High life | 13 August 2015

The wind is maddening and constant, and gets stronger as the sun falls below the horizon. The streets are lined with plastic and rubbish, the beaches covered with greasy bodies and sunbeds, and ghastly music blasts away all day and night. Motor scooters without mufflers and cars choke the tiny roads that lead to the centre of town, where literally thousands of sunburned young people wearing expensive rags down tequilas with a thousand-mile look on their unshaven faces. Welcome to Mykonos, once a brothel of an island, now reverting to type after 30 years as a gay paradise.

I am on a 125-foot schooner, the Aello, which was built in Hamburg, Germany, in 1921, by Max Oertz, and commissioned by Anthony Benakis, a great Greek benefactor. She has been totally and perfectly refitted by her present owner, a Greek ship owner, and I have chartered her for a fortnight’s cruise with my son and grandchildren. The crew is splendid, all six of them Greek. They love to sail — even under these storm-like conditions. Our one and only mistake was to come to this hideous island, now overrun by nouveaux-riche ‘cool’ people. Vulgarity rules the roost as never before. What is interesting is that average room rates for Mykonos hotels exceed those of luxury hotels in Monaco. Those are two hellholes I will never again get caught in, as God is my witness. One of the crew went out to get rid of the rubbish and ordered a local beer from a shack. It cost €20.

Mind you, Paros was wonderful, with friendly locals, tasty food and without music blasting throughout the night. I saw many friends, dined al-fresco and drank wonderful chilled Greek white wine. As I write, I’m waiting for my daughter and her hubby to get to this modern Sodom and then we’ll head back there.