Walking, Photos and Things

Starting the week with some photos Neil took when out on his walks with Clare in recent weeks. They’ve been exploring behind Nimborio, over the other side of Nimborio bay, and over the other side of the island at Toli, a bay that’s popular in the summer for its taverna and beach.

When we first walked to Toli in 1998, there was nothing apart from a ruined stone hut. We’d walked across from the village, following a map, I think, or our noses, and came back via the old riverbed into the back of Nimborio. No path, just a lot of rocks to be wary of and a few snakes. My boots fell apart just after we’d climbed back out of Toli and started off for Nimborio. I had to walk the rest of the way in sandals which, luckily, I had with me for when I went swimming.

Last Friday, I wandered down to Yialos because I’d had a text from ACS to tell me I had a delivery. I needed to check the post office too. Still waiting for a Christmas present for godson #2 and an Aurora glow in the dark model kit (Phantom of the Opera) for me. The last I heard, it was in Miami, but I checked the tracking, and it was sent on its way from there on 22^nd, so it could currently be anywhere. The Christmas present is also ‘in transit’ and has been for about three weeks now. Waiting for me at ACS though, was a box of model paints I’d order from a supplier Jenine found for me in Greece, and they only took about 10 days to get here. I also picked up a stand for my laptop, so its screen is now at the right height and angle on my desk, and there was also a copy of ‘Banyak & Fecks’ which I must sign and send off to a competition winner in the USA.

You might remember me saying the other day that we had a power cut a few seconds after I’d just got out of the shower. Lucky it wasn’t five minutes earlier. Well, after walking back up the Kali Strata, I leapt into the shower as it was water day, and had just got out when the doorbell rang. Again, lucky, it wasn’t five minutes earlier. It was Yiannis (Rainbow) with a delivery of cakes he had brought us because it had been his name day. We had a quick chat across the threshold, and it was good to catch up.

The rest of the weekend was spent working on the new story, which is taking shape gradually. The weather has been warm, though cloudy, the sea has been extraordinarily flat, and the temperature up to 17 degrees. Of course, everything else is quiet, apart from the biker boys passing now and then. Oh, and the vet has made a visit under the SNiP programme to neuter several stray cats, which is good news.

Meanwhile, Home and Away

Well, where to start on a day like this? What with the scenes from Washington, and the dire news from the UK, and… No, I shall turn to cheerier matters, and, to start with, an important one for us immigrants on Symi who have residency and might be wondering about their biometric cards. The process has started on Rhodes, and people living there can attend the ‘aliens’ centre in Rhodes town to do their upgrades. This, as far as I can make out, involves proving you’ve been tax resident for five years (see your accountant), a CD ROM of four photos plus the prints, proof of income, job or over a certain amount of savings, and the payment of a small fee. Ah yes, but currently, we can’t get off the island for anything other than medical reasons, so what do we do? Well, a phone call to the police station for advice is the first step (thank you, Jenine), and the news from there is that they are currently waiting to be told how we on Symi must proceed. They will update us later in the month. So, unless you’re in Rhodes for a medical emergency and have time between treatment to call into the alien’s department (love the thought of that), and if you can find a photo shop that is open, it’s a case of wait and see.

Meanwhile, in the confines of the house, the decorations are down (took me all of five minutes), and life is returning to a post or pre-Christmas normal. It was 17 degrees outside yesterday, but we still had the heater on because the house has gone from the storage heater of summer to the cold-storage container of winter, and it will take several weeks of constantly warm weather to warm the walls. No complaints as I’ve still not yet had to wear gloves while working and the long johns remain in the wardrobe. The fridge is nearly empty of the chocolate collection, one Mars bar left to go before I have to start on the cooking chocolate, but we’re well-stocked with vegetables and, in the cupboard, brown rice which is actually meant to be brown and isn’t some leftover from two years ago.

Outside, the sea is calm, the sky a mix of high cloud and the occasional blue, there’s hardly any traffic on the road, and the only mechanical sounds I hear are from the ‘manhood to prove’ teens on their tampered-with mopeds, racing up and down the road after the 9pm curfew. Even the cockerels seem quieter these days, and the chickens peck about the lane in silence while the cats lounge in the road when a breakthrough of sun allows a warm patch. So, things tick over, life ticks on, and my keyboard clicks away at my fingertips. Perfect.

Yesterday

It was Epiphany yesterday, but I don’t know if any events happened here on Symi. I heard that, despite the government’s edicts and restrictions, some churches were set to defy the no-gatherings rules and go ahead with the formal events. As I say, I don’t know about here, I’m writing this before nine in the morning yesterday, so nothing has happened yet. Well, we have had bells ringing from churches, but these are controlled by one person and a button these days, apart from the outer bell at a church gate which is also one person, but with a rope.

I was out walking and didn’t pass any particularly large numbers of people heading towards a mountain monastery or anything. Epiphany is usually held by the sea in any case, but there was only the usual number of people going up and down the mountain in masks. They were in cars, actually, but wearing masks… You know what I mean.

Back home, I was just in time to have a shower and was turning the water off when there was a power cut. It’s no fun when this happens halfway through a showering. You find yourself all soaped up with no way to wash and go, but I was just in the nick of, as they say. It was only a brief outage in any case, which was just as well as I was gasping for a cup of tea.

As you can see, brief and pointless today, but I have a chapter in my head to get out, and I want to do that before stopping for lunch. I’m still only working mornings and must get out of that habit. Today, though (yesterday) we have to take down the decorations, a task which should take all of ten minutes. We’ll be finding bits of them and strands of silver stuff in odd places for months to come, but the initial cull is usually a brief one. Must get on. Chat tomorrow.

Weather, Wandering, Wondering

It’s one of those weather update days today, as you will see from the photos (taken on Monday). We had some grey skies, and they persisted until eventually throwing down rain sometimes over Monday night. I was woken at 4.30 by lightning, and the storm rumbled on until around six. Good for the plants and reservoirs, and I am pleased to report, no water got into the house or even the porch. The hills are already turning green as the herbs and things come back to life.

I was out in them there hills on Monday for a wander, waving at masked men in cars, nodding politely to masked ladies in the graveyard too, it was all very Roger Korman and spooky. Heading off-road, I was able to take off my mask as it’s hard to walk when your glasses steam up like a Swedish sauna, though I had it to hand in case I saw anyone coming my way. The only ‘people’ I met on the route was a flock of sheep charging towards me in the hope I’d come to feed them. I was given some very disgruntled looks when they realised I wasn’t.

I also dropped off the rubbish at the bins and greeted the stray cats with a nod. Apart from all that, I managed to get some writing done, dragging myself back into the usual routine and adding another very draft chapter to The Clearwater Mysteries book nine which has a not-really working title of ‘Something Exposure.’ I’m not sure what the something is yet, but exposure works because the story concerns Victorian erotic photography and the 1889/1890 Adriatic Influenza pandemic. Well, the subjects go so well together, I thought, why not?

In other news… more like gossip… I saw a post in a group which suggested that it’s now been decided that the something-office in Rhodes is to be the place to go to exchange our residency cards for biometric permits. I can’t remember the details right now, I was more interested in thinking about how we’d all get there and when, but the post did mention we’d need passport-sized photos on paper and on a CD Rom. Again, not sure how that will work as the only shop here who did/does that is closed for all but paying bills, and the ones in Rhodes, I think, are not allowed to open. So, I reckon, for us here on Symi, we’ll have to wait and see if/when restrictions are lifted before we can go and be made properly official. As I said before, we have until June.

Are the cracks beginning to show?

From time to time, I read snippets of information in the news, and over the weekend, I read some of the less publicised side effects of Brexit that are starting to become apparent. You’ve probably heard more about them than I have, so I may not be 100% accurate here. For example, Spain residents trying to get home from the UK and not being allowed to fly because of paperwork confusion was one story. Another was a Dutch company who are no longer able to deliver to the UK because of new and expensive paperwork and tax collection issues. I think that was for bicycle parts. Then there’s the extra cost of postage and customs duties on some items when you order from Amazon and others online. Plenty more delist like that to come, I expect, as the small print kicks in.

For me, when ordering online, I’ve been using only Greek sites and those in Europe. Places like Amazon.de and German eBay when I can only find items I need outside of Greece. I do have to use the online translator a great deal to make sure I don’t hit the wrong button and find myself signed up for Amazon Prime or some other neatly hidden add-on when all I want to do is buy a book, but otherwise, it’s not only cheaper but quicker to arrive.

As for the residency thing, I’ve also been following posts and pages for Brits abroad, and there’s still loads of confusion around 90 days out of 180 residency and all that. I don’t look too deeply as I have had residency for many years, and all I need to sort out this year is exchanging my paper permit for a biometric one. That may involve having to go to Rhodes, somehow, finding photos and putting them on a CD ROM and proving that I have a sustainable bank account, but none of that should be an issue. I hope. Again, I’ve read stories of some people having no trouble, others having to more or less reapply, and some having to show they have over €40k in a Greek bank account. As the period for switching to biometric only kicked in yesterday, I’ve not yet heard how it’s going to work for us, but we have until June to sort it out.

What I still don’t get though, is the 90 out of 180 days thing. I mean, I get it, but I don’t understand how some others don’t. I may be wrong on this, but I thought that residency permits were for permanent residents, not for people who wanted to pop over for an extended holiday. If you have residency, you pay tax here, and that’s that. (Or you have an agreement to pay tax in the yUK, but then may have to top up to the Greek authorities the difference in what your tax bill would have been had you been paying it all in Greece…) Some people are still asking how they can get a card so they can come for longer than three months at a time and then pop home again when it suits them. That doesn’t seem right to me, you can’t have your cake and eat it, not now Brexit has kicked in. You can’t even order your cake from the yUK unless you want to risk paying import charges and extra postage to ELTA…

I think this is a show that’s going to run, and there will be lots more gossip and lots of niggles coming out as the weeks go by, and all for what? Ah well, at least the NHS is benefiting from the extra 350 million a week, so that’s fine.