While I’m wittering on today, let’s return, in the photos, to Monday night’s boat trip party and excursion.
There continues to be a lot of chatter on Facebook and other places about the BBC, and others, and the use of the word ‘Refugee’ Vs ‘Migrant’ and I’m not going back into that argument, except to say both should be used appropriately. But the on-going debate does keep alive the story and the work that is going on, on Symi (and elsewhere) by residents of the island. Actually, it was some other posts that got me to thinking too, ones where UK citizens are calling for their Government to do something about the situation. I saw a nice analogy which said that all of the refuges currently in the UK could fit on one underground train. Makes you think.
But I was thinking: it’s interesting, am I an ex-pat or a migrant worker, or a migrant? I suppose one is really a migrant when one is migrating, so if you are on the move you are a migrant of some sort and, as I am well established on Symi, I’m not migrating at the moment. If I chose to live elsewhere I would be while I was getting there. I am not a displaced person either, as that suggests I was displaced by something and not through choice. Nor am I a refugee in any sense other that I might be running away from the banality of my home country’s television, the complete breakdown of intelligence that some of my home country’s newspapers suffer from, a society that bays like wolves every time one of their ‘country’s favourite newspapers’ (that have very little news in them) starts a witch hunt against a pocket of society and the breakdown in discipline that, in my old fashioned view, emanates from the lack of authority allowed by schools.
Oh Lord, I am sounding like an old fuddy-duddy. But what was I saying? Oh yes. That’s the reason I am a refugee but not because of war or persecution; though I still fit into a part of society, in any country in the world (with perhaps the exception of Holland), that is open for persecution thanks to the stirring-up of ‘newspapers’ referred to above.
This is one of those posts that’s rambling more than the head of the Outdoor Rambler’s Association on National Ramblers’ Day, so let’s change the subject. What else is going on on Symi at the moment? I have no idea, I don’t get out much – there’s a restraining order on me these days, called ‘Novel writing and other work.’ But I did get out yesterday morning at 5.45 and went for a walk up the hill to the ravine. It is good to see that this is relatively rubbish free since the council got in special equipment to clear it out a few years back.
There was some cloud about in the early morning and it felt a little fresher. Let’s hope the weather doesn’t change drastically though as it’s only early September and the family won’t have finished holidaying until half way through October. We know October can get cold and windy, even wet, but it can also stay warm enough for swimming and sunbathing. It’s all a game of ‘wait and see.’ The rest of yesterday was filled up with listening to the neighbour drill away on some small project, sounding like a dentist on a mission, and seeing friends in the afternoon and evening. The day boats came in, as did the gullets, I could hear their engines and the sound of the horse and carriage, the bell of the train and the clapping of holidaymakers as they drove past the tents and destitute by the clock tower.
And so the world ticks over like a time bomb on a slow countdown.
