No. Not the band but the area of London. Walthamstow. The Far Eastern end of the Victoria Line. Not difficult to get to from where I live. Ealing. The most western end of the Central Line. But a long way nevertheless. I went in order to make the typical Polish Londoner’s pilgrimage to the William […]Read Post ›
Packing away my grandmother’s spectacles I came across this piece of embroidery. My father had obviously packed away her things when she died and gave them to me many years later. But I never really looked closely until now. I remember this cushion and I always knew she had embroidered it. There were some others […]Read Post ›
For the Mhinisteir’s wife Today is the sixth of December. For me the real beginning of the Christmas season. This was the day when good children were given a little present and naughty children a birch rod. One year my mother gave me a rod. It was very small and gilded. Very pretty. But a […]Read Post ›
We walked from the bus station to our apartment up the hill. We had been warned by the tourist information lady that a taxi would take a very long route because of the one way system, so up the hill we trudged. We found the street. But not the house. I’d chosen to stay here […]Read Post ›
These days going abroad should be easy. But the pandemic has for me at least put back all the stress possible into going abroad, what with all the paperwork, testing etc etc. Having sorted all that out, the rest of the stress that I suffered last week was largely my own fault. Did I check […]Read Post ›
George Sand has always been a very romantic figure in my imagination. Ever since I was at my boarding school in Ealing, when Mother Mary Dominic swore me to secrecy not to let the other nuns know that I knew, she divulged that Chopin’s lover, that very wicked woman, had actually been a pupil at […]Read Post ›
Last Tuesday I woke up thinking how uneventful my life has become. I had my breakfast, did a little light housework – very light indeed to be honest- and searched for my book. Never got round to reading it because my husband decided that his detached retina had reattached itself sufficiently for us to risk […]Read Post ›
The above photo is all the women in the family in about 1999. the end of the last century. It is one of my favourite photos taken in my mother’s flat. My mother’s little sister was 63 then – today Auntie Alice would have been 85. 85!!! I find it really hard to imagine. Here […]Read Post ›
I was walking through this park on Monday with my daughter who lives nearby and was reminded of an occasion in 1976 when I first visited the museum. I had just graduated from university and was wondering what to do with my life. I had decided on a gap year, but I had to survive […]Read Post ›
This is the book I would like to have written. ST and I have so much in common. Not everyhing of course. She is much, much cleverer than me and much more knowledgeable – and much wittier, to boot. But – we both like buses, and talking to strangers, and looking out of the window, […]Read Post ›
Life Through Basia's Eyes 