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Sunday 29 May 2011

Explaining Sir Henry

His work is phenomenal...and most relevant today
Minoti Chakravarti-Kaul, who's been studying Henry Maine's works the best part of her academic life, is our guest at Brin Croft, taking my mother, his great grand-daughter, through an extended but gentle tutorial on the work of Sir Henry Maine.
"Anything in Europe that has to do with law tends to go back to Greece. They had very famous philosophers to give guidance on governance, from which the Romans borrowed. Where under some circumstances Greek law determined Roman Law Sir Henry found their provenance in ancient law"
"But why did he go to India in the first place?"asked mum
"What Maine recognised was that what they developed - the Pax Romana - was a copy of the spirit within which law developed, as well as being borrowed....when Sir Henry was asked to go to India it was after the Indian Mutiny or what is called the first independence movement in India and a large part of the country was at a critical point...very critical juncture... a need for a reformulation of the rule of law, keeping in mind the ancient roots and Maine who had just published his Ancient Law, was seen as an expert to show the way self-consciously or otherwise to a form of law that to some extent might mimic an earlier imperial process of Pax Romana - that is to say Pax Britannica or a rule of law that could keep the peace.


"
This process was manifest in Greater Punjab that is a large part of northern India which includes Pakistan of today, and here Pax Britannica built on the foundations of custom and famously passed the Punjab Laws Act of 1872 in recognition of such roots. Maine thus helped to lay the foundations of a very important principle of governance - ruling people by their own laws, particularly in village communities which in northern India held 90% of the land. This was in recognition of the self-governaning capacities of village communities which organised land use patterns and joint tenures which resembled the two or three field system in pre-feudal Europe.
"Where do you begin this story? Where would the revenue of the Indian Government after the take-over from the East India come from? It would not be based on pillage and piracy, nor on trade, but on a positive new move to establish a new law, not an imported law from England. Yet it was recognised that law in England had roots in custom.
"
"So how did this work?" asked Mum
"Where did production come from? Land. Agriculture. Natural resources including forestry. One major insight into this...how can I prove what I'm telling you? The change would be like this. Each of the provinces of the Empire in India would have a Lieutenant-Governor who would be advised by a Council with a legislative section able to make laws. Each province's law-making was legalised by legislation - in the case of Punjab, the largest  province, which then included Pakistan, the largest part of British India, for instance - the Punjab Laws Act of 1872, which was based on recognising custom....Punjab had 31 Districts including Delhi right up to the Afghan border and south east to the river Jumna - the huge greater Punjab.""
"How did anyone determine the law?" I asked, fascinated
"In the case of Punjab it was the custom of the village community. Every village would negotiate a principle which became known as  that of Joint Revenue liability for calculating the tax for the entire village and paid jointly by them collectively."
"How did they do that?" Theodora asked
"It was a huge process"
Here we are getting to the core of how law was made by the people on the ground. I was at last beginning to understand something that had long roused my curiosity about my brilliant ancestor. Where did he find and how did he obtain his data; what were - apart from his own creative mind - his primary sources?

Henry Maine
"There was a statement taken from the people on the principles involved. The people who had the land who were to pay the taxes were known as the malikan-deh or those who was recognised long before the British had stepped into Delhi in 1803. The Afghan ruler in Delhi  Sher Shah Suri had taken over from the heir of the first Mogul ruler Babar and had established a method of realising land revenue which the British took over. The Afghans were very much evident in India as there were large caravans of traders and cattle herders who moved across northern India right up to Calcutta, travelling via the Grand Trunk Road from Kabul made famous by Rudyard Kipling in his novel Kim. Today this is called Sher Shah Suri Marg or National Highway 1.
"There was a statement taken from the people on the principles involved. The people who had the land who were to pay the taxes were known as the malikan-deh (proprietory body of the village). Sir Henry didn't create this.
The system of land revenue settlements with village-communities resulted in records of rules which were put down in the Village Administration Paper which was known as Wajib-ul-Arz ('this which is declared as right') - containing all the customs of the villagers as 'our' rules. These were originally written down by the Afghan ruler - Sher Shah Suri. He laid the foundations of this kind of revenue settlement which was later taken up  by the Mughals of whom the greatest was Akbar.  These rules were not foisted on the villagers. It was their declaration. The script used to record such declarations was Shikasta."
"This is wonderful, Minoti" I said "I learn, I learn!"
All of this has been described in detail in Minoti's Common Lands and Customary Law: Institutional Change in North India over the Past Two Centuries Oxford University Press, 1996, some of it plagiarised by other academics I suspect.
In a break, Mum mentioned that she was born in 1917 in Sir Henry's home, 27 Cornwall Gardens
"You know what happened?" said Minoti making a diversion "A lot of people who served in the government of India were coming and buying houses in the neighbourhood of Cornwall Gardens and so many such people came to live there, a man called Henry Thring, came to refer to this area of Kensington as 'Maine's Village Community.'"
"Simon. You are our Sutradhar... to continue, Theodora (this is my mother's first name; one I've never used, but which she and Minoti enjoy)...I'm giving proof of why these customs were not dated. These villagers were asked to recount their history as far back as they could remember. The settlement officers were recording the history of each village. They recorded these in Shikasta - a written language not a spoken language (shikasta, shekasta شکسته shekasteh). These histories are called Shajra Nasb, Shajra-e-Nasab (shajra - map, nasb - fate - the fate of the village) [see: Wajib-ul-Arz, Riwaj-i-ams]. We use the word 'history' to describe our past. They use the word 'mapping'. These are the stepping stones to understanding the work of Sir Henry. I have seen these records, heard them being read out by the patwari."
Minoti" I said "None of this was mentioned by George Feaver in his biography of Maine"
"I know he told me when we met that he'd missed out about common property resources in India and all that"
"So how did Maine encounter these things?"
"Because the settlement officers recorded their findings in reports that would have gone to the Lieutenant-Governor...proceedings which would certainly have got to Maine via the Viceroy and thence to the Secretary of State who would certainly have discussed them with Sir Henry as the Legal Member of the Viceroy's and later the Secretary of State's Council in London.."
Mum joined in "I remember as a little girl at Henmead Hall, my grandfather's wife, Fanny, seeing all these 'dry old books by some relative of ours' and getting rid of them. I was a little girl but I remember seeing all these books by Sir Henry with 'John Murray', his publisher's name, engraved on them."

Maine, Henry Sumner, Ancient Law: Its Connection With the Early History of Society, and Its Relation to Modern Ideas, London, John Murray, 1861
Maine, Henry Sumner, Village-communities in the East and West; six lectures delivered at Oxford, London, John Murray, 1871
Maine, Henry Sumner, Early History of Institutions, London, John Murray, 1875
Maine, Henry Sumner, Dissertations on Early Law and Custom, New York, John Holt, 1883
Maine, Henry Sumner, Popular Government, London, John Murray, 1886

"I'll give you a link. You know of Paul Vingradoff who occupied Sir Henry's Chair - Chair of Historical and Comparative Jurisprudence at Oxford. You know what Vinogradoff did? Paul went to India in, I think, 1923, and he looked at the village papers regarding tenancy to find out whether Sir Henry Maine had got his information from the grassroots. So he followed Sir Henry's track in India by going to seek out his sources, with regard especially to The Punjab Tenancy Papers."
Looking at Minoti's old map of Kanjhawala
Mum was having difficulty concentrating and Heather brought her in some lunch so we took a break.
I am increasingly aware of the originality of Minoti's research focus. So much scholarship in this area has been done by political scientists. They begin with an interest in the working of power and tend to see the gathering of village details - the recording of a Shajra Nasb, the fate map of the village, from the village accountant, the patwari, by an imperial settlement officer as a means of refining a process of subordination and oppression. Minoti who can 'dance' with vexation, as she delivers public lectures, at political injustice and human silliness, is coming from a different place. She is intrigued with the possibilities of discovering, as did Maine the scholar, the enduring complexity and effectiveness of the self-governing capacity of village communities with customary law, and from there, extending the possibilities of such very old systems to the modern enthusiasm for bottom-up governance and local autonomy, with its implications for creating ecologically sound and sustainable self-governing communities

.

Kanjhawala ...from a review of Minoti's book in English Historical Review
** ** **
With Minoti off the Garbole Road
In the afternoon Richard drove Minoti and I to the high moors south of Strathnairn to see Inverness-shire from that narrow road 1000 feet higher than Brin Croft. A mile and a half along the road he turned sharp left along a dirt road towards a line of turbines harvesting the wind that blow over the tops. The blade tips of the turbines trailed wisps of vapour - a thin vortex of spinning air - emanating power, embracing the wind in great gasping turns, shadows sweeping the ground. What a pleasure to learn that both the Swiss and the German governments, responding to an educated public dislike of nuclear power, are phasing it out over the next few decades. I'd like to think that there is a growing population prepared to be more frugal in its use of energy, to live more sustainably, to turn away from consuming, to think about new ways of living together on the earth, to question brilliantly and shrewdly the grim mantra of growth.
A reaction to posting this clip:
18th and 19th century follies were at least decorative....late 20th and early 21st century wind farms are just as much follies....only totally non decorative. The power they generate is a tiny fraction of our communal needs...
Me: Wind and sun alone, even without wave, tide and geothermal power, exist in renewable abundance. Our present problem is one of harvesting - a challenge we're only beginning to understand. Meeting our communal needs via fossil fuel is unsustainable. Public hostility and the precautionary principle have raised doubts among leading democracies - Switzerland and Germany for a start - about further nuclear investment.
** ***
Vexing news from the Ano Korakiana website - despite the cash being allocated and supposedly guaranteed for the restoration of the old Philharmonic building just south of Venetia at the top of the village, work has been stopped for the last two months, possibly longer as we noticed when strolling up that way in February through April this year...
Ο "Καλλικράτης" έχει τελικά επιπτώσεις ακόμη και στο εκτελούμενο έργο του κτιρίου της Φιλαρμονικής.Οι εργασίες έχουν εδώ και 2 μήνες σταματήσει, αφού οι υπηρεσίες αδυνατούν να πληρώσουν το εργολάβο, παρότι τα χρήματα είναι κατατεθιμένα στο λογαριασμό του έργου.
**** ****
Last September I got an email asking to use some of Jack's films for a documentary about how TV had treated the countryside:
Dear Mr Baddeley. I found your contacts via the web, and I hope you do not mind me contacting you? We are making a documentary for BBC4 which will be a celebratory look at the relationship between the countryside and television over the years, and across the genres - from drama and comedy to factual programmes in seminal British television. We have interview contributions from Kate Humble and Bill Oddie, John Craven and Bill Bryson to name a few. We would dearly love to include extracts from 'Out of Town' by your late step-father Jack Hargreaves, however, we are having trouble tracking down the owners of the material. We are particularly interested in the material he produced while at Southern TV, in black and white. I wondered if you had any knowledge of who might hold this material, or can point me in the correct direction? I have tried contacting one of the dvd distributors for the later series, however, they seemed unsure, and directed me to an Australian company. If you could offer me any advice, I would be most grateful, as we feel it would be an important addition to our programme. Please don't hesitate to contact me if you require further information. Many thanks in advance. very best wishes Dee Edmonds, Production Manager, Crocodile Media Ltd, Glasgow
I pointed Dee towards the South West Film and Television Archive and got thanks and a payment of £200 for using the material they chose, in discussion with Jennie at Plymouth, with rights over its specific use in Crocodile's programme for the next 5 years, then forgot about it. I got an email from Tony Herbert, member of the informal JH Committee, a few days ago:
Dear Simon. My apologies if you already know of this but before doing anything else I must mail you as I have noticed in Radio Times that a new series is starting on BBC4 on Sunday 29th May at 9pm entitled 'Welly Telly - The Countryside On Television', exploring how British TV's coverage of rural issues has changed over the years. According to the write up tributes are paid to Jack. The programme is repeated on following Thursday at 8pm. Best wishes Tony
I'm not keen on television about television. It reminds me of 'resurrection bolly' - a barrack room stew of the previous week's leftovers. Even so my heart took a little dip at the whimsical 'Welly Telly', even though briefed on the need for catchy titles as bait for commissioning editors - to quote from a diary entry:
You know I was listening to a podcast in which Aris Roussinos, who'd rather run an olive oil plantation on ancestral land in Corfu, makes his current crust as a TV development producer - a job my stepfather did as well as actually broadcasting. Aris was speaking about the 'massive crisis' in TV broadcasting (10.14 in the Word podcast 20 May '10 with a reference to Aris' article 'Why do they commission this rubbish' here, and the removed YouTube 'Monkey Tennis' episode here) and the struggle to invent programmes that would keep up viewing. "It starts with a catchy title", he'd said. You need that to catch a commissioning editor's short attention scanning hundreds of ideas ... I don't think Amy or Guy were listening to me. "Aris spoke about an idea for a film about gay Taliban - (from 16.50 in the podcast) "not that new so... "
This was an hour long programme on BBC4 with impressive credentials. Alex James narrated. John Moulson directed and produced. Academic film and television critic Matthew Sweet, Jack Kibble-White, a experienced follower of trends on television, advised. Dick Fiddy of the respected British Film Institute condescended to his childhood enthusiasm for Jack's "very amiable slow delivery" looking at "old time crafts like whittling" or going "for a ramble with his dog". Interviewed were mainstays of countryside programmes, well known commentators on contemporary culture, a few bright comedians with snatches from famous comedies like The Good Life and Last of the Summer Wine. We watched for 15 minutes on Sunday - Mum, me, Minoti and Richard - then turned it off. Wondering if I was making hasty judgement - easy to do - I picked it up later on-line hoping I'd been unfair. The programme remained unsatisfactory. This is little to do with the talents who appeared and everything to do with the capacity of finance-strapped television to take a complicated theme - the way television over fifty years has presented the countryside to a thoroughly metropolitan population. I'd find it impossible in these circumstances to give so intriguing subject a smidgen of justice. Welly telly didn't just fail to comprehend, it didn't even know there was something to be comprehended. That's the scale of the disjunction that Jack, with one foot in the city, the other in the country, was trying - entertainingly - to explain. I wanted to be pleased by Welly Telly but the programme was taking us all down 'So What Street'; encyclopaedic in its coverage of countryside broadcasting or commentaries on it, though - Dee did not use the really early black and white film of Jack's Out of Town* even though we know some of this is in the archive - sprinkled with opinion and sentiment but weak on narrative, unwilling to take a position - politics appeared briefly and superficially with crowd pictures in Whitehall - and seemingly unable to explain; missing, or sidestepping, seismic changes in agriculture, the dislocation of rural populations, the disappearance of a way of life, the deep disconnection of most of us from the land, the transformation of the country mentally, if not wholly in activity, into the city of Britain - a metropolitan population surrounded by parkland.
I sent my opinion of Welly Telly to members of the JH Committee and got this reply from Ian:
Hi Simon. Not much of a case for the defence I'm afraid, you have summed it up pretty well. I have seen some very good documentaries on BBC4 but sadly this wasn't one of them, the lightweight nature of it leads me to suspect that it was made with an eye to showing it on other channels.  A particular downside was the involvement of Dick Fiddy of the BFI, a person I have some respect for but I don't think did himself any favours.  I contacted the BFI some months ago about their Out of Town holdings but not had the courtesy of a reply. A wasted opportunity really, there is a good programme to be made but that wasn't it. A small plus, as a lover of archive television in general, was the clip of Ted Moult's Farmers' Quiz, which I hadn't seen before and was quite extraordinary. I hope you and Tony have a useful trip to Mrs Bréhaut. I plan next Thursday to visit the British Library newspaper depository at Collingdale to work on the definitive episode guide. They have a complete set of Southern edition TV Times so I expect to make some good progress. Kind regards, Ian
Ian's reference to the farmers' quiz Top of the Farm '69 - rang a bell. I realised something that had been troubling me about Welly Telly; something I'd missed about my stepfather's approach to television. Ian referred to a bizarre clip in B & W - 'bizarre' because Vic Phillips pauses over five seconds before answering - an easy laugh at a frequent longeur in the early days of the medium. Then there was the matter of Jack's approach to sound. David Knowles of Lacewing reminded me only the other day of Jack's seemingly casual attitude to his soundtrack. Once he had superlative images - as he did from Stan Bréhaut in 21 years of Out of Town and later Steve Wagstaff for Old Country, JH would talk over a location film after approving a few, mainly symbolic, background dubs from the sound library - a splash, a crowd sound, a whistle and a bang - letting viewers fill in wth their imagination. I can see why Dee Edmonds for Crocodile Media would have though she'd be trespassing if she tried to bring Jack's archive B & W film to life with some similar composite of soundless film, library sound dubs and a commentary - something impossible without Jack.
Thinking about Welly Telly a few days later I realised it's greatest weakness was only marginally to do with different takes on the countryside. What was missing was an intelligent discussion of the art and grammar of television. Jack was praised at the end of Welly Telly as a pioneer of countryside broadcasting, but his greatest achievement was to find a perfect vehicle for his subject and a style of broadcasting, almost invariably live - not on location but in the studio shed and the live voice-over on a sound dubbed silent film - which allowed an avuncular and - in Dick Fiddy's infant memory - 'amiable' front for a cunning sometimes scathing critique of contemporary social mores.

Did they think about the skylarks when they built Mayfair
on the grazings that ran down to the Shepherd’s Market?

Did they worry about the snipe when they drained the marshes
behind St.James’s Palace to build Belgravia?

Where did the kite go when they dug the London sewers?

Do the piles they drove down through the beaver’s dam hold
firm the supermarket in Newbury High Street?

Who cooked the big trout that lay under the village bridge
at Wandsworth?  Who feasted on the last salmon that was
netted at Tower Hamlets?

Now they come to put central heating in the ploughman’s hovel.

They claim the sun that used to bake the hay.  And breathe
the breeze in which the pointing dog caught a hundred scents.

They walk out in trainers and T-shirts that say “Save the
Rain Forest”.

“Stand back!” they say.  “We have a right to walk where we please!”

But we look where they trod before and shudder for what
follows in their footsteps.

I said I must write a warning.  But I was angry and - as the
Japanese say - to be angry is only to make yourself ridiculous.

So we will live out our days in the cracks between the
concrete.  And then they will pour cement on top of us.

J.H.
1993

** ** **
 In Greece's big cities - Thessaloniki and Athens - citizen-journalist Teacherdude - Craig Wherlock - reports on continuing but peaceful street demonstrations against the government's austerity measures.
** ** **
Extract from page 2 of the translation of Maung Tet Pyo's Customary Law of the Chin Tribe translated by Maung Shwe Eik, Assistant Government Translator, British Burma with a preface by John Jardine, Judicial Commissioner of British Burma, Rangoon 1884. This book was one of the few books left from what must have been Sir Henry Maine's library, having his book plate inside the front cover. It seeemd to me that this extract captured rather well the point that Minoti was making to me about Maine's emphasis on the unwritten laws of village communities.

*** ***
An ugly story appears in the Inverness Courier of 27 May '11.
A young trainee gamekeeper called James Rolfe was fined £1500 for being found in possession of a dead Red Kite during a police raid on the Moy estate last June, where the Highland Game Fair started by mum's husband Angus over 25 years ago, is held every August. Rolfe is a pawn in an emotive conflict reflecting changing times, the incursion into the highland moors of a political battle whose chief protagonists and antagonists are city dwellers. New monitoring technology has played an instrumental part in securing Rolfe's unprecedented conviction; CSI Highlands. Moy is the ancestral home of the Mackintosh Clan, a beautiful place we know well. Victor Beamish and Celia Mackintosh are among 250 Scottish Estate owners who last year - weeks before a police raid on the Moy Estate - signed a letter to the Scottish Government Minister for Environment, Roseanna Cunningham:
Roseanna Cunningham
It is for us a straightforward decision to underline our view of illegal poisoning. Frankly, we condemn it out of hand and it has to stop. The message must go out to the people who indulge in such criminal behaviour that what they do is totally unacceptable to the overwhelming majority who have the true interests of the countryside at heart. We will continue to do everything we can to ensure that message is conveyed across the land management sector. We do not presume guilt nor refer to any particular incident, but the apparent deliberate poisoning of protected species in recent years has left us utterly dismayed. We also support the full weight of the law being brought to bear on those who are involved in illegal poisoning and endorse the efforts of the Partnership for Action against Wildlife Crime, in which our representative organisations are active and enthusiastic participants.
The fining of James Rolfe is a tiny breakthrough - the slapping of a foot soldier. Grouse shooting, or wing-shooting covering a wider range of game birds, is a business in Scotland - fuelled by a rich urban population's willingness to pay high fees for an opportunity to shoot grouse, pheasant, deer and duck. There are implicit pressures on the staff responsible for maintaining hunting spaces across Scotland to ensure their international customers return home feeling they've had value for money. Other Highland denizens, especially raptors, which reduce the customer's bag by preying on eggs, chicks or adult game birds are targeted by some veteran keepers, whose trainees are liable to learn from their older mentors. Poisoned bait put out to kill hooded crows, kills raptors too, but fudges the issue making convictions incredibly complicated. The Scottish Parliament is proposing amendments to the Wildlife and Natural Environment Bill, trying to get at people higher up than gamekeepers, by introducing a law of vicarious liability that would target their employers.
The level of monitoring is increasing with growing political committment to stopping the illegal killing of protected species. The economics of grouse shooting is opposed to the economics of wildlife tourism and the growing experience and political strength of those concerned with protection of threatened species - especially birds of prey. Rolfe's red kite was fitted with a satellite-tag  monitored by RSPB Scotland staff and adopted - as are many - by pupils at a local primary school. Its disappearance from the monitor triggered an alarm and search. The  discovery of crudely hidden dismembered remains eventually led to the raid last June on the Moy Estate by police in a fleet of vehicles supported by  representatives from the RSPB, Scottish SPCA, Scottish Natural Heritage, the National Wildlife Crime Unit, and the Scottish Government Rural Payments and Inspectorate.
When I'm at the Moy Fair in early August - an event I've enjoyed for over twenty years - I shall keep my ear to the ground

Wednesday 25 May 2011

"I'm on the train"

Heading south to London and from Euston on via Kingsway, Aldwych, Strand, down Fleet Street over Farringdon up Cannon Street to St Paul's Cathedral.
From Monument I asked directions to Fenchurch Street Station, down a narrow street before Crutched Friars tucked below rhombic offices,  to take a train to Grays where I'm leading a session on navigating Political Space for senior managers at Thurrock Council, invitation - some months ago - of their CEO, Graham Farrant. I'll be teaching on Thurrock's Learning Campus, which sounds fine - indeed I'm really looking forward to it - but for the time spent, with knock-on effects - literally - obeying a technical manager's request that I have my presentation kit passed as safe, via a  Portable Appliance Test (PAT) as required by the legislation of specific relevance to electrical maintenance under the Health & Safety at Work Act 1974, the Management of Health & Safety at Work Regulations 1999, the Electricity at Work Regulations 1989, the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 and the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998, 'which places a duty of care upon both the employer and the employee to ensure the safety of all persons using the work premises.' This includes the self employed - which I guess approximates to me though I'm actually at Thurrock this morning as a part-time visiting lecturer from Birmingham University. I'd guess that getting my laptop, its power cable, external hard-drive and external speakers tested - for free on campus by Roy at the Estates office - entailed about eight e-mails and as many phone calls over as many weeks with the most vexing problem arising when I borrowed Lin's car to make a swift journey to campus - I usually cycle - to squeeze in an appointment with Roy between another errand and someone bruised the skirt of Lin's bumper while I was parked, requiring remedial T-cutting and a some skilled splicing of bodywork by Guy and a few choice threats from Lin about 'ever borrowing my car again'. Anyway I've got little green stickers with a test date on all my kit, so - touch wood - I, and my students and all with whom I come into contact at Thurrock are - actuarially speaking a few percentage points freer of risk - in this uncertain world. Fingers crossed.
From Grays near the Thames I take trains back to London and onto Birmingham International where I plan to meet up with Richard to fly to Inverness, both of us uncertain as to whether the airspace between us and Scotland will allow us to fly this afternoon.
Fenchurch Street - what a beautiful railway station

*** ***
The morning at Gray's was a real pleasure. I had a generous introduction. An interested and involved and astute collection of local government managers explored ways of learning to work with an unpredictable political arrangement.

I began with the more abstract principles; touching on the default tension between bureaucracy and democracy, the conflict between members' and officers' roles that was too easily attributed to intransigent personalities, the subtle process of finding agency and poise at the conjunction of politics, management and professionalism; the wisdom required to negotiate the political-management overlap. People enjoyed the film I used to prompt discussion, making shrewd observations about how generalisations applied to the special personalities and political dynamic of this council.

**** ****
At last I'm reading Ivo Andrić's The Damned Yard and other stories, a present sent from Belgrade last Christmas by our friend Danica. Andrić's The Bridge on the Drina still echoes, and I've been saving up this collection. Aljo Kazaz, silk merchant of Travnik in central Bosnia when during the 18th and 19th centuries that city was the military centre of the Ottomans in the Balkans, finds himself the lone delegate of a group of fellow merchants who the night before, emboldened by drink and companionship had sworn to bring a complaint to the Vizier. In front of the guards at the Vizier's gate he begins in humiliation and fear to ingratiate himself with them. 'Dželalija's soldiers, hardened professional murderers, watched him with a smirk on their dull faces.' It's a small reminder of how it might be to live under occupation, and when out of curiosity, using the normal techniques, of the internet, I jump forward  170 years to a web group called soc.culture.croatia and find an account from the Croatian Information Centre for Collecting Documentation and Processing Data on the Liberation WarOpaticka 10, Zagreb, Croatia.
In the village of Batinska Rijeka, near Ljuban Dzelalija's abandoned house, four unidentified persons dressed in camouflage uniforms and armed with automatic guns with silencers intercepted and imprisoned eight civilian residents on May 11th, 1994, around 10:00 pm...
and as young Lula gazed into the darkness of a dry well, I peer into a seething archive of narratives, recriminations, evidence and counter evidence of human depravity, discovering the Final Report  of the Commission of Experts introduced by the Secretary General of the United Nations, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, on 24 May 1994 following UN Resolution 780 reaffirming Resolution 713.
The final report of the Commission includes a survey of the Commission's work since its inception, its mandate, structure and methods of work, its views on selected legal issues of particular significance in the context of the former Yugoslavia, a general study on the military structure of the "warring factions" and the strategies and tactics employed by them, and substantive findings on alleged crimes of "ethnic cleansing", genocide and other massive violations of elementary dictates of humanity, rape and sexual assault and destruction of cultural property committed in various parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina.  On the basis of the information gathered, examined and analysed, the Commission has concluded that grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions and other violations of international humanitarian law have been committed in the territory of the former Yugoslavia on a large scale, and were particularly brutal and ferocious in their execution. The practice of so-called "ethnic cleansing" and rape and sexual assault, in particular, have been carried out by some of the parties so systematically that they strongly appear to be the product of a policy, which may also be inferred from the consistent failure to prevent the commission of such crimes and to prosecute and punish their perpetrators. The final report includes several annexes containing reports of investigations and studies, which as a whole constitute an integral part of the report. In his letter to me of 6 May 1994, the Chairman of the Commission requested that the annexes be published, although for cost purposes and given their volume (approximately 3,000 pages) it was suggested that they be published in English only and funded from the remaining surplus in the Trust Fund of the Commission of Experts.
Велика Србија, Velika Srbija - the intellectual and his agent
It's good news that Ratko Mladic - confederate of those political leaders who 'violated the obligation to prevent genocide', Radovan Karadžić and the late Slobodan Milošević, promoting the toxic vision of a Greater Serbia - has been captured and will be held accountable for his crimes as a General of the Bosnian Serb Army from May 1992.  I've memo'd myself to get The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht
 'When your fight has purpose – to free you from something, to interfere on the behalf of an innocent – it has a hope of finality. When the fight is about unravelling – when it is about your name, the places to which your blood is anchored, the attachment of your name to some landmark or event – there is nothing but hate, and the long, slow progression of people who feed on it...'
Watch found in a mass grave believed to contain Srebrenica victims
'Dželalija's soldiers, hardened professional murderers, watched him with a smirk on their dull faces.'

Back to the future - 2 June '11: Max Levenfeld writes to his friend in A Letter from 1920 explaining in the 1920s why he has to leave Bosnia for ever - a short story by the great Serbian writer Ivo Andrić:
...I know that the hate, just as rage, has its function in the development of the society, because the hate gives strength and rage sparks movement. There are ancient and deeply rooted injustices and misuses that only rivers of hate and rage can uproot and remove. And when those floods fall down, there is only a place for freedom, for creation of better life. The contemporaries see the rage and hate much better, because they suffer from it, but their children will see only the fruits of power and movement. I know that well. But what I’ve seen in Bosnia is something else. It is hate, but not as a moment in a flow of human development and necessary part of the historic process, but a hate that takes stage as an independent force, which finds within itself its own purpose. A hate that gets a man against man and then equally throws them into misery and misfortune or takes underground both opponents; hate as a cancer in organism spends and eats all around itself, so that itself would die in the end, because such hate, as flame, has no permanent face nor own life, it is but a weapon of a drive for destruction or self-destruction, exists only as such and only until it completes its task of complete destruction.
*** ***
The other day, prompted by Mark in the village I emailed a note:
Can someone at Shooting Times kindly ask Nick Fisher if he'd be interested in the story of Jack Hargreaves' 1970s Out of Town programme featuring an 'exploding' (spring loaded) ground bait box, which has led to me discovering a large archive of his country life 16mm films stored in South West Film and Television Archive? If Nick is not really interested - no problem of course, but one of his regular readers and a good friend who lives in Corfu and subscribes to ST and to whom the boxes' designer, Richard Hill gave the original box, suggested that  Nick might find the device interesting and possibly a subject for an article. I'm Jack Hargreaves' stepson. Best wishes Simon B
I just got this reply which I forwarded to Mark:
Dear Simon. thank you so much for sending me the link to the exploding bait dropper. What a fantastic bit of kit! I loved it and loved watching the old show. The boat, the fashions, the glasses, the hair cuts and the smoking - God, brought back a serious wave of nostalgia. I'd love to do a feature on the device. Oddly, I just wrote a piece about black bream fishing recently in which I mentioned a modern stainless steel equivalent, which is very clever but doesn't have the sheer class of Richard Hill's invention. There is a real tradition of angling engineers; guys who loved to fish but who also loved to invent tackle and devices. sadly a tradition that is dying out as Chinese made tackle is so cheap and so everywhere. i'm intrigued at the sound of the huge archive too. I'd forgotten just how natural a talker JH was. It's easy to remember TV shows fondly and then be disappointed when you see them again. There's so many old shows available on DVD now that we can so easily go back and see the things we once thought were fantastic - monty python, etc only to find them rather cronky and embarrassing - this clip really stood the test of time. thanks so much for bringing it to my attention. always love to hear more. best wishes Nick 
Mark's reply:
Hi Simon , Would be great if he does do an article on it especially for Richard Hill. We had another lamb on the spit last night down at the stables this time though for Richard ( dutch richard , house by the swings) as it was his 60th birthday and he had pre arranged with us for a party down there , it was huge success again with around 20 people their , alot of his friends coming over for a week . I feel slightly hungover today, not sure why. Enjoy Scotland with Richard and your Mum , please send her our regards. Keep up the good work. Best wishes Mark. 
Mine to Nick:
Dear Nick. ...Your reply went winging off to our good friend Mark in Ano Korakiana, who now has the baitbox in question, and at the risk of making a story out of a story I'm logging the exchange on my blog (say if you prefer not), which I've also been using to keep a record of the slow navigation and excavation of my stepfather's films about the British countryside - partly as a family project, and partly because there may be people of all ages who'd share your view that this material doesn't date as much as you'd expect, and because there are others over 60 who'd like to see some replays of films that gave pleasure and perhaps prompted them as youngsters to take up activities that now run through their lives. So what could I tell you more about Jack or the 'exploding' baitbox and Richard Hill and his wife Wendy who make a mean fish pie and who when I'm in England I enjoy visiting, so long as they continue to offer me their hospitality?  My research into JH's work has led me to put together an informal JH Committee to help with my enquiries after archives. Some of these are hunter-gatherers enjoying the rarer opportunities to do the same things Jack enjoyed; some are TV experts with an interest in helping sort out the evolving differences between methods of recording and storing film and tape, picture and sound. One is gradually building up an archive of every broadcast via correlations with old TV schedules in newspapers and magazines. Like all research, it's a process of using one finding as leverage for another, along with sparks of serendipity, as when someone phoned back after looking in their attic, and found original 16mm film of a broadcast going back to Jack's first Gone Fishing broadcasts for Southern TV when making tentative steps into a media still new to him, after a career on Fleet Street. So the search goes amid many other activities.  If you'd like to speak to Richard Hill I think he'd be delighted to hear from you. I now cherish one of Richard's beautiful carved fish; one he gave to Jack in the 1970s, which I inherited. It was attached to the top of his bed and was flat on one side. I took it to Richard many years later (when we met at his home to view the baitbox film from SWFTA)...as a gift to me he carved the other side. It's from the the recovered taffrail of an old Isle of Wight ferry on which Richard worked. Best wishes. Simon (in the Highlands for a week. No mobile signal) 
Roach and Crucian Carp at Richard and Wendy's home

*** ***
Thanassis reports in an entry under telos apographis on the Ano Korakiana website that despite some trespassing by census takers from other villages into areas that are actually within our boundaries, Ano Korakiana's head count - Απογραφής - has reached or exceeded the 1000 required to ensure the village's continued standing as a settlement able to maintain influence in the governance of Corfu. Phew!:
Η απογραφή πληθυσμού του 2011, ολοκληρώθηκε χθες … Παρά τα προβλήματα της προηγούμενης βδομάδας με τις αποχωρήσεις απογραφέων, το «σώμα» ανασυντάχθηκε και συμπληρώθηκε με καινούργιο αίμα και ρίχτηκε στην προσπάθεια προκειμένου οι απογραφέντες στην Δημοτική μας Κοινότητα να ξεπεράσουν τους 1.000, προκειμένου αυτή να διατηρηθεί.
**** ****
And we have the lovely news that Professor Minoti Chakravarti-Kaul who's been visiting her daughter at St Andrews University near Dundee and who visited my mum last year, will be coming up by train to Inverness to visit Theodora - as she calls her using the original name she likes - and will meet Richard and me as well. She's promised this time to cook us some Indian meals while staying at Brin Croft. I so like meeting people off trains.
Minoti and Theodora in 2010
********
Prime Minister George Papandreou is floating the idea of a referendum to test his country's support for  continued austerity measures prior to a second IMF bail-out. Richard Pine's take in The Irish Times - 25 May '11 - on the current situation in Greece and Ireland. 'Greeks might pull plug rather than play hardball with Merkel'...
Greece’s problems are deepening rapidly, as the apparently inescapable choice must be made between an additional €60 billion bailout (making €170 billion in all) or a debt restructuring which would have colossal knock-on effects for the euro zone as a whole....
Aditya Chakrabortty in The Guardian asks if 'defaulting is really political suicide?' Of this argument  - bandied around by journalists he writes:
To us a technical term, it's balls. More precisely, it's the sort of everyone-says-it-so-it-must-be-true balls that's been a hallmark of European policy-making ever since the banking crisis broke out...
As Richard Pine says of the people in his village, the common mood is one of bewilderment. At least they know they don't know what's happening. Meantime, I'm proud to read this story in the local press about a briefcase containing €25000 and about £1980 plus a passport and mobile phone being found on the outskirts of Corfu Town after it had fallen unobserved off the back of a businessman's motorbike, which was handed in to the police by the woman who found it, a British tourist - Ανεύρεση και παράδοση μεγάλου χρηματικού ποσού Κέρκυρα...Μία Βρετανίδα προχθές το μεσημέρι βρήκε και παρέδωσε στο Αστυνομικό Τμήμα Παλαιοκαστριτών, έναν χαρτοφύλακα που περιείχε μεγάλο χρηματικό ποσό.
Goodness is more normal and frequent than might be believed. Studies of public honesty which have involved leaving wallets around with money in them and an address have shown that in many countries more than 50% and often more than 80% of such 'lost' valuables are returned to their owners as a result of being found by strangers.

Monday 23 May 2011

Work on the plot

I usually enjoy working, but getting a grip on our allotment is almost drudgery. It feels like I'm back to square one clearing the ground, even two steps back for one forward. The clearing of fat-hen last year has allowed the growth of more tenaciously rooted grasses, dock and nettles. I struggle to fork out mop bottomed chunks of crab grass, 'weeds' which would grace a pasture, amid fist sized stones, old building debris, even glass and plastic remnants. I was thinking how nice it would be to have someones donkey over to graze. That would at least clear the tops of the weed and remove the seeds released to blow over the rest of the ground of so much unwanted greenery.
All around, other's allotments are burgeoning, organised and fruitful. A cause for rejoicing. There's also a growing waiting list for plots on the VJA.  I'll not give up. The rewards of sitting in my shed with a cup of tea and surveying a crop of healthy plants is too fine a goal. I imagine it as I toil at enlarging a growing patch of forked soil, in which I've planted more potatoes, some corn and decorative border plants.  It's a tiny incursion into the wilderness of Plot 14.
'Plot' is apposite. Scanning different plots across the VJA site as I cycle in and out - a five minute ride from our house - I see many looking neat, fertile and organised. People have been putting in raised beds, dividing their allotment into manageable sections. Some have laid wood-chip on the spaces in between.One has even got neatly turfed criss crossing paths. There are polly tunnels, screens, compost boxes, and a plethora of diverse sheds and everywhere crops in rows and circles - potatoes, tomatoes, strawberries, lettuce, carrots, cabbage, peppers, herb, cardamon and much much more. One gardener has fixed a model owl and a kestrel on edges of their plot to deter pigeons. There are heaps of manure, chips, planks on site available from the allotment shop open in the morning. So each plot demonstrates the craft and the character of its gardeners - there's usually more than one person working any one allotment; sometimes whole families.
"So what does our plot say about us?" said Lin.
"That we are absentee gardeners, who haven't grasped what running an allotment involves."
"And we've got so many other jobs to do in the next three months."
We have. Redecorate one of our flats so we can earn rent again from it; continue helping the management of the Central Handsworth Practical Care Project (CHPCP), go on with our Greek lessons, wash dog Oscar who has got fleas, help out with organising the centenary celebrations for Black Patch Park, visit my mother in the Highlands in a few days if Iceland's latest volcanic cloud does not ground me...
"Grimsvötn is a much more powerful eruption than Eyjafjallajökull, but for a combination of reasons any disruption to UK flights is likely to be considerably less," said Dr Dave McGarvie, a volcanologist at the Open University (Scotsman 24 May'11)
...get repairs done on Rock Cottage in Lydbrook, lead a couple of seminars on political space and on scrutiny. I'm also pursuing the project with fellow members of the JH Committee to find and restore old Out of Town and Old Country programmmes....
*** ***
Lin tidied up my draft of the Minutes of the CHPCP meeting on 19 May. One item aims to capture the absurdity of the current situation, in which the old committee seems to have vanished but a new one cannot be legitimated without approval of the old - a normal rule in many committee or board constitutions. The only way out of this situation will be if members of any new committee can show they have exhausted due process in trying to convene the old. For the moment we shall continue as volunteers.
*** ***
Richard in his roaming of the web for old books has found me a little gem - volume 2 of the two volume A Sentimental Journey Through Greece. in a Series of Letters, Written from Constantinople; By M. de Guys ... to M. Bourlat de Montredon, at Paris. Translated from the French.
Just a swift glance through the little book shows a writer entirely aware of the chronological distance between himself - writing in the 1770s - and the classical Greeks, and entirely confident he is travelling in their country refreshed and excited by the same springs that fed the great western river. De Guys was a physican of Lyons, a member of the Academy of Sciences and Belles-Lettres of Marseille, a folklorist interested in the Orient. De Guys spent more than 30 years in the Levant engaged in commerce, after being sent in 1739 to the business house of his uncles in Constantinople. His travels convinced him modern Greeks were direct descendants of the ancients. The book compares ancient and modern Greeks on many subjects including marriage, fishing, navigation, dress, horse harness and education - some of which  - corporal punishment - he deplores. His book was very popular book contributing to philhellenic sentiments in France

The Greek Dance from the book of Pierre Augustin Guys Voyage littéraire de la Grèce

Thursday 19 May 2011

"No... don't blush"

Liz and Matt were married in Shropshire at Rowton Castle on Tuesday, the exact anniversary as she'd promised her best friend Amy, of our daughter's marriage to Guy at Alvie Church last year.
The celebration nearly didn't happen with the original venue that Matt and Liz had chosen going into receivership a few months ago and so many places already committed to hosting weddings in May. Matt is relentlessly secular. "No hymns nor prayers for us." It was a civil ceremony overseen by the County Council Registrar of Marriages with discrete civil music and sober civil words; nonetheless solemn and none the less - they both said later - scary - making vows to stay together, man and wife, for the rest of their lives.
Amy with Liz's sister Catherine were bridesmaids, Amy wearing low heels to equalise her height. In the middle of the afternoon Liz threw her bouquet as had Amy the year before

Later at the wedding breakfast - and we had fasted and got up an appetite - Matt's brother quoted the words of Louis de Bernières in the mouth of John Hurt's Dr Yiannis of Ionian Cephalonia to his daughter Pelagia, Penélope Cruz in the film Captain Corelli's Mandolin, about what does or doesn't last after 'being in love':
When you fall in love, it is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake, and then it subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots are become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the desire to mate every second of the day. It is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every part of your body. No... don't blush. I am telling you some truths. For that is just being in love; which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over, when being in love has burned away.
Our wedding present will be our son Richard's photographs of a day set in the most English of landscapes.
*** ***
I've been putting off going to our allotment, knowing how much work I have to do on it to get a crop going, but the latest newsletter - 17 May - which brings impressive news of the Committee's progress on the Victoria Jubilee - a shop supplied by Hirons Garden Centre, a sensory garden to which we can barrow unwanted stones from our plots, the purchase of a rotavator, strimmer, handmower, garden trolley and sack truck which can be used in return for voluntary help in the shop - reminded me, quite rightly, that uncultivated plots will be re-let.
So this afternoon I cycled out to the allotments with a spade and fork and began digging over the rich collection of flowering weeds that have sprouted since we left for Greece in February. All around are plots that are looking impressively productive.  I see many are using raised beds made with planks of which there is a supply available on site along with a community compost heap, manure and bark ground cover. People have put up more sheds along with screens and polytunnels.
I am sure there will come a time when I have turned our 200 square metre plot into a working garden, but for the moment it remains a daunting mini-wilderness for which I can only reproach myself. My idea of growing food is still far separated from reality. I'm not a natural gardener. As I cycled onto the site, several people greeted me kindly; asked how I was. I replied that I was embarrassed, but at least I'm not among those on notice to cultivate their plot. Perhaps there's a residue of respect - though I do not seek or expect it - for the work I and others did over ten years by way of political campaigning to get these allotments saved from being built over. [A petition to sign asking the UK Government to withdraw its plans to repeal the duty of local authorities to provide allotments]
The soil feels unforgiving, stony and caked. There are heavy slabs waiting to be used as part of a foundation for a shed. I struggle with the fork, almost fighting the ground as I get started again preparing enough soil to plant a dozen potatoes and sow marrow seeds given us by our neighbour Vasiliki in Ano Korakiana
Γένεσις 3.19: Ἐν ἱδρῶτι τοῦ προσώπου σου φάγῃ τὸν ἄρτον σου ἕως τοῦ ἀποστρέψαι σε εἰς τὴν γῆν ἐξ ἧς ἐλήμφθης ὅτι γῆ εἶ καὶ εἰς γῆν ἀπελεύσῃ*


***
Richard, searching on eBay, bought and gave me a beautifully printed Greek New Testament published in 1813, the same year as Pride and Prejudice.
Corinthians 1:13 ~ Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels...
Ἐὰν ταῖς γλώσσαις τῶν ἀνθρώπων λαλῶ καὶ τῶν ἀγγέλων, ἀγάπην δὲ μὴ ἔχω, γέγονα χαλκὸς ἠχῶν ἢ κύμβαλον ἀλαλάζον...
I'm having a discussion with friends on Facebook - Jon Hunt, Amanda Williams, Margaret Macklin, Alex Kapodistrias about differences between Modern Greek - Katharevousa and Demotic - New Testament Greek and Classical Greek. I guess it is about what various vessels hold these words, how different forms of Greek might be braided by a poet, might contain and protect their meaning and my reflections on them, on love - ἀγαπῶ. Serendipity brought me to Petros Gaitanos, Πέτρος Γαϊτάνος, speaking from Paul's letter to the Corinthians, making it a sublime hymn. Τι χαρά!
****
We had our second meeting this evening of the Central Handsworth Practical Care Project (CHPCP). Edmund reported that more or less all of the jobs that had to be done to ensure the legality of the project's vehicles had been done, and that income continued to come in to pay wages and on-going expenses, but the bank account was still tied up so he was having to work with cash, but keeping meticulous receipts and having clients pay cheques into the project's bank account where it was safe accountable but innaccessible. This ridiculous situation has come about because dear Glynis who died last year never worked through a committee with a transparent allocation of tasks 0 Treasurer, Secretary, Project manager and so on - and as mother Chairman didn't bother herself or anyone with little things like holding an AGM and otherwise observing the project's constitution. This means that we remain for the moment an interim board without formal standing because the members of the old committee despite invitations haven't turned up to agree to stay on or resign and approve a new working committee. We continue waiting on the bank to approve the new signatories for the bank account the previous signatories having proved difficult to find or reluctant through family committments to do the necessary hand over paperwork. There's an enormous amount of work to be done in the area, but Edmund and Kris are not getting paid properly and have had to use a small pool of petty cash to buy things like fencing, pay for petrol and mechanical repairs prior to the truck's MOT. Our meeting turned into an emergency meeting to ensure that by June 16 we would have a receipted hand-delivered a letter to every old committee member inviting them to attend or tell us their intention to discontinue their involvement with the project.  
Second meeting of the interim Board of CHPCP
There was a sense of urgency, nervousness even, but our spirits are good. We'll prevail over the present difficulties because of our belief in the project and our enthusiasm about making it work, resolving the frustrations that have arisen from the previous committee's struggles to replace the leadership of Glynis who has died and the patronage of Mahmood Hussain, now deselected, no longer one of our local councillors. Πρέπει να είμαστε αξιόπιστοι.
** **
I got this message today 'If you don't like Nuclear Plants being built in earthquake zones in Turkey, you may want to sign this' . I dislike nuclear plants anywhere, but in nuclear zones they are especially ill advised - a vile legacy for future generations who will look back with contempt at decisions we made for our present advantage even as the sun, an infinitely greater source of safe nuclear energy, shone down on our feckless heads. My name's a drop in the ocean but I signed, so did Lin. There seem by today to be over 29,000 signatures. As Martin Luther King famously said "there's a special place reserved in hell for those who, because they could do so little, did nothing."
** *** **
Lin following Katrina's recipe made orange pie on Wednesday. Liz and Matt - who aren't going on honeymoon in Scotland until the summer - came round and with Guy and Amy and Emma we all tucked in and finished the lot.
Πορτοκαλόπιτα στην Αγγλία
*** ***
The Technological Institute of the Ionian Islands (TEI Ionian) Τεχνολογικό Εκπαιδευτικό Ίδρυμα Ιονίων Νήσων, based in Cephalonia and Levkas, and providing among others things education in ecology, the environment and sustainable agriculture, has taken hard financial cuts. The chairman of the Steering Committee of TEI Ionian, Professor Napoleon Maravegias angered at the decision of the Minister of Education Anna Diamantopoulou to block further applications from students planning to study Business Administration, Technology Organic Agriculture and Food, and IT and Telecommunications, has resigned.
Την παραίτησή του υπέβαλε ο διορισθείς από την υπουργό Αννα Διαμαντοπούλου , πρόεδρος της Διοικούσας Επιτροπής του ΤΕΙ ΙΟΝΙΩΝ ΝΗΣΩΝ , καθηγητής Ναπολέων Μαραβέγιας για λόγους ευθυξίας που αφορά το κλείσιμο τριών τμημάτων του Ιδρύματος.Ο κ..... φέρεται ενοχλημένος από το γεγονός ότι ο ίδιος δεν γνώριζε για την απόφαση του υπ. Παιδείας .
And in Ano Korakiana the few children left in the upper elementary school on Democracy Street will, for the next school year, join children in a larger school between Agios Markos and Pyrgi and the school in our village will be reopened as the new Corfu Special School staffed by about 10 teachers working with up to 40 pupils
Όπως πληροφορηθήκαμε, με απόφαση του Περιφερειακού Δ/ντή Εκπαίδευσης κ. Γαβαλά, στο κτίριο του καταργηθέντος πλέον Δημοτικού Σχολείου Άνω Κορακιάνας πρόκειται από την επόμενη σχολική χρονιά να στεγαστεί το προσφάτως ιδρυθέν Ειδικό Γυμνάσιο Κέρκυρας με 30-40 μαθητές και περί τους 10 καθηγητές. Σχετική αναφορά έγινε και από τον αρμόδιο αντιδήμαρχο για θέματα εκπαίδευσης Κέρκυρας κ. Ποταμίτη.
This news made me think of the Skyros Horse Project on Corfu conceived by a friend of Sally's, Sylvia Dimitriades-Steen, based on an estate in Kanoni about 17 kilometres south of Ano Korakiana. She has been a leading figure in supporting special needs education in Greece. I find the idea of the Skyros Horse project, which I first heard of from Sally, and later from Richard Pine this March, especially pleasurable. On Sylvia D-S's website I read:
More tangibly, the Skyros small-horse - το αρχαίο Ελληνικό ιππάριον - small-horse valued today for the pleasure and inspiration it provides. Its mild character, stamina, intelligence, as well as other unique characteristics, such as friendliness towards people, adults or children, are legendary. This makes the horse ideal for interaction with children and the elderly as a form of therapy - and it is (a) mutual relationship. Besides breeding, the SILVA Project provides riding facilities for children with special needs and eldercare...plans are being completed for a new state-of-the-art Equestrian and Therapeutic Riding Centre. It will have Equine facilities as well as a Special Educational Needs and Disability Division for children, housing for Eldercare and exhibition space... 
*Genesis 3.19: In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
**** ****
This Saturday - 21 May - will see the celebration of the 147th anniversary of the union of the Ionian Islands with Greece - ENΩΣΙΣ 21 ΜΑΪΟΥ 1864; the graffiti in the photo on Corfu Blues <Το Πάθος για τη Λευτεριά είναι Δυνατότερο από Όλα τα Κελιά> 'The passion for freedom is stronger than any prison'. This, as is so often the case with history, was not as straightforwardly welcomed an event as folk history tells:
...there is another dimension to this story. Leftheris has told me, and it's confirmed by Thanassis and Katya as well as by Hilary Paipeti, that neither Ano Korakiana's band nor the band of Kinopiastes, the village south of Corfu town, were wont to join in annual celebrations of the anniversary of enosis with mother Greece on 21 May 1864...

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Simon Baddeley