Easter

Around here there’s preparation for Easter. That Christmas may be growing in significance has nothing to do with parity between Passion - Αναπαράσταση των Παθών - and Nativity; more to do with secularism borrowing the story, as once the pale Galileans borrowed rituals for the solstices and the end of winter from Pantheism. Asvesti - ασβέστη whitewash - comes in soggy plastic sacks and, after much sweeping and tidying, is painted before Easter in wide lines throughout villages across the country to tidy public-private boundaries, mark the edge of steps, and brighten dusty skirtings. On the narrow sea ferries double their schedules between Corfu and the mainland bringing relatives from the cities to home villages, from the Greek diaspora; people come home to their birthplaces. I, being a roaming metropolitan have the deepest fondness for sharing in this get-together. I apprehend no better account of human nature; no greater drama than Easter – borrowed donkey, laid palms, shouted hosannahs, public excitement, imperial and provincial politics, an intimate supper, wine and bread, a nightwatch and bitter cup, betrayal, arrest, terror, mob frenzy, a travesty trial, Ecce Homo, a washing of hands, torture, mockery, execration, blood and sweat, singular acts of compassion, nails driven through flesh and bone, love even so, a mother’s unspeakable sorrow, agony, abandonment, despair, Golgotha - Κρανίου Τόπος. This is what we do. How we would behave if? Would I wash my hands, offer help, promise never to deny but be terrified into doing just that, cry out for blood, scorn and spit with my fellows, watch the spectacle, fascinated, detached, passive or act with some unexpectedly brave impulse of decency. These choices aren’t dated. 

Epirus and Albania from Ano Korakiana at dawn

*** ***

I got an interesting message from my friend Andrew Simon in Birmingham, Hon.Sec. of the Friends of Black Patch Park, a project that has occupied a group of us for the last decade, when the park was threatened with being 'developed' for industry. Sandwell Council, in part because of our efforts, in part because of the economic crisis, have rescinded that part of the local plan for the area. but there remains a dearth of funds and commitment to restore or even maintain Black Patch Park, so this news - albeit the 'silly season' seems to last most of the year - might, apart from being fascinating, just jolt a hard-pressed council into cutting the grass better and help us attract cash for the  Centenary celebration being organised by the Friends for Saturday 18 June 2011:

Hi Simon. Thought you might like to see the attached sent to me by Adrian Johnson. This is the latest of several articles to appear in the papers including The Guardian, The Times, The Telegraph, The Daily Mail, and the Birmingham Post and Mail. Best Wishes. Andrew

**** ****
The night before last our sitting room filled with smoke after I lit the stove. Next morning all windows and doors were open. By afternoon a breeze dispersed the kippery smell. During the morning we removed the stove pipe, cleaned it and swept soot that hadn’t been collected on a plastic decorating sheet as Lin raked the inside of the chimney pipe with a half-moon of metal sheeting screwed on the end a broomstick.

One of the repairs to be done is to insert a T-joint where the stove pipe exits the house and becomes vertical, to collect the carbon that heap up and blocks the chimney after a month of fires. There was an exquisite cream white moth on the wall below the stove pipe. So well blended into the white wall, we’d not have seen this little creature - hardly a centimetre across - but for having to remove our stove pipe.

Easter in Ano Korakiana

Late Good Friday night the band hurried with taps along the street to join the procession at Agios Georgios. We met them, led by couched banners on Bravi, waited at the verge, as they headed west to the church by the bandroom. Then back up the street some people following others by their casements and doors crossing themselves as the bier was portered by, decked with carnations, rhizomes of wisteria and camellia. In and out of the crowd ran that urchin sister of Katheriniki looking in doorways and windows. People noticed her running loose. She knows us but would not take a hand. As she dashed off up a side road in the dark, Lin - the teacher - followed. I walked on up behind the band slow marching to a dirge up beyond the defile to Venetia, where they retraced their steps and Lin waited for me. “I lost her. It was like that film Don’t look now. The little figure flitting in and out of sight in the back streets. “ Back at Ag.Georgios, a dignified prayer, then everyone dispersed, some like us taking home the flowers threaded into the bier in the cenre of the church.

* * *

This is our third easter in the village. On Saturday night, our candles were lit from the altar at Agios Geogios. We waited with others at the top of the village until midnight; heard the distant fireworks from Corfu town echoing off the mountains above us; then the band struck up, the lights came up and off went the village fireworks with gun shots and we processed down Democracy Street and burned our third cross on the lintels before being invited next door to a tableful of food. For me and Leftheris and Natasha and Fortis a bowl of magiritsa – the insides of their lamb, μαγειρίτσα – in tasty gravy to be soaked up with bread. Their mum said “The children don’t like the insides” They shook their heads vigorously in agreement. This excused Lin who had the same problem with lamb’s intestines, tongues, kidneys and liver – though she can enjoy kokoretsi.

Holy Saturday with our neighbours: breaking the fast of Great Lent

It was lovely how much with Natasha’s English and our littler Greek we could share, not just pleasantries, fun though that was, but music – symphonies, opera, hymns as well as rebetika and local songs – all with humming and words which even I – tuneless – could join in at times, especially bits from Wagner, from Verdi and Puccini and tunes of Mozart’s and Theodorakis’ Ena to Chelidoni song which led us to the story of the architect’s wife buried in the stonework of the bridge at Arta which led us to Yianni Moralis’ portrait of my stepmother Maria in the National Gallery in Athens which Leftheris had seen on the internet, and then to family photo albums. We agreed on our liking of the old black and white photos and the pleasure of hard copy versus the web where I now store so much of my family’s images.

* * *

On Easter Sunday we had a lamb roast at Mark and Sally’s. At one in the afternoon, having been up until nearly four the same morning enjoying food – singing and conversation with our dear neighbours, we strolled down Democracy Street. The spitted lamb was turning over a bed of charcoal. Our assembly came from most parts of the UK, some long inhabitants of the island – citizens - others like us still new and some visitors, one in Corfu for the first time. Angie and Martin we’d met before but I learned they knew Richard Hill’s part of the world, and indeed, when I mentioned his address, knew his street. I explained Richard’s craft and the finely re-carved roach I was so looking forward to holding in my hands in May. We came onto Pompey and the writer Graham Hurley who’s given me so much pleasure.

EASTER LAMB ROAST IN ANO KORAKIANA from Simon Baddeley on Vimeo.

The view from the balcony - greenery to the blue Kerkyra sea and the mainland mountains in their distant detail, while behind us the three crags, on one of which some lads had raised a flag – not the patrida, because it was red and yellow, but we couldn’t make out the pattern. “Could ever a village be better placed?” Swallows darted among the houses. Our company spread across two tables on the balcony; smoke from the roasting lamb full of rosemary rising upwards; cheerful conversation. We ate olive-oiled pitta bread from a barbeque, helping ourselves from dishes of pasta mixed with glazed carrots and sausages; dressed salad; small roasted fowl to be eaten delicately. “This is just the first course" reminded Sally. There was wine, which could be diluted with ice and sipped for hours; also beer and water. Then the lamb – I honoured with half the head. “I’ve never seen anyone trying to eat a lamb’s head with a knife and fork”. True the only way to tease the meat from a skull is to pick it up and feed in the old way.

** ** **

A letter to the Birmingham councillor who oversees parks:

Cllr Mullaney. The crisis in public sector finance is forcing painful decisions on councillors. In the case of Birmingham parks we understand that officers are recommending, as a way of getting the same ranger and warden coverage despite reducing their number, by making them on-call, available from ‘hubs’ across the city. There’s a suggestion that this could benefit smaller parks previously without rangers.

Our concern is that Handsworth Park will lose out under this new arrangement ­ specifically that, after its brilliant Heritage Lottery Fund refurbishment over the last decade, it may lose its small dedicated staff of permanent wardens.

The British public has long recognised that an inner-city park without the permanent stewardship of wardens is poised to descend into urban wasteland, blighted by the violence and vandalism that made it unusable to citizens in the first place.

So much of the contribution of wardens to the popularity of a park is objectively impossible to measure by today’s performance figures because, like fire prevention, it entails a constant process of nipping potential problems in the bud. Crime and anti-social behaviour prevented before it occurs is, like the permanent presence that reassures bona fide park visitors, impossible to measure, in the way it may be possible to measure numbers of park tours, education visits and logged events.

The threat to Handsworth Park is, we understand, the result of a shift in formula funding that makes decisions about the numbers and deployment of rangers and wardens the responsibility of education officers. Education has different priorities to the Recreation Service. If schools wish to arrange a park visit they can reserve the security and tutoring of rangers and wardens for a particular time and place to coincide with the tour in question – a measurable unit of activity. A decision about the placing of a warden 'hub' may make sense in terms of these measurable educational priorities, but they are unwise in terms of the wider contribution of permanent wardens to Handsworth Park.

Before it was restored and staffed Handsworth Park was regarded by the police superintendent at Thornhill Road as a ‘no go area’. The area’s schools never used the park for visits. They would not have imagined participating, as they do now, in an annual 'Classroom in the Park' event. Indeed with the support of parents local schools used to discourage children from using the park for travelling to and from school. This view of Handsworth Park as a dangerous place diffused through all communities of Handsworth and had, at the time I wrote my ‘History of the Founding of Handsworth Park’ in 1997 throughout Birmingham, affected adults as much as children.

If implemented in such a way as to remove the park's permanent staff, the proposed ‘outreach’ approach to the stewardship of Handsworth Park will erode twenty years local campaigning and the transformative investment that, in the last decade, has recovered this beautiful space not only for the people of Handsworth but for visitors across the city and further afield.

If the hub idea must proceed there’s a spark of hope that the permanence of wardens essential to the security and maintenance of what’s been achieved in Handsworth park can be sustained – if one of the selected hubs is based at Handsworth Park. Apart from the vital need for permanent wardening created by the environment, demography and history of Handsworth and Perry Barr, the logic of retaining Handsworth Park as a warden hub for the larger area is difficult to challenge. In Handsworth Park there is a well equipped purpose built classroom with a park office, community meeting space and kitchen, the Boat House café with toilets and summer boating facilities, the leisure centre with car parking, one of the finest cricket grounds in the north of the city, a restored bandstand, listed park keeper's house, and newly equipped children and young people¹s play areas. To this list will shortly be added, under the S106A attached to the development of housing on part of the adjoining Victoria Jubilee Allotments, three new playing fields, 80 new municipal allotments (the largest new allotments site in the UK since WW2), plus further children’s play areas, sports pavilion and gardeners’ community hut.

This is an area of urban green space playing a role in the regeneration, community resilience and history of Handsworth and its surroundings. Retained as a hub for adjoining parks, Handsworth Park is optimally placed and resourced to serve the ‘outreach’ needs of other parks in the area. We deplore, with everyone, the need to reduce the number of rangers and wardens in the city. We implore you not to turn this crisis into a disaster, by removing permanent staff from a place where they can do the most good for the whole area.

Yours sincerely, Simon Baddeley (Historian of Handsworth Park)

Nick Booth at Grassroots, to whom I copied this wrote by return: ‘Have you put this on your blog? If not please do so and either link to http://handsonhandsworth.info/ or http://birchfield.org.uk/ and/or http://sohowardbirmingham.com/ or link to them and also go and add a comment on one of their posts - lining back to yours. These blogs are run by neighbourhood managers so this stuff should be just up their street. 'Tho’ he cautions ‘a council officer is unlikely to make a concerted effort. (They’ll) add your e-mail to their blog, but might simply link to the post as part of a round up of what people are saying in and about their patch.’

Anyway I copied the letter to Tracey Thorne at Hands on Handsworth, to our ward councillors, and to area park managers at Edgbaston and Handsworth and to Adrian Goldberg at The Stirrer.

Dear Adrian. Can you give a mention in the Stirrer to my letter to Cllr Mullaney re social damage to Handsworth following decisions by the City Council to cut back the wardening of Birmingham parks. The cut backs – presented as ‘reorganisation’ - may be unavoidable. The threat now lies in plans to shift a projected warden 'hub' from Handsworth Park, with all its facilities, to Edgbaston Reservoir, providing only an 'outreach' warden and ranger service from there to Handsworth. In effect Edgbaston would keep a permanent staff base as they wait to be deployed for ‘outreach’, but Handsworth would lose its permanent staff. If Handsworth was selected as the hub it would at least keep a vital base of permanent warden presence while carrying out 'outreach' duties. Best wishes. Simon

Lee replied almost at once mentioning progress on the Victoria Jubilee site next to the park:

Thanks Simon, very good letter. The play area (on the VJA) should start soon, all of the designs have been finalized. I have met with the landscape architect on site (Alan Smith). The cricket perimeter fencing is almost complete. Once Education hand the pitch over it will be maintained from the park by BPN grounds maintenance staff. Not sure what is happening with the gate access from the park? all the best ....Lee. Perry Barr Constituency Parks Manager

Chris Duggan picked up my letter which I’d also sent to Birmingham Open Spaces Forum: ‘Can i publish this on greeningbrum.org.uk Simon?

Before and after

Just before we left there was a small hullabaloo in Democracy Street. We hurried out to join in, and found the Leftheris, and their children and friends peering excitedly into next door's garden where Bubble's litter, in a nest near a wall, were having their first look at the world. Even I could manage enough Greek to join in the glow of pleasure and the counting of the kittens - three, one orange. We left Ano Korakiana before sunrise on Thursday. We arrived in Birmingham just after midnight this Saturday morning - taking the 900 bus into town, where I phoned a minicab to avoid the higher charges of the hackney cabs, whose drivers knew there were no trains from the airport into the city after 2327. Waiting for the bus, we met two students who'd just arrived from Cyprus. We chatted and called them a taxi from Moor Street for a journey on to Wolverhampton. At Frankfurt airport I read a 9 May copy of USA Today - the headlined special report said 'Gas costs reshape daily life'. An on-line paper this evening starts:

With crude oil now above $120 a barrel and threatening to go higher, it is clear that our preferred and convenient means of going places, our car, the airplane and the rental car soon are going to be parked because they will be too expensive to operate...

* * * In Venice we left our bags at a friendly hotel on Fondamenta Di Santa Chiara; bought fresh bread and picnic'd in a shady park - Giardino di Papadopoli - near Piazzalle Roma, sipping Leftheris' home grown rosé from the cola bottle he'd handed us on Easter Sunday, feeding the pigeons and sparrows. I noticed visitors struggling with their bags over the stepped Scalzi bridge opposite the rail station to avoid paying a vaporetto fare to cross the Grand Canal. The new bridge - Ponte di Calatrava - when completed - will ease that walk. The trek from Venice's vast Marittima, where we disembarked, will be trickier to sort out. See the comment here on walking it in reverse: 'If you're adventurous and aren't hauling luggage, you can save time by walking along the sidewalk street below the southwestern edge of the Piazza (past the Garage Comunale) until you reach an old steel footbridge with a sign (in Italian) that says "authorized persons only" or words to that effect. This will lead you to Marittima's back entrance. Warning: The bridge is rusty with holes and patches, so walk carefully and avoid the bridge if you're heavy or wearing high heels. Also, the port police may not let you use the bridge from the Marittima side, probably because the cruise authorities don't want to be responsible if you fall through.' Luck found us a trolley by the ferry to cart our cases to the official exit where we were politely told we could take it no further. Thereafter, along Tronchetto we hauled across a couple of roads and a roundabout busy with motorised traffic to and from the Strada Statale 11, using piecemeal sidewalks, across the neck of the Ponte della libertà , to complete the 1500 metre journey to Piazzalle Roma, where, amid phrenetic queuing, new arrivals are divested of their cars, debussed and decoached. People aren't expected to actually enter Venice on foot, despite it being the finest walking city in Europe - once you're there. * * * 9 May 2008 0016. Between Croatia and Italy on the way north. Peering over a rail eleven decks above the distant wash of an immense ferry, I get vertigo as from a high factory roof. The blatancy of the artificial light, bathing the ship’s public spaces, blinds me, making the surroundings remote and unfriendly, despite the calmest of Mediterranean nights. I can make out an occasional star and a crescent moon. Its reflection on the sea or looms from distant lights are all but indiscernible. I'm enclosed by a claustrophobic acoustic landscape of rumbling propellers, rattling screens, vibrating deck plates, roaring extractor fans, humming air-conditioning. Inside, sleep is made difficult by lights that won’t turn off and the background sound of television. The passage of this great private leisure centre - self-described as the 'paradise of the sea' - is hardly apparent until we close the land becoming a platform from which to enjoy mountainous scenery or a panoramic view of Venice. This surging Adriatic juggernaut separates us from the sea; in my case the intimate orchestra of sensations afforded by sailing in a small boat – the starry heavens, the moonlit wavelets slapping the hull, the small flaps and creaks of sails and spars, the swirling phosphorescence of myriad creatures sparking in our wake, the friendly glimpse of oil lamps inside a cosy cabin when making a cup of tea for the watch, the dim luminous face of the compass, the rocking of our quiet passage, distant and occasional lights on land or other vessels - the generous bosom of the surrounding sea. Of course there are other nights of buffeting wind, crashing waves, invading spray, driving rain and difficult reefing - weather through which this great vessel charges impervious, when, seeing her passing, I would think with envy of a warm cabin aboard her, but I know where my preference lies. * * * We are tidying the crude panels nailed round the top of the stairwell – two sides with wood and the third as stucco atop more builders’ foam. Our work has often been accompanied by music on the laptop – tunes woven into these wonderful weeks - Queen, Greek bands from Corfu, Rachmaninov’s Liturgy, Fauré’s Requiem, Hadjidakis’ 30 Nocturnes, rebetika about Smyrna, Vangelis’ Bladerunner soundtrack, Eleni Karaindrou’s soundtrack for The Weeping Meadow, Theodorakis’ setting of Axion Esti, Mozart’s Requiem in Dm, Thomas Trotter playing the refurbished organ in Birmingham Town Hall, Lully, Marais, Saint-Colombe, Couperin, Savali (the last five from the soundtrack of Tous Les Matins du Monde). * * * On Thursday at 7.00 in the morning we will take a ferry to Venice and home. We return briefly in July, and then for September. This afternoon Aln, who’s helped so much with the house renovation, is coming over with H to look at our progress. Yesterday he and she came with us on Summer Song to lunch at Agni. This time Summer Song's old engine sounded sweet staying merely warm to the touch. We didn’t use it so much. I’ve found in Aln and H two gifts. He knows how to sail and, with H, is content with zephyrous progress, passages marked by bubbles that drift silently beside our hull, or a landmark ashore whose position only changes when a conversational distraction stop us noticing it until we look again and see it’s slipped behind or drawn a fraction closer. In addition we had a jocund breeze – coming and going, to Taverna Nikolas in the cove. We came to the jetty at Agni under sail – with two seconds reverse from the engine and a hand with warps from Pericles – and we berthed at Ipsos the same way (though being sensible I had the engine running out of gear just in case). Our ancestors were forever seeing their surroundings under sail, or propelled by oars, feet, or on rumbling wheels, tied for all history to the headlong maximum of a galloping horse. Early rail passengers spoke with excited wonder of landscapes passing smoothly by at intoxicating pace. Trains began our affair with speed, embracing velocity as an ideal, experience what had previously been the province of birds and projectiles. To be pedestrian is to be tedious; ‘dawdling’ a weakness. Our hypermobility is our economy. It mustn’t slow-down. Speedophilia spread from increasing pace to shrinking the time spent on cultivation and manufacture, and from there to fast eating and other fleet sensations. Now speed envelops and traps the richest beneficiaries of modern economies who realise time can't be bought. When did my enterprising nephew in the city enjoy a long slow meal or a family walk uninterrupted by an e-mail or phone call? That phrase - 'a long slow' - brings to mind an aged pimp in Montmartre - when John and I and my daughter Amy travelled by train with our folding bicycles to celebrate a ‘carfree’ day in Paris. He lounged beside a grandmotherly dame and proffered us – the men – ‘une copulation longue et dureé’. Capitalism’s genius struggles to profit from the novel choice of slowness amid the conveniences and imperatives of speed. It will surely succeed - engendering anxiety about pace. Where once the punter paid for a ‘quickie’ and fusses when a fast-food queue delays a minute, slower pleasures will lead the market. The need, and therefore the demand, is growing. Entrepreneurs profiting from the business of popular air travel will take to bicycles, local produce and even commit to relationships ‘longue et dureé’. For the time being slowness is an esoteric good, a choice rather than a fashion, not yet a significant dimension of consumerism, a political rather than an economic choice. We peered at passing inlets, caves, paths into woods, private developments stealing the public cliff top path between Kaminaki and Nissaki, attractive houses nestling amid olives, blatant villas, gazed at verdant flower filled slopes, layers of rock bent into arches by durations that stretch imagination, the shaled fissures and towering crags of Pantokrator, close enough to the shore to rock in redounding wavelets above us two parallel contrails made into sky-filling ‘V’ by our perspective. Aln, H and Lin politely demolished my case for the irrelevancy of most news from the world, proving my dismal failure at Socratic method. I did however demonstrate the wonder of the simplest of knots that will hold secure to the strength of the rope with which you tie it, while remaining easily undone; a knot I can tie behind my back – the bowline. * * * 4 May. So far this is the longest Lin and I have been away from England or indeed from our home in Birmingham. “I don’t want to go back” she muttered; not “I don’t want to go home”. Which is saying a lot because we have plenty of enjoyment in England – places, people, events, but in these last weeks the accumulation of novel sensations – whether a multitude of candle flames reflected from brass trumpets and swaying tubas in the narrows of Democracy Street, shattering terracotta on the Liston, an afternoon breeze raising wavelets in the Corfu Straits, darkening the sea like raised nap on blue velvet; and doing the same, in reverse, to the olive canopy, turning up the silver side of their spinach leaves as we ride among them in the meadows below Agios Ilias – Lin, me, Jill and Sally, and the dog Molly; Kostas humming Ένα Το Χελιδόνι’ as he drives me to his home for a snack and pickings from his garden – eggs still warm, asparagus, peas, broad beans, lettuce, and, from his deep freeze three strawberry granita mixes – “made by myself’ - like small scarlet skating rinks; Easter Sunday’s clear air suffused with the scent of roasting lamb, strolling together beyond the village between flowered verges to be with Mark and Sally and their friends invited - delightfully privileged - to partake of their particular spitted lamb – a New Zealand body and a Greek head who’d been to tea with her husband - delectable morsels of quail roasted on a grid, pitta bread with sausages mustard and tomato sauce with fireflies gathering in the warm dusk, and the midnight before – when my candle guttered out near the bandstand at the top of the village and I reached towards the crowd already there and a flame was offered “Yasoo Simon” said a quiet voice in the darkness - Katia Thannassis and Costas Aspergis a fortnight earlier; Lin raising her candle to mark our front door lintel; Mr Leftheris outside his house in the street after midnight handing us a bottle of wine from his garden vine, shaking our hands “Kronia Polla” and Lin having some gift eggs ready from England for his grandchildren; everywhere smiles, nods and "Χρόνια πολλά"s from strangers, neighbours and people we nearly know – we are half entranced full of dreams as our brains reorganise us for the novel contract we’ve made with one another and this village of Ano Korakiana which, through the fortunate drift of happenstance, seems to have found us. The other day Alan and Honey invited us to strawberries, tea, cream and perfect scones - made by a baker they'd found near Potamus. * * * I’m in the Med without tide and much windlessness. I need to know things about engines that never bothered me. Why was heat resistant paint smoking on one of the pipes through which water should be circulating? :”There’s your problem” said Dave in harbour. With my pocket screwdriver I removed a jubilee clip, slid off a piece of flexible pipe and removed the pipe joint unit. A wad of solidified salt had stopping water circulating round Summer Song’s 25 year old engine, while allowing it to emerge with the exhaust. Dave, impressed by my boldness in engine surgery, came with a proper spanner and removed the water circulating head. “Clear that salt; renew these cooling pipes; cut yourself some gaskets, and you’ll be fine.” I scissored out the shapes from 0.25m brown sealing paper from Kontokali chandlers - where I bought a meter of flexible pipe. The engine ran cooler than I’ve known with far more water gouting out of the exhaust, but then the batteries stopped charging. Without a working battery there’s no way to start the engine. Dave did some diagnosis with his circuit tester. “Could be the alternator; could be this relay (a scruffy little box suspended between wires); could be this regulator that’s been attached outside because the internal one broke.” I watched and tried to learn; took the alternator to the car electrician at Pirgi where a friendly son, Kostas, explained his Dad, Spiros, was the alternator man but spoke no English “…and I’m off to Athens, but leave it. I’ll call you”. An hour or so later I was called at Ano Korakiana where I was helping Lin with woodwork repair round the stairwell. “The old alternator seems OK. My dad’s replaced the old box. See what happens.” I drove down the leafy road to Pirgi, collected the repair and then to the harbour. Dave re-installed before my grateful eyes helped by the wiring sketch he’d made earlier. The jump-lead I’d bought gave us enough power from the domestic battery to start the engine. To my relief and delight Dave’s tester showed the batteries charging. After I’d run the engine 10 minutes and checked it’d restart from the smaller engine battery, I joined Dave at CJ’s for a drink. “Ben had a Greek grumble today.”said Dave. “ ‘Too many English yachts in the harbour. They should be in the marina!’” I have always wondered how long the free mooring could last. “It’s the season. People feeling crowded. There are eight English boats out there. We should be OK for the moment because we’ve got homes on the island.” * * * It’s May. A few white figures brave the chilly sea off Ipsos' pebbled beach; occasional cyclists and walkers are touring the back roads; amplified bass and mini-moke convoys are heard; contrails mark the sky as geese trail in from the north. This morning I woke from a nightmare of a conversation as the bewildered guest - in a fake castle - of powerful people of hideous character exchanging bland simplifications about governing others in order to realise their destiny. Especially galling was my own diplomatic fawning amid this company of the despicable. As we left – I was with someone else who was my crew, on the yacht - Summer Song of course - in which we’d journeyed to this landlocked place, a beautiful stone faced woman of indeterminate age, her face fixed into an arrogant rictus beneath an immaculate hairdo, remarked “You wear that silly hat and that easy smile, yet you rule the world”. [I realise - awake - I've dreamt of Corinna Harfouch as Magda Goebbels in the 2004 film 'Downfall' - 'Der Untergang'. Seeing images of a fine actress instead of the real person dispelled the aftertaste of my horrid dream. I'm friendly to the activation-synthesis theory, suggesting dreams are a mental filing process - nothing to do with Freud's sub-conscious wish-fulfillment and so no interpretation needed, though it's interesting to ponder the origin of these disjointed impressions being tidied into a story during slumber. It's pure coincidence this woman killed her children and was then shot by her husband on 1 May 1945. I was 3.] As my crew and I left in search of the castle car park – a car ride preceding our return to the yacht - we got lost. Attempting to shortcut across the battlements my companion disappeared. Moments later I heard his agonised cries for help. Then I woke. I read a newspaper round-up of ‘the news’ from the UK, trying to peer through the hedge of opinionated interpretation as editors and their journalists discard and connect dots to make a pattern – shaking out inconvenient imponderables, formatting daily meanings; ‘tales (with few exceptions) told by idiots’, prompting surrogate emotions and casual conversation about what’s happening. I’m drawn into chat about often poignant irrelevancies – events which if they happened in our street, our village or involved our family and friends would matter - would entail some action - but which distanced by time and place from us are no more significant than a good DVD which at least pretends to be no more than entertainment. I check the price of oil, food bills, exchange rates, demographies - trends that emerge like seasons, slower but no less dramatic. Socrates would be amused, far less pompous, about the news-makers having equipped his friends and pupils with precision tools for demolishing the certainties of people who think they know and restore a more proper perplexity about what we can know.

Easter Week in Corfu

Easter week's started and there’s municipal tidying of verges – roadmen laying tar on parts of Democracy Street, men on scooters bearing their strimmers like crusader’s swords across their backs, sweepers doing housework in the village. There’s whitewashing and deweeding of public walls; extra discardings beside the refuse bins; more people gathering in the village and children on school holiday playing most of the day under the watch of their grandparents. By the sea at Ipsos and Pirgi and on towards the town, families are doing preparatory housework on seasonal tavernas and bars. Few tourists yet, but those whose business they are, are getting things ready for the start of the working summer. Smoke from fires, forbidden after April 30, rises from bonfires of cut shrubbery and grass. There’s the urgent buzz of bees. “I bet they’re making good honey” says Lin. The same variegated and delightful aromas, attracting them to their work, waft by our enfeebled noses from verges and green meadows where olives and cypresses mingle and amid the rushes, reeds and grasses wildflowers, white, yellow and blue, proliferate and orange tips, brimstones and red admirals flutter by, settling so that, for a few seconds, my human eye with no other motive than the enjoyment of the exquisite can gaze on their delicacy. There’s news at last from D - he's made it with his family to Jordan. Now his problem revolves round paperwork.
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On Sunday we’d promised to take Aln and H out to Agni on ‘Summer Song’, me having spent the previous day sorting out sails and, especially, helping D, my Ipsos mentor, clear the foresail halyard and mast top pulley block. He lay on his back on the mole with binoculars peering up to make out what was going up there, returning with a new idea and a helpful aerosol spray that lubricated the groove up which the sail has to be hauled. All done by Saturday noon, but on Sunday with picnic and guests aboard we’d hardly motored a mile from the harbour on the almost windless sea when the engine stopped, smelly smoke swirling from an unknown pipe joint. We turned and ghosted goose winged (Aln acting as a spar) back to Ipsos where D was waiting alerted by mobile, ready with a line to throw as I sailed in. I drifted into our berth without engine - some consolation for our shortened trip. and we went by road to Agni where all the tavernas were still closed, getting ready. H took us by a grassy track, burgeoning greenery almost hiding trapped heaps of cans and plastic bottles beside the path, to the neighbouring beach where on smooth sandstone rocks lapped by clear water we sat and enjoyed our snacks – olives, wine, nuts and oranges. D texted me to say ‘Summer Song’s’ engine started fine from cold, that there was a problem he’d fix with the heat exchanger. Returning to our cars we drove to the north coast beyond Kassiopi to where the road turned south up Pantokrator and came to the site of Old Perithia. The village, remote for safety from invaders, became unsustainable long ago and a new village closer to the sea was created. Now four tavernas make a living from visitors to the gently collapsing houses, which are on sale to anyone prepared to restore them. In some new way in a cradle of gentle ravines below the ridges of Pantokrator the old village is being enlivened by successive temporary inhabitants. We selected one taverna and ordered mezes – horta, a small casserole, village sausage with lemon, roast feta, chips, - as well as cold drinks – lager, water, ginger beer. We lingered. “It’s a hard life!” said H. I felt pleasantly sleepy on the ride home.
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In the house we’ve started to install a banister. A long coach bolt through a floor beam will hold the newel post after we’ve cut a square in the floor boards so that it sits firmly on a sturdy base. An ironmongers by the old port found me the right drills and bolt. The turned wood we need was bought months ago but we needed the confidence to believe we could do the joinery ourselves. Since installing the new floorboards that’s happened.
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Last week Jill and Lin and me had supper at M & S’s home. A roast of chicken, teal, and quail – all boned one inside the other – along with small tasty unskinned baked potatoes mingled with garlic and a few hot peppers and wild asparagus mixed with fresh peas. We ate and talked and talked and ate. Homer had these breaks in narrative to describe, in tantalising detail, the preparation of similar meals and libations– either for delectation or as presents to deities. How these recitations must have watered people’s palates as over the centuries they were repeated to guests. How they, when not listening to the storyteller, must, like us, have gossiped and philosophised – in our case about the village, the island, about ourselves and our neighbours. “That was a very nice evening” said Jill as we strolled home along Democracy Street. Later I think she said “So why do humans fight?”