Picnic at Execution Island

We’re hoping to get at least one side of the apothike roof tiled before we leave for England on Wednesday. The weather is warming up at last. By our standards it's getting especially hot on the roof. * * *
On Thursday we went on Summer Song to Gouvinon Island, also called Lazaretto - Λαζαρέτο - and before that Aghios Dimitrios, about 3.5 sea miles SSE of Ipsos. About to drive from Ano we found our front tyre flat.
"We're jinxed" mutters Lin.

Του Σωματείου «ΛΑΖΑΡΕΤΟ»

The jetty

I couldn’t believe the small ‘get home’ spare. Even tho’ reassured by Yianni, our car hirer, we got a lift from Honey and Alan to the harbour. A slight south breeze allowed us to sail gently along the coast in nearly the right direction, past Dassia, Dafnila and little Cape Kommeno, from where we could glimpse the island’s concrete jetty facing the shore opposite Gouvia. With Summer Song’s shallow bilge keels bumping the soft weedy bottom, we moored at its head using fenders and a spring to keep our bow from scraping. We laid out squabs to enjoy a picnic on the jetty below a red earth path leading into the woods. Then, cresting the gentle slope, we came upon ranked crosses on spaces too small for individual graves, nearly all dated 1948 or 1949. Beyond was a chapel being restored, close to a larger building, also being restored and added to – elevator, plumbing and cesspool - with a European sign reporting a €314k project – a place to tell a local story of people killing one another. It was a pretty place, difficult to leave with a freshened north breeze pushing the boat onto the shallows. Alan on the jetty hauled us round to catch the wind.

I sailed into deeper water leaving him momentarily abandoned, then circled back so he could leap aboard at the bow as we headed north, leaning to the wind, for a delightful passage home – tacking up the coast on small blue waves.

Note: With even the trustiest of sources it’s inconsiderate to speak of other people’s history – Australian or Greek or English - in their presence. It’s one thing to be invited, within friendship, to share understanding; another to presume to impart the case for the truth to someone you are only starting to know. I regret my tactlessness. I need to be more alert to the possibility that liberal inquisitiveness can be experienced as overbearingly impolite.

The wall on Execution Island

* * *
 E-mail to JM in Australia:

Dear John. I realise that the quikpod is a sort of autobiographical tool - so that you can include yourself and anyone with you in your narrative. The old way is the timed shutter - click, dash and smile and find you've cut off your head in the picture (:)) Since you went the wisteria you and Annie wired up for us has been making steady progress in a variety of directions. A friend tells us it takes 7 years for rhizomes to appear on a new planted wisteria, so we've about five more years to wait. I've bought a spare battery and charger so as to have a starter back up for the boat. Fingers crossed. There have been lots of grumbles here about health services and the delay in the completion of new hospital that you may recall seeing at Kontokali by the main road. One problem is staffing with sufficiently qualified medics and para-medics. Thinking about this I realise that sustaining a fully staffed modern hospital (e.g. to meet the ever-rising health expectations of Greeks as well as a x-European and even global population of potential visitors and expat residents) is a wicked problem on an island of around 107,000 residents. Lin and I were thinking on Birmingham's excellent health support (by and large) but it serves a city and outlying population of more like 6 million. Instead of grumbling we should be wondering about what is actually a feasible level of health provision - what can be sustained. Corfu presents many generic dilemmas about what makes a sustainable community. Have you had permission to yet to use the XY video? How are you doing on film processing - capturing, downloading, editing, compressing? I guess all the video Annie made while here would be good material for honing skills. The ESRC bid that Jonathan Davies and I put together for looking at relations between officials (in Birmingham) and a variety of lobbying group representatives to explore power asymmetry (hierarchy) in what perhaps has been envisioned, rather too easily among New Labour policy-makers to be distributed power (heterarchy) has come together well, though if we're successful work will not start until mid-2010. Thinking about the XY film, I realise how vital is your knowledge of the political context (the 'reading') within which the conversation occurs - not least because it includes, implicitly, a feel for relations of power in the council's political environment. Love from both of us to both of you

* * *
Tuesday morning. Had fresh lightly scrambled eggs on toast for breakfast; then to Lin, just waking, in my best Stephen Fry butler “His lordship is taking tea on the balcony and wonders if you’d care to join him, my lady.” “We better get on with the roof” says Lin. * * * Using the new charger I’ve bought I checked there was a full charge in the spare battery I’ve also bought from Kostas Zervos at Auto Service Electric in Pyrgi to have a reliable back up starter for Summer Song. Dave says “…and get him or his dad, Spiros, to give your starter motor a good overhaul”. It’s ridiculous to be so dependent on electricity, where in other boats I’ve had a pull start outboard or a motor that starts with a handle; a flat battery and your stuck. Well not entirely, but calm is so prevalent in the tideless sea beset by calms where fore and aft mooring is the norm and Lin, who’s sailed with me in the fuller seas of the West Country insists “I just want our boat to take us on picnics.” We’re planning, based on the Thursday forecast, an excursion with Alan and Honey, to ‘sail’ (I wish) few miles south to Gouvinon Island, known as ‘Execution Island’ for its doleful use in the recent past; also as a lazaretto for quarantining people with contagious diseases. It seems there’s a jetty there we could use if it’s too messy or deep to anchor “I don’t want to anchor anyway” says Lin “I want to see the island” “Yeah, well me too”.
* * *
Monday. “Let’s start tiling the apothiki today.” I phoned Alan about mix.”Four to one plus lime replacement – they’ll have that stuff at Tzavros”. We went to a sand and cement supplier opposite the marble factory on the Sidari road and paid €9 for 25k of cement and four sacks of sand and rather more for 5 litres of Durolit. We’ve never tiled a roof, so needed to figure how to position the many sized thigh tiles and where to apply our mortar, and even how to get on the roof to lay the tiles.

* * *

PASOK have made an interesting choice for their spokesperson on the environment in Spyros Kouvelis, only elected to Parliament in September 2007 after fortuitously getting elected from PASOK's state-wide list, partly as a result of ND calling a snap-election hardly a month after that year's devastating fires. 8 May Athens News describes his newness to government, though as an environmentalist he's not new to politics. Thrasy Petropoulos' op-ed ends describes how Kouvelis' thinking on environment policy differs from the current environment and public works minister, Yiorgos Souflias.

"Take his recent town-planning scheme for Attica...In it you have a whole load of sound principles until you come to the implementation level. An example is Mesogia - in eastern Attica - where we are effectively developing a whole new city of one or two million people. The first thing I would do there is put an end to the suburban sprawl. I would think that that should be the number one priority of the scheme. I would like to make suggestions and corrections to the plan but, unfortunately, I cannot. I have to turn it down flat, which doesn't help anybody."

Dawn at Ano Korakiana

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Sitting in our kitchen in Birmingham on an early October morning and thinking of the sun that would have risen some hours ago over Greece, over Corfu warming the houses of Ano Korokiana along Democracy Street. * * * In my mail on return from Greece was an A4 page of notes from Lindsay H from Bookbane who had borrowed my copy of Mark Mazower's, edited, After the war was over (Princeton 2000):

Simon. I pressed on, did my duty to read fourteen Princeton post-graduate essays written by students keen to advance their careers. 'Moral praxis', 'Anomie', 'Habitus', 'topos', and the 'clientelistic ladder' - I did it for you Simon! I read of 'the Stalinist regime' in Northern Epirus (Albania) and yet persisted when I could have been reading a William book. Useful facts (that could easily have fitted on one side of A5) gleaned: - the British took Communist prisoners to concentration camps in East Africa - Indians did most of the fighting - the plebiscite was rigged - the battle of Athens was between 'ELAS and the British' - EAM/ELAS brought justice and 'the benefits of civilisation and culture' to the mountains - 'Communist massacres' in the text turn out 'highly biased' or 'unnrecorded' in the notes - the British army at the end of 1944 was 'sent to crush the ELAS forces' and recruited fascists - compare that with 'parliamentary replies' to Gallagher's question. NOTE: When I was 19 I attended the demonstration outside the Greek Embassy against Queen Frederika. This became the famous NCCL 'half-brick' case when detective-inspector Challenor was found guilty of planting evidence on one arrestee. He was declared insane, confined for three months and released cured. Later C Georgion, General Secretary of the Greek Electrical Workers Union was hanged with Attlee's approval. Lindsey

So while criticising Mazower's and his colleagues' 'liberal' text as I anticipated he extracts 'useful facts'. Googling 'Challenor' I found Martin Short's book on Masonic influence in the police:

'...Det. Sgt Harry Challenor, a West End Central officer who planted knives, hatchets and iron bars on dozens of innocent citizens...His undoing came in 1963 when he framed a cluster of young men who had been demonstrating against a visit of Queen Frederika of Greece. He claimed that pieces of brick had been found in their pockets, presumably to throw at the Queen or at the policemen guarding her hotel. The accused were all cleared, eventually, because no brick dust could be traced in their pockets. Challenor himself was now put on trial for conspiring to pervert the course of justice... Challenor was found unfit to plead and detained in a mental hospital at Her Majesty's pleasure...'

And now I'm watching The Lives of Others - a riveting film about miserable East Germany stewarded by the Stazi, wondering how Lindsay can be so loyal to communism, even though he's often right about the vile behaviours of so-called anti-communists [a comment below reminded me that because every system has its rogues this needn't define communism or capitalism]. I've just read a text by Daniel Chomsky about bias in the New York Times implying that Nicholas Gage, in his understandable loathing for the communists who killed his mother Eleni outside her village of Lia in Epirus, became almost nostalgic for the anti-communism of the military regime of the Colonels, and as a result sought to influence the NYT's views against the PASOK government of the 1980s, as they restored the pensions of ELAS veterans who'd fought the Nazis, bringing them back from exile and restoring their citizenship (pp 587-590 in Daniel Chomsky, The mechanisms of management control at The New York Times, Media, Culture and Society, Vol 21 pp. 579-599, Sage 1999) * * * 7/10/07 Simon Baddeley wrote to Eleni Gage:

Sorry to bother you. Where is your father’s website? Excuse me if he is unwell or for some good personal reason has decided to go off the internet. Yours sincerely, Simon Baddeley

8/10/07 13:25 Eleni Gage replied:

I'm not sure what's happened to his website. I am ccing him so you two can communicate directly. Thanks, Eleni

13/10/07 Simon replied

Dear Eleni Thank you so much for your swift reply. You must have so many e-mails from strangers! I was, like so many others, deeply affected by the story of your grandmother. I came to Nicholas Gage's book after reading your book that celebrates, not reconciliation (there can be none for such evil) but a brave and happy recovery (as for all of Greece) from terrible times for 'the wondrous land' and its people. I wondered if your father had 'gone off air' because of feelings that some well-intended attempts at political reconciliation have led to a muting of the passionate anger that infuses your father's quest - so that he is unjustly accused of 'hate' and 'vengefulness'. The cruelty inflicted on his mother meant the more he learned the more he must have entertained those feelings (engendering them in me as one of his many readers) but he did the bravest of things, which was to resist acting on those feelings, when the opportunity arose. Your father conquered hate without sentimental forgiveness of the unforgivable. Forgiveness and reconciliation (healing tho' these things can be) were not options in this case. Regardless of the ideologies involved, the killing of his mother was a great evil, not to be morally diluted by the fact that so many others suffered similar fates. Because Nicholas Cage had the courage, tho' he does not see it that way, to draw back from personal retribution, part of him, according to his writing, felt continued anger and hatred as well as grief. He reproaches himself for not doing enough, when actually what he did was more than enough. He broke the cycle - surely was the truest 'revenge'. I respect the courage of his choice. I admire the honesty with which he describes his feelings. I feel compassion for his continued pain. Had your father tried to settle this account violently, he would have fulfilled the prediction of George Seferis, that 'blood brings blood and more blood'. and you would have found it very difficult - perhaps impossible - to create your unsentimental, happy, funny and generous book about Lia. 'Eleni' and 'North of Ithaca' are one piece of work. How pleased and proud your grandmother would surely have been. Yours sincerely, Simon

On 15/10/07 13:25, Eleni Gage replied

Thanks for such a thoughtful communication--I will save it. Your words mean a great deal to me and I will forward this to my father, too. I hope all is well with you, Eleni

Burning Greece

In Birmingham it rains and rains. Meanwhile in the wondrous land I read about ferocious flames fanned by gales burning the northern outskirts of Vagelis' Gotham City - destroying the suburban homes homes of Nea Penteli, Melissia and Vrilissia, blackening the slopes of green Penteli. The meltemi drove destruction down the mountain. People threw belongings into their cars, fleeing the fire and the explosions of propane gas boilers. Planes dropped water as Athens broiled. "Strong winds and smoke have hampered our efforts," said Evangelos Falaras for the Greek Fire Brigade. "We can't zero in on the flaming region. So, much water is falling off target" shorting power cables. Penteli was burned by arsonists in the mid-1990s. Reforestation had transformed the region into one of the last areas of greenery accessible to Athenians.

I'm beginning to understand why it's so difficult to obtain proper maps in Greece - ones with details of planning intentions, of the kind I and other lobbyists have been able to refer to when campaigning to save green space from the political pressures to build on parks, playing fields and allotments. Maps are political - but in Greece they are too political. Greek land has constitutional protection, but its use is not, so far as I know, defined in detailed land use 'bibles' prepared every 20 years or so to link land use or what we now call spatial strategies to maps of an area - what we call Local Development Plans, Unitary Development Plans or Structure Plans.

Perhaps I should be pleased we have no constitution - since our legal system is a living thing based on precedent and practice; not fixed in the amber of grand language. I'm sure sophisticated maps exist of all Greece - for military purposes at least - but most people are without access to detailed maps of the kind that could be pinned on a wall at a public meeting or laid across tables in a kafenion or someone's sitting room where it's implications can be debated. Citizens cannot inspect zoning plans for an area. A senior researcher at the Forest Research Institute - who wanted anonymity - suggested to one Agency (SPIEGEL ON LINE NEWS "Forests don't vote" 17/07/07) that Greece’s forest management policies are a contributing factor. Forest protection is written directly into the Greek Constitution, so it is difficult to rezone forest land for other uses - even on the edge of growing cities like Athens. There are no official maps indicating the boundaries of forests, so once trees have been reduced to ash, developers claim land. Desire for land to build on may lead to arson. "This is the heart of the problem. Politicians, though, would never touch it. It wouldn't be so difficult to provide good maps, but they don't want to because there are so many votes involved.”

Elections are in September. Will 'unofficial rezoning' figure at the ballot box? How can local and national politicians make this into an election issue. It can't just be a national issue because the land market in Greece is driven by international custom - look at us! This is why I'm pleased that our home in Corfu is deep in the sokaki, but even so we are having an impact on the character of Ano Korakiana.

No man is an island. Isn't it ironic that someone at their computer screen in Greece can call up the detailed structure plan for any area of England and even lobby local politicians about a local plan in my street in Birmingham, but I cannot do the reverse. This is the best plan I can get of Ano Korakiana from the Municipality of Faiakon in Corfu. I love to look at it for what it reminds me of the beauty of this place, but it's as much use for land use planning as a glamour pin-up for an abdominal surgeon:

But see: THE GREEK NATIONAL STRATEGY TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT and official opinion from Greece on EUROPEAN SPATIAL DEVELOPMENT PERSPECTIVE (ESDP), and National Reporting on Greece to the Twelfth Session of the COMMISSION on SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT of the UNITED NATIONS. The critical thing is the adoption of professional analyses and prescriptions by political heavyweights. Looking through agency reports the President made the environment a key note headline in July, and there have been statements during the height of the fires from ND, Pasok and KKE leaders but I didn't see anything about strategy. It's more about visits to shake hands with emergency workers rather than meetings with planners. Kapodistrias-2 for the reform of local government is significant, but such things provide no photo opportunities. This is not to knock politicians, but it is to express hopes for Kapodistrian style statesmanship, managerialism, detail detail detail - driven by political will. How do you make a Structure Plan sexy?