Planning

Theodroa, my mother, aged 10 months in Dec 1917

We are holding a memorial to celebrate my mother's life on 8 December. With hardly a fortnight to I was at a loss as to who might lead the service. In the loo at home in Birmingham. I picked up a paperback Digger’s Diary: Tales from the Allotment by Victor Osborne. Mum sent it to me a while ago. Out of it dropped the letter she'd included.

I searched William Mather in Fortrose on the Black Isle. Found his phone. He'd seen the announcement of Mum's death in The Times. He agreed at once to help. A few days later we'd worked up a service order - welcome, prayers, hymns, readings, tributes and music; our Richard to do the design and arrange printing.
Having read the service draft he asked me over the phone "Any reason why it's so Christian?"
"A letter dropped out of a book. Serendipity. William's known mum for years. It will not be a stranger speaking about her"
What had been strange was that the celebrant recommended by William T Fraser had not got in touch, despite a second phone call and an assurance he'd ring me back. I'd originally explored a humanist emphasis; had several phone conversations with a most pleasant sounding celebrant, but I even before I began to check family consensus mum's letter dropped on the floor. It wasn't an instruction from mum. She was too bored by the business of funerals to have left instructions on that score. William turned up as a godsend.  After we'd met at Brin Croft for a cup of tea i sent him an email:

Dear William. This is the man who was our Dad - John Baddeley CMG - who later married Maria Roussen with Bay and me and our half Greek siblings. And this is the man Mum lived with for the formative years of our upbringing - Jack Hargreaves OBE - who later married Isobel. I wrote about my stepfather for Wikipedia.And here are some films I made of our mother in the last 18 months. They may give you a flavour beyond what you already know of her life and character - A memory of the Blitz in London; and Mum's memories of coming with Angus Burnett Stuart to live in and love the Highlands - especially Mains of Faillie in Strathnairn
Those films were short. This one is longer and I’ve already overloaded you with things, but they are Mum's recollections of Clavering the village where Bay and I were born, of her leaving a cloistered nannied urban world to accompany her mother’s project of starting up Mill End Dairy Farm in the early 1930s. Kindest regards, Simon 

Part of William's reply: ...I went through all the marvellous films you sent me. I like them very much. Some wonderful insights and reflections. It was lovely just hearing her talk about the Blitz, about coming to Scotland and her joy at remembering so many very happy times at Mill End. It has helped me understand her much better, for which many thanks. The films are a wonderful resource for your family. I think overall my job at the service will be one of ensuring everybody who wants to say something can do so and to enable it all to flow smoothly. I will obviously say something too but it will be in the light of all the other poems, tributes and readings - and of course with an awareness of available time! All the best. William

Meantime the dire routines of probate continue. The inevitable certification, disassembly and temporal assessment of a life. The other morning in my hotel room in Hounslow, despite a warning notice, one foot slid out from beneath me on a semi-circle of hard line outside the shower. I fell backwards half in and out of the cubicle one leg bent under me. I cursed in fright and lay sprawled there for a moment as the shock dispersed, checking if I'd hurt myself. When I've fallen with my bicycle - so rare I recall each time - I've rest a moment on the road to check if I’ve damaged anything. Mostly it’s no more than a graze, if that, and I’m up and away - waking with an ache or two next morning. Now I feel more or less alright one moment; then I think of something from the universe of things and a pang wrenches me and passes like a word I can't remember.
*** *** ***
An email to friends my mother made in India in 2005:

Dear Martin and Annie. I thought you would want to know that my mum Barbara who so much appreciated meeting and knowing you and Annie died on 1 November’12.
She was in that happy group whose bodies gave out long before their mind, lucid until three days before she left us, holding mine and my sister’s hand in her own bed in her own home, she wound down like a grand old clock. As she said, irritated, by her difficulties getting about in the last year “Being old isn’t for the young. It’s ruddy hard work”.
We are full of grief. It is almost impossible - but thank goodness not quite - to imagine life without her here. She had a wonderful happy adventurous life. Enviable really and for that long life we’ll remember her far more than for her death - which although she was as brave as anyone I can imagine, turned up as an extremely vexatious interruption of her many plans. Her diary for 2012 remains replete with intentions as did all her previous ones - most of them realised.
I hope you are all well. I will forever recall mum on your roof at Tikli with her mobile having to pretend to her ailing husband Angus that instead of being in the centre of India she was with us in Birmingham for a week. She could be quite naughty but with good intentions.
We saw mum off at a small private ceremony on 9 Nov and I’m organising a memorial service for her with lots of help on 8 December in Inverness. Love S 

Dear Simon and Linda. Sad but true. It had to happen. Even God is dying.
And so, as you point out so poignantly, it is the life and not the death that is the measure of a person, and few have reached greater heights of intellectual, moral and social achievement and wisdom and stamina than dear Barbara, giving such pleasure to all who came in touch with her. Her memory still echoes round her courtyard and it easy to imagine her sitting bolt upright in bed in the pink room, having her breakfast. And then we read of moving house, by herself, at an age when most have gone. Those two memories are quite indelible. That hole will probably not be filled for a long time. One can only marvel at having known such people and be thankful and use them as role models to lift our modest lives in the daily round...We sympathise enormously with you in this inevitable loss and envy you your amazing experience with her. with love. Martin and Annie

****** ******
Friday morning was bright. I cycled along the canal into town with Oscar; wandered through the crowds milling about the German Market looking for my daughter and grandson. Then I saw them...

sunlit. I knew she'd turn her head and held up my hand in a waiting wave. I treated myself to Glühwein - ridiculously expensive at £4 a mug. I had two. Oscar wandered through the crowds, he keeping an eye on me, I on him. Amy's baby club were sat around The River - what's generally called the Floozie in the Jacuzzi.

I tried to remember the names of as mum's and babies but as soon as I'd got four names in my head the fifth introduction drove the first one out.
Later we strolled down to the Chinese Quarter for a late lunch with Richard and Emma; Oliver being passed between us. Oscar lay in the pannier just in sight outside, covered with a scarf and towel.

These autumn evenings. Indoors warm. Outdoors damp chill and often wet; long johns, wicking vests, thick shirts, neck warmers, jumpers, gloves, waxed cap and protection against rain. With dusk the city sky goes like Chiba's dead channel; sulphurous loom reflecting off the overcast. Oscar runs beside me along the Mainline towpath skirting the long shallow puddles through which I cycle until I turn under the West Coast line rail bridge onto the Soho Loop by factory walls precisely mirrored in the limpid waterway.
*** *** ***
Saturday morning I went to the allotment. It had rained through the night. The sky was blue again, bright sunny but everything well-soaked. Robin's plot was still pooled with water; rain trapped by the concrete edges of his plot.
"I want to give up this plot." he said "Take the one next to yours from which Imram's disappeared, after a week's frantic work in May."
"Good idea. We can help each other. Chris has given up his plot on the other side of our - Plot 15. he's sharing mine. Makes sense."
I started tidying, pruned back Buddleia, cleared stalks, cut and bagged some ragged spinach, dug out a depressingly small number of tiny potatoes, and picked two cabbages that looked fat enough to serve with a couple of meals.
"Imagine if we had to live off this plot!" I said "My god I've got a way to go."

Cycling along our road between allotment and home I pass yet another front garden being dug away to create a frontage for cars. I seethe with unspoken indignation but also some original thought spurred by my two years' learning about trying to grow my own.

"You know" I say to myself "these houses are often bought by people on divergent trajectories. I'm metropolitan - urban to the core - for all my sentiments and experience of the countryside from childhood; my grandmother's farm where I was born; the long television career of my stepfather making Out of Town entertainingly preoccupied with the disconnect between men and the land that followed WW2 and the mechanisation of agriculture; my childhood enjoyment of riding, shooting and fishing over the most beautiful landscapes of Britain. It's only very recently I've begun to get a flavour - a mere soupçon - of the arduousness demanded of anyone who must grow food to eat; growing in a way of people who do it to feed their families and stay alive. It's been a horrid wet year. Everyone on the Victoria Jubilee admits to that; grumbling about the onion fly and the slugs and the enduring summer rain of June and July. No wonder those of my neighbours now making their lives in the city, but who are still rural at the core, who've descended from generations of men and women who've struggled to work the land, labouring with intractable soil, pests and weather, rents and landlords; no wonder they want to be free of everything that hints at the forces of nature  - trees, climbers, shrubs, grass! Nature sheds leaves, branches, twigs, clinging wetly to feet and walls, blowing into damp heaps that collect and rot in inaccessible corners, spreading dirt and the memory of rural oppression. There may be pride in forefathers, but there's not an ounce of sylvan sentiment. No wonder these descendants of farmers and peasants hire diggers, chain-saws, earth skips, weed killers and pesticides; defending their tidy homes from nature, taming her with pots and vases, ensuring what once sprung from the earth is dried, faked or portrayed only in decor; framed and engraved. Anything to do with soil and agriculture and farming carries displeasing memories; something to be forgotten and rejected with those sentiments of environmentalists who've never set a hand to a plough, raised an axe, hoed stony ground and watched the weather; rather the demonstrable achievement of a comfortable spotless reliable automobile; its scent of internal tidiness and security; a climate controlled interior of dogless carpets and hairless furniture; well-polished floors unsmirched by muddy shoes, and a walled garden of brick, concrete and decking with a patch of well mown lawn to keep the devil nature at a distance, better enjoyed on screens, admired in glossy magazines, and gazed upon from new and well-maintained roads. All the same I wish people would not get rid of their front gardens...

Royal Horticultural Society booklet on urban front gardens

Once home I continued tidying the garden, raking and bagging clammy leaves, cutting back more Buddleia and wayward foliage blocking the path to the composter. This is a scruffy time of year. Our garden's soggy with the teeming rain I heard as I read in our warm bed last night. Amy arrived with Oliver mid-afternoon. We had a good chat with Liz and the terriers in Scotland.

I'm getting used to having Ollie around, still opting out of my full contribution to constant care.  Some of the time he stood, other times sat and he even slept amid our incomprehensible comings and goings, in the large Koochi travelcot generously given by our neighbour Charles, that, when Guy had come round for supper and left with Oliver, easily folded into a dinky cuboid hardly more than 2' x 8", while Amy and Lin set to wrapping and boxing Christmas presents for distant relatives. The rain returned as I headed for bed, reading le Carré's Our Kind of Traitor.

News: Flooding across the UK ...torrential rain batters UK...at least 800 homes in England and Wales have been flooded in recent days...10,000 more at risk...Environment Agency has issued 490 flood warnings and alerts as rivers continue to rise and rain saturates the ground....

...and Lydbrook, our village in the Forest of Dean, is inundated, not just Lower Lydbrook from the Wye at its foot but from the Lyd overflowing its culverts as far up the hill as The Jovial Colliers in Upper Lydbrook. The irony, our neighbour up Bell Hill far above the deluge, has phoned to say they've lost their main water supply, and no-one from the water company can recall the run of the supply from the mains.

The Citizen ~ 26 Nov'12: An overnight deluge left a Forest of Dean village under 3ft of water as flooding wreaked havoc across the county. Relentless rain throughout Saturday night left businesses, homes and cars submerged in Upper Lydbrook. Gloucestershire Fire and Rescue were scrambled to the scene at 8am yesterday and 10 people had to be rescued by raft as the main road was transformed into a river. At the Jovial Colliers Inn water levels reached waist height. Jamie Woods, who lives there and whose parents run the pub, said: "We went to bed and there was about a foot of water, then I came down on Sunday morning and it was around my waist." Forest of Dean district councillor Bruce Hogan (L, Lydbrook and Ruardean) lives in the village.  He said: "The road was like a brook, it was grim. The water level just kept rising and rising by about an inch every 10 minutes. I've never seen anything like it before."

*** ***
Kathimerini 26 Nov'12: Eurogroup summit on Greek debt go to the wire...'The outlook for Greece receiving crucial rescue funding, and a solution for the sustainability of its huge debt mountain, remained unclear late on Monday after nearly 10 hours of talks between eurozone finance ministers in Brussels though officials indicated that an agreement was expected to be reached ultimately. At around 10 p.m., sources told Kathimerini that talks were expected to continue for at least another two hours but that a solution would likely be thrashed out “one way or another.”'

*** ***

On November 26, 1943, 118 Greek hostages... members of the local community in Sparta, were executed in German reprisals in Monodendri, Laconia. The victims were hostages already picked out by local hooded informants collaborating with the occupiers. Among those shot was the doctor and general surgeon of Sparta, Dr. Christos Karvounis. Orestes Varvitsiotes' wrote a poem to mark the event:



Οι 118
Παίζαμε στον κήπο με τ΄ άλλα τα παιδιά(*)
και την Ειρήνη που τα φύλαγε και τα φρόντιζε,
όταν ξαφνικά κοκκάλωσε η γης,
μαύρισε ο ουρανός, σταμάτησε ο χρόνος.
Τα τραγικά μαντάτα πέσανε σαν κεραυνός
και διαδόθηκαν σαν αστραπή,
περνώντας από στόμα σε στόμα,
από πόρτα σε πόρτα, από σπίτι σε σπίτι:
"Σκοτώσανε τους φυλακισμένους οι Γερμανοί!"
Κι ακούγονταν τα ονόματα αδελφιών, πατεράδων,
συγγενών, φίλων, γνωστών και αγνώστων...
Άκουσε ο Ήλιος τα φριχτά μαντάτα
και κρύφτηκε στα σύννεφα ντροπιασμένος.
Ο ταύγετος έσκυψε θλιμμένος το κεφάλι.
Ο Ευρώτας δάκρυσε σιωπηλός.
Ο Πάρνωνας ορκίστηκε εκδίκηση
(αυτός τους είδε από κοντά τους νεκρούς
σε μια πλαγιά του ξαπλωμένους).
Η Σπάρτη κουκουλώθηκε να μην ακούει
το κλάμα, τις φωνές, τον πόνο, τις κατάρες.
"Σκοτώσανε τους 118 οι Γερμανοί
στο Μονοδέντρι".

ΟΡΕΣΤΗΣ ΒΑΡΒΙΤΣΙΩΤΗΣ

Progress on the plot

June 2010

It's not impressive compared to the way some have cultivated their plots, already into a second season, but as a beginner I'm pleased with what I've learned and what I'm learning. The first fruit from the soil here wasn't from our plot but from Chris Rishworth's beside ours who emailed from a distant place asking us to pick his strawberry crop as it came ripe. We harvested two delicious bowls to enjoy on successive evenings with cream and little sugar.

I came home at the end of Monday afternoon having dug over the whole surface of our plot. Robin emailed me, part of a running chat we're having about the tools we use and sometimes share:

All Hail to the Grim Reaper's tool that has fed our ancestors so well! Meanwhile there's another wonderful tool, that has been developed over centuries to a high level of sophistication by the natives of this region of the planet, to suit the specific local conditions.  It's called a fork.  The gardening equivalent of the Strad violin.  Wheels rarely need reinventing, even if people who work on the land are by definition a bit thick! It could be interesting to compare your weed situation in a year's time with mine.  Though I've only been in the food-growing business (in this part of the world) for 50 years so what would I know! Cheers, Robin (whose granddad had an Archers accent before becoming a pattern-maker (master craftsman) at Austin and later architect of many houses still very much in use 80 years on)

Dear Robin. Yes you are being far more thorough than I about weed removal and the results will be interesting. We are learning. My family - with the exception of my step-father - has been disconnected from farming for a couple of generations unlike some of our neighbours on the Victoria Jubilee Allotments. I'm laboriously learning that soil is complicated. As you work on it with hand tools you begin to get the inkling of a feel for things you didn’t know you didn’t know - not in an organised or theoretical way, what can be read in books about soil structure and contents, physics and chemistry – but the slow accretion of impressions from the weight and composition of the stuff as you lever it with a fork, heft it with a spade or bash at it with a mattock or azada, noting small things like worms, beetles and getting stung or bitten on one’s lower legs by smaller invisible beasts that have been inhabiting the mat of dock, grass, nettles and other things whose roots I’m trying to clear, along with the bricks, part bricks, large stones, chunks of rusty metal, old wood, plastic, glass, and china fragments from the mangled soup of topsoil that the developer first swept with their bulldozers, including all the old gardeners sheds and remaining bits and pieces from the old VJA plots, then simply shoved back*, with the same earthmovers, as working topsoil – a mêlée of all those old gardeners had constructed over a century on the original pastures of this small patch of Staffordshire.

The old VJA site  cleared in 2004 (Photo: Luke Unsworth)

I suspect that many of the variations current plotholders are recognising on their plots, by way of gravel or clay or sand content, have more to do with the building operations of the past decade than with the original soil, which I recall, from my wanderings around the VJA while helping campaign against its total loss to building, was much more like the soil on our plot – dark and friable, and by all accounts, since it had been skilfully tended for decades, highly fertile and without the debris that most of us are encountering as we tend our new plots on the new VJA. Best S

*Luke's photo shows that the clearance did involve separating soil and surface debris but this as we know from present gardeners' experience was an imperfect process.

June 2011

** ** **
Last Sunday afternoon our daughter phoned.
"We're having a barbecue at your place tonight. We'll bring the food."
Guy and Amy had already given us a gas BBQ cooker earlier in the week.  Now they were coming round to try it out for us.
"Can Liz and Matt come too?" asked Lin
"Call them"
So around 7.00pm we were a family and best friends party + Liz and Matt's dog Jess. A bit short of garden furniture my old Black & Decker workbench was used as an extra table. Tired from digging for three hours, it was so nice to be waited on.  Guy cooked; Amy and Richard served. We had sausages, spare ribs, pork belly draft - with cheese slices, lettuce, mushrooms and fried onions and bread rolls to make up beefburgers, followed by strawberries and cream, and there was wine and beer. After that I gladly did the washing up. Oscar dog resented Jess and sulked indoors, suffering from the unusually warm weather.

** ** **
We are getting ready for the third emergency meeting of the Central Handsworth Practical Care Project next Thursday, typing up and checking the minutes of the meeting on 16 June, and feeling good about the meeting on 23 June with Yvonne Wager and Jessie Gerald. Even though they've got no money to give work to the project, we believe they left our meeting feeling that the project is getting organised after the confusions left by Glynis Foley's death last August. Lin and Denise have been going through the finances, calculating what needs to be earned to insure enough surplus exists to keep the project's head above water.
** ** **
A report by Malcolm Brabant on feelings about the crisis in their country among traders, islanders and guests on Aegina.

*** ***
Aleko sends me this translation from the Ano Korakiana website entry for 27 June '11 - Χωρίς τους "βαρβάρους" (A reference to Cavafy?):

The general meeting of PAOK (scroll down my blog entry last August) took place showing that when confronted with problems and responsibilities our local representatives vanish, despite the fact that the responsible parties of the former Municipality of Feakon (now the responsibility of Corfu Municipality) with all their promises never brought to completion the work for the sports-grounds.

Ano Korakiana 'sports ground'

There was an intense feeling of good will towards this historic association throughout the entire meeting and it was quite emotional because they placed three of the founding members, Gianni Kourkoulos, Spiro Spiggos and Kosta Kourkoulos. Once again the problem of the athletic installations was one of the major issues. It was said that in 2003 the association after a proposal from the Municipality of Feakon, handed over a functioning stadium in order to upgrade it to an athletic centre, but in 2010 it received a half finished project, semi-destroyed and non functional installations suitable only for animals to graze upon. Finally after many problems they selected an executive board with the mandate from the General Assembly to deal with the above issues in the most efficient and effective way. The new governing body consists of : Savvanis Alekos, Zervopoulos Stefanos, Ionas Kostas, Metallinos Sevastianos, Metallinos Giorgos, Mandilas Fokion, Thimis Nikos, Savvanis Stamatis and Ionas Alekos.

Χωρίς τους υπεύθυνους  του τέως Δήμου Φαιάκων,  που παρά τις χρόνιες υποσχέσεις  τους δεν ολοκλήρωσαν τελικά τα έργα στο γήπεδο, αλλά και του νυν Δήμου Κέρκυρας και της Περιφέρειας, που έχουν πλέον την αρμοδιότητα, συνεχίστηκε χθες η Γενική Συνέλευση του ΠΑΟΚ, αποδεικνύοντας έτσι ότι, μπροστά στα προβλήματα και τις ευθύνες, οι τοπικοί μας εκπρόσωποι υπεκφεύγουν. Ο προβληματισμός για την τύχη του ιστορικού Συλλόγου υπήρξε έντονος σε όλη τη διάρκεια της Συνέλευσης, ενώ σε αρκετά σημεία φορτίστηκε και συναισθηματικά από τις τοποθετήσεις τριών εκ των παρισταμένων ιδρυτικών του στελεχών (Γιάννη Κούρκουλου, Σπύρου Σπίγγου και Κώστα Κούρκουλου). Το πρόβλημα των αθλητικών εγκαταστάσεων  αναδείχθηκε εκ νέου ως  το πλέον σημαντικό πρόβλημα, ακόμα και από τα οικονομικά του Συλλόγου. Όπως χαρακτηριστικά ειπώθηκε, το 2003 ο Σύλλογος ανταποκρινόμενος σε πρόταση του Δήμου Φαιάκων παρέδωσε ένα λειτουργικό στάδιο, προκειμένου να αναβαθμιστεί σε αθλητικό κέντρο και το 2010 παρέλαβε μισο-τελειωμένες εργασίες, ημι-κατεστραμμένες και μη λειτουργικές εγκαταστάσεις, κατάλληλες μόνο για βοσκή!!! Τελικά και μετά από πολλές αμφιταλαντεύσεις εξελέγη Διοικητικό Συμβούλιο με εντολή από τη Γενική Συνέλευση να χειριστεί με τον πιο αποτελεσματικό τρόπο τα παραπάνω προβλήματα.  Στη νέα πλέον Διοίκηση συμμετέχουν οι: Σαββανής Αλέκος, Ζερβόπουλος Στέφανος, Ιωνάς Κώστα, Μεταλληνός Σεβαστιανός, Μεταλληνός Γιώργος, Μάνδυλας Φωκίων, Θύμης Νίκος, Σαββανής Σταμάτης και Ιωνάς Αλέκος. 

Aleko added:

Dear Simon and Linda. Great to hear from you. The weather has settled and we are having temperatures of 28-32 degrees but for the past few days very high NW winds (maistro) force 5-8 which is very annoying! As you no doubt heard they re-shuffled the government and things are worse!!! Everything is going up from the 1st of September. VAT on foods to 23% from 13%, car tax, petrol, heating oil, house rates, private yachts etc, etc...