Late night caused by cats using a bed as a WC, leading to transferring houses after midnight and leaving Neil to sleep on the godboys’ sofa while I came home as no other sleeping place available up there.
Up at 5.30 to find the boiler making a very odd noise it’s not made before. Something to do with the new tank I suspect. Worried the boiler might not be filling. Help arriving tomorrow but turned hot water off just in case.
Computer fired up, and Word crashed taking the whole machine with it. One hour delay while reboot and deal with.
Thomas A Basket (the stray cat who lives in the laundry basket) covered the washing machine with a nosebleed. Washing machine reacting by also making an odd, new noise. Am keeping an eye on it.
Workmen now drilling right outside the house which, actually, I don’t mind, but I am not sure if I will be able to get out to do the shopping after writing this, not without leaping across the chasm.
So, a few photos and I think I’ll go back to bed and start again.
There are notices up around Yialos at the moment advertising an offer from the Plaza Hotel, Rhodes. From now until the end of March, double rooms are only €40.00 per night, including breakfast, and if you stay for the weekend, Friday to Monday morning, there’s a deal per person for room, breakfast and a meal for only €90.00 for the three nights. I thought you might like to know in case there’s anyone travelling this way over the next three months. I think we’ll use it when we go to get our annual health MOTs done in March – looks good but check with the hotel in case I have misremembered those details. Here’s the website for The Plaza Hotel, Rhodes. I’d advise ringing them and saying you’re going to/from Symi and ask about the offer.
What have we been up to over here since we last spoke? Well, Neil went off to Rhodes on Friday to do some shopping and have his phone put onto a contract. When I took up my contract a couple of months ago, I popped into the shop, chose the €13.50 per month bundle, called back an hour later, and it was all set up and running. I have 3.5 Gbs of data, 500 SMS and 1,000 minutes of talk time (within Greece) per month. That’s more time than I spend talking to anyone in person let alone on the phone, but I can connect to the internet anywhere. Neil’s phone still isn’t doing what it should be doing, and he needs to call the helpline to sort it out. Panormitis at the phone shop on Symi has had a look, and one sim card is working fine as it always did, but he’s locked out of the new one and… well, I don’t understand it, but it’s nearly sorted.
View from the dining table, Saturday
I met Neil and Ms DJ at Rainbow on their way back from their expedition, ladened down with Jumbo bags and news of their day. We went through the shopping on Saturday, so there are now loads of small, useful, plasticy things around the house and some things we did need. After popping to the phone shop for advice, and collecting a parcel from the bookshop, ordering a new carpet from Crystalo at the back of the town square, helping ourselves to a beer at Pacho’s (Yiannis was out and about somewhere and it’s a common practice) and chatting to Hugo, we went for a giros. You could call it the annual Symi Dream, Christmas lunch; two chicken pittas and a bowl of perfect chips.
Later
Thanasis was around to taxi us up to Horio with the bags and boxes, and then it was an afternoon at home before popping out to do more shopping at the ‘American’ supermarket. We don’t often go that way as Sotiris is nearer and we’re lazy, so it’s a treat to take a good look around the recently re-vamped shop, or partly revamped. It has expanded over the years, been rearranged and now has three main sections. When you pass by you might think it’s only the downstairs that’s available, what you can see from the street, but go through and up, and it’s an Aladdin’s cave of a store. I found some Brasso – not for a Christmas Day tipple but for polishing the brass on my desk and trunk as I am also revamping in the New Year (my office, but more about that another day), and then home again to plan Sunday.
Which is where I am now, with the sun coming up behind rain clouds. If you have been following the water business at our house, you might have picked up that we need a pump in our new tank, so we get more than a spit of hot water in the showers and sinks. I phoned Symi Property Services (you can find them on Facebook), and we’ve arranged to have our old pump removed from the sterna, checked (as it suddenly stopped working at the same time as we switched tanks) and, hopefully, have it put into the new tank, on Tuesday. All being well, we will be back to normal after that. Today, Sunday, I am sorting out the new Jumbo store (our house) and preparing it for Christmas, and then we’re up with the godboys and sporting out theirs, so I better go and get tinsled-up. More tomorrow.
Here we go again with a mix of images from my file to give you something to look at over the weekend. We have a few plans afoot for the next couple of days. Friday – as I write this, Neil is in Rhodes with Miss DJ doing some Christmas shopping at Jumbo, and elsewhere, I have got the boys off to school with no fuss. It’s like looking after two young gentlemen – or rather, they are looking after us. We’ve ordered the Christmas turkey from Christos at the village butchers. I love the way things work around here…
Thursday morning before the rain
Walk in and the place is empty, but someone is downstairs, so you call out ‘Yassou!’ Cristos appears through the floor from below, ‘Ella Dobby!’ A quick chat about how we both are, and I explain that I’d like to order a turkey. No problem, it will be delivered next week. That done it was on to how we are doing looking after the boys while mum is away. Some people might not like everyone knowing their business, but I think it’s wonderful. It means you have people looking out for you. Even those you’ve not seen for weeks know what you’re up to. We ended the conversation with when I should come an collect the turkey and arranged that Christos would send me a Facebook message when it arrived. Modern-day village life.
Yialos in winter
Rather antiquated village life currently comes in the form of our water supply which, although fixed temporarily – for which we are very grateful – gives us a water flow that is more of a suggestion than a statement. The shower, for example, gives us a trickle reminiscent of the last drops from a watering can as the tank is only a couple of feet overhead and there’s not a lot of gravity in play. I will ask a man who knows and see if there’s a way of fitting a booster pump somewhere along the pipes to help. Meanwhile, have a good weekend and here are a few more photos from Symi.
Pre-dawn. The Christmas lights are up.Stage set for the Symi Amateur Dramatics (SAD, for short) production of Les Miserables.
Neil at work on a day off – having the keys to the bar comes in handy.
Coming to you live on Thursday morning, here’s how last night panned out. I waited in at the house, and the workman called just after four armed with a bag of tools and a string of complicated technical questions in Greek which received the occasional nod from me. Having finally learned the world for water pump after 16 years, I was able to explain that it wasn’t working, but that didn’t matter, he said. We wouldn’t need it until the sterna was fixed next year. He found the water feed pipe he needed, and I left him to get on with whatever he had to do.
On the way home at 5.30 yesterday. Didn’t realise how tall I was.
An hour and a half later, after some clanking and shuffling about on the roof, he called me, and we tested the water by turning on the tap in the laundry sink. No water. A bit of head scratching, testing of other taps and back he went to figure things out. A little later, he was back, and we tried the kitchen, giving the open tap some time to run while the water filtered through the pipes… and worked. We tried the hot, and that worked too. Mild merriment. Only mild because there’s not a lot of pressure, and he explained (and better, I understood) that without a pump the pressure was down to gravity. I’d expected this.
A bright but cold morning on Thursday at 8 degrees.
I wondered how he’d filled the new tank, and he explained that he had, with permission, syphoned some water from the landlord’s sterna which is attached to our mains in-pipe, so both are filled from the same meter (we split the bill when it comes in). He also demonstrated that when our tank is full it overflows and the excess pours off into the courtyard, so that’s going to be easy to detect on water days. All done, he tidied up and vanished into the night leaving me to pack up and head to the boys’ house for the night to meet them and Neil for dinner. Progress was halted when I realised that the overflow was still overflowing. Some basic investigation showed me that the plumber hadn’t trend off the landlord’s feed, so the tank was still filling. I turned that off, not wanting to call him back as it was now dark. I was just leaving when I heard water still running and realised we’d not turned off that tap in the laundry. Not an issue, I thought as I headed to do just that, only to find the plug was in and the sink full. Not a problem, normally, except I learnt that the overflow overflows into the cupboard beneath and the laundry was fast flooding…
The new lodger.
I dealt with that under the disinterested gaze of Thomas, the unwanted ginger tom who lives in the laundry basket, threw some towels down to deal with the mop-up the next day and headed up for dinner. So, finally, we have water back in the house though not flowing as powerfully as before. I am about to try out the shower for the first time, and I will leave you to digest this privateering tale and show you an image from the courtyard steps to give you an indication of how the guys are doing with the new paving for the lane to Lemonitisa.
I am writing this on Wednesday morning a day ahead as usual. This means I can’t yet comment on what’s happening in the yUK and the mess that is the Tory party, Brexit and the yUK generally as Ms May-Not-Be PM is currently announcing her leadership disaster thing. My journalist mate over there is sending me headlines by the minute, and it’s all very interesting, but as there’s nothing I can do about it (as I have been stripped of my democratic right to vote), I shall address the more mundane matter of our on-going water adventure. Sitting comfortably? Here’s your update of this thrilling tale – with some photos.
Wednesday started cloudy as the rain passed
Tuesday. The workman arrived at 3.30 pm and told me a βαρρέλλη (barrel) was on its way – a tank, I assumed correctly. A little while later, while I was inside keeping out of the cold, I heard a few grunts and some plastic-scrapes, the clang of the gate, and popped out to see that a βαρρέλλη had indeed arrived. A great big heavy-duty plastic thing. The guy was pottering about with it on the courtyard floor, so I retreated inside; he knew where I was if needed. About an hour later, things had gone quiet outside, so I took another look. The βαρρέλλη was now magically up on the bathroom roof. I have no idea how he did it, I assume he prepared it, dragged it back outside and then lifted it on a ladder over the courtyard wall, avoiding the vine and the wires that support it, and the mesh, and the railing and squeezed it through a small gap in the rigging and into place. There was no-one around, and I assumed he’d gone home for a well-earned lie-down. It was dusk by now, so I closed the gate and knew he wouldn’t be back to plumb it in that evening.
That meant I could do a quick tidy up and head on up the hill to the godsons’ house where we are babysitting for a few days. Well, teen sitting really which is, surprisingly, much easier. I went to have a quick wash before leaving only to find no water in the taps. Ah ha! I thought. The sterna has finally run dry. Nope. There was enough water in the sterna (it had been raining), and the pump was trying to pump it. Perhaps he’s connected something… A look on the roof and it was clear there were no pipes attached to the barrelli. I did notice it was resting on a couple of plastic water pipes that come from somewhere and go somewhere else, but these are hard plastic and were not crushed. Odd. I reset the pump as best I could, but still no water. I concluded that with everything else going on and the level low, grit or sediment had filtered in and bunged it up. A job for the next day. Off I went to spend a pleasant evening and night up the hill.
I knew my MSc would come in handy one day
Next day, Wednesday. I was home by just after six, to find there was still no water and the pump hadn’t corrected itself. No reason why it should. I popped over the road to tell a rather beleaguered and crestfallen landlord that although we had some water in the sterna, the pump was now not working. He said he’d phone the man – which I am sure he will do, and I expect the guy again probably at 3.30 when he finishes his real job. Meanwhile, I had a brainwave and, as it was town hall supply day, wondered if there was any way I could divert the incoming mains to a variety of bottles we had been collecting. Luckily the in-pipe for the mains is one of those tough plastic ones but flexible enough to be pulled from the sterna entrance and directed, with some spillage, to the bottles one at a time. No need for the pump as this is pressured water from the main pipes. So, I have filled up what we have which should be enough for today and tomorrow, and I’ll do it all again on Friday if the new barrelli is not yet attached. The pump, whether it’s dead or simply injured, will have to wait. No point replacing it if we’re not going to need one until the summer.
Tuesday morning, carrying on up the Kali Strata
I am sure there will be more news on this adventure tomorrow if you can tear yourself away from the car crash which is the yUK at the moment. Oh, and roadworks have begun again on our lane so all the above is accompanied by pneumatic drills. There is good news, however. The accountant rang to say Neil is to receive a merisma – a dividend – from the government (Greek, not British of course). It’s something to do with his name being on the lease for our property rental. I don’t know exactly, and I don’t know how much it might be, but he will investigate today. Might be enough for a new pump…
