What’s to do on a Symi holiday?
Just sitting here wondering what to write about and I thought, I know. I’ll make a list of things you can do when on Symi. I’m thinking of people who might be interested in a holiday here but who aren’t sure what to expect. This is not an exhaustive list of course and actually I am only going to walk around the harbour – there is no much more and maybe I will come to that one day soon. Let’s go.

Let’s image that for some strange reason, you have landed at Nos Beach (the boats don’t come in there, but you can hire jet skis and there are other fun watersports activities on offer). Stop for a coffee or sunbathing there on the ‘town beach’ before heading off around the road towards Yialos. This will take you past several restaurants where you can sit out beside the water and watch the boats coming and going. You’ve also walked through the boatyard so you can see traditional boat building at work; and you might have popped up to one of the many churches to admire the buildings and the views. Leave your bags at one of the hotels, some of the apartments or studios, and then admire the 19^th century clock tower while watching the big ferry unload its vans, cars, people, luggage, provisions, livestock and visitors.

Moving on, you’re got a variety of bars and shops to stop at, two banks (on this side) and one of Symi’s famous wood oven bakeries to snack at or by fresh bread from. Have a wander around the town square to see the nautical museum, the town hall, the festival stage, clothes shops, household shops, hairdressers and the garden centre before winding your way into the backstreets. Here you have the ‘Symi Cathedral’, St John’s church, and the doctors, dentists, chandlers, travel agents, tavernas, bars, an ouzeria (what’s the singular? Doesn’t matter, there is more than one), fashion shops, souvenir shops, stationers, computer shops, butchers, off license and delicatessen. There you are back on the harbour-front again for a traditional kafeneion and a view of the taxi boats that can take you to any of the beaches later in the day; if you are not going on a bat trip for the day with lunch included.

More wandering leads you to another bank, a couple of pharmacies, more bars and eateries, the taxis and the bus, a lovely walk up the gentle slope of the main road to the village and to the steps of the Kali Strata, the carpenters and boutique hotels. There are plenty of benches to rest on while you admire the views, you can watch the fishermen bring in their catches, occasionally you can see the divers at work freeing anchor chains and you’re also able to find out Symi information from many shops and visitor businesses, holiday companies and so on, before you check out the status of your boat with the harbour authorities.

You might want to leave your children at the new play park, or sit them safely with a homemade ice-cream somewhere while you do your Lotto tickets and then pick them up to take them for a walk up one of the old donkey paths out of the harbour. Or walk up and over to Nimborio for swimming or just to see the ostriches (are they still here or have they been eaten yet?) and to admire the more rural side of things. And then it’s time for lunch, but where? There is almost too much choice.

And so it goes on and we’ve not yet been to Horio, Pedi, Panormitis or into the hinterland where there are load of walks and views. So, if you are thinking of a Symi holiday, rest assured that there will be plenty to do.

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Sunday Symi blog
The weekend plans fell into place as expected, though it is only Sunday morning as I write this and I’ve not been for a decent walk yet. We went to Yialos on Saturday morning after some heavy rain and did the jobs that needed doing: buying new oven trays, looking for other things for the house we need but couldn’t find – a trip to Rhodes may be in the offing. I mainly went down to pick up a parcel that had arrived but it turned out not to be the thing I was waiting for, it wasn’t even for me. After a couple of Saturday beers at Pacho’s (a once a week treat) we were lucky enough to find a couple of taxis still working after 3pm, and so Thanasis took us up the hill. We also had other shopping with us, so that was the easiest way of getting home.

While we were there, Neil met with Yianni-Poseidon to firm up details about our boat party on September 8^th. I know it’s a long way off but we like to get things sorted out well in advance. We currently have over 80 people booked on with us, which is actually too many for the boat, so we’re looking at that. Some guests might have to swim around to Again Marina.

Only joking. I was also able to spend some time on my final draft of the next book, arranging a flight for my nephew for September and, once I’ve prepared this post, I’ll be considering some housework, that’s for after the shopping is done. It’s very handy having a supermarket or two open on a Sunday though always best to get to them before the end of the Sunday church services when they can get rather busy as people shop on the way home.

Because we both work at home Monday to Friday mornings, the weekend takes on that old sense of having got everything done and now it’s time to relax. It does rather make Sunday evenings feel like the end of a good two days off and Sundays still remind me of ‘the old days’ when there was a drive to work to not look forward to the follow day. It used to be, in the very old days, Pinky & Perky, bath time, supper in front of the fire and then bed with that heavy feeling of going back to school hanging over you. That’s not so bad now – and there’s no bath in this house – as the commute to work only involves crossing the porch, but you still get the same old Sunday night/Monday morning feeling. Mind you, I much more look forward to Mondays now than I did 15 years ago, when I had a job working for other people. When you’re working here through the summer (as I did back in the early days of moving to Symi) there was no such thing as a weekend and each day was exactly the same as the next. Winters were one long weekend then, but weekends with no money.

Talking of summer. There is already some work going on in the harbour as some businesses are either changing or already preparing for the next season by getting some building work done while it’s quiet and, on most days, dry. There are still three months to go before Easter but that time will fly, and the season won’t really kick off until after then. There is sometimes a quiet gap after the festivals of Easter and before the charter flights start bringing regular tourists, but the good news for travellers is that the boat timetables are now up and available for the summer. The Blue Star http://www.bluestarferries.com/el/ can be checked and booked online and the Dodecanese Seaways timetable is available for the next several months (up until October 31^st) and you can book the catamarans online there to. The Panagia, the larger ferry, can’t be booked online (unless you book separate tickets to Panormitis, its first stop, and then onwards, or so I am told), and for all travel news of flights and boats, you should check out Andy’s blog at Symi Visitor. As I always say: if you are coming independently, always check your boats before you buy your flights. There are currently no extra evening boats scheduled from Rhodes (only Wednesday pm and Friday evening on the Blue Star) so there’s no point arriving at eight in the evening and thinking you will get a boat straight to Symi.

But still, there’s something to look forward to and start planning: your next Symi holiday.

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Symi Saturday photos
It’s the weekend and there’s lots to do. How much will get done is another matter but, for my part, I am planning to: Go down to Yialos and collect a new chair for the desk that is waiting for me, check out some kitchen light fittings, maybe have a look around for some drawers for the bedroom, buy some cat food and other essential supplies and do some shopping. Then there’s the book to work on, the house to tidy and clean, laundry to do, if the sun comes out and perhaps even an escape from the desk for an hour for a walk. Now then, how many of those things are actually going to get done, I wonder?

Meanwhile, I’ve got some shots today: one of the helicopter on the landing pad, and a couple of the Friday boats coming in and out through the misty rain that was out and about in the morning. It was one of those days where I could see Nimos one moment and then not the next, there was low cloud hanging over it and then it was clear. I was able to add a bit more free water to the sterna and the plants got some, and the electricity man came to read the meter. That’s something that’s kind of a mixed blessing. At least you know it’s going to be the correct amount on the next bill as opposed to an estimate but, at the same time, it is going to be the correct amount. It’s going to be a winter one so savings are already in place to cover the great shock when it comes in.

Anyway, I have things to be getting on with, the cat wants feeing again and so do we and it’s my turn to make lunch, so I’m off to do that, leaving you with a few more Saturday Symi photos to look at. Have a good weekend wherever you are.

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Some Symi photos…
May I just share some Symi photos with you today? To be honest, I had a good idea for a blog post early in the morning and then forgot what it was. So, rather than knock out any old thing, I thought I’d put up some images from the past few months that I’ve not used yet and then get on with the rest of a sunny, cold day.

Thank you. More Symi photos tomorrow.

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Just when you think…
That you’ve finished your novel, you find that you haven’t. Today is not about Symi, it’s about the writing process. As this is a blog by a writer who lives on Symi, I usually try and talk about both things. The photos are Symi, of course as, at the moment, I don’t have anything else to photograph. So, the writing of a novel.

Regular readers would have followed me through the process of writing my next novel, ‘The Saddling’, and will know that I’m up to draft six and have started discussions with a designer for the cover and the editor for the layout. I also have a nice quote for the back cover from another author friend of mine and, with 100,000 words of character, story, backstory, setting and action, I am surely ready (after three years) to have the team start on the layout. No, not quite. My editor, who has medals in thoroughness I am sure, suggests I improve on this one even more than I did on the last one. Which is a nice way of saying: ‘Right, I’ve got you to stop starting sentences with And… except for when you intend emphasis. Now it’s time to look at your use of the passive voice.” “Okay, I reply, always happy to improve. But how?” He put me on the trail of a thing called https://readability-score.com/ which is a site and facility that I should have been using for years. Sign up, enter your text and see what it comes up with. I will do just that at the end of this blog and see how I get on.

I shan’t go into the process and the scores, as I don’t understand half of it, but you can find out how readable your text is, how many adverbs you have used, how many passive voice moments there are and so on. I entered the first chapter of ‘The Saddling’ and immediately saw how I could improve things. Mind you, I was confused when it underlined the word The at the start of an otherwise fine sentence and told me I was using too many adverbs. Since when has The been an adverb? I wondered. Maybe it was just giving me the occasional timely reminder as there were quite a few adverbs used in that chapter. Actually, the adverb note comes with one suggesting you use a ‘better verb’ so they are not all words ending in ly, which I do try and avoid as they are ‘show’ words rather than ‘tell’ words. But still…

The task now is to work on my final draft (until I check the finally layout copy) using this programme as a guide, but not always sticking to its suggestions, chapter by chapter while also looking out for any other changes I want to make. Sadly, it doesn’t always pick up on the typos I am famous for (and don’t get me started on my punctuation), but it is having great fun with the dialect used in this story. So, back to the grind of checking and rewriting some text so that ‘His words were snatched by the wind’ (passive voice) becomes ‘The wind snatched his words’ (active voice) without detracting from the style I want while also making sure that sentences vary in length and are not all short. This process should take me another couple of weeks and then… well, then I will probably think of other things I want to change.

So, just when you think it’s finished…
Oh, the readability score for this post?

Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level   7.5
Gunning-Fog Score                 10.1
Coleman-Liau Index              8.1
SMOG Index                          9.5
Automated Readability Index 7.2
Average Grade Level          8.5

 Now I just need to translate what that actually means!

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