Thursday Doors, The Greek Island of Kimolos

Narrow cobbled streets, whitewashed houses with paintwork cracked and splintered by the sun.  With less than a thousand residents across the entire island there isn’t a great deal of local activity to observe. In the tight, sinuous streets paving stones have been edged in white and decorated with flowers, hearts, sailboats and slogans: “My Kimolos, my paradise”. Lovely.

At the top the tall cathedral seemed somehow too grand and too big and completely out of scale with the tiny streets and boxy houses. The streets are ramshackle and without order or planning as they wound their way to the centre and the sixteenth century Kastro, much of which isdilapidated and in ruins with heaps of rubble from collapsed and mostly abandoned houses.

Inside, some people were clinging on to occupation of houses with only very basic facilities that would certainly be declared unfit in the United Kingdom.

The Kastro is an important historical monument and there are plans to restore the buildings and some early work has begun but it is likely to take a very long time because current funding from the Greek Government and the European Union is totally inadequate which leaves the project financially beyond restorative reach.

As surely as a sunflower drops its head and dies if anyone wants to see these old doors they had better go soon because they will soon be replaced with plastic and will have gone the way of the old Greek ferries, the unreliable bus services and the dusty corner shops that sell things people no longer need.