Monday morning

An email this morning from Clive Birch, Chairman of BDAC:

Simon, Intention is still to open this year - proposed time is during national allotments week in August. Clive

That's 10-16 August this year. So we're back on the road - with the usual caution. I phoned Rachel to pass on Clive's message to her and others.

* * * With help I've been pointed to where I can get my hands on Eleni Calligas' thesis - at the Institute of Historical Research. I shall visit on my way to the National Archives on Thursday - at least to start reading. As for the search for the village petition to the High Commission asking the English not to leave, a document which may or may not exist, I may have another source in Maria Paschalidi researching the construction of colonial identities 'the Ionian islands in British imagination 1815-1864'. There's even a hint she might have seen the 'paper' that Kostas and Thanassis have asked me to try and find.

* * *

In another dimension my imagination is being fermented by an exchange on Flickr about Execution Island. I'm led into the pitiable space of Civil War, Occupation and fratricide, the stone years and moral ambiguity around the naming of Democracy Street. Her moniker is Kerkira. She writes English like a native and poses sensitive questions, tells me more about things that happened - how Miki Theodorakis visits the island every year, to remember his brother who was killed there.

Did you hear, my Constantine, what the little birds are saying?

They are little birds and let them sing, they are little birds and let them say.

And a little further on their way other little birds are telling them:

“Isn’t pity and unfair, very strange,

the alive to walk along with the dead?”!

-Did you hear, my Constantine, what the little birds are saying?

That the alive walk along with the dead....