You won’t believe what happens next. Pure genius!
Well, we’ve been having something of a chilly weekend with temperatures down to six degrees inside the house rising to a balmy 12 by the end of the day, all shutters closed and several layers on, plus blankets over knees. The wind has been a bit lively, reported at only force five but I reckon it was harder than that. It ripped the hook and eye from my office shutter so now it must be closed until I get it fixed, so I am without a view for a while. The living room shutters are also closed, with draft proofing around parts of them, the doors are shut and there is now a cover hanging in front of them which still blows out and into the sitting room right next to where I usually sit. I must see if I can find someone to make me a decent, heavy curtain – I shall explore the web later.

The rain did stop on Friday though so Saturday and Sunday were clear days, making things colder than they otherwise would have been I guess. We carried on with our weekend plans which were mainly shopping, feeding the stray cats, doing the housework and getting some writing done. But there were breaks for Roku watching. I’d ordered one of those things you plug into your TV so you can watch streaming TV from the net. I can’t ‘cast’ from tablet to TV with it but we can watch hours of American TV (OMG!) with lots of films and TV programmes, Netflix is on there (though it’s not regional, it’s American) as are loads of other channels and things like YouTube. You can even access your Facebook videos and pictures.

And talking of Facebook images and pictures, I am getting so fed up with some of the stuff that’s being not only put out there but accepted as acceptable. It’s like these ‘things’ are changing the way people communicate and not in a good way. I raise two examples which many people will feel are fine and won’t have a problem with, but which I think are stifling creativity (‘cos everyone is simply copying them). I don’t have a huge problem but these things are starting to taser my nerves each time I see them.

The first are those posts that try and lure you into another site so you will play a video clip, or flick through some photos and then click on an advert button and gain the site a few pennies. That’s not the problem for me as we do that, the £25.00 a year we generate from the advert clicks helps pay to keep the site going, that amount per day would help keep the whole island going, but that’s another story. The style of writing I am objecting to runs something like this:

You will see an innocuous photo but the screaming headline beside it is meant to draw you in and make you believe you are going to see something remarkable:

“She thought it was just an ordinary slide but then THIS happened!” (Woman slides down waterslide and ends up in a swimming pool. So What?’

“He thought he would never walk again, and then he did THIS!” (Man gets off his arse and goes for a walk.)

“He didn’t understand how it worked so she did this. The result is GENIUS.” (Man can’t work TV remote control, woman switches TV on manually.) That kind of thing.

I wanted to tell you about my number two pet hate, but you won’t believe what happened next. INCREDIBLE!

I hate all this ‘This is Bill’ though any name will do it seems. These ridiculous cartoons – that often say things that I totally agree with – are taking over. You may have seen them: “This is Bill. Bill knows it is annoying to post ‘This is Bill’ images on his wall. Bill still does it. Don’t be like Bill.” Or, “This is Bill.” (Yeah? So what?) “Bill doesn’t think it’s necessary to post photos of your food on Facebook. Bill knows they look like sick. Be like Bill. Don’t do it.”

That is so annoying! Being told what to do and think by a stick-man cartoon and someone trying to be flippant. One day these two crass witticisms (if that’s what they are, I can’t actually think of the word for them) will breed and we’ll get things like: “Bill just posted a photo on Facebook. GENIUS! Bill now thinks he is important but actually Bill’s a twit. You won’t guess what happened next. Be like Bill.” And they will make even less sense than they do now.

Thank you. Had my say, and now I am away, leaving you with these last words: “James is an old grouch when he sees unimaginative posts like these on Facebook. James will now ignore them and never post such things himself. James is smart. Be like James.”

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Blogs About Living In Greece
After mentioning Effrosyni Moschoudi and her blog yesterday (here’s the home page link) I thought I’d do a scout around to see what other blogs about living in Greece I could find. I thought this might be of interest to you along with some general images I’ve got in my folder.

I did a generic search via a search engine and found loads of Greek based blogs. I haven’t mentioned the larger, more commercial sites here as they probably don’t need the attention, and you already know about Adriana’s blog from Symi, and my own. Of course you do, you are reading it right now. But here are four others that you might want to look at. If you do, and you post comments or make contact, do tell them that I sent you.

My first problem was to find blogs with up to date content; several at the top of my search results looked promising but had not updated for over a year; so I left them alone. The first one I looked at (that was reasonably up to date; December 2015) looked fine but a pop-up popped-up to tell me there was malicious malware associated with the page. I was still able to view http://bigfatgreekodyssey.com/blog/ though and it is, like Symi Dream, a blog with pictures and text, though not a daily one.

http://momingreecetoday.blogspot.gr/ was next and again it is images and words. I know that sounds pretty obvious, but some blogs these days are image-only blogs. This looks to be a personal blog like mine and goes back to 2012. I was interested to see a post in the archive list called ‘Musicals in Greece’, though the page I found seemed to be all about politics.

http://octopus-in-my-ouzo.blogspot.gr/ An Octopus in My Ouzo was third on my list and again it’s a neatly set out Blogspot style blog with pictures and text. This blog is by Jennifer Barclay who lives on ‘a tiny Greek island’ so is much more in keeping with Symi Dream. But which island? I am assuming Tilos, though it’s not immediately apparent and I may be wrong – no doubt someone will put me, er, straight. A good blog though and very much ‘Up our dromos’ (street) as it’s personal, easy to read, about island life and also publicises books, other blogs and sites you might like to see.

And Jennifer also has another close-to-home blog on her list of handy sites, John Manuel’s Ramblings From Rhodes. http://ramblingsfromrhodes.blogspot.gr/ Very much like our Symi Dream – note the use of the word ‘Rambles’ – except with fewer typos and longer posts perhaps, more informative and with appropriate pjhots (oops) rather than my habit of posting up any old pictures to go with any old ramblings. You can also get hold of John’s life in Greece books via his site links and there is, I believe, a fourth in the series now available.

I hope that’s given you some new ideas for some reading to accompany Symi Dream – not to replace it. Perhaps make yourself a Favourites folder called ‘Greek island blogs’ or some such and, if you find any others that you think our other readers might like to know about, let me know and I’ll mention them here. Now I have to go and do some housework before getting on with a novel. It’s been raining (hard) and some rain came into the porch where Jack had merrily thrown most of his dirt tray content onto the floor during some midnight expedition to find the perfect hole to dig, so there is mud to deal with. I could also do with opening the house up, now the rain has stopped, and letting some air through. Don’t want to get black mould and damp this early in the winter.

Anyway, check the links above, and for a fuller list of other Ex-pat blogs in Greece try http://www.expatsblog.com/blogs/greece and happy reading!

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Some bits and pieces
I have picked up on a couple of things that might be of interest to you today. I’ll have a quick chat about them while showing you some of the lazy photos taken from my window over the past couple of days. I’ve not been out an about much since the weekend, it’s cold and there is no need, so what’s the point? I have spent a lot of time at home updating my recently destroyed autocorrect changes, turning the water pump back on several times a day, sweeping up the mountain of cat litter Jack manages to throw out of his box every night, trying to warm the house, writing letters to water pump manufacturers in Italy (two €400 pumps going wrong in six months, not a good thing but I doubt I shall hear back) and thinking about doing some more Donkey work, and then finding I have spent so long warming the sitting room to an acceptable level that I have neglected the office and it’s too darn cold to go back there and start writing again. (And it’s actually not that cold out, ten degrees or so; due to be down to three next Monday.) The kitchen alternative is just as cold. But, while pottering around with all that, I also found these news items:

“Greece has seen 21 times more migrants arrive on its shores so far this month [January] than in all of January 2015, the International Organization for Migration said Tuesday. By the end of the year [2015] the country alone saw well over 850,000 arrivals.” That’s according to ekthimerini.com and the article link is here.

The other thing I picked up on is an interview with Anne Zouroudi on ‘effrosyni writes’, a blog by fellow indie author Effrosyni Moschoudi. You might like to read the interview here. The good news is that Anne is starting work on more ‘Greek Detective’ novels; where the last series was based around the seven deadly sins, the next one is going to be based around the Ten Commandments. Looking forward to that or what?

In other news, I have been sent a link to the score for ‘the Thirteenth’ as ‘The Judas Curse’ is now called. I have downloaded it and will give it a play through soon. I played a little of it (to make sure I’d converted the file correctly so I could play it on my CD player) and it sounds great. I thought it would be good to give the whole thing a play through to get an idea of the overall tone, the atmosphere and the style, but you really need the visuals to make sense of the music. I’ll have a go at that later today perhaps.

I saw the Blue Star come in yesterday, Wednesday, on its usual run to Rhodes. It had come back through on Monday rather than Friday last because of the storm we had. I wondered if, when you are booked into the boat for the Friday evening sailing but find you are not leaving until Monday, do you get a free cabin for the weekend? Not that I would like to find out, not in Rhodes. I wouldn’t mind if I was stranded on an island I’d not been to before, as long as the cabin was free. And there may be other disruptions later this week as there is another strike due. This is in protest over what the government is having to do to workers’ pensions or something equally as justified.

There you go, a few snippets of stuff for a Thursday morning. Now, back to the heating and trying to warm my toes and fingers.

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I caught these photos of the patrol boat out in the bay during the rain the other day. They sailed right into the end of the rainbow, making me wonder if this vessel could now be called a Rainbow Warrior. Talking of which, Yiannis is back and fine and around and about though the Rainbow bar is not yet open again. There’s no point. The island feels deserted.

The usual day to day battles of a writer’s life on a Greek island continue. Today we are slowly ploughing through Word ‘72, or whatever the latest update was to my computer’s operating system. I may have mentioned it before but thanks to the great global overlord in the sky which is Microsoft, I have a problem with my autocorrect. Every time I get an update from the all-seeing omnipotence it buggers up my collection of my stored autocorrect options. I’ve been on the forum with them getting all kinds of un-useful advice about ACL Extensions or something, but the problem is pretty clear to me: Whenever Office updates (as it did without my permission) then I can say goodbye to the hundreds of inputs I have made over several hours, over several months, since the last update. I have now turned the auto updates off until I can be sure I will no longer lose my thousands of autocorrect words when an update comes along. I can’t be the only one to suffer this problem every time there’s an Office update, surely.

And if that meant anything to you, then thank you for listening. Thanks also for the tips and advice previously sent in. I am now going to leave things as they are and wait for the next update, which I will control, and see what happens. At least then I can see if my theory is correct and I will be prepared for any slaughtering of my carefully constructed autocorrect list. Meanwhile…

Great news on the undergarment front! New thermals arrived on Tuesday, along with new slippers and a box set of ‘American Horror Story,’ so that’s me settled into the sofa for the next few days. No, actually, an episode or two a day is enough, we’ve also got a series of ‘24’ on the run and various other things lined up for the evening TV viewing. I am waiting for a Roku caster (or some such magical appliance) so I can ‘throw’ my tablet at the telly and see what the internet can cast. (We use some very odd language these days.) Mind you, I am not convinced that the connection and signal strength are going to be sufficient to cast a Film On live TV show from one country to this and from one part of the house to the next, and then from the sofa to the television. Time will tell.

By the way, Adrianna is back from her trip and back to her twice-weekly blog which you can find here.

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Donkey work

Today: Some more photos from Yialos, Saturday.

On Monday we nipped down to pick up some post which must have arrived on the Friday boat as I don’t think we have had any since. Sunday threw down a storm or two, with thunder and lightning effects and some heavy rain. This has topped up our sterna but also disturbed the water pump – at least, something has.

It’s doing that thing where it turns itself off after use every now and then and even, on one occasion, turns itself on again, taking the toilet cistern by surprise. Often though it’s a case of having to cross to the other house to reboot the on/off switch. Then it’s fine… until the next time. This is the third pump in 11 months, so either there was a bad batch or something is troubling them down there in the sterna. At the moment it’s running (though off and on) so there is no need to trouble our electrician/plumber just yet. Mind you, when it switches off half way through a shower and you’ve covered in soap and the switch is in the next house and it’s seven in the morning and freezing cold, well, that’s another mater.

The other news from the weekend is that I was able to do some more Donkey work. It’s a bit of a donkey work challenge actually. I have the script and characters, but I have to flesh it out in such a way as to make it readable. What I have discovered along the way so far is that I’ve not had to think about the characters’ appearance. What I mean is:

When you write a screenplay you don’t describe the look of a character unless it’s plot necessary – i.e. certain scars, race, anything unusual that is a clue to or part of the plot. You wouldn’t, for example, describe a character as : “Mike enters. He is 27 years old and has blonde hair and green eyes, a striking man with high cheekbones and a permanently furrowed brow. His beard is ginger and his moustache shows as prematurely grey. Although right handed, Mike likes to use his left hand and train it up to one day be ambidextrous. He comes from Wiltshire and was a pheasant plucker’s mate for the first 21 years of his life. He retrained at night classes to become the world’s top computer hacker at 24, and now lives with his collection of stoats on a small island off Torbay.”

For a start, who is this creature? And for a second, where are you going to find someone to play it looking like that? Without a lot of expensive makeup and effects he’d be pretty hard to find. And for a third, you’ve taken up valuable ‘black stuff’ lines and wasted valuable action/movie time. Anyway, there’s no point writing for Bruce Willis (I wasn’t, actually) when you’re only likely to be able to hire Will Bruce. The camera does the work and you say: “Mike (20s, unusual in appearance but with presence) enters.” Or something like that, leaving it open for the casting director to work with the team and find someone the writer hadn’t thought of who can carry the part and improve it.

And what that means is that I came to a part in Donkeys where I realised no one had been told what the characters actually looked like. So, while using a bit of sensible word placing and by dripping description in throughout the text over time, I now have to think about looks, and make sure I keep any descriptions consistent. It was odd to realise, after having this piece around me for so many years (four now, or three?), that I had no idea exactly what the characters looked like. So, while out and about on Symi recently I’ve been keeping my eyes open and making mental notes. One day, when regular Symi visitors read Shocking The Donkeys, they may actually recognise some local heroes in the story.

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