Dateline Milna: Sunday Update

The thunder and lightning rolling in from Italy brought rain all Friday night and it was still going on at 5:30 a.m. Saturday when Julia left in a taxi for the U.K. for 12 days of business meetings, having a birthday send-off with an anchovy dinner at Slavko and Nada's and then lightning and thunderclaps shaking our old stone house and keeping us awake all night.  So I gave up trying to sleep and was up crawling about in our attic space at 2 a.m. scaring the geckos and looking for the source of our water leaks which are harming our guest room.  Almir had arrived from Sarajevo, vacationing for about a week, and he seemed to have slept soundly through it all.  Now the sun has returned but the sea is chilly.  Today is the annual tug-of-war between Brac and the neighboring island of Solta.  The winner claims honors and – for the next year - the small rock of Mrduja, which lies midway in a channel between the islands.  A huge flotilla streams out from each island in the late afternoon, meeting at Mrduja for the contest, then returns for much music and party-making, of course.