'...στοιχεία ερωτικά, σκωπτικά και πολιτικά ανατρεπτικά...'

The laic sculptor of Ano Korakiana at work by Jan Bowman

A catalogue on the internet for Aristeidis Metallinos` Ο Αριστείδης Μεταλληνός I left Ano Korakiana in June telling Angeliki, his grand-daughter, that by September I would bring her a rough draft - on paper.
Back in England, talking to several curators of art galleries, I came away convinced that what was needed was not a hard copy - yet. I asked my son, Richard, to design a website. Yesterday he showed me his draft for a front page...

...but to get it right "You have to have high quality photo's of each sculpture.
 "Can you come to Corfu?"
"Yeah"
Richard will bring his camera to the museum in October. I hope he can work through the works not already photographed by Rob Groove who may be able to do more.

The artist creating his work - 1984, cat 190, stone 74 x 69cm (photo: Rob Groove)

"I need speed lights and a roll of white paper"
"Hm? Can you bring your own lights?"
"Maybe. Can't you find some in Corfu?"
"Maybe. I can let you know."
"I guess we'll need to photograph about 50 to 60 pieces a day. Can they be moved?"
I imagine doing this vital process the same way Angeliki, Lin and I with help from her parents worked up the draft catalogue we made in May, listing and numbering each piece with measurements and whether it's stone or marble.

Lin and Angeliki working on the catalogue

Every on of Aristeidis' pieces has been photographed by the artist's nephew Anastasios Nikolouzos, Tassos - an invaluable record, basic to the project.

A sample of Tassos' images of the carvings

There are the lists made 10 years ago by Angeliki M, in Greek and English, recording the inscriptions on each work. Now all pieces in the collection are renumbered - chronologically - these words need to be digitised and linked to each new picture, bot for their explanatory value and to ensure identification.

Letter to Angeliki M: Αγαπητοί Αγγελική. Linda and I send love and best wishes to your family and hope you are all well. I have attached letters to me from Eurydice Antzoulatou-Retsila who knows as much as anyone outside Ano Korakiana about your grandfather. She is happy to write another article for the ‘catalogue’ we are working on about Aristeidis Metallinos. She retires from her university in the Peloponnese this month and she will be coming to Corfu, where she also worked, to visit friends and, she hopes, to visit you, your family and the museum when she is here.  My son Richard Baddeley is working on a website about the sculptor. This website will record all the works with photographs of each carving. My son says that he needs high quality photographs like those created by our friend Rob Groove from Ipsos who visited the museum this May to make an image of ‘The Saint of Preveza’ for Richard Pine’s book about Greece which will be published in October. Our son will be coming to Corfu for a week in order - with yours and your family’s permission - to take high quality photographs for the Aristeidis Metallinos catalogue which he will be putting on the website catalogue he has started to design. After we returned to England in June I asked several museum and art gallery curators about our plan to publish a catalogue. They confidently advised me that it would be far better to have a web-based catalogue containing the artist’s work and articles about him.  The advantage of this is that we can have swift free access across the world to Aristeidis’ works. The website can include texts including ones by Eurydice Antzοulatοu-Retsila, by your father and by me and you. We can also include video clips and sound recordings in English and Greek that can be accessed with a click of a computer key. People with smart phones can find out about the sculptor. A web-based catalogue has the additional advantage that it can be easily re-edited as new knowledge about your grandfather or more detailed images become available.  I hope you will not be disappointed that I am not coming back to Corfu with a ‘book’, but I am now convinced that an Aristeidis Metallinos website is the best way forward in bringing the artist to a larger audience, and certainly does not preclude a book type catalogue. If a ‘hard-copy’ catalogue is wanted for a particular exhibition of the sculptor’s work at some time in the future, this can be constructed from data in pictures and words from the internet. We are looking forward so much to being back in the village and to seeing our friends again. I don’t know exactly when Eurydice arrives on the island but as you see – in the attached letters - I have given her details of how to contact you. I hope she will be welcome in Ano Korakiana.  The work I am currently involved with is writing the English and Greek words on each of the sculptures....

First page of 15 pages - spaces await recording of transcriptions and, where needed, explanatory notes

The Scops owl Metallinos carved on a stone plaque fixed to the front of his house, displaying his initials, and holding a builder's trowel and a sculptor's hammer, is dated the year he made the transition from builder to sculptor, depicting in stone and marble a unique record of a fast changing pastoral economy, emphasising the primacy of the family, village institutions and traditional customs, yet mingling with this account of Greek folklore, works that are στοιχεία ερωτικά, σκωπτικά και πολιτικά ανατρεπτικά...erotic, ribald and subversively political.

*** *** ***

I planted parsnip seedlings, germinated in March on a wet kitchen towel at home then planted them out on the plot inside cardboard tubes to help them stay straight and not divide. Since July I've been enjoying them as soup, roasted and boiled. Late August, my friend Winnie gets my grandson's help pulling up another crop for the pot.
One of the most robust sources of happiness these last 9 months has been the fecundity of our allotment. Various actions define a turning point. For s start I did what just about anyone living in Handsworth starting with raw soil has to do - one way or another. I invested in several builders bags of black gold compost which I gradually mixed with the 'messy' soil I've been trying to work since mid-2010.

Andy of Valley Contractors delivering black gold compost to Plot 14 - July 2014

What is 'messy' soil? There's a question. This plot and others on the Victoria Jubilee are confusing in this respect. It presented itself to my spade, fork and mattock, as neither sandy, nor peat, nor clay nor chalky.

The soil as it presented itself in December 2013

This kind of rubble still being dug out of the plot in 2014

It might have the character of silt soil. Where compost has been mixed in, it might be loam. Loam and silt contain elements of the others. Why is it tricky to define?
To go way back; in Triassic times all Britain was in the tropics, our area a vast shallow lake. Far more recently - between 100,000 and 12,000 years ago...

Birmingham is about where ''e' is at the end of 'Northern Ice'

... the land was buried beneath 3000 metres of ice. The climate was like that at the North Pole now. Slow-moving sheets of ice ground the tops from the Welsh Mountains. Glaciers pushed great masses of earth and broken stone south eastwards across the clay plain.

...huge glaciers pushed millions of tonnes of sand, gravel and pebbles from Wales and from the north of Britain to the Midlands. Glacial drifts with different mixtures of sand and gravel, pebbles and clay are found in many places on top of other rocks... 

Across great lakes, blocked in by mile high ice barriers, gales blew the water into mighty waves, which, breaking, pounded fallen rocks into smooth rounded gravel. When the great thaw came, glacial drift had left rubble strewn over the landscape forming an uneven layer of water-worn pebbles mixed with sand, clay with a few larger boulders...

Winnie's stone garden - 'water-worn pebbles'  ground by glacial drift

So Handsworth and its surroundings was 'covered by glacial drift deposits 150 feet thick'. Glaciers ground the high peaks of Wales and drifted their stones all over the Midlands.  The ground stones are attractive, but  they're mixed with recent remains from activity on private allotments that were here up to the start of this century

A typical collection of glacier and water-worn stones mixed with more recent rubble dug from the plot

The account of local geology goes on to say that the local 'topsoil is porous and acidic, unsuitable for agriculture...its natural cover was light woodland and heath.'
This suggests that anyone who's used this land for growing vegetables has needed to improve their soil. I'm confident that the soil on the original Victoria Jubilee Allotments (VJA) - private land - had been undergoing steady improvement for near a century, from the time working men started using land given them by the church at the end of the 19th century. Much of the VJA had been thoroughly dug, manured and composted for decades.

The Victoria Jubilee Allotments, sold by their owners to a developer, who got planning permission to build in 2004

The old Victoria Jubilee Allotments were accessed by country lanes (photo: Luke Unsworth 2004)

Would that those of us who took up plots on the 'new' Victoria Jubilee Allotments - 80 plots on a third of the original site - in June 2010 had inherited this well prepared soil. What actually happened was that the whole site...

Google map now - the unfinished playing fields and the new housing around Victoriana Way were once all allotments

...from which Birmingham City Council eventually won the new plots and space for playing fields - still not delivered after eleven years - was first graded and built on and driven over with heavy machinery during the housebuilding that went on between 2004-2009. There were major man-made ground upheavals. First, old sheds, shrubs, trees, hedges and anything remaining on the old plots was bulldozed into several big heaps...

In 2005 the old VJA was being prepared for new allotments, playing fields and houses (photo: Luke Unsworth)

...then a large cavity was dug in the ground beneath the smaller area reserved under a S106A. It was deep enough to almost hide the diggers involved...

Landscaping on the VJA in 2005 reveals glacial drift  - pebbles, sand, clay and occasional boulders...

...and show the start of the deep sandy muddy glacial drift deposit that runs so close to the surface. Why such a large hole? Why did the developer need to create such a space? Was some of the excavated earth trucked from the site? I suspect this was all about major re-landscaping of the whole site with earth from one part being moved to other part - including the laying out of level playing fields to the south where the land had sloped gently down to the park. The original geology is confused. I didn't see it happen but my guess is that this cavity - under my present plot - was refilled from gradings elsewhere on the VJA site over which earth mixed with all left on the surface of the original VJA site was re-spread across the new site...

The new plots being laid out on the VJA

...with, as I understand, a few inches of topsoil brought in from elsewhere. I'm unclear why this was necessary and most gardeners tell me it's not especially rich and may have brought in such perennial weeds as horsetail.
On 10th June applicants signed up for their plots. Linda and I chose one overlooking Handsworth Park.

Signing up for our plot (photo: Richard Baddeley)

I started work - innocent and ignorant - on preparing our new cherished hard-won plot.

Summer 2010

The earth was dry, dusty, full of weeds, pebbles, stones and odds-and-ends that had been part of the furnishings of the previous plots that had been here - worked wood, plastic, metal brackets, wire, fragments of fabric, many coloured pieces of broken glass, bricks, rubble...
It was a start. I was carried forward, as I am now, by interest, enthusiasm for learning, excitement at the prospect of growing things, getting a shed, making Plot 14 into a place.

July 2015 ((photo: Richard Baddeley)

*** *** ***
1. Making sense of the soil - from figuring the local geology; investing in topsoil and compost; knowing the history of the site to explain some of the objects brought up by the spade. Studying the book recommended by Barry Luckhurst - Gardener's Earth by Stanley B. Whitehead and beginning to learn the art of composting.

Palette composting bays laid out in March 2015

2. Making the improved soil accessible...by laying and widening paths to create beds I can get at without treading on worked soil.

My rough plan of Plot 14 in 2015

I used the HHH van (with a donation for time and fuel - all logged and transparent) to deliver hundreds of bricks recovered from skips and front yards, with permission. These are easily moved to change the shape of a bed as carpet tiles, collected in a discarded batch while clearing a Handsworth garden, can quickly create temporary paths as well as holding down the hem of netting. All paths on the plot have been  covered with permeable weed control membrane fixed with staples...

I've stocked up with plastic tubing to use as frames for nets, investing in veggiemesh and, for winter, bubble wrap to protect from frost.  I now set up a netted framework swiftly; a crowbar to make the holes, Each end of a cut-to-length plastic tube inserted in the holes; the hoops strengthened with bamboo fixed with plastic ties to the hoops. Then the mesh spread over the frame, staples inserted to hold it down and carpet tiles to cover any excess spreading on the surrounding path.
3. Winnie. She is my steward and farm hand and friend as interested in the plot as I and with a dad who also has an allotment, and a young son who works with her on the plot and plays with Oliver, my grandson, when he's here.

Winnie and Simon on 'our' plot this January

Cutting out cabbage buttterfly eggs and damaged leaves on Brussels Sprouts

E-mail from Corfu

Dear Lin, The front part of the roof has now been pointed up with cement, to give a neat finish. The wall inside and the plasterboard wall have been taken down, and the arch started. ... We should start on the floor and stairwell next week. That will all be belt sanded down and left until we can find something to put on it instead of varnish, ... consensus is that varnish will scratch. I have a builder friend over from UK says there's something called Russic oil, which you put on by cloth very thinly then leave for five days before applying the next coat. This seals and protects the wood from stains and scratches. Outside, the garden area is 90% completed. The orange tree has started to produce lots of leaves, but no branches. We can wait and see what happens. We should also start and finish the steps next week. I think Squeak is pregnant, so am keeping it out of the house. If it is a boy, then it is just getting fat from too many biscuits and sandwiches. Will keep you updated, Best regards G, M & B

Garden at 208

A place for the rubble at 208
Originally uploaded by Sibad.

Thursday, April 26, 2007
Where in a sokaki of tightly linked buildings do you put the building rubble? Our solution is to move it to part of the garden. This is the before picture.
We’ll be going home Tuesday afternoon. Our roofer said “Your roof will done by then, but check your neighbours don't mind noise on Sunday." It was raining this morning, the work secured with a sheet of plastic. Extra tiles, mortar mix, insulation, wax paper were delivered and stacked this morning.

We’re thinking we’ve now got a mix of people doing work we can afford and with whom we can keep in touch by e-mail, who trust us enough to cover cash flow delays, and who understand our wishes. After the electrics, the renewing of the kitchen, hall and downstairs bedroom ceilings and the roof comes making one space out of the two front upstairs bedrooms, with the wood stove and flue moved to its eastern wall, and the stairs widened. Then we could have the garden part tiled – over the flattened rubble.
Word of mouth led us to holiday flats in Pyrgi being refurnished. We salvaged a cane sitting room suite with cushions and a low table, drove it home, and lifted it upstairs with a rope over the balcony.


Wednesday, April 25, 2007
I cycled into town and did some work at the Arco. The weather has gone cooler and is slightly overcast with spots of rain. Missed my bus to AK so cycled all the way there via Ipsos – with only a couple of breaks for some of the local ginger beer. Drove back to Ayios Markos to collect a sturdy plastic table I’d seen by a waste skip.

The roofing is coming along well. Lin paints almost without a break. With a loaned jack hammer I knocked down the first and largest lot of breeze blocks and made holes for the rain to get away in the ones we’re leaving. Amy called from home. Our neighbour came round and we chatted about the odd things the previous owners and their builder had done with the place – including cutting down two lemon trees and an orange tree - leaving the one in the picture - and removing a side balcony, the door on to it and the outside steps to it, removing rain protection from the side of the house as well as a pleasant part of it, and creating a problem of what to do with the rubble. Lin and I discussed replacing the steps – perhaps iron ones and putting back the upstairs door. Our neighbour showed us two bricks from his house – one with 1590 and another with 1711 inscribed roughly on them.

Lists of things to do

Wednesday, April 18, 2007. The lady from across the street offered skilled helped cracking away one of the breeze blocks enclosing rubble in three concrete enclosures put up by the last builder against the side of the house. They’ve been collecting and storing damp that has been entering the house. They look ugly. Another neighbour was reassured I wasn’t dumping the emptied rubble off our property. She saw the first six barrow loads strewn in the garden as planned and said 'sorry'. On the car by the museum Lin found a a civil note in Greek and English pointing out she’d parked across a two car space. We had a picnic lunch about 5.30 under the veranda. Two young cats tried to climb on our table. Later on ‘Summer Song’ we discussed the re-roofing needed with a young man who can start work next week.
Lin thought we’d had an unproductive day. I’m not sure. Perhaps the test of a place is when it stops being an exotic and temporary escape and becomes another kind of home. We’ve being working through lots of lists in recent days, getting connected to water and electricity, securing addresses, paying dues, anticipating a Greek tax return next year and overseeing, and paying bills for, work on a boat and a house. This island was once a passing image that included mouse island – Pondikonisis – a white church, blue sea and dark cypresses. In the months since last July when I clicked the ‘buy now’ button and bought ‘Summer Song’ sight unseen on eBay, I remain astonished at the unexpectedness of this extraordinary turn of events.

Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Around 5.30 the sound of rain on the cabin roof and a wind from the east in the rigging. Light shows grey clouds. We’ve had waking dreams three mornings in a row. Something in the home made wine? I find the current reasoning about the way dreams work convincing – randomly firing synapses producing a stream of data that the mind assembles and reads like faces in clouds or interpretations of Rorschach blots. The detail is uncanny. I was forced at the end of one dream, to prevent it causing mayhem, to grill a boa constrictor in a shallow tray of hot coals. The image was painful because of the danger posed to me and then the pain caused the snake. I was glad to wake. This morning a reception in a public building composed of architecture from diverse but familiar places and guests including colleagues I thought I knew but with novel extramural professions – one a jockey in riding clothes who greeted me cheerily. Abruptly the time seemed to change and then after a pause – the brain processing a flood of waste data - the whirr of helicopter blades. We were invaded by Nazis, one disguised as a Guards Sergeant-Major. I saw him lining up infantrymen outside, barking at the ranks to get lined up. Then soldiers walked in and took over. There was no fighting, no remonstrations nor announcements. A pause for further processing and then I realised - invented the notion with the data to hand - that the place had been taken over as the venue for an opera. The situation remained fluid. Should we try to coordinate some response? I felt fearful about risks. I asked three staff officers with their wives – all immaculately dressed, the men in uniforms, the women in white diamonte evening gowns - sitting in a cluster of armchairs in blasé anticipation of the entertainment to come, why they needed to come here. “Isn’t your great Berlin Opera House fine enough? And what about Vienna?” I asked ingratiatingly but also resentfully, but they were entirely off hand. The opera was going to go ahead and there was nothing anyone could do.

We were taken by a Greek friend to get our electric bill and water rate sorted. Found there’s Wifi at the Arco Café on the Liston. Two estimates for repairing the roof and a visit to assess taking out an upstairs wall to make one large front room next the balcony. Lin continues painting white over various off-white shades with me holding a step ladder as she reaches up. The plaster board is up awaiting skimming. A late drink at CJs. The large screen over the bar played a football match in England. It is difficult to imagine a more intense assembly of enthusiasts, with the sound track and real time editing moving so adroitly between grand view and intimate inspection of players that took even me into the drama. I shared my admiration with the owner. He commented that the screen shots we were seeing can also be seen by the crowd, but not by the referee. This creates grand differences of opinion. Later I remembered I’d seen no-one spitting. Everyone involved knows how closely they are being watched on screens across the world, especially those whose brands are attached to the players shirts. Earlier when strolling to pick up the car in Ano K I noticed something missing – no litter on Democracy Street or its tributary paths.

Monday, April 16, 2007
Cloudy. In Corfu town after dropping Lin at the house to get electrics and water transferred but to get the phone requires the presence of both of us plus the line’s previous users. “I’m arranging it” said A. Asked after his baby daughter seeing him looking tired. Saw K. to get rubber on the clutch pedal. Got Lin’s phone working with a Greek number. Back at the house made lunch while Lin continued painting. Neighbour’s wine goes well with feta, raw onion and olives – different pungencies. More work on the garden. First estimate for redoing both roofs. Two more estimates tomorrow. Supper of chicken and pork from the spit at George’s, Kontokali, then home to the boat.

२०८

Friday, April 13, 2007 How satisfying to insert a new chip in my phone, enter a Personal Identification Number and find that it will work in Greece. For some this would be too easy to mention. Not for me. Whenever I’ve travelled my phone has been on ‘roaming’ for calling and being called anywhere. Yet call a number in Corfu, be it a few kilometres away, the person called pays for my call at international rates. Not a good way to treat friends in Corfu. Lin’s painting upstairs. I’ve gone on clearing the garden. We’ve asked another roofer to give us an estimate to compare with the one we expect on Monday from G. We’ve made up the bed that was left here, had a late light lunch and caught glimpses of neighbours and heard their children playing and seen distant ferries moving to and fro in the channel. Thursday, April 12, 2007 A calm fresh cloudless dawn. We are living on 'Summer Song'. Had breakfast on board and later in the morning drove up Ano Korakiana getting more used now to the road and its pinch points at Ayios Markos and the various potentially tricky passing points on the road up to the house. At the 208 Democracy Street Lin gardened, tidied and cleaned most of the day. I went to Corfu to work on the internet responding to enquiries from various councils. Back at the house late afternoon we checked the whereabouts of our cesspool and the best place in the small garden to transfer rubble from building work. Someone played a recorder next door. After dusk at CJs I chatted to an engineer about how Corfu’s water system struggled to cope with summer visitors. Not that well from what I’ve read and heard from Greeks and foreigners. There are problems with traffic, with waste, with land use, and - more subtly – with social fabric as tradition becomes commodity and harvesting begins with the start of the holiday season.

An old postcard of Ipsos

Enthusiastic from experience in Australia about what could be done here, Harry Tsoukalas in the April ‘Corfiot’ announces the first (Location: Kontokali – inland inner road close to Danilia junction info@petracon.biz 6947 269112 or Garnet at 6932 606332) of 3 recycling yards charging €50 to receive rubble, which at 20 cubic metres per truckload, would cost €500 to dump at Temploni.