As you can see, a cloudy start to today.

For the first time since whenever, I have a day with nothing in my diary, nothing in the typewriter, and nothing much to do around the house. That’s because I’ve finished the latest MS and sent it off to be proofread, so I can’t work on that, there are no piano commitments, dinners planned, drink meet-ups or anything like that, and I don’t know what to do with myself. I think I shall do some research for the next book. I had an idea yesterday, and I need to look into whether it’s going to be viable as the basis for a story set sometime in 1893. So, there, that’s my morning organised.

I was hoping I might receive some ‘You have a parcel’ notifications, because, according to tracking, I have a couple of things which are nearly here, and the Blue Star you saw in the photo above is the first boat in what seems like ages. I had a message about one delivery a few days ago and it was the one that says, ‘Delivery failed.’ This usually means the thing has arrived at the hub in Rhodes, but as it’s a Symi address, it automatically registers as ‘unable to deliver’ because, I assume, the system only accounts for Rhodes addresses. They have street names there, where we have very few here. Usually, when ‘Delivery failed’ appears, it means the thing is on the next boat. I.e., this morning’s.

Delivery rarely fails here, and that’s thanks to the excellent postal system and workers, and the conscientious courier staff. Often, I’ll get an automated message from, say, ACS, saying I have a delivery, and then, a personal text message from the ACS pickup point in Yialos. I’ve been sat outside having a coffee before and one of the post office folk has come past and told me I just had a delivery come in. On one occasion, we were having lunch at Meraklis when the courier came past, waved hello, vanished, came back a minute later, and put my delivery on the table.

However, if the rain starts and is as bad as predicted, I shall be staying home where it is currently, permanently night. That’s because the shutters are closed and the heavy curtain up, and if I want to see daylight, I have to stand in the courtyard. So, now, locked inside my dark office, beneath the one lamp, because I need to change the main light fitting to a new one, and with one bar on the heater as a half-hour treat, I shall start investigating the facts behind my next possible work of fiction. have a good weekend!

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Things around here are starting to get festive. There’s the Christmas tree in the Rainbow bar and the lights around the village, and now, we have splashed out on a new tree too. For years we were dealing with one we’d had since before 2007. I know this because on New Year’s Eve that year when Neil broke his heel, we had to go to Rhodes on 2nd January, and he ended up in hospital for an operation. The next day, or day after, I had to nip back to Symi to collect some things as he was going to be there for a week or more. Lefteris gave me a lift up from the hydrofoil, I dashed around the house putting away the decorations, packing bags, and sorting out work things via emails. That left the Christmas tree which I picked up, baubles and all, bunged in a bag and shoved in the mousandra. Before I knew it, I was back in Rhodes. The next year, we simply took it out of the bag and bunged it in a corner, and there you go. Anyway, last year, we’d had enough of the poor old thing, so we bought another one from a cheap online shop. This arrived in a pizza box. You put together the stand (four pieces), placed the round, shiny, horrible, plastic thing over the top and let it drop. Hey presto! A Christmas tree. It was so light and portable, we took it to Athens where Neil ended up wearing it on his head. We left it behind.

This year, we have a stunning arrangement, bought locally.

Mind you, that’s a close-up shot of it. It’s not exactly worthy of Syntagma Square, but it’s cute and does its job.

The Christmas programme from the town hall is also out. There will be a succession of carol singing, dance shows, markets, and other events in the weeks leading up to St Vasilis Day on January 1st. I’ll put the info at the bottom of this post for you to read or translate.

I have a busy day today what with a physio session later this morning, an online meeting at one, a piano lesson at three followed by the final part of the Mozart series with my student who is then staying for tea so we can watch an old Treasure Hunt or something. All that after getting up at four because I was in bed by nine last night. As for the weather, it’s back to normal, though only for a couple of days. Apparently, another wet and wild weekend lies ahead.

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Much inspired by our new Christmas tree, Yiannis at the Rainbow Bar has invested in one of his own.

Calling into the corner shop last night, I was as impressed as always with the Wonder Wall; the place where any child of any age is able to pass by and add their contribution to modern art.

And after admiring that, I admired the village Christmas lights from a different angle and was mightily impressed.

In the rest of our little local world, the rain has passed by, for now. There are still scenes of destruction coming out of Rhodes which was particularly badly hit by the recent storm, and there is more to come this weekend. In the meantime, we should enjoy the respite. It means we can open some shutters and brighten the house which has been in constant darkness since Friday. The washing is in the machine, the doors are open to let some air through, and I may even venture out for a walk, the first since I got back from Rhodes. There’s not a lot more to tell you about that trip, but if I remember anything, I’ll come back to it.

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The thrilling saga continues… I went out to eat on Monday night, over the road to the Wok and Roll. (See what they did there?) I’m not usually one of those who share photos of their noodles and things, so I shan’t, but I had Singapore noodles for my supper, and very nice they were too.

Further down the pedestrian street, Koukos was doing its usual roaring business. I’ve known this place for over 20 years, and it gets bigger each time I see it. It’s well worth a visit if you can ever get in, and looks a lot prettier than my photo picks up.

That was Monday. On Tuesday, with all day to myself, I started off with a walk around the peninsular as it is so much easier to get your steps in on Rhodes than it is on Symi thanks to it being mainly on the flat. I think I did 15,000 steps on Tuesday, in the end. Breakfast was at the Plaza where, for €12.00, you can have as much as you want from the buffet. Two cups of coffee, a plate of all kinds of cooked things, and some yogurt, toast, fruit etc., would cost more than €12.00 at a café, so that, to my mind, was a bit of a bargain.

Shopping was on my list of things to do; some new t-shirts and a hoodie, to start with, so I set off to the usual stomping grounds. Everything, it seems is grey. Blandness is making a comeback this season, with the dreary black and lighter shades of mediocrity being the in-thing for men. The trend has been set by H&M and their collection of drab, with the theme of off-white banality developing into the risky world of beige over at Zara. Even Pull & Bear have taken the bromidic path of couldn’t-careless-ness black, grey, beige, and ‘once might have been cream,’ coloured everything. Trousers, shorts, hoodies, jumpers, coats… Yawn. At least in the men’s department of H&M one can take a moment to ponder the ancient monuments.

Luckily, I found some colour over the rainbow at Terra Nova, where there, among the grey, were some offerings for men in green, purple and blue. So, with three new T-shirts and a maroon hoodie, I set off up to my next hotel, the Castellum, there to check in early (10.30) so I could make use of the facilities, dining room, bar, you name it, and the room which as usual, was clean and spacious. I set to work on the book for most of the rest of the day, apart from taking a lovely long walk in the afternoon to see if I could find my jeweller open in the Old Town, because I’d brought over Sam’s necklace to be repaired. The jeweller wasn’t in, but then I didn’t arrive there until two in the afternoon, so thought I’d try the next day. Thus, it was back to the hotel for more food and reading, chat and hanging out as I waited for Neil to arrive at some point around midnight.

The ‘what I did in the holidays’ ramble will continue tomorrow.

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Here I am, back after my week off. The reason I was away all week was because Neil was coming back from Scotland and was due to land around midnight on Tuesday. We’d booked the Castellum for Tuesday to Friday, and it occurred to me that I might as well use the room on the Tuesday, as we were paying for it, and Neil would miss out on the included dinner (and bar). For me to be there when he arrived, rather than the day after as originally planned, meant I had to go to Rhodes on the Monday. Here, I had a choice of boats: the very early morning Blue Star, or the 16.20 Spanos. I thought, ‘Hang the expense,’ and bought a Spanos ticket to avoid a 4.00 am start.

And then we had a storm.

That photo isn’t of the storm, just the winter weather, but because of very high winds, the boats got messed up and it turned out the Spanos was put back to 17.30, but the Blue Star had been put back to 14.15 (later changed to 14.45, and eventually came in around 15.00). I decided to switch ships and go earlier in the afternoon. It was only an additional cost of €5.50 what with my discount card. I could have exchanged the Spanos ticket, but never got around to it, and I’ll get some of my €5.50 back from the government’s M.A.N. scheme, so… whatever.

However, I decided to keep the Monday accommodation cheap to save money, and so, booked into a place called Marnin Apartments, which is not far from the Plaza, off the pedestrian street, and cost me only €25.00 a night. This was for a single room (bring your own towel) with not many mod cons – it’s more of a backpacker’s hostel type thing, but clean, safe, and handy for the new town.

This was my room, where the view from the bed was interesting, and the view from the loo was too.

Bear in mind that by booking the Castellum through its own site cost me €57.00 per night. Now bear in mind my cheap night elsewhere. €25.00 for the room, €20.00 for dinner, €12.00 the next morning for breakfast at the Plaza, which also comes to €57.00 but without any entertainment bill, like a couple of glasses of wine. I might as well have gone straight to Castellum, but if you want somewhere cheap to crash for a night to or from the airport, then look up Marnin Apartments.

As I write this on Sunday, ready for Monday, we’re under a huge raincloud. Rhodes has been flooded in places, roads have been washed away, and the airport was closed for some time. Maybe it still is. We left on Friday in t-shirt weather, but it changed dramatically on Saturday. The weather is forecast to be very wet and somewhat wild all week, so if you are heading this way, check before you set off. I’ll be back tomorrow with more tittle-tattle about our recent adventures in Rhodes which included clothes and Christmas shopping, some medical checkups (because at €40.00 for a consultation you might as well), and plenty of eating, drinking, playing crib, and walking.

You can find the Castellum site here.

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