Age

Lydbrook Valley, Gloucestershire looking north towards Courtfield

I left Lin asleep upstairs. With old Oscar I walked out of Rock Cottage, along the familiar path by the small iron gate of Plum House, which has a new resident. With my hazel stick and walking boots I clambered, sharp left, up the random stepping stones of a ladder-length gully to a familiar path that runs through the woods to a lych-gate opening onto a sheep mown pasture filling the foreground of the Lydbrook valley, coated on either slope with trees in wintry brown, yellow and fading green. At the head of the sloping meadow there’s a break between hanger woods leading via a steepening track to an edge. Along this runs a staked barbed wire fence with large mesh chicken wire, to keep in lambs. There's a stile. 

It’s a boundary that recurs in the paintings of our friend Steven Outram, who works in an old church hall on the opposite side of the valley. 

'It seems like forever' Steven Outram

Oscar and I climb slowly, pacing ourselves, towards the stile. Beyond it, the landscape opens to a panorama; nearly twenty miles away I can often see the grey outline of the Brecon Beacons; in the middle ground, the tower of English Bicknor church, amid fields of cattle and sheep. Earlier clouds had thinned. We had sun for our walk. Over the wet turf of Lydbrook’s small airfield, there are two runways mown flatter, surfaces fancied by Oscar who not so long ago would scout through deep tangled bracken and bramble. 

A family was walking the same field.  I heard the chatter of happy children. Oscar and I strolled slightly askance towards the same field gate, letting the band of ramblers and their dog advance and disappear. 

Herefordshire towards the Brecon Beacons

We descend from the larger landscape to the combe, edged by the road past Eastbach Court. I enjoy this Queen Anne house, slightly grudging the investment apparent in its excellent maintenance, walled garden, out-lying barns, stables, Dower House and steward’s cottage - each address indicated by push-bells next to a bright red post box with the initials VR - with the time of daily collection - embedded in the stonework of the modest gates. But here’s no local farming squire embroidered into the landscape and lives of an ageless community. We’ve walked Bell Hill over thirty years and seen this house change owners three times. 

The morning is beautiful. Occasional cars slow for us, as I walk upwards; Oscar on a lead until we’ve ascended to the forest’s plateau. What may have been Eastbach Court’s home farm marches beside a rough track back into the woods above Lydbrook. I follow it into the trees, bright sun beams sliced by tall spruce, signs of leaf mould turfed over by foraging wild boar. 

Passing Nigel Aston’s old car yard – hulks of many models rusting on a bulldozed track just above our path, we arrive on the steep path down Bell Hill between the beech wood above Rock Cottage, at one point sliding on my bottom over leaves, mast and twigs. 

The slope down Bell Hill through the slender beech

At home again. Lin has fed the wood stove more of our well seasoned ash, cut four years ago, sawn and split in the summer.

A day later the rest of the family arrived. Linda and I become 'Nan' and 'Grandpa', 'Mum' and 'Dad'. The cottage becomes turbulent. To let grown-ups stay in bed, I'm steward - for drinks, cereals, toast, getting dressed and resisting the spreading disorder of objects that accompanies the activities of children. 
"Right everyone, A walk! Coats and boots"
With the two dogs, Oscar and Cookie, and three children we set off up Bell Hill inventing the ten foot rabbit that lives here. 
"Keep your eyes peeled. Listen carefully. Be not afeard. Bell Hill and the woods are full of noises, " 
They know we're making things up. The sky is cloudless. 

Hannah, Oliver and Sophia on the way to Eastbach

"You know that on the other side of this hill there's an enormous bison"
We retrace the walk I made, walking along a sloping track beside heifers and a placid Black Angus bull, the dogs on leads. 
"There's the bison!" I show them a construction placed on a rise across a field.

"Do you want to see it close?"
"No, no, no!" in chorus. I knew we'd be trespassing.
Along the Eastbach road we troop north along Probert's Barn Lane, the narrow road - in places grass along its centre - that crosses back into the Lydbrook Valley.

Probert's Barn Lane

I'm trudging, glad of my stick. The children's energy is boundless. We've further to go. Back briefly to the cottage across a long sloping meadow, then down the path to the main road. Hannah and Oliver talk to one another through 100 feet of plumbing of the galvanised hand rail - mouth and ear; childish teasing back and forth along the pipe.

We stop to post a card the children have written to Sophia's dad...

... cross the dangerous road through the village, with tremendous care, and ascend the opposite hill on a narrow path to where the railway ran in and out of the Forest of Dean.
"There's a ghost train runs along here! Can you hear a train?"

Waiting for the ghost train that runs through the Lydbrook Valley

"What about the ten foot rabbit?"
"It's scared of the train. It lives over the way where we walked before"
"It's coming" shouts Oliver "Get on the train. Quick"
Safe on the train, we head toward the river. We descend by many steps to the Wye, collecting interesting fruit and seeds and leaves.

Beside the river there are ducks and a pair of swans scavenging, neck dipping for seconds at a time, by the opposite bank.
So home on the pavement up to the centre of the village, up the Bell Hill path.
"Have you seen the mess the wild boar have made of our lawn"
"It's the ten foot rabbit"
"No! Wild boar rooting"
Indoors the grown ups are about, well fuelled wood fire warming the room.

"Where are we going today?"
Making decisions about this will go on a while. I sit back with a mug of tea. The children lay out their samples, examining what they've collected.

*** *** ***
Εορτή Αγίου Ισιδώρου 

Παρά το δυνατό νοτιά, ο κόσμος γέμισε απόψε το εκκλησάκι του Αγίου Ισιδώρου πάνω από τη Βενετιά, για να παρακολουθήσει το Μεγάλο Εσπερινό, παραμονή της εορτής του Αγίου. Το ψαλτήρι, όπως πάντα πλήρες, με ανάμικτο «τοπικό» και «βυζαντινό» ιδίωμα, με τον Γεώργιο Κένταρχο και το Σπύρο Τσιριγώτη στο Ανάγνωσμα της «Σοφίας Σολομώντος». Αύριο, Δευτέρα 4 Φεβρουαρίου 2019, ανήμερα της εορτής του Αγίου Ισιδώρου του Πηλουσιώτου, στις 8.00 το πρωί θα ξεκινήσει η ακολουθία του Όρθρου και στην συνέχεια, κατά τις 9.00 η Πανηγυρική Θεία Λειτουργία, μετ’ αρτοκλασίας. Στις δε 5.30 το απόγευμα θα ψαλθεί η Ιερά Παράκλησις προς τον Άγιο. Above Ano Korakiana tonight, in spite of the strong south wind, people filled the little church of St. Isidoros of Pelousios above Venetià, in order to attend the Great Vespers service, on the eve, of the celebration of the Day of the Saint. As always, the list of  hymns and chants, was full of mixed local and Byzantine pieces. George Kentarhos and Spyros Tsirigotis read from the Wisdom of Solomon. (Part translation: Thanks to Maria Strani-Potts)

*** *** ***
Memo to myself re Birmingham City Council's plans to decommission Walsall Road Allotments - a petition. It was started by my friend Betty Farrugia, Secretary, for many years, of WRA - probably the best allotment site in the West Midlands. She it was who persuaded me to have an allotment myself, after we'd saved the Victoria Jubilee Allotments near my home in Birmingham. [By 21.00 on Tue 19th Feb 6.700 signatures had been attached to the petition: 8006 by 01.00 22/2/19]; 10274 signatures by 15.30 on 28th Feb 2019.

Walsall Road Allotments threatened by plans for Birmingham's 2022 Commonwealth Games

A walk

From our house...

There’s a walk that goes westward from our house in the centre of Ano Korakiana Άνω Κορακιάνα – an area called Αρκούδενα - the Bear, (no-one's told us the origin of the name), 250 metres along Democracy Street, to a Y-junction. Here’s a corner provision store, burned down and restored over two years ago; a place to gather, offering space for vehicles to edge by one another, or park. You can continue left, round a blind corner, and wind downhill 2 kilometres to the Sidari Road, or take the right turn that heads steeply into Μουργάδες, Mourgades - a word that translates as ‘the dregs’.

Coming out of Mourgades - strolling west

There were many olive presses here. One remains inside a finely proportioned house at the end of the neighbourhood; a corner angled to allow the passing road. A busy foreigner's supposed to have spent much money restoring the building, including the old press inside an airy atrium. Local agents - not Greek - took up his dream with confident promises of professional help with the project, telling him they'd obtain permissions for all alterations. This they did not do, leaving changes made by builders at the mercy of local planning inspections. Work was delayed, then stopped for failing to conform to the local vernacular. With plausible assurances the absent owner's helpers withdrew, leaving the property more incomplete than when it was merely neglected.

'Pressing the olives' - marble relief by Aristeidis Metallinos of Ano Korakiana (with permission)

After the heavy rolling stones of the olive press had cold-crushed the oil from the olives, as with wine from grapes or cider from apples, the miller was left with the olives' skin and bones ... ‘postain’ ‘potage’ (what’s the word?). Pomace! From pomace came the distinctive aroma that once permeated the maze of paths in Mourgades.

An image of olive pomace - 'the dregs' - downloaded from the internet

Perhaps the area should be called Ελαιολάδες or Eλαιοπυρήνα. I think of Mourgades, with its many recently improved houses, as the posh end of the village. It even has traffic lights, to avoid a jam between cars that venture through from either end. A notice cautions that the road narrows to 1.8 metres. Here, up an alley, even narrower, are two derelict houses, beside them turfed-out broken furniture, blackened kitchenware, a chamber pot, a retired cooker, rotting carpets, a German army diesel canister brimming with clear rain water, stamped with the date of my birth – 1942.

 On the other side of Mourgades the road heads west past a few outskirt homes, an allotment and chicken run, through olive groves and boulders that, long ago, must have tumbled from the crags above the village, now muffled and decorated by saplings, shrubs, moss and grass, rooted in their crevices. The road, like its two siblings, runs two kilometres to the same main road between Corfu and Sidari in the north. It’s recently been repaired to 'passable' – the rain washed grooves on one steep corner filled in and rolled smooth. All along here our eyes have the sudden delight of sunlight piercing the foliage, dividing into myriad beams, brightening small flying insects like dust motes, dappling the ground between the olive trees – back-lit into the distance.

A children’s book wood, or, closer to dusk, a dazzling exposure over the tree tops. Momentarily blinding.

A long-lost friend of Lin's once remarked, when walking here at dusk.
"I'm out of my comfort zone"
The road winds down and down

,,

On the level ground there are pastures, vineyards with rusty fences set in low concrete walls. A winter brook winds across our route - a ditch, still dry in this long stretch of sunny October weather. Clear of the woods, we see the mountains above Ano Korakiana, and, in the distance, a few roofs and walls, the village tucked into the hillside a mile away. We’ve walked this circuit often.
“There’s the gateway where we stopped for a snack when Amy and the children and Liz were here” That was three years ago.

Level ground below the crags

A few more bends on an even road, then up a rise to meet the main road. Trucks and coaches rush by. We walk just a few yards along its verge to the quiet road that leads back to Democracy Street.

Coming up to the church of Agios Nikolaus at the edge of the village

Ano Korakiana 1975 Angelos Kontis, Άγγελου Κόντη. Posted by Thanassis Spingos on the village website 

On Bell Hill

I had been looking forward to being at Rock Cottage. A solace for leaving beloved Greece. Amy had already sent us a photo via Facebook.

'We can finally see Ross after 4 hours of motorway hell 😆YAY!' Amy and family approaching the Forest of Dean

On FFriday evening of half-term week Lin and I joined the family in a cottage already warmed for two days.
"The heating's working a dream. Your shower is just brilliant" said Guy.
I begin to feel that Rock Cottage, so neglected for over five years, is becoming a home again. Our children knew it as babies and toddlers and now our grandchildren are sleeping here. Our dear friends Martin and Sandra and their son Adam and his fellow workers have transformed the place, which was not only suffering our neglect, but also the cod-work of our ill-chosen builder, Royston, with whom I parted company over two years ago over a series of new windows that he...why go on? The windows are fine now, frames sealed with improved opening. The kitchen and bathroom are in almost full working order, as ditto bedrooms and sitting room.

Amy's second photo - Oscar curled by the wood stove at Rock Cottage

In the morning I inspected Craig's strimming, lopping and uprooting in the garden - clearing a jungle of weed shrubbery, brambles and saplings back to the older contours of three dry-stone walled terraces. We're getting back to the half acre allotment that surrounds us on the steep sides of Bell Hill. I'm bathing in unashamed nostalgia, hoping that we will make this our 'place' again. As enjoyed and loved as Handsworth and Ano Korakiana, by the whole family. So - yes - I was pleased when my son Richard, just back from Vietnam, phoned and asked for the keys so he could come down with E on the evening the rest of us returned to Birmingham.
The grand-children are a challenge. Playing, arguing, noise and mess-making with unabatable energy. On Sunday morning I set out to walk with Oliver - 'wear him out' I thought - up Bell Hill, the tree covered slope that ascends the west side of Lydbrook.
"First we get sticks. You can't go for a good walk without sticks"
I cut and tidied two - smaller for Ollie - from a hazel cluster by our path, as we set out up through the tall slender beech trees on the margins of the forest, the houses of the village receding below.

Oliver, 4 years old now, on Bell Hill

The steeper slope levelled off as we passed the old ruined house. Recalling past stories told me I told Oliver of an old lady used to live there.
"Every day she went to the bottom of the hill and came back with a pail of water. Old Mrs Cook"
He asked questions about her which I dodged and invented. Rather he ask questions than be uninterested in things I point out, or he notes, on our walks. I frame my answers, to keep our conversation going; Chinese whispers over time, amplifying, distorting and confusing, but conveying seeds of history, a scent of madeleines, 'the echo of great spaces traversed'.
Next time we make this walk I'll suggest to Oliver that Mr. Cook was a 'bodger'.
"You see these tall trees. Beech trees. See their leaves all around. See the little nuts, Beech mast. They used to cut these trees before they grew so big to make chairs - wheel-backs, Windsor carvers"
We came to a level stretch, narrow beside a wire fence, broken in places, with, on the other side, the remains of dry stone walls, then, almost hidden behind the remaining greenery of Autumn, the tiers wrecked cars that Nigel Aston has long stored up here, sinking mossy and rusting into the landscape. Then we're onto a lane high above the village with a few houses...
"It's called Uphill Road"
"Why?"
"I'm not answering that, Ollie!"
...before taking the narrow path that leads on up the rest of the hill. Here the trees become forestry spruce, occasional chestnuts, mixed with birch - their small brown-yellow leaves falling like snow when, for my pleasure and Oliver's, I tap the sapling trunks with my stick. Along the path are the prickly husks of fallen chestnuts, marked by the rooting of wild boar. The forest population of wild boar has increases vigorously since the haphazard introduction of about 40 farmed boar to the Forest in 2004.
Two people with dogs on leads walk towards us.
"Get Oscar and Cookie on their leads!"
They pass us with smiles.
"Nice morning."
"Yes it is"
"I'm earlier than I expected. Forgot the clocks went back this morning"
At last we're at the top of the hill, looking over fields, one with sheep; in the far distance horses grazing and a tractor pulling a plough on the slope below English Bicknor. I take my grandson through the rules - the gate rules, the sheep rules.
"A dog that worries sheep can be shot. Always watch out for sheep and other farm animals in the fields"
We see a herd of Welsh cattle - black bullock, or perhaps heifers, silhouetted in a field on our left as we start to walk downhill towards Eastbach.
"Come up! Come up!" I shout and they raise their heads and consider investigating us.
"Can you smell them?"  I can sense their rank from here on a small shifting breeze.

Oliver runs down the sloping road to Eastbach.
"Oi! Watch out for cars!" I shout.
He pauses, sensible. And indeed a few cars edge by us on the narrow road until we come to the old milestone that says, in carving. 'London 122 miles. Gloste'r 17'

We wwalk by Eastbach Court, a house of enviable elegant beauty, about which Lin says "When we win the lottery..." I lift Oliver up to see the manicured lawn, a bronze hind, and swings hung from a tall fir branch.

A public footpath beside the house's northern boundary turns off the road, curving back up to the top of Bell Hill.
"We've come about half way"
There's a small air strip with hangars on the hill top. We can see a wind sock stirring in the distance. At the gate the dogs go on their leads. I half hope Oliver will see a small plane come bouncing in at 40mph. They often fly on Sundays. As it is I let him peer through a tiny gap in a hangar door.
"I can see an aeroplane!"
Another stile brings us to the last meadow before getting back to the cottage. I lift the dogs over; let them free again. They listen to my voice and note my whistle, and seem utterly at home, getting soaked nosing in the tall grass. It's still a time of year for ticks, so remember to check when we get home...

 ...Oliver, fooling around, falls over and cries.
"Get up and stop that noise" I say, giving him a momentary hug. So we come to a steep part of our walk as the fields re-join the hanger woods. In my old age I have to take this part carefully less I fall arse over tip. My stick helps.
"When your mum was about 12 years old she persuaded me to walk home from Monmouth - ten miles away. When we got to this field the light had gone. I couldn't see a thing. She held my hand for a hundred yards."

Oliver and the dogs descend heedless to the lychgate that leads into the path that takes us, in a few yards, to Rock Cottage, where the dogs get a good towelling before drying themselves in front of the fire.
*** *** ***
Richard Pine's latest Irish Times article from Greece:

'....It’s actually surprising that life continues at all, since the heartbeat seems to have gone out of the country. But it is the resilience of the Greek spirit, and its resistance to external pressure, that keeps that heart ticking over, even imperceptibly.
One can only conclude that this is not a brave new world but a global pandemic of fear-driven entropy. To paraphrase Seán O’Casey, observers can confidently say: “The whole world’s in a terrible state of stasis.” To paraphrase Seamus Heaney, politicians can safely adopt the maxim: “Whatever you do, do nothing.” '

Walking in the rain

"That's the most sinister olive"

It stood on its own in a meadow beside our path to Ipsos from Ano Korakiana

Pouring rain had set-in for the day.
Amy said “I’m walking with Oliver to Ipsos”
She and I have enjoyed walks since she was a baby.
“Can I come?”
“If you like”
Oliver’s in his raincoat. Amy and I have waterproof jackets. She carries a push chair down the rough narrow path to National Opposition Street, which runs three kilometres to the sea at Ipsos. We strolled eastwards along it until we came to Angeliki’s house, a kilometre outside the village.
“Shall we take the low road?” I said.

Just there, a concrete track leads down into the woods through olives and cypress, edged by brambles reaching out their salad tips, hollyoak and elder, vines, proliferating wild flowers and long grasses. We could have been walking in Scotland. So much fauna is the same, especially in the rain. Our route does the descent to sea level more swiftly than the metalled road hill from Agios Marcos, whose houses we glimpsed above us. Now and then the rain relented. But, even when it returned as we reached the estancias near Ipsos, it mattered little. Oliver enjoyed delaying us to stand and paw the puddles. Captive dogs barked furiously through the chicken wire of the small-holdings, where we glimpsed the heads of sheep and goats peering from their damp shelters.  I enjoyed imitating chickens and trying to gobble like the turkeys.

We came across an ostrich. I mistook it in the shade of dripping trees for a pile of brush. It unwound itself and came silently to inspect us; next, a damp pasture, shoulder high with greenery and yellow flowers, goats and their kids feeding beside a dry stone wall...

A meadow near Ipsos

...then up a small slope and round a bend between houses and we were on the Ipsos seafront edged by a glassy grey sea, with under a kilometre to Sally’s bar, where Guy met us with a load of wet things to get tumble dried at the local laundromat
*** *** ***

Lin and Amy collaborated hanging up the blue tarp we’d brought from England to shield us from rain falling through the planks of the timber balcony. They got me inserting eight cup-hooks in the beam that runs along the house side. The tarp was neatly stretched to these. The challenge; how without over tensioning it to suspend it at a gentle angle out from the house above the veranda so that rain falling through the balcony would not form pockets that would split the fabric, at the same time making it firm enough to hold steady when the wind blows strong. Makeshift guys were attached along with thin rope to give under-support.

“Later we can replace these with bungee cords and hooks, so it’s simpler to put up and take down”. They worked at it all morning under grey skies...

...left it hanging neatly before heading off to enjoy the north of the island and even find sun. Rain came sweeping over the village. The awning worked, coping with the weight of the small puddles that collected at the foot, maintaining a dry area in the veranda
“Mark one awning is good” I said
Abruptly, as we'd hoped but not expected, the rain and mist cleared. Our children and friends had found their way to a taverna at Palia Perithia. As they sat to eat at the first taverna on the left - Foros being closed for three days - the sun came out for the rest of the day.
What enjoyable events we managed to fit into the time our visitors were here!

The weather played with us and we with it. One moment the washing’s on the line to dry in early sun; but then grey cloulds gather and it rains and the washing’s bought swiftly inside to dry in front of the stove…
“A log-fire? In Greece at the end of April?”
“Yes indeed”

But a hope of warmth as the sun re-appears has us lifting the loaded clothes horse onto the balcony, not quite risking the clothes line again. Sure enough the rain returns and the clothes stay indoors to dry – slowly.
But we set out in the two cars – Liz, Matt and baby Sophia, Amy and Guy and small Oliver, and Lin and I. We find parking in town and walk to the Liston looking in shops, then head for Kanoni where a hundred feet above the sea we gaze out to Mouse island, Vlacherna Monastery and the airport runway.

At Kanoni

Voyage to Mouse Island

Oliver lands with mouse on Mouse Island

Liz, Matt, Sophia and small dog, on Pontikonisi

The boatman had taken us out to Pontikonisi - 'Mouse Island' for the wriggly white zig-zag ascent to the church on its summit that looks from the further shore like a tail to a mouse - the church - and left the small place to us, but for two yappy but friendly white dogs, one with a litter of pups behind the tiny counter of the small shop next to the church; a peacock perched on its porch. Returning we strolled on to Vlacherna. A cat carefully posed for us and other tourists.

At Vlacherna Monastery

A few days later, another walk on a sunnier day;

Liz, Amy, Lin and Oliver on Democracy Street

...we strolled down the west end of the village to the Sidari road, crossed over to the back road that wound upwards through woods and fields, past a smooth grazed meadow...

....beside oaks and olives and the wild flowers, now bright, welcoming bees.

Old friends - Liz and Amy - walk on ahead

I pushed Oliver and watched the beloved ones strolling ahead chattering – like the many walks we’ve taken in other lovely places, especially by the sparkling Farnack...

Liz by the Farnack in Strathnairn

by the ruffled sea of the Moray Firth...

Lulu by the Moray Firth

... and in Handsworth Park. Heaven must include walking. At the highest point we arrived where we could glimpse the two pronged outline of the old fort in the city glinting in the sun and the blue ribbon of the sea of Kerkyra running south toward hazy mainland mountains.
*** *** ***
Visiting the city again...

The car park next to the sea in Corfu Town

...we parked the cars, loaded push-chairs, split up and separately wandered the streets of the city meeting up for ice creams and heading back to the car park by the sea.

The Liston

It had rained all morning but now the sun showed. We sat on the quayside below Faliraki gazing at a tug nudging a rubble-filled barge into place at the end of the rough mole that will form the outer edge of a long-planned marina.
“Only a year ago” said Lin “there were high blocks of concrete all along here blocking the view. Three metres high! They were going to be part of a new marina. Loads of protests! Common sense prevailed”
“Where did all that concrete go?”
“Floated out to sea. Sunk in deep water, I suppose”
“Broken up too”
One of the two cruise liners for which the new harbour at Corfu is so perfect sounded a long bass siren to alert passengers to wander back on board from a day visit to the city.
Matt had been reassuring me that yet another day’s familiar mix of sun and rain – so unexpected after Easter and on the edge of May – afforded intriguing mixtures of cloudscape...

The view south from Ano Korakiana

...that “in many ways” made his views of Corfu more interesting than the unconditionally sunny days Lin and I had hoped for our dear guests. It was polite of him, but indeed he was right. The play of light on the sea, the ships, the buildings and the coast of Greece across the changing surface of the narrow sea that lapped placidly below our dangling feet gave us panoramas of altering colour and shadow.
The tug shunted back and forth for half an hour before the small crew aboard the barge were satisfied with its position. We sat and watched and chatted and joked about yelling “You don’t want to do it like that”.

As work continued on the mole, the cruise liner slipped elegantly from her berth into the channel between us and Vido. We tried to read her Russian name as she headed briefly south into deeper water. A small fish splashed as it jumped from the clear water of the harbour.
“Being chased by something larger, I expect”
Abruptly the barge’s position was right. A rumbling tumbling sound came to us across the silvery water. A mound of sandy rubble sank; the hull of the barge rose from the water.
“Look the barge has unfolded!” I shouted.

Unloading rubble in the Old Port

It had indeed split stem to stern port and starboard. We could see the dark wedges of its unfolding as it opened itself; its sides, from sea level, swinging out from the perpendicular. Rubble slid into the sea churning the calm. The tug headed off almost invisible behind its emptied charge whose hull slowly closed again. Once in the open sea beyond Vido, the liner had turned north to head through the Corfu Channel and into the Adriatic.

“Next stop Dubrovnik?”
Minutes later the waves of her wake and those from the precisely dumped gravel arrived - mildly larger ripples lapped our perch. We watched the liner's progress; her sunlit hull growing small against the greenery of the mainland shore, dappled with sunlight through shifting clouds - sometimes dazzling...

*** ***
Whether by bee or by hand or by self-pollination, there are signs of fruit - almost certainly orange - on our small recovered tree.

**** ****
Feeling ill emphasises age. Things ache. Joints hurt; stairs, especially holding a tray, become a nuisance; sluggishness is a predominant sensation – a hint of that point made in survival situations
“Don’t let yourself go to sleep”
 “I wonder how Oliver will be when he’s in his teens?”
 “Don’t know but you don’t have to worry. We’ll probably have snuffed it by then” says Lin from another room “I think we’re tired out after having the house full for ten days”
 “You may be. All that cooking! I was mostly just being entertained”
Perhaps so much joy has to be followed by lethargy-breeding anti-climax, especially as we spent so much time getting the house ready for the family.
 *** ***
I was listening weeks ago to a chat on Radio 4 about the calculation of longitude and recalled how long ago I’d sat in a rocky cockpit in the Atlantic taking noon sites while my crew recorded the time. On impulse I picked up the phone:

Dear Simon. So lovely to hear you on the phone and sorry had to rush off. Every other Friday morning we run a 'Have-a-go Shakespeare' session in the local Arts Centre, and although Phil had gone on ahead I realised I had the scripts in the car. Haven’t looked at your link yet, but looking forward so much to seeing it and hopefully you all up to all sorts. If you want to see what we get up then look at www.shakespearelink.co.uk, its still a bit under construction but gives you an idea! If I started to tell you would take an age. We're having a bit of a refit on Vickie our 22 - she's 50 years old and deserves it, tho’ she does seem to get smaller as we get creakier. Lovely that you sail in Greece, how restful without the tides. It would be great to see you sometime - I suppose you would never come West? Love to you and Lin and all you guys, and from Phil xx Sue 

Dear Sue. I enjoyed reading your account of creating a meadow. I must scythe it for you!

The even mead, that erst brought sweetly forth the freckled cowslip, burnet, and green clover, wanting the scythe, all uncorrected, rank.

I’ve an allotment which is teaching me the aptness of the ancient curse ‘In the sweat of thy face..." I wish we did have tides. They make it easier to get around when there’s no wind and cheaper when anti-fouling. We have a grandson – Oliver, coming up 2, and a grand-daughter due in July...That Lin and I would be living a good part of the year in a village on Corfu struggling to learn the language...It was an impulse, now 8 years past. We go to and fro. You and Phil seem to have brought pleasure and happiness and understanding to so many people. Lin and I and some neighbours have started up (or rather turned round from insolvency) a local caretaker service in Handsworth.

I’m a white van man with tough gloves and we do street litter clearing, gardening of street planters and helping vulnerable people clearing gardens and moving furniture. Sounds like a penance I know, but we’re almost enjoying ourselves making something work...I’ve always felt in touch via that shared adventure in the dawn of our lives. Don’t worry about writing unless time and the right moment allows. I rejoice that you and those around you are OK, loved and happy, and that you have always made your life an adventure. X Simon 

Dear Simon. You put it so wonderfully, that's what it was, a shared adventure in the dawn of our lives, and we are inextricably bound because of it, for always, life and death and everything. I'm so very glad that you and all yours are happy and loved too, and sailing and I fully expect adventuring too...Meanwhile xxx S

Young Tiger in Bequia 1966

Memories occupy more of my mental ramblings than when I was younger. Of course.
What I cannot find words to explain is the glaze that seems to lie over those ancient experiences. Wordsworth wrote of infant sensations being bathed in celestial light. He was referring to the earliest recollections, of infancy; Proust pursued the spoors of his childhood; Eliot, the simultaneity of time past and time present. It’s a near unshareable subjectivity. But when I recall sitting at the tiller sailing gently eastward on a warm Mediterranean night - sailing towards Greece - bright with moon light sparkling small waves – the attempt at capture, as with a thousand other memories, sends the sensation into hiding. It’s the same with charts – the old ones that were normal until the 1970s; with hachures, used with the relevant Admiralty Pilot with silhouettes of coast lines and their features – for compass-bearing navigation; the throat constricting excitement - in a city chart-dealer on a grey winter day - of buying charts of distant places with foreign names where I planned to voyage. Those are a tiny sample. I was a child in my experiences until my 20s. The intervening half-century, full of the earthy shortening of expectations; earning a living, full of wholly different achievements according to standards that would have seemed disconcertingly banal – things that other people did, people I saw askance with a mix of pity, even contempt; striving for financially security, paying for a house, doing solid work for a salary, making a marriage permanent, planning licensed holidays of unfamiliar brevity. It was late that I adjusted to taking small pride in the grind. Now I respect and admire others who live in the 'light of common day’. Perhaps that adjustment explains the tingling sparkle of the memory of these early experiences - viewed through a distorting glass of a shifted consciousness; one that long ago would have seen my present as a failure to live anything but ordinariness. It’s not that I’m reading time-travelled postcards to myself saying ‘wish you were here’. I was undoubtedly enchanted, entranced; inside a waking dream. Yet at the time I am sure I would have been thinking not about the magic I think that I'm remembering, but about the duration of my watch and when I’d get to have a mug of tea and turn in as Chris, my skipper, took over, and where these charts and in what order they should be filed. Perhaps the part of my brain set aside for sorting my life’s plot was storing future delight
‘This will give you pleasure in old age. Now and at the time of your dying, that you had so much happiness and adventure to set you going.’

Agni in Corfu - we arrived in Summer Song

From the balcony at dawn yesterday (photo: Linda Baddeley)

Cycling up to the village

Talking breeze

With family at Strapunto