A cultural send off

            Writers: WM, Grazyna Wasiak-Taylor, Janusz Guttner, Iwona Woropaj

 I kept my promise by attending the dinner and prize presentation event at the posh Polish Hearth Club in Kensington. I was supposed to turn up at 2pm for the dinner but the Piccadilly Line was cancelled just as I got to Northfields Station. Chaos as Heathrow crowds milled in bewilderment around the station in a strange part of London they did not know. They were told to get to Ealing Broadway by the E2. Curiously the next E2 which showed up was only displaying West Ealing as the destination. I knew for a fact that it had transformed itself from a Greenford bus (travelling via Ealing Broadway) only minutes before, according to the digital notice board. The crowd let it pass, still bewildered and somewhat angry, encumbered as the frustrated travellers were with suitcases and baby buggies. However, on a hunch I got on the bus, knowing I could change buses at West Ealing to get to Ealing Broadway. Yet two bus stops later, and lo and behold! the bus termination changed back to Greenford again. That is unaccountable sadism by the bus company (or just the driver?) towards all those frustrated arrivals from abroad. Great PR for London.

So thanks to Transport for London, I arrived more than an hour late for that dinner, but the literary event was a great success for Regina Wasiak-Taylor and the Union of Writers. The two prize recipients were a London writer, Wioletta Grzegorzewska and a historian, Neal Pease, from Chicago.  Pease was the author of two books on Poland's interwar history. One was on the Catholic Church in prewar Poland, where he argued that the Polish government and church hierarchy in Poland were in conflict with the Vatican about Rome's ambition to convert Russia to Catholicism, but within the Eastern rite. Poland saw these plans as vacuous, ill informed and dangerous to Poland's security. His other book was on Polish-U.S. relations in the 1920s, up until 1933, where the U.S. was hoping that Poland and other impoverished European countries could stabilize sufficiently to benefit from American investment and trade. This policy was cut short after Hitler's rise to power and Poland's continued flirting with Hitler, so that there was no proper Polish-U.S. cooperation at the time the Second World War broke out. 

My role was to read aloud a fragment of Neal Pease's preface to the book on Polish-U.S. relations. After I had read my piece Regina unexpectedly announced to the audience that I was going on my Round the World Tour to everyone's surprise and seeming admiration. At the social that followed many of the ladies, mostly writers, actresses or rich widows from the Polish literary elites in London, congratulated me and I had to explain the route and circumstances to each in turn. It was enjoyable. Poles are very tactile, Polish ladies are particularly tactile and Polish literary and artistic ladies are overwhelmingly tactile, especially at a cheese and wine event like this. So I was able to emerge from some very emotional send offs consisting of warm hugs and kisses, and occasionally having my bum discretely pinched. 

Albina was in a grumpy mood when I got back, and had not started packing her own cases yet. Hopefully things will improve tomorrow, but I am going to be at work for the next two days, and she may be left to brood on her own at home. Not a good sign.