Keeping in touch

I write letters from Democracy Street to my mum in the Highlands of Scotland, They take three, sometimes five, days to get from the post office at Tzavros in Corfu to Inverarnie, near Inverness. Barbara replies via her tablet.

Can compete with your weather today - lovely hot sun all day Another very readable letter from you this morning, you have no idea how much I enjoy them. visited garden centre today to buy more trees to camouflage ugly chicken fence rowens, cherry, crab apples and beech Apart from hiding fence they will help to reduce the superfluity of silver birch here Must try Skype again best time to be sure of getting me is around lunch time love to Lin and lots to yourself Mum xxxxxxxx Sent from my iPad

My mum taught me typing, lending me her Olivetti two colour ribbon portable on which she touch-typed through the 40s, 50s and well into the 60s.
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From Mike Tye in Handsworth:

Hi Simon, here's Imran your energetic young neighbour, proudly showing his mastery of tarmac chunks, today as the weather cleared. His raised bed scheme has certainly improved the appearance, and he likes bees and chickens! Mike ps and yes some shots of your plot with close up of cabbages and rhubarb

That’s classy Mike. Lovely photos and lovely weather - given your last news on that score. I am amused by the tarmac chunks. We should have  a site-wide competition. Who can find the most bizarre piece of detritus that’s not wanted on their plot - courtesy of Persimmon Homes who were supposed to have laid the topsoil as a condition of the S106A that brought us the new Victoria Jubilee Allotments. Please give my respect and best wishes to Imran. Best, Simon

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Πρωτομαγιά

For the first of May I made, and hung on the side of the house, a wreath that was already wilting in the heat of the afternoon. Lin and went north to picnic in the woods...

...and paddle in the sea

By Cape Agios Spyridon

...and I made it black and white so Oliver can one day compare his maternal grandpa with mine and my mum by the sea in 1919.

Grandpa Henry with his daughter

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Later in the cool as Lin continued the tedious task of painting wooden louvres Corfu green, I scarfed new wood where rot had set in on another set of recovered shutters

A sanding disk on an angle grinder creates a finish which once painted will be near invisible, but lacking a saw bench I need to go to the woodyard to get the frame pieces on which to hang these.