Going electric - green motors move on move up.

SHOULD he suddenly feel the need for speed, Adrian Loening's seemingly quite ordinary Nissan Leaf could leave just about any car standing at the traffic lights.

Foot to the floor from stationary to 60mph in around seven seconds - not bad for what some still reckon is not much more than a souped-up milk float.

"It's happened once or twice, there's some young lad in the next lane who recognises it's an electric vehicle.

You can see them thinking 'I'm going to leave him behind, Jeremy Clarkson says electric cars are rubbish'," smiles Adrian. "I watch their shiny little faces in the rear view mirror as I drive off, them wondering what has just happened."

He's far from some crazed boy racer, but Adrian can definitely be forgiven a moment of fun.

After all, for years he was one of the loneliest moto

rists in the land, a rare breed who embraced the green revolution and snapped up one of the first electric cars on Scottish roads.

There was, however, also a downside to being ahead of the pack.

For he was such a rarity that infrastructure hadn't quite caught up with his groundbreaking mode of transport, and finding somewhere to actually charge his vehicle while out and about was virtually impossible.

Now, however, he's far from alone. For as fuel costs bite, electric cars become cheaper and more motorists get over their 'range anxiety' - the fear that their battery will suddenly expire if they stray too far - more motorists are switching on to the idea of driving without pumping emissions into the atmosphere.

The push for electric power has taken at least one car manufacturer by surprise: according to Mitsubishi's Edinburgh dealership, its I-Mieve electric vehicle is currently completely sold out in the UK.

And soon demand could move up another gear, spurred on by transport minister Keith Brown's announcement earlier this year for a GBP2.6million Scotland-wide network of public charging stations which will increase the number from 70 to 240, with plans to site them every 50 miles on trunk roads.

Edinburgh City Council, which has a 13-strong fleet of electric and hybrid vehicles, is looking into the possibility of installing a number of new electric vehicle charging stations, probably located at the city's Park and Ride locations.

Meanwhile a growing band of hotels - such as Radisson Blu in the Royal Mile, Kings Manor Hotel in Milton Road and Dalmahoy Hotel near the airport - have seized on the benefits of offering to charge electric cars for travellers who may then also want a bed for the night, while car dealerships and even Malmaison brasserie in Leith have set up points for customers.

Better news at last for dad-of-two Adrian, who is a member of the Electric Vehicles Association Scotland and is seeing more and more people interested in joining the green team.

"There are probably at least 300 electric cars in Scotland now and quite a good number of vans and trucks," he explains. "As the charging infrastructure improves, the price of vehicles comes down and more people see cars being charged at supermarkets and in public places, it all starts to trigger the idea among drivers that they might look at an electric car."

Adrian, who lives in Ormiston, bought his first electric vehicle in 2008 having originally set out to buy an electric scooter.

He explains: "The battery was old acid technology but it still got me around and it took the kids from home to school and back every day without any problems. But finding somewhere away from home to charge it was a problem."

Since then, however, he's seen vehicles and technology advancing all the time. His Nissan Leaf has a more modern lithium battery that can be fully charged using an electric socket in his garage from empty to full, overnight, at the cost of just GBP1.50.

It works out, he adds proudly, at around 2p a mile - around a tenth of the cost of fuel.

"I've worked out that over the last couple of years, I've saved something like GBP2000 on fuel by using an electric car," he happily points out.

Technology, he says, is evolving all the time, with batteries becoming more powerful - he sees a day when an electric car will be capable of travelling hundreds of miles between charges, much more than the 80-90 miles they currently manage.

"In terms of performance, they are already much faster than their petrol equivalent," he adds. "A Tesla which can seat seven people can accelerate from 0-60mph in 4.2 seconds - that's faster than most Ferraris."

But while electric cars are finally getting into gear, they could eventually have hot competition from another even greener alternative: hydrogen fuel cell powered cars. Earlier this month the European Commission announced plans for a new £1.2bn raft of research into hydrogen power, while Toyota said it will produce a hydrogen powered vehicle capable of travelling 300 miles without charge but with a price tag of up to dollars 100,000.

Honda and GM have banded together to research fuel cell technology - with talk of a Honda mass- produced, affordable hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle hitting the market by 2020 while Hyundai has also embraced the hydrogen fuel idea.

Fuel cell cars use electricity created by a chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen.

They generate no toxic exhaust gases and don't need to source their power from the national grid, giving them even greener credentials.

Craig Ingram, sales manager at Phoenix Mitsubishi Edinburgh, the car manufacturer's official Electric Vehicle Sales Dealership, says there is certainly growing interest among customers for making the switch to greener power.

"Mitsubishi's electric vehicle, the I-Miev, is now sold out in the UK and we're waiting for more coming from Japan," he points out.

And while customers are often interested mainly in the savings they can make on running costs, the green credentials that comes with driving an electric vehicle also factor high, he adds.

"In some cases it's down to company car tax which is based on emissions. The tax on these cars is incredibly low, so we are seeing a lot of businesses taking them.

"We've just supplied vehicles to Edinburgh College where they do a lot of short journeys, so the cars are ideal."

He agrees that many motorists still need to be convinced that electric cars can match the performance and offer the same peace of mind as a traditional fuel-powered cousin. "People are nervous that the vehicles won't do what they are supposed to do," he nods. "But once they try the car for a while on their normal journeys, they tend to change their minds.

"Once people start to see more charging points - especially fast charging ones that take just half an hour to 40 minutes - then I'm sure the demand will really increase."

l Find out more about the Electric Vehicle Association, www.eva-scotland.org. The Energy Saving Trust has information about electric vehicles, runs workshops and training, go to www.energysavingtrust.org.uk

Still vastly outnumbered but becoming popular

ELECTRIC vehicles may match conventional cars in performance, but they fall well behind in numbers. Of the 28million cars on UK roads, just 3,597 are electric and 121,687 are hybrids.

Despite the savings in fuel costs, electric vehicles are often more expensive to buy, although there are government incentive schemes to help both corporate and private buyers.

Ian Murdoch, transport manager of the Energy Savings Trust - which will be running a series of workshops in September - says the cars are becoming a serious option for many town and city drivers.

"Some of the first electric cars generated interest but at around £36,000 they were expensive. Now the prices are falling and there's a growing network of publically accessible charging points free until 2014, and more people are becoming interested."

He points out new owners can have their home electricity supply assessed and a free home charging point from the Energy Savings Trust. Government grants are also available to help in buying a vehicle - knocking up to £5000 off a new car - they are exempt from road tax and often don't pay parking charges. Many businesses have switched or are showing an interest, he adds. "A number of firms are embracing the technology on our doorstep. Edinburgh businesses in particular are keen as the cars are very good for town and city driving."

For details go to: www.scotland.greenfleet.net.

 

Switching over made good business sense

BUSINESSMAN Tim Murphy was keeping a close watch on his company's rising fuel bills when an electric van caught his eye at an Energy Saving Trust event at Ingliston last year.

"I was looking at a diesel vehicle, but tried a couple of electric vans to see what they were like," he explains. "I was thinking about the cost of fuel and what savings I could make, but also at the environmental issues."

He replaced one of Alba Beverage's vans with an electric Renault Kangoo. The vehicle effortlessly covers around 50 miles a day deliving tea and coffee supplies to customers, and an overnight charges gives it enough power to travel around 90 miles without a further boost.

"If you like to zoom away from the lights and charge around town, then you'll use up more power, but we're using it on a daily basis and it meets all our needs," he says.

"The only downside in Edinburgh is that there aren't many charging points compared to some other places in Scotland. The council needs to work harder. Look at all the effort to create an electric tram system, it would be better if they had used some of it for charging points for electric vehicles."

He reckons he can run his Kangoo £17,000 van for 60 miles for £1.50 in electricity, compared to around GBP20 he would spend on diesel for the same distance.

It costs around GBP70 to rent the battery from Renault, but he knows if anything happens the firm will replace it.

 

Appeared Edinburgh Evening News July 2013

(c) 2013 Johnston Publishing Limited

The art of putting myths in the picture

PORTOBELLO beach, and Paul Reid was down on his hands and knees positioning a little golden goblet into the sand.

As the waves rolled in, Cockenzie Power Station's chimneys to his right, the promenade chippies and cafes behind, he captured image after image on his camera, each angle, each shadow, every gleam of sunlight on its gilded curves, all recorded, filed and saved.

Back home in the "bland room" he calls his studio - bland and empty because most of what Paul does tends to leave and not come back, destined instead to hang on the walls of wealthy art lovers - the little golden cup and his beach snaps were propped up in preparation for Hercules' arrival, muscular and a bit dishevelled, salty spray from the Atlantic drying in his hair and the cool water lapping at his bare feet.

Today the cup, the beach, the Greek hero and Penicuik-based artist Paul are at a New Town art gallery preparing for one of the most eagerly anticipated art exhibitions of the Festival.

On the walls of The Scottish Gallery in Dundas Street hang the results of intense labour, meticulously detailed realistic paintings that at first glance might look as if they've time travelled from an age when art wasn't all about unmade beds and pickled cows, yet on closer inspection are curiously modern: half men-half beasts of Greek mythology against backgrounds that could be - and sometimes are - strikingly familiar, in their hands or at their feet little glimpses of the modern world that shouldn't be there but still somehow don't look out of place.

Combined, they make up the latest collection of work by an increasingly acclaimed artist whose art school tutors originally sighed and said he was doing it all wrong, but who now counts royalty and famous patrons among his ardent fans.

Eventually someone will spend thousands and take home the Hercules painting - there are two to choose from - the little goblet that sat at Portobello sand now depicted as the giant vessel granted to him by Helios (the sun) so he could sail to Erythia where he was to kill a three-headed giant and bring home his cattle.

"The cup was photographed at Portobello beach," nods Paul, "and the beach in the painting is Gullane. I need to have photographs and rough materials to work from so I'll scout around looking for whatever hills I find or beaches. I use the Scottish landscape, because that's what's around me."

The result is that the gentle lines of rolling hills behind Odysseus, depicted in one striking painting not as an Ancient Greek but with brown hiking boots, kilt socks and rifle as he finds men cruelly transformed with pigs' heads by the witch goddess Circe, are based on scenery around Ballater. In another version of the Hercules myth, the rocks of Gullane in the foreground are complemented by the island of Fidra rising from the sea beyond.

The largest work - a 7ft by 5ft scene of Theseus and the Minotaur with a GBP60,000 price tag - involved him meticulously preparing mini models to base it on, including a mini set of stairs, a moulded lion's head and tiny candelabra adapted, bizarrely, from a little Egyptian chariot model bought at a branch of Game Station which he took apart and rebuilt using nails and glue.

One of the most intense works, a black ink depiction of the gigantic form of a cyclops, towers over the long defunct brewery buildings at Duddingston Road West, which father-of-two Paul found almost by accident and felt perfectly suited the brute force of the mythical creatures.

If the images look as if they've fallen from the pages of a fantasy novel, then it's probably not surprising. Paul, 37, today keeps a guide to Greek mythology art - a reference point for many of his works - handy, but as a child growing up in Scone, Perthshire, it was Ladybird books that retold ancient stories with fascinating illustrations that caught his attention, before giving way to teenage superhero comic books.

"It was actually comics I wanted to do. I loved 2000 AD and Judge Dredd," he confesses. "I spent a lot of time copying the images, and when you think about it, comic book artists tend to draw perspective and human form - they need to know where all the muscles go and how they work. They don't spend as long as I do on it, but they need to be able to do it. So when I went to art college, I could already draw the human form correctly, because I'd spent so long drawing Batman."

His realistic style, the "superhero" mythical characters and their stories which even now find their way into modern culture means he's amassed a league of fans from a sector not generally known for their patronage of art galleries and highbrow masterpieces - the video games community.

"I'm from that generation that played a lot of video games and used the first home computers," says Paul, who, in turn, is hugely appreciative of the art skills involved in today's massively popular games industry. "They seem to like my stuff and I like a lot of what they are doing."

At the other end of the scale, his work has drawn royal patronage. The Prince of Wales has followed his work from his graduation from Duncan of Jordanstone in Dundee, where tutors keen to promote more contemporary styles often marked down his efforts, to his first Scottish solo exhibition at the Scottish Gallery in 2002.

So impressed was Prince Charles, that he invited Paul to join him on a royal official visit to Turkey and Jordan in 2004, where he soaked up the desert landscapes and ancient cities and returned to his Edinburgh studio to create striking artworks, three of which are now in royal possession.

Now his latest work is waiting for inspection - and already sold stickers are dotted around the Scottish Gallery's walls - prices range from a couple of thousand pounds for a sketch, to the supersize GBP60,000.

So who buys his work? "Various people," he smiles. "I'm lucky. There's one very famous person who's bought two or three, but I'm not supposed to say who. They bought large paintings though, so you can assume they have quite big walls . . ."

 

Appeared Edinburgh Evening News August 2013

2013 Johnston Publishing Limited

Walking back to happiness

It was 20 minutes past six in the morning, Hogmanay 1999. Not before, not after, but precisely.

Julie Read distinctly remembers looking at the clock. The time it read is now burned forever into her memory, one of those moments that can never, ever be forgotten however much it haunts and hurts.

She was in bed, her husband Anthony, as usual, by her side.

But this morning, as the hours and seconds ticked away and everyone else was getting ready to welcome a whole new year, century and millennium, something was very wrong.

"He was in the bed beside me, he had been asleep when he started to have a grand mal seizure and he wasn't coming out of it," recalls Julie.

A grand mal seizure, in which the body jerks and the limbs twitch, when there's nothing really that anyone can do - even Julie, a GP - other than try your best not to panic and to make them as safe as they can possibly be.

A phone call brought an ambulance. In hospital there was a CT scan. "It looked like it was some kind of tumour," remembers Julie. "One that had been there for a long time."

There was a biopsy to confirm the worst while Anthony - a highly successful corporate lawyer with a sharp mind for legal detail, in his 30s and with two young children at home - slurred his words and looked down at his right hand and tried but failed to tell it what to do.

Among so many conditions and diseases and illnesses, the two words - brain tumour - is one of those likely to strike most fear into any of us.

Anywhere else, and we hope the surgeon's skill can slice the tumour away, when it's deep in the brain with calcium deposits - a sign that it had been greedily expanding for some time - encroaching on places where no scalpel can safely go, then it's the worst possible news: not 'just' cancer but cancer that's not probably going to be defeated. Yet incredibly, Anthony survived for 12 more years. A death sentence on his shoulder, somehow he rallied, battled and with Julie by his side showing remarkable courage, soldiered on. Their two children grew up not really knowing what it was like for dad to be well.

In fact, so 'normal' did it become to live with a brain tumour in the family, that Julie, a GP at Liberton Medical Group, recalls it actually being a body blow shock when he finally died.

That was a hellish day last March. Now, with her Newington home quiet, her children moved on to university and Anthony gone, Julie is focussing on doing what she and her husband always said they'd one day like to try to do, a grand adventure, one that embraces life to the fullest.

Soon, in what will be an emotional and well as physical challenge, she will pay homage to her husband and the charity whose care and support provided a vital lifeline during their darkest days, pushing herself on a challenging fundraising trek through the Peruvian jungle.

The challenge will be bittersweet, her way of saying a warm 'thank you' to Marie Curie Cancer Care, a chance to stretch her own wings after so long living in the shadow of hospitals and dying, and all the time with memories of Anthony to spur her on.

He had staged a remarkable battle against the tumour that was destined to steal him away, aged just 49. In the end, it was a no-win contest.

"It was so sudden at the end," she says. "He'd been going to Marie Curie's hospice regularly since 2007 and one day they phoned and said he wasn't right and I said, 'no, he's not'.

"He was sent to the Western for a scan. He went in walking and within days he couldn't walk, his speech was going. He was still very cheerful and loved seeing people but over the next four weeks he went down."

The scan had showed bleeding but because the tumour was so concealed and hard to properly analyse, it wasn't clear just what was happening, other than it appeared to be, as Julie puts it "progressing."

"It was awful to be suddenly discussing 'do not resuscitate", it felt completely out of the blue. Although we'd agreed on things like that, it was very hard. I knew he'd have a premature death, his kind of tumour has a 60 per cent ten-year survival and he'd survived for 12, so he did well. But we just didn't expect him to one day just go."

Anthony came home on a stretcher in mid-January last year, where a special bed had been set up, a bed hoist erected and carers in place to help with his care. Julia, craving normality and certain Anthony still had several months to live, made plans to work a couple of days a week. Everyone, she recalls, was still battling to come to terms with what was going to happen next, which meant his death on March 19 - although hardly unexpected - was still a huge shock.

"I really hadn't come to terms with it all, the kids hadn't either," she remembers. "I expected things to continue for weeks and weeks, but he took a turn for the worse on the Friday and three days later he had died."

It was 100 days before the couple's silver anniversary, slap in the middle of son James' higher exams and just before daughter Cathy's 19th birthday.

"I look back now and realise how bad things were at the time," she recalls. "I went back to work gradually but on the days I wasn't working I'd just stay in bed. You think you are coping, but now I see how bad I was feeling and it's only now that things are starting to come together again."

Part of her own healing process has been to focus on the Machu Picchu trek next May, spending spare time training at the gym for the physical demands walking four days and camping out under the stars for three nights. "Th

e longest stretch is 21km, but what makes it difficult is that it's uphill and at altitude.

"But I know the scenery will be amazing, so I'll try to focus on that and my target - I want to raise at least £3900."

Anthony's 50th birthday was spent in Canada, a fabulous holiday that turned out to be the couple's last. For Julie's birthday last week, she asked family and friends not to bother giving her presents, but to kindly donate to her JustGiving web page.

"One of the biggest things for me during that time was the fact that the staff at Marie Curie always asked the right questions and made sure they gave us the right answers in regards to his care at the end of his life," adds Julie. "Without an insight into those things, it would have been extremely difficult for me to have been able to have my husband home during his final days.

"What's so great about doing the Inca Trail for Marie Curie is not only will I raise money for such a great charity, but we'd always talked about doing it. It makes it that bit more special. When I found out about the trek - it was like it was supposed to happen.

"There's always going to be that sadness there, but now I feel I can cope."

Julie Read is raising money for Marie Curie. To support her, go to www.justgiving.com/julie-read2.

 

Danger beneath the surface

ANTHONY Read survived 12 years after his brain tumour had been diagnosed in 1999, but it's thought the growth was there much longer.

During much of the time he was able to function well and returned to work soon after diagnosis. By 2002, however, his speech had been affected and he underwent radiotherapy treatment.

He stopped work and progressed well for the following four years.

But his condition deteriorated in 2006 when a scan showed that part of the tumour deep in the brain seemed to have been missed by radiotherapy and had started to grow again, progressing from a low-grade tumour to a high-grade.

He endured further radiotherapy and chemotherapy however the tumour was affecting his day-to-day life - he often struggled with his short-term memory and would get disorientated.

Complex tasks were difficult and wife Julie recalls a challenging period between 2008 and 2009 when Anthony struggled to interact with his children and became quiet and withdrawn.

Julie recalls him enjoying New Year with friends last year, but within days his condition had changed for the worse. He spent several weeks in hospital before returning home where his condition deteriorated rapidly. He died last March.

 

Appeared Edinburgh Evening News August 2013

(c) 2013 Johnston Publishing Limited

Spice up your life... Tony's taste of success

WHEN chef Tony Singh was a boy his father was busy driving an Edinburgh bus.

Turban wrapped around his head, he would have been quite a sight for goggle-eyed city travellers who had never seen a Sikh bus driver before. And given that it was the 1970s, chances are a few who boarded Baldey Singh Kusbia's bus muttered something under their breath about the man with the funny headgear.

Not many will have paused to consider the rather more gruelling route that he'd taken with his family while he was just a baby - from Lahore during partition in India which tore communities apart, to Edinburgh - the beginning of a process to get his family where it was going.

Hard work, focus and a determination to do well meant by the time he was grown up Baldey Singh Kusbia had made a home and a life in a strange cold and wet land where faces like his were always going to make certain people stop and stare.

Today it's his son who is a familiar face around town and beyond. Recognisable for his tightly-wrapped turban, his impressive whiskers, the mischievous glint in his eye and his witty repartee, like his father, chef Tony Singh has broken through a few barriers.

For a start, with a flair for cooking and a yearning to run a restaurant, he might have easily chosen to go down the 'curry chef' route - instead he opted for fine dining using classic Scottish produce and exotic flavours at the much acclaimed Oloroso. Even when the George Street restaurant folded last August, Tony may have simply opted to find another place and reopen, rather than throw his turban into the ring of a whole new area - television. Yet from next Monday, the Leith-born father-of-four will appear on small screens alongside his friend, London-based chef Cyrus Todiwala - the culinary force behind the Queen's Jubilee dinner - in a quest to encourage us to search out the dust-covered spice jars in our kitchen cupboards and discover new uses for them.

During five 30-minute programmes on BBC2, the pair - dubbed The Incredible Spice Men - travel the country showing how spicing up our traditional and much-loved British dishes can make them even more delicious.

To prove the point, among the much-loved food given the 'spice boys' twist is a humble half-time pie at Easter Road - livened up with a dash of cumin and coriander.

It's quite a turn of events from this time last year when the award-winning chef was facing up to the collapse of Oloroso. "It was market forces," he says, in between juggling dishes at the pop-up restaurant he's currently operating at Fringe venue Summerhall. "We had a national following, Oloroso was known around the country, and it was good.

"But the rent was going up to silly levels and it didn't make economic sense to keep on working just to pay the landlord. That wasn't going to happen. It was time to step away.

"I'd done 11 years, and every one was amazing, I met amazing people and having Oloroso gave me the chance to do something I really loved.

"But the time had come to take a break."

He was developing various ideas and putting a few into practice - from consultancy work in Jersey to acting as a blade-for-hire, going to people's homes and showing them how to cook some of his most loved dishes - when the phone rang.

Before long he was travelling the country, to Wales and the south of England, back up to Kelso in the Borders, then Edinburgh, with many stops in between, discovering which spices are most popular where and, with Cyrus, developing a few of their own ideas.

The result is a cookery-cum-travel show that takes British classics and throws in a spicy twist - spiced fish and chips jazzed up with turmeric, cumin, coriander and chilli, Sunday roast lamb with a cardamom rub, rarebit with chilli and coriander, roast chicken with honey and ginger and bread and butter pudding with cardamom and orange.

At the heart of it all is a determination to encourage home cooks to throw open kitchen cupboards, rummage around in spice racks and then . . . dispose of what they find.

"If something has been lying there so long it has dust on it, then the first thing you should do is put the contents straight on the compost heap," Tony, 42, explains. "The secret with spices is not using them all the time, but a little and quite often. Store them in the fridge or a dark cupboard but remember to use them."

And using spices doesn't necessarily have to involve cooking up a curry. "Spicy doesn't mean 'hot'," he adds. "Spices are subtle, sweet, pungent and the easiest way to make everyday food sensational."

His clever ways in front of a stove got the young Tony noticed as he worked his way into a Youth Training Scheme kitchen job when he was just 16. He'd already learned more than most of us can hope to ever know about spices by watching his mother and grandmother as they cooked Punjabi dishes - often having to improvise using Scottish produce - for the family and at the Sikh temple, the gurudwara.

But then adapting is part of the family make up. Displaced during the post-war partition of India, the family left Lahore whe

n Tony's dad was just a babe in arms and landed in a harsh refugee camp in Delhi.

By 1953 Tony's grandfather and great-grandfather had taken the huge step of leaving Mumbai for London, arriving in mid-winter to a land still slowly rebuilding after the war. Eventually they gravitated north to Leith, where the thriving port already had a community network of immigrant families just like them.

Tony insists he never felt the sting of racism. Today we might like to use buzzwords like "multi-cultural and cosmopolitan" to describe the melting pot communities but back then, shrugs Tony, Leith was simply a place where different groups gathered.

"We just got on with it," he adds. "Yes there was an edge to living there at that time, it was a community with Italians, Poles, Indians, Sikhs, everyone just getting by. I think for my family, the biggest thing was the weather - it definitely was not what they were used to."

His father shovelled coal in a steam engine, became one of the first turban-wearing Edinburgh bus drivers and went on to run his own transport business. Tony loved to cook, going from restaurant kitchens and pubs, picking up vital knowledge of the trade, storing it away for the day he'd run his own place.

And he always aimed high. On the way he worked at the Royal Yacht Britannia, the Balmoral, on board the Royal Scotsman train and at prestigious Skibo Castle. He picked up various awards, including Scottish Chef of the Year, before opening Oloroso in 2001.

Tony's Table, a rustic bistro followed, and before long Tony's vibrant and charismatic personality was catching the eye of television producers, making him a regular on Ready Steady Cook and, more recently, BBC's Great British Menu.

Edinburgh's overheated restaurant scene and crippling overheads became too painful and the restaurants closed within months of each other, but Tony's genetic make-up means he's not the type to sit back and do nothing. From pop-up restaurants - even rolling into Freemans Coffee Shop in Marchmont for a spell which he claims serves "the best coffee in Edinburgh" - to television, he's hardly been quiet since Oloroso's doors closed.

Now, as The Incredible Spice Men gets set to hit the screens, there are hopes that it could well evolve into the next 'Hairy Bikers', there's a recipe book to accompany the series and Tony is on the prowl for a new venue for another restaurant. It seems that the chef in the turban isn't so much back, he's never really gone away.

 

Cumin let's get together

FROM takeaway chicken tikka masala to jars of ready made sauces, Britons love their spices.

But while we might wish we could recreate our favourites at home, there's a tendency to banish the spice rack to the back of the kitchen cupboards, lacking the knowledge and courage to use them.

According to Tony Singh, every part of Britain has its particular favourite spices - from us Scots with our peppery haggis and white pudding, Dundee cake even gingerbeer, to Welsh cakes jazzed up with a sprinkling of mixed spice.

"Vanilla, cinnamon, chillies, nutmeg, cloves," lists Tony, who appears on The Incredible Spice Men with fellow chef Cyrus Todiwala. "They are so underused but so good. It's about being a little bit more adventurous."

Cyrus, who came to the UK from Bombay 20 years ago, runs a successful chain of restaurants and was chosen to cook the Queen's Jubilee dinner.

The pair met 15 years ago and bonded over a joint love of British produce and the spices of their childhoods.

In each show they travel to a different region of Britain in their spice-filled vehicle, visiting passionate cheese makers, beef producers, pig farmers, fishermen and showing how even the best British produce can be enhanced by spices.

And they take on some serious British culinary traditions: spicing up a National Trust afternoon tea under the watchful eyes of the Women's Institute; putting cumin and coriander in the Hibs football fans' beloved half-time meat pies, adding chilli and coriander to the Full English in a trucker's greasy spoon and adding a spicy marinade to bikers' fish and chips in Hastings.

 

Appeared Edinburgh Evening News August 2013

(c) 2013 Johnston Publishing Limited

Rockers Nazareth can't stop the music

A packed sports arena in British Columbia and Scots veteran rockers Nazareth were revving up, ready to pump out their driving rock and roll to a packed audience of thousands of long-haired, sweat lashed fans.

Gravel-voiced singer Dan McCaffe

rty had just launched into his first vocals of the night, another high energy gig on a seemingly never ending global tour that had already taken the band on a relentless journey from Austria through Russia, Eastern Europe, on to Brazil, America - through the burning hell of an Arizona heatwave - and now Canada.

Lights down and ready to rock, McCafferty grabbed the mic and struck a pose on centre stage. Then promptly collapsed.

The dramatic incident just minutes into the band's mid-July gig at the Cranbrook Curling Club ice arena in a town overshadowed by the Rockies sent shockwaves through the band's worldwide fan base, from the bleak Russian Steppes to the carnival capital of Brazil.

While Dan was sped to hospital for emergency treatment, the rest of the band announced the immediate cancellation of the remainder of their Canadian tour - sparking fears that perhaps now, after 45 years of almost constant gigging and recording, they'd reached the end of the road.

Rumours of Nazareth's demise, however, have turned out to be very much premature. Today bass player Pete Agnew is laughing off the health drama, while Dan, recovered and back in fine voice, is holed up in a Rosyth recording studio, belting out vocals for the band's next album.

By Friday the non-stop rockers - Dan and Pete are both 66 - will be back on the road at a rock festival in Switzerland headlined by Joe Cocker, followed by shows in Belgium, Germany and Sweden.

"Dan's fine," laughs Pete, shrugging off the on-stage drama. "A lot of singers don't really like performing in mountain areas because the air's thinner and it affects their breathing. Dan got on stage but he couldn't draw a breath.

"I thought he was going to puff out and I shouted across to him 'Are you okay?' but he just looked at me and said something like 'Hell! No!'

"It affected him badly. We decided it was daft to try to continue and better to hit the remainder of the tour on the head and give it a break."

Giving it a break Nazareth style, however, involves a few days of rest and respite before rolling up the sleeves and getting on with it again. Within weeks of the Canadian drama, the band had regrouped at recording studio The Sub Station in Hilton Road, Rosyth - just a couple of miles away from their Dunfermline roots - to lay down tracks for what will be their 23rd, or perhaps even their 24th album.

"I honestly can't remember what number it will be," chuckles Pete, who along with Dan is one of the original Nazareth members.

"I can't even remember the names of the albums we did five years ago, never mind how many there have been. I do know this is the first album we'll have made in Scotland for 35 years. Normally we'd be locked in a studio miles away, so it's nice this time to do some work and get home for dinner."

Which is odd, because getting home at night isn't typically part of the Nazareth style. Hardened rockers - indeed, make that "rock gods" to devoted fans scattered across the world who follow their every move and gig via the band's website and fans' forums - they may be virtually ignored on their home territory in the UK, but elsewhere they are superstars.

In fact, Pete's knowledge of far flung towns in the likes of Ukraine and Belarus far outstrips that of even well known spots closer to home, where bands like Nazareth, with their hard rock roots, struggle to compete with modern popsters like One Direction or even fellow Seventies' singer Rod Stewart.

"It's hard to make a living in this country," says Pete, whose son Lee is the band's drummer. "Rod Stewart is up in the premier league and we're more first division. He can go and sell out Edinburgh Castle and we do the Alhambra in Dunfermline.

"So most of the time we're abroad. It's funny that we've played places like Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Chile and Alaska, but we've never even played Blackpool."

"Actually," he laughs, "we've been talking about what to call the next album, and one suggestion was to just call it 'Never Been to Blackpool'."

Clearly Blackpool's loss is Russia's gain. And Pete, for one, isn't too worried about missing out on the Illuminations - not when he can count former Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev among the band's VIP supporters. "We're like the Beatles in Russia," he grins. "We play places like ice hockey stadiums and these big concert halls that are usually called things like the People's Palace of Culture, great big concrete commie things and we are massive there.

"As far as we know we've not had Putin at our shows - maybe we're doing something wrong there as we've not been arrested in Russia either. But we met Gorbachev in the VIP lounge at an airport.

"There was this wee baldy guy with his missus and all these guys in suits with him. He came over, we had a beer and he had a coffee. He was a nice guy."

In a career spanning nearly five decades, Pete's amassed a wealth of hard living - and sometimes downright ridiculous - rock 'n' roll tales that make cult music movie Spinal Tap look like an episode of the Partridge Family. Such as the summer gig in Arizona in June just before Dan took ill, when the band found themselves trapped in a hotel room, unable to leave because going outside would have meant they nearly fried in the 120 degree heat.

"We went from December in Russia to being stuck in Arizona for five days because of hassles over flights. You looked out of the hotel window and never saw a person on the street, it was too hot to go out.

"In fact, the only people outside were two guys from our road crew who'd gone out and got lost. I phoned them up and said 'get back inside you clowns, you'll die out there!'"

Which could hardly be further removed from the icy blast of Austria at the peak of the skiing season when the country's World Champion ski squad hit the slopes to the pounding beat of a specially composed Nazareth anthem, God of the Mountain. Bizarrely, the Austrian Ski Federation had contacted the Scots rockers last year with a plea for them to write a power rock anthem to inspire their downhill squad to victory throughout the season.

"They'd been on at us for months to write a song for the World Cup team, something they could play every time they went out to race," recalls Pete. "I said to my son Lee that we'd better get it done and he came in the next day with God of the Mountain. I said 'very good son, that'll do'."

He revels in the oddness of Nazareth's lingering success in the strangest of places, but all joking aside, keeping the band going for four decades has involved a fair share of brutal hard work and a schedule he admits is "knackering". Just preparing for a tour that covers so many diverse countries meant rehearsing a massive range of songs from their vast catalogue to ensure they perform songs that are best known in each country.

"We've had different hits in different countries, what we play in Brazil will be different from Russia," explains Pete. "It doesn't all happen by chance, you know.

"We're not like the Rolling Stones. They turn up and play a couple of gigs and go away again. We never stop.

"We've put a few days between each gig this year, but we play 35 gigs in 42 days - now that's a tour. By the end of it all, it's no bother for us to order off a menu for each other."

Of course the question is how much longer Pete and Dan - both heading for their 67th birthdays next month - can keep it going.

"There's all this speculation about when we'll stop," shrugs Pete. "To be honest, we're too busy to even think about it."

 

Dunfermline to London: Start of a long road

NAZARETH formed from the remains of Pete Agnew's original band The Shadettes, which started in Dunfermline in the early Sixties. His lifelong friend Dan McCafferty took the role of lead singer with the band and, by 1968, the original Nazareth line up - with Manny Charlton and Darrell Sweet - was in place, although the name did not change until 1970, when the group arrived in London.

By the mid-Seventies, they had achieved chart success with songs like Broken Down Angel, This Flight Tonight and My White Bicycle.

Among the band's fans is Guns 'n' Roses singer Axl Rose, who asked them to play at his wedding.

The current line-up includes Agnew's son, Lee, on drums and guitarist Jimmy Murrison

Stroke survivors and the painful road to recovery

A RUSTLING crisp packet is just background noise to most of us, yet it's enough to cause Graham McGuire to snap.

He's been talking, quite clearly and very precisely, about his recovery from a stroke. Now, as fellow stroke survivor Paul Hodson crunches up the empty packet, the sound proves just too distracting for him to continue.

"Will you please stop that?" he suddenly barks, and Paul, who like Graham battles daily with communication condition aphasia, is suitably chastised. He apologises, puts the bag down and quietly folds his arms.

Graham's blunt outburst might have seemed unnecessary to some - after all, a scrunched up crisp packet doesn't make that much noise. But it turns out that even the droning sound of traffic outside, or the chatter of people in another room, is enough to fog Graham's fragile concentration, making every word he utters an even bigger challenge than it already is.

Paul, sitting opposite in a room within Stroke Association's Leith offices, isn't offended at all. For aphasia - the frustrating aftereffect that hits a third of the 120,000 stroke survivors in Scotland - also left him struggling to speak, read, write and, devastating for someone who once worked high up in the city's banking industry, numerically dysfunctional.

Life post-stroke for them both is a giant leap away from broadcaster Andrew Marr. He recently returned to television screens following his stroke in January with the only hint that all was not completely right being a walking stick propped up at the side of his chair. As he set about grilling politicians and chatting to his Sunday morning guests about the big issues of the week, his knack for untangling complex issues and putting squirming interviewees on the spot seemed as sharp as ever.

The Loretto School-educated presenter's stroke left him with some mobility problems, however pictures of him this week exercising in a park without the need for his cane suggest he's winning the battle against those.

But for Graham and Paul - like Marr, both were in their early fifties and at the peak of their careers at the time - the confusion as they woke up in hospital having had a stroke was compounded by the horrible realisation they had been left with one of its most frustrating aftereffects.

Suddenly, simply trying to communicate basic needs - never mind emulating Marr's incisive brain power or returning to work - posed a daily challenge of epic proportions.

Now, in a bid to create greater understanding of aphasia, the charity Stroke Association has launched a campaign which primarily targets health workers who are often stroke survivors' first port of call and yet who may be unaware of just how debilitating it can be.

New research from the charity, released to mark Aphasia Month, reveals 43 per cent of those affected found communicating with their GP difficult - raising concerns over the standard of care they might ultimately receive. And nearly a third quizzed indicated problems being understood by their GP.

Certainly in Graham and Paul's case, aphasia - the result of damage to the language centres of the brain and which can also be caused by tumours, trauma or neurological illness - didn't just devastate their ability to communicate normally, it wrecked their successful careers and altered their lives forever.

"I'll never be back to normal," explains Graham, now 67, who held an academic post at Strathclyde University and worked for the Leith-based Centre for Advanced Marine Studies at the time of his stroke in October 1997.

"Even the noise of traffic which most people don't notice can prevent sensible conversation. You're distracted all the time by noises which wouldn't bother other people."

Today, his speech seems fine, the result of years of hard work that included re-learning the alphabet and being taught to read all over again. And now Graham, of Morningside, supports others affected by aphasia at a local Speakability group, where he hears devastating stories of people whose lives crumble as they lose their income and friends drift away unable to deal with their sudden inability to communicate.

Paul nods as Graham describes the impact of aphasia and challenges of having to learn basic communication skills all over again. For the former bank executive, even simple tasks like recalling his age and differentiating between right and left can be a struggle.

A law and economics graduate, he was 51 and working as a project manager for the Royal Bank of Scotland in 2007 when he entered hospital to await a triple heart bypass. The problems with his heart, however, led to a stroke.

He woke up acutely aware that something was very wrong. "I knew I could speak before," he says, "but then all I was able to say were 'yes' and 'no'. So I knew immediately that I had a big problem."

As with Graham, intense speech therapy has helped. Now Paul, of Canonmills, can make himself understood, although sometimes painfully slowly as he searches hard for each word. For those listening, second guessing what he wants to say might be well-intentioned, but he stresses that every conversation, however challenging, aids his recovery.

"It's important that people wait for me to explain and don't jump in," says Paul. "It's annoying, and for me it's about trying to improve. I can't do it if someone is already talking for me.

"But before I had nothing at all," he adds. "I am slowly getting there."

For details of Speakability groups, log on to www.speakability.org.uk

 

Quarter of a million affected

More than a quarter of a million people in the UK have problems speaking, reading and writing as a result of communication condition aphasia.

It is caused by injury to the language centres of the brain, either through stroke, head injury, brain tumour or a neurological condition such as meningitis or multiple sclerosis. Around a third of the 120,000 stroke survivors in Scotland have the condition.

A stroke occurs when the blood supply to the brain is cut off by a clot or a bleed in the brain. Around 12,500 people in Scotland have a stroke every year. It is the leading cause of adult impairment and disability.

Stroke is the country's fourth biggest killer after cancer, heart and lung conditions. Risks include obesity, alcohol and smoking. High blood pressure and irregular heartbeat can also lead to stroke.

Born to be a woman...Gina reflects on the fight for her life.

 

GINA Smith rummages in her cavernous black handbag and pulls out a sheet of yellowish paper.

She unfolds it slowly and deliberately, revelling in the impact she's creating.

Indeed, if someone was to film the scene, it would be no doubt accompanied by a dum-dum-DUM! soundtrack, there'd be audible gasps from the audience and a final round of applause.

The paper now unfolded and flattened on the table, is clearly a birth certificate. Gina, stubby nails painted deep blue, points proudly to the 'gender' column. Girl, it states.

"Girl," she says, puffed with delight. "It's written down there. Born a girl. Her Majesty's officials recognise I'm a woman, the department of Work and Pensions have done the same.

"I carry the papers with me because I won't take any crap from anyone any longer," she adds, stiffening.

"I have it all here in legal documents."

Gina, a former soldier and miner who worked in the dirt and claustrophobic bowels of Polkemmet pit, crosses her bare legs and adjusts her figure hugging frock. It has a vivid psychedelic print, cut low at the front and unfortunately just a bit on the short side so that when she bends over to take off her towering heels because they're hurting her feet, she gives a quick flash of her knickers.

Even if she realised, it's unlikely that she'd care. For having fought tooth and painted nail to get to the point where she can proudly wave that replacement birth certificate in any face she chooses, she's not about to worry about flashing some flesh.

Indeed, changing from a he to a she certainly wasn't without a fight. Back in 1994 when she was officially still male - even though the past life as Ian George Smith, father of four, one-time husband, soldier and miner, was very much no longer on the scene - Gina launched a one-woman campaign that highlighted the anguish of those like her, desperate for gender reassignment surgery but suddenly denied by a controversial health board rule. Her angry challenge made banner headlines. Gina, then in her late 30s, became something of a poster girl for those born in the wrong body, a bit of a pioneer at a time when sex swap surgery was still referred to in headlines as a "gender-bender op" and transsexuals were often cruelly dismissed as some kind of weirdos who needed to 'man up'.

Time moves on, attitudes change though, surely? Today, 18 years on since life and body changing surgery, it might be expected that we've all stopped snickering at the women who feel they really should be men and the men who yearn to be women, and learned to move on.

And yet earlier this month saw the launch of a new campaign aimed at dispelling transgender bigotry. Time for TEA (transgender education awareness) was developed by the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender National Youth Council, a unique project that will run in schools, colleges and universities.

As well as seeking to change attitudes among students, it will also target teachers, helping them understand the correct terminology and issues that transgender students might be experiencing.

That launch came just a few weeks after River Song, 18, who is in the process of switching from male to female, claimed she had been banned from the toilets and verbally abused by a member of staff at the St James Centre.

None of which really surprises Gina. After all, the piece of paper she feels she must constantly carry - a legal replacement for her original birth certificate granted post-surgery - proves that simply going through the process hasn't meant an end to her personal struggle.

"I didn't do anything that anyone else in my situation would not have done," she says, shrugging off suggestions that her high-profile mid-Nineties campaign was in any way brave or pioneering. "I suppose I'd fought so hard for so long - I'd got used to fighting. I didn't know what I was going to do with my life without the surgery, so I had to fight.

"Part of it has been me fighting against myself," she adds grimly. "I did all these very masculine jobs, like joining the army for seven years, working as a miner for two. But I couldn't shake the feelings that I had.

"Actually," she sighs, "I don't think you ever do get your head around it all. It's 'why me?', and 'why did life pick me for this to happen to?'."

Gina was the middle of five children growing up in the Midlands and knew from a young age that she was different. It wasn't a particularly pleasant childhood, she recalls. For a start there were her own conflicting feelings about her identity which arose just as younger siblings came along and she found herself suddenly squashed in the middle.

"People talk about middle child syndrome," she sighs. "Well I think it all helped to screw me up."

She craved attention and says she got it in the most shocking way possible. Years later she accused her father of sexually abusing her as a child, claims which he angrily refuted before he died and which, much to Gina's upset, never resulted in any court hearing.

A bit older and she began to attract attention from men, awakening feelings that she'd been told were wrong and which she battled against by taking on "macho" jobs. "I tried to fight it, I didn't want feminine feelings," she explains. "Every time I tried to get rid of the feelings they came back stronger.

"No-one can understand it because even I don't understand. Eventually I couldn't stand being two people at once, I thought I'd have to sort it out."

So she joined the Infantry in 1971 and served in the most butch places of all, Northern Ireland. Later as her regiment's Colonel's personal valet, she'd wait until he and his wife went on holiday and then raided the woman's extensive wardrobe, shedding his infantryman's uniform to prance around their home dressed in her finest Christian Dior cocktail frocks and heels.

Army life came to an abrupt halt in 1978. Tortured by her secret, Gina went awol in the most unlikeliest of places. "Jamaica!," she howls. "Of all the places to go awol, I did it on a small island and there was nowhere to go. Twenty-eight days in the slammer and then SNR - services no longer required."

Still desperate to prove her 'masculinity', Gina married, worked at Polkemmet pit and fathered four children. "It was extremely exhausting, " she remembers. "It was like I was acting all the time and I couldn't keep on doing it anymore."

Her marriage ended in 1988 and Gina slowly shed her masculine layers to become, on the outside at least, every inch a woman. Her children, still young at the time, had had no problem accepting her transformation, to them she became 'Aunty'. "You can't sit down with a four, six, eight-year-old or whatever and say 'sorry I'm not going to be your dad any more, they would have been devastated," she continues.

"I was fortunate that they have just always seen me the way I am and I'm unbelievably proud of them."

Sex swap surgery was not particularly new - high-profile personalities such as April Ashley had made the male-female transformation in the Sixties, and she went on to become a Vogue fashion model. But it wasn't much talked about either.

Gina, of Saughton, started hormone treatment and was days away from surgery in 1994 when health bosses decided to stop funding the GBP7000 gender-swap operations unless in "exceptional cases". Enraged, she loudly campaigned against their plans, eventually forcing a U-turn and undergoing full surgery in early 1995.

To prove how far she's come, she recalls a moment during the recent Fringe when she suddenly stepped on to a stage for an impromptu, first ever, stand-up comedy routine during which she fielded questions from the audience - some more intrusive than others - about being transsexual.

She enjoyed it so much that she's planning a much bigger, more formal show for next year's Fringe. "It'll be called 'Everything you ever wanted to ask a transsexual but were too scared to ask'," she giggles.

All a world away from the days when she desperately hid herself for fear of being found out, drank too much and thought of ending her life.

"You have to go through a lot alone and have guts and determination," she nods, "but I couldn't stand being the way I was any longer. I just want people to know I'm like any other woman."

 

 

Triggered by survey results, campaign sets out to increase understanding

 

A CAMPAIGN to highlight transgender issues was launched this month.

Developed by the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender National Youth Council, Time for TEA - transgender education awareness - is the first campaign of its kind in Scotland and will target older secondary school pupils, college and university students. It aims to work with teachers, helping increase under-standing of transgender issues. The campaign follows a LGBT Youth Scotland survey that revealed more than three quarters of transgender people had experienced bullying at school. Almost nine in ten said that bullying had a negative impact on their education. Fewer than half said they would feel confident reporting it. Nearly half of those who responded said they had left education as a result of bullying.

More details from www.lgbtyouth.org.uk

 

 

More than 80 years of ground-breakers

SURGEONS carried out the first recorded attempt at male-to-female reassignment surgery on Lili Elbe in Germany in 1930, who died three months after her fifth operation.

The first female-to-male surgery was in 1960s America.

April Ashley, pictured,

underwent surgery in 1960 and became a Vogue model and actress.

American tennis professional Renee Richards had male-to-female surgery in 1975. Despite opposition, she went on to play tennis on the women's professional circuit.

Former Second World War fighter pilot and racing driver Roberta Cowell underwent male-to-female surgery in 1951 - the first recorded case in the UK. The change meant she was barred from Grand Prix.

(c) 2013 Johnston Publishing Limited