Yesterday. Up at six, check the temp: 19 degrees. Cup of tea, look at emails, laugh at spam, bin it, do some admin, pay a bill, check on sales. Go for a walk, up to the top of the village, say hello to a goat…

Continue onto road and down, find a visitor following Google maps to oblivion. Speak English? Yes. Right way for the museum? No. Come with me. Change route, back into the village, up this way and that, pass a stray microwave, ‘Oh look, a traditional outside oven.’ And some fell on stony ground. Top of these steps, can’t miss it, have a nice day. Back to the walk, passing a building site…

Can you guess what it’s going to be? Wander homeward, cup of tea, to work, write 2,000 words, something’s wrong. The right words, but in the wrong place, will adjust next time, this is too early in the final reel to feel in the right place, and that’s lunch. Afternoon reading, pop to the bar, watch the world go by…

Then, watch a wedding go by…

Then home for supper, a bit of TV, and bed. There, that was Sunday. Today? Partly the same but with the addition of piano lesson in the afternoon.

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The clouds are back, but it’s not yet as rough and windy as predicted, nor have I seen any Sahara sand, as yet. I can feel it blocking up my nose, and when it rained the other day, we found some of it on the newly painted outside table, but otherwise… just this.

Yesterday

Talkin of the outside table, we painted it a couple of months back when we redecorated the courtyard. This started because I was worried about the state of the shutters and the bathroom wall, and thought they needed a coat of protection if nothing else. We had Laki come in and fix the wall because it needed stuff other than a coat of paint, and when that was done, the rest of the courtyard looked really old and decrepit. It wasn’t, it just looked it. However, a couple of the shutters had peeling paint and exposed wood, so we sorted that out, put on an undercoat and painted them. Then the rest of the walls still looked out of place, so between Neil, Sam and I, we did the whole thing. To celebrate, I’ve arranged some lights for the summer, and we now have something of a theatrical corner out there.

In other news… I was out wandering yesterday and came across one of these (below). It’s interesting to see things like this and to know that someone spent a little time on that step with a compass or knife and etched out an image. There are others around the village, and I’ll try to look out for them and take some other shots. This one shows a couple of boats and a date (1980?). I’ve turned the contrast right up to highlight the engraving. I’ll leave you with that and head off into chapter 20.

By the entrance to Ag Athanasios church.

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Sounds like a 1950s B movie, but last night was definitely the night of the mosquito. The joy of wearing earplugs is that you don’t hear the little blighters, but that doesn’t stop them from treating you as a pin cushion. I’ve not yet started on my summer habit of rising early (like, three in the morning), and I’m still on my winter timetable of rising at around 5.30 or six, so being woken by my own scratching at 5.45 wasn’t so bad, but I’d rather not wake up looking like a Picasso. I didn’t know which part of me to scratch first, so I left all alone and went straight to my instant cure, haemorrhoid cream. No, honestly. If you buy the stuff with the anaesthetic in it, it takes away the itch and reduces the swelling, which is exactly what you need for both conditions. The pharmacies here sell a very good one called Procto Synalar (the orange/white one), and I find it’s the only thing that works, for me, at least.

There. That’s today’s Symi survival hack dispatched, now let’s have a random photo.

Photo by Neil

Taking of piles, I was sitting on a friend’s roof the other day, as you do, and I took in the view, which was, in a way, one thing piled on top of another. A restored house, a ruin, a church, the sky… it reminded me of an A Level English lesson years ago when we were studying A Passage to India. Mrs Purvis, our teacher, had us read the chapter where there’s a polo match going on, and pointed out the way Forster uses the scene to subtly describe the Indian caste system. He describes the grass, the near distance, the rising hills, the mountains and the sun above it all. She called the technique… something I can’t presently remember, and told us how magical the writing was, the nuance, and the subtlety, and what did we think? What nonsense, we said, he’s only talking about the scenery.

There was no point to that anecdote, apart from to illustrate this second, not-so-random photo taken from that roof.

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There’s a parade on Symi today, as there is every May 8th. This celebrates the end of WWII and involves the school children, local organisations and services, and the laying of wreaths at the war memorial. If you are here and want to see it, the best place to be is on the north side of the harbour (Takis Leather side) along the quay, and to be there around 11.00 a.m.

Here’s what the weather has in store for the day…

I love this time of the morning when the sun’s just coming up, the sea is still silver, and the sky a little pink. The Blue Star is on its way in, on time as usual, and a couple of fishing boats have recently gone out. Birds are twittering nearby, but otherwise, there’s hardly a sound. You can hear that on our Facebook Page under ‘reels’ where I’ve started putting random 30-second clips when I remember to or have something to put up. (Eventually, there will be a lot of the same view, but taken at different times of the year.)

The extended bank holiday weekend has more or less come to an end (some places may not be open in the morning because it’s May 8th), and things are returning to normal. We were out to dinner last night with friends, and had a great time at Georgios, good food as always and hardly any cost involved. Today, I’m off out for a walk before settling down to chapter whatever-I-am-on, and it’s all about getting my head back into the next book.

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As it turned out, we were fine, or we are currently fine, for water. Having said that, Tuesday is a bank holiday, and Wednesday is the May 8th parade, so we’re still favouring what we stored in the buckets over the tank, but as that was full on Monday, we should…

Friday morning

That’s all rather boring, isn’t it? You want to know how the Easter weekend went. The build-up was not as noisy as in previous years, and I wasn’t sure if that was because bangers are costly, outlawed, or simply hard to come by these days, but there didn’t seem to be as many of them going off in the last week. The fireworks and dynamite made up for that, though, and the island fair rocked over the weekend. It rained on Friday night, but that didn’t seem to put anyone off, and otherwise, it was a good-weather weekend. Me being me was in bed by 10 every night, and slept through the explosions, earlier ones of which had rattled the balcony doors right beside where I was sitting.

Bier procession passing the house Friday night.

Sunday, we popped down to the home of our logical family (as opposed to biological family) to have a Sotiris lamb, salads, homemade gigantes, mojitos and other goodies, including some hastily made easter eggs. I was cooking up my gigantes on Sunday morning and remembered we’d not bought the boys Easter eggs. Neil wasn’t having that, so he popped out for some Kinder eggs, tempered some white chocolate, and made marbled spheres with the Kinder surprise inside. He also made a chocolate bowl for them to go in, but it was too delicate for the journey.

A quick hustle in the kitchen and we get these.

Just before we set off, he realised he’d not made the garlic dip he’d promised to, but seven minutes later, that was taken care of too. It was all very Masterchef.

And yesterday, I went for a walk in the morning out onto the hillside and back, and then came home and wrote half a chapter.

A view to inspire, and still very green.

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