Today’s pictures are here to satisfy the curious. If you have ever wanted to know what it was like to be on Symi in the rain when the ‘Spanos’ came in from Kos, an hour late due to the bad weather I guess, then these images are here to satisfy your curiosity.
They were taken on Monday evening when we went down to Yialos to see Ian off; he’s heading back to do some work in the UK. It was light when we got down there and not yet raining, but that soon changed and the café we were waiting at, the Roloi near the clock tower, soon filled up. The Blue Star was also due in, coming back from Rhodes on its skewed timetable due to New Year’s Day. That came and went and we waited and had a drink as we did so. The Dodecanese finally came in, there was a bit of a rush about, and then off it went into the wet and dark night.
It was raining hard by this point but that didn’t stop Neil from clowning about, as you will see.
We walked back around the harbour, the original intention was to walk back up the steps, for the exercise, but the rain and water running off the steps put paid to that idea; always best to be safe on Symi in the rain. So we took a taxi back up the hill and that’s what the last image is, a shot from the back of a steamed up taxi heading out of Yialos.
There has been a lot of snow in northern Greece recently and, looking at the news reports, it’s still going on. The skies around here have been heavy and dark, though Tuesday morning was brighter. But very cold. Just the kind of weather for jumping into the recently blessed seas to retrieve the cross; which is what was happening all over the country on January 6th as it is the celebration of Epiphany. The wind yesterday was not as bad as first expected with Windfinder showing force six only, and not the force nine or ten the weather forecaster on TV was talking about. I wouldn’t be surprised though if that was the gusting force, the house has been rattling a bit.
And that of course makes things pretty cold, particularly as the site shows the wind coming from the north. I know, it’s probably colder where you are (unless you are Kon down in Australia of course, hi Kon, hi to the family too!).
The good news is that I found the missing information from my memory stick which wasn’t missing at all. For some reason the ‘open recent’ command in the programme I was using decided to open an old version of the same file, not the most recently opened one that was at the top of the ‘open recent’ files list. But you don’t need to know that.
What you might like to know though is that the weather forecast (you can never have enough of this drivel can you?) is now saying that we’re in for three degrees tonight, like it was last night apparently. Three degrees? How about The Marvelettes instead? Or perhaps The Velvelettes? Who? Quite, I had to go and look them up – you might remember ‘He was really sayin’ something’ from 1965, probably better known to us youngsters by the Bananarama cover version. And talking of really sayin’ something, I clearly am now not saying anythin’ of much interest so will now go and put on another layer of hoodies, my gloves, a hat, my overcoat and knitted scarf I bought from Rasnov castle in Romania, and watch TV.
