Skimmed  by the bulldozers - the site of the new Victoria Jubilee Allotments in 2004

The soil spread by the developer, when re-creating the space for growing things, is acknowledged problematic. Didn’t Susan Green from Douglas Road, other side of Handsworth Park, phone me the day the site opened for inspection by those who wanted allotments?
“No way am I taking up a plot, Simon! The ground's full of rubbish. There’s dry clay just below the topsoil.”
My enthusiasm overrode her carping, but she had a point. The site's in a wonderful place, a great green space under two miles from the centre of Birmingham, marching beside Handsworth Park, whose trees provide its skyline, backdrop and, when the wind blows, sounds that override the city's rumble. In some parts the topsoil, such as it was, got bulldozed back into place, over the heavy-plant-compacted ground of the builder’s work yard. Ralph’s dug down several feet on his plot, broken up the hard surface down there, and, with pick and shovel, removed a ton of hardcore so his plot can drain. Our plot, next to the Park fence, is out of that zone, but since I’ve been working it I’ve removed the remains of the previous gardeners’ equipment, fragments of brick and slab, parts of greenhouses  - frames and broken glass - wire, pipes, guttering and plastic bags – skimmed by the bulldozer into a stew of soil, wood and shattered sheds that sat like a dyke, a good 15 feet high, 80 yards long, squatting for nearly a decade behind the terrace houses along Holly Road. I saw it through a friend’s upstair’s window.
“One day” I assured him “there’ll be a cricket pitch there and beyond that allotments”
“I’ll believe it”

For years I peered through a barrier as the developer's workers dug over the site

Of that agreement, only the allotments have so far arrived. The ground for them was laid out by sifting out the trunks of a couple of ripped up sycamores, and bulldozing the pile back into place across the north west corner of the site – 80 plots divided by gravel and drained paths.

Then in 2008 the layout began

The surface was raked of its most obvious obstructions and allowed to sit and grow weeds for a couple more years...

Weeds were spreading and the site was still not open in 2009

... until in June 2010 the Victoria Jubilee Allotments went public. Lin and I chose our plot in an ideal spot, adjoining a tap, near the remaining hedge, a gently sloping aspect down to Handsworth Park for whose restoration we and many others had lobbied over many years. I couldn’t have been happier, enjoying the extra pleasure of knowing that these allotments might never have been but for the prolonged local campaign I’d led to gain a city negotiated Section 106 Agreement that had the developer, who’d wanted the whole site for building, passing two thirds of it back to the public domain for allotments and playing fields - the latter still to come, despite an agreement made in 2004. Thereafter the challenge has been mine. John Martin teased me gently “Simon! You’ve been excited by the idea of working an allotment”
By 2013 I was arriving back from a time away, reluctant even to go out to the plot. It’s not just that the soil left us by the developer was so intractable. Far from it.  A few gardeners on the Victoria Jubilee Allotments have been producing successful harvests since they started here. I am not one of them. I have struggled to turn the 'idea' that John spoke of into a properly worked garden producing food that Lin and I can cook and eat at home or pass around the family. There’s a sturdy shed with the tools I need. Paths. There are fruit trees, and of course Gill’s beehive has a home here. I’ve won a few crops – broad beans, runner beans, potatoes, spinach. But they’ve arrived in desultory ways.
"How can I prepare something with your veg unless you warn me?" Lin complains
Other enthusiastic applicants for plots have left after a brief struggle with the ground, with couch grass and the latest annual weeds. I have no intention of ‘giving up’. The 'idea' keeps me going. I’ve argued with Ziggi.
“I’m generations from the land. My ancestors were city people from the start of the industrial revolution. We don’t do ‘back to the land”
She disagrees. We were at Dukes in St.James. She said she was as removed from the land as I.
“It’s wanting to cook and eat things you’ve grown”
We're both right. You must know how to grow; know how and when to crop and store and you must know how to cook and enjoy the eating.
What matters is that perseverance and a decision to work harder on the soil last autumn has marked a change. I've abandoned - at least for now - the idea of cheap home grown veg and spent money that would be beyond imitating the ideal envisaged in the 1908 Allotments and Smallholdings Act*  passed to help a working man feed his family in the city from an 'allotted plot'.
I've invested in manure. I've bought top-soil. I've paid our helper from Handsworth Helping Hands - Taj - to concentrate on digging and weeding, digging and weeding, digging and weeding; adding in the manure as he goes and removing the larger stones, piling them at the back of the plot or using them to edge paths. I - no 'we' - are beginning to get some degree of farming on this 200 square metre piece of ground. Even far away from it, I dream about the plot. I imagine seeds germinating, saplings blossoming, seedlings, if they survive the pigeons, settling in to grow. While Gill waits to find another swarm, I've worked around the empty beehive and replaced John's slightly shaky net structure...

...and in the last few days of England planted and planted - potatoes, Jerusalem artichokes, spinach, onions, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts. I dragged furrows. Laid topsoil there and bedded my young plants and seeds in it, watered them in and added another thin layer of new topsoil, friable as a nursery play garden's, and then raked a small layer of the cruder earth over the top, chatting to them the while like an idiot, keeping an eye out for Oscar watching at the steel fence for passing dogs to growl at; bitches to pursue via one of the opening's in the fence I've failed to block.

In you go, darlin's

At Luton in the night we waited for a dawn flight to Greece. I'd slept on the coach to the airport missing tedious stops on the way and now we chatted and did dopey things to pass the time.

At last we're in the sky, reading, snoozing, snacking, in the compact spaces of budget flight until we're 'aware of the horizon beginning to strain at the rim of the world: aware of islands coming out of the darkness to meet us... '

Karaburun Peninsula from our Easyjet to Corfu

 ...descending beside the Albanian mountains west of Vlorë, hardly a hundred miles north of the green island and beloved Greece where I kneel to touch the concrete half pretending a problem with balance.

In hours we're at work again, cutting the greenery that blocks the path below the house, tidying the small garden, and - at last - cutting out rotten sections of the wooden balcony...

...straightening the floor in the small bedroom upstairs where some 'lazy idiot' - we know who - had laid a chunk of flooring grade chipboard with no cross beams between joists...

...so that it sagged the width of the small room. We sawed out the chipboard in two sections to extricate its edges from the wall plaster; put in cross beams, fixed them with angles screws to the joists while resting on battens I'd nailed to the joists. Screwing down the curled up edges of the chipboard, we removed its sag; all this before we can add varnished skirting of wood recovered from a dismembered palette waiting in the garden.

Rotting balcony wood replaced

1. The Small Holdings and Allotments Regulations 1919 Remove. This required councils to get the consent of the CLG Secretary of State for certain actions in relation to allotment land, such as if they want to purchase allotment land or lease allotment land to an association or lease allotment land for more than a year at time.  It is not considered that these regulations have effect any longer and this will help clean up the statute book.  

At last! Blossom on the recovered tree? Is it orange or lemon?

I repeat the process - collecting the precious dust from one of our richly blossoming lemon tree stamens, so that the flowers on the recovered tree may be doubly fertilised.

Pollen from the fecund orange tree's blossom - the yellow at the tip of the brush

A few days later I'm hanging out laundry to dry and hear a buzzing round the little tree and see bees searching. Then as I stare, one, and then, two bees are all over two of the blossoms, searching, probing, touching stamen and pistil with their bodies. 
I've been reading John Crompton's 1947 book The Hive about keeping bees - not, in the first place, for their honey. 

Crompton, though not anthropocentric, is the more readable for unashamedly attributing wisdom to bees, interpreting their actions as if they thought and planned like humans. The odd thing is that despite his admission that his interest in beekeeping began with wanting to ensure the fertility of his fruit trees, he does not at any point in the book describe how pollination actually occurs and what follows its success...The Orange blossom has a stamen (anther and filament), pistil (stigma, style,and ovary), sepals, ovules, and petals...
I do hope Gill has managed to obtain a new swarm to re-populate the hive on Plot 14. 

Building a surround for Gill's empty hive on Plot 14

*** ***
We watch the series Game of Thrones  – first two seasons, and want to know what happens next.
"We're on series 4" says a friend
Earlier we'd watched Breaking Bad– sometimes three episodes a night. Then for a break from that story telling, a look at a Catherine Cookson yarn on DVD, her recognisable characters and familiar turns – the evil landowner, a self-made working class man, a fractured childhood love consummated at last. If it’s not film then I’ve my head in a book, perhaps two at a time. I embrace narrative.
"But you know these great stories, these assemblages of creative talent entertaining audiences across there world; their sucking my brain, leaching out imagination. Instead of inventing things out of words and thoughts on a page, all - music, sound effects, words, faces, places - are created for me to enjoy. Passively. These brilliant sagas use ingenious technologies to colonise what in a book I would be imagining."
"Oh yeah? Then why do you find it so exciting to see those bees cuddling the blossom recovered from the sat-dish placed over them?"
Scripts and above all coherent plots with beginnings and middles and ends, encompassed within a time-scale that fits my sense of the dramatic, stimulates me to excitement and fascination at ‘what’s going to happen now? The great war is anticipated; in minutes it’s upon our characters and then, wreaking havoc, it’s past, and the plot is picking up pieces on its route to a happy ending.
"Let's have coffee?"
“Isn’t it almost ironic” I said to Lin, after an especially gripping episode of Breaking Bad,“that we had to exercise will power not to go on to the next, even though it’s so late…yet here we’re living in a country in a crisis such as we’ve not seen in our lifetime. We struggle to grasp it’s drama. We’re like the crew of a vessel far out in the deep ocean that rides a tsunami unnoticed – except through our instruments -  because the wave that will wreak such harm on reaching land, raises us an imperceptible foot and it's hundred miles wide.

A cold grey day in the village. Lin and I wait for a bus to town to see our accountant

Panos Kokkinias’s Yiorgis

A young man in traditional Greek garb– white pleated skirt, embroidered vest and red pompoms on the tip of his shoes – is floating, his arms outstretched, in the still, turquoise sea. It’s unclear whether he’s dead or just resting from earlier battles with the open water. This photograph, more than any other piece shown in the new exhibition No Country for Young Men in Brussels’ Bozar complex, captures the question that many are asking about Greece today: What is going on with Europe’s first bailout victim?...

Getting DIY supplies from the ironmonger at Tzavros

Γράφει ο/η Κβκ

17.04.14

Τη Μεγάλη Τετάρτη το απόγευμα, η Εξομολόγηση και στη συνέχεια το Ευχέλαιο, έφεραν αρκετό κόσμο στον Άη-Θανάση. Ο χώρος στην πίσω πλευρά του ναού (πίσω από τα στασίδια) είχε πλήρως ανακαινιστεί από τους Επιτρόπους και εκεί ο ιερέας δέχτηκε τους προς εξομολόγηση πιστούς. Στη συνέχεια τελέστηκε η Ακολουθία του Ευχελαίου, στο τέλος της οποίας οι πιστοί δέχτηκαν από τον ιερέα τη σταυροειδή χρίση με το αγιασμένο έλαιο, προς θεραπεία του εσωτερικού κόσμου και ακολούθως προμηθεύτηκαν για το σπίτι αγιασμένο έλαιο από την αναμμένη κανδήλα που είχε τοποθετηθεί σε τραπεζάκι μπροστά από το Ιερό. Και ενώ ο πολύς κόσμος είχε αποχωρήσει, ξεκίνησε όπως προβλεπόταν η Ακολουθία του Όρθρου της Μεγάλης Πέμπτης, πιο γνωστή ως τελετή του Νιπτήρος. Έξω, βαδίζοντας προς το σούρουπο, η πτώση της θερμοκρασίας είχει ήδη αρχίσει να γίνεται αισθητή...

Coffee and cakes at Emeral

Του λαἲκού λιθογλύπτη Αριστείδη Μεταλληνού

Dear Tassos. Can you have a look at the way I have written out - in Greek and English - the references to the work of Aristidis Metallinos that we talked about when we met at Emeral last Tuesday?  Send me corrections, please. 

1. Γίαννη Μ Μαρή (1978) Βιογραφικό - Αριστείδης Ζαχ. Μεταλληνός, Απάνθισμα Γράμματων και Τέχνων, Επιμέλεια Έκδοσεως, Αθήναι, σελ. 611-617
1. Yianni M Mari (1978) Biography - Aristidis Zach. Metallinos, Anthology of Literature and Art, Epimelia Publications, Athens, pp. 611-617

2. Ευρυδίκης Αντζουλάτου-Ρετσίλα (1985) ‘Θέματα Κέρκυραἲκής λαογραφίας στο έργο του λαἲκού λιθογλύπτη Αριστείδη Μεταλληνού’, Δημοσιεύθηχε στο Περιοδιχό Μυριόβιβλος, τεύχος 7, σελ. 37-47
2. Efrithikis Antzοulatοu-Retsila (1985) ‘The folklore of Corfu in the art of the traditional stone-sculptor Aristidi Metallinou’, article in Miriovivlos Periodical, issue 7, pp. 37-47

3. Ευρυδίκη Αντζουλάτου-Ρετσίλα (2005) ‘Θέματα Κέρκυρα ι κής λαογράφιας στο έργο του λαἲκού λίθογλύπτη Αριστείδη Μεταλληνού’ στο Ευρυδίκη Αντζουλάτου-Ρετσίλα (εκδότης), Πολιτιστικά και Μουσείολογικά Σύμμεικτα, Έκδοσεις Παπαζήση, Αθήναι, σελ.47-70 [ISBN: 960-02-1860-9]
3. Efrithiki Antzοulatοu-Retsila (2005) ‘The folklore of Corfu in the art of the traditional stone-sculptor Aristidi Metallinou’, in Efrithikis Antzοulatοu-Retsila (editor), Culture and Heritage Combined, Papazisi Publications, Athens, pp. 47-70 [ISBN: 960-02-1860-9] 

If you see any accents in the wrong place, or can edit my translations, do let me know, Tassos. I have the impression that articles 2 and 3 are perhaps the same, with the first one in the periodical Miriovivlos being re-published in the 2005 collection, edited by the author of the article in the periodical. Are the two articles the same, or is the second that appears 20 years later, re-written? Best wishes, Simon, Σάïμον και Λίντα Μπάντλεϊ

Monday afternoon into the evening our sky was covered with high and unfamiliar mackerel clouds. On Wednesday morning the weather at last changed. Abruptly cold drinks are nectar; shirt sleeves sensible.

Insects and spiders are out, and everywhere.

This morning after I'd hung the washing I drove down to the harbour at Ipsos and took Summer Song out, to rehearse the new engine - with a phone call to Dave to ensure exact procedure - and once outside the harbour turned off the engine and using just the jib jaunted up and down the Ipsos shore, before returning and docking without incident. The gadgetry for furling the main from the cockpit has yet to be installed but I want to get used to sailing again - and I want to become accustomed to our boat's renewed engine. I'm pleased enough to do a selfie of a selfie.

Yet just before I went out I spotted the crew of the old Westerly with whom I shared the harbour. I introduced myself; Shauna and Russell. ...

They'd heard of me via Cinty and Paul who'd told me the tale how this 22' gunter-rigged twin keel GRP yacht came to be in Ipsos, after being sailed to Greece from England. Russell generously invited me on board.
"No no, you're busy"
"No come on. Really."
I leaned forward to board and as I stepped onto her bow, I tripped - arse over tip; this on a boat I thought I knew in my sleep! I didn't hurt myself, and as for bruised esteem, I'm now too used to being an old fool on small boats. They make me feel my age more than anything. Russell had done a lovely restoration job on the little boat. She was as ship-shape as you could have asked. Denys Rayner, her designer, would have been so delighted to see how his first fibre glass creation has lasted the fifty years since she, and her sisters, were came off the Waterlooville production line in the early 1960s.

Jogging along off Ipsos

*** *** ***
Richard Pine, who we'll be seeing tomorrow in Perithia, has published a piece about Greece's recent local elections in the Irish Times:

On my terrace, the breeze lifts the olive leaves from green to silver; at night, the garden lit up by teeming fireflies, I hear the mating call of the skops owl. It’s difficult to think that upcoming local and European elections are causing heated debates just 200 metres up the lane at the village bar.
Greeks can be very argumentative. The raised voice and clenched fist are merely ways of saying, vehemently, “Sorry, I don’t agree with you” or “What kind of eejit are you?” Only in extremely divisive situations, such as led to the civil war in the 1940s or the military junta (1967-74) does it provoke violence. These days, there isn’t enough energy to drive an ideological buggy, let alone a war.
Actually, Greeks hardly care about the European side of it. But they have a greatly diminished voice in local affairs: in Corfu, where I live, the 13 municipalities were amalgamated, with a single mayor who doesn’t even know where our village is. The roads are so bad, we need a “pothole candidate”. So they care deeply about how they are represented locally.
The outcome of these elections will be a barometer of public opinion, and Prime Minister Antonis Samaras may decide not to go the full stretch to 2016.
At national level, Greeks’ disillusion with all political shades has been reflected by the parliamentarians themselves, sensing their own impotence as decision-makers, and leading to a fragmentation of the larger parties.
Since 2010, at least nine splinter parties have been formed, some by principled MPs who could no longer support the government, others by careerists who are far from principled. Very few have any hope of gaining the 3 per cent of the national vote which is the threshold to parliament.
In 2012, necessity threw together the traditional rivals, New Democracy (ND) and Pasok, into an unholy coalition: it started with a sizeable majority, which disaffection has reduced to a mere two seats, due to voting on a multi-purpose law forced through at the insistence of the troika. This law, much feared by vested interests, provides for deregulation of protected professions and increased efficiency and redundancies in the public service. The coalition’s “satisfaction” rating has sunk to 20%.
In a general election, the party with most elected MPs is awarded an extra 50 seats and is asked by the president to form a government. Opinion polls depend on who is calling the tune for the way they describe the political spectrum.
But in general terms, ND and the chief opposition, left-wing Syriza, are neck-and-neck on 20% to 21% apiece. If this held up in a general election, it would give the winner 60-63 seats, plus the 50-seat bonus, still 40 short of even the slimmest majority.
The issue would then focus on a coalition partner. Pasok, which for decades was regarded by many as embodying the postwar state, has sunk so low (less than 4%) that its chances of forming any coalition are negligible. Like Fianna Fáil, in similar circumstances, it is desperately trying to rethink its identity and its relationship to the people.
Until very recently, the fascist party, Golden Dawn (GD), was running in third place: at the height of its popularity, it had 12% of the vote, but its involvement in criminal activities (including murder and arson) and a report highlighting its infiltration of the army, police and judiciary, has seen it drop to 8%. The rise of the very new “Potami” (River) Party, on about 9%, seems to have pushed GD into fourth place.
Of the other new parties, only Independent Greeks (4%) and Democratic Left (which quit the coalition last year, and is now on 3%) are in the frame. “Burning Hot Greece” (I kid you not) and EPAM (United Peoples Front) are among those without a snowflake’s chance in hell.
Most voters are apprehensive that GD might hold the balance of power in a new parliament, without necessarily being in government. But they are equally aware that the highly principled and well-intentioned Potami, with what seem to be sensible, popular policies, is completely lacking in political experience. This may appeal to those who are fed up with the current politicians, but it is not a great recipe for pragmatic government.
The increasing European phenomenon of popular support for right-wing parties will not be entirely reflected in this month’s polls in Greece: there is an undercurrent of discontent with the present political spectrum, which would hope to see other methods of determining Greece’s return to stability, self-confidence and self-respect. Personally, I’d support the Firefly Party: it makes no promises, only comes out at night, and lives a mere two to three weeks.

Day after elections

A detailed study into the intrusion of ultra-right ideology into four key state institutions in Greece has found that while there is an obvious problem in the military, police and Orthodox church, the issue is most problematic when it comes to the judiciary.
The report says that while the situation in all "four institutions is quite dangerous ... the hardest case is the Greek judiciary" because of its constitutional status and also because of the generally deeply conservative worldview of its members, which is reflected in many of their judgments.
"What we found out is that, of course such penetration exists in terms of ideology, but we are certain that you also have enclaves, where this ideology transforms the informal structure," the report's editor, Dimitris Christopoulos, associate professor of political science at Athens' Panteion University, told EnetEnglish.
He adds that the complex interrelations between right-wing extremism and the Orthodox church, police, army and justice "reveal the imperative need and remaining challenges to democratise the Greek state and society".

The report was published in Brussels in March 2014

Avignon© Bert Smith

A woman in Perithia, seeing my car with a hire company badge on the driver's door, wandered over to peer in my window and saw Richard sat beside me.
"Oh! It's you. I thought you might be lost"
"We are, We are!" said Richard
"Aren't we all?" she called over her shoulder
I drove over the mountains behind Ano Korakiana down to the north coast. We ascended then, from Perithia, where Richard had been waiting for me near the post office, to Loutses and on up the bumpy winding road to Old Perithia, parking on the rough gravel beside other cars and a coach; treading carefully down the steep cobbled slope into the village, until we were below the village's view towards a patch of sea below the high Albanian mountains. We sat at a wooden table covered with a red and white gingham table cloth, dappled with sunlight through an awning vine that brushed my shoulder. 

“Don’t buy it! It’s going to cost £70”
But I will. Richard’s writing is a struggle I welcome. Sometimes more than half the time I don’t understand what he’s getting at, but then a grasp of an original and unfamiliar understanding emerges. Of Brian Friel it was how a village - Ballybeg - could contain everything; how an artist can make the ordinary heroic; weaving plots from the threads of routine. It was Richard who told me that Chekov’s stories came from what he saw through his window. Where I see a fascinating view with sounds and colour and movement, he – as with all genius - could create a proscenium for the rest of us and raise a curtain on the unforgettable doings of eternal personalities – who are yet us; me even. I’m intrigued by the colonial story and how it reads into the present. The preoccupying issue of the current local and European elections is bound up intimately with the implosion of the continent’s separate empires. Enoch Powell in his brilliant, sad and ugly speech in 1968 had called allowing a total of 50,000 immigrants into the UK ‘literally mad’. It’s well agreed that current figures are unreliable - according to the final chapter of Andrew Marr's excellent History of Modern England...

...but the annual net arrivals from other countries to the UK in the 2000s has been closer to 165,000 a year, while more than one in ten of those with British nationality – five and a half million – live abroad, joined in that British diaspora by over a thousand more emigrants every day – some in despair at here, hoping their choice of there will be better. What an astounding rejigging of old ideas and experience of place, identity, and the meaning of life!
Humans have always moved about but this mêlée involves a vaster mélange of humans across  a land mass mapped to the centimetre whose outlines alter with the melting of ancient ice, rising seas and dying bees. I want to read what Richard has to say about ‘what happens to an emerging nation after it has emerged’ and what is understood by the ideas of ‘independence’ and ‘freedom’. 
Lin will insist “You can order it from the university library”

This original study is the first major critical appraisal of Ireland’s post-colonial experience in relation to that of other emergent nations. The parallels between Ireland, India, Latin America, Africa and Europe establish bridges in literary and musical contexts which offer a unique insight into independence and freedom, and the ways in which they are articulated by emergent nations. They explore the master-servant relationship, the functions of  narrative, and the concepts of nationalism, map-making, exile, schizophrenia, hybridity, magical realism and disillusion. The author offers many incisive answers to the question: What happens to an emerging nation after it has emerged?

Richard and I discussed the Greek political landscape; the possibility of a General Election if Samaras’ coalition with PASOK becomes too weakened in the light of SYRIZA’s successes in the latest local elections. We touched on the research on Golden Dawn’s infiltration of the country's army, church, police and judiciary. 
“I was chatting to an Englishman the other day" said Richard "He scoffed at the idea of Golden Dawn as a threat to him. I said ‘Look if they become powerful you are one of the foreigners who’ll have to leave Greece. Your property here forfeit” 
But it was like trying to imagine something too far outside experience. 
“We never think it’ll happen to us!” 
We spoke about Ano Korakiana’s laic sculptor, Aristides Metallinos; what happened to his dream of making a gift of his work to the village. 
“You must write a book about him. It’s a fascinating story.” 
We mused on bad writing about sex. 
“Well it’s just as bad for many people even talking about it” I said “I don’t mean prudery. Rather the opposite.” 
“Hm” 
“One thing. The young get embarrassed even a little disgusted by their elders, particularly parents talking about coition, affairs, passion. Goodness! My mum drew my attention to Donne’s The Ecstasy when I was about 16 - pointed up favourite lines in the poem. 

...So must pure lovers' souls descend

         T' affections, and to faculties,

Which sense may reach and apprehend,

         Else a great prince in prison lies.

To'our bodies turn we then, that so

         Weak men on love reveal'd may look;

Love's mysteries in souls do grow,

         But yet the body is his book.

And if some lover, such as we,

         Have heard this dialogue of one,

Let him still mark us, he shall see

         Small change, when we'are to bodies gone.

I was almost repelled by her delight in these. Now I celebrate his line ‘else a great prince in prison lies' Then it was ‘Yuk!’ I suspect a reflex working of the incest taboo. I also think that writing about sex is so often gross, unlike Donne's; why I like the Bad Sex in Fiction Awards drawing 'attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to discourage it.'
“I want " I added "to be able to show how Ano Korakiana's self-taught sculptor – taking up hammer and chisels in his old age - expressed the theme in stone and marble, but English, failing an improvement in my prose, is too medical or too brash, so that the words that do at first seem right turn out sheepish euphemisms. Aristedes Metallinos* is - when depicting his wife, oblique, yet more assured, more laic; their wedding memorialised in traditional finery, full of love...a marriage to Angeliki who bore him a son and a daughter. 
How they gaze into each other's eyes. How he swaggers with cane and turn of knee in princely plumage and she, with her white mountain flower, face unveiled, now dotes upon him; touching each other's hands with intimate promise, both hearts leaping. 
'Love's mysteries in souls do grow'...'and yes I said yes I will Yes'.

.A Lord of the Ionian Islands. Aristides Metallinos 1981 - shown with respect and gratitude to Andrea (sculptor's son) and Anna (daughter-in-law) Metallinos.

The tree of life - Aristides Metallinos

Something according to Aristedes brought detached ascetic Diogenes almost leaping from his ceramic pithos!

Diogenes came out of his pot - Aristides Metallinos 1981

I believe 1981, when the sculptor was 73 - old as his Diogenes - might have been an especially important year for his' work; some confident juncture of his life and the universal at which every artist aims - even unconsciously. Aristides rejoices with every chip of his chisel stone at the memory of his second marriage in the 1950s, his children and ageless Angeliki - bride, mother, lover.

Aristides Metallinos - relief carved in 1981

St Stylianos is famed for curing childhood illness, hence the reference in the Papas' book to 'γιατρός - doctor' - Aristides Metallinos 1981

We talked on, over Tomas’ complimentary apple pie and cinnamon cake, about ageing; about losing dear friends; missing them terribly; on trying to stave off senility. We ordered Greek coffee – a skirto and a metrio. I added a Metaxa. 
“My mother” said Richard “speaks of holding on until she’s a hundred in 3 months time, and then she’s ready to go.” 
“My great grandmother died in 1969. In her 90’s she complained 'I’m losing my mind. It takes me over half-an-hour to do the Times crossword’”
Richard’s next book – writing to keep the brain at work he said – will explore the odd sensibilities that in some people’s minds separates high literature – thecanon– from popular writing. We both had a go at Leavis. Not our favourite person. Richard enjoys stories to be read in winter beside a log fire “in a panelled room…” 
“..with Mrs Hudson preparing toasted muffins” 
Of course! Sherlock Holmes, but also John Buchan and – what – anything about an adventure that moves from the dark rainy streets of a British capital – though probably not Cardiff - to somewhere east of Prague, a small almost unknown principality with a castle and a railway that began from the edge of the channel. 
"A quest"
"And a maiden in distress"
I mentioned Alan Furst. Richard mentioned Ian Fleming. He enjoys James Bond, which except for the earliest films – especially From Russia With Love - I don’t enjoy. Richard didn’t like the lugubriousness of Henning Mankell’s Kurt Wallander (“He eats so much junk food”), whereas Lin and I enjoy the dyspeptic policeman. We discussed other Scandinavian successors. 
“What about Italian – Aurelio Zen – and Donna Leon’s Brunetti?” 
“Definitely. And Camillarri in Sicily, and the Greek one – can’t remember his name.” 
“Inspector Haritos. Petros Markaris"
"I wish his latest was translated into English, the one about the murders of millionaires in Athens. Anyway, Richard, I’m still struggling to get you a Wikipedia entry. It’s a matter of your notability”

From the house we hear the cuckoo and, a few days ago, a crescendo of buzzing as a swarm of bees approached over the rooftops, descending towards the bottom of the village. The caged dog, some houses away, moans and barks day and night. Now and then we hear the eagles that hunt from the warm air that rises up the greened crags behind us. With hot weather, planes come and go, rumbling off the runway in town; passing overhead and climbing before disappearing over the ridge behind the village. Aircraft about to land are more relaxed, seeming to wander south – high for a northward turn back to the runway or lower if the wind is in the south. The silence between their passage – not so frequent as to vex – is punctuated in the day by the sound of strimming, digging, hammering, cats defending their patches, chickens in the back garden a few houses away, chat between the houses beside us, occasional cars along Democracy Street, the loud-speakers of the grocer and fishmonger as, in their vans, they work their way through the village, and the lament of the hopeless dog. Holidaying visitors to the island  come and go, though there are few in Ano Korakiana. We note them on the beach at Ipsos or wandering along the pavements through Dassia, on dune buggies on the Sidari Road or cyclists working their way up the hill to Agios Markos from the sea. Their time here is brief compared to our sojourns. Though even now, as our latest stay nears its end, I can feel my senses turning to England and all the things to do there, regretting departure yet knowing that this to-and-fro life - πέρα δόθε - suits us, for the pleasure of arrival, and re-arrival, and the sadness of leaving over and over. 

On Sunday we sat chatting with Mark at Piatsa an hour, enjoying wine and cold beer and souvlaki grilled just across the narrow road along which cars backed up...

Polling jam on Democracy Street

...on the way to and from the polling station for the European elections and to settle the race – under proportional voting -  for the Mayoralty of Corfu** (which was won by SYRIZA's Kostantinos Nikolouzos - of whose success a friend commented "...so that means ND have been ousted here. I'm delighted that the malaka Trepeklis has gone, he was an A1 shit. This new guy at least has to pretend that he cares about people, even if he turns out to be just a politician. Trepeklis never cared, and showed it."

Yesterday I went out again on Summer Song. Dave and his dog came too. There was too little wind to fill a sail, so we motored across Dassia Bay to Dafnilia Bay and practised testing depth and anchoring.
“I want to be able to take the family on short day-trips, bringing a picnic, visiting a beach” 
On the way back we skirted the shore of Dassia beach where the sea is shallow, commenting on the hotels and their beaches full of loungers and umbrellas and moored pedalos as we slowly passed. In the last half hour the jib was unfurled. We enjoyed the quiet of sailing back to Ipsos. 
I made a list of things  and jobs for the boat – a better pump for the dinghy, a plug for the auto-steer, a bucket for the anchor chain at the bows, a lead line, a stern anchor, life jackets and a life belt, a repair to the connection between stove and gas (“So we can make a cup of tea”), a water container, another coat of varnish for the cockpit woodwork, tidying and whipping the jib sheets where they connect to the clew, depth marks on the anchor chain, tidying the stern mooring, a compass if one become available second hand, repair to the bimini, and of course the new arrangement that will let me roller reef the main from the cockpit. The 'new' engine performed well, using hardly 3 litres of fuel an hour. The motor started instantly whenever needed, was quieter and more powerful. 
“Blimey! This has taken a while” I said “Near three years from when the idea of a replacement engine was muted”

On the jetty at Ipsos, Russell was working on organizing the rigging and spas on his and Shauna's Westerly, readying it for setting her up to sail. I’d sent him a photo of my gunter rig from 1965. 

Leaving for America. Young Tiger in the Solent

He’d studied that. 
“We had to start this from scratch” he said. “The spas were in the hedge. Bare. No running rigging.” 
Locals unfamiliar with the gunter rig had told him he needed a back stay. I’d reassured him on that score “so long as you don’t let the sail put over much pressure on the aft shroud, but even then they're more than adequate.” 
To my chagrin though I didn’t know exactly how the lazy-jacks fixed to the mast. Did they stay divided all the way to the mast or was it right to have them joining a foot or two short of the mast. I couldn’t see how the the gaff could be raised high enough with them like that but I could not remember. 
“Even so” I said “I doubt there’s another gunter rig on a boat this size, within hundreds of miles.” 
Russell’s concerned that the ropes in the luff and foot of his mainsail will not easily slide into the grooves on the gaff and boom” ... even using silicone spray to ease the process.

Hi Russell and Shauna. My overview - I will ask someone in England just where the running rigging should go to ensure the gunter works. I know the gaff relies on two halliards – one, the peak, that hauls from a pulley at the mast head and is used first when raising the main and which attaches to, and slides up and down a braided steel wire running almost the whole length of the gaff, attached to it by stainless steel straps at either end…(sorry you know this but I’m thinking aloud)...and another halliard, the throat, running from a pulley three quarters of the way up the mast, which is used once the first halliard is secured, and fixed to the gaff next to its jaws. This throat halliard allows the gaff, once the parrel beads are tied round the mast to hold the gaff jaws in place, to be hauled up and above the top of the mast. The gaff is held close to the mast by the peak halliard which has a slide where it attaches to the steel wire on the gaff. Hauled upwards by the throat halliard the gaff slides upwards on the steel wire to set the full main. When reefing the main you do not touch the peak halliard, which fixes to a cleat at the foot of the mast. You slack the throat halliard – which I’m almost certain should lead back to the cockpit. You use a smaller rope wound round the drum at the boom’s gooseneck to reef the main as many times round the boom as you decide. Only for a last reef – lowering the main completely - do you release the peak halliard. That job can be done without climbing on deck in a sea. You poke yourself through the forward hatch and release it from there.  “Once you get this rig going you’ll love it” I promise, but I can see why some people find it initially complicated and apparently unwieldy, compared to a Bermudan rig. The advantage of the gunter is that it's so easy to reef the main from the cockpit, with the gunter spa aiding the lowering of the sail. Thus you reef both main and roller jib without clambering around on deck. I’m confused though as to where the reefing cord for the jib runs. I wonder if Sue (my transatlantic crew) and Phil’s W22 called Vicky is gunter-rigged. They can tell the details if so and I’ll pass them on. All the best (hope to catch you before we leave) (Do you have a phone number I could keep?). Simon

And an email from Wales:

hello Simon and Lin - yes Vickie is gunter rigged and I simply could not for the life of me explain how she rigs, especially since she's down in Neyland as we speak having a bit of a refit as after 50 years and us not getting younger it would be nice to have heads that worked again, portholes that didnt leak and so forth - but when I can get hold of Phil (who is out and about just now) will ask, and also I think we just may have the original brochure with drawings etc, so can copy and post if so. So this is just a 'coming shortly'reply email to yours, and how lovely to be in Corfu not in wet chilly Wales where we have had a bit of a fine Spring but in only 3 weeks the nights will start to draw in again and summer has definitely not yet come! hey ho! Love xxxxx S

*** ***

*The sculptor Aristedes Zacharias Metallinos (Άριστείδη Μεταλληνοῦ), brother to Spiros and Xthoforos, one of three sons of Zacharias and Eleni Metallinos, was born in 1908 (no official record of birth date) and died at 79 on 19 May 1987. He spent the greatest part of his life working as a general craftsman in the village of Ano Korakiana on the island of Corfu in Greece. Despite early evidence of his imaginative talent as a carver of stone, Metallinos was prevented by poverty from artistic training. He did not begin his work as a self-taught sculptor until 1973, when at the age of 67 until his death in 1987, he fulfilled a long held intention of creating, in local stone and marble, a unique record of the fast changing social life of the village’s pastoral economy, emphasising the role of the family and traditional customs. To this the sculptor carved, as his work evolved, a commentary on human nature and the world - one that was often pungent, erotic and at times ribald. His work of over 250 pieces, nearly all completed in the last 12 years of his life, is kept together in a family museum in Ano Korakiana - a museum he built himself, intending it as a gift to the village. Aristedes' first wife, Eleni, died childless. The sculptor was married again, late in life, to Angeliki, who bore him two children, Andreas and Maria. Andreas and his wife Anna continue to live in Ano Korakiana in the museum that houses a unique collection of work largely unknown outside the village in which it was created.

**Αλλαγή σκυτάλης τόσο στο Δήμο Κέρκυρας, όσο και στην Περιφέρεια Ιονίων Νήσων. Νέος Δήμαρχος Κέρκυρας ο Κώστας Νικολούζος και νέος Περιφερειάρχης Ιονίων Νήσων ο Θόδωρος Γαλιατσάτος, με ποσοστά που κυμαίνονται στο 60% περίπου.

Το κλίμα αυτό αποτυπώθηκε και στο χωριό, όπου σύμφωνα με τα τελικά αποτελέσματα:

Α. για το Δήμο Κέρκυρας

Ψήφισαν: 744, εκ των οποίων 47 «Άκυρο-Λευκό»

Έγκυρα: 697

ΝΙΚΟΛΟΥΖΟΣ: 466 (66,9%) και

ΥΔΡΑΙΟΥ:         231 (33,1%)

Β. για την Περιφέρεια Ιονίων Νήσων

Ψήφισαν: 744, εκ των οποίων 78 «Άκυρο-Λευκό»

Έγκυρα: 663

ΓΑΛΙΑΤΣΑΤΟΣ: 399 (60,2%) και

ΣΠΥΡΟΥ:          264  (39,8%)

The grass on the front lawn was too much for the mower. I scythed...

...then Amy and Oliver helped collect cut grass.

Today has been sunny. We expect thunder and rain tomorrow. About four weeks now to the birth of our grand-daughter. It seems a little unreal. Amy held my hand on her tummy. I didn't feel the movement she can feel regularly.  Our son came round too. He's posting some of his best photos on his biog...his ruminations on the odd mix of 'souvenirs' in shop windows in Marmara.
"They're a bizarre mixture of things to buy anywhere. Not really to do with place. The Eiffel Tower. Cutty Sark. The Statue of Liberty!"

A shop window in Marmara (photo: Richard Baddeley)

Almost hearing my own parentheses I said "It's a potent example of contemporary placelessness, Richard! Are they all from China?"
"See how in one window there are figurines of historical figures, and below them china caricatures of copulating pandas and pigs. Then another window with wooden turtles and below them knuckle-dusters. What's that about?"
Yesterday morning, we left Ano Korakiana where our tasks are measurable pleasures, to Birmingham's less well formed and often more irksome duties. We left our incomparable view, a summer haze beyond Vido...

On the balcony at 208 Democracy Street

...running in the last hours through our familiar checklist; read meters, turn off water and electricity; leave fridge door open, keys, chargers, lock gates, pack a book to read on the plane, remember passports, boarding cards!  Then, with suitcases in the car and a hug for Katerina, Vasiliki and Effie, we're driving south. I heard Effie remark
"Δεν τ'αρέσει να αφήνει He doesn't like leaving"

"Damn!" said Lin, as we joined the Sidari Road "I left potatoes and onions in the cupboard"
"Smell!"
"By the time we're back they'll have dried up"
The airport was busy. Lin went to get in a check-in queue; I to the car park. Yianni was there.
"We don't want to go"
"I phone a bomb"
"Ha ha"
"Have a good summer in England"
"See you in September"
Then after an easy wait among holiday makers we're on our way to the waiting plane...

"What have we done this time?"
"Your steps to the garden"
"Not finished yet"

"You've also stopped the worst of that regular pong from next door's leaking soak-away"
"We finished Oliver's room"
"Yes. That was a messy store-room. Now it's got skirting boards, trim, door frame and furniture painted, new curtains lined and hung. But we need shutters for the window"
"He liked his room. And I've touched up all the wood shutters where their paint was flaking; sanded them, undercoated and repainted. And the wooden window frames upstairs. Oh! And we made that mosquito-screen for the stable door in the dining room. What a business getting the curve at the top! I made a new gate for the garden, out of the end of a piece wooden cot I found in a wheelie bin"

"Put up a canvas to stop rain coming through the balcony onto the veranda"
"Had several outings in Summer Song. One on my own. Getting to know the new engine. Made a list of jobs for Dave for when we get back."

"Renewed the worst planks on the balcony. Rebuilt an old table"
"That'll go in the dining room as a side table"

A table I mended, adding a top from another. It needs more work.

 "We went on with learning Greek. Michel Thomas Method and Rosetta Stone"
"Ha!"

Learning Greek with Rosetta Stone

"Learned more from Angeliki and Tassos about their grandfather, Aristedes Metallinos. Got the references about him checked - in Greek and English - ready for another go at at a Wiki piece about him"

1. Γιάννη Μ Μαρή (1978) Βιογραφικό - Αριστείδης Ζαχ. Μεταλληνός, Απάνθισμα Γραμμάτων και Τεχνών, Επιμέλεια Εκδόσεως, Αθήναι, σελ. 611-617
1. Yianni M Mari (1978) Biography - Aristidis Zach. Metallinos, Anthology of Literature and Art, Epimelia Publications, Athens, pp. 611-617

2. Ευρυδίκης Αντζουλάτου-Ρετσίλα (1985) ‘Θέματα Κέρκυραἲκής λαογραφίας στο έργο του λαἲκού λιθογλύπτη Αριστείδη Μεταλληνού’, Δημοσιεύφθηκε στο Περιοδικό Μυριόβιβλος, τεύχος 7, σελ. 37-47
2. Efrithikis Antzοulatοu-Retsila (1985) ‘The folklore of Corfu in the art of the laic stone-sculptor Aristidi Metallinou’, article in Miriovivlos Periodical, issue 7, pp. 37-47

3. Ευρυδίκη Αντζουλάτου-Ρετσίλα (2005) ‘Θέματα Κέρκυρα ι κής λαογραφίας στο έργο του λαἲκού λιθογλύπτη Αριστείδη Μεταλληνού’ στο Πολιτιστικά και Μουσειολογικά Σύμμεικτα, Εκδόσεις Παπαζήση, Αθήναι, σελ.47-70 [ISBN: 960-02-1860-9]
3. Efrithiki Antzοulatοu-Retsila (2005) ‘The folklore of Corfu in the art of the traditional stone-sculptor Aristidi Metallinou’, in Efrithikis Antzοulatοu-Retsila (editor), Culture and Heritage Combined, Papazisi Publications, Athens, pp. 47-70 [ISBN: 960-02-1860-9] 

"Easter in the village. Another cross on our lintel. The family to stay during April into May."
"Despite the wet weather!"
We recalled our friends in the village. Meals together. Drinks at Piatsa. Lefteris, Vasiliki, Natasha, Effie, Adoni, Cinty, Paul, Mark, Sally, Barry, Kasey, Steph and Wesley.

Simon, Stamatis, Mark and Pepe at Piatsa

"Wes has helped with the iron framework for the vine in the garden. Brackets to hold the cross pieces"

Vine trellis: Wes of the Deep checks one of the uprights for brackets he's making us

We worked through a pile of mail awaiting us and enjoyed Oscar. There's lots to do - a two day course on which I'm tutoring coming up after the weekend, the cottage in Lydbrook, our allotment, the coming new grand-child, more work with Handsworth Helping Hands, the two Wiki pieces, more language learning...

With Oscar in the kitchen at Beaudesert Road

...and I've had a haircut at last, from John Rose's Afghan barber, at the corner of Chantry and Hamstead Roads - £4.50.

...and now I'm definitely back in the UK

At One-Stop Shopping Centre, Perry Barr

The Finance Ministry’s general secretary for public revenues, Haris Theoharis, resigned from his post on Thursday, abruptly ending a job that was created in 2012 under pressure from Greece’s troika of international creditors with a view to making the country’s tax administration more independent. The official explanation for the resignation of Theoharis, whose term was scheduled to run until 2018, was “personal reasons,” but it was clear that he had irked some government officials with his methods and that he was pressed to step down. Among the decisions believed to have annoyed government officials was his recent attempt to tax Greek bondholders retroactively, a move that prompted a quick about-turn by the ministry. Theoharis defended his record. “I don’t feel like I’ve been made a scapegoat because something went wrong,” he said. “Those who feel that something went wrong should look at their own actions,” he said. The 43-year-old emphasized that his job had been to enforce policy decisions, not to formulate them. Minister Yannis Stournaras, with whom Theoharis is known to have had a good relationship, thanked the latter for his “ethos, integrity and respect for the public interest,” adding that his efforts had bolstered Greece’s tax reforms and helped meet fiscal targets. Theoharis’s departure made waves beyond Greece too, with a European Commission spokesman expressing “serious concern” at the resignation. Noting that Theoharis had played a “key role” in improving Greece’s finances, Simon O’Connor insisted that Athens must not lapse on reforms. “It is essential that the government ensures full continuity in the delivery of planned reforms to improve the efficiency of the administration, combat fraud and evasion, and secure increasing government revenues,” he said. The statement irked the ministry, which said the EC spokesman was “wrong” to express concern at Theoharis’s departure. Meanwhile it emerged that Stournaras, who is widely expected to leave the ministry in a cabinet reshuffle in the coming days, met with the head of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, and the IMF’s envoy to Greece, Poul Thomsen, in Paris on Tuesday. IMF spokesman Gerry Rice told reporters in Washington that the three discussed “the way forward for Greece and issues of common interest” though sources indicated that the much-anticipated launch of debt relief talks in the fall was also on the agenda. Rice added that an IMF report on Greece is to be published “in the coming days.” ekathimerini.com , Thursday 5 June 2014 (21:24)

The visitors return home

Winding up the meeting: Friends of Black Patch Park at Sandwell Council house

A conversation with Bridget and Michelle on the Black Patch - June 2011

Outside the Council House: "Are we agreed?" asks our Chairman Ron "It was a good meeting"

Dear All 

BLACK PATCH PARK LINKS

Can we get these links to Nick ASAP - with brief explanations. 

- Draft history tour of the Black Patch mentioning it as the birthplace of Charlie Chaplin and the links to the Soho Foundry - key place-marker in the birth of the Industrial Revolution 

- The Wikipedia article on Black Patch Park 

- Song on YouTube by Bryn Phillips about Queen Henty's curse 

Best, Simon

Soho Foundry today

Under and over on the Birmingham Mainline. Those are pillars for the M5 motorway

Dear Jeevan/Gill. Can I get my scythe to to the seeding weeds all over my neighbours' plots? Plot 13 and 15. Best wishes, Simon 

Hi Simon, Plot 13 can be trimmed as it is now empty but plot 15 has a new tenant, his name is Rxxx so please don't cut this one. all the best, Gill

Liz, Sophia, Oliver and our pregnant Amy

Handsworth Park

Our picnic at last. Lin made the sandwiches

Dear G. Can I get my scythe to to the seeding weeds all over my neighbours' plots - Plots 13 and 15?  Best wishes 

Hi Simon, Plot 13 can be trimmed as it is now empty but plot 15 has a new tenant, his name is xx so please don't cut this one. all the best, G 

Understood. But xx's grasses are growing as high as 13’s. Any chance you could get him to get in touch with you re the impact of his ‘weeds’ on me and everyone else. S

Hi Simon I sympathise as I have the same problem but xx has only just taken on the plot so perhaps we need to give him a bit of time. He has been down so he is keen but I will talk to his plot rep and ask them to keep an eye on things. All the best. G

I've started scything Plot 13

Aristedes Zak. Metalllinos - Αριστείδη Ζαχ. Μεταλληνος 1908-1987*

Λαϊκή παράδοση

19.06.14

Η επίσκεψη ήταν μια επιθυμία ετών, από τότε που ζούσε ακόμη ο Αριστείδης Μεταλληνός και μια πρόσκλησή του στο εργαστήριό του αποκάλυψε ένα σπουδαίο ταλέντο στη γλυπτική τέχνη. Ως ανάμνηση, ξεθωριασμένη εικόνα στο νου, είχε απομείνει κάτι από τη θέαση μερικών γλυπτών πάνω σε πέτρα, που απεικόνιζαν επαγγέλματα του χωριού. Πριν από μερικές μέρες ο υιός Ανδρέας Μεταλληνός προσέφερε την ευκαιρία για μια νέα ματιά στο σύνολο της σημαντικής δουλειάς του πατέρα του, μερικές εκατοντάδες κομμάτια, που συνθέτου ένα πραγματικό θησαυρό της λαϊκής μας κληρονομιάς και  κοσμούν τους τοίχους ενός Μουσείου που δεν έχει ακόμη λειτουργήσει. Ανάμεσα στα πολλά έργα, σε περίοπτη θέση, βρίσκεται και μια αναπαράσταση του "Κορακιανίτικου Χορού" ... (my translation) Folk tradition.  The visit was desired for years; since Aristides Metallinos was still alive. An invitation  to the workshop revealed a great talent for sculptor.  There was a hazy memory of having viewed sculptures in stone depicting village occupations. A few days ago his son, Andreas Metallinos, offered the opportunity for a fresh look at all the important work of his father, a few hundred pieces that make up a real gem of our folk history, adorning the walls of a museum that is not even open...Among the many works displayed is a representation of 'Korakiana Dancing' Σταυρωτός χορόςΆνω Κορακιάνας 1985 - Ano Korakiana circle dance

 

The use of woman - the start of a sequence of works depicting gradual emancipation

*Images of the village artist and his work posted on Democracy Street with permission from Andrea and Anna Metallinos, for which many thanks!

Dinner with Persephone

Penelope Delta, Woman of Letters, and two of her three daughters

Storace in The Telegraph 4 Nov 2009...when I saw the dome of Agia Sophia, the great symbol of Byzantium, I wondered fancifully if the Greeks were trying to correct Paris’s choice, and offer their own apple to Divine Wisdom after all. Paul the Silentiary, the sixth-century poet (whose enchanting title refers to his Byzantine court post, responsible for order and decorum in the palace) wrote a hymn to the building, invoking Homer, and praising the building in terms that describe its superiority compared to the ancient world. Incidentally, Elizabeth Barrett Browning translated an excerpt of this poem.
I was certainly drawn, too, to this quintessential aspect of Greece - the way those possessed by it travel in time. To experience the country, and its language, compels its visitors to move through centuries with indescribable speed and flexibility. I had the intricate relationship to heritage of those who are adopted, so the notions of archaeology and excavation were very powerful to me. And Greece in which the worlds of antiquity, Byzantium, Asia Minor are both dramatically lost and utterly present, had everything to teach me about the complex presence of the past. But above all, it was the way Greece reentered history, reconceived itself after the 400 years of Ottoman rule that I wanted to learn about and find ways to describe...

Runner beans to be planted

Ron with friend John are building a greenhouse on Plot 15

Hard won spuds from ground I've already dug over twice

The backward facing man by Aristeidis Metallinos

Είναι ο τσαγκάρης αρκετά ξεχωριστό; Getting an entry in Wikipedia isn't straightforward. Rightly so. In the case of the sculptor Aristeidis Metallinos** - more or less unknown outside his home village of Ano Korakiana -  eligibility for an entry revolves around establishing that he is sufficiently 'notable'.

«Αυτός είμαι εγώ» ~ "That's me". Aristedes Metallinos 1980 (cat.92)*

Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/Help desk
09:35:02, 25 June 2014 review of submission by Sibadd[edit]
Sibadd (talk · contribs) (TB) Draft:Aristedes Metallinos (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

Simon Baddeley (talk) 09:35, 25 June 2014 (UTC) 

Hello, Simon, what is your question about the draft? — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 22:03, 27 June 2014 (UTC) 

I have been able to obtain references to the work of this subject and have added them to the draft article. I have also uploaded a commons image that I submit for inclusion https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pressing_the_farmer%27s_olive_oil.JPG Simon Baddeley (talk) 09:39, 25 June 2014 (UTC) Simon Baddeley (talk) 09:39, 25 June 2014 (UTC) 

@Sibadd: I looked for your sources. The book you're calling Culture and Heritage Combined is in Greek and called Politistika kai mouseiologika symmeikta. I wasn't able to find Anthology of Literature and Art and I suspect you've translated that title, too. Wikipedia allows for non-English sources but I can't accept what I can't verify. I also noticed that your subject doesn't have an article in Greek Wikipedia yet.

  If Greek Wikipedia had an AfC project I might be more willing to accept a translated version here. As it is, I don't read Greek so I'm not willing to assume good faith on sources. I haven't declined your submission because Aristedes Metallinos might be notable and I'd be willing to wait for an editor that can read those sources to decide. Chris Troutman (talk) 23:35, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

Comment by Wikipedia editor: The issue is that nothing in the article says why the gentleman is notable. We don't need him to be unique, just notable. Please build your article around the references. Mari's biography looks like a useful source. Ideally please add links to on-line versions of the references. This is not compulsory, but we write for ordinary readers who like tine instant gratification of being able to see what is written in the reference with ease. Fiddle Faddle 09:38, 26 June 2014 (UTC) 

Γιάννη Μ Μαρή (1978) Βιογραφικό - Αριστείδης Ζαχ. Μεταλληνός, Απάνθισμα Γραμμάτων και Τεχνών, Επιμέλεια Εκδόσεως, Αθήναι, σελ. 611-617

I had submitted this draft:

The sculptor Aristeidis Zacharias Metallinos (Άριστείδη Μεταλληνοῦ), brother to Spiros and Xthoforos, one of three sons of Zacharias and Eleni Metallinos, was born in 1908 (no official record of birth date) and died at 79 on 19 May 1987. He spent the greatest part of his life working as a general craftsman in the village of Ano Korakiana on the island of Corfu in Greece. Despite early evidence of his imaginative talent as a carver of stone, Metallinos was prevented by poverty from artistic training. He did not begin his work as a self-taught sculptor until 1973, when at the age of 67 until his death in 1987, he fulfilled a long held intention of creating, in local stone and marble, a unique record of the fast changing social life of the village’s pastoral economy, emphasising the role of the family and traditional customs. To this the sculptor carved, as his work evolved, a commentary on human nature and the world - one that was often pungent, erotic and at times ribald. His work of over 250 pieces, nearly all completed in the last 12 years of his life, is kept together in a family museum in Ano Korakiana - a museum he built himself, intending it as a gift to the village. Aristeidis' first wife, Eleni, died childless. The sculptor was married again, late in life, to Angeliki, who bore him two children, Andreas and Maria. Andreas and his wife Anna continue to live in Ano Korakiana in the museum that houses a unique collection of work largely unknown outside the village in which it was created.  

References: 

Yianni M Mari (1978) Biography - Aristidis Zach. Metallinos, Anthology of Literature and Art, Epimelia Publications, Athens, pp. 611-617  

Evrydiki Antzοulatοu-Retsila (2005) ‘The folklore of Corfu in the art of the traditional stone-sculptor Aristidi Metallinou’, in Evrydiki Antzοulatοu-Retsila (editor), Culture and Heritage Combined, Papazisis Publications, Athens, pp. 47-70 [ISBN: 960-02-1860-9] 

My reply to the Wiki editor:

Dear Timtrent. Thanks for your swift response on my latest draft on the laic (lay) sculptor Aristedes Zacharias Metallinos. Publications about this man are in Greek. I have been striving to arrive at accurate translation, hence the time I am taking. So far as I can discover only one of the references I quoted is on line - that by Evrydiki Antzoulatou-Retsila . This link is only a reference to the compilation rather than the original article about Metallinos by the same author in 1985. 

Evrydiki Antzoulatou-Retsila (1985) ‘The folklore of Corfu in the art of the laic stone-sculptor Aristidi Metallinou’, article in Miriovivlos Periodical, issue 7, pp. 37-4 

Antzoulatou-Retsila's reputation as an expert on the study of Hellenistic folklore is established. I am striving via another academic source to contact her to see if there is an on-line transcript of her 24 page article (with images) about Metallinos. I'm relieved that you say this is not essential to establish the artist's notability, but that more of what is written in the article by Mari should be in my submission. Have I understood you correctly?
I will work, as you kindly suggest, on the Mari biography. This is a mere 130 words long (in Greek) containing a rather rough photo of the Metallinos' face as a young man and images of some of his sculptures. I can find no on-line record of this book, though I have held Mari's publication - a collection of biographies - in my hands. I will work on weaving this short biography more effectively into the Wikipedia draft. What do you think? Metallinos is an interesting man - an artisan who took to sculpture in stone and marble in the last 12 years of his life producing at least 250 works; worthy in my view, and I hope yours, of an entry. Outside the academic articles I have found, Metallinos' works are almost unknown, being contained in a closed museum, where I have viewed them, in the village of the artist's birth.
Your continued tutelage would be valued. I have made several 'successful' contributions to Wikipedia, but I am finding this the most challenging. Best wishes Simon Baddeley (talk) 08:05, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Reply: There is every reason to have references in Greek, they are allowed. However that does not help when one attempts to assess an article. It will simply delay matters, but that is fine. Time we have. What we want to achieve is for the raft to be good enough to accept with small risk of nomination for deletion.

Find sources: "Aristedes Zacharias Metallinos" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR · free imagesFind sources: "Aristedes Metallinos" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR · free imagesFind sources: "Άριστείδη Μεταλληνοῦ" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR · free imagesBoth of those may help you.

Fundamental to any wikipedia article is knowing in the very first sentences why the topic, in this case the gentleman, is notable. We need something like "Aristedes Metallinos produced over 250 sculptures, one of which sold recently for $1,.5m, and is acknowledged as the premier sculptor of Greece" This is patently untrue, but has the notability one requires that one requires

Find any media coverage about him.

Read User:Timtrent/A good article. Have good luck! Fiddle Faddle 13:00, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Shoemaker of the village Ο τσαγκάρης του χωριού ~ Aristeidis Metallinos 1980 (cat. 19)

A conundrum. Aristeidis Metallinos is, to all intents and purposes, unknown outside Ano Korakiana. A couple of people wrote about him when he was alive - Yianni M Mari in 1978 and Evrydiki Antzoulatou-Retsila in 1985. Metallinos waits to be re-discovered, as his grand-daughter said a few months ago, "after thirty years."
Of those few who have seen his work since his death twenty seven years ago, some are impressed, some not. This is the way with undiscovered things. Private views have not become public opinion, personal opinion has not become a verified judgment; our subjectivity has not become objective.

Ο καλλιτέχνης σε ώρα δημιουργίας σου έργο του ~ Aristeidis Metallinos 1984  (cat. 37)

Angeliki Metallinos in her grandfather's museum

*I'm grateful to the family of the sculptor for permission to post images of work displayed in the 'museum' in Ano Korakiana. 

A few hours later...

Talkback[edit]

Hello, Sibadd. You have new messages at Timtrent's talk page.
Message added 13:57, 27 June 2014 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Fiddle Faddle 13:57, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Your submission at AfC Aristedes Metallinos was accepted[edit]

Aristedes Metallinos, which you submitted to Articles for creation, has been created.
The article has been assessed as Start-Class, which is recorded on the article's talk page. You may like to take a look at the grading scheme to see how you can improve the article.

You are more than welcome to continue making quality contributions to Wikipedia. Note that because you are a logged-in user, you can create articles yourself, and don't have to post a request. However, you may continue submitting work to Articles for Creation if you prefer.

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Thank you for helping improve Wikipedia!

Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:17, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Start class is defined thus: An article that is developing, but which is quite incomplete and, most notably, lacks adequate reliable sources. More detailed criteria. The article has a usable amount of good content but is weak in many areas, usually in referencing. Quality of the prose may be distinctly unencyclopedic, and MoS compliance non-existent; but the article should satisfy fundamental content policies, such as BLP, and provide enough sources to establish verifiability. No Start-Class article should be in any danger of being speedily deleted...My message to the rejecting editor:

It looks as if 'my' article on Metallinos has been accepted, but I believe with you that the subject needs and deserves further verification in line with your advice above, i.e entry on Greek Wikipedia, translation of available academic reference material woven into the piece and images of the artist's work that support the key concept of 'notability'. Thank you for your continued interest. I am encouraged to persevere with the article by Wiki's trust in my good faith in an untrustworthy world. Simon Baddeley (talk) 10:46, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Aristeidis Metallinos English spelling of Αριστείδης
Dear Konstantinos. Thanks for your interest in this article. You just have edited the English version of the first name of the sculptor Αριστείδης Μεταλληνός to 'Aristeides'. I have been regularly confused about the sculptor's first name in English, spelling it - at different times - as 'Aristides', 'Arestides and 'Aristedes', and now, I guess, 'Aristeides'. My Greek tutor told me a while ago that in demotic Greek orthography 'ei' is one of the consonant combinations in the language that is pronounced and usually written as the Latin 'i' . Thus 'i' can be spelled η, ι, υ, ει, οι, or υι (I quote from one of my language textbooks, and apologise for trying to talk to you about your language and mine when you write both impeccably). To add to my confusion, the English version of the sculptor's name outside the museum in Ano Korakiana has been spelled 'Arestides' by the sculptor's son Andrea Metallinos, who has carved it on a marble plaque there! On the advice of a Greek friend I altered the name I had been using ('Aristides') to 'Aristedes', having been following my understanding of Greek consonant combinations. Does the τόνος on the 'ι' determines that 'i.e.' is the best Latin/English version of the Greek 'εί' in the sculptor's name? Can you assure me that the most correct English/Latin spelling of the name is the one you have written, i.e. 'Aristeides' and that this definitely is the same as 'Αριστείδης'? If this is assured then I will alter my previous references where they are on my blog - Democracy Street - and in future correspondence and writing about the artist. I am further confused because the English Wiki entry on [[Aristides}} allows the following 'Aristides (/ˌærəˈstaɪdiːz/; Greek: Ἀριστείδης, Aristeides'. Are you more or less confident that no-one will in future challenge the spelling 'Aristeides'? I hope very much that we may remain in touch as I may have other advice I need.
On another matter I am hoping that someone can create a version of this article in Greek Βικιπαίδεια. What do you think? Τους θερμούς μου χαιρετισμούς Simon ~~~~ (talk) 14:04, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

Reply: Hello and thanks for creating the article in the first place! The issue of transliterating Greek names is complex, and there is no single method of doing it. Modern Greek names are usually transliterated letter-by-letter, so you get "Aristeidis" or "Aristeides". Then there is the old Latinized form, familiar since antiquity, "Aristides", but for some reason latinized forms seem to be avoided for modern Greeks in English. A purely phonetic rendering of the modern pronunciation would give you "Aristidis" or even "Aristidhis". Any of these forms are fine, really, they are not mutually exclusive. What was wrong was the form "Aristedes", which, while phonetically close, was not an accurate transcription of the name. The rule of thumb with transliterating is that one should be able, going backwards, to arrive at the original form, and for "Aristedes" this would be something like Αριστήδης. Anyhow, given that the artist is rather unknown outside Greece, and there is no preferred form (i.e. he himself had no preferred way of spelling it in the Latin alphabet or an established usage in the press/literature/etc.), I thought the best way was to simply use a straight-up transliteration. Constantine ✍ 15:15, 29 June 2014 (UTC) 

Trump

Oscar

With Oscar and Oliver in the Birmingham markets

Ο απολογισμός μας στην Νικηφόρου Θεοτόκη

Richard Pine

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Richard Pine (born 21 August 1949) is the author of critical works on the Irish playwright Brian Friel and the Anglo-Irish novelist Lawrence Durrell. He worked for the Irish national broadcaster, Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ), before moving to Greece in 2001 to found the Durrell School of Corfu ^[1] which, after he had resigned the directorship in 2010, closed in 2014. In 2012, to mark the centenary of the birth of Lawrence Durrell, Pine edited and introduced a previously unpublished novel by Durrell, “Judith”.^[2] He writes a column on Greek affairs for The Irish Times^[3] and is an obituarist^[4] for The Guardian. His work on Friel has been described by the critic David Ian Rabey as 'immensely stimulating, courageous and encouraging....' ^[5]

Contents

  [hide] 

• 1 Early life
• 2 Career in Ireland
• 3 Greece
• 4 Family
• 5 References

Early life[edit]

Richard Pine was born in London on 21 August 1949, the only child of Leslie Pine and his wife Grace. After attending Westminster School (1962–66), he began higher education in Ireland taking a BA in 1971 at Trinity College, Dublin (TCD) and a H.Dip.Ed in 1972, being President and gold medallist of the University Philosophical Society and winner of the Vice-Chancellor's Prize for English.

Career in Ireland[edit]

After university, Pine remained in Ireland, joining RTÉ as Concerts Manager. In 1983 he became Senior Editor for RTÉ's Public Affairs Division; a post he held for 16 years, writing and presenting many programmes for RTÉ Radio, including a 15-part documentary, “Music, Place and People: the Irish Experience 1740-1940” on RTÉ's classical music channel, Lyric FM.

From 1988 to 1990 Pine was Secretary of the Irish Writers' Union and a music critic for The Irish Times. From 1990 to 1994 he was co-editor of the New York-published Irish Literary Supplement.

Between 1978 and 1988 Pine was a consultant to the Council of Europe on cultural development programmes. A seminal essay on cultural democracy was published by the Finnish Committee of UNESCO in 1982. He has lectured on this at the Cultural Research Centre, Belgrade (Yugoslavia) and at the City University, London.

Pine has held guest lectureships in literature and Irish studies at Berkeley, Emory (Atlanta), New York University, Georgia Southern, University of Central Florida, Centre for Irish Studies at CUA, Washington, and the Princess Grace Library, Monaco.

In 1989 to he was elected a Governor (trustee) of the Royal Irish Academy of Music, which, in 1998, bestowed on him a Fellowship honoris causa. He resigned from the RIAM in 2006.

Since 1978 Pine has been a prolific author of articles and books on Irish theatre and Irish playwrights including Oscar Wilde and Brian Friel. Of Pine's book The Diviner: the Art of Brian Friel, the Nobel poet Seamus Heaney wrote personally to the author "One good contribution this book will make will be to the understanding of how Friel and his plays transmit meaning within the acoustic of the Irish cultural and political scene. And not just the Irish scene, since the book itself will be part of the transmission and amplification of the plays in a wider context. The particularity of quotation joined with the meditative, associative habit of your mind is the book’s strength. It provokes a thoughtful response in return and, as such, will be a welcome addition to the critical reaction to Friel. It should deepen the sense of his complexity and modernity, while rendering a sense of those 'truths, immemorially posited'."^[6]

Greece[edit]

Continuing his career as a writer, Pine moved, in 2001, to the Ionian Island of Corfu in Greece to found the Durrell School of Corfu (DSC) which, for twelve years, hosted seminars on literature and the protection of the environment. The school aimed to enrich international understanding of the writings of Lawrence Durrell and his brother, the innovative ecologist and zoologist, Gerald Durrell. It closed in 2014. Pine is an advisor to the Laboratory for the History of the Documentation of British-Greek Relations^[12] at the Ionian University, Corfu

Family[edit]

In 1972 Pine married Melanie Craigen. They have two daughters, Emilie Pine (b. 1977), a lecturer in film and drama at University College Dublin and Vanessa Pine (b. 1981), an artist and cookery writer. Pine and Craigen separated in 1983. From 1994 to 2008, Pine's partner was the concert artist and piano professor Patricia Kavanagh.

References[edit]

1. Jump up^ Durrell School of Corfu (DSC)
2. Jump up^ Published in a limited edition of 500 copies by the Durrell School of Corfu
3. Jump up^ Articles by Richard Pine in The Irish Times
4. Jump up^ Guardian obituaries by Richard Pine
5. Jump up^ David Ian Rabey (Autumn 1991). "Brian Friel and Ireland's Drama". Theatre Research International 16/3: 277–278. Retrieved 8/7/14. "'immensely stimulating, courageous and encouraging'"
6. Jump up^ Personal letter to the author and critic, Richard Pine, from the Irish poet, Seamus Heaney, dated 5th April 1989
   
   

   Personal letter to the author and critic, Richard Pine, from the Irish poet, Seamus Heaney, dated 5th April 1989 (page 1)
   
   

   Personal letter to the author and critic, Richard Pine, from the Irish poet, Seamus Heaney, dated 5th April 1989 (page2)

• All for Hecuba: The Dublin Gate Theatre 1928-1978 (Dublin: Dublin Gate Theatre,1978)
• Oscar Wilde (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1983/97)
• The Dublin Gate Theatre 1928-1978 (Cambridge: Chadwyck-Healey, 1984)
• The Dandy and the Herald: Manners, Mind and Morals from Brummell to Durrell (London and New York: The Macmillan Press/St Martin’s Press, 1988)
• Brian Friel and Ireland’s Drama (London: Routledge, 1990)
• Dark Fathers into Light: Brendan Kennelly (ed.) (Newcastle-Upon-Tyne: Bloodaxe Books, 1994)
• The Thief of Reason: Oscar Wilde and Modern Ireland (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1995)
• Music in Ireland 1848-1998 (ed.) (Dublin and Cork: Mercier Press, 1998) Thomas Davis
• To Talent Alone: the Royal Irish Academy of Music 1848-1998 (ed. with Charles Acton) (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1998)
• The Diviner: the Art of Brian Friel (Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 1999)
• 2RN and the Origins of Irish Radio (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2002)
• Music and Broadcasting in Ireland (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2005)
• Creativity, Madness and Civilisation (ed.) (Newcastle-Upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007) [seminar proceedings on “Madness and Creativity”]
• The Literatures of War (ed. with Eve Patten) (Newcastle-Upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008)
• Nostos: Proceedings of the Durrell School of Corfu 2002-2005 (ed.) (Corfu: Durrell School of Corfu, 2008)
• Charles: the Life and World of Charles Acton 1914-1999 (Dublin: Lilliput Press, 2010)
• Theodore Stephanides, Corfu Memoirs and Poems (ed.) (Corfu: Durrell School of Corfu, 2011)
• Judith – a novel by Lawrence Durrell (ed.) (Corfu: Durrell School of Corfu, 2012)
• The Disappointed Bridge: Ireland and the Post-Colonial World (Newcastle-Upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014)

'It's windy, really windy. They've smashed that street light again. Not kids this time, it was those people, the people who carry darkness inside them. Better ring City hall tomorrow. No, not tomorrow; tomorrow's Sunday - first thing Monday. They'll get onto it at once...' 

Aristeidis Metallinos

Stone relief by Aristeidis Metallinos - on the front of the museum he built to display his art

Shoe, 1928. Metallinos' first work, a carving in local stone by the sculptor when he was 20.

ΕΟΚ (Ευρωπαϊκή Οικονομική Κοινότητα) 1980. The EEC as a broody chimaera

Village olive-oil press, 1982

Αριστείδης Μεταλληνός was a Greek sculptor. He was born in 1908 (no official record of birth date), one of three sons of Zacharias and Eleni Metallinos, and died at the age of 79 on 19 May 1987.

He spent the greatest part of his life working as a shoemaker, stone mason, builder and general craftsman in the village of Ano Korakiana^[1] on the island of Corfu in Greece. Despite early evidence of his imaginative talent as a carver of stone, Metallinos was prevented by poverty from artistic training. He did not begin his work as a self-taught sculptor until 1973, when at the age of 67 until his death in 1987, he fulfilled a long held intention of using hammer and chisel 'to bear witness to human nature and its weaknesses'«να παρουσιάσω τον άνθρωπο και τα ελαττώματά του», depicting in stone and marble a unique record of a fast changing pastoral economy, that emphasised the primacy of the family, village institutions and traditional customs, yet mingling with this account of Greek folklore, works that are erotic, ribald and subversively political. The Scops owl he carved on a stone plaque fixed to the front of his house, displaying his initials, and holding a builder's trowel and a sculptor's hammer, is dated the year Metallinos made his transition from builder to sculptor.

His work of over 250 pieces, nearly all completed in the last 12 years of his life, is kept together in a family museum in Ano Korakiana - a museum he built himself, intending it as a gift to the village.

Metallinos' first wife, Eleni, died childless. He was married again, late in life, to Angeliki, who bore him two children, Andreas and Maria. Andreas and his wife Anna continue to live in Ano Korakiana in the museum that houses a unique collection of work largely unknown outside the village in which it was created.

References[edit]

1. Jump up^ [1]Η Άνω Κορακιάνα Σήμερα… Ano Korakiana today...

• Giannis M. Maris (1978) "Βιογραφικό - Αριστείδης Ζαχ. Μεταλληνός", in Απάνθισμα Γραμμάτων και Τεχνών, Athens, pp. 611-617
• Ευρυδίκη Αντζουλάτου-Ρετσίλα (1985) "Θέματα Κερκυραϊκής λαoγραφίας στo έργo τoυ λαϊκoύ λιθoγλύπτη Αριστείδη Μεταλληνoύ"στο Μυριόβιβλoς, τεύχ. 7, Αθήνα, σελ. 37-47
• Evrydiki Antzοulatοu-Retsila (2005) "Θέματα Κέρκυραϊκής λαογραφίας στο έργο του λαϊκού λιθογλύπτη Αριστείδη Μεταλληνού", inΠολιτιστικά και Μουσειολογικά Σύμμεικτα, Papazisis Editions, Athens, pp. 47-70 ISBN 960-02-1860-9

External links[edit]

• [2]Aristeides Metallinos in Greek Wikipedia - Αριστείδης Μεταλληνός στη Βικιπαίδεια
• [3] Extract from the blog 'Democracy Street' showing further images of the sculptor's work
• [4] 'Λαϊκή παράδοση' 19.06.14 - Ano Korakiana website

Linda and Angeliki, the sculptor's grand-daughter, in the Aristeidis Metallinos Museum

Simon and Jack at Raven Cottage ~ 1 Jan 1992 (photo: Isobel Hargreaves)

Μπαράζ κλοπών  10.07.14
Εβδομάδα κλοπών αυτή που διανύουμε, που ήρθε να μας θυμίσει τον προ-πέρσινο χειμώνα. Στην αρχή κλάπηκε μέρα-μεσημέρι ιδιωτικό λιθάρι παλαιού ελαιουργείου στο δρόμο της Νεροσυρμής, το οποίο στη συνέχεια επεστράφη άρον-άρον, προφανώς γιατί έγιναν αντιληπτοί οι δράστες. Την ίδια μέρα «απαλλοτροιώθηκε» το παλιό αντλιοστάσιο (μουσειακής πλέον αξίας) του Συνεταιρισμού στον Αθραουλιά, αφού διανοίχτηκε δρόμος και γκρεμίστηκε το μικρό οίκημα!!!…Οι δράστες αναζητούνται. Χθες είχαν σειρά δύο εκκλησίες του χωριού, η Αγία Αικατερίνη και ο Ταξιάρχης, από τις οποίες «αφαιρέθηκαν» ασημένια καντήλια, Δισκοπότηρο και ένα παλαιό Ευαγγέλιο…Και «ο Θεός να βάλει το χέρι του»!

Αποτρόπαια πράξηΤο πρωί του Σαββάτου στην γειτονιά μας, Νεροσυρμή, κάποιο ανθρωπόμορφο κτήνος χωρίς ίχνος ευαισθησίας δολοφόνησε ΕΝ ΨΥΧΡΩ με φαρμάκι ΟΛΟΥΣ τους γάτους που είχαμε για να μας προστατεύουν από φίδια, ποντίκια κ.λ.π.
Έριξε φαρμάκι σε όλη την γειτονιά και ψόφαγαν σπαράζοντας από πόνο ΟΛΟΙ οι γάτοι της γειτονιάς μπροστά στα μάτια μας.
Τα ανθρωποειδές αυτό κυκλοφορεί ανάμεσά μας και μας λέει και καλημέρα. Πιθανόν να μας χτυπάει φιλικά και την πλάτη.
Ντροπή και αηδία. Βαρβαρότητα σε όλη της μεγαλείο.
Συγχωριανοί να μας χαιρόμαστε όλους μας. 

Νίκος Μεταλληνός 

Το συμβάν είχε και συνέχεια, αφού λίγες ώρες αργότερα βρέθηκαν και οικόσιτοι σκύλοι της γειτονιάς δηλητηριασμένοι...Και οι κάτοικοι κάνουν δεύτερες σκέψεις για τη σκοπιμότητα της ούτως ή άλλως αποτρόπαιας πράξης...

I'm being bitten by fleas. It made me search in my head for a picture I recall seeing on one of many visits to the Barber Institute on campus; a woman hunting under her blouse for a flea. Peeping Toms gazing from an interior window - and I, standing before the picture.

Giuseppe Maria Crespi A woman looking for fleas, about 1715 (Barber Institute)

I've not had annoying encounters with fleas until now. It may be the cat, the dog, or the fecund season, but we have them in the house. With the name of the artist, Crespi, Google shows me Robert Hooke's astounding, microscope-aided, drawing of one of the beasts that are biting us. Lin's seen some of them. I've not, but I've got the bites; on my legs, at my mid-riff.

Micrographia: or some physiological descriptions of minute bodies made by magnifying glasses : with observations and inquiries thereupon. Robert Hooke 1667

The vet gave us a Bravecto pill for Oscar, and an external treatment called Stronghold for the cat - who's called Flea, as I had to tell him, which isn't funny really - and a spray called R.I.P. We make more frequent use of the vacuum. I've removed all bed clothes down to the mattress cover on our bed; thoroughly hoovered our bedroom; moving the big Brittany marriage bed to suck up ancient dust, lifting the base boards I made years ago.
Linda's done the same in our front bedroom, the task made more difficult because that room's still full of mum's stuff yet to be dispersed or disposed, plus things to go to Greece.
Lin said "A flea jumped on my leg, a baby one, just hatched"
"Where?"
"Down here by the fridge last night"
"I caught it, squashed it and put it on the table to have a look, on a piece of paper. It jumped off"
*** *** ***

6.00am, by the Iron Man at the top of New Street on Tuesday morning

On Tuesday I was up at first light to take the train to Wigan where I led one of my seminars on relations that make good government for managers in the Library Trust. This work gets rarer. I like the preparation and the journey to and fro almost as much as the teaching...Our morning was in the dark panelled stained glass windowed council chamber of the long abolished Leigh Council - an agreeable space smelling of wood, with interested and enjoyable people; the kind I always prefer to work with; so ready to learn I never have to teach for all my inclination to give a good 'lecture'; one to assure me the world is as I say it is!

Leigh Town Hall

MANAGING WITH POLITICAL AWARENESS 

This seminar focuses on skills and values for working in a politically led organisation. It will: 

                    - assist you to read and maintain your knowledge of the political scene,

         - explore the skills and values basic to political-management working,

- develop and fine-tune your feel for the boundaries between political, managerial and professional work,

- add to your vocabulary of political concepts, offering models of competence and integrity in politically sensitive situations.

PROGRAMME
- Brief introduction - overview of the morning
- Reading the Council’s political environment: facilitated exercise
- Defining political awareness: skills and values; talk and discussion
- Work on ‘critical incidents’: facilitated exercise
- Summary and feedback: Q & A 

Tutor: Simon Baddeley’s expertise lies in the study of working relations between politicians and managers in local government. As well as in the UK, he’s taught and researched in Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, Japan, and Canada. During the morning Simon will stimulate interest in the skills and craft involved in managing with political awareness, as well as facilitating discussion among participants of the local political environment and its implications for officers. simon@baddeley.be 

I've only passed through Wigan on the train, never been there in all my years as a tourist in my own country, but in the pages of Orwell - who taught me about mining in words. So it was nice, in the hour and a half, before my train to stroll through Wigan town centre, visit W.H.Smith and get Robert Harris's latest fictionalisation of the Dreyfus affair, to read on the train to London, and buy a tasty steak pie, to munch as I wander, wheeling my bicycle, along the mid-summery slope of the town. It feels like a place.

The centre of Wigan in June - remote from coal mining but the legacy's there

In the middle of the afternoon I caught a Virgin Pendolino bound for Euston, treating myself to a generously reduced First Class seat - only £30.

I snoozed and read Harris, did a few emails using free WiFi. Got to Euston chilled by over-enthusiastic air-conditioning, regretting the days when train windows could be opened and closed to adjust the temperature.

Arrival at Euston

I warmed in London; shirt sleeves, shorts, small skirts and bare skin all about, green spaces teeming with groups of people chatting  - conversations sur l'herbe - crowds packed so close, a few naked people might have passed unnoticed. At a coffee shop on Euston Road, I sat outside reading Harris, enjoying a smoothie as traffic poured by and London made vast urban haa.
Supper at Pasta Plus where Ziggi and I talk and listen non-stop on all subjects roaming under our shared suns, including growing old, allotments, the corruption that accompanies incompetence in managing inner-city grants, my fascination with Aristeidis Metallinos of Ano Korakiana, the work of Handsworth Helping Hands and the pleasure of jumping between white and blue collar work, the concept of hyperdiversity and the erosion of a core identity no-one celebrates sufficient to maintain a centre for the faster turning centrifuge.
"It's squeaking"
"We're doing well on diversity. Hyperdiversity's something else. We worry about social cohesion but with the hollowing out of localism there's not enough infrastructure. You get the futile despair of populists...wanting what? A good moan?"
We agreed to have lunch together before Christmas.
I had booked myself a guesthouse out of the centre - just £30 for a single bed with WC and shower across the way, a few miles out of the centre. I took the Victoria Line...

On the Victoria Line heading for Seven Sisters

...just three stops to Seven Sisters, where I asked the way of a rich mix of strangers struggling with English until a local African pointed me to my lodging, as urban noire as I could desire, up a narrow winding stairway, helped by a friendly Lebanese women who carried my Brompton to the landing...

Hopper-land: West Green Road, N15

I slept well and showered in the morning, before setting off for a more or less down-hill cycle ride down Seven Sisters Road, six and half miles, via Islington and Holborn, to Soho, to rendezvous with Charles Webster in Frith Street, and share a sandwich and tea at the nearest Prêt. He's left Delta Leisure where he was working as a senior commissioning manager when we met four years ago...

...to plan a re-publication and redistribution of my stepfather's films.
"I've left my mobile on, Charles. Expecting news of my daughter's giving birth to our second grandchild. She's two maybe four days overdue"
I'd said as much as an excuse for leaving my phone switched on for the last few days.
Charles and I reviewed what had been achieved since we met. The Jack Hargreaves archive of films and tape has been moved from Plymouth to Birmingham, its exact contents far better understood and on record, with a start made on synchronising Stan's location films to Jack's commentaries on tape.

With Charles Webster

The Out of Town DVDs licensed from Endemol have been re-produced under Contender's now surrendered licence from me, now that I've bought all rights in my stepfather's work from Endemol. Between us, with the energies of Kaleidoscope and especially Dave King, 34 'lost episodes' have now been turned into a box set by Delta - originalOut of Town episodes, unlike the earlier box set which is also selling well, but which Jack made several years after he'd left Southern Television. A few weeks ago I earned the first lot of royalties on the Delta publications.
"Not bad really. All this in four years when we've both had other things on our plates" I said, knowing Charles' wife has been going through the unrelenting ordeal of chemo since we met.
London was jammed, teeming in the sun...

On my way along Oxford Street on a June afternoon

Marylebone Station - time for a choc milk shake before my train to Snow Hill

*** *** ***
At home we've been grand-child sitting and gaming in  the garden with Oliver, along with Liz and her babe, Sophia...

"Potatoes" I cried. "Tatoes" he echoes as each earth apple rises on my fork

Plot 14 in June 2014 - fourth year! Some of my 'black gold' compost in  the foreground

Stone and couch root harvest from a two hour dig

My garlic crop was stolen. I shall plant again in November.

Where I can ponder the world news

A bed being got ready for my sprouts and broccoli - next to a large self-seeded fennel I'll let stay where it began

Young plants in and protected from pigeons

Some of my vegetables. The lemon is from Ano Korakiana

Skip paid for by HHH. Partnership with Fleet & Waste. Metal aside for the scrap men. Builder's bags for loose rubbish

Winnie with residents

The normal condition of the green patch, next to the launderette, at the entrance to Church Vale close

Edging smashed and more fly-tipping nearly every day, in front of a notice threatening a £20,000 fine for dumping

John O'Reilly arrives with the Fleet and Waste Sweeper

There was a bag of dead pigeons in the rubbish and undergrowth up this alley

Kabs and team arrive with a council crusher truck to clear heavier waste and things that aren't allowed in the skip

Dennis, one of our volunteers

Nearly finished - a few more hanging baskets to come

Litter collected, edges weeded, area swept

Neighbours and friends in our road

First man standing (photo with his permission)

Ειδήσεις ~ 17.7.14  1.«Τέτοιο καλοκαίρι δεν έχουμε ξαναγνωρίσει τα τελευταία 50 χρόνια», έλεγαν οι παλαιότεροι, από αυτούς που έτρεξαν στο Κοινοτικό κατάστημα για να βρουν καταφύγιο από την ξφνική βραδινή μπόρα, στη μέση του θέρους. Και πράγματι, έως σήμερα, το φετινό καλοκαίρι χαρακτηρίζεται από ξαφνικές εναλλαγές του καιρού… 2.Οι έρευνες για τις κλοπές της προηγούμενης εβδομάδας συνεχίζονται, λέει η Αστυνομία…3.Σύμφωνα με ανάρτηση στο facebook, μετά την Κορακιάνα βρέθηκαν και στους Πουλάδες ψόφιοι σκύλοι, από δηλητήριο…. 4.Για μια ακόμη φορά επιχειρήθηκε ο καθαρισμός του δρόμου του Αθραουλιά από σπουπίδια και μπάζα, που πετούν κάποιοι, μετατρέποντας το όμορφο μέρος σε μικρή υπαίθρια χωματερή.

(my translation) News ~ 17.7.14.  1. An old man, chatting to neighbours taking shelter in the community store from this evening's summer storm, observed "We've not had such a summer in 50 years." This summer has indeed been marked by many abrupt changes in weather... 2.The investigation into last week's thieving continues, say the police... 3. For posting on Facebook, after a Korakiana discovered dead chickens and dogs, poisoned ... 4. Yet another attempt to clear the beautiful track through Athroulia of litter and rubbish foiled by a casual fly-tipper.

Skirmishes on the Balm Scented Poplar

South on the M5

Oscar walks up Bell Hill to the cottage he knows

The Loud Brook this Saturday afternoon

A summer morning ~ down Lydbrook valley to Courtfield from Rock Cottage

Lin and Richard at Rock Cottage 1983

Our sitting room there

Rock Cottage, Lydbrook, in 1995

Dear Martin and Sandra and Adam. It was lovely seeing you all in Lydbrook. Thanks so much, Sandra, for the lunch. Thanks Adam, for your offer of help clearing inside and outside Rock Cottage. I have your mobile. Send me your email? I guess we’re looking to the weekend 2-3 August for this, but let’s make the arrangements after your concert.  We’ve been getting pessimistic about Rock Cottage after being let down by our last builder.   Following our get-together in Lydbrook some of the weight of the project ahead is lifted off our minds. Love, Simon and Linda 

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 

Dear Martin...I could see the weight lifted off my mind by just putting the place in a skip and auctioning it (:)), and then I thought about things like ‘not giving up’ and my family’s love for the place and - as you observe - all the pleasure we’ve got from it. It’s a different time and I’m not looking to recover what’s past, but I’d like to hope there’s life in the old property yet.  We had the misfortune to have a run-in with a builder who we trusted and who let us down in mid-work. Let’s make his mess good and see where we go from there. Let’s see what can be made good for the next generation and our older selves. Love to you all.  Simon 

June 2014