​Heat and holidays go together but be thankful for cooler days

How different it was back in 1970, the year after our wedding when anxious for a bit of proper sun we got some brochures from the travel agents and looked up Greece, a place I had wanted to visit since childhood after seeing pictures of it in a magazine. Flights and accommodation were affordable. It didn’t disappoint. Nor did the roasting hot temperatures. I fell in love with Greece little knowing what an influence it would have on me in later life.

I knew the holiday would be warm but hot was something else. Despite that the place stole my heart within a few days and the heat seemed bearable except when we attempted to walk up to an old Castle in the hills one day. We finally made it, drenched in perspiration.

Despite that first shock of super temperatures, all the rest of Europe, I decided, could wait until I had soaked up the beauty and history of this remarkable Mediterranean country with its romantic ancient architecture. And this was before we went to mesmeric, historic Athens a place I really wanted to see.

Within days of our arrival we were heading to Athens in a fairly rickety plane, part of the normal fleet we were told. Passengers included little old ladies carrying baskets of live chickens, presumably for a market though we didn’t ask.

I could easily have set up home there earning a living selling oranges from my front door. This week I’ve been looking at the newspapers and television to see tourists struggling with the 40-plus temperatures at Greece’s various historic sites many of them not getting further than the various water fountains.

At my age that sort of heat is not for me but I bet my grandchildren who have a Greek mum and have had a number of visits there will have no problems coping with it.

By contrast, back home here we are keeping the umbrellas handy as nasty little showers chose to take the shine of our so-called summer. As I write the TV weather man is predicting temps for here in the teens with no sunshine expected in the short term. What next, thunder and lightning?

Going back in time one wonders how hot Mediterranean countries actually were and what methods they used to keep cool, in say, the last century. The Greeks will say their climate now is, if anything, cooler than it was in the past. Not this year I’m certain.

Many died erecting the beautiful historic buildings we visit today in Greece. That sort of work in such heat must have been unforgiving. Of course the builders were not to know that one day some of those same sculptures would be spirited away by one Lord Elgin who was then British ambassador in Constantinople and who later sold them to the British Government in 1816 for an estimated $160,000.

My Greek in-laws would like them brought back to their proper home and I sympathise with that sentiment but it’s not likely to happen. I regard it as having been a shameful episode in British/Greek history. And we never did hear how Lord Elgin spent his loot.