To my relief there will be a ferry to the mainland on May Day after midday, which is fine as the ferry on to Ancona doesn't leave until 2000 tomorrow. One roofers - a sailor - said an object bearing a red and white light scooted round Ipsos harbour at a smart walking pace laround 2300. "Unidentified Floating Object!" he said. "Tell that around here and by dusk Corfu will know there was a Turkish sub off the coast last night". I've got money from our bank off the Liston for the work on the roof - after a long queue with people grumbling behind me I felt grateful to get our money. The water bill was paid at the civic offices in Ipsos. I've introduced myself to a lady there who may be a senior officer of Faiakon Municipality. I never cease to be fascinated by the way a place solves or tries to solve local problems - roads. licencing, planning, transport, waste collection disposal, water supply, tourism, conservations, parking, burials, emergencies, healthcare, and so on, and how much of the money coming into the local economy benefits local communities rather than going to the shareholders of international travel companies and hotel chains? How do the politicians here relate to their officers? Friends here regard my interest askance. We shall miss the cats - Bubble and Squeak, the lighter one. They'll probably miss us but it'll be good to see Oscar again after the longest Lin and I have been away from home since the mid-70s. Must remember to read the meters before we go.
Monday, April 30, 2007 0125. We packed up the boat, had a cheeseburger at CJs and drove up to Ano. The island dotted with lights and the sea sparkling below a waxing moon. We stepped over the threshold and made a cup of tea and coffee after unpacking and putting hotwater bottles in our bed. I had a shower and went upstairs. I can hear Lin tidying in the kitchen and far away muffled barking and what might be a nightjar. The roofers are back in the morning to finish up. Sunday midday seeing our neighbour sat outside his front door doing a Sudoko puzzle I took him orange juice with ice. A friend said later “Next time try adding a little lemon to the orange. It adds something.” Our neighbours replied to the drink with a heaped plate of olives – small ones from Corfu for making oil and middle and large from a brother in Sparta for eating – as well as oil. Discarded stones can be cast into the greenery edging our alley. He has a smallholding above the village growing oranges, lemons, garlic, onion, potatoes. Tracing the letters on his palm he said he was 65. “We are the same age. Which month?” “May” “Me March 29. I'm two months older”. This parity was enjoyed and shared with our closest, me to Lin and my neighbour to a daughter, mother, of the small siblings we’ve seen and heard playing in the garden. * * * I’ve had an uncomfortable exchange with the builder whose estimate for the roof work was too high. I phoned him because the bedroom sockets don’t work. He wouldn’t discuss it preferring to tell me that I’d made a bad mistake with my our chosen roofers. There was no gainsaying the man. Phones are bad for this kind of exchange. I suggested coming to see him directly but he was unenthusiastic. I found an extension cable so we could have bedside lights.
Saturday, April 28, 2007 Our first water bill was delivered by the shopkeeper yesterday. Work continues on the roof and we’ve accepted a tender to pave part of the garden and remove one of the upstairs walls. “It’ll be done when you’re back!” That seems ages away. We’ll be going home Tuesday afternoon. Our roofer said “Your roof will done by then.” It was raining this morning, the work secured with a sheet of plastic. Extra tiles, mortar mix, insulation, wax paper were delivered and stacked this morning. We’re thinking we’ve now got a mix of people doing work we can afford and with whom we can keep in touch by e-mail, who trust us enough to cover cash flow delays, and who understand our wishes. After the electrics, the renewing of the kitchen, hall and downstairs bedroom ceilings and the roof comes making one space out of the two front upstairs bedrooms, with the wood stove and flue moved to its eastern wall, and the stairs widened. Then we could have the garden part tiled – over the flattened rubble. Word of mouth led us to holiday flats in Pyrgi being refurnished. We salvaged a cane sitting room suite with cushions and a low table, drove it home, and lifted it upstairs with a rope over the balcony.
The more we roam Corfu - by cycle, car or on foot - the more I come to see the scale of the achievement of Stephan Jaskulowski in making this map of the island in 1996. Stephan was a working resident of Corfu in the 90s, found published maps of Corfu inadequate and in places hazardously innaccurate. Being a border state the authorities discouraged surveys. Over 3 years Stephan travelled over the island on foot, cycle, scooter and car with compass, altimeter and hand-held GPS checking roads, footpaths and tracks. This detailed map rich in additional information and inset plans of the city of Corfu is a unique labour of love. I wish Stephan would make a revised version that would pick up changes since he completed this project, but imagining the sheer scale of his original achievement I don't blame him hesitating. I still prefer this map to any other for exploring - and I don't want to know everything anyway and I can always ask for directions - though I'ver found that a gesture to take a right turn often means take a left and vice versa.
The mainland stretched north to south in a tableau of varying greys in the damp air this morning. The shores are distinct and darker but beyond are the lighter and more distant peaks of the Grammos in Epirus - site of campaigns that 58 years ago concluded a catastrophe so terrible that even now it starts a lump in my throat to think of such happenings in a land we English have found so kind to us and of whose civility we hold such confident illusions. The vista is framed by the foreground of Vido Island and, even closer, Ipsos' breakwater and its cluster of masts including 'Summer Song's'. I caught the Korakiana bus into town to do some WiFi work and will catch it back to AK in an hour.
Stephan e-mailed me on 8 May "Thank you very much once again for your very kind words and endorsement of the map." To get the map while supporting Agni Animal Welfare Fund visit www.agni-animal-welfare-fund.com/Maps.asp
Thursday, April 26, 2007 Where in a sokaki of tightly linked buildings do you put the building rubble? Our solution is to move it to part of the garden. This is the before picture. We’ll be going home Tuesday afternoon. Our roofer said “Your roof will done by then, but check your neighbours don't mind noise on Sunday." It was raining this morning, the work secured with a sheet of plastic. Extra tiles, mortar mix, insulation, wax paper were delivered and stacked this morning.
We’re thinking we’ve now got a mix of people doing work we can afford and with whom we can keep in touch by e-mail, who trust us enough to cover cash flow delays, and who understand our wishes. After the electrics, the renewing of the kitchen, hall and downstairs bedroom ceilings and the roof comes making one space out of the two front upstairs bedrooms, with the wood stove and flue moved to its eastern wall, and the stairs widened. Then we could have the garden part tiled – over the flattened rubble. Word of mouth led us to holiday flats in Pyrgi being refurnished. We salvaged a cane sitting room suite with cushions and a low table, drove it home, and lifted it upstairs with a rope over the balcony.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007 I cycled into town and did some work at the Arco. The weather has gone cooler and is slightly overcast with spots of rain. Missed my bus to AK so cycled all the way there via Ipsos – with only a couple of breaks for some of the local ginger beer. Drove back to Ayios Markos to collect a sturdy plastic table I’d seen by a waste skip.
The roofing is coming along well. Lin paints almost without a break. With a loaned jack hammer I knocked down the first and largest lot of breeze blocks and made holes for the rain to get away in the ones we’re leaving. Amy called from home. Our neighbour came round and we chatted about the odd things the previous owners and their builder had done with the place – including cutting down two lemon trees and an orange tree - leaving the one in the picture - and removing a side balcony, the door on to it and the outside steps to it, removing rain protection from the side of the house as well as a pleasant part of it, and creating a problem of what to do with the rubble. Lin and I discussed replacing the steps – perhaps iron ones and putting back the upstairs door. Our neighbour showed us two bricks from his house – one with 1590 and another with 1711 inscribed roughly on them.
A good deal of work can be done like this. The Arco has WiFi. But I'm asked to give a reference to an international student applying to do postgrad work via a UK university's on-line admissions office, but my reply must involve a real signature and text on the headed paper of my university. Difficult until I get back to UK.
We take occasional breaks on the boat where we're sleeping. Getting Summer Song started with eBay last Summer. I wanted a boat but we needed a mooring. I'd been thinking "Hebrides". On 23 July last year Amy, on her laptop at our kitchen table in Handsworth, found an entry: "27 foot yacht on permanent free mooring in Corfu". She showed it to her mum who said "Hey, we want this one!" I phoned the seller's wife. I conjectured eBay reputation wasn't worth losing for a scam at the price offered. Besides I liked her voice. "I don't really want to sell her. My husband does." I pondered an hour and realised that what mattered was the free mooring and family agreement on getting one in a warm place. I clicked the "buy now" button and committed myself to the purchase, ahead of sensible people planning visits and surveys. We felt we'd made a good decision when, 6 weeks later, the waiter at a taverna in Agni took our warps so we could stroll ashore for retsinas and tzatziki, gaze on Summer Song and catch our breath and think about buying a house.
Monday, April 23, 2007 But for apprehension I’d delight in the continuing heat. The nights are cool, the skies clear. The breeze blows inshore or offshore depending whether sea or land cool slower or heat faster. Our chosen roofers were started by 0800. At 0915 I drove our rubble helper up to the house from Ipsos. With regular drinks of water and a couple of cups of tea he laboured through the heat until 1400 while Lin painted and filled. I moved stones, and raked the rising surface of the triangle of ground below the house. “There’s a lot of stuff here” observed our helper. “We’ll get it all in tho’” I said. One of the roofers suggested finishing it with ‘plaka’ paving. As for the roof: “We can finish it before you go.” We’ve a mix of old Corfu tiles piling on the balcony. While tomorrow moulded modern tiles will come off the lower of our two roofs, where one storey had a floor with two rooms, added by a builder working below spec, hence the need to insert waterproofing and insulation. An armless model of an Evzone was inside the roof - guardians of the Hellenic Parliament, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the Presidential Palace. In the heat when the village was quiet and morning work done, I shook three big lemons from our tree, juiced them, added ice and sweetened them to our tastes. Another builder visited to estimate widening the staircase and taking out an interior wall.
Sunday, April 22, 2007 Seven wooden chairs at €1 each from a lady at the Kontokali table sale, more china and another quilt. Our friends sold us the fridge and the builder’s friend, returning to UK, sold us his microwave. Had a meeting in the taverna at Kato Korakiana to discuss further work and a lesson in drinking Ouzo. Two glasses. One for ouzo. One for water and ice. Dilute to choice as you go along and get the pleasure of seeing the Ouzo turn white with the first addition of water.
Saturday 21 April 2007 Lin found a carpet in a flytip on the beach. We brushed it clean on the railings above the house and laid it in a downstairs room. In the early evening Lin drove us up the zigzag road to Sokraki. At Emily’s, opposite a tree pollarded to avoid cables on which hung Christmas lights, we had toast and cheese and watched drivers negotiating the streets converging on the platea. Then west towards Troumpetta by a half completed road from which, as we descended on gravel, we could see Cape Kavokefali and further NW Mathraki, Othoni and Erikoussa islands on one side then round a bend an equal panorama to the south.
Friday, April 20, 2007 Went to a house in Skripero to see our roofer’s work. Looked good – with the insulation over and not under the wax paper, Corfu style to reduce condensation inside the roof. Then to town to buy spade, barrow, lump hammer and rake. Traffic in Corfu town congested but we found Skiadopolos the paint supplier after a mobile chat for directions. Could tell it was a professional place local builders scurrying. Back to the house to help tidy after the plaster boarding had been sanded. Tidied the house is bare but beginning to look more as we’d like it. Had wine and salad and bread under the veranda. The village is a quiet cacophony of children’s voices as they play, adults chatting, a radio commentary somewhere, a noisy scooter now and then, someone doing band practice playing drums, a neighbour’s child singing a few lines of the Allelulia chorus over and over, cocks crowing, pigeons, frogs and occasional dogs barking. None of this is galling as no sound bullies another. How I do like the high dark houses here with lights behind shutters.
Friday, April 20, 2007 The oranges in Summer Song's cockpit were a gift from friends living in Ay.Markos. I have the task of extracting their sweet juice. Went to a house in Skripero to see our roofer’s work. Looked good – with the insulation over and not under the wax paper, Corfu style to reduce condensation. To town to buy spade, barrow, lump hammer and rake. Traffic congested but we found Skiadopolos the paint supplier after a mobile chat for directions. Could tell it was a professional place. Many builders scurrying. Back to the house to help tidy after the plaster boarding was sanded. The house is bare but beginning to look more as we’d like it. Had wine and salad and bread under the veranda. There's a gentle cacophony of children’s voices, adults chatting, a radio, a scooter now and then, a bandsman practicing drums, a neighbour’s child singing the Allelulia chorus over and over, and the sounds of pigeons, frogs and dogs. No sound bullies another. At dusk a few bats after the evening insects. How I like the high dark houses here with light behind shutters.
Thursday, April 19, 2007 I cycled into town to collect deeds. Yellow slips for the Greek tax authority have not yet come from our bank. Took a table and chair by the door at Arco. With my WiFi scratchcard username and a password I worked with my laptop as straightforwardly as at home or anywhere Wifi exists. The café server allows me to send as well as receive mail on my own machine – so no need to search for e-mail addresses let alone switch material via flashdrive to a strange computer. This access can only increase so a phone at Democracy Street is just another bill and a distraction, compared to coffee frappé on the Liston – until more start working this way and conviviality becomes call-centre isolation. For €1.20 an Acharavi bus dropped me at the Ano K turn. I cycled through the greenery to Democracy Street on a road graded to ease the climb. Plasterboarding nearly done. We went on carting rubble to the garden. A lady smiled on our labours. ‘Easy, easy’ (‘seegah, seegah’) she said. Later, we agreed ‘let’s get help.” At CJs we met a customer we’d seen there before, checked daily rates and agreed he’d help us on Monday. Meantime we’ll check work completed by our prospective roofer at Skripero.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007. The lady from across the street offered skilled helped cracking away one of the breeze blocks enclosing rubble in three concrete enclosures put up by the last builder against the side of the house. They’ve been collecting and storing damp that has been entering the house. They look ugly. Another neighbour was reassured I wasn’t dumping the emptied rubble off our property. She saw the first six barrow loads strewn in the garden as planned and said 'sorry'. On the car by the museum Lin found a a civil note in Greek and English pointing out she’d parked across a two car space. We had a picnic lunch about 5.30 under the veranda. Two young cats tried to climb on our table. Later on ‘Summer Song’ we discussed the re-roofing needed with a young man who can start work next week. Lin thought we’d had an unproductive day. I’m not sure. Perhaps the test of a place is when it stops being an exotic and temporary escape and becomes another kind of home. We’ve being working through lots of lists in recent days, getting connected to water and electricity, securing addresses, paying dues, anticipating a Greek tax return next year and overseeing, and paying bills for, work on a boat and a house. This island was once a passing image that included mouse island – Pondikonisis – a white church, blue sea and dark cypresses. In the months since last July when I clicked the ‘buy now’ button and bought ‘Summer Song’ sight unseen on eBay, I remain astonished at the unexpectedness of this extraordinary turn of events.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007 Around 5.30 the sound of rain on the cabin roof and a wind from the east in the rigging. Light shows grey clouds. We’ve had waking dreams three mornings in a row. Something in the home made wine? I find the current reasoning about the way dreams work convincing – randomly firing synapses producing a stream of data that the mind assembles and reads like faces in clouds or interpretations of Rorschach blots. The detail is uncanny. I was forced at the end of one dream, to prevent it causing mayhem, to grill a boa constrictor in a shallow tray of hot coals. The image was painful because of the danger posed to me and then the pain caused the snake. I was glad to wake. This morning a reception in a public building composed of architecture from diverse but familiar places and guests including colleagues I thought I knew but with novel extramural professions – one a jockey in riding clothes who greeted me cheerily. Abruptly the time seemed to change and then after a pause – the brain processing a flood of waste data - the whirr of helicopter blades. We were invaded by Nazis, one disguised as a Guards Sergeant-Major. I saw him lining up infantrymen outside, barking at the ranks to get lined up. Then soldiers walked in and took over. There was no fighting, no remonstrations nor announcements. A pause for further processing and then I realised - invented the notion with the data to hand - that the place had been taken over as the venue for an opera. The situation remained fluid. Should we try to coordinate some response? I felt fearful about risks. I asked three staff officers with their wives – all immaculately dressed, the men in uniforms, the women in white diamonte evening gowns - sitting in a cluster of armchairs in blasé anticipation of the entertainment to come, why they needed to come here. “Isn’t your great Berlin Opera House fine enough? And what about Vienna?” I asked ingratiatingly but also resentfully, but they were entirely off hand. The opera was going to go ahead and there was nothing anyone could do.
We were taken by a Greek friend to get our electric bill and water rate sorted. Found there’s Wifi at the Arco Café on the Liston. Two estimates for repairing the roof and a visit to assess taking out an upstairs wall to make one large front room next the balcony. Lin continues painting white over various off-white shades with me holding a step ladder as she reaches up. The plaster board is up awaiting skimming. A late drink at CJs. The large screen over the bar played a football match in England. It is difficult to imagine a more intense assembly of enthusiasts, with the sound track and real time editing moving so adroitly between grand view and intimate inspection of players that took even me into the drama. I shared my admiration with the owner. He commented that the screen shots we were seeing can also be seen by the crowd, but not by the referee. This creates grand differences of opinion. Later I remembered I’d seen no-one spitting. Everyone involved knows how closely they are being watched on screens across the world, especially those whose brands are attached to the players shirts. Earlier when strolling to pick up the car in Ano K I noticed something missing – no litter on Democracy Street or its tributary paths.
Monday, April 16, 2007 Cloudy. In Corfu town after dropping Lin at the house to get electrics and water transferred but to get the phone requires the presence of both of us plus the line’s previous users. “I’m arranging it” said A. Asked after his baby daughter seeing him looking tired. Saw K. to get rubber on the clutch pedal. Got Lin’s phone working with a Greek number. Back at the house made lunch while Lin continued painting. Neighbour’s wine goes well with feta, raw onion and olives – different pungencies. More work on the garden. First estimate for redoing both roofs. Two more estimates tomorrow. Supper of chicken and pork from the spit at George’s, Kontokali, then home to the boat.
Sunday, April 15, 2007
At a table top sale at Harry’s Bar in Kontokale we bought a small cooker for €20, glasses and mugs. Told of cast off chairs by the roadside we salvaged three plus a serviceable hosepipe. At the house I set to with the juicer and seated on the salvaged bamboo chairs beneath the veranda we drank fresh orange.
Saturday, April 14, 2007
Went to a cybercafé in town. A police authority want to take scrutiny more seriously. Can I offer a half-day on political-management for a County? Can I do a workshop on evidence based policy making for new district members after May? Back to the boat by 1300 then painting and earth moving and general tidying at 208. I’m aching from carting earth from the terrace to the side of the house and back into the garden below in a wheelbarrow to make new planting space around the area where our rubble will go. Friends dropped in late afternoon with a juicer and a fridge. We can offer cold fresh orange juice during the heat forecast next week. A neighbour moored near us at Ipsos saw the gully across our garden that carries washing water. “Block it with a reed bed. Same for rain water. Try a barrel.” He gazed from our balcony and pointed out Sayiadha about 20km away to the south east across the Corfu Sea and the last village before the border with Albania that runs northward up a ribbon of coast to Ormos Ftelias almost due east of Ipsos – still mysterious to us but hardly 8 nautical miles off. Over beers at CJ’s we met two neighbours from AK. Their pool uses around 22k litres. Even with a meter their water rate is just €130. Lin saw a firefly. We heard a frog in the darkness that sounds like a ring tone.
There's a fine building about 100 paces east of our house on the narrow platea next to the kafenion with a detached balcony looking south with room for a table and chairs. The museum has always been closed when we've been by - only a matter of weeks between November and now. I'm curious to know more about this artist. Some of his sculptor is on display on a smaller balcony facing Democracy Street,
Friday, April 13, 2007
How satisfying to insert a new chip in my phone, enter a Personal Identification Number and find that it will work in Greece. For some this would be too easy to mention. Not for me. Whenever I’ve travelled my phone has been on ‘roaming’ for calling and being called anywhere. Yet call a number in Corfu, be it a few kilometres away, the person called pays for my call at international rates. Not a good way to treat friends in Corfu. Lin’s painting upstairs. I’ve gone on clearing the garden. We’ve asked another roofer to give us an estimate to compare with the one we expect on Monday from G. We’ve made up the bed that was left here, had a late light lunch and caught glimpses of neighbours and heard their children playing and seen distant ferries moving to and fro in the channel.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
A calm fresh cloudless dawn. We are living on 'Summer Song'. Had breakfast on board and later in the morning drove up Ano Korakiana getting more used now to the road and its pinch points at Ayios Markos and the various potentially tricky passing points on the road up to the house. At the 208 Democracy Street Lin gardened, tidied and cleaned most of the day. I went to Corfu to work on the internet responding to enquiries from various councils. Back at the house late afternoon we checked the whereabouts of our cesspool and the best place in the small garden to transfer rubble from building work. Someone played a recorder next door. After dusk at CJs I chatted to an engineer about how Corfu’s water system struggled to cope with summer visitors. Not that well from what I’ve read and heard from Greeks and foreigners. There are problems with traffic, with waste, with land use, and - more subtly – with social fabric as tradition becomes commodity and harvesting begins with the start of the holiday season.
An old postcard of Ipsos
Enthusiastic from experience in Australia about what could be done here, Harry Tsoukalas in the April ‘Corfiot’ announces the first (Location: Kontokali – inland inner road close to Danilia junction info@petracon.biz 6947 269112 or Garnet at 6932 606332) of 3 recycling yards charging €50 to receive rubble, which at 20 cubic metres per truckload, would cost €500 to dump at Temploni.
My friend said without being so direct that with privacy as rare as water in the desert do you really want to blog? I have freed myself of the car as an object of desire though I'll use one, but without access to cyberspace I feel bereft.
Thursday, April 12, 2007 Yesterday we started clearing the small garden, to see what lay beneath. I opened the gate onto the path to the lower road. Neighbours brought a house gift. Our builders arrived to measure up the roof for an estimate of complete repairs as well as removing the concrete rubble blocks that the previous owners had set up beside the house to stack rubble and which have brought damp into the lower rooms. A young woman from the house behind when asked said “It was very nice” leaving unfinished her view that improvements had been unsuccessful. We agreed. An outside staircase to a balcony had been removed. I cycled back to Ipsos and Lin came down in the car. Shared a lager and an altercation with itinerant topers whose game is to ask questions, top the answer until someone remonstrates and then say ‘sorry’. We were part rescued by a friend who’d winked across the space at the bar into which this couple had barged.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007 Summer Song lies near the end of the seaward arm. of Ipsos Harbour. The owner of the little yacht moored next to ‘Summer Song’ until February, sailed for Italy while we were away, but Magnus, her skipper, is now in hospital there after he became ill while crossing the Straits of Otranto. The Italian Coastguard came alongside his drifting boat but in trying to lift him from his boat he dropped into the sea from which they only finely rescued him after two hours in the water.
We went into town and drew money from our bank behind the Liston, bought bedding, shower curtain and paint in the Evraiki [Back to the future reference: Look out for a forthcoming book by Marcia Haddad to which I was referred on 27/7/07 by Stan Boardman-Jacobs' 'The Day My Heart Broke'] We drove to Democracy Street - the back way, turning off the Sidari Road along roads lined by the pink blossoms of Judas trees, to gaze from our balcony at the sea and the woods and the village above and below and discuss plans for the house. I checked the shop nearby could receive our mail. “Yes, two or three times a week it comes.” I said the bread was good there. The owner said he used to have a bakery there. The wood meant the bread lasted 5-6 days, “but I don’t want to talk about that.”
Monday, 9 April 2007 Ano Korakiana, Easter Monday We visited 208 Democracy Street and met the builders. It may be necessary to redo the whole roof rather than just repair parts of it. Ano Korakiana’s Easter Monday procession gathered round the bend by Little Venice. We had a coffee – skirto and nescafe – at the kafenion and gingerly wandered up Democracy Street to the ravine bridge where we waited. The drums started. The procession moved off. A troop of cub scouts, cross bearers and then the Ano Korakiana band. Woodwind – clarinets and flutes – to spice the grander sound of the swaying trombones, trumpets and the drums. They were playing San Tomasso. Solemn but not sad. Then three ranks of dignified women in suits with purple ties – part of the choir. Then passed – St.Peter and St.Spiridon and St Michael on banners, then priests. One saw us and nodded and said “Christos Anesti, Where from?” “From England.” I should have replied "Anethos Anesti".
We waited a little and than strolled on, wary to follow, but not join the procession as it played down Democracy Street. We visited some friends at the bottom of the village. Later on the low road past olive trees, Lin stopped the car and we could hear bees not yet recruited to the killing labour of monocultivation, doing voluntary work among the wildflowers.
Edward Lear, Corfu, 1871, w/c & gouache. Indianapolis Museum of Art, USA
Saturday, April 7, 2007
The big ferry from Bari sailed hardly a 100 metres by the corner of north east Corfu in the dark and on to Igoumenitsa where we landed and trollied our luggage a kilometre along the seafront to the Pantokrator. We remembered how when we'd come this way the previous November a south wind had blown with such strength off the shore our ship had been unable to dock for two hours - a wait that had given us a new friend in Hy from Ayios Markos who'd ridden home with us once we'd made it to Corfu.
She was very full, convivial chat drowning the noise of unwatched TVs in the familiar saloon. One family, at least, had brought a whole lamb for Easter. It lay wrapped beside them but as the crowd increased was stowed below their seat. 'One vast realm of wonder' (Canto 88 Byron's 'Travels of Childe Harold') - words of a lover, blind to flytipped refuse, strip mall development, bleached menus selling 'pise and ships', UK redtops and eurotrash porn, dumb t-shirts, fuming traffic, wall-to-wall football on TV and shaven lads with rosy bellies. But Greece makes me blind. I get a lump in my throat as I see it twinklng below from a late night plane or rising from the sea from the deck of a ferry.
The air was crisp as the ship headed north west over a flat sea. At the Port of Corfu by mid-morning Kostas' boy met us with a car. We left it outside his office with our luggage and strolled towards the Liston until we were standing tightly surrounded by people of all ages below fine balconies packed with onlookers, some preparing to drop terracotta pots on the marble streets below. As even larger pots appeared in the windows above we "ooh'd" and "aah'd" in anticipation. At noon the cascade began. 'Crash" "huraaaaaa" "crash" "huraaaaa". The water in the pots, as well as holding the sins of the preceding year, ensures shards don't explode among the onlookers. The sun shone bright. the crowd was civil and happy. A few minutes later with bands playing we strolled through pottery strewn streets, eating roast lamb, onion and tomato on pita bread.
Friday, April 6, 2007 All seats to Bari from Rome were reserved. At Termini by 8.30am we walked through the bustle and boarded a Eurostar for Bari hoping for the best. Another passenger, a young teacher, Valerian, helped translate, asking the guard if sitting on our luggage would be OK. He nodded. A young woman ran to catch the train as it started and the guard opened the door so she could hop aboard with a broad and slightly out-of-breath smile of gratitude. In a spacious lobby at the end of the last carriage we could gaze through glass at the receding lines as our train sped south.
The snack trolly was a door away. We enjoyed hot chocolate and espresso. Later Lin made a picnic – bread and wine. Cassino, Caserta, Foggia and then some seats came free. We ate, chatted and read. The train was clean and roomy; the passengers civil without needing words. No-one sought our tickets or made announcements. At Bari we left our luggage at the station and soon found ourselves in a Good Friday procession through the high sided streets following or being followed by a brass band in grieving sonour swaying amid a procession of saints carried on biers behind Jesus - ecce homo - bearing a cross to Golgotha by crowded pavements, shops (few shuttered) bars (none closed) a nunnery and commuters in their cars queueing to get out of town.
There are good ice creams in Rome but this place is special - offering a deep chocolate flavour generously overflowing each cone. I'm holding Linda's - just while she takes a picture.
In the Imperial tradition much of Rome is best viewed from a motor car. Unlike many modern cities it has none of those inventions that can cause drivers inconvenience like pedestrian controlled crossing lights. Much of the magnificent architecture, especially the Colisseum stand in the centre of traffic islands so that a car can drive smoothly around the building unhindered by people on foot.
Linda and I are sitting in limbo outside the Beehive Hotel, Via Marghera. The sun's trying to come out. The traffic is grumbling round the Termini station and we are thinking all seats are taken on all trains and coaches to Bari tomorrow and we'll probably have to sit on our luggage for 8 hours, or could we play 'silly old foreigners' and hope someone will take pity on us like they do in England where everyone is so civil. Yeah, well. The cat is called Ingmar. The other one is called Lin's handbag
Ano-kato means upper-lower. There's an Ano Korakiana - Άνω Κορακιάνα - and a Kato Korakiana. But through Ano Korakiana itself there run two roads - ano-kato. The higher road by the contours is Democracy Street. The views from both streets to the east and south east can be lovely. The village sits below the mists that can envelope Spartillas and Sokraki on the mountain above or the villages in the valley. [click on 'Ano Kato', in the title of this entry, to see a map of the village]
Here's a view I stole from Becky and Simon, restoring a house off the lower road described at anokato-acorfudream.blogspot.com/ - a dream so far unfulfilled (in early 2011 their house was still incomplete, rumoured for sale)
DEMOCRACY STREET - the one we know - is in a village on Kerkyra or Corfu (Κέρκυρα), an island in the Ionian, close to the coast of Epirus, which includes Albania and the Greek mainland. The main town, which feels like a city, is also called Corfu. Ano (Upper) Korakiana - Ανω Κορακιανα - [Κόρακας means raven or crow] is in the widest part of the island on the slopes of the Troumpetta range - an hour's cycle ride, for me, from the port. Democracy Street runs through Ano Korakiana past the church of the Archangel Michael, past the Arestides Metallinos Museum, the school, a kafenion with views towards the mainland, the bandstand and the cluster of houses known as 'Little Venice' (for its architecture), turning north up a sinuous road past the small church of St.Isadoras, to Sokraki and over the mountains to the north coast. Westward, Democracy Street passes three general stores and surgery to a hairpin bend that leads to choices - one road running eastward again, almost parallel to Democracy Street (linked to it via steep footpaths between tightly clustered houses) to Ayios Markos and the sea at Pyrgi and Ipsos joining a north-south road along the east coast, another southwards via Kato (lower) Korakiana to the capital, and another westward to the sea via Skripero to Paleokastritsa on the west coast or Sidari in the north west. * * * Small facts gleaned from the web - which keep reappearing and need checking: Ano Korakiana - Άνω Κορακιάνα - is 18 kilometers from Corfu Town, about 3 from Ayios Markos. Its population in 1991 (last census) was a little more than in 1981 at 1400 - which is not the village trend. It has an orchestra founded in 1958 and a musical tradition going back to 1623 with the foundation of the Mantolinatas of the Pope (for which I will need an explanation). Ano Korakiana has 37 churches - the most interesting, to Byzantine scholars, are Saint Nicholas, the Archangel Michael (next to 208) and Saint Athanasios. The local school, a few metres east of 208, contains a small folklore collection. We heard from our friends in AK it was at risk of closing and being replaced by a psychiatric unit (What's new?). It's the birth village of the Greek actress Rena Vlahopoulou who died in 2004 at 81. She is quoted saying "I catch the boat from Patras and as I board I say to myself, now I’m at peace. I’m on my way home to Korakiana, I’m going to see my things, those who are close to me. I feel that Corfu embraces me every time I arrive." How true and I'm not even Greek, let alone Corfiot. Villages are being transformed all over the world. AK is probably no exception when it comes to a sustained communal core amid the foreign settlers and semi-settlers. It's not a 'tourist' village yet. The kafenion is open only at exclusive times. There's no restaurant or shop selling things other than provisions for residents. Notices are in Greek. Music practice can be heard at various times and chat in various registers - from outbursts of maternal invective, steady conversations, greetings, laughter, TV soap dialogue, monotonous sports commentary and chirruping domestic banter interspersed with the clinking of hardware in sinks, the acoustic of gossip shifting, as it comes outside, for washing to be hung or garden worked.
The first computer on our kitchen table was a Commodore Pet - borrowed from work in 1979 (see below). It stored data on tapes which could be used to enter software for a rudimentary version of Space Invaders. This was 10 years after Neil Armstrong walked on the moon.
By the mid 80s we had an Amstrad. Academic staff were to do more of their own typing. We flirted for a few days with a Sinclair ZX80. Then came a succession of Dell PCs backed by a laptop. We entered the internet in 1995. We used Windows loaded from floppy disks. The university deluged us with training; licensed our software. Four years ago I switched from Windows to OSX on an iBook and a PowerMac to edit interviews of politicians and officers which, before this, were compressed to CDs on campus.
The university's role in my computing is now via one of the campus servers. Computers at home are linked by WiFi. Except our friend Phoebe (playing Patience in the picture), we use Apples, encouraged by the support available at their local store. Buying and, in Lin's case, selling, goes on from our kitchen table. Role playing games get played across continents. Richard designs websites. I write occasional pieces for Wikipedia.
I haven't been in the University Library for ages. Unless I'm teaching I can work anywhere, communicating by mobile phone or email wherever there's coverage. Last week I was sending and receiving emails while on a train between York and Dundee on the way to lead a speculative workshop on managing the results of the Single Transferable Voting system to be used for local elections in Scotland on 3 May.
I am invited by my friend Nick Booth to do a podcast. A month ago I put a short film I'd made on YouTube which helped us save Black Patch Park in Smethwick.
Lin with our first table top computer - a Commodore PET with 4K of ROM, 8 K RAM- borrowed from the university
I think it should be possible to cycle to and from work in a suit but this requires a good bicycle that can if necessary be easily transferred to a train, bus or taxi (hence a folder) and an astute choice of wet wear and judgement about when to put it on. Cycling is, by and large, the easiest, most economical and most enjoyable way to get around since I can carry stuff easily (compared to walking), travel times are predictable, there are no parking problems or security risks (especially with a bicycle that folds) and over distances of 6 or 7 miles, especially at rush hours, cycling is the swiftest means of getting from A to B in a big city and certainly, along with walking and perhaps running, the least frustrating.
'The bicycle had, and still has, a humane, almost classical moderation in the kind of pleasure it offers. It is the kind of machine that a Hellenistic Greek might have invented and ridden. It does no violence to our normal reactions: It does not pretend to free us from our normal environment.' J.B. Jackson
I can cycle to the University by joining the towpath of the Soho Loop off the Birmingham Mainline Canal where it runs parallel to Clissold Street in Hockley - a mile from home - and following it almost to the top of Farmer's Locks where I cross a bridge and take a right onto the Birmingham and Worcester Canal, passing the edge of the country's greatest waterway intersection, and heading westward to Edgbaston, leaving the canal a hundred yards or so further on from this picture and surfacing via the steps up to Somerset Road.
* * *
Who cycles?
Power and influence sometimes work best - for good or evil -when unseen to most of us. Do you know how many ministers, academics,barristers, surgeons, senior civil servants and other establishment figures are navigating our urban streets by bicycle? More than you might imagine. The car is increasingly the chariot of the masses and the object of proletarian desire. It therefore has a powerful resonance in a democracy which makes moves against this sacred artifact something best kept under the radar.
Recall too that for a public figure to be associated with walking or cycling is to risk the inference that such ways of getting about are preferable to motoring. In other words to cycle or walk is not simply a choice it is frequently interpreted as a public political gesture. Any public figure who becomes associated with cycling or walking will be transferred within months or less to the ranks of the slightly odd or the amusingly eccentric with every public statement they make thereafter on any subject under the sun prefixed with the words like "the well known 'pedestrian'" or "the '(insert age) year old cycling enthusiast'". Even an obituary headline will contain some similar reminder of their distinctive association with their preferred way of getting from A to B. This is not a call to apathy, just a reminder that power is sometimes most effectively exercised behind the scenes or by quiet example.
That said, Jeremy Paxman cycles the capital. "It is easily the quickest way around London, faster than bus, tube or taxi. You can predict precisely how long every journey will take, regardless of traffic jams, tube strikes or leaves on the line. It provides excellent exercise. It does not pollute the atmosphere. It does not clog up the streets." Vivienne Westwood regularly bicycles through the streets of London wearing a mad-looking pair of shoes from Balenciaga and Gilles Tapie's recent book of photographs of the dancer Sylvie Guillem shows she’s an urban cyclist. Eric Clapton collects and rides Italian road bikes while Bea Campbell wrote "In the context of debates about identity politics - are you gay or straight, nationalist or republican, British or English and so on - I would ask, 'Do you ride a bike?' I love everything about the machine - the sensation of the tyres on the road, the mobility - and I love the fact that you have this intimate relationship with the elements, and the landscape."
Michelle Pfeiffer cycles. Madonna rides with Guy Ritchie and little Rocco and no doubt a procession of reluctant but well paid heavies. Robin Williams owns lots of road bikes and rides with his friend Lance Armstrong. Ex-Shadow Secretary of State Bernard Jenkin drives to his London home on Sunday evening and cycles the rest of the week: "...everywhere, every day - to Westminster, to meetings in the West End and the City, to the Albert Hall, to the Royal Opera House. Cycling offers a huge financial advantage and it keeps me fit."
Des Lynam wrote in the Telegraph: “I decide on the spur of the moment to fly home...I see my loved ones and ride my bicycle in the fresh Sussex air.” Jarvis Cocker cycles in town. Jeff Banks and Paul Smith are avid cyclists and Smith's business has sponsored cycle teams. We may yet see them design proper day clothes for cycling in the city (:)). Sheryl Crow, a singer but also Lance Armstrong's girlfriend,rode close to 70 miles at the recent Ride for the Roses in Austin and speaks of writing a song about cycling. Jon Bon Jovi is a mountain biker sponsoring an MTB team and even though Jeremy Clarkson is rude about cyclists in general he and his wife keep fit on Raleigh Pioneers. "Don't listen to what I say, watch what I'm pedalling (?)" Grateful Dead rent studio space from Marin and their guitarist Bob Weir is a mountain biker, and often rides with mountain bike co-founding father, Gary Fisher. Weir said: "Bicycles are almost as good as guitars for meeting girls."
Sir Rocco Forte took up cycling when his love of endurance sport led him to triathlons. Of all the sports he pursues cycling is "the thing I love best...I am addicted." John Kerry (remember him?) is a keen road cyclist, owning a Serotta Ottrott. God help me, even President Bush took up mountain biking in 2004 "Nothing compares to getting your heart rate up to 170-something, riding hard for an hour-twenty, getting off and not hurting, as opposed to 24 minutes of running, at the end of which I hurt. When you ride a bike and you get your heart rate up and you're out, after 30 or 40 minutes your mind tends to expand; it tends to relax." Yes well. That's one of the most coherent sequence of words I've ever heard from those lips.
I've passed Jon Snow on his Dutch city bicycle near Trafalgar Square. He probably persuaded Paxman it was the best way to get around London. I've used Snow's advice about getting cool in the studio after a fast ride. Apply an ice cube to the temples and back of the neck. Snow says his "... whole day is built around meetings that can be achieved around bike rides. My contract actually offers me a free car from my home to my office and back, but I suppose I am addicted to cycling." Alexei Sayle may write about cars in the Independent but he commutes by bicycle and, with Jon Snow, is a customer of Condor Cycles along with Adam Woodyatt, Jill Halfpenny, Mick Jagger, and Chris Tarrant and wife who've bought a tandem.
Retired Treasury mandarin Sir Steve Robson always rode to work and still gets off road in the Sussex Downs sometimes. Boris Johnson MP cycles to and from Parliament and has argued for cyclists being able to use mobile phones on the road as they only endanger themselves unlike drivers doing the same thing. The Prime Minister of Belgium, is a cyclist and a fan of cycle-sport. He said: "In politics, one can learn some things from cycling, such as how to have character and courage. Sometimes in politics there isn't enough of those things.”
Lee Iacocca ("when you die, if you've got five real friends, then you've had a great life") former boss at Ford and then GM, invented the the SUV, repented and is now into electric bikes and rides his company's products. He said: "After 50 years in the auto business, I'm bringing you the future of transportation - and it's electric!" Kraftwerk's 1980s Tour de France album is a classic and they do other bicycle things though they are a bit reclusive, which brings me back to my original point. I agree that most of these people are celebs rather than people in government or the professions - but I would be undermining my case if I started on another list here. I though Belgian PM and a Conservative shadow minister would be OK though (:)), though I can't resist my favourite European politician, Romano Prodi, one of Italy's most successful post-war politicians, lives in Bologna and goes to work on his bicycle.
In my v.small way, I never ever advocate cycling or walking in the lectures I give around the UK about local government, but in one corner of the room there's always a folding bicycle and when I submit my expenses there's always the reference to "20p a mile for the journeys I've done by cycle", and when I sign into hotels the space for a car number plate remains in-your-face blank, and some may even notice that for a 65 year old I look in rude health cutting quite a figure in the suited self that emerges from my wet wear on a rainy winter morning. My favourite famous cyclist is Emil Zola but he never went on about it. He fought for justice and wrote like an avenging angel - and happened to love cycling.
Taken by one of my Japanese students at 7.00pm on an October evening in 2004, 'Big Joe', officially the Chamberlain Clock Tower, marks the centre of the first 'red brick' university in England. It's in University Square 200 yards from the the School of Public Policy where I've worked since 1973. After seeing the Torre del Mangia in Siena Joseph Chamberlain asked for a Birmingham version that could be seen across the city to which he'd devoted his political life.
Richard, my son, took this picture of the view from the back of our home in Handsworth, Birmingham. Ours is a detached cautiously Tudorbethan house built in 1935. It has a bell box in the kitchen with little signal numbers for Bedrooms 1 and 2, Front Rm, Dining Rm and Lounge, so that a servant could be summoned from each place. Today this system, if it worked, should allow whoever is in the enlarged kitchen (it was originally a rather mean scullery and small morning room) to call people in the rest of the house, though now it's more likely I will use a mobile phone to call the attic. The darkened houses across the garden are of larger Victorian houses converted to flats by social landlords. Many are semi-occupied, providing transient homes for people who haven't quite made up their minds where they are, in contrast to the more decided residents of Beaudesert Road.
* * *
There are various arrivals, passages or departures that bring emotions to my fairly stiff upper lip:
As the train heads south from the Highlands it speeds down a long gradient through Drumochter Pass between the Sow of Atholl and the Boar of Badenoch. This is part of a journey I’ve been making regularly since Christmas 1950. Until the 1960s a second steam engines was put on the sleeper at Perth to make the gradient when going north – these two mountains – small by Greek standards – have marked leaving or arriving in Scotland, even though Dalwhinnie Station, at the head of the pass is over a 150 miles north of the border. I've been making the journey - on and off - all my life. As a small child with my sister in the care of the guard, as an uncomprehending adult-youth looking for an unknown career, as a happy father of small children and then, in a new millenium, of my teenage children and their friends and the beloved dog Oscar
Arriving by train after being absent for a while, through the scruffy remains of Victorian Birmingham - our city – to arrive at the ugly busy station beneath a low concrete roof below the city centre.
Discerning the Ionian coast from the deck of a ship through a morning haze. I recall, also, flying into Athens after not seeing Greece for 25 years and being able - as one still could before 11 September 2001 - to go with Richard and Amy to the cockpit of the Airbus (the one that doesn’t have a steering lever and is flown by buttons) and seeing the mainland laid out in dark marked by the glow of Thessaloniki to the east, the moonlight on the Ionian to our west, tiny jewel-like clusters of villages thousands of feet below and far ahead the loom of Athens (Photo: Amy, Lin and Richard on their first visit to Greece in June 1996)
It’s a swift transition from heart warming feelings to the noisy modern reality of an airport or port – an antidote to involuntary uncritical sentiments, in the form of a cut to another land with which I feel familiar, despite my ignorance.
To my relief there will be a ferry to the mainland on May Day after midday, which is fine as the ferry on to Ancona doesn't leave until 2000 tomorrow. One roofers - a sailor - said an object bearing a red and white light scooted round Ipsos harbour at a smart walking pace laround 2300. "Unidentified Floating Object!" he said. "Tell that around here and by dusk Corfu will know there was a Turkish sub off the coast last night". I've got money from our bank off the Liston for the work on the roof - after a long queue with people grumbling behind me I felt grateful to get our money. The water bill was paid at the civic offices in Ipsos. I've introduced myself to a lady there who may be a senior officer of Faiakon Municipality. I never cease to be fascinated by the way a place solves or tries to solve local problems - roads. licencing, planning, transport, waste collection disposal, water supply, tourism, conservations, parking, burials, emergencies, healthcare, and so on, and how much of the money coming into the local economy benefits local communities rather than going to the shareholders of international travel companies and hotel chains? How do the politicians here relate to their officers? Friends here regard my interest askance. 
