Continuing the water watch theme for the week, let’s talk sterna. I don’t mean the plural for sternum as in breastbone, but the water chambers found beneath Symi houses. Before pumps and pipes, water would be drawn from this well by hand, having been collected from the roof during the winter and any other time it rains. What you had by the end of May was what had to last you until October, or until the next heavy fall of rain. It was important to keep these chambers clean and dry, and the well opening was often in the courtyard, set in an alcove in the wall and painted white for cleanliness. Now, we have pumps that are either submerged into the sometimes-massive chambers and other times, placed above ground with the pipe down near the bottom of the sterna – but not too close to the sediment that gathers there.

These sterna can be large. The one beneath our house is the size of my study, a good 12 feet by twelve and probably just as deep. The only problem with it is, it’s broken, and has been for some years. It was invaded by the roots of a fig tree some years ago now, and to repair it would have meant knocking down a wall, taking out the pump, draining what was below the root line, killing the fig tree (which we and the neighbours did with glee), and then relining the whole thing before refilling it. Expensive, disruptive and complicated. Instead, our landlord gave as a 500-litre water tank to sit on our bathroom roof.

That’s all well and good, and worked fine once we put the pump in it because he’d overlooked that minor fact, but it means we can be limited to how much water we can use. As the mains supply feeds the tank three mornings per week, it’s not usually a problem, but at Easter and other long holiday weekends, we can run dry. If we can’t fill up between Wednesday of one week and Wednesday of the following, for example. We can’t collect rainwater because the opening to the tank is too narrow. So, we’re forever on water watch, and when there’s a bank holiday, I pop onto the bathroom roof to open the tank and peer in, then give my verdict as to whether we can shower or flush that day.

People often ask if the water on Symi is safe to drink, and they get various replies depending on who they ask. Some say yes, but others say, since the desalination plant was installed, no. I say it depends on what’s in your sterna. Our tank is quite clean (being plastic there’s nothing growing at the bottom of it), and yet now and then, the water runs a strange orange colour from the taps, as if it’s run through a pocket of rust, which it might have done, but surely it would always run that colour? Odd. Anyway… We use the water for washing up, cleaning teeth and so on, and also use it for ice as I am sure, do most businesses.

The other water we have a lot of is the sea, and that’s why you have a few images from various angles showing my view of the sea, taken from my neighbourhood. (Except the last one.)

Share on Facebook

Continuing the water theme, let’s talk bottles. I shudder to think how many plastic water bottles are used and thrown away on the island every day. I know in our household we get through about three a day between us, at least, so I hate to think what the bars and tavernas are using. Good for the suppliers, but as these things are not recycled and end up in the landfill tip… But what happens to the bottles is not today’s topic.

Opening the darn things is. Over the last couple of months, there’s been a takeover by bottles with a new design. Someone’s come up with this great idea of designing the tops so they don’t stray from the rest of the bottle, thus, keeping them from being lost or discarded in the sea, or on land, come to that. All well and good, maybe. As is making the bottles from thinner plastic, which also seems to be happening in some cases. However, they’ve also made the things more of a challenge to open. Come to that, they’re not that easy to close either. After lunch on Monday, as we left the Trawler, I realised my backpack was wet underneath. I sniffed it to make sure it wasn’t cat pee, and couldn’t work out how it got so wet. (Had it been a cat, it would have been one with an excessive bladder.) It wasn’t until I reached the taxi rank that I remembered I had a bottle of water in there, and although I thought I’d secured the lid, they are now designed to fox even the most highly qualified physicist, and it had leaked.

You see, now, there are two dangers inherent in the seemingly innocent bottle of bottled water you can buy anywhere on the island. First, opening it. The caps are now attached to the collar by a very strong isthmus of plastic, so, once opened, they don’t drop off. This has made them (some brands at least) more difficult to open, so you have to grip more tightly, and as the bottle-body plastic is flimsier, as soon as you’ve got your cap released, you’re met with a waterspout to rival Geneva. Endless amusement when in a café and the waiter doesn’t open the things for the customer.

Then, presumably refreshed, dried off and with the flood removed from the tabletop, you come to put the lids back on. This is more of a challenge because, thanks to the new design, the top doesn’t always fit. It’s something to do with the way it joined to the bottle. You fold the lid over to find it’s slipped down the neck, so you have to wiggle-waggle it back up to get it into the right place. It’s only about two millimetres, but it’s not as easy as it sounds. There’s a ‘thing’ that keeps the top folded back, and if this slips below one of the ridges on the screw thread, you have to pull the cap out, lift it, place it back in, fold it over, and then you’re free to tighten it. Or not, because often it’s hard to see if you’ve seceded and you end up with a wet bottom. Or your backpack does.

I should draw a diagram, but I won’t, and I could advise that when you get one of these good/bad new bottles, you can always use a little force and rip the blooming top from the bottle and use it like a normal one like we used to have in the good old days of two months ago.

There, only I could fill a whole page talking about plastic bottle tops.

By the way, if you want to recycle your plastic water bottles by refilling them, thus, using fewer, there’s only one way I can think of to do it. As far as I know, there are no state or business-run ‘refuelling’ stations on the island (as there are now in some places in the world), but there is a natural one. Take a walk up to the monastery on the side of the hill overlooking the Pedi valley, known locally as ‘To Vrisis’, and you can fill your bottles from the natural spring there.

Share on Facebook

Good morning, I hope you had a good weekend. I had a productive one, thank you for asking, though it started as a cloudy one. It has been very humid of late, which is what I assume caused the cloud you can see in the photo, because it was gone a couple of hours later. It’s all very well when it’s 40 degrees and dry, but when it’s only 30-something and damp, it’s a ball game of a different colour. Nothing like a mixed metaphor to start the week. Still, after the Saturday morning blimp, everything settled down into a warm weekend, with fans on when needed, and plenty of staying in the shade.

I was able to get a few odd jobs done. You can see one of them over on the right of this page. I put up the widget that lets you link directly to Neil’s 2024 Symi calendar. When you are ready to buy one or two, all you need do is click the image of the cover and you will head straight to the page at Lulu where you can place your order.

Another triumph of my weekend was to fix the light in the laundry. This is one of those jobs that has been waiting to be done for around two years, but which only took five minutes. Having turned off all possible fuses via the three main switches, and turned off the other one in the workhouse just in case, I took down the old light fitting, trimmed the wires, bunged on a new fitting, screwed in a bulb, and Bob’s your uncle, Fanny’s your maidypard, let there be light in the laundry again. So thrilled was I that I popped down to the Rainbow bar for a celebratory iced tea, and, on returning home, spent some time standing in the laundry flicking the light switch on and off and marvelling at my achievement.

While there, I thought it was high time I did something about the smell. Ever since we moved in here, there has been a lingering whiff of waste, to put it politely. Sometimes, it’s not so much lingering, but loitering, and at other times, it’s positively squatting. Clearly, there is an issue somewhere with the plumbing. I make sure the traps are watered, by which I mean, I regularly run water in the sinks which are otherwise little used, to ensure the U bends have water in them. That hadn’t helped. Then, about two years ago (only six years after first noticing the whiff), I took my courage in both hands and bought a new contraption of white pipes that join plughole to outflow pipe, and set about replacing the old one. As per usual with this house, there was an issue. The outflow pipe is meant to be slightly larger than the sink waste pipe so one fits in the other, and they are the same size, so you can’t join them. I found a workaround, fitted the new contraption and sealed it so there were no more holes where the whiff could escape. To be sure, I wrapped the joins in gaffer tape.

Still, the stink persisted, being worse when the wind was in a certain direction and even worse in the summer. Some days it was fine, and those are the days you say, ‘That’s sorted itself out, good.’ Of course, it never does. So, on Saturday, I addressed the back of the washing machine. When I’d fitted that in a couple of years ago, I’d packed a plastic bag in the gap between the drain pipe and the machine’s water-out pipe, but I noticed this had come loose. So, I pulled out the washing machine and the plastic bag (plus a roach which was investigating there – a clue to how the padding may have failed), and restuffed a new seal inside one pipe and around the other. As of 3.30 this Monday morning, I can report, no whiff. I even popped in there last night just for a sniff and could only smell washing powder. Possibly, a success. Time will tell.

At the risk of sounding overly manly with all this DIY business, and at the even greater risk of boring you to tears with my achievements, I’ll let you get on. I was going to take a look at the new plastic water bottles and their impossible lids, but I will have to leave that for tomorrow. Oh, there are so many exciting things to chat about… but they will have to wait.

Share on Facebook