A day of being

Today has been sunless, still, overcast and wet but I have enjoyed my day immensely.  This morning I spent writing in the cottage.  This afternoon I donned the hat and calf-length raincoat I bought yesterday at Ennis and went out into the mist and rain in search of the remains of an early Christian church I understood to be somewhere across the fields from the cottage.  As seems to be the case with a great deal of the Irish countryside, this area is littered with built evidence of human occupation and use and continuity of ideas since at least neolithic times.  The most recent of these, satisfying a human need of an explanation for being, for some kind of god, is the seamless transition from Pagan to Christian.

Adjacent to the church is a stone shrine believed to be older than the church and to mark the grave of St Cronan

Despite the remoteness of both the cottage and the church the stroll to it is remarkably well way-marked; first along tarmacked country lanes and then through fields divided by stone walls well provided with ancient-looking, lichen-covered stone stiles. The ruins of the small now roofless but well maintained church, dedicated to St Cronan of Roscrea, or Tuamgraney, possibly date from the 12th Century.  A number of interesting romanesque carved heads have been built into the walls of the church. Adjacent to the church is a stone shrine believed to be older than the church and to mark the grave of St Cronan.  As may be but, in common with so many ‘sacred’ places, the paddock containing the church and shrine did, for me, exude a powerful ‘atmosphere’ of peace and well-being.  Today this feeling was somewhat enhanced by my believing, not without some concern, that I could hear there, or  above the song of a Robin and the alarm call of a frightened Wren, almost hear snatches of ethereal sounding music.

I wandered along what passed as a path for a short distance beyond the church and stumbled upon a spring and a wishing well, concreted and obviously, judging by the healthy layer of coins at its bottom, very much in current use. Beside the ‘well’ was an earthen mound topped with a broken standing stone.

Returning to the cottage, I lingered at the roadside to gather rain-washed blackberries and while doing so was relieved to hear, loud now, the source of the ‘ethereal music’ I had imagined I had heard earlier; from a nearby cowshed I could clearly hear far from ethereal sounding pop music being blasted out from a radio within.

Hurrying back to the cottage under a lowering cloud base with rain falling with increasing determination I stopped briefly to photograph one of my hardier neighbours (Top photo).  As I did so a flock of Curlew appeared from out of the mist behind me, wheeled above, piping mournfully, then flew low over a stone field wall to fade back into the rain-mist from whence they had come.  This timeless awareness of the continuity of existence of all things, both animate and apparently inanimate, is something of a reality I think I may have been drawn here to find.

Static - for a while

This morning, for the first time since, almost three weeks ago, I was on the ferry to Venice, I am feeling sufficiently relaxed to essay a blog post. Since my landfall at Venice I have been more or less continually moving. This had not been my intention but, in my case at least, the circumstances of travel have been mind altering.  I had not expected the drive across Italy into France to be as easy as it happened to be.  Arriving in France early in the evening of my first day of travel towards Ireland encouraged me to abandon my original plan, to move gently north and west, in favour of a new plan; to reach my chosen objective, Ireland, as soon as possible.

Shortly after emerging from the Mont Blanc tunnel I turned of the main road and booked into the delightful Aiguille du Midi at Les Bossons near Chamonix.  Delightful in every respect but accordingly expensive, providing further encouragement to hurry on.

On the outskirts of Laon, a mediaeval town I have long wished to explore, I booked into an adequate if utilitarian hotel, equally expensive as the Aiguille du Midi but considerably less delightful.  I would have liked to stay at Laon for a while and may, one day, make a dedicated visit but this time I had resolved, with some regret, to press on.

Only four days after leaving home, at about two o’clock on 16^th September, I drove out of the shuttle train into the bright and sunny Eurotunnel terminal at Folkestone.  Shortly after I was enjoying, in an old haunt of mine, the Rose and Crown at Elham, a delicious pint of Kentish ale.

Since the idea of making Ireland my ultimate destination first entered my head, I had intended to visit en-route my sister in Scotland, a diversion made easy for me by having family and friends living at strategic distances along the way.  An so it was that I broke my journey north at Canterbury, Boston and Glossop.

After spending four pleasant days with my sister I took a two hour catamaran ferry trip from Troon to Larne.

Ireland surprised me. I had expected it to be little different from Scotland, it is not, after all, so far away but it felt very different. Heading for the Giant’s Causeway I drove north along a beautiful coast road that snaked between the sea on my right and a patchwork of small, neat fields on the rolling hills on my left.  Near Bushmills I booked into Islandcorr Farm B&B, which should have been an ideal base from which to write, sketch, paint and dream but, tired and disinterested, I did none of these things. I did however get some much needed exercise. During the morning of what was reported to be the warmest day of the summer I walked north along the lower coast path at the Giant’s causeway to the point at which it has been closed.  In the afternoon I walked the whole of White Park beach, a huge stretch of tide washed sand on a part of which cattle were contentedly loitering; something I had never seen before.

From Antrim I headed, on a dreary and sometimes wet day, west and south through Derry, Donegal and Leitrim to Sligo where I loitered to pay my respects to Yeats.  From Sligo I drove on through Mayo and Galway arriving in the early evening of 29^th September at the Burren, County Clare where I have taken for a while a small, very basic, but adequate cottage.

Needing adequate ‘gear’, a waterproof coat and hat, and a means internet connection here I spent my first full day at Ennis, Clare’s largest town where I found everything I needed.

Ennis, in common with every town I have driven through in the Free State, is a wonderfully colourful collection of small independent shops and bars.

This is not much of a post and is certainly not the kind of post I hope to be making while away on my search for whatever it is for which I am looking but I wanted to have it out of the way; to clear the way perhaps for the kind of introspective posts I had come here to Ireland in part to essay to make.

Venice

On 14th September I arrived in Venice.  Although long since a novelty, sailing into Venice at sunrise is still a spine-tingling pleasure for me.  My short sea cruise, and the attendant thirty-six hours of freedom from all responsibility which it had provided, was reaching its conclusion.  Before me lay the prospect of driving away from Venice, on unfamiliar and far busier roads than those to which I am accustomed, and finding somewhere to settle.
I drove off the ferry and onto Mussolini's 'Ponte Littorio' which, since 1933, has been the only road link over the lagoon between Venice and the mainland.  Heading west towards Milan, I passed by many interesting towns and cities worthy of my time; Padua, Vicenza, Verona, Mantua.
Because I decided, on this occasion, to ignore the undoubted charms of these places I was at Milan far earlier than I had expected so chose to press on further.  Beyond Turin the motorway runs through more scenic country than hitherto and it began to rise towards the Alps.  By late afternoon I had reached the entrance to the tunnel that would take me through the mountain and bring me, within half an hour, into France.

All at sea

The trip on which I am presently prosecuting was conceived at some time during the days immediately preceding the twenty-fifth of August when an inexplicable notion, a notion of wanting to get far away from my home for a while, struck me.  So strong was this notion that, within days of it penetrating my psyche, I had booked a passage from Patras to Venice for myself and my car for the earliest date on which I could reasonably leave.

Initially I dreamt of arriving in Venice and allowing the breezes of fate blow me where they may but through the two weeks or so following my rather sudden rash booking I did essay to give my trip some skeletal form.  I gave it an ultimate destination.  For most of my adult life I have toyed with the idea of visiting Ireland. Ireland being the birthplace and occasional home of many of the writers I most revere, I have wanted to experience something of that from which they drew their inspiration; to seek their shades in in their mortal stamping grounds.  Yeats at Sligo, Green at Achill Island, Synge on the Aran Islands and so on.  When I was younger my time away from the income-mill was limited and the need to escape for the summer to places with reliably fine weather strong.  Through the years during which I have chosen to exile myself in Greece I have felt bound, when leaving home at all, to honor family commitments in the U.K..  The loss of my mother last year, together with the fact that all my children and grand children have only recently been with me has eased my need to be in the United Kingdom.  Only my sister and her family have I not seen this year.  She, sister Susan, lives in Scotland, not too far from Troon from where a ferry runs to Larne in Ireland. En-route for Troon I shall take the opportunity of calling on her and resting for a while in the delightful, “Wee County”; Clackmananshire.

I have given this post the title of ‘All at sea’ because that is where I am.  For too long I seem to have been living in a state of dissatisfied contentment or, perhaps, contented dissatisfaction; happy enough but regretting not doing any of those creative things that give substance to, and justification for, being; blogging for one.  I am hoping that, among many other things, this trip will break the mould of contented lethargy that I have, over recent months, allowed to shape me. Θα δουμε  (Tha thoumae) is a much hackneyed phrase here in Greece; it means ‘we shall see!

When I left home early yesterday afternoon I had driven only a few hundred metres when I remembered that I had turned off neither the power supply to the house, nor the water pump, nor had I locked the front door.  Bothered that I should need to, I turned back to deal with these things.  When I finally did get away my thoughts turned again to considering why I was doing what I was doing.  Why was I leaving?  The sea was a beautiful shade of rich royal blue, the gentle swell high-lit here and there with brilliant white crests.  The sea here is invariably a beautiful shade of blue but yesterday as I drove north beside the Messinian Gulf it was as beautiful as I have ever seen it and the mountains that back it, usually rather hazy, were unusually clear.  It was as if the mountains and the sea were conspiring to change my mind; to make me consider the folly of leaving all of this for a place notorious for grey skies and all but incessant rain.  As I drove on beyond the coast my route took me on winding mountain roads through delightful landscapes of olive grove, fig orchard, river valley, ancient forest, vineyard and villages, hardly changed for centuries, with wonderfully exotic names.  Somewhere on this country road between the Messinian Gulf and the Ionian Sea I came upon a T-junction at which I could turn either left or right.  WrongIy I chose left but it did not matter, it just meant that I joined the Ionian coast road to Patras a little further south than I had intended to.

I arrived at the port at sunset, seven-thirty, and was scheduled to board the ferry at ten-thirty.  I boarded at midnight.  But traveling was ever subject to delay and disappointment and rather more than that which we complain about nowadays; at least I did not have to wait for a favourable wind!  Patience, surely, is a prerequisite of all travel.

And so, for better or for worse, my trip is underway.  Sitting here writing this post in the privacy of my comfortable cabin I am rather pleased that it is.

Into the unknown

At the beginning of August my younger daughter arrived here with her three children.  Part of the way through her stay my two eldest grand-children arrived overlapping the arrival of their mother, her partner and their two young children; these last visitors left yesterday morning.  Through the course of these past weeks life as I know it, my quiet ‘normal life’, has been ‘on-hold’.  Instead of filling my days with reading, writing and generally pottering about, I have been commuting daily to one beach or another, one café or another, one ice-cream parlour or another, one bar or another or one taverna or another. I have been playing the role of a holiday-making grandfather.  It is not an easy role for me to play. 

At some time towards the end of my holiday-making a peculiar desire came upon me; a desire to get far away from here for a while.  I had a disturbing feeling that, if I stayed here for any length of time after my visitors had left I would slip back into the uncreative furrow of lethargy I had been ploughing through the months before they arrived.  I resolved to yield to this unsolicited escapist emotion and leave here as soon after my last visitors left as was reasonable.  On 25^th August I booked myself a one-way ticket for 12^th September on a ferry to Italy.  I leave here on Monday with a very loose itinerary - I shall be heading towards Ireland to look for what inspired Yeats and, perhaps, to look for something of myself.  I have no idea at present about when I shall be ready to return from wherever my journey will end.

Through the past several months this blog has, along with many other of my pursuits, suffered considerable neglect; neglect due to involuntary lassitude and, more recently, to shameless hedonism.  Through the weeks ahead I hope that my travels will terminate the lethargic stupor into which I have slipped and invigorate creativity sufficiently for me to resume regular, interesting and thought provoking, blog posts.

Fish n'chip night at Fini

Swordfish, a tasty, filling, close textured fish is popular in Finicounda; it is popular with me too!
Readers of this blog who may be interested in this fish can find, or can try to find,  fuller information at the link below; if nothing else it is worth a look at:



























http://fotis-fishingingreece.blogspot.com/2009/09/swordfish-greek.html?spref=bl

Ο Νικος Κυριοπουλος

Nico herding his goats, March 2008

On 23rd June my neighbour and good friend Nicos Kiriopoulos died; shockingly quickly after having his illness diagnosed only about six weeks previously.  Nico died in the house in which he was born seventy-six years previously and which, barring a few months military service, he hardly ever left for more than a few hours at a time.  The loss of any member of a community must alter it but Nico was the last of the village’s farmers; here there will be no new layers of humanity through whose industry the rent left by an elder passing might be covered.  Nothing in Mystraki will ever be the same again.

Nico, with his wife Fortini, farmed goats and olives, grew vegetables and kept domestic hens; they were as close to being self sufficient as it is possible to be in a largely retailer dependent society.

Through the century beginning soon after the exodus of Greece’s hitherto Ottoman masters and ending at the outbreak of the last world war, Mystraki developed as a clan farming community; the Kiriopoulos surname common, as yet it is, to every inhabitant.  Most of the land around the village that is not presently cultivated for growing olives, presently scrubby wilderness, once supported all manner of crops, not only to feed the human population but also the considerable animal population.  Domestic animals; pigs, goats, sheep, bovines, to provide meat and diary products for the table; horses, donkeys and oxen for transport and drawing bulk, water in particular, and agricultural implements.

Life made the landscape.  Animals foraging undergrowth kept woodland accessible; browsing goats adequately cleared inaccessible uncultivated land.  Water came to the hamlet of Valanidia, a kilometre beyond Mystraki and represented now only by my home, in ox-drawn bowsers, huge barrels laid horizontally on axels, keeping open a track from the village well in the valley between Velanidia and Mystraki to the house.  After the war increasing mechanization, better roads and cheap imported food led to the abandonment of the still almost mediaeval life of country villages in favour of what was considered a ‘better life’ in the cities.

When, in 1998, I arrived to take possession of the house, Nico was here to welcome me.  Why an englishman would want to buy and throw money for restoration at a mouldering eighty year old pile in which generations had been born, lived and died without any benefit of running water, sanitation or electricity, had obviously puzzled him but he was overwhelmingly grateful that I had chosen to do so; Nico appreciated and valued his environment, both natural and built.  A gentle man in every respect and a natural philosopher, Nico had had very little formal education.  Barely literate, although he had aspired to being able to write and read a shopping list, he was nonetheless an autodidact of all that is essential to life; horticultural skills, innate knowledge of when and where to sow and when to harvest; how to deliver into the world, raise, slaughter with compassion and butcher domestic animals; viniculture (although his wine is something of an acquired taste!), cheese making, bread oven maintenance, how to repair and fashion tools; repair and build shelter, how to magically improvise and re-cycle.  Much more than this Nico had cultivated the difficult art of thinking, of using the most primary sources to make sense of and know the sheer joy of living.  No one has taught me more about the privilege of living, of being able to feel the inner peace and tranquility that comes with being in harmony with the very rhythm of life than has Nico.  Rather than being formally taught, this learning was somehow assimilated from the man, by being with him during long contemplative silent conversations and, when he did try to verbally communicate, of understanding all he had to say about the seasons, weather, plants, diet and all that is good in the world; Nico had no capacity for negative ideas.  Nico and I did not share much spoken conversation, he did not have a word of english and I, even after half-heartedly studying the language for over fifteen years, can not claim a facility for speaking greek that is even close to fluent, but from our first meeting communication between us was never a problem and such greek as I have owes more than a little to Nico’s patience and understanding.

With Nico’s passing his goats will go from the village, the paths and tracks which their twice-daily wandering and browsing kept open will become overgrown and impassable.  In a matter of months fast growing wild pear will provide shelter for more vulnerable trees and shrubs which in turn will grow tall and strong and ungratefully shade out the wild pear that had protected them.  In very few years large areas of land will revert to impenetrable woodland.  It is a cycle of which Nico was, and we are, a part; a cycle that always was and will ever thus will be.