Oliver Sacks

I got a copy of Oliver Sacks' Uncle Tungsten at the closing down sale of Kilburn Bookshop. I didn't realise at the time, but it is a local memoir. Sacks lived at 37 Mapesbury Road on the corner with Exeter Road. Apparently in the late 1930s Walm Lane synagogue had a congregation of 2,000. Sad that it is now closed entirely.

I also didn't realise how easy it was for a small boy to obtain dangerous chemicals in those days. At the age of ten, Sacks was apparently able to buy lethal doses of potassium cyanide. He also tells of dropping a three pound lump of Sodium into Highgate ponds to see how it would react.