The hordes of children from the mainland who had thronged the tiny beach had returned to their classrooms. There were fewer tourists. The atmosphere was more subdued. The island's official drunk seemed to have mended his ways and was trying to be nice to everybody. Even the flies seemed to have called it a day, and gone off to buzz their ugly menace somewhere else.
Winter is a time of transition.
Life seemed to be brooding on reinventing itself on the island. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, until I glanced out of my window on the fourth day and saw, for the first time, a funeral cortege on the island. There was nothing elaborate about it. Three sapeurs pompiers, who would elsewhere be described as firemen, but who perform the function of general emergency staff here on Gor e, where few calamities ever occur, were walking slowly in a parallel line. They were carrying between them the corpse of a young woman, tightly wrapped in linen, towards the island's tiny mosque.