Wherever you look, up or down
On doors and walls
they can be spott-ed
All over the city of Cambridge, you will see depictions of creatures.
Here area few for you to enjoy:
Cambridge creatures
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Keep your hair on
Mr T was a regular attender at my dental surgery. Bald, he had a high pitched voice. For some years he made appointments on Saturday mornings because he commuted during the weekdays. He retired and then began coming to see me on weekdays.
One Thursday just before Mr T was due to enter my surgery, our receptionist rushed in and said : “Don’t be surprised when you see Mr T.”
A few moments later, a woman in fairly dowdy, quite unfashionable clothes walked in and sat in my dental chair. When this person with a good crop of hair greeted me, I recognised Mr T’s voice and his familiar face was framed by his unfamiliar hair. I looked at my dental nurse, and she looked back at me, astonished.
As I always did, I asked the patient whether he/she had any medical problems lately, or had to see the doctor lately. The transformed Mr T said “not at all.”
Puzzled, I performed the dental check up, and discovered that there was a tooth that required extracting. T consented to this and we arranged for him to return a week later. He/she left the room.
In those days, early in my career, whenever I performed a tooth removal I asked the nurse to support the patient’s head gently during the procedure.
As soon as T left the room, my nurse said to me: “Don’t expect me to support his head next week. What if his wig were to come off in my hand?”
A week later, dressed as before in dowdy women’s clothing and with a full head if hair, the previously bald and previously male-attired T turned up for his extraction.
Before commencing, T asked me in his high-pitched voice which was now in complete harmony with his female appearance: “Will this take long?”
I said: “Only a few minutes. Are you in a hurry?”
“Slightly,” T replied, “I am going shopping with my wife in a quarter of an hour.”
I suspect that throughout his working life, T had yearned to appear female, but only in retirement was he able to make his fantasy into reality. His wife must have been a very understanding woman.
Punt
A pole, a person, some water,
A river in Cambridge:
That’s punting
Poetic license
Seventeen syllables: haiku
Four lines a limerick
Poetry rules
Chicken tikka in Tirana
This war written in mid-2016, following Adam Yamey’s visit to Albania
Tirana
Between 1944 and 1990, the tiny Balkan country Albania was governed by a Stalinist dictatorship. During that period, it was more isolated from the outside world than North Korea is today. My Indian wife, Lopa, and I visited the country in June 2016. We were open to surprises, but never imagined that we would discover what I am about to describe, namely some Indian connections.
The small town of Pukë is in the north of the country. Hardly visited by tourists, it is a pleasant place at a high altitude. During our visit there, we entered a small gift shop to buy a notebook. The shop-keeper looked at Lopa, and asked where she was from. When we said India, she pointed at a small television screen beneath the counter. We saw that she was watching something from Bollywood, but with Albanian sub-titles.
Vlore museu,
Some days later, we were in the coastal city of Vlorë, visiting the house where on the 28th November 1912, the independence of Albania (after about 500 years of Ottoman domination) was declared. We were shown around the building, which is now a museum, by a lady who spoke only Albanian. An Albanian friend translated. As we moved from room to room, we noticed that the lady was becoming more interested in Lopa than the Independence of Albania. She kept touching Lopa and even hugged her from time to time. At the end of the tour, she asked Lopa why she was not wearing something like a sari as the actors in the Bollywood films do on the television shows that she loved. A devotee of Bollywood soap operas, she was thrilled to have a real live Indian in her museum. She told us that Lopa was the first Indian women to visit her museum in the 11 years that she had been working there.
Later, we learnt that Bollywood television soap operas are extremely popular in Albania, especially amongst women viewers. The shows are usually broadcast in the afternoon, so a ‘savvy’ person knows better than to ring an Albanian woman during the hour that such shows are on-air.
Mosque in Korce
Love of Bollywood is not confined to Albanian women. In the southern city of Korçë, we were visiting an old (15th century) mosque, when an elderly man, who was just about to enter to do ‘namaaz’, saw Lopa, and asked if she was Indian. On hearing the answer, he exclaimed: “Rye Kapur”, which was his way of pronouncing Raj Kapoor.
Judging from the excitement that Lopa evoked when meeting Albanians, we guessed that there were probably few or even no Indians in Albania. Our guesswork ended when we met Vijay in the foyer of the National Museum in Albania’s capital Tirana. Vijay, who hails from southern India, lives and works in Albania with his family. He was waiting for his son to return from cricket practice. We were surprised to hear that cricket is being played in a country which has not ‘enjoyed’ the effects of British colonial influence. Vijay told us that not only were ‘ex-pats’ involved in cricket in Tirana, but also Albanians. There is an Englishman who has been training members of Tirana’s rugby club to play cricket. In late June this year, the Albanian team beat the ex-pat’s team by one run.
On the next day, we met Vijay, who teaches computing to Albanians in Albanian, with his family at a café. His wife had specially prepared some Indian snacks for us: chicken tikka and some aloo bhajjis. While we were sitting chatting, another Indian, Vicki, wandered past and joined us. Vicki was working for an Indian mining company, but has recently returned to India having spent a few years in Albania. When we had spent time with our new Indian friends, we got up but before saying farewell, they invited us for lunch the next day.
Apart from having been very fortunate to have ‘bumped’ into Vijay and his family and friends, we were very lucky to have met any Indians at all in Albania. This is because there are currently only about 50 Indians in Albania, and some of them are Mother Teresa nuns.
The following day, we met Vijay and Vicky in the centre of Tirana. A car pulled up, and we all piled in. The car was driven by yet another Indian, Father Oscar who runs Tirana’s large Roman Catholic Don Bosco establishment. He drove us out to Vijay’s flat on the edge of the city. There, we were confronted with a superb warm buffet prepared by Vijay’s wife. As I served myself with chicken biryani, dal, chappatis, channa, and so on, I had to pinch myself to believe that I was not imagining eating home-cooked Indian food in Albania.
PS: Finally, for those with Indian passports who wish to visit Albania, the nearest Albanian embassy to India, we were told by an Albanian diplomat, is in Beijing (China).
Gothic splendour
Ribbed vault-ed ceiling
Ethereal atmosphere
Kings College chapel
Cambridge
City of colleges
Towers lawns and bridg-es
That is Cambridge briefly
Do they speak Welsh?
One of the many patients, whom I treated while I was studying dentisty at University College London, was a highly intelligent senior civil servant. There was much work that needed doing in his mouth, so he visited my clinic frequently and we got to know each other reasonably well. At least, that is what I began to think.
One morning, he arrived for his appointment and sat in my dental chair. After exchanging pleasantries, he said:
“You know those Martians, who have landed in Wales?”
“Mmmm,” I replied.
“Well, I’ve heard that they communicate without exchanging words.”
“Telepathy?” I asked.
“Yes, that’s it”
I turned away from him, ready to wash my hands, when he continued:
“Well, I was wondering whether when they are in Wales they communicate in English or Welsh.”
Feeling a smile coming on, I turned my back to him, and began washing my hands for long enough for my urge to laugh to wear off.
As the saying goes, it takes all sorts…
REQUIEM FOR THE EMBLEM OF POWER
Cork Street, near London’s famous Burlington Arcade, has long been home to quite a number of art galleries. Recently, the greed of property developers has led to the closure and disappearance of many of these. Dadiani Fine Art, a small gallery, at number 30 Cork Street has survived so far. This gallery is hosting an exhibition of works by Paul Wager, entitled “Requiem for the Emblem of Power”. The show, which opened in January 2018, commemorates the centenary of the ending of the First World War ‘WW1’). Althoug the website states that the show was due to finish in April 2018, it was still available for viewing in September 2018. So, you might still be able to ‘catch’ it.
Paul Wager, British, was born in Hartlepool in 1949, four years after the end of the Second World War. According to the gallery’s website, Paul Wager wrote:
“I find myself at the interzone of painting and sculpture; my work is a heavy metal cocktail of male fantasies, obsessive and confrontational. It is a chemical haze of alternative sound and vision, religion and politics, conflict and war, tragedy and loss. A crucible of liquid observations and memories which stimulate my pending offering to the uncharted future of art.”
The works on display in Cork Street reinforce this statement this well. According to Umberto Eco:
“Art now in general may be seen as conveying a much higher degree of information though not necessarily a higher degree of meaning.
However, the Gallery notes:
“Wager’s paintings are a profound statement of information and meaning“
Be that as it may, I found the art works, visually alluring, powerful, and moving. Finely crafted, both in detail and as a whole, and creatively designed, they are fitting, original contributions to the large body of recent creations made to celebrate the passing of 100 years since 1918.
No ordinary ham
Portuguese presunto
pleasure on a plate:
no ordinary ham
Presunto is dry-cured ham from Portugal
yamey 