Με τη μαμά μου...

 Their leaves falling gently, in August these trees are alive with the sound of bees. 

This morning the sky is cloudless. From the log cabin where I'd slept cosily, I walked swiftly across the frosted gravel in nightie and slippers, carrying my clothes into the warmth of the bathroom at Brin Croft, got dressed and made a cup of tea.

Inverarnie is 2200 miles north west of Ano Korakiana

Yesterday it was cloudy and milder with rain and wind in the night. Anthony, my nephew, Bay's son, flew up from London to say goodbye to his grandmother. The house is quiet yet so connected - as my mother made it - to everything, so here we chat across the world by email, Skype and phone to family, grown-up, children and babes, to Lin in Birmingham and Gabe in New York, vexed the stock exchange is still closed.
Mum would not fully approve all this nurturing care, hand holding and gentle kissing, but she's only just with us now - a slight misting of my glasses. At moments I’ve wanted to raise my voice and shake her as from a stupor but she's a long way off. She may hear us somewhere on a liminal threshold as our voices hover on a bank, beside a wood in the evening or she may see Bay and me and our children and friends in the suspended time of dreams, We speak to her gently. Hold her hand. I've read her my latest letters from Greece and then England, written only a week ago, and other things I know she enjoys, no, loves - The Piper at the Gates of Dawn

...and once more they began to see surfaces— meadows wide-spread, and quiet gardens, and the river itself from bank to bank, all softly disclosed, all washed clean of mystery and terror, all radiant again as by day, but with a difference that was tremendous. Their old haunts greeted them again in other raiment, as if they had slipped away and put on this pure new apparel and come quietly back, smiling as they shyly waited to see if they would be recognised again under it....

What an antidote to Marlow's passage up-river in Heart of Darkness. 

"We'll get the boat out, and paddle up stream"

Instead of 'the horror, the horror', the exchange between Rat and Mole in their rowing boat on the river.

Rat!' he found breath to whisper, shaking. 'Are you afraid?'
'Afraid?' murmured the Rat, his eyes shining with unutterable love. 'Afraid! Of Him? O, never, never! And yet— and yet— O, Mole, I am afraid!' 

Anthony took a flight south early this morning. Last night, after supper, made by Liz, i drove him back to a hotel near the airport. Earlier we'd walked together, first south along the strath towards Birch Cottage past the esker, then down a slope over a gate and style to Farquar's path beside the Farnack, in the company of the terriers, dashing Lulu and blind Bibi happily trailing in our wake, until we could cross a wooden bridge and climb the sledging hill to Brin Croft in the dusk.

*** ***
As beloved Greece hangs by a thread - από μία κλωστή - I have a lot of time for this man, the prisoner Kostas Vaxevanis, Κώστα Βαξεβάνη.

Back to the future ~ 16/11/12: Acquitted magazine editor to face retrial...The publisher of the Hot Doc magazine, Costas Vaxevanis, is to face trial once again after the Athens Public Prosecutor’s office appealed a court decision earlier this month acquitting him of charges of violating privacy laws after publishing what the magazine claimed was the so-called Lagarde list, a list of some 2,000 Greeks with Swiss bank accounts....
***** *****

Theodora Barbara Burnett Stuart, on 1st November 2012, peacefully at home, Brin Croft, Inverarnie, formerly of Mains of Faillie, Daviot, beloved life of the late Angus, mhàthair mìorbhaileach* of Simon and Bay, step-mother of Fiona and Jennifer. A long life of adventure and fulfilment. Cremation private, thereafter a memorial service to celebrate her life will be held on Saturday 8 December at 2.30pm** in the funeral home of William T Fraser, Culduthel Road, Inverness. All friends respectfully invited and afterwards a warm invite to join the family for a reception at the Beaufort Hotel.

*Gaelic for something like 'mother wonderful/miraculous'
**In the flurry of planning I've changed date and time to suit as many as possible

Mum with her great grandson Oliver a few weeks ago

A Greek friend, Niko, sent me this, the third of the three epitaphio laments of Great Saturday, which we call Good Friday. Thank you Niko. I know it's not Easter yet I know the significance of these indescribably beautiful words...Αι γενεαί πάσαι (ω γλυκύ μου έαρ) my sweetest child, where has your beauty gone?...

Collecting the collection

John Rose, me, David and Jenny Knowles

I'm back in Birmingham with my step-father's films and tapes in the back of our transit van ready to be taken on to safe storage in the city centre. John, my neighbour in Handsworth, and I left for Plymouth at eight this morning. At Royal William Yard by the sea at Plymouth we met up with Jenny and David Knowles and immediately began trolleying the films and tapes of the Jack Hargreaves Collection from their long resting place on shelves in the South West Film and Television Archive (SWFTA) out of the building and into the transit van for the 200 mile journey home. David picked out boxes bearing his writing that he'd not seen for over twenty years - tapes from  Old Country, the series he did with Jack for Channel 4, successor to Out of Town. These he'll check over at his home in Hythe.

"The past is passing away in the English countryside at a rapidly accelerating speed. The change is amazing" said Jack towards the end of his life. The films he talks about in this clip were stored on shelves in the shed next to his home in Dorset. They are silent 16mm films, some going back to the early 1970s, all shot by his long-term cameraman, Stan Bréhaut. They were transferred from that shed at Raven Cottage after Jack's death in 1994 by his friend Nick Wright, who stored them in his own house for nearly a decade. When Nick moved home and no longer had room for the collection, he transferred the films to the archive at Plymouth. We collected them from there today - their cans somewhat rusty after so many years.

"This one's from 1974! "(photo: Dave Knowles)

*** ***
Friday 13th:  Richard Pine has just circulated his latest piece on Greece in the Irish Times - 'Greece undone by toxic blend of clientelism and corruption' - anticipating the Greek general election in early May, comparing the collusion of politicians and populace in the corruption of public life, in both Greece and Ireland - a reminder that "my friends, we all ate at the same table" "Τα φαγαμε ολοι Μαζί"

...In the build-up to the general election to be held in early May, the two major parties, Pasok and New Democracy, have fragmented, with eight or nine minor parties in the field, each of which (except the Communist Party) has a chance of featuring in what will almost certainly be a coalition government.
Defections from Pasok have led to the creation of Democratic Left and Social Pact, while New Democracy’s defectors have set up Democratic Alliance and Independent Greeks. Laos (the right-wing Popular Orthodox Rally) and Syriza (Radical Left Coalition) and the communists have largely been immune from this fragmentation. To these must be added National Unity League, founded last year by former army officers, and Golden Dawn, a group of self-professed anti-Semitic and xenophobic fascists.
Parallel to this has been the growth of illegal organisations, following the dispersal of 17 November, the terrorist group that dictated the rhythm of Greek political violence from 1975 until the arrest of its leaders in 2002. The successor was Revolutionary Struggle, which emerged in 2003, followed by the Sect of Revolutionaries (a splinter from the former) that assassinated a journalist in 2010.
Others are Urban Guerrilla War, Lambros Fountas Guerrilla Group, Revolutionary National Socialist Front and the Terrorist Guerrilla Group. By far the most active in recent times has been the Conspiracy of the Cells of Fire, which in 2010 sent a spate of letter bombs to foreign embassies and is suspected of the bomb that killed an aide to the law enforcement minister.
Leaving terrorism aside, Greece and Ireland have much in common. Fintan O’Toole’s assessment of the Mahon tribunal report (March 24th) rings horribly true to Greek ears. He portrays 'the great silence' of a complacent electorate* who allowed themselves to be fooled by politicians into 'passive collusion', while 'corruption affected every level' and 'undermined the rule of law'. Substitute Greek names for Irish, and you have the situation here: Greeks in general enjoy the same tolerance of bribery and clientelism.
Media commentators here continually refer to similar levels of corruption in public life, and the Greek people’s capacity to condone it....

*Fintan O’Toole: The really tough thing about the Mahon report is that it strongly implies that few of us were really that naïve. It suggests that the issue with corruption in Ireland is not innocence but wilful ignorance, not just wrongdoing but passive collusion. What happened was not belief in Bertie Ahern’s lies but something more subtle and more characteristic of Irish culture: a suspension of disbelief.
*** ***
Good Friday in Ano Korakiana...

...a rainy day of mourning; a re-enactment of the crucifixion across Greece. A picture of Christ is on the Epitaphio, its edges dressed with carnations. From the church, boys carry lowered standards, followed by villagers, the choir behind, along Democracy Street, everyone carrying candles. When the funeral procession is back in the church, people take carnations home.
...and a taste of what we're missing arriving late - The Liston in Corfu on Easter Saturday this time last year. Είναι όλοι τους εξαιρετικοί