You are here - North Harrow station - coming back from Didgeridoo practice...

Which was awesome.

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You are here - in Pinner for didgeridoo lesson

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Chicken Soup - Example

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You are here - Paddington Station

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Time for Reflection

Firstly, reflection takes time: therefore creating or allowing time for reflection is essential.

http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1952269

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You are here - More weather...

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You are here - beautiful rainstorm brewing heading in over Muswell Hill

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The Trouble with Recruitment for Software is that you don't Know Anybody

I've just read and article in the Guardian about how difficult it is to recruit software developers "The problem with recruitment for software jobs ... is you". There's this weird section where he says that finding CV's should be a “beauty parade.”

Recruitment should be a beauty parade. It should be a, wonderful, magical process of just having a procession of dynamic and enriched individuals parading in front of an employer blowing people away with their awesome coding skills and fascinating personalities.

What I was thinking was “well, a beauty pageant is a pretty horrible thing. It basically arises in societies where there is so little social mobility that women have to resort to taking nearly all their clothes off and parading up and down in front of dodgy D-list celebrities in the hope of getting any kind of career advancement.”

Why isn't searching for developers at the moment a beauty contest? The author of this article, Matthew Baxter-Reynolds curiously blames the recruitment agents and the developers themselves for refusing to don their metaphorical swimwear for pretty obscure reasons, like not paying attention to careers advice from their teachers when they were at school. But surely, the truth is that at the moment, things just aren't that desperate for skilled software developers. The only time you're going to get this kind of awful parade is when there are very few jobs and a large number of well-qualified people who are desperate to fill them. Actually, the last time that I can remember that there really was a jobs crisis in IT – after the first internet bust, the CV's and agency system really did fail for everybody, for agents, developers and and employers. For the employers, all the CV's were riddled with lies, or it was impossible to detect the truthful ones, because everybody would say anything to get a job.  For the candidates, you could send out maybe a hundred CV's to potential employers and not even get an interview.  It might well come to that again. We live in changeable times to say the least, but we aren't there just yet.

So why aren't developers wobbling down that catwalk in high heels and talking about their love of world peace and their desire to look after animals? If the companies that Matt is trying to staff are doing interesting, challenging work and paying quite well as he claim surely people should be parading themselves to work there. But they're not. This leaves us with a few possibilities either developers are really stupid or they know that the deal that's being offered isn't that great.

In my experience, IT contractors that command up to £750 a day pay rates aren't stupid, they may have many failings, but as a group I've dealt with quite a lot, stupidity isn't the adjective that immediately leaps to mind. That leaves us with the deal not being that great. And it probably isn't. My guess is that they're being offered 75%-80% of the going rate to work in a situation where's it far less than certain they will even get paid. It's also pretty certain that they won't be kept on for as long as they might be if they working, say, for a big, dumb, merchant bank, where you might work on a “temporary” contract for years. If they're being taken on as permanent staff, again, the salaries (and certainly the benefits packages) are probably lower than for the big organisations, so the only incentive you can really offer them is shares in the company, and I'll that's exactly what the venture capitalists who fund these “start up” companies expressly forbid.

So what's the solution? Well there are three that I can think of. The first, which probably isn't that palatable is to up the offer so that it starts to look more like a million pounds and a diamond tiara. If your day rates were genuinely competitive (at current rates, over £750 a day), and you let it be known that you wanted typographically beautified CV's, that is what you would get. As I said developers aren't stupid, they can pay a graphic designer to beautify a CV if that's really required to get the moula. Actually, no, it still might be a bit of a struggle, because one area where such developers are, if not stupid, then certainly obstinate is in insisting that that the content of their CV should be what matters rather than how it looks.  This is the same reason why they tend to be deeply distrustful of anybody in a suit.

The second possible solution, is to offer what you're offering to people who might think it is a million bucks and a diamond tiara – recent graduates. There are some very bright graduates out there, who probably could provide you with exactly what you need from a developer on a start up – enthusiasm, energy, a just-do-it attitude and a likelihood to hang around for eighteen months to two years at wages below market rates. But you need to find them. One way to do that is to take in interns. If you're going to do that, my inner circle tips, having managed an intern programme for Xerox are 1) don't hire computer scientists as interns – hire the brightest history or philosophy graduates that you can find and 2) pay them, don't take the ones who can afford to do it because daddy's rich.

There is a third option which is to de-risk the situation for both you as a company and the developers that are going to work for it. How about actually getting to know the community of developers that are working with the skills that you want to hire and let them get to know you. If developers get to know you and your company, if during the course of a series of meetings, chats, drinks, they get to see that your company really is doing something interesting and innovative and isn't going to go away any time soon, if they also get to see that you, and your colleagues that run the company, and that work for it, aren't arse holes, then they will be much more motivated to work for you. Similarly, if you actually turn up to some of these talks, and mingle with the attendees in the pub afterwards, you'll get to find out all kinds of things. Is the money you're offering competitive? Who are the really good people who it would be worth hiring, even at twice the money you're offering? Also, who are the arse holes? Actually, this kind of networking is very similar to what is classically advised as they way to come up with good negotiated agreements in such books as “Getting to Yes.” By socialising with the people who you're looking to get a negotiated agreement with (e.g. hire) you're “exploring their value landscape”. For example, it may be that lots of developers will sign up to work for you if you can guarantee that they'll always get to use the most recent version of the code – or even a certain source code control system or editor.

And there is at least one recruitment agent that I know of who is doing this – BarryCranford, who has been working tirelessly over a series of years to put together the London Java Community, organising talks and events and in the process getting to know a ton about what's going on in Java development in London, who's doing it, who's good at it and who to avoid. I'm not sure where and why Barry deciding to approach things in the way that he's doing them, but whether he knows it or not, he's essentially putting into practice the wisdom that's outlined in the classic article on how to get a job through connections “The Strength of Weak Ties” by Mark Granovetter and in new books on the science of connections.

How do I know about what Barry's up to? Why would I recommend Barry? Because I know him through a friend and former colleague...

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Nope - that didn't work @Mark_Stringer

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Oh Yeah

The mind of Buddha is like water that is calm, deep, and crystal clear, and upon which the "moon of truth" reflects fully and perfectly. The mind of the ordinary man, on the other hand, is like murky water, constantly being churned by the gales of delusive thought and no longer able to reflect the moon of truth. The moon nontheless shines steadily upon the waves, but as the waters are roiled we are unable to see its reflection. Thus we lead lives that are frustrating and meaningless.

Buddhist Teaching 8th-9th C
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September CV

cv220911.doc Download this file

I'm currently looking for contract Agile Project Manager positions in central London.  Current notice period - one month.

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You are here - training done for the day: Bicester North

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You are here - Bicester Hotel and Golf Spa

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You are here - Mornington Crescent, far too early

On my way to Bicester to give a course.

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You are here - Wakefield Kirkgate

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You are here - Wakefield Kirkgate station in the rain

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Koby and Tarun

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Tarun

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You are here

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Good Strategy

Good strategy requires leaders who are willing and able to say no to a wide variety of actions and interests. Strategy is at least as much about what an organisation does not do as it is about what it does.

Richard Rumelt - Good Strategy/Bad Strategy
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Conflicting goals

Having conflicting goals, dedicating resources to unconnected targets and accommodating incompatible interests are the luxuries of the rich and powerful, but they make for bad strategy. Despite this, most organisations will not create focused strategies. Instead they will generate laundry lists of desirable outcomes and, at the same time, ignore the need for genuine competence in coordinating and focusing their resources.
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Strategy

I carried out interviews with twenty-six executives, all division managers or CEO's in the electronics and telecommunications sector. My interview plan was simple: I asked each executive to identify the leading competitor in their business. I asked how that company had become the leader - evoking their private theories about what works. And then I asked them what their own company's strategy was.

These executives, by and large, had no trouble describing the strategy of the leader in their sectors. The standard story was that some change in demand or technology had appeared - a "window of opportunity" had opened - and the current leader had been the first one to leap through that window and take advantage of it. Not necessarily the first mover, but the first to get it right.

But when I asked about their own company's strategies, there was a very different kind of response. Instead of pointing to the next window, or even mentioning it's possibility, I heard a lot of look-busy doorknob polishing [...] They each hald told me the formula for success in the 1990's electronics industry - take a good position quickly when a new window of opportunity opens - but none said that was their focus, or even mentioned it as part of their strategy. Richard Rumelt - Good Strategy / Bad Strategy
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Our education system...

Our education system is rich with targets and standards, but poor in comprehending and countering the sources of underperformance.

Richard Rumelt - Good Strategy / Bad Strategy
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Kernal of a Strategy

"The Kernal of a strategy contains three elements: a diagnosis, a guiding policy and a coherent action."

Richard Rummelt - Good Strategy/Bad Strategy
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Untitled

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Conkers

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It's scientifically proven to be a marital aid...

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/12/051224094017.htm

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Curious, the things that contribute to marital bliss, if not exactly harmony

http://www.didgeridoostore.com/circularbreathing.html

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Oyster Pay as you go Trap?

Forget to tap out and it costs you £££.

How much to TFL get as a result?

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Chairman of a hedge fund (geddit) New Portrait - Chris shoots Barnaby with Chairman Pat

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Chris Gloag <studio@chrisgloag.com>
Date: 30 August 2011 10:30
Subject: New Portrait - Chris shoots Barnaby with Chairman Pat
To: "mark@agilelab.co.uk" <mark@agilelab.co.uk>

Visit chrisgloag.com - London Portrait Photographer | View this email online | Unsubscribe | +44 7759 3444 95

Barnaby Wiener looks after a $2.8 Billion Hedge Fund and in his spare time looks after his hedge jumping horse Chairman Pat. I shot the portrait at Barnaby's stables deep in the Sussex Downs (UK) near to where Barnaby lives. Shooting with a frisky big race horse wheeling around is not easy and it took quite a time to organise Barnaby and the horse to be together, still enough and nonchalant looking! For the picture to work they had to look connected and collected. I was shooting really close up with the 35 mm f1.4 lens to give me the horse, Barnaby and the environment behind in the proportion that I wanted. It would have been easy to use a wide angle zoom lens but the 35mm lens is so fast to shoot with and gives such a beautifully atmospheric quality to the background, I had to shoot on it. If I had to take just one lens on a portrait shoot it would be this one.   The art direction on the treatment involved giving the shot an interesting shadow fill process with a little high light recovery. It gives you a flatter mid tone and sometimes a grainy illustrated feel. Barrons magazine commissions some really high quality imagery and I love shooting for them as they always have a challenging brief. If you would like to see my portfolio to discuss a photographic project you have then please get in touch. You can get me on my cell anytime +44 (0) 7759 344495.

	T: +44 (0)7759 344495 E: studio@chrisgloag.com 2 Bleeding Heart Yard, London, EC1N8SJ Nearest Tube: Farringdon

This email was sent to mark@agilelab.co.uk. If you are no longer interested you can unsubscribe instantly.

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Top 10 things to eat in Greece

After last week's rantings about my experiences travelling in Greek taxis, my wife was concerned that I might have created the impression that the entire country spends its whole time being rude to each other, getting drunk and driving at high speed to the wrong place. This is of course not true. There is a lot of eating.

There's other stuff I could add to this list of course. What you should note is that this is a list of things to eat in Greece. It isn't a list of great Greek cuisine which might be a very different list.

The TV Chef Anthony Bourdain admits in his book 'Kitchen Confidential' that the finest cuisine is never going to compete with simple food that you eat when you're in love or when you're sitting on the beach as the sun sets. I realise that as I write this list there's always something else that's an extra ingredient. Family, setting sun,or just the helpful ingredient of being slightly more hungry than normal. I rather one of the crucial ingredients of Greek cuisine is Greece. So if you want to enjoy them, my suggestion is to go there, or even better, befriend a Greek person, be very nice to them and get invited to visit. Just remember to start firmly and rudely saying "Oxi" to all offers of food after the fourth meal of the day.

1. Tomatoes - on several occasions I've encountered tomatoes that were tasty beyond anything that you could legitimately expect of an ordinary tomato. Once I was on my honeymoon in Naxos where we bought tomatoes from the local farm cooperative shop. They didn't look like supermarket tomatoes, they were gnarled like arthritic fists and flecked with yellow and brown. I resolved not use them for salad but just to make a sauce for the green beans I was buying.

But when I started cutting them up for the sauce - the smell aroma, I think is more the word. Never mind about the taste. I'm dreaming of it now, it made my mouth water and when I tasted them it was like someone had taken the most powerful possible taste of tomato but made it light and delicate and so fresh that all I wanted to do was eat some more.

In Crete in the 50's a visiting Dutchman who knew a thing or two about tomatoes pointed out to the local farmers that if they grew tomatoes in poly-tunnels they could grow and sell tomatoes all year round. To show their appreciation the Cretan farmers erected a statue to this Dutchman. I've had Cretan tomatoes. If you can't get any from Naxos, they'll do.

2. Olives. The Greeks have a religious relationship with this weird little fruit/vegetable, believing that it was given to them by the goddess Athena. Just about anything you eat in Greece has olive oil poured over it or mixed into it. The best olives I ever tasted were pungent little black salted ones that we were served for breakfast with jam, brown bread and Greek coffee by the monks at Stavro Nikita monastery on Mount Athos. But I've eaten mountains of the pinkish ones pickled in brine and intend to eat a lot more.

3. Lamb at Easter - one of my first memories of Greece is helping the man who would eventually become my father-in-law ram a massive iron spike through the skull of a sheep. This is just the beginning of an entire day of barbecue action with not a Quorn burger in sight. The salty, fatty skin of the lamb as it comes straight off the barbecue is just perfection.

Easter lamb provides one of the few areas where an English person can teach the Greeks a thing or two about food. English mustard is unheard of in Greece, as is mint sauce. Both can be good presents and a great help if you're staring at a mountain of lamb. Also, Greeks don't seem to be too imaginative about leftover recipes for the lamb, so this might the time to step up and produce a shepherd's pie. Probably best not to get to cocky and start throwing together a lamb Jalfraizi unless you want to end up on a skewer.

4. Kontosouvli - pork kebab. Vivid memories of cooking this on an open fireplace in my wife's uncle's "shag pad." Which tellingly had an open fireplace on which you could barbecue, a double-width bunk bed and about 1000 bottles of his own wine.

This is rough cut lumps of leg and belly pork about the size of snooker balls, marinated in lemon and salt and then barbecued on an open charcoal fire. It's full on stuff that you certainly need lots of good wine to wash down. And after that? Maybe a lay down in the doublewide bunk bed. Actually, my wife and I ended the night staggering home under the weight of a crate of wine each.

5. Kokoretsi - this is a lamb's offal kebab, most commonly done at Easter on a skewer the size of a broad sword. It is absolutely perfect for the first 30 seconds of it's life off of the barbecue. I'm so glad that my principle of saying "yes" to everything that I was offered the first time I went to Greece resulted in me trying this. I know, I know it doesn't sound great, it's fabulous.

6. Melomacarona - christmas biscuits, stuffed with walnuts and raisins with a clove on top and then bathed in an orange and honey syrup. Not as sweet as some other Greek sweets. I have to resist the temptation to put away half a dozen after dinner when they're in the house. They go great with English tea.

7. Kotopoulo me Bamnies - Chicken and Okra. You're going to have to try hard to get this one. For me this has always been cooked with one of those extra ingredients I talked about. With love, by my mother-in-law Athena for her daughter my wife. As someone who tries to cook occasionally I find Athena deeply impressive because she never seems to break a sweat when she's cooking and everything she cooks tastes marvellous. I've never tried cooking okra myself, but I understand that it's tricky stuff. If you're careful it can taste like glue. Every time Athena has made it has been perfect.

8. Horta - it's hard to figure out exactly how this vegetable translates into Englsh. It seems to be a plant a bit like spinach, a bit like rocket, a bit like dandelion leaves. Very often, it's picked wild and boiled long. It's a great, great thing to eat to aid digestion whenever you find yourself faced with a table creaking with all the other things on this list.

9. Loukanika - the Greek take on sausage is robust. Powerfully salty. Sometimes it's got leeks in it. Sometimes it's even got chillies - one of the few places where you find these in Greek cuisine. When we have it in our freezer at home in London it finds itself serving as a late night drunken snack a lot. You need to put it in the freezer though, the fridge isn't enough, because when they're fresh they smell, they smell of farts truth be told. To my eternal shame I made my wife throw some sausages away once because they smelled and I was worried our landlord, who wasn't that tolerant of foreign food would throw them out. I wonder where those sausages are today. They keep so well, they probably be fine after half an hour in the oven.

10. Peas in Dill and Tomato Sauce. Another one from Athos. It's a simple, simple dish. Peas, tomatoes (remember the ones from Naxos, they would be great) and Dill which grows like a weed in Greece. Ok, maybe an onion. Serve with rice, or pasta, or potatoes.

11 (and 12) Octopus and squid - I know I said ten, but I hadn't even mentioned any seafood. Grilled Octopus, fried squid, stuffed squid. Atherina - little tiny deep friend fish. And I haven't mentioned cheese pies and the kind of fried cheese they make at the end of the night on Easter Sunday. Or yoghurt with honey and nuts for breafast or pork giros. Look, just go to Greece, eat stuff. It will be great.

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Greek Home Cooking

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Now that's a kebab

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Ikea in Athens - Like Hell...

...but curiously with less seating.

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Greek Taxi Stories #5 (and final)

Spirited Away

One of the reasons that I take taxis in Greece is because when I'm there I'm often attending some kind of celebration. This normally means that at any time after about noon, all the members of my extended family who might offer to drive me anywhere are drunk. I mean drunk. I don't mean a few milligrams over the legal limit, I mean can't stand fetch-the-stomach-pump stotious.

So occasionally, I make a principled stand and get a taxi. When I do this my in-laws complain "Why pay for a taxi? All the taxi drivers are drunk as well!"

Ha ha ha. A drunk taxi driver. The very thought.

We were hurtling through Athens on our way back from a wedding or christening or some such. By now I'd got used to the 'three-handed' driving technique of Athenian taxi drivers. One hand for the cigarette, one hand for the iced coffee, one hand for the mobile phone and a firm(ish) grip on the steering wheel with the knees. I know, it makes no sense, try not to think about it.

The taxi driver rang off on his mobile and turned round to talk to us (a crucial part of the three-handed driving technique, watching the road with your free ear).
"That was the girlfriend! I've got a hot date tonight, going to have to ring the wife now and make some excuse."

We pull up to some red traffic lights. The taxi driver is still talking to his missus on the phone. A policeman on a motorbike pulls up next to him, notices that he's on the phone and motions for him to wind down the window.

Policeman: You're not supposed to talk on your phone when you're driving.
TD: do you mind mate, this is an important phone call you're interrupting. Policeman: Turn off your phone! TD: [winding the window back up] Sorry mate can't hear you, I'm on the phone!

The lights change, the policeman shrugs and speeds off on his motorbike.

With a fourth hand the taxi driver produces a hip flask that he proceeds to swig from, filling the back of the cab with powerful alcoholic fumes. "Good job he didn't see this isn't it?" We nod wearily in agreement.
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Greek Taxi Stories #4

Gay

It averages out at about every other time I get in a taxi with my wife (who is Greek) the conversation goes something like this:
Taxi Driver: So are you Greek?
Wife: Yes, but I live in England.
TD: (as if I'm not there) and what? This is your English boyfriend?
Wife: Husband actually.
TD: Husband? But all Englishmen are gay aren't they? Wife: Well, maybe not all of them. TD: No, no, you're wrong everybody knows that, all Englishmen are gay!
Me: [Thinks] I'm here you know! I can hear this!
TD:[Probably thinks] He can hear this and he's not doing anything manly like trying to strangle me while I'm driving - obvious proof that he's GAY!
Wife: [As politely as she can manage] Maybe I know a bit more about this than you?
TD: Yeah, yeah. I suppose, you have to say that, but if ever you want a real man, you should get with a Greek taxi driver love.
Wife: Thank you, I'll bear that in mind.
[Rest of journey continues in awkward silence while I try to look manly in the rear-view mirror]

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Greek Taxi Stories #3

First Sign of Trouble

Possibly the first time that I took a taxi in Athens, I started to get an idea that maybe this was a little different from taking taxis in other towns. We went to visit a friend. We got in a taxi, my wife gave the driver the address. We pulled up outside a house about 20 minutes later. I was already to get out when my wife leaned over and said to the driver:
"This isn't it."
"Yes it is!" Says the driver.
"But I wanted Georgos Panandreou Road."
"Well, that's where we are." "No we aren't - see we're on Herkules Road. See, you can see the sign there. "
"Well, this used to be called Georgos Papandreou Road. So I'm right, we're in the right place."
"But my friend lives on the road which is still called Georgos Papanadreou Road. Can we go there please?"

We call our friend and she tells us to put the taxi driver on the phone. She talks him down. We drive about 200 yards around the corner to the road which is currently called Georgos Panpandreou. The taxi driver speeds away still grumbling to himself.
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Greek Taxi Stories #2

Fire and Damnation

My wife and I take a train from central Greece to Athens. It's an eventful journey because for most of the trip there are forest fires on either side of the train. As a result, when we arrive in Athens, it's very late and there is a frantic melee of people battling for taxis. I see an empty taxi and suggest to my wife that we get in the back of it and wait for the driver to come back. "That's not the way they do it." She says, "You need to find a driver and then he'll take you to his cab."

So we do this, we manage to find a driver and he walks us back to his cab. When we get there we see that there's a little old lady in the back - in fact it's a nun. I'm guessing that we're going to have to find another cab, or at least share. The taxi driver opens the back door to his cab and says to the nun: "Get out."
"But, but, I wanted to go to the monastery at..." pleads the nun.
"Never mind that," says the Taxi driver,"Get out, out!"
Still complaining, but now more feebly, the nun complies. To my eternal shame (and probable damnation) we get in the back of the taxi and zoom away.
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Greek Taxi stories #1

Poor reception. I arrive in Greece with my wife to be - we're going to get married in Athens. I'm a little nervous, a little worried about all the arrangements. The first thing I'm worried about is whether the taxi driver would be able to find the hotel from the airport. Even with sat nav, from my previous experience, this doesn't seem to be a foregone conclusion. It turns out that I needn't have worried. The guy has a sat nav bolted on the dashboard and he seems to know how to use it. What I should have worried about, if I could have possibly imagined such a thing, is the 10 inch flat-screen TV which is also bolted to the dashboard. As we hurtle into central Athens down the new motorway from the airport the TV is on and driver is watching a soap opera. Occasionally he turns round to us and says "I always get really poor reception on this bit of this bend, I wonder why?"

I managed to restrain myself from shouting at the top of my voice "WHY ARE YOU WATCHING TELEVISION WHILE YOU ARE DRIVING? TURN THE FUCKING THING OFF AND KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE ROAD!!! YOU FUCKING IDIOT, WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!" We don't die. We find the hotel, get married and live to take another taxi.
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Equally cursed and blessed - in Greece, August 2011

Written from the beach on the island of Astypalaea, the Dodecanese, Greece

We visited an iron age re-creation camp in Hampshire, England once. There was a beardy chap in what might have been Anglo saxon dress or might have been a set of velour curtains sitting in front of a clay oven in which he was trying to bake primitive bread. The primitive bread looked really unappetising - burnt on one side and still gooey and uncooked on the other. 'The trouble is we don't really know how these ovens were used.' Said Eric Velour Curtain rather defensively.

"My Grandma had one just like that!" said my wife. "She baked bread and cheese pies in it for forty years!" My wife is Greek. Her grandmother, who lived to be over a hundred started out her life as an itinerant shepherdess. Her family aren't sure exactly how old she was because she was born in an area of Greece still under Turkish occupation where the last thing you wanted to do was register your children with the authorities. She gave birth to some of her children at the side of the road as her family herded sheep from one area of grazing to another. This article made me think about this:

http://m.guardian.co.uk/ms/p/gnm/op/swBRGoXJuZH4uf6_4FisFgw/view.m?id=15&gid=.../2011/aug/27/attenberg-dogtooth-greece-cinema&cat=film

One of things that great art does is makes you think 'ah yes, of course!' It gives you permission to think consciously things that had previously been milling around in your subconscious. I haven't yet seen any of the films talked about in this article (although 'Attack of the Giant Mousaka' is top of my list) but already, just having read about them I'm getting that feeling. Of course Greece is a weird place! Permission to think this in itself feels like a great relief.

I've been coming here and witnessing the weirdness as first the boyfriend and then the husband of a Greek woman for seventeen years. And this article feels like it's given me permission to talk about why I think Greece might be a bit weird. The iron age oven thing is one of those reasons. Perhaps it is the reason for Greek weirdness #1: although it shares it with a large number of European countries that sat out the Industrial revolution. It is a country that has come from, if not the stone age, certainly the iron age in the years since the second world war. Greece is essentially an agrarian, peasant society, where the family, home and hearth are everything. But what to do when family, home and hearth (and as part of this bundle inevitably in Greece comes the church) cannot provide the answers? Well now, welcome to the modern world. Maybe it is time Greece took a closer look at the kind of problems that many northern European cultures were forced to deal with at the beginning of the previous century. At least in their art if not in their reactionary politics. The death of God, the dread understanding that we all have to make it up as we go along without a clear steer about right and wrong.

Reason for weirdness #2: This place is like the Marilyn Monroe of Europe. Greece is a crazy beautiful country. Quite possibly one of the most beautiful in the world. Nothing short of a massive nuclear explosion will stop it trading on its looks. And even after that, the sun, the sea and the sky would still be here, you'd just maybe need a higher factor sun cream. No matter how much the Greeks try to fuck things up with dodgy development, disastrous administration and average food (in their restaurants, the home-cooked stuff is another matter) and accommodation, pale northerners will still pay to come here in their droves.

This is both a blessing and curse. It's a blessing in that, as long as there are planes, even trains, there will be paying punters on the beach in Greece. And there will be a living for Greeks. It's a curse because, like in many other countries rich in natural resources, there's little pressure for governmental and organisational reform. Greeks can make a living, but it's a precarious living, with no social security and no health care system to really speak of (the health care system is that you have to pay a private surgeon a fee plus a cash bribe if hope to survive an operation). Levels of corruption in Greece are now so high that independent outside observers who follow such matters think that investments in some African countries such as Tanzania are a better bet.

Reason for weirdness #3: "When you were all swinging from the trees eating acorns we were building the Parthenon." I've heard this attempt to knock upstart northern Europeans down to size from children as young as six in Greece. For a huge number of people who know about, care about and truly love Greece, the real Greece isn't the one that I'm sitting in now, but the one that produced the Parthenon, the dialogues of Plato and the plays of Sophocles. Greece, more than any other country is a country of the mind. Then again, that puts Greece in the select and scary company of other countires tha 'Have to exist' such as Tibet and Isreal. Every scientist, philosopher, educator, mathematician and most surely any democratic politician owes ancient Greece a nod and a tribute. The philhellenic urge is strong in western civilisation. Some say Modern Greece has traded on this sentimental love of Ancient Greece at various crucial points in its history, including its war of independence from Turkey and its membership of the European community. But this love of Ancient Greece also has its downsides, it has resulted in a great deal of Greece's art and culture simply being looted. You're never going to get the British Museum in court for receiving stolen goods, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't call it what it is - theft. It also, during the dictatorship of the late sixties and early seventies in Greece resulted on the teaching of a 'cleaned-up' (re-Ancient-Greekified) version of Greek in schools that no one had ever spoken or written. It has also perhaps resulted in a degree of contempt for Modern Greek culture.

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Our Last Full Day in Astypalaea (this time)

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September

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