Saturday Symi Photos
We’ve not had a set of photos for a while so here are some that Neil took on a walk around the village the other day. Now then, there’s a problem with our photo presentation plug-in, inside the WordPress set-up, that means you can’t, at the moment, open these and run a slideshow. I’m not sure why this has happened by we’re looking into it. The images you see here are resized anyway so they don’t get any bigger, but you’ll have to bear with us while we try and arrange for normal service to be resumed. Meanwhile, enjoy the browse down.

News of the various writing projects I’m tinkering with: I am now half way through a rough draft of ‘Shocking the Donkeys’, the comedy/drama about Greece’s first gay civil partnership (made up) that is actually a screenplay. I am turning that script into a book, and it’s an interesting exercise. It’s not going to be a standard novel, in fact, there should be nothing standard about a novel, else it would not be novel, the adjective that gives its name to the noun. For a novel to be a novel it needs to be novel. This one is. Not in story construction – it’s a classic four act film progression, but in the way the story is told as a book. So far it’s all rather fast, with brief scenes cutting from one place to another. That would look fine on screen, but how it will read when I have re-drafted it later remains to be seen.

I intend to do the final draft of this in early June when I should be on Tilos again for a week, the same as last year. There, away from the distractions of home, I was able to bash out quite a few thousand words of ‘Straight Swap’ so this year I hope to have the second draft of ‘Donkeys’ ready to take with me so I can fine tune it and have it ready for proof readers and editor by, at the latest, the end of June.

‘Straight Swap’ may now be titled ‘Remotely’ for reasons that will become obvious if you ever read it. I am working through the edits on the final draft and hope to have that ready for the editor by the end of this month. He, the editor, meanwhile is dealing with a crisis at the Berlin Film Festival, so that may delay things slightly. The cover designer is also working in the background and I aim to have this book ready for publication in a couple of months’ time. And, while doing all of that, I have two other ideas on the go and that short story to finish, the one I started last week about ‘Throwing the Stocking.’ But that’s really an exercise and just a bit of fun.

So, there’s plenty going on up at our hose at the moment what with writing, going for photo walks, plotting and thinking up ideas for projects I’d like to write. Which all means I had better get on. Have a good weekend.

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Thursday morning on Symi: cloudy and with a bit of rain about. Not enough to boost the sterna water supply as yet. The sea is grey and the wind calm.

A few more photos from around the village today. More cats being fed and looked after – still no sign of Jack though. Thanks for all your messages about the star of the blog, but there is still no news about where he might be. He’s been away since last Friday now and is not at our old house. We and others have been looking for him around the area, and the neighbours there know him and will report if he is seen. So, still a mystery but not un-cat like behaviour. He is nearly 14, though seemed in perfect health as usual, but you never know…

That aside, and as there is nothing we can do, things tick over up here in the village. The name day of Haralambos was celebrated on Wednesday and this was, I think, the first year we’ve not made it to church in the morning. This was due to the tree-felling appointment, and we’ve still to take the old branches away to the bins, something we will do bit by bit when we go to feed the cats. Now we can see the harbour more clearly, at least for a while, until it grows back. Around the village there are restoration and building works taking place; a house two doors down from us is being done up, there are various other projects on the go and the sound of cement mixers and donkey hooves mingle in the lanes.

It’s definitely a quiet time here on the island, as February is usually the darkest, coldest month that, ironically, feels longer than most other months. I guess the other extreme might be August which feels lengthy as it’s often hard work. Temperatures of 40 degrees feel so far away on days like today when, though not cold, it’s still only around 15, at the moment. Sometimes you do actually long for August to melt into September when you know it will start to cool down, just as you start to long for February to thaw into March, where things start to improve. March for us means medical MOT on Rhodes and that’s something we will put into place shortly. Now I am on private health insurance I have a built-in scheme for basic ‘older man’ check-ups once per year, and though in IKA (Greek National Insurance), Neil also has a similar scheme. So we usually have a three or four day ‘health holiday’ around March/April time. Oh, the things we have to look forward to!

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Symi cats, trees, walks, weather
We’re back on track now with today’s post being written yesterday (Wednesday). The Blue Star has been in, gliding into port on a calm sea under the sun. It came in on Monday too as a special visit to bring supplies, so when we went to the post office on Tuesday there were several packages for us and there were fresh supplies today in the shop. Including cat food.

We’ve just had a tray of Rokus (cat food) delivered to the house along with a few packs of water. Habib brings it on his moped for us, it saves us carrying it the huge distance from the shop, and I think he likes getting out and about every now and then. He stays on his moped as he puts the water on our step, rings the bell and rides off to turn around. Usually by the time we get to the gate he is sailing back past merrily shouting ‘Your nero is here’ (in Greek) and heading off down the hill back to work. But back to the cats:

We have reached the end of our supplies – we’re talking stray cat food supplies here. I think we’ve probably been a bit over-generous with our set of strays as we give them leftovers and biscuits every day, or a can of Rokus and some biscuits, plus water. We also bought some cheap pasta to mix up with it all to make it go further so later the bin cats near us will be having ‘Pasta a la dubious meat from a tin’ with a side order of dry biscuits and a 2016 bottle of ‘eau de tap.’

We were out and about for a walk the other day, taking an hour after lunch to get out and enjoy the sun. You start off from home with your thermals and jumper and coat, and end up down to a t-shirt (with some kind of trouser arrangement of course) by the time you’ve reached the top of the village. It’s the same when you go to Yialos; start out dressed for the final push to the pole and end up at Elpida’s in a t-shirt, in the sun with a frappe. Such is Symi winter weather (not all the time). Apparently it was 16 degrees yesterday but try telling that to the sitting room where the thermometer read 10 all day, and it’s set to stay fair and warm (14 to 17 during the day) and sunny with some cloud. As we know, these predictions can change quickly.

We were on hand to keep our appointment with our landlord on Wednesday morning, but it must have slipped his mind so we did some work on the tree unsupervised. There’s a fig tree in front of the house that he cuts back each year and, as it grows back again, it obscures part of our view and, more importantly, endangers the phone lines above it. We went out and did what we could, taking off any branches thin enough for our loppers to cope with. The main branches need a saw and a strong arm, or an electric saw and me, and we need to know if we should take the wood away or leave it there in case anyone wants it for their fires. The tree will have grown back by June, but at least it will only grow back to how it was and not carry on growing higher, potentially cutting off six buildings from their phone connection. It’s a start and I am sure the landlord will knock for us when he wants us to help with what remains.

That’s about the highlight reel for the last couple of days: sun, a boat or two, cats (still no sign of Jack), shopping, lopping, keeping warm and vowing to call the plumber every time the pump fails to kick in and never getting around to it as you can (at the moment) simply flick the switch to re-set it and start again. We are planning a few more walks before the weather changes, as the forecast sown it will be doing in March, so there should be some more photos to look at over the coming days, which means that you can keep right up to date on what’s happening on Symi. At least, you can as far as what the weather and Symi Dream are up to.

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More ramble for your money
Why is it that, occasionally, when you turn your computer on and open a programme, its screen opens to a strange, smaller size, not the full screen size that it should be? I’ve often wondered that and my Word did it just now. Odd, but there you go, one of those mysteries.

It’s Wednesday morning and I’ve not pre-prepared a blog post for today so this is happening ‘live’ and I have no idea what to tell you other than: the Alarm Cat is still out and about and has not come home and has not been seen, the weather is calm and cool and the sea flat. It all looks very pleasant and slightly wintery out there. And we have an appointment with our landlord later to help him cut down a fig tree. And, to be quite honest with you, I have no other news, so I’ll have to leave you with a couple of photos (there will be more tomorrow and I have some on the camera I’ve not dealt with yet) and leave it at that. This is why I like to do the blog a day in advance, you get more ramble for your money.

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A quick Symi catch up on news from up here in the village… Another quiet Sunday passed off without incident. We went back to our old house and the area to see if we could see or hear Jack out and about, but there was no sign of him. As of Monday late morning he’d still not come home. I expect he is having a wail of a time beatings up all manner of poor cats in some neighbourhood; he’s not been in a good fight for ages.

Interestingly, it was nearly one year ago that we moved house. Since that time he has ventured out and about on only a few occasions, even though we have left our courtyard gate open for him in the hope that he will explore the area. He has done this in the past too, and returned the following morning or afternoon, on one occasion he came back after two days and on another we went and got him from the old house after three. There’s not a lot we can do about it really, he’ll come back if and when he wants to, or he may stay away for good and we may never see him again. He’s a cat. I reckon he’ll be back… at some point.

Apart from peaceful mornings and no need to clean out the dirt tray (we’ve just bought eight big bags of litter, so he’d better come back and use it!) there’s not been a lot else going on at the house. As you might have read, Saturday was very windy and so all shutters were closed and the house in darkness. Sunday was better and Monday I was able to open some shutters without fear of losing them, and was able to see sunlight again. The sea down there is calm, though not 100% flat as there are ripples coming in towards the shore. Apparently the Blue Star, held up by strike and wind, that was due in at 11.00 in the morning, didn’t come in until 3.00 the next morning – not sure which morning as I was asleep at all 3.00 ams over the weekend. The Dodekanisos, stuck here on Saturday, is back to normal and was in and out on Monday morning.

It’s Harry’s name day tomorrow (Xronia polla all Xaralambos, or is that Xaralamboi?) but he’s at school; now he is at junior school he can’t really bunk off to attend his name day so we shan’t be going – feels a bit wrong to turn up without your godson, it’s like you’ve only come for the coffee and cakes. And that ‘not going anywhere’ is the only social entry in the calendar so far this week. It’s still very quiet everywhere, hardly anyone about it seems, but if this good sunny weather stays and things warm up a bit, I can see café-life returning to the village before long.

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