Planning at 208 Democracy Street
Originally uploaded by Sibad.
Showing posts with label axion esti. Show all posts
Showing posts with label axion esti. Show all posts
Tuesday, 18 September 2007
On a table at 208 Democracy Street
Planning at 208 Democracy Street
Originally uploaded by Sibad. 
Tuesday, 11 September 2007
At 208 Democracy Street - elections on 16 Sept!
Monday 10 Sept. A hot day with a local morning breeze. My aches are moderating from all the messing about yesterday. My phone is still drying but we shifted my SIM to Lin’s so I got a call at noon as we tidied, that B. would be coming up to do our electrics and M. tomorrow to plaster. Lin in her nightie is spooning out rubble from around the electric wiring beneath the floorboards. The power’s off. I court martialled myself to her about the silly mistakes on the boat on Sunday. Our friends will be here from England in the afternoon.
The cat, Bubble, has found us again but not its companion Squeak. Bubble is older and has a cough and seems altogether in poor form. She pleads. Lin gives her food. One, a chop from supper yesterday is too hard for the cat. Lin chews it smaller and places the macerated meat on a plastic plate where they are welcomed.
How one becomes acquainted with dust when sweeping it up! How one notices the ground. Kostas spoke of the need to dig the earth and grow vegetables. We'd recalled the giant whom Heracles defeated by lifting him from the ground - the source of his strength. What was his name - Antaeus? Yes.
The use of association. Take these just now lathe-nail-crucifixion, dust-death – these are easy. Suitable for cryptic crosswords. They call on memory only. To dig deeper you have to jump on other things – which could be an assonance, a nonsence sound, an idea, an object, even a sound or smell. You don’t know whether what you’ve got is a wriggling thing or junk. The wriggling things have seen me first and I don’t know it. You have to fall asleep and then wake in a dream and think - stealthily.
Lin called while I was in the garden. ‘Come and look at this creature’. It was in her bucket wading on the surface tension of the water. A delicate slender striped multi-legged creature about an inch long with antennae fanned out ahead like something from the sea. She edged it gently into our garden. We are dusty but the house, though very incomplete, is looking much cleaner.
Sunday 9 Sept. A brief round of bells this morning. We wake just before 9.00am having not slept until 3.00. Eight miles away a northerly breeze dissects the sun’s reflection on the sea apportioning light to Epirus and Kerkyra. ‘Can we have some music?’ says Lin. I turn on music on the laptop, the Leipziger choir is singing Theodorakis’ folksong. ‘A solitary swallow’ - Ena to helidoni - from the Axion Esti.
One male singer:
Nur diese eine Schwalbe A solitary swallow
Der Früling macht sich rar and a costly spring
damit die Sonne heimkehrt for the sun to turn
Bringen wir Opfer dar’ it takes a job of work’
The choir echoes:
Nur diese eine Schwalbe…
Starting with parts, we’re getting, as we work, to know the Axion Este, set to the music of Theodorakis and parts of Elytis’ epic poem,
which I have in English. I got to like the rebetica pieces, other parts grow as we get a sense of the whole – Genesis, Passion – in which the poet writes of a merciless struggle against the others – ‘it cannot be they without you nor can it be you without them… and you must face them without fail…those who wear the black shirt’ and others who ‘speak the language of porcupines’, raw-eaters, water-brutes, bread-fearers, the leadenfaced and the neocondors. The lead singer’s lines are repeated by him and the choir, the tune ratcheted up a key in a familiar heart churn even a musical idiot like me can grasp:
Tausende Tote braucht es it takes a thousand dead
wenn das Lichtrad ruht sweating at the wheels
lebende Leiber braucht es it takes the living also
wärmend verströmst ihr Blut giving up their blood
The same echoed, and then the chorus, back to the earlier key:
Als mein Gott die Erde schuf God my master builder
Baute er Berge um mich her you built me into the mountains
Als mein Gott die Erde schuf God my master builder
Schoß er mich ein im dunken Meer You enclosed me in the sea
A morning service for secularists enjoying peace. Here's A solitary swallow sung in 2001 by Mario Frangoulis and the same sung by Grigoris Bithikotsis with Theodorakis conducting in 1977. Keeley’s notes say the ‘master builder’ is not God but an architect from a folktale who built a bridge at Arta over the river Aracthos in Epirus - where Gianni Moralis was born incidentally.
As is well known bridges, because they cross water, must have a sacrifice. He buries his wife alive inside its structure. Nowadays, in our disenchanted world, EU law would forbid this, but in some accident a beloved companion will slip on the wet marble of their new pool and be drinking through a straw for life – like the bold young motorcyclists in Corfu’s mental hospitals who did one wheelie too many or swerved into an olive trunk wearing no helmet.
* * *
Now mid-morning we wash before driving to the Sunday sale at Kontokali. Yesterday afternoon as we swept the path beside the house Kiria Leftheris brought a plate of sweetmeats made by her mother, telling us the name to make it right and I can’t remember – sweet crispy baked and tasty with honey.
* * *
The sale at Kontokali was not on so we drove west to Agios Ioannis. L and M sat with us over coffee for a couple of hours and added to the Sunday conversation in the square. While Lin looked at the stalls three of us with a combined age of 201 discussed the young – which is where I heard about the brain damaged in asylums, as we discussed the pros and cons of the rule of law at a table in the Platea at Agios Ioannis. We got on to Corfiot opinion about the UK and their indignation at our help for the Muslims in Yugoslavia, who they associated with the collaborationist Chetniks who had hounded Serbs for the Nazis. Durrell,
years ago, wrote the British occupiers up to 1864 [Sir Frederick Adam, Lord High Commissioner of the Ionian Islands between 1824-32], when Corfu became part of independent mother Greece, regarded the locals as about 'as interesting as their stock' and the Corfiots regarded us - and other invaders - with contemptuous indifference. I doubt that all true. For the first commissioner, Maitland, yes - but a lot less for his successors. We brought good roads, ginger beer and cricket, and also there is a education and growth in trade. The Venetians brought the olives - a strategic incentive.
Olives, Corfu 1912, oil on canvas. John Singer Sargent
‘Oh yes and we contributed to the military band element of the island’s music’ said L ‘ except they regard it as slightly beneath them to tune their instruments’. ‘Wait’ I said, ‘maybe if you’re poised between East and West “out of tune” hasn’t the same meaning as it does for us?’ L. thought about that.
‘In the meantime, tell me some Corfiot jokes’ I said. These were mined from conversation with denizens who circulate Greek versions of English self-deprecation – both a product of confidence in one’s good fortune to be born under one or other flag. ‘How do you tell the difference between Corfiot electrician and a Corfiot joiner?’ ‘It’s written on the side of their van’. Two Corfiots meet in a bar. ‘Have you heard any gossip?’ ‘No’ ‘Have you heard any rumours?’ ‘No’ ‘Then tell me some lies.’ God offered to grant an Englishman, a Frenchman and a Corfiot, who had lived good lives, their dearest wish. The Englishman asked for a small castle and a few acres; the Frenchman asked for a vineyard that produced good wine; the Corfiot said ‘the man next door has a cow that produces 25 litres of milk every day’ – pause - ‘Yes?’ said God. ‘Can you stop it?’ asked the Corfiot. That last one is especially sweet. It makes Corfu sound like the Forest of Dean. I found M was a fan of Grand Prix - for me tedium in agate - but his joy in the success of the young Black – he called him ‘coloured’ - racing driver who’s brought Britain back into Formula 1, was infectious. I find this is always the case with enthusiasm – when modestly inserted into chat. We all get our turn.
* * *
We went back via Ipsos where I started putting on Summer Song’s sails and ran into a series of mishaps of my own making. The main went on fine, except that as I was folding it down a batten dropped out and disappeared. I started bending on the self-reefing foresail, but the afternoon wind had risen. The sail fought back, sticking in its groove. The foot clipped my face and my glasses fell into a fathom of hazy water. I leapt in after them. Futile of course. I called to B., on the boat nearby, and he dived for them, at first fruitlessly until I pointed out, through a myopic haze, something glinting. Phew! Then I remembered my mobile was in my pocket. I dunked it in fresh water and it’s still drying along with a few euro notes. The chip is OK in Lin’s phone. She wandered along the mole and gasped in admiring disdain as I relayed my foolishness. She tried to help me get the jib on but again it jammed. I persisted when I should have abandoned my efforts, and put the halliard on the mast winch. Another gust around Trompetta and I dropped the winch handle in the drink. ‘That’s it’ she said ‘how am I going to trust you in this boat?’ I wondered too. Such stupidities can, at sea, become swift disasters. I dived unsuccessfully for the handle in the warm salty harbour, and found the batten. ‘Wait until the morning clears the water’ said my neighbour on his taxi boat. I tidied up. Put the jib below and dug out dry clothes.
Lin drove us home ‘I was so angry with you’ she said. I don’t blame her. Another mistake. I hadn’t brought the combined tools gadget that should be on my belt, and was using a wholly inadequate spanner on shackles. ‘We could have been back tidying the house’ said Lin as we drove home. Meantime she’d found two shelves in kavalla marble lying on the beach.
What have I learned apart from ‘there’s no fool like an old fool’? Think what I’m doing. I should have left the sails until the morning or got help. It would have been unfair to ask Lin. Last time we sailed together in 1976 I was in the boat I’d sailed single handed in many weathers with sails far easier to bend. I’d done the sail work leaving her occasionally steering and cooking. She and I are a lot less lithe and I’ve not taken Summer Song more than a few miles up the coast so far. (note – have spare winch handle and attach a little white float, tether my specs, don’t bend on sails in a wind gusting 4 from astern, think!)_
The cat, Bubble, has found us again but not its companion Squeak. Bubble is older and has a cough and seems altogether in poor form. She pleads. Lin gives her food. One, a chop from supper yesterday is too hard for the cat. Lin chews it smaller and places the macerated meat on a plastic plate where they are welcomed.
How one becomes acquainted with dust when sweeping it up! How one notices the ground. Kostas spoke of the need to dig the earth and grow vegetables. We'd recalled the giant whom Heracles defeated by lifting him from the ground - the source of his strength. What was his name - Antaeus? Yes.
The use of association. Take these just now lathe-nail-crucifixion, dust-death – these are easy. Suitable for cryptic crosswords. They call on memory only. To dig deeper you have to jump on other things – which could be an assonance, a nonsence sound, an idea, an object, even a sound or smell. You don’t know whether what you’ve got is a wriggling thing or junk. The wriggling things have seen me first and I don’t know it. You have to fall asleep and then wake in a dream and think - stealthily.
Lin called while I was in the garden. ‘Come and look at this creature’. It was in her bucket wading on the surface tension of the water. A delicate slender striped multi-legged creature about an inch long with antennae fanned out ahead like something from the sea. She edged it gently into our garden. We are dusty but the house, though very incomplete, is looking much cleaner.
Sunday 9 Sept. A brief round of bells this morning. We wake just before 9.00am having not slept until 3.00. Eight miles away a northerly breeze dissects the sun’s reflection on the sea apportioning light to Epirus and Kerkyra. ‘Can we have some music?’ says Lin. I turn on music on the laptop, the Leipziger choir is singing Theodorakis’ folksong. ‘A solitary swallow’ - Ena to helidoni - from the Axion Esti.
One male singer:
Nur diese eine Schwalbe A solitary swallow
Der Früling macht sich rar and a costly spring
damit die Sonne heimkehrt for the sun to turn
Bringen wir Opfer dar’ it takes a job of work’
The choir echoes:
Nur diese eine Schwalbe…
Starting with parts, we’re getting, as we work, to know the Axion Este, set to the music of Theodorakis and parts of Elytis’ epic poem,
which I have in English. I got to like the rebetica pieces, other parts grow as we get a sense of the whole – Genesis, Passion – in which the poet writes of a merciless struggle against the others – ‘it cannot be they without you nor can it be you without them… and you must face them without fail…those who wear the black shirt’ and others who ‘speak the language of porcupines’, raw-eaters, water-brutes, bread-fearers, the leadenfaced and the neocondors. The lead singer’s lines are repeated by him and the choir, the tune ratcheted up a key in a familiar heart churn even a musical idiot like me can grasp:Tausende Tote braucht es it takes a thousand dead
wenn das Lichtrad ruht sweating at the wheels
lebende Leiber braucht es it takes the living also
wärmend verströmst ihr Blut giving up their blood
The same echoed, and then the chorus, back to the earlier key:
Als mein Gott die Erde schuf God my master builder
Baute er Berge um mich her you built me into the mountains
Als mein Gott die Erde schuf God my master builder
Schoß er mich ein im dunken Meer You enclosed me in the sea
A morning service for secularists enjoying peace. Here's A solitary swallow sung in 2001 by Mario Frangoulis and the same sung by Grigoris Bithikotsis with Theodorakis conducting in 1977. Keeley’s notes say the ‘master builder’ is not God but an architect from a folktale who built a bridge at Arta over the river Aracthos in Epirus - where Gianni Moralis was born incidentally.
As is well known bridges, because they cross water, must have a sacrifice. He buries his wife alive inside its structure. Nowadays, in our disenchanted world, EU law would forbid this, but in some accident a beloved companion will slip on the wet marble of their new pool and be drinking through a straw for life – like the bold young motorcyclists in Corfu’s mental hospitals who did one wheelie too many or swerved into an olive trunk wearing no helmet.* * *
Now mid-morning we wash before driving to the Sunday sale at Kontokali. Yesterday afternoon as we swept the path beside the house Kiria Leftheris brought a plate of sweetmeats made by her mother, telling us the name to make it right and I can’t remember – sweet crispy baked and tasty with honey.
* * *
The sale at Kontokali was not on so we drove west to Agios Ioannis. L and M sat with us over coffee for a couple of hours and added to the Sunday conversation in the square. While Lin looked at the stalls three of us with a combined age of 201 discussed the young – which is where I heard about the brain damaged in asylums, as we discussed the pros and cons of the rule of law at a table in the Platea at Agios Ioannis. We got on to Corfiot opinion about the UK and their indignation at our help for the Muslims in Yugoslavia, who they associated with the collaborationist Chetniks who had hounded Serbs for the Nazis. Durrell,
years ago, wrote the British occupiers up to 1864 [Sir Frederick Adam, Lord High Commissioner of the Ionian Islands between 1824-32], when Corfu became part of independent mother Greece, regarded the locals as about 'as interesting as their stock' and the Corfiots regarded us - and other invaders - with contemptuous indifference. I doubt that all true. For the first commissioner, Maitland, yes - but a lot less for his successors. We brought good roads, ginger beer and cricket, and also there is a education and growth in trade. The Venetians brought the olives - a strategic incentive.
Olives, Corfu 1912, oil on canvas. John Singer Sargent‘In the meantime, tell me some Corfiot jokes’ I said. These were mined from conversation with denizens who circulate Greek versions of English self-deprecation – both a product of confidence in one’s good fortune to be born under one or other flag. ‘How do you tell the difference between Corfiot electrician and a Corfiot joiner?’ ‘It’s written on the side of their van’. Two Corfiots meet in a bar. ‘Have you heard any gossip?’ ‘No’ ‘Have you heard any rumours?’ ‘No’ ‘Then tell me some lies.’ God offered to grant an Englishman, a Frenchman and a Corfiot, who had lived good lives, their dearest wish. The Englishman asked for a small castle and a few acres; the Frenchman asked for a vineyard that produced good wine; the Corfiot said ‘the man next door has a cow that produces 25 litres of milk every day’ – pause - ‘Yes?’ said God. ‘Can you stop it?’ asked the Corfiot. That last one is especially sweet. It makes Corfu sound like the Forest of Dean. I found M was a fan of Grand Prix - for me tedium in agate - but his joy in the success of the young Black – he called him ‘coloured’ - racing driver who’s brought Britain back into Formula 1, was infectious. I find this is always the case with enthusiasm – when modestly inserted into chat. We all get our turn.
* * *
We went back via Ipsos where I started putting on Summer Song’s sails and ran into a series of mishaps of my own making. The main went on fine, except that as I was folding it down a batten dropped out and disappeared. I started bending on the self-reefing foresail, but the afternoon wind had risen. The sail fought back, sticking in its groove. The foot clipped my face and my glasses fell into a fathom of hazy water. I leapt in after them. Futile of course. I called to B., on the boat nearby, and he dived for them, at first fruitlessly until I pointed out, through a myopic haze, something glinting. Phew! Then I remembered my mobile was in my pocket. I dunked it in fresh water and it’s still drying along with a few euro notes. The chip is OK in Lin’s phone. She wandered along the mole and gasped in admiring disdain as I relayed my foolishness. She tried to help me get the jib on but again it jammed. I persisted when I should have abandoned my efforts, and put the halliard on the mast winch. Another gust around Trompetta and I dropped the winch handle in the drink. ‘That’s it’ she said ‘how am I going to trust you in this boat?’ I wondered too. Such stupidities can, at sea, become swift disasters. I dived unsuccessfully for the handle in the warm salty harbour, and found the batten. ‘Wait until the morning clears the water’ said my neighbour on his taxi boat. I tidied up. Put the jib below and dug out dry clothes.
Lin drove us home ‘I was so angry with you’ she said. I don’t blame her. Another mistake. I hadn’t brought the combined tools gadget that should be on my belt, and was using a wholly inadequate spanner on shackles. ‘We could have been back tidying the house’ said Lin as we drove home. Meantime she’d found two shelves in kavalla marble lying on the beach.
What have I learned apart from ‘there’s no fool like an old fool’? Think what I’m doing. I should have left the sails until the morning or got help. It would have been unfair to ask Lin. Last time we sailed together in 1976 I was in the boat I’d sailed single handed in many weathers with sails far easier to bend. I’d done the sail work leaving her occasionally steering and cooking. She and I are a lot less lithe and I’ve not taken Summer Song more than a few miles up the coast so far. (note – have spare winch handle and attach a little white float, tether my specs, don’t bend on sails in a wind gusting 4 from astern, think!)_
Wednesday, 5 September 2007
In Greece
Wednesday at 208 Democracy Street: I wake before 6.00 which is just before 8 here. This morning is grey and even damp from a short rain (predicted even last Saturday) while we slept, brought, as usual, by a rare southerly breeze.
Most bad things in Greece come from the north (totalitarians and the m*lt*mi with its moaning delivery of suicide and household mayhem) but the issue in Greek foreign policy since WW2 has been an island to the south east. The British relinquished their governing role in 1959, satisfied to an agreement that gave them a military base in Cyprus and bars for our lads. Tension between Cypriots, locked in their children’s history books, and stands by Greek and Turkish governments in defence of their own, as this is understood, on the island and on the two mainlands, has stymied reliable peace. Memory of the feud – great acts of chopping and shooting between villages – has made old men and women weary of the fervent young, so ready, if licensed by their elders, to set upon each other, in uniform for their state or as bandits for their friends. Internal politics in Turkey and Greece are swayed by great men’s views on ‘the problem of Cyprus’. Some young mainland Greeks scorn the trouble bringers – ‘Cypriots, ttch!’ The Aegean pot is stirred by the great powers protecting our ultimate driver. A river intractable runs through it from the Middle East. Until our economies eschew carbon and we live instead on the bounty of sun and the wind we live under the satrapy of oil.
* * *
And now comes more sweet rain. When we go to the cottage people say “you’ve brought the rain” with reproach, but in Korakiana it’s only a blessing and we must hope for more.
* * *
Tuesday 4 September at 208 Democracy Street
The train journey to Gatwick and the flight passed most of Monday. We arrived at Corfu in the night. Kostas’ son met us with the hire car. We drove to Ipsos and dropped in on the café there for an indoor smoke and a drink. V was just tidying up to go home. Dg sat at the counter as he had when we left and J pointed to the collection box for the victims of fire mentioning ‘one boy they bought in with firelighters – 65 years!’. We wandered across the road and drove up the jetty to see ‘Summer Song’ lying quietly at her mooring. Amplified sound came from the strip but most places seemed lightly patronised, except where a coach party milled in one long bar.
At Ano Korakiana, at one in the morning, Lin dropped me off with the luggage and parked further up the village. I found the keys in their place. The house held the day’s heat. I surrendered to the air conditioner. There was building dust and detritus everywhere and much incomplete, but the upstairs room with its divider out is a great improvement. The replaced window stood wide open to the cooler night and a moonlit view of the sea and hills and a landscape dotted with too many lights. I made us tea and coffee. Lin wiped surfaces. I was glad we’d anticipated there’d be ‘a few things to be done’.
I woke just before 8. Wandering to the balcony I shade my eyes, gazing only momentarily to the east, where the sun has already turned the view to dazzling monotones, assailing the house through windows left unshuttered by the previous builder, leaking through the ones that are protected. The clock ticks in the kitchen. Lin sleeps. I make myself a cup of tea bracing for the heat, wondering what to wear. M. texted he was coming round with G. They sat over coffee and tea, new bread and honey, I’d got from the shop.
Lin paid part of what we owed for work to date. M. will come tomorrow to try and finish more of the top room. Gossip about the island. Police heavies from the mainland have visited to enforce laws on things like bad driving and parking habits and not wearing helmets on motorbikes. Local police not wanting to stir things with fellow islanders treated many infractions as customary, and tolerance on such things has long been part of tourism, but the state is putting its foot down to avoid paying more fines to the EU, whose Regional Structure Fund has benefited Greece since she joined. Brussels is now saying ‘what’ve you been doing with all the cash you’ve had from our shared pot? Didn’t you know when you dipped into it that there were conditions? Where’s the structure? Rule of law? Regulatory frameworks? Your borders have had the protection you get from full membership of the union. The Euro emphasises that, making a mockery of neuroses, once justified, about the ‘Macedonian Question’. Do you seriously think the place under the conditional name FYROM is going to invade, invest Thessalonika and march on Athens? Grow up. Stop the corruption. End the pervasive clientelism that blights your democracy. Stop the seedy relaxed attitude to the rule of law!’ Of course I wouldn’t countenance such views’ being too used to what pots tell kettles.
* * *
Evening of Tuesday 4 Sept: The house, although we’ve not wanted at first to admit it to ourselves, is more of a mess than we’d expected. The Apothiki is a fish skeleton of nailed lengths of wood, lathes and debris from the upstairs building work. ‘Who would have known the old wall to have so much rubble in it?’ There ‘s a pile of broken tiles and odds and ends on the balcony. Furniture wears a fine dust from the sanded floor, which is incomplete, as are the walls with wires loose and rough surfaces. Builders’ odds and ends have been plonked down all over. The garden looks more of a mess than when it was rubble. To top this there’s been a fire in the land below our house that was once overgrown. From the balcony you can see a couple of dead trees, others badly scorched. Mrs Leftheris greeted us and shook her head at the devastation.
To add to our chagrin I was stung by a wasp and trod on a nail. Blood dripped on the path until Lin found a pad for my heel. The wasp must have been weary so I didn’t go into antiepileptic shock as I did once. We tidied and tidied. Now there’s a pleasant waft of salad in preparation, plus fresh bread, and wine. Supper of tzadziki, ham, salad of tomatoes, onions, peppers and feta, with a chilled retsina. Lin wondered if there was some music and I dug out on my laptop some of the lute music from Iraq that Dhiaa has sent me when I asked him about his favourites, interspersed with songs from Miki Theodoraki’s setting for Axion Esti – near East mingling with Middle East. It’s strangely moving to hear these sung in German given their context.
* * *
J said ‘business has been shite’ this summer. G. said middle Europeans – Croats and others from Yugoslavia come to Corfu with their food and drink in their baggage. ‘They stand outside bars chatting and dancing and drinking. enjoying the lights and music but not spending any money. They even bring their own water!’
Most bad things in Greece come from the north (totalitarians and the m*lt*mi with its moaning delivery of suicide and household mayhem) but the issue in Greek foreign policy since WW2 has been an island to the south east. The British relinquished their governing role in 1959, satisfied to an agreement that gave them a military base in Cyprus and bars for our lads. Tension between Cypriots, locked in their children’s history books, and stands by Greek and Turkish governments in defence of their own, as this is understood, on the island and on the two mainlands, has stymied reliable peace. Memory of the feud – great acts of chopping and shooting between villages – has made old men and women weary of the fervent young, so ready, if licensed by their elders, to set upon each other, in uniform for their state or as bandits for their friends. Internal politics in Turkey and Greece are swayed by great men’s views on ‘the problem of Cyprus’. Some young mainland Greeks scorn the trouble bringers – ‘Cypriots, ttch!’ The Aegean pot is stirred by the great powers protecting our ultimate driver. A river intractable runs through it from the Middle East. Until our economies eschew carbon and we live instead on the bounty of sun and the wind we live under the satrapy of oil.
* * *
And now comes more sweet rain. When we go to the cottage people say “you’ve brought the rain” with reproach, but in Korakiana it’s only a blessing and we must hope for more.
* * *
Tuesday 4 September at 208 Democracy Street
The train journey to Gatwick and the flight passed most of Monday. We arrived at Corfu in the night. Kostas’ son met us with the hire car. We drove to Ipsos and dropped in on the café there for an indoor smoke and a drink. V was just tidying up to go home. Dg sat at the counter as he had when we left and J pointed to the collection box for the victims of fire mentioning ‘one boy they bought in with firelighters – 65 years!’. We wandered across the road and drove up the jetty to see ‘Summer Song’ lying quietly at her mooring. Amplified sound came from the strip but most places seemed lightly patronised, except where a coach party milled in one long bar.
At Ano Korakiana, at one in the morning, Lin dropped me off with the luggage and parked further up the village. I found the keys in their place. The house held the day’s heat. I surrendered to the air conditioner. There was building dust and detritus everywhere and much incomplete, but the upstairs room with its divider out is a great improvement. The replaced window stood wide open to the cooler night and a moonlit view of the sea and hills and a landscape dotted with too many lights. I made us tea and coffee. Lin wiped surfaces. I was glad we’d anticipated there’d be ‘a few things to be done’.
I woke just before 8. Wandering to the balcony I shade my eyes, gazing only momentarily to the east, where the sun has already turned the view to dazzling monotones, assailing the house through windows left unshuttered by the previous builder, leaking through the ones that are protected. The clock ticks in the kitchen. Lin sleeps. I make myself a cup of tea bracing for the heat, wondering what to wear. M. texted he was coming round with G. They sat over coffee and tea, new bread and honey, I’d got from the shop.
Lin paid part of what we owed for work to date. M. will come tomorrow to try and finish more of the top room. Gossip about the island. Police heavies from the mainland have visited to enforce laws on things like bad driving and parking habits and not wearing helmets on motorbikes. Local police not wanting to stir things with fellow islanders treated many infractions as customary, and tolerance on such things has long been part of tourism, but the state is putting its foot down to avoid paying more fines to the EU, whose Regional Structure Fund has benefited Greece since she joined. Brussels is now saying ‘what’ve you been doing with all the cash you’ve had from our shared pot? Didn’t you know when you dipped into it that there were conditions? Where’s the structure? Rule of law? Regulatory frameworks? Your borders have had the protection you get from full membership of the union. The Euro emphasises that, making a mockery of neuroses, once justified, about the ‘Macedonian Question’. Do you seriously think the place under the conditional name FYROM is going to invade, invest Thessalonika and march on Athens? Grow up. Stop the corruption. End the pervasive clientelism that blights your democracy. Stop the seedy relaxed attitude to the rule of law!’ Of course I wouldn’t countenance such views’ being too used to what pots tell kettles.* * *
Evening of Tuesday 4 Sept: The house, although we’ve not wanted at first to admit it to ourselves, is more of a mess than we’d expected. The Apothiki is a fish skeleton of nailed lengths of wood, lathes and debris from the upstairs building work. ‘Who would have known the old wall to have so much rubble in it?’ There ‘s a pile of broken tiles and odds and ends on the balcony. Furniture wears a fine dust from the sanded floor, which is incomplete, as are the walls with wires loose and rough surfaces. Builders’ odds and ends have been plonked down all over. The garden looks more of a mess than when it was rubble. To top this there’s been a fire in the land below our house that was once overgrown. From the balcony you can see a couple of dead trees, others badly scorched. Mrs Leftheris greeted us and shook her head at the devastation.
To add to our chagrin I was stung by a wasp and trod on a nail. Blood dripped on the path until Lin found a pad for my heel. The wasp must have been weary so I didn’t go into antiepileptic shock as I did once. We tidied and tidied. Now there’s a pleasant waft of salad in preparation, plus fresh bread, and wine. Supper of tzadziki, ham, salad of tomatoes, onions, peppers and feta, with a chilled retsina. Lin wondered if there was some music and I dug out on my laptop some of the lute music from Iraq that Dhiaa has sent me when I asked him about his favourites, interspersed with songs from Miki Theodoraki’s setting for Axion Esti – near East mingling with Middle East. It’s strangely moving to hear these sung in German given their context.
* * *
J said ‘business has been shite’ this summer. G. said middle Europeans – Croats and others from Yugoslavia come to Corfu with their food and drink in their baggage. ‘They stand outside bars chatting and dancing and drinking. enjoying the lights and music but not spending any money. They even bring their own water!’
Friday, 17 August 2007
Modern Greek wins over Classical
A thought for the festival - it is worthy. It might seem a cause for regret but Edmund Keeley and Lawrence Durrell and other 20th Century philhellenes would not have grieved at the news that A-Level Ancient Greek is to be scrapped by the Oxford and Cambridge Exam
Board while Modern Greek A-Level has many thousands of candidates each year. This is all part of the notion that our future is invented in Greece - an old quern brimming with tears in which men may see a reflection of their sins but also their grace. ΤΟ ΑΞΙΟΝ ΕΣΤΙ.Lest this sound portentous, I'm drawn to any endeavour to relieve the blight of poverty - material and aspirational. Being concerned about the role of government in this task is how I've earned my living. I happily give hours of voluntary time to local involvement in parks and allotments, and the urban fabric, the state of streets and community safety in Handsworth. I want democracy to work. I cycle and walk for pleasure but also to reduce my carbon footprint, recycling glass and paper and freecycling possessions. I lobby for green causes. Yet we own a sailing boat in Greece and have a home on Corfu to which we've flown as much as going by train and ferry. I yearn to lie in the sun and drink wine and sit at tables under an awning beside blue water and gaze at the sun rising over the mountains of Epirus, see the spinach green cypresses pointing through early mist below our village, the sun filtering through ancient olive trees on the low road to the coast.
When Nikos Dimou suggested the best translation for 'the banality of good' was 'i koinotopia tou kalou' he added 'which is a bit Oscar Wildean'. Did he mean the phrase implies 'good' is boring compared to evil, like W.C.Fields saying 'I like children. Properly cooked'? Was he thinking of the long Harry Lime quip? 'In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed,
but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.' Can good exist unstoked by depravity?
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