Timothysalmon's Blog

 On Foot Across France: Dunkerque to the Pyrenees 

(Blackbird Digital Books, 2014; UK Kindle edition £2.16/paperback £10.06;  US $2.99 and $15.06. For the UK, go to http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00HR6NCMS/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=B00HR6NCMS&linkCode=as2&tag=blackbirdeboo-21; for the US, go to http://www.amazon.com/On-Foot-Across-France-Dunkerque-ebook/dp/B00HR6NCMS/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1395162540&sr=8-3-fkmr0&keywords=Across+France+on+Foot%3B+from+Dunkerque+to+the+Pyrenees.

I fell in love with France when I was sixteen and had to spend three weeks in bed with ‘flu. On a friend’s recommendation I started to read Zola’s Germinal, in French. I had to resort to the dictionary many times a page to begin with, but, nothing if not stubborn, I won through in the end. By the time I met my first French girl friend at eighteen I was passably at ease in French  and of course doubly determined to get even better. One way and another I have been involved with France ever since.

In the 1980s I was asked to write The Rough Guide to France, something that I did for fifteen years. But I had always wanted to write my own book about France, nothing to do with cathedrals and history and railway timetables: a more personal look at the country I loved. I wanted to make a slow journey, a journey on foot. I kept thinking of Laurence Sterne’s eighteenth-century A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy, but could not decide on a route, until one day in 2000 I came upon an article in Le Monde by its culture correspondent who had crossed the country on foot from the North Sea at Dunkerque to the Spanish border, following the line of the Paris meridian, which, re-christened La Méridienne Verte, served as a central focus for France’s millennium celebrations. That’s it, I thought: there’s my route, a virtual line from nowhere in particular to nowhere in particular, passing, with the exception of Paris, through nowhere in particular. It would bring what it brought. I would see what I saw.

This  book is the diary of that walk, what the French call a carnet de voyage, an account day by day of what I saw, heard, thought: landscapes, flower girls, snippets of history, curious encounters and lots of birdsong. Click here to read the first chapter.

 

Schizophrenia: Who Cares? – A Father’s Story

(Blackbird Digital Books, 2013; UK Kindle edition £2/paperback £9.12; US $3.35 and $13.13. For the UK, go to http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_4_14?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=schizophrenia+who+cares&sprefix=Schizophrenia+%2Cnull%2C279; for the US, go to http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1/182-4777469-8275353?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Schizophrenia+Who+Cares.

This is the story of my son’s twenty-year struggle with schizophrenia – mine too, come to that. It is a story of periods of reasonable stability punctuated by hospital admissions, followed by discharges into the so-called community where it is never clear who is meant to be responsible for what, who will see that the patient eats properly, keeps himself clean, receives the benefits he is entitled to, has a decent place to live; where it is never clear who is responsible for spotting an approaching relapse and who is going to do something about it when it happens. Will there be a hospital bed available? An endless cycle of anxiety and uncertainty…

I have told my story because I know it stands for all those who find themselves in the same boat and I believe it needs to be told, for the “outside” world – and I include many of the professionals in that – knows little of the daily reality of living with schizophrenia. I have also told the story of our dealings with the care services, a pretty shameful record of incompetence, buck-passing and lack of communication and co-ordination. And I have not spared the mental health charities, for in their devotion to the sloppy, evasive language of political correctness they have dangerously underplayed the seriousness of real mental illness like schizophrenia.

Click here to read the Prologue.

You can also listen to an interview I did with BBC Radio 4’s All in the Mind on June 15th 2011.  There is a review with Frontier Psychiatrist at http://frontierpsychiatrist.co.uk/interview-with-tim-salmon-author-of-schizophrenia-who-cares/.

What others have said

Salley Vickers, author of Miss Garnet’s Angel and The Other Side of You:

‘This impressive first-hand account of coping with a relative suffering from a serious mental illness highlights the shameful lack of proper resources available for the mentally fragile in our allegedly “caring society.” Tim Salmon’s moving and disturbing book should be read by the families of sufferers but more importantly should be compulsory reading for all those responsible for mental health welfare.”

Nina Bawden, novelist; author of The Birds on the Trees:

‘I have just finished reading Schizophrenia: Who Cares?… Salmon writes of the bureaucratic hurdles he has had to face in order to get help for his damaged child; including as evidence some of the letters he has received from organizations supposed to help the weaker members of our society which reduced me, on occasion, to both tears and laughter. We could do better than this. Salmon’s story – which I found a riveting read, a proper page-turner, might show us the way.’

Leonard Fagin Honorary Senior Lecturer, University College London, and Consultant Psychiatrist, The Psychiatrist:

‘I found this book to be a bit of a long gripe at times, but nonetheless a salutary one. Before embarking on it I kept in mind three questions: Will it provide comfort/advice/guidance to other carers? Will it make mental health professionals more aware of the plight of the carer? Will it offer insights on what carers actually need in terms of support? The answer to all three questions is yes, in parts…

Although at times I was uncomfortable at his comments… I do agree with the overriding message that we have a long way to go to work alongside carers in a mutually sharing system of care. I would recommend this book for care coordinators and those interested in more responsive and engaged services.’

Declan Hyland, Royal College of Psychiatry Student Associate Newsletter, June 2011:

‘“Schizophrenia: Who Cares?” is a thought-provoking and brutally honest personal account of a father’s struggle through the development of his son, Jeremy’s, paranoid schizophrenia…

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and found it very difficult to put down.  It provided an invaluable insight into the author’s personal experience of living with schizophrenia from the point of view of the main carer.  The author enlightens the reader on some of the flaws in mental health service provision; he is not afraid to be controversial.  I would strongly recommend this book to both users and providers of mental health services, especially since it is so reasonably priced at only £12.00.’

The Unwritten Places(Lycabettus Press, Athens, 1995; ISBN 960 7269 44 6; 319pp; £14.99)

To buy this book, click on the title. 

The Unwritten Places tells the story of my wanderings in the mountains of northern Greece in the 1970s and ’80s, and in particular of my experiences among the Vlachs.

The Vlachs are what we would call an ethnic minority today, living mainly in the northwestern corner of Greece and southern Albania. Traditionally they have been nomadic or semi-nomadic shepherds, migrating with their flocks between  winter pastures in the lowlands and  summer ones in the Pindos mountains. They are called Arumani in their own language, which today is their principal distinguishing feature. It is a language derived from Latin and is considered to be a dialect of Romanian.

I have enjoyed a close friendship with one particular Vlach family from Samarina for thirty years now. The second half of this book is mostly about experiences that my friendship with them has allowed me to have. I have watched their flocks grow in size, I have seen the road arrive, I have watched their children grow into their sophisticated twenties, some of them becoming archaeologists and diplomats, others keeping their fathers’ accounts on laptop computers, whereas their grandparents were born into a completely pre-modern world that was still part of the Ottoman Turkish empire.

The portrait on the front cover of this book is of Vassilis, the youngest son in my generation; the mounted man in the photograph at the head of this site is his brother, Tsiogas.

I am as grateful to them for letting me into their lives and teaching me things I would never have dreamt of as I think they are proud of me for taking an interest in them.

Some reviews:

“Salmon minutely observes the character and practices of his shepherd friends, their families and wider circles. He has a sensitive and perceptive eye for mountainscape and skyscape, an eye any landscape painter might envy; his pen depicts what he sees in a fluent tongue, stark or lyrical or dramatic and in total sympathy with the occasion. There are passages in his book as compulsive and chromatic as those in which Edward Lear described, for instance, the scenes that confronted him at Petra.”

John Leatham, The Anglo-Hellenic Review, no.13.

“Tim Salmon respectfully, yet candidly, illuminates a dying world crucial to understanding the development of modern Greek, Vlach and Balkan history… For this reviewer, not only do Salmon’s candid, perceptive recollections succeed in capturing the essence of these lords of the mountains, especially the Vlach shepherds, it also imbues them with a certain nobility, Homeric virtue and endearing down-to-earth humanity… it takes a certain courage to write admiringly of this way of life in the 1990s, and Salmon certainly has it.”

Robert N. Talabac, Society Farsarotul, USA.

“He describes the remote parts of Greece beautifully, and comments hauntingly on their despoliation… Sometimes he is perhaps too disdainful about the shoddy benefits of modern civilisation… perhaps it might be better to follow this excellent book with an investigation of the mountains of southern Albania, full of Greeks and Vlachs, but empty of baths and roads… Such an investigation would test Salmon’s strong legs, stout heart and interesting brand of reactionary socialism, but these trials would be worth while if they produced more fine writing about more unwritten places.”

Tom Winnifrith, The Times Literary Supplement, March 1996.

Availability:

Outside Greece, the book is available either from the publisher’s website www.lycabettus.com or from three bookshops in London: Daunt Books, 83 Marylebone High St, W1V 4QW (tel. 020 7224 2295; email=marylebone@dauntbooks.co.uk); Stanfords, 12-14 Long Acre, Covent Garden, WC2E 9LP (tel. 020 7836 1321; email=sales@stanfords.co.uk); Hellenic Book Service, 91 Fortess Rd, NW5 1AG (tel. 020 7267 9499; email=info@hellenicbookservice.com).  You can also buy it on this site by clicking on the title above.

The Mountains of Greece: A Walker’s Guide

Published by Cicerone Press, this was my first book. The original edition came out in 1986, the fruit of ten years’ hiking the remote and little known mountainous regions of Greece. Most of the routes were based on the centuries-old footpaths and mule trails that served as the country’s road system pretty much right up until WWII. In 2006, helped by my friend Michael Cullen, we published a much expanded and completely re-walked third edition, now called The Mountains of Greece: Trekking in the Pindhos Mountains (ISBN 978 1 85284 440 0; 368pp; PVC cover; £15.95).

(To download updates to 2008, click on The Mountains of Greece under  Pages on the home page.)

A review:

“Salmon and his co-author Michael Cullen both have long experience of Greek mountains… this is a book which all those who want to tackle the Greek mountains should have.”

Michael Llewellyn Smith, former British ambassador to Greece and author of Ionian Vision, the best account of the bloody 1920’s expulsion of the age-old Greek populations from Turkey: The Anglo-Hellenic Review no.34.

The Rough Guide to France and The Rough Guide to Paris

I wrote both these books with my dear and now deceased friend, Kate Baillie. We started work in 1984 and the first edition of France came out in 1986 and of Paris in 1987. We went on to produce a total of six editions of France and seven of Paris, the last in 1999, when we sold our rights back to the publisher. Kate also wrote a Rough Guide to Provence.

It was fun while we were still exploring the country, but after that new editions became very tedious: a matter of checking countless phone numbers and prices. You dash about from place to place. You stop in the high street. Has anything changed? Of course not: things do not change much in a long-established country like France. You drive on; there are still six places to see that day. No fun!

And we always felt that we were at the mercy of the editors who frequently introduced errors into our work and were then supported by the publisher on the grounds that we were a bunch of prima donnas who gave ourselves airs and graces as authors when in reality we were no better than hacks!

I also made a brief appearance as a co-author of The Rough Guide to Greece (1989 edition).

Self-Catering in Greece (Croom Helm, 1986; ISBN 0 7099 1589 6)

A rather unappealing title for what was in fact – it is long out of print – quite a useful little primer in Greek cookery. I still use my copy regularly. It was written in conjunction with my Greek wife of the time, Florica Kyriacopoulos, and our recipes were largely those of her mother’s housekeeper, Eleni .

A curious and pleasing tale hangs thereby. I was commuting from London to Athens one winter by car. I had a zippy little Ford Escort XR3i, the poor man’s sports car. Coming out of the ferry port at Calais on a dark and rainy evening I ignored the raised thumbs of a young couple hitching. A mile down the road, thinking of my own youth and frequent hitch-hiking, I repented of my hard-heartedness and turned back. They were still there, wet and bedraggled. They were going to Paris. So was I. They got in. The rather beautiful girl fell asleep in the back and the boyfriend sat in the front beside me. He told me they were taking part in a student charity race to the Ecole Militaire on the Champ de Mars, which was exactly where I was going, to stay with an aunt. I put my foot down and we got there first. On the way I had told him that I was actually on my way to Greece. He said he had been there once, to the island of Rhodes. “And, do you know,” he said, “the thing that really made the holiday for me was a book I picked up called…?” You’ve guessed it. It was one of the most touching compliments I have ever received as an author!

Great Walks of the World, edited by John Cleare(ISBN 0 04 440135 3; Unwin Hyman, 1988) and The Mountains of Europe, edited by Kev Reynolds (ISBN 0 946609 84 5; Oxford Illustrated Press, 1990).  Chapters on the mountains of Greece in both these works.

Translations

From the Greek:

Prespa, by Giorgos Catsadorakis (The Society for the Protection of Prespa, 1999; ISBN 960 85811 2 5). An account of the author’s work with the fascinating fauna and flora of these beautiful lakes shared between Greece, Albania and the former Yugoslavia.

Greece’s Heritage from Nature, by Giorgos Catsadorakis (WWF-Greece, 2003; ISBN 960 7506 07 3 (hardback) and 960 7506 08 1 (paperback)). A compendium of the natural history of Greece.