Arms and mankind

Turkey yesterday violated international law and the sovereign borders of its neighbour Iraq. Where is the international condemnation? I suspect that if Canada sent a couple of dozen bombers over the US indiscriminately bombing civilians and suspected "terrorists" there would be some outrage.

The US has exempted itself and its citizens from all international justice by refusing to sign up to the international criminal court. It impedes the progress of international law at every turn.  And this while passing itself off as the world's policeman.

It vetoes every attempt within the UN to bring international law to bear upon Israel which itself regularly violates its neighbours' borders.

Why should we be surprised that Turkey's latest illegal incursion into Iraq goes unremarked?

Some other facts

The United Nations and all its agencies and funds spend about $20 billion each year. That works out at about $3 for each of the world's inhabitants.

It is estimated that yearly, over 1 trillion dollars are spent on military expenditures and arms worldwide.

As of August 31, 2007,  the United States owed UN contributions of $785 million (68% of the regular budget arrears).

Though barred by Congress from selling offensive weapons to Cyprus itself, in 1997 alone the U.S. sold (or allowed American corporations to sell) more than $270 million worth of weapons to Greece and nearly $750 million worth to Turkey.

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Do dogs plan?

Because we cannot communicate with dogs by language we deny them, and reserve unto ourselves, as a species, certain specifically soi disant  "human" traits. Consider the following: in the course of a normal evening Bridey will sit on Gill's lap. When she does this Molly comes and lays beside Gill to have her belly rubbed. This evening Gill was at her computer, Molly was hogging the sofa, and Bridey was mooching around unsettled. Bridey looked at Molly and slowly wandered around to stand beside Gill. She intimated that she wanted to get up on G's lap and looked across to Molly. As soon as Gill moved her chair to make way for Bridey Molly left the sofa and made toward Gill in anticipation. After a delay of perhaps a second or two Bridey ran to the sofa and settled herself smack in the middle of it and looked back at Gill and Molly.

Planning? It looked a lot like it to me.

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Blasphemy, Blasphemy, they've all got it in for me

There is a petition here - The Downing Street petitions site that I have recently signed - I urge you to do the same. The petition calls on the government of the UK to repeal the Blasphemy Law that has come down in UK law from the canon law into common law. For those who want a fuller understanding of the operation and scope of the law itself this Wikipedia entry will enlighten.

Some people have asked me what it is that I find objectioable about this archauc piece of legislation ans why it should be removed from the statute book. Let me count the ways.

IT LIMITS freedom of speech - one of the fundamental human rights to which I subscribe. If I publicly scoff at the notion of trinitarianism (a very strange piece of theological sophistry that teaches that god the father, god the son and, god the holy spirit are separate and yet indissoluble), if I deny that the Xtian religion is true or, if I assert that the "Holy Scriptures" do not have divine authority then I am breaking a law (the Blasphemy law) which overrides not only my right to freedom of speech but has previously been adjudged to override my protection under the Act of Toleration (itself a privileging law). For this reason alone The Blasphemy Act must be repealed.

IT PRIVILEGES one set of beliefs over and above any other set. It is an odd law indeed that protects a creed or set of beliefs and is in that manner reminiscent of Sharia law. That it is the only UK law that protects a belief set rather than individuals or groups it privileges. Science has no such protection under law - and nor should it have. No self respecting belief should be so fragile in its adherence to its tenets that it cannot argue those beliefs in public nor should it seek parliamentary protection or privilege.

IT PRIVILEGES one set of religious beliefs over and above all others. In this it is not unique, in UK law there are several similar laws that afford unique privileges to this set of beliefs and the church to which they belong. It is widely and mistakenly believed among British "subjects" (another UK legal nicety that is far from nice) to have been enacted to protect the Xtian faith and that it continues so to do. In point of fact it protects the Church of England and its dogmas, its behaviours and its priesthood at the expense of every other religious faith. When Muslims wanted to use this bizarre piece of legislation against Salman Rushdie it immediately became crystal clear that Islam is not protected by its strange contingencies. Given that this law has been used in past times to prosecute Quakers and Freethinkers, Unitarians and atheists, it is clearly a piece of legislation that has no place in a modern, rational, post enlightenment society.

Enough of this nonsense. Let us have away with this ridiculous 17th century import from church law. It would be a good first step on the road to disestablishing the Church of England and bringing the separation of religion and state that most modern democrats see as fundamental a little closer,

Design part 2

Having opined that the beauty of a good design mirrors that of a good mathematical solution I'd like now to turn my attention to the similarity between poetics and design. Inasmuch as poetry is the literary form that most bounds itself with constraints as a precondition schema I find that it is a good analogy for real world design. How often I have heard people studying design or even having recently graduated from design courses bemoaning the fact that design in the real world does not give full voice to their creativity when what they really mean is that the number and degree of constraints attaching to real world briefs deny them the flights of fancy that are gratuitously used to expecting? Time without accounting I am afraid. For me the constraints are what make any brief a genuine challenge rather than a fantasy. All design graduates should really understand this before they are allowed to complete their courses. A precondition.

To understand how central constraints are to the design process It is enlightening to identify where constraints might arise in any design brief and in order to do that I shall mix and match from several assignments to illustrate my point. Major constraints may be explicitly stated within the brief but seldom all constraints. Many of the minor constraints will be implict and easily enough winkled out. However, it is not unknown for some of the biggest constraints that the designer will need to address not only to be implicit in the brief but for the client not even to recognise them. This is particularly true of software design briefs (if a design is even undertaken) and is one of the main reasons that so many software projects overrun both timescales and budgets. And there dear reader you have 2 of the major constraints of any design job - time and money. Both of those key limitations are too often treated as unrealistically elastic by the arrogant designer.

There are usually 3 areas where constraints will be present: those that limit the design process itself - time, money, technology available etc; those that impinge on the the manufacture of the object - the aforementioned plus materials, tooling, cost per unit etc.;and; those that are determined by the lifetime operation of the object designed - typically all of the foregoing plus things like, throughput, speed, cost per use, ecological impact, durability, adaptability, aesthetics, fit to environment and any extreme conditions under which the object needs to operate. Without wishing to be exhaustive, and I am not convinced that I could be not matter how long I worked on this short article, I hope it is now clear that the constraints on a design will often outweigh the look and feel of the object designed by a very long stretch.

I may come back to this topic and discuss some of the joys of design as a discipline. We shall see.

DESIGN

So this is headed up DESIGN but what do we mean by design? I know what I mean but I also know that the idea of design and designers as a class of people have been derogated over recent decades so shall we start by dispelling the most common misconception and defining our own terms?

Designers do not just make things look good (or bad depending on your particular take on the designed object). Design is not focussed narrowly or exclusively on the look of the designed object -  fashion design is as close as you get to that obsession with look but remember that even fashion designers focus on fabrics too. Admittedly design in the eighties, or rather, the objects marketed as "designer items" during that era of empty gloss did rely heavily, and sometimes exclusively, upon the mere look and feel but for that we can blame the sales and marketing mafia that held sway. And some of the soi disant designers of the period.

Let me clarify or illustrate from personal experience. The first objects that I designed in my working life were pieces of software code. Most software code has no look or feel. Nobody save for the guy who gets to maintain it cares too much what it looks like when printed out and in use it has no look at all - it is merely an arrangement of bits in a segment of computer memory and the computer doesn't care at all but make no mistake good software code is designed.

In fact, until much later in my career I designed almost nothing that had a look. I designed code. I designed computer systems large and small. I designed database schemata. I re-designed other peoples' code.  I re-designed other peoples' database schemata. Until I began designing online conversations, and later human computer interfaces and web sites, did any of the things I designed have a viewable dimension and at first I did not design the visual elements of those. Perfume designers will know what I mean. The bottle may well have been designed by a different person to the perfume itself.

So, the way I tell the story, design is not primarily a visual discipline. So what is it? For me design is an intellectual discipline.

Design is a problem solving discipline. Design is primarily concerned with solving problems. A design, a good design, is a solution to a particular problem within a set of constraints. The ideal design is the best available solution to the particular problem within the constraints of the problem space. Hold on to th idea of constraints - we'll come back to them and the important  role they play in design.

When I used the phrase "best available design" it was in the full knowledge that it would evoke the question "what do you mean by best?". In design two of the most important criteria in judging the worth of a solution, assuming that the designed object fulfills fully the function mandated by the brief, are elegance and simplicity.  There is a famous quotation that is often attributed to Albert Einstein but that I came across as being from Gustave Eiffel (he of the Paris tower): "Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler."  Given that what has been designed is likely to be made then it should be obvious that simplicity is a great attribute for any design. As to the attribute of "elegance" you must understand that I use elegant as it is used in the scientific discipline where it signifies "pleasingly ingenious and simple". Not ingenious in isolation but ingenious AND simple.   

The reason I refer to scientific usage in my definition of elegance is because I believe that design is a discipline that shares much with mathematics. Were you to listen to mathematicians for any length of time you would doubtless be surprised, as I first was, by how often they refer to beauty. Mathematicians believe that mathematics, good mathematics is beautiful. Often when presented with a new proof a mathematician will make his or her first judgement as to whether it might be true on whether the proof itself is beautiful - if it isn't beautiful it probably isn't true. Push the mathematician to explain beauty and he or she will often use the words elegant and simple. Consider Occam's Razor. - a regularly observed scientific heuristic. 


Enough for now ... maybe more tomorrow ...

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dinnae fret hinny

Don't worry people out there I haven't dropped off the blogging map just busy elsewhere right now.

One of the major concerns, I hesitate to call it work, is picking over the bones of the blogella that I wrote last year in order to make it available to new readers. It is hard and it is odd to be reading my own stuff (I try to avoid that at all costs). It occurred to me today that when it is eventually re- purposed it will be a very different experience for the reader than was the original. It is a little like turning a story into a play inasmuch as it will come at the reader from a different direction and will be apprehended in a totally novel way. But it does help me to understand more clearly what it is that I do.
 
A minor diversion has been trying to frame some modern day aphorisms. I managed 3 today - see what you think:


for a man the organ of generation lies between the legs -
for mankind it lies between the ears

you don't have to be a shit to write well
but writing will usually make you a shit

for the solipsist, great literature is as close to an objective reality as it gets

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life is for the living

Life. Mine? Yours? In general? The lived or the abstract? Stick "Life is" into google and you'll get 78,300,000  hits. Today that is. Tomorrow it could be more or it could be less.

Life you get given - unasked. It's your stake in a game you never asked to join. A life is something else. You get squeezed thru a vulva into it. Or you get hacked out into it like Caesar. It's always bloody, the beginning. But the end of the game is always the same. For everyone. No mind how you parlay your stake. Nor play your hand. It's death. Oblivion. Back to nothingness. An interlude alone, and yet the only. That is life. The potential something between the curtains of total oblivion. An abyss of another kind.

If you don't enjoy it then that is your fault. If you think it has a purpose, yours or anyone else's you're wasting it. If you think it means something, anything, you're deluded. It is much simpler than that. It is without meaning or purpose. It just is. And the one you have is yours. It is the only one you have or will get. Make something of it. Each moment of it comes only once. One after the other. Waste none of them. They are gone when they are done. Life moves on irreversibly. Enjoy them all if you can. And you can. If you choose to.

The nothingness behind you is certain. The nothingness in front of you is ineluctable. Waste no time nor effort. Live your life and love it. 

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What's red and turns green at the flick of a switch?

You must have heard the old kids' joke "What's green and turns red at the flick of a switch?  - A frog in a liqidiser!".  Well, today we have our own twist on that old chestnut - "What's red and turn green at the flick of a switch? Farmboy with a strimmer in his hand".

In the drizzling rain and bright sunlight he was out this morning in his signature red overalls and with a red thermal vest over the top - he'd lost the toss up with Eddie - standing by the dogs' run he was ready to clear oxalis before they took to eating it and poisoning themselves - he started the strimmer, lowered it to the offending vegetation and turned green almost instantaneously.

Chlorophyl happens!

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Pickleherring speaks

A fine and busy day today: Farmboy was weeding and servicing the brushcutter ( he intends to keep the oxalis down this winter); G was picking eating olives and prepping them for bottling - she was also cooking soup for us all (fakes); Eddie was shifting compost and organising all of us putting our backs in (and mine out) redeploying the delivery of gravel that he organised. Shem was writing a book review for the flue where he has been appointed 'fluebrarian (it's reproduced below); Shaun was busy with me on design work for the recycled bits of Daisy and updating our joint FaceBook presence as well as rippling the new website design thru the many pages required. Good job it was sunny and warm.

Robert Nye was brought to my attention by B S Johnson who included a list of writers who were, in his opinion, advancing the art of writing in his monograph Aren't You Rather Young To Be Writing Your Memoirs (well worth a read if you can find a copy). Since reading the BS Johnson I have always carried a copy of the list in my wallet and have now ticked off all the writers.
Nye's early work was promising and slightly experimental but for a few years he dropped off of my radar until I saw a copy of The Late Mr Shakespeare on the grubby shelves of a second hand shop in Xania.   It seems he has found a way forward all of his own and that he has written quite a bit since last I read him.
The Late Mr Shakespeare, let me make perfectly clear, is a wonderful read. It is the concept that is experimental/groundbreaking and not the prose nor the style. Nye relates a litany of stories about Shakespeare, his life and times from the viewpoint of an actor from his Globe troop.  Our narrator, PickleHerring is writing, after Shakespeare's death to fend off his own. Pickleherring is a gossip and an unreliable source - he treats fact and rumour with an even hand and while doing so he reveals more about himself than he does about his subject.
He is humorous, low and knowledgeable. He writes flowingly and elegantly.  He covers major facts of Shakespeares life with gusto and in doing so gives you a better grip on Shakespeare and his work and genius than is to be had from dry and dusty biographies. Is it Pickleherring or Nye we are listening to?
I care not a jot. This is worth anybody's time and requires no effort at all. Read it and enjoy it. Personally I shall be looking for a copy of Mrs Shakepseare! 

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November 8th

November the 8th and we still have not felt the need for a fire. Okay the evenings are cooler - but not that cool. Okay the nighttime humidity is up and we have really heavy dews overnight when it doesn't rain but it's not that damp. All in all it's a pretty mild autumn so far. It gets dark by 6 - but that's no big deal.

The days are usually good enough weather-wise to get things done around the house and farm. We still spend most of the hours of daylight outdoors. The blog has still not bubbled to the top of my priority list. G is planting (40 or 50)  and taking cuttings (160 or so). D is DIYing like a mad thing - today we had internet connectivity, Radio 4 playing and the phones working during a 6 hour power cut  - all from the photovoltaic setup! He's also tinkering with the layout and content of the id-ds website - going pretty well thanks to some keen eyed input from Liam et al.

See you all soon and don't think that the last aborted blogella is dead quite yet ....

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All fur coat and no knickers

As autumn draws on and the nights draw in the tourist traps close down one by one. Within a fortnight most of our area will be closed. For the past few days we have been finding out who is staying open during the winter.Every winter one or two cafes stay open and most years it is a different few. As if they take it in turns to be the social hub for us farmers and locals. We do not have an ex-pat community as such and so the financial benefits are few for those that do choose to remain open. Often the staff will outnumber the customers in winter - more often than not I suspect.

This winter the cafe options  will be limited to one old favourite - Classico - and two new establishments (plus the zakaroplasteio of course). Classico is  one of our original winter haunts and is wonderful on those days when the sun shines - we know it well but the other two are brand new this year and we haven't got around to visiting them since they opened at Easter so this last few days we've been checking them out.

There is clearly a lot of money washing about these days. Where it comes from I'm not sure. The amount of taste is another matter altogether. Some kind of inverse relationship going on here. Both of these places have clearly had a lot of money spent on them and it would appear that you are supposed to notice it. There is a clear attempt at some kind of Sunday supplement fashion - whatever that might be. Ikea chic. Or rather Almeco chic.

My father had this graphic expression - all fur coat and no knickers - that he used in a number of circumstances: to describe somebody who put all of their money into appearances rather than substance; to denigrate some nouveau riche or petit bourgeois; as a general put down for anyone pretentious. That's how so many of the newer businesses here come across nowadays. Maybe I know where it has come from.

The locals here have traditions and until recently while their taste was not ours it was most certainly theirs. What they have now, or what the entrepreneurs have, I suspect that they have picked up - some odd cultural contagion. A lot of the money has come from the influx of ex-pats immigrants. And I'm afraid that that is where the new ideas of taste in furnishing and aesthetics have come from too. It's a bit of a shame but there we are. The virus is loose and the results are all around us. Money and taste do not go hand in hand whereas money and vulgarity seem to attract.

 

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Summer is done

The rains began a few weeks back now. It's cool in the evenings. The fields have greened and the oxalis has everywhere started to sprout. We've taken delivery of our first batch of logs ready for winter. Here and there mud sticks to our boots. The birds are back on the soundtrack now that the cicadas have gone back to earth: the sparrows and the tits, the crows and the finches, sing and croak in the morning sunshine playing and swooping through the olive laden trees.

G is still harvesting regrowth every few days when the sun shines and once the dew has dispersed. She is all up to date with her rubbing and is thinking of the Xmas bazaar at Xania. Today she took cuttings to fill in where plants have died in the horrific summer and in anticipation of a new plot. She has lined the path to the girls' run with new french lavender to mix with the rosemary. 

The red suited boys have been clearing up and digging drains, cutting kindling and re-commissioning the stove. They have fixed some deflector boards above the kitchen windows and have, as far as is possible without buying any materials, been weatherproofing where they can. Eddie mad a ladder shel unit for the bathroom from cypress wood cadged from Babbis. He practiced his skills by making drawer dividers - one for the cutlery drawer and one for my top left drawer. The wood smells beautiful and more than compensates for his less than micron precise cutting.

We have waved goodbye to the last of our visitors. Perhaps this blog will appear more frequently now. We shall see - in due time.
 

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Lavender oil - made in Crete or made on Crete

OK OK I know - it's been a very long time and no amount of rancid, pathetic, self serving explanations will ever add up to anything other than a poor excuse so why not just accept my apologies (I've been so lazy about it that even I am ashamed).

And just to try and make things up to you all we've made a special mixed media entry for you. This weekend was the culmination of the farming year for us here at the Lavender Way. This weekend we made oil for the third consecutive year but this time G took a photographic record of the process and the day and I have added a few bits of tetx that I hope will help you share the experience.

Click here to go to the mixed media blog entry -

Black 2.3

... a little further on and he is passing the Vella's house ... yes ... Maltesers .. the husband a pimp, or so his father told someone last week ... the mother a dark eyed beauty with amazing legs ... the sons two thugs who liked to throw their weight around but got beaten fairly regularly when things got really tough ... things got tough very often round here ... too often for most of the kids ... mostly fists, but sharpened tail combs were becoming more frequent and now and then a proper blade turned up these days ... one of the boy's friends brthers was doing time for a knife murder ... the eldest boy was doing national service...

the fog had thickened ... or was it more properly a smog ... the street lights seemed dimmer now and he spotted a bicycle tyre around the base of the one outside the Campses house ... an act of bravado that ... he bethought himself of the daughter of the house who had died last Xmas of a brain tumor ... not the Campses, they were methodists and the kids went to the same sunday school as he had ... until the Camp girl had died ... they had prayed for her at the mission ... week after week ... and Peter had been the leader of the Boys Brigade ... and still she had died in pain ...

the boy turned into the road on his left and headed up toward the methodist mission ... and the fruit and veg stalls ... and the fish stall ...

olive bases done

The red devil twins finally finished tidying the bases of all 85 olive trees today - or at least as many as make an impact on our daily eye-lines. And rain may be coming in the next week or so. Among the detritus organic, growing amid the sawn of trunks and rootballs they discovered, brambles (enough to construct perhaps 20 or 30  linear feet of 5 foot high boundary fence), bay tree, mulberry, fig tree, and some large amount of ivy and hideous clinging weeds. Job jobbed.

White 2

This room is still white... the pure,powerful mediterranean light is still there ... I have still not opened my eyes ...the reality of the room will simply confirm what I already know ...when I do... white, white and more white... and is there anything to say yet ? ... and what have I been doing while you were away watching my younger self?... if anything?

Who did you think was propelling him along and putting his thoughts and memories in place? ... projecting him? ... I was making myself for the day too ... constructing my self to do battle with the hours ... and who to make ... deciding who to be ... how to be ... it is a thing we all do mostly without knowing it but mine is a conscious making ... each day ... and potentially anew each day ... though I do that less now than I did ... same man today as yesterday ... mostly the same at the least ...

Each waking requires, for me, a construction of a self ... I rummage around in my memory store ... in there no one thing has more weight than any other ... no facet nor no  character trait would tip a scale in either direction ... I have a headful of them from which to choose ... accumulated along a long life ... some days some shine brightly like gems ... perhaps yesterday I overlooked them entirely ... perhaps yesterday they were mere briquettes for a barbecue ... that much I still don't know ... what lights them that is ... whatever the case, I shuffle them around and pick them over like rags in a second hand clothes shop ... until I have enough for a day's living ... sufficient unto a life or a simulacrum thereof...

But enough of that for now... I have to open my eyes soon ... I have visitors arriving today ... meantimes let me put my young self upon the screen of the page for you again ... follow him into the fog ... away from this brightness... this glare ....

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A novel use of a novel

I loved it when Katherine Hamnett and Viv Westwood plastered slogan on t-shirts. I own that I preferred the ones with apposite quotations from well known works. I once owned a great one witha Kazantzakis quote on the front - which in translation would say “I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.” I own, even now, two huge t-shirts that feature full frontal reproductions of early Penguin titles (green covers) - Dangerous Curves by Peter Cheney and The Thin Man by Dashiel Hammet (nearly there Katie H). But of all of these my favourite is the t-shirt I wore today and that I made myself. Rather than a book cover or a memorable quotation it has an entire novel on the front. In 6 point DIN Mittelschrift the entire text of Samuel Beckett's wonderful late novel, Imagination Dead Imagine is reproduced. It is readable only if you get close and have your reading spectacles with you but it is readable. Now that is novel. "You've read the book, you've seen the film of the book, you've been to the musical of the film of the book, now get the t-shirt of the book - is that a cool marketing slogan?

The full text of Imagination Dead Imagine is available online here

Black 2.2

at 101 the boy pauses and talks to David Walker who is leaning on the gate ... there is no stret light here ... David is tall for his age which is a whole year younger and a compulsive footballer ... on another night he would be kicking a ball relentlessly and tediously against his garden gate but not tonight .. not in the fog or smog ... your magazine came in this morning, should be with you tomorrow ... Mel Charles on the front cover ... the magazine in question is Charles Buchan's Football Monthly - the only one that the boy delivers on two paper rounds ... the boy hangs around a while hoping to see David's sister Doreen despite David being poor at conversation ... are you Catholic in your house Dave? ... oh yes, fish on Friday, mass on Sunday, we're Catholic, aren't you? ... see you ... he strolls off ... I'm off to the library.

this far down the road he knows very few people on this side and fewer or none on the other side ... the evens are a mystery apart from Gordon who lives next to the transformer station ... the houses on that side don't have bathrooms ... Gordon rides with the Wheelers ... he passes the banjo ... the Gardens ... Janice, the girl of his wet dreams lives there ... the first girl he ever kissed ... he stops and blows his nose again ... filthy ... past the Gardens he nods a yes at David Long's house, definitely Catholics, he's seen a Virgin Mary in there ... and across the road at Gordon's ... another yes ... amazing how many there were when you counted them ...

how come he's counting Catholics? ... Bertha had taken him completely off balance ... with her honesty ... Bernie is dying ... he has lung cancer ... I know you go to the ibarary, and that you have adult access ... would you get him books when you go next? ... I'm going now ... what does he want? ... go in the front room and ask him, we moved the bed in there, it's easier that way ... are you alright with that?

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Black 2

Four books under his arm and three new library tickets in his back pocket he walks out into the dark. The air is thick with a November fog ... blinding him ... deafening him too ... a blanket on all his senses save his olfactory ... sulphur and coal dust ... but he knows where he's going ... he could find his way to the public library in the dark ... he's going to have to... half an hour ago he had finished up his homework ... (what he hadn't done on the bus) ... and here he was walking down the street of almost identical terraced houses marking in his mind those where Catholics lived ... going to get not 4 but 7 books.

He was just packing his rough book away ... and his trig book ... the ballpen with 7 different coloured refills that his form teacher hated ... ballpoint pens ruin your handwriting boy - don't you know that? ... and his log book ... when his mum had shouted up ... before you go out go and knock next door, Mrs Noakes wants to see you - wants you to do her a favour .... but mum, I'm just going to the library ... that's what she wants to talk to you about ... but mum ... the library will still be there in an hour - she'll not keep you long - don't argue just do it - she's a neighbour and she's got a lot on her plate right now so do it will you? Now!

127 - the Sullivans - Catholic? - No, at least I don't think so ...

126 - over the road - the Hawkes - yes ... and both sides - the Disses and the Bartletts ... but not the fishmonger ...

123 - Mrs Hill, no

121 old man Gladden - no just a miserable old bloke with a wooden leg - and he spits in the street - dirty old sod ...

119 the Coxeds, on the corner, yes ...

120 - over the road again - Mrs Hard and her sharpfaced hairdresser daughter Pat - could be but lets say no

118 - the Coxes, next to the iron bridge, definitely, despite his drinking and gambling and him taking bets too and if rumours were to be believed beating her too and having a fancy piece, that Maltese one ...

he pauses at the corner and blow his nose into a big white hanky ... a slight burning in his nose ... he pulls out his tobacco and rolls a fag, lights it with a Swan Vesta and saunters on ... no hurry ... he is beneath the lamp post with its thin white light ... a light so puny that it cannot penetrate the fog as far as the damp pavement ... he spots a droplet encrusted web in the immaculately clipped privet hedge ... privet is everywhere but only Ernie keeps his this tidy ... his old mum likes it that way and Ernie will do anything for his mum ... checks for traffic (looking and listening) and crosses over ...

White 1

This room is white... pure,powerful light radiates all around ... I know that it is white before I even open my eyes ... it is a large room ... it is 20 metres by 20 metres ... the ceiling is 3 metres above my head right now... above the mosquito net that is above me ... the room it is furnished with a few elegant sticks of white furniture ... it is decorated sparsely with white fabrics ... if and when I open my eyes the reality of the room will simply confirm what I already know ... white, white and more white.

There is nothing to say ... yet ... With eyes closed I shall simply luxuriate in the unseen light ... the hot August Mediterranean light ... I know it is flooding in from all around... but what if I opened my eyes and it were not so? ... if it were that small black room that I left myself in? If I were that small boy again? It could happen ... I could do that ... not now though.

Light ... white light ... and warmth ... and white light

Black 1

Well Bernie ... here we are ... I told you back then that only one of us would get out alive ... it wasn't you was it ... what say Bernie ... nothing ... silence ... I did tell you ... you've got the rest of the night ... I can wait ...

It is black ... lightless ... there is a dead body and a live body ... they are in a small room ... I know this only because I put them there ... the boy is an approximation of me when I was much younger ... as close as I can get with this much distance between who I was and who I am now ... the corpse was easier to conjure up ... as far as I know now he doesn't have a speaking part ... maybe he will have but not for now ...

I know it's a little like a Pinter opening and that is probably not entirely accidental ... nothing after all is entirely accidental ... least of all human memory ... and that's what this is ... isn't it?

Nothing to say yet Bernie? Silence? Let's at least have some light ... a couple of candles perhaps ... that wouldn't be out of place would it? Four candles ungutter into a dim glow that refuses to light the room ... throwing now real light it traces planes on the boy's face ... I realise that I have stripped some of his pubescent podginess in my simulacrum of him ... good bones but not that good at that age ...plump him a little ... such an obvious mistake and it took me half of this morning to put him together ... fallible ... I told you it would be a learning exerience Bernie ... I've learned a lot ... and you?

An occasional glint lights furntiure in the room ... utility furniture ... they were bombed out during the doodlebug festival at the end of the war ... Pynchon would love it ... their lives went forward but their furniture stayed the same ... a sideboard ... evreyone had a sideboard back then ... four simple stick back chairs ... in light oak and stamped underneath with the utility mark ... they 're holding up a simple coffin ... also light pine but with brass? ... this is where Bernie is resting ... not resting as in sleeping ... resting in the gravitational sense ... resting in peace as it were ... in his own terminology ... dead in ours

Silence ... and darkness ... half of a conversation made for two ...

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A Lavender Cylindrical Makura and the Art of Powernapping

Since the first heatwave of the year back in June I have been taking a powernap in the afternoons. Not the full siesta that is so popular here in Crete but the 20 minute offically apporved powernap. I wash up and retire to the dark and cool of the middle floor, I wedge the shutters on the balcony slightly apart so as to catch any passing breeze, I lay my sunglasses and dorkeys on the table beside the sofa and stretch myself out, I do a small routine of exercise to loosen a tight tendon in my left leg and then I position my magic makura under the nape of my neck and drift away for 20 minutes.

I wake fully refreshed, revitalised, and ready to get on with whatever is next. No yawning. No eye rubbing drowsiness that lingers over from the slumber. No nagging wish that I had slept longer or for less time. No filthy mouth. No downside at all. A perect recharge.

The secret is, I truly believe, my magic makura. A traditional makura or Japanese pillow is filled with buckwheat husk: mine is filled with lavender flowers. 600 grammes of pure lavender flowers - no leaf, no stalk, no nosense.  Nowadays, makuras tend to be rectangular but mine is cylindrical in the old style. It becomes, within moments, a part of me the angle that the makura eases my head into opens my airways completely. The relaxing and soothing scent of lavender does the rest.

Gill made the magic cylindrical makura and I'm tring to talk her into marketing a few of them every year. They would be prohibitively expensive but I am sure that others would buy them if only they knew what joy is to be had from 20 minutes of total peace and relaxation in the day.

98% - are you sure?

Sitting in the post office in Rethymnon the other day - Gill was at the counter sending off our UK IRS self assessment tax returns for the year - I noticed that the guy sitting in front of me waiting for his number to come up was reading a copy of Daniel Dennet's Breaking The Spell - what's more he was reading the english version - and he was clearly a Greek - not a Cretan - a Greek - I leaned forward and across and gestured to the book - "how are you enjoying it?" - he looked delighted - his face lit up and a huge smile crosed his entire face - "It's great ... - "I'm reading  The God Delusion myself" - "Ah yes Dawkins - it is very good, well argued and well written - it has given me plenty of ammunition ..." - " ... but why are you reading it in English?" - "... because when I have finished it I must pass it on to someone else - and it attracts less attention " - "So how does atheism go down here in Greece then? " - he laughed - "not well, it is difficult to speak of these things outside of university, my parents would not like it, nobody would like it" - "But there are many atheists here in Greece?" - "Among the young and educated yes, Dawkins and Pinker and Dennett have done a lot of good here" - "Have you read Christopher Hitchens?" - "No - please write the name down for me" - he handed me a pen and paper and I wrote Hitchens - God is not Good - he thanked me and put the paper away safely - "We have problems here with religion - did you know that the ministries of religion and education are the same here?" - "is that so?" - "yes and if you speak then your chances of getting a job are damaged - but these writers are helping us all ..." and at that point we had to separate, his number was called - he thanked me for the talk and we separated. I have thought of him several times since then and wonder will we meet again?   I hope so.

Whistle down the Wind

This is how they clean the insulators on the pylons here in Crete but they always seem to choose a very windy day on which to do it - every year. Perhaps it has to be windy for the blowers to work properly?

The Leg

Betty is home in the bosom of the family. I know a lot of you won't understand how a car can be a family member but that's how it is with Betty. She's been our car for more than a decade now and in the same way as we are an Irish terrier family we are also a DS family. It's the way it is.

New battery and new exhaust today - the leg. But she's done inside our timetable and she's back home. We finished the episode in some style with the avuncular exhaust expert, Stephanos, picking us up from Rethymno in our newly fixed Goddess and sharing a raki or three with us before giving us his mobile phone number, talking about his family and inviting us back for another, social, raki next week.

Result! Well done us!

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

Blogged with Flock

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?