Symi, Συμη, Photos, Blog, News, Accommodation, Holidays, Weather, Art, Information, Festival, Ferries, Simi Island Guide, SymiGreece, Symi Dream

Symi Dream

Living on a Greek island

Symi Dream - Living on a Greek island

It Set My Mind to Reminiscing

Continuing from yesterday’s discussion about power cuts. I noticed that some people had gone to the trouble to extend the discussion on various Facebook posts, and among them, were some tips on how to ease pressure on the grid, and how to save water. Simply put, don’t use the air con and shower with your laundry, open windows, and rinse, don’t boil, or some such. It put me in mind of what we expected and aimed for when we first moved here 22 years ago carrying only two rucksacks and a laptop. We expected to get ‘back to basics’, and for a while, we did.

20240601_155630

Our first rented house had an unusual number of spaces, namely, a kitchen with mousandra above, a bedroom with mousandra above over the bathroom, a large courtyard and a long concrete block that was a saloni. It also came with the landlord’s furniture and objets d’art that were more objets than d’art. The kitchen housed one of those two-ring cookers with fridge beneath and a sink with cockroaches beneath, while the saloni across the courtyard housed a gas cooker with no gas, a dining table, a sofa as welcoming as a prison bed, a window that wouldn’t open, and an original Philo Farnsworth television that didn’t work. (Look him up. It wasn’t John Logie Baird.) It had a water pump that shook the house when you ran a tap, a sterna you couldn’t easily see into, and a washing machine that needed counselling to move on from wash before accepting emptying, with further therapy needed to rinse, and thence, to spin. We washed by hand. Sheets were a challenge.

20240628_074824

There was no air conditioning, so we spent lots of time outside in the shade when not working. In fact, the only cool I felt in that first summer was standing beneath the air con in the doorway of Takis’ leather shop where I worked. I often needed three changes of costume per day just at work, so I did that rinsing out shirts in the shower thing because it was only dust and sweat I had to get rid of. We were very conscious of saving water, even in the winter, and wouldn’t have used aircon if the house had any, because we had to pay the electricity bill and we had €300 a month to live off once the rent was paid. The situation’s the same now. Although we have two aircon units, they’ve never been used, and still half of my income goes on rent.

In those days, we could easily hear the power station even from up at Periotisa, and you couldn’t walk by it without a) having to shout, and b) being blasted by the heat of its generators. It’s much better now, quieter, and I imagine, more economical. Yet only occasionally has a meltdown when a mass influx of football fans all switch on the game at the same time as their aircon, while the tavernas are running their cookers, and everyone’s having a shower each, and the fridges and freezers are working overtime. I think it does bloomin’ well, but we can all help by being more considerate about the island and those who work to keep it running.

20240622_104911

So, as a tip: open doors and windows to catch a draft, or use a fan if you can, turn off taps when not in use and that includes shaving, gents (thank heavens for commas), cleaning teeth and showering. My routine is ten seconds to get wet, turn off. Shampoo, soap, scrub, whatever. Fifteen seconds on, and that’s it. If you like to wait for the water to run warm, take a bucket into the shower with you and let the otherwise wasted water run into that, and later to use that in the loo. Invent a game for the littl’uns: who can save the most water today? You know, just be sensible, and we’ll get through the summer to come.

Other handy tips and nonsense can be found in any or all of my Symi books, and you can rush to get them on Kindle, Kindle Unlimited or in paperback, but clicking the links at the top of the column >> or by heading to my Amazon author page.

https://www.amazon.com/stores/James-Collins/author/B005C7HWJI