Being a tourist

I’ve just hung out a tub of washing in the garden. I find this more satisfying than, as in Scotland, shoving spun-dried washing into a tumble dryer for forty minutes or hanging things on the washing rack strung on ropes and pulleys in our cramped boiler room in Birmingham. I so enjoy seeing the suspended clothes, dish clothes and towels swinging gently, sometimes frantically, under the sun in a sea breeze. It’s very seldom warm and dry enough to do the same in Handsworth – though I have a line hung hopefully between fence posts across our lawn there.
Yesterday I cycled into town about 15 kilometres - easy enough. Indeed a pleasure. Coming back i dealt with the ascent to Ano Korakiana by cycling, but also walking on gravel lanes along the valley from the sea at Ipsos up to the village.

So Valerie’s been with us three weeks. In that time we’ve been tourists, taking her to places on the island, driving on many country lanes edged by cyclamen, and olive groves above and below; to the Achilleon...

Upstairs at the Achilleon - Franz von Matsch's celebration of Achilles' notorious war crime

...to Kaiser’s Throne above Pelekas. with its superlative views of suburban Corfu...

The view from Kaiser's Throne along the south west coast of Corfu

...to the quiet shore at Agnos to paddle and sunbathe and read for several hours, to Domino’s in Anilipsi to swim in their pool and lounge on their lawn, and do the same at two pool bars in Paleokastritsa, to drink in a bar at the ‘little England’ of Sidari...

Main Street, Sidari

...to the island’s highest point on the vertiginous summit of mount Pantokrator gazing over to Saranda, Butrinti and the Albanian peaks beyond the narrow Corfu Straits....

...up the twenty-nine hairpin bend road above our village, stopping to visit the tiny church of St Isadoras...

....before ascending to the panoramic outlook of Sokraki Villas sitting by their horizon pool surveying the island as far as the eye could see...

Sokraki Villas looking south

...to Emily’s in the Platea of Sokraki for drinks and snacks, giros amid pouring rain under a vine lined roof at George’s in Kontokali, supper at Strapunto on the road to Kato Korakiana, and, with Mark and his brother-in-law Paul and sister Michelle, at Elizabeth’s in Dukades, several times to Emeral near Tzavros for ice cream, to enjoy a curry evening on our friend Sally’s balcony in the village; to Corfu town to stroll and eat, to Kalami, to sea-front snacks under a large umbrella at Kassiopi (where I've been told by the manager at Plous Bookshop a diligent ex-schoolmaster drummed up some of the votes Corfu's electors have given the new Golden Dawn MP, Ioannis Aivatidis in the Sept 20th General Election); to the beach at Dassia – usually tranquil – where warm southerly gusts brought breaking waves and pouring rain; on the last ferry of the summer to Vido island for a swim and meal....

Sunday afternoon on Vido Island (photo Linda Baddeley)

...to the quiet English Cemetery half a kilometre from San Rocco Square, centre of the new town; to the resort of Agios Gordis below the high cliffs of the west coast to look at shops and flocks of sun loungers spread on an end-of-season beach; to Kanoni to watch planes landing and taking off, by small boat from Vlacherna jetty to visit Pontikonisi and, near the end of Val’s stay, coffee and cake at the village’s new café Crescendo and a generously offered opportunity from the artist’s family to see the sculptures of AristeidisMetallinos in the closed museum* of our village, and on several occasions a relaxed drink at the village ‘pub’ - Stammati’s Piatsa thirty yards from our house and to have supper with friends Stephanie and Wesley at home, and to lounge now and then on our balcony.
****
*At the family's request I've written what I hope is a gentle letter to Corfu Mountain Bikes' owners to explain why it is so difficult to get to see the sculptures in the Museum in Ano Korakiana:

Visitors to Ano Korakiana outside the closed museum (photo Linda Baddeley)

Dear Kostas and Hans
THE ARISTEIDIS METALLINOS MUSEUM IN ANO KORAKIANA
I wonder if I can ask you to mention, when you are visiting Ano Korakiana with your guests and come to the Aristeidis Metallinos Museum, that although the place is, very sadly, not open to visitors, and has not been for many years, my family are, with the support of the Metallinos family, creating a website catalogue of professional photos of all 250 of the laic sculptor's works.
We hope to have this up and running in 2016, so that anyone interested can view the work of Aristeidis Metallinos on the internet, and perhaps through their smart phones even while they are in the village.
The family have recognised that through talking about the village sculptor on my blog Democracy Street I may inadvertently have raised expectations that visitors can get to see inside the museum.This is simply not possible.
I spoke briefly to ‘Napoleon’ a few days ago (when he was in the village with a group of visitors) and explained in more detail why it has proved impossible to open the museum to visitors, asking that Corfu Mountainbike Shop Guides do not call on the family at the museum. They are troubled and embarrassed at having to explain their reasons for having to refuse entry to their father’s/grandfather’s museum.
Aristeidis Metallinos is a most interesting man and we understand how even a glimpse from outside the house might make people who have heard about the artist, want to have a look inside the building that houses his work.
These are the wikipedia articles - in English and Greek - I have so far posted about the village sculptor. We hope to make more information available in the next year. The family greatly value your understanding in this matter, and I know the village greatly welcomes your guided visits to Ano Korakiana. Kindest regards,
Simon....Σάïμον και Λίντα Μπάντλεϊ, Οδός Δημοκρατίας

*** *** ***
It was a dream from which I awoke gripped by happy astonishment, knowing that, awake, I could not command the language to describe what my slumbering imagination had conjured. Near the end I was looking down at a young director – or so he or she seemed to me. Others had been ahead of me speaking to this small modest dynamo. I looked down into his - or her - eyes breathless, choked with the joy of what I’d been watching
“You made magic come alive. Thank you”
I hugged the delicate figure gently and was looked up at with compassion.
She/he was, seeing my tears dropping so copiously she/he touched and held my arms gently, and said something I could not hear, in an accented voice, that seemed to be consoling
“No no” I said “You have made me so happy”
Awake it struck me that if in the liminal state of dreaming I could invent a performance so astounding, so grippingly beautiful, if the visions came from inside my head, things I had never seen in my life inside or outside of art, fiction, cinema, or show, yet drawing on visions and fictions and that I could reference to what my eyes and ears have seen and read and heard in 70 years, then were I as talented awake I could do and invent anything.
Perhaps I was weeping in less than happiness. Perhaps I was weeping as the newborn cries – in folk tale – as it enters the world from paradise, or weeping for not being gifted. Proust said writing entails working in a dream-state, knowing you’re awake, but stopping yourself from waking. What I saw in my dream had the charisma of ‘Revelations’, the last book, the detail of all Bosch and Breughel, the spectacle of Cirque du Soleil (tho' they don't work with the animals I saw) and music that gripped my insides as though it had entered my chest other than through my ears, so also what I saw seemed to have gone straight to my brain through more senses than sight.
We were assembled in a large hall, high as the knave of Winchester, yet more like a marquee, wholly coloured the blue of a cloudless sky before dusk. Various performers were exercising in costume on a variety of spirited horses of glistening fitness amid a crowd assembled in knots across the vast floor lit from invisible sources. Who was there? Perhaps everybody in six degrees of separation. I had no worry with thinking ‘we’ were to see a preview, which in waking memory was the moment I entered my dream.  Useless to describe the moment when a performer of a sudden begins their performance, rather than limbering up or rehearsing since we were both behind the scene yet in its midst. Somehow several horses had climbed on the backs, unfazed by ungainly hooves, of two more horses, then two or three more, making one great horse on which a rider sat towering above us, the illusion screened by an immense and richly coloured tapestry flowing in undulating folds to the floor, while from one end of this caparison appeared a head larger than any of the many horses beneath the lovely robe and, at the other end, a tail of similar magnificence, both seeming alive but somehow composed of parts of smaller horses and, perhaps, people in skillfully contorted disguise. This towering breathing masquerade, imitating the fluid movement of a single animal, processed gracefully to the end of the hall infused and enveloped by music in complement to the vision, to meet another artifice as high and vast as the other. The single horse which we knew to be made up of many horses greeted its twin beneath an apse at the apex of the hall. From its head sprang a smaller horse that seemed ridden by a cherub lit with bright lights that no more dazzled than the music deafened. The audience gasped in admiration. The scene was celestial. I looked up in delighted awe as the horses disassembled and performed an impossible aerial ballet of delicate harmony with all of us and one another as the light softened to a deeper dusk and left everything for a while in semi-darkness as the performance ended – hardly a minute for all my dream-sense of time suspended.  Still asleep I was entranced beyond any accessible expression. I awoke happy but slightly embarrassed. I’d been trying to hear what the director had been saying to me that I couldn’t catch and had moved with them to a door near the end of the hall which opened to reveal the busy interior of the women’s changing room into which I’d been trying to continue my attempts at conversation. I retreated with apologies and woke up.  

Winter in Greece

“IUD? IUD? What’s it stand for? 'Unexploded'. Yes. 'Device'. What’s the ‘I’? Ahah. 'Improvised'. I'm mulling this. Why IUD?"
I’m going over this between waking and dreaming and then I’m failing to get my mum’s attention, as she bustles around a house, full of her daily errands, re my plane ticket for a four day workshop in Berlin on 'Understanding Modern Germany'. Now I’m in a queue in a concourse which starts to advance to boarding and I’m in only the clothes I’m wearing. Not a moment too soon, Lin and mum bustle in with my boarding card. 
"What about my things, toothbrush etc?”

“Sorry” says Lin 

“A book?” I ask, more than vexed. 

“Sorry, no” 

“For f*ck’s sake, mum” 

Then I’m apologising profusely to a sitting woman with a child who probably didn’t hear me anyway and isn’t English. I look angrily at mum, embarrassed at this highly public evidence of my dependency on the women in my life who have failed me, even though it was mum who booked me on the flight and this workshop that I’m not keen on anyway. 
Mum looks back at me with one of her looks of loving chiding amusement and holds her gaze until her face fills my whole field of vision. I feel caught out, unshaven, unwashed but thinking I’ll buy what I need in Berlin but then I’m awake; relieved of these  responsibilities, aware this is the first time, that my mum, since she died, has had a part in a dream.

36 hours of rain and grey, but this morning is bright. Our windows need a clean and we’re going into town today, to the bank, the tax office, what else? 
At supper the other day a friend said the 100 Club, an ex-pat subscription lottery charity run on the island, was collecting money to buy new tyres for the island's ambulances.
“There’s only one ambulance left on the island – of ten – that are still roadworthy” 
Had I heard that the authorities have been round the coves on the north west coast and made all the tavernas take down their jetties – ‘they’re defined as illegal” - and remove their chairs and tables where they have spread to the shore. Boats can’t arrive and tie up for a meal anymore. 
“Really?” 
“And the charge on trip boats. €3000 a month! Most didn’t go back in the water last season. Wasn’t worth it” 
“Blimey” 
“And the new cruising tax for all foreign yachts in Greek waters applies this year” 
“Will we have to pay?” 
“Sure” 

Summersong in the rain

I ask another friend about this.
“It’s true but there’s no infrastructure in place to collect that tax.” 
Best wait and see?
“Meantime all the gin palaces – over 12 metres pay €100 a metre - are heading off for marina’s in Croatia. I feel sorry for those people here who’ve bought a marina mooring for twenty five years”

We finally got a domestic water bill – for €6.50 – after two years of getting none. At the demos office in Ipsos Lin and I went through the empty hall of the building back from the front, up darkened stairs and along a dim peeling paint corridor to the cashier. Knocked. 
“I am alone” said the woman there, as she processed and stamped our bill. 
“Twenty five people left today – to their homes” 
Blimey
“What does this bills cover?"
"The end of 2012” 
She smiled wanely “We are late” 
“The next bill…?” 
“…will be for the beginning of 2013” she said.

At supper we heard an account of a Greek friend’s journey back and forth between departments within the tax office in the city, the demos office in Ipsos, and the main town hall in the city striving to get their renovated house designated as ‘old’, so that they stopped incurring the tax increment applied through their electric bills to properties defined as ‘new’. Over a series of visits she was referred to other offices and officials each claiming, with conviction, that redefining the status of a property was not in their remit. At last someone surmised - of another official in one of the offices already visited - that it was not that they could not do this, but “they do not know how to do it”
“She got on the phone and rang this other office and, over the phone, took her through the steps on the form on her computer required to alter the status of our property” 
“Wow. Well done you - and her!”

Did I know,  asked another friend "Golden Dawn have opened an office in the centre of Corfu town.
“I saw all these police in town the other day. Roads blocked. One of the arrested leaders - Greek MP Ilias Kasidiaris - on probation, come to Corfu for the event, with other supporters." My impression is that there were more people on the street protesting against the eggvolk than there were representatives of Golden Dawn.  
Με πρωτοφανή αστυνομική Δύναμη(120 περίπου) με χρήση μοτοσυκλετιστών και περιπολικών αλλά και όλη την Τροχαία έγιναν το απόγευμα τα εγκαίνια των γραφείων της Χρυσής Αυγής στη Κέρκυρα στη Πολυχρονίου Κωνσταντά και τους γύρω δρόμους. 

Παρών ο εκπρόσωπος της Χ.Α κ Κασιδιάρης ο κ Ματθαιόπουλος (βουλευτές) με περίπου 300 Κερκυραίους υποστηρικτές του κόμματος.Γύρω τους κλούβες των Ματ Ματατζήδες.Ακολούθησε αντιφασιστική πορεία από μέλη του Συριζα και του Ανταρσία

See 'Golden Dawn photos shock Greece'

'…setting the scene...'

Eggvolk and their party symbol in front of the Hellenic Parliament building

Richard Pine loves Greece, lives in Corfu, and is someone whose friendship is a source of pride. His conversation is sparse, amusing, educated and to the point. This article, one of his regular 'Letters from Greece' to The Irish Times, chills me, piercing through my reflexive optimism about the capacity of Greek democracy and the Greeks to weather this relentless unending crisis. Now the experience of relative tranquillity looks more and more like that eerie peacefulness to be found in the eye of a storm. Comments on his article criticise Richard for lack of balance, for not providing evidence (in a short essay he actually refers to much evidence for his despondency) - but neither do those who comment, failing to offer any robust rebuttal of reflections based on Richard's acute knowledge and direct experience of Greece and its history as well as the sequence of events by which Weimar Germany, one of the most civilised states in Europe, popularly elected the demise of its own democracy…because these things are unthinkable they are not thought about, and for those who do not remember they are unimaginable…

'Many Greeks would prefer stability to democracy'

Under the present regime, the country as a whole is unsustainable

Protesters from the Communist-affiliated trade union PAME shout slogans during a rally yesterday against the government’s plans for cutbacks in medical staff and hospitals in Athens. Photo John Kolesidis/Reuters

I would not be surprised or even shocked to see tanks rolling into Athens to signal the advent of a military junta. Apprehensive, but not surprised. It will almost certainly not reach that point, but citizen apathy at the poverty of political life, and despair at the continuing economic decline, are setting the scene for a potential takeover by forces including the military, police and far- right political parties such as the fascist Golden Dawn (GD).
A coalition of such forces would offer not only stability – a one-party state or even a no-party state – but no-nonsense determination to deal with the conditions of a country which sees no way forward under present dispensations.
A judicial investigator, attempting to assess the culpability of Golden Dawn MPs in relation to a recent murder and membership of what is in effect an illegal organisation, has stated that the party’s aim is “the dissolution of the democratic system of government”. That system has been abused by successive governments to such an extent that its suspension would be welcome to many disillusioned Greeks.
Meanwhile, the call by the union of reserve military personnel, for abolition of the government, repudiation of the bailout programme, the expulsion of illegal immigrants and the establishment of a government of national unity, chimes chillingly with GD’s policies.
A coup in 1967 led to a military junta for seven years. Greece became a police state. One of its leaders declared categorically, “whoever is interested in human rights in Greece is a communist”. So much for democracy. Its anti-democratic behaviour included disappearances and torturings, as reported in gruesome detail by this newspaper’s Peter Murtagh in his book The Rape of Greece.
But that was several years before Greece joined the EU in 1981. If it happened today, the EU would most likely expel Greece, which would certainly exit the euro zone, a step which would upset few Greeks. The bailout was (as the IMF admits) a mistaken panic measure to save the euro rather than saving Greece. Today, the people among whom I live don’t give a damn about the euro, and they look enviously at the likely end to the Irish bailout.
Today, the passivity of citizens, already exhausted by successive waves of austerity and degradation led by Brussels and Berlin, would reduce the likelihood of any meaningful opposition to military rule. Many Greeks, quite apart from the fascists, would agree that the prospect of stability and a dependable vision of the life to come is more important than democracy, and better than the life they currently lead.
It would, nevertheless, be a police state. It is widely believed that the police have been infiltrated by GD (this is under investigation), thus creating a strong ideology and a threatening presence on the streets. A police state would be Europhobe, xenophobic, and brutally harsh on its opponents.
A government spokesman recently said, “We have used up all the fat in the economy” – referring to Greece’s inability to reduce public finances any further to meet troika demands. With the fat has gone the elasticity and resilience of the man in the street in both financial and intellectual terms.
It is unrealistic and unfair to compare Greek statistics with the EU norm, even with the similar Irish financial mess. Unemployment, the banking crisis, tax evasion and corruption are specifically Greek problems. Under the present regime (or lack of it) the country as a whole is unsustainable – politically, economically, socially, culturally and morally. A hardline government could be achieved by the expulsion of the existing middle-of-the-road cosy coalition of New Democracy and Pasok, the so-called socialists. The chief alternative is a coalition of the left (Syriza), the possibility of which has increased the rightist vote.
Public opinion has moved slightly away from GD. Parliament has voted to remove immunity from nine of its 18 members, and suspend state financial support for GD as a political party. But current opinion polls still place GD with 7% of the national vote, down from 12% at its highest. This would still leave it with three more seats in parliament than it already holds.
And it is not only politicians who are decrying the status of Greece. At a London conference in mid-October speakers referred to the risk Greece runs of becoming “a failed state” unless it addresses “ineffective governance and lack of public confidence”. It was argued that “targeted constitutional correction and an internationally-sponsored programme of economic reform” is the only way to save Greece and the euro zone. Whether an attempted, failed coup would give the government a sufficient wake-up call is unlikely. Greece is a tragedy waiting to happen.

A relief by Aristeidis Metallinos, sculptor of Ano Korakiana

Plato said "One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors" - an elitist observation unless you subtract any implication of class and insert some gauge of the inclination to treat one's fellows with decency; as germane, the words of George Santayana, 'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it'

My good wife with paint in Ano Korakiana

…and see the article by Michael Theødosiadis at Eagainst.com 24/10/2013 The Fascist threat beyond Golden Dawn

The Serpent's Greek Lair by Yanis Varoufakis - In this, the fourth article that vitalspace.org and I have contributed to the Witte Centre for Contemporary Art, I offer a short history of the Greek Nazi party...In this piece on Golden Dawn, I begin with an encounter with an old, poor Peloponnesean farmer, some time in the 1990s, whose life revealed much about Greece’s Dark Side...

...The question now is: Why has contemporary Greece seen a Nazi revival? Spaniards, the Irish, the Portuguese, the Italians have also felt the ill-effects of the Eurozone crisis in their bones. But why is it that only in Greece has a Nazi party, Golden Dawn, managed to enter parliament in large numbers, while its storm troopers are terrorizing the streets? Kapnias’ story offers useful clues. It throws light on the significance of the Nazis’ attempts to create a local SS-like body of marginalized men disaffected by the local bourgeoisie, by the Left, and living under a permanent cloud of collective disgrace brought on by a previous national humiliation....

*** ***
On Tuesday Handsworth Helping Hands (HHH) had a good day's work in Wilson Road…

HHH volunteers enjoy a lunch break of local chips discussing progress with Ward Officer Ken Brown visiting to check progress on our skip-it don't tip it day. There are some typical rubbish collection challenges around Wilson Road. 1. A pile of detritus gathering further rubbish in the alley between New Inns Road and Wilson Road that council workers struggle to keep cleared, [Some say we should copy those countries that serve strict penalties on those who litter but it is almost impossible to collect evidence acceptable to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). You must catch people in the act. That requires street wardens, police, PCSOs. All in shorter and shorter supply as the government erodes commitment to the public domain in favour of privatisation. On the whole citizens are reluctant to take photos and report (less apathy than an aspect of UK culture I quite like) and the police, unhappy about the paperwork involved, will seldom charge someone with littering in what they already view as a rough part of town with more serious policing priorities. The people who contribute most to this are social casualties - in this case from a local hostel for recovering alcoholics. Would the courts be able to change their habits? It's most intractable. This is why we must labour the links between social cohesion and the environment. This kind of thing makes people dislike, have contempt for, and over time even develop hate for particular categories of vulnerable people who are their neighbours. This constantly renewed heap of rubbish erodes social altruism.]

I feel the animosity I refer to in myself.  I question it and wonder what my mirror says. That term of abuse - 'bleeding heart liberals' - coined in the US, is such a clever turn of phrase. Cruel but so effective in drying up civility towards neighbours and even making some feel guilty for caring for their fellows. I'm not saying this problem is not always with us, nor that more government would solve it. I think some challenges are Sisyphean*. A good citizen acknowledges that and goes on rolling the stone up the hill.

2. A broken notice warning of £20K fines for fly-tipping, 

3. The end terrace fly-tip site where we found a dismantled garden shed stuffed in Solihull Council plastic bags, 

4. A fridge, which should have been disposed of separately, dumped in one of the skips while HHH volunteers were clearing rubbish further up the street, 

5. An HHH volunteer chats with a neighbour feeding pigeons showing them a Birchfield Action Group circular asking people not to do this 'because food on the ground causes more rats'. 

All these issues demonstrate the connection between our environment and local social cohesion.

Filling the crusher truck in New Inns Road - HHH working in partnership with Council workers

*** *** ***
On Wednesday afternoon Linda and I were at an awards lunch at Aston Villa Football Ground for people who've given 75 or a 100 blood or platelet donations…

It was enjoyable and I felt proud being officially thanked and having my photo taken and getting an entirely impractical glass trophy.
"You'll fall on that" said Lin "and need a blood donation"
Before lunch we were offered a tour of the Aston Villa stadium, getting a stroll, with spine-tingling sound effects, of coming out of the tunnel to the pitch…

In the tunnel at Aston Villa

After the meal all 175 of us listened as Nadine Simpson, who was to present us with our trophies, spoke, entirely without self-pity, of the pain caused by sickle cell anaemia for which she had been receiving transfusions most of her life. She thanked us all. We applauded and were called up for photos. I found myself next to Adrian who'd remembered me from our 75th donation presentation event at the Hyatt Hotel.

The Gift Relationship

*Sisyphus Σίσυφος was a king in Corinth punished for chronic deceitfulness by being compelled to roll an immense boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down, and to repeat this action forever.