I was wrong. I was absolutely off kilter. Last time I was that wrong was in 1996 when Howard wiped out Keating, my hero. However the comfort I take this time is that we were all wrong.
I like Hillary have done so since I saw her battle to install universal health care for all Americans in 1994, she lost but she fought with grit and dignity. I love Obama for many things, but I have no interest in talking about them now. Let others write history.
The political consensus misjudged the election. Journalists, opinion makers, artists, academics, political junkies, we got it wrong. The pollsters, what an embarrassment! Online surveys and aggregating algorithms let them down. Millions retreated to that last bastion of ancient privacy, the polling booth and let it rip. We had nothing for that.
Even Trump looked surprised. He was ready to mount a war on a Hillary for ‘rigged’ elections, lost emails, ISIS, and any loony conspiracy theory floating on social media.
Anyway, I have spent the last few nights and days inanely scribbling, muttering to myself, deep sighing, with occasional busts of maniacal laughter. I have been in denial. Right now, with the overload of information on Trump’s victory, the endless media updates and analyses, there’s no room for my pithy evaluations on politics, economics, art and society. This is big. I hope not as big as I fear. I want to be so wrong on that.
I am a democrat after all. I believe in democracy. Anyone who denies my right to own democracy I’ll slap a cultural appropriation thingy on them. Then again it is for all of us. Right?
See what I mean, can’t write about it now. I need to heal and think on strategies for the future. Before strategy, I have decided that the best course of action for me is to retreat mentally, for now, to my favourite beaches.

So here are Fotis’ favourite beaches.
This summer we will be heading to Safety Beach for a week. That’s totally freaking me out. It’s far from the northern suburbs. I know beaches exist further, like Portsea, but in time, step by step. I’ve been to Black Rock and Frankston once.
Growing up in Adelaide, I was used to a seven-minute drive to some of the best beaches in the world. I spent all my summers from the age of 16 to 24 on West Beach, an endless shoulder of white sand licked by a clear, cool, clean and safe sea that melds with pale blue sky in the horizon. Ready to sleep on, play cricket and soccer on, dance on. The sound of cricket tests, Bowie, Clash and Fleetwood Mac, buzzing from a mono trannie was our soundtrack, as we fried ourselves dark brown. Trump wasn’t there. These were the halcyon days of Fraser and Hawke, flawed but humane.
My local favourite in Melbourne is Middle Park Beach. A mere 200 meters from the beach is my aunt’s and late uncle’s house, and where my cousins grew up. My aunty still lives there. They were there before the doctors and barristers moved in the neighbourhood.
In pre-globalism my mum, dad, sister and I would jump on the Overland train and stay with them in Middle Park for weeks on-end. We’d become a cluster of families, as other friends and family joined us, and their house became a beachside resort.
On the beach we’d load up on crabs and mussels, the Aussies saw us as crazy for eating what they still thought were vermin. We should never have introduced them to these seafood delicacies.
My base is still there. We gather, family and friends, my aunt’s Esky loaded with enough food and drinks for a small village. Along with the Esky come the cricket bat and soccer ball. We colonise the space – instinctive for us – but we bring food, (lots of it), loudness and fun for all.
Day turns from white hot, to blood red, then into balmy evening while we’re on the beach. Skaters, bike riders, body builders, overfit runners, strollers with babies, little kids, mums and mums, dads and dads, single mums, and mums and dads, teens with haircuts they’ll be embarrassed by in ten years, muscle boys with tats, hipsters, aged yuppies, millenians, all parade on the palm lined boulevard of Middle Park Beach.
My teen son, (the colt), his friends and cousins, kick sand and slam balls into people as they play out sports fantasies. We eat, drink, sleep, laugh and dip. Anglos, Greeks, Africans, Russians Jews, Arabs, lobster tans, birkinis, Hawaii shorts, Speedos, we’re all there. Trump’s not.
Ah, Gili Trawangan that became my Kurtz and Gilligan illusion. I could possibly be forgotten there, a threat my wife never carried out. I never swam in this tiny tropical island’s magnificent beach. The massive kidney shaped pool in a five star hotel and the fresh lime mojitos from the poolside bar became my lotus land. I think I spent most of then time inebriated by the bar, in the water. It rained hot but the magic mushies, legal then, made things great again, I tell you, a great. No Trump there either.
My favourite of all my beaches, is Kakovatos Beach, my grandmother’s village of birth, in the Peloponnese. I spent five childhood summers there, in late 60s, before the Coronels Junta forced us out. It was our sanctuary from Athen’s bitumen. I also spent part of my sabbatical in my mid 20s there and endeavour to go back whenever I can. Took the whole family there and my wife was freaked out a little with the idea of so many people young and old with the surname Kapotas, my original name. I think I’m the only Greek on earth that changed a shorter name Kapota, to the longer, Kapetopoulos. Simple, while Kapota means coat in Italian, kapota began to mean condom in slang in Greece after WWII.
Kakovatos Beach is where an continual Mediterranean summer blends days, one flows into another on a ribbon of yellow sand met by an blue slaty sea. No sharks.
The pension is a stroll away. On the beach a there’s a shack tavern, where I spent hours on milky ouzo, cold beer, freshly caught sardines, local feta, tomatoes, olive oil and bread.
During the evening Kakovatos village, with it’s stone houses and little square, embroidered by coloured light bulbs, a tavern and a bar-café where locals, Greek and German tourists hang out. Mellow, warm, and all mine. No Trump.
So these are my beaches. That’s where I am now. I will be there until I’m ready to surface and strategize.