Symi Saturday Photos
An assortment of recent shots from Neil and myself today all taken in January.
Sad today
Sad today
Maybe the reason I woke up at 3.45 this morning was to spend as much time as a European citizen as possible. After tonight, I have no democratic right to a vote or voice anywhere in the world, I can’t even have a say in who keeps the streets clean, and to be honest, I feel like a citizen of nowhere. Thanks to the European Union and Greece, I should continue to be able to live here without too much hassle, but there are no guarantees those rules will stay in place forever. So thank you, EU, Greece, Symi for making me welcome. And that’s all I have to say today.
I go to the hills…
I go to the hills…
We both managed to get in a walk yesterday. While Neil heads off down the road to the harbour, around and up the hill past Nos beach, and then back, taking in the town square and coming up the road again (roughly five miles), I go to the hills…
…‘when my heart is lonely’ (it’s not, don’t worry, it’s packed in there with all my other bits and pieces, so has plenty of company). And now I have the Sound of Music stuck in my head. ‘I know I will hear what I heard before,’ and that was the sound of hawks in the valley and water running through the pipes that come from the natural spring at ‘to Vrisi’ and run alongside the path from there to Agia Marina. I did take a video so you can hear the sound, but it will have to go up on the Symi Dream Fakebook page instead, so look out for it there.
And while we’re on the subject of ‘The S of M’, have you ever studied the lyrics? I mean, most are charming and seem to work perfectly, but when you take a closer look… What does a lark learning to pray actually sound like? ‘To sing through the night like a lark who is learning to pray.‘ Come to that, why would a bird be praying, and who the hell is teaching it, and why is it at school… at night? I don’t know. Very pretty and all that, but not the kind of deep question you want in your head at this time of day.
I may go to the hills later this morning, it depends on the weather and it’s too dark at the moment to see the forecast, i.e. look out of the window, though the wind has been buffeting our north-facing house already, so it might not be the most pleasant day for a stroll. So, instead, I shall battle on with Clearwater 6, and let you get on with your day.
Photos from Neil
Photos from Neil
This morning’s earworm is ‘Favourite Things’ from the Sound of Music. Don’t ask me why. I woke up at 4.30, looked at the clock and thought I’d have another half an hour, then spent some time in a complicated dream, and woke again to find it was only 4.00, so not sure what happened there, but sometimes during, Julie Andrews was favouritizing* in my head, and I couldn’t work out why. Until I remembered that I said I’d try and get some photos from Neil’s phone to put on the blog, and as he was still asleep, snaffled his phone away and have copied over 50 photos to my Symi Dream folder. It wasn’t until making them ready for posting that I worked out why the song was in my head; these photos, taken in January, show some of my favourite things! Enjoy.
* It’s in the urban dictionary
Light and Dark
Light and Dark
Everything is back to normal today after our internet issue yesterday. We’ve even found the reason for it, we think. It seems Ote, or Cosmote as it is now, have started sending bills via text to cut out the paper, and that’s fine by me. Except, we didn’t know that’s what they were doing and hadn’t seen any warning. Thus, we hadn’t told them of Neil’s new phone number and, I am guessing, they sent the bills to the old mobile which is redundant. Still, after a quick phone call to 13888… (press nine for English, ask, fluently in Greek if we might have this conversation in English as it could become technical, and then wait while the assistant arranges, in Greek, for someone who can speak English to call you back. Alternatively, learn to speak Greek)… the internet was restored within a few minutes and thanks to Alpha online banking, the bills were paid while the conversation was going on.
And that’s the next thing. The bank app on the phone requires your fingerprint to open, so you have to set your phone to recognise fingerprints; no problem there. But then, when next turning the phone on, I find it now requires my pin number. Okay, so we’ll do that, and all is well… Until the next time when it wants your pin number again, and so on. It’s not hard, just boring to tap in every time you pick up your phone, so I set about taking off the ‘screen lock via pin’ thing and did that, and there it is back again the next time I switch on. So, I go to some advice website and follow the instructions: For a Samsung Whatever 9, go to Settings (done that), scroll down to Security (yup), click the remove pin number command (there isn’t one), on the next screen, tap on ‘Edit’ (there isn’t one), uncheck ‘Use pin number’ (there still isn’t one). Try another website and follow the same frustrating procedure while checking I really am using a Samsung Whatever 9, which I am, and start again. Throw phone at the wall to teach it a lesson and, when recovered, use your own logic. Finally found the way to remove fingerprints, which the website had told me will also require your pin, so took off the fingerprint because if I need to use the bank app again, I can put it back on easily and yesterday was the first time I’d used said app, and that’s that. Until I open the phone again and it asks for a pin number.
I finally managed to get through that technical hurdle by finding the glaringly obvious button marked ‘remove your pin’ or something, and everything is back to normal there too. I also had success booking us Blue Star ferry tickets to Athens and back at the start and end of our holiday in March, and splashed out for an outside cabin, not that we will see anything through the porthole, assuming there is one, but I wanted to see what they were like. And so, we can finally get on with today which has started wet with some distant thunder wandering around. If you were wondering, the light and dark of today’s title refers to the sights I see daily. One, the light over the harbour and bay, and the dark of my study when the curtains and shutters are closed against the cold. I mainly see dark during the winter months.
