Yes, it is still cloudy (Thursday), yes it’s been raining, yes there was thunder and lightning about when we were out walking early in the morning and yes, the house is still dripping and the clothes aren’t dry, but I’ve had enough of talking about how wet it is on Symi at the moment. (The Poseidon weather site shows the rainfall map and is predicting more overnight but a clearer day today, Friday.) I just checked out the month ahead, specifically to look at the week we hope to be moving, and that week (on Accuweather) shows thunderstorms all week. Oh joy! Mind you, that’s still over two weeks away so things have time to change. And that’s it, no more rain talk (today at least).

So, by way of a complete change and to give us all an ‘Ahh’ moment or two, I wanted to share a couple of photos sent in from Suzan. She sent them with a message explaining that these are three orphaned Symi kids (goats) which are now one month old. They were, by the looks of it, hand reared, and they are all now doing fine up at Filimonas’ farm at Ayios Dimitrios.

Suzan, as you may know, helps with Symi Animal Welfare (www.symianimalwelfare.org) and if you want to know more about how you can contribute towards the health of the island’s non-domestic (and sometimes domestic) animals, then click over there and take a look at their site.

Do you know, after a few days of long rambles and stuff, I am going to leave it there today. I find myself with an hour to spare before household chores demand my attention and I still have eight chapters of ‘Lonely House’ to check over before I send them to the editor, so I am going to do that. Have a nice day.

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It’s not really the weather for taking photos, so you will have to make do with some old ones and a couple I took around the house yesterday.

Not that it is very easy to get around our house at the moment. The packing is one reason, as you can see from one of the shots, and the rain is the other – more in a moment. The front room is filling up with boxes and bags, crates and ‘things’ ready to go. I’ve more or less got the front room packed, apart from what I need at the desk, and some larger objects and pictures – which will probably end up being carried as they are. The bathroom cupboards are now down to their basics, and the moussandra/office is pretty much taken care of apart from Neil’s cameras. (About six boxes just on their own.) There’s not a lot more we can do now until we have a firm moving date and the keys, apart from collect more boxes, but where to put them? That’s the question.

Today, Thursday, is day 18 of the ‘moving house on Symi’ saga, and all we are waiting for now is the contract signing day; well, that’s the next stage. Meanwhile, though, we’ve lined up the new furniture that is needed, and have identified a new fridge freezer; all very exciting.

But progress is slightly hampered by the washing. It’s been rather wet of late, out there and in here, and Tuesday night/Wednesday morning brought a huge thunderstorm. It was so ‘Biblical’ that the lightening was going off at the same time as the thunder, a phenomenon usually reserved for horror films. As National Geographic put it: “Since light travels faster than sound, the thunder is heard after the lightning. If you see lightning and hear thunder at the same time, that lightning is in your neighbourhood.” Well, that night it was in our back garden, I reckon. The power went off at the trip switch, luckily after we’d got out of bed to unplug everything, this was at 3.15 in the morning.

I was just getting back into bed when I heard a new sound. We’re kind of used to the drip of the sitting room roof with rainwater falling into the bowl that’s there, but this was different. It was coming from the front room, the saloni, where it hasn’t rained before. So, we found that leak and put a towel under it and headed back to… No wait, there’s another sound. This one was closer to home and it was actually dripping on one side of the bed, somehow coming through the roof, through Neil’s office (where there was no sign or a leak at that time (3.30)) and into the bedroom. That’s a new one. Sorted that, reduced to putting down an old tablecloth as we’d run out of towels, and back to sleep – avoiding the, er, wet patch.

In the morning I discovered that the kitchen was now leaking is six new places, including over the draining board, the sitting room was as wet as usual and the corridor had also sprung a leak. In fact, the bathroom was the driest place in the house. Now we have the washing in the sitting room, near the heater with a fan on it to help the towels dry as we need them for the floors, the door and windows open to get rid of the condensation, and all kinds of damp things hanging about all over the place.

So, when next you think of asking ‘What is it like on Symi in the winter,’ I can give you two answers: one: wet. And two: read ‘Symi 85600’ and ‘Carry on up the Kali Strata’ and you will find out more detail.

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After the excesses of the holiday to Kos followed by Christmas and all that, I’ve started up my morning walks again. Last week I went out a couple of times and the aim is to go out at least three times this week. These aren’t lazy ambles down to the sea or anything, these are, usually, quite hard work, on purpose of course.

The usual route is out of the house and up past the museum to the top road, all in one go, no pausing until I arrive on the road by Periotisa where I stop for a slug of water by the new house that’s being built. After that it’s down to the main road and then up the zigzag to the cantina, and back again. After a few days of this at a fast pace I usually start running the second stage and go as far up the slope as I can before slowing down and walking the rest of the way up. This stage gets longer as the days get warmer.

The running back down is simple except that when I get back to the top road there’s an uphill slope again, like a final burn before the warm-down, which is the climbing back down the steps, past the museum. I give myself an extra distance to run for each time, the next bend, the next shrub, the shrine or the bulldozer (which is liable to move day by day) and so on. Hopefully by April we’ll be back to the full distance again and will be alternating the road route with To Vrisis and even Pedi.

On Monday, for example, I left the house at 6.30, it was still a bit dark as there was heavy cloud covering the sunrise, and it was cold, but not windy, so not unbearable. I went as quietly as I could down to Kampos where things suddenly got loud. There were some army guys waiting for their lift, a few workers waiting for their pickup, cars going past and soon after, the army truck. The officers living out and about can catch the pick-up truck at around 6.30 to go up to barracks, or drive to their base, and I am often passed by army men in cars at that time of day, plus farmers and agricultural workers heading out.

A little further up the road and the traffic died away and calm returned. And, once I was back on the top road I noticed that the church clock is back to telling the real time. On Monday it chimed seven at seven, rather than at twenty-two minutes past two, or whatever it had been doing for the last few weeks. Add in the sheep that were taking a stroll on the road, the goat bells, the many barking dogs and the cockerels, it was quite a noisy early morning. As it is most mornings when I (or we) head out at the time of day to blow the cobwebs away and get the brain into gear for another day.

Another day of packing (contract almost ready to be signed for new house – all being well we should have the keys in less than three weeks) and sorting things out.

Oh, here’s a quick ‘Symi’ thing to leave you with, one of those things that happens a lot around here. I mentioned we needed boxes or crates and could folk drop them off at the house if passing. Well, after a Sunday at home noticing nothing out of the ordinary, on Monday I noticed there were some new boxes and a couple of crates in the front room. Neither of us brought them in, and I have no idea who did, but they are very useful, so thank you whoever you were.

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Here are some interesting speculations about what is going to happen in and to Greece over the coming months… Obviously not from me. I am as likely to make an in-depth, considered political analysis as I am a strawberry pavlova, so don’t worry that I am going to get serious on you.

But a journalist friend of mine in England sent me some interesting distilments from the media that I thought I would share. These are quick thoughts from early Monday morning as the results were still coming in:

“The BBC has more or less decided this radical left party with the slogan “Hope is Coming” will be forming the government. They have of course now raised vast expectations among disgruntled Greeks who will expect them to deliver. In fact, the newspapers here are reporting that lots of Greeks have now stopped paying their taxes in the expectation that the new government will just write off the bill. The expectation is that if the new party tells Europe to [Foxtrot Oscar], and refuses to pay any of its debts, then taxes will go down, so why bother paying them now?

The truth is that if the new government does refuse to pay its debts and just writes them off then Greece will be at a position zero (ie no debts) but will be unable to borrow anything. As it happens, the old government has managed to balance the books. They’re managing to raise in tax exactly what they need to pay for public services. So, provided they continue raising the same amount of tax then they should be able to pay everybody’s wages. But if taxes go down, then they won’t.

What they won’t be able to do is modernise, build new schools, new hospitals, and the private sector won’t be able to move forward and create new jobs because there will be no investment in Greece. So the country will stand still – with the notable exception of tourism which will boom, but there won’t be enough money to improve facilities for tourists (new hotels etc).

And standing still also means no jobs for the 25% currently unemployed (which is 50% of young people as well).

So in a nutshell, those currently in work will continue to get paid but basically the country will come to a standstill. Everything will carry on just as it is now and Greece will be locked in austerity for years with no end in sight, or else go bankrupt. Tourism will flourish, but most of that money will be spent on jobs for people working in tourism and building new hotels (not hospitals or schools or roads).

The drachma (if it comes to that) will be a rock bottom currency, which means Greece will be very cheap for everyone outside Greece but people in Greece won’t be able to afford much in the way of imported goods. Everything outside Greece will be hugely expensive for them. Anything imported will rocket in price. And if Greece imports a lot of fuel and energy, then that will also cause price rises for Greek goods depending on them (manufacturing and delivery costs).”

But we shall have to wait and see what happens now. Right, that’s that done. Tomorrow I shall talk about something a bit closer to home.

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Well, that’ll teach us to do the right thing. Popped into the accountant’s office on Saturday to check up on a piece of paper that came through the post, a fifty-something VAT bill from last year, so no big shakes. And was then told that taxes were due for 2013… I mean, nearly two years ago now, and where did that come from?

Ah, some is personal income tax so fair enough but then there’s this large amount for having a business. Doesn’t matter that a) you only had a small business and you’re not Microsoft or anything and b) you don’t actually have a business anymore, you closed it because c) you had no money… So, that’s now been added to the list of monthly expenditure to be paid off in instalments. And, what’s worse, there will be another one along soon for 2014, including a tax for having a business during that year. The bill, for anyone who is interested, covers 24% personal income tax (no matter what, apparently, and the income threshold seems to be more a serving suggestion than anything remotely helpful), €600 for the joy of having a business during that year, plus something like 45% of that year’s income tax paid again, in advance, towards the following year’s income – if that makes sense. So, the bill due to come along in a few months will be for 2014 income tax, + business tax + 45% towards 2015 income.

Someone is having a laugh, and why didn’t this arrive back in June or whenever it usually comes in? Perhaps Sunday’s elections will cause a change for the better and this ridiculously high (for a small biz) business tax will go by the wayside – I am sure it’s never been that high before. (Used to be €250 a year. No wonder small businesses are going out of business.) And here endeth the Sunday morning rant – as I am writing this on Sunday morning with ‘death bells’ ringing rather atmospherically, though interspersed with joyful bells – as if someone is secretly happy that someone else has passed on and can’t resist pressing the happy button every now and then – the wind has died down and the sun is out. Once I wake up and get over it I may actually go out and about.

We did that yesterday (Saturday), with a visit to the new Well Being centre in Yialos which was opening its doors. That was followed by a wander around the harbour looking for a cover for my tablet, no joy but I should hear today (Monday) about one that can be ordered for me. I could buy one online and have it delivered, but other people have small business taxes to pay, so I would rather support them. And that was followed by a visit to the Wind shop. It’s amazing what you can buy on Symi, you can even buy wind.

No, actually, you used to be able to buy Symi air, from Neil, at his shop (taxes included) but I am talking about my mobile phone service provider which used to be called Telestet then changed its name to Tim, found that rather too informal and so became Wind. Now lots of people in Greece have wind, myself included. I’ve been on a contract for a few years now paying around €30.00 per month. For that I can make calls and send texts until the balance is used up, and then on 19th of each month they make the balance up to €30.00 again, so, if I use it all up I do okay but if I only use, say €5.00 worth, they still only make it up to the €30.00 limit and I still have to pay €30.00 – yes I know, takes a bit of getting your head around –though I do get a ‘free’ smart phone every 18 months.

But not any longer. I cancelled it yesterday, and I will go back to a pay as you go one instead. This means a new sim card, but the same number, apparently. So, if you have my phone number it remains the same but I may lose yours when I change sim cards (March 19th) and forget to transfer them over. I hardly use the phone anyway, and now I have the tablet I will miss the thing even less. Always best to send me an email or a text, rather than ring me, I sometimes watch the phone ringing and think, ‘No, not answering that, it could be someone wanting to speak to me.’ Which is, I know, pretty daft as that what phones are for, but I just don’t like their intrusiveness and the way they keep ringing.

So, that’s me got that off my chest, I’ll let you get on with the week ahead now. The cat is bothering me for his second breakfast and I have Harry’s washing in our machine to tend to so best go and get on with that…

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