Leaving England

Last Saturday in March I did some last minute sowing and, with Oscar, took a look around Plot 14 before packing our cases for Ano Korakiana.

Winnie asked me to give her notes...

WEEDS: Keep the plot free of weeds – especially couch grass (do not put couch grass or any other perennial weeds in any of the compost bays) Keep everything tidy like you do already. The annual weeds will spring up everywhere but can be dealt with by regular hoeing back into the ground, unless they’re seeding (in which case pull and add them to compost bay 2). Don’t worry about dock. The long roots turn the soil. Cut them off at soil level and put leaves in compost bay. 

COMPOST: Now and then fork and turn the waste I’ve started in bay 1 (it won’t be ready until at least winter). Cover it with polythene or carpet to keep warmth up but ensure it still gets air. If there’s a long dry spell – wet it with the watering can to stop it drying out. If it rots/ferments well and is well on its way to turning into humus (like the ‘black gold in the builder’s bags) turn it into bay 3. If things work out the compost will become humus, ending up the colour and consistency of a good Christmas cake!
Meantime put new green waste (other than perennial weeds. i.e. couch grass) in bay 2. Cover that in the same way to keep warmth up.  After moving the contents of bay 1 into bay 3, switch to putting new waste into bay 1, turning that into bay 2 when its well on its way, leaving bay 1 clear for the next lot of new waste. I'm figuring how to use Garotta or a cheaper equivalent to keep the process moving.
Re the commercial compost in the builder’s bags. If you do any digging over on the plot, add some of that – enough to darken the ground to hold more warmth from the sun and prevent cracking of the soil if it stays dry a few days - and a few handfuls of the bone meal and blood fertilizer from the big plastic buckets with the red lids. Just a sprinkle to flavour the ground.

POTATOES: Earth up potatoes as the green tops rise SLUGS AND SNAILS: Salt slugs. You’re better at this already. If frogs appear that’s great. They like slugs. RUNNER BEANS: If the runner beans I sowed on Saturday sprout as I hope you may need to give the seedlings a help to get started up the bamboo frame. ONIONS: If any onions are growing too close, thin them out and replant with more space or harvest them for yourself as spring onions. BROAD BEAN SUPPORT: Once the sprouting broad beans get higher they may need support – a net or strings stretched between bamboos. Same for the peas just sprouting. PARSNIPS: Let me know how the parsnips are doing (the seedlings under the netting and bubble wrap). Thin out any growing too close. Don’t let the seedlings dry out. Remove bubble wrap but leave netting when weather gets warmer. 

JERUSALEM ARTICHOKES: I’ve left them in the ground. They’ll probably start growing like Jack’s beanstalk in the next months. Leave. WATERING: If and when we get a spell of several days without rain do some watering with the can (but not in bright sun!) and if the water in tanks runs out attach hose to the tap and refill. It's forbidden to water direct from the hose!  

BEES: If you need to phone Gill Rose about the bees she lives at ** Beaudesert Road and her phone her number is ****. She'll be making periodic inspections of the hive. Refer anyone else on the site who asks about the bees to her.  (If another incident of stone throwing from the park occurs put that piece of paling fence between the hive and the fence)  

SECRETARY VJA COMMITTEE: Gill Preston, VJA Site Secretary, * Wood Lane B20 2AA mob: ****. She shares her job on the VJA committee with Danny Webster (They are nice - keep in with them)  

BLACKBERRY BUSHES. If anyone starts cutting down the blackberry bushes by the iron fence or debates the heap of earth and weeds at the back of the plot next to Plot 14, point out that our plot boundaries end well before the fence – especially on the edge side (there’s a plot map slipped into the back shed wall near the door which shows this)  

TROUBLE: If you have trouble like the glass throwing incident catch one of the rangers when they come by in the park in that white van or stroll up the park compound in case you can meet them there. The supervisor of park grounds maintenance is Allen Broad – nice bloke – mob:*** (keep a brief record of any incident)  

POND: Just leave that for the moment. I haven’t made up my mind whether it’s a good idea or will work without running water.  

NEIGHBOURS: If anyone starts work on the next door plots be really nice. Nothing worse than ill-will between neighbours (however irritating expereince says they can sometimes be).  

STAY IN TOUCH: Keep in touch by email or Facebook. Send pictures if possible. In emergency we can talk on the phone. In case anyone questions you being on the plot…I have given Winnie Hall - a very responsible person - full permission to work on Plot 14 during my absence from the UK including access to the site combination lock. 

From Ano Korakiana

Rain came

We knew three days ago the weather would change. Mark told us. I trust him, as a friend, and as someone who works for Sailing Holidays, where it's good business to keep an eye on the weather. Even though we’ve seen it for five seasons, the shift as high summer passes is a surprise; an event.
We were strolling below the village on Thursday evening exploring a small church in a clearing at the end of a short track off the road to Kato Korakiana. It was being repaired. Who does this work? Is it done for free? Is it a voluntary tithe based on loyalty to the village? I have so much to learn about this place. In England we would see evidence of collections to maintain churches. Not here.
As Linda and I chatted in the circle of parched land before the church, surrounded by olives, there came the rumble of thunder, easily mistaken at first for a plane taking off from the city. We started home towards the village, its wings spread across the slopes of Trompetta between Mougades to the west and, a kilometre mile to the east, Venetia.
"Have you noticed" said Lin "how Mougades is just as high on one side as Venetia on the other?"
We walked along the straight road north that leads into the centre of the village past small pastures and the now derelict football field. The thunder wandered about, reverberating, not easily placed. Now and then lightning flashed. The evening sky was grey, matte, taupe and the air humid. We felt the first flecks of rain. As we walked the drops stayed as spots on the dry road. I felt them through my shirt.
"It's like an orchestra tuning up!"
"Hurry or we're going to be soaked"
We clambered up the last steep paths to the house.
The symphony started; all timpani and percussion with special effects. Perfectly timed lightning striking across the darkened sky; the thunder deafening, the rain like a breaking of waters cascading down pipes, gullies, over the edges of gutters too small to handle the flow; splashing off window sills and through a couple of windows we'd left open day and night to let breezes cool the house.
All night it rained and thundered following the flicker of lighting through the shutters. Ano Korakiana, being, with Sokraki and Spartillas and Skripero, attached to the island's highest mountains is near the centre of Corfu's storms as the weather of the north meets the weather of the south on the Trompetta Ridge. Peering through our eastern window we can see the warm southern air climbing the cypress ravines forming mist then cloud as its vaporises at the watershed, creating a false impression of weather from the north, when most storms are driven from the south.
I went into town by bus in the morning, taking my folding bicycle. At the bus station, well wrapped in waterproofs, I cycled happily through town to the airport to meet Yianni in the carpark. Here further south the wind was far stronger, streaming water across the runway. A Russian holiday charter heaved into the wind with a customary roar; vanishing in seconds from sight and sound in the thick white mist of the gale.
"It's a dreadful day" said Yianni, wind grabbing at his raincoat, as he handed me the key, holding the back door open for my bicycle. I imagined him meeting new arrivals looking for their late summer holiday on the island and finding this. I suspect he'd been up all night for the late-early inward flights.
I drove slowly into the city with wipers fast, fan full on to clear the window mist, working my way to Garitsa where the waves were battering the esplanade. Beautiful.

The Old Fort from Garitsa

It reminds me of the film Zorba. It opens with a gale; a shelter on the quay at Piraeus assailed by wind and rain, doors slamming, water streaming down the windows, people huddled inside awaiting the boat to Crete. That classic was black and white, but there’s hardly a modern Greek director who doesn’t balance blue with heavy doses of grey; grey factories, grimy landscapes with faceless trucks spraying grey water from the gutters of dual carriageways, surging through the exurban strip malls and dislocated condominiums that surround all modern cities. Consciously or not, such scenes give an ageing formula some dilution – compensating for films set in the Republic where the producers locate a globally-branded landscape and pay for Photoshop Ἑλλάς; clearing away tourists, plastic bottles and displays stacked with Chinese souvenirs, to invent a scene of costumed extras, wise old yiayias, wrinkled old men with white-wing moustaches chatting in the shade, swinging kombolói, virgins in comely dresses, kind but relentless fathers, dutifully pinafored wives, passionate young men in white shirts, tactical donkeys on cobbled alleys, decorated by set designers, lighting gaffers and post-production digitisers tippexing out what doesn’t fit the cliché in an acoustic landscape of syrtaki and goat bells dubbed over techno beat, football commentary and engines.
** ** **
The morning after the storm the landscape is changed; a canvas scraped to the gesso, with new colours and shades worked into the imprint of familiar horizons along with new ones which, as the season progresses into the kinder weather of autumn, become more and more a part of the background - the peaks of Epirus in haze through summer...

The morning ferry to Igoumenitsa

...show in silhouette, and then by November are enriched by varying shades of snow that will last beyond Easter when the mainland again recedes into haze.
"We nearly lit the stove last night" said Mark, dipping a ladle into a casserole in the middle of his and Sally's table to serve us a steaming gravied stew of duck - mallard and wigeon shot over marshes in Evros by the Turkish border.
*** *** ***
A letter on Flickr from Italy:

Dear Simon, I'm Raffaella De Donato and I work for Lupo Editore, a little and independent publishing house that works in the south of Italy. We would be interested in using one of your pictures for the cover of a book. In particular we are interested for this: Bay on the west coast of Scotland. The book is about a story of two brothers who live near the sea so the picture is perfect. What is the condition for the Rights of Use? Consider that we are a small publishing house and that for every book we stamp only 500 copies. At the same time, we would like that our books became a way to introduce new artists to an audience of readers. This is our website: www.lupoeditore.it Basically, we pay the artists a refund (about €50). We know that is little price, but that's what we can afford also because the copies that we print are few. Please, let me know what do you think about. Thank you! Raffaella De Donato Lupo editore

'Imagine the joy'

I said 'credit my mother who took this photo. She'll be delighted and so will my sister Bay...and we'll forget the fee' How I remember that holiday long ago. It was 1950 and we drove over three days from London to the Western Highlands. This was one of the photos my mum took 60 years ago. The book is by Vittoria Coppola and will be out before Christmas...and there's my beloved Bay on the shore in Scotland just a few months ago...

Bay at Nairn

Ordinary things

With sunset a big smiling child’s moon rises over the mainland, slowing with nightfall. It’s waning; growing gibbous by tomorrow, a faint skull in the midday blue. In the morning I’d cycled to post letters at Tzavros and buy melons for a supper with friends. At Emeral, baker and confiseur to all north Corfu,  I stopped to buy a spinach pie, green sandwiched in crisp oiled filo. Wasps were queueing to drown in a bottle trap by a display window.

I wheeled across the busy road and waited for a clear patch, surmising a tale of love and romance in a gutter of dried eucalyptus and oleander leaves.

Straggling grey clouds that by today will produce rain brought intervals of shade as weighed with melons I made the slow ascent to Ano Korakiana, resting at Marmara Granita where the same voguish poster’s been on display for six years...

... stopping again before the steepest climb below the village to drink water and enjoy the pie.

We started with melons, cut in sweet crescents – with thin cut prosciutto – eight of us at the table downstairs. Actually nine. Little Estelle, daughter to Nick and Nancy, is sitting at table unsure - amid all this grown-up chatter - if that’s preferable to being fed separately on such evenings. Mark and Sally, and Paul and Cinta, are also guests. Main course, cooked by Lin on a stove moved under the veranda for cool, rice and chicken in cream sauce with onions, mushrooms and peppers, then a trifle improvised from jelly, peaches, tiramisu, Greek brandy, custard, cherry liqueur, peaches, topped with cream mixed with yogurt and vanilla, and served from the fridge. There might have been some pauses in our chat but I don’t recall.
“Have you seen the Paralympics? Fantastic. If I have someone who says they’ve got a strain or something, can’t work, I’ll just scoff and tell them to get on with it.”
We ran through the inventive repertoire of boron space-age alloyed gadgetry supplementing will and guts
“What about the clay pigeon shooter, Simon? They were blind!”
It’s a sign of the mighty increment of expectations about disability that I was already conjecturing high speed echo sounders copied from bats before I realising my leg was being pulled.
“Ha ha ha. It’ll happen tho’”…
We contemplated how the C-word had replaced the F-word.
“What’ll be left for Estelle, when she's older, as her worst curse?”
“Can there be any better swearword – especially as it’s less easy for fools to use as a lazy substitute adjective?”...
“Wasn’t the Great Ormond Street display good at the 2012 opening ceremony?” I was asking Nick who works in the NHS
“You know” he said “that was the first time people outside the UK have heard of the NHS.”
“What that was all about? Waltzing docs and nurses and bouncing infant patients”
“Yes. Puzzled by a lot of it!”
“NHS are thinking of going worldwide – opening branches overseas” added Nick “Their logo got such coverage.”
“Clever Boyle!”...
I heard a reference to cash flow blips at an island supermarket chain
“Sconto shelves were right down”
“They were fine when I went there”...
We spoke of baby-kit, the push chair in full working order we’d retrieved from by the bins, for Oliver when he comes
“They don’t do second hand baby things here!” said Nancy...
“There was a dead fox on the road”
“Where”
“Down by…”
“I put it in the hedge, planning to come back for a skull. A few days later, nothing”
“Maggots, rats, cats, dogs, and flies”...
“There was this shop where women could buy men” told Cinty “First floor full of handsomes; second floor, same thing but handsome men looking after children; third floor - you can’t go back to shop on the previous - same as second, but they're rich”
“...and the fourth floor?”
“You’re on the roof …and there’s another shop for men with lots of breasty dolly birds”
“So what’s on the second floor?”
“It’s a bungalow”...
Paul had been at some sort of event for local business
“Stelios was there from Easyjet. He was saying the tax on travellers was getting so high for Greek destinations it wasn’t the business he was in.”
“So Easyjet may pull out of Corfu?”
“...as have Ryanair for the winter flights they began last year”
“At least we have discretion with travel dates” I said “We’d probably do more journeys that combine flights, train, coach and ferry, with stops on the way” I thought of buying prosciutto and new bread while changing at Bologna, or grazing in Venice and having ice cream in Bari before a winter ferry to Igoumenitsa
“But it’s pretty shortsighted discouraging cheap airlines”
“It may be nothing to do with Greece, more the general push for higher carbon taxes”
“The Adriatic ferries are hardly emission clean”...
We spoke of water in the village getting harder, leaving calcium deposits in glasses, gumming up pipes. “Yes the demos is getting pushier about using water that used to be for the Korakianers. We’re now serving water from up here all the way down to Dassia. It’s been the best quality on the island and still abundant. I’ve read several pieces on the village website about meetings with official protesting about what’s happening to it”
“You know that between Kassiopi and Nissaki”said Paul “water is rationed. One day on. One day off.” “Blimey. You mean no washing?”
“They have to use reserves in the hotels in summer”
“Too many ruddy swimming pools” I said, winking at my hypocrisy
“We pay for every litre of ours” said Nancy
“But why in an island with the most beautiful seashores in the whole Mediterranean is the current height of luxury a private horizon pool”
“It’s what people have come to expect”
“Yes and because the beaches aren’t perfect anymore”
“Wait a mo’. Do you know what went into the sea when the Durrell’s were hear 80 years ago writing how idyllic it was?” said Cinty
“Yeah yeah. Raw sewage, food waste, the lot. But there weren’t so nearly many people about. Things had time to get clean”
“So even more plastic bottled water. When will that be sorted?”
“I heard from a woman we were chatting to in Ipso that her village - Neri in Viterbo - in Italy has agreed a communal spring paid for by general rates from which you can fill permanent containers. The idea is spreading to other communities” (I could find no reference to this on the web)
“Great and we’ve closed the last public taps here. Remember there was one in Analipsi and another by the harbour at Ipsos”...
Lin and I chatted in the kitchen later as we shared the washing up, shifted back chairs and cushions.
"That was good?"
"Yes. It was very good"
*** ***
The other evening we watched The Snowtown Murders directed by Justin Kerzel, shown first at Adelaide Film Festival in 2010. It wasn’t entertainment; a fine fictionalised account of a series of murders in Australia by a gang of men, led by John Bunting, played by David Henshall, a man I’d like to meet just to reassure myself that the actor is really a decent highly talented human being. There’s no wanton violence, no obvious blood and guts, except for two kangaroo corpses being chopped up and pulverised, so that their remains can be strewn across the bungalow stoop of a neighbouring paedophile on bail. This is a film about unnoticed people torturing and killing people even less noticed. The film was supported by the Australian Government – step forward that good civil servant for the arts. The unmusical sound track by Jed Kurzel is a perfect accompaniment to procession of scenes, mumbling silences, repetitive cackling – the non-communication of a population whose wit and intelligence has been relentlessly leached away by meritocracy. In these flat suburbs depravity breeds and excuses depravity. Fledgling decency loses over and over to wanton beer gut bullying. If ever there was a film to dispel the aura of glamour that in the last twenty years has been hung by some writers and film-makers round the neck of mass murderers, this was it. Was it that brilliant new type of documentary – In Cold Blood – that shifted us into greater shared ambivalence, debrutalised brutality; made us complicit in shades of grey (there’s some barrel scraping!), set us on the route of tout comprendre...tout pardonner? I wonder if Antony Hopkins should do penance for Hannibal Lector as the great Marlon Brando refused an Oscar and took up a native American cause as penance for making Don Corleone into a hero, instead of what such a man would have become in front of Justin Kurzel’s lens. There are woman taken with murderers who write love letters to them in prison. This film cued that piece of me that now and then can feel the rare deadness inside that must represent despair, not just sadness but the numb apathy of clinical depression. If ever the particulars of modern poverty could be put on film this succeeded; a gripping exercise in making evil’s banality watchable. (A recent NY Times review)
*** ***
Around noon on Thursday there was the abrupt and unfamiliar patter of rain, increasing until, for half an hour or more, water was running beige, sluicing months of summer dust off the roof, washing dried leaves down the path by the house. I shoved a bowl under a downpipe - a soft water treat for the flowers. When the sun came out again I hung washing in a gentle breeze from the west. “From now our weather will start to get nicer”

*** ***
Recipe for an al fresco meal off Democracy Street

- Place one table outside house (this doesn’t normally work in England)
- Add four chairs
- Add a bowl of olives
- Add glasses and a bottle of wine
Look over neighbour’s garden wall, peer into the other’s front yard
Beckon with head and arms saying “Hi. Come. Some wine?” “Ya. Ela’tho. Thelis krassi?”
When neighbours approach, and politely hesitate, beckon again and say “Sit, sit!” “Katzi katzi!”
- Pour wine. “Yammas!” Clink glasses and drink (repeat throughout)
Neighbour women disappear and reappear with a large plate of small fresh just fried fish and basket of fresh bread (or equivalent)
Neighbour calls into her garden/yard
Young man and women – very good looking – appear, with more wine
Add more chairs, glasses and plates
Sit. “Katzi. Yammas etc”
Continue serving wine, repeating process as more neighbours arrive
(If necessary fetch second table, join it with the other and add chairs)
Lightly baste with conversation adding laughter to taste plus children and cats standing around; others waving and greeting as they pass.

(Thanks to our neighbours Effie, Adoni, Lefteri and Vasiliki for this excellent recipe)
*** ***
Simon Winter of Kaleidoscope who co-authored the accompanying booklet that goes with the DVD set has just sent me the link to Delta's website devoted to the issue of 34 original Out of Town programmes by Jack that will be coming out next month.

In the wet

I keep making up a cup of coffee with my cup of tea. I  do this a few times when Lin's away - with her mum and dad who she's taken for a biopsy in Sheffield. I've been cycling in the rain, giving Oscar his walk along the canal, taking in some Pantone swatches for Richard to use for computer graphics. We had lunch in town - a steaming soup of wontons, noodles, mushrooms and pak choi, delectable spring rolls, salt squid and rice, and china tea, regularly refilled. Oscar lies quietly in his basket under the awning outside Cafe Soya.

On the street I stay dry and warm. Oscar's got a soft, dense undercoat beneath his wiry surface fur keeping him warm and dry in the wet. This afternoon I raised a veranda of sorts on the shed on our allotment. The site's all mine in this weather, but I'm not alone as people pass along the path through the park, sometimes stopping to chat. I shall cover the plywood of the veranda with roof felt off cuts. It'll be good to have a bit of shelter outside to sit and watch the plot.

In the evening when Lin had still not returned I cycled into town with the box of Pantone Swatches Richard uses for making pictures on screen, Oscar running beside me along the puddled towpath. In the German Market we had bratwurst with crispy bread rolls. I had a mug of mulled cider before heading home the way i'd come.

Lin was back. We'll know the results of her father's biopsy after Christmas. The appointment for 1230 yesterday was delayed until half past six, and then as Lin was preparing to head south this morning the hospital called to ask Lin to bring her dad in to take some photos they needed. "They were all very nice" said Lin "but different people gave us different reasons for the delays." 

*** ***
I streamed another of Jack's Old Country films from the 1980s.

"Now here's a piece with a conservation message of a sort. Nothing to do with birds or frogs or wildflowers but a beautiful creature, important in the history of Britain which recently has been very seriously reduced in numbers. Now all the tourists who come from overseas to see the sights of London, a lot of them go to see a statue which is called the Quadriga. It's a statue of Queen Boadicea in her chariot. They buy postcards of it. But Queen Boadicea or Boudicca, as I believe it's now fashionable to pronounce it, never had horses like that. There are four horses in this chariot. It's a - that's why it's called a quadriga - and they're great big roaring giant horses of the sort which were quite unknown in Boudicaa's day. In the days of that queen the horses in England were very small, very tough and very ancient. They'd been here as long as anybody had ever been here. Perhaps they were here before the people."

*** ***
In Ano Korakiana we enjoy a wood burning stove which, after getting through one truckload of purchased olive logs, we've fuelled with wood recovered from the side of village paths, the gardens and interiors of long empty houses and driftwood from Corfu's litter-strewn beaches.

On the beach ~ plenty of firewood amid the trash

It entails getting permission, sometimes receiving generous offers as when our neighbours, Effie and Adoni rebuilt their apothiki offering us all its old roof wood - decaying but still excellent for heating.

Wood for me to saw from Effie's and Adoni's garden

With the cost of gas and oil increasing it's clear that wood burning stoves are returning in popularity and with this poaching of wood from Greek forests. Kathimerini reports:

Illegal logging has taken on epidemic proportions since the beginning of December, according to reports on Wednesday from forestry services across the country and the Environment Ministry’s Special Secretariat for Forests. The record-high cost of heating oil coupled with shrinking household budgets and a drop in temperatures have compelled thousands across Greece to switch off their radiators and turn to wood-burning stoves instead, creating a profitable market for wood sellers and importers, as well as illegal loggers who pass off their merchandise as being licensed. Reports suggest that thousands of hectares of forest have suffered serious depletion in Pilio, Xanthi, Kavala and Halkidiki, with illegal logging also taking a chunk, albeit a smaller one, out of the woodlands of Foloi in the prefecture of Ileia and Aghios Christoforos near Agrinio, while forest rangers in Strofilia in Achaia claim to have been attacked by a group of illegal loggers when they tried to stop them. The problem is also acute at the Kotychi-Strofylia Reserve in the western Peloponnese -- whose lagoon and forest are protected under the Ramsar Convention -- where there have also been reports of widespread poaching. Forestry authorities, however, admit to being overwhelmed by the magnitude of the phenomenon,

***
In Thessaloniki English citizen journalist Teacher Dude sees Greeks hanging electricity bills containing the new property tax on a public Christmas tree:

Richard Pine's morose grim letter from Greece for The Irish Times 23 Dec'11:

Politics is in complete disarray as people brace themselves for at least a decade of hardship and misery arising from a much-needed bailout. Two inescapable facts emerge from the new political scenario in Greece. First, that Greece was, is and will remain bankrupt – socially and morally as well as financially. The figures don’t add up. They add down. Few people in the street believe that the new “government of national unity” can do anything about it. Second, the structure of politics has fallen apart, with a massive question mark over the future of the two major parties, Pasok and New Democracy (ND) – Pasok because, under former prime minister George Papandreou, it failed to solve the crisis; ND because it caused it. It’s being widely bruited that austerity, even with a 50% 'haircut 's Greek debt, will not cure the long-term ills of Greece, and will do severe harm to individuals and business in the meantime. This is a fact of life which bewilders Greeks because they can see no way out of the impasse....

Richard ends his piece with a quote from Michael Lewis who is referring to southern European nations and Ireland as a new 'third world': “The Irish have a greater talent for suffering. If you imposed on the Greeks what the Irish have imposed on the Irish population, people would be getting shot.”

Ano Korakiana

Flowers and grapefruit from Honey awaited us in the house. Leftheris brought round a big bottle of his latest rosé and Paul's text messages greeted our arrival the moment I turned on the Greek chipped phone. The chimney's drawing well and we've a good supply of dry wood. In between the rain it's warm enough to put out the washing. The blood oranges are exquisite.

We were tiring of snow. Nonetheless I hadn't banked on finding a foot of rainwater in Summer Song. Few appreciate the pleasures of pumping and baling slightly oily water from the bilges of a flooded boat but after a couple of hours its done and I'm hoping there'll be enough sun to start to dry out the mildewed cabin.

The canvas cockpit cover had torn open, forming a funnel for torrential rain. The cockpit drains had blocked. Water filled it and overflowed into the rest of the boat. Dave, who came down like a Djinn with an electric pump helped clear the worst. After that it was groping with a sponge to soak up what was left. He told me several boats had sunk, including one in our harbour. We're lucky.

* * *

The impacts of the government's programme to eliminate the grey economy and find new ways to raise revenue to offset Greece's debt are apparent. Number plates are missing from quite a few cars....

View of Corfu old fort and the Greek mainland from Sally and Mark's house in Ano Korakiana

Dreich

.

If I said I love this weather you'd think I was being eccentric, but I do. It's perfect outside if you're well covered and have dogs for company and great to come indoors from and sit by a log fire and have tea and crumpets or a malt whisky. What's the Corfiot word for 'dreich'. There must be one, given the comforting similarity of such weather. See photo below.
*** *** ***

Dear Becky. How are you? I've attached a short piece from Liana's Kerkyra which contains a page she's translated from the Ano Korakiana website which, if you've seen it, is fascinating but all in Greek, so I can only get an impression from the great pictures and the general format. It is interesting to see the names of the old AK families - Metallinos among them, whose name attaches to the sculpture museum and to the local PASOK candidate in the September election this year. By the way if you want to go the website any time go to my blog and go to 'Korakiana website in Greek'. Have fun with the church interiors which are magnificently photographed by vista technology (sorry if you've already been there, done that!) I've also attached a section from a Corfu History website which is helping me make more sense of the history of the island and 'our' village's role in it. Mr Leftheris, our neighbour, had shown me two bricks on which the builder had inscribed dates - one from the 16th and one from the 18th century. Leftheris had found them in his house. He said with a gesture as we chatted about this (with our small shared vocabulary and lots of non-verbals) 'grandfather, grandfather, grandfather, grandfather, grandfather, grandfather...' and so on pointing into the distant past. What I try to understand is why the village has such a grand style of architecture in it. It does not look anything like the impoverished mountain village that has perhaps benefited by one or two grand public buildings from the benefice of rich diaspora Greeks. There seem to be so many finely wrought buildings with lovingly crafted additions in lintels and doorways and arches and other decorative features that suggest prosperous continuity. I have mentioned the thought on the web (Nov 2009 note: Ano Korakiana website has now gone replaced by a blog) about: 'Today, the decrease in the village population is evident, despite the settlement, either temporary or permanent, of foreign families.' Many years ago in my childhood my parents bought and converted an old house in the village of Bagnor near Newbury in Berkshire - being in the van of city people (my parents worked in journalism in London) going for a retreat in the country. When we went there in 1949 we were the first, among about 20 clustered village houses, to have direct water plumbed in. Others went to the clear chalk stream - the Winterbourne - that ran near the village street and got water in buckets. When we left there in 1962 much had changed. The villagers had mostly moved to council housing on the edge of Newbury, and more urban professionals had moved into the area. Of course we are now well aware of this phenomenon. It's happening in villages all over Europe - and no doubt further afield. I remember my father mentioning that much as we all loved where we'd come to live a lot of the year we were also part of what some considered the blighting of the rural economy. In the 1990s I revisited Bagnor. It was just recognisable. I was there to protest with 1000s of others against the motorway that was to be driven through my childhood water meadows. My father (actually my stepfather) wrote in his old age that the incursion against which I was so vigorously (but peacefully) protesting was part of a change that both affected all of us and for which we were in part responsible. Now I write in my blog about 'yearning, burning and earning' to try and get a handle on the consequences of this transcontinental desire for land in dear Greece. Do you think any of us place what might be called the integrity of Ano Korakiana at risk? Are any of us (I'm trying to avoid saying 'we' because you and I and our relatives are unique and I don't want to clump us all together as 'foreigners') to be reproached for our choices in life. I would not like AK to become like the non-communities of Barbati, with their completed new houses and wonderful views over the sea inhabited exclusively by time share visitors. I hope young Greeks born in Ano Korakiana will be able to stay, or if they leave, come back to contribute to the life of the village. There are villages in England which though being transformed have arrived at a new kind of stability with lots of local involvement driven by relative newcomers who've made their peace with the remaining older residents and pressed for the building of 'affordable' housing so younger people can stay in the village. Just some thoughts. You with your work on mosaics are bringing your skills to the island and making something new - drawing on Greek tradition based on your interest in Byzantine churches and doing it in an English way. I am sort of hoping my blog drawn from my love and respect for Greece and for this particular place is making a small contribution. I am pleased it is being linked to Liana's blog and is mentioned on the AK website. Best wishes (from the dreich Highlands - wow! What's that bright round thing in the sky? Och aye we call it the sun! Oh right I thought I'd seen it somewhere before). S

Corfiot wet last week. Above Ano Korakiana

Hi Simon. Thanks for the translations, I'd been getting a 'bastardised' version by putting the Korakiana pages through Babelfish. You get the jist but not the detail! I had had a look a the various photos and 360 degree views of the village, and wonderful they are too, I hope that I get more time to visit all 28 of them in the future - that is if I manage to locate them all. I can only think of half a dozen or so off the top of my head. (Note on Nov 2009. I do hope these photos will return, now the Ano Korakiana website is no more) The histories of the village that suggest that it was a relatively poor mountain settlement have always puzzled me too. in comparison with many other Corfiot settlements, Korakiana does seem to have more than its fair share of grand buildings, and not just houses and churches. It'd be nice to be able to get to the bottom of the village's history, but my Greek is going to have to improve 1000% to get anywhere near it. I have no real concerns about buying a property in the village, as we see it as saving an old property from almost certain collapse, and bringing much-needed 'new blood' to the settlement. I do not believe that AK will fall victim to much more development, it is just that bit too far inland for the hordes (not that Corfu is getting hordes these days!) Again, it seems to me that the indigenous population prefers (and why shouldn't they?) to live in newer houses if they have that choice, so if we can help in any way to extend the villages existence than it can only be a good thing. Rather you than me in the dreich north, but here in the Fens, it has been raining like Corfiot rain this morning, but the sun is shining now as I type this. Regards, Becky

Rain at last!

5.00pm. After this mornings gentle showers, the rain increases, which, so long as it doesn’t cause flooding or landslides is good for Corfu. It’s good for all of Greece’s parched terrain, if it’s falling equally on the mainland. But D’s predictions about the failings of our inadequate roof improvements are proving correct as we go back and forth with buckets and clothes stemming leaks. Leaks, diagnoses, solutions – the leaking side door caused by splashes from streams of water coming through unsealed guttering will be solved by mending the guttering, a tactical application of additional silicone sealant round the marble at the foot of the door and a lintel. How even more aware we are of how that ill-judged removal the old external stairs and balcony took away rain shelter from that side of the house, especially the side door. Leaks in our bedroom upstairs, on the wall back of our bed and the wall opposite, are because the silver tarred flashing between Leftheris’ house and our back roof and between it and the front section of our house is useless. It will be replaced by lead flashing chased into the walls at either end. We didn’t order this originally because we believed people who said ‘the Greeks all use tarred silver paper’. Further leaks along the east wall of the small upstairs bedroom are caused by water driven along the roof beams that stick out a foot through the wall that overlooks Leftheris’ and then drip down on the inside of the wall at intervals, in line with those unnecessary extensions. The leaks on the west wall of the front top room are a result of not running the roof’s new waterproof membrane into the edge of the guttering, so that instead of pouring into the gutter, rain drips off the last tiles ands runs between gutter and wall into the house. The reason there’s no leak on the west wall of our bedroom is probably because rain is leaking out of the gutter before it gets there. Small mercy. Lin is displeased. ‘Ah well such is life’ she sighs seeing the drips striping her paintwork. I phoned M who’d done our roof and said ‘I am not happy’ explaining what was happening. He said ‘Oh shit, how could that have happened?’ I phoned D, praised the accuracy of his diagnoses the other day and we agreed it was lucky we’d been in to see the problems first hand. ‘I’ll be round on Friday’ he said. Kitchen, utility room, downstairs bedroom (now we’ve put temporary protection outside the door) dining room and sitting room and, indeed for the moment, most of the house is still dry. But we expect another’s day’s blessed rain and should not complain about the bad condition of our roof. I took the remaining sacks of rubble down to Tzavros along puddled roads. Now we have a few well washed blocks left for various jobs. I drove home via Ipsos and checked Summer Song to see her self draining cockpit was working. Shifting rainbows arched across the bay, several giving the illusion of plunging into the sea or shore in a specific location marked by an aura of golden light. Once back we manoeuvred one of the wardrobes downstairs where it fitted neatly into the space in the downstairs bedroom where the stove used to go, before the previous builder made it unusable there by adding a floor. It’s a cheapo chipboard piece left by the last owners. L’s painting it white. * * * 2.00pm. Greyer and greyer skies as we give a climbing grip to a vine to grow below the veranda and bicker over, string-knotting, holding steps steady and passing scissors, as we tether errant branches of bougainvillea. Next door the Lefteris squabble aimiably as they begin extracting juice from their garden harvest. ‘700 kilos of grapes!’ Leftheris looks up and traces on one hand with a finger. Then rain comes again, this time gentle but steady with occasional downpours – proper rain from the sea, part of a weather system and not a local phenomenon. So welcome. Lefteris’ vines have prospered on regular hose water but is there yet hope for the olive harvest or was that made impossible by the lack of rain last winter? Thunder wanders around and we repair to the cosy house and cuppas. The Lefteris cover their kit with plastic sheet and also shelter. A spindle of water from an unsealed roof gutter splashes up from the concrete to the middle of the side door, runs down and seeps through a corner. Under an umbrella I position a slab of plaka as a temporary solution to deflect the stream, then stand at a window to enjoy seeing the wet, reminded irrelevantly of another rain gazer in Jack’s tale of class hatred. An old peer habitually stands gazing from a high window of his club in St.James as rain pours on scurrying crowds in the broad street below his window and runs down the gutters from Piccadilly towards Duke of York steps and the Mall. Asked why he stands so intent he grunts “I hate the poor, ‘n I like to see it rainin’ on ‘em’.” * * * At 9.30am it feels cool. Weather from the south east has brought a light overcast, and a few minutes of light rain wetting the balcony and settling dust. Athens News gives a very readable overview of the challenges facing ND under their successful leader Karamanlis. It’s noted that just before the election deputy finance minister Petros Doukas signed an agreement with the Mayor of Zaharo Pantazis Hronopoulos in Ileia Prefecture the right to lease land protected under the EU’s Natura 2000 programme for conserving natural habitat – made part of Greek law in 1998 - for ‘high quality tourism’ hotel development to the Hellenic Public Real Estate Corporation- a private corporation within the finance ministry that manages the development of ministry owned land - paving the way for 16k of coastline in one of the worst burned areas to be leased by private companies in order to develop the area’s tourism industry. Lin and I pondered this piece of news. Athens News reports the mayor saying ‘the olive tree – our one source of income - is finished here. We lost 1.1 million trees. It will take 10 years for the industry to re-establish itself.’ Against reproaches that this decision sends out the wrong message in view of the long running connection of fire and development Hronopoulos says all hotels will be limited to one or two floors and all development would be ‘in keeping with the local environment’. He is criticised by Kritonas Arsensis, regional planner of the Elliniki Etairia (Society for the Preservation of Environmental and Cultural Heritage) who sees this agreement as leverage for property profiteering. He cites the positive example of post 1986 earthquake Kalamata. ‘They didn’t take the quick money route. They restored the traditional architecture. Anyone who passes through is likely to visit the old town. They never did that before. Zaharo has many beautiful villages. They should concentrate on preserving the unique characteristics that attract true quality tourists and encouraging local industries and businesses.’ But George Mitropoulos for HPREC says this overlooks immediate needs of local people. I guess a lot depends on the personalities and interests of the Mayor, the HPREC and key figures in ND and their responses to the diverse political pressures of the situation. (Athens News 21-27/09/07 p.10 reporter Thrasy Petropoulos. Letters to the Editor an-community@dolnet.gr and by post 3 Christou Lada St Athens 102 37) [further article by Maria Magaronis about Ileia in Autumn on 9 November 2007] A wise letter in the AN from an English resident points out the increased combustibility of the Greek countryside as farming has decreased and ground cover is no longer cleared by people, and sheep and goats. Clear scrub round your property and remove low tree branches. Create a buffer zone cleared of flammable materials. I realise now that I should have seen danger present in the small area of trees, bamboo and thick brambly undergrowth at the back of our house which went up in flames on 1 September putting ours and other houses as a risk but for swift action by villagers. No doubt a domestic goat or two would have cleared this area in the past. * * * Tuesday 25 Sept. This morning I woke before dawn, wrapped myself in a quilt and sat on the balcony to watch the earth roll towards sunlight. There are two especially bright planets east and west, and above in the high south the three star belt of Orion in front of the innumerable lights of the great circling disc that is our own galaxy. The cock crowing spreads, then the dogs take up their cries with their barking and soon come the scooters and now and then, like tumbling boulders, the rumble of aircraft rising from Kapodistria Airport. The sky lightens enough to show the grey smudge of a ferry heading slowly towards Corfu port and then another on a course for Igoumenitsa. Pink light grows and flares behind the mainland mountains, the stars disappear. I make myself a cup of tea and return to my seat. Venus and Mars remain longer, then fade into the growing blue. Sunlight tops the mountains and in hardly twenty seconds a noose of light has caught and warmed me on the balcony. I hear conversation across the houses. Lin wakes to hear me working on the door latch and lock of the bathroom door which hasn’t ever closed properly. By the time that task was done, we were making lists. I pruned the bougainvillea, helped Lin put up curtains and we discussed the next set of things to do. In the afternoon, we picnic’d in an olive grove at the end of a path off the road high on Trompetta. It was quiet enough to hear the blood running in my ears. Lin had made up smoked salmon, cream cheese, fresh bread, a can of cold beer and a fresh tomato. The ground was crisp with dried olive leaves, but with all the parching there was moss and spinach green undergrowth among the rocks above the terraces that went downwards in gentle steps strewn with the rolled dark plastic nets that will be used to catch the fallen olives in November - though a poor harvest is expected after so little rain. Even as strolled in pleasant solitude the phone rang. Richard said a man from Severn Trent wanted to come in our house and ‘check our stopcock for a suspected water leak’. ‘Tosh!’ said L ‘On no account let him in. We’ve been through this routine before.’ We’d already shopped for needed things, including bags to fill with rubble which I started ferrying to a site at Davros that wanted ‘baza’. Katherina helped fill the sacks. A third were removed before dark. I’ll try to get rid of the rest tomorrow. At 10.00 pm Lin continues, lying on her side, cleaning the marble skirting of the guest bedroom, having gloss painted door and window frames. * * * Monday 24 Sept. A lazy day. I got up later than usual, reading an account of trying to make the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq work by Rory Stewart, realising the prescience of the Mad Max films; but in this case the scale of the collapse of order in a place that was the cradle of civilisation, the fertile crescent, the place where calligraphy began, where people converged from across the known world to trade and gaze in awe at its architecture and culture. It has become thrice Ozymadian - a ghastly blighted wasteland of corruption, dusty hot ugliness, pollution and murderous feuding between innumerable factions riven by contradictory hopes and intentions stirred into unreliable and treacherous alliances against its rueful, frustrated, puzzled, impatient, covetous, misguided and despairing invaders who, by and large, want to escape at almost any cost but can’t loose their grip on the country’s oil or the bizarre idea that democracy might be nurtured in Iraq. One of the lessons Stewart imparts is that history doesn’t point a way forward in Iraq. It is all very well to repeat the maxim that ignorance of history causes its repetition, but today’s circumstances are so different from the past that to rely on knowledge of previous fiascos is to drive by the view in the rear mirror. Dreadful Rumsfeld was probably right to speak of the problem of handling not known unknowns, but unknown unknowns. There’s enough ignorance of the past among the invaders to justify that explanation of the calamity, but Stewart suggests that even with far greater knowledge the task of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq would have been impossible. I was struck by words in Stewart’s Foreword

‘…I have not catalogued the national failures in planning, policy and administration. This is because I believe it was not grand policy but rather the meetings between individual Iraqis and foreigners which ultimately determined the result of the occupation.’

Starting each chapter is a quote of apposite relevance from Machiavelli – embarrassing because we still try to fool ourselves he was describing the unique politics of renaissance Italy instead of immutable human behaviour. * * * D and Mg have been on the roof at 208 Democracy Street. As we expected a large part of the roof will have to come off again and be properly tiled with chicken wire between the tiles and damp-proofing. D told us the tiles were uneven because the older ones were made by women bending them over their thighs – some slenderer than others. You need to grade them when roofing and organise the up and down facing ones in far neater ways than M. had managed. We sat in the top room and discussed the roof, the repair of the cypress wood floor, plastering around the new archway, and making a flue hole for the stove, which they carried upstairs for us so we could decide against which wall to set it. D will give us an estimate in a couple of days. Lin says ‘let’s go for a sail to the mainland on Wednesday.’ * * * Dropped into CJs. J has got a €1000 in the café for his ‘Greek Fire Appeal’ and is driving over to donate it for one selected village. Several present were quietly rejoicing at the departure in a few days of the last of the Thompsons and Cooks geese. Some report that the Thompson birds will not return next year. I note the Durrell School of Corfu and the Institute Dikeoma are co-sponsoring a symposium between 24-28 September on ‘Cleaning up the Mediterranean’ (durrells@otenet.gr) Note: On being ourselves tourists, a quote from the last chapter of David Roessel's In Byron's Shadow: Modern Greece in the English and American Imagination 2003, Oxford UP

My fifth Brompton folder ~ one less car

My fifth Brompton folder ~ one less car
Originally uploaded by Sibad.

Still the rain. News of three dying from heat in Corfu.

I've got 8000 words of this chapter done and now the hard part, getting it down to 5000. I'm cycling over to my friend and mentor Dr Lesley Prince this afternoon so that she can help me pull together a final version for a deadline on Tuesday.

I got this folding bicycle from Mike at Phoenix Cycles in Battersea Bridge Road, London in 2004. Walked in and bought it and he's looked after it since allowing me enjoyable visits across the Thames past the derelict grandeur of Battersea Power Station.

This valued artefact - a Brompton - is slightly longer than previous models, adding to its versatility - especially in allowing me to stand on the pedals which I found tricky on earlier versions. I've had several Bromptons over the eleven years since I bought my first. One was stolen in Lancieux in Brittany. One, through my negligence, fell under an intercity train in High Barnet and was broken into many pieces. One is in Ano Korakiana. One is in my mother's house in the Highlands - accompanying her recent move - and two, including this one, are in Handsworth. They are the design children of an inspired engineer who, with his team in London, works on them to this day and, within the small niche for folding bicycles, they are probably incomparable.

The bicycle in the picture is beside me as I wait for a train at New Street Station. It is ideal for what transport planners call multi-modal travel. Its low cross bar means walking is an easy choice, since it's so easy to hop on and off and stroll with it in places you might not be able to take a full size bicycle. It also carries lots of weight in a specially tailored pannier that slides on and off a sturdy bracket on the handlebar stem. I attached a large Dutch ding-dong bell for civility in announcing my presence. I carry an antique train whistle on a lanyard around my neck should I need to signal more urgently amid motorised traffic. Now get back to writing, Baddeley!

At Gas Street Basin      Photo: Dan Burwood for Rescue Geography. 

* * *

Note from Bob McFetridge in Canada:
Simon. This article from today's Globe and Mail makes a bit more reference about the human impact on water patterns globally. I thought it might be of interest to you. "Human activity altering rainfall patterns": Sub-Saharan Africa is getting drier while more rain falls on North America in a global rainfall change that Environment Canada study shows is caused by humans. It has been quite extraordinary watching the news and hearing the interviews with those affected.
Today's study on Climate Change was released here in Canada (published in Nature). The potential impact will be a profound worsening of the human condition in the poorer regions and concomitant gains with more water in the wealthy regions of the world. Although I suspect the UK is not overjoyed about their new found wealth at the moment.
Our west coast has seen considerable rain this summer as well and records are breaking for temperature in the prairies - both consistent measures of CC modelling. Of course the challenge is to understand the difference between inclement weather patterns and actual climatalogical shift.
Some of what I am engaged in at the moment is trying to establish accessible data patterns in biodiversity that will allow monitoring of species changes in the ecosystem - particularly as they affect human health, food and economy.
There is a lot there in fact. The problem is that so much of it is in analog format and therefore hard to trap. Once again, however is the question of what we are actually seeing in a change. On the west coast, in my lifetime since I studied marine biology in the mid 60's, we have seen a number of species populations move as much as few hundred km north. Problem is they are mostly innocuous looking little invertebrates and so not particularly visible in the political landscape.
I watch all that water affecting urban and suburban populations and wonder how and when we will start to rethink our relationship with the landscape and how we plan our future development and protect that which we now have. All the best, Bob

Francis Zwiers is one of the lead authors of the complex study to which Bob has drawn my attention. Zwiers is based at the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis. The article in Nature - the equivalent for climatologists and other scientists as The Lancet for medical researchers - is being mentioned in newspapers around the world at the moment.

More wet weather from the west

More rain spreading from the west

The sun was shining on Thursday morning. The house painter dropped in first thing. "I thought you were coming on Monday". "Have you seen the forecast? Better do it today."
We hadn't tidied where he needed to go. "I could kill you, Baddeley" said Lin. Showing Dannie the windows that needed repainting I said "My wife's angry with me for you seeing our mess" "Don't think about it" he said "We're Irish. We live like this." Such ingenious politeness almost placated Linda, while I felt complemented at being honorary Irish for not helping with housework.

By evening it was raining again. Then came an hour of thunder and lightning. I unhooked the WiFi until it passed. Rain continued through the night. This morning the surface of the ponds in the garden vibrate. The bird feeders are popular with a family of blue tits fledged from Amy's bird box - seldom fewer that five little birds at a time pecking away at the nuts, seeds and fat balls hanging outside our kitchen window, sheltered by the overhang of a Japanese quince, topped this time of year by the foliage of our venerable wisteria. Well aware that Oscar is across the road a baby rat comes out for the food dropped from the feeders.

Danica in Serbia tells of temperatures above 45 degrees in Belgrade. Our Met Office warns that Birmingham is the likely centre of the heaviest of today's severe weather. On Usenet Forums climate change deniers clamour with instances of past weather peaks to prove that out of the ordinary isn't, and all who disagree are 'commie freaks' and Al Gore supporters speculate on why 'these toads' have crept out from under their stones. I tell my students adversarial debate is part of democracy, quoting Churchill's maxim that 'jaw jaw is better than war war', but I dislike arguers who hurl abuse at each other from behind the hedge of cyberanonymity.
[Back to the future ~ 5 Nov 2008: see Keyboard Warriors on YouTube]

My class on politics includes pondering ways of using wit in the rough and tumble of public arguments, whether canvassing the public or in encounters outside the relative safety of a regulated debating chamber. A discussion last week, arrived at street escapology - getting out of sticky situations on buses, trains, sidewalks and other public places. J recalled how a man with a knife grabbed him from behind and whispered "I'm going take all your money and I'm going to slit your fucking throat". J replied "Why?" turning himself, for an instant, into a question mark. This, we surmised, for J was with us and I'd no cause to doubt his veracity, created a conundrum for his assailant. In the pause for reflection that followed J escaped.

These stories link wit to wisdom. Some last. "Tell us Lord, should we pay tribute money to Caesar?" How did the Naz get out of that one, in the glare of waiting reporters, not to mention those emissaries from the local theocracy seeking to have him arrested - if he said "no" - or discredited - if he said "yes"? 'And they could not take hold of his words before the people'. [Matt. 22:15-22; Mark 12:13-17; Luke 20:20-26] We spent twenty minutes unpacking the exchange and the escape phrase "render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's" Theologians have raked this ever since, using it to define a disconnection between sacred and secular, though that'd been invented in Athens rather earlier. The actual crisis - trap set, sprung and evaded - lasted what? A hundred seconds? Wit is swift. It comes from the whole body not just the knowing bit. It is not - unlike joking - formulaic. It relies so much on the moment. If I'd said "Why?" to J's attacker it mightn't have worked at all. I've long wanted to be a fly on the wall when JC's questioners reported back to Caiaphas. "What did he say? Go on, what did he say" "Er well er um he said 'render... etc"" "What the heck's that supposed to mean? Look - let me think - right - yes - go and find a woman who's committed adultery, get the stoning ready, then ask him what's wrong with carrying out the Law of Moses. He'll never get out of that."

I just remembered I was talking, long ago, with a American Professor of English at Michigan - my son's late godfather James Gindin - about this particular street crisis. Confronted with the dilemma, a woman awaiting death, a crowd hefting stones and a pointed question about respect for the law, J bent down and began to write on the ground with his finger. Jim suggested Christ was letting them know he knew his scriptures too. I also needed to understand how deep in Judaism is respect for the law. Didn't it, he was implying, have some bearing on the precise conduct of a judicial stoning? His scribbling gained time to survey the crowd, to note the actual witness who must, in law, cast the first stone. As a communal act, any one stoner can evade the unpleasantness of being the one who started the killing. There was a click in my mind, as we chatted, about the three blanks rounds allotted at random to a firing squad, so each man with the vile task could hope his might be the rifle with the blank, and obey his orders and conscience easier. J looking up from his writing in the earth made hiding in the stoning party impossible. It was not the words "let he who is without sin cast the first stone" that, of themselves, saved the woman. How many times since has an equivalent plea fallen on stony ground? Jim said "He could have been writing anything - maybe just scratching". It was the gesture that mattered and the fact that what was spoken was to an individual not a crowd.

So what happened this time when the questioners went back to the High Priest? "What! Something about procedure? What on earth are you talking about? Who told you that?" "Well no-one as such but ..." "Fools, there's nothing but nothing about an actual witness having to throw first, you total idiots!"

[None watched with Christ. Though Peter tried, his courage failed him. None stepped to the mark when unesteemed, Christ faced his crucifiers.]

* * *
E-mail to staff: Electric Storms

Dear All. The inclement weather brings with it the risk of lightening strikes and as a result of this possible loss of service across campus. Last night the links between Edgbaston and Selly Oak campuses were lost due to hits on the Telewest exchanges and today the Conference Park was affected too. Both services are now active again with the problem last being rectified within a couple of hours.

Another e-mail:

For info – for those with a car there is a huge amount of water/fload on Egbaston Park Road at the level of the Vale and it is very difficult to pass though there to go to the City Centre

.
And another:

WEATHER CONDITIONS - FLOODING Importance: High
Dear Colleague. The University has been informed that the following roads are flooded: Bristol Road/Bournbrook Road Junction, Vincent Drive, and Edgbaston Park Road. I would be grateful if you could circulate this information to your staff in order that they can make alternative plans for their journeys home at the end of the day. Jonathan Nicholls

The Rector, Brian Hall, in the Parish Magazine of St.Mary, Handsworth for 7 July (delivered on Saturday) reports his return from a Greek Island holiday; his fifth visit to the same place:

What was unexpected (and for which I couldn't prepare) was the 'snowfall' of ash which, for three days, gently descended on us, carried on the wind from forest fires we could see driving across the mainland. At one stage there were 130 such fires raging out of control in the heat.