In Polish.Or Ghent. Or Gent or Gand or Gante in Spanish. I prefer the Polish version because it sounds much more romantic. I first went to Belgium on a school trip when I was 13. Unfortunately not to beautiful Ghent. It was a strange place to take a very varied group of girls as we […]Read Post ›
Do you recognise these words? Aqua Laureth sulphate.? Limanol? Are you a chemist? If not, then you are indeed a reader. Reading the back of the shampoo and conditioner bottles, for lack of any other reading matter, or the label on the marmalade jar has always made my family think I am quite eccentric – […]Read Post ›
for EMO This is one of my favourite photos of me. I was about 7 or eight, 1961 or 2, and staying with friends of my mother in a little village outside Brecon, in Wales. She would leave me there for weekends and holidays, because she was a working mother, recently separated from my father, […]Read Post ›
I wrote this in response to someone’s little rant on Facebook. They had all my sympathy as there’s nothing worse than going to a concert of a play or a film and being distracted by sweets and popcorn and talking and in one case in my experience a couple trying to make love next to […]Read Post ›
I’m on my way to the Tate Modern at the moment and I’m really looking forward to it. I’m on the train to Paddington and just thinking about all the exhibitions I have really wanted to see and actually made the effort to go to the gallery, yet did not manage to see them. Many years […]Read Post ›
My mother,Grażyna Łomnicka, never spoke about the war or Siberia at all until one day her doctor persuaded her to tell him why she wouldn’t let her throat be examined. She had had problems for years with swallowing and absolutely refused to have anything done about it. One Sunday, however, she came to lunch as […]Read Post ›
Reading List Suitable literature for young ladies 1964 – 1971 Form III Mrs Nurse: 39 Steps; The Tempest Lower IV Miss Crowfoot: Great Expectations; Twelfth Night; Hornblower Upper IV M M Francis: The Rape of the Lock; Northanger Abbey Lower V […]Read Post ›
This is one of my favourite photos, for many reasons. We’re having a picnic. As you can see my mouth is full of bread and cheese. You can’t thank goodness see the bread and cheese but I can remember it well. Not quite a Proustian moment but getting there. I am wearing my first ever […]Read Post ›
I used to work in a school called Ealing Green. It was closing down for many reasons, but possibly mainly because it was a school for boys and single sex schools were rapidly going out of fashion. I had been there for almost seven years – first on general supply ( the only supply teacher […]Read Post ›
Life Through Basia's Eyes 