Shop thoughts

I thought you’d like to share a bit of a shopping experience with me in a couple of photos. The caged birds aren’t to everyone’s taste, I know, but it’s a custom in this country and we respect local traditions, or at least we can’t complain about them as, well, who are we to complain? I like the sound of birdsong as I shop, it’s better than the cheesy pipe music they drone out in some places. We’re going to Jumbo on Friday (Rhodes) where they will on doubt be playing Christmas music including the Jumbo song. I thought this soundtrack thing was meant to make shopping more relaxing? Last time I was in Jumbo with their seasonal offerings blaaring*, it made me want to leave the shop, not stay longer and browse. Ah well.

Still 20 degrees in the courtyard during the day, washing out, drying nicely, calm breeze, grey sea at times if there’s cloud cover, but all rather warm and lovely at the moment. Someone reported the sea being about 24 degrees yesterday and said they had a lovely, warm swim, and it’s still possible to sit out in the square of an evening. We’ll be doing that later before going to dinner with a friend who leaves tomorrow. We’ll be off to Rhodes ourselves on Friday for the day and night for a bit of shopping and a couple of other things, and that’s going to constitute my holiday for this year.

Meanwhile, day to day life potters on around here. Looking after the house, getting those odd jobs done or, in my case, getting someone who knows what they are doing to get them done. Hopefully this weekend the leaking water tank, WC and kitchen tap will be sorted, and there will be fewer niggles for me to fuss about.

[* The word blaar or blarrin‘ etc., is Kentish dialect for bleating, going on, making a racket etc., Readers of The Saddling series will know this.]

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Monday wind

Woke up to a bit of wind – outside the house, you understand – after a warm and calm weekend. On Friday, godson #1 came to spend the afternoon while mum was away. We had lunch, watched Jumanji and had a piano lesson before he left. On Saturday I was able to get some writing done, and then, after a day’s work, we went to a quiz at the Sunrise café which was good fun, and on Sunday, I did some more work on a book before taking the rest of the day off. Some light shopping in the morning, watched some of The Crown on Netflix and popped out for a drink in the square in the later afternoon, early evening. It was still warm enough to sit outside, though in jackets and shoes – the shorts and sandals have been put away for the winter.

So, a quiet weekend, and now it’s back to work. There are only a few appointments in the diary for this week. Must pay the rent today, having dinner with a friend tomorrow night and we’re thinking about going to Rhodes for some shopping on Friday. That’s about as exciting as things get around here at this time of year and it suits me. Plenty of time to be in the ‘study’ with my research and writing, and unusually for this time in November, there have been few times when I’ve needed to put on the heater, though it’s starting to feel colder inside the house than it is outside. The wind is from the south and west, so it’s still not too cold, but once it changes to the come from the north, we can expect to be cooling down considerably.

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Symi Saturday (old) Photos

When I say old, I actually mean 2017, so only a couple of years old, and also, taken by Neil, so not even mine, but some things from the collection to see us through the weekend.

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Sloshing and spiders

Yesterday morning was mostly spent dealing with this:

Sorry about the blurred photo, my feet were wet. I have no idea why the porch leaked during the night, it’s never done it before. Between downpours, I went up onto the roof and checked, and there’s nothing wrong with the flashing, the tiles look fine, and there are no visible cracks in anything, but it was running down the walls where the old part of the house meets the added porch. It only meant getting wet feet when I crossed the porch on my daily commute to work, and I had to get the mop out and put towels down before it ran into the house. There were no other infiltration issues, so that was alright.

Actually, there was one. Neil was doing some housework. I could hear him pottering around next door when all of a sudden there came a yelp of surprise, and I thought, ‘Oh, he’s discovered the second power setting on the vacuum cleaner at last,’ but no, he had discovered a Symi spider… In the bedroom. The worst possible place to find one. I reckon it came in through the open window during the night to escape the rain, which isn’t much better a thought; it was on the other side of the room to the window, meaning it might have wandered over us while asleep. Either way, he humanly captured it and took it to the front garden, so it’s probably back by now. I’ve decided we will refer to it as a mouse, as I can cope with a mouse in the bedroom, but not a four-inch-long spider. Didn’t sleep that well last night, and it rained again. The window was firmly shut.

Oh, and if you were wondering about the candles in the top photo, that was how they ended up after the summer, melted in 40 degrees. I liked the look, so left them as they are.

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Rain and Racing

This morning I was woken up by the sound of the roof overflow gushing outside the bedroom window which we’d left open last night as it was so warm. There was no water coming in, as there was no wind to blow it, but I closed it anyway, just in case, and then set about my morning routine: cup of tea, look at the news, head to the desk. It’s still raining, and it’s set to go on all day which is good news for sternas and plants alike, and luckily, Neil painted the flat roof the other day, so the bathroom has remained rain-free. I found some photos from last March to illustrate, slightly, what Symi looks like in bad weather. Not great photos, but something, and actually, the weather wasn’t that bad then, but you’ll get the picture.

The rest of my day is planned according to the usual routine. The morning spent writing, occasionally pausing for any necessities like breakfast and shopping (unlikely today), a break for lunch and then back to the desk, though some afternoons recently that’s been hard to do and its been more than tempting to tune into something else like a good book or the television where we’ve found a way to watch a US game show.

No, it’s not called ‘The Peachy Trump Impeachment Show’ (I read about that during my news catch-up in the mornings), but one called ‘The Amazing Race’ that’s been running for years. We can only find a few series, but it’s a show right up my street. Pairs of contestants travel the world to perform challenges and races based on local customs, traditions or sights and get knocked out one by one until only three remain for the final leg, by which time they’re travelled around 24,000 miles in three weeks and submitted to all kinds of things. Not things like you see on mind-numbing game shows in a studio, but things like jumping off a tall building (in safety harness) to retrieve a clue, a zip-line over a gorge, bungee jump, swim with sharks, or, in calmer moments, learn a flamenco routine and perform it. We’ve seen a couple of episodes in Greece where they had to be on duty with the Ebzones in uniform (something of an honour) and do something lethal at the Corinth Canal. Anyway, that’s my excuse for only writing one chapter a day at the moment not two, and now it’s back to the rain.

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