Route to the Hospital - An Illustrated guide

Cross the brook at the bottom of Francis Street (1).  Take Byway Road on the right. (You have a choice of Broadway, New way, Trueway, Byway or Highway.)  Walk to the top of the ridge which is Romway Road.  Turn right along Romway, then left up Coplow Road.

(2) Coplow Road Bungalow

(2) View a 1900's bungalow, that I believe predates the other houses.  It looks to me like the house my great grandmother probably lived in that was demolished.  This one feels as if it could easily receive the same fate one day.

View from Evington Lane

(2) Cross over Evington Lane to the footpath on to Teighmouth Road.  I wonder how the locals pronounce this?  In Devon it's pronounced 'Tinmouth'.  There is a record of street names in Leicester being pronounced differently.  Katherine Street is pronounced 'Cat- er-ine (as in nine) Street.  I guess everyone else miss pronounces 'Leicester', to its tit-for-tat.  This is a 70's estate.  I noticed a row of houses each with a taxi parked on the drive.  Is this Taxiland?  There is an american film called 'Copland' about a world where the Cops have to live separately from the populous, because it's become 'war'.  I have no sinister thoughts about these taxi drivers.

(3) On the ring road, (Wakerley Road) there is a house called КОТАРСКА КОЛИϬА.* I wonder what it means? I'm guessing that it's Serbian because the house has Serbian colours.  Wakeley Road, like a lot of the ring road, was planned to hold a duel carriageway.  Some bits were of the original plan never turned into the ring road.  They are still quiet residential streets with long tree filled parks separating the two sides of the street.  This bit is still single lane.

At the junction at the bottom of the hill, turn right along Ethel Road.  Apparently  Arthur Wakerly, the Leicester architecture who designed a lot of Edwardian Leicester, named many of the streets in this area after his daughters and other family members.  The Hospital is on Gwendolen Road.

(4) Before the footpath on the left hand side disappears into the bushes, our route veers left up some steps between neglected housing belonging to the hospital.  The the route assents through trees and communal lawns to the main Hospital at the top.  We dive into the hospital though an outpatient department.

Route to Hospital

* See correspondence between Sandra and Kathleen.

Dear Sandra,

I have Morton Benson from 1971 in two volumes, and ESSE, compiled in Belgrade, published 2002.  The title means English-Serbian, Serbian-English.  I witnessed one session at the Institut za Strane Jezike as a friend of mine was involved, not sure if I contributed to anything though. 

I’ve tried both dictionaries and this is the result:

KOLIBA

Morton Benson:  (1)  Hut, cottage, cabin; drvena koliba, log cabin;  (2) dilapidated house.

ESSE

KOTAR [this one is ONLY in Morton Benson]

K  [N.B.  I can’t work out what this abbreviation means, it isn’t in the list at the beginning.  Any ideas?]  Anyway, after the letter K it says …

(administrative) district (in certain parts of Yugo.;  see also srez [this says the same thing in Morton Benson; in my other dictionary, the more recent ESSE, the word srez does appear, unlike the word kotar, and is translated as “county” or “borough”.

Morton Benson offers an adjective for both words, i.e. “kotarski” and “sreski”.

So, I guess it’s the County Cottage … hang on, what DOES that mean?!

Perhaps I should ask the friend in Belgrade, even if they didn’t include the word she must know what “kotarski” means.

People do give funny names to houses, I once had to find a Portuguese translation for “Fox’s Lair” which a man had seen on a house somewhere in the Portuguese countryside and wanted to use for his house in Cyprus.  He knew what it looked and sounded like; a colleague of mine in Bush House eventually worked it out, while shaking her head over the idea of using such an obscure expression …

I will get back to you with some news.  Just fitted this in before supper (fish pie.  Ready-made?  Of course!)

Love, Kathleen XXX