Still and silent Symi
Kalo Mina!
I didn’t manage a long walk on Monday after all, but I did pop out to the village for a short one. It was so quiet! I guess everyone was at their family barbeques, flying kites, down by the sea, up in the mountains…

Both bars in the square were closed, but the corner shop was open. I felt like whispering when I called in there, it was so quiet. The square was empty, no boys playing football, no children gathered on the steps at Syllogos, nobody passing by. Only one old man was sitting on one of the benches in the square looking wistfully down at his house next door, contemplating life, or perhaps wondering when he would be allowed back in; once the floors had dried, perhaps. I heard no birds singing, there was no breeze to worry the trees, nothing passing by, not even the sound of a church bell or a motorbike. It was as if the whole world was on hold for a while. Someone had pressed the pause button.

The sky was clear and the day as warm. I could smell the new season in the air, which was clear and still. The sea was as flat as I had ever seen it, reflecting the hills like ice and, when I reached home and looked down from the roof, only a few people were wandering the quayside. Later in the day, the Blue Star came back and went just as the Dodecanese was coming back in, collecting a group of visitors from Rhodes, it looked like. Later, the evening settled in, and things took on a different sound.

There was a party… somewhere, on Monday night. We could hear (and at one point, feel) the music from down below and, with lights on a some of the harbour-front cafes, I assumed it was coming from down there. The music was still playing, though much more quietly, when we got up at 5.30 the next day, so it sounded like the party had gone on all night. The sound wasn’t at a level to disturb but, with everything being so quiet during the day, I was aware of it. Maybe it was a mix of music from the taverna, Yialos and perhaps even a private party. Wherever it was, it sounded like everyone was having a grand time.

Tuesday, and the outlook has changed. The sea is still calm, the air still, but today it’s grey and flat. Nimos is hung with a low cloud, the air is misty and dripping with humidity, though it feels colder than yesterday. I have heard a few cars passing by the house today, a sign that the world is turning out there, and soon I am heading down into to town to pick up my new keyboard; a proper Qwerty one in English and Greek. This is the one I should have bought before I got clever and ordered from Germany. That one is sitting over there, waiting to be used as an emergency measure, but hopefully, the new one will serve me for another year or two.

And that’s the no-news for today.

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Clean Monday
It is Clean Monday morning as I write, the start of Lent in Greece. There are lots of traditions associated with this time of year, the diet being probably the most famous. Rather than regurgitate the information from elsewhere, I thought I’d direct you to a site, Greek Reporter, which is in English and which tells you all about the diet, traditions and other things in a short article, with photos. If you are interested, click here.

The day started off damp after some overnight rain, but now, nearly midday, Monday, the sky is clearing, and the sun is out if a little diffused. That’s good news for everyone planning a barbeque today and for us, as we may be taking a walk later. That’s after I’ve finished my day’s work, or my morning’s work, as I try not to do too much in the afternoons in winter. I am still working on edits for ‘The Saddling’, and we are nearly there. Once that’s done, I can let the editor do his thing and double-check through each chapter word by word, poor thing. This will take him some time, and while that’s going on, I can turn my attention to something else. Not sure what yet. I still have an idea for ‘Symi, Stuff and Nonsense’ and lots of short pieces in the style of ‘Carry on up the Kali Strata’ with a bit of ‘Symi 85600’ mixed in. I found an old diary with entries written before and during our move to Symi back in 2001/2002 which might be of interest and which fills in some gaps left in stories in ‘Symi 85600.’

Apart from that, though, it’s been a quiet weekend. We cleared up the courtyard and on Sunday went for a drink in the square where it was just warm enough to sit outside if wearing a coat. The kafenion, Lefteris, (also known locally as Bulmas) is now the new home of the Symi cinema on a Sunday evening. I’m not sure how it went last night, but I am sure it was well attended and that everyone enjoyed ‘The Blues Brothers.’

In other news, the Blue Star was running a slightly different, Clean Monday, schedule and Neil is now cooking fish for lunch, so I can’t hang around. There’s still post-weekend tidying up to do. How is it possible to have a tidy kitchen one evening and a cluttered one the next morning when all we had to eat last night was a simple curry and rice? And as for the state of the sitting room after a Sunday night in front of the televisions… Where did all that come from? So, better go and mess with my mess and tidy the place up. It is, after all, CLEAN Monday.

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Symi Saturday photos
As is becoming a custom, there are a few extra photos for Saturday readers today.

The send off for our friend went well and was well attended at the Sunrise café. The bells of nearby Agia Lefteris were rung for him too, causing a flurry of enquiries on the bus, apparently; Who has died? There was a children’s party at Mandeio’s, so we didn’t stop there in the end, they had enough on their plates. Instead, we sat in the square for an hour, just for one on the way home. Then we were invited to the Rainbow Bar for a drink with and on Yiannis. Time to catch up on local gossip and chat about his third grandchild who is on the way in Rhodes. She is expected in a few months, but, as is often the case over here, the doctors have put Yianni’s daughter into what I call ‘confinement’ so she can rest and be waited on for the next three months. There are no problems with the baby, it’s just a thing that happens. It does mean that Yiannis’ wife will be away in Rhodes looking after the family for a few months, and he has been here too. The baby is going to be called Ioanna, the female version of Yiannis, after him.

We also caught up on other gossip which can’t be relayed here. But no more about hearsay, it’s on with some more photos for you to have a quick glance through before I head off into a weekend with no writing planned. What will I do?

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Grammar, and an era ends

I’m still doing well on the old typos I see. Thanks for the comments about stopping for a couple of bears instead of beers. It’s amazing what you can find in Yialos these days.

I am using Grammarly though, which helps with some of the obvious ones, like form instead of from. Before I bought this plug-in, I trawled through my last manuscript, running a search and find for form and changing each instance where it as wrong. Now the thing does it for me. Well, it underlines words and says, ‘Are you sure about this?’ And, ‘I think you should really get a grip you know, no-one says that these days.’ No, it doesn’t, but it would be fun if it did. Instead, it underlines and highlights where normal grammar would suggest you are doing something wrong. Or should that be, doing something incorrectly? Or, incorrectly doing something?’ Grammarly will sort it out for you. I’m not selling this handy add-in, but I am impressed by it. Last time I mentioned it, they wrote to me and thanked me for doing so and asked if I’d put a link. I promised that I would, and so here it is: www.grammarly.com

By the way, before you start to worry and wonder, you can set it to UK spelling and grammar, or USA if you prefer to use that version for your spelling, which I only suggest you do if you are American. Or Canadian? What do they use? American English or Proper English? Whatever they use I am sure it is a lot more friendly, calmer, more polite, caring and – of want of a better adjective – nicer than American. (OMG, USA, you must be SO embarrassed to have elected that. Did you not learn from Brexit? Enough said.)

I’m in danger of wittering on again, but I am looking out at the calm sea, and the sun on the mountains and that view does tend to take you away from what you were thinking about and make you think of nothing. Or, it makes you think about leaving this blog half way through and heading out for a stroll across to a far beach, or through the valley to watch the wildlife, or up into the hills for a ramble. But I can’t. I am playing the piano for someone in a while and then going for a glass-raising at the Sunrise Café for a friend who passed away recently. It’s Thursday as I write and there is only one more day to go before the weekend. And this weekend promises… Nothing! Or whatever I want to do because there is nothing in the diary, at the moment.

On the way back from our glass raising this afternoon we are also going to stop at Mandeio’s Café as there is sad news there too. It’s closing down today, and unless someone else takes it on, not reopening. I am not sure where this will leave the groups of teenagers who go there for coffee of an afternoon and evening or the cinema that Peter has been so ably running these last couple of years. We shall have to wait and see, but it does feel like the end of an era. And the end of a quick pizza, a good club sandwich and a very nice chicken salad, to say nothing of the various bears they served. Beers.

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Wellbeing (not) and doctors
Well, my ‘wellbeing’ kneeling chair has brought me anything but wellbeing. If I were able to get into where I bought it from (I bought it via someone else’s eBay account, long story) I would write the following note to potential buyers:

“Don’t do it! This chair had brought me nothing but aches and pains in the four hours it has taken me to put it together, minus the two pieces that don’t actually fit the holes they were meant to and which won’t do up, no matter how hard I try. First of all, the instructions are badly drawn, so badly drawn that they don’t show you clearly which way round the cross pieces are meant to go. They also come delightfully free of any written instructions, and they are needed. For example: ‘This piece goes in through the cross part, but you need to put the bolt into the cross part first.’ Simple things like that. One of those bolts didn’t work, which didn’t help. And then the wheels which I put on yesterday. There is only one way they can go, and although it’s fine on the back bit, where they point down towards the floor as you would expect, they point forward on the front part, and so serve no useful purpose there at all. They don’t; wheel, they scratch, and they are also lower than the back part, so the chair tips you too far forward.” And so on.

Anyway, enough of that, but I do think the thing might end up sitting redundantly in one cover for the rest of its un-useful life. Meanwhile, I am getting on with some sunny days (a little rain overnight on Tuesday), and getting on with the day-to-day jobs at the house. Outside, the Blue Star came and went, there is an altered timetable for the Clean Monday weekend that’s coming up, and Symi Tours and the websites have the details. We are starting to take a more than a healthy interest in the boats now that we are planning our medical holiday to Rhodes.

This is something that happens every year and has done for a few years now. Around March/April time we set up a series of tests with consultants and spend a couple of days going from cardiologist to Urologist, to whatever ‘ists’ lung doctors are, having X-rays and giving blood and being wired up. It’s all part of the ‘prevention is better than knowing who did it’ mentality I have towards my rather vague healthcare. Now that I have private insurance my wonderful lady from Rhodes organises it all for me. Neil has the same package, though at a lower price as he is younger, and she also organises his; he’s also in the Ika system, but although you can see Ika doctors for free, he pays something like €100.00 per year for his tests. (No waiting involved.) They would cost the same if we did it privately, but Zambika arranges everything and takes the pain out of making the arrangements. Last year she even met us in Rhodes and drove us around; a free taxi service courtesy of AXA.

And that means I need to make contact with her and set the wheels in motion. Not the wheels on the new sit-up chair as they are beyond help, medical or otherwise, but soon we will take a few days off and stay in Rhodes, see the doctors, visit some bars and restaurants and combine our probing and prodding with some eating and walking, sightseeing and general holiday fun. And, of course, we need to know the boat schedules to make sure we can get there and back while staying only a few nights. Looks like Wednesday to Friday might be the way, but we wanted to go on my birthday which falls inconveniently on a Sunday this year. We could go on the Saturday, but then wouldn’t be able to see doctors until Monday and there would be no boat until the Wednesday, so that would be four nights away rather than two. Anyway, enough of this nonsense, I am off to make kindling out of my chair.

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