What rambles do we have today? What news?

Not a great deal, I fancy. Yesterday was a quiet day at home for me, with time to start on a new story. I’ve been hanging around since the end of the last one, not being sure what the next subject is, and so I thought I’d just sit down and write something. So far, in the current series of mysteries set in 1892/93, I’ve had as my background: the life of a cabman, the old school network, the music hall, family feuds, magician’s & sewers, serial killers and saints, and graveyard antics and revenge. For the one that’s due out shortly, the background theme is the name of the book, Holywell Street, notorious in the 19th century for its seditious publications, naughty books and, later, photography. The next book…? Not sure, but perhaps something to do with ballooning.

Talking of books… yesterday, I released my short book of short stories as told by characters from my Victorian series, as an audio book through Amazon’s Audible programme. It’s a virtual voice, but there’s nothing I can do about that, and I can’t get the VV to do the accents the characters should have, but it’s there now. Already, I have had a critical fan wrote to say it sounds fine and they are enjoying listening to it. Here’s the link:

Anyway…

That’s where my head is at this morning, though I am not sure how much I will get done as I have another dentist visit later – they come in threes, don’t they? And that is all I have planned. Heading to the harbour later will mean passing by the pet shop which, as you can see, is very popular with pets…

… and, right beside it, Frederika’s clothes shop which is always so invitingly colourful and has gorgeous things for sale.

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Well, yesterday was a varied day for sure. After reading some newspapers from 1893, and searching out ballooning accidents and related crimes, I took a walk up to the top of the village and down the road. All very civilised and peaceful.

After lunch, the piano lesson went very well, I am pleased to say, and we started on the 3rd movement of the sonata, the first being all but in place bar upping the tempo while keeping the accuracy. Trills are also improving. That was followed by the youngest Yiannis from Lefteris’ Kafeneion having his first birthday party in the square.

That was followed by a film back at home and a reasonably early night, ten, I think it was. At 2.17, we were woken by the house shaking thanks to a 5.9 earthquake just the other side of the peninsular from us. As you can see from the list of other tremors down the right hand side of this graphic, the ground is constantly grumbling, but not usually so vociferously. The actual event was immediately followed by the phones going off with an earthquake warning, so I dragged myself out of bed to turn them off, only to have them stop when I reached the sitting room.

Returning to bed, I then had a dream about being back in Dalston, East London, where we had rented an Airbnb apartment for some unknown reason. All was going well until another family arrived, and tried to get in. The man upstairs threw them out, and that was that. Later, they came back and there were more of them insisting they had booked the place. There were children bouncing all over the bedroom, someone started cooking, and there was a party in the garden, and we didn’t even know there was a garden. We upped sticks, left them to it and caught a number 38 to somewhere else. In fact, I got so fed up with it all, I woke myself up thinking, ‘To hell with that,’ and set about my day.

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Finally, it’s starting to look more like early summer. Friday was amusing. My forecast said a slight chance of 0.5mm of rain at nine o’clock in the evening. What did we get? A massive thunderstorm at 17.00. Routers and computers unplugged, towels down… At least it washed away some of the Sahara that had settled over the previous weeks, and it didn’t stop me baking bread for a dinner we were having – inside. It seems to have cleared the air a little, too, as today, I’m, looking out on a clear blue sky and a calm sea, and I am wondering which it takes OneDrive so long to put together a few photos read for me to download? I’m sure it only used to take a few seconds, now, it’s more like five minutes.

Before the Friday storm, I was downtown to visit the dentist for a filling which, this time, required anaesthetic. We were, rather optimistically, planning to stay down for lunch afterwards (Neil and I, not me and the dentist), but the anaesthetic wouldn’t allow. You know how it is, sometimes it’s fine and you can function normally, while at other times, you’re drooling, it must depend on where the needle goes in. Well, I couldn’t even speak properly, let alone eat anything, and I was sure people thought I’d met with a nasty accident. Anyway, it wore off a couple of hours later. Actually, it took about as long as OneDrive has taken to finally create and download a zip folder of a few photos, so at least I can now show you a couple of shots from Friday and Sunday.

There will be more of these during the week, no doubt, and it look like it’s going to be a week with very little going on for me. I am waiting for a MS to come back from my proofreader, which is like waiting for your homework to come back from the head mistress. We are going out to eat later in the week, but otherwise, I only have some piano lessons and playing in the diary, and a new story to think up. Maybe I will get to take another walk. Yesterday, it was down the steps, along through Pitini and then back up the road. The new holiday complex in Pitini is coming along, right opposite two other glamorous villas/complexes which looked ready to accept boarders, and on the way back, I passed several other new Airbnb rentals with signs outside of varying quality, none of which were (as yet) occupied, and again, I had to wonder where our godson will find to live if he comes back here after his two years in Rhodes. The other one has secured a basement room in a friend’s house and is no longer having to pay nearly €500 a month for a bedsit (while earning only €900 per month, as he was). But, don’t get me started on all that, not this early in the week. I have a new book to think up, so I shall turn my attention to more cheerful thoughts, like the state of the East End of London in 1893.

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A holiday has been ruined by a sunbed. Apparently. We were talking about this yesterday, and I was hearing stories of how people’s visits to Symi have been ruined by a few things. Well, one thing, manly, it seems. By progress.

Yes, I too dislike the idea that those with enough money to buy a couple of houses here and rent them out for holidays should think that the island should become the next Saint-Tropez for the sake of making more money. Yes, I dislike the fact there are motorbikes roaring up and down outside the house at all hours, and young (and older) people are not wearing helmets, and are risking their lives and those of others because they want to feel like they are important. And yes, I’m not too strapped with 1,500 day-trippers turning up to drop their rubbish, drain our drainage and water systems, block the road with ignorance and so on, but what’s the alternative for businesses? Starvation like the good old days of the post-war era?

Now, apparently, the island is not what it was because there are ‘posh’ sunbeds on our shores, invading from within and taking away the Greekness of the island.

Oh dear. If you don’t like progress, then stay in your cave and don’t progress.

Btw, don’t you love English? Progress and progress – look the same, different meaning, noun/verb, accent moves, but there’s nothing to tell you so visually, not like in Greek where we have an accent: τόνος = tuna… and the accent over a letter… Anyway…

The point of this pointless ramble is now lost on me, but it is interesting to overhear people saying ‘It’s not like it was’ because nothing ever is like it was. Then there’s the, ‘I wanted to see the real Greece,’ the answer to which can only be, you are. This is how it is. This may not be how it was, but it’s what we’re dealing with right now. If you want to experience the ‘real’ Symi, come in February, get stuck on Rhodes for three days because of the weather, eat whatever you are lucky enough to find in the shops, bring your duvet, quilt and buckets to catch the internal rain, plenty of reading, a torch for the power cuts, and hope you don’t need a doctor in a hurry.

And if you don’t like the ‘posh’ sunbeds, or object to paying €10.00 for a lie down (and I don’t blame you), then sunbathe on the rocks like we used to do in ‘the good old days’ when everything was in black and wite and people still died of typhus.

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Actually, two courtyards and a place to sit. It was a day for doing the ‘garden’ yesterday. Not for me, but for Neil who set about replanting the orange rose, weeding the pots and tidying up our courtyard, and this was the end result.

Taken with a wide-angle lens by the looks. Only the other day, he was in Panormitis, and took some photos of the monastery courtyard there, as well as some photos of other parts which I’ll put up here as the days go by. As you can see, it’s a traditionally pebbled courtyard as many are and, I am told, as ours once was. You can still see many such things on Symi. The floor at Georgio’s taverna, for example, and several church courtyards, up at the museum in Horio, and… well just keep your eyes open. It’s the same in Rhodes where in the residential areas, like Saint Nicholas outside Rhodes New Town/Old Town, you can see pebbled side streets, not to mention the Old Town itself, which is more or less completely cobbled. Anyway, before I talk too many cobbles, here’s the Panormitis courtyard.

Finally, this place is on the road out of the village heading up the hill. It’s in the hairpin bend at what was Lavinia Studios, and, I think, a lovely use of otherwise forgotten space. A bench with a view across the road towards Pedi, a handy litter bin, shade and a place to sit and contemplate courtyards, or courts, yards, Yardies, courting…

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