I took a walk around the village lanes yesterday afternoon, mainly for the purpose of taking some snaps for these pages, and came up with a few – as you can see today. If you are wondering what the black thing is snaking its way through the lanes, it’s the mains water pipes delivering water from the tanks around the village to the sternas and other water chambers of the village houses. Although it was four of the afternoon and there was a yellow weather/heat warning in the Dodecanese, it was actually pretty mild in the shade, and not the hottest day we’ve had this year. As with last year, August has been cooler than July (so far). When I say cool, I mean in the mid-thirties, rather than the 40+ we had been seeing, and have seen before. Just about right, if you ask me.
This morning, waking up and pottering straight to my PC, I opened up my mail collection program to give it a scan before downloading what I wanted and filtering out what I didn’t, and found what I thought was the shortest spam ever. Its title offered me a complimentary and unrestricted access pass to something unspecified, and the first line read, ‘Dear Friend, Nice talking to you and have a good day.’ Short and sweet, I thought. Makes a change from the usual. Then I read on, and it was trying to sell me steel wires which would be good for my busiess (sic), and I rather lost interest because I don’t have a busiess. What was of more interest was this, seen outside the window yesterday afternoon.
I wonder if someone reached home after a shopping trip and said, ‘Now, I am sure I had something else with me… What was it?’ Or, later, when they came to feed their cats, thought: ‘I’m sure I bought some biscuits, where did I put them?’ Seems an odd thing to leave lying around, or sitting on a wall in an alleyway that’s not used by many. If you’ve lost half a ton of cat biscuits, you know where to find them.
And in other non-news, here’s a photo from the dining table taken the other lunchtime. Not wonderfully exciting, I’m afraid, but gives you an idea of how busy the harbour is during the day-boat hours. There are some days when we have up to eight boats a day: the King Saron (now back in service and sometimes with two visits per day), the Sebeko One and Two, the Nicholaos X (ever wondered what happened to the other nine? Maybe it’s the letter X, rather than the number), the SP Cruises boat which I always think stands for Sunburnt People, but I’m being generous, the red speedboat thing, and the Discovery. On certain days, we also have the Spanos catamaran and the Panagia. I expect I’ve forgotten someone. Then, there are also smaller, private charters where the visitors from Rhodes arrive on the bows of speed boats, and that’s without mentioning the sailing boats, gulets, cruise ships and tax deductibles. So, there are some days when it’s busy down there, and that, I hope, is good for trade.
Okay, that’s me off. I am preparing a new book for release and have a few ‘backstage’ things to attend to, like writing a series blurb which Amazon’s book description generator can do for me by using AI, apparently. Hm, if it can do that, it can also write the whole book, and I’m not sure how I feel about that, so I will approach with caution.
