Clean Monday
It is Clean Monday morning as I write, the start of Lent in Greece. There are lots of traditions associated with this time of year, the diet being probably the most famous. Rather than regurgitate the information from elsewhere, I thought I’d direct you to a site, Greek Reporter, which is in English and which tells you all about the diet, traditions and other things in a short article, with photos. If you are interested, click here.
The day started off damp after some overnight rain, but now, nearly midday, Monday, the sky is clearing, and the sun is out if a little diffused. That’s good news for everyone planning a barbeque today and for us, as we may be taking a walk later. That’s after I’ve finished my day’s work, or my morning’s work, as I try not to do too much in the afternoons in winter. I am still working on edits for ‘The Saddling’, and we are nearly there. Once that’s done, I can let the editor do his thing and double-check through each chapter word by word, poor thing. This will take him some time, and while that’s going on, I can turn my attention to something else. Not sure what yet. I still have an idea for ‘Symi, Stuff and Nonsense’ and lots of short pieces in the style of ‘Carry on up the Kali Strata’ with a bit of ‘Symi 85600’ mixed in. I found an old diary with entries written before and during our move to Symi back in 2001/2002 which might be of interest and which fills in some gaps left in stories in ‘Symi 85600.’
Apart from that, though, it’s been a quiet weekend. We cleared up the courtyard and on Sunday went for a drink in the square where it was just warm enough to sit outside if wearing a coat. The kafenion, Lefteris, (also known locally as Bulmas) is now the new home of the Symi cinema on a Sunday evening. I’m not sure how it went last night, but I am sure it was well attended and that everyone enjoyed ‘The Blues Brothers.’
In other news, the Blue Star was running a slightly different, Clean Monday, schedule and Neil is now cooking fish for lunch, so I can’t hang around. There’s still post-weekend tidying up to do. How is it possible to have a tidy kitchen one evening and a cluttered one the next morning when all we had to eat last night was a simple curry and rice? And as for the state of the sitting room after a Sunday night in front of the televisions… Where did all that come from? So, better go and mess with my mess and tidy the place up. It is, after all, CLEAN Monday.
