Cheese dream days

“It’s a cheese dream day” said Lin
“Go on”
“On days when it rained too much to go out, my mum promised 'cheese dreams' – cheese spread on buttered bread and fried”
“Toasted cheese sandwich”
“No 'cheese dreams'”
It has rained from the afternoon. I’m in vest, shirt and sweater. At night we need the quilt. Summer’s furnace light no long leaks through shutters, dancing bright motes of dust and sparkling mum's little chandelier we brought, so carefully packed, from Scotland.

“A few more days like this and the house will have lost the heat in its walls”
“We’ll be lighting the stove. Putting on our electric blanket”
But for brief patines of silver on the sea, rain and clouds advance our landscape from the south. There’s still an absence of the penetrating cold I take for granted in the Highlands, which - plus grief - set me back last winter until we returned to Greece at the end of March, when 30 minutes with a Greek doctor cossetted me to health, along with antibiotics an English GP wouldn’t prescribe, plus generous possets, at the Pyrgi doctor's suggestion, of chicken soup from Cinty down the road.
On Wednesday in sunny weather I was helping Lefteris, Foti and Adoni with pressing the last of their wine – some juice from Zakinthos grapes but some, this year, from Lefteris’ own garden, the weather not so hot as to wither them on the vine as has happened the previous two years.

After the final turn of the screw the press is unscrewed and taken apart and we dig our hands into the spongy cake of tsipira (what we call pomace) pulling it out in crude wedges to add to the garden compost.
Lin and I were invited to lunch as a reward for our help (as if helping is not reward enough!) and we laughed and enjoyed small crispy skinned fried fish, cold cod, bean soup, salad, bread and wine with all the family. We lingered as conversation grew into debate
“We are talking Politics” explained Natasha in English. You know Golden Dawn?”
 “Ne” I replied “Chryssí avga χρυσή  αυγά”
I know quite well the difference between αvgí and αvga, but, having decided to call them the 'eggvolk' I thought I’d try it out on Greek neighbours and was rewarded with hilarity. Lefteris observed how well the BNP are doing in UK, mentioning a double figure percentage he’d seen on TV. “They are thriving on present misery” we agreed.
I disagreed that the British National Party was having as much success in the UK as Golden Dawn in Greece; rather the opposite.
Cinty’s view, she shared with me later, is that one thing a lot of young Greeks especially won’t stand for, people who might, because of the crisis, be inclined to sympathy with the eggvolk, is the suppression of a right to speak your mind...“with the murder of Pavlos Fyssas they have shot themselves in their Greek foot”
*** *** ***

Lin and I have been using the rain to work indoors on the wardrobe in our bedroom. She's taken over management after I retreated frustrated at the intractability of the angles involved.

Drawers from Brin Croft; doors recovered from beside wheelie bins below Ano Korakiana

Under her guidance I’ve been planing and trimming surfaces, creating angles that accommodate the illogical geometry of the space in which we’re working. Shavings and saw dust proliferate but it’s slowly and steadily coming together.

This Saturday evening there was a knocking at our door. It was Angeliki and her mum Anna Metallinos. No they wouldn’t have a drink, wouldn’t stay, but asked if we’d like to come to the village museum.
“We never knew you wanted to see it. I’m so sorry”
This ισ a conspicuous slightly narrow building in the centre of Ano Korakiana we’d given up hope of visiting.

In the seven years we’ve been here it has never been open. Tactful attempts to seek an invite had not succeeded. We’d decided that the Metallinos Museum was not one, in the sense we had understood the term; not really a place open to visitors; rather a private house that happened to be called ‘ΜΟΥΣΕΙΟ’. A plaque tells passersby in Greek and English that ‘In this house lived and created his great work of art the first self-taught popular from Corfu sculptor Arestides Zach.Metallinos’. Two days ahead – meta-avrio - at 10.00 suited our bi-lingual friend and neighbour Cinty. She agreed to join us to help with conversation.

**** ****
I got an email from our solicitor in Scotland:

Dear Simon and Bay. Just a quick note to confirm that the sale of Brin Croft and the Lochan has successfully settled. The Purchasers’ Agents have authorised release of the funds and accordingly the keys have been handed over. With kind regards. Yours sincerely,  James Wotherspoon. Macandrew and Jenkins WS LLP

I could hardly not be anything but beholden to a house that stood close above the sweet river Farnack where, with my sister, I’d sat with mum as, at teatime on November 1, she breathed her last. The sale for a sum that derided shared pessimism and a rather mean Home Report – required in Scotland – vindicated mum’s good choice

Barbara, and her grandson Richard, at Brin Croft

*** *** ***
It seems hardly possible but it looks as if I may get my wish - a loose footed mainsail on Summer Song. I'm not a fan of the almost universal rig of modern yachts over the last 50 years - the Bermudan - preferring gunter or gaff. The Bermudan mast feels too tall. The sail though elegant is unwieldy and without a generous belly, and, in a world of sudden squalls, not easy, especially when single handed, to lower or even reef in a hurry. (see - parts of a sail) In the search for a seamless luff the Bermudan main is near married to its mast, running up a groove or hanging on slugs in that groove; an arrangement that's all about getting a tight luff to improve sailing close to the wind in competition - no great concern of mine. Summer Song's main has been a challenge when it come to reefing or furling.

Summer Song's main is a handful to furl or reef

Her previous owner, Norman, had been wont to stuff towels in the canvas he rolled round the boom to try and give Summer Song's main a wind-friendly shape when reefed. Imagine doing that in a sea and a stiffening breeze. So Dave has been drawing diagrams.

At Sally's Bar in Ipsos, Dave draws a loose footed furling main for Summer Song. Rob Groove looks on.

At first we thought of using another genoa rigged in the main triangle, but now he's found a mainsail that rolls up between head and tack, like a roller reefing jib; the type that reefs into a 'box' attached all up the back of a Bermudan mast; almost universal on modern charter boats. On the clew there's a sturdy pulley linked along the boom to a roller furling gear just below the gooseneck. All up the luff runs a stiff length of aluminium around which the mainsail furls and unfurls. The furling sheet runs from the clew pulley, just above where the main sheet attaches, to the furling gear and back to the cockpit so that both main and jib can be reefed from there.
"Blimey Dave! Make it happen"
"I've got the main and I think there's a furling reel fell in the sea up by the harbour. I'll go look in a moment"

Συζήτηση υια τις απόπειρες-διαρρήζεις

Alarm in the village about thievery, culminating in an attempt by two youths wearing hoods – according to those who chased them off - to break into the Agricultural Co-op. The masked miscreants fled into the woods above the village where they were pursued by hunters until two in the morning. Friday morning Cinty phoned to tell me there was a meeting to discuss attempted-burglary - Συζήτηση υια τις απόπειρες-διαρρήζεις - to be held in the upper room of the Co-op - Αγροτικού Συνεταιρισμού - at 7.00pm that evening.
“Are you going?” I asked
“Yes”
“I’ll go too and you can translate for me. Lin can stay and guard the house”
I was in the Co-op by seven. There were a good number present some of whom I knew. I chatted with the Chairman of the Co-op Sebastiano Metallinos who speaks excellent English.
“It’s a fuss that plays to the right wing elements” he said. “The chances are that most of the crime that’s causing the excitement is local, people from the village who know their way around. Why did those two bother with masks? It can be dealt with by having a word in the right place. This was how we handled a similar panic when I was a councillor a few years back. You find out whose up to mischief. You let it be known you know who it is. Perhaps pay a visit or two. Have a word in a few ears. It stops. The Right blame strangers and foreigners. We play into their hands.”
Cinty arrived at 7.30 knowing nothing would begin until around 8.00, when a panel - the President and members of the Local Council - Fokion Mandilis, Nikolouzos Charilaos and Spiro Tsirigoti, also the Deputy Mayor of Corfu, Fanny Tsimpouli, and Mr Papadopoulos, Mayor of Kato Korakiana’s Local Council - τον Πρόεδρο και τα μέλη του Τοπικού Συμβουλίου (Φωκίωνα Μάνδυλα, Χαρίλαο Νικολούζο και Σπύρο Τσιριγώτη), την Αντιδήμαρχο Κέρκυρας Φανή Τσιμπούλη και τον Πρόεδρο του Τοπικού Συμβουλίου Κάτω Κορακιάνας κ. Παπαδόπουλο.
The problem was acknowledged. The Mayor of Kato Korakiana spoke of the trauma of a break in that so scared his family his young lad wouldn’t go to the loo on his own for six months. The deputy mayor of Corfu – Fanny Tsimpouli – told the meeting that there would be two new police officers at a revived police post at Ipsos - επανα-ενεργοποίησης αστυνομικού στον Ύψο. €140K had been made available for this, so villagers wouldn’t have to rely on the police station – 15 kilometres away by road - at Paleocastritsa. Hardly had she sat down up stood a small succession of enragés – familiar at law’n’order meetings I’ve attended in Handsworth and Lozells.

“Why isn’t there a police officer at the meeting?” I whispered to Cinty
“He’d probably be lynched” she replied with a grin
The evident fact as in other places I know is that the police are very understaffed.
“..and that” declared Fanny Tsimpouli was “a political issue” which required the village to make a political response. She suggested a peaceful demonstration by villagers at the Tzavros T-junction on Monday. There was a call from the Chair for a show of hands. About a dozen arms were raised from among the 50 or so residents present. The enragés were swift to decry the futility of such an action, preferring to raise their voices and gesture at the panel for their failures.
“What are we supposed to do? If we catch someone in the act and hold him."
"Will the police even come?"
"And if they do, won't they make us let him go?”
These protests were received with murmurs of agreement around the room. Outside thunder came with a mighty clap. Rain leaked through the roof above the door, the main drips collected in a bucket. Much of the meeting served as a big safety valve for frustration and impotence. But as it proceeded, voices of reason became increasingly predominant...

...with astute questions about practical things like telephones, about neighbours keeping even more watch on behalf of their neighbours, and about the need to maintain dialogue with local government and the police; to have continued meetings to debate and share information on the village’s security in these hard times. The meeting ended with a good proportion of residents signing up to be part of a village watch, with no-one quite clear what that involved. I had really enjoyed being there, understanding far more than usual with Cinty's discrete translation and not relying on my reading of the colourful non-verbal dimension of such events.

Signing up for village watch

*** ***
Thursday 14 Feb: Cinty phoned me with the news passed on to her on Democracy Street by one of the residents at the Friday evening meeting that, partly as a result of the fuss that was made that evening, Corfu police have caught a gang of ten men made up of Greeks and Albanians who - allegedly - have been carrying out the burglaries and attempted burglaries, including the one on the Co-op, about which villagers were complaining.
*** ***
By and large villagers don’t go for ‘walks’ (βόλτα). My sister’s husband came to mum’s memorial service but seldom if ever came with her to the Highlands.
“There are wolves up there” he’d grumble
In answer to his question about what she actually did when in Scotland, she’d mentioned among other things “We go for walks”
“Where to?” he’d asked bemused, even a little disparaging. He’d made a similar remark about my liking for writing letters.
“Haven’t you got something better to do with your time?”
Long letters were one of the things I so enjoyed writing to mum. Now my paper lies with fountain pen and envelopes untouched. It may be an archaic thing I will one day explain to my grandson.
Lin and I have walked since our separate childhoods. In some UK census account ‘walking’ is listed as one of the favourite recreations of the British along with gardening and DIY. I don’t mean gardening to grow food anymore than walking, in the listed sense, is to go anywhere but back to where you started or that DIY is about saving money.

Walking down Democracy Street

We walk up and down and around Ano Korakiana, threading its maze of steep and winding allies where public and private space mingle between buildings fitted like jigsaw pieces to the spaces available; wood, tile, stone, plaster and concrete grown in a manner organic, and in beneficent contrast to the accursed ferro-concrete villas sprinkled suburban style across the Corfu countryside, raising their unsightly profiles above treelines, digging concrete footings into the roots of shattered olive groves. I know the street that runs through the centre of the village, its layered archipelago of different coloured asphalt like tundra glimpsed from a polar flight, manhole covers and those variations in breadth where experienced drivers know two cars can pass one another, perhaps folding a wing mirror for safety. But we have yet to discover all the tributaries that flow into Democracy Street, though we have become familiar with the twelve or so paths that climb up from almost parallel National Opposition Street Οδός Εθνικής Αντίστασης; several running to and from its four optional bus stops, with the longest – San Jacobo – running in paths and steps from the centre of Venetia down via a metalled section to the lower road, perfect for a long circuit of the village bounds. Others descend below National Opposition Street – normally referred to as 'the road to the sea at Pyrgi via Agios Marcos' – to another serpentine road that starts with a tight hairpin junction onto a steep hill at the eastern end of Ano Korakiana to a T-junction over a mile away on the road that connects the village to the main Corfu Town-Sidari Road. Along this road the other afternoon we took a hundred metre detour to Kiriaki Church...

Lefteri's plan for Kiriaki bell tower in 2010

... where our neighbour Lefteri first told us he was helping construct a bell tower. It’s done and the church repainted.

Nearby on a wooden telegraph pole we saw one of the regularly posted death notices - this one for Lefteris' brother who died in Athens only the other day.

Walking further east into fields below we came across a scruffy flock of sheep who gathered at our passing.

On a turn at the western end of Democracy Street just beyond the shop there’s a narrow steep road surfaced with corrugated concrete that leads into Ano Korakiana’s west end, the area called Mougades. It has a traffic light to prevent impossible meetings of vehicles and leads through dense buildings to yet another road out of the village – one that passes through olive groves, high banked in places, descending about a mile and a half to join the Sidari road. I can hardly recall meeting a soul on this route out of the village. Advance a matter of yards left of the point where it meets the main road and there’s another road that goes a mile back into the village – ideal for a walk to where we started. A good thing about my attendance at the busy meeting last Friday is that more people recognise and greet us on our walks - including one of the angriest of those present who, as he worked in the garden in front of his house, smiled and waved in the friendliest way. 

"Γειά σου. Να 'σαι καλά"

*** ***
'Extremely urgent' notice on the village website

Εξαιρετικώς επείγον...

| Εκτύπωση |

Γράφει ο/η Κβκ

13.02.13

ΥΠΟΥΡΓΕΙΟΝ ΣΥΝΤΟΝΙΣΜΟΥ ΤΗΣ ΚΥΒΕΡΝΗΣΕΩΣ Μετά τα αλλεπάλληλα χτυπήματα που δέχτηκε το χωριό μας από τις διαδοχικές παραιτήσεις του «Αρχηγού του Στρατού» και του Πάπα, ο Βασιλεύς, προ του προφανούς κινδύνου της αναρχίας, απεφάσισε να έλθη εις το χωριό μας εσπευσμένα. Γι’ αυτό καλούνται όλοι οι μασκαράδες του χωριού να προσέλθουν στηναίθουσα του Συνεταιρισμού, την Παρασκευή 15 Φεβρουαρίου 2013και ώρα 8:00 μ.μ. για την οργάνωση των εκδηλώσεων, που θα πραγματοποιηθούν κατά το διάστημα της παραμονής Του στο χωριό μας. Καθώς δε ευρισκόμεθα σε καθεστώς γενικής επιστρατεύσεως, καλούνται οι αρχηγοί των τριών όπλων να μεριμνήσουν σχετικά με τις χορηγήσεις αδειών προς τους καρναβαλιστάς. Εκ του Γραφείου του Υπουργού COORDINATING MINISTRY OF GOVERNMENT After repeated blows received by our village from the successive resignations of "The Chief of the Army" and the Pope, the King, anticipating an obvious risk of anarchy, has decided to speed to our village. He therefore invites all villagers to attend at the Co-op from 8.00pm on Friday, 15 Feb 2013 and to help organise events that will take place during the period of these personages' stay in our village. In accord with  traditional custom, the heads of the three armed forces will be invited to oversee the issuing of permits for Carnival.  From the Office of the Minister

"Please, sir, I want some more"

After the last meeting of Handsworth Helping Hands we’d agreed I'd contact Jo Burrill at Midland Heart, who's also now chairing our local housing forum. I phoned first. She was positive, so I wrote at once:

Dear Jo. Thanks for the phone chat. We're hoping that in early March 2012, as a pilot, we could use the kit held by the HHH project  to carry out a first job, gain experience and show we’re back at work. Can we clear out rubbish from the frontage and rear of 36 Westminster Road and from the entry beween 1 and 3 Turville at the junction of Turville Road and Westminster Road? Can Midland Heart, once we’ve agreed a price, replace the stolen metal gate between 1 and 3 and provide the means for us to dispose of the refuse we clear? It seems to us a shovel-and-barrow job rather than a litter-pick. To be able to empty a barrow we need a skip rather than one of the 660 litre wheelie bins that I was mentioning on the phone. How much does Midland Heart usually pay for a job like this including skip hire, and how would the contractor judge the quality of our work?

Jo replied almost at once:

Dear Simon. Thanks for you email…In principle, we can assist HHH with your first job and I have spoken to Val Browne who is the housing officer for general needs housing on Westminster Road and Turville Road...I have provided some more specific notes below related to your enquiry…It may be possible to clear out the rubbish and the frontage and rear of 36 Westminster Road. If there is significant rubbish there at the beginning of March, then we can arrange for this work to go ahead. The average cost for the Westminster Road job would be in the region of £xxx.  1 & 3 Turville Road is a shared ownership scheme and are therefore not managed by the housing officers, who would be your regular port of call for any future jobs. A team called Commercial Operations manage any shared ownership, leased or outright sale properties. I will approach them about the issues that you have brought up regarding the rubbish and the gate, but I would recommend that we choose another different site that is a general needs property. I will consult with Val or any other Lozells, Birchfield and Housing Officers to identify a suitable job.
When dealing with other contractors, the price quoted to the housing officers would include the job and disposal (see the quote for Westminster Rd rubbish clearance above), so would not include any addition amount to cover the cost of skip hire. In my experience skip hire is around £100 - £150 a day, but I suppose the cost of disposal at the tip would be factored into a contractor’s prices….From speaking to Val about how she usually works with environmental services contractor. She will send them details of the job, they will return with a quote within around 2 days, if she accepts the quote she will probably expect the job to be completed within the next 7 days. Once the job is completed, the contractor would update the housing officer who would then release payment. Cost and efficiency of service are a housing officer’s main factors in preferring a contractor. Hope this is helpful – if you have any further questions, thoughts or queries please get in touch…Many thanks Jo (Facebook page Jo B Midland Heart and local news and events in the area)

We learn more already, about types of property ownership, the quoting process, prices with and without disposal. So. Fingers crossed.
*** *** ***
If wanted to be on my own, which I don’t, I’d stay at the Travelodge off the M5 junction for West Bromwich, 10 minutes cycle from Handsworth Park. My first afternoon in Ano Korakiana, as I went about checking the house, a text invited me to supper. Another the next evening. Only last night did I stop off at the butcher in Pirgi-on-sea to get some mince – the same word works in Greek, though it should be κιμάς - to make a spaghetti sauce. One of the canaries in the shop – twittering away - has a hatch of three. The butcher drew up a chair below a bank of cages. She took down one, gently shoo-ing the she-bird off a tiny nest in which a featherless brood lay snuggled.
“Επίσης” I said proudly “Κόρη μου…my daughter” I made a sign of a belly bump
“…είναι έγκυος;”
“βεβαια. Ένα γιο…το πρώτο μου εγγονός.” "A boy...my first grandchild"
I’d rehearsed this conversation about our Amy’s expected child with our tutor Nikos, so left feeling quite pleased that I’d at least been understood.
On lowest gear the ascent to Agios Markos where the road to Ano Korakiana levels for a couple of miles was easy pedalling. There were hunters with 12 bores stood at intervals along the verges looking out for the evening flight of blackbirds and thrush.
Thursday morning I bought a fresh crispy loaf, baked in the village, from Stammatis in the shop, grated a potato for hash browns, fried two fresh eggs with three rashers of bacon and served myself on the balcony.

Round midday, Adoni and his sister-in-law, Maria, were seeing to the delivery of olive firewood, strewn on the street from a small truck. I helped carry logs down our shared steps into their garden. Effie came out and we embraced. I must have a meal. Pressed to sit – I needed no encouragement – she plied Adoni and I with village rosé and a shared platter of cheese, sausage and fresh crusty bread and a plate of large beans - φασολιάς - in tomato sauce. Wages for our work. Vasiliki arrived. Again hugs. Later I took one of our long delayed Christmas cards to her husband Leftheris
“Ο Σάïμον!”
“O ‘Λευθερί!” I kissed my friend's afternoon stubble…both cheeks.
*** ***
Last lines of a straggly email from Lin with her parents as she takes her dad for his medical treatment:

I had a job getting online here, and the signal, which wasn’t there at all last night, is very weak. No doubt you’re already having a wonderful time. Give everyone my love and give the cats a stroke for me – if they’ll let you. Lin x

The sun was warm enough to dry the washing I hung in the garden. On arriving I’d turned on the water heater forgetting I’d turned off the water supply when we left. No boiler pilot. No hot water. I got ready to change a blown immersion element, taking a snap to remind myself of the wiring, unable to rinse away the stale of my journey, planning to cycle the next day to get a new element from the plumbers at Tsavros.

Then I noticed a tiny trip switch in the plastic junction box that carries the shaft of the heating element. The tip of a small screwdriver re-set it. Turned on the power, on came the pilot. I was punching the air, for sorting it and for the anticipation of a hot shower. Last time this happened I didn’t understand how anything worked or what needed replacing. I disassembled the bottom of the boiler including the drain plate releasing gallons of rusty water mixed with a kilo of lime scale on my head.
Outside the house, on the east wall that’s tricky to get to, Paul and Lula’s people have completed - so far as I can see - a list of small jobs; just the sort of things for which you need friends since this kind of piddling but essential work, is a builder’s curse, involving lots of time for small reward compared to a laying a roof or a building a balcony or painting a whole house. An a/c unit we seldom use, fitted by the previous owners, was stopping a French windows opening fully. Now I can, on a sunny morning, swing open both doors to the panorama that’s one of Ano Korakiana’s gifts. There’s now an elbow joint in the external stove pipe to drain away water and wood oil so it won’t get blocked so regularly. A messy surface of cracks and crumbling plaster around the kitchen window has been made good, along with a plate screwed over an unnecessary space above that window....

...I can’t check the effectiveness of two other jobs - the straightening of the roof gutter so that trapped rain drains at once to the ground, or the filling in of holes in part of the eaves that let rain leak down the wall of a bedroom. Corfu’s having an untypical winter drought - plenty of cold weather; no rain.
“The wells are right down” Mark told me.
“Suits me” said Sally, not having winter mud pools at her stables below the village.
I’ve removed a pretentious faucet over the bathroom sink – one that splashed water over the floor when you washed.  These things are hardly consequential, but like a hangnail or a minute splinter, it’s pleasant to have them sorted. We’ve no blood oranges this year. Normally in January our tree would be fecund with them, but we saw no blossoms back in October. Last year’s hot summer produced a dearth of pollinators. There are many many lemons. Their trees blossom earlier in the year. The dry weather means I couldn’t test the success of our efforts to make the big balcony leak-proof giving us a dry space below and protecting the wood from decay. All seems as we left it but the normal winter downpours and the oven heat of high summer will be the test.
I’ve been pootling about with minor housework, bringing wood from the apothiki to below the house, some to fill the log box by the stove; finding a discarded stapled grocer's box, fiddled it with wire, and a little paint, into a passable rear carrier for my larger bicycle.

Towards Friday evening the sky clouded over. The air grew milder and it was raining. I strolled with umbrella up to Paul and Cinty’s house to deliver the third late Christmas card.
“You’re washing’s getting wet!”
“I know. Do you want a cup of tea?”
The big room upstairs - but at street level - which combines kitchen and sitting room was warmed by a wood fire so efficient it needs hardly a small log an hour. We caught up with the news; Paul just back from a yacht delivery to France; Cinty’s daughter gone with her grandma to Australia. Where could I buy some wood? Another person buying a house in the village phoning Cinty to arrange a meeting to get a picture of the place from her.
“Aren’t we lucky living in Ano Korakiana?”
“Yes indeed” I switched to white wine and two kinds of good cheese. We spoke of favourite authors. Her interest in Edward Lear’s tours around Greece and Albania; his wonderful landscapes before the age of concrete. I mentioned the novels of Ismail Kadare, also The Bridge over the Drina whose author's name slipped my memory.
“Got it - Ivo Andrić. But some places haven’t changed so much”
She spoke of the new year tour she and Paul had made with Mark and Sally in Zagori.
“It seems you had Greece almost to yourselves” I said, a little envious, having seen some of their landscape photos and the friendly cosy interiors of their wood fired lodgings.
“Now there’s an area in which I wouldn’t mind driving a car” I said “up and down long winding lonely roads, crossing rushing streams with ancient dry stone bridges, brown leafed oak, dark pines, towering mountains… the parts of this country most people don’t know.”
We spoke of Australia again which her daughter is loving on her first visit, planning a job there to pay for travel. I related the places John Martin had taken me to over the three successive visits I've made there to lecture with him across the continent. Cinty\s mum recalled being at art school with Barry Humphreys "He was wonderfully strange even then - made an exhibition of paintings with pasta" I thought what an antidote he's been to those Ozzie stereotypes held by some foreigners of inadequate males jeering anything they didn't understand as poofie. Of indigenous Australians whose art I'd seen in Melbourne and later with some of my Japanese students in Tokyo, deeply stirred by the paintings of Emily Kngwarreye. Cinty mentioned a Victorian ancestor - an horrendous story - of treating casual his labour with arsenic-laced flour to avoid paying them.
Once home, a two minute walk up narrow Democracy Street under street lights by cosy shuttered interiors…

…I put the remains of yesterday’s spaghetti and sauce on the cooker, lit the stove upstairs and ate a slow supper - postponing Attenberg and A Separation in favour of comfort viewing - I watched Roman Polanski’s  Oliver Twist, a tale which like Dicken’s Christmas Carol, I must first have been read, in abridged form before I was ten; re-reading and re-watching it this last 60 years. Its characters and plot have the resonance of a founding myth for my time on earth. I was as I expected enchanted, moved, amused, sad and happy at the tale’s consoling moral symmetry, its depiction of criminality censored by Dickens, his publishers and his readers, many who must have known of worse depravity than picking pockets, housebreaking or even a single murder.

Rachel Portman’s music was perfect for this return visit to old villains and heroes – Oliver, Mr Bumble, Fagin, Artful Dodger, Bill Sykes, Nancy, Mr Brownlow, Bulls eye Bill's dog, the flame-lit  Victorian dystopia; its green sunlit opposite. Polanski - or was it Ronald Harwood’s screenplay - didn’t play to the Victorian box-office that goodness in Oliver might - even must - have to do with genteel DNA. That turn of the plot was left out; unneeded. Of course as I realised later., as well as telling a good story, Dicken’s chief target was not his notorious villains, but the torpid consciences of his own class gorging themselves at freighted tables, embellishing with righteous censure their judgements on the fate of the poor who passed before them.