Category Archives: Day to day on Symi

Day to day on Symi

Hot

Yes, it’s hot. Maybe not as hot as other places around the country and Europe, but 40 degrees in the shade in the courtyard on Saturday is still pretty warm. We’re reading about the Acropolis closing at the hottest times of the day, the government ordering no deliveries are to be made between noon and 5 pm, and temperatures of over 42 degrees in Syntagma Square. So, if you are heading this way anytime soon, be prepared.

Photos today are from Neil
Photos today are from Neil

The usual rules apply: Drink lots of water*, stay out of the sun, eat properly, rest, and don’t be selfish and leave the air con on when you go out, because there’s no point and you’re robbing the rest of the island of the power. Leave water out for the stray cats if stray cats are your thing, and remember that most waiting and bar staff are running daily 12 + hour shifts with no day off until the end of the season, so, be nice. Cover up, put on sun protection, wear a hat, and do all the sensible things you know you should be doing.

[* Beer is not water, nor are coffee, tea, orange juice, gin and tonic, wine, iced tea or anything else that’s ‘mainly water.’ You want pure bottled water, and the only thing to add is electrolytes like ‘Almora’ which you can buy at the pharmacies.]

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However, please refrain from walking through the village in your summer thong, showing off your bottom bits and rubber parts as though you were poolside. What you are doing, actually, is wandering through a pretty ancient village where real people live, and it’s insulting to see the poor job your stylist made of your Brazilian runway, or whatever. I am sure you wouldn’t go walking down Harlow High Street dressed as though you’re on your private yacht. Even if you are an allegedly gorgeous Italian or a wealthy French personne d’intérêt, we are not intéressée (or even intéressé) to see you without your clothes on. So, put it away, love, and show some respect.

For many of us, this high heat is nothing new, though it’s never welcome and you never really get used to it. You just learn to adapt, to be sensible, and stay as cool as possible, move around as little as possible, and do things according to the temperature rather than time. That’s why I’m up at 2.30 writing this, when it’s only 32 degrees outside, and not doing it at 3 pm when it will be 40 plus.

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On the upside, we don’t have to have our hot water tank turned on at the moment. The water from the cold tap comes out hot because our water tank is outside, and the water from the hot tap comes out cold-ish because the hot water tank is inside and switched off. We don’t have aircon, and my desk fan runs from the PC, while the other two we have run on goodwill and a lot of WD40. The windows are wide open, letting in the children of the night (mosquitoes, rats, cockroaches and other gate crashers), and if you come to our door, expect to wait while we get dressed before answering.

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On which note, let’s get on with another warm day during which Neil intends to take his exercise and go swimming long before nine in the morning, and I am resigned to spending my time between typowriter and sofa-dozing because I have been awake since 1.30 this morning, thanks to a nightmare about eating cannelloni on the Kali Strata. That could have been a side effect of the heat, or just me.

Day to day on Symi

Thoughts from a Midnight Balcony

Talk about an early morning ramble, this is a very early morning stream of semi-consciousness, and with a pretentious title too! What more could you ask?

I woke up at 2.00 this morning. Actually, it was 1.30 but I managed to go back to sleep and have a lie in. The night before, I’d watched half of Das Boot, but had to give in at 20.45 and go to bed, so at least I had five hours sleep, and there’s about the same amount of time to look forward to with the rest of Das Boot. (Never seen it before. Always meant to. Excellent.)

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I’m not here to whinge about the lack of sleep, because I don’t feel tired at all. In fact, today (which is actually yesterday when you read this) started well. A potential new writing opportunity came in, as did a free book promo opportunity on a thing called BookFunnel, and I reckon my Victorian mystery adventure, ‘Guardians of the Poor’ would be perfect for it. I also sold some books yesterday and my daily stats thing had a spike – we’re talking cents not sensational, so don’t get excited. I now have the whole day to work on the current WIP, save for an hour’s siesta around normal people’s breakfast time, and at least I am not a British TV presenter having my life ruined because some scum of a rag wants to sell more newspapers. Honestly! Don’t get me started… Today is to be a positive day, and I mean yesterday when I am writing this and today or whenever when you are reading it.

Being up and about when most people are asleep or finishing off their night out isn’t always a tranquil experience. Granted, the other morning, I was in the courtyard listening to absolutely nothing at all. No cockerels, no mopeds, no voices and not a breath of wind. Then, standing on the balcony some mornings, I am treated to conversations from the still-open kafeneion in Yialos, and the goodbyes hollered before the mopeds set off to grind up the hill. Other mornings, music is still playing somewhere, occasionally interspersed with ‘Opah!’ and on other days (nights), I hear the fishing boats throatily chugging out way before dawn.

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Then, there are the night animals. The owl that sits on our telegraph pole and pings like a sonar, the one that screeches in the darkness, the cats in heat singing almost as badly as the revellers in the kafeneion, and the insomniac cockerels up the road, in the valley, over the hill, and let’s face it, everywhere. From time to time, you can add to this the discussions of two young men as they ride side by side up the hill on their motorbikes, the lapping of the sea against the quayside, the rumble of a middle-of-the-night ferry, and the solitary half-hour chime of the Ag Triada clock, when it’s working.

Pre-dawn departure
Pre-dawn departure

There are also the sights. There’s an odd light that appears over the Turkish mountains now and then. It rises to a particular height, stays there, glows and fades. There are sometimes flashing pinpricks from aeroplanes too high to hear, and others lower, accompanied by the dull drone of their engines, satellites and the space station gliding silently among the stars, the currently waning moon over to the east, and the rats in the pomegranate tree next door having a good old picnic.

The mind is more alive too. At least mine is, and I do my best writing before ten in the morning. After that, all I am good for on the work front is editing, but that’s also a job I enjoy. That’s how this post started. I was having a cup of tea on the balcony, looking at the harbour lights and, for some reason, a line from Private Lives came to me; ‘It’s extraordinary how potent cheap music is.’ There was no music, so I don’t know how that got in, but I was, like Amanda, standing on a balcony overlooking a harbour at night. I was also reflecting on the days just passed and how the bother-in-law left on the Wednesday evening Blue Star with his delightful daughter, and what a good time we’d all had. Then, my mind turned to what I had planned for the day ahead, I turned on the PC, made another cup of tea, and shuffled the piano stool from one part of the house to another as quietly as possible so as not to wake the volcano rumbling away in the bedroom.

Random shot inside Taverna Zoi, early lunchtime (she's open 12 to 3pm for lunch), Wednesday. I lked the shades of blue, and the food was fab too.
Random shot inside Taverna Zoi, early lunchtime (she’s open from 12 to 3 pm for lunch), Wednesday. I liked the shades of blue, and the food was fab too.

And here I am doing that thoughts-to-page stuff at 3.44 in the morning. I’ve read the ‘news’, checked the admin, had my first breakfast, and will finish this before heading off into fiction-land and setting my mind to chapter nine of book two of series three. This one to be titled ‘Fall from Grace.’

Here’s a reminder before you go. Although I’m not posting here on SD over the weekends, I put a Saturday post on my Jackson blog, and tomorrow, the 14th, it’s a guest post from a fellow author who has written a three-book historical series set in WWII. Take a look at Jackson Marsh tomorrow, and I’ll be back on Monday, probably around the same unearthly time of night.

Waving off te famly on Wednesday evening. Seeing the Blue Star leaving for Athens in eth evening is always a romantic sight.
Waving off the family on Wednesday evening. Seeing the Blue Star leaving for Athens in the evening is always a romantic sight.
Day to day on Symi

Can’t See the Full Picture

Here’s a thing. Thomas kindly contacted me the other day to report that when he is using Chrome, he is unable to see the images on the blog, only the placeholder and image title. (See his screenshot below.)

After some investigation, he discovered the problem, and it’s to do with the little padlock you can see to the left of your address bar. That’s at the top of this page where it shows the website address. My blog is housed on a shared server because I can’t afford to pay for one of my own, and this is why you sometimes get a message saying ‘Connection is not secure.’ It is. I mean, the server is very secure, but because it’s shared, browsers automatically put up this message, and in some cases, you might need to change your settings. So, if you see this kind of missing-image thing…

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It’s because your browser isn’t set to allow ‘unsafe’ content, i.e., content on a shared server. Click on the padlock, and you should be able to change the setting, and say the site is secure. It’s up to you, but if you don’t see the images properly, that’s what you could do. I hope that makes sense.

Seems a bit odd, when talking about missing images, to add more, but here are a couple of Neil’s from earlier this year. In the absence of any narrative, these are random images to brighten your day. Assuming you can see them.

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Day to day on Symi

To Hear the Breeze Singing

Welcome to Monday. I was going to start this week by taking a look at how many visitors the blog had last week, but I can’t get into my stats package. I’ve sent a support ticket to Brad in Arizona who lives to serve customers at all times of day and night and asked him to reset my password. As soon as that’s done, and I’ve been sent on my way with his customary, ‘Y’ave a good day now y’hear,’ I’ll be able to see how the first week went in terms of views and visits. This is only out of idle interest, but it might be something to talk about later. As was the wind this last weekend.

Is it not sweet to hear the breeze singing
As lightly it comes from the deep rolling sea?

[Blow the Wind Southerly. Northumberland folk song, pub. 1843.]

Force five and six, what was on the vine is now in the porch, what was the dry surface of the earth is now in the sitting room, the chillies are looking forlorn, but at least the roof is clinging on. Just. The NW wind also blew a fair few undesirables our way; roaches slammed against the outside wall before scuttling into the house for shelter, blue plastic bags windsocked their way from the wasteland in front of us, over the chimney pots and onwards over the rainbow, pollen and bark flew direct from plant to nose. The sea was white with wind icing and surface squalls, shutters were doing the sabre dance, doors slamming intermittently, and there were a lot of folks saying, ‘It’s windy, isn’t it?’ Rather an unnecessary comment when you’re clinging to your toupee before it emigrates to Turkey. Otherwise, it was a pleasant weekend with the visiting bother-in-law and his daughter.

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I walked down to meet them for lunch on Saturday, and rather than take the Kali Strata, I used the zigzag path near our house. I took some photos along the way, but for some reason, they’ve not yet uploaded to my cloud so I can’t download them to the PC so I can upload them here. And tech is meant to make our lives easier? Instead, I downloaded some random shots from the cloud, which is why you have one of a birthday dinner last Thursday at Giorgio & Maria, one of the Invisible Man model kit I built a couple of years ago, and one of a hansom cab. I can’t tell you why I uploaded the Invisible Man (who is clearly visible), but I know why you’ve got a hansom cab. It’s because I am currently writing a novel where the main character is a handsome hansom driver in 1892. More on that story here. And more early morning nonsense from me tomorrow if I’ve not been blown away.

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And finally… Thank you to everyone for the kind messages about the return of these pages. I am glad they are enjoyed.

Random.
Random.
Day to day on Symi

Early Morning Madness

‘That’s the middle of the night’, so say outraged acquaintances when I tell them what time I get up in the summer. ‘Why do you get up so early?’

What I’d love to say is, ‘Mind your own business,’ but what I usually say is, ‘Because I like to’, and it’s true. Apart from anything else, I enjoy the peace and quiet of 3.30, although ‘quiet’ is a relative term.

This morning (3.15) I crept from the room to the kitchen, turned on the light ever wary of summer bugs and spiders scuttling across the floor, and went to fill the kettle to be greeted by the first wildlife of the day; a cockroach in the washing up bowl. Convenient, as there is no escape from the bug spray. That done, kettle on, tea made, I followed my usual routine of reading the news in the sitting room, kept company by the mosquitoes delivering their overnight bulletins directly into my ear. The cockerels up the road had already started reveille, if, in fact, they’d ever stopped, and in the distance, the washing-up bug was still committed to its wheel of death around the walls of the bowl. The alleged silence of the early hours is also often disturbed by some of those unidentifiable sounds a house makes; a slightly worrying creak from up in the roof, or a loud click from the kitchen which I assume is the kettle, but you grow accustomed to them and carry on.

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The headlines glanced at and those stories that interest me read in detail, and it’s out to the balcony to finish my tea. Yesterday, we had a small cruise ship in port, the 220-foot motor yacht the MS Monet. Varying up to 50 passengers, this vessel goes on cruises around the islands and Greek mainland coast, and in September, you can take a ten-day cruise for £3,895. It’s part of the Noble-Caledonian line and looks rather nice. Anyway, that was parked up outside the police station, purring away with its string of over-deck lights looking very pretty. I stood and listened to a couple of fishing boats chugging out, now and then watching the rats in the pomegranate tree next door, and watched the harbour lights waving through the water. Sometimes, when there isn’t a large ship in, it’s possible to hear the sea lapping at the harbour wall, and on other mornings, you’re treated to the romantic sight of the Blue Star rounding Nimos and heading in, lights a blaze.

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Some mornings, the boy next door comes home from work at 3.30 or 4.00 in his baker’s blacks (or whites, it varies) and hurries to his flat downstairs where the lights go on, there’s a time of silence, the lights go off and I don’t see him again for another several days. Young lad, works very long hours as far as I can see, is very quiet, but when he sees us, always says hello. Now and then, the party’s still going on ‘down town’ at one of the later-night restaurants or cafés, and there are times when mopeds strain up the hill, or friends holler goodnight to each other across the cavernous void of two feet, but generally, the Symi parties have calmed by this time of night.

Then, tea drunk and kettle reheated (the bug’s still circling the bowl, though with more lethargy), it’s off to this desk to type out some nonsense, see if I’ve sold any books so we have an income two months hence, and settle down to write, exactly as I am doing now. Later, I’ll go and make another cup of tea and, later still, when Neil wakes up, listen out for the shriek from the kitchen sink as the discovery is made.

I broke off there to go and make another cup of tea only to find the thing still clattering around, so I took the otherwise empty bowl to the balcony and tipped it into the garden below, only to discover another little chap in the sink. He’s our lodger and helps keep the mosquito population in check. If he’s still there later, I’ll give him a hand out to freedom.

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I’ll be back on Monday.