So Brin Croft is up for sale

Brin Croft and Brin Rock beyond

On Monday 22 July my mum's house, which Lin and I are clearing next week, will be officially for sale. Once Brin Croft is gone I'll probably not go to the Highlands again.

The Farnack runs below Brin Croft

I've been visiting since 1950.

Christmas at Fasnakyle

What an evening! I was so delighted to find this record of the Christmas party held at Fasnakyle House by my aunt and uncle in about 1950. Victorian aristocracy including Queen Victoria embraced the Scottish landscape. Dr Johnson was more critical. But he and Boswell travelled to the Hebrides before Romanticism trained the lowland eye to delight in highland scenery and railways made them easy to visit from the cities of the south. It was depicted as a wild heather-strewn wilderness.
In fact it's an enormous park, stocked with ornamental fauna to shoot, paint or photograph; and now every track that doesn't pass under Forestry Commission plantations can be viewed from the air via Google maps. Does this make me love it less? I'm not an explorer here, more a traveller, even a life-long tourist, inheriting the safety of the land's long habitation by people who made roads and place markers for centuries before the Victorians, let alone me, coming first to the Highlands in 1949 on the sleeper from King's Cross to spend Easter with my aunt Margot at Fasnakyle, her home beyond Cannich, in Glen Affric, and later to celebrate a magical Christmas (in this photo I found at Am Baile, Bay and I are in the middle row, left and right of the tree - Bay just in front of Father Christmas). My aunt had hired a film projector and we all sat down to watch Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy. We and the rest of the children were laughing so loud and so continuously, one or two little ones had to disappear to be sick before rejoining the general hilarity. (It's so good to have help identifying the others in the picture and hoping they also remember all that laughing at slapstick custard pies and silly walks from so long ago). Then Father Christmas - the estate's head ghillie (I believe), I was told years later when I no longer entirely believed in Santa Claus, arrived - and presents were handed out to all after which my aunt organised us to have a group photo with many calls to settle down and look serious just for the camera. This is why we show little signs of the excitement and joy that suffused us. In fact I know I was fit to burst - needing one titter to set me off again. The human past is part of the area's character - kingdoms, invasions, depravity and civilisation, even where the rigour of the landscape suggests wilderness, anyone with a little thought can see there's more wilderness in the blighted estates of our population-diminished cities than in this sublimely landscaped garden for the enjoyment of those with time to spare, good raincoats and midge repellent.
It's true that in the depth of raw winter you're sensible, if stuck somewhere on a drifted road, to have a care to stay in your car and phone the rescue services www.ambaile.org.uk/en/item/item_photograph.jsp?item_id=3621 Quote from Am Baile: This is a Christmas party held at Fasnakyle House in the early 1950s for the children of employees on the Fasnakyle estate, Strathglass. The estate was owned at the time by Captain Clark. Four members of the Mitchell family have recently been identified in the photograph - Marcelle Mitchell and three of her daughters, Monique, Christine, and Lesley. Marcelle is the lady kneeling beside the little boy on the right hand side of the photograph. Monique is standing near the back, next to Father Christmas. Christine is in the second row. (She has a ribbon in her hair and her face is half hidden by the girl in front.) Lesley is the small blond girl in the front row, holding a present. The girls' father, Mr. William Mitchell B.E.M., was the General Foreman for Messrs John Cochrane & Sons, Ltd, the company who built the Hydro Electric dam in Glen Affric. A fourth sister, Lyn, was born in 1952. A letter received 19 Oct 09: “Also in this picture are Margaret and Kenneth MacLennan, family of John MacLennan, (Johnny to guests, Jock to natives), who was head stalker at Fasnakyle. He succeeded his father, also John, to this position in l941. Kenny is the little boy (2nd, front row, left, holding his present), he still lives nearby on estate with his wife and family. Margaret (1st back row, left) has married and moved away. Their mother Mary was caretaker for Fasnakyle Lodge. Beside Margaret is Lily Henderson whose sister Cathy is (2nd row right, kneeling, nearly out of picture). Their father, James Henderson, also a stalker, worked and lived on Fasnakyle Estate.
 On 31 Oct 2011 I received this very interesting letter: Dear Mr.Baddeley. I can identify two more people in the Christmas at Fasnakyle house photo. I loved the photo and was very touched to see the innocent faces that I shared a portion of my young life with. The little girl center right with the mask is Frances I think her mother is behind her to the right. I also knew Kenny Mclennan, the young boy to the left.We were all playmates at the time, living on the Fasnakyle estate. My parents were German immigrants who emigrated to Scotland in 1950 to work on the estate. I was allowed to join them in 1952 and experienced one of those wonderful Christmas' at the Fasnakyle house, one year later than the photo. My father was the chauffeur for Captain Clarke. The two men met during the British occupation in Northern Germany where my father acted as an interpreter for the British officers. The two men must have hit it off. A small reason may have been that they had something in common. My name was also Margot. My mother was the cook at the house. Frances and I went to school together in Cannich, she was a close friend and I have a school picture of her. What wonderful years they were. I think about them often...My life in the Fasnakyle House was a major event in my life and I am planning to take a trip there next year. I have not been back since 1955. Best wishes, Margot Luedke (Ludke)

Walking in Strathnairn

Last page of the estate agent's brochure

**** ****
Amy came round with Oliver on her way to work. We're babysitting while she's on duty.
"It'll be the hottest day of the year so far"
"Maybe we'll go to the park"

Linda, Oliver and Amy in the garden at Handsworth

I've just finished clearing yet more ivy intertwined with a climbing rose and honeysuckle and replaced the collapsed and rotting frame that supported this exuberant mingling of shrubs, using a few plastic ties to guide the disentangled branches.

In-tray

Jocund bocage ~ there goes the bus from Inverness to Whitebridge

Fetched mum's paper from the shop at Inverarnie and a litre of semi-skimmed; bought a John Grisham paperback - perhaps to read on the way home; put rubbish in the bins; recycled cans and bottles. I'm leaving Scotland soon; taking the train back to Birmingham. We'll be in Ano Korakiana in under a fortnight, with lots to do in the days between.
Aftab Rahman, who takes the social web for granted, circulates a short slideshow on Facebook, recording our Cultivation to Consumption event - two happy rainy hours on the Victoria Jubilee Allotments in mid-July and the next one to be planned. He adds images from our reckie, the other day, for a Lozells and East Handsworth Heritage trail that includes Soho House, St Mary's Church, The Victoria Jubilee Allotments, St Mary's Convent, the nine restored Georgian terraces in Hamstead Road, the gatehouse of the Watt Estate, The Old Toll House at the junction of Hamstead and Villa Road and Handsworth Park. We repeat the walk for further planning on Thursday afternoon, fine-tuning the route:

Hello Simon Thank you for responding.  I forgot to attach the timetable for next week 15th Wed.  See below and thank you for bringing this to my attention.
3:15 Soho House
4:00 Asian Resource Centre - The Old Toll House
4:30 St Mary's Convent - Hunters Road
5:00 Hamstead Road - row of 9 houses built 1836;  9 interlocking amazing gardens
5:30 James Watt Gate House - West Drive
5:40 Victoria Jubilee Allotments off Hamstead Road
6:00 St Marys Church - to be confirmed6:30 Handsworth Park and bandstand
7:00 Thornhill Police Station
7:10 Rhodes Alms House - Soho Road
7:20 Handsworth College - Soho Road - to be confirmed.
The above is approximate timings and may run over.  Johur has agreed to come and join me at 315pm and Jesse will come and join us at 4:30 pm at St Marys Convent.  My mobile number is 07861 310802, please call if you need to find out where we are. Kind regards. Aftab

**** ****
After circulating sketches based on photos plus two sittings Jan Bowman has completed a portrait of Richard which we all like. She's mailing the final portrait to Mum in a few days.
"He's been difficult to draw. He's quite handsome. I've been looking for flaws to get the likeness."

Sketch for Richard's portrait by Jan Bowman - with Flea

It was my idea to commission Jan after she sketched me as a quid pro quo for finding her a replacement bicycle after hers was stolen in London.

Miriam Chapman, who's Dad has a plot on our site, has emailed the Victoria Allotments Association about the bees Gill Rose has placed on my plot:

Dear Lorraine Luie (Hon Sec VJA Association) I am writing on behalf of Friends of the Earth Birmingham. Friends of the Earth have recently launched The Bee Cause campaign to help halt the decline of British bees. One of the ways we are doing this is encouraging people in local communities to grow bee friendly plants. I would love to explore the possibility of organising a 'Bee Breakfast' on the Victoria Jubilee Allotments. It would hopefully be a Saturday morning in September/October (possibly Saturday 29th September?). The event would be for all allotment holders and other keen nature conservationist in the area. We would also hope to invite our local MP Khalid Mahmood. For more information on The Bee Cause. I look forward to hearing from you, Miriam Chapman. FoE Volunteer chapman.miriam@gmail.com

Beehive on Plot 14

Dear Miriam. Brilliant! Let’s make it happen. Can I check with Gill the owner of the bees looking after them on our plot that she is happy with this? She (and we) had quite a bureaucratic gauntlet to run to get her bees accepted after a rejection a year earlier on the basis of one complaint by a plotholder’s wife about the risk of Anaphylactic shock to her husband. The allotment officer for the VJA ruled against the beehive, and for their security our friend Gill removed them to a city apiary in Handsworth Wood.
Since then we’ve been working hard to have another colony on the VJA. A new hive was finally approved only a fortnight ago. Wonderful.  I understand only too well how ignorance among the general public - even some plot holders - has made the council risk-averse re bees despite the enthusiasm for their wider introduction in the allotments section of the Council.
We have won the support of the site association, the approval of all adjacent plot holders, and have, as advised by a city recommended expert, erected an 8’ high screening around the hive. This has been officially inspected and the presence of the bees - European Honey Apis mellifera - will be reviewed this Sept/Oct to ensure there have been no ‘incidents’ or complaints - all of which are to be recorded by the site association.  It’s a delicate matter and we are all (including the council officers) cautious about the terms on which we give our wonderful cherished bees more publicity. I applaud the idea of a Bee Breakfast to learn more about growing bee-friendly plants. I’m subject to Anaphylaxis myself but regard that as my problem not the bees', and always carry remedial kit with me (not just on the allotments).
We should be pushing the Bee Cause Campaign and supporting events. It encourages others to get training as apiarists, and helps reduce prevalent eco-illiteracy in a city that is not especially bold on green issues (I speak as an urban cyclist and campaigner for urban green space). Birmingham despite bursts of rhetorical greenwash is far too timid on the environmental crisis. It could take such a lead but there are still echoes of Brum as the motor city of the UK. Nostalgia for our mighty smokestack industrial heritage runs through the city’s popular culture (:)). We so need to see the new wealth that be created by smart growth - which includes bees bees bees and more bees.
By the way I’m out of the UK in October. Of course I don’t have to be involved but I’d like to be, as I was in the recent Cultivation to Consumption event run by Aftab Rahman on the VJA in July. He hopes to run another of these in September on the VJA. Aftab knows about the bees return to the VJA and suggested that if possible we might add honey to the allotment fruits prepared for consumption at a future event. Great idea. (I’ve copied this reply to him)
I’m all for inviting our local MP but don’t miss out on an invite to Cllr Waseem Zaffar who attended the Cultivation to Consumption event and is lobbying for delivery of the playing fields next to the allotments that were part of the S106A that saved so many of the plots on the site. Waseem has just been awarded a well deserved MBE for services to the voluntary sector in the city. He’s even been known to hug trees! Best wishes, Simon

**** ****

I can't always work out, in the heat of these unlikely days of sun when clambering a slope, what are insects rising from the warm grass and what are floaters inside the liquid of my eyes. I saw at last a tortoise shell butterfly basking on the dried mud of a path as I walked with the dogs and Amy's best friend, Liz, whose come to stay at Brin Croft for a while. She and I strolled along the Farnack yesterday. The terriers romped, swimming, sniffing, tasting the Highland air...

Liz on the Farnack

..."There are two rivers that would run through my paradise. This and the Itchen" - a river far away in Hampshire...where, as a four year old, I looked over a low bridge at the brown trout inches from my nose. The Itchen rises from a chalk spring like most southern rivers, remaining more or less level through the year, unlike its burn-fed counterpart that rises and falls with the rain.

The dark grip of winter is unimaginable in the present landscape. Liz snapped me sipping the cool peaty water of the burn. She mentioned Gideon's way of choosing his three hundred to fight the Midianites, as she remembered it from school.

Judges 7:5-7 So he brought down the people unto the water: and the Lord said unto Gideon, Every one that lappeth of the water with his tongue, as a dog lappeth, him shalt thou set by himself; likewise every one that boweth down upon his knees to drink. And the number of them that lapped, putting their hand to their mouth, were three hundred men: but all the rest of the people bowed down upon their knees to drink water. And the Lord said unto Gideon, By the three hundred men that lapped will I save you, and deliver the Midianites into thine hand: and let all the other people go every man unto his place.

I don't believe the imposed interpretations of some scripturalists that one category of drinker made a better warrior. Gideon simply needed 300 short straws.
*** ***

The chickens have started laying in their new home. I found the first lay in one of the egg boxes yesterday morning and brought the warm egg to my mother who wrote the date on it. I haven't done that for so long.

The first egg

She also extracted a Tick - Ixodes ricinus - from dog Oscar, who'd picked it up among long grass and bracken. They're not easy to remove. This little mini-beast digs head and thorax deep into the flesh of its host usually around leg pits or muzzles and must be teased out wriggling like billy-o by holding tight to the little bag of blood that's all you can see attached to the dog, taking care not to break the insect in half leaving one half to die still embedded with a risk its corpse will cause its point of entry to go septic.

*** *** ***
In Ano Korakiana, at the weekend, the Philharmonia played at the top of the village before a packed audience - braving a high wind...

The concert was led by conductor Kosta Zervopoulos, who devoted his first official performance in the village to the memory of his father. It was a joyful challenging event rewarding the crowd who came to watch as toward the finale the entire band rose - literally - to the rhythms of the samba. The breeze blowing throughout the event, sometimes gusting, created several small problems for the musicians, with printed musical parts thrown from their stands*. Guests of honour included a new member of Corfu's SYRIZA Sameelis Stephen, former Mayor of Corfu, John Kourkoulos, director of music education and one of the founders of the Association, Mr. Papadopoulos, the curator of Byzantine Antiquities, Ms. Rigaki, the sociologist, Nikos Fakiolas etc. At the end, the President of the Association Spyros Savvani, reminded everyone of the next event - the public appearance of the Association's Dance Division next Wednesday.

Με «άλλον αέρα» κυριολεκτικά και μεταφορικά η μπάντα της Φιλαρμονικής πραγματοποίησε την αποψινή της εμφάνιση. Με επικεφαλής αρχιμουσικό τον Κώστα Ζερβόπουλο, ο οποίος συγκινημένος αφιέρωσε την «επίσημη πρώτη του» στο χωριό, στη μνήμη του πατέρα του. Το πρόγραμμα ήταν ευχάριστο και κατά περίπτωση απαιτητικό και αποζημίωσε τον πολύ κόσμο που προσήλθε να το παρακολουθήσει. Στο τέλος δε της εκδήλωσης, ολόκληρη η μπάντα «ξεσηκώθηκε» στην κυριολεξία, στους ρυθμούς της σάμπα… Ο αέρας όμως που έπνεε καθόλη τη διάρκεια της εκδήλωσης, εκτός από φρεσκαμέντο, δημιούργησε αρκετά μικρά προβλήματα στους μουσικούς, αφού σε αρκετές περιπτώσεις τα τυπωμένα μουσικά μέρη «πετούσαν» από τα αναλόγια.
Το παρόν στην εκδήλωση έδωσαν ο νέος βουλευτής Κέρκυρας με τον ΣΥΡΙΖΑ Στέφανος Σαμοϊλης, ο πρώην Δήμαρχος Κερκυραίων και εκ των ιδρυτών του Συλλόγου Γιάννης Κούρκουλος, ο σύμβουλος μουσικής εκπαίδευσης κ. Παπαδόπουλος, η έφορος Βυζαντινών Αρχαιοτήτων κα Ρηγάκου, ο κοινωνιολόγος Νίκος Φακιολάς κ.ά. Στο τέλος, ο Πρόεδρος του Συλλόγου Σπύρος Σαββανής, ανανέωσε το ραντεβού με το κοινό για την ερχόμενη Τετάρτη, με την παράσταση του Χορευτικού τμήματος.

*Weather in Corfu.

...and people from Korakiana and neighbouring villages have been over to Skripero on Monday evening to enjoy the annual frog feast - Καρλακοπόδαρα - enjoying the songs of George Mavromatis while queueing for the deep fried delicacies.

13 Αυγούστου το βράδυ και στον περίβολο του Σχολικού Μουσείου στο γειτονικό μας Σκριπερό διοργανώνεται και φέτος η «γιορτή του κάρλακα», παραδοσιακού σκριπεριάτικου και όχι μόνον, εδέσματος. Η κοσμοσυρροή από τη γύρω περιοχή κατέδειξε την επιτυχία του εγχειρήματος και την πρωτότυπης ιδέας. Η ουρά για τον περιβόητο μεζέ, περνούσε με πολύ αργούς ρυθμούς, φαντάζοντας ατέλειωτη, σε συγχρονισμό με τις γυναίκες που αλεύρωναν και τηγάνιζαν ασταμάτητα. Δεν ήταν λίγοι και οι Κορακιανίτες που πέρασαν για να τιμήσουν το έθιμο και να απολαύσουν τα τραγούδια του Γιώργου Μαυρομάτη και της συνοδείας του. Λίγα μέτρα μπροστά μας, ο οδοντογιατρός Κώστας Απέργης, ανέμενε υπομονετικά στη σειρά του για ένα «καρλακοπόδαρο» και παραδίπλα, νέοι χωριανοί μας, απολάμβαναν επίσης την ωραία ατμόσφαιρα…. Για μια ακόμη φορά, συγχαρητήρια στους διοργανωτές της εκδήλωσης.

ΑΣΩΤΟΣ Β΄

Δημήτρης Τσαλουμάς

Jim Potts on Corfu Blues has drawn attention to a poem by his friend, Dimitris Tsaloumas,  the Greek-Autralian poet from Leros, living in Melbourne - a poem he wrote -  Prodigal II for a collection The Observatory published in 1983, also published in the annual literary magazine of the Greek-Australian Cultural League Antipodes (56), 2010 - see two poems, including this, on p.133:

ΑΣΩΤΟΣ Β΄
Χρειάζεται νοικοκυριό και μάτια τέσσερα.
Σου το ’πα κι άλλοτε. Περνάμε
απάνθρωπους καιρούς, ακόμα και οι τράπεζες
θα ζοριστούν, κι έχει πολλούς
που ψάχνουν κιόλας στα παλιά τους τεφτέρια.
Δεν είναι ώρα για δάνεια.
Βολέψου όπως μπορείς. Στα περιθώρια
της αγρυπνίας και του ύπνου τα σύνορα
περιφέρονται ύποπτα σχήματα και σκιές,
κι αν βάνεις τ’ αφτί σου κι αφουγκραστείς
στης νύχτας τις ρωγμές θ’ ακούσεις ψιθύρους
θανάσιμους. Άκου που σου μιλώ.
Πάρ’ τα παιδιά σου και πήγαινε στην εξοχή.
Περάσανε τα χρόνια της σπατάλης. 

PRODIGAL II
It's time for parsimony and circumspection.
I told you before. We're going through
inhuman times. Even the banks will feel the pinch
and already many merchants scour
their dusty books for long forgotten debts.
This is no time for borrowing.
Manage as best you can. On the margins
of insomnia and the boundaries of sleep
lurk dubious shapes and shadows, and if you cup
your ears and eavesdrop
at the door cracks of night, you'll hear deadly
whisperings. Mark my words.
Take your children and head for the bush.
The years of squandering are over.

*** ***
Eleftherotypia, Ελευθεροτυπία, was the first new newspaper to appear in Greece after the fall of the Colonels’ regime on July 21 1975. It closed down yesterday after failing to secure funding from banks amid an ongoing dispute with staff owed several months’ wages. Alter TV has also been granted bankruptcy protection under Article 99, reportedly €400 million in debt. Their employees have also not been paid wages for several months. Journalists from other media have collected donations to help unpaid staff at Eleftherotypia and Alter.
**** ****
The weather in the Highlands. Unseasonably mild and in great contrast to the last two years. I walked again for several hours from my mother's house along the lane from Inverarnie. With the two terriers Oscar and Lulu, I strolled south along the edge of Strathnairn through fields that border the river Farnack, running full from yesterday's rain; not in spate.


Level with Farr I turned onto a forest path that continues just a few yards from the river. After a mile and half I turned north on a rough zigzag track up the side of the valley until I came to the higher of the two gravel forest paths wide enough for heavy logging vehicles.

I joined the broad forestry road above Strathnairn

With a strong mild wind at my back I walked swiftly north for three miles gaining extra purchase holding out my arms, pausing to take a photo over toward Easter Ross as I saw the red lights of the Rosemarkie transmitter mast on the Black Isle, the northern shores of the firth trailing north-east along the narrow horizon towards Cromarty and Balintore. I was enveloped in the din of the wind;  now and then the haa of clear rushing water.

A crescent moon shone through watery clouds and as dusk came the underbelly of the northern sky reflected the polluting light of the town. We came to Wester Lairgs farm;  turned west and gently downhill. At the gate on my left to the lower forest track I turned south again, until I came to the esker by Inverarnie where I climbed the low gate to walk over the esker on a rough green path home. I towelled the dogs before treating myself to a cup of tea.

A burn to feed the Farnack

*** ***
"I've no time for New Year's Eve" said my mother
"Nor I"
Friends Christine and James had come round, bringing a sweet scented hyacinth, to share champagne and snacks before going to a New Year Party. There were fireworks and a bonfire on Farquar's field at the end of the lane. Mum and I discussed the future of books - especially a piece she'd read by Jason Epstein last year in the NYRB. I'd said was seeing more and more ebooks being read on screens but that I didn't especially want one myself - for all my enjoyment of new gadgets.

Dirty Book Tom Benedek 2011 in a piece by Ben Ehrenreich in the LARB

We enjoyed watching Fiddler on the Roof (and wondered at how the world has changed since Solomon Rabinovich was writing of Tevye the Milkman...I had hitched a ride with a group of Israeli human rights workers on a tour of the Jordan Valley, riding through lush settler-owned groves of oranges and bananas until the driver stopped on a dirt road and we all got out and climbed the hill to get a glimpse of the river) on the tele' and just over midnight I got a three-way Skype with Liz and Matt in Edinburgh, Lin and Jill and Amy and Guy together in Birmingham.
"Happy New Year, darling. Love you, Happy New Year, grandma. Happy New Year."
"Happy New Year Oliver!" cried mum to the baby, her great grandson, still inside until March.
I also sent exchanged greetings with our neighbours in Ano Korakiana via Dimitra and her dad, Fotis, on Facebook ...Κρόνια Πολλά! Σάïμον και Λίντα Χ.
*** ***
Thanks to Public Issue I was reminded that Transparency International published, on 1 December 2011, its annual rankings of perceptions of corruption in different countries. In the PDF chart that can be viewed via my link, Greece is tied 80th among 182 countries - worse than Rumania, better than Bulgaria. The UK comes 16th, Germany 14th. New Zealand remains top of the list, regarded the least corrupt nation in the world. The consequences of this corruption in the upper echelons of the Republic has been a gaping portal for debt-pushing credit candymen to infiltrate the whole Hellenic economy.

Having seen how well interest-rate swaps worked for Jefferson County, Alabama, Chase 'helped' countries like Greece and Italy mask their debt problems for years by selling a similar series of swaps to those governments. The bank then turned around and worked with banks like Goldman, Sachs (who were also major purveyors of those swap deals) to create a thing called the iTraxx SovX Western Europe index, which allowed investors to bet against Greek debt. In other words, banks like Chase and Goldman knowingly larded up the nation of Greece with a crippling future debt burden, then turned around and helped the world bet against Greek debt.

Στην Αθήνα, οι άστεγοι έχουν γεύμα Ημέρα της Πρωτοχρονιάς.

...that Europe remain unified. I thought of the Song for the unification of Europe - sung in Greek [the words in Greek and English] by Zbigniew Preisner for Three Colours - Blue by the late film-maker, Krzysztof Kieślowski. 
Ean tais glosais toon antropoon lalo, If with the tongues of men I speak, kai toon angeloon, and of angels, agapen de me echo, love I do not have, gegona chalcos echoon e kumbalon alaladzon. I have become a gong resounding or cymbal clanging. Kai ean echo profeteian, And if I have the gift of prophecy, kai eido ta mystery panta, and know mysteries all, pistin ore metistanai, faith mountains move, agapen de me echo, outen eimi, outen eimi, outer emie Love I do not have, nothing I am, nothing I am, nothing I am. He agape makrotumai, chresteuetai Love is generous, virtuous, he agape ou dzelloi, erpereuetai, ou fysioutai. love does not envy, boast, not proud is. Panta stegei, panta pisteuei, panta elpizei, panta upomenei. All she protects, all she trusts, all she hopes, all she perseveres. He agape oudepotte piptei, Love never she fails. eite de profeteiai, katargetezontai, be it prophecies, they will cease, eite glosai, pausontai, be it tongues, they will be stilled, eite gnossis katargetesetai be it knowledge it will cease. Nuni de menei, pistes, elpis, agape, ta tria tauta, So remain, faith, hope and love, these three, meidzoon de toutoon, he agape, but the greatest of these is love. (Instead of this phonetic transcript I'll try to write these beautiful words in Greek.)

Εάν ταις γλώσσαις των ανθρώπων λαλώ και των αγγέλων, αγάπην δε μη έχω,
γέγονα χαλκός ηχών ή κύμβαλον αλαλάζον. και εάν έχω προφητείαν και ειδώ τα μυστήρια πάντα
και πάσαν την γνώσιν, και εάν έχω πάσαν την πίστιν, ώστε όρη μεθιστάνειν, αγάπην δε μη έχω, ουδέν ειμι.
και εάν ψωμίσω πάντα τα υπάρχοντά μου, και εάν παραδώ το σώμα μου ίνα καυθήσομαι,
αγάπην δε μη έχω, ουδέν ωφελούμαι.
Η αγάπη μακροθυμεί, χρηστεύεται, η αγάπη ου ζηλοί, η αγάπη ου περπερεύεται, ου φυσιούται, ουκ ασχημονεί,
ου ζητεί τα εαυτής, ου παροξύνεται, ου λογίζεται το κακόν, ου χαίρει επί τη αδικία, συγχαίρει δε τη αληθεία.
πάντα στέγει, πάντα πιστεύει, πάντα ελπίζει, πάντα υπομένει. η αγάπη ουδέποτε εκπίπτει.
είτε δε προφητείαι, καταργηθήσονται. είτε γλώσσαι παύσονται. είτε γνώσις καταργηθήσεται.
εκ μέρους δε γινώσκομεν και εκ μέρους προφητεύομεν. όταν δε έλθη το τέλειον, τότε το εκ μέρους καταργηθήσεται.
ότε ήμην νήπιος, ως νήπιος ελάλουν, ως νήπιος εφρόνουν, ως νήπιος ελογιζόμην.
ότε δε γέγονα ανήρ, κατήργηκα τα του νηπίου. βλέπομεν γαρ άρτι δι΄εσόπτρου εν αινίγματι, τότε δε πρόσωπον προς πρόσωπον. άρτι γινώσκω εκ μέρους, τότε δε επιγνώσομαι καθώς και επεγνώσθην.
νυνί δε μένει πίστις, ελπίς, αγάπη, τα τρία ταύτα.
μείζων δε τούτων η αγάπη.
(Thank you my Greek friends for helping me here - Ευχαριστούμε τους Έλληνες φίλους μου για τη βοήθειά μου εδώ)

**** ****

Καλή Χρονιά σε όλους! Happy New Year to one and all!

Παραμονή Πρωτοχρονιάς και οι παρέες των παιδιών ξεχύθηκαν στις γειτονιές του χωριού για τα πρωτο-χρονιάτικα κάλαντα. Το βράδυ, για άλλη μια χρονιά, ο Άγιος Βασίλης συνοδευόμενος από κουστωδία εγχόρδων επισκέφτηκε τα σπίτια μικρών παιδιών του χωριού, προσφέροντας συμβολικά δώρα και τραγουδώντας  τα «αγιο-βασιλιάτικα». Τα αισθήματα των μικρών ήταν ποικίλα, από την σχετική οικειότητα των μεγαλυτέρων, έως την εκστατικότητα, την απορία ή την επιφυλακτικότητα, που καθρεφτιζόταν στα βλέμματα των μικρότερων… Και αυτή τη φορά, η αγιο-βασιλιάτικη κουστωδία μετά τη γύρα της στο χωριό και τα περίχωρα, κατέληξε εις την οικίαν Αθανασίου Μαρτζούκου στις Μουργάδες*, όπου την ανέμεναν καλό κρασί και μεζέδες…Καλή Χρονιά σε όλους!

New Year's Eve and groups of children (Lin and I recognise those in the photo, two being neighbour's) hurry around the neighbourhoods of the village for new year carols. In the evening, for another year, Santa Claus, accompanied by a string troupe visited the homes of young children of the village, offering symbolic gifts, singing 'Agiovasiliatika.' (I can't translate that better - 'St Basil's' doesn't really get it).  Reactions varied - relative familiarity among older children; shy, wondering, enraptured reactions reflected in the faces of the smallest...And this time, Saint Basil's parade, after touring the village and its surrounding, came to Athanasiou Martzoukou's home in Mougathes where, as expected, good wine and mezethes awaited them...Happy New Year to everyone!

*Μουργάδες comes from μούργα, referring to the familiar smell of the pomace pressed out from olives in that neighbourhood of the village.

"Let's make a cup of tea"

I took my mother down to the new wheelchair route from the playground at Farr that Farquar Forbes told me he'd made to add to his landscaping routes along the Farnack. It's just completed but the path needs hardening up else wheelchair wheels, built for malls and sidewalks, tend to dig in.

A swathe of rain works its way across the Highlands, filling the river again, so high above the boulders the Farnack ceases its chattering ripple, just a constant 'haa', running fast and smooth. The light's flat. Everything drips. In the wood black slugs gouge holes in sodden ceps.
"I'll stay in the car" said Mum "you walk the dogs"
I take in a circuit of School Wood past the wooden bench she gave to commemorate Angus, her husband for forty years who died six years ago, an infantry officer at Dunkirk, a rescue boat sunk under him, in the water for "quite a few hours." Shot in the leg before being rescued again. "The salt kept it from getting gangrene".

In memory of Angus who loved this wood

 Lin's terse on the phone still angry with me for suggesting causes for the events of recent days, thinking I'm inventing excuses; my attempts at explanations, she holds, are attempts to justify the unjustifiable. "No excuses" she says. Meanwhile I'm vexed by friends on the left who sometimes seem to celebrate raggedy rioting and by my son-in-law, in the motor trade, who seems untroubled by the reverse rumble of local vengeance. He's seen a lot of cars in flames. Amy keeps her counsel. Mum - who knew war - says, when asked, "Who am I to say? I think this was always going to happen."

I look for signs of my England - decency, civility, generosity of the kind I've long known in my street and on the allotments and across Handsworth and Birmingham. I was moved by this fearless angry Hackney dame, Pauline Pearce, calling on the raggedy to 'get real', cursing not rebels but failed shoppers, crying out not to people dispossessed of rights, but to grown-up children of capitalism excluded from the market. She swears in the urban wilderness at raggedy proles seduced by consumerism "Get a library card"

To my delight I come across Birmingham recycled - Local Councillors and MPs joined over a hundred people gathered in Birmingham City Centre to aid the city council in the clean up of the city centre following riots and unrest by youths and more clean-ups across the country, and I like Stay in and drink tea,  humour in words and images

*** ***
Chris with the plot next to ours emailed thanking me for the letter to Waseem about the playing fields:

Well done Simon. It is amazing to me how few staff keep the park together so proudly for the community. I am sure very little money could also find staff salary and capital outlay for schools and improved sports facilities. I was away till yesterday but cycling down Grove Lane was surprised at what evidence of cars smashed up and two places in tarmac where cars had been burnt. Local residents must have cleaned up quickly in solidarity no one has yet parked cars down all of Grove Lane at present (small businesses down that road still boarded up but trading today.  The riots must have been horrific but all quiet know and police from Staffordshire controlling Soho Road tonight. Speak soon. Chris. PS Picked some of your broccoli before it goes to seed 

**** ****
The survey of Saint Athanasios Church - Ο Ιερός Ναός Αγίου Αθανασίου - at the foot of the village reports €40,000 before VAT and tax - χωρίς ΦΠΑ και φόρο - needed to carry out the restoration and preservation of a hundred square metres of murals on its southern and northern interiors. The church council - Εκκλησιαστικό Συμβούλιο - which includes our neighbour Eleftherios Jonas, Ελευθέριος Ιωνάς, are appealing to all Korakianas, Κορακιανίτες, for donations - 'the times are difficult but the objective is not unachievable'. Work should start as soon as possible. This is important work in itself, as also for Ano Korakiana.

Με την παραπάνω επιστολή συνοδευόμενη από φωτογραφικό υλικό και περιγραφή των απαιτούμενων εργασιών συντήρησης, που καλύπτουν επιφάνεια 100 μ2, το Εκκλησιαστικό Συμβούλιο απευθύνεται σε Κορακιανίτες και μη, αναζητώντας δωρητές, προκειμένου να καλυφθεί το κόστος συντήρησης που υπολογίζεται σε €40.000 (χωρίς ΦΠΑ και φόρο). Στόχος είναι να συγκεντρωθεί σε σύντομο διάστημα ένα ικανό ποσό ώστε να ξεκινήσουν το συντομότερο δυνατόν οι εργασίες. Παρότι οι καιροί είναι δύσκολοι, ο στόχος δεν είναι ακατόρθωτος, με την προϋπόθεση της μαζικής ευαισθητοποίησης, η οποία περιορίζει την κατά «οικογένεια» επιβάρυνση. Εξάλλου πρόκειται για ένα σημαντικής αξίας έργο για το χωριό μας και όχι μόνο.

An opportunity to make a donation in support of the village band of Ano Korakiana:

Farnack in spate

Amy and Oscar

It started to pour as we strolled beside Loch Ness last night and continued through the night and most of the day. It was still raining late on Sunday night. Below the house the waters of the Farnack go rushing by flattening the grassy banks. We strolled along the river this afternoon - Amy, Guy, me and the four dogs.
I phoned Lin around midnight to discuss the Care Project, the weather and the disorder in several London boroughs that began in Tottenham, and smoulders on, spreading north of the Thames, the social web dispensing highly local and individualised accounts on the violent confusion in Brixton, Chingford, Enfield, Waltham Forest, Walthamstow, Islington and in the West End at Oxford Circus. News spreads of despondency in financial markets across the world, especially the 'crisis in the Eurozone'. Accounts of rebellion in Syria, economic protests in Israel, deaths in Afghanistan, US credit down-rating and the aftermath of a fatal polar bear attack compete in the headline stakes with the London disorder, and news of the mass killings in Utøya are now in the hands of the the writers of features and - no-doubt - books, becoming a story about a story, even for some of those most directly involved struggling in grievous pain to make a sense of what happened. As for the riots in London, for me, it's the economy stupid. And by Monday evening we get news of troubles in Croydon, far outside London, and then central Birmingham, then at Perry Barr One Stop Shopping Centre and now Wolverhampton city centre.

The Farnack

*** ***
In Ano Korakiana, tonight, at 8.00pm - τη Δευτέρα 8 Αυγούστου και ώρα 8:00 μ.μ. - the local Council has convened an open meeting, to which all residents are invited. To be held in the main room of the Rural Co-Op. The purpose is to hear and discuss how things stand on the wind turbines due to be erected on Trompetta, the mountain range above the village that leads eastward to mount Pantokrator.
Το Τοπικό Συμβούλιο Άνω Κορακιάνας καλεί τους Φορείς του χωριού (Συνεταιρισμό, Συλλόγους, Συμβούλια, Επιτροπές) σε συνάντηση – συζήτηση με θέμα τις «Εξελίξεις στο θέμα του πάρκου ανεμογεννητριών Παντοκράτορα», που επηρεάζει και ενδιαφέρει άμεσα την περιοχή μας.  Η συνάντηση θα πραγματοποιηθεί στην αίθουσα του Αγροτικού Συνεταιρισμού ...
** **
Paul McGovern as well as sending news of our friend Lionel's illness, treatment and return home (see pp 6-7 in the August Agiot Newsletter), reminds me of this year's Agiotfest Music Festival at Agios Ioannis on 27 August 2011 at 1800.
In October we will see my friend, Anthony Scoville, met many years ago when I was briefly a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania - my first paying job. He asked about ferries and other things - planning with his wife to drive to Corfu from Athens stopping on the way to see places:

Dear Tony...I hope you like Durrell on Corfu as much as I... ‘Somewhere between Calabria and Corfu the blue really begins’. Wedded to Lawrence’s writing it was only much later I came to appreciate the work of his brother, Gerald, whose early life in Corfu fermented a life’s commitment to rescue vanishing species for return to such wilds as we feckless humans allowed. His widow – Lee Durrell – has been an influential continuer of Gerald Durrell’s pioneering environmentalism, not just rescuing animals but through education developing a grasp of the living webs we so carelessly destroy, as much (to my embarrassment and chagrin as a beneficiary of most of the luxuries available to citizens of the richer countries) in quotidian activity (flying, motoring, consuming, building) as in the more obvious depredations of illegal logging, industrial fishing, and the mining of fossil fuels.
It’s sweet of you to think of supplies sought on the way up from Delphi, but just bring yourselves and I hope fine experiences of the places you see on the way. Sa vyees ston beegamo ya tin Ithikee, na efkessai nana makreis o dromos, yematos peripeties, yematos gnosees. (first 3 lines of Ithaca) ‘When you set out on your journey to Ithaca, pray that the road is long, full of adventure, full of knowledge....’
I visited Delphi on a mini-bus tour in 1957. My dad sent me off at 16 to be a tourist. “You can always return to these places but first of all see some.” After our enthusiastic and knowledgeable young guide had shown us the museum and its treasures, my travel companions dispersed to their own enjoyments and I stumbled my way down between olives in the quiet of the evening to the valley below surrounded by the tinkling of goat bells interrupting such silence as made my ears ring. I was dusty and scratched when I returned, happy at having so much space to myself.
Here’s an interesting piece by our friend Richard Pine. A clue. To a visitor, steeped in the Classics, enamoured of them even, more of ancient in Greece may come alive observing and experiencing its present, as much as its revered antiquities. The old heroes could be anything but heroic. Greek democracy was often a noisy farce; abusive and vindictive. I sympathise but persevere with the idea. Under Athenian democracy Socrates was condemned to death. Plato regarded democracy as impossible unless protected from popular government by guardian intellects.

Yet follow Thucydides to see the unfolding debacle of the Peloponnesian war under such leaders. Women played no part in public life. Only slavery gave free men time for democracy. It brings to mind the remark about the cuckoo clock by Orson Welles in The Third Man.
Don’t buy into the complaint of some modern Greeks that they are the feeble inheritors of an incomparably nobler past. It’s an imposition placed on all of us by sublime sculpture, architecture, drama, fiction historical analysis and philosophy. George Seferis who won the nobel for his poetry wrote of a travelling in time, unable to disentangle himself from the mythologies of the past, or from personal memory, which blends - one with the other.  ‘I woke with this marble head in my hands; it exhausts my elbow and I don’t know where to put it down.’ (from Mythistorema 1935). Love to you both. Simon (in Scotland)

Ξύπνησα με το μαρμάρινο τούτο κεφάλι στα χέρια
που μου εξαντλεί τους αγκώνες και δεν ξέρω πού να
τ’ ακουμπήσω.
Έπεφτε το όνειρο καθώς έβγαινα από το όνειρο
έτσι ενώθηκε η ζωή μας και θα είναι πολύ δύσκολο να
ξαναχωρίσει.

Κοιτάζω τα μάτια. Μήτε ανοιχτά μήτε κλειστά
μιλώ στο στόμα που όλο γυρεύει να μιλήσει
κρατώ τα μάγουλα που ξεπέρασαν το δέρμα.
Δεν έχω άλλη δύναμη

τα χέρια μου χάνουνται και με πλησιάζουν
ακρωτηριασμένα.

I woke with this marble head in my hands;
it exhausts my elbow and I don’t know where to put it down.
It was falling into the dream as I was coming out of the dream
so our life became one and it will be very difficult for it to separate again.

I look at the eyes: neither open nor closed
I speak to the mouth which keeps trying to speak
I hold the cheeks which have broken through the skin.
That’s all I’m able to do.

My hands disappear and come towards me
mutilated.

Thaw in the Highlands

Flew to Inverness on Friday in a small prop plane half full; comfortable with coffee, a police procedural whose author knows his organisational politics, and a good week's work behind me and several day's assignments on my return before we go back to the village. We took off in rain and thick overcast. As we flew north, it was almost odd to glimpse through dispersing clouds the snow still covering high ground above the border. Sharon was waiting for me at Dalcross and within 20 minutes we were coming into Strathnairn. I was greeting the barking terriers; seeing my mother at Brin Croft.

Ground that's been covered by snow for months is at last open to the sky; a sodden surface of bleached and flaccid grass appears amid disappearing archipelagos of shallow watery snow; meandering trails through the matted surface show where moles have tunneled in the darkness under the snow, unaware they worked on the surface. Cracked trees abound. Branches split by weight of snow are strewn along the muddy banks of the Farnack in spate. Snow melt burns add to the rushing sound of water, louder in the moonless night, sparkling under the sun.

Lulu started after a young roe deer foraging close to the houses. Being less fleet I thought she'd have no chance of catching a deer but her prey, panicking, balked at a fence and collapsed in the mire. In an instant the terrier was at the throat of an animal five times her size, both flailing half in water below the wire. In seconds I caught up and called her off. The mud matted calf struggled to its feet and fled. I held Lulu, squirming and panting, until the bouncing rump patches were out of sight, embarrassed the feral in me had excused pursuit of an animal unfit to jump a hip high fence. I'd sent confusing messages to the dog. Had I been starving we'd both have enjoyed a venison casserole. Far from restraining her hunting, dog and I would've eaten together.

* * *

Meanwhile, in beloved Greece, I was remembering we were having supper with Mark and Sally, Paul and Jacinta on Democracy Street this January. I asked, almost off the cuff, if Cinta knew the Ode to Freedom Ύμνος είς την Ελευθερίαν. She paused for a moment to gather her thoughts and see if I was serious, then sang it quietly, humming first then word perfect I'm sure, nodding the rhythm, almost as if to test her memory. I was impressed that she knew all the words but delighted I should first encounter Dionyssios Solomos' anthem sung quietly and gently in the company of friends rather than at some grand event.

** ** **

On 8 March a cartoon and an editorial in Kathimerini:

Wednesday, March 3, 2010, will go down in history as the day that a modern Greek government made a conscious effort to bring the country and its economy in line with reality. It is most appropriate that the unprecedented step was taken by a PASOK government, headed by George Papandreou, as it was under PASOK, in its first term in power under Papandreou’s father, Andreas, that Greece slipped the bonds of economic reality and began to live way beyond its means. But the New Democracy party, with which PASOK has alternated in power since the restoration of democracy in 1974, is no less guilty of bloating the public sector and buying 'social harmony' by giving workers whatever they wanted, leading to a relentless rise in wages and pensions irrespective of what the country produced. As deficits and the country’s debt burden grew, governments just kept on borrowing – borrowing to meet their obligations in terms of wages and pensions, borrowing to import more than Greece exported, borrowing to pay off previous debts. There was no effort to break the borrowing habit. In addition, membership of the eurozone brought monetary stability and historically low interest rates, prompting a massive boom in mortgages and consumer loans, which hid the economy’s underlying weaknesses.

...and in Kathimerini's Greek edition strong words from George Papandreou against favouritism, nepotism, bribery and their causes:

Πρώτο μας μέλημα είναι να σώσουμε την οικονομία μας. Είναι το πρώτο και απαραίτητο βήμα για να προχωρήσουμε στο μέλλον», τονίζει ο κ. Παπανδρέου, προσθέτοντας ότι δεν θα ανεχθεί «να βαφτίζονται δικαιοσύνη η σκανδαλώδης εύνοια, κεκτημένα τα προνόμια των λίγων και των συντεχνιών, δικαίωμα η περιφρόνηση του κοινωνικού συνόλου, πολιτισμός ο προκλητικός πλουτισμός, επιχειρηματικότητα το παρασιτικό κέρδος, μαγκιά η ασυλία και η φοροδιαφυγή...Καταβάλλουμε ως λαός βαρύ τίμημα για τις εγκληματικές επιλογές των προηγούμενων ετών. Αναγκαστήκαμε να λάβουμε αποφάσεις επώδυνες, που αδικούν πολλούς συμπολίτες μας. Αλλά θα ήταν ακόμη πιο άδικο να αφήσουμε τη χώρα μας ανυπεράσπιστη στις ορέξεις των κερδοσκόπων, αδύναμη να καταβάλει μισθούς και συντάξεις και να ανταποκριθεί στις στοιχειώδεις υποχρεώσεις της...

Yet what I recall of that period when Andreas Papandreou led PASOK was his pursuit of an agenda as critical for Greece - though his achievements are obscured amid the current crisis - as the stability of her economy. Andreas Papandreou broke the enduring dominance of the old Greek Right, shifting Hellenic politics to the centre in line with other European democracies. He was bold in pursuit of inclusion in a land divided and speechless when it came to what had happened to dear Greece between 1939 and 1949 (none writes better of this, unearths with more scholarship than Mark Mazower).

Above all Andreas Papandreou drove a bold politics of reconciliation with Greeks who since the terrible civil war - Ελληνικός Εμφύλιος Πόλεμος - (a subject regularly addressed on Democracy Street -see especially 'I dreamed I entered the home of a woman') had been treated as political pariahs - exiled, imprisoned, silenced, even conveniently forgotten. Old communists, veteran andartes and many others were invited in from the cold; made eligible for war pensions, allowed to recover alternative histories of the past forty years and opportunities to participate as full honoured citizens of the Hellenic Republic. Furthermore Andreas Papandreou with Constantinos Karamanlis, played a key role in recovering democracy during metapolitefsi. Amid these tasks we can see now that the economy was not just neglected but used to fund the recreation of a happier land.

* * * *

Next Sunday 21st March, from 1300 starting at the Park Lodge on Hamstead Road, I'm doing a 'History Walk' through Handsworth Park finishing up at Mark Bent's cafe on the lake. I hope we won't need umbrellas.

The Ranger Service mentioned this to Graham Young on the Birmingham Post and Mail. Graham announced the walk in last Thursday's edition, giving me and our beloved park a fine plug in the process.

Simon Baddeley grew up in London and the Home Counties. But, like so many other ‘immigrants’, from the moment he first came to live in Birmingham in 1972 he fell in love with the place in general – and Handsworth Park in particular. A lecturer at the University of Birmingham’s Institute of Local Government studies, Simon, 67, is fascinated by the relationship and struggle between politics and reality. And it was the fading state of Handsworth Park in the 1990s which led him and others to try to engage others into doing something positive about the 63-acre site. Their enthusiasm paid off. In 2006, the Grade II-listed park was reopened following an £8.5 million restoration scheme.

That it happened at all is partly down to Simon spending hours in the Birmingham Community Library more than a decade ago. His subsequent 40-page publication, History of the Founding of Handsworth Park, substantiated the link between the Industrial Revolution, Soho House and St Mary’s Church where pioneers Watt, Murdoch and Boulton are remembered with memorials. “This is the cathedral of the Industrial Revolution which started here more than Ironbridge,” says Simon. “All of these places have the most extraordinary connection. It’s where the modern world began.” His research was also one of the key factors which helped to secure the necessary funding through the Heritage Lottery Fund, European Regional Development Fund, Single Regeneration Budget, Advantage West Midlands and the city council. On March 21, he’ll be leading the latest of his regular walks through the park to explain how it was founded and opened, on June 20, 1888. The walk will include views of the boating lake, bandstand, wooded avenues, sports ground and the landscaping of the park by designer Richard Hartland Vertegans. “He liked people to come across spaces they didn’t know were there,” says Simon. “For some, the railway line through the park might have been a problem. Vertegens saw it as an opportunity to create two parks in one.” Simon’s research taught him that it was only thanks to human foresight that there is a park in Handsworth at all. Cannon Hill Park was a gift to the city, but Handsworth Park had to be fought for politically,” he explains. “It was originally in the boundary of Staffordshire which was green, but some people realised that at the rate Birmingham was expanding, if they didn’t create the park the land would have been built on within 20 or 30 years.”

This is just the same sort of vision, Simon believes, which led to plans for the ICC and surrounding facilities in the 1980s.

“It’s hard to remember now how confused we felt in the 80s,” he says. “The hardest thing was to admit that we were no longer the city of 1,000 trades. Back then, when we took pride in our brash vulgarity, you would never have believed that people would now be coming to Birmingham as tourists.” Looking forward, he believes the next decade will be hard for public and private sectors alike, but he warns against the city council trying to make false economies in parks. The Victorians realised that if you put a park in the middle of a bustling city you would have to assume the fecklessness of human nature. A few people can do a lot of damage; just a few regulations can prevent a lot of damage. “The best park keepers are diplomats and being assertive is so important. I’ve never felt unsafe in Handsworth Park, but you want everyone to feel like that and it’s great to see people having picnics in the park now...When it reopened was one of the happiest days of my life. We’d fought for 15 years for that. But a park with no keeper would be one step from a derelict urban wasteland..." [To join the history walk meet outside the lodge at the park’s Hamstead Road entrance at 1pm on Sunday, March 21.]

A postcard from 1900 - relaxing in the middle of a bustling city

* * * *

Last Friday: an in-house event - one of three - that I've been asked to organise for a council in the south of England; the hum of responsible gossip as managers learn more about their council's elected political representation, helping one another to put 'faces to places', with tutoring from officers in Democratic Services.

The feedback I was sent about this event was especially nice to read. I know it's because I listen to Linda when she criticises me for going into 'lecture-mode', but I've also learned much in the last two years from John Martin. He, while we were working together in Australia, pointed out - in the nicest way - that I'm so attached to ideas - in love with them even - that I can forget the duty of a teacher to get on with those who've given up their time to learn about those ideas. I knew that Myers-Briggs showed me as an introvert but I made no use of that information until John explained its effect on my teaching. I begin to see now why JM and I - and a few others with whom I've enjoyed working - make such a good mix when leading a seminar. The e-mail from Vickie, my client and most competent behind-the-scenes event organiser:

Dear Simon - here are all the comments from last week - Particularly like "Quite probably the best tutor I have ever had the good fortune to learn from" That's amazing! Positive comments:

* Excellent, fluid presentation, good use of handouts and analogies

* Excellent

* Absolutely brilliant. Superb. Quite probably the best tutor I have ever had the good fortune to learn from.

* Very good course - presenter excellent with many examples and anecdotes to demonstrate a complex subject, tailored to group

* Engaging speaker, v good learning/support materials

* Very informative, challenging and engaging- thank you

* Very good presenter

* Very thought provoking

* Pitched at an excellent level

* Another great training course, well presented and informative

* Very good presenter! Very useful and appropriate to our organisation

* Very charismatic, hugely knowledgeable - kitchen analogy excellent

* Excellent speaker

* Excellent - engaged throughout

* Excellent content and pitched at a good level

* Good range of activities, lively and engaging pace - thank you

* Eye opening

* Very good, Innovative

* Excellent

Farnack in spate