The quiet days are starting to settle in, to be followed by quieter evenings, although last night we went out and painted the town red. Well, four of us went to Taverna George & Maria for dinner, and that’s about as red as you can get right now. The film club was also showing a film, I believe, and Lefteris kafeneion was open, and on the way back, there was a lad playing football in the square, underneath the streetlight, alone. The quiet times are upon us. The ferry came in the early morning and passed through again on its way to Athens, taking weekend and longer-stay visitors away, and, as we know, Neil’s off to start his trip tomorrow.

The packing was done days ago and didn’t take long. The speed of it reminded me of a time when I went to visit Marks and Spencer in Rhodes to buy a pack of socks. Having been there before, I knew where the men’s department was, so I walked in, climbed to the top floor, found what I needed, brought them down to the ground floor where the tills are, and paid for them. ‘You men are so fast with your shopping,’ the assistant said, apparently in awe. ‘How do you do it?’
It’s quite simple. You see what you need, buy it, and go. None of this trying things on, comparing colours, and standing before mirrors wondering how it will look from the side, and does it make my bum look big? Maybe I’ll try a smaller size, because it will fit one day… And then not liking it and starting on the next thing. A man’s thought process: I need clothes. There are clothes. I buy clothes. I go.

There’s another reason I don’t hang around these things called clothes shops, and that’s air conditioning running 24/7/365 (every day of the year). In the summer, you enter from 39° to an environment kept at a constant 39°, and walk up several flights of stairs with the temperature rising to 40°+, because men’s departments are always upstairs or hidden in the basement like they are in H&M (though that one comes with part of an ancient monument running through it, which lessens the blow). You’re faced with choices in a varied sea of colours (for men, these are grey, black, and white with a hint of drab), you know your t-shirt size, so drop one of them into your basket, but you might go for a new pair of jeans… Except that means having to try them on, and that means getting undressed behind a curtain, shoes unlaced, shoes off, and now you’re sweating a little more, and although it’s 43°, you pull on the potential new garment and don’t like it or, more likely, you’re not as slim as you thought you were, so you change it, which means putting on clothes, drying yourself down with a towel and continuing the hunt in 45°. More sweating as you repeat the process until you give up on that idea, and you’re just heading outside for cooler air when you think you should have a new and decent shirt to expand your wardrobe by 100%. But you don’t, because you’re now sweating like a blacksmith’s armpit, and if you try on a shirt, you’re going to have to wring it out before putting it back on the rack, and that’s not fair on the next chap who comes along. So you leave empty-handed, and go for a cup of tea instead. It’s just as hot in these shops in winter as it is in summer, so there’s no escape.
I dislike shopping for this, and other reasons, so I’m happier taking a gamble and buying ‘sight unseen’ and if it doesn’t fit when I get it home, I’ll give it to someone else.

Expect more of these odd thoughts as the winter months go on, because other than my writing, I’m not going to have much to talk about. Fear not, though, I shall think of something.