And, as it happens, we went out on Monday night, a bit of a treat from Tina for her visiting family. And what a great evening we had. Thank you, thank you! Okay, so it went like this:
Neil was at work, and I was at home working on ‘Straight Swap’ the next comedy novel – now with only two chapters left to go of the first draft and at 120,000 words – so feeling pretty excited about that. Having done a quick interview with The Times (they’d rung Neil who was working so he put them onto me) where I gave my views and experience of: Greek banks – still giving out money and in €60.00 withdrawals last time I saw. Tavernas? Doing fine so far but we could all do with more tourists. Food supplies? Fine, markets gardens in Rhodes, the Tilos veg man, local meat and so on… Having done that, I nipped down to the bar to recover from a 7,000 word writing day.
Then we nipped home to collect camera and things for the evening ahead and nipped back to meet Jenine.
We headed down to ‘Kavos’ in Harani for the evening, some of our party stopping to take some money out of the National bank and others out of the Alpha back en route, no problems there. The harbour was busy. The south side was full with gullets and smaller boats and the north side full of bigger yachts and fishing boats. A great sight to see.
Our table was right next to the water, which made standing up a bit of a trial, I mean, put the old man with vertigo right on the edge why don’t ya? No, it was fine and, I think, the first time I have had dinner on the water’s edge for many years. The food at ‘Kavos’ is traditional Greek, everything was on the menu and we ordered various mezethes to share and pass around; tuna fish salad, souvlaki, patatas, octopus and some other seafood things I don’t go near, keftethes, roasted vegetables, and some completely acceptable local house wine.
Later, after missing the intended 23.00 bus back up, we walked back around the harbour where the boat party was still going on, though not overly noisily so, and some of the party bought ice creams. There was some mild dithering about waiting for a taxi as it looked like only one was still running so some of the group leapt in that, others waited for it to come back and some of us walked up. And up, and up, and walked off the mezethes via the ‘Lazy Steps’ (misnomer, as I’ve mentioned before), the slope past the school and then the killer steps past the old shop.
A final and quite unnecessary nightcap at Rainbow and home. No sooner had we walked in than the cat ran out and headed off into the wild for the second time in a few days. I reckon he is bored with this house, there’s not enough fight action for him, and he can only get out if we leave the gate open. Or if, like on Monday, he sees us come in and gets out before we have a chance to close it. Tuesday midday and he’s still not back. But if he wants to go and explore and have a few days away, we can’t stop him.
And now to Tuesday – well yesterday as I write. We are expecting Neil’s brother to arrive this evening, and we have been invited to two parties, neither of which we can make. So happy (belated) birthday celebrations to Pat, Hazel and Michelle. Neil’s brother, James, has a friend arriving on Friday, also called James. Neil intends to take a photo showing James, James, James and our hoover, also called James. There that’s something to look forward to.
Don’t forget, if you like these Symi views, and photos, you can check out the three books about living on Symi. The links are over there on the top right. ‘Symi 85600’ the first five years of living here. ‘Carry on up the Kali Strata’ – articles and stories about living here. ‘Village View’ – the collected blog posts from 2013. Enjoy!
