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:

You would think, with all the problems Greece has, all the austerity, riots, wage freezes and sackings and people shooting themselves outside parliament, that there would be some effect on prices here. Things should be cheaper, and almost certainly they would be if Greece didn’t have that huge millstone round its neck called the Euro. Instead, everything is getting more expensive as the government sucks harder and shoves up business costs, and while the Greeks pursue their idiot inclination to screw the maximum money out of every sale rather than reducing prices to sell more. Let me give you an example.

Last year as we completed work on our ‘ruin’ we of course wanted windows. From a local supplier they were more expensive than what we would have paid in England, however, because of the hassle involved in getting hold of anything cheaper, and of course the extra cost in shipping or whatever, we just paid up. After that we wanted a 2 metre kitchen unit with integral sink. This was silly money, but we paid it anyway. However, on the basis of the price of that unit and sink I damned well wasn’t going to buy a new kitchen here for the main house.

Instead, while in England, I went to Screwfix then a carrier called Nomad. The result of this is that we’ll get a flat-packed kitchen, consisting of 3 metres of work-surface, six cupboards plus doors and a sink with all taps and fittings, delivered to our door at just £100 more than we paid for the unit up in the ruin. Of course I’ll have to fit this all myself but it’s not exactly rocket science. Without any tiling I reckon on a couple of days of work. End result? Buying the kitchen in England, paying to have it shipped and then spending two days fitting it myself will have saved me, at a minimum (because I’ve heard how much others have paid for their kitchens here) about €3,000.

It’s a ridiculous situation and, until Greece gets out of the Euro, until it brings its prices down to where they should be, which by some estimates are a third of what they are now, until someone lets the pus out of its artificially inflated economy (and bloated government), it’s not going to change.

Here’s another price for your delectation: petrol is now €1.95 a litre here.

Ooh, bit of luck today: Michalis arrived with his strimmer, which he was going to loan to me to knock down the weeds on our bank, and did the job himself.

Saturday 7th April
Yesterday I only managed to write just over 800 words rather than my target of 2,000, but never fear, I have justification. I’ve reached a point in the story where I’ve realized I been overdoing it with the plot threads. Two characters seem to be blending and indistinct, and one of them is turning into a complication that distracts from the main thrust of the story. I’ve mentioned this character before. He’s called Tuppence, with his sidekicks Dr Whip and a troodon dinosaur called Harriet. I really enjoyed writing about these – their general weirdness, power and strange motivations – but they are too much. I am, therefore, stripping out the entire plot thread involving them.

I don’t know who said it, and I’m not entirely sure of the exact quote involved (of course if I was on the internet I could give it to you verbatim and appear knowledgeable) but someone said that in writing it is necessary to kill your babies. This is what I am doing now. But in reality this particular baby, or collection of babies, won’t die. I’ll transfer the thread I strip out into a file called ‘Tuppence’ and it is quite likely this will form the basis of either a novella or another book. Thereafter, with the present book reduced by 18,000 words from 88,000, I can concentrate more on the main threads, the main characters: Isobel Satomi, Thorvald Spear and Penny Royal.

Monday 9th April
We’ve had four days of lovely low twenties weather which, with the powerful sunlight here, means shorts and sun lotion (especially on my nose). Over the last week I’ve been tracking the temperature at 9.00 in the morning every day and it climbed from 12 to 18. Now, however, it’s dropped back down to 12. No matter, since it’s still a lot better than it was this time last year.

I just watched a BBC report on alpine resorts going green. Apparently they need more power there but don’t want to spoil the mountain views with power lines. The answer? They’re building great big banks of solar panels which of course look so much better. I despair.

Tuesday 10th April
Some thoughts…

I’ve always been of the opinion that if I was to get something like lung cancer or oesophageal cancer (like my brother) I wouldn’t bother with treatment other than pain killers and, at some point, sleeping pills and a plastic bag. The odds for both of these have always been crappy, something like one in twenty of surviving for five years, with treatment. I’ve seen what that five years means with a neighbour who died of bowel cancer. You might survive for five years but you don’t live them. At the beginning of his treatment he had six ‘good’ days a week and by the end of it he had none. On balance, how many ‘good’ days would he have had if he’d had no treatment at all? And with by brother I’ve seen what it means when the treatment doesn’t really work at all.

However, my opinion is in a state of flux, mainly due to reading numerous science articles on various sites and the generally optimistic stuff on places like Singularity Hub. We’re right on the edge; we’re entering the age of miracles. When you read threads in which scientifically literate people are seriously discussing whether or not any of the baby boomers will enter the age of permanent life extension you have to think a bit more deeply about these things.

A few years ago I read about a scientist who had managed to tissue engineer a human bladder, now I read that he’s making these things constantly and implanting them in people who need them. I’ve always been fascinated by the development of exoskeletons, now one example has passed all inspections and is actually being used … cripples are walking. Stem cell advances are occurring every day, heart muscle and other tissues being renewed. Magic bullets for various cancers are being designed all the time and the odds of survival just keep on changing. I was reading about new treatments and understanding of Alzheimer’s almost on a weekly basis, which is why I would say to Terry Pratchett, just hold on a minute. So, in the light of just these few examples I take the view that maybe a visit to Dignitas should be delayed for as long as possible. You could be taking that drink just at the moment that someone, somewhere, is having a Eureka moment.

Wednesday 11th April
So much for the wonderful sunny weather here. On Monday the morning temperature dropped 6 degrees with cloud gradually filling up the sky. It started raining in the afternoon and ever since it’s been cloudy and cold with frequent downpours. The forecast today is for sun all across Crete but there are no signs of it yet this morning – the 9.00AM temperature is 9 degrees.

I’ve again worked my way through Penny Royal and am back on the word counts hoping to polish off 2,000 today.

I’ve been noticing how the exchange rate of the Pound with the Euro has much improved this year, well, for me. Last year I don’t think it went much above €1.16 but now it seems to be hovering around €1.21. Unfortunately I don’t think this means the Pound is on the rise, but rather that at the moment the Euro is winning the race for the bottom.

Saturday 14th April
Heh, as well as writing, gardening and doing stuff on the house I’ve found myself some more chairs to repair. The Belgian neighbour bought some cane furniture just like the chair I repaired a couple of years ago and two of them have collapsed. I suspect he bought them new. This was just the kind of furniture we originally wanted for outside, but five years ago decided it was too expensive. Seems we may have made the right decision.

Monday 16th April
After severe weather warnings for the Midwest of America the tornados duly turned up, people are being killed and property is being damaged – all this coming after that really cool video clip of a bloody great truck being tossed about in Texas. And all throughout the reports on this is the implication that, ‘Oh my god! Something is changing! The weather is going crazy!’ I wonder, is the place where this is happening called Tornado Alley for a reason? Could it be that tornados have been having a yearly gathering there for hundreds, thousands or tens or hundreds of thousands of years? But it is absolutely true that something has changed in the last few centuries. Now, when the tornados touchdown and churn across the landscape like titanic wood routers they are no longer just tearing up grass, trees, buffalo or the occasional unlucky Indian. In the place of these are buildings, loads of people, trucks and cars and all the infrastructure of civilization. It’s the population, stupid.

Thursday 19th April
I was hoping our remaining wood was going to last until the temperature ramped up but it looks like that is not to be. Yesterday, it being cold with a wind sucking the heat out of the house, us having the stove on all day and having just a few days of wood left, I decided to go in search of some more. We’d been told of a local guy selling it for €100 a pickup truckload so via some friends in a nearby village sought him out. He’ll deliver either today or tomorrow, which in Greek could mean any time in the next few weeks, if at all.

€100 is a good price because others have been charged as much as €180 for the same amount, yet I still wince at the price of wood here. Back in England I could venture out with a chainsaw and in a morning collect an equivalent amount in trees knackered by Dutch elm disease from a few hedgerows. However, I have to rationalize this. It costs two or three Euros a day to heat the house and I compare that to how I’m quite happy to spend €10 on a couple of carafes of wine in some local bar or much more than that on a meal out.

Oh, and now we’re getting some more wood delivered it’s still and sunny with the temperature rising rapidly. Meanwhile, for Paul and Heidi, here’s how the veg patch is looking: