Symi Christmas
I had a look back to see what we were doing this day last year in the run up to our Symi Christmas and things didn’t look that much different: Quiet harbour and news about boats and busses, but also, I noticed, I reported that it was warm and we were: “…in the ‘Halcyon’ days, as someone pointed out to me the other day; the period of a week either side of the winter solstice (from today the days start growing longer as we head towards summer).” It’s not that warm here today (Wednesday as I write) but days are still ‘Halcyon’ in the “A very happy and successful period” meaning of the word.
I also noticed that we had attended our first Christmas party, that we were all hoping for rain as there had been a shortage of downpours – the same as this year – and we were planning to attend a Christmas quiz night. I remember that! (Surprisingly.) It was a good evening. Tonight we are planning nothing but films and reading and staying warm inside the house. We are planning to go out for dinner on Friday night though, at Georgio’s, followed by some Christmas carols and fun fund-raising for the Rhodes orphanage afterwards, or before, depending on what time we go to eat. We were also planning for a Boxing Day party at our house. We are not having one this year. It’s always a good idea at the time but when you wake up late on Boxing Day morning with a slight thump to the head and remember that you have 30 guests arriving in two hours, it’s not such a good idea. We will, I expect, invite smaller groups of people for post-Christmas get togethers during next week instead.
This will be our 15th Christmas on Symi. The first was spent with Jean and Sue at Jean’s house in the afternoon; we spent one with Marj and Brian at their house – that was when we had the notorious incident of the Brussels sprouts and learned not to feed them to Neil; and the others have been spent with Jenine and the godboys, a day we look forward to all year round and start planning usually on December 26th, if not earlier.
The tree is up, I’d take a photo but it’s the same as last year. When Neil went into hospital on January 3rd 2008, after breaking his heel on January 1st early in the morning, I dashed home to arrange a few things before heading back to Rhodes the next day. This was on January 4th and I was aware that I had to take the decorations down before Epiphany. I rushed around doing things. Lefteris ‘the truck’ had given me a lift up, Miss DJ has made my dinner, but I was still short of time as I came in late afternoon and the boat back was early morning – those were the days of the hydrofoil. The tree was still up and decorated so I just lifted it up and dropped it in the mousandra. Twelve months later I lifted it down again, fully dressed (the tree and me), and that tradition went on for a few years. I got out of the habit a couple of years ago and now we re-dress the tree every year. Still with the same decorations and lights, so I might as well just store it ‘as is’ and leave it at that.
We’re planning to head down to Yialos for the last minute post and presents on Friday and that’s when our Symi Christmas will really start – the last working day for a whole ten days! We will probably have our Symi Dream staff party while there which will be a giros and a beer, possibly at Pacho’s (the giros shop delivers and Yiannis and George don’t mind) but that will depend on the weather and chicken giros availability.
I wonder what I will make of this post if I look back on it in a year’s time?
