Topic: Europe
I'm on a bus in Greece looking out the window at the magnificent county side. As I watch the olive trees, mountains, and the Med roll past the window, my mind goes back to a time nearly forty years ago. I was here with my friend. We had spent a couple of months travelling through the U.K., then down through Austria, Hungary, and Italy. We had done all the usual backpacking stuff. Hitchhiking in the English rain. Swapping books between us. Lord of the rings, Fear and loathing in Las Vegas, and Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, our three well thumbed paperbacks. Tried to kill ourselves by riding motor scooters, and falling off cliffs into rivers. Slept in hostels, railway stations, and caves. Drunk too much whisky in Scotland, eaten too much pizza everywhere, and taken full advantage of the cheap beer, and goulash behind the iron curtain. Greece was the last haragh, after that it was back to the depressing real world, jobs, and adulthood.
We caught the ferry from Brindisi to Corfu, drank the local water, and got seriously ill with gastro. I recovered pretty quickly, but her constitution wasn’t quite as sturdy. On to Athens, we’re we did the rounds of chemists, and hospitals, collecting the newest, and latest in poo stopping medication. The wild and free travelling life isn’t much fun when you can’t go more than twenty minute’s without running to the loo. Finally with the help of Gastrostop, herbs , and a couple of witch doctors we managed to stretch the loo stops out to a couple of hours. She told me she would feel much better, lying on the beach, than in a grotty Athens hotel. We jumped on the bus, then a ferry and arrived at Assilinos beach, in Skiathos. We pitched the tent under an old olive tree, shooing away the flys and the local sheep. It worked, Ten days of lying in the sun, on an ldilic beach, cures everything. Unfortunately it couldn’t last, she had a flight out of Athens, and summer was over. After a 3AM tearful goodbye at the airport, I jumped an overnight bus north.
The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long. Thinking of you Suzi.
Susan McGuckin 1960 - 1991.
