(Grab a cup of tea, Phyllis, it’s a long one.)

Now then, this is an emotive subject, but one that comes up every year at least twenty times in various social media posts, in emails and on the ground, and it’s cats. Not the musical, although I do have a story about that for you one day, but the animals, and in particular the stray cats. Not the American rockabilly band formed in 1979, but the feral cats of Symi. In a way, I don’t want to touch on this subject, because:
A) it’s bound to raise all manner of discussion and, frankly, my dear, I’m not that bothered. (Discussion can be a good thing among those who want to discuss it (not me), but please do it respectfully.
And B) I’m not best placed to offer advice, only my opinion. That opinion, though, is based on 24 years of living here 365 days a year.

When we were on holiday here towards the end of the last century, we were soon adopted by a local stray cat who made so bold it used our accommodation when it felt like it. We put down water and some food, and put up with its constant coughing, temporarily naming it Furball. The reality was, it probably had lungworm or another medical condition we could do nothing about, and the other stark reality was that when we left, it returned to having to survive on its own, and was probably dead by Christmas. Cut forward 29 years, and we’re still surrounded by stray cats living at the bins, nearby farms, in the street, and wherever they can. Being cats, they breed and produce more, and being animals living in the wild, some survive, and some don’t. During the summer months, visitors come, ‘adopt’ them and do what they think is best to look after them. Then they go home — the visitors, I mean, and leave the cats to look after themselves.

This is fine. The cats adapt, even though it must have been quite a shock to the animals to be living off tinned food for a week or two, only to find it taken away once they have come to rely on it. But there you are; they are cats. They adjust. Once the season of misty-eyed visitors and the fruitfulness of their generosity is over, they return to doing what they can to survive, and they either do or they don’t. They have resources available, though, even in the winter. Local residents who feed them and, more importantly, put down water, a regular supply of bins to root through, vermin to catch as their nature demands, and places to find to keep warm – our laundry basket occasionally included. And, being cats, they keep breeding, and as nature arranges, they birth several more at a time, and before you know it, you’ve got far too many to survive, so a man called Megginson kicks in, and those that can ‘adapt and survive’ do so, while those that can’t, don’t. The truth is, as Herbert Spencer concluded back in 1864, it’s a case of the ‘survival of the fittest.’ (Before you put your hand up at the back there, both expressions developed from Darwin, but neither can be directly attributed to him.)

I’ve seen visitors commit some remarkable acts. These range from ordering an extra plate of Symi shrimps at dinner, asking for them as a takeaway, and then feeding them to the strays. (I can’t comment on this because I only ate them once and thought I’d have to be airlifted to hospital.) I’ve seen physically grown men lying on their fronts in the street trying to tempt a kitten to a slice of smoked salmon like the child-catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. We’ve seen people adopt a young kitten, arrange for all the necessary matters needed to rip it from its homeland and rehouse it in another corner of the world at great expense to the visitor and great discomfort to the animal (only for it to get mown down by a car not long after coming out of several thousand pounds worth of quarantine). And we’ve put up with tourists demanding that we, personally and municipally, do something about the disgusting condition of Symi strays, and why don’t we adopt every cute little kitten they found during their holiday, and we are all monsters for allowing it to happen, and no-one cares. I’m going straight to the mayor next time (good, do), I couldn’t find the pet shop open, they were on holiday. (How dare they, but, er… weren’t you?) There is no organisation to help them; there is, and there are. Keep asking around, and you will find it/them. (But don’t ask me, I’m so fed up with accusatory emails and remarks on the subject, I now barely reply.)

It’s all about expectations. At least, that’s what I concluded at four this morning when this came dripping from the top of my head. You’ve done well, saved, borrowed, or simply decided to use some of your finances for a never-cheap holiday on Symi, and you’ve brought with you your social norms from some well-off town or city where there’s pest control, and you stumble across a kindle of kittens, and OMG, isn’t that both the cutest and worst thing in the world! They have no USB-heated cushion, no cat house for nighttime, no collar or bowl with their names on them, and they are so adorable and cute, despite their ringworm, fleas and eye infection, and they each deserve a home with heating and care, pampering and fluffiness because that’s what you can afford to do to your pets back at home. Yeah, nice dream, but sadly, that’s your view of cat life, and not the reality of a small island struggling to make it through the rest of the year. Come winter, the animals will be left to get on with it, cared for as best they can by local volunteers, but otherwise left to fate, the occasional rat poisoning (illegal, but then so is driving without a crash helmet – ever done that in Greece?), the eagles (not the rock group), and other natural and unnatural ends. Your two weeks of feeding, fussing, fuming, while trying to make their temporary lives better, worrying, complaining, doing something, and generally being nothing more to them than a source of food, come to an end. You can leave, but just as you can’t leave behind your kindness, you also can’t leave behind your judgement on what comes after you. It’s island life, love. If you can’t do what you want to, then you do the things you can.

Anyway, I didn’t intend to waste an hour on this, but pick it apart (I agree, it is rather muddled, and I would rather tell you the Cats story), think what you will, do what you can, but please, put the brakes on the criticism. When temporary visitors throw down their ‘this is what I would do about it, therefore, this is what you should do’ on us who are permanent, I switch off and say, yes, dear. If you feel that strongly about stray cats, I suggest you sell up, move here, and get on with it. Otherwise, as Napoleon says to Lafayette in The Aristocats, ‘Hush your mouth.’

I woke up in the night, and the time was 0.13. I woke up this morning and the time was 0.13. It was only then I realised I was relying on the microwave, which had been paused at 13 seconds, so I’ve no idea what time I was up the first time, but I know what time it was the second time. However, the first time, I was woken by the overflow from the pitched roof, which the building designer thoughtfully thought to leave as a pipe hanging halfway across the narrow lane right beside the bedroom window. Had I suitable skills and a ladder, I’d stick an extension on the thing and let the runoff land in the ruin over the wall, rather than two feet away from my head, but hey, one day…

There was also thunder and lightning, some water through the roof in the porch and bathroom, but nothing major. We were going to fill the cracks and apply the concrete paint the other day, but the weather turned, and luckily we didn’t get to it; had we, it would have all been washed away overnight. And there is more to come, they say. (I am in danger of becoming a weather channel here, but it gives me something to whittle about). It’s either going to be heavy all day, in which case I might have to change my dentist appointment because the kayak is in the shop, and I’m not attempting the rapids of the Kali Strata without it, or it’s going to be on and off and not too heavy. These days, the weather depends on which forecast app you use, and everyone uses a different one. This, it seems, can lead to all manner of misinformation and entertainment.

You’re sitting in a café listening to other people’s conversations, and hear a game of one-upmanship as people defend their weather apps. Such conversations can easily descend into chaos.
‘We’re going to have rain today.’
‘Nay. Mine shows it as only patchy cloud. We’ll be reet.’
‘Mine’s always accurate. See? There’s a typhoon blowing in from Kalymnos.’
‘Typhoon? In the Med?’
‘That’s what it says, and it’s never wrong.’
‘You only get typhoons in the Northwestern Pacific Basin.’ (This is the ‘me’ of the conversation, the pedant, but the others are so keen to be heard and affirmed, they take no notice of reason.)
‘Aye, well, we’re northwest of somewhere, aren’t we? You can’t go wrong with Sneeze.’
‘Wi’ what?’
‘Sneeze. It’s me new weather app.’
‘Nay, mate. You want Accu-Rabbit. It’s run be A-One.’
‘Be what?’ Looks. ‘That’s AI, you cabbage. Can’t trust that. Wife asked it why I was getting these headaches every night ’round bedtime. It told her I had a tuba on me brain.’
‘But you play the euphonium.’
‘Aye, that’s what I said, but it insisted it were a tuba, then it asked her if she’d like to know more about who invented it, when, and why.’
‘Oh, aye?’
‘Eighteen thirty-five.’
‘Is it? We’ve missed the boat.’
‘Can’t leave now anyroad. It’s raining.’
‘See? Told you. You can’t go wrong with Sneeze.’

And so on. If I want to know what the elements have in store, I look up, make up my own mind, and get on with it. If it’s too dangerous to go out at ten, I’ll change my appointment. If it looks reasonable, I’ll take my brolly and off I’ll go. One thing it does give me, though, is plenty of opportunity to show some of Neil’s dramatic shots of the skies we’re currently, if temporarily, living under.
Have a [<insert > Good ~ Pleasant ~ Wet ~ *random* >end>] day.

PS: It’s now 05.25, and it’s chucking it down.

We’re expecting a wet playtime for the next couple of days, with the worst rain coming on Wednesday. I saw a couple of videos of Rhodes airport yesterday, with the road flooded and heavy downpours generally, and tried to look on the local news this morning for news about how it might have affected travel, but all I could find in one Rhodes newspaper were stories about football teams, and the other I found didn’t mention it, so I assume it was nothing to out of the ordinary. Here, after rumbling but dry skies in the morning, we had a few drops, and that was it.

It was during this that I decided it was time I made enquiries about having the kitchen tap fixed before it got worse. (A small dribble from the wrong place when it was in use.) Then, I thought about the tap in the laundry sink which we hadn’t used for three years because it had blocked up with crud, and added that to the list. I’m very good at saving these jobs for a rainy day, and as it promised to be just that, that’s what I did. I called our friendly handyman to see when he could take a look, and like the genie from the lamp, he was at the gate fifteen minutes later, because he happened to be finishing a job nearby. A quick inspection, a quick quote, and he was back in twenty minutes with two new taps. Half an hour after that, they were both on and working, but as happens, we then found a leak on one of the overflows, so that piece of pipe needed fixing, and off to the other side of the harbour he goes to find the part. A short while later: both taps fixed and working and no drips. Having congratulated myself on a job well done and a very reasonable bill paid, I started thinking about fixing the feed to the spare WC which hasn’t worked for a short while. (A ‘short while’ in this case being about four years.) However, I thought ‘one thing at a time’ and as we don’t use it, decided that could wait until I feel another bout of home maintenance coming on; probably another year or so.

Before all this, I’d done some work on a plot and a chapter, and some research into London in 1904, as you do. Later, we met up with friends we’ve not seen for six or seven years, which was lovely, so that rounded of a successful day in a very pleasant way. All this time, the day boats continued to arrive below, with no let-up despite the grey. I expect people were glad to have missed the deluge taking place in Rhodes, though I doubt many spent their time lazing on a beach. At some point during the day, I booked an appointment with the dentist. (It’s not an addiction, just the time of life.) So that’s an event for tomorrow when we’re supposed to be receiving the deluge. We shall see.

We’re approaching the time when the season usually starts to slow down, but with at least 12 day-trip boats arriving on Saturday, new arrivals taking up accommodation bookings, and just about all businesses still open, it doesn’t look as if ‘the end is nigh.’ Not yet. We were down in Yialos for a while on Saturday, and it was still necessary for cars to wait behind the herd wandering gobsmacked in the middle of the road gawping at the architecture and wondering, ‘Why haven’t I been here before?’

Mind you, a change in the weather is predicted; we might see some rain later today and a lot more later in the week. That is, unless the weather changes its mind, which it often does, but then again, it might not. Yesterday, there were fewer yachts lining the part of the harbour we can see from up here, fewer school children are manning parents’ businesses because they are back at school, and visitors are, in the evenings, more warmly dressed. On the other hand, we’ve had the front windows open all day and night, and the courtyard thermometer read 25° in the early hours of this morning (though it doesn’t feel like it). I did manage to sort my summer clothes from my winter ones, and restock my two shelves in the wardrobe, and my one drawer beside the bed. (Note to self: invest in some more clothes.) It’s interesting to note that where I have only three summer shirts, for the winter I have about seven different jumpers, plus hoodies and an old faithful sweatshirt that was once dark grey and is now an unknown shade of something else — but it’s still going, and feels homely, even though it’s now too big for me. I’m bound to have a day in Rhodes before too long, so I may go shopping then. Thinking about it, I’ve not been to Rhodes since March.

But as you can see, a sunny and reasonably warm weekend during which I started on another writing project, because that’s what I do, usually from four to eleven each morning. We also began preparing the flat roof for its winter weatherproofing (thanks for the mud and tips, Steve), dug out the duvet, ‘slanket’ and long socks, and checked the whereabouts of the umbrella and my waterproofs, only to remember I don’t have any.

So, is it a time for watching the season change and the tourist season fade? The holiday season for Rhodes seems to run later and start earlier these days, and I’m not sure how long the day-trip boats keep their licenses for, so, it’s a time of wait and see.

As we are obliged to point out these days, ‘No filters were used in the harming of this photograph.’

That was the colour of the landscape yesterday towards sunset. I took the picture through the window, but although that might have been a little dusty, it wasn’t in any way pink. We also see the sea a different kind of red from time to time. Mainly, after we’ve had a heavy rainstorm and the surface earth gets washed down the hills and ends up in the sea. In those cases, the sea becomes a muddy, reddish-brown colour. When there’s a daytime storm, it becomes the grey of a battleship, darker in places, and highlighted with white wave tops. In better weather, it can be anywhere from dark blue to grey depending on the cloud cover, and on very rainy days, you can’t see it at all.

Yesterday was a sunny and calm day, so the sea was its regular blue and silver, as you can see.

The guys are working on the roof of a house that’s stood empty ever since I can remember noticing it many years ago. It’s a building that is on its way to becoming a classic Symi ruin, but isn’t quite there yet. The doors were open but hanging off, the place empty apart from a few rotting pieces of furniture, the windows and shutters long past their usefulness days, and the whole building is grey. It also has some very fine skeletons of trees around it, an overgrown terrace on the steep hillside, and an atmosphere worthy of a chilling suspense novel. It hangs off the hill above the harbour below, facing north and open to the elements on all sides, so couldn’t have been a pleasant winter house to occupy, and yet, it’s so romantic in a black-and-white Universal horror film way that it’s irresistible. I was interested to see work being carried out on it yesterday, and have to wonder if it’s about to be brought back into life, or if the roof was simply being weatherproofed to help keep it in limbo for longer. I will watch with interest because I’ve always admired the house, and next time I can, I’ll try and get another photo or two before it loses its mystery and charm.

That’s for another day. For this weekend, though, what’s planned? Not a lot, to be honest. I am passing out news about my latest story, which is now available in paperback form, and the link to here you can find it on Amazon UK is right here: Journeyman Joe. ‘Is it any good?’ Well, I am sure I don’t know. I know what it isn’t, though. It’s not an action adventure, mystery-driven story like the last lot. It’s quieter, calmer, more descriptive and slower, yet, I hope, still entertaining. You’ll have to be the judge.

So this weekend will be about thinking and plotting, and wondering whether I shouldn’t revert to vaguely plausible mysteries based on true events and a load of What if?, or try another village tale from the past. Maybe I’ll have a think when I take a stroll later. Perhaps the dilapidated house at the end of the lane will be the inspiration…

Have a good weekend.