This is my grandfather as I never knew him. He was born in 1878 and died during the Second World War, a captive in Siberia. His story is a very interesting one, but one which I shall leave for another day. Today I was thinking about him as I was wrapping parcels to send […]Read Post ›
I was about eight I think when I did my first paid work, not counting selling my grandmother’s cigarettes to her friends when they came e for a gossip for a penny each. That money went into my money box and there it stayed as I had absolutely nothing to spend it on. But when […]Read Post ›
Babysitting was obviously not going to be a career, so I needed to think again. After the exams I was finally free. Living at home with my mother and stepfather in South Kensington but still needing cash. So I went to work. I joined an agency and was sent out to the Folio Society. Somewhere […]Read Post ›
I left school having taken my A levels just before I was eighteen. I spent my eighteenth birthday babysitting for a friend of my mother’s who desperately needed my help and left me to care for her one year old and five year old. I couldn’t have been less interested and it was only the […]Read Post ›
I don’t usually use bad language and never write it but sometimes for artistic integrity you have to indicate what was said. A true story: A couple of weeks ago I decided to wait for a bus home as I had already walked about ten kilometres that day, and thought I could do with a […]Read Post ›
For Annie – Lola Valerie Stein, and anyone who has done the real thing! https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/barbara-korzeniowska2 Dear Friends and Supporters, This is going to be a surprise to many of you, and possibly a big shock to my system, because I have decided to challenge myself to climb Mount Kilimanjaro – virtually of course – in […]Read Post ›
Today I am on safari. In my kitchen. I am wearing khaki and trying to blend in with my environment. I stand very still and look out of my kitchen window which looks out onto my garden. it is tiny – 22 feet by 12, north facing and very dark – but what a riot of colour. Cyclamen, […]Read Post ›
About ten years ago – actually almost exactly ten years ago, my husband and I went to Damascus for the weekend. A strange thing to do, I suppose, as it is quite far away – normally we try to go to Paris for our anniversary weekend, but that year we wanted to do something different. […]Read Post ›
This is a story which my son discovered about some of his paternal ancestors. I have translated it from a newspaper article which I attach below. And a link to a a map. At the beginning of the nineteenth century in the centre of the present park stood a hunting lodge belonging to the Doschot […]Read Post ›
At home, trying to keep busy and not think about the reasons for being at home and trying to keep busy. A few days ago this piece of embroidery fell out of its ancient plastic bag in the cupboard where I had been hoarding it since we moved in in 1986, and demanded to be […]Read Post ›
Life Through Basia's Eyes 