Spirit in the Skyros

If your chi is blocked, if you need to find yourself, or if you just want a right good laugh in the sun, this centre for teaching and healing could be just what the doctor ordered

IT'S BEEN a hell of a year. Two broken relationships, three children, much gnashing of teeth and shedding of tears and many chest pains later, I find myself sitting before the good doctor telling me I need to take some time out. So I plan a holiday and two weeks later I'm on a plane to Athens.

Skyros is on my list of pluses from my forays into the world of alternative lifestyles, along with meditation, hippy chicks, Tibetan prayer flags, most vegetarian food and acceptance of my own free- spirited nature. Minuses include the permanent threat of tantric sex, sweat lodges where everyone strips off, a surfeit of lentils and wispy-bearded youths lacking the energy to wash up and wash, period.

I had heard about the legendary holistic holiday centre that had become synonymous with its island base. There were tales of balmy weather, raucous laughter, romantic assignations and late nights in tavernas fuelled by retsina.

Given the doctor's diagnosis, I would have been better off having a whip round for a heart defibrillator, heading to Bognor Regis for two weeks with sufficient medical supplies, and hiring a Swedish nurse in case I needed mouth-to-mouth. But I didn't.

You have to want to go to Skyros. It takes longer to get there than it does to get to Australia, but it's organised at such a leisurely and pleasant pace it becomes part of the holiday.

I arrive in Athens at night and rounded up with a group of Skyrians and shipped to a hotel. In the room is a single bed and a double. I grab the single and await the inevitable rap on the door. Ed, the most over-qualified drop-out in history, stands before me. He's been an actor, barrister, consultant, trainee drama therapist and environmental do-gooder and has a background of family trauma and a gnawing, lifelong neurosis. We hit it off straight away.

Next comes Colin, a shy technical writer from Oxford, who spends the whole holiday soaked in sweat in what appears to be the same blue shirt and permanently wedded to an attache case.

Our journey continues on two coaches across mainland Greece followed by the required island hopping. That night, after considerable flirting over lunch with two sisterly divorcees clearly bent on a good time, Ed and I finally make it up the cobbled streets to the Skyros Centre.

Most people, including our lunch companions, are delivered to the more remote Atsitsa Centre. After collecting our bags, we are greeted in twos and threes by a pack of smiling Greek landladies who, despite speaking an alien tongue, welcome us into their homes.

Many trippers come here not for sun or romance, but to partake of one or two of the many courses such as novel writing, painting, tai chi, massage, sailing and theatre, that are on offer. For this session most people are booked in for two weeks of drama therapy with world authority Marcia Karp, a brazen and hilarious New York Jewess prone to big earrings, braying laughter and creative swearing.

I tick the box which says: 'Polly James: Self Presentation, Performance' and another course in drumming. Polly James, the tousle- haired former LiverBird and comic actress who played the fiery but lovable Beryl, is among a number of well-known names sprinkled throughout the Skyros calendar. Others include writers Fay Weldon, Sue Townsend, Martin Amis and DM Thomas, broadcaster Mike Read and musician Tom Robinson.

Down at the centre after dumping our bags, the former LiverBird, a petite, still pert, waif-like figure with huge saucer eyes, hands me a glass of orange juice and introduces herself. Then we eat a sumptuous feast of aubergine and hummus.

Classes began in earnest the following morning with introductions and what becomes the morning ice-breaker: a quick round of the ridiculous refrain, "It ain't what you do it's the way that you do it" while dancing haphazardly around the centre's upper floor workroom.

Breathing and bonding exercises follow and as we all got to know each other, loosening up in the Greek heat, we risk the sort of gentle ribaldry and wicked banter that rapidly promotes friendships and constant hilarity. Never have I laughed so much. Polly James was a fund of funny stories, flirtations and a self-mocking humility that earned her a place in the hearts of everyone present. "I am an actoooor you know," becomes her catchphrase and when, in exasperation at her unruly charges' constant misdemeanours, she asks if I can do better I decide to take her at her word. By this time Marcia Karp, whose classes run in the afternoon, has joined us and before long we all collapse, laughing, on the floor. My grief at the loss of two families has turned to mania and I find myself the life and soul of one long-running party.

This jocularity soon spills out on to the streets as we split into natural factions and head past the statue of the English poet Rupert Brooke, who is buried here, for a lazy afternoon on the beach and a long nights in the taverna.

The Greeks seem to take all this in good part, used as they are to eccentric groups of foreigners descending on their island through the busy summer months.

In our session are three Glaswegians, a French rocket scientist, a depressed Belgian, a Norwegian, an angry Swiss woman, a tardy Irish woman, a couple of Americans and a smattering of English media types.

It doesn't take long to establish who to hang out with. Alex, a film producer, with corkscrew curls and a ready wit; Frances, a kindly counsellor pining sweetly for her husband; Lesley, a business consultant and church-goer with a lethal line in dirty jokes; and Coralie, whose radiant beauty and serene temperament are entrancing.

Everybody has their story, even those I'd usually cross the road to avoid take on a surreal beauty as if blessed and transformed by the Mediterranean sun.

Normally, if I have warm feelings for someone I find myself whipped into a maternity ward nine months later charting a course I'd not planned. But at last I feel at peace. Tranquil. Contained.

What is strange though, and takes some figuring, is the large number of old Greek women with black clothes and teeth who sit staring at us from doorways. We decide they are special agents smuggled over from another part of the island where they've been busily amassing an arsenal of weapons.

Another running gag is the price of food. Wherever we got on Skyros any meal costs exactly the same - 3000 drachmas, as long as we have a Greek salad with it. By the end of the fortnight our theory has been extrapolated to include anything - I am still hoping to buy a Maserati and salad for that sum.

But alas, too soon it is all over and one morning it is time to say goodbye. As we board the ferry there is one final surprise - the Skyros staff take off their clothes and somersault into sea.

We laugh uproariously and head home. The doctor was right: it was just what I neededu Need to know Further information u Skyros holidays at the Skyros Centre and Atsitsa, May to October, start at (pounds) 675 for two weeks, including full board and courses but not travel. Skyros-in-Thailand runs throughout the winter. Prices start at (pounds) 855. Skyros 92 Prince of Wales Road, London NW5 3NE. (020 7284 3065) www.skyros.com u You can book flights to Greece through Griffin Aviation 020 7814 9977) for around (pounds) 239 (and to Thailand through East Travel for (pounds) 465 (01473 214305). Transfers and stopover accommodation from (pounds) 95.

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