'...το ωραίο άρθρο για την Κορακιάνα....'

From the Ano Korakiana website: From the littered overbuilt shores of Corfu lots of people still reap perfect images of the island landscape that so enchanted those who passed through before mass tourism – the monastery of Panagia Vlacherna and Pontikonissi omitting the roar of the airport and the multistoried hotel on Kanoni, the pretty sight of Gouvina Cove where you can park by the road a few hundred metres from the end of the dual carriageway at Tzavros, and a small crop with photoshop can easily disappear the cloned boxes and concrete skeletons that disfigure Barbati, and from a distance even the jutting hull of the Nissaki Beach Hotel can be blended into the towering cliffs of Pantocrator, though ignoring 'Seashore Villas' plonked on what was once the village of Ag Spiridon near the car-blocked streets of Kassiopi is a little trickier, but removing the endless plastic detritus from the beaches needs no army of earnest litter-pickers - just a tiny upward shift of the lens records the sublime landscape of archetypal Greece above the sparkling blue of the Kerkyra Sea, as from the dizzy heights of Angelokastro the cliffs of Capes Iliodoros and Plaka facing the Adriatic horizon distract from the disastrous shamble of Paleocastritsa. It was the better-off who recorded their memories of Corfu’s charms; incubating their future commodification. For peasants, fishermen, small shopkeepers, beauty lay in health and harvest; the two connected. Once upon a time, when people gazed longingly at the green island from the rocky mainland of Epirus they saw its wealth not in its landscape but its fecundity, as a family judging a prospective daughter-in-law might rate child-bearing hips, above a pretty face [Of these observations Jim Potts remarks: 'Succinctly stated. But I sincerely believe that even the poorest peasants appreciated Corfu's natural beauty and recorded it in their own ways, through orally-transmitted tales, folksongs and proverbs, for instance. Is it not possible to feel a sense of profound regret, even while cutting down olive trees to build a better house or to make some money to pay to educate one's children? The sense of regret increases with time.'] Only in the last fifty years has Corfu’s harvest changed from what grew here to what disembarked from ships and planes. The shift in wealth that followed – from the grand farm estates of the nobility - the signorini - thriving and then just surviving on the close cropping of tenant labour - needed and got little help from government. Oil in Arabia and Texas turned arid scrubland into gold. Tourism in Corfu made hard-worked seaside estancias into cornucopias. Sea, sand and gravel were already here.  Cement made new byres, the digger and the dozer swiftly cleared the island curtilage of unnecessary trees. An olive grove or a vineyard anywhere on the island sprouting concrete in place of roots could send your children to university and show a way, other than emigration, to escape a life of sweated labour, as a fibreglass boat with a glass bottom over one busy summer could replace the hazards and uncertainty of fishing round the year. Landscape enjoyed by those with the means to gaze upon it, that had inspired painting and poetry became publicity and copy to attract the new wealth of millions. I hear myself muttering “You make all this sound like a bad thing” “Well yes and no” I reply “Yes and no” The noble leftwinger Lord Bertrand Russell remarked that ‘the central dilemma of socialism is that you can ruin anything by making it available to everybody’. “If only governments instead of being bought by the Lopakhins so excited about laying an axe to Corfu’s cherry orchards had pursued a research based policy that had regulated the massive changes brought by mass tourism; created an infrastructure that was less piecemeal and opportunistic” A broad smile grows on my face at my naïve pomposity. “Έλα τώρα! Surely you jest?” I exclaim “Weren’t these messy changes always going to be irresistible, any attempt at planning overwhelmed not just by greased palms and brown envelopes but by human yearning. Try testing your commitment to properly regulated planned development of tourist infrastructure against another lifetime of horizon-less poverty heaped on the deprivation of centuries” The challenge of Ano Korakiana; a few years back – three or four at most – there was a discussion, probably one of those animated debates in which I’ve sat in the back nodding sagely as though my Greek is good enough to follow the arguments, in which villagers, in large numbers explored whether they should have a taverna or indeed any other commercial establishment in the village that catered for and attracted foreign visitors. I first heard of this meeting from two British neighbours in the crowd awaiting midnight the Easter Saturday before last “They decided, on balance” said Wesley “that they would not.” This confirmed the presumption I heard a few years earlier when we were planning to buy a house in the village that “Ano Korakiana doesn’t welcome tourists.” To suggest that Ano Korakianas do not welcome strangers – for all those 44 voting last Sunday forGolden Dawn to keep foreigners out of Greece – would be slander. Apart from the fact that an overwhelming majority of eligible voters here voted for the left including the KKE (third in the poll here), this village is nothing if not hospitable, not just to people who have made their lives here but to passing tourists on foot, on cycles and in cars, who stop to look about, sometimes puzzled as to where to buy a drink or a meal. Such people are sometimes treated to these; as guests, not customers. So? So what makes this village? What makes any village? It’s a question elaborated across the world. I have urgent thoughts on this, I feel a need to know and understand. This village has a website, as with all Greek villages - a global diaspora, an historian, a documented history that goes back over a 1000 years...and a permanent population that qualifies it as a working village in the eyes of government. It has a medical centre staffed at different times through the week, and of course it has the Spyros Samaras Philharmonic Society of Korakiana, including its superlative band that performs here, in Corfu Town and across Greece, with practise rooms (a new finely restored band-room higher in the village will probably be ready next year), instruments, uniforms and regular rehearsals – an institution linked to a choir and dancers – who rehearse and learn in both the band-room on Democracy Street and in the Agricultural Co-op which also processes olive oil; providing space for meetings and village celebrations like Carnival through the year. It has 35 churches – the one’s most used Ag.Georgios, Ag.Spiridon, Ag.Athannasios, Ag.Isadorus. I can’t list all their names though they are described in Kostas Apergis' history – but also the semi-ruined Prophet Elias... Prophet Elias before Mother Greece ...marking the ancient village boundary on the hill a mile away and Kiriaki, a church below the village. There’s a taxi service on Democracy Street - almost opposite us, and buses to and from the city. There’s a second olive processing factory below the village, a furniture making workshop, a carpentry shop, a thriving bakery serving other villages and two grocery shops onDemocracy Street and a kindergarten and nursery and a kafenion – τουκαφενείου Κεφαλλονίτη - regularly attended, where even Linda and I have enjoyed a coffee and beer, tho' there's still a mainly male attendance there overseen by Maria, its proprietor. Another kafeneon - John Laschari's, Γιάννη Λάσκαρη, ceased in 2007. The village primary school closed last year and is to be replaced by a special school serving the whole island. Ano Korakiana appears to have a museum for an exceptionally gifted village sculptor who worked in the first part of the 20th century – but disappointingly, this though full of invisible sculpture, with parking spaces and displays signs saying it’s a museum, is, I’m authoritatively assured, never open. There is another business – Luna D’Argento – a kilometre below the village, a venue for weddings and dances, also occasionally for the whole village as at the cutting of the New Year Cake, Vassilopita, and next to that a stable for horse trekking and riding lessons run by our friend Sally. I couldn’t attest to how many other skills and talents are exercised in Ano Korakiana. There are people who in repairing or rebuilding parts of their houses are conscientious about maintaining its architectural character – what experts sometimes call 'vernacular'. (Example 1 ~ Nick and Sophia's house. Example 2: George Poplis's work and Sally and Mark's house - scroll down. Example 3: The restored Music School). Our house lost some of this vernacular at the hands of an English builder hired by the previous English owners who destroyed its balcony and steps, replaced by us via the admired skills and taste of Alan Barrett of Ag Markos. There are doctors, pharmacists, house-painters, plasterers, carpenters, artists, probably writers preferring anonymity, many wine makers, woodcutters preparing a delivering fuel, gardeners cultivating vines and vegetables, gardeners growing a festival of flowers – geranium, roses, honeysuckle, jasmine, bougainvillea, wisteria, cane and arum lilies; a few farmers tending larger fields, small vineyards, keeping sheep and goats, chicken, turkey, guinea fowl, ducks and geese and of course harvesting olive oil from their olive groves - the island’s most distinctive crop; plumbers and mechanics and builders, roofers, private tutors teaching English and other skills; engineers, accountants working in the city. Kostas is the village priest. Ano Korakiana fields a football team that triumphs across Corfu and beyond, but hopes of having a local football field - one a quarter completed that has sat fallow below the village for over a decade - seem to have expired. This is made less problematic by the existence of two pitches finely maintained that Ano Korakiana can share with its neighbour Skripero, sited close to the T-junction between the winding south-westward lane out of Ano Korakiana where it meets the road to Sidari. Ano Korakiana has organisation. It has committees for the band, shareholders for the Co-op. It has government. It debates and makes decisions – με δημοκρατικό τρόπο - about events and direction. Some say it has the best water on the island. Does all this make ‘a village’; in modern parlance – a sustainable community? [A cautionary essay on the village in England, Bagnor, where I grew up between 1949-1960 - translated. and posted on Ano Korakiana's website..Νομίζεις, ότι κάποιοι από εμάς θέτουμε σε κίνδυνο αυτό που αποκαλείται «ακεραιότητα» της Άνω Κορακιάνας; Είναι δυνατόν οποιοιδήποτε από μας (προσπαθώ να αποφύγω το «εμείς» επειδή εσείς και εγώ και οι συγγενείς μας είναι μοναδικοί και δεν θέλω να μας χαρακτηρίσω όλους μαζί ως «αλλοδαπούς») να επικριθούμε για τις επιλογές μας στη ζωή; Δεν θα επιθυμούσα η Άνω Κορακιάνα να γίνει όπως η μη-κοινότητα του Μπαρμπάτι, με τα νεόκτιστα σπίτια και τη θαυμάσια θέα  προς τη θάλασσα, που κατοικείται όμως αποκλειστικά από εποχιακούς επισκέπτες. Ελπίζω ότι νέοι Έλληνες γεννημένοι στην Άνω Κορακιάνα θα είναι σε θέση να μείνουν, ή εάν φύγουν, θα επιστρέψουν για να συμβάλουν στη ζωή του χωριού. Υπάρχουν χωριά στην Αγγλία που παρότι έχουν μετασχηματιστεί, εν τούτοις έχουν οδηγηθεί σε μια νέα ισορροπία, με σημαντική συμμετοχή σε αυτό, των σχετικά νεοφερμένων, που έχουν βρει την αρμονία τους με τους εναπομείναντες παλαιούς κατοίκους και πίεσαν για το κτίσιμο «φτηνής στέγης» ώστε νεότεροι άνθρωποι να μπορούν να παραμείνουν στο χωριό...]...and some thoughts from an earlier entry in Democracy Street which draw on the experiences of Geert Mak in Jorwert - reported beautifully but without the 'aren't they quaint and eccentric and charming' tropes of some commentators on villages (from a review)...The point is made, and reinforced by research carried out by others around the world that villages divided by space and time have more in common with each other, than they do with their nearest urban neighbour. Villagers are proud of the small differences. Jorwert is very special to Jorwerters. They are proud of tradition, and cling on to the facets of it that survive the changes in technology and bureaucracy as best they can. They believe in the future and in the family. And that is what the country, and therefore the village, life is all about. It is not about being an individual. It is not about making money or acquiring stuff . It is all about survival. Making sure that what is outlives you, and that your children are there to take it on and take it forward and protect it as you have done. This is true of every village, everywhere. What is also true of every village in northern Europe is that since the end of the second world war, the local people have had to cope with the Europisation of regulation. The disaster of the Common Agricultural Policy played out with the best of intentions and the worst of results. This is as true for the dairy farmers around Jorwert as it is for the sheep farmers of Wales. The lure of education, of easy money, of city life and hedonism affected the children of Jorwert, just as it did those of the French mountain youngsters or those in the Spanish plains. Schools struggled and then closed. Shops followed them. Churches remained the focus, but in protestant northern Europe they didn't have the hold they had in the catholic south – which isn't to say the whole Jorwert didn't put aside their personal faiths the day the church tower collapsed and set about figuring out how to rebuild it! Mak examines all of the issues in true journalistic fashion, supporting his arguments with academic study and local example...Simon & Linda Baddeley   (http://democracystreet.blogspot.gr)ΣΗΜ.:θα ήταν πολύ χρήσιμο αν είχε κάποιος υο χρόνο να μεταφράσει αυτό το ωραίο άρθρο για την Κορακιάνα.... *** *** ***

But to continue the disposal of our mother's estate, I'm not sure I shall come to the Highlands again. My walks there...not a yard that does anything but remind me...I shall be missing mum all my latter life. I shall not grieve much longer. This place is inextricably connected with the unalloyed happiness I've enjoyed here - and joy is not forgotten. Catching the edges of the swift passing scenery from the car - farms, woods, shallow peat brown icy banked rivers wandering through frosted alluvial plains, cattle and sheep with different concerns, not seeing the winter landscape or the dying trees. Here for ever. We left Brin Croft at 1.00pm, Lin driving as ever, Oscar in the back or in my footwell; ice and frost at first, the mane of the Boar of Badenoch creased with snow rising like a prow into low cloud as we crested Drumochter Pass and left it behind slipping into milder landscapes; on past Perth and Stirling, the edge of Glasgow, hurrying through the Lowlands...

...by Lockerbie, Gretna and Carlisle, through the Lake District, Lancaster, Preston, Manchester - the darkening landscape receding until we're running amid streams of lights, red and white, snaking north and south.
On Friday morning I was up before 6.00 to cycle into New Street to catch the non-stop express to London for a day with Hounslow - my final day of work on the scrutiny coaching project there. My colleague Andrew Coulson met me at the Civic Centre so we could exchange batons. Later we travelled back to Birmingham.

I'm working on the train

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In the blessed village:
A day to celebrate at Ag.Arkoudena, an event, if I understand it, takes note of an ancient dispute that severed Eastern and Western christians. In the local church of Arkoudena (or is that the other one at Episkopi - the village just north of the Trompeta ridge above us?) there's a picture of St.Arius at the great Council of Nicea - first ecumenical council - Α’ Οικουμενική Σύνοδο - in the year 325AD. Arius - is he a saint? - hm - probably not. He argued that Christ, though the most perfect of creations, is a creation of God the Father, in opposition to the belief of St.Alexander who held that Christ is of the same substance as the Father and co-eternal with him. Their debate became so heated that Nicholas of Myra - one day to be known as 'Santa Claus' - slapped Bishop Arius for, as he saw it, belittling Christ.

Preparations for the 'midnight oil' «Ολονύχτιο» have begun early in the afternoon...A few yards away, outside the building of the Philharmonic Society, the decoration of the Manger  - της Φάτνης - has already begun by Yianni and (his son) Angelo Spingo, assisted later by Epameinonta Kentarhos and Fokionos Mandilis. In one way or another the festive atmosphere will affect the operation of olive mill in the Co-op that grinds at dawn today. Traditional dumplings - λουκουμάδες - arrive (from Jonah and Dina Katerina Fakiolas) to treat workers and those who grind the early olives - the first milling after they have made their home in the village of Antony Prentoulis and his wife Tula. A bottle of olive oil from the final milling will be sent, shortly before midnight, to the church, for "good" - για «το καλό»
The traditional supper is held, between Vespers and evening function in the home of Yianni Savani; they, this year, having general 'responsibility' for the feast. The church is "filled" with people again: three priests, chanters quite a few old and younger, mostly women in the congregation. Close to midnight, Aristides Poulimas assisted by George Kendarchos, read the Life of the miracles of the saint, while a small stove in the corner to lessen the cold ...
Note: But the unexpected loss of the "shrine" of the Saint (a small image) overnight will cause confusion and frustration to the founders of the small church.
A note is added: Apart from this suspected theft, ten chickens have been 'expropriated' from a busy poultry coop in Mourgades (the western end of Ano Korakiana).

Παραμονή τ’ Αγιού, εορταστική όπως πάντα, μέρα για το χωριό μας, λόγω της ομώνυμης εκκλησίας στην Αρκούδενα. Οι ετοιμασίες για το «Ολονύχτιο» έχουν από νωρίς το απόγευμα ολοκληρωθεί και ο εκ των επιτελούντων Κώστας Σαββανής θα εκφράσει την ικανοποίησή του στην ιστοσελίδα μας. Λίγα μέτρα πιο κάτω, έξω από το κτίριο της Φιλαρμονικής, ο στολισμός της Φάτνης έχει ήδη ξεκινήσει από τον Γιάννη και τον (γιό του) Άγγελο Σπίγγο, συμβοηθούντων αργότερα του Επαμεινώντα Κεντάρχου και του Φωκίωνος Μάνδυλα. Το εορταστικό κλίμα θα επηρεάσει τρόπον τινά τη λειτουργία του Συνεταιριστικού ελαιουργείου, που σήμερα αλέθει από τα χαράματα. Παραδοσιακοί λουκουμάδες καταφθάνουν (από την Ντίνα Ιωνά και την Κατερίνα Φακιολά) για κέρασμα των εργαζομένων και όσων αλέθουν. Ο Αντώνης Πρεντουλής και η σύζυγός του Τούλα, κάνουν το πρώτο τους άλεσμα, μετά από την εγκατάστασή τους στο χωριό. Ένα μπουκαλάκι ελαιόλαδο από τις τελευταίες αλεσιές θα σταλεί λίγο πριν τα μεσάνυχτα στην εκκλησία, για «το καλό». Κατά τις δέκα, έχει ολοκληρωθεί το καθιερωμένο δείπνο, ανάμεσα στον Εσπερινό και τη βραδινή Λειτουργία, στο παραπλήσιο σπίτι της οικογένειας Γιάννη Σαββανή, που έχει για φέτος τη γενική «ευθύνη» της εορτής. Η εκκλησία «γεμίζει» ξανά από κόσμο: τρεις ιερείς, κάμποσοι ψαλτάδες παλαιοί και νεώτεροι, κυρίως γυναίκες στο εκκλησίασμα. Κοντά στα μεσάνυχτα, ο Αριστείδης Πουλημάς συνεπικουρούμενος από τον Γιώργο Κένταρχο, διαβάζουν από το συναξάρι τα θαύματα του Αγίου, ενώ μια μικρή σόμπα στη γωνία «καίει» ασταμάτητα, λόγω του κρύου… Όμως, η αναπάντεχη απώλεια του «προσκυνηταρίου» του Αγίου (μιας μικρής εικόνας) θα προκαλέσει ολονύχτια σύγχυση και εκνευρισμό στους κτήτορες του μικρού ναού. ΣΗΜ.: εκτός από την απώλεια του προσκυνηταρίου, ξημερώματα της Παραμονής σημειώθηκε και «απαλλοτρίωση» κοτετσίου μετά του πολυπληθούς περιεχομένου του (πάνω από δέκα πουλερικά) στην περιοχή Βασιλικού, της Μουργάδας.

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Nick Malkoutzis on 15 December writes on his blog Inside Greece - one I read as avidly as the Athens News and Kathimerini:

.... Thursday proved to be quite a day for Samaras’s morale as the long wait for the eurozone to approve Greece’s next loan tranche ended. Euro-area finance ministers agreed the release of €49.1 billion, which, along with another €3.4 billion, means Athens is due to receive €52.5 billion by the end of March 2013.
Of this, €34.3 billion is to be disbursed next week: €16 billion will go toward bank recapitalization, €7 billion for budgetary financing and €11.3 billion to finance Greece’s bond buyback program. French Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici insisted this was no 'Christmas present' for Greece but recognition of fiscal and reform efforts that had been made over recent months and come at some cost for the Greek people....

Power cuts in Ano Korakiana

Kostas Apergis - Κώστας Απέργης - was grumbling on the Ano Korakiana website last Thursday about the power cuts that leave the village without lights or heat for cooking, and even without tap water, while his friend Thanassis has added a note - από μια άλλη άποψη - that these inconveniences direct neighbours back to earlier forms of light and heat and the inclination to help one another.

Εωσφόρος ονομάζεται αυτός που αναγγέλλει τον ερχομό της αυγής (έω-αυγή+φέρω), δηλαδή ο πλανήτης Αφροδίτη, ο Αυγερινός που λέμε. Κατά τη χριστιανική διδασκαλία ήταν επικεφαλής των αγγέλων, που όμως λόγω αλαζονείας και υπερηφανείας εξέπεσε στην τάξη των δαιμόνων και έγινε διάβολος, ο Βεεζελβούλ.
Η ΔΕΗ, όπως όλοι γνωρίζουμε, έχει καθήκον να μας τροφοδοτεί με ηλεκτρικό ρεύμα, γι΄ αυτό άλλωστε την πληρώνουμε και μάλιστα καλά.
Για να εξασφαλίζει την ομαλή τροφοδοσία ρεύματος στους καταναλωτές της, διαθέτει τεχνικά συνεργεία, τα οποία προβαίνουν σε όλες εκείνες τις απαιτούμενες ενέργειες προς τούτο.
Τα τελευταία χρόνια κατά τη διάρκεια καιρικών φαινομένων έντονων όπως βροχή, αέρας, αστραπόβροντα η Κορακιάνα μένει χωρίς ρεύμα για λίγο ή συνήθως περισσότερο χρόνο, με ότι συνέπειες έχει αυτό σε άλλους τομείς π.χ. στο υδραγωγείο, ενώ στη νότια μέση Κέρκυρα τα φώτα πάντα συνεχίζουν να λάμπουν! Να αποδώσουμε το φαινόμενο στο διάολο της Κορακιάνας ή σ΄αυτόν της ΔΕΗ;

Σημείωση ιστοσελίδας: από μια άλλη άποψη, η παρατεταμένη διακοπή ηλεκτρικού ρεύματος γύρισε για λίγο τη σελίδα της καθημερινότητάς μας. Η πρόβα της Χορωδίας έγινε υπό το φως των σύγχρονων "λαδοφωτιών" (τα κινητά τηλέφωνα φέρουν και φωτισμό), και το κέρασμα της Κατερίνας και της Σοφίας έγινε στο σκοτάδι. Η χαρτοπαιξία στο καφενείο έδωσε τη θέση της σε συζήτηση υπό το φως των κεριών, ενώ η τηλεόραση στο σπίτι αντικαταστάθηκε για λίγο από το παλιό τρανζιστοράκι. Τέλος, οι παλαιότεροι θυμήθηκαν ότι πρώτο τους μέλημα τα παλιά τα χρόνια, μόλις επέστρεφαν από το χωράφι το σούρουπο, ήταν να ζητήσουν από το γείτονα ένα απόδαυλο για να ανάψουν το τζάκι τους, εάν δεν είχαν προνοήσει για κανένα μισαναμένο κάρβουνο στις στάχτες. Και βέβαια, το αντιφέγγισμα του ουρανού, παρά τη βαρειά συννεφιά, απέτρεψε από την ανάγκη της χρήσης απόδαυλων για το περπάτημα στο δρόμο...

(My rough translation) Lucifer - Εωσφόροςis - announces the coming of dawn, between the planet Venus and the Morning Star. In Christian teaching he was at the head of the angels, but because of his arrogance and pride was cast down and became Beelzebub -Βεεζελβούλ. The PPC (The Public Power Corporation of Greece) - ΔΕΗ - as we all know, has a duty to supply us with electricity. We pay good money for their service. They are there to give consumers a reliable supply of electricity. They have technical workshops to do all that's needed to ensure that. But in recent years during heavy rain, strong winds and lightning, Ano Korakiana has been left without power - sometimes briefly but often for long periods, causing us to lose power for the pumping stations so that the village is without clean water, while further south the lights remain on across Corfu! Is the PPC just telling Korakianas they can go to hell? (note: Kostas is actually ruder - Να αποδώσουμε το φαινόμενο στο διάολο της Κορακιάνας ή σ΄αυτόν της ΔΕΗ;

Note from Thanassis: From another viewpoint, prolonged blackout briefly turns the page on our daily lives. The choir rehearsed by the light of modern inventions - 'ladofotion' - ? cell phones and torches, and Catherine's and Sophia's hospitality (treat) was enjoyed in the dark. Gambling at the kafeneion gave way to discussion under candlelight while TV at home was briefly replaced by old transistor radios. Finally, the oldest of us recalled that their first concern in the past, as soon as they returned from the fields at nightfall, was to ask their neighbour for a glowing ember to light their stove, if they'd forgotten to leave enough coal to smoulder in the grate. And of course, the glow of the sky, despite pouring rain, prevented the need for torches when walking down the street ...

Να αποδώσουμε το φαινόμενο στο διάολο της Κορακιάνας ή σ΄αυτόν της ΔΕΗ;

In the village last Feb I was in Mark and Sally's house one evening: 

...Their house cosy with plentiful candles, Mark, gazing beyond the spacious porch said
“There are lights over to the west” proving the point.
The power came on again but we lost WiFi for a few minutes. As I said goodnight the house lights stayed on, but street lights were out – on a separate supply which also powers the pumps that bring water to the village. Back at 208 I nudged our largest bowls below the gutter pipes; rainwater for washing and flushing; prepared night lights, candles and matches and a small propane stove. I’ve got bottled water for tea – and wine to drink. Reminded by loss of water and power, something familiar at this time of year, Sally and I had been discussing how we’d all experience shortages in the ‘crisis’ – the winter weather’s not unfamiliar but now it's got the feel of a dirge, stirring apprehensions. 

...and here's mention on the village website on 3 Dec 2009 of the same recurring problem

Η προχθεσινή βροχόπτωση, που συνδυάστηκε με δυνατό αέρα, ανέδειξε για μια ακόμη φορά ένα πρόβλημα που ταλανίζει το χωριό μας, χρόνια τώρα. Κάθε φορά που οι καιρικές συνθήκες είναι έντονες, ο οικισμός ξεμένει από …ηλεκτρικό ρεύμα. 

The day before rainfall, combined with strong winds, highlighted once again a problem plaguing our village for years. Whenever the weather is severe, the settlement finds itaelf...running out of electricity.

Gale at Garitsa

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Yesterday the first big removal from Brin Croft, an oil painting that has hung behind my mother's chair all the five years she's been here, after her move from Mains of Faillie in 2006. It's lovely. A painting by Guthrie of Fiona, my step-sister's great grandmother.

In the quotidian language of probate, it's been valued for the estate and can now be moved out. I've put another picture in its place but the wall looks empty. Thus we will disassemble Mum's things, gradually changing everything. Thank goodness the house feels so entirely without her as though she's got better things to be doing than hanging around here. To while the time I wrote an obit in case a local paper wants one:

1917: Theodora Barbara with her mother and grandmother

Our mother died at Brin Croft, Inverarnie at teatime on 1 November aged 95. She was born Theodora Barbara Sumner Maine in London in 1917. Like her mum she was a debutante, but had little taste for 'the season'.

Mum's memories: recalling the Blitz

She became a photographer, journalist and publisher. In 1946 she reported from occupied Vienna as a war correspondent for Vogue. She continued a career in Fleet Street as editor of women’s magazines and the first women’s editor of Farmers Weekly. She had two children, Simon and Bay - "my pigeon pair" - by her first marriage to the diplomat John Baddeley CMG, followed by a long liaison with the country broadcaster Jack Hargreaves OBE. In 1965 she married Angus Burnett Stuart, head of Thompson Regional Newspapers, adding his two stepdaughters, Fiona and Jennifer to her family. In the 1950s and early ‘60s she published, edited, commissioned and part-authored a range of country-life books on smallholding, cookery, collecting and restoring old junk (long before these became widespread hobbies), pressure-cooking and deep-freezing (when these were still novel in the home). Moving to the Highlands on her husband’s retirement, she continued her publishing work as well as sharing Angus’ love of fishing. He was a founder of the Highland Field Sports Fair at Moy the last thirty years. Her sister Margot had long lived locally, at Cannich then Forres. Angus and Barbara settled in Strathnairn at Mains of Faillie near Daviot.

Mum with her daughter, Bay, great granddaughter, Sydney and granddaughter Susie

She worked for various local causes including the Samaritans and created a home for more and more grandchildren and eventually great grandchildren. For most of them the Highlands became a refuge of constant pleasure and happy memories, of dreich winter snow, wind and rain, chilly summer swims, climbs and long walks with many dogs. When Angus died in 2005 in his own home, Barbara, at the age of 88, managed the move to her last home at Brin Croft. She continued to take part in community activity; was an ardent friend of Eden Court Theatre, a gardener and traveller - to many parts of Europe, to Russia, Palestine and Israel, Greece, Morocco and Egypt, the USA, India and the Far East. She was one of those fortunate people whose bodies gave out before their minds, lucid until three days before she passed away, her children at her bedside in her own home. She once said, as she found herself relying more and more on sticks and a wheelchair, “Growing old is not for the young. It’s ruddy hard work!” She was a prolific reader; loved music with no distinction between genres; nurtured long close friendships with relatives and non-relatives.

Mum with great grandson, Oliver, granddaughter, Amy and son, Simon 

She was a companion, listener and consoler. Her five years' carer, Sharon Brown, told of how early this year, she wheeled Barbara into the big supermarket outside town, where her first words in the electronics section were “I want the best iPad you’ve got!’ - a great span from touch-typing and shorthand in her twenties, to Skype, Google and Wikipedia in her nineties. She loved life; more especially she loved the rivers, tracks, woods and hills of Inverness-shire, especially the Findhorn about which she left files of notes. Four chickens were bought and housed just outside Brin Croft this August, providing entertainment for her great grandchildren and eggs for her omelets. Almost until her last days she was planning further projects; death no more than something in her way. 

Mum fishing for shark

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Saturday afternoon: Beth, Tracy's daughter, was waiting on us at the Dores Inn. She's a sweet girl. Liz and she hugged and chatted after she'd bought us a cider and, for me a half pint of Ossian, a pleasant flavoured real ale. The pub was warm, welcoming; busy with Saturday lunching into the late afternoon. Liz drove me down the rough lane from Brin Croft onto the road from Tombreck over the Nairn to the cross-roads, then left up the strath past Tordarroch farmstead, towards Dunlichity, over familiar rises and familiar turns close beside loch a'Chlachain - mum called it Clacken - round a long bend to the wooded banks of loch Duntelchaig. the gentle heights of Creag Bhuidhe luminous with light snow under winter sun, achingly beautiful. Then through the muir over two grids by high Loch Ashie reflecting the flawless blue. The menu was easy. i ordered an interesting vegetable soup and brown bread and a smoked salmon and cream cheese sandwich. We'd walked where I've walked for years and years the sun blazing on the glittering water of the Great Glen, the great rift of Loch Ness that divides the Highlands, dazzling even through the tall pines, spangling layers of pine needled earth beside our easy track beyond the pebble shore between Dores and Tor Point, the ageless outline of hills dipping into Loch Ness. There's Meall Fuar-mhonaidh. I saw its steep sugar-loaf summit thoroughly snow covered like a Christmas cake when I was 10; first time in the Highlands, for the world, which seemed to lie before me like a land of dreams, so various, so beautiful, so new.  
"This is a clearance for my sadness, Liz"
She talked blithely, like Amy, about all sorts of things, a palliation for the inescapable ache of this lovely landscape, trailing away headland by headland to drab Fort Augustus. Lulu yelled at me for a stick. I threw it out twenty feet into the chilly water of the loch and in she leapt, swimming as ever like a little champion, our otter, brought it back and brushed the wet stick against the back of our legs, asking us "throw again, and again!" I argued with Liz about democracy, about trusting it enough to vote as she made familiar generalisations about 'politicians' and 'the system'.
We returned in the dusk, a few coming cars shining up the roadside birch, footlights on a winter's tale. Brin Croft was in darkness; our tyres crunching on gravel sparkling with hoarfrost crystals.
"Doing this is good" I said "I get to cover the old ground. But I don't see how I'll be coming back to the Highlands"
"I love it here. I want to live here" said Liz "so does Amy"
"So you might apply for a job?"
"Oh yeah. It's agreed."
The dogs leap from the opened boot. Heeling us as we shuffle into the warmth of the house.
"Cup of tea, One sugar?"
"Yeah. Cup of tea."
** ** ** ** **
Jim Potts has dug out a newspaper cutting for Corfu Blues in which Gerald Durrell returned to Corfu in 1987 half a century after his and his family's legendary childhood there in the 1930s. I've visited and revisited this dismal falling off; nothing is novel. But like Maria Strani-Potts' recent Pimping of Panorea, Durrell's words resonate now as they did 25 years ago:

I have had a most extraordinary affair of the heart. It started when I was eight years old and I fell deeply and irrevocably in love with a ravishing creature who was mature and beautiful. She gave me joy, brightness, freedom of spirit and opened my eyes to beauty, scents, colours, knowledge, love and laughter.
Her name was Kerkyra, the island of Corfu, and she is probably several million years old.
Going back to her recently was like paying a visit to the most beautiful woman in the world suffering from an acute and probably terminal case of leprosy – commonly called tourism.

It is, of course, ridiculous to expect the places of your youth to remain unchanged while you yourself get older and more withered but somehow, with land and seascapes, if they are untarnished by man you expect them to be immutable, like a beautiful painting.
“Never go back to a place where you were happy,” my brother Larry once said to me, and it is an offered fruit of wisdom with a kernel of bitterness enshrined in it, for have been back to many places where I have been happy and been happy again.
But the place that gave me the greatest joy and enchantment was Corfu and so I have been back many ties and suffered as I watched her demise.
Tourism is a curious modern disease. It attacks the shoeless man, the man of meagre wealth and the bloated man of affluence, whereupon it becomes an epidemic like the Black Death that stalked through Europe in the Middle Ages. It now ranges all over the world.
The people of Corfu were blessed with a magnificent, magical inheritance, an island of staggering beauty, probably one of the most beautiful islands in the whole of the Mediterranean. What they have done with it is vandalism beyond belief.

Barbati in north west Corfu before  the arrival of Lopákhin

All this is true. All this has happened. I've been over it again and again - chatted happily about it with Jim and Maria last February at Rouvas. The world is full of Lopákhins who want to buy and Ranevskayas who, through their own incompetence, have to sell.

LOPAKHIN: I bought it. Wait a bit; don't hurry me; my head's in a whirl; I can't speak. . [Laughing] When we got to the sale, Derigánof was there already. Leoníd Andréyitch had only fifteen hundred pounds, and Derigánof bid three thousand more than the mortgage right away. When I saw how things stood, I went for him and bid four thousand. He said four thousand five hundred. I said five thousand five hundred. He went up by five hundreds, you see, and I went up by thousands...Well, it was soon over. I bid nine thousand more than the mortgage, and got it; and now the cherry orchard is mine! Mine! [Laughing] Heavens alive! Just think of it! The cherry orchard is mine! Tell me that I'm drunk; tell me that I'm off my head; tell me that it's all a dream!...[Stamping his feet] Don't laugh at me! If only my father and my grandfather could rise from their graves and see the whole affair, how their Yermolái, their flogged and ignorant Yermolái, who used to run about barefooted in the winter, how this same Yermolái had bought a property that hasn't its equal for beauty anywhere in the whole world! I have bought the property where my father and grandfather were slaves, where they weren't even allowed into the kitchen. I'm asleep, it's only a vision, it isn't real...'Tis the fruit of imagination, wrapped in the mists of ignorance. [Picking up a set of keys] She's thrown down her keys; she wants to show that she's no longer mistress here. [Jingling them together] Well, what's the odds? [Musicians can be heard tuning up] Hey, musicians play! I want to hear you. Come everyone and see Yermolái Lopákhin lay his axe to the cherry orchard, come and see the trees fall down! We'll fill the place with villas; our grandsons and great-grandsons shall see a new life here....Strike up, music!

"...come and see the trees fall down! We'll fill the place with villas" What remains of the island's cherry orchards is yet amazing. What's happened isn't as black and white as Durrell writes it - the old man remembering and lamenting a childhood idyll; what happened isn't bad or good in that easy sense. It's both tragedy and comedy as Chekov intended his wonderful play to be, and about which audience, directors and critics have debated since.

Sunrise after rain in Corfu

"If you want to find a place" said my stepfather 'be sure to choose somewhere already ruined".
Well yes indeed. That's Corfu. I embrace with such gratitude the happiness that yet remains here; that we have found in this place. Its beauty, joy, love, light, come only in part from the precious remains of its ravished landscape – worst of all the littered shores – but from the people we know here. Without them, like Scotland, as anywhere, there would be no happiness.

At Brin Croft

New York Times Editorial 30/11/12:

What’s Missing in the Latest Greek Bailout...The new Greek bailout deal agreed to Tuesday by eurozone finance ministers and the International Monetary Fund is a clear improvement over earlier deals. It recognizes that Greece’s current and projected ratios of debt to output are unsustainable. It prescribes useful steps to lower that ratio, including lower interest rates on loans from Greece’s European partners, longer bond maturities and a plan for Athens to buy back and retire some of its heavily discounted bonds. Regrettably, it excludes more effective tools, like actual debt write-downs, which Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, finds politically unpalatable. And in deference to Ms. Merkel, the deal postpones some of the promised relief until after German elections next September. But its biggest mistake is conditioning relief on maintaining fiscal austerity.....

I dreamed that austerity would go on for ever. That Athens would shrink to the size it was in the 19th century, and the sprawling suburbs of all the Republic's cities would shrink to their core, their deadly suburbs and strip malls falling into decay, becoming the fields and woods they destroyed; that Greece with all Europe and the world would utterly rebalance urban-rural relationships; reducing the human population to ancient proportions over the next century. My stepfather wished it. I wish it.

Did they think about the skylarks when they built Mayfair
on the grazings that ran down to the Shepherd’s Market? 

Did they worry about the snipe when they drained the marshes
behind St.James’s Palace to build Belgravia?

Where did the kite go when they dug the London sewers?

Do the piles they drove down through the beaver’s dam hold
firm the supermarket in Newbury High Street?

Who cooked the big trout that lay under the village bridge
at Wandsworth?  Who feasted on the last salmon that was
netted at Tower Hamlets?

Now they come to put central heating in the ploughman’s hovel.
They claim the sun that used to bake the hay.  And breathe
the breeze in which the pointing dog caught a hundred scents.

They walk out in trainers and T-shirts that say “Save the
Rain Forest”.

“Stand back!” they say.  “We have a right to walk where we please!”
But we look where they trod before and shudder for what
follows in their footsteps.

I said I must write a warning.  But I was angry and - as the
Japanese say - to be angry is only to make yourself ridiculous.

So we will live out our days in the cracks between the
concrete.  And then they will pour cement on top of us.*

*'Love of the country ~ ode to a book I never wrote' written in 1993 by my stepfather Jack Hargreaves (1911-1994) and probably - forgive me - not intended to be public.

At Solva with Jack

To a rural townie like me this 'ode' of Jack's is contradictory, as I suspect he was well aware. He denigrates people who demonstrate on behalf of rain forests. Yet who, other than illegal loggers and land hungry peasants, does not care about their degradation? He's vexed at people who buy rural labourers' cottages to convert into comfortable second homes - yet all my life with him we switched to and fro between the city where Jack, when he was not filming, did much of his work and earned his living, and the country where we had beautifully converted homes - in Berkshire, Hampshire and then Dorset. I have no doubt that Jack knew our way of living - as is often the case with all but the most dedicated of self-sufficient farmers - contributed to the passing of the way of life he spent thirty years recording on television. That he was entertaining rather than bleak was his gift as an entertainer. All his life JH respected people who lived off the land though they lived by modern agricultural methods, as few cannot. He knew a tiny percentage of those who reside in the countryside actually live off the land; that his stewardship of fowl, cattle, ponies and his kitchen smallholding, was a drop in an ocean; satisfying, even beloved props, for Out of Town. He once observed - earning a kick below the table from my mother - that my grandmother's post-war dairy farm (where I was born) was a 'hobby farm', surviving on subsidy - "a milk lorry winding slowly along country lanes collecting one or two churns from small farms on its daily round, adding a good three pennies to every urban housewife's pint." His position was contradictory. I am unsure what else it could have been.
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Hurrah for hybridity! Intriguing reading from June Samaras' ever valued Google Group hellas-greece on Greek ethnicity in America, especially when I ponder the diversity of my wider family - Jewish, Greek - Athenian and Cypriot - South African, Turkish, working class, middle and upper middle class, English, Scots, Welsh - an academic paper by Yiorgos Anagnostou, Ohio State University...When “Second Generation” Narratives and Hollywood Meet: Making Ethnicity in My Big Fat Greek Wedding , MELUS, Volume 37, Number 4 (Winter 2012) pp.139-163

....Thus the film reminds audiences that the pursuit of freedom is far more complicated than simply a matter of choice. Obligations lurk in social relations, becom-ing particularly visible in the interface between the dominant society and American ethnics with histories of collectivism such as Greek Americans. They also operate when families and communities invest in the social reproduction of ethnicity. The film values the striving for autonomy while at the same time pointing to the limitations surrounding this ideal. It is compelling to watch because it narrates social life as a drama of longing for autonomy and acknowledging the existence of forces that curtail it. The American ideal of autonomy is not achieved, and it may even be impossible to achieve in a culturally diverse society.
My Big Fat Greek Wedding envisions ethnicity in the multicultural polity by promoting the value of ethnicity while also acknowledging its constraining function. p.157

My take on the polyglot - Internal Polity and Governmentality:

Thirty years ago Michel Foucault (1965) described the spontaneous appearance in the middle ages of the ship of fools. This image reflected alarm among the burghers of well-ordered medieval towns at the movement within their streets and outside their walls of leprous, itinerant and destitute people. From the findings that such people had been the subjects of increasingly attentive monitoring, regulation, sometimes incarceration and later institutionalisation, Foucault showed how disorder engenders order and elaborated an evolving reciprocity between forms of madness and forms of civilisation. This exegesis led me thereafter to suspect concerns I found myself harbouring about disorder in the world. Irritation at litter insinuated a gap in my reasoning. Exasperation at noise implied a failure of logic. Fear of crime might include flawed ratiocination. All anxiety evoked by external events has had to be checked for its possible source in too complacent a need for order. Thus Foucault’s archaeology engendered a reflexive distrust of any impulse in myself to define a polity - local or global - that excluded the aberrant. I do not mean differences absorbed by a liberal civility educated to abhor inhibition of the cosmopolitan. Foucault’s lesson applies where those fine feelings no longer rule and anxiety about otherness and what cannot be understood edges into fear or worse. “Madness and Civilisation” served as constitutional therapy, partially immunising me against projecting fears in myself on to strangers and the strange, and creating a setting for an internal politics that would entertain no appreciative judgement about what was outside without a comparable appreciation of what was inside. Foucault (1978) wrote of government as an art that can be discerned in the way people learned to govern themselves, accept government and govern others. His concept of "governmentality” elides “government” and “mentality”, providing a term that embraces psychology and politics and assumes a continuity between the rule of self, household and state that may be interrupted and require reinvention in crises. It embraces the historical process of government in external polities and the biographical process of self-government in internal polities (Baddeley 1995)....from Governmentality in Brian Loader (ed.) (1997) The Governance of Cyberspace (London:Routledge) (5) 64-96