Ela malaka! EU interior ministers please talk sense!
Some potentially bad and breathtakingly unfair news today, emerging from reports in Greek and other newspapers and on the broadcast news. Summed up by Greek Reporter as: “Europe is about to warn Greece that it has six weeks to stop migrants crossing from Turkey or it will be forced out of the Schengen zone for two years, says a London Times report.” I don’t think I am the only person who immediately sees the stupidity of this ruling, if indeed it is true. I am certainly not the only one to be outraged by it, though I am probably one of the few who doesn’t fully understand its political implications. I don’t go into all that, I simply look at the simple. And that ‘simple’ is: How?

Apart from anything else, apart from the fact that Greece is up to its meatballs in debt, its people are literally being crippled by pressures on services (hospital staff shortages, strikes etc.), apart from the pressure the government and country are already under to do the bidding of the EU, how on earth is anyone going to ‘secure the external borders’ when most of Greece’s border with Turkey looks like this:

It’s a bit ludicrous really when you think that Greece has 13,676 km of coastline and ranks 13th in the world in the table of longest coastline (2012). Not all of it is a border with Turkey of course, but a lot of what is, is simply made up of rocks and jagged rocks at that, and it’s all rather remote.

I wondered how the negotiations might go up at the EU headquarters when they sit down to talk to the Greeks about this issue.

EU: So, Greece, it’s now up to you to stop refugees and migrant workers, asylum seekers and immigrants coming through Turkey. If you don’t then we’ll take our Schengen toys away and then boot you out of the agreement that no country is supposed to be booted out of, or else the Union starts to fall apart. Okay?
GREECE: Ela malaka! I’ve not even finished my coffee yet.
EU: How are you going to pay for it?’
GREECE: I’ll put it on my tab as usual and consider paying for it later. Perhaps.
EU: No, the new border patrols, the boats, the communications, the medical supplies needed, the staff, the paperwork and the housing you will have to give to all the migrants (of various castes) who will start to fill up your nearly-third world country over the next two years. How are you going to stop migrant flow and pay for it?
GREECE. Pou na xeroume?
EU: Say what?
GREECE: Dunno.
EU: Well, it doesn’t matter. It’s your problem now, it’s your fault that you happen to border with Turkey at sea and a little on land, and it’s your fault that we are basically dumping this problem on your ancient doorstep. Deal with it.
GREECE: So, what do you suggest?
EU: We suggest that it’s not our problem. We’ll just block Greece off from the rest of Europe and expect you to deal with it. And, by the way, can we have our money back too?
GREECE: If you are going to be like that about it, we’ll just go back to the Drachma and invite others to do the same. Then we won’t owe you anything and we can keep the ‘donations’ you gave us to pay for the increase in population until the country descends into a riot and you have a border war to deal with. Sound okay with you?

And so it could go on. I can’t be the only one who thinks that this proposal, if it gets passed through whatever committees and groups it needs to be passed through, is at best unfair and at worst a annexing of a struggling country by more affluent countries and leaving it to struggle further. Apparently half a million displaced people arrived in Greece last year (according to the Express online) which represents around 4.5% of the 11m population of the country. Which means, in theory, that by the end of this year the country could have grown by 10% and that 10% is made up mainly of people fleeing a war Greece had nothing to do with. The country would then have to house, clothe and administer that extra one million. Unless it uses its “one of the biggest navies in Europe” (Austrian interior minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner) to repel borders at its coastal borders, the EU will do what it has been trying to stop happening and cut out one of its own union countries. That makes no sense either.

Hopefully tomorrow I’ll have something else to blog about. Something that doesn’t raise the blood pressure and make one want to bonk some safely removed and unaffected EU officials on their empty heads.

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Symi cold, windy, now calm…
I sound like the shipping forecast. Rising Dogger, Blight, westerly…

After yesterday’s long and winding ramble, I thought just a few photos today. I am actually in the middle of some Donkey work and thought, ‘I must get a blog ready for tomorrow.’ Then I realised I am running low on images, so apologies if these are all a bit samey these days.

I’ve not been out much, it’s a bit chilly. Over the weekend we had all the shutters shut against the wind – the wind which pulled the eye from my office shutter so I can’t now hook it back; the wood looks to be a bit rotten so I need to think of an alternative. I won’t use a rock as we do on other shutters as the soldier next door hangs his underwear and uniform out to dry directly under my window and we don’t any accidents. I feel a wedge coming on. (Nothing to do with the soldier’s underpants, I mean for holding the shutter back.)

The house is pretty dark without the shutters open and if I keep my office ones closed I don’t see any daylight, apart from that which leaks through the small kitchen window. There’s keeping warm and there’s enjoying the view, but the two things are not compatible when there is a north wind in January and it’s down to around five degrees (minus temperatures and ice are reported from the Pedi valley). But, I’ve been brave, I’ve had a shower first thing in the morning – no mean feat when the water pump decides not to work willy-nilly, as it has been doing of late – and I’ve spent today so far in thermals, five layers, gloves and hood. I may well finish this now and then go and camp out in the sitting room where yesterday we had both heaters running full tilt. The room was just about warm enough to take the blanket off my knees about half an hour before going to bed.

But, in other news: Symi had its ‘Vasilopita’ party on Sunday – the cutting of the new Year cake; that took place down at The Opera House function room. Georgio’s is still open and we’ve been saying for weeks that we must go there; we’ve not been since before Christmas. Every time we come up with the idea of going for dinner we then discover that we are holed up in the siting room and too warm to want to go out. One day soon! And while out and about, as I must be at some time or else I’ll go bonkers, I shall try and take some more interesting photos.

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You won’t believe what happens next. Pure genius!
Well, we’ve been having something of a chilly weekend with temperatures down to six degrees inside the house rising to a balmy 12 by the end of the day, all shutters closed and several layers on, plus blankets over knees. The wind has been a bit lively, reported at only force five but I reckon it was harder than that. It ripped the hook and eye from my office shutter so now it must be closed until I get it fixed, so I am without a view for a while. The living room shutters are also closed, with draft proofing around parts of them, the doors are shut and there is now a cover hanging in front of them which still blows out and into the sitting room right next to where I usually sit. I must see if I can find someone to make me a decent, heavy curtain – I shall explore the web later.

The rain did stop on Friday though so Saturday and Sunday were clear days, making things colder than they otherwise would have been I guess. We carried on with our weekend plans which were mainly shopping, feeding the stray cats, doing the housework and getting some writing done. But there were breaks for Roku watching. I’d ordered one of those things you plug into your TV so you can watch streaming TV from the net. I can’t ‘cast’ from tablet to TV with it but we can watch hours of American TV (OMG!) with lots of films and TV programmes, Netflix is on there (though it’s not regional, it’s American) as are loads of other channels and things like YouTube. You can even access your Facebook videos and pictures.

And talking of Facebook images and pictures, I am getting so fed up with some of the stuff that’s being not only put out there but accepted as acceptable. It’s like these ‘things’ are changing the way people communicate and not in a good way. I raise two examples which many people will feel are fine and won’t have a problem with, but which I think are stifling creativity (‘cos everyone is simply copying them). I don’t have a huge problem but these things are starting to taser my nerves each time I see them.

The first are those posts that try and lure you into another site so you will play a video clip, or flick through some photos and then click on an advert button and gain the site a few pennies. That’s not the problem for me as we do that, the £25.00 a year we generate from the advert clicks helps pay to keep the site going, that amount per day would help keep the whole island going, but that’s another story. The style of writing I am objecting to runs something like this:

You will see an innocuous photo but the screaming headline beside it is meant to draw you in and make you believe you are going to see something remarkable:

“She thought it was just an ordinary slide but then THIS happened!” (Woman slides down waterslide and ends up in a swimming pool. So What?’

“He thought he would never walk again, and then he did THIS!” (Man gets off his arse and goes for a walk.)

“He didn’t understand how it worked so she did this. The result is GENIUS.” (Man can’t work TV remote control, woman switches TV on manually.) That kind of thing.

I wanted to tell you about my number two pet hate, but you won’t believe what happened next. INCREDIBLE!

I hate all this ‘This is Bill’ though any name will do it seems. These ridiculous cartoons – that often say things that I totally agree with – are taking over. You may have seen them: “This is Bill. Bill knows it is annoying to post ‘This is Bill’ images on his wall. Bill still does it. Don’t be like Bill.” Or, “This is Bill.” (Yeah? So what?) “Bill doesn’t think it’s necessary to post photos of your food on Facebook. Bill knows they look like sick. Be like Bill. Don’t do it.”

That is so annoying! Being told what to do and think by a stick-man cartoon and someone trying to be flippant. One day these two crass witticisms (if that’s what they are, I can’t actually think of the word for them) will breed and we’ll get things like: “Bill just posted a photo on Facebook. GENIUS! Bill now thinks he is important but actually Bill’s a twit. You won’t guess what happened next. Be like Bill.” And they will make even less sense than they do now.

Thank you. Had my say, and now I am away, leaving you with these last words: “James is an old grouch when he sees unimaginative posts like these on Facebook. James will now ignore them and never post such things himself. James is smart. Be like James.”

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Blogs About Living In Greece
After mentioning Effrosyni Moschoudi and her blog yesterday (here’s the home page link) I thought I’d do a scout around to see what other blogs about living in Greece I could find. I thought this might be of interest to you along with some general images I’ve got in my folder.

I did a generic search via a search engine and found loads of Greek based blogs. I haven’t mentioned the larger, more commercial sites here as they probably don’t need the attention, and you already know about Adriana’s blog from Symi, and my own. Of course you do, you are reading it right now. But here are four others that you might want to look at. If you do, and you post comments or make contact, do tell them that I sent you.

My first problem was to find blogs with up to date content; several at the top of my search results looked promising but had not updated for over a year; so I left them alone. The first one I looked at (that was reasonably up to date; December 2015) looked fine but a pop-up popped-up to tell me there was malicious malware associated with the page. I was still able to view http://bigfatgreekodyssey.com/blog/ though and it is, like Symi Dream, a blog with pictures and text, though not a daily one.

http://momingreecetoday.blogspot.gr/ was next and again it is images and words. I know that sounds pretty obvious, but some blogs these days are image-only blogs. This looks to be a personal blog like mine and goes back to 2012. I was interested to see a post in the archive list called ‘Musicals in Greece’, though the page I found seemed to be all about politics.

http://octopus-in-my-ouzo.blogspot.gr/ An Octopus in My Ouzo was third on my list and again it’s a neatly set out Blogspot style blog with pictures and text. This blog is by Jennifer Barclay who lives on ‘a tiny Greek island’ so is much more in keeping with Symi Dream. But which island? I am assuming Tilos, though it’s not immediately apparent and I may be wrong – no doubt someone will put me, er, straight. A good blog though and very much ‘Up our dromos’ (street) as it’s personal, easy to read, about island life and also publicises books, other blogs and sites you might like to see.

And Jennifer also has another close-to-home blog on her list of handy sites, John Manuel’s Ramblings From Rhodes. http://ramblingsfromrhodes.blogspot.gr/ Very much like our Symi Dream – note the use of the word ‘Rambles’ – except with fewer typos and longer posts perhaps, more informative and with appropriate pjhots (oops) rather than my habit of posting up any old pictures to go with any old ramblings. You can also get hold of John’s life in Greece books via his site links and there is, I believe, a fourth in the series now available.

I hope that’s given you some new ideas for some reading to accompany Symi Dream – not to replace it. Perhaps make yourself a Favourites folder called ‘Greek island blogs’ or some such and, if you find any others that you think our other readers might like to know about, let me know and I’ll mention them here. Now I have to go and do some housework before getting on with a novel. It’s been raining (hard) and some rain came into the porch where Jack had merrily thrown most of his dirt tray content onto the floor during some midnight expedition to find the perfect hole to dig, so there is mud to deal with. I could also do with opening the house up, now the rain has stopped, and letting some air through. Don’t want to get black mould and damp this early in the winter.

Anyway, check the links above, and for a fuller list of other Ex-pat blogs in Greece try http://www.expatsblog.com/blogs/greece and happy reading!

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