My husband is taking Amelia and Alexia to their first real concert next week. Alexia has been talking of little else for the last couple of months. As expected, today over breakfast, the topic popped up again.
– The only thing Amelia and I need to decide now is what to wear. Aaaargh, this is so stressful!
– Can we please not worry about it until a couple of days before the concert? I bet daddy is not stressing over what he is going to wear.
– No, he doesn’t, but he doesn’t need to, I already chose what he is going to wear.

***

The school emailed us at 1.23 today to inform us about early school closure at 1.45. I struggled to see the point of giving us 22 minutes warning, but then again, perhaps this is useful information for stay at home parents having an affair with a milkman or a postman. Except I haven’t seen any of these people in our street since first snowflake. Anyway.

***

My husband is taking Amelia and Alexia to their first real concert next week. Alexia has been talking of little else for the last couple of months. As expected, today over breakfast, the topic popped up again.
– The only thing Amelia and I need to decide now is what to wear. Aaaargh, this is so stressful!
– Can we please not worry about it until a couple of days before the concert? I bet daddy is not stressing over what he is going to wear.
– No, he doesn’t, but he doesn’t need to, I already chose what he is going to wear.

On my travels criss-crossing this Small Island of ours, I regularly come across imprints left here by countless men and women from my Old Country, and I am always surprised how many of these stamps of time past are out there, scattered in most unlikely of places. Last weekend, whilst picking up a map of Audley End House and Gardens, I noticed a ‘Polish War Memorial’ listed at number 7 on the map of attractions. For reasons best left unexplored and allowing a sleeping dog lie, I do not feel particularly patriotic towards my country of origin, but a mention of Polish memorabilia still stirs my interest, so I set off to find the said monument in the grounds of the stately home.

The war memorial turned out to be a distinctly modest size stone vase with fading lettering, the engraving clearly losing out to a lichen invasion. The sight filled me with sadness which was totally disproportionate, I am sure, to the significance of the memorial, the passage of time since the events it commemorates, and especially to my own, mostly dispassionate attitude towards Polish WWII war effort. Am I getting soft in my old age? Please judge for yourselves.

The inscription reads:

Between 1942 and 1944 Polish members of the Special Operations Executive trained in this house for missions in their homeland. This memorial commemorates the achievements of those who parachuted into enemy occupied Poland and gave their lives for the freedom of this and their own country.

P.S. Since I wrote the above, more to myself than for any other reason, I was educated by my much more clued-up friend, that Audley End was a training ground for the Polish Special Operations group, called Cichociemni, which is a beautiful word, officially translated as Silent Unseen. What is lost in this translation is the sense of their elusive nocturnal presence, as well as the onomatopeic effect of the original. Hush and Shadowy is my personal choice of words for them.

Watching a group of teenage girls from a famously strict single sex Catholic school in a moderately leafy London suburb take on Sister Act as their annual School Production last night was fantastically reassuring. The world is a happy place, anything is possible and life is beautiful. The way these girls tackled Catholic clichés and male peacocking with age-defying expertise and joyous flair was light years away from their usual conservatively uniformed image. Every look, every mannerism was a pleasure to behold, but at the same time left nobody in any doubt that this level of effortless elegance must have taken a lot of effort indeed. Every Monday and Tuesday night for the last four months amount of effort to be precise.
Several girls depicting main characters came across as truly outstanding actors, more than capable of giving West End performers run for their money. My personal favourites, plural, as it is impossible to single out just one person, were, in no particular order;

Mary Robert, the postulant nun, for  her blasting rendition of The Life I Never  Lived, which sent shivers down my spine and left my husband a blubbering mess;

Deloris for her incredibly mature acting skills which allowed her to convey the singer’s vulnerability in a gentle and tender way;

Joe, TJ and the Spanish Guy trio for priceless comical touch and an insightful mockery of a pathetic male bravado;

Mother Superior for making the character her own, solemn, dignified and deeply human. Who’s Maggie Smith again?

Curtis, Deloris’s gangster boyfriend, for making the whole audience do a double take and think, ‘I thought it was a girls only production?’ Personally, I am still inclined to believe that he was a he from a neighbouring boys’ school, and not a she, despite my daughter’s assuring me of the latter. His swagger, his gangster drawl, his ill-fitting suit were just so convincingly male!

Sweaty Eddie, for his show-stealing solo piece, by far most amazing piece of showmanship I have ever seen a schoolgirl attempt before.

Mary Patrick, for perfect nervous giggle sounding exactly like the film version. Uncanny.
Mary Lazarus, for the rap to end all nun raps.

The second nun in the third row up on the right hand side of the stage for being the best, most convincing, most beautiful member of any nun chorus ever. Yes, she is my daughter, how did you guess?

The only regret, and it is a big one, is that the show carrying this amount of exhilarating joy and vibrant energy should be confined to such strict time and space-constrained life span. Three nights in the school hall is a good warm-up, but this production begs to be shown to larger audiences, so it can be celebrated on the scale it deserves. It would be worth calling Royal Drury Lane for any last minute stage availability. These girls are West End ready.

My husband and I are not speaking. Or at least, I am not speaking to him, and he keeps quiet just in case. This morning all was good, we were laughing and joking, lazy Saturday, no plans, no need to rush anywhere, beautiful. As I was getting dressed, I thought I would run a routine check to find out whether my husband was still a big soft romantic that he had always been no matter how hard he’d tried to deny it.
I just finished reading a short story in which a man was so smitten, he went on to marry a woman who stole money from him after their one night of passion. This provided a perfect benchmark to assess where my husband stood on the love conquers all issue.

– So, if you met me at a bar of a hotel you were staying at for business, and you saw me there, all done up and beautiful and you would be instantly attracted to me…

– You are beautiful and I am attracted to you, my love, my husband interjected nervously, feeling massively out of his depth already.

– Please don’t interrupt pumpkin, so, you have a few drinks with me and you really like me and at the end of the evening you ask me to go to your room with you and to your surprise I agree. We spend an amazing night together, and you have the best sex of your life, twice, and then when you wake up in the morning, I am gone and so is your wallet, your cash as well as a very expensive watch your grandma gave you on your twenty first. Do you think you would marry me if our paths crossed again at some point?

-No, of course not. Not if you turned out to be a common thief. Marriage needs to be based on trust, how could I trust you after that? No, sorry, but no, I would not marry you under those circumstances.

-Oh, come on, where is your romantic side? What happened to fighting for your love?? What is wrong with you??? Remember that despite what I did you were really attracted to me, and you couldn’t get me out of your head, why would you not marry me, what is wrong with you??

-Sorry, darling, but I couldn’t marry you if you stole all my valuables from me after a one night stand and disappeared like that. Why are we having this conversation anyway?

-I just wanted to find out how much love mattered to you and how far would you be prepared to go for a woman you fell head over heels in love with despite some minor imperfections in her character.

-Minor imper…? You stole my wallet from me…

-Oh, stop being so petty! You know what, I am sorry, but this conversation is not going the way I hoped. I am very disappointed with your attitude, I can’t believe you. Having listened to your answers I am not sure how I feel about this relationships right now.

There was no point carrying on, so I walked out of the bedroom, one sock on one sock off which hopefully added an air of finality to my gesture, and left no room for doubt about the extent of my disappointment.

It is past lunchtime now, and he still hasn’t apologised. I bet he doesn’t even know what he did wrong. Men!

From time to time my dear husband comes home with an idea how to enhance our family’s life skills. In October last year he introduced the concept of Talking Tuesdays. Each Tuesday night henceforth we are to gather in one room and talk about something which we read or wrote about recently and want to present to the family. The excitement he got in response surpassed his expectations.

– Yes! Yes! YES!!! Let’s do that! What a brilliant idea! Come on, let’s go to the living room now and talk!!

– Mummy, calm down, it’s Monday…

Talking Tuesdays have been going for more than three months, and I can definitely say that this was one of my husband’s best ever ideas, although he disagrees and claims that his plan for turning our back garden into a wind farm with a solar-powered greenhouse in one corner is a far superior example of his brilliance.

All five of us gather every Tuesday evening or, if one of us is busy on Tuesday, the event becomes a Warbling Wednesday or a Thundering Thursday. Rules are that everybody has to speak every week, ready or not, no interruptions or negativity allowed, round of applause is most welcome after each speaker finishes, time limit is between one and five minutes each. Each person chooses whether they wish to stand in the middle of the room or talk directly from the sofa.

Older members of the group usually bring printed copies of what they wish to present, the young ones read from devices.

Talking Tuesdays felt a bit stilted at first, as we were suddenly oddly self-conscious with each other in the awkward formality of the situation. We have moved on from there, and now each session is a great pleasure and a roaring success.  Everybody loves it and we all make an effort preparing for each event. As we are a family of aspiring writers, several of us read extracts from our own work. My freshly adult son inspires us with his ever changing entrepreneurial ideas.  My 15 year old daughter surprises us with her ability to talk non-stop, and wittily so; coming out of her teenage shell does not begin to describe the transformation that we witness in her every Tuesday. My youngest daughter, a 12-year old militant feminist in the making, more than holds her ground as she tackles issues far beyond her chronological age, propping herself with Powerpoint presentations and strong blog pieces. I already feel sorry for her future opponents in any debate on the subjects of equality, abuse, or sexual harassment.

My husband relishes his status as the Talking Tuesdays creator, and struggles to hide how proud he is of his brainchild, but he is also the first one to admit that the concept has far outgrown his boldest expectations. From where I stand it has reached the stage where it is ready to be packaged up and send off to the intellectual property office for fast-track approval.

Anyway. All of the above was meant to serve as a rather long, but in my opinion necessary, introduction to what I really want to say, which is this. During a recent Talking Tuesday, my husband chose ‘Things that fathers should pass on to their children’ as the subject of his talk. He read out a long list of tasks and ideas that in his view, fathers should teach their children.

Changing a tyre and checking oil was mixed with kindness, not holding a grudge and ability to listen, and then back again to practicalities of putting together an Ikea cupboard, riding a bike, swimming and cooking. As he listed each item we played a little game trying to work out how successful he had been so far in imparting knowledge and wisdom to each of our three children. Somehow, I got bundled up with the kids for the purposes of this assessment, and my husband realised with discernible sadness that to date he had failed to teach me absolutely anything.

While the others were trying to assess a degree of dad’s success by deciding which of the kids had learnt the skill of house cleaning, and lighting a fire, my mind wandered off as I tried to compile a parallel list of ‘Things a mother should pass on to her kids’. Next day I carried on with the exercise.

First, I tried to work out how it was that I personally saw the division of labour between parents in the task of passing on things to children. I realised that until now I had, to a large extent intuitively, seen a father as a chief ‘passer-on’ in a family, with mother being more of a basic needs provider, nourisher, homemaker, nest builder and a general house manager, who makes sure children were clean, fed, dressed and ready in the mornings, and clean, fed and in pyjamas, teeth brushed in the evenings. Now that we have moved beyond the drooling helplessness stages of their childhood, the real work begins.

Not being the world’s most practical person, it would be pointless for me to try and teach them any housekeeping skills, as it would be doomed to fail, and besides my 15 year old daughter has already overtaken me in the cooking and baking category.

I see my role mainly as the person who will steer minds, nurture attitudes and instil values that I believe are good to have in life. I would like my lasting legacy in their lives to take the shape of continuous personal development, ambitious aspirations, intellectual discipline, cultural curiosity, fluency in geography, history and literature of their country, the world would be a bonus, childlike fascination with everything around them, contagious passion and enthusiasm in whatever they choose to take on, political and social awareness and a witty sense of humour. I want to be the one who puts them through their paces at Bletchley, Blenheim Palace, Hadrian Wall and the battlefields of the Somme, who smuggles Shakespeare, Austen and the Marriage of Figaro into their consciousness, and who bombards them with endless raw ideas so they can make them their own. I want to make sure they are well versed in art and music, cultured is probably the word I am looking for, and appreciative of their heritage. And if at the same time their dad manages to teach them how to change tyres and put up Ikea furniture, there will be no stopping them.

Mornings go one of two ways for me. One, I stay in bed much longer than I can reasonably justify to myself, and then spend the next few hours trying to make up for it by throwing myself frantically at work, or two, I get up virtuously early and am at my desk before seven, which makes me feel incredibly smug and I allow myself the luxury of writing down my morning thoughts.
Today I got up really early.

What I would like to know is whether we all have those dark unrevealable thoughts we keep wrapped up in the deepest folds of our minds because if these thoughts escaped and were no longer locked away, their owners would likely get locked up for a very long time.  I do wonder, is it really true that everybody has a darker side, or is it just me and if so I better keep quiet about it.

Well, I know it is not just me, serial killers, gang rapists and animal decapitators, are a safe bet, but that is hardly a reassurance, I would like to know whether I am in so called good company here, friends and family, not just the Yorkshire Ripper and Croydon Cat Killer. I am not likely to find out though, am I, because as things and society values stand, we are all careful to put a veneer of decency, respectability and so called normality first thing each morning, so we are all properly put together by the time we face ourselves in the bathroom mirror. Or perhaps it is just me and most people only need to tidy up their messy hair, not minds, as they get out of bed?

Law enforcement, religion and mental institutions contribute greatly to the obfuscation of the issue as we become reluctant to act on our darkest impulses for fear of unpleasant consequences, and so our so-called human nature in its true nakedness remains elusive.

Every now and again, and not before we had known a person for a very long time, they let us have a glimpse of their inner darkness, and even then it is masqueraded as I-don’t-really-mean-it fooling around sort of thing. Even so, those glimpses make uncomfortable viewing. I walk away from such moments thinking, would they really re-introduce public hangings in Trafalgar Square given half a chance as they said they would? Would they really subject all BMW drivers and rush hour cyclists to such an ordeal? And would they really shoot their next door neighbour’s forever yapping dog if there were no rules against it?  If this is what they are willing to share with me, what else is lurking down there? And what would be my own equivalent to public hangings and dog shooting thoughts? Am I prepared to reveal them even to myself, or is it best to keep busy and convince myself that this is all there is to me, what you see is what you get, let the rest remain safely locked away?  Just one last thing, have you ever been tempted to replace the water in your goldfish bowl with Bacardi?  No? It might be just me after all.

A friend of mine messaged me this morning with a tearful note saying she was feeling really down because not only was it cold and wet outside, but she was also getting old, fat and ugly.

I pictured her exactly how I remembered her, or at least what her latest facebook photos looked like, I then looked at myself in the mirror and there was no getting away from it, slowly but surely we were both getting old, fat and ugly. I then thought of my other vintage friends, and they too fell into the progressively old, fat and ugly category. All except one, of course, there is always one, isn’t there, the skinny bitch who has kept the same dress size since her own graduation to her kids’ one.   Still, karma has burrowed itself deeply into her face of late, so all is good.

I surprise myself to discover that I think of all of them with nothing but fondness and and odd sense of collective womanly pride. I have never been very sisterhood-inclined in my younger days. When the majority of these women first became part of my life, cold war was still very much on, and Thriller was still to be released. Over the years I watched these women achieve amazing personal, professional and creative goals. I watched them, from a safe distance, give birth to an impressive number of children, I watched them as they travelled the world, swam in oceans, climbed mountains and cycled in a desert. They delivered babies, and they pronounced people dead for a living, they wrote books and rode horses. Watching them do all this made me feel inadequate, insignificant and not measuring up. I came very close to feeling a fat old ugly failure long before my time.

Fortunately, I had a young family to look after, eight loads of washing a week to do, a 7.46 to catch every morning, an Easter bonnet to decorate by Friday and a summer holiday to book, all of which did not leave me too much time for existential crisis.

I know now that my self-doubt was not only premature, it was also laughable.  Now that middle age is firmly established, my family no longer so young as to need my constant attention, I could quite easily squeeze in a wobble, and stress about my fat old and ugly self. Except, I really cannot be bothered any more.  I never thought the moment will come, but it has, I really don’t care. Instead I am beginning to see myself and all my friends born in the third quarter of the twentieth century as increasingly powerful and beautiful, strengthened by decades of looking after their families and building their careers, more invincible with every passing year, capable of anything, awesome.

Certain things always improve with age, at least as far as women go, please do not get me started on old men, I want to keep this upbeat. Older women often develop an amazing sense of humour, their wit sharpens, Alzheimer’s permitting, and they open themselves up to the idea of making peace with themselves, with each other, with most of the universe, with the exception of, let’s keep this real, their next door neighbour.

By their fifth decade majority of women are finally ready to talk about their, dwindling by now, periods with other women without inhibition.  Masks begin to drop, or are left forgotten on bedside tables next to false teeth. Ha! Tricked you, we are still a decade away from false teeth, it’s still fake lashes for now.

Dear friend who messaged me this morning, look what you have done. You got me into one of my rants, which cannot be good for my blood pressure. I hope you feel better now, because you are gorgeously strong and totally beautiful. As well as old fat and ugly.

Meanwhile in a remote Polish village of Balham, locals have gathered for an annual Opłatek Parafialny (lit. parish Christmas wafer), the ritualistic breaking and sharing of Christmas wafer. The tradition is sacrosanct in Poland and all its overseas outposts.  It consists of sharing a piece of white wafer, closely resembling communion wafer in Catholic church, with one’s nearest and dearest, whilst at the same time exchanging lengthy elaborate Christmas wishes.  It takes place on the 24th of December, during traditional 12-courses Christmas Eve supper, a Polish national institution, known as Wigilia.  Non-Poles who try to imitate this custom with just a cheery Merry Christmas miss the point of reciting a list of well thought through and personalised wishes, enumerating all the ills to be remedied and specific aspects of prosperity that we wish the Christmas season to bestow on the recipient of our tiny piece of wafer. I digress.

Balham White Eagle Polish Club has been hosting the Opłatek event since time immemorial, or at least since Polish settlement in Balham took hold some decades ago.  The ritual is observed according to a reassuringly predictable protocol. This might seem chaotic, even brusque to outsiders, but Polish Balhamites find comfort in the proceedings.
To begin with, the Parish Chairman welcomes everybody in the room.  A panel of parish priests bow majestically. Hand movements are uncannily royal.

First artistic offering of the evening is traditionally provided by parish choir.  A group of around 15, mostly female, very smartly dressed singers in white blouses and floor length black skirts, all with matching glittery necklaces, take over the stage and deliver a series of traditional Polish Christmas carols. Feliz Navidad it ain’t.
Operatic tones and solemn melancholy songs set the mood. This can be dangerously sleep-inducing to uninitiated outsiders, and looking around I notice some of the 200-strong audience  in semi-slumber.  As for the Poles in the room, the familiar Christmas music from their church-going childhood back home seems to be doing the trick as they are gently carried back to memories of  motherland. Warm fuzzy feeling spreads slowly around the room.  Foundations are laid for the main event of the evening.

The next hour or so belongs to folk dance groups Lajkonik and Orlęta. They are divided into four age groups, ranging from adoringly clumsy 4 year-olds to professionally looking dancers in their mid to late 20s. They are all simply amazing.  Basia Klimas-Sawyer, who has been running the groups for 42 years, is a household name in Polish Balham and a true national treasure. Generation upon generation of Polish dancers in London owe their adventure with Polish folklore to her. She has to be seen to be believed.

After the show, the parish priest takes centre stage, says a few seasonal words, sprinkles holy water on the Christmas wafers and off we go, sharing the wafers with friends in the room, exchanging wishes and three kisses on the cheeks. Tea and coffee is served, as well as a selection of slightly tired looking cakes; a gift from the chairman of the parish, who happens to also run a Polish bakery.

A couple of hours later we suffer from a serious case of Polishness overload. Still, we say our do widzenias safe in the knowledge that in less than three months we’ll meet again at Święcone (the blessing of the Easter food basket) gathering.  This time we will be sharing hard-boiled egg quarters. Same place, same crowd, same dancing routines.
I can’t wait.

Setting up

Guests arrive

Thrilled to be here

Lajkonik and Orleta gather on stage

Plynie Wisla plynie, a song every Polish nursery child knows by heart

And bow

Middle group in action

Balham Polish parish high and mighty, oh, and father Jerzy far right.

Father Wladyslaw Wyszowadzki in full glory

Today, a rare glimpse into Polish literary and fungal national traditions.

A badly google-translated sign found at the Chobham Common car park last weekend inspired me to delve deeply into a widespread Polish custom of mushroom picking.  Every Pole worthy of their name is an expert mushroom picker. It’s one of those habits, like playing with live carp in the bath the week before Christmas, and painting elaborate patterns on boiled eggs for Easter, that all Polish children carry in their genes. By the age of ten, you confuse your boletus, and your chanterelles with your toadstool at your peril. Quite literally.  Several hundred people are reported to suffer from varied degree of mushroom related food poisoning every year. Fatalities are rare, but they do still occur.

A highly venerated 19th century Polish poet, Adam Mickiewicz,  exalted the joys of mushroom-picking in his epic oeuvre,  Pan Tadeusz, as long ago as 1834.  And since this masterpiece of rhyme and rhythm was (still is?) compulsory reading for all Polish secondary school students for about a century, the mushroom picking, alongside many other Polish customs mentioned in the book got elevated to an almost patriotic deed and national duty. Just a little more background here, the plot of Pan Tadeusz is set in 1811-1812, when Poland did not exist as an independent country, and Polish patriots put great hopes in Napoleon’s defeat of Russia, the common enemy. Everything in the book, written when Poland was still long way from regaining independence, was seen as an essence of Polishness.

Mushroom picking and bigos making received celebrated status, something which both these activities still enjoy today. Bigos, since I am sure you are now dying to know, continues to be one of Poland’s flagship dishes. It is made of sauerkraut mixed with fresh white cabbage, chunks of meat, sausage, and yes, dried wild mushrooms.

When Poland joined the EU in 2004, hundreds of thousands of Poles descended on unsuspecting sleepy English countryside. Old habits die hard and so soon enough the new arrivals were seen  traipsing the woodlands and the commons of their new host country, with baskets and other mushroom picking paraphernalia.   Mushroom picking is not a hugely popular pastime in England. An average Englishman is usually able to distinguish between button mushrooms and flat cap mushrooms, and they know that the best place to find them is between the peppers and the onions in their local Sainsbury’s vegetable aisle.

As the picture above clearly shows, the Polish mushroom picking custom has been duly noted by local authorities in the UK. Surrey Heath Council awarded the Polish language version of their multilingual mushroom picking ban the top spot, ahead of such other mushroom-picking giants as the Chinese, the Italian and the French.

I, for one, find this fascinating.

* ‘Grzybów było w bród…’, Pan Tadeusz, Book III