Scimitar Press

02/09/2024

MATHS COACHING

MA (Oxon), 13 years' full-time Maths teaching experience, available to teach GCSE, AS, Maths A Level (Pure/Mechanics/Statistics) & Further Maths A Level (Pure). £25 per hour introductory lesson, £30 thereafter.

Willing to teach at my home (HR9 6DZ), your home (within reasonable distance) or online.

Email [email protected], phone 01600 890730 / 07824 678044 or message Gill Suttle on FB.

Maths Teaching MA (Oxon), 13 years’ full-time Maths teaching experience, available to teach GCSE, AS, A-Level Maths Pure/Mechanics/Statistics, & A-Level Further Maths Pure. £25 per hour introductory lesson, thereafter £30. Willing to teach at your home (within 20 miles HR9 6DZ) or mine, or onlin...

22/11/2023

I've made it on to the cover for the Globetrotters 2024 calendar!

We are pleased to announce that our 2024 Calendar is now available for pre-order. Thank you to everyone who entered our wildlife competition to have your photography included in the 2024 calendar, we have truly been blown away by the entries. Every member will receive a free calendar in the post but...

22/11/2023

www.scimitarpress.co.uk is fully recovered after the hacking incident, and now available .

27/03/2023

I've been advised by my ISP that my website www.scimitarpress.co.uk has been hacked. Normal service is suspended!

13/02/2023

The triumphal arch and colonnaded street at Syria's ancient city of Palmyra have now been partially blown up by ISIS. What's left may have been further damaged by last week's earthquake, which will have been felt quite strongly here.

24/01/2023

The roof of the Buddhist monastery of Gandaan Hiid gives a unique panarama over Ulaan Baatar, capital of Mongolia. The motifs of deer and wheel ("Wheel of Darma", said to have been set in motion by the Buddha whan he gave his first sermon) are ubiquitous in Mongolian Buddhism. Behind the camera is a great bronze bell.

25/02/2022

NOW TAKING BOOKINGS for in-person TRAVEL TALKS due to lifting of coronavirus restrictions. Syria, Central Asia, Iran, Mongolia, Oman. 75-mile radius of HR9 6DZ. https://scimitarpress.co.uk/travel-talks/
Adapted for horse people, historians, people with itchy feet or just the armchair traveller. Go somewhere new this year!

07/11/2021

Extract from STEPPE by STEPPE: A Slow Journey Round Mongolia www.scimitarpress.co.uk/books/ p.b. £3.99 inc p&p
www.amazon.co.uk e-book £2.99
LAKE BAIKAL: THE GINGERBREAD HOUSE
Anna Nikolaevna was a witch.
She had to be. Her nose and chin jutted fiercely, under a huge whiskery mole which split her left eyebrow. She kept a cat, and a broomstick behind her kitchen door. And she lived in a gingerbread house.
Fresh paint dripped pastel blue icing down over the treacle-brown walls of her izba, and white piping drew arabesques over the windows. More paint frosted every available surface, from the wooden outside steps to the kitchen floorboards to the outhouse; even the chicken shed. You took your shoes off and dusted your socks before entering Anna Nikolaevna's house. One footprint on her dazzling floor, and you might be turned into a toad. Deservedly.
A few yards away, and down a bank, was a shingle beach. Beyond, Lake Baikal stretched to infinity, its further shore swallowed by distance. Bolshoi Koti crouched like so many other villages on its edge, deriving its life blood from the immense lake, possessor of one-fifth of the world's fresh water, the Blue Eye of Siberia.

31/10/2021

Extract from BETWEEN THE DESERT AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA: A Syrian Journey https://scimitarpress.co.uk/books/
SAONE CASTLE..Slowly, in the heat of the day, we climbed the far side, Madfaa stopping every few minutes to snack by the roadside. The walls of the ravine came down to meet us. I followed them round; and stopped. Saône wasn't entirely ruinous after all. But that was the least of its surprises.
Picture the shell of an old abbey; the roof long fallen in and rotted away, only the walls of the nave remaining. The transepts have one wall only, and in place of the choir is a steep mountainside. Now take out the mortar and blend the stones seamlessly, so that a single block reaches a hundred feet from floor to top. Where there might have been windows, paint in splashes of creeper or dark green bushes, growing from heaven knows what foothold in those sandpapered walls, so that the only light comes from above, barely reaching the floor. Where the nave altar would have stood, place a single column, a square-sectioned obelisk cut from the same living stone and to the same height as the enclosing walls. Replace the flagstones and chiselled memorial tablets with grass, but keep some of the echoes and all of the awe.
And this is only the castle moat.
People have forgotten who cut this breathtaking ditch, using only mallet and chisel and muscle and sweat. The Byzantines may have had the idea first during their brief tenure here at the end of the tenth century; but the moat as it stands today was conceived by the Frank, Robert of Saône, who held the castle in fief from the Prince of Antioch. He began the reconstruction of the fortress; before he could finish it, he was captured during an unsuccessful assault on Damascus, and opted for death rather than conversion to Islam. The Turkish commander, in the time-honoured custom of his Central Asian forebears, set Robert's skull with jewels as a drinking-cup.
Photo: Madfaa was dwarfed by the walls of the moat.

26/10/2021

Atamekan, protagonist of Black Sands & Celestial Horses https://scimitarpress.co.uk/books/ and patriarch of Kyzyl Akhal-Tekes http://kyzyltekes.co.uk/, wearing Caroline Baldock's antique Turcoman bridle of silver and cornelian. I found these photographs from about twenty years ago, and reckoned they deserved a public airing. The third photo shows Caroline and Kaan sharing an intimate moment.

24/10/2021

Extract from JAILBREAK: A Slow Journey Round Eastern Europe https://scimitarpress.co.uk/books/

DOWN AMONG THE DEAD MEN

"Convivial friends have all gone
Death has trampled them down one after another;
We were in one wine-bout at life's party,
They got drunk a round or so ahead of us."
(Omar Khayyam: Ruba'iyaat)

It was as well I'd left my final visit until after lunch, as it would have seriously damaged my appetite.
The Capuchin church, glimpsed through the locked grille, looked unremarkable. You would have passed it without a second glance - if it weren't for the crypt.
A couple of centuries ago, it was common for anyone who was - or had been - anybody, to be interred in open coffins among the ex-monks in the crypt of the Capuchins. Whether the site was believed to confer extra sanctity on the departed, or whether it was just a fashionable idea which caught on, no-one now can remember. Quite simply, it became de rigueur for the smart set to join the party. No self-respecting co**se would be seen dead anywhere else.
And there they still lie, mummified in the fusty underground air, lined up to be admired, as they were in life, by the hoi polloi. Their faces are still disconcertingly human, although the cheekbones protrude and the lips are drawn back over yellow teeth; their once fine clothing is faded to a monochrome sepia. A sign over the entry reads MEMENTO MORI; in case the message hasn't got home, another inside reminds you with grisly relish, "TU" FUI; "EGO" ERIS. I was once you; you will become me.
Whoever drew up the placings had a macabre sense of humour. Immediately inside the door was an alcove with three members of the same family. A tablet over their coffins named them: the brothers Grimm.

14/10/2021

from Black Sands & Celestial Horses https://scimitarpress.co.uk/books/

AKHAL-TEKE RACING IN TURKMENISTAN

The stillness that suddenly descended on the spectators hummed with suppressed energy. When the starting gates opened and the horses came flying out, the hum became a murmur and began to gather force. The jockeys shared its urgency; this was a seven-furlong sprint, and there could be no hanging about. As the field rounded the bend the whips were already out, and the crowd cheered the leaders up the straight with a roar disproportionate to its size. They thudded past the post in a rainbow tangle and vanished into the distance, jockeys standing up in the stirrups as they fought to pull up. The sand kicked up by their passing hung in the air, a curtain hiding them from sight.
The winner peeled off to parade briefly in front of the stands, the owner and trainer hugging the jockey and patting the stamping, excited horse. Someone draped a Turcoman carpet over the horse's neck, and it set off at a canter towards the stables. The ceremony was over in a flash, unlike the western process of lengthy celebration in the winners' enclosure.
They do things differently in Ashkhabad. There is no pre-race parade, no inspection of runners in the paddock. The horses warm up over by the stables, as far as possible from public scrutiny. The excitement lies all in the action, in the few brief, electrifying moments when several tons of highly-charged bone and muscle whip by; and in the fun of cheering your horse home.
But I wanted a closer view of the horses. Leaving the stands, I went down to stand by the rails. Immediately I was sent back with a flea in my ear by a military policeman.
"You must watch from the stands!"
Another distant glimpse as they cantered down; another straining, frenetic finish; another brief ceremony, before the winner disappeared with a scarf around its neck. This wouldn't do at all.
I left the side of the stands on the pretext of buying a piroshka, eyeing my soldier friend furtively while he eyed me openly. When he looked the other way I disappeared behind a building. Without further trouble I reached the warm-up ring, to stand enraptured at the runners: tall horses, powerful but delicate, their strength softened by the lightness of their floating paces, their long ears questing forward and back like antennae above finely chiselled faces. Horses at once very similar to, yet fundamentally different from, those on other racecourses across the world.
For this was the most different thing of all about racing in Turkmenistan. The racehorses were not, as elsewhere, English Thoroughbred. They were Akhal-Teke: the rare, ancient horse that I had come three thousand miles to find.

06/10/2021

HIGH NOON WITH SYRIA'S SECRET POLICE

I sat eating my lunch under a bramble hedge beside a field of maize, while Madfaa grazed a ditch rampant with rye grass and clover. A man strolled over to us. I thought him a local, arriving for a pleasant chat. I was wrong.
“Passport!”
He wore ordinary clothing, but the terseness, the expectation of instant obedience, marked him out.
Syria is said to have many levels of secret police. They are universally loathed by the people for the control they exercise... Amnesty International has a long file on Syria.
I’d met one or two of these characters on my way. An expensive Toyota would pass, turn round and pull over, and a man in plain jeans and shirt would alight and demand to check over my papers. I took good care to be courteous, but never showed my documents until I’d asked for identification. I wasn’t going to pull my money belt out from under my shirt until I knew who I was dealing with, especially on a lonely road.
“OK. May I see your authorisation?”
Now the fun began. He was just being nosey, for he wasn’t on duty. And he’d left his own papers at home. So I wasn’t getting mine out. On principle, of course.
“You say you’re a policeman. How do I know? ...Real policemen have identification.”
He got more and more stroppy, while I remained politely obstructive. Limited by my Arabic, the argument wasn’t an intelligent debate; rather, it went along the lines of, “Oh, yes, you must!” “Oh, no, I shan’t!”
One or two passers-by stopped to watch the pantomime, and within minutes a crowd was gathering. With the protection of my foreign status, I could get away with baiting the poor man in a way the locals couldn’t. They were heartily enjoying his discomfiture.
It might have gone on for hours, but his pal turned up. Number Two was a colleague - and had his identification papers with him.
“Passport!”
Of course, Officer. Three bags full, Officer. I handed it over obligingly. He passed it at once to Number One, who checked it, gave it back to Number Two, and cleared off almost before I had it back in my belt. Number Two asked a few cursory questions until honour was satisfied all round, and then followed him. The fat lady had sung, and the crowd drifted away.
It made good sport. I felt no compunction. Whereas Syrians in uniform were invariably decent men doing their job, the secret police were a different breed. But it was sobering to reflect that only the privilege of my nationality allowed me to play the game at all.
Photo: entrance to Qardaha, and the shrine of Basel al-Assad (picture, right). Basel, elder brother of the now-infamous Baashar al-Assad, was the heir apparent and a national icon until his death in a car crash in 1994.
Between the Desert and the Deep Blue Sea,
More: see https://scimitarpress.co.uk/books/
Order at https://www.amazon.co.uk/Between-Desert-Deep-Blue-Sea/dp/1590482468/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Between+the+Desert+and+the+Deep+Blue+Sea&qid=1633552043&s=books&sr=1-1

01/08/2021

A member of the Central Asian dynasty that came out of the Black Sands story.

One year old: Karakhanym, grand-daughter of Atamekan, named in honour of the village of Karakhan where Kaan and I received such warm hospitality during the ride across Turkmenistan which is the main theme of the book. She is just one of 26 descendants of Kaan.

20/03/2021

Painting of a Turkoman village, given me by the unforgettable Olga, with whom I lived in Ashgabat.

A village in Turkmenistan. Painting by a friend of my wonderful Russian landlady Olga Briusova, which Olga very kindly gave to me.

18/02/2021

Fascinating corroboration of the stories of Amazon warriors.

Grave of one of the many Scythian Warriors, about one-fifth of which (so far) have contained remains of female warriors.
https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/scythian-warrior-women. Unfortunately I can't claim that my favourite Scythian warrior might have been a girl, as he clearly sports a beard!

22/08/2020

RIDING THE TAIGA
Extract from newly-published e-book STEPPE by STEPPE: A Slow Journey Through Mongolia. £2.99 from www.amazon.co.uk, free with Kindle Unlimited.
More extracts and reviews on www.scimitarpress.co.uk

The river was too deep to ford... there was a ferry, a simple raft riding on oil drums and pulled across manually via a wire hawser. Passengers walked on almost dry-shod by a plank, while the horses were led into the river and persuaded to jump aboard.
The furthermost drum leaked. As successive horses came aboard, it took in water with audible slurps, and the raft sank a little lower. By the time the last horse was loaded, the first was standing with his hind feet in the water. Yet we made it safely, and at the other side the process was reversed, the drum spitting water with each unloaded horse until the whole contraption was horizontal again.
From now on we followed the Hogrog River, tributary to the Shishhid, up a wide basin; now high above it on the hillside, now low down among the rocks in the valley. Repeatedly we forded it, the horses splashing us with water for some way after as they swished their long, wet tails.
Black clouds were building, so it was a relief when at last Tokhtbat's gers appeared in the distance. For the last mile the storm broke behind us, and we outran it at a gallop across a marshy stretch strewn with stones. As we tied up the thunder was crashing all round us; we raced the rain to the ger entrance just in time to avoid the torrents that drummed on the roof, beating through the smoke-hole to land hissing on the stove-pipe.

16/08/2020

A DAY AT THE RACES - MONGOLIAN STYLE
Extract from newly-published e-book STEPPE by STEPPE: A Slow Journey Through Mongolia. £2.99 from www.amazon.co.uk, free with Kindle Unlimited.
More extracts and reviews on www.scimitarpress.co.uk

…with a rising buzz at the sighting of the distant leaders, drama broke prematurely.
As heads began to turn and the spectators to lean out for a better view, one end of the tottering grandstand gave way, spilling people and heavy boards together down on to those below. A few remained, clinging to the remaining rail, or swung down harmlessly in a controlled fall. Helpers came quickly to scrabble among the wreckage towards those groaning underneath, or to catch children passed down to safety from above.
One more moment, and the disaster was forgotten by all except those caught up in it directly; for the first horses were thundering up the finishing straight. Cheers went up for the gallant winner who had galloped nineteen miles. A moment later, all hell broke loose.
Through the increasing dust cloud galloped horse after horse, still tightly packed and racing hard after all those miles… a stampede began, as those supporters who had followed the last few miles on horseback scooped up the mounted spectators at the finish, and all raced pell-mell together beside the finishing funnel to greet their own competitors.
…as the backmarkers trailed in, they were overtaken by the first of the ambulances, threading a path from the broken grandstand through the dust and horses to escape at the funnel exit. It was utter bedlam. To be a spectator on foot felt like walking through a herd of charging buffalo, and about half as safe. The riot police, wisely, had completely disappeared.

02/08/2020

Further extract from e-book STEPPE by STEPPE: A Slow Journey Through Mongolia, NEW OUT THIS WEEK £2.99 from www.amazon.co.uk
More extracts and reviews on http://www.gsuttle.free-online.co.uk/sp_sxs_intro.htm (while scimitarpress.co.uk is being rebuilt!).

PRZEWALSKI HORSES IN MONGOLIA
..The best things in life come when you're not expecting them. Eyes riveted to the sky while I watched a group of hobbies, I almost walked slap into Khaan's herd. Under the sharp rib of Hustain Nuruu one of the pink boulders stamped and snorted; I was just in time to drop to my knees before it saw me. Crawling now, I worked round until the curve of the hill hid me from sight.
...My patience was rewarded. From a perfect vantage point between two rocks I watched them at my leisure. Now only fifty yards away they idled comfortably, mares dozing in the mid-day sun, foals fidgeting in boredom or scratching lazily on a favourite rock.
It was all too brief an idyll. Still wary, or simply restless as ever, they were soon on the move again. Khaan for once dictating the action, they made off in single file along a narrow track. One after another the foals left their scratching post and trotted in pursuit until only one, blissfully rubbing his back against the rough granite and forgetting his friends, suddenly found himself alone. He ran about whinnying in panic; then caught sight of them and went into top gear, galloping full-tilt along the rough path and catching up just as they disappeared round the massive shoulder of Hustain Nuruu...

28/07/2020

Further extract from e-book STEPPE by STEPPE: A Slow Journey Through Mongolia, NEW OUT THIS WEEK £2.99 from www.amazon.co.uk
More extracts and reviews on www.scimitarpress.co.uk

A SHAMANIST BLESSING..Tokhtbat's family lived on the very edge of their world. Beyond, the landscape changed dramatically.
This was the boundary of the steppe, the point where it gave way to the taiga which, but for the interruption of the Bolshoi Sayan mountains on the Russian border, stretched unbroken to the north until it gave way in its turn to arctic tundra.
It was more than just the meeting of two topographical features. It was the meeting of two worlds, two cultures, two histories: that of the mounted steppe nomads, which reaches south and west to Europe and the Middle East and back to the Scythian horsemen; and that of the forest dwellers of the north, from Scandinavia to Kamchatka.
Before we saddled up to leave, Tokhtbat's mum (Erdenejav wouldn't tell us her name; it was disrespectful, he said, for a young person to use an elderly person's name, so we referred to her throughout as Tokhtbat's mum) invited us into her ger for a ceremonial blessing on our journey.
She was herself Tsaatan and, like many of her kin, had given up her life with the reindeer to marry a Mongolian herdsman - and raise fifteen children. Her culture was shamanist, the age-old religion of steppe and forest alike. Shamanism is a form of animism, invoking local deities and numinous presences in wood, water and rock... It came to her as naturally as breathing, then, when Tokhtbat's mum took a glass of arkhi and, using the third finger of the right hand, flicked it to the four points of the compass to invoke the goodwill of the spirits along our way...

26/07/2020

STEPPE by STEPPE new out this weekend
e-book (2nd edition) £2.99 at https://www.amazon.co.uk
EXTRACT:
MONGOLIA'S REINDEER HERDERS..we came into a long valley between two ridges, which bent away at our point of entry and marched down distantly to the south-east. At the meeting of the ways was a small obo. We stopped briefly, while Tokhtbat's mum brought strips of cloth from her pocket, and tied them on for the local deity.
As we rode soggily up the northern branch of the valley, not a bird or beast stirred on its forested slopes. It was as if evolution had passed it by. Towards the top was a sudden explosion of orange; a swathe of Siberian globeflowers, ravishing in the desolation. Above stretched a bank of melting snow. Suddenly the thought of reindeer seemed highly appropriate.
A large obo, surrounded by gentians, crowned the pass. We dismounted to make a clockwise circuit, and tied tufts of hair from our horses' tails to the central pole. Great mountain peaks now stood all around us.
Ahead, three valleys branched off. To the right, towering peaks at the end delineated the Russian border. To the left, a river of white water thundered down to join the distant Yenisei, gathering tributaries as it went. And in the centre valley, from which the torrent issued as a moderate stream, we could just make out in the distance a cluster of white dots: the tepees of the Tsaatan.
A few miles up the valley, we met a sudden commotion. Four hundred reindeer came crashing round the shoulder of the mountain, splashed through the stream and raced ahead of us towards the camp. Behind them galloped three mounted youths, whooping like cowboys. With an answering yell Tokhtbat was off, dragging my tottering pony in a headlong dash through peat hags and over rocks, lurching through the streams and hollows with scant regard for the life and limb of any of us. For the second time in two days we finished our march at the gallop. But as we approached I could think of only one thing: there was smoke issuing from the tops of the tepees. The promise of warmth and dry clothes beckoned.
Five minutes later we were under cover, drinking hot, salt tea and steaming gently by a glowing stove.

24/07/2020

NEW OUT TODAY!
STEPPE by STEPPE: A Slow Journey Through Mongolia
(2nd edition, Amazon e-book)
£2.99 on www.amazon.co.uk.

Four good legs are better than two lousy ones. So if you have an incapacitating illness, incurably itchy feet and an affinity for horses, what better country to make for than Mongolia, where horses outnumber people and have supported the nomadic lifestyle for 3,000 years?
In this country of contradiction and paradox, though, live horsepower may still be more elusive than the mechanical sort... if rather more reliable. Making the best of whichever's available, the author sets out to discover whether there is life after - even during - the destructive illness ME.
But what of life after Communism? Is this land, from which the Mongol hordes of Genghis Khan once exploded to conquer empires, faring better or worse under the lesson of democracy than the many other satellites of the former USSR? Exploring the diverse layers of Mongolian society together with the immense and varied landscapes, the author encounters a tough and resilient people making the best of hard times. From Yuppie wannabes in the capital, Ulaan Baatar, nomads of the ancient reindeer culture on the borders of Siberia, Titans in the wrestling arena and others come many stories of determination and success - such as the dramatic resurgence of the Buddhist faith, and the reintroduction of the endangered, prehistoric Przewalski Horse to its native land.

23/07/2020

AVAILABLE SOON!
STEPPE by STEPPE: A Slow Journey Through Mongolia. E-book publication pending on Amazon. Price £2.99 - watch this space for special promotions!

17/07/2020

Reviews of JAILBREAK

"A stimulating and lively read from a promising new travel author who vividly conveys the joys and difficulties of her journey across Eastern Europe in the early years of freedom from Communism."

"Excels when she talks about the views and the countryside... Her descriptions are evocative but concise”

"This book must be an inspiration to anyone suffering with ME."

"If you are addicted to horses, travel stories... and chocolate... Then this is the book for you!" - Ross-on-Wye Gazette, CFIDS Soc of USA, Amazon

17/07/2020

Published by the Long Riders' Guild Press: a poignant memoir of Syria before the civil war, as seen from the back of an Arab stallion.