Symi Saturday photos
First: I had to share this with you as it made me laugh. You may know about these ‘inspirational’ quotes and images that people put up on Facebook; if you are a Facebook user you can’t avoid them. Well, I saw one yesterday that made me laugh. Actually, it was the reply that made me laugh, the quote was quite sensible:

“If you are depressed you are living in the past. If you are anxious you are living in the future. If you are at peace you are living in the present.”
Lao Tzu

Reply: What about if you are living in Battersea?

You could replace Battersea with anywhere I guess, but I thought it was funny.

Anyway, moving on… I have a few Symi Saturday photos for you today, showing some more that I took recently on the new camera. If I can, I will get out and about this weekend and get some more but I’m right into some editing of ‘The Saddling’ at the moment and it’s going so well I want to stick with it until it’s done. Mind you, we have been invited to a games party on Sunday so it will have to be put on hold for that. A games party isn’t as dodgy as it sounds, it’s mainly quizzes and mezethes, drinks and ‘I knew that!’ for a few hours with friends, and I am really looking forward to it. It’s one of those ‘What do you do on Symi in the winter?’ things: games parties, social evenings or afternoons, walks with the camera, writing…

So, here are the photos and here’s wishing you a good weekend wherever you are.

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Symi playing at ‘home’?
A quick follow-on from yesterday’s post with a bit of an update. If you want to help the Symi under 12 football team realise their dream of playing in a European tournament in the UK later this year, see the post for yesterday (bellow). What I didn’t include was the link to the organisation that arranges these team and friend building sports tours. So, you can find more info here: https://www.sports-tours.co.uk/ I just read that the guys may end up at Camber Sands, near where I grew up and near where my brother still lives at Dungeness – how spooky is that? If they get the funds together they will, in my case, be playing at ‘home’, as it were.

What’s also rather spooky, and completely off topic, are the noises Jack has been making these past few days. He’s been very unsettled, might be the weather. When not sleeping or concentrating hard on what’s in his food bowl, he has been wandering around the courtyard and house shouting at nothing in particular. Making the most amazing noises that sound like he is in distress but, apart from his bleeding ears and a bit of fur loss (being treated with athlete’s foot cream again) he’s quite fit and healthy. I often wonder if the house has nomadic ghosts that only he can see and he’s shouting at them.

In Symi news, such that I’ve noticed, there’s a film showing at the cinema club at Mandeio and that seems back to its normal Sunday afternoon/evening routine; Neil has been attending the aerobics classes; the boats have been coming and going despite some bad weather, and we have escaped the snow that has debilitated many places across the country recently. It’s actually quite warm today, Thursday, at around 10 or more degrees and it is, once again, colder inside the house than it is outside.

As you can see, it’s a bit of a no-news day today as I spent yesterday at home with my books and things. I’ve moved on from reading about great mountaineering disasters to a biography of Laurence Olivier while keeping one eye on what’s on Netflix and starting on ‘The Hollow Crown’ (thanks mother) which is a very good way of understanding Shakespeare, apart from anything else. I wish we’d had such things when at school ‘studying’ Henry IV part two, I would have understood what was going on much more easily than I did. Luckily, for my O Level, we had a film version of Great Expectations on the TV the night before the exam and I watched that. Well, it saved reading the book and I still got a B for English Lit.

Anyway, enough of this no-news, I’m off to check where the cat might have been bleeding and get some veg on for lunch. Oh, the excitement of the winter on Symi.

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Symi football, under 12
I’ve had a few requests over the past few years to talk more about football. These people clearly don’t know me. It’s not a subject I know much about or take much of an interest in. Not until I hear stories of how a lad from Rhodes has been selected to play with a very big London football trainee camp, and also had several other offers and callings from other top teams and we aren’t talking Maidstone United here, we’re talking Arsenal or something. These kinds of stories spark my interest as it’s good to hear of local boys and girls getting a chance in life. And that’s what today’s post is all about (with unrelated images from the roof).

Symi has a few football teams. (For exact details talk to someone in the know, not me.) One of them is the under 12s team who regularly play against other islands here and on Rhodes and, I assume, on those other islands. Well now, they have an opportunity to take part in an international junior football competition in London (London, UK, for our American readers) later this year. The trouble is, of course, getting them there.

A page has been set up on Facebook to advertise the fundraising that the team are now doing. There is a specific organisation set up for this, so it’s all bone fide, and the money will go towards the boys’ flights and travel. Parents and other interested parties will have to pay for themselves, if they can and these days, in Greece, a lot of folk don’t have enough for heating, let along foreign travel. So, the news today is: you can help get our team there by making a donation either into a bank or via PayPal. The money will be accounted for and used for travel and the boys will have a once in a lifetime opportunity to play their game abroad, in London as it happens. An invaluable experience in all respects, I am sure you will agree.

For more information you can find the team’s fundraising info on this page: https://www.facebook.com/SYMIAOSTOLONDON/

If you are not a Facebook user, here is what that site says – in part –

If you would like to donate to this cause a bank account has been set up especially for this purpose under the name of our secretary at Alpha bank;
Dawn Stirrup-Karagiannis
IBAN: GR2401407910791002101045329 BIC: CRBAGRAA

And: A paypal account has also been created purely for fundraising purposes for this cause and is linked to the above account, for those of you perhaps out of the country. We sincerely appreciate all help received, however big or small. https://www.paypal.me/symiAOStolondon

That’s my news today and that’s the appeal. I don’t have any of my own photos of the team so I’ve pulled this one of the Facebook page, so you can see who you might be helping with their opportunity of a lifetime. Thank you.

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Another Symi walk (easy)
We’re certainly getting our fill of rain today (Tuesday). It started overnight and has been heavily on an off all day so far. At least it’s warmed things up a bit. So it was lucky we chose to go for an after lunch walk on Monday instead of waiting. Here’s another Symi walk idea for you and it’s a simple one.

We walked through the village along the main road. You must understand that the main road in this case is only wide enough for very slim vehicles and mopeds, walkers, shoppers and the mule train. It leads you past the new grocery shop where you can look up and out for the crest on the top of the building, and towards Taverna Zoi.  You pass the Jean & Tonic Bar, now open at 3pm every day and complete with coverings outside and over the courtyard so it’s now an all-year, all-weather bar as well as often being an all-night one in the summer; past the English language schools and taverna and left down towards the bus stop.

There’s a new shelter here now (just the other side of the barrier in the above photo), where the rubbish skip used to be, the rubbish is now collected form the lower car park which is itself being cleared of building debris as the cottage hospital takes shape. Opposite this, where once was a one story shed and a gaping hole, a new building is being set up and, beside this, there was a fruit and veg van selling its traveling produce. Walk on towards the new sport centre.

You are walking along the main, main road now, wide enough in most places for two cars, the bus and all the agricultural vehicles we have here on Symi, though not at the same time and it does narrow near the old surgery building. On this road you get good views down to Pedi and across the water to Turkey and a large white building where, so I am told, the largest, or most expensive, pleasure yacht is currently being built. Keep on up the road, it can be a bit of a slog if you are not used to hills but you go slowly, pausing here and there to admire the valley below. Turn a few bends in the road and carry on up towards the sign for Ag Triada, the top church in the village. I noticed that the trees along here have recently been enthusiastically pollarded.

You can of course, carry on up the main road and onto oblivion, well, Xissos and Panormitis and the hinterland of the island, or you can head back towards the village via the Triada path. Not long after the shrine to an accident victim (I assume) you cut down to the right on a rough path, or carry on towards the church and take the main steps, and from then on you are heading down through the upper village towards the museum. If you find yourself lost in the lanes, just keep heading downhill, you will find something you recognise before too long and will eventually meet the sea, if you go too far.

That’s the short walk we took the other day and it was a good day to be walking, until the cloud started coming over. I’m not heading out there today, not in this rain, but maybe tomorrow I shall attempt a downwards assault on the harbour as I need to visit the bank and a shop or two.

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Symi in the winter
People often ask, or always ask, ‘What’s it like in the winter?’ And I assume they are talking about Symi as that’s where we are when they pose the question. Well, this winter looks like it’s going to be one of the coldest for a long while. Last summer I remember telling people that the winter hadn’t been so bad; cold for a couple of weeks, but otherwise fine, not too wet either. So far this year we have seen storms one day and very cold weather the next. We are luckier than some islands further north which are currently under snow and declared disaster areas. We must feel for the refugees still in camps on Samos, Lesvos and other islands living in tents, some of which have no heating. I’ve heard of three refuges dying from the cold on other islands and, although we don’t have any here at the moment, Solidarity Symi is still doing its bit to support those further afield.

I was outside the corner shop the other day, the little shop on the village square, and Stelios had placed a thermometer by the door; it read four degrees at midday. He and his wife are to be found there all day and late into the night, huddled behind the counter with the doors open to welcome customers. The supermarkets have air-conditioning heating on and that warms you up as you go inside, but the boys are still delivering groceries to those who can’t get out, you still see them carrying four packs of water or more up and down the steps. The shops are still open and battling the cold and the boats are coming and going when the storms don’t stop them.

So, in the winter, life carries on and you make do. A few years ago I photographed icicles on the rosemary bush at our old house. It’s not that bad at the moment, but facing north and being exposed, it’s still pretty chilly around this place. I am wearing three layers, a fleece, fingerless gloves and a hat as I write, with my shutters closed against the cold (I’ve not seen the view for days, apart from when I went up on the roof the other morning) and I have a heater on full beside me. After lunch and the afternoon writing shift, I will try and warm up the sitting room which is large and open plan. The heater will go on, the hat and gloves will stay on, and the cat will be welcome on my lap as added insulation. I’ll sit there watching my breath ascend into the roof (which is not insulated, neither are the walls in these old houses) and pull the thermal blanket up over me as I read.

Bedtimes are not so bad as there’s an electric blanket to act as a bed warmer and, by the time I go to bed, the house has warmed up to around ten degrees (the thermals stay on for very cold nights and the socks I now have are Everest quality). The mornings are something of a trial, especially when taking a shower. Apart from the bathroom being cold, the shower curtain is attracted by the warm air and so gets sucked in, to cling cold to your body at unexpected moments. It’s like a shroud from the grave wrapping itself around you as you stand there not wanting to move from under the hot water. But you do because you must, and so another day starts. Yesterday, Neil was very brave and went out at eight in the morning to go to the gym for the aerobics class, and then walked back up the road. I was intending to also take a walk early in the morning but, at 6.30, it was dark, cold and not very inviting; so I shall wait for warmer and more settled weather before starting on that idea.

We, and many others, are doing what we can to look after the poor stray cats who rely on the bins for food and the ruins for shelter. We can’t take them into the house, but we can visit them every day or so and give them what we can when it’s not raining. Meanwhile, I am thinking about finding a large rug for the sitting room, to try and help warm things up, the smaller one, nice though it is, only covers a small area, and I should also find something to plug the two inch gap under the front door. Old towels usually work.

I’d love to turn the central heating up a notch but we don’t have any, or close the double glazing but there isn’t any, so instead I’ll go and  make lunch now and perhaps leave the cooker on a while to warm the kitchen and, while doing that, I – like everyone else in Greece these days – will have to save hard and extra to cover the increased cost/tax on electricity and try not to worry about the bill until it comes in.

That’s kind of what it’s like on Symi in the winter.

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