Picnic at Execution Island

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

Του Σωματείου «ΛΑΖΑΡΕΤΟ»

The jetty

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

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

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

The wall on Execution Island

* * *
 E-mail to JM in Australia:

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

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

* * *

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

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

Late October in the village

Dawn over the mainland - an October morning in Ano Korakiana

As the time to leave the village and return to the distant city grows closer I find myself playing down here; playing up there. It’s the same for those long departed swallows. As they assembled on village power lines beside their fledglings, emptied nests growing stale under tiled eaves of a village in Greece, twitching for the flight south; reversing the excitement of Easter’s arrival, fretting for a village in Africa.
 “You’ll like it”
 “Are we there yet?”
I’m balancing regret and anticipation; a slight time vacuum that matches this weather; poised between late summer and gentle autumn; sounds and smells evoking life as a planet in a universe of parents, their story my sun, sensations and images evoked by wood smoke, slight chill, misty evenings, lit windows into glimpsed interiors; the quiet of this village strewn along a mile of mountainside with its wide precise focus on the scrubbed mainland hills of Epirus. Here is a warmed space in which to be absorbed uninterrupted by clues to the present; so the click of burning wood in the stove is both now, and long ago, a reminder to feed the fire. I roam in time, occupied by beloved presences long gone from the earth, places past, still ineffaceable. So will we be for our children I hope - an indelible frieze. I’ve been employing my imagination on the recovery of Rock Cottage, assisted by Martin’s regularly forwarded pictures from Gloucestershire. He and Sandra and Adam have been travelling down to the Forest of Dean at weekends from their home near Worcester - equipped with first aid for our first second home, plus Jack and other helpers – ‘Team Ward’ Martin calls them. I’m nearly ready to imagine us being able to stay again in the Forest of Dean – but there’s tiling, painting, carpeting yet, and the hope that the problem of upstairs damp will be solved, by adding gutters, burning logs, clearing drains, living there…

Hi Simon. Paul examined the heating system today, re-filled and charged the system, and got it all up-and-running. The boiler has withstood the ravages of time and lack of use quite well. There is only one issue and this is some corrosion on the diverter valve and pipework.
He estimates the boiler is ten years old, and has a lifespan of 15 years. He estimates this corrosion will last the life of the boiler, and messing about with it at this stage in its life would only cause more problems.
I have been discussing the damp problems with Paul, and he has had similar problems with a cottage in Wales. After many surveys and so-call expert advice - most of the problems turned out to be condensation. I note the new windows have no trickle vents, and other than the chimney flue upstairs - there is no ventilation at all. When we got there this morning, the windows were steamed up on the inside !
I've opened all the windows one tiny gap, and left the heating on for the week, turned down to 15°C - so it will only come on at night. I'll see how it goes for just this week, and note any improvements. Talk more about this when I see you both next. Regards, Martin X

Adam mending the guttering

Sandra on the windows 

Martin's lit the fire to help dry the house ~ 'Team Ward' at work

There’s the allotment, plot 14 on the Victoria Jubilee, from which I’ve pledged these last years, I’ll supply vegetables for our next Christmas lunch. Winnie’s been sending reassuring pictures of well prepared soil, sprouting winter onions…

Plot 14 England (photo: Winnie Hall)

There’s walking and cycling on the canals with dog Oscar, who, while we’ve been away, has been shared between our neighbours and Amy. There’s a host of work to be done on the house in Handsworth; continuing work on the Jack Hargreaves archive sat in that slatternly lock-up on the Tyburn Road; see what Francis in London has done by way of further digitising film and tape, synchronising sound and image. Second day home – Monday after next – I’m giving an evening talk about the history of Handsworth Park to Barr and Aston Local History Society in Great Barr Memorial Hall. And there’ll be seeing the grandchildren again; familiar after an interval of just a fortnight since they were with us in Corfu...

Lin, Hannah, Amy, Oliver at Ipsos

... a fortnight since Guy and I went out on Summer Song; Dave our guardian.
“Let’s go to Lazaretto Λαζαρέτο”
“Where?”
“Gouvinon Island”
He was still puzzled.
“Execution Island”
I’m averse to the name. A cloud shadowed the mountains. We motored out of Ipsos into a calm sunlight sea. No chance to sail…
”Unless those two big clouds come together, then we might need Gouvia as a bolt hole” said Dave as we passed close by Cape Kommeno.
But the sun shone on us between them. The island came closer.

We slowed near the old jetty, took a second pass to avoid shallows, and went in nose first, Dave mooring us with a knot shoved into a slot between a pair of rough stones, our bow covered in fenders touching the water. The clouds moved across the sun.

I’d been here a over four years ago, expecting now to see the museum announced in 2007 completed; a place to tell the story behind the walls scarred by the impact of many bullets; serried ranks of crosses a few yards up a slope from the jetty; memorials for young men and women shot during the Civil War - bearing dates between 1947 and 1949.

A Museum of Medical History and National Reconciliation is to be built on the historic islet of Lazaretto, Corfu. The old leprosy hospital, which has been listed for preservation, is set for restoration and the surrounding area will be refurbished and made fully accessible to the public, according to a Corfu Municipality architectural study that has the approval of Deputy Environment Minister Stavros Kaloyiannis.[Long history of Corfu isle honoured with a Museum February 24, 2007]

But someone and something doesn’t want the history yet. Can’t tell it. Won't tell it. The Occupation executions perhaps yes, but not the fratricidal killings that came after. When I was here in May 2009, the new building looked smart, ready to be used for visits, lectures, exhibitions. The older buildings including the old and perfectly shaped small church, were readied for restoration, scaffolding erected, walls being stripped, some re-plastered. Now the whole place lay besmirched with neglect, mossed, mildewed, rusting, streaked with gutter dripping. In a clearing was a large stack of hardened sacks of cement, paper peeled.

“There’s a €1000 of cement gone to waste there” said Dave.
"It could have been stored under cover surely?"
The notice I’d seen before showed the starred Euro-symbol and the amount dedicated to creating this memorial - €314,000
“That’s gone somewhere else” we muttered.
 “There’s some rain” I said, feeling speckles between the pines. Someone had been strimming and lopping recently or all would have been disappearing into the shrubs, saplings and trees decorating the rest of the island. There were also roughly squared boards bearing more names, listed without dates or other identification. We'd been going to sit and eat our sandwiches. Instead we headed back to Summer Song, passing another notice, the only one that speaks a little of what happened here.

“What a great place for a taverna!” said Dave “A proper jetty. You could have a to-and-fro ferryboat from Gouvia”
“Yes. An open air grill. Souvlaki  lamb, pork, kokoretsi, chicken breasts and legs and beer and wine” “It would be a cracker of a place”
"Singing, dancing..."
Remembering. Someone told us an old man they knew saw soldiers with rifles bringing prisoners to the harbour.
“Young men and women from the prison marched to the old port to board a boat to the island. They were shouting and singing as they walked!”
We got back on Summer Song and motored around the island before heading back to Gouvia Bay. Guy had phoned Amy.
“They’ll meet us at the jetty there in an hour”
The clouds passed as we closed the shore by the old Venetian shipyard, tied up beside the caïque moored there and strolled ashore as Lin drove up with Amy, Liz, Sophia, Hannah and Oliver. Dave had brought small life jackets, and fitted one to Oliver.
“We’ll meet you at Ipsos” said Amy.
Liz and Oliver came with us on Summer Song, clambering over the decks of the caïque to board the old yacht.

Summer Song leaving Gouvia Pier (photo: Linda Baddeley)

Oliver with his dad "What's that noise?"

With Oliver aboard the 'Boyhood of Raleigh' flashed in my mind...an image nursed in imagination since I was a boy, lived in my youth...the model ship, the arm pointing to the Spanish Main, so so long before I was - with thousands of others who need to know their history - grappling with post-colonialism.

A breeze got up off Kommeno again. For a quiet half hour, before calm returned, we sailed under the foresail, Liz at the helm. Moored again in Ipsos, tidying the boat, turning the handle that pumps grease into the stern gland, I thanked Dave
 “That was such good outing. Your reassurance made it so”
Oliver had spent most of our return journey exploring inside the cabin, observing as we approached Ipsos “Look at the lovely water” A boy's memory of the sea.

Meeting up at the harbour in Ipsos

*** *** ***
The Co-op is gearing up for this winter's olives. On a walk with the family, we dropped in on Sebastiano Metallinos, and his helper Harry, overseeing the oil processing machinery. Sebastiano gave Amy and Liz a tour of the plant from the delivery of olives, twigs and leaves, to the cleaning washing hopper, to the oil tap at the other end

One of the two olive oil centrifuges in the village co-op

Douglas Adams would have used the name of a town, Roget might have a clue for me, and the Germans, a suitable compound adjective to describe the bitter-sweet experience of having the house to ourselves, now Liz, Sophia, Guy, Amy, Oliver and little Hannah have flown back to England. They left - eventually - in wet grey weather, which is always better, except the plane that should have taken them home was struck by lightning somewhere on its approach to Kapodistria. It landed with everyone safe, but sat on the runway effectively unusable, while Easyjet announced they were sending a replacement jet, which would mean everyone waiting in the airport for the rest of the day. (Other travellers fared worse). I was grandpa childminder helping with the children until at last they trooped into security just before nine in the evening and I headed back to Ano Korakiana in the dark.

"I don't see how they can get any compensation" said Lin later, reading the cancellation and delay leaflet everyone had been been given at the airport "It's hardly Easyjet's fault if they get struck by lightning"
“When we get home…”
“Home?” I’m of two minds on this, at least two, thinking of a way to return in January when the internet – outside the popular months for travel - becomes useless and Lin and I rely on local knowledge.
“Do you know anyone who knows about travelling to and from Albania?” I asked Pastor Miltiades at the Lighthouse.
“I do”
“Wow! We’d like to go to Dubrovnik, perhaps Split and on to Albania without having to go back to Italy first”
The crow flight from the bottom of Croatia to the top of Albania is hardly 100 kilometres. No coach or ferry is promoted between the countries…
“Not that we can see”
“From Dubrovnik there is a coach or ferry to Durrës. From Durrës - in Greek we call it Dyrrhachion Δυρράχιον - you take a coach to Saranda” said Pastor Militiades
“Right opposite us!”
“From Saranda you take a ferry direct to Corfu. I will give you some places to stay in Albania next Saturday”
So then I’m trying to work out how to get to Dubrovnik for under the ridiculous £1000 price three change 12 hour flights thrown up by flightscanners.
“They’re useless for economy flights in Europe.” says Lin “They’re for cheap tickets to Thailand, Hawaii, Australia…I’ll do some searching on Ryanair, Easyjet, Whizzair”
Meantime I’m phoning Viamare in London for their access to winter ferry routes to Croatia from Italy.
Says Alina “Bari-Dubrovnik? Wait a mo’…checks her computer...they start in April”
“Anything in January?”
“Wait a mo’…Ancona-Split. I’ll email details”

Dear Mr Baddeley. Further to our telephone conversation with regards to a ferry crossing from Italy to Croatia or Albania. Please note that I can offer a ferry crossing from Ancona – Split , Jan 2015 however time table is still not available, it should be available in mid/end November 2014. At the moment I can offer: Bari-Durrës – 10 Jan 15 – 23:00 arrives 08:00
2 passengers in seats = €116
2 passengers in 2 bed inside cabin with shower and wc = €168
Please note the ferry runs every day at 23.00
Best regards. Alina. Viamare Ltd. Reservations Dept.

***** *****
Kobanê...Just when the politicians and military of the West have learned about fighting assymetric war they find themselves confronting a force claiming aspirations to fighting symmetrically in the style of the warrior prophet. Kobani  an undoubted place, a concept avoided in asymmetric conflict, is being fought over these last weeks. I suspect the 'West', working the old military option of patience - if only they'd done this after 9/11 - will, with the learning of the last 10 years, out-manoeuvre this unwieldy occupation of ravaged middle eastern deserts. As for the Kurdish diaspora - this must be a moment in history.
*** ***
By incomparable Tolstoy’s first line in Anna Karenina, his response to Madame Bovary perhaps, we ought, in order to be interesting, to be less than fully happy. Yet to avoid too much derivative plotting, clichés even, I wouldn’t want to paint a picture of enviable harmony masking an emerging tale of depravity…(from the prompt box – frantic rotations of fingers and a finger slashing the throat)
No no, seriously tho’, don’t bloody do those fake gaping yawns, you know how real writers can compress time; painters define foliage with hardly two deft strokes or composers hit a three note phrase that says it all…
The trouble with all this is that I try to agree with my stepfather, a master of the television anecdote. He didn’t think you should ever take your audience behind the proscenium; “Don’t share the tricks of the trade”…
I suspect that these last few weeks will show up on our tree rings, or whatever Lysenko projected was the physiological medium by which experience attached itself to genes, as a time of richly harvested joys. Yet didn’t Tolstoy also show that his hero Levin – same novel – in even his happiest moments contemplated suicide. It’s something about mixing; an alchemy in which grown-up joy is the more real through being spiced with homoeopathic dilutions of misery, depravity, despair, extinction and failure. These are dreams I have, waking to find myself among my children, beside my wife, in my home bed. Koestler implied it with the image of a walled cottage garden orchestrating an array of gentle perfumes and colours, sounds and lovely things to touch and taste, surrounded, if you lift your gaze, by a panorama of barbed wire, where Homer’s rosy fingered dawn is become a blood streamed firmament.  Wasn’t I right to cry out with revulsion when Uncle Mac on Children’s Hour sang about the bells with that finale...

Here comes a chopper to chop off your head
Chip chop chip chop - the last man's dead.

...or Strewwelpeter’s to little Conrad suck-a-thumb … ‘he comes he comes’ –  the big red scissor man.

Snip! Snap! Snip! the scissors go;
And Conrad cries out - Oh! Oh! Oh!
Snip! Snap! Snip! They go so fast;
That both his thumbs are off at last.

...just little red stumps - in that famous cautionary children’s book.
“Oh! The crying and the wailing of children!” I smiled in mock despair to our neighbours Vasiliki and Lefteri and family around their table for Sunday lunch. Foti smiled at me
“You need King Herod” he muttered with a grin.
I missed his meaning for a moment
“Massacre of the Innocents!” said Natasha to cries of horrified laughter. Ah yes indeed.

The children in Corfu 

*** ***
A new shop - for goods, coffee and drinks - has opened in the village's last kafeneon καφενείου Κεφαλλωνίτη. Crescendo run by Spiro and his brother Dimitri Vlachos, opened with the blessing of Pappa Kostas last week...

Εγκαίνια στο "Κρεσεντο" - 26/10/14

Χθες, παραμονή του Αγίου Δημητρίου, το σούρουπο, πραγματοποιήθηκαν τα εγκαίνια ενός νέου καταστήματος στο χωριό, από δύο νέους ανθρώπους, τα αδέλφια Σπύρο και Δημήτρη Βλάχο. Το κατάστημα άνοιξε στο χώρο του πρώην «καφενείου Κεφαλλωνίτη» επί του κεντρικού δρόμου, έναντι του Δημοτικού Σχολείου του χωριού και είναι πλέον πανέτοιμο να προσφέρει τρόφιμα, καφέ και γλυκά, στον ειδικά διαρρυθμισμένο χώρο του. Τα εγκαίνια έγιναν με τον συνηθισμένο για την περίσταση αγιασμό από τον παπα-Κώστα, με την παρουσία της οικογένειας των ιδιοκτητών, φιλικών τους προσώπων και αρκετών χωριανών, ενώ μπροστά από την είσοδο υπήρχε μπουφές με κεράσματα. Ευχόμαστε καλές δουλειές…και προπάντων με «κρεσέντο»!!!

Local history

Tea with village historians at 208 Democracy Street

I was pondering my interest in history, realising that I'm drawn to the fascination of events close in time and place and their connection to the larger flow; our local park that gave identity to the new Birmingham suburb of Handsworth at the end of the 19th century; Black Patch Park which, with friends, we've sought to save from being built over, helped by descendants of the Gypsies once displaced to make it; the life of a family friend, long dead, who fought at sea and taught me to sail a small boat in the ocean.

Thumb Island, Peloponnese 1962

Our local church, whose tower I can see above the canopy of trees between us, holds the remains of the founders of the industrial revolution; my stepfather who so influenced my childhood and thus my life; my mum and dad who fell in love amid war - and made me in the Savoy; my grandpa Henry, who with help from Paul Savage, I'm learning things I hardly suspected; my dad and his Greek wife Maria who married in Panaghia Kapnikarea - Παναγίας Καπνικαρέας - in busy Hermou Street in central Athens in 1949 and gave me Greek half-sisters and half-brother and my proud connection to beloved Ελλάδα; my great great grandfather brilliant author of Ancient Law who analysed the frailties of popular government and wrote 'except the blind forces of nature, nothing moves in this world that is not Greek in origin'. Especially, and more recently, I've tried to learn about the Greek Civil War - ο Eμφύλιος - the source of national trauma worse in its ravaging of the national psyche than Nazi Occupation - Η Κατοχή - leaving tensions still unresolved; histories almost impossible to write. And only lately have I learned - see Richard Pine's discussion of it last November - about Pantelis Voulgaris' 2009 film Soul Deep - Ψυχή Βαθιά - about the Greek Civil, just as I was reading the book and seeing the film of Ashes and Diamonds based in Poland in May 1945, and regretting not seeing something similar about the human side of those historical events in Greece! Voulgaris' film shows the last stage of the war on the slopes of Grammos from the perspectives of brothers on different sides. Richard from near Kassiopi writes:

...in the village where I live today, the events of 60 years ago are still fresh. One man is totally ostracised because he gave the authorities the names of three young communists who were then “disappeared”. Every year, the Greek communist party (KKE) organises a pilgrimage of remembrance to the Lazareto islet in Corfu bay, where most of the executions of prisoners took place.

'Execution Island' where we sailed to have a picnic with friends

Encouraged by the scholar and journalist Richard Pine at the Durrell School, met in 2009, I have been learning more about the British Protectorate of the Ionian Islands. He invited me to give a talk last February about what I'd learned about that period in Corfu's and the other Ionian islands' history. My study of the Septinsular had begun a little earlier when Ano Korakiana's historian, Kostas Apergis, and the authors of the village website, Thanassis and Katya Spingos - neighbours - had asked if we could dig out 'a letter' that they had so far been unable to find in Greek archives. I've failed to find this 'letter' in the British Library, the National Archives or the Institute for Historical Research, but on my 'voyage' I've made many visits and learned much from lettered men - and women, especially Eleni Calligas.

...σε πόλεις Αιγυπτιακές πολλές να πας,

να μάθεις και να μάθεις απ' τους σπουδασμένους.

* **

Less wind; more animals and insects about yesterday. A hatch of Scots Argus - ranged above every patch of grass, clustering on tansy ragwort. The air was full of insects revealed then hidden again as the sun went in and out. No midges though. Over a plantation of deciduous saplings east from Brin Croft three buzzards circled mewing, a red deer hind grazing shoots, flushed by the terriers, leapt the low fence I was skirting and disappeared into the dark of the larch enclosure. I came across fresh Chanterelle, picked and fried them in butter with salt and pepper to share with mum as hors d'œuvres in the evening

Descending into the alder edges of the Farnack still strewn with the remains of winter spate I saw the feeding pens I'd passed in the depth of winter - haven for sheep huddled against the wind. Here were foxgloves, harebells, Anne's lace, vetch, flowerless buttercup, rich grass and sedge and a path that gave like a sprung floor through which I'd last waded thigh deep in snow.

Having tea in the conservatory, chatting with my mother. The maiden heifers in the field below us began bulling and there appeared a white Charolais bull. A burst of crackling momentarily deafening sound disturbed this conversation as the big silhouette of a low flying Tornado out of Lossiemouth disappeared trailing sound.

I spend my time in a sort of daze, doing occasional errands for mum when she can't help herself and Sharon's not around. The atmosphere, perhaps the altitude, has always made me slightly sleepy when I'm not being walking. There's occasional work - planning events her; the seminar in Wellington in November; more in Australia with John, who, in passing, has put me in touch with Andy Asquith, at Massey, who's sent me papers to read and the promise of further briefing on local government in New Zealand.

I'm moving over to the log cabin for a few days while my step-niece and her husband with their small children visit for the Moy Fair on Friday and Saturday. Lin and I talk on the phone and to our delight Paul P and his family will take a repair-lease on Rock Cottage ending an episode of neglect for that cherished place in the Forest of Dean, since we've switched our attention to Greece.

Brin Rock

* * * I found these images of Ano Korakiana posted last August with the suggestion that the village is 'deserted in winter' - Τωρα δυστυχως το χωριο εχει ερημωνει τον χειμωνα...I wouldn't have thought that a fair description this winter when there was Vassilopita in January and Carnival in February along with other events over Christmas

From the Ano Korakiana website there's news of progress on the long neglected football pitch (in the background of this linked image) below the village and progress on plans for investment in instruments and uniforms for the village Philharmonia band. A meeting took place in late July with representatives of PAOK, local politicians and officials of the Prefecture to review an investment of €420,000 - to be shared between the Prefecture and the Municipality. Have they effectively won the bid then? Could this partnership be at risk with plans to dissolve the current municipality under Athens's Kallicratis local government restructuring supposed to be in place by November? On the other bid for the supply of organs and sewing uniforms for the Corfu Philharmonic including Ano Korakiana's band, 'things get slightly complicated'. It's OK for instruments 'but when it comes to uniforms and helmets' bidding will have to be repeated.

Monday morning

An email this morning from Clive Birch, Chairman of BDAC:

Simon, Intention is still to open this year - proposed time is during national allotments week in August. Clive

That's 10-16 August this year. So we're back on the road - with the usual caution. I phoned Rachel to pass on Clive's message to her and others.

* * * With help I've been pointed to where I can get my hands on Eleni Calligas' thesis - at the Institute of Historical Research. I shall visit on my way to the National Archives on Thursday - at least to start reading. As for the search for the village petition to the High Commission asking the English not to leave, a document which may or may not exist, I may have another source in Maria Paschalidi researching the construction of colonial identities 'the Ionian islands in British imagination 1815-1864'. There's even a hint she might have seen the 'paper' that Kostas and Thanassis have asked me to try and find.

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In another dimension my imagination is being fermented by an exchange on Flickr about Execution Island. I'm led into the pitiable space of Civil War, Occupation and fratricide, the stone years and moral ambiguity around the naming of Democracy Street. Her moniker is Kerkira. She writes English like a native and poses sensitive questions, tells me more about things that happened - how Miki Theodorakis visits the island every year, to remember his brother who was killed there.

Did you hear, my Constantine, what the little birds are saying?

They are little birds and let them sing, they are little birds and let them say.

And a little further on their way other little birds are telling them:

“Isn’t pity and unfair, very strange,

the alive to walk along with the dead?”!

-Did you hear, my Constantine, what the little birds are saying?

That the alive walk along with the dead....

What the Greeks went through

Dylan Thomas wrote to Lawrence Durrell in 1938 a letter from England which included the paragraph

...I think England is the very place for a fluent and fiery writer. The highest hymns of the sun are written in the dark. I like the grey country. A bucket of Greek sun would drown in one colour the crowds of colours I like trying to mix for myself out a grey flat insular mud. If I went to the sun I’d just sit in the sun; that would be very pleasant but I’m not doing it, and the only necessary things I do are the things I am doing. Unless by accidents, and my life is planned by them, I shall be nearer Bournemouth than Corfu this summer.

Jim Potts mentioned these observations on his blog recently, and in a note to me this morning, included the sentence:

It's extraordinary what the Corfiots (and the Greeks generally) went through in the 1920s and 1940s.

This made me think of suggestions that Corfu's beauty, tranquillity and wealth is enervating, not a place for an artist to be creative...

Dear Jim. Indeed. At the time Kostas Apergis identified those initials carved by a boy in 1957 he said Marcos was still living in Ano Korakiana...It’s knowing what the Greeks went through in the ‘20s and ‘40s that puts the lie to the idea of the ‘enervating.... bucket of Greek sun’ drowning the creative muse, as compared to colder climates...an error of Dylan Thomas and even Cretan Kazantzakis who described Corfu as 'fatal for a fighting soul'. A picnic on the Lazaretto?...

The shame and cruelty of the young men and women being taken out under 'a bucket of sun' to that pretty green place; Theodoraki’s laments for his brother and others who died there; gentle Despina Bebedeli, Δέσποινα Μπεμπεδέλη, singing 'Sleep My Little Angel’...

Κοιμήσου αγγελούδι μου, παιδί μου νάνι - νάνι
Να μεγαλώσεις γρήγορα, σαν τ αψηλό πλατάνι
Να γίνεις άντρας στο κορμί και στο μυα - λό
Και να σαι πάντα μεσ το δρόμο τον καλό

You know this is not a lullaby to a baby, but a dirge, τα μοιρολόγι, for a youth in the ground of Execution Island. 

Greece, marketed as sun, sea and sand for fifty years, with ruins thrown in, is an image of the country that deceived even Dylan Thomas and no doubt other intellectuals (tho' I can compile a rebuttal inventory starting with Robert Graves and D H Lawrence, Camus, Hemingway and Leigh Fermor - it’s not just Greece but the decadent sun of the olive belt) who need, or feel their muse is further north, as though Greece is winterless. 

Lazaretto ~ each flower marks an executioner's bullet (photo: Jim Potts)

Corfu is full of ghosts; worse - spectres. She overlooks, as you well know, a peaked landscape of the imagination stretching from Saranda to beyond Levkada. Things were done on Corfu by the signorini that are lost to all but family history, even then reduced to small anecdotes that hide the larger oppression. 

What of the Jews, Greek citizens, taken from their city so near the end of the war, to join the thousands of others from Ioannina, Athens and Thessaloniki? It’s true that the skulls are not on the surface as they are in the Mani, but they lie in similar numbers beneath the beloved island’s green turf. The flaw in the 'ennervation thesis' is that so many northerners know almost nothing of modern Greek history. They know little even of the time before that - of the loss of Constantinople Κωνσταντινούπολις. 

I sent two birds to the red apple tree, of which the legends speak. One was killed, the other was hurt, and they never came back to me. Of the marble emperor - το Μαρμαρωμένο Βασιλιά - there is no word, no talk. But grandmothers sing about him to the children like a fairy tale. I sent two birds, two house martins, to the red apple tree. But there they stayed and became a dream.

There are refugees via Cyprus and Crete on Corfu, some in Ano Korakiana, who hold the memory of the marble emperor and the loss of Greece’s Byzantine capital. E.M. Forster met Constantine Cavafy in 1918 in Alexandria living off a narrow street in a flat above a brothel - 10 Rue Lepsius. Alexandria. Or was it in a letter Cavafy wrote to Forster? The poet told Forster that the Greeks and the English were almost exactly alike, but for one crucial difference: 

"We Greeks have lost our capital -- and the results are what you see. Pray, my dear Forster, oh pray, that you never lose your capital." 

Some suggest he referred to financial privation. Forster knew it was Constantinople. Northerners are confused by a hazardous semi-knowledge of what has happened here in the last 200 years. Greece's classical history - tho' in detail as exactingly complicated and messy as the modern one (see the actual alliances involved at Marathon, Salamis and Thermopylae for a start or the conditional liberties of Athenian democracy) - is so tremendous; fills such a vast part of educated people’s mental DNA, there’s hardly room for the utterly unfamiliar morally complicated Balkan mayhem of the Greek War of Independence.
“Wasn’t Byron involved?”
And what of the Souliotes betrayed by Pelios Gousis? ...πως ο Εφιάλτης θα φανεί στο τέλος. What of the women of Souli?
THe great schism? The big idea? The burning of Smyrna? The exchange of populations? What are they? Noble Kolokotronis at Dervenakia, Venizelos, Theotoki, Kapodistria, Mavromikali? Who are they? Klefts? The dance of Zalongo? Distomo? Kalavryta? Kommeno? The famine of Athens? Blokos?  The holocaust of Viannos? The dekemvria? The white terror, the red terror? Metaxa?
“Oh yes Metaxas, Very nice after a good meal”...

...and I haven’t got to the Stone Years, τα Πέτρινα Χρόνια. The Junta. (See Mazower's After the War was Over) And not only the 20th century but far further back. Thucydides: 

It was in Corcyra that most of these audacious acts were first committed and all the crimes that would be perpetrated in retaliation by men who had been governed tyrannically rather than with good sense and had the chance of revenge, or that would be unjustly designed by others who were longing to be relieved of their habitual poverty, and who above all were animated by a passionate desire for their neighbours' property; crimes too that men commit, not from greed, but when they assail their equals and are so often swept away by untutored rage into attacks of pitiless cruelty

Another bolster for the enervation thesis is that for the Durrell’s, Corfu was a childhood paradise. They wrote with unsurpassed brilliance about happiness. Their joy may have aroused envious critical suspicion; an inclination to treat them as fantasists or, if telling the truth, describing a lotus eating haven that eats creativity. Edmund Keeley wrote Inventing Paradise. His word ‘invention’ captures the point.
I cannot subscribe to the enervation thesis on the grounds of landscape alone - a place with panoramas that elude the painter perhaps, but cannot fall short of the Netherlands or England for inspiration. Just because I’ve been so happy on the island doesn't make it enervating in my book, but then I have no book. I rest my case. Best, Simon

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Public or private dentistry?

I needed an extraction, some cleaning and some tidying. I went to a private dentist and met a nice and competent seeming surgeon. His estimate after an examination came to £5803. I went to an NHS dentist and talked to another nice and competent seeming surgeon. His estimate, after examinaton, was £208. The difference? The first dentist would replace my extracted tooth with an implant, and possibly another - the process completed by December. The second offered a small denture - the process completed in the time it'd take to make the denture - just over a week. I could afford to go private but I've got better things to do with £5959. I spoke to Lin and worried the matter for a week then went to the NHS where they made a mould in ten minutes. I came back in a week, had a local anaesthetic. The tooth was out so quick I hardly noticed. I was cycling home, my gadget in place, within half an hour. My three little false teeth are finely wrought and comfortable, and give my mouth a better appearance than it's had for years, but I'm not a toothy smiler anyway.
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Saturday afternoon Richard showed Amy around his flat in town and we went to the Bull Ring, to Jamie's Italian where I bought them a rather too expensive late lunch and Richard and I both managed to hold Oliver without dropping him or making him weep.

Later Amy inveigled me into Gap where there was a 45% off sale, except her choices of baby clothes were not in the sale. Next door Apple was packed but a figure waved to me from the crowd - Niko, our tutor. We embraced.
"When can we have our next lesson?"
"I've been very busy. Christina and I our getting married in September"
"Oh no! We'll be in Greece"
"I'll send dates for us to get together"
I introduced him to Amy and showed him my grandson, fast asleep in the odious hubbub of the shopping centre.
Strolling up crowded New Street Amy bumped into two of her police colleagues on duty.
We walked on.
"Just after I went on maternity leave" she said "Operation Paragon started belt tightening. My area will have changed when I go back. It's larger."
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Scholarship on two wheels! John Martin and Alistair Walker with Annie Guthrie filming as they go, continue their great shared cycle ride across Canada, studying sustainable communities; writing their thoughts as they go, every sentence is the tip of an iceberg, with a hundred elaborations and examples to be pursued on the way to explanation and insight on the habits that make for sustainability.

John, Annie, Alistair

The metaphor of a community on a journey becomes more powerful as the reader realises that their propositions are emerging from a transcontinental bicycle odyssey. Every working community is indeed unique yet governments and individuals seek the guidance and even the shock of admonition derived from general principles. Uniqueness is the watchword. Creativity is vital. They're explorers composing, as they travel, a sophisticated yet practical map of imaginative intellectual territory that for many currently in power has been illustrated by exotic beasts and blank spaces. Their new map will assist more and more people and communities to make more and more unique journey’s towards sustainability, helping more and more to join ‘the long conversation’, spurring more and more negotiation with the dominant economic paradigm. The final map won't be overwhelmingly burdened with data, with acronyms and endless statistics. They will know all this of course as they noticed and felt, in the seat of their pants, the rich detail of the endless surfaces over which they pedalled. They’ll have breathed it all in. Their exposition will be more like those ingenious ‘mud maps’...

...the aboriginals use, which in context reveals more truths than the precise measures of modern ordnance survey about a place and its inhabitants

Given the requisite variety of communities there is an infinite number of ways of achieving sustainable outcomes. Each journey is unique. Every community is concerned about its success and continuity. The way they achieve this is an individual journey, at a point in time influenced by both externalities and the capacity and commitment of the people who constitute each community to adopt new ways of working. We have seen many communities in our journey across Canada, some more closely than others. Some are doing well, some not so. The question we are often asked is: what makes for a sustainable community? ‘Institutionalising’ or incorporating sustainable living practices into the formal regimes of society is, I believe, an essential outcome for building sustainable communities.A key success factor in this continuity is the extent to which...

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It's clear that the onion fly has been causing harm across the VJA site. I've been getting advice from other plot-holders planning for future crops of onions and leaks on the use of nematodes. I've clearly got a world of understanding ahead of me with these. One snag is their cost. During a rare sunny patch I harvested more spring onions and broccoli from the plot.

***** *****
On Sunday afternoon, Linda and I completed Wednesday's Handsworth Helping Hand's work in the Church Vale Triangle, laying out plants donated via Freegle, including perennial Geraniums, Lilac, Hypericum, Big Leaf Periwinkle and Alpine Strawberries. Three of the seventy or so Pelargonia we planted on Wednesday have been pinched. We replaced them.

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Letter from a friend on holiday in Corfu. She had asked for advice on places to visit while there with her daughter. I cautioned her on a general truth about contemporary Corfu - in this case the despoliation of Paleocastritsa - while describing the possibility of exquisite places to be discovered close by - especially on foot or bicycle:

Simon. Greetings from beautiful Paleo. Your bespoke guide has been invaluable. I carry a printout in my beach bag. Thank you. We are here for another 3 of our 14 days. It  has been delightful. We have only had a problem with the weather - a heatwave! Really - can't believe I am complaining but sometimes too hot to move from our shaded cove. Everywhere a noticeable lack of people which is great for us but not for the locals. We didn't hire a car so have been walking everywhere. We recommended guests to your friend Sally's hacking tours and they loved the trek. Monastery great - after all the awful half empty coaches have left for he day. Glorious dusk. Restaurants good. London prices unfortunately. xxx Beach just perfect. We also like being able to find different spots to explore and enjoy the peace and cicadas. We are celebrating. My beautiful daughter, Genevieve has got a First in her Part 1 Tripos - English. She got the news here so I think Paleo will always hold precious memories for her. Greek Champagne is delicious! love Fiona

Genevieve in Corfu