It’s still only May and already the diary is filling up! Monday evening: friends around for drinks and to see the new house.

Tuesday afternoon: online meeting with the Editor. Tuesday evening, Taverna Zoi is opening and we are booked in for a meal. Saturday evening we are invited for drinks. Next week we have another evening at home with friends… It’s a wonder we get any time for any work.

Monday morning the alarm went off at 5.45, though I was already awake. Not because of the Alarm Cat, he went on the night before and didn’t come home until around half eight in the morning, quite early for him. He seems to be enjoying his new neighbourhood now, but I’d love to know where he goes. Anyway, I was up early and went straight out, this time towards To Vrisi the monastery on the side of the hills overlooking the Pedi Valley.

It was a great Symi sunrise, as you can see from the photos.

I’m looking forward to my trip to Tilos which isn’t until the end of the month. The other day people were asking when I was going, then some thought I had gone and come back, and then someone asked me again when I was going so I volunteered to go tomorrow if they were that keen to get rid of me. Don’t know why I said I’d go at the end of the month, thinking of pay day I guess. But still, less than three weeks and I shall be away.

I’ve been working on the new book bit by bit when I can, but what with all these visitors and blog posts and housework, and trips to Yialos for things, and dinners and so on, it’s a wonder I’ve got anything typed at all. But I am doing what I can when I can.

And that includes today, so now I am cutting myself shorter than I usually am and heading off into novel land. Have a nice day!

I’ve not doing brilliantly on my personal targets of late, though keeping up what I can. Not as much written of the new book as I would like, last week, but I did manage two early morning ‘strenuous’ walks, and two Kali Strata assents, one while weighted down with shopping.

Neil’s had a busy weekend. There’s this new thing in Greece now (he says; it may not be new at all, but it’s new to me), where anyone who works with food and drink has to take a compulsory seminario (course) over two days. This teaches you all about health and hygiene, and there is a certificate you have to gain in order to work legally in a bar, café, restaurant taverna, creperie, supermarket, kafeneion, or anywhere that involves food/drinking.

That all sounds like a very good idea to me, but then I am not paying for it. Each person has to pay €80.00, or their employer does, and when you think how many people work in these kind of places (including hotel staff, canteen staff…) that’s a lot of money going into, I assume, the government. Another way of Greece clawing in some much needed revenue?

Anyway, Neil was there Saturday and Sunday morning, and he stayed the whole course – some people registered, and left pretty smartish, apparently. If you get found working without this certificate there’s a hefty fine. As there is if you get found working without all the correct paperwork, and that takes several days and Euros to arrange as I saw last year. But when it’s all done it’s all done and legal, and that’s what counts.

And it did make me think, do you have the same things when you go for a bar job in the UK (or other countries)? It’s not just the safety course, but last week he was over in Rhodes having a chest X-ray and a… hmm, what shall we call it…? A ‘yesterday’s dinner’ test; he need to get things certified from the doctor here saying he doesn’t have anything nasty, and that’s all on top of the strange work permit papers everyone must have (even Greek people I am told) which cost another €3.00 in ‘tax’, and all that jazz. I’m sure you don’t have such stringent rules in place elsewhere. Maybe you do, and quite right too.

At least in Greece you (should) know that when your moussaka is served alongside your ouzo that the person giving it to you is not also giving you TB with a helping of dengue fever on the side.

Well, there’s a lovely thought to get you off to a good weekday start, and another reason for visiting Greece; it’s a very healthy pace to be. Sun, sand, sea, swimming, relaxation, fresh food, and waiters free of scurvy. Book now I say.

I’ve not been sleeping brilliantly of late for a couple of reasons, the main one being the nocturnal habits of the old Alarm Cat, Jack. It goes like this:

Off to bed, cat’s asleep on the sofa, all well and good. At some point, a few hours later, I wake to hear this click-two-three-four, click-two-three-four coming along the corridor; one of his claws is longer than the rest, and I’m a very light sleeper so it doesn’t take much. There’s then a little paws (ha ha) and then I feel the weight of a rather large cat landing by my feet. He usually settles down there and all is well.

But only for a few hours. During that time I’ve tried to get back to sleep but the hay fever sufferer nearby sounds like a coffee percolator, and the earplugs I have are pretty rubbish really. (Note: must by those decent, yellow Earfit ones – anyone heading this way soon? Will pay you back. Note to note to self: look on eBay you lazy git!)

I’m just back in the happy land of dreaming when I feel this movement creeping up from the foot of the bed; a cat stealthily making his way towards my head. I push him back down again, gently. Dozing off nicely when… here he comes again, this time slower, as if that makes any difference. So I push him down a little more firmly and head back to dreamland. Not the funfair in Margate, that’s ‘Dreamland’ with a capital D, but to sleep, perchance to…

No chance. Cat leaps onto my back to try and catch me out, cat goes flying onto floor.

Pause. Repeat from the part when he jumps on the bed again. This time he stays by the feet and I can just see the light coming in as the dawn starts to break. And by now I’ve got that incessant noise in my ear (not the percolator this time but a clicking sound) and I need the loo. But I fight that all off and try and doze again, which I do quite well until I suddenly wake up, open my eyes, and there’s the cat, on the bedside locker, staring at me out blinking. I close my eyes, turn over, and try and get back to sleep. The coffee is once again percolating by now.

A few minutes later and there’s the feeling of something heavy landing on the bed beside me. The sound of hopeful purring starts up. A quiet whine makes its way through the earplugs and a paw touches the back of the head. Ignore it. Pause. Cat sits on my head. ‘Oh for *$%!’s sake cat…’ Get up and give the cat his breakfast.

This is anywhere between 4.30 and 6.00 in the morning. However, on Wednesday night he went out, and while he was out and about we shut the gate so he stayed out in the ‘hood all night. Gloriously quiet in our house that night and in the morning. He came back again in the afternoon, had something to eat and settled down. I think this could become the new routine.

A few recent, random photos today…

And, because you can never have enough sunrises…

The day trip boat, the Nikolaos X came in for the 1st time yesterday with a long blast on its horn. It’s been done up and now looks very new.

And while I was there I thought I’d try an experiment with the binoculars:

And finally, us all lined up in ’42nd Street’ from the dance show. Thank you to Sevasti for letting me use this photo.

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/