On my way home from church this morning I met Colin Firth leaving his ivy-cladhouse. He was all done up in black cycling gear, including goggles and helmet, but I recognised him and of course I know where he lives.
As he cocked his famous leg over the bar, I mentioned to him that I had sent him a letter quite a long time ago, when he was in line for the Oscar, asking if he would like to contribute to our church roof fund, as all the lead has been nicked.
This missive also mentioned the church organ which is currently dying, but I didn't bring that up as well. As he was half on his bike it was best to keep it simple.
He said he hadn't seen it but he never responds to letters put through his letter-box, as he doesn't want anything coming to the house, and "tries to discourage it."
Not sure he understands the postal system and how does anyone know that he discourages it? His silence doesn't exactly betoken disapproval of letter boxes.
He has someone to deal with all his mail, and he says he will at some point get round to looking at my letter and will respond. I look forward to that!
Sunday, 19 June 2011
Saturday, 18 June 2011
what has happened to shop assistants?
Another Groan about modern life – what has happened to shop assistants?
I set off this morning to buy a small tube of hand cream, something light to put in my luggage on my next voyage out. I also need some tinted moisturiser, as that saves putting on foundation, at least in theory. It’s the lazy woman’s maquillage.
I tried a small chemist on the Chiswick High road, one of those that stay open even though there rarely seems to be any customers. The cream was all expensive. I asked about the moisturiser and a tiny, very smiley Asian girl directed me, vaguely, towards some stuff new in, “organic” cream at £12 for a small tube.
I asked if they had any other more regular brands and she went moving about the shop listlessly before disappearing altogether. I found some tinted cream, but an expensive French variety, and decided to give up. On my way out I saw her again, looking out of the window, and told her where she could find the tinted moisturiser in case anyone asked for it again.
Traipsed on to Superdrug. As soon as I got there I asked the young Indian assistant if they had any such face cream. “We have no cream tinting,” she said emphatically, looking quite pleasantly apologetic. I looked in a different aisle and found Nivea, Daily Essentials, tinted moisturising day cream, a neat little row of the stuff.
What is going on? I had a similar situation a few months ago in the apparently up-market, “As Nature Intended,” organic food shop on the Chiswick High Road.
I asked a large Asian girl on the till, swathed in black robes, if they had any cherry juice. She’d never heard of it and seemed annoyed that I could ask for something so unlikely. Now deeply cynical about girls on tills, I found another assistant at the far end of the shop and asked again. She had heard of it but said they didn’t have any. And as I turned to go, there it was, but a cherry stones throw away, bottles of it, and perhaps the most expensive item they had on sale.
Is this some kind of girlie conspiracy to undermine the shop’s owner or manager, or perhaps the already failing British economy. Do they not want to serve foreigners, (i.e. English people) or any customers who have the temerity to bother them, or are they simply not expected to know anything?
Perhaps they got the job through family connections, or are just waiting to get married. Jobs in shops are not great, but work of any kind, for most of us, is hard to come by.
If I ever had a boring job to do, in the days when I could get a job, I always found that really throwing myself into it was the key to sticking it out. I once had a job on a till in Boots where this plan didn’t work and I nearly went mad with boredom and disgust at some of the customers. Girls in dress shops are generally happier because they are genuinely interested in clothes and keenly eye up all the stock.
But the business of how these idle girls get their jobs and keep them does puzzle me, and I know if I tried to get one myself, I’d have no luck at all.
I set off this morning to buy a small tube of hand cream, something light to put in my luggage on my next voyage out. I also need some tinted moisturiser, as that saves putting on foundation, at least in theory. It’s the lazy woman’s maquillage.
I tried a small chemist on the Chiswick High road, one of those that stay open even though there rarely seems to be any customers. The cream was all expensive. I asked about the moisturiser and a tiny, very smiley Asian girl directed me, vaguely, towards some stuff new in, “organic” cream at £12 for a small tube.
I asked if they had any other more regular brands and she went moving about the shop listlessly before disappearing altogether. I found some tinted cream, but an expensive French variety, and decided to give up. On my way out I saw her again, looking out of the window, and told her where she could find the tinted moisturiser in case anyone asked for it again.
Traipsed on to Superdrug. As soon as I got there I asked the young Indian assistant if they had any such face cream. “We have no cream tinting,” she said emphatically, looking quite pleasantly apologetic. I looked in a different aisle and found Nivea, Daily Essentials, tinted moisturising day cream, a neat little row of the stuff.
What is going on? I had a similar situation a few months ago in the apparently up-market, “As Nature Intended,” organic food shop on the Chiswick High Road.
I asked a large Asian girl on the till, swathed in black robes, if they had any cherry juice. She’d never heard of it and seemed annoyed that I could ask for something so unlikely. Now deeply cynical about girls on tills, I found another assistant at the far end of the shop and asked again. She had heard of it but said they didn’t have any. And as I turned to go, there it was, but a cherry stones throw away, bottles of it, and perhaps the most expensive item they had on sale.
Is this some kind of girlie conspiracy to undermine the shop’s owner or manager, or perhaps the already failing British economy. Do they not want to serve foreigners, (i.e. English people) or any customers who have the temerity to bother them, or are they simply not expected to know anything?
Perhaps they got the job through family connections, or are just waiting to get married. Jobs in shops are not great, but work of any kind, for most of us, is hard to come by.
If I ever had a boring job to do, in the days when I could get a job, I always found that really throwing myself into it was the key to sticking it out. I once had a job on a till in Boots where this plan didn’t work and I nearly went mad with boredom and disgust at some of the customers. Girls in dress shops are generally happier because they are genuinely interested in clothes and keenly eye up all the stock.
But the business of how these idle girls get their jobs and keep them does puzzle me, and I know if I tried to get one myself, I’d have no luck at all.
Friday, 17 June 2011
Teethn'Smiles
I have been trying to fix basic things which is increasingly difficult these days, now money seems so scarce. I have heard that many quite respectable people are getting by with out proper gas, electricity or regular hot water as if their boiler goes they’ve had it – it’s too expensive to replace them.
I had a letter saying that my Neasden excursion on May 17th had been in vain. They have decided not to give me any money; my small disability allowance has stopped. No more Montmorency cherry juice and monk fish for me.
This might easily be followed by a letter from the same people awarding me a certain amount, as that happened a lot months back when the whole rigmarole began. I have never seen evidence of any money from them on my bank statements. I don’t think I ever received any. It was a kind of virtual money that drifted in cyber space somewhere between us.
The next bit of bad luck was visiting my local vet, C.J. Hall in Acton. This was just to have old Maisie’s teeth cleaned. They asked if I wanted her to have a blood test, at a mere £60. I said no, as she looks quite healthy to me.
In the afternoon they rang to say there seemed to be some sign of thyroid trouble as she had “lost a lot of weight.” I naturally agreed to the blood test. Later I got another call to say there was no thyroid problem. She had lost weight over two years – and she is an old cat. I got a bill for £300 – and not even an extraction.
I cannot afford vets anymore. I lump them in with estate agents, loan sharks and nurses as people with a smart appearance and criminal tendencies.
Rang up the Blue Cross, I am just outside their income range, and tried the RSPCA who were not open. The Mayhew Clinic where Rolf Harris made his programmes are supposed to be more reasonable and it would be cheaper to take a cab there and back to see them than pay my local vets who obviously have an obsessional need to buy themselves yachts.
Off to the dentists in South Ealing, the nearest NHS dentist who seems competent. I had a really bad experience with one just up the road in Acton Vale. Complete check up clean and polish for just £17.00. That is a bargain these days, if only he would see cats, but for how long? He tells me the government are advising dentists to only see clients once a year. He’s worried that NHS dentists are being slowly marginalised and has considered branching out into botox.
For most of us the twice yearly appointment has been the rule of a life-time starting at about the age of three. Seeing this sacred ritual discarded, I know this country has really changed.
Back to Queen Charlotte’s to see Mr McKindo, who operated on me in May 2010, to see about a repair to a hernia made at that time.
He seems so nice and charming, just like Prof Gabra last time I met him. On the day of the diagnosis they both seemed cold and forbidding, if not exhausted and tetchy.
Mr Mckindo seemed keen to do the op, and it’s surprising that he has so many dates free to do it. If I was in agony, needed a hip replacement, or my carpal tunnel fixed no doubt there would be a long delay – that’s NHS logic.
After we’d made the appointment he looked in my notes. Seeing him lift the file gave me a queasy feeling. I didn’t want him to, as if I’d got a bad school report or a criminal record. I was suddenly afraid that he would see all that ominous stuff, and say something that would throw me off balance. Later I wondered if he had given me a prompt appointment because he felt sorry for me. Going back to hospital is difficult. It seems I will have to stay in the dreaded Victor Bonney Ward where I had such a bad time. I made a formal complaint about the nursing on that ward, which was dismissed. It will be interesting to go there again – I will be more on my metal this time and taking notes.
I have insomnia again probably because I am about to go travelling, so I have been listening to the Mausoleum Club on Radio 4 Extra. This is pronounced, “Mouse-o-leum,” but none of the presenters seem to grasp this, not even Arthur Smith, who was in one episode himself.
They are parodies of Victorian tales, written by Ian Brown and James Hendrie with a wonderful cast. The last one was a sharp send-up of Sherlock Holmes. I can’t wait for The Twist of the Knob and Trevor Island.
Marriage has many pains but celibacy has Radio 4.
I had a letter saying that my Neasden excursion on May 17th had been in vain. They have decided not to give me any money; my small disability allowance has stopped. No more Montmorency cherry juice and monk fish for me.
This might easily be followed by a letter from the same people awarding me a certain amount, as that happened a lot months back when the whole rigmarole began. I have never seen evidence of any money from them on my bank statements. I don’t think I ever received any. It was a kind of virtual money that drifted in cyber space somewhere between us.
The next bit of bad luck was visiting my local vet, C.J. Hall in Acton. This was just to have old Maisie’s teeth cleaned. They asked if I wanted her to have a blood test, at a mere £60. I said no, as she looks quite healthy to me.
In the afternoon they rang to say there seemed to be some sign of thyroid trouble as she had “lost a lot of weight.” I naturally agreed to the blood test. Later I got another call to say there was no thyroid problem. She had lost weight over two years – and she is an old cat. I got a bill for £300 – and not even an extraction.
I cannot afford vets anymore. I lump them in with estate agents, loan sharks and nurses as people with a smart appearance and criminal tendencies.
Rang up the Blue Cross, I am just outside their income range, and tried the RSPCA who were not open. The Mayhew Clinic where Rolf Harris made his programmes are supposed to be more reasonable and it would be cheaper to take a cab there and back to see them than pay my local vets who obviously have an obsessional need to buy themselves yachts.
Off to the dentists in South Ealing, the nearest NHS dentist who seems competent. I had a really bad experience with one just up the road in Acton Vale. Complete check up clean and polish for just £17.00. That is a bargain these days, if only he would see cats, but for how long? He tells me the government are advising dentists to only see clients once a year. He’s worried that NHS dentists are being slowly marginalised and has considered branching out into botox.
For most of us the twice yearly appointment has been the rule of a life-time starting at about the age of three. Seeing this sacred ritual discarded, I know this country has really changed.
Back to Queen Charlotte’s to see Mr McKindo, who operated on me in May 2010, to see about a repair to a hernia made at that time.
He seems so nice and charming, just like Prof Gabra last time I met him. On the day of the diagnosis they both seemed cold and forbidding, if not exhausted and tetchy.
Mr Mckindo seemed keen to do the op, and it’s surprising that he has so many dates free to do it. If I was in agony, needed a hip replacement, or my carpal tunnel fixed no doubt there would be a long delay – that’s NHS logic.
After we’d made the appointment he looked in my notes. Seeing him lift the file gave me a queasy feeling. I didn’t want him to, as if I’d got a bad school report or a criminal record. I was suddenly afraid that he would see all that ominous stuff, and say something that would throw me off balance. Later I wondered if he had given me a prompt appointment because he felt sorry for me. Going back to hospital is difficult. It seems I will have to stay in the dreaded Victor Bonney Ward where I had such a bad time. I made a formal complaint about the nursing on that ward, which was dismissed. It will be interesting to go there again – I will be more on my metal this time and taking notes.
I have insomnia again probably because I am about to go travelling, so I have been listening to the Mausoleum Club on Radio 4 Extra. This is pronounced, “Mouse-o-leum,” but none of the presenters seem to grasp this, not even Arthur Smith, who was in one episode himself.
They are parodies of Victorian tales, written by Ian Brown and James Hendrie with a wonderful cast. The last one was a sharp send-up of Sherlock Holmes. I can’t wait for The Twist of the Knob and Trevor Island.
Marriage has many pains but celibacy has Radio 4.
The Case of the Missing Compost.
29/5/11
There is a vixen living in the garden next to mine, with two cubs. I haven’t seen them but if I go out there at dusk I hear a scrabbling and banging as one of them goes over the fence, and my cat Maisie won’t go out at all.
They visit my garden at night and leave evidence of their antics in the form of horrible rubbish; plastic bags, food wrappers, bits of foil and soggy kitchen paper. I once found a bag of old make-up remover pads and dead false eye-lashes. This is strewn all over the lawn and borders. They have also dug a hole under my fence into next door’s garden. It gives an odd feeling of chaos to look at my lawn now, as if my garden has suddenly become part of the pavement at the front.
I was doing a bit of gardening before lunch, picked up some stray sticks and took them to the compost heap – this is not really what you might call authentic compost, of the sort seen on TV contained in neat wooden structures, more a load of old branches and twigs I can’t be bothered to cut up, which get stacked up on a wall behind the shed, along with grass cuttings and weeds. The thing has got very large and unwieldy in the past, and once contained a wild bees’ nest.
I reached out with the detritus and found that the compost heap had gone. Vanished. Just not there. I stared at a flatish pile of old leaves.
Some grass cutting had been shoved down onto the path along with a wet plastic bag, but my pile of organic matter was missing. The foxes have taken it all for their nest, and just left me with the spare shreds of unpleasant plastic they don’t want.
They are nothing if not green.
Since I came back from Poland Maisie has been behaving slightly oddly, by sleeping on my clothes. She always used to roost in the folded back duvet, sinking into it until she almost disappeared. Now she has been curled up on my pillow on my nightdress, and today she was on the mattress sheet on top of my t-shirt. She looks as if she’s clutching the things to her. I won’t mention that I’m going away again soon, to New York on the Queen Mary.
There is a vixen living in the garden next to mine, with two cubs. I haven’t seen them but if I go out there at dusk I hear a scrabbling and banging as one of them goes over the fence, and my cat Maisie won’t go out at all.
They visit my garden at night and leave evidence of their antics in the form of horrible rubbish; plastic bags, food wrappers, bits of foil and soggy kitchen paper. I once found a bag of old make-up remover pads and dead false eye-lashes. This is strewn all over the lawn and borders. They have also dug a hole under my fence into next door’s garden. It gives an odd feeling of chaos to look at my lawn now, as if my garden has suddenly become part of the pavement at the front.
I was doing a bit of gardening before lunch, picked up some stray sticks and took them to the compost heap – this is not really what you might call authentic compost, of the sort seen on TV contained in neat wooden structures, more a load of old branches and twigs I can’t be bothered to cut up, which get stacked up on a wall behind the shed, along with grass cuttings and weeds. The thing has got very large and unwieldy in the past, and once contained a wild bees’ nest.
I reached out with the detritus and found that the compost heap had gone. Vanished. Just not there. I stared at a flatish pile of old leaves.
Some grass cutting had been shoved down onto the path along with a wet plastic bag, but my pile of organic matter was missing. The foxes have taken it all for their nest, and just left me with the spare shreds of unpleasant plastic they don’t want.
They are nothing if not green.
Since I came back from Poland Maisie has been behaving slightly oddly, by sleeping on my clothes. She always used to roost in the folded back duvet, sinking into it until she almost disappeared. Now she has been curled up on my pillow on my nightdress, and today she was on the mattress sheet on top of my t-shirt. She looks as if she’s clutching the things to her. I won’t mention that I’m going away again soon, to New York on the Queen Mary.
Sunday, 5 June 2011
Polish sight seeing.
Ewa’s mountain idyll and the peace of the whole village has been destroyed by the arrival of Expressway S69, a four lane motorway, stretching from Katowice to the Slovak border, where it will connect with the Slovakian motorway D3.
She and her neighbours woke up one day to find they were living alongside the S69 and D3 sections of the Trans European Transport Corridor No VI.
From early in the morning you hear the noise of construction and men in orange vests swearing and shouting. Look out of the window across what used to be gardens and acres of allotments with fruit trees and you now see a rigid barrier of concrete on squat giant legs.
This new “pan European transport corridor,” now hurtles below her garden balcony. It’s so close that you could reach out from the balcony and almost touch the concrete.
It’s being built closer to domestic dwellings than any new road would be in the UK. EU law, at least in Poland allows a distance of 40 metres but here the distance is 37 at most.
She says she wants to invite reporters from the BBC to come and sit there with her and have tea, and watch how their cups and saucers rattle to the sound of high powered drills.
“My house is like a watchtower overlooking the road,” she says. “Perhaps when the cars come I could stand on my balcony with a billboard, advertising something and get paid for it.”
That’s about the only joke we’ve found in the situation so far. The cars haven’t arrived yet but it’s already ferociously noisy and fills the air with dust. There is some vague plan to put up giant screens as noise barriers to shield the houses, and schools which are just an alarming eighteen metres away.
These will have to be painted somehow stop a massacre of birds, so the future will certainly be different in Bielsko-Biała; one of triple glazing, staying in doors instead of sitting in the garden or looking at the view, and smog masks.
In the 1970s there were about 500,000 cars on the road in Poland, now there are about 20 million. The roads are in bad shape. In Bielsko very little is down to repair the small local roads, which break up badly in the winter frosts.
The government’s response to this, using EU money, is to build motorways, and to run down the Polish railways,(PKP) which were privatised quickly just before Poland entered the EU.
Early this year the Polish Prime Minister, Donald Tusk announced that 4.8 billion PLN (1 billion GBP) which had been allocated for expenditure on Polish rail was being diverted to the road budget.
Like good old British Rail, has not been improved one jot by being sold off, at least not as far as the “customers,” are concerned. Poles now experience the kind of Christmas chaos which we enjoy so much in the west. Ticket prices have soared and passenger numbers fallen. Trains lines that I used regularly in the 1970s, for instance from Katowice to Oswiecim, to my surprise no longer exist.
The Polish government is now subsidising cars not trains. Currently, due to an EU directive, three major motorways spanning the entire country are being built. Many sections are under construction, due to be finished by mid-2012.
What is so alarming about all this is the lack of any consultation with the public.
A couple of years ago I wrote a letter of protest about Ewa’s plight, to the European department dealing with Polish roads. They sent back a thick document written in dense jargon, saying that full consultation had taken place. A terrible lie as neither Ewa nor her neighbours had any say in the matter. Local people suggested running the new high-way along a route proposed years ago, skirting the town, or putting some of it into a tunnel, but those ideas were dismissed without comment.
I tried to fathom out Polish local democracy a bit – who is there MP or equivalent? No one is sure. There is a list of men, chosen by different parties by proportional representation, in a multi-party system, with sixteen regional governments, who send a representative to the Sejm in Warsaw.
This is confusing to say the least and not one of the men appointed locally was interested in the residents concerns. When Ewa went to the local town hall and met a councillor he said, “Well what can I do? I am only one man.”
Available land was quickly sold by the county council and even the church, so the road quickly seemed to locals like a fait accomplis.
The key man apparently who wanted it is the mayor, Jacek Krywult, 70, a career politician who even had a good career under the communists, and has continuously been re- elected “President” of Bielsko since 2002.
Despite being “vice-president for traffic safety,” he is not worried by having two schools bang up against a major motorway, or 37 metres from the local church steps.
Where is Swampy when you really need him? Apparently there are no knotty headed tree protestors or groups of determined middle-class road protestors in Poland. According to Ewa protestors are taken away, put in hospital and given drugs.
“Like in Soviet times,” a phrase which is sometimes a dark joke between us.
One of her neighbours, called by Ewa, “the bravest,” who refused to move out when ordered, had her 19th century house knocked down anyway. She was offered help to pack if she got out on the appointed date, but she stayed defiantly inside until police arrived and turfed her out. There is still a great fear of the police in Poland, “just like in…”
The woman received compensation and built a new, smaller house nearby. No one can sell their once fine houses so there is no chance of moving away to a quiet, less polluted place.
It was disappointing to me to think than no local press reported her situation and there were certainly no TV cameras recording any discontent. When this sort of thing happens in Beijing and people are forced by their government to quit their homes, you do see reports of it in the world’s press. When it happens in Poland, the new EU, no one seems to bother.
A beautiful country town is now scarred, raddled by road builders as blind to the environment as our planners were in the 1960s.
The people I spoke of spoke of a new “Red Bourgeoisie,” former communists now living on the fat of EU money, happy with advanced capitalism.
This sometimes has its darkly comic side – in the mountain town of Zywiec an old factory with a tall chimney, has been turned into a TESCO, which has its logo vertically on the chimney stack. It looks ominously like a crematorium.
In Auschwitz itself, always a boldly unembarrassed little town, all the supermarkets apart from Carrefore are German; Lidl, Kaufland and Biedronka. There was an objection when Kaufland wanted to put up signed advertising itself with the initials: KL, once famous for Konzentrationslager.
After the wedding we had a couple of days sight seeing, visiting churches old and brand new. There was obviously a building boom going on. Detached houses are springing up everywhere, among them a few old grey concrete boxes, patterned with asbestos tiles, and flat roofs from communist times when pitched roofs were forbidden as they used too much material.
Ewa knew someone who made enough money cleaning in Dublin to return home and build a house. The Polish Zloty is low in value, so it’s possible to get rich abroad. A kind of Polish fiscal miracle.
“It is a mystery everyone talks about,” said Ewa. “There are no jobs in Poland, yet everyone is building country houses.”
It was interesting to see Bielsko town again. It was dreary and run down under the comms but now looks like a clean Alpine holiday resort, with good bars and night-clubs.
We visited Łodygowice village with its baroque wooden church, and up to Zywiec to visit the old brewery where they still produce 1,464 bottles of the amber nectar every four minutes, that is 2,108,160 bottles a day.
They now have an interactive museum, taking visitors on a time travel from the time of the Hapsburgs to the Soviets. This included a flickering black and white film made in the 1920, free Poland between the wars, with well dressed people gathering at race-tracks, travelling in sports cars and gliders, the Poland that never was.
Not being a beer drinker, the best part of Zywiec for me was sitting on the grass, eating a fresh yeast roll, in the old Habsburg park, in front of its Palace. In an act of extraordinary and unlikely kindness the Polish government have allowed Duchess Marie-Christine von Habsburg, 87, to return and live in a two room flat in her former home.
There is a short film about her life in the Zywiec museum. She is a grand old girl. Perhaps she has been allowed back because her father was tortured by the Gestapo and her mother, an Austrian, joined the Armia Krajowa, AK, the valiant Polish underground army.
We took a cable car up Zar, or “hot” mountain, and sat in the sun looking down on Tresna Dam, and Bielsko’s lush enfolding scenery. I hadn’t realised until then that Ewa now lives in a major tourist spot.
“Over there, behind that hill is Oswiecim,” (Auschwitz) said Kazik.
“I can see that you’d like to visit it,” she said.
At one time every blade of grass, every stone in there was fascinating to me, but we had decided not to go there this time. I’d come to a wedding and it wasn’t appropriate, besides she finds the tragedy of it has got worse in her mind over the years, not better.
Her grandfather moved the family from northern Poland down to Oswiecim after the first world war. He looked at the map and decided that it looked like a quiet, rural place where nothing much would ever happen. Her father was taken to the death camp to work as a slave, aged sixteen. As soon as he arrived his teeth were punched out. I know other Poles whose relations had the same treatment. It was obviously company policy. Gruesome to think of people walking about with smashed up jaws and no medical help.
There were a lot worse things going on in there of course. That was the luxury end of the itinerary. I was fascinated by it on one level, as a factory of death; such a completely in-human, un-human idea.
Before it became properly known, some Jews called it “Pitchipoi,” a distant destination. The artist Charlotte Salomon said the name, “resounded like an eternal curse.” The German painter, Felix Nussbaum painted it quite accurately, on the basis of this hearsay.
When I first went there in 1978 it seemed oddly still, like an extinct volcano. You pick over the old lava, climb up small hills of moraine, walk carefully over the cracks in the ground, not sure that it isn’t all going to ignite again at any moment. It still has a devouring presence.
Part of this feeling of torpor came from the poor quality of the museum in those day, ruled over by communists who used it for partly for propaganda purposes. On my first visit, the Jewish bunker was shut. I saw a youth who’d come all the way from LA sitting on the ground outside the locked door, really distressed. In those days there was no one to appeal to. If something was shut that was it.
After the comms went, the same people were left in charge. They opened a “Jewish reading room,” but I never saw a Jew in there. I was given a signed first edition of his book, The Pianist by Wladyslaw Szpilman. I gave it to the archive and they were very pleased to have it, but I did wonder why they didn’t just go to Warsaw and ask him for a copy themselves. They didn’t go in for collecting oral history, what was there when the Russians arrived was it.
Apparently the museum has got better now, even providing visitors with i-pod commentaries. I wonder if they all leave them in a heap when they go home.
It’s very difficult to know how exactly to view the place. I was at Machu Picchu in Peru recently. Like Auschwitz it is also a “World Heritage Site,” a place where you can pay respect to a race and their culture which was systematically exterminated. It doesn’t have that kind of impact of course, a lot of tourists find the place rather cute. That is due simply because of the passing of time.
Wondering whether to go there again was like talking about an old acquaintance, someone we didn’t know anymore.
Kazik suggested going past it briefly on our way back to the airport on my way home.
We stopped for a moment outside KL One, before driving along the wall of the old Austrian barracks. It could be any old wall, yet the other side of it forms the end of a court-yard and is painted black. Hundreds of Poles stood there naked, facing it, waiting to be shot.
Up the road, reaching Birkenau, you immediately see the broad, black camp watch-towers which look as fragile as charcoal when you get close. We parked in front of the famous entrance, like the open mouth of hell in a mediaeval painting, with the strips of metal rail feeding in.
Ewa’s younger son remained very quietly in the car, perhaps wondering what people were doing, having photos taken but not smiling into the camera, staring through barbed wire at expanses of rolling nothingness, bending their eyes on vacancy, putting their hands down flat on railway lines as if they were to tops of sacred tombs.
On the plane back from Krakow I was surprised to find that most of the passengers were young Jews. When I was last in Poland ten years ago I didn’t see any. Visitor numbers started increasing after the release of the film Schindler’s List.
spoke to a couple of the young women. They seemed angry and agitated by what they’d seen.
“It will definitely be my last visit,” said one, sounding disgusted with the world. I wondered where all that rage will be directed, perhaps towards support for the state of Israel, which means that Hitler’s work of destruction will go on.
She and her neighbours woke up one day to find they were living alongside the S69 and D3 sections of the Trans European Transport Corridor No VI.
From early in the morning you hear the noise of construction and men in orange vests swearing and shouting. Look out of the window across what used to be gardens and acres of allotments with fruit trees and you now see a rigid barrier of concrete on squat giant legs.
This new “pan European transport corridor,” now hurtles below her garden balcony. It’s so close that you could reach out from the balcony and almost touch the concrete.
It’s being built closer to domestic dwellings than any new road would be in the UK. EU law, at least in Poland allows a distance of 40 metres but here the distance is 37 at most.
She says she wants to invite reporters from the BBC to come and sit there with her and have tea, and watch how their cups and saucers rattle to the sound of high powered drills.
“My house is like a watchtower overlooking the road,” she says. “Perhaps when the cars come I could stand on my balcony with a billboard, advertising something and get paid for it.”
That’s about the only joke we’ve found in the situation so far. The cars haven’t arrived yet but it’s already ferociously noisy and fills the air with dust. There is some vague plan to put up giant screens as noise barriers to shield the houses, and schools which are just an alarming eighteen metres away.
These will have to be painted somehow stop a massacre of birds, so the future will certainly be different in Bielsko-Biała; one of triple glazing, staying in doors instead of sitting in the garden or looking at the view, and smog masks.
In the 1970s there were about 500,000 cars on the road in Poland, now there are about 20 million. The roads are in bad shape. In Bielsko very little is down to repair the small local roads, which break up badly in the winter frosts.
The government’s response to this, using EU money, is to build motorways, and to run down the Polish railways,(PKP) which were privatised quickly just before Poland entered the EU.
Early this year the Polish Prime Minister, Donald Tusk announced that 4.8 billion PLN (1 billion GBP) which had been allocated for expenditure on Polish rail was being diverted to the road budget.
Like good old British Rail, has not been improved one jot by being sold off, at least not as far as the “customers,” are concerned. Poles now experience the kind of Christmas chaos which we enjoy so much in the west. Ticket prices have soared and passenger numbers fallen. Trains lines that I used regularly in the 1970s, for instance from Katowice to Oswiecim, to my surprise no longer exist.
The Polish government is now subsidising cars not trains. Currently, due to an EU directive, three major motorways spanning the entire country are being built. Many sections are under construction, due to be finished by mid-2012.
What is so alarming about all this is the lack of any consultation with the public.
A couple of years ago I wrote a letter of protest about Ewa’s plight, to the European department dealing with Polish roads. They sent back a thick document written in dense jargon, saying that full consultation had taken place. A terrible lie as neither Ewa nor her neighbours had any say in the matter. Local people suggested running the new high-way along a route proposed years ago, skirting the town, or putting some of it into a tunnel, but those ideas were dismissed without comment.
I tried to fathom out Polish local democracy a bit – who is there MP or equivalent? No one is sure. There is a list of men, chosen by different parties by proportional representation, in a multi-party system, with sixteen regional governments, who send a representative to the Sejm in Warsaw.
This is confusing to say the least and not one of the men appointed locally was interested in the residents concerns. When Ewa went to the local town hall and met a councillor he said, “Well what can I do? I am only one man.”
Available land was quickly sold by the county council and even the church, so the road quickly seemed to locals like a fait accomplis.
The key man apparently who wanted it is the mayor, Jacek Krywult, 70, a career politician who even had a good career under the communists, and has continuously been re- elected “President” of Bielsko since 2002.
Despite being “vice-president for traffic safety,” he is not worried by having two schools bang up against a major motorway, or 37 metres from the local church steps.
Where is Swampy when you really need him? Apparently there are no knotty headed tree protestors or groups of determined middle-class road protestors in Poland. According to Ewa protestors are taken away, put in hospital and given drugs.
“Like in Soviet times,” a phrase which is sometimes a dark joke between us.
One of her neighbours, called by Ewa, “the bravest,” who refused to move out when ordered, had her 19th century house knocked down anyway. She was offered help to pack if she got out on the appointed date, but she stayed defiantly inside until police arrived and turfed her out. There is still a great fear of the police in Poland, “just like in…”
The woman received compensation and built a new, smaller house nearby. No one can sell their once fine houses so there is no chance of moving away to a quiet, less polluted place.
It was disappointing to me to think than no local press reported her situation and there were certainly no TV cameras recording any discontent. When this sort of thing happens in Beijing and people are forced by their government to quit their homes, you do see reports of it in the world’s press. When it happens in Poland, the new EU, no one seems to bother.
A beautiful country town is now scarred, raddled by road builders as blind to the environment as our planners were in the 1960s.
The people I spoke of spoke of a new “Red Bourgeoisie,” former communists now living on the fat of EU money, happy with advanced capitalism.
This sometimes has its darkly comic side – in the mountain town of Zywiec an old factory with a tall chimney, has been turned into a TESCO, which has its logo vertically on the chimney stack. It looks ominously like a crematorium.
In Auschwitz itself, always a boldly unembarrassed little town, all the supermarkets apart from Carrefore are German; Lidl, Kaufland and Biedronka. There was an objection when Kaufland wanted to put up signed advertising itself with the initials: KL, once famous for Konzentrationslager.
After the wedding we had a couple of days sight seeing, visiting churches old and brand new. There was obviously a building boom going on. Detached houses are springing up everywhere, among them a few old grey concrete boxes, patterned with asbestos tiles, and flat roofs from communist times when pitched roofs were forbidden as they used too much material.
Ewa knew someone who made enough money cleaning in Dublin to return home and build a house. The Polish Zloty is low in value, so it’s possible to get rich abroad. A kind of Polish fiscal miracle.
“It is a mystery everyone talks about,” said Ewa. “There are no jobs in Poland, yet everyone is building country houses.”
It was interesting to see Bielsko town again. It was dreary and run down under the comms but now looks like a clean Alpine holiday resort, with good bars and night-clubs.
We visited Łodygowice village with its baroque wooden church, and up to Zywiec to visit the old brewery where they still produce 1,464 bottles of the amber nectar every four minutes, that is 2,108,160 bottles a day.
They now have an interactive museum, taking visitors on a time travel from the time of the Hapsburgs to the Soviets. This included a flickering black and white film made in the 1920, free Poland between the wars, with well dressed people gathering at race-tracks, travelling in sports cars and gliders, the Poland that never was.
Not being a beer drinker, the best part of Zywiec for me was sitting on the grass, eating a fresh yeast roll, in the old Habsburg park, in front of its Palace. In an act of extraordinary and unlikely kindness the Polish government have allowed Duchess Marie-Christine von Habsburg, 87, to return and live in a two room flat in her former home.
There is a short film about her life in the Zywiec museum. She is a grand old girl. Perhaps she has been allowed back because her father was tortured by the Gestapo and her mother, an Austrian, joined the Armia Krajowa, AK, the valiant Polish underground army.
We took a cable car up Zar, or “hot” mountain, and sat in the sun looking down on Tresna Dam, and Bielsko’s lush enfolding scenery. I hadn’t realised until then that Ewa now lives in a major tourist spot.
“Over there, behind that hill is Oswiecim,” (Auschwitz) said Kazik.
“I can see that you’d like to visit it,” she said.
At one time every blade of grass, every stone in there was fascinating to me, but we had decided not to go there this time. I’d come to a wedding and it wasn’t appropriate, besides she finds the tragedy of it has got worse in her mind over the years, not better.
Her grandfather moved the family from northern Poland down to Oswiecim after the first world war. He looked at the map and decided that it looked like a quiet, rural place where nothing much would ever happen. Her father was taken to the death camp to work as a slave, aged sixteen. As soon as he arrived his teeth were punched out. I know other Poles whose relations had the same treatment. It was obviously company policy. Gruesome to think of people walking about with smashed up jaws and no medical help.
There were a lot worse things going on in there of course. That was the luxury end of the itinerary. I was fascinated by it on one level, as a factory of death; such a completely in-human, un-human idea.
Before it became properly known, some Jews called it “Pitchipoi,” a distant destination. The artist Charlotte Salomon said the name, “resounded like an eternal curse.” The German painter, Felix Nussbaum painted it quite accurately, on the basis of this hearsay.
When I first went there in 1978 it seemed oddly still, like an extinct volcano. You pick over the old lava, climb up small hills of moraine, walk carefully over the cracks in the ground, not sure that it isn’t all going to ignite again at any moment. It still has a devouring presence.
Part of this feeling of torpor came from the poor quality of the museum in those day, ruled over by communists who used it for partly for propaganda purposes. On my first visit, the Jewish bunker was shut. I saw a youth who’d come all the way from LA sitting on the ground outside the locked door, really distressed. In those days there was no one to appeal to. If something was shut that was it.
After the comms went, the same people were left in charge. They opened a “Jewish reading room,” but I never saw a Jew in there. I was given a signed first edition of his book, The Pianist by Wladyslaw Szpilman. I gave it to the archive and they were very pleased to have it, but I did wonder why they didn’t just go to Warsaw and ask him for a copy themselves. They didn’t go in for collecting oral history, what was there when the Russians arrived was it.
Apparently the museum has got better now, even providing visitors with i-pod commentaries. I wonder if they all leave them in a heap when they go home.
It’s very difficult to know how exactly to view the place. I was at Machu Picchu in Peru recently. Like Auschwitz it is also a “World Heritage Site,” a place where you can pay respect to a race and their culture which was systematically exterminated. It doesn’t have that kind of impact of course, a lot of tourists find the place rather cute. That is due simply because of the passing of time.
Wondering whether to go there again was like talking about an old acquaintance, someone we didn’t know anymore.
Kazik suggested going past it briefly on our way back to the airport on my way home.
We stopped for a moment outside KL One, before driving along the wall of the old Austrian barracks. It could be any old wall, yet the other side of it forms the end of a court-yard and is painted black. Hundreds of Poles stood there naked, facing it, waiting to be shot.
Up the road, reaching Birkenau, you immediately see the broad, black camp watch-towers which look as fragile as charcoal when you get close. We parked in front of the famous entrance, like the open mouth of hell in a mediaeval painting, with the strips of metal rail feeding in.
Ewa’s younger son remained very quietly in the car, perhaps wondering what people were doing, having photos taken but not smiling into the camera, staring through barbed wire at expanses of rolling nothingness, bending their eyes on vacancy, putting their hands down flat on railway lines as if they were to tops of sacred tombs.
On the plane back from Krakow I was surprised to find that most of the passengers were young Jews. When I was last in Poland ten years ago I didn’t see any. Visitor numbers started increasing after the release of the film Schindler’s List.
spoke to a couple of the young women. They seemed angry and agitated by what they’d seen.
“It will definitely be my last visit,” said one, sounding disgusted with the world. I wondered where all that rage will be directed, perhaps towards support for the state of Israel, which means that Hitler’s work of destruction will go on.
Monday, 30 May 2011
Polish Wedding.
Ewa appeared downstairs in metallic splendour; long copper coloured dress, silver bolero and old looking hooped earrings containing residual deer tusks.
“I was wearing them at one of your parties in the 1970s,” she said.
“You said, “Oh, you are too elegant.””
Oh dear – what an insecure twit I was. I remember those student parties in my flat near Katowice in Silesia. I was a so called teaching assistant at the University of Sosnowiec, although I had no one to assist. I was on my own fronting large classes mainly of bored looking teenage girls with inexplicable names like Małgorzata and Bożena. A rattled Fulbright scholar from the US called them, “The whispering maidens of Katowice.”
Ewa was one of my students who didn’t whisper or pass bits of paper to her neighbour. She worked determinedly and was definitely the most elegant, possibly the best looking of them all. A real Polish princess.
We first met when she put up her hand in class and asked me if I would like to go home with her for the weekend to visit her family in Oswiecim, better known to the world as Auschwitz.
“The town is very interesting,” she said. “We have a wonderful ice-rink.”
We’ve been friends since then, down all the years, and I was invited to Bielsko-Biała for her son Adam’s wedding on May 21st.
I remember when he was born, just after Martial Law had been declared. There was a food shortage and everyone was in a panic about finding milk for him.
A Polish wedding is possibly more significant than its English equivalent, especially if the family is strongly Catholic.
This time, unlike the 1970s I complimented her on her outfit. She didn’t comment on my black and white M & S dress and bright red fascinator, she was too stressed to notice. Her husband Kazik sat quietly sewing a button onto Adam’s suit.
We set off in two cars, along the pot-holed roads to visit the new in-laws, for a special Polish parental blessing on the young couple, which sounded rather strange to me.
The small house might have been English, part of a pleasant looking estate, but there was a large black crucifix at the bottom of the stairs, and a table set out like an altar in the living room, with a silver crucifix and beside it a bowl of water and a small brush called an aspergillum, used for sprinkling in the Catholic church. On the floor was a white towel.
The mother looked rather perplexed at seeing me, as if this intrusion might be the last straw on a very stressful day. She shooed me away from the towel as I struggled to take photos with a strange camera.
The bride came down stairs and no one made a big fuss at seeing her in her wedding dress, except me! In Polish tradition this is the moment when the groom first sees the bride. They both had to kneel on the white square. The four parents made spontaneous comments on their union before kissing them, making the sign of the cross on their foreheads and sprinkling them with holy water which had been blessed by a priest at Easter.
Seeing Kazik cup his son’s face in his hands and kiss him briefly was very moving. I wondered if I would get through this without shedding tears. Around me everyone else seemed light hearted.
The nuptial mass took place in the church of St. Barbara in Mikuszowice, a smart looking country village. The tiny church, was built in 1690 from nailess planks of black larch wood, sweeping down to the ground in a broad stiff skirt. Above it has an onionish dome and a slender tower. http://www.panoramy-wirtualne.pl/panorama/kosciol-sw-barbary-w-mikuszowicach-bielsko-biala-spacer-wirtualny/33/5
http://parafia.twojestrony.pl/0,0,galerie,lista,galeria.html
I first saw these churches when I went to work in Poland in 1978 and found them disturbing, too like illustrations from fairy-tales. I associated them with village culture and persecution of the Jews.
Milling about outside in the sunshine, among the guests there were a lot of chic clothes on view, but I quickly realised that I was the only woman in a fascinator, or hat of any kind.
“For Polish women the most important thing is going to the hairdresser on the day,” I was told.
Inside St. Barbara’s is a Baroque jewel, with ornately painted walls, showing scenes from her martyrdom. There were also carvings of her, and St. Michael the Archangel slaying the dragon, and over the altar a giant poster of the Blessed John Paul II’s beaming face.
When the comms were in power, the grim image of Maximillian Kolbe the martyr priest who died in Auschwitz was everywhere. He now seems to have been replaced somewhat by the sunnier, more triumphant figure of the late Pope.
The bride and groom go up the isle together, no one is “given away.” That custom is purely Anglo-Saxon apparently, but catching on in Poland, thanks to American rom-coms on Polish TV and the recent royal wedding.
There were no wedding service sheets, but I could follow the Mass easily as its rhythm is the same as the service we have at St. Michael’s in Chiswick. I didn’t lose my place at all.
At the “Pokoju” or Peace, I felt moved, and at the end when the choir, including Adam’s new father in law, struck up with an English anthem: “Great is the Lord. In his power we trust, ” sung in a rather “Swingly” manner with lots of “pah, pah, pahs,”
Afterwards the guests lined up to give the bride and groom presents of money and fresh flowers all beautifully wrapped. Ewa told me that flowers as gifts are getting rarer, and there is a new custom of asking guests for lottery tickets in the hope of a big win. Others ask for tiny keep sakes, “Pamiątka,” which can also be risky as you may end up with a room full of pottery elephants.
I lined up with my envelope containing £20 and told the bride she looked, “as good as Pippa Middleton,” forgetting that I’d been warned that “pipa,” pronounced, “Pippa” is a very rude word in Polish. Hearing it cause much hilarity in Polish homes during the royal nuptials.
“You must say Philippa at all times,” warned Ewa.
The bride laughed and I got the impression they thought I was a bit eccentric anyway, with this red feathery thing on my head.
We made our way in convoy into higher mountains, to the small hotel, the Stara Szmergielnia, the equivalent of “the old whet-stone.” A beautiful place with a wide court-yard leading down to stables and the Białka river.
We were going to be there until the next day. The party might last that long. “However late it ends,” Ewa told me, “the parents must stay till the very end.”
A strange convention indeed. No sloping off to bed like the Queen. I was glad I had a room to retreat to even though it was ominously number 101.
A fat chef appeared with a very large loaf, with a heart shape cut out and filled with salt. He gave the bride and groom a glass of water and one of vodka. They had to pick a glass each and the one who got the vodka would be “the ruler,” of their house.
Food began appearing as soon as we sat down.
It came stacked up on the plates, Kotlets, traditional beef roulade, and a modern version with chicken and fruit, piled up like pleated material. Very tasty but I couldn’t recognise much of it, and to Ewa’s annoyance there were no menus.
Then endless salads; raw celeriac with walnuts and orange, herring in cream and with apple, cooked vegetables and traditional chicken broth.
There was supposed to be a Greek salad but to Ewa’s disgust no one could find it, but it was difficult to spot as the tables became crammed with food and the lights dimmed as the disco started.
The bride and groom kicked off the dancing with an ambitious tango. I suspected that the tentacles of Strictly Come Dancing reached even into deepest Poland. Then the DJ launched the evening with the hits of Boney M.
I sat there in my fascinator, clearly not fascinating anyone much, but the man next to me and his wife spoke some English and he seemed very charming and amused by me as we excavated the food and drink.
He wanted “Kluski śląskie,” glutinous boiled dumplings. They were there among all the plates but he asked the waitress for an extra portion. I wondered if he might like to have them in a kind of croque en bouche, piled up with gravy poured down over them, but I couldn’t put that into Polish.
At first there was a toast, then one glass of wine and some orange squash available, later Ewa managed to procure some real fruit juice, and a small but ominous bottle of vodka. People had to decided early between wine and vodka, mixing the two would be lethal, but the wine was kept back for awhile. Despite this, the dance floor was full of sexy couples and then I was dragged up and flung about and clutched closely by a sweating, barrel chested man, which was quite enjoyable.
We sat down for awhile for some gypsy music and singing by a local “mountain man,” and I realised that my fascinator had been noticed. A fat young man who looked like a football hooligan asked to be photographed with me wearing it, then he put it on himself, then on his wife.
After a few old records the music seemed to be mainly covers of old songs. I asked for some ABBA and the DJ reluctantly agreed. For a few moments I was again the Dancing Queen, only seventeen, prancing about alone in the strobe lights. I don’t get to do that very often these days.
At 10 pm more food arrived, this time large fried pierogi, or ravioli, with cheese and meat. I was visited by a young girl from Alabama. She said she’d deliberately changed her accent at college as other Americans thought it was “too cute,” the frequent reaction we English get.
She was living with a Polish boy in Krakow, studying East European culture and Polish language. Apparently her mother is very understanding, but her father finds it inexplicable that she should swap the US for Poland.
Over the din of Polish pop music which neither of us knew, she laid out the whole basic structure of the language to me, a bit like doing a diagram of the National Grid or inland waterways. She was really clarifying it to herself, but it was useful for me to hear.
“Honestly, you know I speak it like a seven year old,” she said. “All the nouns and pronouns decline and the verbs conjugate in three tenses so I often get lost.”
But unlike me she had cracked the code. I told her that in a few months it would be gushing out of her and she’d be surprised to hear herself.
I wished that I’d worked at it when I was living there, but then all the students wanted to speak English to me, while teachers from the Jagiellonian university said they didn’t want to hear foreigners speaking poor Polish. I couldn’t have focused enough anyway.
Strangely she said she couldn’t follow the wedding service at all. After ten minutes she shut off because of all the “formal, old fashioned Polish.” Well, she was by tradition a southern Baptist, so perhaps she would have found the Eucharist hard to follow even in English.
As the hours ticked by in what was part party and part endurance test, people came up to chat and intimacy developed quickly.
Ewa told me she had seen a piece by Dame Diana Rigg on line, about me. In 2003 she sued me for libel, got about £40,000 I think, in an out of court settlement and my career at the paper went into a nose-dive. It was her word against mine and I didn’t have a tape-recorder, just my trusty note-pad.
“That woman wrecked your career,” said Ewa bitterly, “and your health.”
Ewa really does not like what she sees as bad people at all and seethes if they are seen to prosper, a hangover from the old communist days when flagrant injustice was the norm. For a moment I imagined a Polish posse descending on the liver-spotted old cow. But it’s old history now and despite being a tabloid journalist, I still have my integrity. Some months after it all happened I heard La Rigg on Front Row on Radio 4 contentedly describing herself as, “A monster.”
The DJ generously offered us a rendering of, “Viva Espagna!” and the floor filled up again. I was pulled up to dance by a man ho constantly twizzled me about and kept pirouetting me in and out under his arm as if we were jiving. He wouldn’t let me alone and wanted me to join in congas and groups of arm wavers in the centre of the room. I got away from him and had a moment of pure joy under the strobes, dancing to, “Staying Alive.” That never had more resonance for me. I didn’t bother with it at all when it came out.
“Should I stay or should I go?” by the Clash brought back memories of working in Wormwood Scrubs. We had a visit from what remains of that group and some of the men loved that song. Particularly a Dutchman I was fond of.
Then we had Polish disco music and for a moment the floor seemed to be taken by Polish Elvis impersonators.
I returned to my table which was gradually stacking up with food, feeling a bit maudlin about all that had happened since I was last in Poland ten years ago. Thinking about all the new people I’d met over the last year, some of them at Maggie’s Cancer Support Centre, so many of them slowly dying, to be swept away soon like leaves. That connected with thoughts about Poland and the last war, the great horror, which is never far from mind; so many good people just like these frisking about so sexily, all those pointless deaths. I had a sense of everyone being intensely valuable which I never used to have.
The couple reappeared to cut the cake, thin slices as the whole bottom tier was mysteriously missing. “It’s like communist times,” I said to Ewa who looked apoplectic.
Other cakes arrived, sturdy wedges of poppy-seed cake, apple cake which I love, and piles of petit four, but some mad fool had flavoured almost everything, apart from the apple, with coconut.
When I first went to Poland as a picky girl, I didn’t like the flavour of coconut, dill and caraway, which the Victorians used for small cakes. My mother was forced to eat them as a child, in an age where children had to take whatever they were offered.
I quickly realised I was going to have to put up with these three flavours as they were in almost everything, with caraway often put into bread. Over the years I have got to like potatoes and fish with dill.
At 1pm the rather surly waitress brought us a kind of very fatty soup, “bogracz” a kind of goulash, which is supposed to be supportive to vodka drinkers. The wine had appeared and more vodka, and people had made their choice of poison hours before.
The bride decided to throw her bouquet at last. A large girl in a very short, tight pink dress was determined to get it, there was a scrum, a real pile up and in the struggle the flowers were shredded. The girl in pink emerged triumphant but got very weak applause after such a desperate fight.
“I’ve never seen such a strong fight between maidens before,” said Ewa, still cross about the blips in the catering.
I could sympathise with the fat girl in pink, as I realised that this was the first wedding I’d ever enjoyed. I have not been invited to many, which was a mercy as I used to behave so badly at them, wanting so much to have one of my own. Now all those bitter, anxious feelings had gone. I was happy for other people being happy, a tottering step in the right direction I suppose.
I stayed up for some very good ice-cream, but at 2am slipped away before the beetroot soup, to room 101. Other people had gone too, but the young and the surprisingly old, and the parents were still hard at it and stayed till 5am.
In the morning I pottered about before anyone else came down. Breakfast was fixed for 11am. Round the side of the hotel I met the fat chef, still in his whites and hat, having a quiet smoke.
He said he’d been working for seventeen hours non stop. His pay was not as good as it would be if he moved to London, and was Gordon Ramsey really as crazy as he seemed on TV?
Ewa told me that one of the mountain women had asked for my fascinator. She had told her it was improper to ask for such a thing. I said she could have it, as long as it didn’t become an object of pagan worship. But then I hesitated. I am going on the Queen Mary to New York soon and rather fancied wearing it to go on board.
The bride and groom went off on their honeymoon, walking in the Beskidy mountains. They were staying in a luxury hotel at the foot of Pilsko mountain. When I saw the bride with her enormous ruck-sack as long as her long, graceful body, I thought they were heading for the summit at 5108ft. I asked what was in it.
“I am a woman. I need so many things,” she said in that winsome womanly way that some Polish women still have.
I was up there myself once in deep snow. We met some Czechs on their side of the invisible border, and toasted each other in vodka, but after initial greetings sat in silence, in a kind of acknowledgement of mutual political oppression and frustration.
Ewa’s home and the other mother in law’s soon filled up with the couple’s wedding flowers. It was sad to see them sitting there in their wonderful arrangements, lining every window ledge and table, a beautiful burden.
In the house in Bielsko, I had my usual bed on the top floor under the eaves.
It’s a tall country house, with a wood interior, which her husband built by hand with his friends. When I first saw it in the early 1990s I thought of it as a kind of tower he had designed to imprison her. She has never let down her tawny hair and attempted escape but things have changed drastically around her.
“I was wearing them at one of your parties in the 1970s,” she said.
“You said, “Oh, you are too elegant.””
Oh dear – what an insecure twit I was. I remember those student parties in my flat near Katowice in Silesia. I was a so called teaching assistant at the University of Sosnowiec, although I had no one to assist. I was on my own fronting large classes mainly of bored looking teenage girls with inexplicable names like Małgorzata and Bożena. A rattled Fulbright scholar from the US called them, “The whispering maidens of Katowice.”
Ewa was one of my students who didn’t whisper or pass bits of paper to her neighbour. She worked determinedly and was definitely the most elegant, possibly the best looking of them all. A real Polish princess.
We first met when she put up her hand in class and asked me if I would like to go home with her for the weekend to visit her family in Oswiecim, better known to the world as Auschwitz.
“The town is very interesting,” she said. “We have a wonderful ice-rink.”
We’ve been friends since then, down all the years, and I was invited to Bielsko-Biała for her son Adam’s wedding on May 21st.
I remember when he was born, just after Martial Law had been declared. There was a food shortage and everyone was in a panic about finding milk for him.
A Polish wedding is possibly more significant than its English equivalent, especially if the family is strongly Catholic.
This time, unlike the 1970s I complimented her on her outfit. She didn’t comment on my black and white M & S dress and bright red fascinator, she was too stressed to notice. Her husband Kazik sat quietly sewing a button onto Adam’s suit.
We set off in two cars, along the pot-holed roads to visit the new in-laws, for a special Polish parental blessing on the young couple, which sounded rather strange to me.
The small house might have been English, part of a pleasant looking estate, but there was a large black crucifix at the bottom of the stairs, and a table set out like an altar in the living room, with a silver crucifix and beside it a bowl of water and a small brush called an aspergillum, used for sprinkling in the Catholic church. On the floor was a white towel.
The mother looked rather perplexed at seeing me, as if this intrusion might be the last straw on a very stressful day. She shooed me away from the towel as I struggled to take photos with a strange camera.
The bride came down stairs and no one made a big fuss at seeing her in her wedding dress, except me! In Polish tradition this is the moment when the groom first sees the bride. They both had to kneel on the white square. The four parents made spontaneous comments on their union before kissing them, making the sign of the cross on their foreheads and sprinkling them with holy water which had been blessed by a priest at Easter.
Seeing Kazik cup his son’s face in his hands and kiss him briefly was very moving. I wondered if I would get through this without shedding tears. Around me everyone else seemed light hearted.
The nuptial mass took place in the church of St. Barbara in Mikuszowice, a smart looking country village. The tiny church, was built in 1690 from nailess planks of black larch wood, sweeping down to the ground in a broad stiff skirt. Above it has an onionish dome and a slender tower. http://www.panoramy-wirtualne.pl/panorama/kosciol-sw-barbary-w-mikuszowicach-bielsko-biala-spacer-wirtualny/33/5
http://parafia.twojestrony.pl/0,0,galerie,lista,galeria.html
I first saw these churches when I went to work in Poland in 1978 and found them disturbing, too like illustrations from fairy-tales. I associated them with village culture and persecution of the Jews.
Milling about outside in the sunshine, among the guests there were a lot of chic clothes on view, but I quickly realised that I was the only woman in a fascinator, or hat of any kind.
“For Polish women the most important thing is going to the hairdresser on the day,” I was told.
Inside St. Barbara’s is a Baroque jewel, with ornately painted walls, showing scenes from her martyrdom. There were also carvings of her, and St. Michael the Archangel slaying the dragon, and over the altar a giant poster of the Blessed John Paul II’s beaming face.
When the comms were in power, the grim image of Maximillian Kolbe the martyr priest who died in Auschwitz was everywhere. He now seems to have been replaced somewhat by the sunnier, more triumphant figure of the late Pope.
The bride and groom go up the isle together, no one is “given away.” That custom is purely Anglo-Saxon apparently, but catching on in Poland, thanks to American rom-coms on Polish TV and the recent royal wedding.
There were no wedding service sheets, but I could follow the Mass easily as its rhythm is the same as the service we have at St. Michael’s in Chiswick. I didn’t lose my place at all.
At the “Pokoju” or Peace, I felt moved, and at the end when the choir, including Adam’s new father in law, struck up with an English anthem: “Great is the Lord. In his power we trust, ” sung in a rather “Swingly” manner with lots of “pah, pah, pahs,”
Afterwards the guests lined up to give the bride and groom presents of money and fresh flowers all beautifully wrapped. Ewa told me that flowers as gifts are getting rarer, and there is a new custom of asking guests for lottery tickets in the hope of a big win. Others ask for tiny keep sakes, “Pamiątka,” which can also be risky as you may end up with a room full of pottery elephants.
I lined up with my envelope containing £20 and told the bride she looked, “as good as Pippa Middleton,” forgetting that I’d been warned that “pipa,” pronounced, “Pippa” is a very rude word in Polish. Hearing it cause much hilarity in Polish homes during the royal nuptials.
“You must say Philippa at all times,” warned Ewa.
The bride laughed and I got the impression they thought I was a bit eccentric anyway, with this red feathery thing on my head.
We made our way in convoy into higher mountains, to the small hotel, the Stara Szmergielnia, the equivalent of “the old whet-stone.” A beautiful place with a wide court-yard leading down to stables and the Białka river.
We were going to be there until the next day. The party might last that long. “However late it ends,” Ewa told me, “the parents must stay till the very end.”
A strange convention indeed. No sloping off to bed like the Queen. I was glad I had a room to retreat to even though it was ominously number 101.
A fat chef appeared with a very large loaf, with a heart shape cut out and filled with salt. He gave the bride and groom a glass of water and one of vodka. They had to pick a glass each and the one who got the vodka would be “the ruler,” of their house.
Food began appearing as soon as we sat down.
It came stacked up on the plates, Kotlets, traditional beef roulade, and a modern version with chicken and fruit, piled up like pleated material. Very tasty but I couldn’t recognise much of it, and to Ewa’s annoyance there were no menus.
Then endless salads; raw celeriac with walnuts and orange, herring in cream and with apple, cooked vegetables and traditional chicken broth.
There was supposed to be a Greek salad but to Ewa’s disgust no one could find it, but it was difficult to spot as the tables became crammed with food and the lights dimmed as the disco started.
The bride and groom kicked off the dancing with an ambitious tango. I suspected that the tentacles of Strictly Come Dancing reached even into deepest Poland. Then the DJ launched the evening with the hits of Boney M.
I sat there in my fascinator, clearly not fascinating anyone much, but the man next to me and his wife spoke some English and he seemed very charming and amused by me as we excavated the food and drink.
He wanted “Kluski śląskie,” glutinous boiled dumplings. They were there among all the plates but he asked the waitress for an extra portion. I wondered if he might like to have them in a kind of croque en bouche, piled up with gravy poured down over them, but I couldn’t put that into Polish.
At first there was a toast, then one glass of wine and some orange squash available, later Ewa managed to procure some real fruit juice, and a small but ominous bottle of vodka. People had to decided early between wine and vodka, mixing the two would be lethal, but the wine was kept back for awhile. Despite this, the dance floor was full of sexy couples and then I was dragged up and flung about and clutched closely by a sweating, barrel chested man, which was quite enjoyable.
We sat down for awhile for some gypsy music and singing by a local “mountain man,” and I realised that my fascinator had been noticed. A fat young man who looked like a football hooligan asked to be photographed with me wearing it, then he put it on himself, then on his wife.
After a few old records the music seemed to be mainly covers of old songs. I asked for some ABBA and the DJ reluctantly agreed. For a few moments I was again the Dancing Queen, only seventeen, prancing about alone in the strobe lights. I don’t get to do that very often these days.
At 10 pm more food arrived, this time large fried pierogi, or ravioli, with cheese and meat. I was visited by a young girl from Alabama. She said she’d deliberately changed her accent at college as other Americans thought it was “too cute,” the frequent reaction we English get.
She was living with a Polish boy in Krakow, studying East European culture and Polish language. Apparently her mother is very understanding, but her father finds it inexplicable that she should swap the US for Poland.
Over the din of Polish pop music which neither of us knew, she laid out the whole basic structure of the language to me, a bit like doing a diagram of the National Grid or inland waterways. She was really clarifying it to herself, but it was useful for me to hear.
“Honestly, you know I speak it like a seven year old,” she said. “All the nouns and pronouns decline and the verbs conjugate in three tenses so I often get lost.”
But unlike me she had cracked the code. I told her that in a few months it would be gushing out of her and she’d be surprised to hear herself.
I wished that I’d worked at it when I was living there, but then all the students wanted to speak English to me, while teachers from the Jagiellonian university said they didn’t want to hear foreigners speaking poor Polish. I couldn’t have focused enough anyway.
Strangely she said she couldn’t follow the wedding service at all. After ten minutes she shut off because of all the “formal, old fashioned Polish.” Well, she was by tradition a southern Baptist, so perhaps she would have found the Eucharist hard to follow even in English.
As the hours ticked by in what was part party and part endurance test, people came up to chat and intimacy developed quickly.
Ewa told me she had seen a piece by Dame Diana Rigg on line, about me. In 2003 she sued me for libel, got about £40,000 I think, in an out of court settlement and my career at the paper went into a nose-dive. It was her word against mine and I didn’t have a tape-recorder, just my trusty note-pad.
“That woman wrecked your career,” said Ewa bitterly, “and your health.”
Ewa really does not like what she sees as bad people at all and seethes if they are seen to prosper, a hangover from the old communist days when flagrant injustice was the norm. For a moment I imagined a Polish posse descending on the liver-spotted old cow. But it’s old history now and despite being a tabloid journalist, I still have my integrity. Some months after it all happened I heard La Rigg on Front Row on Radio 4 contentedly describing herself as, “A monster.”
The DJ generously offered us a rendering of, “Viva Espagna!” and the floor filled up again. I was pulled up to dance by a man ho constantly twizzled me about and kept pirouetting me in and out under his arm as if we were jiving. He wouldn’t let me alone and wanted me to join in congas and groups of arm wavers in the centre of the room. I got away from him and had a moment of pure joy under the strobes, dancing to, “Staying Alive.” That never had more resonance for me. I didn’t bother with it at all when it came out.
“Should I stay or should I go?” by the Clash brought back memories of working in Wormwood Scrubs. We had a visit from what remains of that group and some of the men loved that song. Particularly a Dutchman I was fond of.
Then we had Polish disco music and for a moment the floor seemed to be taken by Polish Elvis impersonators.
I returned to my table which was gradually stacking up with food, feeling a bit maudlin about all that had happened since I was last in Poland ten years ago. Thinking about all the new people I’d met over the last year, some of them at Maggie’s Cancer Support Centre, so many of them slowly dying, to be swept away soon like leaves. That connected with thoughts about Poland and the last war, the great horror, which is never far from mind; so many good people just like these frisking about so sexily, all those pointless deaths. I had a sense of everyone being intensely valuable which I never used to have.
The couple reappeared to cut the cake, thin slices as the whole bottom tier was mysteriously missing. “It’s like communist times,” I said to Ewa who looked apoplectic.
Other cakes arrived, sturdy wedges of poppy-seed cake, apple cake which I love, and piles of petit four, but some mad fool had flavoured almost everything, apart from the apple, with coconut.
When I first went to Poland as a picky girl, I didn’t like the flavour of coconut, dill and caraway, which the Victorians used for small cakes. My mother was forced to eat them as a child, in an age where children had to take whatever they were offered.
I quickly realised I was going to have to put up with these three flavours as they were in almost everything, with caraway often put into bread. Over the years I have got to like potatoes and fish with dill.
At 1pm the rather surly waitress brought us a kind of very fatty soup, “bogracz” a kind of goulash, which is supposed to be supportive to vodka drinkers. The wine had appeared and more vodka, and people had made their choice of poison hours before.
The bride decided to throw her bouquet at last. A large girl in a very short, tight pink dress was determined to get it, there was a scrum, a real pile up and in the struggle the flowers were shredded. The girl in pink emerged triumphant but got very weak applause after such a desperate fight.
“I’ve never seen such a strong fight between maidens before,” said Ewa, still cross about the blips in the catering.
I could sympathise with the fat girl in pink, as I realised that this was the first wedding I’d ever enjoyed. I have not been invited to many, which was a mercy as I used to behave so badly at them, wanting so much to have one of my own. Now all those bitter, anxious feelings had gone. I was happy for other people being happy, a tottering step in the right direction I suppose.
I stayed up for some very good ice-cream, but at 2am slipped away before the beetroot soup, to room 101. Other people had gone too, but the young and the surprisingly old, and the parents were still hard at it and stayed till 5am.
In the morning I pottered about before anyone else came down. Breakfast was fixed for 11am. Round the side of the hotel I met the fat chef, still in his whites and hat, having a quiet smoke.
He said he’d been working for seventeen hours non stop. His pay was not as good as it would be if he moved to London, and was Gordon Ramsey really as crazy as he seemed on TV?
Ewa told me that one of the mountain women had asked for my fascinator. She had told her it was improper to ask for such a thing. I said she could have it, as long as it didn’t become an object of pagan worship. But then I hesitated. I am going on the Queen Mary to New York soon and rather fancied wearing it to go on board.
The bride and groom went off on their honeymoon, walking in the Beskidy mountains. They were staying in a luxury hotel at the foot of Pilsko mountain. When I saw the bride with her enormous ruck-sack as long as her long, graceful body, I thought they were heading for the summit at 5108ft. I asked what was in it.
“I am a woman. I need so many things,” she said in that winsome womanly way that some Polish women still have.
I was up there myself once in deep snow. We met some Czechs on their side of the invisible border, and toasted each other in vodka, but after initial greetings sat in silence, in a kind of acknowledgement of mutual political oppression and frustration.
Ewa’s home and the other mother in law’s soon filled up with the couple’s wedding flowers. It was sad to see them sitting there in their wonderful arrangements, lining every window ledge and table, a beautiful burden.
In the house in Bielsko, I had my usual bed on the top floor under the eaves.
It’s a tall country house, with a wood interior, which her husband built by hand with his friends. When I first saw it in the early 1990s I thought of it as a kind of tower he had designed to imprison her. She has never let down her tawny hair and attempted escape but things have changed drastically around her.
One Big Thing
Monday 30th May 2011
Today is the feast of St Joan of Arc.
All this worrying about will it happen or won’t is all rubbish of course, if we all have eternity to deal with.
In church yesterday, young Fr Stephen gave us a print out of some words from St. Basil about the Holy Spirit. It ends with a list, which he says we might like to consider over the next nine days before Ascension Day. It gives what they call the “fruits of the spirit,” and he says we should think which ones we already have and which we’d like to acquire:
Love
Joy
Peace
Patience
Kindness
Goodness
Faithfulness
Gentleness
Self-control
A bit daunting really. I think I have Kindness, now and then, and honesty, which isn’t mentioned, but little or none of the others!
Today is the feast of St Joan of Arc.
All this worrying about will it happen or won’t is all rubbish of course, if we all have eternity to deal with.
In church yesterday, young Fr Stephen gave us a print out of some words from St. Basil about the Holy Spirit. It ends with a list, which he says we might like to consider over the next nine days before Ascension Day. It gives what they call the “fruits of the spirit,” and he says we should think which ones we already have and which we’d like to acquire:
Love
Joy
Peace
Patience
Kindness
Goodness
Faithfulness
Gentleness
Self-control
A bit daunting really. I think I have Kindness, now and then, and honesty, which isn’t mentioned, but little or none of the others!
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