Someone to watch over me. And it's not the Border Agency.

My childhood was split up between 2 completely different environments. One was Krakow, a fairly big city in which you could to some extent revel in anonymity. Until, obviously, you found yourself in a situation when knowing someone was quite handy, like applying for a job or needing urgent treatment.
The other was my dad's home village, a small place where everyone knew everything about everyone else to the point that you had to fake ignorance just to have a conversation. "Is this Antek's daughter?" my aunt's distant neighbour would ask pointing at me and referring to my uncle and my 10 years senior cousin. "No, Ginek's" my aunt would reply, and that would give her and the said neighbour an opportunity to run through my family tree and current geographical locations of my various family members. Again.

How am I? Please, don't encourage me

The most frustrating, intimidating, panic and anger generating side effect of transplanting your life from one country to another is not reading about your nation in The Daily Mail.
It is not even reading about your nation in The Mail Online's comments section.
It is in fact a sudden lack of ability to read between the lines. Which is a bit of a problem when you decide to live in a country in which "That's interesting" means "You're insane".

Polish mathematicians and film credits

I was one of the last, for the lack of better word generations to remember PRL and to sense the influence of the communism on everyday life. We could travel more or less freely to the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Yogoslavia and other countries. Lots of countries which don't exist anymore. Come to think of it I do hope it's just a coincidence, what with Scotland planning to gain independence.

How to Przemek. On Polish names.

I remember once watching a stand up comedian who said that when he was a child he was desperate to read but they were so poor that the only book in the house was a phone book. He was not impressed: there were too many characters, the plot was difficult to follow and at the end lots of Polish people turned up.
I think it took me about 5 minutes to get the joke.

Longing and belonging

So what are the quick fixes if someone misses Poland?
Well, obviously they can go to Little Poland i.e. Polish shop and buy anything from herring in cream to Kasztanki.
They can hang out with other Poles and slag off English sausages*, which are, I admit, a very easy target, and not only because they don't go well with strong spirits.
They can, if they live in Northamptonshire, go to Towcester and drive through Marlow Road a couple of times. It definitely makes me feel like I'm on my way from Krakow to Katowice. It also helps to keep my Polish fresh, although not of the most presentable sort.

Perhaps I don't exist

It's been an eventful fortnight in the British press for all the Poles living in the UK. Polish is the second most popular language in England and Wales! And Ponglish is oh so funny.
So you would have thought it would be about the languages. But no, typically it was about (in the alphabetical order)

• a) antisemitism
• b) bloody immigrants who eat their sausages hence clearly do not integrate.