‘Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make.’ Dracula was talking about the wolves beyond his castle walls. My children of the night yesterday was actually only one, so a child of the night, or rather, early morning. Picture it:
I’m sitting there on the sofa with a cup of tea at 3.30 when I hear what sounds like a moth caught in a paper lampshade. Except the only light that was on was the one bulb in the sitting room ‘chandelier’, and there was no moth buffeting anything up there. The sound stopped, and I carried on reading the newspaper… and the sound started again. It then became a light buzzing noise, and a dark smudge weaved across the middle distance. It was a smudge because I have to take my glasses off to read, and without them, anything beyond a foot away might as well be a painting by Turner. Glasses on, and smudge becomes a cockroach flying about the room without so much as a by your leave. Well, we don’t want him moving in, and he’s quite big enough to carry his own luggage, so when he landed on the arm of the sofa, I approached, intending to give him a Subbuteo flick straight out through the open balcony doors, from whence he must have come as they’d been open all night. He must have sensed me coming because he took off on a journey to another part of the room, leaving me no choice but euthanasia. I do love the smell of Teza in the morning. Later, I shrouded him in kitchen paper and sent him to recycling.
Dawn happened not that long after and brought with it the pleasanter sounds of the children of the dawn. Not a horror film title as it might sound, but the blackbirds, sparrows and Tweety. That’s the name we’ve given to our personal swallow, who sits two feet away from the balcony on the telegraph cable. She pops back regularly to keep us up to date with neighbourhood news, someone of which is so far-fetched it’s hard to swallow. Get it?
Never mind. Here are some random photos, none of which feature roaches or, sadly, Tweety.
Standing at the window on Sunday afternoon, I saw a speedboat pulling people around on inflatable tires (or something, it was a distance away). The watersports place at Nos must be open, I thought, that’s good. Then I noticed the large umbrella was up at Petalo and saw a line of luxury yachts in the harbour. The Nikolaos X was in, the Spanos had come in and stayed, and the red ‘speedboat’ day boat was there too. There were also a few white sails out at sea. Things must be picking up.
Later, the village was deserted. Well, it was five in the afternoon, and there were a few locals at the bars. Damianos from Georgio’s was saying they were getting some customers of an evening, but it’s a bit etsi-ketsi, and only some of the businesses in Yialos are doing a reasonable trade, so things need to pick up a lot more. You’re supposed to wear masks in public still, and definitely when on the bus, in a taxi or in the shops, but very few visitors (and locals) seem to be aware or bothered. We’ve been covid free since it began, bar one or two very limited cases that luckily led to nothing serious, and it would be good to keep it that way.
Another luxury yacht came in on Monday morning and headed around to Nimborio just as I was heading up the hill for a quick walk. I was back by seven, by which time it was already up to 28 degrees. It’s due to get hotter soon, so if you are heading this way, be prepared.
Hello, and here’s wishing you a good week ahead, happy solstice and all that. Or, happy Witchling Day if you happen to live in the imaginary village of Saddling, down on Romney Marsh. Not sure what I’m talking about? Click here. (Note, that’s book two of a series, but it’s set around the summer solstice.)
Other news… The photos today are from Neil, as you can tell by the quality and style. He’s currently arranging to have a one-day diving course with the new Symi diving school, Blue Lagoon Divers. A friend did this the other day and had an amazing experience. There are longer courses and various ways to arrange them as everything is tailor-made to suit you. If Neil gets on with the introductory morning course (during which you do all your safety training and your first dive, one-on-one with an instructor), then he may go on to do the longer one so he can dive deeper.
We’ve had some traffic police from Rhodes on the island of late; different uniforms and everything. Apparently, and this is café chatter, they came over following the complaints about the biker-boys* and the way they make up for lack of manhood by removing the baffles from their exhausts, so they have the noisiest moped on the island or some other childish thing. Many people who live along the main road have been disturbed by their curfew-breaking antics, and enough was clearly enough. Hopefully, they’ve been put in their quieter place. Things are certainly a lot quieter than they were.
(* Or biker girls. Definitely biker men who should know better, ’cos I’ve seen one doing a wheely up the main road. I’d say he was 40 going on 12.)
Another thing I’ve noticed in groups on Facebook is more and more people asking for advice about how to stay longer than 90 days. These are Brits who want to come to Greece for a full summer or who want to move out here for a year and try it out. I can’t believe I am still seeing this kind of question, and I can’t believe how calmly and kindly most people are answering it. Did the yUK government not make it clear? After Brexit, if you want to have an extended stay in Greece (or another EU country), then, basically, you’re stuffed. You can’t. End of. You can’t extend your 90 days while you are here. Sorry. Well, you can arrange a certain visa before you leave if you’ve got a place to go and a job etc., but you can’t do it on a whim like you used to. There are other ways around it, like buy a property for a quarter of a million or have an income of more than 2K per month, a large amount of savings in a Greek bank, private health insurance and so on. But the good old days of being able to come for six months, or even four, or even 91 days (in a rolling 180) are over. Brexit, the gift that keeps giving.
Oh, finally, talking of gifts. Another friend recently had a parcel from UK Amazon which only took eight weeks to get here and only cost an extra €45.00 in customs duty and so on, and that, by post-Brexit standards, is not bad. I ordered a book from Amazon Germany last Monday, and the tracking told me it was delivered on Thursday. Delivered being, left Athens, so probably on a Blue Star or a flight to Rhodes, but still, an excellent service. It was ordered via Germany, sent from Italy, arrived in Greece and was probably in my PO box last Friday. Nice. Must go now and pick it up.
To end the week in what’s become my usual fashion, here are some photos.
Firstly, Taverna Zoi is opening tonight (Friday). I took these and other photos early in the morning while walking up to To Vrisi. The others were taken on a walk down to Yialos, as you can probably tell. Here they are in no particular order. Have a good weekend.
Living on Symi, sometimes the simplest of tasks can take a terribly long time. For example, let’s say you needed to get your incoming orders from the bank and give them to your accountant so she can prepare your tax returns. This can involve gearing yourself up to head to Yialos, an event in itself for the likes of me, preparing your speech for when you get to the bank, and being forearmed with your bank book, passport etc. That done, you head off down the steps, around the harbour, and arrive at the bank, hoping there won’t be a queue. There is, and you wait in the blazing sun while the queue declines pleasingly quickly until there’s just one person in front of you, and you are being held in the vestibule, which must be the only non-airconditioned part of the building. However, the person in front of you is trawling back through their transactions since before the days of the Drachma… But you finally get in, deal with your paperwork, pay the fee and escape. As you do, you decide to call at the post office, where you wait again until you can enter, check your PO box and find there’s nothing there anyway. So you decide to drop your papers at the accountant, only to find they’re not open yet because it’s still early. So, you trudge back up the steps knowing that you’ve got to trudge back down them again another day soon.
And breathe.
That’s how things can sometimes go. On Tuesday, however, things ran differently. Having geared myself up for the annual visit to the bank to ask for my ‘pink slips’, which the accountant needs to do last year’s tax now the platform is open… I headed on down the steps with a self-made printout of the transaction details I needed official copies of, so I could hand it over and save the teller some time. I was early, as I hardly ever do anything late, i.e. after ten in the morning, and discovered, when I stopped to tie a lace by the war memorial, that Jenine had been calling me for the last five minutes. I’d not heard because my head was back in 1890 and the chapter I intended to write when I got home as it usually is when I am allowed out on my own. We walked to the bank, and she continued on to work, and lo! I was admitted to the vestibule straight away. There, I had to wait while someone finished some piece of business inside, which took all of two minutes, and I was released into the air conditioning to talk to the teller.
I made my opening gambit in Greek, of course, and after that, we slipped politely into English. The paperwork was quickly prepared and handed to me with the news that not only are these things not called ‘pink slips’ anymore and haven’t been for years (I knew this) but also, there is no need for me to go to the bank to get them. I can do them via my Alpha Web Banking… and here’s how. After the demonstration, and after being told how to activate my new card, which arrived a couple of weeks ago, I was back out in the sun with a spring in my step. A quick visit, no need to bother them annually again, and my card activated to boot. So, buoyed by this, I decided to head to the post office, where there no queue, only a cheerfully welcoming George, and a delivery slip waiting for me in our PO box. I’d ordered a model from the USA back in March. It was a pre-order, due to become available at the end of May, and I wasn’t expecting it until next month. It had been posted on May 16th and arrived here on June 10th, no extra charge, all in one piece. Well, as many pieces as the kit should have because you have to put it together yourself. Result: I now had a spring in both steps.
I now have four to build when the winter comes.
There was another result shortly after when I started my trudge back and found Stelios already in his office. I dropped off my papers, thereby saving another trip down the next day, and headed on up the Kali Strata springing like nobody’s business. On the way, I met Panormita, who does my tax return, so was able to tell her – while bouncing from one spring to the other – the non-pink slips were waiting for her. And so, my annual admin was done and dusted within one hour of leaving home.
