Pleasant

It was a pleasant morning for a walk yesterday, the temperature being 28 degrees at 7.30 as opposed to the 34 + it has been of late. I wandered up the side of the mountain while Neil took off to Nimborio and back.

There was something of a surprise the other day as many people with Greek mobile phones received an alert from the government. The message comes with an unmissable sound, and we don’t hear it very often, so at first, it was a shock. All it was telling us to do was stay safe on the way home from holidays, which was a bit late in my case as I did that months ago, but I reckon it meant the Panagia weekend. I also wondered if it was to prove that Greece is taking the pandemic more seriously than, say, the yUK where things got out of control, and where, rather superciliously, they are now threatening to put Greece on their list. That’s the list of countries you have to quarantine after you’ve come back from. (There has to be a better way to write that, but I can’t think of it right now.) Who knows? Anyway, apart from a rise in cases caused by too many people gathering where they shouldn’t be, an influx of people from abroad and others generally flouting the rules, Greece is still managing things well.

We’ve had day boats and ferries, taxi boats are going out, round the island trips are taking place, I’m sure I saw the Diagoras the other day. The busses are also running their trips to Panormitis, so apart from very few visitors, things are running normally. Masks and distance are the rules. Masks when inside any shop or business (well, any building, really apart from your own home), and distance at all times. It’s not so bad now as people can sit outside cafes in the summer, right up until December sometimes, but when the dark and cold months come, wearing a mask inside while taking your coffee is going to be interesting. Let’s see how many local businesses and people stick to that one, as there are several who are currently not following the rules.

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A few Symi beaches

Neil has been receiving lots of praise for the photos he puts up on Facebook after his morning walk and swim. So, I thought I’d put up five images today that show beaches, or where land meets sea. No reason, I just like them, and I’ve got no earth-shattering news for you, so I hoped these would do instead. Have a good day.

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Awards, Random Enquiries and Supper

Sunday was an unusual day, or rather, a day with unexpected things in it. We had invited guests for supper in the courtyard, and so shopping was first on the to-do list. That done, Neil set about making his MasterChef inspired desserts, and I checked up on my recipe for vegetarian giovetsi. That’s like a lamb giovetsi without the lamb, but with more of other things in it, and it’s mainly a kritharaki (orzo) dish, and looked pretty straightforward.

With everything planned, we had lunch, Neil went off to work, and I found out I’d won the best screenplay award at the Santorini Film Festival. Well, me and Rebecca who wrote the book on which the screenplay was based. (You can find it here.) One quick siesta later, and I set about the giovetsi, being very organised and arranging everything I needed according to the list of instructions. The dish started off with two tablespoons of olive oil, onions and cinnamon, and continued through ‘set aside, clean skillet and add another two tablespoons of olive oil and gently fry the carrots,’ and onto, ‘meanwhile, take 450 grams of kritharaki and six cups of water…’ I never know how big a cup is, ours vary in size from a polite demitasse to a butch half-pint tea mug, but you know, you do what you can. Seeing how many ingredients were now cooking, semi-cooked or ready to be put together (with yet another two tablespoons of olive oil), I checked the recipe again. I was dealing with a huge mound of stuff, and there was no way it was all going to fit into one ‘large oven dish.’ The recipe was for six people, apparently, more like six families with a craving for olive oil, and I decided to split everything down the middle and bake two. Anyway…

Neil came home and was checking his panna cotta and other inspired desserts, still smartly dressed from work while I was in baggy shorts and nothing else, and sweating like a blacksmith’s bum, when all of a sudden, the doorbell rings. Thinking it would be a quick dispatch, I left my oil heating, the courgettes ready, and dashed to the courtyard to find a very handsome young lady at the door telling me her husband was a film director. That news got around quick, I thought, and a doorstep conversation took place with me half-hiding my toplessness behind the gate. They were looking for someone to speak on a documentary about Covid and faith, or some such, and not seeking a scriptwriter for a million-Euro feature, so I politely declined. I also explained that we had two people coming for a six-family meal in fifty minutes, and agreed to give her my phone number, which I wrote beneath my name.

‘Oh, you’re James?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then who’s Neil? We wanted Neil.’
‘He’s my husband,’ I said, while thinking, Good, he can deal with this, and on cue, he shouted out that my oil was burning. ‘He’s doing something complicated with a pudding,’ I explained and went to fetch him.

Neither of us was willing to be part of a documentary about Symi, Covid and faith, and we politely refused. Apparently, they’d been given his name by a variety of people; one person telling us it was X while another said it was Y, and we don’t mind who. Usually, we’d do what we could to help, but not this time. I’ve had a few enquiries about filming on the island and been asked to take part in TV documentaries before (I was invited to Star News in Athens once for the morning show, to talk about ‘Shocking the Donkeys’, but that was an oxi-oxi from me), but it’s not my thing. My thing was getting that dinner ready, half of which is now to be frozen for a very rainy day, and our supper in the courtyard, which was, I am pleased to say, very pleasant. Neil’s desserts were wonderful and should have won an award. They certainly would have been more interesting in a documentary about pandemics and faith than I would have been, not that they wanted me in the first place.

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Ants

Ants are the latest thing. In fact, they are very nearly flavour of the month, except we check everything before we cook with it or put it on a plate. I’m sitting at my desk in the office nowhere near the kitchen, and there are a couple of them running across the rim of my glasses, more investigating the desktop, a couple about to get squashed on the keyboard, and I came in here to get away from the ones crawling all over me in the sitting room. These are tiny things, by the way, not the standard size edition, and although they’re useful for eventually getting rid of dead cockroaches, they are annoying when clambering all over you and your kitchen. Anyway… I just thought I’d mention that as it was the first thing on my mind this morning. That and mosquitoes, but lets’ not start that one. Let’s have a gratuitous photo of Symi instead.

So, apart from becoming an adventure playground for ants, what else have I been up to? Not a lot. A few evenings in the square where there’s a mix of distancing and not. The weekend saw the August 15^th Panagia, and I know there were events planned, though I don’t know how they went off. Joyous and safe, I hope. I did a quick wander around some hills, Neil walked the length of the island as the crow flies by walking to Pedi and then to Nimborio and then back via the roads, no shortcuts, and stopped for a swim somewhere en route too. I happened to be on the balcony wondering about nothing when I saw him march past the clock tower heading home. It took 40 minutes from there to here around the harbour and up the main road; not bad going.

And talking of going, I am. An idea for a new story is presenting itself, and I want to get on with that. I can’t promise there will be any interesting news here this week, there rarely is these days as I don’t go out much. There’s far too much to watch at home, like this military parade of ants now assembling on the laptop screen…

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Yialos, Wednesday

All rather quiet in the harbour on Wednesday, but then we were there before the day boats came in. The taxi boats and others were at their stalls taking bookings, selling tickets, and hopefully, doing as good a business as they could. We stopped for an orange juice at Pacho’s to watch the rather small world go by before tramping back up the steps to home. Neil had already been to Nimborio via the main road, and back the same way, so he got good mileage out of his trainers that day.

This week is meant to be one of the busiest on the island and in holiday and festival spots around Greece generally, but I’m not sure how that’s going to work out this year. Adriana has thoughts on this, plus more information about what’s happening in the country and on Symi over on her blog here.

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