Before I forget, I should thank Racheal from The Symi Estate Agent for the photo I’ve taken from Facebook, and to Sevasti from the Symi Women’s’ Association for her photos too. The others today are from our ‘family’ after show party which we held at Trata, the Trawler taverna in Yialos.

Yum, food…No! Winter is over, the exercise is back on in the mornings, I am not going to eat another pizza until the next time I eat a pizza, and we’re having a run on brown rice and vegetables in our house. Actually, you often have to try hard not to eat well around here. It’s always tempting to head to a taverna for lunch or dinner, especially now we don’t have the ties of the shop, but it’s also rather costly both in terms of coins and calories. But shopping is the way to go and then making things up from fresh ingredients – when the boats are running smoothly. Yesterday, for example, we had fresh free-range eggs from Sotiris’ farm for breakfast, plus some kind of greenery our landlord gave us from his patch of ground in front of the house. There were also fresh (ish) veg from the shop and a tin of tuna – the only tin used in anger that day, with a salad for dinner. None of this boil in the bag, or pop a ready-made pie out of the freezer and into the micro-diddle, though it is nice to get hold of things like that occasionally, as a treat. Fray Bentos pies, where the pastry never puffs up properly…. Yum!

Anyway, that wasn’t the news I was going to tell you. What I wanted to share with you today is the rather extravagant and conceited sentence: “At the end of the month I am off to Tilos to work on the book.” (Facebook fiends might already know this.) There will no doubt be eating involved when there, but I have booked myself a large self-catering apartment with all mod cons so I can be as ‘at home’ as possible. I chose this place because of the table, I like to have the space to sit and write comfortably, I am used to a desk, and if I have to cramp up on an outside café table or narrow dressing table (as I have done in the past) I won’t get half as much done.

I’m booked into the Apollo Studios, Tilos, for the last weekend of May, first week of June – Neil, poor old thing, is staying here as he has to work at the bar. But then, he’s been to Austria, Bratislava, Scotland, the south of France and India on his own, and where have I been solo in the last 18 years? Sainsbury’s.

Only kidding (Gran Canaria actually, and Deal). But I am heading off to do some work on ‘Straight Swap’, the strange body-swap comedy set in a place not unlike my home town on the Kent coast. The apartment looks good, and it’s got good reviews On Trip Advisor, if you use that site, I have it for a decent price and it’s got views, though it’s not right on the sea, so I shan’t be too distracted. The plan is to work in the mornings, as per, and then go and do some wandering and walking in the afternoon, with perhaps more work in the evening. The journey is not at the most convenient time but as long as the boat is on time it’s not too bad; leaving on a Friday night at around 8.30, getting there around 10.30 and then catching the next Friday boat back at six in the morning.

So, that’s my news. You can check out the Apollo Studios website here: http://www.apollostudios.gr/

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Starting off a rather blurred Tuesday morning after a very pleasant Sunday and Monday. Today might be the first day for wearing shorts as someone’s put the heating up all of a sudden.

Sunday went off brilliantly and we had a great audience, as you will see from one of the photos on today’s post. The children were excellent and the adults got a big round of applause and a cheer after each of our routines too. It was a packed house – and a hot one – with parents, visitors, locals all enjoying the show. After five months of lessons and rehearsals it now feels like winter is over and done with and we can get on with summer.

We got a congratulatory handshake from the Mayor during the interval and I am sure he suggested we do the routine again, on the main stage in the summer, with him in it too. I’m up for that if he is. I haven’t yet seen any phots of us in the show, but will have a scout around online today – if anyone has any they’d like me to share, please send them over – not just us I mean, of the other dances too.

And summer, for us this year, means the delights of being able to take some time to enjoy things a bit more, I mean with less hours to put in at the shop. So, needing to check the bank and see the accountant, we popped down to Yialos yesterday for half an hour at around 11.30. We made it back to the village just in time for Neil to start his shift at the bar at 3.00 having called in at the accountant (tax forms not due until the middle of May), the bank, the post office, the pharmacy and To Spitiko for a bite to eat – salad and mushroom risotto in my case.

A quick aside: hi Joshua and Daniella – great to meet you! And Ian & Marylyn, the restaurants in Rhodes were, Boukia Boukia (in the Old Town around the back of Socrates Square, actually quite near the public loo but don’t let that put you off!), and Koukos cafe in the new town pedestrian way, and Nikos Fish Taverna nearby. Hope you find somewhere.

Talking of shops, which I wasn’t, there’s a new online Symi shop for you to check out. You can bring some of that Symi sunshine straight to your door, direct from the island. This is a new venture, currently selling men’s clothing, but with other accessories and art coming soon. Check the site: www.symishop.gr and bookmark it so you can check it out again. It looks like you can order and pay online with cards and with PayPal and there’s free worldwide shipping.

Here’s the link again so you can go and have a look now. www.symishop.gr

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I’m having that ‘end of the week’ feeling, though it’s not quite the end of the week yet – it’s Friday later morning actually. I am writing this now as I have some more work to do this afternoon, and I want to get straight on with things tomorrow morning.

I’ve got an online meeting to get to at 1.30. I don’t have to travel very far, just across the porch to the workhouse, the part of our house where I work. The editor of Lonely House and I are going to slaughter some widows and orphans, those hanging words at the bottom or top of a page that simply don’t look right. We’re aiming to do this live, via Skype and some wizardry (I’ve not done this before he has) where we can look at the same page on the screen and then chat about what to do. If you get rid of one orphan then you might create more later on you see, it saves lots of emails.

So, that’s going to be all new to me, and dandy. I hope. We should, after a couple of these sessions, have the text of the book tided up and ready to go. I just need to sort out the cover then, and the front stuff, and then get a proof copy to test quality and then… These things don’t happen overnight. But, with any luck we should be looking at a new horror novel out in the summer.

Meanwhile: dance show on Sunday, last rehearsal on Saturday afternoon for us and then we’re up and running, or up and tapping. 18:30 at the Opera House in Yialos if you are on Symi and want to come along. The weather has warmed up, we had our first breakfast on the balcony overlooking the harbour this morning; just need to get some balcony chairs sorted so we don’t have to carry the dining chairs out each time.

And we had our first water lecture in 12 years on Wednesday. The new house has a facility for catching rainwater and putting it into the sterna. So we’ve been happily using it up while the rains were here in the knowledge that the sterna was filling. It wasn’t. The pipework, of which there is a lot around here, was broken. This was only discovered recently and so on Wednesday we put the water on to start filling the tank again. So, you turn things on at the mains and in it comes. No. The dial wasn’t turning. So, you check out the pipes in the sterna cupboard to see there’s another tap there, so you turn that on and yes, the sound of running water. And the pump going. Odd.

So, you turn that off and check with the landlord who lives across the road. He comes along and turns the mains on. No. Then the tap. Yes but no. (That combination leads to the pump pumping water up from the sterna and then back into the sterna. Don’t ask me why.) And then he turns on another tap on a second pipe in the cupboard and… No. So he goes away and phones the council who say eight o’clock is the time – this was half seven. So, he comes back at eight and turns on the mains. No. And then turns off a fourth tap on a third pipe that goes up our courtyard wall and over the top of the lane. Then he pops into the sterna cupboard and turns the red tap from on to off, and the blue tap from off to on, and then the mains tap to on and hey presto! No water.

Only joking. The water does come in with that four tap combination, though it didn’t today as it was meant to; already the days are being rationed. At least the water is, though though the water boat was in the harbour as we were having breakfast. So, on water days it’s mains tap on, red tap on, blue tap off. It’s going to be a weekend for taps. And while the sterna is being filled we have no water in the taps for some reason. I don’t understand Greek plumbing! Then I don’t understand any other nationality of plumbing either.

Okay, off for my weekend now. Hope you have a good one too!

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April 29^th, the first cruise ship of the season arrives on Symi and four go mad at a dress rehearsal. Living the dream on Symi eh? Well, having fun at least.

Now then, for all you first time visitors who are preparing to head this way, whom we may meet at some point during your stay, can we get a few things sorted out?

Firstly: I’ve never understood that ‘Living the dream’ saying. People come up to me and say, ‘You’re living the dream!’ And, after I’ve recovered and asked who on earth they are, I think to myself, ‘No I’m not. If I were, I would be doing something like running through a town I’ve never seen before and yet I know intimately while talking to an old school friend I’ve never met about the house we are standing in which is growing real flowers on the wallpaper where you step through to find yourself by the sea eating chocolate chairs with no noses.’

That’s the kind of dream I have. Living the dream? You wouldn’t want to live some of mine. Others, on the other hand, you would want to live, I know I certainly would, but we shan’t get into all of that now.

Here’s another one I hear a lot from total strangers, ‘Oh, you are so lucky to be living here.’ Well, yes, when you see the trauma and tragedy and devastation and hatred and all those other non-nice things happening to people around the world, we are lucky. We are lucky to be UK citizens, believe it or not, we are lucky that the world speaks our language on the net and in the air, at sea and elsewhere, and we’re lucky that, so far, we have avoided major illness or horror. But we didn’t actually get here by luck; we didn’t wake up from one of those odd dreams to find ourselves living someone else’s dream. We made it happen. You see you can, if you try, make your own ‘luck.’

And thirdly, for those Symi newbies who will find yourself wanting to know more about Symi, here are some of the questions you will want to ask:

• What’s it like on Symi in the winter?
• Do you live here?
• Do you ever get used to the steps?
• What are the medical services like?
• Does it get cold in the winter?
• What is it really like to live on Symi?
• Where can I get the bus to Rhodes?

And so on. Well, dear yet-to-be-met fiends*, there is one simple answer: Read the books!

Symi 85600 | Carry on up the Kali Strata | Village View – all available in Kindle and proper-book form. Oh, and happy May 1st to you! Kalo Mina.

* Typo

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I guess the first advertisement of the day is for the dance show on Sunday. Organised by the Women’s Association of Symi, this is Rhiannon Wheeler dance show which features ballet, jazz and tap from children aged from three to 52, if I include myself in the tap section. Which I do. That’s at the Opera House at 6.30 pm on Sunday evening. It usually runs for a couple of hours, with an interval, and the bar will be open. I hope.

Before that though, on Friday, we have Koukoumas up at Agios Athanasios in the usual way. The local celebration of May Day and Husband Naming, this is a chance to come and see traditional Symi dances, hear traditional island songs and watch the ceremony as the unmarried girls of the village discover the name of their future husbands. That usually starts around 5.30 pm.

And also on Friday we will (apparently) be having another of those Greek crisis days the media is so fond of. Well, I don’t know what’s going on, but I suspect our government will have to change its promises, the ones they were elected on – some of which we all knew were lovely dear, but not really feasible. We shall see. But I do wish the UK press (and possibly other countries’ press) would stop scaremongering. Telling holidaymakers to bring cash only on holiday as banks might run out of money. Doh! Just stay calm, bring your usual and you’ll be fine. Well, you could bring extra as long as you spend it on local businesses, no one will mind that, but I doubt you will find a lack of notes. And if you do, well, then you’ll experience what it’s really like to live in Greece and get some bonus holiday value.

And talking of a lack of notes, I took up the flute yesterday. I was brought up with a flute in the house, my brother played it from an early age, we used to do concerts together him on flute me on whisky, I mean piano. He was an orchestral player too, appearing with the Kent Youth Orchestra one year. (Berloiz’ Te Deum, I thought it was te-tedium; sorry, not a fan.) Through my vague musical career I have had a stab at: piano, organ (church), saxophone, recorder, violin, cello, clarinet, oboe, guitar (lead and acoustic), bass, accordion and a few teachers. The only thing I’ve never managed to get a note out of is a flute.

So, with my new, second hand Boosey and Hawkes, I sat down, or rather stood up, for an hour yesterday with a few online instruction manuals and made myself very dizzy. I took up the tip of taking the mouthpiece on its own, blocking the end with a hand and blowing, and that worked, no problem. Then I did exactly the same with the mouthpiece attached to the rest of the gubbins and, nope, just a lot of air, light-headedness and frustration. But perseverance is the key, so later today another attempt will be made to get a sound from this, the (apparently) easiest of instruments to play – after the ukulele, the spelling of which is not the easiest to explain.

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