Yesterday was the name day for Constantin, Constantina, Helen and Nantila, and various variations of the same. I spent the morning watching boats heading to and from Analipsi, Symi, the monastery on the edge of the island over Kokkinochoma Bay, just before you head through Diapori on your way to Turkey, or the open sea – if you head that way. This is a church I have not visited before, though Neil was over there last year to film a festival put on for one of the cruise ships.
So, during the part of yesterday morning, while out walking and while I was working at my desk I saw: The Panagia Skiadeni (The Scooby to its friends) going out at 6.30 and coming back in from Rhodes around 10.30 with its day-trippers, a full taxi boat heading out towards Analipsi, various speed boats, some of those white hired sailing boats coming in and out, and the Sea Dreams, Symi, boat over at Analipsi passing by and blasting its horn for a long while before coming into Symi with its own load of day-trippers. It was actually quite a quiet morning down there, some days it’s non-stop and it is still only May.
The other day the four (or something) most expensive or biggest or who cares, private yacht was in the harbour with some far too wealthy football person on it; a club owner, or owner of the largest shares in Folkestone United or somewhere. Football often passes me by as do the people who earn lots of money from it. ‘The first of the season’s super yachts’, it was being called. Not impressed. Well, you know me. When I see a phrase like ‘Super Yacht’ I immediately think, ‘Anagram opportunity.’ So how about, in future, when we see something like that pumping its fumes out into the atmosphere ten feet away from where 100 homeless and frightened refugees are sharing one toilet, let’s think: ‘Peachy Rust,’ or ‘Pushy Crate,’ or perhaps ‘Pushy Recta…’ And we will leave it there.
I think I might be in a bit of a volatile mood today because my wonderful pay €XX.00 per annum for Microsoft Office package 360 thing is turning out to be an absolute pain the Pushy Recta. It does this every few months, I am convinced of it: It forgets words I have added to the custom dictionary, and it forgets words I have added to autocorrect, so I have to spend hours putting back in my most commonly mistyped words. And, let’s face it, that’s going to be a lot. One day my page is nicely white with nothing underlined in red, thanks to autocorrect and spell recognition of such words as Yialos, Symi, Horio etc. and the next it looks like my old sociology homework. You ring Microsoft for advice and they expect you to pay a further €80.00 before they will even discuss the thing.
Ah well, just look out of the window, take a deep breath, enjoy the view and remember that Microsoft is an anagram of ‘Cost From I.’ (It’s also an anagram of ‘Cost Of Rim’ but that’s something else we shan’t go into.)
