Well, I say lots… Today is a big day in the church calendar. I’ll let Jenine explain:

15th August is one of the biggest days in the Greek orthodox church calendar…the day that the Virgin Mary is celebrated. Everyone takes their holiday at this time, a chance for the city dwellers to visit their families on the islands and have a merry time. Yesterday was the evening service and tonight the dancing and barbeque feast. Chronia Polla! (I borrowed that from her Facebook page.)

That’s one thing, another is Upload Day, which means, for me, uploading the final files for my next book. More news when I have the link to its Amazon page.

Also today, I have the mundane bits and pieces to do, like paying the electricity bill and paying the mobile phone bills. Allegedly so much easier now it’s done online. Years ago, we’d have to take the pieces of paper down to the harbour and hope to find the appropriate office or bank open and without too long a queue; always a bit hit and miss. Now it’s a case of:

Open online banking, “Password expired, Please reset your password.” “Enter existing password”, think you know it, get it wrong. Try again. Get it wrong. Look in book, find a password, enter it, get it wrong. You have blocked your account. No, you have blocked my account… Find phone, make phone call. Press one for this, two for that, three to get ready and four to go to English. Get cut off.
Start again; one, two, three, four… Listen to Mozart’s 110^th symphony recorded underwater and played back through a tin can and a length of string.
‘Your call is very important to us.’
Hayden’s 177^th symphony played on a kazoo and a Stylophone.
‘Your call is very important to us.’
Wagner’s Ring Cycle.
‘Your call is…’
Apparently not.
Phone finally connects. It’s not in English but it says, press one to be ignored, press two for Bach’s entire output, press three for… ‘Kalimera?’ Oh joy. Explain problem in great depth (we’d got locked out of internet banking, in case you were distracted by the adagio and forgot where we were), and receive reply, ‘You will need to go into your branch.’
Luckily we have one on the island, so… down 400 steps, into bank, deal with issue, up 400 steps. Please enter your new password.
Doesn’t work.
Anyway… That’s not happened, I was just filling in white space.

So, the celebrations for the day started last night with church services, and by the sound of it, many people thirsting after righteousness and partying the night away until half three. They will continue through the day, no doubt, and culminate this evening at the church on the Pedi road.

If you are driving there (and I don’t advise it), you might like to check out the new speed reduction measure at the junction. Apparently, this appeared overnight the other day (you know what I mean), and so far, seems to be doing its job.

It’s just this sort of photo that accounts for news in my life. I am so provincial.

Share on Facebook

I predict a random week, hence four random photos this morning. I don’t know why I am predicting this, probably because I have woken up with no idea what to put on this page, so you’re getting random thoughts. Having said that, the day has started with no random tune in my head, whereas most days recently have started with a song or a piece remaining on my mind after waking up, and being there for no reason at all. Today is an earwormless day.

As for the first random photo… The Blue Star leaving on a calm sea a few days ago.

There are a few things on my ‘to do when I get around to it’ list for this week. Mostly, these are jobs which have been waiting to be done for ages yet take only five minutes to achieve. Example: change the light fitting in the laundry. (Turn off the power, unscrew the old fitting, replace, and enjoy light for the first time in a year.) Another is to tighten the legs on the piano stool which is becoming as wobbly as my rendition of Chopin’s Raindrop Prelude, and another is to run the hoover over the office carpet.

Random photo number two, a view looking down the Kali Strata.

I’ll be taking that route tomorrow on the way to the harbour where we have to do a couple of random things. (Note: remember to see if the dreaded tax returns have been done yet.) Talking of downtown, the festival continues with concerts and dancing in the town square and elsewhere. For the first time in ages a couple of the bars are still open when I get up at 3.30, which means someone is having fun and someone else, hopefully, is making money. There are plenty of boats moored at the end of the harbour we can see from up here, and although I don’t go down there much, it looks like Yialos is keeping busy thanks to the many day boats and visitors. All good news.

Random photo number four is one of Neil’s and shows you the colours of most days.

I see in the national press that the great sunbed debate rages on: space on beaches, how beaches are never private in Greece, as all are publicly owned, and some places are taking up too much space, blah-di-blah. That’s one to keep an eye on. As for me this week, I have very little planned apart from the usual: get up, splurge some random words here, get on with other less random words for seven hours, take the rest of the day off to read. I am intending to release a new book this week – details will follow – while working on the next one because that’s my job. Otherwise, hopefully, a lunch with the godson, some piano playing, a short walk or two, and that light fitting to change, though that has waited a year, it can wait a little longer We shall see.

Final random shot, the sunrise at Pedi. Another Neil shot – oh and that’s something else on my list of ‘definitely to do’, I must upload next year’s Symi Dream calendar because Neil has chosen the images, and likes to get it online around now. Again, I’ll post news when I have it.

Share on Facebook

Had to put on a t-shirt this morning. Only 24 degrees in the courtyard. Mind you, there’s a stiff breeze and it it’s 3.30, so that might have something to do with it. As we head into the weekend, I have a day ahead doing what I like to do: writing, eating, playing the piano, and watching films. The weekend promises more of the same, with nothing major planned for a few days.

To see us into the weekend, there are a couple more photos taken when wandering aimlessly around the village. The narrow lanes, a Turkish-looking casing around what I assume was once a courtyard a door, a lane showing the old Vs the renovated, and a shot of a ship. (Make sure you don’t get your vowels mixed up on that one.) There was a barquentine in view yesterday. The Star Clipper from Star Clippers Cruises carries up to 170 passengers and 72 crew, was built in 1992, and looked majestic. My photo doesn’t do it justice, of course. It would be good to one day see one of these tall ships with its sails up, but there’s not much point in them doing that when moored off an island for a day.

It’s strange, talking about a ‘weekend’ because my weeks don’t have ends or beginnings. I suppose I am still of the Monday-to-Friday mindset ingrained over X number of years working back in the yUK, so I still call Saturday and Sunday a weekend. In Greece, the week starts on a Sunday, I am told, so the weekend is really the week beginning. Whatever, every day is the same for me, summer and winter, and that’s just fine. As the dowager says in Downton Abbey, ‘What’s a weekend?’ She says that because, before the growth of the middle classes in the late Victorian and early Edwardian period, and a change in working hours/days, there was no such word as weekend. If you went to a country house for a visit, you did a ‘Friday to Monday.’ If you were of any other class, you probably worked seven days a week, perhaps with a Sunday morning off for church, and that was that.

That’s one of the things I’m constantly aware of when writing stories sent in 1892, as I am doing these days. No such word! I have to keep checking, as best I can, when certain words came into general use, and weekend doesn’t appear until after the turn of the century. There are others. I tut greatly when a character in film or writing uses the word ‘okay’ and the piece is set before WWII – I heard it in a Victorian drama recently; they should have known better. There are many others, and some are surprising. ‘Acerbic’, for example, sounds like an old word to me, but apparently, it didn’t come into general use until the 1950s. ‘Paperwork’ is another. It’s a minefield (1908), but being me, it’s a thing I enjoy researching.

On which note, work calls, so I will leave you with one of Neil’s shots from Pedi yesterday and wish you a good Friday to Monday.

Share on Facebook