'Austerity takes toll on cradle of democracy'

September 19, 2013, 3:09 am

Richard Pine has circulated his latest 'Greek letter' in The Irish Times but writes:

I have been unable to create a link to my column in yesterday's Irish Times (Wednesday 18 September). I am therefore sending it in the body of this email. The brutal killing (by stabbing) of an anti-Nazi rap artist, Pavlos Fyssas, by a member of Golden Dawn last night has raised the 'hate' and the 'fear' stakes even further. If you do not wish to receive copies of my future columns, please notify me and I will remove your name from the distribution list. Sincerely Richard Pine

'Extremism is fast becoming a political default in this humiliated country' Photo: Yannis Behrakis/Reuters

Given the low opinion held by most citizens of their political leaders, and of international institutions such as the EU and IMF, it’s astonishing that we seem to cling to the concept of democracy – especially in Greece, where the word was invented – to describe government of the people by the people. Today it’s all up for questioning, including the composition of the nation state.

There is a significant gap between our faith in the concept of democracy and our suspicion of the democratic process which produces people we cannot trust. A mismatch between the ideal and the real, including the operation of the civil service, the clientelist system and the passing of parliamentary seats from father to son – or daughter – a not unknown phenomenon in Ireland.

Do we distrust our fellow citizens because we fear that, as soon as elected, they will turn into powermongers, the political equivalent of werewolves or Frankenstein’s monster? In Greece we have a democratically elected parliament and a government appointed under the terms of the constitution, rejected and abhorred by the vast majority of voters.

Extremism
Plutocracy, oligarchy, autocracy, monarchy (all words with Greek roots) have their supporters, and even fascism (definitely not of Greek origin) has a hold in modern Greece (as reported in last month’s letter) although, as the third largest political party in the opinion polls, Golden Dawn is still not yet the overwhelming popular choice, but may have a very significant stake in the next parliament, with 14 per cent of the vote in current opinion polls.

But there is another Greek term gathering momentum today: anarchism. Many citizens, disenchanted with the political system which they regard as having failed the state, have turned their backs on politics and, instead, advocate lawlessness and, at its most extreme, tearing down political and social structures by terrorist means. The group Conspiracy of the Cells of Fire (one of the most successful) describes its mission as 'urban guerrilla warfare'.

I am surprised that the Greek indignados (who made such a dignified, peaceful process in Athens’ Constitution Square for many weeks in 2011) have not re-emerged during the latest crisis; some of them are merely disenchanted with all forms of protest, but I expect that many, more aggressive types, are actively pursuing the anarchist option.

At one end of the spectrum is the fascist Golden Dawn, burning synagogues and mosques and beating up migrants and gays; at the other are the various terrorist groups, the latest of which calls itself Untamed Desires, which sounds more like the title of a porno movie than a bunch of arsonists and bombers attacking civil servants, lawmakers and judges.

Richard Pine

*** *** ***
Just driving dully along I catch people on the beach at Ipsos enjoying their holiday in the sun.

Κι εγώ. In readiness for the wind vane removed from the roof of Brin Croft and due here by carrier at the start of next month, I've attached the iron bracket made for me by Steve Lee to a corner of the house. I bought five 9 inch coach bolts and the largest rawlplugs I could buy; dug out a metre length chunk of wood recovered from the beach and rejected as too good for the firewood in the apothiki, and drilled five holes in it. On a stepladder I offered the beam to the wall and, through the holes in the wood, drilled five marker holes on the mortar, then using my SDS drill followed these with five deeper holes in the stonework of the house. I filled these with a dollop of strong glue and then, with the coach bolts through the beam, and the rawlplugs lightly screwed on the end of each, offered the whole to the wall and tapped it home, until I could place a bottle spanner on each coach bolt and tighten.

I painted the wood, now tight on the wall, to match, and with a spirit-level positioned Steve's bracket, its end just beyond the gutter, pointing as vertical as I could make it. I gave it a couple of coats of rust resistant black gloss before using four four inch coach bolts to fix it firmly ready for the vane. I shall need a compass to find the north, or perhaps use the north star, or the wind vane on the church a few yards down Democracy Street.

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Sophia Mae arrives

September 22, 2013, 2:44 am

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Lovely news of a baby to Liz and Matt. Conceived in Scotland, perhaps at Brin Croft, only days after mum died, our dearest friend Liz's baby was born yesterday and this morning, at Sally's in Ipsos, Linda and I are enjoying photos of Liz, already back home with the baby and her friend, our daughter, Amy. The snap tank-tops are entirely coincidental.

Liz Basden, Sophia Mae Basden and Amy Hollier

I stood on our balcony at daybreak this Saturday morning. After a while I saw the ferry from Italy emerging from the Corfu Channel heading for Igoumenitsa

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My plot in England

September 23, 2013, 2:15 am

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Before we left I sent the VJA site secretary a £35 cheque – being the £25 annual rent I pay, 50% reduction as a concession for being over 60, and £10 as my sub to the site association. I have been trying to work my allotment without spending money, as once a working man would have tried, would have had to. I did not buy equipment from garden centres. Our shed came via freecycle for the cost of its transport to the site where Lin and I and Imram put it up after I’d built a base from recovered slabs. At the end of August I made a decision and invested £210 in three tons of manure from Singletons Nurseries (0121 457 9977) and £160 for 3 tons of topsoil from Valley Contractors (0121 628 0600). Two trucks arrived on two wet mornings in succession. I paid the drivers in cash. In two days Taj had started digging in this expensive muck and dirt, so I didn’t need the tarps I’d bought on the internet – another £25 – to protect the delivery. I’ve asked Taj to dig thoroughly over the whole plot, making it my aim to improve what is widely agreed by plotholders I respect, is difficult soil. More stones and weed, especially couch grass, will be removed in the next few weeks. Hiring help and spending money is a set back for my ideas about growing our own food. I’ll again not have vegetables I’ve grown on our table at Christmas; my vow and proof of achievement. But I’m hoping that this working of the ground to which I’ve now added topsoil and manure will prove worthwhile. Taj is also removing more of the plot’s stones.

On 9 Sept, Danny, the site Chair saw plot 14 with Gill, Hon Sec:

Hi Simon. Gill and I were pleased to meet Taj yesterday when he came over to introduce himself. The plot looks amazing, though Taj could put the stones in a heap or in a container to move them off the path. I'll have a gentle word and we'll look for the best solution…Enjoy your time away, and we'll see you in November. Best wishes, Danny

*** ***
I think Lin has found the secret of a reliable mosquito repellent. A mixture of surgical spirit in which she soaks cloves, γαρίφαλο, for two days, adding baby oil to ensure it stays on the skin. It's smelly but not unpleasantly so, except to the Corfu mosquitos that, so far, have been sparing us their vexing attentions since we've been applying the mixture. It seems to work for about three hours.

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Green space for playing fields in Handsworth

September 26, 2013, 7:46 am

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Looking north across the planned playing fields off Crick Lane, Handsworth

Unused green space in cities, land on which no-one has ever raised a building, is always eyed by interested parties. Unsecured and accessible it becomes a magnet for flytipping, temporary accommodation for travellers, a place to dump old vehicles or to use for free parking, a convenient tryst for prostitutes and punters, dealers and users - neither no-man’s land nor a public good as farmland, allotment site, park or playing field. Builders covet it, having no need to invest in preparing their footings on the rubbled foundations of a predecessor. The green acreage just south of the Victoria Jubilee Allotments is just such green gold. I roamed it in the 1990s when it was still private allotments, campaigned for years to hinder an initial plan to build houses over the whole 7 hectares of the original allotments – set up by an alliance of private plotholders minded to swap their earth for the cash to be made selling it to a builder.

The VJA allotments next to the planned sports area

The compromise S106A saved over 50% of the area for the new allotments delivered in June 2010 and now 10 years after the developer, first Westbury, then Charles Church and now Persimmon Homes, got planning permission, the latter has promised delivery in the next 12 months of the rest of what was agreed in May 2004 – playing fields, a children’s play area, a sports pavilion. On 5 September there was a site meeting just outside the gates of the projected sports area on scruffy Crick Lane…

Ghaz Hussain and Bob Churn (BCC), Danny (VJA Chair), Simon Macdonald (Persimmon) and Syed Ahmed (BCC)

Clll Zaffar who’d prompted the meeting was at another meeting at the council house but asked to be kept in touch:

Dear Waseem. I think Syed Ahmed'’s report to the next ward committee, which I can’t attend, will be more than adequate, so I will not compose my own version of yesterday’s excellent site meeting in Crick Lane, beyond saying that the sight of the early stages of the long awaited children’s play area, ready in 7-8 weeks and approved by previous local objectors, and assurances agreed by all present (Persimmon plus officers of the council) that we would have football on the site by the New Year and cricket by the summer of 2014, was convincing. I may have egg on my face by the middle of next year but I think we are at last going to get our sports area and all that goes with it.
The challenge now will be finding a revenue stream to run and maintain these great new facilities, as Ghaz has already indicated, placing hope in the CDT.
Sted Wallen is interested in helping with the latter as it relates to cricket as I think he has told you.
I’m away until 5 Nov but still in email contact.
On another matter. Working with HHH over the last year has been a learning experience - even for one who’s lived in the area since 1979. I would v.much like to have a chat with you about the security, social cohesion-waste disposal link. There are some depressing accounts in other parts of Europe, especially Italy, of how waste management once reduced (as is happening in Birmingham) and privatised, creates conditions for the criminalisation of communities. There is as much potential money to be made from selective waste disposal as from drugs and people trafficking. Best wishes, Simon

From Syed Ahmed’s briefing note to Lozells & East Handsworth Ward Committee on 9 Sept’13 on the Victoria Jubilee S106 Agreement in which he refers to the remaining parts of the 106 agreement awaiting delivery – items 3.4, 3.5 and 3.6….

2.1In May 2011, the City Council (Legal Services) wrote to Persimmon Homes, reminding them of the S106 obligations and advised that legal action would be taken unless there was a new commitment to the satisfactory and timely completion of the S106 projects.
3Progress / Action Outstanding
3.1Affordable Housing Provision: 24 affordable housing units have been built and are occupied through partnership arrangements with Midland Heart and Family Housing Associations.
3.2New allotments: These were transferred to the Council on the 11th August 2010 and £21,620 commuted maintenance was paid in September 2011.
3.3Handsworth Park and Play Area Improvement: A contribution was received and work has been carried out as part of the Park’s major Heritage Restoration project. £25,000 was received for Play Equipment to enhance the Park’s play area.
3.4Sport Pitches: Persimmon Homes have rectified all outstanding defects to the cricket square and will continue their treatment work for the next 12 months before the square can be used; expected completion date is summer 2015. The football pitch is complete but now awaiting completion of the sports pavilion before it is used, it is expected to be in operation by January 2015. The pitches will then be transferred to the City’s Children, Young People & Families (CYPF) portfolio.
3.5Public Open Space: New design specification for a Natural Play Area agreed and work has now started on site with a final completion date of October 2013.
3.6Sports Pavilion: Persimmon will start building the pavilion upon confirmation of planning approval and discharge of planning conditions. Expected completion date is January 2015.
Syed Ahmed
North West Planning & Regeneration, Planning and Regeneration, PO Box 2470 - 19, 1 Lancaster Circus, Birmingham B1 7DJ
+44 (0)121 464 9839 syed.ahmed@birmingham.gov.uk

Perhaps I was exposed to a familiar piece of planning legerdemain but when I phoned Syed at his office on the 9 Sept, before the Ward meeting on the 10 Sept when Lin and I were in Greece, he swiftly thanked me for correcting him and said ‘of course, 2014’.
I will have to wait and see the public domain document that went to ward committee. I cycled round from Crick Lane back into Victoriana Way and had a look at the children’s playground that is to be ready this year. It seems local opposition to this use of the space has ceased and everyone’s happy with design of an interestingly landscaped space, not full of play equipment, more a small hilly arena under the shade, on one side, of mature oak trees, for walking, sitting and clambering. Perhaps I can visit with Oliver before this Christmas.

*** *** ***
Lin’s been working a marble patchwork for part of the space under our veranda – marble off-cuts left in a steel bin for anyone to collect beside the road at a stone works near Lidl opposite Alikes Bay and Lazaretto Island.

We’ve also put up the doors on the wardrobe in our bedroom – two doors we’d recovered from where they’d been left by wheelie bins below the village. In May Martin had helped us line up the frame and the hinges. Now at last they’re in place - a shelf above on which I’ve fixed a hanging rod. The challenge now is to work out how to fill the remaining space along that wall, using Lin’s sketch as a guide.

**** **** ****

Agnos Beach and Astrakeri Harbour, silted with kelp sand-spits making entry by boat tricky

Last Sunday, our last day before surrendering the car for a fortnight, we drove to the north coast to have a late afternoon picnic finding the sea at Agnos Beach, a shore of reeds, hard smooth sand mixed with earth fringing a muddy sea in which floated semi-composted weed, between the new harbour at Astrakeri and a pair of well-maintained hotel buildings that have taken over, almost turning their backs on, the narrowing beach at the eastern end of Agnos, a wasted cluster of uncompleted villas...

...a couple of small boats and little used fishing gear – parched nets and marker floats. We wandered through this part ghosted hamlet, blighted product of the all-inclusive holiday – and through the busy hotel, by its tidy blue pool and long bar serving free drinks for guests most of the day. All notices, including the safety guidelines, were in English and German.
“You buy this holiday in UK or Germany" I said "A friendly guide meets your flight, shows you a short walk to an air-conditioned coach bearing the name of the hotel. No need for maps or directions. It brings you here in an hour. You're shown comfy rooms with lovely views over a blue sea to the great Albanian peaks...

Meals are served at convenient times from a menu in English and German. There’s a pool and a bar with 'free drinks 10.00am to 24.00’ – well, included in what you’ve pre-paid – and wide screen TV with the relaxing murmur of soccer commentary. Outside in a grassed area laced with tidy slabbed paths are loungers and umbrellas where you can relax by the pool or the sea, ordering drinks and snacks. There’s a playground easy to watch and a reliable perimeter hedge and fence around the whole. No need to think of prices, negotiating foreign menus or questioning bills and nothing in Greek. If all you want is to pay your cash and relax amid sea and sun and pleasant shade with reliable food and drink, it’s perfect, with every Friday some local culture, 'a Greek night - all hotel residents welcome’”
Getting to the hotel, we’d wandered through two crumbling abandoned tavernas – one with a fading for sale sign attached - and peered through the dusty windows of several empty buildings with large windows intended as shops whose owners had given up on them before they could be opened for trade.

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Summer Song sails

September 29, 2013, 5:04 am

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My sister Bay in a south westerly gale on Hurst Spit

Smell is so seductive; evoking, momentarily, a recollection of sight and touch, before capricious memory amends and revises. Daffodils have no perfume like a rose or hyacinth but for me one sniff brings an embracing feel of infancy, when my nose was closer to the ground. I know the place; who was there somewhere in the background; everything that could be known without words or anything so tangible as a sequence of thought. ‘Intimations’ of course free of my editing ego. Anyone who’s been around horses as a child and left them behind can be struck by the pleasing reek of staled straw and dung mingling with leather and the exhalations of shifting beasts that click on the yard. In infancy I was taken on a pleasure boat trip round Southampton harbour. It included passing the docked Queen Mary, sun reflected from a dizzying precipice of black riveted plates. There were jelly fish hanging in the black water. That besides I knew no more of the sea than holidays with bucket and spade. But for the pages on which I enjoyed vivid illustrations of ships, the sea was not something I knew by smell. The first boat I was to sail on saltwater was built well inland. I associated, what existed in my imagination, with the whiff of epoxy resin, marine ply, varnish and new synthetic paint.

Denys Rayner DSC*

It was at our family friend Denys Rayner’s boat building yard at Donnington, near Newbury 60 miles from where Danica, a 5 ton sailing sloop, would be slipped one enormously exciting autumn afternoon into the grey water of Gosport Harbour.

Danica launched from Hardway Gosport in 1961

I was 18, being mentored in seafaring by a man who, though he never mentioned it, had commanded warships in the Battle of the Atlantic...

Denys - far right - at war in the Atlantic, from his biography Escort

...been torpedoed, survived and returned to his Ithaca, a Berkshire farm, where in the peace he made a living designing and building small sailing yachts for people’s dreams. My stepfather Jack Hargreaves was taken with the idea of making yachting, hitherto exclusive, more available. He made TV programmes about Denys’ successful endeavours to make a small affordable sailing boat that could potter tidal estuaries at weekends yet hold steady in the deep. Rayner knew and respected the dangers. He was assiduous on seamanship and its responsibilities. He was also a romantic with several novels written by the time we knew him. Denys wanted his designs to go far. Five months after Danica, built of plywood, was launched I’d found myself – with my stepfather’s blessing and a small ad in The Times - a skipper, almost my age, Chris Jameson, who’d worked Thames barges off the east coast.

“I want to sail to Greece” I’d said

“So long as you know who’s in charge” he’d replied

”Agreed”

We sailed Danica to Athens and back – a journey lasting from April to October. We crossed from Lymington ahead of a gale in a grey channel swell to Le Havre, journeyed up the Seine to Paris, through the springtime countryside of France by canal to Séte and the Mediterranean, on to Marseilles, San Tropez, Monaco, Corsica, Naples, Messina, Patras, Corinth and Athens, then back around the Peloponnese to Zakinthos thence to Malta, Bizerta in Tunisia, and north to Séte again, this time via the Canal du Midi into the Garonne and the Bay of Biscay where, south east of Finisterre, Danica, as Chris was confident she would, weathered her first tempest – an equinoctial gale gusting to Beaufort 10.
I was fledged. I made single handed crossings in another boat to France exploring north Brittany between Granville and Morlaix, then in another – Denys’ first fibre glass design - to Spain across Biscay to the rias around Coruna.
In 1965 Denys encouraged me in a dream of sailing his Westerly 22 to America. I’d just finished university.

“It’ll be your national service” said Jack, whose service like Denys’ had been in a war.

Years later my mum said of that Atlantic Caribbean adventure “I never ever worried about you” I guess the truth of this is that I could not have improved on my parents, their faith in me grew mine in myself, along with their choice of those who taught me seafaring.

Young Tiger in Bequia with my shipmate Sue

A year later, in a class at the University of Pennsylvania, where I took up my first paid occupation, I tried to learn and do research and follow my stepfather’s admonition “You have had your dream. Now you must earn a living”.

I came to work in London and later in Birmingham, putting aside all interest in sailing and boats (I wasn't going to be a weekend sailor packing up Sunday night for work on Monday when I’d been used to being out on the water again on Monday morning), until, in my late 60s, my daughter Amy, sat at our kitchen table in Handsworth, found notice on ebay of a boat on a mooring in Corfu.

“Come and look at this, Simon” said Lin, who knew my inclinations. I, knowing that a mooring is almost more important these days than the boat, made some phone calls, and clicked ‘Buy now’.
So Linda and I, in 2006, bought Summersong, attached to a rickety jetty in Ipsos.

This is where the smells come in. Salt water filmed in diesel and fishiness and the embracing smell, not of timber or old rope, but, for me, the evocative scent of fibre glass and terylene, foam rubber squabs, varnished plywood and synthetic paint.

Summersong was in poor condition when we bought her; so disappointingly messy, shorter than described and not in the condition shown in the ad photo. I sat in her shabby interior with Lin that first day of our arrival on the island.
“What have we done?”

“I thought you knew about boats” said Lin.

“I did, I do. I’ve sailed to many places”
My excuses were feeble. In later years when speaking of Summersong, a 27 foot Snapdragon built on the Thames Estuary in the early 1970s, I’ve been wont to say when Lin speaks of a rip-off or at best a ‘sorry deal’, “Summersong brought us to Corfu”.

We live in Ano Korakiana in a house we love beside good neighbours in a village at the foot of a mountain with a panoramic view over the sea and mainland Greece, “because of Summersong".

"...because of Summer Song"

We’ve made small expeditions in her, a few miles up the coast to a cove at Agni, down to picnic at Execution Island and over to the mainland at Sayader, but our boat’s engine was unreliable, her overall condition poor and I was now an elderly man with forgotten instincts; lacking essential reflexes and youthful confidence. Lin does not trust me as a skipper, nor does she take to the pace of sailing and the feeling of hazard when katabatic winds gust down from Trompetta, leaning us abruptly over with straining sheets and odd noises. Through all this we’ve worked on our house, improved and maintained it but neglected Summersong. I decided two years ago we must have a better engine. I must spend money on our boat; not money I expected to get back but an investment in recovering the pleasures of sailing that I’d taken up again and then almost abandoned.
Vital to this restoration - our friends Dave and Trish. In 2007, as we sat inspecting our ill-advised purchase over the internet, it was Dave who said “Your boat’s OK. Just needs some work. We’ll make a list.”
He did things on Summersong for us, but only this last 12 months have we begun to turn the old boat round – a different and more powerful engine, new and more reliable electrics, new rigging, new mast head fittings, new cockpit slides and hatches and a restored interior, recovered squabs, fenders, repaired cabin lining, new curtains, a major paint job on hull and deck, mended teak strakes, new anchor chain, new propeller and sacrificial plate, a grand tidy up of accumulated odds sand ends in bilges and lockers, and the shaking jetty made firm, moorings made more secure to the harbour bed, a replacement roller for the jib.

Moored at Ipsos in Corfu

“She’s retro” says Dave “She’ll never be swift but she’ll be a new old boat”
“Easier to sell I suppose” mutters Lin.
Last week Dave and I took her out of the harbour and I got my first sail, jib only, in three years. It’s a start.
Two days ago we went out again, this time with Trish too and dog Skinny and raised jib and main.

Sailing Summer Song with Trish, Dave and Skinny

*** ***
Our friend Chris Holmes has sent me this article, via Jim Potts - a piece by the fine writer Nick Malkoutzis in MacroPolis called Nightmare on Democracy Street

...When a group of Golden Dawn supporters recently attacked Communist Party (KKE) members who were putting up posters in the working class neighbourhood of Perama, western Athens, the socio-political dimension of the Greek crisis entered a new, uncertain and dangerous phase. After years of mounting attacks on migrants, homosexuals and leftists, Golden Dawn made it clear that it wants to fight a pitched battle for control of districts like Perama. The symbolism of the September 12 incident did not end there. The attack took place on a road named after democracy – the very same democracy that has been pushed and pulled like a rag doll over the last few years ...Philosopher Stelios Ramfos captures the essence of the sometimes myopic Greek mentality by saying that when Greeks go to bed they do so for the purpose of sleeping or dying but never with the intention of getting up the next morning. Recent events underline that this short-sightedness in the face of a clear political and social threat is perilous. If we close our eyes, it must only be with the purpose of awakening from this nightmare when we open them again.

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Puncture makers

October 2, 2013, 2:07 am

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Every time I wheel my bicycle down the public path from Democracy Street, beside our house, to the lower road to cycle south I need to check my tyres for small puncturing thorns – pretty flowers like small yellow daisies grow into soft green seeds....

Tribulus Terrestris - a most appropriate name passed on to me by Annie Hawkins on Facebook

... that dry, tenacious hard and multi-spiked strewing themselves along the rocky path beneath the greenery of the ground cover, attaching themselves to my tyres, breaking off, if not removed, and working their way through to inner tubes.

The spiked seeds attach themselves to the tyre and break off, leaving one thorn to work its way into the inner tube

“We’ll just have to drag it all up”
“But there’s so much of it”
“I know and I thought it was so attractive”
“It must spread on shoes and paws. When there were sheep and goat around these little spikes must have worked into their hooves. Horrid if you’d try to walk this path barefoot.”
“We’ll not only have to unroot this stuff. We'll have to sweep up all the seeds that are mixed up in it and on the ground”
“I could use another path to and from the lower road but ours is the only one I know that doesn’t have steps”

On Monday the weather turned grey, cooler and humid, a steady south wind streaming the new Greek flags on the crags above the village.

By noon increasingly jaundiced overcast released a soaking downpour that continued for an hour, interrupting Lin’s work remaking the uneven narrow steps between our garden and the terrace beneath the balcony.

With the SDS drill set on hammer using a broad chisel I shattered two small chunks of obtrusive stone, leveled the front of some steps and eased off plaka from two more.
“I do like using this thing”
“Your man-drill.”
“Yes indeed, And it’s 5 minutes to 2. I’m done, so no noise in siesta”
I went back to the wardrobe project in our bedroom while Lin continued on the steps. By the end of the afternoon our bedroom was untidy with tools and the support I was making for four fine old pitch pine drawers that we’d recovered from Brin Croft and brought in our hold luggage was not coming together as we’d planned.

The space we’re filling has no right angles. Even the floor and wall are less than horizontal and vertical. The ceiling beam to which the completed doors are attached starts 55 cms from the wall and is 10cms closer at the other end of the bedroom, whose ceiling is 5 cms higher at one end. The whole beam is inclined at a medial angle. There’s no point of reference. My prototype chest for the drawers seemed to sit neatly to the left of the wardrobe door upright; but more careful offering up, checked with spirit level and eye told a different story; everything vexingly out of kilter. I summoned Lin to help. She was soon using galling past tense imperatives.
“You should have made up the whole chest of drawers framework freestanding, and then fitted it in”
“Yes well I didn't”
“As I suggested in the first place”
“No you didn’t”
“Yes I …”
Even as we argued the framework started to collapse.
“I hate the ruddy thing. I’d like to start from scratch”
“No need. I’ll do it”
“Then you’ll see how difficult it is”
“It’s very simple if you just follow instructions”
“Hrmmf”
I gave up, tidied the tools and vacuumed sawdust. Reculer pour mieux sauter.
“Tomorrow we need to get ready for having people to supper. It’s tidy-up day.”
A week ago Lin and I were at Belissimo’s in Limonia, a small platea off Nikiforou Theotoki. We’d caught the 1300 bus from Ano Korakiana. €2 each to the city and the bus to ourselves but for one other passenger all the way to town. I’d asked at the information kiosk at the bus station about the new timetable.
“It should be by the weekend. It will be decided which buses will be elim-in-ated”
I walked a little ahead of Lin.
“I’m going this way” she called continuing on Zavitsianou to make a dog-leg into Theotoki while I continued via Vellisariou and Solomou, losing her amid a bustle of visitors from the three cruise liners in port.
I was sat next to the door beneath a shade just before 2.00 asking for a fourth chair. Richard, slightly stooped, entered right, and the waiter seeing him, a regular guest, heading my way, acknowledged our table and me with the minutest of nods. Then Lin followed
“Did you run?”
“No I did not. You dawdled”
Can it be only this year that Lin and I were walking round the rim of Vesuvius, when she fell and cut her mouth and had stitches in the A & E above Torre del Greco and we walked on to catch the train to Herculaneum; mum already dead two months and Richard P back from near fatal illness? It was warm then, blue and sunny enough for ice cream. And in mid-May was it that we – Lin, I and Chris - met with Richard at Harry’s in Perithia, discretely shaken at how he’d altered?
“Tell me” asked Richard, who’d filled the minutes before Chris’ arrival with an account of the final revisions of his latest book “the difference between hip-hop and rap”
Chris, who would know exactly, diffidently obliged. We were reflecting on the term hip-hop in Roger Cohen’s op-ed in the NY Times - 'Why Greece Is Not Weimar' - which called Pavlos Fyssas ‘a leftist hip-hop singer’.
“The eggvolk killed Fyssas for what he sang – rap – not for how he danced – hip-hop”
“But I’m unsure” said Richard “that he was their original target...Fyssas was with friends. There was an argument in a place, a bar in Keratsini, with one Golden Dawn member. He called up followers on his phone. A score arrived and in the ensuing attack Fyssas was stabbed”
We ordered village sausages, roast chicken, chips, and, for Richard, tomato and taramasalata and lettuce and we shared a Greek salad; the feta one thick square on top. I passed the bowl to Lin to break the cheese and dress with oil.
“There’s no salt or vinegar on that so add it to your plate” said Lin. Bread came crusty and soft.
“Narrative, Richard! I just saw a film called The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. When I watched black and white cowboy films they were all black and white. Then we had the guilt films”
“Little Big Man”
“Dancing with Wolves much later, and lots more. Then we started to get films where there was always a chronicler, a journalist sending stories of the Wild West back East, making it up as he went along. Unforgiven? W.W.Beauchamp? George Hearst in the Deadwoodseries. This last film with Brad Pitt as Jesse James was all about making the myth with the events depicted being staged and debated by some of the participants and their audiences in Manhattan. Deconstruction used to be a complicated idea teased and dismissed as academic la-la, now it’s in the multiscreen franchise movie houses….These days you don’t even need an idiots’ guide. For all Richard Dawkins’ contempt, it’s become common sense. Even boring.”

I was getting at Richard P’s writing; not his newspaper articles about Greece but his books, the one I’m tackling on Brian Friel. This latest one will be a difficult I’m sure – about colonialism, but that’s like saying a novel written in Russia is “about Russia”.
Later Chris, as he’d offered, drove us back to Ano Korakiana, else we’d have taken the Sidari bus and walked from the junction 2 kilometres up to Democracy Street. Later he wrote:

‘R was much better, wasn’t he?...what a lovely wife you have. I don’t mind saying it knowing you will let Lin know because she is hard headed and the right kind of cynical and quiet…sceptical might be the better word…I had something else to say but it’s gone.’ He added advice ‘no more capping…I have decided to try not to cap others' stories. do you realise how much of our chat is capping? I am the worst offender and I notice my frustration. My father never capped. It is a pleasure being able to focus and keep track of the speaker. They are grateful and in my case surprised. I love the discipline. What a bore I have been all these years. It’s insecurity but wrong because with silence and attention comes power and quiet satisfaction.

Dr. Johnson suggested, or was it Boswell himself made the remark? “We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over...” So there is a moment in conversation when something hitherto absent is unaccountably yet undoubtedly present; like an original idea; initially invisible since without reference or context.

↧

Cheese dream days

October 9, 2013, 1:48 am

≫ Next: Work

≪ Previous: Puncture makers

“It’s a cheese dream day” said Lin
“Go on”
“On days when it rained too much to go out, my mum promised 'cheese dreams'– cheese spread on buttered bread and fried”
“Toasted cheese sandwich”
“No 'cheese dreams'”
It has rained from the afternoon. I’m in vest, shirt and sweater. At night we need the quilt. Summer’s furnace light no long leaks through shutters, dancing bright motes of dust and sparkling mum's little chandelier we brought, so carefully packed, from Scotland.

“A few more days like this and the house will have lost the heat in its walls”
“We’ll be lighting the stove. Putting on our electric blanket”
But for brief patines of silver on the sea, rain and clouds advance our landscape from the south. There’s still an absence of the penetrating cold I take for granted in the Highlands, which - plus grief - set me back last winter until we returned to Greece at the end of March, when 30 minutes with a Greek doctor cossetted me to health, along with antibiotics an English GP wouldn’t prescribe, plus generous possets, at the Pyrgi doctor's suggestion, of chicken soup from Cinty down the road.
On Wednesday in sunny weather I was helping Lefteris, Foti and Adoni with pressing the last of their wine – some juice from Zakinthos grapes but some, this year, from Lefteris’ own garden, the weather not so hot as to wither them on the vine as has happened the previous two years.

After the final turn of the screw the press is unscrewed and taken apart and we dig our hands into the spongy cake of tsipira (what we call pomace) pulling it out in crude wedges to add to the garden compost.
Lin and I were invited to lunch as a reward for our help (as if helping is not reward enough!) and we laughed and enjoyed small crispy skinned fried fish, cold cod, bean soup, salad, bread and wine with all the family. We lingered as conversation grew into debate
“We are talking Politics” explained Natasha in English. You know Golden Dawn?”
“Ne” I replied “Chryssí avga χρυσή αυγά”
I know quite well the difference between αvgí and αvga, but, having decided to call them the 'eggvolk' I thought I’d try it out on Greek neighbours and was rewarded with hilarity. Lefteris observed how well the BNP are doing in UK, mentioning a double figure percentage he’d seen on TV. “They are thriving on present misery” we agreed.
I disagreed that the British National Party was having as much success in the UK as Golden Dawn in Greece; rather the opposite.
Cinty’s view, she shared with me later, is that one thing a lot of young Greeks especially won’t stand for, people who might, because of the crisis, be inclined to sympathy with the eggvolk, is the suppression of a right to speak your mind...“with the murder of Pavlos Fyssas they have shot themselves in their Greek foot”
*** *** ***

Lin and I have been using the rain to work indoors on the wardrobe in our bedroom. She's taken over management after I retreated frustrated at the intractability of the angles involved.

Drawers from Brin Croft; doors recovered from beside wheelie bins below Ano Korakiana

Under her guidance I’ve been planing and trimming surfaces, creating angles that accommodate the illogical geometry of the space in which we’re working. Shavings and saw dust proliferate but it’s slowly and steadily coming together.

This Saturday evening there was a knocking at our door. It was Angeliki and her mum Anna Metallinos. No they wouldn’t have a drink, wouldn’t stay, but asked if we’d like to come to the village museum.
“We never knew you wanted to see it. I’m so sorry”
This ισ a conspicuous slightly narrow building in the centre of Ano Korakiana we’d given up hope of visiting.

In the seven years we’ve been here it has never been open. Tactful attempts to seek an invite had not succeeded. We’d decided that the Metallinos Museum was not one, in the sense we had understood the term; not really a place open to visitors; rather a private house that happened to be called ‘ΜΟΥΣΕΙΟ’. A plaque tells passersby in Greek and English that ‘In this house lived and created his great work of art the first self-taught popular from Corfu sculptor Arestides Zach.Metallinos’. Two days ahead – meta-avrio - at 10.00 suited our bi-lingual friend and neighbour Cinty. She agreed to join us to help with conversation.

**** ****
I got an email from our solicitor in Scotland:

Dear Simon and Bay. Just a quick note to confirm that the sale of Brin Croft and the Lochan has successfully settled. The Purchasers’ Agents have authorised release of the funds and accordingly the keys have been handed over. With kind regards. Yours sincerely, James Wotherspoon. Macandrew and Jenkins WS LLP

I could hardly not be anything but beholden to a house that stood close above the sweet river Farnack where, with my sister, I’d sat with mum as, at teatime on November 1, she breathed her last. The sale for a sum that derided shared pessimism and a rather mean Home Report– required in Scotland – vindicated mum’s good choice

Barbara, and her grandson Richard, at Brin Croft

*** *** ***
It seems hardly possible but it looks as if I may get my wish - a loose footed mainsail on Summer Song. I'm not a fan of the almost universal rig of modern yachts over the last 50 years - the Bermudan - preferring gunter or gaff. The Bermudan mast feels too tall. The sail though elegant is unwieldy and without a generous belly, and, in a world of sudden squalls, not easy, especially when single handed, to lower or even reef in a hurry. (see - parts of a sail) In the search for a seamless luff the Bermudan main is near married to its mast, running up a groove or hanging on slugs in that groove; an arrangement that's all about getting a tight luff to improve sailing close to the wind in competition - no great concern of mine. Summer Song's main has been a challenge when it come to reefing or furling.

Summer Song's main is a handful to furl or reef

Her previous owner, Norman, had been wont to stuff towels in the canvas he rolled round the boom to try and give Summer Song's main a wind-friendly shape when reefed. Imagine doing that in a sea and a stiffening breeze. So Dave has been drawing diagrams.

At Sally's Bar in Ipsos, Dave draws a loose footed furling main for Summer Song. Rob Groove looks on.

At first we thought of using another genoa rigged in the main triangle, but now he's found a mainsail that rolls up between head and tack, like a roller reefing jib; the type that reefs into a 'box' attached all up the back of a Bermudan mast; almost universal on modern charter boats. On the clew there's a sturdy pulley linked along the boom to a roller furling gear just below the gooseneck. All up the luff runs a stiff length of aluminium around which the mainsail furls and unfurls. The furling sheet runs from the clew pulley, just above where the main sheet attaches, to the furling gear and back to the cockpit so that both main and jib can be reefed from there.
"Blimey Dave! Make it happen"
"I've got the main and I think there's a furling reel fell in the sea up by the harbour. I'll go look in a moment"

↧

Work

October 12, 2013, 3:16 am

≫ Next: Ano Korakiana in relief

≪ Previous: Cheese dream days

The wardrobe that we are making in our bedroom, from a mix of new and old wood, has been added to. A window frame found by the roadside and stored in our apothiki is now in place. Yesterday I picked up a small cupboard door by bins below the village and that too is now part of our construction. We await one more pine drawer from England. It should arrive with other furniture brought from Brin Croft next Tuesday afternoon, courtesy of Daniel Blom. There's lots more to be done including stripping all the white paint from the old wood.
*** ***
So we visited the Metallinos Museum and were entranced.

The sculptor and his granddaughter Angeliki Metallinos

The man sits at work on a ram (a photo of him in the background of my picture) wearing a shepherd's woollen hat - as we see on countless images of the island saint. His art is almost unknown, even on Corfu, let alone the wider world. It seems he never wanted to sell his art, meaning it for and about his village, Ano Korakiana. The proliferation of stone and marble pieces in three small spaces on floor and shelves is overwhelming. The man was entirely self-taught. I'm only starting to take it in, but I understand that this work was only begun when, aged 67, Metallinos having been a craftsman - cobbler, and maker of furniture, ovens and olive millwheels - found the time to become a sculptor. He continued on his collection, creating 250 pieces, before his death in 1987.

Aristedes the cobbler

↧

Ano Korakiana in relief

October 14, 2013, 12:45 am

≫ Next: A perfect kind of ordinary day

≪ Previous: Work

After we visited the museum in the village - after a few years waiting and hoping - Angeliki Metallinos followed up our visit last Monday by sending me photos of her grandfather's work. They include marble reliefs about life in Ano Korakiana

Distaff and flute in the olive groves

These reliefs represent a small part of this rich collection, their tone - innocent presentations of the remnants of a pastoral economy, enchanting and without irony or rancour, yet within the sculptor we know there is far more to see and understand. See Metallinos' comments on parliament...

and these two on the telephone...

"I wait for you"

*** *** ***
From the Ano Korakiana website, words on distortions in current political situation by Nikos Fakiolis

Οι λόγοι που παρέσυραν μια μερίδα ψηφοφόρων

Γράφει ο/η Φακιολάς Νίκος
09.10.13

Ένα πολιτικό κόμμα είναι οι ψηφοφόροι του και πρέπει να παραδεχτούμε ότι μια μερίδα συμπατριωτών μας παρασύρθηκαν και ψήφισαν επιπόλαια ένα εγκληματικό, «πολιτικό» μόρφωμα που εμφανίστηκε στο προσκήνιο προβάλλοντας υποκριτικά κάποια απαράδεχτη και ανιστόρητη για τους Έλληνες και την ιστορία τους ιδεολογία και μια σειρά παραβατικές πρακτικές. Είναι όμως τα χαρακτηριστικά του πολιτικού αυτού μορφώματος που προσέλκυσαν μια μερίδα του εκλογικού σώματος που δεν το εκφράζει και αναντίρρητα καταδικάζει την τυφλή βία, από όπου κι αν προέρχεται;
Πολύ πιθανόν έστρεψαν τους πολίτες σε αυτό κάποιες πραγματικές ή ενδόμυχες ανάγκες τους. Η στάση τους γίνεται κατανοητή, μπορεί να ερμηνευτεί, αλλά δεν δικαιολογείται.
Οι πολίτες στρέφονται σε ακρότητες καθώς είναι αγανακτισμένοι με όσα συμβαίνουν στο οικονομικό και πολιτικό σκηνικό και ψάχνουν οπουδήποτε στα τυφλά να ξεφύγουν από τα αδιέξοδα που τους έχει οδηγήσει η κυβερνητική πολιτική και τους έχει εξαντλήσει. Η αγανάκτηση δεν έχει όρια ή λογική.
Πιστεύουν στα κηρύγματα περί εθνικισμού των εκπροσώπων αυτού του εγκληματικού μορφώματος που βρίσκονται σε διαμετρική αντίθεση με το ναζισμό που τόσα δεινά έχει επιφέρει στην Ελλάδα.

Με αφέλεια υποδέχονται τις υποκριτικές υποσχέσεις ότι τάχα θα τους δώσει λύσεις στην ανεργία και την οικονομική ύφεση αυτός ο πολιτικός σχηματισμός που δεν έχει κανένα πρόγραμμα εξόδου από την κρίση ή σχετικές προτάσεις. Αντίθετα, προστατεύει την πολιτική του κεφαλαίου και στρέφεται φαινομενικά εναντίον των μεταναστών, καθώς η λαθρομετανάστευση θεωρούν ότι ευθύνεται για μεγάλο μέρος της ανεργίας ανειδίκευτων και η παρουσία τους αποτελεί μεγάλο πρόβλημα για την Ελληνική κοινωνία, και παράλληλα εκδηλώνεται εναντίον όσων εκφράζουν με οποιοδήποτε τρόπο αντίθετη γνώμη……
(συνεχίζεται)

Παράλληλα, οι εκπρόσωποι του «πολιτικού» αυτού μορφώματος υποκρύπτουν έντεχνα την πραγματική νοσηρή ιδεολογία τους και υποτίθεται καταδικάζουν τις παραβατικές πράξεις μελών τους ή αποστασιοπούνται από αυτά. Μερικά θερμοκέφαλα μέλη ισχυρίζονται ότι από τη μια μεριά διαψεύδουν για τυφλούς και κωφούς όσα έγιναν από την άλλη ότι πρόκειται για προβοκάτσιες με στόχο τα τάγματα εφόδου που συντηρούν, αλλά θα έκανε κάποιος πολιτικό παιγνίδι με βία και φόνους για να τους χρεώσει στα μέλη τους;
Οι πολίτες πιστεύουν στην ειλικρίνεια  των φιλανθρωπικών δράσεων των μελών του ναζιστικού αυτού κόμματος που γίνονται για ορισμένους ελκυστικές και καλύπτουν περιστασιακά κάποιες ανάγκες, όπως διανομή τροφίμων ή ρούχων μόνο σε Έλληνες, η υποστήριξη ηλικιωμένων, οι επιλεκτικές! ρατσιστικές αιμοδοσίες, η διανομή χρημάτων άγνωστης προέλευσης σε μέλη. Οι δράσεις αυτές είναι υποκριτικές και απευθύνονται και εκμεταλλεύονται με αναιδή τρόπο τις ευαίσθητες χορδές των Ελλήνων.
Η προσφορά εργασίας και κάποιου εισοδήματος σε οπαδούς του κόμματος με απαράδεκτα ανταλλάγματα, όπως παράνομη προσφορά προστασίας σε μαγαζιά, άτομα ή επιχειρήσεις με το αζημίωτο.
Ικανοποιούν το αίσθημα των αδύναμων πολιτών που θα ήθελαν να πάρουν αόριστα και τυφλά εκδίκηση από όσους θεωρούν υπεύθυνους για την κρίση και οι ναζιστικού τύπου βιαιότητες έχουν τέτοια τυφλά χαρακτηριστικά, ενώ πολλά πλημμελήματα μπορεί να καλύψει η βουλευτική ασυλία ορισμένων «πρωτοπαλίκαρων».
Άλλοι πολίτες οδηγούνται σε αυτούς από δυσπιστία στη δυνατότητα του αντιμνημονιακού μετώπου να εφαρμόσουν όσα επικαλούνται και να δώσουν λύσεις στα αδιέξοδα της Ελλάδας.
Διάφοροι έλκονται από την αυστηρή ιεραρχική δομή, τη στρατιωτική πειθαρχία! και τη σωματική ρώμη των ταγμάτων εφόδου από μισθοφόρους, ακόμα και ανήλικους, που συντηρεί και εκπαιδεύει η εγκληματική αυτή συμμορία.
Ορισμένοι πολιτικοί σχηματισμοί ή φορείς αισθάνονται ότι επωφελούνται από παράλογες και ακραίες πράξεις και τις ευνοούν ή τις ανέχονται ή επιδιώκουν τον αποπροσανατολισμό της κοινής γνώμης από επίκαιρα, ζωτικά προβλήματα, όπως είναι σήμερα τα προβλήματα της παιδείας, της υγείας, της διαθεσιμότητας και των απολύσεων των εργαζομένων της καταρράκωσης των εργασιακών δικαιωμάτων ή της καταστρατήγησης της συντάγματος..
Έχει δοθεί μεγάλη δημοσιότητα στις πράξεις των εκπροσώπων του ναζιστικού «πολιτικού» μορφώματος και αυτό μπορεί να το ευνοήσει δημοσκοπικά και την εκμεταλλεύεται, έστω και αρνητική για να βρίσκεται στο προσκήνιο. Σε αυτή την παγίδα πέφτουμε όλοι, κι εγώ δυστυχώς, με τη σύντομη αυτή δημοσίευση.
Πραγματική συμβολή των δημοσιογράφων θα ήταν, αν ρωτούσαν τους λαλίστατους εκπροσώπους του «πολιτικού» αυτού μορφώματος ποιο είναι το πρόγραμμα τους, πέρα από τα  εύκολα συνθήματα, για να ξεφύγει η χώρα από την κρίση και ποια μέτρα έχουν την πρόθεση να πάρουν σε αυτή την κατεύθυνση.
Το καλύτερο μέτρο για την ομαλοποίηση του πολιτεύματος και την προστασία της δημοκρατίας θα ήταν η κατανόηση των πρακτικών και η απομόνωση των μελών αυτής της εγκληματικής οργάνωσης, ιδιαίτερα η απόλυτη συρρίκνωση της κοινοβουλευτικής της παρουσίας που της αποδίδει προσχήματα, της προσδίδει δικαιώματα και καλύπτει εγκληματικές πράξεις των μελών της. Αυτό μπορεί να το επιτύχει άμεσα και ανώδυνα ο λαός που της έδωσε με την ψήφο του δικαίωμα  ύπαρξης και λόγου. Μπορεί να την εξαφανίσει.
Έργο του πολιτικού μας συστήματος θα ήταν η ριζική αλλαγή της δημοσιονομικής και κοινωνικής πολιτικής που οδηγεί την Ελληνική κοινωνία σε επικίνδυνα αδιέξοδα που αναθερμαίνουν τη φωλιά του φιδιού και κυοφορούν την αποδόμηση της κοινωνικής συνοχής. Νίκος Φακιολάς, Δρ. κοινωνιολογίας
τ. Δ/ντής Ερευνών ΕΚΚΕ, Παν/κός

↧

A perfect kind of ordinary day

October 19, 2013, 1:55 am

≫ Next: Aristedes Metallinos 1907-1987

≪ Previous: Ano Korakiana in relief

A spinach pie would not taste the same in England, but a cup of tea in Ano Korakiana is as good as one in Birmingham. Come to Greece in October hoping for weather as blue and breezy warm as we've enjoyed the last three days, you risk autumn weather that we do better in England for the whole of a week's late holiday. Thus last Wednesday morning was deep grey with the promise of pouring rain. How skillfully the bus driver negotiated the bend at the bridge and the close pressing walls of houses in Agios Markos on the winding road to town from Ano Korakiana.
“I don’t like the look of that crag” says Lin peering up from the bus at a place where the rocks of the trompetta ridge emerge as serrated cliffs from the hollyoak cover above the road to the sea at Pyrgi.
“It looks as if bits of it could fall down at any moment”
Lin always drives when we have the car. She misses the chances I have to gaze at the scenery. All the way to town on the 9.00am bus there was hardly a stop, but for traffic lights. We travelled with three fellow passengers.
"Why don't they run a minibus service between the village and the town?" said Lin
"Then there might be problems when I want to bring my bicycle"
"You can get a folder onto a minibus plus plenty of shopping bags"
We were visiting our new accountant in Ioann.Theotoki, just of San Rocco Square.
On Monday while Lin was still in bed, I’d dropped the car, almost with relief, at the airport, unfolded my bicycle and cycled into town, wending through back streets to busy San Rocco, thence to the bank where I was in and out in an astonishing 10 minutes, having collected cash and the pink slips for three previous transactions – the paperwork seldom easily forthcoming but vital to showing none of our earnings come from wages in Greece. From there I cycled down N.Theotoki to Ploos Bookshop where, in their dark study at the back, immersed in the smell of books and coffee, I used their WiFi to do email and post images of Aristedes Metallinos’ work describing village life on Democracy Street.
Near noon, the sun seeping into the narrow streets, I made my way to the bus station, via the seafront of the old harbour. Our neighbour, Katerina and, others from the village, were waiting for the 1215 bus, she, as always, chatting brashly about her day to all in hearing.

This Wednesday Lin and I visited the second floor offices up narrow marble stairways to see George Agious, accountant recommended by Cinty. We had, as we suspected, incurred fines for tax returns not submitted. We paid these plus an accountant’s fee, signed the forms and emerged into sheeting rain, arguing about who held the umbrella as we walked gingerly along the slippery marble pavements towards Ploos where Lin needed to complete a form for the small claims court in England where she’s vigorously challenging a opportunist claim for an absurd parking fee at Newtown Shopping Centre. We bickered about hiccoughs. How come our previous Corfu accountant had defaulted on submitting our nil Greek tax returns? How dare this UK company charge nothing for 2 hours then jump you with an £85 breach of contract claim for the next 5 minutes? Then an email from the Highlands
“Blimey look at this” I downloaded a statement of fees incurred during the selling of mum’s house “They’ve parlayed their take to over 5% of the sale price!”
We continued a Charles-and-Carrie row about human depravity as we strolled to the bus station munching a spinach pie and a cheese pie from the small baker by the quay. The sky had turned - it seemed quite abruptly - entirely cloudless, pools of rain quickly drying on the uneven pavements.
“You know that every year in Padstow they hold a Greek pastry eating competition?”
“No?”
“Every competitor gets to eat a spanakopita, a tiropita and one more pastry of their choice – a sausage roll, an apple pie, whatever. They stand on a small square of white cardboard. The idea is to eat all three pastries in under 7 minutes with no filo crumbs falling outside the square or on your clothes. It’s very popular with the Greek community in the West Country but loads of others join in. Since the event began about 6 years ago the Greeks have always walked away with the prizes.”
“Amazing”
“Sorry I was going on at you”
****
On Tuesday Daniel Blom, Corfu Transport Partners, and his helpers arrived as scheduled in an estate car at the top of the steps down from Democracy Street. They manhandled a chest of drawers to the downstairs bedroom, and two heavier ones to the balcony and into our upstairs room, were paid, and departed.

The windvane from Brin Croft, protectively packaged by Lin before leaving Scotland, fitted Steve Lee’s bracket. I raised the windvane, enjoying showing it off to the neighbours – though the Latin letters in sheet metal are puzzling, given that, in Greek, N for North should be Β, Βορρά, while South should be N for Νότια, with A for East, Ανατολή, and delta – Δυτικό for West. Our vane can be seen from both balconies as well as from the top of the steps onto Democracy Street, so we can say to visitors “Look for the house with the wind vane on the corner”. One problem. The arm of Steve’s bracket is rigid in the vertical but twists sideways in the slightest breeze
“Take it down now!” says Lin “It’ll either break the bracket or twist it off the wall”
I unscrewed the four coach bolts holding the bracket and strolled up to Steph’s and Wesley’s house beyond St George’s Church. Steph guided me down winding iron stairs to Wesley’s large workshop where I heard the crackle of an acetylene torch.

Wesley's workshop

Wes pushed his goggles onto his forehead and paid me acute attention as I described the torque on the bracket with a photo and measurements.
“Leave it with me”
He had in mind welding a supporting arm between the foot of the head of Steve’s bracket that will fix to the house wall a couple of feet to its right. Steph made us coffee and I spoke a little about the amazing marble sculptures in the Metallinos Museum.
"It's not just the 'naughty museum'. There's lots lots more to the man"
“How sad it would be if all that work had to leave the village”
"That's the problem. No-one seems to know what to do with the collection...Arestides may have been a simple artist. He wasn't a simple man."

***

At Dave’s suggestion I fixed masking tape around the areas of Summersong’s deck where we will apply more nonslip paint. It's a tedious job, yet pleasing for the harbour motion of the boat as I kneel on her decks fiddling the tape round corners, making sure that hardly a square inch of deck will not be slip-proofed before she's ready for us to sail on the mercurial Sea of Kerkyra.

Dave's dad, visiting from England during the week, left on Friday. On Saturday I cycled down to Ipsos to work with Dave, applying non-slip paint on the rest of Summer Song’s deck.
“This stuff doesn’t have suspended sand in it so you don’t have to keep stirring as you apply. Just spread it on quite thick and stipple”

We set to working inside my blue tape and were done in under an hour. The first painting was touch dry. It came up like light sandpaper.
“Feels good” I said
“You may have to apply this paint annually. We’ll see. Come and have a look at the main furling set-up I have in mind for Summer Song”

We inspected a yacht, the same length as our boat, a few yards along the mole. As I desire; a loose footed main rolling round a rigid metal shaft between the top of the mast and the goose neck; the blue rope is fixed to the top of the boom on a sliding slug, leads through a pulley on the main clew and back to the end of the boom for when the main is fully set, then back through the boom to the goose neck again where it runs down to a fixed pulley on the deck; one more pulley about a foot out from the mast and back via a self locking cleat to the cockpit where it can be hauled round a winch.
“So do I need another winch beside Summer Song’s main hatch?”
“Maybe. Otherwise you can do it manually or use her existing cockpit winches. We’ll see”
The red rope follows a similar route, but wraps round a reefing reel below the goose neck. As you release the blue rope to reef, you haul in the red rope again from the cockpit, with a self-locking cleat, and the sail rolls up along its luff, just like the present roller-reefing foresail.
“The main reefs on this boat into an aluminium sleeve spot riveted to the mast and running all the way up the masthead. That’d cost you five grand.”
So on Summer Song the luff will roll outside the mast, using the down haul to keep it as tight as we’ll need.
“Yes and if anything goes wrong I can lower the whole mainsail, which is what I want. And I can adjust the belly on the main from taut to generous curve. I like it!”
“You friend’s shot himself in the foot”

“People get themselves into bizarre messes. My great uncle was a senior officer in the RAF – Allied Air Commander in Chief, South-East Asian - during WW2. In wartime, he did something no-one in the family could talk about for years. I think there’s an oil painting of the man in full regalia in store at the Imperial War Museum. I’ve seen a black and white copy in mum's files. She told me, almost in a whisper a few years ago, that her uncle had 'deserted' and ‘run off’ with General Auchinleck’s wife while he was also serving in India. It never went public.

He wasn’t disciplined for fear the enemy would use such a scandal as propaganda. He and she and their affair were allowed to disappear.
“It went sour for them” said my mum with seldom summoned but fathomless contempt “once they’d run off to somewhere on the south coast”
I thought what Aristedes Metallinos had carved over and over in marble and Corfiot stone on the theme of lust.
"The urge to reproduce is so strong" said Dave
After a beer with him and Trish at Sally's I cycled up the hill to Ag.Markou and home through the olive groves, passing on the way, a man walking his dog.

Into the light

*** ***
The day after I'd been to Wesley about the bracket he was back to our house with a sturdy strut. I spent most of yesterday morning making a secure anchorage for it in our surface-crumbly wall, getting through with the SDS drill to the stone beneath the mortar so I could fix two more coach bolts into my largest rawlplugs.
"Souvlaki skewers are good for jobs like this" Wes had said, but I couldn't, in my keenness to raise the wind vane, lay my hands on any.

Steve's bracket plus Wesley's strut

The Jack Russell shows the wind

So there's our wind vane, on perhaps its last home, brought this time from the Highlands where it swung on the roof of mum's two Scottish homes. I knew it as a child. My stepfather designed it and got the local smith to depict our first lurcher, whose name I've forgotten (or was it a whippet called Jenny?) and a Jack Russell bitch called Sukie. It swung on the roof of our house in Bagnor in Berkshire.
*** ***
I was wondering about loneliness, in particular about those few occasions when I sit beside a bend in Democracy Street and watch. I thought Metallinos was speaking of this with his chisel.

'The snails of the village when they are alone sit and flaunt their large antennae. If someone appears in front of them they try to hide these, one behind the other between their legs.' Ar. Metallinos 1984 (tr: Aleko Damaskinos)

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Aristedes Metallinos 1907-1987

October 29, 2013, 8:16 am

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Σφηρή και σκαρπέλο

Some remnant DNA prompted Arestides Ἀριστείδης Metallinos in the last decade of his life in Ano Korakiana to put aside his cobbler’s last, to obtain marble and Corfu stone, in order to 'bear witness, with hammer and chisel, to human nature and its weaknesses'.

«Για όλα ‘αυτά αποφάσησα και πήρα διάφορα μάρμαρα και πέτρες Σφηρή και σκαρπέλο να παρισιάσο πάνο στα μάρμαρα τον άνδροπο και τα ελατόματάτου» (απόσπασμα από χειρόγραφο του καλλιτέχνη)

And so, between 1977 and 1987, Metallinos created, unknown to the world, over 200 works. Locked in a closed 'museum' on Democracy Street, the old artist has left our village a puzzling and baneful bequest...

Stop troubling your old body. Your friends, relatives and fellow villagers will torment you towards the end of your life. They demolished your house which you kept like a museum of divine work to adorn the village. The time will come for their great crime to manifest itself, to burden them, and their children for ever. (Tr: Aleko Damaskinos)

I have much yet to learn about this amazing artist. How I wish he could come home to his village.

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Winter in England

November 2, 2013, 3:28 am

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I’m starting to imagine myself back to England – cycling into the city centre with Oscar running beside me along the Soho Loop, and the mainline canal towpaths, catching a train to London or York from New Street, chinese lunch with Richard and Emma, buttered baked potato from the Rag Market, fish and chips with curry in the dark cold evenings, working our allotment, thermal underwear, neck warmer, turning on an electric blanket as we do in the winter here. As it is we still sleep beneath just a sheet; Lin without her nightie. The weather these last weeks in Greece has been as high summer in the north so that I’m almost apprehensive at the cold we’ll meet in the arrivals building at Gatwick – an edgy chill I’d normally welcome with British winter.
“The car thermometer’s reading 4°” said Amy, on patrol in Moseley, when I phoned yesterday to thank her for words about mum..

A year ago today I lost a very special person, my Grandma. Thankfully I haven't lost any of the wonderful things she taught me! She will live on forever in the knowledge and wisdom she imparted on all those who were lucky enough to meet her... Doesn't stop me missing you though Poppet x

The only mark of the season here, apart from longer dark, is the ground mist that gathers across the island, a haar so thick at times, Prophet EliasΠροφήτη Ηλία seems like an island assailed by ocean swells. I walked up there to see Ano Korakiana in the distance. Lopakhin has blocked the walking route up the hill to the church that marks one of the village boundaries.

<Δεν μπορείτε να κλείσετε τη διαδρομή προς την εκκλησία του Προφήτη Ηλία!>

I slipped through a gap between hedge and new steel gate, climbed the new concrete gradient, ready to argue, rehearsing in Greek...
“You cannot close the path to the Church of the Prophet Elias”
In a hundred metres the concrete gave out as I glimpsed a semi-completed monster of a villa with swimming pool below...

...my ascent crossed cropped grass sward strewn with dewy webs and clumps of pink cyclamen winding up between olive trees to the oak that overhangs the ruined church.

I sat on the steps in front of the church. The mist dissolved. A church bell rang in the village. I reached the cord for the single bell of Elias and rang it - twelve times.
I wasn’t returning the way I’d come. Pondering another descent, I headed west until the grove in front of the church came to an end in undergrowth. I edged, as when lurching a short cut from a forestry track in the Highlands coming to a short drop – an old olive grove terrace - and so gingerly descended through leaf mould sliding on my behind into cypress woods, hollyoak shrubbery, ivy, and bramble...

...peering for long unused paths in the bright lit underwood. The woods opened onto a small meadow.

I heard voices, then a car driving off and so found the road. I strolled back to where I’d started in clear sunlight.

I headed home and on an impulse, headed for Angeliki’s house. I needed a phone number and address. Outside on the village outskirts I tried the gate bell. No answer. Then she drove up; asked me in for coffee and so I got another view of the village from the top of her home as I sipped a Greek coffee and asked more questions about her grandfather - Ano Korakiana's sculptor.

“I saw you in the church on Monday” she said.
Lin had said she’d seen Angeliki in the village band, playing trumpet.
“I saw, from one corner of my eye, that you cried when the national anthem was playing”
This was true and I was unembarrassed.

In St George's Ano Korakiana on «'Οχι» Day (ph: Thanassis Spiggos)

“I wasn’t crying for sadness so much as for everything I love about this country”
“You are more Greek than…”
I had heard this about myself before and denied it.
“It is the love of a foreigner for another country, these feelings I have for Greece. I’m proud to be of my own country, but I also know that when we were alone in 1940, Greece, of all who might have been with us, stood to be counted against the same enemy – mono Ellada. That’s why your anthem moves me so.”
I didn’t say all that, just ‘mono Ellada’.
I learned more in our conversation about Aristedes her grandfather. How he was to people about him; how he loved his village; how he went about his work.
“I will only write about this with discretion” I said “I will run my thoughts by you and your mother and father”
What an incredible step forward this last fortnight has been in my opportunities to witness the work of Aristedes Metallinos, after waiting for so long and more or less abandoning hope that I’d ever see more than a sample of his work.
“It has been thirty years” said Angeliki "Now must be a good time to make a new start with my grandfather.”

Aristedes' last sculpture - an unfinished self-portrait in 1987

*** *** ***
We have almost completed it - our wardrobes-cum-cupboards-cum-shelves – in our bedroom. Now it’s a matter of filling and stripping the wood and adding finish and four more turned wooden drawer handles.

But for the two uprights beside the ‘french windows’, all materials, but for trim, glue and screws, are recovered from old wood; old parts of other furniture.
I love the way this has all come together. First the doors we found years ago and kept in the apothiki. Then the window we thought we’d have to throw away after using it’s twin in the dresser downstairs. The messy old drawers from Brin Croft Lin used to pack things for the journey from mum’s house to Birmingham and then fitted in our hold baggage, with more things for Greece; then the two small doors I found in separate places by the road which just happened to fit below the windows. The shelves that were the drawer fronts on the rubbishy chipboard chest of drawers that fit exactly in the middle, and the old pine wood from that rotting table on waste ground near the house that made the bottom drawer, and the luck we had finding three large sheets of chipboard – shop display screens - abandoned by the derelict sports field below the village.

The bottom drawer

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A day to go north

November 5, 2013, 3:55 pm

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The terrier's pointing to the wind from the south bringing rain and deep grey sky - the first real signs of winter after a summer reaching into November. This morning as we packed our cases and ticked our check-list, it felt a little easier to leave.

The full plane bounced upwards through grey-white to the familiar blue again; no land to be seen beneath undulating plains of cloud all the way to England; then a train to Victoria and coach to Birmingham, and taxi home to Handsworth; on our kitchen table a lemon I picked this morning in our garden on Democracy Street.

Fireworks were exploding somewhere behind the roofs, in part for November 5 but, in Handsworth, mainly for Diwali - from the third to the seventh of the month. We'd enjoyed 'November 5' in Greece, combining it with Halloween, last Saturday evening, down at our friend Sally's stables a kilometre below the village...

...a fire of eucalyptus, foliage and leaves, the distinctive scent mixing with the enticing smell of meat grilling over carefully tended charcoal, to be enjoyed with cowboy beans, corkscrew pasta, and village wine; above us stars and a glow to the east as a young moon coasted the Trompetta Ridge. After the fire had died down Lin and I walked back to the village, its twinkling lights above us on the dark road, the air growing warmer as we climbed one of the narrow paths up to Democracy Street. Before sleeping we added a few touches to our wardrobe project, having stripped all the paint and filled cracks and holes.

We cannot complete the work without drawer and door handles and some more trim, but we're pleased with what we've made over the last two months. Before we left, the evening before, we walked in the village. Lin saw a beautiful snail working its way gracefully over a low wall, feeling the air with its tentacles. These are its 'eyes' but they made not the tiniest flinch from the camera's flash.

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//democracy157.rssing.com/chan-11756149/article114-live.html

November 12, 2013, 4:37 pm

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Dr George Savvanis on the Ano Korakiana website:

ΕΡΤέλος...

Γράφει ο/η Γιώργος Σαββανής
11.11.13
"Κάποιοι θα ντρέπονται εσαεί και θα λογοδοτούν στις επόμενες γενιές», είπε χαρακτηρίζοντας «ενέργεια εκτροπής» την έφοδο της αστυνομίας."
Αυτά δήλωσε κάποια βουλευτής το πρωί έξω από το ραδιομέγαρο της Αγίας Παρασκευής. Θα μου επιτρέψετε να αμφιβάλλω πολύ, αν ανάμεσα στους «κάποιους» υπάρχει έστω και ένας που να είναι σε θέση να ντρέπεται. Το αίσθημα της ντροπής, από όλο το ζωικό βασίλειο διαθέτει μόνο ο άνθρωπος.. Όσο για τη «λογοδοσία», εδώ πια δεν έχω την παραμικρή αμφιβολία! Θα λογοδοτήσουν και αυτοί όπως λογοδότησαν όλοι οι κατά καιρούς απατεώνες και δοσίλογοι πλην ελαχίστων εξαιρέσεων. Έτσι λοιπόν απλά μπήκε η ταφόπλακα στην ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΗ ΡΑΔΙΟΦΩΝΙΑ ΤΗΛΕΟΡΑΣΗ και στην ογδοντάχρονη ιστορία της. Έτσι απλά έσβησε η φωνή της Ελλάδας. Ο «τσοπανάκος» δεν θα ξανακουστεί στον αέρα. Η μοναδική ελεύθερη και ανεξάρτητη φωνή στους τελευταίους πέντε μήνες σίγησε. Τα σκύβαλα των ιδιωτικών καναλιών θριάμβευσαν. Το απόλυτο μαύρο κυριάρχησε. Οι εργαζόμενοι της ΕΡΤ που άντεξαν, υπέστειλαν τη σημαία τους και βγήκαν με αξιοπρέπεια. Τώρα στις ίδιες συχνότητες ραδιοφώνου και τηλεόρασης εκπέμπει το κυβερνητικό «μόρφωμα». Πόσο επίκαιρα ακούγονται τα λόγια του εκφωνητή Κ Σπυρόπουλου στις 27 Απριλίου 1941 από το «ραδιοφωνικό σταθμό Αθηνών»: "προσοχή! Ο ραδιοφωνικός σταθμός Αθηνών σε λίγη ώρα δε θα είναι Ελληνικός! Θα είναι Γερμανικός! Και θα μεταδίδει ψεύδη!"
Γιώργος Σαββανής (Γιατρός) (my earlier blog reference - scroll down)

**** ****
And from our friend Richard Pine…a fascinating archeological dig down eight decades:

12 November 2013
Germany and Greece
I offer this article to members of the Hellas-Greece discussion group in the belief that the intentions of Germany in 1942, as expressed in the following text, find significant echoes in the views of the European core states today, regarding the economic and political future of smaller, peripheral states such as Greece and, indeed the whole of the Balkans, and that this raises issues concerning the status of the smaller states vis-à-vis the dominant powers in Europe today. I would welcome comments either through this channel or to my e-mail <rpinecorfu@yahoo.com>:

I recently read the transcripts of ten lectures delivered in Berlin by senior German officials (bankers, academics, most of them economists), which envisage the transformation of the European economy and, as a result, of its social structures. Strategies include a massive investment in infrastructure, sweeping agricultural reform, industrialisation of south-east Europe, and a rationalisation of fiscal conditions among the member states.
But this wasn’t yesterday. The year? 1942, when Germany was still confidently anticipating victory in the second world war. Not only continental Europe was involved, but also Russia which, at that time, had a massive food surplus which would be used to supply net importers of foodstuffs. German military might would prevail and create the conditions for economic peace and growth.
Britain, of course, would be excoriated and cut adrift, and would have to pursue its fate in the company of the USA, which, it was argued, had brought about the economic malaise of the continent, through 'estrangement from the European continent' in the pursuit of imperial interests.
The giveaway is that the entity to be summoned into existence would be known as the 'European economic community' (EEC) – a body which of course did not actually come into existence until 1957 and is now the EU. The guiding principle would be a 'coalition of the countries of Europe', 'a community sharing one destiny', founded on economic integration, and a 'unity of political order'. To create such a unity would be 'an act of European self-determination immune to Europhobic influences'– by which it meant the British attitude. Germany’s role was 'to recreate a natural situation whereby Europe’s natural focus is the centre of the continent'.
The overall intention was, in the sentimental words of one speaker, to recreate the trading conditions which flourished in Europe from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century, in German cities such as Lübeck, Cologne and Hamburg, which developed control first over the Baltic and later established trading posts throughout Europe including London and Paris - known collectively as the Hanseatic League. The League provided the economic hub of European trading, and the 1942 vision of a new Europe under German control envisaged a modern-day linking of the chief producers by the creation of an autobahn system for faster transit of goods and services.
How this unity would also be capable of demonstrating 'respect for the independence of the nations concerned' is difficult to imagine, since those nations would be bound together by irrefragable economic treaties and their independence would be subject to 'the destruction of these monocultures: Europe has to be dragged out of its romanticized backwardness'.

'Europe has to be dragged out of its romanticized backwardness' - cover page of the original collected lectures

The smaller nations, especially those of the east and south, would be satellite clients of this centrist system. They 'must never remain in any doubt that they are dependent on their neighbours...The spirit of the individual economies may not be allowed to go against the spirit of neighbourly co-operation'. In terms of citizenship, we would see 'the subjugation of the individual to the primacy of the economy' which is 'the ultimate goal': 'there will be victims here and there but the end result will benefit all the peoples of Europe'.
Curiously, the one feature of today’s eurozone, which the German economists of 1942 did not consider necessary, was the establishment of a single currency, since the Deutschmark would be the controlling currency to which all other currencies would be subservient.
As an adolescent in 1960s Britain, I vividly recall the cliché “they may have lost the war but they have won the peace”. As Winston Churchill acknowledged in 1949, at the foundation of the Council of Europe, “a united Europe cannot live without the help and strength of Germany”, since “we are engaged in the process of creating a European unit”. A defeated Germany, divided between east and west, as it was until 1990, could not have exerted the economic or administrative muscle necessary to develop that strength. But over sixty years after Churchill spoke, we now see a form of domination by Germany of the fiscal system which keeps the eurozone afloat. The spirit of these lectures, delivered by top-ranking academic figures, including the president of the Reichsbank and the minister for economic affairs, is widely perceived to be the issue confronting Europe today.
It is not far-fetched to suggest that many persuasive figures in Germany today, including Chancellor Angela Merkel and her finance minister Wolfgang Schaüble, though they have entirely different motivations, have a similar vision of a united Europe, with Germany overseeing and guaranteeing the fate of the euro.
Recently Jean Asselborn, the Luxembourg foreign minister, warned of the dangers of a “German hegemony” – a clear indication that, in some quarters (especially the 'smaller' states), direction by Germany of the economic fate of Europe is seen as a move towards rather more extensive control of the domestic affairs of member states.
But what is remarkable about these lectures, and the economic vision they propose, is not so much that the same blueprint seems to exist today, but that seventy years ago they so accurately predicted key factors in today’s economic and social scenario, such as the Maastricht and Lisbon treaties, the British 'eurosceptics', and the near contempt with which the European centre regards the peripheral newcomers to the EU.
To a hankering after the glories of the Hanseatic League have been added the diminution or eradication of economic and political sovereignty, while all the time the EU’s cohesiveness and solidarity are being threatened by citizens’ apathy, anger and indignation.
Richard Pine lives and works in Greece

Lectures presented in 1942 under the title 'The European Economic Community' by the Society of Berlin Industry and Commerce in conjunction with the Economic Advisor to the Berlin Committee of the NSDAP and The Chamber of Trade and Industry:

Walter Funk, Reichs Economic Minister and President of the Reichsbank: The Economic Face of the New Europe

Dr. Horst Jecht, Professor at The Berlin School of Economics: Developments towards the European Economic Community

Dr. Emil Woermann, Professor at Halle University: European Agriculture

Dr. Anton Reithinger, Director of the Economics Department of I.G.
Farbenindustrie A.G., Berlin: The European Industrial Economy

Dr. Philipp Beisiegel, Ministerial Director of the Reich’s Labour Ministry: The Deployment of Labour in Europe

Gustav Koenigs, Secretary of State, Berlin: Questions about European Transport

Dr. Bernhard Benning, Director of the Reich’s Credit Company, Berlin: Questions about Europe’s Currency

Dr. Carl Clodius, Ambassador of the Foreign Office: European Trade and Economic Agreements

Professor Dr. Heinrich Hunke, Economic Committee Advisor of the NSDAP, President of Germany’s Economic Publicity Agency and the Berlin Society of Industry and Commerce: The Basic Question: Europe - Geographical Concept or Political Fact?

My email to Richard today:

Dear Richard. You're a troublemaker. Thank goodness! I’ve made your words prominent on my blog. As one of many who has maintained high hopes for the 'unification of Europe' as an antidote to the worst of the 20th century, this kind of revelation is an affliction. I doubt it will sink in to most readers, confirming the prejudice of knee-jerk anti-Europeans. And I don't think for one moment that Merkel is a neo-Nazi any more than you do. That's not what this is about. In fact the irony is that Hitler ignored the advice in these lectures - using Nazi occupied Europe as a granary, a reservoir of raw materials and slave labour (see Mark Mazower’s Dark Continent). Had Hitler implemented the toxic vision contained in these seminars, he might have undermined the US-UK alliance that became his nemesis. Stalin made the same mistake with the satellite countries of the so-called Soviet Union. I resent and detest the notion of Greece being 'dragged out of its romanticized backwardness' and I do not look forward to its industrialisation and - so-called - ‘modernisation', for all that corruption needs to be dealt with so urgently.
I'm so glad you posted this - depressing as it is. Academically these papers are fascinating in their prescience. But I do not believe Merkel is trying to repeat history. I have to believe her agenda is closer to that described by Roger Cohen in the NYT. What do you think?
I’d heard about these lectures from you and others last year but it’s quite something to be reading them 70 years later (1942 being the year I was born)
I guess some editors would be chary of publishing these revelations. Best, Simon

Ευρωπαϊκή Οικονομική Κοινότητα 1980 - Aristedes Metallinos, Ano Korakiana's great sculptor,
depicts the EEC as a broody chimaera

↧

Damp and cold

November 21, 2013, 2:33 am

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Plot 14, Victoria Jubilee Allotments after 3½ years

On Plot 14 Taj has done great work digging in manure, weeding, keeping an eye. There are inviting spaces in which I am planning - on advice - to plant garlic, shallot, broad beans, spinach and spring cabbage…

He's tidied the shed, which I share with Robin on plot 16, and which needs a proper window cover. This is still not the shed in which I had envisaged myself sitting cosily with a cup of tea surveying my growing vegetables. I shall get there in time.

Queuing on Heathfield Road, Handsworth

I've been driving the Handsworth Helping Hands van around our neighbourhood on a plethora of errands. Two days ago I was in London on other jobs - seeing a lawyer at Simons, Muirhead & Burton - to strengthen rights in my stepfather's work and discussing with Charles Webster the work I'm having done on Jack's films.

Somewhere just off Oxford Street

Hyde Park cycle track

I enjoy being back on trains, cycling through Hyde Park in the dark seeing the lights of the fairground dressed for Christmas, the feel of our capital. Sweeping leaves off our driveway. Sharing the house with Oscar and cat Flea again...

…nestling amid paperwork on our kitchen table - one big in-tray; Lin on the phone for hours trying to contact faceless agencies unable or unwilling to have any communication with customers who pay them money for services they fail to provide...

Re: Electricity and gas supply to Flat 1, xxx. Account in the name of xx xxx opened xx/xx/13
I have been on the phone for 50 minutes in total waiting to speak to someone at Economy Energy. Having spent 20 minutes on a phone number found on your website yesterday, I checked again, only to find that the contact number had been changed overnight. I phoned the new number and have now been on the phone for 30 minutes, only to have the phonecall terminated at your end. No doubt you charge the maximum 0844 rate of over 4p per minute. I am disgusted with the service your company offers. How dare you call yourselves 'Economy Energy'!
I am a landlord. Having just returned from abroad, I found that the tenant in my flat had had the electricity meters changed, without my permission, to pre-payment meters which require a 'key'. The tenant left the flat some time ago without leaving a forwarding address.
In the flat I found a contract with your company signed by the ex-tenant, but there is no key for the meters. There is no credit on the meters and i cannot even access emergency credit without a 'key'.
I have no lighting or heating and no way of remedying this situation without speaking to someone at your company about how to get a 'key'.
I see that your company is not signed up for complaints to be dealt with by the Energy Ombudsman. I am not surprised by this. Judging by information found on the internet and my own experience, I imagine the Ombudsman would have a full time job dealing with complaints about your company alone!
I will be changing supplier asap. However, if you feel that I am being unfair in my assessment of your services and wish to explain reasons for your appalling treatment of customers, you are welcome to phone me on 0121 55x xxx. Linda Baddeley

Seeing my children again and grandson and son-in-law…

"Oliver shouldn't be watching!" Guy shows a sample of Grand Theft Auto V to Lin. Oliver, Amy and Richard

I can't work out where to start re-assembling the variety of wood on the landing that was part of a cupboard around our bathroom sink after we'd at last had the bathroom tap leak mended.

June 2013: We have a leak from under the bath tub discolouring the ceiling in our boiler-room below. I've prevaricated about this. The leak is minimal. It can be safely ignored
"Meanwhile the wet and then the dry rot spreads" warns Lin
"There's an immovable sheet of slate on the side of the bath preventing access to the plumbing"
Three days ago, I attached the stone cutting disk to my angle grinder; removed the cupboard that stood beneath the washbasin up to the side of the bath, and began cutting out a panel in the slate that would be invisible when the cupboard was replaced. The slate dust was stifling, settling everywhere, blowing out the window I'd opened. A tap with a hammer and a panel appeared.
"Just great! I've found the leak. It's in the side of the old lead pipe just below its junction with six inches of copper pipe, old fashioned 1" gauge"
Lin peered in too.
The plumber we found took a look.
"I don't know what I can do"
He was worried about cutting the lead pipe in case it made the leak even worse. He applied liquid metal and refused any payment.
"I could have done that" said Lin
"Lin! It's old piping and it's copper to lead. That's a stinker. I don't blame him leaving it well alone"
Checking the next day the leak continued, but a bowl beneath the bend of the pipes contained the drips - hardly a centimetre deep.
"Who can we find who can connect lead piping to old gauge copper.piping? I guess we'll have to have the tap off, try to fit it with 15mm copper pipe and then cut the lead pipe below the leak and join the two pipes with a lead to copper compression joint. Phew."

**** ****
The sitting room is strewn with things brought from Brin Croft, some of which must be sold, some distributed and some stored. The room must be cleared if we are to open presents here at Christmas.

In the streets the litter proliferates in its familiar way.

Michael wants something done about this

Dear Nick (Principal Operations Manager, Perry Barr Depot, Holford Drive) When Handsworth Helping Hands were leaving waste at Holford yesterday I was able to collect some gloves from one of your people in the office but there were no grey plastic bags available. We are down to our last few and would appreciate some more for HHH. Justin said a few days back he would bring some round. We’d be most grateful.
On a matter of flytipping in Church Vale - on the small green space next to the laundrette at number 15 - Is there any way something can be done about this continuing problem?….Simon

Post to Facebook: We - Handsworth Helping Hands volunteers Simon B and Denise F - were clearing rubbish from a back yard in Putney Road yesterday when we met Michael, a resident, living a hundred yards or so away, who asked us to help move some furniture for him (which we did). He pleaded with Denise and I to draw attention to the fly-tipping 'grot-spot' off Church Vale near his home (Handsworth B20 3SG). This a small green space we know well next to the Rainbow Laundrette (15 Church Vale) Map reference - 52.510293,-1.916249
The flytipping in the photo is nothing to do with the laundrette. The space has been a trash magnet for several years and, being private space, though we do not know who's the owner, does not get routinely cleared by Birmingham City Waste Services. Rubbish dumped there piles up and gets blown onto surrounding roads. It is passed every day by school children and other residents. There was just too much for us to clear as the HHH van was already carrying a full load bound for Holford Waste Depot, furthermore we fear that if this space is cleared the problem of fly-tipping on it will not cease.

Seen by 7
Helga Edstrom I have complained about this to Waseem Zaffar before, and the one at the top of Church Hill Rd. Did get cleared but it creeps back. Who owns the land?
16 minutes ago via mobile · Unlike · 1
Simon Baddeley Thanks Helga. I have just emailed Nick Reid, BCC Waste Services Ops Manager at Holford Depot who may be able to find out via Environmental Services or planning who owns this land.
14 minutes ago · Like
Waseem Zaffar I have also emailed Ken Brown, our district ward support officer to look into who owns the land. Many thanks
11 minutes ago via mobile · Unlike · 1
Helga Edstrom What would we do without social media!
6 minutes ago via mobile · Unlike · 1

Last week we had another meeting - the first since September - of Handsworth Helping Hands. welcoming a new member, Jimoh, and having a really good debate, while getting essential business done, about our use of 'Skip-it--Don't-tip it' days. Does it involve us doing work that ought to be done by local authority waste services? Instead of spending grant cash on skips could we not use the same money to hire in bulky waste street collections with a staffed crusher truck as an alternative to skips...

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Friday in November. I spent the afternoon in York with a friend - working over a long lunch at Pizza Express. Spritzer. Calzone Salami e Salsiccia, Mozzarella and tomato side salads. Sorbets and coffee. We were working up some thoughts on central-local relations in government. Dusk falls. My Brompton bicycle leans against a pillar. I caught a 5.45 train back to Birmingham. York is a special railway station. A beautiful place to arrive. Famous. I first saw it's iron bowed roof as a two year old when my mother brought me here in 1944, so that we were with my father who was training with his regiment, part of the Guards Armoured Division, on the Yorkshire moors.

On York Station - down platform for Birmingham

Simon. A somber look at what is happening to the NHS at a frightening speed. Despite assurances from politicians that this would not happen it has been implemented at breakneck speed. Democratic oversight and accountability are being lost and in effect passed to corporate interests who will use competition laws and business confidentiality to squeeze out scrutiny (implications for LA scrutiny functions) and public provisions. This is an example of what is likely to happen to LA services and functions. Cameron said in a speech this week that rolling back the state (i.e. the public sector) and create the "small state” (i.e. a minimalist and residual public sector) is a permanent policy objective not determined by austerity or growth. It is here to stay. In other words it is ideologically driven. This will have major implications. Not only will direct service provisions disappear (with the possible exception of some residual services/new poor laws provisions) but commissioning by the public sector will also, as can be seen in the NHS, become meaningless and near impossible. Where it survives it will be forced into a 'ace to the bottom' approach. This is likely to be the future for Local Authorities. There is very little evidence that they have strategies for dealing with this scenario. Some authorities, especially in the major cities are bravely putting forward proposals for further devolution in areas like economic development but, although welcome, it is difficult to see how that will stop the direction of travel. The paradox here is that further devolution may be granted but the role of LAs may diminish at the same time and, as in the NHS, in effect taken over by corporate interests or new 'quangos' operating outside any proper democratic scrutiny and oversight. Where is Localism in this scenario? We also need to bear in mind that the big reductions in LA services and functions have yet to work their way through the system with more to come. The major staffing reductions are likely to come in the next 18 months and this will be a big challenge for LAs. LAs are so hamstrung by legislation that their scope for manoeuvre is very limited. A lot will depend on how willing local elected members are to stand up to their national parties and national policies. I remain sceptical. Parties are as centralised as government.
I think we need to build some context and Big Picture items in our critical incidents, otherwise we may end up discussing how to stack deckchairs on the Titanic. Another get together would be good. I’ll do some more thinking on the issues of criminality. Best Jan

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I signed this petition. Of course people should repay or service their debts but these debts are not the debts of the Greeks alone, though we who watch their suffering might find it easier to think it so.

100,000

86,375

86,375 signers. Let's reach 100,000

Why this is important

This New Year’s Day may turn to a complete nightmare for thousands of families in Greece. The law that stops the banks from repossessing people’s homes is expiring. If the government does not renew it, from the 1st of January 2014, thousands of indebt families as well as small business owners, will be literally left on the streets and the real estate market will crash because of the sudden, influx of properties for sale.

Together we can stop this non-sense, but we don’t have much time. In the next few days, the government will decide whether they will allow foreclosures. If enough of us take action now, we can prove to the government that the opening of foreclosures would pose a real threat to Greece's political stability.

So let’s send a crystal clear message: that the Greek people have made extreme sacrifices and that the government must now prove that they have the will to protect the vulnerable, indebted citizens who are in danger of becoming homeless and permanently marginalised. Sign the petition now and share it with everyone. Let’s create a sunami of outrage, too deafening to be ignored! When we reach 100.000 signatures, EKPOIZO will deliver them directly to the Greek government.

Μαζί μπορούμε να σταματήσουμε αυτό τον παραλογισμό, αλλά δεν έχουμε πολύ χρόνο. Μέσα στις επόμενες μέρες η κυβέρνηση θα αποφασίσει αν τελικά θα απελευθερωθούν οι πλειστηριασμοί. Αυτή η εξωφρενική απαίτηση της Τρόικας έχει ήδη αναζωπυρώσει αντιδράσεις ακόμη και μέσα στην ίδια την κυβέρνηση και ο Σαμαράς δέχεται πιέσεις απ’όλες τις πλευρές. Αν αρκετοί ψηφοφόροι αντιδράσουμε τώρα που ο Σαμαράς ακόμη σκέφτεται τι θέση θα πάρει στο θέμα, μπορούμε να του αποδείξουμε πως το πολιτικό κόστος αυτής της παράλογης και αντιλαϊκής κίνησης είναι πολύ βαρύ για να το σηκώσει αυτή τη δεδομένη στιγμή.

Ας στείλουμε λοιπόν στον Σαμαρά ένα ξεκάθαρο μήνυμα: πως ο Ελληνικός λαός έχει κάνει υπεράνθρωπους συμβιβασμούς και πως εκείνοςοφείλει πλέον να αποδείξει πως μπορεί να διαπραγματευτεί με την Τρόικα για να προστατεύσει τους ευπαθείς και υπερχρεωμένους πολίτες που κινδυνεύουν να μείνουν στους δρόμους και να οδηγηθούν οριστικά στο περιθώριο της ζωής.

Το ξεπάγωμα των πλειστηριασμών δεν είναι η λύση. Αν η κυβέρνηση και οι τράπεζες θέλουν, όπως ισχυρίζονται, να κυνηγήσουν τους κακοπληρωτές και τα ‘μεγάλα ψάρια’, μπορούν να το κάνουν ανά πάσα στιγμή χωρίς να απελευθερώσουν τους πλειστηριασμούς.

Υπόγραψε τώρα το ψήφισμα και διάδωσε το στους πάντες. Ας χαράξουμε τα όρια της ανοχής μας ακριβώς εδώ κι ας δημιουργήσουμε ένα τσουνάμι διαμαρτυρίας από κάθε γωνιά της Ελλάδας, τόσο εκκωφαντικό ώστε να είναι αδύνατον να αγνοηθεί! Όταν ξεπεράσουμε τις 120.000 υπογραφές η ΕΚΠΟΙΖΩ θα τις παραδώσει απευθείας στην κυβέρνηση.

Linda Baddeley...I don't want to see my friends and neighbours in Corfu suffering more than they are already. What good would their homes be to the banks anyway? The Greek property market is all but dead - I know of houses that have been on the market for more than seven years. If this goes ahead, will the banks be paying all the property tax due on the repossessed properties? People are already struggling to survive, in the great part because of the corruption of politicians and government agents. Do they have to suffer even more? Only if the government doesn't act quickly. I urge the Greek government to seriously consider the consequences if the law that protects people's homes from repossession is not renewed.
http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/Ohi_stoys_pleistiriasmoys_akiniton_ton_yperhreomenon_Ellinon_3/?dSSZTcb

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This evening I was at a Social Media Surgery, events I've attended on and off for ages. This gathering was up at the top of the Mailbox in the foyer of the BBC, who'll host these events for the future.

I was exploring ways to use Facebook in supporting Handsworth Helping Hands, getting helpful advice from people more media literate than I. As well as our Facebook pages we need a website but I don't understand websites. Someone suggested I use a blog that looks like a website - something they demonstrated convincingly with Wordpress.

↧

'…setting the scene...'

November 28, 2013, 3:36 am

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≪ Previous: Damp and cold

Richard Pine loves Greece, lives in Corfu, and is someone whose friendship is a source of pride. His conversation is sparse, amusing, educated and to the point. This article, one of his regular 'Letters from Greece' to The Irish Times, chills me, piercing through my reflexive optimism about the capacity of Greek democracy and the Greeks to weather this relentless unending crisis. Now the experience of relative tranquillity looks more and more like that eerie peacefulness to be found in the eye of a storm. Comments on his article criticise Richard for lack of balance, for not providing evidence (in a short essay he actually refers to much evidence for his despondency) - but neither do those who comment, failing to offer any robust rebuttal of reflections based on Richard's acute knowledge and direct experience of Greece and its history as well as the sequence of events by which Weimar Germany, one of the most civilised states in Europe, popularly elected the demise of its own democracy…because these things are unthinkable they are not thought about, and for those who do not remember they are unimaginable…

'Many Greeks would prefer stability to democracy'

Under the present regime, the country as a whole is unsustainable

I would not be surprised or even shocked to see tanks rolling into Athens to signal the advent of a military junta. Apprehensive, but not surprised. It will almost certainly not reach that point, but citizen apathy at the poverty of political life, and despair at the continuing economic decline, are setting the scene for a potential takeover by forces including the military, police and far- right political parties such as the fascist Golden Dawn (GD).
A coalition of such forces would offer not only stability – a one-party state or even a no-party state – but no-nonsense determination to deal with the conditions of a country which sees no way forward under present dispensations.
A judicial investigator, attempting to assess the culpability of Golden Dawn MPs in relation to a recent murder and membership of what is in effect an illegal organisation, has stated that the party’s aim is “the dissolution of the democratic system of government”. That system has been abused by successive governments to such an extent that its suspension would be welcome to many disillusioned Greeks.
Meanwhile, the call by the union of reserve military personnel, for abolition of the government, repudiation of the bailout programme, the expulsion of illegal immigrants and the establishment of a government of national unity, chimes chillingly with GD’s policies.
A coup in 1967 led to a military junta for seven years. Greece became a police state. One of its leaders declared categorically, “whoever is interested in human rights in Greece is a communist”. So much for democracy. Its anti-democratic behaviour included disappearances and torturings, as reported in gruesome detail by this newspaper’s Peter Murtagh in his book The Rape of Greece.
But that was several years before Greece joined the EU in 1981. If it happened today, the EU would most likely expel Greece, which would certainly exit the euro zone, a step which would upset few Greeks. The bailout was (as the IMF admits) a mistaken panic measure to save the euro rather than saving Greece. Today, the people among whom I live don’t give a damn about the euro, and they look enviously at the likely end to the Irish bailout.
Today, the passivity of citizens, already exhausted by successive waves of austerity and degradation led by Brussels and Berlin, would reduce the likelihood of any meaningful opposition to military rule. Many Greeks, quite apart from the fascists, would agree that the prospect of stability and a dependable vision of the life to come is more important than democracy, and better than the life they currently lead.
It would, nevertheless, be a police state. It is widely believed that the police have been infiltrated by GD (this is under investigation), thus creating a strong ideology and a threatening presence on the streets. A police state would be Europhobe, xenophobic, and brutally harsh on its opponents.
A government spokesman recently said, “We have used up all the fat in the economy” – referring to Greece’s inability to reduce public finances any further to meet troika demands. With the fat has gone the elasticity and resilience of the man in the street in both financial and intellectual terms.
It is unrealistic and unfair to compare Greek statistics with the EU norm, even with the similar Irish financial mess. Unemployment, the banking crisis, tax evasion and corruption are specifically Greek problems. Under the present regime (or lack of it) the country as a whole is unsustainable – politically, economically, socially, culturally and morally. A hardline government could be achieved by the expulsion of the existing middle-of-the-road cosy coalition of New Democracy and Pasok, the so-called socialists. The chief alternative is a coalition of the left (Syriza), the possibility of which has increased the rightist vote.
Public opinion has moved slightly away from GD. Parliament has voted to remove immunity from nine of its 18 members, and suspend state financial support for GD as a political party. But current opinion polls still place GD with 7% of the national vote, down from 12% at its highest. This would still leave it with three more seats in parliament than it already holds.
And it is not only politicians who are decrying the status of Greece. At a London conference in mid-October speakers referred to the risk Greece runs of becoming “a failed state” unless it addresses “ineffective governance and lack of public confidence”. It was argued that “targeted constitutional correction and an internationally-sponsored programme of economic reform” is the only way to save Greece and the euro zone. Whether an attempted, failed coup would give the government a sufficient wake-up call is unlikely. Greece is a tragedy waiting to happen.

A relief by Arestides Metallinos, sculptor of Ano Korakiana

Plato said "One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors" - an elitist observation unless you subtract any implication of class and insert some gauge of the inclination to treat one's fellows with decency; as germane, the words of George Santayana, 'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it'

My good wife with paint in Ano Korakiana

…and see the article by Michael Theødosiadis at Eagainst.com 24/10/2013 The Fascist threat beyond Golden Dawn
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On Tuesday Handsworth Helping Hands (HHH) had a good day's work in Wilson Road…

HHH volunteers enjoy a lunch break of local chips discussing progress with Ward Officer Ken Brown visiting to check progress on our skip-it don't tip it day. There are some typical rubbish collection challenges around Wilson Road. 1. A pile of detritus gathering further rubbish in the alley between New Inns Road and Wilson Road that council workers struggle to keep cleared, [Some say we should copy those countries that serve strict penalties on those who litter but it is almost impossible to collect evidence acceptable to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). You must catch people in the act. That requires street wardens, police, PCSOs. All in shorter and shorter supply as the government erodes commitment to the public domain in favour of privatisation. On the whole citizens are reluctant to take photos and report (less apathy than an aspect of UK culture I quite like) and the police, unhappy about the paperwork involved, will seldom charge someone with littering in what they already view as a rough part of town with more serious policing priorities. The people who contribute most to this are social casualties - in this case from a local hostel for recovering alcoholics. Would the courts be able to change their habits? It's most intractable. This is why we must labour the links between social cohesion and the environment. This kind of thing makes people dislike, have contempt for, and over time even develop hate for particular categories of vulnerable people who are their neighbours. This constantly renewed heap of rubbish erodes social altruism.]

I feel the animosity I refer to in myself. I question it and wonder what my mirror says. That term of abuse - 'bleeding heart liberals' - coined in the US, is such a clever turn of phrase. Cruel but so effective in drying up civility towards neighbours and even making some feel guilty for caring for their fellows. I'm not saying this problem is not always with us, nor that more government would solve it. I think some challenges are Sisyphean*. A good citizen acknowledges that and goes on rolling the stone up the hill.

2. A broken notice warning of £20K fines for fly-tipping,

3. The end terrace fly-tip site where we found a dismantled garden shed stuffed in Solihull Council plastic bags,

4. A fridge, which should have been disposed of separately, dumped in one of the skips while HHH volunteers were clearing rubbish further up the street,

5. An HHH volunteer chats with a neighbour feeding pigeons showing them a Birchfield Action Group circular asking people not to do this 'because food on the ground causes more rats'.

All these issues demonstrate the connection between our environment and local social cohesion.

Filling the crusher truck in New Inns Road - HHH working in partnership with Council workers

*** *** ***
On Wednesday afternoon Linda and I were at an awards lunch at Aston Villa Football Ground for people who've given 75 or a 100 blood or platelet donations…

It was enjoyable and I felt proud being officially thanked and having my photo taken and getting an entirely impractical glass trophy.
"You'll fall on that" said Lin "and need a blood donation"
Before lunch we were offered a tour of the Aston Villa stadium, getting a stroll, with spine-tingling sound effects, of coming out of the tunnel to the pitch…

In the tunnel at Aston Villa

After the meal all 175 of us listened as Nadine Simpson, who was to present us with our trophies, spoke, entirely without self-pity, of the pain caused by sickle cell anaemia for which she had been receiving transfusions most of her life. She thanked us all. We applauded and were called up for photos. I found myself next to Adrian who'd remembered me from our 75th donation presentation event at the Hyatt Hotel.

The Gift Relationship

*Sisyphus Σίσυφος was a king in Corinth punished for chronic deceitfulness by being compelled to roll an immense boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down, and to repeat this action forever.

↧

Oliver in the park

December 4, 2013, 4:13 am

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≪ Previous: '…setting the scene...'

Moment of undiluted content, sharing fallen leaves with my grandson in Handsworth Park. These are from our plane trees, broad and brown; good for falling on; being buried and shuffling all over the place. By the pond are willow leaves, yellow and curved like little scimitars, to be picked up in a bunch and thrown above our heads spinning as they fall, winning shrieks of pleasure and surprise. Down by the pond under the intense guardianship of eye and hand Oliver sits by the bank as across the grey city water we're approached by hopeful fowl - Canada geese, coot, duck, moorhen, two married swans like galleons with their cygnets - no longer ugly ducklings. Oscar dog stands on an outcrop of stone and earns open beak hisses from cob and pen, but Oliver and I are treated as benign; allowed to stare.

*** ***
First thing in the morning I'd cycled to Aston station, taken the train to Blake Street and cycled about three miles in car-land to Aldridge Parish Church…

Car-land on the way to Aldridge from Blake Street

Aldridge Parish Church

…to give a talk about the Founding of Handsworth Park to over fifty members of the Probus Club of Aldridge. Nearly 15 years after I wrote a history of how Handsworth Park was invented in the 1880s its story has taken more secure form in my mind. Good. When I asked how many of this audience, white men of my age and older, had visited Handsworth Park, over two third raised their hands. Yet to me Aldridge feels so different from my Handsworth I'm made slightly nervous by the prospect of explaining how much I love this park and how much I've learned about it over twenty five years.
"Our park was not, like many fine city parks, a gift from a philanthropic landowner. It had to be paid for by local ratepayers in what was then the rich and salubrious village of Handsworth in rural Staffordshire, at comfortable remove from the the smoke, noise and mess of the great working city of Birmingham. But Birmingham was spreading. Relentlessly."
I quote what I and others have written:

Birmingham’s expanding population sought new living space, leaving only the poorest in the insanitary courts of the city centre and even these were soon edged away by the Corporation Street “improvement scheme” initiated in 1875 and finished in 1882 at a cost of over £1½ million. A familiar idea of “inner city” was not so much when the poor increased but when they no longer lived so close to the unpoor. In addition there were houses closer to the city centre, such as the Jewellery Quarter, whose artisan owners were converting them into workplaces and setting up home further away while still working in the city. Handsworth, many of whose residents had a special connection to Hockley and St.Pauls, was only one of the outlying parishes of Birmingham to undergo a process of transformation to “suburb”: 'While it was going on, the process gratified landowners, developers, builders and the occupants of the new suburbs, or at least continued to lure them with the prospects of profits, status, and happiness, but pleased practically no-one else. Contemporary social and architectural critics were fascinated and appalled by the mindless, creeping nature of the sprawl ... The ceaseless activity of the builders, the alarming rapidity with which they turned pleasant fields into muddy, rutted building sites, the confusion of hundreds of building operations going on simultaneously, without any discernible design, the impression that little schemes were starting up everywhere at once and were never being finished, were in themselves frightening portents of disorder and chaos…' Thompson, F.M.L. (ed.) (1982) The Rise of Suburbia (Leicester:University Press) pp.67-68.

The talk went well. I nearly enjoyed myself. Over coffee, one old man - my age - said "I wonder of some of those people you quoted, when the case was being made for a park in Handsworth, would have believed their words are being quoted now?" I'd read from some of the conscientiously reported transcripts of local leaders arguing for the park, debating with sceptics and people downright opposed to having their rates spent on a park in what was still countryside…and especially the concerns of the Vicar of St.Mary's Church, Handsworth:

Dr. Randall rose amid the uproar to make what the Handsworth News reporter, with irony, called the speech of the evening: “I will answer for myself. Allow me to say that from my heart I am the last man in the parish to stand between any object which is for the welfare of the people of the parish. It is because I don't think it is for the well-being that we should have the park that I lift up my voice against it. We have an agricultural parish, and we have some of the finest air in the kingdom, and I believe that the park will be more for the benefit of the roughs of Birmingham.” (a perfect howl of dissent, uproar for at least a minute and cries of “shame” followed by alternations of groaning and cheering) Dr. Randall spoke of people leaving the parish because of the heavy rates. (“hear, hear” and applause) He thought the Local Board had erred through jubilee zeal or some other zeal.(laughter) The vendors had taken advantage of that zeal to raise the price. (clamour) “I will state on my honour and word that the same land including the house has been offered to me even a few months ago, first at £7000 and then at £6000. If on no other ground I will oppose the purchase because it is above the price at which it has been offered to a private individual.” (great cheering and interruption, Babel itself was not in it with the confusion of sounds that then ensued)..p.16 of my history, drawing on unnamed reporters for the Handsworth News and the Handsworth Gazette, 19 Jan 1887

The long campaign for the recovery of contemporary Handsworth Park required the construction of a political narrative (helped in our case by access to far wider reference*) as robust as that which has persuaded our ancestors. Reading the words of contemporary reporters of the 1880s I am even more aware of how closely and astutely argued was the case for the financial value of the park, its utility for a fast-growing urban incursion - effectively an expanding 'Birmingham suburb', a 'lung' for the city assuring the 'vigour and health' of the new population in their tiny-gardened workers' terraces with hardly room to 'swing a bat'. I said to the Probis members "I love this park, my family love it. I laud it for its beauty on spring mornings, its tranquillity to be enjoyed alone as much as its bustling crowds on summer afternoons. And the fun of visiting it in the snow!

Amy and Guy and the dogs in Handsworth Park

I would have argued for its aesthetics and in consequence would have had none of the impact of those shrewd local politicians who'd made their case for popular support with demographic statistics and the language of efficient accountancy, raising for the new park the largest single loan then known to the district…I quote from one of the crowded public meetings held in the Council House off Soho Road seeking local permission for a park in Handsworth...

"...If the park is established I feel sure that in a very few years houses will be built in the locality which will render no extra rate necessary to support the park” (laugher and cries of “no, no”). Mr. Lines sits down and Mr. Wainwright rises to reply:
He was commendably brief, but exceedingly earnest, and his short fiery speech was admirably adapted to secure his purpose. Every word told, and the promise that the Board would, if the resolution were carried, do all their promised work without raising the rate, and throw in the park as well, seemed to produce the desired effect. Having concluded his speech, Mr. Wainwright put the resolution, and hands having been held up on either side, he declared that..
IT WAS CARRIED,
..much to the disgust of many on the platform. Mr.Jacobs loudly protested that the proposition was lost and demanded a poll. Mr.Cooper offered to place in the hands of the clerk or the chairman a cheque sufficiently large to cover the expenses of a poll. Mr. Ellis fumed and Dr. Randall looked disconsolate. But the clerk explained that the Board had no power to arrange for a poll of the ratepayers and the malcontents had to satisfy themselves with empty protest and not too polite observations as to the chairman and his manner of conducting the proceedings. Meantime, Mr. Wainwright, with radiant face and beaming eyes, left the platform, being heartily congratulated by his friends and supporters, and as we elbowed our way out of the still crowded room, we felicitated ourselves on the fact that the vexed question of a public park for Handsworth had been set at rest, with every appearance of the settlement arrived at, being a final and permanent one. Handsworth News, Jan. 22 1887 (pp.16-17 my account)

Even so in the final paragraph of my account (and all my talks about the creation of Handsworth Park) I conclude

'They did not pursue such an idea simply out of expediency or to raise the value of their properties. Such self-interest was present - used unashamedly to strengthen their case among the practically minded citizens of Handsworth and more covertly to mitigate social conditions that might spur political unrest - but opposition to the Park from some of those who would be paying for it was at times so intense that calculative motives alone would not have carried the project through.

'...its tranquility to be enjoyed alone…' A 19th century postcard

*for instance The Economic Value of Protected Open Space or a much circulated Japanese study on the link between longevity and walkable green space.

↧

Wind

December 5, 2013, 6:03 am

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The tall poplar at the end of our neighbour's garden seemed, for a moment this morning, to be turning like a carousel, merrily throwing it's last leaves into the sky. I watched the scribble of bare branches through our bathroom window and returned to the warmth of our bed, enjoying the wind's sporadic invective, which even in Birmingham mutes the normal roar of the city. Once up, I tried to mow the lawn, netting leaves over the pond, collecting them from the ground before driving rain took away their crispness. This gusty blow in the centre of the country is a hint of the tempest's force along the coast and in Scotland, cracking cheeks, drenching steeples, drowning cocks - gales from the north surging a spring tide late this evening into the North Sea narrows between East Anglia and the Netherlands. The security of the East Anglian coast and the German and Dutch low countries depends on warning systems and sea defences built since the floods of 1953.

Our street

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From Aldridge:

Dear Simon. Thank you so much for coming to speak to us at the Aldridge Probus club. The members really enjoyed your talk and felt you created a genuine sense of time and place for us. We will certainly be paying the park a visit in the near future. Regards, John

Dear John. Thank you for those kind words...If your members would like a tour, I do these, with varying duration, any time of the year - in snow and sun.

In the summer there’s a chance of rowing a boat on the park pond, and we can all go for tea and cakes at the Sons of Rest Building or at the Park Café. Numbers? Anything from 1 to 50 and we meet at the main gate off Hamstead Road in front of the Park Lodge - but I can give those details if and when a tour is in the offing. It would be lovely to meet some of your members again - perhaps with other members of their families. Again thanks for inviting me to talk about my favourite place in Birmingham. Best wishes, Simon

↧

Worse

December 12, 2013, 1:07 pm

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Richard Pine wrote, in one of his regular pieces for the Irish Times on 11 December:

Why Greece’s schools are a shambles and its universities are chaotic

I am sometimes asked whether the criticisms of the Greek system that I occasionally voice in this column are criticisms also of the Greek people. The answer is most emphatically "no”. It’s said that people get the government they deserve, but in modern-day Greece that is not the case.
The crisis of Greece is due to it having always been messed around politically by the major powers, and being subject now to the international expectations and persuasions in the EU and the financial marketplace. It is not due to the people, any more than the Irish banking crisis is the fault of ordinary Irish people.
While Greece may solve its economic problems, it has made scant progress on the systemic issues of social provision, in particular health and education.
The schools are a shambles and the universities are chaotic. The somewhat primitive education system may have been adequate when Greece was backward and marginal, and had only a minor role in international affairs. Today, with the expansion in curriculums, diversification and specialisation in university faculties, and the pressures of the market place, this isn’t good enough.
School-leavers deserve a university system which is transparent and offers both hope and opportunities. Most young Greeks, like their Irish counterparts, are not content with the old ways: they want to acquire skills and reach new horizons. The education system stands in their way.
Even when they graduate, however brilliant they may be, employment commensurate with qualifications is almost inconceivable. The best prospect is emigration, usually to Britain (40% of emigrants), Germany (16%), Italy (16%) and north America (5%).
Emigration by graduates is lower than in Ireland or the Baltic states, but only 16% of graduates working abroad would contemplate returning to Greece. About 46% of PhD-holders earned more than €60,000 abroad, more than twice their equivalent in Greece. The main subjects for emigrating graduates are economics and business studies, law, computer science, physics and chemistry.
Of the 'free' secondary school system, one newspaper, Kathimerini, said: 'It’s not free and it’s not education.' The annual budget for education, pre-austerity cuts, was €6 billion or slightly more than 4% of gross domestic product. This is insufficient to enable schools to meet modern standards. The worst affront is the fact that teachers direct pupils to the crammers where they work out of hours, the frontisterio - φροντιστήριο - 'tutorial college'.
Teachers earned a pre-cuts average salary of €30,000, making the frontisterio industry an essential extra cash-earner. There are an estimated 3,000 crammers, to which anxious parents are paying an annual total of €1.6 billion, or €200 per month per family. It has been described as a form of kleptocracy.
It was expected the frontisterio system could be eliminated by extending the school day, which until last year ran from 8am to 1pm; it now ends at 2pm, with provision for a further two hours’ study time, for which teachers are paid no extra. But the frontisterio still flourishes: in fact, it is mandatory if you want your son or daughter to get into university.
One result of the austerity measures has been non-replacement of retiring workers. About 23,000 teachers retired in 2011; the government could afford to replace only 3,500; the worst-hit are the disabled and those with special needs.
In 2010, the then prime minister, George Papandreou, pledged to “fundamentally change the way Greek pupils learn and teachers teach”. Attempts to honour that pledge by his, and the current coalition, government, have met opposition from the unions, because they believe the reforms won’t achieve any real improvements.
The most extensive reforms envisaged include revamping school teaching methods, coupled with abolition of the existing Greek 'Leaving Cert' and the points system of university entrance. At present, 50 per cent is required in their Leaving Cert for university entrance, but 20 per cent of school-leavers failed to reach this, with over 60 per cent failing history and maths. Greek schools rank 28th out of 31 countries measured by the OECD for literacy and maths.
Universities are not amenable to a system of control, despite efforts at reform. Universities have to be autonomous and yet responsible. That balance has yet to be found in the Greek system, which is impenetrable to the rational mind. There are 19 universities in Greece, plus 16 technical colleges, with a lecturer-student ratio of 31:1. Three Greek universities are ranked in the world’s top 500, at 193, 226 and 338. Five more feature in the range 500-1,000. Greece ranks 118th in the world league for university efficiency.
It’s essential the schools and the universities are reformed. But the two problems seem to be intractable. Greece is still struggling to find its way in the world, trying to decide how to educate its young people.

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An unsigned article a few days ago in Macropolis:

Percentage of people in Greece at risk of poverty tops EU list

The percentage of people living in Greece who are at risk of poverty rose substantially last year and almost a quarter of the country's population now falls into that category, which is the highest proportion in the European Union. Understandably, the plight of the worst off in Greece often grabs the headlines. But it is easy to overlook the fact the crisis is pushing more people who once had reasonably comfortable lives to the margins of society. The new data, which excludes the most socially vulnerable such as homeless, irregular migrants and Roma, leaves little room for doubt that this process is well underway. According to the latest figures from the Hellenic Statistical Authority (ELSTAT), 23.1% of people in Greece were at risk of poverty in 2012. This is compared to 21.4% in 2011 and 19.7% in 2009, shortly before the crisis broke out. In total, 914,973 households and their 2,535,700 members are considered as being at risk of poverty. The poverty threshold is considered to be €5,708 per person or €11,986 for each household that has two adults and two dependent children under 14. The risk of poverty threshold is 60% of the median of the total equivalised disposable household income. The worst-affected groups are single-parent households with dependent children, two thirds of which are at risk, and unemployed males. Just over 52% of men without jobs are at risk of poverty, along with 26.9% of children under the age of 17. However, the threat of hardship also affects those with work. More than 27% of Greeks with part time work are considered to be at risk of poverty, while the same applies for 13.4% of those with full time jobs. Without social transfers, almost half of Greece's population would be living at risk of poverty. It is worth noting, though, that social spending has been cut considerably over the last few years. According to the 2014 budget, social transfers were reduced by 6.8% between 2012 and 2013. They are due to be cut from about €17 billion this year to just under €14 billion next year – a cut of more than 18%. When the element of social exclusion is added to the data, the results become even more worrying, as 34.6% of the population was considered to be living at risk of poverty or social exclusion in 2012. When these two categories are combined, Greece has the fourth highest percentage in the EU, behind Bulgaria, Latvia and Romania. When only the "at risk of poverty" rate is considered, Greece ranks first, half a percentage point ahead of Romania in second at more almost three times the rate of Iceland, which takes the last place with 7.9%.

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I like these early morning starts. Alarm goes; reset it for a few hours later for Lin and descend to the kitchen for tea and to dress, then out into the chilly lamp-lit dark to cycle into town...

Hamstead Road before dawn

... to catch the non-stop train to London...

7.30am London train coming into platform 3 at Birmingham New Street

...for a morning meeting in Mayfair...

...a visit to Battersea to have one of my older Bromptons serviced at Phoenix Cycles ("You might as well sell it" said Mike "for what a proper service with replacement handlebars and wheels will cost""Just tighten up the gears and renew the brakes then") before taking a taxi back to Dukes in St James Place...

...for a long lunch with an enduring friend. We drank an aromatic Stellenbosch for Mandela and argued about why some people have such a gift for making their allotment successful.
"It's a family association with the land" I claimed
"No. It's about enjoying preparing food" said Ziggi.
Back in another taxi to fetch the bicycle, and a swift ride for five and a half miles back across crowded London to Euston.

Big Ben behind me, approaching Trafalgar Square

Euston concourse - platform 5 for Wolverhampton via Derby and Birmingham New Street

I was home by 7.30. I tried to share my day but she's unpleased with my inability or is it unwillingness to get stuck into preparing the house for Christmas, inventing urgent contingencies to evade domestic responsibility; instead doing work with Handsworth Helping Hands...

...and pottering on the allotment where as well as admiring Taj's digging and shed tidying...

...I've harvested some of my Jerusalem Artichokes...

...and having cleaned and pealed them into salted water planning to sauté them with garlic and Bay leaves and see what they're like.
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In Ano Korakiana, where we shall be soon - celebration at the church of Saint Spyridon half way along Democracy Street:

Η εορτή του Αγίου στο χωριό

11.12.13

Με την υπενθύμιση ότι «Πλούσιοι εφτώχευσαν και επείνασαν…», οι τρεις ιερείς και οι ισάριθμοι ψάλτες αναχώρησαν περί την δεκάτη βραδυνή από την οικία της Αίμης και της Κατερίνας Σαββανή (οι οποίες είχαν την επιμέλεια της φετινής εορτής) για την εκκλησία του Αγίου, στην ανηφόρα της Πλάστιγγας.

Εκεί όπου η καθιερωμένη Ολονυχτία της εορτής του Αγίου θα κρατήσει μέχρι τις πρώτες πρωινές ώρες…δοκιμάζοντας τις αντοχές του γυναικείου κατά κύριο λόγο, εκκλησιάσματος.

Ανήμερα της εορτής, στον ίδιο χώρο, θα ψαλεί η Λειτουργία, σε μία κατάμεστη από κόσμο εκκλησία.Εντυπωσιακό φάνταζε το φωταγωγημένο από το διακριτικό φως του ήλιου και των καντηλιών τέμπλο του ναού.

Στο τέλος, στη μικρή αυλή και στην πρωινιάτικη λιακάδα, θα προσφερθούν στους εκκλησιασθέντες άρτος από την Εκκλησία, αλλά και σπερνά από την οικογένεια της Αγγέλας Θύμη.

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Compost

December 21, 2013, 2:23 am

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Worms at work: compost - το κοπρόχωμα για το κήπο - coming along nicely in our garden

Compost lunacy! I've learned from various sources in our local council that staff have been told to stop composting fallen leaves in city parks as a rich source of humus for suppressing weeds and enriching soil, with occasional surplus being brought to nearby allotments. In future all a park's potential compost will be taken to the local waste depot...

Denise and I take green waste we've collected in the streets of Handsworth to Holford Drive - but we'd hoped to take it to our local park in future

...often several miles away, where Birmingham City Council pays a private contractor to remove it. That company will compost the leaves that fall in the parks. Green waste previously generated and used as compost inside a specific park will now have to be removed from that park purchased back from the contractor. This probably means that the council will not pay for any compost at all. We shall live with the consequence of that interruption of a natural and local cycle; from green leaves on trees and shrubs and plants, and grass cuttings, to the rich fertiliser that helps them thrive the following year. I avow the verity of this daft logic. I learned about this accountant-driven erosion of the principles of sustainability, after, I, as a representative of the committee of Handsworth Helping Hands, was encouraged to explore our voluntary group's involvement in 'community composting'. We're anticipating more abandoned domestic green waste now that citizens must pay £35 per annum to continue a service previously covered by their council tax.

Green waste put out on a non-collection day - typical of what we can expect in greater abundance next year

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Love is powerful; so's hate. Both use the sleep of reason to create seamless narratives.

Love conquers all because it’s invulnerable to reasoned rebuttal; so's hate. Beware of the self-serving story that contains no doubt – take the film by Jim Bruce ‘Money for nothing – Inside the Federal Reserve’ which blames the sub-prime mortgage crisis on government, most specifically the US Federal Reserve system. Don’t I recall Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, in failed government, as the catastrophe's precipitant?
An expert on the history of the Federal Reserve (a mechanism explained to me two years ago by my old friend and guest in Ano Korakiana, Tony Scoville - "oh that you had such a mechanism in Europe!") wrote a piece - 'They Hate the Fed'. Roger Lowenstein says the film espouses the grand villain theory of catastrophe, rather than a less gripping story of many causes (Once upon a time vs. once upon several occasions?), indicting Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke...

Ben Bernanke

...for the Fed’s policy of low interest rates which induced speculation. Don’t blame liar loans and reckless traders, argues the carefully edited documentary, they were merely responding rationally to Fed policy. The film adroitly rejigs a private market failure and presents it - seamlessly - as a failure of government. More likely, the disastrous rescue operations that followed Katrina were informed by a Darwinian retreat from duties of central government to intervene decisively on behalf of vulnerable citizens of New Orleans after the great tempest. Government action to ban risky mortgages might have averted the sub-prime mortgage crisis – ‘in other words’ writes Lowenstein ‘the problem wasn’t too much government, it was too little; regulation was woefully deficient’. I’d agree, but the real interest of this story is its demonstration of seamless narratives to propogate a ‘grand villain’ ideology. This would apply at any extreme of the political spectrum. In this case it’s a shrewd way to dismiss complexity, to dismiss the notion that the economic catastrophe we now experience and for whom I have to resist the temptation to seek one feckless clump of rogues had many causes including Lowenstein’s list:

‘faulty incentives that rewarded Wall Street traders for buying unsound loans…incompetence or corruption at rating agencies that endorsed mortgage securities as safe investments…abject failure to regulate new mortgages at various levels of government, including the Fed…reckless behaviour by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government sponsored housing agencies…low interest rates set by the Fed, that arguably motivated investors to seek the higher yields of mortgage products.’ (Roger Lowenstein 'They Hate the Fed'NYRB 21/11/13pp.29-30)

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There are enough children in the village now for a decision to have a second kindergarten teacher.

Χριστούγεννα στο νηπιαγωγείο- Christmas at preschool in Ano Korakiana

Το μουσικό παραμύθι με τίτλο «Η αγέλαστη Πολιτεία» αναπαράστησαν απόψε οι μικροί μαθητές και μαθήτριες του Νηπιαγωγείου Κορακιάνας, με την καθοδήγηση της νηπιαγωγού τους.Η αίθουσα γέμισε από γονείς και συγγενείς (κυρίως παππούδες και γιαγιάδες) των μικρών παιδιών, που μεταμφιεσμένα σε καλικάντζαρους και παπαρούνες, σύμφωνα με τις απαιτήσεις του παραμυθιού τα «έδωσαν όλα». Στο τέλος της εκδήλωσης, ο Άγιος Βασίλης μοίρασε δώρα στα παιδιά, ενώ τον κόσμο ανέμενε ένας μικρός μπουφές που ετοιμάστηκε από τις μητέρες των μικρών μαθητών…

Ο σχετικά μεγάλος αριθμός παιδιών και η αναβάθμιση του Νηπιαγωγείου σε ολοήμερο (από τις αρχές του νέου έτους αναμένεται να προστεθεί και δεύτερη νηπιαγωγός), σε συνδιασμό με την ποιότητα των εκπαιδευτών-νηπιαγωγών (σημερινών και προγενέστερων), πιστεύουμε ότι θα παγιώσει ένα καλό επίπεδο για το μέλλον…

(My translation) The small pupils of Kindergarten Korakiana enact the musical tale The unsmiling State* tonight - 20.12.13.. Our kindergarten room was filled with the parents and relatives (mostly grandparents) of the young children, who, disguised as goblins and poppies "gave all". At the end of the tale, Santa Claus distributed gifts to the children, while everyone looked forward to a small buffet prepared by the mothers of the young pupils...The relative numbers of children is bringing our village an upgrade to an all-day kindergarten (from the start of the new year we expect a second kindergarten teacher). This, combined with the quality of kindergarten teachers (current and past),, promises well, we believe, for the future.

*A story and play by Haris and Panos Katsimiha just republished...Χάρης και Πάνος Κατσιμίχας: Η Αγέλαστη Πολιτεία...

Kόβε πριονάκι μου, η Αγέλαστη Πολιτεία Κατσιμιχα.wmv

I wish I could tell this story to Oliver but he's more into touching and looking than following a narrative in any language. He and I play with books but I look forward to when we can read together.

Oliver with us for the afternoon: the high chair was my mum's. mine, our childrens' and now our grandson's

Days merge into days. It's mid-Winter. The longest night. Greece seems as far as I want it to be; as I want her to be always, as far as when, on my own, I first travelled there by train fifty five years ago; four days by train with three days in Venice on the way, then on through the Balkans via Belgrade in the middle of the night to Thessaloniki, Larisa and Athens in the morning - following the historical routes on the map I went on a standard train from London to Paris. I must have taken the métro from Gare du Nord to Gare de Lyon where, around midnight, I caught the Simplon-Orient Express. I'd still travel that way had not air travel ravaged the railway. In 1957 train travel was so normal, it seemed effortless, yet exciting. From Venice I took a standard train through what was still, and for a good long time yet, Yugoslavia, travelling via Belgrade to Athens - a two day journey. Such a travelling adventure is impossible today. Even were I able to buy tickets for the heritage version of a journey on the Simplon-Orient Express, it's the last thing I'd desire.

I freely roamed the centre of Athens returning to my family staying in Kolonaki, I living in a single bed flat loaned by a Greek cousin for a two week stay engraved in memory...

Ναός του Ολυμπίου Διός: I still have the 35mm Kodak camera I used to take this picture in April 1957

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Birmingham's canals are my favourite routes.

The Birmingham Mainline - σε όλη τη διαδρομή προς την Ελλάδα;

How wonderful if there were a waterway with a tow path, but for the channel at Dover, that stretches to the Black Forest to join the great Danube - the Donau, Dunaj, Duna, Dunav, turning south somewhere before it becomes the Dunǎrea, and my route drives through Bulgaria southward to the Aegean. Our canals wind far and wide. I use a tiny section for my journey's in and out of the centre of Birmingham. Oscar and I enjoy them as, carried to the towpath in the basket on the front of my Brompton, he can run with me clear of traffic danger. The other evening after a visit to the Christmas market to enjoy a mulled cider and a lemon and sugar crêpe, I headed down to the Birmingham mainline that runs westward from the city beside the west coast railway and city trains to Wolverhampton. The wind was blowing wet and almost warm. Well clothed against the driven rain I sped through a succession of long puddles, the ruffled surface of the canal reflecting yellow lights from flats and street...

Vincent Street bridge on the Birmingham Mainline canal

...until under the Ladywood Middleway dual carriageway my way turns darker, Oscar, a dashing smudge in the gloom, now and then a lighted train rushing by in and out of the city. When I'm on one of those trains I peer down through my window watching for a version of myself pedalling below, getting dressed for cycling when I step onto the platform at New Street, ready to head home on the route I've been scanning from the train.
Earlier in the week I was again in London delivering Christmas presents for relatives in the middle of town gazing like a tourist at Katharina Fritsch's blue cockerel on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square...

...and on Pall Mall - sign of the times - two of the once cherished Gilbert Scott phone boxes - littered, damaged and disused; an optimistic ad for the services of a dominatrix; unrecognised by a generation unfamiliar with tart-cards or fixed phones.

Phone boxes on Pall Mall

*** *** ***
At home I'm making a present for Oliver, adapting a small bedside locker to make it into a cooker...

I got all the bits and pieces from a new ironmonger on Lozell's Road, most of the small items likes hinges, catches, nuts and bolts difficult to find outside a big-box suburban DIY store.

Lin at the kitchen table is surrounded by papers as she finishes our tax returns on-line as I feed her receipts for sundry paid activities in 2012-13.

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