Wet, wet wet
Wednesday 30th November
I slept through last night, the first time I have done that in a long time. I usually wake at least once, for a short while on a good night, but I don’t remember doing so last night at all. I woke about six thirty, and got up a bit later, and saw that it was raining. The forecasts here don’t seem so accurate, my friends told me of a new site yesterday which seems a bit better, it’s called Meteo.gr . It says cloudy at the moment, but does say we will get heavy rain later on, which other sites agree with. Above is a ruined building I walk by every day, I have no idea what it was, but I like it a lot, the colour of the stones, the sort of horizontal stone at ground level, and of course the windmill behind it.
On the Greek, I feel a bit more comfortable about the latest chapters, the problem I have is with two words that have a single letter difference between them, and to my untrained ears, sound very similar, the words are einai which means is, and eimai which means I am. Given they mean very different things, you would not think it would cause confusion, but to me it does! Eisthe is another word in this sort of mix, which means you are. At the moment I haven’t got to the plural side of things at all, or we etc. I have started on the path of he and she, that’s aftos and afti. This is ok, except if it’s clear who is saying or doing something, these are left out. Greek does this with the use of I and you as well, that’s ego and asis. For the he and she, the verb words in the sentence change, thello become thelei. ( this means want).
Later on the rain stopped so I walked down to Marinos’s coffee bar and despite the rain, there wasn’t a huge number of people celebrating a day off. Marinos was pleased to see me in my trousers. I said to him how are you, I think he was pleased to hear a bit of Greek from me. I ordered a Fredo Cappuccino, he double checked that, after who wants a cold coffee on a cold day? Answer an Englishman ! No sugar and no cinnamon, more strangeness! He easily makes the best one of these on the island and it’s nice to drink out of a glass, instead of a disposable cup. He has tasteful Christmas decorations up, which are nice. The pigeon was in the place as well, wandering in and out, I am sure it’s the one we saw in here the other day. I did not want to hang around too long, so while paying , I told him I was walking to Livadi in Greek. He made the sign of walking, I nodded, yet more strangeness…
I really like this house. It’s been in this state for a long time now, which made me think it was going to get stuck in this halfway house state of being refurbished, but today, the door is open and work has resumed. It’s possibly going to be a shop, more on that in a while. Outside Father Daniel’s house, the cats had been fed, and there were a lot of them munching away..
I carried on down towards Livadi, the rain holding off. I kept practising the word for my favourite pie, hoping Grans would have one still. So I walked in, they did so I said it. The lady owner and the young girl were impressed! But it wasn’t perfect and quite rightly, they said it properly with the right emphasis. I asked if the lady owner could repeat the word, and then I would record it. She did so and carefully said it slowly, to help. The guy who does the deliveries, he explained with writing on a pad. He broke down the word to help. They are clearly so pleased, that’s I am trying and in a positive way are trying to help. This will only improve my confidence. I know a lot of words that I can use, I just need to make an effort to use them. When I tried to pay, they said no, this was on the house. Now my friends from yesterday, told me something. If Greeks don’t take payment, don’t refuse the gift. you will insult them if you do. While I was sitting down, I was introduced to a lady who is setting up a Real Estate place in Hora, ( hence my comment above). I explained I wasn’t in the market place right now, but might be one day. I told her where I was staying, she said it was a nice place, she knew my landlord and had seen the property!
I walked to the hairdressers, maybe I could get a last minute appointment? No chance, she is closed until the first week in December, which is a pity, my hair is going to get long. At least it’s not summer. I walked past the Opsis Estate Agents on my way back, the dog with the hurt leg came out to say hello.
I walked back to Hora, on the way back, I saw these pigeons on this wire and I thought they looked good. There was thunder in the air, but I think it was moving away. I got to the house, dried off as I was a bit wet, and wrote this blog. I will do a bit more Greek today and the guitar, which I missed as I wanted to try and avoid the rain.
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