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 .

The slow table

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Food can be scarce

but when it’s abundant

let folk have plenty of choice

ADAM small

 

I attended Golders Hill School, a primary school in in Golders Green, between 1956 and 1960. It was a high-achieving school for boys and girls with an all female teaching staff. Founded in 1908, just after the Underground was extended from Hampstead to Golders Green, it still works today but in a greatly enlarged ‘campus’.

 

We used to spend all day at school. Lunch was served at 1 pm. We sat at various long tables. The children sitting on the table which ate its food fastest were  rewarded with a piece of confectionary from a box of ‘Dolly Mixture’.

 

I was a fussy eater. Having had a difficult few first months of life, my mother was happy to see me eating anything at all. I was not forced to eat anything I did not fancy. Actually, there were few foods that I was prepared to put in mouth. A particular dislike of mine, which remains with me to this day, is green peas. Their taste, or even just thinking about them, makes me feel nauseous. I can recall that my mother was keen that I should get to like these nauseous little green spheres. She would put a few on my plate. To avoid eating them, I employed the following delaying tactict: I would first slowly peel a pe, and then carefully cut into four pieces. My parents soon tired of watching, and eventually attempts to make me consume them were abandoned.

 

Almost nothing that was served at Golders Hill appealed to me apart from steamed pudding and the oddly named ‘spotted dick’. Main courses often came served with cubed carrot, chopped green beans, and green peas. I would not touch them. No table that I sat on would ever be rewarded with pieces of Dolly Mixture.

spotted

Spotted Dick with custard – source: https://www.justapinch.com

I was shifted to the slow table, where the four slowest eaters in the school sat trying to finish their food during the play time that followed lunch. I remember nothing about the three other members of the slow thable except that they were all girls and one of them was called Rhoda.

 

Even if I had been kept at the slow table for the rest of the day, there was no way that I would be able to finish what was in front of me. I devised a solution. I put whatever I could not eat into the pockets of my short trousers (‘shorts’), visited the toilet, and then emptied the unwanted food into the toilet pan, and flushed it away. This worked for most foods including slices of canned fruit.

 

My biggest challenge, and I can only remember it happening once, was gooseberries in hot custard. I felt that putting this in my pockets was not at all a good idea. In desperation, I carried my filled bowl to the closed door of the staff room. I knocked on the door, hoping that whomever answered would take pity on me. A forlorn hope because many of the teachers were quite formidable. I hoped that it would not be the large Miss Fitzgerald, who frightened me greatly. If it was Miss Dredge, I would have felt happier.

 

I cannot say who it was that opened the door. But, as soon as it opened I dropped the plate with all of its contents ont the feet of the teacher at the door. It still puzzles me why I was neither punished nor told off for my act of carelessness, or was it defiance.

 

PS: I still dislike peas, but now I love gooseberries.

African meeting

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Timewarp_500

All of the relatives in my parents’ generation were born in South Africa. Some might say that they were ‘Africans’ although many Africans might not agree. One of these always arrived at our house at least an hour before we had invited him, and another usually did not arrive until one hour after we had invited him. My parents, on the other hand, were sticklers for punctuality.

For several years, I worked in a dental practice, which might have well been described as the “United Nation of bad teeth.” My patients had originated from all over the world. They came from, for example: Brazil, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, the West Indies, Spain, Portugal, tropical and southern Africa, the former Yugoslavia, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Ireland, and a few from the UK. Few of them appreciated the importance of punctuality.

We operated an appointment system in the practice. Patients booked specific times on particular days for their chance to visit me or one of my colleagues. Most of them either turned up at the wrong time or not at all. Consequently, my days were broken up into periods of frenetic activity separated by periods of inactivity, plenty of time to read a book.

One afternoon, a Tunisian gentleman turned up for his appointment at the right time on the correct day. I was so surprised that I said to him:

“How nice. You’ve come on time. Most of my other patients are not as courteous as you. They come whenever they feel like it, if at all.”

The patient listened, removed his coat, sat in my dental chair, and then said:

“Yes, that what we call in French ‘rendez-vous africaine’”

Somehow, after hearing that, my patients’ erratic attendance and timing began to make sense with me, and no longer bothered me. It also chimed with the erratic timings of some of my South African relatives.

Safety first!

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Experience learn’d

damages suffer’d

must consider safety first

 

My late mother was involved in a motor car accident near Cape Town in South Africa when she was a young girl in the 1930s.

HBY 60s 36 HW

“Our family dentist, at least the first one who ever looked after me (during the 1950s and early 1960s), was Dr Samuels, an elderly Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany. This kindly man, who must have been in his late 60s or early 70s when he treated me, told my mother how he had to smuggle gold out of Germany. When he, and for that matter any other Jew, was fleeing from Germany in the 1930s, it was not permitted to carry anything of financial value out of the country. His resourceful wife prepared sandwiches for his journey. Instead of filling them with lettuce leaves, she filled them with sheets of gold leaf – a material that used to be used a great deal in dentistry. Thus, if he had encountered inquisitive Nazi officials on the train, he could have concealed the gold he was carrying by munching his precious sandwiches. I am not sure when he retired, but I remember him telling my mother that he would not cease practising until the last of his patients abandoned him. I do not know when this was, but I do know that he helped to conceal from us the fact that my mother was missing some teeth.

 

In all the 28 years that I knew her, I had no inkling that my mother had two missing front teeth. I knew that she had missing teeth because she often reminded us about the accident that she had suffered, but it was not until she was dead that I discovered, almost by chance, that it was two of her front teeth that she lost.

 

FIAT 1100 60s BSY

I am sure that it was having been involved in this accident that led to my mother having seat-belts installed in our Fiat Millecento. She arranged for this to be done at least 20 years before they became mandatory in the UK. I have no idea how and from where she got the idea of installing car seat-belts in 1960, but she did. And, with a little persistence she found somewhere where these items, which were almost unknown in cars, could be installed in our Fiat.

 

Seat-belts were not routinely fitted into cars before the 1980s, with the exception of some Swedish cars such as Saab and Volvo. There were very few of these on British roads in the early 1960s. Therefore, my mother’s idea of installing them into our Millecento in 1960 was little short of revolutionary. The two front seats of the car were fitted with complex harnesses. A strap went over each of the wearer’s shoulders and these were connected together by a waist strap. The people in the front ended up wearing what looked like the sort of safety harness worn by a jet pilot. These complicated straps were extremely difficult to adjust properly.

 

The rear of the car was fitted with two lap straps such as are found in aircraft passenger seats. My sister and I used one each except when there was a third person in the back. In this case, my sister and I had to share one strap. To avoid fighting, my mother separated us in the strapby placing a pillow between us.”

 

The passage written above is an extract from a book, “Charlie Chaplin Waved to Me”.  It does not mention the extra locks my mother had fitted in the rear doors of our car. These were to prevent my sister and me from opening the doors while were diving. Had we been in an accident, it would have made it very difficult for rescuers to open these doors as the keys were attched to the ring with the car keys.

 

I only learnt about my mother’s missing fron teeth when after her tragic demise, I found her partial denture lying around in our house.

 

“Charlie Chaplin Waved to Me” is available by clicking : HERE

Also available on Kindle

On the bus in Gujarat

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Travelling by bus through Gujarat is interesting…

yamey's avatarGUJARAT, DAMAN, and DIU

Hop on a bus and travel through Gujarat: see the country and enjoy the people

More excerpts from “Travels through Gujarat, Daman, and DIU“, a travelogue by Adam Yamey, available HERE IN PAPERBACK and HERE ON KINDLE

BUS 0 Narendra Modi on the bus

During our eight weeks of travelling through Gujarat, Daman, and Diu, we made much use of public transport. We used mainly buses. As in other parts of India, some buses are run by private companies, and other by the local state, in our case Gujarat, which operates under the name ‘Gujarat State Road Transport Corporation’ (‘GSRTC’). At the outset, we made the assumption that privately-run buses are bound to be better than those run by the state. It was only near the end of our travels that we discovered that we had made an erroneous assumption.

BUS 1 Daman Local bus in Daman

Here are some extracts about buses…

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In Germany, we only eat…

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High up in the sky,

a compartmented tray,

consuming airline food 

FLIGHT 1

 

Since I was a little boy (many decades ago), I have been travelling on aeroplanes, usually to and from holiday destinations. The food served during flights has always intrigued me. As a child, I used to collect the miniature containers of salt and pepper that appeared on the compartmented food trays. I can remember these better than the far from memorable food served with them.

In 1963, we took an overnight flight from New York to London. When the breakfast tray arrived, I remember that there was a hot, foil-wrapped item on the tray. Cautiously, I unwrapped it to reveal a long spindle of something yellow and rubbery. I hit it with a knife. The knife bounced off it. My mother told me that what I had revealed was an omelette. To this day, omelettes on ‘planes have repelled me. I love freshly made omelettes, but one made several hours earlier and reheated has no appeal for me.

The best food I have eaten in the air was on Air Lanka ‘planes in the mid-1990s when we were travelling between London and Colombo. The food was served in large foil containers, rather than in in tiny neat plastic dishes. Delicious Sri Lankan curries were served. They tasted as if they had been lovingly prepared in someone’s home rather than in an industrial kitchen. My wife recalls eating whole steaks and caviar on an Aeroflot flight between Moscow and New Delhi in the late 1980’s. The burly stewardesses served the food on real porcelain plates.

More recently, I have been travelling regularly to India. There is a direct flight between London and Bangalore operated by British Airways (‘BA’), on which we used to travel. The staff on these flights were coolly efficient. The meals were not so good. For some years I had a dental patient, a friendly fellow, who worked for BA as a cabin crew member. When I told him that I was not keen on what was served on BA, he suggested that I pre-order the seafood meals. These turned out to be better than the regular meals, and we ordered these on several successive flights. Then, on one BA flight I was seated next to a very devout Muslim couple, who did a lot of praying during the ten-hour flight. When their meals arrived, a delicious aroma spread from their trays. When they removed the foil from their hot dishes, I saw that they had been served with what looked like really nice curries and biryanis.

After seeing these halal meals, that is what I pre-ordered on all our subsequent bookings with BA. We were not disappointed. BA used a good quality halal caterer. Many people who order halal food are teetotal. The BA crew did not raise an eyebrow when we ordered gin and tonic or bloody Mary cocktails with our so-called ‘Muslim meals’.

FLIGHT 2

Before BA operated the direct flights between London and Bangalore, we had to make the journey with one change of ‘plane. The German airline, Lufthansa, ran a convenient flight from Frankfurt (Main) to Bangalore. On one occasion, we were served two meals on the flight. The first meal included some meat. Several hours later, the second meal arrived. It was a selection of vegetarian food items. Now, I have nothing against vegetarians and vegetarian food, but I like a bit of meat or fish with my veg. I called the stewardess and asked if there was a non-vegetarian option as there had been during the earlier meal.

“No,” she said abruptly.

“Why?” I asked.

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

What nonsense, I thought. Whenever I have visited Germany, I have seen people eating meat at breakfast, lunch, dinner, and in between these repasts. I was not going to put up with her inaccurate reasoning.

“Well,” I replied, feeling a little bit hypoglycaemic, “I shall be ill if I eat this vegetarian offering. You must find me some meat.”

“One moment, please.”

She disappeared out of our cabin. Maybe, she was worried that I might eat her. After some minutes, she returned with a tray containing some very tasty pieces of fish.

Apparently, Germans who travel business class eat non-vegetarian food more than once a day.

POSTSCRIPT:

I cannot understand why airlines feel that they have to serve hot dishes mid-air. Most of these dishes are shoddy versions of the descriptions given to them on the tiny menus handed out to fool you into thinking that the airline will treat you to ‘fine dining’. I believe that many people would be happy with a selection of tubs of what the Greeks call ‘meze’. These could include things like hummus, taramosalata, tzatziki, olives, cole-slaw, nuts, mutabel, guacamole, salsa, etc. No cooking required, and fun to eat.

Sabotaged

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My late and much-loved mother was very protective of her two children. She saw dangers everywhere. We were not allowed to go near to electric wall sockets just in case we got an electric shock. Intelligent as she was, I have the feeling that she believed that electricity flowed out of the holes in the socket like water from a tap. 

 

During my childhood, my aunt and uncle used to smoke Benson and Hedges cigaretess that were supplied in nice small hinged metal boxes, which when empty were very useful for storing small objects. When one day I was given one of these boxes, empty, my mother confiscated it immediately. She was concerned that I might cut my fingers on the sharp edges of the box.

As for matches, much caution was needed here. Despite the fact that her grandfather had owned a factory that manufactured safety matches, even safety matches were deemed unsafe by my mother. Therefore, we were forbidden to handle boxes of  (even safety) matches just in case they should spontaneously ignite in our hands or packets. I am sure her intentions were well meant, but sometimes they went a bit too far. This excerpt from my book “Charlie Chaplin Waved to Me” (he did!) shows how her anxiety sabotaged what promised to be a wonderful hiking trip:

“The four of us (aged 17) embarked on a second youth hostelling trip the following Easter. Once again, we took a train to South Wales, and made our way up to our first hostel, which was located at Capel y Ffin in the Black Mountains near to the English border. We spent the night there, and awoke to discover that snow had begun to fall.

 

I had been instructed that I had to telephone home every morning to ensure that my mother knew that I was still alive. I rang from the hostel’s public telephone and my mother answered. She had heard on the radio weather forecast that there was snow in Wales, and asked meabout it. When I said that it had begun falling where we were, she ordered that we return to London immediately. Believe me, this was not an order that could be discussed. My mother, anticipating that we would surely be lost like Scott of the Antarctic in an avalanche or in freezing snow drifts, had to have us back as soon as possible. I broke the news to my 3 friends, who were furious. For about an hour they kept offering me reasons that I should give my mother in order to try to change her mind about our premature return. Eventually, they gave up. We all knew that none of these would work. And, because, I imagine, they feared my mother, we set off back to London. I have never been allowed to forget this fiasco. Even Hugh’s mother, now in her eighties, often recalls her amazement when she learnt how my mother had successfully wrecked our trip.“

 

“Charlie Chaplin Waved to Me” is available by clicking: HERE

Mad cow

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we don’t see ev’rything

that we consume:

might be germs with any bite

 

Bovine_500

From time to time, the United Kingdom is subject to agricultural diseases that need to be accompanied by nation-wide restrictions to limit spreading. A frequently occurring example of this is so-called foot-and-mouth disease. During such epidemics, those not involved in agricultural activities, such as hikers and tourists, are confined to roads, told to keep out of fields where traces of the disease may be lying.

During one outbreak of foot-and-mouth, we were spending a holiday in Wales. Wherever we went, we saw signs and barriers that prevented free movement across the countryside. What with the incessant rain, it made our trip rather dreary. We stopped for lunch in an ugly little town in central Wales. The most attractive looking eatery was a dowdy pub, devoid of any architectural merit. We sat down in its ageing dining room, trying to avert our eyes from the peeling wallpaper and a horrible worn carpet that badly needed to be replaced. Things looked up when the inn-keeper arrived to take our food order. We were attracted to beef steaks. There was a bewildering range of options for this on the menu.  Our host patiently explained the differences between the different types of beefsteak, explaining how the tastiness of the meat itself was related to its fat content and distribution within the cut. Fillet steak, for example, has little fat, not much taste without sauces, but wonderful texture. He recommended rib-eye as being the cut with just the right amount and distribution of fat to be tasty on its own. He was quite right, we discovered in that unattractive dining room in rainy Wales.

bovine

Some years later, Mad Cow disease (Bovine spongiform encephalopathy) became a concern in the UK. One evening, when we were going to a theatre near St Martins Lane in London, there were large headlines about the disease on the front page of the latest issue of the Evening Standard newspaper. Before the performance, we entered a branch of McDonalds for a quick snack. Almost everyone in the café was eating beef burgers, despite the headlines on the newspapers that some of the customers were reading!

Shortly after this, we went on a driving trip through France. In one small town, we walked passed a small restaurant with a sign hanging in its glass-fronted door. It read (in French): “We might be mad, but our beef is not.”

While the Mad Cow scare was at its height, we were invited to stay with some friends in Belgium. We had stayed with them often before. We asked them what they would like us to bring from London. They said they would love a home-made curry, enough for about twelve people. Although I am married to an Indian, it is I who makes the meat curries in our family. I prepared and cooked a huge lamb curry. As it is only a few hours’ drive between London and Belgium and the curry would have to be re-heated before being served, we thought it safe to transport the casserole containing it without refrigeration.

There were more security checks than usual at the English end of the Channel Tunnel. After our car had been examined, and the engine checked for hidden items including explosives, we were asked if we were carrying any meat products across the English Channel. We mentioned that we were transporting a casserole of cooked lamb curry. The security officials looked puzzled, told us not to move, and then walked away towards an office. One of them returned, and asked:

“It’s lamb, not beef is it?”

We confirmed that it was not beef.

“And thoroughly cooked?”

“Yes.”

“Well, what with all those spices, we’ll let you take it through the tunnel.”

Nobody asked us about meat when we arrived in France. We drove through a bath containing disinfected, and then headed for our destination.

Matterhorn

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It is hard to say which is my earliest memory. I believe it was going to St Albans church hall in Golders Green (in north-west London) to collect orange juice with my parents. I was born in 1952. In the early 1950s, the government supplied young children orange juice free of charge. The juice, which was free of the ‘bits’ that are found in many of today’s orange juices, was supplied in glass medicine bottles with cork stoppers.

 

MATTER 1

St Albans church hall in 2017

Another early memory dates back to 1955. We had just disembarked from an ocean liner in Cape Town. There were tram-like tracks embedded into the concrete of the quay. Adventurously, I put my foot into the groove of one of the rails, and then could not remove it. This caused quite a commotion as my mother carefully detached me from the rail along which large cranes travelled. This might be an actual memory, or someone may have told me about it later.

I do remember my first morning at primary school, which I entered aged 4 years. My parents took me to Golders Hill School on the first day along with my little friend Anthony. We stood next to each other in the front row of the assembled school. Suddenly, another boy, a complete stranger, pushed himself between Anthony and me. He said: “I want to be your friend.” He was Nick, and we remained friends for almost twenty years. I have only seen Anthony once since that day at school.

Every day at Golders Hill began with assembly. We were lined up in rows while our names were called out. We were required to answer in Latin: “Adsum”. As I did not start learning Latin until after I had left the school, I had no idea why we were required to say this peculiar word, which I later discovered means ‘I am present’.

Following the roll-call, we had to recite something, which to my young mind began with something that sounded like “Our father widgeartahev’n”. This recitation included many other words that were new to me. No one ever explained why we were saying this, or what it was. It was years later that I realised that we had been saying the Lords Prayer at high speed.

 

MAT 2

Golders Hill School in 2017

During the morning assembly, we stood facing the teachers and the then Head Mistress, Miss Davis. The latter used to cycle to school with her three corgi dogs stuffed into the basket at the front of her bicycle. The dogs spent the day resting in her office. On the wall behind the teachers and facing us pupils there was a black and photograph of a snow-topped mountain. Why it was there, I never found out, but unlike the other mysteries of roll-call, we learned that the mountain in the picture was the Matterhorn.

Switch it off, please

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Over the airwaves,

messages of faith are heard,

evangelising

 

radio

 

‘Mark’, the owner of the first dental practice where I worked after qualifying, told me that it is important to have a good relationship with the dental nurse with whom you work. He pointed out that on working days, the dentist often spends more of his or her waking hours with the nurse than with his or her spouse. During the 35 years I practised as a dentist, I encountered very few dental nurses with whom I could not get on amicably. Let me tell you about ‘Maria’, who was kind, resourceful, and remarkable.

Maria fled to the UK after having had what sounded like a horrendous childhood and adolescence in a troubled part of the world. She worked with me for several years. Sometimes, when needed, she worked as a dental receptionist in our practice. When, as they often did, patients came storming up to the desk, impolitely demanding an appointment without even saying “please”, Maria would calmly reply: “Good morning, Mr X. How are you? And how is your family?” Her polite questioning in a soothing voice quickly ‘civilised’ the patient’s approach.

Once, I was running very late, and the patient I had kept waiting had only 15 minutes left out of the 60 minute appointment I had planned for him. I said to this patient: “I have run so late that I really don’t have enough time to do what we planned.” Before the patient could answer, Maria said to me: “Don’t be silly, Mr Yamey, you can do it in time. I know it.” And she was right. I could not have done a decent job so fast if Maria had not been my assistant. When it came to the time to prepare the dental impression (mould) for the crown (cap) I was preparing, she mixed the two elements – the firm base and the low-viscosity material that picks up fine detail – simultaneously. Ambidextrously, she mixed one constituent with one hand and the other with her other hand. We finished the job to my clinical satisfaction in a quarter of the time I usually needed. “See, you can do it,” she said, “I have faith in you.”

You might wonder why I did not speed up after that when working with Maria. During that curtailed appointment, fortunately everything went smoothly without hitches. I preferred longer appointments so that I would have sufficient time to deal with unexpected problems and to relax the often-anxious patients.

Maria was very practical. In the practice where we worked, equipment often broke down. When this happened, a repair man, ‘H’, would be called to do just enough to get the heavily-used, well-worn piece of equipment to work again. On one occasion, an essential piece of kit stopped working. I told Maria to ring H. She said: “He’s not needed.” I asked her why. “I watched what H did last time the drill broke down. Let me try.” Maria fiddled with the equipment for a few minutes, and successfully repaired it.

Maria was a devout Christian.  She kept a small volume of the New Testament in a drawer in the surgery. Some of the words in it were printed in red. I asked her why, and she explained that the words that Jesus spoke were printed in red. Every now and then, she used to say to me: “All you need to do, Mr Yamey, is to accept Jesus in your heart, and your soul will be saved.”  Out of politeness, not wishing to offend her by questioning her great faith, I would say: “I need more time to think about it.”

We had a radio playing continuously in the surgery. Maria had tuned it to a non-stop evangelical Christian station. Various people speaking with strong North American accents spent hours describing how they had discovered Jesus. Like quite a few of my patients at that practice, many of the speakers on the radio had been locked up in prison. During their long incarceration, the radio personalities had had time to contemplate life, and during this contemplation they had discovered Our Lord and taken Him into their hearts. I found this radio station quite fascinating and listened to it avidly in gaps between appointments. Maria seemed less interested in the broadcasts. She wandered in and out of the surgery when she was not needed to help with a patient’s treatment.

Mr ‘C’ was a regular attender. He had a barely discernible North American accent. On one occasion, just as I was about to begin treating his teeth, he raised a hand, and said: “There are two things I can’t stand. One is coming to the dentist. The other is having religion stuffed down my throat. Maria, please switch off the radio.”

Maria turned it off without argument – she never argued. From that moment onwards, Maria never ever tuned the radio to that evangelical station. She was not only a wonderful assistant, but also sensitive and thoughtful.