In answer to yesterday’s vaguely rhetorical question about whether the season is showing signs of closing, after a trip to Yialos, the answer must be no. We arrived not long after one of the day boats had arrived, with several already in port, and there was the familiar sight of lines of tour groups being led around the harbour. They were plugged in to their headphones, listening to their guide at the war memorial, squeezing through the narrow lane past the chandler’s shop, trudging up the few steps to the courtyard of St John’s church, and huddled in what little shade they could find. Walking to the clock tower against the tide is always a game of ‘dodge the pink and tender’, though there is more of that on the other side where the open speedboat-looking boats come in.
These are the ones that make me wince when I see them arrive. On the way over, many passengers opt to sit in the bows in full glare of the sun, or have no choice, and at first, discover how pleasant that is. Very pleasant when out at sea with a cool breeze blowing over you while you’re at speed. Very pleasant to pause with hundreds of other people in St George’s Bay, where island stayers have escaped for some tranquillity, only to find a sea of bobbing heads and an overwhelming smell of Hawaiian Tropic among a mild oil slick. Not so pleasant to later realise that, where you thought you were cool and protected, the sun’s radiation has actually reflected from the sea, been disguised by the cool air, and left you turning pink and raw for the rest of the day. Each to his own.
Good to see the businesses appearing to do good business, and then not so good to see one frappe and three bottles of water between four people who remain blocking a table for over an hour just so they can have a nice sit down. Good to see a taverna full, with new customers taking the places of departing ones even before that table is cleared. Not so much fun for the owners, who now have to cover the work of the children who have gone back to school and can no longer act as staff. But… The custom is still there, and as Nikos said with glee at the taverna yesterday, ‘Only thirty more days.’
I haven’t been in Yialos much this summer, except for 12 visits to the dentist and a couple of days out. (A ‘day’ being three hours of shopping, collecting, sorting things and finding something to eat.) That’s why I hadn’t noticed the new things until yesterday. The ‘things’ are, I think, electronic notice boards. The one I saw was showing drone footage, with 90% of its time on the harbour and 10% of it showing the Castro, and looks like a good way of orienting the visitor. A kind of, ‘You are here… somewhere’ moving map seen from above. I’m not sure if they also carry advertisements or static maps of, for example, how to find the famous Kali Strata, but they also showed the time, and that’s useful. These now complement the speaking dustbins that say, ‘Thank you for using me,’ when you’ve dropped off your ice cream wrapper. Grateful dustbins? Makes you feel like you’ve wandered into a fetish club in a Berlin backstreet. (Apparently.)
Anyway, back to the rhetorical. No, there were no obvious signs that the season is ending, apart from fewer young people being at work because they are at school, vague warnings about possible high winds, and more autumnal weather. But we’re getting there. ‘Only thirty more days to go.’ Or to think of it another way, only about 16% of the season left to run.
