Enjoy the holidays!

 I’m preparing for my holidays. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not actually doing any practical preparations. I always plan early, but pack very late. I know where we’re going and have been thinking fondly about our various destinations for some weeks now. But after booking tickets and rooms, I have done nothing except think and fancy.

 I shall spend my two weeks, of course, in Greece. It has always been my dream to holiday in Greece without going through the nightmare of airports and flight delays. Now that I live in Greece, I can simply get in the car and drive off. And that is exactly what my partner and I will do.

 The start of the tourist season has been marred with sadness. In May, I launched a campaign, called “Holiday Hangover”, for young Britons in the most popular youth tourist resorts here. The campaign gives young people basic information about the Greek emergency services and encourages them to think about the consequences of their actions. The message is simple: you can have a good time and enjoy yourself, while staying safe and acting responsibly. As many of you know, the death of a young Briton last week, in Malia on Crete, brought us all face to face with what can go tragically wrong on holidays. My team and I have been working hard to support everyone involved in this incident, not least the family of the young victim. I am hoping that cool heads will prevail over the remaining weeks of this year’s season.

 Although I have visited the most lively youth resorts on business in the past eight weeks, I have always opted for a peaceful life on my own holidays. For me a holiday in Greece is an opportunity both to read poetry and to see the poetry of Greece unfolding around me. The sky, the colour of the waters in shallow bays, the penetrating light, the enfolding heat; the smell of the Greek earth and the taste of the salty sea. I hope to walk a little, to visit some archaeological sites and some ancient monuments: mediaeval castles and Mycenean palaces. And I am always trying to expand my vocabulary of fish: synagrida, milokopi, barbouni, tsipoura, sargos, skoumbri, kolios, sardeles. Magical words. Nowhere is fish eaten better and more simply than here in Greece, despite the conservation challenges.

 But in addition to poetry, I also try to take biography or two, something serious about politics, economics or religion. This year, I have a large pile of books about the far right. London is increasingly asking me for my views on the rise of this phenomenon in Greece. Brits, generally speaking, are puzzled. Greece gave us the idea and ideal of democracy; it suffered terribly under Nazi rule (famine, holocaust, economic destruction); it is a land where the stranger has been traditionally welcomed. I am planning reports to London in the autumn, and will take some of my growing library with me to the beach. I have books by Robert O. Paxton, Dimitris Psarras, Xenia Kounalaki et al., and Anna Phrangoudaki. What else should I read?

 As I prepare myself mentally for two weeks of idling and a busy autumn, I wish all of my readers a great time on holiday!