After my first couple of years on Tilos, I moved into the heart of Megalo Horio (‘Big Village’) when a house with a lemon tree and views of mountains and sea was offered for a small rent. To one side was a home owned by a potter from Crete, who had bought a ruin and restored it but visited only a few weeks a year. The neighbour on the other side had died years ago and the house was slowly disintegrating, the garden overgrown and the shutters hanging askew. 

These days every third or fourth house, many with a Christian cross carved into the stone lintel, sports a handwritten ‘For Sale’ sign; for every one that’s inhabited, there’s a ruin with gaping walls and roof, wooden cupboards still intact, trees still dropping fruit in the courtyard. The village with its narrow, twisting alleys is half-empty, more than half-empty in winter, shutters closed. Many people don’t have the money to fix up the hundred-year-old house built by their forebears. The edges of Megalo Horio are scattered with abandoned dwellings built long and low into the gently descending terraces, earth packed into double-skinned stone walls and roofs of rough-cut logs, now covered with grass and flowers. 

My village house had rusty metal railings and broken door handles, and a frequently blocked kitchen drain that couldn’t be fixed without breaking a stone wall half a metre thick. There were occasionally cockroaches, and slugs at night from the disused well, but I loved the space, the empty rooms, the rambling, ramshackle building with additions from different eras: a heavy old wooden trapdoor divided upstairs from downstairs; outside, modern concrete steps leading to the terrace were haphazardly built over the stone archway of the original front door, which had ‘1868’ carved into it – a century before my birth. In the summer I slept on the terrace, rigging up a shelter to block the streetlight so I could see the stars. Scops owls made their high-pitched calls in the evening.

 

The low rent allowed me a different kind of life, less dominated by regular work, yet I marvelled every morning that I could sit in my office overlooking the arched roof of a tiny medieval chapel, and across the valley to Harkadio Cave, where the last elephants in Europe died four thousand years ago. To the left on top of the mountain stood the observatory, dating from the Italian occupation, the shell of a building with no roof and gaping windows. The sun gradually lit and defined the terraces on the hill below it, where people once grew everything they needed, when the island was yellow with wheat fields, perhaps when the house was built for a newly married couple.

In the 1880s, the British couple Theodore and Mabel Bent came to Megalo Horio – albeit on a very brief visit – and their diaries record what they saw. They were on a longer trip around the Dodecanese, aiming to excavate and remove items of archaeological interest, usually without permission or with Ottoman officials turning a blind eye in return for baksheesh. In Tilos they stayed with the priest, who also cured hides for making shoes. The houses were dark, they wrote, and women sat spinning on their roofs. Tilos was ‘thinly populated, and as remote a spot as well could be found from any centre of civilisation’, rarely visited by steamer or even sailing boats. Women wore coats of homespun material, white shirts edged with embroidery, and pointed leather shoes; they had wild, gypsy looks and wore earrings so big they deformed their ears. There was no doctor; the local people would ‘live and die as birds of the air’.

If you’re interested in reading more about my journey around the deserted places of the Dodecanese islands, it’s now available in e-book from Amazon and various other sellers. Thanks for your support! And if you do read it and want to support me even more, please post a review online to help others to find it.

And here’s the link to what others have written about the book so far, and some photos from the deserted places: https://wild-abandon-dodecanese.blogspot.com/ 

Hope you’re well!

In early March after a month on Tilos, when green leaves were just beginning to unfurl out on the fig trees, Mark and I flew to England for work and to see our families. I planned to stay just ten days or thereabouts, and didn't want to put the hound through the whole flying thing, so Stelios offered to look after Lisa. As she raced around his garden through grass still wet from the morning rainstorm, we sat in the dark listening to scops owls calling, and Stelios got Mark tipsy on raki. 

The following morning, we caught the ferry at dawn. I’d been stressed about leaving Lisa and home, especially as coronavirus was already a threat, but the skies were so fantastically beautiful, a mix of cloud and sun, that I soon began to enjoy it. When we passed an empty island off Symi, I gazed at it and thought how, when I got back, I'd try to do some walking there in this wonderful time of year. The sky and sea were deep blue in Rhodes and we sat on our hotel balcony feeling the sun on our skin, then for hours on the quiet beach, our faces getting ever so slightly sunburned. 

We were fairly relaxed as we flew out the next day, with no idea that within a couple of days, the situation would change as the news about coronavirus and its implications very quickly got worse. Plans to go to events and see people got changed and then cancelled. Soon it was a question of bringing forward my travel plans to make a dash for home before movement was restricted for no-one knew how long. Mark would stay with his mum, who although a trooper is 88, and near his children who are in their twenties, and complete the work he had planned.

On the 18^th, I should have been on a plane to Athens then Rhodes. The days before were horrendous, trying to find out how this would go as things changed constantly. Greece had already shut down bars and restaurants and schools to reduce the spread of the virus, and declared its sensible, calm policy of ‘We’re Staying at Home’. I’d have to be quarantined for fourteen days, but would they allow me to travel home to do that? I noticed islanders on social media dissuading any arrivals from abroad. Even if I quarantined myself, what if I did carry the virus to Tilos with its very basic medical facilities?

Mark had encouraged me at first to go back, saying I’d be impossible if I stayed (who, me?), knowing how my sense of self is wrapped up in living in the wilds of a sunny island, walking and swimming. My parents, knowing the same, also encouraged me to go home where I’d be safer and happier, away from the madness.

But as we got up that morning and Mark drove me to Heathrow, both of us too upset too speak much, leaving seemed more and more wrong. Knowing anything could happen in the next months, should I go back to the place I love and more importantly Lisa, or stay with my family and my partner who wanted to look after me, with hugs and love? Nobody else could make this decision for me.

In the departures hall of Heathrow, where people of all nationalities walked grimly about in masks or in tears – nobody going on holiday – I still could get no information about how I’d be received in Greece. In the end, the only important consideration was Lisa, that dog I love so much. I called Stelios, and he told me to do whatever I thought was best but that he would be happy to keep looking after her. ‘She’s no problem,’ he said, ‘though she does snore a bit.’ He is, after all, the man who named her, who has always been a big part of her life. 

Assured that Lisa would be protected and have everything she needs, I left the scary departures hall and walked back to the car, where Mark was waiting for me in the drop-off zone, and told him I was staying.

That afternoon, exhausted from an extremely tense few days, relieved to be together, we went for a walk around some lakes, near where Mark fished when he was a kid. We stopped in a hide and watched a little bit of sun poke through the clouds and light up the water, while the coots paddled closer. Mr Anorak had even brought a pair of binoculars we could use to watch the nesting grey herons and snow-white little egrets across the other side, and the great crested grebes diving and reappearing. There were quite a few people out walking or fishing, most of them happy to smile and chat a little. 

I loved seeing little blue forget-me-nots, and plucky great tits making raids at a feeder while mallards foraged below; marsh marigolds, a noisy jay and a green woodpecker; tufted ducks with their jaunty black quiffs and bright eyes, pochard ducks with their lovely chocolate-brown heads and grey backs. Eventually, walking back along the canal at dusk, we stopped to listen to the quiet and the song of the blackbirds. In times of crisis, isn’t it wonderful to appreciate simple things like nature and a warm hug? Whatever we have to go through in the coming months, the cycle of nature will continue, the days will get longer.

The next day I walked alone through the fields in fine, drizzling rain. It was good to see the buds beginning to unfurl on the tips of bare branches. With life reduced like this, perhaps I appreciate more the feel of springy grass under my walking boots, the colours of lichen on a tree trunk and the songs of the birds even on a grey, wet day.

Just think how it will feel when the sun comes out.

This crisis is interrupting the distribution of print books temporarily, but my new book Wild Abandon will still be released in May – initially as an e-book, until things get back to normal. I hope it will provide a reminder of Greece for those who can’t get there. I may have to read it myself.