I’m not going to hanging around for long today. It’s actually Wednesday and I am getting this ready ahead of time, as has become my habit of late.

I find that I can witter on aimlessly more freely at this time of day, usually around lunchtime, because I’ve got my morning work out of the way and have the rest of the day to myself. Being an early morning person I like to get straight on with thing as soon as I have got up and sat down at the desk. In the old days the blog used to be my wake up routine, now it has become my wind down routine. Either way, it still gets done.

But the reason I am not hanging around for long is that my fingers are not working properly due to the cold. I have four layers on including a new woollen jumper, there are two heaters going, one either side, and now, after five hours in this large front room, the temperature has risen from nine to nearly eighteen degrees. But still my fingers are cold and stiff and I can’t type in fingerless gloves. Even the cat is not happy with the arrangements, he keeps wandering from one heater to the other finding no satisfaction with either, it seems.

But at least I am inside and not having to be working outdoors, That must be very bitter for the workmen, builders, and others who have to go outside to work. Neil went to Yialos this morning for aerobics at the gym, brave him, as a way of shaking off a cold he has picked up. He also picked up some post and shopping and carried it all the way back up the steps. I was hoping to be taking up my morning exercise routine again by now but it’s just too cold. That’s my excuse, not that I need one, and I am staying with it.

So, pointless blog post done, a couple of pics from the archives put up, a few emails to do and then an afternoon of keeping warm, either in the sitting room or back here for another chapter of the book. Oh, and in case anyone needed to know, the wind was in the wrong direction for the Blue Star to dock this morning (Wednesday) and the next boat isn’t due in, from Rhodes, until Friday. Let’s hope the wind has died down by then. Oh yes, and the Sunrise tells us that they have got their temperature up to above 20 degrees, so there’s a warm place to hide out in, should you be on Symi and venturing out and about.

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Today’s pictures are here to satisfy the curious. If you have ever wanted to know what it was like to be on Symi in the rain when the ‘Spanos’ came in from Kos, an hour late due to the bad weather I guess, then these images are here to satisfy your curiosity.

They were taken on Monday evening when we went down to Yialos to see Ian off; he’s heading back to do some work in the UK. It was light when we got down there and not yet raining, but that soon changed and the café we were waiting at, the Roloi near the clock tower, soon filled up. The Blue Star was also due in, coming back from Rhodes on its skewed timetable due to New Year’s Day. That came and went and we waited and had a drink as we did so. The Dodecanese finally came in, there was a bit of a rush about, and then off it went into the wet and dark night.

It was raining hard by this point but that didn’t stop Neil from clowning about, as you will see.

We walked back around the harbour, the original intention was to walk back up the steps, for the exercise, but the rain and water running off the steps put paid to that idea; always best to be safe on Symi in the rain. So we took a taxi back up the hill and that’s what the last image is, a shot from the back of a steamed up taxi heading out of Yialos.

There has been a lot of snow in northern Greece recently and, looking at the news reports, it’s still going on. The skies around here have been heavy and dark, though Tuesday morning was brighter. But very cold. Just the kind of weather for jumping into the recently blessed seas to retrieve the cross; which is what was happening all over the country on January 6th as it is the celebration of Epiphany. The wind yesterday was not as bad as first expected with Windfinder showing force six only, and not the force nine or ten the weather forecaster on TV was talking about. I wouldn’t be surprised though if that was the gusting force, the house has been rattling a bit.

And that of course makes things pretty cold, particularly as the site shows the wind coming from the north. I know, it’s probably colder where you are (unless you are Kon down in Australia of course, hi Kon, hi to the family too!).

The good news is that I found the missing information from my memory stick which wasn’t missing at all. For some reason the ‘open recent’ command in the programme I was using decided to open an old version of the same file, not the most recently opened one that was at the top of the ‘open recent’ files list. But you don’t need to know that.

What you might like to know though is that the weather forecast (you can never have enough of this drivel can you?) is now saying that we’re in for three degrees tonight, like it was last night apparently. Three degrees? How about The Marvelettes instead? Or perhaps The Velvelettes? Who? Quite, I had to go and look them up – you might remember ‘He was really sayin’ something’ from 1965, probably better known to us youngsters by the Bananarama cover version. And talking of really sayin’ something, I clearly am now not saying anythin’ of much interest so will now go and put on another layer of hoodies, my gloves, a hat, my overcoat and knitted scarf I bought from Rasnov castle in Romania, and watch TV.

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Strange goins-on yesterday in the magical world of computers. I plugged in my external hard drive where I keep my notes, opened a file I had been using in the morning to find all updates to it, since December 20th, had vanished. No idea what is going on there. (Will try a re-boot later and see if that helps.)

Meanwhile, while I was doing that and feeling a little under the weather, Neil was bouncing around down in Yialos at his first aerobics class of 2014. It was a cold morning again, that followed a night of heavy rain, so much so that we had drips in the bedroom, and that made me think of an answer to that age-old question: what is Symi like in the winter.

Well, you will find out by reading my blog posts, and Adriana’s when she is back, and you can also find out by reading the Symi books (see the right hand column). But here’s an example of what it can be like, based on Sunday evening. Wet. Agreed it was a big rain storm but it was wet inside the house and outside. Here’s how our house is in the winter:

The kitchen, at the back, gets little ventilation due it it’s design and so turns black and needs washing with bleach, and painting every year, and the rain drips through the ceiling no matter how often you (or Ian) repairs the roof and the cracks. The hall has a mysterious puddle in a certain place due to rain, and the big window can leak. The bathroom, despite having the window open most of the time, also slowly gets black mould, and is always cold. The sitting room can get wet inside depending on which way the wind is blowing, it comes through the window, under the door and sometimes through the roof but it doesn’t usually get damp as it’s the room that gets heated the most.

The  moussandra office has just this year stared to get drips in it, through the old pitched roof, and sometimes these drip into the bedroom below where the window has a broken shutter that has been listed for repair for about a year now – it’s one of those ‘avrio’ things, I reckon we’ll end up having to get it fixed ourselves. But that’s also now leaking and gets black mould around it which needs cleaning off. The front room has only leaked vertically once but does get horizontal leaks under the balcony doors and front door, which is so expanded in the rain that it is a job to open it. Oh, and the house is also cold and the inside of my wardrobe damp.

And that’s not because of how we live or anything; we don’t use gas heaters – the worse thing for producing black mould, it’s just how the houses are. Other people’s houses are sometimes worse, sometimes better than ours, it all depends. But people do ask and that’s just one example of how it can be. Yesterday morning I looked out of the window as I was hanging up the floor-towels to dry and said to myself, ‘We didn’t do so badly last night.’ It can always be worse.

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Sunday evening on Symi, and what started as a bright and chilly day has turned into a cloudy one, slightly warmer, and with a hint of rain in the air.

We’re just back from a walk through the valley to Pedi and back up the road. (You will see in the photos, it’s all sheep, lambs, goats and the river beds washed away by the recent rains.) After several days of being inside, escaping the worst of the rain, eating and chilling out, it was good to get out of the house. It might have been a relaxing few days watching films and reading books, but it has also been a productive one for me.

I set about ‘Straight Swap’ again on Saturday morning. This is a new comedy novel I have been cooking up for a couple of years now. It is a straightforward body-swap comedy that’s not so straightforward, as it seems to be greatly inspired by places I knew when growing up, and perhaps by a few people. Not that I am going to name names, and of course I never did swap bodies with anyone when younger, or even when older. But the question is, of course, what would happen if…? And in this case what would happen if two friends, who are no longer friends, swapped bodies and experienced each other’s lives?

Not a new concept but there is a twist or two with this one. So far I have reached 25,000 words of a first draft. First drafts are usually, for me, about getting the ideas of the story down. It’s a time when I write loads of words, many of which don’t make it to draft two but all of which are useful in getting the story out of my head and onto the paper. After that it’s a case of going back and forwards making alterations. For example: I describe a place or a person in one way in chapter one and later in chapter five have a better idea and so change a detail. I note this on a sheet of paper to remind me to change it back later on, and then I mislay that piece of paper.

It doesn’t matter though because by the time I get to chapter fifteen I change that detail yet again and then add in a new thought line which takes a character off somewhere else, and so make a note in a note book this time, so I remember to change the detail back later on. And then I can’t remember which notebook it went into.

And so, when I’ve finally got to the end, I have to go back to the start and reread and make notes and make sure I keep them, and then move bits around, and change many other things and hope that everything is consistent, while still keeping it interesting, readable, logical and in this case funny. Then, after draft two is done I get Neil and/or Jenine to read it for typos and input, and then do a draft three. By this time I’m into changing only minor details and typos. Then I send it to my editor man and he goes through it as he lays it out for printing. This can take several months as he is also checking for typos, spelling mistakes and often emails me with things such as ‘Are you really sure you meant to write…?’

And then, a few years after starting, or a few months in some cases, the thing is ready to put online line and then it’s up to the reader to point out all hose typos and spelling mistakes the team may have missed.

A

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I thought of something interesting to tell you just now and now I can’t remember what it was. Never mind, couldn’t have been that interesting.

It might have had something to do with going for a walk, which we’re hoping to do on Sunday if this rain ever lets up and goes away. Actually Friday morning wasn’t too bad at first, sunny and cold, though the clouds soon rolled in over the mountain. At least it gave us a chance to get some of the floor towels dry. Mind you, the washing remains inside the house just in case so my view from the desk is of Spiderman socks and Superman sweatshirts, the equivalent of ‘Christmas jumpers’ in our house.

I’m still merrily making my way through some of my Christmas books, I now have a large pile of real reading and the possibility of several Kindle books too, on the tablet. I am starting to see how addictive these tablets are, I mean the hand held device ones, not any other form of tablets. I keep picking mine up and wondering what ‘ap’ I can put on next and then thinking, ‘I don’t actually need any kind of ap at the moment’ and putting it down again. I have put on one of those star map ones so I can see what constellation is what, but since putting that on we’ve had nothing but cloudy skies.

I’ve not been out and about much though Neil has been to the harbour a couple of times in search of a missing parcel from the mysterious TNT lady in Rhodes who rang on Christmas Eve and told us that the delivery would be with ‘Vasilis.’ Perhaps she meant Agios Vasilis, whose name day it was on New Year’s Day, but if she did then he still hasn’t delivered this particular parcel. Perhaps it will turn up eventually, I heard that there were delivery issues (as the Americans might say) over in the UK around Christmas.

So, a short blog post today, my fingers are cold and the internet is playing up, someone is cooking something in the kitchen and I have a book I want to start reading before lunch so the I can perhaps start writing my own one after lunch. Have a good weekend and, if the next walk happens tomorrow, no doubt there will be endless photos of it next week.

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