I predict a random week, hence four random photos this morning. I don’t know why I am predicting this, probably because I have woken up with no idea what to put on this page, so you’re getting random thoughts. Having said that, the day has started with no random tune in my head, whereas most days recently have started with a song or a piece remaining on my mind after waking up, and being there for no reason at all. Today is an earwormless day.

As for the first random photo… The Blue Star leaving on a calm sea a few days ago.

There are a few things on my ‘to do when I get around to it’ list for this week. Mostly, these are jobs which have been waiting to be done for ages yet take only five minutes to achieve. Example: change the light fitting in the laundry. (Turn off the power, unscrew the old fitting, replace, and enjoy light for the first time in a year.) Another is to tighten the legs on the piano stool which is becoming as wobbly as my rendition of Chopin’s Raindrop Prelude, and another is to run the hoover over the office carpet.

Random photo number two, a view looking down the Kali Strata.

I’ll be taking that route tomorrow on the way to the harbour where we have to do a couple of random things. (Note: remember to see if the dreaded tax returns have been done yet.) Talking of downtown, the festival continues with concerts and dancing in the town square and elsewhere. For the first time in ages a couple of the bars are still open when I get up at 3.30, which means someone is having fun and someone else, hopefully, is making money. There are plenty of boats moored at the end of the harbour we can see from up here, and although I don’t go down there much, it looks like Yialos is keeping busy thanks to the many day boats and visitors. All good news.

Random photo number four is one of Neil’s and shows you the colours of most days.

I see in the national press that the great sunbed debate rages on: space on beaches, how beaches are never private in Greece, as all are publicly owned, and some places are taking up too much space, blah-di-blah. That’s one to keep an eye on. As for me this week, I have very little planned apart from the usual: get up, splurge some random words here, get on with other less random words for seven hours, take the rest of the day off to read. I am intending to release a new book this week – details will follow – while working on the next one because that’s my job. Otherwise, hopefully, a lunch with the godson, some piano playing, a short walk or two, and that light fitting to change, though that has waited a year, it can wait a little longer We shall see.

Final random shot, the sunrise at Pedi. Another Neil shot – oh and that’s something else on my list of ‘definitely to do’, I must upload next year’s Symi Dream calendar because Neil has chosen the images, and likes to get it online around now. Again, I’ll post news when I have it.

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Had to put on a t-shirt this morning. Only 24 degrees in the courtyard. Mind you, there’s a stiff breeze and it it’s 3.30, so that might have something to do with it. As we head into the weekend, I have a day ahead doing what I like to do: writing, eating, playing the piano, and watching films. The weekend promises more of the same, with nothing major planned for a few days.

To see us into the weekend, there are a couple more photos taken when wandering aimlessly around the village. The narrow lanes, a Turkish-looking casing around what I assume was once a courtyard a door, a lane showing the old Vs the renovated, and a shot of a ship. (Make sure you don’t get your vowels mixed up on that one.) There was a barquentine in view yesterday. The Star Clipper from Star Clippers Cruises carries up to 170 passengers and 72 crew, was built in 1992, and looked majestic. My photo doesn’t do it justice, of course. It would be good to one day see one of these tall ships with its sails up, but there’s not much point in them doing that when moored off an island for a day.

It’s strange, talking about a ‘weekend’ because my weeks don’t have ends or beginnings. I suppose I am still of the Monday-to-Friday mindset ingrained over X number of years working back in the yUK, so I still call Saturday and Sunday a weekend. In Greece, the week starts on a Sunday, I am told, so the weekend is really the week beginning. Whatever, every day is the same for me, summer and winter, and that’s just fine. As the dowager says in Downton Abbey, ‘What’s a weekend?’ She says that because, before the growth of the middle classes in the late Victorian and early Edwardian period, and a change in working hours/days, there was no such word as weekend. If you went to a country house for a visit, you did a ‘Friday to Monday.’ If you were of any other class, you probably worked seven days a week, perhaps with a Sunday morning off for church, and that was that.

That’s one of the things I’m constantly aware of when writing stories sent in 1892, as I am doing these days. No such word! I have to keep checking, as best I can, when certain words came into general use, and weekend doesn’t appear until after the turn of the century. There are others. I tut greatly when a character in film or writing uses the word ‘okay’ and the piece is set before WWII – I heard it in a Victorian drama recently; they should have known better. There are many others, and some are surprising. ‘Acerbic’, for example, sounds like an old word to me, but apparently, it didn’t come into general use until the 1950s. ‘Paperwork’ is another. It’s a minefield (1908), but being me, it’s a thing I enjoy researching.

On which note, work calls, so I will leave you with one of Neil’s shots from Pedi yesterday and wish you a good Friday to Monday.

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Three random shots from my photo file today, apropos nothing in particular, as that’s what I have to say today; nothing in particular. Mind you, I often start like that and then wander on and see what comes out, and a whole page later… well, there we are.

These aren’t the best photos ever, but they show you three different locations. Horio and the ‘main street’, which is just wide enough for a very small truck or a carefully driven car, a square at the back of Yialos, and a view at the top of the main road by the windmills. If you look around blogs, social media, print magazines and websites, you will see stunning photos of Symi, the harbour and the neoclassical houses, but it also has beauty in the day-to-day. Like the ‘main street’ of Horio with the walls where bored and over-excited children have applied their marker pens, and where the flag gets changed only now and then. Where there are no glitzy high-fashion outlets for oligarchs on super-yachts, but a simple bakery, a butcher’s shop, some homely tavernas and other small businesses that keep the village alive.

All locations are worth a wander.

The village after you reach the top of the Kali Strata – keep going straight up, along the main road unit the very end, then do a right, first left, on until you can go no further, right, first left and up, and you will come to the museum, for example.

The main road from the harbour to the village and beyond. Get off at the windmills, walk back a little way on the pavement and you will see a splendid view of Yialos.

In Yialos itself, behind the town square, where this other hidden (and private) square can be found. If you’ve not found these views already, look out for them on your next visit.

There’s more to see than what we see.

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Day Trip

Yesterday was my first ‘lunch downtown’ for several weeks, and it made for a pleasant change. The King Saron is back in action, bringing day trippers over once or twice per day, there were three or four other day trip boats operating as well, so the harbour was busy, which is good to see from an island finance point of view. We did what we had to do; a visit to the dive centre, post office, buy some tea bags (not from the post office), buy a new bulb fitting for the laundry light (today’s challenge is to change it, and it’s only taken me a year to get to this point), and then it was off to lunch.

In the evening, the harbour was also full, from what I could see of it from up here, with a few boats anchored offshore too, and there was a concert in the village square. Neil was called in to work for the evening, and I’ll find out later how that went because he’s still in bed while I am starting my day’s work, but then, it’s only 4.00, so you can’t blame him.

Today looks to be a quiet one as I have nothing planned other than the usual writing work, and perhaps a quick sweep of the courtyard to get rid of some fallen leaves. Then, I can start reading my new book, ‘Life of the Victorian Stage.’ A book, I should add, that was hard to buy.

A Struggle with Amazon

I was trying to buy a Kindle copy because a) it was more immediate and I don’t have to wait for delivery, b) I don’t have to pay post-Brexit import changes, and c) it was cheaper. To buy it, I had to log into Amazon. So, I entered the details, and it came up with a captcha thing where you can hardly read the letters and numbers. I did though, and was told it was wrong. So, I tried again, and again, and again…. Until finally, I passed the challenge and was over the threshold, where I was told I would be sent a verification code to my phone within 90 seconds…

No code arrived. (Resend: nothing.)

I tried the process again – still no code.

Did some online research, and checked my phone’s ‘push notifications’ were on, made sure my password was correct and all that jazz, and tried again. (This process had been working fine a couple of days ago, btw.)

No code.

Rinse and repeat several times. No joy.

I headed to customer service only to find the only way of contacting Amazon was via phone. Not doing that! Actually, I can’t do that, as my mobile phone tariff only lets me phone within Greece, and we don’t have a landline anymore.

I then found a customer service email on the dark web and sent them a message – only to receive the auto-reply that the email no longer exists.

Then, I found some other links to CS via the lighter grey web, only to find those pages didn’t exist either – yet they come up at the top of a Google search.

Tried downloading the Amazon app, and that DID send me a verification code, so the phone was working fine, then.

I then found out, I can’t buy Kindle books through the Amazon app (it’s basically useless and tells you to use a PC to buy Kindles). Nor was I able to buy one through my Kindle app on my tablet, nor through my phone (verification code needed), and still not via the PC. (Ditto)

Had a break, turned the PC off and on again, and a while later, finally managed to get my password accepted, and get a code, and, I bought the e-book.

I don’t know why all that happened, but I got there in the end. Now, though, I have a message saying there’s a problem with the payment, yet the account page shows it all as being fine.

What do you reckon? Chinese spyware, Russian ghosts in the machine, an Amazon glitch, or perhaps AI having a bad day? Whatever the reason, it provided me with an hour of frustrated non-entertainment.

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