I caught these photos of the patrol boat out in the bay during the rain the other day. They sailed right into the end of the rainbow, making me wonder if this vessel could now be called a Rainbow Warrior. Talking of which, Yiannis is back and fine and around and about though the Rainbow bar is not yet open again. There’s no point. The island feels deserted.

The usual day to day battles of a writer’s life on a Greek island continue. Today we are slowly ploughing through Word ‘72, or whatever the latest update was to my computer’s operating system. I may have mentioned it before but thanks to the great global overlord in the sky which is Microsoft, I have a problem with my autocorrect. Every time I get an update from the all-seeing omnipotence it buggers up my collection of my stored autocorrect options. I’ve been on the forum with them getting all kinds of un-useful advice about ACL Extensions or something, but the problem is pretty clear to me: Whenever Office updates (as it did without my permission) then I can say goodbye to the hundreds of inputs I have made over several hours, over several months, since the last update. I have now turned the auto updates off until I can be sure I will no longer lose my thousands of autocorrect words when an update comes along. I can’t be the only one to suffer this problem every time there’s an Office update, surely.

And if that meant anything to you, then thank you for listening. Thanks also for the tips and advice previously sent in. I am now going to leave things as they are and wait for the next update, which I will control, and see what happens. At least then I can see if my theory is correct and I will be prepared for any slaughtering of my carefully constructed autocorrect list. Meanwhile…

Great news on the undergarment front! New thermals arrived on Tuesday, along with new slippers and a box set of ‘American Horror Story,’ so that’s me settled into the sofa for the next few days. No, actually, an episode or two a day is enough, we’ve also got a series of ‘24’ on the run and various other things lined up for the evening TV viewing. I am waiting for a Roku caster (or some such magical appliance) so I can ‘throw’ my tablet at the telly and see what the internet can cast. (We use some very odd language these days.) Mind you, I am not convinced that the connection and signal strength are going to be sufficient to cast a Film On live TV show from one country to this and from one part of the house to the next, and then from the sofa to the television. Time will tell.

By the way, Adrianna is back from her trip and back to her twice-weekly blog which you can find here.

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Donkey work

Today: Some more photos from Yialos, Saturday.

On Monday we nipped down to pick up some post which must have arrived on the Friday boat as I don’t think we have had any since. Sunday threw down a storm or two, with thunder and lightning effects and some heavy rain. This has topped up our sterna but also disturbed the water pump – at least, something has.

It’s doing that thing where it turns itself off after use every now and then and even, on one occasion, turns itself on again, taking the toilet cistern by surprise. Often though it’s a case of having to cross to the other house to reboot the on/off switch. Then it’s fine… until the next time. This is the third pump in 11 months, so either there was a bad batch or something is troubling them down there in the sterna. At the moment it’s running (though off and on) so there is no need to trouble our electrician/plumber just yet. Mind you, when it switches off half way through a shower and you’ve covered in soap and the switch is in the next house and it’s seven in the morning and freezing cold, well, that’s another mater.

The other news from the weekend is that I was able to do some more Donkey work. It’s a bit of a donkey work challenge actually. I have the script and characters, but I have to flesh it out in such a way as to make it readable. What I have discovered along the way so far is that I’ve not had to think about the characters’ appearance. What I mean is:

When you write a screenplay you don’t describe the look of a character unless it’s plot necessary – i.e. certain scars, race, anything unusual that is a clue to or part of the plot. You wouldn’t, for example, describe a character as : “Mike enters. He is 27 years old and has blonde hair and green eyes, a striking man with high cheekbones and a permanently furrowed brow. His beard is ginger and his moustache shows as prematurely grey. Although right handed, Mike likes to use his left hand and train it up to one day be ambidextrous. He comes from Wiltshire and was a pheasant plucker’s mate for the first 21 years of his life. He retrained at night classes to become the world’s top computer hacker at 24, and now lives with his collection of stoats on a small island off Torbay.”

For a start, who is this creature? And for a second, where are you going to find someone to play it looking like that? Without a lot of expensive makeup and effects he’d be pretty hard to find. And for a third, you’ve taken up valuable ‘black stuff’ lines and wasted valuable action/movie time. Anyway, there’s no point writing for Bruce Willis (I wasn’t, actually) when you’re only likely to be able to hire Will Bruce. The camera does the work and you say: “Mike (20s, unusual in appearance but with presence) enters.” Or something like that, leaving it open for the casting director to work with the team and find someone the writer hadn’t thought of who can carry the part and improve it.

And what that means is that I came to a part in Donkeys where I realised no one had been told what the characters actually looked like. So, while using a bit of sensible word placing and by dripping description in throughout the text over time, I now have to think about looks, and make sure I keep any descriptions consistent. It was odd to realise, after having this piece around me for so many years (four now, or three?), that I had no idea exactly what the characters looked like. So, while out and about on Symi recently I’ve been keeping my eyes open and making mental notes. One day, when regular Symi visitors read Shocking The Donkeys, they may actually recognise some local heroes in the story.

[If you are a Facebook user you can check out my new author page at: https://www.facebook.com/jamescollinsauthor/ Please feel free to Like and share and invite other to like too.

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Symi weekend
It was, as expected, a wet and slightly wild weekend as a bad weather front swept across the country. The edge of it caught Symi, and it wasn’t so bad, but it did mean a long Sunday walk in the mountains would have been pretty unpleasant, so we decided against that and just had the ‘after walk Sunday dinner’ instead.

But on Saturday we were out and about, down in Yialos doing a few minutes at the refugee station at The Old Post Office. There have been around 20 refugees on Symi this weekend, I expect they are still here waiting for the Wednesday boat to Athens. A bit of a shame actually as, I believe, they arrived on Friday but missed the Friday boat, so they have to stay until Wednesday. But Solidarity Symi and the authorities have looked after them, they have accommodation during this cold, wet weather, and they should be on their way on Wednesday Unless they decide to head to Rhodes for another connection. We just called into the centre to make up some more wash bags so that it’s easier to administer them for whoever takes the guests into the centre to hand over clothes and supplies.

After that we did a bit of shopping and wandering around, didn’t stop for a coffee or anything as we wanted to get back in case the heavens opened, which they didn’t as it turned out, but better safe than soggy. And so I spent the rest of the weekend entertaining myself with things online (shopping) and things in books (plotting a story, reading about the ‘Jack the Ripper diaries’), housework (tidying the sitting room for five minutes), writing (another chapter of ‘Shocking the Donkeys), and thinking about playing the piano. That’s on top of the usual chores of cooking, washing up, shopping, sifting the cat’s litter tray, feeding the strays up the road, sweeping the floors and trying to get the washing done.

Talking of Himself, the great He who must be obeyed, He went out for the night on Friday, dirty stop-out. We were heading out, around seven in the evening and Neil nipped down to Sotiris’ for some wine to take with us, leaving the front gate open. I was pottering around doing something highly important and noticed that Jack was looking at the open gate. As I came back past the same place a few seconds later, I noticed he’d gone. Either out, or up on the roof which is one of his favourite hanging out places. But no, for the first time in months, he took the opportunity to do a little exploring and, when we came home later, he was still not around so he stayed out all night.; We opened the gate again in the morning and he came back after about half an hour. No idea where he was or what he got up to, but at least there was no alarm call for us at 6.30 that morning.

And I must tell you that, apparently, Sunvil do come to Symi for holidays (see post last week). Lynne and Ian (who live on Tilos and who look after the cats there, and who kindly gave me a Tilos Cat Calendar when I was there last year) inform me that Sunvil operate on Tilos and Symi (Nireus and Iapetos Village). Lynne, the rep, tells me, “The 2016 brochure, which you can access online at http://www.sunvil.co.uk,/ features Symi on pages 206, 207. I often have clients on Tilos who do a twin centre with Symi.” So that’s good news and thanks for pointing it out.

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Symi connectivity
Here we are heading off into the weekend again and this time it promises… What? Cooler weather, perhaps a storm, maybe a long walk – weather permitting – and possibly a visit from the Cosmote technician.

We have, of late and as I may have grumbled about previously, been experiencing internet connection problems, ‘connectivity issues’ American might call them. It’s on, it’s off, it’s meant to be 4 Mbs we get 0.03 at times, and you don’t know from one day to the next if it’s going to bother turning up for work at all. All this is very frustrating when you are trying to research online. The problem has been growing steadily worse over the last week. So, what have we done about it?

First of all I tried rebooting the box, the router thing. Then, as that didn’t make any difference, I tried plugging the internet directly into the wall socket, and did away with the net/phone splitter; then, as that didn’t seem to help, I changed all the cables and bought a new phone as we needed one anyway. I checked with our local phone shop who told me there was a similar problem all over the island, an issue with the ADSL line or something. But I plugged in the new equipment anyway… and no change.

Yesterday morning the internet connection was simply taking the ISP. It started up and then stopped. It connected again and then slowed down to slower than a one legged pot-addicted sloth, before acting like a dysfunctional college student and dropping out completely. At this point my PC even failed to find the router, which is but five feet away. And then it asked me to re-enter my username and password as if to say, ‘I’ve found something here but you gotta convince me you really want to connect with this guy, he has connectivity issues. (My PC is clearly American.) But, connect we did and all was fine for two minutes and off we went again. So, unlike me, but driven by frustration, I called the Costmote helpline. And I was very nice.

And so was she and I told her all about my issue. She asked me to pause while she checked our line. I said that I had been told it was a common problem on the island, but she refuted that and told me it wasn’t, it was just us. I wasn’t sure if that made me feel special or naughty, but she went away for a moment and did her checks. Ah yes, she agreed, I can see you have had disconnections and slow speeds, you should be at four megabytes… She went on to tell me what I knew I was paying for; I explained again that I was clearly not getting it. She told me an engineer would call my mobile number to arrange to come and check things at the house if needed and thank you have a nice day. (It’s good that she didn’t ask me if there was ‘anything else I can do for you today please sir thank you how about a product you don’t want but which I am obliged to try and sell you anyway thank you for calling the call centre today, my name was…’ Dial tone.

A few minutes later I received a text message from Cosmote (who is not my mobile provider, in case you were wondering) to tell me that they were thankful for my call and the issue reported had now been dealt with. I gleefully tried my connection speed again and found it to be down to 0.36 and 0.22 (instead of 4 and 1), so perhaps the message meant that my call had been received and looked into. At this point in time – Friday midday, I am still waiting for the engineer to call and check. As we only have one on Symi, that I know of, I shall know who to look out for but if, in the meantime, all goes dark on these pages and the blog is not updated, you shall perhaps know why. Have a good weekend.

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Symi Holidays – Alternative Holiday Searches
A look at some holiday search ideas with a few choice typos left in for you. Yesterday morning I was a bit ruched (rushed), but today I have a little more time to think about summer holidays, which is something of a developing theme this week, it seems. I did a simple internet search for ‘Symi Holiday’ to see what might come up and see if I could give folk some ideas for a break in Greece, namely on Symi.

Obviously, advertised sites come up first, including the big names like Booking.com, and the result you might get from doing the same search will be different; apparently it depends on where you are, what server your engine is on and all things wonderfully technical like that. But, for me, the top results were: Monarch, Olympic (which we looked at the other day), and then some search and compare sites (as opposed to being company sites). I then wandered in more familiar territory with Travel A La Carte and Kalodoukas, Symi Visitor and, oh, and then Symi Dream, which isn’t actually a travel site. I don’t want to start talking too much about local companies as I may give too much info on one and not enough on another and cause ructions, so for that kind of info and links, head to www.symibest.gr and the Accommodation area. But, to give you an idea of prices (from the UK), here’s what I found on other sites.

I had a look at Monarch.co.uk first as I’d not checked them out before. Their page was a bit slow to change its calendar, but it got there in the end and I looked for seven days in the first two weeks of July. The thinking here is that that time is coming into high season, so the more popular months for British visitors (May, June, September, October) should be cheaper, in theory. I was also looking at Gatwick flights and one person traveling. Monarch could get me into the Nireus in Yialos for £436 for the week, and Pedi Beach Hotel for £459, both bed and breakfast. You can up-grade to half board at the Pedi Beach. That was all Monarch had.

I had ‘Sunvil’ on my list of Symi holidays but when I checked their site it turns out they don’t actually travel to Symi, so don’t bother using that site. It must have got its key wording or meta data wrong or something.

Thompson came next though their destination box for their search was not very detailed and I had to search for Greece rather than more specifically Symi. Needless to say they found 1,000 destinations and I wasn’t going to hang around searching through them for Symi; I saw no filters either. I checked their Destinations page and, glossy and swish though it looked, could not be buttered (bothered) to search through the type of holiday, I just wanted ‘Destination Symi.’ Quite frankly, I got bored. I’d go to a travel agent if you are considering a Thompson holiday, I didn’t find their site search functions very user-friendly. You can though, after a search, whittle down the 1,000 Greek offers to 147 South Aegean ones, but no further. [See: Job 38:11 “Hittherto shall thou come and no further.” Impressed, eh?]

And finally, another one I’d not head (heard) of, Home Away, which was offering apartments and villas on Symi, with a much more manageable 11 to search through, found after a simple and effective search. There were several villas here that I recognised, a few that I’d never heard of and one whose view appeared to be that from my living room window, which was a bit disconcerting. These (very nice and sometimes plush but hopefully not mine) properties were showing prices per night and were not your package deals, or your basic accommodation. £72.00 per night was the starting price for an apartment in Horio looking towards Pedi; the same price for a very nice property I know down at Petalo where the new jetty is being built. At the top of the scale came £225 per night (this is still in high season and you could probably cram eight people in and share the cost (and outside loo)) plus a few properties which rather worryingly showed no price, like the very poshest of posh jewellery shops in Bond Street. If you have to ask you can’t afford it.

That might give you an alternative idea of places to look and places to stay if you’re planning a Symi holiday. One thing I would advise though, especially for those posher sites, is that you shouldn’t be taken in by the photos of detail. I was just checking out something at over £200 per night and all the images showed me were architectural features, napkins on tables with out of focus somethings behind, and the occasional Indian bedspread. Very nice, but what’s the view? Remember, these were also non-Symi based sites and companies. If you want to get the real deal then check out the local tour operators and accommodation offices. Again, see www.symibest.gr for a listing.

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