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