Today is the tenth anniversary of my father’s death. This photo was taken in 1982. He was a sprightly 63. Kasia was one and a bit. I am showing you this photo because it brings back so many memories. We were living in the flat above my godfather’s accountancy office which he rented out to […]Read Post ›
I was in West Kensington the other day and suddenly I was five again and going to school for the first time. Actually, maybe not the first day, as the routine had been established. I was holding my grandmother’s hand. We would play word games on the way. I must have been able to read, […]Read Post ›
I have a lot of antique jewellery left over from when my mother tried her hand at being an antique dealer, and ran a little stall in the vintage market Antiquarius in the Kings Road in Chelsea. That was a very exciting and beautiful place and I loved going there to help. There was also […]Read Post ›
We came to Poland a week ago in order to sort out my mother in law’s funeral – she died nine days ago quite suddenly but peacefully in her sleep – originally we were just coming to visit her, but sadly she beat us to it. But this post isn’t going to be about her, […]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 ›
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 ›
My grandmother, Janina Wysoka, nee Kirschinger, in 1917 just before she got married. She was born in 1896 and died in 1978 just before I got married. Born in Bratislava; brought up in Vienna. Spent twenty years in Lwow, then Siberia and the long journey to freedom through Iran, Palestine and finally England in 1947. […]Read Post ›
For IR There is no more powerful creature than a baby. Which adult has ever managed to say with absolute conviction, “I have changed people’s lives for the better”? Yet every baby does this in some sort of way. A few days ago I was at work, at school, unable to contain my excitement about […]Read Post ›
Not so my mother’s mother, of whom I began to be aware about the time when I was still at infant school. She too was plump. Impressively so. And shades of dark beauty still hung in her black eyes and her dyed hair. One day she appeared at the school gate with a large […]Read Post ›
Life Through Basia's Eyes 