I just picked up on two pieces of news that might be of interest but bear no relation to the photos I am adding to brighten the page. (The photos are to remind you how sultry the weather is right now.)

First, ‘Scientific research focuses on creating chocolate that does not melt in the heat.’ I mean, forget everything else, let science take a pause for a moment and stop trying to get computers to do everything for us, from heart operations to writing Mills & Boon romances, and concentrate on the real things that matter: Chocolate that doesn’t melt. Very Willy Wonka if you ask me, but if successful, you’ll be able to take your Quality Street to the beach and have it beside your sunbed all day with no fear of sticky fingers. Whatever next? An initiative to stop the world from overheating? An end to famine?

Mind you, you have to get to the beach first, and on your way, you may once again encounter a problem: News item number two, the on/off situation regarding Schengen entry requirements.

In Greece, this was ‘on’ earlier in the year during that quietest of travel times in Greece, Easter. Yeah, great idea. After that fiasco, it was ‘off’ again, and as far as I can make out, was then both off and on depending which airport you were using. Then, there was a quiet ‘off’ period, according to travellers in and out of Rhodes, but now, according to whatever the UK Government happens to be right now, it’s back ‘on.’ Whether it will be on when you get off your plane, or off when you get back on, I can’t tell you. I tend not to hang about airports watching the queues, so maybe the best advice is simply to be prepared for delays.

If you’re coming from the UK or any other non-Schengen country, you may need to register your biometric details, such as fingerprints and a photo when you arrive and before reaching the immigration desk. (Or you may not if it’s a busy time of day.) This can cause delays. You may also need to provide either your fingerprint or photo when you leave the Schengen area. This might also cause delays. But then, it might not.

So, there you are, now you know. If you are coming from the UK, you might want to check the latest news on this with the official UKGov website; here’s the latest page.

In more local news, the festival continues. There is a dance performance in Yialos this evening, and a concert from ‘Locomondo’ tomorrow night, and two more concerts at the weekend. All free, all in the main square, and all starting around nine PM.

And in even more local news, I might need to fiddle around with this website again at the weekend. The theme it runs on doesn’t easily support the left column where I put info about books and things. Judging by the click reports, not many pay attention to it anyway, but I want something there so I can keep up the link to Neil’s Symi Calendar, making it easy for you to order hundreds of copies, and right now, I can’t work out how to do it. So, if you notice odd pages or an odd look while you’re browsing, or get error messages, it’s because I am making the change ‘live.’ Obviously, I will be live while doing it, but so will the site. The alternative is to pay more to the hosting company so I can keep version A running while I work on version B, but as I only intend to spend an hour or so doing it live, that seems pointless. Anyway, now you know the news, and can take your Milk Tray with you to the airport knowing it won’t melt while you stand in a queue for hours waiting to be processed, because it is ‘on’ again. Make sure you don’t buy the kind of chocolate that melts, though, else your fingerprints won’t take and you’ll have to go to the back of the queue.