All posts by James Collins

Wildlife

July 20, 2023 James Collins

The other morning while standing on the balcony listening to the world at 3.00 am, through the sound of a superyacht’s chugging generator came the screech of an owl. This made me wonder if I could mention on the blog the wildlife I’ve seen from the house. I don’t mean the ‘Another hundred people just got off of the boat’ kind of mini wildlife we see from up here when the day boats come in, or the train which weaves around the harbour like a caterpillar, or even the speedboats that skim across the sea like water boatmen, but the various real-life, wildlife animals. So, even though I don’t have any suitable photos to use for illustrations (I’ll have to search for and use some from elsewhere), here’s a rundown of the diverse Symi wildlife as seen from a village balcony over the past eight years.

Four-legged

It’s not uncommon, particularly in the spring, to find a random mule tethered in the wasteland right below the house. We have all kinds of plants growing down there at that time of year; grasses, poppies, tall green weeds, Michaelmas daisy things, the ‘Judas plant,’ and other plant things I don’t know the names of. The random mule chomps away, leaving behind deposits of fertiliser in what seems a fair and natural exchange. Around springtime we also find the occasional sheep wandering past. There are usually at least a few of these invasions as a ewe and lamb become separated from the flock, or, having been brought down to graze on the edge of the village, make a run for freedom and explore the lanes and views in the manner of bewildered tourists. At least the sheep don’t ask the age-old and vague question, ‘Which way to the church?’

Now and then a stray goat may make an appearance down our side alley, and climb over the opposite wall to take up a pose of the neighbour’s outside bathroom, but we’re more likely to see sheep, for some reason.

Also in the four-legged category, I could list the rats that play in the pomegranate tree next door and occasionally wander closer to our home. One day, I must tell you about last year’s house rat, the upturned piano, and the heroic capture of the dear little thing Neil engineered with a crutch and the front wheel of Harry’s bicycle. Oven gloves and Tupperware were also included, but that’s for another day.

Cats, obviously, are the most common visitor to the neighbourhood. In full throat in mating season, stalking the rats in the tree, digging holes to leave deposits, and hunting the birds with all the success of a Tory government trying to find a benefit of Brexit. We have lots of cats on the island.

Not outside the house, but one of Neil's photos from a while back. — Not outside the house, but one of Neil’s photos from a while back.

Two-Legged, Land-Based

I mentioned tourists, and we’ll often see day trippers who have broken from the herd and struck out for freedom. Usually, this specimen is caught standing in the lane below with a mobile phone in one hand, head in the other, and pointing their Google map to where, apparently, there should be a road. They move on after a while, but if they return, we sometimes ask if they are lost, to which they reply, ‘Which way to the church?’ (Which one? There are, allegedly, over 360 on the island.)

Also seen passing on two legs are the boy next door, always very quietly if at night, and with a friendly wave if in daylight hours; other local folks on their way to work through the shortcut from the ‘main’ road to Kali Strata; the neighbour taking his daily exercise, and other such reassuring local sightings.

Chickens and cockerels. Kind of two-legged, semi-land-based aviators who live around the dustbins up the road. Last year, a hen led her very young chicks down to the wasteland and over the broken wall into the abandoned garden next door, and then, couldn’t get the things out because they were too small. We took it upon ourselves to feed them from on high with seeds and cucumbers and watched the chicks grow up until, without so much as a thank you, they left home.

Two-legged Aviators

Far more interesting, for me as a once-member of the Young Ornithologists Club, are the birds. Sadly, my membership expired in 1973, and I don’t remember the names of half the things we see, so excuse me if I get them wrong. When I was a YOC member, something I always wanted to see were ravens. (I must have been into Poe from an early age, because they fascinated me. Perhaps I’d seen the Roger Korman film with Vincent Price and Jack Nicholson when I was eight, I don’t know…) These days, we see ravens all the time; croaking like frogs, which is what I thought the sound was when I first heard it not long after moving here, flying upside down when showing off, and, not so long ago, swooping so close to my head as I stood on the roof, what’s left of my hair moved in the draft.

Also in the big bird department, we often see buzzards or eagles over the windmill hills and Pedi Valley. We have a pair of kestrels nesting just up the lane, there are seagulls over the harbour, but not as many as you might think, and the little and scops owls that sometimes sit a few feet away on the telegraph pole. In the middle-class-neighbourhood range, we have the collared doves and the pigeons, the blackbirds who nest in the pomegranate tree despite the rats, and a blue rock thrush or two. In the more mundane department, we have sparrows. In fact, sparrows are two a penny around here. You could say they are going cheap. (Like the gags.) Then, there are the European serins, all yellow and grey, and other small, noisy birds like wheateaters, swallows and martens. Recently, we’ve had a hooded crow or two, which I thought was unusual. These are the birds that wake you up early in Rhodes where they are everywhere, but I don’t remember seeing or hearing so many here until recently.

The top view of the last eight years, though, was a hoopoe (above). This was in 2020 when we were in lockdown and the wildlife had started to reclaim the village because those pesky humans weren’t out and about. There were more birds near the house, and more sheep, actually, and one day, while standing outside watching nothing taking place below, a hoopoe flew right past not five feet away. Had I been a train enthusiast and the bird a Mallard, I’d have blown a gasket with excitement, but I’ve never seen a duck in the village, nor a 1938 A4 class locomotive, come to that. I did hear a duck when we first moved in and thought it quaint that someone should keep such birds up here, but it turned out to be the man next door clearing his sinuses by sniffing up and expelling water through his nose.

Insects, Lizards and Others

I shan’t go into the insect class in detail, because I can’t. There are too many, but among the creepy-crawly, highly-industrious insects and others you can expect to find not far away are cicadas, locusts, moths, butterflies, spiders (yes, I know, not insects but…), ants, snakes, salamanders, lizards, mosquitoes, beetles, and some other things I’ve forgotten about because, frankly, it’s far too early in the morning and I wish I’d never started this exercise. So…

Yes, there is plenty of wildlife to see on Symi, and you can often see it with very little effort. Apologies to those wonderful critters I’ve missed off the list, and thanks to whoever I took the photos from.

[ For more island wildlife photos, see this old post: Goats, Cats and Weekend Plans ]

wheateater 02 — A wheateater, apparently.

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Day to day on Symi

Questions

July 19, 2023 James Collins

I’ve often thought about having a t-shirt made saying:

Yes
Cold
Same as summer

These are the answers to the three most common questions asked by new visitors to the island.

Do you live here?
What’s it like in the winter?
What do you do in the winter?

Between Neil and I, we have worked at the Rainbow Bar in Horio for nearly 19 years. I started there in September 2004 helping out for two weeks while Yiannis’ son went back to university. That two weeks turned into two months, and then twelve years, then Neil took over after closing his shop. During that time, we have met hundreds of new people, some day trippers, some longer-stay visitors who then come back, and some who have come here to live. Just about all have been interested to know more about island life, and on finding a local captive to interrogate, let loose with their questions. This is natural, of course, and understandable, and when we’re exploring other places, we’re also interested in the way of life. So I’m not knocking it, but after all this time, it becomes a little repetitive.

‘Do you live here?’ is an honest enough enquiry, though I have been known to reply: ‘No, I commute from London, but it’s worth it.’ People have a natural curiosity to know more about the island, and what better way to find out than to ask a local? Mind you, not everyone bothers to listen to your answers.

You know, that’s something that bugs me, and it doesn’t apply to visitors asking, ‘Do you live here?’ It applies to people all over the place, here, there and abroad. What is it with some people who ask questions they clearly don’t want the answer to? I have a few examples of things that bug when it comes to being on the receiving end of a question, and these monsters fall into these groups:

Ask and interrupt. You begin your answer but have only reached halfway through the overture, set-up, or introduction depending on whether you’re a musician, dramatist or academic, when the asker asks another as if they weren’t really interested in the first place. If that’s the case, why ask?

Ask and talk about themselves. This is a classic, and Willy Russell brings it up in Shirle Valentine when she points out how men turn conversations to themselves. Roughly: a woman will say I like Thursdays, and the man will say, Do you? I like Wednesdays, and suddenly you’re talking about him. Well, it works the same with many people. ‘What’s it like in the winter?’ Cold. ‘Oh, I don’t mind the cold. It was always cold when I lived in…’ And that’s that.

I call it CQD, and I know several people who have it. QCD, by the way, stands for ‘All Stations: Distress’ in Morse code (the pre-SOS mayday signal). Some say it stands for ‘Come Quick Distress’, and I can support that, but for me, it also stands for Compulsive Questioning Disorder.

Then, there are those with the inability to recognise to whom a question is directed. You’re sitting in a group, someone looks you in the eye and asks, for example, ‘Do you live here,’ and one of your number will answer from left field, sometimes even from the next table as if they didn’t deem you worthy of answering the question clearly meant for you.

Here’s another one that makes me shudder internally. You’re walking back from the shop with your non-eco-friendly blue carrier bags bulging with six everyday items which these days cost six day’s wages, and you pass the café tables, as we must to get home, and someone will say, ‘Have you been shopping?’

‘No, actually, it’s a severed head.’

Worse is the non-asked question, i.e. ‘Been shopping I see.’

‘I must. How else will I collect enough plastic bags to wrap over the heads of the inquisitive and seal with gaffer tape until the inanities cease?’

Others of this ilk include, ‘You’re not drinking?’

‘I am. This is a glass, and in it is water. The glass travels from table to mouth and bit by bit the liquid level goes down. Thus, it’s safe to assume, I am drinking.’

‘So, what do you do in the winter?’

No matter how much we’d all like to say, ‘None of your business. What do you do in the winter, big nose?’ for the sake of politeness, you come up with a stock answer and list the things most people do most of the time no matter the season. All rather prosaic, but honest. The winter questions suggest people can’t understand why anyone would want to be on a Greek island for any other reason than taking a holiday, wallowing in the sea, or spending two weeks discussing sunbeds. Either that, or they assume we’d only want to live here in the summer before buggering off to the drab drear of the yUK for the worst months of the year. Of course, we live here in the winter, it’s our home. What do you do after six months of alleged summer at home in Surrey? Do you say, ‘Come on Brian, summer’s over, let’s get back to Greater Manchester.’? Odd.

Seriously, it’s nice that people are interested, and questions are simply an opening gambit, so I can’t knock anyone for asking them. It’s human nature and that is that. To be fair, it also works in reverse, and visitors might like to create their own t-shirts with the replies:

Two weeks
Yes thanks
Anastasia’s

This is in answer to the most common initial questions asked by people who live here. How long are you staying? Did you have a good journey? Where are you staying? It’s all code for the real question, ‘When are you leaving?’ but no-one puts it that way. Well, I might if someone asks too many inanities of me.

What’s the answer? You may ask. For my part, it’s easy. When someone hasn’t taken their pills and runs off a stream of ‘Do you…’ ‘What’s it…’ What do you…?’ ‘How is it…’ I now simply point them in the direction to my Amazon page and say, ‘It’s all in the books.’

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Day to day on Symi

Sunbeds

July 18, 2023 James Collins

Continuing this week’s theme of one-word titles for blog posts, the word of today is ‘sunbeds.’ It seems to have been the word of the season so far with visitors and locals alike endlessly discussing the things at the bar and on social media. Everyone has an opinion, it seems, and when talking about beaches, lots of people have advice on what ‘they’ should do, what ‘they’ should provide and charge. Some aren’t happy with what ‘they’ are providing and for how much, and how many ‘they’ have now got on their beach, while another ‘they’ have this, and wasn’t it better when ‘they’ did that? And if only ‘they’ could do this. Whoever this ubiquitous non-gender specific ‘they’ is or are, they are not going short of advice, that’s for sure.

Of course,I have no photos of sunbeds to use as illustrations, so you will have to make do with some oder, random shots with the sea in them. — Of course, I have no photos of sunbeds to use as illustrations, so you will have to make do with some old, random shots with the sea in them.

The last time I used a sunbed was pre-2015. Having decided to take a Sunday morning off, the two of us packed up a beach bag—you know, shoved everything in as though we were going trekking for six weeks—and walked down to Pedi to claim a free sunbed at Apostolos by 9.30. The intention was to spend the morning on the beach pretending we were on holiday, stay for lunch and for me to catch the 14.30 bus back up to get to the bar for work by three. I lay down on the sunbed at 9.45, woke up at 11.45, and walked home. Not because there was anything wrong with the thing; ‘they’ had provided me with a decent one, but because, frankly, there are always better things I could be doing than lying in the shade doing nothing. On which note, why aren’t they called shade beds?

They are not for everyone, that’s for sure, and that’s partly due to the techniques that must be mastered before successfully using one. Getting onto one of the things is tricky enough in my experience. There’s an art to it.

You can sit in the middle side-saddle, then hoist yourself around in an arc to land with feet at one end, head at the other, only to realise it’s not at the correct angle, so you hoist back again, reach around to move the sloping part, unhook it and collapse face-first in an ungainly heap. Assuming you haven’t severed a few digits in this process, you then yank the back bit up while putting your weight on it and hope the slidey bit finds the correct notch, only to find it doesn’t, and you either collapse again or end up sitting upright as if in some Victorian health contraption. By this time, it’s time to cool off in the sea, so you waddle in, returning later to repeat the process.

Then there’s the straddle technique where you get one leg on either side, and lower yourself to a sitting position only for the thing to clamp shut over you like a Venus Flytrap.

Of, course, you have to put your towel down first, and that’s the easy part. If you’re sensible, you can arrange the tilt angle before you mount the thing, and if you are an expert, you can glide gently to place amid oohs and ahs from an impressed stranger who has already settled in to share your intimate, semi-naked bathing space not two feet away.

I don’t advise throwing yourself face-first or even backwards onto one as they are unpredictable, and you never know what enforced yoga position you will end up in.

Once aboard, though, you can lie back and make yourself comfortable before noticing the earth has continued its orbit around the sun, and the shade has now moved, and so must you. There are two ways to complete this part of the assault course:

Grabbing the sides while still prone and spasming your way a few inches towards the shade. This method is also known as the electro-shock technique.

Or, disembarking, dragging, turning, looking up, whipping out your sextant, checking the angle of an observed object, noting the ‘dip’, sighting the horizon, the time of the zenith and the declination of the celestial orb against the desired direction divided by the length of time intending to remain, and then remount using whatever technique has been mastered. (Full details can be found in chapter six, ‘The Master and Commander Style of Sunbed Adjustment’ in my forthcoming tome, ‘Surviving a Symi Summer.’ Hardly University Press.)

That done, and all settled in and sorted, you can then fish around underneath for your bag to grab your latest Jackson Marsh and continue from chapter five, only to realise it’s way back up the beach by now, and what happened to your towel? Ah well, a few minutes catching the rays and it’s down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky, with red strap marks across your back, or the imprint of a manufacturer endorsing your behind, and cool off with a dip. Later, returning to your pre-marked territory, you discover a family of nomadic circus performers has encroached, dragged the second sunbed of your pair to elsewhere, not knowing you were keeping it for no reason other than you didn’t want anyone else to sit near you.

You’ll need a lie down after all that, and on most beaches on Symi, you can do just that. How much you will pay, whether you will be on one of the new tier-and-tariff systems, paying X amount for a back row, or taking out a mortgage for the front row, or packed somewhere mid-stalls with no privacy or view, well… that depends on the beach. Whether you get your own personal torture device for free as long as you spend X amount in the café bar or restaurant depends on where you are. Whether you get a bamboo shade that leaves you with a burlap tan, or a collapsible umbrella (the use of which is the subject of an optional instruction manual), or whether you have one of those ‘set-in-a-concrete block and don’t you dare move it’ affairs, all depends on where you are.

Hopefully, you’ll find the perfect match for you, and while looking at the many beaches offering their various arrangements, you won’t think, ‘They’ should do this…’ You won’t criticise ‘They’ for not providing you with exactly what you want, or for over-providing the facilities because they are expecting an entire Virgin cruise ship to empty on their shores, and you won’t bad-mouth ‘They’ if you don’t like what you see and find. If you don’t like it, move on. There’s plenty of choice around the island. For me, I’ll continue to stay well away from the deathtraps, but that’s my choice, and I wish all the hard-working ‘Theys’ out there every success in whatever arrangements they have on offer, because, at the end of the day on the beach, everyone has to make a living.

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Day to day on Symi

Hot

July 17, 2023 James Collins

Yes, it’s hot. Maybe not as hot as other places around the country and Europe, but 40 degrees in the shade in the courtyard on Saturday is still pretty warm. We’re reading about the Acropolis closing at the hottest times of the day, the government ordering no deliveries are to be made between noon and 5 pm, and temperatures of over 42 degrees in Syntagma Square. So, if you are heading this way anytime soon, be prepared.

The usual rules apply: Drink lots of water*, stay out of the sun, eat properly, rest, and don’t be selfish and leave the air con on when you go out, because there’s no point and you’re robbing the rest of the island of the power. Leave water out for the stray cats if stray cats are your thing, and remember that most waiting and bar staff are running daily 12 + hour shifts with no day off until the end of the season, so, be nice. Cover up, put on sun protection, wear a hat, and do all the sensible things you know you should be doing.

[* Beer is not water, nor are coffee, tea, orange juice, gin and tonic, wine, iced tea or anything else that’s ‘mainly water.’ You want pure bottled water, and the only thing to add is electrolytes like ‘Almora’ which you can buy at the pharmacies.]

However, please refrain from walking through the village in your summer thong, showing off your bottom bits and rubber parts as though you were poolside. What you are doing, actually, is wandering through a pretty ancient village where real people live, and it’s insulting to see the poor job your stylist made of your Brazilian runway, or whatever. I am sure you wouldn’t go walking down Harlow High Street dressed as though you’re on your private yacht. Even if you are an allegedly gorgeous Italian or a wealthy French personne d’intérêt, we are not intéressée (or even intéressé) to see you without your clothes on. So, put it away, love, and show some respect.

For many of us, this high heat is nothing new, though it’s never welcome and you never really get used to it. You just learn to adapt, to be sensible, and stay as cool as possible, move around as little as possible, and do things according to the temperature rather than time. That’s why I’m up at 2.30 writing this, when it’s only 32 degrees outside, and not doing it at 3 pm when it will be 40 plus.

On the upside, we don’t have to have our hot water tank turned on at the moment. The water from the cold tap comes out hot because our water tank is outside, and the water from the hot tap comes out cold-ish because the hot water tank is inside and switched off. We don’t have aircon, and my desk fan runs from the PC, while the other two we have run on goodwill and a lot of WD40. The windows are wide open, letting in the children of the night (mosquitoes, rats, cockroaches and other gate crashers), and if you come to our door, expect to wait while we get dressed before answering.

On which note, let’s get on with another warm day during which Neil intends to take his exercise and go swimming long before nine in the morning, and I am resigned to spending my time between typowriter and sofa-dozing because I have been awake since 1.30 this morning, thanks to a nightmare about eating cannelloni on the Kali Strata. That could have been a side effect of the heat, or just me.

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Day to day on Symi

Thoughts from a Midnight Balcony

July 14, 2023 James Collins

Talk about an early morning ramble, this is a very early morning stream of semi-consciousness, and with a pretentious title too! What more could you ask?

I woke up at 2.00 this morning. Actually, it was 1.30 but I managed to go back to sleep and have a lie in. The night before, I’d watched half of Das Boot, but had to give in at 20.45 and go to bed, so at least I had five hours sleep, and there’s about the same amount of time to look forward to with the rest of Das Boot. (Never seen it before. Always meant to. Excellent.)

I’m not here to whinge about the lack of sleep, because I don’t feel tired at all. In fact, today (which is actually yesterday when you read this) started well. A potential new writing opportunity came in, as did a free book promo opportunity on a thing called BookFunnel, and I reckon my Victorian mystery adventure, ‘Guardians of the Poor’ would be perfect for it. I also sold some books yesterday and my daily stats thing had a spike – we’re talking cents not sensational, so don’t get excited. I now have the whole day to work on the current WIP, save for an hour’s siesta around normal people’s breakfast time, and at least I am not a British TV presenter having my life ruined because some scum of a rag wants to sell more newspapers. Honestly! Don’t get me started… Today is to be a positive day, and I mean yesterday when I am writing this and today or whenever when you are reading it.

Being up and about when most people are asleep or finishing off their night out isn’t always a tranquil experience. Granted, the other morning, I was in the courtyard listening to absolutely nothing at all. No cockerels, no mopeds, no voices and not a breath of wind. Then, standing on the balcony some mornings, I am treated to conversations from the still-open kafeneion in Yialos, and the goodbyes hollered before the mopeds set off to grind up the hill. Other mornings, music is still playing somewhere, occasionally interspersed with ‘Opah!’ and on other days (nights), I hear the fishing boats throatily chugging out way before dawn.

Then, there are the night animals. The owl that sits on our telegraph pole and pings like a sonar, the one that screeches in the darkness, the cats in heat singing almost as badly as the revellers in the kafeneion, and the insomniac cockerels up the road, in the valley, over the hill, and let’s face it, everywhere. From time to time, you can add to this the discussions of two young men as they ride side by side up the hill on their motorbikes, the lapping of the sea against the quayside, the rumble of a middle-of-the-night ferry, and the solitary half-hour chime of the Ag Triada clock, when it’s working.

There are also the sights. There’s an odd light that appears over the Turkish mountains now and then. It rises to a particular height, stays there, glows and fades. There are sometimes flashing pinpricks from aeroplanes too high to hear, and others lower, accompanied by the dull drone of their engines, satellites and the space station gliding silently among the stars, the currently waning moon over to the east, and the rats in the pomegranate tree next door having a good old picnic.

The mind is more alive too. At least mine is, and I do my best writing before ten in the morning. After that, all I am good for on the work front is editing, but that’s also a job I enjoy. That’s how this post started. I was having a cup of tea on the balcony, looking at the harbour lights and, for some reason, a line from Private Lives came to me; ‘It’s extraordinary how potent cheap music is.’ There was no music, so I don’t know how that got in, but I was, like Amanda, standing on a balcony overlooking a harbour at night. I was also reflecting on the days just passed and how the bother-in-law left on the Wednesday evening Blue Star with his delightful daughter, and what a good time we’d all had. Then, my mind turned to what I had planned for the day ahead, I turned on the PC, made another cup of tea, and shuffled the piano stool from one part of the house to another as quietly as possible so as not to wake the volcano rumbling away in the bedroom.

Random shot inside Taverna Zoi, early lunchtime (she's open 12 to 3pm for lunch), Wednesday. I lked the shades of blue, and the food was fab too. — Random shot inside Taverna Zoi, early lunchtime (she’s open from 12 to 3 pm for lunch), Wednesday. I liked the shades of blue, and the food was fab too.

And here I am doing that thoughts-to-page stuff at 3.44 in the morning. I’ve read the ‘news’, checked the admin, had my first breakfast, and will finish this before heading off into fiction-land and setting my mind to chapter nine of book two of series three. This one to be titled ‘Fall from Grace.’

Here’s a reminder before you go. Although I’m not posting here on SD over the weekends, I put a Saturday post on my Jackson blog, and tomorrow, the 14^th, it’s a guest post from a fellow author who has written a three-book historical series set in WWII. Take a look at Jackson Marsh tomorrow, and I’ll be back on Monday, probably around the same unearthly time of night.

Waving off te famly on Wednesday evening. Seeing the Blue Star leaving for Athens in eth evening is always a romantic sight. — Waving off the family on Wednesday evening. Seeing the Blue Star leaving for Athens in the evening is always a romantic sight.

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Symi Dream

All posts by James Collins

Wildlife

Questions

Sunbeds

Hot

Thoughts from a Midnight Balcony

Writing on a Greek island