A rounded picture of Jewish life and traditions by a failed tenor who believes in re-incarnation.


A heimische collection of reminiscences with a melancholy twist....Recorded verbatim, which accounts for their vividness and impact.
Jerusalem Post

The feeling I had - and it didn't go away throughout my youth- was that the Lane was a carnival. There was a man who sold ointment to cure corns. He didn't have any corns himself but he'd put some ointment on the side of his hand and say if you wrapped it in a bandage you could peel off the corns like the skin of an onion in the morning. People bought and nobody came back. Another man sold what he said was extract of Spanish fly - 'Don't give it to minors! It'll make them into men and women before they leave school!' He had as a come-on a strong-man with a heap of rubber expander-sets he was forever threatening to pull but never did. I've got an idea they were related! Another man sold home-made boot polish, another - I don't think he made a fortune at it - you could buy double envelopes from him, put something in one end, turn it round and make it disappear. One man used to cut off two- or three- inch lengths of bitter herbs, charge two or three pence a time and say they were good for piles, loose bowels, pimples, tell you the whole story. There were four or five from the First World War, and one of them turned a barrel-organ while the rest in ladies' dresses did ballet, tap. Prince Monolulu, wearing a feather headdress, would say, 'I've got a horse!' and if there were sixteen runners in the race , he would have sixteen horses to tell you for sixpence apiece. There was Little Ginger, the Strong Man. Apart from the conventional tricks of breaking chains and bending bars, he once for a bet, and it was only a cup of tea, bent a penny with his fingers.