Oh, dear! Yet more rain. I guess the country needs it but does it need quite so much? When is St. Swithin’s Day? Do we have this for forty days I ask myself? And the dreary cold that goes with it. Poor Douglas, came home for sunshine, brought the English weather with him, and now he goes back to England tomorrow the hours of sunshine he enjoyed counted on fingers, possibly a bit more than one hand – but not much.
When I wrote about all the good things visitors brought to the party I forgot to mention the mooseburgers! Yes, mooseburgers, brought by Norwegian friends. I think interesting might be the word. No, actually they were very good and supplied a second dinner after the goat. The Norwegians have also been quite liberal now and again with the smoked salmon, one luxury I could O.D. on.
The Bosie biography has had to be delivered to Torquay as the book-seller through whom Amazon got it does not deliver to Greece. This is not the first time this has happened and it is so annoying and rather silly I feel. I have no idea what their objection could be. After all, with credit cards and Paypal they don’t run the risk of not getting their money, the Greek postal service is actually as efficient as anywhere else despite what people might think and finally there is insurance should something go wrong, so what is the objection?
Annoying also is the courier company used by Lighningsource to deliver my books as they take forever. Four copies of THE JOURNIES WE MAKE were dispatched days ago and I suppose are till sitting in Heraklion as happened before. Then, when they do get around to delivering, they refuse point blank to try and find the house (not difficult; Vamos is hardly a large city or even a big town and there are plenty of landmarks to show the way) but fortunately our friend Georgia who runs the pandopoleo in the square will take them in and hold them for us. The reason for there being four copies is that the National Library of Greece likes to have three copies of books published in Greece. Three! What do they want with three? Does the British Library ask for three? Or congress? There are Greek publishers who produce some wonderful books including very large coffee table ones and where does the library store them all at three copies a throw?
Writing and being published in Greece has disadvantages in other directions as well. For example, Amazon and Penguin USA are running a short story competition with quite a hefty prize in dollars but Greece is not included in the countries eligible for submission. Douglas thought of submitting THE JOURNIES WE MAKE for the Booker prize but guess what – it is published in Greece so not eligible. Also they would more than likely consider it to be vanity published as DCG is not one of your big regular publishers. Ah, well, can’t win ‘em all.