Wander, Wonder

I took a wander on Monday morning, up through the village to the main road and down again, just for some fresh air. It was windy and cloudy but not cold, and not unpleasant at all. Among the things of interest I saw were cats, walls and greenery, so here are a few photos highlighting what Symi is like right now. At least, what parts of it are like along the route I took.

First of all, the cats at the bins. We have feed from Symi Animal Welfare now, so our bin cats will get more regular supplies of biscuits. Meanwhile, they seem quite happy to play with an old toy car that’s been left there for collection.

If you look closely, you’ll see someone has already called shotgun on the front seat.

Up at the top of the village, the road to and from Periotisa and Agia Triada is being improved. It’s now concreted flat, and the retaining wall is being built along with safety railings on the other side of the road. What’s interesting here is that the wall is being built around a shrine that’s been there for longer than I’ve lived here. These are usually set up to mark the scenes of an accident, death or perhaps a close call, and it’s good to see the personally erected shrine respected and the wall built around it.

Then there’s the workmanship that goes into the stonework, also to be admired.

Then, from the top road, there was the view of the valley where you can see how green it is at this time of year.

The sea was grey and a bit choppy, the clouds hung around for most of the day and were back on Tuesday morning along with the strong-ish winds, though the temperature in the courtyard was still reading 17 degrees.

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Weekend, Behind Nimborio, Photos

Over the weekend, we spent about 15 hours watching the extended versions of The Lord of the Rings trilogy and thoroughly enjoyed them. They don’t feel that long, and, let’s face it, there’s not much else to do of an evening right now. Had the bars been open and things running as they were a year ago, we might have gone to Rainbow to watch a football match, or rather, just be in the company of other people while they did, by way of something to do. We might also have had the god-boys and family for lunch, a film and a bit of mayhem, but we still can’t do that, of course. So it was something of a stay-at-home weekend for me. The weather was a bit blowy too. (Any excuse to stay in and write.)

Which is what I did, write, I mean, and I managed to knock off several thousand words of a new story. I work along the lines of ‘don’t get it right, get it written,’ and then, after it’s written, I work on getting it right, so at the moment, I am simply telling myself the story through my keyboard. The writing process for me is a bit like carpentry. Finding the piece of wood is the first draft, shaving it down to a basic shape is the second when dead bits are cut away, you decide which way to work it, where the grain goes and so no, and the third draft is when I cut it into shape. Further drafts could be thought of as the turning, carving, polishing, depending on what you’re making out of this metaphorical piece of wood. Then, when it’s done, you’ve got a finished piece which needs to be looked after through its life. I’ve recently gone back to a couple of my Jackson Marsh novels and been through them again to give them another polish and ‘treat’ them for those niggly errors no-one spotted before the first publication. (Like the use of the word ‘Okay’ in 1888, long before the word existed.)

That was all very interesting, wasn’t it? Of more interest, I suspect, are Neil’s photos, which show us a property and area behind Nimborio. There is a shot of it on yesterday’s blog, at the top. If you walk to that bay and along the shoreline at the head of the bay (where you might have to walk in the sea depending on tide and moon), you will come across a wide opening heading into the hills. This, I guess, is an old riverbed or natural water channel, and if you walk along it, taking care as it’s rubbly, you will find this property which was abandoned some time ago. I don’t know anything about its history except that is used to be more colourful and is now very atmospheric, but if you’re ever that way, it’s well worth taking a look. What with the palm trees and other plant life, to me, it all looks rather exotic, Arabian almost or at least tropical.

So, it’s Monday as I write, early morning, of course, the wind is buffeting the house a little, and as it’s still dark, I’ve not yet seen whether the weather will allow me to go for a short walk or not. Rather, whether I want to face the weather and take one. We do, however, need some money, so one of us will have to go to the harbour, but I think Neil might be walking that way. Great news! Not only will I not have to, but he’s bound to get more wonderful photos to put up on this blog.

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Walking, Photos and Things

Starting the week with some photos Neil took when out on his walks with Clare in recent weeks. They’ve been exploring behind Nimborio, over the other side of Nimborio bay, and over the other side of the island at Toli, a bay that’s popular in the summer for its taverna and beach.

When we first walked to Toli in 1998, there was nothing apart from a ruined stone hut. We’d walked across from the village, following a map, I think, or our noses, and came back via the old riverbed into the back of Nimborio. No path, just a lot of rocks to be wary of and a few snakes. My boots fell apart just after we’d climbed back out of Toli and started off for Nimborio. I had to walk the rest of the way in sandals which, luckily, I had with me for when I went swimming.

Last Friday, I wandered down to Yialos because I’d had a text from ACS to tell me I had a delivery. I needed to check the post office too. Still waiting for a Christmas present for godson #2 and an Aurora glow in the dark model kit (Phantom of the Opera) for me. The last I heard, it was in Miami, but I checked the tracking, and it was sent on its way from there on 22^nd, so it could currently be anywhere. The Christmas present is also ‘in transit’ and has been for about three weeks now. Waiting for me at ACS though, was a box of model paints I’d order from a supplier Jenine found for me in Greece, and they only took about 10 days to get here. I also picked up a stand for my laptop, so its screen is now at the right height and angle on my desk, and there was also a copy of ‘Banyak & Fecks’ which I must sign and send off to a competition winner in the USA.

You might remember me saying the other day that we had a power cut a few seconds after I’d just got out of the shower. Lucky it wasn’t five minutes earlier. Well, after walking back up the Kali Strata, I leapt into the shower as it was water day, and had just got out when the doorbell rang. Again, lucky, it wasn’t five minutes earlier. It was Yiannis (Rainbow) with a delivery of cakes he had brought us because it had been his name day. We had a quick chat across the threshold, and it was good to catch up.

The rest of the weekend was spent working on the new story, which is taking shape gradually. The weather has been warm, though cloudy, the sea has been extraordinarily flat, and the temperature up to 17 degrees. Of course, everything else is quiet, apart from the biker boys passing now and then. Oh, and the vet has made a visit under the SNiP programme to neuter several stray cats, which is good news.

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Meanwhile, Home and Away

Well, where to start on a day like this? What with the scenes from Washington, and the dire news from the UK, and… No, I shall turn to cheerier matters, and, to start with, an important one for us immigrants on Symi who have residency and might be wondering about their biometric cards. The process has started on Rhodes, and people living there can attend the ‘aliens’ centre in Rhodes town to do their upgrades. This, as far as I can make out, involves proving you’ve been tax resident for five years (see your accountant), a CD ROM of four photos plus the prints, proof of income, job or over a certain amount of savings, and the payment of a small fee. Ah yes, but currently, we can’t get off the island for anything other than medical reasons, so what do we do? Well, a phone call to the police station for advice is the first step (thank you, Jenine), and the news from there is that they are currently waiting to be told how we on Symi must proceed. They will update us later in the month. So, unless you’re in Rhodes for a medical emergency and have time between treatment to call into the alien’s department (love the thought of that), and if you can find a photo shop that is open, it’s a case of wait and see.

Meanwhile, in the confines of the house, the decorations are down (took me all of five minutes), and life is returning to a post or pre-Christmas normal. It was 17 degrees outside yesterday, but we still had the heater on because the house has gone from the storage heater of summer to the cold-storage container of winter, and it will take several weeks of constantly warm weather to warm the walls. No complaints as I’ve still not yet had to wear gloves while working and the long johns remain in the wardrobe. The fridge is nearly empty of the chocolate collection, one Mars bar left to go before I have to start on the cooking chocolate, but we’re well-stocked with vegetables and, in the cupboard, brown rice which is actually meant to be brown and isn’t some leftover from two years ago.

Outside, the sea is calm, the sky a mix of high cloud and the occasional blue, there’s hardly any traffic on the road, and the only mechanical sounds I hear are from the ‘manhood to prove’ teens on their tampered-with mopeds, racing up and down the road after the 9pm curfew. Even the cockerels seem quieter these days, and the chickens peck about the lane in silence while the cats lounge in the road when a breakthrough of sun allows a warm patch. So, things tick over, life ticks on, and my keyboard clicks away at my fingertips. Perfect.

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Yesterday

It was Epiphany yesterday, but I don’t know if any events happened here on Symi. I heard that, despite the government’s edicts and restrictions, some churches were set to defy the no-gatherings rules and go ahead with the formal events. As I say, I don’t know about here, I’m writing this before nine in the morning yesterday, so nothing has happened yet. Well, we have had bells ringing from churches, but these are controlled by one person and a button these days, apart from the outer bell at a church gate which is also one person, but with a rope.

I was out walking and didn’t pass any particularly large numbers of people heading towards a mountain monastery or anything. Epiphany is usually held by the sea in any case, but there was only the usual number of people going up and down the mountain in masks. They were in cars, actually, but wearing masks… You know what I mean.

Back home, I was just in time to have a shower and was turning the water off when there was a power cut. It’s no fun when this happens halfway through a showering. You find yourself all soaped up with no way to wash and go, but I was just in the nick of, as they say. It was only a brief outage in any case, which was just as well as I was gasping for a cup of tea.

As you can see, brief and pointless today, but I have a chapter in my head to get out, and I want to do that before stopping for lunch. I’m still only working mornings and must get out of that habit. Today, though (yesterday) we have to take down the decorations, a task which should take all of ten minutes. We’ll be finding bits of them and strands of silver stuff in odd places for months to come, but the initial cull is usually a brief one. Must get on. Chat tomorrow.

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