Plot 14 - slightly less scruffy

Grey

Goya's picture of men fighting in the quagmire into which they are sinking

CONSULTATION ON FUTURE MANAGEMENT OF ALLOTMENTS

Birmingham City Council is reviewing the management function of the Allotment Service in consultation with the Birmingham and District Allotments Council, Associations and tenants.
Given the severe budgetary pressures that we all face, the Council needs to review how the service will be managed in the future.
Initial discussions with the BDAC have given rise to a number of options which now need to be discussed wider. These include:
• Devolution of budgets to individual sites to enable the Associations to directly manage their budgets, this will include repairs and maintenance, water, cesspit and portaloo servicing. Payments will be made twice per annum, on 1 April and 1 October direct to the Associations for all devolved budgets.
• The Associations will be responsible for applying the Allotment Rules, letting of plots, collection of rent, monitoring of Grounds Maintenance, plot cultivation, and initial resolution of complaints and disputes.
• Issue of Letters of Concern and Letters of Intent will be carried out by Associations. Where Notices of Re-Entry are recommended by the Association, this will be ratified by the BDAC before the final Notice of Re-Entry is issued by the Council, acting as the Landlord.
• Associations will still be required to notify the Council, as the Landlord, of structural or other major changes and funding applications prior to anything being submitted. Events notifications will also still need to be submitted to the Council a minimum of 4 weeks before for the event for approval.
• The BDAC will directly manage the current ‘Departmental’ sites, until such time as they set up their own Associations. Once Associations have been formed on these sites, they will perform all management functions as outlined above.
• The BDAC will operate in an advisory capacity to help Associations where requested. Should disputes arise between tenants and the Associations, the BDAC will act as the arbiter, and ensure consistency in the application of the Allotment Rules across individual and between different sites.
• The Council will act as Landlord and retain the final power of eviction. All rents collected and tenancy records will continue to be maintained and managed by the Council.
• The Council will continue to provide training in rent collection and completion of Tenancy Agreements.
• The Council will remain responsible for making payments to the current 3 Grounds Maintenance Service Providers where applicable.
• Strategic management decisions regarding the future of sites, payments of leases for ground rent, statutory checks e.g 17th Edition Electrical Testing, will continue to be carried out and paid for by the Council.
• Future rent levels will be set by the Council, however, full consultation with the BDAC will be carried out prior to any changes.
• Annual Risk Assessments will continue to be carried out by the Council, however, every Association will be required to have a trained Health & Safety/Risk Assessor member on their Committee. Training will be given by the Council’s Safety Services Officers.
• Fire Insurance to the Council’s buildings will still be met by the Council.
• The Council will retain a small contingency budget for major repairs and maintenance emergencies, which Associations will be able to bid into. The decision to award funds from this budget will be made jointly between the Council and the BDAC.
• Quarterly meetings between the BDAC and the Council will continue, as is the case now, to ensure regular liaison and consultation is maintained.
All of the above are items for discussion, and we must stress that NO DECISIONS have been made to date. The Consultation period will continue for a further 3 months to allow due consideration to be made by tenants, Associations and the BDAC, and for them to feedback their views and suggestions which will be considered - before a final draft of the proposals is written and circulated. After a further 4 week period, the final proposal will be submitted in the form of a report to the Council’s Cabinet Members to gain authority to proceed with drawing up the new Management Agreements.
It is anticipated that these new Management Agreements will be circulated and signed off by the 1 January 2014, with the start date of the new Management arrangements being implemented in full from 1 April 2014.
All comments and ideas are welcome, and should be submitted to:
allotments@birmingham.gov.uk
or for those without email, in writing to:
Allotments Team, The Lodge
115 Reservoir Road Ladywood Birmingham B16 9EE

Dear VJA
CONSULTATION ON THE FUTURE MANAGEMENT OF ALLOTMENTS
I’m anxious about the current consultation by the city on the future management of allotments and have submitted a personal reaction to the proposals which I summarise below.
Councils, up against the wall on their budgets, have been resorting to raising plot rents. Coinciding with a succession of very wet years, there has, as a result, been an unprecedented abandonment of allotments.
Combining these difficulties with giving local sites powers and responsibilities they may lack the experience and competence to exercise, means some sites will suffer the consequences of the 'constructive non-maintenance' referred to in the Government's 1998 Report on a Future for Allotments - a process which further reduces demand for plots as surely as taking the seats out of a cinema reduces the population of moviegoers.
The law says allotments must be protected unless it can be shown there is no demand fo them on a particular site. This ‘managed’ retreat from responsibility, lowers demand for plots and turns what should be statutorily protected allotments into tempting windfall sites for housing, retail outlets and industry.
This means an accelerating loss of urban green space, further loss of recreational and growing space and consequent weakening of social cohesion.
Allotments have in the past become self-managing as a result of a robust process of monitored delegation that has included an opportunity to take early well supported steps towards self-management. I fear that current plans are based on council abandonment, with few opportunities for local associations to develop sustainable competencies. The Council in the guise of nurturing the 'big society', local empowerment and citizen participation is, in effect, jumping ship. Local government should not be blamed for this. It comes from the top! Best, Simon
Simon Baddeley
Handsworth Allotments Information Group (HAIG)

Hi Simon Thank you for your comments. Whilst we cannot comment on matters relating to politics, we are endeavouring to ensure - by seeking as many views as possible during the consultation process - that whatever future management of allotments is put in to operation, it is for the best of the allotment sites and the tenants, and protects them from further losses of tenants in to the future. We will obviously carry out training in relation to any extra responsibilities that are finally devolved, as we have done with all other management functions that sites have taken on as part of the new management agreements introduced in 2011. Best wishes Nikki 

Denise Forsyth helps unload our rubbish at Holford Depot

Ημέρα των Θεοφανείωνκαι της Βάπτισης σήμερα και όπως κάθε χρόνο η Λειτουργία τελείται στην εκκλησία του Άη-Γιώργη. Από την παραμονή ο στολισμός του ναού είχε ολοκληρωθεί, με την επιμέλεια των Επιτρόπων της ενορίας, ενώ ο Θανάσης Νικολούζος είχε φροντίσει για την προμήθεια των απαραίτητων κλάδων δενδρολίβανου. Ηλιόλουστη η μέρα, παρά τον αέρα και ο κόσμος πλημμύρισε την εκκλησία. Μετά την «Μεταλαβή», ο ιερέας θα κάνει τρεις φορές τη γύρα της «Βάπτισης» κρατώντας το δενδρολίβανο στα δύο του χέρια, πριν το χρησιμοποιήσει λίγο αργότερα για τον αγιασμό του εκκλησιάσματος. Ο παιδίατρος Σπύρος Σαββανής θα αναφερθεί στο νόημα της εορτής, ενώ ο αντιπρόεδρος του Τοπικού Συμβουλίου Χαρίλαος Νικολούζος θα εκφράσει ευχές εκ μέρους του Δήμου Κέρκυρας. Με το πέρας της Λειτουργίας ο κόσμος θα προστρέξει να γεμίσει μπουκαλάκια με αγίασμα για το σπίτι. Στον αύλειο χώρο, οι Επίτροποι θα προσφέρουν «μακαρόν» (γλύκισμα) και μια κάρτα ως ενθύμημα, ενώ όπως ανακοινώθηκε, με πρωτοβουλία του Γιώργου Μαρτζούκου θα ξεκινήσει η λειτουργία μικρής εκκλησιαστικής βιβλιοθήκης, στην εκκλησία του Σταυρωμένου, στο κέντρο του χωριού. 

Day of Epiphany and the Baptism is held today and, as it is every year, the Liturgy was celebrated in the church of St. George. Decoration of the church was completed the evening before, overseen by the Parish Commissioners, while Thanassis Nikolouzos had taken care to supply the rosemary. It was a sunny day despite the wind. Everyone filled the church. After the 'communion', the priest went three times around the baptistry, rosemary in both hands, to be used later when blessing the congregation. The paediatrician Spyros Savvani says a few words about the meaning of the feast, while Vice President of the Local Council, Charilaos Nikolouzos expresses good wishes on behalf of the Municipality of Corfu. At the end of the service everyone fills small bottles with holy water bottles to take home. In the courtyard, the Commissioners will offer sweet "macaroons" and a card as souvenirs. It was announced that George Martzoukou will start a small ecclesiastical library in the church Stavromenou in the centre of the village.

A recent study, Understanding the Crisis in Greece, by two Greek economists, Michael Mitsopoulos and Theodore Pelagidis (both of whom have been advisers to the Greek government) tells us the Greek economy is dysfunctional.
We do not need an academic treatise to tell us that. Greece’s relations with the EU have made that clear over the past three years at least. The 114 bar charts, pie charts and graphs in the book are unnecessary: we can observe all of them by looking around us.
Anton Chekhov used to say that he got the ideas for his searing dramas by looking out of the window and seeing all human life going by. Brian Friel showed us much the same in his essay on his mother’s home town, A Fine Day at Glenties.
I sit on the esplanade of Corfu town, absorbing the last of the autumn sunshine, and I look across the straits at an Albania already going into winter: a country consisting almost entirely of unhelpful snow-clad mountains.
We live in a world of microclimates, each of which disobeys the laws of economics, meteorology and citizenship.
What I see in town (really a small city rather than a large town) or in the village where I live, is living proof of this book’s thesis: that the political parties are undemocratic in nature and “everyone participates, more or less willingly, in the shadow economy”.
I see poverty, tax evasion, ostentatious wealth, despair and joy. Hope and helplessness. I see widows collecting wild greens (horta) on which they live almost exclusively because they cannot afford meat (although they buy chicken carcases to make stock). But I am also told that one of the poorest-looking widows owns five houses and has thousands of euro stashed away. A microclimate indeed.
One of the strongest indicators of Greece as a divided society is the contrast between town and village: the mutual suspicion of the people. The townies look down on the peasants (not too strong a word for subsistence farmers), who in turn regard the townies as crooks – and have done so since at least the 18th century.
A new dimension to political life has been the rise of the neo-fascist Golden Dawn, which in Corfu polled much higher than its national average in the last elections, and which is suspected of having organised an arson attack on its last synagogue.
It’s a country where women use the genitive of their husband’s or father’s name (the singer Vicky Leandros is known as Vicky Leandrou - Βασιλική Παπαθανασίου - here) and still adopt an all-black wardrobe as widows.
It’s also a country of immense beauty: Corfu town has been declared a Unesco world heritage site because its arcaded streets, built mostly during the 400-year Venetian occupation, and the evident signs of building during the British administration (1815-1864), make it a city of appealing uniqueness.
Sitting on the esplanade, I look at the miracle of the two arcaded blocks that form a replica of Paris’s rue de Rivoli - they were built by the father of the man who constructed the Suez Canal. Miraculous because when the French were routed from Corfu the British finished the job. It’s the social centre of 'le tout Corfou'
But the simplicity of village life and architecture complements and adds to that beauty – even though the inhabitants of village and town are as different as chalk and cheese. How can I reconcile the beauty of the environment – and the added value that inheres in the tourist industry – when Mitsopoulos and Pelagidis document so thoroughly that Greece is so resistant to the sort of reforms demanded by the EU?
I see the kaleidoscope from the opposite end, simply because the economists cannot look at the everyday lives of ordinary people. It’s possible that they may never have seen villagers dunking their local bread into their own olive oil – or seen the sacks of olives going to the oilery where the growers pay 80 cent per litre for production, or spit-roasted lambs at the local panegiri (saint’s day).
It is the celebration of life at the most basic level, even if it does involve bribery and corruption, that the economists can’t see: they may hold the view that Greek people are inured to the grey economy and to dealing with the problem of balancing responsibility to the state with the demands of family, but in a country which last year lost 1,000 jobs a day, and where young people look to emigration as their only hope of survival, the claims of the individual are bound to trump those of the state.
And if, as is rumoured, the local taverna decides to open for only three days each week, due to declining spending power, we will all have to learn more than just dunking bread in oil.

Hi Lin and Simon. Here is Otis (born three weeks early on 14th December - a birth compadre of your Amy!)

Otis Oscar

The entire essence of the legal code of the Albanians is an unparalleled rigorous respect for this basic principle: non-violation of the dignity of a man- his honour, home and life.”
(Ismail Kadare) 

“The ‘Kanun' or Code of Lekë Dukagjini is an extraordinary monument of 

Albanian culture, essential for the understanding of all the northern Albanian lands. This magnificent edition, with its authoritative translation of the text, is an indispensable work for anyone who wishes to explore the history and traditions of the Albanian people”

(Noel Malcolm, author of Kosovo: A short History, 1998) 

“Certainly the Kanun is an unique document, a codification of practices amounting to law of great historical significance. In addition, it provides the bedrock for the rule of law in Albania even today.”  (Robert W. Sweet, United States District Judge)

For all their habits, law and customs, the people, as a rule, have but on explanation: ‘It is in the Canon of Lek…' as for the laws ascribed to him, the greater part are obviously far earlier than the 15 th century, when he is said to have lived. They probably were obeyed by the unknown warriors of the bronze weapons in the prehistoric graves.” (Edith Durham, High Albania (1909)

Igoumenitsa at dawn

...a port that takes no account of travellers on foot, and trailed our bags across two kilometres of concrete to where we could catch the smaller ferry to Corfu, name Doris – ΔΩΡΙΕΥΣ. Greece, far from wounding me, embraces and supports me. My chest swells and my eyes glisten with the joy of return. I feel brave.

Arriving at the Port of Corfu

I want Ano Korakiana – ‘our’ village - to be timeless; timeless for me; nothing must change without I know of it, yet as Lin drives down DemocracyStreet under an overcast sky, as you’d expect in January, I see the shop – Stamatis' small shop yards from us - is gutted, with builders inside. After unloading the car of our luggage and shopping on the way, I find our neighbour, Vasiliki, is putting up washing below a polythene sheet that crackles and slaps in the wind. I greet her over our garden fence.
“To pantopolei, to magassi, το μαγαζί? Pou agoraso psomi? Που αγοράζω ψωμί; where do I buy bread?
She said ‘supermarket - σούπερμάρκετ’.
I groan inwardly. Our nearest is miles away. I go down into the house, turning on the water and the power including the water heater. I stroll to the shop. Stamatis is there. It’s OK. The place is being refurbished - ανακαινίζουν το μαγαζί. Bread is across the road at Pepe’s where they sell cakes. Phew. But if I want vegetables I must walk three hundred metres to the other end of the street to the other shop, which only reopened two years ago. So now who’s receiving the mail I wonder?
But I’m relieved. It’ll sort itself out; a change that need not bring anxiety. Later the sky grows clearer, a strong almost warm south wind blows below ragged racing clouds.

[21/01/13 Stamatis explained his plan to me. He is not redoing the shop but making a small bar which will serve coffee and drinks and mezes. It will be called Piazza - Πιάτσα. He gets a temporary relief from tax as this is a starter business and he has installed toilets and wash basin. On reflection I think this is a very good project and I hope it prospers.]

But abruptly the sky darkens. Hail falls in a burst, lashing leaves from the trees, beating a staccato on the shutters and doors, heaping ice stones against the outer walls, making such a din I’m momentarily alarmed the weather’s made a breach, assaulting the cosy house where our stove burns old building wood I sawed late in summer, dry as a bone. The electrics flicker – come on again, go off, come on and then go off for several hours. We’ve candles ready with matches near and a small propane stove to boil water.

At dawn, a blue-grey mat stands across the island southward. Rain pours through the day. I collect it from the downpipes in big bowls for when the pumping fails and the village loses tap water; which for several hours it did. I spin the washing twice and hang it on the drier in front of the stove.
“That just makes condensation” grumbles Lin
“Well what do you suggest?”
“Wait until you can hang it outside”
“When would that be?”
In a short relent yesterday afternoon Lin and I got out our sticks and trudged up the village through Venetia to Ag. Isadoras on the ninth bend of the road to Sokraki above. The south wind moaned in the electric wires twirling the tops of trees and shrubs, spreading our coat tails and streaming Lin’s hair beneath her hat. We had the road all to ourselves, ample warning of rare approaching cars.

On the way up the hill I drop off two bags of litter I’ve collected from the path beside our garden. Vasiliki told me her husband Lefteris’ brother had died on Saturday - έπεσε νεκρός. He’d had a home in Athens. Lefteris has gone there; I think to bring him home. Vasiliki knew my mother had died - πεθαίνω πλήρης ημερών. We both gave the worn look, a shared sad shrug – our fate.
Around 7.00pm I sat in on a lecture about - so Dr Savannis told me - ‘The Poverty of the Greek Language’ or perhaps 'The bankruptcy of our language'. It was in the Philharmonia Room in the centre of the village. I understood little - a sort of self-imposed fasting from comprehension; to allow myself to feel uneducated and dense. The lecturer was on a panel – fascinated, amused – all engaged in a two hour debate.

Lecture and debate in Ano Korakiana "Η πτώχευση της γλώσσα μας'

There were at least forty present – grey hairs and young, even a child of 10 or 12. She sat attentive as her mother took part in the discussion. These evening debates are regular in Ano Korakiana – covering music, poetry, novels and themes like tonight’s. In what other village would I encounter such a thing? I long to be involved as more than just an observer of such animation.

Near Cavour in the city centre of Naples

We left Naples by train on Monday morning and travelled to Bari via Caserta.

Across Campania

Under the Volcano was a book about a talented man drinking himself into stupor; people who love him, powerless against his compulsion. With the help of murderous rogues he is destroyed. So Naples.

Chiesa S.Giuseppi di Ruffi

Imagine Venice invaded by Mestre and oil-drenched Marghera, drab Treviso and the outlying settlements kept away by the lagoon. Naples, without such protection, is infected by cement. Where once were walls and separation between town and country, the once great city of Bourbon, Austrian and imperial Spanish architecture with Roman-Greek infrastructure - famous wondrous Naples - is now an uninviting settlement of semi-derelict ticky tack strewn between fabled Sorrento and Mondragone, north of the Gulf of Naples, thirty miles up the Domitian coast and outward across a mess of temporary building and depopulated farmland reaching to Caserta.  

Placeless in Torre del Greco

Six lane succubus

We learned at school the eulogy ‘See Naples and die’. Old paintings, even old photos attest its sublime beauty. I'm not nostalgic.

Near Piazza Dante in the centre of Naples

‘how and where to dump toxic waste…copper, arsenic, mercury, cadmium, lead, chrome, nickel, cobalt, and molybdenum…from tannery residues to hospital waste, from urban trash to tyres…’ 

‘relaunched and energized the Italian economy…Tuscany the most environmentally conscious region of Italy, plays a significant role in the geography of illicit traffic…the 2003 Midas investigation reported that waste disposal traffickers were already making contacts in Albania and Costa Rica…every channel is open now: to the east, to Romania…to Africa, to Mozambique, Somalia and Nigeria…the local agriculture, which used to export fruit and vegetables as far as Scandinavia, is collapsing. Plants sprout diseased, and the land grows infertile. But this disaster and the farmers’ rage are only the umpteenth advantage for the Camorrah: desperate landowners sell off their fields, and the clans acquire new landfill sites at low – very low – costs…In the land of the Camorrah knowing the clans’mechanisms for success, their modes of extraction, their investments, means understanding how everything works today everywhere, not merely here.’

...That subtle knot which makes us man,
So must pure lovers' souls descend
T' affections, and to faculties,
Which sense may reach and apprehend,
Else a great prince in prison lies.
To'our bodies turn we then...

Known as the “anti-state” or simply the “system,” the “Camorra” dominates the city of Naples, Italy. The Neapolitan equivalent of Sicily’s Mafia operates a multibillion dollar a year enterprise ranging from international smuggling to street level crime to providing material support to terrorists. The epicenter of the system is the neighborhoods of Scampia and Secondigliano, called the Red Zone due to the amount of power that Camorra exerts over the area...The Camorra came on the international stage in the early 1990s. The Sicilian Mafia had traditionally been the most powerful of the organized crime groups in Italy, but following the assassination of two prominent anti-mafia judges, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borselino, in 1992, it faced an unprecedented level of crackdowns by law enforcement*...This created the opportunity for the Camorra to fill the void for international drug trafficking, and subsequently the bulk of drug trafficking shifted from Sicily to Naples. The conditions in Naples itself, particularly Scampia and Secondigliano, have allowed the Camorra to continue to operate on the international level. Following the earthquake of 1980, thousands migrated to the public housing complexes known as the Vele di Scampia (Sails of Scampia). This influx exacerbated already existing problems of poverty, drugs, and street crime, in which an estimated 60,000 residents were now living in the complexes seriously lacking public services, not even a single police station initially. The lack of commercial development coupled with extremely high unemployment made this a perfect area for criminal enterprise....(The Case of Scampia and Secondigliano, Italy. Egon Donnarumma Summer 2011,Vol 20 (3) www.nationalstrategy.com)

Naples and its suburbs from Vesuvius

 … If left unobstructed, terrorist groups can continue to use Naples as a point to safely enter Europe, which may eventually result in a major terrorist attack…A partnership of Italian and American intelligence operations to track terrorist activity in Naples would also be in both countries’ interest….for American businesses. The implications of facing organized crime elements must be considered…While this does not apply to every industry, those involved with shipping and especially waste disposal should be aware of the likelihood of crossing paths with elements of the Camorra…so embedded in society that they are unlikely to go away anytime soon. 

... illicit sale of cigarettes and other goods is tolerated by authorities under an “air of casual illegality”. With little in the way of commercial infrastructure and social services, it functions as the only viable economic organization in these neighborhoods. It also serves as a welfare agency, in essence, by providing care for families of any member who ends up in prison. This tightens its grasp on the neighbourhoods by making the population dependent on its services, which pushes out state services, thus further integrating Camorra into society. Following the global economic crisis, organized crime in Italy is one of the few businesses with liquidity and is lending lots of money (although with extremely high interest rate) to businesses. (The Case of Scampia and Secondigliano, Italy. Egon Donnarumma Summer 2011,Vol 20 (3) www.nationalstrategy.com) 

Father Don Peppino Diana

‘Religion is a constant point of reference for the Camorra, not merely a propitiary gesture or cultural relic but a spiritual force that determines the most intimate decisions. Camorra families, especially the most charismatic bosses, often consider their own actions as a Calvary, their own consciences bearing the pain and weight of sin for the well being of the group and the men they rule.’ (Gomorrah p.226-227) 

‘Don Peppino wanted to bring some clarity to words, meanings and values’ ‘We must’ he said ‘divide the people so as to throw them into crisis’. ‘… (p.229) his priority was to fight political power as an expression of criminal business power’

“… the candidates favoured by the Camorrah have neither policy nor party, but merely a role as player or a post to fill.” 

Words, meanings, values…. “The Camorrah gives the name family to a clan organised for criminal purposes, in which absolute loyalty is the law, and expression of autonomy is denied, and not only defection but the conversion to honesty is considered a betrayal worthy of death; the Camorrah uses every means to extend and consolidate this type of family, even exploitation of the sacraments. For the Christian, shaped to the school of the Word of God, family means only a group of people united by shared love, in which love means means disinterested and attentive service, in which service exalts him who offers it and him who receives it… 

Weapons in hand, the Camorristi violently impose unacceptable rules: extortions that have turned our region into subsidized areas with no potential on their own for development; bribes of 20% or more on construction projects, which would discourage the most reckless businessmen; illicit traffic in narcotics, whose use creates gangs of marginalized youngsters and unskilled workers at the beck and call of criminal organisations; clashes among factions that descend like a ruinous plague on the families of our region; negative examples for the entire teenage population, veritable laboratories of violence and organised crime.” 

'Don Peppino didn’t want to believe the clan was an evil choice a person makes, but rather the result of clear conditions, fixed mechanisms, identifiable and gangrenous causes. No church or individual in the region had ever been so determined to clarify things.'

'…His killers did not pick a date by chance. March 19, 1994, was the feast of San Giuseppe, his name day…Early morning, Don Peppino was in the church meeting room near his study. “Who is Don Peppino?” “I am”  Two bullets hit him in the face, others pierced his head, neck and hand, and one hit the bunch of keys on his belt…He was thirty six years old.’ 

'largely officered by Americans of Italian origin. AMGOT 'stood between us and justice and truth'....'They had made a start by replacing all fascist-appointed Mayors with the nominees of the Mafia freshly released from gaol. Vito Genovese, ex-head of the American Mafia, now their principal adviser, was ready with his list of names, and soon these sinister ruffians became the real rulers of Southern Italy'

Summer Song ashore at Ipsos

Mum's terrier Bibi at the gate by the field next to Brin Croft

‘Yes I can well imagine that it must feel extraordinary B suddenly not being there – she was such a ‘present’ person: vivid, beguiling, exceptional in so many ways that it is difficult to take in the fact that she has gone….it must have been immensely comforting to her to have you both with her, although I can understand that it doesn’t really offer much consolation to you. The truth is, consolations are few, and in my experience, only come with time (one being that the pain goes finally, but the love remains). You say you always knew ‘that one day it would end’, but actually it hasn’t quite ended, has it? I think you will find – as time passes, that B will be, is, part of you now until you die. How could it not be so when two people are very close? Also, remember that nothing can take away your experience of her, what you had - have had. A mother who was also a loved friend and a marvellous human being?’

Things indivisible

...things we would not want to buy off one other; whose value can no more be measured than a child or a stone picked up on the edge of a river on a winter walk long ago, or a shard from Palestine, a lock of hair, lace from Venice, and things I don't know about but which my sister and her children and mine may?
“Will you have this?”
“No you have it”
“No you”.
And what about books, read and enjoyed over the years?
“Will you have this one?”
“No you”.

For the time being these sit on many shelves as mum left them. And what of her files – our multitude of letters, photographs, her collected notes, especially on the Findhorn, where over forty years we’ve picnic’d and walked – Cawdor, Drynachan Lodge, Dulsie Bridge, Shenachie, Tomatin, Coignafearn, Findhorn Bay where the river meets the Moray Firth? In March 1995 Bay wrote a poem (or is it a psalm?) for the book mum was always planning about the river but never started. Bay found it in the file and read it at the Memorial Service…

The Findhorn at Coignafearn

… ‘ the “convincing” trueness of the atmosphere which pervades Friel’s most unreal plays and thus gives them the sense of people “behaving naturally”. This engagement with the ‘constituency’ thus provides Friel with the types of life sufficient to populate and encompass the largest issues with their essential actors.’ (‘Some of you people aren’t happy unless you’re miserable and you’ll not be right content until you’re dead’) (RP p.47, C.1) 

‘…Friel’s description of Glenties (Ballybeg) on that particular day – a day composite of many observations, of course – encapsulates everything that any drama of the world could say’. 

Anton Chekhov used to say that he got the ideas for his searing dramas by looking out of the window and seeing all human life going by. Brian Friel showed us much the same in his essay on his mother’s home town, A Fine Day at Glenties.

Gouvia last Spring: the late Anthony Blok on the right

William Orpen Midday on the Beach

From the internet

Dear Simon. I sent you (@birmingham a proper letter about your Mother's service so here I will stick to more mundane matters.
Glad you and your Mother like the NYR.  It is excellent and more in-depth than the New Yorker.  I should resubscribe but I get three science journals plus the Economist plus the NY Times which I have barely time to get through.  But perhaps a change would be good for me. The NYR has a family connection too. Helen's brother, Whitney Ellsworth, was the publisher from its founding and for at least 20 years thereafter.
New good books?  I got a year's worth for Christmas and birthday. I will hardly have time to finish them all before next Christmas rolls around.
The most awakening so far is ReGenesis by George Church and Ed Regis. It is all about how "synthetic biology will reinvent Nature and ourselves." Synthetic biology is the use of genetic engineering technology to invent totally new organisms that have never before existed on earth - in effect giving rise to a very rapid and conscious origin and evolution of species.  Darwin in the folds of our brain.  It is amazing what can be done rapidly and cheaply with modern g.e. techniques. Nothing like the laborious and clumsy recombinant DNA technology of the late 1960's and early 70's.  ReGenesis is not an easy book to read because the authors do not provide a glossary.  So, unless one is familiar with biological and taxonomic terms it is hard to follow some of the current and future processes that they are describing. Still well worth the effort and absolutely fascinating.
Another one that I am just starting and think might interest you: The Great Sea by David Abulafia.  It is a history of the Mediterranean Sea and the harbors on its edges each acting as portals to the interiors beyond. It is not a history of the lands surrounding the sea.  Very well written.  I think will be fascinating but I caution that it is BIG - 650 pages.  Would be interested to hear what you think of it.
Another yet: The Pun also Rises by John Pollack.  I love and love to make puns.  The book is not an anthology of puns but rather a history of punning and the impact of punning on the development of language and inventions. As Pollack puts it, "(Punning) is about freeing our imagination to leap from one idea to the next even when those leaps seem illogical or impossible. And it is precisely that capacity to link wildly disparate ideas that enabled people, through thousands of generations of trial and error, to move from cave to skyscraper to space station, and from drum to telegraph to iphone."  A short fast read - enjoy.
Finally Helen gave me for my birthday this week Artemis Cooper's biography of Paddy. Not always so well written but fascinating to me because Paddy is such an amazing strange character. What a weird dislocated childhood he had. I gather that he never completed the book on the third leg of his walk from Brussels to Istanbul; however, I gather some of his notes on that leg are sufficient to reconstruct an account which will be published some day. But it will probably not have that quality of an extended florescent metaphor that characterizes his own completed works. I gather he had terrible writer's block and it was almost impossible for him to 'finish' sentences.
As to what is going on over here, I am not sure I am quite as optimistic about Obama as I was in my November email written in the euphoria of his re-election.  The compromise over the 'fiscal cliff' is terrible and I am afraid he gave up a great deal of leverage that he had over the Republicans by settling for a minor increase in taxes on the rich while leaving unresolved what cuts in spending are going to be made and leaving unresolved the issue of the ceiling on the national debt.  On the latter he has taken off the table the desire to directly challenge Congress on whether Congress has the right to set a limit on national debt given that Congress has appropriated funds for various programs at a level that cannot possibly be paid for by the current provisions in our tax code. And I see that three Senators (two GOP and one Dem) snuck a provision into the fiscal cliff compromise that rewards the biotech drug firm Amgen with $500 million in Medicare funds by protecting the monopoly pricing status of certain drugs over the next two years!  And the two GOP senators are the very ones who yelling loudest about the need to reform (reduce) Medicare benefits primarily for middle and lower income people.  What outright shameless CROOKS!
At least in his inaugural address today Obama mentioned climate change, gun control, and federal gay marriage. Will he pursue them vigorously and expend real political capital on these issues?  Hope so but not optimistic - especially if he allows himself to get mired in endless quarterly showdowns over the national debt and related issues.
Well enough for now. We have winter here but not nearly as much snow as normally.  It has been generally warm here although we are forecast to get some bitter cold over the next few days. Meanwhile I read that the UK has been getting snow and relatively quite cold weather.  Climate Change?? Seems likely given that this has happened for two years in a row. Very strange weather year around.
In the meantime everyone over here is hanging on from week to week awaiting the next episode of Downton Abbey. Do you get it?  A time-warp fantasy when we crave one as the clock of reality tolls a black moonless midnight.
Best wishes and love to you both. Tony

Corfu: wet day in the city

Summer Song ashore at Ipsos

Dear Jan. Yes indeed. Name some dates for a day trip to York.
We stopped in Naples on the way to Corfu. What a lesson in consequences of cutting public services and occluding the public domain, so that local government of a highly calculative kind has ended up being provided to its followers by organised crime - the Camorrah.
I note the strengthening link in UK between local deprivation and the scale of central government funding reductions - poor areas in the north, midlands, and inner London getting the greatest cuts despite Whitehall rhetoric to the contrary. Things fall apart but nastier forms of 'service' thrive amid what is blighted.
Yes I'd like to read more about the deteriorating relationship between the Civil Service and Government. Can you send it to me as a link or attachment?
There are so many resonances from Naples with our experiences of the inner suburb of Handsworth in Birmingham, though at the moment our gangs – Johnson Crew and Burger Bar Boys - aren't yet as far as I know offering alternative public services. My nightmare is when I first hear that some intelligent local criminals have taken up providing social care for vulnerable people and collecting rubbish. Then we are in trouble. All the best, Simon 

Simon. Send me an e-mail when you are back. I'll keep the articles from the Times for you. I am not as computer savvy as you! Have read your blog on your visit to Naples. Fascinating and frightening and regrettably not impossible even in parts of Britain if we take our eye off the ball. I agree Once 'intelligent' criminals start to offer alternative services to fill the gap left by diminishing public services we are on a hiding to nowhere. In fact it is happening on a small scale in some communities. Then it is only a small step before these 'new' criminal  organisations start to field candidates in elections. In my worst nightmare I can see alliances between 'intelligent' criminals and the top 1% wealthiest people who, as we know, are both criminal and corrupt already, as we have seen in media empires, the banks, chemical firms, police etc. This is not a happy prospect. I am beginning to think we are creating a new form of feudalism where democracy is shrinking, even disappearing, and most if not all activities will be beyond democratic control or influence and run by a new and small feudal clique Transparency will then will be non-existent. This is a gloomy forecast I know and I 'd like to think there is still time for a more positive future but the dismantling of the public sector is progressing at a frightening speed, and where there is vacuum it will be filled by something. The growth of moneylending to the most vulnerable people at exorbitant interest rates is a good example. They even advertise on TV and openly, almost proudly, charge the equivalent of between 1500 and 2000% per annum interest rates, and this is perfectly legal!  I hear that pawnbroking is one the few growth industries at the moment. Looking at developments in the NHS it is difficult not be gloomy and frightened about the future, especially our own old age. I cannot see the NHS surviving in any meaningful way once the current changes have been fully implemented. The NHS is one of the greatest creations of this country and it is disappearing quickly. It is easy to be sentimental about it I know, and there is considerable scope for improvement and change but this is not it. The only light on the horizon is that Labour's shadow minister said that they would give all health responsibilities except specialist nationwide services to local authorities. Don't know the details or how real this is, but at least it sounds promising, but by 2015 it may be difficult to reverse or overturn the current changes. At least it offers some alternative, if it is serious and not just a political stunt. We will no doubt have a lot to chew over when we meet. Enjoy Greece, did you hear Cameron's speech on the EU ?  Best, Jan D

Dear Jan. A date's is in my diary and barring blizzards and strikes I’ll see you around 11.00 at York station. I’ll let you know train times closer to that date.
Thanks for your thoughts and for that news item on Burnham’s plans for local council’s to have health service responsibilities.
I recall colleagues writing in the mid 1990s ago about ’the new magistracy’ as non-governmental agencies proliferated. I like your image of a new feudalism - which for many provided both a prison but also a sense of place and security (as indeed is the case with what we call ‘organised crime’)
For so many years we have heard talk of people - some people - becoming over dependent on the state. In that light the move towards greater voluntarism and self-help can be seen as positive. As I get peripherally involved in local voluntary activity I become aware of how complex and time consuming is such activity.
Care, street cleaning, grounds maintenance - just to select a few examples are covered by volumes of legislation, technologies requiring training and retraining and qualifications, and commensurate wages for practitioners. A watershed for me was when I first got a glimpse, some 15 years ago now, of the 600 pages grounds maintenance contract for our local park. The idea that we - the local friends of the park - might take over responsibility for overseeing and implementing this was unrealistic - 26 different ways to mow grass of different kinds at different times of the year in varying weathers!
Seeing the professional care received by my mother - which was wonderful, and which was private as she was well off, I got an inkling of what level of training and competence is required to enable a frail older person remain - as my mother did - lucid and pretty comfortable in her own bed (specially adapted) in her own home until her death.
Linda and I and several neighbours long involved in community activity took over a moribund and grant-aided handyperson service two years ago. It hired two full time workers on the grant money then available at ward level and had three vans and loads of power tools but by the time we were approached via a local councillor to help it was £20K in debt as a result of drastic grant cutbacks and accumulated overheads. We sold off two of the vehicles, a very expensive chipper and allowed the employees - who’d seen the writing on the wall and had already been making up unpaid wages by doing grey jobs for unreceipted cash - to go their way. We now have secure parking for one vehicle in the Handsworth Park compound courtesy of my long association with the city’s Park’s Service and storage for our power tools. The debt is cleared and we have, as a result of successful sales of the two other vehicles and chipper, got a healthy balance in the bank, augmented by a small local community chest grant. We - the running committee - are doing street clean-ups and a variety of local jobs for vulnerable people in our area. But Jan, we are all over 60 and I’m nearly 71. This work is rewarding but it’s tiring. We do it, of course, for free but claim expenses for fuel and so on and we still have a free charity pass to the local tip, and now and then we work with the local refuse manager who, while we pick up lighter litter, sends a truck round to collect fly-tipped furniture and mattresses. And here’s an additional problem. None of us is accredited to use our cache of power tools (mowers, strimmers, drills, angle grinder, chain-saws). If any of us even pick up a chain saw for an 'official' job, we are in breach of health and safety and uninsured. Training is very costly and time consuming. The previous workers just broke the law; didn’t have ear muffs, gloves, boots etc. That might be OK but if anyone has an injury or worse the uninsured liabilities are horrendous - financial and legal. We also have a to have a vulnerable persons policy with proof of how we and anyone employed by us will observe this when inside the homes or in the gardens of the people we are tasked with assisting. On top of that we must also have CRB (now the DBS) checks on ourselves and anyone we employ. All this makes sense but it is also something of an obstacle to getting stuck in to local voluntary work along the lines the government is encouraging as a substitute for public services. We are in part middle class professionals and so can weave our way through all the paper work required; in fact feel quite a sense of achievement at where we have arrived, but I see this sort of thing presenting big problems as larger agencies who used to pay our group to do various maintenance jobs for their social housing customers tighten up to EU standards on their procurement and commissioning of handyperson services. Bluntly we are put right out of the running by sets of rules that are more suitable for commissioning work over £100,000. OK so we find a niche being sub-contracted by the larger contractors. Feudalism? Best Simon 

Jan 29/1/13: Simon…I am wary of becoming, as you say, a grumpy ol' git. I have become aware that the journey from being a ‘Young Turk’ to ‘An Old Fart’ is very short indeed. However, I can't help having a sense of foreboding and dread about the future which is not entirely due to my advanced age (I think!).
If the first casualty  of war is the truth, then the casualties  of current policy directions will be altruism and idealism. A great loss I think but not very fashionable at the moment and very difficult to quantify on a balance sheet. I am mindful of Oscar Wilde's saying that they "they know the price of everything and the value of nothing." I remain fearful that a new feudal class is quickly being established; this ‘economic aristocracy" which will be financially hereditary, will increasingly operate outside civic and democratic spheres. It will make no difference to them who is in power. They will see themselves as having more in common with their equivalents in other parts of the world than their fellow citizens where they reside. They may also become very nomadic and hence have no loyalty, or sense of belonging, to any society or community.
I think we can already see plenty of evidence that government is trying to bend the nation to the interests  of the few rather than promoting the overall national interest. The current economic policy of the madhouse is a good example. The significant transfer of resources from the poorest section to the richest (accompanied by cheering backbenchers) is a sorry sight and I fear will reap a terrible price at some future date.
Those who govern, certainly at national level, are so closely integrated with the top 1% that they are totally disconnected from the day to day life of most ordinary people and try to persuade us that the interest of the 1%  is the equal to the national interest. We have a situation where those who earn over £1 mill per year receive an additional £50000, for each million, in tax benefits, whereas those on benefits will now have a real reduction in their income and we talking about some very vulnerable people. They are not all skivers and shirkers (although I am prepared to accept some are) which is what politicians and tabloids would have us believe. You will know that a new system for assessing disabled people's ability to work has been introduced and contracted out. We now learn that a few thousand disabled people died within weeks of being declared fit for work (it beggars belief).
Figures were released recently which showed that in Sheffield people's income in real terms had reduced by almost 20% but strangely (or perhaps not!) unemployment has dropped. The starting pay for new police officers has dropped by £4000 and there has in effect been a pay freeze for almost everyone since 2008, so no wonder we are heading for a triple recession.
I never understood the logic of getting growth by reducing the economy. You will laugh at the fact that the small consultancy run by my wife and me paid more in corporation tax than Starbucks who paid nothing!! Alongside this I have seen some extraordinary facts and figures, for example the 20 richest people in the world are now worth £750 billion which would almost entirely wipe out the EU debt. The top 40 companies in the world are worth more than all governments in the world put together (that is staggering). British companies have £750 billion on their balance sheets which they are not investing (so much for being hard up) and it is almost impossible to trace where ‘quantitative easing’ monies have gone. Seems they are stuck in banks rather than invested in the real economy. To top it all we discover that despite Leveson and the reprehensible conduct of Murdoch’s media empire, the Chancellor of the Exchequer (yes, that’s right George Osborne) attended a private party at the Murdoch's last week. Is the this the right way to behave in public office? Can you imagine what the outcry would have been if it had been a civil servant or, worse still, a local government officer or member.
Incidentally I read today that two thirds of top civil servants have expressed a wish to leave the service. In the midst of all of this Local Authorities are doing everything to balance the books and cope with the dramatic changes - almost too compliant and loyal - they are taking the biggest proportion of cut backs in the public sector whilst at the same time suffering constant abuse from Eric Pickles. I am amazed and quite proud of the good will and commitment displayed by local authorities but can't help feeling we are heading for the minimalist state and only residual local authorities which I fear will only be a last resort for the poorest section of society - in effect a new form of the ‘poor laws’; a breeding ground for ‘intelligent’ and entrepreneurial criminals to flourish. I would like to think that none of this will happen and I think there are realistic alternatives but it would be foolish to think that the unthinkable can't happen. Tomorrow it is 80 years to the day – 30 January 1933 - since Hitler became Chancellor of Germany through democratic elections; not that long ago in historical terms. The unthinkable can happen but is not inevitable.
On a happier note you will be pleased to learn that the government has approved a new high speed rail link between London, Birmingham and Manchester and second one to Leeds and Newcastle. I can at least agree with them on this one! Sorry to rant on. Too much time on my hands....Jan

Simon. Thanks for your comments. Hopefully the blizzards will be gone by March but you never know, as for a strike not very likely, despite attempts at portraying unions as gung ho we are very compliant and malleable compared to our European cousins.
The big story here at the moment is Chris Huhne's fall from grace. Spectacular and depressing. Another nail in the coffin of trust in politicians There has been a very muted response to Burnham's announcement, perhaps a case of Be Careful of what You wish For.  Or perhaps just fatigue at the thought of yet another re-organisation of the NHS. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.
I am fascinated at your experience of doing voluntary work. I agree with you that self-help and voluntarism can be very positive, and regrettably officialdom has made this increasingly difficult. We have to admit that the public sector is often paternalistic (despite genuine attempts at the opposite) and off-putting rather than embracing and partnership oriented. A sweeping statement I know and unfair  in some circumstances but there can be no doubt that excessive legislation and mindless bureaucracy has grown up, mostly piecemeal, over the years, often for good reasons but sadly a whole range of unintended and negative consequences have emerged which often lead to the experiences you so graphically describe. Underlying this there has grown up an almost pathological aversion to risk which stifles creativity and initiative at a time when we need them most. There is a tendency to respond to problems by adopting legal or bureaucratic means (sometimes these are necessary) rather than solving the underlying real causes which in most cases are cultural and behavioural.  These are more difficult to deal with and do not  easily fit into a climate of Quick Fix and Sound Bites peppered with blame games and finger pointing (very different to true accountability).
I can't remember last time I heard the phrase ‘Big Society’. It has disappeared from the political narrative I fail to see how (or understand ) the reduction of the public sector or the rolling back of the state will promote the Big Society. I think the government don't understand it either or can find any credible narrative for it, hence it has been allowed to fade away. It is more likely that the vacuum will be filled by economic interests and/or ‘intelligent’ criminals. Read some fascinating stuff about what has happened in Russia in the last 20 years and the conclusion the commentators come to is that it is a Mafia State ("where there is money there is organised crime") where it is impossible to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate activities. In fact the distinction is meaningless, ditto for politicians and criminals. A rather frightening look into a possible (but not inevitable) future.
On a slightly different topic linked to my previous observation about inequality I have come across a commentator called Robert Reich, Harvard academic and member of both the Carter and Clinton administrations, so hardly a left wing loony. He has made a film called Inequality For Allbased on his book Aftershock which are attracting attention. I have not seen it or read the book but there was a comprehensive article about his thinking in the Observer last Sunday (see also). The statistics on inequality are eye watering (e.g. 400 individuals own half of the total wealth of the USA ) and merely confirms other statistics I have seen. Interestingly he is not opposed to inequality as such but identifies the point at which it becomes problematic (we are long past this point) and why, as well as offering some solutions (higher taxes will produce increased productivity! Osborne will have a fit). Reich claims UK's austerity as a ‘cruel hoax’ which simply does not work or will work. I suspect he will not be invited to the Tory conference but it may give some food for thought for Labour. The value of property in the ten richest boroughs in London is equivalent to the value of all properties in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland put together.          Have you seen the report on Mid-Staffordshire hospital? Depressing and a real eye opener. Clearly there is something deeply wrong in many parts of the NHS  and a reminder that being in the public sector is no guarantee in itself that there will quality and dignity in the services provided, but I remain convinced that the current changes are not the way to solve the problems which in my view are largely cultural and behavioural compounded by a large dose of managerial incompetence at every level of the NHS reinforced by a government (Labour) obsessed with targets and statistics. The patients did not get a look in. What is worse is the total contempt with which both patients and their relative were treated. Hundreds died prematurely often in traumatic circumstances. Surely some accountability is not unreasonable. A national scandal really but I have seen no evidence or heard any convincing arguments that the current changes (i.e. privatisation, fragmentation, competition, etc) will improve the service. I have heard plenty of ideology and political spin but it seems to me that cooperation, co-ordination, competence (the 3 Cs) are more relevant to success and despite paying lip service to these they are sadly absent, so is any attempt at accountability and democratic transparency. Just look at the make up of Commissioning Groups (e.g. local elected members are banned from being members). The proposed Well Being Groups have still to prove their worth (I still don't understand what they will actually do but I remain open to be convinced. Could easily become talking shops). I do however welcome the transfer of public health responsibilities to local authorities; but in itself it doesn't do anything but there is  the potential to be creative and use it as a springboard for additional duties when Andy Burnham becomes minister! Enjoy the Greek weather. Winter has returned here. Best Jan

Hi Simon, up date on SS old engine out, engine bay cleaned out and eng. Beds built up and glassed in to fit new eng. fitted on new mounts, prop shaft cupling machined to fit new gear box now all lined up, all the old wiring has been taken out and will need to be re done to make good as new again, new eng. controls will have to be found as the old ones will not work, allso eng. stop controls new, new skin fitting for water intake to be replaced, new dash surround made and fitted for new eng. wiring, the hull to be scraped smooth then antifould, the paint work has been filled and rubbed down ready for the under coat and the new boot topping, also the wood round the toe rail to be re secured and rubbed down and sealed…

Summer Song's new engine control panel

Summer Song's old engine at D's place below the village

I can't do Thursday, but I could do Wednesday at 1.30 in Perithia…Let me know. Harry's mother is doing new dishes, so it may well 'vaut le detour'. RP

Hi Simon & Linda, just to say that Community 1st application will receive £1500 to help with planting proposals. Planning Application for Birchfield estate published http://brag.btck.co.uk/  Needs Birch trees to line Birchfield road, not London Plane. Scouts planning to plant more bulbs on Wellington Embankment. all the best,  Mike Tye

Hi Andrew, Simon. First of all a very big thank you for all the hours you spent with the Chairs in xxx and us - I am happy for you to invoice us for the sum in the bid. Cllr X had a panel meeting yesterday evening...she is a changed woman, the other panel members noticed too (judging by the look on their faces) I felt very proud of her!  Z had a meeting with Cllr K earlier in the week, he reported back to me a noticeable change in him...he is much more direct and took the lead saying exactly what it was he wanted to discuss. The seeds you have planted during your time here seem to be sprouting! I will have a look at the report and discuss with Z and get back to you by the end of this week with any comments we have. It has been a pleasure working with the both of you - I cannot speak for the others but it has certainly made me reflect on the Members we work with and come to a better understanding of what motivates them and to see things from their perspective. I think this will be important in making sure I can provide the most appropriate support possible. Cllr K is coming in on Thursday to meet with the team and discuss a number of issues. I suspect one of these will be member induction.....perhaps we will be working together again some time in the future :)  All the best, Y

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First meeting at the Co-op to plan Carnival 2013 (photo: Thanassis Spingos)

The old boiler is leaking

Hello Simon. I follow your escapades on your blog. Good to see that you are busy doing practical tasks. In the future (perhaps sooner than we think ) such skills will again be vital and in much demand, we may (re)discover that manual and technical skills are more important than the latest IT gizmo, after all we can’t eat the computer or mobile phone. Talking about food are you following events in Britain? These are depressing and worrying times. Quick on the heels of the Mid Staffordshire Hospital scandal we now have what is referred to as the ‘horsemeat’ scandal. This will not surprise you but it is yet another example, on top of all the others, of mismanagement. corruption and deceit in a key industry; this time the food chain and supermarket ready-made meals. The food chain has now become so long and uncontrollable we cannot be certain of what we are eating (despite the labels) or the safety of it. The Government is out of its depth  and everybody is blaming everybody else (what’s new!). Yet another example of what happens when you deregulate. The Food Standards Agency has lost of half of its inspectors (through so called efficiency no doubt), so it’s not surprising that yet again we have an industry operating outside any meaningful control or accountability. If it wasn’t so serious you’d laugh at some of the finger pointing. Monty Python could not have done better. We are being told that it is all down to Romanian horse thieves! Well if everything else fails blame ‘Johnny Foreigner’, especially if there’s a gypsy angle as well. The hypocrisy is staggering. Some of the most diehard anti-European MPs are now calling for EU actions and seeking the co-operation of our European partners. I actually don’t mind eating horse; done it many times in France as long as I know that is what it is and that it is safe to do so. However there may be some benefits emerging from this, especially around a revival of locally produced food and local food outlets. Traditional butchers are doing a roaring trade at the moment and hopefully this will extend to local markets, greengrocers, artisan bakers etc., which can only be good for local communities and ‘localism’. I don’t think this is the demise of supermarkets, but they may well operate somewhat differently in the future.
There is also a growing  acknowledgement and appreciation of the importance of a wide range of public functions. Whether this is just an immediate reaction or a longer term shift is yet to be seen. Regrettably I think the deregulators and unlimited free marketeers have the upper hand and wield enormous power and I still have a deep anxiety that we are moving toward a new type of feudalism. There was a very interesting article in the Guardian this week on the workings of so-called Think Tanks. They like to present themselves as independent and objective, but in reality they are well funded pressure groups working on behalf of some rather unpleasant, and in many cases American, corporate interests, (tobacco, climate deniers, chemicals, etc.). Frequently it’s impossible to know who funds these organisations, and to really rub salt into the wound many of them are registered charities and hence receive tax benefits. They also have considerable access to the political elite. I am not a natural conspiracy peddler but it is difficult to see how local democracy or any democracy can function properly in the economic and political environments now emerging. I would be interested to hear your views on this. I am convinced that some form of ‘bottom –up’ or ‘refocused’ consumerism is part of the answer, and in this context modern technology can be a powerful tool so I’m not a total Luddite.  

I have read some more on the developments in Russia since the fall of Communism which is good case of Be Careful of What You Wish For. We spent decades trying to bring down the Soviet Union in the (naïve) belief that a western style democracy would make it free, open, fair and governed by the rule of law. But it hasn’t quite worked out like that. Whilst the Soviet Union was good riddance, what has replaced it, according to a book by Edward Lucas, is organised crime, big business corruption, illegality and bribery on a phenomenal scale, e.g. as much as $6 billion is paid in bribes every year and half of the country’s $140 billion public expenditure is siphoned off illegally. He calls it a ‘pirate’ state (others call it a mafia state) ruled by a criminal elite heavy populated by ex-Soviet spooks and ex- secret agents and the ‘nouveau riche’. (see also Luke Harding's Mafia State) I think this demonstrates what can happen when a vacuum is created  during political upheavals and who might fill it. It makes you stop and think what could happen here as the state and public sector retreat on an unprecedented scale. The ‘intelligent’ criminal may well thrive and then local democracy or any democracy is going to struggle to survive in any meaningful way.

As more and more of society is removed from democratic accountability and transparency and power and wealth concentrated in a very small group we face a troublesome future and I can’t help feeling it has gone beyond the tipping point already. I struggle to envisage how an alternative may emerge  or what it would look like. The offerings of the left are as cliché ridden, unrealistic and unpleasant as the offerings of the right or any other existing group. A new mind set is certainly required as well as different expectations and these things don’t come easy if at all. I agree with you that a recalibration of the relationships between the citizen, the state and the public domain is crucial to the way forward. The very notions of progress, growth, well-being etc., need to find a new narrative which appeals to people and which they can actually experience as something positive and fulfilling in meeting their aspirations.
I am conscious that this sounds idealistic and naïve and it may well be that we need to hit the buffers hard in order to make a paradigm change or we may simply just drift into a very different society to the one we have had for the last 60-70 years and adjust accordingly; although in the longer run people will not put up with a new form of feudalism.
I am struggling to find ways local involvement and actions can assist us in going in a more positive direction but as I said I am convinced that a bottom up approach is necessary. Despite all the scandals and increasing loss of faith and mistrust in many public and private institutions, it is interesting to note that with one or two exceptions local authorities have conducted themselves properly (with very little recognition) and actually coped better than most (so far) with challenges facing them which are greater than most; they are almost too competent for their own good; all they get in return is abuse from Eric Pickles a particularly odious minister. Happy days. Look forward to our conversation in March. Best Jan  

*Antica tradizione contadina, di origine piemontese, la "Merenda sinoira" è un pasto pomeridiano che, per l'abbondanza, tende a sostituire la cena (per questo "sinoira" o «cenoira»). D'estate, dovendo lavorare i campi anche dopo il tramonto, i contadini organizzavano delle chiassose e ricche merende, sul tardo pomeriggio.

Barbara Burnett- Stuart, 1917-2012

Some personal reflections; 

William Mather, 8th December 2012 

My own personal  memories of Barbara are linked with my parents, Bill and Eleanor  who were friends with Barbara and Angus in Cheshire and Manchester when Angus was working with Thomson Newspapers.
There were wonderful social events and whenever Barbara and Angus were around there was lots of laughter and fun. These always seemed to be linked with tweeds and dogs and glorious days outside, in all weathers, sharing their love of shooting and fishing both in Cheshire and up here.
Libby and I once bumped into Barbara quite by chance on one of our rare visits to London. Feeling a bit like tourists we were exploring the Burlington Arcade and on going into a very respectable  shoe-shop suddenly bumped into Barbara, trying on shoes!
When my late mother visited us here a couple of years ago we went to see Barbara at Brin Croft and I reminded her of the Burlington Arcade shoe-shop. She said with relish: “Ooh and were the shoes very expensive?!”
Barbara had a wonderful way of combining all aspects of life. Born in London she had a real feel for city life but she loved the country and all that went with it. Perhaps it was her early years escaping with her mother and sister Margot to Clavering, a totally unspoilt rural Essex village, that nurtured her love for the open air. There were bicycles and horses, paddling in the ford, developing a dairy farm and sharing in Girl Guide activities. They all loved it
During the war Clavering became a refuge from the nightly air-raids of the Blitz. During this period Barbara remembered her mother trying to  keep everybody calm with matter-of-fact comments like:  “We must remember to let the dogs out before the bombs come.”
When she married John Baddeley in 1940, Clavering became the obvious place for their home and it was there that Simon and Bay were born.
It is perhaps no surprise that following her privileged upbringing Barbara put her sharp mind and humour to good use by throwing herself into journalism, photography and publishing.
Sadly her first marriage ended shortly after the war and was followed by a long relationship with the Country Broadcaster Jack Hargreaves. Eventually in 1965 she married Angus, adding his two step-daughters, Fiona and Jennifer to the family.
Among the wonderful family films that Simon managed to do about Barbara – including memories of the Blitz,  and of life at Clavering, there is one of Barbara reflecting on coming to live in the Highlands. In it she says: “I just bless the day when Angus said:  ‘Would you settle if we went to Scotland?’ Because if he hadn’t said that, we never would.”

Settle she certainly did, settling in Strathnairn at  Mains of Faillie near Daviot. This became a home for more and more grand-children and eventually great grand-children. For most of them, in Simon’s words: ‘The Highlands became a refuge of constant pleasure and happy memories, of winter snow, wind and rain, chilly summer swims, climbs and long walks with many dogs.’
She also became involved in much community activity, including the Samaritans and becoming a ‘Friend’ of Eden Court Theatre.
This service has been specially designed with hymns, readings, tributes and photographs to try and remind ourselves of some of Barbara’s interests and loves. Thomas Hardy’s poem ‘Afterwards’ hints at some of the enjoyments and awareness  of life’s delights, eccentricities and quiet beauties – from hedgehogs ‘travelling furtively over the lawn’ to ‘watching the full-starred heavens.’ Barbara would have loved such imagery.
And her article ‘Peace of Mind’, with her personal reflections on looking at Leonardo da Vinci’s painting, ‘Madonna of the Rocks’ – written when she was women’s editor of Farmers’ Weekly– is particularly perceptive. She ponders on ‘peace of mind’ and how gazing at the painting and in particular the face of the Virgin, she writes:  ‘one begins to know the meaning of that Peace which Passeth all Understanding.’
Earlier in the same article she remembers child-hood visits to her local church at Christmas, where  in a Christmas crib-scene, she sees the figure of Jesus, ‘this tiny figure representing the Man who was to make men and women of us all.’
Barbara would not have called herself particularly religious but she was blessed with an open-heart towards life and people and with a spiritual awareness.
It is perhaps worth reminding ourselves that when she refers to the ‘Peace that passeth all understanding,’ she is quoting from the famous verse in Philippians 4-4-7. In the words of the Authorised Version of the Bible, which she loved, it is as follows:  

4. Rejoice in the Lord alway: and
Again I say, Rejoice
5. Let your moderation be known
Unto all men. The Lord is at hand.
6. Be careful for nothing; but in
Every thing by prayer and supplication
With thanksgiving let your requests
Be made known unto God.
7. And the peace of God, which
Passeth all understanding, shall keep
Your hearts and minds through
Christ Jesus.

Mum on Democracy Street in 2010

*** *** ***
Lin and I visited Richard in the Corfu Private Clinic a few days ago. He's now flown to Dublin for further treatment...sends his regular circular 'Greek voters ponder the unthinkable - cutting ties with the EU':

Please follow the link to see my column in The Irish Times of Tuesday 19 February. Apologies for .the delay in circulating this which was due to medical complications. I hope to resume a regular column very shortly. Regards Richard Pine

(extract)....A 'Grexit', as it is called, is still an option. If the Voulí is a 'council of elders', it has shown itself to be incapable of knowing its own mind or of recognising and interpreting the will of the people. What people actually want, and what they are not getting, is a way out of the economic impasse, a means of creating wealth which will counteract the recession, and lead to job creation. This is not without precedent. In the 1920s Hungary, in the throes of reconstruction, offered the state railways to foreign buyers, and even went so far as to apply to the then League of Nations for a bailout. Parallels with Greece are obvious, where state assets are on offer, not very successfully, to foreign investors and buyers. The imperatives for any struggling country, especially a small one, to look for help elsewhere are compelling. It’s even within recent memory that the UK secured IMF funding to dig it out of an appalling financial crisis. In 1977, the then president of Greece, Konstantine Tsatsos, argued for Greece’s inclusion in Europe (it was admitted in 1981) on cultural and political as well as economic grounds. He linked Greece to other southern states – Portugal, Spain, Italy – all of which, it could be argued, would have to either catch up quickly or be left behind. Their inherent assets would not be enough to sustain them in an age of technological change and wealth creation. How right he proved to be.

Restoring the police station by Ipsos Harbour

A man with a bicycle in a field south of Caserta

Leaving Naples

Hope you can all make Monday night's Special Ward meeting at Welford School, 7pm. We need to be of one voice against these proposals to reduce services...(attachment)

Service changes to make waste management savings – February 7, 2013 Posted by Cllr McKay. A number of changes to waste collection services have been announced by Birmingham City Council in its 2013/14 budget following central government cuts to the authority’s finances.

For the 2013/14 financial year the council’s overall savings requirement is £102million. Of this, £6.57million relates to waste services and includes:
Bulky waste: providing households with ONE free collection per year (maximum 6 items). For each subsequent collection (maximum 6 items), there will be a charge of £25 per collection. This compares to the existing system of 3 free collections per year, with a maximum of 6 items per collection. The new charge is in line with fees charged by other councils (that typically range from £15 to £44).
Special street collections: A city-wide subsidy is being dropped, meaning that individual districts will have to use their own budgets if they wish to continue this service, which is a service uncommon amongst local authorities. These collections are a service that gives residents in an area a fixed day(s) beyond regular bin collection dates on which to put out additional bulky waste items out, to be collected by the council at no cost to the households taking advantage.
The provision of black and green sacks: The council spends £1million per year issuing one sack per week to households. Many residents already buy their own waste sacks. Residents will now be required to provide all of their own sacks from April 1, ahead of the council plan to roll out wheelie bins at a later date.
Green waste collections: In line with many other local authorities, the council will introduce a chargeable service from February/March 2014. This will be an optional service, and those wishing to take advantage will be given a free 240-litre wheeled bin. The annual collection charge, to be paid in advance, will be £35. Those not wishing to take up the service will have the option of buying a composter, at cost, via the council’s website. Fees charged by other councils who provide this service generally range from £18 to £56.
In addition to this, other measures are set to be introduced to meet the budget challenge caused by the cuts. They include:
City centre street cleansing: There will be a reduction in the overall level of cleaning– but there will be no compulsory redundancies. However the council is introducing larger capacity bins, fitted with a compactor to reduce emptying frequencies, and more automated technology to increase productivity.
Mechanical sweeping: The number of large mechanical sweepers that clear main arterial routes and some residential roads will be reduced from 20 to 15. This will not lead to compulsory redundancies but there will be a reduction in the level of service offered.
Your City Your Birmingham: It is proposed to discontinue these enhanced services (services provided over and above the standard service) and can relate to environmental crime such as fly tipping, fly posting, littering and dog fouling etc.
Cllr James McKay, Cabinet Member for a Green, Safe and Smart City, said: “Cuts to the services that help make our city a cleaner and greener place are not something that sit easy with me.
“However, given that the controllable part of the council’s budget – which we can choose to prioritise – will be halved by 2017, we are simply left with little or no option but to consider some major changes to our waste management service. What we have done is come up with a package that tries to minimise the impact felt by citizens, embracing innovation and modern ways of working where possible – such as with the introduction of wheelie bins, to replace a system that is firmly stuck in the last century. But we want to be open and transparent about some of the less palatable changes helping up meet our financial challenge - that is why we are giving as much notice as possible of our intention to introduce fees and reduce the level of services where applicable.

Dear Simon. I loved reading of your Mother’s Service, and most of all, loved the pictures down the generations. Clearly a very beautiful woman in the pictures of her, your father (I assume) and you as young child. I can see the evolution persisting after all the years have done and favoured us with.

The Thomas Hardy poem you read is a great tribute – to one who notices things. But I wonder whether Hardy hasn’t got the generations wrong in his poem. Isn’t the real gift of the living that they have imparted to others – family, children, friends – the gift of noticing, of being curious which causes one to notice all the wonders cited by Hardy. Clearly your mother is one who did so.
The death of one’s mother, one’s father and brother or sister is so intimate. One feels a hole in one’s life – even if the time for departure had come. But the hole is not nothing. As we have come to understand in the cosmos, the black hole, the emptiness is not no-thing. It is all possibility. That, I have come to believe is the gift of death to the living – the gift of possibility. Clearly your mother imparted that to you and her grandchildren.
Best wishes and warm hugs to you and Lin. Tony

Simon. Hope next Friday is still on. Be good to chew over some ideas with you. Every day seems to bring something new and often unpleasant. Bankers bonuses are back in the news. It simply beggars belief that what are in effect publically owned assets can allow such total misuse of resources. It is difficult to comprehend how a business loosing £5.5 billion can still be allowed to allocate £650 mill in bonuses. The real worrying factor is that democratic processes and players are powerless or unwilling to stop it, even in a nationalised business. This demonstrates how ‘castrated’ democracy is becoming. Democracy, through elected government, appears no longer able to shape events and they even struggle to react properly to them. Instead they are becoming the mouthpiece of vested interests, trying to persuade us that the interests of the 1% equals the national interest. Very different moralities and psychologies are at play here. If you already earn millions you need even more millions to stay motivated whereas if you are on benefits you need your income cut further in order to be motivated to find work – a bit simplistic I know but to quote George Monbiot ‘Our own ruling class...lives in a world of its own from which it can project power without understanding or even noticing the consequences’ and ‘frontbenchers can rock with laughter as it truncates the livelihoods of the poorest people in this country.’ In conclusion he says ‘those who govern us do not in their hearts belong here. They belong to a different culture, different world which knows as little of its own acts as it knows of those who suffer them’  Not certain I fully accept this ignorance of their own actions but this sums up nicely the new ‘feudal’ elite. There is something strange going on here whereby democracy is spawning forces which are totally incompatible with it or perhaps it is not that strange at all (remember the Weimar Republic!). Look forward to hearing your views. Best Jan

Back in Birmingham

Εγκαίνια απόψε στο χωριό… Ο παλιός φούρνος του Γιάννη Σαββανή στην Πλάστιγγα, αφού πέρασε από τη φάση του μινι-μάρκετ, μετατράπηκε σήμερα σε ένα πολύ όμορφο χώρο καφε-ποτείου. Η διακόσμηση περίτεχνη, με αποκάλυψη των παλιών υλικών (ξύλου, τούβλου, πέτρας), με προσεγμένο φωτισμό και με φωτογραφικά ασπρόμαυρα ενθυμήματα από παλαιότερες δεκαετίες. Ο Σταμάτης, επικουρούμενος από τους τρεις γιούς του, τον Αλέξανδρο, το Γιάννη και τον Άγγελο υποδέχτηκαν απόψε τους πρώτους πελάτες και πέρασαν με επιτυχία τη δοκιμή της εξυπηρέτησής τους. Στη νέα επιχείρηση που υπόσχεται ζωντάνεμα της «Πιάτσας», ευχόμαστε «καλές δουλειές»… 

Opening tonight at the village ... The old bakery that belonged to John Savvani, after passing through the phase of being a local grocery, was today transformed into a really beautiful place for coffee-drinkers - with elaborate decoration, display of old wood, brick, and stone, with imaginative lighting and black and white photo memorabilia from past decades. Stamatis, assisted by his three sons - Alexander, John, and Angelo - tonight welcomed their first customers and successfully passed the test of entertaining them. The new enterprise promises to revive the 'Piazza' and provide new jobs...(note: and the grocer's shop at the other end of the village will do more trade and we can still get our bread, wine and confectionary and mail just across the street from Piazza)

Strathnairn

Sorting books in the log cabin

Liz's ultrasound image

Drummond Street, Inverness

Hello Simon - I am sorry for your loss. I lost my dad nearly six years ago. Every now and then, I still cry - and wish he was hear to share in my success and failures. But, he is buried in Bangladesh - my brothers and I took him back one last time. We reached the last leg of our trip to my dad's village at night on a boat - I still recall, the night sky full of stars. I like to think that I have taken him back to his beloved land where the stars shine on him at night and the remains of his body nourishes the land he so loved. I have not been back to see his grave for some five years - I want to visit and take my daughters with me and share my joy by his grave side. I hope you happiness in this tough time. That void will never be filled - but time will heal and you will find ways to cope my friend.

Hi Simon. All is great here in Asia I have today taken the night train from old British Penang island to KL in Malaysia. 

Night train from Penang

My back has eventually recovered from the garden repair project. I don’t know why I have been so driven to so injure myself but must be that childhood on a farm and a desire to be surrounded by green growth; as the development has destroyed lots of green space.
I am sorry I will miss you in  March we both seem to have such a drive to travel and understand our world!  I shall look forward to news of strawberry’s harvested by you and not the slugs like last year!

Chani, Chris and Aftab at our 'Cultivation to Consuption' event on a rainy 19 July last year

Cultivation to Consumption - Chani uses some of my cabbage to cook delectable pakorah

It would indeed be great to have another share your plot plus there is also much room to share at Antrobus Road, as after a constant battle to get the City’s Development to cooperate with not damaging the former gardens too much I have decided to keep a larger amount of my adversely possessed land; which is more fertile than the bit they have already given back. They have not exactly played by the rules as developers but their land transfer department has been most truthful with me and has recognised my rights over the land I have looked after for some time. Will be glad when its all settled however; (possessions possess the possessor) then I can concentrate on just growing! How great that you have sailed by Antikythera.

Sailing in Danica near Thumb island near Antikithera in 1962

I stopped by the British Museum with a friend before I flew in Feb and looked at their collection of early Victorian drawings of the ‘discovered’ great ancient Greek ruins settled by goat herding people living in low level settlement at the foot of the great ruins. It does seem that we have done very little more to advance in last 2000 years but keep repeating history. I would be very interested in discussing your living in Greece. I have tried to get redundancy unsuccessfully this year but keep hoping that soon I will get the opportunity to seriously think about another investment project eventually!

Hope you have been enjoying travels to Bari and Naples. It has been raining unseasonably in Thailand and Malaysia but not too much as yet it does have the advantage of keeping it cooler!
After a few days in Malaysia with Teo we are off to Laos via Thailand as he has an amazing four weeks off work.
Looking forward to catching up soon with our respective news of travel-happy UK landings!
Much love to you both
Yours Chris

Plot 14 - still messy but now shared with Chris

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, recitingMein 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

 ...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

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

The Lochan

Old plantation terrain

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 Συνερταιρισμόκαι 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.

Aftab Rahman:  Hey Simon that image looks really good. We have thrown a stone in the pond and now we will see the ripples.

Simon: Yes indeed and it's our pond and we watch those ripples - assiduously! Let no-one assume that in thinking up and developing a Heritage Trail for East Handsworth and Lozells, we not are also recognising, as did those Victorian predecessors whose lives we are striving to recover, that we live amid the pathologies that beset all cities, and that our project is not some detached indulgence but one which directly - and with the same concern and commitment as characterised the concerns of our ancestors in this area - addresses the conditions presented by deprivation and its effects in misery, crime, anomie and ill-health. The money invested in this project is an investment in reducing crime, and in improving education and health.

On Saturday morning I was guide for a history tour of Handsworth Park - at first called Victoria Park, like many others at the time, in honour of the Queen. The chilly weather and the snow, still falling now and then, did not deter over 15 people turning up. I've been doing tours of Handsworth Park for years.

A photo of the opening - in pouring rain - of Victoria Park Extension on 30 March 1898

This one was included in a more ambitious enterprise dreamed by my friend Aftab Rahman of Legacy West Midlands. Handsworth Park is one of ten other places with historical resonance included in the East Handsworth and Lozells Heritage Trail (see local press)

• Soho House
• St Mary's Convent - Hunters Road
• Hamstead Road - 9 restored Georgian houses built around 1836 - with 9 amazing gardens
• Asian Resource Centre - Old Toll House
• James Watt Gate House - West Drive
• St Mary's Church - the cathedral of the Industrial Revolution
• Handsworth Park and bandstand
• Thornhill Road Police Station– formerly Staffordshire Court
• Handsworth Library - Soho Road
• Handsworth College - once Handsworth Council House, Soho Road

Birmingham's new tourist trail - but will coach parties want to visit East Handsworth?

Do tourists really want a guided tour of the once riot-scarred streets of Birmingham?

A snowy day in Handsworth: Aftab Rahman with Tom Rowley on Hunters Road, Handsworth

By Tom Rowley

8:55PM GMT 13 Feb 2013

15 Comments

Walking tours of Oxford begin by the gates of Trinity College. In Bath, the eager participants gather at the Pump Rooms, and in Edinburgh the route starts at the foot of The Mound, near the Royal Mile. But our rendezvous today is the Asian Resource Centre.

I’m the first visitor to sample Britain’s newest – and most controversial – walking tour, and my eager guide, dressed in hardy boots and a baggy cagoule, is Aftab Rahman. Rather than lingering by a Bridge of Sighs, though, the two-hour route will see us walk through two of the country’s most deprived and notorious neighbourhoods – Lozells and East Handsworth – in search of their industrial heritage.

The wards, two miles from Birmingham city centre, are not an obvious tourist draw. One in four of the population is unemployed and a recent police newsletter warns of anti-social behaviour, prostitution and drugs. More than four-fifths of locals are from ethnic minorities. It was here that racial and economic tension sparked the riots in 1985, when two brothers burnt to death in the Post Office they ran and 45 shops were looted. In 2005, further rioting claimed another two lives and injured a police officer.

It is perhaps surprising, then, that the Heritage Lottery Fund has given £38,000 to launch the tour. When it begins in May, volunteers in Victorian garb will guide visitors around the area for free each Saturday.

The local MP, Khalid Mahmood, thinks it is a huge waste of money. “We’re talking about the middle of Birmingham,” he sighs. “I don’t think it is picturesque. We haven’t got the sort of sites they have in York, for example. Of course we have some history, but we’re not in that league. We’ve got to understand where we are. We’ve got better things to spend that money on than walking a group of Japanese tourists around.”

Lottery funding should go towards regenerating the area or helping residents find jobs, he argues. “I think they should provide pamphlets for people to explore the area themselves. Then visitors could interact with local businesses and put some money back into the community.”

Undeterred, we set off in driving snow, and Aftab dismisses Mr Mahmood’s concerns. “The MP should be promoting his own area, not putting it down,” he tells me, as we pass the “Eat Well” Caribbean vegetarian takeaway on Hamstead Road.

Aftab, 42, emigrated from Bangladesh to Lozells with his family when he was six. He admits that the area has generated a bad press over the years. “I came here in 1976 and it wasn’t always rosy,” he recalls. “There was a lot of violent racism in the early days and the riots when I was 15 were devastating. Shops were burnt down, there were petrol bombs and stand-offs with the police.”

Walking tours in unlikely areas are a recent phenomenon and not confined to the West Midlands. Visitors to Belfast will soon be offered a walkabout that includes a dozen sites associated with the worst atrocities of the Troubles. Last year, an enterprising bus company launched a £15 tour of the M25. The chance to spend four hours in a jam seems unlikely to become a major draw. Aftab, on the other hand, is determined that his tour will work. “Ultimately, I want people from London and across the world to come,” he insists. “We have enough to showcase here for the world to see.”

It is impossible not to be cheered by Aftab’s enthusiasm. Whether he is pointing out Soho House, a grand Georgian home where the industrialist Matthew Boulton lived in the 1700s, or “one of only six bandstands in the West Midlands” in the park, he is proud to call himself a local.

Aftab, a former youth worker with Worcester city council, is an energetic supporter of the community and has set up several charities to help young people into work. He will run the walking tour in his role as director of Legacy West Midlands, an organisation he set up to promote the area’s history.

But some of Aftab’s showpieces are, frankly, of limited appeal. The “first Halal slaughterhouse in the West Midlands”, where customers used to be able to select a chicken to be killed, is, perhaps, of minor cultural interest. Similarly, a row of nine Georgian houses, sympathetically restored, have little to commend them beyond charming sash windows.

But the route also takes us into St Mary’s convent on Hunters Road. Built in 1841, it is the work of Augustus Pugin, more famous for much of the interior design of the House of Commons. Two of the nuns greet Aftab warmly and show us Flemish carvings and a grandfather clock by Pugin.

Our final stop is St Mary’s church, back on Hamstead Road. The Norman tower is magnificent but Aftab heads straight to a marble mausoleum where James Watt, the Scottish engineer and inventor whose improvements to the steam engine were key to the Industrial Revolution, is interred.

“This is what my trail is all about,” he says. “We have these hidden gems here that people don’t know about. It is beautiful and we need to make a song and dance about it. People think of Lozells and East Handsworth as a riot hotspot with gang affiliation. But it is not like that. Give this area another 10 years and it will be one of the most desirable places to live. What was Brixton like 10 years ago? The community is growing slowly and it is just a matter of time. Give it a chance.”

Our tour may be over, but Aftab will never tire of walking around his neighbourhood – even if coachloads of tourists fail to turn off the M40 at Junction 16.

**** ****
“We’re talking about the middle of Birmingham," said Khalid Mahmood“I don’t think it is picturesque. We haven’t got the sort of sites they have in York, for example. Of course we have some history, but we’re not in that league. We’ve got to understand where we are. We’ve got better things to spend that money on than walking a group of Japanese tourists around.”

Our MP's words angered Lin

"He's rubbishing his own constituency'

I enjoy quotes like this though. They are a challenge. Handsworth, modern Handsworth where we've lived since 1979, has a reputation I rather enjoy, not only because it discourages visits by the kind of people who made comments like this below Rowley's carping piece...

....as you can work out for yourself, the area is a dump. you could work out your own guided tour out with a book on birmingham architecture. i wouldn't recommend someone white do it, as your safety could not be guaranteed. it still has a black presence so mugging is a distinct possibility, and it is now overwhelmingly muslim, so not to be recommended for non muslim women, especially white women, as some of these people regard non muslim women as easy meat (especially if you happen to be very young, white, and from a dysfunctial background). thinking about it, as a brummy i have to say it would be better to take a trip out to worcestershire or gloucestershire and see what england use to/should look like. birmingham is rapidly looking more like a 3rd world country, and i can't see why anyone wishing to sight-see england would want to look at that. sorry to disappoint.

...but much more important because the history that resides in this area is entirely formidable. I've been taking people around Handsworth Park, including my entranced Japanese students, for decades, telling them how "in this place the modern world was invented"

Showing my Japanese students around Handsworth

For years I've lived amid the echoes of this astounding source. Only in the last twenty years or so have I begun to grasp the causes and consequences strewn around me - this place where the industrial revolution was seeded. 

Another history tour of Handsworth Park (photo: Lee Southall)

I cherish the concealment that hides this significance from so many people, including our MP who talks unknowingly of "understanding where we are". It may seem a paradox but I don't want this area to become a museum replete with commodified history. I value it too much for its present life including its risks and the things that anger me as well as those things in which I rejoice. 

Our home in Handsworth

I'm protective, even possessive, cherishing Handsworth the way I might cherish a chest of private family treasures that, as an old man, I might ease open with false reluctance in response to the pleas of curious grandchildren, encouraging their small eager fingers to touch and hold; their ears to listen, uncritically, to my crafted accounts of amazing things; their innocent eyes to gaze untroubled, wondering and happy at what one day they will be taught as 'history'.

Talking about Handsworth Park in the Sons of Rest -  run now as a café by Mark Bent and family

Thursday night's meeting of Handsworth Helping Hands

Hi Simon, Received this email this afternoon with the attachment in response to my email to the chair of planning and licensing & public protection committees. Doesn't really say anything positive on how an elderly resident is protected.  Many thanks. Best wishes, Waseem Zaffar, Councillor for Lozells & East Handsworth Ward

Dear Cllr Waseem Zaffar Thank you for sending me the copy of James Wagstaff’s letter of 25 March 2013, also copied to Cllrs Sharp and Dring, in which he responds to your concerns about work at xx Beaudesert Road, Handsworth (refs: 2012/1754/ENF & 2012/05049/PA)
Over six months a woman in her 80s living alone since her husband was taken into care has suffered life threatening harassment in the form of dangerous building and excavation involving heavy falling debris, late night noise, trespass on and damage to her home at the hands of an uncommunicative and insensitive neighbour while we, also her neighbours (Simon Baddeley, Chair Beaudesert Road Residents), her ward councillors (Cllrs Mahmoud Hussain, Hendrina Quinnen and Waseem Zaffar), along with officers (Philip Whittaker, Maxine Brown, Katie Moriarty as well as Waheed Nazir, Director of Planning and Regeneration, Chair of Planning Cllr Mike Sharpe and James Wagstaff, Principal Enforcement Officer at Birmingham City Council) have found themselves powerless to help her as she continues to receive demands from that same neighbour to complete the work he began without any attempt to meet or consult with her before he began major extension work on his property with the consequences that followed.
There has to be something seriously wrong if local government with its formal duty of care for vulnerable people can only suggest to this old lady that she resort to civil action to gain redress for the injustices perpetrated against her.
As you may imagine I could not agree more that James Wagstaff’s exculpatory letter says nothing 'positive on how an elderly resident is protected.’
I am happy for you to circulate my thoughts on this miserable situation.
Yours sincerely, Simon Baddeley

Excavation damage to and trespass on a neighbours property

as always you hit the nail on the head .As far as this sorry saga is concerned it is shameful and sadly illustrates the parts of local government I do not like and tried with only various degree of success to confront in my time. I can't help feeling that this is the response of a middle ranking bureaucrat and jobs-worth who is hiding behind rules and regulations to justify doing nothing and covering his back. No doubt everything in the letter can be evidenced and I suspect it has been 'authorised' by the legal department who generally speaking are pathologically risk adverse and defensive. It fails to address the issue which is the Council's Duty of Care to Vulnerable people and as such you may have grounds to take action against the council on these grounds.You could draw it to the attention of the Director of Adult Services who is Peter Hay, but whereas they may help the old person they would not on their own have powers to deal with the neighbour. This require a council-wide response. I think the only options now are a sustained publicity campaign and civil legal action. Not a happy scenario! Best of luck, J 

CORFU SUPERSTITIONS
The bird that 'brings death'
A bird that nobody talks about is this one…
Nobody has ever seen it, but only hears it in the night!
It is called the striglopouli (The screaming bird).
If anyone hears its call near their house it means that some member of the family will die! If though the bird is shot and killed the curse will be lifted!
Nobody has ever managed to do this, and then they would then know what this bird looks like!

It’s the same the whole world over:
It’s the poor what gets the blame.
It’s the rich what gets the pleasure;
Ain’t it all a bloomin’ shame. 

At the beginning of last week, Cypriot politicians insisted they would not choose a 'suicidal' option for their country. By the end of the week, they picked one that would inflict mortal wounds instead.

Nicosia’s handling of its unprecedented predicament has been cataclysmic. But the approach adopted by the European Union and International Monetary Fund to Cyprus’s problems has also been disastrous. The eurozone has been building up to an omnishambles moment throughout the debt crisis and it finally struck in a small island state in the Eastern Mediterranean.
The agreement arrived at in Brussels early Monday, following hours of talks involving Cypriot officials, eurozone finance ministers and EU and IMF chiefs, is being billed as the least worst option after all sides took successive wrong turns on the way. That may be the case but it will be little consolation to thousands of Cypriots who have lost a big chunk of their deposits and face uncertain times ahead.
For those looking at the longer-term picture, the island is in for years of extreme difficulties. Its banking system and concomitant services made up about half of the island’s economy. This has now been obliterated. Depositors are unlikely to trust Cypriot banks for some time to come and young Cypriots will have to choose to become something other than lawyers, financiers and accountants. Many will have to consider a future away from their homeland, which faces a double-digit recession in 2013 and more years of economic contraction ahead....