All posts by James Collins

Day to day on Symi

Symi on TV

Isn’t it odd how the power of television still grabs? We walked into Rainbow last night to discover Symi on the TV. Actually, as we arrived, it was Takis on TV showing his incredible leather work. Later, we had a guided tour of Yialos, a quick foray into Horio, a drive across the island to Panormitis, and some other shots of the island taken, I assume, last summer. This was a SKAI TV programme called Happy Traveller where cheerful chappie, Ευτύχης Μπλέτσας, goes about the country with a selfie stick (and a production crew, no doubt), and does travelogues from various parts of the world; Zambia, Colombia, Symi…

Just strikes me as odd that we get so excited about seeing something on TV that we can see for real simply by sticking our head out of the door. Still, it was good to see my old boss of 20 years ago still going strong and making incredible art on leather.

If you want to see videos of Symi while you wait for your next flight, I heartily recommend Symi TV on YouTube.

Also this weekend… A few strolls around the village…

A neighbour has bought some new courtyard shrubbery from Ikea…

We have been having some lovely weather too. Mind you, it’s not quite enough yet to dry things out and everywhere is still humid and damp. I spent some of the weekend writing, of course, and I have three of my older novels in a special promo, if you’d care to take a look. This is one of those free to browse promos where you can find new authors and titles to add to your reading list. I am searching for an opportunity to put the Symi books in one of these, to give them and the island some more attention, but I’ve not found an outlet yet. Meanwhile, the slightly spooky Saddling series is having an outing. Click the banner to see what else is in the promo.

Day to day on Symi

Rain Again and Train

Yesterday was a fun day. Despite waking up at 4.30 like the good old days, I was bright and dandy in the morning and managed to get a few thousand words written for the next Delamere book. I am currently tied up in a mystery to which I know the ending, but not the path to reach it. That’s a job for the characters who discover things as they go, which means, I discover things as I go and I never quite know where the mystery is going to lead next. This, I find is more natural than plotting every single clue and stage, because, after all, if I were the detectives, I wouldn’t know what was coming next. I have to know how to end things, who, where, why and so on, and I do, but how my characters discover the facts? That’s as mysterious to me until it’s written as it is to them. Anyway, that’s what I was up to yesterday morning.

The afternoon saw my piano student do a grand job on his scales, and I can now safely say, if he was sitting a grade four exam tomorrow, he would pass his scales and arpeggios, and if you’ve wondering what’s involved with that, basically it means knowing and playing smoothly the scales of: C, D, E, F, G, A, B, Bb, Eb, Ab, Cm – all major, and Dm, Em, Fm, Gm Am, Bm (minors both harmonic and melodic), plus the same in arpeggios – all two octaves, hands together. We’re also getting to the point now when, for example, we reach the end of Chopin’s Prelude in e Minor and there are three great big chords, I can say, ‘It’s B dominant seventh followed by E minor’, and he knows what I’m talking about. So, that lesson put me right in the mood for sitting at the kitchen table for two hours…

That’s the ‘Big Boy’ which is a locomotive on my side of the table, and an even bigger boy that’s the Titanic on the other. I’m not sure what breed of locomotive ‘Big Boy’ is, I just know he’s going to take a lot of close painting work before I get to the easy job of sticking it together. We’d just finished for the day when Yiannis phoned and said, ‘Come and have a drink’, and as we’d been in for so many days, we thought we would. It started to rain just as we left home, and by the time we did the 100 yards to the bar, all three of us were sheltering under the one umbrella. It was too wet and dangerous to travel on, so we entertained the new pianist for a coke while we waited for the rain to ease.

Last night.

It did, eventually, and all’s well that ends well. There’s a video of the rain passing the village square on the Symi Dream Facebook page (reels section) if you’ve a mind to view it. I’m off into a weekend of writing and keeping my fingers crossed (because the rent is due on Monday and my pension hasn’t arrived yet…), so I’ll see you next week.

Day to day on Symi

Symi in Spring

Three photos today to show Symi in spring: The clear blue sky and sea, the abundance of green, and the dampness of the stone.

Damp is an issue in winter and this year seems to be the dampest I can remember. For the first time in ten years we’ve had trouble with black mould in the bathroom, despite the window being permanently open, except for when the dehumidifier is in there. The ceiling plaster is also starting to crack and come away from whatever mess is beneath it. We have the dehumidifier on in the bedroom too, then, later in the morning, open windows and doors through the house to dry it out (unless it’s raining), and still, things are damp. Most days, the humidity is around 80%, and the damp you see in this photo is caused by that, not rain.

That aside, its’ also been reasonably warm, and there’s not been that much need to put the heating on even though we’re north facing. When there’s a wind, it’s different, as it tends to be from the north at this time of year and the icy blasts come straight into the sitting room around the shutters, under the doors, through the draft-proofing and around the heavy curtain. Still, the heater stays on the low setting, and we put on another layer or get under another blanket. Walking in the sun is a case of stripping down to a t-shirt; walking in the shade is to dress like Shackleton.

Then, there’s the greenery, and if you know where to wander, you can find some very verdant pastures. The Pedi Valley is now coming alive with green, as is the path and hillsides above it, though the herbs and shrubs on the hillside aren’t as bright as the grass and new bulbs in the valley. It’ll all be gone by the end of May into June, I expect, so now’s the time to make the most of it.

Now is also the time to get to work, to beaver through the morning, and to look forward to an afternoon of building the Big Boy while watching the boy fit out his decks after working through some fingering and thumb stretches… In other words, piano, followed by modelling with the Titanic on one side of the table and a steam locomotive on the other.

Day to day on Symi

Unexpected

Let’s start today of with an unexpected photo of Yiannis doing some wiring work in the bar on a January evening. I think he was tidying up the internet line to the modem. This, a few years ago, would have been an unheard-of sight – a modem in the Rainbow Bar I mean. Not so long ago, all there was in there was a public telephone, which was more private than the one in the square, or the one on the corner of the Kali Strata where the bar used to be. There were others, but I only ever used those three. This was a long time ago – when we first moved here in 2002, we had no internet at home, and had to walk down to the Roloi bar in the back street to see another Yiannis and use his internet café at 56kbps dial-up, but we could only do that at times when he’d paid his phone bill. Now…? Well, now, we have 150 Mbs at home, and landlords wiring modems while owning two mobile phones – mind you, one of them is about 20 years old. Anyway, here’s the photo.

And here’s another one taken in the same place. You might order a glass of wine, but you often end up with three free lemons as a garnish. And very useful they are too.

Another magic moment was caught on Sunday evening when Jenine was allowed to attend ‘Boys’ Night’, I cooked steaks, and, while flambéing, brought down the cooker light ’cos it’s only stuck on with magnets and it came from Temu, so what do you expect? It’s the white thing dropping into the frying pan, caught on camera by Sam, I believe.

And just to keep in with the Symi theme, here’s a shot from a walk the other morning. Sunny, as you can see, very green after the high tide, and a pleasant little ramble along a simple lane which always reminds me of walks in the Kentish countryside. It looks like it will be another sunny day today, so later, I may well venture outside for more than five minutes. We’ll see.

Day to day on Symi

Finishing the Weekend

Continuing the brief chat about the weekend… The Rhodes boat on a Friday may as well be called the Symi boat as half the island seems to pop across that day. Mind you, it’s a decent sailing time (08.45) whereas the others are much earlier. It also means you see a fair few familiar faces as you go about your business, and there’s a lively atmosphere on the boat on the way back.

We managed to miss the rain in the afternoon, but only just. Otherwise, it was a fun day with lots of walking as it’s easy to spend an hour walking from A (beyond St Nikolas) to B (Mandraki) without noticing because the ground is mainly flat, and you have a UNESCO World Heritage Site to admire on the way.

So, on returning home… On Saturday, I thought I’d forgo my writing morning and set up the new laptop instead. This is always a journey, and this time was no exception. It took me until Monday to get the email accounts set up in Outlook, despite the details/servers being exactly the same. In the end, I needed the help of my server technicians who were very helpful. Next is to transfer the old email data and files. Other programmes I’ll need to transfer or reload will come to lit in time because I don’t really use anything other than the basics.

Which leaves Sunday, when we spent the day preparing for a logical family dinner. The preparations had begun on Friday with buying some supplies and continued on Saturday with himself making chocolate domes and ice cream, and continued on Sunday with me preparing to do the two other courses. The first was bouyiourdi, which even Sam had trouble pronouncing, but I had no trouble making, and the second was steak and pepper sauce. In between was much laughter, and afterwards, even more as we all watched the homemade DVD of Neil and I in South America from 2007.

It was all very exciting until the overhead, magnetic light dropped into the pan.

And that was the weekend. Yesterday, I stayed in, finished setting up this new machine, did a piano lesson and spent some time at Harland & Wolff. There will be another progress update in due course. While the Titanic is being fitted out, I am awaiting the arrival of ‘Big Boy’, which I will also introduce you to in due course…

You know the boys are in the house when…