Island life is not for me

Let’s get one thing straight: island life is not for me. Island life off a boat, jawohl, but island life without a boat, nyet! Family czars insisted that living in tight quarters with Covid-ignoring sex-starved sailors would not be conducive to the health of my four grandchildren. Better safe than sorry and all that, but from now on, Covid-carrying and sex-starved or not, I’m spending my summers in the company of sailors going from isle to isle like a drunken Flying Dutchman.

Serifos is an island in the western Cyclades that once upon a time was a place of exiles. Roman emperors banished criminals there, probably because it’s windswept, poor and insignificant. By the time iron and copper were discovered, Nero and Caligula were long gone, though striking Greek miners were nevertheless shot dead by the fuzz back in 1916. Those were the days, when civil disobedience did not make you a celebrity but got you a ‘gabardine en sapin’, as the Frogs call a wooden box. And speaking of frogs, Serifos is full of them but they are mute. No one has as yet explained why, but something awful must have taken place to shock them into silence. Maybe Perseus was washed ashore in mythological times, and then returned with the Gorgon Medusa’s head, scaring the crap out of everyone, including the frogs.

The population of the island is just over 1,000 and the natives are friendly because of the lack of rich tourists. The place is arid and windswept and there are no slaves to designer labels, most of tourists being backpackers and the young. Unlike neighbouring Sifnos, which is drenched in mimosa and bougainvillea, Serifos has only some olive trees and a lot of cactuses.