Thursday morning on Symi: cloudy and with a bit of rain about. Not enough to boost the sterna water supply as yet. The sea is grey and the wind calm.
A few more photos from around the village today. More cats being fed and looked after – still no sign of Jack though. Thanks for all your messages about the star of the blog, but there is still no news about where he might be. He’s been away since last Friday now and is not at our old house. We and others have been looking for him around the area, and the neighbours there know him and will report if he is seen. So, still a mystery but not un-cat like behaviour. He is nearly 14, though seemed in perfect health as usual, but you never know…
That aside, and as there is nothing we can do, things tick over up here in the village. The name day of Haralambos was celebrated on Wednesday and this was, I think, the first year we’ve not made it to church in the morning. This was due to the tree-felling appointment, and we’ve still to take the old branches away to the bins, something we will do bit by bit when we go to feed the cats. Now we can see the harbour more clearly, at least for a while, until it grows back. Around the village there are restoration and building works taking place; a house two doors down from us is being done up, there are various other projects on the go and the sound of cement mixers and donkey hooves mingle in the lanes.
It’s definitely a quiet time here on the island, as February is usually the darkest, coldest month that, ironically, feels longer than most other months. I guess the other extreme might be August which feels lengthy as it’s often hard work. Temperatures of 40 degrees feel so far away on days like today when, though not cold, it’s still only around 15, at the moment. Sometimes you do actually long for August to melt into September when you know it will start to cool down, just as you start to long for February to thaw into March, where things start to improve. March for us means medical MOT on Rhodes and that’s something we will put into place shortly. Now I am on private health insurance I have a built-in scheme for basic ‘older man’ check-ups once per year, and though in IKA (Greek National Insurance), Neil also has a similar scheme. So we usually have a three or four day ‘health holiday’ around March/April time. Oh, the things we have to look forward to!
