Two weeks ago today I was reclining on a sun lounger overlooking the Aegean sea as it lapped the soft white sands of Glystra beach.

Lest that paints a picture of some sort of leggy goddess bronzing herself in the Mediterranean sun, let me be clear. I was hiding from the searing heat under a stripy umbrella and a makeshift towel-curtain, while covering my pale, mosquito-bitten legs under an ill-fitting sarong.

I was the least glamorous thing in the otherwise very swanky set-up on that secluded bay, where well-to-do tourists and a few locals were spending their Tuesday afternoon.

Behind us was the enormous, open-fronted structure of a luxury beach bar and restaurant called Escapada. Massive glowing lights suspended from the ceiling. Club tunes pulsing through giant speakers. The waiting staff were dressed head to toe in off-white linen, looking like something between a Greek caryatid (probably the intention) and an Egyptian mummy (probably not). A weird look, but undeniably very cool.

Today, it’s all gone.

Along with Sabina’s watersports centre, an altogether humbler outfit 3 minutes along the coast. Little more than a home-made shelter with a desk and several racks of waterskis and windsurfing boards. Sabina’s business, living her dream life on a beach in Greece doing what she loves. Which 2 weeks ago was teaching my girls how to waterski, while I got to bomb about on a jetski.

Funny how you can grieve for a place, even if you’ve only known it fleetingly. Like the club on the 108^th floor of the Twin Towers which I went to in 1998. Now an indeterminate patch of open sky above Lower Manhattan.

What are we grieving for? Partly it’s the loss of a physical space you can no longer go to. But it’s also the realisation that the experience you had there – whether one of joy, hilarity, exhilaration or serenity – can never be repeated. Perhaps you never can truly repeat such experiences, but when the physical place is obliterated, so is the possibility of returning there, of reliving the moment, of revisiting the dream.

Last night, after seeing the pictures of a scorched and smoke-smothered Glystra beach, my teenage daughter climbed into my bed and had a little weep.

“Is this climate change?” she asked. 

I think so.

“Then it’s our fault.”

Not just our fault. Lots and lots of people’s fault.

“What will the world be like when I grow up?”

Crikey. No answer. 

Climate change. No longer a spectre on the horizon. This is it. Here and now. It’s not too late to undo the worst, I do believe that. But today I can literally see what we are losing. What my children are losing. And it feels like part of me is already grieving for the planet.