I was on a Thomson cruise of the western Mediterranean, and feeling disappointed that because of the political situation we should not be visiting Israel, which had been on the itinerary. However, the boat was going to Piraeus instead, and excursions would be arranged to Athens. I’d always wanted to visit the Greek capital, and the Greek islands where we’d called already had given me a passion for the Greek way of life. I’d been learning Greek all winter, and was having fun trying it out. The evening before we docked I got talking to an old man, whom I’ll call Ted. He was well into his eighties, tall, spare, still very handsome indeed in a Howard Keel kind of way. Ted had been retired as a senior CID officer for many years, and talked to me about a few of the notorious cases he’d worked on years ago, including the Moors murders, committed by Hindley and Brady. We got on very well. Eventually I told him I meant to visit the Acropolis the next day.

I must admit I was unsure about this. I was going to have to cope with unfamiliar buses and money, a language in which I was only marginally adept, and now a very frail old man. But we could take our time. The weather was kind. It was late October, so the boiling sun had lost most of its ardour, the crowds would have gone, and I knew Ted would love the Acropolis.

Others who have written about Athens in Ciao found it noisy and dirty, but I did not. Possibly this was because the tourist season was virtually over, but I think it’s also an attitude. I wanted to love the place, and I knew a lot about it beforehand, which always helps. Ted and I agreed that our first impressions were of a vibrant, colourful, good humoured city, bursting with history at every turn.

Everyone knows what it looks like, that majestic ruin up above the city, but nothing prepares you for the actual sight of it. I had been so disappointed in Rome, having always imagined the Coliseum to be somewhere in solitary splendour. To find it with an underground station just opposite, tatty souvenir stalls, rather grotty cafés, the stink and bustle of Rome all around, people yelling, gypsies begging aggressively, had been a cruel let-down. I didn’t want the Acropolis to go the same way into my mental book of disappointments.

But I was worried about dear old Ted. How could he ever get up there ? We took a closer look. Well, maybe he could, after all. Steps had been built, with very shallow risers, and deep, so that you took three or four paces before climbing another one. There were low walls on either side, ideal for a rest, and olive trees gave welcome shade. He felt he could cope, so we set off up the steps, looking about us, looking back at the city, so near, and yet already seeming remote. The olives are so pretty. Somehow, reading about olive trees in the Bible when I was a child I imagined them to be sturdy, dumpy, gnarled little things, but their leaves are dainty, silvery, and feathery. Ted was doing well. We came to a kind of plateau, where there were loos, a little shop and, surprisingly, a post office, but these places were tucked away in the trees, and not obtrusive. We used the loos, which were clean, and then I persuaded Ted to rest while I went to get an iced coke for me and a lager for him. We were drinking these when one of those ludicrous incidents occurred which are the joy of travel to me. Ted said, ‘How did you ask for these in Greek ?’

We continued on our way, slow but steady, stopping often to look at Athens, well below us now. I had, suddenly, a most peculiar feeling, which it won’t be easy to describe. I just felt part of the history of this amazing place, at one with Pericles, who founded Athens as a city, at one with Aristophanes, Sophocles, Socrates, Plato, all the great names who shaped European thought and culture. I felt small, totally insignificant as a single thread in this vast tapestry of history, and yet, paradoxically, important, for each of us has a part to play in shaping that history.

He said , in a very quiet voice, ‘All my life I have hoped to meet a woman like you, and now it’s too late.’
‘Yes,’ I thought, ‘and how I wish you were younger.’ I did not speak for a while. I needed the right words. As I looked at him I could see the young man that he had been, sense his intelligence, his niceness, his courage. Very tentatively I finally spoke.