Ὄτι ἐγενήθην ως ἀσκος ἐν πάχυη

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My dad

Phone calls that come after midnight worry me but there's a line in the Greek Orthodox funeral service - a prayer of St John of Damascus - Ήχος α´ ποία τοῦ βίου τρυχφή διαμένει λύπης ἀμέτοχος´; Where is the pleasure of life that is unmixed with sorrow? I was in a log cabin on the outskirts of Ann Arbor when the phone rang in that different and distinctive American way. It was 1972 before tailored ring tones. It was at 1.35 in the morning when my half-sister, Dorothy, phoning round the world from his home in Dorset told me Dad had just died. Many years later she, the only one with him when he went,  said in passing (how she’s always said serious things) “Don’t ever get to thinking death is anything but very unpleasant.” In the same vein on another occasion (the only other time she referred to it) she muttered “Dad was so concerned not to give anything way,  he refused painkillers.” The two remarks made sense. The prolonged agony of death from stomach cancer, diagnosed a year earlier. The courage to ensure that drugged he imparted no intelligence, even to a beloved daughter. It was not until one mid-summer weekend in the 1980s, when visiting my stepfather who also lived in Dorset, hardly twenty miles away, that I dropped in on the farmhouse next to a small Saxon church; a village with a ‘worth’ in it’s name. I strolled up a short lane to the house. Someone in a floppy hat, gardening, greeted me. “I recognized you. You are so like your father.’ I hadn’t realised the new owner knew Dad. Though I’d arrived without warning, he invited me in for some tea. His family were out. Later he asked “Would you like to see the room where your father died?” He led me up a narrow winding staircase to a small bedroom that opened through a leaded mullion window overlooking a close cut irregular lawn fringed by banks of cottage flowers merging into a dappled meadow that became a shadowed orchard, with gaps for sunbeams in which butterflies sparred. “I did wonder if you were in the same line of work as your father.” “No I’m not.” He smiled. “No really” I said. Later in the churchyard I found a small commemorative stone, hardly larger than an upright brick, Dad’s name inscribed, almost hidden in the grass, where his ashes lay. Ὄτι ἐγενήθην ως ἀσκος ἐν πάχυη For I am become as a bottle in the frost."  In 2005 when my Greek stepmother, Maria died, these were brought to Kensal Green Cemetery to be buried beside her and we, my sisters and brother, with our children, had become the elders.

Maria, Simon and John Baddeley

Traffic hazards on Edgbaston Park Road

I've just had another go at drawing attention to dangers on Edgbaston Park Road - a busy route into Birmingham University campus for students living at the Vale about half a mile away, and indeed one of my ways into work once I've left the Birmingham-Worcester canal towpath at its exit by the bridge on Somerset Road. I made this film in October 2004. I passed the DVD out to various people who I thought might be able to do something about what looks like an accident waiting to happen - and therefore not an accident. This morning, on impulse, I posted it on YouTube and sent it to some friends and people who might bring pressure to bear to arrive at a more satisfactory arrangement - for instance an attractive and safe walkway between the Vale and main campus just over half a mile away. Plenty of people know and agree this road is hazardous, but because Edgbaston Park Road is a major route for motorised traffic onto campus including the Queen Elizabeth Hospital and surrounding offices and a feeder to the Bristol Road which takes traffic into and out of Birmingham, it's difficult to introduce significant traffic calming. For the time being the investment needed to lay out an alternative walking route is not forthcoming. There have, as far as I know, been no deaths on the road. My student was injured near where the figure stands at the end of the film. That was over twenty years ago. He walked too far from the side of the road that has no pavement and was hit by a car, suffering a compound fracture of his arm, from which, thank goodness, he made a good recovery. I show this film to new students. It's hardly 3 minutes and makes its point cogently. I was delighted that the red Royal Mail van weaves in and out of sight on the film establishing that I was filming in real time and not selectively. How I delight in Blondie's line "...walking on imported air"! Thanks for being allowed to use this song to back the film.
* * *
Meanwhile, more fires on the outskirts of Athens.

Family

The photo is of Maria with some of her grandchildren. She died in November 2005. In a few hours perhaps we may have the start of the next but one generation. All of us have children - 15 in all - 6 of them girls. One son is married. They expect a boy today making one of my half-sisters a grandmother for the first time.
* * *
I've a list of things I didn't do yesterday to avoid doing the thing that has priority, which is to start writing a chapter I've agreed to write for a friend's book. As soon as I'm poised to start, displacement activities present themselves. Yesterday it was our garden - which Lin and I set to weeding removing and bagging that hairy plant which looks like Borage but isn't as well as lots of Sticky Bobby, dandelion, nettles and wayward couch grass. Lin tended the fish. Amy, back from work, helped. Other errands presented themselves. I phoned Mum. She's optimistic about the sale of the home we've visited since 1966. "If they go ahead and buy it the place will be as it should be - full of children". In 1973, returned from America and looking for work I took refuge in the Highlands and made a swing for the local children that hangs on a tree by the house with a view over Strath Nairn. It was used a lot but I've only needed to repair it twice in 30 years. Now it may be used again. These are hopes.
Lin and I chatted last night about whether life was better here or in Corfu. It's not a choice that interests me, wanting to be part of both - but I started the conversation because here we allow ourselves to be enveloped in news as we don't in Greece. What's the difference between being conscientiously in-touch with the human condition and overloaded with evidence of trouble? "Should we take a fortnight in Corfu before September?" we wondered.

The climbing rose - Jour de Gloire - from the garden in Handsworth has a delicate scent better than anything from a bottle.

Brompton in our garden in Birmingham

Black Brompton in our garden

This bicycle was mailed to Corfu and is the one I've used for getting around there. I was able to cycle 15k from Corfu city up to Democracy Street without walking the bike - so well graded is the route. I took rests - especially on the hill above Pyrgi - and was refreshed by the locally made ginger beer. A green Brompton - a later model - is my transport of delight in UK.

* * *
I've been rivetted to a book of essays edited by Mark Mazower. 'After the War was Over. Reconstructing the Family, Nation and State in Greece, 1943-1960'. "If any era deserves the epithet 'tragic' then it is the 1940s in Greece" writes one reviewer. "Given that the volume aims to showcase cutting edge research, it inevitably raises as many questions as it answers, pointing productively if perhaps rather untidily in numerous directions." h
My interest is not new. My Dad's second marriage to Maria in Athens in 1948 made half my family Greek and gave me three more sisters, a brother and a habit of unembarrassed kissing in public. My step-mother died in November 2005 and lies with her husband in All Souls, Kensal Green Cemetery. This portrait by her first husband Yiannis Moralis hangs in the National Gallery of Greece