Well, this is rather fine. I’m sitting here on Sunday morning, lit only by the overhead laptop light running from the battery, in an otherwise blacked out room, and Neil is in the courtyard with the camping stove, a saucepan and tea bags. There is no sound but the hiss of the gas and the thudding of my fingers.

When I stop writing and wander about the strangely silent and dim house, I can imagine how things used to be before electricity. We’re having one of those planned power cuts, you see. Could be off for half an hour, could be off all day. It doesn’t matter, because you get so much else done when you don’t have electricity Alright, so you can’t do the hoovering, run a tap, or stay warm, but you can sweep up something, tidy up something, and later, rustle up something that doesn’t need cooking. You could read a book if the shutters weren’t shut against the cold and keeping out the light. You could read on your Kindle if the battery hadn’t died. You could write up your notes (see above re: closed shutters and lack of light). Plenty of things to get done. A taste of the old days, except we know that the power will come back on at some time, and we don’t yet need to fill a bucket from the water tank.

The gas is still hissing.

We trotted out for a pizza last night (Saturday). We were going to go to the taverna, but the high school class was holding a fundraiser for its end-of-school trip later in the year, and the taverna was already booked out. Just like the old days.

The gas has stopped hissing.

I’m sure some readers will remember ‘those’ days. Those summers when both bars were so full, people were sitting on the steps, and where the taverna was so busy, there was a queue to get in. It is still like that in the summer, but there are fewer people on the steps, and that part of the season doesn’t seem to last as long.

My tea has arrived!

Who knows what the rest of today holds? Who can say when we might be back on the grid and back online? I’ll let you know.

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I’m sure you’re fed up with our winter view, the ‘shots from the balcony’ type stuff that always shows the same bit of sea and island. Apart from keyboards and television, it’s about all I see at this time of year. So, to end the week, I had a trawl through last year’s photos and beyond, and found a few spring and summery shots of the village and its details that I thought would do as a weekend gallery. Hopefully, a quick browse will remind you of the reason you come here on holiday, or why you should if you don’t already. Either way, enjoy, and I’ll see you back here in class on Monday.

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The courtyard’s looking forlorn. It’s the time of year when most things are on hold, waiting for the warmer weather. I say most things because the orange rose is currently blooming, and the chilli plants were still going right up until Neil harvested yet another hundredweight of the things and cut back the plants. The weather’s been so up and down, I reckon most things out there don’t know what season it is. Some were damaged in the high winds (sorry Penny, we may have lost two of yours in a recent storm), some didn’t make it through the cold winds, some have drowned, and some are just sitting there wondering what in earth is going on. The weeds are thriving, but I suppose that’s their job.

Once things start to brighten up, we’ll set about tidying the courtyard and readying it for the summer. This will entail moving that hosepipe I bought in September and never got around to putting away, and sweeping up the collection of leaves that gather behind the table in that place that’s really awkward to get to so we leave it alone. Then, there are the buckets to empty, clean and refill, ready for the lack of water storage problem because still no sign of a larger tank or a repaired sterna, so we’re still rationing it, particularly at the weekends when we have no refill for two and a half days.

Soon, too, we’ll be able to open the shutters and let some daylight back into the house. As it was a bright and mild day yesterday, I opened my office curtains and window, because I wanted to highlight the dust that’s accumulated over the past few weeks. No, actually, it was just to air the room, because we don’t want the ceiling going mouldy again.

Hopefully, I’ll remember to give more courtyard updates as the months go on. Bet you can’t wait.

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Sorry if I’m a bit late this morning, I had to go to the bank at 7.40.

You know how it is… You sit down to start the day by typing random thoughts off the top of your head, and then something catches your eye, and you think, ‘I must check if I have recorded my pension income from last year because the accountant will need it in May,’ and off you go on a side quest.

This was, I suspect, triggered by an email from the accountant replying to one I’d sent yesterday. I asked if they could send over my papers to KEP to ensure that I remain insured under Neil’s AMKA for another year, and they replied this morning to let me know it had been done and we’re both insured through to February next year. That’s a relief, and a great service.

Meanwhile, I decided to take screenshots of my income so far through this tax year, because, if you leave it too long, the online bank system won’t let you go back that far. So, I start to log in only to receive the dreadful news that my password needs changing. Neil had to do this the other day, and for one reason or another, had to go to the bank to sort it out. You need your current password, and in Neil’s case, the system wouldn’t accept it, even though it was correct. I had the same thing, and although I knew I was right, I had to go down the ‘Forgot your password’ route, which always feels like you’re taking the walk of shame while insisting ‘No, I haven’t, it’s right there, malaka, but you’re not accepting it…’ Luckily for me, it messaged me a code, then an email (neither of which it would send when Neil tried the other day), and I could get into the system that way, not that I like to look at my bank account these days. With the rent taking up over 62% of my pension, there’s never anything to play with in there.

Still, the side quest was achieved, but not what you want early in the morning, and so, I can set about the day. Well, set about making another cup of tea before I start work.

It looks like it’s going to be another pleasant one out there, although it looks like it might be a wet weekend.

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It’s still all about the sea. Yesterday, a shot of the flooded part of the harbour, today, the Blue Star Patmos (below). This’ll be old news to Facebook fanatics, but yesterday, the Patmos bumped a harbour wall while trying to land at Kastellorizo in a force six wind. Some of the translations refer to the bump as ‘ran aground’, which it didn’t. The images are of a scrape near the rear end, rather than the thing washed up and listing on a deserted beach. As far as I can make out, it remained unberthed while the authorities did whatever they had to do to make sure passengers were safe. That must have been frustrating; being stuck only a few meters from your destination and unable to get off. The same happens now and then in Rhodes, when we hear of the boats sheltering up near the airport, when they should have been in Akandia, but the weather turned.

The knock-on effect of this slight bump is that the Patmos had to change its timetable slightly. There is information on the Blue Star Ferries website. (It appears to be back to normal on Friday.)

Away from the sea and back on reasonably dry land, I’m wrestling with the settings of my new phone. You may know what it’s like when you have had a phone (or other device) for some time, and you’re used to how it all works. You’ve spent half a year getting the settings just right, and then, the struggle is forgotten as you enjoy life with your new whatever. Then, the time comes to change it, lose it, stamp on it, whatever you do when you’ve had enough with the thing, and you go for a new one. Okay, it’s easy enough these days to swap the contents across, and the apps and all that, but then comes the fine detail. For example, currently, only the photos I take on my phone get sent to my gallery, and from there, to the cloud storage. Photos sent in from apps, like the ones Neil takes and sends on via WhatsApp, don’t get saved to the gallery, but elsewhere. That means, they’re not automatically sent up to the cloud, so when I bumble my way in here at 5.30 in the morning to write this kind of gibberish, I can’t easily download them and put them on the blog. I have to fiddle with the phone to send the image he’s sent me from one app to another, then to another, thence, if I am lucky, up to the cloud, then down again and up to the website. (Or I have to go searching for that lead I know I have, so I can physically connect phone and PC, and I know I put it somewhere…)

Still working on that fine tuning, but if that’s all I have to fuss about today, I’ll be quite happy.

I put up a photo of my writing desk yesterday, and here’s another of the room since we moved the piano in here. I have cut off the top of the curtains (in the shot) because I am still waiting for the right hooks, and at the moment, it looks like something from the set of Phantom, only with less swag. Have a good day.

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