Meanwhile, on Symi…
And back to normal broadcasting… Thank you for your comments on yesterday’s post.
Here is the latest news from Symi on Tuesday morning, yesterday as you read this. It’s blowing a bit of a gale but that’s due to calm down this afternoon, and the rain seems to have passed by, taking the early morning thunder with it. The sea is quite choppy but the boats are still running and that’s just as well as Nephew George and his friend are leaving today to head back to England on Wednesday afternoon. Could be a bit choppy on the way over and they may regret their late night at Harani and Vapori bars where, they tell me, they had a great time with friendly staff and customers.
In slightly connected-to-Symi news, some readers may have been at the Symi Dream gallery on a wine night when my friend and cabaret partner, Kinny Gardner, gave as an impromptu concert from the balcony. This was… years ago now. Kinny has been running a children’s theatre company in the UK for many years and since 2000 has been devising, writing and appearing in shows created specifically so that deaf and hard of hearing children can watch and enjoy alongside their hearing families and friends. I’ve written or arranged the music for a couple of these, ‘The Very Magic Flute’ is still touring in the UK with my arrangements of Mozart’s themes (grave and rolling in his, come to mind) and all of the Krazy Kat productions are well received and suitable for an included audience. Her Majesty the Queen acknowledged Kinny’s work in her birthday honours list last week and he has been awarded an BEM, a British Empire Medal, for his services to the arts and disability in the arts. Here’s a photo of one of the leading campaigners for inclusion in arts and media:
Meanwhile, back on Symi, what news do we have? Well, since being back from Tilos I’ve been trying to get back to the diet that was so successful during the early part of the year. Trouble is, there are so many lovely people coming back and visiting and wanting to meet up for a drink, or a meal, that one often has to keep a diary, or at least a dance card. I’ll get back to the semi-starvation and total denial as soon as I can, though there’s no promises as to when that might be, not at this rate!
At the Olive Tree fundraising afternoon on Sunday, where the girls arranged a Queen’s birthday celebration complete with guess the weight of the cake (made to the same recipe that the Queen has on her birthday), somewhere in the region of €500.00 was raised to help the high school with its basic needs. You can still donate when at the OT should you be coming this way soon and want to help with a local need. By the way, the cake was 3lbs 3oz so I was about one pound out and Neil about one stone out. ‘I put one stone six,’ he said. ‘One stone…!’ ‘I got mixed up with the pounds and ounces thing.’ Understandable; if I make a sponge cake it usually comes out weighing about a stone and half more than the weight of the things I put in it, but the ladies at the OT know what they are doing.
I am sure there is lots of other news to be aware of, but if there is, I don’t know it. So I’ll head of into the rest of my Tuesday, which will include seeing Nephew George off to the bus stop and then, hopefully, getting down to some reading. And on that subject, I picked up a copy of my own ‘The Judas Inheritance’ yesterday and thought I would have a look. I don’t often do this as, by the time the books are published, it’s usually too late to make any more edits and I am still thinking about edits on lyrics I wrote for shows nearly 20 years ago. But, I have to say, apart from a couple of times where I would have now taken out that word and replaced it with this, it’s not bad. Fast, atmospheric and I’d forgotten a lot of what’s in it, so I, like many readers, am finding it hard to put down. If you’ve not read it, you might like to take a look: The Judas Inheritance. (Still no news on the final cut of the film version, ‘The Thirteenth’.)
