It seems like ages since I have written a blog post at this time of the day; it’s Tuesday morning, 6.45 and I’m just sitting down at the desk. The last couple of weeks I’ve had the weeks’ posts ready to go by a Monday evening, because we’ve been out on long walks and I’ve had plenty to talk about, in advance. This Sunday we had a Sunday lunch at the Harry House instead, so I’ve not been able to move much since then and it’s put my schedule out of sync.

But here we are, with the sun not yet up, the temperature outside chilly, a few clouds in the dark grey sky, and even the Alarm Cat still asleep on his outside bench. What’s the day got in store?

A wander to Yialos to see if there is anything at the post office. Apparently Friday’s delivery (via the big boat) has been unpacked and people have started to find things they were waiting for. Let’s hope the 101 things we ordered are waiting for me as there is only one more boat before Christmas. That’s on Friday of this week, if ordered items are not on that boat they won’t be in until after Christmas Day as the post comes on the Blue Star and that only comes on Wednesday and Friday. Fingers crossed.

We still have our local Christmas Shopping to do, but that’s about it. Mind you, I don’t know when Neil is going to find the time to fit it in what with his Pilates, Zumba and tap dancing classes. We went to tap last night and had a good thrash-o-the-feet for an hour and a half or so. We’re half way through learning one routine for a show in April, but nowhere near up to speed on it, at least I’m not, but we are pretty hopeful that we will be by the time we get there.

And after Yialos? A game of golf is in order tonight I think, we’ve started up our Symi golf challenge for the 2014/15 season, we’ve played four courses so far and Neil is first on the leader board by one stroke.

If you were wondering where the course (let alone courses) is on Symi, it’s in our sitting room inside the Xbox; it’s a winter tradition us boys have set up, the Tiger Woods challenge, it keeps us off the streets. So the week currently runs as: Monday, tap, Tuesday, Pilates, Zumba and golf, Wednesday (possibly aerobics – can you imagine!), Thursday Pilates and Zumba, Friday, card school, Saturday (and relax) and Sunday long walks. Ah the winter life on Symi!

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Neil has just discovered that the parachuting Santa his bought from Haroula on Friday evening (after a very long lunch) is voice activated. He started singing along to the loudspeakered Sunday morning liturgy (!) and it went off right beside him, giving him a shock, but waking him up. There will now be no peace on earth in our house. As I try and work in the front room I keep hearing, ‘Boo!’ followed by ‘You better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout or I’ll spit in your eye,’ or something similar.

The first Christmas presents are under the tree, all the way from Penzance in a box that also included a t-shirt for padding; very practical my mum. The T-shirt has a slogan on the front, in French, and Neil has already claimed it for his own, the slogan reads: ‘I don’t have a minute to myself, I’m retired.’ I know the feeling. I keep trying to get on with ‘Straight Swap’ my comedy novel, but keep getting side-tracked by other things, mainly checking the post and eating.

Neil’s upstairs in his new office right now and has just shouted down, ‘There’s no blog today then?’ like it was some kind of accusation. I reply: ‘It’s a Sunday,’ to which he counters with a rather grudging, ‘Oh, okay then.’ I mean, I’m actually writing tomorrow’s post now, and it IS a Sunday morning! As my nephew would say ‘FFS.’ (Wasn’t that a furniture store?) I should be out doing the garden or feeding the cat or something, I don’t have a minute to myself and I am not even retired yet. Apparently you can’t do that these days unless you are 95 because the average life expectancy of a normal person is 123, assuming they never eat at McDonald’s and strictly avoid polyester. I mean, DFS! (That was it.)

And so I move on to tell you that after last week’s deluge, the weather has perked up and Saturday was and Sunday so far is, rather sunny and lovely. We decided not to go out on a walk today because we wanted to do nothing at home instead. Actually, I have planned to wrap some presents and put them under the tree, but I am currently waiting for a wagon load to arrive in the post. My box to mother took about ten days to get to Cornwall, but other things coming in the other direction seem to be taking weeks. It’s one of those strange Star Trek time-warp (just a step to the left) things where posted items move more quickly heading up and to the left than they do down and to the right. (I put that in just for you, Terri.) But there could be a reason for that as my tame journalist in the UK wrote to me the other day:

“Meanwhile, just heard that Christmas in the UK is descending into chaos. You may have heard there was a major airports computer failure yesterday that brought loads of airports to a complete standstill. And of course James (1) found himself stuck in a plane at Heathrow going nowhere when he was heading off to Berlin for an important shoot today. Don’t know if he’s made it.

But the biggest mess is the complete collapse of the UK’s online delivery services. So many people have ordered their Christmas online – not just presents, but the food orders as well – that the online retailers and their delivery companies are in melt-down, unable to cope. Warnings are now going out that many deliveries will not now be made in time for Christmas. So I expect a lot of people will be having a “Margot Christmas”. Remember that episode? (2) When Margot’s bought in Christmas failed to arrive? Christmas at the Leadbetters had to be cancelled but they ended up having a great time with Tom and Jerry next door and their homemade Christmas.”

I hope your Christmas arranging hasn’t fallen into chaos, and I am very much looking forward to our dress rehearsal this afternoon, where Jenine has invited us and a couple of others for a roast dinner. I am currently making up some proper Christmas music CDs to play (carols, not songs about parachuting Coke advertisements) and am even going as far as to consider going to Yialos to buy some horseradish sauce. I’ll keep you posted on that scintillating adventure in due course. Meanwhile, have a good week ahead.

Notes:
(1)    James. Not me, my friend’s nephew who is the current Hugo Boss model.
(2)    ‘The Good Life’ 70s TV series in the UK.

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We have all been battling storms and bad weather this last week, and especially here on Symi in the last couple of days. We were up during the night on Thursday/Friday, putting down towels, unplugging things and checking the shutters. The storm came in around 1.30 a.m. and then rolled away, came back and rolled past again, then later in the morning on Friday came back again.

At one point on Friday morning there were two Electricity Board guys outside the house, up the pole, swinging wires around and, I assume, fixing next door’s supply. I did hear a strange ‘bang’ sound during the night. Each time it rained or hailed or thundered, they took shelter under our balcony and each time I went to tell them to take shelter inside our lobby it was pelting too hard for me to get out there.

But still, enough about that, Saturday has dawned bright and clear, as if nothing had happened. Here are some photos from Neil taken last weekend. You can click to open them in the lightbox and then run a slideshow if you want. Have a good weekend and stay dry!

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Sunday morning on Symi: The liturgy being broadcast from the church (listen to short video below), the cat asleep on his outdoor bench, washing out to dry, Neil up in his loft seeing to his messages, something in the slow cooker for later in the day, house tidy and it’s only 09.15.

We’re up early because we’re aiming to go for a walk up the hillside, but the skies look a bit dark, though the forecast says it’s not going to rain until tonight. We’re not planning to go too far though and I’ll put some waterproofs in the rucksack just in case. All being well there will be some more ‘walking on Symi’ photos during the week.

We went for a short walk on Saturday, just down to Pedi and back, by which time I was drenched; not rain, not the sea, but it was very humid. I took some snaps of the Pedi landmarks which I can share with you: the wartime shell, the fishing nets, the 101 uses of a dead motorbike, the strange man in red, the shopping trolley and other internationally renowned sights will be along on the blog today and later.

This Sunday morning (as it is as I write this) is also an exciting time as the illuminations are due to be switched on tonight. I don’t mean the municipal Christmas trees around the harbour, or the lights on the street lamps, the festive neon of the village square or anything as simple as that. Tonight is the Spalding Festival of Light which we should be able to see from the other side of the island. The boys and Co. are setting up their Christmas lights and decorations today, so I hope to be there covering that story later, and, as long as I can bag an exclusive, I’ll get a photo for the blog. Can’t wait.

We’re not putting our decorations up until after 11th December; two weeks seems adequate time. Before then I have to find decent wrapping paper and pay copious visits to the post office to see if things arrive in time. Not sure when the last posting day from UK to Greece is, but that doesn’t really matter around here anyway. Things can leave warehouses and homes in plenty of time, and wiz across land or sea to Athens, to Rhodes or wherever, but they can then still get held up by bad weather, a cancelled boat or even, and this has been known, get stuck in a delivery person’s yard for several days, outside, in the rain; though that happens rarely I should add.

We did once, when first opening the shop, order a blow-up from Kodak (USA, as it turned out) to see what their service was like – we were sourcing enlargement services from all over the place. The photo didn’t arrive so after about six weeks we ordered another one. That arrived in about three weeks, though the quality wasn’t great so we never used them. About a year after ordering the first print, this tattered, battered old piece of cardboard tube turned up at the post office, stamped all over with labels from places it had toured while en route, like Alan Wicker’s passport; ‘Dusseldorf’,  Antwerp’ and the back end of ‘Anus’ (which is actually a town in France, honest, look it up). And the photo was just as bad as the other one. Hey ho!

Anyway, here’s hoping you’ve posted and done, and everything is falling into place for Christmas (if you celebrate it) and here’s hoping it doesn’t pour down just as we get to the top of the mountain later this morning. And here’s that video:

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We have a new feature on the blog from today. There’s a thing called ‘Lightbox’ (thank you Allan) installed, you can’t see it but you can see it working. Click on the first image (or any image) on the posts and a pop-up image should appear (you may be asked if you want to allow this for this site, in which case you do; or you may not, but if you don’t then there’s not much point reading this…). This should be the most recently added image and it will open to a certain size. You can then click through all the images on the posts without having to open and close a new window; and I’ve just added a slideshow function too so you can watch ‘hands free.’ That should make it easier for you to browse the pictures. To change images simply click the picture or the navigation buttons you will see, and to close the thing just click the X in the bottom right corner.

And talking of images, there’s a new gallery up at the old-look Symi Dream site where we still have all our image galleries. This one relates to the weeks’ posts of Walking through the Kato Meria area of Symi and has photos I’ve not put up on the blog; it can be found here.

While you are browsing images, and talking about walks, I have used some of Neil’s images from our recent walk to add to the post today. You can use the new lightbox feature simply by clicking the first image, and test it out. Let me know if there are any bugs, our email address is at the very bottom of the page.

So, what’s been going on during this week, while we were wandering the hills? (Which we only did last Sunday, it’s just taken me a week to get through the event. And we may be walking again this Sunday, so watch out!) Well, the weather has warmed up and we had a slight sprinkling of rain, not enough to dampen the kitchen, though things have been humid and the house is already getting that damp-wall look. The Symi cinema has been playing films on a Sunday night, at Mandeio’s, and the crossword team have been doing crosswords on a Saturday.

We’ve been working at home, as we now do, and have been ordering Christmas presents like mad. Which reminds me, you can probably still get a calendar delivered in time, check the links to the right and order now! The Alarm Cat has been a bit grumpy as next door’s tom has been in and he tends to spray a bit; Jack lacks the internal combustion to be able to spray back. While he is outside on the path keeping watch on the roof and preparing for battle, I am on hands and knees sniffing washing machines and doors with a disinfectant spray in one hand, a roll of kitchen paper in the other and an equally grumpy look on my face. We have to keep the bathroom window open you see, to help reduce the black mould the grows due to condensation. Ah, the joys of living on Symi in the winter.

Neil’s also been to his Pilates and Zumba classes (separately), we’ve both started on tap and have been doing the weights, and the only thing missing at the moment is the early morning jog routine; it’s just too dark and cold at 6.30 these days. So, walks and dance instead, with maybe the occasional run if we can. That’s the way to go.

So, enjoy your weekend, try out the lightbox (I am thinking of upgrading so I can make images bigger and do other fancy stuff with this plugin) and enjoy the photos.

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