Adam Yamey's Blog: YAMEY, page 200

Web

[image error]

With internet unknown

She spins contentedly

A neat spider’s web

Photo taken in Sri Lanka in 1994

A town in California

[image error]

 

Just after Christmas in 1994, we flew to San Francisco in California (USA) for a four-week holiday. My wife was in the sixth month of pregnancy. Before booking our trip, we consulted her obstetrician at St Marys Hospital in Paddington, London. We wanted to know whether it was safe for her to travel at this stage in her pregnancy. The obstetrician did not mince her words:

“Yes, go ahead, but make sure that you have good travel health insurance because having a premature birth in the United States might well bankrupt you.”

After spending a few days with friends who live across the Golden Gate Bridge in Marin County, we rented a car, an upmarket Toyota, one of the nicest cars I have ever driven. We drove all over California south of San Francisco. Also, we visited the Grand Canyon and saw it under snow. This was a very beautiful sight because the snow had fallen in such a way that the many stepped strata that line the walls of this spectacular gorge were accentuated. We admired this while trudging through very deep snow. In order to enjoy this, we had had to purchase snow chains and to learn how to apply them to the wheels.

One day, we drove south from the snow-covered Grand Canyon to Sedona, a town famed for its vortices of energy. It was a distance of 106 miles. Yet in that short distance the weather had changed from Arctic to summer. And, the following, day we drove further south past Phoenix and Yuma and then through a southern Californian Desert to San Diego. Even though it was freezing up at the Grand Canyon, from Phoenix to San Diego it was so hot that we had to switch on the car’s air-conditioning.

From San Diego, we spent a few days driving along roads close to the Pacific Coast. We visited most of the historic mission stations between San Diego and San Francisco. We also stopped at Nepenthe in Big Sur, where the writer Henry Miller once lived. The building in which the writer lived was open to the public. While we were visiting it, my pregnant wife needed to use a toilet urgently. Without making any fuss, the guardian unlocked the toilet that Miller used to use and allowed my wife to relieve herself.

Being fans of the architect Frank Lloyd Wright, we visited some of the few buildings that the great architect had designed along the route we were taking. One of these, at San Luis Obisco (between Los Angeles and San Francisco), was a particularly lovely medical centre, the Kundert Medical Clinic that was built in 1956.

On the final day of our road trip, I looked at the guidebook and spotted something that I did not want to miss. To reach it, meant adding 60 miles to our already long (300-mile journey) journey. The place that caught my eye was about 90 miles to the east of our destination Marin County on the left bank of the River Sacramento. The small settlement is called Locke.

Locke is in the wetlands of the Sacramento River Delta. In the 1860s, work was undertaken to drain the malarial wetlands. Many poor Chinese labourers were hired to do this work at disgracefully low wages. In about 1912, the settlement of Lockeport, now called ‘Locke’ was established by three local Chinese merchants. Three years later in 1915, the Chinatown in nearby walnut Grove was destroyed by fire. The Chinese community then moved to Locke and a town grew. Because the Californian Alien Land Law of 1913 forbade Asians buying farmland, the Chinese in the area leased the land from a George Locke.

The town’s population reached 1000 to 1500 in its heyday. It acquired a reputation for its gambling halls, opium dens, and brothels. At one point, according to an article in Wikipedia, it became known as ‘California’s Monte Carlo’. In the 1940s and ‘50s, the towns population dwindled because many people migrated from Locke to major American cities. Currently, there are only about ten people living there.

By 1995 when we drove into Locke it was already a ghost town, a lesser-known tourist attraction. However, it did not disappoint us. Most of the main street’s buildings were picturesquely decaying. They were all made of wood, and no doubt highly inflammable. The place looked like a rundown set for a cowboy film, except that it was for real. One of the buildings that had housed a gambling salon, or maybe a brothel or opium den, was open to the public. Its original dingy décor had been preserved. All that was missing was a haze of opium smoke and the poor Chinese workers squandering their hard-earned money.

From Locke we drove west into the setting sun towards Marin County, pleased that we had made the detour to see the fascinating remnant of a far-off era. Our daughter was born three months later, having travelled several thousand miles around the American west in utero.

Book titles

[image error]

Inspired by a quick look at a pile of books near my bed:

“ The Zimmerman Telegram

told

The Master and Margarita

to

Beware of Pity

whilst

Half Asleep in Frog Pyjamas, ”

declared Hans Fallada.

A hidden gem

SOMETIMES, IT PAYS TO BE “ECONOMICAL WITH THE TRUTH”, to rephrase the words used by Edmund Burke in his book “Letters on a Regicide Peace”, published in 1796, in which he wrote:

“Falsehood and delusion are allowed in no case whatever: But, as in the exercise of all the virtues, there is an œconomy of truth.”

[image error]

The Residency in Hyderabad was built for the British Resident (for the Princely State of Hyderabad) James Achilles Kirkpatrick (1764-1805) in the style of a Palladian villa in about 1798. As described in an excellent book, the “White Mughals” by William Dalrymple, Kirkpatrick, like many other pre-Victorian Europeans in India, adopted local Indian ways of life. This Resident went so far as to marry (not too publicly) a local aristocratic woman from Hyderabad, Khair-un-Nissa (1786-1813). She remained in purdah and lived in a zenana, a ladies’ quarter, in the garden of the Residency but quite separate from it.  

The Residency was used for its original purpose by British Residents of Hyderabad until India became independent in 1947. In 1949, it became a building within the confines of the Osmania University College for Women (founded 1924).

Having read Dalrymple’s book back in 2011 just before visiting Hyderabad, I was keen to see the Palladian style Residency. With great difficulty our driver (from Bangalore) managed to discover the whereabouts of the Osmania university. We drove up to the gate and were stopped by a security guard, who would not admit us until we revealed (somewhat deviously) that the Director was expecting us. We entered the grounds and found the Director’s office. We suggested to her that I might be a relative of Dalrymple’s and that I was keen to see the building he had written about.

 

The Director assigned a member of her office team to take us to the old building, adding that it was not wise to enter it as it was in a perilous condition. What we saw, although in a very poor state of repair, was a magnificent, elegant neo-classical building. If it had been in the UK and restored considerably, it would have outshined many of the great houses built in the same era, which are open to the public. Ignoring the advice of the Director, we entered the crumbling structure and viewed its wonderful twin curving staircases and glamorous rooms. Although the place was in a parlous condition, its former glory was still very evident.

We left the former Residency without any of it collapsing on to our heads and feeling very pleased that we had ‘blagged’ our way into seeing this gem hidden from the public.

Foot and mouth

[image error]

Before she died in 2012, we used to make annual visits to a dear friend, whom I had known since my childhood, in South Wales. She used to live in London, but when she retired, she moved to a village in the Brecon Beacons, near the River Usk. We stayed in her cottage but were encouraged to leave her in peace from after breakfast until about four in the afternoon. We did not mind this because there is plenty to explore in the area and often the weather was good at the times of the year that we visited her.

In 2001, disaster hit Wales in the form of a vicious outbreak of foot and mouth disease. In order to prevent its spread, all footpaths and many open spaces were closed to visitors. This and the appalling rain that fell relentlessly during our visit, restricted what we could do while we were allowing our guest a few hours relief from her guests. We drove around the countryside not particularly having much fun.

One day, we arrived at a small town with a name I am unable to pronounce correctly:  Llanwrtyd Wells. It was lunch time. We parked outside a hotel near the town centre. The floor of the lobby was covered with a grubby, well-worn carpet. We were shown into an unattractive dining room. Our hopes for having a decent meal fell as we surveyed the room’s dingy uninviting décor. The sight of incessant rain falling outside did little to enhance the dreary mood that this unappealing room was inducing.

The hotel’s owner brought us menus. We asked what he recommended. He said “steaks” and showed us the large range of meats listed in the menu. We asked his advice about which steak to choose. Then, he did something that transformed the dingy place for us.

He gave us a ‘tutorial’ about the relative merits of different kinds of beefsteak and their tastes. The least tasty, in his opinion, was the costliest cut, fillet steak. Sirloin steak was, he advised us, tastier and cheaper than fillet. However, he considered that the tastiest cut was rib-eye. He explained that the latter was marbled with fine streaks of fat, and it was this that gives it its superior taste. We ordered it and discovered he was right. He regretted that he was unable to serve the local, and in his view far superior, Black Mountain beef. This was because of the problems connected with the foot and mouth outbreak.

Whenever I buy steak, I look for rib-eye first, and if this is not available, I go for sirloin. Whenever I think of beefsteak, I always remember that dreary eatery in Llanwrtyd Wells and its helpful landlord. For a long time, I could not remember in which town in Wales, we were given our tutorial about steaks. Recently, I discovered some photographs I had taken there almost twenty years ago. In one of them, there was a pub sign that read “Neuadd Arms Hotel”. Seeing this helped me discover where we had been.

Onion on top

[image error]

This piece, which is about onion shaped domes on some churches, was inspired by a chance discovery of a photograph of a church (see illustration) that I took somewhere in Slovenia about twenty years ago.

In the summer of 1975, I accompanied my PhD supervisor, Robert Harkness, and his wife, Margaret, both now no longer living, on their annual drive from Buckinghamshire in the UK to Platamon on the Aegean coast of northern Greece. It took about nine days in their Land Rover, which was towing a caravan that was to become their home in Greece for up to two months. Robert, a well-regarded physiologist, was also a keen naturalist as well as being interested in many other things. This excerpt from an unfinished biography of the Harkness’s that I began writing over a decade ago illustrate one of the varied interests that kept Robert happy.

Soon after we left our camping site on the following morning, we crossed the River Rhine and entered West Germany, where we began driving along its Autobahns. After some hours, we spotted the first of the many onion-domed church towers typical of southern Germany.

Robert speculated that there must be a line of places north and west of which it is almost impossible to find onion domed church towers. This idea made him think that there must also be an olive line north of which no olive trees grew, and a ‘karpousi’ (καρπούζι: Greek for watermelon) line below which watermelons grew. Original as this might seem, Robert’s concept of boundaries based on the presence of this or that particular item was apparently proposed earlier by a French author – it might have been Stendhal – who was writing about those nations whose inhabitants favour eating Brussels sprouts.

The leaning tree

[image error]

“A PICTURE IS WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS” It is not known exactly when this well-known sentence was first used, but an article in Wikipedia suggests that one of the first times it appeared in print was in an advertisement for a Texan newspaper, the “San Antonio Light”, in 1918. I do not know whether I can write a thousand words to put the attached picture in context, so you will have to make do with what I am able muster.

Just over a year ago, my wife and I were ‘wintering’ in India. We left our daughter looking after our flat in Kensington. One day, she sent us a message informing us that one of the old trees in our street had toppled over in the middle of the night.

The tree that fell always looked precarious as its trunk leaned over the road at quite a sharp angle, making it tricky to park a car next to it. A neighbour told us that it had done so for well over a century. His evidence was that the very same tree can be seen leaning over the road in an old photograph of our street taken about 150 years ago. So, the tree was not inherently unstable.

Many years ago, while walking through woods with my old PhD supervisor (and by then a close friend), he pointed out the variety of shapes and inclinations of the tree trunks around us. He wondered how a tree ‘knew’ how to grow in various directions whilst maintaining a centre of gravity that stopped it toppling over. Clearly, our late lamented leaning tree ‘knew what it was doing as it had been leaning seemingly precariously for at least a century and a half.

After we returned from India, there was a bare patch where the tree had stood for so long. A neighbour, who makes it his business to find out in detail what happens in our small street told us what befell our tree. The local council decided to move the position of the curb and so to widen the pavement around the tree, the idea being to narrow the road at that point and thereby prevent parking next to the tree.

Unfortunately, the workmen assigned to carry out this job managed to cut through part of the tree’s root system. This destabilised the tree, which then fell over across the street. While falling, the tree damaged a first-floor balustrade and terrace on a building across the street. Luckily, there were no human casualties.

For some months, the site of the fallen tree remained treeless. Then, a small tree with a slender trunk, a sapling, was planted by the council. Day by day, we watched it producing leaves. These changed colour in the autumn, looked sickly, and fell off, leaving a sad looking spindly tree. Then, we spent another winter in India.

When we returned in late February this year (2020), the young tree was still standing and still looking lifeless. As the weeks passed, we were very pleased to see buds forming on its slender branches. These buds have grown in size and are, at last, unfurling to reveal the tiny leaves seen in the photograph.

It is pleasing to see that even in these troubled times, nature has something positive to lift our spirits.

Well, I have reached about 580 words, not quite a thousand. However, as the saying goes, I hope my photo is worth at least a thousand words and is something to enjoy.

Death of an automobile

[image error]

It is odd how an old photograph can trigger a whole lot of memories, which you thought were long forgotten. This photograph brings back memories of the last hours of one of our motor cars.

I had just had our old Saab car serviced and I asked the dealer how much it would beworth as part exchange for a newer model. I was told £400 would be generous. I was horrified, and said:

“Really? You’re kidding”

“No, Sir, yesterday I was shown a ten year old Jaguar in good nick. I only offered the owner £400.”

I paid for the service, having been told that several quite costly repairs might be needed soon if wanted to keep our Saab on the road. The first of these, and this was a legal requirement, was to replace the four tyres.

We bought four new tyres a couple of days later and set iff to attend a wedding anniversary in Kent. On the way, we stopped at a bonsai tree nursery to see an old acquaintance.

When we returned to the nursery’s car park, our car would not start. All that happened when I turned the ignition key was a whining noise followed by smoke seeping out of the engine.

We called the AA, the emergency breakdown service, and an agent arrived soon. He looked at the problem and came to a rapid diagnosis. I asked him how much it would cost to repair the major problem that had occurred. He said about £400. With that information and the knowledge that other major repairs might be needed in the near future, it was not a difficult decision to scrap our Saab.

That was back in late 2010. Prior to that date, we had used our car to make annual visits to France, where we enjoyed staying at ‘Gites rurales’, rented holiday homes often in picturesque rural spots. I took many photographs on these lovely holidays. The picture illustrating this piece was taken somewhere in France, but as I never bothered to label all of my photos at the time, I cannot tell you where I saw this fine set of doors.

A city reborn

[image error]

We used to spend a night in Arras in northern France when we made driving holidays to stay in rented houses on central and southern parts of the country.

To casual visitors, such as we were, the centre of Arras looks like a perfectly preserved old baroque city.

Yet, it is not.

During WW1, Arras, close to the front line fighting, was almost totally destroyed. Pictures of the city taken after the “War to End All Wars” resemble pictures of Hiroshima after the atomic bomb was dropped on it.

The reconstruction of the old centre of Arras was so successful that if you were ignorant of its history, you would believe that you are seeing the original city.

By the way, Arras is one of the few places in the rather bleak north of France really worth visiting.

Photo taken about 15 years ago.

What is in a name

[image error]

When I was a young child, I used to love eating slices of tongue. It was a cold meat that I really enjoyed. In those days, I never thought about the name of the meat, that is ‘tongue’.

When I was about 10 years old, I put ‘two and two together’ and realised that what I had been eating was once a living animal’s tongue. This realisation put me off eating tongue. I have hardly ever eaten tongue since that discover of what is in its name.

The curious thing is that, with plenty of knowledge of anatomy, I have no difficulties eating, say, liver or pancreas (‘sweetbreads’) or stomach (‘tripe’).

Picture from Wikipedia