Greece is teetering on the edge of a return to the economic Stone Age.
That may seem a little melodramatic but recent events have left me fearing for the future of this most beautiful of countries.
I visited Crete, the largest of Greek’s islands, last year and it was obvious how difficult daily life had become.
For a start there were huge numbers of working-age people just hanging about on the streets with little or nothing to do.
For the young and inexperienced, opportunities were even harder to come by as the unemployment rate topped 50%.
And for those fortunate enough to be in work, the returns for a day’s hard graft were often meagre at best.
But in the 14 months since my plane home set off from Heraklion airport, what was a highly challenging situation has become a major calamity.
Like millions of others across Europe and beyond, I have watched events in Athens unfold with a mix of horror and fascination as the Greek debt crisis lurched from bad to worse.
In such situations I find it useful to look back to try to understand how and why the downward spiral began.
In Greece’s case the answer is simple: it was a country living beyond its means that had racked up eye-watering debt.
Throw into the mix a combination of corruption, tax evasion and a lack of regulatory rigour and you have an incendiary just waiting to go off.
And when it did explode, the only solution on the table was a bailout from Greece’s eurozone partners.
The first was worth €110 billion, the second a year later worth a further €130bn.
But those handouts came with strict and hugely unpopular conditions related to economic reform.
And when imposed austerity began to bite, the response of the Greek people was to use their democratic rights to bite back.
They took to the streets and, in January, the anti-austerity Coalition of the Radical Left known as Syriza swept to power.
They promised a different path to the Greek people and expected negotiations to deliver compromise.
But the reality has proved somewhat different as those holding the financial cards institutions like the IMF have become increasingly hard line in their dealings with the Greek government.
With a snap yes/no bailout referendum called by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras for this weekend, Athens now stands at the point of an unprecedented debt default and, potentially, an exit from the eurozone.
Million of words have been written and spoken about that most undesirable of outcomes. But the truth is there is no real way of knowing the consequences of a Grexit either for Greece itself or for the wider common market project.
I am certain, though, that it won’t be pretty and it will be painful.