Ἡ εἰρήνη τοῦ θεοῦ ἡ ὑπερέχουσα πάντα νοῦν

At my mother's memorial service her friend and neighbour, Christina Murray, read this from one of Barbara’s regular articles during her fourteen years as  the first women’s editor of Farmers Weekly. She was inspired by seeing Leonardo da Vinci’s Madonna of the Rocks in the National Gallery.

PEACE OF MIND

...When we were children, one of the excitements of Christmas was visiting the crib in our village church. And, like all things in a child’s memory, it’s the atmosphere and happenings which surround an event as much as the event itself which are important.
We always used to make this visit after tea and oh the excitement of going out of the house after dark and the little shivers of expectancy which murmured through my small frame as we entered the church door and tip-toed across the stone floor to where the crib was arranged in the corner. There it was, those little figures grouped around the inch high doll lying in its little match-box sized crib. This tiny figure representing the Man who was to make men and women of us all. Now, when I look at this picture, I recall the feeling of those after-tea visits, and though now I can express my thoughts a little more clearly the majesty and the magic of it still remain.
What emerges more clearly as one stands before this painting is the Mother’s peace of mind - strange that so nebulous a quality should shine out so distinctly. For her it was a peace of mind from having achieved so richly that for which she was chosen. For us it is strangely the same, for Peace of Mind is an achievement in itself. It is a philosophy of life born along the road to maturity. A state of mind achieved out of the guts of experience.
Then when you believe that you have found contentment in the way you live your life, a pride in your family and friends and no lasting envy of others, then peace of mind becomes the bridge over the gap between youthfulness and maturity which, when you cross it, makes you stronger and braver than the young.
The truth of this shines through the face of the Virgin in the picture and as one quietly gazes on this family group one begins to know the meaning of that Peace which Passeth all Understanding.
*** *** ***
The Rev William Mather, officiating, finished his tribute:

Barbara would not have called herself particularly religious but she was blessed with an open-heart towards life and people and with a spiritual awareness. It is perhaps worth reminding ourselves that when she refers to the 'Peace that passeth all understanding,' she is quoting from the famous verse in Philippians 4.4-7. In the words of the Authorised Version of the Bible, which she loved, it is as follows:  

4. Rejoice in the Lord alway: and
Again I say, Rejoice 

5. Let your moderation by known
Unto all men. The Lord is at hand. 

6. Be careful for nothing; but in
Every thing by prayer and supplication
With thanksgiving let your requests
Be made known unto God. 

7. And the peace of God, which
Passeth all understanding, shall keep
Your hearts and minds through
Christ Jesus. Amen

 **** ****
Barbara's step-daughter, Fiona, spoke most ex tempore, sweetly and with such fun, wit and timing. I pause at using her notes to capture her tribute, which like this seem to have something of the style of Pickwick's acquaintance Alfred Jingle. Fiona tho' was no charlatan and she never mangled a phrase:

Intro: difficult task so many aspects to her character. She was attractive, cultured, extremely intelligent, charming, great sense of style – feathered hats, plus fours, good sense of humour, great taste, always interesting, career woman, homemaker. A true country woman who was equally at home in the city, often infuriating and never, never wrong! She was interested in everything ranging from llamas and Jacob sheep to politics, religion, literature and the arts, always young at heart. Amusing and exasperating anecdotes: Supermarket trolley, plastic cutlery. Driving: excellent and very fast, to still very fast, but dangerous. A9 at 80mph, terrier. Crash with police car. “Not my fault, foggy”. Cooking: Excellent, unusual attitude to food hygiene, chicken, “Nonsense”. Food poisoning. Hols: far from incident free. Fire, insurance. Picnic chairs and table, picnic site. Lost passport, Wheelchair in road, furniture moving, slope, booking cockup, shared bedroom, smoking in café..End on serious note. Dad and particularly B gave us wonderful holidays with the children up at Faillie. Warm welcome, wonderful smell of woodsmoke, delicious meals, picnics. A relaxing outdoor holiday, fishing, swimming in the loch, walking the dogs. Hard to realise that a 40 year era has ended. I believe that B’s spirit is riding across the moors, whistling up the dogs or fishing down by her beloved Findhorn and that is how I’ll always remember her. Last paragraph from Wuthering Heights.

“I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath and harebells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth”.

Thank you Barbara for looking after Dad so well, for all that you did for our family, and for the privilege of knowing you. 

*** *** ***
Mum's friend Minoti could not join us but added her tribute in writing:

REMEMBERING THEODORA

"Theodora"! Slowly she lifted her head, a ray of sunshine stole in from the window wrapping around her hair like a halo as we came in beside her chair in the living room of Brin Croft that afternoon of the last day of June this year. It was as if a sunflower had turned its face to the East in the morning. Indeed so it was. For a moment time raced back two centuries. It was as if her great grandmother, Jane, Lady Maine, had stepped out of the pages of the researched volume on the life of Sir Henry Sumner Maine which lay open on the table where Theodora had been reading. But this was not the first time that our two worlds met, defying as it were Rudyard Kipling's famous prediction that they would not. Unlike her great grandmother, who had never seen India, Theodora had visited the country although she had not been familiar with her ancestor's famous books Ancient Law published in 1861 and his equally famous lectures in Oxford on Village Communities in the East and West which too had been published in 1871. It was well beyond the Kipling prediction that the "twain shall not meet". Sir Henry not only brought the East to the West but brought the study of Law into the formal teaching curriculum of Oxford University. I travelled the other way round to the West and so imbibed the scholarship initiated by Sir Henry which helped me to retrace my study of common lands in India to the Western Teutonic and Celtic communities of Europe. It was in this process of collecting Sir Henry's entire correspondence that I came across Simon's search on the internet for his Grandpa Henry who was Sir Henry Sumner Maine's grandson. This is like the silk route to Theodora Barbara Sumner Maine or TBSM - her encrypted DNA as I would like to think. Her great grandmother and grandmother belonged to families in Kelso - the Borderlands. I could discern a special attachment of Theodora to the Highlands and she listened with great interest to my work on common pastures in highlands both in Scotland and in the Himalayas. She called herself a shepherdess. To me our meeting has been a confluence of two cultures brought together by the onset of changes in the Twentieth century where women are no longer in 'tutelage' as they were in the times when Henry Sumner Maine wrote about it. She wanted to know so much about the tradition of commoning in both India and in Scotland and whilst I was able to explain the major findings of Sir Henry there was very little time to share his views on women in society. I never could tell her how Sir Henry had been in the society of educated authors of his time like George Eliot and had been espousing the talent of his wife's sister who wrote novels. I wonder what Maine would have thought of my finding his great-grand-daughter enthusiastically reading about the Voyager spacecraft on the edge of our solar system, on a 21st century iPad? [A note from the scholar, Professor Minoti Chakravarty-Kaul, December 8, 2012]

...and a few days ago came a card from friends in India, from Tikli

I studied E.M.Forster's A Passage to India for 'A' level 50 years ago. It was Mum's friendship with Minoti that made instant connection with that curtain falling conclusion, written when she was a 7 year old girl, to Forster's tour de force:

"But the horses didn't want it - they swerved apart; the earth didn't want it, sending up rocks through which riders must pass single file; the temples, the tank, the jail, the palace, the birds, the carrion, the Guest House, that came into view as they issued from the gap and saw Mau beneath: they didn't want it, they said in their hundred voices, 'No, not yet,' and the sky said, 'No, not there.'"  Ch. 37

*** *** *** ***

Clarinet Quartet in Ag.Georgiou

Μια πολύ ωραία συναυλία του "Κουαρτέτου Κλαρινέτων ΟΡΦΕΑΣ" πραγματοποιήθηκε απόψε  βράδυ, στην εκκλησία του Αγίου Γεωργίου, στο χωριό μας. Το συγκρότημα εκπροσώπησαν οι Αργυρός Δημήτρης, Κρητικός Γιάννης, Μάνδηλας Χρύσανθος και ο Βασιλάτος Ηλίας. Στο πρώτο μέρος του προγράμματος το κουαρτέτο πλαισιώθηκε από τις νεαρές μουσικούς της μπάντας του Μουσικού μας Συλλόγου  Νικολούζου Ευαγγελία, Στογιάννου Σπυριδούλα και Τσιριγώτη Ελευθερία. Το ποικίλο πρόγραμμα απέσπασε το χειροκρότημα του κοινού και τα θετικά σχόλια των μαέστρων των Φιλαρμονικών Σκριπερού και Κορακιάνας. Την εκδήλωση προλόγισε ο Πρόεδρος της Φιλαρμονικής Κορακιάνας Σπύρος Σαββανής. 

This evening a delightful concert was given by the 'ORPHEUS Clarinet Quartet' at the church of St. George - Αγίου Γεωργίου - in our village. The group comprised Dimitris Argyris, John Kritikos, Chrysanthos Madilas and Elias Vasilis, joined in the first part of the quartet by young musicians from our band's Musical Club, Evangelia Nikolouzos, Spyridoula Stogiannis, and Spyria and Eleftheria Tsirigoti. A varied programme won the audience's applause and compliments from the conductors of the Korakiana and Skripero Philharmonics. The event was introduced by the President of the Korakiana Philharmonic, Spyros Savvanis.

*** *** ***

I went shopping again on Christmas Eve and bought presents - chocolate boxes, champagne, marrons glacés, checked boys' toys at Maplins...

...before descending down the Birmingham slope to look for odds-and-ends from the Rag Market, treating myself to a well burned baked potato...

... dripping with melted butter, then half a dozen oysters...

... and later, when Richard joined me, a meal at Café Soya. A couple sat nearby. The male had entered on the phone, spoke on it while eating and left the same way, emitting muffled banalities, letting the woman open the exit door - a bulky figure, possibly an android, enabling its owner to enjoy the town alone. I peered to see a ring in its back, but she probably had a remote control in her handbag.

On Christmas day it continued grey. A part of my little constellation - Amy, Guy, now Oliver in his pushchair seeing it all for new, his first Christmas, Liz and Matt and Richard and dogs Jessie, Oscar and Cookie plus our neighbour's dog Deiter - we strolled through Handsworth Park, the familiar circuit of our park - Vertegan's promenades - by St Mary's Church, over the narrow rail bridge, past the cricket ground to the rose garden, children's playground and back along the avenue by the Son's of Rest and over the larger rail bridge, down the long slope that passes the pond, taking us back to busy Hamstead Road...

...and home for the happy chaos of Linda's and Dot's Christmas lunch in the early evening - and presents still to come. Oliver sits in the same high chair that served his great grandmother, his grandfather, and his mum.

Lin's mum Dorothy with Oscar and Oliver and Amy and Guy

Planning

Theodroa, my mother, aged 10 months in Dec 1917

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Royal Horticultural Society booklet on urban front gardens

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

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

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

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

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

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

*** ***

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



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

ΟΡΕΣΤΗΣ ΒΑΡΒΙΤΣΙΩΤΗΣ