Up early

Up early this morning. Up before the cicadas so we could hear the birds for once. Up before the day began to heat up. A few moments of cool to water plants in. To clean the cellar and to sort out the dogs. And then a swift wander down to the strip to catch an early bus to Xania.

We were off to collect the car - after 10 weeks of inactivity her hydraulics are, we are told, fixed. A taxi ride out to a road that runs parallel to the main highway but that shows no evidence of how you get to it. Here is the garage - and Christopheros translates. It's only an arm and not an arm and a leg. But ... And it's a big but - when she was loaded onto the low loader they wrecked her exhaust. We pay and are assured that we can have any other work on her done there but after August. We drive off sounding like a London bus with a broken exhuast - we cannot hear each other speak. Oh and the battery is flat as a witch's tit.

They cannot find an exhaust specialist who has DS parts in Xania - but we know one in Rethymnon and that is where we are bound. Deafening. There are relative sweet spots - 2500 revs in 5th and 3000 revs in 4th where the noise is almost bearable. We try not to make too much noise but fail dismally. Eventually our exhaust man pronounces the system unfixable - we need replacement parts - and they have to come from Athens. A coule of days at least but "it's only a bit noisy and you do live in the country". He reminds me of my uncle Derek this man. And his manner is genuinely avuncular.

As we leave - to return in a few days - the electrical warning light glows orange and refuses to extinguish itself - the battery is not charging. We charge off up to the auto electrical specialist - damaging eardrums as we go. A young man implicates the alternator but his more senior colleague refutes this and sets to work looking like a Greek version of Paul Newman with a permanent fag in the left hand corner of his mouth. The regulator comes out and is opened. Cabling is stripped back - the wiring loom long since dined on by rats when she used to spend 9 months a year in storage. An hour later he surfaces from beneath the bonnet - come back tomorrow - leave the car here - tomorrow at 11.

And so we wait on.

Old gits - new layouts

If you like the new layout for this blog then tip your hat to the old git who provided a sound critical analysis of the last attempt. Now that's what I call a friend.

You roast and you learn

This summer has been a learning experience par excellence for us. The first heatwave struck in June (way early) and hit us up to 106ºF. We learned how to cope with those temperatures in the short term and Gill even began her harvest as that wave first started to wane. She finished first harvest as the current heatwave began to wax a few days back. Today the mercury hit 106ºF again and the humidity dropped down to 10% and so we learn some more.

We now make it a rule not to go outside when the air temperature is above the temperature of the blood in out veins. Simple but effective. When the temperature sticks at 104ºF we bring the dogs inside to cool their bellies on the tiled floors and soak their run and kennels with irrigation water. If a really hot day is in prospect we rise with the sun and do what has to be done as soon as possible. Tea is better than coffee in the heat. We drink plenty of water but don't overdo it.

Living through a heatwave is a little like putting yourself under house arrest. It's not comfortable but you learn to just dicker around at small bits and pieces - concentrating too hard makes you hot and above blood heat your judgement is impaired so we don't do anything too demanding.

Oh well - tomoorow is supposed to max out at about 98ºF. We'll get what we have to do done early ans see how it goes.

HARVEST UPDATE

G says 1 more day will see off the first harvest of 2007. Regrowth only after that. Oh yes, and the french in September. So far, so good, so hot.

Sorry?

"Covered in scratches and tears" says the boss, covered in scratches and tears indeed. Lacerated to buggery more like. Eddie and me look like we've been thru one of them there chippers ourselves - death of a thousand cuts is more bloody like it. And all we're wanting is a chance to get our own back: we may get torn up a bit more feeding the chipper but we'll have the satisfaction of mulching the buggering brambles. Victory is sweet but annihilation is best. Let's go forward to the final bramble solution.


This is what the boss had in mind -

This is what we have in mind -

War crimes

We have a mutiny on our hands here at the farm. The boys in red have downed tools - well they've downed the secaturs and the hand saws for the time being. Having hacked the wild carrot, fennel and tree mallow down from their towering heights we, well I really, had directed them on to clearing round the bases of the olive trees some of which are encompassed round with vines and grasses: some grow cheek by jowl with mulberry and fig shoots: but all of them share a common pest - the bramble - and it is the bramble that has brought out the militant side of the farm boys.

Those of you who are not familiar with Eddie and Ceddie might not be aware that they are brothers of an heroic bent - no pansies these. They lap up hard work in the way a tired dog will gratefully lap from fresh fallen puddles. They are physicall not exactly prepossessing but they are hard. Whipcord tough they are and so when they began complaining about the brambles I knew it was serious. Now it isn't that they don't want to cut them back and expose the wonderful old olive trees that this hideous rambling bramble has everywhere colonized it is rather that they want revenge. After manfully uncovering 4 magnificent tree architectural or sculptural in their majesty the boys have had more than enough. Covered in scratches and tears they are now demanding their own "ultimate solution". They want one of those garden chippers - one of those machines with internal knives that reduce prunings to chips. Their reasoning is that the brambles inflict so much damage as they are torn free that they, the boys, want the final satisfaction of reducing them to mere chips that can be refed to the garden as a mulch.

I'll not cavil, and when we have the funds they will have their chipper. Meantimes Shaun has instructed them on the making of fasces from discarded and dried lavender stalks (another by product of the harvest). Are they turning into fascists?

Commonality?

small acts of kindness

There are small acts of kindness committed here every day.  By ordinary people. For no better reason than that they make people feel good.

You go into a cafe, you sit down and order a frappe each, you sit and talk, you acknowledge a few people you know, you finish your drinks and call the waiter over to pay your bill: he leans in and tells you that there is nothing to pay, "Vaso bought your drinks". Vaso left half an hour ago, she waved as she went. Today it was Vaso, last week it was uncle Nikos, two weeks ago it was the man with the big moustache. It happens. It happens a lot.

You go into a cafe (we use cafes a lot) it is hot, it is very hot, the waitress is sweating, you are sweating, everyone is sweating. You sink into the shade and watch the cool water rippling in he lake. The waitress brings your frappes without you having to order. Thirty minutes later she brings a small carafe of ice cold raki, to tiny glasses, and a plate of chilled fresh fruit, "From the house," she whispers, "it is very hot yes?".

You spend half an hour selecting birthday cards from the racks outside the shop in the sweltering heat of the old town. You pick up a funny and apposite postcard or two and wander inside to pay. The priestlike figure behind the till tots up the cost of the birthday cards only and you point out that he has forgotten to charge for the postcards, "from us" he says and waves them away.

Truly the Lavender Way

The magic is working. The way is growing into its repute. Voula dropped in this afternoon and the very first thing she said as she walked through the gate was that the entire place smells of lavender. And do it does although because we have been living in it for weeks now we had not properly noticed. The cellar, home to most of the bunching and processing positively reeks (the table now is buried beneath piles of the stuff); the sheds, where drying happens are suffused with it; the middle floor where dried type2 is stored and a sack full of type1 now lives too takes ones breath away and replaces it with lavender scent.

Harvester

This blog is suffering from neglect of late but that's simply because there is rather too much going on to invest time here. The lavender harvest came early this year and it came on hard. Despite help from Annie (a doff of the hat) it continues. Type2 is all in and has been dried successfully en masse - it's dry and stored now - and will become tea later. Drying is taking 3 days in the post heatwave weather but because there is so much of it the drying racks are almost permanently occupied. Today's estimate suggests that there are still another 47 plants to harvest in Lav2 and believ me that is not as small a task as it might seem: remember this is all hand harvested, no technology involved.

While G (most everyday) and A (on Fridays) bring in the harvest the boys continue to push back the overgrowth of everything not lavender which, like the harvest itself, is no small beer - plenty of beer is consumed at the close of the day. One thing is for sure though, everybody sleeps soundly and some of us retrie totally knackered. Tonight will be no exception and so we sign off.

28/82

The temperatures are down and I woke this morning dry for the first time in a fortnight. G was gone - already up and watering the house garden and trimming back the trees by the front door.

We shared a pot of coffee, some cigarettes and she confided in me. Lav 2 has come of a sudden into almost full bloom and Lav 1 has recovered and is also blooming. We have a profusion of lavender, all of it is waiting to be harvested and there are only so many hours in a day. And the front garden needs trimming back if G is not to be lost in there.

Next up we treated the girls against ticks which we have to do every month during spring, summer, and autumn. We cleaned out the run and fussed with the girls for a while and then went back indoors for another coffe. A wind had got up by then and the cellar was cooling nicely. The silver sides of the olive leaves were showing. Butterflies abound now and this morning they were taking shortcuts through the cellar.

We decided that G will cut all type 2s this week and rather than bunching them to dry we will load them onto the huge drying rack in my garage that we usually reserve for drying the french in September. That will save some valuable time.

I decided that I would tackle the front garden at least to open up paths to the hoses and the areas that need watering: the bougainevillea, the climbing rose, and the beds and after breakfast as G settled down to the accounts I ventured out with Farmboy. With secaturs and hand shears, handsaw and mattock we worked toward each other from oppostie ends: invisible each to the other for the first hour. Fennel and red rye grasses 8 or 9 feet tall (2,5m.), tree mallow in magnificent pink flower filled the space between us until we broke through and met at last at the brdige by the palm. It was a Livingstone and Stanley moment with both of us wreathed in sweat, shirts sodden, hats dripping, covered in burrs and grass seed.

Result.

40

Forty easy paces will take me from the new arch-topped door to the last full row of olive trees. How old are they? The green sides of the leaves are glossy now and some are full of fruit already. The heat of the past few days has yellowed patches of leaves on each and every tree. The bases have been stripped of suckers and brambles. A mat of vegetation carpets the grove, slowly rotting down to feed the trees.

Step (one) across the irrigation pipe and one more takes your breath away. Glance left and majestic Lav 1 stands mightily: the remnants of the 50 divers mother plants reaching up with spikes toward the bamboo. But stop, you will not glance left for there before you, taking your eye is Lav 2 - glorious. What takes which sense first? A purple glow wafts into your eyes, hits your retina and runs up to your brain. Does it register before the low busy hum registers from your ears? Bees are busy at their work flocking over a myriad of flowers, singing their songs of hums as they go. Or is it the heavenly scent that gently glows in your nose?

The physical presence of a lavender patch at late afternoon with the sun to your back and the lightest of breezes coming up from the river brings all of these sensations but ... But it is the essential harmony and rightness of the whole that gets you first. It is like standing in front of a Rothko painting, it hits you with its quiddity, its whatness before you perceive any of the components of it. It impresses itself upon you instantly. No thinking needed. It lavenders you.

 

Ad hoc air conditioning unit

It is odd what comes to mind in times of stress. Yesterday afternoon when the day was at its very hottest and we had just been rolled over by the rolling blackouts that DEH uses to control demand it occurred to Shaun than all of the people with air conditioners would now suffer and that there was some poetic justice since it was their immoderate use of those A/C units was what forced DEH to implement rollong blackouts in the first place. Not content with this he sketched a jerry rigged air conditioner that Farmboy promptly rigged up for our delectation.

A small fan that once did service in a now defunct fan heater was plugged into our photovoltaic source - the sun was cranking out plenty of electricity for us - and the airflow was directed across a tray of ice cubes. In minutes we had a deliciously cool breeze that we all luxuriated in. And the knowledge that right then we were probably the only people in the area with aircon. Sweet.

This idea might have legs.

Heat

There is a silence outside that is palpable: thick and deadening. A solitary cicada stopped rasping several minutes ago and the birds ceased long before that. Nothing is moving out there unless you count the blinding white light that is bouncing from every surface and the heat haze that ripples gently off the baked and bleached soil.

Indoor I can hear the blood pumping in my head and the fluids in my semi-circular canals lurching as I get up from the desk but nothig else. Power was cut, deliberately and possiby on a schedule unannounced, perhaps 40 minutes ago. A mist of sweat covers my forearms and upper lip. My hair is wet. A sweat rash itches at me.

A fly ventures in through the only open shutter. Closed against the heat, we routinely leave one shutter cracked to catch any passing breeze although today it has no work to do, no little air movement to catch and funnel. The tiny, heat exhausted, fly buzzes desultorily before collapsing onto the tiled floor in silence. The silence reigns again.

There is only hot air to breathe and cold water to drink. I sit before a dead computer, both of us completely still, while Gill stands at the table bunching lavender that she picked in the cooler section of the day (82º at 0600 hrs) and that is destined to dry, possibly in record time, on the rack in the bathroom.

And so life goes, on the heatwave days.

108/42

The temperature was up at 98 (using ºf dates us we know) by 10 this morning and has continued to climb all day . On days like this you close all doors, windows, and shutters and stays indoors - at least if you have any sense you do. Or unless you're a dog and live outside. Luckily we have previously rigged up a shower system for the girls' run that cools down both the run itself and the kennel too. This system uses irrigation or farmers' water and can drop the localised temperature a couple of degrees and raise the humidity by 10s of percentage points within an hour.

As for us us we sit indoors in the darkened cool cellar that has one wall underground. Once the air temperature rises above blood heat fans are pointless and we resort to dampened and chilled scarves and cloths. We sit very still and listen to reports on Radio4 of horrid weather in the UK and disruptions to travel caused by rain.

It is hard to imagine anybody voluntarily prostrating themselves on the beach on days like this but we know it happens and imagine that beach bar takings do not suffer in the same way as the people do. Pity the poor staff. Especially the one collecting beach bed fees!

The latest forecast suggests that it might begin to cool by Thursday.

We're having a heatwave

It isn't stopping us doing much but it sure is slowing us down. And it's set to continue. Perhaps for the entire summer.

Be not misled by shallow show

Despite the appearance here in recent days of both of the brothers Bovary be not misled into believing that we true twins have been idle. Be not misled by shallow show or in our case by a lack of show. Shaun and I have been burning intellectual oils well into the small hours with our own particular socratic dialogues despite you not having been made privvy to them (a tree or two fell in the forest when there was none there to hear them). In point of actual fact since we were introduced to 3quarks daily (there is a link in the sidebar) we have been daily provided with enough grist, mental, political, linguistic and cultural to keep many many mills on a 24 hour day. And we have never shirked our duty.

Several topics spring to mind to share with you but the one that repeatedly bubbles to the top of the brew. Time and again we think back to a bizzare radio piece we heard recently where the estimable Christopher Hitchens, whose latest work "God is not Good" has recently been released, was confronted live on air by his ignoramus, fascistic, less reasonable brother Peter. The topic, was ostensibly to be a discussion as to whether CH, as he opines in his new book, is correct in his assertion that religion and religious thinking has regularly done the world and culture serious harm as opposed to the good that its adherents and priesthood regularly and vociferously claim. PH, you see is a card carrying, right wing, coercive supernatural religious "beleiver". What might have been an interesting discussion came to nothing for no better reason than the massive mismatch in intellectual wherewithal between the siblings. Where CH was reasonable and rational PH was bullying and loud. Where CH made his case with evidence and reason PH made assertion after unsubstantiated assertion growing only louder and more hectoring as he repeated himself over and over whilst frequently claiming "higher authority".

The fascinating part of the discussion, for us as brothers at least, was how two brother could have grown up in such similar circumstances within a few years of each other could have come to such very different personal states of being. Shaun argued that PH's unpleasantly coercive manner was typical of religious thought through time and that it was his coming to God that had influenced him whereas my own view was that an immanent coercive streak in his makeup had in contrast brought him to religion. But perhaps it was neither. Or perhaps both are true. It is not possible to safely attach an arrow of causality to this development and perhaps it is not necessary but it is an interesting theme to pursue. We continue to explore the possibilities of finding some core data that might support either direction of causality.

In a nice synchronicity another piece on 3quarks later that day which reported a tussle in the field of linguistics reported on an isolated tribe whose language shows no sign of recursion, no names for colours, and no number, have as one of their basic precepts, their guiding principle if you like, "no coercion". No missionary group has ever been able to interest them in any flavour of Xtianity because of this. And many have tried over many years. Indeed the linguist who is studying their language originally went there as a missionary (of some fundamentalist stripe or another) and he himself lost his religious faith when it was put under the scrutiny of their supposedly primitive gaze.

That's one of the things we all love about 3quarks. That and the fact that it mirrors one of our online sigs and honours the illustious JAJ.

Sparrow invasion

Those of you who have been with us since the start will doubtless recall the incident of the owl in the bathroom when a barn owl took up residence in our top floor bathroom. Well yesterday we found, and you'll have to trust me on this because we didn't think to take photos, a sparrow nest in one of our interior light fittings.

During the summer months, and the winter months too to some extent, we spend most of the daylight hours at field level using the middle and top floors for the evening hours and relaxing. In summer though, we tend to leave windows and shutters open to promote air circulation and generally freshen the place up.

This last few months have seen frantic nesting activity among our ornithological population. Nest building began as early as January and by late spring every nook and cranny was under development: every gutter; all of the space in the carage; infeasible spaces in Gill's potting shed; every tree and shrub; the house full signs should have gone up around the end of May. But they clearly didn't more and more birds poured into the area. Sparrows, wrens, chaffinches, and even Dartford warblers continued to move in until nest material could be found everywhere.

And so it appears that we left enough space that a pair of little feathered friends, forced out of the housing market, decided that the light fitting in the stairwell was both safe and accessible. How we missed it is another matter but yesterday and more in sorrow than in anger, we evicted our little squatters. From here on in we will V the shutters rather than throwing them wide.

Meds

1500 milligrams of amoxicilin, 375 milligrams of clavulanic acid, 1600 milligrams of Ibuprofen , mind jarring amounts of caffeine and nicotine, is this any way to live? Is this a diet worth having? What is it with the Guv'nor pouring this amount of chemicals down his neck day in and day out? By my reckoning he's taken more pharmaceuticals since Staurday than in the previous 5 years.

OK so the guy has an abcess under one of his front bottom incisors but so what? That tooth has been all but useless since the olive accident 3 years ago. Surley he should have had the thing taken out before things got to this pass? He and G traipsed off to Xania this am and good old Nikos extracted the tooth in question, drained some of the obscene pus and told him to keep taking the tablets. Maybe good old Nikos should have extracted the top incisor that was damaged at the same time? Or do we all have to live through another bear with a sore head session in a few months time? Might be the best thing all round but for now let's just hope that when the feeling comes back the Guv'nor is in less pain and can knock off the ibuprofen popping, and that the Augmentin kicks in to kill off the infection.

He does look odd with that new and gappy smile of his, yes he has raised a smile since coming home, and although we are all trying not to laugh and show our complete dentitions I doubt it can last.

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P.S. I know I'm just an old country boy but could one of you prescribers out there please explain to me how a guy who only eats once in a day is supposed to take antibiotics three times a day after meals? Beats me and if'n you could hear the Guv'nor retching first thing in the am after his first meds it'd bother you too.

Harmony

We, me and Ceddie, were working the fields again today its been a busy time lately in the fields. He was cutting sukkers from the olive trees and any new groath going into the middle of the tree (gotta keep themopen so's the sunlite can get in) they haven't been done proply since Panderlise did them the other year and he only did harf of them and I was dragging all the cutaways down to the river bank what got washed away last year before the wedding and weevig them into a kinda fence. It was hot as all stink out there as Ceddie would say and we was sweating like pigs (do pigs sweat?) there was salt water dripping into my eyes and down the inside of my sunglasses but we got thru about half the trees and added to the brushcuttering that we did yesterday and the day before it was all starting to look v neat. Sos the last thihng Ceddie did was to cut a hole big bow off that was all growing to one side - bloody ginormous it was - and making the tree lopsided - so I cut all the little branches off and weeved them in the fence and then the two of us dragged the big ole mother up to the garage to log it.  We dont use the chainsaw if we can avoid it and so it was today we did it all with them little jap saws that the boss gets us.

Anyway the point was is we got the smaller stuff off and we was down to the main trunk what was pretty bloody big and Ceddie kept getting the blade jammed as the trunk closed on it and cos there was a lot of of sap in it. And then he had this harmonius idea - he stepped over to one of the shelves where the boss stores bits and bobs and grabbed a coupla fine olive wedges that he'd made before then he got the little mallit made of olive that Shaun designed and Ceddie made in winter then he slipped a wedge into the cut he'd made and tapped it with the little mallit - that'll hold the sawcut open he said and as he swaed he just tapped the wedge a little now and then and suddenly he was thru. It was beautiful!

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The crew mutiny

So there I was this morning minding my own business, checking emails, and catching up on things online: the cellar chores were done and G was out in the fields in her tatterdemalion gathering the first gleanings of the early lavender harvest when there came a knock at the door.

I turned my head leftward some 80 degrees or so and there was Shem framed in the stable doorway, the top half of which was open already. "Can I have a word please guv'nor? It is quite important. At least it is important to us." Over his shoulder I could see Farmboy and Eddie, and a little farther off Shaun skulked. "Come on in Shem - come on in all of you". Shem stepped inside nervously and the rest of them loitered without refusing my invistation.

"Is this some kind of delegation Shem? Takes me back to my old trades union days. Spit it out lad - what is it?". "The rest of the boys elected me as spokesperson stroke shop steward, they're all, wee're all. feeling a bit, well, to be frank, we're all feeling a bit neglected, it's become almost as if we'd all left home. We're afraid that the blog readers will all be thinking we're not pulling our weight around the farm. And that's just not so - as you well know. We do appreciate what a shitty time you've been having of late with all this legal shite and that's why or partly why we've not spoken up before but now that you've got all that behind you and trust me we're all really pleased that you have got that behind you or rather behind us - we thought it was about time we got a mention again. Maybe even an entry or two of our own?"

Of course he was right - they all were - how could I have been so remiss? I got up, pushed the chair back, and hugged him close to me.  I guided him to the door and embraced each of the boys separately. "I'm so sorry boys, trust me, I am so sorry, I apologise unreservedly." There was a profound, group silence that I broke with a grin and a smile - "OK kids, we start tonight - let's get this show back on the rails! The lavender crew ride again!" Slowly but surely four faces beside mine lit up.

And so, tomorrow we start over.

 

 

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The gorgon's head

The gorgon's head

as I understand

is the only thing in all the land

that can turn around the evil wishes

of nasty gits and evil bitches

Home and dry

The 6 to 4 shot romped home today on a tight rein at 10 past 2. Won by a distance.

Let joy be unconfined.

Odds

The local bookies Drakos and Tsilli are offering 6 to 4 tomorrow, 6 to 4 on before the end of the week, and 50 to 1 on by the next public holiday.

If and when the horses cross the line we'll let you know but in the meantime this will have to suffice.

For those of you who have no idea what the stakes are all we can say is - stay tuned and all will one day be revealed.

15 days

15 days without a DS. 16 tomorrow. Our mechanic is popping back and forth to Athens as his health is in a sorry way and so he cannot dedicate much time to fixing her. We have begun to suspect that her problem may be beyond his considerable skills as well as being beyond his current availability.

Living without a car in the countryside is tough but walking back and forth to the shops is getting us both pretty fit and even my arthritic hip/spine/pelvis is benefitting. I wouldn't do it from choice but it is probably good for my cardio-vascular system too. Traipsing up the hill with two fully laden bags between us in the pissing rain is hardly enjoyable but it is edifying. We now know every wild flower between here and the strip. We know which fruits have set. We know how the tomatoes and potatoes are coming along as well as the grapes and the chicory. We've even struck up a new acquaintanceship with an elderly German couple whose house we pass on the route down to the strip by the wiggly road.

Yesterday we crumbled and hired a car - a very ugly car I must add - a Suzuki Wagon R - from Yasser at Alianthos and caught up on some bulky cupboard stuffing - water from Mathes, wine and beer from Lidls, coffee and dog food from Rethymnon. We shall probably have to continue hiring a car once evry week or ten days until Betty comes home but outside of that we intend to cntinue adjusting to life without easy access to a car. It's just another challenge and we always rise to challenges.

Besides - as the old Turkish proverb says "No journey is long when you travel with a friend".

The plot thickens ...

For two or three years now there has been a bitter race for circulation among the weekend newspapers in Greece. Free CDs followed by free DVDs followed by DVD's plus magazines - escalation by the quarter. Some of the low end publications were - until very recently - offering 4 or 5 DVDs with their Sunday rag - and all for 2 euros. As might have been predicted things got slightly out of hand and the yellow press red tops escalated from grubby 'B' movies, to soft core porno movies, and most recently all the way down to hard core porno. At the last bank holiday weekend local police siezed 2 tons of hard core pornographic DVDs due for circulation with that weekend's newsprint.

Having reached this impasse - which saw us collect a six volume Best of Buster Keaton collection and a set of D W Griffiths silent classics - one of the up-market papers has made a surprise move. Last weekend I noticed that one of our regular Saturday papers carried a copy of Umberto Eco's Name of the Rose. The move from grubby DVD to classy canonical literature was confirmed this weekend when they announced their forthcoming offerings -

I shall be interested to see how this lateral and literal sidestep will serve them. I wonder also whether any of the UK rags wil follow suit. It would be nice to think that in this week of the Hay festival some British newspaper might put its faith in the taste of the British public. Maybe not.

There's a good game to be had here - check out the spines and see how many of the well known works you can identify - let me know in the comments section here.

Full size image here for the game - http://flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=516531451&size=l

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lollygagging

So it's Sunday morning and the rain has stopped after two days. A long lazy wind blew in from the northwest on Thursday and brought a mackerel sky with it. The clouds continued to pile up through the evening and by Friday rain was inevitable. Friday night brought an amazing son et lumiere of thunderstorm and howling rain. Rain that we needed. Usable rain. Rain that didn't for once run off but that saoked itself instead into the ready wetted soil.

So it's Sunday morning and I'm lollygagging while G washes out the week's dirty wash - no more rain showing on the forecast until Tuesday - I'm surfing, reading my niece's new blog, and listening with half an ear to Radio 4. There's some supercilious pratt on the radio lecturing me about my carbon footprint. He's having a pop at common people taking foreign holidays and talking capitalist nonsense about paying his nice green company to offset the carbon debt of my flights.

That's rich, I'm thinking, no mention of all that buiness travel - most of it air travel - that somehow manages to smuggle itself under the green radar. I used to do business travel and trust me most if it was not necesary but it was a nice perk - but isn't all junketting? Suddenly I lose contact with Radio4 - there's a flight of 4 military jets going supersonic over our peaceful tranquil valley and I can no longer hear myself think. They zoom off toward the mountains and then they bank and turn back down the valley - deafening us all over again, as I shout at the pompous prick on the radio - what about their carbon fucking footprint smug bollocks? But by the time they finish up and bugger off so has our man on his hobbyhorse and the eco bandwagon.

So tell me - what was the carbon footprint of the Afghan invasion? And the invasion of Iraq? What is the carbon footprint of all this military exercise crap? How to find out? Any ideas anyone? I think we should be told - come on Greenpeace - live up to the peace part of your name.

NO NEED TO BE RUDE DEAR

I mentioned en passant the other day the charity shop in Xania where I sourced our sixties pulp fiction. Another charity shop has recently opened in nearby Rethymnon. Now second hand shops seem strangely alien in Greece where the new found consumer obsession emphasises the new and shiny. It is likewise true that charitable enterprises have a much lower public profile here than they do in the UK where most high streets sport several varieties of charity shop - Oxfam (upmarket now), Romanian Orphans, Battered Wives, Cancer Research, Mencap (or whatever else it is these days). In fact the charity shop may be more of a hallmark of the high street now than even the buildng society and the optician.

My own remembrance of charity shops is coloured and textured by the wonderful example discovered in Royston Vasey which boasted Reenie Calver and Vinnie Wythenshaw, two garrulous bigoted ladies as regular staffers along with the roundly denigrated and never seen Merrill who does Thursdays. The book, the bags, the crack spined paperbacks and the sweet slightly acrid smell of used clothing - every charity shop, everywhere. Walk blindfolded into one and you will know without doubt what sort of establishment you have entered.

How these oddly English shops have made their way to Crete is a mystery - how they will fare more so. Unless Greek consumer preferences change rapidly they are likely to remain dependent upon ex-pat Brits and indigent east europeans for their customers. I applaud difference and I will continue to frequent these little eccentricities while they last. I just hope that neither of these outposts is gullible enough to employ Keith Drop if he dares show his heavily made-up face there looking to help out.

Xrysos Asteria

Andreas has made still more improvements to his expanded beach empire this spring and now more than ever it feels just like a rather select private country club with its own beach. In May it is wonderfully almost empty but fully staffed.

May 17th is early in the year for Greeks to visit the beach and none would think of going into the sea just yet - August is early enough for most. It's early for us too but since the brother and the borther's family left we have had unseasonably warm and dry weather - and it's been sunny too so we drifted down there this afternoon ostensibly for a mid-session frappe. Mind you we popped the beach bag into the boot - just in case.

Andreas and Mrs Andreas were their usual charming and welcoming selves - as were the rest of the charming and friendly staff - most back for a third or fourth season. We worked it out while lounging and supping a frappe - it is our tenth year using XA as our preferred beach venue and in those years we have seen the daughters - theirs and ours - grow from sweet if spunky girl children into young ladies.

The combination of sunshine, solitude, cerulean sea, and clean sand drew us down to the sun beds where we consumed a pair of dodgy sixties British pulp novels sourced from the CIC secondhand shop in Xania for 40 lepta a piece.

This, my friends and readers, is bliss.

There is a description of how Asteria used to be here: http://classic.spymac.com/blogs/blog_show_entry.php?entry=117294

Lightening the load

My life was improved recently by an old friend. While discussing a particularly inane thread on one of the many ex-pat bulletin boards he remarked that I was wasting myself taking any part in such nonsense. The proverbial light bulb went on and I realised just how correct he was. I immediately resolved to post no more on such trivial locations and over the next few days I weaned myself from even lurking there.

I've been clean for a couple of days now and I have to doff my cap to the old feller. Life is so much more enjoyable without the negative, carping, self-satisfied, self-aggrandizing behaviour and atmosphere of those places. Clean is a very apt description of how I now feel. Clean and happy.

No 12 point plan for me - simple self discipline does for me. However, my time hanging around these places has given me some grist and for that I am grateful. Was it worth getting that grubby for? Probably not. Mark it down to experience. I have.

Slavery by any other name

Whilst it is possible that the tragic British toddler Madeleine McCann may be laying dead and defiled somewhere in Portugal this horrid case brings to light once more the spectre of an often unreported and disgusting trade that thrives in the 21st century. I sincerely hope that she is safe and unharmed but to be honest I am not sure which of the other possible outcomes turns my stomach most.

The trade of which I speak is sometimes called child trafficking, sometimes abduct-to-order adoption, but it is nothing more complex nor less foul than slavery. Child slavery exists across the globe: camel jockeys are sourced by abduction, young children are sold into lifetime bonded child labour (often by their desperately poor parents, the "reasons" and the "rewards" are legion (check Wikipedia if you doubt me). The sad Madeleine McCann case raises, not for the first time in continental europe, the trade in illicit international adoption.

Imagine a wealthy married couple in Sweden, or America, or the UK: they have been unable to have children naturally; they have poured thousands or tens of thousands of euros, dollars or pounds into the gaping maw of the IVF charlatans and snake oil salesmen. They desperately want a child. They want a child that is theirs. Failing that they want a child that looks like them - that could be their natural child or could be taken for their natural child. They want a child not much more than a baby - to shape and mould. They want an undamaged child. They have money to spare but no child.

Step forward the international adoption agency. Pricey, but results are guaranteed. Don't ask too many questions . Fork across the cash and take a baby home in a year or so.  No defects. No colour mismatches. No qualms.

When big money is in play there are no serious limits on what people can be persuaded to do.

Madonna and Ritchie, Jolie and Pitt and their celebrity ilk have "legitimised" the idea of buying babies. Why not our wealthy married couple? Many western countries have legalised this side of the trade. The US has smiled on the buying and selling of babies for years. Why not our wealthy married couple? Why not indeed?

BECAUSE IT IS SLAVERY - and we are currently celebrating the anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade - that is why not.

Why children deserve better parents

My very good friend The Merchant of Menace posted a emarkably perspicacious piece on the abduction of the British toddler Madeleine McCann in Portugal - http://tinyurl.com/35byx8 - wherein he lays culpability squarely on the heads of her professional, affluent parents. He expects to draw some flak for this and I can see why but I am behind him 100 percent on this.

Of course he will draw flak. In this world that seeks to shift blame anywhere but on the culprit.  Where everything is somebody else's fault. Of course he will draw flak. In a world where childrens' needs and desires are supposed to be paramount but where abandonment of children is both commonplace and routine.  Abandon the kids to the televison. Abandon the kids to computer games and internet sites. Abandon the kids to a child minder. Anything but take responsibilty.

If children are so precious why do westerners regularly, as a matter of course, refuse to take responsibilty for anything other than their material well-being? As if that was all that really mattered. Why do western governments, and here I'm thinking particularly of the UK government, encourage and even coerce parents to abandon their children - actively penalising them if they refuse to go out to work and abandon their children?

We have achieved a breathtaking, a vertiginous, zenith of hypocrisy with respect (sic) to our children. Publicly, children are sacrosanct. Their interests override all others. Privately, they are little more than life-style accessories to be off loaded when they inconvenience our lives. Which seems more and more to mean most of the time. Why else would it be the case, as Wikipedia states - "According to a recent UNICEF report on child well-being [2] the United States and the United Kingdom ranked lowest among rich nations with respect to the well being of their children" - ?

The British press has already begun to shift the blame for this incident squarely onto the Portugese police investigation with never a mention of the appalling act of abandonment that led to it.  Breathtaking hypocrisy. Shame on them and on the parents. And on all who try to absolve the parents from their culpability.

I hope only that this child can be found and that when found she will be placed in the care of someone who actually cares for her. And that she can somehow recver from this trauma. I doubt it though.

Ain't life wonderful?

Do you ever wake up with a tune or a snatch of a tune running in your head? Well it doesn't matter whether you do or not because I do and this morning was just such a day. And the maddening thing was that unlike most times when this happens I had no idea what the tune was. I rehearsed that snatch over and over in my head for the next hour. Coffee, cigarettes, and a bus ride and I was still at it. The piece I had by now was longer maybe 4 whole bars longer than the snatch I'd woken with. a haunting piano solo that I knew, just knew instinctively, would lead me on to a genuinely great song. So far though - no lyrics. And not a clue as to who the performer, and or composer might be.

A session with our accountant and a longer session with my dentist (bad news - don't ask) and I've got half a line of lyrics. It's 3 o'clock now and we're boarding the bus back to Kavros. How much further forward was I? Not very. Was this going to take all day? Could be. Halfway home and I completed the line. Now I could hear the voice. I played that voice, that single line over and over until we were sitting drinking coffee and the whole thing came to me.

Stevie Wonder - They won't go when I go. I looked up the album when we got home - Fullfillingness' first Finale. How apt.

And what did you do with your day?

Pulling Teeth

Apologies to addicts. I'm blocked right now. Seems like I have been since January. It's driving me nuts too if that is any consolation. Everything that gets started - and that's precious little - seems to spontaneously abort before it gets anywhere near term. I suspect it has something to do with some issues we have with a particular knobhead here in paradise. We shall fix his wagon at some stage but for now he's draining my creative juices and Gill's too. And he used to be a friend - isn't that just fucking typical?

I just want to share a couple of things with you that have been still born of late - you'll have to provide the expatiation for yourselves and if you know me well enough then you'll get the drift (the great and most recent album from Scott Walker BTW).

John Tierney's first exhibition of 2007 opens tonight and we sneak-peeked it this morning. He's sharing the old mosque in Xania harbour with a Greek abstract artist (Anna) who uses canvases even bigger than his. It's a great show and John is on great form - especially the earth tone works. Painting number 1 - "Cretan" is the painting we'd buy if money were not an object - but it is. Well worth a visit if you get a chance and if you'd like to buy us the painting: we aren't proud.

Farmboy serviced the Husq yesterday and G cleaned around and amongst the rows in Lav2. The earth is much drier than we could have imagined and G was Husqing in a cloud of dust for a couple of hours. Add in that the olives are now in blossom and you'll understand why we are all a bit throaty today.

Met up in the flesh with an online acquaintance yesterday and I think that we may be on the way to turning her into a real life friend. What a pleasant surprise - one meets so many total dickheads online. She isn't one of them.

Friends and relatives begin turning up in the next week. Deep joy.

New tricks - old dogs

I have ever made it a habit not to teach any of my dogs tricks - there is something undignified about a dog doing tricks don't you think -  and thus would not be in position to judge the veracity of the old adage referred to by the title of this piece. As an old dog myself I have certainly not been taught any new tricks for a very long while and although I have learnt some new tricks since we moved here to Crete that is not the same thing at all.

Anyway, onto the meat of this post: Molly and Bridey will be 4 this summer and are thus at least approaching some canine middle age. Notwithstanding this Molly has recently taught herself a new "trick". She has obviously been observing our habits closely and has now found one that appeals to her. No, don't fret, she hasn't taken up smoking! Earlier this winter we experienced a blockage of the kitchen sink that I finally traced back to a build-up of coffe grounds in the waste trap. Since then we have taken to tipping the used grounds into a champagne bucket that we keep under the sink. We empty the contents from the bucket every few days around the roots of trees in and around the kitchen garden. Molly has taken, we discovered a few weeks ago, to checking the contents whenever she comes into the house and if there is enough then later on, when she has finished her dinner, she will wander over to the bucket and take a post prandial cup of coffee.

There's nowt so queer as dogs!

I see

We went to the optometrist today - or the ophthalmologist. Now that we are getting on we have regular MOT (KTEO) tests done on ourselves to ward off the medical bogeyman and to work out what servicing needs doing. Today it was time for the eye doctor. G had sought out this eye doctor in Rethymnon a couple of years back but this was my first visit. I was initialy prescribed specs before we decamped to this blessed isle - one set for reading and another set for driving - so, mister six eyes or would that be eight?. Anyways we took the bus into Reth and got along to the eye doctor after a quick pitstop at the vets' for worming tablets. No appointments are possible - you simply turn up and wait. Surgery closes at 2 and if you have been seen fine - if not, come back tomorrow. The waiting room was full of old scrotes, male and female - and I do mean full. Bloodshot eyes, rheumy eyes, old eyes, eyes behind spectacles so thick that their eyes double in size. The receptionist is heavily pregnant and seems to spend all day watching daytime Greek TV. Hell, everybody is watching this thing! Loud, bright, and pointless - like most TV.

Over time the number of people before us in the queue diminishes but the queue itself does not. I pop out now and then to top up on nicotine. By the time there are only three people in front of us caffeine levels in my bloodstream are getting perilously low too. I go out for another fag. Soon it is our turn. In order to set expectations I have to explain that this office is on the first floor of a shabby looking block behind the clinic/hospital. The next office is that of an oil importer and it looks as though somebody dropped off some product samples recently - onto the floor. But when we are ushered into the surgery I am amazed - this man has more kit than the hopital ophthalmology department at St George's Tooting - no kidding, and I speak from experience! If he switched everything on at once I swear the lights would dim as far away as Atsipopolou.

Now it transpires that we have been waiting just over an hour and a half, which is less time than I waited for eye tests last time I was examined in London, and we are seeing a man who has all of the latest kit. And he speaks perfect English. He is a polite, softly spoken man with a small beard and wonderfully soft hands. G is first up and it's good news: her prescription (reading glasses only) does not need changing; and slightly bad news, she must come back for a field of vision check because although her optic nerve looks fine her pressures are slightly outside of the statistical norm and so he will need to check the optic nerve from a functional perspective (same as last time in fact - seems her whole family have higher than normal pressures. We are not worried.

Next up it's my turn and I get a whirl on 3 of the sexy machines. No mixed messages here - good news - my reading glasses are fine - more good news, better than good actually - the slight myopia that has necessitated the driving glasses has reduced by 50%. In fact, says the eye doctor, in 4 or 5 years age may have sorted the problem completely and I will no longer need driving glasses at all. Result!

Now it seems to me that this guy, who does not, remember, sell glasses or lenses, has done a wonderul job for us and all for 30 euros a piece. As I pocket the prescription for new driving lenses I wonder whether a high street optician in London would have or could have given us such obviously unbiased satisfaction?

We have:

blossom on the coramilo,

wall to wall oxalis spotted now here and therewith orange and pink vetches,

nasturtiums climbing up the ramblingrose's plegma,

early lavender,

olive blossom and budding mulberrycuttings alongisde the fruiting koukia that still has flowers -

nothistles this year but the bitumen peas make up for them

 the borage and asphodel,

the chaffinches and the greattits,

the crows and the gerakia.

We saw a swallow today as we sat drinking coffee and watching the locals prepare for an Easter opening - does that make itsummer?

First flavours

The novella is suspended for now. Having put all 3 of the protagonists together I have decided to leave them to rest for a while just as our olive oil has been standing and resting since January.

Today we broached the 2006 harvest. If only we could have shared the experience with you. The oil came out of the barrel a clear golden colour with a darkish green tinge like some rare and precious gem.

A strong aroma of olives fresh and crisp and that first drop on the tip of the finger and into the mouth. On the front of the tongue the taste of olives and nuts, almost fruity. On the back of the tongue a peppery sensation and an almost cough inducing bitterish overtaste. Complex and robust. A thing of wonder and a taste of summer's pleasures to come.

Thank you Demeter. Thank you Olea Europaea.

Rob

Robbo breezed in - the weight of his stumpy little body bouncing on the balls of his feet - Charlie, his older brother, had taught him to bounce like a plastic gangster - it seemed to work - people respected the bounce - were in awe of the front - there didn't need to be anything behind it so long as nobody challenged it. And few people did. Not since grammar school where almost every other kid had exposed him.

His hands were plunged deep into the pockets of his cheap little windcheater. His keys were in one hand and his lighter in the other. He glimpsed Keith moving toward the toilets. Shit - he had meant to look up Rhode Island last night and instead had collapsed in the kitchen when he got home - he'd even left his Shredded Wheat. It was hard looking after yourself when you were living on you own. That cow - she'd run off leaving him alone - and she'd run off with a woman!

He'd known Keith for a few months now and he felt close to him - as close as he'd felt to Charlie before he went off to Canada - even  Charlie couldn't live with their father's demands. He'd even given Keith his redundancy money to keep the bar afloat. There had been that boy at school - they'd been very close - too close maybe - it worried him even to remember it - and his feelings for Keith were closer than that  - closer than he'd been to his wife even.

He was bouncing across the bar now - acting like he owned the place - going to join the boss - who knows, maybe he did right now - Keith had been a bit evasive about what he'd get for his contribution. And then he spotted mad Liz - oh no - please don't let her talk to me - he turned his head, checking out the bland artwork on the walls - anything rather than catch her glance. Bizzare flliers for the upcoming Mexican menu - commissioned from some cheapo art student. He stepped up his pace and was past her in a moment. Safe.

He pulled out the chair, winked at the waiter, and sat himself down at Keith's table just as Keith emerged from the toilet.

Keef

Keith surreptitiously glimpsed over at her table ... he didn't want her to see him looking ... he didn't need his ear bending tonight ... Robbo would be coming in soon and he wanted to spend some quality time with him ... Robbo was a local jack the lad ... a proper scouse scally ... Keith was fascinated by him ... that accent ... that empty swagger ... all that vapid posturing ... Keith knew in his heart it was empty but still it drew him in ... or was it those muscled shoulders and that squat little body ... the weather beaten face and the balding head ... no ... that was nowhere he wanted to go.

Liz gave him the creeps big time. She was ordering another drink ... not looking his way ... one more and she'd have to hit the tab again ... these sad old dames creeped him out ... if she told him about her abusive father and downtrodden mother once more he'd have to think seriously about hightailing it back to the US. This was what passed for a social worker in this country ... third world ... seriously fucked up. She aways ended up crying or ranting ... she seemed only to have two modes ... and he didn't like either of them but ... but she was a regular ... and he was the owner ... how was it the Brits called it ... noblesse oblige ... something like that ... what you have to do in his job.

Robbo was a diamond though ... last time he'd been close to bankruptcy he'd helped out ... shelled over his latest redundancy payment ... that had kept the wolves away for just long enough ... OK so he drank too much ... didn't all the regulars ... what else was there in their lives ... the place was a toilet ... what was he doing here ... he'd left before the guys got after him and he still didn't know what was waiting for him if he ever went back ... fingers crossed that wouldn't be necessary ... those people have long memories ... look at the trouble Polanski was still in ... and that at least was a girl ... and Polanski was pretty kosher everywhere else in the world.

He was watching the door in the mirror behind the bar and he saw Mad LIz looking his way ... please no ... don't let her ... the barman brought her drink and Keith took the opportunity to slip off to the head unnoticed.  He stood pissing ... wondered how much longer Robbo would be ... he was he thought like a young girl waiting for a date to turn up ... no, don't even think it ...  stay straight ... shaking off he reminded himself to check the cleaning roster ... he nodded the state of the bathroom through ... Malcolm - an hour and a half ago ... Wayne due in half an hour ... the waft of deodorant caught in his throat and as he opened the outer door the smell of burgers ... next week the mexican menu comes on line ... hope that picks business up a bit ... should get the later passing trade ... he hoped ... margins were still dangerously slim ... wafer thin ... thank God for the regulars ... he stepped out and saw Robbo swagger in ...

Mad old witch

Her head cast down she stares into the remains of another vodka tonic. Around her eyes the skin is palegrey and papery ... like paper that has been stored too long ... dead paper ... dry paper ... paper delicate and prone to tear. And wrinkled ... her sad long years and post-menopausal condition writ large ... etched even onto a skin never truly young. The hooded eyes themselves palegrey too. Palegrey and watery ... as though about to cry ... always, as though she is about to cry. She seldom cries though .. she is too distant from her emotions now to cry ... except from pure anger and frustrated desires. Alcohol, age, and anger have supplanted life itself in her daily being ... don't call it a life ... have drained the vitality from her ... she is dry outside and dead inside. Sad Liz they call her in this sad bar. Mad old witch, the local children call after her in the street.

Her hair is grey too ... greypale and lifeless ... a dulled pewter helmet ... cut short when he reached 40 all those years ago ... cut short as her mother's hair had been ... cut and not styled. There is something about her that reminds the casual onlooker of the institution ... and then they look away ... the living do not look comfortably or for long upon the dead ... and the spark is not in her ... just pain ... and self-loathing ... and undirected hatred. The slice of lemon that has sunk to the bottom of her glass looks back at her ... mocks her ... derides her ... or so she thinks.

Her mouth turns down at the corners ... habitually, inexorably down ...  her father always maintained that she had never smiled in her life ... not even as a baby gurgling in her cot had she ever smiled ... her eyes, he swore, might glint but that downturned thin lipped slit in the bottom half of her face had never smiled. Over the long sad years she had learned to turn the corners up under duress ... to mimic a smile ... to try to pass for normal ... but it would not convince. It was hard work and since her latest boyfriend had walked out she had not mustered that much effort.

Her father. Her boyfriend. The stories she had. The stories she could tell ... if only there were someone to listen. Someone who would even pretend ... it didn't have to be real ... pretence had always been enough ... it would be enough for now. For all time in fact. She pushed her fingertip, lightly yellowed and deeply ridged, through a pool of spillage on the tabletop and wondered. Another drink? Yes, but when? She knew to within a penny how much she had in her purse ... her mother's purse as was ... not just today ... not just now but at all times on all days ... another of her obsessions ... she had enough for three more drinks ... more if she forewent food ... the cod and chips on the way home to her empty house ... not her house really ... not yet but she would have it ... it would be hers ... he couldn't walk out like that and leave her dry ... drier. He would pay ... they all paid one way or another. She nodded to the passing waiter ... another drink appeared ... they knew her here ... how could they not ... despite the alarming turnover of staff ... young, pretty things ... mostly antipodeans ... she spent more time here than most of the staff ... all of the staff ... well, except for Keith.

HEAD INJURY?

I suspect that I may have taken a blow to the head. Some time in the past week or ten days. Perhaps when we were in Como? Or just after we got back.

We have had rain - quite a lot of it in fact. Yesterday and most of the night before, and the evening before that, it rained. The bottlebrush is set with more than 20 or 30 flowers in waiting - when the sun shines they will blossom into fiery brands. The first few olive trees have begun to bud into flower - the ones near the house are always first. And today I noticed that the plum or coramilo in the front garden is now coming into leaf - tiny buds are opening into showers of leaflets.  OK, so the grasses are overblown, the thistles are coming along strongly and the burr clover had started to crowd out the oxalis - everything has a downside.  But all in all the results are welcomed.

Closer to home - OK actually indoors -  my outputs have all been directing themselves to Tabblo and flickr. The blog lies somewhat neglected. Bulletin boards likewise. And this is why I suspect a blow to the head. Most of my creative output, as you all know too well, goes into words and this momentary aberraation that leans my mind to images is most uncomfortable but you and I shall just have to bear with it. It's just the way it's leaning right now.

If it wasn't a blow to the head maybe it's the effect of spring? We shall see.

SPRING THING

Although today has been overcast and cooler than its predecessors Spring has been the thing this last few days and Spring means activity around here. The farm comes out of a strange almost hibernation. The first olive blossom is in view - from the kitchen window, the wild almonds are pinking daily - thrusting themselves into view on our regular trips to shop for fresh food, pale blue and orange red vetches are pushing their way through the oxalis and the burgeoning burr clover attempts to take over every spot not already taken.

G has been busy with a selective weeding program, tidying and yet not manicuring the periphery of the house. Farmboy has been moving plants - the rosemary sits now beside the front gate for luck, and taking cuttings - mulberry this week, truncheon cuttings in hopeful pots and squirrelled away elsewhere. Eddie, under guidance from Shem, completed work only today on the small olive wood mallet that has been under way for months, fashioning the handle from a piece of old balustrade.

G has cleared the perimeter of the girls' run of oxalis - the silly things insist on eating the seductive yellow flowers that promptly poison them! Sheep in large flocks have become a daily staple now that the valley is in green.  The sounds of chainsaws pruning olives likewise.

We are all looking forward as the days lengthen and the light intensifies. Birdsong fills our ears day long - their nesting activities are properly underway - while the grooming table beckons for the terrible twins, their winter coats sprouting into an odd hairy broccoli look.

And it's Cruft's this weekend so we are tracking Terrier results as they are posted online today.

Tagged

A few days before we were due to go off to Como an old online friend of longstanding - one Nightshade    from the 'flue tagged me in his blog (despite the fact that he doesn't carry a link to mine). He wanted 5 reasons why I blog. Now we're back and I can respond. It may not be 5 reasons - who knows but here goes:

1 - I have so many opinions that I have to tell someone who won't obviously be bored by them - the web does that for me

2 - I have, since adolescence, wanted to be a writer - my blog allows that

3 - I never wanted to have to earn a living by writing - no chance of that with a blog

4 - I want to be able to address any subject at any time

5 - I demand total creative freedom vis a vis style - the oonline format forces me to innovate (I use it as a set of formal or poetic constraints)

6 - I love the feedback no matter how infrequently it might come my way

7 - I have a regular readership built up over the past few years

8 - I'm an egomaniac

Well -  I think that covers about as much as I'm prepared to let on.

Fear and loathing of flying

We have been 40 minutes in Italy. I have already seen more black faces than in the past 5 years in Crete. It is comforting in is way. I have missed that. I have not, you can imagine, missed the filth that goes with all cities. Cities are so dirty. I have not missed the dinning: the constant intrusive "ambient" noise of cities. Does the din ever quiet enough to hear birdsong?

I realised while sitting in Athens airport departure lounge as the expected departure time of our flight slid further - and yet further - away "due to the late arrival of the incoming service" that airports remind me of nothing so much as my old working life - tarnished reams indeed.

Air travel is an odd contradiction. Such a speedy form of travel and yet each journey is much longer, drags on so long, much longer than it should be. No destination airport is closer than a one hour trip to wherever you want to go. Unless. of course you inspect airports for a living. Your own local airport is never closer than an hour's trip from where you live. Unless you live in a departure lounge. So, before you begin your journey will take 2 hours. Plus flight time. Plus that dead time that every air journey gives you - or takes away from you - 2 hours for international travel - 1 for domestic - that hideous "check in" time while fascist animals treat you like a criminal - when they are not ignoring you altogether that is and leaving you to the ministrations of international capital courtesy of MacDonalds, Tie Rack, franchised perfumeries, and all their familiar and grisly cohorts. Baggage? You have baggage? OK give me another half hour - minimum. On the outward leg - at the beginning of your journey - add another twenty thirty minutes minimum loitering beside a grubby carousel at the other end. Unless your carrier loses your baggage of course! And then it is more - much much more.

The nightmare that is air travel is behind us. Delays - unscheduled and inbuilt - over. We are in Milan. We are 40 minutes into Milan. A wait for the shuttle bus was usefully spent getting nicotine levels up to normal. Functional once more, we ignored the siren calls of taxi drivers licensed and unlicensed - it is not hard to see how seductive a swift getaway from the ennui of air travel makes good business for these guys. Milan Centrale station is undergoing cleaning. It needs it. Beautiful mosaic floors - grubby walls - filthy skylights. A chance for another cigarette and then we're off on the fast and timely train to Como.

Still life with nicotine

It's half past five on a February afternoon. The light has begun to fade, It has been raining on and off all day. The temperature has hovered around 5ºC all day and is now falling. I am sitting beneath a balcony outside a cafe in Como. Beside me two elderly ladies in fur coats are deep in conversation around another table chainsmoking. Beyond them a solitary middle aged man sits sipping a cappuccino - fingerless gloves - he grasps a cigarette and draws heavily - his wife and young child sit inside the cafe in the warmth - the only customers inside the cavernous cafe. They have a young male employee who mans the till as their only company - the rest of the staff are out here with us - the smokers. They too are grabbing a quick smoke. The rains continues to fall. The temperature continues to fall. A mist rolls in from the lake. The smokers persist - taking their outlawed pleasure where they might while they can. Across the way in an open air annex to the Duomo the homeless crouch together for warmth - they are smoking too.

Thanks for crapping on my life

I'm not quite sure who this is addressed to but ... Thanks for ruining a great portion of my life outside of home. I've always valued quality over quantity and never more so than when it comes to life itself. People have long lectured me about losing 20 years of my life to cigarettes. I would reply that the 20 years that the cigarettes were getting were crap anyway: years of dependence, incontinence, illness and pain ~ great, take them ~ I'll take 60 enjoyable and self sufficient years and cash in the 20 crap ones for the sake of those cigarettes. The cigarette with my first coffee in the morning at that warm little cafe on the corner as I gaze out of the window as the day develops. The one over the rich port at the end of a fine meal in good company. The cigarette after sex, good, bad, or just plain indifferent. Some body of jerks has taken steps to take them all away from me - well two of them so far but I don't doubt that the mean spirited intolerance they have shown so far will not stay their hand from the last one in time.

A week's stay in Italy was less enjoyable, and less enjoyed, than it could have been because of those jerks. Standing outside cafes and restaurants in February: foregoing coffee after dinner so that I can get out and get my cigarette put a serious crimp in my fun; drinking coffee in the rain with gloves on likewise. And you know what? The anti smoking jerks, those self righteous naysayers, really couldn't give a tinker's cuss, a flying fuck, a twopenny damn. They don't care whether I ever enjoy breakfast, or dinner, or sex again because they'd rather hand me back those 20 discarded years (yeah sure, it's all motivated by a concern for my longevity). Those 20 shitty years that I don't want and that, thanks to our jerks, will be yet more miserable and unbearable than even I had anticipated. Thanks a bunch.

Fragments from a honeymoon in progress

Woke this morning back in my own bed ... birdsong outside the bathroom window ... how to portray our week ... impressions of the past week ... wrote only two full pieces while away ... another is brewing ... but first some fragments ... Milan central station and I've seen more black faces already than in the last 5 years in Crete ... people, many ethnic minorities are living at the margins ... city shit ... the train leaving MIlan passes a shanty settlement made of packing cases and polythene sheeting ... beaten looking men huddle beside fires in open drums ... Milan is dirty in an industrial way ... much of the everyday architecture is brutally ugly ... nowhere I would want to live ... mobile fucking phones ... the trains run on time just like in Il Duce's day ... and they are clean ... the sun comes out on the way into Como ... a clearly affluent town ... very pleased with itself ... well tended and scrubbed clean ... the people too ... less thigh ... less buttock ... less bosom too ... a surprising lack of obesity ... fat is not fashionable - clearly ... though the people are ... save for the men ... there is a virus running amok here that disables mens' aesthetic sense - ORANGE corduroy trousers? ... please ... ORANGE ... the lesser infected men affect banana yellow corduroys! .. what is it with corduroy? ... Italy has reignited my fashion fascism ... only Jim Morrison looked good in leather trousers - nobody looks good in orange corduroy trousers ... trust me on that ... seaplanes crossing the sky of the old town make a musical sound and cut the sky with an anachronistic design ... love that sound ... the lake is pretty impressive too ... I tend to go with Huysmans on nature and stuff ... the mediaeval city is where we are to stay ... fascinating and elegant ... the apartment is beautiful ... Italian style courtesy of an inhabitant of SF, Hawaii, and Como but ... but the black country is in her ... peering between closely packed houses in narrow streets - a funicular .. we shall be going up there to look back down on Como ... a hydrofoil rises and glides across the lake ... we have arrived safely ... now for some expeditions .. maybe ... we shall see ...

Absent Friends

There is an eery silence round here. Birds are chirping and a breeze is rustling though the olives but something is missing. A familiar sound is absent.

There is a visual absence too. Walking up and down the stairs that join the main house to cellar brings it home to you. A familiar visible element or two - gone. We do not see them and they do not see us.

But more importantly there is a spiritual, an existential, absence. Two spirits, bright and cheerful. Two spirits happy and friendly. Our two best friends are off on holiday. Who will come in to sit with us this evening? Who will sit beside us and lift our hearts with their unconditional love?

The girls are away at kennels. We miss them desperately but I doubt that they are missing us. They have new friends to get acquainted with. They have a new environment to familiarise themselves with. I am sure that they will enjoy their holiday. But without them this place just isn't the same.

First They Came for the smokers

First they came for the smokers
and I did not speak out
because I was not a smoker.
Then they came for the motorists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a motorist.
Then they came for the pensioners
and I did not speak out
because I was not a pensioner.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.

February

It is February

mid February

and today I saw:

bees flocking around our koukia, and

a wild almond tree in Mathes dressed in a cluster of pink blossom

Dead lock locked

I love full mortise dead locks. With the lock itself safely tucked into the body of the door and the tongue locked firmly into the jamb, they are so secure. They are really difficult to tamper with. Aye, there's the rub. Really difficult to tamper with.

Last night we adjourned to the lounge for the latter part of the evening as usual. It was about 10:30. As we were going to be in for the rest of the night I turned off the outside light and double locked the door behind us The redoubtable mortise lock clicked into place. Something clicked in my mind. That didn't sound right. Along with the reassuring clunk there was another, alien, sound.

Just to make sure I put the key back in the lock and opened the door. Or rather that is what I tried to do ... but the lock was stuck firm. The key would not turn . The tongue would not withdraw. I checked that I was using the right key. I was. I tried again. No luck. No change. G came along to find out what I was doing wrong and had no better luck than had I.

This floor has no back door save a balcony two and a half metres above the garden at basement level and no internal staircase to the lower level. The now permanently locked door is the only usable entrance. Tomorrow.

We settled down with a DVD after lighting the stove. We drank our tea and relaxed as best we could knowing that we were firmly locked in.

This morning we left by the front window and roused Farmboy to deal with the problem. Six hours later the door was re-instated with a new mortise lock. I'm not exactly sure how he did it but I did see the following tools and supplies going upstairs and through the window: screwdrivers various; chisels various; mallet large; mallet small; tenon saw; angle grinder; files various; electric drill; drill bits, wood and steel, various; new mortise lock; new lock cylinder; door handles cast iron; sandpaper grades various. It is by no means an invisible repair but it works - for now.

Thanks Farmboy.

Ole

It's gone 3 in the morning. It must be - we're waiting for the other crew to come back from their first break. We're working a night shift. One week of nights in three. That's the deal. A shift made up of maybe 13 guys. Only guys, no females. 13 testosterone charged young guys. Maybe the shift leader, Pete, is past his early twenties but none other. We're talking teens and early twenties. No marrieds - well Pete perhaps. Yeah Pete definitely - a father figure for all the boys. Pete is running the other half of the crew - he's on break. Ian's running this half - Ian acts as though he's married and old but it's just an act. Ian's just boring. And acting old and responsible. One day he'll grow into the reality of his pretence. One day soon in fact but that's hindsight speaking.

The computer that we are all slaves to surrounds us. The arithmetic logic unit runs for probably 20 feet behind us. Parallel to it and maybe 12 feet away s the run of cabinets that house the processing unit and the core storage unit - the main primary memory of the machine. At the far end, furthest from me, and between them, closing off the third side of an odd rectangle is the double fronted drum unit. Secondary storage for the machine lives on a pair of massive magnetic drums, each with it's own cabinet. Each of these cabinets stands seven feet tall. Each cabinet was manufactured by Mulliner of Park Ward, the guys who then made Rolls Royce bodywork. Each in two shades of grey. Many tens of coats of paint layered onto each one. Cabinets whose doors close with a whisper on high class hinges that never squeak. A small grey haired man whose face has collapsed where his teeth have been removed or have been lost hangs on for dear life to a mechanised floor scrubber that is almost as tall as he is. This is Charley. HIs pal and oppo, Bill, is over by the two banks of one inch tape drives that rock in action beyond the ALU as records are retrieved to keep the company running. The tape units have clear perspex fronts and the huge reels of tape move rhythmically, mesmerically, on all ten drive units. Each drive is cleaned thoroughly as one tape is dismounted an another takes its place. This bank of tape drives is served by three operators. Three highly sexed young men who will run back and forth and clean and mount and dismount hundreds of 7 pound aluminium hubbed tapes onto and from these monsters in shifts all night until 8:30 tomorrow morning. Heavily built metal trolleys full of these tapes stand waiting.

In front of the parallel rows of cabinets sits the command console, L shaped. At the corner of the L is the teletype machine from which the beast is monitored and managed. The rest of the console is a massive array of lights that flicker on and off as the machine crunches through its work and beneath this impressive array of little lights is a set of hand key switches that are used to power this thing into life every day. An operator uses these switches repeatedly to enter a tiny machine code program into the main memory. Once complete the operator commands the machine to jump to the beginning of the program and begin executing it. The tiny program reads in the bootstrap code from a paper tape reader that nestles at the end of the long arm of the L. The program now in the memory of the beast is complex enough to read the rest of the operating system from the first of the tape units and prepare for itself for its daily load.Now though the beast is in full flow and at the teletype sits an operator monitoring and controlling it.

He is a short almost plump youth of maybe 20 years. His hair is thin and bouffanted - strawberry blonde verging on pale ginger. His name is Smallbone and he wears the regulation operator's jacket, much like the linen jackets that you might see old men wearing on the bowling green. This is a climate and dirt controlled environment. The whole vast space that the beast occupies is a clean room. Even the viewing bay beyond the control console is clean. Parties of visiting dignitaries and stock brokers are ushered into this cathedral of technology with the sole aim of impressing them. They have their own place - the viewing bay. But not now. Not in the middle of the night. For now only the lower order of the priesthood tend the machine and satisfy its needs. To the right of Smallbone are ranks of job trays piled high with work yet to be done. Wire mesh or grey plastic trays depending on whether they are production or development jobs.

Smallbone is a well known wag amongst the priesthood. In many ways more mature than his years and yet in other ways a man with a child's sense of fun. HIs place in the annals of the priesthood is assured already. There are several oft repeated amusing stories of his antics but the guarantee of his immortality lies in the story of "When Smallbone stuck his prick in Pound's ear". Another, an earlier, night shift. Perhaps a year or two ago, just after they started the third shift. Pound was on duty at the control teletype and Smallbone had come into work slightly inebriated and very tired. He had turned up an hour late. He had been out at club before work. He wanted Pound to give way and let him take a stint at the teletype to take the weight off. Pound ignored his every treaty, feigning deafness. Pound was in reality a little deaf and he played it up when it suited him. Smallbone stood beside Pound and announced in a shout that if Pound didn't give up the seat he would stick his prick in Pound's deaf ear. Pound continued with his deaf and dumb show and Smallbone made good on his threat.

This night though Smallbone is rightfully at the teletype and several long jobs are running. The panel of lights flickers, tapes turn on all ten decks. The beast is working hard and Smallbone is relaxing in the lull. He is mellow and smiling. With the pen in his hand he beats a rhythm on the control console desk and accompanies himself on voice. He repeats the opening bars over three times and then all hell breaks loose as he improvises in a strange and hypnotic way. Smallbone is playing jazz. Smallbone is playing Ole by John Coltrane - on pen and voice he is playing Coltrane. Above the drone of the beast; amid the bustle of a working shift, Smallbone has just introduced me to John Coltrane.

Thank you.

Reading

I could read when I started school. I think now that all of my siblings could. I have no idea how I learnt to read. Maybe it was a genetic thing. It certainly wasn't a nurture thing - ours was not an upbringing surrounded by books and reading. I cannot remember a time when I could not read.

Throughout my life there have been moments of literary epiphany. Moments when I discovered things not about words - words are meaningless sub-fragments in the same way as individual notes are in music - but about literature itself. About what language is capable of when written.

What images and music are to others is what literature is to me. It is my bedrock, my building block. I have no visual imagination (my surviving sister "suffers" the same "sensory deficit") - I think, dream, and imagine, in language. My life is language and language is my life.

My first? My first literary epiphany? I think I was eleven, maybe twelve, no older. I had read every book in my school libraries. I had been given a library card at 6 or 7. I had graduated from the junior to the adult library precociously. I recall it well.

I had read something - a book perhaps, an article maybe, could have been a review of a reprint -  it doesn't matter, it isn't relevant.  It stickes with me to this day, millions of destroyed brain cells later, hundreds, possibly thousands of books later: not the article but the book. Anyway, the piece talked about The Dead. The finest short story of all time it said. An Irishman, a rebel and an exile had written this story and it was included in a book called Dubliners - no article definite or otherwise.

I  rushed down to the library and took the book, almost pristine I remember now, (not much call for James Joyce in Dagenham), down from the wooden shelving. I sat at one of their desks in a silence that was near impossible to replicate anywhere else in my life - a refuge that would become ever more significant in my formative years and I read The Dead. And then I read Araby. And then I read The Sisters. I sat and read in total silence until the head librarian ushered me out at closing time and stamped the book for return in 2 weeks time.

I had always loved reading but my encounter with Dubliners taught me something that has stayed with me to this day. Language is abstract. Plot is not that important. Language can shine, and resonate. A tale is but a tale. Perfect language lives in the memory for the rest of your life. A perfect story is a linguistic achievement. The form backgrounds the content.

Most important of all - maybe - to me at least - language is itself paramount.  And language can be perfected. Joyce had done it. Had anyone else?  I had a quest that would last my living life.  To search and to find perfect literature.