Sunday in Kraków was cold. The hotel (Hotel 32) breakfast room was strangely laid out and we felt we had to keep on running backwards and forwards to get everything we needed, but the food itself wasn’t bad. we had lunch to go to anyway as we were going to meet a friend from my […]Read Post ›
A story of great joy This photograph is of a true heroine – she celebrated her 95th birthday a couple of weeks ago – I am sure this is something she certainly didn’t expect to do 75 years ago when the second world war ended. About ten years ago she gave me a typescript to […]Read Post ›
D is for Dominie, Scottish for master Also for Dashing – but not for Disaster O is for Order, Overwhelmingly Organised Every plan neatly and beautifully realised M is for Medicine when I’ve got a pain And Merriment and Marley and Music again I is for Eye-catching – you’ve seen all the […]Read Post ›
for MH Mr J storms into my class room and yells, “Sit down everyone! Why are you all out of your seats?” Mrs K thinks – if you hadn’t moved me to the room opposite your office you wouldn’t be so upset now! Mrs K draws herself up to her full five feet one and […]Read Post ›
March 1974. When I was invited to go for a weekend to Benidorm by my Uncle Dick – it was a works outing – I jumped at the chance. His wife, my Aunt Alice, his sister -in- law, my mother, and her husband Zbyszek, were coming too. This was going to be my first holiday […]Read Post ›
This beautiful watercolour by Eric Ravilious, painted in 1938, 39 X 52 cm actual size, is of Aldeburgh, Suffolk, where I spent many happy weekends in the 70s and 80s. I came across this picture just now in an exhibition catalogue from 2004, ant thought it captured the very essence of Aldeburgh, not as […]Read Post ›
It was the end of May 1975. I had come back early from my year abroad in Spain – specifically in order to vote to join Europe in the referendum of that year. And what a difference to all our lives that vote made. I came back at the end of May, the vote was […]Read Post ›
This must be one of the ugliest roads in London yet it harbours some of the most beautiful artists’ studios in the world. When I was born in 1953 my parents lived at no 89 for a while. This was not a beautiful house but a lodging place for displaced Poles. Lots of them […]Read Post ›
For JR Marguerite was the Diana to my Anne of Green Gables – many were the glasses of “raspberry cordial” that we shared, many potatoes peeled and eaten, many world problems discussed and solved, many evenings spent together, many days out, and in; generally, someone I relied on to be there when I needed her […]Read Post ›
When I was young, very young, my father always said that England was the only country in the world where begging is forbidden because it is unnecessary. Is that still true? ********************************************************************************* ….He walked past the beggar sitting at the top of the stairs and a few metres later suddenly turned back. The station was […]Read Post ›
Life Through Basia's Eyes 