Woke up this morning at three to find it 26° in the courtyard as opposed to 31° as it has been (42° in the afternoons), and to hardly any wind, after the force fives of yesterday. That info, like today’s photos and text, is apropos nothing apart from trying to raise a smile.
Kind of how I’m feeling today
We’ve probably all heard of ‘misheard lyrics’, when you mishear the words to a song, and from then on, can only hear the wrong words. Sometimes it’s years before you realise what you thought was being sung was actually something entirely different. What I hear around the house is something slightly different to that, as my husband has this knack for producing song mashups. This is where you take parts of one song and put them with another, and I have to admit, on occasion, it works rather well.
Here’s an example. Imagine the song by George Michael, ‘Faith’ with the chorus line, ‘Cause I gotta have faith’ and the syncopated repetition that comes after it.
Got that in your head? Good. Now cast your mind back to Paul Young when he was in Streetband, and their 1978 hit, ‘Toast’ with its groundbreaking lyric, ‘Put the grill on, Slip a slice under, And have toast, A little piece of toast…’
Put them together while you are pottering around the kitchen, and, if you’re Neil, you get, ‘Cause you gotta have toast, toast, toast.’
Toast with bacon
That’s one. Here’s another.
‘I saw the sign,’ a song used in Pitch Perfect, the comedy about a cappella singers in the USA. Mix that with a bit of Bob Marley, and you have the mashup:
‘I saw the sign, but I didn’t shoot the deputy.’
I know, makes no sense, but it keeps me smiling.
I did a similar thing in a romantic mystery I wrote called ‘The Blake Inheritance.’ In it, one of the characters mixes his poetry, so his says things like:
‘Let us go then you and I, to a place where the wild thyme grows,’ which I rather like, though Eliott and Shakespeare might not.
Another one I rather liked from the same book:
‘One upon a midnight dreary, the owl and the pussycat went to sea.’
And, ‘Curiouser and curiouser, said the spider to the fly,’ which isn’t poetry, but by now, we’re so far down the rabbit hole, it doesn’t matter.
Chilliwatch update
Let’s take it a stage further and I’ll give you a challenge based on a parlour game I’ve seen on TV where you have to sing one set of lyrics to a completely different tune. (This one’s for you, Louise.)
Imagine, remember or listen to, ‘Do you hear the people sing,’ from Les Miserables:
Do you hear the people sing?
Singing the song of angry men?
It is the music of the people
Who will not be slaves again!
Got that tune in your head? Right, now think back to the stage show/movie Grease, and Stockard Channing singing:
There are worse things I could do
Than go with a boy or two
Even though the neighborhood
Thinks I’m trashy and no good…
Excellent. Now put the two together and sing ‘Worst things’ to the music of ‘Do you hear.’ It fits rather well – to start with at least.
Anyway, there are worst things I could be doing than putting up this nonsense at 3.30 in the morning, and I should go and get on with them. I have the first in a new series due for publication early next month and the MS is going off to the proofreader in a day or so, so I need to get back to my final read-through before it goes to the abattoir of editing.
To complete my week of one-word title blog posts, I came up with the original title, ‘Friday’ because that’s today, and I couldn’t think of anything else. I thought I’d have a quick glance through any photos I’d taken this week, have a ramble about whatever comes into my head while trying to remember what I’ve done in the last seven days, and see what comes out…
Day to Day
First, the mundane: Gone to bed early (9 pm), got up early (currently 3.00 is the get-up time), written a few chapters, edited a few more ahead of having a new book proofread next week, done some freelance writing work, and dealt with blogs and admin. Thank you for the kind messages in the comments on Facebook and via email. Sorry I can’t always reply to comments, but I usually manage to reply to emails, even if only briefly. I particularly liked the one that came in this morning. “I have missed your rants more than words can say.” Thank you, Marilyn – I’ll reply to the email shortly.
On Monday, our godson came around with his work shirt because it needed two buttons sewing back on. Half an hour later, he’d learnt how to do it himself. (Last week, it was ironing, and next week, we’ll be addressing how to starch a wing collar. Only joking.) You may know if you’ve seen my FB page that H and I had an adventure in Prague earlier this year, and the family had one in Athens at New Year, and these trips will, I am sure, be topics of future rambles. Meanwhile…
View from Scena.
Also this week… Met friends at Scena for a chat and catch up, heard about the terrible fires in Rhodes and elsewhere, did some more research on hansom cabs and other matters, and went ‘Ooh’ at Neil’s photo of a fan tube, or a tube fan, or something I can’t remember the name of. He took it while snorkelling in Nimborio.
Also – huge excitement – we bought another scooper after eight years because the old one broke. Handy for sweeping up dead cockroaches after you’ve sprayed them or whacked them with a shoe, but here’s another tip: If you shoe-whack a roach that crawls out from under your bed late at night, and you can’t be arsed to get up to clean it up, leave it there beneath said shoe, and you may discover, as I did, that come the morning, the ants have removed half of it. Leave it another few hours, and all trace of it has gone, and so have the ants. How, why and where to, I care not, but they make very tidy housekeepers.
Not a roach, clearly. A 2.8-kilo chicken (14.00 euros) which will last us all week.
And to finish this incredibly exciting and very random post, how about a Monty Python favourite:
Spam
It continues to come in. Pointless, desperate but often amusing, because of what bots and real people think I will be hooked with or tricked by. Here’s a run-through of some of today’s attention-grabbing titles, requests, questions and adverts.
Do you miss New York bagels? Never had one, so, probably not. I used to like the ones from Dalston’s Ridley Road Market and the 24-hour bagel shop, but I’ve only been to Old York twice, never New York. Steel and Wire Rope from JFY? Why? Lisa sent me a new message from the YouPic team because I once visited a website to look at images for book covers, and since then, Lisa hasn’t been able to live without sending me a daily email from Gothenburg, Sweeden.
My opinion is important to Facebook, apparently, and it can stay that way and undiscussed. Apparently, I have a new girl waiting for me at ‘Cheaters’ and she’s a hottie – a rather subjective statement, I think. ShoutBooksy will advertise my novel to 20,000 readers for a fee, but anyone who *puts stars* around every *sentence* in an *email* deserves my non-attention, as does anyone who *starts* an email with *Hello Dear.*
A visit to the supermarket.
One person noticed me on LinkedIn, so I am clearly not that linked (what is it, anyway?) Oh, a second new message from Lisa, the same as the first. I can get a *FREE* Costco gift, because, they say, I am a lucky user, except I am a LUCKY USER in bold all caps, and it sounds like they are shouting at me, someone who has never used Costco in their life. My opinion is again important to Facebook. My opinion? Stop sending me spam.
I have a chance to receive a free portable power station, but, sadly, I have nowhere to keep another Seabank 2 since I installed a free Dungeness B, so I’ll pass. Walmart has knives. Well, who’d a thought it?
Then, I have things to drink before breakfast, a new fat-burning diet (quite happy with my fat, thanks), Aegean have extended a holiday I didn’t know I was having, Netflix has an offer, except I suspect it’s not really Netflix, a super sexy Milf has her sights set on me, there’s something totally vital to see concerning CI valves, and several messages written in code.
Here’s a tip: I use a program called Mailwasher. I can see all this spam in the programme, delete the ones I don’t want before they get downloaded to my PC, and then wipe them off my servers, so no harm done. I can also report them as spam and/or bounce them back. Saves a lot of time, and makes for safer email checking.
That was my week that was, and from Monday, I’ll repeat the process. To finish:
The other morning while standing on the balcony listening to the world at 3.00 am, through the sound of a superyacht’s chugging generator came the screech of an owl. This made me wonder if I could mention on the blog the wildlife I’ve seen from the house. I don’t mean the ‘Another hundred people just got off of the boat’ kind of mini wildlife we see from up here when the day boats come in, or the train which weaves around the harbour like a caterpillar, or even the speedboats that skim across the sea like water boatmen, but the various real-life, wildlife animals. So, even though I don’t have any suitable photos to use for illustrations (I’ll have to search for and use some from elsewhere), here’s a rundown of the diverse Symi wildlife as seen from a village balcony over the past eight years.
Four-legged
It’s not uncommon, particularly in the spring, to find a random mule tethered in the wasteland right below the house. We have all kinds of plants growing down there at that time of year; grasses, poppies, tall green weeds, Michaelmas daisy things, the ‘Judas plant,’ and other plant things I don’t know the names of. The random mule chomps away, leaving behind deposits of fertiliser in what seems a fair and natural exchange. Around springtime we also find the occasional sheep wandering past. There are usually at least a few of these invasions as a ewe and lamb become separated from the flock, or, having been brought down to graze on the edge of the village, make a run for freedom and explore the lanes and views in the manner of bewildered tourists. At least the sheep don’t ask the age-old and vague question, ‘Which way to the church?’
Now and then a stray goat may make an appearance down our side alley, and climb over the opposite wall to take up a pose of the neighbour’s outside bathroom, but we’re more likely to see sheep, for some reason.
Also in the four-legged category, I could list the rats that play in the pomegranate tree next door and occasionally wander closer to our home. One day, I must tell you about last year’s house rat, the upturned piano, and the heroic capture of the dear little thing Neil engineered with a crutch and the front wheel of Harry’s bicycle. Oven gloves and Tupperware were also included, but that’s for another day.
Cats, obviously, are the most common visitor to the neighbourhood. In full throat in mating season, stalking the rats in the tree, digging holes to leave deposits, and hunting the birds with all the success of a Tory government trying to find a benefit of Brexit. We have lots of cats on the island.
Not outside the house, but one of Neil’s photos from a while back.
Two-Legged, Land-Based
I mentioned tourists, and we’ll often see day trippers who have broken from the herd and struck out for freedom. Usually, this specimen is caught standing in the lane below with a mobile phone in one hand, head in the other, and pointing their Google map to where, apparently, there should be a road. They move on after a while, but if they return, we sometimes ask if they are lost, to which they reply, ‘Which way to the church?’ (Which one? There are, allegedly, over 360 on the island.)
Also seen passing on two legs are the boy next door, always very quietly if at night, and with a friendly wave if in daylight hours; other local folks on their way to work through the shortcut from the ‘main’ road to Kali Strata; the neighbour taking his daily exercise, and other such reassuring local sightings.
Chickens and cockerels. Kind of two-legged, semi-land-based aviators who live around the dustbins up the road. Last year, a hen led her very young chicks down to the wasteland and over the broken wall into the abandoned garden next door, and then, couldn’t get the things out because they were too small. We took it upon ourselves to feed them from on high with seeds and cucumbers and watched the chicks grow up until, without so much as a thank you, they left home.
Two-legged Aviators
Far more interesting, for me as a once-member of the Young Ornithologists Club, are the birds. Sadly, my membership expired in 1973, and I don’t remember the names of half the things we see, so excuse me if I get them wrong. When I was a YOC member, something I always wanted to see were ravens. (I must have been into Poe from an early age, because they fascinated me. Perhaps I’d seen the Roger Korman film with Vincent Price and Jack Nicholson when I was eight, I don’t know…) These days, we see ravens all the time; croaking like frogs, which is what I thought the sound was when I first heard it not long after moving here, flying upside down when showing off, and, not so long ago, swooping so close to my head as I stood on the roof, what’s left of my hair moved in the draft.
Not sure…
Also in the big bird department, we often see buzzards or eagles over the windmill hills and Pedi Valley. We have a pair of kestrels nesting just up the lane, there are seagulls over the harbour, but not as many as you might think, and the little and scops owls that sometimes sit a few feet away on the telegraph pole. In the middle-class-neighbourhood range, we have the collared doves and the pigeons, the blackbirds who nest in the pomegranate tree despite the rats, and a blue rock thrush or two. In the more mundane department, we have sparrows. In fact, sparrows are two a penny around here. You could say they are going cheap. (Like the gags.) Then, there are the European serins, all yellow and grey, and other small, noisy birds like wheateaters, swallows and martens. Recently, we’ve had a hooded crow or two, which I thought was unusual. These are the birds that wake you up early in Rhodes where they are everywhere, but I don’t remember seeing or hearing so many here until recently.
The top view of the last eight years, though, was a hoopoe (above). This was in 2020 when we were in lockdown and the wildlife had started to reclaim the village because those pesky humans weren’t out and about. There were more birds near the house, and more sheep, actually, and one day, while standing outside watching nothing taking place below, a hoopoe flew right past not five feet away. Had I been a train enthusiast and the bird a Mallard, I’d have blown a gasket with excitement, but I’ve never seen a duck in the village, nor a 1938 A4 class locomotive, come to that. I did hear a duck when we first moved in and thought it quaint that someone should keep such birds up here, but it turned out to be the man next door clearing his sinuses by sniffing up and expelling water through his nose.
The little owl next door
Insects, Lizards and Others
I shan’t go into the insect class in detail, because I can’t. There are too many, but among the creepy-crawly, highly-industrious insects and others you can expect to find not far away are cicadas, locusts, moths, butterflies, spiders (yes, I know, not insects but…), ants, snakes, salamanders, lizards, mosquitoes, beetles, and some other things I’ve forgotten about because, frankly, it’s far too early in the morning and I wish I’d never started this exercise. So…
Yes, there is plenty of wildlife to see on Symi, and you can often see it with very little effort. Apologies to those wonderful critters I’ve missed off the list, and thanks to whoever I took the photos from.
I’ve often thought about having a t-shirt made saying:
Yes
Cold
Same as summer
These are the answers to the three most common questions asked by new visitors to the island.
Do you live here?
What’s it like in the winter?
What do you do in the winter?
Winter on Symi
Between Neil and I, we have worked at the Rainbow Bar in Horio for nearly 19 years. I started there in September 2004 helping out for two weeks while Yiannis’ son went back to university. That two weeks turned into two months, and then twelve years, then Neil took over after closing his shop. During that time, we have met hundreds of new people, some day trippers, some longer-stay visitors who then come back, and some who have come here to live. Just about all have been interested to know more about island life, and on finding a local captive to interrogate, let loose with their questions. This is natural, of course, and understandable, and when we’re exploring other places, we’re also interested in the way of life. So I’m not knocking it, but after all this time, it becomes a little repetitive.
‘Do you live here?’ is an honest enough enquiry, though I have been known to reply: ‘No, I commute from London, but it’s worth it.’ People have a natural curiosity to know more about the island, and what better way to find out than to ask a local? Mind you, not everyone bothers to listen to your answers.
Also winter
You know, that’s something that bugs me, and it doesn’t apply to visitors asking, ‘Do you live here?’ It applies to people all over the place, here, there and abroad. What is it with some people who ask questions they clearly don’t want the answer to? I have a few examples of things that bug when it comes to being on the receiving end of a question, and these monsters fall into these groups:
Ask and interrupt. You begin your answer but have only reached halfway through the overture, set-up, or introduction depending on whether you’re a musician, dramatist or academic, when the asker asks another as if they weren’t really interested in the first place. If that’s the case, why ask?
Ask and talk about themselves. This is a classic, and Willy Russell brings it up in Shirle Valentine when she points out how men turn conversations to themselves. Roughly: a woman will say I like Thursdays, and the man will say, Do you? I like Wednesdays, and suddenly you’re talking about him. Well, it works the same with many people. ‘What’s it like in the winter?’ Cold. ‘Oh, I don’t mind the cold. It was always cold when I lived in…’ And that’s that.
I call it CQD, and I know several people who have it. QCD, by the way, stands for ‘All Stations: Distress’ in Morse code (the pre-SOS mayday signal). Some say it stands for ‘Come Quick Distress’, and I can support that, but for me, it also stands for Compulsive Questioning Disorder.
Still winter
Then, there are those with the inability to recognise to whom a question is directed. You’re sitting in a group, someone looks you in the eye and asks, for example, ‘Do you live here,’ and one of your number will answer from left field, sometimes even from the next table as if they didn’t deem you worthy of answering the question clearly meant for you.
Here’s another one that makes me shudder internally. You’re walking back from the shop with your non-eco-friendly blue carrier bags bulging with six everyday items which these days cost six day’s wages, and you pass the café tables, as we must to get home, and someone will say, ‘Have you been shopping?’
‘No, actually, it’s a severed head.’
Worse is the non-asked question, i.e. ‘Been shopping I see.’
‘I must. How else will I collect enough plastic bags to wrap over the heads of the inquisitive and seal with gaffer tape until the inanities cease?’
Others of this ilk include, ‘You’re not drinking?’
‘I am. This is a glass, and in it is water. The glass travels from table to mouth and bit by bit the liquid level goes down. Thus, it’s safe to assume, I am drinking.’
‘So, what do you do in the winter?’
Yes, winter
No matter how much we’d all like to say, ‘None of your business. What do you do in the winter, big nose?’ for the sake of politeness, you come up with a stock answer and list the things most people do most of the time no matter the season. All rather prosaic, but honest. The winter questions suggest people can’t understand why anyone would want to be on a Greek island for any other reason than taking a holiday, wallowing in the sea, or spending two weeks discussing sunbeds. Either that, or they assume we’d only want to live here in the summer before buggering off to the drab drear of the yUK for the worst months of the year. Of course, we live here in the winter, it’s our home. What do you do after six months of alleged summer at home in Surrey? Do you say, ‘Come on Brian, summer’s over, let’s get back to Greater Manchester.’? Odd.
Seriously, it’s nice that people are interested, and questions are simply an opening gambit, so I can’t knock anyone for asking them. It’s human nature and that is that. To be fair, it also works in reverse, and visitors might like to create their own t-shirts with the replies:
Two weeks
Yes thanks
Anastasia’s
This is in answer to the most common initial questions asked by people who live here. How long are you staying? Did you have a good journey? Where are you staying? It’s all code for the real question, ‘When are you leaving?’ but no-one puts it that way. Well, I might if someone asks too many inanities of me.
Quess when
What’s the answer? You may ask. For my part, it’s easy. When someone hasn’t taken their pills and runs off a stream of ‘Do you…’ ‘What’s it…’ What do you…?’ ‘How is it…’ I now simply point them in the direction to my Amazon page and say, ‘It’s all in the books.’
Continuing this week’s theme of one-word titles for blog posts, the word of today is ‘sunbeds.’ It seems to have been the word of the season so far with visitors and locals alike endlessly discussing the things at the bar and on social media. Everyone has an opinion, it seems, and when talking about beaches, lots of people have advice on what ‘they’ should do, what ‘they’ should provide and charge. Some aren’t happy with what ‘they’ are providing and for how much, and how many ‘they’ have now got on their beach, while another ‘they’ have this, and wasn’t it better when ‘they’ did that? And if only ‘they’ could do this. Whoever this ubiquitous non-gender specific ‘they’ is or are, they are not going short of advice, that’s for sure.
Of course, I have no photos of sunbeds to use as illustrations, so you will have to make do with some old, random shots with the sea in them.
The last time I used a sunbed was pre-2015. Having decided to take a Sunday morning off, the two of us packed up a beach bag—you know, shoved everything in as though we were going trekking for six weeks—and walked down to Pedi to claim a free sunbed at Apostolos by 9.30. The intention was to spend the morning on the beach pretending we were on holiday, stay for lunch and for me to catch the 14.30 bus back up to get to the bar for work by three. I lay down on the sunbed at 9.45, woke up at 11.45, and walked home. Not because there was anything wrong with the thing; ‘they’ had provided me with a decent one, but because, frankly, there are always better things I could be doing than lying in the shade doing nothing. On which note, why aren’t they called shade beds?
They are not for everyone, that’s for sure, and that’s partly due to the techniques that must be mastered before successfully using one. Getting onto one of the things is tricky enough in my experience. There’s an art to it.
You can sit in the middle side-saddle, then hoist yourself around in an arc to land with feet at one end, head at the other, only to realise it’s not at the correct angle, so you hoist back again, reach around to move the sloping part, unhook it and collapse face-first in an ungainly heap. Assuming you haven’t severed a few digits in this process, you then yank the back bit up while putting your weight on it and hope the slidey bit finds the correct notch, only to find it doesn’t, and you either collapse again or end up sitting upright as if in some Victorian health contraption. By this time, it’s time to cool off in the sea, so you waddle in, returning later to repeat the process.
Then there’s the straddle technique where you get one leg on either side, and lower yourself to a sitting position only for the thing to clamp shut over you like a Venus Flytrap.
Of, course, you have to put your towel down first, and that’s the easy part. If you’re sensible, you can arrange the tilt angle before you mount the thing, and if you are an expert, you can glide gently to place amid oohs and ahs from an impressed stranger who has already settled in to share your intimate, semi-naked bathing space not two feet away.
I don’t advise throwing yourself face-first or even backwards onto one as they are unpredictable, and you never know what enforced yoga position you will end up in.
Once aboard, though, you can lie back and make yourself comfortable before noticing the earth has continued its orbit around the sun, and the shade has now moved, and so must you. There are two ways to complete this part of the assault course:
Grabbing the sides while still prone and spasming your way a few inches towards the shade. This method is also known as the electro-shock technique.
Or, disembarking, dragging, turning, looking up, whipping out your sextant, checking the angle of an observed object, noting the ‘dip’, sighting the horizon, the time of the zenith and the declination of the celestial orb against the desired direction divided by the length of time intending to remain, and then remount using whatever technique has been mastered. (Full details can be found in chapter six, ‘The Master and Commander Style of Sunbed Adjustment’ in my forthcoming tome, ‘Surviving a Symi Summer.’ Hardly University Press.)
That done, and all settled in and sorted, you can then fish around underneath for your bag to grab your latest Jackson Marsh and continue from chapter five, only to realise it’s way back up the beach by now, and what happened to your towel? Ah well, a few minutes catching the rays and it’s down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky, with red strap marks across your back, or the imprint of a manufacturer endorsing your behind, and cool off with a dip. Later, returning to your pre-marked territory, you discover a family of nomadic circus performers has encroached, dragged the second sunbed of your pair to elsewhere, not knowing you were keeping it for no reason other than you didn’t want anyone else to sit near you.
You’ll need a lie down after all that, and on most beaches on Symi, you can do just that. How much you will pay, whether you will be on one of the new tier-and-tariff systems, paying X amount for a back row, or taking out a mortgage for the front row, or packed somewhere mid-stalls with no privacy or view, well… that depends on the beach. Whether you get your own personal torture device for free as long as you spend X amount in the café bar or restaurant depends on where you are. Whether you get a bamboo shade that leaves you with a burlap tan, or a collapsible umbrella (the use of which is the subject of an optional instruction manual), or whether you have one of those ‘set-in-a-concrete block and don’t you dare move it’ affairs, all depends on where you are.
Hopefully, you’ll find the perfect match for you, and while looking at the many beaches offering their various arrangements, you won’t think, ‘They’ should do this…’ You won’t criticise ‘They’ for not providing you with exactly what you want, or for over-providing the facilities because they are expecting an entire Virgin cruise ship to empty on their shores, and you won’t bad-mouth ‘They’ if you don’t like what you see and find. If you don’t like it, move on. There’s plenty of choice around the island. For me, I’ll continue to stay well away from the deathtraps, but that’s my choice, and I wish all the hard-working ‘Theys’ out there every success in whatever arrangements they have on offer, because, at the end of the day on the beach, everyone has to make a living.
