detail from: KRK Art dizajn

ADVENTURES IN ENGLAND

For my postgraduate studies, I received a scholarship from the Former Yugoslav Government Fund, £ 40 a month, and I paid Ms Ende £ 4.50 a week for an apartment and food. When I arrived in London, I first met Alane Sabine, and a day later Paul Godfrey, the director of the English car factory "Voxhall" from Luton. I met the two of them the previous month in Igalo, while I was on recreational treatment. Paul took Alane and me on Sunday night and took us to a restaurant for dinner, which he said was 300 years old. There, for the first time in my life, I ate snails, they were very juicy. Paul offered me to drive his sports car, but I gratefully refused, not daring to drive in London, on the left.

When I came to the FMBRA Institute, the director of the Institute, Dr. Elton, received me very kindly and suggested that I read the book "Chemistry and Technology of Wheat'' by Dr. Isidore Hlynka in two days, after which we will choose a topic for experimental research. The book was about 800 pages long. I thought about how I would read it in two days, with my knowledge of English, but I was speechless and thanked him. I thought, "This is going to be my first baptism in England."

The Flour Milling and Baking Research Association (FMBRA) institute was located in the woods, where only the chirping of birds can be heard on all sides, an ideal place for scientific research.

And almost all the employees, who lived in the same place, Charleywood, went home during the lunch break, and I, as a single person, walked through the forest glades. I was walking one day, when I spotted two older ladies behind me kicking a golf ball. When they hit it and the ball flew over me, I thought they were wrong, so I returned the ball to them, to which they started shouting at me very loudly. Realizing that I was wrong, I waved to them in apology and fled into the woods outside the clearing.

Every weekend I went to London and visited galleries and museums. So I visited the British Museum, the National Art Gallery, Teit Gallery, Kensington Palace, St. Paul Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, Wellington Arch, Qew Garden and more. I walked daily, in the streets and in the galleries, from 16 to 18 hours. On Saturday nights I slept in a Yugoslav club, and on Sunday evenings when I returned home I was exhausted. I lived with Mrs. Ende, in Abbots Langley, and three times a week I went to evening school in Watford for English lessons. At that school, I met Lisa Montecaino. From Finland, which I took to London one Saturday, on my regular tours, and when we returned to Watford, after 16 hours of walking, Lisa told me that she would never go anywhere with me again.

I experienced a special event at Wimbledon, in tennis. A group of us, Yugoslavs, went to watch tennis, and, I, who had never watched tennis before, when we entered the stadium, saw Nikola Pilić playing, and I shouted "Come on, Nikola" and the players stopped. The whole stadium, full of spectators, looked at me, and I, embarrassed, bent down and sat down on the first free seat as soon as possible. Fortunately, the players soon resumed the game, and I, ashamed, was left speechless.

One day, while working in Chorleywood, I experienced the famous English fog, during which nothing could be seen across the street, city bus traffic was suspended, and my landlady Ende had to wait for the fog to dissipate to drive from Charleywood. to Abbots Langley.

Bosa was visiting me for the Christmas and New Year holidays. We rented a room in a hotel, where we heated by inserting coins. With her, I visited all the galleries and museums, which I quoted earlier, plus Tower Bridge Crown Jewel Exhibition, where we saw the largest diamond in the world, "Star of India".

In the spring, just as the snow had melted, my school friend Jovan Vukov came to London from Germany to visit me, when we called him "Chita" by nickname. He worked in a Mercedes in the city of Sindelfingen, not far from Stuttgart, and he came to me by train from Paris. He always performed some of his funny ideas, unpredictable, and this time when he got off the train, I saw him in a crombie coat and in wooden nanoles, with a loaf of French bread under his arm and a bouquet of flowers in his hand. He brought me French bread from Paris, as an original. I reserved a room for both of us in the Yugoslav club, on the fourth floor, in which another man from Macedonia had a bed, who was staying there waiting for a visa for Australia.

On the first day, we went out to a nightclub, where we stayed until 3 o'clock in the morning. And when we got back, the club door was locked and we didn’t have the key. We see on the second floor a window open in a row of bathrooms by floors. And "Chita", like a real chita (monkey), climbed up the gutter to that window and stepped inside. There was a piercing female scream and Chita began to apologize. Namely, the caretaker of the club rearranged that bathroom into his bedroom, and we didn't know about it, so when Chita stepped inside, he stood in their bed, between the two of them who were sleeping. Of course, the woman died of fear, and when they regained consciousness, the janitor stood up, angry, opened the door for us, and Chita apologized and explained the situation.

The next evening we went out again, so Chita came up with an idea and tied a thread around the toe of the Macedonian, which he pushed through the window to the ground. When we returned, at dawn, Chita just pulled the thread two or three times and we saw a light come on in our room. The Macedonian woke up and went down to open the door for us. Chita's system worked successfully. Chita, and I liked his stay in London and for both of us it remained unforgettable memories.

While working at the institute in Chorleywood, I became closer to Mrs. Evelyn Fisher, with whom I occasionally went home and met her two sons, a daughter and a husband. One day, she, her younger son Larry and I went on a tour of Oxford University. It was a weekend, so we could just walk between the university buildings and see where each faculty was. On the way back, we stopped by to visit the Blenheim Palace castle where Winston Churchill was born. The castle was open for visits, but at the time of our arrival there was no guide, so we toured the castle alone and received only as much information as Mrs. Evelyn knew.

On other occasions I traveled by bus to Cambridge, booked a hotel for two days, but I toured Cambridge during the first day and during the second day I was quite bored. I was watching the rowers on their river Cem and the students' Baseball games, about which I had no knowledge at all, so I decided that I was tired of staying in Cambridge, I would be able to visit it for only one day.

For the Christmas holidays, my colleague David Redman and his girlfriend Barbara drove me to Barbara's mom in South Wales. The landscapes we passed through were wooded, and the coniferous trees adorned with snow looked beautiful, as if everything was ready for the holidays. We were greeted very kindly by Barbara's mother, and a total of eighteen of us slept in her house that night. She borrowed beddings from her neighbors. When we got up in the morning it looked like we were in a military barracks. Food was perfect and plentiful. After two days, we returned to Charleywood, while driving, listening to the songs of Tom Jones, who was considered a very popular singer in the world at that time.

Trinity College, Cambridge University

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