Just back from a very productive meeting with the new landlord and the agent – all extremely helpful and reassuring. I feel I can now start collecting boxes and start packing.
In a little while we are heading to the Sunrise kafeneion for a memorial gathering in honour of Brian, who lived on Symi for a while. You may remember Brian, he covered two years at the Rainbow Bar for Yiannis, and his wife Marj worked for various people on the island, including a season (or two?) at St Nicholas beach. They left Symi a couple of years ago due to Brian’s health and he passed away a couple of weeks ago.
He used to tell us that he wanted a Viking funeral. ‘Just put me in a boat and send me out to sea,’ he’d say. We did consider this and, at the time, joked about it. We would have to push it towards international waters so as not to create an incident between Greece and Turkey, and we’d have to fire flaming arrows from the cliffs and aim well. Otherwise he’d wash up in Datca or somewhere and would be difficult to explain. Today, instead, we are going to do the best we can, because that’s what you do when you live in a place like Symi.
Neil has made a boat from silver foil and we are going to put a charcoal ‘brick’ in it and maybe some frankincense, as you do in church. You then light the charcoal and it flares up, with smoke, and then calms down and glows and the incense melts and does its stuff. That’s the nice smell you find when wandering the lanes on warm days, often on a Sunday morning, though on any day is acceptable; it’s a way of purifying the house.
That’s the plan for the rest of the day. Afterwards I can see us coming home and not doing much by way of working; it feels like an odd day – the thoughts of Brian, of course, and of moving house, and of how Jack will settle in (the new house is the property of a ginger tom who lives there now and who will be living across the road, so they will have to learn to share the courtyard). Having been a housing manager for 11 years and a member of the Chartered Institute for seven of them, I know all the potential problems that house rental brings with it. But, after this morning’s meeting, I am confident that we are all in the right hands, Jack included.
