39 - A Lonely Child's Holiday

Before the birth of Brother and the inception of joint summer vacations with our family friends in a camping by the shores of Pieria, Father used to book a three weeks half-board holidays in ‘Platamon Beach’ – a 3* hotel situated also situated in the area between the coastal villages of Leptokarya and Platamonas. The hotel could have been as well characterized as semi-luxurious at that time, but for today’s modern holiday accommodation standards would be viewed as impersonal and mediocre, certainly aged and outmoded. In any case, Father, for reason he only knew, always seemed to shy away from booking rooms in higher than 3* class hotels on trips when overnight accommodation was required.

Our days were repetitive and dull in that three storey-hotel. With a rather dark and claustrophobic, albeit comfortably cool interior, it was located a few steps away from a scorched by the cruel midsummer sun beach, more gravelly than sandy, by a mostly rolling and clouded sea water; in short, a beach that offered little to talk about. Our nominal holiday periods of two weeks were spent going back and forth between the beach for a quick swim in the sea and the restaurant, where we ate our breakfast and the evening meals that we were entitled to as part of the package. I was confined within my shell there, having made no significant progress since infancy as far as my sociability and social skills were concerned, that is since the age I was too shy to even mumble a reply when I was asked by strangers of my name. Therefore, incapable of summoning the courage and confidence to mingle with other children of my age of six and seven years, let alone older, I resigned myself to watch them playing from afar, often hidden behind bushes and trees along the paths leading to the beach from the large terrace and the hotel gardens. I could hear their voices, their laughter, their screams of joy, their songs echoing to the sea, I could see them playing, running, dancing- what a happy bunch of boys and girls enjoying their summer. Both being alone, like a boat in the desert, and feeling lonely, and despite Mother's urging to introduce myself to the play groups of children that were spontaneously formed each evening on the terrace. I was inwardly longing to participate to their play, but I could not summon that courage for a breakthrough and declare my presence to them.

One evening, hidden behind the eucalyptus trees of the hotel gardens between the terrace and the beach, and in order to distract the children who had flooded the terrace and were casually playing and gauge their reactions, I bizarrely decided to throw small stones at them; at time intervals, which I believed were long enough so that they would return to their games before another throw would have caught them again by surprise and disrupt their play. Harmless by virtue of the size of the projectiles, yet the act of throwing stones and other small objects to the kids was Inexplicable and inexcusable and in hindsight only a troubled and eccentric soul would have come up with something like that. It was driven perhaps out of envy, perhaps out of boredom, perhaps as a revolt against loneliness and an illusion of participating. On the surface, I merely wanted to attract their attention, to show to them that a non-trivial being yet invisible being is out there and it exists, with a presence and coordinates, and tries in its eccentric manner to make his mark. I think a buried within wish was lurking -for them to eventually spot me and invite them to their company.

After throwing a few stones and pine cones, from the garden hedges, I suddenly realised that from behind the eucalyptus trees and the dark shadows that provided me some cover from sight, two of the older children of the group were approaching menacingly: towards me, the villain who was throwing stuff at them, the unreasonably hostile and evil actor whom he was. I tried to escape through the cobbled footpaths of the hotel, among the eucalyptus and leyland trees, dimly lit by few scattered garden lamps. I could not have predicted their routes in the maze of paths and met them unexpectedly in a crossing. As guilty, I was naturally captivated by fear, but also overwhelmed by a shame: of the lonely and timid, even coward person, which one might have asserted I carried through into adulthood. If it had not been dark, my flushed cheeks would have betrayed my guilt to the vigilantes. Thankfully, what they saw instead was an insignificant in stature timid child, whom they asked: ‘Hey, did you notice any brat about who throws stones towards the terrace?’ I answered them with an apologetically muffled ‘no’ and they left me to carry on with their search for the villain.

The incident, the only remarkable from those holidays, was over. I returned to the serenity of Mother's company, who was drinking her orange juice in a corner of the cafeteria. There would be no more lonely escapades in ‘The Platamon Beach Hotel’.