New Year 2014

Sunday afternoon before last I was planting winter onions – against instructions on the pack – along with broad beans. A call from Crete.
“Your ferry from Venice has been cancelled. Can you get to Ancona by noon for an alternative”
“We will not be in Venice until 11.00”
“Talk to Viamare tomorrow. Goodbye”

Plot 14 ready for 2014

I looked over my plot; more or less every inch dug over, with some of it covered with weed inhibiting black polythene sheet. Taj will continue with couch grass weeding and de-stoning while we’re away. From mid-February through March I shall strive planting proper. I’ll also raise neater stronger netting round Gill’s beehive.
Monday morning Dale at Viamare assures me of an alternative ferry from Ancona. He shares my frustration at the arbitrary way these Adriatic ferries are cancelled against schedule
“There were probably not enough passengers”
That’s how business works - inconvenience outsourced to actual customers rather than a tax burden on all to guarantee a reliable public service.
Midnight on the 30th Dec, Guy collects us and drives us to East Midlands Airport. There we doze, read and chat passing 5 hours before a dawn flight to Venice.
“We’ll take the train from Venice to Ancona. Stay in a B & B by the station. Catch another ferry Wednesday afternoon and in Corfu Thursday around 11.00am. Refund at the Anek check-in I’m assured”.
The plane descended not so far above the great line of black spiked mountains that stops us populating even more of the Veneto

From Treviso a bus to Piazzale Roma; a walk over the Centenary Bridge and a jostle along Terra Lista Spagna, even more people than usual. New Year in Venice. Bought two crispy newbread rolls to enclose prosciutto on the journey south. The Rome train slid out, almost empty with Italians filling-up the carriage from Mestre and Padua. Changed at Bologna for Ancona. At the small hotel opposite the station we found our room and fell asleep. I woke for a few minutes at midnight to hear fireworks. In the morning, unhurried, we caught a bus to the ferry check-in and were handed our refund. Another bus to the ferry Hellenic Spirit. Hardly sat down when the intercom call us to reception. A worried man from the Anek office asks us to repay our refund.
“You must write to Anek. They will refund you a complementary ticket”
Lin “You are joking aren’t you? Write to Anek! Ha”
“But the man who paid you the refund. It will come out of his pocket”
“Do you know” said Lin “I really thought you might have called us to the desk to offer us a cabin to make up for the inconvenience you caused by cancelling our ferry from Venice two days before we set off”
“He thought you had a car”
“Ridiculous! The man at the desk asked if we had a car and we said ‘no’ and it was on our tickets too”
Shrugging of shoulders and exchange of email addresses.
“We’ll let you know” I said.
The ship drove south on a flat sea. It was mild on the perspex screened deck away from the piped Christmas music; instead a soothing hubbub of Greek truck drivers in gesticular debate.

Dusk on the empty sea. A shared Greek salad and plate of chips in the self-service. Lin and I discussed what we needed to do in Greece.
“Finish a report on how HHH have used last year’s Community Chest grant”
“Prepare for this small claims case in the second week of Feb”
“Get a topological engineer to measure the floor space of our house on Corfu”
“Thank-you letters!”
“Get on with jobs at 208; the steps to the garden, the apothiki tiling, the handles on the wardrobe and chest of drawers, more firewood from the beach... then there's Summer Song and the new Greek boat tax, write a Wiki piece on a friend, continue learning about the village sculptor Aristedes Metallinos…”
On the ferry some travellers sleep on blow-up mattresses, one has a tent in a sheltered part of the after deck. We must have had a good four hours sleep on the carpet at the back of the air-seat room. At one point I rose to remove the plug from the widescreen TV displaying before a slumbering audience a succession of android women in minor lingerie with phone numbers. The flicker was annoying; a relief to see a blank soundless screen at last.
I woke as our ferry entered the straits between Corfu and Albania, and sneaked out for a croissante, orange juice and coffee - €9.20
“That’s ridiculously expensive” Lin came later and had my second gratis coffee.

Albanian-Greek border to port - on the way south to Igoumenitsa and Corfu

At Igoumenitsa, the concrete apron, the affable collarless port dogs and the familiar kilometer walk over uneven concrete to one of the small ferries to Kerkyra...

The Corfu ferry from Igoumenitsa

...strewn along the horizon – a slow two hour chug of ever increasing delight under a clear sky. In the saloon two plastic cups of hot chocolate, Greek chatter and two inaudible fluttering TVs screening multiple talking heads between long commercials.

All in the house was fine. We’d been away hardly seven weeks. The fire was ready to light. There was a box of firewood that wouldn’t need refilling for a day. The landscape from the balcony turns briefly pink before sunset.











While the house warmed, we strolled by Christmas lights along Democracy Street, encountering neighbours...

“Kronia Polla. Kronia Polla”
As night falls the land and sky merge - blue grey with dots of light.

I’m in place that is familiar yet still pleasingly unfamiliar. Cosy. Secure. Quiet. Angeliki phones. We were to meet at the Epiphany Επιφανεια Service at St George’s on Monday.

Getting back to work at Democracy Street

On Monday evening, having flown via Frankfurt - where security, along with the other usual precautions, had me remove my belt - to Venice Marco Polo, we rolled our cases to Casa San’Andrea, 100 metres from Piazzalle Roma, then strolled over the Scalzi bridge to the station and along the busy street following signs to Rialto, sharing a pizza. We noticed a lad sat by the canal chatting to a girl, her face filling the screen of the laptop on his knee.
Early Tuesday we took the one-stop vaporetto run - €2 each – to the rail station and after a short row about tickets (“Which of all these is for a train?’ “Isn’t it obvious” “No”) found reservations on a eurostar to Rome, but sat beside a loquacious mobilista choosing a remote conversation to one with his travelling companion. At Bologna we changed trains for Ancona. A fellow passenger worked on her laptop preparing a presentation about Balkan borders, getting up to quiet someone down our coach playing their MP3 without earphones. Civil space. The countryside was flat intensively farmed with vines and orchards between large box warehouses. Now and then a brick farmhouse with blank windows, tiles clumped precariously on sagging rafters flashed by. “Will we ever make beautiful buildings again?” asked Lin. “You should see some of the new ideas in the glossy architectural books – cities mingled with greenery, trees in the sky, skyscrapers embraced by vines, exchanging energy from sunlight and wind, seeking alliance with nature. (See Greenhouse Britain)

The Superfast ferry – Europa Princess - left Ancona at 1800 and delivered us to Igoumenitsa, via the Corfu Channel, at 0900 Wednesday. We slept fitfully in run down aircraft seats in an almost empty pullman lounge sharing the eleven storey vessel with few others – truck drivers, and some car drivers. The system’s not set up for people who walk on and off. We watched Corfu rising in the south and passed on by to the mainland. The ships TVs showed news stories about Skopje’s claim on the name ‘Macedonia’


A €5 ride taxi got us, with seconds to spare, from the main terminal at Igoumenitsa to the apron - a kilometre down the vast jetty - where ferries leave for Corfu. The ticket collector - €6 each - followed us up the escalator, our big bags left in a cuddy by the stern door. Nearly there. Kostas’ son waited for us with a car at the jetty in Corfu to take us to do the papers at the office where Kostas, waiting, offered Lin a peony from his garden. So on to Ano Korakiana driving by the blossoming Judas trees and blooming wildflowers. All was in order. Bubble greeting us heavy with expected kittens.

Saturday morning seems to have come swiftly. We’ve woken to the desultory two-finger typing of rain. On Thursday it came stronger, with hail heaping on the balcony. Lightning flashed and thunder smashed. Our main roof kept us dry, but water still evaded the paltry seal between that and the rear roof. Aln said that was his next job. Meantime we have been working at repairing our upstairs floor, removing the damage caused by a previous electrician who’d got his wiring under a finely carpentered floor with a circular saw; working all Friday inserting three new strips of tongue and groove cypress – from a woodyard in the south of the island where to buy hardwood we had - rightly - to give a tax number. Offering up, marking up, whittling, sawing and screwing down went on between sandwiches, tea and coffee and steady acrimony. Around 6.00pm, after struggling like Galapos tortoises with standing up and sitting on the floor, we were admiring our work, ready to finish two smaller areas in the morning, having learned a little about laying a floor. “It’d have been easier to start from scratch” said Lin. The new planks, like the old, are screwed down with joins well separated. The trickiest job was filling the last space between new and old boards. This entailed sharpening or even removing the tongue on one side, cutting away the lower lip of the grooved side with chisel and knife, and then coaxing the carved and slightly warped plank into place with our combined weights and blows from a lump hammer cushioned with a small piece of wood to prevent bruising the parts of the cypress that remained proud. The last creaks from these now smooth lying boards were removed by tightening countersunk screws at carefully judged intervals, holding our floor to the aged pitch pine beams beneath them. In the evening we tidied up, lit the fire, ate supper.

The sun appears above the mountains of Epirus, while on deck I notice a man pacing with his mobile and catch the words 'stin Ellada'. He is smiling. '"What," it will be Question'd, "When the Sun rises, do you not see a round disk of fire somewhat like a Guinea?" O no, no, I see an Innumerable company of the Heavenly host crying, `Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty.' I question not my Corporeal or Vegetative eye any more than I would Question a window concerning a Sight. I look thro' it & not with it.' William Blake A Vision of the Last Judgement. I am sure Blake would have taken greatest joy from Elytis' Axion Esti. Elytis was once described as the 'sun drinker'