…….. “Sorry Mo! Needs must! Now, where was I?”

“In the Brighton Dome! Hasn’t it been an entertainment venue for a couple of hundred years?”

“Yes, amazing really. Seemingly the Prince of Wales, later King George IV, wanted a bigger and better stable block for his horses and commissioned the building of the Brighton Dome. It took five years and £54,000, a small fortune by the time it was finished in 1808. Over its lifetime it’s been riding stables, a place of protest and solidarity for the Suffragettes, a World War One dance hall, a temporary hospital in World War Two and even a roller skating rink. Today, inter alia, it’s the organisational hub of the annual Brighton Festival in May.”

“Great place to have in the city, especially with that history! What else’s being going on?”

                    “I know you read most of my scribbles so you may recall in PC 328, ‘Random, Fate and Consequences’, I wrote that ‘He who hesitates is lost’ is one of the Christian Proverbs – Proverbs 3 Verse 2.’.”

                    “Yeah, I really enjoyed that PC and have thought about buying one of those Ottolenghi pieces of pottery.”

                    “Celina and I have kept in touch with a Dianne & Tim Tinnes from San Francisco, with whom we shared canoes during our Pantanal trip in 2014 (See PC 20). Tim reads my postcards and occasionally comments. He couldn’t find Proverbs 3 and additionally asked: “Why say Christian when there is no Christian ie New Testament bible book called Proverbs!” I live and learn!

Off to find a sandbank to have breakfast on, in the River Negro

Firstly in my mind I think of the Bible as a complete book, both Old (OT) and New Testaments ….. but now see the error of my labelling, as the New Testament is the only Christian part. I live and learn! I told him I had Googled ‘He who hesitates ……’, got Proverbs 3/2 and assumed it referred to the Book of Proverbs in the OT. This morning I lifted one of my physical books of reference, The Dictionary of Quotations and Proverbs, off the shelf and looked up ‘He who hesitates …..’.  No ‘proverb’ exists!”

“Oooh!” says Mo, “that’s going to be on my ‘To Do’ list this week, to find out more.”

Out of the corner of my eye I notice Sami coming through the door, and lift my arm in recognition. He comes over and I introduce him to Mo.

“Where’s Lisa this week Sami?’

“Ah! She gone back to Derbyshire for a few days; think she had an important assignment to complete and she didn’t need me as a distraction! I read your postcard about the Year of the Rabbit (PC 331) and that encouraged me to watch David Attenborough’s Wild Isles programme, but I’ve only seen the first two episodes.”

“So you haven’t seen what I call ‘The Trojan Horse’ episode?”

“Not yet! Tell me …..”says Sami and Mo cries: “Yes please!”

“An absolutely fascinating story concerning the early life of the Large Blue butterfly. It became extinct in Britain in 1979, largely as a result of the huge decrease in the rabbit population due to Myxomatosis which changed its habitat; a great example of the co-dependences across the natural world. Now through careful land management it’s making a comeback. I am no lepidopterist but this tale could easily have been the instigator for the Wooden Horse at the gates of Troy! Let me explain.

The eggs of the Large Blue are often laid on plants such as Wild Thyme and fall down to soil level as they develop into little caterpillars. Along comes the Red Ant, which just loves eating caterpillars; in the TV series this needs some very dramatic background music!! Knowledge is key and the Large Blue caterpillar secretes some honey dew onto its back, inflates its body and as the air escapes, the sound is like the distress call of a Queen Red ant. The Red worker ant instinctively pulls the caterpillar into the safety of its nest (cf The Trojan Horse?) where, over a six month period, the caterpillar eats all the ant larvae and grows to be one hundred times its original size!

The butterfly emerges ….

The larva develops into a chrysalis from whence eventually the Large Blue butterfly emerges. Wildlife programmes rely on great photography and patience, a good commentary and appropriate music. Turn off the audio and you might imagine you are watching something very different. However in this particular case, just so believable and utterly Trojan Horse-ish!”

“That is unbelievable! Good old Mother Nature. By the way” says Sami “have you been to The Salt Room on Kingsway? Lisa and I are thinking of going but it’s got mixed reviews.”

“That’s always the case; everyone’s expectations are different, don’t you think? Funnily enough I went on a Sunday evening a couple of weeks ago, as a guest of someone who had been to the Goodwood Revival.”

“And was it good?”

“Well, one starter caught my eye: ‘Wild Argentinian Red Prawns – cooked over coal, with Pil Pil sauce and Chive Oil (Price per prawn £3!)’.  Being a guest I got a bit stuck when the waiter asked: ‘How many would you like, sir?’ I had no idea what size an Argentinian Red Prawn was, so was 2 too much or should I ask for 3 or 4? Decided to play safe and instead ordered the ‘coal-roasted scallops with chorizo crumb, coral beurre blanc and purple basil’, which were delicious.

The uncertainty about the number of prawns reminded me of going to a fish restaurant in Tavistock Street, just up from The Strand in central London. I ordered ‘Grilled Sardines on a bed of blah blah’. When my plate arrived I was slightly surprised to find ONE, just effing ONE.’ (note 1)”

Mo and Sami laughed out loud and we settled in for more inconsequential chat …… until Libby came over and suggested we play our part in reducing the loneliness of others!

Richard 5^th May 2023

Hove

www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

PS In some television programme that was inadvertently on one evening, an English woman was trying to identify Romania. “It’s near Turkey inn’t? No! No! That’s not right; Turkey’s in Africa.” God help us all!

Note 1 I wrote and complained …. and got a free meal a month later!

I managed to drop into The Hope last Thursday. Thursdays are ‘Talking Days’ and I met Susie’s aunt Libby who has volunteered to help those who want to chat and relax, to make them feel welcome. Interestingly, the word’s got around and there’s quite a gathering, Libby encouraging individuals to sit here or there and organising drinks. Susie says she’s off on her late, late Gap Year in a week and that Libby will stand in for her.

“Where are you off to first?” I asked.

“Well I thought I would head for the south of South Island New Zealand, say Dunedin, work my way up the island, across Cook’s Strait and all the way to Cape Reinga on the northern tip.

Then across the Tasman Sea to Australia; maybe go to Tasmania first then back across the Bass Straits to Melbourne. If I can get eventually to Perth I will have fulfilled a long standing dream, to visit some of the places that have inspired the Australian writer Tim Winton’s stories.

“Oh! I love him! Which ones? ‘Cloud Street’ or ‘Dirt Music’ perhaps?”

“Got hooked reading Cloud Street, all those lovely characterisations and then ‘Breath’ and ……”

“If you need any contacts in NZ let me know as I have lots of second and third cousins all over the place! And do try and get to Tasmania, just stunning! Now, I need to have a word with Mo, so could you get me a double espresso and bring it over please?”

Mo has been reading some of my past posts and mentioned ‘No Buts no Butts’ (PC 234 June 2021) as she’d recently seen that New Zealand is implementing a law which means if you were born after January 1^st 2009 you will be unable to buy cigarettes legally.

“Great!” she exclaimed. “I hope the politicians here do the same thing.”

“Sadly I read they are not going to! Sixteen years ago the UK government banned smoking in public places, despite vested interests saying it was unworkable and civil liberties groups complaining it was an attack on free choice. Yet today the ban can be counted as one of the most successful public health interventions in British history. But the UK government has ducked the issue this time, falling back on their belief that raising the legal age so that the habit would quite literally die out gradually was ‘too big a departure from the policy of helping people to quit rather than banning adults from buying cigarettes.’ So smokers, whose habit costs the NHS billions of pounds in associated health issues, will die needlessly.”  

I looked around at the tables in the Hope, all full of people chatting, and smiling, and laughing, and listening to the others at their table.

“This looks a very successful way to reduce the undoubted impact of loneliness on those living alone”

“It’s simple yet so effective; I can see Libby’s in her element. Maybe I’ll bring my mother one Thursday. She says she isn’t lonely but I think she would have great fun!”

I had talked to Mo about the Couples Therapy programme and how interesting we had found it (see PC 326 March 2023).

“We finished the third series last week and I was pleased to hear from India and Dale how helpful their sessions with Orna had been. You remember I had been interested in their belief that they carried generational trauma. Dale had said: “I think as Afro-Americans we come into relationships with a lot of trauma that we are not necessarily willing to acknowledge, ready to accept, and there has to be a lot of soul/self-searching in order to understand how real life affects your relationship.”

They now acknowledged that within the safe environment of the sessions, they had realised a few things. “Just seeing our parents, grandparents and uncles blaming others, made us realise we don’t want to be part of that cycle, blaming others. They seem to want to escape from the lineage of our family, but I don’t want to escape, don’t want to run; I just want to accept it.”

“Orna’s clinical support group had asked whether the question of her skin colour had arisen. So she asked India and Dale whether they had initially wanted a ‘therapist of colour’. India said they were adamant they had, but realise now the benefits of being challenged by someone not of colour.”

”A complicated topic! Relationships are about the two individuals in the real-life story, not some fantasy, not influenced by baggage that may have been carried down the generations and not, as Dale agreed, by what my grandparents did!”

I told Mo that we had gone to a classical music concert in The Brighton Dome on April Fools’ Day, to listen to a professional performance of Sibelius’s 2^nd Symphony, some sixty years after I had played in the school’s orchestra’s amateur rendition of it in the End-of-Term concert (See PC 109 That Reminds Me (1) November 2017).

“How was it, hearing it played well?”

“Actually I have heard in played a number of times before, although I never tire of its opening and the finale, when trumpets make a grand entrance. Goose pimples and all that! Andrew Mellor, writing the programme notes, says: ‘…. the Symphony slips inevitably into its final movement and the mustering of a heroic, striving tune soaked in optimism and renewal in its journey from a cautious harmonisation to a brilliantly confident one. The tune, again born of those upwardly-stepping notes, lightens the dark shadows of the troubling Elli Järnefelt theme to suggest the blossoming of life anew, in all its richness and colour.’ Not sure I could have described it like this but hey! Ho! I am not a music critic!”

“So a good evening?”

“Absolutely! Although why is it men don’t dry clean their jackets or overcoats? Before the performance started a chap sat down in a nearby seat and we were assailed by this awful smell of damp, musty material, almost stale BO. It probably went straight back into the wardrobe when he got home!

Sorry Mo, must just pop to the loo; back in a second.”

(to be continued)

Richard 28^th April 2023

Hove

http://www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

(See also PC 172 (March 2020) and PC 217 ‘My Week’ (February 2021) with its recognition of Hugo Rifkin’s genius)

Christians have recently celebrated the moveable festival of Easter. My thoughts about Easter were brought together in PC 64 (March 2016) and the defining memory of my taking part in the Devizes to Westminster Canoe Race, 125 miles from Wiltshire to the capital city, along canals, some dry and others filled with water, and the River Thames. This year someone wished us ‘Happy Easter’ with this delightful little collection of yoga poses:

Francisquinha has her own favourite posture, half locust …..

The Chinese New Year, which started on 22^nd January and ends on 9^th February 2024 (!), welcomed in the year of the Rabbit, traditionally one of the luckiest. If you were born in a Year of The Rabbit you are likely to be quiet, elegant, kind and responsible (Note 1).

The zodiac signs are popular in neighbouring Korea and the rabbit is the guardian of the moon in their folklore. It’s believed rabbits make rice cakes using a pestle and mortar; this has not been verified. Winnie and Richard wished us Happy Easter with San Kim’s photograph of this Cumulus rabbit over the island of Joong-do; San is a member of the Cloud Appreciation Society (Note 2)

The new series of David Attenborough’s nature programmes features the British Isles; ‘Wild Isles’ as it’s called. Featuring my homeland has simply more meaning in its revelations of the treasures beneath my feet than some of his programmes, all undoubtedly wonderful, despite the breathless commentary. Did you know for instance that the red ant obtains protein from an Aphid or that the Ash Black slug mates by wrapping its penis around another slug? The 30cm long slug is a hermaphrodite, so wraps itself (herself? himself? non-binary?) and its penis around another slug (and penis) until the twisting penises are 30 cms long, sperm is exchanged and both penises drop off. Not sure I can add anything to this, apart from a photograph:

One episode in Wild Isles features grasslands and the animals that live in them such as voles, hares and rabbits. Watching any animal is vaguely interesting but it seems that programme makers are always looking for the individual Mating Displays, like the slugs above, as these are often colourful if ritualistic. A male rabbit featured for some minutes of this programme and I am not sure I should share the details with Francisquinha. The first part involves the buck rubbing ‘a cocktail of pheromones’ from a gland under its chin across the fur of the female.

Just for clarity, a pheromone is a secreted or excreted chemical factor which triggers a social response in members of the same species. In us humans, they are actively involved in sexual attraction, for instance stimulating arousal, desire, lust or even fertility.   

The second part of the mating ritual is weird; the buck urinates over the female.  I thought this was only practised by those humans who do deviant sexual stuff behind closed doors, but to see the rabbits, plural as it seems other bucks join in, spraying their urine liberally over a female makes me wonder. Francisquinha tells me her favourite drink is Buck’s Fizz but maybe now I am confused.

The rabbit is fair game for owls and other birds of prey when they are out and about but protected once down their burrows … unless the local fox sees them as they simply follow the rabbit down. What’s that expression, ‘dog eat dog’? In nature the food chain is clear!

If you have read PCs 172 and 217 (odd they both have the same numbers, just a different order!) you will know that Francisquinha is a stuffed rabbit who serves a multitude of purposes in our home. She is, of course, someone to blame for a misdemeanour! For example, Celina’s father was very particular about who could load the dishwasher; he was not a domesticated man by any stretch of the imagination but he firmly believed in ‘a place for everything and everything in its place’. I passed his test, but no other family members did. Now here in Hove it’s Francisquinha’s fault if the dishwasher loading is haphazard. And she’s to blame if the hall loo light has been inadvertently left on!

Dragons’ Den, a BBC production which has just finished its 20^th series, enables entrepreneurs to pitch for investment from the five resident multimillionaire ‘Dragons’. In the last episode the Dragons, having already been asked to invest in a child-friendly sunscreen applicator, a hard-water shower filter and a collectable whisky business, were faced with Jo Proud from Loughborough. She had found that having a stuffed toy to cuddle, talk to, had helped with her anxiety. She then developed a range of stuffed bears that, it is hoped, encourage everyone to understand their thoughts, feelings and emotions and, most importantly, to cope and articulate their feelings. They are named Hope, Calm, Happy, Nervous, Love, Sad, Silly and Angry, and are there to cuddle or simply to listen to their owner, without judgement. All five Dragons offered all of the investment she had asked for and their mentor and business acumen. Francisquinha serves the same purpose; you can ask her anything and she’ll answer.

In fact in this Year of the Rabbit, she wants to write the last comment:

“Sunday mornings are a very worrying time as it’s ‘clean sheets’ day. Everything gets bundled off the bed quickly and into the washing machine. Once I wasn’t quick enough and it was only when the detergent ball was about to be thrown in one of my ears was noticed and I was hauled out. Quite a close shave I can tell you! Although after many months, years even, of lying around, flopping on top of the duvet or travelling to strange cities like Singapore, I do need a bath occasionally!”

Richard 21^st April 2023

Hove

www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

Note 1 Born in a Year of The Dog (there are twelve signs), apparently I am “honest, amiable, kind, cautious, prudent, loyal, reliable, considerate, understanding, patient, hard-working and sincere!” Food for thought!

Note 2 www.cloudappreciationsociety.org

Mushroom Risotto is such a simple dish but it tastes delicious and I can see from the empty bowls that everyone else thinks the same. As we tuck into the salad, Sami mentions the Hope Café for it was here we first talked to each other over a year ago. Having a regular coffee haunt is a mark of a sophisticated existence, someone once said. In fact such places, often know as Third Places or The Great Good Place (note 1), are a hugely important part of our local communities, of our local society. Here in the United Kingdom traditionally it’s been the local pub where one could not only have a drink but also engage in conversation with strangers, if you so wished. The growth of the ‘café society’ has increased the number of places where you can do this and The Hope’s popularity is testament to the way that Duncan and his team have developed its offering. Sami agrees:

“Such a friendly place and I’ve heard that Thursdays are going to be ‘Talking Days’, encouraging those who live alone to come and chat.”

“Yes, didn’t Susie say that her aunt’s going to come in to encourage people? I am sure that’s going to help. Maybe she’ll stand in for Susie? Do you remember that Susie wanted to go off on a Gap Year but Covid postponed that …..”

“Bit old for that!” says Sami, thinking Susie is ‘late twenties’.

“Oh! No! Never too late to travel and stretch your horizons, experience new cultures so I will certainly encourage her to go now (See PC 155 Overseas Experience June 2019) .Talking of which, what was Goa like?”

“Actually it’s a very busy state, with both international and domestic tourists attracted by the lovely white sandy beaches and active nightlife! Being next to the North Western Ghats rainforest we had a wonderful time looking at the ‘flora & fauna’, as they say. And I had forgotten the Portuguese ran it as an overseas colony for over 450 years; that is very obvious in the European architecture which is everywhere. (Note 2)”  

“Tell me more about your writing, Lisa?”

“Well, I occasionally contribute to Grazia and have a monthly column in both the magazine Red and in The Derbyshire Times. I have written a number of short stories about relationships based around the Derbyshire Peak District; no one gets murdered so definitely not crime stories!”

“Wow! That sounds fantastic. Funnily enough I know the sister village to where you live, Folding Under Sheet. It was the location for a short story I wrote in October last year; I called it ‘Murder at The Fete’ (PC 306). I have been writing a weekly ‘post’ since 2014 and am now on my 330^th. I make a hard copy of each 50, just for me!!”

I get up from the table, walk to the end of the room and pick up Volumes 1-6 of my ‘postcard scribbles’ to show Lisa and Sami.

“Goodness! Well, you and I have writing in common and then I gather from Sami you and Celina are Hot Yoga fanatics, if that’s the right word?”

“Slightly obsessed, Lisa!!” says Celina. “Neither of us is working so we’re able to practise five times a week. I started in 2008 and actually we moved to Brighton & Hove because of the hot yoga studios. …….”

Alexa’s timer goes off so, leaving Celina to tell them of our romantic yoga journey, I excuse myself, to take the Tarte Tatin out of the oven and let it rest before turning it upside down.

An artful presentation of food will often mask a mediocre effort but with Tarte Tatin it’s so simple that it both looks great when turned out and is decorative and delicious to boot. (See note 3 for guidance)

“Vanilla ice cream, cream or custard, and the custard can be hot or cold?” I ask as I put the dish on my own place mat and start cutting slices.  

So the evening drifted on in the warm relaxed atmosphere created by good food and conversation, everyone sharing little anecdotes of their lives. I found out that Sami lives in an apartment on Third Avenue here in Hove and that Lisa was staying for a few weeks.

Some moments after 10 o’clock, I tell Sami and Lisa that I don’t do late nights so we could finish before 1030. They looked at each other, as if to say:  ‘Who is this guy?’ so I explained what has become a tradition started after my heart bypass in 2013 and how I had needed to rest. Interestingly it’s been quite popular with many of our guests. Those who drink wouldn’t have a headache the following day and those who don’t wouldn’t have to listen to the inebriated bore ….. for example Andrew from about six years ago, who clearly hadn’t taken in the blank and resigned faces around one dinner party table, talking about the difference between two versions of a small aircraft, the Yak 23 and the Yak 23a, or some such and it was 11.30pm. No one else cared one iota!

I am sure we will see more of this delightful couple.

Richard 14^th April 2023

Hove

http://www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

Note 1 The Great Good Place by Ray Oldenburg

Note 2 Fourteen years after it became independent, India annexed Goa in 1961 after an invasion that lasted just 36 hours. Portugal protested but was probably happy to see it go! It’s India’s smallest state by area and fourth smallest by population but has the highest GDP per capita of all Indian States, two-and-a half times as high as the GDP per capita of the country as a whole.

Note 3 You just melt 100g of caster sugar (50/50 caster and light Demerara works very well) until it browns, add 50g of butter cut into chunks, place pealed apple segments (dusted in ground ginger and ground cinnamon) in a pattern, cover with rolled out puff pastry and put into the oven for 45 minutes.

When I was last in The Hope Café (PC 327 – 24^th March 2023) I invited Sami and his girlfriend Lisa to supper and said I would email some dates which would work for us. Yesterday, Thursday, was a suitable date for everyone and they came.

We have learned from experience that it’s better to ask anyone coming for a meal whether they are vegetarian, vegan, have dislikes, often an irrational one (!) about certain food, or whether they have any allergies, like to mushrooms, to nuts or to red peppers. Celina is allergic to all sorts of seafood, such as prawns, lobsters, oysters, whelks, scallops, clams etc. People seem shy in telling one upfront, so we ask. Some years ago someone came for a three course meal and then announced she was on a calorie-counting diet and could she weigh the food I was about to put onto her plate! Someone else had had to eat fish pie at boarding school and today, more than 40 years later, still couldn’t stomach it, especially if the pie includes boiled eggs. Felt sorry for him, as Jamie Oliver’s Fish Pie recipe is to die for!!

Sami had introduced me to Lisa, whom he had met in India during a tour of the Indian Mutiny sites, back in December (PC 312 In The Hope). She’s a writer from Folding over Sheet in the Derbyshire Peak District and the two of them seem to have developed a lovely relationship, so much so that they went off to a yoga retreat in India in February and then toured Goa.

Our doorbell went.

“Bottle of Tattinger? (Note 1) How did you know? Welcome ….. so nice to see you both ….. please …. come in …. let me take your coats.”

We had decided not to ask anyone else, as we wanted to get to know Sami and Lisa better. Our huge ‘living room’ is exactly that, a room in which we live, cook, eat and relax; downstairs are the apartment’s bedrooms. The open plan format allows me to chat to our guests as I am putting the starter together, a simple collection of roasted pine nuts, peeled pears, rocket, endive, some chunks of gorgonzola and a dressing.

“So how was your yoga retreat?”

Lisa quickly replied:

“Actually it was lovely. I am fairly new to yoga, having started only a couple of years ago when my now ex-husband left for a new life with his secretary! Such a cliché, but I had sited his coercive behaviour in our divorce papers, so it was a very serious breakdown of our relationship! ….”

I made a mental note to find out more, probably at a later date.

“ ……. But it got me focused on what I wanted, mentally and physically; practising yoga covers both aspects so a good place to start! I was delighted to find out from Sami he practised Hatha yoga too, maybe in a more desultory way …..

“I agree, not very regularly, but I am keen to do more.” interjects Sami.

…… so we booked a retreat in Kerula. Very international group of people, all ages, very relaxed and a beautiful place.” And pulling out her mobile from her handbag, with a little searching produced a photograph of the place.

“Looks wonderful! OK Let’s sit.” ….. and we sat as a foursome around the dinner table and got stuck in. The conversation started to flow, everyone relaxed and comfortable.

I then excused myself to finish off the main course. Sami and Lisa hadn’t met Celina before so she was able to tell them something of her life, being born in Rio de Janeiro etc.

Up until 1995 white rice to me meant perfectly cooked, dry and fluffy stuff; the sort of standard accompaniment to an Indian curry. I had never liked what I could call ‘wet’ rice, until I went for lunch in the café of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney’s Circular Quay. I ordered a bowl of mushroom risotto and thought I had gone to heaven; creamy, perfectly al dente but still with a bite and have loved cooking it ever since. When a friend Narissa commented she was put off making it at home, one evening I hosted a ‘Teach-in’ on how to make it.

A much used Risotto recipe from Jamie Oliver

Sami got up and came over to keep me company.

“You can obviously cook Richard.”

“Well, yes I learned sailing offshore that with a little effort food can be tasty and then I can read. Not fazed by a new recipe and remind myself that some recipes, for instance by reputation Nigella Lawson’s Chocolate cake, don’t work, but I have never tried to make it! A few years ago, in the family kitchen in Rio, I was told you could only make Crème Caramel with condensed milk. Thought this was nonsense if you can buy ‘fresh’ milk so came back to the UK, found a recipe and made some – delicious!”

“I guess I’ve got a bit lazy since my bankruptcy and having to look after myself! Too many ‘Take-Aways’ but Lisa can cook really well so life is on the up.”

“And I read the Post Office (PO) scandal isn’t over?”

“It’s a nightmare. I was offered thousands of pounds but the lawyers wanted 80% of it. Some convictions have not been overturned, with the PO dragging its feet, the compensation scheme is a nightmare to work through and the governmental enquiry still has to hear from the PO and Fujitsu executives.”   

Into the heavy-bottomed saucepan of white onions (15 minutes to sweat properly), garlic, sliced celery, I add some finely chopped mushrooms and separately cook some other roughly-torn ones.

“OK! Now some Risotto rice and white wine; three minutes”

“Hey that’s beginning to smell wonderful.” says Sami, looking over my shoulder.

Over the next five minutes I gradually add some hot vegetable stock, keep stirring, and eventually the rice is cooked. Finally I add the mushrooms, a large knob of butter and some grated parmesan cheese, tip the saucepan’s contents into a warmed serving bowl and take it to the table. 

“Sami, can you bring that bowl of salad and the plates please?”

When everyone has some food in front of them and something to drink, I raise my glass and toast:

“Bon Appetite” 

(To be Continued …..)

Richard 7^th April 2023

Hove

www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

Note 1 A bunch of flowers is lovely too, but you have to scramble around looking for a vase etc so a bottle better!

I went to the dentist the other day and, as always, chose a magazine from the collection on the side table in the waiting area – Vogue, Elle Decoration, Good Housekeeping and others for example – to while away the minutes before the enforced time in ‘the chair’. I am pleased to see the magazines have returned …..

…… as during the uncertainty caused by Covid they were all assumed to be carriers of the virus, so disappeared. (Note 1) As I was sucking up the contents of Elle, as if I can’t buy the magazine myself somewhere, I got engrossed in a series of articles about individuals termed ‘creatives’. After some minutes I found an article about some pottery by the Israeli chef Ottolenghi, inspired by the Sicilian style. These days it’s easy to simply take a photo.

Returning home with a numb cheek, I found a supplier on line, ordered a vase and it was delivered two days later (Note 2). I sent a photograph to Celina’s best friend Mimi, looking for confirmation of my taste.

Fortunately she thought it was gorgeous and so I explained via WhatsApp how, looking at a magazine in a doctors’ surgery close to home in Battersea in 2009, I had seen a photograph of a chap sweating doing yoga. At the time I was doing Hatha yoga twice a week but it wasn’t hot enough to produce sweat. I had asked a neighbour if they knew what sort of yoga it was, she said I’ll take you and on 11^th March 2009 I joined 71 other individuals in a hot Balham studio for my first class of the Bikram series.

The ‘WhatsApp’ exchange continued:

“It seems so random ….. that you read an article in a random magazine and through that discovered a passion ……. and Celina (Note 3) ….. and moved to Hove and a change of life style.”

“C’est la vie!” (I was about to eat supper so didn’t want to engage right then in some philosophical debate, so this was a ‘hand-off’!)

“Really? Nothing more profound?” (Slightly incensed by my short repost?)

“More profound in a PC perhaps. But life can be extremely random!”

“Definitely a PC. I can understand ‘random’ about encounters and coincidences yes ….. but why one person reads or hears something then decides to follow up and someone doesn’t? Not sure why that happens ….  you could explore this  further?”

Well, that’s a nice challenge; where to start? Definitions maybe:

‘Random: made, done or happening without method or conscious decision.’

‘Fate: the development of events outside a person’s control, regarded as predetermined by a supernatural power.’

‘Coincidence: a remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances without apparent causal connection.’

So …… I made a conscious decision to buy an Ottolenghi vase, ergo it can’t be random. And if fate is determined by some supernatural power, count me out. I love coincidences and find them in so much of my life but this was no coincidence; I didn’t go looking for a vase! We generally learn our behaviour, understand how our actions have a reaction, how our behaviour is dictated by how we think and feel and how experiences can act as a brake or an accelerator to those actions.

The trouble is there is so much conflicting advice out there. For example, if you were hurt or had something go wrong because of your actions, you might be more cautious next time: “Once bitten twice shy” goes the ‘brake’ saying, whilst the ‘accelerator’ prompts one to act: ‘He who hesitates is lost’, one of the Christian Proverbs – proverbs 3verse 2. Conversely, ‘Fools rush in ….’ (note 3) doesn’t mean every time you make a quick decision you’re an idiot!! Of course a person who spends too much time deliberating about what to do often loses the chance to act altogether; booking tickets for some international star’s concert – any hesitation and they’re sold out!

One’s personal preferences play a part here. Although dismissed by some, the Myers Briggs Type Indicator, based on Jungian principles, can offer a clue. It has four comparative preferences: Extraversion (E)/Introversion (I), Sensing (S)/Intuition (N), Thinking (T)/Feeling (F) and Judgement (J)/Perception (P). I register as ENTJ; an ‘N’ prefers the world of the future, of ideas, of possibilities. In addition someone who registers as a ‘J’ is quite decisive, whereas a ‘P’ wants more information, wants to do some research. So, I bought a vase, without buying a magazine entitled ‘What/Which Vase?’! An explanation of my decision perhaps?

One’s life is littered with ‘What If?’ choices; for instance, in 1985 I debated leaving the British Army after twenty years. What if I had stayed, where might my life have gone? No one will ever know and I am a firm believer we make such decisions …… and stick with them: regretting any decision is for the fairies. The fork in the path? Choose the road less travelled … or not?

Richard 31^st March 2023

Hove

www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

Note 1 Some ‘waiting areas’ have a wider assortment, obviously depending on the quality of the establishment, or not! For instance the gentlemen’s hairdresser in the exclusive Gavea Golf & Country Club in Rio de Janeiro’s Sāo Conrado suburb has a selection of magazines that cover interest in mansions costing millions of dollars, motor yachts that have ten cabins …… and the latest Playboy magazine!

Note 2 I had a Christmas gift of some money so it was good to choose something.

Note 3 Celina started practising hot yoga in September 2008. After over two and a half years of practising in the same classes, we agreed in September 2011 to have a meal somewhere. The rest is history.

Note 4 Alexander Pope (1688 – 1744) added ‘ ……where angels fear to tread’ to this proverb. He is well known for many other quotations, such as “To err is human: to forgive divine.”

I had promised Mo I would meet her in The Hope this week and so on Wednesday afternoon I popped in. Susie saw me and automatically started making a double espresso; being a regular anywhere has its advantages! I pulled up a chair at Mo’s table.

“Hi! Mo. Good to see you. You OK?”

A sort-of strangled “Yes” came out, as she had just put a large piece of a Brigadeiro into her mouth!

“I remember you saying that you had two twenty-something children. Did you see the column in the Sunday Times by Charlotte Ivers headlined ‘Over-forties! Your digital etiquette is appalling?’

She shook her head, wiping the chocolaty crumbs from her lips, and her look said, ‘tell me more’.

“I can only assume she has written the whole piece with her tongue firmly stuck into her cheek, but then I am over 40.”

“Me too!”

“She writes that there are only 3 circumstances when it is acceptable to call someone without prior warning: if you are married to them, if you are engaged to them or if someone has died. Never heard such nonsense! Alexander Bell would be turning in his grave. Surely if you want to talk to someone, dial their number. If it’s convenient, the recipient can answer the call; if not they won’t, although most seem obsessed about answering any call. If you don’t answer and it is important, they will try again!”

Mo showed me a flier that had been left on the tables:

“Come and chat! Every Thursday in April the Hope Café will be focusing on the art of conversation. Come in, have a tea or coffee and talk to someone.”

“What a great idea! It seems more and more people are living alone and rarely talk to anyone.”

“Don’t think you met Edith, Mo? Lovely elderly lady, a Kinder Transport child. Used to come in here regularly and was always up for a chat. Sadly she died towards the end of last year; but she was, I think, 89 or so.”

“Susie says Thursdays are going to be specifically for those who live on their own, who never normally talk to people. Loneliness, or social isolation for a modern description, can significantly increase a person’s risk of death, a risk on a par with those of smoking, obesity and physical inactivity. In extremis, it can take you down, and down, to a point when you fail to see any point in living.”

“Absolutely! Jenni Russell in her Times column suggested, inter alia, cafés’ reserving a table for those who are want to chat: a ‘talking table’! Now that’s a great idea and it sounds as though The Hope Café is right on the ball.

I think Susie said they are going to ask an aunt of hers to facilitate these ‘conversation days’, as some people are extremely shy and probably out of practice in talking to others.”

“What? Ensuring there’s no politics, no sex and no religion? Ha! Ha! You still watching the Couples Therapy series?”

“Yes, although when Cyn, as in Cyn & Yaya, talked about the abuse she had suffered as a child from her uncle and how this affected her relationships today, I wondered why she hadn’t tried to deal with it in one-on-one therapy and not bring it to the table of her relationship with Yaya. Incidentally had quite a lot of comments about my last PC on this programme, reinforcing how relationships define our lives. Orna talks about the need for both boundaries and space in relationships. My very first Hot Yoga teacher, Paul Dobson, writes that ‘….. committing to our relationships is a way to make space in our lives. Relationships are what open our hearts and spirits. So make space for a relationship and have space within it.’”

I roughed out a little diagram:

Sometimes a topic stays in the front of my mind for a while, challenging more thought, more research or just more focus. After a recent visit to my dentist, I thought about this particular relationship, with one’s dentist. (See also PCs 64 & 66 ‘Molars & Wisdom’) (Note 1) No matter how much you like them, once you’re in that chair you are captive to their whims. Unable to communicate as the suction device that removes your saliva is pulling your bottom lip down and your top lip feels the size of an Orca due to an injection, the best you can do is a quiet ‘er!’, ‘ah! or ‘oh!’ as appropriate. And where do you look? Stare at them, or obliquely at the nurse, or at the television that some modern Dental Clinics have installed above the chair but in the latter case if you don’t want to watch football …..?

Incidentally on Monday (20^th) had to go to Hove Implant Clinic. I didn’t need a reminder as that morning’s Codeword in the Times had ‘Implant’ as one of the answers!

I had been chatting to Mo for 20 minutes or so when Sami & Lisa walked in, shaking the rain off their umbrella, and sat down. Never enough time in the day and I needed to be on my way, I said goodbye to Mo and went across to Sami.

Without sitting down, I asked them if they would like to come to supper, as I sensed we could have an interesting evening. They looked delighted, so I offered to email some dates and walked out into the rain.

Richard 24^th March 2023

Hove

http://www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

PS You may have read in PC 326 the simple observation that Dove’s were advertising their Men’s skin care products alongside a rugby match, all brawn and toughness. (See note 2 below) Rather made a dent in the traditional image of male hunks and cauliflower ears, singing raunchy songs in a post-match bath and drinking huge quantities of beer. I made another observation during the Ireland V Scotland game the other weekend; Guinness, the sponsor of the whole Six Nations tournament and renowned for its creamy dark stout, was advertising its ‘0.0’ ((ie no alcohol) beer. At last the separation of being a top athlete and alcohol is being understood; at least by the athletes but probably not by the spectators!

Note 1 I remember that when stationed in Germany a very appropriate slang word we  used for ‘dentist’ is ‘fang-farrier’; so descriptive! The proper word is zahnarzt (m) or zahnārztin (f).

Note 2 Women’s Rugby and Football are two of the fastest growing sports in the UK.

I love going into the Hope Café, never quite sure who will be there, apart from Josh and Susie behind the counter. Teresa from the Brazilian delicatessen next door occasionally pops in as does Duncan, the Hope’s manager. As you will appreciate, finding copy for my postcards is an on-going, delightful chore and places like The Hope, or on the bus, or in the supermarket, or on television, or traveling here and there, prompt ideas that sometimes take root, germinate.

Last year there was a programme on television I found fascinating. It was simply called ‘Couples Therapy’ and was a fly-on-the-wall documentary about the interaction between an Israeli-American psychoanalyst, Doctor Orna Gurainik and those seeking help with their relationships.

Interviewed about it, Orna said: “I think good TV, like good literature, gives people a space where they can imagine themselves in the shoes of someone else. It’s like a rehearsal. It’s the way play prepares us for a real experience. The participants in the show are incredibly courageous and generous. They’re giving the audience the option to jump into their shoes and go through the experience with them. (Ed: I find myself equally in either Orna’s shoes or those of the clients!)

My take on what makes things easier for couples and families is to be really mindful of boundaries and space. Create boundaries, respect boundaries, even artificial ones, Create space because there’s so much mashed togetherness in a ‘state of anxiety’ that I think is adding distress rather than helping. That would be my prime advice.”

I am much taken by the third series, airing now of British television, and was ruminating about one particular aspect as I entered the café, when I spied Mo, sitting at a corner table, head down into her mobile. She looked up and beckoned me over. I am always intrigued by people’s ‘back stories’ and knew nothing about Mo, apart from the fact she had been reading ‘Act of Oblivion’, Robert Harris’ latest book when I had first met her, (See PC 322 February 2023) so I was keen to elicit more!! Sometimes I have to preface the conversation with: ‘I am sorry if I appear nosey, it’s just that during my 16 years of 1:1 executive coaching, I found it fascinating to hear my client’s answers to “So how did you get to be here? Tell me about yourself?”

Mo admitted she had been a senior teacher in a private girls’ school but had decided to move to Hove to be near her aging mother, a fiercely independent woman who lived on her own in a retirement complex in Shoreham. We talked about this and that …… and what she was watching in television …… and she mentioned the Couples Therapy programme.

“Fascinating isn’t it?” I said; “This new series started when we were in Brazil so I recorded it. We’ve watched the first episode.”

“Well, I think I am up to date but I was stopped in my tracks during the first session of India and Dale, when they were explaining how they got to be where there were, on the couch so to speak”.

India and Dale

“Tell me more?”

“Firstly I needed to understand exactly what was said ….”

“At the beginning?”

“Yes, so I wrote it down:

“India: “I was born in Georgia and am an actress; have been in The Lion King here in New York for 8 years now. I met him, Dale, after my first three months and we dated for 4 years.”

“Dale: I come from an immigrant family. I was born in Guyana and then moved to Antigua when I was about four. We moved up here to New York City when I was a teenager. I feel like there are definitely underlying issues we struggle with and it sometimes it shouldn’t be as stressful as it is, it’s hard.”

 …. and this is the bit that rocked me back on my heels, so to speak ……

“I think as Afro-Americans we come into relationships with a lot of trauma that we are not necessarily willing to acknowledge, ready to accept, and there has to be a lot of soul/self-searching in order to understand how real life affects your relationship.”

 …. he seems to separate real life and relationships ……”

“You can’t have a relationship in a vacuum can you?”

“Don’t think so! A relationship with anyone, with anything, happens within the physical, emotional, spiritual boundaries of ‘real life’ There’s no other artificial place surely? But what about his belief that Afro-Americans carry a lot of trauma?”

“I can only assume he means from their historical past, going back to days of slavery?” And as one does these days, when the information lies through the Google portal, I got my laptop out and found, inter alia, “The Traumatic Impact of Structural Racism on African Americans” (Note 1)

“It’s interesting, something I have never been aware of, but there is a great belief that historical trauma, created in this case by the Slave Trade, is an example of intergenerational trauma whose effects can be felt generations later.”

Got me wondering whether other groups subconsciously are affected by ‘historical trauma’, such as Jews, persecuted over centuries, or the English with the invasion by the Vikings, and whether it really does play out in our relationships today, or is it just a crutch for some to lean on? And at this important point, I looked at my watch:

“Sorry Mo, could we continue this discussion next week, I really have to dash?”

“Sure!” a little surprised, “Next week? Wednesday?”

I nodded to Susie as I was passing the counter: “Has Sami been in recently?”

“Oh! Didn’t he tell you? He and Lisa have gone off to a yoga retreat in Kerala for a week and then another week exploring Goa.”

“Lucky chap!” I muttered as I thought of the heat of southern India and headed out into the March cold.

Richard 17^th March 2023

Hove

www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

Note 1 The Traumatic Impact of Structural Racism on African Americans 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8352535/

Here in the United Kingdom we are coming to the end of Rugby’s Six Nations tournament, where teams from England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, France and Italy all play each other over 6 weeks or so. Whilst football is the more popular game here, rugby has a dedicated following and is a more physical game. Think ‘rugby forward’ and you think ‘big’; the six prop forwards in the current pool for the English team average 125kg each, while the lock forwards are over 2 metres in height. The rules are constantly changing to ensure than injuries are minimised, unrecognisable to those being applied when I hung up my boots aged 31 some decades ago.

Given the human brawn on display during these matches, it was surprising to see on the electronic advertising panels alongside the pitch during one match, in between ‘Enjoy Guinness today’ and ‘O2 for your mobile network’ (Note 1), ‘Dove’s Men’s Moisturiser’.

We have come a long way!! In 2019 the UK Men’s Grooming Market was worth some £500 million and is increasing year-on-year. Of course it’s somewhat dwarfed by the Women’s Cosmetic Market – £9.8 billion in 2017. (See also ‘What Moisturiser Do You Use?’ PC 162 October 2019)

I had to go to our local doctor’s surgery the other day and managed a face-to-face with a real, live human doctor. The following day I was on the bus on my way back from the morning hot yoga session and saw I had an email from the NHS. I opened it; to access the message I needed to add my email address, then decide whether the diagrammatic car’s final destination was at ‘X’ or ‘Y’ to prove I was a human being, which I managed to do eventually (!), re-input my email address, wait for a six-figure ‘security code’ to arrive on my mobile, find my password and eventually get to the message: “How was your visit to your GP?” Think I should get another appointment to check my mental health?

I’ll never need Ayesha Vardag, a lawyer the super-rich call to help them get divorced. Rather like the model Evangelista who famously said during an interview for Vogue magazine: “We (as in we super-models) don’t wake up for less than $10,000 a day”, Ayesha specialises in cases where the assets are in excess of £100 million. But she was interviewed for the Sunday Times’ ‘A Life in The Day’ column which, at the end, asks the subject what their ‘words of wisdom’ would be:

Best Advice I was given: – “You have to howl until you find your pack”. Although I spent twenty years in the British Army, it was only when I left and found a different group of people to mix with did I experience a greater affinity!

Advice I’d give: – “When something bad happens, remember it may have saved you from much worse, or may bring you something much better.” I am an eternal optimist so concur. There’s always an upside.

What I wish I’d known: – “Don’t waste time on people who don’t care about you, and move mountains to be with the people who do.” Ah! Yes! The ‘false friends’.

My friend Eddie in Weymouth sent me this lovely story and claimed it is true. I asked where it had come from and he replied an old man down the street had told him (Note 2). OK then!

“On 20^th July 1969 Commander of the Apollo 11 Lunar Module, Neil Armstrong, stepped onto the surface of the moon. We all remember his: “that’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” As he re-entered the Lander, he murmured: “Good luck, Mr Gorsky.” Many people at NASA thought this casual remark concerned some rival Soviet cosmonaut, but research found no such surname in any of the space programmes. Over the years many people had asked Neil Armstrong about this remark and he would simply smile, giving no explanation.

But in 1995, in the follow-up questions after a presentation, a reporter asked the same question, “Who is Mr Gorsky?” As Mr Gorsky had by now died, Neil felt he was able to answer. “In 1938, I was playing baseball with a chum in the back yard at home in the mid-west when the ball went over our neighbour’s fence and landed by a window. My neighbours were Mr & Mrs Gorsky. As I bent down to pick up the ball, I heard Mrs Gorsky yelling at her husband. “Sex? You want sex? You’ll get sex when (pause to think of some unlikely event) the kid next door walks on the moon.”

Somewhere in a February postcard, PC 321 ‘All I want …’, I wrote: “And on the subject of acceptance, we have a number of religions on the planet and there is a degree of ‘If you don’t agree with our beliefs, you must be against us.’ No! I am not; I just want you to accept I am not.” I was pleased that our Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, recently publically agreed: “We do not have blasphemy laws in Great Britain, and must not be complicit in the attempts to impose them on this country. There is no right not to be offended. There is no legal obligation to be reverent towards any religion. The lodestar of our democracy is freedom of speech. Nobody can demand respect for their belief system, even if it is a religion. People are legally entitled to reject — and to leave — any religion. There is no apostasy law in this country. The act of accusing someone of apostasy or blasphemy is effectively inciting violence upon that person.”

Exactly!

And finally, here in England we often say “A pinch and a punch for the first of the month” on its first day, the ‘pinch’ referring to throwing a pinch of salt to keep witches at bay and the punch to banish them forever, but used in a school’s playground in a physical way. Saying ‘White Rabbits no return’ means no one will pinch you back, although somehow I think on the 1^st of March you say March Hares, but I could be very confused! Interestingly, according to Rahmi, in central Turkey they say ‘Open the door and bring the log in’ as by the beginning of March all their chopped firewood has been used up and they have to resort to bigger bits.

More scribbles next week.

Richard 10^th March 2023

Hove

www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

PS Why does the battery of one’s smoke alarm always fail between midnight and 0300 causing its incessant beep to invade your sleep?

Note 1 O2 are one of the sponsors of the English Rugby team

Note 2 Maybe he was Neil Armstrong’s boyhood friend.

“I have seen monsters. I know what they look like.” says Rita, eyes locked on Nell’s. “The Nazis yes. The ones in the uniforms and goose-stepping in the streets. But it was the townspeople of my village, looking for all the world like good citizens and good Christians, who reported my family. And it was the local police who arrested them and handed them to the Germans. The real monsters.”

“I am not sure I understand.”

“The Hatheson police told me my son was a monster, a murderer.”

“But you don’t believe that?”

“You are telling me what I believe?”

“Yes.” Nell gestures to the pictures on the wall, the pantheon of Rita’s family.”

The reason for this extract from the Australian author Chris Hammer’s new book “Dead Man’s Creek” will, I hope, become obvious, as a series of unrelated events, coincidences even, come together to add colour to this postcard about monsters, although the topic doesn’t really need any colour.

The word ‘pantheon’ means a group of particularly important or famous people and it came to me one night as a collective for the selection of murderers this postcard refers to. It then appeared the following day, in the above extract; it’s not a common word! The fictional Rita, aged 5 and an Austrian Jew, had been staying with an uncle in the country when the Nazis, alerted by neighbours to the presence of a Jewish family in their midst, had rounded up her parents and siblings and sent them to their deaths in a concentration camp. She and hundreds of other orphans were shipped to Australia for a more peaceful upbringing.  

Marcel Marceau

Still unsure where this is going? Well, a few months ago I watched a 2020 film on television called “Resistance” about a Jewish actor, Marcel Mangel (1923 – 2007) , who in 1942 joins the French resistance in Lyon to save thousands of orphaned children from the Nazis. Mangel survived the war and went on to become famous as Marcel Marceau the mime artist. As I watched the film it began to dawn on me that the Gestapo in charge of Lyon was famously known as The Butcher of Lyon. So I expected to find out that at the end of the war he was tried at Nuremburg, found guilty and executed.

I was really saddened to read otherwise. I bought Tom Bower’s 1985 book ‘Klaus Barbie Butcher of Lyon’ and read it, acknowledging it had been written two years after Barbie had been extradited to France from Bolivia and indicted for war crimes in 1984.

I was still reading this book when we flew off to The Atacama in Chile in January (see PCs 319 & 320) and, as you do when you join excursions organised by tour companies, chatted to our fellow travellers. One lovely couple were from Berlin and another from Lyon; it seemed apposite. That and the fact we were only a short distance from the border with Bolivia.

As the war ended, Barbie changed his name and managed to move back into Germany where he got in touch with the United States Intelligence Services. It’s hard to imagine the chaos in Germany after the May 1945 surrender; civilians, refugees, service personnel, no functioning government and from an American point-of-view, a real threat from Soviet Russia. Barbie was employed by the Americans for his anti-communist network of informers and spies. In 1950 the French, who had established Barbie was working in Germany for the US, appealed for his arrest and extradition. The Americans apparently refused and used a well-established ‘rat line’ to send him via Italy to Bolivia. There he spent 30 years living under the name Klaus Altmann, assisting various dictators in their oppression of the regime’s opponents. Nazi-hunters identified him in 1971by some fingerprints, but the Bolivians refused to extradite him to France. (Note 1)

A change in Bolivian politics meant that in 1983 he was finally extradited to France. His trial started in 1987; charged with 41 separate counts of ‘crimes against humanity’, he was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment, the death penalty having been abolished in 1981.  He died in 1991 in jail in Lyon aged 71, a far nicer end to his life than the 4,342 individuals whose murders he sanctioned or the 7,591 men, women and children his organisation sent to concentration camps in Germany and Poland and to a certain death, and far, far nicer than those 14,300 who were arrested and tortured, his moniker, the Butcher of Lyon, reflecting the true evil in this man.

While I read the book, two other names surfaced through the sediment of my memory – Mengele and Eichman.

Joseph Mengeles

Adolf Eichman

Adolf Eichman, the main architect of Hitler’s Final Solution, slipped out of Europe to Argentina, where there was a vibrant German community and politicians sympathetic to the Nazi ideology. Eichman lived in Buenos Aires until 1960 when Mossad agents captured him and smuggled him, drugged, out of the country as an El Al flight crew member. After a four month trial in Jerusalem he was found guilty and hanged in May 1962.

Josef Mengele was known as the ‘Angel of Death’ because of his experiments on prisoners in Auschwitz; his penchant was to use pregnant women, twins and the disabled as human guinea pigs. After the war he fled to Argentina and lived quite openly in Buenos Aires, but after Eichman’s capture he disappeared, eventually living in Brazil under the name Wolfgang Gerhard. He managed to evade Nazi hunters but drowned in the sea in Sao Paulo State in 1979 aged 67.

And now I remember Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the millions slain during the rise of Mao in China, the Disappeared of Argentina’s Dirty War, the political opponents of Chile’s General Pinochet who were tortured or executed ….. and I have hardly scratched the surface of the monster fraternity!!

But that pantheon of murderers must surely be headed, certainly in the C20th, by both Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler, between the two of them responsible for the deaths of over 26 million human beings. Maybe Putin’s on the short list for this century?

Richard 3^rd March 2023

Hove

http://www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

Note 1 If he had been extradited and found guilty, he would have been executed.