Jennifer Barclay grew up in the north of England in a village on the edge of the Pennines; she left for Greece after university, lived in Canada and France and the south coast of England before moving to a Greek island. She works with books as an editor and agent and writes occasionally for newspapers and magazines. She has previously written Meeting Mr Kim and Falling in Honey, and her blog about daily life is at: www.octopus-in-my-ouzo.blogspot.com.

It's difficult to find a perfect system of spelling Greek words in English letters, but in general I've spelled words pretty much as they sound, except where it would look too unusual. So for example, Yorgos, because that's how it's pronounced, not Georgos.

  Male Greek names usually end in -s when they are the subject of a sentence (Yiannis) but drop the -s when you are addressing the person (Yianni!) or they are the object of the sentence (talking about Yianni). For simplicity, when I'm writing in English, I've used the -s form throughout, except in speech. I have added an 'h' to the endings of some words just to make it clear that the final syllable should be pronounced.

Prologue
Chapter 1 – A Place Unlike Anywhere Else
Chapter 2 – You'll Go Crazy
Chapter 3 – Finding My Island Feet
Chapter 4 – Black Ribbons and Driftwood
Chapter 5 – Dancing Through Doorways
Chapter 6 – The Seahorse
Chapter 7 – Forces of Nature
Chapter 8 – Normal Service Will Be Resumed
Chapter 9 – The Austerity Diet
Chapter 10 – Sunshine After Rain
Chapter 11 – Darkness and Light
Chapter 12 – Death and Life
Chapter 13 – Perfect
Chapter 14 – Escape from Paradise
Chapter 15 – Emptiness and Experience
Chapter 16 – Big Week
Chapter 17 – Turning to Summer
Chapter 18 – Red Tape and Red Mullet
Chapter 19 – Endless Afternoons at the Beach
Chapter 20 – Rat on a Hot Tin Can
Chapter 21 – The Cheese Thief and the Rabbit
Chapter 22 – An Island Wedding
Chapter 23 – Winter Sunshine
Chapter 24 – Nectar for Christmas
Chapter 25 – Life Will Never Be the Same Again
Chapter 26 – A Happy Household
Chapter 27 – People Who Care
Chapter 28 – Wild Beauty
Chapter 29 – Investing in Freedom
Chapter 30 – Learning to Live Small and Think Big
Chapter 31 – Small Worlds
Chapter 32 – Tilos Devil
Chapter 33 – Life on a Greek Island
Epilogue
Food for a Greek Island
Acknowledgements

Not so very long ago, I fell in love with a tiny Greek island. I had often dreamed about Greek islands, and wanted to see if I could find a way to live there – and I did. It was a bumpy journey but I ended up in a little house surrounded by fields and mountains and sea, next door to a place called the Honey Factory. I had my dream life. This book is about what happened when I started to live the dream.

  It is tricky to write about your neighbours on an island that's a few miles long by a few miles wide. I don't want to get into trouble or cause people problems. Let's say that some of the details are made up and some of them are true, and you can judge for yourself. In my previous book, Falling in Honey, I changed the name of my friend Dimitris to Manolis and a few details of his life for privacy's sake, but he later said he wished I'd used his real name. So here, he's Dimitris.

  Various anecdotes have appeared in different form on my blog, which I named An Octopus in my Ouzo because it sounded funny and Greek. This is a book about breaking the normal rules of life, and muddling along in a culture you half-understand. Putting an octopus in ouzo would be taking that to a colourful extreme, and I'm not necessarily endorsing the practice (unless the octopus so chooses) any more than I would recommend falling in honey.

  I've tried to give a taste of the people, the culture and the flavours of a Mediterranean island all year round. This book is also about what it was like for me to reach out for everything I wanted. It's about real life, and really living. And how I began to learn to live small and think big.

  Escape with me to the sun and the heat, light and colour, hills scented with herbs, the blue seas and blue skies of a wild island in the South Aegean.

The midsummer sun seeps into the stone walls of my little house over the course of the day. The house looks grand from across the valley, but half of it is unfinished. The part I live in is one tall room with a wooden platform for the upstairs. When I arrived two months ago in April the nights were cool, but now in late June the bedroom is stifling. I move downstairs, where the window at the back of the house catches a breeze across fields from the Skafi valley, and another window faces the village clinging to the middle and lower reaches of the mountain. Lying on the couch, I fall asleep looking at the lights of the village and the stars above.

  I wake up in the early morning rested and content, and am gathering up the sheet and pillow when I see a pale yellow scorpion on the armrest. More amused than alarmed since any danger has passed, I take a picture for fun to show friends, then wrap the scorpion in a blanket and remove it to the garden. Dimitris responds with a message:

I do walk barefooted as often as possible; I don't tell him it was actually right by my pillow. I probably had a lucky escape.

  I've known Dimitris, the high school headmaster, since I came to spend a month on this island two years ago. He loves to give advice, some of it very useful, but I try to figure out how a scorpion would hide in a cup. If the cup was empty, you'd see it – and if it wasn't empty, surely the scorpion would drown? There must be some truth in it, but I'm the ultimate sceptic when it comes to received wisdom. Still, I thank him for his warning in the afternoon when I run into him at Eristos beach. He picks up his wetsuit and psarondoufeko, spear gun, and slowly makes his way to the sea to go fishing for octopus.

  This kilometre-long stretch of pebbles and sand that I had to myself in spring is now dotted with tents in the shade of the tamarisks, but the beach is still mostly empty. I spend an hour diving into blue water and lying on the sand in the sun, letting the warmth sink into my bones and clear any aches from sitting at the desk, then walk back through the valley to my house. It's next door to a storeroom and workshop filled with equipment for extracting honey. Back when I was in England and arranging to rent it, the owners referred to it as the 'honey factory'; I liked the idea of living at a honey factory, and told people that was my address. When I arrived, I was pleased to confirm that life was sweet living next door to the honey factory. It took me a couple of months of living here to realise that lots of people on the island make honey and the name on its own is meaningless – the family in reality just call it their apothiki, meaning outbuilding or workshop. The man who came to deliver a truckload of my belongings – boxes marked carefully with 'The Honey Factory, Megalo Horio' – simply rang a few people to find out who I was and where I lived. But by then the name had stuck.

  Megalo Horio, while its name means 'big village', is a small settlement of white houses with blue shutters and doors, none quite the same, each facing a slightly different angle, hemmed in by a cluster of pine trees on the otherwise rocky slopes of a steep hill. Above are strewn the remnants of stone walls from earlier centuries. The ruined castle set into the sheer rock summit was mostly built by medieval knights during the crusades, but the entrance is from the ancient acropolis when a temple of Zeus and Athena was here. That's the view I look at when I wake up in the morning and go to sleep at night.

  I approach my house along a dirt track in an old riverbed; the valley is known as Potamia. A fence all around the property keeps the goats out, and the gate is a haphazard affair of wooden planks and bits of wire, next to a piece of ancient marble masonry. The house was newly built from the ruins of an old one – I am the first to inhabit this new version. The garden, which was bare earth when I arrived, has a disused well and what seems to be an old grain mill or olive press with a round weight that would, until a few decades ago, have been pulled by a donkey around the flat stone circle.

  Below the apothiki is a trough for making wine, and inside are old clay beehives that look like chimney pieces alongside the new wooden ones, the big refrigerator for cleaning the hives, plus thousands of tools that Pavlos uses for fixing this and that. Piled up outside is more such paraphernalia. Nothing gets thrown away. On a small island where you can't just go out and buy things instantly, you never know when something old might come in useful. This might spoil the view a bit, but it fits with my recycling and re-using ethos.

  The house once belonged to Pavlos' father, Pantelis, and now belongs to Pavlos' son, Delos (a short form of Pantelis – in Tilos, people tend to follow the Greek tradition of naming children after their grandparents), who rents it to me; but it's Pavlos who planted the rose bushes around the edge of the garden. I've planted rocket and tomatoes and courgettes; the melon seeds I put in the ground on a whim one day, after eating melon in the garden, have also come up and are bearing fruit. I notice something has been taking little bites out of the courgettes, and there are stalks where some tiny sweet melons have been very carefully nipped off. Since we don't have anywhere to buy garden supplies, I have an idea to protect the melons using kitchen scouring pads, opened out into silver netting. Improvisation is necessary here.

  The drone of a michanaki, a motorbike, signals that Pavlos is on his way up the hill. He comes from the village every day to potter around the workshop and his own vegetable garden in the field below. He's a retired electrician, compact and wiry, with a slightly sad and bemused expression permanently on his face, and eyes that light up and gleam when he sees you. He switches off the engine and walks up the steps to the house with a handful of dark plums.

  'I'd have brought more,' he says, 'but I didn't have a bag with me.' I thank him profusely, and he lights a cigarette, then asks, 'To kouneli irtheh?' Did the rabbit come?

  I say I haven't seen it today.

  'Ercheteh ti nichta,' he says – it comes in the night. I imagine the rabbit stealthily tiptoeing into the garden wearing a black mask and a swag bag. Pavlos has been threatening for a while to shoot the pest and stew it into a hearty stifado. He finishes his cigarette then heads down to his garden, where I can hear him breaking up soil as I eat a couple of just-picked plums.

  In T-shirt and shorts, I make some coffee and open my laptop, log on to the office server and go through my emails. The important thing for me is that this rural outpost comes with an internet connection so I can work. This is the plan, one that makes my situation a little different: I'm working full-time from home but I get to take extraordinary lunch breaks.

  In the evening, the wind has dropped and it's hot even downstairs in the house. I pile quilts and blankets and pillows outside on the rough terrace, grateful to have no neighbours to witness my unconventional approach. I fall asleep in the fresh air, under the stars, listening to the high-pitched call of the Scops owl as well as the intermittent drone of the refrigerator in the apothiki. I wake in the early hours to see the moon straight ahead, so full and dazzlingly bright that it illuminates the sky and bathes the garden in silver light. I'd never have noticed this if I'd stayed in the house. Eventually I turn over and fall asleep again until the bees are buzzing around the basil and courgette flowers, the cicadas are revving up and sun lights the mountaintops all around.

Like many people who come to Greece on holiday, I often wondered if I could live on a Greek island. After university, I taught English in Athens for a year, and spent weekends and vacations on Crete and Santorini, Mykonos and Hydra and other islands. But the pull to find a career, to have the freedom to do more with my life, drove me farther afield. I've loved to travel and live in other countries; but at times when I've been without my own home for a long while, I've felt a need to settle and a longing to be back in Greece. Now I have years of experience working with books – as a literary agent in Canada, a freelance editor in France and a publisher in England – and I decided it was time to try working from home on a Greek island. It took me a long time to be comfortable saying: I can do the job, but I don't fit into the box.

  My boss in England offered me a freelance contract, and a colleague found me tenants to cover the mortgage for the little flat I'd bought: a reasonably solid base with which to make this risky move. I love freedom and adventure, but also need some stability. I earn far less money than I used to, but my rent is low and it's not possible to spend lots of money here. My needs are simple.

  I count my blessings that I've got myself into a situation where I can be outdoors more, and the countryside is on my doorstep. When did I start to notice, I wonder, that exercise outdoors in nature grounded me and made me happier? Over the last few years when I lived near the south coast of England, if I needed a pick-me-up I would always cycle a few miles north of town and then walk up a hill in the South Downs topped by the outline of a prehistoric fort. But it was usually only on weekends, or on rare summer evenings when the weather was good and I still had the energy after work. Here in Tilos, I can sleep under the stars, and be at my desk (barefoot, but who's to know?) first thing in the morning, ticking off items in my diary. And both work and life feel better than ever. That's the idea: to live a better life in lots of ways; eat local food; spend more time in nature.

  Often I ascend the stone steps to the flat roof just to look at the fields stretching away in three directions, and the steep limestone hills, empty except for tiny chapels hiding faded frescoes, and the blue of the sea. Sometimes I look up to see eagles circling high overhead. I can walk to a cave where the bones of the last elephants in Europe were found, buried in volcanic ash. This is a wild, rugged and colourful place with few people, where roads don't have names or numbers, beaches aren't cluttered with signs and entertainments. Lacking many of the things that can make life noisy and complicated, it's unlike anywhere else I've found and I love it. Still, I grew up in a village surrounded by hills in the north of England, so in some ways I've come full circle but to a better climate.

  The sky is a deep blue, the temperature reaches up towards 40ºC and there's a strong sense that we're tiny specks on a baking hot rock in the Mediterranean. The dominant smell as I walk up the dirt track towards Skafiis of sage burning to a crisp in the sun. Then there's the rich, sweet aroma of a fig tree by Menelaos' farm, which looks at first sight like a junkyard, but every bit of junk is something that is being put to good use, and the space in between is filled with goats and sheep. Menelaos, a strong, sturdily built man with tousled grey hair and a smiling face, is often working in his fields there, digging or planting, and he'll stand up and wave, and ask 'Pou pas?', where are you going? Banio? Swimming?

  Another twenty minutes down a footpath takes me to a green valley opening out into a natural stretch of pebbles flashing white against a deep sapphire sea, with patches of sand the pink of the inside of a ripe fig. In late spring, I had it to myself. Now a few hardy summer visitors make it here and build little shelters out of bamboo cane as there are no trees for shade. At the end of the afternoon, it's deserted again, and peaceful. There's a cove to the right, over the rocks, where the sea gets deep quickly. I love to strip off and dive naked into the blue, lie on the shore in the warm sun, then swim back towards the shallower, rockier stretches with my snorkel to watch the fish. When I'm ready to leave, I gather some wood and cane to take home for rigging up nets in the garden.

  Occasionally, I'm invited to a gathering at someone's house in the village: a good excuse to swap the dusty shorts and T-shirt for a strappy dress. Several outsiders have bought and restored old homes here, dropping in for a few weeks' holiday a year. These impromptu invitations of summer are a change from quiet evenings at home and an easy way to make new friends. One evening it's the house of an Italian man who has friends and family staying with him; most of the group except me speaks Italian, so I simply soak up the pleasures of eating and drinking in the warm evening air, my body feeling alive from the swimming and walking and summer sun. When I walk home down the dusty track later, I switch off the torch and let my eyes adjust to the darkness so I can see the jagged mountaintops silhouetted around me. The clear sky is full of piercingly bright stars and the pale arc of the Milky Way.

  People ask how long I plan to stay here. I don't know. I can't know what life will really be like here over the months and maybe years to come. This is an experiment in an alternative way of living. I walk, climb hills, swim, feel the warm sun on my skin every day and speak the beautiful language, and enjoy life. In some ways, I'm able to enjoy life more because of the strange twist that happened in the journey here. I was with someone, and we were going to move here together, but it didn't work out that way. I think I was always meant to come here alone and to see what life brings.

I'm early for the bus so I go to wait on the bench in the shade. An old man comes down the lane and joins me on the bench and we start to talk. He says I speak good Greek.

  'I don't think so! I want to say so much and I don't know how.'

  'Ah, don't worry, slowly you'll learn. You can't know it automatically!'

  Having studied Ancient Greek at school, come to Greece on holiday as a teenager, lived in Greece for a year after university and taken several holiday trips, I have the basics of the language. But I've become lazy about opening the grammar books. No: not lazy, but when I finish my work, I want to relax and make the most of the summer.

  'I'm going to Ay'Antoni for a swim,' announces the old man, and I realise he's carrying swimming trunks in a little plastic bag. 'It gets hot up here in the village in the middle of the day. It's a lovely little beach down there.'

  Pantelis, father of Pavlos, joins us at the bus stop, swiftly followed by Irini, who has the tiny mini-market with the pretty, hand-painted sign up the narrow alleyway opposite. Just below the village kafeneion, or traditional cafe, Irini's shop has unfathomable opening hours that fit around her goat-tending duties. Irini is a bulky and warm-hearted lady, often leaning on a tall stick, and you would have to work hard to remain a stranger to her. The shop doesn't sell much that I need but I try to visit from time to time and find something to buy because otherwise Irini asks me, as she does now:

  'Pou eiseh?'

  This is a tricky one to answer, as it literally means 'Where are you?', which seems an odd question to ask someone standing in front of you. I think it really means 'Where've you been?'

  'At home,' I say, and hedge my bets by adding, 'But now I'm heading to Livadia to take the Diagoras to Rhodes.'

  'Oh, the Diagoras is late! Still in Kalymnos.' The big ferry, the Blue Star Diagoras, comes from Athens and stops at several islands before Tilos. Irini must have been on the phone to someone, maybe waiting for a shipment to arrive.

  'Oh no! So I'll have to wait a couple of hours in Livadia?'

  The village of Megalo Horio is seen as pano, 'upstairs' as local people sometimes translate it. It has its feet in the fertile Eristos valley, and around the other side of the mountain is the northern harbour of Ayios Antonis. Livadia, built on the edge of the large bay to the south of the island where the ferries come and go, is Kahto, 'downstairs'. Being by the sea, it has hotels and rooms to rent, and several shops and cafes in the square – though most of them close in the middle of the day, siesta time.

  'Longer,' says the young woman with a little son who's joined us at the bench also. 'How long does it take from Kalymnos?' she asks the old man, who isn't sure, but they all offer an opinion. Suffice to say, it will be a while.

  'I could take the other boat at four,' I say – unusually today, there are two ferries – 'but it costs more, pio poli…'

  'Pio polla,' corrects the old man with a smile. 'See, I've taught you one thing today!'

  It's true; little conversations like this will gradually improve my Greek, as well as bringing me closer to the community, something that's important to me as an outsider who'd like to stay. I probably spend too much time alone at my house.

  Down the hill comes Nikos, the retired, somewhat rotund travelling barber with thick round glasses. When I stayed in Livadia for a month two years ago, trying to determine if I could live here, I watched him zipping around the island on his scooter, and one day I looked down from the terrace of my apartment to see the baker sitting on a chair in the alleyway wearing a cape while Nikos leaned over him with his scissors. He's the husband of Vicky, long-time curator of the diminutive museum in the village. Carrying a shoulder bag and looking frazzled, Nikos launches into a speech to Irini so rapid that I've no idea what he's talking about, though I think he mentions music and lots of people.

  Eventually the bus comes and I'm wished kalo taxithi, a good journey, and some of us leave and some stay. The bus winds its route to Ayios Andonis, where the little harbour and shady beach look lovely and I think I must go there for lunch or dinner this summer sometime. Someone from the taverna meets the bus and takes their delivery of sacks of bread from the bakery. As we set off again and loop around to Eristos beach, the driver drops Nikos as close as possible to En Plo, where he is going to pick up his michanaki – it seems he left his scooter there last night after going to hear the live music at the taverna.

  If I had a car, it would be so much more convenient, but I'd miss all of this. And I wouldn't want to miss it for the world.

When you live in a place with a permanent population of roughly five hundred, every now and then you have to go to a bigger place to visit a doctor or a dentist, or to buy hardware or underwear, or to get to an airport. For Tilos residents, that bigger place is usually the island of Rhodes, and on Friday when the ferry schedule allows for a trip there and back in one day, islanders will often be seen around Mandraki, the old port area in Rhodes town, running their city errands. This time, I'm leaving for a quick trip to England in early July, but spending a couple of days in Rhodes first.

  Rhodes is one of the larger Greek islands and in the summer is busy with people and cars, a different world from Tilos. The waterfront is lined with boats offering excursions, and stands selling fresh orange juice and corn on the cob cooked on the griddle; beyond the car park is Elli Beach, covered with bodies on sunbeds, but sometimes I like to sit in one of the trendy cafes there and listen to music.

  Walking around the flamboyant dome of the New Market in the early evening, my eye is caught by some shoes in the window of a shop and I decide to go inside. I am deliberating if I can justify acquiring them – living, as I do, up a dusty dirt track in the middle of nowhere – when one of the men in the shop who have been talking amongst themselves asks:

  'Eiseh Italitha?' Are you Italian?

  I smile. I love being asked if I'm Italian; even if it is just a very slick sales pitch. It seems surprising at first that so many Italians visit these islands when there is plenty of sunshine in Italy, but the country's connections with the Dodecanese go back a long way. The wide boulevard that stretches from the New Market to the old casino at the tip of the island, passing the gates of the old harbour which the Colossus once bestrode, according to legend, is lined with grand edifices from when the Italians ruled the island from 1912 until World War Two, as well as some from the earlier Ottoman rule.

  I reply in Greek that, no, I'm from England (not bothering to mention the blend of Hungarian and Scots blood on my father's side).

  'What? No! Impossible! You don't look English. Look at your colour. Father Greek? Mother Greek?' I suppose many of the English they see at this time of year are lobster-red from lying on sunbeds for two weeks in blistering heat.

  'No! But thank you. I live on Tilos.'

  There is general hilarity. 'What?! You can't live on Tilos! You'll go crazy! No, it's just… it's very small. I know people from Tilos, my wife's family. Katse, re…' Sit down, he says, using the 're' word, often tagged on to a phrase among friends, suggesting matey familiarity. 'Sit down, it's a family shop, this!'

  And so I do. We chat, and I leave buying shoes for another time.

The next day, my friend Hari drives us down the coast to Kalathos for an afternoon at the beach. I met him one evening here in late spring, when I was reading a newspaper at a bar and he started reading over my shoulder. He's a heavy-built Greek man who was born in Alexandria, Egypt; he has a deep, husky voice, a subtle smile and twinkling eyes. He's kind and funny and extravagant in his public persona; can tell the same joke a hundred times without flinching; yet is shy and reserved in private, and a creature of habit. When he can afford to stop work, he'll escape to his little house on the small island of Leros and go fishing, or maybe set up a taverna. But for now, with the Greek economy in crisis, he spends his days chasing payments from restaurants he supplies with food. And when I come to Rhodes, he looks after me very well, buying me little treats and teaching me to cook Greek dishes. I am actually smitten with him, though everyone says he's too old for me.

  We stop to pick up frappé coffees for the road, a frozen bottle of water for the beach, and as we continue south past the monastery of Zambika high on its pointed hill above the sea, he puts his hand out of the window and declares it is burning. He knows the road very well and drives with purpose, continually overtaking. As we descend towards the beautiful plain of Malona, a goat runs out in front of the car and he brakes fast. 'Reflexes!' he says, smiling and shaking his head.

  When we get to the beach, the sand is like hot coals, and Hari stands in the sea and declares he's not getting out.

  He later tells me off quite seriously for swimming after eating because I could get stomach cramp; when I protest that it was only a sandwich, he says, 'I'm not going to rescue you if you're drowning, then.' Not swimming for hours after lunch is another piece of received wisdom I'm somewhat sceptical about. Greeks swear by it, but the Greek summer habit is to eat a heavy lunch, then sleep during the heat of the day. The rest of us may survive because we eat lighter meals. Driving back to town, he puts on his reading glasses to compose a text to his son while speeding through the traffic. We clearly have different ideas about what is dangerous behaviour.

  In the evening, we dress up and go to a restaurant with live music. I drink wine and Hari drinks clear liquor called tsipouro, loading our glasses with masses of ice, and we eat sea urchin roe and salt-cured anchovies and marinated octopus.

  Only towards midnight is it reasonable to head into the Old Town. Of course, the narrow, winding, cobbled, ancient streets are pedestrian-only but, 'We Greeks like to be unlegal,' says Hari, so we drive, careering around corners and frightening tourists heading back to their rooms. Every five minutes he gets a call with some work problem. In a loud music bar, we watch the weekend fashion show, and dance to silly, sexy, summer party pop. I don't want to go to England tomorrow.

  'Eh, is nothing. Four, five days we will sit here again. Don't you worry about nothing. The life is too short,' says Hari. 'You must enjoy while you can! Because who knows what is around the corner? We could leave here and get hit by a train. OK, we don't have trains here in Rhodos, but anyway…'

  Arriving in England, I stand on the train station platform and look up. Where is the sun? What is that strange white stuff entirely covering the sky?

  England looks very green and flat and a little strange to me, having grown accustomed to a South Aegean summer. There's a drizzly sort of rain, something I haven't seen in months, and the ground of the train station is dotted with the ugly black spots of old chewing gum. On the train, nobody's talking.

  There are some sunny days, and I go out without an umbrella then get drenched when it suddenly turns to rainstorms. I've already forgotten what an English summer is like, and the world of commuting and traffic feels equally odd.

  The main reason for the trip is for work and it's fun to see colleagues; in between work meetings, it's also good to spend time with family and friends. People want to know I'm doing OK on my own; my plans for moving to Greece changed quite dramatically at the eleventh hour, and I had no time to see people to reassure them I was fine. In fact, I am full of energy and beaming with happiness after these first few months of Mediterranean life, and this new adventure has given me confidence in myself. Nothing can shake the euphoria.

As a child, coming to Greece on family holidays, I was spellbound by the traditional dancing: the dramatic men's dances, shows of strength and agility and passion. Living on the island for a few months has given me the opportunity to learn my first steps of traditional dance, a long-held ambition, at the weekly class in Livadia, which – appropriately enough for me – takes place in the primary school. Although I could catch the bus, during my first week back in Tilos I decide to enjoy the hour-long walk there across one of the emptier sections of the island.

  Turning on to the road, I pass the helipad. On the occasions when a helicopter thunders in, the throbbing power that beats the air as it touches down just a little way from my house gives me a thrill; yet unless it's a military helicopter, it's usually arriving for a medical emergency, to take someone to hospital in Rhodes. It stops just long enough to pick someone up then pulls away, leaving peace behind, just the birds crying out and the gentle sound of crickets. There's a path from there up the mountain to the Italian observatory, dating from the time of the occupation.

  To the right is Harkadio Cave, where the elephant bones were found, and above it are the ruins of another castle of the Knights of St John. As the road gains height and reaches a disused quarry, goats lounge nonchalantly at the roadside on mounds of gravel or in the shade of an old piece of machinery, or sometimes across the road, struggling to their feet awkwardly if a car needs to pass. The route sweeps downhill again to 'porselanes', where building materials are extracted by the islanders for making houses, and ochre and white cliffs of a porous stone provide little caves for goats to shelter from the midday sun. Falcons usually circle high above here at the end of the afternoon. Running parallel to the road is the old footpath that used to join the settlements of Megalo Horio and Mikro Horio.

  At the crest of the hill is a chapel, then the venzinadiko or petrol station, where Nikos Ikonomou sits outside on a couch until 2 p.m. when he closes up for the day. Mikro Horio can be seen on the slopes above: once a thriving village of about two and a half thousand people, now deserted, its stone houses blending into the hillside. After occupation by the German army during World War Two, when the livestock was plundered and curfews prevented people from tending their farms, many residents of Mikro Horio emigrated to find a living elsewhere; the rest moved to the coast at Livadia, abandoning the old village in the 1960s. I first learned about this from Vangelis, who became my neighbour and friend during my month in Livadia, and who wrote an account of his experiences growing up there.

  To the left is a path to the beach of Lethra. There are a couple more houses and then the edge of the plateau where the road zigzags down to Livadia, and the magnificent, smooth curve of the bay reveals itself, fringed by white pebbles. All around, the hills sweep up to sharp outcrops of rock and on a summit stands the stone wall of the ruined castle of Agriosykia. There are faint outlines of old farming terraces improbably high up.

  Kalos tin! is the welcome that each member of the dance class gets as we gather on the steps of the school. Only women attend, and it's another chance to get to know more people: locals who like to practise and improve, and a few xeni, foreign women who live here. Instruction is in Greek, as is the general chatter, gossip and clowning around.

  The traditional dances for women are performed in circles all together, with small steps that at first seem far less interesting than the men's dances. But I've started to realise there's more to them than meets the eye. The teacher likes to warm us up – while stragglers arrive – with the local sousta. There are so many variations on Greek dances, depending on the region they come from. The sousta was the first dance I tried at a festival, and like many foreigners I got confused. Seeing a line of dancers with arms criss-crossed, the natural instinct is to cross your arms. Instead – as I learned very quickly from fellow dancers – you open your arms, reaching over the people on either side of you to hold the hand of their neighbour, binding the line together tightly. I now learn from others at the dance class how to hold my hands: the leading hand palm up, to be led, the other palm down, to lead. The steps are simple: two tiny steps to the right, one step forward, with a slight bounce. While I'm practising the basics at the back of the line, the teacher demonstrates a more complex move to the women at the front.

Midsummer nights on Greek islands are full of traditional festivals and music, which is why some knowledge of the dances is important. The biggest festival, on 27 July, is that of the island's patron saint, Saint Panteleimon, and a good number of men on the island are named Pantelis after the saint. Panteleimon the 'all-merciful' is depicted on icons with what looks like a box of watercolour paints, but is in fact the medicine he used to heal the sick. The main monastery on the island is dedicated to him, a fifteenth-century building amid a spring-fed oasis high up on remote grey cliffs overlooking the sea, where there was once a temple to the ancient god Poseidon. It's no longer a working monastery but is looked after by the priest of Megalo Horio.

  The celebration lasts for three days. The day before the eve is a time of 'lying in wait' called proparamoni, and pilgrims stay up on the mountain, sleeping on mattresses in the leafy compound of the monastery. The eve of the saint's day is the festival's main celebration and feast, known as a paniyiri. Souvlaki sizzle on the grill and goat is cooked in tomato sauce in huge pots, to be served with roasted potatoes. Hundreds of people drive by car or motorbike, or take a packed bus as I do up the road cut into the cliffs for a night of music and dancing.

  The road seems perfectly innocuous by day, with my feet solidly planted on the ground, and it's a spectacular walk. By night, I consider it terrifying. Locals think it's absurd to be scared of the road to the monastery, but on one side is the mountain, down which rocks regularly tumble aided by roaming goats, while on the other side is a stomach-churning sheer drop of hundreds of metres. When half the vehicles on the island are driving up and down it, maybe after a drink or two, a little tired in the early hours… it's not the most relaxing end to the evening, even if the locals do say that the saint protects and there has never been an accident since the road was built.

  A night or two after the festival of Ayios (Saint) Panteleimon, an easy walk home for me in Megalo Horio, is an event called the Koupa or Cup, so called after the most important dance of the evening, where the woman at the front of the line holds aloft a large cup or bowl. When a man wants to praise the dancing skills of a woman – perhaps his wife or daughter – he puts money in the cup and leads her to the front of the line. Usually each woman will only get a few minutes of leading before she's replaced, and the cup is filled with notes.

  The Koupa takes place in the tiny square next to the church, overlooked by the kafeneion. The proximity of church and cafe is no coincidence: both are at the heart of Greek village life. Musicians sit on the stone bench underneath the church's twin arches, its walls smooth with whitewashed plaster except for the exposed stonework around the doorway. The ground is a sea of round grey pebbles on a zigzag design denoting waves.

  I buy a can of beer from Sofia at the kafeneion and wander down the steps. People crowd around the square, everyone in good spirits. A local man I've never met before, about my age and dressed in flip-flops and board shorts, starts chatting to me and offers me a plastic cup of a clear spirit called souma. It's very strong, and probably quite good for getting you in the mood for dancing. He introduces himself as Apostolis and soon drags me up to join the circle for the sousta. I'm now confident enough to join in, and with his encouragement I have fun. The sousta is an inclusive, meandering dance that can go on for as long as people keep joining the line, and the musicians keep playing.

  I meet Apostolis' friends: a lively and spirited woman from Athens, a quiet man from northern Greece who's stationed with the army on the nearby island of Kos, and a dark-eyed fisherman from Tilos whose profile reminds me of artwork on ancient Attic vases. Around 2 a.m., Apostolis suggests we all decamp to Mikro Horio. Stelios the fisherman says he's not coming as he has to be up for work in a few hours. The others take a motorbike and I opt to go in Apostolis' truck. This seems like a bad idea when I see the truck.

  'On second thoughts, I think I'm feeling a little tired. I'll walk home. Have a good time!'

  'Why?' he asks.

  'Um… When did you crash the truck?' The entire front of it is crumpled and parts are missing.

  'What, that? Oh, that's because I lent my truck to Stelios to drive. I'm a good driver, I'm just too nice!'

  'Really?' It's almost certainly a lie, but it's a convincing lie, as Stelios does have scars from a road accident or two. Well, you only live once. I get in. We're not going very far.

  Mikro Horio remained deserted for decades after the 1960s. Then some enterprising types came up with the idea of a summer-only music bar, opening around midnight. A narrow dirt track leads off the main road and twists uphill into darkness. The bar is in an old stone house, with a dance floor covered only by moonlight and a sky full of stars. A few empty houses in the abandoned village are dimly lit as if by candles, and the only other lights are on the Turkish coast in the distance. We drink, we dance, we laugh… And sometime in the early hours of the morning, conveyed home by a bashed-up truck, I happily collapse into my bed.

While the terrace is still cool and in shadow, I sit working in the peace and quiet of the early morning at the big, heavy pine table I shipped with other belongings when I moved.

  'We have tables here!' Maria said, laughing, when I admitted I'd brought it from England. Maria is Pavlos' wife and always insists I can have whatever I need. She's cheerful and kind. But acquiring a solid wooden table in Tilos wouldn't be easy, and this gives me a lot more pleasure than a wobbly white plastic one. I love the way the sun has bleached the wood. I rub oil into it to keep it from drying out too much. Perhaps wooden tables remind people here of the tough old days, and plastic seems clean and modern. When I tell her my father gave me the table, she understands – family trumps everything.

  A peaceful home office is conducive to concentration. I don't have any problem finding the discipline to work; if I don't work, I don't get paid and can't afford to live here. The only noise is of Pavlos and a friend throwing rubbish into the back of a truck, preparing for the honey-making that's coming soon. When I need a break, I potter around the garden to stretch. For the first time, having always lived in apartments as an adult, I have my own garden.

  After my ten days away in England, the garden became a small forest and I've been spending hours cutting things back, mostly the bush of horta. Horta is the word for any sort of grass – hence our word horticulture – and in a culinary sense, edible horta tends to mean any kind of wild-growing, leafy greens, boiled and served with olive oil and lemon. Unfortunately, this one plant had grown almost into a tree. The courgettes had ballooned into weighty marrows, which I stuffed with a mixture of rice and tomatoes and herbs and baked in the oven. The bees are enjoying the flowers on the rocket.

  I've been wondering why there are so many green tomatoes on my plants but they never seem to ripen. There were a handful of reddening ones last night, but none when I went to water them this morning, and finally I get it. The birds are taking them all for breakfast. The early bird here doesn't need to catch the worm. It has a ready supply of tomatoes. Using a handful of bamboo stakes from Skafi beach, I string up CDs over the plants to dangle and sparkle in the wind, selecting those least likely to be missed. It's a technique I've seen others use; a form of Tilos improvisation. We shall see how much the birds like Ibiza: The Sunset Sessions (Disc Three) and Learn to Speak Korean in 60 Minutes.

  I'm not convinced this will be enough to protect my little crops from avian thieves, but a careful scouring of the village supermarket shelves doesn't yield anything that might serve as netting. I rummage around in my cupboards and then, in a stroke of inspiration, I remember my portable string hammock – unlikely to be used now that the summer campers are taking up every tree on Eristos beach – and drape it over the lot. Fingers crossed it works. Pavlos appears confident about the efficacy of my tomato cage, though on a day like today with no breath of wind, the CDs hang like Christmas decorations.

  The melon plant has become a bit clingy, throwing out tendrils like there's no tomorrow and wrapping them deftly and securely around the stalks of the sunflowers. The sunflowers are being stoic about it but I think a conversation about needing space is on the cards. The melon plant also wrapped a tendril around what looks like a ball of tumbleweed. I wish it would wrap tendrils around the rabbit.

  When the sun comes up over the terrace, I move inside to work at the kitchen table, and in the early afternoon I close the computer and cycle to Eristos beach. I stop at the far end then go for a long swim around the little headland to the empty cove on the other side. The cliffs are shades of rust-red and purple-brown with splashes of green caper bushes, the colour of the sand like watermelon. My shoulders have the nicest gentle ache afterwards from all the swimming. I must do that more often. This is what I came here to do.

  Back home, I do a little more work then I write an email to my friend Steven in England, mentioning how nice it can be living on my own for a while: having the bed to myself, being able to eat baklava for lunch if I feel like it, reading a book while eating dinner rustled up from whatever's in the kitchen. It's good having a glass of wine while lying on the terrace and idly watching the sunset; observing how the little lizard comes along to his favourite piece of driftwood and clings to it; admiring my sunflowers. I always imagined sunflowers would take ages to grow, but these mighty, sturdy things have grown from tiny seeds in less than two months.

  This is the good, calm life that I wanted for myself, and also the one I thought would be perfect to raise a child in – surrounded by nature and the sea, a Gerald Durrell-type, old-fashioned kind of childhood in the fresh air. It's only come to me recently, this maternal urge. I was trying to conceive with Matt, the boyfriend I planned to move here with, envisioning a home and a family here. According to the doctor I saw in England a few months ago, there's no physical obstacle to my becoming pregnant. But am I likely to get to the necessary place in a relationship in time for another attempt?