That’s when the holiday really took a turn.
Not because of the pain of the initial impact – although hundreds of sharp needles stabbing into my skin was about as comfortable as it sounds – but because of what came next.
Worse than being an angry teenager on holiday with your parents, I discovered, was being an angry teenager on holiday with your parents who has to hobble everywhere on a swollen, sore foot.
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My main problem, though, was that many, many sea urchin spines had become lodged in my sole.
Spines which, we learned when we sought medical advice on the island, all needed to come out if I was to avoid the risk of serious infection.
The Long Extraction and Lasting Fury
Much of the remaining half of the holiday was then spent with me lying on the floor of our rented flat, my parents taking turns to pierce my foot with tweezers and needles to coax the fragments of sea urchin out, one by one.
Tempers on both sides were lost, to put it lightly.
We took advice from anyone we could find, and before the holiday was through I had bathed my foot in warm water, olive oil and sea water, none of which seemed to bring the blasted black spikes any closer to the surface.
In the end, it was time that calmed my foot and my fury.
A week later, safely back home in Devon, the remaining spines had surfaced enough, and I was level-headed enough, to tweeze them out by myself in the bath.
But I still can’t think of that holiday without a grimace, as the memory of lying on that floor in so much pain, physical and emotional, flashes across my mind.
I remember catching the bus back to the ferry port at the end of the holiday, on which my parents got chatting to another family, who loved Agistri so much that they returned every year.
The mother of that family said something like: “I bet you’ll be desperate to come back!”
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"Yes," responded Mum, with the tightest of smiles.
