A note in advance. I am coming towards the end of an epic first draft, and I hope to have it finished over the weekend. Either way, I’m going to take a few days off from everything while I see to that and then put my writing feet up for another day or two. This means no more early morning nonsense from me until after next week. As I’ve nothing much to say today anyway, I’ll leave you with a gallery of recent photos to browse while I go and finish my manuscript. (Which makes it all sound very grand, when it actually means, I’ve got another 20,000 words at least to bash out before starting the thing again.)
If you’re in the mood for something to read and you’re into the mystery and thriller genres, then I’ve got this list of 73 titles by various authors whose books are available on various platforms, including paperbacks and immediate Kindles. You’re bound to find something here:
It’s getting like a zoo around here, what with tarantulas sitting on Neil’s head and parakeets in the tree. The other day, you might remember, I witnessed an owl hunting warblers in the afternoon, and yesterday, while looking for the parakeet, we saw a chaffinch in the tree instead. The ravens flew past yesterday, a pair that circles nearby, and there will hopefully be more to see as the season progresses. I’ve not seen the kestrels yet, though there were eagles over the windmill hills a while ago (more likely buzzards), and the turtle doves have brought their young one to the square.
The swallows and martins have been whizzing up and down the top of the Kali Strata, through the bars beneath the awnings, and out again, and often stop for a good old natter on the cables outside the house. We have the ever-vocal cockerels and chickens sharing the bin life with the stray cats up the road, a few gulls out on the water, where, this year, the dolphins came further into shore in the harbour. Some local creatures have still to make their appearance; the roaches, for example, and the snakes, and we’ve not yet had the usual invasion of ants into various parts of the house, though we’ve had some of those armour-plated millipedes, plus moths, butterflies, boring old flies, and other flying things, including a couple of Asian Migratory Locusts in the courtyard. They are those large ‘grasshoppers’ that clatter about the place, landing occasionally on one’s glasses. They remind me of those plastic, wind-up flapping birds that were all the rage at tourist attractions back in the 70s, and possibly still are.
Not the parakeet that’s been hanging out near the house, but one like it.
And while all that is going on, so is the human world. Yesterday, with a party in the kafeneion for little Yiannis, who was two yesterday. (Thank you for the pieces of cake.)
A bit of an up-and-down day yesterday. I was halfway through writing a tricky funeral scene for a book when I was distracted by a parakeet causing a stir over the courtyard wall. I’ve never seen one in the wild here before, but apparently, they are quite common everywhere these days. I got the scene drafted in the end and then turned my attention to some banking matter, only to find out I couldn’t access an account and had to phone the helpline to discover why. Me and phones don’t get on, and I get more stressed about having to make a call than I do about why an account should have become blocked. I’ve emailed, but if I don’t hear anything that way, I’ll have to see if my phone lets me call out of the country, because I’m not sure my contract covers that. Failing that, I’ll either try via the internet phone call method or, worst-case scenario, I’ll have to charge up the landline and plug that in after X number of years. I hate to think how many sales reps are queuing up on the other side, ready to start pitching me all sorts of rubbish as soon as the landline shows up as in use. Whatever, I’m not looking forward to trying to get that sorted out.
But I am looking forward to another day bashing out words and looking at the view, and maybe wandering up the lane so I see some outside world for a change. I’m not sure. I had one of those decent eight-hour sleeps last night, the kind that leaves you so rested, you don’t want to stop resting. However, there was none of that TV advert behaviour for me: Throwing back a perfect white sheet as you rise on a perfectly sunny day, with a smile, and a skip in your step as you welcome the best day ever, and swing about the house popping in something healthy for breakfast, packing the kids off to school, doing 101 jobs all before eight thirty when you leave the house on a cloud of happiness all because you took a laxative the night before. Oh no. More like prising your eyes open at the bathroom sink with a ‘Blurgh’, and yawning my way into a cup of tea.
On which note: Janice, I don’t know if you read this, but thank you! So kind of you. I’m surprised you had room for luggage, but I am now saved. (Tea bags.) I hope I’ll see you around to say thank you in person.
There we are. Off into another day, during which I must devise an evil plot that will take place on June 30th, 1894. Why that date? Because something special happened on that day in history, but what was it? (I’ll give you one clue. It happened in England.) And, with that, it’s back to the research.
Welcome to June. And welcome also to any other reader named after a month of the year.
Let’s get started with something guaranteed to ruffle feathers.
The Greek Foreign Ministry has confirmed that UK passport holders will be subject to the same Entry/Exit System (EES) procedures as all other non-EU visitors, ending earlier assurances that Britons would be fast-tracked through border controls. [Greek City Times]
If you want it from ETIAS itself: Greece has scrapped its promise to spare British travellers from the European Union’s new biometric border checks. Brits will now face the same Entry/Exit System (EES) registration as every other non-EU visitor this summer. [ETIAS.com]
One of our roses to brighten the gloomy news.
You can read the full stories by following those links, but it looks like it’s off again. This means there will be queues to get in and out of the country at peak times, which is basically from now until whenever. That is, unless you have a European passport or a biometric Greek residency card (which will only work in Greece, and not in other European countries). I’ve heard tell of travellers with UK passports and Greek biometric residency cards sailing through the EU channel at Greek airports and coming across thankful customs officers; thankful because it means there’s one less person in the swelling throng waiting in sweaty anticipation of missing their hotel pickup.
Good luck with that.
It’s put me in mind of the worst airports I have encountered in my limited travel career. I think I have a top three, starting, in third place, with Skiathos back in the 1980s. I remember the landing because it’s hard to forget at that airport, the runway being the length of the 100-yard dash. I think we were asked to put our feet through the floor and dig our heels in as the plane headed for the sea at the other end of the landing strip, and as we turned, I looked down, and I’m sure I could see fish. Getting off, we walked across the tarmac and followed a set of railings through an open-fronted tin hut where there were a couple of men at desks, and that was it. Free to be ‘at leisure’ for the rest of the holiday. Returning involved a three-hour wait in a building from where we could watch a new terminal being built, and another hour out in the baking heat, on the tarmac, repeating the tin-hut process and waiting at the crash barriers before finally boarding, flying for a few minutes and then enduring a refuelling wait for over an hour at Athens. Not doing that again.
In second place must come Southend International Airport in the 1990s. I was supposed to be flying from City Airport to Dublin with Virgin, but the City was fogbound, so we were driven out to Southend. Well, to a field nearby that might have once been used for bombing raids in WWII, and which had been used for growing mangelwurzels ever since. It was downhill, which helped with picking up speed over the tufts of grass and (possibly) small animals, and it was all so antique, it was almost charming. (It’s a lot better now. Toilets and everything.)
But in first place, I give you the palace of delights which was Abu Simbel Airshack, circa 1987. We’d flown down from Luxor on an Air Sinai rust bucket that was leaking something from underneath as we climbed the ladder to board. ‘Breakfast’ for the 45-minute trip was two pieces of bread glued together with some kind of indiscernible spread, and a glass of water no-one risked. Again, arriving was easy enough, but waiting for the trip back later… It was around midday by then, the sun was a relentless 45° outside, so we had to wait inside where there was no air conditioning, and there enjoy the non-negotiable sauna. When we were finally sent to board into the searing heat of the desert, the release came as a relief. I just had a look, and the airport is also now much improved, I am pleased to say. Anyway, I thought I’d start the month off with that cheery news and some cheery pictures of the courtyard as an antidote. There’s nothing you can do about the queues when you arrive except prepare for them, allow for them in your planning, and stay calm. You’ll get here in the end.
There was a hull of a hellabaloo outside the house yesterday. There I was ‘stood sitting there’ as Hilda Baker might have said, reading my book about the life of John Steinbeck when it all started kicking off up on the telegraph wire. There was this little chap chirping its beak off, loudly, and non-stop, apparently for no other reason than a good chat. There were more of his kind in and around the pomegranate tree, though they were all too small to catch on my phone’s camera to any decent extent. I’m not sure what bird they are. I think they might be a kind of warbler, or a chiffchaff. Noisy things when they get chatting. You might need to turn the sound up on this short video I took, but believe me, it was a lot louder in real life.
I carried on reading about America’s most successful author of the 40s (that’s as far as I’ve got so far), and the racket in the trees got worse. A blackbird came to join in, and sat up on the wire clacking like that old Remington typewriter I mentioned yesterday. Flitting back and forth, having a good old go about the price of a sunbed, or ‘boat people’ or something, and I put my reading aside to do some detective work. It didn’t take long to find the cause of the Great Matter playing out in front of me, and there it was:
It (its preferred pronoun) was sitting so still and was so camouflaged by the background, I’d not noticed it. It was a little like the spider in the kitchen this morning. I’d made a cup of tea, and was just leaving the room when I saw one rappelling down the cutlery drawer. It must have been right next to me as I pottered about, but I’d not seen it despite its size. ‘Ooh, one of the biggest I’ve seen,’ the husband enthuses as he wraps it in a towel and takes it for a walk down the lane to rehome it (making sure, this time, it doesn’t leap onto his head). Back a scene: I wasn’t able to get a good shot of the cause of the disturbance from that angle, as you might be able to see, so I went next door to my office and managed to get one with the sea behind it.
The owl just sat there, only occasionally turning its head, and did nothing for a whole chapter, by which time, I was growing tired of the noise. I was just about to go inside when the owl, after a couple of good scratches, flew to the building opposite, and perched directly above where the chiffchaffs (or whoever) have nested in the tree. Well, the blackbird wasn’t having that, so it tried to scare the owl away by dive bombing it, flying past so close, the owl was obliged to ruffle its feathers, but refused to budge.
I had to leave them to it in the end, but when I came back to the scene a while later, it was all very quiet. The owl had gone, either with or without its afternoon tea, and calm of some sort had been restored. Until the next time. Anyway, have a good weekend, and yes, I did mean to say ‘hull of a hellabaloo’ because it sounds like a line from a Disney song that way.
