Continuing the brief chat about the weekend… The Rhodes boat on a Friday may as well be called the Symi boat as half the island seems to pop across that day. Mind you, it’s a decent sailing time (08.45) whereas the others are much earlier. It also means you see a fair few familiar faces as you go about your business, and there’s a lively atmosphere on the boat on the way back.

We managed to miss the rain in the afternoon, but only just. Otherwise, it was a fun day with lots of walking as it’s easy to spend an hour walking from A (beyond St Nikolas) to B (Mandraki) without noticing because the ground is mainly flat, and you have a UNESCO World Heritage Site to admire on the way.

So, on returning home… On Saturday, I thought I’d forgo my writing morning and set up the new laptop instead. This is always a journey, and this time was no exception. It took me until Monday to get the email accounts set up in Outlook, despite the details/servers being exactly the same. In the end, I needed the help of my server technicians who were very helpful. Next is to transfer the old email data and files. Other programmes I’ll need to transfer or reload will come to lit in time because I don’t really use anything other than the basics.

Which leaves Sunday, when we spent the day preparing for a logical family dinner. The preparations had begun on Friday with buying some supplies and continued on Saturday with himself making chocolate domes and ice cream, and continued on Sunday with me preparing to do the two other courses. The first was bouyiourdi, which even Sam had trouble pronouncing, but I had no trouble making, and the second was steak and pepper sauce. In between was much laughter, and afterwards, even more as we all watched the homemade DVD of Neil and I in South America from 2007.

And that was the weekend. Yesterday, I stayed in, finished setting up this new machine, did a piano lesson and spent some time at Harland & Wolff. There will be another progress update in due course. While the Titanic is being fitted out, I am awaiting the arrival of ‘Big Boy’, which I will also introduce you to in due course…

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Well, that was an interesting three days. I’ll drop in the details during the week, but the weekend included boats, lots of walking, cracking joints, a cracking lunch, good fun, a certain amount of money, frustration, laughter, good food, good company, and now, is being rounded off by a bad back and a nice cup of tea. Strangely, I don’t have many photos to show you, but I have a couple, so we’ll start with this one.

Early morning leaving Symi on a day that started sunny and ended up wet, but luckily, the only rain we encountered happened while we were in a café in the afternoon. Before that, we had a pleasant crossing to Rhodes where our first stop was the mattress shop.

I’m sure there’s more than one, but the one in Kanadas Street showed us plenty of choice and gave us a fun time as the knowledgeable showroom lady let us have a good lie down on every suitable offering. We ended up with a 50% off sale of a mattress that will be handmade and delivered by the end of March, by which time I would have forgotten we ordered one. That done, I then went off to find a new laptop and am already wishing I hadn’t. (More about that later, but let’s just say, transferring from old to new, Outlook files and email addresses…? Forget it. Easier to start again from scratch. I have an hour set aside later for communication with my email hosting company…)

(That white box beside the grey boxes is the new ticket office for Blue Star Ferries – it’s moved from the cafe to there.)

After that, we had a little time to kill so had a coffee/tea in a café near the marina, which was very swank, and then walked over to the other side of St Nikolas to find the chiropractor. That visit included a discussion about films and books, back and elbow issues, and such choice snippets as, ‘I suppose it’s meant to hurt as much as this is it?’ ‘Yes.’ All for the good though, and that done, I toddled off to walk back to town, where we found a lovely and new, to us, Italian eatery in Mandraki. It’s called Sergio’s, and you can click that to find the website. Fabulous lunch, not too costly, and we ate outside beneath darkening skies. After that, it was a trip to the Hondas Centre to find an aftershave for the yung’un, following on form the shaving lesson of last week, and then my feet had had enough, so we began the walk back to the boat which involved 90 minutes in the Yacht Club waiting for the rain to pass and then a taxi, but we made it back to the boat with plenty of time, and arrived home several hundred euros laughter, the body pulled and pummelled, and without the thing I’d gone to Rhodes to buy, but never mind, I obviously didn’t want it anyway.

Now, it’s back to the daily routine for the rest of the week, a week which has again started with clear skies and a calm sea.

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As previously announced in Parish News, I will be in Rhodes tomorrow with a list of things to do and find. These include all sorts of things from aftershave to osteopath, and from Perio Guard to a new laptop, so it should be an interesting day. Here’s hoping the rain holds off because yesterday was slightly on the damp side. In fact, to end my four-day week, how about some photos of yesterday showing you how changeable the winter weather can be? (And how green we are already.) Here you go:

There, I will leave you to your weekend and prepare for mine. Apparently, we are travelling with a class from the technical school who are off to try work experience at a hotel (for a day). Things to look forward to next week include having our bathroom ceiling looked at because it looks like it’s about to fall down. Can’t wait.

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As you can see, it’s not all sunshine in the Southern Aegean. In fact, it’s raining this morning, and it looks like it will be here all day. It was cloudy yesterday and a little drizzly at times, and there was an earthquake near Lesvos, not that that has anything to do with the weather.

That was when I was out on a walk yesterday, just a short wander around the village to keep the joints moving. There will be more walking on Friday when in Rhodes. It’s so much easier to go everywhere on foot there, compared to here where there are so many ups and downs. I can quite easily walk six or seven miles during the day when in Rhodes. If I did that here, I’d be over halfway to Panormitis, or in the sea, depending on which way I went, and it would take twice as long because of the steps. Talking of steps, Neil carried the other Christmas present chair home the other night…

Also, when it’s wet, we tend not to go out onto the balcony, so the balcony photos like this one below are taken through the window. More cloud from yesterday, and beneath it, the Blue Star coming in early one Friday morning. I know it was Friday because, at the moment, it comes in before dawn on a Monday and Wednesday. Apart from the Stavros coming in, the patrol and fishing boats, that’s about as exciting as the view gets at this time of year, and what a lovely view it is.

I can’t think what else to tell you… (thinks). Yes I can: Visited the Chinese shop yesterday for a jumper that didn’t fit, said hello to Mr Chan who’s probably not called Mr Chan at all, but that’s what the locals call him so… Taverna Zoi is after a waiter for the summer, other businesses are hiring too – both godsons have already secured summer employment, which is good news for them as they can save for a trip we’re planning for later in the year, and I did some touch-up work on the tinier pieces of the Titanic model ahead of the next build session tomorrow. That, dear reader, is my news for the day.

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I’m hoping to bring you news from Harland & Wolfe in a short while; I am just waiting for the photos to upload after changing a setting on my phone which had become unset somehow, so my gallery wasn’t communicating with the cloud where I keep the images before sending them to the laptop and… It was so much easier when we had prints and albums, though not so easy to share them with the rest of the world. Anyway… Come on a short Symi walk with me while I tell you a story.

Sorry if you’ve heard this before, but what I just wrote reminded me of it. Picture it: Dover, early 1980s, and I applied for a job in Wales (Dolgellau, to be precise and no, I don’t know why I did it, but it looked like a lovely place). A few days later, a letter[1] arrived telling me I had an interview, the day after tomorrow. Gosh, I thought, that doesn’t leave me long to travel the 280 miles from the southeast of England to the Snowdonia National Park, how will I get there? At the time, I had a Morris Minor[2] and knew that wouldn’t make the trip so I had to go by train. However…

Having made phone calls[3] to the local railway station to discover the timetables, I discovered I would have to stay in Cardiff overnight. Hmm, Booking.com was a thing of… well, wasn’t even a thing or a thought, and the only way to find a hotel in advance was to find a newspaper or magazine, visit a travel agent, or… Well, I didn’t know, but I did know that my brother was at University in Cardiff, and better still, I had his address in Splott. Only, he didn’t have a phone (student, you see), and a letter would take too long, so, ‘Ah ha!’ I thought. ‘A telegram,’ so I phoned the operator to ask if I could send a telegram.

‘Sorry, m’dear, British Telecom don’t no longer do them telegrams.’

‘Really?’

‘Aye. After 139 year, the service stopped back end last September, eighty-two, so, sorry, me luv’r, I can’t be of no assistance to ye.’

I have no idea why she was Cornish. But still… what to do?

All I could do was go and hope for the best. ‘I’ll turn up on his doorstep and hope he’s in,’ I thought as I wandered to the railway station the next day. ‘Hopefully, he’s not on a field trip, but if he is, maybe one of his housemates will believe I am who I am, and let me stay so I can travel on the next day, and arrive… Ah ha!’ An idea occurred.

Cut to 6pm that evening when I step from the London train onto Cardiff soil and Lo! There is the kinsperson waiting for me. Despite the embarrassment I’d caused him, he let me stay, we spent the evening drinking Brains Mild, and the next day, I journeyed onwards via Barmouth, feeling surprisingly smug and non-hungover. How?

I’d passed an Interflora. I popped in and asked, if I sent the cheapest bunch of flowers they had, when would it arrive? and the assistant told me, midday, or whenever I wanted after that time, so I sent him a bouquet with a message, ‘Arriving station 6pm, staying the night, meet me.’ And, despite his housemates taking the petunia because he’d got flowers from a bloke, it worked. So, there’s a tip for you, though these days, all you need is in eth palm of your hand.

The trip back also went without incident, except for when I had to change trains somewhere among the mountains, and alighted to find myself alone with only one other person on a single-track platform surrounded by hills and nothing else. ‘Is this the right place to change for Wherever I’m going next?’ I asked, to which the man replied, ‘Now let me see. What day is it?’

Oh, and I didn’t get nor want the job.

[1] Letter: Personal communication often written by hand, sometimes typed, sent through the post.

[2] Morris Minor: Antique car that ran on prayer.

[3] Phone calls made by putting a finger in a dial and turning a combination of numbers to ask a real person because no-one was online back then.

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