Winter in Greece

“IUD? IUD? What’s it stand for? 'Unexploded'. Yes. 'Device'. What’s the ‘I’? Ahah. 'Improvised'. I'm mulling this. Why IUD?"
I’m going over this between waking and dreaming and then I’m failing to get my mum’s attention, as she bustles around a house, full of her daily errands, re my plane ticket for a four day workshop in Berlin on 'Understanding Modern Germany'. Now I’m in a queue in a concourse which starts to advance to boarding and I’m in only the clothes I’m wearing. Not a moment too soon, Lin and mum bustle in with my boarding card. 
"What about my things, toothbrush etc?”

“Sorry” says Lin 

“A book?” I ask, more than vexed. 

“Sorry, no” 

“For f*ck’s sake, mum” 

Then I’m apologising profusely to a sitting woman with a child who probably didn’t hear me anyway and isn’t English. I look angrily at mum, embarrassed at this highly public evidence of my dependency on the women in my life who have failed me, even though it was mum who booked me on the flight and this workshop that I’m not keen on anyway. 
Mum looks back at me with one of her looks of loving chiding amusement and holds her gaze until her face fills my whole field of vision. I feel caught out, unshaven, unwashed but thinking I’ll buy what I need in Berlin but then I’m awake; relieved of these  responsibilities, aware this is the first time, that my mum, since she died, has had a part in a dream.

36 hours of rain and grey, but this morning is bright. Our windows need a clean and we’re going into town today, to the bank, the tax office, what else? 
At supper the other day a friend said the 100 Club, an ex-pat subscription lottery charity run on the island, was collecting money to buy new tyres for the island's ambulances.
“There’s only one ambulance left on the island – of ten – that are still roadworthy” 
Had I heard that the authorities have been round the coves on the north west coast and made all the tavernas take down their jetties – ‘they’re defined as illegal” - and remove their chairs and tables where they have spread to the shore. Boats can’t arrive and tie up for a meal anymore. 
“Really?” 
“And the charge on trip boats. €3000 a month! Most didn’t go back in the water last season. Wasn’t worth it” 
“Blimey” 
“And the new cruising tax for all foreign yachts in Greek waters applies this year” 
“Will we have to pay?” 
“Sure” 

Summersong in the rain

I ask another friend about this.
“It’s true but there’s no infrastructure in place to collect that tax.” 
Best wait and see?
“Meantime all the gin palaces – over 12 metres pay €100 a metre - are heading off for marina’s in Croatia. I feel sorry for those people here who’ve bought a marina mooring for twenty five years”

We finally got a domestic water bill – for €6.50 – after two years of getting none. At the demos office in Ipsos Lin and I went through the empty hall of the building back from the front, up darkened stairs and along a dim peeling paint corridor to the cashier. Knocked. 
“I am alone” said the woman there, as she processed and stamped our bill. 
“Twenty five people left today – to their homes” 
Blimey
“What does this bills cover?"
"The end of 2012” 
She smiled wanely “We are late” 
“The next bill…?” 
“…will be for the beginning of 2013” she said.

At supper we heard an account of a Greek friend’s journey back and forth between departments within the tax office in the city, the demos office in Ipsos, and the main town hall in the city striving to get their renovated house designated as ‘old’, so that they stopped incurring the tax increment applied through their electric bills to properties defined as ‘new’. Over a series of visits she was referred to other offices and officials each claiming, with conviction, that redefining the status of a property was not in their remit. At last someone surmised - of another official in one of the offices already visited - that it was not that they could not do this, but “they do not know how to do it”
“She got on the phone and rang this other office and, over the phone, took her through the steps on the form on her computer required to alter the status of our property” 
“Wow. Well done you - and her!”

Did I know,  asked another friend "Golden Dawn have opened an office in the centre of Corfu town.
“I saw all these police in town the other day. Roads blocked. One of the arrested leaders - Greek MP Ilias Kasidiaris - on probation, come to Corfu for the event, with other supporters." My impression is that there were more people on the street protesting against the eggvolk than there were representatives of Golden Dawn.  
Με πρωτοφανή αστυνομική Δύναμη(120 περίπου) με χρήση μοτοσυκλετιστών και περιπολικών αλλά και όλη την Τροχαία έγιναν το απόγευμα τα εγκαίνια των γραφείων της Χρυσής Αυγής στη Κέρκυρα στη Πολυχρονίου Κωνσταντά και τους γύρω δρόμους. 

Παρών ο εκπρόσωπος της Χ.Α κ Κασιδιάρης ο κ Ματθαιόπουλος (βουλευτές) με περίπου 300 Κερκυραίους υποστηρικτές του κόμματος.Γύρω τους κλούβες των Ματ Ματατζήδες.Ακολούθησε αντιφασιστική πορεία από μέλη του Συριζα και του Ανταρσία

See 'Golden Dawn photos shock Greece'

Cheese dream days

“It’s a cheese dream day” said Lin
“Go on”
“On days when it rained too much to go out, my mum promised 'cheese dreams' – cheese spread on buttered bread and fried”
“Toasted cheese sandwich”
“No 'cheese dreams'”
It has rained from the afternoon. I’m in vest, shirt and sweater. At night we need the quilt. Summer’s furnace light no long leaks through shutters, dancing bright motes of dust and sparkling mum's little chandelier we brought, so carefully packed, from Scotland.

“A few more days like this and the house will have lost the heat in its walls”
“We’ll be lighting the stove. Putting on our electric blanket”
But for brief patines of silver on the sea, rain and clouds advance our landscape from the south. There’s still an absence of the penetrating cold I take for granted in the Highlands, which - plus grief - set me back last winter until we returned to Greece at the end of March, when 30 minutes with a Greek doctor cossetted me to health, along with antibiotics an English GP wouldn’t prescribe, plus generous possets, at the Pyrgi doctor's suggestion, of chicken soup from Cinty down the road.
On Wednesday in sunny weather I was helping Lefteris, Foti and Adoni with pressing the last of their wine – some juice from Zakinthos grapes but some, this year, from Lefteris’ own garden, the weather not so hot as to wither them on the vine as has happened the previous two years.

After the final turn of the screw the press is unscrewed and taken apart and we dig our hands into the spongy cake of tsipira (what we call pomace) pulling it out in crude wedges to add to the garden compost.
Lin and I were invited to lunch as a reward for our help (as if helping is not reward enough!) and we laughed and enjoyed small crispy skinned fried fish, cold cod, bean soup, salad, bread and wine with all the family. We lingered as conversation grew into debate
“We are talking Politics” explained Natasha in English. You know Golden Dawn?”
 “Ne” I replied “Chryssí avga χρυσή  αυγά”
I know quite well the difference between αvgí and αvga, but, having decided to call them the 'eggvolk' I thought I’d try it out on Greek neighbours and was rewarded with hilarity. Lefteris observed how well the BNP are doing in UK, mentioning a double figure percentage he’d seen on TV. “They are thriving on present misery” we agreed.
I disagreed that the British National Party was having as much success in the UK as Golden Dawn in Greece; rather the opposite.
Cinty’s view, she shared with me later, is that one thing a lot of young Greeks especially won’t stand for, people who might, because of the crisis, be inclined to sympathy with the eggvolk, is the suppression of a right to speak your mind...“with the murder of Pavlos Fyssas they have shot themselves in their Greek foot”
*** *** ***

Lin and I have been using the rain to work indoors on the wardrobe in our bedroom. She's taken over management after I retreated frustrated at the intractability of the angles involved.

Drawers from Brin Croft; doors recovered from beside wheelie bins below Ano Korakiana

Under her guidance I’ve been planing and trimming surfaces, creating angles that accommodate the illogical geometry of the space in which we’re working. Shavings and saw dust proliferate but it’s slowly and steadily coming together.

This Saturday evening there was a knocking at our door. It was Angeliki and her mum Anna Metallinos. No they wouldn’t have a drink, wouldn’t stay, but asked if we’d like to come to the village museum.
“We never knew you wanted to see it. I’m so sorry”
This ισ a conspicuous slightly narrow building in the centre of Ano Korakiana we’d given up hope of visiting.

In the seven years we’ve been here it has never been open. Tactful attempts to seek an invite had not succeeded. We’d decided that the Metallinos Museum was not one, in the sense we had understood the term; not really a place open to visitors; rather a private house that happened to be called ‘ΜΟΥΣΕΙΟ’. A plaque tells passersby in Greek and English that ‘In this house lived and created his great work of art the first self-taught popular from Corfu sculptor Arestides Zach.Metallinos’. Two days ahead – meta-avrio - at 10.00 suited our bi-lingual friend and neighbour Cinty. She agreed to join us to help with conversation.

**** ****
I got an email from our solicitor in Scotland:

Dear Simon and Bay. Just a quick note to confirm that the sale of Brin Croft and the Lochan has successfully settled. The Purchasers’ Agents have authorised release of the funds and accordingly the keys have been handed over. With kind regards. Yours sincerely,  James Wotherspoon. Macandrew and Jenkins WS LLP

I could hardly not be anything but beholden to a house that stood close above the sweet river Farnack where, with my sister, I’d sat with mum as, at teatime on November 1, she breathed her last. The sale for a sum that derided shared pessimism and a rather mean Home Report – required in Scotland – vindicated mum’s good choice

Barbara, and her grandson Richard, at Brin Croft

*** *** ***
It seems hardly possible but it looks as if I may get my wish - a loose footed mainsail on Summer Song. I'm not a fan of the almost universal rig of modern yachts over the last 50 years - the Bermudan - preferring gunter or gaff. The Bermudan mast feels too tall. The sail though elegant is unwieldy and without a generous belly, and, in a world of sudden squalls, not easy, especially when single handed, to lower or even reef in a hurry. (see - parts of a sail) In the search for a seamless luff the Bermudan main is near married to its mast, running up a groove or hanging on slugs in that groove; an arrangement that's all about getting a tight luff to improve sailing close to the wind in competition - no great concern of mine. Summer Song's main has been a challenge when it come to reefing or furling.

Summer Song's main is a handful to furl or reef

Her previous owner, Norman, had been wont to stuff towels in the canvas he rolled round the boom to try and give Summer Song's main a wind-friendly shape when reefed. Imagine doing that in a sea and a stiffening breeze. So Dave has been drawing diagrams.

At Sally's Bar in Ipsos, Dave draws a loose footed furling main for Summer Song. Rob Groove looks on.

At first we thought of using another genoa rigged in the main triangle, but now he's found a mainsail that rolls up between head and tack, like a roller reefing jib; the type that reefs into a 'box' attached all up the back of a Bermudan mast; almost universal on modern charter boats. On the clew there's a sturdy pulley linked along the boom to a roller furling gear just below the gooseneck. All up the luff runs a stiff length of aluminium around which the mainsail furls and unfurls. The furling sheet runs from the clew pulley, just above where the main sheet attaches, to the furling gear and back to the cockpit so that both main and jib can be reefed from there.
"Blimey Dave! Make it happen"
"I've got the main and I think there's a furling reel fell in the sea up by the harbour. I'll go look in a moment"

'Austerity takes toll on cradle of democracy'

Richard Pine has circulated his latest 'Greek letter' in The Irish Times but writes:

I have been unable to create a link to my column in yesterday's Irish Times (Wednesday 18 September). I am therefore sending it in the body of this email. The brutal killing (by stabbing) of an anti-Nazi rap artist, Pavlos Fyssas, by a member of Golden Dawn last night has raised the 'hate' and the 'fear' stakes even further. If you do not wish to receive copies of my future columns, please notify me and I will remove your name from the distribution list. Sincerely Richard Pine

'Extremism is fast becoming a political default in this humiliated country' Photo: Yannis Behrakis/Reuters

Wed, Sep 18, 2013, 01:00

First published:Wed, Sep 18, 2013, 01:00

   

Given the low opinion held by most citizens of their political leaders, and of international institutions such as the EU and IMF, it’s astonishing that we seem to cling to the concept of democracy – especially in Greece, where the word was invented – to describe government of the people by the people. Today it’s all up for questioning, including the composition of the nation state.

There is a significant gap between our faith in the concept of democracy and our suspicion of the democratic process which produces people we cannot trust. A mismatch between the ideal and the real, including the operation of the civil service, the clientelist system and the passing of parliamentary seats from father to son – or daughter – a not unknown phenomenon in Ireland.

Do we distrust our fellow citizens because we fear that, as soon as elected, they will turn into powermongers, the political equivalent of werewolves or Frankenstein’s monster? In Greece we have a democratically elected parliament and a government appointed under the terms of the constitution, rejected and abhorred by the vast majority of voters.

Pavlos Fyssas Παύλος Φύσσας ~ April 1979 – 18 September 2013

Extremism
Plutocracy, oligarchy, autocracy, monarchy (all words with Greek roots) have their supporters, and even fascism (definitely not of Greek origin) has a hold in modern Greece (as reported in last month’s letter) although, as the third largest political party in the opinion polls, Golden Dawn is still not yet the overwhelming popular choice, but may have a very significant stake in the next parliament, with 14 per cent of the vote in current opinion polls.

But there is another Greek term gathering momentum today: anarchism. Many citizens, disenchanted with the political system which they regard as having failed the state, have turned their backs on politics and, instead, advocate lawlessness and, at its most extreme, tearing down political and social structures by terrorist means. The group Conspiracy of the Cells of Fire (one of the most successful) describes its mission as 'urban guerrilla warfare'.

I am surprised that the Greek indignados (who made such a dignified, peaceful process in Athens’ Constitution Square for many weeks in 2011) have not re-emerged during the latest crisis; some of them are merely disenchanted with all forms of protest, but I expect that many, more aggressive types, are actively pursuing the anarchist option.

At one end of the spectrum is the fascist Golden Dawn, burning synagogues and mosques and beating up migrants and gays; at the other are the various terrorist groups, the latest of which calls itself Untamed Desires, which sounds more like the title of a porno movie than a bunch of arsonists and bombers attacking civil servants, lawmakers and judges.

Richard Pine

Back to the future - 23 Sep'13 Nightmare on Democracy Street by Nick Malkoutzis on Macropolis
***
Just driving dully along I catch people on the beach at Ipsos enjoying their holiday in the sun.

Κι εγώ. In readiness for the wind vane removed from the roof of Brin Croft and due here by carrier at the start of next month, I've attached the iron bracket made for me by Steve Lee to a corner of the house. I bought five 9 inch coach bolts and the largest rawlplugs I could buy; dug out a metre length chunk of wood recovered from the beach and rejected as too good for the firewood in the apothiki, and drilled five holes in it. On a stepladder I offered the beam to the wall and, through the holes in the wood, drilled five marker holes on the mortar, then using my SDS drill followed these with five deeper holes in the stonework of the house. I filled these with a dollop of strong glue and then, with the coach bolts through the beam, and the rawlplugs lightly screwed on the end of each, offered the whole to the wall and tapped it home, until I could place a bottle spanner on each coach bolt and tighten.

I painted the wood, now tight on the wall, to match, and with a spirit-level positioned Steve's bracket, its end just beyond the gutter, pointing as vertical as I could make it. I gave it a couple of coats of rust resistant black gloss before using four four inch coach bolts to fix it firmly ready for the vane. I shall need a compass to find the north, or perhaps use the north star, or the wind vane on the church a few yards down Democracy Street.