Blood and geography

Party for 75th Donors

I've been approached by a researcher from my own university and interviewed about blood. R is exploring relationships between blood and identity among blood donors who, like me, are O rhesus positive - the commonest type. We met and chatted in Starbucks, Colmore Row, for several hours. Seeing R's website I'm intrigued to see where this research will go and look forward to further involvement in her Phd. I'm up to 83 donations now. It feels easy, even enjoyable, and I've been doing it for so long and have become so accustomed to the process, I don't think about who gets my blood or the significance of the process of giving and receiving it. I'm thinking about it now and chatting to a researcher about this is a lot more interesting than the forced-choice phone MORI poll in which, by chance, I'd participated earlier in the day on my attitude to Information Technology. One felt like an exchange, the other like a donation - though MORI will give £20 to a charity of my choice in return for my participation. I chose RoadPeace. I realise now that a most significant event which I hardly remember because it was handled undramatically, at a dramatic time, was that Lin, who is Rhesus B negative, got a small jab at the time of Richard's birth, which prevented her creating antibodies that could, depending on our daughter's blood group, have been fatal to her when she was born four years later. A life threatening problem has now, through pre-natal data collection and minor intervention, become, to all intents and purposes, a non-problem. A fine example of the 'banality of good' * * * Had tea with Z this afternoon, at her house, where a guest room is ready for Dh. Our Iraki friend arrives at Heathrow soon. Friends, including Kate from CARA, will meet him at the airport and drive him to Birmingham. Z's away that day and so gave me spare keys and a briefing on turning on heating, rooms, cupboards, the shower and so on, before she returns later in the evening. This week I'll tighten up arrangements for Dh's arrival at the university the following day. He's survived daunting paperwork to get to the UK, and will now need to steer his wife and children here, while starting his Phd and finding campus accommodation for his family. * * * As well as Oscar, we have now got a tabby cat called Flea living here - a tiger in the house. She arrived temporarily a three months ago and looks as if she's decided to stay. She and Oscar co-exist by maintaining diplomatic distance. [CLICK on the picture of the cat and get ready to go 'Awwww!!' Then note the colour of the eyes. Definitely Greek, though whenever I think cat I think of Christopher Smart's cat Jeffry from Jubilate Agno - links there with Axion Esti. Richard's recent picture of Flea] An exchange with a Greek friend - CORFU KNICKERS CRISIS:

I get so much pleasure - and amusement - whenever I revisit your photos. I don't understand enough Greek to get all the humour but it feels infectious. We are recently returned from Corfu to enjoy some good rain, grey sky and chilly weather, and will return after Christmas. There was an 'incident' about which I wanted to ask your opinion, A young man called F has a sailing boat moored in xxx Harbour which he is fitting out. One day last month he hoisted his girl friend's knickers on the same halliard as his Greek courtesy flag (which foreign yachts always fly in Greek waters). 4 big policemen arrived in a 4 X 4 and asked his dad - living on another English yacht close by - if he knew who had done this crime. G said 'it's my son's boat'. Because F was under 21 his father is responsible for his son's actions and so he has been charged with a crime and must appear in court, probably in January 08. Do you know what is the best thing he should say in his and his son's defence? The pants were after all 'under' not 'above' the Greek flag and as soon as the police insisted the knickers - very very small ones - were immediately lowered. I know how important the Greek flag is to many Greeks but it is very difficult for British people to understand the meaning of the flag in Greek culture. I wondered if G could show your photo to the Judge (:)) Yours enjoyably, Simon

Reply:

hahahahaha! F is my personal hero! I fancy him! Go F go! That's what I would do if I were him! Much more things in life are more important than a 'patrida' and the love (sexual or emotional) for a woman is one of them! If F thinks his girlfriend is more important than any flag then he did all right hoisting her panties on that halliard! Go F! woohoo! stupid flags and what they represent! It is a tricky situation. Policemen in Greece are ummm... brutal, narrow minded, dumb and racists. If he (his father G) makes it to the court he should plead guilty and ask for forgiveness. The judge will not be harsh on him. Since that incident didn't make it to the news and there is no publicity to the matter it will be ok. The public opinion in Greece is against english tourists. But G can squeez himself through if he says something like 'F was drunk' or 'we just had it washed and we hoisted it up that sail to dry it'. I am not good at legal advice though! Mind me not! and yes he can show my foto to the judge. Hell, he can use my real name if he wants! But I don't know if this will help him! I hope it turns out good for G (and F)! Poor boy! hahahahahaha! knickers!

Reply:

Dear X. Your laughter is a breath of fresh air, Freedom!! Thanks for your mix of humour, sympathy and wise advice. Of course I won't show your photo - unless G faces death (:)) English people never get drunk, blasted, plastered, blotto, intoxicated, dipso, high, hammered, juiced up, pickled, legless or zonked, so the judge will not accept that excuse. 'We just had it washed ....' hahahahahahahahahahaha! That would be cheeky! I guess G could argue that when asked to take down the girl's knickers they were pulled down v.quickly. Do you think that would wash with the Judge? I just remembered that when those eccentric British plane spotters were in a bad place their Greek lawyer got them clemency when it was discovered there were also Greeks who indulged in the weird hobby of plane spotting (επισήμανση αεροπλάνων?). Much respect, Simon

Postscript to the above letter:

Friend. I am excited by this lecture about a play by Nikos Kazantzakis that I did not know about. As we left Venice for Greece on the ferry last February we met a man in leathers - a philosopher - on a motorbike travelling to Corfu. His name was Kapodistrias. I did not then know this name or what it meant. And then I read about the first governor of free Greece and his assassination. Then I read Kazantzakis after you had told me how you respected this writer but I did not know that in 1944 he had written a tragedy called Capodistria about the last few days in his hero's life, which said much about the paradox and tensions of modern Greek politics. Herete. Simon

The British are relaxed about their flag

'Blood brings blood': The courage to be liberal

'Blood brings blood and more blood' - a line from the work of the poet and diplomat George Seferis quoted in the first chapter of The Greek Civil War: Essays on a Conflict of Exceptionalism and Silences (King's College, London) organised and edited by Philip Carabott and Thanasis D. Sfikas. On the front page there's a black and white photo, dated 1948, of a boy balancing on a railway line. If he lives he'll be my age. Work is being done which could not be done earlier. Having found Mark Mazower and his co-writers, then John Koliopoulos and Thanos Veremis, and earlier the reference to George Seferis, I've now found Carabott and Sfikas. These fascinating investigations led by Greek academics inside and outside Greece is not popular in some quarters. Last night, on getting home from the West Country, I came across a review - the only review - of Greece: The Modern Sequel. I won't quote it all here since it's bookmarked (above):

A new anthropologic specie has planted its roots on the Greek soil that of the graecosaxon liberal historian. Its main traits are neutrality, a tremendous effort to accommodate everyone's needs and wants, by massaging events, distorting the true and cutting and pasting facts .... It is a book full of elegant lies, half truths, but not the brutal truth ... the British blockade of the Mediterranean was the major cause of starving the Greek people to death. (Robin Waterfield: Athens). Blockade that was enforced selectively to target the Greek people, while the Vichy France had all the Mediterranean supply routes open ... We will never learn who are these hypertrophied corrupted babbits*, their attributes, theirs connections and by what tide of times are washed out to mortgage the future of Greece. The chapter on ideology is so fraught with self hate and reflects so a desperate attempt to please Fukuyama or Huntington that we leave the review of this chapter to the psychiatrist ... The sorry arrogant egomaniacs pseudohistorians still remain as formidable a force in rewriting Greek history as the Corleones ever were in the Mob politics of Godfather ... this existence is more than enough to unleash the banality of Mob historicism and thus become a mouthpiece of the Orwellian Neo-History in the era of globalization

. My response:

How depressing it is to read the first review on Amazon of a book that attempts to tread so gingerly through such a politically charged field. This uncivil polemic claims that "a new anthropologic specie has planted its roots on the Greek soil that of the graecosaxon liberal historian." The authors are accused of "distorting the true and cutting and pasting facts". The reviewer has no tolerance for ambiguity; no hint of Tolstoyian confusion amid the fog of war. Against the evidence, he says the writers "never miss an opportunity to denigrate the Greek people". The idea that someone describing the country he or she loves might be self-deprecating, able to acknowledge that his country is not always right, seems outside the reviewer's moral scope, as is the paradox of unintended consequence and the work of fortunae in human affairs. The authors are accused of writing "a neat essay with a priori thesis and all loose ends tied together". In fact loose ends are regularly acknowledged by these authors, but if you can't achieve coherence you shouldn't put pen to paper, and certainly not seek a publisher. The reviewer continues. This is "a book full of elegant lies, half truths, but not the brutal truth." Here we go again - the fundamentalist who 'knows'. Such people so loath the uncertainty that is part of Popperian science that some have coined the oxymoronic slander - 'liberal inquisition'. How this reviewer hates the 'L'-word! Not for him the struggle to control the inescapable risk of bias or the conscious evasion of assumption based on class, origin, gender and all the other reasons for being opinionated in matters of high importance; no respect from this reviewer for the care brought by Koliopoulos and Veremis to arriving at a working approximation of what might have happened over the two centuries of their study of Greece; no sense that the authors are the first to admit that theirs is one of many interpretations - a sound working hypothesis; the nearest any of us can ever get to truth. In that humility the reviewer sees a disingenuous attempt to flatter as many readers as possible, rather than the caution of minesweepers. The reviewer excoriates "disconnected historians". Could it be that the most courageous researcher, even as he or she picks through shallow graves is struggling to see clearly through the haze of their own tears? ['But, the bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it' Thucydides] Contemptuous of the authors' liberalism, the reviewer criticises them for it accusing them of having "erased ... all references to leftist terror", claiming "no one word is uttered about the killing fields". I'm not sure we were reading the same book - or did Amazon edit a review copy? I challenge the reviewer to number the page where the phrase 'heroic communists' appears. The review increasingly loses direction in the way abusive rants can wander into capitalised words, underlined sentences and serial exclamations, followed by the non-signature of a poison pen. These "hypertrophied corrupted babbits*". Long words. "The chapter on ideology is so fraught with self hate and reflects so a desperate attempt to please Fukuyama or Huntington that we leave the review of this chapter to the psychiatrist." Longer sentences. Wasn't accusing people of being insane a way to attack the curiosity and doubt that accompany research? This unknown reviewer finds open-mindedness unforgiveable. The spirit of Socrates' accusers lives. "The sorry arrogant egomaniacs pseudohistorians still remain a formidable force in rewriting Greek history as the Corleones ever were in the Mob politics of Godfather." It was a great film but an innaccurate comparison. History is forever being rewritten with pen and paper or with keyboards on screens - hardly devices of the Mafia. "The banality of Mob historicism". Do I spy spittle at the reviewer's mouth? This book is "a mouthpiece of the Orwellian Neo-History". Koliopoulis and Veremis are doing what Winston did for Orwell's Ingsoc, serving totalitarianism: "If you want to imagine the future of humanity imagine a jack boot stamping on a human face for ever." Somehow I don't see Veremis and Koliopoulos, or for that matter Mazower and his co-writers or Carabott and Sfikas and their co-writers doing the goose step, joining in the morning hate and gazing on a benign portrait of Big Brother. This is not a perfect book. How could it be when we are still debating the Peloponnesian War and the veracity and method of its historian? Koliopoulis and Veremis have striven to be loyal to their fascinating subject without being partisan. The book's freshness is reflected in a number of typos - miniscule blemishes easily corrected in a second edition. I'm grateful the authors have striven to reach a vantage point that makes sense to a wider readership in this contested area. Neutrality is impossible and, if it means disinterest, undesirable, but some professional detachment is honourable when sifting through scenes so drenched in blood. Simon Baddeley

*'babbitts' - from the Sinclair Lewis character Art Babbitt, referring to timid, uncultured, middle-aged, middle-class businessmen.