The PoMo Circus in Crete. The Lavender Way in Felia

Reading a novel by the bits

2011-02-02T22:11:00.001+02:00

I have just finished reading my first novel on an electronic or e-reader. The novel was Tibor Fischer's excellent Good to be God and as I had expected it is another carefully written and clearly expressed examination of what it means to be a modern human being in a complex society such as ours - Tibor seldom disappoints and I would happily recommend any aspiring writer to read his stuff rather than the fluff that comes out of modern creative writing courses.

Reading a bitstream book on an e-reader is a very different experience to reading a cellulose based book. First up let me admit that most of my novel reading is done in bed last thing at night and the Sony e-reader is both lighter and easier to hold than a medium sized paperback. It's a lot lighter and easier to handle than a 4 or 5 hundred page hardback! The screen is clear and crisp and the page turning is simplicity itself. I love the fact that when I switch it on it goes straight to where I left off reading. It is good that it switches itself off if I fall asleep and do not turn a page for half an hour - that has been known to happen.

I love cellulose books and have done since before I could read. I think I first fell in love with the smell of books - old books don't smell like new books; hardbacks don't smell like paperbacks. Dust jackets are wonderful - almost as good as old LP covers. The heft, the feel, the texture: every cellulose book is different whereas I suspect that every bitstream book is the same in sensory terms.

The thing I wasn't expecting to miss with a bitstream book was the thing that I had clearly absorbed so deeply about cellulose books that I didn't consciously know it was there - so I suppose I couldn't reasonably have expected it to shock me but the very first time I settled down and got past the title page, the dedications and the fluff I felt a massive sense of loss. Architecture!

A cellulose book has an architecture of that has a lot to do with the layout of the text and a lot to do with the physical form of the artefact itself. Most strikingly missing from a bitstream book is the right page: when you read a cellulose book you have two pages visible at one time; if you are reading the left page you can see what is coming ( a full page, a chapter end, a set of endnotes, whatever); if you are one the right page you can see where you came from. Moreover you can with a cellulose book, and at any time, know how much you have read and how much more there is to read. The e-reader tells you your current page number and how many pages the book has but as a measuring device it is like making a comparison between a watch with a face and a watch with a digital display - the quality of the imparting of the requisite information is simply more satisfying and profound with the analogue version.

I recall, as a youngster the introduction of the CD and remember hearing that the length of a CD had been determined by making sure it could hold a complete performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Now this may or may not be true - apocryphal tales abound but I sure as hell wish that the makers of e-readers had decided that any device would, with fully charged batteries, see the average reader through the full length of a long novel - say "Infinite Jest" - but mine needed recharging 200 pages into my chosen novel and you could hardly call 279 page a long novel!!!

Cellulose and bitstream reading are different. Cellulose books have limitations imposed by the physical architecture but many people will never realise it. Bitstream books have limitations imposed by current implementations and "standards" and many of them can easily be removed but many of the implementors don't even know they have problems. Don't even talk to me about pagination on e-readers - it just sucks.

I'll carry on with both - probably for the rest of my reading life but we shall see how the comparison.contrast stacks up in a few years time.

Cousin Mary

2011-01-24T22:15:00.000+02:00

Cousin Mary was a pretty little girl when she was young but age has hardened her and has etched an ugliness into her face that comes straight from her soul. She was a morose child though and then a deeply melancholy teenager. She grew into a depressive young woman and at the age of 22 she tried to kill herself by hurling herself from the roof of her mother's house. She succeeded only in shattering her pelvis, breaking her spine and breaking both legs in multiple places. A paraplegic now, Cousin Mary can no longer climb onto the roof. Her wheelchair confines her body to the ground floor and her failure confines her mind to meanness. Cousin Mary is a tyrant in the ancient Greek sense and a martinet in the more modern French sense.

Grandma Alice was beautiful baby, a beautiful child, a gorgeous teenager and now she is a radiant old woman. Though her skin is that strange translucent shade that we associate with extreme old age and she gives every impression that a strong wind could blow her away her inner beauty shines through her pale green eyes. Grandma Alice is Cousin Mary's mother though I suspect that Grandma Alice would rather that Cousin Mary were not her only surviving child. Three dead sons, one dead daughter, 2 still births and a living daughter have, over the years, leeched iron into Grandma Alice's soul. She loves Cousin Mary but she does not like her one little bit.

Let me explain some relationships - Grandma Alice is not my grandmother. She is in fact the baby sister of my mother's mother. She was born a year after my mother as I was born a year after Cousin Mary. Uncle Theo is my mother's baby brother so he genuinely is my uncle and he is also a government scientist of some description.

My mother? My mother is, like Grandma Alice, an old woman now but she is spry and but for her eyesight dimming of late she would be cheerfully old but she fears not being able to read and she detests the idea of no longer being able to drive. She cherishes her autonomy and worries a lot about becoming dependent. My mother, like Grandma Alice has the genes for thinnness. Not so Uncle Theo.

Uncle Theo is a rotund, orotund joker. His baritone voice is strong and clear and so his numerous jests and puns boom out above any amount of modern background din. In these days of commonplace obesity he is more cuddly than fat or gross. You could say that I favour my uncle in terms of body shape and in some ways I favour his demeanour too. I am happy with almost everything apart from my body shape and I do not, I fear have his wicked way with words. Last Xmas, over Xmas dinner in fact, Uncle Theo dubbed Grandma Alice's family as "the auto-destructive end of the gene pool" where my father's side of the family, coming as they originally did from a tiny, remote hamlet in the countryside he described as "the shallow end of the gene pool".

All three of Cousin Mary's brothers, in point of fact all four of her live born siblings committed suicide before they reached thirty. John, the first born, laid his head on a railway track when he was just in his majority. Paul overdosed on morphine in a London squat - a hyperdermic syringe hung from his groin. Tommy, little Tommy, slit his wrists with an old fashioned single sided razor blade in a warm bath in his mother's upstairs bathroom - a large glass of whiskey, a full ashtray, 4 unsmoked Gauloises in a crumpled pack. and a copy of Joannes Zonaras' Compendium of History laid face down and open at page 284 were found with him. He was 18. Alice, named for her mother and the first born daughter starved herself to death at 15.

Grandma Alice's house is laid out on three floors: a cellar where wine and provisions are stored; the ground floor where Cousin Mary rules with a rod of pure titanium wheeling around in her chair from the library where she sleeps to the kitchen where she interferes with the cooking and provisioning of the house and picks constantly at snacks and biscuits. Cousin Mary does not have the thinness gene. The drawing room features on her circuit too but only in order that she can assure herself that it remains locked at all times. Grandma Alice has her bedroom on the top floor in the same room that she and her husband shared. He is long gone. He may be dead. We cannot be sure. He left the year after Cousin Mary's suicide attempt saying that he would not be dictated to by his own daughter. Grandma Alice was not sad to see him go. Grandma Alice's house is permanently silent. A funeral parlour atmosphere lives in this house. Cousin Mary has had a bathroom installed in part of what was the library before her father left. There is a hoist that serves both to get her in and out of the bath and also in and out of her bed. Uncle Theo once told me in confidence that Cousin Mary's quarters reminded him of Catherine the Great's bedchamber but he smiled, tapped the side of his nose and refused to explain why when I asked why.

Grandma Alice has a piano. Actually, Grandma Alice has two pianos. As a child she showed precocious talent as a pianist and composer and her parents encouraged her by employing a tutor. Grandma Alice lived for the piano. The family, close and distant, would gather at holidays and the high point would always be a recital by Grandma Alice, sometimes solo and sometimes with a local boy who played violin passably well. Her talent blossomed and the tutor believed she had a concert pianist under her tutelage but made a terminal mistake by entreating Grandma Alice's parents to enter her at the Conservatoire Frederic Chopin in Paris. He had badly misjudged her parents who had no intention of allowing their youngest daughter a career. The tutor was peremptorily dismissed and within the year Grandma Alice had been married off to an eligible bachelor notary in the nearby town. He was 12 years older than Grandma Alice when they married; that is why we now assume he is dead.

Grandma Alice's day to day piano is invisible to all but Grandma Alice. Perhaps not entirely invisible - there are traces to be detected. In the middle of the kitchen is the huge farmhouse table, a pitch pine rural monstrosity, that serves as a food preparation area, a desk, a work bench and a reading station. Grandma Alice always sits with her back to the south facing window over the stone sink and if you were to look very closely, forensically closely, you would or you might find evenly spaced fingerprints along the edge and if you closed your eyes and visualized the pattern of those fingerprints then like a Polaroid photograph developing in your hand you would or could. if you tried really hard, perceive a piano keyboard. Mother tells me that in the early days Grandma Alice used to spread tea towels that mother had bought for her printed with piano keyboards along this surface and play silently for hours - the tea towels wore out in time and Grandma Alice never replaced them. I suspect that she never needed them - the real keyboard is inside her head and her hands.

Grandma Alice's other piano is a Steinway grand. The very same Steinway on which she practiced in her youth. The Steinway that replaced the old upright that she learned on as a child. It has not been tuned in years. Grandma Alice has not seen it in years. It lives, or perhaps it rests, in the drawing room. The drawing room is always locked and Cousin Mary has the key to the room. She wears it on a chain around her neck.

Lamentations 1:1

2010-08-23T18:31:00.001+03:00

I was really hoping that I wouldn't have to write this. I've been, we've been, denying it for weeks. Given the nature of it I'll make it swift. I don't wish to linger.

! 2010 IS A DISASTER !

Yes, you read that right 2010 is officially a disaster. It's the last half of August and the first angustifolia harvest should be done and distilled but instead we have a single table of dried flowers and a thin dribble still coming. No purple haze this year.

It's more or less the last week of August and the spica harvest should be well under way but instead great chunks of the bushes are dying or dying back . That's right - dying back big time: a drought tolerant lavender is dying in parts. In all areas of the farm lavender is dying back and we have been irrigating since April.

The olive trees that have had a set, and those that haven't too, are spotted with yellow leaves. Olives are wrinkling and dropping from the lower branches even while the trees put on ridiculous thin top growth.

The ground is like concrete. The wild carrot that dominated the fennel this year is dead. There is scarcely a wild flower or grass in sight.

The plants are exhausted. The soil is exhausted. We are exhausted.

Autumn 2009 was warm and unusually dry. Winter 2009 was warm and unusually dry. The olives did not swell fully. Our olive harvest was one of the few in our valley - most people didn't even bother. Spring 2010 was short, hot and dry. By the end of April 2010 we had started to irrigate the lavender weekly - the stress was showing. Summer 2010 started early and has been consistently hot - the daytime temperatures have been over 30º for months. It has not rained since March. The UV readings have been over 11 on a regular basis and there has not been a dew for longer than I can remember. Night temperatures have been in the mid to high 20s save only when they too have been in the 30s. We have had heatwaves too, with 40+ temperatures for a week or so at a time every few weeks. And almost no breeze. No wind.

Weird shit has been happening all throughout 2010. Hindsight is amazing but we did notice all of this weird shit as it happened it just wasn't possible to predict what it all presaged.

Some of our olive trees flowered in January - and set. In january one of our dogs was attacked by ticks and fleas that should have died in the winter. At the end of January our avocado tree - the one we had nurtured from a stone some years ago - turned brown and died in only 3 days.

The rest of our olives refused to flower. The walnut tree failed to put on leaf and I took it for dead. Months after they were due both sprang into some simulacrum of life but the olive blossom was sporadic and sparse and the walnut lacked any real conviction. By this time we had noticed a scarcity of both pollinators and wild flowers. The main crop olive trees had a small set eventually and the walnut finally took on a lightweight coat of paler green leaves but none of it was terribly convincing.

The mulberry trees produced almost no fruit and so did not carpet the ground with mushy fruit and buzzing bees. And so it has continued: some things are months early and some months late. All is spindly and weak and the weather refuses to vary. And now the cumulative effects are killing things off.

I was really hoping that I wouldn't have to write this. I've been, we've been, denying it for weeks but now it's written it's time to move on. We are fundamentally optimists. At heart we try to find the positive in life's buffetings but this really has us scratching our heads and looking at what looks dangerously like a glass that's more than half empty.

There's a lesson sure enough and that is that you should never assume you have mother nature's number - she always has a curve ball left but we knew that already!

And there we are - digging to the very bottom of that half full glass there is a possible upside: any plants that make it through will be ideal for propagating as the only stock that is fit for prolonged drought conditions. It isn't much but it'll have to do for now and we shall have some sort of olive harvest albeit much reduced.

! 2010 IS A TRAGEDY !

The Aunty Who Turned Herself Green

2010-07-20T22:50:00.001+03:00

Luke drives southward, The road is narrow and winding. One one side there is a sheer rock face towering above the little car. On the other a sheer drop. There is no edge nor kerb to the patchy asphalt.

Kate sits beside him in the passenger seat. She has the sheer drop on her side and refuses to look that way. She peers past Luke myopically at the gouged out rock face. Kate does not herself drive. She gradually becomes aware that Luke is checking his rear-view mirror more often than is strictly necessary - there are no cars behind them and there have been none for the last 20 km or so. Not since they left the little mountain village where they stopped for coffees.

Aunty Maureen is in the back seat, positioned to obscure the driver's rear view perspective. Aunty Maureen has never been to the Greek Islands before and stares fixedly through the windscreen. Looking neither left nor right she sits forward in the seat, almost breathing down Luke's neck.

It is hot in the car and sweat beads down Luke's cheek. Kate leans over and dabs at it with a tissue that comes away sodden. Luke turns up the aircon and shifts in his seat - haemorrhoids draw in the heat.. The aircon seems to make no noticeable difference and Kate passes him the cold water when they reach a straight section. Slugging back a mouthful of once frozen water he hand it back and again glances up at the rearview mirror. Kate feels Aunty Maureen lean forward and feels her breath. She hands the bottle back and concentrates on Luke who is by now checking his rearview mirror every few seconds.

Luke is aware that his concentration is slipping and shakes his head. His mouth is still dry, he shakes his head to clear it and a solitary drop of sweat from his forehead splats onto the windscreen. Not thinking, he switches on the wipers and curses under his breath. He switches them off as they scrape back to park in the layer of dust. He simply cannot believe what he is witnessing.

Aunty Maureen is turning green as he watches her assiduously. He nods archly and raises a damp eyebrow to Kate who he knows is watching him, and asks solicitously, "Are you feeling OK in the back there Maureen?".

"I'm fine, pet - I could do with a comfort break - I'm a bit hot but - no I'm fine thank you". Aunty Maureen is now a shade of green somewhere between olive which is very appropriate as they descend through olive groves and khaki. And, finally, Kate looks round, looks directly at Maureen, and cottons on to what Luke has been hinting at. She swivels back to Luke and nods knowingly, "Can we stop at the next taverna Luke? I could do with a break too. And we need to check some things on the map".

Luke drives on. The road has straightened now and the driving is easier but the sun has strengthened. HIs T-shirt is firmly stuck to him and he shifts in his seat again but without achieving any relief. A sign appears for a taverna in 1000 meters and he relaxes. He checks the rearview mirror and gulps. He slips into the forecourt of a traditional blue and white painted taverna and parks up under a mulberry tree. He slips the car out of gear and pulls on the handbrake in welcome shade as a scream escapes Maureen in the back. Kate and Luke, seatbelts now released, turn round swiftly.

Luke is sitting looking down to the Libyan sea and drinking a frappe - black with a little sugar. The girls are in the toilet. It is a pleasant enough little taverna and the frappe is fine, strong but good and cold. The girls have been in the toilet for some time now. Maureen was near hysterical and sobbing as Kate led her off but the taverna owner had scarcely appeared to notice as he shuffled from behind the till to take Luke's order. Luke had ordered only for himself - who knows how long this would take and in this heat ice melts quickly. He motions the owner over, orders a small beer, lights a cigarette and continues to wait.

Halfway down his beer Kate appears. Aunty Maureen is dogging her footfalls. Kate smiles wanly, unconvincingly. Maureen has paler streaks down her cheeks where her tears have flowed. They sit resignedly and Kate orders two glasses of raki - Maureen does not normally partake of alcohol but has decided to make an exception today - under the circumstances. Maureen is still green - a muddy pond bottom green. Not just her face, but pretty much all over.

Kate leans forward and in stage whisper describes how Aunty Maureen has been using a fake tanning foam since she arrived and how, on hearing of the clouds of mosquitoes common on the south coast had decided at the last moment, just before leaving the house, to slather almost half a tube of mosquito repellent on every exposed inch of herself. The green colour was clearly the result of a chemical reaction of some description, perhaps accelerated by the sun and the heat. Luke laughed. Kate scowled. Maureen burst into tears again.

Book Review - The Open Veins of Latin America by Eduardo Galeano.

2010-05-06T18:18:00.001+03:00

Galeano is one of only 2 Uruguayan authors I have read (the other is Onetti). His trilogy Memory of Fire is one of the few non-fiction works that I have regularly recommended. The trilogy is a more or less complete history of America and it is organised as the most humane of narratives possible on a history that is far removed from humanity. This work is an earlier and more overtly polemical history of 5 centuries of the bloodletting of the Latin American continent almost unto death.

Written in 1971 The Open Veins has become a classic among scholars of Latin American history and although it does not have the wonderful structure and narrative flow of the Memory of Fire trilogy it is an incredibly compelling read even for the non-historian. Galeano's gift has been honed over the years but his talent for engaging you with history shines even in this earlier work. Galeano has been compared favourably to Dos Passos and Marquez and that is not too high a praise.

If you want to discover how a mythically rich continent can be reduced to penury read this book. If you want an insight as to how the IMF can enslave not just nations but whole continents read this book, What the hell - READ THIS BOOK.

Book Review - Broken Glass by Alain Mabanckou

2010-04-10T19:51:00.001+03:00

Mabanckou is a French speaking Congolese and his is a fresh voice on the literary scene. Whilst not strictly speaking a novel in its modern sense this is an uplifting and joyous read, The narrator, clearly unreliable since he is a recurrent drunk, relate tales told to him by various customers at the Congolese bar Credit Gone West. His little notebook, forced on him by the bar's owner the Stubborn Snail, gradually fills with riveting little lives until he slowly reveals his own version of his own story. The lives he shows us are not our western lives but the problems are similar. Mabanckou writes in a consistently engaging way with scant regard for traditional grammar and punctuation but he always takes the reader with him. Filled with asides to great literature this text shines with a light from within.

Only two of Mabanckou's books have been translated so far but I await more with bated breath.

3 not 2

2010-04-07T20:45:00.001+03:00

Now here's a turn-up for the book. Until January I thought that we had 2 varieties of olive tree growing in our grove. I even thought I knew both varieties - Koroneikei and Rethymniote. Imagine my surprise then when it dawned on me that we actually have 3 varieties.

I had observed in previous years that some of our trees come into flower earlier than others but this year the difference in blossom time prompted some serious thought. Some of what we refer to as "the house olives" were starting to bloom in January and February when we harvested them. The bulk of the trees - the eating olives (Rethymniote) and the main-crop oil olives (Koroneiki) started to bloom this week (April 2010).

This prompted, as I said, some serious thought and ongoing investigation. There are maybe 11 of these trees that bloom early and close examination reveals that the trunks are bigger in girth than the Koronekei but not ancient like the Rethymniotes. The leaves are subtly darker green and the bark is rougher. They are bigger too (particualry height wise or height aspirationally). With hindsight it may well be the case that the fruit matures earlier in the season but we shall keep a close eye on them come October November and watch for drop behaviour.

On reflection I had known for some time that the Koroneikei require another variety to help with pollination but had always assumed that either the Rethymniotes did that or that other olive trees in the valley did. Perhaps these 3rd way olives do it.

Well, you live and you learn and as to identifying the variety I shall pursue the issue but my main thread of investigation will be to do with which varieties need very little winter chill to produce flowering (there is some 1950s research on this topic that I am tracking down).

Book Review: Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

2010-03-10T19:02:00.001+02:00

Hey Laz, where you been lately? Two months, perhaps 3, without a review? That's so not like you. I been on an infinite quest. Been looking into Infinite Jest (IJ) by David Foster Wallace (DFW). So amny people recommended it that I had to do it. Glad I saved it for winter.

Infinite Jest then, Is it? Is it infinite? Well then, when you get to around page 666 and know that you aren't two thirds of the way through this heavy1 tome you kind of think it might just be. Is it at least a jest then? That sort of depends I guess as to whether you think that a tale is a comedy2 if you laugh now and then but that's not my take. So it's neither infinite nor jesting? Got it.

So it's long and a bit of a downer then? You could say that. And I'd tend to agree with you. But is it him or is it the material do you think? Let me take that sideways on. Take it via Beckett3 maybe, now he, Beckett, deals in some pretty gloomy views of what life is and is capable of being but leaves you laughing and ready to " ... go on" no matter how bleak it is. With DFW you get the feeling that he not only sees the absurd bleakness of life but subscribes wholeheartedly to it. Enters the spirit of it so to say. Becomes one with it.

He takes 3 slight stories of gross inadequacy4 and plaits them into a rope thick enough to hang himself with. He takes 2 schoolboy jokes5 and stretches them into ever thinner territories until he has made a scaffold. He takes a view of a near future that looks now almost laughable6 (retract that almost - it IS laughable) and fashions the drop. Not as inventive as modifying the microwave oven so that you can cook your brain but just as effective.

So you're none too impressed with his material but what about his style? His structures and such? I liked a lot of it, it's a curate's egg of a book. I wish he'd had Gordon Lish instead of Michael Pietsch (whose job I wouldn't have wanted but hey if you step up to the mark you'd better be prepared to do it well and he didn't). DFW turns a good sentence maybe every ten or so. He drops in a lot of esoteric words. I don't know - feels more like a journalist than a novellist and yeah I guess I love a lot of his journalistic pieces - the Federer article is sublime. Maybe that is the basic inadequacy that he is addressing - his own inadequacy as a novelist. Round about page 666 I got to remembering Ellmann's biography of Joyce, or maybe it was from the Joyce Letters, where we find that in one of his last moves (it might be the move to Switzerland or Trieste) he took 17 packing cases full of material for The Work in Progress. Luckily for us he didn't put it all in to The Wake directly7 - seems to me that DFW dug up around 3 trunksfull of stuff and put it all straight into IJ. But what about the footnotes? The famous footnotes? There are 388 of them (and they're footnotes printed as endnotes) feller, what else can I say? About 200 of them seem to have been sponsored by pharmaceutical companies in much the same way the years in the book are sponsored by retailers (is that my insight or his?). Don't get me wrong I like to know about drugs - as a kid I used to read the British Pharmacopoeia, which I just discovered is available online these day for the price of a subscription) for fun and the Extra Pharmacopoeia for research but flipping anywhere up to 900 pages back and forth for a couple of months and using 3 and at times 4 bookmarks does not make for fun. According to Wikipedia (where did the diphtong go?) "Wallace claimed that the notes were used to disrupt the linearity of the narrative, to reflect his perception of reality without jumbling the entire structure". Apparently Pietsch got him to ditch a lot more of them but but they still run out to 100 pages. Maybe what was called for was a book designer and typographer who was familiar with B S Johnson's work8. Anyway whatever there they are - my wrists are stronger now.

I understand that lots of people find IJ better and deeper in every reading. Will you be reading it again? That's a no feller. Life is short and there's plenty of Sorrentino left for me to get. I'll reread Ulysses regularly. There are maybe 1500 books in my library that are marked for possible rereading but IJ isn't joining them. As the man once said - nice try but no coconut.

But did you enjoy it? Would I? Should I read it? Yeah, I enjoyed it plenty. If you like this review you'll like the book. Who am I to tell you what you should read? There are no oughts only coulds. You could.

1) Heavy in the sense of having a large gravitational force acting on the mass of the volume as opposed to having a large amount of gravity working on the text itself.
2) WS did comedies, tragedies, histories and if WSa is good enough for DFW he's good enough for this review.

a: DFW's choice of title tells you enough of what to expect. Taken from a Hamlet soliloquy (the mighty and complex "Alas poor Yorrick" spiel)i beware of tragedy to come.
i: That's the one, so you don't have to look it up, set in the graveyard (a laugh a minute it ain't) where Hamlet's holding the skull of the dead jester of his youth "a man of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy" and is being revolted by the memory of touching him. Still thinking it might be a jest?

3) DFW is most often compared to Pynchon andor Gaddis and simply on the density of the text they are kin but on the material and the treatment which drive this thing you've gotta look at Beckett IMHO. If DFW had taken "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better." as his mantra he might not have topped himself. If you're looking for an American progenitor Gass or even Vollmann might be your best choices.

4) Story One: First and most compoundly inadequate is the tale of "recovering" addicts in a fundamentally inadequate "treatment plan" that makes them all feel inadequate, and in fact to be inadequate, in wholly related and equally inadequate ways.
   Story Two: Just up the hill from the addict centre is the tennis academy where children overadequate in one or two overly specific skills and physically, asynmetrically overdeveloped but socially inadequate and most of them destined to fail to achieve The Tour. An academy dedicated to inadequacy.
   Story Three: A bunch of doomed and infiltrated secessionist terrorists in wheelchairs because they are legless due to an inadequacy to get out of the way of oncoming trains (how big a pile of inadequacy do we need to have?) wage a doomed quest for an entertainment that itself dooms anyone who watches it to an apathetic death.

5) 2 jokes: a major world state that has O.N.A.N as its acronym and the idea of cripples as assassins.See what I mean about schoolboy humour? DFW has north american government designated as wankers and terrorists as cripples. Self reference back to the author here is not impossible of course. Likely even.

6) DFW's view of the future has the US and Canada in an uneasy alliance to create his seed spilling state and sees some clunky and proprietary extension of the VHS film cartridge as the delivery mechanism for the dominant entertainment. True he has an ecological disaster driving the US and Canada into their alliance but not to see an interactive future and the rise of computer gaming? Lame.

7) JJ took 17 years working on FW - probably 16 on Ulysses (8 according to some) - and the effort paid off -each work flows along like a riverrun where IJ is punctuated by gear changes and nearly stalled moments, hand brake turns and emergency stops.

8) B S Johnson was another suicidal author. An experimentalist in the sixties he constantly reimagined the structure of the book trying to challenge the linearity, the serialness, the imposition imposed on the writer by the hardcopy. BSJ did not know about hypertext and hyperlinks - DFW did.

9) This one is just hanging here signifying nothing, full of wind and piss.

More from the harvest

2010-02-05T19:42:00.001+02:00

We may finish the harvest tomorrow. This morning we woke to a bright dry day and were frankly stunned to see frost lying in patches of shade in the valley bottom that the sun had yet to reach. Frosts are pretty rare here. We checked the skies and then we checked the weather forecast and both seemed to agree that there was a good chance of two dry days together.

We settled back into a two coffee pot morning and waited to see if anything was moving in on the cold northerly bimbling in from the sea but by the time we had sorted out the dogs and cleaned the cellar we were as sure as we could be that we were set fair. Out came the nets and the rakes and the buckets and the sacks: on went the work clothes (crushed olives really do stain clothing) and the wellingtons (it is still wet underfoot amongst the rampaging oxalis) and the gloves and the eye protection and out we went into the grove in a bright but not very warm morning.

We finished up at around half two. The day had not heated up. The sun shone but did not warm. We had, however, finished another ten or eleven trees and counted the remaining trees (tomorrow's all being well) at six. An early start tomorrow should enable us to finish them off, bag up and get the new crop to the factory. Today's trees were over on the northern boundary and unlike most of the other trees had fruit only on the north sides. I'm wondering whether the shade from the house is keeping the south sides of these trees too cool but I am just guessing.

We only collected the oil from our first batch yesterday and it is a fine tasting vintage - light on the tongue but with a nice aftertaste and a light peppery aroma. As we had suspected the stone to flesh ratio was up so although the biomass of the drupes collected was good the flesh yield was lower than last year (I blame a lack of a really hot summer and especially the absence of any heatwaves, Gill blames the dry spring, we all have our theories). Fruit fly infestation was noted at 2% and overall acidity was 0,5, the same as the last two years. It turns out that we had picked and bagged 395.2 kilos of fruit over last weekend and after the factory had taken oil to cover their costs we brought home just over 75 litres of single estate, single variety, transitionally organic, EVOO. A satisfying result for us and, from anecdotal evidence, a good harvest relative to other olive farmers in the area.

Picking Olives 2010 day 1

2010-01-29T19:04:00.001+02:00

It was bright this morning. There had been a heavy dew overnight and the weather forecast was less than promising. We loitered through the chores and Gill did the laundry that I then hung out in hope. It was warmer now and though the sky held cloud the sun was peeking from behind clouds. We looked at each other and nodded. "Let's go and see how things in the olive grove look". Well, they looked pretty damned fine. The dew had dried from the trees and they no longer glistened. The oxalis was wet and the ground all but sodden. "We looked at each other and nodded. "He who dares wins!." We trudged back up the steep slope for the first time today.

Unpacking the nets and sacks from the supposedly rodent safe storage we found we had lost 3 sacks to mice. So much for rodent proof. The mice clearly prefer hessian to nylon. The nets were untouched. We opened up the drying room since all the other farm buildings currently have very wet floors. We laid out the sacks, gathered up the olive rakes, grabbed our buckets and changed into work clothes. Wellies on, we took our second trip of the day down the slippery slope. There would be many more.

By the time we got down to the first (or is it the last?) row a crew of olive pickers had assembled in a field nearby and had started up their whizzers. We could hear them but not see them. That's how it would stay for the day. We don't use whizzers. We use olive rakes. They are gentler on the trees and on the ears. We can talk as we pick. Spreading the olive nets beneath the oil tree (oil trees as opposed to the eating trees) furthest from the house we reacquainted ourselves with how big those nets are. Big green buggers. Two of them. The sun was a little further up now and had begun to warm our bones. We set to. The olives were all purpled and came off the tree so easily that it was hard at first to appreciate just how many drupes there were for the taking. Finish the first tree and move the nets on to the next tree in the row, After four trees we can no longer move the nets and so we stop to clean leaf and twig. There is a huge pile of olives on each of the nets. The sun is really warm now. It is another hour and a half higher in the sky. We crouch on our haunches and clean the gatherings discarding twig and detritus in a pile beneath a finished tree behind us.

We are no longer young and neither of us is strong enough of back to hoist a full sack of olives on our shoulder and climb the slope to the drying room. As an aside, the old people here, people of our generation, are much tougher and harder working than their kids who almost without exception hate doing olives. The old ones just knuckle down to hard physical work and set their tempo to suit their bodies. We try to emulate the old ones. So, since we cannot lug full bags up and down all day, or once even, we load up buckets with clean olives and tramp up to the drying room where we empty them into sacks that we never fill more than half way (we have to take the sacks up to the pickup when we have enough). And so we trade more walking up and down hill against lugging huge sacks a few times. This will take its toll on our legs and hips but will save our backs.

The newly emptied nets are dragged under the next tree and the harvest resumes. These trees in this bottom, or top, row are heavy with drupes. The sacks are starting to fill in the drying room and I regret the loss of 3 sacks to the mice. At this rate we may have to get some more sacks. And so it goes until the first row is done and then we turn and start back on the second row but in the reverse direction. The sun is high and about to begin its descent. It is hot now and we are sweating as we work. We wear hats, gloves, and protective eyewear when beating and the olives drop into shirts and shirt pockets, and bras and trouser turn ups. Gill stops now and then to empty olives from her wellington boots. Somehow my wellington shoes do not suffer the same problem.

Half way across row 2 and about when we hear the other crew packing up in laughter, the sun droops lazily behind the house and the temperature begins to drop. We finish the tree in progress and rubbing our sore backs we clean the last of today's harvest and trudge for the nth time up and down that hill to the drying room and when we are done with that we have 9 half full sacks safely in. Trudging back down the hill it is good to think that this will be the last time today. Surely that slope has steepened as we worked? Fold those big green buggering nets, but clean them first. Gather up the rakes and gloves and water bottle and, each of us with a net clamped under an arm, we take that final trudge. We are done for the day once everything is stored away in the drying room. Tired but satisfied.

Gilbert gets the iPad

2010-01-28T21:59:00.001+02:00

Gilbert and Rebecca relax. The stove is burning. The room is warm. The DVD is playing a cinema noir classic from RKO. The coffee is hot and strong. It is late at night and outside it is cold and raining. Gilbert slips the iPad out from its place down the side of the sofa and quickly checks on imdb the name of the actor playing the hood or gunsel - William Bendix. Just as he thought.

Later, snuggled up in bed, he reads a couple of chapters of Infinite Jest before switching over and writing a new chapter of his own new blogella and pushes it up on his site before finally switching off for the day.

At four, in the pitch dark, he wakes sweating from a very dark dream and grabs the iPad to make a few notes for tomorrow's episode before turning back to sleep.

At 0830 he wakes, his bladder pressing him hard but looking through the bathroom window he surveys a grey, wet morning with disappointment. Padding back to the still warm bed he pulls the covers up to his neck and grabs the iPad again. He checks his emails - nothing pressing. He reads the news - nothing pressing - Federer is thru to the final, the Haitians are still suffering. He parks the iPad and snuggles spoonwise into Becky's back.

Gilbert gets the iPad.

The Real Olive Farm - a pre-solstice update

2009-12-18T19:21:00.002+02:00

Now that the first of the drupes, and there are a lot of drupes, are beginning to turn purple (usually at the sharp end first) and the flesh is nice and plump it is time for a pre-solstice update.

Olive farming is a strangely inactive job, especially the way we do it. Since we are organic we do not apply herbicides or pesticides (and thereby hangs another tale) and since we follow Fukuoka we do not apply fertilisers or plough beneath the trees. Nor do we irrigate the trees. What then, you might reasonably ask, do you do? Well there's the pruning. And there's the cleaning under the trees in preparation for harvest, after all nobody wants to rip expensive olive nets on unruly brambles and suckers. And then there's the actual picking. And I guess the rest is about watching and waiting. Right now we are waiting. We cleaned under the trees by hand in October and since then the oxalis has been carpeting the grove and keeping almost everything else at bay.

If you follow the lavender way you will know that we had a very odd summer this last year with high humidity and no heatwaves and that those conditions produced a marked downturn in essential oil yield from the lavender. The rains started early this autumn and we have had plenty of rainfall since to flesh up the olives but we are currently waiting for a really cold snap to turn that water into oil and so far there is no sign of that. We had hoped to harvest before Xmas this year (and many of the groves around us have been harvested already - hearsay evidence is that yields are very low) but we are now looking toward January and the halcyon days for harvest. But if we don't get the cold then we will wait. It is a balancing act - the later we leave it the higher the eventual acidity of the oil but we figure we can wait until early March and still come in under 0.5.

Fingers are crossed and we are holding our nerve, we'll let you know how it goes on.

Another Tale

When we applied to DIO for organic certification we thought there would be no change to our practices but they took particular interest in how we controlled olive fruit fly. When we originally moved on-site the local council was in the habit of coming around the valley and into the olive groves and spraying all of the olives spasmodically 3 or 4 times a year. We, not being locals, had no idea what they sprayed with and neither, it turned out, did any of the local olive farmers - "chemicals" they opined. Wanting to be organic we wanted to know more and so we went to see the head of agriculture for the prefecture to find out. Evanthia was a nice lady and efficient but she poo poohed our concerns about what the local council sprayed on the trees - "It's perfectly safe. It just kills the fruit fly." she reassured us and eventually she managed to produce a pharmaceutical label from said standard, safe, treatment. The information on the label was remarkably sparse but the trade name was large and proudly displayed. After a long discussion and a lot of Evanthia shaking her head we agreed to put up DO NOT SPRAY signs, to inform the local council that we we wanted nothing to do with the spraying regime and to keep all access gates to the grove locked. She promised to send some men around to advise us on alternative fruit fly control procedures within the month or at least before March (this was December) and we in turn promised to let her know what we discovered about "the chemicals".

In those days we were the only people we knew who were regular internet users and so our researches were pretty rigorous and much more objective than anything that the locals had access to. Not wishing to have any large american pharmaceutical company litigating against us I shall omit any detail that might identify either the chemical or the manufacturer but what we discovered was genuinely horrific: said standard, safe, treatment chemical was an organophosphate - not any old organophosphate but one which had been generally banned in the US in 1968 when it was implicated in wide scale, long term, central nervous system poisoning and damage among users. It had been withdrawn from general sale in the US, the UK and most of Europe shortly thereafter although it was still available for very specialized use in the US but under some very controlled circumstances - full body suits, breathing equipment and full clearance of the areas to be sprayed (our local council sprayed it from the back of a tractor and the operatives wore only shorts and t-shirts). When we looked further into it it transpired that the company in question was still selling the stuff widely in Greece (the only European country where it was available), Africa and the Middle East.

We passed the information on to Evanthia and eventually her men turned up at the farm. They brought with them a selection of beautiful open ended glass jars and a big bag of ammonium sulphate. For our population of trees, they told us, we would need 3 of these jars placed here here and here (they identified the appropriate trees for us and showed us where within the tree, out of the direct sun and yet low in the crown, to hang them)and filled with an ammonium sulphate solution before the olive flowers set. We should monitor the jars for evaporation and crystallization and keep them re-filled until the onset of the rains.

And so we had carried on ever since: repelling all spraying rigs and persevering with the jars so imagine how surprised we were when DIO informed us that ammonium sulphate was not cleared for use on organic farms! It's not as if we were spraying it around, we were using it in a trap and it never came into contact with the soil or the trees or the fruit save perhaps by evaporation. What then, we asked, should we use against the fruit fly? Surprise surprise we were given the OK for the use of gamma or delta pyrethroids. Well, forewarned is forearmed and once bitten twice shy, so I did the research and guess what? These pyrethroids are "generally harmless to human beings" but "toxic to fish" and "toxic to most beneficial insects such as bees and dragonflies" - heigh ho! " We are doing without until we can find something less hazardous to our ecosphere and bearing the risk of fruit fly depradations (doesn't look too bad so far).

Book Review - If Not Now, When? by Primo Levi

2009-11-15T13:01:00.001+02:00

Primo Levi started his writing career before his incarceration in Auschwitz although it would seem only two short stories, which later appeared in The Periodic Table, survive. His ouvre consists mainly of memoirs and poetry. It wasn't until 1984 when "If Not Now, When?" was written that Levi as a writer emerged. In this towering book we finally hear his proper authorial voice.

His sentences are beautiful and his paragraphs so well balanced that reading this work is almost effortless and at the same time almost endlessly satisfying and while the book ostensibly chronicles the wanderings and adventures of a group of mainly Jewish partisans in the rubble of the rout of Third Reich forces in Europe at the end of WWII there are other ways to read it. It is only when Levi finally turned to the novel form that he grudgingly gave the reader a valid role in his writing.

Although Levi was lionised for his memoirs and essays the justification for such heavy praise was, in this writer's opinion, chiefly based in the guilt that the non-Jewish readership felt after WWII and a fellow feeling among literary critics but this late work shows Levi in a more reflective and less polemical mind.

Where his previous work concentrated on memorialising the horrors of the German project to annihilate Jewry "If Not Now, When?" examines the nature of resistance and integrity in the face of overwhelming circumstances and emphasises the humanity of its characters - the rich, the generous, the flawed, and sometimes hateful humanity of them.

I was left wondering as I read this superb work whether Levi had finally come to terms with the reality that the holocaust had been something other than the unique, singularly evil, historically anomalous event that he had always portrayed. By 1984 Vietnam and the Cambodian genocide were already historically attested. By 1984 the disgraceful treatment of the Palestinians was into its third decade and the first Lebanon War was over. The Sabra and Shatila Masacre was history by 1984.

For this reader the regular references throughout "If Not Now, When?" to Palestine as the ultimate escape destination for his brave partisans are signifiers. His partisans talk of Palestine but never the Palestinians. Palestine is theirs by right. In Palestine the horrors of the holocaust can finally be laid to their proper historical resting place - burnt into the racial memory of mankind, never to be repeated and in this light the title and its context is oddly, macabrely ironic.

Book Review - Vanishing Point by Aristoteles Nikolaidis

2009-08-18T16:11:00.001+03:00

Three pages into this fascinating book I found that it was taking me a very long time to read each page. Published in 1975 it won Greece's very first National Book Award for a novel and documents the supposed disappearance of an individual during the times of the Greek civil war and general unrest after world war 2. So why was it taking so long? It wasn't until I came upon myself late at night mentally rephrasing sections of text painstakingly into a modern voice that I worked out what was wrong. I could almost hear the author's text struggling to get out of a frighteningly wooden translation and have its say.

Let me say straightway that I thought of giving up there and then. But what I had already read piqued my interest so much that I persevered. The underlying book rolls gracefully along examining the nature of identity and reality, starting with, but not limiting itself to, the identity of the narrator while the juggernaut of the translation chugs on above it. The final section covers the very personal nature of paranoia and leaves the reader wondering about the possibility of any coherent reality in the 20th century.

I would love to read a sympathetic translation of this book - I think it is an important book of modern Greek literature - an important novel of 20th century European literature. I would not recommend it though, to any but the brave in its current form.

Black Olive 2

2009-07-11T18:30:00.002+03:00

Establishing shot : a large, well maintained villa surrounded by extensive gardens (think Chateau Gilly). Swimming pool - a surreal blue to one side - two male figures are visible. One end of the house has a turret or tower. Coral is shown, back to camera wearing a blindingly white bath robe and shabby red espadrilles, walking into the front door, a large pair of arched doors surrounded by stone lintels. Zoom into the archway - shot darkens as she travels down a dark corridor. Pull back and pan left to a stone in the arch - vague shape visible - zoom in to roughly carved figure of a bee on a lavender blossom. Cut to Coral at exactly the same place in the corridor as when we left her. Her right hand reaches out and across to the door handle to her left and lightning cuts the shot - she disappears into the room - fade to black.

Interior shot of study - a triple aspected room but only one shutter is ajar. A dark green room with gold paintwork and ceiling. The walls are lined with bookshelves - mainly empty. Zoom in on a small stand of books - pan the spines - one female author only. Cut to Coral sitting at her desk staring into a computer screen. Zoom over her shoulder - during the zoom she becomes flatter almost two dimensional. On the screen is a Facebook page populated by crude cartoon characters. From here on the film looks like a cross between real life and classic comic strip (think Scott McCloud - meets Edward Tufte). Sound of a skype call coming in - focus as skype notification window pops open and is clicked to accept. Two windows side by side open - Coral right and a shadowy woman sitting in part darkness left. Cut back and forth in talking heads style - panning and zooming during the following dialogue.

C: Hi Jane, how are things with you?
J: Everything is good here Coral - how is the new book coming? Don't forget we're due first draft by the start of August. Is that doable?

C puts her hands to her face - the old hands and as she takes them away we have a smiling young C.

C: It's going very well Jane - it'll be ready - don't worry about it - would I let you down? ... have I ever? I'm putting a chapter down every couple of weeks.
J: You aren't letting the facebook thing get in the way are you? You seem to be on there a lot. I'm looking after that end of the operation.
C: I like the feedback - they all love me over there - it's good for my ego ... but ... it doesn't get in the way ... promise
J: I've got you another book fair gig ...
C interrupts: they are known as literary festivals not book fairs Jane ...
C smiles broadly and her face lights up
C; you got me Hay? Tell me you got me Hay and I'll love you forever.

J leans into the screen and points a finger threateningly
J: you aren't ready for Hay ... when you're ready I'll let you know but that isn't now ... get me? I got you Appledore ---------- now say thank you

Shot of Coral, the older Coral looking away abashed ... suddenly she becomes animated.

C: Hold on Jane there is someone requesting membership - I'll just have a look ...

We come out of the screen and look over C's shoulder again
C minimizes J's window and brings up FB again - an FB profile picture (the Costa Gavras image but in Scott McCloud fashion).

C mumbling to herself: guy ... lavender ... olives ... Crete ....

We see her click on the accept button and then she reopens Jane's window.

J: Coral stop messing around with facebook and get your head into this conversation - I'll decide who we admit
C: ... but this was a guy Jane ... we don't have enough guys ... I don't want to be known as a girly writer ... anyway, I accepted him ... he's got olives and a lavender farm and he's in Crete ... he's our new demographic
J: All right ... he sounds OK ... not a stalker ... now about Appledore ... it's in Devon somewhere ... that's the west country right?
C: I DO know where Appledore is Jane ... even if you don't ... but I've never heard of their literary festival ... when is it?
J: September ... October
C: OK OK I'll do it but when do I get Hay?
J leans into the screen again - menacingly -
J: damn right you'll do it ... I booked you so you'll do it miss ............. and ..... you still haven't said thank you
J: I'm waiting ...
C sheepishly: Thank you Jane ........... who else is doing Appledore?
J: Oh Coral I don't know ... a pair of has been politicians ... the guy in the white suit and some ex-commie ... oh yeah and the guy who used to be Children's Laureate - what's his name? Oh never mind ... It's not bad ... B list stuff but you'll be fine.
J rushes on
J: Anyway darling I have to go I'm due at the office so I'll love you and leave you and you just get your nose back down to the olive stone OK.
Her window goes blank and the call hang up.
Shot over Cs shoulder looking at her own window forlornly on screen.

C: Shit , shit, shit.

Fade out.

Black Olive - first scenes

2009-07-06T12:50:00.002+03:00

Tracking shot - deep blue mediterranean sea - the bay of Cannes - heading toward the beach - think The Big Blue opening - thru the beach at a slower pace - lots of topless women and muscle bound bronzed men - cameos for RdeN and Beatrice Dalle and anyone else we can rustle up (possibly Christopher Timothy? nice ironical tone there) - across the croissete - a red Citroen DS with a pink paint stain on the bonnet that has a hood ornament crosses the lens left to right with Jean Reno driving (wearing the Enzo specs from TBB) - camera passes into an upward sweep through varied appropriate landscape and into a dense olive grove ( lots of drupes) where the blinding light of Southern France dims. Camera at this point is maybe 3 feet from the ground - a lizard scuttles across right to left - we detect a figure at the left of screen - back shot surrounded by bougainevillea as we close in and finally stop 4 feet away.

Hold for 5 seconds as Coral slowly turns to camera. Set up is identical to Alice's Olive goddess. Zoom to gnarled, stained hands - long nails - perfect French manicure - pan to right hand ring finger - ring in the shape of a treble clef - delicate against the finger - pan up - past cleavage to face - smiling Mona Lisa like - no make up - close in. Very close. Lightning cuts the frame behind Coral top to bottom - fade to the young Coral - and back - dissolve to Alice's Olive goddess and back again - and again - her mouth opens and with a slight delay - as in a badly synched movie we hear "Michel, Michel, is the pool clean?".

Cut to Michel by the pool - he is supervising Quasimodo who is wearing an odd, incongruous hat and who is scooping dead bees from the water - zoom to dead bees as the scoop approaches - a dead bee fills the entire screen. Hold for 3 seconds - focus on the wet hairs on the body - switch to B/W. Cut to Michel's face. His mouth opens - same time lag. Close shot of moustache. "Nearly - perhaps 5 more minutes" - he says this in French - volume is up 3 settings- subtitles slide in from the right. Quasimodo continues to scoop bees. The pool is very very blue. Camera zooms in on and then into the pool between the bee bodies.

Cut to camera reversing out of the water. A lithe body splashes past. Michel and Quasimodo are watching the young Coral doing lengths of breast stroke from side on - as are we. Her hair billows out behind her - only the ends are wet. Shot from Coral's viewpoint - a strange looking woman stands at the end of the pool - hair long, grey and very much awry. The young Coral turns at the end of the pool ignoring the psychic. Cut to psychic's POV - she shouts something incomprehensible as Coral reaches the opposite end. A bee crosses the camera right to left. Coral turns and it is the current Coral who comes back toward the camera. She pulls herself out of the pool - psychic POV - C is so close that the image blurs - she shakes her hair.
Talking heads shot.

"What is it?"
"Mrs D you must be very careful ... trouble is coming your way ... I dreamt of you last night ... there is a man ... he will turn your life upside down ... a man with blonde hair ... but he is not of this world ... you have not met him yet ..."
Coral cuts her off - holding her hand up
"Slow down ... explain ... what are you saying ... who is this man that I should be ... what is it I must be careful about ... ?" She runs her hand through her hair, shaking droplets off.
"He is fair but he is dangerous ... he also lives with olives ... be very careful ... he has powers ... he can bring the nearly dead back to life ..."
Enter left Michel looking distressed
Corall, what is it? You have gone so pale ... so wan ... what is it ... what has this woman ... this witch, said?"
The psychic turns to Michel. Switch between M and Psychic shots, to C reaction shots

"I dreamt of her .. there is danger monsieur ... there is a man coming to her ... he will turn her life upside down ... he will loose the spirits ... chaos will be hers"
"You had a dream ... had you been drinking again? ... the pastis? ... you should stay away from it .. you know it gives you wild dreams ... " his voice rises "Quasimodo! Take this lady back to her house ... she needs to rest ... she is .... not herself"

Enter left Quasimodo, his hat is pushed back, he is mopping his brow and squinting. He puts his arm around the psychic's shoulder and leads her off left
"Come on ma'm'selle ... you need to rest Monsieur Michel says so."

Camera follows them.

The Mediterranean Diet revisited

2009-06-26T15:24:00.001+03:00

Back in 2005 I wrote an article for a British magazine about the diet and longevity of the Cretan population. On hearing recently that Greece is set to top next years European obsesity tables I thought to check out what I had written all those years ago so I dug it out this morning and oddly prescient it proves to have been.

Given that the original work that gave rise to the notion of "The Mediterranean Diet" as being a healthy lifestyle choice was undertaken on Crete some 40 years ago perhaps this reprint might prompt some further thought on diet in general.

Rather than update the piece as a whole let me just note a few developments since the original publication:
Starbucks and McDonalds have opened here;
food shops carry much more processed and convenience food than heretofore;
internet gaming cafes have become prevalent;
many of the traditional eating patterns have been disrupted;
Pavlos died peacefully last year of heart failure;
Jiannis still cycles to and from the village most days.

Here is the original article:

THE CRETAN DIET AND LONG LIFE

The grapes are in. The proto raki is ready. The olives are clearly visible on the trees, their leaves showing silver in the autumn breezes. Georgi Nikolarakis leans back on his chair and smiles, his eyes light up. Here is a man about to mount a hobby horse. The Cretans like little better than holding forth: unless it is eating. Of course this inevitably means that they have learned to combine the two. Given that the topic here is food then we have a pretty perfect discourse coming.
Georgi, an avuncular man with a full beard and a weather beaten complexion, opened his taverna back before Georgioupolis was a tourist destination, when only independent travellers and beleagured hippies turned up at this end of the 11 mile beach that is the Gulf of Almyros.

"Why," I have asked him "do Cretans live so long?"

"Maybe they do and maybe they don't. The last generation lived longer than my generation and as for the kids today --- who knows: they eat so much rubbish! When I was a child my mother would give me stakka for my breakfast: spread on a slice of black bread. Only rich people had white bread. (Stakka is the solidified cream from sheeps milk and is something like condensed milk but stronger in flavour. All brown breads in Crete are called black.). If I was lucky I'd have honey spread on top. My aunty used to live in Xania (the nearest city) and sometimes she would bring white bread for us, it was a special treat but Mikhaili's mother, Mikhaili from Creta Corner, used to bake a bread from rye that had lots of hard bits in it and all the kids would smell it from far away and come and beg for it. Bread is at the centre of every Cretan meal. Bread and olives. And salad. Fresh salad from the garden."

The garden in a Cretan village home is always given over to herbs, vegetables, fruits. and salad crops. The flowers are grown in tubs, pots, old tins. The soil is reserved for things you can eat: and that includes chickens and maybe even a pig. The flowers are extraordinarily well cared for, dazzlingly beautiful, and ingeniously grown but the garden is strictly reserved for edibles.

"The workers in the villages," Georgi continues, "often started the day with no more than a hunk of bread, some olives and a glass of malotiras (mountain tea). And then they would go off to work with maybe a piece of cheese and another hunk of bread in their pockets. You remember Pavlos? Pavlos the drinker. He was a big drinker. He was always in Tito's: always drinking wine but he always had bread and some cheese in his pocket that he would eat while he was drinking. When he was eighty some he was knocked down by a car; they said he was drunk but when wasn't he? When he died they cut him up and the doctors said he had the liver of an eighteen year old. Even my granny who was 106 and a teetotaller had a glass of wine with her breakfast: fresh juices and a glass of wine. She married my grandfather when he was 82 and she was 28 and they had 5 children - all healthy. The stakka, is good for the potency. So are artichokes; you just pull off the spiky leaves and eat the artichoke raw with lemon and salt. They turn your lips and tongue brown and they make you windy but they are good for the heart and the potency."

What about meat? Does meat play a big part in Cretan diet? Lamb is eaten everywhere in tavernas but what of the village people? Do they eat much meat?

"Mountain people have always eaten meat once a week and fish once a week. And snails. Snails are good for cancer: it's the calcium. Do snails count as meat? Most families would have a cow or two and some chickens and maybe a pig. And when you kill an animal you eat everything. You don't waste anything and you don't feed bits of the dead animal to the other animals like they did in England. Look what that got them. Now, with the common market, it's become more difficult. Rules about who can kill animals makes it difficult. I would never eat the liver and spleen from a butcher shop animal. I don't know what it's been eating. When your neighbour killed out a pig or a goat you knew it was clean. The same with the chickens. Why are chickens in supermarkets all the same size? Why am I not allowed to buy eggs from my neighbour? I know his chickens are happy and properly free range. It makes me angry, you know, when English people say Greek food is greasy. Look at all the dead animal fat they put into their gravy for the Sunday roast. Here in Crete we have the best olive oil in the whole world and that's what we cook with."

So what do they eat when they aren't eating meat? The Italians have their pasta, the Indians their rice, and the Irish have their potatoes. What are the staples of the Cretan diet?

"We still have seasonal eating here you see. Soups and pulses in the winter and fruits and vegetables in the summer. When things are in season you eat them. People forget how many soups we eat. In the winter we have bean soups (such as fassoulatha made with harricot beans), chick pea soups, lentil soup (fakes) , potato and leek soup. In summer we might have tomato or chicken with rice and lemon, - not so heavy. Once, some years ago there was a monk here from a Russian monastery. He had pure white hair and a big white beard like your Santa Claus. Here in the taverna. He was over a hundred and was on his first holiday. He had a translator with him. He asked for soup and I told him we didn't have soup today. "Nonsense," he said "do you have onions? Courgettes? Potatoes? Garlic?" Of course I had all of them. "Well then", he announced, "you have soup. Twenty minutes is all it takes!" And so he had his soup and I ate with him and we drank a little raki together. He was a really interesting man. He had lived most of his life in a monastery but he knew about life".

This fascination with other peoples' lives and this willingness to sit and eat and drink with them while they tell their tales and put the world to rights is another central rite of the Cretan eating experience and one that Georgi is sure contributes to the well being and long life of the Cretans. A good meal with Cretans will take hours and sometimes drifts into the early hours without you noticing.

"It's not good for you, you know, all this sitting for five minutes in front of the television and wolfing food down. How can you enjoy it? If you do one thing then do it properly. If you are going to eat you sit down together and you eat what you need and you drink a little wine and you talk and then you have company and you feel good and if you feel good you live longer and you enjoy your life. Even the old people here feel useful and wanted. They have stories and they have wisdom. They know all of the herbs and fruits and potions that keep you healthy. They are always welcome to eat with you. They don't rush off for antibiotics when they don't feel so good. They'll make some tea with special herbs, maybe chamomile or wild marjoram or oregano or dikti , or they'll take some fish soup, or perhaps have a massage with the lamp oil or proto-raki. Petrol is best for the massage but dangerous...

As if to demonstrate, and in that magical mode of serendipity that seems to go with the langourous life in Crete, there is a shout from outside the taverna. Georgi's dad Pavlos has just walked down the mountain from his home in Mathes, maybe 6 or 7 kilometers, and asks if Georgi wants bread from the baker. Pavlos will buy a 2 kilo loaf and walk back home. Pavlos is 86. Of course, his friend Jiannis could have got the bread. He cycles up and down to Mathes every day on an old sit up beg bicyle with Sturmey Archer gears, but Pavlos doesn't like to take advantage. "He's an old man after all" - Jiannis is 88. At this point we finish our chat because Georgi is going to get some food for Pavlos to take back with him. A yiouvetsi, (lamb cooked with greek noodles) some lentil soup and a bowl of xorta, another of the magic ingredients of the Cretan diet. Xorta is a dish prepared from mountain greens: often cooked from 3 types of wild plant that grow freely on the mountainside and in the olive groves it is served with olive oil, lemon and oftentimes potatoes. "Since my mother died", says Georgi "my father doesn't bother much cooking for himself. I don't know what we'll do when he gets old".

The Elgin Marbles - the problem is in the plural

2009-06-22T19:38:00.001+03:00

The new museum of the Acropolis in Athens is open now and it is, by all accounts, a truly wonderful building but the opening has been a sad occasion in one way. The so-called Elgin Marbles are still in London and there is no indication that "they" will ever be returned. And so, all of the old arguments have be rehashed and foisted upon us as if they were newly minted.

The story such as it is is simple: Athens was under Ottoman rule and the Ottomans were destroying a lot of the history that they found. The then British ambassador, said Lord Elgin, was a bit of a wily old Scot and so he knocked off a few chunks of marble from a magnificent frieze in order to decorate his own historic pile back in the UK. Sadly he ran into heavy financial waters and flogged them off to the British Museum at a knock down price. And there they remain to this day.

It occurs to me that a major part of the problem here is to do with language. Let me explain. All discussions of this thorny problem refer to either The Elgin Marbles or The Parthenon Marbles. Note the use of the plural: as if all of the fragments were stand alone pieces. Well, that just ain't so. The Parthenon frieze, from which these chunks of carved pentellic marble were ripped untimely, was and is a single work of art. It was designed as a single piece. It was executed as a single piece. And until Elgin's hired vandals got to work it had remained a single piece for several centuries.

Imagine if Elgin or one of his fellow ambassadors had cut the face out of the Mona Lisa and flogged it off to the National Gallery. Who could sensibly maintain that the 2 pieces should not be re-united? No person in their right senses.

It's time to put back together what our forebears put asunder. There is NO reason not to and every reason so to do. And maybe if we all stop talking about the marbles (plural) and start talking about the Parthenon Frieze (singular) we shall all stop obscuring the real issue with a linguistic trick.

A New Short Story - part 7

2009-06-19T20:19:00.002+03:00

Vantaris leaps into the churchyard where Gilbert waits with the ropes. Gilbert rubs his eyes and thinks immediately of the great god Pan - the great god Pan is dead he repeats to himself. "Which one?" Vantaris takes a short rope from the proffered bunch and hobbles the goat by its hind legs. He lifts the young goat from his shoulders like Jason removing the golden fleece and puts him gently down by the church door. The kid struggles briefly against the hobble which is attached to his upper thighs but soon settles. He pets the kid behind the ears before coming to sit himself beside Gilbert under the mulberry stand and pulls off his boots. He trousers are covered in burrs and grass darts, he is coated in a pale red dust but his smile is broad. From his back pocket he pulls a crumpled red pack of Sante and offers one to Gilbert who scans the blonde woman on the box lid before taking one. They light their cigarettes and a silence descends as they savour the first hits of the smoke to their throats. "Tsikourdia?" asks Vantaris? "Why not?". Gilbert is still coming round. Vantaris strides over to the church door and reaches up above the door lintel whence he produces a rather simple Yale type key. He opens the door and disappears into the gloom. emerging moments later with a plastic water bottle of clear spirit in his left hand and a long thin grey stone in his right.

They sip in turn from the tsikourdia, the native Cretan spirit. "OK Vantaris, what's the plan? Does the kid have to go to the vet in Vrysses? Becky will be expecting me back - can you manage now? You can give me the rope back on Thursday." Vantaris produces two knives from one of the infeasible number of pockets that beset his trousers, one of which Gilbert is sure he recognises. "That curved knife ..." "Yes, Becky gave it to me ... said it was her very first lavender knife ... said it was blunt now and you didn't know how to sharpen it ..." Vantaris strokes the curved blade carefully across the stone concentrating intently. "But her knife had a pale blonde handle ... beech I think ... but that one - - ..." Vantaris laughs but sticks at his task "Blood Gil, blood will darken wood ... I changed the tip a little ... reground it ... it is a wonderful knife for cutting throats now ...". Gilbert now looks carefully at the other knife and feels a prescient twist in his stomach - it is a skinning knife, of that there is no doubt. He looks at Vantaris who looks up, his task complete, and holds him with his dark brown eyes and nods. He takes up the second knife and reapplies both it and himself to the stone. "Not here surely? ... the pappas will go berserk ..." Silence save for the blade on the stone, a distant cicada, the first Gilbert has heard this year, and a goat bell somewhere. Eventually Vantaris lays the knife and the stone to one side.

"You think I care what some black shrouded eunuch thinks? With their new religion? With their canting? With their churches built of our stones? With their gospels written in our language? You think I give a straw? My people were killing animals here before their Jesus was born ... before the Ottomans ... before the Venetians even... before the siege of Troy ... back in the times of Minos ... long before that arch-clown Evans "discovered" Knossos and made of it some archaeological joke? My people were in Egypt mummifying their Pharoahs when the Jewses were captives, slaves. Fuck the preist ... and fuck the truck he drives in on." Vantaris laughs long and loud. "Hey Gil, you know Zeus was born here? Of course you know. Near Psiloritis. You know how we know? Because Zeus killed his father and fucked his sister - how could he be anything other than Cretan? A Sfakian."

"Enough?" he says waving the nearly empty bottle?" Gilbert nods assent and Vantaris gets up and puts the bottle and the stone back in the church, locks it, and puts the key back in its hiding place. He bends and strokes the neck of the goat that stands perfectly still. He looks across to Gilbert "Come on Gil ... killing time ... for Manousos's baptism"

A new short story - part 6

2009-06-17T19:44:00.002+03:00

The incline is steep, Gilbert estimates perhaps 1 in 3, and soon his right leg has turned an icy cold. He is thankful for Vantaris' arm around him. "He was a big goat - massive eggs huh?" he turns and smiles at Vantaris who surprises him with a scowl. "The goat is strong ... plenty of power but ... but he only gets weaklings ... and his owner ... that Sifis ... he is a scoundrel ... is that correct? ... scoundrel? ... he has never served the same herd twice with that goat ... no repeat business ... but Sifis ships him around the island to poor goat herds who have not heard." "Scoundrel is a good word Vantaris, very good. And very apt."

The ice in Gilbert's leg has turned to hot needle points but he disregards it - they are entering the churchyard. Now they are in shade. "Give me a cigarette Gil." Gilbert reaches out a pack of Assos and they both light up, gulping the smoke hungrily and smiling. "How many packs these days Gil? When are you going to stop?" Vantaris' head jerks back and his full throaty laugh echoes off the church. "Did you write about the church yet? And the magic tree?" "Not yet ... well yes ... and no ... we are writing it now ... one pack, perhaps one and a half ... two when you help ... and I'll stop smoking the day after I die ... come on ... tell me what you need the rope for ..." Vantaris puts a finger to his lips and cocks his head to one side to listen. "Sit down Gil and rest your leg ... you will see ..." And then he is gone, bounding up the sheer rock face among the goats, his ragged boot laces trailing him like the tails of Chinese stunt kites.

Gilbert wakes from a dreamless sleep. All Gilbert's sleeps are dreamless. He peers through the basketweave of the hat that covers his face and gently rouses himself. The sound of goat bells rings around his head. Removing the hat completely he is amazed to see that his legs are covered in softly yellow butterflies. He is entranced and beguiled by this gentle blanket that delicately takes to the air air as he stirs and shows a pale green underside. He thinks of Marquez and grins at how appropriate is the word butterfly for these beautiful insects the colour of unadulterated butter (Gonepteryx cleopatra - ) and wonders about the origins of the Greek word petaloutha. His Marquez moment is brutally broken by Vantaris' huge, bell-like voice, "Gil, get the rope ready". The sun has passed over and he can clearly see Vantaris loping down a near vertical slope with a brown kid held around his neck like a living shawl - he is holding all four of the kid's feet, two in each hand. "Look ma, no hands ...", Gil thinks.

.

A new short story - part 5

2009-06-16T18:32:00.001+03:00

It was the height that gave him the clue - Vantaris, son of Manousos. In London Gilbert had not considered himself to be tall but on moving here it soon became apparent that he was taller than most Greeks - even the men - sometimes by a head but Vantaris stands nearly 2 meters in his bare feet. Vantaris, barefoot, breaks into a trot and shouts and waves, "Gil, my friend, how are you? Do you have some rope?". He swoops down, lifts Gilbert bodily out of the trough and hugs him tight. Planting kisses on Gilbert's cheeks in turn he puts him down gently and asks again "Do you have rope my friend? In your fortigaki? I need some rope." Gilbert grabbed Vantaris by the shoulder, "Wait, wait. How are your parents? You, I can see, are as hale as ever - you remember the word hale? And yes, I do have rope, in the back, behind the barrel". Vantaris hops up into the back of the little truck and Gilbert wonders again whether he wasn't part goat himself - surefooted, agile, and strong headed. Vantaris pulls the barrel that Gilbert uses as a tool box and roots around. "Where is it Gil? Yes, hale - it means I am in exceptional health and vigourous - from the Old English - aha - eureka - I have found it." Gilbert gives Vantaris an English lesson every week in a local cafe and Vantaris stubbornly tries to force Greek grammar into Gilbert's head. They drink frappe and they smoke and they laugh. "The family is well - you know we have a baptism soon? Little Manousos must have his name written in the book of life ..." his head thrown back he laughs ironically. He has a long length of rope wrapped around his hands and is testing its strength "Good rope Gil, you bought it here? Is there more? I need some more."

Gilbert has stepped back into the shade and eyes Vantaris through a pall of cigarette smoke, amazed at the energy of this young man and frankly envious of his rude fettle. "Plenty more - just look - what do you need it for?" Vantaris hops out of the truck and lands like a mature goat - rope in hand. "I have it Gil. Plenty of rope. Good rope too. Come on - you will help me." He drops down beside Gilbert and plunges his feet into the cold water in the trough oblivious of the wasps. "Come, I'll show you.Put your canisters in the truck. I'll help." Gilbert has accustomed himself over the years to this lack of please and thank you - the persistent and regular use of the imperative - but he still notices it. He grinds out the cigarette as Vantaris pulls on his dusty boots and soon they are climbing up the concrete incline to the churchyard, the canisters safely stowed. "Come Gil we have work to do. How is the lovely Becky? She is so beautiful. What she sees in an old man like you I can't imagine." He wraps his long arm around Gilbert's shoulder and seeps him along. A green Datsun truck sweeps past on the road below and a cloud of dust follows it. Standing in the back is a glossy black he-goat - Gilbert can see this much from where he stands.

A new short story - part 4

2009-06-15T18:13:00.002+03:00

Gilbert puts the worn and dusty boots into a shady spot and goes back to the pick-up to get the canisters. The sun is high and he pushes the hat forward to cover his eyes. As he approaches the spring he notices that the outlet of the trough in front of the spring is blocked and the trough itself is overflowing. A cloud of wasps hovers above the surface and Gilbert's skin gooses. A cold shiver runs through him. Gilbert doesn't think that he is frightened of wasps but they do make him cringe. These wasps are his least favourite - the ones with the articulated bodies and the dangling legs (Note for those interested: Gilberts bete noir here is the European paper wasp ). It is the clean, running water that draws them to the spring and the hotter the day the more wasps gather and today is a very hot day - the 6th in a row. Gilbert fans the cloud of wasps away from the trough with his hat and notices that the sweat band is black with sweat. He bends, scoops up a hatful of the cold clear water and tips it over his head. He rubs his eyes clear, steps tentatively into the trough itself and starts filling the first of three canisters - an 8 liter red one. The cloud of wasps however has reformed and hovers but a foot away.

Gilbert stays perfectly still until the canister is full at which point he screws the top on and hastily lights a cigarette. The wasp cloud moves off left slightly and Gilbert sighs and begins to fill another canister. While he fills, he smokes. He is filling the last canister when a shadow falls into his peripheral vision. He looks around and sees a tall, bearded Sfakian coming toward him. He drops the cigarette in surprise and squints at the ambling figure approaching from the churchyard. He has been here long enough to know to treat all Sfakians with respect.

A new short story - part 3

2009-06-13T17:34:00.002+03:00

Vantaris strides to the gate and peers up into the bright sun and toward the village. In his peripheral vision he glimpses one of the dark brown kids attempt an ambitious leap from one rock to another. Dark brown with a small white mark to the left of his tail. Vantaris notes it for future reference. The kid had landed badly and, in that seemingly insignifcant blunder. sealed its own fate. He shields his eyes and catches a flash of white as a small Fiat pickup negotiates one of the hairpin bends above. He takes a battered red box of Sante from his rolled up shirt sleeve and lights one. And he waits.

Gilbert drops the Fiat into third and sweeps into the bend with tyres howling - the sun has heated the road and softened the tyres. The empty water canisters slide across the truck bed behind him and he smiles, "I should have tied them down ... I always think of it ... and always it is too late ..." Remembering his old Citroen DS he automatically reaches for the column change and has to correct himself. "She was a beauty, but a farmer needs a pick up not a limousine ... she ate these hairpins ... and at night ... the headlights tracing out the bends before I got into them ... and the ride ... smoothing out the potholes ... she was a goddess indeed ... but we have to let go ... come on Pansy ... come on little pickup." And he uses the diesel's extra torque to make up for missing his gear change. As he rounds the last hairpin he sees the spring and coasts the last 50 meters.

Vantaris watches the little white Fiat come round the last bend and listens to the engine, "Bravo, - it is Gil, maybe he will have some rope. Of course he will have rope. Gil carries everything in that little fortigaki of his." The windows are wide open and Gil is wearing a huge straw hat tied on under the chin and smoking. "So Gil, he never uses the air-con" and he was back to his childhood when first he had met Gil.

He had been out with some friends and he had stayed long after them He had stayed too late - watching the buzzards in the gorge way below his village. It was dark but it had been spring then, and so it was not properly night-time. Gil had swept past him in the magnificent Citroen, the feeble headlights picking him out against the hedge only at the last moment but Gil had braked and waited for him to catch up. They had driven to the village in silence, his english had been very scant back then and Gil's Greek almost non-existent. To this day he recalled the smooth black leather of the seats and the utter opulence of the alien car. Even the smell of it lived with him yet. He had had the windows open that day - all of them - and refused to put on the air-con but it had only been much later, when they were real friends and he had been to the frontisteria for a few years that he had dared to ask why. Gil had patiently explained about how running the air-con used more petrol and reduced the speed of the car. Vantaris had not believed him and so Gil took him out onto the then new main coast road in in the Citroen to prove his point. demonstrated. One hundred and eighty kilometers an hour through the twists and bends late at night - he had been so exhilarated. And still Gil does not use the air-con. And neither does Vantaris.

The Fiat pulls up beside the spring and Gil gets out of the passenger door pushing his hat to the back of his head. Dust tumbles out after him. "Mother of god. has he not fixed that door yet?" Vantaris watches him take the water canisters from the back of the pickup and saunter over to the spring. "Will he see my boots?" he wonders. Gil does see the boots, and carefully moves them into a shadier spot before he reaches the spring itself. "Gil is good people" he says to himself " and the lovely Becky too. They are good people". He checks the goats, listening carefully to their bells and placing every single one of them on the rock faces before resuming his study of Gil.

A new short story - part 2

2009-06-11T19:02:00.001+03:00

Tiny tremors run through the soles of Vantaris' feet, his toes separate, and he arches. He is gradually waking himself and flexing his body. He rolls off his back and plants his bare feet on the red dirt that surrounds the bench, the same red dirt that the fields to the east expose to the beating sun. Dust rises just below the ridge that hides the lake. "Antonis is ploughing" he thinks "... watermelons again no doubt". He pulls his mobile from his shirt pocket and checks it. He looks to the sky to check the time. His shirt is black, the cuffs rolled back to his elbows. His trousers are black. Not solid black but a faded, weathered black. Not a north european black but a mediterranean black. Not the black that the tourists wear. Vantaris wears black because his family is from Sfakia but his father buys man made fabrics these days because the black does not fade. Vantaris respects the old ways and so has to buy a new shirt and new trousers for every family occasion - for weddings, for parties, for baptism and yes, for funerals. The very next day these clothes get circulated into his work clothes roster.

A stone falls behind him and he turns instantly, shouting. "Fige, fige!" he shoos the white goat away from the church grounds. The goat scrabbles back up the vertical face and looks back angrily. Vantaris waves his arm, "Fige ... ".

Satisfied that he has dealt with the white goat he fishes his iPod out of his back pocket and punches up some Pix Lax but no sooner has he put the earbuds in than he changes the song - Zavarakatranemia by Nikos Tsilouris - one of his all time favourites - Tsilouris, now there was a real man! His bare foot taps, he turns to look out over the bay and wonders where he left his workboots. The sky is almost white now - bleached out. "By the spring!". He had sat there and cooled his feet in the sweet mountain water before he came up here, before the sun was properly risen. The track finished, he runs his thick fingers through his thick, close cut hair and searches in a tussock of coarse grasses from which he removes a bottle of spring water. Safe from the sun it has kept a refreshing morning chill. He gulps deeply and sighs. Psarantonis's lyra announces the next track, from the 1996 Από Καρδιάς (De Profundis) album, - "No mistaking that sound" he says to nobody, to the goats maybe. But thinking of Psarantonis and Xylouris makes him think of his own brother - Andreas.

Andreas is a modern Cretan and Vantaris loves him and despises him all at the same time. Andreas runs the family hotels. He is a businessman. He drives a Porsche Cayenne and makes kamaki with the tourists. Named for his father's father, as eldest sons always are, Andreas is everything Vantaris hates about what is happening to his blessed island. "The Cretan gaze ... where is the Cretan gaze? Kazantzakis would not recognise these Cretans ... and if he did he would hate them too". He shouts up at the white goat again, gets to his feet, and drinks deeply the sounds and scents that surround him. A diesel engine.

A new short story - part 1

2009-06-10T21:56:00.001+03:00

Beyond the front apron of the little, immaculately white church that would look ramshackle had it not been lime washed last Clean Monday, perhaps 10 meters away, a stand of brutally pollarded mulberry trees has put on its summer leaf. Beneath the two parallel lines of 6 trees each side that are branch woven one into the other there are two rough hewn benches that are perfectly shaded now - only a scintilla of pure white early summer light minutely dapples the reclining body that lies there inert.

Behind the mulberry arbor another 10 meters the concrete ends with a broad painted kerb and beyond this the rock starts, and rises near vertically in protean lumps and crags. The cruel summer sun floods light onto the grey white rock faces and draws shadows as deep as a widows dress where here and there a glossy chestnut coloured goat can be discerned if one squints. A massive, slab sided, dirty white he-goat sporting an old testament length beard balances atop a massive crag seemingly looking down to where his goat herd rests. He is though, looking past the sleeping body and surveying instead the bright green foliage that leaks from the side window of the church.

The little church was built a long long time ago over the stump of a long dead tree. Nobody in the village can remember when the church was built or what sort of tree had once dominated this oasis beside the sweet water spring. Some old men sometimes spoke of their grandfather's grandfather's grandfathers having seen the tree in leaf but some old men will say anything with a few rakis taken. All that anybody had really ever known was that this place was blessed for centuries before the church was built there from stones hacked out of the rock face that today give it its backdrop. And then, last year, the tree came back to life.

The peripatetic priest had blessed it, claiming it for the Orthodox Church - not enough people lived in the village any more to justify a priest of their own. The old people suddenly revered it, proclaiming it miraculous. There are no young people in the village, and there have not been for more than 10 years. Nowadays the only time that childish laughter can be heard ringing in the village is when baptisms and weddings are conducted at the little church - it looks so quaint in the photographs. The villagers go there only to bury their contemporaries and to pick spring flowers to weave into wreaths on the 1st of May.

The graveyard, nearly full now, nearly bursting truth be told. faces north and overlooks the wide caerulean blue bay beneath. Old Pavlo tou Georgis had been buried on top of his wife rather than beside her this last winter and though the priest had been insistent that the gravedigger tell nobody the old folks had spent days checking paperwork, finding out how many bodies were already in the family tombs, discussing the problem in gruff whispers in the kafeneion. The photos and paintings on the massive marble tombstones have faded now and an air of unintentional neglect pervades the whole place. But on the south side fresh, fleshy, vital green leaves push out now through the crude stained glass. And the he-goat eyes it hungrily.

.

On acting and on reading

2009-06-09T20:37:00.001+03:00

There was a strange discussion that developed on Facebook today. Serpent's Tail posted that Tilda Swinton's service had been secured for the film version of "We Need To Talk About Kevin" - WNTTAK hereon in. Strange, and strangely illuminating.

I was first in, with a response that I thought it an excellent choice - that she is a talented actress but soon there was a thread developing that decried the choice on the basis that TS always played cold characters (the naysayers had clearly never seen TS in Julia) . Soon people were suggesting other actresses and in most cases they were vastly inferior actresses but one who had already portrayed characters similar to the poster's reading of the character in WNTTAK.

What these discussions illuminated is interesting. interesting and strange. First up is the idea of what an actor is. We seemed to be operating two separate definitions. In what I shall call the American definition an actor/actress is a person who appears in films until he or she is cast in a role not very far removed from their own real personality and is thenceforward cast forever in not very nuanced versions of the same role - think Jack Nicholson, think De Niro, Pacino and Hoffmann. The British definition is significantly different. In the British definition an actor or actress is a professional who can convincingly portray on stage, or celluloid, or even digital video a wide, and in the case of great actors an almost unlimited variety of characters nothing like their own real life personalities. Tilda Swinton is a great actress within the British definition and thus the WNTTAK role is well within her scope. I suspect the director understands this. I'll work with the British definition thanks - Tilda is a great choice

The second point raised is possibly more interesting and it has to do with reading. It is my opinion that film and literature are separate artistic disciplines (it was, interestingly enough also Joyce's opinion and was largely responsible for the birth of modernist literature) and so the very idea of film adapting literature is abhorrent to me. We know from our French cousins that there is no such thing a s definitive texts and that each reader gets from a text a different experience (it's a lot like radio having better pictures than film). What was happening in this Facebook discussion was that the contributors were projecting their readings of the book's characters and selecting actors who they had seen in similar roles. Of course this projecting of a reading is primarily a film director's job. He or she may or may not take any notice of the actor's reading even if the actor is of the kind to have a reading.

My point, in all of this? That acting is misconstrued. That the ideas that the laity have about film casting are deluded. That film adapting literature is a bad idea - for literature at least. That we do not think enough.

The Smoking Gun!

2009-06-09T18:09:00.001+03:00

I was lucky to have an English teacher who taught me how to read. Not how to read the individual signs and letter and words and sentences but how to read what a text was saying and how it was saying it. I use this skill assiduously and just in case you weren't so lucky here is an exercise.

Smoking costs the NHS five times as much as previously thought, researchers have calculated.

So begins a report on the BBC today. And we immediately know the tone to come.

Treating disease directly caused by smoking produces medical bills of more than £5bn a year in the UK.

It continues. Two sentences in and we have a concrete number. And, surprise, surprise, it's a shockingly big one!

In 2005, smoking accounted for almost one in five of all deaths and a significant amount of disability, the Oxford University team said.

Shocked by the big absolute number we can now have some percentages or in this case a ratio and an unquantified "significant amount". Percentages are always good but sometimes if you want to slip a guess through you need to hedge it with another, more precise number and "almost one in five" sounds pretty precise doesn't it?.

The British Heart Foundation who funded the research said tighter regulations were needed on the sale of tobacco.

And there's the punch line - because of these numbers we need ... No surprises there then. So there you have the entire content of the report - smoking causes problems that cost the NHS a lot of money so we need to do something legislative about it.

Not content with that the report decides to push it's point home but this is where it starts to unravel if we read the text closely. And the very next line begins the process.

The figure of £5bn in 2005-06 equates to 5.5% of the entire NHS budget.

OK, so smoking accounts for 20% of all deaths but costs the NHS only one twentieth of its budget. Did you see what I did there? I rounded their 5.5% down to a twentieth and re-expressed their almost one in five to 20%. And I added a carefully placed only. What's next?

Previous estimates have put the burden of smoking on the NHS at £1.4bn to £1.7bn, the researchers reported in Tobacco Control.

This sentence says, we used to think it was a big number but look, it's actually huge! Next up lets have an emotive inset quote from someone who sounds important.

This is money being drained out of the NHS as a direct result of something we have the power to prevent - Betty McBride, British Heart Foundation.

Yeah, that's a good one - "drained out" - like it isn't doing anything good or useful. Oh no, this is pure waste. Betty might be from the Heart Foundation but she seems not to have one - at least not for smokers. And that ending is good - a little ominous, but strong - we (without saying who this we is) can prevent all of this waste.

The next few paragraphs are key. Essentially they will now tell us that this is not new research. That these are not real numbers but "calculations" arrived at by extrapolating an old set of numbers using a set of other, unrelated, but newer figures from the WHO. Watch carefully how they do it and pass it off as genuine research.

But these were based on data from 1991 and because such studies are complicated to carry out, it has not been updated.

For the latest analysis researchers took into account data from the World Health Organization study of what proportion of a disease is caused by risk factors such as smoking, NHS costs and UK deaths from smoking-related diseases.

They calculated that in 2005, smoking was responsible for 27% of deaths among men and around one in 10 among women, a figure that has not changed much in the past decade.

When looking at the costs to the NHS, they calculated that treating cancer caused by smoking costs 0.6bn a year and cardiovascular diseases cost 2.5bn a year.

Long-term lung conditions cost £1.4bn.

Did you see that trick? All of the numbers in those paragraphs were qualified with "calculated" - right up until the final, big money number £1.4bn. That is given as an absolute. Interesting number that - £1.4bn - where have I seen that before? Oh yeah back up there when it was a previous estimate. Convenient. And now they are going to tell us that that number is an underestimate. And they are going to slip in the fact that the data that the report is based on are out of date.

Underestimate

This annual cost is still likely to be an underestimate, they say, because it does not include indirect costs, such as lost productivity and informal care, the costs of treating disease caused by passive smoking, or the full range of conditions associated with smoking.

However, the study is based on data collected before the ban on smoking in public places came into force.

And now we get to hear from the study leader. And he's a doctor! Not a mathematician or a statistician. or even an economist, you'll note, but a doctor.

Study leader Dr Steven Allender, said the increased costs were largely due to increasing expense of treatment on the NHS with better treatment and technologies.

"The story is not so much the five-fold increase but that £5bn is an enormous number regardless.

OK, so maybe he isn't a statistician but he recognises a big number when he's just made one up. That's right Steve, a five fold increase isn't much of a story but a big number? That's something that'll get you in the media. And please note that this increase is not the fault of the smokers but of the drugs and medical companies and the NHS itself. Time for another emotive inset - not money this time but dead people.

DEATHS FROM SMOKING
England - 90,000
Wales - 6,000
Northern Ireland 2,500
Scotland - 11,000

Set beside this horrific set of numbers (Note: no source for these number is cited.) we get the estimable Steve's studied prognostications.

"There's two different ways of looking at this - one is if nobody smoked we would save £5bn but the alternative view is this is an enormous health problem and should be moved back up the policy agenda."

I have no problem with the second view. OK it's not what's being proposed but it sure is what needs doing. What is actually being proposed is, as we have already learned, another set of moral legislation that passes itself off as health legislation. But the first point? So what are we saying here Steve? That the people who currently smoke wouldn't, if they gave up, ever impose on NHS funds? No Steve, they'd have to die for that to be the case. Whatever they do die from might be less expensive. But it might be more expensive - like a lingering death from Allzheimer's? Oops. But let's not go there. Let's just get on with beating the reader with big numbers.

Drawing on their previous work on other lifestyle issues, he added that smoking cost five times more than lack of physical activity, twice the cost of obesity and about the same as an unhealthy diet.

A separate paper published by the team in the Journal of Public Health found that alcohol consumption costs the UK NHS £3bn.

Not all their numbers either! Alcohol is cheaper than cigarettes!! But what about those last 3 figures? The comparative ones. What are they for? Well, I suppose they are all lifestyle choices but I detect some kind of overlap. I feel a Venn diagram coming on. But no. Let's just say that unhealthy diet costs the NHS the same amount as smoking does. Is that, as Betty McBride told us about smoking , money just being drained out of the NHS a s a direct result of something we have the power to prevent? Well, surprise surprise, here comes Betty again and apart from re-iterating her point she goes on to proclaim her final solution.

Betty McBride, policy and communications director at the British Heart Foundation, said: "This is money being drained out of the NHS as a direct result of something we have the power to prevent.

"Yet the true tragedy of this monstrous figure is the lives that are cut short or ruined as a result of smoking.

"This study shows exactly why we need the strongest possible measures to control the sale of tobacco."

And here comes the DoH to back her up.

A Department of Health spokesperson said: "The government has made great progress in cutting the number of people smoking by nearly 2.5 million over the last ten years but with 21% of adults still smoking in England, there is much work left to do.

"We will be publishing a new tobacco control strategy this year to ensure England can look forward to a tobacco-free future."

Some people might be looking forward to a tobacco-fre future but not me. And not a whole lot of other people either. Do we get a say in this? I think not! Betty, Steve, and the spokesman from the DoH have settled all this with a few big, made up numbers. And now here comes the BBC house policy - right at the end they have to get a quote from a dissenting voice. Not a reputable doctor, or economist, or statistician but a spokesman for the smoker's lobby group (the implication is that he is not credible).

However, Simon Clark, from the smoker's lobby group Forest, said the figure in the report was a guesstimate, and should be treated with contempt.

Mr Clark said it was preposterous to suggest that the cost of smoking to the NHS had risen dramatically, as smoking rates had been falling for 50 years.

He said: "Even if it was true, smokers still contribute twice that amount to the Treasury in tobacco taxation and VAT.

"Far from being a burden on society, smokers make an enormous financial contribution."

And strangely enough he actually makes 3 sound points. Too bad that he has already been discredited as a crank.

Read the whole article as presented on the web here

Book Review - Chapel Road by Louis Paul Boon

2009-06-02T20:21:00.001+03:00

Louis Paul Boon is not much translated into English - 3 books out of at least 11 major works at the last count. The Wikipedia page on Belgian writers does not list him as such despite the fact that he was born in Belgium. The Dalkey Archive, who publish Chapel Road, have him in their Netherlandic Literature series.

Rumoured to have been considered for the Nobel prize for literature in the late 1970s Boon is largely either overlooked or ignored in English speaking countries and the only reason that I can imagine for this lacuna is that he was a committed socialist.

Boon, on the limited evidence of this work, was a hugely talented and inventive writer who in some ways prefigures such current greats as B S Johnson and James Kelman. Boon abandoned the Dutch language for the lower status Flemish for his major works and this adoption of a regional dialect actually figures as a social marker in Chapel Road.

Chapel Road is a great book - flawed but great. Boon winds 3 apparently separate and yet connected threads together into a rope of narrative and commentary that beguiles, amuses, and amazes by every chapter and page. The writer Boon and his friends comment on the ongoing composition of the tale of Ondine - a girl from an earlier age and her social aspirations and bizarre family in an industrial town while Boon's friend, the journalist Johan Janssens retells the fable of Reynard and Isigrenus to echo both of the other threads.

Boon wanted the book to be published using an array of different fonts and colors, and intended initially to include actual photographic reproductions of the clippings and documents he wanted to quote—thus anticipating W. G. Sebald, However, publishing companies of the day couldn’t—or wouldn’t—cope with Boon’s demands and it seems that his wishes cannot, worse luck, be honoured.

Boon eventually stopped writing in 1969 and took to painting instead. Perhaps he had nothing more to say. Chapel Road is a landmark novel and worthy of elevation to the pantheon and the canon. It is hugely entertaining and beautifully innovative. It is funny and tragic. It is cleverly crafted and intense.

The flaw? It is only my opinion but I find it a tiny bit too openly polemical but that could so easily be my problem and not his.

Read this book!

3 New Lights

2009-05-21T20:19:00.002+03:00

When Gill came back the other night from taking the dogs to their run she remarked on a couple (it turned out to be three) new lights on the opposite ridge of the valley. At first we thought it might be a late night silaging session but the following night they appeared again - and they stayed.

A little thinking and a little investigation revealed that the council have installed road lighting on the Kastellos to Dramia road that runs on the other side of the ridge and in one place the ridge dips sufficiently to reveal 3 of these lights to our gaze.

Light pollution! When we first moved into this house there were no lights visible from our balconies save one or two in Kastellos village which is a good 5 kilometers to the south. In fact the first time we switched on a light here we attracted every moth and light loving insect for a 20 kilometer radius. The balcony soon disappeared beneath a blanket of insect life. We had to extinguish the light and go out to a taverna until they left.

A year or three later the roads authority erected massive sodium lamps on the main highway a kilometer or so to the north. This was the beginning of the end of our isolation although it took them a good year to get them working reliably at night rather than during the day.

And this winter the local council put road lights on our track - just 3 of them but ...

OK, we can still see more of the milky way than we had ever seen before moving here. Yes, we do have hundreds of thousands of stars visible on a clear night. Yes, we can navigate our garden by moonlight at full moon and check out the roof fittings in its shadow.

And as I write this it occurs to me - who else would notice 3 new street lights more than a kilometer away? We are lucky.

One more summer?

2009-05-06T07:58:00.001+03:00

No more false hopes.
No more unreal expectations.
No more miracle cures on distant horizons.
This, my love is it.
This, my darling, is the start of our goodbye.

But how do we arrange this parting?
When both of us were younger we
parted from other lovers
but now?
how?
Parting is for youngsters
Departing is for old timers
For us.

In all these years together
I have loved you

No less over time
More if anything

And if the years have raddled us
still our tatterdemaillion suits us well
and can take nothing from this love

I cry bitter tears
my mouth is full of ashes
but this has to be

One more summer my love?
and then goodbye.

Torrents, Pirates, Demons and assorted others

2009-04-17T20:31:00.001+03:00

Given the frankly bizarre judgment handed down against the guys who run The Pirate Bay can we now expect the parasitic, bloodsucking, moneygrubbing dickwads who run the film and music "industries" to go after Google. Yahoo and their ilk? Given that not one of those guys actually hosts any copyright protected material on their own machines then as far as I can see they all do pretty much the same thing.

Type "there will be blood" torrent into google or any reputable search engine and you will be able to download a copy of the film ideirectly from links they provide ( google wil give you 429,000 results).

So come on guys (RIAA etc) take on these giants in court and lets see how you do.

Western Justice

2009-04-17T18:41:00.001+03:00

So let's get this straight:
you host links to files that other people want to share and you go to prison for a year and cop a £3m fine
you torture innocent civilians in order to prove that they are neither innocent nor civilians and you walk away
you leak state secrets and you walk away
you beat peaceful protesters or innocent bystanders on the streets of London and you get suspended from work on full pay
anything else or will that do for now?

Hold on thought there are couple of others:
you host and train Al Qaeda and Taleban forces, you oppress the women in your state, you take the piss out of any idea of proper western democracy and you get given $5 bn dollars to stop it - well, to stop the terrorist training thing anyway
you invade all of your neighbouring states, seize their lands, drop white phosphorous on innocent civilians and refuse to allow them free movement, and you ignore all UN sanctions against you and you get, every year, in perpetuity the largest slice of US foreign aid

That's justice!

Eye don't believe it!

2009-04-17T17:45:00.001+03:00

So we went to the oculist on Wednesday - no appointment just sit and wait - we waited maybe 40 minutes and both went in for our full eye tests - the works - field of vision the lot - twenty five minutes later we have 2 new prescriptions for the reading glasses and a bill for 50 euros which is 10 less than what it cost us 2 years back.

Take the scrips to the optician we used 2 years ago and he takes a note of the necessary - the lenses will be here tomorrow at 11 - bring your frames in and it'll take 35 minutes - whenever suits you - top notch lenses - 130 euros for the lot - yes we're open on Good Friday - and off we go.

Went back this morning at about 11:20 with our frames - oh I'm so sorry the technician doesn't come in until 12:00 - come back at one and they'll be ready - we go and do our things - have a coffee and wander back at around one - the shop is heaving - every Greek and her husband is trying on new season's sunglasses and Mr Optician is under great pressure - he leaves his customer and comes over to apologise - sorry they aren't done yet - we've been so busy - come back in 15 minutes - I promise! We fight our way out past bespectacled bubble cuts and drift off to the mosque - which is shut this being Good Friday and all. 20 minutes later we fight our way through an ever growing crowd of potential sunglass purchasers and still they aren't ready - Mr Optician is profuse in his apologies and rushes to the back of the shop where we assume the technician is working - we wait - Mr O apologises several times - each time more desperate than the time before - and so it goes on we wait - he checks back and apologises - until ... finally he brings the newly minted specs over with an eye chart at about 2 o'clock. Perfect vision. He apologises or rather doesn't - I cannot apologise, there are not the words! We get ready to pay and he waves our money away - no, no, not after all that waiting - I couldn't take your money! We try but he is adamant.

We have our new specs for free! Where else in the world?

Book Review - RED THE FIEND by GILBERT SORRENTINO

2009-04-16T20:51:00.001+03:00

Gilbert Sorrentino has long been on my list of great American writers. He's been at the top of that list for quite a while now and so when a great friend of mine sent me a copy of Red The Fiend I was keen to read this later work (1995). This is the latest of his works that I have read and yet he produced 5 more books before he died in 2006 so I still have 5 treats in store.

Since Steinbeck effectively laid down his pen in 1962 few American novellists have addressed themselves to the issues of the American working classes even though it is arguable that the working class plight now is worse even that it was in Steinbeck's time. Bellow, Roth and Updike all produced middle class novels for the American middle classes. Sorrentino and his great friend Hubert Selby wrote of the working classes though I doubt that the working classes read their work. Red The Fiend is a novel about a small, tight, american working class family.

Red The Fiend is a brilliant novel that examines, dissects, documents and observes the creation of a monster or fiend. In his trademark elegant sentences, with his unfailing ear for dialogue, and with the inventiveness that marks him as a genius Sorrentino invites us to watch, and smile, as a young boy is turned into Red The Fiend. Only Pynchon can handle the grotesque with humour anywhere near as well as Sorrentino. At times I felt as though I was watching a train crash happen as I read this book and felt almost ashamed that I was laughing openly.

Red's grandmother may well be the most unpleasant character in all of literature but despite this she is frighteningly convincing - no caricature this - this is the real thing and all the more terrifying for that realism. Red The Fiend is in fact peopled by a fair few very nasty pieces of work. I cannot imagine that anybody who has read this book will ever forget it.

Despite the genius of the narration, the polished brilliance of the language, the darkness of the subject matter, and the unforgettable nature of the things that happen in this book the truly stunning thing about this novel is the fact that it is so easy for the reader to fail to notice just how exceptional it is as a novel. Sorrentino wrote some of the greatest 20th century novels but in Red The Fiend he wrote a genuine 21st century novel and yet you could be forgiven for not noticing - he does it so well.

Red The Fiend runs to only 213 pages but contains 49 chapters. 49 chapters that could probably be read in almost any order. It is direct. It is unforgettable. It engages immediately and lastingly. It achieves what B S Johnson once described as the only point of the novel - telling the truth by telling stories. And it does so in an almost entirely new way. Red The Fiend points the way ahead for the novel.

Book Review - The Busconductor Hines by James Kelman

2009-04-04T18:58:00.001+03:00
James Kelman is the only Brit shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2009. His novel A Disaffection which I reviewed here previously was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction in 1989. His novel How late it was, how late won the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1994. With the possible exception of J G Ballard he is probably the finest Brit writer of English active today.

There are no heroes in Kelman. There are no massive plot arcs, no tricksy twists, no gratuitous redemptions. Kelman specialises in real life - and brilliant clear prose. His ear is acute for ordinary Scottish Glasgow dialect and he records it in such a way that it rings from the page. His eye for the telling trivial vignette is piercing and he puts these snatches of dialogue and fragments of life together in such a skilled way that you slow down your reading pace to savour them. I am always sad to finish a Kelman work be it a short story or a a novel - The Bus Conductor Hines is no exception.

Rab Hines is a bus conductor. He is not a great bus conductor - his record is poor. He hates the job.Rab Hines is a husband and father. He is neither a great husband nor a wonderful father. Rab is just like you and me - pretty ordinary. Rab gets by. He does his best. He makes the most of what he has - even the no-bedroomed tenement flat under threat of imminent demolition that he and his family inhabit uncomfortably.

Quite simply put James Kelman does what few novelists these days can do - he describes the ordinary and makes it true. He chooses and uses his language to convince you of the humanity in all of us. Long may he continue so to do.

The zen of olive pruning

2009-04-04T17:07:00.001+03:00
How does one prune olives? Do you prune your own? Would you prune mine for me - I'll pay you? In that case, would you show me how to prune mine? So ... clean the middles so the sun can get in, and remove and crossing branches, and cut out anything growing straight up. That's it? OK ... and bring the canopy down if we want to pick by hand? How far down? I need to take about 2 metres off? Are you sure? And take off any suckers. Like an umbrella? OK.

The only thing certain about olive tree pruning here in Crete is that there are as many opinions about it as there olive farmers or maybe as many as there are trees. I spent 3 years asking people about how to do it. I spent 5 years asking "experts" to do it for me. In the end I bit the bullet and decided to do my own. It could not be put off any longer - our ladders no longer reached the upper olives. I began with the oil trees - we have 12 eating olive trees and 80 oil trees.

I started with all of the wisdom incorporated in paragraph 1 above and a simple summary sentence from a Californian web site dealing with the knotty subject of olive tree pruning - "a badly pruned olive tree is better than an unpruned olive tree". I wish I could attribute that pearl but I've lost the link. I decided to eschew the use of a chain saw - too traumatic for the trees I felt: and I hoped that standing before a majestic and ancient tree with just a handsaw would make me think carefully before making that first fateful stroke.

My first tree truly daunted me as I stood before it for perhaps 40 minutes. I must have looked almost paralysed - maybe dumbstruck. I could not help thinking of those stories about painters, frightened and awed by a blank canvas, tentative, and considering all of the possible first brushstrokes knowing that there is only one correct first move. That everything flows from there.

In time I overcame the fear and inertia and entered the tree - literally stood in the middle of the tree feeling the rough bark of that timeless life force against my back and gazing skyward - and so I set to. Every tree was different - unique. Every tree was a new problem to be solved and with every tree I became more confident: I cut more boldly. When the last tree was done I went back to the beginning and redid the first half dozen with my new confidence.

And I was pleased with what I had wrought. But what did I know? Five weeks later a local olive farmer came to visit and remarked on how good the trees looked - " ... who pruned them? ... and would he perhaps do mine?" When I explained that I had in fact done them myself there was a palpable wave of admiration, a hearty slap on the back and a loud "Bravo". We drank some rakis on the strength of it.

In the following year this scene replayed itself time and again - locals loved my pruning and admired my "brutality". Men I admired heaped praise on my efforts and slapped my back. And then came the harvest. Despite my ministrations we had a decent crop and they were so easy to pick - everything within easy reach - no ladders required. But the cherry on top of the cake was when the organic certification people came for our first farm inspection and congratulated me on the trim of the trees - "... the best in the valley".

There is now something strangely satisfying, something oddly creative, almost spiritual for me about pruning olive trees. This year it has been the turn of the eating olives and they, I think, have been neglected for longer than had the oil trees. They are bigger and have a different configuration and even a different habit - they have posed a new challenge.

For the past two weeks I have been studying each tree as I have passed it. Cutting bamboo for the last week has allowed me to study every one in some detail. By the time I am ready I have a sketch of an approach in my head. I walk around the tree several times eyeing it from all angles. I check my mental sketch and adjust my start point if necessary. I absorb the treeness of this particular tree and take it on board. When I am at one with the tree I step inside it and clear any obstacles to my view and freedom of movement. From there on in it is a simple, matter of taking away all those parts that are not of the essence of the tree that I know is in there. I once heard a wood carver being interviewed on radio and the interviewer asked him about how he began carving for example an elephant from a hunk of tree. His reply stuck with me and I understood it artistically without taking it properly on board - "... the elephant," he explained, as if to a child, "is inside the wood. All I have to do is to take away the parts that are not elephant". Now I know exactly what he meant.

What is it you don't understand Ed?

2009-03-02T20:08:00.001+02:00

"Schools Secretary Ed Balls has asked the chief schools adjudicator to look at how widely random selection is used and whether it is fair to children."

This one had me shouting at the radio "What is it you don't understand Ed? Random selection is, by definition fair - any other system just isn't". The different guises that selection for secondary education establishments has taken on since UK governments started talking up the idea of parental choice - including "faith", economic ability, locations and any other nonsense that they can come up with have been blithely accepted but when schools decide to make at least some of their selection truly fair the ubergruppenfuhrer f schools goes ape. It has to be stopped! So, deciding on a child's educational options based on which nutty religion his parents follow or profess to follow is OK - deciding the same thing on how close his or her parents can afford to move to the required school - that's fair but making a random selection isn't? Did this Balls guy not have an education?

Maybe, just maybe, his objection to this incredibly fair system is that his middle class pals cannot rig this system to suit their spoiled little bratty kids. You think?

BookReview - The Lavender Way

2009-02-19T17:28:00.002+02:00
Somebody over at LibraryThing (a guy called Larry Riley) reviewed The Lavender Way this week and I'm reet made up about it. Read it now - and then order yourself a copy of this amazing book from the LuLu link on this page:

LibraryThing review by Larry Riley (US)

GAG reflux - competition done

2009-02-04T19:20:00.039+02:00
One of the reasons that it's been quiet here (maybe not the chief reason but one of them) is because I have been taking part in an online novel competition over at the Telegraph. Well it's done now. I posted the last episodes today and while I'm not over the moon about the result, it was worth doing. I stayed within all of my self set constraints and, of course, meets all of the competition requirements. It comes out at about 20,000 words and I have already started thinking about how to make it available as an e-book using Sophie. I'll let you all know when it's ready in that format but for now I'm posting a list of relevant links in the order in which episodes were posted. Be aware that there are hyperlinks out from some of these episodes - follow whichever ones take your fancy (or none at all - or all of them - it's up to you). Enjoy

Opening Gambit

Next Moves

Third Part

Uncoverings

Super5

Balcony Xania Harbour

The Makeshift Morgue

Good and Gone

Unravelling and Ravelling

Calling...calling...calling...

Flies

Happy Like Killers

Blood Insect

Found and Lost

Unveiling

Ceramic Beheading

Job Jobbed

Book Review: Moon Palace by Paul Auster

2009-01-26T19:17:00.000+02:00
Moon Palace is novel of searching. When we discover that our hero's name is Marco Stanley Fogg the signpost is well and truly planted. Marco Polo, Henry Morton Stanley and Phileas Fogg could hardly be associated with much else. When we then discover that he refers to himself as MS we get the secondary reference: man as an unfinished book - writing himself as he goes. Now, given that M S Fogg is an orphan it is quite clear that we shall be having a story of a man seeking his father and his identity that will feature book quite heavily - Auster likes his heres literary where possible. And so it goes. Auster's twist here is that he finds not only his father but his father's lost father too. Auster is in love with the list of three and the trilogy as an idea so the fact that we end up with the father, the son, and the grandfather is no surprise. Auster takes us and his hero through adventures with books, adventures in the wild west, and adventures with his father to arrive at M S Fogg finding himself having lost his antecedents.

Paul Auster is a very good writer. I was going to refer in this review to two previous reviews that I have written of his works: New York Trilogy and Oracle Nights but it transpires that while I wrote the reviews (in my head - which is where my composition actually happens) I have never written them down or should that be written them out, or published them. Which is a shame but not a disaster. To summarise I loved New York Trilogy which is a trio of novellas and I felt that Oracle Nights while good would have been better as a set of novellas. The same criticism, if it is a criticism applies to Moon Palace. It is essentially three novellas telling what is essentially the same story. After 90 pages or so I felt that the point was made and the text complete. I could see the joins where Auster has glued the three stories "together" into a "novel" and I resented it as a a writer. I suspect that Auster's publishers encourage him to write novel length fiction when his real strength is the novella. Alternatively he has not come to terms with his own metier. By all means tell me the same tale 3 ways - I'm happy with that but don't gussy it up and tell me it's a traditional novel.

Oh ... Bah ... Humbug

2009-01-20T20:25:00.001+02:00

The inauguration today of yet another american president is not an historic moment. The world has not changed. And nor will it - in any significant way.

We are told that he is to be the first black president of the US. He is not really black. He is of mixed race and as far as I can make out had he been born in his father's country and not his mother's (and Hawaii has only been in the US for two years when he was born) he could not have even run for president let alone been elected.

We are told that he is an inclusive politician but then that's what we were told about his predecessor the idiot George W Bush.

We are told that he is a new broom in the middle east despite his pledge to back Israel all the way during his campaign. He may be but do not kid yourself that he will change anything very significantly. He is just another politician made in the mould of all politicians and as such is simply the most recent mouthpiece of the forces that actually run the systems that punish us all daily.

So go on Obama prove me wrong - change the world significantly for the better. You have 4 years. If you get 8 years it means you will have failed - nobody gets a second term unless they have proven that they aren't going to do anything to damage the systems.



Sorrentino meets B S Johnson on the fridge

2009-01-11T14:35:00.001+02:00

Book Review - The Bloomsday Dead by Adrian McKinty.

2009-01-10T15:04:00.001+02:00
Adrian McKinty is great addition to the noir genre. This is apparently his fourth novel featuring Michael Forsythe a particularly unlikable fellow originally from Ireland but whom we find managing an hotel in Peru under the witness protection program. McKinty swiftly transport him, and us the readers, to a post-ceasefire Ireland on Bloomsday 2004 to find and recover the kidnapped daughter of an Irish American lady gang boss. So there you have the opening - fast and mobile - a great start to any book and especially a thriller.

Besides leaking more and more plot and background to us as we go along McKinty also tests our knowledge of modern Irish literature with his references to Flann O'Brien and reminds us on every page, with a subtle typographic device, of James Joyce. McKinty is knowing and knowledgeable, as is his anti-hero Forsythe, and one gets the impression that he is smiling to himself as he writes. I found myself smiling along with him.

Apart from a dreadfully contrived opening line that had me reaching for the sick bag I have only one quibble with McKinty and that has to do with the length of this novel - 50 or 60 pages shorter would have made it a much better book. He needs, in my opinion, to edit himself more harshly to get up there with the top flight.

Book Review: Nightmare in the Street by Derek Raymond

2009-01-03T12:38:00.001+02:00
DO NOT READ THIS BOOK UNLESS YOU ARE STUPID

Derek Raymond was a great writer. Together with Colin Wilson, Derek Raymond invented British noir. HIs books are beyond hardboiled. He takes the reader into deep and dark territory. The Factory Series that he wrote between 1984 and 1990 will enter the worldwide canon of noir novels and I Was Dora Suarez may go down as the acme of noir.

That said, Nightmare in The Street is awful. It is not just bad - it is terrible. But ... that is not Derek Raymond's fault, the typescript for this travesty was discovered after his death and in my humble opinion it should have been immediately destroyed. It is so clearly not a finished work - probably a first draft in fact - that it cannot be counted in his ouevre. The publishers do not even appear to have employed an editor familiar with his style. This text is so rough, so unpolished, so unpared that it is an insult to his memory and talent and a cynical moneymaking con on his readers.

Read any other Derek Raymond novel but do not read this.

Books for Xmas, books for birthday, books from xmas bazaars - books are wonders

2008-12-31T17:14:00.002+02:00

I told you I might

2008-12-29T21:34:00.001+02:00

Today's efforts - and context (click on the photos for large versions)

Wordplay

2008-12-29T15:16:00.001+02:00

This xmas I asked for and received (tip of the hat to Charlie and Frank) a set of 40 lower case magnetic letters. I had spotted these on Lindz's (one of my blood daughters) amazon wishlist (a great idea from amazon the wishlist) and immediately stole it (that's what good ideas are for - theft). My idea was to fiddle around on a daily basis with this limited set of letters to create idea generators but I find myself much busier than that with them - they have become almost addictive - they cry out to me from the fridge (and the cooker hood, but more of that later) and beg to be shuffled into more or less obscure phrases - even whole sentences. The psychology of this new, self induced, behaviour probem must surely be fascinating to someone other than me? No? No pathological scrabblers out there who don't play scrabble? No wordsmiths - or should that rather be lettersmiths? The humour and the mental exercise I get is fun though I'm unsure as to whether it will last (the obsession not the fun) and frankly who cares?

Hey guy, what about the cooker hood? You said you'd get to it and you haven't - don't leave us wondering.

OK - the cooker hood is right by the fridge door and since we don't have one of those enormous american fridges the letters and phrases first cast were looking cramped and overcrowded and the base of the cooker hood started to beckon - looking surprisingly like a musical stave and offering typographic nuances so nowadays as the letter shuffle discipline devlops the cooker stave is the first line thought/product and the fridge door is the remaindered letter section.

I think I'll post photos of the game in progress on an occasional basis - maybe I'll comment on them - maybe not ... (the preceeding sentence is purposely ambiguous - it's how I feel right now) ...

Book Review: A Disaffection by James Kelman

2008-11-29T19:53:00.000+02:00
There are a number of ways to write a book review but by and large I stick to the simple, selfish formula: I write reviews in a straightforward way that I would like to read. I like to read reviews that allow me to make up my own mind about whether what's reviewed is for me or not. Mostly that suits me: I have no axe to grind - I'm just telling the reader what I thought of a book.

This time though I have an axe - I really want you to read this book - I want to share it with you - this is a great book, not just a good book but a great book. This book demonstrates what the new novel can be - should be. Kelman is a true successor to Joyce and Beckett: he is the British Sorrentino but whereas it is difficult to find Sorrentino's influence flowing through American literature Kelman's legacy is set already with writers like Agnes Owens, Roddy Doyle and Irving Welsh.

I could bore you with a list of writers who influenced Kelman directly or indirectly but that would be pointless, simply accept that Kelman did not arrive at his style from nowhere, a broad wealth of British experimentation with the novel preceded his breakthrough.

Kelman uses dialect (Glaswegian) and vernacular throughout his prose and not just in the dialogue which is possibly difficult for anybody who has never heard a Scots accent but for those who have it is a simple matter to read tricky bits out loud to understand. HIs eye and his ear are nearly 20/20 and pitch perfect and, although there is little in the way of plot there is such a wealth of insight and nuance that one sometimes has to consciously draw breath and take pause to digest.

He has one ploy that I particularly enjoy and that is to have his protagonist form and partly answer a question (usually about himself or his trajectory) and then leave the reader to complete the response for himself or herself - in this way Kelman draws the reader into the very soul of the protagonist and by the end of this wonderful novel you have a very good understanding of the very nature of disaffection.

Kelman is very good and this is a fine example of the modern novel - I urge you to read it.

Lies, damned lies and, fundamental market conditions

2008-11-20T20:33:00.001+02:00

Does anybody recall the fuss a few months back when oil prices were going up - up and up? Eventually the $100 per barrel barrier was breached and all this while the economic pundits were denying that the cause for this astronomic stupidity was occasioned by a glut of mad equity investors plunging into commodities. The news programmes were stuffed with economic experts happily telling us that the rises were inevitable given market fundamentals - that the whole thing was the fault of those middle easy potentates not producing enough of the stuff - or that is was the slanty eyed creeps in China using it all up in their rush toward affluence.

Well here we are some months later and oil dropped below $50 dollars a barrel today. So somehow either the supply and demand equation magically balanced itself out or those "experts" were telling us porkies. What do you think?

I'm sorry - I just don't understand this

2008-11-10T18:56:00.001+02:00

We've been living here full time for 6 years now and for ten years on and off before that and we've come to terms with a great number of cultural differences but some things still shock me.

I'm constantly explaining the very different types of relationship that older generation Greeks have with their domestic animals to the north European model that we are familiar with. Ours is an overly anthropomorphic. sentimental one whereas the prevailing model here is a more distanced, pragmatic, utilitarian one. I understand both and can fins things to praise and condemn in both positions of the spectrum.

Notwithstanding that analytical understanding and acceptance of difference I was stunned and dismayed to find the corpse of a fully grown (obviously well nurtured) adult Dobermann dog casually discarded next to the bins at the end of our road today.

This I do not understand.

The future is NOT in eggs

2008-11-09T19:32:00.000+02:00
I have an allergic eczema outbreak and part of the treatment involves limiting my diet_ Pinned to the fridge is a list of when and how much medication is due but there is another list - a list of foods I must abstain from for the next 20 days:

eggs - not a problem - I hate eggs - they are disgusting and make me retch, even the smell of them - mayonnaise though that's a different matter

fish & seafood - ho hum - fish is expensive and not a great love of mine - no great loss

cheese - oh dear - I love cheese - this is really stressful - cheese sandwiches, parmesan and peccorino on pasta - this is a trial

nuts - it is currently chestnut and wet walnut season - this one is painful - and no cashews either - roll on the end of this restriction

carrots - this one is easy I ain't bugs bunny and in casseroles one can always substitute leeks which are much tastier though less colourful

chocolate - chocolate in summer here is so unappetising but now that winter is on it's way the odd Mars bar every day is good but I can wait - now if there were Topics in the fridge this would be a nightmare

banana - my least favourite fruit after oranges and oranges are not the only fruit

strawberries - I love these with champagne but as we have no champagne and strawberries are out of season this is a breeze

apples - no great loss - I prefer pears

pork and pork products - ouch - this one hurts - bacon? no bacon? no ham - no xirino me selino - like I said - ouch

no preservatives or colourings - luckily most of our food is fresh and not processed so apart from prolonging the lifespan of the OK sauce we got in London this is no big deal

I can do this

Worth 3,000 words?

2008-11-08T16:46:00.001+02:00

Mute in the presence of beauty

2008-11-07T20:02:00.002+02:00
The sky was split in two east west when the girls caught up with me having a smoke and so ominous was the east that Gill checked that she had an umbrella with her. We smoked and talked and began to anticipate the Rothko over at Tate Modern. Lindz was all excitement - she had never seen Rothko save in books though she was acutely aware of my love for his work - she has been sending me Rothko calendars for many a year. But when I tried, in my artistically illiterate way, to explain to her that one does not see Rothko works so much as experience Rothko's work she was nonplussed. It's to do with size and power and emotion and pure physicaity of colour ... I trailed off. I become mute in the presence .... anyway, you'll experience it yourself soon enough. OK, let's go - we'll take the river boat I think.

As we walked the embankment Gill and I recalled the amazing evocation of it that Eva Figes manages (The Tree of Knowledge is it or Nelly's Version - maybe a reader here will clear it up for me - maybe it's neither). It seems my memory of this place is more closely linked now to literature than to the multitude of actual, physical experiences of the place itself. Is that to do with the effect of time or the power of the word? A chill swept along the river with the tide and brought us back to London proper and to Lindz.

As we waited for the river boat a chill of apprehension came over me at the very idea of being with Rothko again. I had, for several years before leaving the UK, used the Rothko room (Tate Modern's permanent exhibition of some of the Seagram Murals) as a place to meditate and think up new ideas (it was only a 77 bus ride away) but had even after that regular exposure still never been able to enter the room without gasping. And to think - Rothko was always worried about his legacy!

I missed the Houses of Parliament but when the Eye and the whole South Bank complex came into view memories came flooding with the tide and in no time at all we were mooring in front of the old Bankside Power Station - a place we had spent Sundays in summer long before it became Tate Modern. And off we trooped a trois, picking our way through happy familes and bemused foreign sight seers.

We eschewed the first entrance, choosing instead to enter directly into the massive and massively impressive Turbine Hall and Lindz trooped off to pick up our tickets (Lindz was picking up all the tabs today - sweetie!). I was gathering myself. Up the escalator - and there it was. We took the leaflet proffered by a young man in sports clothing who was ushering us all through the entrance. I hung back, averting my eyes from the first room and checking the leaflet - 9 rooms - the black on blacks that I've never experienced, the brown and greys, ditto, and even the black on grays - wow!. And then it happened - my peripheral vision had picked up the first room and locked in on it - I was caught and was being reeled in. My heart slowed, a lump formed in my throat and without any notice I found myself crying - floods - and suddenly I found myself standing in awe and wonder in room 3 where the Seagram Murals - 15 of them? 14? it's impossible to count and who really cares - surrounded by this amazing hanging I am shattered - I am gasping and trying to control both my tears and my breathing. Gill is beside me - she anticipated this. This is joy. Pure and simple joy. Lindz is shocked, people are looking at me and frankly I just don't care - in the presence I am autistic - incapable of communication - mute and wordless - the work speaks to me - I have no need for speech - I have nothing sensible to say.

From there on it was dumb man walking. Hyper-attentive and over-stimulated I took it all in - every room a revelation and an immersion, seeing and hearing nobody - taking it all in - a pair of eyes and a mind.

Really - I have no words.

THE REAL THING - ish - better still go to the exhibition if you can - you may never get another chance

Bacon - no sausages - no eggs

2008-11-06T19:41:00.000+02:00
We hurried on down a side street and cut through the grounds of Lindz's old college - beautifully restored now and a haven of light and peace and eventually we came out at the new entrance to Tate Britain - an entrance we had never seen before. We had, apparently, an 11 o'clock slot and guessed that we might have time for a coffee before tackling the dark master of 20th century British art. Lindz ran off in her sweet pigeon toed way to pick up our tickets and Gill and I sought out the new cafeteria to pre-order.

And so we chattered on for half an hour - catching up and simply enjoying the company - until Lindz checked her watch and urged us forward to the entrance. We were a little late for our slot but the uniformed guardian handed us each a 10 page boklet and then swept us inward with minimal hand gesture and a nod. I heaved a sigh of relief - it was not too crowded. There were knots of people lingering close by some of the better known works in the first room but it was not, thankfully, heaving with humanity.

The exhibition was arranged through ten rooms (don't worry - I'll not take you by the hand room by room) and promised some early works that I had never seen before and some later works ditto and there, in the first room, were a couple of early works that I had never seen even in books. Five lavender haired old ladies were huddled in front of an early sketch of what has become known as the Screaming Pope. The ladies were of strictly limited stature and I peered over their heads taking in the purple and the gold, the blacks and the gaping hole where the mouth should be. I have always disputed the screaming part of that famous soubriquet and this sketch was remarkable in that it was absolute confirmation for me that this Pope was not only not screaming (he was shouting) but that he wasn't, ironically, a Pope (a cannily disguised Ian Paisley looked out of that dark background and howled vicious empty rhetoric at me). The likeness has faded by the time Bacon got to the much better know triptychs but the evidence here nailed the lie once and for all - what a cruel and humorous man Bacon was. And the power, the disapproval and the anger, come off that sketch more effectively more eloquently than in the later workings of the topic. This exhibition promised much from this first impression.

In that first room. packed closely with many of his earliest works I could feel the power of Bacon brewing - his style took years to develop but the power was there from those earliest days:

a figure on a park bench - a figure without a head but with a menace painted with pity and insight;

a magnificent painting of a dog chasing its own tail (Bacon is magical with dogs, capturing the immanent tension and movement with a few brushstrokes) and;

finally an eerily pale, almost fading depiction of that tragic, crouching figure with the swanlike neck and the head that is little more than an upturned open mouth full of teeth that would crop up again and again in later years, an image that haunts you forever once seen - or even glimpsed.

And so it went on with room following room of powerful images that speak powerfully - some of them shouting - some of them Beckettian in their bleakness. As the rooms flow on the years pass for Bacon and the technique becomes more studied and the foreground image is layered more and more heavily (in some paintings one wonders seriously whether Bacon could have got more paint to stick) as he constrains his figures in mystical cages. The power turns up steadily until the effect on the viewer is physical.

Tired, emotionally and physically, we entered the penultimate room in disarray having been treated to unexpected (and wonderful) paintings of a man with a bicycle, another stunning dogs- this time in a gutter with his owner invisible from the waist up, and a water spout beautifully forceful and dramatically captured, to be confronted with the magnificent triptychs of George Dyer in death and after. This room has Bacon at full emotional throttle - a master filled with pathos, and insight - a painter grappling with the reality of loss and pointlessness. Here, in this one room one is confronted with the awesome ability of one human being to communicate the unsayable. Confronted with such honesty strength we lingered as long as was decent until we wandered out exhausted into the final room.

Here was the late Bacon - Bacon turned old - Bacon unmanned - Bacon fading. The power had passed from him. To me it seemed sad. Here was Bacon producing copies of Bacon - and poor imitations at that. It was instructive - it reminded me of opera singers who continue long after their instrument has lost its tone and range - instructive and tragic.. I left the girls in that room and wished I hadn't seen it.

Tomorrow - a river boat ride and Rothko ...

It's Tuesday so it must be the Tates

2008-11-05T20:04:00.002+02:00
A cold bright Tuesday roused me gently from a night of fitful sleep - a sneaking wakener pushing its penetrating sheet of light under and round the edges of the blinds. Almost Austrian this light, Alpine maybe, Tyrolean even, how apt - not the quality of light I associate with London.

I checked the watch beside me - it was seven fifteen - and settled back into the lush warmth of the swansdown pillows. A two stop day this one - or three if you count the exhibitions separately - and a long anticipated day. The day with Lindz and the evening with Anna and Alex. Culture in the day and decadence in the evening - a superbly well balanced day in prospect but first things first - a shit, a shave, and a shower were all needed - and an early exit. Scratching I headed to the shower room.

As we stepped out into the morning that had, until now, hidden behind the windows the cutting cold sliced into us. It was dry but it was bracing. Bracing or bloody cold depending on how well wrapped one was. For us it was bracing - uncommonly so to a couple accustomed to Cretan winters. We picked up the pace as we headed toward the tube and its promise of insulation. Cold, bright and dry it was but loury clouds had begun to gather in the east - they would lower until dusk had long fallen but their gathering would haunt the day.

We shrugged our way through throngs of men and women of all ages and races all waiting for buses - some of them clutching young children to them - half term - as we hurried up to the tube station and forced ourselves into its maw through the Oyster card gateways. Vertiginous escalators eased us into the artificial atmosphere down there by the platforms where trains rushed in and out beyond us - not waiting our arrival - pushing gusts of warm, moist, dirty, air past us and up into the booking hall.

Arm in arm, we were coming to the fag end of the big commute, we stumbled from the moving stairway - a lack of practice, I guess, could explain the stumble. Heads up despite the dust storms we searched out the familiar and world famous London Underground signage and turned right to the southbound platform - Waterloo and the meeting clock were where we would meet up with Lindz. Amber digital signs announced our train due in one minute and sure enough a gust of filthy fetid air preceded, preannounced its arrival and presaged black bogies yet to come.

We arrived at Waterloo and burrowed our way up to ground level - the tube always makes me think of purblind moles, grey, furry, and covered in dirt - via tunnels and escalators to emerge almost opposite the renowned clock - ten minutes before ten. There was no sign of Lindz though and so I left Gill and went outside for a smoke - her habit is less demanding than my own. Big signs forbad me from the direct pavement and forced me across a road busy with taxis to a knot of like minded deviants hard by a collection of skips and builders' rubbish to huddle against the cold. Some caught short late reveller has last night left his dinner and his urine in the lea of a red lead painted skip. What a way to treat people! Odd how rigorous puritanism produces such gross results. Sated temporarily I picked my careful way through a steady stream of taxi bound latecomers and passed, on the way, a grisly, mean little sign that offered me the bargain of a lifetime - only 20 pence to take a piss! No wonder now at the reveller's relief post.

Gill and Lindz had done their helloes by the time I joined them and after hugs and kisses we headed off a trois leaving the lost and expectant masses neath the clock to their personal rendezvous. Passing the 20 pence pissoirs I realised that were heading out toward Tate Modern and stopped us all. What's first up Lindz? The Bacon. But isn't that at Tate Britain? Is it? Surely not? Lindz punched up some numbers on her mobile and confirmed my guess so we all turned 180 degrees and burrowed back down into the underworld.We were now headed for Pimlico and the Francis Bacon retrospective.

We emerged into brilliant sunshine and an eastern sky more loury than ever. Above the strangely familiar skyline over the Thames a black bank of cloud hung heavy - a sky like this I had not seen since we stood, Gill and I, on the Charles Bridge in Prague squinting up at baroque gilded statues offset against a midnight blue sky.

(T.B.C...)

Vote Obama says the Greek Orthodox Church

2008-10-19T19:29:00.001+03:00

I saw this in the newspaper here today. The Greek Orthodox church has no qualms about taking part in politics, in the US or anywhere else, since it is regularly a part of the executive state in Greece. Mind you in Greece almost everyone involves themselves in political debate so the fact that the state church does the same does not disturb the electorate.

However the message shown is pretty stark :

Roughly speaking the sign says: Vote for the black - the other guy is a wanker. How true! How direct! How politically incorrect!
Refreshing isn't it?

Book Review: The Lavender Way (the modem years) by Papalazarou

2008-10-04T22:45:00.002+03:00

Attend! I'm about to drive readers away in droves. This is for the cognoscenti.

If you don't know I write book reviews then leave now.

If you don't know that I write experimental fiction then leave now.

Don't you just love those then and now juxtapositions? No? Then leave now.

OK, now we are all friends together, cozy and comfortable in our own small world, Huddle closer and I'll tell you something special.

Writing is a lonely pursuit. Reading is a sociable pursuit. You can always share what you have read - that is why I write reviews. Only people who have read your work can share it if you write. Only rarely do they share it with the writer.

Luckily for me, popularity and sales have never motivated me to write. Critical acclaim would be nice. Appreciation likewise. Despite having written loads of reviews I've never had a review of one of my works and certainly not of my only book form work - The Lavender Way (the modem years). Today that lack was rectified. Someone who is reading my book emailed me. I'll say no more than that this made my day.

"May I just say how much I'm enjoying your book. It has become a prize 'pick up and dip into' possession...useful for the bath and stolen minutes of solitude away from pressures of work/home/life.

I'm liking the sense of a thing developing it's own life - the introduction of different voices, the way it switches from a daily log, to discussions on literature, art, politics etc...from gossipy asides to full blown rants, to experimental exercises in self imposed constraints. It's varied enough to keep me continually interested. So well done.

The best thing about it though, is a continued sense of joy in simply being alive in a wonderful place, which I find ... inspiring I suppose. So thank you for that. Long may the log chopping (and occasional finger chopping) continue."

Love it.

Book Review : The Untouchable by John Banville.

2008-10-03T23:32:00.001+03:00

I finished this book almost a week ago - so why has it taken me so long to write the review? A good question and one I have been asking myself in all that time. Maybe this following digression will help explain things.

Some few years ago I was having a heated discussion with a very good friend, Charles Unwin, who is a very clever guy and a great reader. We were talking about Martin Amiss, must have been about the time that Money came out, and I opined that while Martin was clearly very talented compared to his father Kingsley he had yet to produce a novel anywhere near as good as anything his father had produced. On this we kind of agreed and Charles suggested that the father's lack of natural. immanent talent had made of him a hard working writer who had thus produced some very good work by dint of hard work and application. The fact that Martin writes extremely well and obviously knows his history of the novel he has yet, in my opinion, to produce a very good let alone a great novel. I fear i fact that his publishing deal will stop him from ever so doing. And in some ways I think that this is my problem with Banville.

Banville is a great writer who has yet to write a great novel and yet ... And yet ... I still feel he might. HIs writing continues to improve but none of his subject matter matches his talent. And so I keep reading him. And his novels are good ... not very good ... and a long way from great ... but his writing shines through. One day he may do it.

The Untouchable is a loosely disguised contemplation on the Blunt, Burgess, Maclean betrayal of the UK. Banville's Maskell (Blunt) is well drawn and beautifully mannered but where I was expecting an essay on the nature of betrayal I received instead a classic lesson in UK class structures that came nowhere close to the insight that Genet brings to this fascinating subject. Banville lets the real notion encompassed in his topic escape him. Maskell comes out as slight and simply egotistical (as do his co-conspirators) and this is a travesty entertaining though his take on the whole thing is.

The traitor and betrayal are wonderful topics and Banville sadly manages to betray them. What, I wonder, will bring out his greatness? I shall continue to read him and would recommend yo to do the same.

One day. One day.



Another world record tumbles to the Brits

2008-09-19T16:36:00.005+03:00

Forget Usain Bolt, forget Roger Federer's not unsurprising return to magisterial form, instead think Joe Calzhage dumping Bernard Hopkins, think Chris Hoy and Bradley Wiggins rule of the Olympic Velodrome. The Brits are back on top.

After a long and gruelling day and a tough evening at 0120 local time this morning The Lavender Way's 2008 spica harvest broke, no smashed, no demolished the long standing Modi single still yield world record.36 kilos of The Lavender Way's finest spica produced more than 1500 ml of essential lavender oil of the highest grade surpassing by a very large amount the previous single still record for any herb at any time of year.

To put this into perspective consider that no single still distillation in the 17 year history of this exceptional distillery has ever broken the 1 litre or 1000 ml mark. Modi features two 600 litre stills and few double still sessions produce more than the magical litre of essential oil so for a single still session to go through that barrier (think 9.6 seconds for the hundred metres, think 3 minutes for the 1500 metres) and just keep going had every witness to this amazing performance holding their breath as the seemingly impossible mark approached and shouting and cheering wildly as it slipped further and further into the past. At 1500 ml the cheers turned to gasps and even the master distiller, a man of immense experience who has seen more distillations than most, sat slumped in his chair, mouth agape and eyes wide - speechless like the rest of us. We knew that we had seen history made but until the official calibrations have been made and entered intothe record book we will not know the exact magnitude of this performance. All we know is that the world is a different place today. The Lavender Way spica harvest of 2008 has rewritten the record book. The bar has been raised.

And what of the woman who masterminded this amazing performance? Lavender Mistress extraordinary Gill S wiped a joyful tear from her eye and announced that she would be back next year and that "... it won't be easy, but I think we can surpass this". When I asked how much of a surprise this had been she lowered her eyes and calmly stated "I knew in July that the crop was in good shape ... the summer conditions were just about perfect and the plants did what they had been selected for ... at the end of August my drier said this record was up for us and from then on we just went for it." She and her drier slipped away from the victory celebrations at about 0200 -no doubt they had 2009 on their minds - and some lavender to look after.

Related items: The 2007 distilling - here The 2008 distiling - here

Book Review: Suttree by Cormac McCarthy

2008-09-13T17:44:00.001+03:00
When I took Suttree by Cormac McCarthy down from the shelves recently it was immediately apparent that I had had this book for some considerable time and yet it remained unread: the spine was pristine; the cover foxed and; the price - 5.99 from Picador. Why still unread I wondered? It is widely regarded as an American great and I had clearly been impressed, at some stage (probably during 1979), to acquire a copy.

Well, the first few pages explained all. Suttree is one of those works, and they are mercifully rare though Oblomov, The Precipice and The Petty Demon recall themselves, that manages to repel me in the opening pages to the point where I close the book and yet intrigues me enough to keep it on the shelves rather than dispose of it - what I call a "maybe later - maybe one day" book. As I ploughed through those early pages again (and I remembered the viscid prose vividly) remembered attempts at this tome came back to me.

The blurb on the now aged cover had promised me Faulkner and Twain but the text seemed to offer me very little save repeated detailed and frankly tedious descriptions of the river - especially its smells - and the odd glimpse of one Cornelius Suttree, our hero-to-be who had little to commend him. But, like the river itself that is the central figure of this novel (shades of Finnegans Wake anyone), I ploughed on. Riverun slowly, very slowly, sticky prose passage follows sticky prose passage as the river runs more and more languorously. Like the mighty em eye double ess eye double ess eye double pee eye the prose slows as the plot, such as it is, widens. There are promises of freshwater pearls among the mud and the one certainty is the inexxorable nature of the river itself.

McCarthy takes Suttree and his readers away from the middle of the river into the rock pools and eddies, the slack water and the weed banks of life beside the river where flotsam and jetsam of humanity have washed up. Damaged and grubby as they are they provide added interest to the tale and at points, like the river itself, the narrative and the plot come into unexpected flood and one finds oneself rushed along for pages at a time until the pace slackens again and once more we drift along.

We drift along through the narrative as readers and Suttree drifts along through pools of minor human adventure until we all are washed up onto the wide and muddy delta at the mouth of the river and ultimately, into not being.

And so I reached the sea shore and left Cornelius Suttree as he washed out to eternity. Finally I had finished Suttree. It is lavishly written this novel, too lavishly perhaps, and the episodes feel not contrived but not contiguous. It is an honest book and it is an achievement. In the end I think I enjoyed it. At all events I think it is probably an important book and I now feel I may come back to it one day.

.

Write in choice for US president - Michael Albert - remember that name

2008-09-06T22:13:00.001+03:00

It is possible, in US presidential elections, for voters to write in a candidate not previously declared and to vote for them. The currently declared republican and democratic candidates fail to impress and both take flight to the last refuge of a scoundrel by declaring their patriotism above all other qualifications. Today I read an address that one Michael Albert made to a conference on the Crisis of Capitalism this weekend and since no presidential candidate has the candour and integrity to say such things I should like to commend this man as a write-in candidate for the presidency. Here are his opening words from that address:
My country, the U.S. is the world's leader in violent crime per capita.
It leads in the gap between richest and poorest.
It leads in means of communication, but also in levels of ignorance and deceit.
It leads in the manufacture, dissemination, and use of weapons of mass destruction, and of weapons generally...
My country leads as well in interventions abroad, in violent
coercion, in arrogant export of commercial and often vapid culture, and
of course in virtually unlimited hypocrisy.
My country, its core institutions and the commitments they impose on
leaders and led alike, is an enemy of every person on this planet
seeking a better life.
And yet, my country, like all others, also has potential to change.

Obituary - So long Ken and thanks for all the laughs

2008-09-01T22:09:00.001+03:00

One of the true greats of British theatre has gone. As an actor Ken Campbell gave me more pleasure than De Niro, Jack Nicholson and Pacino rolled into one. Ken was a master. He believed in theatre. He was an innovator and possibly a genius. A moment's silence please - we'll not see his like for a while.

Obituary here

2 Book reviews - The Good Bones and What Was Lost

2008-08-24T17:37:00.001+03:00

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold and
What Was Lost by Kathy O'Flynn

A bumper summer "two for one" review today. These two books came to me at different times but I somehow ended up reading them back to back. Both received very good reviews when they first came out and both are debut novels by new female writers.

The Lovely Bones is narrated by a dead young girl, a murdered girl in fact, and is narrated from heaven. Sebold has chosen an interesting narrative viewpoint from which to investigate the effects of death on those left behind by a violent death and she makes the structure work to good effect but by announcing the murder, the murderee, and the murderer at the very outset she seems to eschew any element of mystery.

Kathy O'Flynn on the other hand begins by introducing us to a little girl who fancies herself a detective as she mooches around a shopping centre taking notes, following people and almost willing a crime to happen. In doing so, O'Flynn takes time to make us empathise with this youngster and to understand her and then we begin to imagine and to savour a broad potentiality. O'Flynn paints her protagonist's life, family, friends and motivation sympathetically whilst leaving us wondering about some of the slightly strange figures who people her odd everyday experience and it is this depth and this strangeness that encourages out imagination.

Sebold attempts manfully to imagine a heaven that our murdered girl inhabits and from which she watches over the trauma and disjoint that her death leaves in its wake - and intervenes in on occasion. It is her failure to convince in the matter of this imaginary heaven that is the downfall of the book. Suspending my atheism as best I could did still not allow me to find Sebold's heaven feasible and I fear that many readers will have the same problem.

Rather than an imaginary heaven O'Flynn moves the second part of her novel into the all too real shopping centre (mall) that our girl detective has haunted in the first part where a similar all seeing perspective is drawn from the myriad of CCTV cameras. Where Sebold's narrative conceit becomes more arbitrary, whimsical and sentimental O'Flynn's becomes more realistic, gritty, and believable and whereas Sebold exercises her own imagination O'Flynn gets us to exercise ours.

Thus we have two debut novels by young women about dead young girls both of which use interesting structures to unveil the same scenario - death and its aftermath. Whereas I shall give Sebold another chance should I come across her next novel I shall actively seek out more work by O'Flynn.

.

Our Northern correspondent checks in with the boss

2008-08-18T22:24:00.001+03:00

I know I said the other day (ago) that I'd give you the next or previous installment of the online offline friendship league "tomorrow" and I have therefore to explain a fine point of linguistic usage. In normal English usage the word tomorrow denotes the day following this one and is the dictionary definition of the word but in practice in other languages (Spanish and Greek spring immediately to mind) the word for tomorrow is used in a connotive sense rather than a denotive one. More specifically in the aforementioned languages, at least in demotic usages, the word for tomorrow is frequently used to indicate some unspecified futurity or to indicate a logical not today. Clear? Good. Now - onward and backward.

As I was saying the kidz were confident that the Guerilla Distiller visit would work out because they had had previous experience or mixing their on and offline worlds with incredible and unimagined success. On that very first occasion it was Finn McEskimo, his good wife Alfapet and their youngest child Neero who had come to the farm outwith some previously only ethereal or ethernetreal existence.

Finn was originally recommended to Laz as Northern Correspondent for the PoMo circus by his estimable lady Alfapet who had been a reader of that august publication for some months back in the old Spazmac days (almost pre-Caxton in Circus terms). Alfapet, who you should know coined the word carage, is what Brits would think of as a very special needs teacher whilst Finn himslef is a strange mix of eternal student and long term lecturer in something best approximated by "comparative and experimental literature". Needless to say the 3 of them chewed a lot of academic, cultural and literary fat between Finn's occasional commissions and freelance articles for The Circus and a friendship grew among these unlikely companions. When Laz introduced Gill's photos into the mix (Gill is still steadfastly reticent about a direct online presence) things blossomed and Alfapet and she began to converse via email. Suddenly everyone was involved.

And then this summer Finn and Alfapet announced that they were coming to Crete with Neero and would love to visit the farm. Pulses quickened, consciences were searched, qualms were put to one side and an invitation to come and stay for a weekend was issued in short oreder. Two weeks went by in a mood of trepidation but when the Finn family turned up at Ekkentron in Kavros all misgivings evaporated in moments. The 4 of them got on better in the flesh than they had online - they all knew each other so well (nobody had lied or boasted) and Neero was a brick, putting up with these excited and garrulous adults.

The weekend passed in a blur of visiting sites, harvesting lavender and talking - endlessly talking. Talking into the small hourss. An empathy like that in very good families and friendships was quite simply there before they met up and grew in the harsh reality of the flesh. There will be more of these meetings - of that we are sure. All of us are sure.

It worked.

Taking chances by mixing the on and offline worlds

2008-08-14T22:24:00.001+03:00

The kidz have been doing things this summer that Shem and I would not have endorsed - had we been asked. Not that we would necessarily have given counsel of despair but we would, I am sure, have urged considerable caution.

They've done it twice so far and, colour us both stunned, have been remarkably successful. Moving people from one status to another, or from one stratum to another - higher stratum or status is a fraught one. It's one thing to take imaginary characters into your real life - and mostly a harmless one - shit, adopting Eddie was one of the best things they ever did. There are a few obvious no nos here: turning an ex-lover into a lifelong friend; turning your best friend into a lover. Simply put, these sorts of change mostly do not work and are unlikely to. And to be honest we figured that he kidz were opening a similar one way gate with their decision to elevate some of their online contacts to flesh contacts.

Most recently - yesterday in fact - D invited a guy he had met online -well not met but had come across and whose exploits he had been following for about a year and a haf into their real life - to the farm for goodness sake. The guy in question runs under the nom-de-blog of the guerilla distiller but his real name is Robert Seidel. D came across him some time back when he was looking at the idea of having his own still (before cost constraints made it all look pretty unlikely). Robert - who looks surprisingly like an older Pablo Picasso - is a master distiller who runs a company that sells essential oils, cultivates genetically diverse lavender, and sells stills that he designs himself. Robert is an American. His partner, Dorene, who is a Kiwi, runs a U.S.based university for aromatherapists.

Robert and Dorene sailed into Crete at the weekend (in a 63 footer) and drove for 5 hours on chaotic roads choked to melting point by holidaying Greeks and maddening weather to meet up with the kidz on Tuesday after a single email inviting them over. And, contrary to our expectations, everything went swimmingly - R&D were generous, positive and, extremely knowledgeable. They - D&G and R&D - spent time in the lavender circles, time in the cellar and time breaking bread together - talking constantly. It was a great meet up and when R&D left they promised to return.

... and tomorrow I shall tell you why D&G were so confident that the meet would work ....

Kafka breaks me up

2008-08-11T18:06:00.001+03:00

My review the other day of The Howling Miller raised a few eyebrows by referring to Kafka with respect to comic writing. I have always laughed long and hard at Kafka and have know a couple of other readers of like mind but it was nice to see this opinion reflected in a worthy piece about Kafka over at 3quarksdaily today. I quote below:

"Hawes spent ten years writing a Ph.D. on Kafka. Now he is on a mission
to deconstruct the “hagiographic myth” surrounding the Prague author in
order to expose the real Kafka. His works are “wonderful black comedies
written by a man soaked in the writings of his predecessors and of his
own day”. Indeed, Max Brod provides some evidence of this comedic
dimension to Kafka’s works. He recalled Kafka reading aloud from The Trial.
At times, he said, Kafka “laughed so much that there were moments when
he couldn't read any further”. This Kafka has been somewhat obscured,
but he’s certainly there, struggling to free himself from the
chitinous, beetle-like skin into which fate and literary fame has
sealed him."

The Howling Miller

2008-08-08T20:39:00.001+03:00

The Howling Miller by Arto Paasilinna (Author), Will Hobson (Translator)

Modern literature has its fair share of novels about outsiders and this is another. Paasilinna is a Finn however and his take on the nature of otherness is, if not unique, unusual. Not for him (I assume Arto is a male name) the existential angst of the Russians and the French. Nor the grimy realism of kitchen-sink 60's Britain.

Paasilinna instead gives us a side-splittingly funny story of the other more in the tenor of Magnus Mills or Kafka (no, really Kafka is hugly funny, go back and read him again if you doubt me). His eponymous hero - a miller who howls - is a rational and intelligent man surrounded by a massive nuber of irrational and stupid people who happen to determine his fate by dint of their numbers.

The village that he moves to somewhat mysteriously needs a miller and he is without question a very good miller. He is also a gifted mimic who keeps the local children amused as he woks restoring the rotting mill but trouble looms when the locals find his howling a problem. Paasilinna sketches a developing scenario that plays out the analyses of Thomas Szasz and Michel Foucault regarding madness in modern times and, in an inexorably depressing couple of chapters we see the howling miller committed to an asylum and deprived of both his liberty and his posessions.

All is not lost though. for there are other outsiders - other others if you will - and in their faltering, poignant, heart lifting, efforts they transform our hero's life and future. Confounding expectations, this wonderful tale moves toward an almost magical realist finale that leaves one breathless. The other others are almost as well realised as the miller himself and their respective aberrancies add a light and shade to the "other" side of this story so clearly lacking in the mainstream.

This is a very good novel. It is well written - very well written - it is elegantly crafted, and the translation is so clean and precise as to be worth a mention all of its own. A minor classic I think.

Putting my money where my mouth is

2008-08-04T20:29:00.001+03:00

A few months back my iMac G5 (of blessed memory) blew up, or fritzed, or fell over, or went to meet its maker, or any other euphemism you want to choose. OK - situation completely fucked - no main machine and not a pot to piss in! Replacement motherboard about 700 euros plus VAT plus fitting - no way! Can't be done. Can't be afforded. So. what to do?

For years I''ve been telling people that their machines or their aspirations computer-wise were way above what they really needed or used. Time to take some of my own medicine? I thought long and hard. I considered all the options and finally deccided not to swap to Linux (a serious option) - not to go with bargain basement new stuff (Asus eeepC was an option) but decided instead to drop bacck a full generation or two - well a generation from that then curent kit but 3 from the then state of play.

I copped off on eBay with an early generation mac mini G4 from the US and waited. It was a low spec machine and I had serious misgivings but heck it was cheap - really cheap until the Greek customs guys notched it up a bit - would I manage? It had the advantage of being able to use all my old peripherals - and I had an old CRT haning around that had cost me 10 euros so I thought 'we shall see'.

Well. the kit turned up last week - I paid the customs' surcharge unwillingly - and I brought it home on Frday. So far - very good. All my peripherals work. I've decided against upgrading to 10.5 and the set up is working well. A few things don't run quite as quickly as they used but what the hell it's hardly noticeable.

Result! My own advice was good.

Who died and put pox doctors in charge of our morals?

2008-07-25T22:23:00.000+03:00
I'll be honest - I'm sick and bloody tired of doctors telling us what we should and shouldn't do - what's right and what's not. Today Radio4 carried a piece about "fertility experts" announcing that people who smoke or are overweight shouldn't be given IVF on the NHS. What the fuck? These hubristic gits have been pontificating on the evils of smoking for years and are now turning their bile on obesity. And on what basis have they elected themselves to speak on these matters? Pure hubris.

Doctors have always felt themselves to be inherently superior to the rest of us. In the old days the general public were stupid enough to believe them. Do not forget that the selfish, money grubbing GPs and consultants all but derailed the whole idea of the NHS at its very conception - threatening to take their ball and go home unless the government allowed them to continue with their private practices, no mater how badly it damaged the unborn NHS. "Trust me, I'm a doctor" said Harold Shipman - and hundreds did.

Only this week it transpires that these paragons of virtue and upholders of value within the NHS have failed to stop prescribing anti-biotics willy nilly (38m prescriptions for antibiotics were written by doctors in the UK in 2007, costing the NHS £175m) as they were instructed some years back. Prescribing for ailments that they know anti-biotics cannot affect.

The one thing that I'm sad that they didn't ask the so-called "fertility experts" surveyed was whether they refused IVF treatments in their private practice to smokers and the obese because I know that they don't. Hippocrates or hypocrites? They love to tell the freeloading NHS patients how to live their lives but nod to the mighty pound whenever enough of them are waved under their dirty little noses.

I have some news for doctors - NHS patients pay for their treatment - NHS patients pay the bulk of doctors wages - NHS patients paid for the training of doctors. So guys and girls - get over your superiority and get on with doing your job while keeping your mealy mouthed moral rectitude firmly to yourselves. We pay for your medical opinion and expertise not your self serving hypocrisy.

Cleaning olives

2008-06-23T19:12:00.000+03:00
In a sea, no, an ocean of wild carrot
each plate sized face held aloft and
each demonic ox blood eye staring straight at the blinding sun
the valiant men in their signature red
toil gently at cleaning the olives

And the wind when it comes
reveals currents of chicory
blue as the sky but less punishing
like huge shoals of flying fish
and they lean to their work
these men dressed in red
and they work in silence profound

But the bees in the seas just behind them
the seas empurpled with flowers
keep a constant white noise
thrumming low and insistent
on the edge of their auditory landscape

And their knuckles are scraped
these noble proud men
by the age weathered barks
by the time honoured shells
of these noble, proud trees

There are faces in bark
there are patterns in branches
a beauty not seen from a distance
up close, as they are
the trees have a voice
they tell tales
of the past
of the present
and the future
while they bend to the work
in the hot midday sun

Max's Vintage

2008-05-04T19:45:00.002+03:00

I've just finished a new short story for a very good friend so I thought I'd share it with you all, it's about a man and his dog and it's called:

Max's Vintage

Liam is sitting and crouching. He is pulling on his shoes while his back complains. He is getting old now but the day is bright and this lightens his heart. Autumn is on them all - a gentle, Cornish autumn - and the hedgerows are full. A mellow fruitfulness. A richness.

Tying his laces carefully, he pulls the lace once more around his ankle and feels the cold, damp nose on his wrist. Max boy, yes we're off out this morning. It's a beautiful day. We'll be off soon. Give me a few minutes. Max is getting old now too. They have grown together over the last ten years, closer than most humans ever get.

Liam is eighty two years old and Max a mere ten, but Max is a dog, a black and tan Dobermann dog, of a physical elegance that Liam has not had for many a year. And so, they are probably each as close to their natural ends as twins might be, contemporaries at last. You have aged more gracefully than I old boy. We have converged at last. You knew we would. And so did I.

Liam's hand seeks out Max's muzzle and caresses it lovingly. Max presses his whole head firmly but slowly into Liam's hand and senses a frailty there, a slight weakness that he has become familiar with in the last year or so, a hint that he recognises in his own traitorous body. The hand moves slowly up over his head and pauses on his stop before continuing, as he knew it would, to the sweet spots behind his ears. They both luxuriate in this closeness for a while until Max shakes his head free and cocks it to the left. Liam listens too. Ah, Max boy, that's the blackbird. Isn't that a beautiful sound? Fair makes you glad to be alive, huh? Come on, lets be on our way. No beach today boy. We're off up the lane today. The other way. You'll get your swim later. Promise. But Max has gone skittering across the kitchen by now.

With his front paws on the closed lower half of the stable door he is looking out at the buddleia bush, where the blackbirds nest each year and where they have raised at least three broods to his knowledge. He draws a huge volume of air in through his powerful and sensitive nose: buddleia, blackbird, compost, rabbit, fox, grass, rose, bramble. He discerns each separate aroma distinctly but simultaneously. His mind is placing each of the ingredients of this cocktail to its location in the space before him, when he smells Liam coming up behind him. Now that's a smell all its own: warmth, love, respect - so well known now, a smell that goes all the way back to his smallest days - maybe the first smell he was aware of after his mother's. Liam clips the lead to his three row collar.

Out in the lane they are both assailed and overwhelmed by the sight and smells of the rhododendrons, blown now and looking dowdy, frazzled; frayed but fragrant: fragrant to Max at least, though Liam's nose is failing him now. You'll have to be careful Max, the flail will be along for those weeds soon. Next few days. One hand in his pocket he wrinkles the sack that sits there. Max picks up the scent and raises his noble head to turn those gentle brown eyes on him quizzically. Liam laughs. You know boy, don't you? Elderberries it is. You clever thing you. He checks the lane ahead, knowing that Max now knows where they are going, and, assured that they have it to themselves, he unclips his lead.

Max bounds stiffly off nosing the hedges either side as he goes and now and then turning back to check that Liam is OK. This is his only true freedom of movement these days - this, and his capers at the beach. He misses the free stretching, back bending bounding of yesteryear: the onset of arthritis has put paid to those carefree days and on the lead he is all decorum now. No mad headlong dashes. It would not be kind to remind Liam of just how much mobility he has lost himself. More even than he.

They wander along in silent communion, Max leading, until he spies the elder trees and notes that the fruit clusters have turned. He backtracks and comes behind and around to Liam's left. Liam bends only slightly, and from the waist - Max is a tall dog - and Liam reattaches his lead. Here we are boy. You know don't you? He lets them into the orchard. The winds of the last few days have blown apples down and the distinctive smell of proto-cider reeks: Max wrinkles his nose in distaste while Liam has a madeleine moment that transports him back to days of his youth and just-brewed Calvados in the Normandy countryside .

I dreamt last night of elder, Maxy boy, and, in this superstitious county, that is supposed to presage sickness. Not yours or mine, I hope. But then the addle-pated folk hereabouts seriously believe that elder branches can keep vampires at bay. Claim it goes back further than garlic. Fuckwits all. The very same sheep who bend their knee every sabbath, to a god who is so mean that he denies you a soul - or a place in their much vaunted afterlife. Flockwits more like. OK then Max. Let's get to it.

Free to roam again, Max is soon investigating every hedge and shrub (traces of rabbit here and there - a hare was through here last night) checking back on Liam assiduously. But Liam is fine, picking the low-hanging bunches of fruits and plopping them gently into the unrolled sack. The odd purplish, blackish stain seeps damply, darkly through the hessian. The sun is warming their bones and easing the aches in their joints. Is making them feel, momentarily, young again. Max has flushed a pair of wasps from one of the rotting apples and gaily chases them, as they dance just beyond his tender nose. Liam has settled himself beneath an old Pearmain tree and is tucking into a firm, white-fleshed apple, with a relish normally seen only in the flushes of scrumping youth. He is watching Max's game with a smile playing across his face; a smile of pure enchantment. The sack is full and leaking sweetly, stickily, beside him. Max leaps and neatly bites one of the wasps in half.

Come here boy. That's it. Sit beside me. No - the other side, lemon. That's it. Now Maxy, why did you kill that wasp? That wasn't very nice, was it? He wasn't doing you any harm - was he? Max turns a pair of sad eyes on him. They burn like lasers. Max is contrite, and lays his head in Liam's lap, sniffing the sack surreptitiously. Liam regrets the reprimand and leans slowly back against the tree trunk. He savours the moment. Are we having fun Max? I think so, don't you? Now I'm going to close my eyes for a while. You stay here - alright? Nudge me in a few minutes and we'll go back.

Back home they are sitting on the sun terrace. Ann has the kettle on for tea and Max has a big stainless steel bowl of cold, clean water just tucked in behind the herb border, where the sun has begun to cast a shadow. The sack is open before Liam who crouches Arab style - a habit he picked up in his youth and has never questioned. He is picking the stalks from the firm fruits and discarding the bruised and crushed fruits into a bowl: Ann will make jam from these. The rest are destined to become wine. A late bee buzzes past them breaking the silence and Max looks quizzically at Liam. The herb border fills Max's nose but still he can smell the sick bee. Liam laughs and chucks Max under the chin. It's OK boy. No problem. Let him be! Liam looks up and checks the length of the shadows. Half an hour more here and then I'll take you to the beach. Half an hour will see this lot off. I'll sort them out when we get back. There's time yet, boy.

Ann brings out the tea on a lovely red lacquer tray, that they picked up in an out of the way second hand shop last summer, and settles herself into a little plastic chair. Are you alright crouching like that? Don't fuss darling, you know I'm happiest this way. She strokes Max's head that rests still in Liam's lap. You two didn't overdo it did you? No, we're fine. Liam chuckles. We had a little nap in the shade, thanks. We're fine, and I promised Max his run on the beach. Half an hour's work left here - no more. Will you come?

Max has settled himself on the ground between them. He is looking up and clearly following the conversation. Like the pair of them he is wondering how life could be better and deciding that it cannot. Stretching his front paws out he settles his head between them and closes his eyes. His other senses though are on full alert. The sonorous tones of their voices and the smells of the garden in late afternoon soothe him. The sweet smell of crushed elderberries cloys above all the other scents. Ann and Liam have fallen silent. Time passes contentedly to the gentle rhythm of Liam removing the stalks from clusters of fruit.

You're awful quiet Liam. Are you woolgathering, or are you thinking? Thinking dear. About? Remember I dreamt last night of the elders? Well, as I dozed in the apple orchard I dreamt again of elders. I know I was among the elders, but still and all don't you think it odd? I asked Mrs Potts down at the post office about that, this morning, when I was picking up my pension. You did say the locals had all kinds of superstitions about elders. Well, she said that dreaming of elders presages an illness or bereavement. I'm sure she did - daft old bat! What did I tell you about this being the shallow end of the gene pool? How did such bloody retards end up in control of such a beautiful place? They'd have burnt her as a witch a few years back.

Max sits up at Liam's raised voice and watches their body language. He is used to heated discussions and the odd outburst of ranting but he always likes to check. Ann stretches her hand out and strokes him down his neck and chest. It's alright boy, the old boy is just cross at some stupidity. Max collects his feet together into a text book sit, and sympathises silently with Liam. He too, hates stupidity.

Liam unlocks his knees and slowly unfurls himself from his Arab squat, and while he hears only notional creaking, Max actually picks up the very real sound of bone grinding on too-thin cartilage, and sees a shadow of a grimace pass briefly. Hands firmly placed just above his buttocks, Liam is finally unfolded and arches his spine gently backwards before straightening completely. Liam's second sacroiliac joint cracks loudly - to Max - and he catches a whiff of stale sweat: a familiar smell and a particular favourite; a friendly smell and all Liam's. Ann does not wear perfume but her own scent is always masked by something else, whereas Liam always, and reassuringly, smells of Liam. Max licks his testicles and checks his own scent, but does not get up. He is enjoying his family.

Ann drinks the last of her tea and watches Liam, waiting for him to speak. But he stays stubbornly silent. She stretches her hand out to stroke Max behind the ears once more and he almost purrs: a deep and satisfied grunt escapes him. His hind paw comes up to rake behind his ear slowly. Sorry old boy. We shan't be going to the beach today. We're going back to the orchard. Those fruits are just right for winemaking and we're going to make hay while the sun shines - or at least collect berries while we have light left. And this one is going to be for you. Liam sidesteps to where Ann is sitting. I've made up my mind, love. I want to memorialise Max and we can't know whether we shall all do this again. He is getting on, you know. I'm going to have some labels made up to mark this vintage. I know it'll be a great one. And it's going to be Max's vintage, so that when he's gone (a tear breaks loose and dampens his cheek) ... and we both know it's got to happen some day ... then we can raise a glass of Max's vintage to the wonderful memories we shall have. And this is going to be one of them. Despite his aching thighs he squats and pats Max's head. Come on lad. I'll grab the sack. You get the lead, and then let's get cracking. Max is up and ready before him. Lead in mouth, he nudges Ann into action and heads to the gate, looking back and moving forward.

Ann waves them off at the gate and watches, until they reach the bend, through eyes that stream. She recalls a film she saw just after the war, before she even met Liam: A Boy and His Dog. Yes that's them. In this moment they both seem strangely young again. She turns and retraces her steps, drying her eyes on her apron as she goes.

Who interfered with whom?

2008-04-12T19:13:00.001+03:00
I love this amazing hypocrisy. The al-Yamamah arms deal with Saudi Arabia has been all over the headlines this week and I've been laughing my arse off.

The factual accusations that the UK press and politicians are bandying around - in no particular order - are:

1) bribery and corruption were involved in winning the contract
2) the Blair government used the specious cloak of terrorism to stop the inquiry into the charges of corruption
3) the Saudi royal family threatened to withdraw espionage co-operation with UK espionage forces if the investigation ino one of their rich brat princes was not halted

The "moral" or "principled" objections appear to be:

1) bribery in order to secure commercial contracts is wrong
2) outside governments should not be able to affect the nature of justice administered within the UK
3) the British government should not use the threat of terrorism to rule by fiat

OK lets take them one at at a time:

"bribery and corruption were involved in winning the contract" - almost certainly - that's how many countries do business they just don't see that it is a moral wrong, that's our judgement;

"the Blair government used the specious cloak of terrorism to stop the inquiry into the charges of corruption" - of course it did;

"the Saudi royal family threatened to withdraw espionage co-operation with UK espionage forces if the investigation ino one of their rich brat princes was not halted" - of course they did, and they meant it

"bribery in order to secure commercial contracts is wrong" - according to whom? and how does any western business get a contract with any other country that engages systematically in processes that we in the west consider to be corrupt or wrong? Or do they just not bid. Or do they consistently bid and lose?

"outside governments should not be able to affect the nature of justice administered within the UK" - now in principle I agree but just consider for one moment why the original inquiry was started in the first place - because the US governement put pressure on the UK government having been pissed off because an American supplier didn't get the deal

"the British government should not use the threat of terrorism to rule by fiat" - no argument from me on that one but why is it only on this topic that that particular "principle" applies? Locking people up for 28 days at a time. Wiretapping at will. Surveillance of school applicants. Deporting people to known torturers. Unbalanced extradition treaties with places like the US. The list, if not endless is pretty damned long - and all in the name of "security against terrorism". Oh yeah and going to war, changing the regimes of soveriegn states and destroying infrastructure - add those to the list.

What moral high ground do we occupy? And how did we take it? By main force?

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On being deaf

2008-04-12T14:29:00.001+03:00
I cannot hear the toilet flush nor the incessant buzzing of the electric toothbrush. I cannot hear the water rushing into the sink nor its gurgle as it leaves. I cannot hear the kettle boil but I can hear the sound as the arms of my spectacles glide over my hair and settle behind my ears. I can hear what I suspect is the sound of my blood pumping.

I can hear through my bones but not my ears. The doors on the DS clunk dully closed behind me like those on a Bentley and when I come to start the engine it is as though I were switching on a silent electric motor: there is just enough feedback from the indicator lights to reassure me that it is actually running. I have to watch the rev counter to know when to change gear and the lights on the dash to know when to cancel the indicators.

No birdsong. No dogs barking. Even the bee that almost collides with me makes not buzz. This is a very different place and I am not at all sure that I like it. The peace is fun but the disconnect is profound. We checked that I could just about make out the phone ringing before we parted but now I must stay close by for fear of missing that call. Already I have taken to watching Gill's mouth to see whether she is speaking to me and what she is saying. Mouth shapes and tongue placements, I realise, are quite distinct one from another.

I am suddenly isolated. Locked in or locked out? Both: and both are disorienting. This now something that I want to finish. Imagine being able to hear the filter tip of your cigarette tap on your front tooth but never being able to imagine or tp hear the one you love most dearly tell you they love you.

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The Olympic Flame in Crete

2008-04-05T12:28:00.003+03:00

With all the current fuss about the progress of the olympic flame toward China I was reminded of 2004 when the flame came to Kavros, Apokaronos; less laden with political overtones and more joyful.

Thankfully the good old BBC carried a report today on the deeply political origins of the flame procession. Very little these days is free of politics and it would seem that it has been thus for some time. Symbols are seldom univalent and the flame is no exception.

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Bacon in my Ears

2008-04-04T19:03:00.001+03:00
I woke up this morning at about 6 o'clock - it was still dark and I could hear a very strange noise. At first I thought it was raining outside but corrected that idea immediately - it was much more like the sound of a fire crackling. But there was no smell of smoke and at that time of the morning it was unlikely, unlikely but not entirely impossible, that anyone had yet started a fire in the valley. I re-appraised the sound and realised, at last, that it sounded most like bacon frying and crackling: and that it wasn't outside at all - it was inside my ear! Weird shit! Maybe there is an earwig or earwicker livering inside there somewhere. Maybe he or she (do earwigs have separate sexes? ) is living off all the olive oil.

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Georgia - the next part

2008-03-25T21:33:00.001+02:00
They stood slightly stunned for some few minutes as figures entered and exited the lobby space. Most of the players on this stage were dressed in a relatively casual manner - casual for London certainly - and only the odd one or two carried folders or files. They heard the rain restart behind them and a flash of reflected lightning lit the lobby. So far, not one of the transients had seemed to notice them let alone stopped for them - they moved like purposive ants, inexorably. A man entered the lobby behind them coughing loudly and stamping his feet and they glanced around: dressed entirely in black and sporting a wide set of grey handlebar moustaches, he was without doubt a farmer and from the south. Before he finished stamping his feet he was shouting at the passing players: demanding to be attended. A short, squat woman in a well tailored twin-set and with the oddly barbered wiry hair that women of a certain age in Crete favour she stopped a youngish man with a handful of ethernet cabling in his left hand and a clipboard in his right who had been scurrying by with his eyes down-turned and directed him to deal with the noisy, noisome, farmer. She exuded a clear and direct authority and so, as one, they moved toward her. She was to be their helper in this warren - whether she liked it or not she would help them.

She beamed as she watched them approach: standing her ground she beckoned them on, her face a picture of welcome. They wondered privately whether they would ever become accustomed to the amazing transformations that tough, big featured, scowling Greek faces underwent when a genuine smile came over them. "Hello, my name is Evanthia, the weather is foul, how can I help you? Are you lost? You are English, yes?" she announced in a confident English". There was barely a trace of accent in her beautiful soft voice and that came as something of a shock. Undeterred, the woman of the couple stepped forward and held out her hand, "I am Gill and no, we are not lost. We are English and I want to become a farmer. I hope you can help me kyria Evanthia." Evanthia nodded at the formal address and regarded the two of them and turned toward the stairwell, "Please follow me to my office and we shall see what we can do".

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Critics and democracy

2008-03-24T20:21:00.001+02:00
I've been using a new website recently - one sponsored by the Arts Council of Great Britain - that is supposed to be resource for unsigned and budding writers. I was drawn to it by the chance to have a professional review of my work but that would only be possible if my work was highly rated by other users of the site. The idea is that you do a bunch of reviews of other people's work in order to be able to upload your own work and have it reviewed by some of those other users. If those users rank your work as one of the best of the month you get a professional review! Simple huh?

OK - the first impressions were not great - it's a plug ugly site to start with. Second up how do I find out what I can upload? Well that is far from clear and after a lot of trial and error it turns out you can upload short stories and opening chapters of novels. So what about novellas? Nope. Experimental forms? Seems not. Poetry? Nope. Right - not perfect but I decide to try it anyway but then can't discover what formats you can upload - and until I've done 5 reviews I am not allowed to upload anything so I can't find out that way. I join the site and request my first piece to review. Surprise, surprise, the first thing I get is not matched to my reading profile - children's fiction - what do I know about children's fiction? Not a lot since it is a form of which I do not approve.

I plough through these chapters - an arduous process and get to the review process - wow. I get a set of categories to rank on a 1 to 5 scale - multiple choice - wow. Use of Language? Plot? Pace? and so it goes on. Once I've done that I get to write a review - not less than 100 words and try to keep it "balanced" - interesting idea. OK - so I do all that and then I get a real surprise - a reading test - 5 questions that the author sets to ensure that I've actually read the piece! Do they think I'd review something I hadn't read? Clearly they do.

The second reading assignment comes and this one is romantic fiction - WTF? Am I Barbra bloody Cartland? It's atrocious - balanced? And so it goes on through 5 pieces - I bear it all and play my part, wondering all the while who he hell is going to review my stuff. Worse still I get to wondering what the hell I'm going to upload. I finally plump for a very straightforward short story about a donkey (you may have read it) that has a somewhat novel first person plural narrator - it's about as traditional as my stuff gets and until I know what formats the upload accepts I'll play it safe.

And so, eventually, I rack up the necessary 5 reading credits, being as positive and constructive as I can be. I even do a couple of voluntary reviews of highly ranked pieces to see what else is on offer - to be honest I could hardly credit the quality of the stuff I was being assigned. Much better but hardly bleeding edge.

Now I'm ready to upload my simple little short story. I've even worked out 5 really silly question for the reading quiz that mandatory reviewers have to complete. I go into the upload process and suddenly I find that I have to cut and paste the text of my story into a form on the site! Hyperlink lookasides? Nope. Parallel textual threads? Nope. Good job I chose something really simple. None of the rest could I ever do justice to using this method. Up it goes and I sit back and wait for the reviews to come in.

Here's what I've had so far - I've done a couple of more mandatory reviews to qualify for a few extra reviews of my own work:

Review By: Sapper

I love stories like this, Papalazarou, so easy to review. The descriptions of the old men, cafe and dusty Crete were superb - so hot I fancied a glass of Gazoza myself (I take it that Gazoza is alcholic - I wound'nt want to find I was ordering lemonade!) The writing was a joy to read and like only one other I've read on YWO in that it was more like painting a picture. For the technical criticism how could I not give straight fives. A couple of points which in no way detract from the tale '3 men' would be better written as 'three' after all it's not an inventory of the cafe's clients! Also "...away from the bones or thick,..." did'nt scan too well.
Very good tale.

Review By: adrian-dunsterville

Some very decent evocative prose, tinged with purple at the edges no doubt, but pleasantly poetic to read on the whole.

Telling this tale though, the author has taken a few liberties of POV and omniscience. For example, the POV change that allows us to witness in detail the donkey dismemberment. And the omniscience that allows us or the narrator to know everything beyond "This man is of the land" about our donkey devotee. This wouldn't be a problem perhaps but for it then undermines the sense of having the narrator narrate this. Clearly it's the author's choice but one could argue that in pure story terms, it's not the most direct or honest way of telling it.

I do appreciate the hazy heated atmosphere and a certain dusty timeliness, don't get me wrong.

A few more paragraph breaks and shorter sentences would I think make it easier for the reader.

I didn't at all times buy into the cafe proprietors superb grasp of English. But what do I know?

Review By: marlathome

This is a very unusual story well written. The characterisation and settings are evocative and authentic - I am very familiar with Greece: not the tourist Greece but the Greece beloved of Greeks and can attest to the accuracy of this portrayal. Familiarity, however, is unnecessary since you bring the landscape and its people to life with such astonishing attention to detail. In many ways, you paint a picture with your words. Well done for that.
The story itself is secondary to its characters - there is no real plot as such, in my opinion, but simply the gentle and sometimes dramatic passage of life. This may not be to everyone's taste on this site, I'm afraid, but I found your work to be thougthful, poignant and uplifting.
There are a number of punctuation problems that you might want to take a look at - no capitals after full stops etc. A niggling point but one which breaks of the flow of the narrative and also something that will be pointed out time and again in your reviews if you don't fix it (very tedious!).
I liked this story and look forward with interest to reading more of your work.

Review By: sls

Hello - I enjoyed the story. It's well written and the characters are engaging. The description sets the scene nicely.

I found the narrative memorable - I have been thinking about it since I read it. It has been thought provoking, which is a sign of good writing.

Being an animal lover I did find it hard to come to terms with the fact Pavlo dismembered his donkey - but there you go I'm squeamish about such things.

I did notice a few typos - Georgos appears once without an s on the end.

There were one or two uncapitalised h's at the beginning of sentences. And I noticed two disappears in one sentence.

I also thought one or two of the sentences were quite long. One appears in para 4 - A cheap blue bic ... I wondered if there should be a full stop after ashtray.

In parts of the narrative with dots I noticed five when there's usually no more than three.

I got a bit lost in the paragraph that describes the old lady's dress. I got the headscarf confused with the frock and wondered if She dressed in black. Her wispy white hair covered by a headscarf clearly of a newer vintage etc - might be clearer - just a thought.

I also noticed where the para begins "Exactly ... came back here ass fat as. (I think it's meant to read as fast as) He said that he owed Dimitri that - I felt the word that might work better after Dimitri, rather than in front of it.

I hope my observations don't sound too negative - they're not meant to be -

Review By: Paula

Enchanting

I enjoyed the sensitive way these characters were observed, and I particularly liked the way they were described in their setting. I felt as if I too had sat in that cafe and watched the old men and felt the heat of the sun. There are issues with pace here, I think. Personally I liked the slow burn, attention to detail, and the care taken over building atmosphere and authenticity. I felt the langorous pace of the story matched the pace of life in the village.
The contrast between the simple, nothing-ever-happens-here feel of the first half of the story and the tragedy and drama of the second half worked very well. I would have liked a little more at the end pointing out that life then would continue as it always had (except for the donkey, of course), and as if nothing so sad and violent had taken place. This would have given a nice balance to the piece, I think. I also felt that some of the language use could be tightened a little - you might want to double check for repetitions and weak descriptions here and there. On the whole the writing is clear and vivid, so it's a pity to let phrases and sentences slip through that might detract from this.
An interesting piece, a refreshing change from so much that is all hooks and grabbing and shocking at the start just to gain attention. Let's hear it for the slow but powerful build up!

Review By: dleighton

Needs work

I thought the writing was a curious mixture. There are some really descriptive passages, which evoke a Greek Island feel but on the other hand, the spelling, grammar and punctuation especially (almost a complete lack of commas in a lot of long sentences), totally distracted me from the story.

The premise of an old man, distraught at the death of his companion donkey and determined to protect its carcass from the vultures circling overhead is a worthy one for a short story. However, I was very unsure about the way in which the story is untold and found myself irritated by the narrative voice, referring to 'we' all the way through. I was more intrigued to find out who 'we' might be than I was interested in events at the top of the mountain.

I think this is a good idea but needs to be executed better.

Review By: ShorhamShambles

A long way to the mountain

Papalazarou can obviously write and there are some wonderful sentences dotted around this short story, but they just didn’t quite add up for me.

Almost all the descriptions are too wordy, and almost everything it seems must be described.

I didn’t get a feel for the characters – nothing made me believe they were real, or want to care for them in any way.

I like meandering stories but this one made me beg for something to happen. After the first page, to be honest, I didn’t really want to read on. The description must be absolutely first-rate for this kind of thing to work.

Thankfully the ending was interesting and well-written. Unfortunately I had the distinct feeling that everything was merely a pre-amble to the final two paragraphs, as though the real story was summarised here in 300 words and everything before was just padding. This final section was fluent and evocative but under normal circumstances I just wouldn’t have got this far.

I appreciate that this was perhaps intentional – reflecting the slow pace of life in a dusty Greek café – but it didn’t quite work.

There are the seeds of something here. Papalazarou can write, but will need a stronger narrative around which to frame his skills.

Did I misjudge this site?

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Chip and Pin and Chip and Path

2008-03-20T19:20:00.003+02:00
Having accomplished the major prune of the olive trees that we had promised ourselves for several years - we cleaned out the centres and lowered the profiles of more than 50 trees - we were left with prunings so prodigious that for a while we did not know what to do with them all. The previous major pruning had been a reactive one after the massive snowfalls of February 2004 and the clean up thereafter had taken 6 weeks and involved daily bonfires for the best part of a week at the end. What to do this time round?

The bonfires of yesteryear though satisfying in and of themselves had, in retrospect, come to seem wasteful. We could. I now know, have garnered more useful wood for the stove than we did. We were naive. We followed what all the other olive farmers were doing. We did not think it through but this time it would be different. Well the thinking would be different even if the outcome should be the same.

When we finally took control and full ownership of the land last year we decided to farm the olives in our own style. Just as we have with the lavender from the very outset. We have long refused the local authority access to our olives to spray them with insecticides - they use some hideous organo-phosphates long banned in the UK and US and most of Europe: now we decided not to have the tractor turn over the land between the trees twice yearly and to cope with the weeds and brambles another way. For the olive fruit fly we have organic fly traps among the trees from the start of blossom until late October: for the weeds and brambles we have the brushcutter. But what about the prunings? What about the bamboo?

We have been leaning towards the Masanobu Fukuoka methods since being introduced to his One Straw Revolution by the Greek cameraman who shot the excellent footage for Gill's acclaimed TV appearance and round about October last year we had started looking at chippers to dispose of the big spring weed crop of fennel and mallow and thistle and bitumen pea. Might a chipper be an option for the olive prunings? We decided to ask the red-robed twins: after all, Eddie and Ceddie were well into the initial logging exercise - taking out all of the big wood and stacking it ready for seasoning and cutting into stove-sized pieces later on: who better to judge what would be left after this phase was complete? The new pile was already substantial when we bearded the boys, their Japanese ABS saws in hand, about it and it has grown considerably since then. Their answer, as one, was unequivocal, "if it can take branches about an inch and quarter, and run for a couple of hours at a time then it'll probably do the trick - it'll mean more work but what the hell ...". Ceddie was almost immediately back to unloading the barrow but Eddie hesitated. "Will it be orange? Like the Husq?". "Who knows?" I replied, "We shall see ..."

It turned out not to be orange, rather, it was a bright green and white plastic Viking (the domestic arm of Stihl) electric machine. 2.5kilowatt motor, 35mm capacity, cloverleaf opening - a consumer model, the GE 150. but beggars can hardly be choosers and the petrol versions were ridiculously expensive. And here it is as shown on the Stihl website: Extra work? Do we care?

We bought it at the newly relocated farmers supply shop in Episkopi and we bought it on impulse. We had thought originally just to see what they might have available - we'd researched chippers online and plumped for the Viking range so it was just a question of seeing whether the farming shop was still a Viking dealership and maybe seeing one in the flesh so to speak but ... As I said impulse took over - spring price changes were in the offing and they might go up rather than down. And they did have one we could touch and test. And Gill just happened to have her egg card with her ... And thereby hangs another tale -

The farmers' shop in Episkopi, apart from being new and clean and amazingly well lit is also high tech - they take credit cards in a world where farmers usually work exclusively in folding money - bags full of it if necessary - cash is invisible to the taxman - and to the rest of the family. And so, having decided to buy the bugger Gill handed over her newly minted egg card and the assistant, a young lady who speaks very good English, duly swiped it through the sparkling new credit card terminal and that is when our joint adventure began. Said terminal demanded the entry of a PIN and announced that no signature would be required! Shit - none of us had ever done this before but we had all been aware of it - chip and PIN technology was suddenly a practical reality rather than a theoretical possibility.

Gill scrambled to her handbag and rifled through all 3 of her notebooks desperately searching for the one where she had written her PIN down - just in case. The assistant was clearly mentally rehearsing what she had been told about chip and PIN or what she had heard or read. I stood to one side in a technological stun zone. The assistant signalled Gill to come around to her side of the counter and enter the newly retrieved PIN and, with fingers mentally crossed, she did. Eventually the terminal responded with a receipt or transaction record covered in numbers and the information that the transaction had completed successfully and again that no signature would be required. OK, we'd done it - we'd chipped and PiNned!

Or so we thought. Our assistant had her doubts - that was clear from the look on her face as she read the transaction receipt and for the next fifteen minutes she was on the phone to the bank reading strings of digits from the now somewhat dog-eared scrap of paper. At last she had satisfied herself and been reassured sufficiently by the bank clerk to let us exit with purchase but not before we had all congratulated ourselves and filled out the warranty card.

Next day we were out in the field facing a mountain of olive prunings. The chipper was plugged in and Gill was at the helm as she has been ever since - it is her machine now Dave. And so began what has become to seem like a never ending chore of feeding the voracious maw of Vic the Chip. The piles of prunings shrink and disappear but the incarnadine twins are always mounding new ones. And there is an issue - quite literally. Prunings go into the top of Vic, Gil guides them in carefully following the instructions, Vic chews them, and then Vic spits out chips. Now while the volume of chips issuing from Vic is less than one tenth of the volume of what goes into Vic, one tenth of a hell of a lot is still a lot. So what do we do with the chips?

They'd be good for barbecues? You could use them to smoke meat or fish? Yes and yes but we have a lot of chips - by the end of day 3 we have a small hill of chips! Eddie is standing there looking at the growing pile of chips, smoking a roll up and scratching his head. Ceddie is busy building another pile of prunings for Vic. Gill is feeding Vic. Vic is chewing and spitting. We are all thinking - hard.

And then Eddie has his halogen moment. "Guv? Did you ever see that place I used to live before I come here? No you ditnt but we did have a one of them venture playground thingies and that was covered in stuff just like what Vic spits out so was all the parths thru the woods and down to the lake where daft Bill did drown that time d'you think its the same? ". Brilliant Eddie - abso - bloody - lutely brilliant. I hug him and signal to Gill to switch Vic off. "Paths Gill! Paths. Paths to the lavender plots. Paths wherever you want. Thats it. Eddie is a genius." Gill's face lights up and her thumbs go up. We all hug Eddie and now we know what to do with the chips. And that is exactly what we have been doing ever since - path finding and making. Here's a shot of the first path in progress - check back and we'll show you where all those chips end up.

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Georgia

2008-03-10T19:53:00.001+02:00
Comfortable again, he thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his Drizabone and she linked her arm through his. It was the Drizabone, long, black and totally unknown here in Crete that had been turning heads. And continued so to do as they pushed their way out onto Kydonias and turned right past the souvlaki stall where the smell of grilled meat, sticking to the damp air, momentarily triggered his gag reflex. To him the Drizabone brought memories of the Keach brothers, the Carradine brothers (and he did in those days look a lot like Keith), and the Quaid brothers in Walter Hill's The Long Riders. To the locals he probably reminded them more of The Matrix. They pressed on, the crowds were thick here outside the Omalos hotel. The pavements were wet and treacherously slippery. His leather soled boots were not much use whereas her rubber soled ones allowed her to move quickly: she unhooked from him and pulled ahead. He lost her briefly in the melee.

She stopped outside the town hall where scads of people stood around in huge clumps clasping sheaves of documents. She had no problem spotting him - four inches taller than the average Greek and dressed in black from head to suede booted toe he stood out from any crowd that they were likely to encounter here. And there was a space around him, even in the throng, that was clearly discernible. She did not need to wave to attract his attention, her red hat marked her out.

He clasped her to him and whispered to her "These fucking boots will be the death of me ... is it much further?" "Not far, just follow me - it's up to the end and right". He nodded an OK and they moved off again. She made the right into Apokoronou and he followed. She turned almost immediately into Vouloudaki and he followed. Taking a right into Sfakion she turned and said to him "It should be along here somewhere on the right". "I thought you said not far? This is a bloody hike". The rain came on again.

They found the building easily, not 400 yards up the road and surprisingly well signed, an extremely unprepossessing brutalist office block of 5 storeys but with a frontage no more than 7 metres wide all dark grey granite and approached up a lethal looking flight of steep, wet, marble stairs. The buildings either side were no less ugly. They would, over time, become accustomed to such monstrosities but for now they could scarcely believe how ugly this thing was. The rain had stopped now but their coats glistened yet in the weak sunlight. They picked their way warily out of the light and up the stairs. The doors were wedged open with rusty fire extinguishers and so they reached a dark hallway. A door to their left, another flight of marble stairs ahead and a lift to the right. Which way now?

A start - possibly

2008-03-05T20:42:00.001+02:00
I'm sorry if the fiction buffs among my readership have been feeling neglected - shit ,not feeling, you have been neglected. The muse has been coming up dry for a while,or prompting crap, but this last few days I've been determined to pen a new Greek short story and this is the opening - make of it what you will:

The pair of them stepped down from the bus into the rain and heads turned. Locals milled around, talking loudly and even shouting. Several looked at them very obviously. A fat blonde woman with a cigarette in one hand and a mobile phone in the other stared un-selfconciously. The near rancid aroma of the gyros cafe next door wafted across the bus terminal. And then the skies opened again. Umbrellas shot up like mushrooms all around them. The couple simply pulled their hats down further - his a black fedora and hers a plain black felt confection. They walked through the throng - the crowd parted silently as they approached and closed behind them noisily. Heads turned.

Xania bus depot in winter can be a dreadful place, crowded, dirty, cold, and wet. It can be, and today it was. Tourists who crowd this bus station in summer, dressed in shorts and t-shirts, sandals and beanie hats have no conception of what a winter here can do or be. They cannot see the White Mountains to the south capped with snow. This is the couple's first full winter here and the last three months have brought home to them how harsh a Cretan winter can be to bear. Three hours and more ago they had woken to the sound of incessant rain and a wind howling like a wolf as it rushed around the house, and if they had not agreed among themselves to visit the diefthinsi georgia today then they would have just pulled the duvet up around their snug little ears and drifted back of into the arms of Hypnos. But they had agreed and there was no going back. It wasn't as if they had an appointment but they had promised themselves and the day had come round and so they would do it. That's just how they were. It's how they conducted themselves.

He had raked over the stove and emptied the ash - he would lay a new fire in when they came back. She had made a pot of coffee and begun to clean the kitchen before he joined her in the kitchen. They drank coffee and jump started the day with cigarettes before finishing the cleaning and driving down to the main road to catch the bus. They didn't open shutters or windows - why confirm what they already knew about the filthy day? This was before they had the dogs so venturing out was unnecessary. The DS had started first time and without choke and they had waited just 5 minutes before the bus turned up. The omens were looking favourable despite the apparent pathetic fallacy.

They headed off to the public toilets arm in arm and emptied out the morning's coffee. He gagged standing over the squat Turkish style toilet that showed too clearly the detritus of a previous user. Averting his eyes had only brought them to bear on the plastic bin in the corner that was already full of skid marked toilet paper. The smell of urine and bleach hacked at the back of his throat prolonging the gag reflex. The sink, when he came to consider washing his hands, swiftly convinced him to the contrary opinion. The badly tiled floor was slippery and he tried not to wonder why - he put it down to the rain and left in haste. She joined him outside as he lit a cigarette and they ploughed off into the drear day. Heads turned. Again.

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How does this shit work?

2008-02-27T22:16:00.001+02:00
Memory and recall fascinate me. Those of you who have stuck with me through thick thin and bald will know that. I have written several times on the subject or subjects over the years.

When recall throws things from memory at me I still get taken by surprise now and then. This morning was a wonderful example.

We were sitting drinking coffee and listening half heartedly to Radio 4 whie drinking coffee and waking up when an item came on about the ark of the covenant. Some odd guy was chattering on about having found an object in some obscure african tribal home that was built from parts of the original ark of the covenant which apparently self destructed at some time in the distant past (don't ask - just research it if you need to know more). At that point I turned to Gill and said "shittah wood - that's what it was made of - well the original was anyway".

Gill looked at me as though I were an alien and yet I had, when I said it, assumed that everyone in the world knew that fact. Apparently not. Two questions come immediately to mind: when and how did I learn that the ark of the covenant was made of shittah wood?; and how and why did I recall that ridiculously esoteric fact just now?

Gill insisted on checking the thing out on Wikipedia and quickly established that shittah is a singular, that the plural is shittim, that shittah wood comes from the mimosa acacia family and that these woods are available in the deserts of the middle east. And yes - the ark of the covenant was supposed to have been constructed from shittah word. Seriously weird shit memory and recall.

The fascinating point here is that that little piece of information has now been filed into two sets of memory cells with a far richer set of recall paths than it had this morning. Weird shit indeed.

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The Cost of the War

2008-02-26T19:09:00.002+02:00
Nobel prizewinning economist Joseph Stiglits has collaborated with Linda Blimes to produce book that looks closely at the true costs of the latest US expeditions into Afghanistan and Iraq. Are you sitting comfortably? Please sit down if you aren't already. The numbers they come up with are big - really, really big.

Three trillion dollars. That's right 3 triliion dollars. Not billion. Trillion. More than World War 1. More than Vietnam cost over 12 years. More than the Korean War - twice as much. 10 times what the first gulf war cost. As of writing the joint efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq are costing the US about $18 billion - per month. Like I said really big numbers and under normal circumstances they would remain just very big numbers but Stiglitz was on Radio 4 yesterday and he made a couple of equivalences that put things in perspective.

At the current rate of spend 2 weeks would pay to eliminate illiteracy worldwide. 10 days would fund the US aid budget to the whole of Africa for a year. One sixth of the total $3 billion could put the US social security system on a sound financial basis for 75 years!

Now those are just the numbers - the arithmetic - the money if you will. Stiglitz and his collaborator do not stop there though. They investigate the impact that the financial and human costs have had or are having on family lives and the world economy respectively and those finding make equally awful reading.

It is a truly horrific picture they paint with words and numbers. And what is it all for?

Read the truth here.

Or listen to the Radio4 program here.

Read and listen - and weep.

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wake up and make the coffee

2008-02-18T20:39:00.002+02:00
Despite the typographical similarities with Celine please allow the following to serve as an humble trubute to Alain Robbe-Grillet who died today

wake up ... it's dark ... peer thru the mosquito net to see the clock ... listen to the hail slanting in ... 06:05 .... turn over ... turn the deaf ear upwards

wake again ... bladder pressing ... some light but grey ... and wind howling ... out of bed and across the wooden floor to pull on slippers and a thermal vest ... off into the toilet ... piss and listen to the rain ... check the clock again ... 09:03 ... decide to get up ... wash face ... cold water ... fucking cold ... brush teeth

pull on the rest of clothing ... jumper, socks, jeans ... taking off the slippers beforehand .... head downstairs telling G to come when she's ready

living room is warm ... check stove ... some embers still glowing red ... wind is howling around ... check outside and pull on the drizabone and the boots ... pick up the teapot and cigarettes ... unlock and step out into a freezing north wind that's carrying snow ...

check for cat presents on the door step, blank, quick check of the surroundings, snow everywhere on the mountains ... down the stairs checking Kastellos ... a mist hangs in the way ... the sky is grey-white ... the wind is bitter and biting ... say hi to the girls ... both wet

unlock the cellar door and check for water ingrees, none .... open the tp half of the stable door fully ... open the windows and shutters over the kitchen sink ... cold blast ... open the north facing windows and shutters ... icy blast ... go to fill the kettle ... still no water ... use some spring water from the cannisters ... switch it on ... shit, the washing up from last night sits on the drainer ... and the coffee dregs bucket is full ...

outside into the bite ... fill a bucket from the water butt ... white finger ... empty the coffee dregs around the mimosa ... flush it with more butt water ... sleet is refilling the butt already ... back indoors ... drizabone off ... jacket and wristlets on ... flush the toilet with butt water ... make the coffee making sure not to drop the cafettiere ... pick up some water from the fridge and a tissue ... rain and snow have stopped ... for now, time to do the girls but fill the sink from the bucket and wash up first ... cold water, very cold indeed

out to the run ... greet the girls and clean their eyes ... pick up two frozen turds in a plastic bag ... change their water and disinfect and sweep the run of olives and olive related detritus ... play with the girls and cuddle them, fuss all round each other ... look up south to the mountains ... grey ... look north to the sea and the incoming weather ... shit incoming ... check the plants on the way back ... check the water butt is switched off ...

back indoors ... pour some coffee and warm hands around it ... light a cigarette and perch on the chair in the draught ... filth coming in ... the wind gusts up to 30 or 40 mph bringing snow with it ... close the north facing shutters quickly ... check the girls, they've gone into their kennel ... slurp some coffee and then roll up all the rugs ...

G arrives ... kisses and a cuddle ... sit and drink coffee ... smoke cigarettes ... brush down the sofa ...sweep the floors ... clean the bathroom ... dust everything ... re-connect to the internet, the router has jammed ... check the weather, snow in Souda, temperature -6ºc with wind chill ... get moving ... refill the kettle, the water is back hurrah - only 12 hours or so ... rugs back down and sweep them ... make more coffee ... get the girls in - the snow is settling now ... clean ther paws and dry them off, drowned rats ... electricity goes off ... but only for a few minutes ... restart the computer and the router and reconnect to Radio4 ... check the weather again - sleet, hail and mist, still -6ºc, wind gusts at 40 mph ... close the south facing windows but not the shutters got to get what light we can ... the sky is a dark grey and darkening .. .threatening

girls are on the sofa ... we are drinking coffee ... G does make-up and D goes up to do the stove ... open the balcony shutters and doors ... empty last night's ashtray into the bin on the balcony ... switch on the immersion heater - there'll be no solar heated water today ... wash up last nights tea mugs in freezing water and put them away ... wire brush the grate ... scrape the inspection panel in the stove door free of soot ... empty the ashcan into another bin on the balcony ... white finger ... lay in a new fire and sweep the floor ... we're short of logs and kindling ... bring in some more logs ... down to the carage where some chopped logs are prepared and bring them up in empty wine boxes ... check the cover on the log pile ... sweep the floor again ... bringing in logs always messes things up ... swab up the damp that came in on your boots ... switch off the immersion ... close up the shutters and doors ... check for water ingress ... the snow is slanting in almost horizontal now ... pick up a couple of packs of cigarettes and exit locking the door behind

almost blown down the stairs ... the view from the sun terrace is obscured by snow and cloud, mist and wind ... into the cellar and close the door behind ... close up the top of the door ... we're well aired now ... and re-greet the girls who are all pleased to see you ... slurp some coffee and light another cigarette ... is that it? ... are we done? ... for now?

G's turn to start tomorrow

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All things pass

2008-02-18T17:15:00.003+02:00
There are a lot of strange people with some very strange ideas running around in the public spotlight. It is truly difficult to get a fag paper between them these days. Take the following:

Tough call huh?

The Year of the Death of James Graham Ballard

2008-02-17T13:11:00.002+02:00
It is always with a sense of dread not dead that I write obituaries. To write one in advance of the actual death is nothing new for me but this one pains me deeply.

This piece could easily have been entitled Chronicle of a Death Foretold. But it isn't. I found a better hook to hang it on. It could as well have been entitled The Dead - great novel or great short story it makes no nevermind - JGB did them equally well but will no more I fear. Fear is the key. Instead I stole my title from Jose Saramago - one his less accessible but most beautiful novels. A novel about a real poet - the death year of a great poet - the 4 greatest Portugese poets - Fernando Pessoa.

I have read all of my properly sentient life. I have listened to radio all of my sentient life too. This week my two loves have come together with readings on Radio 4 from JGB's latest book - Miracles of Life: Shanghai to Shepperton. Latest and last? I seldom read biographies and eschewed literary biographies almost entirely some years back with but a few exceptions. My advice would usually be "Never read the biographies of artists whose work you admire. You wouldn't want to meet them - let alone know them. Most of them are less than likable human beings and in many case their likability is in an inverse ratio to the product of their talent and how much you admire their art." But this is an autobiography and Ballard comes across as a really nice guy!

Having made the disastrous mistake of failing to give Gilbert Sorrentino the Nobel prize for literature - he died before they even thought of it - I fear they might miss Ballard too, and for the same reason, and that would be a mistake of the same order of magnitude. I love Doris and Harold P all that they have done - but really - GS had and JGB has, each, a genuine body of work unassailable by comparison.

JGB is, I truly believe, the greatest English writer since the second world war. Forged in that conflict his insight is unwavering and unsentimental. Amiss, Self, Rushdie, McEwan et al are pygmies by comparison. Ballard looks inside the human condition and never flinches no matter how unpleasant the image. Where Dostoevsky and Camus and even Derek Raymond looked inside the individual and found Conrad's Heart of Darkness Ballard's focus is upon society - the kinds of society that mankind is capable of creating - the ugly crippled children of the body societal. The works all shine a magnifying light on the potentialities of how we pull ourselves together into groups or how we might. Somehow the Cocaine Nights tetralogy seems more real and more frightening than Orwell's 1984 or Huxley's Brave New World - more prescient - and he does this not by looking into and projecting the future but simply by looking into the present and extrapolating.

Not since Joyce has one man mastered both the short story form and the novel with such a mixture of skill and inventiveness. Ballard's Atrocity Exhibition is a scarily experimental novel that challenged readers when it was published to handle the fractured and overlapping semi-narratives and snapshots, the vignettes and the tableaux that have become a commonplace - an everyday, moment by moment experience - since the advent of the web. Ballard pulls it off with an aplomb that in hindsight is nothing short of brilliant.

Reading Ballard can feel like accompanying Mapp and Lucia on a day-trip to Belsen says Sam Leith in his recent review of Ballard's final work and there is more than a grain of truth in that albeit contrived encomium but the regularity with which reviewers and fans alike trot out the word dystopic is in and of itself fairly depressing. I would prefer to draw people's attention to the facination with art and architecture, design and decadence that suffuses his work and his vision. Ballard sometiimes writes of livable societies and sometimes of unbearable ones but to focus entirely on the darker side of his work is to miss his essential humanity and this last week I have come to appreciate just how human JGB is and how this informs his entire oeuvre. He shows us exactly what mankind is capable of and it is not all misery.

If Miracles of Life is his last book it will be sad but it may be a fitting place to finish his life work. I want it not to be his last. I want to have the next Ballard to look forward to and that is something I can rarely say of a living author.

The wikipeadie entry on Ballard can be found here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._G._Ballard

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It snowed tomorrow

2008-02-12T17:25:00.001+02:00

It started raining last Wednesday and it has rained every day since. It has also been getting colder every day since. We've had hail and freeing cold rain already. It has snowed in northern Greece already and with the meteorologists forecasting colder weather at the weekend with northerly gale force winds those of us who recall the big snows of 2004 are watching February the 13th roll around with fingers crossed that we do not get a repeat. What a week that was - the one that started on the 13th. See what happened then here.

I thought this piece of text gave a solid idea of how winters are felt here and thought I'd share it with you:

Winter is in full force here, which means it's really, really wet, and, here in the village, cold. Although we have had blessedly welcome spells of sun - with breathtaking views of the completely snow-covered Psiloritis and his rivals to the west - for the most part the weather has been wet. Paint-peeling, mold-inducing, goat-stinking wet. The humidity here is astounding; if we don't air out the place vigorously whenever it's not raining, evil-looking black mold grows on the ceilings, the walls drip, and in general it starts to feel like a medieval castle.

The full blog entry is well worth reading and can be found here: http://www.paddyleague.blogspot.com/

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Silly me

2008-02-12T14:38:00.001+02:00
I saw this headline "UK government plans to stop file-sharing" and thought to myself "how wonderful - the UK government is tightening up security so that it stops inadvertently sharing my data with Joe Soap and all his identity thieving mates and maybe it'll stop allowing the DVLA and its ilk from selling my data too." How wrong was I? What sort of silly Billy am I? Turns out what they really want to do is stop me sharing my files with other people so as to protect a bunch of parasitic record and movie companies. Colour me mug.

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On the birth of our first grandchild

2008-02-06T19:29:00.001+02:00
Welcome little Charlie
welcome to our world
your world
you didn't ask to be here
you owe nobody anything
the life you have is yours to live
nobody else's

Do as little harm as you can
damage as few people as you may
love yourself first and
everyone else thereafter
but
love yourself

There are people here
who will care for you
as best they can
but they cannot live your life for you

You must find your own way
and cut your own furrow
through the field of life
but keep your head and eyes up
there are many beauties to see
- see them all

There are no rehearsals
no playbacks
once it is done it sticks
There is no supernatural
no afterlife
no make it all right later on
get it right as you go
this life is all you have
live it wisely
live it happily

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Fall back and spring forward

2008-02-05T20:20:00.001+02:00
Incongruous. A man in a white suit is standing in the top of a tall olive tree. The valley is verdant and lush. All around there are olive trees and citrus groves. The sky is bright and clear even though it is February. Wisp of smoke climb vertically from small bonfires all around. There is no movement in the air. In his hand he hold a japanese pull saw: another is stuck into his wide brown belt. From this distance he looks like Fitzcarraldo with a mane of white blonde hair and a manic smile. The sun catches his broad brimmed white hat as he hops goat-like from branch to branch sawing as he goes.

And suddenly he is gone. He falls backward, the ladder toppling left as he fall right. The wraparound sunglasses fly from his face as he hits the ground shoulders first and his head whips upward. They land 2 metres away. The saw is still grasped in his left hand: the other, smaller saw is still in his belt. HIs fall is broken by a palliasse of oxalis growing beneath the olive tree. Silence, Stillness.

He shakes his head. He moves his legs, glad that they are operational. He checks his legs. And then his arms. He catches his breath: the fall has clearly winded him. He rises to his feet and glances around to make certain that nobody saw him fall. He rubs the back of his head. And then he picks up the ladder and places it back on the tree, making sure this time that it is level, And he climbs back up into the tree with the saws both still in place. He continues.

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Gazing into the crystal ball

2008-02-01T19:44:00.001+02:00
Today's announcement that Microsoft has made a "hostile" bid for Yahoo makes my crystal ball shimmer. Watching the rise of super cheap PCs and laptops from the likes of Asus means that we might be seeing Linux derivatives at last get some traction. Vista, which had a gestation hat would make an elephant wince has proved desperately unappealing to the corporates. Likewise the newest version of the bloated and ugly Office suite. The EU and the British educational system have begun to despise MS and its manipulation of so called "open standards" and have finally started to voice their doubts. Their is a tide running against the proprietary and toward the open.

Open is suddenly cool in a way that it always should have been. It has taken a long time and the open movements have finally achieved some kind of critical mass. Those of us who were preaching the open road 6 years ago at its inception can finally breathe out. Intel tried and failed to derail the OLPC project. Microsoft tried and succeeded in perverting web standards with its ugly and subversive browser. But the pendulum is swinging back - Firefox has taken over the fight that Netscape lost to the 800lb gorilla. And it is winning. Google's offerings for word processing, email and the like have begun to convince simple users that there is another way. And it is cheaper. It also has better future proofing because of its openness. Embracing standards rather than subverting them suddenly seems to make sense and the long history of fear uncertainty and doubt that Microsoft has used to deter "switchers" is possibly starting to backfire.

Vote with your wallet and your choicesw - let's bury the gorilla and the gorilla pupeteers. Forward with the open road.

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Something obscene in the state of Crete

2008-01-22T19:51:00.001+02:00
On several occasions in the last month we have passed huge lorries parked up in the valley. They arrive in the early morning around dawn and only leave when they have been fully loaded with immense amounts of olive wood. When they leave they are driven down to the harbours at Rethymnon and Souda where the wood is shipped out to Piraeus.

Gypsy lorries pass us on the highway stacked high with old central heating boilers that once burned olive stones: ripped out to be replaced by oil burning ones. The heating oil tankers rush past in the other direction.

Stacks of halogen, ceramic and, electric heaters block the entrances to almost all supermarkets in every winter season now. In the larger supermarkets they nestle beside the air conditioning units that start at a meagre 8 kilowatt ratings. And they sell well.

Plentiful firewood is being exported. Olive wood burns efficiently and with a high calorific value. Olive stones have the same properties as wood since the major component is lignite and the calorific value is similarly high. Olive stones are a natural by product of olive oil production. Olive firewood is also a natural by product of olive production. At the last count there were more than 35 million olive trees on Crete. Neither olive wood nor olive stones need to be imported and the supply of both is self sustaining. The price of these fuels is not controlled by some wide boy commodity dealers in ridiculous coloured jackets.

The price of olive firewood has increased some 15% in five years and we are told that olive stone prices have increased at roughly the same rate. And fuel oil prices? And electricity prices?

I am no expert but I suspect that Crete is one of the few places in Europe that could be powered without recourse to fossil fuels. And from sustainable resources within its borders. Crete has 300 days of sunshine each and every year. There was a plan drawn up in 1990 for solar Crete. Sadly the reality never materialized (if you read closely you'll see that the contractor was to be Enron) and instead the Greek government built another oil fired power station.

I am sorry but, bugger the green eco warrior arguments, simple fiscal probity makes that a dumb decision and one that could have been identified as such by a simpleton. It is a decision that could be reversed: the solar and olive options are still there and becoming more attractive daily. And yet?

And yet the Greek governemnt refuses to even implement an environment ministry despite a Greek being EU Environment Commissioner (Stavros Dimas - how the hell did that happen?). They refuse to provide incentives to install photovoltaic systems and tie them to the grid (why not make it compulsory on all new builds?). And yet the public here is rushing to a future power economy that is guaranteed to become ever more expensive and ever more difficult to sustain. And they don't care - they just don't care. The convenience of flicking a switch. of never having to fill a hopper or to chop some wood is just too seductive.

Obscene.

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Democracy? No - a travesty!

2008-01-20T15:38:00.001+02:00

The only real indications that an election is taking place are the sheets of paper posted on shop and office windows, with a photograph and short biography of each candidate.
More than 90% of voters are expected to turn out.
The new National Assembly has to meet within 45 days to approve, from among its own numbers, the president, vice-president and executive Council of State for new five-year terms.
Sixty-three per cent of candidates f are new, standing for the first time.
Fifty-six per cent are under 50 years old. Forty-three per cent are women.
Half of the candidates are chosen by municipal authorities, the other half by organisations, such as trade unions and the women's movement.
Critics call it a travesty of democracy that should be replaced by multi-party elections.
The system, set up in 1976, is possibly the most democratic in the world because money cannot buy votes and delegates are chosen at a neighbourhood level.
Voters are given a list of candidates for their region. If they do not like one candidate or another, they can tick individual boxes next to names and leave others blank. They are also offered a single box that they can check to support all listed candidates

A candidate must get 50% of the vote to win.
Compare what is written above with the biased piece that the BBC ran today and from which the bones of the above are extracted. You will then see why US experts dismiss the above system as a travesty of democracy. This supposedly lighthearted piece from the BBC might which also ran today could give you some deeper insight into what is is that is believed to be a part of an authentic and creditable democracy.

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2 reviews - one author

2008-01-18T19:58:00.001+02:00
A couple of book reviews for you today people.

Jean-Patrick Manchette - Three to Kill

This was my first exposure to Manchette and what a very pleasant surprise. The number of literate writers who venture into genre writing is small. You could count them on the fingers of both hands: maybe one hand. Ballard is one, Poe another. Manchette is one too. Credited with single handedly rescuing French crime fiction from the police procedural he writes in a spare, vicious language about men capable of extreme violence. Hardly a word seems wasted and once or twice an excess or a mis-step may be the fault of the translator. This is very good, very consistent, writing. Manchette's man, a high end hi-fi salesman, reluctantly stops to help a motorist who has been involved in an accident, or so he thinks but the man beside the citroen DS has been shot by professionals. The man takes the victim to hospital and abandons him to his fate while he himself goes off on holiday but his life has changed irrevocably. The killers soon come after him - and after his family - but the man is lucky. In a move never properly explained but not explained only because the man does not understand it himself he decoys the killers away from his family and the hunted becomes the hunter. Ten months later he returns to the bosom of his family, his task accomplished. Fast and insightful prose fills the gap I have left you here. Manchette fills up that gap much better than I could. Manchette elevates the crime novel to literature once more, bringing to mind Dostoevsky and Camus. In this slim volume he gives us psychological insight and social commentary spun in a tidy web of well chosen words. I did wonder whether he had read the great Derek Raymond but who cares?

Jean-Patrick Manchette - The Prone Gunman

Derek Raymond first tempted me into writing crime - Manchette is likely to be the writer who brings me back to try it again. Understanding that this genre has attracted some of the greats - Dostoevsky and Camus and Hamsun among others - might make you wonder why and I think it has to do with the onset of the modernists and Freud. When narrative qua narrative has become the domain film and the obvious way ahead for literature is the life of the interior crime springs obvious and eternal as a possible mainspring of the modern and post modern novel.

This time round Manchette gives us a professional hitman who is retiring as his central character - his hero if you will. Leaving this dangerous profession is by no means as simple as it would be from any more mainstream profession however. An untimely retirement would spoil things for his "station boss" and it soon becomes clear that the next job, the "one more thing", could be fatal for our extremely violent but unconflicted hero. Quite how Manchette makes a professional killer so sympathetic has to be experienced to be believed. But like him we do. We even empathise with him. No mean feat.

Once you are hooked on the hero the action picks up from a frantic pace to a hectic one and soon you are careening through a seemingly logical but eminently crazy helter skelter of calculated violence and mayhem. Every step makes sense. Ears end up on car floors. People end up dead. The logic and the reason are undeniable - Manchette has you in his grip. Sit back in the assassin's passenger seat - a Citroen DS again, take out your Opinel knife and pare your nails - it's a bumpy ride but one you will enjoy. There will be blood but there will also be analysis and commentary.

One to enjoy and possibly Manchette's finest.

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Olive Harvest - The Romantic and the Pragmatic

2008-01-14T20:40:00.001+02:00
13 = 324 = 712 =75= 81 : that's the accountant's version of this year's harvest.

The four of us partly filled (only partly filled because none of us is strong enough of back to carry a completely filled sack or to hoist it into the vehicle) thirteen (13) 50 kilogram sacks with olives in a day and drove them off to the olive presses. Weighed out we had harvested 324 kilograms (712 lbs) of fruit. When cold pressed those 13 part sacks converted into 75 kilograms of organic (we use no sprays or chemicals of any description) extra virgin olive oil (acidity 0.4 percent - anything under 2% is virgin and anything under 0.8% is extra virgin). If we assume a specific gravity of 0.912 for extra virgin olive oil that multiplies out to 13 part sacks of olive fruits equals 81 litres of product.

And, as is the case with most accountants; descriptions of anything that involves humanity, that tells you almost nothing about the actual values involved and exchanged during the process. But that's accountants for you. Six (6) hours in the open air, in a beautiful valley, under a warming sun (we sweated copiously) with good company. Six hours of conviviality and shared physical labour: spreading nets, raking and beating trees; sorting twigs and debris from the ripe firm purple black fruits, kneeling or crouched Arab style. Six hours that strain the wrists, the back, the shoulders and, the legs to fatigue levels. Happy fatigue: satisfied fatigue; an almost smug fatigue if you will.

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Famous for 5 minutes? Don't quote me.

2008-01-08T18:59:00.001+02:00
There have been a few incidents recently that have made me wonder whether I am either catching the zeitgeist a little ahead of everyone else or whether some influential people are reading my blog and not mentioning it.

Who knows? Whichever might be the case I'm content.

First up there was a Tariq Ali piece in the Guardian the day after my excoriation of Benazir Bhutto that was in a very similar tone to my own piece and even reproduced my little "poor and poorer" figure in a similar position vis a vis the text.

Today my grand old friend the Old Git sent me the following link to a an item in the Telegraph about a concerted assault on Britain's archaic blasphemy laws. Those of you who read my original piece back in early December will recognise not only the key sentiment but also some of the key argumentation.

Result.

Digital is dumber!

Here's one that isn't (as far as I can remember) addressed in any of my blogs in the past few years but one that I certainly covered a long time back. It is a topic that has been discussed for many years amongst audiophiles and is one of the main reasons that I still have my vinyl albums. How long I wonder until someone realises that digital photography contains the same immanent dumbness?
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Metrics bloody metrics

2008-01-02T17:49:00.001+02:00
If I were to tell you that in order to measure the effectiveness of the national health system I intend to monitor closely the health of the fittest 5% of the population year on year an publish the findings in the form of a league table would you think me perverse? Or would you perhaps think me misguided? Mad? So how do we measure the effectiveness of the education system by monitoring the progress of the top performing 5%?

The UK has become, within living memory, obsessed with measuring things. It started with commerce and gradually infected public services and the utilities. Metrics, targets and, league tables have become part of the new and pervasive language of management. We are expected to take note of these statistics and rankings as some holy grail of efficiency and effectiveness - for everything! Sadly we seldom question what it is that is being measured and rarer still what that metric tells us. Single point metrics like waiting lists cannot tell us about the overall performance of our health system any more than your blood pressure can tell me about your general well-being. No person in their right mind would think to judge a complex system by a single metric.

No more can the continuing performance of the brightest few inducted into an education system designed for the brightest tell us anything useful about the manner in which that system provides for the needs of the rest? Precious little is what those figures can tell us of value. And where one might reasonably ask are the resources to come from to monitor and record the performance of these few? From the rest of the system I figure and likely to the detriment of the mass. And what new metric will we use to measure that degradation? Why none at all.

Bloody nonsense. Bean counting nonsense. Management science? Don't make me laugh.

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Another New Year

2008-01-01T18:40:00.001+02:00

If the new year celebrations are about anything they are about renewal - so look what came into flower today:

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Come off it Benazir baby

2007-12-31T19:35:00.001+02:00
A woman who was seeking election to extremely high office in Pakistan has died. There is argument about how she died although this doesn't seem to preclude pinning her death on any number of groups and alliances. She was garnering huge support from Western democratic governments not because she was a democrat herself but because she would, they believed, have looked favourably on their way of carrying on had she been elected. She paid lip service to democracy but that was as far as it went. She had already held high office in Pakistan and had made no impact in securing democratic structures or embedding democracy as the fundamental principle of the state. In truth neither the western democracies backing her nor the lady herself had any genuine interest in Pakistan transforming to a democracy.

She was a woman whose time in power served only to swell her foreign bank accounts and to further ingrain corruption and autocracy into the systems of power in Pakistan. Her unholy alliance with the military junta should have warned everyone what to expect. Yet still the western press is churning out hagiographies to this unpleasant woman who could have improved things and chose instead to fill her pockets. It is of course historically the case that her party the PPP has never had internal elections nor has it ever really considered so doing. Democracy? Don't make me laugh! But it is her failing as a human being that has now come to light and that damns her irredeemably.

What mother would knowingly condemn her son to the life that poor Bilawal will now have? How caring is that? Not content with condemning her party to a leader of her choice (where was her democratic urge?) she imposes, from beyond the grave, a life he has not chosen. A life as a target.

So let us not mealy up our mouths with circumlocutions about her physical bravery or her potential. Let us examine her works both in power and beyond death. And let us rather condemn her works and thank our lucky stars that she no longer has a part (beyond the damage she has already done) in the future of poor Pakistan and the even poorer Pakistanis.

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Text for nothing

2007-12-30T20:05:00.001+02:00
First up time to come clean - yesterday's ultimate story was stolen. It was not in any real sense mine. It was a rewrite of a passage from Beckett's The Unnameable - a wonderful book littered with gems. It was rewritten because I had been reading t his review of Daniil Kharms. There are some things that are sublime. I could no more improve it than I could shorten it.

HEADS UP - the blogella Black and White that I started some time back here will be resumed very soon. It got away from me for a while. I wrangled it. It got its head once more. I rode it and it threw me. I got back on and it threw me again. From here on in we go where it wants to go. Ballard here we come.

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Ultimate story?

2007-12-29T18:15:00.001+02:00
A young man - unextraordinary meets a usual young woman. They love and they marry in order to love more conveniently. He goes off to a war but we do not know what the war is about. Soon she receives a letter telling of his death at the front. She is distraught but soon falls in love again and marries another man in order to love more conveniently. The first man writes to say he is coming back - he never died. She goes to the station to meet his train. He dies of a heart attack as the train pulls in to the dull rural station - the anticipation has overcome him. She is distraught and trudges to her dull home. She finds the door is locked and so she peers in through the window where she sees her mother-in-law taking him down from a meat hook in the kitchen- he has hanged himself thinking he would lose her. Why was the door locked she wonders?

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