I have never been less ready for another Holy Night so soon after the last one.

Only a couple of weeks ago I threw away Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference Christmas pudding camouflaging as a box of something with forever shelf life at the back of the cupboard. In another unrelated event, I found myself musing over at a couple of 12 months old bottles of mulled wine recently; how long do they keep for, do they ever go vintage? Fine, I do not do clear-outs until cupboards doors buckle, unable to contain the fruits of my voracious consumerism any longer.
My housekeeping shortcomings aside, it’s too soon for tinsel again.

As I get older, time plays funny games. I am still trying to get into proper work mode after the summer heatwave and holiday season. I am almost there, but now that Christmas is round the corner, there seems little point in throwing myself into work, only to grind to a festive halt within weeks. Might as well wait until the New Year.

It looks like I am not the only one not ready for Christmas though. Eastenders are still busy mopping up after last year’s rooftop carnage, whilst this year’s spoilers remain at guesswork stage.

The state of my Christmas un-readiness might have something to do with our family inching along towards adulthood. It has not been the same since the kids reluctantly conceded that believing in Santa was no longer sustainable. The first time we did not leave out a glass of milk and a mince pie for Santa and a carrot for his reindeers, a little bit of Christmas died a silent death right there in the middle of our living room. Going to sleep on Christmas Eve without chewing and spitting out bits of carrots onto the carpet to make a convincing impression of messy Rudolf and his mates made me more painfully aware of merciless passage of time than anything else I can think of right now.

Gift buying has become a lot less fun. It now amounts to ploughing through list of Amazon links in elaborate emails to Santa, which replaced wobbly handwritten notes of yore, and finding the right balance between making everybody happy on the 25^th and making myself destitute in January.

Utopian family Christmas ads always feature not only angelic children, and clean-aproned parents, but they are also peppered with silver-haired grandparents, breaking into perfectly dentured smiles. I am aware that next time my Christmas is likely to be yet again populated with miniature humans will be when my children bring their own offspring to the equation.
I also know beyond a shred of doubt, that if there is one thing I am less ready for than another jar of goose fat, it is becoming a grandmother. And I am happy to cover my entire kitchen floor with bits of chewed up carrot to prove it!

This year’s Iceland Christmas advert is about an orangutan being kicked out of the Rainforest by bad guys who are after his palm oil, and John Lewis ad is about Elton John’s pianos. I am not sure which one fails more spectacularly in evoking anything remotely resembling the spirit of Christmas. I understand that John Lewis has had a tough year and might not feel very festive, and as for Iceland, well, it featured Kerry Katona in their Christmas ad a decade ago, and you simply do not recover from that.

Iceland ad was banned as too political as soon as it was released, or possibly before, which immediately made it go viral and so, naturally, it has now become the most watched one of the lot, and we all feel like rebels, wondering whether, by watching it, we might have stepped into the realm of dark web for the first time ever. We will never know the stats on this ad, because officially it is no longer with us.

Tesco attracted controversy last year after they showed a Muslim family enjoying Christmas, but this did not stop them from going even further this year, and in their determination to embrace diversity they ended up disrespecting brussels sprouts. If that is not political in Brexit Britain, I don’t know what is. Or rather, I do know, because apparently a story of a cute cartoon ape being driven to the edge of extinction by ruthless shampoo makers is unpalatably political.

Sainsbury’s ad is so detached from the reality of an average school Christmas play, it has to be dismissed as pure fantasy.  When was any Nativity play ever any good? If Martin Freeman could not rescue the concept, despite three progressively desperate attempts, what hope was there for the Live Well for Less supermarket?

And finally, there is good old ASDA, with its ever so uninspiring, predictable snow ride offering,  whereby all the most unhealthy over-indulgence of  Christmas arrives on a pretty little girl’s doorstep. This excessive abundance makes her overjoyed, even though it is clearly a prelude to the rosy-cheeked cutie becoming yet another victim of child obesity epidemic which seems to be gripping the nation.

So it looks like this year’s award for most successful seasonal heartstrings pulling by a leading supermarket might go to Heathrow. The UK’s busiest airport returns with a pair of loved-up teddy bears who, like the PG Tips monkeys of old, are slowly but surely making themselves comfortable in the corner of our hearts.  They stagger, they wobble, they hold paws. They bring a lump to our throats, and we are all Christmassed, hook, line and sinker.

Does John Lewis even sell pianos?

I was a late comer to Netflix, and very much still a newbie, but the wretched thing is rapidly damaging my cognitive abilities and sabotaging my family life.  I can virtually hear my cerebral cortex unfolding with every hour I spend on it.

I have my 13 year old daughter’s French teacher to thank for this. At a recent parents’ evening I asked her, as any over-zealous mother worth her tiger stripes would, what she would recommend, beyond BBC bitesize, linguee.fr, and Allez-y magazine, to improve my daughter’s language skills.  She suggested that watching French series on Netflix could go a long way towards equipping Alexia with a certain je ne sais quoi.

I was sold faster than you could say, well, I am not sure how fast it is to say sucker in French. Suffice to say that as soon as I hear ‘educational benefits’, I am every marketing director’s dream, and so I purchased a four screens packet for our five strong family.

At first it was ever so exciting, we had such fun choosing a black cat, a chicken, a random teenage face and a grumpy blue faced monster as our profile pictures, and we were all ready to go. We dispersed to our rooms.
I re-watched a few old favourites, Leap Year, The Notebook, Bridget Jones’ Baby, everything with Ryan Gosling, everything with Anne Hathaway, and then Leap Year one more time for good measure.

The rest of the family took to it like fish to a bicycle and are yet to resurface, but I got stuck half way through the second week of our 1 month free trial, and started dipping my toes in some of the worst crimes against film-making ever committed. How I wish I could un-see some of them.

It is hard to pick the overall most awful one, but if pressed, I would have to say – Ms. Matched. As soon as I watched it, I had an inkling it was probably going to be The One, but not wanting to be slapdash about it, I went ahead and watched a couple dozen similar productions. A hundred wasted hours later, Ms. Matched still wins hands down.
There are no easy words to accurately describe the tosh that this film exudes.
It has no redeeming features. The acting is non-existent; what the lead characters steadfastly offer in its place is to scrunch up their faces in regular intervals. The plot is nonsensical. There is no chemistry, no drama, no feeling, no logic. One pretty girl in a supporting role, I give you that.

So what’s next in store for Netflix and me? I am currently working through a seasonal glut of third rate Christmas movies, after which the plan is to finally treat myself to Netflix piece de resistance, its raison d’etre, House of Cards. After that, who knows, I might be ready for Leap Year and The Notebook again, or shall we just wait and see, que sera sera.
I am not sure how Alexia’s French is coming along, and I should probably check with her, as it was this trickily annotated language that started my slippery descent into brainlessness.  For my part, I seem to have developed a worrying compulsion to pepper my writing with suspiciously French looking phrases. Oh well, c’est la vie.

I have a thing about chairs, and it’s bad. Chairs, with their neatly upholstered beauty have a near-mystical appeal to me, they pull me in, mesmerise me, and bring me inexplicable joy.
I am unable to walk past an exquisitely made chair without a gasp of admiration and a pang of yearning.
My husband tried to appeal to my common sense, soon realised that trait was missing from my personality, and has now long conceded defeat and accepted that he had unwittingly signed up to a love me love my chairs kind of marriage.
Whenever one of my children tries to accurately describe an absurd situation devoid of reason or logic, they might simply say, you know it is just like mummy and her chairs.

Are you one of those people who harbour hopes for happy afterlife? Personally, I am quietly confident I have already secured my place in Hell on the strength of you shall not covet your neighbour’s chair directive alone, and I can just picture myself shifting uncomfortably from side to side on a grey plastic chair for Eternity.

Bar the most heinous crimes against chair craftsmanship, I am surprisingly egalitarian in my tastes, whereby I devote equal amount of enthusiasm to antique shops and builders’ skips, and am as likely to lose sleep over a wooden farmhouse simplicity, as over Versailles opulence in gold and silk.

So far, my personal best chair hoarding record stands at 20 chairs scattered around the house as well as 36 chairs stacked up in the garage, which is not that many when you put things into perspective.

Years ago, once we already have all the functionally necessary chairs in the house, including the staple of 6 dining table chairs, one chair at everybody’s desk, a clothes chair in each bedroom and a few decorative chairs in the living room, I drafted a Chair Rule Book, which states that any additional chairs should be obtained free of charge if at all possible. This rule does not encourage me to use violence, deception or bribery, it simply limits my hunting grounds to websites offering unwanted goods for free and local reuse and recycle centres commonly known as dumps. Either way I have vowed not to part with money in exchange for supplementary chairs, and I mostly manage to stick to this rule.

Sources of free chairs in South East London are limited, and when they do become available, they usually come in sets of 4, as and when their previous owners decide to update the décor. This means that my 36 chairs in the garage were the result of mere nine offers I nabbed on Freecycle, so let’s not read too much into that figure.

My perfect chair has many faces, but it is leaning towards strongly traditional, Georgian mahogany or Tudor oak, conservative upholstery, preferably dark greens, cream and burgundy, but I am happy to keep an open mind on the colour scheme. I am also partial towards a classic farmhouse spindle back with a subtly arched curvature.

I like mixing, swapping, replacing and re-arranging my chairs regularly. I aim for eclectic rather than matching sets. At the same time I have developed a strong bond with some of them and find myself unable to pass them on, to make room for new ones. This attachment is not dissimilar to people who keep pigs because they like bacon and then cannot bring themselves to eat them, because the pigs become family and you do not eat family, no matter how much you love bacon. My best chairs have become family, too. They sit in my study so I can keep a close eye on them.

So there, I love chairs.

Another thing I love is writing. Most days I either write, or think about writing, or look out for things  and words I can store and write about later, and if I haven’t written anything for a while, I use strong words with myself, and they are not words of self-love.

Last weekend we made a family pilgrimage to Stratford-Upon-Avon. My teenage daughters have never been, so it was time.  I was acting all cool and casual, but I was sneaking in my personal secret agenda. I thought it wouldn’t hurt to dab in a bit of amateur hocus-pocus, and plead with the Bard to guide my older daughter’s hand in her upcoming English GCSE exams.  I am available for parenting advice on other subjects too.

Anne Hathaway’s Cottage is tucked away a mile away from Stratford town centre. It has a thatched roof, a flower garden, a vegetable patch and a haphazard apple and pear orchard.

A Mind Your Head front door took us to a small anteroom where we were greeted by a friendly Shakespeare Birthplace Trust staff member. He made obligatory small talk, mentioned Anne Hathaway the actress, and pointed us in the direction of a mostly dark kitchen, the only faint light provided by a couple of permanent candles. We were invited to look up the chimney, took photos of a pair of pheasants hanging dramatically by the neck from a peg on the wall. We walked up the winding wooden staircase onto the first floor, went through a couple of bedrooms, with their red velvet draped four poster beds, tiny cradles, dark oak chests and antique silver candle holders.

The third room was where I found it.  I entered unsuspectingly, bending my head as I did.

Once you’ve been walking around 500 years old houses for a while, you adjust your pace to the rhythm of the place, you move pensively from room to room, you dive into centuries of history, you breathe it all in. The outside world stops and waits whilst you drag your feet, slowly, silently. By the time I strolled quietly towards a carved wooden chair by a small window I was fully entranced, lost in the moment. There was an open book and a lantern on the chair. I bent down over the page;

‘This oak armchair dates from the early 1600s. Known by the Shakespeare family as Shakespeare’s Courting Chair, it was reputed to have been handed down from William Shakespeare to his granddaughter, Lady Elizabeth Barnard. Lady Elizabeth did not have children and she gave the chair to the Hathaway family.’

As I read on, and it all began to sink in, thoughts and emotions rushed in and crammed together, competing for my attention, straining their necks, if thoughts have necks, but that’s just how it felt. I was staring at my very own Holy Grail of Chairs. Shakespeare’s courting chair right in front of me. Shakespeare touched this chair, sat on this chair, rested his arms on this chair. Shakespeare’s writing hand on this chair! Shakespeare’s granddaughter a fellow freecycler!

The best of chairs and the best of writing came together in this dimly lit room and I could hardly breathe. I reached out, stroke the armrest, touched the seat. Again. Third time. My mystic moment was complete. Magic does not get any better than this.

On Monday, back at work, when colleagues asked me how my weekend had been I said it was perfect, I found the most beautiful chair in the world.

We have a hedgehog called Charlie. Charlie sleeps all day and most of the night too, but in the morning his food is gone and his exercise wheel is stained with poo.
In rare moments of lucidity, he is the cutest thing ever and it is impossible not to love him.

Charlie has become my husband’s new soul mate. This was rather unexpected, and I am still not sure how I feel about losing the position, but I cannot deny that it makes sense, ever since we discovered that their personalities are a perfect match.

Hedgehogs are solitary creatures and they are at their happiest not having to share their cage with another specimen. Rowan’s default mode is to avoid crowds and only come out to play occasionally and for short periods of time. Which happens to be the exact wording in YouTube videos instructing owners how to keep a hedgehog happy.

What they both love most in the world is to be left alone, so they can curl up in a comfortably secluded spot and sleep. They both get aggressively stroppy when disturbed in their slumber.
Charlie hisses violently, which sounds like water being poured onto a hot frying pan, and spikes up into a ball, pretending to be a sea urchin.
Rowan frowns threateningly and gives out warning grunting noises.

The similarities do not end here and are as many as they are uncanny.

They both have a weakness for treats. Charlie’s diet is cat food based with a small portion of fruit and veg on the side. He is also supposed to eat cooked chicken or turkey, but he doesn’t seem to know this and we have so far failed to communicate this to him.
What Charlie cannot resist is a bit of crunchy crispy mealworm. If mixed with his regular food, he will sniff it out, and scoff it whole.
Rowan’s diet is equally high in protein, with heavy meat leanings, and an occasional acknowledgement of fruit and veg. He keeps a drawer full of personalised treats and forages in it every night, expertly sniffing out packets of snack size Reese’s or other crunchy morsels.

Both lads hail from the same continent, which must be an additional subliminal bonding factor.
Charlie is an African pygmy hedgehog, Rowan is a South African medium size homo sapiens.

They display matching physical features, as salt and pepper Charlie camouflages perfectly in Rowan’s grey-speckled goatee.

And finally. Hedgehogs have very poor eyesight, which they compensate for by well-developed sense of hearing.
When Rowan turned fifty earlier this year, he got his first pair of reading glasses, +0.25 in on eye only. Visual impairment does not get any more minor than that, but Rowan took to calling it his disability.

Rowan’s pet name for Charlie is Squirrel, which is as sweet an expression of bromance as any.

I never thought the day would come when I had to compete for my husband’s affection against anybody again, but if it has to be done, Charlie is the most adorable love rival I could wish for.

In my experience, some things do not travel well across the Channel, whilst others are prone to get lost in translation and so it was with heavy heart that I set off to watch an arty black and white film which tells a story of love and misery in post-war Poland.
I needn’t have worried. Cold War has arrived in Ritzy cinema Brixton via Cannes Best Director Award in pretty good shape. It is achingly beautiful, unbearably sad, and utterly gripping. The sense of foreboding sets in early and you spend most of the film’s relatively short running time waiting for the inevitable fatal blow. And when it comes, you go into full on denial as you try to negotiate a few more minutes, a few more stunning shots of silent, cold windy fields. Credits roll.
Cold War had enjoyed massive publicity in its native Poland, the director and lead actors are household names, and just about everybody has already seen it. Judging by the Ritzy audience today, the film’s fame did not survive the journey across the sea too well. Still, it’s all there for the taking.

Ever since the line-up was announced, Alexia, my usually eloquent daughter, was barely able to string a sentence together without the words Panic, Brendon, Reading and Saturday in it.

Her 13^th birthday was coming up, so in a fit of momentary madness I bought the tickets. We arrived nice and very early, to watch the weekend campers wake up and brush their teeth outside their tents. We went straight for the main stage and by 11.30am we were standing by the barrier in what I am told is called a mosh pit, some 20 metres from the stage. Alexia joked that this was the precise spot in which we were going to spend the next 10 hours. I laughed out loud, but only until I realised she was not joking. One of the longest afternoons of my whole life followed.

Priorities first though. Reading has changed a lot since my last visit there, 19 years ago. Toilets are now actually usable, flushable and light years away from the portaloo nightmare of yesteryears.
Food choices are so varied this year, it feels almost insane. In 1999, we quequed for close to half an hour for a solitary food stall, facing the choice of greasy burgers or limp hotdogs. This time round, we could go for Mexican, Vegan and Vegetarian, Falafel Empire, Greek Expectations, Subway, Halloumi Store, alongside more traditional junk food offerings.

Reading audience has changed too. They seem to be all school leavers and clean shaven students now, with thick smudges of glitter and love bites on most cheeks and necks.  Their idea of youthful rebellion is pouring alcohol into Capri Sun pouches, bless them.

Security staff deserve a special mention. They were all absolutely fantastic. Being squashed flat against the barrier next to the centre path, we watched them, and they watched us back, all day and all night. They were facing the audience, American presidential guard style, hands behind their backs, mirror sunglasses, the lot. They were all exceptionally helpful, friendly and courteous at all times. They were also incredibly patient and gentle with every drunken, stoned, arrogant, immature and obnoxious reveller they had to deal with during the course of the evening. I mention it because it is so refreshing to see security staff who resist the temptation to enjoy their position of ‘power’ and opt for a human face instead.

Back to the music, and the four of us, guarding the main stage.

It all kicked off around midday with Trash Boat, which consisted of a few sinewy boys (men?) in staple black jeans and oversized vests jumping around the stage making a lot of jarring noise. I cannot recall a single song of theirs now, but their performance made me realise the enormity of impact that 80 one million watts speakers in close proximity was likely to have on my unsuspecting ears and brain.

A slew of bands followed, the place got more crowded by the hour. Every now and again, we were slammed against the barrier, as the more enthusiastic punters broke into a weird ritualistic jump and shove routine at random.

One of the early afternoon bands was a Jamaican reggae group, Protoje. They played a number of traditional rum and coke numbers, their dancing ladies gyrated energetically. It was pleasant enough, easy on the ear, which was welcome, but I am not sure how much traction their Rasta Love slogans gained among the Reading music youth of today.

I am going to be kinder to you than I was to myself on Saturday, and so I am not going to go through every act.  I still cannot fully believe we camped out there for so long .

Two more bands stood out for me, though, during our long vigil between midday, and Panic! slot shortly before 8pm.

The first one was Mike Shinoda. Before yesterday I was fully ignorant of his existence, so I found it difficult to put his back story puzzle pieces together, but everybody else in the crowd seemed to know who Chester was and several people had tears in their eyes when Mike talked about dealing with his loss. He spoke a lot, mainly about Chester, and overcoming his own anxieties in coming back to perform at Reading again. He jumped off the stage and went hand shaking with fans for a bit, to complete the reach out and relate routine. It left me cold, but that might have been due to my ignorance on the subject. Possibly an age thing too, my age.  A couple of Mike’s songs though were touching. He kept switching from pensive ballads to jump about a lot songs, which was confusing, but I guess this must be how these things work these days.

Next on was an improbably named Dua Lipa, a pretty, wholesome looking girl, who reminded me of Victoria Beckham from her Spice Girls days, when she still smiled and was generally much more convincingly human than she is now.  Dua Lipa’s outfit was no doubt carefully planned for maximum effect, and it worked, I for one was mesmerised by her wackily mismatched, multi-coloured skiing trousers and checked crop top ensemble, as well as her slick bouncy bob. Her songs and her voice were instantly forgettable, opinion totally my own of course, but her dance routine was impressive. It was a bizarre mix of tantric yoga, kickboxing and pretend horse riding, all in all a seemingly effortless display of agility and abs, what not to like.

Now for the main event. From the moment we crossed the Entrance line, the feeling of progressively hotting-up anticipation was unshakeable. The whole day so far was a mere warm-up, steadily progressing towards the one band on everybody’s lips. Panic! At the Disco was coming on at 19.50. A giant digital clock went on display ten minutes before, counting down seconds, New Year’s Eve style.  A smartly dressed all female string trio entered first, followed by two electric guitarists and finally, up he popped! Brendon Urie appeared and the crowd’s vocal cords went into overdrive.
Brendon is a cute looking guy, I give Alexia that. He donned skin tight leather trousers and a dark sparkly blazer for the occasion, which made him look positively skeletal, but I appreciate that this is the look his fans love to see. The next hour and a half belonged to him. He sang, he chatted, he jumped on a grand piano, he back-flipped mid-song, he told us how he got knocked out by a bottle in Reading 12 years ago, he made reference to some ‘sexual experience’ of his, which sent the rainbow Nando’s chicken banner holder into frenzy. He sang, quite a lot. He does this thing with his voice, at randomly chosen moments, when he goes into this really high pitch zone, and he stays there for longer than you would expect.  Quite impressive. As a newcomer to his music, I struggled to understand most of the words of his songs, he also occasionally skipped the whole line or two, letting the audience fill in the gaps, which they fully obliged, but which made my understanding of his lyrics even less clear. One song I did understand, from start to finish, was the one he announced as ‘one of the greatest songs ever written by any band’.  My first reaction was, he is a bit full of himself, isn’t he, but then it turned out he meant Bohemian Rapsody. So he sang the Queen tribute and yes, it was magical. And then, just like that, he was gone, and we faced a long journey home.

There was little interest left for the evening’s co-headliner, Kendrick Lamar, as most people left with us. Panic! was without a doubt the flavour of the day, and I am only grateful that schedulers did not put them as the top headlining band, as this would have meant them coming on last, which would have meant more sore feet, knees and back for the oldest generation of festival goers, which would have most definitely meant me.

This morning I woke up with the worst hangover in years, despite having consumed zero units of alcohol yesterday. I can only explain it by a compound effect of listening to excessively loud music, watching strobe lighting, ingesting mosh pit dust and second hand cannabis smoke for several hours as well as not eating, not drinking, in case I needed the toilet afterwards, for the same number of hours.  As I contemplated odverdosing on paracetamol earlier today, I seriously questioned my sanity of what I put myself through yesterday. But then I remembered Alexia, how she screamed her head off for hours, how she shouted Brendon, I love you! How she rocked, bopped, swayed, jumped, sang along, cried, laughed, pointed and waved in his direction, and it suddenly all made perfect sense.

This is how early we got there.

Reggae band

It could have been worse…

Panic!

It was a long afternoon

Brendon Urie big and small

Panic!

Dua Lipa

Panic!

This year’s Kids Week tickets went on sale at 10.00am yesterday. Every cultural snob, educationally ambitious, financially challenged mother’s D-Day. The date had been in my diary for months and I was ready.

However, as Sod’s law dictates, whilst tickets became available to purchase online, I was not available to purchase them, having been locked up in Kingston Crown Court court number 3 for closing speeches since 9.30

Husband to the rescue.

I briefed him, complete with notes, charts and a few pointing arrows the night before. His mission, which he accepted grudgingly, was to purchase tickets for 4 shows, on a selection of dates in August, with one specific instruction not to buy tickets for Amelia and me to see Les Mis on the 2nd of August, as this is our blooming 15th wedding anniversary so I might be busy elsewhere.

Husband excelled himself. He managed to purchase tickets to 5 shows out of the 4 that I listed. The first thing I noticed, when I emerged from court was Les Mis booked for the 2nd of August. The second thing I noticed was Kinky Boots booked twice. The third thing I noticed was tickets pickup at the venue, but fair enough, his briefing was ambiguous on this point.

My heart sank a bit as I resigned myself to several, possibly futile hours, unravelling it all.

I emailed Kids Week with multiple requests to change, amend and cancel and half an hour later something amazing and no longer common happened.

Ruth, the Kids Week representative called me back, just to confirm the exact changes I wished to make before she makes them. She then completed all the changes whilst on the phone to me and a few minutes later I received an email confirming everything that she had done. I gasped. I am still recovering.

Customer Service has become a dirty word these days. Kids Week / See Tickets team are doing their best to rebuild its reputation.

#kidsweek

Early 21st century Łódź is a work in progress, a city in a state of extended flux, firmly wedged between its solid industrial past and not yet fully evolved future.

The town grew almost overnight on the strength of textile industry, which exploded in the region mid-19th century. Imposing factories, of predominantly Jewish and German ownership put Łódź on the map and shaped its character. Fast forward a couple of world wars, post-war antisemitism, collapse of Communism and Łódź textile industry is no more, but the town remains a large urban establishment, with the population of just under 700,000.

To an impartial observer trying to make sense of its current status Łódź seems a bit rudderless, if you excuse a cross-language pun (Łódź means boat in Polish).

The word on the street is regeneration. It sweeps across town with scrubbing brushes and pours bucketloads of fresh paint over everything in its sights.

It is against this background that I want to introduce the heroine of today’s story, or rather, she is today’s story.

Ilona is a walking talking laughing crying thinking feeling story of modern Łódź.

Łódź born and bred, she loves her city with the force of emotion humans rarely display towards a geographical location. Except, to Ilona Łódź is much more than that. Łódź to her is a state of mind, it bubbles over in her veins and it resonates in everything she does. And if you find the above turn of phrase a bit over the top, wait until you meet Ilona, and you will realise that if anything, my description was tremendously understated.

Ilona was born to a working class Łódź parents. Her mother was a textile factory worker, who spent the best years of her life on a shop floor, in appalling working conditions, in almost unbearable heat and all-permeating dust. Her father was a taxi driver.

She graduated with a law degree and married a teacher, but she remains immensely, passionately proud of her parents’ hard working background, emphasis on hard.

I went to school with Ilona, but we were not close then. Thirty years later, Facebook messenger brought us together again, and my, oh my, how could I have missed that woman until now.

Ilona knows everything about Łódź. I realise it is a bold statement but it is virtually impossible to exaggerate the level of her knowledge on the subject. She knows every restaurant worth knowing, she is able to retell the story of Łódź ghetto day by day, she knows the dodgiest courtyards in the shadiest parts of town and can render the tiniest detail of every mural, monument and graffiti with photographic accuracy. She talks fast, swears a fair bit, and downs vodka shots like a pro when situation demands it.

Ilona debuted as Łódź tour guide during recent Łódź Ugly Beauty minibus tour of eponymous Łódź sights. She was fantastically engaging, incredibly knowledgeable and bowled us over with her indestructible effervescence.

I am writing all this for a reason. After the tour had ended, it became very clear that it is only a matter of time before Ilona becomes a legend in her own lifetime, and when this happens, I will want to be able to remind all of you that I had my share in launching her into the orbit.

And finally.
Inevitably, Ilona can also come across as overbearing and opinionated, borderline pontifical. Some find her exhausting and draining, not to mention hyperactive. The human jar of marmite if ever there was one.  It is quirkily fitting then that Łódź itself is often seen as a marmite town. Love it or hate it, take it or leave it, but before you decide to leave it, please allow Ilona to show you around. She might just change your mind.

Krzysztof, Elvis, Amelia and Zuzanna

Amelia on Elvis

Amelia on Elvis

Emotional goodbye

Possibly Pyza and possibly Cudaczek

Daddy goat

After several failed attempts to add Ośrodek Jeździecki Skaratki (Skaratki Riding Centre) to Trip Advisor, I’ve settled for leaving my review here. Your loss, Trip Advisor.

Skaratki, pronounced Skaratki, is a village in Central Poland, about 40 miles from Łódź, pronounced Woodge, the second largest city in Poland.

Skaratki Riding Centre offers the best introduction to horse riding you could ever wish for. Ever.  It is also a holiday destination so friendly and so laid back, you will be tempted to pinch yourself every now and again to check whether all this is for real.

By day two, you will feel as if you’d travelled back in time to an era when people focused on simple things in life and found pleasure and contentment in nature, home-made food and having meaningful conversations with animals.

Five dogs of no particular breed play an important role in everything that goes on. So do five goats, including Shirley who has secured exclusive rights for the supply of milk to the Centre. A special mention goes to my favourite, Theodore the black cat, rumoured to have killed a hare a couple of weeks prior to our arrival.

The place is run by Zuzanna and Krzysztof, a youthful pair whose boundless energy, hard work and passion for everything they do defy their chronological age.

Skaratki is a fairly new enterprise for Zuzanna and Krzysztof who moved here from Łódź and built the horse riding facility from scratch four years ago. Not a day goes by without them discussing bold plans for further expansion and improvement.

My 15-year old daughter Amelia had always fancied having a proper go at horse riding, and a few months ago she teased out a firm promise from me, and so here we were on a Ryanair flight, from Stansted to Łódź on the first Sunday of summer half term 2018.

In Skaratki Amelia had 2 one hour riding lessons a day. On Monday she got off to what seemed to me a slow and uninspiring start and after two days of watching her being led on a long rein around a small circle in the training enclosure, I was beginning to lose faith. However Krzysztof, her main instructor, himself a professional rider who had recently returned to competitive level after several years’ break, sounded pleased with Amelia’s progress.

Three days into steady circling in the sand came the first breakthrough. Amelia swapped horses and was allowed to trot the perimeter of the enclosure by herself for the first time. No matter how hard she tried, and she did not try hard at all, she could not wipe a permanent proud grin off her face. What was more endearing still, was an authentic happiness with which Krzysztof and Zuzanna witnessed Amelia, on Elvis the horse, reach each new skill level.

Another two days later, Zuzanna suggested that Amelia could try turning with the horse, to spice up her riding route a little.  Amelia and Elvis raised to the challenge with enviable elegance and grace. Cheshire Cat could take lessons from Amelia now.

Krzysztof watched bemused, Zuzanna came onto the pitch to record Amelia’s latest achievements. What was noticeable at every step, was their deeply personal involvement in their new student’s progress. They celebrated every well executed turn with Amelia, and skilfully encouraged her to push herself to what they recognised as her limit each day. This in turn had an amazing effect on Amelia. It gave her a new confidence and poise I had never seen in her before. I really cannot praise their dedication and professionalism enough, words fail me, and that is a new thing for me.

What is no doubt a bonus to non-Polish speakers among their clients is the fact that Zuzanna had spent the first twenty or so years of her career as an English teacher and translator.

The house offers three guest rooms, each room sleeps 2 or 3 people. The rooms are not en-suite, but if that is an issue for you, you should stop reading now, Skaratki is not for you.

The owners have a couple of bicycles which they will happily lend to you at no extra cost. Country roads starting from the front gates offer hours of cycling heaven among fields of rye, oats and barley.

Talking of cost, we agreed a very reasonably priced package of accommodation, 2 horse riding lessons a day and full board, i.e. three home-made meals a day.

Meals are hearty and simple. You will not go hungry, but if you are not satisfied with scrambled eggs and a selection of cold meats, freshly made goat cheese and tomato salad for breakfast, chicken or pork with rice or potatoes and vegetables, or spaghetti bolognese for lunch (main meal of the day in Poland, served around 2-3pm) and light supper, then please do not come to Skaratki, it really is not for you.

Zuzanna prepares all the meals herself. She caters for vegetarians too. How she finds the time, what with milking the goats, feeding the horses and the dogs, busy teaching timetable and inevitable admin, I have no idea.

Zuzanna’s motto, which she repeats several times a day, and which goes a long way to explaining how she holds it all together with such ease, is a Polish phrase ‘damy radę’, which translates as a cross between ‘we’ll manage’ and ‘it will work out’. It does the trick. She manages perfectly and it all works out beautifully.

Thank you, Zuzanna and Krzysztof! We will be back.