Honolulu duvet nonsense – with random photos thrown in to break it up as it’s a long post today.

Back to the duvet delivery and I had the most appropriate and nonsensical piece of spam turn up in the in-box the other day. It was headed something like “Your Abandoned Package For Delivery” which of course, perked up my ears a little as I am still waiting for my new duvet. So, I thought I would investigate further…

My suspicions were aroused when I saw it had come from the “Interim Assistance General Manager, Honolulu International Airport” (full address supplied for authenticity), and my package was supposed to be coming from Derbyshire, England to Symi, Greece. But still, it started off cheerily enough with “Hello Good Friend.” To which I replied, ‘Ah hello my good friend, whoever you are, we’ve never met so you’re not actually a friend let alone a good one, but how can I help you?’ the conversation (repeated here exactly as it was written) ran on, thus:

“I have very vital information to give to you, but first I must have your trust before I review it to you because it may cause me my job, so I need somebody that I can trust for me to be able to review the secret to you.”

‘A little repetitious but I get the drift, man, and I ain’t never heard of no-one reviewing a secret before, The Situation yes, but even that was only in song form, but pray carry on, my good friend.’

He did.

“I am Mr.William Emmad, head of luggage/baggage storage facilities (Operations,Maintenance,Transportation) here at the Honolulu International Airport, Hawaii USA.”

‘How’s the weather over there, William?’

          “During my recent withheld package routine check at the Airport Storage Vault, I discovered an abandoned shipment from a Diplomat from London and when scanned it revealed an undisclosed sum of money in a metal trunk box.”

‘Okay, forget the weather. Was it my duvet?’

“The consignment was abandoned…”

‘Oh no! Why?’

“…because the Contents of the consignment was not properly declared by the consignee as “MONEY” rather it was declared as personal effect to avoid interrogation and also the inability of the diplomat to pay for the United States Non Inspection Charges which is $3,700 USD.”

‘Back up a moment, pal, and take a breath, why don’t you? I was asking you, good friend, how the weather was and you completely ignored me and started rattling on about someone’s package and it’s not even my duvet. What do you want?’

“On my assumption the consignment is still left in our Storage House here at the Honolulu International Airport, Hawaii till date. The details of the consignment including your name, your email address and the official documents from the United Nations office in Geneva are tagged on the Trunk box.”

‘Highly unlikely my duvet is of interest to anyone at the UN, and you don’t need to repeat where Honolulu is, I got the message, but what’s this got to do with my duvet?’

“However, to enable me confirm if you are the actual recipient of this consignment as the assistant director of the Inspection Unit, I will advise you provide your current Phone Number and Full Address, to enable me cross check if it corresponds with the address on the official documents including the name of nearest Airport around your city.”

‘Well now you’re going to have some fun, matey. The airport around my city eh? Well, I don’t live in a city, so what-ya gunna do about that?’

“Please note that this consignment is supposed to have been returned to the United States Treasury Department as unclaimed delivery due to the delays in concluding the clearance processes so as a result of this, I will not be able to receive your details on my official email account.”

‘Don’t fret it. Just send my duvet to the USA Treasury and I am sure they will know what to do with it.’

“So in order words to enable me cross check your details, I will advise you send the required details to my private email address for quick processing and response. Once I confirm you as the actual recipient of the trunk box, I can get everything concluded within 48hours upon your acceptance and proceed to your address for delivery.”

‘No, don’t think so.’

“Lastly, be informed that the reason I have taken it upon myself to contact you personally about this abandoned consignment is because I want us to transact this business and share the money 70% for you and 30% for me since the consignment has not yet been returned to the United States Treasury Department after being abandoned by the diplomat so immediately the confirmation is made, I will go ahead and pay for the United States Non Inspection Fee of $3,700 dollars and arrange for the box to be delivered to your doorstep Or I can bring it by myself to avoid any more trouble but you have to assure me of my 30% share.”

‘Take a bleedin’ breath! Blimey. And no, I don’t want only 70% of my duvet, I rather think we’ll need all of it. It may be warm in Holo-bleeing-lulu in the winter, pal, but it gets mighty brassy in Symi, Greece. And, BTW, what’s a non-inspection fee? You mean someone actually gets paid for not inspecting stuff? That’s a job I’d like. I could sit here all day not inspecting things and earn a fortune. Can you just send me the $3,700 non-inspection fee as I happened not to inspect it either?’

“I wait to hear from you urgently if you are still alive…”

“I’m sorry? You getting threatening now?’

“… and I will appreciate if we can keep this deal confidential.”

‘What? Your plan to murder me for not inspecting something I didn’t want in the first place? Who are you people?’

“Please get back to me via my private Email:(xxxxwille@gmail.com) for further directives:”

‘Learn to punctuate.’

“Thank you.”

‘So, how is the weather?’

I’m still waiting for further directives and my share of 70% of a duvet from Derbyshire and my fee for not inspecting it. Ah well.

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I took a fairly easy morning walk yesterday, just down to Pedi and back. Mind you, I did it in 35 minutes and at quite a pace, for the aerobic stuff you understand. I got a few snaps, as you will, see from today’s truly amazing photos, and it was good to see the girls again – I’d not done this walk in the morning for months.

Feeling pretty bouncy I then set about a few hours’ work while listening to the Oxi Day music and parade that was taking place in Yialos. Yesterday was Oxi Day, obviously. You can find out more from this post on the old look Symi Dream: https://symidream.com/wp/oxi-day-symi/ While you are there you may want to browse back through the old Symi photos we have as the galleries are all still there, and the blog posts and other things. It’s all on the old Symi Dream Archive.

In other news: Work on ‘Straight Swap’ continues as I sit there of an afternoon crossing through lines and paragraphs and making notes and wondering ‘Have I already said this?’ and so on. It’s nice to be able to edit from the sofa, rather than be sat at the desk; that will all come later when I start to make the changes on the document files. Meanwhile, there’s been no news of the duvet delivery that is still, apparently, delivered according to the tracking site which only seemed to track it from one side of the warehouse to the other. It’s still too soon to worry though as, at this time of year things can take weeks to arrive.

The good news about the house is that the new-new pump is working fine still, the old-new pump had a fault, it turned out after a post mortem and so we were covered by the guarantee and Vasilis hugely kindly replaced it all for us at no extra charge. If you need an electrician I know a man I can recommend. The house is cooling down, I am wearing slippers and a sweatshirt for the first time in months, the cool air breezes in under and around my office window but I am loathed to close the shutters; I may look for draft excluder and talking of that, Yiannis now only has bottles of beer in the Rainbow bar so he’s another kind of draught excluder to I suppose. Not that I drink beer, not at this time of year.

Neil is still working though and sunny afternoons have brought some locals out during his shift so it’s still profitable for the boss to keep him on. The Blue Star came in on Wednesday morning taking people off to Rhodes for the day and at least one day trip boat came in too, as did the Express (or Pride) so Wednesday is still a fairly busy shipping day on Symi. And that’s about my news for today. Maybe something more interesting will happen tomorrow.

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I was going to write a blog post about why there is no plural of sheep, as it was a conversation we were having the other day. I did some research and started reading all about “The prehistoric plural *skǣpu normally lost its final vowel in Old English, so that nominative and accusative singular and plural became identical.” (OED) And ‘long stemmed nouns’ and ‘long vowels’ (ee in sheep) or short vowels followed by consonants (o in folk) and so on and, well, quite frankly, I lost the will to live. But it is all to do with mutations (like the X Men) and Germany, and where you put your tongue: “Goose comes from an ancient Germanic word that underwent a process called “mutation” or “umlaut”. When it was made plural, an /i/ or /j/ sound was added, causing the tongue to rise in preparation for making that sound, and changing the “oo” to “ee”…

Still awake? Well, if you want to know more than I suggest you ask the font of all knowledge Google and see what come up. But here are a few others (Terri) which might be useful to put in your knowledge base: Salmon, Moose, Fish (hmm), Deer, Cattle, Bison, Pike, Plankton and Squid and there are others that are not related to animals but, frankly, life is too short so here is a photo of Jack investigating some donations for Solidarity Symi and giving them his seal of approval.

Seals is the plural of seal by the way, just so you know. And here are other photos, for example the sunrise and cloud of Tuesday morning when I went up to hill a-wandering at 6.15. I was back before the actual sun-up over the mountain, but had a pleasant walk. I timed myself this time, as I had been meaning to do for a while, and found it was 25 minutes to the Kantina from the house, and then 15 minutes back down again at a reasonably fast pace. That’s not too bad for a bit of aerobic exercise before breakfast.

And then onwards through Tuesday and the cruise ship came in followed by the Panagia Skiadeni and the Sea Dreams Symi, so there were day-trippers and cruise-trippers on the island through the morning and into the afternoon. Not that I saw any from up on my perch where, after some work in the morning I relaxed with some story editing in the afternoon.

As you can see, a slow news day from the desk. But for anyone who doesn’t do the dreaded Facebook and who is on Symi, there’s a meeting of Solidary Symi on Wednesday at 14.00 at the Symi Visitor office and repeated again at the same time on Thursday to discuss winter plans, if you want to go along. That’s me, short post today as I need to go and read up on why there is no plural for rice. Or is there?

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Monday morning and Vasilis is here to check up on the water pump that has taken on a life of its own. Problem diagnosed (silt in a valve) and now being fixed.

I think I’ve sorted the small leak in the workhouse though. There looked to be a broken seal where the rain water collection pipe comes through the roof so I got the mastic gun out (yes, I own one! Well, Ian left it behind one day and I’ve owned it ever since) and ran some new sealant around the gap. Now we only have to wait for it to rain again and I can test it out. And yes, apparently it did rain on Saturday night but I was in bed by then and missed a good thunderstorm. So, that’s the thrilling news on that particular home improvement.

The contributions for blog posts are coming in, and thank you to everyone who has sent write-ups and pictures, post and even poems. I’ll get those all uploaded in good time for going away in November. There is still room for a few more if you want to send something in.

If you were wondering about the above photos are all about, they are ones we took on Saturday last while on the balcony at sunset. This could well have been the approaching storm that I somehow slept through. Neil has shown these off on his Facebook page and I believe one or two are for sale (contact him to enquire), it certainly was a stunning display of clouds. The rest of the weekend was pretty wonderful to with an extra hour in bed, sunny weather and an invite to a lovely dinner in upper Horio. Monday dawned fair but chilly and I had to wear long trousers and long sleeves while writing, for the first time in ages. It’s about now when it’s hard to know what to wear; feeing cold in the shade and still hot in the sun, so best to go out with a removable top and something underneath, you’re hot one moment and cold the next. It’s like having the menopause, or so I am told.

I’ll leave you with that and go see what the rest of my day holds in store – nothing is planned apart from paying a bill at the bank, and making something for lunch or dinner out of some chicken that’s defrosting in the fridge. Oh, and some work on the book, can’t forget that. It’s not all fun and play around here you know.

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Living on Symi could be a general category for blog posts and here we have some thoughts on Symi living in a Sunday morning blog and news roundup. First the weather check (looks out of window): calm, flat sea, cool (low 20s) but not cold, sunny out there, a few clouds around, a couple of showers expected later, week ahead set for sun, declining temperatures, but soft winds. Inside the house conditions: generally dry, bit of dusting needed, slight leak from rain pipe into the laundry room. Now then, this was a conundrum.

After the heavy rains of the other day we had water in the workhouse. I assumed it had blown in there from the porch as it was warm enough to have the doors open and the porch is open to the courtyard and when the wind is in the wrong direction it blows rain in. But the water persisted after being mopped up and even when it wasn’t raining, so I blamed the washing machine which is over 12 years old. But on Sunday morning I noticed that the water was back, not a lot of it but still a mystery as it hadn’t rained, the doors were shut and the washing machine was off. It turns out to be something to do with the free water supply. There’s a pipe that has been designed into the roofing system to drain the rain from the roof and let it flow into the sterna and there must be a problem with one of the joints, and it looks like it’s the one I can’t get to. So we will have to put up with it or else take the whole thing apart and rebuild it. Note: keep mop handy.

The other news of the weekend is that the landlord dropped by with the electricity bill. Remember I told you we thought we’d been paying the wrong one? Well, we had and now we have the right one, and it covers the whole time we’ve been here which is eight months now. Luckily it was not as much as I expected and was just about the amount I had saved, so that’s all well and good and the reading is now accurate and up to date. Your electricity bill in Greece doesn’t just cover the power you’ve used, there are other things on it too: the use of the transmission network, the rather vague ‘Services of General Interest’ (I have a general interest in the Universal horror films of the 1930s, is that covered, I wonder?) and “the special duty of Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reduction, destined to the development of green energy.” (Sounds fine by me.)

Plus: “charges resulting from selling generation power from photovoltaic systems”, (no idea) and “charges for works carried out on the network.” (Can I see the order sheets and specs before agreeing to pay for the work please?)

Plus: Excise duty, and “ΕΙΔ. ΤΕΛΟΣ 5‰ (SPECIAL DUTY 5‰) (L.2093/92): The estimated mean charge from the Special Duty 5‰ is up to 0.5 ευρώ per 1.000 kWh. It is noted that the Special Duty 5‰ is calculated in the Bills based on actual reading” (I’m not going to argue with that, I wouldn’t know where to start.)

Plus: VAT. And (we’re not done yet) charges for third parties (Municipal fees, Municipal tax, Real Estate Tax). And if you were wondering how those local taxes are calculated it’s by taking the square meterage of the property, multiplying it by the MF or MT coefficient, multiplying that by the number of billing days and dividing the whole kit and caboodle by 365. Then you take away the number you first thought of, add your paternal grandfather’s year of birth and divide that by the ASS coefficient (plus 18% VAT) and write down the first number that comes into your head. Bingo!

So that’s the water leak analysed and the electricity bill up to date and everything ready for a new week ahead during which I shall be working on draft three of ‘Straight Swap’ which is coming along nicely. It’s great to have a print copy of it that I can red pen all the way through, so much easier to do than on the screen (where the red pen gets in the way of other programmes and messes up my Facebook). Having a proof copy printed via Lulu.com was cheaper than using up paper and ink on home printing 130,000 words, double spaced, and the time it took to arrive, about six weeks, gave me enough time away from the story to come back to it with a more distant eye. So, that’s my week planed, that and wondering how to fix the water leak.

Oh, and by the way, the 100% duvet tracking is now showing that the duvet has been delivered, which is news to me as I’ve not seen it. What they mean, when they wash their hands of the delivery by saying it’s been delivered, is that it is now with another courier and probably somewhere between Derbyshire and Rhodes.

Your Greek electricity bill explained in English can be found at this link, but I am not sure how up to date the info is (percentages and VAT amounts etc.) https://www.dei.gr/en/oikiakoi-pelates/o-logariasmos-sas/entupo-logariasmou

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