Symi, Stuff & Nonsense
I just wanted to update you… You might remember that my latest travel book, Symi Stuff & Nonsense, came out around the time of last November’s storm. Since then, I have been collecting a percentage of the sales to put towards the island’s high school. We’re not talking much, but we are talking helpful. We’ve passed on a couple of things to the school, maps for the geography classes so far to replace ones ruined in the flood, and I’m going to keep doing it because every little helps. So, if you do buy a paperback copy of SS&N or a Kindle, or even read it on Kindle Unlimited, you are also contributing to things that the school needs. Or at least to some extras that they might not have or otherwise be able to get hold of. The link to the book is over there in the righthand column. >>
On a different subject — and I don’t know why it’s come into my head — I just remembered something from years ago when I worked for a while at the Windmill. That’s the restaurant on Symi, you understand, not the revue theatre in Soho. (I did briefly work at Madame Jo-Jo’s, but that’s another story.) I was probably the world’s worst waiter and still could be, but one night, as we were saying farewell to a couple of guests, chatting at the door as you do, the man surreptitiously handed me a €50.00 note. You know, in the manner of someone passing on 10p to a waiter, with a sympathetic, secret smile as if to say, ‘Don’t tell the wife, but here you go,’ as if 10p was going to pay the waiter through college or something. Well…
The chap handed me the money in a way that I knew it was a tip and there was no darker intent behind it. He carried on chatting to Rhiannon without leaving me a space in which to interject. Not until he had done that, ‘What’s it like in the winter?’ questioning and was about to leave. Then I was able to leap in with, ‘I think you gave me this by mistake,’ as I handed back the €50.00.
He squinted at it (your first clue to the mistake) and then snatched it back in horror.
‘Oh!’ he exclaimed. ‘You’re quite right… I meant… Here…’ He passed me €2.00, adding, ‘You, Sir, are a gentleman.’
To which I replied, ‘And for a minute there I thought you were too.’
It just slipped out, but he saw the funny side of it, and there is a funny side to it, though you may have had to have been there to see it.
Anyway, no idea where that anecdote came from, but I know where I am going to. Off to do some writing. Have a good day.
