1000s of miles across the globe

I am astonished and yet not astonished. Things are both different and the same; exotic and familiar. From the 747 porthole, between watching films and reading a paperback - A History of Modern Greece - I gazed out at lightning darting across three hundred miles of cumulo-nimbus over Pakistan. Hours over the ocean beneath small cloudlets, then the Northern Territory of Australia, glimpsing the ancient void of the Great Sandy Desert thirty thousand feet below, a passage marked on a screen by my seat - one of many viewing options controlled by a handset. At Sydney after minimal formalities I bought a local mobile chip, reassured myself at an auto cash machine, that the world banking system would give me credit in AU$ (credo=I believe). I came to my hotel at Broadbeach, Gold Coast - after an evening connecting flight from Sydney - in a bus in the dark along the Pacific Boulevard up Hooker Avenue, and, after an easy check-in surrounded by young people enjoying the night club and casino at Conrad Jupiters, I ascended to my room with the help of a key-card, which also worked the lift, unpacked, showered, slept - until nearly noon  (UK time 1.00 in the morning), then gazed on a landscape with a familiar foreground - shopping mall, suburban houses, roads with traffic on the left, but a horizon that seemed different.

Singapore

It's 0915 here but my body says it's only just after midnight, and I've got many miles yet to go.

At last it may be happening

It may just be that by August we shall see work starting on the sports pavilion on the old Victoria Jubilee Allotments site off Hamstead Road. On Tuesday morning I was at a meeting on Parklands Avenue with - left to right in my photo - Cllr Mahmood Hussain, residents who I've not met yet, Cllr Kim Brom, Alan Orr our Constituency Planning Officer, my good friend Liz England from the Handsworth Park Association and Basil Hylton, Chairman of Handsworth Cricket Club (hope I've got that right) and Frank James, Basil's representative on the park committee. Alan said he'd met the representative of Charles Church, the developer of the housing on the site, and that he had agreed with Alan that the 'trigger' point for implementing the terms of the Section 106 Agreement on the VJA site had been arrived at. In other words we are now about to get the 80 new alotments, cricket pitch, two soccer pitches, sports pavilion and children's play areas. I will be sceptical up to the moment I see the work beginning but it was a good meeting.
* * *
I'm just about to board my Quantas flight to Sydney, sitting in a coffee shop at Heathrow, having got up at 5.00 this morning, taken a taxi to Digbeth Coach Station and caught a National Express Coach direct to the airport - impossible by train, and far cheaper, e.g. £18.50 return as opposed to £75 by rail. The news splashed over the papers is that oil prices are unprecedently high and will remain so for the decade. Not unexpected.

Trouble in Newtown

We made up some sandwiches for Amy and I took them down to her on six hour cordon duty after a shooting in Newtown on Friday evening. Lin had put her some cola in a little wine bottle we'd got on a flight, "Dad! I can't be seen drinking from that." I went off to the local shops at Newtown and got her a coke.
It looks as if gun crime is on the increase again after a lull with a linked shooting in Bilston. Mark Cowan and Laura Corcoran wrote in the Birmingham Evening Mail last Wednesday - before this incident:

'that the police and the council had been hoping to rely on civil injunctions to ban so-called 'nominals' (people about whom information is kept on files shared between agencies) from city streets or hanging around with each other in a novel way of ending tit-for-tat gang violence.'

Police and the council were hoping initial interim orders were having an impact.

'But two months ago, the Birmingham Mail revealed the project had hit a snag after a High Court judge dismissed an application for the first full ground-breaking injunctions in January.
West Midlands Assistant Chief Constable Suzette Davenport told a commission on gun and knife crime (video) that firearms offences had started to climb since January. "Having been very successful at the end of last year where the number of gang-related shootings were reduced, since January those figures have gone back up," she said. The figures include gun-related incidents and street robberies. Mr (sic) Davenport later stressed the number of incidents had not reached the same levels as before the operation, codenamed Malva, was launched last summer.
The gun crime setback emerged as Mr Davenport gave evidence to the Channel 4 Street Weapons Commission, chaired by Cherie Booth QC, when it came to in Birmingham yesterday to hear evidence on what could be done to tackle the problem. While the use of injunctions under Section 222 of the Local Government Act 1972 to target gang members is a break from the traditional use of the legislation, which is normally used to target dodgy traders, the authorities are confident they are on firm ground. Birmingham City Council lawyers have lodged an appeal against the decision. Mr Davenport said it was ruled that so-called Section 222 injunctions could not be used they hoped to encourage Government to work on alternatives. She added: "I am hoping we can encourage the Government that if they do not feel Section 222s are appropriate, we can look at other things which can give us an element of control over these people so they are not shooting each other or innocent people in the community."'

E-mail: Simon. Thank you for your email and your kind comments on the story. Unfortunately, it would seem a production error resulted in a few key words being changed regarding the title of Suzette Davenport, who is obviously a woman. I shall raise the matter with the news editor later to try and find out what happened. Regards, Mark Cowan

Trigger points
On Tuesday morning we have a meeting arranged by Councillor Mahmood Hussain at the Parklands Housing office off Hamstead Road to try to hasten the promised playing fields and allotments on the site of the old Victoria Jubilee Allotments (VJA). In return for building on a good third of the site the developer contracted, on 13 May 2004, when planning permission was granted to build on the site, to use the remaining space to lay out 80 allotments which would be transferred to the City Council, to provide a toddlers' play area and associated open space, a play area for older children, to pay £150,800 towards open space improvements off-site, to lay out and transfer to the city council two playing pitches and a cricket square, a pavilion changing room facility and car parking, and 24 affordable housing units on the same site. The section 106 Agreement was completed on 23rd August 2004 and we've been assured by the Constituency Planning Officer, Alan Orr, that at the end of April 2008, 'no changes to the Agreement had been made.' (e-mail sent to Mark Jackson while we were in Greece, dated 30 April 08)

According to Alan Orr 'the required affordable houses have been provided. The developer (initially Westbury Homes, and now Charles Church) entered into a partnership with more than one Registered Social Landlord, to build affordable housing on the site, and there are now more than those required under the S106 Agreement.

Alan went on to say in his e-mail to my friend - and fellow campaigner - Mark Jackson:

that in respect of the other provisions of the 106 Agreement, it is 'common practice' to work to a number of 'triggers' (my italics) depending on the stage of the overall development or the housing element of the development. Thus, the provision of the allotments and the sports pitches is related to the occupation of 40 open market dwellings on the new housing development (but, guess what? '40 dwellings' does not include the 24 affordable housing units. Currently, the sports pitches, according to Alan, have been laid out 'but their transfer to the City awaits the completion of the changing room pavilion and associated car park.'

Alan believes the trigger point for the allotment provision 'has been, or is soon to be reached' and claimed to be arranging a meeting with representatives of Charles Church to ascertain their detailed timescales for the delivery of the sports pitches and allotments to the City Council.

'The provision of the tertiary (older children's) play area and associated open space is required within 6 months of the completion of the final residential unit of the housing development, and the sum of £25,000 towards the provision of a secondary play area (off-site) is to be paid on commencement of the laying out of the open space. The sum of £150,800 (to be used towards open space improvements in Handsworth Park) is to be paid by the developer on approval by the City Council of the works carried out to provide the allotments and sports pitches. '

There's much room for fudge and further prolonged delay, especially if Charles Church are not marketing these properties with any enthusiasm - and housing sales have slowed. I ran a check on Parklands in Handsworth and came up with nothing - though Midland Heart, one of the area's prominent Registered Social Landlords, has property for sale on the Parklands site. The collateral impact of playing fields, allotments and play areas in this area of city can help fight crime as surely as greater contentment can help people's health. I'll say as much at the meeting on Tuesday morning with the developer's representatives, ward councillors, Alan Orr and the chairman of Handsworth Cricket Club, Basil Hylton. We can only perservere.

I have had a phone chart with Paul, my stepfather's biographer, about the VJA after he pointed me towards a website on which he's doing podcasts about allotments - the Allotment Channel. He also pointed me towards another interesting site which I've linked to Democracy Street - Home Farmer. Narrowcasting works so well for important interests that aren't as yet mainstream.

* * *
I've been enjoying a variety of journeys to work in the Midlands this week - negotiating the canal between home and campus and taking the bus and tram on the way to Dudley on Friday. I got change for a tenner from the conductor on the Centro tram. "Gosh that's nice" I said to a chap older than me even as he handed me my change. "Like the old days" he said with a smile. I have the conviction that were the cost savings of single staffed buses and the disappearance of park keepers balanced against the cost of the harm done to urban civility by these so-called savings, the wages of those who provide stewardship of public space would have been amply justified. But you can cost putting out a fire. It's far trickier to cost stopping it happening in the first place. How do you measure and justify the tax bill for prevention and maintenance. I conjecture that rather as the Titanic disaster and the recent Asian tsunami produced almost immediate responses in early warning measures, regardless of cost, so the slow burn growth of public squalor in the wake of the widespread withdrawal of stewardship of public places, has taught us that if people are to return in large numbers to public transport, to parks and urban streets, they must be confident such spaces are afforded protection. Our learning is the product of a long slow decline, lasting over 40 years. It will take as long to recover, and in the meantime we have trickier lessons to learn - about how to ensure our inclination to acquisitiveness, or in the case of most of the world the need to have reliable food and shelter, while protecting and sustaining the Earth's diverse yet mutually supporting system of living things. We are just learning 'to wake from a 300 year old dream' and challenge the tragedy of the commons.

* * *
An exchange with my friend Jan about my talk in Tokyo:

Dear Jan. Just getting acclimatised to England again. Hope you're well. I'd appreciate your views on the talk I need to give in Tokyo to Japanese civil servants in June on 'how to ensure standardisation of services across local governments'. Yes, they want me to talk about that - not how to nurture local choice. Best S

Hi Simon. Good to hear from you. I've kept in touch via your blog. Regarding 'how to ensure standardisation of services across local government', it seems to me that Britain is the perfect example. Despite verbal utterances to the contrary this is exactly what the Government has tried to impose and with some success through: targets, national indicators, inspection regimes, intervention (e.g. Hull & Lincolnshire), ring-fenced funding, capping, 'naming & shaming', to mention but a few. The postcode lottery has been used as an excuse. In the present political climate where Conservatives and Liberals are the dominant forces at local level I can not see any significant decentralisation take place. In fact I think there will be further neutering of local democracy under the banner of local democracy. Sorry to be so pessimistic but I simply cannot see any meaningful 'place shaping' taking place in the foreseeable future other than rhetorically and tokenistic. Hope I am wrong! Best Jan

Dear Jan. I think much can occur in the informal space between legislation and politics. Humans are ingenious. What I have found fascinating from preparing this talk - hardly more than 30 minutes (with translation) - is that in Japan which certainly contains distinctively different areas, the idea of standardised services across the country is a matter of pride and their absence regarded as a problem to be put right quickly. Local choice is not high on the agenda. So I am unclear what this man's work involves.
And what am I to make of this - the local decentralisation law. Thanks for your response. I'm delighted you are taking a look at my blog. Best Simon

Simon. This is fascinating stuff. I suppose national cultures play an important role in all this. I think he is the equivalent of a local government minister in the national government. I also get a strong sense of local ADMINISTRATION being the most important element of decentralisation rather than local GOVERNMENT. I do think developments here since 1997 are interesting in terms of what localism now has become and what the drivers are. The content of Local Area Agreements are almost identical in every locality. The same goes for Community Strategies. Variations, as they exist , tend to be linguistic and in terms of impact and emphasis rather than substance. Everywhere you will see safer & stronger communities, healthier communities, sustainable communities, economic development, wellbeing of the vulnerable, being the priorities. The reason for this is that these are the national priorities upon which LAs are judged through CPA and other inspection regimes and their star rating determined. Also LAs can only access additional funding though performing well on national priorities (e.g. stretched targets). Decentralisation can never be absolute but the absence of powers to raise revenue for local priorities based on popular demand is a major obstacle to local democracy. I think the profiles of local councillors and turn-out in local elections tell their own story. Best Jan

Yes indeed, Jan. The core fact is that only 4.71 pence of every one of my tax pounds is paid directly to local government (I dug that out from Chris Game this morning). I know more is clawed back through grant - but with many many conditions as we all know. In Japan far more of people's tax yen are raised locally. Thanks for your other thoughts. All grist to my mill on this complex subject. S

Simon. Although I remain sceptical, perhaps in a paradoxical and perverse way the present circumstances may just be conducive to more meaningful decentralisation. Given the government's unpopularity they may throw caution the wind and be more inclined to pass powers downwards (it helps with the blame!!) although their track record is not good and I don't think it is in Gordon's nature to give up any powers. There's a Scottish bean-counter for you! It is more likely this debate will ebb and flow with changes hard won and substance difficult to achieve. 'Place Shaping' can only ultimately happen with more powers (of the positive kind, not spying on people's bins or surveying people for school catchment areas) and more revenue being collected locally. It means fundamental questions about policing, health, transport, development, being given much higher local determinants. There are dangers in too much power at local level e.g. Southern states of USA in 50s & 60s re race is a sobering lesson. Only federal intervention turned it around. The dark forces of local determination must somehow be curtailed by national government or counterbalancing forces locally; a real conundrum. Some real challenges for officers and members - local collusion vs professional engagement, corruption - moral & financial. You can see the Japanese anxiety. Best Jan

This is great, Thanks Jan. Yes I know the horror stories. The village can be a source of companionship and care and the locus of a lynch mob. Simon

Good luck with your trips to Australia and Japan. Keep writing your blog so I can keep up with what you are doing. Let's get together when you're back. Best Jan

* * *
From Kalamos Books: A law extending a smoking ban in Turkey to most enclosed areas - including taxis, ferries and shopping malls - came into effect Monday 19 May. Outdoor smoking was also banned in locations such as stadiums and playgrounds. A ban on lighting up in bars, restaurants and coffeehouses will be implemented next year. Smoking is already barred on buses, airplanes and in larger offices.

Petition to save forests in Greece. The Save our forests and give our planet a chance Petition to The Greek Parliament,The United Nations,The European Union was created by and written by Konstantina Stafylaki (ambelos_village@yahoo.com).

One of the best issues of Carfree Times is just out - edited by Joel Crawford, author of Carfree Cities. There's a fascinating conversation with the traffic scientist Professor Hermann Knoflacher of Austria in this issue.

Handsworth

It's good to see Oscar again. I've just been picking up on the gossip in Handsworth, cycling and strolling round our park - full of people from everywhere - picnicking, playing cricket and soccer and handball, running, walking, talking and musing by the ponds on a sunny May afternoon. The place gets its Green Flag inspection (see page 22 in the 2007 report - a PDF file) this week. I've been listening to the apprehensions of the local rangers who maintain the fragile civility that makes the park work. The other day - from two directions - vehicles, K told me, swerved into the park borders and smashed walls and fences; also, about a week ago, "Polish people from 30 to 15 - about fifty men and women - came in the park; smashed the benches in the sunken garden and sprayed graffiti. It's mostly cleared up". As usual there's never an explanation for such bizarre behaviour. I think of anomie (from the Greek, of course - ανόμος without law) - humans from another land, confused there, more so here. It's a bloody nuisance, typical of the work involved running a park in a teaming inner city area. Three Rangers - good men - who know the place like the backs of their hands, constantly alert to incidents like these, help, through their stewardship, to maintain a safe public space enjoyed by thousands.
As I chatted to M he stopped a 14 year old kicking a soccer ball against the shutters of the Sons of Rest Pavilion. "I'll be back" said the boy, resentful, but later we saw him and friends artfully kicking the same ball to and fro on open grass. Two Punjabi men approached M. One had had his nose bloodied in a fracas that had brought the police in earlier. "We're going to have blood" said one. "Can you forget it?' said M "No way" "Can you take your argument out of the park then?" "It makes no difference - in the park or not!" They wandered off - searching. The grounds maintenance teams will be working away to keep the Green Flag in the next few days. We can only hope. It's interesting that one lots of local problem makers - there are always some - come from eastern Europe, from the enlarged EU, though all that I see have been just as keen to relax in the park as the rest of its visitors. This is what parks are about - arenas for negotiating and sustaining community, often assailed, and necessarily fought for by people who treat their job as duty and live their work.
* * *
Picking up tasks for the coming weeks; teaching in East Anglia and on campus and in a few weeks in Australia (see p.8 of the Congress brochure - my first workshop) and Japan. This morning I clicked on the Skype icon Lin had set up for me and 'dialled' John Martin at home, and - blimey - we were seeing and hearing each other clearly. Over 44 minutes - free - we went over plans for my coming visit, as easy as if he were sat across a table - or nearly. I'm late to this way of communicating, given I used the internet first in 1995 with e-mail close behind. This wasn't fiddly. It was as easy as phoning with a handset and - because it was visual - better for our purposes. Our images were fuzzy and there was an occasional sound stumble - but never problematically so.

Before and after

Just before we left there was a small hullabaloo in Democracy Street. We hurried out to join in, and found the Leftheris, and their children and friends peering excitedly into next door's garden where Bubble's litter, in a nest near a wall, were having their first look at the world. Even I could manage enough Greek to join in the glow of pleasure and the counting of the kittens - three, one orange.

We left Ano Korakiana before sunrise on Thursday. We arrived in Birmingham just after midnight this Saturday morning - taking the 900 bus into town, where I phoned a minicab to avoid the higher charges of the hackney cabs, whose drivers knew there were no trains from the airport into the city after 2327. Waiting for the bus, we met two students who'd just arrived from Cyprus. We chatted and called them a taxi from Moor Street for a journey on to Wolverhampton. At Frankfurt airport I read a 9 May copy of USA Today - the headlined special report said 'Gas costs reshape daily life'. An on-line paper this evening starts:

With crude oil now above $120 a barrel and threatening to go higher, it is clear that our preferred and convenient means of going places, our car, the airplane and the rental car soon are going to be parked because they will be too expensive to operate...

* * *
In Venice we left our bags at a friendly hotel on Fondamenta Di Santa Chiara; bought fresh bread and picnic'd in a shady park - Giardino di Papadopoli - near Piazzalle Roma, sipping Leftheris' home grown rosé from the cola bottle he'd handed us on Easter Sunday, feeding the pigeons and sparrows. I noticed visitors struggling with their bags over the stepped Scalzi bridge opposite the rail station to avoid paying a vaporetto fare to cross the Grand Canal. The new bridge - Ponte di Calatrava - when completed - will ease that walk.
The trek from Venice's vast Marittima, where we disembarked, will be trickier to sort out. See the comment here on walking it in reverse: 'If you're adventurous and aren't hauling luggage, you can save time by walking along the sidewalk street below the southwestern edge of the Piazza (past the Garage Comunale) until you reach an old steel footbridge with a sign (in Italian) that says "authorized persons only" or words to that effect. This will lead you to Marittima's back entrance. Warning: The bridge is rusty with holes and patches, so walk carefully and avoid the bridge if you're heavy or wearing high heels. Also, the port police may not let you use the bridge from the Marittima side, probably because the cruise authorities don't want to be responsible if you fall through.'
Luck found us a trolley by the ferry to cart our cases to the official exit where we were politely told we could take it no further. Thereafter, along Tronchetto we hauled across a couple of roads and a roundabout busy with motorised traffic to and from the Strada Statale 11, using piecemeal sidewalks, across the neck of the Ponte della libertà , to complete the 1500 metre journey to Piazzalle Roma, where, amid phrenetic queuing, new arrivals are divested of their cars, debussed and decoached. People aren't expected to actually enter Venice on foot, despite it being the finest walking city in Europe - once you're there.
* * *
9 May 2008 0016. Between Croatia and Italy on the way north. Peering over a rail eleven decks above the distant wash of an immense ferry, I get vertigo as from a high factory roof. The blatancy of the artificial light, bathing the ship’s public spaces, blinds me, making the surroundings remote and unfriendly, despite the calmest of Mediterranean nights. I can make out an occasional star and a crescent moon. Its reflection on the sea or looms from distant lights are all but indiscernible. I'm enclosed by a claustrophobic acoustic landscape of rumbling propellers, rattling screens, vibrating deck plates, roaring extractor fans, humming air-conditioning. Inside, sleep is made difficult by lights that won’t turn off and the background sound of television. The passage of this great private leisure centre - self-described as the 'paradise of the sea' - is hardly apparent until we close the land becoming a platform from which to enjoy mountainous scenery or a panoramic view of Venice.
This surging Adriatic juggernaut separates us from the sea; in my case the intimate orchestra of sensations afforded by sailing in a small boat – the starry heavens, the moonlit wavelets slapping the hull, the small flaps and creaks of sails and spars, the swirling phosphorescence of myriad creatures sparking in our wake, the friendly glimpse of oil lamps inside a cosy cabin when making a cup of tea for the watch, the dim luminous face of the compass, the rocking of our quiet passage, distant and occasional lights on land or other vessels - the generous bosom of the surrounding sea. Of course there are other nights of buffeting wind, crashing waves, invading spray, driving rain and difficult reefing - weather through which this great vessel charges impervious, when, seeing her passing, I would think with envy of a warm cabin aboard her, but I know where my preference lies.
* * *
We are tidying the crude panels nailed round the top of the stairwell – two sides with wood and the third as stucco atop more builders’ foam. Our work has often been accompanied by music on the laptop – tunes woven into these wonderful weeks - Queen, Greek bands from Corfu, Rachmaninov’s Liturgy, Fauré’s Requiem, Hadjidakis’ 30 Nocturnes, rebetika about Smyrna, Vangelis’ Bladerunner soundtrack, Eleni Karaindrou’s soundtrack for The Weeping Meadow, Theodorakis’ setting of Axion Esti, Mozart’s Requiem in Dm, Thomas Trotter playing the refurbished organ in Birmingham Town Hall, Lully, Marais, Saint-Colombe, Couperin, Savali (the last five from the soundtrack of Tous Les Matins du Monde).
* * *
On Thursday at 7.00 in the morning we will take a ferry to Venice and home. We return briefly in July, and then for September. This afternoon Aln, who’s helped so much with the house renovation, is coming over with H to look at our progress.

Yesterday he and she came with us on Summer Song to lunch at Agni. This time Summer Song's old engine sounded sweet staying merely warm to the touch. We didn’t use it so much. I’ve found in Aln and H two gifts. He knows how to sail and, with H, is content with zephyrous progress, passages marked by bubbles that drift silently beside our hull, or a landmark ashore whose position only changes when a conversational distraction stop us noticing it until we look again and see it’s slipped behind or drawn a fraction closer. In addition we had a jocund breeze – coming and going, to Taverna Nikolas in the cove. We came to the jetty at Agni under sail – with two seconds reverse from the engine and a hand with warps from Pericles – and we berthed at Ipsos the same way (though being sensible I had the engine running out of gear just in case).
Our ancestors were forever seeing their surroundings under sail, or propelled by oars, feet, or on rumbling wheels, tied for all history to the headlong maximum of a galloping horse. Early rail passengers spoke with excited wonder of landscapes passing smoothly by at intoxicating pace. Trains began our affair with speed, embracing velocity as an ideal, experience what had previously been the province of birds and projectiles. To be pedestrian is to be tedious; ‘dawdling’ a weakness. Our hypermobility is our economy. It mustn’t slow-down. Speedophilia spread from increasing pace to shrinking the time spent on cultivation and manufacture, and from there to fast eating and other fleet sensations. Now speed envelops and traps the richest beneficiaries of modern economies who realise time can't be bought. When did my enterprising nephew in the city enjoy a long slow meal or a family walk uninterrupted by an e-mail or phone call?
That phrase - 'a long slow' - brings to mind an aged pimp in Montmartre - when John and I and my daughter Amy travelled by train with our folding bicycles to celebrate a ‘carfree’ day in Paris. He lounged beside a grandmotherly dame and proffered us – the men – ‘une copulation longue et dureé’.




Capitalism’s genius struggles to profit from the novel choice of slowness amid the conveniences and imperatives of speed. It will surely succeed - engendering anxiety about pace. Where once the punter paid for a ‘quickie’ and fusses when a fast-food queue delays a minute, slower pleasures will lead the market. The need, and therefore the demand, is growing. Entrepreneurs profiting from the business of popular air travel will take to bicycles, local produce and even commit to relationships ‘longue et dureé’. For the time being slowness is an esoteric good, a choice rather than a fashion, not yet a significant dimension of consumerism, a political rather than an economic choice.
We peered at passing inlets, caves, paths into woods, private developments stealing the public cliff top path between Kaminaki and Nissaki, attractive houses nestling amid olives, blatant villas, gazed at verdant flower filled slopes, layers of rock bent into arches by durations that stretch imagination, the shaled fissures and towering crags of Pantokrator, close enough to the shore to rock in redounding wavelets above us two parallel contrails made into sky-filling ‘V’ by our perspective. Aln, H and Lin politely demolished my case for the irrelevancy of most news from the world, proving my dismal failure at Socratic method. I did however demonstrate the wonder of the simplest of knots that will hold secure to the strength of the rope with which you tie it, while remaining easily undone; a knot I can tie behind my back – the bowline.
* * *
4 May. So far this is the longest Lin and I have been away from England or indeed from our home in Birmingham. “I don’t want to go back” she muttered; not “I don’t want to go home”. Which is saying a lot because we have plenty of enjoyment in England – places, people, events, but in these last weeks the accumulation of novel sensations – whether a multitude of candle flames reflected from brass trumpets and swaying tubas in the narrows of Democracy Street, shattering terracotta on the Liston, an afternoon breeze raising wavelets in the Corfu Straits, darkening the sea like raised nap on blue velvet; and doing the same, in reverse, to the olive canopy, turning up the silver side of their spinach leaves as we ride among them in the meadows below Agios Ilias – Lin, me, Jill and Sally, and the dog Molly; Kostas humming Ένα Το Χελιδόνι’ as he drives me to his home for a snack and pickings from his garden – eggs still warm, asparagus, peas, broad beans, lettuce, and, from his deep freeze three strawberry granita mixes – “made by myself’ - like small scarlet skating rinks; Easter Sunday’s clear air suffused with the scent of roasting lamb, strolling together beyond the village between flowered verges to be with Mark and Sally and their friends invited - delightfully privileged - to partake of their particular spitted lamb – a New Zealand body and a Greek head who’d been to tea with her husband - delectable morsels of quail roasted on a grid, pitta bread with sausages mustard and tomato sauce with fireflies gathering in the warm dusk, and the midnight before – when my candle guttered out near the bandstand at the top of the village and I reached towards the crowd already there and a flame was offered “Yasoo Simon” said a quiet voice in the darkness - Katia Thannassis and Costas Aspergis a fortnight earlier; Lin raising her candle to mark our front door lintel; Mr Leftheris outside his house in the street after midnight handing us a bottle of wine from his garden vine, shaking our hands “Kronia Polla” and Lin having some gift eggs ready from England for his grandchildren; everywhere smiles, nods and "Χρόνια πολλά"s from strangers, neighbours and people we nearly know – we are half entranced full of dreams as our brains reorganise us for the novel contract we’ve made with one another and this village of Ano Korakiana which, through the fortunate drift of happenstance, seems to have found us. The other day Alan and Honey invited us to strawberries, tea, cream and perfect scones - made by a baker they'd found near Potamus.
* * *










I’m in the Med without tide and much windlessness. I need to know things about engines that never bothered me. Why was heat resistant paint smoking on one of the pipes through which water should be circulating? :”There’s your problem” said Dave in harbour. With my pocket screwdriver I removed a jubilee clip, slid off a piece of flexible pipe and removed the pipe joint unit. A wad of solidified salt had stopping water circulating round Summer Song’s 25 year old engine, while allowing it to emerge with the exhaust. Dave, impressed by my boldness in engine surgery, came with a proper spanner and removed the water circulating head. “Clear that salt; renew these cooling pipes; cut yourself some gaskets, and you’ll be fine.” I scissored out the shapes from 0.25m brown sealing paper from Kontokali chandlers - where I bought a meter of flexible pipe. The engine ran cooler than I’ve known with far more water gouting out of the exhaust, but then the batteries stopped charging. Without a working battery there’s no way to start the engine. Dave did some diagnosis with his circuit tester. “Could be the alternator; could be this relay (a scruffy little box suspended between wires); could be this regulator that’s been attached outside because the internal one broke.” I watched and tried to learn; took the alternator to the car electrician at Pirgi where a friendly son, Kostas, explained his Dad, Spiros, was the alternator man but spoke no English “…and I’m off to Athens, but leave it. I’ll call you”. An hour or so later I was called at Ano Korakiana where I was helping Lin with woodwork repair round the stairwell. “The old alternator seems OK. My dad’s replaced the old box. See what happens.” I drove down the leafy road to Pirgi, collected the repair and then to the harbour. Dave re-installed before my grateful eyes helped by the wiring sketch he’d made earlier. The jump-lead I’d bought gave us enough power from the domestic battery to start the engine. To my relief and delight Dave’s tester showed the batteries charging.
After I’d run the engine 10 minutes and checked it’d restart from the smaller engine battery, I joined Dave at CJ’s for a drink. “Ben had a Greek grumble today.”said Dave. “ ‘Too many English yachts in the harbour. They should be in the marina!’” I have always wondered how long the free mooring could last. “It’s the season. People feeling crowded. There are eight English boats out there. We should be OK for the moment because we’ve got homes on the island.”
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It’s May. A few white figures brave the chilly sea off Ipsos' pebbled beach; occasional cyclists and walkers are touring the back roads; amplified bass and mini-moke convoys are heard; contrails mark the sky as geese trail in from the north.
This morning I woke from a nightmare of a conversation as the bewildered guest - in a fake castle - of powerful people of hideous character exchanging bland simplifications about governing others in order to realise their destiny. Especially galling was my own diplomatic fawning amid this company of the despicable. As we left – I was with someone else who was my crew, on the yacht - Summer Song of course - in which we’d journeyed to this landlocked place, a beautiful stone faced woman of indeterminate age, her face fixed into an arrogant rictus beneath an immaculate hairdo, remarked “You wear that silly hat and that easy smile, yet you rule the world”. [I realise - awake - I've dreamt of Corinna Harfouch as Magda Goebbels in the 2004 film 'Downfall' - 'Der Untergang'. Seeing images of a fine actress instead of the real person dispelled the aftertaste of my horrid dream. I'm friendly to the activation-synthesis theory, suggesting dreams are a mental filing process - nothing to do with Freud's sub-conscious wish-fulfillment and so no interpretation needed, though it's interesting to ponder the origin of these disjointed impressions being tidied into a story during slumber. It's pure coincidence this woman killed her children and was then shot by her husband on 1 May 1945. I was 3.] As my crew and I left in search of the castle car park – a car ride preceding our return to the yacht - we got lost. Attempting to shortcut across the battlements my companion disappeared. Moments later I heard his agonised cries for help. Then I woke.
I read a newspaper round-up of ‘the news’ from the UK, trying to peer through the hedge of opinionated interpretation as editors and their journalists discard and connect dots to make a pattern – shaking out inconvenient imponderables, formatting daily meanings; ‘tales (with few exceptions) told by idiots’, prompting surrogate emotions and casual conversation about what’s happening. I’m drawn into chat about often poignant irrelevancies – events which if they happened in our street, our village or involved our family and friends would matter - would entail some action - but which distanced by time and place from us are no more significant than a good DVD which at least pretends to be no more than entertainment. I check the price of oil, food bills, exchange rates, demographies - trends that emerge like seasons, slower but no less dramatic. Socrates would be amused, far less pompous, about the news-makers having equipped his friends and pupils with precision tools for demolishing the certainties of people who think they know and restore a more proper perplexity about what we can know.

Easter Week in Corfu

Easter week's started and there’s municipal tidying of verges – roadmen laying tar on parts of Democracy Street, men on scooters bearing their strimmers like crusader’s swords across their backs, sweepers doing housework in the village. There’s whitewashing and deweeding of public walls; extra discardings beside the refuse bins; more people gathering in the village and children on school holiday playing most of the day under the watch of their grandparents. By the sea at Ipsos and Pirgi and on towards the town, families are doing preparatory housework on seasonal tavernas and bars. Few tourists yet, but those whose business they are, are getting things ready for the start of the working summer. Smoke from fires, forbidden after April 30, rises from bonfires of cut shrubbery and grass. There’s the urgent buzz of bees. “I bet they’re making good honey” says Lin. The same variegated and delightful aromas, attracting them to their work, waft by our enfeebled noses from verges and green meadows where olives and cypresses mingle and amid the rushes, reeds and grasses wildflowers, white, yellow and blue, proliferate and orange tips, brimstones and red admirals flutter by, settling so that, for a few seconds, my human eye with no other motive than the enjoyment of the exquisite can gaze on their delicacy. There’s news at last from D - he's made it with his family to Jordan. Now his problem revolves round paperwork.
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On Sunday we’d promised to take Aln and H out to Agni on ‘Summer Song’, me having spent the previous day sorting out sails and, especially, helping D, my Ipsos mentor, clear the foresail halyard and mast top pulley block. He lay on his back on the mole with binoculars peering up to make out what was going up there, returning with a new idea and a helpful aerosol spray that lubricated the groove up which the sail has to be hauled. All done by Saturday noon, but on Sunday with picnic and guests aboard we’d hardly motored a mile from the harbour on the almost windless sea when the engine stopped, smelly smoke swirling from an unknown pipe joint. We turned and ghosted goose winged (Aln acting as a spar) back to Ipsos where D was waiting alerted by mobile, ready with a line to throw as I sailed in. I drifted into our berth without engine - some consolation for our shortened trip. and we went by road to Agni where all the tavernas were still closed, getting ready. H took us by a grassy track, burgeoning greenery almost hiding trapped heaps of cans and plastic bottles beside the path, to the neighbouring beach where on smooth sandstone rocks lapped by clear water we sat and enjoyed our snacks – olives, wine, nuts and oranges. D texted me to say ‘Summer Song’s’ engine started fine from cold, that there was a problem he’d fix with the heat exchanger. Returning to our cars we drove to the north coast beyond Kassiopi to where the road turned south up Pantokrator and came to the site of Old Perithia. The village, remote for safety from invaders, became unsustainable long ago and a new village closer to the sea was created. Now four tavernas make a living from visitors to the gently collapsing houses, which are on sale to anyone prepared to restore them. In some new way in a cradle of gentle ravines below the ridges of Pantokrator the old village is being enlivened by successive temporary inhabitants. We selected one taverna and ordered mezes – horta, a small casserole, village sausage with lemon, roast feta, chips, - as well as cold drinks – lager, water, ginger beer. We lingered. “It’s a hard life!” said H. I felt pleasantly sleepy on the ride home.
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In the house we’ve started to install a banister. A long coach bolt through a floor beam will hold the newel post after we’ve cut a square in the floor boards so that it sits firmly on a sturdy base. An ironmongers by the old port found me the right drills and bolt. The turned wood we need was bought months ago but we needed the confidence to believe we could do the joinery ourselves. Since installing the new floorboards that’s happened.
* * *
Last week Jill and Lin and me had supper at M & S’s home. A roast of chicken, teal, and quail – all boned one inside the other – along with small tasty unskinned baked potatoes mingled with garlic and a few hot peppers and wild asparagus mixed with fresh peas. We ate and talked and talked and ate. Homer had these breaks in narrative to describe, in tantalising detail, the preparation of similar meals and libations– either for delectation or as presents to deities. How these recitations must have watered people’s palates as over the centuries they were repeated to guests. How they, when not listening to the storyteller, must, like us, have gossiped and philosophised – in our case about the village, the island, about ourselves and our neighbours. “That was a very nice evening” said Jill as we strolled home along Democracy Street. Later I think she said “So why do humans fight?”