Of musicals and fresh produce
It looks like this cold north wind is set to stay with us through the week, though it’s calming down. A bit like us after the birthday weekend. Sunday descended into a great afternoon at the Rainbow Bar with one too many glasses of something – Yiannis eventually left us to get on with it and went home for his lunch. That was followed by an evening at home watching musicals.

I had recently ordered a copy of Chess in concert at the Albert Hall and, though I’d seen it on YouTube before, this was the first viewing in high quality. It’s still a great show with some good numbers in it and some great performances from this concert cast. The cast included Marti Pellow from Wet Wet Wet, and David Bedella who I had seen before in ‘Jerry Springer, The Opera.’ (Much parental guidance advised.) This treat was followed by the arena performance of Jesus Christ Superstar. Well, it was Easter in many countries, though it’s not Easter here until May 1^st.

I actually felt surprisingly alive on Monday morning, thanks to the many bottles of water consumed during the day. We usually get through up to three litres each day each as a matter of course, even in the winter. There’s always a plastic beaker (courtesy of Jumbo) on the desk or by the sofa, and I am always topping that up with water and sipping away. It’s helping with the dreaded post-Christmas diet (five kilos down since February) and is also good for you, of course. We have four packs at a time delivered from the supermarket and that lot lasts us less than a week. Luckily bottled water is much cheaper here in Greece than I’ve found it elsewhere. I remember being on a strange detox-yourself diet years ago in the UK and mineral water was a big part of that too, three litres a day. But it was so expensive.

So, the lesson from this morning’s ramble from Symi is that you should always drink lots of water and it’s not expensive to do so when you are here. The other thing that is easy to do is buy fresh produce and eat well. Mind you, when the boats are messed up by the weather, as they were last week, fresh can mean frozen, but that’s okay. You also can’t help but eat organic, if you want to, with a lot of produce coming from local farms and nearby islands. We regularly have fresh eggs with bright yellow yokes courtesy of Sotiris’ farm. Michaelis’ supermarket, and many others, also sell their own produce. In fact, apart from the (very) odd Pot Noodle, it’s quite hard to buy convenience food. There are tins of Greek specialities, dolmathes and meatballs spring invitingly to mind, but it’s so much healthier and cheaper to buy your own ingredients and cook. It’s fun too.

This reminds me of an incident of 2008. I remember this as it was the year Neil was laid up with his broken foot. He was on both feet by then and we were celebrating something at the Jean & Tonic bar, chatting to Miss DJ about stuff when we started trying to remember lyrics from the musical Chicago, specifically ‘The cell block tango’ where six ‘merry murderesses’ each tell their story. They have a specific word each, Pop!, Squish, Uh-uh, Cicero, Lipschitz and… But we couldn’t remember the sixth one. Naturally this meant we had to race home, put on the DVD and watch the show, just what you do at two in the morning in winter. While Miss DJ and I sang our way through various numbers, Neil disappeared into the kitchen to, we thought, make himself a sandwich. But no. Such is the way of things here that, twenty minutes later, he reappeared with a plate of homemade kolokithokeftethes. Try saying that when you’ve had a few. We did, it was fab. So were they. (You may also know them as courgette fritters or balls.) That was all lovely and they went down well. The next morning, it might have been more like afternoon actually, I went to the kitchen to discover the aftermath of an explosion in a kolokithokeftethes factory with courgette dripping from the cupboards, blocking up the sink and just about every pan in the house in need of washing up. But still, they were fresh and tasted great.

Oh, and the sixth word from the lyrics that we could not remember? The word was, naturally, ‘Six.’

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Monday ramble
And a lovely weekend was had by all. I was celebrating a birthday so the weekend included a special dinner and time with the Godboys and friends. Luckily the vertigo faded out throughout Saturday and the world righted itself.

The Friday boat schedule was a bit disrupted because, I assume, of the bad weather earlier in the week, and the Blue Star didn’t come in until about five hours after its usual time, making it very late/early Friday/Saturday coming back from Rhodes. The weather stayed sunny but cold as a chill wind blew in and the Dodecanese boat came and went according to its schedule, so it can’t have been that windy.

As for me, I stayed in on Saturday and read a new book Neil had given me about a conspiracy theory to do with 9/11 – interesting and rather scientific, well researched but doesn’t actually explain why the US Government would want to blow up the buildings and stage the event, it leaves us to make up our own mind about that. In fact, the book doesn’t ask the question, Why? It’s about ‘How.’ So, that was an interesting read and while I was reading it I was able to listen to music from my tablet sent through the airwaves to my new CD machine via Bluetooth and not even have to get up to change the CDs, as the music was coming from Spotify online.

Which suddenly made me think of LPs (remember them?) and how you had to change the record over, half way through. This probably won’t make any sense to my younger readers, but I still feel myself about to stand up and cross the room to turn the record over after certain songs from albums which I now have on CD. Unfortunately, I left all my LPs back in Brighton, thinking I would collect them from the old house one day, and never did and our friends, to whom we sold the property, later sold it on, and oops, there goes my collection. There was nothing valuable in it though, apart from a rare copy of Victor Victoria on vinyl; apparently only so many were made and then they were withdrawn. I bought mine from Dress Circle in London for a small fortune in those days. But hey ho! There, it’s gone and I have no idea why I am rambling on about this now or here.

So, back to the week ahead. I hope you put your clocks forward on Saturday night/Sunday morning – put them forward to the front of the shelf I mean, so you can see them better. I forgot all about that and had that thing on Sunday morning where I wasn’t sure if the computer was making things up, or if the kitchen clock had stopped. Ah well, off into Monday we go.

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It’s Saturday, and so here is a small collection of photos for you. I took these while out on a walk on Thursday in the valley. There are several more, and I will put those ones up over time. Yesterday was Independence Day in Greece, a bank holiday, and that came after the name day of Evangalismos where lanterns are lit around the harbour and up the slope towards the church at Harani; it all looked very pretty from up here on the hill. I only had my underwater camera to hand and so the image here is pretty ‘skata’ but you can make out the lanterns along the quayside and up the slope towards the church, and also around the clock tower in Yialos.

Friday, for me, started with a wonderful attack of vertigo which had me bouncing around the house from wall to wall, holding on to whatever was to hand when needed, and basically putting paid to any thoughts I had of getting anything constructive done for a while. But still, here are some images of flowers and things seen on my walk. I am no plant expert and so cannot give you the names of what I saw, but hopefully you will get some idea of the kinds of wildlife we have here on Symi at this time of year. For more information and a reliable guide, you need to consult the experts, and I once again direct you to the useful blog and catalogue that you can find on Symi Flora and Fauna here.

Enjoy the wildlife photos (click one and a viewing box should open so you can click through them all one at a time) and have a good weekend:

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Health insurance matters
First: Well, that wind certainly made itself known. The rattling steam train on our roof turned out to be the wind racing through the air conditioner unit and/or through some heavy plastic pipes the landlord has left up on the ‘tower’ roof above the kitchen. We had to keep turning the television up so we could hear it, and the force eight or nine gale went on through Wednesday and into the evening, finally fading out well after dark. The Blue Star was unable to leave Rhodes, in fact, looking at Marine Traffic, I could see no passenger ships in the Aegean at all, only some sturdy tankers and cargo boats. Even Rhodes Diagoras airport was closed to flights at one point.

But Thursday was quite the opposite. The morning was calm and quiet and there was but a slight breeze. There was also a strange mist around, or maybe it’s dust in the air, and things looked rather autumnal out there. At one point I could not see Nimos which is only a just across the bay. It was also warm, so perhaps the mist was caused by humidity. Either way, it was a complete contrast to Wednesday’s battle of the winds, and this blog is quickly turning into a daily Symi weather update page, so let’s move on to something else.

The health check MOT is fast approaching and we will be going to Rhodes in a few days. We are just waiting to get the itinerary from our health insurance contact and then we can plan boats and hotels. In case you were wondering, there are various ways to have health insurance in Greece and, in my 14 years here so far, we have had dealings with four. First there is the IKA (like the British national health schemes and service) which you can get if you are employed by someone else. Then there is TEVE which are payments made by self-employed folk, and this also covers pensions and things and, as far as I can see, is very expensive. Smaller communities can also use something called OGA, which is, I think, mainly for farmers, fishermen and some small businesses. (I have not looked up the exact details here so excuse me if that’s not 100% accurate, but OGA was available for the shop when we had it.)

Then there are private health plans and apparently many Greek people on IKA (and others) also opt for some kind of private health insurance if they can. These services are a private supplement to their government insurance. Or, you can go for full private insurance if you don’t work for anyone else, or work for an overseas company and don’t fall into the IKA and other schemes. This is what I set up last year. Part of mine involves some annual check-ups, along the lines of what we usually do (regular and longstanding readers will know about this) and that’s what we are going to be doing, hopefully, in the first week of April. Although Neil is still in IKA, he has a check-up plan as well, and pays a certain amount for a morning of tests at the Euromedica private hospital in Rhodes. Mine is similar but works in a different way as I also have a full cover plan.

And that plan is with AXA (their Greek website is here – in English). I did look at others last year but settled for this company for various reasons. The cover is good, though the only thing private insurances don’t cover is the cost of medicines, which can be expensive in Greece, and elsewhere, and so the annual check-up is well worth adding on. I’ve always found that Greek doctors are very into prevention as well as cure. Often have I been told off for not going to the doctor before I became ill. ‘You left it so long, why?’ ‘Because I wasn’t ill yesterday.’ ‘You should still have come to me sooner.’ That kind of thing, which is of course, all for the good. Anyway, our lovely lady, Tsmabika, is making our arrangements (all part of the service) and we should be heading off to Rhodes to get thoroughly checked up. If you are interested to know more, you can look at the website link above, or call the office in Rhodes. (English is spoken there as well as Greek.) The number is +30 22410 69690.

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Still windy
Writing this on Wednesday morning and the wind is still blowing. The Blue Star bypassed us today, presumably because it was so rough out there. You can clearly see the wind whipping up the sea surface from up here.

But the sun is out and the wind is not cold, though you’d have to be careful if you went out in it, something I was going to do first thing this morning. I decided against it when I woke up and thought an express train was hurtling across the roof above me. Each time I hear a sound like that I think of the strange case of ‘The Dyatlov Pass Incident.’ This is a story that my friend Ged alerted me to a couple years ago; a group of Russian hikers, all students and trained for outdoor pursuits, went missing on a hike in 1959. The bodies were found in very strange circumstances, there was an inquiry but no definite conclusions, at the time. The theory was that local tribes (this was in the Ural mountains of Russia) killed the hikers, and this theory was put forward in a recently published book called ‘Don’t Go There’ by Russian author, Svetlana Oss. There is another theory, put forward in ‘Dead Mountain’ by Donnie Eichar, that it was a low-frequency sound phenomenon, something called ‘infrasonic sound’, that would cause vibrations, interrupt brain patterns and cause disorientation and panic. This then caused the hikers to flee and freeze to death. It’s all very creepy and the sound of the roof rattling and the wind howling low across the house makes me wonder if this is what the group heard (only it would have been even lower and more intense). Was that the reason they fled their tent, without shoes and some clothing, and ran? Click the links above if you want to read the story and make your own conclusions. It’s a fascinating read – the Oss book looks a little at Russian rural and tribal song poems/storytelling which is itself fascinating.

But back to Symi and it’s a day for staying in, with the shutters closed against the wind, and the cat by the fire, though it is not that cold. I do wonder, on days like this, what happens to those who wanted to get off at Symi this morning and hope that the wind subsides so the boat can dock tonight. I know of at least two people hoping to get back today. Fingers crossed. It was so windy that the Dodecanese catamaran harboured at Symi, presumably on Tuesday night. I am pretty sure it wasn’t there when I went to bed on Monday (might be wrong), but it was there are 6.30 Wednesday morning. I wonder where that came from and where it was going to when it was told to pull in here and wait for the wind to die down.

And, on another note, I now have seven people reading ‘Remotely’ in its current draft format, all prepared to offer notes on typos still remaining and also provide reviews for future publicity. I could still do with a few more readers if anyone is interested to read the book before it comes out. Its current format is not professionally formatted as yet and not checked by the main proof reader, so it’s about pointing out any obvious errors and maybe posting a review of it on Amazon, Facebook and other useful sites (assuming you think it is worthy) in return for having an electronic copy for free. Email me if you might be interested.

And with that I shall leave you and head off into the wind, which is due to have faded somewhat by the time you read this on Thursday.

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