[Photo: Rob Groove] A selfie - see his brilliant website

Halloween Party at Sally's Bar, Ipsos (photo: Rob Groove)

In the years that rush by madly,
Times we share are too short sadly,
But now we can rejoice so gladly,
By celebrating union Baddeley
Much love on their ? anniversary
To our dear friends,
Lin & Simon
Love
Lula & Paul
XXX

‘Greek literature risks getting lost in translation’ (Irish Times, Tue 14th Oct 2014)
If you write in a less well-known language, such as Irish, Finnish or Greek, the essential vehicles for reaching a wider readership are a reliable translator and a publisher who can exploit your book in the marketplace. This in turn requires a cultural policy underpinning the work of translation. But there is no government agency responsible for pushing Greek writers under the noses of commissioning editors, reviewers or the bulk-buying outlets.
In Greece, the Frasis Φράσεις project, managed by the national book centre, funds the translation of books published outside Greece. In its two years of existence, with a budget of €189,000, out of a total of 100 applications it has subsidised the translation of 28 books (at an average cost of €6,500), only four of them into English.
I’m told by translators that the Frasis application procedure is bureaucratic and its operation intermittent; it seems to have no policy guidelines, and no marketing role, which imperils any project that aims to get Greek authors into Waterstones or on to the Amazon website.
And last year the government announced the closure of the national book centre, with Frasis being subsumed into the culture ministry.
Who are the Greek writers we need to know? Nikos Kazantzakis is in a class of his own: almost everyone has heard of Zorba the Greek and The Last Temptation (maybe because they saw the films). It would be unfair to say that his reputation overshadows later writers but he remains an example of a Greek writer who, because of the power and popularity of his writing, could readily attract a publisher of the calibre of Faber and, in the United States, Simon and Schuster.
It’s the power of Greek writing that makes it so rewarding. It’s emotional, it’s visceral, it’s passionate. Of course the perennial themes of love, jealousy and ambition are present, but Greek novelists seem to be preoccupied, very instructively, with the events of history in the past century, and the emotions they evoke.
For example, the disastrous Anatolian campaign of 1920- 1922, when Greece attempted to invade Turkey, is the subject of several recent novels, including Panos Karnezis’ The Maze. Such events not only continue to resonate within the Greek folk memory, but provide non- Greek readers with an understanding of the persistent tensions and anxieties which make modern Greece so rewarding to study.
Karnezis also writes with wry and acute perceptiveness of contemporary Greek life in stories such as The Birthday Party, allegedly portraying the Onassis family. Karnezis, published by Jonathan Cape, is lucky in that he lives in England and writes in English. But it is only occasionally that a Greek author finds a mainstream publisher.
One major Greek publisher, Kedros, has an impressive list of fiction and poetry in translation, but, based in Greece, is ineligible for Frasis funding. An unsung hero is Denise Harvey, who publishes from the island of Euboea: her edition of stories by Alexandros Papadiamantis, together with his novella The Murderess, is perhaps the single most important publishing achievement I can think of. Again, Frasis funding is not for her.
My recommendations must necessarily be subjective, and limited to a very few of the titles I have read. The tragic but beautiful Astradeni by Eugenia Fakinou (Kedros), depicting island departure and resettlement in the city, will ring many bells among Irish readers. So too will Dimitris Hatzis' The End of Our Small Town (Birmingham University). If you like detective thrillers, Greece has its Inspector Haritos novels by Petros Markaris; at least four of his, including Deadline in Athens, are available from Vintage. Vangelis Hatziyannidis has two novels of dramatic quality: Four Walls and Stolen Time, both from Marion Boyars. Yiorgi Yatromanolakis, widely regarded as an amiable eccentric, concentrates on the psychology of village life: The History of a Vendetta, The Spiritual Meadow and Report of a Murder are published in the UK by Dedalus Press, with EU and UK arts council funding. There are many novels of the German occupation and civil war. Outstanding among these is Pavlos Matesis’s The Daughter (Arcadia), which has been translated into nine other languages.
All the books I’ve mentioned are in print. Many others, translated in the 1950s and 1960s, are out of print and cry out for reprints. Many more, from past and present, are untranslated.
What these stories have in common is an earthiness, a deep sense of history and tradition, a seemingly infinite capacity to engage with social issues, and a sensitivity to what it means to be Greek, how to celebrate life in all its horrors and joys. Partly for the echoes and parallels, partly to discover a new culture, Irish readers need to find them.

From the balcony in Ano Korakiana

Our son Richard; his recent work, on his blog and on Facebook - especially his sequence on The Imminent Threat of Islamic Extremism in Everyday Life ....

Photo: R.J.Baddeley

Photo: R.J.Baddeley

andThem...#1, English Defence League Rally, Centenary Square, Birmingham "What must ‘they’ be thinking?"

Photo: R.J.Baddeley

Photo: R.J.Baddeley

and The Incomprehensibility of Tragedy...'The day before we arrived, a tragedy befell the town of Soma. No person spoke of it to us.'

Photo: R.J.Baddeley

...and this of dear Emma...Eat, Drink, Repeat...which if I were her would vex me. or did she pose for these?

Photo: R.J.Baddeley

*** *** ***
Last week Mark emailed us photos of progress on the wood balcony in Ano Korakiana...

Hi Simon and Lin. Started work on balcony today. Have removed all old decking...what you see on the photos is free standing so i can move about up there, the old decking is now stacked down at the bottom of the garden and will be covered the next day or two before the rain
The wood order arrived and is now safely inside the house and apothiki , or should we call it your other house in the village .
Screws and brackets came too , only thing is the brackets are no good for the job as they are the same as the old ones which means they are too deep so when the wood sits on the base of bracket the decking will not touch the top side of wood.
I am not about to start cutting brackets down or cutting bits of wood to fit in to make them sit higher so I will take them back avrio and find the correct type .
As you can see from one of the pics some of the beams are pretty badly rotten on the top side ,hopefully they will be ok once treated and then turned 180.

All support beams removed for treatment (Photo: Εφη Χονδρογιαννπα‎)

Support beams before and after sanding (Photo: Mark Jacks)

The only other thing is we never allowed for an extra piece of 7x7 cm wood so as we could cut it into short sections and put it on the outer edge beam to bring the 7x7 cm up to decking level, so I either get another length or 2 depending on how much I need or I use the 2 outer end pieces once replaced with new ones and have them cut down to 7x7 cm from 14.5x7 length ways and obviously use the good side of them (bottom edge) to do that part of the job...regardless of what I use they will have to be held in place by screws of sorts along the outside beam bringing the 7x7 up to height. Hope you both got home safe and sound. Best wishes. Mark

Winter's wood from the balcony off Democracy Street

*** *** ***
I've swept up and bagged a goodly load of fallen leaves from the front of the house; even managed to mow the wet grass of the front lawn - compost for the allotment. The back lawn needs a haircut as much as I, for all that it'd pass as a paddock until Spring and a friend advised me to leave the grass long for winter nutrients, weed suppressant and resistance to frost and snow...

I've had the HHH van out collecting a load of hefty beech logs from the railways embankments of Handsworth, donated by a Network Rail maintenance team to Handsworth Park and stored in the compound...I suspect these logs are the product of a UK wide strategy to fell trees alongside railways...

A government-commissioned report on the resilience of the UK’s transport network to extreme weather events recommends that Network Rail develop a 10-year strategy to ‘significantly reduce the number of trees alongside railway lines, particularly those posing a risk to the railway and its users’.

Yesterday, with help from Winnie, and the receiving householder and her neighbours - Rifat, Hussain, Alvin - who'd earmarked this supply as fuel for a new wood-burner, we loaded and moved five van loads of logs to Thornhill Road; the supply added to by another pile of Network Rail logs up a cul-de-sac backing onto the cutting off Soho Road - a couple of hours work and a donation of £20 to HHH along with a box of chocolates for me and our committee who meet tonight to discuss future work.

Beech logs cut from the rail embankment - will need drying for a year before sawing and splitting

Town that finds right balance between tourism and quality of living 

Nov 10, 2014

A homebound Irish couple accosted me recently at Corfu airport.
“We came here because of what you wrote in The Irish Times . . . ”
I waited in trepidation. “We loved it!”
They are seasoned travellers. They found Corfu beautiful and affordable. It’s a relief to know that one can extol the beauty of a place and still tell the truth. Mission accomplished.
I’ve been travelling recently and I can now say that, whatever the charms of Corfu, those of Nafplion, in the southern Peloponnese, are their equal.
When I first visited Nafplion 50 years ago, it was merely a small town living on its reputation as the site of the first parliament of independent Greece up to 1834, when the government moved to Athens.
Nafplion is dominated by a Venetian castle, reached by 999 very steep steps, up which, at the vigorous age of 15, I ran in pursuit of a girl who could run faster than me. This time, pleading old age and lack of inducement, I stayed on the ground level.
Today Nafplion has expanded into “Nafplion New Town”, a series of suburbs. This is a welcome feature of many Greek towns of historical importance, such as Mycenae, Tiryns, Epidauros and Argos: the tourists are serviced on the prehistoric site while you live and shop in the new town. It brings a whole new meaning to “I got it in Argos”.
Tales of two cities
For tourist purposes, separating the old cities from the new towns is a clever strategy. Suburbs are generally unexciting but affordable and – unless exceptionally well-designed – unattractive social necessity.
Athens is the prime Greek example, with miles of low-rise suburbs lining the arterial exit roads, some of them very squalid, stretching in every direction from the ancient centre. It’s quite a shock, if you know your Greek mythology, to see a motorway exit sign for ‘Eleusis’. One might wonder what 21st-century mysteries it can offer, until you learn that it is home to Greece’s largest oil refinery.
Corfu has its quality shops, especially the jewellery for which it’s famous. But in Nafplion’s stylish streetscape the shops aimed at tourists display none of the tawdry, made-in-China tat that clogs up the narrow laneways of Corfu.
With so many hotels, tavernas and cafes winding down at the end of the season, it’s possible to walk streets that aren’t clogged with camera-toting visitors in order to appreciate the range of local produce, proudly offered in craft shops and delicatessens. Everything is tastefully displayed, perhaps so much so that it runs the danger of becoming twee. In the old town, there’s not a supermarket in sight. But in the “new town” on its outskirts, Cash & Carry rules.
Nafplion is still the centre of the manufacture of komboloi, the traditional Greek “worry beads” that resemble a rosary but are, in fact, an antidote to anxiety. Preferably (and expensively) made of amber, komboloi can also be had in coral, ivory, mother-of-pearl and (the cheapest) synthetic beads. Even if you don’t think you need them, the warmth of the amber in the palm of the hand is reassuring.
Nafplion is perhaps fortunate in that, unlike Corfu, it can’t accommodate cruise ships. The inmates of these behemoths normally spend next to nothing as they linger until departure time six or eight hours later. They are of almost zero economic value to their host towns, but they help spread the word: many travellers will return to savour at a more leisurely pace the beauty they have seen so briefly.
Greece, like any other country trying to expand its tourist potential, is torn between the needs of visitors and the needs of the local population. And, like any country with a rapidly expanding urban lifestyle, it is torn between modernisation and the preservation of the traditional and authentic.
In the past weeks we’ve seen ministerial announcements about this year’s record-breaking tourist influx (18 million, up 10 per cent on 2013) and about intentions to develop niche markets, especially cultural tourism. We hear this every year, but with the need to put Athens itself back on the tourist map after the disturbances of the past four years, it’s welcome.
Nafplion could give the National Tourism Organisation some valuable pointers: it has a very fine local history museum (one of the best I’ve ever seen) established by the Peloponnese Folklore Foundation. Local pride exudes from this and similar institutions (including an annexe of the National Gallery), not least because the Peloponnese was the principal site of the war of independence, which was nasty, brutish and long (1821 to 30). As a result, it has a significance for the rest of Greece, which Nafplion tastefully exploits.
Returning there after so long was a pleasant revelation.

Sophia, Liz, Guy, Hannah, Oliver. Amy and Linda late October

Part of the support beam that runs the width of the house is badly rotted (photo: Mark Jacks)

Hi Simon and Lin. As you can see from the photo's from today most of the old  beams are now back up along with all the new 7x7 ones. It's been a long slow process getting the beams in order as I first had to get all the rotten wood out (ground out) then sanded out with an orbital using a very course grade p40, then 3 coats of the universal wood preserver which kills all manner of grubs and beetles apparently, then I gave all of the old beams the 2 coats of Resolcoat which seems to have gone off nice and hard so sealing all the preservative in and keeping the bad weather out hopefully.

Before and after (photo: Mark Jacks)

A couple of problems have arisen -  one being the old beams are 14.5 cm x 7 cm (not all are this by the way) and the new ones are 7x7cm with the extra piece under the end being added to make them 14x7cm, which leaves half a cm out from the tops of the new 7x7 cm to the tops of the 14.5 cm beams, meaning  along with other inconsistencies with the old beams not running true we have the decking touching the tops of some of the beams and others not... 

'...touching the tops of some of the beams and others not' (photo: Mark Jacks)

...at its worse out by 1 cm and its least ½ a cm, so I am going to have to pack in places to get the levels as right as I can.
- two you will see on the photo's the beam which is attached to the house (2 actually), the one that is directly under your balcony french windows.  In the very left hand corner the wood is rotten far worse than I thought, this beam holds the house side of I think the last 5 beams.

(photo: Mark Jacks)

(photo: Mark Jacks)

I have cleaned it out the best I can and given it some of the wood preserver and hardener, but I am not sure if it doesn't need to be replaced totally, which means I have to take half of the beams down again and get another length of timber and replace it
Maybe it will hold for many years after treatment. I don't know, so you can decide on what I should do with that one.
I am behind schedule as I have yet to remove the last middle beam and 2 end beams after having to secure the balcony first , which is in quite a sore state on the whole. I was hoping to be putting the decking on next week but I don't think so, not with these few minor problems arising, then of course I have to adjust all the beams so as they will allow the decking to sit on top .
All the old beams I numbered so as they went back on the same bracket in the same place and even with no work done to the bracket area of the wood on the beam apart from a little sand and then treated, they don't all allow the decking to make contact so I will have to either raise or lower them a little to try and square it all up, just shows how bad the work was done on it in the first place .
That's it , not all doom and gloom from below it looks quite nice. Sally and I think and the weather is great for doing this work. Hope all is well. Cheerio, Mark 

Dear Mark. Thanks for the latest news on the balcony. It will cost more and take more of your time but there's no question this must be made good. Please go ahead and ‘replace totally'.  This is a key support for the whole balcony isn’t it? It will take more time but please order a tanalised beam from the Velonades yard. It’s a jolly good thing you found this. If it had been left, even with a dose of Resolcoat, it could have been a weak link in the whole ‘new’ balcony. Glad you are figuring out ways to deal with the inequalities of the beams as they emerge. That’s our John the Builder again. All the best, Simon

Before Mark started work

Amy and her mum fix a tarpaulin to create a rain shelter beneath the balcony

Our wooden balcony ~ overlooking the Sea of Kerkyra, Albania and Epirus on the mainland of Greece beyond

In The Bull, Birmingham Gun Quarter

Iwan Bob Geldart - I was a cameraman on the show on the Vimeo link above. The show was Open Air shot at BBC North Studio B, Oxford Road in Manchester. The presenter was Susan Rae

• Simon Baddeley Thanks Iwan. For neatness it'd be good to have a date, but I've already got more than I could have expected from you by way of information. Perhaps Susan Rae will know. I'll tweet her.

  1 hr · Edited · Like
• Ian Wegg Earlier this year the BBC put online transcripts of every single edition of "The Radio Times" so thanks to Iwan providing the show title we can track this down to 2nd May 1988.
  http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/b22d9203688b46dc95ba6ae135550579
  

  Open Air - BBC One London - 2 May 1988 - BBC Genome

  Do you know whether this programme was actually broadcast as scheduled? If not, tell us what was. Or do you know something else about this programme? The information you send using the Tell Us More form will not be published on the page. We plan to hold on to it and use it at a later stage, to fill…

  GENOME.CH.BBC.CO.UK

Centenary Square late Saturday afternoon

Outside New Street Station, Stephenson Street

Brindley Place near Gas Street Basin

The Birmingham Mainline Canal

The Soho Loop

One of my water butts and a chair I mended on Sunday

HHH committee - Denise, Charles, Linda (Hon.Treasurer) Jimoh, Mike (Chair) and Simon (Hon Sec)

Bogan skips arrive - one of two

At one of HHH's 'Skip-it Don't Tip-it' days (photo: Lin Baddeley)

HHH works with Council Fleet and Waste - Kabs in the sweeper in Haughton Road

Back in Handsworth - Lozells Road

Hide-and-seek around the oldest tree in the park

The playground

We walk the same paths - a  postcard circa 1900 when our park was called Victoria Park (courtesy Dorrie Lopacka)

Νέο κάλεσμα για το Κέντρο ΥγείαςΓράφει ο/η Κβκ  
29.11.14
                                                     ΔΕΛΤΙΟ ΤΥΠΟΥ
Την Τρίτη 25 Νοεμβρίου πραγματοποιήθηκε συνάντηση της Συντονιστικής Επιτροπής Αγώνα για την υπεράσπιση του Κέντρου Υγείας Αγίου Μάρκου με τον Περιϕερειάρχη  Ιόνιων Νησιών.
Κοινή ήταν η αγωνία για το μέλλον του Κέντρου Υγείας και η διάθεση αγωνιστικής διεκδίκησης της καλής λειτουργίας της πρωτοβάθμιας και δευτεροβάθμιας υγειονομικής περίθαλψης σε όλο το νησί και την Περιϕέρεια.
Η Συντονιστική Επιτροπή Αγώνα καλεί όλους τους πολίτες στο επόμενο βήμα διαμαρτυρίας, τη Δευτέρα 1 Δεκεμβρίου στις 11:00 στο Γενικό Νοσοκομείο Κέρκυρας.
Η Συντονιστική Επιτροπή

New appeal for the Health Center
Written by KBR
29/11/14
                                                   
 PRESS RELEASE
On Tuesday, November 25, there was a meeting of the Coordinating Committee for the defense of St. Mark's Health Centre with the regional governor of the Ionian Islands.
Shared anxiety was expressed about the future of the health center and the need for more vigourous attention to ensuring proper delivery of primary and secondary health care across the island and the Region.
The Campaign Coordinating Committee calls on all citizens to continue and maintain their protest, on Monday, December 1st at 11:00 at the General Hospital of Corfu.
The Steering Committee

Late summer 1944 German forces withdraw from most of Greece, which is taken over by local partisans. Most of them are members of ELAS, the armed wing of the National Liberation Front, EAM, which included the Communist KKE party

October 1944 Allied forces, led by General Ronald Scobie, enter Athens, the last German-occupied area, on 13 October. Georgios Papandreou returns from exile with the Greek government 

2 December 1944 Rather than integrate ELAS into the new army, Papandreou and Scobie demand the disarmament of all guerrilla forces. Six members of the new cabinet resign in protest 

3 December 1944 Violence in Athens after 200,000 march against the demands. More than 28 are killed and hundreds are injured. The 37-day Dekemvrianá begins. Martial law is declared on 5 December 

January/February 1945 Gen Scobie agrees to a ceasefire in exchange for ELAS withdrawal. In February the Treaty of Varkiza is signed by all parties. ELAS troops leave Athens with 15,000 prisoners 

1945/46 Right-wing gangs kill more than 1,100 civilians, triggering civil war when government forces start battling the new Democratic Army of Greece (DSE), mainly former ELAS soldiers 

1948-49 DSE suffers a catastrophic defeat in the summer of 1948, with nearly 20,000 killed. In July 1949 Tito closes the Yugoslav border, denying DSE shelter. Ceasefire signed on 16 October 1949 

21 April 1967 Right-wing forces seize power in a coup d’état. The junta lasts until 1974. Only in 1982 are communist veterans who had fled overseas allowed to return to Greece

....Greece commemorates frequently and assiduously. The key dates after 1821 are 1864 (the first major growth of the Greek state with the acquisition of the Ionian islands); the black mark of 1922 (when Greece was ignominiously defeated by Turkey in its feeble attempt to invade Istanbul); “Ochi” day, October 28th, 1940, when Greece rejected the Italian threat of invasion; and another black mark in the form of the civil war after the second World War. More recently, 1974 saw the dismissal of the seven-year-old military dictatorship.
Some of these are marked by activities to keep remembrance alive: “Ochi” day is habitually celebrated in Thessaloniki, Greece’s second city, with a presidential address. The suppression of the communist partisans in the civil war is the subject of annual pilgrimages to places of mass execution (such as Lazareto - Λαζαρέτο - island in Corfu bay...see also). This year, the 40th anniversary of the student uprising that brought about the fall of the colonels was widely celebrated. All of this raises the questions: what is to be remembered? Why?.... 

Our shed backs on to Handsworth Park

ALLOTMENT PRICE HIKE WOULD BE FAIR AND AFFORDABLE
Tuesday, 4 November 2014
Dear Editor. No one likes to be confronted with a 300% price hike, which I note as you turn your guns on CEC's proposal to increase the rental on allotments (Issue 235).
I have had the pleasure of being an allotment holder in Warriston for more than 15 years and I, like many others, have wondered at the largesse of the Council for the rock bottom price of the allotment, and the gradual increase of services from rubbish clearance to toilets on the site.
Having an allotment is a hobby. After the proposed price rise the full price of a half-plot would be £155, less than a pint of beer a week. No doubt there are one or two allotment holders for whom the price rise would be too much but, in my experience, the vast majority are in employment or sturdy pensioners, like myself, and quite able to afford the new prices.
Many allotments are still full-size and a holder could halve the expense by switching to a smaller plot, which would also give someone else on the long waiting list a chance.
It is not fair to ask the Council Tax payers of Edinburgh to continue to subsidise a few fortunate allotment holders when so many other amenities, like the park at Scotland Yard which is used by hundreds every day, are crying out for additional expenditure. Yours sincerely, Hugh Lockhart (London Street)

A winter gale's blowing up

United States Senator Dianne Feinstein - a few good men

The study’s 20 findings and conclusions can be grouped into four central themes, each of which is supported extensively in the Executive Summary:
- The CIA’s 'enhanced interrogation techniques' were not effective.
- The CIA provided extensive inaccurate information about the operation of the program and its effectiveness to policymakers and the public.
- The CIA’s management of the program was inadequate and deeply flawed.
- The CIA program was far more brutal than the CIA represented to policymakers and the American public.

Few men realize that their life, the very essence of their character, their capabilities and their audacities, are only the expression of their belief in the safety of their surroundings. The courage, the composure, the confidence; the emotions and principles; every great and every insignificant thought belongs not to the individual but to the crowd: to the crowd that believes blindly in the irresistible force of its institutions and of its morals, in the power of its police and of its opinion. (Conrad (1897) An Outpost of Progress in Cosmopolis (London) Vol. 7, No.XVIII (Jun 1897), pp.608-908)

Jessup: You can't handle the truth! Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Lieutenant Weinberg? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago and you curse the Marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know, that Santiago's death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives! You don't want the truth, because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that wall. You need me on that wall. We use words like "honor", "code", "loyalty". We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it! I would rather you just said "thank you", and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon, and stand a post. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to!

"It's hypocritical. We drop bombs on Iraq and use drones in Afghanistan which do horrendous things most of us don't see while we're going ape about the horrible things ISIS is doing to hostages...and now it's coming out what the CIA were doing..."
"But you have to respect the US for publishing that"
"Of course"

Hi Simon and Lin. As you can see from the photo's the decking is nearly complete. I had to go back up to Sidari for more screws, if those boxes do truly hold 200 in each box, then I have used 2 full boxes and am half way through the 3rd with a few more lengths to go down and that is without putting screws down on every beam, its nice and firm. Sally has been by today for a look and thinks it looks really nice.

Decking in place, now the railings

I now need to do the railing posts before I finish the last few lengths of decking. I bought some 8mm galvanised studded bar for securing the posts as I couldn't find bolts long enough, also because of how bad the rot is on the posts I will be putting a pad on one side to act like a new piece of wood and then the other end of the bar will have the new or refurbished beam to go against. It's going to be a bit of a mission to get it pretty secure but we shall do our best...That's it for now really the weather is on and off rain just now so I work when I can between showers if needs be. Hope all is well. Mark

Hi Simon and Lin. I have attached a couple of photo's of the finished balcony...as you can see the railings are all up and together as best I can do as they are in a very poor state and may need to be replaced in a year or two. I have put on, but not attached to any of the wooden upright posts, some of the brackets to show you what I think should be done on the house side of the balcony but this would mean then I would have to screw a dome head coach bolt through the decking and on the other side of the railings. it would be the same as now there is one balcony's length of  decking there also...For aesthetic reasons all except the two front corner posts would be done and also they will give all of them a very strong feel. The one post certainly needs it. I think you know the one I mean on the outside front edge on the right. It had nothing below it, so could not be attached to any of the beams. I think you have enough brackets at the house to do this so I wouldn't have to buy any more just the dome head coach bolts...I think you have enough brackets at the house to do this so I wouldn't have to buy any more  just the dome head coach bolts...Sally came up with the idea and she actually likes them on there and says it finishes the job off, but I thought I would let you decide what you would prefer. Weather here just now is fab, cold clear. I wonder when the UK weather bomb will hit us. Never heard of that before.  Hope all is well with you both. Cheerio. Mark

First 2014 Christmas card - 'wishing you every happiness' Simon and Lin from Martin, Sandra and Adam

Steven Outram Somewhere Near

Adam and Jack in Lydbrook at the foot of Bell Hill - skip half full

Down the M5 to Gloucestershire

Ross-on-Wye

Linda and Martin at Rock Cottage in November

The view through the window of Rock Cottage looking down the village towards Courtfield beyond the Wye

Sandra painting in the hall

Next steps?

Can anyone help Rehan, PhD student in Medical Sciences? He is looking for 18-25 and 60-70 year-old recreationally active, healthy male volunteers for a research study on the increase in forearm blood flow that occurs with handgrip exercise. The study is being carried out within the University's Medical School under the supervision of Professor Janice Marshall and Dr Clare Ray. If you would like to participate and find out how cardiovascular measurements are made for scientific research, please contact Rehan Junejo: rtj252@bham.ac.uk

With Rehan Junejo

• Performing a maintained handgrip contraction until exhaustion with your dominant hand at 100% of your maximum on 2 occasions on each experiment visit.
• Recording of Heart Rate and Blood Pressure via a small cuff on a finger of your non exercising hand (non invasive procedure).
• Recording of Oxygen uptake at muscular level in your exercising arm (non invasive procedure).
• Recording blood oxygen concentrations from the skin in some of the experiments (non invasive procedure).
• Blood flow recording in the exercising arm – this involves inflating two blood pressure cuffs at roughly the same time.  A smaller (child size) cuff will be inflated around your wrist and a regular (adult size) cuff will be inflated around your upper arm. Each inflation lasts for a few seconds.  The middle part of your forearm will have a light, thin tube wrapped around it to record blood flow to the arm (non invasive procedure).
All visits last approximately 1 hour.

Despite the producers citing the presence of an adviser from the Comanche Nation, some debated the advisability of casting of Depp as a Native American and whether the film would present a positive and accurate representation of the Comanche. Depp has stated he believes he has Native American ancestry, possibly from a great-grandmother. He has said that he considered the role a personal attempt "to try to right the wrongs of the past", in reference to portrayals of Native American culture in the media. Todd McDaniels, a linguist at the Comanche Nation College, commented favorably on Depp's attempts to speak the Comanche language, which has 25 to 30 living native speakers. “The words were there, the pronunciation was shaky, but adequate.

*** *** ***
A few days back I had one of my regular meetings devoted to putting the world to rights. Dave Church sometimes comes to have a pint with me at the Old Joint Stock in St Phillips Square, Birmingham, or I go to Walsall to have pint with him at the old Court House, St Matthew's Hall. Many years ago - around 1975 - when he was a left wing councillor Dave and fellow councillors from Walsall listened to a lecture I gave on 'corporate management in local government'. It was a convivial occasion but after my talk was over and we were having a drink at the bar Dave and I were chatting
"Good lecture, Simon. Very interesting. But come the revolution it's up against the wall for you"

Dave and Simon at St Matthew's Hall, Walsall (photo: Dave Yates)

A pamphlet from KKE

5th (Scots) Parachute Battalion, 2nd Parachute Brigade, fighting ELAS in Athens, 18 December 1944 (photo: Powell-Davies (Lt), No 2 Army Film & Photographic Unit)

Lt. Franck Brinsolaro   Officer Clarissa Jean-Philippe   Officer Ahmed Merabet

Few men realize that their life, the very essence of their character, their capabilities and their audacities, are only the expression of their belief in the safety of their surroundings. The courage, the composure, the confidence; the emotions and principles; every great and every insignificant thought belongs not to the individual but to the crowd: to the crowd that believes blindly in the irresistible force of its institutions and of its morals, in the power of its police and of its opinion. (Conrad, An Outpost of Progress in Cosmopolis (London) Vol. 7, No.XVIII (Jun 1897), p.611)

Article in Dragoumanos ~ 12 Jan 2015 (English translation below)
Σε όλο τον κόσμο, και σίγουρα σε ολόκληρο to Twitter, οι άνθρωποι δείχνουν την αλληλεγγύη με τους δολοφονηθέντες δημοσιογράφους του σατιρικού γαλλικού περιοδικού Charlie Hebdo, διακηρύσσοντας σε μαύρο και άσπρο ότι μοιράζονται πάρα πολύ τις τιμές που αποδόθηκαν στους γελοιογράφους που σκοτώθηκαν. Συναισθηματικά και ηθικά είμαι απόλυτα με την εν λόγω συλλογική ηθική – αλλά στην πραγματικότητα εγώ και σχεδόν όλοι όσοι δηλώνονουν την αλληλεγγύη τους δεν είναι «Τσάρλι», γιατί απλά δεν έχουν το θάρρος τους.
Εξωφρενικά και – υπό το φως του βάρβαρου τέλους τους – από αμέλεια γενναίος. Το είδος του απίστευτα θαρραλέου ανθρώπου που πραγματικά αλλάζει τον κόσμο. Όπως σημειώνει ο Τζορτζ Μπέρναρντ Σο, ο «λογικός άνθρωπος προσαρμόζει τον εαυτό του στον κόσμο, ενώ ο παράλογος άνθρωπος επιμένει να προσπαθεί να προσαρμόσει τον κόσμο στον εαυτό του“, και ως εκ τούτου, «όλη η πρόοδος εξαρτάται από τον παράλογο άνθρωπο“. Ο Charlie Hebdo ήταν ο παράλογος άνθρωπος. Έδωσε τη μάχη, που έχει σε μεγάλο βαθμό αφεθεί στην αστυνομία και στις υπηρεσίες ασφαλείας.
Είναι ένα εύκολο πράγμα να διακηρύξει κάποιος την αλληλεγγύη μετά τη δολοφονία τους και αυτό είναι συγκινητικό να βλέπει κανείς μια τέτοια συλλογική απάντηση. Αλλά στο τέλος – όπως και τόσα άλλα παραδείγματα hashtag ακτιβισμού, όπως το #bringbackourgirls η εκστρατεία εναντίον των απαχθέντων Νιγηριανών μαθητών- δεν θα κάνει τη διαφορά, εκτός από το να μας κάνει να νιώθουμε καλύτερα. Κάποιοι βγήκαν στους δρόμους, αλλά οι περισσότεροι από αυτούς που δηλώνουν ότι είναι Charlie το έκανε αυτό μέσα από την ασφάλεια ενός κοινωνικού απολογισμού των μέσων ενημέρωσης. Εγώ δεν τους επικρίνω για την επιθυμία να κάνουν αυτό. Απλά, δεν νομίζω ότι οι περισσότεροι από εμάς έχουν κερδίσει αυτό το δικαίωμα.
Πολλοί, αν όχι οι περισσότεροι, δημοσιογράφοι αυτο λογο κρίνονται. Θα στηρίξουν την δημοσίευση εικόνων που ξέρουν πως θα θέσει σε σοβαρό κίνδυνο τον εαυτό τους ή την οργάνωσή τους – και μετά τα γεγονότα αυτής της εβδομάδας μπορεί κανείς να τους κατηγορήσει δύσκολα; Οι εταιρείες έχουν καθήκον μέριμνας για το προσωπικό τους και οι άνθρωποι έχουν καθήκον να φροντίζουν τον εαυτό τους και τις οικογένειές τους.
Είναι επίσης λογικό να μην δίνει κανείς περιττές αφορμές. Αλλά θα ήταν ανέντιμο για τους περισσότερους συγγραφείς και σκιτσογράφους να ισχυρίζονται ότι θα χλευάσουν πρόθυμα τον προφήτη Μωάμεθ, όπως θα έκαναν και για τον Ιησού. Μπορώ να εκφράζω τη λύπη μου για το γεγονός ότι τα μέσα μαζικής ενημέρωσης φοβούνται να δημοσιεύσουν μια επιθετική γελοιογραφία του προφήτη, αλλά θα ήθελα πραγματικά μία σε κάθε άρθρο που έγραψα; Γιατί παρ όλα τα γενναία μας λόγια για το πώς θα κερδίσει η ελευθερία, για το πώς δεν μπορούν να φιμώσουν σάτιρα, η σάτιρα φιμώθηκε.
Για να είσαι ο Τσάρλι θα πρέπει να είσαι έτοιμος να αψηφήσεις τις πραγματικές απειλές θανάτου και επιθέσεις με βόμβες μολότοφ. Να επιμείνετε, όπως οι δημοσιογράφοι που δολοφονήθηκαν, εν όψει των δεδομένων κινδύνων για τη ζωή σας, ενώ εργάζεστε υπό αστυνομική προστασία (οι νεκροί περιλαμβάνουν δύο αξιωματικούς). Να συνεχίσεις να δημοσιεύεις γελοιογραφίες και ανέκδοτα που ξέρετε ότι θα πυροδοτήσουν εκείνα τα άτομα που χρειάζονται μόνο λίγο υποκίνηση για να σκοτώσουν. Απαιτείται να αγαπάτε τη ζωή σας και τους φόβους για την οικογένειά σας λιγότερο από την απόλυτη αρχή της ελευθερίας. Πρέπει να είστε τόσο αποφασισμένοι να πολεμήσετε το φασισμό των φονταμενταλιστών που σας κρατούν από το να δημοσιεύσετε , όταν η ορθολογική σκέψη σας λέει να σταματήσετε. Αυτοί οι άνθρωποι δεν ήταν μόνο σατιρικοί. Ήταν μαχητές της ελευθερίας που εσκεμμένα προκαλούσαν έναν εχθρό που ήξεραν να είναι θανατηφόρος.
Κάθε χρόνο δεκάδες δημοσιογράφοι σκοτώνονται και πολλοί άλλοι τραυματίζονται εκτιθέμενοι στα πιο επικίνδυνα μέρη του κόσμου, εκθέτοντας κτηνωδία, εγκλήματα πολέμου και την αδικίας. Πέρυσι, 66 εργαζόμενοι στα μέσα ενημέρωσης έχασαν τη ζωή τους, σύμφωνα με τους Δημοσιογράφους Χωρίς Σύνορα– το ένα τρίτο από αυτούς στη Συρία και την Ουκρανία. Αυτοί οι άνθρωποι και κάποιοι πιο τυχεροί συνάδελφοί τους θα μπορούσαν να διεκδικήσουν το θάρρος να είναι ο Τσάρλι – αν και ούτε ακόμη και αυτοί θα τολμούσαν να είναι τόσο ανοιχτά προκλητικοί και οι περισσότεροι, πολύ σωστά, καταβάλουν κάθε δυνατή προσπάθεια για να ελαχιστοποιηθεί ο κίνδυνος για τους εαυτούς τους.
Αλλά εμείς οι υπόλοιποι, σαν εμένα, που κάθονται με ασφάλεια σε ένα γραφείο στη Δυτική Ευρώπη – ή όλοι όσοι σε άλλα επαγγέλματα που ποτέ δεν θα προτίθενται να λάβουν το είδος των κινδύνων που αυτοί οι Γάλλοι δημοσιογράφοι πήραν καθημερινά – δεν είμαστε Τσάρλι. Είμαστε απλά χαρούμενοι ότι κάποιος άλλος είχε το θάρρος να είναι.

Je ne suis pas Charlie. Δεν είμαι ο Τσάρλι, δεν είμαι αρκετά γενναίος

Je ne suis pas Charlie. I'm not Charlie, I'm not brave enough. All over the world, and certainly around to Twitter, people show solidarity with the murdered journalists of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, proclaiming in black and white that share too the values ​​attributed to cartoonists killed. Emotionally and morally I am totally with that collective morality - but in fact I disown their solidarity. I am not 'Charlie' because I just do not have the courage.
Wildly and - in light of the brutal end - recklessly brave. The kind of incredibly courageous people who really changed the world. As noted by George Bernard Shaw, the 'reasonable man adapts himself to the world, while the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself,' and therefore 'all progress depends on the unreasonable man.' Charlie Hebdo was the unreasonable man. He engaged in a battle which has largely been left to the police* and security services.
It is an easy thing to proclaim a solidarity after the murder and it is heartwarming to see such a collective response. But in the end - like so many other examples of hashtag activism, like #BringBackOurGirls campaign against Nigeria's abducted students - will not make a difference, except to make us feel better. Some took to the streets, but most of those who say they are Charlie did this through the security of a social media account. I do not criticize them for wanting to do this. I just do not think that most of us have earned that right.

I was in Trafalgar Square last Thursday; parked my bicycle in the wet to gaze

Many, if not all, journalists will resist the publication of images they know will seriously endanger themselves or their organisation - and after the events of this week can one blame them? Companies have a duty of care for their staff and people have a duty to care for themselves and their families.
It also makes sense, on some occasions, not to give in. But it would be dishonest to claim that most writers and cartoonists will willingly mock the Prophet Muhammad, as they have Jesus. Should I regret the fact that the media are afraid to publish an offensive cartoon of prophet, Would I really like one in every article I wrote? Because for all our brave words about how to win freedom; about how satire cannot be silenced, it has been.
To be Charlie I should be ready to defy actual death threats and attacks with Molotov cocktails; should insist on continuing to work, as did the murdered journalists, despite the availability of public information about their lives; to continue under police protection (the dead include two officers); to continue to publish cartoons and jokes that you know will trigger those individuals who need just a small incitement to kill; to love your life and fears for your family less than the absolute principle of freedom. You must be utterly determined to fight fascism fundamentalists, keeping to your post when rational thought tells you to stop. These people were not only satirical; they were freedom fighters who deliberately confronted an enemy they knew could kill them.
Every year dozens of journalists are killed and many others injured as bystanders in the most dangerous parts of the world, while exposing brutality, war crimes and injustice. Last year, 66 media workers were killed, according to Reporters Without Borders - one third of them in Syria and Ukraine. These people and some more fortunate colleagues could claim the courage to be Charlie - although not even they dared to be so openly provocative, and most rightly make every effort to minimise risk to themselves while continuing to work.
But the rest of us, like me, sitting safely in an office in Western Europe - or all those in other professions - would never intend to take the kind of risks these French journalists took daily - we'renotCharlie. We are just happy someone else had the courage to be.

When up to a dozen world leaders and roughly 1.5 million people gathered in Paris on Sunday to mourn the murder of 10 editors and cartoonists of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and seven other people by three French-born Islamic radicals, they wanted to demonstrate that Europe will always embrace liberal and tolerant values.
But the more telling event may turn out to be a counter-rally that took place at a 17th-century town hall in Beaucaire, France, that was led by Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Front. In Beaucaire, the crowd ended Le Pen’s rally by singing the French national anthem and chanting, “This is our home.”
Le Pen is at the forefront of a European-wide nationalist resurgence — one that wants to evict from their homelands people they view as Muslim subversives. She and other far-right nationalists are seizing on some legitimate worries about Islamic militancy — 10,000 soldiers are now deployed in France as a safety measure — in order to label all Muslims as hostile to traditional European cultural and religious values. Le Pen herself has likened their presence to the Nazi occupation of France....

Waseem, Carol, Denise, Hendrina, Mahmood, Mike, John, Ruth, Jimoh, Linda, Simon & Oscar dog (photo: Waseem Zaffar)

• Jill Darby  Jill Darby Love this picture. Absolutely heartwarming. xxxxxxxxxx For all my friends who don't live in Brum "THIS PHOTO REPRESENTS REAL LIFE IN BIRMINGHAM - WORKING TOGETHER FOR A BETTER QUALITY OF LIFE FOR ALL" 

  12 January at 15:34 · Unlike · 2
• Waseem Zaffar Totally agree Jill Darby

  12 January at 15:39 · Unlike · 1
• Maxine Blackstock Donaldson It was a good look

  12 January at 17:30 · Unlike · 1
• Joanna Benson Someone should send this to that lummox on Fox News.

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• Tony Fox We're just the same in Sparkhill and Cannon Hill - good neighbours!

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Advice from the allotments Section at Birmingham City Council suggests it takes 3 years to get a new allotment in order, but that's if you are already skilled and organised.

I and Lin and now my waged help, Winnie, have been digging over and over, weeding weeding weeding (dragging out those sinuous creeping white couch grass rhizomes especially), laying paths, cutting out and pegging down weed suppressant on unsown soil, to get closer to something workable on this 200 square meter plot.

Potatoes planted in a bed dug over and over, weeded; new topsoil and compost raked in; all easily worked from surrounding paths

I love it. But this is not a 'working man's' allotment from which i can proudly feed my family - the ideal of small holdings whose legislative protection grows weaker by the year. Mine is a hobby plot - a word I dislike, a fact I accept; as a man seven generations from the land, I calculate my family have been townspeople since my ancestor Samuel Lees in Oldham became an iron master, then cotton mill owner, in the early years of the Industrial Revolution. True my stepfather could grow vegetables in large numbers and my grandmother, half-abandoned metropolitan life to start the dairy farm where I was born in March 1942 and spent many childhood months.

Mill End: Simon on Gypsy, Bar on the haywain

I can't say I'd rather my allotment wasn't just a hobby. That's silly. I don't quite know what I was thinking. I suppose I think of it more as an experiment; a test even.

January 2007 - a picture in The Birmingham Evening Mail"When will the company who bought this green space in Birmingham and built on a third of it lay out the allotments that were part of planning gain deal agreed with Birmingham City Council?"

A hobby is a regular activity done for pleasure during one's leisure time. Campaigning to stop the site being built over and, after over a decade, getting the opportunity to work this plot, has hardly been a leisured activity. I've never been that keen on the idea of dividing activities into ones that are leisure, and one's that aren't. I've a distaste for what that over-worked distinction says about 'work'.

Plot 14 in 2010

I want Plot 14 - one Lin and I chose when the Victoria Jubilee Allotments opened in June 2010 - to prosper. I want it fecund, thriving - a source of pride and good food.
I've invested money on help, on topsoil, on compost to get the ground closer to how I think it needs to be and all the time I'm learning, with help from other plot-holders far better than me at growing their own - especially my friends Ziggi with her plot in north London and Vanley with his on the Victoria Jubilee, just a few yards away.

Garlic tops showing; a sprinkle of potash to rake in

I'm going to make this work but I'm reminded of Douglas Adam's remark "Flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss" or Winston Churchill saying 'success involves persevering from one failure to the next', The gardening guide books I read are unhelpful. They begin at a point I'm still striving to reach. They hardly mention soil filled with rubbish as well as stones, snails, slugs, onion fly, pigeons, and human pilferers - the ones that stole my garlic last year! How I do not envy new plot holders as inexperienced as I, trying to get vegetables to grow on adjoining plots that are still as mine was in four and half years ago.

Stones continue to come out of the soil at every dig....

....but they never appear in the books

...and this worthy tutor teaches me more or less nothing about how to dig my plot

Dear Clive.  Happy New Year 2015.  I hope you're well. I've a favour to ask. Since 2010 I have struggled to get my allotment working. You’d not expect less when I’ve invested so much in getting it in the first place. My favour is also a question. We have by all accounts rather uneven topsoil on the VJA. I know that allotments officers on the council were hesitant about accepting the new plots from Persimmon under the S106A of 2004 because the land was not adequately prepared by the developer. Those of us pressing to get the allotments up and running pressed the council to let people start gardening. A minority of plot holders are doing pretty well but all I’ve spoken to admit they’ve had to do a lot of work getting the soil manageable and productive. It is full of stones, bricks, and other debris, as well as chunks of clay with - in some places - ground heavily compressed by building plant machinery. A lot of us have invested in manure, compost and extra topsoil. I would - now that I am beginning to feel more in control - be so grateful for someone coming to look at the soil on my plot to give me an assessment and tell me the best way to continue improving it. All the guide books speak of adding nutrients and getting a balance between acid and alkali, but I’m in the dark as to the starting point on soil composition. It would be great if someone with much more experience and knowledge than I could drop over and give my plot soil an assessment and diagnosis with suggestions as to the what would now be the best treatment to get healthy crops. Would this be possible? Best wishes Simon 

Simon. An experienced allotment holder visited your site and had a good look round, concentrating on the soil structure. Some plots were thriving, some were struggling and some were vacant and overgrown - the overgrown plots obviously were able to support plant life! You can test the acidity of soil [test kits available at DIY/ Nursery] - often the only balance used is lime for the brassicas. The answer to improving the plot - clear rough debris - stones etc [stones can be buried to provide drainage] Clay - working in compost - leaf mould is one of best ways - over wintering will help here. Adding as much rotted compost/manure is great. Leave on surface for a while then dig in [note some crops do not like fresh manure!] You could import topsoil but beware it could include weeds etc even Japanese knot weed! Perseverance is needed. Hope this helps. Best wishes, Clive

A potato from the kitchen cupboard

Aristeidis Metallinos, Ano Korakiana's laic sculptor, depicts the EEC (EOK) as a broody chimaera

Tsipras appears to be naively idealistic, innocent, ingenuous and transparent, but he needs to be secretive, cunning and dishonest to succeed in the minefield he has created. As Maurice Manning once said of Garret FitzGerald, it is difficult to trust someone who pours a glass of wine without reading the label on the bottle. Tsipras wants to do the impossible, but if he is to succeed as a political leader he must learn the art of the possible and acquire the killer instinct.

Richard. I recall writing this in a paper published in the 90s about political skill in civil servants and politicians.....The constant negotiation of this moral minefield is part of life and certainly part of government. An additional layer of complexity is added to these circumstances by the fact that in families, as indeed in government, many people recognise the presence of these dynamics and may actually impart “in confidence”, something intended to be passed on. A process of negotiation is occurring where one person appears to be trusting another to risk being untrustworthy. The novelist Iain McEwan describes public figures who move around in this moral maze by navigating the complicated channels that run between truth and lying: 'with sure instincts while retaining a large measure of dignity. Only occasionally, as a consequence of tactical error, was it necessary to lie significantly, or tell an important truth. Mostly it was sure-footed scampering between the two extremes. Wasn’t the interior life much the same?’  (McEwan 1988:182)....McEwan captures the moral nimbleness that accompanies grown-up behaviour - public and private - where corruption and probity are proximate rather than polar and, where rules are at best casuitical; maintaining integrity requires wit.  What I struck me about Iain McEwan’s words is that self-query 'Wasn’t the interior life much the same?’  My tolerance of politicians about whom you are much more judgemental (I think) is that politics - certainly the politics of government - is that it’s so like my internal life and I suggest I’m not alone in that. Best, Simon 

Richard: You mean you lie to yourself and let not your right hand know....? 

Simon: That’s what Iain McEwan is suggesting. I care about the environment and do many things that harm it. I shop at supermarkets while praising the survival of small shops. I think lascivious thoughts about other women. The list of my moral inconsistencies is endless and I don’t let them worry me or lessen my expressions of concern about the sins of my fellows.
My interior life is a parliament of debate with every now and then a rare internal argument from which the whips are withdrawn and I have a vote in which I must truly interrogate my conscience - but most of the time I’m bladerunning ‘the complicated channels that run between truth and lying”.
I think you have so hit the spot when saying how Tspiras must be. The killer instinct etc. Do you think he has it? Could he grow into it? Is his partner going to help? Peristera Batziaka. ‘Tough cookie”? This is riveting. S 

R: I don't have that problem/advantage. I never argue or debate with myself. I am conscience-free when I wake, and the same when I go to sleep. Thanks for the Batziaka article - interesting that "peristera" means "pigeon" or "turtle-dove". R 

S: 'Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.'Matt 10:16"I never argue or debate with myself. I am conscience-free when I wake, and the same when I go to sleep”. People will make pilgrimages to seek your advice - the sage of Perithia. You make me think of that other writer Nikos Kazantzakis “I hope nothing. I fear nothing. I am free. This is true happiness: to have no ambition and to work like a horse as if you had every ambition. To live far from men, not to need them and yet to love them. To have the stars above, the land to your left and the sea to your right and to realise of a sudden that in your heart, life has accomplished its final miracle: it has become a fairy tale.”  S

In other words just 10.6% of the €254 billion funds 'state operating needs'

My grandson and I have been working the allotment

"Here’s a thing, Oliver. Suppose I get this allotment producing a regular supply of vegetables. Suppose I sort out my confusion about whether this is a serious exercise in producing healthy and tasty food, if not cheap; that this is not an allotment in the old sense – the means by which a working man may feed his family including you – but a hobby, a leisure activity that maintains my mental health and physical shape. Suppose I sort all that out by spending money on soil improvement and paying Winnie to help work the plot with me, there’s yet another challenge. What do I do with what I grow. Does your nan cook it? All of it? Do I give it away? Some of it? How do I grow and supply what I grow in a way that gets things to the table in the right way, instead of producing gluts. As well as growing things - my main purpose - do I have to master the art of storing things? Preserving fruit and pickling veg? That’s a whole other aspect of the project, requiring crafts as tricky to learn to do well as those I’m ever so slowly learning about cultivation. What do you think? While you're thinking about this put some more water in the kettle"

 

• Nick Booth "can you grow ice cream?

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• Mickey Lowe My God what a lucky little tyke that is to be with you and learning all the time! Bless ya both !!

  19 hrs · Like
• Mickey Lowe Any extras you grow could surely go to any food bank or homeless shelter!! 

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• Tony Jacks Excuse the language Simon, but that is an awful lot of bloody thinking.

  19 hrs · Like
• Simon Baddeley Of course. Just insert the liquid and the ice crystals grow in it

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• Ann Marie Gallagher There is a super project called the Real Junk Food Cafe - cook up surplus food - Payl pay as u feel - or u could give to a local place of welcome ?

  19 hrs · Unlike · 1
• Simon Baddeley A friend has just sent me a message...'Re your allotment quandaries ... I'd been going for a while before i got the hang of preserving. I have to say that its one of the things that is most exhausting. After working at the allotment i drag the produce home and have to start working again to prepare it for the freezer/pickling/chutneying etc. It adds a whole other level. And it makes giving stuff away even more joyful at the time of inevitable gluts - you will not be able to avoid gluts.There are plenty of books about preserving.' But why not just go to Fortnums or Harrods' Food Hall next time in London. It's cheaper in the end. Apple and Mint Chutney £4.95 a jar. Off my allotment the same would cost nothing in materials and around £150 in labour (:))...and you want me to give that away to the poor?

  19 hrs · Edited · Like
• Sue Tsirigoti Your friend is right! we are sooo lucky not to be in a "needs must" time.. well not much anyway. There is a great deal of pleasure in growing and eating ones own produce and the sad thing is at the time you havea glut so does everyone else too! Well here at least where we all have gardens of varying sizes. Even the effort of harvesting and blanching ready for the freezer is so too much for me once summer season has started. I remember my mother salting beans because we of course didnt have freezers. I would have to buy a new freezer to accommodate all our produce and even then we would be struggling to eeat it all before the next crop next year. At least some of it oes to the chickens which continue with the circle f life and turn it into eggs and chicken soup, or Kokoros pastistada. It is the eternal question isnt it?

  18 hrs · Unlike · 2
• Zena Phillips I was lucky. It was my own garden so it included fruit trees and soft fruits. All my surplus requirements went to the village shop. We split the proceeds half and half. Sometimes there were people waiting for me to arrive because they knew stuff had been harvested a maximum of half an hour before I got there. I never made a fortune but it covered next year's seeds and needs.

  18 hrs · Unlike · 3
• Andy Mabbett That looks like a proper shed.

  15 hrs · Unlike · 1
• Simon Baddeley Got in on freecycle. Had to cut two panels in half to get them in the van! I recovered the roof, added the veranda and rain gutters and downpipes. https://flic.kr/p/a5qBJ7 Got the slabs after a neighbour's front-yard make-over. https://flic.kr/p/a5qBJ7
  

  
  

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  13 hrs · Like · 3 · Remove Preview
• Poppy Brady Are you sure you haven't tied Oliver to that chair?! And who sits on the chairs on the tables?

  11 hrs · Unlike · 1
• Simon Baddeley How else can I get anyone to listen to me (:))

  11 hrs · Like · 3
• Paul McGovern I think you should let Oliver take over and take up fishing x

  4 hrs · Unlike · 1
• Maureen Carter I keep a log of the produce i use and give away for every year and the chutneys i produce and its quite amazing how much you do produce. It takes a few extra minutes daily but you can then see what was productive to grow and what wasnt worth the effort but it does at the end of the day , depends on the weather. I this winter didnt grow enough winter greens but it is a very big learning curve. The neighbours quite happily look after my plot when i go away as they pick and use the produce !

  1 hr · Unlike · 1

• 39 mins · Like
• Aftab Rahman What a lovely picture Simon Baddeley - we could do something this summer. We could cook on a weekend and I will bring my daughters along. What do you think Helga Edstrom? I also know a few more people on the allotment, that will join in.

  27 mins · Unlike · 2
• Simon Baddeley Yes!

  26 mins · Like · 1
• Aftab Rahman Great....

  25 mins · Unlike · 1
• Zena Phillips This is sounding excellent.

  18 mins · Unlike · 1
• Aftab Rahman Zena we will keep you posted...

  11 mins · Unlike · 2

I've invested in topsoil and compost; dropped off in builder's bags from the lane at the top of my allotment. When needed Ollie and I barrow it down to the bed we're working on.

We passed Vanley on the way down to Plot 14 yesterday. I haven't seen him for a while. Oliver strolled on with Oscar on his lead. I reflected on my hopes and cares for the plot.
"The paths are much wider"
"Yes. And when you want you can always make your beds larger and thin the paths again"
"This March is going to be important. That's when I'll do a lot of planting, now I've done more weeding and digging over and added in more compost and top-soil...but both plots on either side of me have been abandoned"
"They may turn up when the weather gets better"
"Yes but I wish I had plots next to me that were thriving. There are so many plots that people have given up on after covering them with bits of wood and plastic and....someone came for three weekends in August last year and then disappeared. That other covered the plot with polythene last November but hasn't checked in since. I keep putting her weed suppressor back in place but the wind is always..."
"Allotments are a metaphor for life"

Oliver, Winnie and her son, Dennis

Dennis and Oliver moving earth

There have been big winds rising. How they gust across this dishevelled site, showing scant respect for structures not well secured, tattering plastic covers, blowing over poly-tunnels...

...shifting one greenhouse onto a neighbour's plot; getting under people's weed suppressing fabric; blowing it around until it's in shreds. On Plot 14 everything's tied, pegged or weighted down.

The bottom bed was collecting water, producing lots of mud. To get it workable I dug a trench at its end. Oliver and I filled it with rubble. Splash! Splash!

I barrowed the earth I'd shovelled out to the top of the plot; brought back lighter topsoil and good compost to mix in the earth I'd forked over and weeded yet again.

After removing its fabric, I covered the fly-tipped bed-frame I dragged to the site yesterday with insect netting - Veggiemesh - using my gun tacker.

On a nearby bed I've planted parsnip seeds. I've done this twice without success, so here goes again but with more compost and bed preparing. I bought a resistant strain of seeds. Archer.  Have I done this right? I'm already thinking I should have waited for warmer weather despite the Feb plant packet advice. Perhaps as a safeguard I should try germinating the parsnip seeds I've got left on a damp kitchen towel in the conservatory.

As it is I checked instructions on depth and spacing - but I wonder how much to trust the retailer's instructions. I semi-sprinkled the small disc-like seeds along rows. The instructions - read in several places as well as from the packet  - say that parsnips dislike transplanting, so these are not to be cultivated in my frame-covered seedbed then moved. What I should expect to do is to thin the sprouted plants and expect to harvest something around Christmas or beyond. I'm slowly realising that there's no substitute I've found for the time it takes to make judgements based on experience I've only just begun to acquire.

The plot now- this bed ready for potatoes

The plot 3 years ago

Starting on a shed from Simon Baddeley on Vimeo - 2010

I've finally found a book on gardening that I like. I was told about it by Barry on Facebook - a veteran pro gardener....

 'Simon. Look for a book called “ Gardeners Earth“ by Dr Stanley Whitehead. I had a copy for horti exams I had to do yearsssss ago. I managed to “keep“ it LOL'

• 24 February at 19:59 · Like
• Simon Baddeley I've just bought an old library copy off Amazon

  24 February at 20:06 · Like · 1
• Barry Luckhurst I've had mine for yearrrrrsss. And I've not finished yet. See what you think. That will tell you all about it mate LOL.

  24 February at 20:10 · Unlike · 1
• Simon Baddeley Re colloidal activity - lots of soil turning into muddy water with stones

  24 February at 20:11 · Like
• Barry Luckhurst Wen u get. Ur copy. It will tell you all about the colloids in clay. Sand. And loams. You will see when you get to grips with it, how much these pillocks on gardeners world and all the rest of programmes, do not hav a clue.
  

  Studying Gardener's Earth, Stanley B. Whitehead (Dent:London 1945) with Hannah

**** **** ****
Even so we miss beloved Greece....in memory land...an Easter Sunday five years ago...a lamb roast at Mark's and Sally’s. At one in the afternoon, having been up until nearly four the same morning enjoying food – singing and conversation with our dear neighbours, we strolled down Democracy Street. The spitted lamb was turning over a bed of charcoal. Our assembly came from most parts of the UK, some long inhabitants of the island – citizens - others like us still new and some visitors, one in Corfu for the first time. Angie and Martin we’d met before but I learned they knew Richard Hill’s part of the world, and indeed, when I mentioned his address, knew his street. I explained Richard’s craft and the finely re-carved roach I was so looking forward to holding in my hands in May. We came onto Pompey and the writer Graham Hurley who’s given me so much pleasure.

The view from the balcony - greenery to the blue Kerkyra sea and the mainland mountains in their distant detail, while behind us the three crags, on one of which some lads had raised a flag – not the patrida, because it was red and yellow, but we couldn’t make out the pattern. “Could ever a village be better placed?” Swallows darted among the houses. Our company spread across two tables on the balcony; smoke from the roasting lamb full of rosemary rising upwards; cheerful conversation. We ate olive-oiled pitta bread from a barbeque, helping ourselves from dishes of pasta mixed with glazed carrots and sausages; dressed salad; small roasted fowl to be eaten delicately. “This is just the first course" reminded Sally. There was wine, which could be diluted with ice and sipped for hours; also beer and water. Then the lamb – I honoured with half the head. “I’ve never seen anyone trying to eat a lamb’s head with a knife and fork”. True the only way to tease the meat from a skull is to pick it up and feed in the old way.
EASTER LAMB ROAST IN ANO KORAKIANA from Simon Baddeley on Vimeo.
But Angela Papageorgiou in Corfu shares this picture, tagged : "What was that about wishing you were here"?

Southerly gale on the Old Fort, Ormos Garitsas  ~ Friday 6th March

**** **** ****
Catching the 9.10 train to London is altogether a fussier business than the purposeful 7.30 that goes non-stop to London and is full of serious commuters. This is my second visit to London carrying films and tapes from the Out of Town archive for the first stage of turning them into broadcasts.

Leaving New Street for Euston

It doesn’t help that I’m carting an unwieldy old suitcase weighing over 20 kilos containing eleven episodes of ‘Out of Town’ – rusty film cans of 16mm location film with, cello-taped to them, my stepfather’s commentary as recorded in his studio ‘shed’ at the time of broadcast – over forty years ago. I needed a taxi to New Street. It didn’t arrive quite on time. The traffic after eight was heavy – parents to school, commuters into the city centre – congestion I’d slide by on my bicycle, but for this freighted journey I’m a penguin ashore. Desultory chat with the young driver; peering at my watch. I got a receipt at the drop-off.
“Keep receipts” says Lin “If you ever make any money from this I’ll need it for your tax return”
At New Street it’s a literal drag from the drop-off to the platform. A Virgin platform helper consulted his tablet.
“The 9.10 is coming in the wrong way round. Your coach will be up that way”
The platform was crowded. Travellers for Coventry and International. My train arrived. I trudged towards Coach D. My guide was swiftly behind me, grabbed the hefty case to the right door and heaved it on board for me.
By Coventry I was in an almost empty carriage. At Euston I’ll hope to find a trolley and another taxi to Deluxe Soho.

Dear Mark. As arranged I expect to be with Deluxe Soho around 11.00 this Wednesday morning with a second batch of ‘Out of Town’ film and tapes. Looking forward to seeing you again. I shall come to Mearde Street. Best wishes, Simon 

Morning Simon. I'm actually in meetings, so please ask for my colleague Graham Jones, who will make you a nice cup of tea upon arrival. I will hopefully see you a bit later. All the best, Mark 

I have taken up Christopher Perry’s offer. We’ve signed a witnessed contract. Big Centre TV -  on air in Birmingham and the Black Country Saturday Feb 28th  - will pay for processing the films and tapes in the archive I’ve been looking after these last few years, in return for being able to broadcast some of them.

At Deluxe Soho with eleven film-tape pairs for digitising

This deal includes showing episodes from the Delta box-sets that contain over fifty complete easily broadcastable episodes of Out of Town. This gives us time for the old archive film to be digitised in London by Deluxe Soho and brought to Walsall Studio School for the key work of turning it into broadcasts – a process that requires film and sound to be synchronised, titles and credits to be inserted along with the Southern Television logo at start and finish, and - probably the biggest challenge - editing decisions made about what do with the sequences of Jack’s commentary where we have his voice but no picture. We’ll almost certainly remove him talking about an unseen object on the table in his studio ‘shed’ hoping to create sensible transitions from his commentary in the ‘shed’ to the location film. I’ve enjoyed quite a lot of chat on Facebook– nearly 900 members now – about what images to insert in the ‘shed’ sequences; stills from the episode itself, silent moving film from the episode, portraits of Jack – stills and moving. One helpful adviser even dubbed my stepfather’s imageless commentary onto a sequence clipped from a different episode where the studio is shown. It fooled a few people including me until after a few seconds I spotted the subterfuge.
From Euston where I had further help - a trolley for the hefty case from the platform to concourse and a station uniform to guide me to the lift that took us down to a taxi. The taxi took me to the centre of Soho, to Meard Street, where I lugged the case into Marie Fieldman's workroom at Deluxe Soho.

With Marie Fieldman starting work on the next Out of Town batch

Euston Road - a phone booth in old London town

Dear Chris. Not sure if we were clear on the advertising of Out of Town on Big Centre TV. I saw the announcement of future episodes being shown Monday and Friday mornings, but we agreed there would be, at the end of each episode of Out of Town (as you suggested and we agreed), showing a 10 second commercial for the Delta Box sets with a link to Delta’s website for OOT.
I have told Delta this would be happening so I could check with them the effect of that publicity. Sales of the box sets pay me the royalties I need for storing the archive and expenses associated with the restoration of the archive, the main part of which Big Centre TV will be covering once we arrive at broadcast quality episodes from the archive.
I anticipate you have about 15 more weeks drawing on the existing box set material. If all goes well the first of the recovered archive episodes should be ready to broadcast in the first week of June. These will be unique, not seen since first broadcast in the 1970s.
Remembering I will be out of the UK, the sooner I can get together with a Studio School editor with digitised material to hand the better. It may help that I have three such episodes already processed by Francis Niemczyk. Best wishes, Simon

Hi Simon. As soon as we take some delivery of files, I can fix you up with an editor. I planned to give Steve until end of week and then chase him at Deluxe. I have fixed the caption issue - playout server couldn't see it.  c

The Rock Cottage restoration project hovered over us for several years. A favourite place reached by walking up a steep path from the middle of Lydbrook, Gloucestershire. The place has been neglected as the children grew older and my parents-in-law found it more and more difficult to climb the narrow path up Bell Hill from the car park below, and Linda and I met Ano Korakiana. Meanwhile, a nice man but, as it turned out, a wholly inadequate builder, subject to excuses about instructions 'lost in translation' made partial improvements which made the place worse. Its neglect hung over us. Then last July, our friends Martin and Sandra met us in Lydbrook. They inspected. Martin wrote later:

Hi both. Glad to hear you're feeling a little better about the task ahead...I must confess I was shocked to see the condition of the Cottage. I always visualise it as it was in May '92 when I did that veranda roof - and I used my motorbike, we lived in Gloucester. It was a glorious summer that year, Sandra would come over in the afternoons (after work) and sunbathe in the back garden. The ride there in the cool mornings, and the ride back with my jacket tied around my waist because it was so hot - ahhh!, happy days indeed. We'll have to see if we can recapture some of that. Martin X 

No builder or decorator could have been expected to achieve what our friends have, treating their work, mainly carried out by their son Adam and two other young men who work for Martin's company - work for which we paid - but also by Martin and Sandra who except for material have worked on the cottage for free. First, back in August of 2014, a pile of building rubbish and rubble left in the overgrown garden was barrowed or carried away. Phil from Lydbrook Stores gave permission for us to place a large skip where the path met the road. Adam and his mate Jack filled it over a weekend. Timber for logs was piled in the garden. Where, already cut, it was stacked under the lean to at the south end of the cottage. Foliage and other pieces of rotting wood were heaped for burning. Then work began on the interior - first the kitchen (transported from Amy's and Guy's home in Birmingham after new building there( and then the bathroom. The old bath was rescued from the garden, re-plumbed and combined with a shower.

Walls were plastered; stonework cleaned up and repointed, and two walls at the north end of the house were dry lined. Lin and I would go down now and then to see the place 'coming along'. Martin sent me conscientious costings for materials and the lad's labour. I'd send needed cash on-line. We downloaded Martin's photos of the work while we were in Greece in September and October.

Last year - Sandra at work in the hall

The hall being dry walled

The hall this Feb

New catches were fitted to the highly unsatisfactory windows installed by the previous builder which allowed them to open where previously they had merely cantilevered. Leaks around the window frames were made up. Martin would light the wood stove helping dry the place out.
"So much of the problem of damp is being caused by condensation" he said, dismissing prolonged discussion about water ingress via roof and walls that would have had us spending lots of unnecessary money with the previous builder.
Martin set the new windows on a trickle opening to make up for their lack of ventilation strips; set central heating to come on now and then when the house was empty. It began to dry out, helped via the tree clearance I'd paid Dave at Evolution Trees to carry out in January 2014. Lin and I had backed this up with substantial lopping and sawing of the garden trees and shrubs we could get to.
This February - just over half a year later, the body of the restoration was complete.
We went to look at carpets at a Birmingham showroom...

Our grandchildren, Oliver and Hannah play as Amy and Lin discuss carpets for Rock Cottage

Early February, Lin, ferrying her mum between hospital consultants, couldn't come with me. I got permission from the HHH committee to borrow the van in return for a full tank of fuel. With strict instructions from Lin, I took her selected carpets to Lydbrook and carried them up the hill where they were fitted in sitting room, and bedrooms, by Dave, locally recommended. He also laid new lino in the bathroom.

Our bedroom - carpeted and cosy

Dave at work in Rock Cottage sitting room

Looking out across the Lydbrook valley

Of course there's more to be done; not least recovering the garden, especially the lawn where we lay in summers. For now Lin and I need to re-arrange the furniture stacked upstairs, so we have a couple of working bedrooms and furniture for the sitting room where we eat. The kitchen's fine, but needs a washing machine.
While Dave was fitting carpets Oscar and I set out on an old and familiar walk towards the top of Bell Hill. I wondered if the way had changed; a climb among tall beech trees. So, as we haven't for nearly 10 years, we set out - left turn, up a narrow steep track for 20 yards, then sharp right for a 50 yards and a short turn left and up the hill...

Up Bell Hill

Coming to the top of the first slope I could gaze down on the village...

...How this changes with the summer greenery, yet the beech trunks, once coppiced for chair making, are now so elongated, as they reach for the light, you can still see through them to feel the sense of being overhead, ascending towards the high ridge from where it's possible on a clear day to see the Brecon Beacons. A little further I saw the familiar car dump that reminds me Lydbrook is still its slightly scruffy old self rather than being a smart Cotswold Village.

I didn't rise so, but kept on the path round the village side of the hill...

...greeting Nigel Aston and shaking hands - "Not seen you a while" - descending to the Hangerberry Road just above its junction with Lydbrook's long central street. Dave had nearly completed his carpeting. The rooms felt warmer; the bedrooms cosier; the sitting room almost ready for family and friends. I paid Dave. Oscar and I headed happily back 75 miles to Birmingham.
*** *** ***
On our allotment, Gill, our friend, neighbour, and apiarist was inspecting the hive on Thursday to give the colony sugar feed and Apiguard against Varroa mites. A couple of years ago I persuaded her to keep one of her colonies on our plot. The first colony lasted five months but died during the first winter. The second died in February, a year later, after carrying damp into the hive after an early warm spell had brought the bees out foraging the winter bulb sprouts. The third colony Gill introduced was invaded in July 2014 by another colony which, after killing the tenant Queen, took over. These bees seems to have survived the worst of this winter and are, says Gill, the strongest colony yet. They should even give us honey, as well as pollinating across the allotment and beyond.

Oliver and I have continued to enjoy the plot, one day with Dennis and Winnie, who continues her work on the plot. Last week we cleared a mess of rotting wood, shrubs and other combustible rubbish, my first bonfire in years, good dry stuff, creating little smoke; buckets of water to hand ready to douse the flames in a hurry...

...Oliver is planting for the first time, watering and helping move earth...

I've moved the unsightly pile of weed-filled earth that's sat next to the shed for too long, and am making compost bays from pallets...

One more bay to come: compost from bay 2 will turned into the empty bay 3, so that bay 1 can be turned into bay 2.

I'm steadily planting things - winter peas, winter broad beans, onions, garlic, rhubarb, and I couldn't resist a scarlet rose - but the next few months will be critical if this year's growing is to be far better than previous years'. I've pruned the small trees; top-dressed them. Winnie's been creosoting the shed; continuing to place recovered bricks around beds and along paths. Where seeds are sprouting I've put up nets over hoops. The contest with couch grass continues with every visit to the plot.
I'm away soon to Greece - alone. Lin must care for her mother, who's fallen ill, and needs ferrying between different consultants at different Staffordshire hospitals - tests, diagnoses, treatments and more tests....

Hannah with her great grandmother at Staffordshire General

Linda and her mum wrapping presents last Christmas Eve

I've got lots to do in the next week. Winnie and I will stay in touch across the miles using photos to check progress. I really hope we've choked off the worst of the couch grass but it remains a presence for all the stripping out of those cursed winding white rhizomes. I'm hoping that I'll start a parsnip crop, growing them direct. but also to ensure germinated parsnip seeds grow straight and do not divide, I've sought advice and been told to plant them in tubes. I didn't have any round cardboard tubes to hand, so made cardboard triangle tubes, stapling the open edges. I filled them with damp compost, then Linda, to a background of 'Gardeners' Question Time' on the BBC, used tweezers to pick up the seeds that were showing little roots. I'd germinated the seeds on a damp kitchen towel over the last 10 days. She put two seedlings into a small indentation in the compost in each tube and put soil gently over them. If I get sprouting seedlings I'll thin them down to one per tube and then use a crowbar to make a hole in the bed I have ready for them on the allotment, and slide the tubes into the ground with no cardboard showing. If this works then I'll make up more tubes. Once in the ground I'll cover them with veggiemesh and over that, for a few weeks, lay a covering of fleece. Now all depends on TycheΤύχη, the blind mistress of Fortune, protecting the young parsnips from Sod's Law, holding s sheaf with a sandalled foot on the shoulders of a suppliant farmer...

Τύχη είναι η υποτιθέμενη «δύναμη» που αποδίδεται σε έμψυχα ή άψυχα αντικείμενα και η οποία είναι σε θέση να επηρεάσει, πέρα από τον έλεγχο του ανθρώπου και τους φυσικούς νόμους του σύμπαντος, γεγονότα και καταστάσεις ώστε να έχουν θετική κατάληξη. Στην αρχαιότητα η τύχη ήταν θεά, κόρη του Ερμή και της Αφροδίτης, και λατρευόταν από τους αρχαίους έλληνες ως προστάτιδα των πόλεων. 

A gauge of my ignorance. I thought the little white tentacles emerging from the germinated seeds were growing upwards - stems rising with the seed earthward. I had to wait a few days and look closer to see these were stems rooting in the damp tissue carrying the seed skywards. Can it be that some of these tiny fragile things will become the delectable parsnips we may enjoy next Christmas?

Germinating parsnip seeds

*** *** ***

Birmingham's Lord Mayor Shafique Shah has to be outside party politics, but representing an inner city ward, he was well aware of the issues HHH volunteers discussed over biscuits, tea and coffee in the Council House last Tuesday morning. Thanks to our ward councillors for arranging this, especially to Cllr Waseem Zaffar MBE, with us for our hour with the Lord Mayor. A useful meeting and for all the civility and pleasant ritual (HHH got a certificate!) not idle chat.

Coffee, tea and biscuits in the Lord Mayor's Parlour

Cllr Waseem Zaffar MBE, Charles Bates, Jan Horn, Lord Mayor Shafique Shah, Mike Tye, Linda Baddeley, Simon B, Denise Forsyth, Nick Jolliffe

.

Working in Cornwall Road - another 'Skip-it Don't Tip-it' day - tea, courtesy of a resident

...and the next day Denise and I were working with a family to clear rubbish, including a collapsed rotting sofa, left by the previous tenant.

Kinopiastes - Κυνοπιάστες - is Ano Korakiana's sister village south of Corfu Town. Courtesy of John's Corfu World blog I've come across a film - 50 minutes - showing one of the best depictions I've seen of Corfiot rural life in 1970-71. Praise to Kinopiastes in Corfu and to the film-maker David Shaw-Smith, his family and Greek colleagues. This is the finest documentary I've ever seen of a pastoral economy still at work 45 years ago. At 36.21 I see a working threshing-floor (aloni, τ'αλώνι), horses used to loosen the chaff from the grain. My friend Jim Potts wrote a few years back...

"...an objective, physical structure and space, but also as a potent literary, cultural and folkloric symbol throughout Greek history, literature and folk-song, from ancient times, until the present day. It's sad to see many threshing floors abandoned nowadays, their surrounding walls crumbling, their beauty and function almost forgotten. As people start to go back to the land, maybe some, at least, will be restored. Will the circle be unbroken?" 

I enjoy the way the Greek commentary mingles with the children's English. Watching it, for all my realism about the back breaking labour of working the land, I ache for what's been lost by modernisation and its effect on the life of villages everywhere. 

This coming Sunday evening, at 19.00, there's a meeting in Kinopiastes Philharmonic Hall to consider rural revitalisation, including the revival of rural housing....

Η αναζωογόνηση της υπαίθρου
Μια εκδήλωση - συζήτηση με ευρύτερο ενδιαφέρον πραγματοποιείται την Κυριακή 22 Μαρτίου  και ώρα 7.00 το απόγευμα στους Κυνοπιάστες, σε συνεργασία με το Κέντρο UNESCO Ιονίου. Αφορά στο πρόβλημα της εγκατάλειψης της υπαίθρου και στην αναζωογόννηση των χωριών μας.

My translation: An event - exploring a matter of widest interest - will take place on Sunday, March 22 at 7.00 pm in Kinopiastes, in collaboration with the Centre for Ionian UNESCO. It concerns the problem of the rural exodus and the revitalisation of our villages.

The fast passing pastoral economy was fixed in a series of marble reliefs by Ano Korakiana's laic sculptorAristeidis Metallinos who died in 1987.

Charles Webster's note

With Sean, 'my' Big Centre TV editor, at Walsall Studio School on 11th March

My son came with me to interview Mike Prince at the formal opening of Big Centre TV on 6th Feb 2015

Oscar's got fleas and I'm watching 'Out of Town' on Big Centre TV

A caricature depicts Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras and German Chancellor Angela Merkel during the traditional rosemonday carnival parade in the western German city of Duesseldorf. Photograph. AFP/Getty Images

I am very pleased that Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, and Greece’s prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, took my advice about the need for compromise. The two most entrenched hardliners in Europe – on either end of whatever spectrum you choose – moved together as if orchestrated by newspaper columnists, with Nobel laureate Paul Krugman the chief puppeteer. 

Nevertheless, a kissy-kissy scenario and swapping family photos isn’t on the agenda yet. Behind whatever smiles they can manage for the photo opportunities, Merkel would dearly love to cut off Tsipras’s feet at the shoulders.

If it were not for a growing sense in southern Europe that the underdogs may still be able to snarl a bit, many in the north (and Ireland) would have no hesitation in killing Greece – or at least the Greece led by Syriza which, Charlie Hebdo says, is “the future of Europe”.

It seemed at one point that the palpable sympathy of most Europeans for the Greek plight would not translate into votes, with several around the euro table determined not to let heart rule head when it came to getting re-elected.
As Krugman has pointed out, austerity policies, which the International Monetary Fund admits were ill-founded, caused such a shrinkage in the Greek economy as to jeopardise any possibility of recovery. 

Tsipras knows his government is on sale or return. Crying “Wolf!” is no use, if his election promises (of a new vision of the Greek future) are outperformed and negated by the realpolitik of Brussels and Berlin, and his 20-20 vision is severely impaired. He may well accept by now that, as former governor of New York Mario Cuomo put it, you campaign in poetry but govern in prose. If Tsipras had capitulated to Brussels and Berlin he would be facing another election before the end of this year. And that is still on the cards.

Speaking of cards, Greece’s finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, who taught game theory at Athens University, denies he has been bluffing. “Nothing is farther from the truth,” he said on the eve of the crucial meeting of EU finance ministers. But Varoufakis comes from a Cretan family, and it was a Cretan who famously said: “All Cretans are liars.” If he was speaking the truth he was lying, and if he was lying he was speaking the truth. 

Poker wasn’t around when this was first mooted in 600 BC, but when Varoufakis says “It would be pure folly to think of the negotiations as a bargaining game to be won or lost via bluffing”, he was in fact saying the opposite. And that is how he won the last round of talks. 

When he insisted there was “a red line beyond which logic and duty prevent us from going”, he wasn’t merely stating Syriza’s ideological bottom line: he was also admitting that although the cards in his hand couldn’t beat a royal flush they could force his euro zone colleagues to show their hand. This he achieved, and they respected him enough to let him into the next round of the game. 

Of course Varoufakis was playing the game of his life. Everything in his manner – dress code, body language, approach and withdrawal from the table – proved him the consummate Cretan. And he got what he wanted – what he knew he could achieve, without overplaying his hand. To sit as a neophyte at that table with the big boys (including a scornful Michael Noonan) was to play the Cincinnati Kid against Edward G Robinson, but this time he won. 

To change the analogy, if an Indian army officer couldn’t pay his mess bills, his fellow officers gave him a revolver and told him to do “the honourable thing”. Tsipras and Varoufakis walked out of their meetings with their fellow officers, holding the gun but with no intention of doing anything honourable other than abiding by as many of their election promises they knew they could afford to keep. 

Tsipras returned home cautiously claiming: “We won the battle, not the war. The difficulties lie ahead of us.” Influential figures such as the German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble are not helping anyone by suggesting Greece won’t be able to deliver on the essential reforms. The simple fact, as Krugman repeatedly emphasises, is that if Greece cannot pay all its debts there’s no future in insisting it should do so. 

Noonan, too, doesn’t help when he so clearly relishes his rehabilitation on the good-boy side of the table, adopting an unseemly attitude to Varoufakis, comparing him to a “celebrity economist, good in theory but not very good in practice”. I think Varoufakis will prove to be a better player than Noonan. The next game could be Russian roulette. Smiles don’t cost anything but they don’t come cheap. Handshakes and hugs, as we know from Northern Ireland, take a little time.

...There is no doubt that mêtis is a type of intelligence and of thought, a way of knowing; it implies a complex but very coherent body of mental attitudes and intellectual behaviour which combine flair, wisdom, forethought, subtlety of mind, deception, resourcefulness, vigilance, opportunism, various skills, and experience acquired over the years. It is applied to situations which are transient, shifting, disconcerting and ambiguous, situations which do not lend themselves to precise measurement, exact calculation or rigorous logic.. 

Letter sent prior to a meeting in Berlin today between Alexis Tsipras and Angela Merkel

Dear Chancellor 

I am writing to you to express my deep concern about developments since the 20th February 2015 Eurogroup agreement, which was preceded two days earlier by a letter from our Minister of Finance* outlining a number of issues that the Eurogroup ought to resolve, issues which I consider to be important, including the need:

(a) To agree the mutually acceptable financial and administrative terms the implementation of which, in collaboration with the institutions, will stabilise Greece’s financial position, attain appropriate fiscal surpluses, guarantee debt stability and assist in the attainment of fiscal targets for 2015 that take into account the present economic situation. 

(b) To allow the European Central Bank to re-introduce the waiver in accordance with its procedures and regulations. 

(c) To commence work between technical teams on a possible new Contract for Recovery and Development that the Greek authorities envisage between Greece, Europe and the International Monetary Fund, to follow the current Agreement. 

(d) To discuss means of enacting the November 2012 Eurogroup decision regarding possible further debt measures and assistance for implementation after the completion of the extended Agreement and as a part of the follow-up Contract.

Based on the in-principle acceptance of this letter and its content, the President of the Eurogroup convened the 20th February meeting which reached a unanimous decision expressed in a communiqué. The latter constitutes a new framework for the relationship between Greece, its partners, and its institutions.
More precisely, the 20th February Eurogroup agreement stipulated a number of points outlining this new framework and process, including:

(a) The Greek authorities will present a first list of reform measures, based on the current arrangement, by the end of Monday, February 23. The institutions will provide a first view whether this is sufficiently comprehensive to be a valid starting point for a successful conclusion of the review. This list will be further specified and then agreed with the institutions by the end of April. 

(b) The Greek authorities have expressed their strong commitment to a broader and deeper structural reform process aimed at durably improving growth and employment prospects, ensuring stability and resilience of the financial sector and enhancing social fairness. The authorities commit to implementing long overdue reforms to tackle corruption and tax evasion, and improving the efficiency of the public sector. In this context, the Greek authorities undertake to make best use of the continued provision of technical assistance. 

(c) We remain committed to provide adequate support to Greece until it has regained full market access as long as it honours its commitments within the legal framework. 

Based on this common ground, the Minister of Finance sent to the President of the Eurogroup a letter, dated 23rd February 2015, with the aforementioned “first list of reforms” [see (a) above] proposed by the government. On 24th February 2015 the said “first list” was accepted by the institutions as “sufficiently comprehensible to be a valid starting point for a successfully conclusion of the review” by 20th April 2015.
In order to expedite the process, the Ministry of Finance sent a letter to the President of the Eurogroup on 5th March 2015 urging that the process of technical discussions on specifying further the “first list of reforms” begin immediately. In the same letter the Minister of Finance attached seven examples of how the reforms in the “first list” could be developed and specified further. 

Following a positive reply by the President of the Eurogroup (dated 6th March 2015) and the subsequent Eurogroup meeting of 9th March 2015, the first round of discussions of the Brussels Group (comprising of the four institutions – EC-ECB-ESM-IMF – plus the technical team of the Greek government) took place, in Brussels, on Wednesday 11th March dealing with both political and technical issues. At that meeting it was also decided that technical teams of the institutions would travel to Athens on the following day for on-site fact-finding to assist the Brussels Group negotiations.In the context of the above, I feel it is critical to alert you to a number of developments which are either undermining the spirit of the agreement reached or making their fulfilment perilously difficult.

(a) On 4th February the European Central Bank lifted the waiver for minimum credit rating requirements for marketable instruments issued or guaranteed by the Hellenic Republic, while declaring that the waiver would be restored when an agreement was reached at the level of the Eurogroup. Moreover, even since the Greek banks were referred to the Bank of Greece’s ELA facility, the ECB has been raising the ELA’s ceiling at shorter intervals than normal and at rather small increments that incite speculation and spread uncertainty vis-à-vis Greece’s banking system. Additionally, the ECB determined that Greek banks cannot hold more T-bills than they did on 18th February 2015, thus restricting their participation to well below the T-bill cap. (Please note that, in the summer of 2012, when a new Athens government was in a similar situation to ours, ELA was being expanded generously, the T-bill issuance cap was lifted to allow the government to finance its debt repayments to our creditors, and banks were not restricted to any limit corresponding to a prior date’s holding. In that manner the government of the time and the Eurogroup were granted sufficient ‘space’ to reach an arrangement that allowed the Greek banks to move away from ELA and back to normal ECB financing methods.)  

(b) Following past failures (of the previous government) to complete the scheduled reviews, disbursements under the loan agreements with the ESM-EFSF were discontinued (while those of the IMF were similarly delayed), yielding a substantial financial gap in 2014 and 2015. This includes the profits from the ECB’s SMP-sourced bond redemptions, which the ECB distributes to member states on the understanding that they be passed onto the Greek government.

Given that Greece has no access to money markets, and also in view of the ‘spikes’ in our debt repayment obligations during the Spring and Summer of 2015 (primarily to the IMF), it ought to be clear that the ECB’s special restrictions [see (a) above] when combined with the disbursement delays [see (b) above] would make it impossible for any government to service its debt obligations. Servicing these repayments through internal resources alone would, indeed, lead to a sharp deterioration in the already depressed Greek social economy – a prospect that I will not countenance. 

Meanwhile, I also regret to report that little progress has been made in the negotiations between the technical teams in Brussels and Athens. The reason for the extremely slow progress is that the institutions’ technical teams, as well as some of the actors at a higher level, seem to show little regard for the 20th February Eurogroup agreement and are, instead, committed to proceeding along the lines of the Memorandum of Understanding that pre-dates both the 20th February agreement and 25th January 2015 – the date on which the Greek people elected a new government with a mandate to negotiating the new process established by the 20th February Eurogroup agreement. It is difficult to believe that our partners consider that a successful reform drive can be carried out under such restrictive and pressing constraints, including the financial squeeze that my government is currently labouring under. 

The Greek government remains steadfast in its commitment to fulfil its obligations to its partners within the framework of the 18th February letter and 20th February Eurogroup decision. However, I am also obliged to make clear to you that, in order to continue to fulfil our obligations, as we have done up to now, progress has to be made on a number of fronts:

(a) After 20th February Eurogroup agreement and the approval of the extension of the MFAFA by member states, and given that the technical discussions with the institutions are under way, the ECB should return the terms of finance of the Greek banks to their pre-4th February 2015 state. 

(b) The process by which the reforms proposed by the Greek government, and their evaluation, must be immediately clarified so as to make a successful conclusion of the review by the end of April 2015, as well as to specify the recommencement of disbursements with the progress of the negotiations. 

(c) The process must be specified (as well as the participants and timetable) by which further arrangements (which my government would like to take the form of a ‘Contract for Greece’s Recovery and Development’ – including provisions on Greece’s public debt in the spirit of the November 2012 Eurogroup agreement) will be agreed to before the end of June 2015.

In conclusion, Greece is committed to fulfilling its obligations in good faith and close cooperation with its partners. To this purpose we are committed fully to the process specified in the 20th Eurogroup agreement so as to begin immediately the work of implementing reforms crucial to our economy’s prospects of long term development within an inclusive Europe. With this letter, I am urging you not to allow a small cash flow issue, and a certain ‘institutional inertia’, to not turn into a large problem for Greece and for Europe.

*Letter sent by Yanis Varoufakis, the Greek finance minister, on 18th Feb 2015, to Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Dutch finance minister who chairs the eurogroup, formally requesting an extension of the existing bailout, something Tsipras had resisted since his government's election. See also Yanis Varoufakis' blog entry for 20th March in which he picks up on the matter of a subversive video circulating on social media. 

'Above all remember; allotment gardening is fun, it's healthy and it's a great way to meet people. So the most important thing is to enjoy your allotment.'

Advice from the Allotments Section at Birmingham City Council suggests it takes 3 years to get a new allotment in order, but that's if you are already skilled and organised.

I and Lin and now my waged help, Winnie, have been digging over and over, weeding, weeding, weeding (dragging out those sinuous creeping white couch grass rhizomes especially)....

Winnie and Simon on Plot 14 (photo: Sue Hall, Winnie's mum)

....laying permanent paths, cutting out and pegging down porous weed control fabric, making temporary paths by moving around stacks of the industrial-grade carpet tiles I picked up for free during a garden clearance for Handsworth Helping Hands. Making separate beds accessible. The plot is just over 200 square meters, but with the shed and paths only half of that area is now working soil.

Potatoes planted in a bed dug over and over, weeded; new topsoil and compost raked in; all easily worked from surrounding paths

I love it. I do. I really do. But this is not a 'working man's' allotment from which i can proudly feed my family - the ideal of small holdings - urban green spaces whose legislative protection grows weaker by the year. Mine is a hobby plot - a word I dislike; a fact I accept, as a man seven generations from the land. My family have been townspeople, even when enjoying life in the country, since my ancestor Samuel Lees in Oldham became an iron master, then cotton mill owner, in the early years of the Industrial Revolution. True my stepfather could work the ground, handle stock, and grow vegetables in large numbers while my grandmother, Bar, abandoned metropolitan life to start the dairy farm where I was born in March 1942 and spent a lot of my childhood - an idyllic place I first heard described, when I was in my teens, as 'a hobby farm - by my stepfather.

Mill End: Simon on Gypsy, Bar on the haywain

I can't say I'd rather my allotment wasn't just a hobby. That's silly. I don't quite know what I was thinking. I suppose I think of it more as an experiment; a test even.

January 2007 - a picture in The Birmingham Evening Mail"When will the company who bought this green space in Birmingham and built on a third of it lay out the allotments that were part of planning gain deal agreed with Birmingham City Council?"

A hobby is 'a regular activity done for pleasure during one's leisure time'. Campaigning ten years to stop the Victoria Jubilee Allotments from being built over and, after that busy time - lobbying, writing, filming, speaking - getting the opportunity to work this plot, has hardly been a leisured activity. I've never been that keen about dividing activities into ones that are leisure, and one's that aren't. I've a distaste for how that distinction defines 'work'.

Starting on Plot 14 in 2010

I want Plot 14 - one Lin and I chose when the Victoria Jubilee Allotments opened in June 2010 - to prosper. I want it fecund, thriving - a source of pride and good food, I want to agree with the advice that an allotment should be enjoyable.
I've invested money on help, on topsoil, on compost, striving to get the ground closer to how I think it needs to be, and all the time I'm learning, with help from other plot-holders far better than me at growing their own - especially my friends Ziggi with her plot in north London and Vanley with his on the Victoria Jubilee, just a few yards away.

Winter sown broad beans with a sprinkle of potash to rake in

I'm going to make this work. But I'm reminded of Douglas Adam's remark "Flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss" or Winston Churchill saying 'success involves persevering from one failure to the next', The gardening guide books I read aren't helpful. They begin at a point I'm still striving to reach. They hardly mention soil filled with rubbish, as well as stones, nor do they seem to give much attention to the emotions aroused by the depredations of slugs, onion fly, pigeons, snails (with their exquisite shells I find impossible to crush), and human pilferers - the ones that stole my garlic last year! How I do not envy new plot holders as inexperienced as I, trying to get vegetables to grow on adjoining plots that are like mine was four and half years ago, perhaps worse.

Stones continue to come out of the soil at every dig....

....but they never appear in the books

...and this worthy tutor teaches me more or less nothing about how to dig my plot

Dear Clive.  Happy New Year 2015.  I hope you're well. I've a favour to ask. Since 2010 I have struggled to get my allotment working. You’d not expect less when I’ve invested so much in getting it in the first place. My favour is also a question. We have by all accounts rather uneven topsoil on the VJA. I know that allotments officers on the council were hesitant about accepting the new plots from Persimmon under the S106A of 2004 because the land was not adequately prepared by the developer. Those of us pressing to get the allotments up and running pressed the council to let people start gardening. A minority of plot holders are doing pretty well but all I’ve spoken to admit they’ve had to do a lot of work getting the soil manageable and productive. It is full of stones, bricks, and other debris, as well as chunks of clay with - in some places - ground heavily compressed by building plant machinery. A lot of us have invested in manure, compost and extra topsoil. I would - now that I am beginning to feel more in control - be so grateful for someone coming to look at the soil on my plot to give me an assessment and tell me the best way to continue improving it. All the guide books speak of adding nutrients and getting a balance between acid and alkali, but I’m in the dark as to the starting point on soil composition. It would be great if someone with much more experience and knowledge than I could drop over and give my plot soil an assessment and diagnosis with suggestions as to the what would now be the best treatment to get healthy crops. Would this be possible? Best wishes Simon 

Simon. An experienced allotment holder visited your site and had a good look round, concentrating on the soil structure. Some plots were thriving, some were struggling and some were vacant and overgrown - the overgrown plots obviously were able to support plant life! You can test the acidity of soil [test kits available at DIY/ Nursery] - often the only balance used is lime for the brassicas. The answer to improving the plot - clear rough debris - stones etc [stones can be buried to provide drainage] Clay - working in compost - leaf mould is one of best ways - over wintering will help here. Adding as much rotted compost/manure is great. Leave on surface for a while then dig in [note some crops do not like fresh manure!] You could import topsoil but beware it could include weeds etc even Japanese knot weed! Perseverance is needed. Hope this helps. Best wishes, Clive

A potato from the kitchen cupboard

June 2014

Aristeidis Metallinos, Ano Korakiana's laic sculptor, depicts the EEC (EOK) as a broody chimaera

Tsipras appears to be naively idealistic, innocent, ingenuous and transparent, but he needs to be secretive, cunning and dishonest to succeed in the minefield he has created. As Maurice Manning once said of Garret FitzGerald, it is difficult to trust someone who pours a glass of wine without reading the label on the bottle. Tsipras wants to do the impossible, but if he is to succeed as a political leader he must learn the art of the possible and acquire the killer instinct.

Richard. I recall writing this in a paper published in the 90s about political skill in civil servants and politicians.....The constant negotiation of this moral minefield is part of life and certainly part of government. An additional layer of complexity is added to these circumstances by the fact that in families, as indeed in government, many people recognise the presence of these dynamics and may actually impart “in confidence”, something intended to be passed on. A process of negotiation is occurring where one person appears to be trusting another to risk being untrustworthy. The novelist Iain McEwan describes public figures who move around in this moral maze by navigating the complicated channels that run between truth and lying: 'with sure instincts while retaining a large measure of dignity. Only occasionally, as a consequence of tactical error, was it necessary to lie significantly, or tell an important truth. Mostly it was sure-footed scampering between the two extremes. Wasn’t the interior life much the same?’  (McEwan 1988:182)....McEwan captures the moral nimbleness that accompanies grown-up behaviour - public and private - where corruption and probity are proximate rather than polar and, where rules are at best casuitical; maintaining integrity requires wit.  What I struck me about Iain McEwan’s words is that self-query 'Wasn’t the interior life much the same?’  My tolerance of politicians about whom you are much more judgemental (I think) is that politics - certainly the politics of government - is that it’s so like my internal life and I suggest I’m not alone in that. Best, Simon 

Richard: You mean you lie to yourself and let not your right hand know....? 

Simon: That’s what Iain McEwan is suggesting. I care about the environment and do many things that harm it. I shop at supermarkets while praising the survival of small shops. I think lascivious thoughts about other women. The list of my moral inconsistencies is endless and I don’t let them worry me or lessen my expressions of concern about the sins of my fellows.
My interior life is a parliament of debate with every now and then a rare internal argument from which the whips are withdrawn and I have a vote in which I must truly interrogate my conscience - but most of the time I’m bladerunning ‘the complicated channels that run between truth and lying”.
I think you have so hit the spot when saying how Tspiras must be. The killer instinct etc. Do you think he has it? Could he grow into it? Is his partner going to help? Peristera Batziaka. ‘Tough cookie”? This is riveting. S 

R: I don't have that problem/advantage. I never argue or debate with myself. I am conscience-free when I wake, and the same when I go to sleep. Thanks for the Batziaka article - interesting that "peristera" means "pigeon" or "turtle-dove". R 

S: 'Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.'Matt 10:16"I never argue or debate with myself. I am conscience-free when I wake, and the same when I go to sleep”. People will make pilgrimages to seek your advice - the sage of Perithia. You make me think of that other writer Nikos Kazantzakis “I hope nothing. I fear nothing. I am free. This is true happiness: to have no ambition and to work like a horse as if you had every ambition. To live far from men, not to need them and yet to love them. To have the stars above, the land to your left and the sea to your right and to realise of a sudden that in your heart, life has accomplished its final miracle: it has become a fairy tale.”  S

In other words just 10.6% of the €254 billion funds 'state operating needs'

WEEDS: Keep the plot free of weeds– especially couch grass (do not put couch grass or any other perennial weeds in any of the compost bays) Keep everything tidy like you do already. The annual weeds will spring up everywhere but can be dealt with by regular hoeing back into the ground, unless they’re seeding (in which case pull and add them to compost bay 2). Don’t worry about dock. The long roots turn the soil. Cut them off at soil level and put leaves in compost bay.

 

COMPOST: Now and then fork and turn the waste I’ve started in bay 1 (it won’t be ready until at least winter). Cover it with polythene or carpet to keep warmth up but ensure it still gets air. If there’s a long dry spell – wet it with the watering can to stop it drying out. If it rots/ferments well and is well on its way to turning into humus (like the ‘black gold in the builder’s bags) turn it into bay 3. If things work out the compost will become humus, ending up the colour and consistency of a good Christmas cake!

Meantime put new green waste (other than perennial weeds. i.e. couch grass) in bay 2. Cover that in the same way to keep warmth up.  After moving the contents of bay 1 into bay 3, switch to putting new waste into bay 1, turning that into bay 2 when its well on its way, leaving bay 1 clear for the next lot of new waste. I'm figuring how to use Garotta or a cheaper equivalent to keep the process moving.
Re the commercial compost in the builder’s bags. If you do any digging over on the plot, add some of that – enough to darken the ground to hold more warmth from the sun and prevent cracking of the soil if it stays dry a few days - and a few handfuls of the bone meal and blood fertilizer from the big plastic buckets with the red lids. Just a sprinkle to flavour the ground.

POTATOES: Earth up potatoes as the green tops rise

 

SLUGS AND SNAILS: Salt slugs. You’re better at this already. If frogs appear that’s great. They like slugs.

 

RUNNER BEANS: If the runner beans I sowed on Saturday sprout as I hope you may need to give the seedlings a help to get started up the bamboo frame.

 

ONIONS: If any onions are growing too close, thin them out and replant with more space or harvest them for yourself as spring onions.

 

BROAD BEAN SUPPORT: Once the sprouting broad beans get higher they may need support – a net or strings stretched between bamboos. Same for the peas just sprouting.

 

PARSNIPS: Let me know how the parsnips are doing (the seedlings under the netting and bubble wrap). Thin out any growing too close. Don’t let the seedlings dry out. Remove bubble wrap but leave netting when weather gets warmer. 

JERUSALEM ARTICHOKES: I’ve left them in the ground. They’ll probably start growing like Jack’s beanstalk in the next months. Leave.

 

WATERING: If and when we get a spell of several days without rain do some watering with the can (but not in bright sun!) and if the water in tanks runs out attach hose to the tap and refill. It's forbidden to water direct from the hose!

 

 

BEES: If you need to phone Gill Rose about the bees she lives at ** Beaudesert Road and her phone her number is ****. She'll be making periodic inspections of the hive. Refer anyone else on the site who asks about the bees to her.  (If another incident of stone throwing from the park occurs put that piece of paling fence between the hive and the fence)

 

 

SECRETARY VJA COMMITTEE: Gill Preston, VJA Site Secretary, * Wood Lane B20 2AA mob: ****. She shares her job on the VJA committee with Danny Webster (They are nice - keep in with them)

 

 

BLACKBERRY BUSHES. If anyone starts cutting down the blackberry bushes by the iron fence or debates the heap of earth and weeds at the back of the plot next to Plot 14, point out that our plot boundaries end well before the fence – especially on the edge side (there’s a plot map slipped into the back shed wall near the door which shows this)

 

 

TROUBLE: If you have trouble like the glass throwing incident catch one of the rangers when they come by in the park in that white van or stroll up the park compound in case you can meet them there. The supervisor of park grounds maintenance is Allen Broad – nice bloke – mob:*** (keep a brief record of any incident)

 

 

POND: Just leave that for the moment. I haven’t made up my mind whether it’s a good idea or will work without running water.

 

 

NEIGHBOURS: If anyone starts work on the next door plots be really nice. Nothing worse than ill-will between neighbours (however irritating expereince says they can sometimes be).

 

 

STAY IN TOUCH: Keep in touch by email or Facebook. Send pictures if possible. In emergency we can talk on the phone. In case anyone questions you being on the plot…I have given Winnie Hall - a very responsible person - full permission to work on Plot 14 during my absence from the UK including access to the site combination lock.

 

From Ano Korakiana