I wonder whether today’s parents would take more interest in their youn goffspring in buggies if they did not possess mobile telephones.
I wonder whether babies and young kids now in buggies will suffer later in life because their parents preferred paying attention to their mobile phones rather than their little children.
Remembering the 1960s in Florence, Italy
The short Via dei Tavolini was another of our regular morning destinations in Florence. Situated in the heart of the city between the Duomo and the Uffizi, we visited this street frequently during each visit to the city. It contained 3 important shops: the ice-cream shop called Perché No? (‘Why not?’), a dress material shop, and a shop with the name ‘Busti Biondi’. It was in the latter that my mother had her brassieres made to measure.
During my earlier visits to Florence, when my parents were less confident of their spoken Italian, they were assisted by Giorgio, who owned the material shop between the ‘bra’ shop and the ice-cream parlour. Giorgio, who had learnt English from British soldiers during WW2, translated for my parents. Like so many Italians, he was fond of children, and we grew to like him. For years, he used to send my sister first day covers of newly minted Italian postage stamps. His patience must have been impressive because my mother was not an easy customer. She and my father spent what seemed like hours in Busti Biondi whilst the bras were tried on, discussed, and returned for endless
alterations.
My mother was buxom, a trait shared by many ladies in her family, and extremely particular that things should be just right. As far as I was concerned, the positive feature of these visits to the Via dei Tavolini was seeing and talking with Giorgio as well as the chance to enjoy cups of some of Florence’s best ice-cream. We thought that Perché No? was the best ice-cream place in the city, but others favoured Vivoli, a gelateria close to the church of Santa Croce. We did try that place, but it failed to change our high opinion about our favourite place close to my mother’s bra shop. If it had not been for my mother’s breasts we would not have met Giorgio and might have never discovered Perché No.
This is a brief extract from my book “Charlie Chaplin waved to me” available on Kindle and also as a paperback by clicking HERE
photo source: wikipedia
Gothic towers glow
In the grey midnight gloom
London sleeps silently
About 20 years ago, we drove to Loket, a small town in the western part of the Czech Republic, a part of the country that was once known as ‘Sudetenland’. It was home to a large German speaking minority, which was expelled from Czechoslovakia at the end of WW2.
We stayed in a small but cosy hotel with a fine restaurant. One evening, there was a couple of German tourists sitting at the table next to ours. Their pet Alsatian dog, Harry, was sitting under the table at their feet. We greeted them as they seemed quite jolly. We struck up conversation with them and soon we were clinking each other’s wine glasses.
They told us that they hardly ever travelled out of Europe because they did not want to leave Harry on his own. However, they said to us:
“Once, we visited Kenya”
“To see wild animals?” we asked.
They laughed, and then replied:
“The only wild animals we saw were Africans.”
This unsettled us a bit as did Harry who was, by now, licking our ankles with great interest. Somehow, the conversation drifted around to the Jews of Germany. At that time, the German Jewish community, such as it was, was under the leadership of Ignatz Bubis (1927-1999). One of the couple said:
“Whenever Bubis sneezes, Germany must pay the Jews one million Deutschmarks.”
Detecting a move towards further anti-semitic remarks, my wife said:
“By the way, we are Jewish.”
This brought the conversation to a swift end and also led to the couple failing to meet us for coffee and cakes on the next day, as we had planned earlier in the evening.
In a way, it was good that my wife had stemmed the possible flow of anti-semitism, but I was a bit disappointed. I would have been fascinated to discover how deeply they felt about the Jewish people in Germany so long after the end of WW2.
We never discovered the names of this German couple, but privately we christened them ‘Adolf’ and ‘Eva’.
A couple of years later, we revisited Loket and stayed at the same hotel. As we parked outside the hotel, we saw a couple packing suitcases into the back of thier vehicle. Accompanying them, there was an Alsation dog. Yes, you have guessed right. It was Adolf and (und?) Eva packing up to return to Germany. We greeted each other politely, but not warmly.
I hope that I am not tempting fate by writing this!
I am puzzled by the excessive anxiety over the coronavirus outbreak, which is encouraged by politicians and the press.
On the one hand, the public is informed that the virus outbreak will lead to dire consequences on a global and local scale.
On the other hand, we learn that apart from a couple of susceptible groups at the two extremes of the age range, being infected by the virus is highly unlikely to cause the infected person to suffer much if anything at all.
What are we to believe? Should we be panicking as our politicians seem to be suggesting, or should we not let the coronavirus affect our mental harmony?
Whatever the answer, it is best to be careful!
Finally, here is a thought provoking article to read:
Ev’ry rain drop
Creates a ring of rippling
Wet but of quite short life
Back in about 1995, I decided to leave the dental practice where I was working. I went to one or two job interviews, but did not feel that I would have been happy working in them had I been offered a job in any of them.
Then, I visited a dental practice next to the Portuguese Lisboa Patisserie in Golborne Road (near London’s famous Portobello Road). The owner of the practice, who has long since retired, knew me, but I could not remember him even though we had studied at the same dental school.
The interview began well after my future boss had gone next door to get each of us an espresso coffee from the Lisboa. It was one of the best espresso coffees I had ever tasted in London. We got on well, speaking for hours, for so long that I was late for a pre-arranged dinner engagement.
I took the job and worked in the practice for five interesting years, fixing and/or extracting many of the local’s teeth. I do not believe it was only the espresso coffee that persuaded me to join the practice, but it certainly helped.
I have long since retired from that practice in Golborne Road and also from dentistry, but still visit the Lisboa Patisserie regularly. The quality of the coffee and Portuguese snacks, both sweet and savoury, has not faltered over the years, and some of the staff are those who were there back in the late 1990s.
I can strongly recommend a visit to Lisboa and its coffee, which was so perfect that it helped direct my career pathway.
57 Golborne Rd, London W10 5NR
Huge steel hoops
Over tracks leading westwards:
Paddington rail terminus
A bird flies past the Bard
No sonnet for the gull
Will thaw this statue
Statue of William Shakespeare at Leicester Square, London
When I was very young, I had a best friend called Rick (not his real name!). He lived within a short walking distance from my family home. During weekends, we spent a great deal of time in each others houses.
Both Rick and I had large collections of toy model vehicles made mainly by the Dinky Toy and Corgi Toy companies. I kept my collection in a wooden box in no particular order. In time, the model vehicles looked used, battered, and scratched.
In contrast, Rick and his younger sibling kept their vehicles much more carefully than me. Each vehicle was kept in the box in which the manufacturer supplied the toy. When we wanted to play with these toys, each vehicle was removed from its box and then we handled them very carefully. Rick’s collection was in superb condition. When we had finished playing with the vehicles, which included a fine model of a mobile rocket launcher complete with a detachable rocket, we packed each of them into their own boxes.
I lost touch with Rick when we reached our early twenties. Many years later when the Internet became commonly used, I tried to re-eastablish contact with him, but in vain. He never appeared on internet searches. Eventually, I decided to ring his parents’ telephone number, which had remained etched in my brain. To my great surprise, Rick’s mother, by now over 90 years old, replied. I asked her about Rick. She replied:
“You have just missed him, dear. He died a few months ago.”
Some time later, we visited Rick’s widow, whom I had never ever met. After feeding us lunch, I mentioned the model cars and other vehicles. Without saying anything about them, she beckoned me to follow her into another room. It was, she explained, Rick’s study while he was alive. Arranged neatly around the room on shelves was Rick’s collection of Dinky and Corgi toys, including the rocket launcher. And to my great surprise and delight, each of the toys, still in pristine condition, was sitting on top of its own box.
picture source: https://www.toyhunteruk.co.uk/
yamey 