What to call this weather

The reservoirs are certainly filling up this winter. Another rainy day yesterday, and I woke up to more this morning, with the forecast suggesting heavier rain later and a storm. Apparently, this one has a name like they all do these days. I wonder if this personalisation of bad weather was created to make us more friendly towards storms and stop people fretting about them. All pretty daft really. I understand when it’s a hurricane (well, I don’t really, but someone must find it useful), but a squall or a typical winter storm…? Whatever.

I wonder if ‘they’ will start naming good weather? ‘Heatwave Harry is stopping by this afternoon…’ ‘Cloudy Caroline can be expected to cover parts of the north-west by lunchtime…’ ‘Watch out for ‘slightly warmer than usual Wendy on Wednesday, and, by the weekend, we expect weather front normal Norman to return as long as Bothersome Billy the Blustering Beaufort (force terrible-two) stays away…’ When will it end?

Needless to say, rain stops play for me, as in, stops me doing anything except sitting at my desk tapping away and hoping there’s enough food in the house to last until it’s safe to get out to the shops, and for ‘safe’ translate as ‘I could be bothered.’ Hence the old photos – still not found those snatched from my camera on January 10^th for no reason. Except Samsung think my card must have ‘gone faulty’ overnight, taken upon itself a good tidy-up, and dumped 1,100 individual files but left behind the folder that housed them. So, with those excuses given, I intend to spend another day at the desk, bar, perhaps, a quick swim to the shop if ‘Sally the shower’ lets up.

Symi by night

Well, not all of Symi by night but a couple of shots from over the weekend when we were out and about after hours. Coming back from Upper Horio and passing the church of Ag Athanasios where there are new eagles crowing the gateposts, and lit up from the outside, coming back from the Sunrise on Sunday night, past the supermarket looking mighty festive as always, and the village square on a not-too-chilly night in January.

I’ve still not located the photos missing from my camera. Thank you to everyone who has suggested places to look and things to try and for telling me all about how it happened to them. I’ve been chatting with Samsung’s help messenger service who sent me through a series of steps (I’d already tried) but to no avail. I can only imagine the card filled up, the phone said it was going to clear the space, I didn’t see the message, and it just went and did it with no further warning. Ah well, I had saved some of the images, and there was nothing too desperately important on there.

What’s on this week? Nothing very much. I am hoping my order of new furniture arrives, Neil gets his room painted so his office things can leave mine and go home, I can fit in my new computer desk (when here) and finally get my ‘study’ knocked into shape. I am now waiting for a curtain and rail as well, but that’s a finishing touch. First I need the rest of the furniture, but you should have an image of the finished room in a couple of weeks. Meanwhile, it is looking like a fairly standard week ahead for me, and I have no plans to be out and about anywhere. I was going to take a walk this morning and I might… if it stops raining. The first day in weeks I’ve been in the mood and the first day for about a week that it’s decided to rain again. Ah well – up and at ’em, as they say.

A bit odd

What’s a bit odd is that I went to look through the photos on my phone/camera yesterday to see what I had I could post, and all my photos from the main gallery taken before the start of this year have gone. Can’t find them anywhere. Looked through phone files via laptop and phone, followed ‘advice’ online telling me to click commands on the phone which don’t appear to exist, checked there are no hidden galleries, no ‘deleted images’ folder, nothing helpful at all. So, while I investigate that, we’ll have to make do with some random shots from my file which could be a couple of years old (and includes photos from Rhodes). I’ll go and have a look now and see what I have. Anything could happen in the next ten images…

Spam-it, Janet!

What day are we on now? Oh yes. I’m still in that odd time zone of not being exactly sure what day of the week it is. Sometimes I don’t even know what time of day it is because the shutters are shut to keep in the warmth. I’ll get up early, as usual, make a cup of tea, switch on the computers and heaters, drink the cup of tea in the sitting room and wake up for half an hour. Then I’ll commute across the porch to the study and check the emails before getting on with whatever work the day has in store. A couple of hours later, I will emerge to find it light outside and either raining, as it was yesterday, or not. But I think today, as I write, is Thursday. In fact, I am sure of it now because I just checked a date on an email…

I love spam. Well, I don’t, it’s a pain in the Mailwasher, but it sometimes gives me a laugh. His morning, for example, I opened the Mailwasher programme and, as usual, ticked everything for delete. I then go through and un-check the emails I actually want; the rest get thrown off the server before they reach my computer. The programme also lets you bounce emails back, report spam and flag up dodgy messages. I love bouncing back spam emails, not that it seems to make much difference to the overall number. Today I have eight from ‘Janet’ or someone offering to touch me up, or to touch up my photos, simply because we have photos on our blog. Jane is an auto-bot or something, but she’s not as bad as Marci or Angela or anyone else who starts an email with ‘My Dearest,’ or ‘Darling’, or ‘Beloved’ as if we were characters from a Catherin Cookson meeting on a moor near Tyneside, or whatever she wrote.

I ignore those of course and bounce them back when in the mood – that way, hopefully, the auto-bots thinks my email doesn’t exist, and it is deleted from their lists. Worse, are the ones that tell you they have your password, and they seem to have found one of them, and threaten you with exposure if you don’t pay up. Bounce! I never bother with those, but if I am worried, I change my password for the site they have flagged up – usually Facebook. I am never worried because the password they seem to have found is invariably an old one from years ago and besides, they can plaster my browser history if they want, I don’t think anyone would be surprised by it, and I’d certainly not be bothered. Anyway, this morning I had an interesting message from someone who apparently knew me intimately, and not just me; you too. It was addressed to Symi Dream and began:

Thank you, first off, for your work in serving the senior community!

Worth ignoring for the unnecessary exclamation mark alone. Well there you go, seniors, I’m off to do something youthful and more useful than filtering spam.

More bits and pieces

We had a successful trip to Yialos on Tuesday in that we made a list of things to do, forgot to take it, but still remembered what was on it. Bank for money, pharmacy for some bits and pieces, Crystalo to order some carpet for Neil’s office (only taken four years to get around to that), supermarket for a few things you can only find down town, collect two parcels from two different couriers, post office, a beer at Pacho’s and a taxi back up – no walk on account of the bags and boxes we had to carry. Back home to put on heaters, keep the sofa warm and fight off a cold.

That was about it. Wednesday, so far, is clear and cold, eight degrees in the porch and now the bedroom as I’ve opened the windows to blast away some of the damp, but fresh air and clear views across to Tukey and the mountains where you can sometimes see snow on the peaks. Other than that, not much update news, except high winds and rain are forecast again for Thursday and onwards. I’m hoping my new desk arrives this week so I can complete the study ‘renovations.’ I collected the banker’s lamp yesterday and had a look around online for a chair. I was tempted to order a Chesterfield Captain’s Chair (I know, extravagant) but the delivery cost the same as the chair itself. I think I will inquire of friends in Rhodes to see if any shops there sell similar things; repro is fine, as long as I can carry it onto the boat.

I’m also in the process of changing my driving license to a Greek one, and I’ll update you on that as I go along. So far, I have a list of what’s needed from the KEP office, and Dawn has also clarified something for me there, and I have someone translating my yUK driving license for me, front (and back!), which I will need before I can progress. Anyway, that’s all for another day. And now, back to the writing.