Run up to our Symi Christmas
A weekend of preparation for our Symi Christmas has just taken place at our house. Finding the tree and decorations up in the mousanrda, wrestling with the tree base that’s an imaginative piece of 1950s engineering (we bought the thing only a couple of years ago), getting covered in thin strips of silver plastic, finding half the baubles no longer have thread on them to hang with so substituting with paperclips (a handy tip, that one, just make sure the paperclips are a suitable colour and not too prominent), and then wrapping presents to put under the tree.
Meanwhile, the Symi Christmas Fayre continued, with a ‘German Christmas Market’ theme organised by some of the school teachers and their classes, and others, I am told. The boats came and went, including the new Blue Star run on Sunday morning. (I assume: I am writing this before it arrives but it’s showing on the Live Ships map as just leaving Nisyros and heading to Tilos and is due in here after 10.00.) There are two more sailings to Rhodes before Christmas, the usual Wednesday and Friday, and no talk of strikes that I have heard of yet. The weather has been cool and calm, the sea only slightly ruffled by a breeze and the island seems quiet.
Sotiris supermarket has been stocked up with Christmas items and chocolate, there’s fresh veg in the greengrocers, the ‘American’ supermarket has all you could need, from stuffing to five litre boxes of wine, I’ve been seeing news reports telling everyone when there will be fresh sprouts in what shop, and who is going to be bringing in parsnips. You can keep the parsnips but I’ll try a few sprouts – unlike Neil who is no longer allowed to eat them; not since a Christmas dare half way through lunch that resulted in… well, just don’t feed him any sprouts (messy), it’s all I’ll say and I will leave it at that.
And so, it looks like everything is geared up and ready apart from, in my case, the arrival of a few final gifts that were ordered some time ago and were probably held up in the boat strikes of last week/week before. The post office is closed (I am told) on Tuesday and Wednesday this week, so the last search for deliveries must be made on other days, unless they have come with one of the couriers. Anything else will have to wait to be presented later (or presented if, to give a present, can be pronounced like that – presented, rather than presented… I know what I mean); New Year’s Day is much more of a local celebration day anyway, being the name day of Saint Vasilis.
As for the rest of this week, for me: I keep telling myself I will do some creative writing over this Christmas period, but then I tell myself that having written two books in the last 18 months, taken my scriptwriting course, and mapped out and almost-first-drafted another book, that I can probably afford to take a couple of weeks off and do some reading instead. I call it legitimised laziness; the writing can wait until early next year, meanwhile I’ll try and act like a normal person and do the housework, watch television, read some books, go for a walk, put the clothes away…
For this week, there’s nothing in the diary as yet apart from: Checking for last minute post, buying in the stock of Christmas ‘ale’ (the once-a-year stuff, you know: sherry, port, Baileys, Alka-Seltzer), vegetable peeling on Christmas Eve and a day with the godboys on Christmas day to look forward to – as always. I hope your run up to the festive weekend goes well – if you celebrate it, if not, I still wish you well. I’ll be around this week with my usual odd posts about… ‘whatever!’ and some photos that don’t really go with anything.
