A couple of parish news items to get out of the way first.
The new Poseidon is starting its trips around the island on Thursday, I believe. You will be able to find the details in Yialos along the harbour front where the taxi and other pleasure boats are moored.
We’re having some maintenance work down to power lines and so forth around the place, so there are some planned power cuts going on. Don’t be surprised if you go dark for a morning or longer. I think they should be finished by the end of the week.
Meanwhile…
After finishing my chapter yesterday, I took a wander around the village just to get some air in the system. It was strange, but I couldn’t stop myself looking at properties and wondering if they were available to rent, holiday homes, sitting vacant for no reason, not yet opened for the season, only to be used for four weeks out of a year, and all manner of other possibilities. When you start looking around you realise a) how many there are in the village, and b) the varying state of their repair. There are a lot because there were over 25,000 people living up here at one point (some books say 30,000 or more), which must have been a drain on the drainage, not, I suspect, that there was any. Some were being done up, others I passed were clearly occupied, some, I know for a fact, are holiday homes, and others, I assume, have been left fallow while someone tries to work out who owns them. Several were for sale, but nowhere did I see what we used to see, ‘for rent.’
I wandered on and out to the road and down, enjoying the scenery as always, and trying to put my mind to the next chapter, but failing. Still, things perked up later when a new sofa cover arrived. I know! The excitement was almost too much, as was the thing itself, with its stretchy material, odd shape, and no instructions. There was only one way the thing could have fitted, and I found it on about the fifth attempt. Yeah, it looks a bit… ew, but it covers up the… ew, beneath. The sofa is over ten years old and has been much used by godchildren from the age of seven upwards. At least now it looks clean. We could only wash the cushion covers before because the rest is too heavy to go in the machine even if we took the cover off the frame, so thanks in advance for your helpful comments on how to clean a sofa. Simply cover up the old one! We now have a new (looking) one, and it will do for now.
