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Saturday 17 June 2023

The Greek Revolution


For once during this greyest of Mays the sky's cloudless, blue as eyes but for a small cloud the size of a man's hand over a southern mountain. My bicycle is loaded with onions, a box of village rosé, a loaf, firestarters, dried sausage and a role of black plastic sacks. The countryside is jocund. The verges of roads and gravel tracks are dense with yellow, blue, pink, and red flowers. The kokkuyia trees are blushing with guilt. Easter's over. Kristos Anesti.  Lin said "I also need garlic and parsley" but only when I'd got home after bouncing the bicycle down 13 steps to the house. I have a cup of tea then go out again, up the steps helped by the e-bike's 'walk' gear, and back to the mainroad - 2 kilometres - then westward towards Skripero to the nearest grocer. I've looked up 'parsley' - maidones. They have it. Good. The breeze even in early afternoon is still  cold.

June - the descent from Democracy Street is like taking off. First there's an ascent of 50 metres, then round a corner my wheels bump over the messy repaired surface of a winding hill into three hairpin bends past a frieze of scarlet bougainvillea climbing widow Melinda's house, then down on renewed tarmac, gathering speed until the wheelie bin T-junction where I prop my bicycle on its stand to unload a black sack of weekly waste and the remains of a large broken plastic laundry bowl, then down again past greenery on either side to another short ascent. At the top I turn right on a narrow concrete track, corrugated, like turbulence on a plane, past a hoard of rubbish with glimpses of isolated houses and rich meadows of uncut grass and flowers, to another metalled road allowing me to join the main road to the north of the island via Skripero, Trompetta and Agros. 

*** *** ***


I'm working into my third reading of Mark Mazower's book on the Greek Revolution, as well as dipping into pages and chapters and the index. This is an incomplete, as Mazower admits, and contested history. 

Marietta Giannakou 1951-2022
In 2007, conservative New Democracy Party Education Minister Marietta Giannakou had to resign after approving a school text book on the revolution which mentioned that it was not just one side who'd committed atrocities during the struggle for independence. 

Prof Mazower's book describes truths that were once politically unacceptable in Greece. In 2021, Mazower was awarded an honorary Greek citizenship by a Conservative government for 'the promotion of Greece, its long history and culture to the international general public.' 

I asked a Greek friend recently "Do you call the events that brought about modern Greece 'The Greek War of Independence' or 'The Greek Revolution'?" 

Alex reflected for a moment on the direction of my query and answered, indisputably, "'The Greek Revolution' "

Mark Mazower titles his history 'The Greek Revolution', but unfolds a more equivocal account.  This comes much later, but it's clear that the allied Navies that defeated the Turks and the Egyptians at Navarino in 1827 would not have fought to save a 'revolution'. Mazower's book has managed to come, as near as a work of historical scholarship can, to being a 'cliff-hanger'. Of course, the Greeks were victorious. The Hellenic Republic exists. It's on the euro-currency! But reading Mazower's history I was wondering to his last chapter who was going to win. 

Insurrectionary talk was widespread across Europe in the 1820s. Rebellion against the old orders had been sparked by the American War of Independence; then the French Revolution and revolts across South America and the other parts of Europe.  Metternich and the Tsar had convened the Congress of Vienna - nearly wrecked by Napoleon's escape from Elba and his 100 days... 

Napoleon returns from Elba to disrupt the Congress of Vienna (George Cruikshank)
.
The Congress organised by Metternich was dominated by Austria, France, Prussia, Russia, and Britain.

The Congress's agreement was signed just nine days before Napoleon's final defeat at Waterloo on 18 June 1815. This magnificent gathering of 100s of conservative - some would say reactionary - monarchs, emperors and ministers welded an alliance designed to maintain the peace of the continent, suppress rebellion and share intelligence on all signs and symptoms of insurrection. This was not a good time for a revolution against the mighty Ottoman Empire. 

Prince Alexandros Ypsilanti
Yet the great Greek event - the 'Romeiko', the 'ethnogesea', began, in so far as there's a 'once upon a time', on 21st Feb 1821. 

Encouraged by a vastly distributed and secretive 'friendly' society founded in Odessa in 1814, full of commercial travellers on land and sea - the Filiki Etaireiarequired oaths of loyalty, coded messages and secret signs on meeting a stranger.  Their black uniform, when they surfaced, bore the symbol of a skull and crossbones below a crucifix.  

Trade is a good cover for subversion; the language of commerce camouflaging the planning of revolt - price lists, inventories, consignments, cargoes, weights and measures, transactions, deadlines - protected by normal business discretion.  In 1820 the leaders of Filiki Etaireia asked Prince Alexander Ypsilanti to be their leader. Given the omens - not least the profound opposition of Ioannis Capodistria, to become first Prime Minister of Greece (more of him later), this aristocratic soldier was probably an excellent choice to start a dangerously impossible rebellion.

On 21st February this impulsive, bold, one-armed veteran of the war against Napoleon, falsely claiming the support of the Tzar, led a small and ragged force across the river Pruth from Russia into Ottoman Moldavia, far north of the land that would become Greece. Ypsilanti's expedition turned into a debacle of confusion and desertion, and, as others more cautious had warned, provoked bloody reprisals against Greeks from Sultan Mahmud II in Constantinople. The most prominent was the public hanging of the Ecumenical Patriarch, Gregory V, in front of The Saint Peter's Gate of the Patriarchate of Constantinople just after he'd celebrated Easter mass. 

Easter Sunday 22 April 1821 

With implicit approval of the Sultan, surrounding streets ran with the blood of Christian residents of the city. If this story were a Netflix series I'd end this first episode at this moment. The next episode would be about Greece in the early 19th century opening on a dramatic panorama of mountainous stone with glimpses of distant blue sea "Rumeli - mainland Greece 15 years earlier" and perhaps we'd open at the court of the rebel potentate Ali Pasha in Jannina. 

Audience chamber at the court of Ali Pasha in Jannina






Wednesday 3 August 2022

St Christopher Άγιος Χριστόφορος: Γιατί απεικονίζεται με πρόσωπο σκύλου?

A shop on George Theotoki where we discussed the puzzle of a 'dog-headed' St Christopher

Linda and I were window gazing on the south side of George Theotoki Street in town. At a stationer with a stand outside the shop, a postcard of an icon caught my eye. It showed a saint with the head of a dog. Looking closely at it I saw that it was St Christopher, Αγιος Χριστόφορος, Christ-bearer. It was titles as from The Byzantine Museum in Athens - with no date, artist unknown. 
 Γιατί απεικονίζεται με πρόσωπο σκύλου?

Neither the shopkeeper, George nor Maria, the children's shoe shop next door, could explain it. Intrigued I asked at the Icon Gallery on the south side of Plakada t' Agioú of N. Theotoki. The man I spoke to - darn it, forgot to get his name - was familiar with this image. 
"It goes back to very old times, Egyptian" 
"Anubis" I thought
Anubis in the Book of the Dead - a guide to the journey from life to after-life used between 1550-50 BC

"The image was disapproved of by the Orthodox Church" he added "These icons only reappeared in the 17th century when the church became more tolerant. They can be seen in some of the older churches on the island from that time." 
Lin said "You can see this isn't a proper icon. Look at the feet and the head shown sideways." 
It turns out there's a wealth of information and conjecture about the dog-headed St Christopher. (Jim Pott's sends me this Greek link) I'm talking on the phone to my friend Simon Winters in London about another project, and our conversation turns to the strange icon. He'd not come across it. St Christopher is not mentioned in the bible. His story has been passed down through storytelling and tradition. I've noted his image since infancy on medals hung from the mirrors of bus and taxi drivers. How intriguing are such survivals through the ages. Our conversation turned to the mysterious centuries of Christianity before the faith became the one I learned at school - and that but one of so many varieties. 
The name of the shopkeeper where I saw the icon? 
"My name is Christopher"

*** *** ***

The St Christopher Chapel in the coach and car park of the Corfu Town Green Bus Terminal

In the coach park of the Green Bus terminal on the edge of Corfu town there's a chapel to St Christopher, patron saint of travellers. There' no similar chapel at the harbour where the ferries leave for the mainland and the ports of the Adriatic as far as Venice, nor is there so far as I know one at the airport, now managed by a German conglomerate, where contemporary politeness would have made a 'multi-faith room'. The Green bus station is quite new, replacing a friendlier fume-filled space near the sea at the foot of the town. The new terminal appeared in 2016. Richard Pine, who lives in Perithia, furthest village from the city on the north coast of Corfu, was vitriolic about the place - Ο Νέος Σταθμός...

The old Green Bus Station near the sea

Simon. I discovered to my alarm and despair that the bus station moved over the last weekend and one is now deposited in a no-man's-land near the airport. Too too shaming. RP

Dear R. Is that bus station move a permanent one? Coming into town, there must be a point you can get off earlier with a reasonable walk to the city centre. I hope so as I too rely on the bus. S

It has been planned for years - a real, modern, bus station - fully functional, devoid of humanity, androids serving coffee, miles from anywhere because planners do not take people into account. At present there is no stopping point between Lidl and the terminus but they will surely have to invent one, as it goes everywhere except where one needs to. Bring back the old one - at the Spilia - sez I…  

I’m trying to work out how you get from the new and inconvenient (except for airport tourists) Green bus terminus. No problem where it is for me. I just use my folding bicycle which stores in the luggage compartment. I suppose there’s a shuttle into town, but there might be a convenient stop closer to the city centre. It seems rough on the local people who have no interest in being close to the airport and want to get into town. If you find out anything vaguely positive let me know.  

…there is a shuttle but that is presumably not a long-term solution - the bus into town goes up the long hill past all those shops selling electronics etc, down the other side, out onto the roundabout by the 'other' Lidl and there you are. In the middle of no-mans-land. The return is even more stupid as it goes all round the world, including San Rocco, to come out exactly where it should have started from, but doesn't stop!

Walkers to the city centre making their way carefully from the new Green Bus Terminal

I have just been at the new Green Bus Station. It’s as miserable as you’ve observed. But the staff are proud of the place. I strolled in wheeling my little Brompton bike and was ordered out again. I folded it up and was forgiven. But at once two cleaners arrived to wipe the floor where my bicycle wheels, leaving no marks, had passed. I gather there’s a stop on the way out of town by the Old Port – Café Sette Vente - which may make things a little better, but as I cycled into town from the new station up that brief stretch of firmly divided dual carriageway - Ethniki Odos Lefkimis - I passed a single file of tourists negotiating the narrow rough path (I wouldn’t call it a pavement)... ...that runs up Dinatou Dimolitsa, leading to a longish stroll up Mitropolitou Methodiou into San Rocco Square. A mess! I admit the old bus station was probably not so good on health and safety with people and buses and diesel fumes mixing it in that little space, but it was agreeably located. Like most things people will get used to it, but I cannot say or think anything good about this non-place, its access so unfriendly to anyone on foot.  

Someone must have ensured this little church to St Christopher was included in the new building's plans, yet when I asked around this July no-one I asked upstairs in the office, nor at the enquiry desk knew anything about it or could answer my question about the superb icons being painted on its interior walls. The chapel is hardly larger than a wardrobe, perhaps an allotment shed - no stasidia nor lectern and the stand for candles, once lit, sits, on the pavement outside. 

My ebike outside the St Christopher chapel at Corfu's Green Bus Terminal

There's a collection box and case for beeswax candles inside. I'm used to myriad sizes of Greek churches from spacious cathedrals, the barn sized churches - all 36 of them - that are dotted around Ano Korakiana, attached in many cases to families, some locked and unused or even, like the distant Church of the Prophet Elias that marks our southern parish boundary ruined, but for a protective roof, to the small roadside Kandilakia marking the place of an accident - fatal and survived - and others that look similar but are markers reminding of a church some yards from the road. There are even shrines hardly larger than a sun dial or an elaborate garden bird feeder, with room for a small icon, and a candle, imitating the doors, windows, dome and cross of a larger church. 




So here they were. These finely painted works inside this little bus station chapel. Who was painting them? I dropped in on successive days over a fortnight - to admire their craftsmanship, hoping to catch the mysterious unknown icon painter at work. No luck. 
I remembered that a while ago my friend Mark had answered a question about a strange unfinished three floored house beside the road from Tzolou into Ano Korakiana whose ground floor has been incomplete these last 12 years at least. Two attractive terriers bark enthusiastically at me as I cycle by. I've not seen anyone there. 
"Who lives there, Mark?"
"An icon painter"
So returning from town I stopped my bicycle on the wild flowered verge before the house and called out.
<Χαίρετε>
A lady came to the balcony. She helped me - awkward in my 80th year - up flights of unbannisterd concrete stairs to the fine door of a studio. Over the next hour I learned she had painted the icons - and indeed, with her husband, many more all over Greece; that she had not yet been paid for the Green Bus contract; that I must not even think of intervening on her behalf - a typically unwise impulse of mine. Her name is Irene Vitouladitou. I felt honoured but also delighted at having begun to sate my curiosity.
I asked about the dog-headed St Christopher. 
"God knew he wanted to be a holy man. But Agios Christopher was a beautiful man. Women threw themselves at him. God in mercy gave him the head of a dog."
"I have heard and read many other explanations, but not that one. Did you make that up for me?"
A reference in a Greek Orthodox compendium: 

Thou who wast terrifying both in strength and in countenance ... didst surrender thyself willingly to them that sought thee; for thou didst persuade both them and the women that sought to arouse in thee the fire of lust, and they followed thee in the path of martyrdom...

The story I learned, perhaps at a Sunday school, in childhood: 

Hieronymus Bosch's 1490 painting of the legend replete with symbols

... a child asked Christopher to take him across the river. As they crossed the river the child grew heavier and heavier so that Christopher could hardly hold him up. Struggling to the other side, Christopher said to the child: "You put me in danger. The whole world could not have been as heavy on my shoulders as you were." The child replied: "You had on your shoulders not only the whole world but Him who made it. I am Christ your king, whom you are serving by this work." The child vanished 


Irene Vitouladitou's unfinished work in the St Christopher Chapel at the Green Bus Terminus in Corfu



 

Wednesday 1 December 2021

At 208 Democracy Street until winter

Looking over the Sea of Kerkyra towards Epirus in Mother Greece. The small island is Vido

Having been away – because of travel restrictions - since last December there have been more than a few gardening jobs to do. A spreading squash has climbed the fence into our garden from Vasilikki’s. Its broad palmate leaves and hairy stems, hanging by tendrils, spread to the ground. Most of its yellow flowers are male. 


On a whim I decide to have a go at doing work that’s better done by bees. I pull up a chair to get a closer view of the vine, looking to take the stamen of a male flower and touch it to the stigma of a female. I’d found find several squashes forming – kolokithakia Κολοκυθάκια – but could find no more female flowers on which to experiment. There’s a crack of thunder. The sky goes grey, rain descends, and the washing I’ve hung out gets a further rinse. As the days pass the lower squash has grown to a satisfied potentate, nestling among its decaying leaves, yellowing, a smaller satrap hanging six feet above. We on high ground only heard of the consequences of several days of rain in the south of the island.

Flooding in Moraitika

Our Bougainvillea, plant of a thousand hybrids even within a square mile, flourishes as it hasn’t for years, in some cases surging through the planks of the balcony. Work above and below with the loppers sorts that, with the help of a hammer and chisel where a stem has hardened, wedged itself between decking. 

The Wisteria, about 12 years old, had invaded our already enfeebled orange tree, the wooden balcony, the down pipe of the roof gutter, reaching into the upper branches of our neighbour's walnut tree. I tame it with an hour's discipline of shears, long reach loppers and secateurs, until it hangs meekly along the metal railings of our side balcony. One of Amy’s presents for her mum’s 70th birthday included a string of solar lights. Lin’s wound them along the railings amid the wisteria and with many hours of sunshine they shine out from dusk to dawn like a distant city street 

The trumpet vine leans nonchalantly over the front of the balcony, less invasive than last year but full of flowers. I’ve cut back the top growth of the lemon tree in front of the balcony. For its safety, I’ve applied more of the anti-scale insect spray used last October and earlier. These insects seem, at last, to have given up, after blighting our citrus trees. Can this infestation really be over? There are many lemons on the larger tree, but none on the smaller. Our blood orange tree, once so fecund, hasn’t fruited for five years. Though still leaved, its periphery branches end in dried and blackened twigs. In the lower garden Lin’s cut back ‘what needed it’, including Yucca tops. She’s combed out dead growth, potted up cuttings, moved many of our plant pots on the steps and swept up accumulations of fallen leaves and petals, and watered widely. Things are, and therefore life, is tidier. Dimitri, a neighbour, has strimmed the path that goes below our house from Democracy Street down to ‘our’ bus stop on National Opposition Street

Above us from before dawn well into the night the short holiday harvest planes grumble to and fro above the mountain ridge behind us, often half full, we’re told, of travellers in masks who, like us, have completed or booked Covid immunity tests, shown their vaccine certificate and other proofs of immunity, filed their PLFs and prepared for self-isolation on arrival. 

We are almost always without a car. Hirers may have none available, or they're too expensive. We rely on the daily bus at 7.45am and early afternoon back from the city. There’s my bicycles. But for the local bakery – OK for wine and bread – our grocery is 8 kilometres away.  A grocer in a truck visits us Tuesday and Saturday, crying his wares as he drives back and forth through ours and the lower roads.

I'm beginning to find the uphill pedal to the village, with kilos of shopping in the rear basket, and especially the ascent by the last four hairpin bends, more of an ordeal than an achievement, especially in the heat of August. On impulse I did what I had told myself I wouldn’t do.  I cycled on the bike I'd bought from them 10 years ago, to Rolando’s and Elena’s shop opposite the hospital in Kontokali, and bought an eBike with a Bosch crank-driven motor. 

Other electric bicycles have a battery drive on the hub of the wheel. My drive sits between the pedals - Active Line Plus offering increasing levels of power to support my pedalling with increments of back-up power that proceed from normal cycling without the battery rising to 40% (Eco) to 100% (Tour), to 180% (Sport) to 270% (Turbo) support - 


... all shown on a little screen beside an up-down button on the handlebars controlled by my left hand index finger. That's helped by seven derailleur gears on my rear chain drive controlled by a right hand twist grip - allowing me to decide how hard I want to work and how much I want to delegate to my battery, while still pedalling. Stop pedalling or reach a speed over 25kph and the edrive cuts out. Friends noting my occasional grumbles about the effort of cycling up the hills into Ano Korakiana had said “just get an e-bike, Simon”

“Spawn of the devil!” I retorted “They erode the moral compass of cycling – no pain no gain and vice versa.” 

Now my cavilling is dismissed. I love this machine. 

My e-bike on a hill looking south across the island of Corfu

Naturally disinclined to effort for its own sake, I rejoice in journeys back from Kaizani’s at Tzavros, with a good 10 kilos of shopping secured by bungies in a plastic crate cable-tied to my rear rack – a journey of over an hour now less than 40 minutes with a triumphant ascent into Democracy Street in lowest gear and ‘turbo’. There’s also a ‘walk’ function that, without having to be mounted and pedalling, helps me wheel the ebike up the 13 steps from home to the road. I’ve now cycled up the 29 hairpin ascent to Sokraki – the village on the watershed above us. I have done this twice on my ordinary bike but it’s a route that now tests my 79 years. I’ve been into the city – 22 miles return journey, made several journeys to Doukades using the main road, country roads and gravel tracks. I’ve cycled effortlessly home at night from eating with friends a mile below the village. For that I’ve strolled beside Lin on a gravel track, then, arriving at the metalled road, headed off by unlit hilly roads while Lin walks the stepped short-cut to Democracy Street. I’ve cycled from Sokraki to Trompeta in gentle drizzle then down through the woods to Doukades and home via Skripero – the dial shows I’ve already covered over 420 kilometres. In mid November I cycled to the top of Mount Pantokrator - a round journey of 54 kilometres nursing the battery by pedalling most of the ascent on 'eco'. 

Some years ago we had a family picnic close to the top of Mount Pantokrator

Route: Up the steep winding ascent to Sokraki; take the short bypass round the village centre down to meet the steep descent to the river valley, then up a hundred metres to Zygos, up up to Sgourades, on the Spartillas-Acharavi road, along a kilometer of level; then the turn up to Strinilas - the longest haul part of the ascent; from Strinilas, tavernas closed for winter and latest Covid restrictions, down briefly to the right turn up again to the gently rolling road to the foot of the steep mound that leads to the summit of the mountain, up which I walked, as, even on 'turbo', the kilometre of mostly concrete road is too steep for me and my ebike. I trudge - assisted by the bike's 'walk' function. Lingering on the roof of the island gazing round the compass - the peaks of Albania and Epirus across the Corfu Channel, the Adriatic stretching beyond the north coast settlements - Roda, Acharavi, and inland Old Perithia and south to two little peaks of the old fort and the city and much in between, I watch the cats and chat to Sotiris the gardener and a candle lit in the monastery church, much silence but for the wind in the aerials, then down down down down again to Sgourades and then return via a different road, to Spartilas with two clicks left on the five click battery. I stop at a taverna in Spartillas for a diplo skerto and cheese and ham toastie, my vaccination covid certificate sought. Can I make it home on what's left in the battery? I freewheel down the long descent, nearly to the sea at Pyrgi, then up again through Agios Markos and another mile into Democracy Street, Ano Korakiana. I did this journey first by traditional bicycle in 2012. 

I was back early afternoon, having the summit almost to myself via almost car less roads, proving to myself there are few places on the island I can't reach and return. Our friend Jenny, who has the same bike, says that relying on the lowest charge I should be able to cycle 60 kilometres. I've now satisfied myself of that, having power to spare on returning from Pantokrator. I’m almost back to the moral compass I’ve abandoned. 50 kilometres from Ano Korakiana can take me almost anywhere on this beautiful island. I could if concerned about remaining power ask a friendly taverna at the end of an outward journey to plug in my charger while I have a meal. 

A folding bicycle invented by Andrew Ritchie over 30 years ago called a Brompton is the best product in a niche market. It’s not just a bike that can be taken apart easily. It folds in less than 30 seconds into a 12 kilo portable machine that can be carried on cars and public transport.  I use the Brompton with public transport; best for negotiating traffic congested streets and the public spaces where I can mingle with walkers and other cyclists.

Awaiting the morning bus from the village into town at 07.45

I have owned several of these since the early 1990s. In February 2007 I was using a Brompton folding bike to travel by bike, rail and ferry with my friend John Richfield from the UK to Corfu via Paris and Venice to buy our home in Ano Korakiana. 

Just off the ferry from Venice in 2010

We returned the same route. 

On Via Garibaldi - the only filled-in canal in Venice, one of the few places anyone can cycle

A few years later I shipped the same bike – a deep green T6 – from Birmingham to Corfu with furniture. Bought in June 2001, it’s quite old. I rode it downhill to the sea at Ipsos this August. It scared me - clunking and clicking like a straining bulkhead. The original Sachs hub was telling me noisily that it was shot. I phoned Mike at Phoenix Cycles in Battersea. The cost of a replacement wheel with a Sturmey hub gear, new sprockets, chain and chain tensioner was over £400, before adding 50% post-Brexit customs charges . It says something for the resale value of used second hand Bromptons that I was prepared to even think of spending what would be needed – over half its cost in 2001. The carriage was made suddenly reasonable when a friend offered to put wheel and trappings in her hand baggage from London and drop them off to me in the village. I was anxious – cack-handed as I am – about the reassembling work. 
Guided by Youtube tutorials on several tasks I secured the new sprockets to the new hub with a holding circlip, threaded a new gear cable and handlebar controller, replaced the derailleur for the other two gears. Adjusting the chain guide that switches the chain from one sprocket to another was tricky - for me. A small washer on which the guide swivels kept slipping from my fingers and hiding on the veranda floor. With help from Lin and my cyclist friend Gerard (who’d never seen a Brompton), the work was done. 
I reduced the new chain to 95 links using a chain breaker to force out the link rivet. I threaded it round the rear wheel sprockets, the chain tensioner jockeys and front chain-wheel, joining with a ‘quick link’ - an innovation that allows the chain to be joined and unjoined without the removal of a rivet. New to me. Repairs completed my folding bike performs better than new. 

New hub gears, rear wheel, and chain tensioner - my old folding bicycle better than new

The three Sturmey hub gears are superior to the Sachs they’ve replaced. Testing the restored Brompton I cycled slowly but steadily up to the small chapel of Agios Isadoras – five hairpin bends above the village. 

Agios Isodoros on the winding road between Sokraki and Ano Korakiana

So satisfying that the bottom of my 6 gears made that possible. I’ve since taken the folder into town to cycle happily through its maze of streets amid the walkers. I returned our hired car. Lifting the folded Brompton from its boot, I headed into the city centre for various errands - paperwork, especially for our Biometric Residency Cards interview with the Immigration department in the police station off Solari. Being Monday morning the town was near gridlocked, which made pedalling smoothly past a kilometre of fuming semi-stationary traffic queues, on Heptanisou and Lefkimmi Streets into Mitropoliti Methodiou and San Rocco Square, especially satisfying. To go home I caught the bus to Sokraki, Brompton in its luggage hold, and for €3 was driven, via Tzavros, Dassia, Ipsos and up the winding road to Spartillas, along to Sgourades – a wonderful bus route for seeing Corfu’s changes of scenery from city, seashores to forested mountains – then down to Zigos and up to Sokraki, 29 hair pin bends above Ano Korakiana. 

The road from Sokraki to Ano Korakiana - 29 hairpin bends

I sat outside Emily’s Taverna for snacks and conversation with their Polish waitress, Milena, and various customers, German and English. One couple from Manchester, arriving quietly in an electric car. They were living in Corfu - a man and his sister living in Karousades. As we chatted convivially about the comparative merits of marriage for men and women, the man – middle aged - told us he’d lost his wife to Covid. In the last two years I’ve known very few who’ve caught this much talked about condition – Lin suffering it for an uncomfortable fortnight in January 2020 before lay-people even had a name for SARS-CoV-2.  
On November 10th Lin and I decided depart from beloved Greece. We flew back to England - Corfu Kapodistria, Athens Venizelos, London Heathrow and National Express coach back to Birmingham and Handsworth.  Goodbye for a while. PLF and tests and 10 days self-isolation back in the UK except to buy food.


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Simon Baddeley