It’s not by design but it’s impossible to exclude climate change from these posts. It’s the elephant in the room, just as it was in Spain when I was there in February, reservoirs down to 16% of capacity and all the municipal fountains turned off. Here it’s the heat, forecast today to hit 32°.

Yesterday it came close and I ventured out early to avoid the worst, walking for a few miles before seeking refuge in a café in the old town.

In the shade of its terrace I’d watched an older man across the street unloading crates of tomatoes from the back of a truck. He was glistening with sweat by the time he was done and, like me, headed for the shade of the café.

We were the only ones there and after he’d downed water and lit a cigarette to smoke with his coffee, addressing nobody in particular, he said, “Fuck it’s hot”, to which I agreed, and he smiled with a “You speak Greek?”

I’ve just enough to get by, although not far, and we muddled along for a while. He told me of wildfires in August and that the electricity had gone off in Vathiako, where he lived and power lines had been downed by the flames. Several villages had to be evacuated as hundreds of firefighters tackled the blaze.

I’d read about the fires before coming to Crete, as well as those circling north of Athens, a city spared by a change in the wind and the valiant efforts of hundreds of firefighters.

At the time more than 2,000 wildfires had erupted all over Greece and authorities were reporting that a mild, dry winter followed by a dry, hot spring had left vegetation across the country tinder-dry.

My friend, the tomato man, who I knew by then as Yannis, seemed intent at this stage on imparting knowledge of something far more important.

He’d moved forward in his chair, his arms airborne in what I assumed to be a rendition of one of the helicopters that had doused the flames, but I didn’t hear the word ‘elikóptero’, so obviously a word of Greek origin (etymology)

It had all got a bit too complicated for my inadequate Greek at this stage but, with the help of Google Translate, I then learnt of something quite shocking.

Yannis had been trying to alert me to the fact that twelve people have died in Greece this year from the West Nile Virus (WNV), a disease for which there’s no preventative vaccine or medicines with which to treat victims. His charade depicted mosquito flight, not helicopters.

Commonly found in Africa, the Middle East, North America and West Asia, WNV can cause neurological disease and death in people, mainly through the bites of infected mosquitoes.

As I read later, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDPC), had warned in August that the outbreak in Greece was a ‘major concern’. So far this year a total of 100 cases have been identified.

The ECDPC has also reported cases in Austria, Croatia, Hungary, Romania, France, Italy and Spain. Israel’s been hit hard too, recording 870 confirmed cases and 62 deaths, although probably not hit quite as hard as Gaza. Now mostly rubble, sewage flowing on what’s left of its streets and where over 40,000 people are dead, it’s almost certain that the situation there will be far worse.

So today, between 11.00 and 15.00 hours, as many area officials are encouraging people to do, I’ll be lying low, thoughts of Michael Moseley’s sad fate on my mind.

As far as I know, the infected mozzies haven’t made it to Crete yet, so I probably don’t need to worry about them.

Last night, going out onto my balcony to close the doors on any that might have made their way here, I overhead the two British expat couples who live in the apartments next door.

They were out on one of their balconies enjoying a glass or two and, apparently, immigration is the thing about which we should all be worried, the irony of their own presence here lost in their indignation.

There were none of them here when I first came in the 70s and, much as I still love this city, they and the things that delight them, which have transformed parts of the place, have diminished its charms.

The last thing I heard as I closed my door was talk of ‘stopping the boats’, although the only ones you see and hear in Rethymno are roaring speedboats, jet skis and inflatable bananas bouncing screaming passengers around the bay.

I’d bet my life on my neighbours being first in the queue when yesterday’s Daily Mail arrives in town.

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