Yesterday we signed the contract for the new house. Today I can give you a shot or two of what will be our new view. A week on Monday we can collect the keys, take the inventory and start moving things across.

On the way back we stopped off for a few supplies at one of the village supermarkets (see photo) and it’s a question of ‘What shall we have for lunch today?’ As you’ll see, supplies have become a bit scarce. But not to fear! The Blue Star came through in the morning and, all being well and calm, should have come back last night. (I will be able to give more accurate details once we move as we’ll be able to see and hear it arrive and depart from the comfort of the living room.) So, Thursday morning will probably see a scrum at the vegetable department, so might give that a wide berth.

But it’s also good news for empty boxes, and we still need a heap more, with only about 60% of the house packed up. The more we pack the less we can use, obviously, so the house will probably stay mainly as it is until only a few days before we actually start moving things. Then it will be open season.

Meanwhile, the nights and mornings have ben wet, everything is feeling damp and it’s also cold; standard February weather here. I’ve not been able to get out for much ‘jalking’ at my preferred time of day, but have been trying to get out for your more standard kind of walking in the afternoon. Neil’s not been 100%, having had a bad tummy, but is on the mend now.

So, off into Thursday, with plenty to do and plenty to look forward to.

Share on Facebook

First of all, thanks to everyone who has so far sent in notes and tips, and things about the pension topic mentioned yesterday. I’m hoping to distil all the info for a future blog, but it sounds like things are due to change in April. So, watch this space.

So, it’s Wednesday (well, actually it’s Tuesday as I write this) and today we are going to sign the contract for the new house – day 24 of ‘moving house on Symi,’ so we’re looking forward to that. I walked past it yesterday (Monday – do keep up!) on my way back from Yialos and saw the landlord heading back and forth to his house opposite, so that bodes well. I went down to sort out a few things, check the post and get the deposit out of the bank, all done successfully, and took some grey, winter photos while I was on route.

Funnily enough, I took one of the sea coming onto the road by the customs house and it was more or less the exact same photo as Adriana put on her blog on Monday. http://adrianas-symi.blogspot.gr/ Check it out, ‘Surf’s Up Symi Style.’

I also almost took the same shot of the dog in the tree, and got some shots of stones and… well, great minds obviously think alike. Adriana also has some info about the recent Sunday Times piece about Symi, and links to the ferry schedules, which are kind of all over the shop at the moment.

I also noticed on my way past that the old Symi Dream shop is now up for rent, so that’s not gone to anyone new as yet. If you fancy having a small business on Symi and need a shop, this could be the place for you! Down in the harbour there was the navy boat in (or is a customs boat? Looks more military to me, must examine closer next time), but no other ships coming or going. We’ve not had many recently, not for some time now due to the bad weather. You can tell by looking at the empty vegetable racks in the shops.

Monday is a busy day though, down there, with folk doing their admin things like banks, post office, catching up on shopping; a bit like I was doing. Heading back up the Kali Strata I decided to go in a different direction and went up almost vertically past Villa Papanikola, the recently done up accommodation that overlooks Yialos. Then it was back to the house to find Neil ill with the tummy big that’s been going around the village/island, and, after lunch and some pottering about, a tap class that was mind-meltingly hard work but good fun.

And then Tuesday morning and… Another night disturbed by the sound of rain on the shutter-less window and wondering if there was going to be thunder, and did I need to get up and unplug things? I heard the clock strike five, drifted off a bit and then my alarm started signing ‘Good morning, good morning!’ to me at 6.30 as it does. I dragged myself out of bed, was not impressed to see it had stopped raining, so fed the cat, put on my trainers and headed off up the steps and to the quarry for a bracing, early morning job/walk. (I could call that a ‘jalk’ as I mix jogging with walking, but that sounds like too silly a word to use, and the alternative is not PC at all. After all, I can’t call my early morning exercise a ‘wog.’)

Managing to dodge the rain, until the last few steps, I was back and at my desk by 7.30 ready for a morning of, yes you guessed it, more rain. Ah well, at least we’ve had some time away from it, off and on, recently so the towels are dry.

Share on Facebook

Going slightly off piste today and wondering about pensions. As far as I can remember, I’ve still got a few years before my private one kicks in, I think it was 67 at the last count. Age that is, not years to go.

No idea what age I might be able to delve into any UK pension (or Greek one) that I may have paid/be paying into, 97 probably, if there is such a thing as a pension by the time I reach any kind of claiming age; if indeed I reach any kind of age.

But I have been seeing a lot of adverts recently for a company that tells me that, as an Ex-pat, I can claim my (private) pensions early, or move it overseas, or do something wonderfully handy with it – as long as I use their company of course, and I have never heard of them, so I shan’t even fill out an enquiry as I know it will only lead to hours of boring phone calls trying to sell me a product I don’t really want. But, maybe someone reading this knows about what ‘deals’ (for want of a better word) might be available to UK ‘ex-pats’ living abroad, in Europe, who have private or other pensions that that can become better off by doing things with them. And perhaps there’s also someone who can put those words in the correct order and make sense of them.

If so, feel free to email me and I’ll share the info. Please do not phone me about it. There are two reasons I ask that. 1) I hate speaking on the phone, and 2) the phone is currently unplugged so it won’t get answered anyway. Oh, three reasons… 3) My mobile is also playing up and turns itself off when I try and answer it, it apparently hates phone calls more than I do. Oh, four reasons… 4) I don’t want to talk about pension advice, I’m just interested to read about it and share reputable links with the blog readers. So, any ideas via email with handy links would be great. Thank you.

And talking of unwanted phone calls, I’ve already had a few from my mobile provider since I cancelled my mobile contract the other week. I went to the Wind shop in Yialos and Mr Wind there took me through the whole process, and my contract ends in March. He was very intrigued to see my sim card which is now nearly 13 years old and still working. I have a temporary one now and will change that for the new pay as you go one in March. But the call centre somewhere rang me out of the blue to find out why I was leaving my contract, so I told them: I was paying them more than I use, and they magically come up with a better offer. But I still wasn’t interested. So they came up with one that sounded like they would pay me to use their network. But I still wasn’t interested. If I’d wanted a new deal I would have asked for one thanks, so please get off the phone.

All this does mean that all my old numbers are on the card that is now out of the phone. I could out it back in and transfer them mover via the PC but I have packed the lead, so that’s not going to happen. So, if you text me and I reply asking ‘who are you?’ that’s the reason. If you want to text me saying who you are, I will save the number to the phone. But then again, the phone screen is playing up and I will need a new phone soon, so… oh forget it! Forget phones. Lets’ stick with emails and face to face shall we?

There, that’s my Tuesday morning ramble. Off to get on with the rest of the day now, though I have no idea what’s in store…

Share on Facebook

Feeling a bit wintery in the house today, down to 13 degrees in the front room at 7.30, been kept awake during the night by the strong winds, the shutters at the front were rattling a bit but I can’t get to them now as the room is full of boxes, so I put the earplugs in and tried to get back to sleep.

Didn’t get out for a walk this morning at 6.30; far too cold and windy to make myself feel any more unpleasant than I feel at that time of day after a rough night’s sleep, so sat for half an hour while I had my hot water and lemon, and played with the new tablet – LG V400, not any other kind of tablet.

I like this thing, it’s got some funny habits. For example, when I use it to check things on Facebook and make a post, I write my pot, and then click share, or done or whatever it is, up pops my post and the tablet tells me ‘You posted this’ or ‘You just shared this’ and I say, I know, I told you to, I am in charge, actually. I mean, how thick does it think I am? I expect there will come a day soon when we won’t even have to like or post our own things, our devices will know what we would like or post and do it for us.

Anyway, meanwhile, what next, where are we? Ah yes. We’re heading off into another winter week on Symi and this one contains all the usual ingredients: tap, aerobics, walks, Pilates (for Neil) and so on, plus a couple of extra ones: signing the contract for the new house (the new furniture has been ordered) and collecting a new laptop. I am getting ahead of myself with this, I’ve found a new one as I want to upgrade before this one goes wrong suddenly, not that it looks like it is going to. Then everything shuffles down: Neil gets this one and his becomes the spare for emergencies. Might sound extravagant, but I’ve been saving up. Thought I should get it now and give myself time to transfer everything across and get used to Windows 8, as that seems unavoidable now.

So, that’s’ me for a Monday morning. Jack has just wandered in from his place on the sofa and decided that the big square box fill of kitchen things is this morning’s favoured bath and sleep place. So, he’s happy.

Have a good week ahead.

Share on Facebook

When someone says, ‘Let’s go down town now and get some money out,’ and you’re looking at the weather and thinking, ‘Well, there’s a break in the rain and I can see a bit of blue sky,’ and you say, ‘Let’s go.’ Don’t.

A quick bit of exercise, a walk down the Kali Strata and then back up again for exercise, turned into a couple of hours sheltering at Pacho’s and a taxi, followed by drinks at the Sunrise and dinner at Georgio’s. (Two plates of spaghetti with mince, some cheese balls, two jugs of wine and a glass for Lefteris, all for just €20.00.) That’s what I call my sort of exercise.

But all was not lost, and the treat of going out to eat paid off as we had the chance to chat with our current landlord about how we should leave the house. Now then, I know you are following our house moving progress avidly, and I know that a lot of folk are genuinely interested (as opposed to what, James? Being falsely interested? Pretending to read this blog?) in how the process of moving from and/or to a Symi house actually works. Well, with the on-going assistance of The Symi Estate Agent it’s going very smoothly – the fantastic Dora has now arranged for us to sign the contract next week. We are packing up in earnest now…

But back to leaving this house. When we moved in we paid a deposit and in theory you get this back when you move out, minus any bills that need paying to cover the cost of repairs your landlord might have to carry out after you, etc. In our case that’s going to be a complete renovation of the house, but as that’s not our fault, we’d expect to get our deposit back. Only we know that it doesn’t actually work like that in practice; and there will be some electricity and water bills coming in after we’ve gone so he can use it for that. And the rent’s not gone up in 11 years so we’re happy about that too.

We’re also happy about the fact that he’s said that we can throw everything, leave nothing and not do any repairs, no need to fill holes in walls made by shelves, paint walls or clear the garden, or anything. We can even take the furniture that came with the house, not that we want to. He double-iterated that we don’t need to do any painting (‘Why? I am going to rip it all out.’) and we don’t need to fill any cracks, and we can dump the furniture for him. Well, we may leave it behind just in case. And I am putting this here so the if you hear that we left the house in a mess you will know that that is what we arranged to do. We even told him how black the kitchen was getting due to the damp and mould, and the hall, and the bathroom, and the bedroom where the window and shutters need fixing, and how the front and back doors don’t fit any more… And so on.

So, the way ahead is paved for signing contracts next week, picking up the keys on 16th February, and then using that week to move house. Neil is, as I write, packing the kitchen things not currently needed, into his smalls not currently needed and then into boxes – many currently needed.

And on that note (the boxes, not Neil’s smalls) if anyone else would like to volunteer to help move said boxes (and smalls) on the weekend of 21st and 22nd of February, please feel free to drop me a line.

Share on Facebook