Although it is Wednesday, it feels like the weekend has only just finished. I don’t know why. I had a perfectly normal working day yesterday, without parties, festivities, expositions or fireworks, and I got a whole chapter first drafted. This morning, I have one of those mornings with bits and pieces to do before I can settle down to write, while Neil is planning to call down to ACS to pick up a new air fryer because the last one stopped working. It chose to do it as we were cooking dinner for Sam, who bought it for us two Christmases ago, which was a bit embarrassing, but couldn’t be helped. We had a look at changing the filament and ordering another, but that was a dangerous new world to step into, not only with 101 tiny screws to extract and all that, but also to find the serial number, make, model, breed, year of birth, and name of the technician who put in the original one, plus their guild registration details, and/or to send the thing back. Do you ever keep your receipts and guarantees? Do you sign them and send them off, or register your new Lady Shave or beard trimmer online just in case it goes wrong within the warranty period? Hm. Maybe you do. Ah, but then, do you search for the box you kept because it ‘might be useful one day’, and can’t find it so use something else the thing doesn’t fit into, then package up the faulty appliance, carry it down 400 steps, pay to have it sent back, or fill out a free post form, wait another four weeks, before going to collect a replacement that’s not the same as the one you sent back?

I don’t.

Apparently, we had lots of fireworks and some naughty dynamite going off this year, but I slept through it all, being in bed at half nine at night. On Friday, I fell asleep to the sounds of bangers and processions outside the window, and slept through the big bangs of Saturday night too, though I was awake around three when I heard at least three major explosions somewhere nearby. I was told that these had been outlawed, but then I’ve often heard that, only his time, I was told that to be found setting off the homemade bangs has led to one young island resident being arrested on terrorism charges, which sounds a bit mean. This, of course, will not be 100% firsthand or maybe even correct, because news travels around here, and the incident in question happened maybe a year ago, and the news has been through many hands and dropped from many lips since…

Meanwhile, back on Sunday, we wandered down to a party around by Nos beach, passing the 25 slowly roasting lambs on spits, and the gathering crowds. Some families had already grabbed the waterfront tables, probably having put their towels down during the night, and the music had been playing since 07.30 for all to enjoy. The weather was spot on, and our party was a hoot. Being at one of the island’s most desirable holiday lets, we had a perfectly sunny afternoon view of the sea, and plenty of room to socialise among a small group of lovely people.

Monday brought another afternoon gathering, on a smaller scale and without the need for a two-mile walk, and that was the weekend. There will be more celebrations this coming weekend when friends return to the island for the summer and for the first of their holidays. Although the village is still quiet, and in a post-Easter lull, this, hopefully, will not last for long, and the season will soon be up and running.

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Now then, breakfast. Not my favourite meal of the day, in fact, I often rather naughtily forget about it. However, when you’re up at 04.30 ready to attack the day with gusto (and other cleaning products), you might start to feel peckish around nine in the morning, kind of lunchtime on the shifted body clock. This was the case with me last Friday, and I downed fingers to go in search of something to eat. Had I been writing by hand, panel beating a car, or extracting someone’s tooth, I would have downed tools, but my tools are my imagination and typing digits, so there we are. Off to the kitchen for a snout around the fridge to find nothing of interest, to the cupboard to discover I’d finished the emergency cornflakes the day before, and as a last resort, the fruit bowl. Such choice! No insta-satisfaction including sugar from Mr Kellog, the pears were still hard, and I couldn’t be bothered with the toaster, but there was some natural yoghurt not yet turning blue in the fridge, so I opted for that.

Greek yoghurt (GY) is a thing in its own class of foodstuffs. You can mix it with garlic and cucumber to make tzatziki, add fruit and healthy bits with honey for a classic Greek holiday brochure breakfast, or you can use it to ward off yeast infections – so I heard in a queue one day in the pharmacy. (Do you smear or dip? I still don’t know.) I opted for a bowl of yoghurt with honey because we keep a jar in the cupboard somewhere, and I know it’s there… Ah, right at the back, where it has lain undisturbed for some time. Sadly, it resembled one of those souvenirs from a seaside resort where you buy an old jar filled with layers of varying coloured sand. Silty at the bottom, then a layer of nearly clear, then a layer of crystals and none of them an inviting colour, so that went to the bin. Ah ha! I thought, maybe some jam. I do like something sweet to go with the tart taste of GY, and a teaspoon of jam mixed in turns it from a health-farm breakfast into a Ski yoghurt of my youth. What did I have available in the treasure trove which is the fridge? Orange marmalade. Hm. Pickled chilis? Maybe not. Then, there was some mandarin jam bought for some inexplicable reason by persons unknown, and it had one experimental spoonful missing; a clue which told me I’d tried this before and not liked it, so that, too, was off the menu. And then, I noticed the word ‘Honey’ on a plastic bottle.

I am slightly averse to eating things from plastic squeezy bottles, and the aversion runs to spray cans, too. I mean, who sits there with their favourite dessert and applies highly pressurised, chemically enhanced chemicals from a can of compressed air with the sound of a medically worrying fart? The best use for such an abomination is the pre-lent carnival, where the little whatnots in the square use it to attack each other when the silly string runs out. Similarly, who wants to apply anything to a plate that comes from a gaudy yellow plastic bottle with a list of added ingredients longer than your shopping bill? I mean, honey is honey. It’s natural, so leave it as natural.

Honey has once been pollen. It gets shoved into the insect equivalent of saddlebags, transported back to the hive where the bees reduce the water content from 80% down to 18%, and break down the complex sugars with enzymes (while listing their equipment in their best books), and share the regurgitated nectar between themselves before storing it, fanning it to thicken it, and then covering it. This covering is created by young female bees (aged 12 to 18 days old, I am told), who convert the twice-vomited honey into waxy scales which they then secrete through their abdominal glands, chew with saliva, and then spit out the resulting beeswax over the storage units, or use it to polish their antique furniture. I mean, how more natural can you get?

However, with no other option, I take the squeezy yellow bottle of honey from the fridge, knowing that, as it’s comes in plastic and has had the life e-numbered out of it, so it will never go off, and I take it to the counter where I squeeze it over my bowl of yoghurt. There follows a little bottle flatulence and then that rather worrying and unidentifiable dribble of clear liquid that comes from things unshaken, un-lanced or undead. Finally, an ooze of dark yellow substance emerges, and it looks like gone-off honey. ‘Oh dear,’ I think. ‘But maybe it still tastes alright.’ So, I try half a teaspoon of yoghurt with this stuff mixed in, only to discover it is in fact honey mustard. ‘Oh.’ Plain yoghurt and rolled oats it is then. Ah well.

That was not my only highlight of the weekend, at least, I hope it isn’t, because I am writing this on Saturday morning, during that silent time between the bier parades of Good Friday night and the accompanying bangers thrown into the alley beneath the bedroom window, and the mayhem of Saturday midnight, when everything blows up. I’ll fill you in on any more details if they come in over the weekend.

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Today is Good Friday here in Greece. Apart from the religious services, the dressing of the biers this morning and the parade tonight, this is a bank holiday for most businesses. Being a holiday island, the tourist businesses will no doubt be open, but others, not. I’m still open for business and have two projects to work on, but I shall be taking Monday off to catch up on some other work. I was going to leave you with a gallery of photos that you may have seen before, but instead, I thought I would leave you with something to remind us all of how the world once was, rarely now is, but should be.

Below is a shot of one of the village bakeries. Because they close for siesta before some people can collect their bread orders, they leave them hanging on the shop door during closed hours. The bags are named, and they are never stolen. Reminds me of being in the wilds of Devon many years ago now, hiking along country lanes and now and then coming across a box of vegetables with a sign saying, ‘Help yourself,’ and an open box for ‘pay what you can.’ On the same trip, but miles away at Brookland church on Romney Marsh, there was the same thing in the porch. People’s home-grown produce, there for those who want or need to buy locally. I’m sure (I hope) it still goes on, and this is the Symi version.

Happy Easter – back on Tuesday.

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I’m sitting here at 04.20, wondering what I can tell you that you don’t already know, and suddenly, another thought pops into my head. No, it’s not What am I doing up at 04.21? I have been up since 03.30, mainly because I was asleep by half eight last night. The thought was, I wonder what was in the news on this day in 1894? There was an additional question too, ‘Was Greece mentioned?’

Why I should go down this route is mildly understandable, because I am setting my current ‘must read’ in that year, and I live in Greece. I am also fascinated by newspapers and other publications of that time, and have a subscription to the British Newspaper Archive. This means I can pop in and out when I want, and look up details of that day to match the, for example, weather on the same day in my imaginary world, to make the stories as realistic as possible. I also use it for finding names of products on sale at the time, prices, local as well as national events, and stories that might spark stories. Then there’s the historical background too, and while searching for the keyword ‘Greece’ in April 1894, I found a couple of interesting comparisons to today.

There was much about shipping, of course, but on April 9th, 1894, the Glasgow Herald was talking about the financial conditions of European countries, and when talking about a financial ‘manoeuvre’ stated that: … every repetition of the manoeuvre will bring Russia nearer to the abyss of national insolvency, on the very edge of which Italy, Spain and Portugal are already tottering, while Greece has practically made the final descent.

Ah well, as long as it still looks like this:

Greece is, as far as I know, back in the relative black of solvency these days, but there are still relevant headlines and stories. (Though I don’t think they were called headlines back then.) Monday 9th of April was a slow story day for the country of Greece, but there was a fascinating piece in the Morning Post about The Daffodil. This entertaining piece talked about a Mr Barr and the 500 varieties of daffodils he grows, and those he has found in southern Europe on his travels. [He] is just now engaged on a tour which includes Greece… verifying previous observations and searching for novelties. I am sure he found many, but not all of the flowering variety.

After that gratuitous but rather lovely shot from up in the village, here’s another story from later in the month.  This snippet comes from the London Evening Standard on April 14th of the same year: Athens, Friday night. A member of the boulé has been committed to take his trial on a charge of complicity with brigands in Thessaly. The Government has given orders for a fresh election in his constituency.

No change there, then.

[I am told by an autobot that ‘The Boule, a basic institution of the ancient city-state in historical times, consisted of the citizens’ representatives who assembled in order to confer and decide about public affairs.’ According to another autobot, though, ‘The Boule wasn’t in existence in 1894’, which goes to show just how cautious one must be when using online transformers to find information. Cybertron doesn’t produce them like it used to.]

So, there you have it. What you have, I have no idea, but I do have a plan to battle on with chapter four (currently set in February 1894), and before I do that, and while I am in the archive, I shall have another quick browse of the papers to set myself in the scene, and leave you with ne last scene from Neil’s camera.

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Here’s some news I picked up. Scena, up in the village near the bus stop, is to reopen on Sunday, 12th (Easter Sunday) at 16.00. It’s been closed for a short while to prepare for the summer. They will also be back to having their late-night live music sessions. Meanwhile, the top kantina, ‘Constantinos View’ continues to remain open as it has been, and also hosts events, including music. We had lunch at Georgio’s yesterday, so you can count on Noufris being open, and Neil might be starting his summer shifts at the Rainbow from today. It’s always a little hit and miss at the start of the season, as it depends on how many visitors we have, but there were folks around yesterday, staying here and visiting for the day. If this continues, you can expect your Rainbow afternoons to be as usual. Also, the Kali Strata Restaurant is opening tonight, so Sam and the boys are back to working 18-hour days, seven days a week, from now until October.

Also… I found an announcement from the Sebeco Lines company, explaining why they no longer offer the subsidised route from Symi/Rhodes, as they have been able to do in the past. (The early from Symi and later back from Rhodes, the ‘local’ route as one employee called it, was subsidised and thus, cheaper for us locals, while the ‘tourist’ route (later from Rhodes and earlier back from Symi) never was. I’ll put the full translation below, but I’ve not tidied it up in case I misread it; I’ve left it up to you to figure out for yourself. This, btw, is not their or my translation, but one from an online translator, and you know which I’m talking about.

Important Announcement to the Passengers and Residents of Symi. ​With a sense of responsibility towards the residents and visitors of Symi, Sebeco Lines wishes to inform the public about the reasons for the forced reduction of the subsidised routes (morning from Symi and afternoon from Rhodes), which we have been serving consistently for the last 5 years. ​

What really happened: ​Unfortunately, the lack of these routes is not our choice, but the result of unfair practices: ​The Bidding Trap: Last August, shortly before the announcement of the tender, a competing company declared “free” routes at the same time. ​The Legal Obstacle: By law, the Ministry cannot announce a subsidised line when a company declares that it will cover it without subsidy. Thus, the routes were excluded from the announcement. ​The Withdrawal: Shortly before the start of the period, the company in question withdrew its statements, knowing from the beginning that these lines are loss-making without state aid. ​

The Consequences: ​This move, which turned out to be pretextual, had the sole aim of harming Sebeco Lines. However, the biggest blow was suffered by Symi. ​Residents are now deprived of the morning connection with the center of the prefecture, and visitors of the afternoon return, disrupting the social and economic life of the island. ​ Our Commitment: ​At Sebeco Lines, we remain on the side of the people of Symi. We are making every effort and are in constant communication with the competent authorities, so that a legal solution can be found that will restore the smooth connection of the island. ​Thank you for your trust and support over the years. ​Sincerely, The Management of Sebeco Lines.

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