First world problems

Arthur Rackham - an illustration from Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens

Magpies leap around inside the frieze of black branches at the bottom of the garden. Unruly wind stirs a medley of orphan leaves; stripping the trees of the few that remain, reminding me of infancy. Some I’ve gathered on our front lawn where a few rainless days will dry them, so I can run the mower over them, bagging their grated remains to join the compost on my allotment or use them for mulch, food for worms.

John comes to the door with Dieter, who rolls, delighted, in wet leaves. Oscar joins him barking welcome to “walk time” in Handsworth Park.
The weather’s mild. Lin complains “it’s cold” so now I start inroads on the logs I cut and split in summer; lighting the wood stove in seconds – top-down – the warmed flue whistling, wind drawing up the first flames, crackling, roaring. I’ve worked through my in-tray since we came home. On recommendation from CS, improver and restorer of houses, I brought in Wayne and Barbara of Genesis to clear all our roof gutters. Booked an eye test to check a small cataract in my left eye, made appointment for a flu jab,  and for the dentist; filled in the form for my 126th blood donation, confirmed an appointment with Mr Martin Sintler at City Hospital to assess me for an operation on the inguinal hernia I developed in August.
On Monday, recruited from the 1000elders, I kept an appointment with Dr Benoit Smeunink at QE Hospital to be briefed, and sign consent forms, for participation in the ‘Bed-Rest Study’ in the New Year – official title Exercise 'prehabilitation': A novel intervention to protect against disuse-induced muscle atrophy and sarcopenia in the old. 
The drift of government policy is to keep those of us who might otherwise be reliant on the burdened NHS, healthy and fit until we drop painlessly and naturally - what ever that means - dead (like in the movies!). The main killers of the elderly are heart disease, cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, strokes, Alzheimers, diabetes, pneumonia, flu, nephritis - a kidney thing, septicemia - and there's another list of illnesses that contribute. The whole population is susceptible to the same dangers, but getting older increases susceptibility, hence so much research on reducing the ill-effects of 'slowing down', and in this case, being confined to a hospital, and worse, to a bed, after a procedure. How can I avoid sarcopenia, or worse, cachexia?  Like an old horse, once I lie down, the chances of getting back on my feet lessen. The vet can gently finish off a horse, but I could be bed-ridden, with occasional wheel-chair forays, for an unpredictable age.

Other things, vexing in their banality; long spells sitting in our kitchen half-heeding recorded phone messages, pressing handset keys between sales talk, wrestling gently with human respondents working to a script, striving to sort confusion between energy company Npower, who we’ve left, and energy company Solarplicity, who we’ve joined, about gas and electricity supplied to Rock Cottage during what appears to be a difference between the two companies’ switch-over dates and their use of estimated meter readings as against the actual readings they were sent by me - an issue also described as 'cross metering' or 'erroneous transfers'. Solarplicity says switch over was 3rd Aug for gas and electricity. Npower says it was 2nd Aug for electricity and 17th Aug for gas, and insist this is confirmed on the 'national data base', an entity I can't even find on the web, but which may be the National Meter Data Base or could it be the Meter Point Administration Service (MPAS)? I'm being mailed court order threats from Npower – on and off the most complained-about of all energy companies in Europe -  in pursuit of gas and electricity bills for whose payment I have dated receipts. The sums involved are under £5. The transfer process began mid-July 2017. Over these four months consider the cost of our time and their time pursuing this ageing company-made error. Result of our time (Lin and I share this sort of chore) on the phone so far? Agreement by Npower to stop phoning (they even phoned us in Greece) and mailing demands – until the dispute is resolved.

24/11/17 Your reply from npower. Your account number:12601** Code: E1*T. Hello Mr Baddeley. Thank you for contacting us about your account. I am sorry to learn that you have not received a resolution for your complaint. I am aware from reviewing your account that this is still ongoing. Our Complaints team is working on resolving this for you and I have made them aware that you have contacted us again about this issue. Rest assured, Mr Simon Baddeley, we will be in touch soon. Your unique reference number for the complaint is 12601**47, please quote this should you wish to speak to our Complaints team directly on 0800 316 9328. They are available from 8am to 6pm Monday to Friday and 8am to 2pm Saturday. If you prefer, you can email complaints@npower.com. Thank you for your patience in this matter, Mr Simon Baddeley. I am confident that this will be resolved for you shortly. Kind regards Chris Thewlis, Customer Services Director, Customer Services

‘Our’ (No! ‘your’) problem according to Solarplicity - another 25 minutes on the phone - is that the sums involved are too small to ‘raise a dispute’, which means we can’t recruit them in stopping Npower in their system’s automated tracks. Fascinating as a symptom of the times, this tiresome ‘first world problem’ vexes but doesn’t worry me. If it ends up in court – unlikely - I shall, as both of us have in the past, enjoy telling this well documented fiasco to a court. (We’ve never lost a case). There are places where, in a different world, I might be trying to get Linda out of solitary confinement based on mistaken identity, or travelling to the Hague to bear witness against Ratko Mladić for the murder of our child.

29/11/17 Email from npower, to back up a phone call from the company, that looks to have sorted 'our' problem:

Unique Reference Number: 10157***   Dear Mr Baddeley. Further to our telephone conversation this afternoon, I can confirm that in line with our agreement, I have now removed the outstanding gas balance of £28.47.
As I have been unable to contact Solarplicity directly with regards to the closing meter readings, I have confirmed that we could either continue to contact your new supplier and re-agree a new final meter reading. Alternatively, we could remove the balance however, no further amendments would be made to the final meter readings.
You have confirmed that you would be happy for me to remove the outstanding balance without agreeing a new meter reading with your supplier. Therefore, I have applied a credit balance to your account today and this leaves nothing to pay. 
I can confirm both your gas and electricity accounts have now been closed to a £0.00 balance.
If you’d like to discuss this with me, please call me direct on ****etc.  Kind Regards, Bev Young, Specialist Advisor, Executive Liaison Team

* * *  * * *
A meeting was held at Dot’s care home the other day. Anticipated this last fortnight, it was to determine whether Staffordshire NHS Trust could continue to pay for my dear mother-in-law’s care, or whether this should be handled by Staffordshire County Council’s Social Services who would seek funding from the family. Amy, our daughter was at the meeting at the care home, attended by an NHS manager and nurses who look after Dot. She phoned us to say the NHS, after 17 months at the care home,  would no longer pay for Dot’s care. We await a rubber stamp to this decision after which we have about 6 weeks to continue paying the care home out of Dot’s inheritance, such as it is, or make alternative arrangements.

“I can build ramps” I said to Lin
“Yes” said Lin "and we can clear the sitting room at our house, put in a bed and all that’s needed, and have a visiting and occasional live-in carer service.”
Dot can hardly stand, let alone get about, but she can be gently moved from bed to wheelchair. She can feed herself but her care must involve washing and therapy to deal with the risk of sores from spending most of the time bed-ridden, as well as “going to the loo and all that”. Now should be payback for all the National Insurance Dot's paid through her long life but what’s been paid out so far, for her care in old age and disability, can no longer be paid, and the state wants, now, to dip into her savings. Arthur, her husband of 70 years, died in April 2016 at 98. She’s regularly visited by her grandchildren, her niece Janice, and Lin and I and the grandchildren, and also Oscar dog, who is welcome at the care home.
“I knew the NHS wouldn’t continue funding” said Lin, “Mum’s situation didn’t meet their criteria”
Just before we left Corfu, there came a message from Epirus asking if it was true that XX, a mutual friend we knew had been ill, was confined to a care home in Perama. We made some enquiries, located the place and visited - a 15 minute walk across the causeway from below Kanoni. I promised after our visit to write to him, care of another friend, he being without phone, radio, tape player, books or computer (not wanting them even when offered)...adding that I'd put the letter on the internet to ensure that, one way or another, he'd get to read it, or, at least, have it read to him:

xxxxx

House of Elderly Care

Perama Gastouriou,

Dear Xx

I’m sending this via our friend Yy, who promised to bring you and, if necessary, read you this letter. I’d prefer to hand write, but the letter may be easier to read, typed. I’ve used larger than normal font; your description of me as ‘distinguished’, as I sat at your bedside, being a measure of your disability.

I’m so glad we met you again just before we headed back to England.  Despite your circumstances, you entertained us for two hours with the same thoughts and words that marked our first acquaintance.

We’re back in Birmingham after three days in Venice, chased up the Adriatic, from Igoumenitsa, by a gusting gale. 

Passing the Karaburun Peninsula, on Anek Line's F/B Asterion, before a southerly gale

Those big ferries are floating warehouses with noisy accommodation. They clang, echo and rumble, almost ignoring the sea. We snoozed in armchairs, among truck drivers.

As our ship approached Fustina, the clouds pealed back, revealing distant peaks across the horizon – snow-topped Dolomites. Lin and I roamed the lagoon by water-bus. On Torcello we ascended the restored campanile of the island’s Byzantine cathedral. 

Up the campanile of Santa Maria Assunta 

A young man at the ticket office said we could ascend the tower, but its belfry was open only “to priests and children under 6”. Only at the top, having breached this rule, and admired a sunlight panorama of marsh and water from the vertiginous belfry, did we grasp the Italian leg-pull. “Only priests and small children! Ha!”

Venice sparkled. One afternoon, we sat in the sun at Pellestrina, a village on the narrow lagoon spit, sipping coffee and local wine, hearing the sound of Adriatic surf from over the mighty sea wall that protects the city and its islands.

Back in England we’re working through in-trays; the largest challenge - arranging to move my bed-ridden mum-in-law from her care home, for which the NHS will no longer pay, to a room in our house, which will be equipped with kit and care brought in to help us out, leaving Lin, when I ask her if we can be in Corfu for next Easter, saying, of our next flight, already paid, “I hope so”.  Lin’s mum has been a wonderful grandma. Like you, it’s not good to see her bedridden. She’s without her husband of 70 years, who died 17 months ago. These things are tests of character. Mine not hers.

There’s junk mail, bills to be paid, and jobs to be done – like cleaning out house gutters. The wood I collected, sawed and split last August is feeding a wood stove in the kitchen....Lin and I are working on your escape plan. We’ve got you faked papers, cunning disguises and skeleton keys, and a scooter that will be left near the end of the causeway to Kanoni, where you will be met - password ‘λοιπόν’ - and escorted to a safe house until the hue and cry has died down. Love, Simon & Lin XX

Ernest Hemingway with the sculptor Toni Lucarda on Torcello 1948 (Archivo Cameraphoto Epoche. NYRB Oct 2017)

On Torcello - we crossed the ditch on the planks

The other side of the sea-wall at Pellestrina

On Pellestrina - a long narrow strip of an island at the edge of the Lagoon of Venice

Work

Hannah and Oliver at our house

We have recovered wood turned out by householders when Handsworth Helping Hands (HHH) were doing a Skip-it Don't Tip-it day in Putney Avenue.

It was full of staples, bolts and nails but once cut up, and stacked, burned well. On eBay Lin discovered a palette manufacturer not far from us who regularly give away kiln dried off-cuts. A few days ago, a neighbour messaged me 'I'm having a dead tree removed. Collect?' Contractors loaded parts of her felled tree into the borrowed HHH van. I stacked them in front of the house.

This afternoon, just back from Gloucestershire, I began cutting up the lesser girths with an electric chain-saw.

This timber, though from a poplar already dead, is too young to split. In a year it may be ready.
Earlier in the - around 8.00 this morning - Lin and I were in bed in Rock Cottage, in Lydbrook. The phone rang. Dot, her mum, was calling from her kitchen floor in Cannock.
"I've fallen in the kitchen, and I can't wake Arthur"
Lin dialled 999
"I'm 100 miles away in Gloucestershire" she told the operator.
"Is your mother bleeding?"
"I don't know I'm a hundred miles..."
"How does she look?"
The ambulance was on its way to Cannock in 15 minutes. Lin rang Wilf, next door, to unlock the front door, so the crew wouldn't have to break in. Then Arthur was awake. Lin was patched to the ambulance dispatcher.

Lin on the phone to her mum, waiting at her home for an ambulance

"Mum may have broken her wrist or her arm. It's badly bruised. I'm going to collect dad and take him to the hospital. Mum doesn't half pick her times. I'll bring them home."
We'd been working on tidying up Rock Cottage. Enjoying seeing Lydbrook again. Making the place ready for the family to enjoy again after Martin and Sandra and their son Adam have done so much restoration since August 2014.

Traveller's Joy on the path up to Rock Cottage - looking over towards Courtfield

In an hour we were packed up, tidying and heading back to the Midlands, Oscar in the back, We ate a picnic in the car, mackerel pâté sandwiches from a brown bloomer; wedges of pork pie.
*** *** ***
Handsworth Helping Hands has slightly changed direction.  Gaelle Finley included my thoughts on the futility of doing the same thing over and over....

RUBBISH? A BIG LOCAL ISSUE
What’s abandoned and not abandoned tells much about local and global economies. Once upon a time it was worth it for sellers of bottled drinks to pay people (often children) to return empty bottles. It meant fewer soft drinks containers littering the streets. One of the things that strikes anyone collecting street waste is the sheer amount of alcohol being consumed in the area – not beer but liquors of every kind.
Right now far less discarded metal is collected from the street. Why all these fridges? Disposing of them is no longer free to householders. The manufacturers encourage consumers to change fridges more frequently. There’s money to be made from the metal innards of fridges, especially the copper coil in the motor. Now, that’s less likely to be the case, and though people are still dumping fridges, we find fewer ‘gutted’ ones. Why do we see far fewer discarded ovens or washing machines? Because suppliers at point of sale are throwing in disposal-of-your-old-model in return for delivery and installation, which entails plumbing for washers and wiring in direct for all but very small stoves. Fridges and freezers are just plugged in.
Why so many clothes and other soft materials left lying around clothes recycling bins? There’s a market for old clothes often discarded in good condition, and people just want free clothes for themselves and their families. Going through discarded clothes, people select what they want and leave the rest on the pavement.
In our area, not many people want wood. I have delivered wood cut by Railtrack maintenance workers to a wood-stove owner in Handsworth. I use such wood for our wood stove, but there are not many wood stoves around – getting ones efficient enough for accreditation in a smokeless zone tend to make gas cheaper.
We wonder at how much expensive baby equipment is either dumped or given to Handsworth Helping Hands (HHH) as donations. This stuff is not cheap, but even less well-off people like to pay for new things for a baby. We got second hand push chairs for our children but we met friends who are shocked we did this.
Birmingham City Council Fleet and Waste managers attribute the volume of dumped furniture – sofas, armchairs, beds, shelves, sideboards, wardrobes and other items made of chipboard and MDF – to the high turnover of tenancies and the tendency to buy furniture that doesn’t last long. When a new tenant arrives they also want to clear out everything in close contact with previous tenants. A lot of that ends up on pavements. We know that more of this should be paid for by landlords, but it’s an extra too many seek to avoid.
Rarer items thrown in the street, which HHH has encountered, are the big polystyrene blocks that cannabis growers have used to insulate their growing spaces, serving also to hide their activities from the heat sensor in the police helicopter.
Very large accumulations of black bags – a familiar sight in the whole inner ring of the city – suggest the waste disposal methods of tenants a landlord doesn’t wish to be recorded for tax, so that their premises get no, or far too few, wheelie bins.
Add to these issues the vast messiness of trade waste and the low attention given to regulating trade waste licences in our area and you have another major source of rubbish.
We can no longer expect to leave out metal to be collected by the scrap men who roam around HHH street cleaning events – quote from an article in the Guardian last November ‘the bottom dropped out of the recyclable materials market. The global economic downturn means that the global response to “any old UK iron?” is a big fat “no” as scrap metal reputedly plummets from £175 a tonne to a mere £25, plastic prices falling by a reputed £100 a tonne and copper by a huge £1,500 a tonne’. 

Nick, Mike (Chair), Flea (cat) and Lin (Treasurer) ~ HHH committee (photo: Simon, Secretary)

Members of our voluntary group – Handsworth Helping Hands – enjoy what they do. We live in Handsworth. We care about Handsworth. We work hard and we work as a team. We are even used to thinking that we, our partners and residents, are having a real impact in the area. But more and more we’ve had to recognise that we find ourselves doing the same street clean-ups over and over. We are vexed at how many people seem impervious to change; at how our neighbourhood seems stuck in a rut, remaining an obstinate and notorious mess.  For example, HHH carries out one of its regular ‘Skip-it Don’t Tip-it Days’ in one road, with partners and residents. Afterwards things looks great – for a while. We’re all very pleased – for a while. A job well done – for a while. A few days later, we find the same street that looked briefly as a street ought to look, is again as bad as before people got stuck in cleaning it up.

Picking up Bogan's 12m³ skip - hire charge £240 paid for by Neighbourhood Funds 

The same fly-tipping and littering has occurred again, in the same places we picked it up a few days before. We are a small group – 7 of us. We take pride in our local reputation, but we aren’t regulators. We have no authority. We see the same rubbish reappearing and we collect some if it. We resort to the repetitive and often futile labour of reporting it to an overloaded local council.  Knowing all this, experiencing it over three years, the HHH committee decided a few weeks ago to experiment with a shift in approach. We won a grant of £2140 from Birmingham Community Safety Partnership ‘Mobilising Communities Small Grants Fund’.  We selected four avenues – Putney, Brackley, Poplar and Crompton, each with fewer than 20 households, and have named it the ‘4 Avenues Project’. We will strive to engage people in these small places.
We continue to involve our Neighbourhood Office, Birchfield Residents’ Action Group, Midland Heart and Fleet & Waste, .....

Fleet & Waste bring sweeper and compactor truck to Putney Avenue

...but want to do things WITH rather than TO or FOR people. We are learning. So are residents. So, maybe, is everyone involved; learning together about the same intractable challenges that exist in longer streets, in larger areas, but with – just perhaps – a greater chance of doing something about them.
We would really like to balance the disproportionate emphasis on blaming feckless neighbours. There are such people, but just as with crime and health there is more to it. We need to continue to be hard on littering but harder on its causes.

Fish and chips break in Putney Avenue - Nick, Ruth, Oscar, Lin, John and Jimoh 

*** *** *** ***
Last week I donated blood for the 119th time. As a long term donor I'm allowed to continue after age 70, and as a volunteer for the Intervals Study, I'm giving blood more frequently. This time my appointment was 8 in the morning, dawn breaking ...

Cycling down Constitution Hill into Birmingham city centre

65 New Street - Blood donor centre is on the second floor

..On the way home on Constitution Hill I passed a clothes mannequins shop, including a dog mannequin - Tradelines. These give me an idea for a scarecrow on the allotment, especially as the shop has second hand models

** ** ** ** **
I offered to child-mind Oliver, instead of waiting for Amy to ask us as a favour. Oliver is just at the stage that ought to go on forever, where he's always asking "Why?" about things and I just love inventing the answers I don't know. We were strolling with Oscar down Gibson Road. The old car has been slowly bio-degrading for as long as we've lived nearby.

Gibson Road ~ Oscar and Oliver walking in Handsworth

Looking at this venerable Vauxhall Cresta Oscar asked "Why?"
"It is owned by the man in that house. Fifty years ago when he was a young man, about your age, he was given that car by his mum who had bought it second hand from the Queen. He was so excited he decided to drive it round the world via America, Russia, South America, China, across Greece to England where the engine exploded, so he bought a house and parked his beloved car in the drive..." "Why?"
"Because he'd driven so far and the car had looked after him he loved it. He could not even think of getting rid of it. So there it's stood for near 60 years!"
"Why?"
We walk on. Later I met up with Amy and Liz and Henry James and Hannah at One Stop. We had a meal at Wetherspoons.

Oliver, Liz with Henry James, Amy and Hannah at The Arthur Robertson (JD Wetherspoon), Perry Barr

...after which Oliver and I took a train from Perry Barr into New Street where I had a coffee and Oliver a choc ice-cream cone...

Oliver in Grand Central, Birmingham

...after which I cycled and walked  - Oliver sat on my cycle rack, Oscar in the handlebar basket - down to Fazeley Street where we slipped down an alleyway onto the Grand Union Canal...

 ...we headed through dark tunnels, under bridges and up locks to the junction at Aston Top Lock with the Birmingham & Fazeley. We followed that all the way to Spaghetti Junction where the canal turned east towards Minworth and Amy's home

Just east of Spaghetti Junction on the Birmingham & Fazeley Canal

...Oliver rode, walked and sometimes ran up and down the slopes of locks and hump bridges where a siding canal joins the main, keeping up a running conversation. We stopped at the KFC on Kingsbury Road backing onto the towpath - orange juice and a chicken leg for Oliver and corn-on-the-cob for me - then on in the gathering dusk to where after Minworth locks the towpath deteriorates and we were picking our way through puddles and mud until we came to Minworth Green Bridge hardly a 100 yards from Oliver's home on Summer Lane.
"You realise we've covered nearly 8 miles. All the way from the city centre to your house!"
We were hardly a minute waiting outside the house when Liz turned up, and soon after that Guy and Amy and, a good bit later. Linda. We had an Indian take-away.

****** ******
Dora Metallinos, on the Ano Korakiana website, praises the city of Corfu, το Πόλη - which seems so far away at the moment....

Πόλη, Κέρκυρα 
Γράφει ο/η Δώρα Μεταλληνού   01.02.16

Κάτω απ' αυτό το κομμάτι ουρανού είδα το πρώτο φως!Μέσα σε χρώματα,ευωδιέςκαι μνήμες!Τύχη μεγάλη το θεωρώ! Ευωδιάζει η ομορφιά εδώ και καθρεφτίζαται παντού. Μέσα στα σοκάκια περπάτησα τους πρώτους εφηβικούς έρωτες, Με μπλε ποδιά και άσπρο γιακαδάκι αγνάντευα κομμάτια σύννεφου...Οσο μου επέτρεπε το κενό ανάμεσα στα στενά σοκάκια. Πάνω στους υγρούς τοίχους,μουσκεμένα αποτυπώματαοι ολοφυρμοί ανθρώπων που γνώρισαν τη βία των κατακτητών. Κι ήταν πολλόι....Σε κάθε γωνιά οι σφραγίδες τους πάνω στα μνημεία. Αναμφίβολα υψιλής αισθητικής.  Ρούχα να κρέμονται σαν σε ικρίωμα, από τη μια μεριά στην άλλη στα καντούνια ,να περιμένουν να στεγνώσουν κάτω από όσες αχτίδες μπορούσαν να τρυπωσουν. Και εμείς να γελάμε με τα κρεμασμένα εσώρουχα των κυράδων. Σκάλες ξύλινες ατέλειωτες να οδηγούν μέσα στα σύννεφα! Ετριζαν καθώς τις ανεβοκατεβαίναμε κι έκαναν τη φαντασία μου να οργιάζει. Κυράδες με κρινολίνα και ομπρελίνα, κύριοι με ''μπαουλίνα'' και καπέλο ,να κοσμούν τους δρόμους.Κι εκεί σε κάποια τραπεζάκια του "Λιστόν"  η διανόηση να συσκέπτεται με αγωνία για τη γλώσσα και την ελευθερία. Και οι χωριάτες στη λαική ,εικόνα κι αυτή ,στου νου μου τα κιτάπια, να κάνει εμφανή την κοινωνική διαφορά. Να φαντάζομαι πάντα την αδικία του να μη μπορούν να σεριανίσουν στο δρόμο των ''ευγενών''. Και οι δυο κορφές της πόλης να αγκαλιάζουν σα δυο μεγάλες φτερούγες τους κατοίκους και τα σπίτια. Αιώνες ζωής πέρασαν από πάνω της...Η υγρασία, η αδιαφορία, η έκπτωση των αξιών,η αλλάγή προτεραιοτήτων, μόνιμο επίχρεισμα, έφερε τη φθορά στους τοίχους, στα μνημεία, στους ανθρώπους...  Οξειδώθηκαν όλα....Μόνο μια παρηκμασμένη αρχοντιά έμεινε..Μια εκπνοή μεγαλείου.... Η περηφάνεια των κτηρίων μόνο,που στέκουν περήφανα,ευθυτενή.....μα τραυματισμένα....  On the Liston on my Brompton (photo: Linda Baddeley)

All these threads

I seem to have a lot, maybe too much, on the go.

We've just spent nearly £300 getting the clutch master cylinder replaced on the HHH van - the result I suspect of so much short term stopping and starting for myriad jobs up and down the streets of Handsworth. The work was done swiftly by Allen and colleagues at Villa Cross Garage. We're back in business. Second: to qualify for our latest grant application - a bid for cash from the Mobilising Communities Small Grants Fund 2015/16...

Our latest committee meeting

...all committee officers of HHH have to go through the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) process - to check we can work in and around gardens and premises where there may be children and vulnerable people. We also have to show the granting agency our policy on the protection of children and vulnerable people (see 'files' at the top of this FB page). Third: All four of us qualified to drive the HHH van must now give details to our insurer of the new DVLA 'licence information code'. This has required scanning both sides of each driver's licence; sending the images plus other details to the insurer. Soon after these details had been transmitted on PDF files, the insurer apologised and said they'd mislaid our details asking Lin to send them again by which time the DVLA code had expired and each of us had to generate another via their website.
As it is I struggle to write grant applications, detesting forms, finding means to procrastinate.

Cat Flea relaxes on some Handsworth Helping Hands paperwork

On a rainy day a few weeks ago Lin and I, Nick and Denise were in Handsworth Park to be be presented with a cheque for £200 by Shaana Shabir, Community Life Colleague from Asda Stores, Perry Barr - part of Asda's 'Chosen By You' top prize for community groups. Denise's nephew and Oliver enjoyed the puddles on the path running along the top of the park pond.

HHH continues daily work....

Private landlord, multiple occupation, neglected waste - gathered to be bagged and taken away

Denise takes up the matter of anti-social landlords with Cllr Mahmood Hussain

Denise and her grand-nephew Dennis check on some trash left by rough sleepers outside St.Mary's Church

The new Rector Bob Stephen "Thank you - a splendid bit of work, very much appreciated". He's married to Penny Price

Dennis with Veolia's Kathy checks the HHH van on the weighbridge at Holford Drive Recycling Centre

*** *** ***
There's the Black Patch too. 16th of June last we had an interesting meeting in the Soho Foundry Pub with Tony Deep MBE of Eastside Foods....

A meeting with Tony Deep Woura at The Soho Foundry Pub

... His company wants to build on part of Black Patch Park. Sandwell MBC officers are entertaining the idea - an impossibly vague one - of a S106 Agreement with Eastside who want to use the site to build an autoclaving plant in return for contributing to the rest of the park's regeneration. The meeting was good tempered, polite. We agreed to respond in a fortnight. Ron Collins our chair came out to my shed to discuss our response...

...A few days later Phil Crumpton and I met at Urban Coffee in the city centre to work up a draft letter which we all reviewed. Andrew Simon, our secretary sent a final version of a reply from the Friends to Sandwell MBC's senior planning officer, Hayley Insley, copied to Tony Deep:

Dear Hayley
The Friends of Black Patch Park much appreciated the opportunity to meet with officers from SMBC, Tony Deep and colleagues from East End Foods Plc and Smart Waste Ltd on Tuesday 16th June. We agreed that we would respond as promptly as possible with our initial views on the proposed development.
As a Friends group we have no problem with engaging in a constructive dialogue with SMBC and East End Foods Plc concerning the future of Black Patch Park and the surrounding area. However, as we expressed at the meeting there are a number of key issues that we would like to share.

The Black Patch in winter (photo: Karen Fry 2006)

Our constitution states: “The Friends of Black Patch Park is a group committed to the retention in perpetuity of the whole of Black Patch Park and to the improvement of the Park for the benefit of all local people.“ Endorsing a development that would see a significant proportion of the park disappear is therefore a major step for the Friends to take and will in our view require much more detailed information on what is being proposed and dialogue on how any proposed development might be done in such a way as to minimise the social and environmental impacts, while maximising the benefits to the park – its heritage and biodiversity – and the current and future and park users.
We are concerned that the current proposals do not appear to be part of a more comprehensive cross-border plan. There are significant residential areas in the neighbouring authority that represent the main users, or potential users of the park, and are likely to be the people most affected by any proposed development. Cross border consultation would seem to us to be paramount, especially given the proposed boundary review to report in 2017.
We are also not convinced by the arguments that housing is not a better option for Kitchener Street and Foundry Lane. We believe that there are plenty of good arguments to be put forward for housing as a preferred option. In our view the infrastructure is no worse than that available to existing residential areas in neighbouring Soho Ward and significant improvements could be made with little cost, for example pedestrian access through Merry Hill allotments to the Metro stop.
While we appreciate that the proposed developments might bring much needed investment for the park which we all desire, we are not convinced that this is a “last chance opportunity” for such investment. Black Patch Park and its surroundings has huge potential – adjacent as it is to Soho Foundry a major landmark in the history of the industrial revolution, birthplace of Charlie Chaplin, and a centre for Romany culture.
We very much appreciate the interest shown by Tony Deep and East End Foods plc in the Black Patch area and we would like to re-iterate our willingness to meet further with representatives from SMBC, East End Foods plc and SmartWaste Ltd to discuss the proposed developments in more detail and the issues raised.
Yours sincerely
cc Tony Deep – Chair, East End Foods plc

Reply 24th July:

Simon/Harjinder. I would just like thank you for arranging the meeting last month.  Mr Deep and his colleagues would also like me to convey their thanks for your continued involvement as this project progresses.  Whilst there are many questions still to be answered, your feedback has provided them with the confidence to progress with the necessary reports required to take this onto the next stage.  They would also welcome your continued dialogue with them and I’m sure as more detail is released there will be more meetings with the Friends Group in the future.  I would be obliged if you can pass this onto the other members of the Group. I will be in touch when more detail is forthcoming. Regards, Hayley
Hayley Insley, Senior Planner – Planning Regeneration 

*** *** ***
Lin and I have been making trips down to Lydbrook to sort the higgledy-piggledy mix of furniture, books, tools, kitchenware that seems to have been strewn around Rock Cottage during its restoration. The place is carpeted. the bathroom and kitchen  have been renewed; the windows replaced and properly sealed and the whole repainted...

The path up Bell Hill to Rock Cottage

...Oscar has joined us on each visit.

I've replaced the front door lock. I brought down two armchairs, a sofa, a washing machine and Lin's spare sewing machine and a new mattress for our double bed. I've rehung a large shelf. A pile of books have come out of cardboard boxes, been brushed clear of dust and mould and put back on it. Small jobs succeed small jobs. No single room upstairs is clear. We've still no bedding. The washer has yet to be plumbed in. I've no storage for tools. The garden is overgrown, though kept in check after I paid for £150 worth of strimming by Evolution Trees. Lin and I bicker about the slowness of the process. I'd hoped the place would be livable this summer but I suspect we'll need to extend that goal - to the autumn.

Amy's washer moved to Lydbrook. Our neighbour Craig Aston helped me cart it up Bell Hill and lift it into the cottage

*** *** ***
These last nine months the health of Lin's mum and dad. my parents-in-law, has been a major preoccupation. Arthur's 97. Dot 91. Both are taken for hospital visits by the local NHS transport service but on those occasions when Lin needs to talk to doctors, nurses and consultants, she goes, as well as helping take care of her parents' garden. Dot has been receiving both chemotherapy and radiotherapy. It's an ordeal for them both. Lin too.
*** *** ***

Ορμόνες, υ Κάτερος ~ Aristeidis Metallinos 1981 (cat.85 S 39cm)

Aristeidis Metallinos 1908-1987

I've told Angeliki Metallinos that when we return in September to Ano Korakiana I will have a draft catalogue of her grandfather's works. I have met with my son. Richard assured me on Wednesday afternoon that he has started work on a web version of this. There will a website - a portal to articles about Aristeidis Metallinos, and most important, an accessible list of all his works with photos.

Parliament of animals We want justice ~ Aristeidis Metallinos 1981 (cat: 98 M r  40 x 51cm)

At the pension office - Τ.Ε.Β.Ε, Ταμείο Επαγγελματιών και Βιοτεχνών Ελλάδας

Richard Pine sent me details of his latest book - out in October - which will include a photo by Rob Groove of one of Metallinos' marble reliefs.

I really hope that after her letter to me in June, Eurydice Antzοulatοu-Retsila, will come to Corfu in September, visit the village museum, again see the works of the laic sculptor and write us an article building on what she wrote in 1985 when he was still alive....

...So, let me first thank you deeply for your interest in the work of Metallinos. I was feeling the same when in 1982 I had discovered him and I had faced all negative attitudes from all parts of communities in Corfu. But I insisted and I wrote my article then . My husband , now, says that nothing goes in vain and he is very glad with your initiative , because he, himself ( as artist, he is film director) had believed in this work. Perhaps my interest those days was founded in my work as curator at the National Museum of Greek Folk Art (in Athens) and my interest in what is humble and simple. After all, this had been my first speciality (history archaeology, art focused on Greek folk art, my PhD dissertation was on the wedding crowns of modern Greece, those created in gold and silver and kept in local churches or in museums). I will be very glad indeed to contribute in the volume you are preparing and actually I am planning to visit Corfu again in September to meet with my old friends there (I was professor of museum studies and cultural management at the Ionian University there from 1994 to 2009), to start a new research I am planning and of course I will enjoy seeing again the works of Metallinos....

When I read the letter Alexis Tsipras had written to EU ministers just over three weeks ago and considered the humiliating circumstances surrounding his words I thought of C.P. Cavafy...

 ...of his 1910 poem Satrapy ~ Η Σατραπεία

What a calamity that you who are made
for beautiful achievements and renowned,
should always be, through your hard fate, denied
occasion and success; that you should always
be hindered by the mean observances,
the littlenesses, and indifferences.
And how unblest the day when you give in
(when you have lost yourself, and you give in),
and you depart, a wayfarer for Susa,
and come before the monarch Artaxerxes
who welcomes you with favour at his Court,
offering you satrapies and things akin.
And you, despairing, you accept those honours,
those that are not the honours you desire.
Your soul is hungering for other things:
the praises of the Demos and the Sophists, —
the difficult, invaluable “Well done”;
the Agora, the Theatre, the bays.
These — how should Artaxerxes ever give,
how should you ever find in satrapies;
and what a life will yours be now, without them.

Βουλή των Ελλήνων (Photo: Alexandros Michailidis/Demotix/Corbis)

Τι συμφορά, ενώ είσαι καμωμένος

για τα ωραία και μεγάλα έργα

η άδικη αυτή σου η τύχη πάντα

ενθάρρυνσι κ’ επιτυχία να σε αρνείται·

να σ’ εμποδίζουν ευτελείς συνήθειες,

και μικροπρέπειες, κι αδιαφορίες.

Και τι φρικτή η μέρα που ενδίδεις,

(η μέρα που αφέθηκες κ’ ενδίδεις),

και φεύγεις οδοιπόρος για τα Σούσα,

και πηαίνεις στον μονάρχην Aρταξέρξη

που ευνοϊκά σε βάζει στην αυλή του,

και σε προσφέρει σατραπείες και τέτοια.

Και συ τα δέχεσαι με απελπισία

αυτά τα πράγματα που δεν τα θέλεις.

Άλλα ζητεί η ψυχή σου, γι’ άλλα κλαίει·

τον έπαινο του Δήμου και των Σοφιστών,

τα δύσκολα και τ’ ανεκτίμητα Εύγε·

την Aγορά, το Θέατρο, και τους Στεφάνους.

Aυτά πού θα σ’ τα δώσει ο Aρταξέρξης,

αυτά πού θα τα βρεις στη σατραπεία·

και τι ζωή χωρίς αυτά θα κάμεις. 

Cavafy was in Alexandria, shortly before he began to be known and esteemed as a poet, writing in Satrapy about his own life. How his musing resonates with the present circumstances of his nation; with the grievous personal humiliation of all Greece.  Tsipras and his colleagues have tried. They have failed. Greece continues to pay back its impossible debt, one that the IMF has proclaimed unsustainable (see also, IMF Country Report No. 15/165 June 26 Greece: Preliminary Draft Sustainability Analysis) even if she implements all the conditions of the third bail-out agreement.

No-one in the world has yet managed to grow an effective grand theory that can stand against the neo-liberal paradigm. I suspect there are dormant seeds in many places, even unseen seedlings sprouting in unexpected soils; sturdy perennials which are yet indistinguishable at this stage of their growth from transitory annuals.
Only some later history will claim, with the inestimable benefit of hindsight, their contribution to an idea stronger than those that now rule us; a new set of ideas and practices as robust and truthful as those ideas and practices that have taken so strong a possession of our common sense. No great idea (the heliocentric theory of the solar system, the evil of the death penalty, the wrongness of slavery, the rights of women, the theory of evolution, the equality of races) came to flourishing growth in the lifetime of those who first intimated its innate truth and rightness. Stand against neo-liberalism? Commit yourself to loneliness, doubt, ridicule, humiliation, and despair - yet still be brave, happy, good humoured and sweet company.
In that respect I give high marks to Yanis Varoufakis but I credit too how, on the Ano Korakiana website, my friend and neighbour, village historian Kostas Apergis - Κώστας Απέργης  - has written:

"Μνημόνιο"... ΓιονάτικοΗ τραγική επικαιρότητα για τη χώρα μας δεν είναι ούτε πρωτόφαντη ούτε μοναδική.Η εφαρμογή σκληρών οικονομικών πρακτικών αποδεικνύεται συνεπής και διαχρονική,διότι στηρίζεται σε «αλάνθαστους»,όπως φαίνεται νόμους του Καπιταλισμού, δηλαδή στην εκμετάλευση των μη εχόντων από τους έχοντες.
Η επιστροφή της οικονομίας της χώρας σε συνθήκες μεσαίωνα και φεουδαρχικού συστήματος δεν νομίζω ότι μπορεί να αμφισβητηθεί με οποιοδήποτε δικαιολόγημα...
Ας δούμε όμως μια περίπτωση δανεισμού του 1801.Το μέγεθος δεν έχει σημασία.Οι όροι και οι συνέπειες είναι αυτές που καθορίζουν τη σχέση και την ηθική του συστήματος...

«Στο κάνγγελο εμού νοταρίου στο χωρίον της Κορακιάνας.....οι Γιωργάκης και Δημήτρης αδέλφια Ιωνά του Ιωάννη από παρόν χωρίον, εσυμφώνησαν με τον Σπύρο Κένταρχο ποτέ Μανώλη από παρόν χωρίον και του δίνουν δανεικά 228 τάλαρα ασημένια και υπόσχεται ο άνωθεν Κένταρχος να τους τα επιστρέψει την πρώτη του ερχομένου μηνός Ιουλίου μέ τόκο....και από σήμερα μένει υποθήκη προς τους αδελφούς το κοπάδι του Κένταρχου, πρόβια και τραγιά κεφάλια 98, και ο Κένταρχος υποχρεούται να δίνει το τυρί που θα κάμει και τα μαλλιά στο σπίτι των αδελφών. Εκεί το τυρί θα αλατιέται και θα το πουλεί ο Κένταρχος και τα χρήματα θα υπολογίζονται πάνω στο χρέος, και αν δεν πιάσουν το ποσόν των 228 τάλαρων να συμπληρώνει ο Κένταρχος πουλώντας και το κοπάδι και αν πάλι δεν συμπληρωθεί το ποσό να υπολογίζεται το υπόλοιπο σε λάδι προς ενάμιση τάλαρο η ξέστα, λάδι λαπάντε μέχρι τον Ιανουάριο 1802...

Μάρτυρες:Δήμος Μαρζούκος ποτέ Σπύρου και Θοδωρής Κοντοστάνος ποτέ Στέλιου όλοι από παρόν χωρίον» Η πράξη έγινε στις 3/2/1801
Τύφλα νάχει ο Σόϊμπλε και οι υπόλοιποι Ευρωπαίοι «φίλοι μας»!!!.Επειδή το ένα μέρος των συμβαλλομένων είναι Γιονάτες έτσι καταλαβαίνω και τον κουμπάρο μου...
ΚΩΣΤΑΣ ΑΠΕΡΓΗΣ

*** *** *** ***
In Handsworth, our water rates are over £800 a year. In March we ordered a water meter from Severn Trent Water. Their publicity assured us this could halve the cost of our water. In June we came back to England and read the meter. Having started a zero it showed that in our absence 40 cubic metres of water had leaked from our supply pipe. A team from the company came out to check. They found the leak was on our side of the meter. our responsibility. We paid £200 excess to our insurance company and were promised a refund on the cost of the water leaked - a one-off arrangement STW provides with meter installations. A pleasant water engineer turned up with sounding kit and other tools....

Terry finds our leak

...in twenty minutes he'd located the leak in the thin thick-walled lead supply pipe, under the roots of the old cherry tree we had cut down nearly 10 years ago as its roots were pushing down ours and our neighbour's garden walls.

A section from our water supply pipe

"We'll be back" said Terry "after we've got permission to dig up the pavement. Then we'll run an alternative pipe up your drive. We won't try to dig into the tree roots. You don't have to do anything more."
*** *** ***

Jack and Simon

I am impatient about progress on the project to digitize my stepfather's tape-film archive; something I've been working on over several years, since the archive of 16mm film and 1/4" reel-to-reel tape was recovered from the South West Film and Television Archive in 2012. In late May while in Corfu, Chris Perry of Big Centre TV said the project had been assigned a new editor - Simon Coward.

Simon Coward and Chris Perry with me at the Walsall Studio base of Big Centre TV

Days passed through June. Pressing the matter I found that Ascent Media in London, now changed to Encore, had hardly started to digitise the film and tape I'd brought them last March. No invoice had been generated. I got an apology from Simon Warren at Ascent - now Encore - and a batch of five episodes of archive Out of Town was given to Simon Coward for editing a fortnight ago. I knew this wasn't ever going to be straightforward. It hasn't been all along, but I'm hoping we are now in slightly faster production than so far.

Email from Simon Coward to me and Chris Perry on 24th July: Simon and Chris. This is a slight tangent to everything that's been mentioned below, but in case these emails suddenly kick of a whole raft of activity be it here, at Big Centre, at Ascent or wherever - I need to remind everyone of something which needs to be addressed.
[Simon's just rung me and I've mentioned most of the following to him already, but it won't hurt putting it in an email to everyone]
The test film, which Ascent made a very nice transfer of is, of course, an original Southern Television film. The soundtrack that was with it, however, was not a Southern Television soundtrack but was a newly-recorded film commentary only (i.e. not including the shed sequences) made for the sell-through videos recorded in the 1980s, released by Contender on DVD, and currently available from Delta on DVD.
Now, while there might be an archive/preservation angle to getting the raw materials like this (and others in the same state) digitised in HD (even reduced in size to standard definition, the film looks a lot sharper and has more detail in Ascent's transfer than it does on the current DVD), for the present purpose there's no value in doing so and so, at least in the short term, I presume everyone wants to prevent Ascent from copying any further films/soundtracks which are in the same boat.
I'm happy to ring Mark at Ascent this afternoon to discuss whether there's a way of identifying these and putting them to one side so that their time and BCTV's money can be concentrated on transferring just the shows which have a Southern TV soundtrack. It may be this is something Ascent can do easily - the duration of the tape, tape brand, age of tape/box etc might be significant. Or it may be that things are in enough of a jumble that the only way to identify them as "correct" is to listen to the audio tape soundtrack first and confirm that it's a Southern recording. I think this can be done reasonably easily because the Southern editions should begin with the opening theme music whereas the 1980s editions will go straight into the film commentary with no music or anything....
If anyone doesn't want me to ring Mark after lunch to discuss any possibilities with him, let me know asap. Simon 

My reply: Dear Simon and Chris. Yes. Ring Mark urgently.
Two thoughts.
I need to stretch my expectations regarding the time this is going to take. We’ve had many hiccoughs on this journey and not a few cul-de-sacs since 2010. Now we face another.
My agreement with Big Centre TV does not mention time, or even the number of restored Out of Town's (OOT’s) that might at some time be broadcast by Big Centre TV, only the commitment to process and edit episodes for broadcast from the JH Archive in my hands in return for using material from the OOT box sets. I had been assuming we needed to have broadcast-able material ready for the Autumn season and beyond.
Second thought. Though there may have been human error (i.e the delay for which Steve Warren at Ascent/Encore has generously apologised) but there are other delays that arise from the complicated jumble contained in the JH archive. It is unwieldy material. The reprise on this is that to recover old OOT episodes, we have had to match OOT films to what we had assumed were Southern TV sound tapes of the programme as it was being broadcast in the 60s and 70s. This is an, as yet, uncompleted task, and, as we have reminded ourselves constantly, we have sound but no image for the moments at start and sometimes finish of the archive episodes where my stepfather speaks from his studio ‘shed’. I now learn of a new problem! Among the sound tapes in the archive, some of which we thought we’d matched to the appropriate film are sound commentaries that do not accompany the original broadcast made in Southern’s studios at the time of broadcast. They are the commentaries Jack made for a VHS (now DVD) series in 1985. You and I. Simon, have been trying to work out how these got into the JH archive. Aside from that, these particular sound tapes are useless for our purposes, indeed more than useless because we already have them on the commercial DVDs some of which have been broadcast by Big Centre since March this year.
None of us want to waste time and money digitising tapes mistakenly matched with archive film. The matches must be of the sound tapes made in Southern's Studio that accompany Stan Bréhaut's location film with the addition of Jack’s voice without picture at the start and sometimes at other intervals in an OOT episode.
At the worst we must assume there are about 28 of these unwanted sound tapes (the number of episodes in the first commercial production of OOT in 1985 and now in the first Delta box set produced in 2012) dotted around the JH archive. We now know, thanks to Simon Coward, that at least one went down to London to be digitised and returned with invoice to Big Centre TV.
Now we know they are there in the archive with possibly more in the batches sent to London this year, It should be easy to tell by listening for only a few seconds to one of these tapes that it is unwanted. It will not have Jack’s opening lines from the studio but will only start with the start of the relevant location film. Recall, as an aid to identification, that the key tapes are not ones made by Jack and his team in 1985, but start to finish sound tapes made routinely by Southern TV for all original broadcasts of Out of Town in the 1970s and perhaps earlier. Best wishes, Simon

*** *** ***
Our son dropped round on Sunday evening. He and Lin shelled the whole batch of broad bean pods I'd harvested. Lin blanched them, put them into plastic bags and into the deep freeze. The pods will go on the compost. Nothing wasted. Glut waste avoided.