Greek Walls by John Waller

Author:John Waller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yiannis Books
Published: 2014-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

I recognised Stamatis Grammenos; he wore a trilby, perhaps the uniform of the foreman. His short rubber boots, old trousers and short sleeved sweater suggested that he was a hands-on boss. I then saw Stamatis’ son, Spiros, the one with the biggest moustache and the biggest grin. I almost heard him say, under his breath, “how’s your outboard engine, mate?” or whatever that was in Greek. I vowed to keep clear of him on dark nights.

Construction

We arrived in England with George’s final words still ringing in our ears.

“I’ll be glad to help you with all your building problems, such as permits and contractors.”

He was a man of his word and furthermore a successful Greek. In Greece, a system of favours oiled the slow moving bureaucracy. Going back in time, probably through Ottoman rule to Byzantium, it was seen as perfectly normal for the strong in the community, nowadays the politician or the larger businessman, to ask for action on some matter. The Manessi brothers had unwritten power. Strengthening the system of favours was the loyalty to the family. Though more apparent in the villages, the concept of families as allies was still important. At the highest level, of course, one saw the power of political families or dynasties: George Papandreou, his son and heir Andreas and his son George Junior, or Konstantinos Karamanlis and his namesake and nephew.

Within a month, George was writing to us with good news. The building licence for the villa had been issued, unbelievably quickly when compared with today’s never ending delays. George had also received offers from various builders and had chosen Gongas Brothers who were also building his new Mobil service station on the road south of town. Here again the builder was helping George, who had helped him in the first instance. Not only would the price be good, and I was assured that we were 25% under Petros Kardakis’s estimate, but Petros would have the same contractor on two sites. This would reduce the friction caused by a builder working for multiple bosses. With a shortage of labour and a boom in construction I was happy with George’s arrangements. We were promised that work would start on 8 November.

I transferred the remainder of our savings from New York to the Greek bank account and let George know that when Jannie and I came out in December we would bring out enough to complete the first phase of the project, with the fitting out deferred to the following year. Again I reminded him how I hoped that Gongas would be able to use local labour.

Two weeks later the news from Corfu was less encouraging – nothing had been done. On the one hand bad weather had delayed the start and then Gongas couldn’t get a mechanical digger on to the site because the land was too precipitous. He would have to employ more labour and excavate by hand. George had threatened Gongas that he would take the work elsewhere if he didn’t start within two days – just a week before our planned arrival.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.