The road at night

Yesterday evening after various morose chats at Sally’s Taverna in Ipsos, while I did email, having again bailed Summersong’s cover and checked her mooring lines, I treated myself to several euro’s worth of prosciutto at AB and bought a bottle of Tequila to make the puddings I’ll serve my guests next Wednesday.
Christopher at the bar in Sally’s said he hoped Greece would revert to the drachma, that indeed the whole Eurozone project should dissolve and everyone go back to their own currencies. I disagreed, though that could well be the succession of events if Greece defaults.
“Angela Merkel’s tied her place in history to Germany saving the eurozone” I said
“And she’ll be out soon along with Sarkozy” replied Christopher "and then things’ll start to happen”
“And what will happen to the poor and dispossessed of Europe?”
“They’ll go to the wall” muttered Scot George, sat next to Christopher at the bar.
“The family will return to its own, and the villages” said Christopher
“They’ll go to the wall” repeated George, who’d been complaining how the UK government keeps extending his pension date.
In the dark I began the ascent from Pirgi to Ano Korakiana, a route I've come to know by signs, shrines, buildings, particular stretches of fence and bends, dividing up my journey in my head to spread my pedalling energy. The Kandylakia which mark halfway and completion of the main hill to Ag Markos are, Sophia told me last Sunday, not shrines for road victims, but mark churches at the end of steep paths. Up and up I went, until the road became black, lit by the dim light of my cycle dynamo’s headlamp.

Panorama Bar

In Ag. Markos I stopped at the Panorama Bar, a small warm oasis. I greeted three men in there, ordered a glass of wine and sat on a sturdy dark varnished bench close to a wood stove. We stared up at a TV screen over the door, relaying pictures of a seriously concerned news announcer, ribbon titles running across the bottom of the screen as clips came from the European Parliament, from the Bundestag, and the chamber of the Hellenic Parliament, earnest Greek, German and Italian politicians sub-titled in Greek, interspersed with serious groups of men holding folders walking in bunches in and out of glass foyers, a shot of Venizelos speaking over a bouquet of logoed sponges on sticks...

...with cut-backs to studio conversation, with repeated shots of Athens police in riot gear dashing about Syntagma targeted with missiles, fireman hosing smoking burning buildings, glass strewn streets and a shopkeeper wringing her hands over the wreck of her shop. Now and again one of the men in the Panorama would make a laconic comment on what we were viewing. The others would smile and shrug resignedly, observing shared dismay. A long-haired terrier wandered out from behind the bar, its coat matching the tawny floor. I stroked and scratched its back as it sniffed my feet. Someone spoke to it in a friendly way. It settled by the fire as a woman came out, the owner’s wife, to join the taciturn company. The owner wandered over, hefted the round stove lid with a neat tool, peered into the glowing fire and added a log. The TV switched to a weather report on deep snow in Macedonia, pictures of snow ploughs in narrow streets, sheep and goats herded into byres, a well scarfed woman telling us it was cold and snowy, with subtitles saying it was cold and snowy. I said 'goodnight' and headed on up the darker road to the village..

The road to Ano Korakiana

..glad to see the street lights that start around the road up to Venetia. At the shop I asked Stammatis about 'the news'.
“The football?”
“No no. Greece!”
“I only get football on this set”
"Goodnight Stammati"
"Goodnight Simon"
*** ***
Jim Potts on Corfu Blues has had a go - quoting some telling passages in Greek and English, in support and refutation - at answering my first  'exam' question to him and Maria when we were lunching at Rouvas the other day:

1. Is the architectural, environmental and spiritual desecration of Corfu offset by the alleviation of the material and mental poverty of its population? 

This is one from Augustus Sordinas on The Corfiot Peasant:

*** ***
Our ward councillor Waseem Zaffar in Birmingham Handsworth, has asked as many of as can to contact as many others about the second conference for the ward on 3 March:

Dear Colleague. You are cordially invited to attend the second annual Lozells & East Handsworth Ward People's Conference 2012. The Conference will be held at 10.00 - 1.00 pm on Saturday March 3 2012 at City College Birmingham (Soho Road Handsworth Campus B21 9DP).
The Conference continues the theme 'communities coming together' - how, with fewer resources, residents, third sector and public sector organisations can work together to make Lozells, Handsworth and Birchfield better places in which to live and work.
People's Conference 2011 succeeded in raising key themes and putting forward recommendations for addressing them.  We have been acting on those recommendations and are organising this Conference as a way of sharing with you what we have been doing as well as illustrating some of the exciting initiatives occurring across the ward.

On behalf of the Conference planning group, I would like to express our genuine enthusiasm for this Conference. As a community we have so much to celebrate and yet so much more to achieve. I hope you will be able to join us for the Conference and help us continue the momentum that has developed.I hope you will also be able to pass this information to family, friends and colleagues who might not have been included in the mail-shot. It would be helpful for catering purposes if you could indicate the likelihood of your attendance. For any further information, please do not hesitate to contact me or Michael Brown of the North West Birmingham Development Agency on 0844 870 7982 or by email Michael Brown michael.brown@nwbda.org.ukYours truly, Waseem Zaffar 
Councillor for Lozells & East Handsworth Ward

Lin's copied me her letter to members of the voluntary advisory group for Handsworth Helping Hands (HHH), previously Central Handsworth Practical Care Project (CHPCP)

Dear All, I've renewed our free tipping permit, though it won't be for long. Attachment is description of our status and intended activities that I sent Bridget Kearney, Birmingham City Council, Fleet & Waste Management, for their records.I've advertised the chipper on the Preloved website. I'll put it on more sites when I have time. I'm hoping to get to the meeting at Mayfield on Thursday re. Heathfield Neighbourhood Forum. Might see some of you there. Lin

And again Waseem has sent this round to kick off a new forum more specific to our area within his ward:

The launch of Heathfield Neighbourhood Forum is taking place on Thursday 16th February, 6.30pm start at Mayfield Special School, Heathfield Road Entrance, Heathfield Road, Birmingham B19 1HJ. Are you concerned about the issues affecting your area including: environment, health, transport, leisure facilities, education, housing, jobs and training, community safety & crime. Then join the HEATHFIELD NEIGHBOURHOOD FORUM. A community meeting has been organised for local residents who are interested in tackling issues affecting the Heathfield area including all roads within the perimeter of Lozells Road, Birchfield Road, Church Hill Road (not including Church Hill Road) and Hamstead Road. Do you care about where you live and want to play a more active role within your community, then come along to Mayfield Special School to find out more information about the steering group launch for the Heathfield Neighbourhood Forum. Ongoing training and support will be available to all the volunteers. Free energy saving items will be given to all those participating. For further information and clarification of the neighbourhood forum area, please contact Rajinder Rattu of Neighbourhood Consultancy on 0121 448 8187 or email rajinder@neighbourhoodconsultancy.co.uk - please forward information across your networks. Yours truly, Waseem Zaffar, Councillor for Lozells & East Handsworth
Telephone/Fax: 01215513300 Mobile: 07790 161889
Email: waseem@waseemzaffar.co.uk
Mail: 16 Heathfield Road, Birmingham B19 1HB
Website: www.waseemzaffar.com
Twitter: @WaseemZaffar
Facebook: Waseem.Zaffar
Skype: Waseem.Zaffar1
LinkedIn: Waseem Zaffar
BBM: 272EE8CA

We've also got messages about new localised refuse collection arrangements happening soon:

Dear Colleague. Following the pilot of ward-based refuse collections in the South East of the City, Birmingham City Council have decided to introduce this form of refuse collection across a number of wards across the city including our ward, Lozells & East Handsworth, with an introduction date of Monday, 6th February 2012. In brief this will result in all refuse collection and recycling rounds being changed so that each ward will have a dedicated refuse collection and recycling crews. According to Birmingham City Council, as well as improving accountability this approach allows for greater synergy between the refuse/recycling crews and the dedicated street cleansing teams already working in the ward. However, as the existing collection rounds are not co-terminus with wards, implementation of ward based collections means that there will be changes in the day of collection for many residents. The time of day collections are made may also be changed, but will be between 6.00am and 3.30pm. Birmingham City Council state that as with the pilot, there will inevitably be some teething problems as residents and crews adjust to the new arrangements. However, to keep this to a minimum, each household in the ward will receive a post card outlining the new arrangements and days of collection. A hotline has been established by the Council for enquiries from residents. Please telephone 0121 675 7454 to report any issues with the new service or visit the website www.birmingham.gov.uk/collections.
I also enclose a map that has been provided to me illustrating the collection day for different areas of the ward. Please try to convey this information to local residents to ensure a smooth transition to the new system.  Please forward this email across your networks. For any further information, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. Yours truly, Waseem Zaffar, Councillor for Lozells & East Handsworth Ward

*** ***
Email purporting to come from my friend Ted Rudge. My server thought it was spam, but it used his normal e-mail address.

From: <his email>
Subject: ?spam? Terrible Trip....Ted Rudge
Date: 16 February 2012 12:37:45 EET
Reply-To: <same name different e-dress>

Sally looking over my shoulder said 'delete at once', but I hesitated. I know Ted so well and 'if he's in trouble' I thought, yet spelling, grammar and style! Woeful. But then he might be distraught, injured, whatever:

I really hope you get this fast. I could not inform anyone about our trip, because it was impromptu. we had to be in Madrid , Spain for a program. The program was successful, but our journey has turned sour. we misplaced our wallet and cell phone on our way back to the hotel we lodge in after we went for sight seeing. The wallet contained all the valuables we had. Now, our passport is in custody of the hotel management pending when we make payment. I am sorry if i am inconveniencing you, but i have only very few people to run to now. i will be indeed very grateful if i can get a loan of 2,720 Euro from you. this will enable me sort our hotel bills and get my sorry self back home. I will really appreciate whatever you can afford in assisting me with. I promise to refund it in full as soon as I return. let me know if you can be of any assistance. Please, let me know soonest. Thanks so much..Ted and Maureen Rudge

Swift e-mail from Linda "I can't think why you would 'pause and ask'. It's classic scam material. Ted's email has been hijacked. I've emailed to tell him" and a mutual friend, Andrew Simons, in Birmingham, also one of the Friends of Black Patch Park, has checked. It's already amazing to me that I could have, even for an instant, not immediately agreed with Sally. The hustler plays on the mark's feelings, sometimes greed, but in this case, compassion for a friend. Even tho' I'm well alert to multiple web scams, keeping myself informed about them through all the channels, this one stopped me for a moment. It's an example of the influence and power of emotion over common sense:

Hi Simon. I rang Ted just to check and spoke to Maureen. Ted is out buying bricks in Earlswood and definitely not in Spain. Like you the way the email was written didn't sound like Ted and I'm sure if stuck in such a predicament he would contact family first, but I was taken aback when I first received it because usually scams like this involve some anonymous person who claims to have come into unexpected money which they wish to launder through a UK bank account and for which you will receive a generous percentage. Best Wishes, Andrew

From a train in winter

Travelling through a recognisable landscape; broad muirs speckled with snow, mist rolling up higher ridges, black sheep on meadows under wind-break elms, scanning bar codes of regimented pine by the line; a web of power lines on pylons, tributaries to settlements on wooden poles, phone masts and wooden fences, woods of leafless birch, lines of alder marking burns, passing long enough to gaze at highland rivers edged with ice; a wet well salted road among white modern houses, snow on their insulated roofs. After Slochd Summit suburban hamlets in commuting reach of Inverness become fewer. Still on the old one track line built a century ago, we march beside the busy A9 - road bridge, rail bridge, road hill, rail cutting; no tunnels on this route from Inverness to Perth via Carrbridge, Aviemore, Kingussie Ceann a' Ghiuthsaich (head of the pine forest), Newtonmore Baile Ùr an t-Slèibh (new town of the moor) - the geographical centre of Scotland at the meeting of the old droving roads between livestock fairs at Perth, Fort William and Inverness - Dalwhinnie Dail Chuinnidh (trysting place) - no stops at the last two - as the five coach train hurries down from the Pass of Drumochter by the Boar of Badenoch An Toch and the Sow of Atholl Meall an Dobharchain, into Blair Atholl, then through Dunkeld and Birnham, to Pitlochry and Perth; south to Edinburgh via the Forth Bridge, gripped by a DVD of The Stranger starring Orson Welles - its climax as we came into Waverley.
I cycled and part walked this route - between Pitlochry and Inverness; cycling from Glasgow via Loch Lomond and the Trossachs on Sustrans route 7 with my daughter and friend John Richfield and his son Tom, savouring the smaller landscapes between.
Who invented the notion of an 'unspoilt' landscape? Where did I ingest this ... grotesque...idea of a pristine place. How painters and photographers have colluded to omit, to select, to crop and redact their idea of warts - cars, litter, motorways, wind turbines, buildings, runways, crowds, barbed wire. "Psst, want to see a nice view?" "I can take you where you can find landscapes. Very nice. Very clean," "How much do you want to pay?" I'm not alone in thinking a landscape really likes me; imagining I could own it. All landscapes are artefacts; as man-made in the countryside as in the city - a distinction itself man-made. Our rural landscapes are parks between our cities. Many paradises were made by rich people coming to live among poor people; city folk descending on village folk; industrialists visiting the pre-industrial; the disenchanted (Weber called it enttäuschung - the iron cage that our reason has forged for us) returning to worlds where enchantment survives. As for those few places left where the hand of man has hardly reached, they can kill you a surely as a surviving tigers can kill its kindly keeper. There are just too many of us. We teem. We swarm across the land - leaving wastelands in our wake and now there's nowhere left. This is not pessimism. I'm trying to extract from myself the long inculcated and now commodified assumption, that 'there's a place for us'. That was always going to end in tragedy. There is indeed a place, but it's no longer defined by geography, probably never was for all our projection of happiness onto physical landscapes. Geography is no longer about mapping new places - since there are none - but about trying to understand what's happening in places already discovered.

* * *
Our street in Birmingham was looking untidy this morning; refuse uncollected because of industrial action, though since recycling there's less than there might be (bottles and plastic for recycling were collected yesterday but not the black bags). A neighbour has put out garden refuse, forgetting this isn't collected this time of year. I'll probably put it with ours to be composted on our allotment.

12 January '11: our street in Handsworth, Birmingham

*** ***

From Ano Korakiana, news of the vice-mayoralties - some for portfolios or tasks and others for particular areas of Corfu, appointed by the Mayor of Corfu's new Municipality, John Trepeklis:

Οι αντιδήμαρχοι του νέου Δήμου του νησιού μας, ορίστηκαν σήμερα με απόφαση του Δημάρχου Γιάννη Τρεπεκλή. Όπως προβλέπεται από τη νομοθεσία, αυτοί ανέρχονται σε 14 και διακρίνονται σε «θεματικούς» (υπεύθυνοι κάποιου τομέα πολιτικής) και «χωρικούς» (υπεύθυνοι για κάποια γεωγραφική ενότητα).

Οι θεματικοί αντιδήμαρχοι είναι οι:

Οικονομικών: Τάκης Καρύδης (δημαρχών αντιδήμαρχος)

Τεχνικών Υπηρεσιών: Σπύρος Μωραΐτης

Καθαριότητας, υπ. Πρασίνου: Αλέκος Δήμου

Διοίκησης, Ηλεκτρονικής Διακυβέρνησης: Γιώργος Πανταζής

Αγροτικής ανάπτυξης, ευρωπαϊκών προγραμμάτων: Σπύρος Ρίγγας

Προγραμματισμού: Αναστάσιος Μοναστηριώτης

Παιδείας, νεολαίας και απασχόλησης: Αναστάσιος Ποταμίτης

Κοινωνικής πολιτικής, υγείας και προστασίας του Πολίτη: Αλέκος Πουλής

Πολιτικής Προστασίας: Κώστας Νίκου

Οι χωρικοί αντιδήμαρχοι είναι οι εξής:

Λευκιμμαίων, Κορισσίων, Μελιτειέων: Ανδρέας Σαγιάς

Κερκυραίων, Αχιλλείων, Παρελίων: Βαρβάρα Βλάσση

Φαιάκων, Κασσωπαίων, Θιναλίων: Φανή Τσιμπούλη*

Εσπερίων, Παλαιοκαστριτών, Αγίου Γεωργίου: Μάκης Φωτεινός

Διαποντίων Νήσων: Σπύρος Αργυρός

Some of the deputy Mayors of the Corfu for  2011 to 2012 - women missing

Όπως προκύπτει από τον παραπάνω κατάλογο, τα θέματα του χωριού μας, υπάγονται γενικά στη νέα αντιδήμαρχο, γνωστή δικηγόρο Φανή Τσιμπούλη, η οποία διετέλεσε επί δύο τετραετίες δημοτική Σύμβουλος στον τέως Δήμο Φαιάκων (στις παρατάξεις της αντιπολίτευσης), αλλά και στους θεματικούς αντιδήμαρχους, κατά περίπτωση. Βέβαια, η κα Τσιμπούλη θα έχει υπό την ευθύνη της ολόκληρη τη βορειο-ανατολική Κέρκυρα, γεγονός που καθιστά κρίσιμο το ρόλο του Τοπικού μας Συμβουλίου…

*Includes Ano Korakiana

Heading back to Birmingham

Speeding south to catch my connection to Birmingham

Spent two hours shovelling snow off the driveway at Brin Croft yesterday, so that Sharon could drive me, my luggage and Oscar down to Inverarnie Stores where I met up with a taxi whose driver took me gingerly down a snowy A9 to catch a train to Edinburgh from Aviemore. A freight train, whose tumbled Eddie Stobart wagons I glimpsed through the taxi window as we passed Carrbridge had lost its brakes on the descent from Slochd Summit and come off the rails just north of the station - so no trains from Inverness and a narrow escape for the drivers.

An hour later we were running comfortably south with no certainty of a connection at Edinburgh. On Waverley's milling concourse - always a station that brings to mind my favourite and greatest version of The 39 Steps, the first black and white version directed by the young Hitchcock - the boards were vague about trains to Birmingham, but as I waited in a queue for information, Oscar, behaving impeccably until a friendly mastiff with a crumpled face joined the same queue, set up an extended low growl of rage which attracted the attention of a motherly lady from Scotrail who directed me to an East Coast train to London on Platform 9 "You've got five minutes! Change at Newcastle or York" Well...give me an East Coast train even if it's not going my way - especially now they're no longer run by privateers. We dashed over the passenger bridge - about 39 steps - climbed into a packed train, climbed out again, ran up to First Class and got a wide seat with floor space to spare and paid a £27 supplement for the next 100+ miles to York. Catering starts at Newcastle. I've got free WiFi, a couple of fine ham rolls I made up at Brin Croft this morning, sharpened with English mustard, a miniature of Scotch and Fred Vargas' Seeking Whom He May Devour.

Lin says it's snowing hard in Birmingham while in Ano Korakiana people are rightly annoyed at another episode of uncollected refuse though we've found the weekday service mostly excellent, if we compare it with the once-a-week collection we have in Birmingham where mess is created by householders who leave their black bags in the street so their contents can be strewn around by foraging urban foxes. In Corfu there's the added bonus we've harvested from beside these bins by way of abandoned carpets, tables and chairs suitable for renovation and, in the last resort, firewood.