I wonder what percentage of day trippers to the island get to visit the village? Maybe 5% per day? I have no idea. I wonder how many of that, let’s say, 5% do more than sit in the village square, and how many actually find the museum? Fewer will see sights like this:

A classic upper-village ‘tunnel’, built, I was told, mainly for stability during earthquakes, but also to give more room above. The first house we lived in here was right up at Ag Triada and the back terrace was laid over just such a tunnel as that one. We didn’t use it much, but when we did, we’d sit out there at night and watch the bats and owls doing their thing overhead.

The houses in the upper village tend to be built close to each other with narrow lanes in between, but now and then, you come across a square. Some are bigger than others, some are quite grand, and they hark back to the busy days when 25,000 to 30,000 people lived on the island, mainly in the village. There were (forgive me if this is wrong) something like 13 parishes churches in the village, and more or less each one would serve a part of the wider community, thereby making the smaller and larger squares a meeting place, or simply a place to escape the narrow tunnels and on-top-of-one-another living. In Alamina Square, for example, just below Ag Athanasios, where the millstone is, you can still see the kafeneion, and the ruins of a couple of tavernas, with a shop at the bottom of the steps, and another over the lane, still with its wooden frontage, though now badly painted.

Anyway, I don’t know why I am rambling through these lanes, it’s just my way of waking up, I expect. I want to get on with chapter whatever, before we head down to Yialos for lunch with my piano pupil, whose final lesson will now be on Monday and will be more of a recital than a lesson. Before then, there are watery things to do such as showers, washing and watering the garden, and all that has to be done while the mains water is on, so that we start the weekend with a full tank, and keep our fingers crossed that it’s enough.

So, happy weekend to you and happy Independence Day if you’re into all that.

Well, I never. I was looking at my photos trying to find inspiration, and the title of a film came to mind, ‘My life in Ruins.’ The film is known as ‘Driving Aphrodite’ in the UK for some reason. Set in and around Athens, it’s a Nia Vardalos rom-com, and cute to watch. It came to mind because the first photo I saw was of a ruin up in the higher part of the village, and I thought I’d put that up here today. Then, I went to my One Drive photo collection, and it has this thing where it says ‘On this day…’ or similar. There, I found the book cover for ‘Bobby’, and on checking the release date, I discovered that I published the book exactly one year ago today.

So, as that sounds like the perfect excuse for a plug, here’s the blurb, and then I’ll get back to the usual.

However, he came from the underclass of the homeless, drag queens, and illegal lovers. There at pivotal moments of the gay 20th century, this previously unknown gay man’s richly fascinating career has previously slipped under the radar but is now getting the limelight it deserves.

Click here for more details (Amazon)

Other images in the collection for ‘On this day…’ included lots that Neil must have taken because they are too good to be mine. Hot sunrise over Pedi, anyone?

This morning feels cooler as there’s more of a breeze, but it’s still a case of stay out of the sun, put on a hat and drink lots of water. I think I got through over four litres yesterday; at least two large bottles and two small ones, one of which had an electrolyte tablet in it. I ordered some from Skroutz.gr (because they are so much cheaper), they came from Poland, and the tube is labelled Elektrolity na kaca. A little detective work tells me that’s Polish for ‘Electrolytes for a hangover’, not that I have one, but at least ‘kaca’ doesn’t, in this case, mean what it means in Greek. On which note, here’s another sunrise, and on with the day.

I slept far too well and long last night and have still woken up needing another five minutes. Must be the heat? Then again, it’s not been any different to other years, heat-wise. I was chatting to a neighbour yesterday who was saying she expected the high temperatures to have started weeks ago. It’s usually hotter in early June, she said, and it was last year. It’s still only 37 in our courtyard in the afternoon, and we’ve known it be 40° or more. Even so, the hot weather is no excuse for this…

I don’t mean the chap on the left who’s either gawping, fantasising or considering throwing up, I refer, of course, to the unnecessary amount of flesh on the right. All the way up the Kali Strata with her BF cow-towing along behind with the bag of discarded clothing. I once did that for Neil – follow along behind picking up his discarded clothes, but then, it was Brighton Pride, and he was doing a turn on a float. This is a different matter. This is a village. At the risk of sounding like a sitcom character with a catchphrase, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, would you walk through the charming village of Little Bottom Under Wallop with your big bottom walloping about for all to see? This is how a lady walks through the village:

And now, I must away to deal with watery things. We now have a young soldier living below (as I might have said), so our already restricted water supply is being stretched to the limit. (We ran out completely on Sunday, midday.) No-one’s fault, but we have to be careful, so I am having my shower, watering the garden, doing the washing and other similar things in the morning while the mains is on, so we still end up with a full tank at 12.00 when it stops. (We can fill the tank on three mornings of the week, only.) The tank just about lasts two days if I don’t have another shower and leave that for those who need it, like the barmen and soldiers. The landlord is arranging for a second tank to go in so we’ll be okay, and for a solar water heater to be wired up, so the chap below can have control of his own hot water, because otherwise, he only gets hot water when we turn on our hot tank… Confused? You will be after the next instalment of Soap. Which is what I must go and use now, while I can, and after that, sweeping the courtyard, watering the plants, putting the washing on, and having a shower. At last!

Woke up stuffed up with hay fever. In a grumpy mood, and computer things are trying to take over my life. Sounds like a line spoken by a character who wears a tin foil headpiece and thinks Area 51 is listening in, but it’s actually spoken by me every time I turn on my laptop. First of all, my anti-virus protection software thing acts more like a virus than a virus does. No matter how many times I go to settings and disable notifications it finds a way of popping up another notification about something I’m not interested in. ‘Your AVG Secure VPN is active, secure your settings.’ [Changes settings to turn off my VPN unless I say it can be turned on.] ‘Your AVG Secure VPN is inactive, activate it here. [Turns off notifications for this product.] ‘Your AVG Secure VPN notifications have been turned off. Turn them on here. [Gives up and moves on.] And breathe.

‘Let Co-Pilot help you…’ What? Who’s… What is this fresh hell? Microsoft’s new Co-pilot, ‘Let AI do your living for you.’ No thank you. I’m going to write now, so I open Word and my file explorer so I can find the last chapter and have a re-read. ‘Let Co-Pilot find your last chapter for you.’ No! I’m quite capable. Quite capable of searching out the Co-Pilot button and switching it off. (Sometimes it’s not hyphenated, as in, Copilot, and it looks like it’s saying copulate, or is that just me?)

‘Your Copulate has been switched off. You can turn it on…’ No.

And so, to work, but first, a quick check on Facebook in case there are any free advertising opportunities.

Well, there are plenty of adverts. ‘Sell your book with AI.’ ‘Let AI live your life for you.’ ‘Write a book with AI.’

WTF? (Stands for What the Faulkner?) That last one is a definite no. I mean, how insulting can a machine be? How may times have I seen an advertisement for some book-writing AI software? It’s everywhere and it’s foul. It’s like saying, ‘Hi, you want to have a baby? Let AI do that for you with Microsoft’s Copulate, it’ll even bring it up for you so you can get on with the housework and Martini mixing.’ Write and publish a book in a day with AI…’ No. Just no. I’d rather spend over 500 hours doing it myself while AI sees to my household chores, exercise and tax bill, but can it do that? Can it buffalo.

Here’s something you can all do for us impoverished writers who now have to contend not only with the prejudice of not having a ‘real’ publisher, but also with computers that will write books for imbeciles, the lazy and the talentless until the whole world is dumbed down to the level of Trumpery. When you see an advertisement on social media saying something like, ‘Let AI write a book for you’, do what I do, and report it as offensive, because, frankly, it is.

Anyway, on that wrong side of the bed note, I shall now get on with chapter 11 without the use of AI, Co-pilot or anything else that is designed to take the living out of life. Oh, hang on, there’s an AVG notification to swat first… Oh look, a laughing dove…

Last day of June, 6.50 am, 27° degrees, 20% humidity. Yesterday afternoon it was 39°, and the ten-degree difference is noticeable. Do you get used to it, you ask? Yes, in time, though the older you get, the more you feel it, and it depends on the humidity. Dry days are easier than humid ones, but all are there to be lived to the full, only, sometimes slower than usual.

In garden news, the roses are rosing again, and we have both orange and red plants about to bloom. I took a dodgy picture of the new orange one the other day…

I’m waiting for the mains water to be turned on right now. As you might recall we only have water three times a week. This means we can only fill up our 500 ltr tank three times a week, and once it’s full, it’s full, so we can’t store any more. The tank usually does the two of us for three days if we are careful. Last week, the owner was preparing the downstairs flat and had a vigorous cleaning person in to get it ready. She clearly didn’t know about the water setup, and that the flat also uses our tank, and we ran out of water on the Thursday afternoon, meaning no more cleaning or flushing until Friday. On Saturday, a new chap moved in downstairs, and he too, didn’t understand the setup and we ran out of water on Sunday lunchtime. I had to go down there and explain the situation in my best Greek. So, now, we have expensive (by comparison) bottled water to use until we can properly flush, wash and clean ourselves again, but that should happen in the next hour. Thank heavens it’s not a bank holiday. The owner has told me he has asked a plumber to put in a larger tank or a second one. You’d be surprised how much water you use, even when being careful. 500 litres sounds like a lot, but it isn’t.

Anyway… Anything else? I just saw an enthusiastic visitor put up a social post declaring they had booked Symi for next May and what was the best time to book the ferry? I couldn’t stop myself from writing, ‘April,’ because… well, calm down, it’s a way off yet. Today also marks the penultimate piano lesson of… well, of ever, I suppose. Potentially this will be the second to last time I sit down with my boy, and we ‘do’ piano. There’s to be a vague kind of grade four exam part one, with some scales and other necessities, followed by the first movement of the grade five sonata. Part two will happen on Thursday when it will be the last lesson, possibly ever.

I expect the boy downstairs will be grateful. Mind you, I got the impression he was a military person and so, should be out six to four. When I saw him, he had a short back and sides haircut, was young, fit, wrapped in a dressing gown and had just got out of the last shower the water tank could sustain. Oops. Mind you, the gown looked like silk, so perhaps he’s a trainee officer. He’s only here for nine months anyway, by which time he might have just got used to us oddballs upstairs. Poor thing. Anyway, moving on into the day…