Accessibility is not La Gorgona's strong point - certainly if you live in or near Hereford.

You'll need a flight to Rhodes. The good news is you can avoid the inner rings of hell at Gatwick and Heathrow since there are departures from Birmingham. The bad news is that these are charters which operate on inhuman timetables. The flight lasts three or four hours and there's a two-hour time difference. You arrive early in the morning.

Take a taxi to the ferry terminal - a bollard at the end of an otherwise featureless concrete pier. Be prepared to wait. Be grateful that the weather is Mediterranean.

The ferry arrives four-ish. Be glad that you had the good sense to book a cabin although you'll be disembarking at 8.30 am. Someone from your hotel will no doubt meet you at your arrival terminal - another bollard at the end of another pier.

"Go out and occupy yourself," your mother said during the summer hols. And this is the place to do it

Your are now in Diafani a three-hundred-soul village on the island of Karpathos in the Dodecanese. If you are not a great walker, and there's been what one French tourist described as "an infestation of jellyfish" you may spend a desperate ten minutes calculating whether the dozen books you brought with you will last out the holiday. A ten-minute stroll is all it takes to reveal that Diafani is short of conventional entertainment and a news channel from Kazahkstan on the hotel TV is unlikely to fill the gap.

Oh ye of little faith. La Gorgona can, if you let it, meet all your needs. Once you have rid yourself of the sweaty cosmopolitanism that comes with living in Hereford, flatlined your pulse and elected to watch, listen and chat.

La Gorgona is at the southern end of Diafani's urban sprawl. From a chair on the terrace you can see the northern end, a full 250 metres away. The outdoor loudspeakers have been removed but there'll be music inside - Billie Holliday on our first day, then Don Giovanni, Bob Dylan, Greek stuff, and who knows.

Gabriella runs La Gorgona and one can only assume the name (gorgon in English) is an act of inverted modesty. I don't really know what a Gorgon is like, says Oscar Wilde, but I'm sure Lady Bracknell is one. Gabriella lacks the handbag but she has the voice. Forceful, plangent.

Thinks: We never plumbed the depths of the Risorgimento

Gabriella is from Italy and couldn't be from anywhere else. She'll discuss Berlusconi and Prodi with you if you ask, dismissing them both with extravagant hand gestures. She's read lots of books written in English though she pretends her English is so poor she will not accept your used paperback despite having read several others by that author. "Gigi (who co-manages La Gorgona) complains when I stay up reading into the small hours", she says. Her taste in music could not be broader.

La Gorgona has no menu. It's lunchtime and you fancy something light so Gabriella does you an omelette. If you've swum that morning and are feeling sharp-set there's usually pasta. In the evening you'd be foolish not to order fish since La Gorgona is about 100 metres from the little jetty where fish was unloaded three hours ago during the afternoon. Coffee is Italian so no more need be said.

The default drink is utterly anonymous wine, red or white, served in an anodised aluminium carafe. The signal that you need to order more occurs when the carafe threatens to blow away in the strong winds that Diafani is heir to. As a friend said, you don't come Diafani for the wine.

Which brings us to La Gorgona's reason for being. Done properly lunch should take about three hours, dinner about the same. But this doesn't mean you lurch pie-eyed, twice a day, back to your hotel bed. For one thing the wine is not especially potent. For another two half-litre carafes (three at most) between two will provide sufficient punctuation for your stay.

Dog bites man? Man bites dog? Nah, what about: Dog stirs sleepily?

The rest of the time? Well Gigi could arrive with a saucer holding some slices of potatoes and few peas done in a sauce he has just dreamed up. An experiment, he says. Gabriella will break off a discussion about William Boyd to serve a customer and return half-an-hour later to outline a poetry festival she has proposed for Diafani. A German couple with legs the colour of biltong, drinking something healthy, will explain the steep route to Olymbos. A van will deliver something or other in cardboard boxes. The lutenist who plays in Michaelis' bar across the street will provocatively park his moped in a way that blocks traffic and will be upbraided by a pick-up driver. And wasn't that the brother of Nikos - Diafani's mayor - going past? What can he be doing so far away from his bar? (ie, 120 metres at most).

By Parisian (even by Herefordian) standards nothing has happened. And yet it's now half-past two and you sat down at half-past eleven. After a week you think you know everyone and you're beginning to speculate on their motives as well as their moods. If you had an ounce of energy you'd be doing a Somerset Maugham in your head. Instead you get up reluctantly, go back to your hotel, read two or three chapters on your balcony and then return for more slow drinking and voyeurism. At La Gorgona the theme park is the bar, the dining terrace and the street outside.