Small works

Clunk!
From downstairs Lin calls “What have you done now?”
“We have a problem”
The stove, just refilled with wood, was keeping us warm. The hollow half-cone cast iron moulding that linked it to the stove pipe had dropped off onto the marble base of the stove. Six 5mm bolts sheared.

“It’s because you let the lid fall with a bang all the time” said Lin “Cast iron’s brittle.”
We opened both french windows to clear any smoke. I measured the height from floor to chimney, went down to the apothiki and found a suitable piece of sturdy plank under 60cm to prop back the moulding, now cooled in water. I offered up the moulding, pushed the plankprop under it, while Lin jammed in planky firewood wood, front and back, to hold it in place.

Sorted until the morning, I considered the problem. The sheared bolts were firmly married to the stove casing, almost invisible.
“I’ll have to drill them out and cycle down to Tzavros in the morning to get replacement nuts and bolts.”
The morning was bright; clear blue. Ripe for a cycle ride south.
First I took the moulding outside. My metal drills found an easy centre in the bolt heads. Through to the other side, the metal  drill gave a grip to a big nail used as a punch. Bang, bang, bang. A sharp tap with a small hammer and the holes were clear. I tidied the interior surface with a sanding disk on the angle grinder.
“If the rest of the job’s as easy…”
I disconnected the stove pipe and swivelled the stove to the light. Reaching inside with grippers I tried to turn the bolts. No way were they going to give. But drilling was hampered by the inadequacy of my metal drills and the difficulty of getting them centred on the sheared end of the bolts.
The solution was for Lin to hold the moulding in place so that its bolt holes gave me a centre on the stove. With the six bolt holes just pricked with the drill, I began drilling proper, having first used the angle grinder inside the stove to cut through the immovable nutted bolts. Sparks flew.
“Why bother?” Said Lin “Once you’re through the casing they’ll surely drop off anyway”
“It feels better this way”
Drilling with my metal drills was frustrating. They were the cheapest kind and lost their edge in moments.
I got out my bicycle, checking tyres for thorns at the end of the path to the lower road. The pleasure of being on the large bicycle on a fresh sunny morning – a downhill run almost the whole 7 kilometres to Tzavros. A list of small things to buy.
At Kostas’ I got the 5mm nuts and bolts, but he was out of 5mm metal drills - the cheap ones and the good ones. On to Technomart another kilometre. They had some in stock.
Now the long ascent back to the village – a test of my declining powers. I stopped for a scoop of melon ice cream and a glass of water at Emeral; rested at the Doctor’s Bridge turn and ate a choc biscuit and again, after the turn onto the village road, at the bridge over the stream. The wind was fresh and chill; wild flowers blooming; the mountain sides greening with spring leaves. It was pleasing how a five minute rest recovered my powers. Here was the steepest part in the last half kilometre. Fine on 1:1 gears. I walked up the path, rang my bell.
Lin in our small garden says “Hi”
“Right let’s see what happens now. Make me a cup of tea, woman”
“Yes master”
Each hole took the best part of 10 minutes drilling, with me switching through even my new drills.
“You need a diamond tip”
“Get me a set for Christmas”
The holes were not well enough aligned to get all the bolts through. We argued, Lin as usual using that dratted past tense containing the futile imperative “You should have…”
She left me to it and went to work in the garden. I used a larger drill from my set, a cheap one, but it worked well enough, enlarging the drill holes now the casing had been pierced. Offered up again, each bolt, two at odd angles, came through. I tightened the nuts. All flush. I loosened them again.

“Li-in! We’re ready for the fire cement.”
“Hm” she said “Well done Baddeley”

The cement – red sticky from a tube was applied as I watched. Then I tightened the nuts for good.
“Looks good” I said “I’ll just grind off the bolts an inch”
“Not too close to the nuts. While the stove’s facing this way I’ll give the back a coat of stove paint.”
That done we eased our mended stove back in place, vacuuming up ash and soot. Lin applied marble cleaner to clean scuffing on the base; re-attached the stove pipe to the next length of pipe, sealing the join with silver tape.
“Cup of tea?”
“Yes”
“And now be more careful about not banging the stove lid. I keep telling you”
“Yeah yeah”
I put my clothes in the washing basket, had a shower and felt pleasantly clean and achy from the cycling and drilling.
Later I said “The problem with the sorts of repairs we do, or the things we make...It’s not like a craftsman doing similar things over and over...improving on experience; knowing the measures and having the right tools to hand. How could we have known that stove moulding would just drop off one evening? What do I know about how it attaches…the width of the holes, the number of bolts? Now it’s reattached is it likely to happen again? Touch wood, no. Something else will break or go wrong. No wonder I sometimes seem cackhanded; always an innocent...If you get me diamond tipped drills when will I need them again?”
**** **** ****
On Good Friday, coming home from a walk in the late afternoon, we could hear singing in the large school room above us – the choir from Sokraki rehearsing one of the three Great Friday songs, ‘Ω γλυκύ μου έας’ – ‘Oh! My Sweet Spring’ that I chose to begin my mother’s funeral in the Highlands. In old age, memory’s palette has more shades to mix from present cues. I allowed myself – so it felt – a tear. I wonder if there’s some reservoir of grief as yet untapped though I sense, as someone gingerly feels themselves after a fall, that my mourning’s done. The richness of her long life, her hand in mine at her last breath, Bay and I beside her bed, her genes so thoroughly, often familiarly, in me; and didn’t we both say at moments of chat immersed in favourite places, happy with the hour, even the whole day, that, come a time, these things would all pass. Once I grew out of thinking of my mum’s death as beyond bearing, the infant's nightmare, their ending became the hidden ingredient - the risky spice - of our shared enjoyments. I like seeing things of hers here in Greece – the windvane that followed us for 50 years, the pitch pine drawers used to store garden things now part of the bedroom wardrobe Lin and I built last year, the pyjamas Lin’s wearing now, the cashmere neckwarmers good for cycling in chilly winds, a small oil portrait of a woman that mum found in a junk-shop (when such places existed), seen now in the Greek light that seeps through the shutters.

Easter Saturday coming up to midnight: Stephanie and Wesley live close to the higher church. They’d invited us to a recording, in their big sitting room, of the Corfu Christmas panto, Cinderella, in which Wesley played a moustached and goatied ugly sister performing in ever expanding hoop dresses, while Steph played half an extemporised double act between the main scenes – one of two spivs in pin stripe and trilbies. Maria, also in the panto, had joined us with her sons James and Adam. The finale done, we got our coats on against the chill and strolled with candles unlit to Ay Georgias.
“The Greeks find the British enjoyment of men dressed as women and vice versa as strange” said Wes.
The annual panto’s plot is topped and tailed, characters and plot, exposed to a hybrid Brit-Greek audience by a Corfiot clown front of curtain.
The triangular courtyard of the church was full, a platform with speakers for the priest and a lozenged image of Christ risen, and, beside the church, the brass helmets and plumes of the village band. We joined the throng of familiar faces and every age. I stepped up via the back door into the smoke wax scented glistening gloom of the church’s crowded interior audience to prayer and incantation, candles all around below the lights of the big chandelier. The congregation moved slowly towards the front, lighting their candles from the original flame and walking them down to join the people outside. From the podium there were more prayers until at midnight "Kristos Anesti!" bang bang bang bang of fireworks, a merry tune struck up by the band and further away the sound of shots, hugging and kissing and handshaking, faces uplit by candles. Down the short steep hill, guarding our candles in the wax cradles Wesley had given us, to Democracy Street where villagers lined the road, more hugs and kisses and the hum of happy greetings “Kronnia Polla!” “Kala Paska” “Kristos anesti” "Alethos Anesti”. Under our porch was room for one more candle flame cross to join three from previous Easters.
** **
Peter and Elena are married and she expects a child in September. Easter Sunday afternoon, a spotless blue day, Peter’s parents, Paul and Lula invited us to a lamb roast at Elina's parents, Procopius and Xrysa's home on Filareto, beside the road to Kanoni. We’re used to filotemo here, but here, if that’s possible, the gift was amplified as we - strangers - were, from the first second of our arrival, drawn into the orbit of two Greek families joined in pride and happiness at each others’ children’s union. Starting with warm handshakes and kisses we were sat at joined up terrace tables under a veranda overlooking the narrow road from town. Between us already many plates spread with prosciutto, salami, feta cubes, slices of hard cheese and village rosé in jugs not allowed to empty, a bottle of tsipero circulating and Sunday toast. To the rhythm of songs whose lyrics all but I and Lin knew the company sang, now and then breaking off to clash our glasses and plastic cups in toasts to health up and down the tables.

Procopius

“Come” said Procopius “the spit”
He gestured the turning. I followed him to a cooking space where glistening with fat a whole lamb turned above the charcoal, watched by Anna, Xrysa's mother.
“Here, baste!” he handed me a brush and jar of olive oil and then pinched off a piece of crisp skin and juicy flesh, piquant with rosemary, salt and the smell of the roasting beast.
“Ready?” he asked me
“Thekka lepta?” I ventured
“Thekka lepta” he instructed his mother, who smiled without a hint of indulgence.
Back at the table village sausages were added to the mezes, cut six or seven times, to make delectable mouthfuls.
Lin began nudging me as I ate “Don’t be so greedy”
We sang and hummed and toasted and drank, Paul, Lula, George, Lin, I, Procopius, Xrysa  George, Rula and her daughter Eleni, Pete and Elina, his brother Kostas.

Procopius and George ready to unspit the lamb

A plate of kokoretsi passed round - a delicacy some don't like because made of lamb's intestines turned inside out, washed, rubbed with salt, soaked in lemon juice, threaded onto a skewer, wrapped with the intestine to hold the roll together, crisped over the fire. It was time to prepare the lamb for the table, unshackle its neck, draw the spit from centre, lay the cooked carcass on wood and chop it limb from sizzling limb. Procopius and George prepared the feast. Chop chop chop. Bones and sinews gave way. Rich slivers of meat and crisp skin were laid in square platters for our table. I carried one, trailing the delicious scent of the roast to the table and so to our plates to be enjoyed with the help of fingers, fatty, hot and lickable.

Procopius filled the wine jugs, led the toasts amid the eating and the singing and dancing. Two plates were smashed followed by more, with Xrysa adding the regular clanging of dropped oven and baking tins “Oopa” “Oopa”.

When the younger people had gone the grown-ups continued the meal with two enthusiastic household dogs bounding under and around the tables. We played 'conkers' with dyed red hard boiled eggs - a game I still haven't the knack to win.  As the sun sank and began to dazzle us Xrysa hung a cloth from the beams of the veranda. Procopius - or was it Paul? - threw more plates to smash in the road...

...and then we continued dancing there, waving to passing cars on their way to Vlacherna and Kanoni, some drivers and passengers waving back happily “Kala Paska” “Kronia Polla”.
Music, dancing, plate smashing, ironware clashing continued, tables were swiftly cleared, more wine poured, sweet things served on platters, and hardly consumed, before Procopius whipped the whole table cloth with all on the table to the floor “Oopa” – and danced amid the shambles swiftly tidied by Lula and Anna, who’d already swept our wreckage from the road. Then we were dancing, even I, on one of the tables. Procopius picked up the other and threw it over. Xrysa pulled a hollow brick from the garden and hurled it into the shattered debris of plates and glasses. Two girls passing outside were invited to join us. They too were soon dancing and singing, plied with food and wine
“You realise where you are?” said Paul “we're all vampires!”

Then there was coffee. Slowly the party wound down, the terrace tidied, even as the music and singing continued. In the Greek way of enjoying a party eyes never glaze over, speech is never slurred, no-one gets drunk, for all the wine that flows, and no-one whispers “You know I really like you”. Wit stays sharp. Mickey is taken. Procopius and Paul, father to father “Me Greek bastard no English! You English bastard, no Greek”. At some point I went over to Paul; gave his shoulders a hug “Thanks for asking us to this. I couldn’t be happier”. So when it was time to leave we all hugged, kissed, shook hands and went our ways.
*** ***

Anna Metallinos has brought me a rich diplo and chocolate cake these last two days as her daughter Angeliki and I work in the Aristeidis Metallinos museum listing the features of each of the laic sculptor’s works – whether marble or stone, its dimensions, whether a full sculpture or a relief, oblong or oval. Andreas has dropped in and answered more of my questions. He brought in his father's marble - Kozanis κοζάνυς. The works in stone - like one of my favourites, the small statue of a woman - came from local houses that were falling down or were stones just lying beside the road, which might have come originally from a quarry at Sinies.
"Why did he sometimes use marble and sometimes stone?"
"We don't know"
"Which is easier to work?"
"Marble"

Right now this is my favourite - smoothed stone; hardly 15 inches high

The wood stove is working!

Just before sunrise on Monday morning I checked and found the fire had stayed in overnight. The logs are seasoned, from a truckload I’d bought and carted down our steps and stacked in February last year. G and M had carried them from beside the house where they’d have got soaked and stacked them in the apothike from where I carted six logs upstairs last night. I placed an olive log on glowing embers but saw I needed smaller logs. I made a cup of tea, fetched a dustpan and brush, and a handsaw and put on socks and pants and brought the laptop upstairs. The embers needed coaxing but until fire flamed, smoke came from the door and lid when opened. I didn’t want to spoil a growing ash bed with the riddle and was wandering whether to open a window to increase the draw when I spied a flame. I opened the front. The fire spread, muttering and clicking. I drank my tea, basking in the enveloping warmth. The bedroom door was open to spread the warm for when Lin dressed. Bright sunlight leaks through all the eastward windows. Shadows of invisible smoke rise twirling beside the shadow of the stove on the white wall. I assume it’s very thin smoke off the paint of the stove that will stop in time, or does a sun so bright make shadows of the heated air? More vexing right now is a foot long crack in the marble slab behind the stove. Was this made by too much heat behind the stove; by a flaw in the kavalla? Will it extend across the rest of the slab? We need to get to know the stove; the effect of its placing in the room, how its heat spreads, our choice of fuel, the weather, the design of the flue – inside and out. In the room is a thirteen foot stainless steel tubular radiator too hot to touch and already turning iridescent, adding to our warming. Yesterday morning condensation in the flue dripped brownily on the floor from the horizontal joint closest to the wall. Heat from embers prevented that this morning. Olive creates a lot of tar and we help create a market for olive wood – the tree whose abundance is part of the island’s character. I was assured this load came from the trimming of local trees every two years, but we’d prefer to collect the generous amounts of discarded wood we see by the road and along the shore. One day, not so far in the future, people will mock us for not knowing how to use the sun that shining so dazzling on us in the depth of winter to warm our homes. The kafenion here has two solar heating panels facing south west beside its terrace – as an example to all who pass.
* * *
There are so many small birds frolicking around the gardens and the robins are numerous and allow you to get within a few feet. We wondered if the shooting sends them into the gardens and empty buildings of the village like some modern agriculture in England drives country creatures into the city using the canals as routes and parks, allotments and untended gardens as habitats. D told us the other day of a worried man who’d wandered up to the place they’re making a house below Ano Korakiana and asked, in English, if they’d seen an animal he was seeking. “It has a dark voice and…” – making a swift gesture as though combing back a quiff and “a chi!” – pronounced hard. Could this have been a badger, or the particular character of a missing dog?

* * *
Sunday morning, reckoning the mortar dry round the flue hole in the wall, I light our stove. It warms the main upstairs room. We drop in on a table top sail at Drifter’s Bar in Dassia and buy cutlery, china, pictures, a mirror and a four foot long hand-made hand-painted papier maché parrot on a stand. The breeze from the north chilled us even in direct sun creating the clearest of views across the channel as we passed through Ipsos. Once home we finished work on the guest bedroom door and hung it with glass replaced, between the kitchen and the downstairs bedroom. In the evening with the temperature falling below freezing the stove warmed the whole house. We sat and gaze at the flames listening to the logs, which I’d brought up from the apothiki, crackling, inhaling the slight waft of wood smoke. It’s only a week now before we return to England for five weeks.

* * *
Sunday morning: The sun rose into a watery sky. There was a shower in the early morning. Lambros and one mate arrived at 9.00am. This confirmed my learning that you need to be on the spot with any building. Not because of dishonesty or incompetence but because work on houses, like surgery, requires regular revision of original plans because of the inconstancy of materials and settings. A flue tube as just too large to fit the second bend poking out of the wall. Our spare tube is needed and another cut with the grinder. Another fitting is too loose.
How to make it stable? Our longest ladder is almost impossible to position safely in Leftheris’ garden. One more rung of extension might have made it possible but there’s a safety fitting that makes extension that far impossible. Rightly so. We find one acceptable position, which is OK to insert the pipe and chimney top and mortar the outside part of the hole made for it, but not to drill for a bracket to hold it. Lambros asks for wire. He finds the right stuff off the neighbouring waste ground and fixes the flue to the same bracket as the gutter’s. I hold the foot of the ladder like a limpet while Adoni hands Lambros mortar through an upstairs window. Meanwhile Lin’s putting a coat of varnish on the conscientiously stripped and sanded and filled door for the guest bedroom which now has a worn surface of ancient eau de nil lacquer with wood showing through that interior decorators enjoy crafting and lovers of the new regard as scruffy. Then upstairs Lambros and Adoni are straightening out our drunken archway – with render. I’m on the phone to Paul. “Is there a difference here between mortar and plaster?” “Not really. It all depends. We tend to go for a slightly knobbly finish.” “OK. Thanks.” Later when Aln trying to restore the upstairs downstairs two-way switch he finds a two-way switch but no wiring leading upstairs. “Where did it go?”

Plan of 208 Democracy Street

Bank holiday and I've got an intray of things but I thought I'd better just do this. "It's like a boot" said our solicitor at the conveyance meeting at CPA at 15, Kapodistriou Street, Corfu, on 7 February. For a moment I thought he said 'boat' and was confused. "No boot, boot!" So we are putting the rubble from the outside staircase and balcony, so wantonly removed by the previous owners' builder, in the 'toe' where our present builder will finish it with random 'sikis' (Συκης) stone, leaving soil for growing things. The apothiki sits in the heel of the boot, around which runs a steep 100 metre path to Ano Korakiana's lower road and a bus stop. The square above is a veranda under a spacious balcony with its view - one of the good points of the previous owners' ill-conceived improvements, though its woodwork needs strengthening and treating. Then come two more squares that were once separate dwellings but are now joined. The higher one - just before the square of our neighbours' house - had a second storey with two bedrooms added to it and a roof separate from the roof of the dwelling below it. Herein lay problems. The builder had installed no insulation or waterproofing in the roof of dwelling to which he'd added a storey and given it only the slightest slope and failed to make good the seal between the roofs of the previous separate dwellings. He had not touched the other roof. Rain streamed into the upstairs bedroom and came out through the amateurishly installed flue of the downstairs stove. Both roofs had to be rebuilt and relined from scratch using most of the original tiles. This work is done. We will live with the 'insufficient' slope of one roof, especially now we've taken away the piles of rubble and mortar in the breeze block enclosures the 'builder' had placed by the west walls of both dwellings to hold the rubble of the external stairs. These stored Corfu's copious rain, dampening the sturdy walls we've now reopened to the sun.
In the lower storey of the house, nearer the apothiki, there's to be a dining room to the left, (a table cloth now on our plastic table) then the hallway from a central door below the balcony. Across the hall there's a utility room and just above that a bathroom with shower, tub and WC emptying into a fresh smelling cesspool. The lino on these floors will be taken up so we can enjoy the tiled floors beneath. In the upper storey of the same part of the house there are two rooms served by a new wooden stairway with a narrow opening on which I bump my head. These rooms will be made one, with an arch between. The stairway opening will be lengthened and widened; the pitch pine floor beneath the fitted carpets recovered and varnished. The woodfire will be brought upstairs and stood on semi-white 'kavala' marble from Euboea (tell me another six letter word with one consonant). This marble matches some that is in the house already. It will stand by the east side of the enlarged room. A window looking east to Albania - crudely bricked up on the same wall - will be reopened alongside but out of the way of a new flue. The neighbours say 'that's fine' 'endaxi endaxi'. No building permit is needed. This window was already there. Downstairs in the next part of the house (adjoining the neighbours) there's a stable door off the alley into what will be a bedroom. The rug we found on the beach will lie on its dark variegated marble floor. A curtained double door - yet to be fitted - separates this bedroom from the kitchen where Lin has economically assembled second hand equipment - small oven, grill and fridge. Plates, cutlery, cups, glasses, the familiar kitchen utensils are being distributed in drawers and cupboards below and above a spacious workstop and double sink.
Our exciting new house has been the victim of an incompetent renovator but, after a month's working holiday, we are on the way to recovery. It helps that a range of minor tones - including pink, grey, pale blue and mustard - have now been covered with white paint. Damp areas are drying out, the lime plaster prepared with a Greek version of transparent PVA as a base for paint.

One of the first things I associate with Greece is marble - initially the marble floor and skirting stones of the flat where I stayed in a room lent by a relative near Koloniki in Athens in 1957. With its distinctive smell the marble emanated cool in what was, for me, unfamiliar warmth.