For Father's Day beloved Amy gave me a glossy kitchen-garden porn mag

Early Tuesday morning - about 3.00am - I went downstairs to join Lin who was up late in the kitchen after collecting Richard and Emma from East Midlands off a midnight flight from Turkey.
"I've been having a nightmare. Make me a cup of tea...Please"
"Go on then"
"I was taking an exam.... Thanks...I was taking an exam...on gardening. I thought I was going to do quite well. But I couldn't answer any of the questions. Somehow I lost my paper. Lost everything I needed to at least write something. Time seemed to speed up. My second pen didn't work. I couldn't find the exam room. I had to ask the invigilator, a young American soldier, who made me stand to attention while I asked for assistance. He was unhelpful. It was humiliating. The fiasco seemed to go on for hours. One problem following another. I couldn't complete a single question. Didn't even start on one!"
Amy's friend Liz, who was also up late suggested - via Facebook - that my dream might have come from looking at the gardening magazine Amy gave me for Father's Day - along with a large Toblerone bar.
It is so tempting to use apparent short cuts when dealing with problems on my allotment. For example why not deal with weeds, especially couch grass, by spraying them with glyphosate? Why not lay into slugs and snails and the many other insect pests with organochlorines, organophosphates, carbamates? Punish them! Notwithstanding endlessly rehearsed environmental arguments, I'm beginning to grasp that there's something else I'm supposed to learn about gardening. There's no substitute for constant attention, daily maintenance, alertness, growing experience and learning, steady work and intelligence. I must use my wits. I realise now that 'pottering' is not something to be mildly ridiculed. If I hit nature head on - or try to - I may think I'm 'winning' for a while. Insects will die; weeds will wither  - for a while. Nature hits back by committing temporary suicide or becoming dependent on my shop-bought nutrients. As in intensive agriculture this deal involves growing crops in a more or less sterilised medium regularly re-sanitised and re-fertilized for successive crops. The off-shoots of this more or less effective process are sold on via a confusing repertory of proprietary products to ordinary gardeners across the land. Of course I risk drowning in the fruitless study of endless abusive argument - Rachel Carson versus Dr. J. Gordon Edwards. ....'continued page 94' as 'Private Eye' would say)

For the moment I am delighted at my allotment. Two years ago I was served an official notice to the effect that if I didn't show more signs of working my plot I would be asked to surrender my lease. Nearly four years ago I was struggling. I didn't always look forward to going out to the plot - just 5 minutes cycle ride away. Now....

Plot 14 in 2011 - same bike and same Oscar

I returned from abroad to find proper onions, planted last September, swelling their hips above weedless dark soil...

At last there's stuff coming out of the plot to which Linda will give the time of day. None of this would be possible had I not realised that I have the inestimable advantage of not having to run the allotment like a business. I made a decision last spring - that regardless, or almost regardless of what i could afford, no expense would be spared to make my allotment a success. Of course I've have miles to go before I sleep; the task is as endless as a piece of string. What's been achieved so far would have been impossible without investment in 'black gold' compost - six builder's sacks of it over a year, two similar sacks of topsoil. Add to that my decision to make a network of paths around separate beds that would ensure that in no case would it be necessary to step on the earth when digging, sowing, weeding, or cropping. Add to that my partnership with Winnie who gardens the plot when I'm there and when we're away.

Next we set about making our own compost. Winnie riddles by the composting bays at the back of the plot

Jerusalem artichokes left, rhubarb and parsnips to the right, with Winnie and Oscar under the shed veranda on Plot 14

The other day seeing black fly on the tops of the broad bean plants I prepared a mix of detergent to spray. Coming back the next morning prepared to kill by drowning and slipperiness I found that this years plentitude of ladybirds had done the job for me in one night. Instead I pinched out the tops of the beans to keep the growth in the pods that are already croppable - delectable little beans that take a while to strip from their pods at the kitchen table.  Of course I can't always rely on ladybirds, but the very health of the crop as a result of the attention to the plot and the good compost worked into the top seven inches of the soil helped, especially as so many of large stones and other hard debris have been systematically removed as we've worked the earth. These several hundred carpet tiles, recovered from an abandoned garden we were tidying with Handsworth Helping Hands have been useful, allowing swift temporary paths and as a supplement to the weed-suppressing fabric pegged down by Winnie across the plot. People visit me on the plot. Ron was round the other day to discuss Sandwell Council's consideration of a S106A to build on a third of Black Patch Park.

Tony Jacks "The picture reminds me of days gone by when men tended their allotments and chewed the cud."

I got permission from Dannie, VJA Secy, to crop the hay from the hay from the allotments next to mine; a chance to give Winnie the tutorial she wanted on using a scythe.

Dear VJA Committee. Re bees. As you know we had a problem on the allotment last Sunday 7th June. For reasons still unclear but experts suspect was a missing queen following a swarm, the bees which for 3 years have been fine and so welcome, went 'feral', stung two people and frightened away several families from their plot that afternoon. In under 30 minutes I was on my plot with my apiarist friend – Gill Rose - who had come more immediately to the 'rescue’ after a phone call from me. Arriving at my plot I experienced a threat - even on the path while well away from the hive - from a dozen angry bees, and had to back off slowly. Another experienced apiarist – Nigel Fleming (Birmingham Beekeepers Association) - joined us and it was very regretfully decided by him and Gill to apply apicide to the colony. I support their judgement. So now for the first time since June 2010 we have no colony of bees on the VJA, tho' there are still some wild bees roaming the site. I have met and spoken to people affected including the people stung and the people with young children who'd been threatened and had to leave the site. All understood the dilemma. We are preparing the case for reintroducing bees on the allotments and want to make sure we've covered every angle on top of the hazards we had anticipated when the bees first arrived – liability insurance, accreditation of the apiarist, risk assessment, netting around hive, first aid kit to hand, approval by committee after consultation with plot-holders. Everyone I've spoken to seems keen to see the bees back and is sad that such drastic action was needed. Any advice? What is the view of the VJA Committee on re-introducing a bee colony to the site? Did the people directly responsible respond the ‘bee crisis’ swiftly and responsibly; call to Simon from Danny W at 15.37 on Sunday? - attendance at the hive by 16.10; - decision to apply apicide when all bees had returned to hive; - 18.15 Simon notified by Gill that colony has been destroyed; - from 16.00 Simon on site talking to people affected, with follow up on subsequent days and via Facebook and email to VJA committee members Kindest regards, Simon, Plot 14, VJA

The bees on Plot 14 in happier times

"Γλέντι μετά μουσικής"στο καφέ - "Piatsa"διοργάνωσε χθες το βράδυ (Σάββατο 20 Ιουνίου 2015) ο ΠΑΟΚ, με ποτό, σουβλάκι και μουσική από την ορχήστρα του Γιώργου Μαυρομάτη, που μας χάρισε όμορφες μελωδίες, μέχρι μετά τα μεσάνυχτα, δίνοντας παράλληλα έναν τόνο ζωής στο χωριό μας.Οι παρέες είχαν πιάσει διάφορες γωνιές στα παράπλευρα του δρόμου και απόλαυσαν τα τραγούδια του Γιώργου και των συνεργατών του...Στις ζεμπελιές διέπρεψαν ο Κώστας Σαββανής και η Αγγέλα Θύμη!

Oliver and Hannah (Photo: Amy Hollier)

Hannah sits in the high chair that was my mother's, mine, and our childrens'

Oscar and Oliver ~ the flag was described recently as 'an ode' to a famous photograph taken 45 years ago

Flags. – Simon has a union jack flag on his allotment and it was questioned whether this was appropriate as it has negative connotations and could give the wrong impression of the allotment. The flag in question is an ode to a photograph taken close to the allotments that has cultural significance and is therefore an artistic and cultural expression.

Boy with flag, Handsworth Park by Vanley Burke 1970 - 1979 (c.)

Celebrating a rainy Diamond Jubilee on the Victoria Jubilee Allotments

Yanis Varoufakis, Finance Minister of Greece "Democracy did not have a good day in yesterday’s Eurogroup meeting"

...a book about 'how economic power has emerged from the shadows of political and military might before gradually taking over human societies. The narrative combines history, literature, science fiction films and down-to-earth economic analysis to impress upon teenagers, and various beginners, that economics is an epic drama. Rather than a technical science, it is a battleground on which armies of ideas clash mercilessly and where concepts with a capacity to move mountains emerge; and all that in a war for our own allegiances which are being fought over by powerful interests usually at odds with ours...That, looked at through a piercing eye, behind every economic notion, every theory, there lurks a fascinating debate about human anxieties that only poets, dramatists and musicians have managed to address with any degree of efficiency.'

Eurozone Finance Ministers Reject Greek Request for One-Month Bailout Extension by Viktoria Dendrinou & Gabriele Steinhauser Wall Street Journal June 27, 2015  The eurozone rejected a Greek request for a one-month extension to its bailout Saturday, plunging the country into a period of high uncertainty and raising concerns about wider financial fallout when markets open on Monday....

Q&A: what options now for Greece’s strained banking system? by Alex Barker Financial Times June 27, 2015 Greek banks are on the edge of failure. Deposit flight is accelerating and Greece’s funding options are running out. Every euro withdrawn from cash machines is backed by emergency funding from the European Central Bank. Without an extension to Greece’s bailout, these ECB emergency loans are in doubt. Alexis Tsipras, the Greek prime minister, has

Greece's Tsipras calls referendum to break bailout deadlock Reuters June 27, 2015 Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras called a referendum on austerity demands from foreign creditors on Saturday, rejecting an "ultimatum" from lenders and putting a deal that could determine Greece's future in Europe to a risky popular vote...

Merkel faces Greek challenge with strong political capital Associated Press June 27, 2015 German Chancellor Angela Merkel has emerged undamaged from the global financial crisis, European bailouts, an astonishing U-turn on nuclear power and the crisis over Ukraine. Now, with the future of efforts to resolve Greece's fiscal woes up in the air, the long-serving leader looks well-placed to emerge strong even if they fail.

Tsipras gambles Greece by Hugo Dixon Reuters June 27, 2015 Alexis Tsipras has taken a massive gamble on Greece’s future. By calling a referendum on whether to accept the creditors’ latest offer of cash in return for unpopular reforms, the Greek prime minister is offering the people a choice between the bad and the extremely bad. Meanwhile, the world may be about to face the biggest default in history...

Tsipras announces referendum on creditors’ bailout demands by Peter Spiegel Financial Times June 26, 2015 Alexis Tsipras, the Greek prime minister, has announced a national referendum on whether his country should agree to creditors’ demands that would release desperately-needed bailout aid to avoid national bankruptcy. In a televised address to the nation after a late-night meeting of his cabinet, Mr Tsipras announced that the plebiscite would be....

'Ευρωπαϊκή Οικονομική Κοινότητα ~ The European Union' 1980 by Aristeidis Metallinos

Aristeidis Metallinos (1908-1987) catalogue draft

Dear Simon.
At last I can communicate with you, because I had terrible problems with my computer all this period, being afraid that I had lost all my archives, but finally all has been arranged well.
So, let me first thank you deeply for your interest in the work of Metallinos. I was feeling the same when in 1982 I had discovered him and I had faced all negative attitudes from all parts of communities in Corfu. But I insisted and I wrote my article then . My husband , now, says that nothing goes in vain and he is very glad with your initiative , because he, himself ( as artist, he is film director) had believed in this work.
Perhaps my interest those days was founded in my work as curator at the National Museum of Greek Folk Art (in Athens) and my interest in what is humble and simple. After all, this had been my first speciality (history archaeology, art focused on Greek folk art, my PhD dissertation was on the wedding crowns of modern Greece, those created in gold and silver and kept in local churches or in museums).
I will be very glad indeed to contribute in the volume you are preparing and actually I am planning to visit Corfu again in September to meet with my old friends there (I was professor of museum studies and cultural management at the Ionian University there from 1994 to 2009), to start a new research I am planning and of course I will enjoy seeing again the works of Metallinos.
This last period has been very hectic for me, because I am retiring  end of August and lots of things in the administration must be arranged (I am dean since 2011…).
I am planning also my new career  (my third one!!)  in music this time (piano and singing as soprano) and I am really very excited. My first career was as curator at the museum (and also creating lots of museums all over Greece), my second as university professor and now as musician. Not bad for a variety in life !!!
So, dear Simon, thank you again for these wonderful ideas you have, I am sharing your interest and I will be glad to contribute. But the greatest pleasure for me is your interest in Greek things, expressed in this very sensitive way, especially this period, where this country and this society is really in a very bad situation.
Be well, take good care, greetings to Linda and let us try to meet soon
Best,
Eurydice

Plaque on the front of the Aristeidis Metallinos Museum in Ano Korakiana - the year the builder became the sculptor

Windrows raked from the scythings of fallow allotments either side of plot 14

This bay includes much of the couch grass weeded out over the last year

Lin didn't ask for these but I needed to do some thinning of the parsnip bed

From Amy who brought the cakes to finish the meal: Thanks mummy for cooking dinner for all of us was very yummy and much needed. Liz says thank you too smile emoticon

Et in Arcadia ego

'...Under their thundering rage at Syriza, those who will vote yes are also afraid, not just of losing their privileges as some on the left would have it, not just of the deeper collapse that will surely follow default, but of being torn from Europe and the stability it’s meant, of being thrown back into the nightmare of Greek history.'

Ano Korakiana

Handsworth

Ano Korakiana

Jodhpur

Handsworth

Liapades

'Immoral chapter'Aristeidis Metallinos of Ano Korakiana, 1985 (cat.220 marble relief 75 x 59)

'God's Law - the poor make children so the rich...'Aristeidis Metallinos of Ano Korakiana, 1986 (cat.237 marble relief 40 x 59)

...And, sure enough, what we are seeing now, 16 years after the eurozone institutionalised those relationships, is the antithesis of democracy: many European leaders want to see the end of prime minister Alexis Tsipras’ leftist government. After all, it is extremely inconvenient to have in Greece a government that is so opposed to the types of policies that have done so much to increase inequality in so many advanced countries, and that is so committed to curbing the unbridled power of wealth. They seem to believe that they can eventually bring down the Greek government by bullying it into accepting an agreement that contravenes its mandate.

...By contrast, a no vote would at least open the possibility that Greece, with its strong democratic tradition, might grasp its destiny in its own hands. Greeks might gain the opportunity to shape a future that, though perhaps not as prosperous as the past, is far more hopeful than the unconscionable torture of the present.

Oliver and I harvested peas, broad beans, onions, garlic and potatoes for Sunday supper

Brussels, 05 July 2015. The European Commission takes note of and respects the result of the referendum in Greece.
President Juncker is consulting tonight and tomorrow with the democratically elected leaders of the other 18 Eurozone members as well as with the Heads of the EU institutions. He will have a conference call among the 'Euro-Institutionals' (with the President of the Euro Summit, the President of the Euro Group and the President of the European Central Bank) on Monday morning. He intends to address the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Tuesday.
Earlier today Martin Schulz, the President of the European Parliament warned of difficult future situations for Greeks following their choice on Sunday.
An urgent Eurogroup Working Group meeting will also take place tomorrow.

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Χθες το βράδυ, ο αύλειος χώρος του Αγίου Γεωργίου γέμισε από κόσμο, κυρίως παιδιά και το ζεστό, υγρό αεράκι της καλοκαιρινής νύχτας ανέμισε τις φωνητικές συγχορδίες από τη μια άκρη του χωριού στην άλλη. Οι εμφανίσεις των παιδιών (και των δασκάλων τους) των παιδικών Χορωδιών της Κέρκυρας και της Πάτρας στο χωριό μας ήταν μια άλλη πνοή, μια ένδειξη στο ότι η «ζωή (μπορεί να) είναι και αλλού», μακριά από την πλημμυρίδα των τρεχουσών  «εξελίξεων» (το σημερινό δημοψήφισμα). Με το ίδιο το γεγονός της χορωδιακής σύμπραξης να προσδίδει ένα άλλο νόημα στην κοινή μας συμβίωση, όπως άλλωστε τόνισε ο Σπύρος Π. Σαββανής, αλλά και ο Δήμαρχος Κέρκυρας Κώστας Νικολούζος, που μαζί με τον Τάκη Μεταλληνό, το Δημήτρη Μεταλληνό, το Σταμάτη Απέργη, το Γιώργο Ρεδεστινό και τον υπόλοιπο κόσμο, παρακολούθησαν την ωραία εκδήλωση. Διοργανωτές της εκδήλωσης ήταν οι Ενορίες Αγίου Γεωργίου και Αγίου Αθανασίου, η Φιλαρμονική Κορακιάνας και η Δημοτική Κοινότητα Κορακιάνας.

I seem to have a lot; maybe too much on the go.

We've just spent nearly £300 getting the clutch master cylinder replaced on the HHH van - the result I suspect of so much short term stopping and starting for myriad jobs up and down the streets of Handsworth. The work was done swiftly by Allen and colleagues at Villa Cross Garage. We're back in business. Second: to qualify for our latest grant application - a bid for cash from the Mobilising Communities Small Grants Fund 2015/16...

Our latest committee meeting

...all committee officers of HHH have to go through the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) process - to check we can work in and around gardens and premises where there may be children and vulnerable people. We also have to show the granting agency our policy on the protection of children and vulnerable people (see 'files' at the top of this FB page). Third: All four of us qualified to drive the HHH van must now give details to our insurer of the new DVLA 'licence information code'. This has required scanning both sides of each driver's licence; sending the images plus other details to the insurer. Soon after these details had been transmitted on PDF files, the insurer apologised and said they'd mislaid our details asking Lin to send them again by which time the DVLA code had expired and each of us had to generate another via their website.
As it is I struggle to write grant applications, detesting forms, finding means to procrastinate.

Cat Flea relaxes on some Handsworth Helping Hands paperwork

On a rainy day a few weeks ago Lin and I, Nick and Denise were in Handsworth Park to be be presented with a cheque for £200 by Shaana Shabir, Community Life Colleague from Asda Stores, Perry Barr - part of Asda's 'Chosen By You' top prize for community groups. Denise's nephew and Oliver enjoyed the puddles on the path running along the top of the park pond.

*** *** ***
There's the Black Patch too. 16th of June last we had an interesting meeting in the Soho Foundry Pub with Tony Deep MBE of Eastside Foods....

A meeting with Tony Deep Woura at The Soho Foundry Pub

... His company wants to build on part of Black Patch Park. Sandwell MBC officers are entertaining the idea - an impossibly vague one - of a S106 Agreement with Eastside who want to use the site to build an autoclaving plant in return for contributing to the rest of the park's regeneration. The meeting was good tempered, polite. We agreed to respond in a fortnight. Ron Collins our chair came out to my shed to discuss our response...

...A few days later Phil Crumpton and I met at Urban Coffee in the city centre to work up a draft letter which we all reviewed. Andrew Simon, our secretary sent a final version of a reply from the Friends to Sandwell MBC's senior planning officer, Hayley Insley, copied to Tony Deep:

Dear Hayley
TheFriends of Black Patch Park much appreciated the opportunity to meet with officers from SMBC, Tony Deep and colleagues from East End Foods Plc and Smart Waste Ltd on Tuesday 16th June. We agreed that we would respond as promptly as possible with our initial views on the proposed development.
As a Friends group we have no problem with engaging in a constructive dialogue with SMBC and East End Foods Plc concerning the future of Black Patch Park and the surrounding area. However, as we expressed at the meeting there are a number of key issues that we would like to share.

The Black Patch in winter

Our constitution states: “The Friends of Black Patch Park is a group committed to the retention in perpetuity of the whole of Black Patch Park and to the improvement of the Park for the benefit of all local people.“ Endorsing a development that would see a significant proportion of the park disappear is therefore a major step for the Friends to take and will in our view require much more detailed information on what is being proposed and dialogue on how any proposed development might be done in such a way as to minimise the social and environmental impacts, while maximising the benefits to the park – its heritage and biodiversity – and the current and future and park users.
We are concerned that the current proposals do not appear to be part of a more comprehensive cross-border plan. There are significant residential areas in the neighbouring authority that represent the main users, or potential users of the park, and are likely to be the people most affected by any proposed development. Cross border consultation would seem to us to be paramount, especially given the proposed boundary review to report in 2017.
We are also not convinced by the arguments that housing is not a better option for Kitchener Street and Foundry Lane. We believe that there are plenty of good arguments to be put forward for housing as a preferred option. In our view the infrastructure is no worse than that available to existing residential areas in neighbouring Soho Ward and significant improvements could be made with little cost, for example pedestrian access through Merry Hill allotments to the Metro stop.
While we appreciate that the proposed developments might bring much needed investment for the park which we all desire, we are not convinced that this is a “last chance opportunity” for such investment. Black Patch Park and its surroundings has huge potential – adjacent as it is to Soho Foundry a major landmark in the history of the industrial revolution, birthplace of Charlie Chaplin, and a centre for Romany culture.
We very much appreciate the interest shown by Tony Deep and East End Foods plc in the Black Patch area and we would like to re-iterate our willingness to meet further with representatives from SMBC, East End Foods plc and SmartWaste Ltd to discuss the proposed developments in more detail and the issues raised.
Yours sincerely
cc Tony Deep – Chair, East End Foods plc

*** *** ***
Lin and I have been making trips down to Lydbrook to sort the higgledy-piggledy mix of furniture, books, tools, kitchenware that seems to have been strewn around Rock Cottage during its restoration. The place is carpeted. the bathroom and kitchen  have been renewed; the windows replaced and properly sealed and the whole repainted...

The path up Bell Hill to Rock Cottage

Amy's washer moved to Lydbrook. Our neighbour Craig Aston helped me cart it up Bell Hill and lift it into the cottage

...So, let me first thank you deeply for your interest in the work of Metallinos. I was feeling the same when in 1982 I had discovered him and I had faced all negative attitudes from all parts of communities in Corfu. But I insisted and I wrote my article then . My husband , now, says that nothing goes in vain and he is very glad with your initiative , because he, himself ( as artist, he is film director) had believed in this work. Perhaps my interest those days was founded in my work as curator at the National Museum of Greek Folk Art (in Athens) and my interest in what is humble and simple. After all, this had been my first speciality (history archaeology, art focused on Greek folk art, my PhD dissertation was on the wedding crowns of modern Greece, those created in gold and silver and kept in local churches or in museums). I will be very glad indeed to contribute in the volume you are preparing and actually I am planning to visit Corfu again in September to meet with my old friends there (I was professor of museum studies and cultural management at the Ionian University there from 1994 to 2009), to start a new research I am planning and of course I will enjoy seeing again the works of Metallinos....

...but I credit too how, on the Ano Korakiana website, my friend and neighbour, village historian Kostas Apergis - Κώστας Απέργης - has written:

"Μνημόνιο"... ΓιονάτικοΗ τραγική επικαιρότητα για τη χώρα μας δεν είναι ούτε πρωτόφαντη ούτε μοναδική.Η εφαρμογή σκληρών οικονομικών πρακτικών αποδεικνύεται συνεπής και διαχρονική,διότι στηρίζεται σε «αλάνθαστους»,όπως φαίνεται νόμους του Καπιταλισμού, δηλαδή στην εκμετάλευση των μη εχόντων από τους έχοντες.
Η επιστροφή της οικονομίας της χώρας σε συνθήκες μεσαίωνα και φεουδαρχικού συστήματος δεν νομίζω ότι μπορεί να αμφισβητηθεί με οποιοδήποτε δικαιολόγημα...
Ας δούμε όμως μια περίπτωση δανεισμού του 1801.Το μέγεθος δεν έχει σημασία.Οι όροι και οι συνέπειες είναι αυτές που καθορίζουν τη σχέση και την ηθική του συστήματος...

«Στο κάνγγελο εμού νοταρίου στο χωρίον της Κορακιάνας.....οι Γιωργάκης και Δημήτρης αδέλφια Ιωνά του Ιωάννη από παρόν χωρίον, εσυμφώνησαν με τον Σπύρο Κένταρχο ποτέ Μανώλη από παρόν χωρίον και του δίνουν δανεικά 228 τάλαρα ασημένια και υπόσχεται ο άνωθεν Κένταρχος να τους τα επιστρέψει την πρώτη του ερχομένου μηνός Ιουλίου μέ τόκο....και από σήμερα μένει υποθήκη προς τους αδελφούς το κοπάδι του Κένταρχου, πρόβια και τραγιά κεφάλια 98, και ο Κένταρχος υποχρεούται να δίνει το τυρί που θα κάμει και τα μαλλιά στο σπίτι των αδελφών. Εκεί το τυρί θα αλατιέται και θα το πουλεί ο Κένταρχος και τα χρήματα θα υπολογίζονται πάνω στο χρέος, και αν δεν πιάσουν το ποσόν των 228 τάλαρων να συμπληρώνει ο Κένταρχος πουλώντας και το κοπάδι και αν πάλι δεν συμπληρωθεί το ποσό να υπολογίζεται το υπόλοιπο σε λάδι προς ενάμιση τάλαρο η ξέστα, λάδι λαπάντε μέχρι τον Ιανουάριο 1802...

Μάρτυρες:Δήμος Μαρζούκος ποτέ Σπύρου και Θοδωρής Κοντοστάνος ποτέ Στέλιου όλοι από παρόν χωρίον» Η πράξη έγινε στις 3/2/1801
Τύφλα νάχει ο Σόϊμπλε και οι υπόλοιποι Ευρωπαίοι «φίλοι μας»!!!.Επειδή το ένα μέρος των συμβαλλομένων είναι Γιονάτες έτσι καταλαβαίνω και τον κουμπάρο μου...
ΚΩΣΤΑΣ ΑΠΕΡΓΗΣ

*** *** *** ***
In Handsworth, our water rates are over £800 a year. In March we ordered a water meter from Severn Trent Water. Their publicity assured us this could halve the cost of our water. In June we came back to England and read the meter. Having started a zero it showed that in our absence 40 cubic metres of water had leaked from our supply pipe. A team from the company came out to check. They found the leak was on our side of the meter. our responsibility. We paid £200 excess to our insurance company and were promised a refund on the cost of the water leaked - a one-off arrangement STW provides with meter installations. A pleasant water engineer turned up with sounding kit and other tools....

Terry finds our leak

...in twenty minutes he'd located the leak in the thin thick-walled lead supply pipe, under the roots of the old cherry tree we had cut down nearly 10 years ago as its roots were pushing down ours and our neighbour's garden walls.

A section from our water supply pipe

"We'll be back" said Terry "after we've got permission to dig up the pavement. Then we'll run an alternative pipe up your drive. We won't try to dig into the tree roots. You don't have to do anything more."
*** *** ***
I am impatient about progress on the project to digitize my stepfather's tape-film archive; something I've been working on over several years, since the archive of 16mm film and 1/4" reel-to-reel tape was recovered from the South West Film and Television Archive in 2012. In late May while in Corfu, Chris Perry of Big Centre TV said the project had been assigned a new editor - Simon Coward.

Simon Coward and Chris Perry with me at the Walsall Studio base of Big Centre TV

Days passed through June. Pressing the matter I found that Ascent Media in London had hardly started to digitise the film and tape I'd brought them last March. No invoice had been generated. I got an apology from Simon Warren at Ascent - now, to add confusion, called Encore - and a batch of five episodes of archive Out of Town was given to Simon Coward for editing a fortnight ago. I knew this wasn't ever going to be straightforward. It hasn't been all along, but I'm hoping we are now in slightly faster production than so far.
*** *** ***
Our son dropped round on Sunday evening. He and Lin shelled the whole batch of broad bean pods I'd harvested. Lin blanched them, put them into plastic bags and into the deep freeze. The pods will go on the compost. Nothing wasted. Glut waste avoided.

'The compromise to save the nation' Greek cartoon 1893

Hellenic Parliament Monday 30 Oct 1893 Charilaos Trikoupis “Unfortunately, my dearest gentlemen, we went bankrupt.”

Heinz Richter in The Globalist, June 2015: Unless one understands the history and the manifold ways in which the clientelistic system has metastasized, one has no chance of improving Greece’s prospects. Alas, most Europeans do not understand the phenomenon of clientelism and react in a peculiar way – such as the oft-made claim of 'lazy' Greeks.
Come to think of it, inside the EU, it is only the Austrians who – due to their past as a Balkan power – have some understanding of what’s really going on inside Greece’s structures. The other EU nations simply project European political ideas and ethical principles onto Greece and the other Balkan countries. They lack the understanding that these ideas and principles — noble and/or commonsensical as they sound — are alien to the society and the political culture of Greece.

The compromise to save the nation - 99% with an eternal monopoly under foreign control of markets in tobacco, raisins, bread, wine, meat, olive oil.

Loan 850.000.000 (drachma)

From the beginning, our state had no other choice than to live on credit. We were born in debt.

“bourgeois arrogance…especially for a country that skipped the industrial age altogether…from shepherds to bulldozers…from bulldozers to mines, and from mines, straight to petit-bourgeois hysteria…we built an industrial colony on top of sheep pens and thought we were making a revolution.”

Tsipras as Sisyphus ~ David Simonds The Observer 1/2/15

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mill End: Simon on Gypsy, Bar on the haywain

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

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

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

Starting on Plot 14 in 2010

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

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

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

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

....but they never appear in the books

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

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

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

A potato from the kitchen cupboard

June 2014

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My grandson and I have been working the allotment

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

 

• Nick Booth "can you grow ice cream?

  19 hrs · Unlike · 2
• Mickey Lowe My God what a lucky little tyke that is to be with you and learning all the time! Bless ya both !!

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

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

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

  19 hrs · Like · 1
• Ann Marie Gallagher There is a super project called the Real Junk Food Cafe - cook up surplus food - Payl pay as u feel - or u could give to a local place of welcome ?

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

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

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

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

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

  
  

  FLICKR.COM

  
  

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

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

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

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

  1 hr · Unlike · 1

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

  27 mins · Unlike · 2
• Simon Baddeley Yes!

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

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• Zena Phillips This is sounding excellent.

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

  11 mins · Unlike · 2

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

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

Oliver, Winnie and her son, Dennis

Dennis and Oliver moving earth

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The plot now- this bed ready for potatoes

The plot 3 years ago

Starting on a shed from Simon Baddeley on Vimeo - 2010

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Leaving New Street for Euston

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

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

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

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

At Deluxe Soho with eleven film-tape pairs for digitising

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

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

Euston Road - a phone booth in old London town

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

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

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

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

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

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

Last year - Sandra at work in the hall

The hall being dry walled

The hall this Feb

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

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

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

Our bedroom - carpeted and cosy

Dave at work in Rock Cottage sitting room

Looking out across the Lydbrook valley

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

Up Bell Hill

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hannah with her great grandmother at Staffordshire General

Linda and her mum wrapping presents last Christmas Eve

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

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

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

Germinating parsnip seeds

*** *** ***

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

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

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

.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Charles Webster's note

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dear Chancellor 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

COMPOST: Now and then fork and turn the waste I’ve started in bay 1 (it won’t be ready until at least winter). Cover it with polythene or carpet to keep warmth up but ensure it still gets air. If there’s a long dry spell – wet it with the watering can to stop it drying out. If it rots/ferments well and is well on its way to turning into humus (like the ‘black gold in the builder’s bags) turn it into bay 3. If things work out the compost will become humus, ending up the colour and consistency of a good Christmas cake!
Meantime put new green waste (other than perennial weeds. i.e. couch grass) in bay 2. Cover that in the same way to keep warmth up.  After moving the contents of bay 1 into bay 3, switch to putting new waste into bay 1, turning that into bay 2 when its well on its way, leaving bay 1 clear for the next lot of new waste. I'm figuring how to use Garotta or a cheaper equivalent to keep the process moving.
Re the commercial compost in the builder’s bags. If you do any digging over on the plot, add some of that – enough to darken the ground to hold more warmth from the sun and prevent cracking of the soil if it stays dry a few days - and a few handfuls of the bone meal and blood fertilizer from the big plastic buckets with the red lids. Just a sprinkle to flavour the ground.

POTATOES: Earth up potatoes as the green tops rise SLUGS AND SNAILS: Salt slugs. You’re better at this already. If frogs appear that’s great. They like slugs. RUNNER BEANS: If the runner beans I sowed on Saturday sprout as I hope you may need to give the seedlings a help to get started up the bamboo frame. ONIONS: If any onions are growing too close, thin them out and replant with more space or harvest them for yourself as spring onions. BROAD BEAN SUPPORT: Once the sprouting broad beans get higher they may need support – a net or strings stretched between bamboos. Same for the peas just sprouting. PARSNIPS: Let me know how the parsnips are doing (the seedlings under the netting and bubble wrap). Thin out any growing too close. Don’t let the seedlings dry out. Remove bubble wrap but leave netting when weather gets warmer. 

JERUSALEM ARTICHOKES: I’ve left them in the ground. They’ll probably start growing like Jack’s beanstalk in the next months. Leave. WATERING: If and when we get a spell of several days without rain do some watering with the can (but not in bright sun!) and if the water in tanks runs out attach hose to the tap and refill. It's forbidden to water direct from the hose!  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From Ano Korakiana

‘Yes, it's better - much clearer contrast. Many thanks for organising it.
You didn't say whether you'd prefer Chrysomalis or Nino's - where we were (the 3 of us) before. Please let me know. The bus I will be taking is the 4pm to Acharavi - it goes straight on from Tzavros, not turning right to go through Ipsos. Not sure if it stops anywhere from where you could get to Ano K.

SB: We’ll see you at Chrysomalis. Your bus can drop us at the turn to Ano Korakiana off the Sidari Road. Only 2 kilometres to the village.

Dear John. Sorry you seem to have missed Richard in Birmingham.
I’d like to know if the accomm at the Bull was quaint and interesting or unmentionable.
With your customary generous manners I can see you not grumbling to me as I recommended. But I’m hoping so much it was OK and you didn’t have to move out to Holiday Inn or equivalent.
Hope Cats was good. Happy Birthday to Annie.
In Corfu everyone speaks of endless rain but we’ve hit a lucky set of blue sunny days with the wood stove needed only at night to keep us cosy in the house.
General view of the ‘situation’ here is that the SYRIZA government needs its first 100 days and that Greece is playing the toughest of games despite a lousy hand. The cards? Card 1: Austerity doesn’t work. Card 2: Don’t drive us into the hands of Golden Dawn. Card 3: Russia and/or China. Card 4: German WW2 reparations -  cut us some debt-forgiveness like Germany got war forgiveness via the Marshall Plan. Card 5: We really will do something about corruption and tax collection.
Systems of tax collection have closed down here pending the new government’s resolutions on what will be stopped, modified and renewed. So even if we want to pay our taxes we can’t. All is on hold.
There is a feeling of resigned waiting, but it still feels slightly better than under the previous government.
Varoufakis seems to be lying low at the moment. His initial coverage led to vexation and some envy of ‘bandstanding’ in his own party; SYRIZA already being a loose partnership of several left wing parties.
How does it look from your perch?
Our children stepped in to look after Lin’s mum. It’s so good they enabled her to get away, but Lin’s mum Dot has an alarm button that rings with Amy, Richard and us if pressed. Dot’s been mistaking it for the normal call button. I think that’s sorted now. Love to all, S 

‘Faced with competition from world markets, sovereign states could do very little to withstand the pressures of finance and globalised trade, unless they wanted to alienate investors and threaten their own gross national product. The role of states was now limited to maintaining order and security in the midst of a new world disorder controlled by centrifugal, supranational and elusive forces. No-one genuinely believed in progress anymore, the world had become an uncertain, precarious place, but most decision makers were happy to let the pirates of this phantom system continue with their plunder and to take advantage of it themselves while hoping it would all blow over. The excluded were pushed farther out onto the periphery of huge cities reserved for the winners of a cannibalistic game in which, with no prospect of collective action, people’s widespread frustration was channeled into television, sports and celebrity culture.’ Caryl Férey Zulu (2010) pp.379-380 

An inability to explain to a teenager the fundamental issues of economics reflects badly on one’s own grasp of them. And the failure to inspire youngsters to care about wealth, poverty, power (and their distribution in society), reveals the instructor’s, or author’s, own lack of appreciation of what makes our social world tick. This book strives to inspire teenagers (and other readers normally disassociated from economic narratives) to care about economic ideas and economic processes by revealing their power over our imagination, beliefs and passions. It does this by means of a narrative of how economic power has emerged from the shadows of political and military might before gradually taking over human societies. The narrative combines history, literature, science fiction films and down-to-earth economic analysis to impress upon teenagers, and various beginners, that economics is an epic drama. Rather than a technical science, it is a battleground on which armies of ideas clash mercilessly and where concepts with a capacity to move mountains emerge; and all that in a war for our own allegiances which are being fought over by powerful interests usually at odds with ours. In addition to its drammatic style and content, this book answers two fundamental questions: How was the modern world formed? And why are the economists’ theories part of the problems that this world is constantly producing, rather of the solutions. In the process, it poses and answers challenging questions, such as: • Why did British colonists invade Australia instead of the Aborigines invading England? • When and how did the primacy of profit come about? • Why could wealth never exist without debt? • From where do bankers derive their exorbitant power? • What is hiding behind economic crises? • Is there hope that humanity will stop functioning like a stupid virus killing the “organism” in which it resides? • What is money and why does it "need" democracy?

One of the enduring memories from my early childhood is the crackling sound of Deutsche Welle radio transmissions. Those were the bleak years of our dictatorship (1967-1974) when Deutsche Welle was the Greeks’ most precious ally against the crushing power of state propaganda. Mum and dad would huddle together next to the wireless, sometimes covered by a blanket to make sure that nosey neighbours would not get a chance to call the secret police. Night after night these ‘forbidden’ radio programs brought into our home a breath of fresh air from a country, Germany, that was standing firm on the side of Greek democrats. While I was too young to understand what the radio was telling my mesmerised parents, my child’s imagination identified Germany as a source of hope.
As I am writing this preface to the German edition of a book aimed at another child, my daughter, I feel the urgent need to recount that memory. To turn it into a small homage to the idea of Europe as a realm of shared democratic ideals. A small gesture of defiance against the recent tendency for European peoples, who were hitherto coming closer and closer together, to be set apart by a… common currency.
Our European Union began life under the presumption that to achieve political and social union we must first bind together our economic interests; that economics would lead the way to a united European polity. It was a good idea except that, as the years and the decades went by, a problem emerged: our collective understanding of ‘economics’ became increasingly crude. We slipped into a simplistic mindset according to which the sphere of the economy began decoupling, separating itself from that of politics, of philosophy, of culture. As it did so, the economic sphere acquired massive discursive and social power for itself, thus causing democracy, politics and culture to fade out, to become shadows of their former selves.
We economists were, I confess, responsible for this steady erosion of our collective understanding of the economic sphere. Before we knew it, markets were no longer means to be placed in the service of social ends but emerged surreptitiously as ends in themselves. Under the influence of, on the one hand, financialisation and, on the other, economic theory, we began to resemble Oscar Wilde’s definition of the cynic: one who knows everything about prices and nothing about values. Naturally, our European Union’s institutions also tended towards the conviction that the large decisions should be taken by technocratic committees that constitute ‘politics-free zones’. In an ironic twist the language of economists helped usher in a mindset that jettisoned from the corridors of power and the halls of decision making not only politics and culture but also …economics.
But enough of this now! This book is not intended as a diatribe on Europe, on Germany, on Greece or indeed on anything that would bore… my daughter. It was written in order to test the author’s ability to convince a recalcitrant teenager that economics is too important to be left to the economists. That it can also be too much fun to be ignored by those interested in things other than money and finance. That, looked at through a piercing eye, behind every economic notion, every theory, there lurks a fascinating debate about human anxieties that only poets, dramatists and musicians have managed to address with any degree of efficiency.
Did I truly write this book for my daughter’s sake? Not really. I wrote it mainly to test the limits of my own understanding. For if I failed to explain to a teenager the fundamental issues of economics, my failure would reflect badly on my own grasp of them. Indeed, the failure to inspire youngsters to care about the nature of wealth, poverty, of economic power (and its distribution in society), reveals one’s own lack of appreciation of what makes our social world tick. As for my daughter, it is true to say that she played a major role. Being my worst critic, every time I completed a section or chapter I wondered whether she would look at me with disgust upon reading it. Nothing motivates an author better than such terror!....

Road from the village. Our companion dogs finally head home

Ειδικά της κοκυκιάς που σε κάθε κήπο, σε κάθε φράχτη κάνει την εμφάνισή της! Walking below Ano Korakiana on St George's Day

Dear Alexandra
I hope you’ve not given up on me and that you are well and that you will receive this email.
I am afraid my pace on our shared Aristeidis Metallinos project is slower than yours might be, were you in my shoes.
Nonetheless we do proceed! I attune to the family’s pace - and perhaps my own. The tortoise rather than the hare.
I am as enthusiastic as ever. Linda and I have now, with Angeliki, made a list of every item in the museum as well as a few weathered pieces on the roof.
In the week after Easter we  created a temporary numbering of each item; whether it’s stone or marble; its metric dimensions. In about two weeks we will add to this information the inscriptions by the artist - his signature and date and where he’s written something - his words. We will then use our own words to describe those pieces where there’s little or no information from the artist. These notes will be in Greek and English (other languages could be added). We will then renumber the collection - chronologically (by year as there’s no way of finding a month unless Andreas who sometimes remembers his father’s work can date them more precisely).
I have ideas for the form of a published catalogue. Covers can have perhaps the sketch I had done by a Birmingham artist - Jan Bowman - which she made from Andreas' black and white photo of the sculptor at work.

I have also started with the help of a friend - Rob Groove - to get some high quality photos. He has already made a couple, one of which will be featured in a book by the scholar Richard Pine who’s next book will be about Greece from an Irish perspective - to be published this October.
We would pick - say - about twenty representative works to illustrate the catalogue.
I would like then to have three brief articles at the start of the catalogue

- One by Angeliki, Andreas and I describing Aristeidis - enlarging the Wikipedia piece I did last year, or if we are fortunate, one by Andreas alone remembering his father.
- One by you (if you’d be prepared) discussing the imagery from your perspective as a Greek scholar and referring to a timeline of events accompanying the sculptor’s works, your sense of his subversive risk taking etc.
- One by Prof Efrithikis Antzοulatοu-Retsila expanding on the piece she published in 1985 (I’ve now heard from her and she is interested in a second sight, from her base at Kalamata, University of the Peloponnese

These would be in Greek and English.
These are tentative ideas. There is of course no money but I see it as unnecessary at this point (if at all) to spend money. Time! Yes. My son is skilled at self-publishing and graphics so he could mock up a model catalogue. Rob Groove is interested in establishing a reputation as a professional photographer and for the moment speaks of leaving out being paid in favour of the pleasure of taking part in an interesting project. It is one of his photos that will be credited in Richard Pine’s book. There are no problems with copyright as the family of the sculptor - in particular Angeliki and Andreas are involved and enthusiastic about seeing Aristeidis Metallinos better known.

My judgement is that a draft but publishable catalogue is a logical next step, essential for any wider recognition. About twenty pages, it could be presented in any initiative that might be taken to promote the laic sculpture in Greece and elsewhere.
In case you wonder why I would most especially like you to write something…your standing as a scholar is significant of course. More so your part in this project. You replied to me last year when I wrote to you about the laic sculptor. All original art has to be discovered; discovered by the individual who strives to see the artist's work directly, unmediated by reference, comparison or repute. I could see from the moment we sat down over coffee in Newcastle that day of my visit last August that you’d been ‘discovering’ Aristeidis. You’d read the papers I attached, looked at pictures, made notes. You had not awaited my arrival with questions, but had prepared thoughts of your own – especially about the timeline of contemporary events in Greece that offer context to this jumbled collection. I believe that few people have yet discovered the laic sculptor. Efrithikis Antzοulatοu-Retsila did in 1935. Yianni M Mari in 1978. I discovered him too as has Linda, through the kindness of the artist’s family and after five year’s wait. You have. So has Richard Pine and the writers Jim Potts and Maria Strani-Potts, to whom I sent all the photos. Aristeidis’ son is the most complex and ambiguous of these discoverers – the one who’s lived longest with the artist. This is why I’m pleased that Angeliki has just told me he’s come round to the idea of writing (or speaking) an account of his memories of his father. There must have been others - some of whom found the work boring, possibly ugly and second-rate, who were rather shocked by some of the pieces. Their reactions are also a discovery. I feel disturbed, even repelled by some art, as the artist may have expected and even intended.
My sense is that we can do our best to intervene in a process of discovery; by mediation and presentation enable more people to see and imagine Aristeidis Metallinos at work, to be able to place what they see and touch in a context and gain a sense of the range of his work - work he began in his 70s (but for the stone shoe he carved in 1927), through the last decade of his life, after most of a lifetime as an artisan, stone-mason and builder - a worker from Ano Korakiana becoming a self-taught sculptor of Kozani marble and unforgiving local stone.
I hope you are well and will forgive me the long interval between communications. We are back from Corfu in early June. It would be good to meet up again. Best wishes, Simon

Guy's text from GB the other evening

Euston Station December 2013

The family in the garden on Democracy Street

Oliver's boat launched in the river that flows into the sea at Ermones

Ermones bay

‘the book itself’ she writes in her planning notes for the whole ‘must give the impression of only being one episode … which is really what is happening in our times, as in all times of course.’ 

"Now for the gulley"

The gates of Hades