Sunny and warm

Wednesday 9th November 

This day has a couple of unusual things going on, a visit to the dentist for the first time here on Serifos and a meeting with someone, who feeds some of the stray cats here, to show me what they do, for me to take that responsibility on, while they are away. As my dental appointment is at five pm, I plan to have dinner in Livadi as a treat afterwards.

After yesterdays musings on hot water, I have been thinking about heating. I have my old greenhouse thermometer in the house in the open area. When I got up this morning, it was a little below twenty. When I got here in September the thermometer was in the mid twenties to start with, but after having the windows open during the day, this dropped a bit. I think these little sugar cube houses are good at keeping cool in the summer and not being too cold in winter, but let’s see! The bed linen has started to feel a little damp, not really damp, but just not crisp, like it is when you change it. ( don’t worry it’s really not damp, I am NOT sleeping in a damp bed!) I don’t like a warm bed, and I know people use a bed blanket here to get it warm and drive any damp feeling out. I haven’t turned on the dehumidifier on yet, I might try it for a couple of days to see if that helps. I could get one of those portable heaters, but like the blanket, I would have to go to Syros/Athen or order online. If  I go for the online option, that would be cheaper than going to Syros, as you have the ferry ticket plus at least two nights in a hotel, dinner and so on. I don’t have an address, so a courier would take delivery of the item, I can then pick it up or they would deliver. 

I haven’t heard from the accountant, or the eye place in Athens. I have resent the eye hospital my email, but translated in Greek. I can’t find a second place unfortunately. One thing about the Greek language that really trips me up is the ordering of words. So if you don’t want something, you don’t say “I don’t want it” in Greek in that order, you say, “not it I want”. So the translation process is made harder for me I find. The good news is this morning the three new words have lodged in my head. The one for “But”, I had trouble with, I knew the word, but I kept forgetting what it meant. I used a couple of my own ideas to remember the other ones, “Kati”, I thought of a cat, but the words means “something”, go figure. The last one was a more sensible way of remembering. “Tora” means now, so I was thinking about the WW2 film “Tora Tora Tora!”  On the course, the instructor asks them to translate something and the two students take it in turn to speak it in Greek. The instructor then says it at normal speed, and when I listen to that, I can’t really follow it! She talks quite fast and the words do merge into one another. The students are like me, they speak very slowly. The next chapter in the course is a recap, this is the first time in my life I have really made an effort to learn a language, I haven’t put so much effort in as I am doing now.

Photo interlude another nice house on the way down to Livadi.

The work down to Livadi was nice, the wind has dropped so it’s warm again. There was the usual number of waves, horns tooting etc when I got to the road. There seemed to be a lot of lorries about, it did not take much to work it out, there was a ship in the harbour, it had some kind of aggregate in its hold, which was being scooped out into lorries in turn, who took it to the concrete making facility in the industrial area. As each lorry drives off with its load, a cover automatically covers the top of the lorry load to cut down dust being spread about on its journey. At Grans I longingly looked at the sausage roll as we would call them in the UK but these ones have sausage and usually something else in there as well. I used to buy one of these when I used to do my taxi service for a lady and her dog in the UK, until it got too much of a habit. 

I walked to the end of one of the concrete piers and listened to the follow up chapter in the Greek course. The instructor basically fired English at her students and me, asking for the Greek translation. I did fairly well, but got a few words mixed up, basically saying I want instead of you want, and missing out a few Its as well. I walked back into the town. I popped into Blue Bird, and explained that although he had offered me a good deal for the long term rent one of his cars, I felt I would only use it two or three days. What sort of deal could he offer me? He said the paperwork every week would be a nuisance and then lowered the price of the long term deal. I think I will take him up on it, then when I come back in September I can sort out transport in Athens or somewhere else, depending on what I do. I followed the step up to Hora  and had an easy rest of the day waiting for my three o’clock meetup. 

Ending photo - the local  Marine Police boat. Looks fast.