Cycling to places

  

In an aeroplane, even the slow descent to Corfu airport, passing high over Trompetta, Skripero and 'our' Ano Korakiana to the runway at Kapodistria, 18k further south, I travel further with one bite of a sandwich sat in my belted seat, than on a morning’s cycle ride along the roads far below. Our residency papers were ready at the police station in Paleokastritsa.

It took me nearly an hour to get there from Ano Korakiana via Skripero – 8 kilometres crow-flight, perhaps 10k on country roads. Vasili, a polite young policeman in the office, had our certificates ready – 23 cents each with a stamp, a photo, signatures – official. We can now stay here more than the previously legal 183 days. I was delighted to cycle, without a break, past many tavernas and hotels. up the long hill out of Paleo to where my road headed, below the turns to Doukades, to a T-junction along a rutted road through wood and meadow to Skripero and home. My knees start to ache after a while, but not so they trouble me.  That only happens first thing in the morning when going downstairs I have to take one step at a time until my joints loosen up. 

Another day, my road south is another country road, gnarled by irregular repairs, with cracks from roasting that run in the direction of travel, and a winding four inch scar after the laying of wifi cable. Lined with hollyoak, cypress, olive, lemon and orange, prickly pear, oak, fig, kokykias, eucalyptus and pomegranate trees, some wrapped in ivy, its verges brim with wild flowers, hiding occasional plastic bottles, cigarette cartons, soft drink cans. This land was once part of great estates, but it wasn’t subject to enclosure, where, in England, swathes of land were hedged from the commons by landowners. 

It’s piecemeal – the vanishing remains of a busy pastoral economy in which all but a few were country people. No hedges. Those are reserved for private gardens; rather a shifting mix of makeshift separations – chicken wire, chain link and barbed wire held by metal posts, upright wood palettes, a bedstead, olive timbers nailed to posts – made discreet by burgeoning greenery. Gulleys, leading to culverts and dry winterbournes in the dips, make edges beside the road. At times there are just clumps of unmown verge, bamboo, brambles, oleander, long grass sprinkled with wild variety - corncockle, mallow, loosestrife, convolvulus, the brightest red poppies, spurge, pellitory-of-the-wall (especially prevalent this year), bryony, dwarf elderberry, wild geranium, wild garlic, clover, vetch, white and yellow daisy, honesty, nettles, and, now and then, fugitive garden flowers turning feral - clambering rose, grape vine, wisteria, tall hollyhock and other plants I struggle to name. 

Lin had made a shopping list  - a box of wine, 6 eggs, 2 packs of butter, 1/2 kilo of mince, 6 village sausages, 1/2 kilo of mushrooms, 6 large potatoes, a kilo of onions, a kilo of carrots, crab sticks, margarine, sweet corn. 
I start by walking my bicycle 100 yards down the stony path from our house to National Opposition Street. By the bus stop I turn the bike upside down and, leaning it against the wall there, I examine my tyres for embedded thorns from plants on the path that produce seeds like caltrops - tribulus terrestris. We call them ‘yellow perils’.  I use a hard brush on the turning wheels, and the tip of my penknife to ease out suspects. 
I ride eastwards to the hairpin bend on the edge of the village, that leads south from the road to Ag Markos, freewheeling swiftly to Athanassios Street, taking the short cut that passes the olive oil works to 'barking dog corner' and the old main road from the village to town. This road has no steep slopes until Ag Vassilis. Then it descends more steeply to the main road between Corfu Town and Paleokastritsa. I’m heading for Kaizanis, the supermarket at Tzavros. 

I pedal by Luna D’Argento, night club converted to apartments, and the gate to Sally’s stables where I took our grandchildren riding, on past Stamati’s joinery and up a slight hill before passing the T-junction that leads down to Kato Korakiana and the shore. I continue through the hamlet of Ag Vassilis. The clouds are starting to drop rain. At the hamlet of Gazatika the rain increases. I find an open garage and shelter opposite an empty house. A few cars drive by, swishing on the wet road. Swallows settle on an electric cable over the way, preening fussily under the rain. I see no-one. The rain rattles louder on the corrugated roof of the garage, lessens and pauses. 

I’m working through the recovered footage of my stepfather's old Out of Town location film – 16mm reverse negative colour film 40 years old and more, synchronised with 1/4" reel-to-reel sound tape of Jack's commentaries, digitised, colour restored - brought here on a solid state hard drive. Where we have only Jack’s recorded voice, because the old studio image recording tapes cost so much, they got reused. I am filling in these. I'll be filmed in July by Paul Vanezis to make the next Out of Town DVD box set. 

Draft selection of recovered Out of Town episodes

I must digest the spirit of my stepfather’s words before the start of the location films. It scares me. I observe a process of rumination and procrastination.
The unusual grey weather that lingers across the western Balkans wandering daily over Corfu, is here, the village’s pall. We had local and European elections in Ano Korakiana, but where before the village website would swiftly list the results of the polls, they remain unentered, but for an epitaph to the daughter of the village diarist. How could TS, so cruelly bereaved, muster the spirit to continue recounting the village story? The worst thing that can happen is to lose a child. The grass on the paths to her grave at St Nicholas Church is flattened by daily visits – toys, a hundred fresh flowers, a kite, a portrait, small heaps of lovingly arranged pebbles. Beside that a couple of instances of cancer in treatment, a pair of unexpected and irreparable separations from marriages entered only recently, with celebration and ceremony, pass almost unheeded. Even so they make this grey weather dispiriting, reflecting harm in the affairs of a community - ένα χωριό, μια κοινότητα.

Low cloud over mountains drifts in the street

I walked by the village mayor on Democracy Street, working on repairs and alterations to the home occupied by our new papas. FM has striven hard for the village, sorting out street lighting, leading neighbours in keeping village waste sorted and removed without mess, arranging for its collection from homes without cars, pushing for a recycling area near the long abandoned football pitch that is at last being laid out in full working order below the village, ready I suspect for astroturf. He told me he would be Mayor for just 3 more months. The vote last Sunday had been 430 for him to stay and 435 for a new Mayor. 

“Five votes” he said holding up his hand “Just five”

Papa Evthokimos’ house in the village is just opposite what was Stamatis’ Piatsa bar. That’s closed. Our Papas parks a car where we and others sat to drink and chat. Mark says our new Mayor will be Stavros Savanni, elder of Ano Korakiana, but we'll miss Mayor Fokion.
I sense, now and then, gouts of nostalgia; like a slide show my brain presents remembrances. Walking just a few weeks ago with my grandchildren down the rough track from Ano Korakiana to the sea on a route - Κλειστός δρόμος - now closed by a small landslip to vehicles, or seven years ago, with Amy and our new grandson and the dogs - hers, Cookie, my mums', Lulu, and our Oscar - beside the shores of the Moray Firth, over there the Black Isle.

Oscar dog, Oliver, Amy, Lulu, Cookie beside the Moray Firth near Ardersier

Oscar is old now, losing his sense of continuity, barking to go out just after he's come in, blind and almost wholly deaf yet wagging his tail enough to show he enjoys bits of his remaining life. The thought of these fragments of past is entirely bearable, yet contemplating them I sense being on the edge of suppressed grief. I'm old. I will have to go after Oscar in a few years. Am I up to all that - being bereaved of my wonderful life?

"You are old, Father William," the young man said,
"And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head—
Do you think, at your age, it is right?"

"In my youth," Father William replied to his son,
"I feared it might injure the brain;
But now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again."

Lewis Carroll taking the mickey out of Robert Southey. When I was young I gave no thought to what the world felt like to old people, and they, quite rightly, had no intention of bothering me with their concerns, far more interested in sharing things the young hadn't experienced. Said my great grandmother, Lucy who died, aged 99 in 1969, once "We thought Oscar was a fool to take on Queensberry" I didn't understand her remark but I remembered it and much later gave it context in what happened to Oscar Wilde. I remember so many things she shared with my seven, eight, nine, ten year-old self, visiting her from school, having lunch at an Italian Restaurant in South Kensington and always talking about the world she'd known. How she fell in love and eloped to London, leaning out of the carriage window, saw her future husband, George Halkett, waiting at the end of the London platform - was it Euston? -  for her train from Oldham "and I knew, just seeing him standing alone in the distance, I'd made the right decision." I had no sense, then, of the risk she'd taken.

My bicycle just after I bought it 6 years ago

I peeked out from my shelter in Gazatika. The rain began again, sheeting down – then as abruptly stopped. My road continued past Angeliki’s, the physiotherapist, opposite the island’s electrical sub-station. I cycled across the Stravo river, waterless despite the rain, to the main road opposite Sgombou and travelled another kilometre to Kaizani. There, pushing a trolley, I work through Lin’s list, enjoying ticking off items without her back-seat shopping eye. I keep the invoice of course, as she'll check it carefully. Outside I calculate I have about 13 kilos in my basket.

My old box shopping basket when it's at home

The bike would like to fall over with the weight. On my way, gently uphill, the 10 kilometres back to Ano Korakiana. When it comes to gears my favourites involve the lowest gear on the rear chain set and the sequence - left hand lever - that changes the position of the chain on the seven sets of cogs on the pedal chain set. All of these from 1-1 for climbing steeper hills to 7-1 on the level, I like. On a descent I'll shift to 7-2 but the bike doesn't like it that way round. 7-3 is fine but switching up to 7-2, I've lost the chain, and oiled my hands putting it back. I don't know why. It's how things are.

The rear chain set on my bicycle

Shopping is an adventure on a bicycle. Walking up the steep path from the bus stop I push myself and the bike  ten steps, then rest for 10 seconds, then push another ten steps. Easy pacing.
"I'm home!" I shout as I prop my faithful vehicle against the wall of our house and unload freight from its rear basket.
"Hi" replies Lin from somewhere in the house.

Our grandchildren, Oliver and Hannah, walking down to the sea from Ano Korakiana

At last

Monday afternoon into the evening our sky was covered with high and unfamiliar mackerel clouds. On Wednesday morning the weather at last changed. Abruptly cold drinks are nectar; shirt sleeves sensible.

Insects and spiders are out, and everywhere.

This morning after I'd hung the washing I drove down to the harbour at Ipsos and took Summer Song out, to rehearse the new engine - with a phone call to Dave to ensure exact procedure - and once outside the harbour turned off the engine and using just the jib jaunted up and down the Ipsos shore, before returning and docking without incident. The gadgetry for furling the main from the cockpit has yet to be installed but I want to get used to sailing again - and I want to become accustomed to our boat's renewed engine. I'm pleased enough to do a selfie of a selfie.

Yet just before I went out I spotted the crew of the old Westerly with whom I shared the harbour. I introduced myself; Shauna and Russell. ...

They'd heard of me via Cinty and Paul who'd told me the tale how this 22' gunter-rigged twin keel GRP yacht came to be in Ipsos, after being sailed to Greece from England. Russell generously invited me on board.
"No no, you're busy"
"No come on. Really."
I leaned forward to board and as I stepped onto her bow, I tripped - arse over tip; this on a boat I thought I knew in my sleep! I didn't hurt myself, and as for bruised esteem, I'm now too used to being an old fool on small boats. They make me feel my age more than anything. Russell had done a lovely restoration job on the little boat. She was as ship-shape as you could have asked. Denys Rayner, her designer, would have been so delighted to see how his first fibre glass creation has lasted the fifty years since she, and her sisters, were came off the Waterlooville production line in the early 1960s.

Jogging along off Ipsos

*** *** ***
Richard Pine, who we'll be seeing tomorrow in Perithia, has published a piece about Greece's recent local elections in the Irish Times:

On my terrace, the breeze lifts the olive leaves from green to silver; at night, the garden lit up by teeming fireflies, I hear the mating call of the skops owl. It’s difficult to think that upcoming local and European elections are causing heated debates just 200 metres up the lane at the village bar.
Greeks can be very argumentative. The raised voice and clenched fist are merely ways of saying, vehemently, “Sorry, I don’t agree with you” or “What kind of eejit are you?” Only in extremely divisive situations, such as led to the civil war in the 1940s or the military junta (1967-74) does it provoke violence. These days, there isn’t enough energy to drive an ideological buggy, let alone a war.
Actually, Greeks hardly care about the European side of it. But they have a greatly diminished voice in local affairs: in Corfu, where I live, the 13 municipalities were amalgamated, with a single mayor who doesn’t even know where our village is. The roads are so bad, we need a “pothole candidate”. So they care deeply about how they are represented locally.
The outcome of these elections will be a barometer of public opinion, and Prime Minister Antonis Samaras may decide not to go the full stretch to 2016.
At national level, Greeks’ disillusion with all political shades has been reflected by the parliamentarians themselves, sensing their own impotence as decision-makers, and leading to a fragmentation of the larger parties.
Since 2010, at least nine splinter parties have been formed, some by principled MPs who could no longer support the government, others by careerists who are far from principled. Very few have any hope of gaining the 3 per cent of the national vote which is the threshold to parliament.
In 2012, necessity threw together the traditional rivals, New Democracy (ND) and Pasok, into an unholy coalition: it started with a sizeable majority, which disaffection has reduced to a mere two seats, due to voting on a multi-purpose law forced through at the insistence of the troika. This law, much feared by vested interests, provides for deregulation of protected professions and increased efficiency and redundancies in the public service. The coalition’s “satisfaction” rating has sunk to 20%.
In a general election, the party with most elected MPs is awarded an extra 50 seats and is asked by the president to form a government. Opinion polls depend on who is calling the tune for the way they describe the political spectrum.
But in general terms, ND and the chief opposition, left-wing Syriza, are neck-and-neck on 20% to 21% apiece. If this held up in a general election, it would give the winner 60-63 seats, plus the 50-seat bonus, still 40 short of even the slimmest majority.
The issue would then focus on a coalition partner. Pasok, which for decades was regarded by many as embodying the postwar state, has sunk so low (less than 4%) that its chances of forming any coalition are negligible. Like Fianna Fáil, in similar circumstances, it is desperately trying to rethink its identity and its relationship to the people.
Until very recently, the fascist party, Golden Dawn (GD), was running in third place: at the height of its popularity, it had 12% of the vote, but its involvement in criminal activities (including murder and arson) and a report highlighting its infiltration of the army, police and judiciary, has seen it drop to 8%. The rise of the very new “Potami” (River) Party, on about 9%, seems to have pushed GD into fourth place.
Of the other new parties, only Independent Greeks (4%) and Democratic Left (which quit the coalition last year, and is now on 3%) are in the frame. “Burning Hot Greece” (I kid you not) and EPAM (United Peoples Front) are among those without a snowflake’s chance in hell.
Most voters are apprehensive that GD might hold the balance of power in a new parliament, without necessarily being in government. But they are equally aware that the highly principled and well-intentioned Potami, with what seem to be sensible, popular policies, is completely lacking in political experience. This may appeal to those who are fed up with the current politicians, but it is not a great recipe for pragmatic government.
The increasing European phenomenon of popular support for right-wing parties will not be entirely reflected in this month’s polls in Greece: there is an undercurrent of discontent with the present political spectrum, which would hope to see other methods of determining Greece’s return to stability, self-confidence and self-respect. Personally, I’d support the Firefly Party: it makes no promises, only comes out at night, and lives a mere two to three weeks.

Day after elections

I know that one of the things I'll want to ask Richard about is the report about Golden Dawn's infiltration of key Hellenic institutions. The Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, a research foundation with a branch in Athens since October 2012, came out with a Greek authored report that mentioned the church, the army and the police and most troubling, the judiciary.

A detailed study into the intrusion of ultra-right ideology into four key state institutions in Greece has found that while there is an obvious problem in the military, police and Orthodox church, the issue is most problematic when it comes to the judiciary.
The report says that while the situation in all "four institutions is quite dangerous ... the hardest case is the Greek judiciary" because of its constitutional status and also because of the generally deeply conservative worldview of its members, which is reflected in many of their judgments.
"What we found out is that, of course such penetration exists in terms of ideology, but we are certain that you also have enclaves, where this ideology transforms the informal structure," the report's editor, Dimitris Christopoulos, associate professor of political science at Athens' Panteion University, told EnetEnglish.
He adds that the complex interrelations between right-wing extremism and the Orthodox church, police, army and justice "reveal the imperative need and remaining challenges to democratise the Greek state and society".

The report was published in Brussels in March 2014

*** ***
Our neighbour Katerina has an estancia near Skripero on which she keeps the chicken whose eggs she's given us on three recent occasions; small eggs, muddied with strong shells which break to reveal firm yokes. Yesterday morning I grated an onion and potato, cut small pieces of bacon. Fried them and added three eggs to make an omelette to die for. Sprinkled with parsley, Lin and I shared it for breakfast.

Longreach in the outback

The first workshop for councillors, and some officers, from Longreach and surrounding Shires - council areas in central Queensland each larger than Wales - has gone very well. The day after Lin and I and John toured the township of Longreach courtesy of John Palmer, the Mayor, waving at and being greeted by fellow citizens as he passed - a world away from my metropolitan world, as was the small town's showcase exhibition, the Stockman's Hall of Fame, celebrating Australia's wild west, in historic terms hardly a century that changed the Australian landscape, formed a stereotype fast fading into modernity.

By CityCat to downtown Brisbane

So now we return to the bustle of the city, staying in Hamilton on the edge of Brisbane, heading this afternoon to the coast city of Mackay, for a second seminar, before returning to Brisbane from where we fly to New Zealand on Sunday. Also in Lonreach we visited the QUANTAS Founders' Museum - conspicuous from above and on the ground some of the retired airplanes that conquered the 'tyranny of distance' - historian Geoffrey Blainey's phrase for the vastness that was the Australian settlers' experience of their new continent.
*  *  *
And just before countrywide local elections this Sunday, an op-ed piece from Richard Pine, living in Corfu, in The Irish Times, heralding the acrid blast of modernity upon the Hellenes and their economy, threatening much that Greeks and non-Greeks associate with 'Greekness':

....These elections are not about Greece’s image abroad, but about Greece’s image of itself.

As Kathimerini newspaper put it: “Every institution, every group and every individual will have to redefine itself with regard to society as a whole.” Talk of “the rebirth of a nation” is widespread. Papandreou declares, “We are changing Greece.” At the same time he insists, “There is no intrinsic flaw in the Greek character – it’s not in our DNA to have these problems.” But many critics insist that it is the very Greekness of that DNA that has created the problems.

As Athens-based journalist Nikos Konstandaras observes, “The underlying cause is the absence of personal discipline, which has cultivated a mentality that anyone could do what they liked.” There is a fundamental problem here – Konstandaras says, “this mindless tolerance is not a manifestation of democracy: it undermines it.” But to a vast number of Greeks, freedom and democracy are identical.

An index of this is the reaction to the new ban on smoking in public places. The law was introduced on September 1st but is widely regarded as an intrusion into personal liberty. As William Mallinson, a former British diplomat now lecturing at the Ionian University, puts it: “The price of freedom is chaos.”

Papandreou has acknowledged that “the crisis derives mainly from the lack of transparency in state power and public life, and from a clientelism that has corroded everything”.

The Brookings Institute in Washington reports that bribery, patronage and other corruption cost €20 billion per year, or 8 per cent of GDP. Much of the clientelism stems from the “sins of the father”: it was under Papandreou’s father Andreas, prime minister in the 1980s, that the flawed system was created by vested interests influencing political decisions. Ostensibly, and to a large extent truly, this was a reaction to the right-wing exclusion of the lower classes – urban and rural – following the civil war and under the military junta, between 1967 and 1974......

The recovery has been a personal crusade by George Papandreou to highlight the self-delusion his father’s crusade inadvertently encouraged: cronyism, over-employment in the civil service, excessive consumer spending. The programme on which recovery is based involves four key elements: a fundamental reform of public administration, including a reduction of the 1,034 municipalities to 340; locally-based initiatives to stimulate economic growth; privatisation of state companies such as Hellenic Railways; and liberalisation and deregulation of restricted professions, including lawyers, pharmacists, engineers, accountants, architects, truck drivers and taxis.......(extract)

** **

Wednesday late afternoon we arrive in Mackay to run a seminar on Thursday with councillors (plus Chief Executive) from the Regional Council. A hotel behind palms, shorter trees, shrubs and grasses along the Pacific shore. The taxi driver spun a mile journey from the airport to our hotel into a three mile fare - A$24 compared to a crow-flies fare of under A$10 - talking the while about the right pronunciation of the town - "Mack-i" or "Mack-a". "What do they make of climate change?" asked John "I think it's just the natural way of things. But who knows?". Later another driver, about to take us on the same run-around said "That's what the sat-nav says."
I have strong feelings about continued coal dependency, including a local economy's reliance on selling it to others. Parents who continue to deny or ignore the need to more than greenwash 'clean' coal may answer to their children and grandchildren.  Coal power costs the environment. It hinders the pursuit of renewable energy, yet a young men earning A$125k a year toiling 5 days on, 5 days off in the mining business of Queensland, can well feel pride spending and investing his wages on home and family; "Who needs education? Bastard climate change hippies." [See Stephen Schneider's recent book Science as a Contact Sport: Inside the Battle to save Earth's Climate - a review with good links, including this guide to debate with a climate change sceptic. Given that scientific thinking entails maintaining doubt and scepticism about the nature of truth you can see the problem. Political truth is made at the ballot box, which has no slot for shades of grey.]

China continued to be the largest and one of the fastest-growing coal markets in the world, with usage rising 9.6 percent to 1,537 mtoe in 2009, or 46.9% of total world coal consumption. The increase in coal use in China between 2008 and 2009 was greater than the total 2009 usage in Germany and Poland combined. In 2009, China became a net importer of coal for the first time, thanks to a surge in imports of steam coal (the grade used in boilers for electricity generation) from Australia, Indonesia, and Viet Nam. 

Colliers off Mackay

Once settled in our room, we stroll the shore - sandy soft and clean; on the tide line - leaves, twigs, small seawashed logs and coconut husks; not a plastic bottle or other human detritus. Flat Top and Round Top islands just offshore and further off the big colliers arriving at Dalrymple coal terminal further down the coast and departing for China. The sand crabs re-create on the beach, in fractal style, the spinifex landscape we've seen from the air around Longreach.

** ** **
A very funny piece in The Australian about aca-zombies by Joseph Gora and Andrew Whelan, co-editor of the forthcoming Zombies in the Academy.

The deadly hand of corporatism has drained all life from campus. Universities are increasingly populated by the undead: a listless population of academics, managers, administrators and students, all shuffling to the beat of the corporatist drum. Perhaps not surprisingly, the terrifying zombie plague that has swept through the sector is now the subject of serious scholarly attention (books, articles, conferences) as surviving academics investigate how we have descended into this miasma. So who or what exactly is responsible for tertiary zombification? Is there an antidote? Perhaps a clue lies in the recent independent movie Pontypool, in which the zombie virus is spread through endearments such as honey and sweetheart. The contagion is rapid and lethal, infecting all those who come into contact with such banal sweeteners. Similar lexical vacuity exists in today's university campuses, which have become hollowed-out spaces containing soulless buildings: food courts like any zombified shopping centre; eerily deserted libraries; and hi-tech lecture amphitheatres. In this bleak landscape the source of the zombie contagion lurks in the form of dead hand, mechanical speech....

The article is just a reminder that where the Victorians treated primary education as an instrument of the state, in pursuit of a workforce sufficiently literate to work in the new factories that were part of the industrial revolution, and secondary education expanded for less material motives after the second world war, now tertiary education - universities, academia - is treated by government and its business partners as the lead instrument of national economic survival in a globalised economy.

Studying this interest in the metaphor of zombies I was led to a recent publication called Zombie Economics by John Quiggin about the dead ideas that still walk among us and this led me to a most interesting overview of commentaries on the economic paradigm in which we are now entrapped - a piece by Daniel W. Drezner, a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School at Tufts University in The National Interest, of which he's a senior editor. Drezner's title takes up the zombie theme - First Bank of the Living Dead. Quiggin blogs a gentle rebuttal of Drezner's review, but the words I'm drawn to - not least because they are so lacking in the 'lexical vacuity' described by Andrew Whelan, are Keynes' - quoted at the end of Drezner's piece.

The decadent international but individualistic capitalism, in the hands of which we found ourselves after the war, is not a success. It is not intelligent, it is not beautiful, it is not just, it is not virtuous—and it doesn’t deliver the goods. In short we dislike it, and we are beginning to despise it. But when we wonder what to put in its place, we are extremely perplexed. John Maynard Keynes 1933

Meanwhile Tom Tomorrow's cartoon describes the credit industry going about it's daily work:

I wonder which society, which country, or which town or village will invent and maintain a way of living without growth without resorting to the terrible 20th century experiments of Nazi Germany and its allies or Soviet Russia, China and the failing experiment that grips the rest of us as the only alternative - turbo-charged global captalism.  I remind myself to read Prosperity Without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet by Tim Jackson, leading the economics steering group of the UK's Sustainable Development Commission.

I am inclined to agree with Max Born, the German physicist, who reckoned that the acceptance of a new quantum theory would occur only with the passing away of the old physics professors. The acceptance will await a new generation that starts off with a question mark. Fred Emery, one of my first employers

Back to the future ~ 18/12/10: Terry Eagleton on The death of universities.
18/01/11: Henri Girou on Beyond the Swindle of the Corporate University: Higher Education in the Service of Democracy

*** ***
Pleasing news from Ano Korakiana. The greengrocers we thought was closed at the western end of Democracy Street has re-opened...

'...fully renovated owned and managed by Maria Binou, welcoming its first customers. At 7 last Saturday evening the Pappas gave his blessing to the opening of the store while Maria had prepared a buffet for guests with the support of her large family. The new shop will undoubtedly provide benefits to our village and deserves our support, along with the 2-3 others remaining ... in an area which up to three decades ago was served by 30 different stores.'

General Election UK

From the kitchen window. Beyond the sea - Albania

“The place looks especially islandy today”

“What do you mean ‘islandy’?”

”I don’t know. It just does.”

Sun and gentle haze, not the summer fog, have made foreground, middle ground and background separate, according depth to the landscape; the firmest blue and green along the island shore; brindled blue-grey flecked flaxen by sunlight between fluffy clouds on the receding ridges of Albania. We’re repairing a washstand that must have been well but simply made in the 1950s, perhaps earlier, with good mortises and precise angles. Discarded it had begun to fall apart weakened by woodworm, though not too much; one leg-end rotting, with clues as to its use – burns where cigarettes may have been left during washing; fine repeated shallow cuts where shaving foam was smeared off a cut-throat razor; scratched initials barely readable; dark patches from standing water on winter days rather than later rain in an abandoned house; an attempt at makeshift maintenance hammering in over twenty two-inch nails – rusted, rotting the joints they were meant to tighten; cracking and blemishing the pine.

It was simple pleasure. Like getting a potential survivor into A & E. Woodworm killer was allowed time to work. Nails were extracted or driven on through, the piece disassembled, and put together again with glue, joints realigned, a drawer made where one was missing, mortise and tenon joints cut for the wood surround; the whole sanded with a new piece of wood replacing the rotten leg-end; the frame that had got out of square pulled straight and the table top mended and re-attached with countersunk screws.

Now all that’s needed is to fill the old nail holes and do enough extra sanding to tidy but not remove the history and decide what to do with the hole for the wash basin.

*** ***

This morning I asked Leftheris about the election in UK, he having TV and me with errands before going on the internet at Mark and Sally's. “Brown two” he said holding up two fingers. I understood 'second'. But he was unsure who was first because, as I was suspecting, it was not clear who was first. We seemed to be looking to a hung parliament and the unaccustomed negotiation that follows when no party has an overall majority. Meantime I shall be interested to see what’s been happening in the local government elections (invariably obscured by the national news), given the higher turnout that goes with having these on the same day as a General Election.

Alan arrived to continue work and told me more details adding news of the problems experienced by many casting their vote because of overcrowded, possibly ill-managed polling stations. From the the ladder “We’re a laughing stock. We’re not a banana republic. We’ve not even got bananas! What’s happening to us. We were the ones who monitored other people’s elections. Now the EU’s sent people over to monitor us.”

The builders, over the way, have been having a joyous time rubbishing all politicians, expressing their views on civil servants’ wages, especially now that pensions are being cut across the Republic. Alan joined in the general scorn, stirring disapprobation of our two governments, as they worked.

“One problem” he observed to us “is that now we’ve made this deal to get help with mixing and pouring cement is they’re now part of your balcony project, so I’m going to be getting lots of advice”

Mark drove by around then and shouted down to Alan “You don’t want to do it like that!” Around noon the building material truck arrived. With impressive dexterity the driver, having manoeuvred his truck to a point in the middle of Democracy Street above us, stabilised it with a hydraulic strut extended from the chassis, and proceeded, with remote control slung at his waist, to guide the truck crane to pick up up several tons of sand and cement and lower them gently down to the bottom of our steps – the operation done in 10 minutes - speed that's valued on Democracy Street, as it's blocked during deliveries, although drivers seem to take such delays in their stride. There’s no altercations; no honking.