Symi Christmas week, Wednesday
As you can see from today’s photos, it’s still bearing up with sunshine down here. Yesterday on the far side of the harbour it felt more like a day in late spring rather than the winter solstice. I wore my new, warm coat down there but had to take it off after crossing the bridge, and I didn’t put it back on until much later in the day.
I think we’ve finally gathered everything in ready for a couple of days off over Christmas; last presents organised, paper bought, special things bought for Christmas Day and the drinks cabinet, that kind of thing. All that remains to do now is to get some shopping in for the house and Boxing Day and we’re done.
The shops are open on Christmas Eve and Boxing Day around here, things don’t clam up the way they used to back in the UK many years ago. The days when there was no shop open on a Sunday, and Wednesday was early closing day for some reason. When you would stock up your larder for Christmas sometime around November 20th and start hording as you couldn’t possibly risk running out of anything over the Christmas period or else you would completely ruin the festivities for everyone. I don’t suppose it’s the same now that you can do Tesco at four in the morning, or have a wiz around Sainsbury’s at dawn. Not now the shops put up signs to say ‘Terribly sorry, we will be closed today between 10.00 and 10.05 for staff training, this is the first time we’ve closed since 1997, and we really are awfully sorry for the slightest inconvenience this heinous act may cause you (please don’t sue us, thank you ever so)’ because people are used to their shops being open 24/7. It’s like 7/11 – I always thought that would be a cool place to work, only doing four hours a day. Then I figured it out.
So, our own 7/11, that I prefer to call Fortnum’s (Sotiris’ supermarket) is open today, tomorrow and probably Saturday, though not Christmas Day – that’s the only day Sotiris gets to rest. That is, after he’s been up to the farm and mucked out, seen to the goats, planted a field of potatoes, milked the chickens, swept the pig and fed the yard. Then, sometimes around 2pm he can put his feet up and watch an episode of ‘Στέψη Δρόμος’ (Coronation Street) before getting back to work.
And talking of going back to work. I don’t think I will do that until Monday, thank you very much. I will put up a blog tomorrow, Christmas Eve, but then you will have to be on your own until Monday.
