Picnic at Execution Island

We’re hoping to get at least one side of the apothike roof tiled before we leave for England on Wednesday. The weather is warming up at last. By our standards it's getting especially hot on the roof. * * *
On Thursday we went on Summer Song to Gouvinon Island, also called Lazaretto - Λαζαρέτο - and before that Aghios Dimitrios, about 3.5 sea miles SSE of Ipsos. About to drive from Ano we found our front tyre flat.
"We're jinxed" mutters Lin.

Του Σωματείου «ΛΑΖΑΡΕΤΟ»

The jetty

I couldn’t believe the small ‘get home’ spare. Even tho’ reassured by Yianni, our car hirer, we got a lift from Honey and Alan to the harbour. A slight south breeze allowed us to sail gently along the coast in nearly the right direction, past Dassia, Dafnila and little Cape Kommeno, from where we could glimpse the island’s concrete jetty facing the shore opposite Gouvia. With Summer Song’s shallow bilge keels bumping the soft weedy bottom, we moored at its head using fenders and a spring to keep our bow from scraping. We laid out squabs to enjoy a picnic on the jetty below a red earth path leading into the woods. Then, cresting the gentle slope, we came upon ranked crosses on spaces too small for individual graves, nearly all dated 1948 or 1949. Beyond was a chapel being restored, close to a larger building, also being restored and added to – elevator, plumbing and cesspool - with a European sign reporting a €314k project – a place to tell a local story of people killing one another. It was a pretty place, difficult to leave with a freshened north breeze pushing the boat onto the shallows. Alan on the jetty hauled us round to catch the wind.

I sailed into deeper water leaving him momentarily abandoned, then circled back so he could leap aboard at the bow as we headed north, leaning to the wind, for a delightful passage home – tacking up the coast on small blue waves.

Note: With even the trustiest of sources it’s inconsiderate to speak of other people’s history – Australian or Greek or English - in their presence. It’s one thing to be invited, within friendship, to share understanding; another to presume to impart the case for the truth to someone you are only starting to know. I regret my tactlessness. I need to be more alert to the possibility that liberal inquisitiveness can be experienced as overbearingly impolite.

The wall on Execution Island

* * *
 E-mail to JM in Australia:

Dear John. I realise that the quikpod is a sort of autobiographical tool - so that you can include yourself and anyone with you in your narrative. The old way is the timed shutter - click, dash and smile and find you've cut off your head in the picture (:)) Since you went the wisteria you and Annie wired up for us has been making steady progress in a variety of directions. A friend tells us it takes 7 years for rhizomes to appear on a new planted wisteria, so we've about five more years to wait. I've bought a spare battery and charger so as to have a starter back up for the boat. Fingers crossed. There have been lots of grumbles here about health services and the delay in the completion of new hospital that you may recall seeing at Kontokali by the main road. One problem is staffing with sufficiently qualified medics and para-medics. Thinking about this I realise that sustaining a fully staffed modern hospital (e.g. to meet the ever-rising health expectations of Greeks as well as a x-European and even global population of potential visitors and expat residents) is a wicked problem on an island of around 107,000 residents. Lin and I were thinking on Birmingham's excellent health support (by and large) but it serves a city and outlying population of more like 6 million. Instead of grumbling we should be wondering about what is actually a feasible level of health provision - what can be sustained. Corfu presents many generic dilemmas about what makes a sustainable community. Have you had permission to yet to use the XY video? How are you doing on film processing - capturing, downloading, editing, compressing? I guess all the video Annie made while here would be good material for honing skills. The ESRC bid that Jonathan Davies and I put together for looking at relations between officials (in Birmingham) and a variety of lobbying group representatives to explore power asymmetry (hierarchy) in what perhaps has been envisioned, rather too easily among New Labour policy-makers to be distributed power (heterarchy) has come together well, though if we're successful work will not start until mid-2010. Thinking about the XY film, I realise how vital is your knowledge of the political context (the 'reading') within which the conversation occurs - not least because it includes, implicitly, a feel for relations of power in the council's political environment. Love from both of us to both of you

* * *
Tuesday morning. Had fresh lightly scrambled eggs on toast for breakfast; then to Lin, just waking, in my best Stephen Fry butler “His lordship is taking tea on the balcony and wonders if you’d care to join him, my lady.” “We better get on with the roof” says Lin. * * * Using the new charger I’ve bought I checked there was a full charge in the spare battery I’ve also bought from Kostas Zervos at Auto Service Electric in Pyrgi to have a reliable back up starter for Summer Song. Dave says “…and get him or his dad, Spiros, to give your starter motor a good overhaul”. It’s ridiculous to be so dependent on electricity, where in other boats I’ve had a pull start outboard or a motor that starts with a handle; a flat battery and your stuck. Well not entirely, but calm is so prevalent in the tideless sea beset by calms where fore and aft mooring is the norm and Lin, who’s sailed with me in the fuller seas of the West Country insists “I just want our boat to take us on picnics.” We’re planning, based on the Thursday forecast, an excursion with Alan and Honey, to ‘sail’ (I wish) few miles south to Gouvinon Island, known as ‘Execution Island’ for its doleful use in the recent past; also as a lazaretto for quarantining people with contagious diseases. It seems there’s a jetty there we could use if it’s too messy or deep to anchor “I don’t want to anchor anyway” says Lin “I want to see the island” “Yeah, well me too”.
* * *
Monday. “Let’s start tiling the apothiki today.” I phoned Alan about mix.”Four to one plus lime replacement – they’ll have that stuff at Tzavros”. We went to a sand and cement supplier opposite the marble factory on the Sidari road and paid €9 for 25k of cement and four sacks of sand and rather more for 5 litres of Durolit. We’ve never tiled a roof, so needed to figure how to position the many sized thigh tiles and where to apply our mortar, and even how to get on the roof to lay the tiles.

* * *

PASOK have made an interesting choice for their spokesperson on the environment in Spyros Kouvelis, only elected to Parliament in September 2007 after fortuitously getting elected from PASOK's state-wide list, partly as a result of ND calling a snap-election hardly a month after that year's devastating fires. 8 May Athens News describes his newness to government, though as an environmentalist he's not new to politics. Thrasy Petropoulos' op-ed ends describes how Kouvelis' thinking on environment policy differs from the current environment and public works minister, Yiorgos Souflias.

"Take his recent town-planning scheme for Attica...In it you have a whole load of sound principles until you come to the implementation level. An example is Mesogia - in eastern Attica - where we are effectively developing a whole new city of one or two million people. The first thing I would do there is put an end to the suburban sprawl. I would think that that should be the number one priority of the scheme. I would like to make suggestions and corrections to the plan but, unfortunately, I cannot. I have to turn it down flat, which doesn't help anybody."

"...think of the effect of your work on other people’s views"

Long ago while picking up for a Shropshire farmer, rough shooting on the moors above Strathnairn, I sat in the heather chatting with his wife, and I asked how she thought the world would end - by our hand or nature's? "Our world you mean?" "Yes I suppose I do," "When it's all been discovered," "So we're nearly there". Now that Everest has to be regularly cleared of visitor’s rubbish and cruise ships visit Captain Scott country; you know where you are in the Amazon to six metres using SatNav (OK it's satellite imagery that exposes predatory cattle ranching on rain forest), and the world’s on Googlemap, this chase for the 'unspoiled' is becoming outmoded - though it keeps metropolitan travel touts employed, along with all those academics researching the marketability of destination. We’re moving on - from commodified discovery to how we share an earth we're despoiling. At times I am enveloped in a venomous detestation of things seen, sharing in Waugh's misanthropy at the hand of man on the land (not a link I expected but containing the spirit of my point), at:

... the grim cyclorama of spoliation which surrounds all English experience in this century and any understanding of the immediate past…incomplete unless this huge deprivation of the quiet pleasures of the eye is accepted as a dominant condition, sometimes for mere sentimental apathy, sometimes poisoning love of country and of neighbours. (Evelyn Waugh (1964) A Little Learning: The First Volume of an Autobiography)

Given a moment to reflect, I'm not of that deep green conviction that hates the human race, consciously or unconsciously wishing it out of the picture.

The older I grow and the longer I look at landscapes and seek to understand them, the more convinced I am that their beauty is not simply an aspect but their very essence and that that beauty derives from the human presence.

I agree with J B Jackson, an American who thought about landscape all his life. I also agree, almost fervently, with those lines in Matthew Arnold's greatest poem, whose near final lines make the same point about the impotency of landscape as a source of human consolation or joy:

...the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain...

It's a way, I suppose, of saying that if Lin and I quarrel no landscape, however beautiful, will join us - though gazing over the olive groves across the ageless Kerkyra Sea to the dappled uplands of Epirus provides opportunity for making peace, even cues for my better self.

We are the children of our landscape; it dictates behaviour, and even thought, in the measure to which we are responsive to it. Lawrence Durrell 'Justine'

Friends came to supper; he from the estuary end of Essex, she a Corfiot born in the village where they live - a cluster of lights we glimpse at night astride a rise between us and the southern Pantokrator. Their company office overlooks the plataea, near the family taverna, opposite a fine town house, used as Wehrmacht HQ during the Occupation, next to a house of many cats owned by the old musician who advised us not to buy a traditional piano - “unless you re-tune it weekly in the heat and humidity” – and found us a good electronic substitute. Our friends have a benign rule about building or restoring houses on the island which, if observed, might do more than any other to reduce the spread of unattractive building everywhere. “Build what you like, how you like, but think of the effect of your work on other people’s views”.

A fine view - so long as you're inside the building

For their business, they employ workmen conscientious about their craft. Our once leaky roof is proof. The new one made by their people, done in three days last February at fair cost, has kept the house dry through the rainiest of winters. They’ve no wish to impose views on anyone, except those they employ. “You can’t resist human nature – especially on a small island”, but I wonder if you can't try to arrive at an understanding among neighbours, that they respect other’s subjectivity when building, while local government can, in making rules and giving guidance to builders and their clients, strive to maintain this principle of thinking about other's people views when creating one's own.

This simple principle was formulated because so frequently and blatantly ignored. Thus, an entrepreneur knowing the potential of a sublime panorama, defaces it for those not paying to gaze on it from the windows of their multi-floored concrete box, or another, seeing the same scene, sets up a beach restaurant whose tacky front becomes invisible to customers sat inside; and others construct, on a green mountain ridge, an extended line of ill-proportioned apartments and villas from which residents - temporary and permanent - can look down on a heart stopping landscape of sea and cliffs, patchworked with shifting shades and colours beneath the changing sky. This aggregation of unlovely buildings, accurately christened ‘Beautiful View’, blights that view for those who pass below.Or perhaps one of the worst breaches of the principle - no longer permitted in Corfu - multi-floored hotels stacked on headlands affording guests panoramas for miles around blighting the shoreline for everyone else.Our friends’ principle is universal. It's disobeyed globally, so that when I see a certain place - and they exist everywhere, sometimes where least expected – my heart warms with affection and respect for those who've recognised, protected, recreated or recovered a genius loci. Thus gazing down at our distant reflections in the clear well in the courtyard of the church and monastery above Paleokastritsa I felt that all could be well if humans could create, respect and maintain such a place - one of the cracks between the concrete we lay so enthusiastically on the earth. On leaving we thanked the two dames, chatting as they worked, tending plants with deft hands, for stewardship that might save us.In their delightful book Corfu Sketches: A Thirty Year Journey - an art and writing collaboration by Theresa Nicholas and John Waller - the latter draws attention to the island's villages, wishing more would choose them as places to live.

The Greeks will buy in Corfu Town and then perhaps in the villages, where there are still beautiful old houses to restore. The foreigners prefer to buy their Mediterranean villa in the olive groves. I hope this book will make the latter think again and consider restoring a village house. They will then become part of the island community. (p.62 John Waller on the island's 104 villages)

Nearly all our friends on Corfu, if not on boats, live in the villages - Ano Korakiana itself, Agios Ioannis, Agios Ileas, Temploni, Skripero, Agios Markos and Corfu town. Friendship is far too important to be inhibited by address, but just as a good friend with a sturdy 4X4 gets teased by me and gives as good as he takes by chaffing me for flying when I'm not on my bicycle, I shall tease those friends who contribute to urban sprawl by buying and building houses outside the island's traditional settlements.

"One advantage of the current economic down-turn" said one friend, advocate of the principle praised here, " is that that kind of thing may be slowed down." To look at the problem in context - how can government or civil society slow down the spread of isolated villas or cloned estates of ticky-tak on the remains of Corfu's green countryside when wealth which once came from olives, oranges, lemons, sheep, goats, milk, cheese, meat and wool now comes, primarily, from the space it provides for a house? So great is the contrast between the return on produce and the return on concrete, that some will even set fire to the trees that get in the way of laying the latter. This human problem should not be seen as an Hellenic issue - though it will be the decisions of Greek politicians, for better or worse, that will be engraved on the historic record. When it comes to bulldozing olive groves, individuals make economic choices to benefit themselves and their families in a global market for properties, and some of the descriptive adjectives, that exemplify these problems (note that 'near' a village often suggests you can drive to it in 'two minutes' but the property is outside the traditional villages boundaries, even when there's only a 'five minute walk' to the village:

New, beautiful, secluded villa of 402 sq.m near the village of xxx. Finished in early 2009, perched on a hill on a beautiful plot of 5700 sq.m in a cul-de-sac, offering isolation and tranquility with panoramas of mountains and sea. A 90 sq.m. heated swimming pool extends the holiday period.

Two storey modern villa of 155 sq.m in secluded olive groves built in 2000 with garden and private parking. Four bedrooms, three bathrooms, lavatory and open plan fully fitted kitchen with all appliances included. Open views to the sea and Corfu Town.

Single storey small villa of 115 sq.m near the village of yyy built in 1984. 1720 sq.m of landscaped gardens with swimming pool. Complete privacy, forest views, private parking, with apothiki converted to a self-contained apartment. A minute's drive to village amenities.

* *
Yesterday, or was it the day before, as we worked in the garden, we saw the eagles circling, soaring and swooping over the crags, beside them, one folding its wings to stoop into the undergrowth just above the village.

* * *
I posted some of the images of regretted buildings on Flickr and this exchange followed: DoyleSaylor: I suspect your point has wide ramifications, ongoing because of energy and climate reasons. In other words how we construct living arrangements are in need of a global overhaul. That is pretty big scale by anyone's measurement. Anyway your essay above is a good read. S: Many thanks. I'm so glad this is not seen - by you at any rate - as criticism of Greece, largely a victim of human nature and the global market for property on the Hellenic littoral (see 'The Case of Greece' on the encora Coastal Portal by Alexandra Mexa). In another century - or less - if global warming continues the same problem will apply to the lakes of Finland and Siberia. For the moment the blighting love affair is with land values in the middle latitudes. DS: On a tangent but related to you point. I wonder as I go about photographing the urban landscape where I live how one shows these issues? I often don't have time to work on the 'showing', but your image above is a good step in understanding what to show. This sort of defining what is being seen might be a way to help focus minds more. If you have some resources to point me to? S: I'm not an architect or planner. There are many guidelines on what constitutes good and bad building - but given the subjectivity of this subject it's tricky to find agreed ones. Prince Charles encouraged some. Critics rightly worry that codes may block creativity. There's truth in that, but at the same time codes may block crass buildings put up swiftly for profit. It's a bit like rules against pornography end up censoring something with wholly different intentions by a talented artist. The pornographer will always claim the protection we want to afford the latter. There's always going to be a problem defining a shared view of what's aesthetically pleasing and what fits, with integrity, into a natural landscape. Making a list like this of one of so-called 'ugly buildings' is exactly the kind of thing I'd want to avoid. These creations are undoubtedly controversial - ugly to some, magnificent to others - very far from problem to which I'm drawing attention - the damage to the human and natural environment caused by the spread of banal ticky-tacky cloned constructions (houses, hotels and other businesses) despoiling the coastlines and countryside of Greece (and many many other places). For me this problem has to do with height and context; the crass interruption of skylines, and shorelines - things I've tried to show in the images posted. In Corfu it is now forbidden to build above three stories - or rather the tax for extra floors makes building impractical for people whose plans are determined by cost and profit. It's because this is such a tricky issue that I so like my friends' principle (above) "Build what you like, how you like, but think of the effect of your work on other people’s views”. This seems to acknowledge the inevitability of subjectivity and invokes local debate between all involved about the effects of any one building. Perceived ugliness begins with carelessness about other's feelings for their surroundings. It's bound to be an imperfect principle in practice, but it does aim to encourage people to think about other people's collective views, advocating debate and discussion with a view to achieving some consensus on a subject on which agreement is bound to be problematic. That, as my friends say, is 'human nature on an island'. Oddly enough, our planning system in the UK does work a bit like this. You can propose erecting almost anything subject to the absence of objections from interested parties ('building regulation' permissions are separate, being more objective, relating to structural safety to the actual building and its surroundings - relating also to things like drainage, fire safety, accessibility, ancient lights etc.). To object I must create and enter a case against the proposed building into a debate about its merits and demerits, on the basis of current planning law and planning guidance - the latter, especially in a declared conservation area - often dealing with things like the local vernacular, the style and spirit of the place, density and overall appearance of the planned property in its surroundings whether natural landscape or other building or both - something that's been called the pattern language. * * *
Newsletter item from the International Law Office on a New Special Zoning Framework for Renewable Energy Source Projects in Hellas:

In December 2008, after a long period of public consultation during which comments and proposals were submitted by several participants, the special land planning and public works that was formed in order to implement governmental environmental policy on zoning for the installation of renewable energy source power plants issued the Special Zoning Framework for Renewable Energy Source Projects by way of a joint ministerial decision. governmental committee under the presidency of the minister of environment...The framework, along with two other special zoning frameworks regarding the industrial and tourism sectors (both pending), is expected to implement the new environmental policy adopted by the government on the basis of the General Land Planning Framework of June 27 2008. The framework aims to encourage new investment in renewable energy by giving investors the certainty they need in order to make significant investments in the Greek renewable energy market....

For further information contact Sotirios Douklias at Kyriakides Georgopoulos & Daniolos Issaias by telephone (+30 210 8171 500) or by fax (+30 210 6856 6578) or by email (s.douklias@kgdi.gr) ...and see this Greek case study of the project to divert a Greek river, the country's greatest ...The Acheloos winding through one of the most important ecosystems in Greece, and perhaps Europe, rising from Pindos chain in Epiros - in central Greece and flowing into the Ionian Sea near Messolonghi...

...and the campaign continues; an example of the growing profile of environmental politics in Hellas. See this article 'The Idea of ending up with a river God' - brilliantly argued by physicist-ecologist Kimon Hadjibiros of the National Technical University of Athens describing the project to divert the Acheloos as an example of national ὕβρις subsidised by the rest of Europe; and this summary on the Europe-wide Penelope Project site, from Yorgos Politis, Greece's WWF co-ordinator of the Acheloos river diversion campaign: 'The futility of the project and the damage it will cause are becoming clear to all'

Ο Αχελώος

* * *
See also an English translation of an abridged version of THE PIMPING OF PANOREA by Maria Strani-Potts, as published in ISLAND Magazine, Summer/Autumn 2008. Translated from the Greek by the author, originally published as ο πούλημα της Πανωραίας, CorfuBooks.com, 2008

* * *

[Back to the future - 11 Oct '09: This is the kind of house I like - one that instead of being used by its owner to make a statement about himself enters into a conversation with its surroundings.]