I was going to say that it all started with a toothache, but that’s not quite right. It really started the day before, with a decision. A stupid decision made with the sort of offhand nonchalance with which people like me make decisions about places like theirs. It was a bad decision, one that I regret to this day and one that I probably always will.

On the other hand, the decision to go to Greece in the first place had been a good one. Though of course that decision wasn’t really mine.

It had been the run up to exam season and as the teacher with the highest number of exam classes in the school (and as a consequence the teacher with the highest number of mock examination papers to mark) by the time the half term break came around I was absolutely exhausted. For what seemed like months I was either in the classroom teaching, planning the lessons I would be teaching the following day, or marking examination papers from one of the four exam classes, all of which had multiple papers for me to plough through.