Thunder, lightning and lots of rain

After ripping, capturing, editing and compressing a film of a second political-management conversation mailed me by John Martin from Australia I cycled into town. The sky grew heavier. At the markets people began looking for cover, scattering as lightning and thunder converged and the skies opened, water dripping from awnings and gutters, running down gullies, shining the streets. People watched from cover. Others scurried between shelters under umbrellas and hoods. - enjoying the wet.

I returned home along the mainline canal, its water drifting from the city centre. The drains on the lower roads were overflowing, a sign of how the Birmingham water table has risen with the end of industry, while loss of green space from a thousand thousand hard surfaced garden has taken away absorbency.

Once home I find my e-mail connection has gone. Rare and vexing, though I can always use Lin's for sending urgent material. A woman working evenings at the campus IT helpdesk said I'd need to wait until Monday before anyone could look at the problem. The cat staring up draws my attention to a moth circling inside the kitchen lampshade. I reach up, catch it and let it out into the warm night.

[By midnight on Sunday the university has restored my e-mail. I leave a message of thanks and close the Helpdesk log]

* * *

Twitter: CORFU, Greece, 28 June 2009 - The informal meeting of OSCE foreign ministers on the Greek island of Corfu concluded today with the launch of the 'Corfu Process' ... Ministers concurred that it is also time to consider that "much work remains undone." Bakoyannis said that traditional security problems remained unresolved as new threats and challenges continued to emerge ... protracted conflicts and other unresolved tensions, the suspended CFE Treaty, the need to strengthen democracy and rule of law in parts of the region, the economic crisis, terrorism, trafficking and instability in neighbouring regions. The meeting ended with agreement on the 'Corfu Process' - steps to take the dialogue on European security forward...

[See RIZOSPASTIS news story]

Earlier reflections on the history of civil society in Europe, the extinction and survival of democracy

.....Something must be invented that matched the vigour of Fascism or Communism – whose epic encounter at Stalingrad was probably the pivotal battle of WW2. This had to be democracy’s second chance – a system and philosophy of government that could not only survive and defeat fascism and resist communism but also replace with new policies, popular consent and civic competencies the failures of its predecessors.

* * * As Corfucius says "He was damned good". I like the invention in 'black or white'

* * * Note on the British Library on-line feedback form:

The `Rizospastai': politics and nationalism in the British Protectorate of the Ionian Islands 1815-1964 (sic - surely 1864). Calligas, E., 1994, A9m British Library Shelfmark DX187456 Ph.D., London, London School of Economics, 44-9204

After being unable to download this thesis on 15 June 2009 I have been e-mailed by a librarian - Mr J Dixon - on 27 June 09 that this thesis which your system says is available for download has become ' corrupted' He goes on to say 'I will contact our technical support department and have them check the file at their end, when they come back to say all is ok, we will contact you and ask you to submit a new order. Yours Sincerely, Jonathan Dixon.' This reply suggests an indefinite period before I can access the Calligas thesis, despite your catalogue appearing to be open to order an immediate download. Mr Dixon cannot now be directly contacted as his e-mail is 'non-reply'. I can imagine how busy you are but I plan to be in Corfu from 25 August 09 and was hoping to have been able to start reading the Calligas thesis before then. Is there any other way i can get to at least start reading it? Is it possible to come into the library or is it also unavailable in hard copy? I am next in London on 9 July 2009...

Reply:

Dear Simon, Thank you for your email. I'm sorry my reply did not satisfy your query. I forwarded your query to our technicians and have as yet received no reply, we no longer accept theses in their original hardback format and these cannot be read in the reading room, Ethos is the ONLY way to view and order British Theses from the British Library. I appreciate your frustration we have so far digitised over 16,000 theses and some of these have had corrupt files and we have to solve each one on a case by case basis, the service has been immensely popular and regrettably we do not have the resources to fully cope with the initial interest that has been generated. I can assure you we are doing all that we can to resolve this situation. If you are in desperate need of the thesis I can only suggest you contact the university direct and they may be able to source a copy for you or you can wait for a response from us, however your query is in a long backlog of emails and queries we receive everyday and we have to deal with each one in turn. Yours Sincerely, Jonathan Dixon, British Library Ethos Help

I phoned the LSE. No record in their catalogue but I was directed to Archives where, though she could find no record of Calligas' thesis, a helpful voice spoke the name of Eleni's supervisor, "...but he's left." I googled the name and found a Professor of International History at the University of East Anglia. I've sent him an e-mail. 'Have you a copy of Eleni C's dissertation, or do you know where I can find her?' It'll turn up.

Iason arrested in Iran

Iason Athanasiades a fine journalist of Anglo-Hellenic parentage, who's writing I've followed regularly, has been reported arrested in Iran. Though having a British parent and, according to the story linked here, a British name - Fowden - tagged on to his Greek one, I have always known him and thought of him as an Hellene, priding himself on his delight in and knowledge of Iranian culture and history. I hope he will not be mistreated and that his integrity as a scholar, writer, linguist, photographer and journalist will earn him a swift release. Athanasiadis grew up in Athens. He was read stories from The Thousand and One Nights (Alf Laylah wa Laylah) by his mother. In the summer of 2007 he wrote about 'intermediary Greeks' (scroll down the link to see):

...Being Greek makes me a quasi-insider: We have been present as a regional power from antiquity through to the Byzantine Empire. Later, as Christian subjects of the Muslim Ottoman Empire, the Greeks were its bankers, merchants and diplomats to the European West. The switch of allegiances to the West only came in the 19th century, after the Great Powers helped Greece win its War of Independence. There is still residual mistrust over the Crusaders' sacking of Constantinople on their way to Jerusalem and the lack of help sent by Genoa as the Turks scaled the capital of Byzantium. After World War II, Greece remained firmly within the Western orbit and became the first line of defense against the Soviet Union. In the post-9/11 world, Greek politicians have continued the tradition of the intermediary, most notably when former Greek foreign minister and Colin Powell confidante George Papandreou passed messages from the Bush administration to the Taliban prior to their overthrow. Greek construction companies were trusted by Arab leaders to construct much of the Gulf's infrastructure, build clandestine military bases in Libya, and erect palaces in Saudi Arabia complete with secret escape routes in case of an antimonarchical revolution. A fine example of the 'intermediary Greek' is that country's current ambassador to Baghdad. Panayiotis Makris was educated in Alexandria's Victoria College, speaks fluent Egyptian Arabic, packs a pistol in his leather briefcase, and lives resolutely outside the Green Zone. A 17th century tapestry depicting Alexander the Great's death in Babylon dominates his living room in the kidnapping-scarred diplomatic district of Mansour. His professional performance is likewise infused with an historical perspective. As he points out to visitors, Alexander died just 10 kilometers from Baghdad; "We're the only country that has the right to offer lessons in democracy around here," he quips in a barely concealed barb at the American mismanagement of their Iraq occupation. Greece's man in Tehran similarly draws heavily upon history in his dealings with Iranian officials. His enthusiastic and repeated claims that Greece and Iran share 5,000 years of shared civilization may owe more to Athens' dependence on Iranian oil imports and an innate proclivity to exaggerate than to historical fact. But the excellent ties between Greece and Iran reveal how important a shared cultural background is to a bilateral relationship (extract)

A Greek acquaintance here was almost amused at my concern for Iason. "He knows such things are part of his chosen profession. He will come out of this even more famous." Yes. well... maybe. My thoughts darted to the qualities another Iason shared with the most famous Odysseus - courage and cunning in sticky situations, so long as the right gods are in the right mood - metis referring in Greek to wisdom or craft or nous, and to the goddess of wisdom and prudence - η Μήτις - yet, in French, meaning of mixed race as in the Métis or mestizo. Cunning in Hellenic culture stands higher than it does in ours (tho' Greeks see Albion as a mirror). They do not link it so automatically to perfidy, and I've come, by happy chance, on the work of two Frenchmen, Marcel Detienne and Jean-Pierre Vernant, who, in 1978, published a book called Les ruses de l’intelligence: la mètis des Grecs, translated in 1991 as Cunning Intelligence in Greek Culture and Society.

...There is no doubt that mêtis is a type of intelligence and of thought, a way of knowing; it implies a complex but very coherent body of mental attitudes and intellectual behaviour which combine flair, wisdom, forethought, subtlety of mind, deception, resourcefulness, vigilance, opportunism, various skills, and experience acquired over the years. It is applied to situations which are transient, shifting, disconcerting and ambiguous, situations which do not lend themselves to precise measurement, exact calculation or rigorous logic...

* * *

Although there's plenty to do here and I love the places we inhabit we're missing Κέρκυρα. The prow points towards Vido. Beyond are the mountains of the Troumpetta leading eastwards to the summit of Pantokrator - the name of our ship.

I first saw Corfu across a crowded room - an island without insularity. Its aspect seduces visitors. Some passing through stay longer than intended, some keep returning, some never leave and one forced to go spoke of 'an amputation' for which 'all Epictetus' could offer no consolation.

But as the OSCE ministers talk at their conference at Gouvia Maria Strani-Potts writes:

The Potemkin principle is followed by our authorities. The Greek Government is spending vast sums to impress while we still have no decent hospital. The abuse of the environment continues. Corfu has become a Third World destination: luxury hotels for visitors, while the natives have to put up with abysmal public services and infrastructure. Last night we attended a public meeting of the Mandouki Association concerning the appalling state of the old olive oil factory opposite the New Port. It is a complete ruin even though it contains five listed buildings with preservation orders. It's a home to rats and illegal immigrants and constitutes a public health hazard... (see Maria's The Pimping of Panorea)

* * *

Yesterday I enjoyed strolling with Oscar in steady rain round Handsworth Park, the whole place to myself. There are problems in the park, no doubt created by general demand for economies showing up in disorganised ground care. Flower and shrub beds show signs of unskilled tending, invaded by rose bay willow, couch grass and thistle; drains, uncleared, have allowed large pools fringed by unpicked litter to gather by the cricket pitch while the broken walls and fence by Holly and Hamstead Roads remain unrepaired. What other problems may I have missed. Most will not notice even what I did as the place looks and feels so pleasant but I'm anxious about these signs of absent stewardship after our hopes in the aftermath of the restored re-opened park. I noted the arrival of a pile of topsoil for the allotments and concrete edging for the main lane through them, but can the Persimmon Homes really have them ready for selection in a month as suggested by the Allotments Team in the City Council?

Opposite the Hamstead Road park gate is the mess created by some householders colonising public grass verges with their cars even though Winston Drive off Churchill Road provides access to the rear of their homes. I passed this on to Transportation via FixMyStreet last week. We came home damp but content to dry out, chatting to our evening guest Karen while Richard and his friend Kirin cooked supper. Lin towled Oscar vigorously - a dog who's happy in the rain but, once home, detests being wet.

St.Mary's Churchyard next to Handsworth Park ~ between the fence and the gravestones are unmarked pauper's graves, waterlogged in wet weather

A card from my mother in London, She'd flown down from the Highlands to spend a week with hew new great grandchild, Raif, son of Anthony and Alesandra. 'Stunning weather & I'm so enjoying being wheeled about by Bay & going back through Memory Lane...Hyde Park, Kensington Gardens etc. The trees seem to have grown up and round otherwise London hasn't changed. I love it.'

Gillian Golding 'Noodles' 2006

Plots on the Victoria Jubilee Allotments in Handsworth

Click on the image to enlarge

A second Newsletter from Birmingham City Council reporting progress on the laying out of the new allotments next to Handsworth Park – the Victoria Jubilee. There are already in the last week of June 2009, forty two people on the waiting list for 80 plots - each 200 square yards, or 20 by 10 yards.

To apply to be on the short list go to Birmingham Allotments team on 0121 303 3038 allotments@birmingham.gov.uk We're told rents will be £15 p.a. with concessionary rents down to £9.00 a year for men and women over 60. See Newsletter 1.

Here are some images - old and new with text - telling of the campaign to save the green fields next to Handsworth Park for allotments and playing fields. Plots can be shared and it is hoped that some will be adopted by local schools.

We've been told that there will a meeting room for gardeners with storage. Plotholders can have a shed up to 6' x 8' on their plot. Water supply is at hand and gardeners can have a greenhouse or a polytunnel. The Allotments Team have told us that they will guide new gardeners to become self-managing via a site committee with responsibility for collecting rents on behalf of the council and stewarding the site. Further help is available from Birmingham and District Allotments Council who can be approached via their website at any time for advice and support. Plots can be shared.

* * *

The trial, following the death of two children visiting Corfu with their families in October 2006 was to begin in Corfu on Thursday but has been delayed until February 2010. While staying at the Louis Corcyra Beach Hotel at Gouvia, 5 miles north of Corfu Town, the children allegedly died of carbon monoxide poisoning.

* * *

We've been running the first part of a five day course on scrutiny on campus. I've been riding to and from campus partly via canal towpaths. Going home, just before six, I noticed even more cyclists, walkers and joggers along the Birmingham-Worcester Canal. Ever so slowly the numbers of people commuting without a car (see the flickr group I help administer) seems to be increasing in Birmingham. I felt almost resentful, having been so used over the years to having the towpaths of British Waterways almost to myself.

World Streets

Eric Britton and I spoke via Skype. He's doing some gentle lobbying for the New Mobility Agenda for World Streets - a daily blog linked to the mother-site. We've been cyberspace acquaintances for years. Here I was gazing at his room in Paris and he at our kitchen in Birmingham, wondering about the style and tone of public conversation that will best combine intelligence, politeness and urgent fear at the prospect of 'getting our feet wet'.

He was asking around for brief opinions of World Streets - a good way to convey a feel for the international reach of new ideas about how people and their goods should get around...

Tell us, in two lines, what you think about World Streets

Eric. The title 'World Streets' is a portal, blog and website capturing the idea of thinking globally, acting locally, sharing, via the Internet, practical ways, after a century of distortion, to restore - through research, education, lobbying and debate - a balance between access by proximity and access by mobility. Simon

I see that Joel Crawford - soliciting images and opinions about car-free city streets and squares - has published Linda's picture of me cycling along the Liston in the June edition of Carfree Times.

The Liston is a kind of perfection. It's old but not a museum. It's grand but not big, and when crowded it's full of intimacy. There are no cars to endanger the children, pollute it with smell and noise. The Liston is a place for walking and sitting and talking and gazing around. It connects to the sokaki, Corfu's intricate back streets, and to the grand square, the cricket ground and the sea. It's open to the Ionian sky but has ready shelter from its generous rain. It is private space where people live as well as work - full of thriving interesting business - and it is a public space that takes civility for granted without pompous notices; an agora for all and an avenue for secular and religious celebrations of joy and solemn gatherings at times of sadness. It stands on its own connected to everywhere.

* * * Email from Dr Phil Jones, Lecturer in Human Geography, University of Birmingham:

Hi, I'm doing a project looking at how people cycle to the university and wondered if anyone wanted to take part. Essentially it involves wearing a microphone and a GPS-wristwatch while cycling home, describing thoughts and feelings as you ride along. The equipment is lightweight and fairly unobtrusive. There's more information at Rescue Geography. Thanks. Phil

'As part of attempts to further refine Rescue Geography techniques, we're attempting to apply it to cycling, investigating the ways that bicycle-users understand their commute to and from work at the University of Birmingham. This involves asking participants to wear a GPS 'wristwatch' and a microphone while they cycle, narrating their journey with their thoughts and observations on the environment they're passing through...The University is a very large regional employer in a city which is notorious for congestion, pollution and poor provision for cyclists. In 2008 the University undertook an audit of how its staff travelled to work. One of the conclusions was that there was a fairly low uptake of cycling as a form of transport and significant barriers to its wider use.'

* * *

Richard, at our kitchen table, works on a website for Karen Van Hoff in Ludlow sharing screens with her as they chat; phones on speakers. "That looks really beautiful!" "Have you any thoughts on pictures?" "Some of the close ups were really lovely" "Hm...have a look at..." "Did you want to use that one...or that? The one we're looking at with..." "Yup yup"..."There's a lot riding on this one...it's coming along really nicely."

I had another lesson at Apple this morning, getting my head further round Final Cut Express, my tutor, Nikos from Athens, slipped in a few lessons on Greek pronunciation as we captured some film and started editing. As well as the One-to-One service, Apple Bullring are now offering three hour workshops for several people to work on their projects at the shop, share ideas and get tutoring. I'm drilling deeper into the film-production process. For £75 a year these lessons - as many as I want - are worth it. The learning is fun - an antidote to the distancing we get seeking help from disembodied displaced voices for too many other services.

* * *

I've finally delivered the draft film I made earlier in the year of Councillor Alistair Dow, the politician who co-ordinates Overview and Scrutiny in Birmingham in conversation about daily business with John Cade, Director of Scrutiny in the Council. Because they suggested it I abandoned my usual questions and left the camera running for thirty minutes of a normal meeting. I have yet to gauge how far my presence and the camera's needs to be factored into any understanding of a most interesting conversation.

Kanun and the public law of Europe

'a country in sight of Italy is less known than the wilds of America'

D'Anville quoted by Gibbon c.1788 Photo: Stephen Sommerhalter

'Different cultures, different behaviours. Two months ago, Albania lodged its formal application for EU membership and suddenly the two ends of Europe fall into place...'

Richard Pine, Director of the Durrell School in Corfu, has written in the Irish Times* about something new to me. His intriguing 'letter from Corfu' reminds me of a frequently repeated 18th century observation** that Albania, though visible from Italy, was less known than the interior of America:

Oh we're back in the Balkans again

Back to the joy and the pain

What if it burns or it blows or it snows?

We're back to the Balkans again.

Back, where to-morrow the quick may be dead

With a hole in his heart or a ball in his head

Back, where the passions are rapid and red

Oh, we're back to the Balkans again.

Preface of the 1908 book 'High Albania'

Kulla by Melanie Reimer ~ 'read High Albania by Edith Durham' and Lin has given me a present of Edward Lear's Journals of a Landscape Painter in Greece & Albania

So Club Méditerranée have withdrawn from Kakome Bay, a few miles north of Saranda on the Albanian coast. A part of me thought that local villagers protesting against Club Med might have had an environmental agenda, but it was a long running complicated and divisive dispute over whether local families or the state had the right to profit from the sale of the land to build a resort, with Club Med agents unclear whether to deal with locals or the state Agency for the Restitution and Compensation of Property...

Drini Çano argues in stilted and stultifying Euronglish legalese that Albania’s incomplete property restitution process, under way for the past 20 years,  has violated the nation’s constitution and jeopardized its effort to attract foreign investments and accede to the European Union. To make his case, the author focuses on the Albanian Property Restitution and Compensation Agency (PRCA). Instead of a team of “administrative judges”, this is a board of potentially corruptible political appointees, a phenomenon that reflects on micro-scale the many pathologies of post-Communism. 

As we approach important Albanian elections, on 28 June, the Prime Minister, Sali Berisha, speaks of flytipping and sewage problems damaging his country's formal application to join the EU.

To join the EU my colleague Gill Bentley tells me...

...applicant countries have to accede to the acquis, and meet the Copenhagen criteria, which includes such things as the stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights, respect and protection of minorities, a functioning market economy and capacity to cope with competitive pressures and market forces, and ability to take on the obligations of membership, including adherence to the aims of political, economic and monetary union (see).

Albania has various 'enlargement' projects in train, but see this, for example, on Tirana:

...estimated to be one of the most polluted cities in the world, behind New Delhi and Beijing...deaths due to illnesses caused by pollution have increased by 20% in Tirana in the past two years... respiratory system diseases came third on the list of causes of death last year. As Albania gears up to join the EU, pollution troubles get in the way. Albania is facing a humanitarian catastrophe due to growing pollution, 10 times above the tolerance level set by the World Health Organizations (WHO)....(ref)

Less public attention and equally, if not more problematic, is a different kind of pre-Islamic left-over that requires an understanding of Albanian - even Illyrian history - before the Ottoman Invasions of Europe - the lethal phenomenon of kanun. Uninformed outsiders may ask innocent questions about the stone towers - kullas - dotted around the country, unaware they were built as sanctuaries for the potential targets of blood feuds legitimated by the Code of Lekë Dukagjini five and half centuries ago - the basis of another Balkan 'big idea' - via the Kosovo connection.

I was intrigued on looking further into this to find young Albanians (Shqiptarët), in our wired world, had continued the spirit of the kanun as hip hop, and I've just been told about the Albanian writer Ismail Kadare, who's novel Broken April I've ordered.

[see Tanya Mangalakova's paper for the International Centre for Minority Studies and Intercultural Relations (IMIR) THE KANUN IN PRESENT-DAY ALBANIA, KOSOVO, AND MONTENEGRO and this image and text]

As well as the EU, OSCE will presumably continue to give attention to creating and maintaining government in Albania' no doubt discussing her EU candidacy at the meeting in Corfu next weekend a hundred and fifty years after that twelve week visit to Greece by William Gladstone, a 19th century colossus of British politics. I’m studying his engrossment with the ‘public law of Europe’ via his extraordinary mission to the Ionian islands in 1858-59, seeing, in a biographer's words, ‘the Ionian microcosm' as 'a task worthy of macrocosmic devotion’. Richard Shannon wrote ‘it is possible to deduce much at large about Gladstone immersed in this small episode’, and I suspect it may be possible to find ‘much at large’ about Corfu immersed in what, for the Ionians, was a large episode in their 19th century history. 'In many ways, it seems to me, Gladstone's interlude as High Commissioner in the Ionian Islands encapsulates as well as anything his urge to hold the world in Peelite tutelage. ' (response to a review of his two volume biography of WEG). Gladstone, in his famous diaries, wrote of being utterly absorbed 'in the affairs of these little islands...The complexity of the case is inversely (so to speak) as the extent of the sphere.' (31 Dec 1858)

A very recent and welcome acquaintance, a scholar on Corfu, wrote to say 'He was like Durrell - a philhellene paid to do a brit's job - keep the islands safe from the Greeks, even though you know in your heart that enosis is the right path.'

This is going to be fascinating.

* * * I got news by phone on Saturday that Liz England has died. I dug out a photo (c.2001) of Liz - in the maroon raincoat on the right - when, as Chair of the Handsworth Park Association, she along with Dick Pratt and John Richfield, led our successful 12 year lobby for the park's restoration.

On the far left is Hilary Taylor of Hilary Taylor Landscape Associates who advised on Birmingham City Council's bid to the Heritage Lottery Fund and after its success oversaw the improvement work giving advice and making recommendations. The man centre left is Adrian Rourke, manager of Birmingham City Council's Landscape Practice Group who, over six years, co-ordinated the work of restoring Handsworth Park from preparation of the successful funding bid to the park's re-opening in summer 2006. I'm at the back, in a yellow top, chatting to a ministerial minder. In the red coat is the minister. I'm embarrassed that I cannot recall her name - her tenure was so brief. Liz, after being ill for the last year, died on 15 June 2009. She was a local hero, stalwart campaigner, politically astute, a friend and a good person. Her funeral will be at 1.00pm at West Bromwich Crematorium on June 30.

* * *

Εκτός από τισ τυφλέσ δυνάμεισ τησ φύσησ,

τίποτα δε κινείται σε αυτον τον κόσμο

το οποιο δεν είναι Ελληνικά στην καταγωγη

Meantime in Athens, sublime, wonderful, the opening of the New Athens Museum, another step in restoring the narrative of the contest between Athena and Poseidon.

The place it honours I knew from childhood schooling, on which I gazed on in 1957 through the small window of Yiayia's loo in her flat in Kolonaki after a train journey from London and on whose almost empty stone floor I walked that same April on a grey rainy day with my half brother George and Nigel Greenhill, son of the diplomat. As a paeon for Greece I know Maine's words are compromised by their context but they ring for me:

This quote is from Henry Maine's 1875 Rede Lecture - The Effects of observation of India on Modern European Thought - aimed at impressing upon a Cambridge audience the richness of India's contribution to world thought, through drama, comparative philology and mythology and the possibility that 'it may yet give us a new science not less valuable than the sciences of language and of folk-lore.' So Greece was a means, including the backhander - 'results far greater than any exhibited in Greece itself' - for Maine to talk of Britain's role in India.

[*I read Richard Pine's piece a week before it was published. A message from another informant suggests I learn about 'Arvanites and Qameria'. I am reminded of the scale of my ignorance. Yes I had heard of Chams but... ]

[Back to the future: see 'Albania: short on homework for joining the EU 15 July 2009]

[**This comment of Gibbon's was, so far as I can find, first quoted by James David Bourchier in the piece on Albania he wrote for the celebrated 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica. It's in footnote 23 in Part 1 of Chap 32 of the fourth volume of History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire (click footnote 23; search for 'Ambracia'). Gibbon relates a comment on Albania by the great 18th century cartographer Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville in his Memoires de l' Académie, tome xxxii, p. 513 - 528, illustrating the Gulf of Ambracia,

‘but he cannot ascertain the situation of Dodona. A country in sight of Italy is less known than the wilds of America.’

The Ambracian Gulf is by Preveza well south of Corfu. Dordona is level with Corfu but deep within Epirus. The reference to 'sight' refers to the view, on a clear day, from Italy, fifty miles over the fearsome Strait of Otranto to the 4000 feet mountains of the Karaburan Peninsular]

The Straits of Otranto from a map by Jean D'Anville (1697-1782) who instead of the inventions inserted by many earlier mapmakers would leave blank those areas that remained unknown to him

[26 July 09: See the Balkan Peace Park Project and Robin Hanbury-Tenison praising Albania on YouTube and again on Sandy Toksvig's Excess Baggage BBC R4]

[5 August 09: See an account of the Corfu Channel Incident in October 1946]

Registering at the British Library

An enjoyable 'picture' in the British Library

On my way between Milton Keynes on Monday and Westminster for a planning meeting about an in-house seminar in Cumbria I dropped into the British Library in Euston Road. It's a lot busier than the National Archives and did not strike me as so immediately welcoming. There was no obvious sign pointing to lifts, nor to locker rooms or loos. In short the signage leaves something to be desired, but getting my Reader's Card was straightforward. Details typed into a screen in the card issue room, a number called, and a friendly three minute process with a photo printed on a plastic card. My difficulties began as I tried to get hold of Eleni Calligas' thesis on-line.

I'd tapped into the on-line catalogue and found my reference, but as soon as I clicked the download button - titled 'Get it' - I was logged out. The WiFi system - called RegenerateIT - and the library catalogue didn't seem connected.

I sought a reading room help desk; found one of several, but was sent to the basement by a security guard at the portal, just feet from a help desk, to divest myself of my bag and bike. He was quite right of course, but I was already starting to act outside the precise reasoning necessary to ease the navigation of a large bureaucracy. [I enjoyed this Corfiot version from AFTONMOSTV and the subsequent Hellenic TV commentary Part one and Part two] Two separate lifts were needed to get to the basement. Back at the help desk it became rather clear that the librarian, not computer literate, was unable to explain complications I'd encountered ordering the Calligas thesis. "Why not get a hard copy?" "But it says I can have it downloaded" "Use one of our terminals" said the librarian pointing a little tartly to a bank of screens. "But I want the PDF on my computer." At this point she turned away to talk to the next person at the counter." I persevered. "Excuse me....sorry... excuse me. But can you tell me how ..." "It could take thirty days," "Thirty days! But why does my screen say 'Get it' and refer to a PDF download?" I suddenly wondered if I was talking aggressively to someone who felt their job diminished, even threatened, by spreading digitization; or was it me? Was she fatigued by a daily queue of readers whinging about the technology. I retreated, but my exasperation must have been apparent. Security had an eye on me. Another librarian beckoned me to a different desk. "You have to go through a system called EThOS, it's new. It's overloaded." "Thanks so much!" A wave of relief flooded me. I wasn't going crazy. Then my mobile, set on loud, went off.

Being stuck tightly at the very bottom of my top pocket it took twenty slow and frantic seconds grappling inside my jacket to turn it off. A security guard appeared at my side and asked for my reader's card "because your mobile went off in the library reading room." Helpless, all too aware of my own disdain for people who can't control their mobiles, I gave it to him, sweating with embarrassment, but unclear what would have happened if my phone was set on silent vibration. I waited for the guard to return with the harakiri kit, but my librarian smiled indulgently, "Don't worry. It won't be on your record. He has to check." I could have kissed her. "Yes yes of course. It's so tricky. The fine line between access and security. It's not easy, it's..." She smiled indulgently. In a minute I had my card back and retreated to the street, cycling south through the calming bustle of Euston Road, down Whitehall, past Parliament.

As the Prime Minister announced to the House that Sir John Chilcot would lead an enquiry into the invasion of Iraq, Brian Haw, just across the road, reminded the passing world of the loathsome things we did when we and our allies began this war. In his ninth year of protest. Haw is now the only protestor allowed - after complex legal procedures that were begun to stop him doing just that - to use a loud hailer this close to Parliament. He's a sturdy pawn used by sober functionaries in legal corridors to maintain some small reminder, in a very public place, of the gore with which we've been covered. I did protest; I even marched. I sat where Colmore Road crosses New Street on the evening of 19 March 2003 and spoke angrily and pompously into a police camera in the days before invasion - announcing my name and address and occupation. I wrote letters. I supported Phil Shiner's continuing legal actions, signing petitions to bring Blair to the Hague as a war criminal. I know of no-one in my small circle who doesn't agree with Brian Haw. He won't stop irritating people who want to get on with their lives.

* * *

Teacherdude: This reads like a scene from Brazil. Surreal. Have you thought about looking at stamps from the period and area you are studying? Like coins from ancient times stamps give a snap shot of the political realities of that time.

Me: There's a bank note museum in Corfu Town which sounded a bit unexciting. Now of a sudden I'm keen to go visit, and I'll start looking out for coins and stamps. Efharisto poli teacherdude

By seven in the evening it was getting wet

* * * Iason Athanasiades reporting from Iran for the Washington Post - 17 June 2009

Ένoσις - 'so perilous an experiment'

I'd been told by a British friend, some years ago, in one of those generalisations filed under 'conjecture - revisit', that Corfiots were fiercely proud to be Greek but sustained a certain sense of superiority over other Greeks. Our dear young Hellene friend Nancy, from Patras, did mention, when we were happily debating politics at table this January, that some Corfiots (and presumably some inhabitants of the rest of the Septinsular) felt that in abandoning the Protectorate in 1864, the British had delivered what could have been an independent Ionian Republic into the hands of the Greek Monarchy, embroiling them in the machinations of Athens.

I suspect that it will necessary first to understand the machinations of Britain and her agents. I expect this to bring uncomfortable revelations about what went on in the Ionian Islands under our 'amical protection' - notwithstanding roads, education, cricket and sin tsin birra (echoes of Life of Brian on "what have the Romans ever done for us?"). Original sources offer direct insight but, subliminally, they draw a student through time, so that one finds oneself wandering in another dimension. A reader invents the voices of fiction in their head. Film-makers pre-empt such imagining. I've travelled thus before when pursuing research. As ever it depends who writes the history and what interpretations most credibly explain the motives and actions of individuals.

From Warlike England as seen by herself (1915) by Ferdinand Tönnies - insight into British foreign rule from a great sociologist

I will ever revert to Anglo-Hellenic relations because my necessarily sober study of texts is driven by inchoate emotions. At times what I thought was Greece turns out to be my reflection in a foxed mirror. I'm neither detached nor disinterested. I'm mindful of Kevin Andrew's passion for Greece, in whose seas his life ended, undimmed by a rare fury at 'uncritical, unquestioning adherence to the revolting shame of lesser people’s stupidity, cynicism and cheapness' and Byron, his heart buried in the Hiera Polis, writing, in a burst of vexation, that 'there never was such an incapacity for veracity shown since Eve lived in Paradise.'

In the National Archives reading room at Kew: British Colonial Office records for the Protectorate of the Ionian Islands

On only my second visit to the National Archives, last Thursday, I focused on the months between November 1858 and late Spring 1859, getting the hang of ordering documents on-line, remembering to put pens in my bag in the downstairs locker chained by my folded bicycle, requesting a desk, swiping my reader's card at security, collecting documents - one file at a time - from the glass-doored locker with the same number as my computer allocated desk space, collecting the polystyrene forms to support thick heavy volumes, donning white cotton gloves to turn pages...

Sir Thomas Wyse, author of Impressions of Greece, was British Minister (or ambassador) to Greece, sending reports on local affairs back from Athens to the Foreign Office in London since his posting in 1849. On 2 December 1858, in a dispatch to the Earl of Malmesbury, Foreign Secretary in the government of Lord Derby, Wyse describes how, on the evening of 24 November, he'd just left a party given by Ozeroff, the Russian Minister to Greece, when a young employee from the Hellenic Foreign Office called Typaldos arrived with the news 'that the Ionian Islands had been ceded to Greece'.

..the dance ceased…groups were to be seen in every direction congratulating each other, especially amongst the younger portion of the company on so unexpected and auspicious an event.

This news may have come attached to reports of William Gladstone's extraordinary mission to the islands (journeying from England by train through Dresden, Prague and Vienna to Trieste where he took the paddle steamer HMS Terrible down the Adriatic, arriving in Corfu on 24 November [see p.367 in this ref] reporting the magnificent Albanian landfall we've several times enjoyed - the Karaburan Peninsular then called the Acroceraunian mountains). The day after news broke of unification, people in Athens had started ...

... to hesitate as to the advantages of the change. The more sedate and experienced did not see that either party could gain much by the proposed union. Others went so far as to express apprehension of immediate danger to the monarchy and dynasty, from annexing their turbulent neighbour little used to the restrictions of genuine Hellenic liberty...(The Ionians) couple with the hope of such annexation, the means of establishing by their audacity or preponderance, a new state of things in Greece, involving in some of the theories, a radical alteration, not in the constitution only, but in the dynasty and Monarchy of the State...The time is not yet ripe, it is added, for so perilous an experiment. It would be not so much an annexation of the Ionian Islands to Greece, as of Greece to the Ionian Islands...(FO32/263 ~ p.165)

Letter from Sir Thomas Wyse to the Earl of Malmesbury ~ 2 Dec 1858

Background: The news that broke at Ozeroff's party was of course a rumour, since union with Greece did not actually occur for another five and a half years on 21 May 1864. Gladstone, over three months in late '58, early 59 had sought to convey to Ionians - in ways and for motives I'm trying to understand - that union with Greece was, for the time being, unrealistic. Inclined towards self-rule, he became convinced that a catalogue of complaints against the Protectorate could be attributed, in part, to the style of the previous Commissioner Sir John Young who had recommended an Ionian partition converting Corfu and Paxos to British colonies, ceding the remaining islands to Greece, in part to inbuilt flaws in the Maitland Constitution of 1817 that corrupted prospects of evolution towards self-government, making the Ionian Protectorate, a Colony in all but name, and unready for the 'home-rule' he perhaps hoped to seed (echoes of Gladstone's later preoccupation with Ireland) or union with Greece which he came to doubt was really what local people or the Greek government really desired. Having ensured the departure of Sir John Young, Gladstone sailed away from the islands on HMS Terrible, leaving a reform package for approval by the Ionian Senators that would strengthen Ionian conservatives, weakening radical pressure for enosis. But his successor Sir Henry Storks was left to face almost immediate rejection by the Ionian Assembly of Gladstone's proposals as well as continued demands and petitions for union with Greece. Thus we enter the last five years of the Protectorate.

Gladstone, during his twelve week Ionian mission had visited Athens to sound the Greek government and court on the idea of union. On 13 December 1858 he wrote to Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Secretary of State for the Colonies under Lord Derby, noting ‘divided sentiment’ about union in the Greek Kingdom - something ‘feared as well as desired’. It is exciting to see the signature and writing of Gladstone dotted about the records, but although it’s referred to in Holland and Markides as being in CO136/165 I couldn’t find it. That file starts in January 1859 where I did find a letter marked 'most secret' from Sir Henry Storks to Bulwer-Lytton, a few months after Gladstone's departure for England on 19 February. Sir Henry matched Gladstone and Wyse in conveying Athenian ambivalence about extending the Hellenic Kingdom to the Ionian Islands:

Sir Henry Storks at the Palace, Corfu, to Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Downing Street, London ~ 9 April 1859

'No doubt the King of Greece would find the inhabitants of these islands very difficult to rule, and in many respects superior in attainments, and less docile than his own subjects, but still territorial aggrandizement, and the commanding strategical and maritime position of these islands, are objects of ambition which the Court of Athens is not likely to underrate...'

...adding a full measure of jaundice towards King Otto, Queen Amalia and their court.

'It is my duty to acquaint you that I have heard from sources in which I have confidence that little reliance is to be placed in anything the King or Queen of Greece, or the Ministers may say on the subject of the annexation of these States to the Kingdom of Greece. I believe there is an undercurrent of intrigue fanning the flame here, and that the chief movers are Greek agents. (CO136/165 ~ p.645-646)

***

Dropping in on the Scrutiny offices at Southwark Council in mid-afternoon I mentioned my visit to the National Archives. As I left, Rachel one of Shelley's colleagues, explained how security at the NA had, through its focus on preventing documents being stolen, overlooked the possibility of them being introduced. Some rogue had sneaked in fake correspondence to prove that Himmler, rather than committing suicide, had been murdered by British agents. The fake letters intended as evidence (scroll down this URL to see) were printed on a 'high resolution laser printer', written by someone risibly incapable of imitating official circumspection, a bit like those ridiculous, but at least technically clever, Meegeren imitations of Vermeer. But then Trevor-Roper was initially deceived by The Hitler Diaries, to which Richard, knowing his le Carré, adds "unless it was double bluff."

* * *
  Email from Ayios Markos:

I forgot to comment on your learning Greek. It can be hard, or it can be fun, depending on the teacher and the teaching methods. I found it more fun and learned more when I taught myself. There are some advantages to having the teacher though, such as pronunciation and grammar. When I took classes I found it too frustrating. There were a couple of times I had to grab the teacher by the throat. She kept me sitting across the table so I wouldn't grab her. Ha! She is my very dear Greek friend here.

There was a rather comical incident up here in Agios Markos. They are working on the road, cutting a trench for water pipes. This, of course creates more problems for the already narrow street. Consequently, there was major frustration by the bus driver who was having a problem getting through. He called and complained to the mayor, who then called the police and they came up and wrote tickets on 30 cars! Each costing €80. Everyone was up in arms. They have been parking there for nearly 20 years without ever being told it wasn't legal. They all embarked on the police department in a rage. The mayor was red faced and admitted he might have made a mistake. Last I heard they were told not to worry about it, and today I noticed they were all, once again, back in their old parking places. Don't you love Corfu? The Greeks are as much fun as the italians. Love, X

* * *
Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) meeting in Corfu under the auspices of Dora Bakoyannis near Gouvia.

Forwarded email: I see there’s a big summity event at the end of the month in Corfu. Everyone get ready to be hustled off the road by large cars with flags, and off the sidewalk by burly gentlemen with ear pieces. Here comes the cavalry...

Reply from H: Yes. I heard from the neighbor. Hillary Clinton is coming! [she cancelled] Actually, as much as I would love to see her, I would rather not be around with all the police lining the streets. I've experienced it before when a dignitary came to town. We've been amused at the things they've been doing to the main roads. You would not believe all the painted white lines! You will laugh when you see them. And also cats eyes, which are already popping off. Ha!

And a call via Indymedia to protest at the implication of Fortress Europe
 * * *
Back to the future ~ 16 June 2009 re the Iranian Election result: I think I and many others may, at last, take Twitter seriously seeing its use along with mobile phone photos to evade attempts to silence those challenging the poll. See this witty lass on YouTube where she speaks of things in Iran and of Twitter ' the so-called "death of attention span" medium (2.26).

See also Iran: Nation of Bloggers plus accompanying comments. It reminds me of the way the mobile phone circumvented attempts by leaders of the 1991 August Putsch in Russia to control the media and the telephone network.

Back to the immediate future - 23 June 09: I was informed on Facebook across the globe by my student Takanori Ogasawara in Aomori Prefecture: 'The movie of the moment of Neda's (ندا آقا سلطان) death are so shocked. We receive the full benefit of peace here in Japan. On the other hand, on the another side of the Earth, a lot of people are dying.' The face of a woman, Neda Agha-Soltan, a philosophy student shot by a Basij militia sniper, on 20 November, dying in the street, was sent by an attending doctor's mobile to a contact in the Netherlands who put it on

the web from where it was picked up and relayed on live-blogs, flickr, facebook, mainstream media, wikipedia to be printed on placards in Iran. I'm just hearing a BBC R4 report in our kitchen at 13.26 23 June 09.

...and one of the most informed of commentators Iason Athanasiadis who spends a lot of time in Iran in The Spectator on 17 June 09 - cautious.

...and from Eric Margolis a sage warning about the higher-politics: 'In viewing the Muslim world, Westerners keep listening to those who tell them what they want to hear, rather than the facts. We are at it again in Iran...President Obama sincerely wants to enter into talks with Iran over its nuclear program and try to convince Tehran to give up enrichment. But hardliners in his cabinet and Congress are urging Obama to seize the opportunity to further destabilize Iran. Bad idea. A stable Iran is essential to a stable Mideast....US and British efforts to subvert Iran’s government could yet blow up in our faces.

...this on internet interception and this from Greek bloggers
[Back to the future -  22 June 2011: A More 4 programme For Neda]
[Back to the future - 14 November 2012: BBC News magazine 'Neda Soltani: 'The media mix-up that ruined my life'