Jack Hargreaves 1911-1994 with his stepson Simon Baddeley born 1942 (photo: Barbara Hargreaves)
My stepfather delighted in reading Charles Dickens. He could recite first lines of the novels
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness...
"Opening lines are fascinating. They contain all that’s to follow”. I like the phrase 'recalled to life' from the first chapter. Dickens, after setting the scene - France and England in 1775 - for A Tale of Two Cities, describesthe DoverCoachtoiling up Shooter’s Hill. The night is stormy. To ease the horses, passengers have been asked to get out and trudge through the mud. Here's a place perfect for ambush and robbery. A lone rider is heard galloping in pursuit. It's Gerry Cruncher, messenger from Telsons Bank. Rider and coach halt, Jerry facing a wary driver's blunderbuss. Jarvis Lorri, banker, stands beside the coach. Jerry hands him an envelope.
He opened it in the light of the coach-lamp on that side and read - first to himself and then aloud; “ ‘Wait at Dover for Mam’selle.’ It’s not long, you see, guard. Jerry, say that my answer was, Recalled to Life.”
Recalled to life. Old 16mm film smells of vinegar. The cans in which it's stored are brown with rust - many over forty years old, films made by Jack's cameraman Stan Bréhaut for the Southern TV series Out of Town. at risk of wasting in our garage.
But by Christmas 2019, my licensee, Network on Air, will be publishing 6 episodes selected from the archive of recovered Out of Town material, sitting in our garage for ages, recovered by Jack from a warehouse some unknown time after Southern TV lost its licence in 1981. There were 100s of cans of 16mm film with added library sound effects and a similar number of flat cardboard boxes containing ¼” reel-to-reel sound tapes of Jack’s commentaries, which, left to Southern TV’s successor Meridian, had sat in their library, cherry picked as background – without Jack - for country-themed programmes, becoming disordered. Jack had moved on, to do successful broadcasting on Channel 4 for three years, delivering sixty episodes of Old Country in the same style and format as OOT, using the same ‘shed’ – the set he’d used at Southern, set up in the Old Schoolhouse in Meonstoke. Jack Hargreaves - the invention of the camera from Simon Baddeley on Vimeo.
The recovered OOT material was stored on racks in his workshop beside Raven Cottage. When domestic DVD players proliferated, Jack selected 28 reels of film from this archive. The film had magnetic sound strips containing the sound effects – fish splashing, hammering, wind, atmos, and so on - added post-production. See Dave Knowles, Jack's sound technician, on the next clip between 00.47 and 1.46 explaining the characteristics of the film in the archive.
Although an executor of my stepfather's estate, I knew nothing of the ‘archive’ until 2009. Well before he died Jack had entrusted the unwieldy collection of film and tape to his friend Nick Wright, a media academic. Thank goodness! In 1994, when Jack died, such a collection would have burdened me. I might have discarded it and surrendered all rights – a condition for gifts - to the BFI.
I remained unaware, until Richard Hill, filmed for an OOT episode on sea angling in the early 70s, wrote and asked if he could have a copy of the episode in which he and his friends appeared.
His computer literate neighbour, with a touch of OCD, had traced the archive to Plymouth, then to Jack’s stepson, Simon Baddeley, as the likely owner of rights.
Some time after Jack died Nick Wright had moved house. Lacking storage in his new home, he’d passed Jack’s gift to the South West Film and TV Archive, where it had stayed over 10 years. Via Paul Peacock, who was writing Jack's biography, Paul and I met Nick in Leeds. Over a meal and a pint, Nick explained the unwieldy nature of the JH archive.
“These are not complete episodes of Out of Town broadcasts, Simon. They’re Stan’s location footage with sound effects. You’d first have to match film with sound tapes of Jack’s commentaries. There are no titles, no theme tune, no credits. Footage where Jack spoke from his studio 'shed' have vanished”
I learned later that, until the end of the 1970s, the only way such footage would have been recorded was on v expensive swiftly re-used Quad tapes.
The mishmash nature of the OOT archive had one positive – it was generally perceived as useless. Nick said he’d looked through it and could do nothing with it. His gift to me was a signed letter he’d sought from a senior employee, Cathy Meacock, of Endemol International, declaring, in writing, that despite Endemol’s ownership of so much old Southern media (bought speculatively, overriding, so they claimed, Jack’s informal reclamation of OOT film), they had ‘no further interest in the material’. Nick was free to do with it as he - and therefore I - wished. Nick was clear the archive at SWFTA, passed to him by Jack, was mine.
I phoned Jenny at SWFTA and gave permission for Richard Hill’s episode to be assembled and sent to me to take to him on a DVD as an MPG file. By train and cycle I took a day trip to the edge of Southampton. Richard now grey-haired was over the moon. We enjoyed Wendy Hill’s cups of tea and fish pie.
“If it hadn’t been for you, Richard, I’d not have discovered my stepdad’s archive”.
I learned from Jenny the work her husband Roger Charlesworth had done to make Richard’s DVD out of the archive material available, finding the sound tape that went with the episode, digitising sound and picture, splicing them, inserting stills of Jack in the absence of studio ‘shed’ footage; pro bono.
I took a train from Birmingham and met Roger and Jenny in the old naval yard in Plymouth, viewed the ‘JH archive’ stacked on dexion, and met the manager of SWFTA. He put out feelers about rights in return for SWFTA making more episodes. I said I’d think about it, taking home his blank waiver.
Time passed.
What could be done with the archive if neither Nick nor the archive technicians could spin this treasured straw into an episode of Out of Town? Would still pictures or random footage run as background to Jack’s voice? A friend suggested, with a clever example, of how Jack’s voice could be added to his animated picture. Not quite recalled to life though.
Meantime I was supporting publication by Delta of those full episodes of Out of Town that Jack had made for VHS in 1987, speaking from his workshop at Raven Cottage – not even Southern TV broadcasts, though they contained the location footage Jack had recovered from the archive.
In 2010 SWFTA wrote to say that without my waiver giving them rights to any work they could not afford to store the JH archive. With my neighbour, John Rose and the borrowed use of a van, we drove to Plymouth and collected the films and tapes to store in our garage.
In 2012 Kaleidoscope’s David King unearthed 30 episodes of Out of Town broadcasts made in 1980-81. These were published by Delta as “The Lost Episodes”. Endemol had been about to throw them out. Once they realised my hopes for them, they claimed copyright, as for all the Southern TV media over which they claimed ownership. After several attempts to contact them, their CEO emailed me “Simon. You can have all OOT material we own for £10,000 ‘take it or leave it’”
I found the cash. I co-signed a novation agreement transferring their licence with Delta to me plus an addendum rights transfer for the OOT episodes saved by David. I went to Endemol's HQ in Shepherd's Bush and put the masters I'd bought on my bicycle rack
Collecting my OOT master tapes
After Jack’s death his solicitor with whom I shared the executorship along with Isobel of the will, said he had no doubt that Jack wanted this material to belong to me, that it almost certainly did, but “their lawyers have more time and money than you can afford”.
For about three years I was making train visits to London, cycling around the city to meetings. With advice from Charles Webster of Delta, now my licensee, I got a rights lawyer. James Greenslade of Simons Muirhead & Burton in Soho. £600 an hour! He cut me pro bono advice, going through Endemol’s contract with his platinum toothcomb.
I was about to recover my outlay in royalties from Delta’s sales of two OOT DVD box sets, when Charles texted me that Delta had gone into administration.
Charles and I had been working enthusiastically on ways of restoring the archive but seeing the way the wind was blowing he'd left Delta. He and I had meetings at a fish and chippie near Victoria Station to continue exploring ways to restore the archive. I hired Francis Niemczyk up Kilburn way to start restoring the films Lin and I had matched with their sound tapes, adding Frazer Ash, Digital Transfer Manager of British Universities Film & Video Council off Oxford Street.
Charles and I drifted apart, he, vexed that I’d made an agreement he’d cautioned against, with Chris Perry of newly formed Big Centre TV based in Walsall, to broadcast existing OOT episodes on a new local TV station, in return for getting the services of a reputable film restoration company in Wardour Street, Soho, restoring the archive. The long and short of that embarrassing episode, drawn out over a year of constant emails and excuses, was that the OOT episodes were broadcast in the West Midlands, but Perry failed to fulfil his side of our agreement, got summarily fired from the company he’d started, whose new director, after some wriggling, agreed to pay me a symbolic £1500 of compensation. So few people watched this local TV company little was lost. I was an irritated fool.
After turning down offers for Jack’s material from a couple of the companies circling Delta’s administrators, there came, a surprise approach from Talking Pictures that went nowhere, and another from Network on Air. I liked their CEO Tim Beddows.
I signed an Acquisition Agreement with his company in 2017. Tim Beddows was keen to republish all that Delta had published plus extras featuring Jack. Even more pleasing was Tim’s offer to restore and publish the whole archive if I would fill in for Jack where his introductions had gone missing. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t spent enough time humming and haa-ing over options for filling in where Jack was missing. With trepidation I agreed. Tim drove a first batch of old footage with sound tapes to be restored by his company in Canary Wharf where, after tapes and films had been matched and digitised, they were stored as HD – “better than when Jack saw them” said Tim. I relayed a link to the first batch of restorations to Ian Wegg, Southern TV’s amateur local historian. Ian dated them and alerted me to footage already published by Jack when he cherry-picked location film for his 1987 VHS issue of OOT. From this base selection, I picked 16 suitable 12 to 6 minute sequences which, put together, would give us 3 hours viewing in 6 half hour episodes, made up of 15 parts.
Tim assured me “That’ll be enough to start. This will be Network’s Out of Town Vol 3, ready for Christmas 2019”. But there were more slips twixt cup and lip, not least a Pandemic, which delayed the publication until the start of July 2020 by which time the new DVD, also on Blu-ray, had been renamed Further Out of Town.
Tim had contracted film-maker, director and producer, Paul Vanezis to make the film insets of me introducing each restored OOT episode. With the restored OOT footage, now digitised in HD, loaded to his hard drive, Paul and I met up on my allotment in Handsworth, where between my shed and fruit cage we spent two sunny July mornings filming introductions.
Paul Vanezis films inserts of me introducing Further Out of Town on the Victoria Jubilee Allotments in Handsworth
I’d spent two months rehearsing after digesting Jack’s recorded introductions without picture and the location footage to be used - trying not to imitate Jack but to find a suitable version of Jack's relaxed style in front of a camera.
I practised for a day with my friend Michael Livesley at his studio in Liverpool ...
and spoke on my own to Photobooth on my laptop...
So, over 11 years after I learned of the existence of the ‘JH Archive’ we are lined up to publish the following films introduced by me.
Episode 1. Garden Pests/Red Squirrels/Country Flowers
Episode 2: Planting a Vine/Sheep Fair
Episode 3: Southall Market/Fishing in the Hebrides/Peeler crabs
Episode 4: Andalusian Horses with Brassy Searle and son
Episode 5: Mr Cuckoo/Sea Bream/Stocking a lake
Episode 6: Butterflies/North wind fishing/John Bass lake
Before they are scanned, Paul Vanezis checks old opening titles of FurtherOut of Town
We are almost running out of things to do on a rainy day.
“It's raining in Athens” said Lefteris from the steps, which he negotiates more slowly these days, “It's raining in Italy. Raining everywhere”
“Every day? Κάθε μέρα;”
“Αύριο, και μεθαύριο και μεθαμεθαύριο...Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow”
In Athens it's really bad.
Yet even so the blessed sun reminds us of its efforts to scatter the overcast and allow us one washing day a week, its sudden beams piercing the grey to cast patines of silver around Vido, its distant warmth making enticing gaps like the glimpses of sky and bright unfurling nimbus above the heads of the cherubs in the ceiling of a rich man’s chapel. “Enough blue to make a little boy’s trousers”
I leave our cosy bed, don woolly slippers. Shave. Go to the loo. Enjoy a shower – now the new boiler’s in place. Get dressed. Put away last night’s washing up, cutlery, pans, plates. Bring up logs from the apothiki; we’re running short. Clear the ashes, make up a fire – paper, twigs, and a few logs for the evening chill. Brush teeth. Make a cup of tea. Lin sleeps. All is quiet.
Through an opening in the spinach green shutters, above our balcony rail and the rich green leaves amid our oranges and lemons and the almond blossom, an olive landscape veiled in swathes of driven rain rolls south to the backs of the high cliffs between Capes Iliodoros and Plaka. The mountains behind the airport from where Lear would often paint his exquisite landscapes of Corfu – gazing over the tarbooshed heads of two or three languid muleteers, over the twin headed outcrop of the Old Citadel, across the broad bay beyond the city, towards Trompetta and high Pantokrator - are grey outlines almost hidden by rain and mist. A ferry heads for Igoumenitsa where we'll be Wednesday evening.
*** *** ***
The old boiler is leaking
It’s not that it was a complicated job - for anyone who knew what they were doing. All the same, removing our broken hot water boiler and replacing it caused arguments that wouldn’t happen if we did it again. Self-help in the home means forever doing things for the first and often only time. Wouldn’t it be more sensible to call in a reliable plumber? They’ll provide the boiler, install it, guarantee their work and have a cup of tea as you pay their annotated bill for parts and labour. It’s not as if by now we don't know where to find workmen we trust, but this wish to do things ourselves is like our shared dislike of taking taxis, learned in childhood from my great grandmother who could well afford them but preferred to persuade bus drivers to take her where she wanted to go. You learn more that way. It’s the same with many things, especially housework, cooking and childcare.
I visited a plumbing shop near Sgombou and got prices for various boilers; phoned a plumber we know to ensure the prices were reasonable (owe him a drink) and also a friend in the village.
“Do you have baths?”
“No. Showers only”
“Then go for a 60 litre instead of your present 80 litre tank”
“What about this compression bubble beside our tank?”
“Not needed”
I still don’t understood what that item actually does, but it was the first thing I unbolted from the wall.
He added “Use the plumbing supplier on the main road by Gouvia”
“I know it”
“Spiro there is from the village”
So we collected a new tank. €120 with 5 year guarantee. Of course I couldn’t see how the old tank was fixed to the wall behind it, but guessed it was a bracket on two bolts, that the old tank, once drained and disconnected, would lift off.
So the power supply is switched off at the panel in the utility room and the three wires – live, neutral and earth - disconnected and the tank drained – something we’ve done before and know how to do. The first time, to clean the boiler and change the element, I, thinking all water had emptied out via the tap, unbolted the round hatch containing element and thermostat housing. I and the floor were abruptly drenched in rusty water and limescale. This time we are dry and ready to lift the boiler out of its bracket.
“It’s heavy” says Lin “If we let it slip it’ll smash the tile floor and hurt one of us”
We ponder. I scuttle down to the apothiki where I stored an old sculling oar we found on the beach ages ago. I shove it right up inside the old boiler and wedge the oar end in a plastic bucket of gravel beside the end of the bath/
“It’ll just sink into that” says Lin
“No it won’t”
“Yes it will”
“No it will not”
I jerk the boiler upwards above my head. I’d already loosened one of the bolts with a few levering jerks of a jemmy.
“OK it’s free”
The boiler now sits on the oar, unbalanced but it's weight held.
“Gently, gently”
We gradually slope the oar, dodging the shower rail, until I can cradle the boiler in both arms.
“Now how do we get the oar out?”
“Down a bit more, bit more.”
“OK now bring it round and pull it towards you”
I back away towards the window of our small bathroom
“Now ease it out”
“As the actress said to the bishop”
I carry the old boiler away and we make a cup of tea.
“How are we going to get the new one up?”
“Wait until they come to supper on Tuesday night. I’ll ask Mark and Paul”
Next problem is that the bracket on the new boiler is lower than the old. Two more bolts are needed. I see the old ones were expansion bolts in a plastered wall made of insulating bricks. It’s dodgy getting a firm fixing with two lined up holes in that. I could see where the previous builder had made two other holes that had failed, filling them with mortar.
“We’ll use the other wall. We’ll need different length connecting pipes and a junction in the electric cable so it’ll reach”
I start drilling. The first hole is too easy. It’s old stone wall and I’ve hit a wider mortar seam between rough stone, but one of the recovered expansion bolts gets a sturdy grip in the gap. I insert a tough ring of hard epoxy glue around the wider hole near the surface. Lin then makes a careful measurement using one of the new brackets as a template and the next challenge is to get the second hole exactly level with the first. I begin drilling. Two inches in the lights start to flicker in the bathroom and the drill dies. The carbon brushes are shot and their dying sparking must have set off a sympathetic flicker in the light circuit.
“I’ve never seen that before. Have you?”
Of course my battery drill, good for wood drilling, is no way up to hammering into the rock I’ve encountered.
I phone a friend.
“Er! Any chance you could lend me a drill to finish one hole in our bathroom wall”
“Sure. Come round”
This was not do-it-yourself. Too many experts brought in to help. I was lent a very expensive craftsman’s battery powered drill. The sort of thing you don't see in shops for ordinary punters.
“Wow, thanks! You shouldn’t be lending something like this to an amateur”
“Simon. I’ve seen some of the things you’ve been doing in your house. You’re craftsmen!” I beamed inwardly and outwardly’
“Yeah yeah, But gosh thanks all the same”
Back in the house. This beautiful piece of kit drilled confidently into the rock, even so, taking me nearly 15 minutes. This time a big rawlplug went neatly into the hole followed by a coach bolt on which you could have hung a cathedral. Furthermore it was perfectly in line with the other. I returned the drill with profuse thanks.
For the next two days Lin began redecorating the bathroom and we washed in warm water from the kettle. We removed the fiddly wire shelf through which things fell into the bath and replaced it with a sturdy glass shelf.
“Amy bought this shelf on eBay, but she didn’t want it”
“Oh?”
“She’d bought babe clothes from the same address for a couple of quid and was told they had to be posted to her, just up the road, charge £6.00. Classic ebay seller trick to get profit on carriage”
“Then?”
“The same seller offered this shelf for 99p ‘buyer collect’. Amy didn’t want it but clicked ‘buy now’ and went to the address. Once there she said 'Oh and can I pick up those clothes I bought?'”
Ah, the cunning of thrift.
My battery drill served for the smaller holes needed.
Tuesday evening, friends for supper.
“Mark, Paul! Can you help?”
They went downstairs. Lifted the new boiler between them. Dropped it neatly on the bolts in three seconds, then back to the table.
Next day I bought two 50cm flexible pipes at Sgombou; removed the old pipes and after binding plumbers’ thread on the boiler and the hot and cold inlet-outlet pipes tightened everything up, turned on the water, filled the tank; then the electricity. On came the pilot light.
“We’ve got hot water again!”
Lin had a shower.
“Hm. Not sure 60 litres of hot water is enough for wash, rinse, conditioner and rinse.”
But later as she continued decorating, adding grout to a circling ribbon of small blue tiles, she said “Ohoh! There’s a leak”
I sighed and inspected. The no-return valve on the cold water inlet was dribbling steadily from the quite the wrong place.
“Shit”
I turned off the water, undid the connection. The bolt shot off under pressure from 60 litres of warm water, bruising my knuckle. It poured into bowls and buckets I emptied into the bath.
“Now what’s gone wrong?” I wondered “I’m taking this valve to the plumber at Kontokali”
Spiro checked it.
“You must not tighten the nut that connects to the valve so that it prevents it working. Just three or four turns will do” Now how could I have known that?
I bought another valve, a tap to go between tank and valve and a shorter length of flexible pipe. €11.50. Back home I wrapped plumbers waxy string carefully around each connection and gently tightened everything; turned on the water and watched.
“It’s OK!”
“Don’t say that where the boiler can hear you” said Lin
*** *** ***
On naftemporiki.gr - an intriguing interview with an academic who loves Greece, and knows the history of modern Greece in great depth, Professor Mark Mazower speaking in English with Greek sub-titles. Μαζάουερ: Ανάκτηση της αυτονομίας με σωστή οικονομία
I especially like his observations on the new generation of young Greek historians, but also his admission that so much of what is happening in and to Greece was not what he ever expected.
*** ***
Another good letter from my friend Jan D in England:
Hello Simon. I follow your escapades on your blog. Good to see that you are busy doing practical tasks. In the future (perhaps sooner than we think ) such skills will again be vital and in much demand, we may (re)discover that manual and technical skills are more important than the latest IT gizmo, after all we can’t eat the computer or mobile phone. Talking about food are you following events in Britain? These are depressing and worrying times. Quick on the heels of the Mid Staffordshire Hospital scandal we now have what is referred to as the ‘horsemeat’ scandal. This will not surprise you but it is yet another example, on top of all the others, of mismanagement. corruption and deceit in a key industry; this time the food chain and supermarket ready-made meals. The food chain has now become so long and uncontrollable we cannot be certain of what we are eating (despite the labels) or the safety of it. The Government is out of its depth and everybody is blaming everybody else (what’s new!). Yet another example of what happens when you deregulate. The Food Standards Agency has lost of half of its inspectors (through so called efficiency no doubt), so it’s not surprising that yet again we have an industry operating outside any meaningful control or accountability. If it wasn’t so serious you’d laugh at some of the finger pointing. Monty Python could not have done better. We are being told that it is all down to Romanian horse thieves! Well if everything else fails blame ‘Johnny Foreigner’, especially if there’s a gypsy angle as well. The hypocrisy is staggering. Some of the most diehard anti-European MPs are now calling for EU actions and seeking the co-operation of our European partners. I actually don’t mind eating horse; done it many times in France as long as I know that is what it is and that it is safe to do so. However there may be some benefits emerging from this, especially around a revival of locally produced food and local food outlets. Traditional butchers are doing a roaring trade at the moment and hopefully this will extend to local markets, greengrocers, artisan bakers etc., which can only be good for local communities and ‘localism’. I don’t think this is the demise of supermarkets, but they may well operate somewhat differently in the future.
There is also a growing acknowledgement and appreciation of the importance of a wide range of public functions. Whether this is just an immediate reaction or a longer term shift is yet to be seen. Regrettably I think the deregulators and unlimited free marketeers have the upper hand and wield enormous power and I still have a deep anxiety that we are moving toward a new type of feudalism. There was a very interesting article in the Guardian this week on the workings of so-called Think Tanks. They like to present themselves as independent and objective, but in reality they are well funded pressure groups working on behalf of some rather unpleasant, and in many cases American, corporate interests, (tobacco, climate deniers, chemicals, etc.). Frequently it’s impossible to know who funds these organisations, and to really rub salt into the wound many of them are registered charities and hence receive tax benefits. They also have considerable access to the political elite. I am not a natural conspiracy peddler but it is difficult to see how local democracy or any democracy can function properly in the economic and political environments now emerging. I would be interested to hear your views on this. I am convinced that some form of ‘bottom –up’ or ‘refocused’ consumerism is part of the answer, and in this context modern technology can be a powerful tool so I’m not a total Luddite.
I have read some more on the developments in Russia since the fall of Communism which is good case of Be Careful of What You Wish For. We spent decades trying to bring down the Soviet Union in the (naïve) belief that a western style democracy would make it free, open, fair and governed by the rule of law. But it hasn’t quite worked out like that. Whilst the Soviet Union was good riddance, what has replaced it, according to a book by Edward Lucas, is organised crime, big business corruption, illegality and bribery on a phenomenal scale, e.g. as much as $6 billion is paid in bribes every year and half of the country’s $140 billion public expenditure is siphoned off illegally. He calls it a ‘pirate’ state (others call it a mafia state) ruled by a criminal elite heavy populated by ex-Soviet spooks and ex- secret agents and the ‘nouveau riche’. (see also Luke Harding's Mafia State) I think this demonstrates what can happen when a vacuum is created during political upheavals and who might fill it. It makes you stop and think what could happen here as the state and public sector retreat on an unprecedented scale. The ‘intelligent’ criminal may well thrive and then local democracy or any democracy is going to struggle to survive in any meaningful way.
As more and more of society is removed from democratic accountability and transparency and power and wealth concentrated in a very small group we face a troublesome future and I can’t help feeling it has gone beyond the tipping point already. I struggle to envisage how an alternative may emerge or what it would look like. The offerings of the left are as cliché ridden, unrealistic and unpleasant as the offerings of the right or any other existing group. A new mind set is certainly required as well as different expectations and these things don’t come easy if at all. I agree with you that a recalibration of the relationships between the citizen, the state and the public domain is crucial to the way forward. The very notions of progress, growth, well-being etc., need to find a new narrative which appeals to people and which they can actually experience as something positive and fulfilling in meeting their aspirations.
I am conscious that this sounds idealistic and naïve and it may well be that we need to hit the buffers hard in order to make a paradigm change or we may simply just drift into a very different society to the one we have had for the last 60-70 years and adjust accordingly; although in the longer run people will not put up with a new form of feudalism.
I am struggling to find ways local involvement and actions can assist us in going in a more positive direction but as I said I am convinced that a bottom up approach is necessary. Despite all the scandals and increasing loss of faith and mistrust in many public and private institutions, it is interesting to note that with one or two exceptions local authorities have conducted themselves properly (with very little recognition) and actually coped better than most (so far) with challenges facing them which are greater than most; they are almost too competent for their own good; all they get in return is abuse from Eric Pickles a particularly odious minister. Happy days. Look forward to our conversation in March. Best Jan
*** *** ***
I wondered if there was a name for a lunch that lasts into the early evening. Olimpia said there was 'at least, there is in Northern Italy (mostly Piedmont area): they use to call it "merenda sinoira"'*. We were at Jan M’s home overlooking the Kerkyra Sea below Garitsa, a village south of the city.
Having driven south on the Lefkimmi Road, past that doleful ruin – Kaiser’s bridge – we turned onto a thin winding ascent, negotiating a minor landslip, realized we’d missed a turn, and crossed it again. A man, perched like a statue beside the road, pointed our way up a snaking gravel drive to a Venetian country house of courteous aspect.
If a house could be polite this one was; so too its owner who greeted us almost with diffidence, as though our visit honoured her. Through a modest front door into a room of perfect proportions, large and graceful without grandeur or pretension. If only all Corfu could have learned to know and respect such architecture, instead of crusting its lovely shores with vain construction. Even from the balcony of San Stephano nested so delicately inside the landscape...
... its almost invisible, the tiers of a monster shack stuck themselves through the skyline; one of Greece’s Lopachkin’s, before running out of money, had again wounded the island with the skeleton shelves of yet another Leggotel. From its guest rooms the world offers fine prospects; from outside, the world is blighted by the plans of a new signor.
We talked and ate and drank. Jan M made being our host look easy. Local wine, local food. Over coffee we looked at a photo album – black and white portraits, of people who’d enjoyed and lived in and visited the house. Some seemed almost ready to talk - so animated their gaze into the long open shutter from long ago.
In the guest book Aleko came across the delicate signatures of his parents, guests before they were married. I glimpsed in the same book, looming in my memory, a curling scrawl of fading black ink taking up all of a page, as one who suddenly encountering a venomous snake sees it bigger than it is - the signature of Kaiser Wilhelm, last German emperor, that Abraham who slew his son. instead of the offered ram of pride, and with him half the seed of Europe one-by-one.
*Antica tradizione contadina, di origine piemontese, la "Merenda sinoira" è un pasto pomeridiano che, per l'abbondanza, tende a sostituire la cena (per questo "sinoira" o «cenoira»). D'estate, dovendo lavorare i campi anche dopo il tramonto, i contadini organizzavano delle chiassose e ricche merende, sul tardo pomeriggio.
*** ***
Upstairs at 208 Democracy Street the wood of a disassembled and de-nailed palette is being made into skirting board to hide the ragged gap between the chipboard floor and our bedroom walls; walls, which, being in places curved, require a mix of wood bending and later filling. The palette wood was first sanded and double-coat varnished. On top of the wood we attach strips of moulded trim bought from Αποθήκη Ζύλειας The Wood Shed, a timber yard on the Lefkimmi Road in Kanalia, about a kilometre beyond the airport and Simonetti’s Yard. Rather too wide at the base each strip had to be sanded down several millimetres before varnishing.
This combination was glued to the wall, held by bricks while it dried, and varnished with old nail holes yet to be filled. The improvement is remarkable.
I don't know why it took us so long to find and start using a chimney brush with rods to clean our stove pipe.
What has so far involved the exercise of taking down and taking apart the stove pipe inside the house, with attendant soot, followed by resealing the pipe joints with heat proof silver tape, now entails the simpler task of climbing a ladder on the outside wall, removing the top of the chimney and shoving the brush on two rods into the pipe so that soot ends up dropping into the stove where it can be cleared away like the ash.
“We’ll have to do this more often…”
“As the actress…”
“…instead of putting off a messy job until the stove starts spouting smoke”
*** *** ***
The Rev William Mather has sent me a copy of his address at mum's Memorial Service
Barbara Burnett- Stuart, 1917-2012
Some personal reflections;
William Mather, 8th December 2012
My own personal memories of Barbara are linked with my parents, Bill and Eleanor who were friends with Barbara and Angus in Cheshire and Manchester when Angus was working with Thomson Newspapers.
There were wonderful social events and whenever Barbara and Angus were around there was lots of laughter and fun. These always seemed to be linked with tweeds and dogs and glorious days outside, in all weathers, sharing their love of shooting and fishing both in Cheshire and up here.
Libby and I once bumped into Barbara quite by chance on one of our rare visits to London. Feeling a bit like tourists we were exploring the Burlington Arcade and on going into a very respectable shoe-shop suddenly bumped into Barbara, trying on shoes!
When my late mother visited us here a couple of years ago we went to see Barbara at Brin Croft and I reminded her of the Burlington Arcade shoe-shop. She said with relish: “Ooh and were the shoes very expensive?!”
Barbara had a wonderful way of combining all aspects of life. Born in London she had a real feel for city life but she loved the country and all that went with it. Perhaps it was her early years escaping with her mother and sister Margot to Clavering, a totally unspoilt rural Essex village, that nurtured her love for the open air. There were bicycles and horses, paddling in the ford, developing a dairy farm and sharing in Girl Guide activities. They all loved it
During the war Clavering became a refuge from the nightly air-raids of the Blitz. During this period Barbara remembered her mother trying to keep everybody calm with matter-of-fact comments like: “We must remember to let the dogs out before the bombs come.”
When she married John Baddeley in 1940, Clavering became the obvious place for their home and it was there that Simon and Bay were born.
It is perhaps no surprise that following her privileged upbringing Barbara put her sharp mind and humour to good use by throwing herself into journalism, photography and publishing.
Sadly her first marriage ended shortly after the war and was followed by a long relationship with the Country Broadcaster Jack Hargreaves. Eventually in 1965 she married Angus, adding his two step-daughters, Fiona and Jennifer to the family.
Among the wonderful family films that Simon managed to do about Barbara – including memories of the Blitz, and of life at Clavering, there is one of Barbara reflecting on coming to live in the Highlands. In it she says: “I just bless the day when Angus said: ‘Would you settle if we went to Scotland?’ Because if he hadn’t said that, we never would.”
Settle she certainly did, settling in Strathnairn at Mains of Faillie near Daviot. This became a home for more and more grand-children and eventually great grand-children. For most of them, in Simon’s words: ‘The Highlands became a refuge of constant pleasure and happy memories, of winter snow, wind and rain, chilly summer swims, climbs and long walks with many dogs.’
She also became involved in much community activity, including the Samaritans and becoming a ‘Friend’ of Eden Court Theatre.
This service has been specially designed with hymns, readings, tributes and photographs to try and remind ourselves of some of Barbara’s interests and loves. Thomas Hardy’s poem ‘Afterwards’ hints at some of the enjoyments and awareness of life’s delights, eccentricities and quiet beauties – from hedgehogs ‘travelling furtively over the lawn’ to ‘watching the full-starred heavens.’ Barbara would have loved such imagery.
And her article ‘Peace of Mind’, with her personal reflections on looking at Leonardo da Vinci’s painting, ‘Madonna of the Rocks’ – written when she was women’s editor of Farmers’ Weekly – is particularly perceptive. She ponders on ‘peace of mind’ and how gazing at the painting and in particular the face of the Virgin, she writes: ‘one begins to know the meaning of that Peace which Passeth all Understanding.’
Earlier in the same article she remembers child-hood visits to her local church at Christmas, where in a Christmas crib-scene, she sees the figure of Jesus, ‘this tiny figure representing the Man who was to make men and women of us all.’
Barbara would not have called herself particularly religious but she was blessed with an open-heart towards life and people and with a spiritual awareness.
It is perhaps worth reminding ourselves that when she refers to the ‘Peace that passeth all understanding,’ she is quoting from the famous verse in Philippians 4-4-7. In the words of the Authorised Version of the Bible, which she loved, it is as follows:
4. Rejoice in the Lord alway: and Again I say, Rejoice 5. Let your moderation be known Unto all men. The Lord is at hand. 6. Be careful for nothing; but in Every thing by prayer and supplication With thanksgiving let your requests Be made known unto God. 7. And the peace of God, which Passeth all understanding, shall keep Your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.
Mum on Democracy Street in 2010
*** *** ***
Lin and I visited Richard in the Corfu Private Clinic a few days ago. He's now flown to Dublin for further treatment...sends his regular circular 'Greek voters ponder the unthinkable - cutting ties with the EU':
Please follow the link to see my column in The Irish Times of Tuesday 19 February. Apologies for .the delay in circulating this which was due to medical complications. I hope to resume a regular column very shortly. Regards Richard Pine
(extract)....A 'Grexit', as it is called, is still an option. If the Voulí is a 'council of elders', it has shown itself to be incapable of knowing its own mind or of recognising and interpreting the will of the people. What people actually want, and what they are not getting, is a way out of the economic impasse, a means of creating wealth which will counteract the recession, and lead to job creation. This is not without precedent. In the 1920s Hungary, in the throes of reconstruction, offered the state railways to foreign buyers, and even went so far as to apply to the then League of Nations for a bailout. Parallels with Greece are obvious, where state assets are on offer, not very successfully, to foreign investors and buyers. The imperatives for any struggling country, especially a small one, to look for help elsewhere are compelling. It’s even within recent memory that the UK secured IMF funding to dig it out of an appalling financial crisis. In 1977, the then president of Greece, Konstantine Tsatsos, argued for Greece’s inclusion in Europe (it was admitted in 1981) on cultural and political as well as economic grounds. He linked Greece to other southern states – Portugal, Spain, Italy – all of which, it could be argued, would have to either catch up quickly or be left behind. Their inherent assets would not be enough to sustain them in an age of technological change and wealth creation. How right he proved to be.
*** ***
Aftermath: I still haven't got the boiler right. After a couple of days the non-return valve below its cold water inlet starts to drip. I replace it with another - €3.50. It works for a while then the dripping starts again.
Paul, up the road, asks me “What’s your water pressure?”
“You mean on the gauge outside the house?”
“Yes”
“Somewhere between 7 and 8”
“It should be more like 3”
“But we’ve only opened the mains tap a quarter turn”
“That’s flow not pressure”
“Er?”
“It’s like amps and volts” says Lin helpfully
“You will find a screw for adjusting the pressure just next to the dial”
“And don’t you touch it” says Lin “until we know exactly how it works”
“Hold on you were saying the boiler was jinxed. Thinking of calling in the priest to exorcise it”
“That may still be necessary”
*** ***
Down at Ipsos work continues on Summer Song and also, as promised by the Deputy Mayor of Corfu at the meeting on 8 Feb, on the revived police station.
Says Cinty "That's good. I hope they don't make it so comfortable the new policemen just stay indoors lounging"
Kostas Apergis - Κώστας Απέργης - was grumbling on the Ano Korakiana website last Thursday about the power cuts that leave the village without lights or heat for cooking, and even without tap water, while his friend Thanassis has added a note - από μια άλλη άποψη - that these inconveniences direct neighbours back to earlier forms of light and heat and the inclination to help one another.
Εωσφόρος ονομάζεται αυτός που αναγγέλλει τον ερχομό της αυγής (έω-αυγή+φέρω), δηλαδή ο πλανήτης Αφροδίτη, ο Αυγερινός που λέμε. Κατά τη χριστιανική διδασκαλία ήταν επικεφαλής των αγγέλων, που όμως λόγω αλαζονείας και υπερηφανείας εξέπεσε στην τάξη των δαιμόνων και έγινε διάβολος, ο Βεεζελβούλ.
Η ΔΕΗ, όπως όλοι γνωρίζουμε, έχει καθήκον να μας τροφοδοτεί με ηλεκτρικό ρεύμα, γι΄ αυτό άλλωστε την πληρώνουμε και μάλιστα καλά.
Για να εξασφαλίζει την ομαλή τροφοδοσία ρεύματος στους καταναλωτές της, διαθέτει τεχνικά συνεργεία, τα οποία προβαίνουν σε όλες εκείνες τις απαιτούμενες ενέργειες προς τούτο.
Τα τελευταία χρόνια κατά τη διάρκεια καιρικών φαινομένων έντονων όπως βροχή, αέρας, αστραπόβροντα η Κορακιάνα μένει χωρίς ρεύμα για λίγο ή συνήθως περισσότερο χρόνο, με ότι συνέπειες έχει αυτό σε άλλους τομείς π.χ. στο υδραγωγείο, ενώ στη νότια μέση Κέρκυρα τα φώτα πάντα συνεχίζουν να λάμπουν! Να αποδώσουμε το φαινόμενο στο διάολο της Κορακιάνας ή σ΄αυτόν της ΔΕΗ;
Σημείωση ιστοσελίδας: από μια άλλη άποψη, η παρατεταμένη διακοπή ηλεκτρικού ρεύματος γύρισε για λίγο τη σελίδα της καθημερινότητάς μας. Η πρόβα της Χορωδίας έγινε υπό το φως των σύγχρονων "λαδοφωτιών" (τα κινητά τηλέφωνα φέρουν και φωτισμό), και το κέρασμα της Κατερίνας και της Σοφίας έγινε στο σκοτάδι. Η χαρτοπαιξία στο καφενείο έδωσε τη θέση της σε συζήτηση υπό το φως των κεριών, ενώ η τηλεόραση στο σπίτι αντικαταστάθηκε για λίγο από το παλιό τρανζιστοράκι. Τέλος, οι παλαιότεροι θυμήθηκαν ότι πρώτο τους μέλημα τα παλιά τα χρόνια, μόλις επέστρεφαν από το χωράφι το σούρουπο, ήταν να ζητήσουν από το γείτονα ένα απόδαυλο για να ανάψουν το τζάκι τους, εάν δεν είχαν προνοήσει για κανένα μισαναμένο κάρβουνο στις στάχτες. Και βέβαια, το αντιφέγγισμα του ουρανού, παρά τη βαρειά συννεφιά, απέτρεψε από την ανάγκη της χρήσης απόδαυλων για το περπάτημα στο δρόμο...
(My rough translation) Lucifer - Εωσφόροςis - announces the coming of dawn, between the planet Venus and the Morning Star. In Christian teaching he was at the head of the angels, but because of his arrogance and pride was cast down and became Beelzebub -Βεεζελβούλ. The PPC (ThePublic Power Corporation of Greece) - ΔΕΗ - as we all know, has a duty to supply us with electricity. We pay good money for their service. They are there to give consumers a reliable supply of electricity. They have technical workshops to do all that's needed to ensure that. But in recent years during heavy rain, strong winds and lightning, Ano Korakiana has been left without power - sometimes briefly but often for long periods, causing us to lose power for the pumping stations so that the village is without clean water, while further south the lights remain on across Corfu! Is the PPC just telling Korakianas they can go to hell? (note: Kostas is actually ruder - Να αποδώσουμε το φαινόμενο στο διάολο της Κορακιάνας ή σ΄αυτόν της ΔΕΗ;
Note from Thanassis: From another viewpoint, prolonged blackout briefly turns the page on our daily lives. The choir rehearsed by the light of modern inventions - 'ladofotion' - ? cell phones and torches, and Catherine's and Sophia's hospitality (treat) was enjoyed in the dark. Gambling at the kafeneion gave way to discussion under candlelight while TV at home was briefly replaced by old transistor radios. Finally, the oldest of us recalled that their first concern in the past, as soon as they returned from the fields at nightfall, was to ask their neighbour for a glowing ember to light their stove, if they'd forgotten to leave enough coal to smoulder in the grate. And of course, the glow of the sky, despite pouring rain, prevented the need for torches when walking down the street ...
Να αποδώσουμε το φαινόμενο στο διάολο της Κορακιάνας ή σ΄αυτόν της ΔΕΗ;
In the village last Feb I was in Mark and Sally's house one evening:
...Their house cosy with plentiful candles, Mark, gazing beyond the spacious porch said
“There are lights over to the west” proving the point.
The power came on again but we lost WiFi for a few minutes. As I said goodnight the house lights stayed on, but street lights were out – on a separate supply which also powers the pumps that bring water to the village. Back at 208 I nudged our largest bowls below the gutter pipes; rainwater for washing and flushing; prepared night lights, candles and matches and a small propane stove. I’ve got bottled water for tea – and wine to drink. Reminded by loss of water and power, something familiar at this time of year, Sally and I had been discussing how we’d all experience shortages in the ‘crisis’ – the winter weather’s not unfamiliar but now it's got the feel of a dirge, stirring apprehensions.
Η προχθεσινή βροχόπτωση, που συνδυάστηκε με δυνατό αέρα, ανέδειξε για μια ακόμη φορά ένα πρόβλημα που ταλανίζει το χωριό μας, χρόνια τώρα. Κάθε φορά που οι καιρικές συνθήκες είναι έντονες, ο οικισμός ξεμένει από …ηλεκτρικό ρεύμα.
The day before rainfall, combined with strong winds, highlighted once again a problem plaguing our village for years. Whenever the weather is severe, the settlement finds itaelf...running out of electricity.
Gale at Garitsa
*** *** ***
Yesterday the first big removal from Brin Croft, an oil painting that has hung behind my mother's chair all the five years she's been here, after her move from Mains of Faillie in 2006. It's lovely. A painting by Guthrie of Fiona, my step-sister's great grandmother.
In the quotidian language of probate, it's been valued for the estate and can now be moved out. I've put another picture in its place but the wall looks empty. Thus we will disassemble Mum's things, gradually changing everything. Thank goodness the house feels so entirely without her as though she's got better things to be doing than hanging around here. To while the time I wrote an obit in case a local paper wants one:
1917: Theodora Barbara with her mother and grandmother
Our mother died at Brin Croft, Inverarnie at teatime on 1 November aged 95. She was born Theodora Barbara Sumner Maine in London in 1917. Like her mum she was a debutante, but had little taste for 'the season'.
She became a photographer, journalist and publisher. In 1946 she reported from occupied Vienna as a war correspondent for Vogue. She continued a career in Fleet Street as editor of women’s magazines and the first women’s editor of Farmers Weekly. She had two children, Simon and Bay - "my pigeon pair" - by her first marriage to the diplomat John Baddeley CMG, followed by a long liaison with the country broadcaster Jack Hargreaves OBE. In 1965 she married Angus Burnett Stuart, head of Thompson Regional Newspapers, adding his two stepdaughters, Fiona and Jennifer to her family. In the 1950s and early ‘60s she published, edited, commissioned and part-authored a range of country-life books on smallholding, cookery, collecting and restoring old junk (long before these became widespread hobbies), pressure-cooking and deep-freezing (when these were still novel in the home). Moving to the Highlands on her husband’s retirement, she continued her publishing work as well as sharing Angus’ love of fishing. He was a founder of the Highland Field Sports Fair at Moy the last thirty years. Her sister Margot had long lived locally, at Cannich then Forres. Angus and Barbara settled in Strathnairn at Mains of Faillie near Daviot.
Mum with her daughter, Bay, great granddaughter, Sydney and granddaughter Susie
She worked for various local causes including the Samaritans and created a home for more and more grandchildren and eventually great grandchildren. For most of them the Highlands became a refuge of constant pleasure and happy memories, of dreich winter snow, wind and rain, chilly summer swims, climbs and long walks with many dogs. When Angus died in 2005 in his own home, Barbara, at the age of 88, managed the move to her last home at Brin Croft. She continued to take part in community activity; was an ardent friend of Eden Court Theatre, a gardener and traveller - to many parts of Europe, to Russia, Palestine and Israel, Greece, Morocco and Egypt, the USA, India and the Far East. She was one of those fortunate people whose bodies gave out before their minds, lucid until three days before she passed away, her children at her bedside in her own home. She once said, as she found herself relying more and more on sticks and a wheelchair, “Growing old is not for the young. It’s ruddy hard work!” She was a prolific reader; loved music with no distinction between genres; nurtured long close friendships with relatives and non-relatives.
Mum with great grandson, Oliver, granddaughter, Amy and son, Simon
She was a companion, listener and consoler. Her five years' carer, Sharon Brown, told of how early this year, she wheeled Barbara into the big supermarket outside town, where her first words in the electronics section were “I want the best iPad you’ve got!’ - a great span from touch-typing and shorthand in her twenties, to Skype, Google and Wikipedia in her nineties. She loved life; more especially she loved the rivers, tracks, woods and hills of Inverness-shire, especially the Findhorn about which she left files of notes. Four chickens were bought and housed just outside Brin Croft this August, providing entertainment for her great grandchildren and eggs for her omelets. Almost until her last days she was planning further projects; death no more than something in her way.
Mum fishing for shark
*** *** ***
Saturday afternoon: Beth, Tracy's daughter, was waiting on us at the Dores Inn. She's a sweet girl. Liz and she hugged and chatted after she'd bought us a cider and, for me a half pint of Ossian, a pleasant flavoured real ale. The pub was warm, welcoming; busy with Saturday lunching into the late afternoon. Liz drove me down the rough lane from Brin Croft onto the road from Tombreck over the Nairn to the cross-roads, then left up the strath past Tordarroch farmstead, towards Dunlichity, over familiar rises and familiar turns close beside loch a'Chlachain - mum called it Clacken - round a long bend to the wooded banks of loch Duntelchaig. the gentle heights of Creag Bhuidhe luminous with light snow under winter sun, achingly beautiful. Then through the muir over two grids by high Loch Ashie reflecting the flawless blue. The menu was easy. i ordered an interesting vegetable soup and brown bread and a smoked salmon and cream cheese sandwich. We'd walked where I've walked for years and years the sun blazing on the glittering water of the Great Glen, the great rift of Loch Ness that divides the Highlands, dazzling even through the tall pines, spangling layers of pine needled earth beside our easy track beyond the pebble shore between Dores and Tor Point, the ageless outline of hills dipping into Loch Ness. There's Meall Fuar-mhonaidh. I saw its steep sugar-loaf summit thoroughly snow covered like a Christmas cake when I was 10; first time in the Highlands, for the world, which seemed to lie before me like a land of dreams, so various, so beautiful, so new.
"This is a clearance for my sadness, Liz"
She talked blithely, like Amy, about all sorts of things, a palliation for the inescapable ache of this lovely landscape, trailing away headland by headland to drab Fort Augustus. Lulu yelled at me for a stick. I threw it out twenty feet into the chilly water of the loch and in she leapt, swimming as ever like a little champion, our otter, brought it back and brushed the wet stick against the back of our legs, asking us "throw again, and again!" I argued with Liz about democracy, about trusting it enough to vote as she made familiar generalisations about 'politicians' and 'the system'.
We returned in the dusk, a few coming cars shining up the roadside birch, footlights on a winter's tale. Brin Croft was in darkness; our tyres crunching on gravel sparkling with hoarfrost crystals.
"Doing this is good" I said "I get to cover the old ground. But I don't see how I'll be coming back to the Highlands"
"I love it here. I want to live here" said Liz "so does Amy"
"So you might apply for a job?"
"Oh yeah. It's agreed."
The dogs leap from the opened boot. Heeling us as we shuffle into the warmth of the house.
"Cup of tea, One sugar?"
"Yeah. Cup of tea."
** ** ** ** **
Jim Potts has dug out a newspaper cutting for Corfu Blues in which Gerald Durrell returned to Corfu in 1987 half a century after his and his family's legendary childhood there in the 1930s. I've visited and revisited this dismal falling off; nothing is novel. But like Maria Strani-Potts' recent Pimping of Panorea, Durrell's words resonate now as they did 25 years ago:
I have had a most extraordinary affair of the heart. It started when I was eight years old and I fell deeply and irrevocably in love with a ravishing creature who was mature and beautiful. She gave me joy, brightness, freedom of spirit and opened my eyes to beauty, scents, colours, knowledge, love and laughter. Her name was Kerkyra, the island of Corfu, and she is probably several million years old. Going back to her recently was like paying a visit to the most beautiful woman in the world suffering from an acute and probably terminal case of leprosy – commonly called tourism.
It is, of course, ridiculous to expect the places of your youth to remain unchanged while you yourself get older and more withered but somehow, with land and seascapes, if they are untarnished by man you expect them to be immutable, like a beautiful painting. “Never go back to a place where you were happy,” my brother Larry once said to me, and it is an offered fruit of wisdom with a kernel of bitterness enshrined in it, for have been back to many places where I have been happy and been happy again. But the place that gave me the greatest joy and enchantment was Corfu and so I have been back many ties and suffered as I watched her demise. Tourism is a curious modern disease. It attacks the shoeless man, the man of meagre wealth and the bloated man of affluence, whereupon it becomes an epidemic like the Black Death that stalked through Europe in the Middle Ages. It now ranges all over the world. The people of Corfu were blessed with a magnificent, magical inheritance, an island of staggering beauty, probably one of the most beautiful islands in the whole of the Mediterranean. What they have done with it is vandalism beyond belief.
Barbati in north west Corfu before the arrival of Lopákhin
All this is true. All this has happened. I've been over it again and again - chatted happily about it with Jim and Maria last February at Rouvas. The world is full of Lopákhins who want to buy and Ranevskayas who, through their own incompetence, have to sell.
LOPAKHIN: I bought it. Wait a bit; don't hurry me; my head's in a whirl; I can't speak. . [Laughing] When we got to the sale, Derigánof was there already. Leoníd Andréyitch had only fifteen hundred pounds, and Derigánof bid three thousand more than the mortgage right away. When I saw how things stood, I went for him and bid four thousand. He said four thousand five hundred. I said five thousand five hundred. He went up by five hundreds, you see, and I went up by thousands...Well, it was soon over. I bid nine thousand more than the mortgage, and got it; and now the cherry orchard is mine! Mine! [Laughing] Heavens alive! Just think of it! The cherry orchard is mine! Tell me that I'm drunk; tell me that I'm off my head; tell me that it's all a dream!...[Stamping his feet] Don't laugh at me! If only my father and my grandfather could rise from their graves and see the whole affair, how their Yermolái, their flogged and ignorant Yermolái, who used to run about barefooted in the winter, how this same Yermolái had bought a property that hasn't its equal for beauty anywhere in the whole world! I have bought the property where my father and grandfather were slaves, where they weren't even allowed into the kitchen. I'm asleep, it's only a vision, it isn't real...'Tis the fruit of imagination, wrapped in the mists of ignorance. [Picking up a set of keys] She's thrown down her keys; she wants to show that she's no longer mistress here. [Jingling them together] Well, what's the odds? [Musicians can be heard tuning up] Hey, musicians play! I want to hear you. Come everyone and see Yermolái Lopákhin lay his axe to the cherry orchard, come and see the trees fall down! We'll fill the place with villas; our grandsons and great-grandsons shall see a new life here....Strike up, music!
"...come and see the trees fall down! We'll fill the place with villas" What remains of the island's cherry orchards is yet amazing. What's happened isn't as black and white as Durrell writes it - the old man remembering and lamenting a childhood idyll; what happened isn't bad or good in that easy sense. It's both tragedy and comedy as Chekov intended his wonderful play to be, and about which audience, directors and critics have debated since.
Sunrise after rain in Corfu
"If you want to find a place" said my stepfather 'be sure to choose somewhere already ruined".
Well yes indeed. That's Corfu. I embrace with such gratitude the happiness that yet remains here; that we have found in this place. Its beauty, joy, love, light, come only in part from the precious remains of its ravished landscape – worst of all the littered shores – but from the people we know here. Without them, like Scotland, as anywhere, there would be no happiness.
What’s Missing in the Latest Greek Bailout...The new Greek bailout deal agreed to Tuesday by eurozone finance ministers and the International Monetary Fund is a clear improvement over earlier deals. It recognizes that Greece’s current and projected ratios of debt to output are unsustainable. It prescribes useful steps to lower that ratio, including lower interest rates on loans from Greece’s European partners, longer bond maturities and a plan for Athens to buy back and retire some of its heavily discounted bonds. Regrettably, it excludes more effective tools, like actual debt write-downs, which Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, finds politically unpalatable. And in deference to Ms. Merkel, the deal postpones some of the promised relief until after German elections next September. But its biggest mistake is conditioning relief on maintaining fiscal austerity.....
I dreamed that austerity would go on for ever. That Athens would shrink to the size it was in the 19th century, and the sprawling suburbs of all the Republic's cities would shrink to their core, their deadly suburbs and strip malls falling into decay, becoming the fields and woods they destroyed; that Greece with all Europe and the world would utterly rebalance urban-rural relationships; reducing the human population to ancient proportions over the next century. My stepfather wished it. I wish it.
Did they think about the skylarks when they built Mayfair on the grazings that ran down to the Shepherd’s Market?
Did they worry about the snipe when they drained the marshes behind St.James’s Palace to build Belgravia?
Where did the kite go when they dug the London sewers?
Do the piles they drove down through the beaver’s dam hold firm the supermarket in Newbury High Street?
Who cooked the big trout that lay under the village bridge at Wandsworth? Who feasted on the last salmon that was netted at Tower Hamlets?
Now they come to put central heating in the ploughman’s hovel. They claim the sun that used to bake the hay. And breathe the breeze in which the pointing dog caught a hundred scents.
They walk out in trainers and T-shirts that say “Save the Rain Forest”.
“Stand back!” they say. “We have a right to walk where we please!” But we look where they trod before and shudder for what follows in their footsteps.
I said I must write a warning. But I was angry and - as the Japanese say - to be angry is only to make yourself ridiculous.
So we will live out our days in the cracks between the concrete. And then they will pour cement on top of us.*
*'Love of the country ~ ode to a book I never wrote' written in 1993 by my stepfather Jack Hargreaves (1911-1994) and probably - forgive me - not intended to be public.
At Solva with Jack
To a rural townie like me this 'ode' of Jack's is contradictory, as I suspect he was well aware. He denigrates people who demonstrate on behalf of rain forests. Yet who, other than illegal loggers and land hungry peasants, does not care about their degradation? He's vexed at people who buy rural labourers' cottages to convert into comfortable second homes - yet all my life with him we switched to and fro between the city where Jack, when he was not filming, did much of his work and earned his living, and the country where we had beautifully converted homes - in Berkshire, Hampshire and then Dorset. I have no doubt that Jack knew our way of living - as is often the case with all but the most dedicated of self-sufficient farmers - contributed to the passing of the way of life he spent thirty years recording on television. That he was entertaining rather than bleak was his gift as an entertainer. All his life JH respected people who lived off the land though they lived by modern agricultural methods, as few cannot. He knew a tiny percentage of those who reside in the countryside actually live off the land; that his stewardship of fowl, cattle, ponies and his kitchen smallholding, was a drop in an ocean; satisfying, even beloved props, for Out of Town. He once observed - earning a kick below the table from my mother - that my grandmother's post-war dairy farm (where I was born) was a 'hobby farm', surviving on subsidy - "a milk lorry winding slowly along country lanes collecting one or two churns from small farms on its daily round, adding a good three pennies to every urban housewife's pint." His position was contradictory. I am unsure what else it could have been.
*** ***
Hurrah for hybridity! Intriguing reading from June Samaras' ever valued Google Group hellas-greece on Greek ethnicity in America, especially when I ponder the diversity of my wider family - Jewish, Greek - Athenian and Cypriot - South African, Turkish, working class, middle and upper middle class, English, Scots, Welsh - an academic paper by Yiorgos Anagnostou, Ohio State University...When “Second Generation” Narratives and Hollywood Meet: Making Ethnicity in My Big Fat Greek Wedding , MELUS, Volume 37, Number 4 (Winter 2012) pp.139-163
....Thus the film reminds audiences that the pursuit of freedom is far more complicated than simply a matter of choice. Obligations lurk in social relations, becom-ing particularly visible in the interface between the dominant society and American ethnics with histories of collectivism such as Greek Americans. They also operate when families and communities invest in the social reproduction of ethnicity. The film values the striving for autonomy while at the same time pointing to the limitations surrounding this ideal. It is compelling to watch because it narrates social life as a drama of longing for autonomy and acknowledging the existence of forces that curtail it. The American ideal of autonomy is not achieved, and it may even be impossible to achieve in a culturally diverse society. My Big Fat Greek Wedding envisions ethnicity in the multicultural polity by promoting the value of ethnicity while also acknowledging its constraining function. p.157
Thirty years ago Michel Foucault (1965) described the spontaneous appearance in the middle ages of the ship of fools. This image reflected alarm among the burghers of well-ordered medieval towns at the movement within their streets and outside their walls of leprous, itinerant and destitute people. From the findings that such people had been the subjects of increasingly attentive monitoring, regulation, sometimes incarceration and later institutionalisation, Foucault showed how disorder engenders order and elaborated an evolving reciprocity between forms of madness and forms of civilisation. This exegesis led me thereafter to suspect concerns I found myself harbouring about disorder in the world. Irritation at litter insinuated a gap in my reasoning. Exasperation at noise implied a failure of logic. Fear of crime might include flawed ratiocination. All anxiety evoked by external events has had to be checked for its possible source in too complacent a need for order. Thus Foucault’s archaeology engendered a reflexive distrust of any impulse in myself to define a polity - local or global - that excluded the aberrant. I do not mean differences absorbed by a liberal civility educated to abhor inhibition of the cosmopolitan. Foucault’s lesson applies where those fine feelings no longer rule and anxiety about otherness and what cannot be understood edges into fear or worse. “Madness and Civilisation” served as constitutional therapy, partially immunising me against projecting fears in myself on to strangers and the strange, and creating a setting for an internal politics that would entertain no appreciative judgement about what was outside without a comparable appreciation of what was inside. Foucault (1978) wrote of government as an art that can be discerned in the way people learned to govern themselves, accept government and govern others. His concept of "governmentality” elides “government” and “mentality”, providing a term that embraces psychology and politics and assumes a continuity between the rule of self, household and state that may be interrupted and require reinvention in crises. It embraces the historical process of government in external polities and the biographical process of self-government in internal polities (Baddeley 1995)....from Governmentality in Brian Loader (ed.) (1997) The Governance of Cyberspace (London:Routledge) (5) 64-96
