Cycling to places

  

In an aeroplane, even the slow descent to Corfu airport, passing high over Trompetta, Skripero and 'our' Ano Korakiana to the runway at Kapodistria, 18k further south, I travel further with one bite of a sandwich sat in my belted seat, than on a morning’s cycle ride along the roads far below. Our residency papers were ready at the police station in Paleokastritsa.

It took me nearly an hour to get there from Ano Korakiana via Skripero – 8 kilometres crow-flight, perhaps 10k on country roads. Vasili, a polite young policeman in the office, had our certificates ready – 23 cents each with a stamp, a photo, signatures – official. We can now stay here more than the previously legal 183 days. I was delighted to cycle, without a break, past many tavernas and hotels. up the long hill out of Paleo to where my road headed, below the turns to Doukades, to a T-junction along a rutted road through wood and meadow to Skripero and home. My knees start to ache after a while, but not so they trouble me.  That only happens first thing in the morning when going downstairs I have to take one step at a time until my joints loosen up. 

Another day, my road south is another country road, gnarled by irregular repairs, with cracks from roasting that run in the direction of travel, and a winding four inch scar after the laying of wifi cable. Lined with hollyoak, cypress, olive, lemon and orange, prickly pear, oak, fig, kokykias, eucalyptus and pomegranate trees, some wrapped in ivy, its verges brim with wild flowers, hiding occasional plastic bottles, cigarette cartons, soft drink cans. This land was once part of great estates, but it wasn’t subject to enclosure, where, in England, swathes of land were hedged from the commons by landowners. 

It’s piecemeal – the vanishing remains of a busy pastoral economy in which all but a few were country people. No hedges. Those are reserved for private gardens; rather a shifting mix of makeshift separations – chicken wire, chain link and barbed wire held by metal posts, upright wood palettes, a bedstead, olive timbers nailed to posts – made discreet by burgeoning greenery. Gulleys, leading to culverts and dry winterbournes in the dips, make edges beside the road. At times there are just clumps of unmown verge, bamboo, brambles, oleander, long grass sprinkled with wild variety - corncockle, mallow, loosestrife, convolvulus, the brightest red poppies, spurge, pellitory-of-the-wall (especially prevalent this year), bryony, dwarf elderberry, wild geranium, wild garlic, clover, vetch, white and yellow daisy, honesty, nettles, and, now and then, fugitive garden flowers turning feral - clambering rose, grape vine, wisteria, tall hollyhock and other plants I struggle to name. 

Lin had made a shopping list  - a box of wine, 6 eggs, 2 packs of butter, 1/2 kilo of mince, 6 village sausages, 1/2 kilo of mushrooms, 6 large potatoes, a kilo of onions, a kilo of carrots, crab sticks, margarine, sweet corn. 
I start by walking my bicycle 100 yards down the stony path from our house to National Opposition Street. By the bus stop I turn the bike upside down and, leaning it against the wall there, I examine my tyres for embedded thorns from plants on the path that produce seeds like caltrops - tribulus terrestris. We call them ‘yellow perils’.  I use a hard brush on the turning wheels, and the tip of my penknife to ease out suspects. 
I ride eastwards to the hairpin bend on the edge of the village, that leads south from the road to Ag Markos, freewheeling swiftly to Athanassios Street, taking the short cut that passes the olive oil works to 'barking dog corner' and the old main road from the village to town. This road has no steep slopes until Ag Vassilis. Then it descends more steeply to the main road between Corfu Town and Paleokastritsa. I’m heading for Kaizanis, the supermarket at Tzavros. 

I pedal by Luna D’Argento, night club converted to apartments, and the gate to Sally’s stables where I took our grandchildren riding, on past Stamati’s joinery and up a slight hill before passing the T-junction that leads down to Kato Korakiana and the shore. I continue through the hamlet of Ag Vassilis. The clouds are starting to drop rain. At the hamlet of Gazatika the rain increases. I find an open garage and shelter opposite an empty house. A few cars drive by, swishing on the wet road. Swallows settle on an electric cable over the way, preening fussily under the rain. I see no-one. The rain rattles louder on the corrugated roof of the garage, lessens and pauses. 

I’m working through the recovered footage of my stepfather's old Out of Town location film – 16mm reverse negative colour film 40 years old and more, synchronised with 1/4" reel-to-reel sound tape of Jack's commentaries, digitised, colour restored - brought here on a solid state hard drive. Where we have only Jack’s recorded voice, because the old studio image recording tapes cost so much, they got reused. I am filling in these. I'll be filmed in July by Paul Vanezis to make the next Out of Town DVD box set. 

Draft selection of recovered Out of Town episodes

I must digest the spirit of my stepfather’s words before the start of the location films. It scares me. I observe a process of rumination and procrastination.
The unusual grey weather that lingers across the western Balkans wandering daily over Corfu, is here, the village’s pall. We had local and European elections in Ano Korakiana, but where before the village website would swiftly list the results of the polls, they remain unentered, but for an epitaph to the daughter of the village diarist. How could TS, so cruelly bereaved, muster the spirit to continue recounting the village story? The worst thing that can happen is to lose a child. The grass on the paths to her grave at St Nicholas Church is flattened by daily visits – toys, a hundred fresh flowers, a kite, a portrait, small heaps of lovingly arranged pebbles. Beside that a couple of instances of cancer in treatment, a pair of unexpected and irreparable separations from marriages entered only recently, with celebration and ceremony, pass almost unheeded. Even so they make this grey weather dispiriting, reflecting harm in the affairs of a community - ένα χωριό, μια κοινότητα.

Low cloud over mountains drifts in the street

I walked by the village mayor on Democracy Street, working on repairs and alterations to the home occupied by our new papas. FM has striven hard for the village, sorting out street lighting, leading neighbours in keeping village waste sorted and removed without mess, arranging for its collection from homes without cars, pushing for a recycling area near the long abandoned football pitch that is at last being laid out in full working order below the village, ready I suspect for astroturf. He told me he would be Mayor for just 3 more months. The vote last Sunday had been 430 for him to stay and 435 for a new Mayor. 

“Five votes” he said holding up his hand “Just five”

Papa Evthokimos’ house in the village is just opposite what was Stamatis’ Piatsa bar. That’s closed. Our Papas parks a car where we and others sat to drink and chat. Mark says our new Mayor will be Stavros Savanni, elder of Ano Korakiana, but we'll miss Mayor Fokion.
I sense, now and then, gouts of nostalgia; like a slide show my brain presents remembrances. Walking just a few weeks ago with my grandchildren down the rough track from Ano Korakiana to the sea on a route - Κλειστός δρόμος - now closed by a small landslip to vehicles, or seven years ago, with Amy and our new grandson and the dogs - hers, Cookie, my mums', Lulu, and our Oscar - beside the shores of the Moray Firth, over there the Black Isle.

Oscar dog, Oliver, Amy, Lulu, Cookie beside the Moray Firth near Ardersier

Oscar is old now, losing his sense of continuity, barking to go out just after he's come in, blind and almost wholly deaf yet wagging his tail enough to show he enjoys bits of his remaining life. The thought of these fragments of past is entirely bearable, yet contemplating them I sense being on the edge of suppressed grief. I'm old. I will have to go after Oscar in a few years. Am I up to all that - being bereaved of my wonderful life?

"You are old, Father William," the young man said,
"And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head—
Do you think, at your age, it is right?"

"In my youth," Father William replied to his son,
"I feared it might injure the brain;
But now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again."

Lewis Carroll taking the mickey out of Robert Southey. When I was young I gave no thought to what the world felt like to old people, and they, quite rightly, had no intention of bothering me with their concerns, far more interested in sharing things the young hadn't experienced. Said my great grandmother, Lucy who died, aged 99 in 1969, once "We thought Oscar was a fool to take on Queensberry" I didn't understand her remark but I remembered it and much later gave it context in what happened to Oscar Wilde. I remember so many things she shared with my seven, eight, nine, ten year-old self, visiting her from school, having lunch at an Italian Restaurant in South Kensington and always talking about the world she'd known. How she fell in love and eloped to London, leaning out of the carriage window, saw her future husband, George Halkett, waiting at the end of the London platform - was it Euston? -  for her train from Oldham "and I knew, just seeing him standing alone in the distance, I'd made the right decision." I had no sense, then, of the risk she'd taken.

My bicycle just after I bought it 6 years ago

I peeked out from my shelter in Gazatika. The rain began again, sheeting down – then as abruptly stopped. My road continued past Angeliki’s, the physiotherapist, opposite the island’s electrical sub-station. I cycled across the Stravo river, waterless despite the rain, to the main road opposite Sgombou and travelled another kilometre to Kaizani. There, pushing a trolley, I work through Lin’s list, enjoying ticking off items without her back-seat shopping eye. I keep the invoice of course, as she'll check it carefully. Outside I calculate I have about 13 kilos in my basket.

My old box shopping basket when it's at home

The bike would like to fall over with the weight. On my way, gently uphill, the 10 kilometres back to Ano Korakiana. When it comes to gears my favourites involve the lowest gear on the rear chain set and the sequence - left hand lever - that changes the position of the chain on the seven sets of cogs on the pedal chain set. All of these from 1-1 for climbing steeper hills to 7-1 on the level, I like. On a descent I'll shift to 7-2 but the bike doesn't like it that way round. 7-3 is fine but switching up to 7-2, I've lost the chain, and oiled my hands putting it back. I don't know why. It's how things are.

The rear chain set on my bicycle

Shopping is an adventure on a bicycle. Walking up the steep path from the bus stop I push myself and the bike  ten steps, then rest for 10 seconds, then push another ten steps. Easy pacing.
"I'm home!" I shout as I prop my faithful vehicle against the wall of our house and unload freight from its rear basket.
"Hi" replies Lin from somewhere in the house.

Our grandchildren, Oliver and Hannah, walking down to the sea from Ano Korakiana

Φωνὴ ἐν Ραμὰ ἠκούσθη

<Φωνὴ ἐν Ραμὰ ἠκούσθη κλαυθμὸς καὶ ὀδυρμὸς πολύς·Ραχὴλ κλαίουσα τὰ τέκνα αὐτῆς, καὶ οὐκ ἤθελεν παρακληθῆναι,ὅτι οὐκ εἰσιν.> ΚΑΤΑ ΜΑΤΘΑΙΟΝ 2.18

Prableen Kaur wrote.'It has now been several hours since all this happened. I'm still in shock. Everything has not fallen into place.'
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On Friday I cycled over, with Oscar, to Livingstone Road Allotments to attend a presentation of a cash donation by the Bank of Ireland to Birchfield Residents Action Group. I was invited by Mike Tye, who chairs Central Handsworth Practical Care's Advisory Group, is also Secretary of Birchfield Residents. Before the presentation I wandered along the hedged path between the Livingstone plots - what a cornucopia of growth of every kind of vegetable, rank after rank of rich greenery from hedge to fence, hardly a square inch of uncultivated ground. It was a salutary reminder of what can be done, of what a way we have to go on the Victoria Jubilee Allotments, almost a reproach to us.

Once home again I got ready for my lecture on campus on this afternoon on Working with Officers, a session in the Inlogov Summer School for Newly Elected Members. 
The day before I'd sent an email to Tim Pfeiffer, lawyer at Endemol who licence Contender, previously Southern Star International, to distribute the DVD series of Out of Town:

Dear Tim...I've been getting royalties on the Out of Town DVD series from Endemol which I share with their director Steve Wade's widow, in accordance with my stepfather's wishes. My query is about your stewardship of this product. In recent years lack of availability and marketing has meant sales of the DVD series of Out of Town are a fraction of what they were a decade ago. Yet the contents of several of these Contender branded DVDs have been streamed to viewers numbered in thousands on the web. Endemol, my family and the Wades are affected by this leakage of copyright material. Can the licensee act to achieve higher distribution of my stepfather's material in all our interests as well as achieving wider viewing of the excellent entertainment my stepfather's work offers - especially to many people over 50 who recall viewing his programmes in their childhood? Kindest regards.

Within a day YouTube had closed down nearly all the sites showing versions of Out of Town licenced by Endemol to Contender, previously Southern Star International.

Where sites were still working for other material the Out of Town clips showed:

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I've just received in the post a new gadget for logging into internet banking - one that will no doubt soon become the norm for personal banking security. It feels ironic that nearly a century after Arthur Scherbius invented a mechanical cypher gadget that was to become famed in WW2 as the German Enigma Machine cracked at Bletchley Park by the British, I'm carrying out the mundane tasks of personal internet banking on a gadget designed on similar principles.  It means that every time I log into my bank account I have to use this small keypad to generate a new number. I wonder if this will actually increase personal banking security or just cause more inconvenience for customers.

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Ήχος α´ ποία τοῦ βίου τρυχφή διαμένει λύπης ἀμέτοχος. Cycling back from town with Oscar I decided to video the well known tendency of Jack Russell's to hang a back leg when jogging. Our Oscar, though half Border Terrier, is no exception. When we had him as a puppy he did this. People pointed out his hanging leg as though we'd not noticed. The vet could find no problem. Eight years old now, he still hangs his back right leg now and then. It's a Jack Russell thing and if the Kennel Club got its malign hands on the breed they'd no doubt have a competition class for specially bred three-legged terriers - for which there'd be a rich novelty market.
In the evening during visiting hours Linda and I went over to City Hospital to see our neighbour, Jo, who collapsed at home a few evenings ago. She was taken by ambulance to hospital and is waiting for the results of tests. Long long wide corridors, doors and doors and everywhere notices, posters, warnings, directions, the smells of the medical cosmos, beeping of monitors, rows of spaced beds like cradles for space travel, screens, tubes, buttons and keyboards and old bodies half awake peering around, gazing up half comprehending at small clusters of family and friends sat quietly about half-helpless, tableaus, a frieze. So this is how it could be. Jo was cheerful, sitting up, the nurses we saw kind and competent. She said she wasn't too bad. People were visiting. She was getting rested; had plenty to read and puzzles to do and could walk about the rest of the hospital. No it hadn't been too difficult to park. No a short walk. Oscar's fine. We've been working on the allotment. It's been a lovely day. The doctors will talk about you in the third person. Did they use you as a table to write on a clipboard? No not that bad. There's a lady can't speak a word of English who comes and tries to make conversation just to have the company walking up and down the ward at night. Another crying out for help. It's her legs. We're keeping an eye on John.  We send Oscar over to keep him company. He's getting fed. We age. My eldest Greek half-sister when we were young .Ὄτι ἐγενήθην ως ἀσκος ἐν πάχυη.

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The hard wind of rationalisation, the Bill for Rural Co-operatives promoted by the Ministry of Agriculture in Athens, is threatening the future of Ano Korakiana's Farmer's Co-operative whose building on the village's lower road has, while we've been there, used for village celebrations and other local events. Ano Korakiana's was the first Co-operative to be founded in Corfu - ο πρώτος Συνεταιρισμός που ιδρύθηκε στην Κέρκυρα  - at the beginning of the last century. The Bill requires the co-operatives in each region of the Republic to join up with a larger market-tuned company - The Co-operative Company, ένα νέο α’θμιο Συνεταιρισμό η Συνεταιριστική Εταιρεία. If a Co-operative is unwilling to join the new entity it will, by the end of this year, be treated as unable to continue - θα πρέπει να έχει καταβάλει μέχρι 31/12/ 2011, unless it can demonstrate an annual budget of €60,000. If it cannot do that over the next three years it will be judged as being not economically viable and forced to dissolve. This would entail clearing debts to third parties and distributing the remaining money among the other Co-ops - Αλλά ακόμη και αν έχει καλύψει τις 60.000 ευρώ μπορεί να οδηγηθεί σε αναγκαστική εκκαθάριση εφόσον για τρία συνεχή έτη η λειτουργία του κριθεί μη βιώσιμη οικονομικά. Τι σημαίνει αναγκαστική εκκαθάριση: εκποίηση περιουσιακών στοιχείων – εξόφληση υποχρεώσεων προς τρίτους – διανομή του υπολοίπου ποσού στους συνεταίρους. In the next few months the village faces two choices in relation to its Co-operative, join the new regional Co-op Company or show an annual budget of €60,000....'otherwise face obligatory liquidation and closure', διαφορετικά, ο Συνεταιρισμός μας...θα οδηγηθεί σε αναγκαστική εκκαθάριση και κλείσιμο...
Economic trends far beyond Greece have long been threatening the Hellenic Agricultural Co-operatives. Vassilis Patronis, who may still be at the University of Patras wrote a paper (undated but I think around 2000) whose title speaks to the problem - Between state and market forces: Greek Agricultural Cooperative Organizations (ACO) in transition period. Patronis suggests that ACOs are a typical product of the Hellenic political culture. Greek ACOs are did not come into being as a result of a grassroots movement by farmers - the way they emerged in other parts of Europe and indeed the world - but as the top-down creations of government aimed at aligning farmers’ interests with state politics. His paper finishes with a smidgin of hope, that  has echoes of Elinor Ostrom's ideas about the governance of the commons or common-pool resources, that the only way to evade the pervasive forces of economic globalisation, is via the organisation of local farmers promoting local produce locally retailed - in other words local 'bottom-up' action.

In a period when the ‘modernist’ policies seem to predominate, the future of the ACOs is based upon their reorientation and their virtual reconfiguration. The era of state indifference which ‘neutralizes’ the ACOs leaves at the same time a unique opportunity to cover the lost ground of organizational and managerial autonomy. During this period of transition the Greek ACOs still have ‘room for manoeuvre’ by taking advantage of the existing EU regulations (e.g. producer groups) and their closeness to the family farms. It is a period when the agricultural cooperative mobilization ‘from the bottom’ carries more power than it did in the past. (Vassilis, p.25)

The difficulty in Ano Korakiana is that the Co-operative has seen minimal recent connection with local agricultural production, tho' there lots of community involvement in the use of the building for social purposes, but for farming I'm inclined to say 'what farming?' There is less agricultural activity around beloved Ano Korakiana than there is around Handsworth and across Birmingham where the drive to produce home grown vegetables has created a private-public compromise that with a lot of ground level political support and capacity for local organisation secures a sound future for urban farming and the self-help activities associated with it. This entry on Democracy Street 'Small island in which I rejoice' gives a small feel for this kind of activity. I am conscious that we proceed with our local activity under an umbrella. This protection in the form of legislation and linked local and central government policy is one that has to be constantly reviewed, propped up, repaired and defended. You don't just get to grow vegetables on prime urban development land coveted by other interests by assuming it's some sort of god-given historical privilege. The plot we rent for £35 lies on a piece of ground with a fine view over Handsworth Park. If it a house were built on it its rent would be in the region of £7000 a year, or equivalent mortgage payment. That such market forces don't apply to our Plot 14 and its neighbours is not something that just happens. We enjoy the fruits of political activity supported by research, public meetings - all kinds of lobbying - letters, petitions, legal actions in favour of setting aside and protecting by law, a proportion of marketable urban real estate for growing foods, instead of building houses, roads, shops or factories. The arguments are complex, refined, evidence-based, well documented and illustrated. 

Single malt

Such a pleasure to bring, as a present to my mum, a 15 year old single malt, Dalwhinnie from Lochan na Doire-uaine.
"Whew!" she said after one sip "that goes right through my body. Beautiful."
"The angel's have had their share of that" I said, tasting the warming bitterness, the sun dazzling through the windows, creating long shadows, speckling surfaces, leaking into the house - searchlights showing glistening dust motes. I walked beyond my usual orbit diverting from one forest path and working my way, with Lulu, up an old fire-break strewn with long fallen spruce coming out above the tree line to gaze over the landscape from Ben Wyvis...

...to the north overlooking a patch of the Moray Firth to the greater part of Strath Nairn, Brin Rock, my marker.

Coming down my path dried up and I had to push my way downhill on my back and stomach through the needle bed below close standing spruce, which gradually thinned until I could stand and holding branches, head...

...where the trees were wider spaced, emerging onto a familiar forestry track to walk back to Brin Croft by the Farnack.
Yesterday I cycled a short circuit down to Inverarnie, over the Nairn at Balnafoich, along the road towards Flickerty, but turning east at Tordarrroch to Farr and home stopping often to gaze.

Tordarrroch; by his horns...a Highland Shorthorn cross?

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Lest it be thought I'm engaged in covert product-placement, I'm leaving clues for google-bots, Trojan horses and other malware to see how far despite, various measures to block such surveillance, I'm being automatically reviewed. Fascinating subject. [See also ICO, and Campus Legal Services]
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Thanks to Jim Potts for passing on via Corfu Blues latest news from beloved Greece and the possibility that Lukas Papademos (CV) might become the new PM of the Hellenic Republic:

Greece's political leadership will on Monday name an interim government and end a crisis of confidence that threatens to derail a €100bn bailout agreement crucial to the eurozone's survival. Socialist prime minister George Papandreou and conservative opposition leader Antonis Samaras met for almost 90 minutes under the auspices of the country's president. A communique issued after they broke off negotiations for the night said they would name the caretaker prime minister and cabinet the following day. The new government's agenda would be the ratification of a €100bn bailout for Greece which the eurozone approved last week, and the implementation of an austerity programme attached to that bailout. It would then take the country "immediately" to a new general election, the communique said.  Papandreou has said that he will be stepping down as prime minister in order to facilitate the formation of such a government. His resignation has been the key demand by Samaras, who has reiterated it every day for the past three days. The prime minister's brother, Nick Papandreou, told The New Athenian that George Papandreou took the decision to resign on Friday....

George Papandreou, Karolos Papoulias and Antonis Samaras

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9 November'11 - back to the future - negotiations around the formation of a new government continue and Papademos seems out of the running having set conditions for accepting the position of PM which the others involved could not accept...I should just wait and see...er...Ioannis Koukiadis? Faites vos jeux?

Φίλιππος Πετσάλνικος

ATHENS, Nov. 9 (Xinhua) According to the latest unconfirmed reports in local media, amongst front-runners for the office was former Vice President of the European Central Bank Lucas Papademos and current European Court of Justice President Vassilis Skouris. According to local media, other candidacies included Speaker of the Parliament Filippos Petsalnikos, former Speaker of Parliament Apostolos Kaklamanis, Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos.

[Back to the future: A player in these negotiations from which he made a display of walking out is Georgios Karatzaferis, Γεώργιος Καρατζαφέρης, leader of the rightist People's Orthodox Rally, Λαϊκός Ορθόδοξος Συναγερμός (ΛΑ.Ο.Σ), with 15 MPs and nearly 5% of the vote in the 2009 general election:

George Gilson, Athens News ~ 10 Nov: The George and Antonis show was upset by Karatzaferis, who stormed out of the presidential palace with the intensity of Maria Callas playing Medea, because Papandreou and Samaras were discussing the new government without him. He demanded that banker Lucas Papademos – who is widely viewed as the best choice to be interim premier due to his clout in EU power and finance circles – be appointed prime minister anyway. The Laos leader’s well-staged scene managed to force Papademos’ candidacy to return to the forefront, and talks were going on between the banker, Papandreou and Samaras as the Athens dailies were going to press. So the ultraright may become the kingmaker that brinks a banker to power.]

Greek police demonstrate against violence

From the European Edition of the International Herald Tribune

...Some protesters were in uniform as they gathered in the city's main Syntagma Square. Last months' riots were sparked by the fatal police shooting Dec. 6 of a teenage boy. Police were targeted in shootings Dec. 23 and Jan. 5; one officer was seriously wounded. The far-left group Revolutionary Struggle has claimed responsibility. "Our colleagues are not afraid," said Giorgos Vlachos of the Greek police officers association. "Of course we remain on guard — that is our duty. "Vlachos said police are hoping to improve their image. The Beatles' song "Let it be" blared as police gathered under a banner that read "no to violence." "We are protesting because we are part of society," said Vassilis Alimaras, a 23-year-old policeman. "Violence against the Greek police is violence against Greek society. We're against any kind of violence." In a 9,000-word statement published in an Athens newspaper Thursday, Revolutionary Struggle vowed to continue attacks on police. "The only way to disarm the cops is for revolutionaries and the armed public to disarm them," the group said.

Refreeze

The weather's freezing again - as it should in winter - and reports say its icier in England than here, while photos from Corfu show red dawns bringing wind and rain. Again I'm walking Oscar and Lulu along Farquer's walks by the banks and through the woods beside the Farnack. Is it conceivable that a dog could find life lacks meaning? It's good enough feeling the ground with four feet and parsing the smells we humans miss. How they romp, poking their noses everywhere. It would be good to have eyes and ears on storks to check detail, whiskers to feel the surface of air, but I shouldn't complain, given my brain can enjoy working out the history of this terrain - how twelve mile deep glaciers churned out this strath, marking its edges with black granite basalt escarpments, leaving erratics - great isolated boulders, for worship and wonder at the play of giants, in random parts of the earth lined trough - rocks first held and carried in the ice then dropped when it melted. I see and name the gravel eskers left by the rush of milky meltwater. Unlike the dogs, who don't need words, I've names for things. I can look them up; fit them into patterns; decline their causes. Let the beasts enjoy their innocence, the plants their ... that quote in 1966 in Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons, talking to his daughter about his fall from royal grace over principle and his plans to, at least, save his life. Margaret meets him late at night walking home, there being no boat for his journey home, a high wind tussling with the trees along his path: “Listen Meg. God made the angels to show him splendour as he made animals for innocence and plants for their simplicity, but man he made to serve him wittily in the tangle of his mind. If he suffers us to come to such a case that there is no escaping, then we may stand to our tackle as best we can ... But it’s God’s part, not our own, to bring ourselves to such a pass. Our natural business lies in escaping. If I can take this oath I will.” * * * We went to see a film in Inverness last night at The Scala Cinema in Eden Court. They're so good with disability, help with doors and loo, offering a space in the stalls to park mum's wheel chair next to me. We saw Australia - a romp for the recession, jumbled history teasing the audience with endings of unallowable happiness, digitally rendered vistas of war, product placement of Australian landscape. I really didn't need it but there's probably a place somewhere for kitsch morality and we were entertained. Hearts are in the right place, and it's no more innaccurate than Gone with Wind. Germain Greer runs over something closer to history as did Philip Noyce's Rabbit-Proof Fence. As well as the latter - watched on a 747 above the Pacific - I was far far more moved, last spring, sitting in John and Annie Martin's home in Bendigo watching the cameo screened YouTube playing that speech "I move..." by the little straw haired policy-wonk Kevin Rudd, standing beside Julia Gillard, his deputy - a defining political moment of 2008. "I move..." (along, of course, with the election in November of the 44th) [What I like about these YouTube extracts is the cyberstreet comment they attract - demotic, obscene, vicious, hateful and now and again humane, civil and articulate] * * * An interestingly portentous piece called THE INGLORIOUS END OF THE THIRD HELLENIC REPUBLIC, 1974-2008 by Vassilis K. Fouskas, Professor-elect of International Relations, University of Piraeus can be read off as a PDF from the website of the Research Institute for European and American Studies. Fouskas' argument turns around the problem seemingly facing the Hellenic polity in 1974 - the fall of the junta. The new leadership saw a problem of restoring democracy. They were right but - and this is Fouskas' argument - they forgot that their righteous reconfirmation of democracy placed the new political leadership and every elected leadership since at the head of an archaic government - government in my book comprising a centrifocal mix of political, managerial and professional leadership (see 'the horror' in this blog):

It is significant to point out that the post-1974 Greek polity... did not make any significant attempt to rationalize and modernize its branches, particularly those that are directly relevant to its internal and external security: I am referring here to the civil service, police, the army and the ministries of interior, national economy and foreign affairs. Once in power, the ruling groups of the parties that instituted the Third Republic got their priorities backwards. Their analysis went as follows: the main problem of the pre-1974 Greece was lack of democracy; the remedy, therefore, should take the form of deepening the people’s participation into the state’s governing branches in order to re-build the lost consensual nexus between civil society and political elites. The approach, however, was deeply flawed.... ...the so-called “democratic participation of the people into the post-1974 governance of the state” did not take the form of a rational process of normative undertakings and institutional openings in decision-making, but that of the extended reproduction of pre-1974 clientelistic networks and nepotistic practices (my italics). This, apart from having a negative repercussion on the fiscal performance of the polity, created a corrupt and bi-partisan oligarchic system mediating between bureaucratic privileges and comprador/parasitic capitalism. This is the way in which the new consensual nexus between political parties/system and civil society came into being after 1974...Thus, the analysis of the Greek Left that the culprit is the state and its authoritarian tendencies is as generic as it is wrong. The future generations that will build the Fourth Hellenic Republic should remember that the Third did not suffer from authoritarianism, but from a lack of institutional norms and rules that are the requisites of every modern polity. Lack of knowledge, discipline and professionalism are the key characteristics of the average Greek civil servant, not least of the person who pulled the trigger on the night of December 7, 2008 in central Athens. (SB note: I understand this occurred at 2130 on 6/12/08)

* * * According to John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, of the web based World Association of International Studies (WAIS) Professor Jon V Kofas retired from being a professor of history at Indiana University Kokomo to live in Tripolis, Arkadias, where stands a flamboyant bronze equestrian statue of the Greek civil war general Theodoros Kolokotronis whose first action in the war for Greek independence was at Valtetsi, a village near Tripoli. The WAIS website reported that Kofas would be likely to meet fellow WAISer Professor Harry Papasotiriou, both interested in modern history and politics. 'They may disagree, but I am sure they will do so WAISly.' These two historians are an interesting discovery for me. Kofas, in 1989, wrote Intervention and Underdevelopment: Greece During the Cold War. Kofas' premise is that after WW2 'American counterinsurgency, pacification, and containment tactics were evolved, (and) tested' in Greece and 'applied elsewhere in the Third World.' US aid, which began under Truman, when the British could no longer afford support for Greece, was paid on condition that Greece remained an exporter of raw materials and an importer of manufactured goods - a policy that blocked modernisation of the Hellenic economy, causing its contemporary vulnerability. In 1944 it was assumed by 'the great and the good' that Greece must become either pro-American or pro-Soviet (see the percentages agreement). Kofas rejects the Anglo-American conviction that Greece had to be in one of these camps, arguing that post-war governments in Greece could have pursued social and economic reforms at home, and pro-Greek rather than pro-Soviet or pro-American policies abroad. The victory of American-supported forces in Greece at the Battle of Grammos-Vitsi in August 1949 enduringly obscured this alternative vision. I guess I'm so imbued with the accounts I've read so far about what happened from 1944 to 1949; so convinced of the divisions and partisanship that existed, regardless of the undoubted pot stirring of the great powers, that I find the idea of a post-war government in Athens that could have brought growth and stability to the country or which could have held the support of a majority of the population almost inconceivable - at least in the country in the state it was at the end of 1944. My bias is to share the view that Greece was ungovernable without the support and intervention of Britain or America - but I've bought Kofas' book. I'll see what I think when I've read it, but the problem is that, past causes, however apportioned, turn into present blame. Perhaps the policy interventions that propped up the returning King, encouraged withholding serious pursuit of collaborators, treated anyone who'd fought in the resistance as Comintern inspired insurgents, were sustained far too long and implemented far too intrusively, preventing Greeks from working through their internal tensions, Greece, for thirty years, remained, like a third world country, an arena for surrogate rivalries. It's possible that there could have been changes in the way the hidden hand of America was applied that might in the 60s and 70s have helped Greece reform its institutions. Instead successive governments operated inside a protectorate culture that preserved clientalism, patronage, nepotism and incompetence throughout the Greek polity - providing excuses for errant and largely ineffectual radicalism that fed and justified dynamic conservatism, constantly blocking attempts at deep reform of central and local government. * * * On 10 December 2008 Jon Kofas wrote to WAIS. I've only read this today, but his analysis, from a commentator likely to be sympathetic to campaigns against the status quo, matches my sense of incoherent protest. A keen anarchist might say Kofas writes "as though this is something bad", arguing that incoherence excludes none from rioting :

The violent protests in Greece that erupted late at night on Saturday, 6 December could have evolved into a revolt and social movement if there was organization, coherent ideological orientation, and leadership behind them. While this may still occur at some point in the future, more than likely we have just experienced something far less than 'Robin Hood Revolts' of the kind that Zapata and Villa engaged in during the Mexican Revolution, something closer to violent student and immigrant youth protests that usually take place in Paris. The nation-wide violent protests in Greece are marked by an absence of an ideology that articulates grievances, mode of operation, and goals. Nor were the protests part of a coherent social movement but simply a series of spontaneous responses with minimal organization operating beyond the confines of the political opposition. Clearly what is happening in Greece is a reflection of a social, political and economic crisis, one that will also erupt in other countries but assume different forms. And clearly modern technology has made such events possible and we will see more of them.

* * * Officer Diamandi Matzounis was shot twice and seriously wounded while guarding the Hellenic Ministry of Culture in Bouboulinas Street, Athens. Brabant for BBC reports this and speaks, further on in his report, of a young police officer - Jimmy - contacting him weary of being demonised by the Greek media wanting to explain in greater detail the import and effect of the insult 'batsos' so regularly directed at him by rioters."We are afraid that one of us will be murdered soon." * * * My pleasure is to have discovered new URLs rich with conversation and thought about Greek politics, laced with links. One is John Akritas' Hellenic Antidote, another, from JA's blog is the Modern Greek Studies Association which summarised a great number of web commentaries on current events, and another is A Different Voice who's author, M, regularly converses on Stavros' My Greek Odyssey and has even left comments on Democracy Street. Another blog I'm glad to have come across is by a former US Diplomat based in Athens, who resigned over the invasion of Iraq, John Brady Kiesling. * * *

Inverarnie ~ Oscar on the path through the wood