First, though, here’s a first. It’s 03.30 in the morning — that’s not the ‘first’, it’s been that time before — and I am taking my cup of tea into my room to start the day (also not a first), and I hear a noise in the courtyard. I investigate. This involves standing in the porch listening, turning on a light to hear better (odd how that helps), and then working out that the sound is running water. The sound of the water pump has become a constant since the lad moved in downstairs with his mother. Either he or she has a thing for washing, or simply running the taps from eight am to eight pm with only a few breaks in between; Valantis should be fitting us a newer and quieter water pump sometime soon, but that’s another story. The sound I heard was that of the mains water filling the tank.
‘Yeah, so?’
The thing is, for that mains water to be running means that someone has turned on one of the locked stop cocks along the mains system. That’s usually only done around 7.30 in the morning and left on until the early afternoon or sooner if the reservoir is low. I’m not complaining, not when the mad water usage from the flat below averages around 300 litres per day by my reckoning. (We use roughly 100 a day between the two of us.) What it all means is that whoever now turns on the mains for our area of the village was up and about and at work at three-thirty in the morning; far beyond the call of duty. Thank you; a little intriguing good news before I even reached the desk.

Now I have, though, I can tell you about yesterday. I managed to get some work done on the new first draft before setting off down the steps to collect something from the courier, pick up some post from the post office, and head to the dentist, only to discover we’d mixed up the days, and I was expected on Thursday, not Tuesday. Didn’t matter; I had other things to do, and, as it transpired, I still need another couple of days of tablets to take away the nasty that is not completely gone yet before drilling can commence, so after a few desultory photos to fill these pages, I treated myself to a taxi back up the hill.

You might remember the other day, when trying to escape the midmorning harbour crush, the taxi was unable to get through the throng, so we had to wait? We were slightly earlier this time, but still, a day trip boot had just arrived – one of the noisy red ones that looks like a mid-cut trainer (sneaker if in the USA), and the road was thronged with wobbly-legged tourists just off the thing, which is essentially a speedboat with an inflated sense of self. There were plenty of raspberry ripple legs and torsos, Instagram pouts and hoisted sarongs on show. Other more intimate places were exposed to catch even more rays, and wide eyes were everywhere but on the oncoming traffic. We passed through the first wave without injury to sunburn or sedan, passed the several cars, large minibuses and small coaches waiting around the bus stop, avoided the tour parties jostling for position in the shade, the port police directing traffic, the mopeds weaving through whatever obstacles no matter what, and the growing queue of those waiting to board the soon to arrive Sebeco, the on coming traffic, and the dodgy parker who’d ‘only stopping for a second,’ and waited behind mopeds whose drivers had also stopped for a quick chat, and finally, emerged beyond the slope, ready to hit second gear.

Not to be. The incoming traffic was held up by the outgoing traffic plus newly arrived white-and-pinks from the Panagia, traipsing round the six-foot wide section of road squeezed between building and sea, but we inched forward, breathing in at times, laughing about some joke or other, until finally, finally, having passed the second traffic control officer and the last day trip stragglers who still had half a mile to walk, we found the freedom of the open road. Which smelt slightly of sewage, because, let’s face it, the harbour in August with an additional few thousand water users pouring in every day… Well, our drainage system isn’t exactly in the first flush of its youth. According to yesterday’s driver, the treatment plant is finished, but when it will be up and running is another matter. Meanwhile, that familiar aroma remains at certain times of the day. Anyway… I made it back up to the peace and quiet of the village for a large breath of fresh air, and was welcomed home by the water pump screaming because something downstairs needed washing for a fifth time that morning, and took the rest of the day off.

The Symi survival lesson for today? Avoid the harbour during day-trip hours, and make sure you write down the correct day for your appointments.

There are events to look forward to in the Symi Festival this week. On Wednesday, there’s the festival of Megalo Sotiris, always a well-attended evening halfway across the island, up in the forest, with church services, then later, food and dancing. The last time we went, which was many years ago, we went in the back of a flatbed truck. This used to be a popular way of attending events in the hinterland churches, particularly for those like us with no transport. On that occasion, there were several of us who had put our heads together and persuaded one of our number to borrow a truck and drive, and we set off after dark to drive up to the monastery. Apart from the event itself, the drive there and back made for memories because it’s not until you get out of the village and around the mountain that you realise how dark the island is (was). The display of stars was unlike anything we’d seen for years, what with living in London and Brighton and such places. The sky seemed so close, you felt you could light your cigar from the stars, but as I didn’t and still don’t smoke cigars, and as I would never entertain lighting anything in a Greek forest in August, no-one did.

Now? I expect you can arrange to get to the church by flatbed truck if you ask around, but with so many coaches and minibuses now on the island, so many visitors with private cars, motorbike hires and the like, I imagine getting there will be easy, but parking may be an issue. I also assume there will be the fire services on hand because there is traditionally outside cooking at such events and permission must be sought from the council and services before striking a match; and rightly so.

Also in the Symi Festival this week: a concert on Thursday by Christina Salti. Christina Salti is a popular Greek singer known for her energetic and polished Laïko-infused pop music. With a strong presence in the Greek music scene, she has collaborated with numerous prominent artists and maintains a significant following.

Then, on Saturday, a performance of ‘Romeo and Juliet… for Tears and Laughter,’ a play by the Symi Theatre performers.
On Sunday, the Symi Women’s Association present an evening of traditional dance with music supplied by Michalis and Iakovos Misos (of the Yiannis ‘Rainbow’ family). These events are to be held in the town square in Yialos.

The rest of the Symi Festival Programme, click here.

The Symi Dream Calendar 2027

On a side note, the Symi Dream calendar for 2027 is now online and available to buy, though you can only buy it online. We still get people asking if Neil can do a passport photo or if they can buy a calendar from the shop. We’ve not had the shop for over 10 years now, dear, so the answer is no.

As usual, the calendar features 12 of Neil’s Symi images, and a grid large enough for basic notes. We’re using this year’s at home, and the entries over the last couple of weeks have been ‘dentist, 10.30’, ‘piano’, and ‘dentist, 10.30’, and that’s what it says for my week ahead too.

If you want to view the calendar and see an online preview, head to this link,

https://tinyurl.com/SymiDream2027 or click this image:

I’ll put a permanent link in the side column as soon as I can remember how to do it.

Well, that was a weekend of lovely weather, not too much wind, a little more humidity, but nothing too unbearable. I popped down to the dentist on Friday as arranged, but things were not to go according to plan. We were to start on a root canal in the upper right quadrant, but for a day or two I’d had an ache in the down stage left area which, on Friday, had developed into a full-blown rage, lump and inability to open my mouth very far, so there was to be no drilling that day. Instead, it’s been a case of antibiotics and waiting while the stage left infraction is dealt with ahead of the upper right issue, and when that’s done, it’ll be back to stage left for drilling and rooting out down there. I woke up on Saturday looking rather like Joseph Merrick, unable to speak, and suddenly, after all these years, understanding what Michael Crawford was on about. Still, we had a lovely morning view over the weekend…

The Michael Crawford thing? Well… When he created the role of the Phantom for Lloyd-Webber’s musical, he insisted the mask be made for one side of his face only (so he wasn’t, um, masked by it when facing a certain direction), and that the lyricist should remove from his lyrics as many words beginning with P as possible. That was because, with a fat lip, prosthetic or otherwise, it is very hard to say words beginning with P without ‘popping’, or if not using a mic, without spraying, or… Well, it’s just a hard letter to use when you’ve got a lip like you’ve been slugged in the Dog & Duck during a dispute over a pint of mild.

Tablets, thankfully, were on hand, and today, although I still have the painful lump around the gum and chin stage left, I am able to say P words, albeit with a slight wince. Back to the chair tomorrow morning to see what’s what, what can be drilled and begun, and if I am not rushing, to take some photos for these pages along the way.

Other than that… The Symi Festival started with a concert in the main square on Saturday, and there are some videos from Symi TV, though I can’t find a way to embed one here as I did last week, but I’ll keep trying. The harbour continues to be busy during the day with Insta-pouts aplenty, wannabe ‘influencers’ having their pouts photographed in front of statues they care nothing about, and only occasionally do intrepid explorers make it up to the real beauty of the island, the village and its history. I caught a taxi back up on Friday, and

the driver told me we had to wait a few minutes before setting off. There was no point trying to drive around the south of the harbour when a day boat had just arrived there. ‘We lose about two hours a day because of this,’ he said, as a matter of fact rather than complaint. He meant, two hours lost to waiting. Waiting for the meandering gobsmacked to filter out thinly enough to make it safe and possible to drive on the road. As many have said, tourists leave their brains in Rhodes, and think roads are paths and churches are nightclubs, what with some of the clothes they’re hardly wearing as they approach hallowed ground… And so on.

We finally set off, weaving through, watching out for, and avoiding. I could never be a taxi driver down there, not at that time of day. I’d be hollering out the window, squashing feet beneath the wheels to teach a lesson and lessen frustration, and who knows what else. Symi taxi drivers, though, are of a more relaxed, Greek nature, and simply smile at it all.

Things are slightly eased at these times when the port police get on their two-way radios and become human traffic lights, one near the bus stop, the other at the bottom of the hill. This ensures no-one gets bumped into the sea on the narrowest part of the road. (Why has that not been widened? It’s only a car’s width across. Would making it safer encourage even more cars? Probably. The debate goes on.) I foresee permanent traffic lights at these places soon becoming a Symi fixture – and that would be a first for the island. Another sign of its rising status among the top over-touristed Greek islands to visit.

Anyway… at the end of this dull story, I got home and muddled through the weekend unable to eat either stage left or upper right, but only down the central line, and here we are; bright-eyed enough to start the week, a little doped up still from the painkillers and anti-this-and-that tablets, but all is made well, because Neil bought me flowers to cheer me up. Here’s to a great week ahead.

Lovely way to start the weekend: toothache at 03.00. Well, gum ache really, so just swollen and a dull throbbing, and my midnight feast of an anti-inflammatory tablet should see me through to late morning when I am due in the dentist’s chair for a root canal, which may now have to wait… Hey! But at least I can still walk there and back. At least, I could the last time.

You’ve always got to look on the bright side, and once this morning’s visits are out of the way, I should have a few days with no ‘extras’ to interrupt my morning work routine, such as popping out for this, or going to pick up that. Mind you, since I had to change credit cards for security reasons, I will have to pop down to DHL next week to collect the new one. Do we still have DHL here? If not, the delivery will be passed on to another service and will still get here. At least, it did last time.

We’ve had a bit of a battle these past two weeks, what with water issues and other bits and pieces. We’re not as badly off as the house over the road that has no water (as mentioned yesterday), because the pressure is too low – and no wonder when we have new high-end tourist accommodation opening up where the apartments come with their own built-in terrace jacuzzi or plunge pool. Read that again. Built-in pools. On terraces/flat roofs. On an island under an official drought notice. Where some people get no water for basic living. Where some people don’t/can’t flush the toilet until absolutely necessary, and stand in a plastic bowl in the shower to catch water to flush with, and generally save as much water as they can… So that the wealthy tourist can sit in a small pool on their roof and watch the sea, all the while pretending they are on Santorini – which, it seems, is what some people want the island to become. You’ve got the money for a classy holiday? Good on you. It’s not your fault some businessman is using local residents’ meagre supplies and infrastructure to fuel his income. And, I assume, in my naivety, that the council will be charging said apartments extra fees or whatever, and using that income to bring in more water for the islanders who support the island all year round, to replace that wasted on Mr & Mrs Cash’s rooftop ‘pool.’ (Times several, because this isn’t a lone case.) I wonder what this has done to the island’s protected status, and if other homeowners, having seen the strict rules bent for one, will bend their own and start putting in things that are ‘illegal’ according to the archaeology services that protect the island.

I could go on, because I am as inflamed as my gum at the moment, but I don’t know all the facts, and have only seen images which might be AI-generated like the false advertising for that windmill accommodation last year. Lit all around by pretty lights, lovely terrace, all mod cons… Er, no. Across the other side of a building site, having very few amenities like no washing up bowl or kitchen furniture, no table… toilet in a cupboard under the stairs… “Doesn’t matter, they paid €120 a night for it, and we made some money.”

The sooner I get my gum deflated and some more painkillers in my gob, the better, eh? Right then. I’m off to 1895, rural Kentish life, blacksmithing, and the trials of Oscar Wilde. Have a great weekend!

You might have been wondering if the Symi Festival is happening this year, and the answer is yes. It begins on Saturday with a concert from Dimos Anastasiades, and this will take place in the town square in the evening.

Also going on in Symi this weekend, a two-day conference at the Cultural Centre, starting on Saturday. With a rich program of presentations covering Symi’s journey from mythology and antiquity to modern history, its maritime tradition and its cultural heritage, the 2nd Annual Symi Historical Conference entitled “Symi through the Ages” will take place next Saturday, August 1st and Sunday, August 2nd. Article from Real Voice.

Other events from the only programme I’ve seen so far include, the festival of Ag Sotiris on Tuesday, a concert by Χριστίνα Σάλτη on Monday 6th, a performance by the Symi Theatre group on the 8th translated as: “Romeo and Juliet…for cheers and laughter,” and on Sunday 9th, Traditional dances by the Symi Women’s Union accompanied by musicians Michalis and Iakovos Missos. These will also be in the square in Yialos.

That’s just the start. If you want to see all events listed, click here for the PDF program. It is in Greek first, and then in English.

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This next part rambled out of control, so I went back and dropped in some random photos.

In other news… Er… Plumer visited again yesterday, but this was for the house over the road which draws its water from the same mains feed as ours, which is in our courtyard, so we played host, but not, for a change, the patient, and the problem was diagnosed: not enough pressure for the feed to reach the tank. I know this water business is a recurring theme, and some may wonder ‘What’s the problem?’ In this case, the problem is this:

Imagine a tree upside down.

At the top sits the reservoir, and the trunk is the mains feed, the large black pipes you might see following the edges of paths around the village. For around four hours on a Monday, Wednesday and Friday, our tree trunk is opened, and the water is allowed to flow from the top to the bottom. On the way, it branches off to the properties on its route; this it does via various smaller branches, each one of which leads to a sterna beneath a house or a water tank like ours.

Let’s say there are 100 houses on this route (I don’t know the exact number, I’m not that much of a nerd). In the winter, half of those houses are closed up and their water intake turned off, or their sternas are full. Therefore, the pressure from above is fine to push the water back uphill if needs be – as it needs to be to fill ours and the one over the road, which is slightly higher in altitude than ours. However, when summer comes, and the other properties are let to tourists, opened for visiting families and so on, the same water pressure has to do all 100 tanks, and the pressure is simply not enough. It’s a clear illustration of the island’s water issues in the summer.

Too many visitors? (Need the income they bring.) Not enough water in the reservoirs? (Let’s build bigger ones and really blight the scenery.) What’s the answer? (I don’t know.) What I do know from firsthand experience, though is that when someone who usually lives in, say, Athens, comes to stay in their once-a-year holiday home, the first thing they do is fill the sterna. Fine. The next thing they do is get through the same 300 litres of water a day as they might back in Athens without thinking – and that’s why our other neighbours got through 600 litres of water in 48 hours last weekend. For those of us used to saving, not wasting water, that amounts to roughly five days’ worth. Slightly more, actually.

Anyway, the property opposite is still without water and has been for over a week, but there is nothing we can do for our neighbour other than offer buckets of water drawn from the mains as extra on water days and offer her to use our shower, if the lady from the mainland downstairs hasn’t got through the whole 1,000 litre barrel again by then.

Today’s message? Be aware and turn it off!