JOST A MON

[I wrote this article on Space Bar's invitation in August 2008 and it appeared on Blogbharti. A little while ago, Blogbharti ceased to exist, my computer crashed, and I thought I'd lost this piece. Luckily, the Wayback Machine had snapped it up all those months ago, and I was able to retrieve it. So here you go, for archival purposes only: this is how it appeared on Blogbharti.]

During the height of the Regency, it was the very thing to betake oneself to Brighton, there to enjoy the sea, dance with the best people, flirt with dashing Army officers, be introduced to the Princes Royal, and play genteel parlour games [Picture credit: The Republic of Pemberly]. And when all the whirling and swirling was done and one was exhausted, the place to go to recover and refresh was Mahomed’s.

To miss going to Mahomed’s is like going to town and forgetting to take a peep at St Paul’s… ¹

Inside an imposing building on King’s Road in Brighton, a man in Mughal court dress welcomed the gentry. He offered a luxurious establishment at the height of ton, and a series of medicated vapour baths. The specialty of the house was a massage with medicated oils. Customers sweated their poisons out in a hot aromatic bath, and then moved into a tent with flannel sleeves. Here, an unseen masseur would pummel them invigoratingly, with his arms through the cloth walls. This last, the man said, was the Indian art of the Shampoo, and it would cure all ills.

[The Baths are] daily thronged, not only with the ailing but the hale … their powerful efficacy … have brought foreigners to him from all quarters of the world …

What was this Shampoo? And how did this word become English? The tale is a curious one, intercontinental in its reach, transcending origins, race and class.

It begins in 1759 in Patna where was born a scion of the Nabobs of Murshidabad. A noble lineage is one thing; the reality of life is another. The Nabobs were a shadow of their former selves after the disaster at Plassey, and Din Mohammed’s father, having set aside all pride, was a minor soldier in the East India Company’s Bengal Army. When Din was eleven years old, his father was killed, his elder brother took on the parental commission, and despite his mother’s vigilance - she knew Din was already smitten by the glamour of soldiery - he ran away from home to become a camp follower. Soon, he was in the service of a Captain Baker, under whose watchful eye he bloomed into a well-read man, widely travelled and keenly observant.

There is scarcely any disease to which the human frame is liable which may not be relieved by the use of these baths.

In 1784, Baker returned to Ireland, taking Din with him. Din perfected his English in Cork, and, after Baker died two years later, married a young Irishwoman, Mary Daly. They spent the next 25 years in Ireland, where Din’s charm and intelligence endeared him to the Irish upper class [Picture credit:Brighton Ourstory].

A popular genre of books at the time was the epistolary travelogue, and Din jumped into the business with panache. The Irish gentry² paid 2 shillings 6 pence for “The Travels of Dean Mahomet, A Native of Patna in Bengal, Through Several Parts of India, While in the Service of The Honourable The East India Company Written by Himself, In a series of Letters to a Friend.” It was a charming read, in turns poetically descriptive and hair-raisingly adventurous. Interspersed in true intellectual style with quotations from Seneca and Goldsmith, among others, he wrote of the Company’s conquest of India, the gracious Mughals and the elegance of the Company’s Calcutta; he waxed eloquently on the riches of Dacca, and the terrors of being hunted by peasants, wrathful at Din’s tax-collection, baying for his blood.

This unlikely tome turned out to be the first book in English written by an Indian, and it brought to its readers a particular sensibility - an appreciation for victorious England and her East India Company, but also an unapologetic love for the grandeur of India that Din missed so sorely.

In 1807, Din and his family moved to London, where he opened an Indian restaurant. The Hindustanee Coffee House in the Portman Estate [Picture credit: BBC News] was the first ever in a series of Indianised British eateries that has continued to this day. While his intention had been to attract the Indian gentry, they tended to look down upon his establishment as one fit only for ignorant Londoners. The British loved it.

Simultaneously, in the service of a Basil Cochrane, he was providing a full body massage service at steam baths opened in Portman Square. Din could easily counter imitators, stating that his was the only genuine massage; only an Indian native could provide a treatment superior to all others; only he, equipped with the correct medicinal herbs, could cure illnesses. In a time of burgeoning excess and a thirst for the exotic, Din was able to provide each in luxuriant quantities.

The last two became immensely popular; the Prince of Wales invited Din to supervise the construction of an aromatic steam bath in the Pavilion. Din so impressed the Prince that he was anointed Royal Shampoo Surgeon. The gentry poured into his establishment, allowing him to expand, build the elegant Mahomed’s Baths [Picture credit:Victorian Turkish Baths] overlooking the sea, and create new branches in London.

The royal warrant by George IV was the final imprimatur on his social eminence, but his financial situation was precarious, dependent as he was on his sleeping partner, Thomas Brown, for funding. Brown died in 1841, and Din was unable to raise the capital required to win the auction of his baths. He offered to manage the property on behalf of the higher bidder, but unfortunately, his services were no longer required, and he had to relocate to a small property on Black Lion Street. He tried to compete with his old establishment, continuing to advertise his services till 1845. He became more and more impecunious in the ensuing years, and in 1851, this extraordinary Renaissance man died.

All right, all right, hold your horses. I know that all 8 of you that attempted this quiz are desperate to see the solutions. So here you go.


1. Am positive a lamb leg will make things loads better: Shawshank Redemption 
2. Jesus’s Granddad: Godfather 
3. Mother Theresa, Hitler and John Merrick: The good. The bad, the ugly 
4. Jarvis Cocker isn’t real: Pulp Fiction 
5. Batman sees no moon or stars: Dark Knight 
6. Nice guys: Goodfellas 
7. A white Spanish house: Casablanca 
8. Join for a barney: Fight Club
9. They stole Noah’s sat nav: Raiders of the Lost Ark 
10. Not this lot in the lineup again! The Usual Suspects 
11. Rectangular numbers: The Matrix 
12. I can’t hear the baaas: Silence of the Lambs 
13. This helps a community member walk: Citizen Kane 
14. Keep Malibu and Santa Monica secret: LA Confidential 
15. Canines playing in the water supply: Reservoir Dogs 
16. Return to tomorrow: Back to the Future 
17. Wet karaoke: Singing in the Rain 
18. Bannister was an environmentalist: The Green Mile 
19. Contender, Are you ready? Gladiator 
20. Blindfolded and handcuffed underwater and got out, wow: The Great Escape 
21. Expiring isn’t easy: Die Hard 
22. Lottery win for poor Lassie: Slumdog Millionaire 
23. A regal roar: Lion King 
24. An expensive offspring: Million Dollar Baby 
25. Blown away my dear: Gone With the Wind 
26. There’s the 2184214 to Paddington: Trainspotting 
27. It will have cost this toy boy at least £9k a year: The Graduate 
28. Cloughie’s story: Life of Brian 
29. Get me out of this womb or else! Bourne Ultimatum 
30. I’m looking for one that leaves it all to me: Good Will Hunting 
31. The story of Harry S.? The Truman Show 
32. Filthy gyrating: Dirty Dancing 
33. An expensive digit: Goldfinger 
34. Don’t show him red…..too late: Raging Bull 
35. I do, I do, I do, I do…..so sad: Four Weddings and a Funeral 
36. The Queen’s one who needs treatment: The English Patient 
37. There’s at least a couple decent chaps: A Few Good Men 
38. Satan’s lawyer: Devil's Advocate 
39. Don’t even have a hint: Clueless 
40. Mind if I butt in young lady: Girl, Interrupted 
41. Insomnia in Washington: Sleepless in Seattle 
42. It’s the end of the world: Armageddon 
43. The King's Wife rules over dry lands: Priscilla, Queen of the Desert 
44. Indian junior keeps it beating to stay alive: Braveheart 
45. He may be a predator but he's such a nice man: Deer Hunter 
46. They just upped and left: The Departed 
47. Tee it high and she will bloom, but she's no English rose: Driving Miss Daisy 
48. 23.5 miles to bring Frank and us together: The French Connection 
49. Rented bacon: Hamlet 
50. Painful storage: The Hurt Locker 
51. Knight of the Crop Landings: Lord of the Rings 
52. He's here all year long - winter spring summer or fall: A Man for all Seasons 
53. On the cusp of tomorrow the Indian's foe arrives: Midnight Cowboy 
54. The wife doesn't believe it was arson: Mrs Doubtfire 
55. Stateless for geriatric dudes: No Country For Old Men 
56. Swiss elevators rock from side to side: Schindler's List 
57. Amorous Bard: Shakespeare in Love 
58. Friendly Party Animal connects over WiFi: The Social Network 
59. A Creepy crawly male friend ....... as well: Spiderman 2 
60. It's a contracted affection ... even fondness: Terms of Endearment 
61. A prostitute's target meets the bootmaker: Tom Jones 
62. Read the book on Ali G's home turf: West Side Story 
63. Addition for those that enjoy the sun on the back: Some Like It Hot 
64. Route to Hades: Road to Perdition 
65. Uncle's son is related to Mr Jones ... : My Cousin Vinny 
66. Insurrection for coconut candy: Mutiny on the Bounty 
67. William II brings a regal finality north of Hadrian's Wall: The Last King of Scotland

Just when I was beginning to despair of fine food in literature from Northern Europe, I come across Bernhard Schlink's Self's Deception, in which an ex-Nazi public prosecutor-turned-private-eye likes to devour delicacies in the midst of antagonising his girlfriend and making enemies of various other folks. Gerhard Self lives in Mannheim, and he wants to have a spot of breakfast.

The name of Zinaida Serebryakova (née Lanceray, also spelt Lansere) (1884 - 1967) is widely known among lovers of art world-wide. Her works are found in many countries, most often in the collections of Russian emigres of the first wave. Still, in the Ukraine, her fame is insufficient, and true glory is still in the future.

At the dressing table. Self-portrait. 1909.

The explanation for this lacuna lies in the tragedy of the history of the twentieth century, when 'aristocratic' art was aggressively replaced by the 'proletarian', with the ensuing triumph of the so-called 'socialist realism' over the Miriskusniki. The example of Serebryakova confirms this harsh rule. After her departure to Paris, numerous fans and collectors undoubtedly recalled the creator of the paintings 'At the dressing table', 'Bath house', 'Harvest', 'Bleaching the cloth', all lovely representations of women. Still, until her solo exhibition in 1965 in her homeland, her works were for several decades hidden in private collections, her name mentioned only in an undertone.

The efforts of the artist's children and the Leningrad-based art expert V P Knyazev resulted in the Commemorative Exhibitions in 1965, held in Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev. These presented to the Russian and Ukrainian art world a true picture of Serebryakova's life and accomplishments.

In 1965, the eighty year-old artist fulfilled a long-held dream - she travelled from Paris to Moscow for the opening of her exhibition, held for the first time in the USSR. That was when her name resounded in full force throughout the motherland. In Paris, she had often thought back fondly to her native Kharkov, but even though she was able to make it to Moscow, her childhood places remained an unfulfilled memory. She had less than two years more to live. But we have the fortune of being able to look to the focus of her memories where were born the best of her paintings.

Fields at Neskuchnoye. 1916.

The Lansere family estate 'Neskuchnoye' (Fun) lay 30 miles from Kharkov; three miles beyond this was the village named 'Merry'. Both these placenames express precisely the nature of the historic region at a time when there were noisy fairs, thunderously loud weddings, gambols and promenades. In the early years of the 20th century, villagers from these estates would head off to Kharkov for trade and return after dusk. In those days, against the background of peasant huts stood the Lansere family estate, all columns and orchards, situated near the swift flowing rivulet 'Muromka', and the family chapel where the artist's father, the famous Russian sculptor E. A. Lansere lay buried. He had succumbed to consumption aged forty, when Zinaida was not even two years old.

Zinaida owed her own artistic development to her maternal uncle, Alexandre Benois, and her elder brother, Eugene Lansere, both outstanding figures of Russian art, founders of the Benois-Lansere school from which emerged an entire galaxy of famous artists and architects. Both the estate and the chapel are attributed to a Lansere, although exactly which from that talented family was responsible is still unclear.

Winter Landscape. Village Neskuchnoye. 1910.

In 1886, Zinaida's widowed mother took her six children to her paternal home in St Petersburg. The atmosphere in the Benois family was special, dominated by the worship of classical art and spiritual interest. Zinaida's grandfather, Nikolai Leontyevich Benois, was a living encyclopedia of art. His tales of his travels in Italy, of antiquity and the Renaissance, and frequent visits to the theatre and the Hermitage as well as exposure to the books in her family's extensive library revealed a world of beauty to Zinaida. All members of her family were constantly engaged in creative work; Zinaida as well began to passionately engage with art.

During Zinaida's youth appeared the creative movement known as 'World of Art' (1898) (Mir Iskusstva), pioneered by her uncle Alexandre Benois and his friends, L. Bakst, K. Somov, S. P. Diaghilev and others. The associated exhibitions became an automatic part of her life. In 1911, the association was newly restored and Zinaida herself became a member, to promote the revival of the traditional artistic heritage. During that decade, there was much emphasis on the classical heritage, and many related magazines were published, such as 'Old Times' and 'Apollo.' A great investigation of the legacy of the past was being undertaken, seeking to find aesthetic, artistic and moral values from which contemporary culture could draw inspiration. Many of the articles bewailed the wait for artistic greatness in Russia as it revived itself spiritually. The humanist ideals of the new art were being defined, and the heroic image of the world was sought in the celebration of beauty, goodness and joy. These were the sentiments that surrounded the budding artist.

While her talent had been kindled in her family homestead, it was in St Petersburg that Zinaida's artistic identity was fully formed. Immersed in the cauldron of contemporary Russia, she personally knew many prominent  litterateurs and artists from home and Europe. If only she had taken up the pen along with the brush! We would then have had literary portraits of those greats: A. Benois, E. Lansere, K. Somov, Anna Akhmatova, Y. Annenkov, Sergei Prokofiev. It was in 1917 that Zinaida's friend, the critic S. Ernst began writing the first  monograph on her work.

From that time on, Zinaida's life would become a chiaroscuro of bright moments and dark bitterness.

Since 1898, scarcely a summer had passed without Zinaida repairing to her ancestral home to spend time with her extended Benois-Lansere clan, happily tearing herself away from gloomy St Petersburg. Not far from the Lansere estate, on the other bank of the Muromka, was the cottage of the Serebryakovs.

Boris Serebryakov. 1908.

Boris Anatolyevich Serebryakov was a cousin of Zinaida's, his mother being her father's sister. Zinaida and Boris had been brought up together since childhood. Now they fell in love with each other, and the family approved. The difficulty was that the Russian Church disapproved of marriages of close relatives. Additionally, while Zinaida was Catholic, Boris was Orthodox. After many appeals to the spiritual authorities in Belgorod and Kharkov, the couple finally got married on September 9, 1905. Zinaida engaged herself enthusiastically in painting while Boris studied to become a railway engineer, and both made the most optimistic plans for the future.

Boris was a thoughtful, progressive and resolute man. During the first Russian revolution, he was present at meetings in St. Petersburg, supporting the farmers' demand to own land. Even as a student at the St Petersburg Institute for Railway Engineering, he dreamed of working in Siberia. This drive to the far lands and new activity so filled with risk was shared with Zinaida. In the midst of the Russo-Japanese war, Boris chose to work in Manchuria, and to the dismay of his loved ones, ended up in Liaoyang when the Russian army suffered a crushing defeat there.

After their wedding, the couple visited Paris. During the trip, each had their own special plans. Zinaida visited the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, where she painted from nature, while Boris joined the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées as a surveyor.

Autumn Greenery. 1908.

After a year of new experiences, the couple returned home. Zinaida was hard at work in her ancestral home - creating studies, portraits and landscapes. Boris, as a skillful and devoted esquire, planted apple orchards, kept a keen eye on his land and crops, and became an enthusiastic photographer. Both husband and wife were like-minded, deeply in love and yet realistic in their vocations, be they artistic or technical. Boris and Zinaida were in temperament very different people, but these differences supplemented and unified them. And when they were apart, which happened often, Zinaida's mood was ruined and she lost her focus on her work. From August 1914, Boris was Head Surveyor in the construction of the railroad from Irkutsk to Bodaibo; later, up to 1919, he was involved in the Ufa-Orenburg line. Still, the happy couple had four children, two sons and two daughters, all of whom subsequently linked their lives to the creative arts, becoming architects, artists, interior decorators.

Farmers. 1914.

Sorrow erupted during the Civil War. On the way to Kharkov in a military carriage, Boris contracted typhus and died of heart failure. The war and her own personal tragedy forced Zinaida to leave Russia for the land of her early ancestors, France. In a letter to a friend, Zinaida, usually so reticent in matters of the emotions, wrote on February 28, 1922: 'I have always thought that to be loved and to be in love - that is happiness. I was always in a trance, unnoticing of life around me, and I was happy, although even then I knew sorrow and tears ... It is so sad to realize that that life is over, that that time has run out, and nothing more than loneliness, old age and misery lie ahead, while my heart is still so full of tenderness and feeling.' And in 1952, Zinaida wrote from Paris to her daughter Tatyana in Moscow: 'You won't believe that more than a quarter century has gone by without him!' All these years she lived continually thinking of her husband, silently seeking his advice on matters of importance. Four paintings of Boris by Zinaida remain in the collections of Tatyana and Eugene Serebryakov, in the Tretyakov Art Gallery, and in the Novosibirsk Picture Gallery.

Harvest. 1915.

But let us return to oeuvre of this wonderful painter.

Starting in 1899, Serebryakova spent nearly every spring and summer at her ancestral homestead. The labour of young peasant girls in the fields grabbed her attention. Her interest became concrete in 1906 after her return from Paris. Although 1915 (the year she painted her famous work 'Farmers in the fields') was still long in the future, studies and portraits of peasant men and women filled up her albums.

The seventh exhibition of Russian artists in Moscow in 1910, brought fame to Zinaida. In the Tretyakov Art Gallery were exhibited her self-portrait 'At the dressing table' as well as the gouache 'Autumn Greenery', which had been finished at her estate. The perfection of technique, the freshness of colour, and the cleanliness of the tones - these for the first time drew attention to her landscapes. Human figures and buildings were included in the artistic composition as an element of spatial organisation. In the landscape 'Autumn Greenery' (which could also be called 'Windmills') they attract attention and become the centre of the image. Zinaida was very fond of this angle. Windmills reminded her of her beloved Don Quixote, serving as a symbol of life itself, which is driven by the wind just like the mill's wings, never stopping for a moment, grinding like grains the fates of men. (However, even her windmills hardly proved eternal. The last ones disappeared at the end of the 1930s.)

Zinaida's 'Harvest' became a classic. It is impossible not to admire the mastery of her composition, the purity and sonority of her palette.

The bather. 1911.

On the Muromka, she painted her sister Ekaterina for 'The bather'. Here in the valley was a small yet important field of hemp: from its seeds, her peasants pressed oil, and from its fibre they wove cloth. Here Zinaida accumulated her observations for the painting 'Bleaching the cloth' (1917). In the Muromka in 1914, a peasant girl named Polya Molchanova drowned; she had served as a model for the portrait 'Polya' and also in an étude for the 'Harvest'. (The Muromka no longer exists - it has dried up, covered with grass. It is just about possible to discern traces of its overgrown bed.)

Her finest works, such as 'At the dressing table', 'Bath house', 'Harvest', 'Bleaching the cloth', were all done at her estate. With pencil and brush, she recreated the unique Serebryakov landscape of Kharkov. During the Revolution and the ensuing Civil War, the house and studio of the artist were burned by gangs of anarchists (to the great grief of the local peasants, who had held the family Lansere in high regard). During World War II, invaders destroyed the family chapel as well. The graves of Zinaida's family didn't survive either. Today only the Serebryakov landscapes remain to give an idea of how the village once looked.

Bath house, 1913.

The October Revolution found Zinaida in Kharkov. She worked at the newly established Archaeological Museum at the Kharkov University. In the autumn of 1920, she received offers to transfer to the Petrograd Department of Museums, or to take up a professorship at the Academy of Art. Not only did she receive papers to return to Petrograd, but also passes for free travel for her entire family. By December 1920, Zinaida was already in Petrograd. She decided not to participate in the museum or teaching activities, preferring to work in a studio.

Undeniably, Zinaida could have become a master of Soviet art. But being modest and shy, and critically attached to her own oeuvre, in the 1920s, Serebryakova did not take up tasks such as the design of campaign posters or the decoration of public buildings or revolutionary celebrations. During these years, she was busy painting portraits, landscapes of Tsarskoye Selo, and interiors of palaces. To her great joy, Zinaida was given permission to be behind the scenes during performances at the Mariinisky Theatre. Her interaction with the dancers over three years is reflected in her amazing series of ballet portraits and compositions.

In the early post-Revolutionary years, a lively culture of exhibitions began in the country. Zinaida participated in several exhibitions in Petrograd. In 1924, she promoted a large exhibition of Russian fine art in America, which was set up for the purpose of financial support to painters. Of Zinaida's fourteen paintings, two were sold immediately. Burdened with taking care of her family (four children and her mother) she used the money to travel abroad with a view to promoting further exhibitions and to obtain commissions. In early September 1924, Serebryakova went to Paris.

Bleaching the Cloth. 1917.

As fate would have it, Zinaida was to spend the major part of her life in France. For many years, she didn't have a studio, and her earnings were miserly. Many of her creative ideas could not be implemented owing to lack of funds. She led a closed life in Paris, socialising only with Russians. Brighter periods in her life were associated with Zinaida's travels with her daughter to Brittany, to the south of France or Switzerland. In 1926, she began a series of portraits of local Breton fishermen and farmers. In 1928 and 1932, she was able to work in Morocco. In the 1920s and 1930s, she was celebrated in Paris among the advocates of realist art. Of her was said that Serebryakova is an outstanding master of European values. However, her voice as a painter in the realist mode was drowning in the contemporary vogue for abstract art and modernist masterpieces.

Portrait of E.I. Finogenova. 1920.

In the middle of the 1930s, Zinaida attempted to return to the USSR. But protracted commissions in Belgium delayed her, following which World War II intervened. After the war, she was invited back to Russia by the Soviet Academy of Arts, urged by her children and notable artists such as D. A. Shmarinov and S. V. Gerasimov. However, old age and illness prevented her from travelling. Then, the Soviets decided to hold a large commemorative exhibition of Zinaida's art. And so she managed to return to her motherland for the last time.

Time flies and takes away the generation that was captured in Serebryakova's études and portraits. Until recently, many of those painted by Zinaida in Kharkov during the Civil War and who worked at the Archaeological museum of the university. In those days when her husband suddenly succumbed to the typhus, leaving her to take care of her four children and mother, those friends had rallied around her in her sorrow. Among them were G. I. Teslenko and E. I. Finogenova, whose visages were immortalised by the artist's brush. Among the many portraits of beautiful Kharkov women, there are two of Lena Nikolskaya who in 1920 was a researcher at the Archaeological museum. The first impression when comparing portrait with photograph is that Serebryakova embellished her model: enlarged pupils, elongated eyebrows, exaggerated tone. But such is the method of the artist. Delicately having observed the subject's personality, she sharpens them to bring them to the aesthetically appropriate limits. And so Serebryakova's portraits of women are considered the embodiment of a harmonic beginning, of the primordial female essence.

[Loosely translated from Zinaida Serebryakova, based on notes from a book by V. D. Berlin (2004).]

Clearly the muscle memory involved in cycling has little to do with ice-skating. The boy, you understand, is an expert cyclist. So is his father. Ice-skating, we found, is another thing entirely. 

We took the boy the other day to the Tower of London where part of the moat has been converted to an open-air skating rink. For the princely sum of £12.50 each, we managed to get an hour's worth of skating practice. The boy fell more times than he stayed up. Throughout, he remained cheerful. Inordinately wet, but cheerful.

This is nothing like the rink in Kuwait, moaned the wife. Why is there so much water on the ice? She had been dragged into the cold water when the boy fell for the fifth time. While she was back on her feet in a fraction of a second, he was content to flap about like a beached walrus. Then he flailed his legs and caused nearby learners to shy away and fall as well. 

'Stand up!' I roared. 

'I am trying!' he roared back.

He flailed some more and amputated the feet of some skatersby.

Presently we were following the rest of the learners who, like lemmings, were moving in the same direction. Anticlockwise we shuffled, good Borg that we were. The experts whizzed about expertly around us, executing stylish flourishes and curtsies. Occasionally the wife would nip away ('I learned to skate,' she said, 'in Kuwait.' She likes to talk in rhymes.) When she got back to join us, the boy would screech, 'Amma!' and fall again.

In the last ten minutes of the allotted hour, the boy managed to make small shuffling steps on the ice. 'Success!' he announced. 

Now it was my turn to shine. I shimmered off into the centre of the rink to practice my balance. A mother and daughter pair, holding hands and keeping each other aloft, suddenly materialised in front of me. I couldn't brake in time. 'Excuse me!' I yelled. They reared up like startled rhinos. Aghast, they watched me looming ever closer, my arms askance, my feet proceeding in different directions. A desperate manoeuvre caused me to spin 180 degrees. My left foot shot up and my right hand scraped painfully against the ice. A second before I was going to plough the rink with my nose,  I righted myself, scarcely an inch away from the mother's face. It was a dance move Flawless would have approved.

'Wow,' the mother breathed. 

'Minty,' I thought.

'Impressive,' she said, clutching at her equally frightened daughter.

Self-deprecating as ever, I staggered off.

Santa brought a Playstation Move for the boy. While he had expected a Wii or an Xbox Kinect (having written a small note to Santa requesting either device), the fellow was quite pleased. He spent six hours whacking demons and skeletons on a medieval quest to obtain a jewel. Every time he was stymied, he'd yell at me. "It's because you're not telling me what to do!"

"Shield, shield!" I would shout. "Arrows! Shield, shield!"

"Don't shout at me!" the boy would yell back.

"Don't shout at the boy," the wife would say.

"I'm telling him what to do," I would say.

"Let him figure it out," the wife would say. 

Flying crosses would fly at Deadmund and he would sag and grunt with every impact. 

"I'm running out of life," the boy would say. "Help me, acha!"

"Shield, shield!" I would shout. "Arrows! Shield, shield!"

"Don't shout at me!" the boy would yell back.

"Don't shout at the boy," the wife would say.

Et cetera ad eternam.

And again, instead of going to the gym, I go on a random walk around my part of London. I walk briskly, honest. I cover about 3 miles in 45 minutes, burn 320 calories, and see some sights and witness some events and overhear some chats. And read some petitions and speak some French.

The initial and fastest leg is from Bank over Southwark Bridge to Borough High Street. I nip past Borough Market, observing the long queues at Neal’s Yard Dairy (a fine British cheesemonger). Desperate Christmas shoppers throng the place. Some of my colleagues have recently received boxes of Neal’s Yard cheeses from their brokers and I am delighted to see that such specialties as Appleby’s Cheshire and Sparkenhoe Red Leicester have pride of place on Neal’s Yard’s shelves. I haven’t had either cheese but I intend to as soon as I have this cholesterol thing beat, and shall report at length. 2012, here I come.

There are even longer queues at local pubs. What’s with people drinking at 3pm, I ask you?

At 67 Borough High Street, I see a lovely red building on which appears the following legend: W H & H Le May Hop Factors. Surely that’s worth a brief investigation? Yes, it is.

[Sketch by Amy Walters.]

 [The George Inn by Nick Garrod, on Flickr]

A little further along and a quick left onto Talbot Yard reveals a non-descript office building on which appears a plaque. Here stood Chaucer’s Tabard Inn, from where the pilgrims set off on their grand trip to Canterbury. Just like the George, it had burned down in the 17th century and was reconstructed; unlike the George, it didn’t survive the Industrial revolution, and exists only in literary memory. Luckily, we have engravings of it from the 180o’s when it looked a bit like this:

[The Tabard Inn, c. 1850. Wikimedia Commons]

I retrace my steps to Borough High Street and shift left on Newcomen Street. I hope there might be a plaque or some memorial or the other to the only Newcomen I’ve heard of, who invented the steam-powered pump and inspired James Watt’s steam engine. But he was a Devon man, and I am not sure if he had much to do in London.

Like many of the side-streets in Southwark, this street too used to be coaching inn yard (once called Axe Yard). In the 17th century, it came to be owned by two charities. One building bears the name of one of the charities – John Marshall’s. The street, however, is named after the other – Mrs Newcomen’s. She owned three messuages – ha! I learn a new word – one of which was in Axe Yard, and she bequeathed them upon her death in 1675 for "the clothing of poor boys and girls with a suit of linen and woollen once a year, whereof two-thirds . . . [were to] be out of the Borough side, and the other third . . . out of the Clink Liberty . . . and for . . . teaching them to read and write and cast accounts, and for . . . putting forth boys apprentice at 5l a piece, at their age of 14 years." (Quote from here.)

As I continue along Newcomen street – not the prettiest street in Southwark, admittedly – I note signs everywhere of King’s College and Guy’s Hospital. Every time I look up, I see the immense Shard. It looms over the entire borough. Guy’s Hospital is so much more to human scale. There is a courtyard with an arch. It is another memorial to the fallen soldiers of the Great War.

 

[John Keats at Guy’s Hospital, by Mike Paterson]

Beyond is a colonnade separating two inner courtyards. In one of them stands Lord Nuffield, a benefactor of the hospital, and in the other is a seated John Keats, a bronze-work by Stuart Williamson inaugurated in 2007. The great poet had trained as a surgeon in the hospital, and quit, undone by the gruesomeness. As far as I can tell, the only bit of medicine that ever appeared in his poetry are these lines from Ode to Fanny:

Physician Nature! Let my spirit blood! 
O ease my heart of verse and let me rest; 
Throw me upon thy Tripod, till the flood 
Of stifling numbers ebbs from my full breast.

Say what? Before I can react, they disappear into a side street. Scratching my head, I continue along St Thomas’s Street till I get to Crucifix Lane. I see a sign for the Fashion and Textile Museum. There’s no time to take a gander at that; I turn towards the Shard. Construction all around has wrecked views and entrances and my neck hurts from craning. I see BVAG petitioning against the demolition of Southwark’s heritage (London Bridge is the first city-centre railway terminus, it thunders, it should not be treated so shoddily; prevent the demolition of prime Victorian-age train sheds), and I see an interesting art gallery. It is called the Underdog Art Company, exhibits graphic art and has live music shows, and I’m afraid I have no time for that either.

[Silk Screen Print by Tony Lee at Underground Art Co. Image by Shuby, on Flickr.]

I am accosted by a couple of young women. ‘Excuse me, sir,’ says one. ‘The Underground?’ She has a strong French accent, and waggles her fingers down. West African, I surmise, so in my best French I respond, ‘Suivez la rue 300 mètres et tournez à droite.’ They grin at me happily. ‘D’accord!’ says the other woman, and giggling at my accent (I hope) they head away.

I took the boy to the office on Friday. He was excited, although not quite as much as some of my colleagues. They'd heard of his wisecracks and were looking forward to meeting him in person. 

'How do we keep him entertained?' asked Frei.

'Shall we show him the table football?' said Pitt.

'No,' said Parker. 'That will give him the wrong impression of what goes on in the office.'

'You mean the right impression,' said Pitt, and everybody fell about laughing.

The boy was on his best behaviour. He shook hands very cordially with everybody and only confused the names of two people. He looked at my Bloomberg console and noticed that the Euro was falling in value against the dollar. He walked around the office and came back to sit at my desk.

'You can use this screen and I'll use this one,' he said generously to me.

We fought each other briefly for possession of the mouse.

Frei made a bet with the boy. 'Look,' he said, pointing at the intraday tick chart of Euro-dollar. 'One Euro is 1.3067 dollars. I'm going for lunch in fifteen minutes. Do you think this chart will be down or up at that time?'

'Down,' said the boy.

'Given how we've been doing so far, I wouldn't be surprised if the boy wins,' said Frei to me confidentially and laughed like a hyena.

Meanwhile, the boy had noticed the football table. It was surrounded by four eager men playing desperately for  victory. He waited patiently for them to finish, but they kept switching sides, playing game after game.

Adebayor noticed that the boy was looking at bit forlorn. He went into the football room and muttered something to the men. They looked at the boy sheepishly. They trooped out. 'We got carried away,' said one. 

'That's okay,' said the boy.

'I told them that your son was about to cry,' said Adebayor smugly. 'It always works.'

We went in and whacked the ball a few times. It rolled into the goals at random. The boy giggled happily.

When Frei was about to leave for lunch, we took a look at the currency chart again. The Euro chart had been dropping jaggedly all that time, but as we watched, it suddenly spiked up.

'Oh dear,' said Frei. '1.3077. I'm afraid you lost, mate.'

'That's okay,' said the boy.

We also went for lunch soon thereafter.

All right, all you cryptic clue lovers. Here's a Christmas quiz: each is a clue to an English film. Send me answers - if you like - at j o s t a m o n at h o t m a i l . c o m:

1. Am positive a lamb leg will make things loads better.
2. Jesus’s Granddad.
3. Mother Theresa, Hitler and John Merrick.
4. Jarvis Cocker isn’t real.
5. Batman sees no moon or stars.
6. Nice guys.
7. A white Spanish house.
8. Join for a barney.
9. They stole Noah’s sat nav.
10. Not this lot in the lineup again!
11. Rectangular numbers.
12. I can’t hear the baaas.
13. This helps a community member walk.
14. Keep Malibu and Santa Monica secret.
15. Canines playing in the water supply.
16. Return to tomorrow.
17. Wet karaoke.
18. Bannister was an environmentalist.
19. Contender, Are you ready?
20. Blindfolded and handcuffed underwater and got out, wow.
21. Expiring isn’t easy.
22. Lottery win for poor Lassie.
23. A regal roar.
24. An expensive offspring.
25. Blown away my dear.
26. There’s the 2184214 to Paddington.
27. It will have cost this toy boy at least £9k a year
28. Cloughie’s story.
29. Get me out of this womb or else!
30. I’m looking for one that leaves it all to me.
31. The story of Harry S.?
32. Filthy gyrating.
33. An expensive digit.
34. Don’t show him red…..too late.
35. I do, I do, I do, I do…..so sad.
36. The Queen’s one who needs treatment.
37. There’s at least a couple decent chaps.
38. Satan’s lawyer.
39. Don’t even have a hint.
40. Mind if I butt in young lady.
41. Insomnia in Washington.
42. It’s the end of the world.
43. The Kings Wife rules over dry lands.
44. Indian junior keeps it beating to stay alive.
45. He may be a predator but he's such a nice man.
46. They just upped and left.
47. Tee it high and she will bloom, but she's no English rose.
48. 23.5 miles to bring Frank and us together.
49. Rented bacon.
50. Painful storage.
51. Knight of the Crop Landings.
52. He's here all year long - winter spring summer or fall.
53. On the cusp of tomorrow the Indian's foe arrives.
54. The wife doesn't believe it was arson.
55. Stateless for geriatric dudes.
56. Swiss elevators rock from side to side.
57. Amorous Bard.
58. Friendly Party Animal connects over WiFi.
59. A Creepy crawly male friend ....... as well.
60. It a contracted affection ... even fondness.
61. A prostitutes target meets the bootmaker.
62. Read the book on Ali G's home turf.
63. Addition for those that enjoy the sun on the back.
64. Route to Hades.
65. Uncle's son is related to Mr Jones ....
66. Insurrection for coconut candy.
67. William II brings a regal finality north of Hadrians Wall.

When I arrive at Indar Pasricha Fine Arts on 12 December, I am met with some consternation. I have seen on their website that there is an exhibition of photographs of the grand Durbar of 1911. An Anglo-Irishwoman named Lilah Wingfield attended that imperial event, and recorded it in her diaries. Pictures from that time are on display until 17 December. But when I enter the gallery, they are still being put up, and Maggie, the enthusiastic arranger, is somewhat nonplussed. 

"The exhibition's being opened at 6pm," she says. "We are going to have drinks and canapes."

Still, she is very welcoming and invites me to look around. It takes me about fifteen minutes to cover the seventy-odd pictures that have been affixed on the walls. There are photos of Lilah's family, and her trip to India, and the Coronation maidan where the Indian nobility and the British ruling castes put up their shamianas, and the Grand Durbar itself, and commoners who came to see their Emperor, and other pictures of her travels around the country. Copies are available for sale at prices from £100 upwards, but the photos are somewhat blurred when viewed up close. They are an interesting relic and record of the time, however, and worth preserving.

Lilah Wingfield at Chandni Chowk, Delhi, 1911.

I notice copies of a book titled A Glimpse of Empire by Jessica Douglas-Home. It turns out that Jessica is Lilah Wingfield's granddaughter. She has recently recovered Lilah's diary and written the book based on its entries. I ask if I can buy a copy, and Maggie tells me that there is to be a book-signing after the opening. 

"Jessica is just powdering her nose," she says.

I am unable to stick around for the drinks. Maggie disappears to ask if Jessica can sign a book for me. When the author turns up presently, she asks where I am from. "Delhi," I say. "Oh," she says, "I just got back from there. The book was launched in Delhi."

She inscribes the book to the wife and dates it. "The Durbar was exactly a century ago," she says.

"I'm afraid I can't stay for the opening," I say. She is unperturbed by this revelation.


"I didn't know there was to be an opening and a book-launch," I continue. "The website just gave the dates of the exhibition."

She doesn't stick around after signing the book. A photograph falls off the wall and is hurriedly reattached. Maggie asks me to leave a note in the visitors' book. I scrawl some platitude or the other. Another couple enters and are greeted happily by Maggie. I say goodbye and leave.


Check these out:


1. Glimpse of Empire photographs page.
2. The photographs were on display in Delhi, as Jessica said. India Today carried an article on Lilah Wingfield.
3. And it appears I missed royalty at the opening of the exhibition. The Duke of Kent was there.

Even when the French try to use flexibility to nudge the other side to compromise, cultural misunderstandings can make the process difficult. Araud told the story of the torturous negotiations with an American counterpart in 1999 over new strategic rules for NATO. Araud took the position that the text had to specify that any military intervention should be in accordance with the UN Charter; the American diplomat rejected that condition. 

"What happens if you want to intervene and the Russians block it with a veto?" the American asked.   

"I intervene," Araud replied.  

"I don't understand," the American said. "You want us to say 'according to the UN Charter,' and you tell me that you're ready to violate the UN Charter?"  

"Wait a minute," Araud said. "When you marry, you say that you'll be faithful to your wife. After that, they there is real life."  

The American looked at him in horror.

"Obviously, we had a cultural misunderstanding," Araud later recalled. "I was trying to say that in life, you need principles. You do your best to stick to your principles, but it happens that you don't stick to your principles. But here, there was a cultural impasse. So I said to him, 'Okay, forget it! Forget it! Bad example!'" 

The story had a happy ending. "The matter was resolved by the two presidents, Jacques Chirac and Bill Clinton," said Araud. "They both knew a lot about marital fidelity."

The boy attended a birthday party on Sunday and returned with a helium balloon. As I put him in bed, he caught my face in his hands and brought his face close to mine. 'If you get scared at night,' he whispered, 'don't worry. I've put a present over your bed. It will keep you safe.'

The present was his balloon. It hovered over us bluely as we slept.

The night was riven by a 'thp, thp, thp' sound that then changed to a 'SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.'

We juddered awake, panicked, gasping.

The balloon had been sucked into the fan.

That was the end of that night's slumber.

[Before you ask why we have the fan on in winter, let me say two words: 'stuffy' and 'without'.

The boy was alternately mirthful and sympathetic when next morning we told him what had happened.]

There's a story about a Berliner who visits Vienna and loses his way to the railway station. He accosts a local and demands, "Which way to the station?" The Viennese is taken aback but replies politely, "Sir, wouldn't it have been nicer to say, 'Good evening. I would appreciate it if you would show me the way to the station.' ?"

The Berliner stares at the Viennese in disbelief, emits a 'Ha!' and stalks off.

A few months later, the Viennese man happens to be in Berlin, and, having lost his way, asks a local for directions. The Berliner responds with a rapid-fire, "Straight 100 metres, left, then right, proceed 200 metres, turn right again, then an immediate left, and 400 metres straight."

Completely bemused, the Viennese manages to stammer out a thanks.

"Never mind the thanks!" barks the Berliner. "Repeat the instructions!"

This story, admittedly, has less to do with giving directions than with cultural differences between Prussians and the Viennese. Still, it points to a social compact - a person who is lost expects to be guided to his destination.

I suspect this is a fairly recent development in human history. For long periods, most people tended to stay within a day's walk of their homes. They were intimately tied to the local landscape. When they had to go farther, they would likely make use of networks of contacts, stepping from cousin to friend to customer. In a new village, they might stop a stranger and say, 'Do you know the way to Gulbadan the perfumer's house?' and - because most people in a village knew each other - would be guided appropriately. 

The development of cities probably did little to stymie this network of connections, although perhaps the links became somewhat more tenuous. The problem was to locate a particular person because a random man on the street would be unlikely to be acquainted with them. This was when landmarks and specific locales became important. One would ask then, 'Do you know Gulbadan who lives by the Friday mosque?' or 'Which way to the Friday mosque?' and once there, ask more specific queries.

This is all speculation - I have not done any research into the matter at all. But as street maps and particular addresses are very recent, and - even where they exist, they are not always reliable - I guess that people still need others more than ever to give them directions. 

Culture affects even this relationship. I'm not talking about the gender stereotype of men not wanting to ask for directions at all. I refer rather to the deep reluctance of some peoples to appear unhelpful, who then offer wrong or misleading directions, because some directions are better than none. Not everyone is as militarily precise as the Berliner; luckily, not everyone is as vague as the fellow at my old alma mater who sent me on  a totally wild goose-chase because he either didn't want to appear ignorant, or wanted to appear helpful.

This was shortly after I first moved into the Indian Institute of Science, a rather sprawling campus with the various department buildings hidden helpfully behind dense vegetation. Seeking the swimming pool, I stopped to ask a student for directions. 

'Ah, yes,' he said, and looked around him in every direction. 'Go down this alley and turn right at the end. You'll pass the Physics department and the library. You then turn left, go through the lecture halls, and turn right. Clear?'

I nodded.

'Then ask somebody there,' he said, and walked away.

I thought even then that the instructions were hilarious. Still, given their precision, I thought it would be a small matter to locate the swimming pool once I passed the lecture halls. Unfortunately, though, the pool was nowhere near those halls. Worse, there was nobody around to ask either. In my four years at the campus, I never ceased to marvel at the ridiculous precision and complete wrongheadedness of that student's directions. 

I never learned to swim either, but that's another story.