Wednesday: A morning at home, clearing up after the rain. Only having to clear up outside is a nice experience, the inside of the house was perfectly dry.

Rhodes airport woke up to find an eight meter long hole in its taxi-way yesterday morning. Apparently there had been a repair made there before but the storm has caused the problem to open up again. Flights were, naturally, suspended and then, when things started up again, delayed. A bit of a shame for some people who left the island a day early (due to the storm) to ensure that they were in time for their flights. They then also discovered that not only did both boats leave Symi on Wednesday morning but they were both on time – but better safe than missing flights. The Diagoras was only about 15 minutes late, which constitutes ‘on time’ around here. And, apparently, it was still raining in Rhodes though Symi was mainly fine – cooler and a bit of cloud.

I spent the morning at my desk –hence the photos from the window – and was in touch with the film production studio about what was once called ‘the Judas Curse’ and which is now called ‘the Thirteenth’ and which is based on ‘The Judas Inheritance’ which you can find here  if you have not already got a copy. The latest news is that they are still trying to iron out a couple of edits, but it’s taking a while because the editor is working for free; but hopefully he’ll be able to get the things done this week. Then they’ve got to add the music, and then the colour grading and then the sound (maybe not in that order) and then the credits, so four more stages to go through before they have a finished thing ready to sell to distributors. There should be a Kickstarter update soon I am told, but that’s all the news I know for now.

Something else I woke up to yesterday was an interesting story I found via Facebook. Thing is, it was on one of those sites that has so many up-sell adverts you have to wait ages for the page to load, and then when you try and scroll, it seizes up your browser because there are so many ads. And all, I may add (ha ha) for things I’ve already got. I know we have a couple of adverts on this site, the Booking.com thing and one at the bottom of posts, but hopefully they don’t jam things up too badly. Not much point over-advertising if no one can actually view your site. I also woke up to the continuing cold, but found some cold and flu tablets I’d bought for a refugee guy (who then vanished) so I was able to take a couple of them myself.

And on the refugee topic – looking out of our window I can’t see anyone waiting around the police station, but that doesn’t mean we have not had any refugees landing here of late. Also, the Blue Star Diagoras came through so may have taken people to Rhodes. We are due back to volunteer on Saturday so will get an update then, but the charity has nearly reached its £30k target and, as of Wednesday, only needed £2,524.56 to break through its latest target.

Solidarity Symi Facebook Page

Solidarity Symi donate page

Other than that, and getting caught in the rain on Tuesday evening, a few times, and getting stuck in the bar for a while on the way home due to Kali Strata flooding, and then having a mainly sleepless night due to cold and ear noise… all is well with the Symi world.

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Weather watch service here – writing to you on Tuesday, so those heading out to Symi today might already have left and this is a bit behind, but there you go. Yes, we got some of the storm as promised, or at least we have so far. Rain on Monday night and a downpour on Tuesday, with heavy clouds and some wind getting up – that’s as of 11.30 yesterday morning.

I’m in the habit of writing a day behind, or rather a day in front and then having the post go live the next day, as you know, but the thing about the weather is that we get some kind of weather here all the time and what you see when you look out of your window is what you get. There’s nothing that can be done about it, so what can you do? Well, I can post some photos to show those who’ve not seen it before what the weather can be like on Symi through the year. And yesterday it was more like October/November, but that happens.

Anyway, enough of the weather, what else has been going on? Well, not a lot really – got a bad sore throat, first illness in many a month, possibly even a year or so, but it’s nothing that can’t be ignored so that’s okay. The plants have had a good watering, but no rain came into the house, apart from a little under a window but that was fine when I shut the shutters. And I’m back to the weather again.

Okay, how about this video instead. I found this via Solidarity Symi, the refugee (and local needy) charity that’s been set up, and I’ll include it down at the bottom so you can see the full thing. It’s about the refugee crisis. Please feel free to share this with anyone you know who says, ‘We’re full up,’ or ‘Not my problem,’ or anyone who fears an Islamic takeover of Europe, a breakdown in social infrastructure and so on. It explains everything and in a very clear way. Give it a watch and stay informed.

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I’ve got some of Neil’s photos today, taken on Sunday and in the last few days, there are a few great portraits coming up and some shots of Symi generally. I’ve also been asked to keep on top of the weather reports as people prepare to jet out to Symi on Wednesday/Thursday, so…

Monday was fine, cooler than it has been, slightly less humid but still quite warm. Warm enough for swimming for sure. I think the latest I’ve been in the sea here is November, at seven in the morning on Panormitis day, and it was still quite acceptable then. Mind you, I’ve not been in the sea at all this year so far, not like last year when we went swimming twice a week at six a.m., seem to have fallen out of that habit. Anyway, the weather looked fine on Monday though there is a storm expected Tuesday or Wednesday. [Does a quick check of a couple of sites…and yes, still thunder and rain expected for today/tomorrow but back to sun on Thursday and the temp in the mid 20s.]

Sunday we had a nice day off, went down to Yialos, had a wander around the shops after lunch and then caught the bus back up to the village. At home later we spent a good couple of hours watching episodes from Modern Family, an American comedy programme that’s done like a semi-documentary. We’re on series two now and it’s slightly funnier than series one. We bought the box set of series one to five as six had not come out by then.

The other things we’ve been watching of late are Broadchurch series one and two and a thing called The Jury, with Julie Walters – need to finish the last episode of that. And, when not watching TV, which we only do for half an hour after lunch and a couple of hours in the evening, I’ve been reading. I’ve just finished Alison Weir’s Henry VIII king and court, and I noticed there’s a Henry VIII series, from 2003, with Ray Winston that I’ve never seen. So, I might have to put that on my wish list. That’s an aside, I am also reading The Second Coming by John Niven while Mother is reading the first draft of Straight Swap, Neil is reading my You Wish! the mad comedy set in Brighton (‘rude, crude and totally nude’ or, as one review put it, ‘perfect poolside reading,’ thank you) while I am working on the Saddling when not enjoying time with the family.

Anyway, back to the real world and what’s going on? Well, Neil’s in Rhodes on Wednesday to see his allergy doctor, I’ll be at the bar, then we have a dinner invite and there’s another on Friday, but otherwise, we’re slowly slowing down as the weather cools; starting to have to wear a t-shirt in the mornings now, it’ll soon be cold and wet, with whistling north winds and… but that’s for later. There’s still plenty of summer to come yet. And, oh, apparently we had an election in Greece on Sunday but no one seems to have noticed.

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Sunday morning and the rain is holding off though there are clouds about, celebrating the latest election perhaps? It all seems very quiet out there, apart from the Sunday morning church bells, though the run up to the election has not been without its events. There was one in the village the other day when three Golden Dawn members were trying to canvas – they got told to Foxtrot Oscar in no uncertain terms by Evangalia who has the small craft shop opposite Georgio’s. Apparently she gave them a whole heap of what for and the best they could do in retaliation was kick some of her stock that was outside. Just the kind of people we want leading the country. Not.

It was also quiet at the refugee station on Saturday when we were there. This gave us the chance to carry out some of the jobs on the list of things that needed doing, one of which was cleaning out a donated fridge. Other volunteers have been sorting out the many generous donations that have been coming in, some of them arriving already sorted and labelled, which is very handy.

I was looking through Facebook the other day and realised that I had been following the BBC news page, there was an article about the refugee crisis and I thought I’d have a look at the comments people had left. Well, I say ‘people’, uneducated animals might be more to the point. I won’t bore you with them now but I did have to wonder how stupid these people actually were. Do they really believe that six year old children are I.S. terrorists coming to change the face or Europe forever and turn us all into followers of a different faith, or die? Do they really think that this is all some conspiracy to overthrow the EU? I mean, get a life! And a reasonable sense of what’s reasonable. So ‘outraged of Tunbridge Wells’ was I that I dispatched a letter to the BBC (well, a message on FB) to tell them that, as they seem incapable of moderating the right-wing skata that their other followers love to throw up in the comments area, and as they insist on calling refugees from war ‘immigrants’ and ‘migrants’ (no matter how correct it may be, it’s what the use of words implies, etc. etc.), because of these two things, I for one will no longer be following their posts.

I bet that got them quaking in their boots. What’s more, I found out at the weekend that they no longer run the omnibus of Eastenders on a Sunday – my mother’s kind of addicted to the real life goings-on in Albert Square and as we can’t get IPlayer here (no idea what that is), and as it’s awkward to watch it in real time during the week on Film On, she was hoping to catch up on a Sunday, but no. No more big four-parter, scarlet painted, London real life, diesel engine, ninety-seven minute (Eastenders) omnibus. So there we go, or rather, there it goes: the BBC off my friends list because it doesn’t know how to behave, in my book. I shall get my news from other sources now, sources less biased and less followed –and written – by idiots.

Actually, we’ve taken to listening to Euronews of a lunchtime. You turn on British TV and it’s all programs about antiques and selling your granny for a fiver, and ladies chatting about the importance of safely tupperwared leftovers and their effect on the Hang Seng Index. And as for the adverts for the latest TV reality show, ‘When celebrity enemas backfire’ or ‘The Great British snooze off‘ or whatever it is, well, don’t get me started on that. No, I’ll avoid that station and check into Euronews. The presenters’ accents may be hard to fathom at times, but at least you get a roundup of what all European countries are reporting, saying and doing rather than the latest reports on why ‘we’ can’t possibly take more than 20,000 refugees in five years (whereas Lebanon, which is about the size of Cornwall, has already taken in 2,000,000). Enough!

Here’s to the week ahead – I hope you have a good one.

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I have to report that cloud has been seen over Symi in recent days, that’s not Claudia you understand, though she has been sighted, it’s the cloudy stuff that produces high humidity and, at a push, rain. But the temperature stays high and no rain has fallen as yet. However, I thought I would carry out a quick survey of the weather stations online to see what they are predicting for the days ahead.

Randomly clicking through rainfall on Poseidon Systems http://poseidon.hcmr.gr shows me nothing until Sunday when a little cloud appears over Rhodes, over lots of the rest of the country but not us on Monday and shows the potential for a downpour here and elsewhere on Tuesday morning, early. It only goes up to Wednesday.

Windfinder http://www.windfinder.com/forecast/symi which, strangely enough, predicts the wind, shows me reasonably calm winds at one to three Beaufort only, with a slight nudge to four on Friday evening (25^th). The precipitation stays at 0 until Tuesday when it then ranges from 0.67 to 0.2 on Wednesday. Are you still awake?

Over on Accuweather http://www.accuweather.com/ it tells me that today is sunny, but then looking out of my window tells me that, but it also goes on to say that it’s going to be sunny all the way through the next couple of weeks, apart from Wednesday and Thursday next week when there will be ‘showers around.’ Temperatures will be in the mid-twenties they say, but remember that often these forecasts are from the weather station in Rhodes, so not always 100% accurate for Symi.

I also had a look at weather.com a site I’ve not used before. This brought me, without searching, the weather in Kolonaki (Athens) and told me that there is was ‘84f (feels like 84f)’ (bit of unnecessary info there) and the search box advised me to ‘search city, zip or place (Disney World)’ which confused me for a moment. I don’t live in a city, I found nothing in my zip or in my house, and what Micky Mouse has to do with anything… I typed in ‘Symi Greece’ (‘Symi’ comes up with ‘Symi Notio Agaio’, or ‘Symiz’ in Albania and then heads off into realms of ‘Symington UK’ etc.) where it was, apparently, ‘84f feels like 89f.’ The ten day forecast also showed rain over Tuesday and Wednesday.

Hell, this is dull. Let’s move on. I think the main point is that it might rain next week. Yippee! Good for the flowers and it will wash the dust off everything, and then we can start saving water for the winter and topping up the sterna for free. Other than that, as you can tell, I’ve very little news to impart and so will get on with doing other things and leave you to your weekend.

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