'Out of Town'

From: Simon Winters

Hi Simon. Don't know if you are in UK and can make it, but there is a Kaleidoscope event on this saturday at Stourbridge. We are filming interviews for a major BFI documentary about missing tv. We will be filming David King about OoT. Can you make it and be interviewed? Cheers Simon

Stourbridge Station

Saturday morning I was on my way to the Talbot Hotel in Stourbridge. The middle aged man sitting opposite wore a floppy sun hat, travelling clothes that seemed to set off his bulk, peered at a satnav in one hand and a note book in the other.
"What kind of train is this" I asked. I had been on the vehicle once - December 2011 - before but spotting a true trainspotter I thought I'd see if I could find out more.
"It's called a Parry People Mover"
"I like it"
"It's the only one in the country"
No more was volunteered; the satnav getting full attention.
We trundled along a mile of bumpy single track surrounded by greenery arriving at the one platform terminus next to Stourbridge Town Bus Station. Via a lift and a tunnel I cycled down the High Street to where Kaleidoscope was holding one of its regular get-togethers, found Simon and after a cup of tea was sat with David King to be interviewed about the way we'd arrived at the 'Lost Episodes" of Out of Town.

Dave King, Out of Town DVDs and reels of archive film from the archive

Chris Perry asked questions. Rory was behind the camera. I extemporised about my stepfather and described Out of Town - not easy, as the tags 'country life' or 'rural pursuits' misses out on what was really a vehicle for my stepfather to enjoy chatting to a few million people about his favourite subjects - for instance rabbiting with nets - with brilliant illustrations from his camera-toting friend, of twenty five years, Stan Bréhaut...

Jack and his cameraman Stan

...and David told how he had discovered and saved the Out of Town episodes that Delta on the initiative of Charles Webster, put together and put on sale last year (Note: In Sept 2015 Delta became insolvent and the following month I terminated their licence on grounds of 'breach of contract', a condition that applies to any sold on copies of Delta's OOT DVDs). I spoke also of the 'unwieldy material' brought in April 2012 to a lock-up in Birmingham from South West Film and Television Archive - Stan Bréhaut's 16mm reverse negative location film with library sound effects...

...and a whole lot of - so far unmatched - ¼inch reel-to-reel tape of Jack speaking to these films and introducing each episode. I spoke briefly about technical challenges that I'd explained in more detail in the account included with the Out of Town 'Lost Episodes':

...I hadn’t only begun to grasp that the background sound on Jack’s programmes was added later – from sound effects in the library at Southern synched with events on Stan’s film. What was I to do with hours of such film? Jennie at SWFTA gave me a clue. She and her husband Roger, also working part-time at the archive, showed me a shelf of ¼” reel-to-reel sound tape in cardboard boxes. These for no obvious reason contained Jack’s voice as he talked in the studio from his set – a shed - and his commentary on Stan’s film for that week’s episode of Out of Town. It had taken hours to find the tape that went with the film. There was no order and no titles that allowed simple one-to-one matching. Roger, using a Steenbeck machine that could play separate film and sound tape simultaneously accurately splicing sound to vision. He then digitised the result and we had a 1975 episode of Out of Town as a gift for Richard Hill and his family. Well nearly. At the start and often at the end of each episode of Out of Town the viewer would see Jack  sat in his studio ‘shed’ from where he’d say “Hullo” before moving seamlessly into talking about Stan’s location film, run on a monitor in front of him in the studio. This all went out live. The location film would end. We’d see Jack again in his shed for a few remarks and a “cheerio” and the gentle signature tune Recuerdos de la Alhambra. So we had Jack’s commentary and location sound effects, but we had no picture of Jack in his shed. Richard’s film with which he was delighted came to him on a DVD courtesy of SWFTA with a stills of Jack inserted over the recording of his studio introduction. But what about the sound effects; of traffic, of cattle lowing, a fish splashing, wind in the trees, a bucket dropped? “People fill in the sound if you give them a clue” was Jack’s reasoning so I was told recently by one of Jack’s old colleagues, David Knowles. He’d certainly fooled me. I learned that my stepfather had made a point of asking expert sound people not to get “too clever”, inserting every possible event that might have had a sound. “Just make it sound like outside and synchronise doors banging and gun shots” I was slowly understanding why it was so tricky to trace whole episodes of Out of Town. “Jack loved to do high quality television on the cheap” added David who’d produced Jack’s successor programme - Old Country - for Channel 4 in the early eighties. My youthful memories of Jack musing about technical challenges were being jogged “I don’t want to go out in the countryside with a TV crew of half a dozen and a pile of kit. They frighten things away.” I learned after a bit that even Jack’s director George Egan stayed away, as Jack with Stan in essential tow went on location. “The finest outdoor cameraman in England” he called him, shooting silent, sound added later, and live continuity by Jack’s when broadcast. Jack knew that what made TV different from cinema and more than just lesser picture quality on a small screen was being live. He was stimulated by the risk of going out live but much more he relished the knowledge of talking there and then to his invisible audience. “We filmed nearly 1:1” explained Jack years later “The normal ratio of used to edited film is 10:I for the sort of thing I do. In commercials it can be 1000:1.” Jack and his team did minimal editing, had a minimal set and a minimal crew and it went out live with Stan’s silent location film plus library sound effects....

Jack Hargreaves tries out Richard Hill's patent 'exploding' bait box from Simon Baddeley on Vimeo.

...and an episode about rabbiting from Old Country, successor to Out of Town, screened in the early 1980s on Channel 4 with Stan's successor, Steve Wagstaff, behind the camera..

Chris Perry, seeing the OoT film cans and sound tape I'd brought with me to Stourbridge said, to my delight, that he would introduce me to an ex-BBC expert who would know what needed to be done to wed sound and image from the archive. I've been looking for ways to get this done for two years now. I so hope this will lead somewhere.
In the early 1990s, When I was 50, I began searching for my dad, not the parent I'd come to know, but the individual who met and married my mum in 1940, whose DNA is mine...

He died in 1973, In the midst of war my mother and he, having made my sister Bay and I, were divorced. Living with my mother I would only get to know my dad after he'd been married over 10 years to Maria, who he'd met in Athens in 1949. Twenty years later, I'm learning more about Jack, the step-father with whom I enjoyed my childhood and youth from one Christmas in 1948. My dad's life is part impenetrable; hidden by his profession. He served in MI6 (Greece, Brussels, the Far East, London, Washington) until his early death at 52. My stepfather's life, including so much that was very public, is made puzzling by his versatile and invigorating self-invention. The novelist Graham Hurley,  who worked for Jack at Southern TV, wrote....

...It was this wonderful marriage of fact and fiction that made him such a great broadcaster (and inspiring boss). Like so many men from that generation including George Egan (Director of OoT), who flew SOE agents into France aboard tiny Lysanders), Jack had been through something infinitely bigger and more scary than any of us would ever find in television and it gave him a breadth and a perspective and a degree of creative mischief that was utterly beguiling. I put a number of the Out of Town programmes onto tape (Stan shot mute film; Jack's studio musings became the sound-track) and after a while I began to spot where fact strayed into fancy. Viewers, and gobsmacked youths like me, loved him. Like Stan, truly a buccaneer...

*** **** ***
Lin was entertaining Oliver most of the day after Amy.on her way to work, dropped him off. I got to see him later. He's not saying much tho' making lots of interesting sounds. We played on the sunny lawn after I got back from Stourbridge and later, for tea, sat Ollie in the same high chair used by my mum, by me and my sister, by our children Richard and Amy...

...Guy came round after work to collect his son.
I started working on removing woodwork and tiling holding our bath. It's got to come out so we can do something about growing damp in the room below coming, it seems, from under the bath. The bath was put in with great firmness in 1935. Getting underneath it, let alone extracting it,  is going to be a stinker given we want to save the long slate panel that runs beside it and seems immoveable. I removed the locker I built twenty plus years ago so that I could start trying to tease out the panel. Hopeless. I'm so tempted to take a sledge to the slate. But if I do I'll regret it. What a mess.

"Be not afeard: the isle is full of noises."

The summer stays with us a little longer. Oscar contributed to Martin Creed's 'all the bells' cacophony to mark the start of the 2012 Olympic Games in London as I chimed in with St Mary's Church bells this morning - just up the road.

We were in St Mary's yesterday noon. Rev Brian Hall was showing around a group of us involved in designing a two hour Heritage Walk around Handsworth and Lozells. We'd begun the pilot walk at St.Mary's Convent, gone on via St Silas' Square to The Old Toll House...

Outside the Old Toll House

...on the corner of Villa and Hamstead Roads, before strolling on to see the Gatehouse to Heathfield Park - once the Lodge of James Watt's estate.

 - From St Mary's we climbed over the churchyard wall and strolled through Handsworth Park to the bandstand where I gave a short account of its loss and restoration with the re-opening of the Park on 8 July 2006

On this occasion we missed the Victoria Jubilee Allotments though they'll probably be included in the planned walk. We headed on to Soho Road for a lovely vegetarian meal with mango lassis at the London Sweet Centre before going round The Council House a few yards further up Soho Road, now home of the Handsworth Campus of City College.

Richard Trengrouse, Ashok,  Simon and Oscar

In our little group of strollers, Ashok, Aftab Rahman, Sue, Richard Trengrouse waxing enthusiastic about the buildings and green spaces; grumbling at examples of damage done them by lack of restoration or, worse, unimaginative restoration. We agreed over lunch that the tour should take in some family homes. Richard emailed us about an encounter on the way back to the walk's starting point at the Convent in Hunters Road

Hi Aftab. Brilliant day, thought the Convent and the park were wonderful  I didn't realise just how good Handsworth Park is, surely the best in the City. After I left you things just got better! I went down Terrace Rd onto Hampstead Rd to look at the restored terraces there. A rather dishevelled man covered in paint came out and went to go to his car. He saw me and accused me of being a historian, an accusation I hotly denied. It was Colin Simms and I got a guided tour of all nine houses and their courtyard gardens in the ninth house which he has just started renovating he has just uncovered the most spectacular stair rails and newel posts, so spent the end of the afternoon supping iced water with Colin! Best wishes,  Richard

Colin Simms restored terrace houses on Hamstead Road

Terrace House on Hamstead Road

Note to Aftab: I hope the Heritage Walk we are planning in Handsworth and Lozells and for which we have funding, will include the possibility of focusing on bad architecture in the area. I noticed how our conversation as we walked together through the neighbourhood was laced with annoyance, even anger, at the examples we passed of ugly renovation and unimaginative new building. The writer Evelyn Waugh wrote in the 1960s about 'the grim cyclorama of spoliation which surrounds all English experience in this century and any understanding of the immediate past…incomplete unless this huge deprivation of the quiet pleasures of the eye is accepted as a dominant condition, sometimes for mere sentimental apathy, sometimes poisoning love of country and of neighbours.' I hope we can draw attention not just to English but global aesthetics as these effect old and new, private and public buildings in Handsworth and Lozells. Here's an example of what I detest about so called improvement in our area (there's an image next to it of one of Colin Simm's restorations to show how beautiful these terraces on Hamstead Road can be). What was in the mind of the builder, owner, who did this to a house? 

*** *** ***
I've typed up the minutes of the meeting on 12 July at which 17 month after the problems of insolvency and lack of leadership were first presented we formally set up Handsworth Helping Hands, previously Central Handsworth Practical Care Project, as an unincorporated association - an extract:

MINUTES OF THE CHPCP COMMITTEE

& CHPCP VOLUNTARY ADVISORY GROUP JOINT MEETING

held at 19.00 on 12^th July 2012 at 34 Beaudesert Road, B20 3TG

Present:

CHPCH COMMITTEE:   Charles Bates*, Daphne Robinson

CHPCH VOLUNTARY ADVISORY GROUP:   Mike Tye (Chair), Linda Baddeley, Simon Baddeley, John Rose, Denise Forsyth, Charles Bates*

* Charles Bates is a member of both groups

1. Apologies: Cllr Hendrina Quinnen

2. Minutes of last meeting ~ 28^th June 2012: Approved

3. Achievements of the Voluntary Advisory Group (VAG): LB reported:

 Over the last 15 months, the VAG have kept accurate minutes of all meetings, maintained proper accounts, filed receipts for all money spent and paid all debts, including reassessment and payment of income tax and national insurance for tax years 2010-2011 and 2011-2012.

All PAYE forms for 2010-2011 and 2011-2012 have been completed online and submitted to HMRC, (including amendment of incorrect 2010-2011 figures originally submitted to HMRC by BVSC), and the PAYE account has been closed. A £300 fine for late submission of 2010-2011 figures was successfully appealed by LB.

The majority of the Central Handsworth Practical Care Project Committee have resigned, leaving only four members. The two paid employees have both left the project voluntarily and have been provided with P45 forms.

Two vehicles (tipper truck and LDV van, (the former now impractical and the latter untaxed and uninsured and originally parked in the street) and the hardly used wood chipper have been sold. The remaining van has been MOTed, taxed and insured, and secure parking in the Handsworth Park compound has been obtained.

All tools belonging to the project have been removed from the garage in St Peter’s Road to secure storage in the Handsworth Park Compound.

Employer’s Liability and Public Liability Insurance was renewed for 2011-2012, but is now due for renewal again. (LB is obtaining quotes.)

The Voluntary Advisory Group has established good relations with the three Ward councillors, keeping them informed of progress and all matters concerning CHPCP.

From a position of being £20,000 in debt, the project now has a balance of over £14000 in the bank account and the Central Handsworth Practical Care Project is now in a position, in accordance with the wishes previously expressed by the CHPCP committee, to be closed, to be replaced immediately by Handsworth Helping Hands (HHH). Handsworth Helping Hands will have the same objectives as CHPCP.

4. Vote on VAG proposals re. dissolution of CHPCP:

LB proposed the immediate closure of CHPCP and transfer of all assets to Handsworth Helping Hands, to be used for the benefit of the Handsworth community. Three votes in favour, two from the CHPCP committee members present and one in writing from Mr Ilyas, who did not attend the meeting, carried the motion. The fourth CHPCP committee member, Mr Kennedy, did not attend, send apologies, nor put his views on the matter in writing.

5.Official inception of HHH

Acceptance of constitution: LB proposed that those present accept the draft Handsworth Helping Hands constitution. The HHH constitution was unanimously accepted.

Election of officers:

Chair:  Michael Tye

Proposed by LB,  seconded by DF. Carried

Secretary:  Simon Baddeley

Proposed by LB,  seconded by JR. Carried

Treasurer:  Linda Baddeley

Proposed by LB,  seconded by DF. Carried

Vice Chair:  Denise Forsyth

Proposed by MT,  seconded by CB. Carried

It was agreed that JR would shadow LB’s role as Treasurer.

DR and CB volunteered to serve as members of the HHH committee. Cllr Hendrina Quinnen, after council legal advice that HHH does not have to have a nominated ward councillor on its committee, will remain as a ‘friend’ of HHH.  HHH will continue to keep local councillors informed.....(continued)
*** *** ***
When Handsworth Helping Hands were clearing the gardens at CMAT studios in Grosvenor Road last Tuesday 17 July I got talking with people who worked there - Pervaiz, Lucy and Mikey - about the work of the studios. That led onto a discussion with Mikey about the film and tape in the Jack Hargreaves' archive. Mikey suggested it might make sense, in the absence of a Steenbeck machine, to digitise films and sound tapes independently, and worry about matching them later. They had the kit to digitise the sound. He'd explore what would be involved doing the same with the film. I made an appointment to bring samples from the archive in the lock up in Sherlock Street this Wednesday. 

Simon, Pervaiz and Mikey at CMAT

I showed Mikey the sound tape - carbon-fibre rods, picking up - pheasant shoot.
"It's in good condition" he said

"We can digitise that"
I showed him a reel of the 16mm film also from the 1970s, this one with Jack's writing recognisable the can 'Out of Town' programme film made on Colonel Hawker and Terns. 

We chatted. I realised that digitising the film wasn't straightforward. Mikey and Pevaiz had been exploring possibilities - but after some circuitous conversation I realised they had no suitable conversion equipment nor experience of digitising 16mm film. Here's a passage from the internet hinting at the challenge:

If you have a box of old 16mm film, digitizing it is either dead simple or very difficult. The dead-simple op­­tion is to send the film to a transfer service...doing the job yourself is hard and time consuming, as no consumer-level dedicated 16mm film scanner is available. It's physically possible to scan 16mm film frame-by-frame using a 35mm slide scanner or a flatbed scanner that handles slides. But this approach entails endless cropping and reassembly....A maximum 18 frames per second for 8mm film means 1080 images per minute of movie...

No way...and here's another website offering a 'secret' method for digitising film after dismissing standard methods:

...Project the film and video it off a wall then put the video into an all-in-one Video to DVD machine. It still flickers! There is a huge array of cheap and expensive machines all purporting to reduce this flicker. Some of them work, however with such manipulation any detail left is lost for ever as these type of machines compress MPEG and digitise at one set low rate. We have stacks of Documentary evidence to prove none of these methods work. We use a proprietary based system which is a closely guarded secret and the envy of our competitors. This system produces top quality, flicker free film transfers which are a pleasure to watch with rich colour, contrast and crisp sharp detail. You can clearly see the faces in our films....

Later at home I phoned Simon Winter of Kaleidoscope. He and colleagues played a key part in uncovering the 34 original Out of Town videos that Delta will be publishing in October.

We discussed the 16mm film in the collection.
"I know someone," he said "Kaleidoscope use him for digitising films they recover."
*** ***
Those lines came over the tele' spoken by Kenneth Branagh in the Olympic Stadium on Friday night...

Be not afeard: the isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices,
That, if I then had wak'd after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me; that, when I wak'd,
I cried to dream again.

Lin said "But...that's not England, it's Corfu, Prospero's Cell!"... the gold and moving blue have stained our thoughts...brilliant speck of an island in the Ionian...waters like the heartbeat of the world...darkness opaque...we see in our dreams the world as if in some great aquarium...

Κέρκυρα

Allowing for that small error I without enthusiasm for the thing, was transported into delight and admiration by Danny Boyle's orchestration of the opening ceremony Isles of Wonder. He and his team surmounted that great challenge of entertainers - working with animals and children, demonstrating, in as brilliant a 15 minutes as I've ever seen or heard or read, that defining event of the modern age - the Industrial Revolution, not sparing us the Satanic Mills, the price paid for its wealth, dissent and protest and destruction of a green and pleasant land. 

As the performance proceeded we saw the empire - about which we're inclined to be like a softer version of the Anglo-German "Don't mention the War" - imploding, accelerating the resentment - already stirred by the plural 'Isles'; - of anyone needing an Island Story whose chief job is to keep the others in their place. The messiness carried many stories - the hybridity of London, the multiplicity of the British Isles. In a ceremony being blogged, tweeted and facebooked across the globe - narrowcast even as it was broadcast it was good to see Tim Berners-Lee feted as the inventor of the world wide web or - rather - as Watt's refinement of the Newcomen engine made steam really 'work', achieving the same for the Internet with HTML. I didn't get some of the more contemporary reference, Soaps and Pop, but it was something to get away with the Punk 'God save the queen, The fascist regime' in the same stadium as 'God save our gracious queen Long live our noble queen'. That was the span - the isle is indeed 'full of noises'. I don't recall having so many laughs at any previous Olympic opener. HM being called on at the palace by James Bond - Daniel po-faced Craig - and helicoptered by him to where she could parachute into the arena. I'd seriously like to see a vignette of the correspondence when that was agreed; Rowan Atkinson getting landed by Simon Rattle with the repetitive note that starts and runs through Vangelis' Chariots of Fire, becoming restless with it, looking, Bean-like, for distraction. Bouncing doctors, nurses and children from Great Ormond Street - part of a cheeky paeon for the NHS combined with fairy stories from Barry through Kenneth Graham to J K Rowling. Boyle had real nurses, kids and doctors - all volunteers - dancing. He saved some cash there and included tribute to that British predisposition - volunteering, something 'we' probably prefer to dancing, though that may be changing. Another of many similarly connected groups, were the relatives of the dockers present at the arrival of  M/V Empire Windrush at Tilbury this time 64 years ago to usher her replica into the stadium - relatives of dockers who might also have marched for Enoch Powell after his 'rivers of blood' speech in April 1968. The visual wit and the fun weren't fortune cooky treats. They vaccinated against the heavy risk of getting too tingly with emotion, let alone welling a tear - just what the doctor ordered for the British dis-ease. This was also my stepfather's England of hybridity, starting with the mixing of two races - preceded on this his last broadcast for Southern Television thirty one years ago by four minutes of commercials.

On the higher ground ~ Jack Hargreaves from Simon Baddeley on Vimeo.

***
On Friday night in Ano Korakiana, apart from some unknown - άγνωστοι - miscreant spraying red paint on cars parked in the square to the fury of their owners, our news - Τα νέα μας - that on Saturday evening there'll be the annual festival of music, dancing and a roast to celebrate Ag Paraskevi:

1. Το καθιερωμένο πλέον ετήσιο πανηγύρι της Αγίας Παρασκευής πραγματοποιείται αύριο, Σάββατο 28 Ιουλίου 2012, το βράδυ υπό τη συνδιοργάνωςση της Φιλαρμονικής και της Εκκλησίας, που υπόσχονται διασκέδαση με μουσική, χορό και ψητά...
2. Άγνωστοι ψέκασαν χθες το βράδυ με κόκκινη μπογιά τα παρκαρισμένα αυτοκίνητα στην πλατεία του χωριού...προκαλώντας την αγανάκτηση των ιδιοκτητών τους...Τι άλλο θα δούμε!
3.Παλαιωμένο κακοτρύγη από την Πούπουλια είχε υποσχεθεί για τα πρώτα γενέθλια της εγγονής του Αγγελικής, ο παππούς Κώστας Απέργης...αλλά τελικά ήταν από Αλευκιμιώτικο αμπελώνα...

It will also the first birthday of Kostas Apergis' grand-daughter Angela - but like lots of the Ano Korakiana website it's tricky for me to translate. What's Αλευκιμιώτικο? and Παλαιωμένο κακοτρύγη?

Preparing for the party at Agia Paraskevi

Κορακιανίτικο πανηγύρι ~ Saturday night party in Ano Korakiana

On Saturday 28 July - the annual festival and party, panigyri:

Δύο ώρες πριν από την έναρξη του φετινού πανηγυριού της Αγίας Παρασκευής, οι προεργασίες συνεχίζονταν με αμείωτο ρυθμό. Γυναίκες της χορωδίας και του χορευτικού είχαν αναλάβει την προετοιμασία των λουκουμάδων, πλάι στους υπόλοιπους που ετοίμαζαν τις ψησταριές και τους υπαίθριους παγο-καταψύκτες, ενώ τα τραπεζοκαθίσματα ήταν ήδη στρωμένα. Την ίδια ώρα, στη γραφική εκκλησία με το νεόκτιστο και φρεσκοβαμμένο καμπαναριό, ο ιερέας τελούσε τον Εσπερινό, ενώ ο κόσμος που άρχιζε σιγά-σιγά να μαζεύεται περνούσε πρώτα από εκεί για το άναμα ενός κεριού.
Οι πρώτοι ήχοι της ορχήστρας λίγο αργότερα, θα δώσουν το έναυσμα για την έναρξη του πανηγυριού, ενώ καθώς νύχτωνε ο κόσμος γέμιζε το πλάτωμα. Λίγο πριν από τα μεσάνυχτα το υπαίθριο γλέντι βρισκόταν στο φόρτε του, με τον Πρόεδρο της Φιλαρμονικής να οδηγεί το χορό. Μα πέρα από τη διασκέδαση, το πανηγύρι, όπως κάθε χρόνο, θα προσφέρει μια ευκαιρία συνάντησης των Κορακιανιτών κάθε ηλικίας, που θα συρρεύσουν. Αργότερα, θα μοιραστούν λαχνοί προς ενίσχυση των διοργανωτών της εκδήλωσης, Φιλαρμονικής και Εκκλησίας και το γλέντι θα διαρκέσει μέχρι τις πρωινές ώρες…

Two hours before the start of this year's festival of Agia Paraskevi, preparatory work continued unabated. The women's choir and the dance group looked after the preparation of donuts, next to others who were preparing barbecues and outdoor freezers, while tables and chairs were already arranged. At the same time, in the picturesque church, freshly painted with a newly built tower, the priest was doing vespers, while everyone gradually began to gather, pausing to light a candle.
Later, the first sounds of the orchestra will trigger the start of the festival. As night falls people filled the plaza. Shortly before midnight, the outdoor festival was in full swing, the President of the Philharmonic leading the dance. But beyond the fun, the festival, as every year, will offer a chance for Korakianas of all ages who've flocked to the village to meet... the party will last until the early hours...

Saplings

Our boy Richard and Flea

Richard came to supper on Sunday, along with Amy, Guy and Karen's daughter, Phoebe - long friends. How bizarre is this? My wife and children and son-in-law - smokers and friends of smokers - have taken to electric cigarettes - e-cigarettes -which they recharge via the USB port on their laptops; which they smoke in pubs and trains and don't need ashtrays. Is this going to become a new habit? I gather these devices are banned in Boston.

Phoebe and Amy came to supper

*** *** ***
I've learned of changes in our street; some pending, others while I was away - Mrs Kolcak died, Gwen's house opposite has been sold and we have new opposite neighbours not yet met, Mrs Piotrovski's sold her home and has gone to live with her daughter who used to babysit for us, the old gentleman who went blind has now moved out and into a home; so-and-so is becoming more and more absent-minded, suffering dementia. Oh and Mahmood Hussain, who got deselected and has been re-selected, will stand for the council in May in place of Don Brown who's retiring.
"Do you realise that Leslie's nearly 50"
"Blimey. I remember when his dad got him his first camera. He was 16 wasn't he?"
"Now we'll have Syrian refugees in Handsworth"
"Wars! They've fled to Lebanon, Jordan. Desperate. Then the governments start allocating them to places across the world. Our inner suburbs, any inner suburb, is where new people get lodged when they arrive. It makes us rich"
"It makes us crowded" says Lin, vexed, who at Igoumenitsa last year, took food to young Kurds being chivvied from the ferry terminal by Greek police.
*** ***
Lin's given me fruit saplings - plum, apple, pear and peach.
"They're a present"
"But it's not my birthday yet"
"They were going cheap at Lidl"
I piled the trees in the front pannier of my bicycle, sat Oscar on top and cycled towards the Victoria Jubilee Allotments, for my first visit since mid-January. The route goes down Victoriana Way on the Parklands estate where by happy chance (given he was leaving Chris Perry's home to get in his car as I went by) I bumped into Simon Winters of Kaleidoscope who's been helping me with the search for my stepfather's old films, tapes of Out of Town made in the 1970s and 80s. I knew he and Chris and been at one of the regular  Kal get-together in Stourbridge to review and celebrate the latest films they've recovered.
"Hi Simon!"
"Simon! How did the Kal event go yesterday?"
"Fine. I saw Dave. He's cooled down. Cathy's actually pleased with him. You know he was anxious about his relations with Endemol re the rights in those 34 Out of Town films. She's going to have them re-issued."
"Oh right. Blimey! That's a change of tone since Christmas"
"And you know the 27 films Endemol..."
"The ones Delta are re-issuing under licence from Endemol?"
"Yes. Well Dave's given her another beta-tape that was actually part of that set, so there'll be 28"
"How did Dave...?" I start to ask but leave it, wondering how come Dave has got hold of yet another Out of Town tape about whose existence I'd known nothing.
I cycled on to the allotment pondering the mercurial cat-and-mouse process of the last 18 months, as I and others have chased after missing copies of Jack's films; have traced them to one archive only to find them missing from there and possibly moved to another where they survive in such-and-such format; found another set whose existence must be kept temporarily secret lest the finder be entangled in the coils of copyright claims from Endemol.
The allotments were deserted, damp and chill, with a grand wind tumbling the trees of the park setting up a roar amid their leafless branches, magpies and pigeons diving and soaring in the gusts. Plot 14 looks quite good at first sight with my shed and edged path and black polythene sheet bubbling in the wind under its holding stones, doing something that looks like it might be useful. But there's nothing seriously growing especially compared to the early vegetables and green manure I've seen on other plots.

I plonk the saplings under the veranda along with the seeds I was given in Ano Korakiana and four kilos of seed potatoes stored in the garage, chitting promisingly. Where to plant the trees? We have had an idea of an orchard of sorts at the bottom end of the two adjoining plots. Rachel and John next door though have had no time for more than a square yards of desultory spade work, which at least gives me some sense of advancement. The trees despite a rule about only three per plot will have to go on 14, on the east side of the shed where the ground is as yet least dug over. I get out the azada and brace myself to work, Oscar gazing on the park, planning to dig under the fence when I'm distracted.
"I know what you're thinking Os. I really do"
"So?" He continues searching the landscape beyond the fence with eyes and nose...

One to break the surface with big hoe, fork or spade, turning up divots; another to break up the weeded divots and begin to level the surface with rake and smaller hoe. It's not as if our plot presents that much of a problem compared to some soils. The other reason I find this hard is, not my age or fitness, but the fact I've neglected ground that a better gardener would work over far more regularly. In fact the soil's a lot easier to work than last year, benefiting from the hard work I invested digging it over then. In the intervening time roots have grown again and begun to gain a hold.

Some progress

I try to keep an eye on Oscar as I work but now and then I see he's tiptoed off and dug a hole beneath the fence. Out of the corner of my eye I catch him sniffing happily at another dog in the park while the owner looks on. If a fight's on the books he's back inside the fence growling fiercely at his opponent through the bars. Recalling him I get to chat with someone through the fence - a welcome break from digging. In two hours, with further breaks to shelter under the veranda from showers of rain and even hail, I've made progress enough to have ground in which to plant the trees after their roots have been soaked. As for the potatoes I propose peeling back the black plastic, planting as I go. I may start the seeds in trays inside the sites new communal polytunnel.
Monday afternoon I went back to the plot passing Vanley sowing onions, in perfect smooth soil.
"How do you get the ground like that?"
"I'll come over to you in a moment" I went on with my digging. Vanley arrived and watched me.
"This is a mess" he said, nicely, of the ground I'd been working. He took my spade and began a tutorial on how to prepare ground; how to hold the fork and get it into the ground, raise the earth
"Bend your knees, not your back..."
I should create a trench with the earth I dug into which I can put compost covered by the next line of soil dug out.
"...this way you get the reward of seeing your progress...make sure you're removing the couch, setting it aside for burning or disposal. the other green stuff and uprooted vegetation you just dig in with the compost"

He completed five lines of digging in almost as many minutes, work that had been taking me longer, exhausting me more.

Vanley Burke teaching me work the ground on my plot

"Level it off with the rake"
Then he showed me a good way to plant my early potatoes. He'd taught me a few months back the principle of only preparing the soil in which you are about to plant or sow...so he dug just one ditch between weeded ground, the earth heaped on one side. "Put in your potatoes. Leave just one chit on each. A foot to 18 inches apart. Rake the heaped earth back over them, pulling out any couch"
He left me to it. I dug a second trench, planted and covered my seed potatoes, marking the line with a bamboo on which I stuck their name.
Tue 6 March: That half hour lesson on digging was no small gift. This morning the back ache I expected after several hours' digging didn't occur. Vanley told me that before he started photography (at which he is so good and justly well known), his father, in Jamaica, taught him and his brothers about working the land and caring for animals. I couldn't absorb from books, the learning he imparted in 20 minutes, much as I've tried. V showed me how to raise the spade or shovel - depending on how penetrable the soil - and plunge it down, one hand on top of the handle; the other close by on the stem.
"Don't spear your foot, Simon!"
Then with the blade in the ground, push it down further, then lever
"With your knees, not back - and heap the soil opposite you while creating a trench."
All obvious, but watching him and trying it myself while I was watched by Vanley made it possible.
"If you come up with a shovelful of roots or a divot of turf, strike the larger pieces to break them up, turn the turf upside down. Drop it in the trench, shake the weed ball of earth and do the same or in the case of couch pull it out by hand and make sure to dispose of it."
V was picking out and throwing these distinctive white yellow roots onto the black plastic cover on part of my plot
"They'll dry out there and die. Don't put them in the compost. Get this done and it'll get easier next year."  So I proceeded
"Keep it neat. Keep a line and an edge and make it so you can see how you are progressing. That's good for your morale."
I can hardly express my exhilaration at feeling that I'm on my way to mastering a skill not exercised in my family for generations - or not on my side of it. Jack, my stepfather, could dig. He was one, at most two generations from the land, and didn't he make his later career out of documenting his return to it.

Samuel Lees
portrait in Oldham Art Gallery founded in 1883 by Charles Lees *

I calculate my family have been townspeople since my ancestor Samuel Lees in Oldham became an ironmaster, then cotton mill owner, in the early years of the Industrial Revolution.
"I'd love to write a book, Vanley. 'Teaching the Bourgeois how to return to the Land'"
I didn't add - not yet - that the Lees fortune came in part from processing raw cotton grown by slaves.

Two rows of Marfona planted 5 March

*It was the setting up of an engineering business by Samuel Lees at Holt in 1816, that engineering really took off, as he began to manufacture rollers, rather than simply repairing them. His firm rapidly developed so that by the early 1830s his company was the largest cotton roller manufacturing firm in Lancashire....

*** ***
For the morning and early afternoon I networked at the People Conference 2012 in Handsworth College, comfortable with familiar faces and local friends thinking about the area, planning a future with less and less money to support public services. There's that feeling that we have the companionship and talent to try to address the problems of our area and the needs of its communities. I feel relaxed with Camille, Aftab, Councillor Waseem, Sister Helen, Hector the Protector, Khalid our MP, Derek, Ifor, Harold, Ken, Rajinder, Verona, Saeed who once let people call him Sid...and they with me; involved with and sharing the same concerns.

Later I cycled over to see Amy on the edge of the city Oscar dashing beside me along the towpath of the Fazeley Canal; noise from the motorway receding as I get closer to the countryside by Minworth bridge over the now green edged canal, a hundred yards from Summer Lane. Oscar's delighted to see Amy's dog Cookie.

They romp in the garden, he trying hopelessly to mount her - she's in season - though twice his height. Now and then she reverses the process and jumps on him. Watching a while over tea and shortcake, we reckon it's OK to leave them together. Amy takes me upstairs to see her baby room, with preparatory kit and baby clothes. She makes an appointment with Guy, working late six days in a row at the Ford Showroom in Sutton (It's “change over” time in the motor trade), to meet up at the pub beyond the fields below the garden and we set out for a walk, the dogs now more interested in the scent of hare and pheasant hiding in a broad field of young kale.

Cookie works the ground differently from Oscar who just wants to chase things - when they turn up. Cookie stops a hundred yards from us; and only her back above a clump of taller kale, points and begins to stalk leading with her nose until a foot ahead of her a young tailless hen pheasant bursts from the cover and turns to fly, in its inexperience, within 20 yards of us. We tie the dogs up outside the pub - a soft apple drink for Amy; half a pint of local bitter for me; clustered at the bar blokes of a certain tribe - to me, from the city's centre, they seem strange - all white, unsightly less in feature than in facial gesture, making steady use of the f-word; skidding in a series of 'fffs', a gap for the 'u' pronounced with a lot of 'a' in it, hitting the consonant buffer of the 'ck' with a manly clunk; they swing the curse as a generic club, yet, being on the edge of Sutton Coldfield, they eschew the c-word, weakening their scansion.The place is called The Cock, and "it's full of them" mutters Amy. The rain comes in, the sky darkens, Guy arrives and we head home, my bicycle in his boot with the dogs
"You know" says Amy "I think Cookie and Amy may have tied"
"Shit. How did they manage that?"
"Well it must have been when we went up to the baby room. I saw they'd stopped chasing one another. I think she laid down. I don't want her to have a litter of Jack Daniels, Dad. You'll have to pay the vet."

*** ***
Monday night's meeting of Handsworth Helping Hands saw us reviewing progress to date, assessing the challenges of raising enough cash from grants to do free work for the vulnerable. On the negative side is the sheer lack of local funding; on the positive is that when various local initiatives, such as our area's Community Development Trust and Heathfield Neighbourhood Forum, have been longer in place we'll be well positioned for the grants available. After reading through, editing and getting approval for a draft constitution  for HHH, Lin and I had worked on last year, the meeting left it with Leslie Pinder to report back on arrangements for making ourselves into a social enterprise. Tomorrow I will contact Jo Burrill at Midland Heart to arrange a pilot tidy up at one suitable site so that at least we start to get our hands dirty in a good way.

*** ***
A report from the Institute of International Finance (IIF) on the economic cost of a Greek default - Implications of a Disorderly Greek Default and Euro Exit...

There are some very important and damaging ramifications that would result from a disorderly default on Greek government debt. Most directly, it would impose significant further damage on an already beleaguered Greek economy, raising serious social costs. The most obvious immediate spillover it that it would put a major question mark against the quality of a sizeable amount of Greek private sector liabilities. For the official sector in the rest of the Euro Area, however, the contingent liabilities that could result would seem to be:
• Direct losses on Greek debt holdings (€73 billion) that would probably result from a generalized default on Greek debt (owed to both private and public sector creditors)
• Sizeable potential losses by the European Central Bank (ECB): we estimate that ECB exposure to Greece (€177 billion) is over 200% of the ECB’s capital base
• The likely need to provide substantial additional support to both Portugal and Ireland (government and well as banks) to convince market participants that these countries were indeed fully insulated from Greece (possibly a combined €380 billion over a 5 year horizon)
• The likely need to provide substantial support to Spain and Italy to stem contagion there (possibly another €350 billion of combined support from the European Financial Stability Fund (EFSF)/European Stability Mechanism (ESM) and IMF)
• The ECB would be directly damaged by a Greek default, but would come under pressure to significantly expand its Securities Markets Program (SMP) (currently €219 billion) to support sovereign debt markets
• There would be sizeable bank recapitalization costs, which could easily be €160 billion. Private investors would be very leery to provide additional equity, thus leaving governments with the choice of either funding the equity themselves, or seeing banks achieve improved ratios through even sharper deleveraging
• There would be lost tax revenues from weaker Euro Area growth and higher interest payments from higher debt levels implied in providing additional lending
• There would be lower tax revenues resulting from lower global growth. The global growth implications of a disorderly default are, ex ante, hard to quantify. Lehman Brothers was far smaller than Greece and its demise was supposedly well anticipated. It is very hard to be confident about how producers and consumers in the Euro Area and beyond will respond when such an extreme event as a disorderly sovereign default occurs.
It is difficult to add all these contingent liabilities up with any degree of precision, although it is hard to see how they would not exceed €1 trillion. There is a more profound issue, however. The increased involvement of the ECB in supporting the Euro Area financial system has been such that a disorderly Greek default would lead to significant losses and strains on the ECB itself. When combined with the strong likelihood that a disorderly Greek default would lead to the hurried exit of Greece from the Euro Area, this financial shock to the ECB could raise significant stability issues about the monetary union.

*** ***
A little more of Vanley Burke - my tutor on the plot

...and I had a visitor on Tuesday evening, Sihlangu Tshuma, Online Journalism Postgraduate student at Birmingham City University, who runs a blog - MyHandsworth. He showed me filming he'd done at Uplands Allotments.

Linda takes charge of Plot 14

Linda said "I'll come over and help with the allotment"
I've been struggling with sturdy weeds and dry earth, while all about gardeners are beginning to deliver crops. Our shed is still in pieces since we found it through freecycle before Christmas, and although its foundations have been part prepared I've not yet compacted the earth I paid Edmund and Krzysztof to move for me in early February. It'll also need a base of slabs. Determined not to pay for these I've been collecting what I can find from skips. The final lot came from a terrace in Ivy Road.

I got small ones and then with help loaded some really large ones that ended up - to save Lin's suspension - four journeys to and from the VJA site. I couldn't have got them in the car but for help from the Sikh who was working on the house - recently in this country I reckon, but picking up the language as he worked.

Once at plot 14 I lent a plank on the back of the boot; heaving and shoving I slid the slabs out of Lin's car and set them down ready to be carried or barrowed to the bottom of the plot.

Oscar came with me. On the last trip while I was occupied manhandling slabs he crawled under the fence into Handsworth Park after a white bull terrier bitch. Getting him back required rediscovering the gap he'd used to get into the park. Quite bright enough to finds this, he chose to be obtuse, peering over his shoulder at the bitch in the distance.
Once Lin arrived she started planning. "You'll need a path to get the slabs to the shed site...also some borders"

We set to marking these out with pegs and string. It was a pleasure to take orders. I set to clearing weeds from the path to the shed. Lin followed smoothing with a rake. There were logs and chippings left by the Park's ground maintenance staff available to all gardeners. In a couple of hours the path began to appear.

So now I can start pounding the shed foundations with a tamper, spreading a layer of sand, wheeling down the slabs and .... in another week we might even be starting to put up a shed. While we worked I watered the potatoes beginning to appear, planted more along with broccoli and corn, moved more stones and continued forking up weeds. Vanley Burke, the celebrated Handsworth photographer, a lovely man I've been meeting on and off for years, has also got a plot. He stopped to chat and encourage us. Although aching in knees and back and hips I felt we'd done a fine day's work; made  progress.
We've come quite a way since I posted this nostalgic record of the old abandoned Victoria Jubilee Allotments using stills by the photographer Luke Unsworth in 2004.

*** ***
This week has seen an advance in locating a significant cache of Jack Hargreaves' complete episodes. First there was seeing Marion's tapes - not complete from my point of view because Stan, her husband and my stepfather's cameraman, chopped out the parts he wanted as a record of his brilliant location work.

Dear Marion. It was great to see you yesterday in Havant (should have been Eastleigh but I'm absent minded), to chat and to view a sample of that wonderful set of videos that you nearly threw out had Tony not made contact.  Tony is now putting the main material onto DVDs. We are both delighted withwhat you preserved. This is rare and rich material - the work of a great duo! I was really glad to see that clip of Jack and Stan working together, and Tony  tells me there is an interview with Stan at your home in which he talks about working on Out of Town. Wonderful along with the OoT episodes I've not seen before. Kindest regards, Simon

I circulated a note about this visit to the JH Committee and Ian Wegg, who has now written an introduction to his growing list of Out of Town and Old Country broadcasts, replied reminding me to 'Bear in mind these are the same  tapes that Simon Winters looked at a couple of years ago and appeared in the  KAL recoveries list for 2008-2009' Ian and Tony had mentioned KAL, Kaleidoscope several times but I hadn't registered and for the same reason I hadn't taken note of Simon Winters. My focus has been on mining the South West Film and Television Archive and viewers' off-air recordings.

Add caption

I wrote to Simon Winters introducing myself and explaining my interest in Jack's material. He replied:

Hi there. Many thanks for your message. The good news is that I most certainly rescued every second of footage from Stan's entire collection of betamax tapes, and am most happy for you as Jack's family to get a copy. I don't think I sent all of the transfers to Stan's wife, so I can help here out there too. The other good news is that I recorded it all straight to dvd back in 2003, so there was no picture quality loss. The bad news is that Stan's tapes were in poor condition and crashed in and out of episodes with no regard to presentation! I can also confirm that ITV Leeds hold a large collection of complete episodes (my italics). They once sent me a database, but I sadly no longer have it. I think there were 28 full Southern episodes in their collection. These are the 'as broadcast' episodes with Southern idents. One of these was released on the 'Dream Factory' dvd, a project which I assisted with. If you want to phone me, my number is ********...I'll fill you in with all the details when we chat. In due course it would also be good for you to meet Chris Perry from Kaleidoscope. He lives in Birmingham, so perhaps you two could meet for a chat. I'm copying in this email to Kaleidoscope who I have long trusted to store and look after this important material. Cheers Simon

Simon and I must have chatted on the phone for twenty minutes. I realised there was another source of 'lost' TV material - a site called Missing Episodes, another called Wiped and, most significant, it seemed to me - the holdings according to Simon of twenty-eight full Southern episodes of Out of Town in the ITV archive at Leeds - something I can't immediately identify on the internet, though I've seen forum talk that it's held by Yorkshire TV. Is it ITN Source? He emailed me on Thursday:

I have been speaking to Chris Perry about this and have suggested that it is much better for you and him to take this one forward. He has all the required knowhow...including excellent contacts at ITV Leeds. There is nobody better placed than him to help you there...I firmly believe that he has the answers to all your questions and the solutions too. He is holding a barbeque in July and I'll be along there too. He suggested that you can meet us both together then...Certainly, the complete 'as transmitted' Southern episodes at Leeds are your best starting point. Simon

Then I heard from Chris, in a message copied to Simon Winters:

Hi Simon, both of you! Kaleidoscope is indeed as keen as you are Simon(s) to track down Out of Town footage. My colleague Simon Coward knows more about this field than I do, but I look forward to talking with you about Jack's work in more detail over the next few months, and I'm sure Simon Coward will be even keener than me...I'm having a barbecue on Sat 16th July  if you want  to meet Simon Winters, Simon Coward and I in the  flesh.  :-) lol. Thanks. Chris

The amazing thing is that Christopher Perry lives hardly five minutes walk from our home in Handsworth, on the Parklands Estate which I pass every time I visit our allotment on the VJA.

Victoriana Way just next to the Victoria Jubilee Allotments

Mark emailed me from Ano Korakiana:

Hi Simon and Lin , thanks for forwarding the e-mails on to me about the JH findings , it really does, for me anyhow, make for good reading on where you are up to in finding his material. Bet you couldn't believe it when you found out about Chris Perry living so close and of Kaleidoscope being in Birmingham, things seem to be moving along in the right direction now for you and of course the archive centre in Leeds also may well hold some vital answers (film). No change here really. Hay season has started , we already have 300 bales in the barn with only another 700 to go (yuck), so am trying my best to get the deed done before it gets too hot out here because as of yet it has been warm but days of overcast so not to bad for humping hay. Talking of humping, Teal has had a girlfriend around for 4 days. She went back yesterday having been with us since Sunday morning. It was a slow start but as dogs do they soon sorted themselves out and got on with it and finally on Tuesday they sealed the deal as it where. So fingers crossed for her pregnancy and if all goes well we will have Teal junior here the start of September...

******
Syngrou Avenue Λεωφόρος Συγγρού is a ridiculous outdated highway that starts at the Port of Faliron just east of Piraeus and drives nearly seven kilometres north east without traffic lights into the centre of Athens, ending in a roundabout just south east of the Acropolis.

No modern city should allow motorised traffic such unrestricted access to its centre, which is why it's good to learn that a group of town planners is, at the request of the Organization for Athens Zoning, considering what Syngrou Avenue could look like if instead of being high-speed dual carriageway, it was friendly to walkers, cyclists, public transport and, thought this is still almost unimaginable to autodependent Athenians, carfree.
** **
Late last night: Amy, my daughter, has just sent me this video of her's and Guy's two dogs encountering a stranger that has somehow got into their home.
*** ***
A fine old tree has fallen. Patrick Leigh Fermor, soldier, traveller and writer, born 11 February 1915; died 10 June 2011. I could imagine him choosing to leave from his dearest home, Kardamyli, Καρδαμύλη in Mani, but last Thursday he came home to Worcestershire. Joan died at Kardamyli in 2003; her remains brought back to her birthplace to lie in St Peter's Churchyard, Dumbleton under the inscription - Και γαίαν έχεις ελαφράν. Aleko tells me modern Greek would write this <Και ελαφρύ το χώμα που σε σκεπάζει> "And may the earth that covers you be light"
*** ***
There have been several mentions on the Ano Korakiana website of problems with water supply, but I struggled to make proper sense of this entry:

Γράφει ο/η Σταμάτης Απέργης   10.06.11… Τα πράγματα, δυστυχώς, είναι απλά: Οι χαμηλές και παραθαλάσσιες περιοχές του πρώην Δήμου Φαιάκων (και συνάμα οι πιο πυκνοκατοικημένες) δεν διαθέτουν καλά νέρα (τα λεγόμενα θαλασσονέρια). Η περιοχή μας, η Άνω Κορακιάνα, διαθέτει αξιόλογο νερό (πόσιμο κατά πρώτο και κύριο λόγο) με τις δύο γεωτρήσεις στη Χούμουλη και στο Νταμάρι. Οι δύο αυτές γεωτρήσεις καλύπτουν σε μεγάλο βαθμό το τελευταίο διάστημα, τις ανάγκες ύδρευσης (όχι μόνο προς πόση αλλά για κάθε χρήση), της παραπάνω πυκνοκατοικημένης έκτασης των πρώην Δημοτικών Διαμερισμάτων Άνω Κορακιάνας, Κάτω Κορακιάνας και Αγίου Μάρκου. Για να καταστεί αυτό εφικτό και στις δύο αυτές γεωτρήσεις γίνεται υπεράντληση. Η υπεράντληση οδηγεί μαθηματικά στην καλύτερη περίπτωση σε μεταβολή της ποιότητας του νερού επί τα χείρω (ώστε να μην είναι πόσιμο), στην χειρότερη δε, στην παντελή αδυναμία άντλησης (η γεώτρηση στερεύει). Το δίκτυο τα τελευταία χρόνια γιγαντώνεται άναρχα, χωρίς οποιαδήποτε μελέτη, ενίοτε χωρίς ρολόγια… Εναλλακτικές λύσεις δεν συζητούνται, εν όψει και της κρίσης, από δε επισήμων χειλέων ακούμε μόνο ότι «όσο βγάνει θα πίνουμε κι όλοι μαζί θα διψάσουμε». Κι άμα τελειώσει το νερό, πίνουμε κρασάκι βρε αδερφέ… 

Eventually I e-mailed Aleko Damaskinos, our tutor earlier in the year:

Dear Simon and Linda. Very nice to hear from you and I look forward to seeing you both after the 30th August. We will again make a visit to the Vitamins since you liked it! Here is a quick translation of the water problems in Ano Korakiana. Quote : "From Stamatis Apergis: Things are quite simple. The areas nearer to the sea and of course more populated do not have 'good' water.They call it 'sea-water'. Our area Ano Korakiana has very good drinking water since they opened the bore-holes at Humouli and Damari - στη Χούμουλη και στο Νταμάρι. These two bore-holes cover all the needs for drinking and general use water for Ano Korakiana, Lower Korakiana and Agios Markos. In order to satisfy all, they draw more water than what is available. This over-drawing leads to a change in the quality of the water and therefore it is non-drinkable. In the worst situation the bore-holes will not give any more water. The water supply system in the last few years is increasing without any kind of control or study. Sometimes not even a water-meter is provided! There are no alternate solutions. We hear from the people in charge the  following : 'Whatever supply we have we will drink it and then, all of us will be thirsty! When the water has finished let's drink wine...!!'" I hope your Greek is improving and I will be glad to see you again at my lessons starting sometime in October (you will be notified nearer the time) and I also hope that Linda will attend without any exam nerves! The weather has more or less settled and the temperature is about 26-30 degrees and sunshine. The last few days we have strong maistros (North-West wind) which is annoying. Normally we expect this wind in August. With all my love, Aleko