I suffered one of those embarrassing moments yesterday when I completely forgot I had an online meeting. Neil left in the morning to head to Rhodes (with everyone else on the island judging from the line of cars queuing to get on the boat), and I got on with some work. Later, I had a physio appointment, then did some shopping, and came home to be home alone. Lunchtime came, and I found a series of ‘The Amazing Race’ I’d not seen, so I put that on while I had my lunch, and then pottered about washing up, and wondering what to do for the rest of the day, and then thought I might as well go and turn my computer off… And that’s when I saw the whacking great reminder note by the PC, and the time, and rushed to my Teams things only to be 25 minutes late. Ah well. I’ve rescheduled.

Feeling terribly guilty, I went about the rest of the afternoon, reading, watching a documentary, and I contemplated going for a walk, but knew I would be walking down town today and possibly back up depending on the size of the parcel I have to collect, so I wasn’t too bothered. The Blue Star came back just after five, and I stood on the balcony and watched the cars coming from it. It took about 15 to 20 minutes for them to snake around the jetty and reach the main road. I mean, where do they all come from and go to? And why on a Wednesday? After that, I decided I needed a new toaster, so I popped down to the household shop, made my choice, paid my money and was on the way home when I was called into Rainbow for one, and ended up chatting to David and Clare for about four more. The defence rests.

Later, at home, having checked out and tested the new toaster (all good there), I settled in to watch… What? Browsing Netflix, I saw something that acted as a ‘trigger’ I think the modern term is. You know how you see trigger warnings on the screen before a TV show saying things like, ‘Language’ (not a silent film then), and ‘Product placement’ (because tins of Coke and jars of Marmite might cause someone to leap from the nearest cliff). Well, as I was browsing I was triggered into heading to YouTube to find recordings of the 1980’s show, ‘Treasure Hunt’ with Kenneth Kendal and Annika Rice. Don’t ask me why. It was probably the most entertaining couple of hours I’ve enjoyed in a long time. ‘Are you in the helicopter? Can you hear me?’ ‘Hello?’ ‘Can you hear me?’ ‘Is it Queen Elizabeth the First?’ ‘Are you in the helicopter?’ ‘Hello?’ More is planned for this evening, after the piano lesson and after H and I have watched the first part of a three-parter about the life of Mozart.

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Some village photos today as I am in something of a rush. Well, as much of a rush as anything around here is rushed. Neil’s off on his travels in a minute, I have some small jobs that must be done ahead of an appointment at 11.00 and another none at 13.00 (online) when I do my twice-a-year checkup with my finance advisor which sounds very grand, but is basically, “Yeah, your pension’s doing alright, speak soon.” After that, I will have the house to myself for a couple of weeks, during which I will wander about on a daily basis taking photos of things like this:

Actually, I think Neil took these photos last week, but things haven’t changed much in the last 80 years let alone the last seven days. I chose today’s three because they are all looking down alleyways, and, let’s face it, that’s what you do in the village; you look down alleyways.

I’ve also looked at the weather for the week ahead and we might, finally, get some rain at the weekend. That’ll be the first time since, when? May? (Apart from a short shower in September, I think.) So, the wild plants and hillsides will hopefully be appreciative.

there, told you it was a quick chat today.

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The owl was with us again yesterday, this time at around 13.00 and closer to the house than before. The photos again aren’t great, because I currently only have my phone, but if you look closely, you can see him on one of the metal rods that are meant to support a vine in the garden beneath us.

The garden belongs to the house but really to the abandoned apartment beneath us. The last time I went in there was to see why the water was draining from our limited tank up here. The then landlord had some workmen in, and they were noisily doing something in the kitchen (which is beneath ours and has no ventilation or natural light). After an hour of banging around, they left, and our pump started running. Ten minutes later it was still going so I went to have a look only to find they’d left the front door wide open, and there was water spewing from some connection in the kitchen. I had to call in Symi Property Services to disconnect the downstairs water from our tank, else we’d not be able to use and water. That done, I closed up the flat below, and no-one has been in there since. I hate to think what it looks like now. But, the garden looks clear and tidy because Sam did it for us last week.

Last night, we went to Scena for something to eat and for Neil to see Jenine before he jets off to Scotland for two weeks, and I found I was sharing my table with a ghost.

Also yesterday, H came for piano and we’ve arranged to watch a recent dramatization of the life of Mozart that is now on a streaming channel we use. I’ve not seen it, but apparently it’s good, and it’s over three one-hour-long parts, so we’ll start after piano on Thursday. By then, Neil should have sailed to Rhodes, gone by car to the airport early on Wednesday for a 6.30 flight, arrived in Edinburgh by 11.30 (local), used a bus or tram to reach his city centre hotel ahead of catching a bus to Inverness on Friday morning. He’s in for some fun weather. I shall be here, locked in my eternal battle between having to type to earn money and typing paining my bad arm. Hey ho! At least I have Mozart with Little Mozart to look forward to.

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That was the weekend that was. I can’t for the life of me remember what I did on Friday. Not very much I expect, but we had the boys around on Saturday night for a roast dinner cooked by Neil, homemade ice cream for afters, and a round of a very inappropriate card game. During all of this, we chatted, and the brothers got along so well that it was charming to see. Even when one left to make a rendezvous, the other stayed and we had a good old long chat about more or less everything.

Rendezvous. Now, there’s a word. In Greek, it looks like this: Ραντεβού. But, in Greek capital letters, it looks like this: PANTEBOY. To our silly minds that reads as ‘Panty Boy’, the new superhero from Marvel, who is the same age as Peter Parker, but who wears only his turbo-charged underpants. It’s all he needs. Here’s an unrelated photo:

I’m not sure what this is going to be, and I assume seating, but it’s been sitting there like this for a while now. It could be the beginning of an unsuccessful outside toilet arrangement, or maybe another waiting area for the train, because that’s never going to get up the hill so there’s no point in rushing to finish the job. It might end up as planters for plants, but I can’t think why, and the bus doesn’t stop there either, so… Maybe it’s a piece of municipal sculpture awaiting the last tranche of funding money so they can cap off the steel bars. Who knows?

What I do know is that the local little owl was out and about again during the day, and this time, he/she/they/it/who/what/etc. was on the house in front and I took that very bad photo of him/her/they/whom/which/etc. I’m sorry, but I don’t know the ‘preferred’ pronoun of an owl. I don’t really get the idea that people can ‘prefer’ to be grammatically incorrect. It rather reminds me of when being gay was a ‘preference.’ That ran for a while along with ‘lifestyle choice’, but ultimately (sensible) people came to realise it was not a choice, because who would choose to be verbally and physically made fun of everywhere from on the street to on TV sitcoms? So, the owl is simply an owl and whether it’s a she or a he, I know not, but as there’s only one, it’s certainly not a ‘them.’

On which note, I will leave you with a view from the top of the village.

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While the festival continues at Panormitis, let me show you some photos from the southern side of the Pedi Valley, a place that is not much visited, but which is very historic. These are from last Sunday, of course. I’ve hardly been anywhere else since, apart from up to the top of the village and back down the road on my vague nod towards getting some exercise.

It’s typical. I was sitting on the sofa last night watching something with my mind half on what I might scribble here today, and I came up with a great idea for something fun to talk about, and now, in the not-too-cold light of day, I’ve forgotten what that was, and I didn’t write it down. It wasn’t this day in history, although now I’ve mentioned it, it was 17 years ago today that we were at Machu Picchu and had a blessing by a shaman in the cloud forest at night by a fire, all said in a dialect of Quechuan with phrases we had to repeat and were so bad at, Neil is probably still married to a mountain and I’m permanently hitched to shrubbery.

It’s also the day that, back in 1938, my grandfather was ordained in York Minster. He was an interesting chap, my grandfather. Born in Harlow, Essex in 1905 into a Baptist family, he went to the University of London, got married in a Wesleyan church when he was 26 to a woman ten years older than him, attended theological college in Edgbaston, and was a vicar in Hull, then a naval chaplain in WWII, got blown up in the Thames estuary, and can be found in various war records in Alexandria and the Middle East. I have a coin he found in Palestine at this time, a thingy from 440 to 400 BC Athens. I can’t remember its name. Yes I can, it’s a tetradrachm like this one:

Anyway, he was also a highly talented pianist and one of the top five amateur organists in the UK at some point, and I was told he was asked to appear in Romeo and Juliette after Zeffirelli heard him orate in Canterbury Cathedral or something, but he couldn’t go and do the film (as Friar Lawrence) because of his, by then, CofE work. I don’t know if that’s true, but I do know that he shares a birthday with Neil.

There you go, random thoughts to do with November 8th. Perhaps I should write a biography about him like my biography of Uncle Bob which you can find in this currently running promotion of non-fiction books…

Or which you can find right here, add to your Kindle collection and read over the weekend.

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