I didn’t get a Sunday morning blog done ready for Monday yesterday because I spent a couple of hours getting the blog posts for when I am away ready instead, and then went for a walk around the hills. So, if you’re an early-birder and have been waiting for this to appear, sorry about that, but it’s nearly eight on a Monday morning and I am only just sitting down to put something up.
A few brief words, then on with my day. Saturday we were out and about in the morning to see if there was anything needing doing at the refugee centre, and then back home for a ready meal; ready meals Symi style mean having something prepared and in the slow cooker ready for when you get back, a sausage casserole in this case. We were invited to a baptism on Saturday afternoon up at Xissos; (Taverna) Zoi’s grandson.
The family church looked superb, the arrangements and borbonieros, the baptism gifts for guests, were supplied by Symi Flower and had a Smurf theme, everyone was dressed in their best and the service was conducted by Papas Stephanos. There were drinks and pies for everyone afterwards. Later we were also invited to the family meal at Georgio’s.
On Sunday, after doing some work on the blog posts, I went off walking with L&J; down the kataractis to the back of Yialos, around and up to the cemetery on the Nimborio road, turning left opposite the chickens and up and around above Nimborio. Here we stopped to watch a family of ravens wheeling about. They were calling and having some kind of fun and even, in one case, flying on its back, something I’d heard about but never seen before.
After that we carried on around the back of the hills that look down on Yialos, past ‘Aslan’s table’, and if anyone knows what this might have been used for I’d be interested to know. There are signs of a building or manmade wall running along to one side of this huge lump of dressed stone, but they are hard to see so I reckon whatever was here was here a very long time ago.
Coming out on the road near Roukouniotis, we then headed back to the village via the path along ‘the Wall’, stopping to watch black redstarts and listen to robins. (The derivation of the word ‘Start’: Old English styrtan ‘to caper, leap’, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch storten ‘push’ and German stürzen ‘fall headlong, fling’. From the sense ‘sudden movement’ arose the sense ‘initiation of movement, setting out on a journey’ and hence ‘beginning of a process, etc.’.)
And that was the weekend that was. I’m heading off into my Monday now so will leave to you get on with yours and wish you a kalo evthoumada.
