‘That’s the middle of the night’, so say outraged acquaintances when I tell them what time I get up in the summer. ‘Why do you get up so early?’
What I’d love to say is, ‘Mind your own business,’ but what I usually say is, ‘Because I like to’, and it’s true. Apart from anything else, I enjoy the peace and quiet of 3.30, although ‘quiet’ is a relative term.
This morning (3.15) I crept from the room to the kitchen, turned on the light ever wary of summer bugs and spiders scuttling across the floor, and went to fill the kettle to be greeted by the first wildlife of the day; a cockroach in the washing up bowl. Convenient, as there is no escape from the bug spray. That done, kettle on, tea made, I followed my usual routine of reading the news in the sitting room, kept company by the mosquitoes delivering their overnight bulletins directly into my ear. The cockerels up the road had already started reveille, if, in fact, they’d ever stopped, and in the distance, the washing-up bug was still committed to its wheel of death around the walls of the bowl. The alleged silence of the early hours is also often disturbed by some of those unidentifiable sounds a house makes; a slightly worrying creak from up in the roof, or a loud click from the kitchen which I assume is the kettle, but you grow accustomed to them and carry on.
The headlines glanced at and those stories that interest me read in detail, and it’s out to the balcony to finish my tea. Yesterday, we had a small cruise ship in port, the 220-foot motor yacht the MS Monet. Varying up to 50 passengers, this vessel goes on cruises around the islands and Greek mainland coast, and in September, you can take a ten-day cruise for £3,895. It’s part of the Noble-Caledonian line and looks rather nice. Anyway, that was parked up outside the police station, purring away with its string of over-deck lights looking very pretty. I stood and listened to a couple of fishing boats chugging out, now and then watching the rats in the pomegranate tree next door, and watched the harbour lights waving through the water. Sometimes, when there isn’t a large ship in, it’s possible to hear the sea lapping at the harbour wall, and on other mornings, you’re treated to the romantic sight of the Blue Star rounding Nimos and heading in, lights a blaze.
Some mornings, the boy next door comes home from work at 3.30 or 4.00 in his baker’s blacks (or whites, it varies) and hurries to his flat downstairs where the lights go on, there’s a time of silence, the lights go off and I don’t see him again for another several days. Young lad, works very long hours as far as I can see, is very quiet, but when he sees us, always says hello. Now and then, the party’s still going on ‘down town’ at one of the later-night restaurants or cafés, and there are times when mopeds strain up the hill, or friends holler goodnight to each other across the cavernous void of two feet, but generally, the Symi parties have calmed by this time of night.
Then, tea drunk and kettle reheated (the bug’s still circling the bowl, though with more lethargy), it’s off to this desk to type out some nonsense, see if I’ve sold any books so we have an income two months hence, and settle down to write, exactly as I am doing now. Later, I’ll go and make another cup of tea and, later still, when Neil wakes up, listen out for the shriek from the kitchen sink as the discovery is made.
I broke off there to go and make another cup of tea only to find the thing still clattering around, so I took the otherwise empty bowl to the balcony and tipped it into the garden below, only to discover another little chap in the sink. He’s our lodger and helps keep the mosquito population in check. If he’s still there later, I’ll give him a hand out to freedom.
I’ll be back on Monday.
