Many Greek islands, nowadaya, pander to tourists, reshaped – for cocktails with umbrellas and menus written in five languages. Fourni does not. It holds to its ways: its black-clad widows, its goats clambering on rocks, its white and blue honey-bee hives, its siesta times. It is simple Greece, a rock in the Aegean that still speaks to those who come seeking quiet and vestiges of Old Style Greece.

I first saw Greece forty five years ago, exhausted from a three – day train trip. It changed radically, on two occasions, the course of my life so, of course, it has a special place in my heart.

Fourni, a small island in the north-eastern Aegean had, when I first arrived, no pier. We climbed down rope ladders, rucksacks thumping the ferry’s side, and crossed to the shore in small boats. Today there is a pier, but Fourni remains itself, just a huge rock, craggy and unhurried.

The village street winds upward under small mulberry trees painted white at the base, their branches weaving a green canopy. Sunlight spills through in shifting gold. Granite slabs from Ikaria pave the way past a few cafés, shops, and whitewashed houses. Old men lean on sticks, old women sit in black, greeting strangers with patient smiles. The old are never hidden here; they live their years among the living. Aphrodite, who is 80, goes up and down Main St each morning with her ‘walker’. Surprised to see her out her black clothes, I ask why. She tells me her mother is now 5 years dead so tradition says she may dress more colourfully.

Each morning the fish seller comes down the street, calling “psaria fresca!” He has a small fishing boat as does his father.

At the top lies the square, shaded by a plane tree older than many nations. The café there — Aspasia’s, as it has been in the family for five generations — spills its tables across the stones. Inside, faded photographs watch over the living.

I drink iced coffee beside Aspasia’s grandmother, who once ran this place, while the marble sarcophagus dated from Roman times -about 2nd century A.D. – across the square keeps its own vigil. Flowers and the inscription, Ἐπαμείνων Τήλωνος καὶ Φίλτης, ἥρως χρηστὲ χαῖρε, ἐτῶν κεʹ,’ meaning “Epameinon, son of Telon and Philte, noble hero, farewell, aged 25“, are carved on its side. A monument, to the dead of the two world wars, crowned by the Greek eagle faces it — history and memory.

The island is a lobster’s claw of rock and shadow. Roads now curl across it, tracing the ridges where the Aegean glitters on every side. Below, narrow paths drop deep to coves of clear water. On the hills, terraces once coaxed growth from barren ground, now lie broken, overtaken by thorn and scrub. Food now mainly comes from outside, especially from nearby Samos. Some figs, olives, and cactus cling to sheltered corners. Yet the bees endure. Their hives gleam white and blue against the rock, and their honey is prized.

The sea keeps its secrets here. In its depths, nearly sixty wrecks lie scattered — merchant ships swallowed by storms, pirate prizes lost to reefs. Amphorae, timbers, anchors sleep below, remnants of centuries when Fourni stood at the crossroads of trade. Above, blue and white small fishing boats still putt in and the harbour, though fewer now, many destroyed under EU decree but, at one time one of the best fishing fleets in Greece. I watch them come and go, remembering the season I worked on a Caïque, learning how hard-earned a fisherman’s life can be.

Goats, outnumbering people, clatter over rocks and rest in the shade, their pungent smell hitting the nostrils. Only once did I see a shepherd. He appeared over a ridge, wooden crook in hand, like a figure from scripture.

Women in black pass silently, after a death, pinning a death notice to poles, mourning fathers, brothers, husbands. For a widow, the black is for life. In the cemetery above the village the sea keeps watch over long lives — many to ninety, some past a hundred.

On my last night I sit on the balcony, watching the port. Dinner has been grilled octopus, tomato salad, and wine from Samos. Thasos scolds me for using too much lemon — “you kill the flavour!” Soon the midnight ferry from Piraeus will arrive, turning within its own length like a dancer in the narrow bay, its lights churning the water. Tomorrow it will take me away.

Evenings here stretch late. the village, more or less, closes down afternoons from 2 to 5 so children play around the port and are only called home about eleven, young people quarrelling loudly and violently over a board game, in the cafe downstairs, burst suddenly into laughter.

Yanni, my host, is up each morning at six, sweeping away the leaves from his taverna terrace. He shows me each morning photographs of clouds where he swears he sees angels and devils battle endlessly. I squint, unable to see what he sees. I tell him he is imagining but he only laughs at my blindness, saying I should have my eyes examined.

On my last morning, he insists on serving me a free breakfast — coffee and one of those wonderful cheese and spinach pies the Greeks seem to hold the secret of making.

It becomes harder and harder to leave. Fourni clings to its simplicity and authenticity: with its rocks and bees, its widows and ferries, its shipwrecks hidden under the sea. An island that helps me to remember what Greece was like when I first came.