Windy Symi
It was what you might call windy on Sunday. The sea was white with a hint of blue (do they still make those paint colours? ‘White with a hint of something nondescript’ etc.) and you could see the surface water being blown along over the sea. The patrol boat was out and about turning around constantly and ready for action, and it must have been pretty cold out there. It was pretty cold up here with the roof rattling and the wind blowing in under various doors. The new quilt curtain in the sitting room held out most of the gale and then doubled as a cover on the bed at night.
I spent some time pottering around with old CDs at the weekend, looking through that old pile of backups to see what was in them. I came across a couple of old plays I’d written, first draft of at least. One of them looks finished and tells quite a cute little story, I may use that again sometime. The other is a farce but I’d only written act one and a lot of very detailed notes. It’s called ‘Vile Bags’ and is about two old friends, in the musical theatre world, trying to practical joke each other all the time. All good fun until things go wrong of course. I am not sure I will do anything with that one as I haven’t studied farce structure and I know it’s not just a case of writing in a vicar who loses his trousers.
I also fed our strays, as we do just about every day. The only day they have to fend from the bins is when it’s raining as they are sheltering and their food would get washed away. But every other day one of us goes up there with leftovers and some biscuits and a tin of food. We regularly have around 10 bin cats and three chickens each day, the most we have seen there is 20 cats, two hens and a cockerel. I found some old bird seed I’d bought by accident so the chickens got some specialist food one day. We bought the huge sack of cat biscuits from Michaelis as the Symi Pet Corner, down at the bottom of the Kali Strata. He delivered it up to Georgios on his moped for us; next time we’re going to work on getting him to deliver it right to our door.
And then Monday came along and after a good night’s sleep, I was ready for the pump-repair man who came to fix our water issues. Sometimes it works, other times it doesn’t, and it sounds/feels like there is air in the system. Actually, as I am writing this he is still here, so I will have to let you know the outcome. I’m needed in the other house as our own cat wants feeding. Again. He’s looking at me with that stare of: ‘It’s been over half an hour since we last checked the kitchen what are you waiting for?’ Now he is starting to look really fed up, so I will stop typing and go and see to the master.
