I am told that tonight is the Symi Shrimp Festival. Held annually up in the village square, there is usually traditional costume, music and dancing, plus free Symi shrimps provided by the municipality. I’m not sure of the start time.

For my part, I’m afraid I am not a great lover of these delicacies, which you can find on other islands under their own local names. What I should say, I suppose, is they are not fond of me, and that’s odd. When I was young and we lived by the sea in Littlestone, my brothers and I would go shrimping with our nets, bring home our catch, and our mother would cook them for us. We also had whelk sellers in those days and other seafood available from peripatetic vendors on the sea wall selling small cartons of shellfish eaten with a wooden fork. (Not to mention the toffee apples and Punch & Judy shows on the beach, deckchairs and a classic 1960s amusement arcade, and this was only Littlestone. For a reference, see my comedy novel, ‘Remotely’.)

However, we grow up and things change. When I first came to Symi in 1996, I went to a village taverna (now long gone), and one night, I thought I better try the shrimps everyone was raving about. So I did. They were okay, but I found this taverna’s version strong on rosemary, and the whole dish rather rich, and I only got through about half the plateful. That night, I woke up around 3.00 a.m. with the urgent need to be in the next room. So urgently, in fact, that I didn’t have time to turn on the lights. As I was in a studio with only one room and a bathroom, and I was in bed, you can guess which room. About half an hour later, I gave myself the all-clear to venture back to bed, which I did via the fridge because I had a dreadful thirst. There were two cans of Fanta lemon and two bottles of water in the fridge, so I dived in, only to see by the light, that I had taken on the look of something from the Quatermass Experiment. We’re talking blotches, and welts, and red patches, my head was dripping with sweat, and something was clearly wrong. Two Fanta lemons and a whole bottle of water later, and I crawled back to bed with visions of airlifts and saline drips.

Eight o’clock came, and I woke as a completely new person, purged, refreshed, and feeling very lucky to have survived. Hence, these days, I can not bear to go near even the smell of Symi shrimps. It’s not localised either. I once had oysters at Selfridges, and was ill for two weeks.

However, if you are coming to the festival, or simply eating this local delicacy while here on the island, you probably know you don’t have to peel the little blighters. I’ve seen people try and do this, and to tell the waiter to Foxtrot Oscar when he explains you eat them shell and all. They are not always that cheap, because there is only a limited supply harvested once a year in spring, I am told, so it’s up to you whether you buy a load from a taverna only to take them home and feed them to the stray cats. Something else I’ve seen done.

I will be venturing out today, though, for the first time in a few days, because I am feeling 90% back to no-cold status, and Neil and I are having lunch with Harry in Yialos. That’s after we’ve paid the tax bills, the accountant, one of the health insurances, and picked up a couple of packages. Needless to say, I shan’t be having Symi shrimps.

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Feeling much better this morning after two days on the sofa doing very little but drinking lots of vitamin C stuff, water, and not much else. So, normal service is being resumed, and being resumed early, because it was too hot to sleep for long. I can do that later.

Here’s a rather gloomy ramble I was wondering about during the small hours. I read a report the other day that on one day of the week, 11,000 cruise ship tourists were deposited onto the island of Santorini for the day. This caused a debate among top officials, and the mayor of the island later declared that as of 2025, the number allowed on the island per day would be limited to 8,000. (In 2021, the census population of the island was put at 15,480.) As you can see, this photo taken from Ekathimerini shows just how pleasant it is to be a tourist in such a situation.

https://www.ekathimerini.com/news/1244697/santorini-concerned-about-overtourism-as-11000-cruise-travelers-flood-the-island/

Other news outlets gave the story different titles such as, ‘Tourism Armageddon,’ ‘Santorini Overrun with 11,000 Cruise Ship Tourists,’ and ‘Greek Island Invaded.’ That last one was the yUK rag the Daily Express who apparently have a thing about islands being invaded. To me, the situation looks very much like rats leaving a non-sinking ship to experience real life on a Greek island. Ha! As if.

Yes I know, everyone has to make money, and we only have a few months per year in which to do it, but that’s the problem isn’t it? “To make money.”

Back in 2007, Neil and I were lucky enough to visit Machu Picchu and, later, the Galapagos Islands, both, even then, victims of their own success. Or rather, the success of those who make money. Various guides told us how the authorities wanted to restrict the numbers of tourists because they were damaging the local ecosystem, but the countries/areas/locals had grown so used to and dependent on the income, they could not. The end result? Well, it will be something like this:

We have a gorgeous fishing bay on our quiet island where no-one is very well off, but where we now have the means to learn what’s happening in other parts of the world. Hey! Over there, they’ve opened up their village to tourists. Let’s do the same, and we will have no more money worries. They can stay at Manolis’ house, and eat at Aris’ taverna, and we’ll set up a new bar, so they don’t worry the old boys at the kafeneion.

Time passes.

Hey, Manolis’ place is full, we need to build another, so we’ll buy out Kostas’ land, and he can move his goats elsewhere, up the hill maybe? Then, we’ll put up sunbeds so British tourists can complain about the cost. Nice new TV by the way.

Time continues to pass.

We need your allotment for a car park because Stelios’ is doing car rentals now, oh, and we need to put a fire truck in there because Kostas’ goats have eaten all the vegetation and the land’s not being irrigated properly, and we need to meet European safety standards, so the new hotel can be built by foreign investors. But it’s okay, the sunbeds will stay at only €5.00 each for the day. Unless you’re at the front of the beach, in which case, it’s €15.00 because we have to give a backhander to the authorities as we’re not supposed to be putting anything on the beach at all. Watch out for that jet ski…

Time drags on.

Sorry, Maria, no room at the inn, it’s full of Northern Europeans paying over the odds for a studio, and €25.00 for a sun bed but that does include a 0.50c bottle of water. The mountain burnt last year, but we’re going to build another hotel on it anyway. Ah, there’s the cruise ships coming in. That’ll be 11,000 souvlakis and chips, Christos, get the fryer on…

And so the nightmare grows until it inevitably has to go bang.

I’m not saying that’s what will happen to Symi, but history does repeat itself because we humans are dumb animals who don’t learn. Once, it was boat building that made the island wealthy – the goal of everyone it seems. However, they cut down all the trees to build the boats and make the cash. Then, it was sponge diving that brought in the money and attracted 30,000 people to live here, but they took away all the sponges to sell them, and they were never replaced. Now, it’s tourism which (mainly) feeds the livelihoods of the residents, but what happens when tourism destroys the island, or people no longer come because of finances, wars, whatever? What comes next? Another decline? If so, this time the mansion houses will stand empty and rotting because the holiday-homers who once owned them can no longer afford to keep them. History repeats until it implodes, and it starts with 11,000 experience-hungry tourists per day.

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W.S. Gilbert knew what it was like.

When you’re lying awake with a dismal headache, and repose is taboo’d by anxiety,
Iconceive you may use any language you choose to indulge in, without impropriety;

[From Iolanthe, 1882]

That was me last night. After passing a wonderful (not) day on the sofa in front of the fan. I dragged myself off to bed at around 21.30, only to lie there, head thumping despite the Depon, nose bunged despite the Ronal, and a few other remedies knocking about inside, and I lay there. And lay there. And turned, and lay there, and finally dozed off, and woke up again more or less straight away, because the fan had gone off. A power cut. So I got up and sat on the balcony for a while, and stared at the stars, and went back to bed, and finally must have dozed off again around midnight, only to wake again at one, one-thirty, two-twelve, and all stops south until I gave up at 4.30.

Nothing better than cold water when you’re dry and bunged, and the experience is enhanced with a vitamin C tablet in it, all followed by a ‘nice cup of tea.’

One of the reasons I find it hard to sleep sometimes isn’t to do with the body crying out for a rest, it’s to do with the mind waking up just when I don’t want it to. Last night, after watching the stars, I went back to bed thinking, ‘It’s all very well these rich people buying holiday homes they only use a few weeks of the year. It’s all very well local authorities allowing great big new complexes to be built, but not insisting a percentage of them are used for social housing or rent, and it’s all very well having your fancy dinners and smart hotels, and mansion houses, but we’re all in the same darkness when the power goes off.’

I really wasn’t in a good mood.

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Sneezing, head full of cold, sore eyes, not a lot else to talk about, woe is me, not man flu, I’m pleased to say, but might as well be, could be too much dust in the air, or an allergy, but one of those non-drowsy tablets and I’m asleep for a week, tennis elbow getting better though, sun’s out, book to read (book to write), things to do, but will be done slowly, day at home, will be fine tomorrow, meanwhile, random photos is all I got, mate. Goodnight.

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I often prepare Monday’s blog post on a Sunday morning when my mind is more lively because I’ve had a rest from writing for a day and have things on my mind that need putting on virtual paper. Well, today is no exception as I’m writing this yesterday, but I don’t really have much to say, apart from this:

Malaphors. A malaphor, apparently, is the unintentional combination of two idioms or clichés that results in a humorous statement that doesn’t make a lot of sense. My husband comes out with them all the time. One can hear him singing in the kitchen, ‘’Cos you’ve got to have toast, toast, toast,’ a combination of ‘Faith’, by George Michael, and (A little bit of) ‘Toast’ by Streetband (Paul Young, 1978).

Another of his is, ‘Grandma, we love you, the one with the waggly tail.’ This is a malaphor created by mixing ‘There’s No One Quite Like Grandma’ by the Saint Whocares School Choir, with ‘(How much is) That Doggy in the Window?’ made famous by Patti Page in 1952.

I’ve used these things for a character in one of my books. The chap in question mixes his lines of poetry, such as:

‘Let us go then you and I to a place where the wild thyme grows.’

He also says, ‘Once upon a midnight dreary, the owl and the pussy cat went to sea.’

I think it’s fun, and as that ‘Once upon a midnight…’ comes from my favourite poem, I thought I’d use it again and make a complete sow’s purse out of a sleeping dog, mix things up, add in a bit of Wordy’s Worth with some Lewis Carroll and see what nonsense I can come up with to get the week off to a dodgy start. So, here, before you get to a couple of random photos, is a creation which I have titled…

Malaphorious

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
I wandered lonely as a cloud.
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore
That floats on high o’er vales and hills.
All mimsy were the borogoves, when all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden daffodils, and the mome raths outgrabe.
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door,
Beside the lake, beneath the trees, fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Only this and nothing more.”

Thank you, and have a nice day.

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