Last night, had a brilliant idea of what to write about this morning, and now I’ve forgotten what that was. So, instead, let me tell you this…
Recently, there has been a lot of interest in ‘Symi 85600’. I’ve had emails from people asking where they can find it, or is there a follow-up, and such like, so I thought I’d have a quick chat about it here.
First of all, the blurb reads thus:
A collection of writings that present an honest and often humorous account of two Ex-pat’s experiences of living on Symi, a small Greek island. This book also contains extracts from the symi dream website and the complete guide ‘How to move to a Greek island or other place in the sun.’
“Even if you are not thinking of moving abroad, this little collection will entertain and inform.”
Taking that apart, the collection of writings refers to various emails, letters, diaries and other notes I made during the first five years of living here, so the thing starts with us arriving on Symi. There are some extracts from this website, but from its very early days, and those pieces have otherwise gone into the great nowhere where old website pages go. The ‘how to move to a Greek island’ part is still relevant in places, but as it was written over 20 years ago, things have changed and moved on a little.
Because I, too, have moved on a little (certainly in terms of proofreading and style), I was going to do a re-edit and update of the book, get my cover designer to do me a better cover, but I now cannot find the original MS, so I have no text to work with. There’s no way I am going to copy it all out again, so we’re left with what’s there. I suppose that makes every copy a first edition.
You can read a sample of Symi 85600 on the Amazon page, and here is the universal link that should take you to your local Amazon store. https://mybook.to/symi85600
Symi 85600 covers our first five naïve years of living here, but there are then three more books which cover the years from 2007 to 2017. These are also articles written for the Symi Visitor, the website, and other places, and the order runs thus: Carry on up the Kali Strata, Village View, Symi Stuff & Nonsense. You can find them all on my Amazon page. https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/James-Collins/author/B005C7HWJI
All are available in Kindle, Paperback and Kindle Unlimited.
And finally, to answer the most popular question on this subject, “What does the 85600 mean?”
It’s the postcode.
