Just 15 days to embarkation. The shadow of the Borealis is looming over our lives with increased intensity and overt anxiety.
I have at least shaken off one more task in order to clear my in tray. After consulting with Krystyna Dereszewska, who had largely rewritten the text I prepared, I have now finally sent off the full 2 page history of how the Friends of Polish Veterans Association was founded. It's a sorry and complicated tale of how the still active democratic local Polish veterans' organizations in various parts of the UK were betrayed by their organization, SPK WB. They were then forced to surrender their club houses and standards to the main organization, which subsequently transformed intself from a mass organization of several thousand remaining members into a Trust Fund with just 12 self-appointed trustees. Fifteen of these local organizations organized a meeting and a petition intending to vote out their organization's executive and when they were sidelined, they set up their own organization.They chose me as their chairman. Ten years later, the local branches are still flourishing as the SPPW or the Friends of Polish Veterans' Association, but last year I finally retired as Chairman and a bright young teacher Alicja Lapicka is now the elected new Chair. She is busy modernizing the organization in a way I could not do, and is now setting up a new website. My text is for that new website. In December she asked me to write this article. Now I have done it. Another job done. Still clearing the decks.
Now I am trying to think through with Albina how we deal with key tasks that need a solution before we go. First there are our utility bills. The ground rent and the service charges have been paid up to June. However, we will have to face a new increased Council Tax (thank you, Johnson and Truss, for the increase), to be paid in mid March. I can't pay it in advance because we don't yet know the amount, I can't just send a cheque because they do not recognize cheques and their bank details are withheld. My energy account is paid monthly. I guess I shall just pay twice whatever I am billed in the next payment and that should cover that. My water bill is payable at the end of March. I still have to pay that somehow. My telephone and broadband bill is due in early March. There will also be a payment in the early spring for my heat and hot water usage, separate from my electricity bill. Non payment of these will have serious consequences, with fines and suspension of services, but if I am at a far distant corner of the world then how can I pay them? Especially as these bills come in the post, so I will not even see them. Will I have to set up direct debits? I have always avoided them until now, so that I am always in charge of my finances, paying when I can and when I wish.
Then what do we do about our post? Most of the post we get is unnecessary. Large chunks of it are advertising junk for mail order and travel companies. Within 2 or 3 days, it blocks up our post receptacle in the lobby of our building. There is nothng more dispiriting than to see envelopes. big and small, crammed into a blocked locker marked with our flat number. It is also a sign to anyone visiting our building, that we are away for an extended period. So, do we provide a box for out post in the lobby, which perhaps our lovely Ukrainian cleaner can come in an empty every 2 weeks or so? Or do we consult our estate manager and ask for him to organize something? Or do we ask one of our equally lovely neighbours on our floor to collect our post, junk and all, each day and take it into our flat?
In the meantime, I went for my last infusion of Vedolizumab at Hammersmith Hospital before our tour. I travelled by bus which gave me time to check on the press. We have the horrors of near 10,000 dead in earthquake hit Turkey and Syria, mounting on top of the horrors and destruction visited on Northern Syria by Assad and Putin. But also we still have Ukraine facing a Russian onslaught before the end of January, just a year after the invasion, and being bombarded with Russian rockets, Iranian drones and Western pledges of new modern tanks. The German government has pledged 172 tanks, the bulk of them next year. Next year! By then the war could be over, Putin may be out, or Ukraine could be, heaven forfend, surrendering. At least the Poles are offering Polish Twardy tanks now, and offering Leopards by April. Have written abother letter to the editor o "i" complaining about German tardiness, but probably to no avail. There is so much to write about on another topics, like the fraudulent Iranian amnesty or the collapse of Peru's democratic norms, as the city faces the Indian outbacks in open physical confrontation.
This infusion is a key part of my treatment for crohn's disease, that sly misery-inducing ailment which makes me a potential victim of unpleasant accidents, especially if I am on some long journey away from a bathroom. For the last thirty years I have been living discretely with this constant fear of unexpected urgency and it has certainly cramped my social life and work in the community. I remember some years ago when I was in the European Parliament in Brussels lobbying various MEPs over EU citizens rights' after Brexit, having to plan at least five visits a day, persuading, cajoling, speaking at EU Parliamentary committee meetings, and making sure I had my comfort brakes marked out in time and in place around the Berlaymont building. With every visit to POSK, to the House of Commons, to work, or travelling by car or tube, I have to plan more than just my departure and arrival dates. I need to know which tube stations can accomodate, and which I need to get through promptly. If you're in my shoes, important note: make use of underground stations attached to main line stations. However I have had my Waterloos as well, and in awkward places too, such as in the middle of Alexanderplatz in Berlin, or walking in the shopping street of Tunbridge Wells. The disease is incurable, but theoretically manageable, while a delightful intrusive colonoscopy every two years ensures a cancer check as well as a continuing measure of the inflammation. And the other good feature is that my disease gives me no pain; others are not so lucky.
In any case I have an infusion every 6 weeks. However, because of our tour, it will be 15 weeks until my next infusion. I have no means of organizaing an infusion anywhere en route. That is a big big risk, and my colonic inflamation could get worse in that period, even though I will be taking other measures, with tablets such as Loperamide and Pentasa. But then everything at my time of life is a risk. What do I do? Curl up somewhere and sulk? No, I go travel into the wide wide world, with my wife who has a lot more to complain about healthwise than me.
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