Symi Film Festival

Or, the Symi International Film Festival to give it its proper title. Here’s a quick update:

SIFF update Saturday Noon. There have been 37 films entered so far.
Five Feature films
Three long-short movies (over 20 mins)
The rest are shorts.
There have been 10 entries from Greece (nine of them short films), five from Iran, plus others from around Europe, Benin, Algeria and Kazakhstan. The next deadline for entries is 14^th August with entry fees ranging from $2.50 US to $15.00, depending on conditions as set out on the web page. The final deadline for submissions is 24^th, August, with fees from $5 to $20.

If you know any filmmakers who might be interested in submitting, the Film Freeway page is here. https://filmfreeway.com/festival/SymiInternationalFilmFestival And you can reach the Festival’s Facebook page here.

Today’s photos are from Pedi on Saturday evening when we went down to have supper with some friends there. (Thank you!) We walked down and back, there was quite a breeze blowing in the early evening which calmed later, making for a pleasant walk, though still a hot one. Sunday dawned bright and clear, and I heard the soldiers singing the national anthem as they raised the flag at eight in the morning. If you are on Symi on a Sunday morning and up and about in Yialos, you will be able to see them perform this ceremony as they do it every week. You will no doubt hear them too.

I have a week ahead with nothing yet in the diary until Sunday. Marvellous. I have a new writing project to start on, and another one to finish, both will take me the next couple of months, so I shall be pretty busy. I am also planning some long morning walks, but as I am always planning them, I shouldn’t hold your breath.

Site may be hacked – it’s not!

If you have Norton security on your computer, you may get a message about

If you have Norton security on your computer, you may get a message about symidream.com saying something about the site being hacked. It’s not. I’ve checked twice with the server folk who, unlike me, know what they are doing and they have found nothing wrong. They say:

“Unfortunately there is very little you, or we can do to remedy something like this. Sadly we have no control over what Norton flags as bad or potentially bad, so we don’t have a way to ask them to “remove it” from their results if that makes sense. I do not see anything out of the ordinary with the site, nor does my browser warn me of anything malicious when visiting that link or the site itself. I personally would not worry about it, but of course, I understand where your concern is coming from.”

Thank you to everyone who has reported it to me. Apparently, there is nothing to fear. There is a link somewhere on the ancient Symi Dream site that needs to come off as it leads to a ‘page not found’ error, and that’s all the problem is. Finding that link and removing it is, however, something of a task. I’ll see if I can do it. Meanwhile, we’ve not been hacked, and there is nothing malicious here.

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Symi Saturday Photos

A varied collection today as we head off into the weekend. A weekend with nothing planned, apart from dinner in Pedi on Saturday, which we are looking forward to immensely. If you’re short of something to do, have a read: Honestly – a Miss P novella. It’ll help you pass a couple of hours. Wink, wink. Meanwhile, here are some random shots of Symi. Have a good weekend.

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Bits and pieces

I was just having a look at my Kindle sales report for the month to date, to see what was the best-selling title so far. That’s best-selling out of my own collection, you understand, none of my titles is in a real bestseller list, yet. I was very pleased to see that ‘The Saddling’ is top of my list. It is, strangely, followed by ‘Village View – a year on Symi’. I say strangely as the two books could not be further apart. Mind you, there has been a bit of a rush on ‘Symi 85600’ over in the print section, so perhaps people have enjoyed that and wanted more of Symi life in book form.

While all that was going on, I have managed to get ‘Honestly‘ up on Kindle now, and it’s only $0.99p to download. (I am not sure if I need to put the ‘p’ on the end of that price, but it is a Miss P novella, so it seems appropriate.) That went live yesterday, so I will be checking in to my account again soon to see if a) anyone has bought it, b) if anyone leaves a review (in time) and c) if it boosts sales of Remotely. The links to some of these novels/books can be found in the right column over there >> or you can head to my Amazon author page to see the full collection.

That’s book news, in other bits and pieces… We are experiencing cloud as I write this (Thursday morning) and the temperature has dropped a little. Apparently, this isn’t going to last very long, and we’re not expecting rain. I was going to take a walk today (yesterday) and take some more photos, but I spent most of the night awake with a thumping pain in my foot. This started on Wednesday after our stroll up the main road, and I assumed I had pulled a muscle or something. But today my foot had swollen up and the pain increased. I am now thinking it’s a mosquito bite in just the right place to cause the swelling and thus the pain. There’s nothing nasty going on down there, but it does mean I can’t walk very far or dance around, not that I do much of either. I’ve had a similar thing before so am not unduly worried, just annoyed that I am not as mobile as usual.

Anyway, that’s my update for today. I am off to Yialos later today (Friday, do keep up) to meet a friend from way back when. We’ve not seen each other since about 1980, so that should be interesting. A lunch is in order, a visit to the house perhaps and a good old catch-up will fill my day.

Click the image to download ‘Honetsly’ from Amazon

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Carry on up the road

We took another early walk on Wednesday. This time we headed down the Kali Strata to the misnamed ‘lazy steps’ and turned right at the bottom. The main part of the walk was then back up the road to the village. It took us 35 minutes from door to door. It’s a pleasant enough walk, though there’s not much shade if you plan to do it during the day. There are benches to sit on if you want to take in the view and you do get a great view of the harbour from there. Thank you for the comments about the ‘Symphony of sound’ post the other day. Wednesday’s walk wasn’t quite in the same league sound wise as we weren’t rural.

It was visually pleasant though with the sea appearing grey and calm because the sun had not come up over the hill. A boat was gliding out, others were moored and quiet and a few people were starting to gather for the ferry which slipped in almost unnoticed (by me) later in the morning. A few cars passed us on the road, soldiers heading off to work, other people coming down to the harbour for work or the boat, and there were a few cicadas around to give us a scratchy underscore. By the time we were back in the village square, at around 6.45, someone was having breakfast at Lefteris’ kafenion. Lefteris is usually there before I go out walking and some mornings that’s at five thirty; he’s an early riser too.

And on with my day… I managed, with help (thank you Allan) to get ‘Honestly’ ready for Kindle, and the cover design should be with me any time now. This means that tomorrow or Saturday I can send up the new Remotely cover and also publish Honestly. This is a 25,000-word novella. A quick, long-short story involving Miss P and her magic and, like Remotely, is comic with a bit of a serious message buried somewhere underneath. A bit of naughtiness (think Tom Sharpe) and a bit of fun. With the new Remotely cover coming out soon it means that the print copies with the old cover will be “collectors’ items” (says he) so you may want to have one on your shelves if you haven’t already.

Other work plans continue with the exciting interruption of a screenplay to write. Unless another Miss P novella pops into my head, the next book publication should be ‘Symi, Stuff & Nonsense’ around November time.

Over here on Symi, the festival has taken off with a live band in the harbour on Tuesday complete with fireworks. There are brochures around so if you are heading this way in July, August or September, you can pick one up and see what’s going on. A lot of church events, music from rock bands to classical, talks about books and other cultural evenings will be taking place across the island. Symi may be a small rock to some, but it’s a rock that rocks.

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‘The 13^th‘ Greek Premiere

The Greek premiere of the film made entirely on Symi, ‘The 13^th‘ took place on Monday evening at the Horio sports complex. The event was introduced by the mayor who also officially opened this year’s Symi Festival. I was also asked to say a few words before the film started and I think I said what I wanted to say. Which was…

Three things: One, to thank all the 200 + backers, volunteers, businesses and locals, plus the town hall, who made the film possible. Two, to explain that the film was being shown around the world in festivals and one of the aims behind it was to bring more attention to the island as a filming location. Three, to let everyone know that it was a bit scary in places and that parents should be aware. There were quite a few younger people there who sat very quietly throughout the whole thing; I hope they weren’t too scared.

We estimate that there were around 150 to 200 people in the audience, so it was a great turn out. It’s also a good venue for films (though they might need more chairs) as there is enough room for lots of people, there are facilities nearby and, in the summer, it’s good to be able to sit outside under the stars. There was very little interference from traffic noise if any, and the whole thing went off well. Bravo the Symi Gallery Cinema organisation for putting it all together.

As you can see, the photos are not great because it was dark and a large space, but these are the best of a bad bunch from my camera.

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