Nights are sultry

It is very hot. The kind of heat that makes your ears buzz and your head swim and even doing nothing at all makes the sweat bead on your forehead and your glasses slide down your nose. Those with nothing else to do are up to their chins in seawater. The rest of us are drooping at our stations, struggling to stay awake and focussed. The Meltemi has given up on us and the sea looks like beaten metal.

Nights are sultry and illuminated by the most enormous full moon as the moon is closer to earth than usual this month. We sit outside, citronella candles to keep the mosquitoes at bay, listening to the tinkle of nibbling sheep in the watercourse and the restless squawks of the chickens roosting in the kermes oaks. It only seems to be cool enough to sleep just when it is time to get up again. Many people sleep outside at this time of the year on terraces and in courtyards.

Tomorrow night is the grand premiere of the Symi Festival and the island is already filling up. The key performers are Dionyssis Savvopoulos (Greece's answer to Bob Dylan) and Fuat Saka, a Turkish musician, an event we shall be covering in the August edition of The Symi Visitor. The peace initiatives between Greece and Turkey continue at a grass-roots level and long may they do so.

Have a peaceful and uneventful weekend.

Regards,
Adriana
www.symivisitor.com

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The Aegli is hooting...

Symi is hot and busy. This year’s peculiarly hectic ferry schedule has generated a tremendous amount of feverish activity. Right now the Aegli is hooting because it wants to dock and the Symi is late pulling out as a tour group leader has mislaid a few day-trippers and the space between the Panormitis which docked at one and the Symi is not quite big enough to accommodate a hydrofoil. Meanwhile the taxis are hovering… There seem to be arrivals and departures at all hours of the day and the taxi service is hard pressed to cope, particularly when people arrive on boats different to the ones on which they are expected as it is not always possible for the taxis to reschedule at short notice, particularly if the driver is half way to Panormitis!

I went to Rhodes on Saturday to collect my new reading glasses. Pity the official summer sales only start today and will undoubtedly be over by the time I next pass that way but even so it was interesting to have a look around. Something that did strike me, having been on occasional shopping trips to Rhodes over the twelve years I have lived on Symi, is that there seems to be a major effort on the part of the Rhodian shops to improve their public relations. The surly shop assistants who used to lurk in the basement of Pappou, scowling at those customers who dared to interrupt the weekend’s social arrangements, have been either replaced or sent to charm school. While one would certainly expect the assistants in branches of international shops such as BHS and Marks and Spencer to meet certain criteria and they do in terms of helpfulness and ability to speak English, even the smaller shops I went into did their best to be obliging. A shoe shop offered to put shoes on the ferry for me when my size comes in. A book shop put themselves out to order an obscure tome for me… Maybe I just struck it lucky but that is unlikely. Perhaps with potential customers in such short supply, efforts are being made to retain the ones they have! And a gyros in Mandraki is still excellent value at 1.80.

Have a good week.

Regards,

Adriana
www.symivisitor.com

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Even the breeze is hot

The temperature continues to climb and even the breeze is hot. Washing dries in minutes and the summer deciduous trees are shedding leaves in great flurries. The hibiscus outside the office door has decided to drop half its flowers and the immature olives dropping from the tree that overhangs the roof above our bedroom at the farm sound like hail as they ping on the tin. One way in which plants adapt to heat stress is to reduce transpiration losses by shedding leaves and reducing the number of fruits and flowers that they carry. Even under irrigation this happens as soon as temperatures reach the high thirties. Evergreen trees such as citrus need a great deal of water to ensure that some fruit makes it through the summer to ripen in the winter.

Many plants become dormant around now and don't start to grow again until conditions improve in September. Roses and other shrubs tend to look a bit tatty now as the dry air scorches the leaves but reaching for the pruning shears makes the problem worse as they then try to put on new growth, which, being soft, burns even more quickly and simply depletes the plant's resources. It is better to let things rest until mid August when they can be properly pruned, fed and prepared for the 'second spring' that accompanies the on-set of the rainy season.

The fig trees and grape vines are showing no sign of slacking and it looks as though we will have a glut - if the rats and the birds don't get there first. Although the locals use old fishing nets to keep the birds off the fruit, this idea does not appeal to me as the birds become trapped in the webbing. The cats are no use as a deterrent - they seem to be spending the summer asleep in the cool damp patches around the tomatoes in the shade house. Just as on a boat a cat will find a spot where the motion is least apparent (useful tip for the seasick!) so do they also seek out the coolest places to sleep in the summer.

Have a peaceful week.

Regards,
Adriana
www.symivisitor.com

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It is a hot still morning on Symi

It is a hot still morning on Symi. The pumps on the watership are humming away over by the clock tower and the pastel sea is cross-hatched with the wakes of departing gulets. There is no wind in our little corner of the Aegean and the day is already warming up. Yesterday we had the Cypriot cruise ship to look at instead of the water boat but the island is now on its summer water quota and the watership is in virtually every day.

The news of yesterday's bombing atrocity filtered through quite late here on Symi as the season is well underway and few people have access to the media in the course of a normal working day. Greek state television cancelled a number of scheduled programs in order to provide live coverage and the various press announcements whereas the commercial channels, like commercial channels everywhere, preferred to focus on the gory details. Meanwhile the Greek police have tightened security around British diplomatic missions in Greece as well as British owned businesses and the British Council. The Greek embassy in London has set up special telephone lines for those Greeks who may have friends and family among the dead or injured. Speaking as one who had a few close shaves back in the days of the ANC's bombing campaigns in South Africa (and I mean seriously close), my advice to anyone who has been in this kind of situation is to not just potter on with your life as normal but also use it as a reminder that as we are none of us immortal, if you want to do something in particular in your life, do it NOW - there might not be an opportunity later. Terrorism only succeeds if we allow it to reduce us to a state of fearful apprehension - why give anyone the satisfaction of achieving that? While I am not suggesting that being blown up by terrorists is exactly a life-enhancing experience, it is important to turn the negative into something positive in order to be able to move on - and not to waste the second chance at life that one has been granted. Sorry if this all sounds a bit Pollyanna-ish, but it might help somebody out there.

I started writing this some hours ago but, numerous interruptions later, it is now 11 o'clock and the Symi has just appeared outside my window and peace has departed for 3 hours. Time to close the windows!

Have a peaceful and uneventful weekend.

Regards,
Adriana
www.symivisitor.com

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Wind-tugged thunder clouds

After a very hot weekend the meltemi is asserting itself again. There are wind-tugged thunder clouds marching across the Turkish horizon and the sea has turned dark blue with crisp white horses romping through the Nimos channel.

The Symi is rumbling away below the balcony, preparing to depart. The scene is the usual mix of half-dressed tourists nursing third-degree piebald sunburn, harassed tour guides and agitated crew members talking truck drivers up the ramp. The melon seller must have done well - his empty truck has just disappeared into the bowels of the ship. I wonder if he'll be back tonight with more melons...

A row of old-fashioned street lamps has sprouted along our side of the harbour. As they are on the quay side rather than the landward side they are unlikely to last long - the building supply ships that come in in the winter lie alongside here with cranes and fork lift trucks.

Have a good week.

Regards,
Adriana
www.symivisitor.com

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Anyone with any sense is on the beach

The thermometer in the tomato shade house reached 40 yesterday and the resident frogs are only too happy to receive their twice daily sprinkles. The cats have turned the bunt of the shade cloth into hammocks in which to while away the days. My chickens sit around panting in the shade and prefer to roost in the oak trees at night rather than in the hen house. They are not bothering much with laying eggs at the moment.

Between ferry arrivals and departures it is very quiet in the harbour during the day - anyone with any sense is on the beach and the tourists are turning from red to bronze. The melon seller has parked his truck by the bus stop and is dozing under a silver umbrella between selling his wares to frazzled day trippers.

Michaeli the harbourmaster is sitting on the step below our balcony, shaving. Yes, that's right, shaving. Sometimes he shaves while sitting on one of the benches on the road above the town, other times he completes his toilette on the steps...

Have a good weekend!

Regards,
Adriana
www.symivisitor.com

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