After the silliness of yesterday’s post, today, something quicker. A ‘garden’ update. We still say, ‘I’m going to water the garden,’ when we don’t have one. It’s a courtyard, and we’re off to water the plants, not the concrete, so…
The innumerable chili plants are doing well, the second rose is growing, other things are doing whatever they do, and Dionysus is growing his hair while the temperature hangs around the 30° mark. This was on Saturday, but it’s been pretty consistent apart from a cooling wind on Sunday which has now gone.
There are some more plant photos to share another day. Today, though, I have a quiet day at home planned, with some typing to do this morning, while Neil is readying the ‘spare room’ for his brother who is calling in on Thursday night on his way to Tilos on Friday afternoon.
Later this week I hope to call down to Yialos not to gawp at another hundred people who got off of the boat, but to take delivery of a new fan, and while there, pay the accountant for doing out tax returns, and that, along with some piano, looks like it’s going to be the highlight of my week. That is, if it hasn’t peaked already when, yesterday, my piano pupil perfectly played the first two pages of the second movement of Mozart’s sonata number 16 and did well on the third movement too (the first movement, we ‘did’ last week, and that, too, is nearly there). Which reminds me, I need to go and look up grade five requirements to see exactly what grade he is, I reckon it’s kind of 4.5, but there isn’t such a thing, so… I’ll go and do that now, and leave you to water the rest of the garden.
In which this anonymuncle encounters a horde of brainless rapscallions divested of most clothing and is compelled to put quill to paper with the use of some vulgar tongue. (And some illustrations of quieter times to break up the nonsense.)
I was in Yialos on Friday, and although I was only walking from the main square to the taxi rank… O M double-G, I encountered such a collection of mutton-headed rapscallions beyond any it has been my misfortune to witness. Let me describe the scene with the use of some English language words that rarely get a day out.
It is a glorious day in June, sun shining, gentle breeze, a calm fishing boat bobbing sea, blah-di-blah, and all is quiet in the ancient port until at least seven day-trip boats sound horns in various keys and set their arse ends dockside. From that particular exit pour upwards of two thousand scapergraces arranged into various types:
The Gobemouches gather gawping in inconvenient places, including the taxi rank, the street, and the bus stop into which the bus is reversing. There, they pay vague attention to their leaders before finally following the umbrella or raised clipboard, believing every tall tale told.
The Mamothrepts come next, dragged by their hands and flustered parents, at one with other unfortunate bui doi who didn’t want to come on this bleedin’ day out anyway, and where’s the ice cream you promised?
The Bewildered, who may be genuinely interested and who are usually well behaved but who, on leaving their all-in hotel, forgot not only their manners but most of their clothing.
A short time after the landing, the streets throng with noise as the chaw-bacons follow the herd listening to the fiddle-faddle fudge of someone who ‘once did a morning’s course in it’ as they are led like lambs from one place to another while being fed the most unusual trumpery. There are, as one must expect, those at the back of the pack who soon lose interest and wander off, taking their earpieces with them until the sound of the drone fades to crackle. There are those who have come only for photographs, and these, too, take various forms.
The Adventurer. Recently crept away from the other sounders being led to market, he can be seen fearlessly scaling the steep face of the hillside by way of the white steps, ‘head down bum up’ as Antipodeans say, only to reach a halfway point, turn and find himself faced with a sheer drop to the rabble below. Photographing abandoned, he descends on legs wobbly with anxiety and embarrassment.
The Professional. He shows no embarrassment as he kneels, lies even, in the middle of the road to get that perfect angle, and capture the glint of sunlight on the ripples around the fishing boat’s yellow nets that lie tangled by the water’s edge. As he frames the shot, he is tripped over by bungling buzzards whose attention was long ago grabbed by the price of the calamari at ‘that nice place back there’, and when he finally stands and becomes less of an obstacle, the only thing he takes away is the reputation for being a perv who does up-skirts.
The Trout. Invariably as attractive as the Covent Garden ague, these are those that one sees posing by the decorative anchor or cloying up the leg of the Fisherboy statue. One hand behind the tipped back head, the apple dumpling shop on full display, bodice stretched to gasping point, she makes herself attractive to the opposite sex, the intersex, the gender fluids and kamaki artists by pouting her gan as if she was about to attach herself to the rear windscreen like a Garfield. Thus, she takes up the position of the Mother Abbess at a bawdy house and hopes to draw crowded attention. For sure, the Professional is there on his belly in seconds, flash at the ready, while five stumbling people need treatment for turned ankles, and the men with wandering eyes receive a slap in the face.
Then come the flushers’ favourites. Flushers, you see, are used to dealing with the undesirable, the effluent of the affluent found far beneath the earth in the fast-flowing slime-dripping caverns of Joseph Bazalgette’s genius, with only rats and toshers for company. Flushers would have no problem with the fogs and frogs when they block their tunnels. However, it is another matter when faced with a cribbage faced flap dragon with no sense other than one of their own self-importance, who has miserably failed to understand that she (or he/it/they/them) has paused to patter in the paviour’s workshop. There, their (his/hers/its) prattle-prattle tittle-tattle chit-chat babble causes the fog and frog of the flusher’s nightmare, while traffic backs up behind because they are blocking one side of the harbour. Three such jolly jolterheads, one on each quayside, at the same time, and the whole island grinds to a halt.
Clearly, most of these characters were enjoying a good old benjo, but at whose expense?
By this time in my observation, I had reached only Trawler Square. I still had to duck, dodge and dive my way in and out of the road to reach the taxi rank, and from then, it wasn’t only me who suffered the trauma of the harbour at Day-Trip Time, but also Thanasi. That, as they say, is another story.
You can find most of these obscure words in ‘The Vulgar Tongue’ a dictionary of street slang and cant compiled by Francis Grose and published in 1785, but here are two that I found elsewhere:
You have Neil to thank for the gallery of photos today, and what a lovely way to end the week. A walk to Pedi early in the morning, to catch the sun as it came up, a mix of silvery grey and heat, cooled slightly by the sea slurping on the shingle. You can tell from the colours that it was going to be a hot day (33° in the shade in our courtyard yesterday afternoon), and from the sea that there was very little breeze.
More in the gallery below
Today holds in store the usual; work, Yialos to collect some deliveries, visit the dentist, probably get a bus or taxi home afterwards as it will be the middle of the day and too hot for the steps, and then, an afternoon reading with no plans for anything over the weekend other than reading and writing, making salads and eating them, perhaps strolling around the village in the early morning. We shall see.
My top news story is that the next instalment of my 1890s detective mystery series is now out. ‘Holywell Street’ concerns the illicit bookshops along ‘Booksellers’ Row’ in a London street notorious for selling under the counter material. If you click that title, you should get to the paperback version on your appropriate Amazon site. If not, click this next one for the Kindle version, or search it out on Amazon. Holywell Street Kindle.
It’s a Mozart morning. I have just put on the clarinet concerto in A major to accompany my random thoughts and photos, and to celebrate three mosquito bites in the last five minutes. It’s that time of year again, with flying things, crawling things, and things that go whir in the night. Or not. I woke at three, drenched because the fan was off, and assumed there was a power cut going on. Then I noticed the streetlights were on, and further investigation proved that himself had turned off the fan. It had to go back on again. Trouble is, it’s the wind-tunnel one and too powerful for by the bed, so we’re going on a forage later to see if we can find one that’s a little less aggressive.
It’s also the time for regular returners, though this year, we’ve not seen so many. No-one is getting any younger, and many of our long-standing regulars and friends are unable to travel. It’s sad not to see them (so hello, we’re waving), and it’s sad to see the village square so quiet for June. Mind you, I don’t often see it later in the evenings, and I know some of the tavernas have been very busy, especially last weekend when it was Pentecost.
I have my work cut out for me this morning because the full cover of the next book has come back and so have the layout files. This means, another check through from me, and if all is okay, an upload. If there are some tweaks to the look of the inside of the book, I’ll have to send the files back, but changes only take a few hours. So, not long now, and there will be news of another new release. This is not one of the Symi books, I’ve not done one of them for many years, and maybe I should, but there’s a problem. Two actually. There’s so much I’d like to write but can’t because I want to carry on living here, and the books don’t sell, so what’s the point? I have to put my time to the niche series.
Anyway, those are my rambling thoughts and photos for this mosquito Mozart morning. We’re now on piano concerto 21, and I am reminded we have sonata K454 this afternoon, and my student and I will be revisiting the first movement. As well as finding fans and uploading books I must make a lesson plan.
It is 5.30, and my day begins with a pink sky, shimmering water, and the romantic sight of a boat gliding into the harbour. Behind the picture are the calls of cockerels, the onboard announcements, and the waking sparrows. Heading to my desk, I select Debussy from my library and have his music playing as I switch on the laptop to see what today will bring in the online world. My emails open in time to Clair de Lune, their headlines announcing an array of unrelated nonsense. Photo contest, miracle fat burner, security alert, Page turner awards, Goodreads updates from people I don’t know (and from a platform I rarely use), and of more interest, the full cover for my next book. Seeing that reminds me I have another blog to see to because it is Wednesday, and I try to write my author blog twice a week. Today, I can talk about the next book which is currently having its internals set out.
5.47 and already I feel that I should put on the fan because I think it’s going to be a humid day at the desk. It is going to be a costly one because I have my tax bill to pay, my accountant to pay, and there will soon be another electricity bill coming along. But before all that, I might take a moment at the window to watch the ship depart and speed majestically away, around the headland, towards its next destination.
