Cycling to the top of Mount Pantocrator

I cycled from our house up to the top of Mount Pantokrator on Thursday. The first stretch, the 29 hairpin bend ascent to Sokraki was done in an hour – at the seventh bend is Ag Isadoras where I rested a moment, the step by the verge helping me mount my big bicycle for which I feel affection.

The road to Sokraki

On the twelfth or the fourteenth bend of the ascent I glimpsed a V-shaped patch of grey sea on the other side of the island. I took the gravel bypass round Sokraki, runnelled by rain, passing chickens who were chukkling from their coop above a bank
“The Prussians are on the ridge!” as a French aide said at Waterloo
“No, it was ‘in the woods’”
“Yes but those chickens were definitely on a ridge.”
I passed the petrol station, wound through to where the descent began, free-wheeled down past the small church of Peter and Paul, to the corner where at a corner before the bridge last spring Mark strolled off the road and saw a blackbird’s nest with eggs. We were driving in a convoy of three to have Sunday lunch at Palia Taverna in Strinilas. All about in this small plateau below Zygos are fields of vegetables. In Zygos there’s a tight turn off the road to Episkepsi, that winds up through the village on a gentler hill toward Sgourades. Here resting by an olive tree I could see mount Mikhalakadhes – 852 metres, 2700 feet – its flat top hidden in mist.

Mikhalakadhes over Sgourades

“Am I really going higher than that?"
"Yes you are”
Another kilometre, gently rising to meet the road between Ipsos, via Spartillas to Episkepsi, on the edge of Sgourades. I turned right into the village, passed through it and on even more gently rising to the junction where a small bus waits to transfer passengers from the bus between Corfu town and Acharavi and bring them to Zygos and Sokraki. Here a sign said 12 kilometres more to Pantokrator, 6 to Strinilas.  I’d imagined myself turning back here if the weather got too fierce or my strength was giving out after the climbs from Sokraki and Zygos but I was doing fine. Sensible about my pauses, drinks and snacks. This steady climb to Strinilas was the hardest of the journey; goal not in sight to give me encouragement. The free-wheel back via Spartillas with the small climb to Ag Markos almost tempting me. Cars passed with ease, their passengers stopping at a view point above, their passengers dawdling, filming and on their way before I came by. Stopped looking back at where I’d come, Zygos and in the distance Sokraki and the long green Trompetta ridge.

“That’s where I’ve been”
Vanley on digging the plot on the Victoria Jubilee said
“You’ve left a bit of a mess. Dig so you can see where you’ve been. It encourages.”
I sipped water, sucked a chunk of dark chocolate; heard a cuckoo call about twelve times. I’ve not heard one for years. This road to Strinilas goes on to Petalia and Lafki where it divides for Acharavi and New Perithia. It’s the last north-south route before the corniche that circles the jutting north east coast of Corfu. Pantocrator fills the space between. 
The next three kilometres I travelled steadily upwards, seeing, far away, the Old Fort’s two prongs, Corfu town, and the airport runway and the island winding south, until I turn a corner round the northern edge of Mikhalakadhes, by radio masts beside the road, and, like crossing a watershed, the island’s north coast fills the horizon, the Diapontian islands north westward, hidden, now and then, in mist.
So to Strinilas by 1045. Just beyond the village where a downward hill begins, I stopped for water and cut a thick slice off my dried sausage. Round the walled corner behind me walked a tall man with a walking stick and umbrella, in a black gown with long white hair and curling beard.
- Hullo.
- Hullo. Good food?
He laughed in welcome
- Yes. I’m going to Pantocrator (I think I said this right in Greek)
- I to Episkepsi
- I am 70
- I am 80
- You look good (feenise se kala - φαίνεσαι σε καλά – did I get that right?)
- Wait until I am 120
He bent at the waist, switched his brolly to his stick hand, pressed the other to his back, coughed and mimicked a trudge and smiled
- Goodbye
- Goodbye

He waved and walked on briskly, soon out of sight round a bend, and I, freewheeling down, thinking I’d catch him up, was surprised to see the road empty ahead. It doesn’t go to Episkepsi either but at 80 he knows the island from long before the motorcar spread. I guess he’d turned off on a clever track that crosses the valleys and ridges separating the divergent roads
“Probably a ghost” said Lin later
“He left me feeling very happy”
I turned sharp right below Strinilas, in sight of Petalia, for the last stretch of my journey. The wind was chillier. Over a hill, the rocky cone shape summit of Pantokrator loomed ahead then disappeared. At the foot of the cone the road turns too steep for me to pedal. I walked the final kilometre of zigs and zags, unworried by the effort now my goal was so close. A friendly couple in a hire car who’d passed me earlier, must have stopped for a meal in a village, saw me again and waved. I grinned back broadly. I had not been sure I could do this ride. I had places in mind for turning back but once started it was a pleasing mix of pain and anticipated pleasure – the thought of arrival and the thought of coming down. Close to the summit I wheeled past parked cars and strolling visitors, and up to the shop to greet Spiro. He reached to my hand. We shook. I felt delightfully proud of myself.
“How long did you take?”
“Three and half hours, but I’m 70. Have a drink?”
“No”
“Yes. What?”
“Metaxas”
I ordered two 5-star measures from the café and brought the brandy back into the warmth of the shop. Spilled them, cursed cheerily and at once bought two more - €16 (“Lin’ll love that”). Spiro pressed a box of Kum-Quat loukoumi from the shop on me refusing payment
“Yes”
”No”
“Yes. I insist”
“Not!”
We drank a toast and sucked the sweets.
“You shouldn’t have come in this weather”
“It’s only like this near the top”
The wind was moaning among the girders of the big radio mast in the centre of the monastery; the usual panorama – all the island’s compass points, Albania deep into her mountains and the Adriatic horizon appeared in sun brightened flashes between thick grey cloud carried on a cold gusting wind.
“I’ll light a candle, then head back”

I was under the bad weather as soon as I was below the summit again. On impulse I took a right down a gravel track and freewheeled gingerly on my road tyres down the east side of the mountain until I came to deserted Palea Sinies, burgeoning with brambles and ivy and wild flowers and paused for a picnic. I had the ruins of the old village and half the mountain to myself but for a herd of goat, bells tinkling, and an eagle heading south, and everywhere blackbirds and swallows. The track became smoother then abruptly metalled and I was in Vinglatoura where I changed an inner-tube with a slow puncture; a thorn inside the tyre; no visible point of entry. Back on the mainroad I pedalled through Barbati, Pyrgi and up to Agios Markos, Two glasses of village rosé, fresh bread, olives and oil at the Panorama Bar. Home by 6.

*** *** ***
From Tony in America:

Dear Simon, I think of you often as I listen to the BBC TV news every evening and hear about the political paralysis of Greece. Are you at Democracy Street now? An appropriate place to be at this moment!
What's it like? What is your bet that Athens will leave the Euro Zone? I'll bet they do.  I just don't see how Greece can become competitive again until they can devalue their currency to match their output. While Greece clearly needs reforming, I don't feel very sorry for all those European banks (especially German) who fed the Greeks with high price loans (like the subprime and credit card lending here) and now have to take a hit. (Very similar to the mortgage foreclosure problem here). but in both cases until the market can clear by writing off mortgage principal or devaluing the Greek currency, the economies will stagnate (in our case) or go spiraling down in the case of Greece. In the meantime the Germans are benefiting mightily by the depressed Euro in their exports. Merkel's arguments about austerity are so self-serving. The situation is very dangerous with the emergence of strong right-wing parties in many European nations.
Τhe basic problem is that Europe doesn't have the will to really integrate itself politically and economically - which is a pre-requisite for a unified currency.  Europe now is like the US under the Articles of Confederation. And we know that didn't work!  They have no equivalent of our Federal Reserve which can expand and contract demand without running up real debt. Even here, only a few such as Paul Krugman, see the real nature of this situation - that the function of a currency (is) to express demand and the ability to meet it; it is not the size of one's stock of gold.
Enough of my sermonizing. I am really writing this to find out how you and Greece are doing.
Last Saturday in our living room we had a glorious concert consisting of one of Ravel's Miroir, the Liszt piano sonata in B minor and the Rachmaninoff cello and piano sonata. Audience of about 40. It was amazing. H and I have been in a trance ever since. A young Canadian pianist and US 'cellist playing. If you ever see a concert with Cicely Parnas (cello) go to it. In a few years (she is 19 now) she will be the YoYo Ma of her generation.
How does it feel to be a grandfather?
Cheers to you and Lin,

Dear Tony. So good to hear from you. 'Listening' to the BBC in Connecticut! As though tuning to what you can trust in an occupied country. True enough. I wonder why I can’t buy radios set to BBC, specially in cars where you have to search through pop and cheer first. The concert sounds sublime. I think of you as a sage aristocratic family in a belovedly constructed estate in the heart of Britannia observing tradition, now and then hosting friends and family, some with rumours from Rome. I agree with all your thinking aloud - because you don’t lace conjecture with oughts. I get as irritated with remote imperatives as with religious tracts passed out and littering the street, or essays on forums with upper case words, snake-oil prescription - sic "I am always asked to lay out my proposals for moving out of the financial crisis. Well here it is - three simple things I would do from my book ‘Bank To The Future: Protect Your Future Before Governments Go Bust’. If I was appointed to advise the new Greek parliament tomorrow, here is what I would advise them"... So simple. Now grace us with instruction, since neither Lin nor I could follow the implication of your para on the Eurozone and I need to understand this: 

They have no equivalent of our Federal Reserve which can expand and contract demand without running up real debt. Even here, only a few such as Paul Krugman, see the real nature of this situation - that the function of a currency (is) to express demand and the ability to meet it; it is not the size of one's stock of gold.*

I get miserable feelings, gut apprehension, even as I cycle by flowered verges and gaze on blue green landscapes or chat to friends over good food and wine, watch sails wandering on the strip of ruffled blue and listen to swallows gossipping in the eaves about real estate... 

...and of course get daily news of Oliver, our grandson from tired Amy (O sleeps in the day, cries in the night). The unspoken. Half the seed of Europe. Mark Mazower’s history of Europe’s 20th century – Dark Continent – tells how the European Community and hence the Eurozone grew out of the now imaginable effects of two world wars. The memory of these things infuses not just the old. We run our heart of darkness multi-media past pupils under 15. Isn’t global sport – whose noisy popularity can be tedious – soaking up what was once the enthusiasm of men to rush to arms. Aren’t the dogs of war skulking and mangy now? So is the bad future one of spreading poverty, crime, immiseration – but not except locally attached to ethnic scapegoats because no-one with any power will do more than pay lip-service with small publicity seeking persecutions at election time to the kind of thing we fear. Aren’t minorities far more alert to such dangers, unprepared to be languorous about xenophobia, fighting back even when unnecessary. Reading, hearing, chatting about the situation, nothing presents itself as so impregnable to comprehension as the present. I have decided – arrogantly of course – that Job was written by an old pagan, an atheist, also wise and attractive. I embrace the author of the verses from 38 on ‘Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said, Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?’

[ΙΩΒ ΚΕΦ. λή.1,2] ΤΟΤΕ άπεκπίθη ά ΚΥΡΙΟΣ πρὸς τὸν Ἰὼβ ἐκ τοῦ ἀνεμοστροβίλου, καὶ εἶπε˙ Τίς αὖτος ὂστις σκοτίζει τὴν βουλήν μου διὰ λόγων ἀσυνέτον; 

This is only an invocation to others to pipe down so's I can hear what you are saying. So much that is written and spoken about the 'crisis' – I almost forgive journeymen journo-academics writing to a deadline – is written by people dyslexic about history, Job's helpers. This is how 761 with some blank ballots, polled out of the 1252 eligible to vote in Ano Korakiana… Votes cast: 761 SIRIZA: 147 19,3% PASOK: 112 14,7% Communist: 111 14,6% New Democracy 87 11,4% Independent Greeks: 84 11,0% Golden Dawn 44 5,8% Democratic Left 44 5,8% Greens: 31 4,1% Popular Orthodox Rally: 23 3,0% Other: 78 10,2% So what now? New election in mid-June. I think people will vote in even greater numbers for SIRIZA. X Simon

*To explain - received from Tony 23/5/12:

When our Federal Reserve Bank wishes to stimulate our economy it buys US Treasury bonds and other assets, it pays for them by issuing a zero percent note of indebtedness called a Federal Reserve Note a.k.a. the dollar bill (look at them closely some time).  And what backs these bills? What is the indebtedness? Not a promise of the FED to  give you gold, or any other specific object or service on a particular schedule. Look rather at the words 'This note is legal tender for all debts public and private' on each dollar bill. They mean that you can present that bill to any other person or company in exchange for $1 worth of the goods and services the person is selling. The exact quantity of the seller's good and services that you receive is determined by mutual negotiation between you and the seller. That negotiated quantity is the 'value' of the dollar.  (Occasionally the amount is determined by a court if the buyer or seller tries to reneg. That is the 'legal tender' part.)  In other words the sum total of all dollars corresponds to the sum total of the productive capacity of our economy at any time and, equivalently, the sum total of all the actual demand plus the potential demand corresponding to the dollars held in reserve by the note holders as 'savings' (the latter bit is the Keynes part). When the FED wants to contract demand it simply reverses the process and sells some of its holdings of bonds and other assets in exchange for dollar bills held by individuals, thus reducing the amount of goods and services that individuals can 'spend' to obtain other goods. In this process the FED simply 'prints' dollar bills and gives them to individuals or takes them from individuals and 'burns' them up. The important point is that only the FED, not even the US Treasury, can create or destroy these 'dollar bills (notes)' according to what it - the FED - perceives as the desired level of production and purchases in the economy. The total stock of dollars represents the total production and demand capacity of the entire US economy, not that of any individual state even including the Federal government. Because these notes are 0% notes they have no 'cost'. They are not a debt to someone else (except in the case of foreign creditors). They are debt to ourselves promising our ability to produce or demand goods and services when requested. Europe, even through its European Central Bank, does not have such a unified financial system because Europe is legally just a confederation of states not a unified federation of states governed by a central government which has supreme power for the powers enumerated in our constitution. So Europe is hog-tied in the current situation and views the problem of Greek indebtedness as one of Germany 'bailing out' Greece which, naturally, the Germans are reluctant to do. Of course the Germans have been gaining; all the while stimulating their export economy by cramming instalment debt down the throats of 'sub-prime' nations like Greece who ultimately couldn't afford to pay. We have a similar problem with sub-prime mortgages taken out by homeowners who ultimately couldn't afford to own a home, or at least couldn't afford to own a home under the terms conned on them by predatory lenders. [My footnote to Tony's; an unmissable dramatization of 'predatory lending' is in Sidney Mamet's 1984 play, 1990's film, Glengarry Glen Ross - some brilliantly ugly quotes; the kind of desperate hard selling that launched the sub-prime crisis on the world. Ed Harris said that on set his fellow actors would call it Death of a F*cking Salesman.]

*** ***
If given the choice of the north face of the Eiger in winter and three minutes doing stand-up comedy I'd seriously consider the mountain, so respect to my brother - half-brother - George Pericles Baddeley (50% Greek) who's walked the walk on stage and manages Silver Comedy. he keeps asking me to go on one of their training events, but I'm terrified.

George's eldest daughter, Anna Baddeley, runs The Omnivore website and blog, writes for the Spectator now and then and for the Observer. She writes in the old media about the new - ebooks and self-publishing.

'... a truly continental economy'

We think we've allowed for the €3.50 for each square metre of the assessed floor space of our home in Democracy Street which we will be required to pay when we get our next electricity bill, but November 9th's Kathimerini reports problems across the country as the new property tax increment appears on this month's round of domestic bills:

Public Power Corporation (ΔΕΗ) on Tuesday announced that it has set up a special hotline to deal with hundreds of complaints from consumers around the country who have received larger-than-expected bills for an emergency property tax levied through their electricity bill. According to the majority of complaints received by PPC representatives across Greece, the square meterage of hundreds of properties -- which is one of the factors in the complex formula used to assess property tax, together with the location and age of the property, and the so-called objective value, a bracket set by the Finance Ministry to control real estate prices -- was inflated. It is the job of each individual municipality to submit to PPC the details of every declared property in its domain, with which it levies the municipal tax that is also charged through PPC bills. A spokesperson for PPC on Tuesday said that the discrepancies in the new emergency property tax are the responsibility of the municipal authorities rather than the electricity provider, though it added that consumers who have any questions regarding the tax they are being asked to pay can call the toll-free hotline on 214.214.1000 for advice. In the case of sensitive social groups, like pensioners and disabled people, the General Secretariat for Information Systems of the Finance Ministry - Γενική Γραμματεία Πληροφοριακών Συστημάτων - has set up an SMS (on tel 54160) and web (http://www.gsis.gr/faq/faq_eta.html) service to deal with claims of over-charging. Other consumers who believe that they are being asked to pay more than their proper dues are required to pay their property tax and PPC in full and to then apply for a refund via their next electricity bill. PPC has been ordered to cut the electricity supply of anyone who refuses to pay the property tax.

[Back to the future - 15 Nov': Kathimerini reports:

It is unlikely that the state coffers will see anywhere near as much money as expected by the George Papandreou government from the Special Property Tax, levied on citizens via electricity bills, as the first signs have been rather disappointing.]

*** ***
Channel 4 is showing a programme Go Greek for a Week . In the first episode three British citizens - a bus driver, hair dresser and a doctor, advised by a fake accountant - Mr U.Kostas (ha ha) - learn how much they would get by way of earnings and pensions in Greece, and how much they would need to pay by way of fakelaki - Φακελάκι - for an MOT and a planning application to build on greenbelt land. It's all done archly tongue in cheek. It's also depressing and one-sided implying Greek corruption - undeniable (see 'Tragic Flaw: Graft Feeds Greek Crisis' Wall Street Journal, 10 April 2010) caused the Eurozone crisis, leading to the collapse of capitalism. One responses from Radio Arvyla - Ράδιο Αρβύλα -  is a parody show hosted by ANT1 from Thessaloniki.

"Go Greek for a Week" is sub-Ladybook One analysis of a complex crisis. Yes of course Greece sustains a horrid amount of corruption, but this alone excludes as much learning about causes and solutions to the problem as the medical treatment of an epidemic is helped by looking at someone's life style. It's almost certainly relevant but considered on its own becomes more useful for moralising, stereotyping and caricaturing than finding answers what happened and how we are all - and we are in it together - going to recover from the mess we're in.
**** ****
Negotiations continue for the formation of a possible government of unity in the Republic. Tony Scoville e-mailed me this afternoon with an account of his and Helen's tour of Greece, including their stay with us in Ano Korakiana, during October. I shall settle down to read it tomorrow. He ends his letter...

...Poor Greece. In the last three weeks since we left, things seem to have gone from bad to much, much worse. I read a heart-rending article today in the NYT portraying how the entire Greek economy seems to be grinding to halt - literally. Businesses and shops, even in the affluent districts are shuttering because they haven't had a buying customer in weeks and those who do come in are seeking to pawn family valuables rather than buy anything! Deposits are fleeing Greek banks and sent abroad before it loses its value from enforced conversion to a new drachma. Will be interesting to see whether the new coalition government can handle the situation. I have my doubts. All parliamentarians, according to the article, have to be accompanied by armed guards. Do you think the military will try to take over as in the 1970's if the situation becomes chaotic and the government simply cannot enforce the measures it passes? Though no one has mentioned the possibility yet, Greece may be close to this possibility. I have no sense as to how all these turns are affecting the countryside but the paralysis has got to hit the rural areas and smaller cities sooner or later if things continue along their present trajectory. How stupid and, as Paul Krugman points out in the NYT so much unnecessary suffering all because the ECB, France and Germany won't get together to form a truly continental economy with greater not less unity. Hell, we learned that lesson (during America's critical period) in the 1780's under the Articles of Confederation!

*** *** ***
Just another day and a half in my mother's house in the Highlands and then south to Birmingham. I'm ensconced as in a closed order here, warm, secure, remote - yet in touch through phone to laptop, with little need for TV or newspapers...

Brin Croft

...organising a lecture on campus on 11 November on 'managing in a political environment', planning an in-house event on performance scrutiny for Dumfries and Galloway later in the month, sending an outline of my interest to the new Director of Inlogov, Catherine Staite, in readiness for a meeting next week about further work:

Dear C...For 30 years or more, while teaching on campus and in-house at InlogovYes Minister crystallised that interest, both because it was so well received, so funny on an unpromising subject - the relationship between a senior administrator and senior politician - and because it was about the minutiae of what went on between two people, with their various foils, but primarily two named human beings - two players. In real life this relationship between a politician and an administrator is not meant to be a friendship, tho' often friendly and usually courteous. It's a public relationship of government - yet at the same time drawing on the energies, feelings, motives and passions of a private relationship. By and large this aspect of leadership in government is left to gossip, reminiscence, fiction and historical biography because methods for exploring personal relations at the core of democracy are so unattainable.
I’ve always had an interest in photography and then television (my step-father was on it and I spent some of my youth in studios as he broadcast). With a mix of help from Chris Game and John Stewart and people at the campus TV studios we started creating short films of political leaders in local government to use on courses - as spice. I became more and more fascinated by the idea of filming the working relationship between a lead manager and a lead politician in making government...there were subtleties here that merited the attention of the video camera, which while not guaranteeing authenticity, could show both verbal and non-verbal exchanges in conversations at a ‘political-management interface’.
I wrote about this in a number of papers that are on my CV - especially my thinking on ‘the construction of trust at the top of local government’ and ‘political-management leadership’. As time went by I detached myself from the increasingly expensive services of campus TV service and acquired my own filming and editing equipment; developing the skills need to use equipment that in time became more and more ‘user-friendly'.
There is a method and a craft to making these films of CEO’s (sometimes Chief Officers) and their significant opposite number in the political sphere. I don't just ask them to talk to me about their working relationship. I have found a way of getting them to have that relationship on camera while I say nothing though of course they know I’m filming.
In 2011 I have an archive comprising many hours of material collected over a lengthy period from which with very clearly agreed permission from participants I've extracted key episodes which I use for graduate teaching, one-off lectures, conference presentations and in-house teaching and consultancy aimed at enhancing the quality of a council's political-management working relationships. An important step forward was having participants trust me sufficiently to permit me to stream extracts of films I’d made of them on the web (clearing this also with campus legal services.).
Although these films are unique - both as a record and as teaching material about leadership in local government - they are by no means the only material I use. There’s the conceptual and cognitive material based on far wider writing on leadership in government and the tension between political, managerial and political processes concentrated at the point where unique figures meet in specific organisations - hence my strong preference for closely prepared in-house work based on local context. I use mini-case studies - critical incidents of which I have 100s on file - told to me, and then rendered anonymous, by the key actors. I use carefully prepared exercises in political mapping to help less experienced officers enhance their skills at ‘reading' a political environment, and similarly I have developed techniques that mirror these ‘reading' exercise to assist members read the bureaucracy they are expected to understand and lead.
With the great diffusion of agencies that has come with localisation such exercises are valued at all levels of local councils, but I continue to hold that the working relationship of a lead manager and politician is key to understanding the wider interaction of politics and management. I believe this entails a process of skilled negotiation. Teaching this subject in Australia with a colleague there we titled our seminars, run jointly across the continent, ‘Negotiating the Overlap’ (the attached programme flier may be of interest). I enjoy working with other trainers, indeed prefer it, whether colleagues from inlogov, other institutions or in-house managers.

With Professor John Martin in Tasmania

When I meet M I hope to win her interest (and the prospect of future work in this area) by running quickly through the contents of a one-day event for a specific local council and the planning that precedes such an event as well as what follows it by way of managerial and organisational development. Every encounter varies since every council’s unique. I’m a tourist in my own land. People speak of cloned town centres. One of the reasons I like walking and cycling is that when I visit a particular council I get to see a few of its byways and highways and of course, if it has one, its railway station. I see its houses, offices, public buildings and green spaces and the drivers of the local economy as I pedal about. As you know I’ve also been involved in community activism in Birmingham and have been able to learn from these experiences without compromising my capacity for an appropriate detachment when it comes to working with local members and officers across the UK....

*** ***
Yesterday under a clear sky I cycled first north to Wester Lairgs Farm, just sold to a new owner as yet unknown, then took the broad gravel forestry track that leads along the treeline on the eastern slopes of Strathnairn, turning downhill and back before Farr Loch, where the track ends...

...and joining a narrower one that runs beside the river beside fields and through tall plantations - about five miles, with Scotland to myself, but for the signs of seasonal heather burning and a few cars once I'd joined the road at Farr School half a mile from Inverarnie.
Later I drove with my mum to Tomatin Distillery to smell the oats and see a little of the process of making single malt...

'...curious treasures of their stock-in-trade'

... a small sight of another's craft. We got to see the copper distillation stills, a warehouse full of vaporous oak barrels...

... coopered on site and a sip of 12 year old Tomatin and learning that most Scots distilleries are owned by the Japanese - in this case Takara Shuzo - that the bottling's done far south in Dumbarton, the barrels emptied into a tanker; the oats made into mash-tun elsewhere and brought for distillation to Tomatin. Later I took Mum to the Snow Goose on the edge of town for supper - veg soup, local beer and sausages and mash, though Mum fiddled with an aubergine curry - and a chance to discuss a video we're planning to make tomorrow about memories of Bagnor - though I'm not sure mum has the plot on that wonderful 13 years of my childhood. There's so much happened, with so many separate intertwined strands, that I can't quite imagine how she'll weave a narrative, compared to other memories of her's that we've filmed.

Not out of the woods

*** *** ***
No white smoke yet. A compromise for Hellenic PM emerged today - Phillippos Petsalnikos - but he was blocked by fellow PASOK members, returning Lucas Papademos to preferred candidate, but with what mandate? Αύριο...

*** ***
My talented half-bro George Baddeley, Managing Director of Silver Comedy, just sent me a tweet about their recent work...

"Celebrations of yesteryear..."

Saint Basil visits - 31 December 2010

"Γιορτές μιας άλλης εποχής..." - In beloved Ano Korakiana an elder of the village remembers "celebrating holy days 50 years ago, lacking today's material essentials, looking forward to the treats that came for all us children; decorating the tree on Christmas Eve. How I cried when rain stopped my mother going out to cut the traditional cypress.'

Πολλά χρόνια πίσω....Δεκαετία του '60...

Ήμουν παιδί και περίμενα όπως όλα τα παιδιά του χωριού μας τις Άγιες μέρες, για να διανθίσουμε τη ζωή μας με κάποιες μικροχαρές που αυτές οι μέρες φέρνουν. Ζήσαμε στερημένοι από υλικά αγαθά. Είχαμε μόνο τα απαραίτητα, αλλά τώρα που το σκέφτομαι τα ουσιώδη... 

Παραμονή Χριστουγέννων στολίζαμε το δέντρο. Περιμέναμε πως και πως τη στιγμή, που οι μανάδες μας θα έβρισκαν λίγο χρόνο για να πάμε να κόψουμε το παραδοσιακό κυπαρίσσι. Πόσα δάκρυα έριξα, τις παραμονές που έβρεχε και αδυνατούσαμε να πάμε για το κόψιμο. Κι όταν επιτέλους στηνόταν σε κάποια γωνιά, άρχιζε το στόλισμα. «Κουτούλια» τυλιγμένα σε τσιγαρόχαρτο, πλαστικά χτενάκια, κουκλάκια, κάρτες και τέλος μπαμπάκι...πολύ μπαμπάκι για να γεμίσουν τα κενά...γιατί η διακόσμηση ήτανε κι αυτή στερημένη! 

Κι ερχόταν η ώρα για τα κάλαντα. Γυρνούσαν τα παιδιά στις γειτονιές να πούνε τα ''Κορακιανίτικα'' κάλαντα...[τα έχουμε κι αυτά ξεχάσει προ πολλού].Δεν ξέρω ακόμη το λόγο, αλλά λίγες φορές συμμετείχα σε αυτό το δρώμενο. Ντρεπόμουν να χτυπάω πόρτες και να ζητάω λεφτά. 

'But at last the tree would be set up in a corner. The decorating began. Little gifts wrapped in paper - plastic combs, dolls, cards and even cotton-wool to fill the gaps; then it was time us children to go around singing the traditional carols...I was always ashamed to ask for money... and I forget...' (and my translation falters).
...now on New Year's eve 2010 today's children of Ano Korakiana dressed in red caps parade through the village and the real Saint Basil -  Greece's Santa Claus - arrives, musicians in tow, calling at forty homes with gifts for the kindergarten children...

Κατά το σούρουπο, ήρθε πραγματικά ο Άη Βασίλης στο χωριό και μαζί με τη μουσική κομπανία του, πέρασε από όλα τα σπίτια των μικρών παιδιών (νηπιαγωγείου και κάτω) για τα Κάλαντα και για ένα συμβολικό δώρο στα μικρά, που ανυπόμονα και εκστασιασμένα, περίμεναν. Η γύρα ήταν μεγάλη, αφού κάλυψε όλη την περίμετρο του οικισμού, ξεκινώντας από την Ακλερή, του Λαγουδέρη και τους Άγιους Πάντες και «μπαίνοντας» στη συνέχεια στις γειτονιές του χωριού.
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The path in the wood

There's a path matted with larch needles and birch leaves that winds through the woods behind Brin Croft through which I trudged, almost soundlessly, on the last day of the year; a path on which I'd meet Red Riding Hood; catch a glimpse of something pokerish moving through the woods beside me or see a stump I'd passed already, where Rupert Bear would meet a magic stranger.

The dogs ranged back and forth, disappearing and appearing, catching winter scents. Amy's second dog, Malo - a Brittany Spaniel - disappeared, left the four dog pack as I walked by Farquar's farm on my way to the wood. I thought he'd work his way home to Brin Croft, so continued my walk. Once returned I found he was still lost; had been sighted on the main road. Guy and Amy searched with their car; friends were phoned and promised to keep looking about; then Malo was back having found his own way home after ranging almost to Farr School, a mile away on the other side of the Farnack, narrowly missed by several drivers.
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Friends came for supper at Brin Croft - champagne, superlative roast goose, ice cream and apple pie. Later we stood in light drizzle as Guy carefully set off - one by one - some disappointingly undramatic fireworks. "I won't come out to watch. Anyway, I'm not that interested in New Year" said my Mum. Most of us agreed "Especially" she added "I hate singing Auld Lang Syne and holding hands." 2011 begins.

Margie, James, Christina and Amy watching a firework outside Brin Croft

The next day Amy and I went to Dores and strolled, with the dogs, along the long pebble beach at the eastern end of Loch Ness. Hardly a sign of ice or snow; a matte greyness flattened the landscape of the great glen. As we walked the dogs roaming around us encountering other people and their dogs we discussed the behaviour and character of our four and how they got on with one another - the bitches Lulu, a border terrier hybrid, and Cookie, a cocker spaniel hybrid, then the dogs, Oscar a Jack Russell Border terrier mix and Malo, a Brittany spaniel; all biddable never roaming too far but varying in confidence with age. How I enjoy the sombre light of the Highlands, the dreich and the coastal haars, sudden gales, waking to the pierce of the wind before dawn, muddy dogs, damp sheep, ticks, hot baths, malt whisky and log fires and the midges we can avoid that keep people away in summer. My knee is hurting somewhere at the back and makes me limp, especially on slopes, but a good long thumb stick helped me along.

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In Australia as the summer approaches, people in places, where I was working last November, like Longreach, Cairns, Mackay and Brisbane in Queensland are suffering severe flooding or preparing for it  as rain continues (ACT = Australian Capital Territory, e.g. Canberra, NSW = New South Wales) (4 January '11 images)

But not to be entirely depressing John sent me this email from home in Bendigo on 30 December. Round this time last year he and Annie were preparing for the threat of bush fires, and south east Australia was suffering the effects of a thirteen year drought:

Hi Simon, I have just come in from the pool, a refreshing dip after a 50km training ride. Summer is in full swing. Cicadas buzz about as the days warm up. Cricket fans in mourning, and everyone thinks the captain should resign. The fuss sells the tabloids. I am working on several papers between completing our tax return from last year ...Just had an email from my daughter-in-law who is off to the tube park in Whistler (sliding down the slopes on car inner tubes) and you guys in Scotland where I expect it is also snowy white. New Year's eve forecast is 38C! Regards to Lin, Cheers John and Annie

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As I have in the past, at the request of a fan of my late stepfather, I've streamed a couple more episodes from his 1980s TV series Old Country, successor to Out of Town, aired on Southern Television. Over the first 13 minutes, before the commercial break, JH talks of the evolution of the fishing rod from handmade greenheart to factory made carbon fibre and beyond. In the second half he shares thoughts about ways angling has changed in Britain since he was a boy:

Jack Hargreaves fishing from Simon Baddeley on Vimeo.
Our cattle are kept close together in yards and milking parlours; transported in trucks rather than driven on foot by drovers. Horns are seldom seen except on ornamental breeds. In the second of these two films Jack talks about new and old breeds of cattle - Shorthorn, Friesian or Holstein, Guernsey, Jersey, Ayrshire, Hereford, Aberdeen Angus, Charolais, Simmental and - perhaps provocatively - Suffolk (' a bit like the Red Devon') with horns. I'd like to know who breeds such cattle now. My step-father ponders the hype-driven balance of English and imported breeds, the greater difficulty of identifying dehorned cattle and their respective merits of different cattle for beef, butter and milk. I keep the long horns shown at the start.

Jack Hargreaves on breeds of cattle from Simon Baddeley on Vimeo.
Seeing this film made twenty years ago I'm aware how our - my - preference for cheap milk increases the likelihood that cows will disappear from fields, ceasing to live out of doors as more and more of them are enclosed in larger and larger milking parlours, kept constantly pregnant, serviced by more and more ingenious mechanisation. This is a trajectory that had momentum even when my grandmother was milking forty Jerseys - all with names - on Mill End dairy farm where I was born, denigrated by my stepfather as a 'hobby farmer'.

Me on Gypsy, my grandmother on the hay at Mill End, Clavering 1944

With me and a million others at the end of a mighty retail chain, the drive to deliver us the lowest priced milk drives more and more farmers out of business and leads us towards the logic of big shed milking of the kind seeking planning permission in Lincolnshire - a test planning case for introducing a type of milk farming that is normal in the USA. Refining counter-arguments to the relentless command of increased mechanisation over our understanding of how to cope with the world is Peter Lundgren, a local farmer in Lincolnshire who's founded FARM to comprehend and challenge the logic of these seemingly inevitable developments. He's not alone. [Petition against Nocton's aimiably argued case in North Kestevan, Lincs]
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Joyce Manyan - roped in to play HM

George Baddeley - my half Greek half-brother - is a co-founder of Silver Comedy - a brilliant example of social entrepreneurship weaving stand-up and sketch comedy into the scary world of dementia, via, among other things a Mockumentary, which George told me about when we met at Liverpool Street before Christmas - a spoof Royal Visit to the Grange day centre in Haringey that stirred up memories, positive and negative, of the real thing. (Silver Comedy on Facebook)