Selection from 'Democracy Street' <Οδός Δημοκρατίας>

On Democracy Street, Ano Korakiana, Corfu

Democracy Street Οδός Δημοκρατίας Odos Dimokratias is the street that runs through the centre of Ano Korakiana, a village in the centre of Corfu, part of the Hellenic Republic of Greece - Άνω Κορακιάνα, Κέρκυρα, Ελληνική Δημοκρατία, Ἑλλάς. On Google maps the street is (2012) still called Επαρχιακή Οδός Αγίου Βασιλείου or St.Basil's Provincial Road - 39° 42.438', 19° 47.679', even though a name change occurred during the Regime of the Colonels - a tale that will be told in another place. I started this blog on 1 April 2007 with a reference to our home in Handsworth, Birmingham...and in the years since Linda and I have gone to and fro - πέρα δόθε - between two places of matching importance and on the blog indulged in the happy technology of hyperlinks - something not so possible in the written diaries I've kept since 1975.

My Birmingham - no mean city

I also use Democracy Street to explore my enduring interest in the working relationship of politicans and managers in local government - relationships that make democracy.

I also use it to record my interest in preserving, keeping on record, the television work of my stepfather, Jack Hargreaves...

...who among many other things was the inventor of an entertainment broadcast by Southern Television between 1959-1981 called Out of Town, commenting without sentiment or nostalgia on a growing disconnect between men and the land (see also Facebook) - On Parsonage Down. He also invented the children's programme 'How' - about which Richard Dawkins, years later, wrote:

I use the blog to speak of Greece, my feelings about the 'wondrous land', of memories of the Marble Emperor, and of Corfu Κέρκυρα and 'our' village - now and in history - especially the British Protectorate of the Ionian Islands between 1815-1864
I also speak of my allotment, Plot 14, on the Victoria Jubilee Allotments, subject of a ten year local campaign - 'small island in which I rejoice', 'worth a few onions and a turnip' - which continues.
I also write, have written papers on local government, on political skill - Owl, Fox, Donkey, Sheep...

Baddeley, S & James, K (1987) 'Owl, Fox, Donkey, Sheep: Political Skills for Managers', Management Education & Development, 18 (1) Spring, pp. 3-19

- and on Political-management Leadership and my preoccupation with agency - Internal Polity and information technology, the governance of cyberspace - Governmentality. Taught in different lands, most recently in Australia and New Zealand.
I dreamed of sailing on the sea. I think my mum and dad had taken the train from York to Scarborough in 1944 where perhaps they bought the toy boat. It's tin keel cut me. How? I remember the cut and I still have the small white scar on the inside of my right knee.

I remember days and months I've spent at sea in small boats, my first steps mentored by Denys Rayner who wrote:

In any reasonable weather it is the diminutive size of the yacht which makes long passages under sail such thrilling affairs, and one of the reasons why I, for one, find the smallest possible craft the most rewarding - as well as costing less.

- once crossing an ocean, other times voyaging in the Mediterranean, sailing to Athens from England and back, borrowing old photos from drawers and boxes.

Of course I write about cycling, about my Brompton folding bicycle. It's an indulgence I can enjoy parading - moral mobility - since I and my car conducted an amicable divorce.

I've explored family history - especially the more or less invisible one that took in my Dad and my maternal grandfather, grandpa Henry - both spies. Also his grandfather, Sir Henry and Mill End Dairy Farm in Clavering, Essex, where I was born in 1942.

I do voluntary work as lots do, because I get annoyed and excited about things - green spaces in cities including playing fields, allotments and parks, especially Handsworth Park - about whose early history I wrote an essay -  and Black Patch Park and now Lin and I and friends are running Handsworth Helping Hands (ditto Facebook), and all through runs the lovely catalogue of friends and neighbours, some fleeting, others lifelong, my family - odd and as we all admit semi-dysfunctional, therefore I suppose close to the norm, as if that mattered much. There's cat Flea and dog Oscar, who comes with me to Scotland, travels in my cycle pannier and stays with friends when we're away....

...and then there are parties and parties and parties - especially Easter, meetings, Carnival, encounters.... Lefteris, Natasha, Foti, Jim, Maria, Dimitra, Effie, Adoni, Aleko, Pavla and Andrea, Niko our Greek tutor, Nico and Sophia, Sebastiano, Katya and Thanassis, Mark and Sally, Paul and Cinta, Richard P, Paul again and Lula, John R, Rajinder, Ziggi, Denise, Robin, Tony and Helen, Karen, Emma, Phoebe, Liz and Matt, Danica, Kim, Tanya, Leslie and my cousins, my sister, my half-sisters and half-brother - Maria my late stepmother on the Greek side

Maria Roussen by Yiannis Moralis, her first husband

 - my mother Barbara Theodora in the Highlands which I've known as a visiting place since I first took the night sleeper from Euston to Inverness when I was 9 years old.

I'm 80% Scot. I relish the train labouring through Drumochter; I'm sad when going south it speeds up on passing the watershed between Dalwhinnie and Blair Atholl.

our children

and grandchild

Amy and Oliver

What else? The search for the 'letter' from Ano Korakiana prompted by Kostas Apergis,village historian and Thanassis Spingos, who runs Ano Korakiana's website. There are lots of entries on this subject. It revolves around the rather conditional relationship of Corfu with mother Greece, the story of the Ionian rizospasti, revealed by Eleni Calligas, and why for many years while celebrating the anniversary of  Greek Independence on 25 March neither Ano Korakiana nor Kinopiastes celebrate the anniversary of Corfu's 1864 enosis with the Republic in May.

Mother Greece over the Sea of Kerkyra

...and my enduring annoyance with bottled water and commodified philotemo, expressed in passionate anger by Maria Strani in The Pimping of Panorea

Το πούλημα της Πανωραίας 

Other pages:
A chance to talk about my stepfather Jack Hargreaves
On Bell Hill, Lydbrook
The realm of wonder
The banality of good - Η κοινοτοπια του καλου?
I entered the home of a women...German Occupation of Greece
Dimitra's 16th birthday party
What it means to be a Brummie
Carnival in Ano Korakiana, Corfu ~ Καρναβάλι, Άνω Κορακιάνα, Κέρκυρα
Phaedo
In the Highlands - "Love let us be true to one another"
Visit to Butrint
The best of all possible worlds
Written stuff
"'Like' is not strong enough"
Golden Dawn
Kevin Andrews - understanding blame for the Greek Civil War
What makes a village?
Ano Korakiana pastoral - friezes of Aristeidis, the village sculptor
Carnival Guignol and the King James Bible
Όλοι μαζί
Tour of Greece
Political-management leadership - negotiating the overlap
Managing in a political environment
Phew! Μολὼν λαβέ 
All of a sudden the fine weather's here
What the Greeks went through
Σκέπτομαι
The earth turns towards the sun - civil war
Beware the gentry when they get scared
Seeking Sir Henry in British Columbia
A ladybird on my specs
Bacon and eggs
Μόνο αν κερδίσουμε την κοινωνία
Nightmares of the contented
Η γεωγραφία της φοροδιαφυγής
Voyage to England
Learning Greek «Η ζωή είναι δύσκολη»
"The horror" ~ how corruption works
Third visit to Greece
My mother in Ano Korakiana
At Kernovel
Πλήρης ημερών ~ farewell to mum
Cycling to the top of Mount Pantokrator
Handsworth
"..while there's moonlight and music and love and romance"
A missing commentary
ΑΣΩΤΟΣ Β΄
Work and play ~ learning about the rizospasti
Independence
A bumblebee in the cockpit
Others
She got married
ΤσικνοΠέμπτη
"No, don't blush"
"Να μη γίνει η Κορακιάνα "μη-κοινότητα"..."
Albania
Another village - Distomo
Kanun and the public law of Europe
A richer dust concealed
"...Think of the effect of your work on other people's views"
Our shed and all it contains
A walk in the snow
Putting cycling on the map
Βρεκεκεκέξ κοάξ κοάξ
On such a day as this
Small island in which I rejoice - allotments
Power cuts in Ano Korakiana
Dreams and scorpions in the woodpile
Pontikonisi ~ being economic with the truth
The blue of the sea we've left behind
Golden Dawn
Sept 2017 - my allotment after 6 years
Jan 2018 Christmas in the Village

Australia
Albania
New Zealand
Japan
France
Jersey
Venice
Rome
Sophia
Athens

Dancing at Effie's and Adoni's

*** ***
The sun was out for several hours on Sunday and I had time to mend the re-roof our garden shed and extend the allotment shed veranda, and feel warm especially as more or less rain is forecast for the rest of the week and I have a 'to do' list.

*****
Pual McGovern in Ag.Ioannis has sent me a circular about a collaboration between his company OCAY - which started and runs Agiotfest - and the photo club (Photoleke Η Φωτογραφική Λέσχη Κέρκυρας ΦΩΤΟ.ΛΕ.ΚΕ.) and the Corfu Environmental Initiative NGO (EcoCorfu) - a non-profit organisation to help needy people and improve the environment. The photo club's Journey of Life exhibition opens 18th Jul-3rd Oct'12 at the Asian Art Museum at the Palace of St. Michael & St. George in Corfu Town (see also this facebook page - Επιτροπής Αισθητικής Δήμου Κέρκυρας Committee for the Beauty of the Municipality of Corfu with images and conversations - in Greek -relating to improving the environment)

Young Tiger - we sailed her across the Atlantic

Corfu slides

A few of the photographs taken and images captured since we first touched down at Kapodistria Airport amid thunder and rain in September 2006. It's a vaguely sequential set - showing maps of the island, the village of Ano Korakiana, work on our house there at 208 Democracy Street, Οδός Δημοκρατίας, before and after - various journeys by plane, ship and train to and from Corfu, views over the local landscape

Our washing in the wind

 - from the village -

Prophet Elias before Mother Greece

and from other parts of the island to mainland Greece and Albania - beaches strewn with plastic rubbish, fly-tipping in the woods, friends, the weather, our boat Summersong, different places in the beautiful town - The Liston, the Old Port and the new, the narrow streets and pot-smashing on Easter Saturday.

Also videos of events - Carnival, Vassilopita, Easter lamb-roast with our best friends in the village - and a skype chat with Alan Barratt from Agios Markos who, last year, transformed our house by replacing its balcony, so oddly demolished by its previous English residents, creating a wonderful curved porch to his own design beneath it. There's also a constant source of enthusiastic fascination - research into the history of the British Ionian Protectorate (pause the film to read the longer paragraphs in this presentation at the Durrell School one evening last year):

An August storm seen from Democracy Street

and the quiet that follows

Visiting Amy and Guy

Amy and her mum going through the wedding photos

I cycled to Amy and Guy's house on the edge of Birmingham last night for a BBQ and to look through Richard's photos of their wedding.

Lin and Richard in their cars were there in 20 minutes. I took 40 minutes. Oscar came, first in the front basket along the Lozells Road, over the roundabout above Birchfield Road, down Victoria Road to the big roundabout over the Aston Expressway, down Waterlinks Road, over the Lichfield Road - another roundabout - down short Lynton Road - all dual carriageway - to another roundabout, then a few yards of Thimblemill Lane through a door-sized passage to the canal towpath after which we could cover the rest of the journey on the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal- north a mile to Spaghetti Junction

and then east, 5 miles parallel with the Kingsbury Road, gradually leaving the concrete behind, to little Minworth Green Bridge where we divert a hundred yards to Amy and Guy on Summer Lane.

** ** **

Honey sent more photos of the work Alan's doing plus the news with image of the fence put up by the various owners of the small triangle of waste ground just below us in Ano Korakiana, where one summer night two years ago there was a brush fire which, because there was no wind and swift action by neighbours, didn't spread. In these times there is concern about untended green spaces inside villages. What would once have been grazed by sheep, goats or smoothed by domestic fowl now harbours rich vegetation that dries to inflammable hay in high summer. Because someone somewhere owns such land, even though absent, no-one else feels entitled to volunteer to tend such spaces. That's an ancient feature of village diplomacy - alertness to boundaries. Now, possibly because of Lin's guerilla gardening - that narrow flowerbed back of our apothiki - the landowners, on the other side of the path, have fenced and tidied their space.

and now Alan's made a more detailed drawing of how the porch beneath the external stairs could look. "This makes the steps that jut outward blend into the entrance, giving a continuous flowing line from horizontal to vertical".

Having Alan design and build our replacement balcony and stairs is more than just our good fortune - though in our acquaintances and friends we've had more than our share of those. Having come from UK a talented designer who'd created racing car bodies for one of the famous companies, adding his design talent to building projects here, architect of his house on the island, Alan paints and draws. He illustrated Corfu - a look through time 1204-1864 by Ninetta Laskari - one of the foremost books in Greek about Corfu [Νινέττα Χ. Λάσκαρι, Κέρκυρα - Μία ματιά μέσα στο χρόνο 1204-1864]. He's a joiner in that class who make their craft look easy, making hardwood doors and window frames, able to apply his craft to wood, fibreglass, metal and concrete, accompanied in the early stages by exquisite cardboard maquettes. He helped steer Summer Song through a few tricky hours when a four-o-clock gale came whistling off Trompetta last September. Envy at this array of talents is entirely subsumed by the pleasure of watching Alan at work. This is presumptuous, but I venture that in so far as I'm capable of it, Alan engenders in me something of the immeasurables within Buddhism, an exemplar of the art of waging peace, of this blog's motto: 'Η κοινοτοπία του καλού'. We met Alan because we met Honey Fortney - her life a whole other story - one chill November morning in 2006 waiting to disembark at Igoumenitsa with a few other foot passengers from one of the great ferries that commute from Italy. We waited together beginning to chat in the gloomy bowels of the ship, vibrating amid our luggage while animated debate among the truck drivers mingled with the echoing rumble of the ship and small soundless lurches as furious northern gale gusted against the ships upper works preventing us docking. Loud scratching sounds over the ship's intercom saw the drivers heading upstairs. Reckoning on further delay we headed back up to one of the saloons for coffee and cakes and waited cosily by a rain dashed window a couple of hours amid contradictory rumours that included the prospect of sailing on to Patras; the while getting to know one another, starting to enjoy the delay for the company it afforded, until the weather improved and we shared a taxi for the kilometre journey to the Corfu ferries, chatting the while. A few days later, via Honey to whom we'd given a lift from Corfu Port to Agios Markos, we were to meet Alan for the first time.

Πολύ σύντομα

But Kostas Apergis, village historian, writes of the diminished celebration in Ano Korakiana of 25 March - Greek Independence Day. He mentions that 'the sympathetic settlers' or, perhaps, 'charming colonists' - συμπαθέστατοι έποικοι - have not yet devised their own contribution to what in earlier days was a richer event:

Με τη φυγή του κόσμου, το κλείσιμο των μαγαζιών και την αδιαφορία(;) όσων απέμειναν έσβησε κι αυτό, οι δε συμπαθέστατοι έποικοι ακόμη δεν ύψωσαν τη δική τους. Ελάχιστοι πια θυμούνται τις μέρες αυτές το εθνικό μας σύμβολο.Έχει απομείνει, μετά τη δημιουργία του Δήμου και τη μεταφορά των εκδηλώσεων στον Ύψο, μια βιαστική Δοξολογία στον Άη Γιώργη και μια πιο βιαστική «παρέλαση» του Σχολείου και της Φιλαρμονικής κατά την μετάβασή τους στον Ύψο και την Πόλη. Στο πέρασμά τους από τον κεντρικό δρόμο του χωριού ακουγόταν και κανένα εμβατήριο, έτσι να θυμίσει στους γέρους και γενικά στους ανήμπορους, που παρέμειναν στα σπίτια τους το ξεχωριστό της ημέρας.

Democracy Street ~ 25 March 2010

But 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. Perhaps this lack of enthusiasm for the event in May extends to the celebration of Greek Independence on 25 March - anniversary of an event in 1829, 35 years before the Ionian Islands became part of the Hellenic Kingdom. This is not, as some might claim because many Ionians didn't want the British to leave - an imputation that applied to relatively few - but because there was a robust aspiration among a much larger part of the Ionian population, originally driven by the rizospastai, especially Ilias Zervos from Cephalonia, to become an autonomous republic - the Septinsular Republic of the Ionian islands - a situation for which there was a conditional precedent between 1800 and 1807 (for background see my YouTube slides on the Ionian Protectorate).

While the majority rejoiced in enosis and the departure of the British, there were others no less radical who wished the British had stayed on long enough to negotiate a departure, not from an Hellenic Kingdom enlarged by the acquisition of the Ionian Islands but from a Septinsular able to fly its own flag.

*** *** ...and this is how Independence Day was for TeacherDude, British citizen-journalist in the streets of Thessaloniki.

* * *

The electricity wouldn’t come on at 208. A customer at our shop phoned the electric company in Corfu town for us. “For less than €50 they won’t cut you off” he said. I phoned Ian, electrician. He was round in an hour to test the meter. “No power to the meter. I saw the first swallows yesterday. The thermals have been right for them. Ring 1050 - the emergency number.” I was answered in seconds and we could speak in English (try that in UK). “It’s very busy but someone will be out to you later today.” Yes, we could run a cable to the neighbour’s supply to power our fridge, but Sally, up the street, gave us space in her freezer. We walked our shopping there and while chatting I got a call from a lineman. “Check the power now.” I ran back up the street, mobile to my ear, gasping “nearly there, nearly there.” Still no power. “OK. Wait by the school. Two men in a black truck will be with you in 5 minutes.” I waited; they came; checked the meter again.

One with climbing claws on his boots checked a cat’s cradle of wires at the top of a nearby street pole, turning off neighbouring supplies in turn. Still no power. Then one of the men, with a ladder, checked along our supply cable and found the wire overstretched just above the meter. Wind and weather had severed the wire inside its sheathing so it didn’t appear broken until a gentle tug pulled it apart. All sorted before dark. ** ** **

I was in Scotland yesterday, with councillors from Dumfries and Galloway. I woke in my guest house to gaze on the lowland landscape and see lambs hurrying to suckle under a dour sky and distant hills. It was a good day's work with a dozen councillors working hard and intelligently on ways Overview & Scrutiny could improve their council's service to the public, preparing - after Audit Scotland's Best Value and Community Planning audit last March when the Chairman of the Accounts Commission, John Baillie, said:

There are serious weaknesses at Dumfries and Galloway Council which would be of concern in any circumstances. They are even more concerning given the significant challenges facing the council. These make it essential that action is taken as a matter of urgency to move the council forward.

Councillors were also aware of Audit Scotland's report on Improving Public Sector Efficiency - anticipating some of the deepest cuts in public service expenditure any of us have experienced.

The lowlands from Southpark House, Locharbriggs

* * *

I've received - via the web - a most useful and intriguing document on the economic value of public parks. It's been done in Philadelphia in Pennsylvania. The eponymous report is a godsend for defending urban green space during recession.

Prepared two years ago (why've I not come across it earlier?) it's swirling among professionals as well as campaigners for public parks, like Birmingham Open Spaces Forum. Ten years ago I wrote a few pages for a government committee about the value of urban green spaces. This report by The Trust for Public Land’s Center for City Park Excellence has garnered a swaithe of professional jargon - assessing the value to the city of stormwater management, air pollution mitigation, community cohesion, health and wealth value to citizens including 'property value from park proximity' and from tourism - to support more lyrical arguments for parks. Thus does political rhetoric transmute into managerial and professional language.

** * **

Lin's been working later icing the various layers of Amy and Guy's wedding cake made by her mum, Amy's nan. We've been immersed in argument's about planning - invitations, accommodation, travel to the Highlands in May, and cakes. The last row between Amy and her mum took two days to simmer down; both refusing to back off and apologise while I attempted mediation. Now they've made a truce perhaps I'll cycle into town and donate some blood.

*** *** *** Email from the blue:

Dear Simon Baddeley. I found your contact from a blog by John Tyrrell while I was trying to find something on the 'Black Patch' Birmingham. The reason for this I am trying to build a Smith Family Tree and I have found that my Grand Father who lived in Ladywood , was known as 'Darkie Smith' and came from Gypsies or associated with them. He was called Darkie because he had a slightly darker skin. Since talking to my brother in law he said Gypsies were know in a place called the Black Patch. Do you have any other information on the history of this place or know of anybody who does. Best regards. Martin Smith, Antwerp, Belgium

Black Patch, c.1890. Gypsies criss-crossed England from as far away as Armenia, Serbia and Greece, finding work on farms, helping with the summer harvests.

Dear Martin. Delighted to hear from you. Try contacting Ted Rudge who wrote a fine book some years ago (out of print at present) called Brumroamin: Birmingham and Midland Romany Gypsy and Traveller Culture and refers, on his local history blog, to our successful campaign to prevent building on the park . See also this clip of a petition about the Black Patch and this song about Queen Henty, who lived with other Gypsies on the Black Patch and a wikipedia article on Black Patch with more links you may find useful. My stepfather was Jack Hargreaves who died in 1994. One of his good friends was the late Len Smith who wrote about Gypsies in and around the New Forest - Romany Nevi-Wesh. I hope this is helpful. Ted Rudge is your best source. I hope you can get in touch with him. Best wishes. Simon