Power cuts
Another thing that you might want to know about, especially if you were considering staying on Symi for any length of time; power cuts. I mention this because I am currently writing this in one, with my laptop on battery for a couple of hours; I will post it up later on when, hopefully, the power comes back on.

What causes them? Well, electricity not flowing through cables I guess. Why that happens though, I have no idea. I do know that it is not a problem at our house as the first thing you do when you are plunged into darkness is check the fuses. Actually, I was plunged into daylight this morning as the power went off at around 7.45 and it was light. That doesn’t help when you are researching online and have your writing stored up in the cloud. So, check the fuses and make sure they are all where they should be; up. If they are down, then there is a problem somewhere on one of your circuits. All up means the problem lays outside somewhere and outside your control. So what do you do?

Well, usually you ask your neighbours or send a text to a friend to see if they have power. That way you start to isolate the area affected. Sometimes it’s the whole island, other times, as was the case last week, it’s only a small area in your neighbourhood. Occasionally (and I’ve not heard this for a couple of years now) you get a warning, an announcement or, more likely, word of mouth around the village. Someone actually knows in advance when there is going to be a power cut so you can prepare. Today there was no warning, so I was not prepared.

And now you are going to ask how do you prepare? Well, for a start you fill up water bottles with tap water so you can wash up, boil the kettle and flush the loo, though not all at the same time. You might also want to get a gas burner in if you don’t have one, so you can boil water. If you have an open fire you might want that ready – it’s not windy this morning but it is cold and there is no heating. And you may also want to get candles and torches ready for when it starts to get dark. We have candles in certain places and a torch always in the same place just in case.

And so what do you do when there’s no power and you can’t use your computer (for long) or have no internet connection? Imagine the horror of it for some: they wouldn’t be able to sit staring at their phones all day checking Facebook every 30 seconds in case something has changed, wasting hours of their lives seeing who had what for breakfast and how a dog gets on so well with a cat, and how the whole world hates Donald Trump and yet keeps voting for him, and how the UK Prime Minister is a hypocrite, and yet someone still voted for him too and how… And no online games, no instant television, no films, no nothing. What do you do? (Hysteria mounting.) Well, I usually start with the housework and get jobs slated for later in the day, out of the way so that when it comes back on I can get back to my work without then having to do the chores later. Then there’s the courtyard to tidy up, litter tray to empty, bedroom to tidy, bed to make, floors to sweep, books to read, books to write (remember longhand?), coursework to do (ditto), there’s always something to dust and clean and if that all gets done and it’s still not back on, there’s always a long walk. Maybe to the electricity company to see what’s going on.

And now I am going to check out some photos and load them up to go with this ramble and then go and set about the housework, once I’ve shouted across the lane to Andreas to ask if he has power at his house, just to be sure.

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On a lighter note
After yesterday’s not so positive frustrations you will be pleased, and no doubt relived, to hear that the internet has been fine so far today (Wednesday). It’s like that around here, off and on, and that’s one of the main frustrations; not knowing what you are dealing with.

Living on a Greek island, there are always going to be frustrations but the fun and light side of life usually outweighs them. You have to put a brave face on things and a happy one too. I remember, years ago, going to get my residency permit organised at the police station. That took a bit of doing I can tell you. It’s not so much the fact that there were not that many police on the island at the time, or the fact that the ‘cast’ change every now and then so you don’t always get to be known and recognised (thus having to answer the same questions and prove the same things each time you visit), it was more to do with the fact that everyone there seemed surprised that I wanted to register. You don’t need to, I do, ask the council, they say to come to you, well go and ask them again, they say the same thing, then get them to do you a form saying you are able to register, why? I have a passport, yes, but it will give us time to investigate what we need to do, okay, thanks for doing that, now come back in two days when the right person is here, hi, I came two days ago… Who are you and what do you want? I want to register, well go and see the council, we’ve done all that, oh, well try this form then (produces ancient piece of Gestetner, hand-rolled, copy paper smelling of flu jabs and irons it out, squints at it and passes it over), okay, done that now what? Come back in two days. Hi, I’m back. Who are you? And so on, until, finally, after six weeks, the papers were stamped and a card issued. Take it to the council; Hi Town Hall, here’s my card… It’s the wrong colour… Ad infinitum. But you keep smiling.

Of course, Greece is known for the mystery of its bureaucracy which has been the subject of many a tale and article, investigation and archaeological dig and, even with the new streamlining of the system (i.e. sacking lots of people), it’s still not much better. Mind you, the doctor and medical set up is now computerised so you don’t need a book, with photos, stamped by various doctors on a different island and produced each visit with new stickers in it from the insurance office (or maybe you do, who knows?); you just need your AMKA number and there you are; your records should be on the system. Mind you, around here it works better than in larger towns in that the doctor usually knows who you are and recognises you. And being a friend of his/hers on Facebook helps a lot.

So, no struggling with bureaucracy today, only in that I had to look up how to spell the word. It’s one of those that gives me instance word-blindness, like about 70% of other words in the English language. Instead, we’re battling with a cold wind, coming from the north-east judging by the movement of the waves on the sea. And that’s going to be fun as, after posting this and getting ready, I have to head down to Yialos to go to the bank and get the rent money out. I went yesterday but the machine was temporarily out of service; there were clunking sounds from off stage and some shouted words of advice which I translated as either someone filling it or robbing it. Either way, I went away empty handed, so, I’ll head off into the cold wind and clear skies now and see if I hit the jackpot this time.

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Symi internet is sometimes (rubbish)
Don’t you just hate it when things you pay good money for don’t do what you were told they would do? It’s the old and thorny subject of the internet connection on Symi again. It may be to do with hubs and areas and all that kind of thing, but ours yesterday got me to the point of wanting to phone up Cosmote and give them an ear bashing of very ungentlemanly proportions – as has been done (politely I should add) in the past. Trying to get anything done online around here sometimes is like trying to run backwards up cliff.

I can imagine the company putting out a message to its Symi customers, something like:

“Your internet connection, that you pay so many Euros for each month and which we promise to give you at, in your case, 4 Mbps, 24 hours a day, will be working for some of the time but, just for fun, we have arranged to have it cut out and go off at the time most inconvenient to you. We won’t warn you about that or be specific, apart from to say, ‘it’ll happen whenever it feels like it.’ We prefer to take you by surprise. Perhaps when you are half way through a Skype call to your agent, or when you are at the last few moments of an episode of ‘House of Cards’ on Netflix, we will simply get the signal to drop out and leave you wondering.” They would then go on:

“As an added bonus, because you are such a loyal customer, having had an account with us for over 12 years now and having never failed to pay a bill on time, we will reward you with some non-drop-out time. At these times you will be able to connect to the internet and find the whizzy super-fast speed that we promised you (a huge 4 Mbps) is actually running at 0.3 Mbps which, as you will know because you are also an astute customer, is slower than the good old days of dial-up. We are offering this service as you are a valued customer.”

And then go on:

“However, if you feel that you are not getting the service we have agreed with you in our contract (4 Mbps for around €30.00 per month) then please feel free to call our helpline. An assistant there will check our end of the system and tell you that everything is fine and has been fixed and there is nothing wrong with the line – you are calling us on your phone after all. If this still does not satisfy (and it is doubtful that it will), then we advise you call the technical people and repeatedly tell them that there is a fault somewhere and you are not getting the service you pay for. They won’t believe you of course and will pass you back to the original call centre where a helpful lady will tell you that there is no fault at our end. In this case we suggest you unplug everything and start again from scratch (again). If that still does not work, then we suggest you try and find another provider. Oh, we forgot, you can’t, not easily, as we have the monopoly on your island. Well, it’s only a small out of the way place anyway, so we are not really worried. Have a nice day.”

Thank you, got that out of my system while waiting for the internet connection to come back on after its 4^th time of doing down in one morning, without warning. Assuming that it comes back on between now and the next time I do a blog post, you should get to read this. Oh, you just did, didn’t you? Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention, I had a tin can stuck to my ear and was listening to a recorded call centre operative at CosmOte via a piece of string. [Looks at view and Neil’s photos and calms down.]

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Grey skies and rams
Woke up on Monday morning to clouds and the aftermath of a thunderstorm, which I slept through thanks to my earplugs. I usually put them in for the cat, I mean so I don’t have to listen to his singing at night and alarm calls in the morning. He has a habit of using his litter tray and then shouting at it for five minutes, as if it had done him wrong. That’s all very well, but he likes to use it at Ungodly O’clock in the morning and I don’t need to listen to that.

So, I missed the rain pouring down on the roof, the overflow flowing over into the lane outside the bedroom window, and the thunder that was rattling around. I even missed the alarm clock. That is left out in the hallway so someone has to get out of bed to switch it off; you can only ignore it for so long. There had been no rain coming into the house which is a good thing, of course, and the plants had themselves a good watering. The sky in the morning still carried heavy clouds and a certain amount of rain, so I went up onto the roof to take a look at the view and found this chap watching me from up the lane.

It’s great at this time of year as you find yourself sitting there watching TV and then wonder what that sound is… A herd of sheep bleats it way past your window, even though we are not particularly rural where we are now. We all know, too, that the silence of the lambs will soon be upon us, around Big Friday in forty or so days’ time.

A quick mention of earthquakes as it came up the other day. Neil felt a tremor from the sitting room but I was in the kitchen and felt nothing. A couple of people have asked for a good site to check earthquakes up on and the one I use is here: http://www.geophysics.geol.uoa.gr/stations/maps/recent.html This site lists all recorded earth tremors and, if you look, you should see the one we had on Saturday at 15:44 (GMT). It was 4.1 and between Rhodes and Symi. But it’s nothing to be worried about, just our grumbling off-shore volcano I expect. Apparently there is something like that half way between Turkey and Rhodes and if it should ever surface, we are all expecting a great rush to see who claims it for their country. A few years ago now we had a November full of tremors, five or six noticeable ones in a day, at times. We probably have hundreds each day as old Mother Earth tries to get comfortable, but you don’t notice them unless they are very close to the surface, nearby, or big. Anyway, that site is run by the University of Athens Faculty of Geology, so it’s the one I trust most for local quake news. But, as I say, don’t worry about them; we’ve not had a biggie down here for many years. (2008 was the most recent fatal one, where one person died after they ran from their house and tripped over – this was not on Symi but further north in the Dodecanese chain. So, don’t panic!)

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Start of Lent in Greece
It’s the start of Lent today in Greece, and the day is usually marked with picnics and kite flying and clearing out the foods you’re not supposed to eat for the next 40 days. That’s why it’s called Clean Monday, I guess. I was chatting to an Orthodox lady on Saturday who told me that the first week of the fast was hard as it’s literally only vegetables and seafood (with no blood), not even oil. I like salads but having one without pickle or mayonnaise would be, for me, a step beyond the call of duty. The same regime applies to the end of the fast but the weeks in between, apparently are a little easier.

I am actually writing this on Sunday, as I do, so I have no idea what the state of weather-play is going to be tomorrow (today), though rain is forecast, which won’t be fun for the barbeques. But then, so it was today and, so far, there has been no sign of rain. The sky is a bit grey, the sea is a bit windswept by not white, so hopefully by the time you read this, any bad weather would have passed and everyone who is celebrating with a seafood barbie will be having a good time.

Also, at the weekend, the ‘cinema’ was showing an old favourite (see below). I wonder if anyone dressed up and got into the part? ‘Pan it, Janet!’ and all that. Sunday was also carnival day, the last blast before Lent starts. Children and some grown-up children have already been out and about in costume, scaring people with elaborate rubber face masks; old crones, warty women, politicians, you know the sort of thing.

Another piece of news for you is that later this year Neil will be bring out next year’s Symi calendar, as he does, but will also be bringing out a cat calendar, with images of local cats. This is a popular subject for calendars, there are hundreds of them every year, but hopefully this one will have some Symi appeal too. Here’s an example: a young cat camping out among the chains by the harbour anchors.

And as for me this week, well, I won’t be fasting or even giving up anything for Lent as that’s not what I do, but I will be working on the Donkeys book, my scriptwriting course and hopefully my typing as I try and advance from the first row of letters to the next. Apart from that, it looks like it is going to be a quiet week ahead. Famous last words?

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