Well, last week was something of an up-and-downer. We shall draw a veil over the 2.5 days without water and the day without a water pump, a contretemps with the landlord about all that, Neil going down with a mystery virus and (for the first time) being signed off work for two days by the doctor, someone trying to get into my bank card account, and some other niggles. We shall lift the same veil, though, on the help we received re the water situation and the pump, the kind attentions of the clinic and friends, and the cooler weather, and we’ll carry on, fortified by experience.
Oh my, the wind last week! One day, it was 37° and calm in the afternoon, and by the next morning, only 27°, half the leaves of the vine ended up in the porch, and some scuttled their way in through the open front door and made it as far as the kitchen. There were a couple of days when the taxi boats and small craft were unable to sail, though the day boats continued to bounce in. Strong winds up to 5 Bf are predicted for Tuesday evening this week, but otherwise, the Windfinder channel tells me it will be calm, perhaps with a force four this evening. We also had some cloud pass over briefly – the tail end of a large storm further north, I think.
Visitors continued to visit, and it was good to see a few visiting families in the square in the afternoon ordering their blue lagoons and G&T’s and having a good time. It was also nice to see our neighbours back for a few weeks’ holiday. Of the houses in front of us, three out of four are holiday homes, and we only see the neighbours at this time of the year, sometimes for a short while earlier in the year, and I wonder if they were out at last night’s Symi Shrimp Festival. This is always held in the village square on the last Sunday of July, and there is one of Panormitis’ video shorts below, so you can see the dancing. (I was, of course, fast asleep by the time it started, but it sounded like it was going well.)
As for this week… I am thoroughly enjoying work on my next book, which will be different from the previous ones, though also set in the late 19th century. This time, though, it’s not about detectives in London, but a blacksmith in a small village on the Kent Downs, just off Stone Street – for anyone who knows that old Roman road. I ordered a book to help with my research, so don’t be surprised if you soon find me setting up as a farrier and blacksmith, operating out of a home smithy just off the square.
No, that’s hardly likely. When forced to do metalwork at school when I would rather have done ‘commerce’, it took me an entire term to bend a piece of steel into something resembling the shape of a hacksaw handle, which was almost as terrible as my attempts in woodwork to create a wooden fish for no discernible reason. Imagine if boys had been allowed to do ‘commerce’ instead. Only the girls were taught the useful arts of touch typing and shorthand, two things which I would have found much more useful in later life. Ah well. I continue to clatter the keyboard in the manner of an infinite number of monkeys in the hope that one word in five is types correctly… typed correctly. See?
I also have Barchester Towers to read, so as soon as I can, I shall spend my afternoon quiet time with my Trollope before lighting the forge.
In the meantime, here is that short video of the annual celebration of the Symi shrimp. Well, not just the one shrimp, but the thousands, millions probably, that are caught in season, frozen, and served up in just about every restaurant on the island throughout the summer.