Lefteris' birthday

A balmy day yesterday. May's issue of The Agiot - a local web based newsheet published monthly by our friends, Paul and Lula, in Agios Ioannis is running my account of the infamous frog farm scandal on page 6.  Lin continues working on the shutters. Mid-morning we hear a strimmer at work and persuade an amenable municipal grass cutter to spare the harebells gathering on the path below our garden. Growth, that would once have been kept gratefully close-cropped by villagers’ goats, sheep and donkeys, has to be cleared by the Demos from miles of paths, verges and commons across the island to lessen fire hazard as it turns to tinder in the heat of summer. 

The pollen released set me sneezing, especially as I’d already climbed through our kitchen window to clear the weeds in the narrow space between our house and our neighbours' garden wall. 

“Watch out for snakes and scorpions when you’re down there” warned Lin. All I saw were lizards and some cracks in the sink waste pipe which I covered with duct tape.

Yesterday was Lefteris’ birthday. He’s the same age as me - younger by fours days over a month. We were invited to lunch from two, bringing presents and sitting down to a table of goodies and conversation that ranged over 'our' village, the Easter holiday, the death of Osama bin Laden and the 'wedding' about which Natasha knew more than we. We thought Kate – now Katherine – looked like a sensible sort who’d be good as future Queen to William. It was impressive to see all the horses and carriages and crowds down Whitehall and the Mall where I enjoy cycling when in London. Seeing it on their screen I felt a frisson for Westminster Abbey, my local church for the six years I was at school next door, where I sang and, when senior, read the Lesson. We laughed at the short clip of a verger doing a cartwheel in the knave. All very English, though isn't he from New Zealand where they're even more English? Lunch continued with sweet sweet things, small light cakes with honey and quince and raisins and sugar to choice. 

Dimitra arrived with greetings for her grandfather and, ensuring our fingers weren’t still sticky, we got to going through one of Lefteris and Vasilikis’ family photo albums, with small nostalgic black and white pictures of when they were married and young - vignettes - seriously handsome and beautiful and, as pictures were thirty years ago, allowing composed faces that endure rather than toothy ads for dentistry. 

We emerged into late afternoon, having using up too much of the day for further work. This is when grown-ups are excused to rest emptying the house of children licenced to play the rest of the day, but all siesta Lin continued painting shutters - the ones we’ve altered by covering the louvers to make them into old Corfu ones. These were fixed with glue and tacks, then undercoated, after the plywood insets had been treated with preservative. 

Then comes the job of filling the small gaps around each cover and the repairing of cracks and filling of the holes made by the tacks. Once this has dried, each shutter gets an undercoat of green with a final finish. The job goes on and on and this is just one set of shutters. 
"We'll leave these on through the summer heat. If the plywood hasn't buckled we can convert the others."
Also painted – primer, undercoat and two coats of green – are the four pieces for the shutter frame. We are fixing this first set of recovered shutters in front of a new metal window frame only in place since 2005. I, having drunk more of Lefteris’ wine was sleepy and indolent, watching Lin but now and then snoozing in the sun thinking of the throaty croaky voice of Papa Lazarue in The League of Gentleman muttering in Gippog “You’re my wife now” or Hannibal Lecter “I'm giving very serious thought...to eating your wife” or Don Corleone mumbling from Marlon Brando’s cotton wool packed jowls "But I didn't know until this day that it was Barzini all along." Later I woke from dreams I’d forgotten.

** ** **

We skyped Amy the other night; found her at home with Guy and Liz and the puppies. Each puppy was held up for us to see as we sat outside Sally’s in Ipsos. 

“They’ve all been sold” said Amy 

“How much?” 

“£150 each and we’ve been careful about checking who they go to.” 

We got onto to talking about how Amy and another WPC had been trying to deal with a gang of youths who were using loud foul language in public. When persuasion failed they’d tried to arrest them. The youths resisted. Amy was pushed over into the road and got an egg-size bruise on the back of her head. 

“So what happened?” asked Lin 

“They got off” 

“How?” 

“The CPS need a 95% success rate for prosecutions. The lawyer who works with us - or should - said my colleague, who was also thrown to the ground, had charged them with ‘breach of the peace’ instead of ‘disorderly conduct’. Pushing me and my fellow officer to the ground, instead of being a compound offence of ‘resisting arrest’, amounted to ‘reasonable force’ in resisting a ‘false arrest’.”  

Such casuistry has long caused whingeing in the canteen, a precision about the interpretation of civil rights balanced by police misdemeanours on that score – one exacerbated by the other - but this being my beloved daughter I found it tricky to stand back. 

“I’m proud of you” I said “for not being angry or bitter. For your grasp of the details. A passing car could have injured you or worse.” 

Roof repairs continue

... meanwhile back at 208 Democracy Street the roof is being re-repaired amid accounts of chill winds, rain and lightning. Phone bills mount for calls to Greece (Skype at our end doesn't connect to anyone we call yet), images go back and forth by Broadband. We sit at the kitchen table peering at these and discussing by speaker phone the minutiae of what has and hasn't yet to be done. I said to Lin 'You know we keep thinking life will begin when the roof is done, when actually, getting the roof done is life...and the electrics, and the new fireplace and flue, and the floor, and the new window sills and the staircase and bannisters and, and, and...'

Clearly I shall have to force myself to go out to Corfu next week.

* * *
Time appears to be resolving the Corfu Knickers Crisis. Invasion has been called off and the state, while saying nothing, seems to be agreeing discreetly to drop the matter. That the knickers were hoisted under and not over a Greek courtesy flag weighs with the Court as does the fact that they were taken down so willingly.
* * *
The same may be said for the Corfu Frog Farm dispute. Achilles' apology for criminal assault has been accepted by the court. He's withdrawn his civil action for frog nuisance. Conditional peace exists between neighbours. The frogs sleep with the fishes. It rains and thunders in Corfu - though you wouldn't know it from the photos.
* * *
Dh is now settled near campus, attending lectures and starting a dissertation on the role of faith in the formation of local government in post-Saddam Iraq - a subject about which his insights will be unique, though historical, since fieldwork will be impossible. The various ritual of temporary residence and studentship have been completed - reporting to the police, starting a bank account, getting a SIM card, a printer scanner, registering for post-graduate credentials to use the library, the internet and to access study space and other campus privileges.

* * *
Athens News Agency: Prokopis Pavlopoulos inaugurated the annual conference of the Central Union of Municipalities and Communities of Greece (ΕΤΗΣΙΟ ΤΑΚΤΙΚΟ ΣΥΝΕΔΡΙΟ ΚΕΔΚΕ (ΚΑΣΤΡΟ ΚΥΛΛΗΝΗΣ, 14-16 ΝΟΕΜΒΡΙΟΥ 2007) KEDKE - the English Language version of the website has little yet) at Kyllini Castle in the Ilia Prefecture on Wednesday. He spoke of 'creating strong local administration at the service of the citizen, with firm resources and a development orientation that constitutes an active agency of local democracy and regional development.' On administrative reform, Pavlopoulos said 'the new administrative division of the country can only result from a wide dialogue with the local administration's collective representation bodies...this dialogue has already begun during our previous tenure and it is continuing on the basis of the creation of stronger and more effective local administration organisations.'

Βρεκεκεκέξ κοάξ κοάξ

Frog chorus from Aristophanes: Ah, no! ah, no! Loud and louder our chant must flow. Sing if ever ye sang of yore, When in sunny and glorious days Through the rushes and marsh-flags springing On we swept, in the joy of singing Myriad-diving roundelays. Or when fleeing the storm, we went Down to the depths, and our choral song Wildly raised to a loud and long Bubble-bursting accompaniment. Brekekekex, ko-ax, ko-ax Brekekekex, ko-ax, ko-ax Brekekekex, ko-ax, ko-ax

Tell me some lies. I am working on a modern plot for a revived version of Aristophanes’ comedy ‘The Frogs’. It is September in Greece. There has been one hour of rain since April. On the beautiful Ionian island of Corfu the authorities have been so anxious about water they have considered turning away the summer geese rather than face the health hazards of such gigantic flocks lacking water for their pleasures. The gods have surrounded this paradise with a multitude of small coves facing crystalline sea, gifting men with winter rain in abundance to replenish reservoirs of water deep in the island’s rocks, but the geese in their eccentric yearnings have found sea-girt shores inadequate and so, for their delectation, men have dug thousands of concrete swimming pools across the island which they fill and refill with hard water from the island’s aquifers, laced, for cleanliness, with chlorine. A progressive architect is seeking, in these times of apprehension about this waste of precious water, the coarseness of concrete swimming pools which lie empty for the winter months collecting leaves and moss, and the hazards of chlorine - revealed by EU risk analysis - to promote pools that imitate nature; pools that do not need annual emptying, regular scrubbing and refilling from mains water. He has, as an experiment, constructed, beneath the eves of his house, which views the sea through the tops of olive trees, a shallow edged irregular rain fed pond which, in draught, he can top up economically from the mains. It is arboured by climbers, edged by flowers, with lilies, papyrus and purifying reeds lining its shallows. Above it swallows swoop. Colourful fish, small and large, swim happily in its deep but limpid centre, surfacing excitedly when anyone approaches. This pond, sun-stippled through the overhanging vine, adorns the house, providing its occupiers and their guests with the pleasure of bathing or paddling in clean, often soft, water or dipping their feet to enjoy the cool toe-kissing of golden carp. At night frogs visit. In spring it is their trysting place. The wide adoption of such ponds could solve the island’s looming water crisis since they keep themselves clean all year round, need no chlorine and no refilling, making full use of winter rain, stored in adjoining sternas or reservoirs for dryer months, harbour fish that eat mosquito larvae and frogs and, being shallow edged, are safer where children are about. The architect’s once friendly neighbour, has, under the goading of his envious soul and a covetous wife preoccupied by disparities in stremas between the two properties, been transformed into a Lopachkin type of orchard-chopping self-made bread-hater. The Gods, who have schemed to have the island destroyed by an over proliferation of summer geese as a lesson to men, now use him as a gadfly to punish our hero and frustrate his plans to solve the island’s water crisis. Achilles, overtaken by fits of uncontrollable rage begins to hurl of imprecations over his neighbour’s wall, then rocks, and - as the play opens one warm winded moonlit midnight – he climbs the wall, naked, hair awry, and makes a mad violent midnight physical attack on the architect and his lover, while his wife, her hair streaming, urges him on from the top of the wall, screaming through the night that she is a sorceress who mates with frogs. The police - comedic figures - have been unhasty in reaction to the gradual break down of civility, but, following report of this dramatic incident, they take note of the architect’s plea for their protection. They phone Achilles from their station in the nearby town, hoping to effect a reconciliation of neighbours. However, Achilles, in his rage, uses such porcupine language to the police, the chief beedle is provoked. He rises from his night desk, summons aid, and in the gendarmerie 4x4, drives out along the dark olive lined roads to arrest Achilles and bring criminal charges against him. In the second act, Achilles’ lawyer, Photis Serendipitos, an opportunist rare in his profession, has drawn up a simultaneous civil charge sheet, under article 989 AK, against his client’s victim. It claims that Achilles was provoked ‘beyond reason’ by ‘sleep deprivation’ caused by the ‘noise pollution of croaking from his neighbour’s frog farm’ which has led, collaterally, to an ‘invasion of mosquitoes and toxic smells threatening his client’s well being’, making life’ so intolerable for him and his family’ that he seeks to have his neighbour sent to prison or fined thousands of euros on each of several counts, and asks the court’s permission to take such ‘drastic measures’ as may be necessary to end this menace (to be continued). * * *

We do work we can do. Lin’s painted our walls inside - gallons of starkest white rollered on top of properly spread astari that helps the paint to grip on plaster, holding walls and ceilings together. She's conscientiously chased out edges with a brush. The revealed tiles and marble are showing cleaner as Lin scrubs and scrapes skirtings blemished by old paint, lino glue and mortar. I’ve chiselled out the side door frame and inserted the marble strip to exclude driven rain. It’s held in place by its fit and the white acrylic sealant carefully inserted by Lin and smoothed by finger. I hid a 50c coin between marble and door and I’ve added a bolt to hold its foot to the marble. We think Kiria Katherina approves but she went on telling us to get rid of the hideous concrete 'bunkers'.

After borrowing a hefty electric stone breaker from D., who needs hard core for the foundations of the home he’s building a mile below us, I’ve demolished the remaining breeze block cisterns our vendors’ builder had put up along our side wall. Now there’s rubble there ready to go and spare plaka, but the house and path look better already. I’ve been wire brushing the wood burner ready for black stove paint. This must go upstairs to sit on an east wall where I’ve already taken up the marble surround.

On Tuesday Nl & Gbr drove over from near Gastouri where we must go on 2 October to collect the bed Nl sold us, and enjoyed conversation that included Greece, England and Switzerland, the long-forgotten plot of Heidi, the disappointing way fish and chips get cooked, the prospect that women are more useful than men, the Swiss habit of doing three kisses to the Greek two and confusions that follow. We sat around our table and on the balcony as it grew dark. Only after they’d left did Lin and I ponder the fact that B’s expected visit hadn’t happened and we are back to where we were on 3 Sept so far as any further work on the house, except for the work we’ve* done ourselves. How I wish I was an electrician and joiner and plasterer to be free of this time-expensive dependency.