Snow

I’d almost forgotten about snow; proper snow with sledging, snowballing, and inconvenience for people who want to go to work. The children rejoice. So far as I know, so does Oscar dog, even when, in the Highlands, there was little to be seen but his tail and a nose, surfacing now and then to check position. 

Birmingham, with the rest of the country south of the borders, gets taken by surprise. Snow comes so infrequently, the airwaves disperse hyperbole about 'weather', it can't be nostalgia that I recall such conditions as normal, to be taken in our stride. This weekend on to Monday, buses didn't run. Schools closed. No trains or trams for 48 hours, No gritting. When salting came, as befits services under 'austerity', only arterial roads got the treatment. 
Oliver was staying with us on Sunday. We ventured out on foot to the allotments. 

At the iron gates I brushed frosted snow off the lock's push buttons.

"We're the only ones to visit" 

"How do you know, grandpa?" 

"What do you notice about the snow, Oliver?"

To my surprise he couldn't work it out. 

We trudged through boot-depth snow to the plot. 

Pristine. From the parks came shouts and laughter. In the distance I could see the smudgy shapes of many Canada geese standing by the pond among the naked trees, oblivious to the stick people cantering about, snowballing, making snowmen, sledging.

"Help me, Oliver"

He'd already made sure to bring a carrot. The snow packed up sticky to make good lumps to pile up for our snowman's body. When he was nearly as high as me I used  a trowel to shape neck and shoulders. Oliver collected chunks with his gloved hands to fill in gaps in the body. 

"Charcoal for eyes! Veg nets for a scarf. Give us the carrot" 

I carved holes for nose and eyes.

"His mouth!"

I went in the greenhouse and found a dried runner bean pod, curved. Perfect. 

Amy rang "come home, Dad. We're all here now. Pasties and mince pies and...

"We'll go sledging in the park?"

"Of course"

I tarried to put out nuts, seeds, water and fat-balls for birds, Garlic stems were poking out through the snow in two beds; winter onions too. But for disturbance around our snowman, the plot lies under the snow, its soil teeming with dormant life. The burgeoning of summer is hardly imaginable. The bees are silent, clustered in winter around the queen; living off honey. The scene is black and white, but for Oliver's warm red coat and flags on the fruit cage.

** ** **

Our park has a special glamour under snow. Amy, Guy, Hannah, Oliver, Oscar dog and I walk over the rail bridge to the other side of the park with its bandstand, and steeper contours, good for sledging. 

We all have a go on our plastic sledges. I slide on my front, the better to steer with my toes. The children are fearless, sitting upright, veering into trees, tipping over. Up we stumble and down we go again - together and in turns dodging trees, the metal fence near the foot of the run, whooping, shouting, laughing with others sharing the slope,...

... until the sky tunes itself to dusk. We head home dragging the children on sledges. 

"I love seeing the street lights through the trees" I said to Amy. We're in a lovely city park remote from feral winter.

Dusk in Handsworth Park

** ** ** **
With many others, we've been helping Jan Kimber campaign against building houses over most of the Lea Hall Allotments. Jan and I evoked Handsworth Allotments Information Group (HAIG) - the small group that I'd set up to campaign against building houses over all the old Victoria Jubilee Allotments, where I now have my plot.

Lea Hall Allotments on Google Maps 

The plan to build on Lea Hall Allotments

Planning application 2017/08883/PA was submitted, on 25th October 2017, by Countryside Properties to build 110 new homes at the Lea Hall allotments site on Wood Lane, in Handsworth Wood. 'A mixture of detached, semi-detached and terraced, 79 of these 3+4 bed homes will be for sale and the other 31 will be for private rent.' My objection sent, with others, to Birmingham City Council Planning Department:

I wish to express my objection to planning application 2017/08883/PA to build on Lea Hall Allotments.
Allotments have legal protection under the the Small Holdings and Allotments Act 1908, unless it can be shown there is no demand for plots.
To suppress demand, Lea Hall Allotments Committee have been engaged in a ‘managed’ retreat from responsibility to look after these allotments, turning a statutorily protected green space into a profitable windfall site for housing.
This strategy, to empty allotment sites and suppress demand for plots,  in order to sell them, was criticised in the report of the Select Committee on Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs Fifth Report ‘The Future For Allotments’ 11 June 1998, which described what’s been happening at Lea Hall Allotments as ‘constructive non-maintenance’.
Members of Lea Hall Allotments Committee have colluded with Countryside Properties (the second developer with whom they have had recent dealings), in ‘constructive non-maintenance’, by:

- not advertising plots and rejecting applications for them
- abandoning all but minimal maintenance, and failing to invest in site infrastructure,
- unnecessarily cutting down some of the site’s mature trees,
- repeatedly telling plot holders that plans to build on the site have already been agreed,
- excluding the contribution of women plot-holders to promoting the site by prohibiting them from committee deliberations, 

The applicant claims suitable substitute plots are available on other allotment sites. This is not a case that has been easy for them to make, as the Lea Hall Allotments site is, or would be if properly managed, uniquely attractive, facing open green space to the north (across a railway line which assists security), with woodlands on its edge, good drainage and an exceptionally well equipped clubhouse with bar, toilets, a bowling green and facilities for meetings and entertainment.
This application by Countryside Properties threatens to remove yet more green space from one of  our city’s finest Victorian suburbs, contrary to guidance in Birmingham City Council’s ‘Mature suburbs: Guidelines to control residential intensification - Feb 2008’.
Properly managed  and advertised, Lea Hall Allotments, left as allotments and conservation area, open to the public, would be a most valuable community asset.
There is a significant deficit of open space in Lozells & East Handsworth Ward. The proximity of the application site to Perry Hall playing field, quoted by the applicant as an example of green space availability, is compromised by the railway line between New Street and Walsall that runs along the northern boundary of the neighbourhood.
The new allotments in the applicant’s proposal cover only 24% of the existing site and they are far smaller than the normal average of 200 square metres in other city allotments..
The woodland in the north east corner of the site provides screening and noise protection for residents of Lea Hall Road, serves as a visual amenity for users of Perry Hall Playing Fields, is a habitat for a rich variety of flora and fauna, and contributes to the area’s drainage.
It seems especially unwise to allow this development on greenfield land given the forthcoming analysis by West Midlands Combined Authority on the remediation and development of brownfield land (West Midlands Land Commission - Final Report to the West Midlands Combined Authority Board. 9th February 2017). 

A tour around Lea Hall Allotments on 22nd November

Jan Kimber describes Countryside Properties' plans for Lea Hall Allotments at Birchfield Neighbourhood Forum - 30 Nov 2017

On the edge of success

A picture speeded up; summer’s exudation of greenery – leaves, tendrils, stalks, flowers, fruit, pods, tubers and all I define as weeds – burgeoning, profuse, like descriptions of far greater heat in Lampedusa's novel of Sicily which I read long long ago - the sun like a lion, the oestrus mares in the palace stables. It makes winter scenery unimaginable – as in winter, this summer abundance is remote. Yet I’m not content. 

The pleasure of my allotment is being shared with a snails, slugs and caterpillars. Pigeons and magpies drop in to enjoy the feast. On a Facebook site devoted to allotments the administrator has been asked to censor the next member who posts a clip of killing slugs; 

Yet again certain people still find great pleasure in posting slug and snail killing pictures. You should be band!!!! You know who you are and so do we. There is no need for it. Personally I don't want see It!! And sure that most other people don't want to either. Thought we had moved on!!! Admin need to step in.

We’ve had human thieves on Victoria Jubilee. They clambered over the site’s metal railings at night, looking for power tools. Nothing from us, since we have none. They borrowed a hammer of mine to break into a neighbour’s shed, leaving it on the ground outside. No-one accuses me. They broke into our shed. I’ve repaired their damage. Oliver helped. Winnie restored order inside; tidying their strewing. The police have other priorities. It's mostly forgotten already. 

Instead of just rejoicing inwardly at the progress I’ve made, learning about working an allotment, slowly but steadily transforming unpromising boulder clay, I and other plot-holders inherited in 2010, into something like fertile loam, laboriously eliminating vestiges of the couch grass that invaded the 200 square metre plot, teasing out its nutrient leaching rhizomes, spreading and pegging weed suppressing textile on a grid of paths to make it easy to work on 24 separate beds without standing on working soil, erecting a shed, adding a veranda and extra bamboo supports for a hardy fertile vine, putting up a second hand wood frame greenhouse, designing a large fruit cage that stands up to gales, laying out alternating compost bays, and getting the bees back in abundance, but as Winnie observes now and then “You’re not happy, Simon!” 

I’m overwhelmed by how much I don’t know, having learned from late experience, and reading, that this little plot is as unfathomable as the universe. It’s the site of a universe. 

“Did you know” said my friend Ziggi who works an allotment in London “There are as many micro-organisms in one spoon of soil as people on earth?” 

How on earth – literally – do I gauge what plants need? What different plants need? 

I’ve arrived at a grasp of Ph values in the earth – even bought litmus paper - but I’m stumped when it comes to reckoning how plants and weather, along with chemical, physical, organic composition makes change in the soil through the seasons. Having invested in several tons of black gold two years ago, are parts of the plot too rich now? Some cultivators start again every year, investing in sacks of laboratory collected compost and top soil. I want to know how to maintain the soil’s equilibrium, to keep it working, with minimal recourse to garden centres and internet products pandering to my anxieties like cosmetics to their consumers.
As it is, I am almost convinced now that the site's original boulder clay - described, in a geological survey, as 'natural sandy clay with pebbles', is slowly reasserting itself

The soil on Plot 14 in 2013

 - wormless, cloggy in the wet and tending to produce fist-sized hardened lumps in the dry. Difficult to fork, impossible to spade. I had hoped the soil, treated with compost, especially black gold, some manure and wood chip mulch, would stay as good as it's been the last two years, but I don't believe this is the case. I shall now consider investing in more 'black gold' and even manure if I can get it from a reliable source. 

“Simon! Have faith” urges Winnie

“Yes but look what the birds and slugs have done to the Brussels sprouts that I hoped to get right for Christmas this year. The cauliflowers have bolted again. 

The same’s going to happen to the cabbage. See how all the cherries on both the cherry trees have been taken by birds. The plum and the pear yet again, haven’t even blossomed.”

My friend Ziggi reminds me “Nature lacks uniformity. For three years in a row your tomatoes come in abundance. Then they don’t. It happens.”

But as if this unpredictability, this indeterminacy, weren’t a vexation there’s another challenge. Growing crops and bringing them home when they are needed;...

... when Lin’s prepared to cook them for supper. She can't be doing with gluts. 

“There’s only so much you can parboil and store in the freezer.” 

She doesn’t do chutney and jam - not right now with the time given to caring for her mum. There’s a proportion I can give away – to Amy, Richard; to Jo and John, friends and neighbours.

“You need to grow things in succession” says Lin; this. while I’m still celebrating the abundance of a particular crop.

“What do you expect me to do with this lot?” 
Potatoes and onions tilled on Plot 14 lie in the veg cupboard beside stock Lin's bought from Morrison’s or Lidl; my scruffy vegetables, shedding earth, sitting gawkily beside unflawed produce from over the till. The other day Oliver discovered and harvested a large aubergine...

...His sunflowers have been a success. Winnie's Dennis also grew sunflowers on the plot. When, as requested, he potted up one of these and brought it in to his school, his was so much taller than the other childrens', one small girl cried and Winnie whispered to her son not to show pride. 

In front of the 'sky-blue-white', Simon, Oscar, Oliver and Hannah beside sunflowers on Plot 14 (photo: Guy Hollier)

21st July: I was asked on FB yesterday 'do you follow much of a permaculture approach?'

I strive to understand the term permaculture on a 200 square metre plot. Its far-reaching philosophy and practice, such as I have picked up, makes plot 14 an impossible site on which to observe what approaches the new 'religion' [Google gives me 7,350,000 hits on the word in 0.41 seconds] that long ago my wise stepfather mused would one day attract the world. In permaculture terms I'm 'pre-scientific' - in the cargo cult stage, like those bewildered indigenous peoples, going slightly mad, on first encountering the technologies and unspoken values, of industrial populations. When an apple falls on my head - speaking hypothetically - I'm inclined to curse and rub my head. It takes a genius to be so rudely struck, and, amid the shock and pain, think 'gravity!'
It's true I've divorced my car. I cycle and walk - as much as possible - relying on Lin's car for emergency use. I do not use - since they are anyway forbidden on city plots - Bayer sourced herbicides or insecticides. I strive to compost and recycle amid the detritus of a consuming economy that allows me my cheap flights across Europe and beyond...I strive to understand what gardening interventions are workable in a medium of far greater complexity than I'd grasped when I first worked to prepare my plot with azada and fork, seeing the ground and what grew in it as hostile, understanding as never before the Biblical curse on Adam and Eve '“In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” My family - the dearest to me in the world - are thoroughly embedded in the economic life of the present, only some of whose habits and attitudes, chime with the new life that is at the heart of a permacultural way of life. The only book that has ever worked for me - as a route into making sense of the earth - was written under war time conditions in 1945, and explains that environmentally sensible gardening is something that someone like me can do, since I'm not under the pressures placed on someone who must grow vegetables for a living - Gardener's Earth by Stanley Whitehead. I'm ever grateful for directions - further directions - but I suspect they are like the old Irish joke, where a local explains a route in great detail to a puzzled traveller only to end up saying, when sure they've grasped the directions, says "You don't go that way". I've come too far 'that way' to be very pleased about starting again 'the right way'. I'd almost rather keep banging my head against the wall - 'kicking against the pricks'. I approach my gardening almost as a penance and a therapy rather than as a seriously thoughtful steward of the land - which would perhaps make me a permaculturist. Your question is a good one. 

Digging the plot in 2012. Intended as a 'before' clip. 

Telling the bees

Telling the bees is a traditional European custom, in which bees would be told of important events in their keeper's lives, such as births, marriages, or departures and returns ... If the custom was omitted or forgotten and the bees were not 'put into mourning' then it was believed a penalty would be paid, such as the bees might leave their hive, stop producing honey, or die. 

A message from a neighbour and friend in Greece:

Hello Simon, I see you are back home. What is going on with the referendum? Was the whole thing an accident? Though I cannot believe that the most instinctive 'school' is pulled in such uncomfortable situations. Do you see Cameron acting as Chamberlain did? In that case 1937-1939 period is being repeated? Sevastianos Metallinos (President of Ano Korakiana's Agricultural Co-operative Αγροτικού μας Συνεταιρισμού

Home? We have two 'homes'! Dear S. Lovely to hear from you. No-one can know if history is repeating itself, but its shadow seems stronger, its echoes louder, than before 23rd June. Yes! You could say that the Referendum was an 'accident'. To resolve differences within his Party, Cameron, included a promise in the Conservative Manifesto for our May 2015 General Election - a pledge to hold a Referendum on the UK staying in or leaving the EU. He did not think the Conservatives would win last year’s election. When he became PM with a clear majority his new government was committed to a promise he had not expected to have to deliver. I guess that beloved Greece is too full of its own woes to care much about what we’ve done to ourselves in Britain as a result of this vote. I agree with the recent words of Yanis Varoufakis who had wanted the UK to remain in the EU. “OUT won because the EU establishment have made it impossible, through their anti-democratic reign (not to mention the asphyxiation of weaker countries like Greece), for the people of Britain to imagine a democratic EU.” My family voted to remain, except my daughter and son-in-law. We would never let politics divide our family, and although I do not think for a second that they voted from fear, there's no question that too many did; fear and anger. Too many jumped at the opportunity to give the ‘ruling elite’ a kick in the pants, and 'get their country back'…

…δεν έχει πλοίο για σε, δεν έχει οδό.
Ετσι που τη ζωή σου ρήμαξες εδώ
στην κώχη τούτη την μικρή, σ' όλην την γή την χάλασες.*

Their vote against ‘foreigners’ carried the day for the OUT vote. Our country is full of angry frightened people. Nor will Brexit shield us against many other angry people across Europe. There lies your comparison with the 1930s. The UK vote threatens the EU project as a whole - beset by right wing nationalist movements. I’m sure you know the famous Chinese curse “May you live in interesting times”. We are back in Ano Korakiana in late August. Meantime I am growing lots of fresh fruit and vegetables on my allotment, despite very wet weather and a plethora of slugs and snails. My bees are buzzing. I have much to occupy my life.

…Τοὺς Λαιστρυγόνας καὶ τοὺς Κύκλωπας, τὸν θυμωμένο Ποσειδῶνα μὴ φοβᾶσαι, τέτοια στὸν δρόμο σου ποτέ σου δὲν θὰ βρεῖς, ἂν μέν' ὴ σκέψις σου ὐψηλή, ἄν ἐκλεκτὴ συγκίνησις τὸ πνεῦμα καί το σῶμα σου ἀγγίζει*

Με αγάπη και τις καλύτερες ευχές, Σαίμον και Λίντα XX

*...there is no ship for you, there is no road.
As you have ruined your life here
in this little corner, you have destroyed it in the whole world. (Constantine P. Cavafy 1910)

**...The Laestrygonians and the Cyclopes, the raging Poseidon do not fear: You'll never find the likes of them on your way, if lofty be your thoughts, if rare emotion touches your spirit and your body. Cavafy 1911

From Sevastianos: Thank you. My regards to Linda
Me: I hope you do not now regard us as foreigners (:))
S: Of course you are foreigners. It is a matter of culture after all. We, proud Greeks, are fond of Sakis Rouvas, Alexis, NO and Olympiaco's morality. Kavafis, et al is for, nationwise, diversified orphans...At least lets enjoy it....THE IRISH coast guard has today issued a nationwide warning for the East Coast as hundreds of thousands of British refugees risk their lives to cross the Irish sea in an attempt to flee the impoverished and unstable nation.....

'An estimated 450,000 people have already fled the UK mainland to neighbouring EU countries.'

Owen Jones in The Guardian yesterday - an extract:

'...Many of the nearly half of the British people who voted remain now feel scared and angry, ready to lash out at their fellow citizens. But this will make things worse. Many of the leavers already felt marginalised, ignored and hated. The contempt – and sometimes snobbery – now being shown about leavers on social media was already felt by these communities, and contributed to this verdict. Millions of Britons feel that a metropolitan elite rules the roost which not only doesn’t understand their values and lives, but actively hates them. If Britain is to have a future, this escalating culture war has to be stopped. The people of Britain have spoken. That is democracy, and we now have to make the country’s verdict work.'

Comment from my friend Christopher Grossmith - living in Nepi, 50 kilometres north of Rome:

I tend to agree, we have to go for it now. The Great British Public may have put their foot in it 'Churchill with the Dardanelles' but we will now do something brilliant just to prove we were right. So far no one has spat at me in Italy..

*** ***
I've been taking part, via my membership of the 1000 Elders Group, volunteering to be guinea pigs, for the Queen Elizabeth Hospital's research into healthy ageing - on this occasion a study of 'the acute effects of sitting time on physiological and psychological function in older adults'

What is the purpose of the study? Although there is evidence supporting the longer term health problems of prolonged bouts of sedentary behaviour (sitting) in older people, we do not know very much about the effects of shorter ‘acute’ sitting bouts on our minds (mood, thinking and memory) and bodies (muscle power, mobility, joint pain). Interestingly the current UK physical activity guidelines state that “while there is sufficient evidence to support a recommendation to reduce sedentary behaviour in older adults, it is not currently possible to suggest a specific time limit”. The aims of this study therefore are to characterise sitting time in older people in terms of acute physiological and psychological effects, as well as identify the main effects that older people perceive as being important after periods of sitting....You have been chosen because you are 70 years of age or over and are able to walk either with or without the use of walking aids.

21st June. Dr. Emma Bostock, School of Sport Exercise and Rehabilitation Sciences:

Dear Simon. I hope you are well. This is just a reminder for your next visit this coming Friday at 11:30am. I will meet you in the reception of the NIHR Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Facility at the Old Queen Elizabeth Hospital (Heritage Building). Please remember to wear comfortable clothing and sensible shoes. Also remember to bring something warm and plenty of reading material to fill your sitting time. It will be your 2 hour sit this week so we should be finished by 5pm. Any problems or questions then please just let me know. Kind Regards, Emma 

At the Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Facility, Birmingham University

During the first phase of three sessions - following consent and familiarisation - I did psychological, cognitive and physical tests before and after sitting still for two hours. Next week I'll sit for four hours. I'm allowed to read and use the guest WiFi but not to receive or make phone calls. My main recollection later - I cycled home along the canal as usual - was the observation of the attending nurse, who took samples of my blood and saliva and measured my blood pressure.

"Your blood pressure's a little high"
"Seriously"
She showed me her readings; in the hypertension range.
"That's odd. That's never been a problem for me"
"Well I need to point it out. Check with your GP"
"Gosh Emma, do you think I'm stressed by the Referendum result?"
"Could be." she said "We'll see how your blood pressure looks on your next visit next week"

Talking to the bees, I recognise feelings that compare with previous personal ordeals - bereavement, and long long ago, divorce and separation. They are preambles to bracing myself for some major and, at the time, regretted change in circumstances.

Notice in the QE Hospital grounds (photo: Emma Bostock)

I'm well aware the rifts in the population of this country have long been there and worsening, but the EU referendum has given voice, expression to and significant legitimacy to stark differences. On the 16 bus into and out of the city I am often the only white man, the only old white man. In such frequent company I feel safe, at home, relaxed. I know a sample of such fellow passengers could include as much of a moral mix as on a bus in any other part of this country, but watching some of the good old boys interviewed in all white pubs and streets of another England I feel distanced, even prejudiced, god forgive me. So when, chatting to the long known and familiar owner of our local Asian corner shop, I was almost relieved to hear, from Ahmed's mouth, views about how 'immigration' had got 'out of hand' similar to those I was hearing on TV from rejoicing white Brexiteers in places where I would feel foreign in my own country.

The family came for roast lamb on Sunday. Potatoes from our allotment.

From a friend, and co-writer:

Yes lots of echoes with my thoughts
We have unleashed something repressed because we had a referendum we should never have had. The prosperity we both enjoy is not shared, inequality in the last 30 years has got worse, we have separate not integrated communities and so no wonder the dynamics of in/out groups, and the hatred of the other,  mobilised voters.  Many people left their homes to vote not knowing what they would do in the ballot box. They knew they were under-informed and were angry to have a responsibility that should have stayed in parliament. People were let down by politicians and yes I am angry with Boris and Gove but look how amazed people were when they found out how wonderful Jo Cox was - by contrast some politicians have spent a long time making fools of the electorate over expenses and politicking for personal gain. This fury and protest vote did not materialise in two months. I do worry that like the 1930s this fragility sends people right or left for certainty and our middle is lost - did the Lib Dems get any air time during this campaign? Who decided they were no longer relevant? So even the media had a role to play.  They focused on personalities as good TV.
I envy future historians - in a hundred years time this whole process will be the subject of a thousand erudite papers. For now I see the issues we are already facing and feel in despair.

The Greek Crisis

A few days ago Oliver and Hannah were staying with their other grandmother, Christine. She introduced them to kite flying...

Oliver and Hannah (Photo: Amy Hollier)

...while yesterday Lin and I were entertaining them.

Hannah sits in the high chair that was my mother's, mine, and our childrens'

This morning I walked with Oscar and Oliver to the allotment and worked through the morning with Winnie, watering and weeding...

Oscar and Oliver ~ the flag was described recently as 'an ode' to a famous photograph taken 45 years ago

...cropping more broad beans and a first batch of peas, shelling them at home...

A sage item from the minutes of a recent VJA committee:

Flags. – Simon has a union jack flag on his allotment and it was questioned whether this was appropriate as it has negative connotations and could give the wrong impression of the allotment. The flag in question is an ode to a photograph taken close to the allotments that has cultural significance and is therefore an artistic and cultural expression.

Winford Fagan with flag, Handsworth Park by Vanley Burke 1970 - 1979 (c.)

Celebrating a rainy Diamond Jubilee on the Victoria Jubilee Allotments

Yesterday Amy brought Liz to the plot. She'd not seen it for two years.
"Wow!" she said "You've done good"
Liz can't walk anywhere for more than five minutes...complications with pregnancy means taking care moving about. Baby due in two months.

Liz visits the shed on Plot 14

** *** ***
Yannis Varoufakis, Greek Finance Minister, wrote recently, about a book he had just written 'talking to my daughter about the economy'...

Yanis Varoufakis, Finance Minister of Greece "Democracy did not have a good day in yesterday’s Eurogroup meeting"

...a book about 'how economic power has emerged from the shadows of political and military might before gradually taking over human societies. The narrative combines history, literature, science fiction films and down-to-earth economic analysis to impress upon teenagers, and various beginners, that economics is an epic drama. Rather than a technical science, it is a battleground on which armies of ideas clash mercilessly and where concepts with a capacity to move mountains emerge; and all that in a war for our own allegiances which are being fought over by powerful interests usually at odds with ours...That, looked at through a piercing eye, behind every economic notion, every theory, there lurks a fascinating debate about human anxieties that only poets, dramatists and musicians have managed to address with any degree of efficiency.'

As it happened – Yanis Varoufakis’ intervention during the 27th June 2015 Eurogroup Meeting
posted on 28th June 2015 The Eurogroup Meeting of 27th June 2015 will not go down as a proud moment in Europe’s history. Ministers turned down the Greek government’s request that the Greek people should be granted a single week during which to deliver a Yes or No answer to the institutions’ proposals – proposals crucial for Greece’s future in the Eurozone...

Greek Lawmakers Approve Decision to Hold Referendum
by Stelios Bouras, Wall Street Journal June 27, 2015 Greek lawmakers gave the green light early Sunday to a proposal by the coalition government to hold a referendum on whether austerity measures demanded by lenders in exchange for further aid should be accepted by the crisis-hit nation...

Greece Will Close Banks to Stem Flood of Withdrawals
by Landon Thomas Jr. and Niki Kitsantonis The New York Times 28 June 2015 ATHENS — Greece will keep its banks closed on Monday and place restrictions on the withdrawal and transfer of money, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said in a televised address on Sunday night, as Athens tries to avert a financial collapse....

Travel to Greece: Advice for those travelling to Greece
by Simon Calder, The Independent posted Tuesday 16 June, 2015 Many concerned prospective holidaymakers have got in touch this week as Greece’s financial crisis deepens. A worrying time for the Greeks – but should holidaymakers worry?...

Eurozone Finance Ministers Reject Greek Request for One-Month Bailout Extension by Viktoria Dendrinou & Gabriele Steinhauser Wall Street Journal June 27, 2015  The eurozone rejected a Greek request for a one-month extension to its bailout Saturday, plunging the country into a period of high uncertainty and raising concerns about wider financial fallout when markets open on Monday....

Q&A: what options now for Greece’s strained banking system? by Alex Barker Financial Times June 27, 2015 Greek banks are on the edge of failure. Deposit flight is accelerating and Greece’s funding options are running out. Every euro withdrawn from cash machines is backed by emergency funding from the European Central Bank. Without an extension to Greece’s bailout, these ECB emergency loans are in doubt. Alexis Tsipras, the Greek prime minister, has

Greece's Tsipras calls referendum to break bailout deadlock Reuters June 27, 2015 Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras called a referendum on austerity demands from foreign creditors on Saturday, rejecting an "ultimatum" from lenders and putting a deal that could determine Greece's future in Europe to a risky popular vote...

Merkel faces Greek challenge with strong political capital Associated Press June 27, 2015 German Chancellor Angela Merkel has emerged undamaged from the global financial crisis, European bailouts, an astonishing U-turn on nuclear power and the crisis over Ukraine. Now, with the future of efforts to resolve Greece's fiscal woes up in the air, the long-serving leader looks well-placed to emerge strong even if they fail.

Tsipras gambles Greece by Hugo Dixon Reuters June 27, 2015 Alexis Tsipras has taken a massive gamble on Greece’s future. By calling a referendum on whether to accept the creditors’ latest offer of cash in return for unpopular reforms, the Greek prime minister is offering the people a choice between the bad and the extremely bad. Meanwhile, the world may be about to face the biggest default in history...

Tsipras announces referendum on creditors’ bailout demands by Peter Spiegel Financial Times June 26, 2015 Alexis Tsipras, the Greek prime minister, has announced a national referendum on whether his country should agree to creditors’ demands that would release desperately-needed bailout aid to avoid national bankruptcy. In a televised address to the nation after a late-night meeting of his cabinet, Mr Tsipras announced that the plebiscite would be....

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'Ευρωπαϊκή Οικονομική Κοινότητα ~ The European Union' 1980 by Aristeidis Metallinos

In the week before we last left Ano Korakiana, Linda, I and Angeliki Metallinos, completed a list of nearly all her grandfather's sculptures and marble reliefs. After three and half hours we had a re-numbered list based on the year of the carving, with dimensions, brief description, and whether in local stone or in marble from Kozani...

Aristeidis Metallinos (1908-1987) catalogue draft

...giving us the raw material for a catalogue which, talking to several gallery curators recently, I believe should be created as a website. I'm not dismissing a hard copy. I'm recognising that having information about Aristeidis Metallinos on the web is a better goal. From such a site, easy to edit, different catalogues with varying emphases can be made into temporary hard texts. The web option, avoiding colour or even half-tone printing is also a deal less costly.  I am still exploring who should write about the laic sculptor. On 21st June, I was excited to receive a letter from the scholar - Dr. Eurydice Antzoulatou-Retsila, since 2009 professor at the School of Cultural Studies at the University of Peloponnese in Kalamata - who had first written about Metallinos in 1985, when he was still alive:

Dear Simon.
At last I can communicate with you, because I had terrible problems with my computer all this period, being afraid that I had lost all my archives, but finally all has been arranged well.
So, let me first thank you deeply for your interest in the work of Metallinos. I was feeling the same when in 1982 I had discovered him and I had faced all negative attitudes from all parts of communities in Corfu. But I insisted and I wrote my article then . My husband , now, says that nothing goes in vain and he is very glad with your initiative , because he, himself ( as artist, he is film director) had believed in this work.
Perhaps my interest those days was founded in my work as curator at the National Museum of Greek Folk Art (in Athens) and my interest in what is humble and simple. After all, this had been my first speciality (history archaeology, art focused on Greek folk art, my PhD dissertation was on the wedding crowns of modern Greece, those created in gold and silver and kept in local churches or in museums).
I will be very glad indeed to contribute in the volume you are preparing and actually I am planning to visit Corfu again in September to meet with my old friends there (I was professor of museum studies and cultural management at the Ionian University there from 1994 to 2009), to start a new research I am planning and of course I will enjoy seeing again the works of Metallinos.
This last period has been very hectic for me, because I am retiring  end of August and lots of things in the administration must be arranged (I am dean since 2011…).
I am planning also my new career  (my third one!!)  in music this time (piano and singing as soprano) and I am really very excited. My first career was as curator at the museum (and also creating lots of museums all over Greece), my second as university professor and now as musician. Not bad for a variety in life !!!
So, dear Simon, thank you again for these wonderful ideas you have, I am sharing your interest and I will be glad to contribute. But the greatest pleasure for me is your interest in Greek things, expressed in this very sensitive way, especially this period, where this country and this society is really in a very bad situation.
Be well, take good care, greetings to Linda and let us try to meet soon
Best,
Eurydice

Plaque on the front of the Aristeidis Metallinos Museum in Ano Korakiana - the year the builder became the sculptor

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The amount of greenery to be salvaged from crops, from neighbouring fallow allotments just scythed - in weeds, pods, tops and hay...all for long term composting...

Windrows raked from the scythings of fallow allotments either side of plot 14

...while the bays by the fence may have produced some humus by this time next year...with one bay providing almost usable soil though full of annual weed seeds.

This bay includes much of the couch grass weeded out over the last year

I've realised my friend Ziggi's point that it's not good just growing stuff, however successfully. You must grow it to eat and ensure that you bring it for cooking by agreement with the cook. Don't just turn up like the 'hunter-gatherer' with a bag of veg and expect Lin to be grateful. Check what's needed. Scarf what's to be cropped into her plans for meals. Allow also for the extra time involved in preparation compared to veg off the supermarket shelf.

Lin didn't ask for these but I needed to do some thinning of the parsnip bed

Once cropped every one of these sweet little parsnips needs to be topped, tailed and scrubbed.

That took me half an hour at the sink, slightly less time than it took me yesterday to shell fresh peas for two, or today, for Lin to shell a saucepan full of broad beans. The same goes for the many small new potatoes that were 'ordered' for a Sunday family supper..

From Amy who brought the cakes to finish the meal: Thanks mummy for cooking dinner for all of us was very yummy and much needed. Liz says thank you too smile emoticon

Et in Arcadia ego