Sure signs that Christmas is coming to the village: The lights are up, and there are parsnips in the shop. Other signs that we are heading into the darker months of winter include the cloud now covering us, the overnight rain and the rising winds. Here are a few rather dodgy photos I snapped the other day in the late afternoon/early evening. It’s darker earlier, of course, and lighter later, but with the shutters closed against the wind – currently from the south, so the temperature is still in the mid-teens – the quilt up over the balcony windows and the heater on, it’s often hard to tell what time of day it is.
It’s all go at our place, kind of. There’s a generator outside working away as a nearby house is being done up, we’ve had the mule train going past already, preceded by trucks of metal rods and other building supplies, and whatever is being done is clearly coming along. It might all come to a stop today as rain is forecast for the next 48 hours, plus high winds. Christmas lights are up in the village and Yialos and have been for some time, and there was an outbreak of parsnips at the supermarket the other day.
Symi, winter morning
Inside the house, we’re not quite festive yet, but we were practising carols and Christmas songs on Monday morning – flute and piano. There is to be another carol and song singing event at ‘Bulmas’ at some time before Christmas, again raising money for the orphanage in Rhodes. It’s a bit of a stretch for my piano playing to go from Jingle Bells to Irving Berlin in the same set, but we’ll manage something, especially if I can persuade my fingers to remember what they are supposed to do and look up a C# m/diminished 4th chord just to remind myself. I also need to look up why my Word programme decided to open blank documents in American English without being asked, and why my keyboard changes from the usual layout to something else (it took me five minutes to find that # symbol) when the one shown on the keyboard is clearly marked and not shift + 3. I can’t wait for my new laptop to arrive, I fear this one has taken on a mind of its own.
Approaching Rhodes
So, with all that going on, and plenty of other things, it’s hardly surprising I’ve only managed to write about 10,000 words since November. I don’t know where the days go. I was up at four yesterday, and after doing some necessary work, making breakfast, writing this and sorting out a couple of other things, it’s nearly time to get ready to go for lunch with the neighbours. Maybe I should start getting up at midnight, I might get things done then. Hey ho-ho-ho, such is life in the runup to Christmas.
Continuing our shopping expedition on Rhodes last Friday… After the surreal experience of Jumbo, we had another fairly odd one on the way back to town as our driver rattled off his list of things he didn’t like about the people who ripped him off one lunchtime. We booked him to collect us later and dropped off our shopping at the Plaza Hotel where we stopped for a drink while we planned the next shopping assault. The list, written on two Post It notes, wasn’t too complicated, a visit to Zara, try and find a cable to link the DVD machine to the Smart TV (still not organised that, but I am sure I have such a lead in the house somewhere), look for inspiration, and buy a Christmas gift for Godson #2 which involved a visit to the basement of the Hondas Centre.
That done and a new coat bought for Neil, we had lunch at a café/bar in Mandraki called Jaspers. It was still warm enough to eat outside as long as jackets were zipped up, and we decided on a simple chicken dish. Well, fairly simple: massive chicken breast halved and filled with a mayonnaise and asparagus spears, dripping in BBQ sauce and coming with a bowl of fries (€12.50 each – not the fries, the whole dish). That was more than enough to refuel us before heading back to the Plaza to settle in and wait for the boat.
As an aside, you may be interested to know that the indoor smoking ban has returned to Greece, and this time it looks like it’s here to stay. Special officers have been sent to islands to train the police (on how to identify people with a lit cigarette in their hands, I guess), inspections are being made, and fines are being handed out to both proprietors and smokers who disobey. I was reminded of the time the husband was in hospital, and I was sitting out in the ward waiting room with a local lady who was smoking beneath the ‘No Smoking’ sign. “We Greeks don’t like being told what to do,” she explained, puffing away. Not quite as unsettling as seeing the orthopaedic surgeon coming from ‘backstage’ in his bloodied greens with a fag hanging out of his mouth, but that was several years ago now. Even locally, there’s no smoking in the bars which isn’t so much of an issue in the summer, but the sight of local friends hanging out of the Rainbow doorway while there’s an AEK match on the TV inside will take some getting used to.
I’m all shopped out now, an hour or so in Jumbo does that for you. It was a fun day if you don’t mind hideous music and the smell of plastic. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Jumbo in Rhodes (or anywhere, I expect), but it’s something of a culture shock after Symi. Maybe that should be a ‘lack of culture’ shock, I don’t know, but it’s certainly a useful if startling place to visit. The idea is to pop in for a couple of Christmas things, pick up some sensibles for the house and then pop out again. Er, yeah, well, it never quite works like that. You end up driving a trolley around an obstacle course starting with children’s toys and ending with a free for all in the confection department, and by then, your trolley is piled high with unmissable bargains and all kinds of things you didn’t know you needed until you saw them and realised you could no longer manage without.
I’m not being entirely serious, of course, we found all manner of things we had on a list and more besides. I was very impressed with the aisle widths. At some moments, even when entering a chicane in household goods, there was enough space for the trolley to get through, albeit only an extra couple of milometers either side. I realised that someone had the job of measuring and checking the aisle width all the way around the thousands of square feet that make up the place to ensure there was — breath in — just enough room to squeeze through. I was also rather impressed with the car accessory department. I found myself wondering why I was attracted to the rubber footwell mats until I realised the smell of the material was making me high, and I had to move on because the display of windscreen sun shields was reflecting the Christmas lights and tripping me out.
Everyone’s happy at Jumbo
All this was accompanied by some of the worst Christmas music you could imagine, which also added to the fun. Among the chart-topping, heart-stopping, Japanese torture playing obtrusively from above, we had Jumbo’s own ‘carols’, a wayward version of ‘Favourite Things’ sung in Greek with slightly altered melody to, I assume, avoid copyright infringement, and the song I titled “How many times can we get in rhymes, artistry forsaking for making the baking while taking the…” Whatever. It was one of the best displays I’ve heard of how not to write a song, or at least, if you do, how to write a song to show everyone else how not to overdo your internal rhymes for the sake of having them in there. They had even managed to find a series of rhymes for ‘happy’, one of which was ‘crappy’ and I couldn’t have agreed more. Still, it was a laugh, but I can’t help feeling so sorry for the people that have to work in it all day.
Anyway, the bulk of the Christmas tat shopping done (along with some very useful things for the kitchen that I’d forgotten we didn’t own and wondered how we had lived so long without), and we took a taxi back to town to visit other shops. The taxi was driven by a sit-com character who has a Romanian stripper for a wife, another girl on the side and a dislike of certain islanders because he once visited and was ripped off for two plates of chips, a salad and some rubbery calamari. (€130.00, allegedly, and I’m not mentioning names.) Still, I learnt a few new swearwords and booked him back to pick us up later for the boat. But that’s another story.
