A new week, a blank page (literally), as I stare at the screen wondering what on earth to tell you about today. It occurs to me that we are now in anniversary season, because this time 24 years ago was our last night of travelling before arriving here on Symi. It also occurred to me how much things have changed in that time. So, although the images here will be of Symi and purely decorative, I thought I might spend the week thinking about these changes, while recalling the journey we took to reach here.

Meanwhile…

We’d flown to Athens on 29th August, got ripped off by a taxi from the airport, and had booked into a hotel near Omonia Square for a couple of nights. Dodgy to say the least. From our crumbling concrete balcony, we were able to watch police officers moving on the homeless with their batons, and we only had to walk ten yards up the road before being offered ladies of the night and/or illegal substances. During the day, the air was thick with fumes and stifling, and breathing was a trial. We managed to visit a couple of sights, walked for hours, and decided we would move on to take a look at Paros. Why not?

When it came time to go, we gleefully checked out of our squalor, battled with a ticket seller because our pronunciation of Piraeus wasn’t perfect, took the train to the port, and searched out our boat. I can’t remember where we booked the tickets. Must have been a travel shop because this was 2002, before online booking, and we had no mobile phones. On the way to the ferry, following a large group of holidaymakers across the port, we were offered various properties to rent nearby, and had some other approaches made about who knew what because we weren’t interested.

I remember the ferry as being busy, but we found a spot up on deck with a bench to ourselves, there to sunbathe, read, watch the sea and coast go by, until we pulled into Paros roughly five or six hours later. There, we were immediately offered rooms by a variety of men and women holding boards (and, we later found out, acting illegally), and settled on a hotel a little way back from the seafront. We gave Paros the benefit of a couple of days during which time we took a look around the main town of Parikia, mainly to find inspiration for where to go next. We had two weeks of holiday fund spending, but by the end of that time, we had to find a place to settle down and live off €600 a month between us.

I can’t remember how we decided on Antiparos, but that was where we headed, and on the way to the ferry, secured accommodation on the tiny island across the water well in advance. The chap who’d found us on the street even put us on the ferry and told us someone would be waiting for us on the other side. A little ominous, but sure enough, there was a cheery chap who took us to his cousin’s father’s cousin’s… you know how it is… accommodation. This was a one-bed apartment in a new purpose-built holiday accommodation complex on the edge of the small town, a stone’s throw from the beach. Very nice, and something like €10.00 a night. There, we settled in for what was to end up being five nights, and it was during that time we decided to move on to Symi.

Changes?

I’ve not been to Athens since a year ago last Christmas, but between our first visit there and now, things have certainly changed. Even Omonia Square has been revamped, and the area has improved. The cost of visiting the Acropolis has more than doubled, but there was no museum to visit back then. The traffic pollution also seemed better, but I’ve not been there in August only in winter. I doubt you can get a room anywhere in Greece for €10.00 a night these days, but you can book ahead online. I see fewer accommodation touts in the ports, but there are more homeless people and, I assume, the same authoritative attitude towards immigrants. What’s for sure is that it is now no longer possible to survive on €600 a month; we have to pay almost that in rent just to have a roof over our heads. The average wage in Greece in 2002 was around €900 a month (not that we have ever earned that much), and I am told it is now around €1,400 a month, and we still don’t earn anywhere near that.

Anyway, more tomorrow…

To end the week, and because I am keen to get straight to work this morning, here’s a gallery of a few photos Neil took while taking a stroll towards Nimborio yesterday morning. There’s a very pleasant walk to be had if you take the road leading off the back of the town square and head up the hill. It’s steep, but not overly long, and brings you out by a large farm. Follow the paved path onwards, and you cross the countryside, where you should make sure you stop to look back. You’ll get a different view of the Castro and village from there. Onwards, and you will come to the church of St George, where the gate is usually unlocked, though the bolt is often across, so you need to unbolt that (and it is on the other side of the gate). You’re able to rest in the yard, but the church will most likely be locked. If you’re going to Nimborio, you carry on down the zigzag caldera and join the road onwards (turn left), or come back around the headland (turn right). As always, if you’re walking, even at dawn, take water, a hat, sensible shoes and care.

Here are some shots. Have a good weekend.

There’s nothing much of use in my head this morning, so I’ve pulled out a photo I took the other day while I was doing that husband thing; hanging around outside a shop waiting for the other half to browse, chat and possibly purchase. I noticed this chap having a sit down and working his sponges while watching the world go by. He’s wearing a scafandros, a mechanical diving suit (also spelt skafandras as far as I can see, or Σκάφανδροs in Greek).

[A disclaimer: I’m pulling this info from various online sources because it would take me too long to find the printed details in my books, so if any of this is wrong, blame ‘progress.’]

According to what I can quickly find: on Symi, before 1863, divers used only a heavy flat stone called a kampanellopetra (weighing 12–15 kilos) to sink quickly to the seabed and harvest sponges on a single breath. You can see some of these stones at the folk museum in Horio. This style of diving was also called ‘naked diving’, but calm down, all the images show the men wore something when they went down, though maybe that’s just for publication propriety.

In 1863, Fotis Mastoridis brought the first surface-supplied diving suit (scafandro) to Symi from his work abroad, and to convince sceptical local sponge fishermen that the airtight suit and air pump were safe, his wife Eugenia Mastoridou put on the heavy metal-helmeted suit and demonstrated it in the sea. This new equipment allowed divers to stay under longer and gather more sponges, though that, in time, led to the decline of the industry through overfishing (and, I read, there was the spread of a sponge disease that killed off a lot of the sponge beds).

I read that info in one of my books; it might have been ‘Bitter Sea’ by Faith Warn, which is about sponge diving on Kalymnos. In that book, she also talks about the dance that developed when divers began to suffer ‘the diver’s sickness’, the bends as we would now say. You can still see this dance performed on Symi and elsewhere. The dance is called the Mihanikos, (or O Choros tou Michanikou, meaning “The Dance of the Mechanic”), and it’s quite a thing to see.

If you want to read more and better on this, take a look at the Visit Symi website article here.

I saw a lovely thing the other afternoon. I was crossing the empty village square; a cicada was doing its thing in one of the trees, there were no motorbikes to be heard, no noise from the bars, and no children playing football. A lady was sitting on the bench on the other side of the square wearing a long, light summer dress and a suitably wide-brimmed hat, and she was reading a book. Had I taken a photograph and zoomed in, the image could have been from the cover of a holiday romance novel, or the final shot of a romantic comedy film. The scene was peaceful and content, and reminded me of what being away from it all used to be about. Time alone, reading a book, in the shade.

It was a world away from what has become the holiday norm. Piling onto a beach, jealously scouring it for a sunbed, paying whatever price that beach is asking, and arranging all the bits and pieces. This means unpacking: the sun lotion, the change of clothes, the spare towel, puzzle book, headphones, phone, snacks, bottle of water, cooler box, plastic inflatables, swimming shoes, goggles, snorkel, first aid kit, anti-this and that cream, sunglasses, spare hat, Kindle, real book (just in case), and then, doing the same with the kids’ bags and adding more plastic inflatables, blow-up surfboards, comics, wet-wipes and a special bag of ‘things’ because you never know when the child will demand to play with that Captain America he’s not played with for five years, but just in case… And after all that (and this is the kicker for me), dragging the wood and plastic mattress sunbed out of the sun and into the shade. Might as well call it a shade bed. Oh, and then to move camp continually through the day to avoid the sun as it moves around.

Fancy that? No? A simple bench in a simple square with a decent book will do.

The sight also reminded me of people’s idea of being a writer living on a Greek island. In the past, I’ve come across other people’s views of this occupation, and it was always wildly different to reality. I think people imagine the author sitting beneath an olive tree on a hillside, with a notebook and a pen, drawing inspiration from the landscape, with the cicada’s chirping out of sight (distant goat bells are part of the underscore too), and everything being perfect with the world while hundreds of words pour forth in exactly the right order to produce another classic, soon to become a Netflix series. That’s the ideal world to which everyone aspires, right?

Hm. More like getting up at four in the morning to find some cooler hours, and some quiet time away from the worries of having not enough water but too many bills, the noise of bikes and other bothersome things, and spending six hours or more each day bashing out words, putting them in a reasonable order, paying to have them checked, set out into a book, and a cover designed, and then arranging for publication, while trying to promote those already out there without spending any money, because you haven’t got much, and then, when that’s done, starting the process again. All before lunch because after that, it’s too hot and stuffy in the house to concentrate.

Ah. Each to his own, of course, but for me, I think I will put on my wide-brimmed hat and spend the afternoon reading on a bench.

Happy first of the month to you! Let’s hope it’s a good one for all. Usually around now, I’d be writing something like, ‘The season is changing…’ or similar, but as far as the weather is concerned, it’s more or less the same as it has been for some weeks, so no change there. I’ve noticed a few more people out and about in the village during the siesta shift, around three to five (o’clock, not people), which is good to see. I was coming back from town yesterday and bumped into a family looking at their phones as they crossed the village square and trying to make sense of a map. ‘Looking for the church?’ I asked, because that’s what many wanderers come looking for. ‘No, just a scenic view.’

Well, you’ve come to the right place… I directed them around the S bend and along our lane. From the end, and on the way, you get great views looking down into the harbour. From the end of the lane, you get a good view of the hills behind Yialos, and around to the back of the village too, and you can drop down and view the church you see from below, though it’s rarely open. Hopefully, they enjoyed the walk, though it’s not far at all. ‘Can we see anything else from there?’ they asked. I told them that, if they had enough time, they could get lost. In the village lanes, I mean, among the ruins that have not yet been made into glossy holiday homes or Airbnb lets. I wonder if they are still trying to find their way out?

This was the time of year we used to come on holiday, the time covering anniversaries and a birthday, and I’m pleased to say, many of the people we met regularly back then still turn up around this time too. There are fewer of them these days, but September is usually the month for familiar faces and friends, particularly those who come to the Rainbow, where one of us has been working for the last 22 years now. Twenty-two years? Good heavens.