The Highlands for Hogmanay

Lin dropped Oscar and I off at the top of New Street at midday on Thursday and we strolled through sales crowds to the station - a little exercise for the dog before the train journey. I passed the 400 miles north in a sort of trance watching an exciting film - Michael Clayton - reading a police procedural wrongly described as a thriller - Cradle Song by Robert Eric (I see the author's tight unspoken rage in the title - from Blake's poem); buying cups of tea and coffee, snacking on Lin's picnic, a miniature of malt whiskey, a small bottle of red wine with baguettes and liver pâté, mince pies, the steady tumble of the train through darkening countryside, past Preston, Lancaster, Carlisle, Lockerbie, Edinburgh Haymarket, and the single track trail in rain spattered darkness through the passes to Inverness, Oscar squirming with delight as he raises his leg to claim the land again and join up with his friends Bibi and Lulu. Sharon had waited an hour at the station to collect me. "Next time the train's delayed go home and I'll get a taxi". At Brin Croft I hugged and kissed mum in her arm chair. She told me to help myself to a glass of Dalwhinnie. Sharon had prepared a rich steak pie for us. Mum and I talked about the family, about the past and the present, though very little about general news. We spoke of Arthur's radiation treatment to come, of the allotment. I showed off pictures of the shed. We described our separate Christmas days (she'd been in London with my sister Bay's family); of the coming grand - and for mum - great grandchild. I showed her Amy's ultrascan movie of the baby she knows for sure's a boy, and another sound byte of her baby's heartbeat. Mum said "It's too much.". I'm wasn't sure I didn't agree, but the tests and monitoring have to be good. Leonardo five centuries ago working from corpses believed that the foetus in the living mother had no heart beat.

Leonardo da Vinci 1512

We discussed the Leonardo exhibition and the books with pictures of his she'd got strewn about.
"I couldn't get to, or rather I wouldn't. Too many people."
"The same problem applies to Hockney's Yorkshire landscapes."
"I want these pictures to myself with all the time in the world - not trudging by with a crowd, fifteen quid for the whole tour in half an hour." All the same Hockney's countryside pictures looked wonderful in her RA magazine
"Imagine them covering spaces the size of this house."
In the morning I slept late. I had dreamed about giving a child advice on life - inadequately. Later I was out walking with the dogs, trudging in warm clothes with good boots in steady rain. A contraption for an instant alarming since unrecognised unfolded from its perch on a stumpy erratic. The only life but sheep in the drab landscape - a buzzard flying off matching its flight to the line of the trees beside my path so only for a moment did I catch its actual silhouette against the sky. I tramped through empty woods along a soggy pooled track of a giant logging truck.

The dogs as usual raced about oblivious to wet and cold, like me. I love this weather and this landscape, not least for the having of it to myself with toast and tea after towelling down soaked dogs when I get back to Brin Croft.

Brin Rock through the trees

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In precious Ano Korakiana ~ Χριστούγεννα με Σπύρο Σαμάρα 31.12.11. Last Friday evening the band held it's Christmas event in the main room of the Agricultural Co-operative - a concert dedicated to the composer of the Olympic Anthem, Spyros Samaras, a reminder of the wide ranging brilliance of that Corfiot composer whose name was adopted by our band, introduced by the vice-president of the Philharmonic Association, Andreas Metallinos.

Πραγματοποιήθηκε χθες το βράδυ στην αίθουσα του Συνεταιρισμού η Χριστουγεννιάτικη εκδήλωση της Φιλαρμονικής, που ήταν αφιερωμένη στον συνθέτη του Ολυμπιακού Ύμνου, Σπύρο Φιλίσκο Σαμάρα. Η εκπαιδευτικός Εύη Πεταλά αναφέρθηκε στη ζωή και το έργο του γνωστού Κερκυραίου συνθέτη, το όνομα του οποίου φέρει η Φιλαρμονική μας,ενώ την εκδήλωση προλόγισε ο αντιπρόεδρος του Συλλόγου Ανδρέας Μεταλληνός.

 ..and last Thursday, after singing carols in neighbouring villages, the choir performed a repertory of Christmas songs in Saint George's Church, accompanied by local accordion, guitar and mandolin...Απόψε, πραγματοποιήθηκε εκδήλωση της Χορωδίας στην εκκλησία του Άη-Γιώργη με χριστουγεννιάτικο ρεπερτόριο και με τη συνοδεία «ντόπιων» εγχόρδων.

In the Highlands

Mum and I and the terriers walked along the remains of an abandoned road beside the Moray Firth looking over to towards Kessock Bridge and the Black Isle. I’m in the Highlands for a week.
It’s calm with clear moments; other times dreich - tho' Isobel at the Inverarnie shop put me right on the pronunciation she said it was one of those words from down Aberdeen way, and remember 'it's i before e except after c!' [back to the future: It's definitely dreich]
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On Friday evening, I arrived in Glasgow after working with Fire and Rescue in Rhyl. How I like arriving at Central Station! Trundled my suitcase contentedly through cold wet streets sparkling with Christmas lights to the Millenium Hotel where I got a cosy room backing onto the great glass fan of Queens Street Station.
On the Friday afternoon - next day - Jan and I enjoyed an audience of practitioners discussing Charlie’s list of problems of government as they appear from the points of view of politicians and officers – ones described at the workshop she and I did in East Anglia.

• Scope creep: Councillors set clear objectives. Officers develop a project plan that is signed off through proper process. Then members start adding things. The expectation is that additional elements can be added to the scope of a project during its course without consequence. Officers are just expected to manage those additions.

• Making grey even greyer: Members are uncertain or confused about objectives and plans. Members and, accordingly, officers seemingly add to the confusion or uncertainty. Sometimes this can appear to be a deliberate fudging. Other times it is accidental.

• Pick on someone your own size: An attempt by a member to get what is wanted by going to an officer who may be least able to say ‘no’ or caution against a course of action.

• Stand by your…: For no apparent reason a decision agreed and on which action has begun is overturned or not supported.

• Fudge the steer: Officers are given a really clear objective. They proceed to implement an action or policy, only to be told the proposal has not been well received or, for some other reason, they need to proceed less quickly or deliberately with it.

• Member or manager: Sometimes officers feel that councillors are getting too involved. It’s not clear who decides who’s doing what.

• Advice or something else: Councillors sometimes feel officers may be a bit blinkered in giving advice, partial or overly impartial. Tension arises because officers seem uncaring about real issues, escalate issues or insist this is ‘just the way we do it around here’.

• ‘You can’t do that….’: Councillors sometimes feel that officers are intent upon thwarting their intentions, often not understanding or frustrating the bigger picture. Councillors do not understand why officers cannot just find a way to do what is wanted.

• Let us take the risks: Councillors sometimes feel officers are being overly risk averse. Instead of managing risks they prevent any action that involves any level of risk.

• Stop flogging dead horses: Councillors report that sometimes officers won’t admit when they’ve got it wrong.

• Lack of corporacy: Members perceive officers undermining other officers - the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing.

• Don’t all say the same things: Officers unite on issues about which members want a range of their views.

• Don’t talk to him or her: Some senior officers have instructed councillors not to talk to specific members of staff.

• Role blindness: Some officers cannot see the person beyond their role as councillor. A councillor may have skills and competence in other areas that could useful to the Council.

• ‘We are human you know’: Some officers forget that - sometimes treating councillors differently because they are councillors.

• Hiding behind conflict of interest rules: Councillors felt that sometimes officers construed this rule narrowly to preclude legitimate views being presented.

• Use your PAs: Sometimes it is not recognised that a good PA can make or break a relationship between officers and members.

* * *

Liana's translation of a part of the Ano Korakiana website teaches me things to know and observations to ponder. The mountains whose crags tower above Democracy Street, seeming ‘to embrace’ the village, are Korakiana and Korendi.

'Today, the decrease in the village population is evident, despite the settlement, either temporary or permanent, of foreign families. As a result, a village that has got a dynamic presence, is within easy reach of Corfu town and other areas, is near the developed tourist resort of Dassia-Ipsos, starts getting affected by the modern trend of urbanization. The only hope that remains is the activation of some clubs and organizations such as the historic Music Association, Spiros Samaras, as well as the new generation of youths who choose to settle down here, thus going against the grain.'

Knowing Corfu never fell to the Ottomans, I note that Ano Korakiana’s people and buildings suffered severely from Turkish assaults in 1537 and 1716; that her population has been renewed many times. After 1204 – I’m, for the moment, ignorant of the particularity of that year - people came to the village from the coastal towns of Asia Minor and Thrace. During Venetian rule of the Adriatic and Ionian seas, settlers came from neighbouring Epirus, from the Peloponnese, from Crete and islands in the Aegean under Ottoman occupation. The oldest families in Ano Korakiana are the Savvanis - since 1473, Vradis, Mandilas, Ionas, Markos, Metallinos, Laskaris, Kaloudis, Linosporis, Reggis, Balatsinos, and finally, Kendarchos and Kefallonitis during the first half of the 16th century.

Even in translation the diplomacy of the account from which I’ve gleaned this information is sophisticated. I wrote Venetian ‘rule’. The preferred term is ‘occupation’. This applies also to the Ottomans. Invaders ‘occupy’; only Greeks ‘rule’ their country. Pleasingly the British, according to the website did not ‘occupy’ but maintained an English ‘protectorate’ – the latter descriptor made negotiable, for better or worse, by the addition of single parentheses.

[Back to the future: How embarrassing is my ignorance! That date 1204 referred to on the Ano Korakiana website, which I didn't recognise but which must be notorious among Greek children and indeed all in the Byzantine parish! 1204 marks the sack of Constantinople, not by Islam, but by Latin Christians on that dismal project that goes by the title 'The Fourth Crusade'

QUOTE: The Crusaders gathered at Venice, Italy, but they could not raise enough money to sail to the Holy Land. They made an arrangement with the Venetians. For Venice, the Crusaders would conquer the Christian city of Zara; then the Venetians would take them on to Jerusalem. Pope Innocent III ordered the army not to proceed and even excommunicated them, but he could not stop them. After conquering Zara, the Crusaders diverted to Constantinople rather than sail on to the Holy Land. They and the Venetians attacked Constantinople, the richest Christian city in the world. They plundered the city and took its wealth, including the treasures of the great church Hagia Sophia. They battled against other Christian men and they raped Christian women. The conquering of the great Christian city in 1204 ended the Fourth Crusade and had significant religious and political consequences. A number of Latin states were established in Greece and the Aegean; the communion between Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches ended. The Byzantine government moved to Nicea. Likewise most of the Greek bishops abandoned their sees and took refuge at Nicea, leaving their churches to the Latin bishops; Greek convents were replaced by Cistercian monasteries.

I must have been taught this at school but I had forgotten.

Note: Athens News Agency - 4 Dec 07: A delegation from the Vatican headed by Cardinal Walter Kasper was in Turkey to attend celebrations being held at the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Fanar to mark the feast day of St. Andrew, the Patriarchate's patron saint. To improve relations between the two churches, Patriarch Athinagoras and Pope Paul VI agreed that Fanar and the Vatican attend the feasts of their respective patron saints. Pope Benedict XVI has written to Ecumenical Patriarch Vartholomeos: ‘We wish to reassure once again the adherence of the Catholic Church to the creation of a fraternal ecclesiastical relation and the preservation of dialogue…our work during these first years of the 21st century is urgent due to the many challenges being faced by all Christians and to which we must reply with a united voice and faith.’

Exploring the subject I've learned the origin of the term Phanariot, and the location of Fanar (lantern) on the outskirts of Istanbul. [Back to the future: See Turkish Daily News piece about the dilapidation of the Dolapdere neighbourhood of Istanbul]