GREECE RE-BRAND

~ Youtube:Peter Economides ~

... Or is it branding GREEKS?

Vaut le voir

See also the comment below by always-good Corfu Blues Man, and heed his link on rebranding.

Ditto reference to 1999 article by Andrew Apostolou.

In fact, set a regular habit of checking out Corfu Blues (not that I'm one to speak) and you will be well informed and entertained and hold your own in any salon or dive in town.

Pinch and a Punch

How very interesting: I'm researching Lear-iana for the coming exhibition, 25 May - 31 August [and if any clever clogs knows, do let tell me what the correct word is for stuff pertaining to Lear], and lo, a book cover closely resembling the Punch volume from the San Luca study book-case that I hurled into the void from the side drive of Villa Thefti.

I sort of bent the truth when i said I was completely caught off guard by the April 2007 double filch of my personal jewelry.

I was walking past maman's room and there she was with my brother handing over to him the San Luca edition of punchiana.

Normally I'd not have thought anything of it - completely up to Mum to give away the family library in whichever direction she chooses - but there was something furtive about the glance she gave the open door, and of course we now know what it was: my jewels were next to be 'fenced'.

Then I did finally see my box on my bro's dressing table. I marched up to where both thefteurs sat, and bearded, branded and red-handed them.

After which followed the usual choleric gyaku gire that always spews from the guilty. (Such a good word, almost worth having been stolen from to have discovered its existence.) Like obganiate that someone passed to me just the other day in token of my 68 months' endurance of repetition ad murderous nauseam: 'to be tediously repetitious'. Wish I'd come across it while maman was still alive and obganiating on all eight cylinders, God help me.

Anyway, back to the thievery: marched I down to the living room where mr Punch lay under the cawfee table mags, scooped it up and took a quick snap for the record. Then, in a single flowing cam shot (as cinephiles have it), marched through the hall, out across the drive, over to the far side where I hurled the weighty volume into a convenient chasm.

Wonderful satisfying spin it made - great aero-dynamics on those original leather-bounders (I was joking about Skivertex).

LEST WE FORGET

We're coming up to another April 8 (Sunday, by Jove, the other lot's Easter) and I shall be continuing the tradition I started with maman of buying a lunch-time half bouteille of bubbly and toasting absent bling and keeping alive the memory of the Big Filch.

Six people stolen from:

Me of my most precious possessions, the only objects in the whole property of any sentimental or emtional value and importance.

Stephanie, my ex

My two girls

Their two fellahs, as yet unmet so they're in for a nice surprise.

This year there's only me to drink it (not that mum always partook: as I recall, 2009 fermented with particularly boisterous gyaku g-ire.)

Anyway, there's an artists impression of the jewel box on the precise spot in my bedside cupboard from which it was lifted in the early hours of April.

EDWARD LEAR AND THE IONIAN ISLANDS

25 May ~ 31 August 2012

The big event

Outstanding link.

ELECTRIC SKY ~ I suspect Birthday Boy Baddeley was on trop de gateau when he mentioned this intriguing link in my breezy recap of ditching Mr Punch in return for the equally poisonous loss of my poisonal joolry. Never mind, excellent excuse to plonk it here and cross-link.

MURALIST

~ Caroline Philp ~

Poolist, I should more accurately say for this particular post.

This blog isn't all about slash and burn, although that's what stiffens my sinews and puts an evil chuckle in my throat.

Look at this cheering clip

Admire CP's artistry

Come to Corfu and see and buy for yourselves.

The less lucky of you, check her out on FaceBook.

My talented mother kept an open mind to the end of her 91 years and was always looking, looking for new pleasures.

Rather than praise faintly or insincerely, she would mutter some approving words and move on.

The first ever unprompted praise I heard her deliver was over Ms Philp's gallery and her unpretentious normalness as a skilled créatrice.

Planning to the end, Maman knew she was going and shrewdly dispensed to her paintery pals the more valuable of her 40 years' accumulation of arty-facts. I have had the pleasure and satisfaction of passing to CP what would have gone to waste among lesser daubers - or, indeed, consigned to the tip as mere bric-à-brac.

Dame Laura Knight: Maman had an easel (unprovenanced) she'd bought in her impecunious days but which the gallery told her had belonged to Dame Laura, and I believe it. Magnificent structure, easily doubling as a garotter or gonad crusher, that would only have ended up on a Kondokali tip but now stands 4-square in the Kyma foyer as a chunky warning to over-exuberant suitors, or I like to think it does.

Look at what Caroline has made of maman's cigar boxes in which she kept brushes and oils. Look and marvel.

Music, Maestro! ~ And for your listening pleasure, Ελευθερία Αρβανι's Πάρε με αγκαλιά και πάμε - (Corfucius is nothing if not multi-media)

I was going to give you this but the accompanying graphics are a little too blood-stirring and some of my readership logs in from more cosseted countries where a glimpse of stocking is shocking and piano legs still covered.

CLYMA DEBACLE

~ CHOQUE HORREUR ~

Scenes of riot on Dryftewood High when Yiorgas Clooney dared to be 'just looking' when he popped in to 'check out' Dame Caroline's array of exquisite kymalia.

Quothed an ashen-faced Inspector Dimitris Tombrou of the Kondokali Konstabulary,

"Here, you don't just 'peruse' Ms Caroline's wonderful wares.

Oki apo my watch.

You open your wallet or we open the cells."

The distinguished snowy-haired gentleman sharing the honours is Clooney père.

Commented Caroline Philp (prop.),

"Pity, really. Rather a pretty boy ~ I'd've given him a few minutes to see the light.

No hard feelings, I even offered to go bail for him but I was told there was a queue - including policières, who somehow managed to mishandle their handcuffs in such a way as to get 'entangled' with Mr Clooney's own wrist.

Pathetic, really."

A penitent Mr Clooney is pictured being led away from the bedlam.

Clooney dad: "Another fine mess you've landed us in.

Not even a chance of a small Fix?"

Bana: "I ask Mister Chris. Is ok?"

CH: "Certainly not. I see'd that look before in Carolina's eyes.

Besides, I don't see the wrassler bird anywhere around.

To the hoosegow with him."

Bana: "Sorry, Mr Clooney elder, I think Mr Holmes a little jealous."

CH: [splutter] "Me? Jealous? Hasn't that Black Maria arrived yet?"

MARJORIE HOLMES OBITUARY

~ The Times, Saturday 17th March, 2012 ~

Saturday's edition for March 17

Skilled obit editor's choice of rare photo of maman actually at the easel, and an endearingly soppy one with dog Sam.

Bombarded yesterday with messages from the UK by devotees of mum who had found the obit. They all expressed themselves moved and impressed by Bishop Geoffrey's words and one even said she was crying over the kitchen table (where she and my mother had enjoyed many a cuppa). So, bravo the Bishop.

Bravo, too, to Jim Potts' admirable and kind reference in his CorfuBlues slot.

GYAKU GIRE

Another website reference to the phrase that should be my family's mission statement in re the Piece of Work jewels filchery

PRAYERS FOR HTC

~ With God's grace ~

Message from our stalwart Vicar, John Gulland:

Dear Friends,

In successive newsletters during the past year we have reported our struggles to maintain financial support for a full-time Chaplain at HTC.

In the attached issue of 'PulseXtra' I report that the church Council have now concluded that it will not be possible to sustain full-time ordained leadership after September and HTC will be hoping to appoint a part-time Chaplain on a house-for-duty basis.

We would appreciate your prayers for the future life and ministry of HTC, that it might continue to serve the English speaking community of Corfu, offering vibrant witness and worship. We anticipate that with God's grace the ministry of HTC will continue to bear much fruit to God's glory.

With very best wishes,

Yours in Christ,

John Gulland
(Chaplain to Holy Trinity Anglican church, Corfu)

We - they - do need your prayers. I won't bother to make the obvious point that, more than prayers, it needs your moneh ~ we're an island of skint pensioners getting skinter by the hour.

I know my lately late mother is downing her trowel and advancing on Le Bon Dieu with her 'look':

"OK, the tree can stay and the snake ... well, just don't let me catch it anywhere around me.

In return, that trick you do turning ouzo into €uros ... and make it some decent dosh."

LBD: St Pete? How much we got in petty cash?

Pierre: [whispers]

LBD: Print more, direct celestial transfer ... and change her password, haven't had a decent siesta since she came on board ... what's that? Yes, yes, after she's fixed what's wrong with My datura."

MACHIAVELLIAN TEMPTATION

Fascinating sounding book. Have ordered it sans delay (currently out of print, dammit) and look forward to licking all my bad habits.

Quote, my "willpower is not like a dam that can block the torrent of self-indulgence ... Today, we know that free will is bounded. People can change their lives, but ordering change is not simple because many things, even within ourselves, are beyond our direct control.

Researchers have come to understand the structure of habits — cue, routine, reward.

Review

Q&A

Amazon listing incl short author video.

MULCHERIA

text to come