Living on a Greek island

30 September - Serifos  I met my friends in Livadi after they got off the ferry. We decided to have a coffee in Livadi before we went up to Hora. It is now very hot again and no wind. None of them had been to Serifos before, although they had been on ferries that visited  the port. We then drove up to Hora and parked the car. First time I think that drive is quite interesting,  all the switchbacks on the road up to the top. We unpacked the car, they had all sorts of goodies  for me, including a kettle, my clothes from Sifnos and much more. After unpacking it was getting on, so we had a whistle stop tour of Hora going all the way to the top. It is a bit like Castro on Sifnos. I think they liked it. We popped into to see people I know, the bar, supermarket and so on. On the way to the house, we had a beer in the bar, I introduced them to Vasileas. He had some music on which my friends loved. I think they agreed this was the place to hang out. ( that is not one of my fr...

Thursday 29th September - Hora  and Livadi So last night it was very windy and I went down to Vasileas bar for a drink. It felt very quiet in the village. Elena was there and I made two Origami models for the children she teaches to look at. children, The models were  the so called flapping bird and the frog. They are really the only models I remember how to do, I used to do Origami when I was a young boy. The paper I had a was a bit thick and should ideally be proper origami paper which is coloured on one side. I should see if I can find a terrapin model! Some Spanish folks came in and Vasileas was able to talk to them in Spanish, which was good. There were a few locals dropping in and out. An American couple popped in, but soon everyone was gone and it was eerily quiet, save the wind. Vasileas did not even have his music on. I then decided to have a wander around Hora and take some photos. The phone has a torch which was handy as bits of Hora were dark.  In the morning,...

Wednesday 28th  - Hora and Livadi So this little shop is new to Hora since I was here last time. I haven’t been in but it looks nice from the outside. When they are open they have a stone cat sitting on the wall. I have been trying to work out about paying my Vodaphone bill on the sim that provides my Wi-Fi, here in the house. The web page spurts out an error and the chat bot is useless. Anyway I found this page where you could ask for help, great! So I logged my request and someone rang me! He said you need to ring this number, they will help. I thought my prayers were answered. I rang it, and I got a recordered message. Including a Press 9 for English. I pressed 9, it remained in Greek. It was another bot. When I said things, it reacted, I managed to use google translate to get bits of what it was saying. In the end I kept repeating “I want to pay my bill” and “ I want to speak to a human”. The bot finally changed its message and it was clearly putting me in a queue to speak to a...

 Tuesday 27th September - Hora and Livadi In the port area, on the passenger waiting place wall is this plaque: I The plaque reads In front of the ridge of Serifos when the sun rises the cannons of all the great worldviews get inflammation." Odysseus Elytis   In the trough at home, things were coming along nicely, the succulent was flowering.   However last night I could hear the wind was picking up so I took the umbrella which is on the roof down. Overnight the strength of the wind has built up. I looked at the trough this morning and it was getting blown to bits, so I have moved it to somewhere a bit more sheltered. The yellow flowers have closed up perhaps because it’s a bit chilly! I checked with the Taverna last night and Ronnie is welcome thank goodness. On the way back from doing that, I saw a dog by Vasileas’s bar, so I went to say hello, unfortunately I have forgotten the dogs and owners name, but they live in Panagia. Vasileas was there too, having not had his n...

 Monday 26th September - Hora and Livadi In the late afternoon yesterday I was relaxing in the house, you know when you hear a noise, you know what it is, but you are frozen for a moment, not knowing how to react? Well the sound I heard was the front door opening! I thought it might be the owner, but he is meant to contact me before visiting to check on the house. So this face appeared, and said “sorry” and the door closed. I was trying to work out why the person opened the door, what did he expect to find? The house has small windows and doesn’t look like a shop or taverna! I think he was English! Typical! So the Taverna is closed for the the season now, and I noticed a bit of geranium plant which had broken off one of their plants and was on the ground. So I have put it in soil, to see if it will root as a cutting. It’s not ideal weather as it’s going to get hot again, so I made myself a pot and put it in the shade on its own. I got the super zoom camera working with the phone ye...

Sunday 25th - Hora   So last nights meal went well, Spagetti Carbonara with the nearest thing you can get to bacon  over here from Syros. If I have time when I pick up my five year permit card, I will go to Lidl, but more importantly I need to visit the Vodaphone store to try and resolve the payement problems on the sim I use in the house router. I watched the blatantly propaganda film  The House on 92nd St  last night, the end bit was a bit over the top in the claims it made, but it was good entertainment nether the less. I will try and find something a bit better for tonight. I need to have a good think about my strategy for getting about here. The walk to the Lighthouse was really good yesterday, but it was too long. I got my timings wrong too, so when I got to Livadi, I had missed the last bus before the afternoon hiatus, so I had two hours to kill. I knew that I needed to keep out of the sun. So I went to the bakery and spun out my drink and ice cream and finish...

September 24th - Hora and Livadi  I  had a lovely dinner next door last night. I had my usual Greek Salad and Mythos beer, for my main I had the Chick Pea Stew, which I plan to try and make myself sometime. I actually had one of my warmer tops on and if I am honest a pair of trousers might have been a better choice than shorts. It was windy, but the last couple of days have been colder and therefore nighttime temperatures drop more. Even the thermometer in the house is hovering around twenty during the day.  After walking to the house I watched on YouTube, the film  The Suspect  It’s a very accomplished film, with actors I recognised from films of that era. It’s a dark film, at the end you can’t help but feel sorry for the hero (IMHO)   This morning it feels cold so I am staying inside, outside there are cotton wool clouds floating in the sky above the mountains and Hora. The house needed a clean, it’s not dirty but I want to keep the habit of doing it...

Friday 23rd September - Hora and Livadi   So above is my washing line with the latest lot of washing drying out. The limit on the  washing that I do is down to this device, not the amount of washing I can cram into the machine. The sheets will require me to hook up, some kind of temporary line, using washing line that my friends from Sifnos are bringing over next week. They don’t have any ground that is part of their property as such, but there is ground around them which is not being used, so they have a washing line on that space, and a pile of wood waiting to be cut for their log burner. Opposite this house, is space used for cars, so it’s busy when the Taverna is open. Beyond that the ground drops down into a ravine, not ideal washing line territory! My temporary line will be on the roof somehow, but a sheet is going to act like a sail, and with the wind we get, it could easily blow away! When my friends drop by with their dog next week, Mike hopes to be able to get VPN go...

September 22nd - Hora, roundabout and Livadi So I forgot a couple of bits of news yesterday. When I was in the Medical centre, they had this bookcase with books, that you could borrow. Well not surprisingly most were in Greek, I did see a couple of Agatha Christie ones! There was a single English one, by Mary Higgins Clark, I’ve got you under my skin. The number they gave me to book an appointment with the physiatrist, not much luck there, I did speak to one person, but they put the phone down on me, other times it just goes to voicemail. I will try more times today. I made a bit more progress on the Vodaphone bill payment.  The Thai red curry was good, the only thing I would say is the chicken was not chicken breasts. I don’t know much about  chicken anatomy, but I would like these were pieces off other bits of the chicken and there was a bit of gristle and fat I had to trim off. We don’t really have a butchers here, and the sort of Sainsburys and Tesco are not here! Which is...

 Wednesday 21st September - Hora and Livadi A few more spring onions have poked their way above the soil overnight, they can be picky germinators, needing warmth and moisture, like all seeds do, but not appreciating any really cold spells or dry periods. The former won’t be a problem here, the latter could be, as it can in our ever drier springs in the UK. The unknown plant that is in the trough with them is looking a bit happier, but it’s some kind of succulent. I have an idea of growing one of those huge cactus that have the prickly pear fruit on them and in the summer when I am not here, they should survive. What might be a problem is the longevity of the plastic pots and troughs. Sunlight, especially strong will cause hard plastics to become brittle and crack. Terracotta is more expensive, I might see how much they cost when I get the compost.  When Ronnie is here, I plan to make good use of his owners car! It’s an old Golf, and I am going to look at a map to see where I w...

Tuesday 29th September Syros, Livadi and Hora  So we had a wonderful meal last night, at the Tavera I mentioned yesterday. I had the seafood pasta, Hazel the pork medallions. But it was an early start for today, alarm set for six am. I showed Hazel Jupiter on my Night Sky app and in the sky last night, in fact it was still there this morning. When we walked back to the hotel, we saw the Artemis docked at the port of Ermoupoli ready for todays journey. As we walked to the ferry in the morning the sun was rising.  We left on time, which was good. I had some breakfast on the ferry and together we did some crosswords. The ferry was quite busy, but not overly so. Paros was the first stop, an island we both know. We then went past Sifnos, we could see the St Simeon church on top of one of the mountains. We then got the call for Serifos. Unfortunately the ferry arrived just after the top of the hour, so there was a wait before the next one arrived at twelve. I had a drink, and a muff...