Sunday, 16th August, 2026
As the weather changes … allegedly … and the heatwave slackens in the North of England, we are preparing to set off for the inferno that is Athens. Twenty years ago today, I was a Greek God looking down from on high over Kamares harbour as the ferries came and left for other lumps of rock in the Cyclades. Although I was still teaching – for another 3 years – we had driven across Europe, sailed down the Adriatic, driven through Athens to Piraeus and taken a ferry to our house on Sifnos.
We spent five weeks on the island in very hot conditions and then packed everything up to drive all the way home. The order of the day in our Greek house was to open up all the windows and doors in the morning to channel any sea breeze through and then close all the shutters in the afternoon to stop the baking sun raising the temperature so high that we cooked. Evenings were offset with air conditioning thank goodness.
Twenty years on and back in UK, we are duplicating that principle with all the doors and windows open in the mornings and blinds closed in the afternoon as the intense sun bites into the south facing kitchen. We don’t have air conditioning installed yet but we will this Winter which will almost certainly guarantee that next Summer will be very cold and wet.
Hair cut this morning in preparation for travel. My hairdresser has just arrived – well, she will do when she’s stacked the dishwasher. Shorter than usual because of the heat I’m told. Someone who knows about Biology tells me that sunshine encourages hair to grow faster. A natural sceptic, I asked AI who/which told me:
A little sunshine can support healthy hair growth, but it does not make hair grow faster. The key mechanism is vitamin D — sunlight helps your skin produce it, and vitamin D plays an important role in keeping hair follicles cycling normally.
Greek Gods need to know this stuff. Anyway, I get ‘free’ haircuts so I just nod in ascent to any old ideas that come out during the process.
Upstairs, the bed in one of the spare rooms is currently becoming more and more cluttered with items to be packed and the available clothes in my wardrobes seem to be declining at a similar rate. Downstairs, I’ve done all the paperwork/digital record keeping – checking in online for flights and downloading Boarding Passes, even checking in at our hotel online.
I hate the cattle-market approach of airport life but going early makes it so much more palatable. I’ve booked a Gatwick Airport Lounge but I don’t think we’ll use it because we fly so early. It will be a matter of driving to the Long Stay Carpark, getting the shuttle bus to Terminal, straight through Security and down to Gate. The flight is 3 hrs 50 mins and I will probably sleep straight through it at that time in the morning. We arrive at 11.00 am(EET)which is still 9.00 am in our body clocks so we will have almost a full day available from the start.
Monday, 17th August, 2026
My morning starts with news and news rolls through the day. This morning I have been struck by something which has been long overdue to be said. Many of us have known it but not had the facts at our fingertips. What that has done is allow others to make up the ‘facts’, to persuade others of ‘the facts’ and whip up fear and hatred based on those false facts. Everyone should be allowed to hold stupidly false opinions but you can’t make up facts.
This morning, a new edition of the long going study known as Crime Survey
for England & Wales initiated almost 45 years ago and renewed annually. What this survey reports is not opinions but facts. It is an empirical study and many people particularly on the Right of politics will be shocked to the point of insisting it is false. It is not. It is not their opinion. It is fact.
Contrary to popular opinion, crime in England & Wales has come down by 80%+ in the past 40 years and that applies almost entirely across the board although things like computer-based fraud have increased because it didn’t exist at the start of the study. Why will these facts come as a shock to those less thoughtful, less intelligent, less curious about the truth. Well that is because they are constantly being told by the Right Wing that Britain is Broken.
It quite clearly isn’t but it taps into a natural human trait that looks back to the Golden Age – the time from their youth, perhaps, when things were so much better. The Golden Age in global terms refers back to 500BC in ancient Greece when tyrrany was expunged and art, philosophy, architecture and literature which are the building blocks of our own civilization first flourished. Political Democracy was founded in its infancy.
The Golden Age ended because Athens lost the Peloponnesian War but it’s influence had radiated out across the world and is referred back to regularly as a lodestone against which to measure democracies and cultures now. Of course, it was never that ‘golden’ for the servants and slaves, for the poor and often for women. In just the same way, the Britain the Right Wing want to take back is one where the working class knew their place in the social structure led by the aristocratic and industry elites and where the poor were cannon fodder for imperialist ambitions and factory fodder in enriching the barons of industry.
Across history, movements on the Right have often framed decline as the work of an “Other,” a group cast as the obstacle to recovering a lost Golden Age. The pattern is remarkably consistent: evoke a past moment of greatness, declare that something precious has slipped away, and then identify outsiders—cultural, political, or demographic—as the force preventing its return. It’s a narrative that blends nostalgia with threat, promising restoration once the supposed barrier is removed. As ever, the Golden Age is less a period than a story, and the story depends on having someone to blame.
For years the Right have used migrants as the other who are the obstacle to recovering a lost Golden Age. If only they didn’t take your jobs, lower your wages, take all your houses, block up your surgeries and hospitals, commit crimes and fill up your prisons … if only … your life would be wonderful.
Just as there is a huge gap between reality and perception about crime so there has been created a chasm between facts and beliefs concerning immigrants in UK. The actual number of EU migrants in UK is just 6% whereas popular belief is that it is nearer 16% giving rise to the cry, We are full. There is no more room! This is a rich seam of racism for Farage and Deform to mine and a very difficult concept to oppose.
Tuesday, 18th August, 2026
Warm – 26C/79F but overcast this morning as we prepare to set off for Gatwick Airport and sunny Athens. Of course a Greek island is in the news this morning and it is the one I have been associated with since 1984. That was when we first visited Sifnos in the Cyclades and then went back twice a year every year until we built a house there and spent 6 months a year in it.
One of the attractions of Sifnos for me was that it was difficult to get to and we didn’t hear many English voices back then. It took 4.5 hours to fly from Manchester to Athens and then 5 hours by ferry from Piraeus. So, it was quite a commitment in escapism.
I loved the island and the people immediately. We loved the food. Sifnos is particularly known for its Tavernas. I loved to walk miles every day across those barren, dry stone walled pathways to the background music of a thousand cicadas and to swim in the warm, inviting bays. Maybe, I have spent my adult life running away and this was just the place.
It took 15 years before we plucked up the courage to buy a field and have a house built and I don’t regret it one bit. It was a magical time. The journey there got longer and, at the same time, shorter. We ditched the flights and drove but the ferries cut the journey from Piraeus by half. However, all that remoteness that was a selling point to a young man became literally a selling point to an old man. Isolation can be a life threatening thing in old age.
There is no airport so transport to and from Athens is by sea from Piraeus or by light aircraft to Paros and then by sea from there. We did the light aircraft route a couple of times in the 1990s but it was pretty homespun and scary. Our first flight was us and a load of parcels and the exit door was literally tied on with twine. If it’s too windy, the flights are cancelled and Greek islands are, by definition, windy in Melti season. As I say, the other route is 2.5 hours by sea but that is little good if you have a heart attack and there are no meaningful medical facilities on the island.
The one thing that Sifnos does have is a heliport. It has been there for years for the rich to travel without the Great Unwashed and there are plenty of those in Cattle Class on cheap, Greek ferries. However, the helicopter flight from Athens is around 50 mins instead of 150 mins on a ferry but it would cost €3,000.00 for two people one way as opposed to €100.00 on the ferry. If you are not extremely rich and not in extremis, you only buy helicopter flight as a big treat.
My wife didn’t see it as a treat but a potential death trap rather akin to the Big Dipper in Blackpool but without the safety checks. This morning brought the tragic news of a couple of British newly weds dying in a helicopter crash along with the pilot at Sifnos Helidrome. It was somewhere we had visited so many times. Feel so sorry for the family of newly weds on their honeymoon dying on a barren rock in the Aegean, friendless and homeless but soaring like Icarus too close to the sun.
This story will dominate TV Greek News for many days while we are here ….. in Athens. If you are reading this, you are still alive – just. Have a good day.
Wednesday, 19th August, 2026
It has rained at home for a large chunk of the day. Still warm but beautifully wet at 26C/79F. For us here in Athens, the standard 34C/93F was what we sweated through. Delightful!
I think I laboured this point last trip but all the media hype about the nightmares of European travel and how the EU was ‘punishing’ UK citizens because of Brexit were utterly dispelled by our experience on this journey so far. We hardly had time to breathe as we arrived at Gatwick, were rushed through Security, taken immediately to Gate by Easyjet because of our Speedy Boarding status.
We were boarded very early, left early and landed 20 mins early. We were so early that our suite at the hotel wasn’t ready and we had to go out for Lunch. We went to our favourite street-side Taverna for Horiatiki – Greek Salad and Gemiste – stuffed peppers and tomatoes. Wonderful!
After a delightful Lunch, our suite was ready and we settled for a relaxing afternoon on our patio in the hot sunshine.
In fact, we ordered Room Service instead of going out to eat and watched the sun go down with a bottle of red wine. Life could be worse ….
Thursday, 20th August, 2026
Last night was hot and dark. A half moon rose in the night sky and the Acropolis dominated the landscape.
Stepping out of UK for a while is exactly what one needs to understand the country’s demented obsessions. This morning it is the right wing media obsession with Prince Harry & his less than white wife, Meghan.
It really does make us look foolish, trivial and more than slightly racist. It is, for me quite embarrassing.
It is 10.00 am and 33C/91F just after Breakfast. Sitting outside reading the newspapers, Sid the sparrow came down for a drink and to learn the news. How awkward I felt to tell him people in Britain who were struggling with their own lives and lack of finance were obsessing over an entitled family of multi millionaires deciding where in the world they would live for a while.
If you are a person who would love to visit the Athens Acropolis but can’t afford the time or the money, I can tell you, you don’t need to. The people standing round the flag are in 36C/97F at the moment and they will have queued for an hour in that baking sun, paid €60.00 for two people, climbed 200 stones steps rubbed dangerously shiny by millions of visitors and been confronted by a load of old stones.
I have never been one for doing the tourist must sees nor understanding History through touching things from the past. I had been in Greece for 30 years before I plucked up the determination to climb up to the Acropolis and was then rather underwhelmed. Athens is for the living and the present. It’s history informs that but shouldn’t dominate it.
Friday, 21st August, 2026
We have been coming here so long and are so old that even the Ancient City of Athens has changed in that time. It is 10.00 am here as I write and already 36F/97F. It is only 8.00 am in UK and my body clock is still in that zone. We will be coming home just as I am adjusted.
Not used to a solid Breakfast, 8.00 am/10.00 am is the earliest I can attempt it. The Breakfast Room at the top of the hotel used to be at the bottom of the hotel when we first came here 30 years ago. Sophia, the girl who served us at Breakfast, was not even born at that time and knew nothing of it.
This hotel is part of the Electra Group which has 6 hotels across Greece. There are 3 within walking distance of each other in Athens.
We have stayed in all 3 but the Electra Palace on Nikodimou Street, first opened in 1973, remains our favourite. The Electra on Ermou Street was the chain’s first hotel from 1965 and our first Electra and is now upgraded and relaunched as The Electra Rhythm. The Electra Metropolis on Mitropoleos Street is about 10 years old and we remember it as the Athens Education Offices where we saw striking teachers protesting outside. These days Greek teachers couldn’t afford to stay there on their salaries.
Time to go out into the furnace that is Athens. No change there ….
Walked down through the Flea Market full of first time tourists and dominated by Americans on to the Train Station at Monastiraki Square.
It is a lively place of transition for Greeks and tourists alike. The train takes people down to the port of Piraeus and ferries to the islands. In the next week it will accept holidaying Greeks back to home and work after their island retreat. It is 3.13 pm in Athens and the temperature has reached 38C/100.4F. It is debilitating but glorious. Time for a glass of icy white wine.
Saturday, 22nd August, 2026
Glorious evening. We went out to Dinner and then came back to our suite for coffee on the balcony. At 11.00 pm, it was still 27C/81F and remained that way all night. My weather app said Manchester – a regular reference point for me – was just 7C/45F.
The sunset was beautiful and then Venus appeared over the Acropolis. I tried to photograph it with my phone on 100x zoom and was quite excited with the result until I searched out a telescopic view to set aside it.
AI told me that at that time in this place, Venus was roughly 95 million kilometers away and its light had taken 5.25 minutes to reach me. It took me that long to focus and control my phone long enough for a shot.
I am 75 but today my Mum would be 103 today. She died 18 years ago. I wonder what she would think of today’s world.
Well, actually I know. She would have hated it. For an intelligent woman, she was so narrow. She hated (feared) the new. The idea of new technology was never embraced even though I gave her a computer and taught her how to use it. She felt more isolated as her children left home and I tried to get her in to email so she could keep in contact with absolutely no success at all. Before that, I bought her a fridge which she rejected but ultimately loved. I pushed her into buying a television which she had long rejected but eventually became hooked on.
I have always embraced the innovation and tried to assimilate it immediately. We are all different but Pauline & I agreed from the start that we would fight vigorously against aging and one thing was certain, we would never fall in to the age ‘traps’ we had see others do like rejecting the new by saying, Oh, I’m too old for all that. Another reaction to reject is the one where an older person says of something new, challenging a frightening coming to their world is to say, thank goodness I won’t be alive when that happens. If they understood it more, many would be saying that about Artificial Intelligence.
If you can fix your mind set, Artificial Intelligence can be incredibly powerful, exciting and useful. The thing to really do is to own it and make it work for you. The opposite will be to shrink from it and let it dominate you and then you are lost. This attitude speaks to our need to maintain mental acuity with sharp thought processes and strong memory.
The other thing we resolved to do is to maintain balance, strength and energy levels. Although I have tried hard, I have to admit I am showing clear signs of lower strength and energy levels since my cancer treatment. I am not doing enough exercise and I have been enjoying myself too much so I’ve put on weight. My balance and suppleness have always been rubbish. One thing I have noticed specifically and I wonder if you have, Dear Reader is that I feel a little dizzy if I spring out of bed. Looking it up, I’ve found that is ‘normal’ for a 75 year old and I shouldn’t do that but take more time. We also know that a common cause of death is falling and causing head injury. Going to work on that.
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