Tasks

I’ve clambered through the kitchen window to weed the small gulley between our house and the neighbour’s wall, lopping their overhanging fig branches to give light to WC and kitchen windows. I’ve tightened my Brompton’s front wheel that was beginning to wobble on its bearings – something I noticed as I freewheeled down the zig-zag road from Sokraki, stopping only to sit for a few moments in the cool quiet of the tiny church of Ag Isadoras on the ninth bend up from Ano Korakiana.

Ag. Isadoras above Ano Korakiana

Done the washing of course – sun dried underpants, shirts, socks and nightshirt. I’ve taken my sickle to the path below the house curbing invading thorns, and greenery happy to take over our route to the bus stop on National Opposition Street – three minutes’ walk below. I’ve hand dipped into the WC basin to give it a good scrub, leaving slices of lemon in it for a day, peeing the while on the compost piling up with my clippings from the Wisteria and other parts of the garden. I’ve cycled in and out of town to check I can still get there and back on my large bike, stopping at Technomart for more cheap paint brushes, and taken the bus into town with my folded Brompton, ideal for roaming the streets of the city, and completed our nil tax returns. Said Eleni when I arrived at her small efficient office off Alexandros
“You are the first!”
I’ve checked our bank account to bring our statement up to date and ensure payment of our standing orders for water and electricity. Cycling home I stopped at Rolando’s shop in Kontokali to have a look at his electric bikes. He insisted I try one. Out of curiosity I did. You peddle. The bike takes off on its own, gently, soundlessly and powerfully. Very tempting but – apart from prices of €2000+ - I don’t want one. Peddling starts the battery driven motor. Once going I’d stop relying on my own faltering strength, whose testing is two thirds the joy and a third the pain of cycling. If an ascent is too hard I’ve the time to get off and walk.
I work through books – Mia Gallagher's Hellfire, Edna O’Brien's The Little Red Chairs, Katie Hayes' Lindbergh’s Legacy, Michael Wood's In Search of Shakespeare, James Herbert’s The Secret of Crickley Hall.
Harder work, for longer perusal and reference, is a book, found for me by my friend Mark, authored in 2017 by the Swedish biologists, now living here, Marie and Bo Stille The Herpetofauna of Corfu and Adjacent Islands. The book cost me €30. Far from being simply a catalogue of species - comprehensive though it is on that score - the book goes far beyond that, comprehending with charts, maps and descriptions of habitats – geology, geography, climate, vegetation - describing, also, the human culture including environmental legislation and three finely written pages on ‘Humans, snakes and fear’. That such fear is instinctive remains despite years of research, unproven. The authors suggest fear of snakes is more likely the product of ideas than genetics.

The positive thing with a behaviour transmitted by ideas and not by genes is that it is relatively easy to change one idea for another when new knowledge becomes available. Consequently the fear that makes us indiscriminately kill snakes, including those that are not harmful to us, should in most cases be easy to overcome. However, oral tradition still has a stronghold in many cultures and old stories of snake dangerousness keep on spreading. (pp 315-316)

Two years ago a part-time neighbour here was kind enough to walk up to our house and warn me, for the sake of the children he emphasised, that there were snakes on the path between our homes. He held up, for my inspection, a jar containing two beheaded slow worms. The other day a friend told me he’d killed two snakes on his plot.
“I knew because they had that black stripe down their backs”
We found a picture in the Stilles’ book
“That’s it!”
It was, as clearly illustrated in the book, a juvenile Anguis graeca or Greek Slow worm Ελληνικο χονακι ‘completely harmless’.
The Stilles' book can be bought with an accompanying poster - €3 - showing pictures of all Corfu's snakes and slow worms, too often mistaken for and often killed, along with other harmless snakes. One snake, only, on Corfu is venomous - the horned viper - a creature no more dangerous than its cousin, the British Adder. Potholes offer greater hazard.
This book is about faith, hope and love. I judge it as significant for the missionaries and disciples of our spreading belief in the world's environment, as St Paul's Letters to the Corinthians in the New Testament was, and is, to Christianity. When I was 16 in 1958, my stepfather, amid one of our many long conversations during my growing up, suggested that a ‘new religion’ was emerging across the world; one that held as its central tenet, that the survival and salvation of mankind depended on his stewardship of the earth - a faith supported by science but, being near unprovable, still a ‘faith’.
“It’s called ‘environmentalism’. It grows from a move away from drawing up lists of natural species to understanding their ‘ecology’ - our own included!”
I remember this, while having little understanding, at the time, of what Jack was talking about.

Using the multi-tool to smooth a windowframe

There are louvred exterior window shutters that are near indestructible, their colour running right through like words in 'Brighton Rock'; to be bought on the internet, delivered by courier; maintenance a damp cloth. On our house some of our windows are metal, but others are wooden with hard wood shutters at least forty years old, perhaps much older. Louvre slats increase their surface area. Stand back, and I can see the joiner’s small variations during their making, increased by repairs.

One of my gravings

Looking close, the surfaces have many variations as a result of maintenance over the years - mainly after periods of neglect when roasting sun, wind and rain have blistered and hardened surface paint, undercoat and primer, raising all layers to the original wood, which, being exposed for too long, becomes split along the grain. Some joints may open. Looking at one pair of shutters on the house, I can see that with louvre slats and cross-pieces there are 286 of these - to shrink and expand.

Where rain has stood and perhaps seeped into the footing joints, there may be patches of dry rot, which I, and previous workers, have cut out, repairing the damage with gravings of old wood - which, once sanded, filled and painted, are almost as invisible as the dents an auto-mechanic can tap out of a metal body panel. Old wood is easily found, cut from shutters left by wheelie bins.
It takes time to maintain wooden shutters. Lifted from the pintles on their wooden frames (those too need maintaining), I lay them on a plastic sheet under the veranda. I sand the roughest looking surfaces down to the wood, and, where necessary, replace rotted parts; apply filler in cracks and small holes; let it dry then wipe down with white spirit and apply colourless preservative which serves as primer and holding for undercoat on surfaces where the old paint is sound. After the undercoat comes the pleasant labour of applying Corfu green surface gloss. Each of two coats takes 24 hours to dry. I leave it longer.

New gloss paint exposed to Greek sun comes up in blisters that can raise the underlying paint layers to bare wood. I learnt that the first time I went through this routine - over enthusiastic to rehang my work and admire it in place.  Now I make sure I’ve other jobs to do, while waiting. The wooden shutter frames are also maintained the same way, and hinges – male and female – oiled, with wandering paint scraped and sanded from them. I repaired, repainted and rehung three pairs of shutters and frames this last fortnight since Lin went back to England.
** ** **
With my friend Dave I’ve replaced a beam supporting our wooden balcony. When we walked there last year Lin and I saw a dip in the decking and assumed a normal settling. Then Mark, visiting, noted how one of two supporting beams had fallen four inches, where it entered the centre of one of its brick support columns. He inserted an Acrow prop to secure the balcony over the winter.

We measured and ordered a treated composite beam, planed to size, and delivered from Duroxil’s yard at Velonades near Sidari.

Dave arrived a few mornings ago; surveyed the job. Mark who’d replaced and renewed all the balcony’s main beams and laid decking across them had done a sound job.  His long sturdy screws had to be undone beneath a decking plank, which, with two balcony support brackets had to be lifted, to get to longer screws through shims into the old beam. A power drill with screwdriver in reverse took those all out in minutes. Zzzzzzzzz- done, Zzzzzzzzz- done, Zzzzzzzzz- done…We lifted and laid a sturdy plank from the apothiki under the cross beams, a foot back from the damaged support beam; moved the Acrow swiftly beneath one end of the plank, screwed up tight. The plank stayed while Dave sawed, to the same length as the Acrow,  an old beam also from the apothiki; lifted it against the other end of the plank, using a car-jack at one end to pump it upwards, until the whole balcony was lifted a few inches clear of the damaged beam.

On a stepladder Dave sawed through the centre of the damaged beam. Both pieces slid easily from the support columns, to be lowered to me. The cavity at the top of one of the column harbours an ants’ nest, whose inhabitants in their constant activity had reduced one end of the beam to a splintered stub, which, if it had given any further would have led to the collapse of one half of the balcony.

Ant work

Heartless, I pour two kettles of fresh boiled water on the teeming nest. Dave cleans out the support cavities at both ends; checks the soundness of the other beam ending next to the ants' nest.
“Seems they’ve left that alone. But keep an eye.”
We lift the new beam into place; tap away some old mortar; perfect fit; unscrew the Acrow, and lower the jack, deftly catching the substitute plank, as the new beam starts its job.

From above, it’s the power drill with screw driver again -  zzzz zzzzz- done, zzzzz zzzz- done, zzzz zzzzz - done; the shims and decking replaced; the decking now pleasingly level; job completed in 3 hours. Cups of tea had helped us through the morning. Now we broke two cans of lager.
“Finished in the cool of the morning, Dave. You made it look easy!”
***** *****
It’s not the best idea to ‘battle’ against nature. For the first time in ten years we experience the deprivation of abundant fresh oranges and lemons - one of the delights for a northerner in Greece. Since last spring, citrus scale insects have infested the under surfaces of the leaves on our two lemon trees and one blood orange.

Not a disease - an infestation

Minute insects gather in thousands on the underside of every leaf. These encourage - we don’t understand the process, but some form of excretion of honeydew which seems to penetrate the leaves. On the honeydew, on the top of the leaf, a black mould grows which stops photosynthesis. The trees are being strangled. They’ve not blossomed this year. Where a few flowers do appear, they drop off in wind and rain.
Scale insects are a pest familiar in the citrus industry. They occurs in the USA and all over southern Europe. Not all citrus trees are affected. On walks we’ve see many unaffected trees, bearing the abundant lemons and oranges we had come to take for granted. Last spring, on advise, Lin mixed dissolved bars of olive soap in boiling water, mixed with oil to hold the olive solution on the foliage. We sprayed as widely as we could reach with a hand pump sprayer lent by Mark. The insects turned to black mush which dried up. On new growth the scale insects return, the male insects travelling, the female clustering and immobile once on their leaves. We sprayed and sprayed at regular intervals. Still new insects return; in small numbers at first, but in clusters that visibly increase. I have watched them gathering. As well as spraying, I’ve hung sticky fly papers in the branches. In days they’re covered, sometimes, to my regret, with a trapped lacewing or bee, but mostly thousands and thousands of scale insects. My neighbour’s orange tree has no fruit nor blossom, but seems clear of scale insects. What’s their vector? Where are they coming from? Why are they on some trees and not on others? Some people here have pollarded their trees drastically. Others have even felled them – which might work for disease but can have only limited effect on spreading insects. Others have employed pest controllers who’ve applied traditional toxic sprays as for other pests, but this like our non-toxic olive soap solution, kills the insects only for more to return. I long for signs of the arrival of predator insects, enjoying scale insects as a welcome feast. Many ants roam the branches but they’re lapping the honeydew in the mould, leaving the under leaf pests unmolested. They may even, as I've read, have a symbiotic relationship with the scale insects, moving them about to new trees, or replacing them on leaves we've temporarily cleared by spraying.
“We need Ladybirds” says Lin.
I cannot just leave the trees alone, hoping that nature will take its course – since with all leaves coated in black mould preventing photosynthesis I will be watching our trees die.

While I can, I’m spraying once or twice a week, replacing the sticky papers as soon as they are covered – which takes less than 10 days. Perhaps now I should also buy some ant bands to deter ants and so try to intervene in the many million year love affair between scale insects and ants - if such it is.

Symbiosis of ants and other insects: One of the most common is the herding or farming of sap feeding insects 'homopterans' such as aphids, scale bugs and mealy bugs. ... By stroking the back of some aphids with their antennae, the ants can induce a honeydew droplet. The ants may move the insects to areas on the plants with the best sap.

*** *** ***
On the 1st May I was standing on the balcony and a neighbour saw me and called ‘Kronia Polla. Proto Maio!” I’d clean forgotten. I went foraging for flowers from verges, walls and abandoned gardens returning with flowering garlic, violets, a pink mallow flower, yellow and white daisies, sprigs of jasmine and wild sage called Lantana Camara - dry thorny stalks bearing bunched florets of many tiny multi-coloured flowers. I found roses, wall flowers, and from a flourishing Bird of Paradise plant, two orange azure flowers like parrots’ heads, sweet peas, clover, blue flowered comfrey prickly to pick, a lily from our garden and a deep purple leafed plant bearing a tiny pink flower. I fixed these with green string in granny knots to a wired circle of long stalks from the invasive pelargonium on the wire fence in our small garden.

Spring 2018 - all my own work

By lunchtime both my neighbour and I had wreaths hanging high on the walls of our houses, visible from Democracy Street. Lin usually makes our Mayday wreath. In her absence I was proud of mine. It will swiftly wither and dry. On mid-summer day its remains will be collected with others; laid in a pile on the war memorial platea or the villages's lower road and set alight, girls and boys leaping over the smoke and flames - Λάμπατα στον Άη-Γιώργη.

Λάμπατα στον Άη-Γιώργη - 22 June in Ano Korakiana

I've heard gossip that our new Papas is not entirely approving of this pre-Christian celebration. It's pagan. But that's just a rumour. I find the Greek Orthodox Church eclectic, even relaxed - perhaps a sign of its health and strength. Long ago - 1949 - my Dad and his new wife, my Greek step-mother, Maria, both divorced, were allowed to marry with full blessings in the small church of Panagia Kapnikarea in Hermou Street off Syntagma in Athens.
**** **** ****
On a Sunday I cycled to Dukades – 5 kilometres west, as the crow flies - to sit in the platea in the shared shade of a Jacaranda and a Lime tree sipping chilled village wine with two of my neighbours, absorbing languid conversation, noon sun seeping through the greenery, sparkling our glasses.
“Look how the sunlight dapples my white wine. If a cloud comes it doesn’t seem as good. Go away cloud!”
Our talking turned on gender fluidity, so normal but with vexatious implications for architecture and competition; vulture capitalists feasting on Greece. How much profit, if any, seeps into the surroundings of these grand hotel projects? Morecambe! Where my neighbours knew one another in primary school. Solar energy - why isn’t Greece’s free resource, so much scarcer in the north, being tapped into by everyone? Will they ever sort out the ethical programming of driverless cars? Who will the software save first, the children in the car or the old couple who walk out in front of it? “Hm? That’s a bit of a no-brainer”; peculiar neighbours and the kindness of strangers; bitcoins and the end of money “Monitor every transaction and human ingenuity will invent alternative ways of doing business”; fake news, filter-bubbles, ‘likely stories’ and urban myths;  and letters to Agony aunts.. 'Dear Marge. I’ve suffered from dropsy since childhood. An orphan, abused by carers, my relationships end in desertion. Help…’ ‘Dear Marge. A servant on one of our yachts persists in wiping the condensation off the champagne before removing the cork with such a noisy pop. Help’ …’Dear Marge. Can you help us with scale insects on our lemon trees? They’re spoiling our lives….’
A Sunday afternoon torpor, impossible north of the olive belt.
“We’ll go home and light the BBQ. Will you join us?”
They headed off by car, while I descended from the village via the road down to Paleo, pedalling away towards Doctor’s Bridge, but long before there, I spied a left turn down a narrow road signed ‘Corfu Donkey Rescue’. At last I’d found, after instructions from Mark, a road that went direct, if curvedly, to Skripero, with hardly an ascent.

I cycle gently between green hedges, trees forming shady tunnels, passing gaps through which I see meadows of flowers stirred by the afternoon breeze from the mountains. If I hold my breath the sound of bees comes from everywhere. I see butterflies, small birds, and, gliding on thermals, two eagles, mewing at one another where their separate circling intersects. In the distance, spread across the slopes beneath Trompetta, I see the separate parts of Ano Korakiana – Mougades, the Bear (where we live), and Venetia. An aeroplane passes over ahead, ascending northward
“Poor sods”
One of the difficulties of not believing is that I have no-one to thank for such happiness, so I do anyway, following pagan instinct - 'pagan' being the old name, so I was told by Richard Pine, for a villager.
“Blessed Mary, mother of God, pray for this sinner, now and at the hour of my death" and I, a Protestant.
****** ****** ******
On another Sunday Mark, John and Karen and I had Sunday lunch at ALS by the shore at Pyrgi. I cycled there through Ag Markos. Clouds with rain and wind and even some thunder during the night were clearing, leaving the shallow sea lapping the gravel beach near our table, limpid yet still blue over white and grey round stones, slightly ruffled so far as the horizon that underlies the mountains of Epirus across the Sea of Kerkyra.

Mark, John, Karen and Simon

In a month I’ll be finding it too hot this close to the shore, but now the climate was perfect, on a par with high summer in England, nearly shirt-sleeve weather.
“I passed you on the way” said Mark, who’d promised to drive me back later, bike folded in the back. We had beer, for me the green topped Ionian Beer I like, and later village rosé in a big carafe. Starters: courgette balls, saganaki - fried cheese, squid, and garlicky mashed potatoes - skordalia, and a rocket salad with balsamic vinegar and shavings of strong cheese. Bread too, fresh for Sunday; then, after just the right interval, whole sea bass twice, similar sea bream, and veal in wine sauce - sofritto.  All around us, Greek families and friends. Though visitors are arriving, planes and coaches coming and going, the holiday season has yet to speed up. People are still preparing premises, smartening frontages, laying planks on jetties, raising flags and signs.
On the way home Mark took the low road one which I cycle and walk, becoming a gravel track through deep woods, undergrowth and overhanging greenery.
“You do know there’s been a landslip ahead?”
When we got to where rain had washed away the ground supporting a concreted stretch of our road, he went on foot to inspect. Then before I had time to be a sensible coward drove over the stretch at risk, making mock panic noises.

Rain-made landslide undercutting the rough track between Pyrgi and Ano Korakiana

“The concrete has a metal grid reinforcing it. They’ll need to build a supporting wall and in-fill. Quite a job and expensive.”
Near where our route turned up to join the Ag Markos road, Mark steered suddenly left along a gravel track I’d not noticed before and brought us to a church low on the eastern edge of Ano Korakiana whose cemetery was covered in poppies, white daisies and delicate blue flowers, almost hidden beneath, the whole waving in the wind among the white marble gravestones with their artificial flowers, photos of the departed and small lamps.

We drove on, and stayed until after dark, sitting quietly in the garden at Karen's and John's below the village. A mass of grey cloud came charging over the mountains, surging before a north west wind, but still no rain. The trees rustled and bent. The air grew almost chilly.
“Home?”
Back in the house I slept early. The street lights were out, the village in darkness. Shapes and tones and now and then lightning and thunder

A windy evening at 208 Democracy Street

He who shewed mercy

I find the words of Job's helpers timeless in decrying my own thoughts and - so help me - perhaps actions, when trying to think of something to say to someone who's suffered a great loss. Easier to keep a distance but wrong. The same applies to the motives, unmentioned, of the priest and the Levite who both saw the man lying injured beside the 17 mile route and passed by on the other side. 'Priest' and 'Levite' - both people of a status and upbringing suggesting they ought to have known better. How pregnant is the silence of their excuses! I can fill in some of the spaces. "It might be a ruse. I wasn't born yesterday", "The man's drunk", "He has an infectious disease. My family!", "I'll go to the the authorities the moment I get to Jericho". These refugees. Innumerable. It is impossible to have a clear conscience except when in the midst of an act of kindness. Pause to allow reasoning. I'm in trouble.
**** **** ****

With my family for a Christmas day out

In Effie's Garden for Dimitra's 17th birthday

My two families - English and Greek

I saw them by Sydney Harbour

‘The basic premise of Greekness, the fundamental identity of the individual and the family is the motive power of art.” p.190

I look up from where I’m reading Richard’s book, still in my nightdress, sat on the balcony, enjoying the sun as it dries the dew settled on tables and chairs overnight. Staring up, shielding my eyes, a perfect double vapour trail pours from a tiny translucent brooch travelling in the azure over the island at 45° toward the rain gutter just above my head. The lines intersect. The plane vanishes, its muted rumble, just perceptible, continues until having enveloped the landscape, it jumps the mountain behind the village. The trail dissolves almost at once. Richard Pine writes of ‘unease’ in this land (p.190-191) about ‘authenticity and continuity’, ‘especially when “authentic” classical art is so different from 'authentic” classical culture’. In the previous chapter he speaks of having lost the will to live after Greece’s light was yet again hailed as ‘luminous’ during an 11 minute travelogue Gods, Myths, Heroes, designed in 2015 to promote tourism. ‘Crassly clichéd and juvenile I shrank in disbelief as I watched it’.
Richard may have been steeped, at the same school as I long ago, in the wondrous normality of classical Greece. That connection, that sublime marble head we were given in childhood and youth, is an irrevocable gift – a discipline and guide for life and death, anywhere - despite its steady excision from the syllabus of contemporary British education. But Richard’s alert to the truism that when we – who’s we? -  touch down on the concrete of Athens, Corfu, Lesbos (carefully screened from Middle Eastern refugees) or a hundred other tourist destinations we’ll be unlikely to find ourselves, as the travelogue promises, walking ‘through the forest with Artemis by our side’ noticing that the ‘olive trees that dot the landscape are the gift of Athena.’ (p.184). Richard says the tourist could be pointed towards Greece today, a place and state of mind that, given the economic and social depression of the times, could benefit from wise marketing. Instead there’s that ‘marble head’ still held – of which George Seferis said, complained, 80 years ago, “it exhausts my elbow and I don’t know where to put it down”.

Extract from Aristeidis Metallinos' The Vendor in the Village  - cat. 222

Extract from Aristeidis Metallinos' The Vendor in the Village 

Extract from Aristeidis Metallinos' The Vendor in the Village 

Extract from Aristeidis Metallinos' The Vendor in the Village 

Richard’s explorations interest me greatly for the reason that he returns several times to the various ways Greek artists, in recent times, have found places to rest that marble head, looking back to other springs than those rising from the ‘Glory that was Greece’, looking to more recent pasts, influenced by individuals and events that had as much as and more to do with the character of Modern Greece. He refers to the Cretan epic poem Erotókritos; to the Ionian poet Dionysios Solomos who wrote the words of the National Anthem; ...

to tavern ballads, fuelling ‘the desire by writers to regard the demotic, the life of the peasant and the village (or, today, the small urban community), as the thesaurus of their imagination and their confrontation with reality.’(p.191)

**** **** ****
Since I learned Delta Leisure, retailer of my stepfather’s DVDs, has gone into liquidation, I’ve been sending emails and making phone calls, to find out what’s happening with the company’s unsold stock of Out of Town DVDs as well as the whereabouts of master copies, art work, as well exploring the possibility of recovering unpaid royalties owed me on DVDs the company sold the first half of 2015. The process is slow - in part because Delta seem to have been selling off stock, including - without permission - films I’d licenced to them, in an effort to maintain cash flow before their bank pulled the plug. I’m not the only creditor in the dark.
Charles Webster emailed me the news before it became official and suggested I hurry to rescind my licence on the basis of insolvency and breach of contract and retrieve as much of my property as possible via the liquidator Meghan Andrews of Wilkins Kennedy LLP. It took two phone calls to get a response from her, after emails with hard copies of letters and legal attachments to follow, went unacknowledged. Her letter on 20th Oct:

Simon, I refer to your email below and our telephone conversation this morning. Firstly, please accept my apologies for the delay in responding to your correspondence. As discussed, on 21 September 2015 the Joint Administrators sold the Company’s stock and intellectual property to Vivat Direct Limited and Simply Media TV Limited respectively. Please note that the sales of these assets were only subject to such right, title and interest as the Company held in the same and as such cannot over-ride any contractual terms between yourself and the Company.  Please contact (she gives a name and contact details) regarding your masters and any stock that was subject to your contract with the Company. With regards to the monies owed to you in relation to the royalties that accrued in the period January to July 2015, this will constitute your unsecured claim in the Administration and I have attached a proof of debt form in this regard for your completion. Please be advised that I do not know if the Company’s records are sufficient for me to be able to advise you on the sales in the period to Administration and I am currently making enquiries in this respect for other licensors and so will advise you once I have established the position. Kind Regards

Contacting Gary Hopkins of SimplyMedia to confirm termination of licence, to caution against illegal sales of ‘Out of Town’ material as a breach of my rights and ask where I can find and collect OOT stock...I was sent a spreadsheet showing the whereabouts of separate batches of Delta stock...

Dear Gary. Thanks for that reply and spreadsheet. I will examine it carefully and come back to you if I have further questions. Delta seem to have been very ‘busy' with my material from July onward, making its recovery more complicated than I anticipated. I will start the process of collecting OOT material when I get back to UK, allowing for the delays you mention in your last letter. I attach the letter to Meghan Andrews of 20th Oct. It supplemented the other two letters I copied to you, seeking a written confirmation of what I had been told by Meghan over the phone. She and her organisation have not been especially efficient at answering my communications I’m afraid. Kind regards, Simon

Hi Simon. Obviously I am not privy to what Delta were doing in their final months, but I suspect you are better off without them. I have just had a look at the Delta sales spreadsheet and one customer  is shown as purchasing 3,728 units of OOT titles in August, having never purchased before. We did happen to see an invoice to this company which included 1,600 units of OOT stock - there was a bit of a story to it….
I don't know if that helps at all  in terms of Delta having been very "busy"? regards, G

Clearly there’s lots of work to do, including looking out for pirate sales of that last minute purchase of liquidated Delta stock to which Gary refers, as well as arranging to pick up a small amount of material from Cinram Logistics in Aylesbury, 255 units of OOT stock from MAM Logistics Group in Winsford, Cheshire and what appears to be much unsorted unspecified stock – in deep storage - from a warehouse provider in Milton Keynes – this latter not until the New Year, rescued it seems from destruction by Delta’s warehouse provider.
*** *** ***
I got news - 28th Oct - from Nicci Collins, that Handsworth Helping Hands’ (HHH) applications for the ‘Four Avenues Project’ for which John Rose and I submitted an application in July, has been approved.

Dear Simon. Re: - Application for Funding - Birmingham West & Central Local Community Safety Partnership; Small Grants Fund. Following your recent application, I am pleased to confirm that you have been awarded funding of £2140 for your Handsworth Helping Hands project. To finalise this, please…

…Nicci lists requests for a copy of our latest bank statement, our constitution, our policy statement on protection of children and vulnerable people, our latest DBS certificates, and an invoice that includes the number with which HHH is registered with Birmingham City Council’s Voyager system All these are digitised so that’s all straightforward. When this project is completed, HHH must also be ready to complete an account of how we have spent the grant and how far our proposed project has achieved its aims - a reasonable request.
“Now” as Lin points out “we have to do the work”
She's already reminding me of how swiftly £2140 can be used up. I've got to see if the researcher we lined up 4 months ago is still available, otherwise we must quickly find another. I've no illusions as to how easy it is to say you will do ‘some research’. Actually doing it is another matter. I think of how tricky it may be to draw out useful generalisations as to opinions among our inchoate, polyglot, transient and hyper-diverse population. We should still try.

FOUR AVENUES PROJECT

This project focuses on two of Birmingham Community Safety Partnership’s priorities – mobilising communities and helping vulnerable people. HHH’s plan is to carry out a variety of activities that draw on HHH’s existing skills and experience in managing ‘Clean-up Green-up’ projects with local people in four specific places – Brackley Avenue B20 3RG, Putney Avenue B20 3QU, Poplar Avenue B20 3QQ and Crompton Avenue B20 3QR, supported by research that offers the prospect of discovering how best to ensure that improvements made in these areas will last.
Recovery: With or without research these projects can start, as with other work we do in Handsworth, with one-off removal of mattresses and other bulky waste from residents unable to afford the services, accompanied by general waste accumulation clearance and street and alley tidying, no longer reliably carried out by the Council. In this stage our chief expenditure will be the provision of skips and their collection and removal, in partnership with BCC Fleet and Waste Management where skips risk over-filling.
Improvement: By ‘green-up’ we add to our ‘clean-up’ activities by drawing on the results of our research ‘reconnaissance’, to make environmental improvements such as make-overs of domestic frontages, including the provision, at the start of the 2016 growing season, of hanging baskets and pots as well as small repairs such as fence mending and gate hinge replacement. We also plan, with the involvement of local residents, to recover - with flowering evergreen shrubs - and weeding, currently overgrown street planters and other neglected public amenities for which no-one currently owns responsibility.
Continuity: To give continuity to our current local improvement work in Handsworth and add value to what we do, HHH plans to begin this project by investing £400 from the Small Grants Fund to employ a researcher. This will represent an agreed 50 hours research door-knocking and analysis exercise to find out what factors, including HHH activity, most encourage local people to assist us when we start working, to stay with us as well as continuing the improvements HHH volunteers have, with residents, been able to achieve in the four avenues. Additional measures contributing to continuity are those which improve upon the ‘recovery’ activities, involving equipment and materials such as plants, hanging baskets, compost, weed suppressant, pegs, and, where appropriate, kneelers, gloves, and small gardening tools to be used by us (three of us having extensive gardening and landscaping experience) and where requested, left with residents, sometimes in return for a donation. 

On the separate matter of a further grant to HHH from The Handsworth Charity, overseen by St Mary’s Parish Committee, to provide upkeep of our van during 2016-17, prospects seem good. That looks so simple compared to the ‘Four Avenues’ endeavour. It hardly matters whether our grant is small, like the one we’ve just won, or large. I see so many far larger sums of money seemingly disappearing into the black hole of apathy, inefficiency, incompetence and dubious and even outright corruption, that I’d rather work with a relatively small sum on a forlorn hope. If we don’t succeed the money will still be accounted for and little wasted. If we do succeed, we will have learned how to use a larger sum better.
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The Loveridges - descendants of the Gypsies evicted from the Black Patch in the 1900s, now supporters of the FoBPP

My friend Phil Crumpton from Smethwick keeps me in touch with any goings on about Black Patch Park. He send me a press story about the initiative the Friends of BPP told me to pursue – suggesting the Black Patch be brought into Birmingham’s Soho Ward. It’s a long shot but the Local Government Boundary Commission are redrawing wards in Birmingham. They might just give attention to the possibility of changing the profile of a peripheral Birmingham ward to take in the few extra acres of the Black Patch. There’d be no more cash from Birmingham than there’s been from Sandwell MBC but we might get a little more political traction on the future of a Birmingham Park than a Sandwell, who might be glad to be free of the cash they spend trying to stop the park and its surrounding streets being a long term fly-tipping magnet.

Black Patch Park and the Merry Hill Allotments in Soho & Victoria Ward, Sandwell MBC - on the border of Birmingham

August 3, 2015 10:19 pm...The main problem with this lovely little park is that no-one opens their window or front door on it. People who once lived around the Black Patch and would bring pressure to keep it clean and welcoming have moved or been moved away. The area is designated for industry, despite having all the infrastructure (metro, buses, roads, local schools and the cycle path along the nearby Birmingham Mainline canal) needed for badly needed housing all around it. The place is rich with mature trees and wildlife. A green oasis in a rough area. I love the Black Patch and find it magical - even with the fly-tipping inside and out (not just travellers'). The connection to history - Charlie Chaplin's likely birthplace, the Soho Foundry, the long association with the Romany, evicted from it in 1907 to create a 'recreation ground' - are a bonus but what the park needs is users. It doesn't help that the park is in Sandwell's Soho and Victoria Ward, when most of its users are in Birmingham's Soho Ward. It was once a Birmingham Park. it could be again. I wonder if Sandwell MBC really want the Black Patch. It's a headache. They've no money to spend on this historic space in an odd corner of their Borough

Express and Star 11th Oct 2015 - Campaigners: Let city run historic Smethwick park

Residents say Black Patch Park in Smethwick – believed to be the birthplace of Charlie Chaplin – has been neglected, with rubbish scattered around it on a regular basis. Although Sandwell Council has removed waste that has been dumped on several occasions, protestors and local residents believe the park has been in a state of decline for some time.

As the park is close the Birmingham border, many in the area believe it would be beneficial for it to be swallowed up by the second city.

Contact has already been made with Birmingham councillor Sharon Thompson to discuss the idea. The boundaries in Birmingham are set to change in 2018, with people being asked what they would like to see changed as part of a public consultation.

Charlie Chaplin’s son Michael made a prestigious trip to the park in August to unveil a new monument but was forced to trudge through rubbish as he made his way through the park, to the embarrassment of visitors.

Some people living in the area believe the park is not as well-maintained as others in Sandwell.

Headache

Simon Baddeley, a founder member of the Friends of Black Patch Park group, said: “There is a certain logic to it. It was a Birmingham park until the 1950s and many of the people who use it are from Birmingham. There are no votes in that park for Sandwell, it is right in a little corner of the borough and they have other parks to look after. I would think Sandwell would be glad to be rid of the headache.”

Councillor Thompson, who represents the Soho ward on Birmingham City Council, just over the border from Smethwick, suggested a move might not be out of the question.

She said: “It’s not that simple, it would be down the Boundary Commission. There is a consultation around boundaries in general and the public have been invited to take part in that consultation. If people have concerns about Black Patch Park and have justifiable reasons why it should be in the Soho ward they should contribute towards that consultation.

Cllr Sharon Thompson, Soho Ward, in Birmingham City Centre

“If Black Patch Park came into my ward I would obviously work with local residents to try and help them with anything they wanted to do.”

Sandwell Council said it was not aware of any plans to change who has responsibility for Black Patch Park and said the fact it has cleared up five tonnes of rubbish this week had demonstrated its commitment to it.

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Beside the wheelie bins on the carpark in Ano Korakiana someone had dumped a high quality children's mattress - metal sprung between sturdy layers of coconut matting. Naturally it came home with us. With some difficulty I removed the zipped cover and washed it, removing two rain rust stains and minor dirt. Then came the twenty minute task of getting the cover back on....

...I struggled.
"Give it here!"
Lin took over, turned the cover inside out and starting at one end we tugged the cover back on and zipped it up.
"That'll be just right for Hannah next time she's here"
How utterly outside the market are our DIY endeavours. Amy found some abandoned wooden shutters in a rubbish pile at the back of the beach we enjoyed at Sidari a few weeks ago.

Our favourite Sidari beach - out of season

Lin said “They could do for our bathroom window. The rain drives in there under the metal window frame, Mosquitoes get in, despite the lace curtain, if we leave the window open to get rid of condensation. The place is the dampest room in the house.”
Two weeks later two of the shutters, a hinged pair meant for one side of a larger window, have been cut to size, with much offering up, heavy sanding to give a gradient on the closing edges and some chipping of the render round the window.

Small patches of rot at the bottom edge of each shutter were cut out with the multicutter - what a tool that is -

 ...and hard wood plugs made up to insert and glue in place after the holes had been thoroughly painted with preservative; the surface smoothed with a sander. Lin repaired all other small cracks with silicone filler, after which I did further sanding, including each surface of 44 louvre slats. I inserted a latch; inset, again with the multicutter, to avoid colliding with the mosquito net that must go between window and shutters. Lin applied undercoat to both shutters. After this had dried, came two coats, all over, of rich Corfu green gloss.
My first attempt to attach an upright inside the window on which the shutters would swing failed; my drilling for holes for rawlplugs breaking away chunks of render and the roughened edges of loosely mortared air bricks. Moving the upright in an inch, I found holding, made firmer with strong glue in the drilled holes and around rawlplugs. The upright was treated with anti-termite and woodworm liquid followed by preservative, then undercoat, then two coats of Corfu gloss. My multi-tool made easy work of cutting the insets for two recovered male hinges, but of course now the upright was lodged inside the window aperture. The only way to get the shutters in and out to offer them up entailed unscrewing and rescrewing the hinges. I’m glad of an electric screwdriver.
To work on the shutters I climb carefully out of the kitchen window and stand in the narrow space between our house and the neighbour’s wall. Lin can also pass tools out to through the bathroom window. We got the hire-car back on Thursday, so I drove down to a window shop on the road to the airport. Showing the craftsman a diagram with measurements he made me a mosquito net on a spring runner as I watched. At last some cash involved! €40 but he had no change. I drove a mile or so around a complicated one-way system until I found a sweet shop where I got €10 of pralines and change for my €50 note. I’d previously tried for change from a Fistaria ordering two souvlakia but before I could present my note a priest entered and ordered a box of roast chicken that was already piping from the grill. He handed over a large note, using up all the change in the till. I ended up paying for my order – delicious, but only €2.50, with the last of my small change.
Back home with the mosquito net I set about the work of fitting the side pieces and the net holder inside the window aperture in the small gap between the shutters and the window; a near perfect fit, but the space lacked a single true right-angle as I knew. I lined up four rawlplugged holes on each side with small wood slivers steadying the framework. It was finally in place but the spring had somehow gone right out of the wind up roller. The mosquito frame and net will have to go back to the shop on Monday, except that’s the day I’ve also arranged for the professional I’ve found - contrary to Lin’s wishes, she thinking we can do it ourselves – to destroy the wasps in the roof above our heads which needs to be recovered beneath its tiles, a job for which I’m also hoping to get a quote on Monday morning.

Lin sent this picture for our wedding anniversary - 31st Oct 1978 or was it '79? Whatever