High life | 2 August 2018

On board S/Y Puritan

  I’m sailing off the charred eastern coast of Athens where so many died last week, and I remain suspicious as hell. Fifteen or so fires starting simultaneously smells like arson to me, committed by scum who murder for a TV set, or set fires in order to loot abandoned houses. Sometime soon we Greeks will have to take matters into our own hands. Frontier justice will prevail. Mind you, the community of Mati, where most of the dead lived, was illegally built some 40 years ago, and only issued building permits after the fact. It is a middle-class community of mostly retired doctors and lawyers, but it lay in a gully that funnelled the flames all the way to the sea. Extremely high winds did not help. The authorities talk a good game but will do nothing. If I were in charge, I’d arrest every criminal in Greece and deport them.