Damp and grey

Thursday was damp and grey and stayed so most of the day. I rather like such weather. With my folding bicycle, cleaned and oiled, I walked it a hundred yards down the narrow path below our house to the bus stop on the lower road. Just after 9 the bus arrived. Someone at the bus stop had already counted out the €1.70 from small change in my palm. Another reminded the driver to load my bicycle in the hold.

After these typical small kindnesses I just sat back and read up the Kallicrates Plan for Hellenic local government reorganisation in Athens News and in 20 minutes we were in town from where I cycled to the Liston, after getting a few good photographs of the magnificent Kapodistrias statue. Jim Potts had kindly agreed to let me run by him, my chat about the Lord High Commissioners next week. We met at Zisimos on the Liston, a delectable bar of old wood, mirrors and glass with a high ceiling that had looked a bit too exclusive. Just before 11-o-clock I entered hesitantly, parking my Brompton by the umbrella stand, then chose a table amid conversation among older people and no piped music. Jim arrived within minutes.

We enjoyed coffee, chocolate, mezes and a long and fascinating chat about his new book – the first recent well sourced popular history of the Ionian Islands and Epirus that I’ve come across, and due out in a few weeks. Jim had copied me a chapter on ‘The Lord High Commissioners’ (pp.201-209) from a 1969 book by Arthur Foss on the Ionian islands – very encouraging and helpful.

We had ouzos, met other regulars and were then, to my delight joined by Jim’s wife, Maria Strani whose writing includes the apocalyptic story of The Pimping of Panorea. When I praised her for it, she remarked gently that it made no difference, reminding, even as I mentioned many recent concerns about the environment in Greece, of the saying that “Knocking at the door of someone dead brings no response.”

Thoroughly content with further introductions to English and Greek customers, one of whom – Dr Spyros Giourgas – gave me his card and promises to gain me access to the old Ionian Parliament building, I left for the Green Bus station, caught the smaller 2-o-clock bus to Sokraki, since the one to Ano Korakiana didn’t leave until until four. Again my bicycle was loaded and unloaded for me. In just under 40 minutes - my fare €3.40 - we were past Ipsos and Pirgi, heading up 30 hairpin bends below Pantocrator and in the mists beyond Spartillas at the left hand turn down to Zygos where another bus awaited us. Everyone but me and the driver got off in Zygos and, with me as a lone passenger, the bus headed slowly up into deeper mist, dropping me by stretch of road in Sokraki just above the twenty nine hairpin bends that led down to Ano Korakiana.

In the quiet an eagle mewed. Muffled by mist, I could hear children playing somewhere in Sokraki. I freewheeled contentedly down the finely constructed serpentine route to Ano Korakiana, bend by bend by bend, until abruptly dropping below cloud cover above little Agios Isadoras, I saw sunlight on a patch of green far below. I could even make out the city I’d left an hour earlier. I was home for tea in Ano Korakiana a few minutes later.

** ** **

Ionian radicalism during the British Protectorate 1815-1864

Inequality unexpressed is accepted as the way of things. Good masters can even make good servants. Oppression, until it is perceived and named, is endured, sometimes evident in madness. Thus it seems to have been on the Ionian islands - dull unrecorded animosity until the emergence of the rizospastai gave voice to a philosophy of criticism and eventually direct resistance, through armed action, futile and easily dealt with by the soldiery, and then effective political activity - overt opposition in rhetoric and text, satire, cartoon, and more covert acts of subversive impoliteness – refusing to observe public rituals to celebrate the status quo, absenting from ceremonies of government, mutterings and murmurings.

The soil for radicalism in the Ionian Islands was fertilised by the socio-economic structures of the Venetian era, beginning to dissolve with the decline of Venice, then abruptly disrupted at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries by the occupying forces of French revolutionary republicanism under Napoleon, but partly recovered under the British, whose Protectorate extended first to protecting the pre-revolutionary status quo, though the British disappointed those prominent families who hoped this included preserving their exclusive powers.

The British, in Corfu and London were concerned about maintaining control of one of their possessions in the face of the jealous interests of co-signatories – Russia, Prussia and Austria – of the Treaty of Paris which had agreed Britain’s accession to the Ionian Protectorate. They did this in what was then the normal way, through conferring patronage on different groups within the Ionian polity, at the same giving sometimes more, sometimes less, support for the emergence of a gradual form of liberal parliamentary franchise to replace what had decayed into an archaically exclusive aristocracy of Venetian landowners in a caste society where the upper classes spoke Italian and lived off a peasant majority who did not.

On Corfu, the Grand Assembly of the cittadini had once been open to all prosperous members of island society. Eleni Calligas’ 1994 thesis reports how this body gradually lost its ‘demotic element’:

Increasingly specific qualifications were required for membership. Each island Assembly elected a smaller Council to conduct the business of government and appoint officials, it was composed of 150 members in Corfu and, eventually, Zante which, although a smaller community, was very prosperous, and limited to thirty in Cerigo. To protect the power that such exclusive franchise conferred, the Corfiot cittadini began closing their ranks, constituting themselves into a separate social class of signorini [nobles], limiting the families allowed to participate in the Assembly and, to avoid confusion, introducing the Libro d'oro in 1572.

Via representations to Venice the Corfiot nobility refined its privileges. By 1641 those who did not own city homes were excluded from the Assembly. Although being an apothecary, goldsmith or mercier (σωποπωλης) was viewed as compatible with nobility in Venice, the land owning Corfiot signorini:

...looked upon any form of mercantile activity with unrestrained aristocratic contempt. Citizenship…involved furnishing proof that a particular individual, as well as his father and forefather, were the issue of a legitimate marriage, inhabitants of their own city residence and not contaminated by the practice of any menial occupation. [Eleni Calligas pp 9-10 whose rich references on this alone include G.Mavrogiannis, 1889, History of the lonian Islands 1797-1815, 2 Vols., Athens (Ιστορία των Ιονίων Νήσων αρχομένη η Ενωση της Επτανησου) and L. Zois 1955, History of Zakinthos (Ιστορία τως Ζακυθνου)]

It may have been expressed nationalistically as a British-Hellenic issue, but the strongest source of animosity towards the British, as a small number of High Commissioner’s, especially John Colborne Lord Seaton, but also Lord Nugent and Gladstone, recognised, lay in perceptions among the poor majority of the islands that the British were allies of the landed aristocracy, their successors and allies among the middle classes; that they worked through them and encouraged them through patronage. Such opinions were realistic. On those occasions when the poor reacted - sometimes violently - against those who effectively owned them, British were seen to apply justice in the interests of the propertied. Thus were the rizopastai, given further encouragement by the ideas of 1848 and the success on the mainland of the Hellenic Revolution against Turkey, able to turn class injustice into a philosophy part nationalistic, part revolutionary, against the British ‘occupiers’.

Over half a century, some British governors resisted this process vehemently, others sought to channel it into their own vision of a mature democracy, some pragmatically, some idealistically, until wider events focused their attention on achieving a dignified abandonment of the Protectorate.

** ** **

The Kallicrates Plan for the reform of local government ~ 2010

Greece is divided administratively into nomes, which are further separated into eparchies. Lefkas and Zante are nomes; the nome of Cephalonia includes Ithaca as an eparchy. Kithira is now attached to a non-Ionian nome, and the eparchy of Paxos is part of the nome of Corfu.

This is an extract from a short description of local government in our area of Greece. All this seems to be about to change. What will happen to Demos Faiakon and the other island municipalities including Demos Kerkyron and the Ionian Eparchies under PASOK’s recently proposed Kallikrates Plan for reforming Greek local government? These measures, are, like the local government reorganisations set in motion by our Redcliffe-Maud Report in 1974, based on a managerial philosophy, not so much antagonistic towards local democracy as distrustful of its claims to be democratic.

Kallikrates seems designed to address the suspicions of the already powerful in Greece that many of its smaller units of local government, far from being local democracies – efficient, transparent, representative and accountable to the local population - provide havens for self-interested factions habituated to dipping into the purses of that local population to feather the nests of those able to buy influence over local decisions. We see, as a consequence, contempt for government – as much among its corrupting beneficiaries as among those excluded. We see the resentment caused by local government officials who ignore complaints about a noisy neighbour who won’t control his dogs, a business that plays illegally loud music at anti-social hours, a householder who let’s rubbish accumulate and spread from his property, a developer who pours concrete, bulldozes trees and builds despite planning prohibitions.

This isn’t just a Greek problem, though Greece may have recognised it later than some other European countries. It’s a problem of modernity – where the definition of community is no longer self-evident and where the idea of local councils which can assess local needs in a professional way and formulate, through debate and participation, the voice of the communities they are meant to govern, is a novel idea, requiring new methods of measurement and new sets of values about the meaning of local democracy.

In our fragmented mobile world it isn’t easy to define ‘community’, measure ‘need’ and express a unique local ‘voice’ and so, as in the UK, it has proved easier to resort to rational centralised solutions that rely on market forces and privately provided services to a more individualised population of consumers rather than voters.

Across Europe there seems to be a slow retreat from representative democracy. Policy develops away from centres of elected political authority. Even the most senior politicians are constrained by decisions being made by shadowy figures whose relationship to democratic government has altered from being agents of government to being its principals - to steal a quote from my colleague Prof Chris Skelcher - an expert on the subject of democratic deficit.

Most of us have little idea how this works. We struggle to find ways to research the process - avoiding conspiracy theory for its one tenth accurate silliness. The Kallikrates Plan is presented for public consultation on the web with a view to creating blueprint that can be voted into law by MPs in May 2010, and implemented over six months, in time for municipal elections in November. It involves abolishing Greece’s 54 Prefectures and 22 other administrative units including eparchies. In their place will be 7 regional unelected agencies, their chiefs appointed by central government. These new regions will be responsible for policies on immigration, waste disposal (not collection), public works and highways as well as land use in town and country and the management of EU funding in each region - referred to as ESPA infrastructure development funds. The regional chiefs will appoint deputy regional chiefs with authority similar to current prefects. 1034 existing municipalities will be reduced by two thirds -1034 to 370 - responsible for civil protection, welfare, public health inspections and building permits. There will be something equivalent to our Audit Commission, checking regularly on local expenditure – the State Auditor’s Council - and something that looks like a scrutiny function based in Athens to maintain oversight of local policies – measures aimed at increasing public understanding of things are being done, what is often called ‘transparency’.

No names of specific councils are mentioned in the consultation document, - an obvious and sensible move to avoid contention during consultation - so I’m not sure just when the actual Kalliktrates plan will be presented for Parliament. What a tremendous test of the political will and weight of Papandreou’s still new government.

** ** **

Corfucius keeps me in touch with all I want to know of our previous PM and his encounter with the Chilcot and the Thomas Cook Corfu case.

Βασιλόπιτα

Vassilopita in Ano Korakiana

Sunday evening marked Korakiana’s Vasilopita - a convivial tradition to mark the coming year and recall the last. It was at Luna D’Argento, a barn sized timber roofed building next to Sally’s stables belonging to Sally’s sister Rachel's brother-in-law and her parents-in-law. Lin and I checked with Leftheris that it would be appropriate for us to attend. After dark we walked from the main Ano-Kato road down a driveway decorated with many little white lights hung on surrounding trees. Outside it was chilly with just a few people behind us. Inside was bustle and glitter. A large square cake was on the centre table – the Vasilopita cake. Several generations were assembled to watch many performing in the celebration – the ambience of a family table multiplied. Free soft drinks were passed out from the bar. Starting with tribute speeches from the low stage led by Ano Korakiana's President referring to people and events, the music began; first a jaunty song, the singers strumming mandolins, then the Samaras Philharmonia spread across the centre of the hall struck up with tunes even I could hum – Get me to the church on time, the theme from Gladiator, Amazing Grace - followed, on a cleared stage, by the choir singing Greek songs, finishing with dances in traditional costume, the last of these special to Korakiana. Large pieces of cake were swiftly distributed. Any worry we might be intruding was dispersed by the kindness of our welcome, being beckoned to sit by the Leftheris, seeing parents and grandparents familiar to us carrying or leading small descendants, amid constant contented chat with pauses to applaud. The choirmaster asked very politely for more quiet at one point. I didn’t feel self-conscious about taking a few pictures, noting that Katya Spingos was, as she has at other events we’ve attended, acting as photo remembrancer while Thanassis, her husband, chronicles the life – past and present - of the village on its website.

*** ***

I would like to see inside the old Ionian Parliament building as I’m sure there’ll be busts, statues and plaques in memory of Ionian politicians to include in an account of the Protectorate, but it seems entry is only possible if some other event is going on there or a generous cleaner lets me in. I've also just read of a new book shortly out - The Ionian Islands and Epirus: A Cultural History (Landscapes of the Imagination) by Jim Potts which I'll order but it won't be with me before my chat on 3 February. Jim has agreed to see me for coffee. He says he's talking about his book at the Durrell School on March 3. (see also)

** ** **

Our week of blue skies is drawing to an end. It will be warmer but wet. I’ve bagged up sun dried driftwood on the balcony and put it under our plastic table now replaced by a cedar table, mildly dilapidated, found amid overgrown rotting wood, carried by us to the house and hauled up to the balcony by rope, after sanding and scraping off crispy remains of varnish. Its surface shows little sign of previous life, the small burns, grazes, scratches and stain that clue the use of some old tables. Between the three good cedar planks, nailed to the frame, that makes its top, there’s no cavity in which a delicately extracted core sample might afford evidence of previous owners. Was it normally covered by a table cloth; treated as a best table, not for any craft – beyond conversation? Each stout square leg is gently tapered with two fluted grooves on each side – 32 in all. The bottom of each leg had rotted from long standing in rain, but equally and the dead wood is all gone, dried away in summers, so the table stands firm. The bottom outside edge of each side panel, just above our knees, has been gently rounded below a discrete routed groove. There’s a drawer missing which we’ve measuring for a replacement, to hold cutlery.

Town and country

On Wednesday we collected more driftwood from a winter oasis below Barbati’s blighted sprawl of cloned villas, scarred earth and concrete skeletons awaiting cash part of me prays will fail to flow. We had a beach to ourselves, ripples over an azure sea barely stirring the pebbles; in the far ground – mountains and mountains. I sawed. Lin gathered kindling. Bags filled, we drove on towards the heights over the Corfu Channel down to Kassiopi strolling from the harbour along a path above the shore ending at a rocky pasture where three fine ponies were grazing. In the cities where I’ve spent most of my life I’m glad to see vestiges of countryside, tamed nature in public parks, tree lined streets and rich private gardens. Here the Ionian countryside can still overwhelm the despoiling energies of men.

Albania from Kassiopi

* * *

We drove into town to Alpha Bank to sort out problems getting debit cards and PINs. Our address is not a postal address. Banks, unlike the electric company’s bill and the Demos’ water bill, can’t send card details to village shops. Getting cards and PIN together has been tricky. Cards came last September via friends who have a PO box but this is not always reliable when receiving mail to a different addressee. So no PINs.

I enjoy our Alpha Bank branch. It's in the poshest part of the city. We’d found an hour’s parking by the Spianada for €1; free after 1400. The bank’s high white marble interior is warm in winter and cool in summer. The queue at the counter is never that long. People are interesting, especially the smartly dressed, Junoesque, manageress who now welcomes us with a smile and beckons us to her desk with an authoritative “come, please” and copes efficiently with our fumbling deference as we sit together on comfortable, but slightly lower, chairs, before her immaculate desk. She's the kind of official who, were she searching our luggage at an airport, would overrule any concerns about intrusion with the strictest politeness so that after she’d satisfied herself - and us - that we were no threat to the security of Greece, we’d be thanking her for going through our belongings with such intimate thoroughness, even suggesting she check other parts of our lives.

“You have the cards? They were sent, yes?”

“Yes, but not our PINS.”

“They were definitely sent. The record shows."

“We think that the PO address didn’t work in that case. For the cards OK. For the PIN. No. Can you send them again?”

“No problem.”

“And can you include not only our name but the name of the PO box holder?”

“There’s not space in the computer form for two names.”

“OK. We'll keep our fingers crossed.”

Our bank book is always adequate for payments in and out at this and other branches, so the newish credit cards will, if they do at last become functional, make going inside the bank and meeting people there less necessary.

* * *

We strolled rich in time, looking at houses, shops, architectural detail – friezes, wrought iron door fittings, shutters, awnings, street signs, lampholders and posts, gates, plaques, windows, balconies, lintels, delicate joinery, curtains, plantpots, trees and climbers – old and new posters, graffiti, dogs, cats, statues, paving, kerbstones. I wanted to identify some buildings associated with government. We checked the Town Hall, a street west of Theotoki. An old porter reassured me this was Demos Kerkyrion – not the ‘Vourla Ionion’. The Town Hall is where Corfu’s governors deliberate, and where Jacinta and Martin were registered husband and wife after dashing downhill, her wedding party in pursuit, from the Ionian Parliament where a cleaner had told her – minutes before her registry office appointment – that they no longer did weddings at the Parliament. So how could we get to see the Parliament? At the National Bank of Greece that looks down towards the Town Hall a security guard said “It’s behind here. One more square”. Sure enough, after a minute’s walk the building stood before us, enclosed by parked cars.

Its three front doors were locked but there were plaques in Greek and English that told me much of what I wanted to know. But how come Charles James Napier, often in disagreement with Maitland, described by Calligas as ‘the scrupulously fair’ Resident of Cephalonia, has recorded an incident where Thomas Maitland, his superior at the time, berated the Ionian Senate in his night-shirt. Energetic he was, but I doubted that, even inebriated, he’d walk half a mile across the city in his nightgown.

Behind the Ionian Parliament in the same building we found Holy Trinity Church, a large new Union flag, hanging outside. Ann, the duty warden, showed us inside – a small space, undecorated, serene.

From there we walked, window peering, along narrow streets we'd not seen before. In an antique shop I saw an 1850 print with maps of British ‘possessions’ in the Mediterranean – Corfu was listed with Gibraltar and Malta. It was priced too dearly at €120, and I’d taken the point about ‘possession’. The Ionian Islands were not supposed to be possessions or colonies but many British politicians and other members of our governing classes treated them as such.

Near Odos Theotoki again we had pies – mine spinach fresh from the oven, burning my lips. “I enjoy this” I said “One more errand. Let’s go back to the car via the Palace of St.Michael and St.George.”

Spread across the narrow sea's leaden horizon lay the mountains, more detailed than in summer. The higher peaks of Epirus and Albania were touched with snow over dark ravines receding into blue-grey haze. What a view from the residential quarters of the Palace. On a leaflet given me in the atrium of the Palace I noted a reference to the ‘British Occupation’ but also the fact that the building housed the Lord High Commissioner, the Ionian Senate and the Ionian Parliament. Of course the Senate was a small and more exclusive ‘upper house’ of Ionian politicians. The Senate stayed in the Palace, from where Maitland could have come downstairs from his bedroom. The larger Ionian Parliament moved to the other site. I’m not sure when.

The old Ionian Parliament, Corfu

Lin drove home via the Beer Bucket to do email. Dusk was settling.

“Let’s buy giros at George’s.”

“No. We’ve got a stifado at Mark and Sally’s tonight.”

“Yes. Right. Yes. You do realise I’m half way through my Fred Vargas Lord have Mercy on Us All. What am I going to read next? I’ve left the rest in Birmingham.”

“I’ve picked you a Martin Beck from the bar book pool,” says Lin “it’s in my bag.”

I reach to the back seat and find The Laughing Policeman.

“I love you!” I say opening its weathered cover “What d’you think’s the first line? Go on!”

“The weather”

“In one! ’On the evening of the thirteenth of November it was pouring in Stockholm’. OK. I’ll put my last one in its place.”

We read for a while before supper then strolled up Democracy Street.

“Nico got the Demos to put that spanking new street sign on the corner of his house - ΟΔΌΣ ΔΗΜΟΚΡΑΤΊΑΣ. He told Paul he knew I’d be pleased by it.”

“You know there’s just these two shops left now”

“I do know. Hard work for them.”

Ancien Gil had bought a fish pâté to pass – a tasty blend of tuna, anchovies and unsalted butter which we passed around spreading on dry biscuits. We sat at table for the promised stifado - as good to eat as lobster. You do unhurried work, teasing away exquisite morsels of slow stewed rabbit from the bone. Our plates were generously supplied with shallots from the rabbit gravy, small roast potatoes and carrots. Then coffee, port, mint chocs and brandy and discussion – the economy, films too scary to watch all the way through, keeping a submarine in Gouvia to evade mooring charges, medieval detective stories, the lethal character of katabatic winds and the seacraft they demanded, Corfu history, absent friends, watching sunrise over the Pyramids in company with a bored Egyptian guide who wanted to talk about Man-U, our village, the success made by its owner of the only shop in Lydbrook, the local village that has said “stuff to OTE”, wired itself up with even “little old ladies on Skype”, the tedium of Twitter (“admitting to it will become as embarrassing as having a mullet haircut and bellbottoms”), the perfidy of the Welsh and the English - in equal measure. We also discussed where you put the cameraman in outdoor documentaries – especially those ones about survival in the wild or any supposedly realistic programme in which the individual talking to you from the screen is presented as all on their own in the landscape.

The sun appears over the mountains of Epirus

'...when the sun rises do you not see a round disk of fire somewhat like a guinea?' 'Oh no! no! I see an innumerable company of the heavenly host crying: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty!' from William Blake's A Vision of the Last Judgement 1806

Protectorate or possession?

I was delighted to accept Richard Pine’s invitation, to give a chat at the Durrell School in Philhellene Street in a few weeks - Wednesday 3 February. In Richard's words "7.30 glass of wine, 8pm talk, finish by 9pm".

I'm delving into the varying characteristics of different Lord High Commissioners of the Ionian Islands between 1815 and 1864, relying on sorties in the National Archives at Kew, on the early chapters of Diana Markides and Robert Holland The British and the Hellenes and, of course, on Eleni Calligas’s brilliant 1992 thesis – unpublished - that has brought together rich information about personalities in the Ionian political classes during the British Protectorate.

I have a portrait of Thomas Maitland, the graceless aristocrat, who in 1817 wrote a constitution for the Ionian Islands that made them more an English possession than the Protectorate, intended and agreed, in 1815.

There’s one of his successor Frederick Adam, whose statue stands outside the Protectorate's seat of government - The Palace of St Michael and St George at the head of the Liston - a man more congenial to Ionians, married to a Greek, he oversaw the building, for her, of a delightful neo-classical house, Mon Repos, in lovely grounds a mile south of the Commissioner's Palace.

I’m missing a picture of Alexander Woodford, acting Lord High Commissioner for part of 1832. I have found one of the whig intellectual Lord Nugent, keen to implement the liberal principles of his party, who became vexed when the Ionian politicians to whom he’d granted greater freedoms failed to observe his wishes.

Andrea Mustoxidi

I’ve also found one of his successor Sir Howard Douglas who sparred with a new class of Ionian parliamentarian in Andrea Mustoxidi - Ανδρέας Μουστοξύδης - intellectual, scholarly, politically astute, back from Italy enthused by republican ideas of liberty and equality brewing across the rest of Europe, by the outcome of the Greek War of Independence, the founding of the Hellenic nation and the idea of Ionian autonomy - these last two being visions that became contentiously separate in the following decades.

I’ve also a sketchy portrait of James Stewart-Mackenzie, and far better painting of his notable successor - an older portrait - of the exceptional John Colborne, Lord Seaton, a radically inclined Tory who at last dissolved Maitland’s colonial constitution and replaced it with ‘the Seatonian’, acting on the principle that power should be linked to the wishes of the electorate rather than of the Palace of St.Michael and St.George. For Seaton, Maitland’s style of government, far from being justified by Ionian venality and incompetence, was in large degree its cause. He was unique among commissioners in seeing economic problems at the heart of social discontent in the islands - exploited by many years of Venetian mono-cropping (olives in Corfu, currants in Zakinthos and Cephalonia).

Giuseppi Momferrato

The Tory in Seaton saw that by opening government to the parliamentarian liberali, he strengthened the Protectorate and undermined the campaigning zeal of the emerging radicals, the rizospastai, pressing for the departure of the British and the creation of a sovereign Ionian Republic – a political movement driven from Cephalonia – one of its leaders, the zealous and principled Elias Zervo in alliance and friendship with Giorgio Lunzo and Giuseppe Momferrato and others whose names and character I have yet to learn.

Elias Zervo

Seaton’s policies were harmed by the personality of his inherited resident, kept on instructions from London, on Cephalonia – Selwyn D’Everton - whose views on the readiness of Ionians for self-government were out of harmony with Seaton’s.

The irony of Seaton’s tenure as Commissioner was that his efforts to strengthen the hand of the liberali added to the momentum of the rizospasti who were not as distinct from the liberali as he might have hoped. The first outbreak of violence on Cephalonia in 1848 was, as Seaton recognized, a reaction against oppression and poverty imposed by local landowners, but it was used by the radicals to argue a philosophical case against the British. By enforcing the law on behalf of the signorini the British pushed Ionians enfranchised by Seaton’s reforms into the camp of the radicals.

The Rizopastai

I’m missing a picture Sir Henry George Ward, successor to Seaton, keen to continue reforms that favoured the wishes of the liberali, but faced with the murder by peasants of two landowners' employees on Cephalonia, Ward ordered military intervention resented to this day as a violent overreaction – a reminder of the fist in the glove that could be wielded by the British on behalf of the Ionian ruling class in whom they often recognized their strongest allies. There were hangings and floggings on Cephalonia – the latter penalty unfamiliar to Ionians and therefore additionally a focus of horror and widespread contempt and loathing for the Lord High Commissioner across the islands. There were good newspapers; many radical. News spread far more quickly along the islands than between London and Corfu.

Nonetheless Ward’s repression may have been a winning card for those British politicians and diplomats preoccupied with maintaining strategic power in the Eastern Mediterranean via influence on Greece. The dominant voice of the rizospasti, Elias Zervos, was silenced first by banishment to Orthoni, just off the north west coast of Corfu, but then by far more distant exile to Kythera, the southernmost of the Ionian islands, below Methoni in the Peloponnese.

Constantinos Lombardo

A way was cleared for the rise of Constantinos Lombardos from Zakinthos, a more opportunist politician who focused the energies of the rizopasti not on republican principles like Zervos, but on enosis - the transfer of the islands to the young kingdom of Greece.

I’ve a portrait of Ward’s successor Sir John Young. He was perhaps the most direct victim of the fact that Ionians were not restricting their political energies to the region. Islanders had come in delegations to London complaining directly to British ministers and MPs about the conduct of the Lord High Commissioner and his agents, cultivating support in London, and indeed the rest of Europe. There was a long tradition of Greek and British political intermingling, distinguished exemplars being Ioannis Kapodistria and later Giorgos Theotokis, who were able to navigate shrewdly amid the differences of opinion on Greece in the British political classes.

Thus, amid the accelerating trajectory of his career as one of England’s most distinguished statesman, William Gladstone, came on an extraordinary mission to Greece and the Ionian islands, convinced that most of the problems of the Protectorate lay with British policies that had blocked the emergence of a mature democracy there.

This didn't mean he came with the intention of abandoning the British Protectorate. To understand why the British government held so keenly to the Ionian islands I must recognise the motives of every power that has relied on Corfu as a military base.

Stand, on a clear day, on the summit of Angelocastra, (see this in another blog) above Paleokastritsa, from where Linda and I have gazed across fifty miles, maybe more, of the southern Adriatic – defended for three centuries by Venice, coveted in the mid-19th century by the Austro-Hungarian empire, linked in a conflux of Balkan contracts that policy-makers in Whitehall and the clubs off Pall Mall referred to as ‘The Eastern Question’, calculating whether to guard our interest in the Eastern Mediterranean via fledgling Christian states or a declining Ottoman Empire, whether, part quoting John Delane, influential editor of The Times, ‘to protect a cradle’ or ‘watch over a tomb’. Look eastward and you see a hundred miles of the mainland coast of Greece stretching south to Levkas - once Santa Maura - and Ithaka and the long contested sea marches between the Turkish Empire and Christian Europe.

Gladstone favoured the cradle. A fervent Philhellene, steeped in English classical scholarship, he came to tell the Ionians he supported reform of their constitution but not the ending of the Protectorate. Like Seaton, Gladstone doubted the quality of their government under the Protectorate, not the quality of the Ionians. He fell half in love with the Orthodox Church, famously banging heads with the Archbishop of Corfu as they bowed to one another simultaneously.

Had events taken a different turn; had Ilias Zervos and his followers from Cephalonia not been rendered ineffectual by exile, unable to present a serious challenge to the fervent politics of enosis pressed by Constantinos Lombardos and his Zantian followers, there might just have been a sovereign Septinsular Democracy along the western shores of Greece – an Ionian polity treated by the great powers as separate from their preoccupations with the Eastern Question, less subject to the machinations of hi-politics that dog Greece to this day (Would heads at the ECB ponder excluding Greece on the grounds of her weakening influence on the €? Possibly. Would France and Germany exclude Greece, or any of the PIIGS from the EU on mere economic grounds? Inconceivable – except among journalists ill-briefed by marginal politicians). Gladstone’s new constitution, improving even on Seaton’s, was rejected by the Ionian Parliament as soon as he’d left for England, leaving the last Lord High Commissioner, Henry George Storks, to apply all his political talent to ensuring that Whitehall’s decision to surrender the Protectorate to enosis looked like a grand gift to mother Greece from Queen Victoria, so that our people could depart amid guns fired in salute, much bunting, flag waving, kisses, embraces - even tears - on both sides.

To those cynical enough to believe in Albion perfidy two things would be apparent. Britain reserved a robust military foothold in Malta, and more important, as Ilias Zervos realized, greater influence at Athens than would be tolerated henceforth in the Ionian Parliament, having ceded the Ionian Islands as a quid pro quo for for the Greek Assembly's unanimous election of the young King George of the Hellenes. The Hellenic governing classes could rejoice, with some reservations, at this further enlargement of their kingdom; continuing to nurture that ill-fated dream of recovering Constantinople – the name for Istanbul displayed on the concourse of Thessaloniki Railway Station to this day. From Corfu History Forum:

THE UNION WITH THE EYES OF A MONK (translated)

Archives of the monastery of Myrtidiotissa, Catastico 1, p. 168r

During the year 1814, the English conquered Corfu, and their occupation lasted until 1864, when the Union with the rest of Greece took place. It would be better if the earth were torn apart and swallowed us all alive. Three times damn, according to the Triode*, to Bishop Athanasios who made (sic) the Union and doomed the Ionians. In the times of England everything was good, and when the Greek nation came, God’s rage came with them, and all the expensiveness and all the great blasphemy. I remember, when I was a little schoolboy, in 1888, that my father – God rest his soul - used to tell me that at the time that the English were in Corfu, in the village of Synarades only two men used to utter profane oaths, a Stathes P. and another Petros, son of A, and no one else. And the Greek nation brought all the sins to the Ionian Islands.**

* Certain feasts of the Lord in the Orthodox Church will have a canon composed of three odes, called a Triode, chanted at Compline on each day of the Afterfeast.

**Extract from the book of Spyros Karydes Αμβροσίου Μοναχού Χρονικά Σημειώματα, η Κέρκυρα των αρχών του 20ου αιώνα μέσα από τα μάτια ενός μοναχού, 2004, p. 107

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Yesterday and today we have sun. We did gardening, washing and sawing firewood and going about in the village visiting, observing at close hand work proceeding on older houses - flooring, roofing, repairing down to conscientious details.

In Nico and Sophia's house where ambitious restoration is nearing completion, I had the honour to be introduced to George Poplis a Greek craftsman from Albania who has taught himself - from the internet - the art of wood graining adding to many other fine touches in one of the finest houses in the village.

Across the road, Mark's brother, Paul has a few months more work to do on the house he and Jacinta have moved to from Bermuda (having lived over 15 years ago on Vido). Next door an old house, long up for sale, has been bought by a Dutchman and is being properly re-roofed and set up for residence. We heard of another restoration further down that has not gone so well -woeful workmanship paid for in advance; the half-completed house now up for sale. Up steps above Nico's place is Sally and Mark's house coming along fine with much of the work done by Ian, who was laying a magnificent oak floor yesterday morning. Sally told us that there's a new carpenter's shop opened at the bottom of Ano Korakiana. I couldn't have felt more satisfied at these signs of renewal, enjoying the muffled noise of drills, sanders and angle grinders carried on the breeze drying people's washing, including ours.

At Saint Athanasios

When it was empty again and I was heading up the hill I sneaked this picture of the church, below us. An hour earlier this Monday morning it was with glittering with candles even as bright winter sun shone through its high windows; packed to the walls with men. women, boys and girls and babies in arms; quite a few I recognised. On Sunday evening Mr Leftheris had told me of a service where much of the village would be present - "at Saint Athanasios", and he gestured downwards. His wife and daughter were doing refreshments. I arrived just after the service began and slipped, as discretely as my size would allow, into a cosy building filled with the voices of a choir down from Spartillas, the village high above and further east of Ano Korakiana. Their singing was flawless, mingling with the words of the priests. The choir was invisible, but for the back of a head I could glimpse high up at the back of the church behind a railing. Their voices filled the rich space of the church. I saw Thannassis Spingos and, after shaking hands, stood behind him, in the floor of the church. A layman, a gentleman my age stood up from his chair, came over and offered me his seat by the wall, between candles. The singing was almost unceasing.

The church and everyone there enclosed me. My eyes watered, as they do with age. A small group of children were given communion in the Eastern way with leavened bread not wafers. We all took a piece of this as the service ended. I left after coffee and brandy in the house next door; full of people talking and laughing. A large round loaf of sweet bread was gently placed in my hands before I made my way up the hill to Democracy Street, passing two men working on an old house we've often admired between us and the lower road.

Already we've seen our friends, eaten with them, have more to supper tonight and next week. The boat's dry again; our house cosy. It looks as if we are to have a few days of sunny weather warm enough to dry the washing outside. I've bagged up most of the Bougainvillea I've cut back to a few feet from the ground and we've been on the beach at Dassia gathering more driftwood for firewood.

On Saturday, after staying up late tidying up our text to meet format requirements and making the paper anonymous for the referees, I submitted - on-line - a paper by John and me, hoping it will be accepted for a conference in May - an account of the way the video I started using over 25 years ago to capture political-management conversations has evolved into quite a sophisticated methodology:

PROBING THE HEART OF DEMOCRACY: THE EVOLUTION OF VIDEO METHODS FOR ANALYSING CONVERSATIONS BETWEEN POLITICIANS AND ADMINISTRATORS IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT

Abstract: In the context of evolving video technology since the 1980s, (the first author) has been refining methods of accessing the way politicians and managers work together. Since 2007 the latter has continued this research in collaboration with (the second author), using film to investigate the interpersonal dynamics built in to political-management ‘conversations’. As well as contributing to theories about the leadership in government, this research has produced stimulating training material, used in UK and Australia, to increase skills, and explore values, among local government practitioners negotiating the overlap of political and managerial responsibilities.

Apart from the method it describes I hope the paper will be accepted with the nine 'illustrations' it contains, in the form of a series of links to videos made over many years showing how these films have evolved from studio interviews in the style of mainstream broadcasting to the conversations between politicians and managers that John and I are now capturing, where those filmed no longer tell an external interviewer about how they work together, but actually do work together during filming without the interruptions of the researcher.

Ano Korakiana

Flowers and grapefruit from Honey awaited us in the house. Leftheris brought round a big bottle of his latest rosé and Paul's text messages greeted our arrival the moment I turned on the Greek chipped phone. The chimney's drawing well and we've a good supply of dry wood. In between the rain it's warm enough to put out the washing. The blood oranges are exquisite.

We were tiring of snow. Nonetheless I hadn't banked on finding a foot of rainwater in Summer Song. Few appreciate the pleasures of pumping and baling slightly oily water from the bilges of a flooded boat but after a couple of hours its done and I'm hoping there'll be enough sun to start to dry out the mildewed cabin.

The canvas cockpit cover had torn open, forming a funnel for torrential rain. The cockpit drains had blocked. Water filled it and overflowed into the rest of the boat. Dave, who came down like a Djinn with an electric pump helped clear the worst. After that it was groping with a sponge to soak up what was left. He told me several boats had sunk, including one in our harbour. We're lucky.

* * *

The impacts of the government's programme to eliminate the grey economy and find new ways to raise revenue to offset Greece's debt are apparent. Number plates are missing from quite a few cars....

View of Corfu old fort and the Greek mainland from Sally and Mark's house in Ano Korakiana

Getting to Athens

Awaiting an overnight bus to Gatwick from our new coach station

We were getting tired of snow. We left in snow showers from the new coach station in Digbeth at 0245 on Monday morning. After an hour's delay we left the snowy runway at Gatwick around 1015 and were supposed to leave Athens for Corfu Kapodistria at 1810. But a technical problem with our flight keeps us waiting at Venizelos for 'further announcements' - giving us plenty of time in the mild weather here to discard our snowshoes and don wetwear for the rain in Corfu. It's good to be home.

'Just an update' on the Victoria Jubilee Allotments

Chap 6: 'The Gift Relationship' in The Allotment by D.Crouch & C. Ward

From Rachel to Cllr Mahmood Hussain on 8 January 2010 copied to me:

Dear Cllr Mahmood. Just a quick note - I have had a look at the agenda for the next ward meeting and notice that Alan Orr is not listed in on the agenda to speak at this meeting. I recall that the September Ward meeting you requested that Alan attend January meeting to give you and local people an update. Alan indicated that he would be happy to attend. I wonder was he invited to Wednesday's meeting? If not could an officer contact him to some feed back as to when we are likely to have access to the site - as we were given assurances that we were likely be on site by January. Happy New Year. Rachel Chiu

From me to Rachel on Sunday morning

Dear Rachel (cc. Cllr Mahmood Hussain). Thanks for posting this. I bumped into Alan Orr in early-December and mentioned it in my blog. A few days ago, cycling home down Wycliff Road, I saw Alan Orr strolling along holding a red brick. "Alan! what are you up to with that?" "Checking on a planning application. They must use a certain colour," "I'll believe you. What's happening with the VJA (see p.8 of the FoE Newsletter)?" He told me the gardeners' shed was in place, which I'd seen before I went to Australia, "...and the water supply and the path and topsoil. The last thing will be the laying out of specific plots" "There seems no change since I've been away" "Oh yes there has been more work's been done on the playing fields." I've no way of knowing if this is so. It would be better if he attended the next ward meeting. I support your request to Cllr Hussain. We're away Birmingham from Monday but will stay informed on progress. Best wishes, Simon. Handsworth Allotments Information Group (HAIG)

From Cllr Mahmoud Hussain to Rachel Chiu on Saturday 9 January:

I will try to get Allan Orr to attend the meeting so he can give update. Thanks.

From Rachel Chiu this morning:

Hi Simon. Will see what happens - I'll attend the ward meeting anyway and make sure it is on the agenda for the nest meeting. All the best, Rachel

On Sun, Jan 10, 2010 at 11:48 AM, Councillor Martin Mullaney passed this message on to my Handsworth neighbour John Tyrell who copied it to me. I passed it on to Rachel and others I know will be interested:

From: Andrew Hogben To: Martin Mullaney cc: Darren Share ; Peter Short ; Adrian Stagg. Sent: Monday, January 04, 2010 1:47pm Re: Victoria Jubilee allotments

Dear Councillor Mullaney. Further to my email below, I am pleased to confirm that the majority of works to the allotments were completed before Christmas, however holidays, weather/ground conditions and availability of fencing materials have delayed completion of some works. I am informed today by the contractor that there are further fencing works to complete which have been ordered; water and electric services to connect which have been ordered and some final works to the individual plots. I hope to be called to a 'Practical Completion' meeting on site sometime this month. In the meantime I have had the transfer plans verified and will be preparing a Delegated Authority for the Head of Landscape and Contract Services to sign which authorises the land acquisition. On receipt I will instruct Legal Services to proceed. I will let you know when I have an idea of a possible transfer date so that we can start letting. Regards, Andy Hogben, Principal Landscape Development Officer 0121 303 4764 andrew.hogben@birmingham.gov.u

* * *

Our balcony in Handsworth looking towards St Mary's Church

The snow persists across the country. Our home here feels warmer after Lin oversaw the installing, over two days, of double glazed windows across the back of the middle floor. We're checking our lists, packing, keeping a special eye on the weather for our coach journey to Gatwick, and flights from there to Athens in the morning, where its supposed to be 16°C and sunny and Corfu, where its supposed to 13°C and raining heavily.

Yesterday Richard Hill phoned me about my planned visit to him in March bringing the carved wooden roach that he gave Jack in the early 1970s. It was fixed on the headboard, where he slept. An eye, gill, pelvic and pectoral fin remain uncarved. Richard has agreed to add these, 35 years after his original. He'll shape that side of the fish, mend the tail and add a missing pelvic fin. "There's enough wood on the uncarved side I'm sure" "Yes but also holes I'll need to fill. The wood's teak. it's from an old paddle steamer" he told me. "Your fish, being a work of art, lowers my heart rate when I hold it. It's a beautiful thing. I'd hadn't really looked at it before, giving more attention to the carved carp. I still don't who made that."

Heading back to Birmingham

Speeding south to catch my connection to Birmingham

Spent two hours shovelling snow off the driveway at Brin Croft yesterday, so that Sharon could drive me, my luggage and Oscar down to Inverarnie Stores where I met up with a taxi whose driver took me gingerly down a snowy A9 to catch a train to Edinburgh from Aviemore. A freight train, whose tumbled Eddie Stobart wagons I glimpsed through the taxi window as we passed Carrbridge had lost its brakes on the descent from Slochd Summit and come off the rails just north of the station - so no trains from Inverness and a narrow escape for the drivers.

An hour later we were running comfortably south with no certainty of a connection at Edinburgh. On Waverley's milling concourse - always a station that brings to mind my favourite and greatest version of The 39 Steps, the first black and white version directed by the young Hitchcock - the boards were vague about trains to Birmingham, but as I waited in a queue for information, Oscar, behaving impeccably until a friendly mastiff with a crumpled face joined the same queue, set up an extended low growl of rage which attracted the attention of a motherly lady from Scotrail who directed me to an East Coast train to London on Platform 9 "You've got five minutes! Change at Newcastle or York" Well...give me an East Coast train even if it's not going my way - especially now they're no longer run by privateers. We dashed over the passenger bridge - about 39 steps - climbed into a packed train, climbed out again, ran up to First Class and got a wide seat with floor space to spare and paid a £27 supplement for the next 100+ miles to York. Catering starts at Newcastle. I've got free WiFi, a couple of fine ham rolls I made up at Brin Croft this morning, sharpened with English mustard, a miniature of Scotch and Fred Vargas' Seeking Whom He May Devour.

Lin says it's snowing hard in Birmingham while in Ano Korakiana people are rightly annoyed at another episode of uncollected refuse though we've found the weekday service mostly excellent, if we compare it with the once-a-week collection we have in Birmingham where mess is created by householders who leave their black bags in the street so their contents can be strewn around by foraging urban foxes. In Corfu there's the added bonus we've harvested from beside these bins by way of abandoned carpets, tables and chairs suitable for renovation and, in the last resort, firewood.