Today is…?

I am gearing up for a weekend of book editing. At least, I think it’s the weekend. It’s that time of year when I am still unsure what day it is. I spent all of Wednesday thinking it was Thursday and all of last Tuesday thinking it was Tuesday, which it was, but then when Wednesday became Thursday for half a day… You know how it is. Anyway, I am nearly back on track now but did have to look at my diary to see what day it is today.

Easter is still three months away (April 19^th for Easter Sunday in Greece, I believe), but sheep and lambs have started appearing in the village already. Despite being brought up on the Romney Marshes and being best friends with the son of a sheep farmer, spending long days playing on the farm and even helping with lambing, I still know nothing about it, and can only assume this pair has been brought down from the hills to be closer to the farmer’s home (?). Just seems a bit early to be grazing in the village when the hills are sprouting green, and there’s plenty of vegetation around. Perhaps the lamp was so early it needed looking after? I don’t know, but it’s always pleasant and, for some reason, amusing, to round a corner and find livestock wandering the village, or tethered in a place you don’t expect.

The Blue Star ferry finally made it into port around 3.00 a.m. on Thursday and will be back again today, though in the afternoon rather than the early morning as the timetable moves closer to being back to normal. The sky is clearing, and no more rain is forecast for a while, but I am being dripped on in the shower thanks to the condensation in the bathroom. A sudden cold shock really wakes you up between washes when you turn the water off to lather-up. Just thought I’d share that with you. And now, back to the editing.

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Weather warning

Returning to the age-old question, what’s it like living on Symi in the winter? Well, one of the things you have to be aware of is the weather, particularly when it comes to travel. Not wanting to put anyone off travelling here at this time of year (because the island is beautiful all year round and the peace and quiet of winter weighs up nicely against the trauma of storms, leaks, floods and so on), but you do have to watch the boat schedules. Due to bad weather further north, there has been a ban on shipping for days. I think it might have now been lifted, but here’s a story…

If anyone wanted to go to Rhodes last Friday, either for shopping, or a weekend away, appointments etc., they found they had to wait until Saturday for the boat (Blue Star ferry). And then, instead of a reasonable morning arrival time, the boat came in around 4 a.m. That’s one thing. I’m not sure if the boat came back that day as scheduled, but the one due to leave on Monday night was still there on Wednesday evening due to weather, and even then, passengers were told it wasn’t going at 4 pm, but at midnight. The company did say, though, that you could get on at ten in the evening. The last I heard from the Godboys who were on it, it wasn’t then going to able to leave until two on Thursday morning, and as I write this (at half-six), it might still be there for all I know. I hope not, they are due back at school tomorrow.

Meanwhile, another friend arrived in Athens with ferry ticket in hand last weekend, intending a short trip down to Symi, and hasn’t, so far, made it. The flights were massively expensive, apparently, and not an option in her case. I assume she had to go home in the end.

Anyway, that was just a reminder to be aware that your travel plans may have to change due to weather. I hope I’m not tempting fate here as we are heading up to Athens in early March, and coming back via the same route later in the month. We always keep an eye on the weather at least a week ahead of our planned departure when travelling at this time of year, and if it looks in any way dodgy, we leave early and book into cheap accommodation to be near the airport or wherever. Not the cheapest way around things, but better than missing flights, or not making important appointments.

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Morning chitchat

I woke up this morning thinking it must be about seven o’clock and I’d had a lie-in. Turned out to be four, but I was up, and the kettle was on by then. It was only 3.50 in the bedroom, 4.05 in the kitchen and 4.00 exactly in the sitting room due to the use of three time zones in one house over three clocks, so time was irrelevant anyway. Or was it? It’s given me a couple of extra hours to get a fist draft finished before sofa time and the ongoing adventures of the Australian Survivor contestants streaming to the TV. I can’t see what the state of play is outside as all the shutters are closed, but as I popped my head into the courtyard on my commute to the office just now, I saw a few stars up there, so it looks like the clouds may have gone. The wind has dropped along with the temperature, but I hear no thunder or pelting rain for the first time in a few days.

That’s just as well as one of us has to nip downtown later to the pharmacy and post office, and there’s some shopping to do as we have guests for tea tonight; the stranded godboy family who should (all being well) finally be able to return from Rhodes on the afternoon ferry. All shipping was grounded (ported?) for a few days thanks to a bad storm which has knocked out all power on Andros and Tinos – something like 13,000 people without electricity. Last I read, they hoped to have power restored today.

We had a call from our telephony provider yesterday, Cosmote (Ote, as was), offering us faster internet now the fibre optic cables are completed. I queried whether they actually were over here, and Christos Giros (it sounded like) told me they were, and the new package comes with a huge amount of local and international calls – I hardly ever use the phone to call anyone, and even more rarely answer it – and it’s only €3.00 extra per month on what I pay now or something, so we will see. He did tell me I had the right modem already, which was a worry as I thought I was alone in the house, and that I should notice the increase in speed in a few days. Shame it wasn’t a call from the bank, but there you go.

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Weather, witch and whatever

We’re not as weather-battered as some parts of the country, but it’s still been wet and windy for a few days. Water, water everywhere… Except in our tank when it ran out on New Year’s Day. At least that was only in the afternoon, and the town hall supply came in the following morning, a day early because of the bank holidays, so we were grateful for that. In other parts of the country, the weather is much worse, shipping has been banned until Wednesday morning leaving some people stranded in Rhodes for an extra two days, but that’s how it is down here in winter.

Luckily, we decided to unglue ourselves from the sofa for an hour and ‘popped’ down to Yialos to raid the bank during a break in the downpours, making it back to the village just in time. The walk up the Kali Strata after a month of inactivity was something of a challenge, but getting out to tramp the hill three or four times a week hasn’t been possible, so I’m out of practice.

Meanwhile, I’ve been beavering away on my classic horror models of the past and have put the Witch together. I now have the Invisible Man to do (yes, lots of gags around not being able to find it, and how do you know when it’s finished etc.,), and a first draft of a story to finish this week too… so I’d better get on.

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And here we go…

Off into 2020 with Christmas officially over and me back at the desk with an almost daily blog.

We have had a great time, and it’s hard to get back into the old routine. It’s become normal around here to be up late (i.e. 6.00 a.m. rather than 4.30, but that has been achieved at times), to work through the morning until midday and then spend the rest of the day hanging out on the sofa. We’re currently working our way through another series of Australian Survivor, having seen a couple already, plus every available episode of The Amazing race (USA, Canada and Australia), many films and other TV entertainment. The stockpile of treats has now dwindled to the strawberry ones no-one cares for much, and all that chocolate and laziness has ended up back in the belly area, so we need to start working on that with our daily walks… Soon. Honest.

The weather has been up and down. Dropping below 10 degrees outside the house and, somehow lower inside the house. We’ve had rain and thunderstorms, some days when we’ve not gone out of the house at all and made do with unlabelled surprises from the freezer, and others where the sun has been out and blazing the temperature up to 14 degrees. Meanwhile, the windows are condensated each morning, so need to be left open for a few hours, the bathroom roof is dripping with condensation, and I’ve de-moulded it once already, the towels never dry, and we put the heater in the bathroom for half an hour before the ‘shower-dash’ game on cold days.

There have also been parties and dinners, events and fun stuff over the holiday period. Christmas Eve and Day with the godboys (Godson #1 loves his piano, and lessons resume on Friday), ditto New Year’s Eve and Day when godson #2 cooked for us all, we’ve called at the bars a couple of times and been to a quiz night. All this, and I have very few photos to show for it.

And so on into the new year. It’s started well with a consolidation Act of the Greek Parliament, again spelling out the rights of British citizens in Greece after the end of the month and beyond: the law is already in place to protect those registered to live here before the bidet… I mean, B Day – brexshit day, which is a weight off the mind, though finer details of how and when we will become biometric are yet to be decided. I think that’s the part where your paper records, in my case going back to 2003, are somehow gathered, checked, ordered and turned into a plastic card with digital data rather than an old piece of card stuck inside my passport, but we’ll have to see.

There is other news and chat to be had, but not all in one day, so I will leave it for another time, try and find some photos and brighten up this ramble with then, and let you get on with 2020. All being well, I’ll be back tomorrow and onwards through the year (apart from March).

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