Escape to the Country?

          The headlines this week are full of anticipated events: a new Prime Minister, England scoring goals in the World Cup tournament and a monster heatwave, the like of which we haven’t experienced since 1976. It’s all work in progress but, as I write (it’s Thursday), the temperature is about to peak, England failed to find the net against Ghana and the ‘King of the North’ – the now ex-mayor of Manchester – has taken the train to London, where he is expected to move into Number 10 Downing Street without further ado.

          These events have triggered in me a ripple of nostalgia. In 1976, I had just moved to Manchester, a football-mad city in industrial decline and yet to find a new engine for its economy. I did play a small part in the economic revival, by setting up in the furniture manufacturing business, but the footie left me cold. Eventually, a good friend and native of the city advised me to take at least some notice of its two legendary teams, lest I be thought of as a weirdo in the pub. I am now able to summon a modicum of interest in the game.

          As it happens, my Other Half and I are well placed to withstand the high temperatures, as we are in the South Devon countryside, close by a beach. It’s hot, but not as hot as elsewhere (Manchester included). We are house/dog-sitting for relatives who have taken a break to go to Menorca, where it’s also hot, sunny and by a beach. To be fair to them, they planned it months ago and were not to know they could have saved themselves the expense – by which I mean the travel and accommodation, not the services provided by us. After all, who wouldn’t volunteer to help out for a week or so in a nice house, with a well-stocked wine cellar? What’s more, the dogs are friendly and the locale is pretty. The only thing is, there is no actual ‘sitting’ involved.

          Our relatives, having recently moved here, are in the process of establishing an extensive garden, comprising produce-beds and areas of newly planted saplings and striplings. Even during an average English summer you would expect to have to spend time watering the plants, but we drew the short straw this time. It takes at least two hours a day to get water to every poor, wilting green thing that needs it and, since the striplings are at the top of a steep incline, it’s not just they who are in need of hydration by the time they are served. The science tells us to expect this extreme weather more frequently, in which case my suggestion would be to plant more cacti.

          As for the two dogs, it seems to me that they are happy to lie around and sleep all day long, but my OH tells me that they have a lazy tendency and it’s not good for their health: they must be roused and taken for long walks, preferably lasting two hours. Surprisingly, they don’t appear to mind being woken up and, as soon as they get wind of ‘walkies’ in the air, they spring eagerly into a state of uncontrollable shaking and tail-wagging.

          I like a good walk myself but, these days, I prefer townie terrain where there are cultural distractions. Around here, it’s country lanes, woods and coastlines. The dogs really like it but, for me, this temporary change of lifestyle is like a refresher course in taking responsibility for the well-being of other living things. The selfishness of an urban-flat-dwelling, garden-free, pet-free lifestyle is duly challenged – as is only fair – but found to be not without merit.

Zen In DIY

          It took me a while to work out that the heightened proliferation of St. George’s Cross flags around town was not down to a sudden increase in the political activities of the far right, but a show of support for quite another cause: football.

          It was the eve of England’s first match in the World Cup tournament, a fact which I had not troubled to register. You might think it curmudgeonly wilfully to ignore the progress of one’s national football team, yet I see a point of principle at stake: the hoo-ha around this tournament is boosted deliberately (by President Trump, for one) to distract attention from warfare and the transference of wealth and power from the many to the few. The Romans practised the same chicanery in their circuses. Why has the game still not been called out?

          Anyway, I spent three days last week in a sort of DIY trance, so I wasn’t taking notice of much in the outside world, never mind one of my least favourite activities, sports.

          After four months of waiting for builders to commit to doing some tiling on our terrace, I realised the job was of no interest to any of them and decided to do it myself (DIM). In an effort to encourage any builder to take an interest in earning some easy money I had simplified the original brief, but the lure had been ineffective. Eventually, I thought it through and realised the job had become so simple, I could DIM and spend the budget on having fun afterwards.

          But the builders, with all the benefit of their professional experience, may well be having the last laugh. Having decided to lay click-together wooden decking tiles over the existing ceramic floor tiles, thereby de-skilling the bulk of the job, I reckoned to have cracked the case. All that remained was to chip the vertical tiling from the retaining wall and paint it a jolly colour.

          My Other Half (OH) was away for a few days; the weather was set fair and my enthusiasm to get the job done could no longer be contained. The tiles came off in ten minutes, but my elation was to prove premature.

          The wall is only two feet high and twenty-two feet long, yet it took two days to clean off the tile adhesive and underlying coats of paint, then another to make minor repairs and prepare the surface for re-painting – and all this time my body was under the strain of crouching on a low stool or kneeling on a pad while leaning forward into the work. I avoided back injury by careful management of my posture, stretching during standing-up breaks and finishing the day with a hot bath.

          So, here comes the Zen part: the work is physically demanding but manageable; your focus is on a vertical surface about one foot away; your only objective is to remove all traces of old paint because, if any patches are left, they will show through the new coat; there is no one to distract you and no one to call you in for tea.

           I found that listening to music or podcasts over earphones lost its appeal early on. I could only get satisfaction from the work by concentrating on small achievements, like removing a particularly stubborn spot of paint in an especially inaccessible corner of the wall. I spoke to no one, didn’t shave, went to bed sober and arose early to the task. At last, I applied the first coat of new paint just as the weather broke, the rain set in and my OH returned. The nagging thought that I had just wasted three days of my life on something I need not have done was countered by the sense of satisfaction at having persevered and the appreciative remarks of the first beholder of the result.

          That evening, after dining out on the tiling budget excess, we got home in time to watch the second half of England vs Croatia – a very entertaining display of footballing skills. It’s not hard to see how immersion in such a spectacle is a useful distraction from the bleak reality of geopolitics.

Home Is Where the Fight Is

          After three weeks away, home, where everything is tailored to one’s personal preferences, feels like a welcoming environment, familiar, soothing and reassuring – one in which, for instance, you can get a cup of tea, made by pouring boiling water over loose leaves in a pot with a straining basket and a properly functioning spout.

          In Athens, we rented an apartment at the foot of the Acropolis and sat on the roof with our drinks to admire the floodlit ruins and contemplate their history. If we shifted our seats to the corner, we had an oblique view across the street of the boutique-open-air cinema that showed The Devil Wears Prada each evening at eight forty. The contrast between ancient and modern had the potential to grate on one’s sensitivities but, given the novelty and exoticism of our situation, excitement and enchantment were our dominant reactions. The ‘theme-park’ appeal might have worn thin after a while, but we certainly did not pine for home during our few days there.

          En route for home, we spent a couple of days mooching around the swanky centre of Milan, where men in tailored suits take breaks from their offices to stand at bars to drink espresso (al banco), while we tourists sit at tables and try not to get in everyone’s way. At one such bar, we asked for “two Americanos” and were given espressos in large cups and a jug of hot water so that we could dilute the blessed beverage ourselves, so scornful were they of the concept.

          We tired quickly of the Duomo’s depressingly Christian interior, with its gloomy images of suffering saints and relentlessly over-decorated surfaces. The streets held more appeal, though excess of a different kind prevails there, especially in the shops, where retailers exploit the power of brands to elevate prices to extraordinary levels. As a rule of thumb, which I learned from one of my travelling companions, the fewer items there are displayed in a shop window, the less likely you are to be able to afford to buy anything within. It’s a sort of early warning system for the curious but impecunious. Incidentally, I have read that Milan has lately become a fashionable refuge for the very rich who want to reside in cities where taxes are not too taxing for them.

          In Paris, we experienced a less affluent cross section of European society. In transit, we had time to spend in and around the rail stations, Gare du Nord and Gare de Lyon, where travellers of all sorts encounter everyday locals, a large percentage of whom are immigrants, either established or still finding their feet in society. The shop windows thereabouts are stuffed with goods, every square centimetre occupied and every single item priced. We had lunches and breakfasts in cafés done up in traditional style (and were served by waiters with traditional off-handedness). We stayed in small hotels, located conveniently by the stations and in which we relished the stereotypically old-fashioned Parisienne interiors.

          Finally, Eurostar delivered us to London and GWR took us onward to Plymouth. It’s good to be home, though our to-do list is full of work in progress. Britain still needs our help: the fight to stem the advance of illiberal legislation that is turning the right to protest into illegal acts labelled as terrorism (next step, treason); the fight to change our electoral system from first-past-the post to more nuanced proportional representation; the fight to stem the loss of public goods to the private sphere which is controlled by ever fewer people or entities; the fight to turn the tide of the commodification of education, which is snuffing out the principle of critical thinking; the fight to modify capitalism to an economy that isn’t bent on chasing the unfulfillable goal of never ending growth.

          The list goes on. But first, a decent pot of tea.

 

No Rush

          While disembarking from the overnight ferry from Greece to Italy, I had a brief conversation with two fellow passengers (I defer such engagement until the end of the crossing, for fear of getting trapped in unwanted temporary relationships). I learned that they were competing in a race across Europe and were chuffed that they had spent “all of twenty minutes” in Athens. Totting up the time we’ve spent there as tourists over the past few years, I’d say it was three months.

          On this trip, however, we had ventured outside the capital – to the Peloponnese – to explore some of the archaeological sites and the contemporary literary trail left by the author and adventurer, Patrick Leigh Fermor (PLF). Apart from the pleasurable aspects of the Mediterranean lifestyle and its welcoming people, there is so much to savour in Greece about the origins of Western civilisation, that racing through it never occurred to me.

          We tackled, amongst others, one of the most famous sites, Mycenae, fortress of the people who are said by scholars to have been the real founders of Western society. There isn’t much left of their stronghold – such treasures as were recovered are now in museums – but just being on the site can invoke a sense of how it might have felt to live there 5,000 years ago – as long as you’re prepared to make allowance for the crowds of other tourists doing the same. Technology has changed the way we live since then, but the legends and myths of Ancient Greece describe human traits that are no different now – avarice, treachery, lust – and occasional philanthropy.

          We stayed for a while, strategically, at the seaside holiday village of Kardamyli, close to which is the house built by PLF and his wife, Joan. They bequeathed it to the Benaki Museum so that it might remain unaltered, used for educational purposes and open to anyone who fancies a snoop. Why is it not enough to have read an author’s work without feeling compelled to pry into its conception and birth as well? It must be something to do with fandom, as I was gratified to find that the house, its contents, gardens and location, were all as close to ideal as I could imagine, had I lived the same life.

          Taking advice from our excellent guidebook*, we drove into the mountains for a short tour of some traditional villages, one of which, Kastania, has ten churches. They are mostly in poor shape (although the 900-year-old Agios Petros has been sensitively restored to a high standard) and their condition reflects the changing demographic of the hinterland, where many of the dwellings have been repurposed as holiday lets, appropriated by expats or lie abandoned and awaiting their fate.

          On the edge of Exochori, there is the mini church of Agios Nikolaos, where Bruce Chatwin, renowned travel writer and friend of PLF, had his ashes buried. To find it, we had first to locate an overgrown footpath, then follow it through uncultivated ground alongside an olive grove. It led to a promontory overlooking the valley, on which the church, hitherto invisible, stands in solitary command of the view. Wildflowers, nourished in part by Bruce’s ashes, crowded all around it. A small, battered door gave entrance to a roughly decorated interior, crumbling but not yet ruined. Neglect notwithstanding, the building and its setting have a quiet, spiritual quality, which makes it easy to understand why it might have been favoured by a restless romantic such as Bruce was reputed to have been.

          I suppose there is a modern Greece out there somewhere, but the one that fascinates me is stuck in the past. According to Henry Miller, “It takes a lifetime to discover Greece, but only an instant to fall in love with her” and I see his point. The racers, I guess, were too preoccupied.

* The Peloponnese with Athens, Delphi & Kythira Andrew Bostock

 

Deepest Dorset?

          Springtime had me fooled this year: just when it had begun to warm my bones, cold winds blew in and chilled them again. This presented a small dilemma concerning my wardrobe (a noun that, according to my dictionary, has 14 meanings, badger faeces being one, though this is now obsolete, as are the hunters who used it).

          The false start to the warmer season had prompted me to begin extracting lightweight garments from their hidey holes and stashing winter woollies there instead, but I’ve had to reverse that flow. And now I need to start packing for next week’s trip to Greece! So, what ought to have been a tidy transition is now a confused project, with my wardrobe (in the contemporary meaning[s]) in disarray. Hence, a couple of days ago, I set off in the campervan for a short trip with an over-stuffed travel-bag.

          The purpose of the journey was to visit an old girlfriend who lived – and still lives – in Dorset, but I took some time to poke around the area while I was there. I still cling, hopefully, to the nostalgic notion that there are regional differences to be savoured, such as there were before the era of instant-comms eroded them further and faster than industrialisation had. Thomas Hardy is still celebrated in the county, but you have to look closely to see it as he did.

           It has been noted, for example, that regional accents are in decline, so it delights me especially if I hear them still voiced. To this end, I eavesdrop and, sometimes, approach older people to ask for directions that I don’t really need, just to hear them speak like Wurzel Gummidge. Of course, I first assess whether, like me, they might be tourists, which is not so difficult: locals tend to be more purposeful in their perambulations.

          I was in Blandford Forum, a market town named, in part, for its Roman past. I had first set foot in the main square in 1967 when, stepping off the bus that had carried me there to be introduced to the parents of said girlfriend, I realised I had entered a uniquely picturesque environment. I learned later that the coherently Georgian architecture is attributed to the brothers John and William Bastard, local architects, who rebuilt the town after it burned down in 1731.

           The Georgian charm lingers, though the town is suffering the same high street blight that affects so many others. The streets once full of specialist retailers now accommodate charity shops, barbers, fast-food joints and beauty parlours. I was not in need of a haircut, a burger or a makeover, but I was easily lured into the charity shops. There may or may not be bargains within, but as repositories of the town’s unwanted stuff they offer an insight, of sorts, into its life. Time was, you could find things unique to the locale – such as tweed jackets as worn by badger hunters – but nowadays they are much the same everywhere, all the valuable or interesting items having gone upmarket to the antique or collectable trades, leaving the clothes racks full of Primark castoffs. I did think I was in luck when I came across some superior quality summer trousers that had belonged to someone with my taste and waist size, but our similarities ceased when it came to the inside leg measurement.

          Back on the street, I approached a local to ask if there was a deli, where I might buy some local delicacy to take to my rendezvous. She shook her head and gave me a brief history of the decline of the town’s shops before directing me, without irony – and without a regional accent – to Marks & Spencer’s Foodhall, which is tucked out of sight at the end of the main street. It was only when l I got to the checkout at M&S that I caught an earful of West Country burr, though there was no local produce on offer.