Okay, I’m back on track after seeing the inside of far too many shops in Agios Nicholas and drinking far too much Metaxa. Yesterday, when we got back to the house, the wind had ceased and the temperature had ramped up. Now it’s bloody windy again, and hot: 28C inside and outside the house. I’ve just caught up in my journal, replied to some emails, done an interview for a site called We Love This Book and will soon delve into that Tuppence short story.

So what did I think of Agios Nicholas? It was a nice place as you’ll see from the pictures here, but my goodness the Greeks are silly with their prices. They remind me of the restaurant owners Gordon Ramsey often tried to put back on track: noting a drop in custom their response was always to put the prices up, then get pissed off when potential customers gave them the finger and walked on by. In the centre of Ag Nik, by the harbour, we wanted to find somewhere to sit down and enjoy a half litre of white wine which, in Makrigialos, ranges from €3 to €5, but the prices there ranged from €8 upwards. I told this to one of the waiters – outside one place trying to drag people inside – and he told us we’d never find wine in Agios Nicholas below €8. Lying prick. We wandered five minutes away from the harbour and found it for €5 and the owner of that place consequently got our custom for a large meal the following night.

Other things to note: made me laugh to see the look on some Greeks’ faces when I spoke to them in their own language. Some weren’t sure how to respond, one gave us immediate discounts, which goes some way to counter the woman in a jewellery shop who tried to short-change me by €40. Maybe she made a mistake and maybe I’m just a bit too cynical. Maybe.

The hotel we stayed in was nice and, as some will have noted on Tuesday night, it had WiFi, which I used quite a bit after the Metaxa. We also found flowers in the room and a note offering us a couple of free drinks at the bar when one of the staff spotted Caroline’s birthday cards. All in all an enjoyable trip, but we’re glad to be back home and on familiar territory.

Friday 13th July
Another broiling day today. It was over 28C outside this morning at 9.00AM, there was no wind and the cicadas were shrieking. Now, at 9.50, the temperature is just a spit away from 30C. A swim will definitely be required later, meanwhile, I must get back to work on the story. I just have a few bits to tidy up and must decide between three alternative titles: The Client, Tuppence and The Client, or The Other Gun. I’m leaning towards the last one at the moment.

Saturday 14th July
Okay, in so far as I can ever say that I’ve finished a story (they always get extra tweaks every time I look at them) I’ve finished one that I am calling The Other Gun. I’ve now moved on to one with the provisional title Dr Whip and, once I’ve polished that off, will get on with the next book.

It’s very hot today with the 9.00AM temperature being 29.4C and now at 11.30 it being 32C, but I guess any of you around London at the moment don’t want to be reading this. Yesterday, down in Makrigialos it hit 38C, so over 100F, and today is certain to be even hotter. It’s quite enervating, and the round of watering with the house’s grey water leaves me dripping sweat, but I have to keep on top of this if I want my plants to survive. The first of these below is a shrub grown from seeds gathered outside our favourite restaurant. Anyone know what it’s called (the shrub I mean)? After that are some of the numerous chilli plants I have growing, then a couple of Agnus Castus or ‘Monk’s Pepper’ plants which I hope no one mistakes for something they look quite similar to!

I’ve just been watching a program about this weird thing called The Orbit in London on the Olympic site. It’s that red thing that looks like a helter-skelter – looks as if someone is setting up a funfair there. Anyway, don’t the BBC arts correspondents talk a load of bollocks? And don’t the artists, designers or architects feed them plenty of bollocks to wax lyrical about? Apparently The Orbit is representative of our new multicultural age, or something. Certainly it could represent our age, since it’s a useless object on which money has been pissed away, looks like it’s incomplete and wrapped in sagging scaffolding, and appears to be technology and design tied in a ridiculous knot. I do wonder when the twits spending public money on follies like this will realize that when they want art they really need to avoid dicks practised in the art of bullshit.

Shame on you Boris Johnson.

Sunday 15th July
I’ve just planted load of statice plants in the back garden. These produce flowers that can last in a vase in the house until you need to wipe cobwebs off them. In fact, they don’t really need water because as they dry out they retain their colour and shape. We first spotted them being sold in bunches in Sitia market and only then realized we’d brought along seeds of the same. I had two plants surviving from last year – pink and white – and now I’ve also planted blue and yellow.

Monday 16th July
Well, I continued working over the weekend on the latest short story, making a large number of alterations to the text I had and adding about 2,000 words. Here I usually do stuff around the house and garden on the weekends but this last one it’s just been too hot. Half an hour outside has to be followed by half an hour recovering inside. After I planted those statice, for example, I left a trail of sweat across the tiles as I headed inside, then had to wash the salt out of my eyes, drink cold water and just sit until the sweat stopped pouring down my back. This was a good time, therefore, to turn on the laptop and do something less physical.

Yesterday the daytime temperature up here hit about 34C (in the shade), while down in Makrigialos it reached 39C. Today we’re told is going to be hotter with a temperature down there on the low 40s, but then in ensuing days it will drop to the mere mid-30s.

Tuesday 17th July
I picked up some cheap mega collections of SF stories to go on my Kindle and have been steadily working my way through them. They are funny. Venus is always a jungle planet and every story about Mars usually has to make some mention of a canal. In one story a future Earth was under threat and its whole population of 3 billion might be destroyed. Vehicle control panels, whether they are flying cars or spaceships, are always scattered with dials and gauges like something out of Jules Verne, and I laughed out loud when a spaceship’s lifeboat went way off course because it blew a transistor.

But of course, people will be laughing at my stories, and not so far in the future. At least these stories were not written in a time when technological development is heading towards the point when a story might go out of date just in the time it takes to write it. Perhaps one for the future: electronic fiction that perpetually adjusts itself to stay contemporary – some kind of software that quietly deletes transistor and replaces it with integrated circuit, then quantum processor…

Sixteen days to go until the release of Zero Point. Don’t forget to get your order in!

The billions of Zero Asset citizens of Earth are free from their sectors, free from the prospect of extermination from orbit, for Alan Saul has all but annihilated the Committee by dropping the Argus satellite laser network on it. The shepherds, spiderguns and razorbirds are somnolent, govnet is down and Inspectorate HQs are smoking craters. But power abhors a vacuum and, scrambling from the ruins, comes Serene Galahad. She must act before the remnants of Committee power are overrun by the masses. And she has the means.

Var Delex knows that Earth will eventually reach out to Antares Base and, because of her position under Chairman Messina, knows that the warship the Alexander is still available. An even more immediate problem is Argus Station hurtling towards the red planet, with whomever, or whatever trashed Earth still aboard. Var must maintain her grip on power and find a way for them all to survive.

As he firmly establishes his rule, Alan Saul delves into the secrets of Argus Station: the results of ghastly experiments in Humanoid Unit Development, a madman who may hold the keys to interstellar flight and research that might unlock eternity. But the agents of Earth are still determined to exact their vengeance, and they are closer to him than he knows…

Yeah yeah yeah, as people have delighted in telling me I got the last two dates on my blog wrong. I put it down to losing track of time here and, frankly, not giving a toss. I might go and correct it or I might just leave it as it stands, for the historical record or something.

Work on the Tuppence thing continues apace but I have no word counts to write down. Roughly the chunk of text I had started off at about 18,000, lost 3,500, gained a 1,000 and has had all sorts of stuff completely rewritten. I reckon the end result will be a short story of about 20,000 (if you can actually call something of that length ‘short’).

Thursday 5th July
And of course (continuing from yesterday) the text removed is not lost and now sits in a file called ‘Dr Whip’ which I know sounds like the title of a porn star, but isn’t. This lot should result in yet another short story. Today, with Tuppence, I’ve reached the point where I can actually continue writing new stuff rather than fill sections in to knock the story into shape and give it direction. I’ll be getting onto that shortly.

Well, dancing to the Wii has resulted in me dropping 1 stone 4lb since January and I now weigh 12 stone 6lb, yet it still doesn’t quite feel like enough. It’s not the weight I want to lose, but the stubborn gut that seems to be clinging like a limpet. Maybe it’s loose skin yet to shrink to fit my new form (I wish). No more dancing now since in the afternoons we head down to Makrigialos beach, however, I have swum a few miles over the last few weeks and hope this will be enough to stop me turning back into Mr Blobby.

Saturday 7th July
As I’ve probably noted before here I’ve been a bit lax in my reading, in fact, until recently, I hadn’t read a book since April. The first book I started with, about a week ago, was Ben Bova’s Return to Mars. This was enjoyable in its way, but I started to get seriously annoyed with the central character. This semi-mystical half Navaho scientist was horrified by the idea of tourists on Mars, of hotels being built there, various tours, maybe people mountain climbing offered on Olympus Mons. These horrible ignorant tourists would be tramping all over the place, maybe picking up souvenirs etc. Mars, it seems, should be the preserve of serious scientists and academics only, none of the plebs should be allowed to go there and it should remain untouched by crass commercialism. Apparently the working plebs must put their hands in their pockets to pay for pure science, and how dare they expect that science to benefit them.

Having skipped through the last chapters of that book (and laughed at Mars being claimed by the Navaho nation) I then turned my attention to my Kindle. When I first got it I loaded it up with some bargain SF short story collections. I also picked up a novella by Guy Haley called Nemesis Worm, and this is what I started on. This was an enjoyable read and an enjoyable romp with an AI gumshoe and German cyborg on the trail of a homicidal AI. It was the perfect length for a beach read too. The only negative thing I would say about it is it needs a bit more copy editing as there are quite a few errors in there. For example, is it Smillie (which in my mind comes out as S-milly) or Smiley (as in George Smiley and Smiley’s People)?

Sunday 8th July
We’re into day two of a hot moisture-sucking wind – the meltemi (or it might be the sirocco – hard to tell up here) has arrived. Just like last year it is stripping the grapevine of leaves and leaving them green and crispy scattered across the garden or piled on the terrace behind plant pots. I’m coming to the conclusion that we’ll never get more than a handful of grapes off this vine because where it is on our house it’s just too exposed. Vines that produce up here are generally low and clustered together in fields or sheltered by other buildings. The wind is also stripping the datura tree and generally frazzling all my other plants – drying out their pots in no time at all. This is a bit of a worry because we’re going to Agios Nicholas for two nights from tomorrow for Caroline’s birthday. I might be losing some plants and our time in Agios Nicholas might be spent dodging tumbling umbrellas and generally finding places to shelter from the perpetual blasts.

Tuesday 10th July

I’m sitting on a hotel balcony in Agio Nicholas now with the luxury of WiFi. The ruddy wind is still blowing, I have a Metaxa hangover … ach, that’s all for now.

Having completed the first draft of Penny Royal (1) I’m again contemplating what to do next – whether to just go straight into the next book or write something shorter – and it’s occurred to me to do something tactical. The large section I extracted from Penny Royal (1) has the makings of a short story or even a novella. If I get that done and aim it at some American publication, (maybe Asimov’s which, incidentally, you can subscribe to through your Kindle now), and if its accepted, that should be help towards promoting the Night Shade Books release of the Owner series next year. Yeah, that’s what I’ll do.

Thursday 28th June
I’ve started on the Tuppence thing (this was the name of the main character in the stuff I extracted from the Penny Royal book) and can see how it will develop. There are about 18,000 words there so we’re talking about quite a long story when I’m done. I’m also going to do something I was contemplating above. I’m going to sign up for Asimov’s through my Kindle. Since Caroline bought me the device for Christmas I haven’t really used it and I really ought to. I really ought to get back into some reading, since the last book I read was on April 1st. Okay, to work.

Friday 29th June
The winds of Crete arrived yesterday (that’s the title of an interesting book by the way) so, after I’d done my work for the day, we didn’t bother heading down to the beach. From past experience we knew that we’d end up being sand blasted and that the sea would be chilled by the wind. Instead we went off to Sitia for some shopping, where we first headed to a wood yard for some timber. This I brought back and used to repair our hall bookshelf (knackered by the damp in there) and which I’ll use to make some shelves for the kitchen – finally finishing that job off. Yawn.

Oh, and just to counter that horrible picture above, here’s our datura tree:

Monday 1st July
Blimy, it’s July already. I could say I’m baffled about where the time went, but looking around me I can see precisely where it went: into a kitchen, a bamboo ceiling, the garden and finishing the first draft of Penny Royal.

We’ve had no more nasty visitors in the house but, contemplating the fact that there are very few ways a scorpion that size can get into the house I’ve come to a conclusion that makes me shudder. A couple of weeks back I obtained the spray and gas canister to rid a building of wood worm, which I needed for the ruin. This was all pretty poisonous stuff so to spray the beams I put on overalls and a raincoat from the car while spraying the beams. After I’d sealed off the ruin and then released the gas canister inside I came back down here and dumped jacket and overall in the spare room. Now, that jacket was in the boot of the car which, a week prior to this, I filled up with wood from the side of the road (I’m always grabbing wood like this to go in the stove or use for various repairs etc). I’m fairly sure now that I picked up the scorpion with that wood and that it probably then crawled into my raincoat. I probably had the thing in my pocket or crawling around inside the coat while I was spraying. Okay, enough – I really don’t want to think about that much more.

Back to work on Tuppence (what is it with this coinage thing?).

Tuesday 2nd July
I’ve come to the conclusion that the ‘Tuppence thing’ needs chopping down even further. There’s a character in there called Dr Whip who, at the instigation of Penny Royal, is transforming into something yet to be revealed. He’s an interesting character with an interesting story but, I’m finding him at a loose end. Better I extract him completely and do something separate with him.

That’s all for now.

It was nice to stumble on a page detailing sales in Borderlands. Sitting at the top of their trade paperback (import version) list was The Departure. Hopefully this is a foretaste of how the book will go when Night Shade Books release it next year. Next twittering this I then learned (thanks Jesper) that its star rating has been steadily climbing on Amazon, rather confirming my suspicions about a large tranche of negative reviews appearing there, very quickly, when it was first released, and mostly from people who had never felt inclined to review a book before.

Update:
I just got an email from a fan who read The Departure and has preordered Zero Point. His name is David Davis and he invited me for a drink at the House of Commons to see if he could persuade me that not all politicians are rampant thieves. I suppose it’s possible he’s that David Davis, considering he studied molecular and computer science at Warwick, but I suspect a wind-up.

So you could call that good news, but of course the cosmos has to restore balance, so I learn by text that my mother has cancer. There’s not really very much I can say about that.

Monday 25th June
Well done Egypt! Given a chance with democracy and you vote for a theocracy! Of course the Muslim Brotherhood president is making all sorts of moderate noises so I’ve no doubt the tourist trade will flower under the new regime and no one will get whipped or stoned for man-on-man action, drinking beer or getting their tits out on the beach. And certainly Egyptian women won’t be impelled to dress like dust-sheet draped daleks. I’m so sure that those enthusiastic crowds of supporters – mostly young bearded men – won’t try to enforce their ideology on the rest of Egypt. I’m sure that anyone suspicious of the Muslim Brotherhood (and its dearth of sisters) is just culturally insensitive and ignorant.

So, while Caroline watched England’s exit from the European cup last night I sat out on the terrace drinking Toplou (though I did return inside to watch the humiliating extra time and the penalty shoot-out). Now, I had caught quite a bit of sun yesterday so that accounted for much of the colour of the face looking back at me from the bathroom mirror, but perhaps not the purple hue and the eyes like kidneys. Checking this morning I note that this dry white wine is 13.5% ABV. Um. Back to the 11% stuff from Lidl, then.

Tuesday 26th June

9.50
The end is nigh! The Penny Royal book now stands at 138,932 words with just a few more sections to write for me to complete the first draft, and I reckon I’ll be polishing them off today (I’d better finish them today – I promised Caroline a meal out tonight to celebrate that particular watershed). This should take the book clear of 140,000 words then after that I need to look at doing some of those chapter starts, each of which average about 250 words so that’ll add another 5,000. The book then should be about the length of The Technician. Okay, enough waffling here, to work…

12.20
That’s it: I’ve felt justified in finally writing ENDS at the bottom of the last page. The additional sections brought the total word count to 141,700 but then that dropped again as I removed to another file about a 1,000 words that came after that ENDS – sections I had removed to perhaps later use, bits that didn’t fit the plot, the occasional irrelevant ramble. That’s it for the first draft, but I certainly haven’t finished. I have the bits to do as noted above, there’s stuff that needs tidying, firming up, fining down, like, for example, I must make one character hate a piece of jewellery because it matches the colour of the eyes … she had. But it’s like a stone statue. I’ve carved roughly, I’ve taken out the little chisels for some more fine carving and it is now identifiable as the finished product. Now I need to do some sanding and polishing and perhaps that will reveal faults that will require the little chisel again.

I hope the arm doesn’t drop off.

So what shall I waffle about in this warm-up to writing my 2,000 words? My word count last week was 10283 on the book (and 1192 on blogs) putting it at 125,843, which is about the length of Cowl. I’ve now opened another file called Pennyroyal2 in which I’m noting down ideas and transferring the occasional unused section from the present book. Maybe another week, or two, and the first draft of the first book will be done and I can move over to that other file.

Someone asked me last night if, after a break (like the one I had doing the kitchen and other jobs around the house) I return to a book refreshed. Not really. Generally if I stop writing a first draft for a while that makes it harder to return to the writing. I have to reread a lot, check out any notes I made and try to remember that last bright idea I was toying with. This is why I’m pleased with last week’s word count – I quickly got back on track.

So, Samaras, of New Democracy, won the Greek election. He’s described as centre right which in Europe, for my American readers, means somewhere to the left of Obama. I’ve no doubt that the markets, and other European governments, will be relieved. However, Greece will not pay its debts; it simply cannot pay them. There’ll be delays in implementing ‘austerity’, there’ll be riots and protests on the streets of Athens. It’ll continue to be a bureaucratic nightmare to try and start a business here. Taxes will go up and new taxes will be introduced, thus killing off even more businesses. Corruption will continue to be rife. Fewer and fewer tourists will come here. And, so I’m told, the two hundred billion in Swiss bank accounts won’t be investigated, nor will the reason behind 45% of property sales in London being to Greeks, since many of those in power now are up to their necks in both. Now we can look forward to the whole train wreck continuing in slower motion, but a wreck it will continue to be.

Tuesday 19th June
So, today’s waffle: I did my 2,000 words (well, it’s generally just a little bit more than that) and am currently bringing my main characters together for a confrontation. Hah, even as I wrote that I remembered another plot element to deal with and made a note. Anyway, i can’t say much more about the book than that.

We’re off to Sitia this evening for a talk with a architect and a notary etc along with our Belgian neighbour. He bought his house along with a ruin beside it and has since discovered that the ruin is basically listed as a garden and he cannot renovate it. There are all sorts of rules and regulations here about how much you can build related to the land you have and things like whether that land is in village boundaries. He’s bought more land, and will be buying more still and is trying to wangle a way to get permission to do that renovation. However, I can’t see how this will work because you can’t add land to your own to increase the area you are allowed to build on because that was stopped in 2002 to prevent the proliferation of building. We are involved because our ‘house’ is essentially one half of a house of which he has the other half. We’re prepared to help, but are very wary of raising our heads above the parapet here. Allow the state and the bureaucracy to notice you and you can end up in a whole world of shit (which is another reason why this country is fucked). We’ll go along, listen, but we will not get involved unless absolutely 100% sure no shit is going to come flying our way.

Wednesday 20th June
Pretty sure no shit is going to be flying our way in fact we gain a little some in the way of building area, though the only way to go now for us is upwards – adding another floor – and we’re not really interested in that. If anyone is being shafted in any way it’s our neighbour, with all the fees and taxes involved. Anything we need, like a lawyer to check out whatever we have to sign, he’s paying for. In the end the aim of this is for his benefit and we just didn’t really have to get involved.

After this meeting we were invited for maybe something to eat and drink, but we had to head back for the England game against the Ukraine. This was for Caroline, though since it was windy outside I watched it was well (man of the match: that England goalkeeper Joe Hart). Of course I’m a little bit of an oddity here to many Greek men. To try and strike up some sort of rapport with me they’ll often resort to football, whereupon I have to direct them to Caroline, who knows more about it and has more of an interest.

‘So what are you taking to the G20?’ he asked.
‘Oh the usual,’ the politician replied. ‘Suntan lotion, swimming trunks, condoms and indigestion tablets – same package I take to those climate conferences.’

Thursday 21st June
I was ranting a bit here about the G20 and politicians before I started on my 2,000 words, but it was vague, so I deleted it. Anyway, screw all that. Now having done my 2,000 the Penny Royal thing is past 134,000 words and I’m now into the end game. A visualized confrontation has just started, wreckage and debris are strewn in orbit around a world I shan’t name right now, and I’m starting to truly realize that next week I’ll probably be making a start on the next book!

Now it’s time for Internet stuff, followed by a swim, then white wine, then a visit to the Gabbiano…

I stopped in at a pharmacy in Makrigialos the other day to stock up on Depon and Brufen – the versions you buy here respectively of Paracetamol and Ibuprofen. I stupidly wasn’t paying attention when I bought them, probably because someone we knew was in the pharmacy, because we were in a hurry, and I was vaguely grateful to be able to change a €50 note. Only afterwards did I realise that I’d been charged rather a lot, and only later still did I decide I had been ripped off and become determined to go back and raise a stink, even more so when I checked the receipt.

It made no sense. The Depon was correct: I bought two boxes at 78c each – the price was on the boxes. The prices were on the boxes of Brufen too, one was €2.04 the other was €7.76, and I was charged in total €15.22 for them. Boiling, I went into the pharmacy demanded to know why I’d been charged so much. Apparently, so the pharmacist told me, the price on the boxes is irrelevant. It scanned at €7.61 a box which is the price I would be charged in any pharmacy in Greece. I said this was crazy since I was paying about €2 last year and demanded and got my money back.

So what the hell is going on? One point to note is that you simply cannot buy drugs in a supermarket here – one of those closed shops that kills business here – but whether the prices are set by government or the pharmacists I have no idea. Maybe the Greek company that supplies these pills is on the ropes and has whacked its prices up, which is the usual silly reaction here. After this episode I checked British prices. Here the pack of Brufen contained 20x400mg pills. You can buy a pack of 16x200mg Ibuprofen pills from ASDA for 41p, which works out at 5.125p per 400mg, so multiply that by 20 and you get £1.02. €7.61=£6.18 so for the equivalent here I would be paying six times the price. Madness, but then, you’ll get ripped off in either country. If I want one of those blue inhalers in Britain I have to go to the doctor’s, get pilloried about my smoking, then take a prescription to the pharmacy and pay the prescription charge of between £7&£8 for one inhaler. Here they can be bought over the counter for about €3 (£2.43) … well, that was last year’s price…

Monday 11th June
I finished off some bits and pieces on Sunday and now, but for an irritating double light switch – I bought a new one but the way it is wired up is completely different so now the old one hangs out the wall since the thickness of tiles makes it a bastard to secure – and some end shelves I have to build at some point, the kitchen is complete. On Saturday we even managed to get the remainder of the door handles. Apparently the shop managed to get hold of them from another branch in Athens.

The temperature has soared here. Yesterday, when I remembered to move the temperature sensor to the shade, it read 32C, though part of that may be due to it sitting on warm tiles and not having quite cooled down. Most of the evening we spent sitting outside playing Yahtzee, well, until our ancient eyes failed us.

The first succulents are now flowering round the garden stepping stones and I’m glad to see I have the full range of colours. Lilies and other flowers are opening too. I have two small shrubs growing called Monk’s pepper (it produces peppercorns) and have bought mandarin and apricot shrubs to replace a couple of the yuccas on the bank.

Things do grow really well here, which is why so many Greeks are now retreating from the cities to the countryside where they can at least survive, which is an advantage they have over countries like England. I suspect that if Syriza get in next weekend this exodus will increase. In its way Greece is a microcosm of the rest of Europe: big sprawling high-spending socialist and often corrupt governments (including that crowd of jerks in Brussels) have completely arse-fucked their countries. Realizing far too late that the answer, surprise surprise, is to stop pissing the money up the wall, some have tried ‘austerity’ (ho ho). Unfortunately, they can’t stop spending, since most of their citizens, having been turned into employees, dependents or clients of the state, want the money to keep flowing so vote them out of power, then vote for the empty promises and impossible to finance plans of those parties even further to the left.

Meanwhile, others are stepping further to the right, as sure as those voting for the other wing that more authoritarian government is the answer. It isn’t.

Tuesday 12th June
I’ve got a little bit of a hangover this morning and am struggling to get going. I blame Toplou. Surprisingly for an island covered in grapes and supplied with 300 days a year of sunshine Crete is lacking in good wines. Most of the local stuff is pretty rough, the only decent red wines are in Lidl and from South Africa, Australia and California etc, and since in such a hot climate we like chilled white wine we had settled on cartons of a white wine from the same shop, imported from Italy. However, our Belgian neighbour introduced us to a wine made at a local monastery called Toplou (this means ‘with the gun’, apparently – the monastery has an interesting history). It is very nice and very more-ish, and I certainly had far too much last night. Zero alcohol today. An ophthalmoscope down my throat would reveal my liver waving a white flag.

Final plot elements of Penny Royal (1) are slotting home nicely, with a sound like a knife being drawn across a sharpening steel, and I’ve found a way to drag in a gabbleduck and the Technician, and have other elements in place for the start of the next book. Currently this one stands at 118,000 words and so, if I keep up my present pace, is maybe a few weeks away from completion (Cowl was 125,000 while The Line of Polity was 175,000, and between those two figures has always been my target), which should put me one year and two months ahead of Macmillan. Thereafter I’m considering diving straight into the next book, and then the next. It would be seriously gratifying if I could get three books done before the first has to be delivered – books in the bank, so to speak. I would have completed my five-book contract with Macmillan and put myself three years ahead of their present publishing schedule. Maybe then I would feel ‘safe’ enough to turn my attention to the fantasy trilogy in my files, maybe the contemporary novel there (though it’s not so contemporary now – not a mobile phone in sight) or tackle a load of short stories. Then again, maybe I’ll do some short stories after this one, maybe a novella or two – I haven’t sent anything to Asimov’s for years and there’s always the Kindle route to explore further.

Wednesday 13th June
After I polished off my 2,000 words yesterday, and it being very hot and still here, we headed down to Makrigialos for a swim. We had absolutely no problem getting sun beds next to Revans bar – there wasn’t anyone there. It was 30C there, the sea was lovely and warm and a slight breeze prevented us from feeling like we were being grilled. Scanning each direction along the beach I counted fourteen people sunbathing or swimming with maybe another four over on the harbour beach … on June 12th, nearly halfway into the first month of the tourist season. Not good.

Thursday 14th June
Yesterday the beaches were again nearly deserted, as you can see:

I must also take a photograph of the practically deserted high street. I have to wonder how some people are going to survive in business here, like Makis, who had a gyros shop on the street before but last year opened a big place on the harbour, or like the English couple who opened a bar on the beach and who will, therefore have to stump up rent unlike many of the Greek-owned businesses. Meanwhile Yorgos at Revans is insuring he actually has some beach to put his sun beds employing a piece of earth-moving equipment called Ali:

I’m slowly coming to the conclusion that our garden must be radio-active. With the succulents I plant around the stepping stones I started off with red, then pink, salmon pink and yellow flowers. Last year white ones appeared and quite possibly an orange one, though I’m not sure. Now we definitely have two shades of orange:

Friday 15th June
Not being a particularly trusting soul (and having wrenched my back a bit) I went to the pharmacy in Koutsouras to check on the price of that Brufen I mentioned before. It turns out that a box of 400mg Brufen does cost €7.61, which is of course ridiculous. However, what the chemist in Makrigialos failed to mention was that a box of the same number of 600mg Brufen costs €2.85. Go figure. Apparently, because the 400mg are the most popular, that’s the one the price has been racked up on. I submit that should only work as an income-gathering strategy if people are too stupid to figure out how to cut a pill in half. Um, I’ll stop that line of thought right there.

Since I’m a bit ahead of Macmillan I decided damn it, I wanted to get all the odd bits and pieces done here. However, I think it’s an aphorism applies to me along the lines of ‘work expands to fill the time available’. Take, for example, the microwave. I was going to put it on some end shelves (yet to be built), but someone suggested I put it on a shelf above the oven, which would require a stainless steel cowl underneath so the shelf wouldn’t get all sticky and horrible.

No problem, because there’s a guy who works with stainless steel in the next village along behind ours. I duly built the shelf, with the wood underneath to which the steel could be fitted – meanwhile being sidetracked into making some small wooden shelves to go over the plug sockets – then went to see said guy. He wasn’t there and the other guy I talked to had no idea when he would be. I foresaw numerous trips to that place and little joy. Meanwhile a knackered stainless steel washing machine appeared below our house. I contemplated this object for a while then asked who I thought it might belong to whether it was for the ‘scoopithi’ – the bin. He said it was and when I asked if I could have it said, ‘yes’. I took the thing to cut up the next day … Meanwhile our neighbour was buying some large terracotta planters and one of them was broken during delivery. I suggested I cut off the broken bit to make a smaller pot. He said I could take it if I wanted. The result of these was that the next day I spent cutting up a washing machine to obtain my stainless steel cowl, which I fitted, along with the socket for the microwave, and cutting up said pot (the broken bit forming a small border for our orange tree):

This expansion of work to fill the time available has resulted in me doing some other bits and pieces. The kitchen now looking better and better I decided to tidy up the arch next to it:

I then went on to do a bit of painting, starting with the mess left here when we had the roof windows and vents put in. I noted that the stone beside our bed was spattered with concrete from this work and cleaned it up, filling in the gaps and rough bits around the edges:

When Caroline repainted the old kitchen cupboards for the spare room and polished up the handles I decided to fill the gaps and crappy bits around the stones in there too:

Composting has always been a problem here – we’ve used big buckets which filled up quickly and I’ve often had to bury their contents, so I built a much needed composter:

Having repainted the damp-damaged and peeling wall in the hall I’ve noted that the bookcase we had against it has been damaged too, so must do a bit of woodwork to correct that:

What else? Well, there are the rest of the stones throughout the house needing work; I must explore the idea of drilling into the front wall and injecting damp-proofing liquid; the shutters could really do with a coat of varnish; the stove needs its glass replaced, to be cleaned up and sprayed with heat-paint; I must build those end shelves for the kitchen; I need to get an electric extractor fan and fit it; the bamboo ceiling needs rubbing down and varnishing; I must fit a worktop in the spare room … oh, and I really need to get a book written this year.

Next a selection of pictures of the tiling job in the kitchen: