I joined the next idiot tourist procession at the hospital

We convened in Paris in high summer, embracing at Charles de Gaulle airport like a sprawl of puppies.

We were 19, fresh out of high school and ecstatic. We had been serious girls who studied hard. We had secured university places and deferred them. We had spent the first six months of the year in various locations, working and saving.

The author in Santorini, aged 19; and (right) recovering from her accident.

Now we were together to execute the long-dreamed plan: to backpack around Europe. We shucked off the seriousness very quickly. We had Eurail passes but no plans, and Greece seemed an obvious choice.

We could closely observe the ancient history we had learned so much about at school.

Also, we could party.

We took a train, a ferry, a train and another ferry to Santorini.

Its prettiness made us happy girls gush – whitewashed cubiform villas set into steep volcanic cliffs, deep blue sea, and sunsets that crowds gathered to watch.

Because I was young and knew nothing, and because my mother was far away and there was no internet and not even many phones, I hired a moped.

I went careering around the island on it. I had never ridden a moped before and I was stunned by the thrilling, euphoric, high-speed autonomy it afforded me.

I could go anywhere! It followed, therefore, that I could do anything.

I was limitless, I contained multitudes. (Walt Whitman – years of study had lodged poetry deep in my brain. Now I was learning what it meant.)

I visited a snug swimming spot tucked away amid Aegean rocks dotting a sea so blue it made me want to weep, or laugh, or, I don’t know, to somehow meet its beauty with an emotion that was large enough to match it.

The swim I had there remains one of the best of a lucky life that has contained many swims.

On the return journey from this magical Aegean bathe, salt crystals on my skin and giddy with euphoria, I came too fast down the hill back to Fira.

I crashed the moped, landing in shock on hot asphalt.

My gangly teenage limbs were wounded, Greek gravel fastened into the flesh of my Euro-summer tan.

My best friend took me to the local hospital. She didn’t say, “I told you so”, and I still love her for that.

A doctor smoked an idle cigarette as he waited in casualty for the next idiot tourist to present herself with moped injuries. Here I was.

For the next few weeks I wore gauze bandages and absorbed an important life lesson: never ride a motorcycle.

I was chastened but, ultimately, undamaged.

We slept in a rooftop dorm. We made friends with Frenchmen we promised to visit in Paris and never did. We ate yeeros. We danced on the bar at the Blue Note cafe. We swam topless (terrifically daring, we thought). We visited ruins and watched sunsets and met people from all over the world whose accents and anecdotes we gulped down.

We lived in an utterly outward way. We wanted to bring all of it into us. We were hungry all the time.

When I think of that summer now, it brings to mind a great capaciousness, a sense that the world was magnificently large and held infinite experiences.

I gained a life-changing piece of knowledge: that I had the resources within myself to live a life of joy and adventure.

We had very little money but we had youth and we had time.

Later in life you learn those two are the two things you would pay anything to have back.

Every day we had a few simple tasks.

We had to find somewhere to sleep, something to eat and something to feed our curiosity.

Now, when I overthink things, I remember the simplicity of that trio: sleep, eat and feed your brain.

That summer was nearly 30 years ago. I have never felt so free again. But the sense of largeness, of boundlessness? I folded it up and kept it. I still have it.

If I need to access it I think of the sea swim and the wind whipping past as I rode towards the blue. Before the crash.

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