Christmas on the go.

 Christmas Eve. We drive that evening to Stefan and Ewa with a few presents and chocolates. It was the first opportunity for Albina to try one of her new wigs. But she bottled out. If she is not prepared to face the novelty and the "risk" of wearing a wig in public, when it is a matter of two sympathetic friends, when will she? The evening was pleasant as Stefan and Ewa paid homage to the usual Polish Christmas traditions, with starting at the sight of the first star, laying some straw on the table, offering the Oplatek wafer ceremony, and then serving the herring, the wild mushroom soup, pierogi and vegetables and then cheesecake and apple crumble, interspersed with several neat vodka shots and wine, that you would expect in a Polish household. We chatted in the sitting room with Ewa digging deeper into finding out what Albina first found attractive about me, but as this was a boring subject both Stefan and I dozed off. Albina interrupted me occasionally when my snoring got too much. We left them well past midnight and Albina turned the return journey by car into a nightmare by constantly criticizing my driving and threatening not to go to Sandro with me next day. Finally, she announced that she would only travel with me to Cambridge if she drove the car and not me. That was not a problem in itself, but I knew that because of the stiff shoulder joints she could not lift her arms sufficiently to command a steering wheel over such a long distance.

Christmas Day. I woke up at 9am, which was quite late, considering we had said to Sandro that we would be in Cambridge by 11. The heavy food and considerable vodka intake from the previous evening was still bearing its toll, as we prepared to leave. Her wig? Albina shook her head. I shrugged my shoulders resignedly. At this rate she would be unlikely to wear one at any time before our World Voyage, and possibly even then. That would be £1000 wasted. We got ourselves ready. I passed the car keys to Albina in the lift going down to the garage. Unexpectedly she said I should drive again. If her behaviour as a car passenger would continue to be unbearable on the journey, then we could stop the car and change places. Otherwise, we should continue with me at the wheel. 

We took the A1 route again and then the quiet backwater A428 route into the north of the city of Cambridge. It went very smoothly with a one and a half hour run. Despite the train strikes, the roads were still quite clear of traffic. We got there in good time and with Albina on her best behaviour. If she thought I was drifting too far to the right in my lane or travelling more than 50 miles per hour she would point it out politely, and we would get by without a storm brewing between us. Consequently, we arrived rested and content. 

Sandro and Liisa explained their new situation while breaking off occasionally to prepare dinner for us. For the new job in Finland he had received an offer of 50,000 euros a year, which was more than I had ever earned, even when I was a trader at a City trading company. Liisa's father, an engineer, had seen the post of an English speaking programmer, advertised in Turku, the Finnish port town, where he lives. Sandro applied and was made the offer before he even visited Finland to seal the deal. Of course, it helped that he had a Polish passport, which made him an EU citizen having the right to find work in any other EU country. Curiously, as soon as he applied, other companies in the UK got wind of his application and also sent him offers. His own company was taken aback by his decision to go, but Sandro was keen to take up the Finnish offer, partly because it would please Liisa and her family, and partly because his prospects there would be better as a potential house buyer. Apparently a Finnish 5 room property would be much cheaper than in the UK. (So why 5 rooms?) 

Sandro prepared the food as he talked to us, initially donning goggles over his eyes to strip and cut the onions into miniscule pieces, while Liisa would occasionally pop into the kitchen, taking out utensils and plates and helping to fan the room, fruitlessly waving a cook book at the surrounding steam. He had bought an exceptionally large chicken which he roasted beautifully, along with the requisite roast potatoes, leek, carrot, parsnip and sprouts and covered it with his home made gravy. Wherever Sandro had learned to cook, it was not from us, but he had acquired the art sufficiently well to have worked professionally as a cook, before taking up lab jobs in some south London schools, and then concentrating on his second MSc course at UCL on quantum technology. For all the difficulties of the past, had had done well, as he was constantly employed or studying and he had a steady girlfriend for the past 11 years. We aged Polish parents had at least an excuse to boast to our friends about what he was up to, even though we mostly did not understand what it was. Also he was ready to help with our IT whenever we required it. After all, what else do you have children for? In the old days you had children so that they would look after you in your old age. I don't imagine Sandro as being the "looking after" type, but at least he will be able to afford the help that he would need to look after us. 

Boxing Day. I got up early and went for a drive to the nearest village of Histon. Stopped at the village square in front of a pretty thatched cottage facing the local Baptist church. I sipped a coffee as I sat in the car and then went for a brisk walk inhaling the crisp country air. Went back just as the local household was rising and Sandro had started to prepare a hearty breakfast of smoked salmon with scrambled egg and rice porridge with cinnamon. Albina and I left again for London with our little Suzuki Swift filled with some ten plants for Albina's balcony and for their friends. It included an aloe cactus for their old friend Ramesh, and a large bay tree. I lugged them all upstairs into our flat, so we now have plants drooping their branches over the back of our fridge, filling every spare shelf space in our sitting room and spare bedroom, while others were left on the balcony for the following day. 

Next day our Ukrainian cleaning lady replanted them to replace the faded and dead plants that had fallen foul of the December frosts. Albina glories in buying or borrowing more plants for her balcony, but she never ever spends any time, even in the summer, resting on the balcony to enjoy them. After all, there's no TV set on the balcony. 

Letter in "The Guardian"

Letter in "The Guardian" Following an article in "The Guardian" last week by Timothy Garton Ash about the cultural self-destructive aspects of Russian Imperialism, where Putin's attempts attempts to destroy Ukraine and other East European nation's self-identity transforms him into the main enemy of his own Russian culture, I wrote my own letter in support, drawing on my recent report on Belarus.

I am so pleased that "The Guardian" chose to publish it today. I enclose it below:

Dear Editor,

 

I heartily concur with Timothy Garton Ash's comments ("The greatest threat to the Russian world is Putin himself" 17.12.2022) concerning the insidious imposition of the Russian language on areas that Putin anachronistically considers to be part of the Russian Empire.

The Federation of Poles in Gt Britain have recently been drawing attention to the growing Russification inf Belarus, where Putin's brutal undemocratic sidekick, Lukashenka, has been championing the spread of Russian in Belarusian schools, threatening to limit the Belarusian language only to the teaching of history and closing down the Polish, Lithuanian and Ukrainian language schools which, in accordance with Article 50 of the Belarusian constitution, had flourished in the areas where these indigenous minorities lived. Now even Russian speaking members of the democratic opposition in Belarus are teaching themselves to speak Belarusian as they identify this neglected language as the voice of democracy. Another side effect of Putin's Russian chauvinism.   

Yours faithfully,

Wiktor Moszczynski

 

 

Nice to know I can still get the odd text published in the U.K. press.

 

Have been spending a bit of my free time in the last week reading a pre-war Polish novel called "Lover of the Great Bear", about Polish smugglers on the Polish-Soviet border. It was based on the author's experience when he supplemented his activities as a Polish spy by a massive smuggling racket in order to supplement his finances. For much of the time it was like reading a Western as the smuggling gangs plied their trade, until things not nasty as newcomers undermined the work of the old smugglers and some of his friends were killed or arrested and deported to Siberia. He then converted into an obsessed vigilante who with two friends plundered the rival smuggling teams on the Soviet side of the border, until they too were eliminated, and he worked on his own. It was a depressing end to the book, but the story crackled along with details of how and what they smuggled and the women they encountered at their wild libations in the local inns. nobody possesses a car or a telephone but the closeknit community around the world of the smugglers still shined with authenticity and a certain innocence before the newcomers arrive. The occasional interference in their activities from the local Soviet and Polish border guards is like something a Robin Hod or Zorro adventure. Of course, the author, Sergiusz Piasecki, knew what he was writing about. Initially a poorly educated Belarusian orphan of noble Polish roots he had served in the Polish Army during the Polish-Soviet war, then continued as a spy cum smuggler, and ended up killing someone and being sentenced to hand. His sentence was commuted to a long imprisonment. In prison he continued to educate himself and wrote this, his first novel, on toilet paper in the prison. In 1937 he was discovered by a famous journalist who helped him publish the book, and it became a massive best-seller before eventually a presidential pardon freed him from jail. During the war he continued his spy work and, more ominously, he became an assassin, killing traitors condemned to death by underground courts of the Polish resistance. He resisted the Soviet as well as the German occupation. Ultimately, he escaped to the West and wrote several books published in the emigre publications in London. Of course, his books were banned in Communist Poland, especially his satire of a Red Army officer in Vilnius, but posthumously, he became a celebrated author again after Poland was free.

 

 

 

Meanwhile we draw on to our non-Christmas posing as we face Christmas with our friends and with my son. We are still suffering from the effects of having no central heating in our flat for more than a week. Our heating supplier claims that this is due to insufficient pressure in out HIU (heat interface unit). Unfortunately, the engineer can only come in the New Year to repair it. Luckily, after a very cold spell last week, the weather is relatively mild at present, and we have borrowed an electric fire from someone on the estate, so we can probably last it out.

 

The agony of Christmas

 I suppose you might expect a Polish couple like Albina and me to be full of the Christmas spirit now. After all, the Polish Christmas is traditioally a beautiful time. For a start Polish kids get early Christmas presents on St Nicholas Day on December 6th. St. Nick comes at specially organjzed events on that date with a white beard, but dressed, not as the Coca Cola advert draped in a red robe with white trimmings, but as a Bishop wearing a mitre. Well the historical St Nicholas was supposed to be the Bishop of Myra. However there is no race between Polish families to get the first Christmas tree up, as you sometimes get in England. Poles cannot understand how English families get their Christmas trees as early as the end of November. That way the magic of the Christmas tree is dissipated and almost gone by Boxing Day. On the contrary the four weeks before Christmas are supposedly a time for Advent. when we Polish Catholics are supposed to practice contemplation and even abstinence as we prepare for the coming of the Lord. The  Christmas tree goes up as late as December 23rd or even 24th, and stays up until January 6th, for the Three Kings. The trees are quickly dressed up before Christmas Eve with baubles, fairy lights and whatever decorations come to mind and are surmounted with an angel at the top. For kids this is the magic of Christmas with the tree only just up the night before the feast day, and the Christmas Eve repast awaits them as soon as the youngest child in the house has spotted the first star. And that Christmas Eve meal is the most memorable, consisting at least traditionally with 12 courses, the exchange of wafers as we hug and kiss each other around the table wishing a wonderful New year with great prospects, health and happiness. A curious thing about this gargantuan session is that we would be eating no meat. The table will be laden with herring and carp and vegetables and mushrooms and beetroot soup and dried plums in compote and cabbage leaves stuffed with rice aplenty, but no meat. Then bloated and drunk with vodka shots we would make our way to a midnight mass, avoiding police patrols, and sing our hearts out with carols, jovial and sad. And next day the English Christmas dinner follows.

That is the tradition for UK Poles. However, not us. There is no Christmas tree or Christmas welcoming mat in our flat. The fact is that my wife hates Christmas. Orphaned at age 7. Albina was brought up by relatives who cared little for her, or she spent time in a children's home. Christmas was an occasion when she was largely excluded and did not enjoy the events, as she watched her cousins get presents, and when there were none for her. The distrust of this kind of false Christmas bonhomie has left its mark. Christmas is not on her calendar. When Sandro was growing up and my mother was still alive we enjoyed the traditionl Christmas ceremonies. We had the Christmas tree and the presents and the feasts. Sometimes we joined communal celebrations of Christmas Eve at Polish parishes and clubs. However, Albina would often absent herself on these occasions, and soon Sandro, had become as cynical an atheist as his mother. He sensed the hollowness of it all and baulked at Christmas celebrations himself. As for me, I would happily join in with friends for Christmas when Albina was away in Poland visiting her friends in the winter. However, if Albina were to be at home in December, then I would not normally be celebrating a proper family Christmas with her. I too gradually gave up on all the pomp. There were still some great Christmas events organized by my friend Kasia and her family, and I would occasionally enjoy attending them and play party games with them, but although Albina was always invited if she was in London, she never went. So I too felt I should be absent myself and not be a burden, or even a figure of pity,  for others. 

Of course I still had to write some 20 or so Christmas cards. As my writing is pretty terrible most of the messages on these cards, whether in English or Polish, are undecipherable. I have no idea what our recipients thought of them, They probably looked at them, shrugged their shoulders and thought, "well at least it's the thought that counts". Albina never wrote anyway and did not even sign the ones I wrote. So Christmas was always a tricky event for us. Our joint pet hates are the American Christmas films with their cod psychology and their predictable sugarcoated storyline, normally starting with somebody who hates Christmas (with whom we can identify) and finally his/her succumbing to something ghastly and unreal called "capturing the Christmas spirit" and punctuated, always, by snowfall, even if the action takes place in sunny Californoa. 

However this year we had agreed to visit Stefan and his wife Ewa for a solemn meal on Christmas Eve. Also we promised to visit Sandro for a Christmas dinner in Cambridge, before he disappears beyond the Baltic, in the snowdrifts of Finland. At least his partner, Liisa, is a fan of a proper Finnish Christmas and Sandro feels compelled not to disappoint her. 

Today, Tuesday 20th, I said my goodbyes to my colleagues at work as I won't return there until 3rd January. Normally, I would get all the office staff in Ashford warm mince pies and chocolates as going away presents before Christmas, but this year I did not bother. This was not just me being cynical about Christmas, but the girls in the office as well seemed oblivious as well. Every year they would put up Christmas decorations. This year, not a peep from any of them, no holly, no tree, no lights. Considering how bad the last two Christmases were you would have thought they would make an effort this year. Yet they were so busy they claimed they had no time. However, I believe it was still the curse of covid which still hangs over all of us. It still saps our enthusiasm and has taught people that the regular Christmas treats and celebrations are not essential when the pandemic crisis hangs over us. Of course, Christmas is still there for little children. Christmas was still celebrated commercially, town centres still shone with lighted reindeers and angels, but for the rest of us our heart was not in it. Strikes, cost of living, the war in Ukraine, executions of protesters in Iran, women humiliated by coarse Taliban thugs at the gates of higher learning institutes, royal family at war....What was there to celebrate? 

Excursions completed

 Our Jules Verne adventure is really beginning to take shape.

Fred Olsen Cruise Lines had sent round a series of offers on land trips for each of the 26 ports of call along the journey, On average we were given the option of 5 different excursions for each of those destinations. We have actually booked 21 trips and paid £3042 in advance for the privilege. We had to be careful to make sure that Albina did not find herself on a trip requiring a lot of walking and a lot of stairs and that is why many of the trips were somewhat tame city tours by boat or by coach. In some cases I went on a more adventurous journey while Albina stayed on the boat but most of them will be joint trips, including a 16 minute journey on a Shikansen bullet train in Japan, something that I had already experienced 9 years ago when I visited Kyoto. Also, I was booked for a submarine trip in Hawaii and a scenic railway in St Kitts. The only question mark remains over the excursions in India. For some reason the three day trip to the Taj Mahal has been withdrawn and so we wait for new inormation on that. 

We did not choose an excursion for Acapulco as we hope to meet our old friends, Jack and Lyn, when we dock there on April 23rd. Jack is an old school friend from when we were both 7 years old, and for many years we were very close. He had an extraordinary career full of adventures, including owning oil wells in New Mexico and becoming a Vice-President for Special Projects for Haliburton. Lyn was active in the film industry. Then some ten years ago they turned their back on the USA and settled first in Spain, where I last visited him, and then in Mexico. 

In the meantime Albina has swapped one of her new hairpieces for a blonde wig which makes her look twenty years younger. If only she can use that as a reason to be seen more often, even if only to impress her friends with her new hair. Oh, the brittleness of femail vanity. I was happy to pay the extra at the Westbourne Grove shop for the upgrade and in the meantime Albina bought me a very warm and practical jacket for £50 at a nearby charity shop. It was worth at least £200. With such mutual charity who needs Christmas presents. 

On Thursday night we had an Oplatek reception in the POSK Theatre. Oplatek is an old Polish Christmas tradition where we share blessed wafers and hug each other, enemies and friends alike, wishing each other health and success and whatever else comes to mind for the New Year. On top of that we had a full meal, a Christmas carol show, and a last chance to chat and gossip before the end of the year. It was noticeable that those associated with the earlier administration which lost in 2021 boycotted the celebration. A sad reflection on them.

  

Debacle with Indian Visas

One of my biggest headaches before the big trip in February was to obtain an Indian visa. I understand from Fred Olsen that it may be possible in the next month to do an e-visa application and get a promise of a visa without showing our passport to the local High Commission. However, somewhat stubbornly, I had committed myself to completing the paper forms for Albina and myself and wanted to present them to the Indian Visa Centre in Hounslow in person on Wednesday.

I knew the application form was a little imperfect as we had no address in India to submit but I was sure that the explanation about sleeping on the vessel would be OK.

Albina and I turned up half an hour early. It was still bitterly cold and the car temperature showed -2C. The Visa Centre was in a huge seven storey office bloc called Vista Place, surrounding by a gigantic and expensive parking area. However, although the car park was indeed huge, it was still full. Cars were parked there in their hundreds, still covered with frost, suggesting they had been there at least overnight, if not longer. Some actually showed printed price offers, as if they were in a car showroom. It was obviously being used for all sort of purposes. By sheer luck we found a place to park and I checked out the layout before dragging Albina out of a warm car on a fool's errand. There was actually a cafe and some service shops on the ground floor, while the visa centre was on the first floor.  Initially, the building did not look to be too full of people but once I reached the main waiting room there must have been a hundred people there.

I brought Albina in, we had a coffee and then we took a lift and ascended. I took a coded number from the clerk at the entrance to the hall and we armed ourselves in the cloak of patient expectancy (a difficult piece of clothing for Albina to wear) and sat down. Actually, bearing in mind the numbers, the system was quite efficient. There were some seven windows open with visa officials and the numbers were called out fairly briskly, as well as being displayed on two large electronic monitors. After an hour, with Albina's patience just beginning to fray, we were summoned. The lady chcked both our applications and rejected them. Frankly, I immediately understood why. I had made a total hash of the applications which I had completed too hastily. She had been checking the application details against our passports. I had mistakenly shown Albina's birthplace as London, instead of Gdansk, and had put down the wrong date (by one day) for the expiry of her passport. I had also failed to show my second Christian name on my application and I described both of us as "UK Brtitish subjects" instead of using the words "United Kingdom". That last item surpised me as I had been following a scrolled down list of options and the clause "United Kingdom" was kept seperate from the other UK citizen options.  I had simply failed to spot it. But the other mistakes were mine. I had been too careless. It is not that I didn't know where Albina was born. It was just that the system had suggested "London" for some reason, perhaps because I had shown "London" correctly as my birthplace, and I had failed to spot it and put it right. We had to take back the forms and start again. 

Of course Albina was incandescent, having to get up so early on such a cold day, and she took it out on me by criticizing my driving all the way back home. I hastily left her there and travelled to Hammersmith Hospital by bus for my regular bimonthly infusion of Vedolizumab. That also will be a consideration for the future. As we will be away for nearly 3 months on our tour. I need to have the last infusion just before I leave, and the next one immediately after. Otherwise my Crohns Disease could get worse and I could see my holiday being spoilt by having to make sudden exits from whatever I was doing, wherever that may be.

That night I re-entered the corrected visa details, including the name of a contact company in India that Fred Olsen had just passed on to us by letter the previous day. Also, I managed to book a new date at the Visa Centre for January 5th. Fingers crossed this time. 

 

New job for Sandro in Finland

 It's a crisp cold misty Saturday morning as I walk along the canalside to the supermarket. Gulls were tiptoing along the thin icy surface of the canal, and a heron on sentinel duty at the dock gates waits patiently for its food. I get the morning papers, the milk, cakes and Ariel pods for the washing machine, knowing too that the cleaner who comes once a fortnight will call today.

When I get back I notice that Sandro had tried to ring me from Cambridge. I call back. Amazing news! Sandro had rung to say that in mid-January he is moving with Liisa to Finland. He has a new job there. I knew that this was his ambition, but I had never expected this to happen so soon. I am so happy I pushed him into getting a Polish passport which would enable him to pose as an EU citizen at airports, and in terms of work permits. For Albina and me that is a shock. When do we have our occasional chats? Will we able to stay in contact? But Sandro and Liisa had only one concern. Can we take all their plants? They can't take them to Finland.

We talked though our plans for Christmas again in light of the new circumstances, but we are still reeling with shock. Christmas may be the last opportunity to travel a longer distance in the car for me. Especially as we had planned to spend a few days with them visiting the Suffolk countryside, that Albina and I know so well from when we lived in Ipswich in the 1970s, and later, when I was the Euro Parliamentary canadidate for Suffolk and S.E. Cambridgeshire.

The fact is that driving with Albina as a passenger can be a little crazy. She used to be an aggressive driver in her younger days, quick to break speed limits, quick to react to mishaps on the road, and quick to criticize other road users with volatile epithets. She tolerated my presence in her car only as a navigator, as her sense of direction was hopeless. Now she has problems keeping her hands raised to the level needed to control a steering wheel, so she leaves driving to me. I am generally a quiet unadventurous driver. Like Kipling's Kim, I see myself as a "Friend of all the World", never in competition with other drivers, polite and unfussed. Except when Albina sits beside me, because she thinks she is still driving, screaming still at other road users, and when they are not available, screaming at me. "Why did you let him in?", "Use your horn", "Keep up to the driver in front", "Keep more to the left", "Don't be so slow", "Stop speeding", etc. Obviously I try and ignore this, but it is not easy, and she can upset my calm approach. I keep worrying that her aggressive back seat driving could cause me to make mistakes. But if I remonstrate she would get into a huff. Yesterday she got so angry with my responses to calm down, she said she would not travel with me to Cambridge at Christmas, as she was fed up with getting so irate with me. I ignore this as I know with time the mood passes.

Certainly, since today's announcement, she has not said anything about not going to Cambridge with me at Christmas.   

Christmas Party time

 I must admit I felt somewhat disappointed by the failure of The Tablet editor, Brendan Walsh, to confirm whether or not he would use my text on the plight of Polish organizations and schools in Belarus under Lukashenka's dictatorship. After all, he had asked me to shorten the text amd add some further details about the Catholic Church in Belarus, and this I did, After which, silence. For 2 weeks. So eventually I sent the text to Louis Houghton at Yorkshire Bylines and she published the text within 2 days. I was quite grateful and circulated it to friends as well as to the Editor of "znadniemna.pl" the illegal internet platform for the Polish organizations in Belarus. I hope it brings them some comfort. It is just possible that The Tablet did not want to upset the Catholic hierarchy. After all the Vatican is trying to stay neutral betweena vicious dictator and a persecuted opposition and does not want to see more Catholics persecuted. However, it is not a good look when the Vatican is the only European government (other than Russia and Serbia) which still recognizes Lukashenka as President of Belarus after his fraudulent election victory of 2020, as a result of which there are 1400 political prisoners in Belarus jails, while the indigenous Polish minority is being deprived of its organizations, schools and cultural centres and is threatened with russification.

At the same time I completed my text in Polish on the assassination of President Gabriel Narutowicz by a right wing fanatic in the Zacheta Gallery in Warsaw. It took place exactly 100 years ago on December 16th 1922. It was a day of shame for the new independent and democratic Poland. I have sent it to my usual outlets, namely Tydzien Polski (the London based Polish Weekly), the Sami Swoi-Goniec monthly magazine, and the Londynek and Cooltura websites. It remains relevant as the same mutual hatred and head-banging nationalistic nonsense still poisons the atmosphere in Polish politics today. Already there have been at least two Polish victims of political assassination in  Poland in the last 10 years, including the mayor of Gdansk. Perhaps, I could do an English version as well, but would my fellow Poles relish seeing an article about this shameful crime plastered all over the British media? Think not.

In the meantime, it is party time at the London Chamber of Commerce. I had just finished sending the text of my Narutowicz article to the Polish press, so I turned up rather late. By this time the staff who had already enjoyed some free drinks in the office lounge was moving to a pub near St Pauls Cathedral to have their Christmas dinner and to party. I joined just in time to join the great trek to the pub. Once we were there we sat at long tables in a private basement party room and  were faced with bottles of wine that needed emptying. Out table happened to contain all members of the export documentation staff and was also all male. I announced to the surrounding table, mostly filled with female staff, that we were the "gay table", which amused them considerably. Certainly, the reputation of the majority of us was quite the opposite. Offered further drinks, I opted for a series of neat double vodkas (I think 3 or four glasses, but who was counting?) all served free of charge. The problem with neat vodkas in a British pub is that they never keep vodkas in a freezer. They assume that watering down and besmirching this sacred drink with ice cubes is sufficient. They don't understand that as you take your shots you are going to choke on the ice, so you need to chuck them out. The vodka has to be kept in a freezer before it is served to enhance this smootheness. If it freezes solid in the freezer it is not proper vodka. However, if you drink it neat, with no flavouring, you will never get a hangover, not even if you alternate it with a beer, or a glass of wine. I said "or", of course. If you drink vodka and wine and beer, you've had it. Not only will you have a hangover. You will probably be sick as well.

However, having also enjoyes a pulled pork meal with scratchings and potatoes, I was in the mood to carve myself a place on the dancefloor, where a couple of young ladies had already started their antics. As the ends of the table was blocked with girls joining our "gay table" I had to make my escape by sinking to the floor and emerging at the other side, where a couple of young ladies, including our very attractive section manager, helped me to get upright. I improvised some original grand-daddy dance moves adapting each to the song being played and everyone seemed to be amused at this 76 year old performing like a party pro. Some laughed with me and perhaps some laughed at me, but who cares? It's a party. I don't party much, but if I do, then I make a proper job of it, aware perhaps that in a few years, I will not be able to do so. By 10.30, although the party was still in full swing, with the drinks flowing, the conversations getting louder, and the selfies and secret snogs enhancing the atmosphere, I had had enough . Unfortunately, as I gathered up my coat at the end of the table where I had left it, I was unable to locate by hat (felt with bordeaux colour) . I looked for it in vain and finally left without it into the cold night air, leaving emails to our HR staff to check next day with the pub to see if they had found it. I staggered merrily to the tube station at Blackfriars and happily got onto a Richmond train to get to Gunnersbury and then catch a bus. I dozed off, so in the end I woke up not at Gunnersbury, but at Kew Gardens. I got back following the subway and reached Gunnersbury at last, and then caught the bus, happy and half asleep, in the direction of Brentford. Luckily not at work tomorrow so I could sleep it off.

Except that at 7.45am I was rudely woken by my phone ringing. It was my Ashford office colleague. Apparently, he was too ill to come in. Could I just possibly help out and come into work that day? These kids. They just can't take their drinks. He had had wine and beer and also shots with flavoured spirits. When will these young people learn that grape and grain do not mix. So I dressed, put on my black Mafia gangster hat (very posh) to replace the missing red hat, and drove to enjoy an unexpected extra day at the office, despite the vodkas still not fully having worn off yet. Along with Christine, who normally fills in on the three days in the week when I am not scheduled to work, we piled through more than 150 documents, hard copy and online. I also made enquiries about the hat, and sure enough, yes, the pub had found it. I asked a London colleague to retrieve it. 

 

An aural revival

 Over the last years Albina's hearing has been deteriorating. TV had to be on quite loud, she had difficiculty hearing people on the phone, and anything I said to her I had to repeat twice, or even more. In fact, I realized that a lot of the time she would not even be aware that I was talking to her at all, especially if I was on her left side. I have a loud voice that carries. Many people, Albina included, have complained over how loud it is. Now it is the opposite. She often fails to hear her morning alarm call and I have to come running from the kitchen into the bedroom to switch it off. If she is in the sitting room she cannot hear the downstairs bell in our flat, so that many times couriers take back their parcels, even though Albina was in. She could not hear conversations in pubs, but then I partly had that problem too. To me her hearing was part of the reason why she retired more and more from life and kept to her bed.

Now I fear my hearing may going the same way though I still hear much beter than Albina. However, I was determined to ensure that Albina should have a more fulfilling life. That is why I pushed her to get some proper wigs to cover her thinning hair, and proper but discrete hearing aids to make her more aware of life around her. 

On Wednesday I took Albina to a hearing clinic in Kensington with the discrete name Hidden Hearing. They had advertised free hearing tests and for some reason Albina had chosen not to go to Specsavers for a hearing test, because it took too long to book an appointment. Hidden Hearing were ready to book her test quickly, so soon after her return from Poland. I thought we might compare the two services so I went ahead and booked a hearing test for myself  at Specsavers but let her try Hidden Hearing.

We arrived a little early expecting to see a queue. In fact we were alone. I stepped forward to the receptionist to give our name but she just smiled and said "Albina, right?" It looked like we were certainly expected. The aural specialist came out of his office early and called us in. First, he peered into her ears and recorded no infections or perforated eardrums. Neverhteless he booked some hospital tests for her to be arranged via her clinic. Then he asked her to press a button whenever she heard some low voiced sounds and finally had a fifteen minute session of recording her reaction to sounds which he generated while playing on the keyboard of his computer. Finally, he pointed out on a screen the difference between her two ears, including the fact that in her right ear, much of the sound was lost inside the actual ear tube, while on her left ear, where the loss of hearing was greater, much of it had gone, before it even entered her ear. He showed us a pair of almost invisible hearing aids, which changed Albina's hearing range dramatically. She put them on. Then when I spoke to her, she told me not to speak so loudly. A good sign.

So how much was this new hearing aid worth, including a lifetime service and regular half yearly free visits? A mere £5700. I swallowed hard. That consumed all the money I had personally saved up as my contribution to the world trip. However, I wanted to make sure she had the best possible use of her new hearing aids. So I said yes, without even consulting her. Nor did she try to stop me. Eventually I paid £5000 from my debit cared on the spot, and asked her to pay the difference. I left with mixed feelings. On the one hand, delighted that an additional barrier to her escape from the real world had been removed and that she could now participate in conversations and hear everything while watching TV, on the other, with no more money to spend on the long trip. All our expenditure would now have to be jointly agreed. I had lost a chance for arranging certain things on my own without asking her, like the £800 I was prepared to spend on using the vessel's wifi. I was going to need that to make sure I could continue this log every day, while on the boat. 

There was still other possible heavy expenditures facing us, like my own visit to the hearing centre in Specsavers, as well as the new pair of glasses I would need in January to ensure that my improved sight following my operation, could be further enhanced to see the far horizon when we were bestriding the globe in our joint adventure.

It was sure sign though how relying on the NHS was more and more fraught as the country's infrastructure is collapsing around our ears. On Monday, one of my colleagues came to work troubled with acute kidney pains. He rang his clinic and was told there was no chance of an appointment before next Monday and only then after he had made a booking at 8am on Monday. We suggested that he go to the drop in centre at Ashford Hospital nearby. I drove him there myself and left him. Two hours later he rang to say that a receptionist had finally told him he may have to wait a further 8 hours. However, as he was far from his flat in Hammersmith, she gave him a referral to Charing Cross Hospital. He went there and was finally seen and given some medicine aroung 8 in the evening. There are 7 and half million people on NHS waiting lists. I am on one for my nose bleeds when my next appontment is in June next year. The NHS is ailing and exhausted and so is nearly every service: railways, schools, clinics, care homes, water, energy. The strikes are continuing while all the governmemt can do is stand aside and bleat, telling nurses they are helping Putin. They forget that the best Tory present for Putin was Brexit, but they cherish the myth of natioanl regenration while we are unable to trade with our nearest partners in Europe. It all needs massive investment and reorganization and reorientation by the state in partnership with private companies. The current government cannot deliver it but for the next two years it can still prevent someone else delivering it. After that we get to the Age of Starmer. I hope it will last 10 years.  

Bus Numbers and Hairpieces

 Returning on Thursdsay evening from an extra day at work, I changed at Richmond from train to bus. As I waited I looked around marvelling at how bright the nightly scene appeared. I could make out a list of buses lining up on the opposite side of the road, and to my surprise I could read the number on each bus! Then I looked at each shop front and, again to my surprise, I could read the names for some ten shops going way back. I looked at the digital notice board under the bus shelter able to read details of the next three buses arriving quite clearly. I retreated step by step from the bus shelter, with my eyes pinned on the notice board, until the details had begun to blur. I stopped and took large steps back to the board. I counted seventeen large steps (yards?) in which the notice board was clearly legible. I imagined what it must have been like for the blind man to whom Jesus had just given his sight back  His surprise, his elation, his wish to explore what more what he could see. All of a sudden my mood lifted. My major sense of affliction and inadequacy over my loss of vison had been addressed. The Monday operation had finally bore fruit, possibly when my eyes were less tired and my brain had sorted out how it was going to interpret the signals hurled at it through my startled optical sense generators (i.e. my eyes).   

When I got home I could see that my vision was good enough for me to watch a TV screen without glasses from the back of the sitting room, just as I could before the op, but while wearing my glasses. My near view had deteriorated making it difficult for me to read a newspaper in bad light and being defeated while trying to read small print. So there was good and bad still. As for my current glasses, they were now useless. Could not see a thing through them. If I wanted to see better than what I could see now I would need a new pair of glasses. Unfortunately, I would not be able to apply for a new pair until my post-operation visit on January 4th authorized it. So no new glasses till the end of January. Just in time, I hope, before the Big Adventure.

To share my joy at my improved eyesight, I travelled with Albina to a hairpeice studio in Westbourne Grove. I was finally winning the battle in convincing Albina to get hereslf a proper wig, or two, with real hair, so as to increase her confidence, and override her physical self-hate over her appearance in public with her thinning hair. All the time I reminded her of the need for her to feel confident when and if we were to be invited to the captain's table during our voyage, and to attend social events like that with greater aplomb. Every time she would continue to be shy at a social encounter or a dinner invite, I could now say to her, "Just show them your new hair". Hopefully she may then overcome her reluctance. She chose first one wig, and then, on my insistence, an alternative second, each relatively short but distinctive. I happily payed for both, as well as for a dummy head and various other accessories, to carry and protect the wigs. We celebrated the purchase in a Chinese restaurant near Queensway station. She happily even posed for a picture, with her new baby bear from Poland.

Perhaps at last I will have a new woman in the house, and a new lady to take to social functions. And with my renewed eyesight, I can even drive her there again, including seeing Sandro at Christmas.

Plunged into darkness

As I removed my eye shield I tried to piece together the frontiers of my new vision. I was not immediately impressed by my surroundings, as I was familiar territory. I was at home. But I was in a hurry with little time to ponder. I had tried to recover from a restless night as I struggled to sleep with that heavy plastic eyepatch hanging on to my left eye like an uncomfortable and shapeless limpet. It was 7.30 in the morning and the day immediately after my operation, I was due at work that morning but I was not going to chance driving a car. So I opted to catch a train from Brentford to Ashford and to get to the station initially by a bus. I dressed and walked along the canal to Brentford High Street. As I stood and waited, my heart suddenly sank. I could not see the number of the first bus approaching the stop. Hastily I asked a startled schoolgirl what number was arriving. The 237. No good then. 

But I was more concerned by my relative blindness. I had been assured before the procedure that my left eye would continue being able to read without the need for glasses, while the view from my right eye would dramatically enhance my distance vision. A new pair of glasses might even not be necessary. This had fired my imagination, especially in view of the fact that I hated night driving. Now it should be less difficult for me and I could see more clearly without being blinded by oncoming headlights. That was the theory, anyway, In practice, the opposite was true. Both my near vision and my far one were actually worse than what I had before. Yet that was not everything. I tried on my old glasses, expecting them to be more of a challenge than before. In fact it was worse than that. If I wore myglasses, my vision would disappear in a kind of fog. With glasses my vision was limited to about 20 metres. It was worse than without glasses. It was a disaster.

This sense of disater was compounded by my journey. At Brentford station I would only read the destinatio of the next two trains when I stood immediately below the electronic notice board. This was dreadful. But what was even more dreadful was that a number of trains had been cancelled and neither of the next two trains travelled to Ashford. The only viable train went to Hounslow and looped round travelling back to central London by way of Whitton and Richmond. Why? All I could think of was to get as near to Ashford as possible. I caught the train to Hounslow, took a ten minute walk to busy Bell Corner in Hounslow shopping centre and caught the 117. Sure enough, after a long and winding journey through London's colourless south-western suburbs I was able to reach Ashford and my office. Half an hour late. I was never late before. My timekeeping was legendary as I always left myself a margin of half an hour, especially when I was driving my car. Left with only public transport, I could not be so reliable.  

Over the next 2 days my vision did not improve. I was sent an invitation to attend a post-operation meeting at Ealing Hospital, but not until January 4th. In 2023. That was a whole month after my procedure, and nearing a month and a half before my world cruise. I could not go to Specsavers to order new glasses until the hospital had given me clearance. So not only would I not have new glasses to travel to Cambridge at Christmas. It might be a struggle to get them even in time for my world cruise in February. And in the meantime I was as blind as a stranded bat, unable to drive, regardless of whether I wore glasses or not. Also while in the office my near vision had also deteriorated. Because of my artificial lens I could no longer screw up my eyes to read small print, which was quite a handicap in a job like mine where I had to inspect and approve documentation presented in varying print sizes. Also I could only read in good light

I wrote a protest email to the Moorfield Hospital in Ealing, but I doubt whether any one would take a blind bit of notice. They advertise no email address and give no names to their staff. Unlike any normal hospital or clinic. It had the anonymous security of a government department and with a good deal less  transparency. My self-confidence was completely sapped. As I travelled to work on the Thursday morning. The situation had not improved, either vison wise or transport wise. I had since discovered there were no direct trains from Brentford to Ashford for just that week of all weeks, because of structural damage at Barnes Bridge, further back on that same line. I could take a bus but was warned they were on strike. On the previous night I learned that the bus strike was off, so I planned a route by taking bus 267 to Twickenham station and from there to catch a direct train to Ashford. I waited at 7.30 for the 267. Two buses went past as I peered mole-like trying to make out the numbers on the bus. After 15 minutes, still no 267. This time I checked details on my phone. Yes, the bus stroke was off, but a few garages were still on strike, including the one that supplied the 267. So my waiting at this stop had been futile. I crossed the road to catch another bus, this time to Brentford station. There I caught the same train as on Tuesday but instead of disembarking at Hounslow I carried on by the loop that came back to central London, and got off at Whitton. At Whitton I managed to get a direct train to Ashford and still arrived there before 9, despite these many obstacles.

On the way I had to ask another bewildered schoolgirl to read a bus number for me. I reckon if this continues, I will probably get arrested for harrassing schoolgirls at bus stops. Yet I met a friend on the last bus journey who promised to check with another friend that worked at Ealing Hospital, to follow up my complaint to the hospital. She came back with an interesting new angle. Apparently, the normal practice is that following a cataract operation, the vision does not immediately respond until after about five days. Well, who knew. Was all my desperation and frustration of the last few days premature? 

Cataract operation number two

 At last. The day of my second cataract operation at Ealing Hospital. This time it's the left eye. The right eye was dealt with on March 23rd as a result of which I was able to read books and look at computer screens without the need of glasses. That was groundbreaking. This operation is supposed to improve my long distance vision. Currently it is so poor I cannot read the number on an approoaching bus when I stand at a bus stop and like an idiot I don't know if I am supposed to hail it or not. Hence my preference for bus stops with only one bus route, as I know what is coming. 

My appointment was for 12 noon. Then I got a call 3 days ago asking me to come at 7.45am. Finally yesterday another call. Can I come in at 1.30pm. Next thing is the logistical problem. I have to dilate the eye beforehand so I cannot drive to the hospital. I come in by bus. The problem is that I have to be collected after the op, but Albina is too weak to drive our car. Finally my old mate Stefan volunteers to help collect me and I suggest somewhere around 3pm. 

I forgot. This is the NHS. That is not how things work these days. These are not the balmy Blair-Brown years. The NHS is crippled by the Tories. Staff shortages, difficulties with moving patients into nursing homes, and so on. By 3 o'clock it becomes obvious that I won't be seen begore 6pm, provided the staff do not decide to give up and leave early. The two Polish assistants at the operation know me well and suggest I go downstairs to the cafe and have something to eat and drink. So I buy a magazine, have exhausted all the information I can find in today's Guardian. I read about the covid riots in China, the massive killings of women and child demonstators in Iran, the eastward tilt in the axis of political and strategic inluence in Europe from West to East, with everyone expecting Poland to play a pivotal role, once it has a sensible government. When I trot back upstairs there is still a queue of patients waiting and I realize it will be 7pm before I get treated.

Finally, I am invited in. The young lady surgeon, Miss Sarmina Khan, is impressive and funny, and says her Polish staff have told her all about me. We all agree that, despite the late hour and the fact that I am the tenth (and last) patient of the day, the vibes in the room are positive and the team get down to it. While I lay flat with a small neck rest, they drop gallons of some liquid into my eye which they forcibly keep open with metal clamps, then they inject me with a local anaesthetic and cover my face with something like a shroud, while they poke around in the eye through a slit in the shroud for about fifteen minutes. I am under their spell, not moving, but being very much alive. In that time they flush out the lens and replace it with an artificial plastic lens which is attached to the back wall of the original lens to keep it all in place. That new lens is shaped into giving me a much better long distance vision (my choice) to match the imroved short distance vision in my other eye. I could not see much of this, but at a certain moment I felt liquid pouring down the side of my face. I felt chatty and relaxed but decided not to say anything as I did not want them to lose concentration.

When it was all done I was helped up feeling somewhat unsteady and taken back to the waiting room for final instructions. I was wearing a very rough and ready eye patch stuck down with tape. I was told to keep it on all night and then remove it in the morning and start the post-operation treatment with regular eye drops for the next 2 weeks. We shall see how that works out, and finally we shall see whether I still need glasses at the end of the day. Will I be able to tell one bus route from another now? 

Farewell to Inglis Road

 

On our way back from Albina's chest X-ray at Hammersmith Hospital we decided to drive round to our old address at 48 Inglis Road, where we lived in our wonderful four bedroom house for 35 years, initially with my mother, and where our son was brought up. We had sold the property in 2018 for a £1.4 million to a family planning to rent it out. We later learned that the new owner had changed her mind and sold on the property to a developer, possibly the same developer whom we had refused earlier. In the meantime we had retrieved the housename "Casa Albina" and watched the property deteriorate and the beautiful garden we had kept going turned into a jungle. It was not our business any more, but we heard from the residents that they had fought like lions to prevent the erection of a three storey block of lates on the site. Unfortunately they lost.

This time we found that the worst had happened. There was no house. No sign even of our reinforced concrete floor erected on 32 metal pillars which had been installed when the house had been underpinned in 2009. All there was was a muddy field with the soil partly chrurned up, the surrounding brick wall and two gates still untouched, and the three magificent trees, a thuya, a yew and a horsechestnut, which had been protected by a tree preservation order  were still standing. We looked at the scene glumly and took some picture. This was where we had brought our five day old son after he was born at Q Charlotte Hospital, surrounded by jubilant family and friends: here was the site of his combined tiger walk, swing and slide apparatus, where he entertained his childhood friends; here I entertained my Council colleagues as we plotted changes in our committee structures; here our close friends Ewa and Jacek had their wedding reception; here I held my rowdy 40th, and 60th birthday parties running happy and half naked round the garden under the protection of our surrounding walls; here my mother had her bridge parties; here we had that fabulous Easter Monday water fight with some fifteen young people, while Albina was away in Poland; here we constructed our fabulous bedroom with the long mirrored cupboard through which there was a secret entrance to our en suite bathroom; here was where I consolidated my library with shelves weighed down by more than 4000 books. This was our world, Albina's, mine, my mother's, my son's, so popular with our admiring friends, especially my mother's Polish friends, who called it a typical country "dworek". We drove home in silence.

I sent pictures on What's App, including a short videod sweep of the site, to Sandro. He immediately replied not to send any more pictures. He wouldn't want to show it, but I think he was upset, very upset, more even than us. After all it was the site of his childhood, which had now been ripped from his existing reality, and to which he could not physically return. Ever.

While I heard nothing more from The Tablet, I translated my own article into Polish and forwarded it to the Polish Weekly, the official newspaper for the Polish community, but with a circulation of less than 1000, despite heavy subsidies from Poland and from Polish organizations in London. Normally I also circulate my articles to other Polish magazines and websites, so they are read quite widely.

The future of the Polish Weekly was under discussion at the zoom AGM of Polish Cultural Foundation on Saturday. Only 11 of us attended and there was nobody there below the age of 60. It's a dying publication but with a long history as part of an unbroken sequence of Polish printed publication in London since 1942 when the then Polish Daily was merged with the Soldiers Weekly, It switched from being a daily newspaer to a weekly one in 2015 after 75 years of publication,  but it was only a newspaper for the older generations who had survived the war but were now literally dying out. It was also the newspaper for established Polish organizations, but completely unknown to the average Polish resident in the UK.

In its dying days it is trying to survive as a website and has received considerable funds for that purpose, as well as a promise of a large subsidy from my old enemies at the Polish Combatants Association Trust Fund. They seemed rather shy of raising the issue at the AGM, so I chose to raise and asked when they would seek to present the case to the Polonia Aid Foundation Trust (PAFT), whose support would be vital, and where I myself could possibly use my influence to secure a larger grant. However, they said that currently they were not in a position to make a presentation, as the key person who would be operating the new website was on a maternity leave. Give it another year. After all, what is one year in a history that rolls on through the decades from 1942.   

Albina is back

 Albina is back from Poland, refreshed and happy. I met her off the plane in Terminal 5.She travelled club class, so she had already eaten and was well rested. I kept her up to date on a couple of things as we drove home and reminded her of her coming hospital appointments, as well as my cataract operation next Monday. As she had been with her cousin Hania, and her son Robert, she was exceptionally up to date on sport, full of admiration for the English and Saudi victories in Qatar and angry at the sluggush defensive display by Poland in the match against Mexico. Mind you, as soon as she had sorted out her correspondence over the last month and updated her medicine cabinet, she trotted off to bed reminding me to wake her at 8.30pm. Curiously, when she got up, she switched on the TV to watch the Belgium-Canada match. Albina watching football? You can see Hania's influence now. Wonder how long that will last.

In the meantime Brendan Walsh of The Tablet had shown some interest in my text on the plight of Poles in Belarus, and I shortened the text a little at his request and added some comments on the Vatican's embarassing silence on the crimes of Putin and Lukashenka. They still have this centuries' old dream in the Vatican of uniting the Churches, east and west. A pious lovely dream. But the East is now under the domination of the Russian Orthodox Church, and the Russian Orthodox Church is part of the state, regardless of whether the state is Ivan the Terrible, or Stalin, or Putin. Even in Communist days, when the Soviet Union was the supreme embodiment of state atheism, the miserable patriarch in Moscow pretended to be a religious leader, but was actually part of the state apparatus. Somehow, so many Popes in turn, John XXIII, Paul VI and now Francis, did not seem to understand this. In pursuit of this empty dream they dither, they confabulate, they make earnest statements in favour of peace and dialogue, but they treat the oppressor and the oppressor on a par, where the only possible method of dialogue is the cudgel in the hand of the oppressor over the head of the oppressed. 

Also, I have had a run of bad luck with my nosebleeds. I spent 15 minutes trying to stop the flow at the office yesterday. I rushed to the loo to contain it there, but it continued unabated for far too long. When it finally stopped the room looked like a scene from a gangland execution. Feeling fine this morning I thought I would pop in to the gym at the Brentford Fountain before collecting Albina from the airport. Bad decision. The nosebleeds returned as soon as I had finished 15 minutes on the rowing machine and was just mounting the leg press. It lasted for an even longer period than at the office yesterday, and it was all quite embarassing. Blood was everywhere and I tried to contain it with my vest. When I finally picked up Albina I mentioned it to her. She then berated me for going to the gym the day after the first serious nosebleed. That sounded quite logical. I'm a bit of a chump there.

The interrogation did not stop there. When can I get the clinic to do something about it? What could I say?I have an appointment to see the Ear, Nose and Throat specialist at West Middlesex. Great! When? On Thursday 15th June 2023. That's seven months from now. There's the NHS in action. Words fail us both.

To the Power Station

 

I woke half-heartedly this morning, feeling no particular urge to do anything exciting, like clean my teeth, or physically get up and make a cup of tea. I had just enough energy to switch on the button that brings out the television embedded at the foot of our bed and switch it on to watch the news and then Laura Kuenssberg's programme. Cop 27 in Egypt finished with many of Glasgow's promises on fossil fuel from last year left unconfirmed. The scientists say that the goal of a 1.5C maximum upgrade on the temperature in the XIXth century by 2050 is no longer achievable. We will lose many species for sure, more glaciers will melt in the Alps and the Himalayas, most of the coral reef will disappear, and the fires and floods will continue with biblical effects and increasing frequencies. We have just had our 8th billion baby and India has virtually caught up with China in population.The only good news on that front is that Lula has promised to prevent further damage to the rain forests in Brazil, Indonesia has planned to stop utilizing coal and the principle was established of a loss and damage fund for third world nations suffering from climatic disasters. Sadly, however, that fund does not possess a single dollar.

Then we have the Tories desolate because the latest budget will not save them from a calamitous election result and Labour also desolate because the latest budget will give them a bitter victory in two years time in which they will inherit all the tax increases, energy overreach and government cuts that the Tories have postponed. In the meantime we have plunged into recession without an anaesthetic. Thank you, Brexit, Covid, Putin and Truss. Kuenssberg tried to cheer us up with the latest Artemis launch but the thought of humans settling on the Moon by 2030 was not really relevant to our current concerns.    

To cheer myself up I decided to view the new retail development at the Battersea Power Station. This gigantic construction, with its two massive turbine rooms and four magnificent concrete chimneys, remains impressive, just as it did in 1929 when it was opened as a single coal-fired power station. The second turbine hall was added in the 1940s to meet with the energy capacity required for London. It was a magnificent piece of industrial architecture designed by Giles Gilbert Scott. I remember in the early 1970s, during the three day week under Edward Heath, standing on Chelsea Bridge at midnight, eating a hot snack from the all night hot dog stall and watching the collier barges surreptitiously and silently sailing into the Battersea Power Station jetty. 

Now the building remains colossal and there are lift excursions inside one of the 103 metre chimneys, three storeys of shops and bars and a cinema under the roof. The place is teeming with life. On the north side there is an ice rink and a fun fair reaching to the riverside. Yes, the place has life, but it has no real soul. The building, tamed and gutted for so many years, does not inspire and energize within its lifeless walls. 

However, adjoining the south side are some fanciful residential blocks, which look like a badly designed lego construction in white bricks with windowed balconies popping out of the building. Certainly eye catching, and actually a very clever layout of what I am sure are roomy and comfortable interiors. 

On the way I had picked up a fresh copy of my dear friend's book, in which my sensuous and lovely Grazyna Maxwell has written about her brother after he got selected for a wrinklies reality show called the "Love Spa". It was an original idea to have people in their sixties and seventies meet and undergo all the toing and froing of a Big Brother experience but with the ambition of showing that these old folk still having a goal in life, and can still find adventure and romance. I have seen pictures in the book of them dancing, dressing up for an XVIIIth century ball and zooming along a high wire, and I have started to read this. I promised to give Grazyna my estimation of the book, and so far it looks promising. I wonder whether it will be a bitchfest, as well as a love in, and whether her brother, who is a widower, actually finds romance.   On my way home I dropped in on a retro concert with pre-war Polish and English songs, where a lot of guests turned up in flapper gear. The atmosphere in the POSK basement, the so call Jazz Club, was electric, as the singers crooned to our delight along with some quite suggestive songs, such as "I'm too frightened to sleep alone", which had been a hit in the Polish 1930s cabaret scene. There were some wonderful gifts auctiond off and I got myself a beautiful Japanese doll in a deep red kimono. I paid only £100 and I felt guilty as I think the organizers had hoped to auction it at a higher price. Should I offer them more money? I will ask Albina when she arrives. 

Visit by our MP

 On Friday I had arranged for our Hammersmith MP, Andy Slaughter, to visit POSK and meet the new re-elected Chairman, Marek Laskiewicz. Also the two local Ravenscourt Ward Councillors, Liz Collins and Patrick Walsh, were also invited. This was an easy task for me as Andy and I have cooperated in the past and I have invited him to meet a number of organizations here, and we have shared political platforms. Also they are all fellow Labourites and as a past Labour Councillor and parliametary candidate (twice), we were all on the same wavelength, at least politically.

The meeting in the POSK gallery went very well. Marek and the new Secretary, Monika, guided the three of them on a tour of POSK, showing them the new Atrium, some of the larger halls, the theatre, the library, the bookshop, and finally the restaurant, where we stopped for a coffee. Marek seemed very pleased with the meeting and he got the councillors to agree to include POSK events in the Hammersmith Council calendar. Liz Collins and I stayed to have dinner at the restaurant and we chatted anout "cabbages and kings", notably, our families, the budget, the war in Ukraine, the plight of Poles in Belarus and the attraction of Polish cheesecake. We also talked of the possibility of POSK provided her and Patrick with space for a monthly surgery. From my own experience as a councillor, I remember that  surgeries are mostly held in lonely places, like school buildings late at night, and particularly for women councillors, there is the question of security. In POSK, with as permanent daytime and evening reception staff, they would undoubtedly be safe. I mentioned it to Marek after she left and he thought it an excellent idea for improving council-POSK relations and providing a little extra income.

Cruise - We miss Shanghai

 Have just had a troubling letter from Fred. Olsen Cruise Lines.

Because of very complicated Covid-19 protocols for tourists in China it would not be practical to pull in at Shanghai. This is quite frustrating because I had spent considerable time preparing my own and Albina's visa aplications for that one day in China. It goes into 8 pages and included details of our parents, what other visas would be on our passports, details of what charities we belong to (they do not like NGOs in China) and even details of my Polish passport, despite the fact that I would be using my UK passport for the trip.

It also means that we will be by-passing China, which I had really hoped to include in the list of the 40 or so countries I have visited so far. Instead we would spend an extra day in Singapore. I wonder if that means that we will no longer be passing through Taiwan Straits and missing sighting all those Chinese and U.S. warships in confrontation? That would have been interesting. 

Fred. Olsen also said that our India trip would be under threat. This is because there is no online e-visa application system for visas for UK citizens. That would have been really bad as Albina and I would be missing out on Mumbai, Agra and Kerala. If that happens they would compensate us with Phuket in Thailand and Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, both of which we have already visited. They were holding out the hope that because of the latest trade talks more skilled Indian citizens would be allowed to come to the UK legally. In thast event the e-visa facility would be restored for Brits.

As it is, I was prepared for this as I have completed our Indian visa applications online and have booked a visit at the Indian visa clearance centre in Hounslow for next Wednesday. I do not understand why others could not do the same. If Mumbai and Agra do get dropped I will claim for compensation.  

Polish Minority in Belarus under threat of Russification

 On Wednesday I met a lady from Grodno (Hrodno in Belarusian) who runs a theatrical group, which now can no longer perform publicly because of Lukaszenka's ban on public use of the Polish language. Now members of her troupe, which includes an orchestra, will only be able to rehearse privately or online.

We talked about the possibility of funding a handful of them to come to London and to perform in POSK for a week or so.

In the meantime I had prepared a report on the situation in Belarus and am looking for a newspaper or magazine that would be interested in publishing it. Hope I find something in the next week. 

Here is the text.

 Polish Minority in Belarus under threat of Russification

With the turmoil and destruction in next door Ukraine hogging the media headlines, we are paying less attention than before to the internal repression now proceeding unchecked in Belarus. There are currently some 1,400 political prisoners in Belarus, many of whom are being beaten during interrogation and kept in unhealthy overcrowded prisons. Some of the prisoners have been dying in unexplained but sinister circumstances. Other members of the opposition, like former presidential candidate, Svietlana Cichanouska, languish abroad. The Belarusian dictator, Aleksandr Lukashenka, has been consolidating his power base following his fraudulent election victory in 2020, and is now assisting Vladimir Putin in seeking to extend the theatre of war to the northern borders of Ukraine and to other neighbouring countries, like Poland.

Lukashenka no longer takes account of the reaction of his western neighbours and is now turning against the national minorities that identify with those countries. In particular, he is persecuting the sizeable Polish minority, which had been settled in the western border territories of Belarus, especially in the Hrodno province, since the fifteenth century. Official questionable Belarusian statistics from the 2009 census indicate the Polish population of Belarus at 295,000. However, 413,000 Poles were recorded under a previous poll held in 1989 by the Soviet authorities and according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Poland, the number is as high as 1,100,000. It forms the second largest ethnic minority in the country after the Russians, at around 3.1% of the total population. Furthermore, Polish authorities had received more than 162,000 applications for Polish identity cards from Belarusian citizens with Polish roots.

Since 1937 Belarus underwent intense Russification under Soviet rule, which led to the suppression of all non-Russian languages in this territory, including even Belarusian. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990 led to the re-emergence of a Polish self-identity and the opportunity to speak Polish and to let Polish culture flower. Following the Polish-Belarusian treaty, signed in 1992, several independent Polish cultural and social organizations emerged, including the Union of Poles in Belarus (ZPB) with 20,000 members, the Polish Education Society (PMS), the Polish Institute in Minsk, the Mickiewicz Museum in Novogrudok, and Polish cultural centres in Lida, Mohilev and other towns in Belarus. There were more than 200 Roman Catholic parishes in Belarus, often run by Polish speaking priests. Four Polish day schools were set up with funds raised in Poland, including the largest in Hrodno, with 620 pupils, offering them the chance to study afterwards in a Polish university with a Polish scholarship. 

A rich Polish culture extends back in history to when the whole of Belarus was part of the amorphous multi-ethnic and religiously tolerant Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and when Polish was the language of the social elites. For example, a native of Belarus was the leading XIXth century romantic poet, Adam Mickiewicz, who is honoured today as the national poet of Poland, Belarus and Lithuania, even though he wrote only in Polish. This historic tradition, as well as the Polish minority’s distinctly Roman Catholic faith, had always been resented by the Russian-speaking authorities in Belarus, and that includes Lukashenka himself.  

Lukaszenka had earlier tried to divide the Polish community by interfering in the internal elections of the Union of Poles, and confiscating the Union’s property when the “wrong“ Chairman was elected. Nevertheless, the unofficial Union had continued to function under the leadership of a teacher, Andzelika Borys, and had identified itself with the mass democratic movement which challenged the fraudulent presidential election results of 2020.

In March last year following the popular annual celebrations on the feast of St Casimir, a Polish saint, five ZPB local leaders were arrested on trumped charges of organizing illegal gatherings and were even threatened with charges of treason. Three of them were expelled permanently with their families to Poland, but Andzelika Borys, and ZPB vice-chairman, the journalist Andrzej Poczobut, remained in prison. They were charged under article 130 para 3 of the Criminal Code of the Belarusian Republic “for inciting national and religious hatred and furthering discord on the basis of national, religious and linguistic identity, as well as the rehabilitation of Nazism carried out by a group of people”. Andzelika Borys was released from prison in March this year because of her poor health and is currently awaiting trial under house arrest. Her colleague, Andrzej Poczobut, who is also correspondent for the Polish liberal newspaper “Gazeta Wyborcza”, has been languishing in prison for more than 600 days, awaiting trial. According to Philipp Fritz of “Die Welt” he could be facing a ten or twelve year sentence, or perhaps even the death penalty. Apart from accusations of “rehabilitating Nazism”, he is supposed to be guilty of calling for sanctions, “whose aim would be to undermine national security”. He is listed on the Belarus national register of “terrorists”.

After abolishing the Union of Poles, the regime has turned to eradicating the Polish language in schools. Lukashenka is subverting the Belarusian constitution which allows national minorities to run schools teaching in minority languages. Since September, despite massive protests by parents, all four Polish day schools, in Hrodno, Volkovysk, Mohilev and Brest, have been transformed into Russian speaking schools, following a new Education Code, introduced last year, which prevents the establishment of education centres in Belarus which would teach in minority languages. The headmistress of the school in Brest, Anna Paniszewa, was also arrested in March last year for organizing a meeting with her pupils about wartime ani-Nazi and anti-Soviet partisans. Under the new Code, Polish literature can be taught in the Polish language, but for just one hour in the week, and subject to the permission of the local authority. There would be no more state examinations in the Polish language. In September the Supreme Court decreed the winding up of the Polish Education Society, and confiscated their expensive headquarters in Hrodno. At the same time, the local Polish Cultural Centres in Belarus had been closed down, one by one, and their property, which had been funded by cultural organizations in Poland, was confiscated.

He is also trying to eradicate traces of Poland’s past. The local authorities in Lida are planning to churn up the local Catholic cemetery, first opened in 1797. It includes many historic Polish funerary monuments and the graves of Polish airmen and soldiers killed in the Polish-Soviet war of 1920 and in the wartime resistance movement. In August local authorities destroyed a cemetery with Polish Home Army soldiers at Surkonty, including the grave of legendary one-armed commander, Colonel Maciej Kalenkiewicz. Destruction has taken place in at least ten cemeteries with Polish memorials and gravestones this year. Pavel Latushka, former Belarusian Ambassador to Poland, has blamed a desire for vengeance against Poland as being responsible earlier this year for the destruction of the graves of the Polish Home Army soldiers, citing the example of the cemetery in Mikuliski. 

Polish Catholic churches still remain, as well as the Seminary in Hrodno, but most priests with Polish citizenship have had to leave, and fear of prosecution prevents any independent Polish cultural activities in churches. In September, after a minor fire in a backroom, the iconic XIXth century Catholic “Red Church” in the centre of Minsk (it was called “red” because of its distinctive red brickwork) was closed for an indefinite period. The priests and parishioners were told to clear out all their property by the middle of October, despite an appeal by the Catholic Church hierarchy. The church was used once as a sanctuary for street demonstrators in 2020, and the police had had no hesitation in marching in and carting them off to prison. At one stage the former head of the Catholic Church in Belarus, Archbishop Kondrusiewicz, a Belarusian citizen, had been barred from returning to Belarus from Poland, after he had prayed for political prisoners in Belarus outside the walls of a prison.

During a meeting in London this week with a Polish theatrical producer in Belarus, I was told that Polish cultural activities, like dances and plays, could only take place in private accommodation, and even then, there was the constant fear of being denounced by unsympathetic neighbours.

“Belarus is under Russian occupation, and the authorities in Minsk are fulfilling the ideology of the Kremlin,” says Andrzej Pisalnik, editor of the popular Polish website “znadniemna.pl” and ZPB activist. He had been arrested for subversive activity, along with his wife, and they were facing a heavy prison sentence. They agreed to being forcibly repatriated to Poland after their 10-year-old son was threatened with being sent to a children’s home “For more than a month,” says Pisalnik, “they claim to be “denazifying” Ukraine, and now they want the total elimination of all Polish life in the occupied territory of Belarus”.

The exiled leader of the democratic movement in Belarus, Svietlana Cichanouska, has stated, while in Poland, that the closure of Polish schools in Hrodno province is an act of revenge for the support that Poland has given to the Belarusian opposition, and now against the war in Ukraine. There have been international protests in Poland and Lithuania, but Western countries have shown little interest at this relentless persecution of a national minority, which is overshadowed by the current war in Ukraine.

Not only Polish culture is under threat from Russification. Belarusian democratic leader Aleksandar Milinkievich believes that “Belarus is undergoing the Soviet policy of destroying national identity and ending the teaching in languages other than Russian.” For similar restrictions have led to the closure of two Lithuanian language schools and two Ukrainian ones. Even the Belarusian language is under threat as it may be relegated solely now to the teaching of Belarusian history. Belarusian and Russian are both considered official languages of Belarus, but only 23% of the 9.67m population speaks the former, whereas more than 70.2% per cent speaks the latter. No more than 10% of Belarusians say they communicate in Belarusian in their day-to-day lives, mostly in the country villages. In the academic year 2016-2017 near 128,000 students were taught in Belarusian language (13.3% of total), but many of the village schools are now closing. This year, a number of Belarusian language printing presses and bookshops have been closed down and their owners arrested. 

This official Belarusian/Russian policy of Russification has even wider implications. It is reflected in the attempt by Russia to eliminate all aspects of distinctive Ukrainian culture in Ukraine, as well as its political independence. Ultimately the Russian government would wish to extend this policy of Russification to all its more vulnerable neighbours in Europe and Asia.

Wiktor Moszczynski