A savoury snack that can be risky to eat

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Bhel is a savoury snack that originated as a refreshment which was (and still is) sold on the beaches of Bombay. It consists of ingredients always including puffed rice, raw vegetables (such as chopped onions and tomatoes), coriander, at least two chutneys (one sweet and another sour). Other ingredients are often added. These might include crushed puris or sev (thin crispy noodles), chillies, and chopped boiled potatoes. There are many variations of this dish which is both sweet and sour and always fresh tasting. All the ingredients are mixed, often stirred by the preparer’s hands. Because of this and the presence of raw vegetables, it is essential that bhel is prepared in a hygienic kitchen.

The bhel which I ate at the Ananda Bhavan in Pondicherry (south India) was prepared in its spotlessly clean kitchen, which can be seen by customers in the restaurant. It did not cause me to suffer any ill-effects.

A week or two later, when sitting in Kamat’s restaurant in Bangalore’s Commercial Street district, I spotted bhel on the menu, and could not resist ordering it. The kitchen at this place, where we have eaten often, always ordering freshly cooked dishes, is not visible to customers. As I was ordering the bhel, I began to wonder whether I had made a mistake. Nevertheless, I did not change my mind. I felt like a driver in a car without brakes heading towards the edge of a cliff at high speed. I imagined that it had been a mistake to order bhel in this restaurant, but when it came, I could not resist eating it. It was a very poor tasting version of this dish that I usually enjoy, and I should not have finished it. I spent the next couple of days consuming pills to treat diarrhoea.

Two drivers from Afghanistan

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Before relating this true story, the reader needs to know what I mean by a ‘minicab’. Long before Uber and similar companies began operating in London, minicabs came into existence. Despite their name, these cars are not usually small. They are, in effect, taxis that can be hired in advance by telephone, or, now, via the Internet, but not hailed on the street. Unlike regular taxis, whose fares are determined by a meter, minicab fares are usually agreed before the ride. Now for my story …

One evening some years ago, we wanted to travel from our home in Kensington to an address in northwest London. We hired a minicab from an office that used to exist near our home, but unusually we did not check the price before the journey.

The car had a radio/cassette player. I noticed that the music playing sounded as if it was popular music from Eastern Europe. I asked the driver about what was playing. He told me that it was music from Russia. I told him that I liked it.

After a few minutes, I asked him where he was from originally. He answered “Afghanistan”, but he said that he had lived in Russia for a few years before coming to London. He mentioned that he drove his minicab most evenings, and in the day time he ran his own shoe shop.

After about half an hour, we arrived at our destination, and parked outside their home. I said to the driver:

“How much do we owe you?”

“Nothing,” he replied. “You are my friend.”

“But, we must pay for the ride,” I said.

“No, nothing, my friend.”

Both my wife and I wondered what to do. We knew that the fare was usually £10. After about a minute, I had an idea. I turned to the drive, next to whom I was sitting, and, holding a £10 note, I said:

“Take this for your family. Buy your children a treat.”

He accepted the cash, and we bid him farewell.

After dinner, we rang the same minicab company, and ordered a cab to take us home. Once again, no fare was quoted. The driver of the cab who came to fetch us was also from Afghanistan. He was not as chatty as the first driver. When we reached our home, I asked him:

“What do we owe you?”

He answered:

“The same as you paid earlier.”

Now, as far as I am aware, he had no idea what we had paid earlier, but he was happy with the £10 I gave him.

These minicab trips occurred soon after I had finished reading an excellent book about Afghanistan, “An Unexpected Light” by Jason Elliot (published in 2007). In it, he described making purchases in rural Afghanistan. He wrote that prices are not displayed, and the purchaser must make an offer. If the offer is too low or to high, the customer gets laughed or otherwise subtly criticised. Remembering this, I felt that what both of our Afghan drivers were doing about the fare is what they would have done back in their country of origin, Afghanistan.

Did the patients hear the nightingale sing in Berkeley Square?

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I have often walked past number 27 Berkeley Square in London’s Mayfair. I am usually on my way to or from the Gagosian Gallery just north of the square. Today, on my way to view some paintings by René Magritte on display at the Gagosian until 12 December 2026, I spotted something I had not noticed before. It was a commemorative plaque attached to number 27, which was constructed between 1821 and 1823.

The plaque commemorates the fact that number 27 Berkeley Square was once used as a hospital. A website that details former hospitals (https://ezitis.myzen.co.uk/27berkeleysq.html) provided plenty of information about this building that served as a hospital between 1916 and 1918.

On 1 March 1916, Mrs FW Salisbury-Jones opened an auxiliary hospital for convalescent officers in her home at 27 Berkeley Square.  It was connected with Queen Alexandra’s Military Hospital at Millbank and had 18 beds.

The website related:

“Mrs Salisbury-Jones was the Commandant and the nursing staff consisted of 2 trained nurses, and 12 full-time and 9 part-time members of a Voluntary Aid Detachment. The War Office later requested that accommodation be increased; the Hospital then had 22 beds.”

Mrs Salisbury-Jones’s neighbour, Mrs Asher, who lived at number 30:

“… allowed the two nurses to lodge in her house for the duration of the war, and even lent her butler to work as an orderly at the Hospital.”

The hospital closed in May 1919. By then, it had admitted 496 patients, of whom only one died.

The commemorative plaque reproduces the words on a certificate of gratitude issued by the War Office and is signed by Winston S Churchill.

Currently, the former hospital is privately owned and contains offices. If as the song goes, a nightingale sung in Berkeley Square, I wonder how many of the patients in the short-lived hospital heard it.

They fled from Trieste to Rome

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We met this lady quite by chance at a bookshop in Trieste, Italy.

At the end of WW2, there was conflict over who was to own Trieste – Yugoslavia or Italy or an independent state. During thus troubled period, many Italians fled from Trieste because life there was dangerous. Many Italians were killed by Yugoslav partisans.

This lady, then a small child, fled with her mother to Rome, and was one of the first refugees to arrive there.

The book she is holding is about that era, and she is the small child on the front cover.

The naked truth in Yugoslavia and Albania

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Naturism used to be popular in the former Yugoslavia – a country I visited frequently during the 1970s and 1980s. In those years, I had many friends in Belgrade. In summer, many of them migrated to the Adriatic coast, particularly to Dubrovnik. I used to join them.

During one visit to Dubrovnik, my friends and I took a ferry to the island of Lokrum, which is less than a mile south of the centre of the historic part of the city.

After disembarking and climbing a short slope, we stopped at a direction sign with two panels, each pointing towards a different path. One bore the words “Ne nudismo”, and the other had only one word “nudismo”.

We followed the path indicated by the ‘nudismo’ sign. The path wound gently downhill through a shady forest, and reached a sandy beach in a small cove. We were about to spend some time bathing nude. My friend, who must have understood my apprehension, reassured me by saying:

“Don’t worry, Adam, there is always someone on the beach who looks uglier than you.”

Though a novelty, I enjoyed bathing without the encumbrance of swimming trunks and so on.

Another year, we spent a pleasant few days on the island of Mljet, which is about 38 miles northwest of Dubrovnik. In those days, the 1980s, no motor vehicles were allowed in the northern part of the island around the port of Polace, where we stayed. Mljet has a lake within it, and within the lake there is an island. Every day, we spent much time wandering around the lake, taking occasional dips, and hiring rowing boats. And all of this activity was carried out without clothes apart from sunglasses and sun hats.

In May 1984, I joined a tour to visit the People’s Socialist Republic of Albania, which was then highly secretive and completely repressed, under the control of its dictator Enver Hoxha, an admirer of Josef Stalin.  We flew from London to Belgrade, and then changed ‘plane to fly from Yugoslavia’s capital to Titograd (now Podgorica) in Montenegro. We spent the night in a comfortable, modern hotel that overlooked a fast-flowing river. In each bedroom, the Montenegro tourist office had placed several coloured brochures that extolled the virtues of visiting that part of Yugoslavia.

One of the brochures contained a grainy coloured photograph of people on a beach – Montenegro has a long Adriatic coastline. If one examined this photograph carefully, it could be seen that it was a ‘nudismo’ beach. None of the holidaymakers were wearing any form of clothing. As the brochures did not interest me, I did not bother to keep them, but most of the others on the tour did.

The next morning, after a brief tour of Titograd in a Yugoslav coach, we were driven to the nearby border that separates Yugoslavia from Albania. The border post is next to Lake Scutari (Skadarsko Jezero/Liqeni i Shkodrës). We were asked to disembark as the coach could not enter Albania. Carrying our luggage we walked a short distance, and passed an Albanian soldier standing stock still, looking like a statue, and holding a gun.

Then we entered the Albanian frontier post, a spacious building containing comfortable armchairs, each with a lacy anti-macassar, and we were invited to sit down. On one wall, were the words in English that read:

“Even if we have to go without bread, we Albanians do not violate principles. We will not betray Marxism – Leninism.”

It was written in capitals using faded red letters that looked like those used to advertise films on the canopies above the entrances to cinemas.  All of the letters were firmly attached to the wall except one. This was detachable as it had been glued onto a removable hatch cover, which must have provided access to services – plumbing or wiring – hidden within the wall.

We sat down, and then filled in the detailed custom declaration form that needed to know whether we would be importing, amongst a variety of other items, any ‘magnétophones’ or ‘frigidaires’. As I filled in my form, I wondered who, apart from diplomats, visited the country laden with goods such as these.  Two by two, we were summoned up to be interviewed by the customs officers standing behind tables.

The customs officials were not particularly thorough, but there was one thing that they wanted to see, and confiscate. That thing was the brochure with the picture of a nudist beach in Montenegro. It was this poorly reproduced image that the Albanian officials were seeking in their attempt to prevent pornographic material from entering the Motherland. Whenever they found one, they confiscated it, but not before labelling it with its owner’s name.

When our tour of Albania reached its end, we returned to the same border post. To my surprise, each of the confiscated Montenegrin tourist brochures was returned to the person whose name was on it.

Sadly, Yugoslavia no longer exists, and happily, Enver Hoxha’s repressive regime that made Albania and the Albanians at least as isolated from the rest of the world as is North Korea today. As for nudist beaches, I have not been to one since my visit to Mljet in the 1980s. This is not because I am averse to nudism and naturism, but I do not enjoy spending time in the sun on beaches.

 

In Germany we only eat …

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About twenty years ago, we decided to fly with the German Lufthansa airline from London to Bangalore. A short flight from London took us to Frankfurt am Main, where we had to embark on another ‘plane for the long flight between Frankfurt and Bangalore.

We travelled as ‘economy’ class passengers, although the cost of the flight was far from economical. Soon after boarding the second flight, the lengthy one between Germany and India, we were served an acceptable meal, which included non-veg items. It contained meat.

After some time, when we were nearing our destination, we were served another meal. This time it was pure vegetarian. Now, I have nothing against vegetarian food, but, if it is available, I like a bit of fish or meat with my meal. Feeling rather ‘bolshie’, I summoned the fight attendant, and told her, not entirely truthfully:

“I cannot eat vegetarian food. I can’t eat this. I must have some meat.”

She replied:

“Ah. In Germany, we only eat meat once a day.”

I looked at her, and said truthfully:

“I have visited Germany many times, and each time I have seen Germans eating meat several times a day.”

She did not dispute this. I continued:

“Speak to the purser. See if you can get me some non-veg food.”

She walked away, and after a few minutes, emerged from the business-class and first-class cabin area. She was carrying a tray, which she placed in front of me. It had a wonderful selection of seafood.

Evidently, even thousands of feet above the ground, a German airline was happy to serve non-veg food more than once a day … providing one had paid for a business or first-class seat.

 

Viewing sculptures in a park in London

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TAKE A LOOK AT THIS:

“The sculpture reimagines the palm tree as a meditation on movement, ecology and the industrialized nature of urban environments. Rather than mimicking the setting’s vegetation, Black Palm engages with The Regent’s Park’s curated landscape, drawing attention to the systems of labour and global trade that influence public spaces. By using discarded rubber to depict once-thriving palms, the piece reflects on colonial exploitation and its impact on tropical beauty, where Europe’s fascination with the exotic depleted its natural resources by transforming rubber into a global commodity.”

And now try this:

“Shawcross continues to explore themes such as the Big Bang and the origins of time through geometry. His installations evoke the ancient mysteries of the cosmos and challenge conventional temporal boundaries through continuously shifting forms. By merging cosmic geometry with dynamic light patterns, the artist transforms our interpretation of cosmic events into a tangible, immersive experience.”

I did not write these two quotes. They are extracts from the labels next to two of the sculptures on display at the Frieze Sculpture 2026 outdoor exhibition in London’s Regents Park. The show is held annually. The exhibits are provided by commercial art galleries. This year’s show is marginally more interesting than last year’s, but none of this year’s works particularly excited me. In some ways, the curatorial notes accompanying each exhibit, two of which I have quoted from above, were more intriguing than the sculptures they described.

I enjoy viewing sculpture in the open-air. And the great thing about Regents Park is that it provides a delightful backdrop for the artworks. In fact, placing these sculptures in such beautiful surroundings puts them at a disadvantage because nature’s creations, trees, plants, and so on, are so much more superior to the artists’ often mediocre products.

Frieze Sculpture 2026 continues until 1 November 2026.

Thank you McDonald’s for introducing me to a new taste

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I was an unadventurous eater when I was a child. So, I never tried any of the pickled gherkins, a food which my father enjoyed eating. A visit to McDonald’s changed my approach to these pickled cucumbers …

Believe it or not, there was a political aspect to my father’s consumption of pickled gherkins. My parents did all they could to avoid supporting dictatorial regimes. They would not visit Franco’s Spain or any of the Communist countries behind the so-called ‘Iron Curtain’. Many good, pickled gherkins were, and are still, produced in countries that were once dominated by the USSR. My parents were against buying these because they felt that with each purchase, they would be contributing a little money that might be used to finance a Russian nuclear weapon that might be used to attack ‘The West’. Therefore, the only gherkins my father ate prior to 1990 were those manufactured in Holland and West Germany. During my childhood and teenage years, I became fascinated by the countries in the Soviet Bloc, and wished my parents would have purchased gherkins from these places. If they had, I might possibly have tried one, but they stuck to their purchasing principles.

When McDonald’s came to England in 1974, I was, for some now forgotten reason, against entering one of the company’s restaurants. It was only later in the 1970s when I first entered a McDonald’s – the one in London’s Haymarket – with a group of friends. I ordered a Big Mac, and it was love at first bite.

In case you did not know, the Big Mac contains a slice of pickled gherkin. While eating my first one, I noticed the slice, and tasted it separately from the rest of the burger. The gherkin’s taste appealed to me, and I wondered why I had avoided sampling one for so many years. Now, I am not exactly addicted to pickled gherkins, but I cannot resist eating them often.

Since I began visiting India in the 1990s, I have discovered that although they are not on most Indians’ menus, pickled gherkins are manufactured in India – and very good ones they are. For example, there is a company called Unpick, which has been producing them since 1994 – the first year I visited India. Based near Bangalore, they export their gherkins to over 56 countries. Some of their gherkins are produced under the supervision of Orthodox Jewish food inspectors, and are certified as being Kosher.

Currently, when at home in England, we prefer to buy the gherkins produced by the Polish company Krakus. They supply a variety of different types of gherkins. Of these, our favourites are the Kashubian style, which are bottled along with strips of red bell pepper, white onion slices, dill, and whole spices including: mustard seeds, allspice, and bay leaves.

To conclude, thanks to McDonald’s, I now count pickled gherkins amongst my favourite food items. And other pickled vegetables are also very much to my taste.

A hunting lodge in Albania built by Mussolini’s son-in-law

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From the second half of the 1920s until 1945, Albania became very much under the influence of Mussolini’s fascist Italy, and in April 1939 the country was invaded by Italy. Mussolini’s son-in-law Count Galeazzo Ciano (1903-1944) built a hunting lodge in the Albanian countryside. This was still standing when I visited the country in 1984, and then again in 2016. Here is what I saw.

1984 – During a guided tour in which all the tourists were closely watched by Albanian security officials.

A short distance away from Lezhë, we left the main road and entered a wooded reservation. We stopped outside a building, which we were told was once Mussolini’s hunting lodge. In fact, it was the lodge designed by his son-in-law, Italy’s former Foreign Minister, Count Ciano. The Italians had had a very dominating influence on Albania during the 1930s. They invaded it at the end of that decade. As hunting lodges go, I cannot recall it being particularly exceptional. However, as we were walking away from it across the spongy soil through the pleasantly wooded grounds, a memorable incident occurred. One member of our group, a middle-aged lady who never made much impression on me, suddenly felt unwell. Almost immediately, two medical personnel dressed in white coats, appeared from out of the blue, and escorted her back to the lodge, where they did something to help her. I have no idea whether these medics just happened to be present by chance, or whether the authorities had arranged for our group to be shadowed by a medical team just in case an incident like this should occur.  As there were no further medical emergencies during our trip, except when the young couple, who were, like our English tour guide Julian, Marxist-Leninist sympathisers, got food poisoning, I was unable to ascertain whether we were being trailed by a medical team all of the time. It would not have surprised me if we had been.

2016 – During a driving trip my wife and I made on our own 

In 1984, our tour group had been taken to see what was described as Mussolini’s hunting lodge. It was in fact his son-in-law Count Ciano who built it. I knew that it was somewhere near to Lezhë, but it was not easy for us to locate. To begin our search, we drove to the seaside resort of Shëngjin.

From Shëngjin, we followed the shoreline of the Adriatic southwards along a road that ran between the sea and backwater lagoons. It was lined with Mediterranean pine trees, but there was no sign of Ciano’s lodge. We stopped to ask the way several times. Everyone knew what we were talking about, but were a bit vague as to where it is.

Eventually, someone told us to head for the villages of Ishul-Lezhë and Vainn. Suddenly, I spotted an old metal sign bearing the words “Filiali Albturist, Hoteli Gjuetisi, Lezhe” (gjuetise means ‘hunter’, and Albturist was Communist Albania’s state tourist organization). We drove along the drive through a garden full of trees and parked outside what looked to me like what I saw in 1984, but it was much more run-down than I recalled. The place seemed to be dead, but eventually a waiter came to meet us. He showed us the dining room and bar, which looked as if it had been left unchanged since it was built. At first known as L’Albergo di Caccia (Italian for: Hunting lodge), this rustic-looking complex was constructed for Ciano in 1940 after the Italians had invaded Albania. The waiter told us that there were rooms to rent, and unlocked one to show us. The room looked comfortable but neglected. It had a damp musty smell. It might have been a peaceful place to stay, but rather spooky. We left this evocatively melancholic, rural spot and drove towards Lezhë.

I was pleased that we managed to find the hunting lodge that I had seen in 1984, but had not been able to enter. Entering it in 2016 was a treat. Its somewhat unkempt appearance did nothing to spoil my enjoyment of knowing that I had stepped into a building that was once used for rest and relaxation by Mussolini’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Count Ciano.  

Too good to be true in Bikaner (Rajasthan)

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We usually use  booking dot com’s website to find accommodation on our travels in India. In November 2025, I booked at a place, a homestay in Bikaner, Rajasthan, which had a rating of over 8 out of the maximum 10. Every one of the reviews of this place was great – both those submitted by Indians and foreigners. I will not reveal the name of the homestay, but will tell you about it. The following is an extract from my book “88 Days in India: A Journey of Memory and Discovery”.

As the sun began setting, we entered the sprawling outskirts of Bikaner. The accommodation we had booked in advance was in the maze of tight thoroughfares in Bikaner’s old walled city. The guest house was difficult to find using Google mapping. Eventually, we fought our way through the dense traffic on the narrow Teliwara Road, one the old city’s main streets, until we got within about 100 yards from the guest house. Our driver looked at the lane which led to our accommodation. It was more like an alleyway than a road. He refused to drive any further. We rang the landlord of the guesthouse, a young man named Saleem. This cheerful fellow came rushing to meet us, and carried our baggage from the car to his tall, slender building.

I had selected the guest house because it had numerous excellent reviews on the Booking.com website. Maybe, I should have been suspicious when I saw the price of an air-conditioned double room with its own bathroom. Including breakfasts, it was only £28 for five nights. Saleem took us up two treacherous staircases with wobbly handrails, and showed us our tiny room. Most of it was occupied with an ageing double bed with a blanket and a single sheet fitted around the mattress. The sheet was, we discovered later, torn in places and either well-worn or not very clean. There was a small, attached bathroom – actually, a tiny toilet with a shower.

After ‘settling’ in our room, which was devoid of cupboards or anywhere to hang clothes, we were told that dinner was ready and that we could eat it either in our room or on the roof terrace. As the outside temperature was well below 10 degrees Celsius and we did not want food on our bed, we persuaded Saleem to let us eat on the ground floor, where we had to squat on what must have been one of his family’s beds. To be fair, although he charged us a lot for the dinner, his mother cooked delicious food.

Throughout most of the night, I heard a roaring sound coming from somewhere above our room, and in the morning, there was no hot water. We informed Saleem, who casually remarked that he had forgotten to turn on the geyser (hot water heater). That morning, we noticed that one side of the bathroom, had no wall. Instead, there was a deep cavity that extended beneath the staircase. This was filled with litter, including discarded cosmetics containers, plastic shampoo bottles, wastepaper, and other dust covered rubbish. We did not spot any rodents lurking there. The included breakfast, which we ate in another bedroom, windowless and even more spartan than ours, consisted of a greasy paper napkin containing an omelette wrapped in a piece of soggy toast.

We decided to leave Saleem and his guest house, and find accommodation elsewhere. Saleem, who seemed upset that we had not enjoyed staying in his family home, reluctantly directed us down his lane to a much more comfortable guest house, the Moon Haveli, where for £10 per night we had a large, clean, well-lit room with a satisfactory, spacious bathroom. To this day, I cannot understand why so many people (from all over the world) gave Saleem’s establishment so many glowing recommendations.

There are at least two conclusions I can draw from this dismal experience. First, is not to place too much decision making on the basis of other guests’ reviews of an accommodation. Secondly, as the saying goes, there is no such thing as a free lunch. Or in the case of Saleem’s place, I should have been suspicious of its exceedingly low price, which seemed too good to be true.

Almost two years have passed since we spent a night at Saleem’s place. Today, 4 October 2026, I took another look at his entry on booking dot com’s website. His average rating has raised from 8/10 to 9/10, and all the latest reviews are still highly complimentary. After our experience, this mystifies me. We were not after luxury, but had expected something better than what we found.