Wednesday, 16 March 2022

To Bath for my Handwriting






I like to write my travel journal by hand in a paper notebook with a fountain pen.  Quite simply it is a more sensory and thoughtful process.  A problem has been creeping up on me.  My handwriting has grown worse over time and now, even I cannot read what I have written.

And so it was that Adrienne and I set off for a few days in Bath so that I could learn to write. I spent two and a half hours on a Saturday morning learning calligraphy from a master of the art, Athena Cauley-Yu, in her blissful stationery shop and print works on Walcot Street — “Meticulous Ink”.  With just a few minutes explanation she got six of us writing our ABC.  We worked through the alphabet from A to Z.  This was learning by doing, the best sort of learning. It was hard at my age to learn new motor skills.  During Lockdown, I had tried Arab calligraphy by way of a British Library online workshop.  Now that is hard and I was really bad at it.

Under Athena’s expert instruction, I could see improvement.  I can just remember some impressions from first learning to write as a child and these came flooding back.

The process was slow, deliberate and meditative.  A well-formed letter was a reward and the iron gall black ink provided oxidised on the paper to a rich charcoal.

I found some letters particularly difficult.  If I am to write in Copperplate, I shall have to avoid words with the letters M and K, which still defeat me.  When we got to the letter O, I announced that my o’s looked more like a row of penguins.  The class agreed with me, which was less than kind.

Athena is a self-confessed stationery geek; so am I. Her shop is a temptation and I stocked up.

Meticulous Ink

Athena introduces her shop

Walcot Street and London Road are promoted as Bath’s Artisan and Artists quarter.  This is a bit of an over-statement.  For knitters there is “The Yarn Story” an excellent shop for knitters but I fear other artisan business may not have survived Covid and lockdown.  I did, however enjoy a very good espresso at Taylor’s Bagels and Coffee close to Meticulous Ink.

We were in Bath for a few days and we have visited before so I have nothing to say about the must-see attractions for the first time visitor.  I did revisit Bath Abbey to pay my respects to King Edgar whose coronation as the first King of England in 973 is commemorated in stained glass.  Parts of the rite were still in use in 1953 at the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.  The Abbey floor is made up of gravestones laid flat.  I learnt that they are called ledgerstones.  I do like learning a new word.

The Museum of East Asian Art was new to us and well worth going to see.  The exquisite collection, mostly of ceramics and porcelain, is based on the private collection of Brian McElney who combined a career as a lawyer in Hong Kong with scouring the markets and antique shops of Hong King to find treasure.  Oriental porcelain has been appreciated in Europe since the Middle Ages when the Silk Road trade brought it west.  Glass from Venice travelled east in exchange but did not catch on in the countries of the masters of ceramics.

Museum of East Asian Art

Bath has two rather wonderful bookshops, to which I made a pilgrimage.  Topping & Co has moved since I was last in Bath.  It is now splendidly housed in the former Friends Meeting House in York Street, close to the Abbey.  I went up the grand steps, through a vast portico into a space with bookshelves from floor to ceiling. And the ceilings were high.  Ladders on bookshelves are always a good sign. The staff were friendly and efficient in this temple to books.

Mr B’s Emporium in John Street is different.  It is rabbit warren of spaces for booklovers.  Its spaces have names.  The Imaginarium is for writers; the Bibliotherapy room is for travellers.  The space for children “The Wood between the Words” is enchanting. Do not miss Mr B’s.

Finally a handful of recommendations from our visit.  We stayed at the Apex City Centre Bath. It was fine but they required us to book a time for breakfast in advance, which I found irritating.  We breakfasted very well indeed at The Boston Tea Party on Kingsmead Square.  

We dined very well at Martini Restaurant in George Street.  It is a traditional Italian Restaurant run by Italians and it had a family-run feel to it.

On our second evening, we pushed the boat out and dined magnificently at Portofino Oyster Bar and Fish restaurant on the High Street.

It felt good to be travelling together again.







Friday, 24 December 2021

The Art of Persuasion

I realise it is a year since my last post.  A dismal year without travelling.  Here is a very old piece that may bring back some memories of your own.  Happy Christmas and here's hoping for a very much better 2022.

You are too canny to be caught by the carpet salesman. But are you?

Experienced traveller?  You have met the carpet sellers, the scent salesmen.  “Just come and look in my shop, no need to buy.” You are too experienced to fall for it.  But it’s part of the holiday, just sip the tea, chat, look at the merchandise. You won’t buy.

Trouble is they are really good at what they do. So what happens between your knowing entry into the shop and the excess baggage charge? It’s the ancient art of persuasion. He asks you questions.  He wants to know how long you have been in his country — code for “How much have you spent already?”  He watches and listens. He is working out how much you will spend, even if you still think it is nothing.  

He gives you tea. Up until now he has hardly drawn your attention to the merchandise but he has been watching to see where your eye has lingered.  

The offer of tea is important.  He has given you something.  You want to give him something in return, and you surely will.

Now he shows you his first product.  It will be nearly the most expensive.  There is no indecorous mention of the price. He just asks you to admire the quality.  You show appreciation?  You are a person of taste.  He will show you something even better.

He senses the fear as you estimate this new thing is too expensive.  He works slowly down to the price range that will suit the cheapskate you have revealed yourself to be. The smile and patter never falter.

You take an interest in something; fatal.  He will not let you take your hand off the object.  It is out of its wrapper, you are holding it.  It is yours.

“How much?”  Music to his ears.  It was you that brought up the subject of money.  He is above such things but if needs must …

You haggle but end up paying almost exactly the price he had always wanted. “You will love it,” he says, “in your elegant home”. He is reinforcing your decision to buy. He offers more tea.  

You have been the willing victim of the art of persuasion.


Wednesday, 23 December 2020

South Park Street Cemetery, Kolkata


South Park Street Cemetery in Kolkata is an English cemetery and I could see plenty of those at home. I almost didn’t bother to go. I am glad I did or I would have missed seeing the splendid tomb of Major General Charles Stuart, better known as ‘Hindoo Stuart’.

South Park Street has been renamed. The pink stone entrance now leads off raucous Mother Theresa Street (that’s the street that’s raucous, not the nun) into a quiet and dilapidated graveyard romantically overrun by fig and palm trees. It looks and feels nothing like an English cemetery. It is oriental and exotic. The cemetery was opened in 1767 fell out of use by 1790. The English people buried here belonged not to the Raj but to the East India Company. They preceded the Victorians and their memorials are more in sympathy with Mughal and Hindu cultures than with imperial Britain.


The monuments were huge compared with English gravestones. I could not place the style. There were miniature Greek temples, columns, arches, obelisks, domes and cupolas. Some of the obelisks were pyramid-shaped, others conical and carved in spirals. There was a Greek classical influence and it did not feel the least bit Christian. I should have thought myself in a Mughal burial ground. I learned later that the tombs are a mixture of Gothic and Indo-Saracenic style. Some of the carvings show a Hindu influence. It was a strange and wonderful place of calm surrounded by the hectic rush of modern Kolkata. Indeed, the cemetery is only a remnant of a much larger plot that has been built over. Taxis, buses and bicycles now stream over the forgotten remains of the men and women of the East India Company.

I met three young men, all technical students from the city.  They knew little of the cemetery’s history and its British connection but they were grateful to find a place of peace and calm.

I walked around this marvel reading the inscriptions. The people here died young. Many of the men died in their forties. There were enormous monuments to young women. A huge pyramid shaped obelisk marks the grave of Elizabeth Barwell, who died in 1778 aged 23. Rose Aylmer lies, dead at 20, under a vast inverted ice cream cone of a tomb. It was said that the life expectancy of a European in Calcutta in the 18th century was two monsoons. Many of the young women died in childbirth and the men, if not of disease, in war or accident. The people buried here were not fainthearted.

I saw very few crucifixes. Biblical references were rare. Rather, the epitaphs celebrated people’s civic and secular virtues.  The Honorable (sic) John Hyde; a Puisne Judge of the Supreme Court died aged 59 in 1796.  He was, I read, ‘a firm and zealous friend’. His hospitality had been enjoyed a wide extended circle. ‘His advice, protection and munificence to unfortunate persons were his noblest eulogium’. It went on at some length; it was a big memorial. It ended eventually with a tribute to the generosity of his mind.

Beating the odds of an early death, Major General Charles (Hindoo) Stuart served in India for 50 years. He wore Indian clothes off duty, became a Hindu and bathed in the Ganges each day. He attempted to persuade the British ladies of Calcutta, the memsahibs, to discard their whalebone corsets and iron skirt hoops and take to wearing the sari. Did he have in mind their comfort, respect for local culture or more lascivious motives?  The answer is buried with him

The epitaph to Robert Gardiner reports that ‘unfortunately’ he died in the ship Ganges on the Barabuller Sand in the river Ganges aged 46 in 1787. The Barabuller Sand lies in wait for ships approaching the river from the Bay of Bengal. His affectionate son Andrew erected the stone from a ‘motive of filial regard’. 

A tattered advertisement informed me that I had missed the first concert ever to be held in the cemetery by a few weeks. I should have liked to have been there.

The Association for the Preservation of Historical Cemeteries in India and the British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia care for the South Park Street Cemetery, evidently on a shoestring. They publish a guidebook.  The young woman who sold it to me explained that her father was the keeper of the plot.  He was off sick and she was standing in for him.  I was touched that she should take such family pride in looking after this wonderful place.



Friday, 4 December 2020

Learning to Read and Write in New York City

 

The Strand Bookstore in New York City is in trouble.  The Pandemic has hit its business badly. When news of this much-loved institution’s problem reached the press, many of its legions of devotees placed orders to save it. It reminded me of a piece I wrote about a visit to New York a few years ago.

 

Learning to Read and Write in New York City

 

Back in Manhattan after 5 years, I made my usual pilgrimage to the Strand Bookstore.  From Union Square subway I walked south on Broadway and soon saw the shop’s maroon and yellow awning.  It has been there since 1923 and it is the last remaining independent bookstore in what had been a whole street of bookshops.  It boasts that it has 18 miles of books.  In its labyrinth of stacks on four floors, I could believe it.  Fortunately, expert staff can lead you to almost any book in a New York minute. 

It is the only bookshop I know that provides shopping trolleys.  An American friend told me she is not allowed in there without a keeper.  I was lucky; I bought just two books, neither of which I knew existed before I went in. I lingered in the stationery section.  I cannot resist a new notebook or pencil.  I could have bought a Moleskine notebook to turn me into Bruce Chatwin or a Palamino Blackwing, John Steinbeck’s preferred writing instrument. 

Pilgrimage over; I paused to pick up a copy of Gotham City Writers’ News from a sidewalk newsstand.  Gotham Writers is another fine Manhattan institution.  Among other things, it runs online courses for writers and competitions.

Then I went to an exhibition of Ernest Hemingway’s manuscripts at the Morgan Library.  What especially appealed was that Hemingway wrote a lot about how he wrote.  I read his letter to Mary Welsh written from the Normandy Invasion.  He wrote 'I am ashamed I know too few adjectives.' 

'That makes two of us, Ernest', I muttered.

He enjoyed editing his own work.  He could do it first in pencil as he wrote, again when he typed it out and finally when reviewing the proofs. Editing is good for all of us whether we like it or not.  I guess we need to be as good as Hemingway before we can fight back against editors.  There in the margin of an edited typescript, Hemingway's own handwriting declared, 'who b******d this up like this?'

He wrote in French School exercise books and I could study the physical process of his writing.  He re-wrote the last page of 'A Farewell to Arms' 39 times before he was satisfied.  He had also consulted F Scott Fitzgerald about the manuscript.  After they had worked on a particular page together, Fitzgerald told Hemingway that page 226 was 'one of the most beautiful pages in English literature'.  Well that is certainly something to aspire to.

Evidently, Hemingway was not too proud to take advice.  Gertrude Stein told him of an early manuscript, 'begin over again and concentrate'.  Thanks, Gert.

I saw his notes for the title of a short story.  He used to write the story first then create as many as a hundred potential titles before selecting exactly the right one.

If writing was that hard for Hemingway, how are the rest of us to manage?

I drafted this piece with a Palomino Blackwing pencil but I am still not Steinbeck.  I used a school exercise book but I am still not Hemingway.  What can I be doing wrong?


Strand Bookstore

Gotham Writers





 

Monday, 5 October 2020

BOOK REVIEW Tom Chesshyre – Slow Trains to Venice

Tom Chesshyre – Slow Trains to Venice

A Love Letter to Europe

Summersdale 2019 £16.99

 

This rather wonderful book is Tom Chessyre’s seventh.  He has a talent for writing train-related travel books and Slow Trains to Venice will not disappoint his readers.

Chesshyre relates the tale of a more or less random rail journey from his home in Mortlake to Venice.  He arms himself with a backpack, filled mostly with books, an Interrail Pass and a longing to be on the move by train.  It takes quite some dedication and curiosity to cover 3,990 miles to make what could have been a 700-mile trip. Chesshyre takes in Northern Europe, Poland, Odessa on the Black Sea and the Balkans.

Concerned mostly with the journey itself, Chesshyre gives us only snapshots of the cities he visits.  As he puts it, he dips a toe and moves on. He does, nevertheless, have the knack of finding something intriguing or offbeat in most places.  Innsbruck is the exception.  In a rush to meet his girlfriend in Venice, he has time only to describe his hotel.  His descriptions of the sometimes-quirky hotels he stays in are more a warning than a recommendation.  What he does so well is to find, and share with his readers, something fascinating in the mundane and everyday.   As he says himself, the traveller by plane wants dull efficiency, not a story.  The traveller by train always has a story to tell.  He has and he does it well.

Chesshyre fears for the future of some of the European countries he visits and worries about the rise of populism.  He is no fan of Brexit.  The subtitle of the book is A Love Letter to Europe. Many would join him in writing such a letter but he conflates Europe with the European Union.  Those that share his view will not be troubled.  Those that do not can still enjoy his storytelling.

Slow Trains to Venice went to print before Covid-19 hit European travel.  It may not be possible to travel as Chesshyre did for some time to come. In the meantime, the armchair traveller could not ask for a better companion.




Tuesday, 22 September 2020

Meeting Mary in Fremantle

A pilgrimage and a connection in a cemetery.

 

On a wet and blustery early summer's day in November, the cemetery in Fremantle, Western Australia had a Gothic feel to it. Eucalypts with dark, grey trunks grew out of the brick and beaten earth paths of reddish brown.  There was birdsong but it was hard to hear over the hoarse cawing of crows flapping through dark foliage.  In the Victorian part of the cemetery, I was among grey tombstones mottled dark with age.

The atmosphere suited me; I was on a pilgrimage to pay my respects to Mary Higham.  I soon found her memorial.  Without being ostentatious, it had a Victorian dignity to it. 


It stood among a small thicket of later family tombstones.  A modern sign explained some of her history and described her as 'Mary Higham 1819 to 1883 Merchant'.  I think she would have liked that simple word 'Merchant' it quietly reveals a great deal about this remarkable woman. There was also a photograph.  She is wearing a bonnet graced with flowers and lace.  She is round-faced with small spectacles.  The eyes are kind but there is a determined set to her mouth, I got a feeling of steel.

When Mary was born in Northamptonshire, George III was king of England.  At the age of 34, Mary and her husband John sold all that they owned: paid about £20 each for their passage in steerage and set off from Liverpool in the ship Sabrina to start a new life in the young colony of Western Australia.  Sabrina was less than 50 metres long.  On that long and filthy voyage, Mary cared for her five-year-old son Edward and an infant daughter Mary Ann.  Little Mary Ann died either on voyage (five other passengers did) or soon after arrival.  Mary must have suffered that loss all her life because on the tombstone, no doubt at Mary's request, is added 'also MARY ANN daughter of the above 1853'.  There is no other record that little Mary Ann lived or died; she has no known grave of her own.  Even the exact date of her passing is lost.

On Monday 13 June 1853, Mary, now 35, arrived in Australia and, with John, set up a bakery and confectionary business.  Within about four years, they had three more children.  On 22 November 1858, 5 years into their new life and with their youngest son Harry, just 5 months old, John died.  He was 41. Mary was a 39-year-old widow with four children to bring up and a business to run in a strange land.  A lesser woman might have given up and run home, not Mary. Mary set up a new business, a sort of early department store in a new building on the corner of Market Street and High Street in Fremantle.  The building that stands there today is called Higham's Buildings.  The sign, confidently carved into the stone, says ‘M. Higham and Sons’ for Mary took her two elder sons out of school as soon as she could to help her run the business. 


The new colony was thriving and Mary imported the things the new colonists wanted.  She sold silk dresses and spades; tweeds and galvanised tubs; ribbons and rakes; stationery and saucepans; iron bedsteads and buckets.  She took in lodgers. While her two sons grew up to go into politics, Mary was barred from such a career by her sex.  She avoided exclusion from the Chamber of Commerce by setting it up herself. Mary's business grew; she diversified into land, pearl fishing and even mining.  The business she was to pass on to her sons was substantial.  Mary was still working until a few days before she died aged 65 in 1883.

Only two of her grandchildren were born before she died.  The second of them was Edward.  She would have known and no doubt loved him for the first year or so of his life.  Edward grew up and re-migrated to England.  I knew him too but near the other end of his life.  Edward was my grandfather. I have held the hand of a man who held the hand of Mary Higham

A newspaper once described Mary as "a person of remarkable energy and decision of character".  I stood for a few moments at the grave of this extraordinary woman and tried to share our one common memory. I wished my great great grandmother goodbye and walked back through the cemetery to the bus stop.  The sun came out.

Tuesday, 1 September 2020

Party Night on the Stockholm to Riga Ferry (2013)

Party Night on the Stockholm to Riga Ferry

Observations of a curmudgeon.

 

 

It was a bright sunny afternoon at the Stockholm Ferry Terminal.  We realised immediately that we, a group of English tourists mostly in our sixties, would be a minority.  Almost all the other passengers were young Swedes setting out on an overnight party to Riga.  The trip had been advertised as a party cruise. Our expectations of a quiet overnight trip evaporated.

We stood in the terminal in a huddle surrounded by young people, most of them more tattooed than clothed.  They were in an exuberant mood.  To them we were as insignificant as streetlights at noon.  We had big wheelie suitcases; they had no luggage at all except cases of beer and boom boxes.  A Swedish policeman built like a brick out-house and armed with an automatic pistol rescued us from the throbbing beat.  He switched off the machine. The six youths around the instrument recognised the greater power and it stayed switched off.

On board, we dumped our bags in our cabins and went up to the sundeck — a big mistake.  The disco had started and the stack of speakers was nine feet high.  The bar was open and happy hour was advertised.  This was no place for anyone over 25.  We retired to an open space on a lower deck to watch quietly as we passed through the beautiful Stockholm archipelago. 

We did not have even this space entirely to ourselves.  Some of the young joined us.  They were at this stage mostly divided between male and female tribes.  The girls, who were mostly dressed in not very much, were nevertheless, dressed to attract.  Their skirts and shorts were tiny, they were in heels and carefully made up and coiffured.  They were enjoying being young and beautiful and not obviously playing hard to get.  The young men by contrast seemed to be doing their best to repel.  Loud voices and grunts, baseball caps on backwards, white, hairy tattooed legs and beer bellies were all on display.  What do the girls see in them?

We oldies ate dinner; the young did not trouble the restaurant.  We retired early, leaving the ship to youth, beauty and Bacchus.  We had an unexpectedly peaceful night.

We re-colonised the sun deck in the morning. The crew had done a great job cleaning up and all signs of the disco had gone.  The place was quiet.

As we steamed up the Daugava River towards Riga in the morning sun, groups of young people came up the deck, blinking and swaying.  Mostly they clutched water or cans of Coke.  A brave few were still forcing themselves to drink lager.  One must assume that some intermingling had gone on the night before but now they were for the most part divided once more into male or female groups.  The women had acquired clothes and were now more modestly and elegantly dressed.  One exception was a bubbly, outgoing girl clad in just a bikini.  She wandered the sun deck gently hugging and lightly kissing one boy after another.  It looked like a role reversal of Prince Charming with a glass slipper looking for the dream, who had been lost at midnight.

Amid this subdued yet sunny scene were two young women we had not noticed the night before.  They were tall, blonde twins — classic Nordic beauties. They were dressed identically in elegant summer frocks.  They sat back in chairs with skirts raised to tan their yard long thighs.  Even an old man's heart beat a little faster.  Mostly they were left alone but one young man dressed only in shorts and dark glasses holding a can of beer blearily approached, unintimidated by such class and beauty.  They tolerated his attempts at conversation for a while but, sensing no encouragement and perhaps uncertain of what he would do if he succeeded, he slunk away to find someone less demanding.

We docked in Riga, disembarked and did not look back.