Things are definitely calming down now. The day boats have all but stopped, several businesses have closed for the winter, while others remain open until after next weekend, which is the Panormitis Festival. Pilgrims have already started arriving, and I expect the cells/rooms at the monastery have been booked up for months. We still see visitors wandering through the village of an afternoon, shorts are still being worn, and there are still private yachts in the harbour.

Meanwhile, the council contractors continue to work on the new marina at Petalo. I was told that the marina will stretch a fair way along that side of the harbour, and the work will include widening the road along the way, and putting in some kind of boardwalk so it’s safer/easier for people to walk into town. Yeah, all sounds very nice, and why not pamper the rich who can afford to sail into a marina? But, for my part, I only hope there are also plans afoot to improve the core services these new guests will use, and that there will be plenty of water for them, electricity supplied and all of that, and the roads will be properly maintained for them, and the street lighting, and I hope they pay well for it so it doesn’t fall to the islanders’ to pay for it under our local taxes. Hm? There was a brief debate during the summer about charging a tourist tax, but I am not sure where we’re at with that.

Anyway, that’s me blathering off the top of my head while I decide what I am going to do today. It is Tuesday, isn’t it? Good. Otherwise, I’ve got an appointment at 11, but that’s tomorrow, so plenty of time. With nothing else to report, I’ll sign off by thanking Miss P for today’s photos.

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We’ve had a couple of hazy, misty mornings over the weekend, which is caused by humidity, I guess. Today, you can’t see the coast of Turkey, but that should clear later in the day. We spent the weekend mostly at home, pottering around, doing some odd jobs, and preparing to have Jenine and Sam over for Sunday lunch. This involved some menu planning and water rationing, and not much writing on my part, but the end results were pretty impressive. No, I don’t have a photo, sadly. Well, I took some of my spotted dick, but they were slightly blurred. That was a shame as I wanted to show off my custard, which was very well received, and the first time I had ever made it.

Oh, go on then…

Neil has a mastery of the Yorkshire puddings, though, and his roast beef was perfect. I took a photo of the Yorkshires, but only to send to Harry, saying we were keeping a couple for him for when we next see him. (Hopefully over Panormitis weekend, this weekend.)

And now, before I head off, here is a photo of someone having a fun time on Halloween last week.

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Before I leave you for the weekend, I wanted to give the calendar another plug and remind everyone that you can only buy it through this link: Symi Dream Calendar (Or click the banner.)

That’s that done, and now, this.

I did it again, though this time on purpose. I found the old, nay, ancient pages of Symi Dream still archived in some bunker in Arizona or wherever, and this time, there are more links to old, nay, ancient galleries. These include the baptism of two young men who are now 18 (someone alert Alex and Dimitris – the other one is H), Neil’s 40th birthday party in Pedi, Some festival dancing, boat launching, you name it, this long list seems to cover it. Better still, all the ones I looked at were still working.

This, for example, was Christmas Day 2006.

And this was Koukoumas that year.

And this was when the Rainbow Bar had blue chairs.

That old fridge/cabinet was outside Georgio’s for months. It was eventually moved after someone dressed as an octopus tripped over a tentacle and went headfirst into the corner. Apparently, the doctor at the surgery was very surprised to find a bleeding octopus being helped from a taxi. The lady sustained only minor injuries.

You can find the full list of galleries and have a good old nostalgic weekend by following this link: Old, nay, ancient Symi Dream galleries.

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I’m a little late this morning, because the cover for the new book arrived and I wanted to post that up first (not here, but on Amazon). It’s a part of the process that only takes a couple of minutes, so here I am, back at the typewriter ready for another day. I had no idea what to mention or show, today, so I looked at that old gallery I found yesterday, and dug out a couple of photos from St Nicholas’ Beach 20 years ago, and found a couple I enjoyed.

Then, I thought, as the Panormitis Festival is coming up next week, I would put a couple of those up here too, and leave you to browse.

If you want to find the full list of galleries from 20 years ago. Here is the link again.

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I spent some time yesterday morning checking the finals of the new book, and, I’m pleased to say, the Kindle version has now been published. So, for those of you who follow the Victorian mystery adventures that Jackson Marsh publishes, this link should take you to the Kindle and Kindle Unlimited version. The paperback should be out in a few more days.

A Depraved Indifference – the Delamere Files book ten.

https://mybook.to/DepravedIndifference

After fiddling about with all of that, I went for a short wander around the back of the village, just to get some ‘air in the bones’, and this was what the weather was doing at that point.

As you might be able to tell, it was a quiet day at home with not much going on. You can’t say the same for the harbour, where, at around midday, the parade set off, and the military, schools and others marched to and past the War Memorial to celebrate Oxi Day. Here’s a photo from 20 years ago.

At least, I think it was 20 years ago. I went searching online for a photo of the event, and found, by some weird quirk, a link to a very ancient Symi Dream page. This is an index of galleries, and some of them still exist. This page and its links must have been archived in some way, and so have some of the galleries. I clicked on a couple and found the images were still there. I can’t be sure of the date of all of them, but they are probably 20 years old. There are some headings that might interest you, such as: ‘A day on the triton.’ ‘Sunrise – new kafeneion opening night.’ ‘Symi Dream Opening Night’ (which sadly doesn’t work, but it shows you how old the index is).

Click here to take a look – and have fun.

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