Symi in the news again, and the Symi Festival programme
News about my plans to write a film inspired by Symi is spreading far and wide it seems. We’ve appeared in Ta Nea again, this time they concentrate on the idea of a new film about a gay civil partnership ceremony happening on a small Greek island. Here is a very liberal translation of my own based on parts of the latest Ta Nea article. The Greek version is on the Ta Nea interview page.
Symi castro
“Civil partnerships would be good for the economy of Greece and specifically for the islands”, say the writer James Collins and the photographer Neil Gosling. And this is the theme of “Greek Island” (working title), a film with the fundamental subject of a gay marriage. The story unfolds on the imaginary island of Kalados, and island that might well resemble Simi. It is small and its residents are proud of their traditions. The Antagonist is a young person who was born on the island, but at the age of 16 years moved with his mother to New York. He decides to return to Kalados to get married, news which makes the locals very cheerful until they discover that the bride-to-be is another man.
“We were thinking about a subject for a romantic comedy set in the Greek islands, when I remembered what fuss there was on Tilos a couple of years ago,” said James. (Two civil partnership ceremonies were held.) He reveals that some big names who love the Greek islands already have been interested in the film, because they believe that “whichever island it is filmed on will get the publicity, as happened with Mama Mia!”
It is not however only the gay marriage that will feature in the film, people will like it because the film is a comedy and has a happy ending… See the blog about writing Greek Island at www.symidream.com/movie
Symi and the sea
Now then; I want to point out that this film is only inspired by Symi and its characters, it’s not got the go-ahead for production yet, it’s not even written yet – though we are two months into the writing process. And I don’t want to happen to Symi what has happened to Skopolos since Mama Mia! was filmed there. That is: people besieging the little church on the hill, complaining that it’s not the same inside (it was a studio set you dummies!) and cars blocking the pavements, prices rising and hundreds of people wandering around singing Abba tunes like they were part of some religious cult. Our ‘Greek Island’ film may not get made, it may get made and be filmed somewhere entirely different – as in ‘Evil Under The Sun’ set just off Devon in the book, set in the Adriatic in the film and filmed on Mallorca. Who knows? We shall see…
Anyway, enough about the film. But while we are talking arts, I am just putting up names and dates from the official Symi Festival guide 2010, thanks to Astrid for the copies – we now have a couple in the shop too. You’ll see the new page when it’s up and running.
Symi thoughts, July 29th
This is just a bit of an advertisement really –the 2011 Symi Dream calendar is now available at Lulu.com [click here to go to the shop page]. The calendar features 12 photos, as usual, with some ‘classic’ ones brought back by request. It seems that people really like the sepia tones view of the clock tower and the one of the door knocker. So, have a look at
2011 Symi calendar images
this preview picture (click for the larger image) which shows the 12 images (but not as they look on the calendar where there is one photo per month) and then view store page for more info, perhaps make a note of it for nearer Christmas.
Can’t believe I mentioned Christmas already… Oops. I shan’t do it again.
I’m not sure what we are doing this Christmas…
As you can see I’m not sure what mood I am in this morning. My fingers are not yet fully up to speed and my brain certainly isn’t. This is all thanks to an early night and an early start this morning. The only trouble with being an ‘early to bed’ person is that I never get to see much of the Symi Festival which is on and running. (Shrimp Festival this weekend apparently – still hunting down a brochure; no one seems to have remembered the village when distributing them and some of us don’t get the chance to go to Yialos very often. I heard there were a few in the 2As bar, which might be handy for you, but not for me as I am usually at home and thinking about going to bed at the same time as they are thinking about opening up for the night.)
So, while I wake up, may I remind you of the current Symi Dreamers competitions – check the page for full details. We are getting near the time of painting the outside of the shop, so get your suggestions and guesses in ASAP if you want to be in with the chance of winning a Symi Dream mug, T shirt or whatever from the Café Press store.
Symi Sunrise is good for you
The news today is that there is now an English translation of the Ta Nea interview with the Symi Dream team which can be found by going this page. The translation was made by Lyn who is available for other translation work, from English to Greek, or Greek to English. Send me an email if you would like to contact her and I will pass it on. [By the way: We still haven’t seen the article in the magazine, so if anyone has a copy of last Saturday’s Ta Nea magazine we’d love to borrow it so we can scan the pages for use in our publicity pack.]
Symi sunrise
You know, it’s very pleasant when you are sitting at work and people stop by and say, ‘are you James?’ or ‘are you Neil?’ and then take the trouble to thank us for the blog and the photos, for keeping them in touch with Symi through the year. Obviously this blog is only my personal thoughts and experiences, I’m not a newspaper as I’ve said before, but when I hear interesting news I pass it on, and when something affects us we mention it. So, thank you to everyone who has taken the trouble to come and see us and said hello. As a few people did last night at the shop where we sat and chatted (and did some work, it’s not all step-sitting and chatting) until late in the evening.
My current habit of waking up at 5.30 has allowed me to see a few Symi sunrises recently – and not just the cocktail that Yiannis makes at the Rainbow Bar, ‘Symi Sunrise is good for you.’ The photos today were taken yesterday morning at sunrise, sometime around six, and the lighter one of the valley a little later. Not brilliant, but then I’ve only got my snappy-cam to hand most mornings while ‘the Duke’, Neil’s professional camera, is safely away from me.
Early morning Symi
This morning there were no such clouds so the sun was its usual fiery orange and the sky changed from black to deep blue, the orange and pink line of the horizon soon faded and now it is white and light blue; the sea is flat and grey, the shores of Turkey are mist covered, and you just know it’s going to be another hot day on Symi.
Symi news to catch up on
There are a few things to report this morning… First of all there is a new gallery in our Symi Photos section. This is a gallery of images taken by the Symi Visitor team at the memorial to Lemonia, which took place in Syllogos Square last 
Saturday evening. I have included all 55 images in this gallery so you get to see everything, and thanks to the Symi Visitor for asking us to display them here. [Click to go straight to the images.]
Secondly, the Symi Dream calendar 2011 is now available online (not yet in our shop on the Kali Strata, we hope to have some by September). And the good news here is that there is a special promotion on by Lulu.com through which we publish the calendars. Up until August 1st you can get 20% off whatever you buy from the site when you enter a code at checkout; and that code is TWIST305 – there will be instructions and details on the Lulu pages. To see the calendar and our books, go to our online shop front by clicking here. You will see the new calendar at the top of the page. Here is a quick preview of the images used, though not necessarily in the right order. Click the image for a larger version.
Next… thanks for the comments about the new look site, and the translator which people seem to like very much. A note about that: at the moments it won’t translate the home page, this page which holds more than one blog post. But if you click a post title and display just a single post, or select a general page from the top menu, and then translate, you will either get a translated page, or you will open a Google page and the translation will appear after a momen
t or two. Now then, these pages have not been translated by any person but by a computer, so you’re not going to get exactly what is written, at least you don’t in my experience. But you should get enough to give you the general idea. I used this Google translate facility on the Ta Nea article the other day and found some surprising results! On that score, the human translation of the article is on its way, though there may be a short delay. And a local Greek lady has promised us a copy of the magazine from last Saturday so that we can display it in the shop. She said she was very proud of us, which was sweet.
The wine night went well again last night, which reminds me… there won’t be one next Monday as the gallery is changing next week. The summer exhibition of Bassett and Bennett will be moving and Haycox (The Symi Gallery) will be coming in for a few weeks. I’ll let you have more details about that later.
Symi Dream and Ta Nea, Rhodes visit
That was the weekend that was. Saturday got off to a good start with an article about Symi and us in Ta Nea. [Click here to view the interview online.] The article is in Greek of course, but we’re having it translated so that we can put an English version up on our site somewhere. Let’s hope Symi gets a little more attention from it – not that it needed it this weekend with the Symi Festival starting last night, and the boats in the harbour parked up three deep along the quay.
But while we’re talking of translations… you may notice a ‘translator’ in our side bar. Not an actual person sitting there with an earpiece in, but a Goggle driven thing that will, or should, put the site and its pages into a variety of languages. I notice that, at the moment, the pages get translated (the Symi history page, competitions etc.), but the actual blog posts don’t. We’re still working on this so bear with us.
Meanwhile, back on Saturday… The wind was buffeting the village somewhat as I dashed down to catch the boat over to Rhodes for the night, to meet Neil, but the sea was calm enough and it was a smooth crossing. I stayed at the Lydia hotel this time and was warmly welcomed and given a superior room, with a Symi islander discount, which was great service I thought. Neil’s plane was a couple of hours late, but he finally arrived, a bit hot in jeans and British weather clothing, but safe. The trip back yesterday was also plain sailing and the boat was just about full. As was the harbour when we landed and walked around, loads of boats and lots of people. I assume many had come in for the festival opening night.
While I was away, there had been a memorial evening in the village square for Lemonia, from Syllogos. The Symi Visitor team have some photos for me which I hope to get soon, and when I d I will put them up here, or in a gallery, as I know many people would like to see them.
But for now it’s back to work as normal. Neil will be in the shop later, when he wakes up, it’s still only 6.30 and the sun is coming up, burning off some dark clouds that were hovering around. Tonight we have our wine night at the gallery, and then nothing special planned until the end of the week. Oh – the photos today are views from the terrace of the new bar in Horio.
Symi Festival and Ta Nea
The Symi Festival 2010 is set to get off to a cracking start tomorrow night with the premier in the main square in Yialos. On the bill will be ΔΕΣΠΟΙΝΑ ΒΑΝΔΗ, ΕΛΛΗ ΚΟΚΚΙΝΟΥ & ΕΛΙΣΑΒΕΤ ΣΠΑΝΟΥ (Despina Vani, Elli Kokkinou and Elizabeth Spanou).
The Symi Festival 2010 runs from now until September and will feature classical music, modern and ancient Greek music, dance (I saw one of the ladies on her way to tap dance practice last night) and theatre, as well as discussions and other cultural activities. I am still hunting around for a festival programme; must have a proper look when next in Yialos… Actually I will be there this evening but only briefly. I’m popping over to Rhodes after work to meet Neil who is returning tonight. This means that tomorrow’s blog (if I get to it) won’t be happening until later in the morning.
We’ve already had one entry to the current competition, suggesting some colours for the new look Symi Dream shop – check the competition page for details. You’re invited to guess what colour we are going to paint the outside of the building, and your guesses will also act as suggestions as we’ve still not made up our minds yet.
The Greek Island Movie blog is getting underway now, we’ve fixed a couple of design things and started adding backdated posts. Well, the posts are dated the day they are posted, but they are actually notes we made early in the writing process, before we had the new blog: www.symidream.com/movie, you can click over there to see what stage of the creative process we are at.
And I had an email from Ta Nea (the national newspaper) yesterday to tell me that there should be an article about Symi Dream in their Saturday supplement today, so that’s something else to look out for if you are in Greece. I’ve not seen it yet and am interested to see what they’ve done with our interview and Neil’s photos. Let’s hope that the piece, combined with the new Symi Festival, brings in a few more visitors to the island and gets Symi noticed some more. The island has been on the TV news recently and featured in a couple of Greek TV travel programmes last week – all good publicity for Symi and its businesses.
The photo on the right shows the Kali Strata Bar preparing for an evening’s business – it’s a great place to stop and admire the view, listen to the ambient music, see the sun go down, and take a rest before heading on up the rest of the Kali Strata (the photo on the left).
Symi Dream competition
Here’s an idea for a bit of fun that we came up with a while ago. We are having the outside of the shop decorated soon and we want to change the colour. It’s been this dusty ‘mushroom’ colour for ages now and it’s time for a change. So we thought we would ask our Symi Dream friends and blog readers, our Symi Dreamers of you like, to guess what colours the new look is going to be.
I did think about asking you to suggest the new colours, and you can if you want, but remember that everything is subject to a) the local cultural authority’s guidelines and rules, b) the landlord’s approval and c) good taste. So, we have some ideas in mind for the main body of the building, the triangle under the roof and the trim, those details that are currently white. The couple of small pics here should give you an idea of the building.
Simply go to the competition page and there you’ll find an email link. Send a quick mail with your guess, all entries will go ‘into a hat’ and one will be pulled out at random when the painting work starts. The winner will receive a Symi Dream T shirt, or mug, or something from our online gift store. And no, you’re not allowed to ask Ian (who is going to do the painting work) what colour it is going to be. Actually, he doesn’t know yet.
Symi Festival, early starts and a memorial
What news from the village today? To be honest I can’t think, I was up at 5.30 this morning, it’s getting earlier each day, must be the heat. But I was full of energy even after a long day yesterday and my mind is on other things today. (I have already lit a candle for Neil’s mum.)
Also on my mind are a couple of articles I have been invited to write and the screenplay which is still going through its structuring stage. (I’ve still to finish the other blog www.symidream.com/movie and add some more posts and features, plus work on some ideas my co-writer has sent over). Even getting up early and having a couple of extra hours doesn’t seem to give me enough time in the day to do everything. I’ll have to take some work to the shop and do it there.
I spent a quiet evening at the shop last night, it was quiet everywhere it seems, I think people are coming out later as it’s cooler, and people are not coming out to eat until after I’m home and probably in bed. It’s that time of year. I made up a new rack of cards though, and did some tidying up; you have to dust every day when it’s dry and there’s a breeze, no sooner have you dusted off one thing than it’s covered again.
I did see Wendy though and she tells me that a memorial to Lemonia has been organised for Saturday evening, in Syllogos square (the village square). Unfortunately I will be in Rhodes overnight on Saturday, but Symi Visitor will be there to take photos and they will be on their pages soon after.
The Symi Festival opens on Sunday night, though I have yet to see a programme in the village – as soon as I do I’ll try and let you know what’s on and when, and how long the festival runs for, in case you’re visiting Symi and want to catch some of the events.
