Our afternoon plane from Birmingham, first booked before Christmas for travel in April then changed to September, arrived in Verona at dusk. A 25 minute bus took us to the railway station. Checking a map on my laptop we walked to 1 Via Mura San Bernardino. A texted 5 digit door code let us in. A foreign river, whose name I’d never heard, winds through the city, flowing with striking speed, audible from the walled banks. Beam to its torrent, a sturdy rowing boat could overturn or be swirled against a bridge buttress. After reading instructions and drinking mugs of green tea, Lin and I strolled up Via Mura to an unaggressive castle with arched geometric battlements. Through its centre a cobbled footway led over a sociable bridge with side walls and niches on which you can stand to look over the swirl of the milky coffee coloured river. 

River Adige from Castelvecchio bridge

“One of these bridges would be great for poo sticks … but you’d have to dash across dodging traffic to see who’s won”

“On this one, you’d need only dodge roller bladers, bicycles and electric scooters”

There was a bar at the end of the bridge. We sat under plane trees sipping generous Campari Spritz with ice and a slice of orange. The helpings of bitter Campari were generous, so I bought a soda water to top up.

I was glad to be ‘abroad’ at last, on our way to Greece. Lin and I boarded a train at dawn, trailing our bags from our lodging in time for coffees at Porta Nuova Station. Men in army uniforms and boots, pistols holstered, stood at the station entrance to say ‘Preggo’, reminding travellers to cover their lower faces. 

Our April tickets had been shifted by Trenitalia without the April concession. Lin dug out €60 extra for tickets to Bari. The day before we’d taken a 45 minute bus to Lazise on Lake Garda. Old and new money seemed to have prevented the usual mess that commercial free-for-all can make of a popular resort. From the bus stop, a paved path sloped gently to the water’s edge between affable houses wreathed in bougainvillea, via the stalls of a market where Lin bought me sandals and she some jeans. The summery haze made the further shore of the lake remote but for a smattering of trees, the water glassy calm, now and then ruffled by small breezes. We sat on a bench beside the blue water. A line of sturdy pines lined the promenade, their surface roots, knuckled webs, enclosed by marble frames. I watched a small triple decked ferry. Distant passengers in silhouette enjoying the leisure of the lake. Minutes later small waves smacked the shore. It could have been the sea. We enjoyed a meal – pizza, mozzarella salad, chips, wine. “Romans sojourned here and discussed the state of the world looking over the water”

Lazise beside Lake Garda

An hour’s wait for a change of trains at Bologna, and time for coffee and butter croissant across from the station. Platform 12, via a broad tunnel, then, as timely as usual, an intercity train; we, in comfortable cushioned seats, reserved in one of the first carriages, ‘socially distanced’.  For six hours we sped down the length of Italy. Oddly the train was diverted from the main line, somewhere by a hamlet surrounded by a sandy wood - an Italian Adelstrop. We waited in silence, mildly anxious lest the delay became longer. Starting again the train ate up lost time, at one interval of the journey, rushing through a landscape of grassy dunes – “like in that film of the kidnapped child” we agreed simultaneously - on past miles of holiday apartments and beaches, sparsely populated, coated in ranks of parasols, arriving a few minutes late at Bari Centrali. 

The hourly bus to the port would take too long if there should be boarding ‘complications’. A taxi costing €15 took us to the quay for ‘Grecia’. I could see the familiar top works of our Superfast ferry above parked trucks. 

We had to prove to the woman at the check-in desk that we’d received an email confirming we had completed and submitted a Greek government pre-boarding health declaration questionnaire – a Passenger Location Form. The screen shot of the email (not quite the full page, as the whole thing didn’t fit on the screen, but at the bottom it showed the important bit – the applicant’s name, date of birth and passport number), was not accepted.

“I must have an email with both names,” she insisted. Lin said the email only mentioned ‘the applicant’s’ name. “No, I need both names on the email. Forward it to me.” 

Having told her we had no internet – no smartphone, now the norm - she directed us to the on-site Wi-Fi café a few metres away. Sat there with cold drinks, Lin opened the email and confirmed that, as she -  ‘the applicant’ - was the only name that appeared, though the on-line form had had to be completed for ‘all  family members’. Indeed, when filling out the form, Lin had to sign to confirm that only one form was being submitted for us both.

“So what are we supposed to do?” I said

Before forwarding the email to the check-in, Lin typed my name, DOB and passport number below hers. When we returned to the desk, this unofficial addition had done the trick. 

“OK. Have a good journey.” 

On board the ferry, with relief, we sat among truck drivers looking down on a cargo deck wrapped by engine roar, an undecipherable cacophony of welcoming warnings and instructions over the PA, as below us international lorries were skillfully reversed into their parking for the crossing to Greece. The sun went down. Imperceptibly at first our ship moved off, gathering speed. Later, having bought WiFi time, we received, as promised but not entirely expected, our ‘quick response code’ “to be sent after midnight on the day of scheduled arrival in Greece”. 

Later in the night, we chatted on HouseParty to Amy in Gloucestershire.

We snoozed a while on bar settees. I woke to see lights passing on the shores of the Corfu Channel, quite close, either side. No moon. A little later the ferry backed up to the jetty at Igoumenitsa. The vast concrete apron has little protection or guidance for the few foot passengers. We trudged in the warm night towards the reception buildings where we were directed to walk yet further to a pair of busy women in full PPE – face masks, plastic aprons, who were testing new arrivals, though not truck drivers or a man on foot who came “from a different country”, with swabs for the virus. They bustled as we shuffled, checked our QR code.

“All done” 

“Thanks. What’s your name?” 

“Eleni Vasiliki” 

“By by Eleni” 

We set out again across the apron.  “I don’t believe in it. This isn't real. It's all a big waste of time” said the affable, slightly jaded, official who’d pointed us to the testing place, and looked after our cases the while. Half a mile along the port road – a familiar trudge bumping over the edges of pavements and potholes with our bags – we came to the smaller Corfu ferry, climbed up steps to sit on Nanti’s top deck to enjoy the sun rise and feel a gentle breeze over the Ionian Sea as our island approached. 

A quick shop, in our hire car from ValuePlus– all employees in masks – and Lin’s driving the familiar roads to home in Ano Korakiana. Vasiliki, tending her plants, saw us as we came down the steps from Democracy Street. We all knew we could neither hug nor kiss in the usual way. We held our arms out in greeting before getting into the house, carrying in groceries, turning things on, putting stuff in the fridge and making cups of tea and coffee. 

“Blimey! We made it”

208 Democracy Street, Ano Korakiana

Early November 2021? Will it be much the same as early November 2020 when the Coronavirus pandemic persisted in being as unfamiliar to its millions of victims as myxomatosis was to rabbits when it first began to kill them, or as the citrus scale insects were to the lemon and orange trees of Corfu – now blighted, and even killed, from one end of the island to the other. We’ve sprayed our two lemons and orange with doses of olive oil soap dissolved in water mixed with cider vinergar – a cup to 10 litres of grey soapy water. 

When we arrived 9 weeks ago, we found to our delight, at least one of our trees laden with lemons, now, in November, turning yellow. The orange is blackened by mould on its leaves, trunk and branches, lacking the new shoots and even blossom that we see on the lemon, whose top growth I can examine from our balcony. At the local garden shop Evangelina has recommended a spray – a mix of Sivanto (2.5 m/l to 5 litres water) and Electro pesticide (ditto mix) - to kill, and by resting on the leaves, break the life cycle of the ‘black spiny insects’ as she calls them.       

  “Yes! They are now all over Corfu since three years. We had a meeting of agronomists from here and from the mainland, where in many places citrus is a commercial crop. They said this infestation is confined to Corfu. 'We are not worried'. They are wrong. It will go there.”   

** ** **

"I think you're mad"

The Diapontian Islands off San Stephano Harbour

How the days have passed. So swiftly. It’s now a little chilly in the evenings. Lin and I keep warm with more woollies and an electric fire – on and off -  at supper; sometimes watching police procedurals in icy places like Helsinki northwards on Netflix.  For days the sky has been almost cloudless. 

At Corfu Kapodistria waiting for a flight to Athens

Over the better part of 2020 I've been able to access more information about the COVID-19 pandemic than has ever been available to any but experts about a pandemic.  Making sense of this information, that comes on the internet via tweets, emails, facebook, podcasts, radio, TV (remember that?), vlogs and many websites, is informative, fascinating, vexing and confusing. T S Eliot suggested in the 1930s - 'we are too conscious and conscious of too much'. Lin and I talk to each other, to friends and strangers and of course we experience directly the effects of government policy - in our case in the UK, in Italy and Greece and back in the UK where, having completed our Passenger Location Form, we are confined to our Birmingham home for 14 days, reduced a few days later to 10. 

Self-isolating at home in England warmed by wood I sawed and split in the summer

Here's the first letter:

Covid-19: An open letter to the UK’s chief medical officers expressing 'concern about a second wave of covid-19'

Professor Chris Whitty; CMO, England
Dr Frank Atherton; CMO, WalesDr Gregor Ian Smith; CMO, Scotland
Dr Michael McBride; CMO, Northern Ireland
Professor Patrick Vallance; Chief Scientific Adviser

21st September 2020

Dear CMOs 

We write to express our grave concern about the emerging second wave of covid-19. Based on our public health experience and our understanding of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, we ask you to note the following: 

1. We strongly support your continuing efforts to suppress the virus across the entire population, rather than adopt a policy of segmentation or shielding the vulnerable until “herd immunity” has developed. This is because:

a) While covid-19 has different incidence and outcome in different groups, deaths have occurred in all age, gender and racial/ethnic groups and in people with no pre-existing medical conditions. Long Covid (symptoms extending for weeks or months after covid-19) is a debilitating disease affecting tens of thousands of people in UK, and can occur in previously young and healthy individuals.

b) Society is an open system. To cut a cohort of “vulnerable” people off from “non-vulnerable” or “less vulnerable” is likely to prove practically impossible, especially for disadvantaged groups (e.g. those living in cramped housing and multi-generational households). Many grandparents are looking after children sent home from school while parents are at work.

c) The goal of “herd immunity” rests on the unproven assumption that re-infection will not occur. We simply do not know whether immunity will wane over months or years in those who have had covid-19.

d) Despite claims to the contrary from some quarters, there are no examples of a segmentation-and-shielding policy having worked in any country. Notwithstanding our opposition to a policy of segmentation-and-shielding, we strongly support measures that will provide additional protection to those in care homes and other vulnerable groups.

2. We share the desire of many citizens to return to “normality”. However, we believe that the pandemic is following complex system dynamics and will be best controlled by adaptive measures which respond to the day-to-day and week-to-week changes in cases. “Normality” is likely to be a compromise for some time to come. We will need to balance suppressing the virus with minimising restrictions and impacts on economy and society. This is the balance that every country is trying to find—and every country is having to make trade-offs. This might mean moving flexibly between (say) 90% normality and 60% normality. We believe that rather than absolute measures (lockdown or release), we should take a more relativistic approach of more relaxation/more stringency depending on control of the virus.

3. Controlling the virus and re-starting the economy are linked objectives; achieving the former will catalyse the latter.  Conversely, even if policies to promote economic recovery which cut across public health objectives appear successful in the short term, they may be detrimental in the long term.

4. As evidence accumulates for airborne transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, measures which would help control the virus while also promoting economic recovery include mandating face coverings in crowded indoor spaces, improving ventilation (especially of schools and workplaces), continuing to require social distancing, and continuing to discourage large indoor gatherings, especially when vocalisation is involved. With measures like these, much of society will be able to function effectively while keeping the risk of transmission relatively low.

5. As we move beyond the acute phase of the pandemic, it is important to restore routine medical appointments (e.g. for long-term condition review and patient concerns that may indicate new cancers). We believe that a combination of remote appointments (online, phone and video) plus face-to-face appointments with appropriate personal protective equipment will allow this to happen safely. We recommend a communication campaign to inform the public that the NHS is now open for most routine business.

6. In a complex system, we should not expect to see a simple, linear and statistically significant relationship between any specific policy intervention and a particular desired outcome. Rather, several different policy measures may each contribute to controlling the virus in ways that require complex analytic tools and rich case explanations to elucidate.

7. While it is always helpful to have more data and more evidence, we caution that in this complex and fast-moving pandemic, certainty is likely to remain elusive. “Facts” will be differently valued and differently interpreted by different experts and different interest groups. A research finding that is declared “best evidence” or “robust evidence” by one expert will be considered marginal or flawed by another expert. It is more important than ever to consider multiple perspectives on the issues and encourage interdisciplinary debate and peer review. While government must continue to support research, some decisions—as you will be well aware—will need to be made pragmatically in the face of uncertainty.  

We thank you for your continuing efforts to get us through the pandemic. 

Trisha Greenhalgh, Professor of Primary Care Health Sciences, Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.

Dr Nisreen A Alwan, Associate Professor in Public Health, University of Southampton.

Professor Debby Bogaert, Professor of Paediatric University of Edinburgh.

Professor Sir Harry Burns KBE, University of Strathclyde and Past Chief Medical Officer, Scotland.

Professor KK Cheng, Professor of Public Health and Primary Care, University of Birmingham.

Dr Tim Colbourn, Associate Professor of Global Health Epidemiology and Evaluation, UCL Institute for Global Health.

Dr Gwenetta Curry, Lecturer of Race, Ethnicity, and Health, College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine, University of Edinburgh.

Dr Genevie Fernandes, Research Fellow, University of Edinburgh and Action Team Member, Royal Society's DELVE Initiative.

Dr Ines Hassan, Senior Policy Researcher, Global Health Governance Programme, University of Edinburgh.

Professor David Hunter, Richard Doll Professor of Epidemiology and Medicine, University of Oxford.

Professor Martin McKee, Professor of European Public Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine; Past President, European Public Health Association; Research Director, European Observatory on Health Systems & Policies.

Professor Susan Michie, Director of UCL Centre for Behaviour Change, University College London.

Professor Melinda Mills, Director, Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science, University of Oxford; Member of Royal Society’s SET-C (Science in Emergencies Tasking – COVID) committee; Member of ESRC/UKRI COVID Social Science Advisory group.

Professor Neil Pearce, Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

Professor Christina Pagel PhD MSc MSc MA MA (Professor of Operational Research & Director of the Clinical Operational Research Unit, University College London.

Professor Maggie Rae, President, Faculty of Public Health.

Professor Stephen Reicher, Professor of Psychology, University of St Andrews.

Prof Harry Rutter, Professor of Global Public Health, University of Bath.

Prof Gabriel Scally, Visiting Professor of Public Health, University of Bristol.

Professor Devi Sridhar, Chair of Global Public Health, Edinburgh Medical School.

Dr Charles Tannock, Consultant psychiatrist.

Prof Yee Whye, Professor of Statistics, University of Oxford.

Arriving over Athens

...and here's the second letter, dated the same day

An open letter to the PM, Chancellor and UK CMOs and the Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser, 'calling for a targeted and evidence-based approach to the COVID-19 response' 

The Rt Hon Boris Johnson MP, Prime Minister

The Rt Hon Rishi Sunak, Chancellor of the Exchequer

Professor Chris Whitty, CMO, England

Dr Frank Atherton, CMO, Wales

Dr Gregor Ian Smith, CMO, Scotland

Dr Michael McBride, CMO, NorthernIreland

Sir Patrick Vallance, Government Chief Scientific Advise

21st Sept 2020

Dear Prime Minister, Chancellor, CMOs, and Chief Scientific Adviser,

We are writing with the intention of providing constructive input into the choices with respect to the Covid-19 policy response. We also have several concerns regarding aspects of the existing policy choices that we wish to draw attention to.

In summary, our view is that the existing policy path is inconsistent with the known risk-profile of Covid-19 and should be reconsidered. The unstated objective currently appears to be one of suppression of the virus, until such a time that a vaccine can be deployed. This objective is increasingly unfeasible (notwithstanding our more specific concerns regarding existing policies) and is leading to significant harm across all age groups, which likely offsets any benefits.

Instead, more targeted measures that protect the most vulnerable from Covid, whilst not adversely impacting those not at risk, are more supportable. Given the high proportion of Covid deaths in care homes, these should be a priority. Such targeted measures should be explored as a matter of urgency, as the logical cornerstone of our future strategy.

In addition to this overarching point, we append a set of concerns regarding the existing policy choices, which we hope will be received in the spirit in which they are intended. We are mindful that the current circumstances are challenging, and that all policy decisions are difficult ones. Moreover, many people have sadly lost loved ones to Covid-19 throughout the UK. Nonetheless, the current debate appears unhelpfully polarised around views that Covid is extremely deadly to all (and that large-scale policy interventions are effective); and on the other hand, those who believe Covid poses no risk at all. In light of this, and in order to make choices that increase our prospects of achieving better outcomes in future, we think now is the right time to ‘step back’ and fundamentally reconsider the path forward.

Yours sincerely,

Professor Sunetra Gupta; Professor of theoretical epidemiology, the University of Oxford

Professor Carl Heneghan; Director, Centre for Evidence Based Medicine, the University of Oxford

Professor Karol Sikora; Consultant oncologist and Professor of medicine, University of Buckingham

Sam Williams; Director and co-founder of Economic Insight

Signatories

Professor Louise Allan (Exeter)

Professor Francois Balloux (UCL)

Professor Sucharit Bhakdi (JG University of Main)

Dr Julii Brainard (U. of East Anglia)

Professor Anthony Brookes (Leicester)

Professor Nick Colegrave (Edinburgh)

Dr Ron Daniels (UK Sepsis Trust)

Professor Robert Dingwall (Nottingham Trent)

Professor Fionn Dunne (Imperial Coll.)

Professor Kim Fox (Imperial Coll.)

Professor Anthony Glass (Sheffield)

Dr Andy Gaya (Consultant oncologist)

Dr Peter Grove (Former Dept Health)

Professor Matt Hickman (Bristol)

Professor Elizabeth Hughes (Leeds)

Dr Tom Jefferson (Oxford)

Professor Syma Khalid (Southampton)

Professor David Miles (Imperial Coll.)

Professor Paul Ormerod (UCL)

Professor Andrew Oswald (Warwick)

Professor David Paton (Nottingham)

Professor Hugh Pennington (Aberdeen)

Professor Barbara Pierscionek (Staffordshire)

Professor Eve Roman (York)

Professor Justin Stebbing (Imperial)

Professor Ellen Townsend (Nottingham)

Steve Westaby (Retired heart surgeon)

Professor Simon Wood (Edinburgh)

Appendix: Specific comments on the existing policy path

Any objective should be framed more broadly than Covid itself. To place all weight on reducing deaths from Covid fails to consider the complex trade-offs that occur: (i) within any healthcare system; and (ii) between healthcare, society and the economy.

Individual policy choices within the strategy should be informed by an evidence base. The absence of similar policy interventions to those now being implemented in the past, coupled with the novel nature of the virus, means there is limited existing empirical evidence to inform the effectiveness of said measures. This means most weight should be placed on: (i) analysing what is actually occurring in relation to the outcomes we are targeting; (ii) metrics that can be most accurately measured and reported; and (iii) robust evaluations of interventions imposed, to ensure they deliver actual benefits. We are therefore concerned about the sole reliance on ‘case numbers’ and the ‘R’ to inform national and local policies, as these metrics are subject to significant measurement and interpretation challenges (and further, neither is an outcome that matters to society).

The most pertinent epidemiological feature of Covid-19 is a greatly varying mortality risk by demographic. Mortality risk is highly age variant, with 89 per cent of Covid mortalities in the over 65s. Mortality risk is also concentrated in those with pre-existing medical conditions (95 per cent of Covid deaths). This large variation in risk by age and health status suggests that the harm caused by uniform policies (that apply to all persons) will outweigh the benefits.

Blanket Covid policy interventions likely have large costs, because any adverse effects impact the entire population. These include: (i) short and long-term physical and mental health impacts; and (ii) social and economic impacts.

In relation to health, the impact on cancer is especially acute. ‘2-week-wait’ cancer referrals decreased 84 per cent during lockdown. The impact of this alone has been estimated to be up to an additional 1,200 cancer deaths over 10 years (23,000 life-years lost). Cancer Research UK estimated there are 2 million delayed or missed cancer screenings, tests or treatments. The impact of this broader disruption is uncertain. However, estimates indicate it could be as high as 60,000 lives lost.

In terms of the economy, the OBR’s forecasts are for unemployment to reach 11.9 per cent by Q4 2020. As of July 2020, net debt had risen to £2 trillion for the first time, and public sector net debt is expected to be 106.4 per cent of GDP at the end of the year.

Set against the high costs of these policies, their effectiveness in reducing Covid deaths remains unclear. Focusing on the UK, there is no readily observable pattern between the policy measures implemented to date and the profile of Covid deaths. Caution should therefore be exercised in any presumption that such policy measures will successfully lower future Covid mortalities.

In light of the above, our strategy should therefore target interventions to protect those most at risk. For example, Germany’s case fatality rate among patients over 70 is the same as most European countries. However, its effective reduction in deaths is based around a successful strategy of limiting infections in those older than 70.

Finally, behavioural interventions that seek to increase the personal threat perception of Covid should be reconsidered, as they likely contribute to adverse physical and mental health impacts beyond Covid. Consideration should also be given to whether policies that are intended to ‘reassure’, may in fact reinforce a heightened perception of risk. Providing the public with objective information on the actual risk they face from Covid-19, by age and health status, would be preferable.

Athens Venizelos Airport - walking to departure for England

My blood pressure as measured soon after the June 2016 Referendum on leaving the EU

"Your blood pressure's a little high" said one of the researchers.
"Seriously?"
She showed me her readings; in the hypertension range.
"That's odd. That's never been a problem for me"
"Well I need to point it out. Check with your GP"
"Gosh Emma, do you think I'm stressed by the Referendum result?"
"Could be." she said "We'll see how your blood pressure looks on your next visit next week"

Sunday lunch with the family - Oliver, Amy, Guy, Hannah and Linda. - weekend after the June 2016 Referendum. New potatoes from our allotment in Handsworth

1st January 2021. MM: I wanted to write a Happy New Year message but ended up writing this instead. If you hate doom and gloom please scroll by. This is an X-rated post.

And so it comes to pass (weeping emoji's). We have woken up today no longer able to call ourselves EU citizens. And I am unspeakably sad. I don't know whether, in the long run the UK, will be better off in or out. I don't know whether there will be queues in Kent or food shortages in Tescos. But I do know that all of us who value that delicious sense of tumbling into a new culture, a new language, a new landscape have been left immeasurably poorer by the UK's decision to leave the EU. 

I speak for all of us in here who one fine day, wearing but a pair of skimpy shorts and an old T-shirt, clambered onto a charter at Gatwick to some random destination in Greece and drank so deeply of the delights of this beautiful country that we mysteriously find ourselves decades later sharing our (zoomed) βασιλόπιτα with children who speak two languages, in-laws who have never set foot on the green shores of Britain and Greek friends and colleagues who we hold dear in our hearts. 

We are heartbroken that the next generations will not know this. Those who already made it out of the gate will have their rights protected. The (richer) retirees will retire. The well-heeled will inevitably find a way. Some of our young will no doubt make it through the portcullis even after it clangs shut. But please allow us to shed a tear on this inauspicious day for all those who won't, and will never come to know what we know.

SB: Happy New Year, M. In your eloquent lament you write "But I do know that all of us who value that delicious sense of tumbling into a new culture, a new language ..." I know so well what you mean. I didn't so much 'tumble', given that my Dad - divorced post-war, then married to Maria in the lovely little church of Panagia Kapnikarea off Syntagma in Athens in 1949 - first invited me to beloved Greece when I was 16, during Easter 1957, and I, on my occasional stays with the 'Greek' side of the family in England was used to hearing my dad and Maria speaking Greek. I never looked forward to those brief childhood visits on which my mum insisted. Too much shouting and disorder and kissing and hugging among unruly half-siblings, though I liked being entrusted with a glass of wine now and then. It took four days, travelling alone on the Simplon-Orient from London, turning Balkan-wards after Venice, to get to Larissa where in the middle of the night this callow English youth, with a compartment to himself, was interrupted by a wedding party bursting in, joyfully noisy. I - a foreigner had the nerve to glare at them and ask them to be quiet. Instead of taking justified offence they laughed uproariously "Oh Englishman!" and had the effrontery to offer me a drink which I turned away. A few hours later I arrived in Athens…There, at dawn, on a low platform, the Greek side of my family awaited with joyous greetings and many disturbing hugs and kisses. Through a tiny window from the loo of Yia-yia's flat in Kolonaki I saw the Parthenon - no longer the familiar schoolbook illustration, the real place!.. ... ... Well! ... Two weeks later, when I departed from Greece, all had changed; changed utterly and forever, but that's another story, a good one. That first visit over 60 years ago was the start of an affair that I will take to my grave. You could say that 'some enchanted Easter' long ago, I saw Greece 'across a crowded room.' Even now, in dear Ano K, strolling or cycling on a small back road I hear a family, perhaps on a Sunday afternoon, laughing and talking under their veranda, and I'm possessed by an impish impulse to stroll over "Excuse me! Με συγχωρείς. Θα μπορούσατε να είστε λίγο πιο ήσυχοι!" They will laugh indulgently, even ask me to join them. I know that the UK leaving the EU can never efface - nor portcullis block - that 'delicious sense of tumbling' you describe so beautifully and which I still feel over and over when my old feet touch the soil of mother Greece.

James S, neighbour on National Opposition Street below our Democracy Street in Ano Korakiana: it’s exactly that Simon! The total mind opening of travel that Brexit seems so ignorant of!

Hi James. For people who have learned - or, in my case, taught against my will - to be happy the new border bureaucracies may bring temporary impatience, frustration and even misery, but love finds a way. I 'tumbled' (M's good word) into Greece long before the UK joined the EU, when post-war restrictions enveloped all Europe, customs examined our cases spilling out our belonging, transfers of cash were strictly limited. Through Yugoslavia I saw how the communist guards abused their own citizens, fellow passengers trying to cross their border (they were scowlingly deferential to me on my dad's diplomatic visa stamped in my dark blue passport). I was alerted by my father about the dreadful psychic scars of occupation and civil war in Greece - things that could not be spoken of, better forgotten. I've learned to accept - or, at least, to live with - queues, rationing, paperwork, inconvenience. I've been abused by immigration on arriving in New York, waited hours to enter Canada and Australia. I suspect from now - COVID restrictions notwithstanding - there'll be a couple of years of 'pain' as this bizarre event is sorting in the wash, but far worse pains have been surmounted in the past. I voted Remain, but I know other people voted to Leave the EU. who enjoy other lands beyond the English Channel as much as I.

The mainland of Greece across the Sea of Kerkyra from our home in Ano Korakiana

Danica

After many years, return to Greece in 1995 with Amy, Linda and Richard

Standing in the cockpit of our Airbus (full of screens and no joystick) where passengers could – pre-9/11 – still be invited for a pilot’s glimpse of the world ahead, I stood behind my family, as with Linda, Richard and Amy, we flew high over the border of Greece; able to see, to port, the glow of Thessaloniki; ahead the greater glow of Athens; to starboard a moonlit Ionian Sea and far below, in inky blackness, clusters of tiny glittering diamonds - villages in the foothills of the Pindos.

“Children! There’s Greece”

In the dim cabin tears welled from my eyes with the delight – and the idea – of sharing ‘my’ Greece with my wife and children. I could not speak for a moment, and Linda, more English than I, was irritated at me. 

A third generation in Greece - our Amy with her cousins Natasha and Anna at sandy Pylos in 1995

Winter 2009: The sun came up into a cloudless sky. It’s so bright and hazy, but for the crackle of awakened logs I’d mistake this winter morning for summer. Yesterday as we pottered on tasks I became so chilled I began to sniffle. By evening I was squeezing fresh lemons to mix with honey to warm in a glass. We’d been down to CJs Bingo Quiz in the evening, me in two under vests and long johns, to struggle with questions that were almost entirely about things in films and TV series. Our friend Trish, in CJs after cold day’s work cleaning charter boats at Gouvia, won. She was playing with Sally who runs CJs for Chrissie and John, also there - the latter cursing merrily to the delight of all. Trish is married to Dave, met at Ipsos Harbour in the first hour of our arrival in September 2006, who first raised our spirits as we surveyed Summer Song’s worn and musty interior, wondering if we’d been sensible buying her on ebay, sight unseen. “We’ll make a list” he said “Norman and Pauline loved that boat and she’s worth it”. And so she was and is. Dave keeps an eye on Summer Song– not only on the boat but also on the harbour politics that allow us to keep her safely berthed there. C remarked from far away on the Pacific coast. “Enjoy Corfu. Greece, no matter what, is a beautiful place to wake up in the morning" but I’m as superstitious as any atheist about reflections on the rewards of fortunae. 

'Greece, no matter what, is a beautiful place to wake up in the morning'

The names of people who rejoice in their luck are selected by a divine factotum and placed face-down on a gilded dish that passes around the table on timeless Olympus. Amid merriment, each God selects the human whose card is to be their post-prandial plaything. Here a brilliant climber says “There’s a window for the summit at dawn”; there a mother says “Our child is so perfect”; and over there a father says “There are police officers, a man and a woman, at the door. Must be about those parking fines”; and here a wife who says “no need to hold the ladder darling. Go and make us a cup of tea”; and there, in the deep ocean, an exhausted sailor says “We’re through the worst” but see this one, here’s a gem “The war will be over by Christmas”, but what about that popinjay Confederate General who said “They couldn’t hit an elephant at this dist…” Far below a fisherman on the Peneios and a woman waiting for a train at Litochoro know they hear, not the rumble of endless thunder reverberating among the peaks of Olympus, but laughter.

Good Friday picnic on a shore in Corfu. A fourth generation in Greece

Covid Tier 4. Restrictions from 00.01 Thur 31 Dec 2020

Before the latest lockdown was announced I could cycle in and out of town, visit the rag market, buying a baked potato mashed with butter, salt and pepper plus a cup of tea, or a butter croissant and filter coffee eaten stood warily in on New Street. Wednesday morning I called in at the Birmingham Donor Centre in New Street to give blood. The first drop during the preliminary test for sufficient iron wouldn't dawdle down the green liquid filled test tube as it's meant, but Sarah - name off her tag - tried an alternative test. ""Yup, that's fine""Phew". I lie in the plastic chair arm pierced skilfully almost painlessly to extract my very common 0 positive blood, but after a few minutes I'm being ministered to by three, no, four, nurses, urging me to squeeze my fist and wiggle my toes, as my blood's not coming out. "Oh no!" I think, but then "There we go! Fine now" says Margaret cheerfully. Privately I suspect the needle wasn't accurately placed in the vein.  After 10 minutes, I'm on my way, exiting through a world of masked donors and masked extractors, making another appointment in March - if I'm not breaking rules. Once home I get a text message thanking me for my blood. 

From Greece we've brought a lemon from one of our citrus trees, which, after two years barren, has fruit - - a generous load - following scale insect infestation affecting citrus, and now, other shrubs and trees, all Corfu. 

Perhaps our treatments have begun to work, as recommended by Sophia and Niko, neighbours, and Evangelina at the new Tzoulou garden shop. She recommended we spray a mix of Sivanto (2.5 m/l to 5l water) and Electro pesticide (ditto mix), to kill, and by resting on the leaves, break the life cycle of what she calls the ‘black spiny insects’.   

A lemon from Corfu back in Brum

Checking lemon leaves for citrus scale insects

Athens on Friday 19th Feb 2021. I had the Acropolis all to myself one rainy day in April 1958

So it's snowing in Greece - the dear country, the wondrous land. The woman, Xristoo, told me when I asked about the weather in Greece. She'd phoned me  from Athens to try and sort out my 'customer problem' with Alpha Bank. My debit card was eaten by an auto-cash machine outside Corfu Green Bus Station two years ago, and though I reported it the same day, I've been trying to get a replacement since. We've been at our other home in Birmingham since December, in Handsworth. 

A small incident on Soho Hill, gateway to Handsworth. A mile and half from Birmingham city centre

'... down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honour - by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world. He will take no man’s money dishonestly and no man’s insolence without a due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him. The story is this man’s adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. If there were enough like him, the world would be a very safe place to live in, without becoming too dull to be worth living in.' Raymond Chandler 1945

A cup of tea in the warmth of the greenhouse on Plot 14, Victoria Jubilee Allotments, Handsworth

Someone driving fast down a back street didn't know he'd hit a cat and ended the ninth of its lives. Someone else picked up the broken body and dropped it in a wheelie bin, with other stuff they picked up, clearing litter. The bin was packed too high, seen as unacceptable by the bin-men, so it stayed un-emptied with other tipped rubbish beside it at the end of a Handsworth cul-de-sac. 

Last time we did a clean-up that way, HHH volunteers emptied the bin, shovelled up the surrounding rubbish - leaving odds and ends for the circling scrap-metal kites. When we'd filled our transit van, the limp corpse was separated and buried in soil to feed the vegetables on our allotment, close to where we'd buried Oscar dog who died in August 2019 - after a far better life than this magpie cat.  Since then Handsworth Helping Hands has been unable to do any of our usual work. Perry Barr Recycling centre is closed to charity waste disposal during lockdown, so we cannot carry out street clean-ups. We've kept up our presence on the social web - passing on warnings of on-line scams. local news, give-away items, information on Coronavirus, vaccination and testing locations... We've also been meeting with other local people sharing information about the problems of our area, talking with local politicians - on-line via ZOOM. 

Cllr Sharon Thompson, Birmingham City Council's Cabinet member for Homes and Neighbourhoods (3rd line, 3rd from left above) asked us to submit evidence to the city's Scrutiny Committee who are looking at the impact of Exempt Accommodation on the inner suburbs. HHH's witness statement, prepared by Lin and I with help from our fellow committee members, was submitted just before deadline.

Lin gets briefed by someone managing a social housing association that strives for best practice

A WITNESS STATEMENT FROM HANDSWORTH HELPING HANDS (HHH) ON EXEMPT ACCOMMODATION submitted to Emma Williamson, Head of Scrutiny Services  emma.williamson@birmingham.gov.uk Thursday 18th February 2021

Our witness statement is based on family residence in Handsworth and Birchfield for over 40 years, and from 10 years working together as a small charity, Handsworth Helping Hands (HHH), carrying out environmental work, whole street ‘skip-it don’t tip it’ days, ‘green-up clean-up projects’, as well as a miscellany of services for vulnerable people in Handsworth, Birchfield. Lozells and part of Aston. As HHH’s work includes tasks on behalf of people in Houses in Multiple Occupation (HMOs), we do not mention names, addresses or specific streets.

Handsworth Helping Hands: our last meeting not on-line

- What issues are faced in Birmingham by residents and agencies associated with exempt accommodation?

When it comes to examining their social impact on the life of the inner suburbs of Birmingham, we do not want the impact of HMOs not classed as ‘Exempt Accommodation’ to escape the attention of Scrutiny. We know Exempt Accommodation, managed by Registered Providers, is exempt from regulations and Local Housing Allowance caps that apply to HMOs, but, for the purpose of this statement, Exempt Accommodation and HMOs are in effect synonymous, creating similar issues for residents and other agencies such as the police, social and ambulance services. 

‘Rachmanism’ was a term given in the 1960s to the exploitation of tenants of slum properties by unscrupulous landlords. Scrutiny members are now examining a problem that matches the social depravity of Peter Rachman, but one made worse by the complacency, even the support, of government - a messy, mostly unwilling, collaboration - blighting the social capital of Birmingham’s inner suburbs.  By ‘social capital’ we mean those residents of an area who have roots in it, have lived there with their families, worked there, and have invested their time and their money in an area. They know the neighbours, know the local shops, take part in voluntary activity, send their children to local schools, attend public meetings, attend local places of worship. They may be defined as belonging to and sustaining a community, enjoying where they live, valuing the network of relationships that enables society to function.  

The social capital of any one street might be measured by the capacity of the people who live in it to look after neighbours and be looked after by them. If the ratio of residents who constitute a street’s social capital, compared to those individuals living in Exempt Accommodation and HMOs, becomes imbalanced, as has happened in many streets in Birmingham’s inner suburbs, then what was once a neighbourhood with the resources, in partnership with local government services, to look after its most vulnerable neighbours, becomes a population of strangers. 

As numbers of these categories of property increase in an area, eventually a tipping point is reached. Neighbours become overburdened with appeals for help from the vulnerable in their midst - requests for food, cigarettes, money, the use of their phones. They get tired of calling ambulances for people collapsed on the pavement, seeing drugs traded openly in the street, are vexed by pilfering of anything left in their front gardens, having their car doors tried, seeing police cars parked in their street, being kept awake by loud music late at night, or annoyed by it on summer afternoons. They despair at seeing bulky objects dumped in streets, at having to pick up rubbish spilling onto the pavement from over-filled bins, at bins being left unemptied by Fleet and Waste when recycling and household waste have been mixed. They become suspicious of strangers and worry about the safety of their children going to and from school or playing in the streets. The extra insult is to find that such concerns, when voiced as objections to an HMO conversion, are not acknowledged under planning law. 

As family properties are converted for multiple occupation, the loss of accommodation for more stable residence negates the sense of place that is part of community. Houses for sale in Handsworth are visited by a queue of potential buyers interested in converting the property, initially to an HMO, with the possibility - in many cases the intention - of it later becoming Exempt Accommodation.  Every decision by city planning services, to allow conversion of a family home to an HMO, has the secondary effect of driving from the area the last remains of the stable 'community of place' that could otherwise have supported lower numbers of transient residents, many of whom hardly know where they're living. Our elected members are seldom able to vote against officers''legal' recommendations.  

When residents move in and out of Exempt Accommodation and HMOs, bulky objects and other belongings are abandoned on the frontages of properties, spilling onto pavements. Fly-tipping in the area becomes endemic, exacerbated by the activities of unlicenced waste collectors, who, for ‘cash-in-hand’ from a colluding landlord, remove beds, used mattresses and cut-rate furniture, and dump it close to where it was collected. 

- Are City Council processes fit for purpose, sustainable, efficient or exacerbating any issues?

The  Cabinet brief for Homes and Neighbourhoods should overlap the brief for Street Scene and Parks, in a way that gives attention to the connection between the social atomisation caused by too many HMOs and Exempt Accommodation properties, and the overwhelming of inner suburban streets by litter and fly-tipping. Other councils in the West Midlands – Coventry, Walsall, Wolverhampton, Sandwell - give greater attention to regulation and enforcement as these relate to permitting conversion to HMOs, issuing licences, registering accommodation as ‘exempt’ and monitoring the consequent required provision of extra support services.

Birmingham’s enforcement services have been skeletonised. Even with a recent, substantial grant from Government, a small number of conscientious council officers are hopelessly overburdened in checking for and dealing with breaches of HMO and Exempt Accommodation regulation and legislation in properties catering for approximately 18,000 tenants. 

Birmingham’s planning portal offers advice to applicants in submitting applications to convert properties to HMOs and advice on how to respond if an application is refused, but is not correspondingly user-friendly for those submitting objections to such conversions, or reporting breaches of planning or building regulations by those doing the converting.

- Why do people use exempt accommodation? 

Exempt Accommodation and HMOs offer a step up from rough sleeping to the homeless, the vulnerable, people struggling and failing to gain secure work or the income needed to rent or buy their own property; a social class, sometimes described as the ‘precariat’. One academic has referred to ‘generation exempt’. Tenants of Exempt Accommodation and HMOs include people unable to find work, people made redundant, ex-prisoners, people with mental health problems, struggling with addiction, escaping domestic abuse, people made homeless due to family break-up – a population of fellow citizens existing without predictability or security, with intermittent employment or underemployment, some trafficked as modern slaves. 

- What are the drivers for landlords to enter into providing exempt accommodation? 

Successive governments now rely on the private rental sector to provide accommodation for anyone unable to buy or rent their own home. Birmingham’s inner suburbs offer a lightly regulated zone for investment in private rental properties.

A scan of the internet reveals a national industry, promoting the financial gains to be made from HMOs, touting them as ‘investment opportunities’. Landlords are tempted into HMO investment through being able to take advantage of housing benefit rules, linking the rent they can claim to the number of bedrooms of the legally habitable size. This encourages owners of HMOs to increase the number of bedrooms in their properties, thereby increasing rental income, by subdividing rooms, or by adding extensions to properties, sometimes without obtaining planning consent, sometimes with false information being entered in planning applications. 

The acquisition of ‘exempt’ status allows even higher financial gains to be made by unscrupulous landlords willing to commit what is essentially fraud. 

To become ‘exempt’, a property must be leased to a ‘Registered Provider’, to be ‘managed’ by them, but not necessarily involving them in providing the extra services required for gaining exempt status. In some cases, the only ‘management’ involved may be dealing with the initial benefits application, receiving the enhanced benefits, and, after subtracting their charges, sending the landlord what remains. 

It must be said that some Registered Providers give excellent service, ensuring that HMO standards, although not mandatory, are applied, that the extra services promised and paid for from the public purse, irrespective of whether they or the landlords arrange the provision of those services, are delivered, that the welfare of tenants is paramount. Unfortunately, however, even for Registered Providers managing many properties, this is not always the case.

The current Exempt Accommodation benefits system enables the exploitation of Exempt Accommodation tenants and of taxpayers, by both Registered Providers and landlords, by those among their number who claim to provide, but don’t necessarily deliver, the extra services necessary to enable vulnerable tenants to live with an appropriate degree of independence. In some cases, the only reliable ‘service’ is delivery of illegal drugs by local dealers. 

The lack of legislation to effectively regulate the Exempt Accommodation sector stigmatises the social contribution of honest landlords and Registered Providers who, in running their businesses or not-for-profit organisations, offer conscientious support to their tenants and strive to maintain good relations with the community who live around their properties. 

- What role can Planning legislation play within the confines of existing legislation and how can planning be used or amended to manage the growth of exempt accommodation?

If Birmingham City Council is to combine concern for the tenants of Exempt Accommodation and HMOs with concern for communities, steps must be taken to stop other local authorities diverting vulnerable people to Birmingham, into the regulated, but poorly enforced, HMO and the unregulated Exempt Accommodation sectors. At present HHH volunteers are struck by an impression of ‘lawlessness’ - a shameful failure to implement even existing planning law and building regulations, with many properties converted for multiple occupation without planning permission, where reported infringements of the most blatant kind are ignored, especially when a conversion is completed before those affected by it can query it, where council planners and building regulators fail to reverse illegal work, once completed. Such ineffectual planning regulation, applies to other services the local authority is supposed to provide for vulnerable citizens.

We also believe that the council’s database fails to reflect the actual numbers of legal conversions, let alone those erected or converted without permission.

Regulatory services are ill-staffed to cope with the challenge of enforcing the laws and regulations, as they relate to HMOs and Exempt Accommodation.

Although not, currently directly related to Planning legislation, housing benefit rules that enable landlords of HMOs and Exempt Accommodations to substantially increase profits, in some cases fraudulently, by sub-dividing and extending properties should be changed. If three-bedroom family homes could only be operated as three-tenant HMOs or Exempt Accommodations, they would quickly become less attractive to those landlords whose only interest is to maximise income, and would have the potential to be returned, eventually, to the family housing market.

- What are the health needs faced by this group of vulnerable people?

The worst health needs come from loneliness. An individual is given a transport fare to an unfamiliar address in a city they don’t know, lodged among strangers in a converted property, beside mistrustful and apprehensive neighbours. This isolation breeds ill health – physical and mental. Perhaps worst is the lack of political engagement. Handsworth’s famous group Steel Pulse - old men now - who many enjoyed in local places before they became famous in the late 70s, were signalling in their music and lyrics the troubles of the 1980s that made Handsworth nationally notorious, but also became associated with a multi-racial cohesion that continued almost into the recession of 2008. 

Thousands of lonely men and women in HMOs hardly know they live in Handsworth, Birchfield, Aston, Holyhead or even in Birmingham. They have no engagement with the area or with one another; little impulse to rebellious creativity, political organisation or collective reaction to their condition. The harm of this condition is drug addiction, alcoholism, petty crime, theft from shops, homes and cars with the amplifying corollary of an atomised population of victims upon whom criminals can prey, trafficking people, encouraging drug pushing, dealing in weapons, fencing stolen goods and fly tipping. 

- What can we learn from people’s experiences and best practice in other parts of the country?

Birmingham City Council’s failure to regulate the amount and distribution of HMOs is notorious across the UK. Certain types of profiteer circle our city’s inner suburbs like carrion crows. Properties judged suitable for multiple occupation in Birmingham’s inner suburbs are advertised by property agents in Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool, where local authorities have made it more difficult for unscrupulous landlords to profit excessively from converting family homes to HMOs and Exempt Accommodation.  Scrutiny members might, as part of this enquiry, investigate approaches to permitting, licencing and monitoring HMOs and registering and monitoring Exempt Accommodation in those cities - if only by making a few phone calls. 

Simon Baddeley (Hon Sec), Linda Baddeley (Hon Treasurer), Nick Jolliffe, John Rose, Sister Simone Hanel, Mike Tye (Chair) Handsworth Helping Hands. Queen's Award for Voluntary Service 2019 

... The tone of a violins is influenced by the varnish, making it an important element of the instrument ... one cloth should be used only for the strings and the fingerboard, which should be wiped well. If the strings are thick with rosin, their tone will suffer and produce noise. The fingerboard becomes dirty with sweat from the fingers ... The violin is so delicate it will creak and pop if exposed to the wind of an air conditioner ... stored in high humidity and temperature the top and bottom plate will swell, changing the thickness of the body, causing the sound post to collapse ... the body of the violin has many curves, so it's not safe to just place it somewhere without thought...

The procedures for travel to Ano Korakiana from Handsworth included a Passenger Location Form (PLF), a certificate of immunity in the form of a negative Rapid Lateral Flow Test for Lin at a shop in the Bullring, paid for, sent by email and printed out a day before departure, and, for me, an NHS certificate of AstraZeneca vaccinations, sent by post after an on-line application, on top of our Boarding Cards for Ryanair.  

Linda goes to take a Lateral Flow Test in the Birmingham Bullring Shopping Centre

To these we added documents relevant to the ‘Withdrawal Agreement’ – beige residency cards obtained two years ago from the police station at Paleokastritsa, a letter, copied from a facebook page of advice to ‘British in Greece’, explaining that our passports should not be stamped with a date of arrival lest we be fined on departure for overstaying a time allowance for non-EU citizens visiting Corfu. These small hurdles nibbled at my enjoyment of the approach to a familiar journey – not a ‘holiday’, as some called it, kindly wishing us on our way, but a return to another much-missed home; our custom of going to and fro, since I was a child, between city and country and between countries.

A pre-dawn taxi. in charge of a distracted young conversationalist, took us, circuitously but chattily, to Birmingham Airport, where sparser numbers eased our check-in. An efficient Ryanair official with a Prussian shock of blond hair stapled and stamped papers we thought might be minutely checked. Only where we had to pass – randomly - through the body scanner was I politely asked, despite my sunflower lanyard with its exemption card, to don a proffered face-covering for a few seconds. There were just 31 passengers, so much choice of seating once in the air. A drink and snack to hand excused us niqabs for the three hour journey. I’d begun reading Nadezhda Mandlestam’s ‘Hope Against Hope’ - alternative title ‘Isolate but Preserve’? – a salutary entertainment, lucid, funny, bitter and noble, on the fate of Osip Mandelstam after he’d written 16 excoriating lines about Stalin in 1933. ‘Salutary’ because her pleasing writing is a reminder of how much further states and their hapless populations can collude in accepting and fatally enforcing delusion and fantasy. 

On alighting from our plane around noon Eastern European, I knelt and placed my hand on the baking concrete and kissed my palm. In an instant a member of cabin crew, solicitous, asked if I was alright.

“Yes yes. I am just so happy to be back in Greece”

“It is very hot!” she said 

“Yes yes. It doesn’t matter. I am happy!” 

On the way up the gentle ramp into the terminal another person in livery, leaning over me from further up, asked if I was OK. 

“Yes yes yes! But thank you so much” 

I smiled rejoicingly like the ‘vulnerable’ slightly dotty old bloke they took me for. At the glass doors into the cool and familiar interior of Arrivals, Lin and I were promptly ushered to the head of the zig-zagging queue, our documents, so conscientiously and apprehensively assembled, were processed unheeded in seconds, our passports unstamped courtesy of the request, printed in Greek, attesting residency, though Lin simply asking seemed all that was needed to jump that anticipated hurdle. Later our friend Paul, in Agios Ioannis, said, when I remarked on our unexpected ease of entry, “I think the officials are getting bored with all this ‘stuff’”.

A hire car, available for only a day, was quoted at €82. Impossible to accept. Our friend K, phoned from England, met us in her air-conditioned car, took us to Kaizanis at Tzavros to shop for basics, and so up the winding road between swaying olives, cypresses, and tinder dry verges, towards the familiar frieze of rising mountains above Ano Korakiana, to drop us at the top of the thirteen broad whitewashed steps down to 208 Democracy Street - our common path shaded by Efi’s ivy covered wall, her spreading walnut tree, Vassiliki’s oleander and our wisteria, strewn with drifts of fading Bougainvillea petals. In a minute I’d turned on the water and the electricity; our bags and shopping brought indoors. 

One of my regular conversations with Angel, a trim lady finely dressed, elegantly trailing a wheelie case, bringing from her church in Highgate food for the poor to the city markets below St Martin’s in the Bullring

“I see you wear no mask. Have you been vaccinated?” I know her well enough to risk curiosity. She, as versed as I, converses in words from King James Bible. 

“None o’ that. Do you not know, now is the Latter Days when Christ will come in his great glory to redeem us - to judge the quick and the dead”  (“the” pronounced “thee”)

“I know that my redeemer liveth”

“Allelulia. Praise the Lord. Would you like a sandwich?”

“No thanks, Angel. I am a rich man. God bless you”

Sometime in early 2020 when governments were fumbling with policies about it, someone in the WHO pronounced that "this is perhaps the first pandemic that humans can manage”. Where humans, faced with previous epidemics, could only accept, adapt and react to such catastrophes, SARS-CoV-2 was going to be managed. 

By late 2021 governments across the world appear to have accorded sovereignty to managerialism – a 20th century invention, relentlessly optimistic in offering the prospect of salvation where there might otherwise be despair and chaos. Where mere politics and the expertise of professionals falter, here is a faith that claims nothing cannot ultimately be managed– money, time, personal relations, and this pandemic. Management theory excludes ‘fate’; views doubt as irregular; sees qualms and reservations as faint motivation. Management side-steps ‘fortuna’ – the element of luck on which Machiavelli placed much weight in human affairs. The manager estimates ‘probabilities’, relies on extrapolation, simulation, graphics and models. Those with faith in management claim to operate outside politics, asserting loyalty to no ‘ism’, yet are ever theorising about values, leadership, motives, organisational behaviour, personality and governance. As with all faiths, as with politics and professionalism, those who trust in managing the pandemic can deploy secure logic, evidence and language, to demonstrate achievements and justify failures - though under pressure their language can turn florid, theatrical and, in dealing with scepticism, abrasive. Though he’s modified his opinion, our son-in-law attributed incidences of the latter – the reported persistence of the virus in the population despite restrictions, distancing, ubiquitous signage, masking, tracking and tracing, mass vaccination, and fear focused advertising, to people’s stubborn and feckless failure to comply with sensible precautions and restrictions.

I see no light at the end of the lock-down tunnel. We are enmeshed in, indeed captured by, a system of thought, of common sense and science as widely trusted as was once the omnipresence of witches and devils, the sky-high market value of tulip bulbs in 17th century Holland, Marxist-Leninism as a basis for fatal collectivised agriculture in the 1930s or the Tayloresque intensification of farming that made a ‘dust-bowl’ of the American southern plains those same years. 

Power, profit, censorship of debate, besmirching of dissent, pervasive advertising in every medium, signage on walls, windows pavements, platforms, shops, and banners, conscientious belief among political leaders, advised by their scientists, that suppression, even elimination, of the CD-19 virus is practical - can be managed - have locked national populations, willing and unwilling, into uneven and unpredictable degrees of lock down. 

Faith, ever couched in the language, but not the behaviour, of science, holds that this global catastrophe can and will  and must be managed. I say ‘language’, since unlike true science, the theories on which government’s rely in combating the pandemic is impervious to refutation - the opposite of theorising in science. Debate is censored, rebuttal - even scepticism - slandered. Possessed by this grand illusion, whose internal symmetry gives it, in some minds, the character of a conspiracy, political leaders – ever relying on the authority of science – have decreed, - with rare exceptions such as Sweden and perhaps Denmark - via emergency powers, policies that become ever more difficult to enforce, the more they are characterised by capricious inconsistency; the more they breach the rule of law, due process and decency; the more they invoke covert evasion of laws no longer respected.

I was on a bus sometime in 2020 as lockdown eased. I’m wearing a face mask. I catch the eye of a man across the aisle without a mask and was perhaps perceived as slightly quizzical, even judgemental.

“It’s not worth it. Did you know this virus can penetrate 9 feet of reinforced concrete?”

“I didn’t. That’s interesting. Blimey! Nine feet!”

“5G. It comes from 5G”

“Oh! Right. So nothing can be done?” He nodded, resigned.

In recent months governments have employed door-to-door canvassers and phone pitchers. Unknown callers have drawn on medical records to ask personal questions about ‘immunity status'. Striving to suppress the elusive shape-shifting virus, they’ve mustered squads of police, masked-up but not socially distanced, lined public spaces in brigade force, deployed batons, pepper spray, rubber bullets, tear gas, and fire hoses to disperse public gatherings. Police and other services ‘with the best intentions’ have been filmed trying to separate parents from their children. Public servants have entered private houses to make arrests and impose fines after being alerted by neighbours observing alleged breaches of lock down, on the basis of anonymous denunciation encouraged by governments. One government in Australia has spoken of enforcing compliance with self-isolation using a citizen's geo-location and facial profiling, starting with aggregated measures of population movement, but refining the process to specific addresses. There’s domestic and civil strife, amplified by the social web, between the fearful and the furious; true believers and true unbelievers. I have noticed men wandering in central Birmingham with hi-vis tabards bearing the title ‘Covid Marshall’. Job descriptions during their recruitment focused on their role as ‘helpers’ and ‘guides’.  

One of the harms of ‘house arrest’ has been to miss out on the constant self-correction of any inclination to think that I understand the world.  Deprived of regular and frequent direct conversation with friends and strangers I find my objectivity compromised. Quarantines have perhaps promoted over-confident subjectivity. My ‘normal condition of open-minded curiosity, puzzlement, doubt and confusion, has been sustained by interaction - in the street, the markets of my city, other countries, between neighbours over garden fences, many pubs, on country lanes, river banks and beaches. Linda and I seem to have robust immunity to Covid-19. It’s called T-Cell immunity.  We know no-one - relatives, friends, neighbours - who’ve died or been more than mildly ill over the last 18 months. Anecdotes about others – second hand from the media - for whom this fortunate circumstance is not the case, are a reminder to welcome our particular fortune and to strive to make the best of these bizarre and dismal times. Regular phone calls, and on-line screen meetings with family - including grandchildren, our son in Istanbul, colleagues and friends in many other parts of the world and now an on-line teaching project with fast track civil servants, do not replace insights afforded by the intimacies and intimations of face-to-face conversation.

I remedy my vexation by revisiting the history of eras whose butchers’ bills by way of war, oppression and disease maintain my sense of proportion. 

At the entrance to shops at Newtown Shopping Centre I recognise Mo and asked him if he was well

“I had the covid, you know”

“What happened?”

“On the third day I was feeling so bad I called the ambulance. There’s two Asian blokes and a white lady. She come to the door and whispers 'We can take you to the hospital but I don’t think it’s a good idea.' She’s shaking her head, like very quiet, mouthing ‘not a good idea’. I stay in my house. After two more days I am still feeling bad I call the ambulance again. This time the driver waves to me. ‘We are here. We can take you. Do you really want to go?’ He’s shaking his head. Discouraging me. OK so I go back to bed, taking honey and ginger and feeling real bad. Two days later I’m not getting any better, I phone again for the ambulance. This time I’m lying behind my front door. They ring my bell. Behind the door I am on my knees. I get it open. The lady nurse cry out ‘Close your door! Now! We’ll come back in 10 minutes’ I wait. Then I hear them knock. I open the door. They all kitted up, like three spacemen I tell you, white boots, plastic trousers, jackets and faces all covered in plastic screens. ‘Now we take you to the hospital’ I said ‘F*ck off’’” 

“Blimey”

“The next day I’m OK”

“That’s strange, Mo” 

Just before we left for Corfu I took our new puppy, Pip, in the pannier of my bicycle to visit a friend in quarantine. We spoke through the glass of her front window. 

“I’m getting phone calls every day. They deliver steroids. Test kits I have to push back through my letter box. I’ve tested positive three times. Feels like a bad flu. They say it’s Delta. I’ve got to quarantine for 90 days!”  

“But you’re allowed out to shop for food or harvest food from your allotment” I emailed her the legal clauses that would let her out of the house. 

“90 days?”

“Yeah really. Don’t you mean 19, I said? ‘No’ she said ‘it’s 90 days’. Anyway I’m bored of them. I don’t want steroids. I’m not answering the phone any more.” 

We’ve stayed in touch by the social web. 

A friend in academia emails: … you appear to have been listening to the bbc too much.  I "risk curiosity" on just about everyone (except those sad souls one instantly perceives the need to keep clear of). I've already explained in previous emails how the level of distrust has never been higher.  Many of even those wearing masks in the open are just doing so to avoid being accused of being "selfish""granny-killers".  Most sci/medical people don't believe the lies but they are scared to speak out as they will lose their jobs.  HUGE marches in London and around the world. The Chris Whitty regime are pushing their luck on how much they can take the pisc.  Even Neil Fergustwat is now "predicting" things will have ended by Sept.  People should just display my cut-open masks saying "PSEUDO - SCIENCE" to provoke responses.  One Korean guy in Nyu St even embraced me haha. Very simple.  If there were loads of deaths, urban house prices would have collapsed with capital C.  Instead they have Soared with capital S

Looking over the Sea of Kerkyra towards Epirus in Mother Greece. The small island is Vido

Having been away – because of travel restrictions - since last December there have been more than a few gardening jobs to do. A spreading squash has climbed the fence into our garden from Vasilikki’s. Its broad palmate leaves and hairy stems, hanging by tendrils, spread to the ground. Most of its yellow flowers are male. 

On a whim I decide to have a go at doing work that’s better done by bees. I pull up a chair to get a closer view of the vine, looking to take the stamen of a male flower and touch it to the stigma of a female. I’d found find several squashes forming – kolokithakia Κολοκυθάκια – but could find no more female flowers on which to experiment. There’s a crack of thunder. The sky goes grey, rain descends, and the washing I’ve hung out gets a further rinse. As the days pass the lower squash has grown to a satisfied potentate, nestling among its decaying leaves, yellowing, a smaller satrap hanging six feet above. We on high ground only heard of the consequences of several days of rain in the south of the island.

Flooding in Moraitika

Our Bougainvillea, plant of a thousand hybrids even within a square mile, flourishes as it hasn’t for years, in some cases surging through the planks of the balcony. Work above and below with the loppers sorts that, with the help of a hammer and chisel where a stem has hardened, wedged itself between decking. 

The trumpet vine leans nonchalantly over the front of the balcony, less invasive than last year but full of flowers. I’ve cut back the top growth of the lemon tree in front of the balcony. For its safety, I’ve applied more of the anti-scale insect spray used last October and earlier. These insects seem, at last, to have given up, after blighting our citrus trees. Can this infestation really be over? There are many lemons on the larger tree, but none on the smaller. Our blood orange tree, once so fecund, hasn’t fruited for five years. Though still leaved, its periphery branches end in dried and blackened twigs. In the lower garden Lin’s cut back ‘what needed it’, including Yucca tops. She’s combed out dead growth, potted up cuttings, moved many of our plant pots on the steps and swept up accumulations of fallen leaves and petals, and watered widely. Things are, and therefore life, is tidier. Dimitri, a neighbour, has strimmed the path that goes below our house from Democracy Street down to ‘our’ bus stop on National Opposition Street. 

Above us from before dawn well into the night the short holiday harvest planes grumble to and fro above the mountain ridge behind us, often half full, we’re told, of travellers in masks who, like us, have completed or booked Covid immunity tests, shown their vaccine certificate and other proofs of immunity, filed their PLFs and prepared for self-isolation on arrival. 

We are almost always without a car. Hirers may have none available, or they're too expensive. We rely on the daily bus at 7.45am and early afternoon back from the city. There’s my bicycles. But for the local bakery – OK for wine and bread – our grocery is 8 kilometres away.  A grocer in a truck visits us Tuesday and Saturday, crying his wares as he drives back and forth through ours and the lower roads.

I'm beginning to find the uphill pedal to the village, with kilos of shopping in the rear basket, and especially the ascent by the last four hairpin bends, more of an ordeal than an achievement, especially in the heat of August. On impulse I did what I had told myself I wouldn’t do.  I cycled on the bike I'd bought from them 10 years ago, to Rolando’s and Elena’s shop opposite the hospital in Kontokali, and bought an eBike with a Bosch crank-driven motor. 

Other electric bicycles have a battery drive on the hub of the wheel. My drive sits between the pedals - Active Line Plusoffering increasing levels of power to support my pedalling with increments of back-up power that proceed from normal cycling without the battery rising to 40% (Eco) to 100% (Tour), to 180% (Sport) to 270% (Turbo) support - 

... all shown on a little screen beside an up-down button on the handlebars controlled by my left hand index finger. That's helped by seven derailleur gears on my rear chain drive controlled by a right hand twist grip - allowing me to decide how hard I want to work and how much I want to delegate to my battery, while still pedalling. Stop pedalling or reach a speed over 25kph and the edrive cuts out. Friends noting my occasional grumbles about the effort of cycling up the hills into Ano Korakiana had said “just get an e-bike, Simon”

“Spawn of the devil!” I retorted “They erode the moral compass of cycling – no pain no gain and vice versa.” 

Now my cavilling is dismissed. I love this machine. 

My e-bike on a hill looking south across the island of Corfu

Naturally disinclined to effort for its own sake, I rejoice in journeys back from Kaizani’s at Tzavros, with a good 10 kilos of shopping secured by bungies in a plastic crate cable-tied to my rear rack – a journey of over an hour now less than 40 minutes with a triumphant ascent into Democracy Street in lowest gear and ‘turbo’. There’s also a ‘walk’ function that, without having to be mounted and pedalling, helps me wheel the ebike up the 13 steps from home to the road. I’ve now cycled up the 29 hairpin ascent to Sokraki – the village on the watershed above us. I have done this twice on my ordinary bike but it’s a route that now tests my 79 years. I’ve been into the city – 22 miles return journey, made several journeys to Doukades using the main road, country roads and gravel tracks. I’ve cycled effortlessly home at night from eating with friends a mile below the village. For that I’ve strolled beside Lin on a gravel track, then, arriving at the metalled road, headed off by unlit hilly roads while Lin walks the stepped short-cut to Democracy Street. I’ve cycled from Sokraki to Trompeta in gentle drizzle then down through the woods to Doukades and home via Skripero – the dial shows I’ve already covered over 420 kilometres. In mid November I cycled to the top of Mount Pantokrator - a round journey of 54 kilometres nursing the battery by pedalling most of the ascent on 'eco'. 

Some years ago we had a family picnic close to the top of Mount Pantokrator

Route: Up the steep winding ascent to Sokraki; take the short bypass round the village centre down to meet the steep descent to the river valley, then up a hundred metres to Zygos, up up to Sgourades, on the Spartillas-Acharavi road, along a kilometer of level; then the turn up to Strinilas - the longest haul part of the ascent; from Strinilas, tavernas closed for winter and latest Covid restrictions, down briefly to the right turn up again to the gently rolling road to the foot of the steep mound that leads to the summit of the mountain, up which I walked, as, even on 'turbo', the kilometre of mostly concrete road is too steep for me and my ebike. I trudge - assisted by the bike's 'walk' function. Lingering on the roof of the island gazing round the compass - the peaks of Albania and Epirus across the Corfu Channel, the Adriatic stretching beyond the north coast settlements - Roda, Acharavi, and inland Old Perithia and south to two little peaks of the old fort and the city and much in between, I watch the cats and chat to Sotiris the gardener and a candle lit in the monastery church, much silence but for the wind in the aerials, then down down down down again to Sgourades and then return via a different road, to Spartilas with two clicks left on the five click battery. I stop at a taverna in Spartillas for a diplo skerto and cheese and ham toastie, my vaccination covid certificate sought. Can I make it home on what's left in the battery? I freewheel down the long descent, nearly to the sea at Pyrgi, then up again through Agios Markos and another mile into Democracy Street, Ano Korakiana. I did this journey first by traditional bicycle in 2012. 

I was back early afternoon, having the summit almost to myself via almost car less roads, proving to myself there are few places on the island I can't reach and return. Our friend Jenny, who has the same bike, says that relying on the lowest charge I should be able to cycle 60 kilometres. I've now satisfied myself of that, having power to spare on returning from Pantokrator. I’m almost back to the moral compass I’ve abandoned. 50 kilometres from Ano Korakiana can take me almost anywhere on this beautiful island. I could if concerned about remaining power ask a friendly taverna at the end of an outward journey to plug in my charger while I have a meal. 

A folding bicycle invented by Andrew Ritchie over 30 years ago called a Brompton is the best product in a niche market. It’s not just a bike that can be taken apart easily. It folds in less than 30 seconds into a 12 kilo portable machine that can be carried on cars and public transport.  I use the Brompton with public transport; best for negotiating traffic congested streets and the public spaces where I can mingle with walkers and other cyclists.

Awaiting the morning bus from the village into town at 07.45

Just off the ferry from Venice in 2010

On Via Garibaldi - the only filled-in canal in Venice, one of the few places anyone can cycle

New hub gears, rear wheel, and chain tensioner - my old folding bicycle better than new

The three Sturmey hub gears are superior to the Sachs they’ve replaced. Testing the restored Brompton I cycled slowly but steadily up to the small chapel of Agios Isadoras – five hairpin bends above the village. 

Agios Isodoros on the winding road between Sokraki and Ano Korakiana

So satisfying that the bottom of my 6 gears made that possible. I’ve since taken the folder into town to cycle happily through its maze of streets amid the walkers. I returned our hired car. Lifting the folded Brompton from its boot, I headed into the city centre for various errands - paperwork, especially for our Biometric Residency Cards interview with the Immigration department in the police station off Solari. Being Monday morning the town was near gridlocked, which made pedalling smoothly past a kilometre of fuming semi-stationary traffic queues, on Heptanisou and Lefkimmi Streets into Mitropoliti Methodiou and San Rocco Square, especially satisfying. To go home I caught the bus to Sokraki, Brompton in its luggage hold, and for €3 was driven, via Tzavros, Dassia, Ipsos and up the winding road to Spartillas, along to Sgourades – a wonderful bus route for seeing Corfu’s changes of scenery from city, seashores to forested mountains – then down to Zigos and up to Sokraki, 29 hair pin bends above Ano Korakiana. 

The road from Sokraki to Ano Korakiana - 29 hairpin bends

A shop on George Theotoki where we discussed the puzzle of a 'dog-headed' St Christopher

Γιατί απεικονίζεται με πρόσωπο σκύλου?

Anubis in the Book of the Dead - a guide to the journey from life to after-life used between 1550-50 BC

*** *** ***

The St Christopher Chapel in the coach and car park of the Corfu Town Green Bus Terminal

In the coach park of the Green Bus terminal on the edge of Corfu town there's a chapel to St Christopher, patron saint of travellers. There' no similar chapel at the harbour where the ferries leave for the mainland and the ports of the Adriatic as far as Venice, nor is there so far as I know one at the airport, now managed by a German conglomerate, where contemporary politeness would have made a 'multi-faith room'. The Green bus station is quite new, replacing a friendlier fume-filled space near the sea at the foot of the town. The new terminal appeared in 2016. Richard Pine, who lives in Perithia, furthest village from the city on the north coast of Corfu, was vitriolic about the place - Ο Νέος Σταθμός...

The old Green Bus Station near the sea

Simon. I discovered to my alarm and despair that the bus station moved over the last weekend and one is now deposited in a no-man's-land near the airport. Too too shaming. RP

Dear R. Is that bus station move a permanent one? Coming into town, there must be a point you can get off earlier with a reasonable walk to the city centre. I hope so as I too rely on the bus. S

It has been planned for years - a real, modern, bus station - fully functional, devoid of humanity, androids serving coffee, miles from anywhere because planners do not take people into account. At present there is no stopping point between Lidl and the terminus but they will surely have to invent one, as it goes everywhere except where one needs to. Bring back the old one - at the Spilia - sez I…  

I’m trying to work out how you get from the new and inconvenient (except for airport tourists) Green bus terminus. No problem where it is for me. I just use my folding bicycle which stores in the luggage compartment. I suppose there’s a shuttle into town, but there might be a convenient stop closer to the city centre. It seems rough on the local people who have no interest in being close to the airport and want to get into town. If you find out anything vaguely positive let me know.  

…there is a shuttle but that is presumably not a long-term solution - the bus into town goes up the long hill past all those shops selling electronics etc, down the other side, out onto the roundabout by the 'other' Lidl and there you are. In the middle of no-mans-land. The return is even more stupid as it goes all round the world, including San Rocco, to come out exactly where it should have started from, but doesn't stop!

Walkers to the city centre making their way carefully from the new Green Bus Terminal

I have just been at the new Green Bus Station. It’s as miserable as you’ve observed. But the staff are proud of the place. I strolled in wheeling my little Brompton bike and was ordered out again. I folded it up and was forgiven. But at once two cleaners arrived to wipe the floor where my bicycle wheels, leaving no marks, had passed. I gather there’s a stop on the way out of town by the Old Port – Café Sette Vente - which may make things a little better, but as I cycled into town from the new station up that brief stretch of firmly divided dual carriageway - Ethniki Odos Lefkimis - I passed a single file of tourists negotiating the narrow rough path (I wouldn’t call it a pavement)... ...that runs up Dinatou Dimolitsa, leading to a longish stroll up Mitropolitou Methodiou into San Rocco Square. A mess! I admit the old bus station was probably not so good on health and safety with people and buses and diesel fumes mixing it in that little space, but it was agreeably located. Like most things people will get used to it, but I cannot say or think anything good about this non-place, its access so unfriendly to anyone on foot.  

Someone must have ensured this little church to St Christopher was included in the new building's plans, yet when I asked around this July no-one I asked upstairs in the office, nor at the enquiry desk knew anything about it or could answer my question about the superb icons being painted on its interior walls. The chapel is hardly larger than a wardrobe, perhaps an allotment shed - no stasidia nor lectern and the stand for candles, once lit, sits, on the pavement outside. 

There's a collection box and case for beeswax candles inside. I'm used to myriad sizes of Greek churches from spacious cathedrals, the barn sized churches - all 36 of them - that are dotted around Ano Korakiana, attached in many cases to families, some locked and unused or even, like the distant Church of the Prophet Elias that marks our southern parish boundary ruined, but for a protective roof, to the small roadside Kandilakia marking the place of an accident - fatal and survived - and others that look similar but are markers reminding of a church some yards from the road. There are even shrines hardly larger than a sun dial or an elaborate garden bird feeder, with room for a small icon, and a candle, imitating the doors, windows, dome and cross of a larger church. 

Thou who wast terrifying both in strength and in countenance ... didst surrender thyself willingly to them that sought thee; for thou didst persuade both them and the women that sought to arouse in thee the fire of lust, and they followed thee in the path of martyrdom...

The story I learned, perhaps at a Sunday school, in childhood: 

Hieronymus Bosch's 1490 painting of the legend replete with symbols

... a child asked Christopher to take him across the river. As they crossed the river the child grew heavier and heavier so that Christopher could hardly hold him up. Struggling to the other side, Christopher said to the child: "You put me in danger. The whole world could not have been as heavy on my shoulders as you were." The child replied: "You had on your shoulders not only the whole world but Him who made it. I am Christ your king, whom you are serving by this work." The child vanished 

Irene Vitouladitou's unfinished work in the St Christopher Chapel at the Green Bus Terminus in Corfu

June - the descent from Democracy Street is like taking off. First there's an ascent of 50 metres, then round a corner my wheels bump over the messy repaired surface of a winding hill into three hairpin bends past a frieze of scarlet bougainvillea climbing widow Melinda's house, then down on renewed tarmac, gathering speed until the wheelie bin T-junction where I prop my bicycle on its stand to unload a black sack of weekly waste and the remains of a large broken plastic laundry bowl, then down again past greenery on either side to another short ascent. At the top I turn right on a narrow concrete track, corrugated, like turbulence on a plane, past a hoard of rubbish with glimpses of isolated houses and rich meadows of uncut grass and flowers, to another metalled road allowing me to join the main road to the north of the island via Skripero, Trompetta and Agros. 

*** *** ***

Marietta Giannakou 1951-2022

Prof Mazower's book describes truths that were once politically unacceptable in Greece. In 2021, Mazower was awarded an honorary Greek citizenship by a Conservative government for 'the promotion of Greece, its long history and culture to the international general public.' 

I asked a Greek friend recently "Do you call the events that brought about modern Greece 'The Greek War of Independence' or 'The Greek Revolution'?" 

Alex reflected for a moment on the direction of my query and answered, indisputably, "'The Greek Revolution'"

Mark Mazower titles his history 'The Greek Revolution', but unfolds a more equivocal account.  This comes much later, but it's clear that the allied Navies that defeated the Turks and the Egyptians at Navarino in 1827 would not have fought to save a 'revolution'. Mazower's book has managed to come, as near as a work of historical scholarship can, to being a 'cliff-hanger'. Of course, the Greeks were victorious. The Hellenic Republic exists. It's on the euro-currency! But reading Mazower's history I was wondering to his last chapter who was going to win. 

Insurrectionary talk was widespread across Europe in the 1820s. Rebellion against the old orders had been sparked by the American War of Independence; then the French Revolution and revolts across South America and the other parts of Europe.  Metternich and the Tsar had convened the Congress of Vienna - nearly wrecked by Napoleon's escape from Elba and his 100 days... 

Napoleon returns from Elba to disrupt the Congress of Vienna (George Cruikshank)

The Congress organised by Metternich was dominated by Austria, France, Prussia, Russia, and Britain.

Prince Alexandros Ypsilanti

Encouraged by a vastly distributed and secretive 'friendly' society founded in Odessa in 1814, full of commercial travellers on land and sea - the Filiki Etaireia - required oaths of loyalty, coded messages and secret signs on meeting a stranger.  Their black uniform, when they surfaced, bore the symbol of a skull and crossbones below a crucifix.  

Trade is a good cover for subversion; the language of commerce camouflaging the planning of revolt - price lists, inventories, consignments, cargoes, weights and measures, transactions, deadlines - protected by normal business discretion.  In 1820 the leaders of Filiki Etaireia asked Prince Alexander Ypsilanti to be their leader. Given the omens - not least the profound opposition of Ioannis Capodistria, to become first Prime Minister of Greece (more of him later), this aristocratic soldier was probably an excellent choice to start a dangerously impossible rebellion.

On 21st February this impulsive, bold, one-armed veteran of the war against Napoleon, falsely claiming the support of the Tzar, led a small and ragged force across the river Pruth from Russia into Ottoman Moldavia, far north of the land that would become Greece. Ypsilanti's expedition turned into a debacle of confusion and desertion, and, as others more cautious had warned, provoked bloody reprisals against Greeks from Sultan Mahmud II in Constantinople. The most prominent was the public hanging of the Ecumenical Patriarch, Gregory V, in front of The Saint Peter's Gate of the Patriarchate of Constantinople just after he'd celebrated Easter mass. 

Easter Sunday 22 April 1821

With implicit approval of the Sultan, surrounding streets ran with the blood of Christian residents of the city. If this story were a Netflix series I'd end this first episode at this moment. The next episode would be about Greece in the 18th century opening on a dramatic panorama of mountainous stone with glimpses of distant blue sea "Rumeli - mainland Greece 10 years earlier" and perhaps we'd open at the court of the rebel potentate Ali Pasha in Jannina. 

Audience chamber at the court of Ali Pasha in Jannina