Echo beach (Vagia beach)

 Saturday 17th December 

Another beautiful day starts with a spectacular sunrise streaking over the sky. I have been listening to Charles Dickens - A Life again on an audiobook read  by the excellent Alex Jennings. It is a fascinating book about one of the few authors that I recognise as a genius. But like many geniuses he had a dark side, in the way he treated his wife. But he was so generous in so many other ways, and the tumble towards his demise is so sad. It’s definitely worth a listen or a read! If only recording devices were there when he did his readings, hearing him do them, would have been amazing.

I had  a nice time at Vasileas last night, it was quite quiet, the comedy was several men looking at a battery powered chainsaw. Vasileas brought it out from behind the bar, I assumed it had some kind of fault, so they were fiddling about with it, every so often setting it off, carefully pointing it away from them but as they did so, it was then pointing it towards me. It was only a baby sized one, and it wasn’t really close to me really. But I would have taken the battery out every time I fiddled with it, in case it went off by accident, “ The Hora Chainsaw Massacre”.  In the end it was put away. It was good to see Vasileas again, I got one of the thumb handshakes. I tried a few of my new words in Greek and they seemed to be received well. I have been taught “Ligo” for something small in my course, I get corrected when I say this and am told to use “Mikro” instead.

I haven’t mentioned the guitar much recently. To be fair there has been a couple of days that I haven’t used it. I seem to be stuck in the no man’s two finger chord land. I am still quite slow at changing still and the fingers fouling other strings seems to be getting worse ! I read a bit more on this problem, it seems practising helps, keeping your fingers vertical to the fretboard is meant alleviate the problem. Annoyingly my thin pick has been lost and I am having to use a thicker one, that seems to have affected my strumming. The thickness difference is not much, a few tenths of a millimetre! In hindsight I should have read up more, even borrowed my friends guitar on Sifnos and discovered that my fingers might be a problem and bought myself a thick necked guitar. Make do with what you have, fat fingers and the guitar you bought!

Photo interlude - Tortoise Shell butterfly today.

I have had to turn the hot water on, when we have had cloud all day, but yesterday it  is was piping hot after a sunshine full day. I do have a couple of places where mould has come through, and a place where the inside white paint has bubbled up. On these warm days I am leaving the windows open ( mosquito guard in place ) to get some air in the house and to try to dry it out. 

Over the last few days I have noticed we have been getting dew on the cars and the leaves of plants. That must mean it is getting much colder at night, although I don’t feel cold in the house at night . When I walked to feed the stray cats, I heard gunshots. I have seen a guy with a dog with what looks like a gun on his shoulder in a case. Most of the birds  I have seen here are small, unless there are grouse hiding in the undergrowth.

At Grans I used my reusable mug for the first time and I was thanked for doing so. The price for my pie and coffee was at a very reduced rate! There was a lot of Christmas joviality, it’s their last day until the New Year today. I said Happy Christmas in Greek, I also told them I was going to Sifnos in Greek too, but I had to resort to English for the days! I then sat on a bench on the concrete harbour apron and soaked up the sun.

I then drove to a beach, Vagia which is on one of the roads to Mega Livadi. It’s part of a huge bay with two other beaches called Koutalas and Ganema. I knew there was a path that headed up to a wall you could see from the beach. For some reason, I could see the path this time, last time it seemed obscured. It’s not a bad path, it’s not steep and reasonable clear of undergrowth. Eventually you reach the wall, you then walk along the top of it and this goes all the way round and then turns left to follow the line of the coast back to Livadi. Eventually it comes to an end. When you look at it, you realise like the miners path, it’s one heck of an achievement. You can see the way it’s been built up from the level of the mountain surface. It makes me wonder what is holding it together? I have built a few dry stone walls in our garden, but these were nothing like this! 

There were some amazing rock formations, I saw some greens, a marble like rock, rusty coloured ones, all sorts of different colours and shapes. There were a few ruined buildings and  signs of mining, I think I saw the rusting remains of a railway line in the path I was walking on. There were also lovely views of Vagia beach.  I doubled back and decided to lie on one the suitably shaped rock formations, that seemed the best fit for a human shape. I listened to some more of the Greek course, and then the sound of the sea, crashing into the rocks below. There was no one, no boats, only planes flying at thirty odd thousand feet above this little island.

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On the way back it seemed a bit chilly out of the sun, which I left behind me as I turned away from my resting place.I was soon down to beach level and walking back to the car. I then drove back to Hora and gave the onions and garlic a drink.