It’s not really the weather for taking photos, so you will have to make do with some old ones and a couple I took around the house yesterday.
Not that it is very easy to get around our house at the moment. The packing is one reason, as you can see from one of the shots, and the rain is the other – more in a moment. The front room is filling up with boxes and bags, crates and ‘things’ ready to go. I’ve more or less got the front room packed, apart from what I need at the desk, and some larger objects and pictures – which will probably end up being carried as they are. The bathroom cupboards are now down to their basics, and the moussandra/office is pretty much taken care of apart from Neil’s cameras. (About six boxes just on their own.) There’s not a lot more we can do now until we have a firm moving date and the keys, apart from collect more boxes, but where to put them? That’s the question.
Today, Thursday, is day 18 of the ‘moving house on Symi’ saga, and all we are waiting for now is the contract signing day; well, that’s the next stage. Meanwhile, though, we’ve lined up the new furniture that is needed, and have identified a new fridge freezer; all very exciting.
But progress is slightly hampered by the washing. It’s been rather wet of late, out there and in here, and Tuesday night/Wednesday morning brought a huge thunderstorm. It was so ‘Biblical’ that the lightening was going off at the same time as the thunder, a phenomenon usually reserved for horror films. As National Geographic put it: “Since light travels faster than sound, the thunder is heard after the lightning. If you see lightning and hear thunder at the same time, that lightning is in your neighbourhood.” Well, that night it was in our back garden, I reckon. The power went off at the trip switch, luckily after we’d got out of bed to unplug everything, this was at 3.15 in the morning.
I was just getting back into bed when I heard a new sound. We’re kind of used to the drip of the sitting room roof with rainwater falling into the bowl that’s there, but this was different. It was coming from the front room, the saloni, where it hasn’t rained before. So, we found that leak and put a towel under it and headed back to… No wait, there’s another sound. This one was closer to home and it was actually dripping on one side of the bed, somehow coming through the roof, through Neil’s office (where there was no sign or a leak at that time (3.30)) and into the bedroom. That’s a new one. Sorted that, reduced to putting down an old tablecloth as we’d run out of towels, and back to sleep – avoiding the, er, wet patch.
In the morning I discovered that the kitchen was now leaking is six new places, including over the draining board, the sitting room was as wet as usual and the corridor had also sprung a leak. In fact, the bathroom was the driest place in the house. Now we have the washing in the sitting room, near the heater with a fan on it to help the towels dry as we need them for the floors, the door and windows open to get rid of the condensation, and all kinds of damp things hanging about all over the place.
So, when next you think of asking ‘What is it like on Symi in the winter,’ I can give you two answers: one: wet. And two: read ‘Symi 85600’ and ‘Carry on up the Kali Strata’ and you will find out more detail.
