I just looked through my photos from the weekend and thought, ‘What on earth…?’ The cover of a new book, a newspaper cutting from January 1893, a shot of the taxi boats in Yialos, a couple of the dinner table at the Taj Mahal restaurant last night, a cruise ship leaving the harbour taken from up here, Yiannis visiting from Vancouver talking to Yiannis from Symi, and an advert for ‘The Midget Razor’ circa 1894. There’s also a goat, a pair of feet that look the wrong way round, and three screenshots from an online book telling me how to perform the vanishing man in a trunk trick on stage, as published in America in 1897. It has been, if nothing else, a varied weekend.
Not that I know much about weekends as you know. To misquote the Alan Parsons Project, ‘The game never ends when your whole world depends on the… sale of a few books,’ the more the better. Talking of which, if you like historical fiction, then some of these books may be of interest to you. Have a click through and browse, and if you want to know more about any of them, simply click the cover and you’ll get the info.
Meanwhile, the week ahead promises to be a relatively quiet one for me. It was 30° at six this morning with 60% humidity, so I don’t plan to travel very far. I have another chapter to write per day, as always, existing titles to promote, and a few social engagements in the diary. Our godson’s coming to lunch tomorrow so there’s a large note by the kettle reading ‘Ice Cream’ as I’ve promised him Neil will make some. We’re visiting his mother on Wednesday for a courtyard evening, shoes kicked off, cold bottle of wine, catch up on news… And it’s the older godson’s 21st on Sunday, so we are going to the Kali Strata Restaurant where his younger brother works so, in a way, we’re all together. Apart from that, expect little news and some odd photos. Talking of which, here are some Symi-relevant ones from the weekend.
It’s Friday! At least, I think it is. When I don’t have Harry for piano twice a week, I lose track of what day it is. It’s too hot for lessons in July and August. We barely made it through June. Assuming it is Friday, let’s end the week with fewer words and more images. Random ones from the past few days, taken at various times and in various places. Have a good weekend.
Yesterday morning. Humidity 70%.Caperi (caper) in flower.Upper Horio
Apropos walls. I went out on a walk yesterday morning and I’d not gone more than twenty paces when it occurred to me how many walls there are in the village. I’ve only been wandering between and by them for twenty odd years, and, of course, I’ve noticed walls before, but for some reason, I was struck by the diversity. This is unlike Neil who was once struck by Castle Bran in Romania, and I mean physically struck when some of the rendering was blown off in the arctic gale that sliced everything in two, including, it seemed, the castle walls. I digress. Here is the wall that started me thinking.
You might note the pattern cut into the plaster, the lines that bother decorate and aid water runoff, I’m guessing. That’s quite common to see on older and newer walls. At the top of this set of steps is an unplastered, retaining wall made, as they all are, entirely of local stone. As you can see, this one has spaces, and I was once told the reason for this. Yes, when the wall isn’t too close to human activity, the holes provide handy nesting places for some birds, and when the wall is close by the road, a handy place for lazy idiots to stuff in their empty crisp packets and/or beer cans, but they are actually meant for scaffolding supports. At least, that’s what a builder chap once told me, and I’ve seen them being used for that purpose. Here’s the wall in question.
Looking at that one makes me wonder how many stones there are in the village. Just about every house, wall, pavement and step is made from local stone, and there must be millions. It’s interesting to think that before they became buildings etc., these stones were part of the natural island. Everything we see around us comes from nature, even plastic (in a roundabout way), becasue as Julie Andrews sang, ‘Nothing comes from nothing.’ We don’t create cups, books, computers, desks, houses, monuments, bridges, boats, planes… from thin air, so every single item on the planet has been stolen from the planet. No wonder it’s getting angry, and heating us to boiling point, and it’s no wonder the world is fighting over what’s left. I digress again. Here’s another wall.
This one was once windows. I mean, it’s the front of a house or courtyard, and the windows or doorways have been filled in by more stones. Looking at it, it might well have been a shop back in the days when the whole village was alive with 35,000 inhabitants, and there were so many small squares, shops, and cafes right up to the top church.
Finally, if you think some of the alleys of the village are narrow, you’d be right. Take a look at this one and try not to feel stoned.
Continuing from yesterday’s discussion about power cuts. I noticed that some people had gone to the trouble to extend the discussion on various Facebook posts, and among them, were some tips on how to ease pressure on the grid, and how to save water. Simply put, don’t use the air con and shower with your laundry, open windows, and rinse, don’t boil, or some such. It put me in mind of what we expected and aimed for when we first moved here 22 years ago carrying only two rucksacks and a laptop. We expected to get ‘back to basics’, and for a while, we did.
Our first rented house had an unusual number of spaces, namely, a kitchen with mousandra above, a bedroom with mousandra above over the bathroom, a large courtyard and a long concrete block that was a saloni. It also came with the landlord’s furniture and objets d’art that were more objets than d’art. The kitchen housed one of those two-ring cookers with fridge beneath and a sink with cockroaches beneath, while the saloni across the courtyard housed a gas cooker with no gas, a dining table, a sofa as welcoming as a prison bed, a window that wouldn’t open, and an original Philo Farnsworth television that didn’t work. (Look him up. It wasn’t John Logie Baird.) It had a water pump that shook the house when you ran a tap, a sterna you couldn’t easily see into, and a washing machine that needed counselling to move on from wash before accepting emptying, with further therapy needed to rinse, and thence, to spin. We washed by hand. Sheets were a challenge.
There was no air conditioning, so we spent lots of time outside in the shade when not working. In fact, the only cool I felt in that first summer was standing beneath the air con in the doorway of Takis’ leather shop where I worked. I often needed three changes of costume per day just at work, so I did that rinsing out shirts in the shower thing because it was only dust and sweat I had to get rid of. We were very conscious of saving water, even in the winter, and wouldn’t have used aircon if the house had any, because we had to pay the electricity bill and we had €300 a month to live off once the rent was paid. The situation’s the same now. Although we have two aircon units, they’ve never been used, and still half of my income goes on rent.
In those days, we could easily hear the power station even from up at Periotisa, and you couldn’t walk by it without a) having to shout, and b) being blasted by the heat of its generators. It’s much better now, quieter, and I imagine, more economical. Yet only occasionally has a meltdown when a mass influx of football fans all switch on the game at the same time as their aircon, while the tavernas are running their cookers, and everyone’s having a shower each, and the fridges and freezers are working overtime. I think it does bloomin’ well, but we can all help by being more considerate about the island and those who work to keep it running.
So, as a tip: open doors and windows to catch a draft, or use a fan if you can, turn off taps when not in use and that includes shaving, gents (thank heavens for commas), cleaning teeth and showering. My routine is ten seconds to get wet, turn off. Shampoo, soap, scrub, whatever. Fifteen seconds on, and that’s it. If you like to wait for the water to run warm, take a bucket into the shower with you and let the otherwise wasted water run into that, and later to use that in the loo. Invent a game for the littl’uns: who can save the most water today? You know, just be sensible, and we’ll get through the summer to come.
Other handy tips and nonsense can be found in any or all of my Symi books, and you can rush to get them on Kindle, Kindle Unlimited or in paperback, but clicking the links at the top of the column >> or by heading to my Amazon author page.
It may surprise no one that one of my favourite Hammer films is Quatermass and the Pit. What’s maybe more surprising is that I can spell Quatermass, and that I know off the top of my head it was written by Nigel Kneale. In the film, scientists and archaeologists are digging up what turns out to be a spaceship at an underground station called Hobb’s End, and a workman forgets some piece of equipment so has to go back down alone. No! Don’t do it! While there, the power goes off, and he tuts, saying, ‘Where was Moses when the lights went out?’
Hold that thought.
My view this morning
There may well have been many people saying just that on Symi last night when, somewhere during the first act of the smash hit comedy, Belgium Vs France, the lights went out across the island. (At least they did up here.) This went on (or off) for a short time, and then they came back on. It always takes a while for the internet router to reboot when this happens, and we’d just got it back and were preparing to watch a new film on Netflix, when it went off again. On off, on off… the power station was under attack from overuse. Too many people using aircon is the easiest place to lay the blame, though there are no doubt others.
There will be letters in dispatches and on social media, some offering disgruntlement, others offering solutions they have no idea how to implement. Some will be laying blame at the door of the electricity company for having an old power station when they know nothing about its working (as don’t I, except I know those who work there work bloomin’ hard), while others, such as myself, will simply adapt and survive.
It’s a shame that the entertainment was disturbed for those watching young men in shorts running around and falling over in distress every time someone came near them, but that’s how it is when you rely on electricity for your entertainment.
As you rely on it to stay cool – which is where I start to have an issue. If the island is selling itself as the new St Tropez of the local seas, then it’s got to be up to the self-set challenge, right? I mean, new marinas in small bays, posh sun loungers at between €5.00 and €25.00 a pop (includes free bottle of water worth €0.50), and if we’re going for swanky restaurants, boutique hotels and shops, and if we’re outpricing Mr and Mrs Average in favour of Lord and Lady Over-Demanding-Twat, then things have to be in place to support it all. By things I mean, infrastructure: enough power supply, enough water, more medical staff, you know… things.
“Come to Symi for top-class cuisine, park your super yacht and take no notice of the plebs eating cake in the dark.” Maybe that’s the new advertising slogan for a place that is reaching further than its ability to cope with what it wants to grasp.
Actually, this was my view because the rail is at the perfect height to obscure everything when one is seated.
I don’t know the answer and I don’t pretend to. This, as usual, is only my early morning, first-thought jotting, but I am pretty sure we’re going to see more of these blackouts. Or not see them – if you see what I mean. As Adriana wrote, this is only July 1st. We have yet to suffer the hordes of car-bringing, aircon-guzzling visitors of the big European holiday month of August. ‘Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night,’ as Bette Davis said when playing Margot Channing in All About Eve.
Anyway…
Back to that thought you’ve been holding. Where was Moses when the lights went out?
That line has stuck in my mind since I first watched Quatermass and the Pit when I was a preteen. Mainly, because I thought it was a ridiculous expression. This morning, though, I looked up where it might have come from, and I found the fascinating answer. Firstly, it’s a joke (allegedly). Where was Moses when the lights went out? Answer: In the dark.
Everyone fall down in hysterics and roll around on the floor like a recently tackled football diva. Yawn.
Alternatively, and to my mind, more interestingly, how about: Vaudeville, 1901 and Bert Williams. More details? Try this: It’s a 78 rpm, Mono, Single-sided shellac 10” recorded in Philadelphia, USA, on 11th October 1901 by, and I quote: … the best-selling black artist of the pre-Great [First World] War era. However, the song was first published in 1878, and it was that which led to the creation of the alleged joke. Bert’s version had different lyrics.
If you’re as nerdy as me about such things, you can find a lot more detail here, including the story told within the song.
A story that, usurpingly, is all to do with a blackout. Get used to it.
The only solution I can offer is to sit outside and enjoy the evening blackout in your courtyard or on your balcony where, later, you can watch the stars.
