Tag Archives: london

Dress code and literature

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Many of the smarter social clubs in India have rules about how one should be attired when visiting them. The same is true for ‘elite’ clubs in London.

DRESS CODE

For example, at the Ootacamund (‘Ooty’) Club in southern India men cannot think oof having a drink at the bar if they are not wearing a formal suit and tie. And, at the Bangalore Club, men can where sandals in the Club House providing the sandals have a back strap. Even worse, at the same club the wearing of smart Indian national outfits is frowned upon if not forbidden. This is surely a hangover from the days when the club only admitted ‘white’ Europeans and a few high-ranking Indian military personel.

Once, I was staying at the Kodaikanal Club in Tamil Nadu state. Dress rules were extremely casual there. Many guests wore shorts and sandals even in the bar and dining room. One day, I entered the club’s small library, and the librarian promptly asked me to leave. I was wearing sandals (with backstraps). Apparently, in the library gentlemen are required to wear formal lace-up shoes.  I cannot say why this was required unless the Kodaikanal holds literature in high esteem, and wants it to be respected by library users who have taken the trouble not to be dressed casually.

Espresso and extraction

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lisb

 

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

Islands of worship

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IN HYDERABAD, BOMBAY, and Calcutta I have seen mosques or large dargahs (mausoleums) located on islands in the middle of roads. Traffic flows on both sides of the places of worship like river water flowing around a rock.

I mentioned this to my wife, who reminded me that London has at least two churches that stand on islands around which traffic flows. Two of them are on the busy Strand: St Clement Danes and St Mary le Strand. This got me thinking about other places where a place of worship stands in a position that forces traffic to move around it. Only one place springs to mind as I write this. There is a small church in a street leading off Syntagma Square in Athens (Greece) that stands on an island in the middle of a street ( or, at least it did when I last visited the city in 1980).

Why are these places of worship on traffic islands? Maybe, the shrines were built before roads were laid out or perhaps a road was widened leaving the holy places stranded in the middle of the enlarged thoroughfare.