२०८

Friday, April 13, 2007 How satisfying to insert a new chip in my phone, enter a Personal Identification Number and find that it will work in Greece. For some this would be too easy to mention. Not for me. Whenever I’ve travelled my phone has been on ‘roaming’ for calling and being called anywhere. Yet call a number in Corfu, be it a few kilometres away, the person called pays for my call at international rates. Not a good way to treat friends in Corfu. Lin’s painting upstairs. I’ve gone on clearing the garden. We’ve asked another roofer to give us an estimate to compare with the one we expect on Monday from G. We’ve made up the bed that was left here, had a late light lunch and caught glimpses of neighbours and heard their children playing and seen distant ferries moving to and fro in the channel. Thursday, April 12, 2007 A calm fresh cloudless dawn. We are living on 'Summer Song'. Had breakfast on board and later in the morning drove up Ano Korakiana getting more used now to the road and its pinch points at Ayios Markos and the various potentially tricky passing points on the road up to the house. At the 208 Democracy Street Lin gardened, tidied and cleaned most of the day. I went to Corfu to work on the internet responding to enquiries from various councils. Back at the house late afternoon we checked the whereabouts of our cesspool and the best place in the small garden to transfer rubble from building work. Someone played a recorder next door. After dusk at CJs I chatted to an engineer about how Corfu’s water system struggled to cope with summer visitors. Not that well from what I’ve read and heard from Greeks and foreigners. There are problems with traffic, with waste, with land use, and - more subtly – with social fabric as tradition becomes commodity and harvesting begins with the start of the holiday season.

An old postcard of Ipsos

Enthusiastic from experience in Australia about what could be done here, Harry Tsoukalas in the April ‘Corfiot’ announces the first (Location: Kontokali – inland inner road close to Danilia junction info@petracon.biz 6947 269112 or Garnet at 6932 606332) of 3 recycling yards charging €50 to receive rubble, which at 20 cubic metres per truckload, would cost €500 to dump at Temploni.