I had promised to write an upbeat, optimistic piece with maybe some happiness or perhaps some future hope but I was struggling with it.

So I thought and fraught and reflected to fulfill my promise. But no matter how hard I tried, my thoughts kept swirling around some permanently ugly and depressing paths. This past season just didn't encourage the positive approach to things. So against all odds, I began to roam around the beautiful beaches in the Gouves Township, hoping to find a solution for my problem.

Fortunately it was an amazing, sunny day, with an incredible sea and a scattering of people who really seemed to be able to find and enjoy the beauty in life.

I was a little frightened thinking about the drought, as, at that time, it hadn't really rained for eight months and maybe the farmers are feeling the pressure, but I moved on trying to reach that happy place in my mind so I could write this piece.

For a fleeting moment I got a mental imagery of what our gorgeous beaches look like in the summer. Plastic chairs, plastic umbrellas, plastic cups with fredo - the new fad with Greeks - but I pinched myself and returned to reality. I hastened to leave the beach because it was steering me down some difficult paths towards issues that need immediate answers. The township’s beachfront is a serious matter which must be, at the very least, discussed at length, if not “wrecked” at length. 

Nevertheless, I thought, if all things around us remain as they are, they would spell out “things to avoid” for next generations and constitute a wonderful study for some future researcher entitled: “Things that past generations did to turn a wonderful place into a horrible mess.”

Of course, straight across the water, Dia Island still dominates, pristine, at least from afar, and proud, spiting all those who saw it full of five-star hotels on its gentle slopes, and a marina filled with yachts.  And there you would have it, the beginning of the end of a beautiful, unmarred picture which our small rock-island presents us with every day.

  Then I thought… we still have our inner villages in the hinterland of our municipality with their own character and still resisting the latest trends.  Villages deserted by the young people but… virtually untouched by the tour-agent’s savagery and greed. But going uphill towards our villages, something finally hit me, and it hit me hard because it had a big dose of rocks, garbage, rubble and plastic, and I saw it around each bend, on all the out of the way roads, on every slope.

Ahh! Here is where the civilized man unloaded all his refuse, away from his line of vision but giving it generously to the unsuspecting passers-by. Fortunately, the villages themselves will compensate you with their beauty and gift you with some optimism if, with your personal white-out, you can erase all the many dumping grounds.    

I believe solutions exist, but we must find them together – those who dump and those who clean up, those who destroy and those who rebuild. 

So I guess this is an uplifting and optimistic piece . . . but lately hope is dying.