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.
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