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