End of the British Protectorate of the Ionian

From: Simon Baddeley Sent: 10 January 2008 To: humanities-enquiries@bl.uk Subject: A petition from Ano Korakiana, Corfu re the ending of the British Protectorate of the Ionian Islands and the Treaty of London 1864.

Dear Humanities, British Library. It has been suggested at your phone enquiry desk that I should try e-mailing to you. As a local historian I have been sent this e-mail request from the village of Ano Korakiana, Corfu, Greece.

Dear Simon. It is said that before the Union of the Ionian Islands with Greece (1864), inhabitants of Ano Korakiana signed a "paper" that they asked for the British Government to remain the islands under the Britain. We have been looking for this paper for years at the Greek archives without result. We wonder if you can help us by searching this paper in British archives (Parliament, Colonies archives, Foreign Office etc). We are sure that one of the names that signed the paper is Panos, Panayiotis or Panagiotis Metallinos (Μετταλινος). He was the 'leader'. A similar paper has been signed by inhabitants of Kinopiastes (another village in Corfu) and one village in Zakynthos island. It is passed by word of mouth, and today's information from my family's environment: a well known person that searched for another theme, found it in Leeds University (history section?) at the end of 1970s, a file about the Ionian aspect that contained this 'paper'. She read it, but they didn't let her have a copy. A further source is a 'historical and more novel' book, written by a Corfiot author named Spiros Katsaros. It is supported in this book - Helio's Story - that the petition was given to High Commissioner named Sir Henry Storks (1859-1864) and he attached it behind a report to the British Parliament. According to Katsaros, this theme was published to the national media (newspapers) of that period. Thank you in advance. Merry Christmas and a happy New Year. Best wishes. Thanassis Spiggos and Kostas Apergis

Making further enquiries I received the following e-mail from Prof. Holger Afflerbach, Lecturer in Twentieth Century European History at Leeds University:

Simon. It seems to be true: there were some Greek inhabitants on the islands who wanted to remain under British domination (like Gibraltar today: not very astonishing, indeed). I asked a friend of mine, who is a retired professor of International history, if he recalls this thesis in Leeds. He didn't, but he recalls that there was a thesis in Birkbeck College in the early 1960s on this topic. His advise was to look in the list of the Institute of Historical Research. I think it would also be possible to contact the British Library. They should have a copy of the thesis. It would also be possible to contact Birkbeck College. Unfortunately this friend of mine did not remember the author of the thesis or the exact title. I hope that these few informations help you further. Good luck and best wishes. Holger Afflerbach.

Since then I have not yet traced the Birkbeck thesis though I am trying to contact Dr Eleni Calligas who is now, I believe, at the British School in Athens. Dr Calligas is an expert on divisions within local Ionian politics in the later 19th century. Her 1994 LSE or University of London thesis - Rizopastai: Radical Unionists and Political Nationalists - covers the same critical period of Ionian politics when the Ano Korakiana and other petitions (if that is what they were) may have been delivered. I have also ordered The British and the Hellenes: Struggles for Mastery in the Eastern Mediterranean 1850-1960 by Robert Holland and Diana Markides, which has a detailed chapter on the end of the Ionian Protectorate and includes Eleni Calligas as a reference. I wonder if you can give me further guidance on where I might find the Birkbeck thesis mentioned or any other source that you might consider relevant. Yours sincerely. Simon Baddeley From: Humanities Reference Service, The British Library, St Pancras, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB http://www.bl.uk/ Tel: +44 (0)20 7412 7676 humanities-enquiries@bl.uk Date: Friday 11 January 2008

Dear Mr Baddeley. I am emailing in response to your enquiry about the petition from Ano Korakiana, Corfu. I have searched our catalogue and found that we have the thesis by Eleni Calligas in the British Library. I am appending the details, including the British Library shelfmark, to the end of this message. While searching the database 'Index to theses', I found two further theses which may be of interest. Unfortunately we do not hold either in the British Library. The theses are: British occupation of the Ionian Islands 1815-64 Markham, S F, 1929 B. Litt., Oxford 0-6856 The Ionian Islands under British administration 1815-1864 Tumelty J J 1952-1953 A9g Ph.D., Cambridge, Trinity Hall, 3-416 I hope this is of some help, though I have been unable to find anything presented to Birkbeck College. I have also searched Birkbeck's catalogue and the whole University of London Library catalogue. I found no further relevant theses, but did find that Dr. Calligas's thesis is also held at Senate House and at the Institute of Historical research. Yours sincerely, Helen Robbins.

The `Rizospastai' (Radical-Unionists): politics and nationalism in the British Protectorate of the Ionian Islands, 1815-1964. Calligas, E., 1994, A9m British Library Shelfmark DX187456 Ph.D., London, London School of Economics, 44-9204

ABSTRACT: When the Ionian Islands were placed under British Protection in 1815, they were granted the right to regulate their internal affairs, but in the resultant 1817 Constitution political power emanated from the High Commissioner and was exercised through an authoritarian system of government. Ionian opposition acquired salient nationalist connotations during the Greek War of Independence although in the 1830s it was mostly confined to demands for liberal constitutional reform expressed by the so-called Ionian liberali. As the British introduced a reform programme that met many of the liberals' demands during the 1840s, a more radical opposition group emerged in Cephalonia, the largest and poorest of the seven islands. These political activists, who became known as the `Rizospastai' (Radical-Unionists), challenged the legitimacy of British Protection and favoured major internal socio-political changes on the basis of the right of national self-determination and the principle of popular sovereignty. Although they were involved in various popular demonstrations of discontent, they remained parliamentarians rather than revolutionaries and promoted their ideology through the press, political clubs and parliament, which they first entered in 1850. The growing popularity of the Rizospastai led the moderate liberal majority to co-operate with the High Commissioner in an effort to eradicate radicalism and exclude its representatives from the islands' polity. Most energetically pursued in Cephalonia, this governmental policy temporarily silenced the old radical leadership. However, a new leadership emerged from Zakynthos and, in the altered circumstances of the late 1850s, it redefined radicalism on purely unionist lines and carried most of the popular base with it. The `old' radicals, still considered heroes by a rather bewildered popular following, were isolated during the last years of the Protectorate and adamantly opposed the terms on which the Ionian Islands were finally ceded to Greece in 1864.

Von: Simon Baddeley [mailto:s.j.baddeley@bham.ac.uk] Gesendet: Sa 12.01.2008 12:37 An: Holger Afflerbach, Betreff: Re: AW: Continued search for petition from Ano Korakiana, Corfu

Dear Simon, my friend, DE, does not think that the paper he recalls is one of the three you mentioned. But both of us had the impression that the material you found so far should give you a quite nice overview on the question. D will be busy with other things in the next week, but he wants to come back to this in two weeks. If he finds something, I will give you notice. Best wishes, Holger

Comment from a Greek correspondent on my enquiry:

I'm not surprised they wanted the Brits to stay - the joke doing the rounds in Greece a few years back when the Brits were putting up strong resistance about the EU managing the national economy was that the Brits blanch when they're told that they'll have to cede sovereignty while for the Greeks it's a no-brainer when they're told that the Europeans will provide free funding for projects and an economist from Frankfurt to run the country's economy...

Seriously tho', it always happens that once you start looking at anything closely - in this instance, an historical event - it gets more complicated and morally confusing. More human. On the one hand there is the magnificent story of Byron giving his life for Greek freedom - 'The dead have been awakened - shall I sleep? The World's at war with tyrants - shall I crouch?' (19 June 1823) - on the other, an extract from his journal, as he and his companions waited in Cephalonia, ten months before his death at Missolonghi in April 1824:

As I did not come here to join a faction but a nation, and to deal with honest men and not with speculators or peculators, (charges bandied about daily by the Greeks of each other) it will require much circumspection to avoid the character of a partizan, and I perceive it to be the more difficult as I have already received invitations from more than one of the contending parties, always under the pretext that they are the 'real Simon Pure'. After all, one should not despair, though all the foreigners that I have hitherto met with from amongst the Greeks are going or gone back disgusted. Whoever goes into Greece at present should do it as Mrs Fry went into Newgate - not in the expectation of meeting with any especial indication of existing probity, but in the hope that time and better treatment will reclaim the present burglarious and larcenous tendencies which have followed this General Gaol delivery. When the limbs of the Greeks are a little less stiff from the shackles of four centuries, they will not march so much 'as if they had gyves on their legs'. At present the Chains are broken indeed; but the links are still clanking, and the Saturnalia is still too recent to have converted the Slave into a sober Citizen. The worst of them is that (to use a coarse but the only expression that will not fall short of the truth) they are such damned liars; there never was such an incapacity for veracity shown since Eve lived in Paradise. One of them found fault the other day with the English language, because it had so few shades of a Negative, whereas a Greek can so modify a 'No' to a 'Yes', and vice versa, by the slippery qualities of his language, that prevarication may be carried to any extent and still leave a loop-hole through which perjury may slip without being perceived. This was the Gentleman's own talk, and is only to be doubted because in the words of the Syllogism 'Now Epimenides was a Cretan'. But they may be mended by and bye. (28 Sept 1823 from Cephalonia)

I read of Byron often. I've hardly read Byron. Byron was read to me at school. I recall The Eve of Waterloo '... a sound of revelry by night, And Belgium's capital had gathered then, Her beauty and her chivalry, and bright, The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men ...'. That ignorance means the impression on me of his journal entry from Cefalonia is the greater; stronger for its poignancy (to the reader knowing he has 7 months to live) and acuity - evidence of how Byron's allegiance to the great cause of Greek independence was neither myopic nor sentimental. This points to a key element of my understanding of British love for Ελλάς - a feeling for Greece that does not eclipse an acute awareness of how her people, places and culture fall short of an impossible ideal. It is a love that evokes grief for past suffering, respect for her courage and ingenuity, contempt for her corruption, discomfort at her weaknesses, joy as her mountains top the horizon or emerge from haze or her dark sparkling terrain opens up beneath the gaze of a night-arriving plane, content at her good news, sad at the bad, delight in her company, pride, modesty and shame in due measure in contemplation of historic connections, and knowing that 'except the blind forces of Nature, nothing moves in this world which is not Greek in its origin.' Further reading: Athanasios S E Gekas (2004) Class formation in the Ionian Islands during the period of British rule, 1814-1864, Economic History Department, LSE & Phd University of Essex William Miller (1966) The Ottoman Empire and Its Successors 1801-1927, New York: Octagon Books Harold Temperley (1937) Documents Illustrating the Cession of the Ionian Islands to Greece, 1848-70, The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 9, No. 1, Mar., pp. 48-55 Extract from Temperley, p.49:

There are three periods, corresponding roughly to the three phases of the question: A. Period of abortive proposals, 1848-65 I. Lord John Russell on possible cession to Austria, May 1, 1848 11. Palmerston on possible retention, December 21, 1850 111. Gladstone against annexation to England, February 2, 1855 B. Gladstone's attempt at settlement as high commissioner extraordinary, and its aftermath, 1858-61 IV. His views on prevalent misconceptions, March 22, 1861 C. Period of cession and its aftermath, 1862-YO V. Gladstone on the cabinet decision, December 8, 1862 VI. The queen's assent, December 9, 1862 VII. Clarendon in retrospect, March 15, 1870

Temperley, p.51

. . . an incident occurred which knocked on the head Palmerston's plan of a British annexation of Corfu. The Daily News obtained surreptitiously and published a copy of a dispatch from Sir John Young, High commissioner of the Ionian Islands. Thus the world learned that Young advocated a British annexation of Corfu. Gladstone, then on his way out, had to explain matters at Vienna, while Derby and Walmesbury disavowed the Corfu annexation scheme. It was ostensibly Young's, but had actually been an idea of Palmerston's; and when Derby's government fell and was succeeded by Palmerston's, the latter did not find it possible to reverse his policy. Gladstone, though he defeated British annexationism, could not reconcile the reluctant Ionians to British ideas. Their methods dismayed him: when they obstructed him by speaking, as one orator did, for two days; or when they were openly violent and seditious. No sound British constitutionalism was a good exchange for union with Greece. Ionians were Greeks and detested any government, however good, so long as it was British. They could love any government, however bad, so long as it was Greek. Their ideal was not, and could not be, Magna Carta. It was Hellas. There never was, nor could be, contentment in the Ionian Islands until the last British soldier left them. The Whigs returned to office in 1859, and Russell certainly considered the question of cession to Greece as early as 1860. But in 1861 his colleague Gladstone was still venting his wrath on those persons who, in his view, misrepresented the question. He had not yet accepted cession, and the cabinet was still undecided.

What the Greeks went through

Dylan Thomas wrote to Lawrence Durrell in 1938 a letter from England which included the paragraph

...I think England is the very place for a fluent and fiery writer. The highest hymns of the sun are written in the dark. I like the grey country. A bucket of Greek sun would drown in one colour the crowds of colours I like trying to mix for myself out a grey flat insular mud. If I went to the sun I’d just sit in the sun; that would be very pleasant but I’m not doing it, and the only necessary things I do are the things I am doing. Unless by accidents, and my life is planned by them, I shall be nearer Bournemouth than Corfu this summer.

Jim Potts mentioned these observations on his blog recently, and in a note to me this morning, included the sentence:

It's extraordinary what the Corfiots (and the Greeks generally) went through in the 1920s and 1940s.

This made me think of suggestions that Corfu's beauty, tranquillity and wealth is enervating, not a place for an artist to be creative...

Dear Jim. Indeed. At the time Kostas Apergis identified those initials carved by a boy in 1957 he said Marcos was still living in Ano Korakiana...It’s knowing what the Greeks went through in the ‘20s and ‘40s that puts the lie to the idea of the ‘enervating.... bucket of Greek sun’ drowning the creative muse, as compared to colder climates...an error of Dylan Thomas and even Cretan Kazantzakis who described Corfu as 'fatal for a fighting soul'. A picnic on the Lazaretto?...

The shame and cruelty of the young men and women being taken out under 'a bucket of sun' to that pretty green place; Theodoraki’s laments for his brother and others who died there; gentle Despina Bebedeli, Δέσποινα Μπεμπεδέλη, singing 'Sleep My Little Angel’...

Κοιμήσου αγγελούδι μου, παιδί μου νάνι - νάνι
Να μεγαλώσεις γρήγορα, σαν τ αψηλό πλατάνι
Να γίνεις άντρας στο κορμί και στο μυα - λό
Και να σαι πάντα μεσ το δρόμο τον καλό

You know this is not a lullaby to a baby, but a dirge, τα μοιρολόγι, for a youth in the ground of Execution Island. 

Greece, marketed as sun, sea and sand for fifty years, with ruins thrown in, is an image of the country that deceived even Dylan Thomas and no doubt other intellectuals (tho' I can compile a rebuttal inventory starting with Robert Graves and D H Lawrence, Camus, Hemingway and Leigh Fermor - it’s not just Greece but the decadent sun of the olive belt) who need, or feel their muse is further north, as though Greece is winterless. 

Lazaretto ~ each flower marks an executioner's bullet (photo: Jim Potts)

Corfu is full of ghosts; worse - spectres. She overlooks, as you well know, a peaked landscape of the imagination stretching from Saranda to beyond Levkada. Things were done on Corfu by the signorini that are lost to all but family history, even then reduced to small anecdotes that hide the larger oppression. 

What of the Jews, Greek citizens, taken from their city so near the end of the war, to join the thousands of others from Ioannina, Athens and Thessaloniki? It’s true that the skulls are not on the surface as they are in the Mani, but they lie in similar numbers beneath the beloved island’s green turf. The flaw in the 'ennervation thesis' is that so many northerners know almost nothing of modern Greek history. They know little even of the time before that - of the loss of Constantinople Κωνσταντινούπολις. 

I sent two birds to the red apple tree, of which the legends speak. One was killed, the other was hurt, and they never came back to me. Of the marble emperor - το Μαρμαρωμένο Βασιλιά - there is no word, no talk. But grandmothers sing about him to the children like a fairy tale. I sent two birds, two house martins, to the red apple tree. But there they stayed and became a dream.

There are refugees via Cyprus and Crete on Corfu, some in Ano Korakiana, who hold the memory of the marble emperor and the loss of Greece’s Byzantine capital. E.M. Forster met Constantine Cavafy in 1918 in Alexandria living off a narrow street in a flat above a brothel - 10 Rue Lepsius. Alexandria. Or was it in a letter Cavafy wrote to Forster? The poet told Forster that the Greeks and the English were almost exactly alike, but for one crucial difference: 

"We Greeks have lost our capital -- and the results are what you see. Pray, my dear Forster, oh pray, that you never lose your capital." 

Some suggest he referred to financial privation. Forster knew it was Constantinople. Northerners are confused by a hazardous semi-knowledge of what has happened here in the last 200 years. Greece's classical history - tho' in detail as exactingly complicated and messy as the modern one (see the actual alliances involved at Marathon, Salamis and Thermopylae for a start or the conditional liberties of Athenian democracy) - is so tremendous; fills such a vast part of educated people’s mental DNA, there’s hardly room for the utterly unfamiliar morally complicated Balkan mayhem of the Greek War of Independence.
“Wasn’t Byron involved?”
And what of the Souliotes betrayed by Pelios Gousis? ...πως ο Εφιάλτης θα φανεί στο τέλος. What of the women of Souli?
THe great schism? The big idea? The burning of Smyrna? The exchange of populations? What are they? Noble Kolokotronis at Dervenakia, Venizelos, Theotoki, Kapodistria, Mavromikali? Who are they? Klefts? The dance of Zalongo? Distomo? Kalavryta? Kommeno? The famine of Athens? Blokos?  The holocaust of Viannos? The dekemvria? The white terror, the red terror? Metaxa?
“Oh yes Metaxas, Very nice after a good meal”...

...and I haven’t got to the Stone Years, τα Πέτρινα Χρόνια. The Junta. (See Mazower's After the War was Over) And not only the 20th century but far further back. Thucydides: 

It was in Corcyra that most of these audacious acts were first committed and all the crimes that would be perpetrated in retaliation by men who had been governed tyrannically rather than with good sense and had the chance of revenge, or that would be unjustly designed by others who were longing to be relieved of their habitual poverty, and who above all were animated by a passionate desire for their neighbours' property; crimes too that men commit, not from greed, but when they assail their equals and are so often swept away by untutored rage into attacks of pitiless cruelty

Another bolster for the enervation thesis is that for the Durrell’s, Corfu was a childhood paradise. They wrote with unsurpassed brilliance about happiness. Their joy may have aroused envious critical suspicion; an inclination to treat them as fantasists or, if telling the truth, describing a lotus eating haven that eats creativity. Edmund Keeley wrote Inventing Paradise. His word ‘invention’ captures the point.
I cannot subscribe to the enervation thesis on the grounds of landscape alone - a place with panoramas that elude the painter perhaps, but cannot fall short of the Netherlands or England for inspiration. Just because I’ve been so happy on the island doesn't make it enervating in my book, but then I have no book. I rest my case. Best, Simon

*** *** ***

Public or private dentistry?

I needed an extraction, some cleaning and some tidying. I went to a private dentist and met a nice and competent seeming surgeon. His estimate after an examination came to £5803. I went to an NHS dentist and talked to another nice and competent seeming surgeon. His estimate, after examinaton, was £208. The difference? The first dentist would replace my extracted tooth with an implant, and possibly another - the process completed by December. The second offered a small denture - the process completed in the time it'd take to make the denture - just over a week. I could afford to go private but I've got better things to do with £5959. I spoke to Lin and worried the matter for a week then went to the NHS where they made a mould in ten minutes. I came back in a week, had a local anaesthetic. The tooth was out so quick I hardly noticed. I was cycling home, my gadget in place, within half an hour. My three little false teeth are finely wrought and comfortable, and give my mouth a better appearance than it's had for years, but I'm not a toothy smiler anyway.
*** *** ***

Saturday afternoon Richard showed Amy around his flat in town and we went to the Bull Ring, to Jamie's Italian where I bought them a rather too expensive late lunch and Richard and I both managed to hold Oliver without dropping him or making him weep.

Later Amy inveigled me into Gap where there was a 45% off sale, except her choices of baby clothes were not in the sale. Next door Apple was packed but a figure waved to me from the crowd - Niko, our tutor. We embraced.
"When can we have our next lesson?"
"I've been very busy. Christina and I our getting married in September"
"Oh no! We'll be in Greece"
"I'll send dates for us to get together"
I introduced him to Amy and showed him my grandson, fast asleep in the odious hubbub of the shopping centre.
Strolling up crowded New Street Amy bumped into two of her police colleagues on duty.
We walked on.
"Just after I went on maternity leave" she said "Operation Paragon started belt tightening. My area will have changed when I go back. It's larger."
**** ****

Scholarship on two wheels! John Martin and Alistair Walker with Annie Guthrie filming as they go, continue their great shared cycle ride across Canada, studying sustainable communities; writing their thoughts as they go, every sentence is the tip of an iceberg, with a hundred elaborations and examples to be pursued on the way to explanation and insight on the habits that make for sustainability.

John, Annie, Alistair

The metaphor of a community on a journey becomes more powerful as the reader realises that their propositions are emerging from a transcontinental bicycle odyssey. Every working community is indeed unique yet governments and individuals seek the guidance and even the shock of admonition derived from general principles. Uniqueness is the watchword. Creativity is vital. They're explorers composing, as they travel, a sophisticated yet practical map of imaginative intellectual territory that for many currently in power has been illustrated by exotic beasts and blank spaces. Their new map will assist more and more people and communities to make more and more unique journey’s towards sustainability, helping more and more to join ‘the long conversation’, spurring more and more negotiation with the dominant economic paradigm. The final map won't be overwhelmingly burdened with data, with acronyms and endless statistics. They will know all this of course as they noticed and felt, in the seat of their pants, the rich detail of the endless surfaces over which they pedalled. They’ll have breathed it all in. Their exposition will be more like those ingenious ‘mud maps’...

...the aboriginals use, which in context reveals more truths than the precise measures of modern ordnance survey about a place and its inhabitants

Given the requisite variety of communities there is an infinite number of ways of achieving sustainable outcomes. Each journey is unique. Every community is concerned about its success and continuity. The way they achieve this is an individual journey, at a point in time influenced by both externalities and the capacity and commitment of the people who constitute each community to adopt new ways of working. We have seen many communities in our journey across Canada, some more closely than others. Some are doing well, some not so. The question we are often asked is: what makes for a sustainable community? ‘Institutionalising’ or incorporating sustainable living practices into the formal regimes of society is, I believe, an essential outcome for building sustainable communities.A key success factor in this continuity is the extent to which...

*** ***
It's clear that the onion fly has been causing harm across the VJA site. I've been getting advice from other plot-holders planning for future crops of onions and leaks on the use of nematodes. I've clearly got a world of understanding ahead of me with these. One snag is their cost. During a rare sunny patch I harvested more spring onions and broccoli from the plot.

***** *****
On Sunday afternoon, Linda and I completed Wednesday's Handsworth Helping Hand's work in the Church Vale Triangle, laying out plants donated via Freegle, including perennial Geraniums, Lilac, Hypericum, Big Leaf Periwinkle and Alpine Strawberries. Three of the seventy or so Pelargonia we planted on Wednesday have been pinched. We replaced them.

*** ***

Letter from a friend on holiday in Corfu. She had asked for advice on places to visit while there with her daughter. I cautioned her on a general truth about contemporary Corfu - in this case the despoliation of Paleocastritsa - while describing the possibility of exquisite places to be discovered close by - especially on foot or bicycle:

Simon. Greetings from beautiful Paleo. Your bespoke guide has been invaluable. I carry a printout in my beach bag. Thank you. We are here for another 3 of our 14 days. It  has been delightful. We have only had a problem with the weather - a heatwave! Really - can't believe I am complaining but sometimes too hot to move from our shaded cove. Everywhere a noticeable lack of people which is great for us but not for the locals. We didn't hire a car so have been walking everywhere. We recommended guests to your friend Sally's hacking tours and they loved the trek. Monastery great - after all the awful half empty coaches have left for he day. Glorious dusk. Restaurants good. London prices unfortunately. xxx Beach just perfect. We also like being able to find different spots to explore and enjoy the peace and cicadas. We are celebrating. My beautiful daughter, Genevieve has got a First in her Part 1 Tripos - English. She got the news here so I think Paleo will always hold precious memories for her. Greek Champagne is delicious! love Fiona

Genevieve in Corfu

With nan

It feels like a sort of theft since Linda so detests being photographed.
"I don't like being called grandma. I don't like being called nan!"
I caught her unawares with our grandson two days ago when Amy came round so we could play with Oliver.

'My heart is at your festival'

In his burbling way he's starting to try to make words. The wonder! Man the tool user; man who speaks; man who will walk on two legs; this astonishing set of senses processing experiences at inestimable speed, far beyond consciousness or future recollection but perhaps the intimation of memories of something enchanting, the freshness of a dream. Incognate understanding - seeing, feeling, tasting, smelling, hearing the new world; enveloped in unconditional love.
*** ***
On the allotment yesterday a touch of the feral, a vixen sat and stared at me as though affronted; so still I didn't see her until a red shape twitched in my peripheral vision and there she was beside a clump of redshank gazing at me, unafraid, out staring me before...

...sauntering off through the same space under the railings between my allotment and the park, that unmistakable brush no dog sports that makes the name paused for a moment as she checked before leaving cover. I took her for vixen because there was nothing cubby about her yet she was slight and left no smell.
**** ****
There's a great chunk of railing and wall knocked out of the boundary fence by Handsworth Park gate on Hamstead Road, with skids on the tarmac and yellow smudgy police markers showing a track from the other side of the road. We'd been irritated the police helicopter hovering almost overhead beyond our street for at least half an hour in the early hours. Next day, seeing familiar twisted metal, rubble and brickwork piled up in the park compound, I asked what had happened...

"It was two cars"
I'd noticed parts of vehicles in the rubble, the interlaced hoops of an Audi logo
"And a BMW"
"Insurance?"
"I doubt it"
"The driver was uninsured?"
"Deceased. There are no flowers. Odd that."
Flowers wilting by the site of a fatal crash is a habit here; our imitation of kandylakia; sometimes with a note of condolence from strangers. Nothing in the news.
"Apparently there was a lot of blood. Two cars - one chasing the other. Three dead."
Later I learned that the police would not disclose the vehicle registration numbers to the council so that they could draw up an insurance application, so this breach in the park boundary will go unrepaired for months, perhaps over a year.
*** ***
A plume of smoke from fires across Chios, born miles southward driven by a dry Etesian wind, passing over Mykonos, Paros, Naxos, Folegrandos, Ios, Kritiko Pelagos, the Cretan coast between Souda Bay and Rethimnon, drifting over her highlands into the Libyan Sea, spreading and dispersing above the deserted stone terraces of Gavdos, where summer campers may remark it on their smart phones. Men are likely to have started this and other fires across Greece.

*** *** ***
Linda's summarised the results of a Handsworth Helping Hands meeting last week - with Nick Reid who oversees waste collection and street cleaning for the City Council in our neighbourhood:

Meeting with Nick Reid – 16th August 2012

Church Vale Litter Bins/Anti-Dumping Signage

HHH: What‘s happening about extra bins for outside the shops at Church Vale Triangle? How about the ‘orange bin’ theory? Could another sign, facing the pavement rather than the road, be put at the major dumping spot on the corner.

Nick: Bins have been ordered for by the shops at Church Vale. Not convinced about orange bins, but will look out for them. Yes, another sign can be put up.

Litter Bins

HHH: All litter bins seen by DF and LB on 16^th August, en route from Putney Avenue to Turville Road, were full to overflowing. Looked like street litter – cans, sweet wrappers, etc.

Nick: Litter bins are often misused for household waste. Will review the number of litter bins in the area and the frequency with which they are emptied.

Mobile Cameras

HHH: What’s the possibility of having mobile cameras to catch fly-tippers in ‘hot-spots’ such as Church Vale?

Nick: The police have access to cameras, if there are any for the area. HHH need to speak to local police.

Midland Heart Properties

HHH: There is a particularly large amount of rubbish in the gardens and vicinity of Midland Heart properties in the area. Streets with a lot of Midland Heart properties tend to have more street refuse than other streets. Stamford Grove is an example of this and is very bad at the moment.

Nick: Will contact Val Brown to discuss. May arrange a walkabout with Val to identify offending properties.

Street Sweeper (Cart)

HHH: Where is the street sweeper supposed to sweep and how often?

Nick: Will supply HHH with a copy of the route and regime.

Street Sweeper (Mechanical)

HHH: There have been reports of driver being seen sleeping when he should be working.

Nick: Mechanical sweeper is old – it’s off the road and awaiting repair at the moment. Will investigate sleeping on duty allegations. (There have been 2 dismissals recently for this.)

Annual Bulky Waste Collection

HHH: There is a great deal of bulky waste - mattresses, etc. - being dumped in the streets recently.  A lot of it comes from landlord-owned properties. When is this year’s collection due?

Nick: Unsure of date, but one is booked. The Councillors can allocate funds for an extra bulky waste collection if they feel it’s necessary. Cost is approximately £1000 (£3 per property) for a typical area.

Rubbish Collection Day Signs

HHH: Could rubbish collection day signs be put up in streets where people are putting rubbish out on the wrong day?

Nick: Yes they can. (But they don’t look very nice.  HHH: They’re better than the rubbish.)

Rats

HHH: There are reports of increased numbers of rats in the area.

Nick: Birmingham pest control service is free. Phone 303 6999.

Littering/Fly-Tipping Prosecutions

HHH: Have there been any prosecutions? Wouldn’t prosecutions be a good deterrent?

Nick: Birmingham prefers not to prosecute its residents and evidence which will secure a conviction is hard to get. We can’t prosecute anyway – it’s the Enforcement Officer’s remit. You could arrange a meeting with the Enforcement Officer. There may have been fixed penalty notices issued in the area. Will try to find out if so and how many.

35 Haughton Road

HHH: The rear garden is full of rubbish, which may present a health hazard. Residents are complaining. It’s a landlord-owned property.

Nick: Will speak to the Enforcement Officer about finding the landlord and issuing a notice to clear the rubbish.

Recycling

HHH: Some residents aren’t recycling. Report from resident of Putney Avenue that no-one in the street recycles.

Nick: Pilot of recycling ‘targetting’ being trialled at the moment, with leaflet distribution, boxes resupplied, etc. Too soon to tell if it’s been successful. If successful, could be used to target particular streets in our area. Results should be known in about a month’s time.

Targetting Rubbish Hot-Spots

HHH: Could rubbish hot-spots be targetted to receive special attention, such as leaflets, street notices, reissue of recycling boxes, street clear-ups, extra collections, etc. HHH could possibly help with leaflet distribution and street clean-ups.

Nick: Yes. Need to identify hot-spots.

HHH: First hot-spots for attention:

1.  Wilton Road and Church Vale Triangle

2.  Stamford Grove

Action agreed by Nick Reid:
  1. Locate extra bins outside shops at Church Vale Triangle.

  2. Put up anti-dumping sign facing pavement at Church Vale major dumping spot on corner.

  3. Look out for orange litter bins.

  4. Review number of litter bins in the area.

  5. Review frequency of emptying litter bins in the area.

  6. Contact Val Brown at Midland Heart re. rubbish problems at their properties.

  7. Possibly arrange ‘walkabout’ with Val Brown to identify problem Midland Heart properties.

  8. Supply HHH with copy of street sweeper route and regime.

  9. Investigate ‘sleeping on duty’ allegations re. mechanical sweeper driver.

10. Put up ‘Collection day’ signs in streets where wrong day putting out of rubbish persists.

11. Contact Enforcement Officer and get statistics re. fixed penalty notices in the area.

12. Contact Enforcement Officer re. issue of clearance notice to landlord of  35 Haughton Road.

13. Evaluate ‘recycling targetting’ pilot and implement if and where appropriate.

14. Plan action to be taken in targeted rubbish hot-spots.

HHH to liaise with Nick and review progress in late October (approximately 10 weeks).

HHH Action:

  1. Contact police re. mobile camera availability.

  2. Identify further rubbish ‘hot spots’.

  3. Report specific rubbish problems as necessary.

  4. Monitor progress.

  5. If required, assist with leaflet distribution.

  6. Liaise with Nick Reid.

  7. Review situation in late October.

*** *** ***
By moving it again at Lin's suggestion, I've halved the monthly charge for storing the Out of Town films and tapes in the JH collection that John Rose and I moved from Plymouth to Birmingham in March. This time we took the collection it in the HHH van from the city centre to another store closer to home.

Jack's OOT commentaries

"When your in a white van you start behaving white van" said John engaging at the lights with another van driver on the subject of football, about which he knows nothing.
"Better start going 'Phwoah! Look at that!'" I said
Richard just smiled. We met Charlotte at the counter of Space Self Storage on Tyburn Road. Wandering around her desk was a Shih-tzu called Romeo checking visitors.
"Continuing white-van," said Richard "how about a KFC?"
The drive-thu was was half a mile up the dual carriage-way next to the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal, we ate on a grassy knoll by the water's edge.

Take-away on the canal

Politics of food growing in the city

From Cllr Kim Brom

Hi Simon, The Ward Committee is on Wednesday, 21 January, 2009 at 1930 hours, at Welford Primary School, Welford Road. Awaiting confirmation of attendance. Regards Kim

From Simon

Dear Cllr Brom. Since I can't be there, I wonder if it would be OK if on 21 January at the ward committee our ally from the Friends of the Earth had an opportunity to say a little about city-wide support for the VJA project? I am well aware that you and Cllr Hussain are as well acquainted as anyone and committed to resolving this issue, but it would be good to have a minute showing support from outside the ward. FoE plan to put something in their newsletter towards the end of Jan start of Feb 09. This is not about a speech ­ just an expression of support and possibly a query to Alan Orr. Can you ensure there’s a place on the 21 Jan agenda for this? Charles and Glynis told me they plan to ask questions about the VJA S106A that evening. I wish we could get Cliff Nixon from Persimmon Homes along too but I doubt that would be possible even though he doesn’t live so far away. Kindest regards, Simon. Handsworth Allotments Information Group (HAIG)

From Karen, Friends of the Earth, to me Subject: Re: Victoria Jubilee Allotments - date and place of next ward meeting:

Ferry has been booked for the 22nd - hooray - so I can attend on evening of 21st. Karen

Me to Karen:

That’s brilliant, Karen. We can perhaps chat by phone. I’m just going over some of the things about current government policy on allotments that I got from a meeting in London just before Christmas with my friend Richard Wiltshire – co-author of the Local Government Association’s report on Growing in the Community (with David Crouch and Joe Sempik) - and someone who’s followed the progress of our campaign re the VJA. One of the questions he asked me was what exactly were the design criteria for the new allotments. I had no idea beyond the 8o plots shown on the developer’s application map of April 2004. Richard said there were elements that we should press for, drawing on latest thinking about laying out allotments as well as matters like where’s the water supply and will there be concrete paths between rows of plots. Richard mentioned Longbarrow in Bournemouth as a model prize-winning site. I guess we ought to draw attention to such things, even though the greatest concern relates to Persimmon Homes intentions and capacity regarding the implementation of the S106A. My impression from Richard is that London is leading on releasing land for food growing with a number of initiatives based on the assumption that inner city land comes at high premium, that the government now acknowledges that there is not only demand, but that if it is to fulfil the 1908 Smallholders and Allotments Act 'requirement to provide' they are facing a loss of slack in the system – unprecedented since the second world war. Allotments are full up in many places especially in the capital, where waiting lists are growing. There's the Allotments Regeneration Initiative, but the government's policy of trying to get people into work could mean pushing policies that favour younger people’s employment at the expense of a growing population of old people. Someone has already coined the slogan 'vegetate or grow vegetables'. Urban food growing which, as you will know, is attracting many more younger people, is also seen as a part of policy relating to quality of life for an ageing population. Another more worrying element here is that the 1908 default dimension for plots (effectively 250 square metres) might be too large, The 1908 dimensions were supposed to feed a family – but average family sizes have halved in the last century, so.... That suggests one way to help solve problems of scarcity and I suspect some allotment sites have done this already. I’d like to know if Birmingham’s Big City Plan has any plans for allotments other than those that exist. In London Rosie Boycott is stumping for London Food. There's a policy initiative in London called Capital Growth ('2,012 new food growing spaces for London by 2012') focused on identifying new growing spaces for London which includes allotments (also city farms) but is also looking at the use of waste land and interestingly at domestic gardens – talking of short term leasing and other legal arrangements right through to compulsory purchase. Urgent terms like peak oil and the coming famine are circulating. Tim Lang, Professor of Food Policy at City University (advising DEFRA) is pushing a policy in London of reduced food miles. The Greater London Authority has published a report on the waiting lists problem (scroll down to 'A lot to lose'). There is talk even in the city centre, where land prices are astronomic, for finding temporary ‘meanwhile’ gardens – very popular in New York in the 1980s – growing food on properties taken over by the city in lieu of unpaid taxes by landowners in financial difficulties. There is a politics of food growing in London for which we need a Birmingham equivalent. one on which FoE and its allies could have a say. I’d really like to see one of Birmingham’s Scrutiny Committees having a look at this. There was a debate in Westminster Hall on 5 November 08 where the government said they would not impose time scales on local authorities regarding the duty to provide, on the basis they are already being accused of not allowing LAs enough autonomy. I hope this is helpful. I’m not suggesting any of this gets raised on January 21 at the Ward Committee but it’s very useful policy background. I’d really like to use some of it in responding to the invitation to comment (between 12/12/08-06/02/09) on Birmingham’s Big City Plan – emails to inquiries@bigcityplan.org.uk If I could say that a response by HAIG was endorsed by FoE and other groups that would be good too. I realise the immediate concern is the delayed S106A on the VJA. Best Simon [11/01/09 See UK town embraces urban farming on a massive scale, and the map of Middlesborough posted with many other exciting projects on David Barrie's blog] (See The Edible Town]

From me to Kim Brom cc: Karen Subject: Victoria Jubilee Allotments - ward meeting 21 Jan 09 at Welford School

Dear Kim. Karen Leach from Friends of the Earth is able to come to this meeting in my absence. FoE have been supportive of earlier campaigning for the VJA and Karen is well appraised with the issues. Kind regards Simon

From Councillor Kim Brom

Alan Orr has confirmed attendance and will ask Persimmon Homes. Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld

* * * The long expected Greek cabinet reshuffle was reported in Kathimerini on Thursday. Stavros Lygeros' commentary doubts the PM can recover from his government's current poll position. His final sentence:

...While Samaras may not hold much sway within the government, he does have political clout, and this will become of significance should Karamanlis decide to step down either before or after elections, because his supporters and those who remain unaligned will either stand back and watch Dora Bakoyannis’s ascent to the party’s leadership or will seek out the one person around whom they can rally to prevent that from happening

* * *Crossing the Drumochter watershed by the head of Loch Garry SUSTRANS cycle path running beside the railway

The Sow of Atholl and the Boar of Badenoch, Drumochter Pass

I left Brin Croft this morning and caught the morning train to Glasgow and on to Birmingham where Lin met me and Oscar after 6pm. Drumochter Pass is the transition point between the Highlands and the rest of Scotland, something that's marked my journeys for fifty years. In the old days two steam trains were used to get up the gradient on what is still a single track line. It's rare but if heavy enough snow falls it will be Drumochter that will be the first part of the route between Inverness and the south to become unpassable. Looking out of the window you see a river flowing north. Moments later, past the watershed, you see another, flowing south. * * * A late night, early morning exchange, with Johnny Prodromous on an forum On the Greek Riots. I wrote:

“The world’s at war with tyrants, shall I crouch?” I’m not an alias for Fontas (Fontas Varidakis, an engineer based in the UK, on the same thread who had been challenging the obfuscatory writing of 'anarchists' and been momentarily confused with me - described as similarly 'deranged'), though I concur with just about everything he says and especially respect his profession. I too can give you my name and address though I’m sure you have it already from my blog ‘democracystreet’ whose URL I always aim to leave. Thanks for respecting me with your ready reply Johnny B4 the Road. You’re up late, watchkeeper. I appreciate the possibility that I’m deranged. Indeed it sounds like a compliment given your feelings about sanity or worse, normality. I’m not ignorant of the history of Anglo-Hellenic relations. Our Lord Byron gave his life for Greek freedom - ‘The dead have been awakened - shall I sleep? The World’s at war with tyrants - shall I crouch?’ (19 June 1823) but see this extract from his journal, as he and his companions waited in Cephalonia, ten months before his death at Missolonghi in April:

As I did not come here to join a faction but a nation, and to deal with honest men and not with speculators or peculators, (charges bandied about daily by the Greeks of each other) it will require much circumspection to avoid the character of a partizan, and I perceive it to be the more difficult as I have already received invitations from more than one of the contending parties, always under the pretext that they are the ‘real Simon Pure’. After all, one should not despair, though all the foreigners that I have hitherto met with from amongst the Greeks are going or gone back disgusted. Whoever goes into Greece at present should do it as Mrs Fry went into Newgate - not in the expectation of meeting with any especial indication of existing probity, but in the hope that time and better treatment will reclaim the present burglarious and larcenous tendencies which have followed this General Gaol delivery. When the limbs of the Greeks are a little less stiff from the shackles of four centuries, they will not march so much ‘as if they had gyves on their legs’. At present the Chains are broken indeed; but the links are still clanking, and the Saturnalia is still too recent to have converted the Slave into a sober Citizen. The worst of them is that (to use a coarse but the only expression that will not fall short of the truth) they are such damned liars; there never was such an incapacity for veracity shown since Eve lived in Paradise. One of them found fault the other day with the English language, because it had so few shades of a Negative, whereas a Greek can so modify a ‘No’ to a ‘Yes’, and vice versa, by the slippery qualities of his language, that prevarication may be carried to any extent and still leave a loop-hole through which perjury may slip without being perceived. This was the Gentleman’s own talk, and is only to be doubted because in the words of the Syllogism ‘Now Epimenides was a Cretan’. But they may be mended by and bye. (28 Sept 1823 from Cephalonia)

It is one of the core characteristics of Philhellenic sentiment that Greece - classical and modern - is so much in our psychological DNA that we cannot easily separate that in us which is Greek and that which is British.

Friday, January 9, 2009 at 3:57 am. Johnny B4 the Road - Pro-dromos - wrote:

SIMON Thank you too for this almost poetical glimpse into your thoughts, “well spoken phile”, I might add as my regular cliche. At least I reckon we have you inspired. With god’s speed sir.

From Fontas Varidakis

Simon. Greetings. You have articulated your concerns in the most eloquent and relevant way, i.e. by reminding us all how the struggles of today and tomorrow are the same as the struggles of yesterday. It never ceases to amaze me when I learn of, or come across, genuine Philellenes whose core is more ‘Hellenic’ than that of many of our citizens will ever be. As you rightly pointed out, the influences in thought and far beyond (architecture, science, drama, etc.) of the ancients are all around one who walks the streets of London and any European polis. It makes me proud more often than not to see that we modern Greeks have maintained a lot of the political nous of our forefathers…for better and for worse. The Brits are worthy friends and adversaries for the Greeks and I am always amazed at how similar English humour is to the zany Cretan variety. As to who is sane and who is crazy…well, normality is a concept of the majority so you can never win, and what is the point anyway?