Late Rains

Grey skies in late May? Yes, we have had late rains, a good 7 mm fell yesterday afternoon, and the showery weather is only expected to clear in the course of Saturday. Bemused snails who thought they had closed down for the summer were wandering around the damp leaves in my garden yesterday, looking for snacks. While the thunder storms and sporadic rain have been bad news for ‘round the island’ trips, the inclement weather has been excellent news for the shops and cafes and the day excursion boats from Rhodes are full of would-be beach goers in search of other amusements.

On Tuesday evening Symi Dream celebrated the re-hanging of their shop sign which was mysteriously vandalized at Koukoumas earlier in the month. Gill Bennett repaired her handiwork and the sign is now swinging happily on sturdy new chains welded onto the balcony above. It was a good turn out as Neil and James have a lot of friends on the island, not to mention supporters among regular visitors to Symi, many of whom were visiting the island at the time. Photographs of this party on the steps can be seen on Symi Dream’s website gallery, and on James’ blog .

The Sapphire, a big Louis Lines cruise ship from Cyprus visited Symi yesterday, with the usual run on the island’s taxi service as passengers were shuttled across the island to visit Panormitis monastery. I took a photograph of it from the corner of the Kali Strata as these cruise ships are quite massive relative to the size of the harbour and surrounding houses. However, as www.blogger.com continues to have problems with the uploading of photographs I am unable to post it at present. Speaking of computer problems, there have been various random glitches in the internet service on Symi this week with many people reporting problems including such mysteries as being able to receive messages but not send them, receiving messages days after they were sent or losing connections at odd intervals. Maybe the boffins are right – perhaps we will be driven back to snail mail, telephones and fax as the internet becomes increasingly bogged down under the load of users and thus ineffective. On that optimistic note, I shall now have a go at posting this.

Have a good weekend.

Regards,

Adriana