A thing to remember

Bad weather on Wednesday meant that quite a few Symi folk are stuck in Rhodes until the next boat back to the island on Friday night. From what I can pick up from the gossip pages (Facebook) there was confusion over whether the boat would leave Rhodes and be able to dock at Symi. Some people report that they were told it wouldn’t stop at Symi and so, later on a windy and uncomfortable Wednesday night, resigned themselves to staying for two extra nights in Rhodes. They later found out that the boat had managed to dock and they could have made it home.

That’s one of the things you have to think about when a) living here and b) thinking of visiting in the winter, which you can do. Recently some others who were calling into Symi for only a few days, found their three-day stay here was reduced to one, and they were lucky to get that, what with high winds and scarce boats. I have to say, we usually do very well with the Blue Star connection, and now that we have the more stable boats, there is more chance of the big ferry docking even in rough weather. It depends on the captain, and some of the more experienced ones seem happier to try it than the less experienced ones.

Thursday dawned calmer and reasonably bright, and you will be amazed to know that I have my shutters open again and the heater is not on. We’re enjoying the warm and sometimes wet weather, and the rain is always welcome (in sensible amounts) for the garden and the water tanks. We’re not planning to go anywhere now until March, but we shall keep an eye on the weather nearer the time. Usually, when we are going on a trip where flights and hotels have been booked and paid for in advance, we leave home a couple of days early, depending on the boats, rather than leave the fate of our holiday in the lap of the weather gods.

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Dracula – read it many times.

This blog had nothing to do with Symi, apart from photos, but in reply to a question from Neil on Facebook yesterday. He asked, What is your favourite novel and why?

My reply was Dracula, which I have read many times and have three copies off including an annotated one given to me by my mum as a 13^th birthday present, and one which is a limited-edition print from the original, which Jenine and Ian gave me on my 50^th.

Why favourite? A few reasons and none of them to do with vampires. For me, it’s the construction of the story.

1, It’s told in journals and diaries, letters and memos, which not only gives you several characters’ point of view but puts you right into their story.

2, It’s a story about friendship as a group of people band together to save Main Harker, and everyone else. There are three men (Seward, Morris and Godalming) who all wanted Lucy’s hand in marriage and yet they are mates and stay that way. Spoiler alert: one of them dies, and that’s the part that moves me.

3, There’s a part in the story where the characters read each other’s journals to bring themselves up to speed. You realise, about halfway through, that the characters are now reading what you have been reading and know as much as you do. A great little gimmick that I bet most readers miss.

Just a little sidestep from the usual posts there. Have a nice day!

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Tuesday Morning

The clouds are clearing, the wind has dropped, the temperature in the office at 6.30 was a reasonable 14 degrees, and the sea down there is calm. Neil had gone off to his first aerobics class of the year, so I am expecting a lot of limping later, and I have been chained to my desk doing my usual. I had a rather startling update from the Grammarly programme I use. This is a plugin to Word (and online) that checks your grammar, and I tend to run everything through it these days. It just told me that, ‘Your vocabulary was quite voluminous last week. You used more unique words than 99% of Grammarly users.’ Probably because I spell so many words incorrectly.

I was also more productive than 99% of Grammarly users in the last 30 weeks. Apparently I wrote 158,843 words (and later had to corrected 158,842 of them, I expect). Startlingly, I was 96% more accurate than most other users, with only 1,016 miswritten words. I used 6,577 unique words – which could be something to do with working on The Witchling which has a lot of Kentish and made-up dialect in it, and my top three mistakes were all to do with missing commas in compound sentences, or not enough commas, or just incorrect use of commas. Not surprised. After that many words, I reckon I’m a bit comatose. (Comma-tose, get it?) Anyway, can’t stay long now as I have to annoy the programme a little more with another block of poor typing, so I’ll add a couple more general photos (from Neil) for today and let you get on.

Ps, Grammarly only found three issues with the above, which I have now altered.

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Village Details

So, where are we walking to today? Well, how about a wander around the old village of Horio, a place often missed by day-trippers. If you’re staying on Symi, even for a few hours, it’s possible to get up to the village by bus or taxi, or by foot. You can also hire cars and motorbikes, so there is no excuse for not visiting. When you do, you should explore the lane and the real village. You’ll see plenty of views but don’t miss the details.

I was looking through some photos Neil took recently, and a while ago, and found several that just show you details from properties and places in the village lanes. Maybe you can save a couple of these and, when you’re up here, take a walk and see if you can find them. Here are a few for you to look at. Regular visitors to the island may be able to recognise some.

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Happy Monday!

As we missed our usual Saturday photos, I thought I’d put up a few from Neil’s archive today. Some may have been taken in the summer, some last year, some last week. It’s a bit of a jumble.

Before that, an update from the desk. The Witchling is back from beta readers and a big thank you to everyone who volunteered, read, replied and helped the book become better. It’s now in its last stages of checking before being set out, but will still be a few more weeks before it’s published. Which give you enough time to read the first in the set, The Saddling (19 reviews! The most of any of my books, who will make it 20?). This and all my other books are free if you have Kindle Unlimited, by the way. So you can also pick up all the Symi books under that arrangement – links in the righthand column >>

The weather has warmed up, though it’s cloudy and a bit windy today (Sunday). If you’re planning your Symi summer sojourn, you may like to know that the Dodecanese Seaways timetable will soon be released covering dates right up until October. Their message said it will be out on 10^th February so you might want to look out for it. Okay, so now the photos.

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