Author Archives: yamey

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About yamey

Active author and retired dentist. You can discover my books by visiting my website www.adamyamey.co.uk .

Head to toes

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It's raining again_240

 

This patient of mine was a local school teacher. An educated person, you would imagine.

One rainy afternoon he sat on my dental chair. Then, I reclined it so that he was lying almost horizontal: his head and mouth at one end of the chair and his feet at least five and a half feet from his mouth. I administered the local anaesthetic, waited for anaesthesia to become established, and then repaired the teacher’s decayed molar tooth with a silver amalgam ‘filling’. When the procedure was over, the teacher left my surgery apparently quite content.

An hour or so later, the teacher returned to our practice and asked the receptionist to allow him to speak to me. He entered my surgery and pointed to a mark on one of his brown suede shoes.

“I believe that you must have dropped some of your chemicals on my shoe while you were treating me,” he said.

I looked at the mark and quickly realised that this fellow was hoping to be compensated, possibly for a sufficient to buy a new pair of shoes.

“Unlikely,” I replied, “while I was treating you, you were lying horizontally. Your mouth was a long way from your feet. If I had dropped something, it would not have fallen anywhere near your feet.”

“Mmmmh,” he replied.

“Furthermore,” I added, “it’s been raining heavily all afternoon. Maybe, you picked up that mark while walking along the wet streets.”

The teacher left, and I heard no more about the problem with his footwear. I was left thinking what an unintelligent man he was, and that somebody had qualified as being capable of teaching young people.

One step, then another

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Walking in the park_640

 

One foot then another

The world passes by

How I enjoy walking

 

You can walk almost anywhere except on water when it is not frozen. And, the joy of this form of physical activity is that no special equipment is needed.

During the first few decades of my life, I used to walk long distances routinely. I would never wait for a bus, but would walk from stop to stop until the bus and I met in the same place. Then, I might have boarded it unless I was close to my destination. Today, I am lazier, and will wait for the bus.

Walking (without staring at a mobile telephone) is a wonderful way of seeing new things. You might walk the same route repeatedly but if you keep your eyes and mind open, you are bound to spot things that you never noticed before. 

In recent years, I have begun writing books, articles, and, now, blogs. I often find that leaving my work desk, switching off the PC, and then taking a walk is perfect for sorting out my ideas. As I walk along, thoughts circulate in my mind and these result in improvements in whatever I am writing. 

Apart from any medical benefits, using Shank’s Pony (moving along with one’s own two feet – walking) gives me great pleasure.

Afghan cab drivers

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Dolmus driver_240

 

A few years ago, we hired a mini-cab (a type of taxi) to take us from Kensington to Golders Green. When we entered the cab, we heard music being played on the car’s cassette player. It sounded Russian to me. I asked the driver about it and he confirmed that it was Russian. He told us that he was from Afghanistan and had lived in Russia for a couple of years before settling in London. We began chatting as we drove northwards towards Golders Green. He told us that during the day he sold shoes in his own shop and drove his cab in the evening. We engaged in an amicable conversation.

When we arrived at our destination, I asked how much we owed him. He said:

“Nothing at all.”

“But, we must pay you something,” I said.

“No, nothing. You are my friend. I cannot ask you to pay me,” he explained.

For a few moments, I was flummoxed, at a loss as how to proceed. On the one hand, he said he did not want to be paid. On the other, he had done a good job for us, which needed rewarding. Then, I said to him, handing over a £10 note:

“If we can’t pay you, take this as a present for your children.”

He accepted the money without objection. £10 was the normal fare for that journey in those days.

We booked another mini-cab for our return journey. By coincidence, it was driven by someone from Afghanistan. Although he was not as friendly as the outward bound driver, there was nothing to complain about him. When we arrived at our home, we asked him how much we owed. He answered:

“Anything you like.”

I paid him the £10, which we usually pid for that journey, and the driver was happy with that.

Shortly before that day of Afghan mini-cab drivers, I had finished reading a book about travelling in Afghanistan., An Unexpected Light: Travels in Afghanistan by Jason Elliott. In it, he describes shopping in rural Afghanistan. The customer is not quoted a price, but has to make an offer. If the offer is too low, the seller will look insulted and hurt. If it is too high, everyone else in the shop will laugh at the customer. I suspect that it was on this basis that the two mini-cab drivers operated with us. They must have detected our familiarity with eastern ways and customs. Had we been typical Anglo Saxon customers, they might have simply quoted a price.

Keep it clean

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close up of menu

 

We entered a popular Thai restaurant, part of a chain, in London’s West Hampstead and waited for our friends to arrive. As they were taking a long time to reach us, we ordered some prawn crackers to quell our pangs of hunger. They arrived quickly with, much to my surprise, a couple of gooey dipping sauces.

The rather unfriendly waitress who delivered our snack, pushed our cheaply produced paper menus aside and said with an abrupt tone of voice:

“Don’t dirty the menus with the sauces.”

I was surprised. Never before in over sixty years of eating regularly in restaurants all over the world have I been asked, nay ordered, to keep the menu clean. I felt that this order to maintain the integrity of the menus to be unwelcome, unfriendly, and impolite.

After eating a revoltingly over sweet meal, I told the waitress about my disgust at her extraordinary instruction when she delivered the prawn crackers. She seemed unfazed by my complaint. I will never ever enter that restaurant again! 

 

Photo by Terje Sollie on Pexels.com

A country that exists no more

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OHR 78 OHRID Sunsetting over Albania

 

The picture depicts the sun setting over Albania as viewed from the Yugoslav shore of Lake Ohrid. When I took the picture, I was standing in Yugoslavia. Now the sun has set forever over Yugoslavia: that country exists no more. What made me interested in Yugoslavia and the Balkans? Here is my reply.

 

Hergé, the Belgian creator of the cartoon character Tintin, must be held responsible for my fascination with the Balkans. From the age of 7, when my father first presented me with one of his books, I became fascinated by the drawings of Syldavia and Borduria in some of the albums. These were two imaginary countries that the Belgian cartoonist invented to depict what he had seen during his visits to the Balkans. They attracted me than all of the other exotic settings of Tintin’s adventures.

My parents were fundamentally opposed to any totalitarian regime, be it right or left wing. They refused to venture behind the so-called Iron Curtain. Furthermore, they were even reluctant to buy anything made there on the basis that any purchase would give financial support to a regime that opposed the capitalist way of life. Their avoidance of countries, which were under the control of communists, and my fascination by Hergé’s cartoon drawings of south-eastern Europe made me yearn to visit them. As soon as I was old enough to travel alone, I gave in to my yearning.

I chose to visit Yugoslavia first for two reasons. First of all, it seemed more accessible than its neighbours; visas were not required and it appeared to have a less oppressive regime than some of the other Balkan countries. Secondly, I was already becoming fascinated by its mysterious neighbour, the tiny hermetically sealed country of Albania. I believed that by visiting certain areas in Yugoslavia I would manage to catch close-up glimpses of this almost completely impenetrable place.

​

My early visits to Yugoslavia, which commenced in the late 1960s, were made on my own or with other visitors to the country. These were fascinating enough to make me want to see more, but differed little from simple tourism.  Soon, I began meeting Yugoslavs. Many of them, especially in Belgrade and Sarajevo, became good friends. My visits to their country began to assume more of a social nature than simply touristic. I believe that as the years passed and I made ever more visits, I began to experience the country more profoundly, and with far greater affection, than the average tourist. My book “SCRABBLE WITH SLIVOVITZ” contains a trail of memories of the experiences I enjoyed whilst visiting a country that no longer exists.

 

“SCRABBLE WITH SLIVOVITZ”

is available as a paperback: HERE and on Amazon Kindle

 

Behind closed doors

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avometer

 

What sparks off an enduring interest in something? I do not know the answer, but let me describe how just one of my interests became ignited.

When I entered Highgate School in north London at the age of 13 years, we were obliged to study both physics and chemistry. The classes for these subjects were held in large laboratories whose walls were lined with locked glass-fronted cupboards filled with a wide variety of scientific equipment and, in the case of the chemistry labs, jars of chemicals in a variety of colours.

At the age of about 15, that was in the late 1960s, we had to make decisions about the nature of our future studies. If you wanted to study science, you kept on classes in chemistry and physics and dropped geography and history. For a course in the arts, you kept on classes in geography and history and dropped the two science subjects. I decided on science. You may wonder why.

It was only the desire to find out more about the stuff locked in the glass-fronted cupboards that made me choose the science course. It was as simple as that! I enjoyed studying scientific subjects and continued to do so until I had completed a doctorate in one of them (mammalian physiology).

Many decades later, I revisited Highgate School and was taken on a tour of its buildings including the Science Block. I noticed that the cupboards in the chemistry and physics laboratories had been replaced. Gone were the glass-fronted cabinets. They had been replaced by cupboards with opaque doors. The contents of these wall mounted cabinets could not be seen without opening their locked doors.

I wondered whether I would have chosen to study the science subjects had I been taught in the newer laboratories where everything was hidden from view.  

 

Image source: ebay

A house in west London

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140 small SINCLAIR

 

Number 140 Sinclair Road in west London, not far from Shepherds Bush Green, looks like an ordinary Victorian terraced house, which it is. However, in the first decade of the twentieth century it was home to a few Indian freedom fighters. When the seventeen year old David Garnett, the writer and a future member of the Bloomsbury Group, visited the house in 1909, he met Bipin Chandra Pal (1858-1932) the Bengali nationalist and a father of the Swadeshi movement, which promoted Indian economic independence. He shared the house with his son Niranjan Pal (1889-1959), a young Indian freedom fighter who was to become a founder of the Bombay Talkies film company. Sukhsagar Dutt (1890-1967), a young Indian revolutionary and brother of Ullaskar Dutt who was involved in the use of bombs in Bengal and Bihar and tried at Alipore (Calcutta), also lived at number 140.

In mid to late 1909, VD (‘Veer’) Savarkar (1883-1966) also lived at 140 Sinclair Road as a lodger of Bipin Chandra Pal. Savarkar, who was studying law at the time, was deeply involved in activities aimed at attempting to cause the British to leave India in order that the country became a sovereign nation. Savarkar is now best known for his contributions to the encouragement of Hindu nationalism. His book “Essentials of Hindutva”, published in 1923, is considered a seminal work by promoters of Hindu nationalism.

Savarkar moved from India House in Highgate, a centre of revolutionary Indian independence activists, to 140 Sinclair Road sometime in 1909 before the assassination in London’s Kensington of a senior Indian administrative figure, Sir WH Curzon Wyllie, in July 1909. The victim was shot at close range by Madan Lal Dhingra, a close associate of Savarkar. Savarkar was suspected of having some involvement in the plotting of Curzon Wyllie’s demise. Savarkar’s host in Sinclair Road, Bipin Chandra Pal, was firmly against what Dhingra had done, but accommodated Savarkar, who was pleased that the assassination had been successful until, as I wrote in my book “Ideas, Bombs, and Bullets”:

“… an angry crowd gathered outside, the house, Pal had to tell them that apart from being a paying guest, Veer had no other association with him. Another resident at this address, Pal’s son Niranjan, was a close friend of Veer’s and a regular visitor to India House. Niranjan’s association with India House worried Bipin greatly…”

Soon after this, Savarkar shifted his home in London to a flat above an Indian restaurant in a now non-existent alleyway in Holborn.

From what I have described, the seemingly ordinary terrace house at 140 Sinclair Road has played a small role in the history of India’s struggle for freedom from the British, which was eventually gained in August 1947.

For much more information about Indian patriots in Edwardian London, I invite you to read my recently published book, “Ideas, Bombs, and Bullets”, which focusses on the Indian patriots who congregated at India House in Highgate between 1905 and 1910.

 

A SMALL house cover

 

This publication is available at:

http://www.lulu.com/shop/adam-yamey/ideas-bombs-and-bullets/paperback/product-24198568.html

or:

https://www.bookdepository.com/IDEAS-BOMBS-BULLETS-Adam-YAMEY/9780244203870

(paperback)

and

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07W7CYKPG/

(Kindle)

An Enquiring Mind

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blahnik

 

People who know me well, or even not so well, would be surprised to learn that I greatly enjoyed an exhibition of designer footwear.

The designer is Manolo Blahnik (born 1942 in Santa Cruz de la Palma, Spain), whose father was Czech and mother Spanish. His rapid rise to fame in the field of footwear design began in the early 1970s. 

The exhibition called “An Enquiring Mind” is being held at the Wallace Collection in London until the 1st of September 2019 and should not be missed.

According to a leaflet about the exhibition, Blahnik has been long inspired by the  collection of diverse fine artworks (paintings, sculpture, furniture, porcelain, armour, etc.) on display in the rooms of the Wallace Collection. The shoes he designs, especially those on display at the exhibition, reflect the artistic finesse and skillfulness of the Collection’s permanent works.

The footwear in the temporary exhibition is tastefully arranged amongst the Wallace Collection’s artworks. If one dd not know that the shoes were designed and  made in the last 50 years or less, you would believe that they came from  earlier eras when most of the Collection’s artworks were created. The shoes mingle harmoniously with creations made several hundreds of years earlier. Not only that, but also they are displayed very artistically, making the temporary exhibition a joy to the viewer.

So, even if you, like me, are put off by the idea of an exhibition of shoes, please try to make it to this superb exhibition.

Hooked on rugs

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burke

 

I would never have thought that I would have enjoyed reading a book about rug-making cottage industry in Nova Scotia, but I have. Recently, a Canadian friend brought me a book that focusses on hooked rugs and their promotion by a lady called Lillian Burke (1879-1952), who was born in the USA.

Just in case you (like me before reading the book) have no idea what comprises a hooked rug, let me explain by quoting from Wikipedia: “Rug hooking is … where rugs are made by pulling loops of  yarn or fabric through a stiff woven base such as burlap, linen, or rug warp. The loops are pulled through the backing material by using a crotchet-type hook mounted in a handle (usually wood) for leverage.” 

Edward Langille’s book discusses in detail Lillian Burke’s significant involvement with the hooked rug manufacture carried out by housewives in small settlements in the remote Cape Breton district of Nova Scotia. Ms Burke, who was born in Washington DC, was  highly acccomplished in teaching, music, and art. During both world wars, she helped pioneer what is now known as ‘occupational therapy’. She was a highly-regarded teacher. It was this skill that brought her into contact with the family of Alexander Graham Bell, the scientist and inventor of telephony. The Bells employed Lilian Burke as a tutor for their offspring. She developed a lasting friendship with the extended family, who owned a country retreat in the region of Nova Scotia where hooked rug making was a prevalent occupation of the local housewives.

Langille describes how Ms Burke helped to develop what had been a local craft into a viable money-making venture. Using her highly developed artistic skills, she helped the housewives produce rugs with artistically sophisticated designs that made them appealing to fashionable interior decorators in the USA (mainly). 

Traditionally, the housewives of Cape Breton wove their rugs with scraps of  coloured material. Ms Burke designed the patterns and the housewives did the ‘hooking’. She encouraged them to begin using locally-produced wool which they had dyed. One thing that particularly interested me was that Ms Burke showed the ladies how to use knots and paper masking to dye a skein of wool in varying colours, so that a single thread of wool would vary in colour along its length. This technique is used in Patan in Gujarat (Western India) to produce the silk threads with patterns of varying colour, which are used to produce the highly valuable woven Patola textiles. I would be curious to know whether Ms Burke had been aware of this century’s old method of dyeing.

Langille’s book is a remarkable, well-written, and readable biography of a remarkable woman, who is probably hardly known outside of Nova Scotia and beyond a few enthusiasts of hooked rug making. She deserves to be better known, especially in the light of what Langille’s book reveals about her dedication to the development of rehabilitation and occupational therapy. Professor Langille’s detailed and carefully researched book may well help give Lilian Burke the wider recognition she deserves.

REVIEW BY AUTHOR OF “IDEAS, BOMBS, and BULLETS”, about Indian patriots in London between 1905 and 1910

 

ISBN: 9781926448404