It’s a morning for the self-warming, USB-plug-in fingerless gloves that can become mittens. It’s a cold one this morning, with a slight breeze and a cold blue sky. No doubt it will be warm in the sun later, but for now, I’m straight from my bed to my desk, by way of the tea urn, and on with the gloves. They should start to warm my hands soon, and thus, my fingers. In the meantime, the wires and connections are clunking around beneath my wrists, and I’m typing more clumsily than usual with my random striking of keys, but otherwise, the page still looks like a red-underline mess.

I saw a sailing boat yesterday. I saw it while I was standing at my bower-eaves with a cup of tea, watching the long fields of barley and rye on either side of the river, and hoping to glimpse my own Lancelot skimming down to Camelot (read your Tennyson), and all the while, thinking it was a good day for sailing.

Maybe not so much of a good day for exploring shops and such like, as it was Clean Monday and much was closed during the day. (Apart from our water. Thank you, George!) Still, I hope they enjoyed the dry day, as we did. Today, it’s back to what constitutes normal around here, except today, I am doing it in a pair of clunky gloves that are wired into my laptop. I have a problem now, because I want to go and make another cup of tea, but I’ll have to keep the PC with me, and carry it around the house like a drip on a stand. Or I could unplug and dive straight back into chapter sixteen of the current story. I am sure my bold Sir Lancelot with his blazon’d baldrick slung will soon appear singing ‘Tirra lirra, tirra lirra’ and bearing a cup of tea. Then, the curse will be lifted from me, and the mirror will remain intact. (Sup.)

Which reminds me, my current work in progress uses superstitions as its background. The thing starts at a dinner of the Thirteen Club on 13th Jan 1894 in London, where they used to debunk superstitions by, for example, smashing mirrors and spilling salt. If you have any unusual superstitions, let me know, and I might be able to squeeze one or two into the story.

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The ball being carnival, which took place in Yialos yesterday. The air up in the village was thumping with the beat, and the music went on throughout the afternoon and into the evening. (If I hear ‘Vida Loca’ one more time, I swear I’ll spit. It’s like Summer when all we are serenaded by at night is ‘Happy Birthday to you…’) Looks like a great time was had by all. I’ve not seen any photos yet, but if I’ve got the technology right, here’s a quick video from Symi TV’s YouTube channel.

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Following carnival comes Lent, and the supermarket now has shelves packed with tahini, halva and frozen squid. Today’s Clean Monday, so ‘everything’ is shut and ‘everyone’ is at the beach flying kites and eating only dead things from the sea (and salads) as the 40 days of fasting begin. It may well be Unclean Monday for us if the water tank doesn’t fill up, and as it’s a bank holiday, George may rightly not be at work this morning, and our mains taps won’t get turned on. (No, we can’t. They are locked up, and it would be against the law, but thanks for asking.) We may get away with it, we don’t know yet, we are on a knife-edge. Well, I’m getting on with things as normal, and Neil is still in bed, but otherwise, I am sure we’re both highly concerned that 500 litres for three men over 3.5 days, possibly four, is not going to be enough.

Whatever. We’re used to it.

As for me, I am currently starting the week with a find. I found a folder of images Neil’s taken over the past couple of years, and although they’re not that up to date, there are some great shots coming to these pages over the next few days. Here’s a sample. I’m off…

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Can’t stay long. There’s due to be a planned power cut in an hour or so, and we could be without electricity from eight this morning to four this afternoon. Some place should be back on by 11.00, so we might be in luck. I never know exactly what area we come under, as we’re on the cusp, but Lemonitisa is on the list, and that’s our nearest church, so I guess we’ll be off shortly. It’s a clear, cold day by recent standards, so that’s going to be fun, but there are plenty of odd jobs to get done that will keep us warm. Not that I’ll be able to have a shower afterwards, as there won’t be any water until the power’s back on, and even then, our little tank has got to last us and downstairs right through until Tuesday because Monday is a Bank Holiday. So, I must rush and fill buckets, find blankets, check the camping gas, and make sure my phone is charged. Meanwhile, here are a few random landscapes I dragged from an ancient folder. Have a good weekend.

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Not much to report today. As far as I am aware, the harbour is still suffering from the high tide/waterline, caused by atmospheric pressure caused by climate change and a new moon or some such. The taxis sometimes have to park further out, so if you’re looking for one, and they’re not at the paddling pool as usual, they might be further along towards the bus stop. The carnival is due to happen on Sunday, so let’s hope nature has moved on by then, or things might become a little soggy.

This week, apart from wrestling with unhelpful, self-governing computer programs and the like, we also celebrated Jenine’s birthday. Neil did the cooking, we had lunch, and Sam came after work to have his. During that time, we all had a video call with the other godson over in Rhodes. This happened not long after we had started watching a film, which we put on pause. I like the way Shelley Winters and Red Buttons are fascinated by a man eating a beef curry with Bombay potatoes and matar paneer.

Anyone guess the film?

The matar paneer, by the way, called for paneer (a type of cheese), but we didn’t have any because we’re lucky if we can find a Laughing Cow in the shops in winter, so we used haloumi instead, and it was spot on. Neil has the recipe, and can be bought quite cheaply. (Neil, I mean. The recipe will cost you a fortune. Or you can look it up online.)

Since then, we’ve been under another rain and windstorm. It’s blown half a lintel off the house opposite, but we’re still intact as far as I know. Ironically, we’re still avoiding using water at the weekends to save what little we have in the tank, and this coming weekend, being Clean Monday, we may have to ration it very carefully, as we may not have a refill from Friday morning through to Tuesday. We have buckets of rainwater at the ready, so we’ll manage. I hope.

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At last, I can share with you the thrilling sight of a telegraph pole being dragged up the road. I bet you had a sleepless night wondering whether you’d be seeing it today, and here it is, below. I finally managed to get my phone gallery to connect to my OneDrive without it insisting I buy Google storage and put my photos there. This is all to do with a changeover I am trying to achieve. My primary Microsoft account is an email address that I soon won’t be able to use. I can use it to sign in as a username, but if they send me anything important, I won’t get the memo. So, I want to change it to another email address, and make that one primary, except when it sent me the code, it didn’t come through until hours later (to the Otenet email, which is perfectly valid), by when it was out of time. Now, it tells me I have to wait a week before trying again.

Meanwhile, my Word colour scheme is still setting itself to have a weird beige/green background, except when I open the settings to change it, or, like now, when I am editing the document, when it reverts to normal. Ah, now I’ve gone to another programme and back again, and it’s yuk again. I do that a second time, and it reverts to white, until I start to type, and then it goes to yuk colour… Give me strength!

Anyway… More and I hope better/interesting update tomorrow. For now:

I opened the gate on Monday morning expecting to find Neil back from Yialos, and lo! There was a long wooden pole sauntering past the house. It was attached to a digger at one end and a guy at the other, who was steering it away from parked bikes and Neil, who had to wait for it to pass before he could. The pole-dragging competition went on all morning, one at a time (slowly wins the race), until calm was restored to the lane, and the chickens reappeared on the road.

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