In the village

So far, being without a car has been no problem. Fresh bread.occasional vegetables, can be bought from the shop yards away. We've plentiful milk and a fridge of food from our last big shop with Tony and Helen the Saturday before last. The village is our world. We read, do jobs, eat, gaze. chat to neighbours, check email and skype with family and friends at Mark and Sally's 100 metres up Democracy Street, watch films from across the world on the laptop, talk, recounting memories, dreams, the troubles of the times...we're at a tricky turn in our species' residence on Earth - at once immensely powerful, potent with recent knowledge of the infinite reaches of space and time - dimensions neither known nor believed until hardly a century ago - drowning in our numbers and our feckless chase for unsustainable wealth accelerated by the striving of the majority to imitate the feckless acquisitiveness of a prosperous minority - us among them. Lin and I amid our debates agree on the futility of nostalgia. Wherever we're going is not backwards. May it not entail some retracing of our present momentum to understand where we went wrong; learn from that compass error around two or even one generation ago - a short period that has progressed in its unfortunate direction with the accumulating pace of a runaway carthorse that neither it, its driver nor bystanders feels able to slow to a halt?

So perhaps I – or even God – can never think of asking the outrageous question. Perhaps man is just a blind horse with the bit between his teeth who can’t be stopped until he hits a hay-barn.  It’s a funny thing that, only yesterday, the thrill we felt as we climbed into the market-cart every Wednesday arose from the fact that, just once in a week, we were going to meet some people other than ourselves.” Jack Hargreaves in 'The Old Country', Dovecote Press 1988

Round midnight we were watching a film on the computer. Lin said “What’s that light out there”. We went out on the wooden balcony and could see a - momentarily - a flame-red flicker behind distant clouds; high to the south beyond land, out in the fishless Ionian Sea west of Levkas, even as far south as Cephalonia. Irregular intermittent, soundless and in the same part of the sky which above us was starlit and clear.
“It has to be lightning. Maybe fifty miles away.”
I thought of other times and places where someone might have said “No not lightning. Guns, missiles.”
We stayed watching for a while wondering about closing windows, bringing in cushions and carpets outside, in case of rain in the night, stood on our wooden balcony which in places creaks when we step on a plank raised by the heat of the sun.
No-one sensible builds wooden balconies in Greece. The one on which we stood, not the narrower permenant one of concrete with metal railings from which we see comings and goings on Democracy Street, but across the side of the house facing south affording a view to die for...

...put together by John the jerry builder for the last owners, resting on brackets attached to the house at one end and a beam that sits on three cement rendered breeze block pillars at its front, built of untreated deal, which in the last few years has wilted under baking sun and the mighty rainfalls of winter – splitting and shrinking. We’ve treated it with creosote – our own mix of diesel and tar, but that’s no assurance of greater permanence. We’ve pondered solutions. Why not substitute a concrete platform for the present? Good question. Two answers. The breeze block pillars would have to be replacd with concrete ones to provide support for the greater weight and we’d likely run into planning and tax problems getting it made. Expensive and complicated. The advantage of a timber balcony is that its not legally designated a permanent structure – so needs no planning permission; incurs no extra property tax. So what can we do to stop its steady decline? Treat the wood of course and replace the shakiest planks and beams. But what then? Wood’s OK for windows and doors if maintained, though most new houses use metal for these including shutters, but not for the large flat surface of a balcony. We thought of covering the planks with roofing felt, sealing the seams.
“That’ll melt in summer, stick tar to your shoes and burn bare feet” said Paul our neighbour.
A recent proposal was to cover it in sheets of marine ply. Expensive but not too difficult.
“Trouble is it’s still wood and we still have to treat it every year and how can we seal the seams for certain?” said Linda "We’re not only wanting to protect the ailing wood, we want to be able to sit, work and hang laundry underneath the balcony when it’s raining!”

At the moment this balcony's a sieve; shady and cool in summer, but offering little shelter in winter. Anything left below in hard rain gets soaked. Our latest solution is a large temporary cover of polythene sealed at the wall of the house, and laid over strips of roofing felt cut round the balcony stanchions. ‘Temporary’ because of course it may need to be taken up to check the wood and this shouldn’t be made tricky and, because being polythene it’ll be brittle and cracked after two years and so need replacing. But for €20 a sheet or just a little more in two years that’s a reasonable running cost. We’ve plenty of felt left from replacing our roof two years ago. That’ll last under the polythene and won’t get too hot there, we think.

“It’ll look awful. How do you stand chairs and tables on the polythene? The legs will rip holes in it in no time.”
We’ve a wealth of old carpets and blankets to spread over our big plastic sheet. They’ll sit there in the good weather, swiftly drying out after a shower or even a few day’s summer rain. We store them in the apothiki when we’re away and in winter and if there’s a sunny spell it’s easier enough to spread them out again. We’ll see. The job’s part completed and I’m looking forward to seeing if, when next it rains, the space below the balcony becomes a proper veranda – cool when it’s sunny, dry when it rains.

*** *** ***
"We are fighting a war against fish, and we are winning" An American in Alpha Bank the other day asked me where he could find a fish restaurant in Corfu
“There'll be fish on menus in many restaurants” I said “but you may find it disappointing. Unless you are somewhere a fisherman has, by arrangement, delivered a lucky catch from the sea, or a restauranteur has bought local fish fresh from a market seller, they know the seafood you can get here will have come from some other part of the world and will have been frozen.”
Tony told us that at one restaurant they stopped on their way here it said on the menu as though to inform “before we asked” that ‘All seafood we serve has been frozen’. I mentioned a fish restaurant we knew at Tzavros; another we’d visited with Alex Kapodistrias, near Benitses, both of which despite specializing in seafood had served unexciting fish, and calamari which had almost certainly been frozen. I didn’t mention another we’d been to at Kontokali three years ago, and never visited again, after being charged outrageous prices for a plate of ill-served small fleshless bony bream.
“It’s very expensive” I said “and even that that’s fresh will come from EU funded aquaculture, fish farms – ιχθυοκαλλιέργεια - in inlets along the coast – Corfu and the mainland; fish with a bland and sometimes muddy taste”
He looked confused. I wasn’t being helpful. He was having to hear a speech.
“We’re all fished out across the Mediterranean. No fish restauranteur is going to tell you this. They keep it even from themselves. People still fish. There are still fishing caiques on the postcards, festooned with nets. Look off the harbour wall you’ll often see fish. Now and then a fisherman will have luck, but the Mediterranean’s near dead for fish - even deep down. The factory ships from Japan have hoovered up what’s left, here and across the world. It’s over. Until we come to our senses. Get less greedy; give stocks a few generations to recover. Learn some substitute for turbo-charged industrialised fish extraction. Enough odd prizes maintain the illusion that god provides. For our need not our greed I’m afraid.”
** ** **
Miriam skyped "Come and see me in A Day in the Death of Joe Egg. Citizen's in Glasgow - late October, November?" I put a few days in the diary. In a way i don't like this. It marks a time when we are not in Ano Korakiana. This place is not for holidays, not even a second home. It's as much home as Handsworth. We inhabit two places, actually and, when away from one, in our imaginations. There's much to do in Birmingham - not least our allotment. I am glad to be in either place - it's the departures that can hurt and the arrivals that can be so exciting - but I wish in a silly way that all were in the same yet different places instantly and almost simultaneously reached by opening magic doors, and yet at the same time we're glad of the differences made by distance. Down at Mark's and Sally's a new puppy, one of black dog Teal's offspring, is getting used to the place.

Mark and  - possibly - Drake

Working on skills for good scrutiny

Over Friday the timeless sea rolled in from the south as a half gale shook the windows of the room where I was working on a series of workshops about scrutiny with a cross-section of interesting and interested councillors and officers:

Workshop 1: Scoping may involve only 10% of an enquiry, yet its significance in focusing an investigation is inestimable. While its theme is the process and selecting and filtering candidates for scrutiny, this two hour workshop is closely linked to accompanying workshops on questioning and weighing evidence. The tutor will assist participants as they explore face-to-face methods appropriate to scrutiny, with emphasis, in this workshop, on agreeing the purpose, range and outcome of a review and the skills and values required in the chair who leads the process.

Workshop 2: The aim of this interactive workshop is to identify and practice habits of intelligent conversation among all involved in scrutiny under the guidance of a skilled chair. The tutor will assist participants to explore face-to-face methods appropriate to scrutiny, with emphasis, in this workshop, on questioning skills that foster a spirit of enquiry, demonstrate curiosity and allow silences for shared thought. This material, drawn from research, with accompanying workshops on scoping and weighing evidence, offers an opportunity to fine-tune skills, share experiences and debate their importance for successful scrutiny. Open, closed, probing and reflective questions and their combination along with riskier ones - leading, challenging and multiple.

Workshop 3: This in-house skills training, accompanying workshops on scoping and questioning, focuses on ‘weighing evidence’. The demise of the committee system can be offset by the exercise of skilled scrutiny in collecting and analysing information relevant to local governance. By spreading understanding about the variety of ways of collecting and analysing information, scrutiny can widen and deepen members’ contributions to evidence-based government. Assessing evidence; distinguishing qualitative and quantitative, ‘hard’ & ‘soft’ data, witness accounts, evidence from visits and inspections; drawing conclusions and making recommendations on the basis of the evidence; reviewing, digesting and analysing evidence; political, managerial and professional data and the tensions between them; the politics of evidence; the intermediary role of the chair.

I got my usual pleasure from cycling through Brighton and Hove, taking the train, reading and gazing at the passing scenery, then cycling through the busy traffic of the capital. Looking at a film of someone else threading the city on their Brompton I'd like to try making a film like this. It is a special kind of pleasure - urban cycling. Part of me supports the idea of carfree 'eco-towns', but a subversive impulse says I'd miss mixing with cars, buses, vans, trucks, walkers and cyclists in the noisy metropolis - maybe that's why I like the vision of shared space.

The other day, Joel Crawford, who I’ve never met directly and for whom I’ve much admiration circulated what he called a ‘hateful post’ from a ‘Jeremy Clarkson wannabe’ – Jen Dunnaway’s peeved response to the announcement of ‘eco-towns’:

… this sounds like my idea of hell: a city populated entirely by self-righteous pedestrians and cyclists, with senseless 15-mph speed limits for cars on the roads leading into it, and a center from which cars are prohibited entirely. The UK is hoping to make this grim prison-camp world a reality, with the establishment ten ‘eco-towns’ throughout its countryside. While I think it'd be great to have some place to quarantine all the militant pedestrians, where they could hate on cars without marching out in front of them, ‘driver pressure groups’ (bless them) are predicting that the eco-town project will simply become a platform from which to bully the rest of the motoring public. UK Housing Minister Caroline Flint says, "These developments will be exemplars for the rest of the world, not just the rest of the country." Yeah, great. It's exactly this kind of pompous banner-waving that's gotten New York and other US cities considering a ‘congestion tax’ like the one so ‘successfully’ imposed in London. Now that we're approaching the saturation point for laws persecuting smokers, the lobbyists and other professional busybodies are clearly casting around for the next acceptable group to persecute. Guess what: we're up.

I thought I’d have a go at matching the rant - in a reply to Joel:

Take heart. Know that when reasoned argument, even that with which you disagree, turns to rants like this you have your opponents rattled. You'll never win them all, but the people who should be celebrating cars – the intellectuals, the creatives, the elites - whether of education, class or wealth - have withered away. The car defenders have lost the middle ground. More and more, those who proselytise against rebalancing relations between movement and interaction, in favour of the latter in cities, are being pressed into the outfield - not into the wilderness that breeds innovation, but into the isolating desert of autophilia. While city life improves, as access by proximity begins to replace access by mobility, they fume in the sprawling ex-urbs, where - deprived of stimulation - they enthuse about stretched limos, even longer food chains, and ever larger parking lots across the zombie world of placeless strip-malls, embracing increasingly grand guignol automobiles, excoriating invented monsters – ‘self-righteous cyclists’, ‘militant pedestrians’, ‘grim prison-camp world’? Plee-eese! Before such rants begin people remain reasonable – susceptible to debate and arguments of the kind that accompanied defences of slavery and the subordination of women e.g. Proslavery: A History of the Defense of Slavery in America, 1701-1840 (Georgia University Press, 1987), or see these and many other arguments against female suffrage, but as the abolitionists and the suffragettes (and their supporters) began - after prolonged struggles - to take the middle ground, their outfield values becoming common decency, so the language, and in some cases the actions, of those who saw themselves as losers, turn irrational and venomous or, like the antics of Jeremy Clarkson, increasingly comedic – helping, through boyish antics, and grumpy diatribes, to dissipate the frustrations of retreat along a broadening front. Best, Simon

* * *
We are busy with preparations for leaving on Monday for Venice, from where we'll take the train to Ancona, and from there the ferry to Igoumenitsa, thence to Corfu. For my birthday Lin has bought me a delightful and poignant Edward Lear reproduction, a tranquil landscape painted about 150 years ago, near the end of the British Protectorate in 1864

There was an Old Man of Corfu,
Who never knew what he should do;
So he rushed up and down, till the sun made him brown,
That bewildered Old Man of Corfu.

An amicable divorce

I have just seen my car driven away by a friend who's got it for free. I've been 'deciding' for 5 years - maybe longer. But the final decision to be rid of it came a week ago, since when it's sat in our drive, insurance cancelled. It helped that the cost of repairing its transmission was assessed as more than its worth. I have not been without a car since the 1960s. This evening is a moment long anticipated, regularly postponed. My family seem to have had cars since they were toys. I recovered an old photo of Barbara Maine, my maternal grandmother Bar, in her Peugeot smoking a cheroot. I recall having some of my happiest childhood times in cars, with my family. What I best remember (something written about and filmed at the time) is the accessibility to places all over Britain we got from having a car in the 1950s. I realise we drove - 50 years ago - on roads that most people now see in absurd advertisements - filmed on locations in Croatia or Albania. My mother and step-father were writers and journalists through the late 1940s and '50s. Cars were part of their salaries. We had the means to drive. We would arrive at places where there would be no cars for miles - or very few. We could park next to beaches, cliff tops, and high ridges with mighty views (see what I mean about advertising?). We reconnoitred long, lightly-paved rural lanes ending in cul-de-sacs where, after a word with a the farmer, we set up tent and fished in clear trout streams. We ate our catch fried in butter. I was often very happy - innocent of being in a vanguard of social change. My step-father remarked once, when I was going on once about the 'beauties of the countryside' (I was a literary youth) that this sort of thing wouldn't last. 'We're doing things the very rich could do. Now we are doing it. Soon everyone will be doing it! We're part of the rot.' In later years he observed that the central dilemma of socialism (quoting Bertrand Russell) was that 'you can ruin anything by making it available to everybody.' From the mid '60s, life on the open road, new motorways notwithstanding, became increasingly closed. The freeway became unfree as more and more people, understandably, sought access to a possession we'd enjoyed more exclusively. The freedoms promised by the advertisers of cars became more and more conditional. Friends of friends were killed in them and by them. I started travelling abroad to get away from the crowds in my own country - often walking and relying on trains and buses when going to lonelier places that were still places. Travelling with my wife, we seldom returned more than twice because we could always see material prosperity spreading - as it rightly should - but in the process blighting the quietness and slowness of more self-sufficient economies we'd visited as guests rather than an important part of the new local economy. We saw fishing boats laid up and replaced by marinas and yachts. We saw heritage signage spreading, as places became consumer items and we became harvest. We too had been consuming but we'd usually enjoyed the only table in the house.
In old age, my father said

'The only places left to live will be the cracks between the concrete. I advise you to to live in places already ruined. Maybe you will find the wisdom to make them better in some new way none of us understand."

Photo from Richard Risemberg's 'Bicycle Fixation'

I did not revisit my childhood experiences of motor touring until 1995, when with my young children we toured the Peloponnese in a hired car. We had had help from the Greek half of my family identifying still isolated areas of the peninsula. The motorway southwest from Athens was under construction. We drove en famille from Athens via Corinth and Leonidi, Sparta, Kalamata and Messini to Pylos on almost empty roads, stopping when we wanted and having picnics, strolling together through ancient ruins. Stopping high in the Taygetos mountains in Lakonia (the point from where this summer's conflagration spread) one Sunday evening and hearing silence under a black sky pierced by a million stars (normally hidden above the yellowing pall of light polluted England), with no sound except the cooling cracking of the car, hot from ascending a narrow zigzag road where we encountered no other vehicle for half-hours at a time. I took joy seeing my little daughter and wife who, unlike me, had never been to Greece, walking among the remains of a civilisation I associate with my roots as well as my present family. The car took us to the edge of beaches and right up to tavernas where we could park and walk to a table. Only once an ill-judged detour 'to see the sea' at Koroni jammed us into the narrow walking streets of an ex-fishing village grid-locked by visiting motorists - foreign, and the new expanding Greek middle classes, and us. Back in England I saw this holiday as an anachronistic replay of my motoring childhood and realised I could not keep trying to stay ahead of people with the same aspirations as myself but slightly further back in the rat race. I had to start thinking about my step-father's old age advice. I kept my car but reduced my annual mileage below 3000. My favoured way of getting about became my feet, my bicycle, train or bus, while car ownership just went on increasing. I have indeed found contentment and interest in the cracks in the concrete. I have watched wild fowl, inland seagulls, herons, urban rats, and foxes along canal towpaths, passing beneath the pillars of raised motorway junctions as I've cycled and walked the city, threading its congested roads and alleys free of worries about gridlock and parking. I have enjoyed picnics in the shadow of dilapidated industrial ruins. I've campaigned for more urban green space, for education for sustainable living. I've chatted across the rich world in cyberspace to like-minded people about ways to solve that central dilemma of making the riches of the world available to everyone without destroying it.
I've tried to imagine cities where more people will want to stay and make them into real places again instead of dismal, narrow economies where they can earn enough 'to get away.' I have found the roots of such cities in my own home town, as I walk and cycle about. Anyone hearing moralising in these reflections, should know that we fly to places still, that there's still a car in the drive (my wife's). My daughter has just bought her own. We are profligate with energy. This is more about about ending my long taken-for-granted relationship with the car - my auto-dependency. It's been a gentle separation, then an amicable divorce from a long and increasingly jaded marriage of convenience.
[A piece I wrote 7 years ago about 'cutting my car use']

[Back to the future 14/01/08 Alex Taylor, Fortune senior editor: DETROIT (2008 Detroit Motor Show number) -- If you are looking for some insight into what the automobile of the future will look like you could do worse than talk with Tom Lane. An American, he runs all of Nissan's Product Strategy and Product Planning from his office in Tokyo. Unlike most executives, he welcomes the imposition of new U.S. fuel regulations that mandate 35 miles per gallon by 2020. "It is not an issue" for Nissan (NSANY) he says. He expects the new regs to drive more small cars, improved technology, and a broader variety of shapes and sizes, as designers try to get more variety out of similarly-sized vehicles. But he points to some discouraging global trends that don't bode well for the industry. He notes that consumers in Japan are losing their mojo when it comes to cars. The population is aging, and younger drivers would rather spend their money on new cellphones and Internet access." Japan is increasingly not interested in new cars," he says. The population in Europe is aging too, and Lane sees similar ennui spreading there. As car ownership becomes more expensive and cities increasingly impose congestion pricing on car usage in center cities, he sees car owners switching to mass transit for their daily commute, and then renting cars for longer trips. "The U.S. is headed that way," he says. "The challenge for us, going forward, is a more interesting offer. Doing a better Sentra or an Altima isn't going to do it." [Review article 'Reducing our dependence on the car', Local Government Studies (2000) 20:1, pp.101-110]

['Cutting car use' Bicycle Fixation 2000]

[Back to the future. AlterNet piece on driving cars in July 2008]

[Back to the future 11 Oct 2009: The auto industry frets over young people's lack of interest in driving]

[Back to the future 14 Oct 2009: Oil ~ From extraction to consumption: an exhibition by Edward Burtynsky]

[Back to the future: 14/06/10 Lament for today's cars]

[Back to the future: 28/03/12: Edward Burtynsky ~ Automotive detritus, Oil ]

Climate change in Greece - getting rid of my car in England

I'm back to working at the computer at the kitchen table. Lin says 'Your hair looks as if you've been in a wind tunnel'. Back here the media bombard us again. In-trays mount; brows furrow; lawns need mowing. I do wave and nod as I cycle through the city but I am also enveloped in its anonymity. In Ano Korakiana Democracy Street has already provided us neighbours, ceremonies, encounters and a smaller world that is, at the same time, not isolated. On Monday 29th October 2007 I will finally be rid of my car, having owned one for nearly 40 years. The family's not 'carfree' - more car-light - because Linda still has hers. This is more about me than overall CO2 emissions at our house - not reducing so much as slowing the rate of increase. I've been thinking about this for over a decade. Many would say my sense of urgency is unimpressive. Flying continues to be one of the ways we go to Greece. When we are on Corfu we hire a car - though when I was there with my friend John Richfield in February we travelled by train and ferry and cycled on the island or took buses.

To get to know a country, you must have direct contact with the earth. It's futile to gaze at the world through a car window - Albert Einstein The bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to man. Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish. Only the bicycle remains pure in heart - Iris Murdoch When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race - H.G. Wells

Last year I added a comment on Castle Morpeth Councillor Nic Best's contribution to 'thinking outside the car' on the I&DeA website:

Like so many, the 'problem of the car' is a wicked one. The arrival of the car changed settlement patterns determined by earlier forms of transport, shifting attitudes to time and distance. Helping to reduce car use requires understanding of how to change car-created environments - as these influence every walk of life. The car created untold opportunities to access distant places, along with door-to-door conveyance of people and goods. Banning or raising the cost of car use, in an auto-created environment , endangers business and reduces many people's quality of life - built around their reliance on the car and their enjoyment of this way of travelling. As someone who shifted to cycling, walking and public transport some 10 years ago I'm well aware of the obstacles to my new ways of getting about and carrying things. If government made things easier for me, life would be more difficult for the auto-dependent. As it is the freedom promised by the car is becoming more and more conditional, as its numbers increase and the collateral harm of car use becomes ever more evident in pollution, congestion, noise, car associated crime, with its consequences for legal and insurance costs and road deaths and injuries that continue to destroy many more lives than other forms of transport. The car economy is geared to human desire and spending, supported by intensive advertising in ways that blights the emergence of other forms of transport. The car's increased safety features (for drivers and passengers) has - via risk compensation - involved an apparent advantage being used to allow even greater speeds. Motoring organisations, in criticising the regulations that have been introduced to reduce speed and ease congestion, have managed, astonishingly, to depict motorists as victims - when in fact motoring victimises. I see it as vital to move away from the car's ability to create greater access via mobility, and the hypermobile culture of which the car is the mainstay [see Prof. John Adams' blog and in particular his writing on hypermobility and the value of policies and values that nurture access by proximity - a dimension of the Lyons' "place-shaping" agenda].

There are dire predictions for the future climate of Greece. There is some good news but Tania Georgiopoulou at the same web address writes:

This summer's repeated heat waves are just a foretaste of what's to come, according to experts. The average maximum temperature in July, now 33 degrees Celsius (91F), is expected to climb to 41C (106F) in the next decades, and average rainfall levels are forecast to drop by 20 percent or even 80 percent in summer months. Scientists believe that despite efforts by the European Union to limit the effects of climatic change to two degrees Celsius, the average increase will be at least 3.5 degrees over the next few years, with varied effects on different parts of the world. The Athens Observatory's Group on Energy Planning, Climatic Change and Sustainable Development has studied the effects of climate change in Greece over two years to April 2007. The results (link to PDF version of their report) show that there will soon be energy shortages, crops will be affected and large coastal areas flooded. Athens will face water shortages.

* * * To remind me to be less serious, the gods sent round my neighbour's grandson for a cup of tea. He told a bizarre tale about his Sunday League Football Club's transformation. As a solution to successive defeats every player, including him, has changed their name - passports, bank accounts and so on - to the name of a selection of international football stars. This has clicked with the media and Lynam Athletic have had stories all over the place on television, in the red tops as well as The Times and Guardian. They've also been doing far better since they made this decision. 'When did you decide this?' 'Down the pub' said J. now Vladimir Petrovic or was it John Terry? Linda calls this 'Grand Theft Autograph'