Sandy Barker - One Summer in Santorini

‘Pft. Stupid o’clock. Six, I think.’

‘Well, I’m a hundred per cent sure I’ll still be asleep when you take off, so it’s highly unlikely I’ll be up when you have to leave for the airport. Want me to book you a taxi to Heathrow?’

‘Sure. If I leave here at four, will that give me enough time?’

‘Should do. I’ll book it. Fuck, I’m so glad it’s not me.’

‘You know, I’m only going to lie down for an hour or so. I still want to meet Jane and have dinner with you guys.’

She looked at me with a knowing smile. ‘Sure, Sez.’

The next thing I remembered was the hideous bleat of my travel alarm intruding on my coma-like sleep at 3:30am. I’d set it – just in case – when I went for my nap the evening before. I lay there for a moment and tried to figure out how long I had slept, but it didn’t matter. I felt even worse than when I’d woken up on the plane the morning before. I needed a hot shower and a bucket of tea, and I only had thirty – make that twenty-nine – minutes until my taxi arrived. Crap .

The minutes flew by, but I only made the taxi driver wait for five minutes, which I thought was pretty good considering how disoriented and horrendous I felt. We made it to Heathrow in record time – sometimes London does sleep and it’s at 4:15am.

The sun was lightening the sky as I handed over a small fortune to the driver. Then it was just me and my backpack and the behemoth of Heathrow’s Terminal Five. The nerves were back. I don’t know why on earth people refer to them as butterflies. They felt more like baby elephants to me.

On the flight to Athens, I was stuck in the middle seat between a husband and wife, one who wanted to sit by the window, the other by the aisle. They spent the entire flight talking across me in their thick Birmingham accents, as though I was some sort of aeronautical soft furnishing. When I politely asked if they wanted to sit together, they scoffed. ‘Oh no, love, we’re perfectly fine sitting apart.’ I wasn’t perfectly fine. I was developing a tension headache, but they didn’t seem to care about that.

I figured if I was going to survive the flight without having some sort of mid-air meltdown, I was going to need more tea. Tea calms me, tea revitalises me, tea is a miracle drink – tea drinkers will understand what I mean. Thank goodness it was a British Airways flight, because I knew they’d have the good stuff – proper English tea . I rang my call button three times during a four-hour flight and every time was to ask for more tea. This, of course, meant I had to pee twice, but I considered those few moments of silence a reprieve from Douglas and Sharon’s non-stop and not-so-sparkling repartee.

I made a point of losing them as soon as we were inside the terminal. I leapfrogged around other English tourists, striding purposefully towards immigration where I discovered two things: a massive queue and a slew of ridiculously handsome Greek men in uniforms. Apparently, the Greek government had hired a flock of Adonises – or is it Adoni? – to staff the immigration booths. This discovery made the first one much less annoying, and I waited patiently in line while appreciating some of Greece’s natural wonders. When it was my turn, I handed over my passport and endured the handsome man’s scrutiny as he weighed up the Sarah in my photograph – slicked-back hair, no makeup and glasses – with the Sarah in front of him.

As I met his gaze, I was glad I’d kept the London taxi driver waiting a few minutes so I could tame my wayward curls into some semblance of a style and put on some blush and mascara. It’s not like I thought the immigration guy and I were going to run away together, but at least I didn’t look like a complete hag. My heart jumped a little at the sound of the Greek entry stamp being added to my passport. Then it jumped again when the Adonis smiled and welcomed me to his country. Moments in and I was back in love with Greece.

After being so warmly welcomed, I headed off to find the gate for my next flight. Right as I started wondering if it would be quicker to swim to Santorini, I finally found it at the far end of the airport and on the other side of a security check. As I was collecting my things from the tray on the conveyor belt, a giant man who smelled like he’d been steeped in nicotine hacked a wet cough down the back of my neck. Really? I turned and gave him a hard stare, but he was oblivious.

My stuff gathered, I looked around for somewhere in the small transit lounge to wait for the connecting flight. Spying an empty seat in a far corner, I made a beeline to stake my claim, but I was too late. A different middle-aged British couple sat their duty-free bags down on what should have been my seat, then stood next to it complaining about the long walk to the gate.

Clearly, this couple was as clueless as Douglas and Sharon, so I found the nearest empty patch of floor and plonked myself down. I was beyond exhausted, and I still had a couple of hours to kill. I spent the first eight minutes calculating what time it was in Sydney, how many hours it was since I’d left there, and how much sleep I’d had. I came up with such a depressingly low number, I promised myself never to think of it again. I could sleep as soon as I got to my hotel in Santorini.

Instead, I opted to read. I’d preloaded my Kindle with such a broad variety of reading materials, I could match any reading mood I found myself in. And right then, my mood dictated a gloomy crime drama where lots of people got stabbed. I reached inside my handbag to retrieve the Kindle. Unlike the borrowed monstrosity that held all my clothes – and was hopefully being moved from plane to plane at that very moment – the handbag had been a splurge right before I left for my trip, along with my Prada sunglasses.

It was a compact leather backpack – stylish enough to be my handbag, and practical enough to be my daypack. It really was a thing of beauty. And, importantly, a handbag wouldn’t cheat on me with a slut from yoga class.

Three and a half hours later – why did I think a Greek island-hopper would depart on time? – I was seated in a very small plane next to a very large man who was turning greener than Kermit the Frog before my eyes.

‘Sorry, ma’am,’ he said. Texan , I thought, identifying his origin right away – I’m talented like that. ‘I don’t usually fly on such small planes. I’m afraid I may need to get up to use the restroom.’ Even in the throes of air sickness, he was using his manners. Texans are so polite.

‘Of course!’ I unbuckled my seatbelt and stood up in the tiny aisle. ‘How about I sit near the window – in case you need to get up again?’

He nodded and rushed up the aisle to the only bathroom on board. Poor man – at least it was a short flight. As I strapped myself into the window seat, I heard a chorus of ‘Ooohs’ from the other passengers. I looked out my window as the plane banked and there it was, Santorini, a crescent of rusty land in a sea of deep blue. It was stunning.

‘Sorry ’bout that, ma’am,’ I heard over my shoulder as the Texan sat down.

‘Look,’ I said, leaning back so he could see past me.

‘That’s mighty pretty.’

I nodded in reply.

As we approached the tiny airport, I could barely wrap my mind around how beautiful the island was. The rugged red land contrasted with the brilliant blue of the sky and the stark white and creamy pastels of the buildings. It was so striking, it took my breath away. By the time we landed, I was practically hyperventilating.

Santorini’s airport terminal was kind of kitschy, looking more like a Las Vegas hotel from the 70s than an airport. We disembarked via a rickety metal staircase and as we walked across the tarmac, a warm breeze tickled my face. Divine.