Today’s plug comes with a couple of lovely views, as seen yesterday from the top of the village not long after sunrise. That’s the time when the hills turn a shade of pink. It’s a slightly different shade to the colour they become towards sunset, when the hills on either side of the Pedi valley are a glorious dusty something somewhere between pink and… I just popped off to find a colour chart to find the exact shade, but it wasn’t possible. I don’t think it has a name yet.
The plug is more of a reminder. Yesterday, I told you about ‘We are the Monsters: On the Road with Lindsay Kemp’ by Kinny Gardner; well, today is a reminder that you don’t have long to order your Symi Dream Calendar before the C word is upon us: Christmas.
I’ve already ordered a couple, and as usual, the images are a lovely reminder of Symi throughout the year. The date boxes are big enough to make notes in, and this is the only place where you can order them: Symi Dream Calendar 2027.
Somehow, Neil has again managed to keep the price low (as low as possible without giving them away), and again, there are 12 unique images from around the island. Some people collect these, frame their favourites and get a recycle out of the calendar, which sounds like a great idea.
As for other parish news… The road to Pedi (and partly from Yialos to Milos) is being resurfaced, so access is limited in places. There’s never a good time to do this necessary work, but now is infinitely better than that time when we had many more visitors on the island, and people were wearing plastic bags on their feet on the way down the hill. There was pitch or whatever it is in tyre and footprints all around the village for weeks after that debacle. No idea how long it will go on for, but if you use Facebook, visit Ράδιο Σύμη – Ειδήσεις (Symi live news), you can read the report there. If you don’t read Greek, you can use the Chrome browser and right-click on the text to find the ‘translate’ command, and it will come up in English. Other web browsers may also offer you this, and there are other ways to translate from Greek to English, such as 25 years of trying to learn the language but being too lazy to bother too much. Ahem. Moving on…
Guess where I am going today? Yes, back to the chair and drills, but it should only be for a few minutes. We started patching up the flat roof yesterday with some sanding and scraping, and some mixing and slopping on of what is known locally as ‘mud’, which, yes, looks like the stuff, but actually fills the cracks and dries hard before the concrete paint goes on. Hopefully, this will stop the ceiling shower in the bathroom, but we also have a running-wall shower or two in the porch and lean-to, and although we’ve cracked-filled and painted there over the years, we still can’t stop the rain coming in that way. Further investigation yesterday revealed no further clues.
Anyway… I’ll let you get back to ordering your Symi Calendar 2027 before they sell out (they won’t), so you can get some in as seasonal gifts. Depending on where you live, they should arrive within a few days, although here it takes about three weeks; then so can a quick drink with friends at the bar.