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.

'…setting the scene...'

Eggvolk and their party symbol in front of the Hellenic Parliament building

Richard Pine loves Greece, lives in Corfu, and is someone whose friendship is a source of pride. His conversation is sparse, amusing, educated and to the point. This article, one of his regular 'Letters from Greece' to The Irish Times, chills me, piercing through my reflexive optimism about the capacity of Greek democracy and the Greeks to weather this relentless unending crisis. Now the experience of relative tranquillity looks more and more like that eerie peacefulness to be found in the eye of a storm. Comments on his article criticise Richard for lack of balance, for not providing evidence (in a short essay he actually refers to much evidence for his despondency) - but neither do those who comment, failing to offer any robust rebuttal of reflections based on Richard's acute knowledge and direct experience of Greece and its history as well as the sequence of events by which Weimar Germany, one of the most civilised states in Europe, popularly elected the demise of its own democracy…because these things are unthinkable they are not thought about, and for those who do not remember they are unimaginable…

'Many Greeks would prefer stability to democracy'

Under the present regime, the country as a whole is unsustainable

Protesters from the Communist-affiliated trade union PAME shout slogans during a rally yesterday against the government’s plans for cutbacks in medical staff and hospitals in Athens. Photo John Kolesidis/Reuters

I would not be surprised or even shocked to see tanks rolling into Athens to signal the advent of a military junta. Apprehensive, but not surprised. It will almost certainly not reach that point, but citizen apathy at the poverty of political life, and despair at the continuing economic decline, are setting the scene for a potential takeover by forces including the military, police and far- right political parties such as the fascist Golden Dawn (GD).
A coalition of such forces would offer not only stability – a one-party state or even a no-party state – but no-nonsense determination to deal with the conditions of a country which sees no way forward under present dispensations.
A judicial investigator, attempting to assess the culpability of Golden Dawn MPs in relation to a recent murder and membership of what is in effect an illegal organisation, has stated that the party’s aim is “the dissolution of the democratic system of government”. That system has been abused by successive governments to such an extent that its suspension would be welcome to many disillusioned Greeks.
Meanwhile, the call by the union of reserve military personnel, for abolition of the government, repudiation of the bailout programme, the expulsion of illegal immigrants and the establishment of a government of national unity, chimes chillingly with GD’s policies.
A coup in 1967 led to a military junta for seven years. Greece became a police state. One of its leaders declared categorically, “whoever is interested in human rights in Greece is a communist”. So much for democracy. Its anti-democratic behaviour included disappearances and torturings, as reported in gruesome detail by this newspaper’s Peter Murtagh in his book The Rape of Greece.
But that was several years before Greece joined the EU in 1981. If it happened today, the EU would most likely expel Greece, which would certainly exit the euro zone, a step which would upset few Greeks. The bailout was (as the IMF admits) a mistaken panic measure to save the euro rather than saving Greece. Today, the people among whom I live don’t give a damn about the euro, and they look enviously at the likely end to the Irish bailout.
Today, the passivity of citizens, already exhausted by successive waves of austerity and degradation led by Brussels and Berlin, would reduce the likelihood of any meaningful opposition to military rule. Many Greeks, quite apart from the fascists, would agree that the prospect of stability and a dependable vision of the life to come is more important than democracy, and better than the life they currently lead.
It would, nevertheless, be a police state. It is widely believed that the police have been infiltrated by GD (this is under investigation), thus creating a strong ideology and a threatening presence on the streets. A police state would be Europhobe, xenophobic, and brutally harsh on its opponents.
A government spokesman recently said, “We have used up all the fat in the economy” – referring to Greece’s inability to reduce public finances any further to meet troika demands. With the fat has gone the elasticity and resilience of the man in the street in both financial and intellectual terms.
It is unrealistic and unfair to compare Greek statistics with the EU norm, even with the similar Irish financial mess. Unemployment, the banking crisis, tax evasion and corruption are specifically Greek problems. Under the present regime (or lack of it) the country as a whole is unsustainable – politically, economically, socially, culturally and morally. A hardline government could be achieved by the expulsion of the existing middle-of-the-road cosy coalition of New Democracy and Pasok, the so-called socialists. The chief alternative is a coalition of the left (Syriza), the possibility of which has increased the rightist vote.
Public opinion has moved slightly away from GD. Parliament has voted to remove immunity from nine of its 18 members, and suspend state financial support for GD as a political party. But current opinion polls still place GD with 7% of the national vote, down from 12% at its highest. This would still leave it with three more seats in parliament than it already holds.
And it is not only politicians who are decrying the status of Greece. At a London conference in mid-October speakers referred to the risk Greece runs of becoming “a failed state” unless it addresses “ineffective governance and lack of public confidence”. It was argued that “targeted constitutional correction and an internationally-sponsored programme of economic reform” is the only way to save Greece and the euro zone. Whether an attempted, failed coup would give the government a sufficient wake-up call is unlikely. Greece is a tragedy waiting to happen.

A relief by Aristeidis Metallinos, sculptor of Ano Korakiana

Plato said "One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors" - an elitist observation unless you subtract any implication of class and insert some gauge of the inclination to treat one's fellows with decency; as germane, the words of George Santayana, 'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it'

My good wife with paint in Ano Korakiana

…and see the article by Michael Theødosiadis at Eagainst.com 24/10/2013 The Fascist threat beyond Golden Dawn

The Serpent's Greek Lair by Yanis Varoufakis - In this, the fourth article that vitalspace.org and I have contributed to the Witte Centre for Contemporary Art, I offer a short history of the Greek Nazi party...In this piece on Golden Dawn, I begin with an encounter with an old, poor Peloponnesean farmer, some time in the 1990s, whose life revealed much about Greece’s Dark Side...

...The question now is: Why has contemporary Greece seen a Nazi revival? Spaniards, the Irish, the Portuguese, the Italians have also felt the ill-effects of the Eurozone crisis in their bones. But why is it that only in Greece has a Nazi party, Golden Dawn, managed to enter parliament in large numbers, while its storm troopers are terrorizing the streets? Kapnias’ story offers useful clues. It throws light on the significance of the Nazis’ attempts to create a local SS-like body of marginalized men disaffected by the local bourgeoisie, by the Left, and living under a permanent cloud of collective disgrace brought on by a previous national humiliation....

*** ***
On Tuesday Handsworth Helping Hands (HHH) had a good day's work in Wilson Road…

HHH volunteers enjoy a lunch break of local chips discussing progress with Ward Officer Ken Brown visiting to check progress on our skip-it don't tip it day. There are some typical rubbish collection challenges around Wilson Road. 1. A pile of detritus gathering further rubbish in the alley between New Inns Road and Wilson Road that council workers struggle to keep cleared, [Some say we should copy those countries that serve strict penalties on those who litter but it is almost impossible to collect evidence acceptable to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). You must catch people in the act. That requires street wardens, police, PCSOs. All in shorter and shorter supply as the government erodes commitment to the public domain in favour of privatisation. On the whole citizens are reluctant to take photos and report (less apathy than an aspect of UK culture I quite like) and the police, unhappy about the paperwork involved, will seldom charge someone with littering in what they already view as a rough part of town with more serious policing priorities. The people who contribute most to this are social casualties - in this case from a local hostel for recovering alcoholics. Would the courts be able to change their habits? It's most intractable. This is why we must labour the links between social cohesion and the environment. This kind of thing makes people dislike, have contempt for, and over time even develop hate for particular categories of vulnerable people who are their neighbours. This constantly renewed heap of rubbish erodes social altruism.]

I feel the animosity I refer to in myself.  I question it and wonder what my mirror says. That term of abuse - 'bleeding heart liberals' - coined in the US, is such a clever turn of phrase. Cruel but so effective in drying up civility towards neighbours and even making some feel guilty for caring for their fellows. I'm not saying this problem is not always with us, nor that more government would solve it. I think some challenges are Sisyphean*. A good citizen acknowledges that and goes on rolling the stone up the hill.

2. A broken notice warning of £20K fines for fly-tipping, 

3. The end terrace fly-tip site where we found a dismantled garden shed stuffed in Solihull Council plastic bags, 

4. A fridge, which should have been disposed of separately, dumped in one of the skips while HHH volunteers were clearing rubbish further up the street, 

5. An HHH volunteer chats with a neighbour feeding pigeons showing them a Birchfield Action Group circular asking people not to do this 'because food on the ground causes more rats'. 

All these issues demonstrate the connection between our environment and local social cohesion.

Filling the crusher truck in New Inns Road - HHH working in partnership with Council workers

*** *** ***
On Wednesday afternoon Linda and I were at an awards lunch at Aston Villa Football Ground for people who've given 75 or a 100 blood or platelet donations…

It was enjoyable and I felt proud being officially thanked and having my photo taken and getting an entirely impractical glass trophy.
"You'll fall on that" said Lin "and need a blood donation"
Before lunch we were offered a tour of the Aston Villa stadium, getting a stroll, with spine-tingling sound effects, of coming out of the tunnel to the pitch…

In the tunnel at Aston Villa

After the meal all 175 of us listened as Nadine Simpson, who was to present us with our trophies, spoke, entirely without self-pity, of the pain caused by sickle cell anaemia for which she had been receiving transfusions most of her life. She thanked us all. We applauded and were called up for photos. I found myself next to Adrian who'd remembered me from our 75th donation presentation event at the Hyatt Hotel.

The Gift Relationship

*Sisyphus Σίσυφος was a king in Corinth punished for chronic deceitfulness by being compelled to roll an immense boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down, and to repeat this action forever.

The Egg Volk - ο Εφιάλτης θα φανεί στο τέλος

Blokko in Kokkinnia in Athens on 17 August 1944

From a recent interview with Yanis Varoufakis Γιάνης Βαρουφάκης

What do you know about the rise of right-wing Neo-Nazi groups (in Greece). What impact are they having? What can you tell us about the Golden Dawn Party, Χρυσή Αυγή?

The Golden Dawn Party is not an extreme right wing party. It is not even a neo-Nazi party. It is a fully-fledged Nazi gang. And here lies the great paradox: Greece, along with Yugoslavia, fought the most dogged, bloody, successful resistance against the Nazis during the Second World War, giving the Nazis a serious run for their money, so to speak. The bulk of the population rose up against them with great acts of valour that inspired the Allies at a time when Nazism was almost unopposed in Europe. Yet, there were collaborators – as there always are*. Hooded men that went around the towns and the villages with the SS and the Wehrmacht, pointing out the resistance fighters.

Προδότης της χώρας του

The Golden Dawn gang is their direct descendant. You see, after the Nazis retreated from Greece, quite tragically, their collaborators managed to infiltrate the armed forces (following the Civil War in which the Establishment’s war against the Left, thus giving a chance to the Nazi collaborators to remain ‘useful’ to the state); so much so that in 1967 there was a coup d’etat that put Greece under a neo-fascist dictatorship for seven years. Since the end of that sorry episode, the remnants of that regime have been sidelined by a prospering democracy. However, after the economic and social implosion of the past three years, the worst elements of that rump (who had never really gone away; instead, they were biding their time, reciting Mein Kampf) re-appeared using purposely the tactics of the 1920s German Nazi party and, in particular, of Goebbels. By this I mean that they adopted a narrative on the crisis that is split in two parts: The first part is an utterly sensible critique of crony financialised capitalism (an exact copy of Goebbels’ 1927 critique of the failures of midwar capitalism). Then comes the second part: blaming the foreigner for the crisis (who can be Pakistani just as he can be a Jew) and calling for ethnic cleansing. Add to this mix: (a) offers of personal security services to hungry pensioners too frightened to step into the street, (b) free food and vegetables only for ‘ethnically pure' Greeks, and (c) stormtroopers savagely attacking migrants and Greeks opposing them, and what you get is the ‘total recall’ of the bleakest aspects of the 1920s and 1930s.

Χρυσή Αυγή υποστηρικτές στο λεωφορείο

In Axion Esti Odysseus Elytis Οδυσσέας Ελύτης, describes this Greek struggle

 ...it cannot be they without you nor can it be you without them… and you must face them without fail…those who wear the black shirt...who speak the language of porcupines, raw-eaters, water-brutes, bread-fearers, the leadenfaced and the neocondors.

*Θερμοπύλες  

Τιμή σ’ εκείνους όπου στην ζωή των
ώρισαν και φυλάγουν Θερμοπύλες.
Ποτέ από το χρέος μη κινούντες·
δίκαιοι κ’ ίσιοι σ’ όλες των τες πράξεις,
αλλά με λύπη κιόλας κ’ ευσπλαχνία·
γενναίοι οσάκις είναι πλούσιοι, κι όταν
είναι πτωχοί, πάλ’ εις μικρόν γενναίοι,
πάλι συντρέχοντες όσο μπορούνε·
πάντοτε την αλήθεια ομιλούντες,
πλην χωρίς μίσος για τους ψευδομένους.
Και περισσότερη τιμή τούς πρέπει
όταν προβλέπουν (και πολλοί προβλέπουν)
πως ο Εφιάλτης θα φανεί στο τέλος,
κ’ οι Μήδοι επί τέλους θα διαβούνε.                                                    

Καβάφης

...and some thoughts on our British Egg Volk

*** *** ***
On Wednesday morning Amy left with Oliver to drive south to her home in Birmingham, leaving Lin, I and Liz in Brin Croft. Lin and I have been working through a long list of errands. To my relief I realise I've learned enough plumbing craft to out an end to a problem of several weeks with a tap in the kitchen.
"If you turn it off completely it stops for ever" said Liz
So it has to stay dribbling a stream of cold water "and it won't turn on fast at all"

The dribbling cold tap that won't turn on and won't turn off

I get out a trusty Allen wrench after using a slot screwdriver to ease off the tap cover like a car's hubcap, then a Philips screwdriver to remove the retaining screw in the tap capstan. I take that off and and get down to the spindle. Then a few loosenings of the tap body with the Allen releases the flow but reveals a leak between the tap body and the basin; which is why it was tightened up too much in the first place I guessed. I fiddle with loosening the tap body which increases the leak but improves the flow and tightening it, which reduces the leak etc, until, of a sudden, flow is fine and the leak has stopped. I beat my chest like King Kong.

We've been making an inventory of mum's disability gear - an electric buggy, electric reclining chair, adjustable bed, bath lift, wheel chair, walkers - one all-terrain...

...a Pilates exercise machine and more ingenious gadgets, tricky, (like her unused sealed medications) that ought to go to other countries that need them, to give away, let alone sell second-hand, even though some have been so little used.  I will have to decide what to simply donate to charity and if I receive offers - Lin will use some of the photos I've taken to float these things on ebay.

We've has two more visits by estate agents to get a preliminary assessment of Brin Croft, one pair of colleagues we especially liked as they'd done their homework on the house, including who'd done the original valuation on the house when Mum bought it. We've been discussing whether to include Littlemills Lochan  - our secret loch - as an option in the sale.

The Lochan 

On Thursday Helen Trussell visited from Logie Steading Bookshop. Lin had read a note she'd sent describing what she was looking out for. She sorted out mum's books to meet those criteria - books about the Highlands, maps of the area, especially old canvas backed ones, plus a range of novelists. She  offered us £110 for about 100 books, pamphlets, guide books and maps which seemed a fair price to share with Bay. Helen put  us in touch with Giles Pearson who deals in antiques at Logie Steading.

Giles came over with his van on Friday and made a range of offers but these were in a rather higher price range, so I could not let him buy anything until it had been run by my sister. This process of checking and double-checking things mum willed in her estate, and being assiduous about it is essential, but it creates a problem when negotiating with a potential purchaser of anything in the house. This will become more of an issue when Confirmation (Probate) is completed - probably in early April. Linda and I are constantly pondering the best way to clear the house prior to placing it on the market. There is no auction house in Inverness now. It's moved northward to Dingwall - twenty miles away. I'd had the idea of someone coming over with a van to remove all the items not going to beneficiaries, cataloguing them and paying us the amount raised. It looks trickier. Again we can probably raise larger sums if we are prepared to proceed with DIY selling on the web.
*** *** ***
I walked from Brin Croft on the edge of Inverarnie through the fields towards Inverarnie Cottage where there's a gate onto a forestry track which leads after half a mile to another gate which has a side opening for walkers. This leads south down the strath just above the River Farnack. A mile and a half beyond the gate there's a rough timber extraction track that zig zags...

...about three hundred and fifty feet up the side of the strath to a broad gravel track that runs about five miles between Loch Farr and Mid Lairgs Quarry, close to the A9 below Daviot. I left the ascending path to cut a corner in the zig zag ascent. The terrain as I expected became tricky, made uneven by old forestry trenches and ridges, dotted with pools of still water of unpredictable depth, and criss crossed with a mess of old and torn branches discarded during previous timber harvesting. Half up-rooted stumps, some rotting, lean in different directions offering hard edges upon which to fall. As I climbed I came upon a pocket swamp full of rushes and sphagnum that I skirted until it looked shallow enough to cross without sinking in muddy peat to my knees. "I should have stuck to the path" I muttered to myself.

Old plantation terrain

My thighs ached with the exertion of walking upwards. My shoulders ached with the strain of balancing myself, as I switched my stick from one hand to the other. But I would never have met this boulder - a glacial erratic dropped perhaps a 1000 miles from where the slow glacier picked it up thousands of years ago and, as it melted, dropped it on the side of Strath Nairn.

It was good to arrive on the big smooth forestry track with the steady and agreeable Ben Wyvis - Beinn Uais Hill of Terror - away in Easter Ross marking my horizon, shifting colour and shade with the clouds and setting sun...

...and head three and half miles back to where, in semi-darkness, I could turn off west down a gentle slope towards Wester Lairgs Farm, a couple of lights in the windows and the sound of continuing work in the barn. There are new people there - Jim and Jane. They have a sprightly West Highland terrier bitch who attached herself to Oscar and Cooky last time I passed by, until I shoo'd her home. Past the farm it was less than half a mile to another turn southward above Inverarnie Woods; then a mile to the grassy bank that leads beside a trickle to a small gate. I climb over it and walk up and over the Esker and, with the dogs still as fresh as when we left Brin Croft a few hours earlier, I walked in the dark across the familiar grazing, to the cattle grid next to the gate into my mother's house. Before relaxing with a cup of tea in front of a sturdy wood fire I towelled the dogs and let them indoors ahead of me. Liz had their suppers ready.
*** ***
On 15 Mar 2013, at 16:54, K wrote from America:

I have no idea how you turned up without a search on my iPad -- but it does make me feel connected!  :-)  k 

Hi K, That baby, my grandson Oliver, was born 1 April last year. The same year my mum Barbara died peacefully, I and my sister beside her in her own bed at age 95 and lucid until she fell into a sleep three days before she left us.
Now I’m in chilly Scotland helping handle probate and suffering a dose of man-flu for which Lin has no sympathy at all.  I caught it from the bab of course and this video shows how. Oscar’s here too of course.
Lovely to hear from you. The domestic landscape is good for us, but the state of our economy is another matter. Local government and public space is being whittled relentlessly away to be replaced by an undemocratic untransparent form of modern feudalism - propped up by expensively funded think tanks. X Simon (in the Highlands)

K replied:

Sorry to get Oliver's name wrong.  Grandchildren are so amazing....it is the only thing that ever makes me want to move--but not enough to actually do so -- we love Minneapolis, except at this time of year, when winter seems interminable.  Fortunately, it is also the height of the theater season, so there are great things to do indoors.
D lost his mother a bit over two years...about the same age as yours, and living alone until the end, when he went to Virginia for a weekend and ended up caring for her for a month. She was an amazing woman, but not exactly the cookies-and-milk type mother - like Barbara as I remember her. His grieving process included shingles, an ocular migraine that mimicked a stroke, various muscular issues that are still on-going, etc. The mind-body connection is out-in-the-open at these times in our lives, and you can chalk your flu up to that, I suspect, and not playing with Oliver!
That is the video that popped up, unannounced on my iPad.  The computer genies are at it again, letting me know that I need to spend time keeping in touch with people who have been part of my life in significant ways. 

Dear k. And I thought you’d glanced at a different video of me and dog Oscar (it exists). How funny you got the name wrong because that’s exactly what I do all the time! Calling Oscar Oliver and v.v. - it’s a family joke and I’m an old git! Not you tho’
Thanks for that insight on the mind-body connection. Makes lots of sense when I think back to both my dad’s and stepfather’s deaths - long ago now. Incidentally I’m already feeling better. Lin scoffs at psychology and psychosomatic explanation. Insists I’ve caught Oliver’s cold. This complete dismissal of a way of explaining the world that I cherish is I suspect why we get on, but why? The mysteries of marriage! I recall that Patrick Leigh Fermor in his book A Time to Keep Silence talks of the impossibility of a dialogue between a champion of theology and a champion of psychoanalysis ‘because the terms of reference of the antagonists would be so different and irreconcilable, so incapable of engaging, that the match might turn into a double exhibition of shadow boxing….”.
Hope Midwest winter lessens its grip soon.
This by the way was the video I thought you’d been seeing
I really enjoyed the film Lincoln! What a fascinating story of the messy morality of the great game of hi-politics. You are ever a part of my life. Love to all. Simon (in Scotland, then England then back to Greece)

**** ****
We are missing Sunday's Carnival in Ano Korakiana:

Δημοσιοποίήθηκε σήμερα το πρόγραμμα της αυριακής ημέρας (17 Μαρτίου 2013), τελευταίας Κυριακής της Αποκριάς, αλλά και της διοργάνωσης του Κορακιανίτικου Καρναβαλιού.
Σύμφωνα με αυτό, προβλέπονται:
Εκκίνηση της πομπής του Καρναβάλου στις 4,30 το απόγευμα από το Συνερταιρισμό και παρέλαση στον απάνω δρόμο του χωριού μέχρι την Πλατεία, με επιστροφή στην Πλάστιγγα.
Εκεί θα γίνουν οι αποκριάτικοι χοροί και θα διαβαστεί η Διαθήκη
Ακολούθως, στο Συνεταιρισμό (όροφος) θα παρουσιαστούν σκετς.
Η βραδιά θα κλείσει με Αποκριάτικο Χορό (στο ισόγειο του Συνεταιρισμού), με "ζωντανή" μουσική, ποτό και σουβλάκια.