Adam Yamey's Blog: YAMEY, page 90

Places called London

MANY YEARS AGO, I used to visit Yugoslavia frequently. I stayed with friends in both Sarajevo and Belgrade. During almost every stay in Belgrade, several friends and I used to travel to the town of Novi Sad to eat good Chinese food in a restaurant called Szećuan. We used to order, and consume everything on its menu. This food was washed down with copious amounts of alcohol.

After one if these boozy lunches, we began walking to the railway station and as we passed a pub called Bar London, my friend Miša said to me:
“It would be surrealist if you take us for a drink in this bar”.
We had one or more ‘for the road’, and then staggered towards the station.

This memory was aroused by coming across the Restaurante Londres in central Funchal (Madeira). We ate dinner there. The food was excellent. For the first time in my life, I ate limpets. These aquatic snails were grilled in their shells with butter and garlic – they tasted wonderful. The other dishes we tried were so good that we have booked there again.

Returning to the past, if I recall correctly, there was also a restaurant or bar called London in central Belgrade, but oddly I never entered it.

Looking familiar in Funchal

THEY STAND SIDE by side on a pavement outside a post office on the sloping Avenida Zarco in central Funchal. There are two sets of them. In each pair, one is painted red, the other is blue. They are postboxes (letter boxes). These cylindrical mailing boxes have a familiar look about them, especially if you live in England.

Having seen several old British style post boxes in various places in India, seeing these boxes in Funchal aroused my curiosity. I looked at their bases. The two red boxes had no manufacturer’s marks. However, both the blue ones had the following on them in English: “Cooperative Industrial Society”. This suggests that at least these two boxes were made in the UK. It appears that many Cooperative Industrial Societies have existed. So just by looking at them, it cannot be said exactly where these boxes were made. In any case, it seems that these items were imported from the UK.

As for the two colours – red and blue – there are two postal methods/speeds in Portugal. Red boxes are for normal mail, and blue for priority or express mail.

Where the Portuguese landed

A GUIDE BOOK to Madeira suggested that before the Portuguese set foot on Madeira, there had been others from different places. Some of these earlier settlers are said to have been travelling on an English ship from England to Portugal. However, the boat was blown off course and ran aground on the shore of Madeira, near where the town of Machico stands today. Two of the passengers on the ship were the English lovers Robert Machim and Anne d’Arfet, who were fleeing England where their relationship was not approved of. They are supposed to have died on the island. Later, their (?) graves were discovered. Fascinating as this is, the veracity of the story is questionable.

18th century fort in Machico

What is most certain is that the Portuguese Joao Goncalves Zarco and Tristao vaz Teixeira landed on the beach at what is now Machico in July 1419, and in so doing helped initiate the erstwhile worldwide Portuguese empire.

In 1440, Teixiera and his descendants were awarded the Captaincy of Machico – the first on the island of Madeira. In the middle of the 15th century, the settlers on Madeira began growing sugar cane. In those days, sugar was a valuable commodity, much desired in Europe. The prosperity of Machico increased.

Today, Machico is a pleasant town with a promenade running along the seafront. Three churches survive from earlier times. We visited the Igreja de Nossa Senhora da Conceição, whose construction was completed by the end of the 15th century. Between it and the sea front, there is a small fortress – Forte de Nossa Senhora do Amparo, which was constructed in about 1706. We saw a few market stalls next it. One if them, a florist, was selling gorgeous pink proteas.

Machico is a 50 minute bus ride from Central Funchal, the city that replaced it as Madeira’s capital by the early 16th century . The journey is spectacular with great views of the sea and the mountains, but because of the incredible windiness of the roads, it is not ideal for those prone to motion sickness.

An amazing bookshop in Madeira

I AM ADDICTED to visiting bookshops. In the heart of Madeira’s capital, Funchal, not far from the cathedral in a steep narrow street stands the Livraria Esperança. Founded in 1886, this bookshop is the largest in Portugal, and maybe one of the largest in Europe. It is housed on three storeys of an 18th century Palace. On each floor, there is a veritable warren of rooms, each filled with books and magazines.

The unique feature of this well stocked bookshop is that each book is displayed so that its whole front cover can be seen. This differs from many other bookshops in which most books are shelved so that only their spines can be seen. Many of the books in the Livraria are held between the jaws of clips hanging from pegs on the bookshelves.

Although books are arranged according to subject matter in different rooms, within each of these rooms the books seem to be randomly arranged. For example, a book about Salazar might be hanging between one about Roman archaeology and another about East Timor. I am not sure how the salespeople lay their hands on a particular volume that a customer requires.

More than 99% of the books are in Portuguese. There is a small collection of books in other languages. I do not understand Portuguese sufficiently well to read a serious text in that language. So, sadly I left the wonderful shop without having made a purchase.

Flying with Ryan

THE FIRST TIME I flew with Ryanair was to and from Friedrichshafen in Bavaria. On the return journey, I asked a lady at an information desk whether our flight was on time or running late. She replied:
“Ryanair never runs on time.”

Since November 2022, we have made 13 flights – some domestic and others international. Of these, the majority did not run on time and many of them had aspects worthy of criticism.

Today, the 27th of April 2023, we flew yet again. We flew from London’s Stanstead Airport to Funchal in Madeira. Both the ground staff and the crew on board were both friendly and efficient. The flight departed two minutes early and arrived at exactly the scheduled time. And the airline was … Ryanair!

Queen of Hearts maybe?

HOLY TRINITY CHURCH in the Suffolk Town of Long Melford is a grand perpendicular gothic affair built in the 15th century when the town was prospering because of the then thriving wool trade. Fortunately for us today, several of the original stained glass windows have survived in reasonably good condition.

On one of these mediaeval windows, which survived the iconoclastic behaviour instigated by Henry VIII, depicts Elizabeth Talbot, the Duchess of Norfolk, who was born in about 1442. Her daughter was married as a child to Richard, one of the two princes murdered in the Tower of London in about 1483.

It has been suggested that John Tenniel, the Victorian illustrator of Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”, might possibly have visited Long Melford, seen the portrait of Elizabeth Talbot, and then modelled his illustration of the Queen of Hearts on that image on the window. Whether this was actually the case or just pure coincidence is up to the viewer to decide. I remain undecided.

Unidentified and frozen in time

Who was she?

Where was she?

What was she wearing?

Could it be fancy dress?

If it is, what was the occasion?

Who can say? Who remembers?

Captured on celluloid – a moment long forgotten.

Tower Bridge

If it is very tall

No need to worry much

This is Tower Bridge

A maze at Greys

THE METEOROLOGICAL OFFICE weather forecasting app predicted a very rainy Sunday (23rd of April 2023). Despite this dire prediction, we headed out west from London to Henley-on-Thames. Not far from this charming riverside town is the estate of Greys Court, which we had visited several times before. We were lucky because the spring flowers in the gardens were in gloriously full bloom.

We found one part of the garden that we had not seen on earlier visits, probably because it is only open on Sundays. I believe that today was our first Sunday outing to the place. The section of the garden that is only open one day a week contains a circular maze. It consists of curving paths made of clay bricks set into the soil, and these are separated by low grassy ridges, In the centre of the maze there is a large spherical sundial, which was not working because the sky was overcast.

The maze was dedicated in 1981 by Robert Runcie (1921-2000), Archbishop of Canterbury from 1980-1991. It was created for two purposes. One was to celebrate Runcie becoming Archbishop, and the other to create what a notice described as:
“… a space for reflection, exploring the idea that we should all help each other solve the mystery of the maze of life.”
Well, whatever its intention, it is an attractive garden feature.

As for the weather, we were out of the house for about five hours, and it only rained for less than 15 minutes whilst we were driving to Greys Court. The maze there might in some way solve the mystery of life, but the Met Office needs to do a lot more work on solving the mystery of weather forecasting.

A cat amongst the …

THE FIRST PLACE I practised dentistry was in Rainham, Kent. Every Thursday, we climbed into my then boss’s open-topped TR 7 sports car, and drove down the High Street to a pub called The Cricketers. There, we used to enjoy a hearty meat and two veg lunch. One of the waitresses, a middle-aged woman, was a patient at the practice and always made sure that we were given large portions. On other days, I used to eat either in the practice or in one of the other local eateries. Sometimes, I would go into the local branch of Tesco’s supermarket to buy myself a few items for lunch. These always included either a Mars bar or a chocolate covered honeycomb caramel called a Crunchie. All the cashiers in the supermarket knew where I worked, and often, whilst I was paying, they would raise the Mars or Crunchie in the air, and shout:

“Look what the dentist is eating!”

Recently, I entered a grocery shop near Portobello Road. I noticed a black cat resting on a shelf surrounded by tins, bottles, and boxes containing tubes of toothpaste. Seeing this creature reminded me of my days long ago in Rainham. There was a small ‘corner shop’ across the road from our surgery. The lady who owned it made very acceptable, generously filled sandwiches. Every now and then I used to buy one of her sandwiches for lunch. I used to accompany this with a packet of potato crisps. These packs were kept in an open topped cardboard box in no particular order. I used to rummage through its contents and select the pack that I fancied.

One day, I entered the shop to buy my lunch. When I turned to look at the box containing the packs of crisps, I saw a very plump cat comfortably curled up on top of the packets of crisps. Despite the fact that the crisps were sealed in their packets, I did not feel like choosing one. As I left the shop, I wondered where else that cat chose to rest during the day. Thinking about that put me off ever entering that little shop again.