"Unrecognisable"

Royal navy postcard - written on the back 'Smyrna in Flames Sept 1922'

 I got the train the other night, it was rush hour, from Charing Cross, it was the stopper going out. We stopped at London Bridge, New Cross, Hither Green. It wasn't until after we got past Grove Park that I could actually hear English being audibly spoken in the carriage. Does that make me feel slightly awkward? Yes.                                                Nigel Farage, London Evening Standard 28 Feb'14

Nigel Farage isn’t a nasty man. He's popular in sections. Married to a German, parent of two children, cricketer, no thug, not racist, born in a Kent village near Canterbury with a metropolitan career, before politics, in banking, he speaks of his idea of how England, perhaps ‘Britain’, its cities and market towns, have become....What did he say in Torquay last week?

“...this country in a short space of time has frankly become unrecognisable” (18.40-18.43 on video)

He might have described something similarly 'foreign' in the, once, rich cosmopolitan cities of Constantinople, Cairo, Alexandria, Smyrna, Thessaloniki; spoken - "frankly" - in worried ways about their messy hybridity; their polyglot incomprehensibility, a slight vexation that that they too had become “unrecognisable”. Over the twentieth century similar apprehensions, even hopes, in the minds of others, have laundered the diversity of those great cities; the population exchange of 1922 under the Treaty of Lausanne removed Greeks from Istanbul, victims of the 'Great Idea Μεγάλη Ιδέα' and popularly nurtured fears of irredentism, parallel dynamics to those Farage described to UKIP's Spring Conference. In 1922 the bloody catastrophe of Smyrna cleansed that city of its Greeks; renamed it Izmir. Nazi’s murdered the Jews of the great trading port of Thessaloniki. A new kind of Islamisation has dispersed those an Arab empire once harboured. Sephardic refugees found haven under in Istanbul from Christian persecution in Spain;  so the high politics of the Middle East, drives Jews from Cairo; Coptic Christians too. Modern Alexandria and Cairo may be teeming with people, but for their tourists, their diversity is blighted. The remaining Orthodox Christians of Istanbul cluster defensively in Karaköy - once Galata.
“It’s so depressing to see these great cosmopolitan places spoiled by contemporary yearning for homogeneity” I muttered to Wesley a few weeks ago, at lunch in his and Stefie's home in Ano Korakiana.
He replied “Hold on, Simon! You enjoy diversity, things cosmopolitan?”
“Of course”
“Yes Istanbul and Cairo may have changed in ways you regret, but look at London, most of the cities of Northern Europe, and your Birmingham, and Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool. What about New York, Seattle, Melbourne, Sydney? Things change. They shift.”
I perked up thinking of my own streets in Handsworth. What Farage calls ‘unrecognisable’ is where I’m at home. I once wrote of this - about the internal heterogeneity that enjoys it in the world - internal polity...

International Supermarket recognises Kosovo despite Serbian residents' refusal to recognise its 2008 Independence Declaration 

Soho Road, Handsworth, Birmingham - one of my homes

The provinces of his body revolted,
The squares of his mind were empty,
Silence invaded the suburbs,...

Moldovans meet Oscar in New Street

Some links that aid my thinking...more about mocking of the poor, fear of the other, rejection of multiplicity...

The Spirit of Haida Gwaii

The Spirit of Haida Gwaii, creation, in 1986, of Bill Reid, comes as near as any piece of art to describing my world. I embrace this work. enjoy the idea of a boat, but the much used image of the 'Ship of Fools' projects our private ugliness - looks and behaviour - as images of shared foolishness, but in the process enjoins mockery of the ugly, the poor, the maimed, the underclasses....

...the present model of a highly centralised state “will not see us through for very much longer”...'

...and this recent piece from the Inlogov blog Migration, citizenship and diversity: questioning the boundaries, in particular research described by Sarah Neal Living Multiculture...

the new geographies of ethnicity and the changing formations of multiculture in England is a two-year research project that explores the changing social and geographic dimensions of contemporary multiculture in urban England....With a focus on the ordinary encounters of increasingly diverse populations in everyday locations the project asks two key questions: how do people live cultural difference, and what role does place play in this process? It is examines the way in which ethnically complex populations routinely interact in convivial and competent ways. Exploring the dynamics and limits of this competency - and its relationship to places that have long and short histories of multiculture - is at the heart of the research

*** *** *** ***
 "What can I put into soil as wet as this?"
"Rice?"
"I can't plant potatoes can I?"
"Best thing is to put them in the fridge until May"
At Hirons where I've bought a selection of chatting potatoes and two kilos of variegated onion sets.

I've been around to my allotment hoping to start planting, but even though well drained, sloping gently down to the park, the ground is spongy damp. I'd be putting the spuds in what's damn near a swamp. As for onions...
Perhaps we'll get a few more weeks of less wet weather. Meantime Taj has cleared a mound of couch grass and removed more of the many stones. If the soil dries out a little we might be good to go. There's no sign of work on my immediate neighbours' plots, nor indeed on too many others. It's not a good time for allotments. I circulated a caution #allotments...

Dear All. Because of the zeal to cut local government bureaucracy, Section 23 of the 1908 Smallholdings and Allotments Act, which requires councils to provide allotments to local residents where there is demand, is on a hit list of ‘burdensome’ regulations.
City Farmer NewsThe Independent
This move is not unexpected. Allotment land has high value - but is currently protected. But it is urban development land where there is intense demand for new housing, promoted by the building industry and the expectations of many citizens expecting easier access to the housing market. It only needs a succession of bad seasons, a few ill-managed allotment sites with many unworked or vacant plots. The temptation to begin a process of selling part, or all, of an allotment site will, if these ‘burdensome’ regulations are removed, become even more inviting, even more feasible. In Birmingham more and more green field sites are being located by satellite and earmarked for future building. Satellite pictures also include images of allotment sites, including the means of calculating their degree of cultivation. I predict that we will see a very strong reaction to these propositions from allotment holders, petitions will be signed, but the demand for development land is relentless.
One of the greatest problems is that many allotments are no longer a means for a working man to feed his family. They are more for the leisure and recreation of the middle classes.
A friend, Dr Richard Wiltshire, who has long advised government on urban allotments and city farms, began a chat with me on one of our periodic meetings
“Does your home have a garden, Simon?”
“Yes”
“So why do you bother with an allotment? if you really needed to grow vegetables you’d use your garden. It’d be closer and more convenient and you needn’t pay rent”
He went on to say that governments have noted many people are either concreting their gardens for parking, reducing the capacity of urban land to absorb rainwater, or using them as playgrounds for their children. It would be easy to start a green movement encouraging people through grants or council tax concessions to get people growing their own food in their gardens.
“If” he pointed out “there really was a need, as in wartime, for people to grow more food themselves...for a few in government it's insane that we subsidise the middle classes by letting them have very valuable urban land for leisure and recreation at rents that hardly pay for the cost of maintaining allotment sites”
I find these views uncomfortable but they exist. Richard Wiltshire is not against allotments, has visited them all over the world, but he’s also an economist. Best wishes, Simon

Clive Birch from the Birmingham and Districts Allotments Association, replies. I hear nothing from the VJA committee...

Simon. I've read this and similar viewpoints. We tried to involve NHS in agreeing allotment gardening was beneficial for patients with depression, stress and other related problems - they stated in writing that "allotment gardening was considered to be a middle class activity!" The quest for land suitable for development is ever with us [Victoria Jubilee!]. We are always vigilant and associations contact us immediately if they see strangers with theodolites or other surveying instruments. Regards Clive

Grayson Perry might regard our allotment as a penance. Richard and I went to see Perry's wonderfully woven tapestries in the Birmingham Art Gallery on Sunday. Last year, Lin and I had delighted in the sequence of TV films in which the artist visited the people and places that inspired his Rakewell's Progress from working class Sunderland via 'Eden Close' in Tunbridge Wells to new-rich Cotswolds via the anxious self-consciousness of the various gradations of middle class - All In The Best Possible Taste with Grayson Perry. The tapestries are threaded through with another dimension of art reference - as well as Hogarth's progresses - Harlot's and Rake's - Perry draws on Mantegna, Bellini, Grünewald, Masaccio, Crivelli, Jan Van Eyck, the Master of Flémalle, Gainsborough, Van der Weyden, and many images of the Vision of St Hubert and I bet there are others. Talk about layering - literal and figurative.

Richard reads about the tapestries

"I didn't see a single bicycle"
"One in the background by the canal in The Agony in the Car Park?"
"That's someone's who can't afford a car" I said

The Agony in the Car Park

Another driver of taste that I noticed amongst the upper middle class was the desire to show the world that one was an upright moral citizen. In the past, a good burgher might have regularly attended church or done voluntary work; today they buy organic, recycle, drive an electric car or deny their child television. This need to pay inconvenient penance to society seems to come partly from guilt. The liberal, educated middle class have done well, but they must pay with hard labour on their allotment, or by cycling to work...extract from the artist's introduction to the catalogue I don't recognise myself. Perhaps my motives are hidden from my self-consciousness. A penitent can rejoice in penance, be masochistic even. I enjoy cycling far too much. I haven't commuted since my first job in the 1960s. For me a truer self-punishment would be to have to drive a car everywhere. And my penitential plot? I don't enjoy it enough. Ha gotcha! Seriously though, I know my driving wish is to prove to myself I can get food from the ground in which I've planted its seeds. To do that under my own steam. To prove something to my stepfather perhaps? Not that he ever sought any proof from me. Not his way. But if I succeeded he'd be discreetly proud. 'The Vanity of Small Differences' by Grayson Perry - Freud's word 'narcissism'  *** *** *** *** Carnival 2014 in Ano Korakiana  - Sunday 2 March - we missed it again Democracy Street Luna D'Argento Εκεί, ανέκαθεν διαβάζεται η Διαθήκη του Βασιλέα προς τους υπηκόους του, που συμπυκνώνει αρκετά από τα προσωπικά και συλλογικά συμβάντα της χρονιάς. Παρότι η εκδήλωση αυτή είχε προγραμματιστεί να γίνει σε εσωτερικό χώρο, τελικά καιρού επιτρέποντος, πραγματοποιήθηκε από το μπαλκόνι παρακείμενου σπιτιού. Το Κορακιανίτικο Καρναβάλι για μια ακόμη χρονιά, έδωσε το παρόν, παρά τις «απειλές» του καιρού έως την τελευταία στιγμή και τη σύντομη περίοδο που μεσολαβεί μετά τις γιορτές. Έτσι, μέσα σε τρεις μόλις βδομάδες, ολοκληρώθηκαν οι προετοιμασίες όλων εκείνων των στοιχείων, που το έχουν καθιερώσει τα τελευταία χρόνια στην κορακιανίτικη και όχι μόνο, συνείδηση. Το πρωί ακόμη της Κυριακής, αρκετές λεπτομέρειες έμελε ακόμη να ρυθμιστούν και κυρίως να προβλεφθεί η εξέλιξη του καιρού, προκειμένου να προσαρμοστεί ανάλογα το πρόγραμμα.Τελικά, όλα κύλησαν ευνοϊκά και έτσι, νωρίς το απόγευμα, ξεκίνησε η καθιερωμένη πομπή από το κτίριο του Συνεταιρισμού. Δύο καλοφτιαγμένα άρματα (ένα των νεαρότερων καρναβαλιστών), το ομοίωμα του Καρνάβαλου, στο «δρόμο» τη φορά αυτή, μεταφερόμενο στα χέρια και ο κόσμος που ακολουθούσε μασκαρεμένος και μη.Η πομπή, με δυνατή μουσική ανηφόρισε και έφθασε έως την άλλη άκρη του χωριού στην πλατεία, όπου έλαβε χώρα το πρώτο μικρό δρώμενο, για να πάρει το δρόμο της επιστροφής έως την Πλάστιγγα. Όμως η βραδιά, τη φορά αυτή ήταν ιδιαίτερα μεγάλη, αφού ο αποκριάτικος χορός πραγματοποιήθηκε στο Luna d’Argento με τη συμμετοχή τετρακοσίων και πλέον ανθρώπων, που διασκέδασαν με τις…προχωρημένες πρωινές ώρες. Και λίγο πριν από τα μεσάνυχτα, παρουσιάστηκε το όμορφο σκετς που είχαν προετοιμάσει σε πολύ σύντομο διάστημα παλιοί και νέοι Καρναβαλιστές και η βραδιά κύλησε με κέφι, μουσική και προπάντων χορό!!!

In Handsworth Park - three little birds

Oliver, our grandson, in Handsworth Park, with Guy, Amy and, our friend, Liz expecting a daughter soon

Liz came to us with Amy and Guy and Oliver on Sunday. A dropsical blanket of cloud lay over the city, ragged underneath, releasing showers. It was Carnival in Handsworth Park, without the right weather for parades or dancing. Glimpses, instead, of goose-bumped flesh in sequined motley under drizzle. With intervals of downpour. Security - police and G4 - were everywhere. We came in around 3.30, strolling from home to the Hamstead Road gate. Lin was chosen for random search, patted down and bag checked. We strolled and milled between vast speakers vibrating my chest cavity. There seemed to be lots of fat people about and the music was, at least for an hour, a recorded Marley medley, and just for a moment - with "Every little thing gonna be all right" - that wonderful song of many wonderful songs lulled me away from my small troubles.

Don't worry about a thing,
'Cause every little thing gonna be all right.
Singin': "Don't worry about a thing,
'Cause every little thing gonna be all right!"

Rise up this mornin',
Smiled with the risin' sun,
Three little birds
Perch by my doorstep
Singin' sweet songs
Of melodies pure and true,
Sayin', "This is my message to you-ou-ou:"

Singin': "Don't worry 'bout a thing,
'Cause every little thing gonna be all right...

We waited for the Carnival Parade ending according to notices at 4.30 in the park, then learned there’d been just six floats; that the parade had set out early along Soho Road, arrived in the park at four and dispersed – a contrast with better days when everything and everyone was reliably late as part of the style. Susan Green, long time part of Handsworth, a neighbour and friend writes on FB:

Carnival was dreadful this year. The worst ever. I had friends visiting from out of town and I was embarrassed. Carnival has now been totally hi jacked by those who have no interest in the art form but just want to have a Jamaican style dance hall event with booming sound systems in our park and use carnival as a fig leaf. Around tea time - well after carnival had ended they turned up in droves for the afters party in the park. They do not support carnival, they can't even be bothered to turn up in the afternoon to support it. My heart goes out to those such as Carnival artist Professor Black who work such long hours to try and keep Carnival going but who get little proper support from BCC or indeed from the Carnival committee. if they want to run a Jamaican dance hall cultural event they should be made to apply for support in their own right and make their own arguments for it instead of hi jacking Carnival . Simmer Down the reggae festival run last month in the same location was well organised, safe, an excellent family event with great live music and those of us living on the doorstep didn't have to suffer loud sounds until late at night and aggressive crowds milling about in the streets after all the so called security and cops had clocked off.

Professor Black and some of his designs

***** ****
A note from Paul Peacock...re the ebook version of his biography of my stepfather...

The Jack Book is now online:Jack Hargreaves a Portrait 

*** *** ***
There is an apple tree bearing fruit; one marrow the size of a courgette; a crop of Jerusalem artichokes, a few rows of potatoes, a rhubarb, a few broad beans, a frame of runner beans - and of course there's flowers, lavender, buddleia, and small trees, pears, plum and cherry, so far still fruitless. My shed stands and in the last day I've done some mowing of the encroaching wild grass wild flower meadow that covers so much of my neglected allotment.

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

I've got excuses for this neglect. None convinces me. But nor am I ashamed. I just know I have to persevere, continue learning;  be inventive. For over a year now, things have not been so good for the whole site. A small complaint by a friend about the 'remoteness' of our committee was met with indignant defensiveness. Clive Birch, who I've long known, secretary of the Birmingham and District Allotments Confederation became involved as a mediator. As things proceeded I, normally inclined to be partisan, wrote a note to Clive and X (the complainant):

Dear X and Clive
STRUGGLES ON THE VICTORIA JUBILEE
Thanks both of you for trying to resolve the real difficulties that exist and for showing respect.
I wish I could help but I feel that unless I take part in the work of our rather overburdened committee I’m not entitled to criticise.
We have a shared problem, yet it all began so excitingly when we opened the site in June 2010.

Opening day of the Victoria Jubilee Allotments from Simon Baddeley on Vimeo.

In these difficult economic times there is a serious lack of take up of plots on the VJA. This makes all allotments vulnerable - given the continued interest of developers in urban green field sites and government pressures to create more housing that does not infringe green belts or in-fill our  suburbs.
I also think there are VJA plot holders who, being new to allotments, have been discouraged by a mix of ill weather over two years and our challenging topsoil (Adrian Stagg admitted the developer had done an unsatisfactory job on this score and that BCC were minded to delay opening the site, but ‘we’ urged him to let us get started.).
On top of this, decisions by the site committee have not been based on talking to as many gardeners as possible. I also think that BCC Allotments section have for all sorts of understandable reasons been unable to give us much help with self-management. This is a problem across the UK of course.
The hedge cutting on the VJA (a familiar landmark, shelter and windbreak which we had earlier campaigned to save from the developer’s bulldozers) was a source of contention (given so many other more important things to be achieved like attracting more plot holders, helping those who were failing and holding site visitor events). The reasons given for cutting back the hedge and the last tree on the site - albeit a humble sycamore - are unconvincing, but that whole business was simply a straw on an overladen camel. We are surrounded by some of the most beautiful greenery in the city right next to Handsworth Park!
The VJA committee has struggled with high turnover, and lack of help from other gardeners, so that as well as isolating themselves they have themselves been isolated. Chicken and egg. I am as much a part of this as anyone.
The failure to change notices on the noticeboard, after two years even, is just a symptom. We need a special kind of rare leadership that will stir enthusiasm, keep up spirits and show inventive and creative ways to get the VJA back on the map within our community. I guess, given the right cues, we could all do it together! We badly need more sunshine among ourselves, and for relative novices, encouragement for the hard task of growing our own vegetables. There are a few brilliant gardeners on our site. I have already learned from them and they prove that good things can be achieved with hard work and perseverance, and some of the skills and craft too many of us are still struggling to acquire.
In short, Clive (and X) I think the VJA shares a problem of low morale and its consequences, but I’m sure that with decency and civility and generosity we will be able to put these difficult times behind us.
Right now we all need all the encouragement we can give and get.
Thanks for your continued interest Clive, and thanks X for having the bottle to raise your concerns which are not yours alone even tho’ at times that is how it must feel. My best wishes also to the committee who must be feeling ‘got at’. Please persevere. darkness before the dawn etc.
Kindest regards and best wishes and hopes of spreading good will. Please stick with us Clive! Feel free to call me in case I can add more to the drift of this letter. Simon. Handsworth Allotments Information Group (HAIG)

An email from Clive to X on 2 Aug:

X. Your comment ref fraud are noted and we can agree. Ref minutes of a meeting it is essential for their acceptance as a "true record" otherwise denial of validity of contents could ensue. We agree that open communication is essential but that information has to be correct and not misleading. Open committee meetings allow any tenant to see what is going on. Hedge - no dispute that it was a mess, BCC contractor has full responsibility! I agree with Simon's view that plot holders need a boost and committee and individuals can do this. Best wishes, Clive 

This BBC news story in June gives some context - Allotment keeping proves no walk in the garden. Betty Farruggia, the superb secretary at Walsall Road Allotments in Perry Barr is quoted saying there was a quarter plot vacant there, for the first time in 6 years.

"Until recently we've always had a waiting list of at least 12 people...The council did increase the rent but only one person left because of that so I don't really think the cost is a factor." Rent varies depending on the size of the plot, ranging from £40 to £90 per year. It is half price for people aged over 60. Ms Farruggia said weather played a part in people giving up allotments, especially when "disheartening" disease ruined harvests. But tending an allotment is also more difficult than expected..."Sometimes it's simply that people don't realise how hard it is - they think they might like to have an allotment but that it'll look after itself. "They can end up taking it on and then not coming back."

A while back I filmed myself working with an azada and before that with a mattock...

Working our allotment on the VJA from Simon Baddeley on Vimeo.

*** *** ***
In distant Ano Korakiana...a party for the Pantocrator, Του Παντοκρατόρου το πανηγύρι...

Η καρδιά του χωριού χθες το βράδυ χτυπούσε στον Άη-Γιώργη… Εκεί όπου επαναλήφθηκε με επιτυχία το πανηγύρι του «Παντοκρατόρου», από την εκείθεν Ενορία. Η μία πλευρά της αυλής γέμισε από ταπεζο-καθίσματα και κόσμο, ο ενδιάμεσος χώρος χρησιμοποιήθηκε ως πίστα χορού και ακριβώς απέναντι «στήθηκε» η ορχήστρα των «Φαιάκων», που κράτησε συντροφιά στους πανηγυρίζοντες έως μετά τα μεσάνυχτα. Αλλά και έξω από τον περιτειχισμένο περίβολο, δεν ήταν λίγος ο κόσμος. Εκεί εξάλλου είχαν στηθεί οι ψησταριές και το «ποτοπωλείο», δύο σημεία στα οποία σχηματίζονταν συνεχώς ουρές από κόσμο… Όπως αποτυπώνεται και στη φωτογραφία, οι διοργανωτές, παρά την κούραση ένοιωθαν ευχαριστημένοι από το αποτέλεσμα…

The wooden bridge to the garden behind the house has been repaired; a new back door fitted. Upstairs walls have been repaired and painted, sources of damp, given the wet weather this year and last, look to have been dealt with...

...though Lin detests the new windows, more Royston's choice than her spec. I'm relieved the old wooden frames, some rotting, all difficult to open, have been replaced. Apart from furnishing and carpeting, further work will be downstairs starting with the bathroom and stable-door porch and hall - a right mess. There's also as Royston points out a great need to allow the house to get more sun, so we'll go down again in a few days to use do some urgent estate work on the encroaching forest.

And in Handsworth we've been giving attention to another garden. Handsworth Helping Hands was asked by the householder to see what could be done to clear, tidy and improve a back garden and frontage in a Handsworth terrace off Rookery Road...

...in 4½ hours HHH cleared and swept a small frontage and removed a heap of tangled weeds and thick grass at the rear, but to slab or turf to give play-space, the soil needs digging over and levelling. We also tidied and swept an alley and removed cut green waste and rubbish entangled in the greenery...

Carnival Guignol

The supper last Wednesday.
“Look you lot…” I said when Paul, Cinty, Mark and Sally had arrived at 208 Democracy Street, as opposed to me leaving there to visit them
“Hm. Nice smell” said someone
“...this is hardly” I continued “pay-back time, since I’m still getting all the pleasure of your company”
“Enough of that, Simon”
“Yes but seriously…”
“Enough!”
Cinty had bought a cheese vegetable dish to pass - nicely judged to complement and not, given her cookery talent, up-stage my efforts.
“Sit down. Sit down…help yourselves to olives and here’s prosciutto wrapped round pieces of mozzarella”
The conversation re-began from where we’d left it at our several last evenings. Lin had e-mailed me earlier:

Make tomato and basil soup for starters. It's really easy and you can make in advance. You can make it the day before if you want and reheat gently when needed. Don't boil it. 1. Gently heat 1 carton of pasata, adding a good sprinkling of ground black pepper.(That's tomato puree - should be some in the cupboard by the fridge.) 2. Add ½ pint (10 flid oz/ ½ litre) chicken stock. (Add one stock cube from jar on the shelf to boiling water to make this.) 3. Add 1 heaped teaspoon dried basil and simmer for 5 minutes. (Should be plenty on the shelf or in wall cupboard - righthand one, I think.) 4. Taste. If it just tastes like tomato, add more basil and simmer again. Keep doing this till it tastes right. 5. When needed, reheat gently and add half a carton of cooking cream. (I think there's some in the cupboard…The pack with dark blue, as opposed to light blue, on it is thicker, so better.) That makes 1.5 pints, which is enough for a reasonable portion for 4 in the proper soup dishes in the dining room cupboard, but no seconds.

I doubled the ingredients for this, ladled the warm soup into a big bowl and took it  upstairs where the table was laid with bread and bowls. There was enough soup with some seconds for the five of us. Then roast chicken – “cook it first on its breast so juices run to the meat” said Lin over the phone from England – “about 170 Fahrenheit for an hour and half”, said Cinty over her phone, just up the road. I made baked potatoes and Sally brought gravy to be heated and decanted into a jug. Cinty in our kitchen carved the nicely browned chicken - into which I’d stuffed a lemon on Lin’s advice - and laid out its meat on a platter to go along with her mix of broccoli and leaks in cheese sauce. Meantime before my guests started on the wine and beer they’d bought I served - cooled in an ice-filled cocktail shaker - margaritas - ⅓ Tequila, ⅓ lemon juice from our trees (plus the juice of two oranges, and ⅓ Grand Marnier, with the rim of each glass wetted with a slice of lemon to hold a rime of salt. It was all going swimmingly.
After a good pause from the main dish, I fetched up the pudding from the freezer – Margarita Granita, made by mixing the mush of squeezed lemons mixed in equal parts with Grand Marnier and Tequila and spooning it into a selection of hollowed lemons, a hole cut in the top lidded with the head of the fruit, cut flat at the bottom so it’d sit upright.

"Don't put your faces too close - remember Alien!"

The alcohol hinders freezing so the result is a lively soft filling the consistency of praline in the dark chocolates from Emeral served besides. We used the emptied lemons to finish the jug of margarita...

**** *****
On Friday I went into town and visited St Spyridon’s Cathedral, having to dash out quietly as my mobile went off.
“What’s your passport number” said Lin “for booking flights in August?”
“I’m just at the cathedral. Lighting a candle for Amy and the baby”
 “Oh good. Shall I phone later?”
I gave her the number and then returned to that friendly serene place, in the centre of the city, to pick two candles’ light them and plant them among hundreds more in the sand tray by the east porch.

Noticing people writing prayers on paper I wrote “For our beloved daughter, Amy and, with God’s will, her son, our grandson” and added it to the little stack in a dish by the altar rail. Lin has reservations about my hypocrisy but I answered that some time ago so she tolerates these things, pondering them, no doubt, in her heart, her lips slightly pursed. I may have no faith, I’m not sure about Amy’s and can certainly not speak for the child within her. If I could write him one of the letters I’ve been sending so regularly to Lin and my mum these past 6 weeks, I’d want to say something about the paradox by which a dead reckoning was used to prepare an accurate position based on a sighting of the sun, moon or stars and reference to exact time and tables “when it comes to words, rather than music, I hope that you, our grandson, will read and learn from the Bible – preferably from a translation whose prose honours its content, and - especially when you are young - its beguiling stories. In some editions substituted for the King James version the meticulous pursuit of accessibility has, like the application of leeches, bled the text of memorable peculiarities and persistent idiom; best sometimes to compare the many translations at your fingertips, and start to learn that words are written by humans of miscellaneous opinion and varied inspiration. You do not need believe in angels or miracles, virgin birth or resurrection, though coincidence and the inexplicable march alongside skepticism, that people have amazing dreams stimulating science and scholarship.

A bloody good read

Where better than from the Bible may you learn in clear and magnificent ways the nature of your humanity, your shared mortality, the minute degrees by which you are both free and constrained in your choices, the extent of human moral frailty, your cowardice, sadism and cruelty, your courage, malice, compassion, kindness and capacity for forgiveness and grace, your anger and vengefulness, your mercifulness, your feckless inconsistency, the possibility of redemption, the moral quagmires into which you can be driven by lust and envy, your nobility and decency, the nature of love, of desire, grief, wisdom and wit, forbearance and sacrifice, the beauty, violence and ugliness of the world and the enigma of infinity – the capacity of language, any language, to convey mystery, to describe in words what is beyond words, to encompass paradox, that eternity may be given time and space by the minds of men ‘In the beginning was the word, and the word was made light’. Where other great works match the bible’s richness strive to know them, but you’ll search far to find works beyond its sway and spur, and, because the Bible is the book of your immediate context, it’s as good an introduction as any to your understanding of plot, structure and narrative, of good and bad writing, or - like mine – passable but inadequate for the truth I’m struggling to convey. The Bible’s contrary texts have long been used to justify perfidy and virtue. Don’t use it for instruction. Know that neither religion nor secularism occupy ground higher than the other; that they can co-exist and contain what is worst and best in you and your fellows. And should you have faith in God – a product of revelation not will - know that prayer is not to get things you want for yourself nor others; that God’s existence is in no way discounted by the fate of humans at the hands of nature or other humans, or that despite faith you may not believe yourself, amid pain, forsaken, and, if you have no faith – a reasonable, though no more nor less logical state, than its reverse - that atheism provides no guarantee of feeling unnoticed.” I’d want to add some sturdy prejudice about the bowdlerisation of King James, and for that matter Cranmer’s Prayer Book, by well-meaning committees led by educators, but the best and kindest words on that were written in an essay by Alan Bennett for a meeting of the society, or some such, for the ‘preservation’ of that supreme text. He said, after a paean for the King James that were he a priest stumbling up the urine smelling steps of a tower block in hope of bringing some unction to a parishioner in despair, he'd not bother that much about the words - though he wrote that thought far better than I.

Psalm 77 (KJV)
1. To the chief Musician, to Jeduthun, A Psalm of Asaph. I cried unto God with my voice, even unto God with my voice; and he gave ear unto me.
2. In the day of my trouble I sought the Lord: my sore ran in the night, and ceased not: my soul refused to be comforted.
3. I remembered God, and was troubled: I complained, and my spirit was overwhelmed. Selah.
4. Thou holdest mine eyes waking: I am so troubled that I cannot speak.
5. I have considered the days of old, the years of ancient times.
6. I call to remembrance my song in the night: I commune with mine own heart: and my spirit made diligent search.
7. Will the Lord cast off for ever? and will he be favourable no more?
8. Is his mercy clean gone for ever? doth his promise fail for evermore?
9. Hath God forgotten to be gracious? hath he in anger shut up his tender mercies? Selah.
10. And I said, This is my infirmity: but I will remember the years of the right hand of the most High.
11. I will remember the works of the Lord: surely I will remember thy wonders of old.
12. I will meditate also of all thy work, and talk of thy doings.
13. Thy way, O God, is in the sanctuary: who is so great a God as our God?
14. Thou art the God that doest wonders: thou hast declared thy strength among the people.
15. Thou hast with thine arm redeemed thy people, the sons of Jacob and Joseph. Selah.
16. The waters saw thee, O God, the waters saw thee; they were afraid: the depths also were troubled.
17. The clouds poured out water: the skies sent out a sound: thine arrows also went abroad.
18. The voice of thy thunder was in the heaven: the lightnings lightened the world: the earth trembled and shook.
19. Thy way is in the sea, and thy path in the great waters, and thy footsteps are not known.
20. Thou leddest thy people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron.

*** ***
“That’s a bummer” said Mark
We were all peering into Summersong’s engine cavity, Paul with a vernier to measure the prop shaft diameter, Mark with a piece of cardboard on which were jotted the measurements of the new engine we’d hoped would replace the old.
“There’s 30 centimetres to find if the new engine’s gear box and couplings are to fit. It won’t work. I’ll go back and remeasure the engine tomorrow but…”
 I swallowed my disappointment, in part because ill-news from friends comes easier if – what am I’m trying to say?
“It’s a bummer?”
That morning. Paul told me. his motorbike - one on which he’d lavished much attention - had been stolen from outside his house in the night.
And yet 24 hours later Mark has told me he has almost certainly now raced an engine of the same type that will almost certainly fit. I've been in touch with Mr Vangelis to prepare to slip our boat, clean and anti-foul her and let Paul and Mark work on her at Mandouki in April, while Dave has texted me that he will get Summersong down there on her old engine and put a small boat in her place to hold her mooring at Ipsos. I've also had word with the fisherman in the security kafeneon by the harbour and have a receipt for their special attention to her security. Being moored there for over twelve years helps.

Vangelis Yard at Mandouki - above me a forest of humming masts

*** *** ***
‘Hellas, once first among nations, what asses we are now’ ...

...written on the back of a de-sexed Carnival King, thus with derisive laughter, shouting and oompapa music, marched this year’s most self-critical of village carnivals; irreverent as ever, innocent fun for the very young mixed, with scathing mockery of Greece and Greeks; sprinkled with flour a phalanx of young bakers and cooks pranced happily along mingling with men and women dressed as militia...

...holding toy machine pistols, some dressed in plastic military helmets, wearing swastika armbands their faces decorated with toothbrush moustaches, waving whips...

...marching behind a white donkey stumbling under the weight of a man with the blackened face and hands of a chimney sweep.

 Past the co-op we went where ‘ΒΟΗΘΕΙ ΜΑΣ’ was scrawled on a sheet - an orange balled golden phallus poking between ‘ita’ and ‘thita’. HELP US. The donkey was relieved of its burden before the hill into Democracy Street - the point made. Grand guignol in the middle of the afternoon. Later at the dance...

*** ***
A note to Richard Pine, after reading his grimmest of op-eds in The Irish Times arguing Greece should, to save herself from further abasement, leave not just the Eurozone but the European Union:

Dear Richard. Your op-ed has sparked table talk over the past few days - and no doubt some of the flack you were expecting, though not from me. Whether you are right or not, we seem to be at a point of decision - one that is quite out of our hands, though we’ll experience the consequences and historians will argue over it when we’re gone.
I hope that Greece will not leave the EU nor the Eurozone. I hope her people can acquire the ‘intricate skills’ required to govern a modern state - these being managerial, in terms of striving to work with fine-tuned logic and best technology in managing fiscal detail; monitoring and checking the performance of  a multiplicity of public services; involving all citizens in a constant educative dialogue about those services and earning the conditional respect for government which will lead people to pay taxes and follow the rule of law in returning to the state, what it needs by way of information and cash to work. This is a process which should be far far simpler than it is at present, employing information technology, individually available to those who can help others learn to use it, to perform, at household and business levels, the tedious but necessary duties of citizenship. It’s problematic that the Republic’s civil servants and ministers are being tutored in these things by Germans. But  unlike you, I think that making use of European (not only German) expertise in government need not be experienced as invasion or even humiliation. Greeks, proud inventors of democracy, are even in their villages deriding their failures as a modern state (see the slogan on the Carnival king’s float in Ano Korakiana last Sunday) - a parade of derisive self-mockery, not just fist-shaking at the Troika, the Government and the Germans.
I’m not sure that even more problematic than five centuries of Ottoman Occupation, is another historical circumstance I mentioned over our salad last Wednesday, that Greece has had no industrial revolution and, even though classical art  inspired that event across 15th century Europe, no Renaissance. I was struck by words from the script of the recent Greek film Attenberg in which the architect says to his daughter
“We missed an industrial revolution. We’ve built a colony of factories on sheep-pens”.
Turkey also had no industrial revolution but contains within itself the history of ruling an empire, even tho’ decayed, and the more recent memory - painful but necessary - of Kemal Ataturk’s reforms across every dimension of government; public finance, education, infrastructure, transport. Of course there’s corruption there too. Think of the ill-regulated multi-storey blocks that collapsed like cards after the last big quake under Istanbul. But there does seem to be a critical mass of expertise in Ankara, lacking in Athens, that supports the modernisation of government - and the constant need to submit reform to review and further change, something taken as a given across northern Europe.
Despite your arguments about misery, humiliation and loss of sovereignty, none of these demanded reforms if they occur - and I hope they will - can deprive the Greeks of their identity or culture (certainly not compared to the historic privations and suffering of the country’s population over the  over the past 100 years), unless you accept the proposition that using the habits of corruption inherited from Ottoman rule is an inextricable part of that culture - that separating corruption from probity involves risking the lives of conjoined twins. I don’t think that. Do you? A lot of Greeks don’t think that - if the chorus of frustrated anger at their country’s corruption is a guide. Nor need Greeks surrender their rights as citizens to be involved in making choices in government - though I suspect the knowledge and values required to exercise local democracy have been developed further in other countries than in Greece. Present protest entails futile sparring with police most of whom are in the same boat as the rioters. Is the long schism between klepht and modernist so intractable? S

...less these thoughts presume some Anglo moral high ground see this posting by Jim Potts on Corfu Blues quoting a rebuttal letter from Heinz Stiller in Berne Switzerland, about the mess made of capitalism by some of Greece's would-be 'helpers' published in Kathimerini’s online English edition on 27 Feb in response to a Bloomberg article by Clive Crooke ('Greek deal leaves Europe on the road to disaster'):

Mr. Crook’s article fits well within the barrage of doom and gloom press articles about Europe from American and British sources which pretend to analyze problems, but in reality are nothing but expressions of irrational chauvinist Anglo arrogance toward Europe. Britain and the US have been highly successful in one thing: They have turned capital markets into a casino-style gambling system which has taken the world to the brink of catastrophe by having blown up the 'funny money' supply to absurd proportions. By relying excessively on Keynesian economics, they have neglected structural economic policies and almost ruined their respective 'real economy' bases. The internet bubble (already forgotten?), the housing (ABS) crisis, and Lehman -- all nice gifts to the world by our Anglo economic expert friends…When hares, hunted by dogs, get tired of running away, they sometimes push other hares out of their holes so that these are now hunted by the dogs and they can take a rest.  Anglo coverage of European problems reminds me of this behaviour....But, as they say, you can’t fool all the people all the time…Europe will not go down the drain, no matter if Greece stays in or not. But in due time, financial markets will center in on the real problem economies of the world, the US and Britain, as these do not even try to tackle their problems.

And this hip-hop tirade against ACTA - The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement - captures in nimble rhetoric (how very well suited is Greek - which starts at 00.44 - for rap) feelings and thoughts that go well beyond the immediate concerns of the campaign against the new copyright legislation before the EU parliament:

**** ****
At dawn I can see that one of Ano Korakiana's olive presses has been working through the night - has been for several weeks...

Clean Monday - Kαθαρά Δευτέρα - starts the 40 days of Lent. Foti asked me as he has for the last two years to join his family for lunch at his family's place near Doctor's Bridge on the Sidari Road. There was a laden table including octopus and squid, spinach pie, macaroni, feta, green salad, wine, taramosalata and Lagana bread - which you're supposed to break not cut - and I could recall nearly everyone's name, and Dimitra whispered me the one's I struggled with. I explained to those who wondered where Linda was that I was here alone as she was accompanying her father - 93 - to the doctors "but it's alright we think and she sends her love and we will both be here for Easter"

Philoxenia  - Φιλοξενία - on Clean Monday

Part way through the meal, with help from Natasha where my Greek failed I made a very short speech
"Tomorrow I go to England. I am sad to be leaving but I am happy to be going. Linda and I are expecting a grandson in March!"
I tried to go on thanking them for their generosity and hospitality but everyone was clapping and raising their glasses, so I had the sense to sit and continue the pleasure of the meal as the children, their food finished, began to dance for themselves and us.

Λαγάνα