First broadcast on Ex-Pat Radio, Radio Alfa, Krakow, 25th November 2007
Like most of us, I don’t really know what ‘alcoholism’ is. Although we use and abuse the words alcoholic, alcoholism, and alcohol particularly, I have a limited knowledge of what the words mean exactly. And yet I do have a vested interest in the subject, for my father was an alcoholic. He died two years ago, of a heart attack, his system wracked by years of alcohol abuse.
Like many alcoholics, my dad left the family home - soon after the birth of his two sons, finding the parental responsibility too much on top of the traumas that had scarred both his childhood and now his adulthood. In the language of the early 1970’s, he dropped out. He lived for the next thirty years in a thirty-storey tower block in the centre of a large English city: the concrete jungle, he called it. The tower blocks of post-war England were once shiny, new and full of hope. But the cracks soon began to appear, the concrete developed concrete cancer and naïve optimism was replaced by premature aging and cynicism. And thus he lived a perfect existence in his hole in the ground in the sky.
It was the 1980’s and England was booming: in the champagne bars of London, money men pissed away centuries of industry while Margaret Thatcher talked of ‘the trickle-down effect’. But, in the steel and coal-towns of England, all I saw were broken families from the once-proud communities and societies which Thatcher said didn’t exist. A self-fulfilling prophecy if ever there was one.
I sometimes wonder if a man’s life is just one big self-fulfilling prophecy. Even without the responsibilities that most other men seem desperate to have (a family, a job), my father continued to drink for the next thirty years. And each visit I made to him saw him get a little older, a little greyer, a little smaller, in every way. He once repeated to me the oft-quoted maxim that ‘For years you take from the bottle, and then one day the bottle starts taking from you.’ In my father’s case, I couldn’t say when that tuning point came, as it must, for any heavy drinker, eventually. But knowing him as I did, probably the bottle started taking from him the very first time he tasted, as he called it, ‘my lord alcohol’. Ten, twelve, fifteen years of age? Like many an alcoholic, he was doomed from the first drink. Deep childhood traumas combined with a weakness of spirit crippled him, tying one hand behind his back, but leaving his drinking arm free.
We think it’s easy to spot an alcoholic, certainly the more pathetic cases. Here, in Krakow, grey shambling men splutter and argue with cronies on street corners or collapse - bodies swimming in cheap, strong booze - on park benches, to sleep it off before the next round of self-mutilation can begin. Sure, they’re the chronics who remember only two things: where their bed is and where to get the cheapest, strongest hooch. But they weren’t born like that, stinking of booze in their mother’s womb. And there are, of course, many shades of alcoholism, many types of alcoholic and many ways to use and abuse alcohol. I do not have an alcohol problem, at least not in comparison to anyone honest enough to stand up and say in front of other people: ‘My name is John Marshall and I am an alcoholic’, as my father, like millions like him around the world, do in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. However, at 40 years of age, I’m finally beginning to learn something about my life and my past experiences. I know now that alcohol has, on occasion, helped damage both my relationships and my self of self-worth. But, whether through hard work, chance or the grace of God, I know I shall never follow in my father’s footsteps. I once spent a month working with an American actor and recovering alcoholic. I asked him what he thought of my drinking habits, of my youthful excesses and partying of that time. ‘Certainly not alcoholism’, he replied. ‘But possibly a foreshadowing’.
A foreshadowing. Is a shadow a sign of something that already exists or rather a warning of what may be? I could, if I wanted, let an alcohol dependence happen, let it creep up on me. Especially in this society, especially in Krakow. Not a shambling drunkenness, of course, but an over-dependence on the social lubrication that is alcohol. Many people’s social lives revolve around the consumption of alcohol and, through legalisation and taxation, governments encourage this. Most people who drink, I am sure, would like to cut back, just a little.
But then I remember my father’s face when my visit coincided with his government benefit money: ‘Better to live like a king for a day, John’, he would say, toasting my health, ‘than a pauper for a fortnight!’ He would then break into a verse of two of his favourite song, ‘Giro Calypso’, penned himself specially for the fortnightly occasion and I would make my excuses and leave him in a pub with a fifty-foot bar while the going and his legendary humour were good, not wishing to witness the three-day binges, Dantesque hell-holes, outbursts and recriminations, mostly against himself, which would usually follow.
The last time I saw my father was just after his triple-heart bypass, a couple of years before he died, having ignored the doctor’s pleas to quit drinking and smoking. I decided never to see him again. After thirty years of drink, I no longer recognised him. A greyness lay heavily about him, like a fog, malevolent, cruel, like a cancer oozing out of his dying body. His eyes were gone, but, most distressingly, so had the mind. There was nothing of any value left: the zany English humour, the joy of simply being alive, the good-hearted mockery of those who daily confine themselves in suits, commuter trains or factories, all was gone. The bottles had finally drunk their fill of him and tossed him aside. He was just one more grey man, old before his time, walking alone on the streets of Birmingham, afraid of his own shadow and everyone else’s.
In truth, I knew and still know little of my father’s existence after he left the family home. He ran from anyone who may have been able to help or comfort him, that much is clear: his mother, his brothers and sisters as well as, later, his own wife and children, all of whom reminded him in some way of the pain and guilt he had experienced as a child and sought to blot out with alcohol and a self-imposed exile from humanity. However, there was one group he welcomed with open arms: a family whose members knew each other only as ‘Lincoln John’, ‘London Barry’ or ‘Birmingham Mary’. Alcoholics Anonymous was and is a lifeline for millions like my father. There, they ask no questions. Why should they? All the stories end in ‘rock bottom’ and, anyway, they know more than most what liars alcohol has makes of us. Instead, it’s enough just to be able to walk in sober, stand up and say, perhaps for the first time, ‘My name is John and I am an alcoholic’.
Alcoholic or not, we each of us, somewhere, have pain or shame which we are holding tight within or perhaps denying even exists. But once this truth, this hurt, is faced, openly and without self-deception or condemnation, we begin the healing process. Immediately, we feel a flicker and a promise of hope. Something tells us that we are not alone, there are others with the same hurt and we know, in the depths of our spirits, that we will never be alone again.
© John Marshall 2007
Sunday 25 November 2007
RFID (microchip) technology
First broadcast on Ex-Pat Radio, Krakow, September 2007
I shall be giving out a few web addresses at the end of this article, so get a pen and paper ready.
Did you know that if you buy a retail product from a large company such as a national supermarket chain, as well as the product, you might also be taking home with you an electronic tag, called a RFID (or radio frequency identification) chip? An RFID is a tiny microchip, stamped onto an increasing number of consumer products at the time of manufacture. It is designed to communicate its exact location to the manufacturer and retailer. For instance, products as diverse as television sets, toothpaste and boxer shorts are now routinely tracked by manufacturers and retailers for logistical, stocktaking and marketing purposes. How common is it? Well, for example, Wal-mart, the largest retailer in the world is encouraging its 20,000 suppliers to incorporate RFID chips into their products at the time of manufacture. Whilst only 600 (or 3%) of these have chosen – or can afford – to do this, there will, no doubt, come a time when Wal-Mart refuses to trade with suppliers who do not put chips onto their products. No chip, no deal.
Well, you know, I’m no businessman and, to be honest, if big business really wants to minutely monitor and track its products from production line to cash till, then fine, whatever makes them happy. Trouble is, that’s just the start of it. Gillette, for example, recently made use of RFID technology in a very un-customer-friendly way. A couple of years ago, in a Tesco supermarket in Cambridge, England, a small, hidden camera was placed opposite the shelf with the Gillette razors. Every time someone picked up a pack, the chip sent a message to the camera which then took a photo of the unassuming shopper. Cameras by the checkout tills then took a photo of each customer in the checkout queue. If a person on the first photo (picking up the razors) didn’t appear on a second photo (paying for razors) by the time he or she left the shop, an alarm was raised and the shopper (or, possibly, thief) apprehended. A pretty clever was of dealing with shoplifters, but do you really want to be photographed every time you take something off a supermarket shelf and treated as a potential thief every time you go shopping?
What is not so well known by the general public is that every time we take home an RFID-chipped product, the chip is still capable of transmitting its location to any interested parties with the necessary receiving equipment. Manufacturers and retailers say that, as there is no commercial value in such longer-term tracking, they would not be interested in putting into place the necessary huge and expensive network of radio receivers. But they would say that, wouldn’t they? And, anyway, how would you like your underwear to be keeping the whole world updated on your movements?
The plain fact is that the technology exists for every single item in the world to be given its own unique item code. Whereas, as present, a particular brand e.g. a tube of Gillette’s 100ml red and blue striped toothpaste, has its own bar code, there are plans to identify each and every single manufactured item with its own unique item code – a different number scanned and tracked for every single tube of toothpaste, pair of socks, DVD or morning-after pill. Now perhaps I’m missing something here but why exactly should a retailer (or anyone else for that matter) wish to be updated minute-by-minute with the location of each particular item unless it foresees a near-future where the product tracking extends beyond the cashdesk, into our car boots and, from there, into our sitting-rooms, kitchens and bathrooms.
To be fair, it is suggested that such technology would enable faulty, or even dangerous goods, to be more easily traced and recalled. Product recalls would no longer be hit-and-miss affairs using full-page scary newspaper ads. Instead, retailers would send messages to the chips on faulty products. What’s that strange beeping sound coming from the fridge? It’s that jar of guacamole dip you bought yesterday, squeaking to be sent back to the Walmart mothership for a bit of TLC. Your food and drink reporting its location and current status back to head office? No problem! Just talk to the Eastman Kodak Company who have filed two patents for the development of ingestible and digestible RFID chips. The idea here is that chips would be put into medicines which, when swallowed, would transmit data about the body’s interaction with the drug. In principle, perhaps a good idea with a possible place in future healthcare. But potentially, a very invasive activity capable of great misuse.
Some people have suggested that pill bottles in medicine cabinets be tagged with RFID devices to allow doctors to remotely monitor patient compliance with prescriptions. All very well, but what if you don’t quote comply unquote? Perhaps granny forgets to take her pills or decides she doesn’t want them this week. Will the doctor, semi-sponsored by multinational drug companies and with his all-seeing electronic RFID eye, decide that granny must take her pills or else … ?
The more you look into radio-frequency technology, the more it seems to be (or soon will be) all around us. For example, the European Central Bank is quietly working to embed RFID tags in the fibers of Euro banknotes. The tag would allow money to carry its own history by recording information about where it has been, thus giving governments and law enforcement agencies a means to literally "follow the money" in every transaction. If and when RFID devices are embedded in banknotes, the anonymity that cash affords in consumer transactions will be eliminated. Of course, the standard defence to such intrusions into private life is “If you’re not a criminal, you’ve nothing to hide.” To this, I have two standard responses. The first is that, quite simply, I do not wish the state (and, increasingly, private business) to intrude any more than is absolutely necessary in my life. You know, not so very long ago, it was considered bad manners to request or to disclose details of one’s private life. Private time and a private life were dearly valued and jealously guarded. Not so now, of course, in the age of the internet and blogosphere. The world changes and, at 40 years old, I’m not that old that I’m not a part of the online revolution. But neither do I consider it strange or unhealthy not to want to share all my private details with the world, especially the world’s governments.
My second response to “Only criminals need fear the state” is that not all of us agree to what should and should not be criminal activities. In an age when western governments seem intent on prying ever-closer into our lifestyles and practices, what is legal today becomes suspect tomorrow and illegal next week. Silent, unnoticed, but ever-watchful technologies like CCTV cameras and, shortly perhaps, RFID chips are pushing us steadily backwards, backs against the walls, the notion of – and need for - private space threatening shortly to become old-fashioned and quaint. Further down the line, a private life may come to be regarded as bizarre or even unhealthy. Oh, I know it’s starting to sound all very Orwellian: Big Brother, Thought Police and all that. And I’ve have to agree with you, were it not for the fact that around 2,000 people have been implanted with RDIF chips. That’s right: microchips implanted inside human bodies. It sounds like the stuff of science fiction, doesn’t it? But welcome to the future. Human implants (as they’re called in the trade) are not science fiction, but reality, today, 14th October 2007. Around 2000 people in the world have already chosen to have a microchip about the size of two grains of rice implanted in their bodies. The question is why do they now see themselves as nothing more than a product, an oven-ready chicken for example, to be chipped, scanned and identified by anyone with the technology, money or right connections?
Well, maybe you’ve heard about Baja Beach nightclub in Barcelona, amongst others, that allows you to queue-jump by brushing your microchip-implanted shoulder against an electronic scanner, thereby removing the need to show ID or to pay cash for drinks. By now, you’re probably expecting me to be against this. However, as a lot of people go to nightclubs in search of casual sex, then I’d much rather these Latin morons procreate with each other and leave those of us with more respect for our bodies alone.
More seriously is the issue of personal health and safety. At the moment, one of the biggest current ‘selling points’ of the RFID chip is that, in case of accident or emergency, the already 2,000 or so implanted people are able to be scanned by doctors and nurses who may then view their medical details on an internet database. For this, of course, both patient and hospital must pay subscriptions to the chip’s manufacturer, VeriChip Corporation. Many hospitals in the USA have already signed up to this database and are operating in this manner right now. VeriChip Corporation says that people implanted with microchips stand a better chance of receiving more timely and appropriate healthcare, saving both lives and, for the hospitals and doctors’ practices, time and money. On the face of it, human microchips would thus seem to be a great aid to effective healthcare, in the same way that electronically-tagging your newborn child or aged parent in a rest home would seem to improve personal security. (Again, these are realities right now). But immediately the thought arises in my mind: might there come a time when we will only be given emergency medical treatment, access to natal and childcare units, residential homes etc. on condition that we have been implanted with a microchip or have agreed to put an electronic band around our baby’s wrist? To those of you who find such a reality manifestly totalitarian, well, good: you are entitled to your opinion. It is your right to disagree. For now. But what about tomorrow? And next year? When the state propaganda tells us that we have to have microchip implants because the health services are overstretched and under-funded. Would it be wrong to argue? Would you, in fact, be given the choice? Would you, good and lawful citizen that you are, suddenly find yourself questioning the role and rightful powers of the state, harbouring thoughts of mental and civil disobedience in an effort to maintain your privacy and your humanity? For remember, when only criminals have something to fear, it is as easy as the stroke of a president’s pen to make us all criminals.
Next week, I shall be continuing this article on the erosion of civil liberties and the steady incursion of the state into our day-to-day affairs. In the meantime, if you would like to know more about RFID technology or human microchip implants, you can go to the following websites …
http://www.nocards.org/ (look for the link to RFID on the left)
www.implantedmicrochip.com
www.verichipcorp.com
… or search the internet for ‘RFID’ or ‘microchip implant’, for example, on Wikipedia. You can also write to me, John Marshall, at jpm1234@hotmail.com and read my blog at http://krakowjohn.blogspot.com/.
I shall be giving out a few web addresses at the end of this article, so get a pen and paper ready.
Did you know that if you buy a retail product from a large company such as a national supermarket chain, as well as the product, you might also be taking home with you an electronic tag, called a RFID (or radio frequency identification) chip? An RFID is a tiny microchip, stamped onto an increasing number of consumer products at the time of manufacture. It is designed to communicate its exact location to the manufacturer and retailer. For instance, products as diverse as television sets, toothpaste and boxer shorts are now routinely tracked by manufacturers and retailers for logistical, stocktaking and marketing purposes. How common is it? Well, for example, Wal-mart, the largest retailer in the world is encouraging its 20,000 suppliers to incorporate RFID chips into their products at the time of manufacture. Whilst only 600 (or 3%) of these have chosen – or can afford – to do this, there will, no doubt, come a time when Wal-Mart refuses to trade with suppliers who do not put chips onto their products. No chip, no deal.
Well, you know, I’m no businessman and, to be honest, if big business really wants to minutely monitor and track its products from production line to cash till, then fine, whatever makes them happy. Trouble is, that’s just the start of it. Gillette, for example, recently made use of RFID technology in a very un-customer-friendly way. A couple of years ago, in a Tesco supermarket in Cambridge, England, a small, hidden camera was placed opposite the shelf with the Gillette razors. Every time someone picked up a pack, the chip sent a message to the camera which then took a photo of the unassuming shopper. Cameras by the checkout tills then took a photo of each customer in the checkout queue. If a person on the first photo (picking up the razors) didn’t appear on a second photo (paying for razors) by the time he or she left the shop, an alarm was raised and the shopper (or, possibly, thief) apprehended. A pretty clever was of dealing with shoplifters, but do you really want to be photographed every time you take something off a supermarket shelf and treated as a potential thief every time you go shopping?
What is not so well known by the general public is that every time we take home an RFID-chipped product, the chip is still capable of transmitting its location to any interested parties with the necessary receiving equipment. Manufacturers and retailers say that, as there is no commercial value in such longer-term tracking, they would not be interested in putting into place the necessary huge and expensive network of radio receivers. But they would say that, wouldn’t they? And, anyway, how would you like your underwear to be keeping the whole world updated on your movements?
The plain fact is that the technology exists for every single item in the world to be given its own unique item code. Whereas, as present, a particular brand e.g. a tube of Gillette’s 100ml red and blue striped toothpaste, has its own bar code, there are plans to identify each and every single manufactured item with its own unique item code – a different number scanned and tracked for every single tube of toothpaste, pair of socks, DVD or morning-after pill. Now perhaps I’m missing something here but why exactly should a retailer (or anyone else for that matter) wish to be updated minute-by-minute with the location of each particular item unless it foresees a near-future where the product tracking extends beyond the cashdesk, into our car boots and, from there, into our sitting-rooms, kitchens and bathrooms.
To be fair, it is suggested that such technology would enable faulty, or even dangerous goods, to be more easily traced and recalled. Product recalls would no longer be hit-and-miss affairs using full-page scary newspaper ads. Instead, retailers would send messages to the chips on faulty products. What’s that strange beeping sound coming from the fridge? It’s that jar of guacamole dip you bought yesterday, squeaking to be sent back to the Walmart mothership for a bit of TLC. Your food and drink reporting its location and current status back to head office? No problem! Just talk to the Eastman Kodak Company who have filed two patents for the development of ingestible and digestible RFID chips. The idea here is that chips would be put into medicines which, when swallowed, would transmit data about the body’s interaction with the drug. In principle, perhaps a good idea with a possible place in future healthcare. But potentially, a very invasive activity capable of great misuse.
Some people have suggested that pill bottles in medicine cabinets be tagged with RFID devices to allow doctors to remotely monitor patient compliance with prescriptions. All very well, but what if you don’t quote comply unquote? Perhaps granny forgets to take her pills or decides she doesn’t want them this week. Will the doctor, semi-sponsored by multinational drug companies and with his all-seeing electronic RFID eye, decide that granny must take her pills or else … ?
The more you look into radio-frequency technology, the more it seems to be (or soon will be) all around us. For example, the European Central Bank is quietly working to embed RFID tags in the fibers of Euro banknotes. The tag would allow money to carry its own history by recording information about where it has been, thus giving governments and law enforcement agencies a means to literally "follow the money" in every transaction. If and when RFID devices are embedded in banknotes, the anonymity that cash affords in consumer transactions will be eliminated. Of course, the standard defence to such intrusions into private life is “If you’re not a criminal, you’ve nothing to hide.” To this, I have two standard responses. The first is that, quite simply, I do not wish the state (and, increasingly, private business) to intrude any more than is absolutely necessary in my life. You know, not so very long ago, it was considered bad manners to request or to disclose details of one’s private life. Private time and a private life were dearly valued and jealously guarded. Not so now, of course, in the age of the internet and blogosphere. The world changes and, at 40 years old, I’m not that old that I’m not a part of the online revolution. But neither do I consider it strange or unhealthy not to want to share all my private details with the world, especially the world’s governments.
My second response to “Only criminals need fear the state” is that not all of us agree to what should and should not be criminal activities. In an age when western governments seem intent on prying ever-closer into our lifestyles and practices, what is legal today becomes suspect tomorrow and illegal next week. Silent, unnoticed, but ever-watchful technologies like CCTV cameras and, shortly perhaps, RFID chips are pushing us steadily backwards, backs against the walls, the notion of – and need for - private space threatening shortly to become old-fashioned and quaint. Further down the line, a private life may come to be regarded as bizarre or even unhealthy. Oh, I know it’s starting to sound all very Orwellian: Big Brother, Thought Police and all that. And I’ve have to agree with you, were it not for the fact that around 2,000 people have been implanted with RDIF chips. That’s right: microchips implanted inside human bodies. It sounds like the stuff of science fiction, doesn’t it? But welcome to the future. Human implants (as they’re called in the trade) are not science fiction, but reality, today, 14th October 2007. Around 2000 people in the world have already chosen to have a microchip about the size of two grains of rice implanted in their bodies. The question is why do they now see themselves as nothing more than a product, an oven-ready chicken for example, to be chipped, scanned and identified by anyone with the technology, money or right connections?
Well, maybe you’ve heard about Baja Beach nightclub in Barcelona, amongst others, that allows you to queue-jump by brushing your microchip-implanted shoulder against an electronic scanner, thereby removing the need to show ID or to pay cash for drinks. By now, you’re probably expecting me to be against this. However, as a lot of people go to nightclubs in search of casual sex, then I’d much rather these Latin morons procreate with each other and leave those of us with more respect for our bodies alone.
More seriously is the issue of personal health and safety. At the moment, one of the biggest current ‘selling points’ of the RFID chip is that, in case of accident or emergency, the already 2,000 or so implanted people are able to be scanned by doctors and nurses who may then view their medical details on an internet database. For this, of course, both patient and hospital must pay subscriptions to the chip’s manufacturer, VeriChip Corporation. Many hospitals in the USA have already signed up to this database and are operating in this manner right now. VeriChip Corporation says that people implanted with microchips stand a better chance of receiving more timely and appropriate healthcare, saving both lives and, for the hospitals and doctors’ practices, time and money. On the face of it, human microchips would thus seem to be a great aid to effective healthcare, in the same way that electronically-tagging your newborn child or aged parent in a rest home would seem to improve personal security. (Again, these are realities right now). But immediately the thought arises in my mind: might there come a time when we will only be given emergency medical treatment, access to natal and childcare units, residential homes etc. on condition that we have been implanted with a microchip or have agreed to put an electronic band around our baby’s wrist? To those of you who find such a reality manifestly totalitarian, well, good: you are entitled to your opinion. It is your right to disagree. For now. But what about tomorrow? And next year? When the state propaganda tells us that we have to have microchip implants because the health services are overstretched and under-funded. Would it be wrong to argue? Would you, in fact, be given the choice? Would you, good and lawful citizen that you are, suddenly find yourself questioning the role and rightful powers of the state, harbouring thoughts of mental and civil disobedience in an effort to maintain your privacy and your humanity? For remember, when only criminals have something to fear, it is as easy as the stroke of a president’s pen to make us all criminals.
Next week, I shall be continuing this article on the erosion of civil liberties and the steady incursion of the state into our day-to-day affairs. In the meantime, if you would like to know more about RFID technology or human microchip implants, you can go to the following websites …
http://www.nocards.org/ (look for the link to RFID on the left)
www.implantedmicrochip.com
www.verichipcorp.com
… or search the internet for ‘RFID’ or ‘microchip implant’, for example, on Wikipedia. You can also write to me, John Marshall, at jpm1234@hotmail.com and read my blog at http://krakowjohn.blogspot.com/.
Media Fear
First broadcast on Ex-Pat Radio, Krakow, August 2007
For as long as I can remember, the media has misused and overused the words ‘fear’ and ‘chaos’, usually in screaming headlines and usually unnecessarily, hyperbolically. And whilst I can only comment on the British media, I am pretty sure the situation is the same in other, principally Western, countries.
This predilection for extreme, scary words can partly be explained by the media’s apparent need to grab our attention, to excite and shock: as our blood pressure rises, so, it seems, does newspaper circulation. In Britain, at least, we are all used to such headlines as “Transport chaos as two inches of snow fall in a single day!” Now, whilst I freely admit that the combination of a little inclement weather and Britain’s inadequate transport system can indeed cause sudden problems, the use of the precise word chaos is nothing more than an over-worn cliché and we, the reader, can usually make up our own minds about the real meaning of the word chaos (the snow causing you to arrive at work an hour late, for example, as opposed to being plunged suddenly into a primeval state of disorder and inherent unpredictability). But then why do the media love this word so much? Is it merely because they can’t help sensationalising news stories or is it also because the word ‘chaos’ unsettles us, frightens us?
The second scary word beloved by the media is ‘fear’. Fear, it seems to me, is quite different from chaos in its effect upon the listener or reader. To be sure, the use of the word ‘fear’ is sometimes entirely appropriate to the article. But usually it is used with the sole intention of generating fear (or anxiety) itself: literal, physiological, emotional fear. Take another sample headline: “Fears continue to grow over the whereabouts of a missing teenager”, or this one: “A group of mountain-climbers are feared to have died last night” (in passing, we may note the media’s use of the abstract noun ‘fear’ as a verb, thus allowing its use in an ever-widening range of situations). Such anxiety-inducing headlines as these are everyday occurrences and we are passively complicit: we hand over our money, pick up a paper and spread the virus in pockets and briefcases or allow these disturbing words and emotions to be transmitted and broadcast onto our TVs and laptops.
And, in the end, are these ‘human interest’ stories in fact fearful? I don’t think they are. Yes, of course I am sorry that a young woman may have been abducted or that a party of mountain-climbers have perished several hundred or thousand miles away but I would argue that many such quote “news items” unquote are of little or no interest to the rest of us. Do you really wish to be notified of every distant abduction, house fire, murder and cot death in the country – or world, for that matter? Yes, knowledge is indeed power and in many ways the global village is a beneficial reality. We may choose to send a loving thought or donation to the disaster appeal fund but, be honest, more often, we don’t. Most of us, most of the time, simply allow a flow of sentiment to wash steadily over us, tut-tutting as we are led by the hand to the next apparently necessary piece of chaos or fear.
And even if we did wish to keep informed of every sad, tragic and fearful global occurrence, we simply don’t have the time or the attention-spans. The media is well aware of this: notice how they all seem to agree upon a certain story to be fed to us: hourly, daily, weekly, relentlessly.
The thing about ‘fear’ is, that like forest-fires and lies, it spreads quickly and easily. It has long been commonplace for fear to be inserted into what would otherwise be a much more mundane news story: for example “It is feared that several hospitals may close this year” et cetera. What’s wrong with using another, more expressive and accurate verb? “It is thought, believed, rumoured” etc. The answer, of course, is that wouldn’t be as sensational, not so … scary. Someone, somewhere, wants you to be afraid.
And yet it would seem that it’s not enough any more to be merely afraid. You have to be terrified. Yes, ‘terror’ is the new word, the new thing. Suddenly, terror is on everyone’s lips. For the media, for politicians and advertisers, fear is … sexy. Open your paper, turn on your TV, check the net: what do you see? ‘Terror!’ Of course, terror’s been around for quite a while. Terrorists. IRA terrorists, for example. Us Brits grew up with that, got used to it, even. And they were real enough, those terrorists. In Northern Ireland alone, there are thousands of gravestones, ruined lives and families to testify to the reality of the terrorist’s bullet and bomb. But the trouble with terrorists is that they can be beaten or negotiated with. The terrorists, at some point, stop being terrorists: they die, grow old, renounce violence or become politicians. History shows that there is always an end to terrorism. But the need for terror - in some minds, at least - is never-ending. The vacuum in our minds must be filled – by those in power, by those with power, by those who want - and are determined – to keep their power.
‘The War On Terror’. Every day for the past four or five years, we have heard about the war on terror – terror which is not an army, not flesh and blood, but ‘terror’, grammatically, an abstract noun. Like stupidity or deceit. Soldiers and civilians die every day. And what killed them? According to your government, according to your media, terror: an undefined, unknowable, unbeatable force. You see, as soon as you defeat terror here, terror pops up over there! And how do you know? Because you’re told, you’re told to know, by the media – sorry, by the government.
There is real fighting and real bloodshed every hour of the day: in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in a dozen other ‘terror-filled places’ of the world. In fact, the war on terror begins anew every morning: at every breakfast table, every sitting-room and every tube-train and tram in the land. It’s a mighty battle, to be sure. The Long War. It’s a battle for hearts and minds, principally minds – mine and yours. Every time you read, and accept without questioning, the words chaos, fear, terror, the war on terror, you unconsciously help strengthen the concept, and a concept, if believed in by enough people for a long enough time, becomes and stays a reality.
Terror is a state of mind. Choose your own state of mind. Do not believe in terror and certainly do not believe in the thing called the war on terror. These things simply do not – cannot – exist, unless you, by your thoughts, words and actions, choose to give them life. Remember what the man said? “The revolution will not be televised”. The revolution, the battleground, is in our heads, in our minds, and not, ultimately, on the streets on Basra and Baghdad. What we all believe to be true, what we all believe to be true and necessary things in this world, these beliefs, opinions and attitudes are where the real battle takes place. It began the day you first opened your eyes all those years ago, is influenced by every thought, word and deed and will continue, as long as you are capable of free and independent thought.
In George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, an elite member of the ruling totalitarian party sets out the desired mentality of the everyday citizen …
Quote. ‘It is necessary that the Party member be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation and orgiastic triumph. In other words it is necessary that he should have the mentality appropriate to a state of war. It does not matter whether the war is actually happening and, since no decisive victory is possible, it does not matter whether the war is going well or badly. All that is needed is that a state of war should exist.’ Unquote.
In 1984, there exists a state of perpetual, but carefully-managed and orchestrated warfare between three global power blocs. Such a situation is uncomfortably close to that of ‘The Long War’, George Bush’s short-lived re-classification of the war on terror, a war which cannot be won either by grammatical definition (terror being an abstract noun) or because, in fact, it is not in the interests of a small yet hugely powerful section of global society. And why is it not in certain interests that the war be won? 1984 again: quote “If the High … are to keep their places permanently – then the prevailing mental condition must be controlled insanity.” Unquote. In a world where foreign forces invade and continue to occupy sovereign nations in breach of international law and on the pretext of what have long turned out to be lies, fuelled in reality by the desire for a consolidation of regional power, well, I think that we too exist within such a controlled insanity.
This article is not meant to be a polemic or rant against the Western presence in the Middle East. It is, rather, a gentle and, I hope, timely reminder: always to think for yourself, to remain alert to what exactly you do and don’t believe to be true, to keep the media, the government and its many systems of misinformation well at arm’s length. And most essentially, I mean to be positive. This is not 1984, this is reality. And in reality, you get to write a new page every day. Choose your words with care.
For as long as I can remember, the media has misused and overused the words ‘fear’ and ‘chaos’, usually in screaming headlines and usually unnecessarily, hyperbolically. And whilst I can only comment on the British media, I am pretty sure the situation is the same in other, principally Western, countries.
This predilection for extreme, scary words can partly be explained by the media’s apparent need to grab our attention, to excite and shock: as our blood pressure rises, so, it seems, does newspaper circulation. In Britain, at least, we are all used to such headlines as “Transport chaos as two inches of snow fall in a single day!” Now, whilst I freely admit that the combination of a little inclement weather and Britain’s inadequate transport system can indeed cause sudden problems, the use of the precise word chaos is nothing more than an over-worn cliché and we, the reader, can usually make up our own minds about the real meaning of the word chaos (the snow causing you to arrive at work an hour late, for example, as opposed to being plunged suddenly into a primeval state of disorder and inherent unpredictability). But then why do the media love this word so much? Is it merely because they can’t help sensationalising news stories or is it also because the word ‘chaos’ unsettles us, frightens us?
The second scary word beloved by the media is ‘fear’. Fear, it seems to me, is quite different from chaos in its effect upon the listener or reader. To be sure, the use of the word ‘fear’ is sometimes entirely appropriate to the article. But usually it is used with the sole intention of generating fear (or anxiety) itself: literal, physiological, emotional fear. Take another sample headline: “Fears continue to grow over the whereabouts of a missing teenager”, or this one: “A group of mountain-climbers are feared to have died last night” (in passing, we may note the media’s use of the abstract noun ‘fear’ as a verb, thus allowing its use in an ever-widening range of situations). Such anxiety-inducing headlines as these are everyday occurrences and we are passively complicit: we hand over our money, pick up a paper and spread the virus in pockets and briefcases or allow these disturbing words and emotions to be transmitted and broadcast onto our TVs and laptops.
And, in the end, are these ‘human interest’ stories in fact fearful? I don’t think they are. Yes, of course I am sorry that a young woman may have been abducted or that a party of mountain-climbers have perished several hundred or thousand miles away but I would argue that many such quote “news items” unquote are of little or no interest to the rest of us. Do you really wish to be notified of every distant abduction, house fire, murder and cot death in the country – or world, for that matter? Yes, knowledge is indeed power and in many ways the global village is a beneficial reality. We may choose to send a loving thought or donation to the disaster appeal fund but, be honest, more often, we don’t. Most of us, most of the time, simply allow a flow of sentiment to wash steadily over us, tut-tutting as we are led by the hand to the next apparently necessary piece of chaos or fear.
And even if we did wish to keep informed of every sad, tragic and fearful global occurrence, we simply don’t have the time or the attention-spans. The media is well aware of this: notice how they all seem to agree upon a certain story to be fed to us: hourly, daily, weekly, relentlessly.
The thing about ‘fear’ is, that like forest-fires and lies, it spreads quickly and easily. It has long been commonplace for fear to be inserted into what would otherwise be a much more mundane news story: for example “It is feared that several hospitals may close this year” et cetera. What’s wrong with using another, more expressive and accurate verb? “It is thought, believed, rumoured” etc. The answer, of course, is that wouldn’t be as sensational, not so … scary. Someone, somewhere, wants you to be afraid.
And yet it would seem that it’s not enough any more to be merely afraid. You have to be terrified. Yes, ‘terror’ is the new word, the new thing. Suddenly, terror is on everyone’s lips. For the media, for politicians and advertisers, fear is … sexy. Open your paper, turn on your TV, check the net: what do you see? ‘Terror!’ Of course, terror’s been around for quite a while. Terrorists. IRA terrorists, for example. Us Brits grew up with that, got used to it, even. And they were real enough, those terrorists. In Northern Ireland alone, there are thousands of gravestones, ruined lives and families to testify to the reality of the terrorist’s bullet and bomb. But the trouble with terrorists is that they can be beaten or negotiated with. The terrorists, at some point, stop being terrorists: they die, grow old, renounce violence or become politicians. History shows that there is always an end to terrorism. But the need for terror - in some minds, at least - is never-ending. The vacuum in our minds must be filled – by those in power, by those with power, by those who want - and are determined – to keep their power.
‘The War On Terror’. Every day for the past four or five years, we have heard about the war on terror – terror which is not an army, not flesh and blood, but ‘terror’, grammatically, an abstract noun. Like stupidity or deceit. Soldiers and civilians die every day. And what killed them? According to your government, according to your media, terror: an undefined, unknowable, unbeatable force. You see, as soon as you defeat terror here, terror pops up over there! And how do you know? Because you’re told, you’re told to know, by the media – sorry, by the government.
There is real fighting and real bloodshed every hour of the day: in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in a dozen other ‘terror-filled places’ of the world. In fact, the war on terror begins anew every morning: at every breakfast table, every sitting-room and every tube-train and tram in the land. It’s a mighty battle, to be sure. The Long War. It’s a battle for hearts and minds, principally minds – mine and yours. Every time you read, and accept without questioning, the words chaos, fear, terror, the war on terror, you unconsciously help strengthen the concept, and a concept, if believed in by enough people for a long enough time, becomes and stays a reality.
Terror is a state of mind. Choose your own state of mind. Do not believe in terror and certainly do not believe in the thing called the war on terror. These things simply do not – cannot – exist, unless you, by your thoughts, words and actions, choose to give them life. Remember what the man said? “The revolution will not be televised”. The revolution, the battleground, is in our heads, in our minds, and not, ultimately, on the streets on Basra and Baghdad. What we all believe to be true, what we all believe to be true and necessary things in this world, these beliefs, opinions and attitudes are where the real battle takes place. It began the day you first opened your eyes all those years ago, is influenced by every thought, word and deed and will continue, as long as you are capable of free and independent thought.
In George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, an elite member of the ruling totalitarian party sets out the desired mentality of the everyday citizen …
Quote. ‘It is necessary that the Party member be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation and orgiastic triumph. In other words it is necessary that he should have the mentality appropriate to a state of war. It does not matter whether the war is actually happening and, since no decisive victory is possible, it does not matter whether the war is going well or badly. All that is needed is that a state of war should exist.’ Unquote.
In 1984, there exists a state of perpetual, but carefully-managed and orchestrated warfare between three global power blocs. Such a situation is uncomfortably close to that of ‘The Long War’, George Bush’s short-lived re-classification of the war on terror, a war which cannot be won either by grammatical definition (terror being an abstract noun) or because, in fact, it is not in the interests of a small yet hugely powerful section of global society. And why is it not in certain interests that the war be won? 1984 again: quote “If the High … are to keep their places permanently – then the prevailing mental condition must be controlled insanity.” Unquote. In a world where foreign forces invade and continue to occupy sovereign nations in breach of international law and on the pretext of what have long turned out to be lies, fuelled in reality by the desire for a consolidation of regional power, well, I think that we too exist within such a controlled insanity.
This article is not meant to be a polemic or rant against the Western presence in the Middle East. It is, rather, a gentle and, I hope, timely reminder: always to think for yourself, to remain alert to what exactly you do and don’t believe to be true, to keep the media, the government and its many systems of misinformation well at arm’s length. And most essentially, I mean to be positive. This is not 1984, this is reality. And in reality, you get to write a new page every day. Choose your words with care.
Election Time
First broadcast on Ex-Pat Radio, Krakow, October 2007
So, that’s another election over! Funny how quick they seem to come around, isn’t it! They certainly do in Poland! Fortunately, this one wasn’t a cliffhanger; Civic Platform winning by a clear ten per cent. No Florida-style shambles last Sunday! You remember Unimpresident Bush’s’s first victory in Florida 2000? The hanging chads, the recounts, the legal shennanigans? The whole fiasco laid the system bare and showed it for what it is: the machinery of elections and governments – illogical, unfair - strutting naked before us like the emperor with no clothes. But this time, many of us saw King George’s nakedness from the off and have been crying out for justice ever since. And all because of a few hanging chads: absolute power hanging by a thread. And when power means the power to save or destroy the global environment or murder possibly millions of innocent people in illegal wars, we may safely call that power ‘absolute’. Am I just another Brit knocking America? No, I am knocking the current US administration. Because from day one this Republican government was built upon lie and denial. And there is only one thing that can be said for it. It does not bow to popular opinion. It remains true to itself. It continues to run on lies and denial.
Now, watch my lips. Even ol’ Bill Clinton knew that ‘It’s the economy, stupid!’. ‘Pity George Doubleyer wasn’t listening (perhaps he was playing golf at the time, or busy ruining another of his daddy’s oil businesses). Whatever. Let’s start with the American economy. It’s not a pretty sight. Zero Bush fiddles on Capitol Hill while the economy burns, destroying hundreds of thousands of sub-prime families in a matter of weeks. Sure, the Federal Reserve Bank quickly bailed out the poor lenders, but who was there to rescue the people? Once given a poor credit status on some dismal database, their only sin was to aspire to own their own home, one of the many ‘American dreams’. In their insatiable desire to bleed the people for every cent possible, the moneymen offered vulnerable people the chance to improve their lot in life by buying their own homes. But when the party ended and the markets demanded their pound of flesh, who suffered? The greedy, irresponsible lenders? No, the Fed looks after its own (give or take the odd engineered crash, of course). The American people lost. As usual, the little people, who, unlike Mary Astor and all the other pigs with snouts in the trough, are decent and stupid enough to pay taxes. At least most of the sub-prime real estate had already been destroyed in New Orleans, by Hurricane Katrina and damp squib Bush. Thank God for global warming, hey, guys!
Global warming, global warming, global warming … . Have you ever noticed when you say the same word over and over again, how it begins to lose its meaning? No? You should try it! It’s very easy. Even ol’ Doubleyer can do it. For example, close your eyes and repeat this simple phrase: evil, lying bastards, evil, lying bastards, evil, lying bastards. Actually, it’s amazing just how many politicians can do this little trick. Take Blair or Brown, for example. They’re almost as good as Bush (or Rupert Murdoch, for that matter).
Ah, Rupert Murdoch! What a fine purveyor of truth and incisive political analysis! (Just to recap, Rupert Murdoch, the Australian media magnate, is one of the most powerful men on the planet. He owns hundreds of newspapers, tv channels, satellite channels, and God knows what else besides. As such, he is a part of your life. He is inside your head, shaping your so-called thoughts, whether you like it or not. And why is he inside your head? Because, as the smug car stickers say: ‘free trade works’!).
Remember when Hamlet was in the library and Claudius asks him what he was reading? ‘Words, words, words’, said our hero, dismissively. That’s how I feel on the rare occasions I listen to politicians or dare myself to read something from the Politburo - sorry, daily press. Oh, sure, there is original, honest thought out there. But you have to search for it. You won’t find it in the tabloids, in the quality papers and certainly not on the 6 o-clock news, with its preference for drama and nervous excitement over truth and objectivity. You have to disentangle yourself from the matrix of spin, deception and downright lying that is The Sun, The Telegraph and Fox News. Thank God for the internet! For all its faults and inaccuracies, it is (for now) a largely unpoliced, independent avenue of free speech and honest inquiry.
However, like Hamlet’s mind, I seem to have strayed a little. I was busy attacking the current US administration over its environmental record. But that’s like attacking former Beach Boy Brian Wilson over his ‘Smile’ record. A great work, delivered over thirty years late by a half-crazed genius. America has a crucial role to play in environmental management, but not quite yet, it seems. Instead, Bush and the oil lobby continue to play in the sandpits of Saudi and Iraq while the rest of the world – China and India included – face up to reality and the real world order. ‘It’s the environment, stupid!’
Out of curiosity, I once read the opening sentence of a book on economics. It read: ‘Any economy that is not growing year on year is an efficient and failing economy’. I thought about this and saw that it was a lie. When the global economy is based on the extraction and inefficient use of raw materials (e.g. oil, coal, gas, wood), without adequate reinvestment or replacement (e.g. by reforestation), it is mathematically impossible for economies (measured in standard terms) to continue to grow, year on year, ad infinitum. Something’s gotta give and, of course, it’s the environment, stupid.
This is the where it gets a bit hazy. If we as individual citizens can work it out, then why can’t the politicans? Why can’t the so-called leaders of the industrialised world see the train crash approaching? The truth is that they see it very well, but that they don’t care. Influenced by big business, oil and the military-industrial complex they, like the sub-prime mortgage lenders, are desperately bleeding the planet and its peoples for everything they can before the game is finally up and we finally turn on the emperor, for shame. Clear-thinking, rational people across the world are now, for example, wondering just how the hell Bush and his dwindling bunch of neo-con cronies can even consider invading Iran, given the shoot-em-up carnage that is Iraq, and the body bags shipped back to yet more families whose trust has been betrayed and whose hearts will never heal. And all because the oil firms, the Halliburtons and all those other selfish, short-term idiots know that the game is nearly up. A few more years is all they have left to rape the planet and its peoples. They’re starting their cars and slamming dollar bills into briefcases as we speak.
My point is this: take control of your own thoughts. If you find truth and decency in politics and big business, rejoice in it, encourage it. But do not expect it: do not expect those with great power to live, much less improve, your life for you. They are looking after themselves. They do not care for you or your problems.
And that is actually a wonderful, wonderful thing. Now, at the beginning of the 21st century, we are being given an opportunity to stand on our own feet, to think for ourselves, to make our own decisions and to develop as individuals as never before. Most of what counts for thought is actually the passive acceptance of someone else’s thoughts and will. We need to make more of our own thoughts. And it’s really such a simple process. When a thought appears in your head, ask yourself sometimes whether you actually believe in the thought: is it your own, original thought or, for that moment, is your mind merely a stopping-off point, a relay station, for someone else’s ideas. In the battle for the control of your own mind, I wish you good luck, because I know that you will win that battle. Starting from now.
So, that’s another election over! Funny how quick they seem to come around, isn’t it! They certainly do in Poland! Fortunately, this one wasn’t a cliffhanger; Civic Platform winning by a clear ten per cent. No Florida-style shambles last Sunday! You remember Unimpresident Bush’s’s first victory in Florida 2000? The hanging chads, the recounts, the legal shennanigans? The whole fiasco laid the system bare and showed it for what it is: the machinery of elections and governments – illogical, unfair - strutting naked before us like the emperor with no clothes. But this time, many of us saw King George’s nakedness from the off and have been crying out for justice ever since. And all because of a few hanging chads: absolute power hanging by a thread. And when power means the power to save or destroy the global environment or murder possibly millions of innocent people in illegal wars, we may safely call that power ‘absolute’. Am I just another Brit knocking America? No, I am knocking the current US administration. Because from day one this Republican government was built upon lie and denial. And there is only one thing that can be said for it. It does not bow to popular opinion. It remains true to itself. It continues to run on lies and denial.
Now, watch my lips. Even ol’ Bill Clinton knew that ‘It’s the economy, stupid!’. ‘Pity George Doubleyer wasn’t listening (perhaps he was playing golf at the time, or busy ruining another of his daddy’s oil businesses). Whatever. Let’s start with the American economy. It’s not a pretty sight. Zero Bush fiddles on Capitol Hill while the economy burns, destroying hundreds of thousands of sub-prime families in a matter of weeks. Sure, the Federal Reserve Bank quickly bailed out the poor lenders, but who was there to rescue the people? Once given a poor credit status on some dismal database, their only sin was to aspire to own their own home, one of the many ‘American dreams’. In their insatiable desire to bleed the people for every cent possible, the moneymen offered vulnerable people the chance to improve their lot in life by buying their own homes. But when the party ended and the markets demanded their pound of flesh, who suffered? The greedy, irresponsible lenders? No, the Fed looks after its own (give or take the odd engineered crash, of course). The American people lost. As usual, the little people, who, unlike Mary Astor and all the other pigs with snouts in the trough, are decent and stupid enough to pay taxes. At least most of the sub-prime real estate had already been destroyed in New Orleans, by Hurricane Katrina and damp squib Bush. Thank God for global warming, hey, guys!
Global warming, global warming, global warming … . Have you ever noticed when you say the same word over and over again, how it begins to lose its meaning? No? You should try it! It’s very easy. Even ol’ Doubleyer can do it. For example, close your eyes and repeat this simple phrase: evil, lying bastards, evil, lying bastards, evil, lying bastards. Actually, it’s amazing just how many politicians can do this little trick. Take Blair or Brown, for example. They’re almost as good as Bush (or Rupert Murdoch, for that matter).
Ah, Rupert Murdoch! What a fine purveyor of truth and incisive political analysis! (Just to recap, Rupert Murdoch, the Australian media magnate, is one of the most powerful men on the planet. He owns hundreds of newspapers, tv channels, satellite channels, and God knows what else besides. As such, he is a part of your life. He is inside your head, shaping your so-called thoughts, whether you like it or not. And why is he inside your head? Because, as the smug car stickers say: ‘free trade works’!).
Remember when Hamlet was in the library and Claudius asks him what he was reading? ‘Words, words, words’, said our hero, dismissively. That’s how I feel on the rare occasions I listen to politicians or dare myself to read something from the Politburo - sorry, daily press. Oh, sure, there is original, honest thought out there. But you have to search for it. You won’t find it in the tabloids, in the quality papers and certainly not on the 6 o-clock news, with its preference for drama and nervous excitement over truth and objectivity. You have to disentangle yourself from the matrix of spin, deception and downright lying that is The Sun, The Telegraph and Fox News. Thank God for the internet! For all its faults and inaccuracies, it is (for now) a largely unpoliced, independent avenue of free speech and honest inquiry.
However, like Hamlet’s mind, I seem to have strayed a little. I was busy attacking the current US administration over its environmental record. But that’s like attacking former Beach Boy Brian Wilson over his ‘Smile’ record. A great work, delivered over thirty years late by a half-crazed genius. America has a crucial role to play in environmental management, but not quite yet, it seems. Instead, Bush and the oil lobby continue to play in the sandpits of Saudi and Iraq while the rest of the world – China and India included – face up to reality and the real world order. ‘It’s the environment, stupid!’
Out of curiosity, I once read the opening sentence of a book on economics. It read: ‘Any economy that is not growing year on year is an efficient and failing economy’. I thought about this and saw that it was a lie. When the global economy is based on the extraction and inefficient use of raw materials (e.g. oil, coal, gas, wood), without adequate reinvestment or replacement (e.g. by reforestation), it is mathematically impossible for economies (measured in standard terms) to continue to grow, year on year, ad infinitum. Something’s gotta give and, of course, it’s the environment, stupid.
This is the where it gets a bit hazy. If we as individual citizens can work it out, then why can’t the politicans? Why can’t the so-called leaders of the industrialised world see the train crash approaching? The truth is that they see it very well, but that they don’t care. Influenced by big business, oil and the military-industrial complex they, like the sub-prime mortgage lenders, are desperately bleeding the planet and its peoples for everything they can before the game is finally up and we finally turn on the emperor, for shame. Clear-thinking, rational people across the world are now, for example, wondering just how the hell Bush and his dwindling bunch of neo-con cronies can even consider invading Iran, given the shoot-em-up carnage that is Iraq, and the body bags shipped back to yet more families whose trust has been betrayed and whose hearts will never heal. And all because the oil firms, the Halliburtons and all those other selfish, short-term idiots know that the game is nearly up. A few more years is all they have left to rape the planet and its peoples. They’re starting their cars and slamming dollar bills into briefcases as we speak.
My point is this: take control of your own thoughts. If you find truth and decency in politics and big business, rejoice in it, encourage it. But do not expect it: do not expect those with great power to live, much less improve, your life for you. They are looking after themselves. They do not care for you or your problems.
And that is actually a wonderful, wonderful thing. Now, at the beginning of the 21st century, we are being given an opportunity to stand on our own feet, to think for ourselves, to make our own decisions and to develop as individuals as never before. Most of what counts for thought is actually the passive acceptance of someone else’s thoughts and will. We need to make more of our own thoughts. And it’s really such a simple process. When a thought appears in your head, ask yourself sometimes whether you actually believe in the thought: is it your own, original thought or, for that moment, is your mind merely a stopping-off point, a relay station, for someone else’s ideas. In the battle for the control of your own mind, I wish you good luck, because I know that you will win that battle. Starting from now.
An immigrant’s thoughts on returning to Krakow
First broadcast on Ex-Pat Radio, Krakow, October 2007
I’ve just come back from a week’s walking and camping in Devon, south-west England. The sun shined brightly as me and my girlfriend hauled rucksack, sleeping bags and tent around one of the most beautiful stretches of coastline in the country. As an unfit, middle-aged man, I was anxious how my body would cope. Surprisingly well, it turned out, and that old knee problem from my abortive Pennine Way trip many years ago seems to have healed up nicely. All this by way of saying that I stepped off the Ryanair plane last Saturday night feeling like a new man.
Under a full, crisp, Krakowian moon, the Balice shuttle bus whisked us efficiently the thirty or so metres from the aircraft to Customs. This fifteen-second hop always seems quite unnecessary to me. Is it a piece of classic British health & safety stowed away to Poland via an Extraordinary Rendition flight, a nod to a full-employment Communist past or, and this I suspect, a simple act of kindness to us, the weary travellers? Either way, it is infinitely preferable to the fifteen-minute slog through the Essex countryside when arriving at London Stansted.
Owing to my somewhat old-fashioned and probably reactionary English attitude to standards of public behaviour, I have, for as long as I can remember, always adopted a sedate, almost langorous, pace when joining a queue, considering any unseemly jostling or scrambling for position to be rather barbaric, certainly not ‘British’. However, I’ve been an expat for two years now and, hopping quickly first off the bus, I found myself the first to stand before the guard at passport control, looking just over his shoulder with a carefully-constructed mix of innocence (me, a terrorist?) and affected boredom in an effort to convince him I feel just the same as he does and the sooner he lets me back onto Polish soil, the sooner both he and I can go home. He appears not to notice my subliminal attempt at camaraderie and merely slides my passport back to me, his gaze already transferred to the babcia behind me, who is already digging her passport into my back, in mute defiance of both regulations and what was once-upon-a-time known as ‘personal space’.
On the bus, I’m immersed, cocoon-like, into blissful ignorance as the still largely-unfamiliar Polish language begins to bubble all around me. I’m tired of being shouted at from invisible speakers to buy Ryanair scratchcards and to choose from the exclusive range of in-flight purchases. Now, as the familiar houses and blocks slip past in the night, I relax, safe in the knowledge that whatever inanities and profanities are being muttered, most of them will slip harmlessly by.
I close my flat door behind me, disconnect myself from my rucksack (na koncu!) and, as a dear friend used to advise me, try to ‘feel how I feel’. It, in fact, feels good to be back in Krakow. And I like my flat. A little cold now in the autumn, but a small adjustment to the brown ceramic sentinel standing guard in the corner will soon sort that. I switched on the kettle and fired up some BBC radio comedy on the laptop.
Windows XP appears rudely disturbed by my presence. It yawns, rubs the sleep out of its eyes and staggers slowly out of hibernation.
Under the streetlight outside, an alcoholic shakily proffers his mate a cigarette and receives, in exchange, a swig of something nameless and purple from a clear glass bottle. I wonder, once again, just how many broken, middle-aged alcoholic men there are in Krakow. Tens of thousands? Maybe. For every one on the street, you can bet there are another ten creeping about in dosshouses and soon-to-be redeveloped attics and basements. Where do these poor souls go when they get their marching orders? Where now, for example, are all those dangerous individuals who, we hear, made it impossible to walk safely through Kazimierz before the fall of Communism began to reunite kamienicas with long-forgotten landlords?
Because of the passage of time, and the passing of both generations and title deeds, some of these nouveau landlords, of course, have little connection to the city and have probably never even set foot here. Strangers from afar remoulding the country and its economy. I’m an immigrant myself, of course. Sounds strange, doesn’t it? Me, an Englishman, an immigrant. ‘Funny how we all prefer the term ‘ex-pat’, when the name we give to the rest of the world is immigrant. Is it because many of us ‘ex-pats’ consider ourselves only temporary Krakowians, ready to skip off to the next country in a year or two or is it that the word ‘immigrant’ suggests a search for money and material gain while we are, in contrast, so wonderful, talented and comparatively affluent that ‘ex-pat’ is so much more appropriate: empowered, assured, cosmopolitan, safe?
If the truth be told, I am three things in one: ex-pat, immigrant and asylum-seeker. Firstly, I am an ex-pat, by which I mean that I am an educated Westerner who is blessed with opportunity and choice. Imagine, as a native English-speaker and teacher with money in my pocket, I can actually choose just about any country in the world to live in! Like most ex-pats, I am fairly affluent by Polish standards and I am also an ex-pat because I am able to skim along the surface of everyday Polish life without getting bogged down in details. It’s easy to be invisible in Poland. It’s easy not to pay taxes. It’s easy not to understand the language and remain aloof from day-to-day life. There is, to use Milan Kundera’s phrase, a ‘lightness of being’ in being an ex-pat.
But if immigration is about seeking a better standard of living, then I am also an immigrant as well as an ex-pat. Currently, I am in the process of buying a flat in Krakow and have also begun working for a company that never, never pays cash. After two years, I have this week officially become a resident, I have applied to the tax office for a tax number and I shortly intend to start my own business. Why this sudden loss of social invisibility? Money. I want more of it and I want it here, in Poland, where I don’t have to work as hard as I would in England - just like any other immigrant.
Oh, yes, I said I was an asylum-seeker, too. OK, maybe not in the real sense of the term but, come on, have you seen your country lately? Americans love America and I sure love England, but, to quote the bard himself, I fear that England has become quote a country afraid to know itself unquote. I am happy to be back in Poland. Sure, Krakow’s not all Rynek Glowny and beautiful Planty: outside the old city dogshit, graffiti and alcoholics assault the eye at every turn while the city and its people struggle to find a sense of self and of pride after generations, if not centuries, of humiliation and subjugation to foreign powers. But at least Poland is moving, slowly and painfully, in the right direction, not squandering its inheritance, afraid of its own shadow like England. I am here seeking asylum, not from oppression or tyranny, but from cultural ignorance, mental slavery and moral and political cowardice. Now of course Eastern Europe (like much of the world) is seeking to emulate the west in so many ways: its embrace of free-market economics and the attendant fracturing of once-supportive communities, for example. Poland is not a paradise and I am very glad I don’t understand the moronic television news or the foul-mouthed teenager standing next to me on the tram. But I am lucky: in England, it would be nigh-impossible to escape such things. Here, I am an ex-pat, an immigrant and an asylum-seeker, and am thus largely able to cherry-pick from Krakow and Poland only those experiences and realities I wish to.
One thing that definitely is ‘ex-pat’ and not ‘immigrant’ or ‘asylum-seeker’ is that sense of difference, the feeling of otherness that we all enjoy so much. I suspect that, for many of us, besides the wanderlust and sense of cultural inquiry that first sent us from our shores, there is also a desire to be a little out of focus, just a bit off the radar in a way that we could never be back home. We enjoy being the foreigner, the one looking in instead of out. As we wonder, marvel, gripe and groan about our new surroundings, we sometimes also stop and learn things about ourselves and those around us: things we’d never notice in our own cultures. And that’s worth a hell of a lot of dogshit!
I’ve just come back from a week’s walking and camping in Devon, south-west England. The sun shined brightly as me and my girlfriend hauled rucksack, sleeping bags and tent around one of the most beautiful stretches of coastline in the country. As an unfit, middle-aged man, I was anxious how my body would cope. Surprisingly well, it turned out, and that old knee problem from my abortive Pennine Way trip many years ago seems to have healed up nicely. All this by way of saying that I stepped off the Ryanair plane last Saturday night feeling like a new man.
Under a full, crisp, Krakowian moon, the Balice shuttle bus whisked us efficiently the thirty or so metres from the aircraft to Customs. This fifteen-second hop always seems quite unnecessary to me. Is it a piece of classic British health & safety stowed away to Poland via an Extraordinary Rendition flight, a nod to a full-employment Communist past or, and this I suspect, a simple act of kindness to us, the weary travellers? Either way, it is infinitely preferable to the fifteen-minute slog through the Essex countryside when arriving at London Stansted.
Owing to my somewhat old-fashioned and probably reactionary English attitude to standards of public behaviour, I have, for as long as I can remember, always adopted a sedate, almost langorous, pace when joining a queue, considering any unseemly jostling or scrambling for position to be rather barbaric, certainly not ‘British’. However, I’ve been an expat for two years now and, hopping quickly first off the bus, I found myself the first to stand before the guard at passport control, looking just over his shoulder with a carefully-constructed mix of innocence (me, a terrorist?) and affected boredom in an effort to convince him I feel just the same as he does and the sooner he lets me back onto Polish soil, the sooner both he and I can go home. He appears not to notice my subliminal attempt at camaraderie and merely slides my passport back to me, his gaze already transferred to the babcia behind me, who is already digging her passport into my back, in mute defiance of both regulations and what was once-upon-a-time known as ‘personal space’.
On the bus, I’m immersed, cocoon-like, into blissful ignorance as the still largely-unfamiliar Polish language begins to bubble all around me. I’m tired of being shouted at from invisible speakers to buy Ryanair scratchcards and to choose from the exclusive range of in-flight purchases. Now, as the familiar houses and blocks slip past in the night, I relax, safe in the knowledge that whatever inanities and profanities are being muttered, most of them will slip harmlessly by.
I close my flat door behind me, disconnect myself from my rucksack (na koncu!) and, as a dear friend used to advise me, try to ‘feel how I feel’. It, in fact, feels good to be back in Krakow. And I like my flat. A little cold now in the autumn, but a small adjustment to the brown ceramic sentinel standing guard in the corner will soon sort that. I switched on the kettle and fired up some BBC radio comedy on the laptop.
Windows XP appears rudely disturbed by my presence. It yawns, rubs the sleep out of its eyes and staggers slowly out of hibernation.
Under the streetlight outside, an alcoholic shakily proffers his mate a cigarette and receives, in exchange, a swig of something nameless and purple from a clear glass bottle. I wonder, once again, just how many broken, middle-aged alcoholic men there are in Krakow. Tens of thousands? Maybe. For every one on the street, you can bet there are another ten creeping about in dosshouses and soon-to-be redeveloped attics and basements. Where do these poor souls go when they get their marching orders? Where now, for example, are all those dangerous individuals who, we hear, made it impossible to walk safely through Kazimierz before the fall of Communism began to reunite kamienicas with long-forgotten landlords?
Because of the passage of time, and the passing of both generations and title deeds, some of these nouveau landlords, of course, have little connection to the city and have probably never even set foot here. Strangers from afar remoulding the country and its economy. I’m an immigrant myself, of course. Sounds strange, doesn’t it? Me, an Englishman, an immigrant. ‘Funny how we all prefer the term ‘ex-pat’, when the name we give to the rest of the world is immigrant. Is it because many of us ‘ex-pats’ consider ourselves only temporary Krakowians, ready to skip off to the next country in a year or two or is it that the word ‘immigrant’ suggests a search for money and material gain while we are, in contrast, so wonderful, talented and comparatively affluent that ‘ex-pat’ is so much more appropriate: empowered, assured, cosmopolitan, safe?
If the truth be told, I am three things in one: ex-pat, immigrant and asylum-seeker. Firstly, I am an ex-pat, by which I mean that I am an educated Westerner who is blessed with opportunity and choice. Imagine, as a native English-speaker and teacher with money in my pocket, I can actually choose just about any country in the world to live in! Like most ex-pats, I am fairly affluent by Polish standards and I am also an ex-pat because I am able to skim along the surface of everyday Polish life without getting bogged down in details. It’s easy to be invisible in Poland. It’s easy not to pay taxes. It’s easy not to understand the language and remain aloof from day-to-day life. There is, to use Milan Kundera’s phrase, a ‘lightness of being’ in being an ex-pat.
But if immigration is about seeking a better standard of living, then I am also an immigrant as well as an ex-pat. Currently, I am in the process of buying a flat in Krakow and have also begun working for a company that never, never pays cash. After two years, I have this week officially become a resident, I have applied to the tax office for a tax number and I shortly intend to start my own business. Why this sudden loss of social invisibility? Money. I want more of it and I want it here, in Poland, where I don’t have to work as hard as I would in England - just like any other immigrant.
Oh, yes, I said I was an asylum-seeker, too. OK, maybe not in the real sense of the term but, come on, have you seen your country lately? Americans love America and I sure love England, but, to quote the bard himself, I fear that England has become quote a country afraid to know itself unquote. I am happy to be back in Poland. Sure, Krakow’s not all Rynek Glowny and beautiful Planty: outside the old city dogshit, graffiti and alcoholics assault the eye at every turn while the city and its people struggle to find a sense of self and of pride after generations, if not centuries, of humiliation and subjugation to foreign powers. But at least Poland is moving, slowly and painfully, in the right direction, not squandering its inheritance, afraid of its own shadow like England. I am here seeking asylum, not from oppression or tyranny, but from cultural ignorance, mental slavery and moral and political cowardice. Now of course Eastern Europe (like much of the world) is seeking to emulate the west in so many ways: its embrace of free-market economics and the attendant fracturing of once-supportive communities, for example. Poland is not a paradise and I am very glad I don’t understand the moronic television news or the foul-mouthed teenager standing next to me on the tram. But I am lucky: in England, it would be nigh-impossible to escape such things. Here, I am an ex-pat, an immigrant and an asylum-seeker, and am thus largely able to cherry-pick from Krakow and Poland only those experiences and realities I wish to.
One thing that definitely is ‘ex-pat’ and not ‘immigrant’ or ‘asylum-seeker’ is that sense of difference, the feeling of otherness that we all enjoy so much. I suspect that, for many of us, besides the wanderlust and sense of cultural inquiry that first sent us from our shores, there is also a desire to be a little out of focus, just a bit off the radar in a way that we could never be back home. We enjoy being the foreigner, the one looking in instead of out. As we wonder, marvel, gripe and groan about our new surroundings, we sometimes also stop and learn things about ourselves and those around us: things we’d never notice in our own cultures. And that’s worth a hell of a lot of dogshit!
All Saints' Day
ALL SAINT’S DAY
First broadcast on Ex-Pat Radio, Krakow, October 2007
As my long-suffering English students fastened coats and snapped shut briefcases, I called out: ‘Enjoy your holiday, Piotr!’ Piotr turned, grinned and shook his head. ‘Better to say ‘Happy Holiday’, he corrected me, winking. Be happy but don’t enjoy, seemed to be the message; have some respect for the dead.
Like many ex-pats and immigrants, I took part in the All Saints’ Day observance last Thursday night, 1st November, and went to Krakow’s biggest and most famous cemetery, Rakowicki, here in Krakow. There can be few of us who have yet to experience All Saints’ night in Poland. All across the land, in cities, towns and villages, Poles make pilgrimages to place thousands and thousands of multi-coloured candles on gravestones, family tombs, mausoleums, graves of unknown soldiers, victims of communist oppression as well as poets, priests and painters, spectral lights of red, white, yellow and green conjuring up shadows which dance and flicker like wood nymphs in the night. The heavenly sight is an arresting one, certainly the first time: the branch of a willow gently brushing against some sleeping sarcophagus, ‘Here lies Jaciek’, long since gone. And in a ceremony repeated throughout the land, from the middle of it all, a church is overflowing, its open doors bathing the people and sleeping ones alike with kind and holy words, as mysterious and beautiful to me as an Arab call to prayer.
It is a dry, warm night and we walk slowly around the cemetery: cutting quickly off from the main paths, finding quiet delight in discovering ever-smaller avenues, which become quickly clogged with autumn leaves and roots of trees. I trip, regain my balance and check the unlit candle in my pocket. It’s still there, waiting for that empty grave. My girlfriend – who has no family members buried here - tells me it’s a tradition to place a candle on an empty grave and say a prayer for its owner. But, as you could warm your hands by the candle heat from most graves, finding an unlit one is no mean feat. Still, it’s good fun looking, all the same.
Most graves and tombs have several, or many, carefully and tastefully-arranged candles in shaped glass jars, placed there by reverent family members. Fresh pots of flowers, too, are provided, in rememberance of the dearly departed. And yes, lest you, o cynical soul, think my picture is a little too rosy, I’ve heard all about the Joneskis next door. You know, the ones you need to keep up with, especially in the village, where appearance is all. It gets like a competition, apparently. The biggest and most impressive candles, wreaths and flowers. At least one of my students hates it all and only takes the night-train to Hel (the northern peninsula, not the southern pergatory) for the money her family gives her, which will tide her over ‘til Christmas and the next family shindig. But scratch the modern surface and you’ll often find something deeper, pagan almost. I’m told that in some villages every inch of a grave may sometimes be covered with candles and flowers in the firm and solemn belief that such an over-abundance of familial love and good wishes will help speed the soul to heaven. I, for one, hope that story to be true. For we all know that Christianity, like all successful religions and cults before it, supplanted and suppressed pre-existing festivals, labelling them inferior, or ‘pagan’. And yet our intuition lives on: throughout the long dark days of first clerical and now consumerist subjugation, we cannot but feel the occult pull to remember, to recognise, once a year, at least, the need to connect, either with our ancestors or some part of ourselves, for most of us buried deep within for 364 days a year.
It is not surprising that human beings across the northern hemisphere should light fires and turn away from the maelstrom of everyday life and look towards the shadows now in the autumn. A year is like a day. The summer, like the heat from a busy working day, has died down and as the hot afternoon gives way to the cooler autumnal evening, it feels right to stop for a moment and reflect as we settle down for the long winter night. But why can similar scenes be found repeated across the world, not just in the autumn, but on the very same day, 1st November? Is there indeed some truth to the mystical belief that, on this day, the worlds of the living and of the dead draw close, overlap, even? And, if so, then no amount of date-changing or spiritual obsfucation will ever snuff out our awareness of the fact.
As in so many other ways, much of English culture has been either forgotten or torn apart in the case of progress and liberalism. Only a few days ago, I blithely, yet wrongly, told an inquiring Pole that, in England, we have only Halloween, a modern, American-influenced, tradition to our name. You, intelligent listener that you are, see immediately how foolish I was. The truth is that both All Saints’ Day, 1st November, and All Souls’ Day, 2nd November, were once celebrated in Britain just as much as in the rest of Europe and many other parts of the world besides. The first, All Saints’ Day, remembered all the saints in heaven while the second, All Souls’ Day, prayed for those in pergatory, neither in heaven nor in hell. However, to the revolutionary mind of the seventeenth century, such concepts smelt far too much of Popery and were discouraged as popular festivals as Protestantism and the Age of Enlightenment took gradual hold of the newly-United Kingdom.
And yet there I was placing a candle on an unknown grave, offering a silent prayer for an unknown soul in a foreign land, neither he nor I feeling part of a world that could stop for the silent fall of another autumn leaf.
They had laid on extra trams to ferry Krakowians to family graves and back to family homes. As always in any Polish crowd, there was character and style. Smart men with dickie-bows and pork-pie hats, who in England would look faintly ridiculous, strolled proudly past, escorting fur-coated women of a certain age, balancing freshly-sculpted bouffants through the crowds. Mothers held their smiling children’s hands as fathers struggled slightly beneath plastic bags full of candles for second cousins, twice removed. But at least he knows their names and, this year, just maybe, they’ll remember his.
First broadcast on Ex-Pat Radio, Krakow, October 2007
As my long-suffering English students fastened coats and snapped shut briefcases, I called out: ‘Enjoy your holiday, Piotr!’ Piotr turned, grinned and shook his head. ‘Better to say ‘Happy Holiday’, he corrected me, winking. Be happy but don’t enjoy, seemed to be the message; have some respect for the dead.
Like many ex-pats and immigrants, I took part in the All Saints’ Day observance last Thursday night, 1st November, and went to Krakow’s biggest and most famous cemetery, Rakowicki, here in Krakow. There can be few of us who have yet to experience All Saints’ night in Poland. All across the land, in cities, towns and villages, Poles make pilgrimages to place thousands and thousands of multi-coloured candles on gravestones, family tombs, mausoleums, graves of unknown soldiers, victims of communist oppression as well as poets, priests and painters, spectral lights of red, white, yellow and green conjuring up shadows which dance and flicker like wood nymphs in the night. The heavenly sight is an arresting one, certainly the first time: the branch of a willow gently brushing against some sleeping sarcophagus, ‘Here lies Jaciek’, long since gone. And in a ceremony repeated throughout the land, from the middle of it all, a church is overflowing, its open doors bathing the people and sleeping ones alike with kind and holy words, as mysterious and beautiful to me as an Arab call to prayer.
It is a dry, warm night and we walk slowly around the cemetery: cutting quickly off from the main paths, finding quiet delight in discovering ever-smaller avenues, which become quickly clogged with autumn leaves and roots of trees. I trip, regain my balance and check the unlit candle in my pocket. It’s still there, waiting for that empty grave. My girlfriend – who has no family members buried here - tells me it’s a tradition to place a candle on an empty grave and say a prayer for its owner. But, as you could warm your hands by the candle heat from most graves, finding an unlit one is no mean feat. Still, it’s good fun looking, all the same.
Most graves and tombs have several, or many, carefully and tastefully-arranged candles in shaped glass jars, placed there by reverent family members. Fresh pots of flowers, too, are provided, in rememberance of the dearly departed. And yes, lest you, o cynical soul, think my picture is a little too rosy, I’ve heard all about the Joneskis next door. You know, the ones you need to keep up with, especially in the village, where appearance is all. It gets like a competition, apparently. The biggest and most impressive candles, wreaths and flowers. At least one of my students hates it all and only takes the night-train to Hel (the northern peninsula, not the southern pergatory) for the money her family gives her, which will tide her over ‘til Christmas and the next family shindig. But scratch the modern surface and you’ll often find something deeper, pagan almost. I’m told that in some villages every inch of a grave may sometimes be covered with candles and flowers in the firm and solemn belief that such an over-abundance of familial love and good wishes will help speed the soul to heaven. I, for one, hope that story to be true. For we all know that Christianity, like all successful religions and cults before it, supplanted and suppressed pre-existing festivals, labelling them inferior, or ‘pagan’. And yet our intuition lives on: throughout the long dark days of first clerical and now consumerist subjugation, we cannot but feel the occult pull to remember, to recognise, once a year, at least, the need to connect, either with our ancestors or some part of ourselves, for most of us buried deep within for 364 days a year.
It is not surprising that human beings across the northern hemisphere should light fires and turn away from the maelstrom of everyday life and look towards the shadows now in the autumn. A year is like a day. The summer, like the heat from a busy working day, has died down and as the hot afternoon gives way to the cooler autumnal evening, it feels right to stop for a moment and reflect as we settle down for the long winter night. But why can similar scenes be found repeated across the world, not just in the autumn, but on the very same day, 1st November? Is there indeed some truth to the mystical belief that, on this day, the worlds of the living and of the dead draw close, overlap, even? And, if so, then no amount of date-changing or spiritual obsfucation will ever snuff out our awareness of the fact.
As in so many other ways, much of English culture has been either forgotten or torn apart in the case of progress and liberalism. Only a few days ago, I blithely, yet wrongly, told an inquiring Pole that, in England, we have only Halloween, a modern, American-influenced, tradition to our name. You, intelligent listener that you are, see immediately how foolish I was. The truth is that both All Saints’ Day, 1st November, and All Souls’ Day, 2nd November, were once celebrated in Britain just as much as in the rest of Europe and many other parts of the world besides. The first, All Saints’ Day, remembered all the saints in heaven while the second, All Souls’ Day, prayed for those in pergatory, neither in heaven nor in hell. However, to the revolutionary mind of the seventeenth century, such concepts smelt far too much of Popery and were discouraged as popular festivals as Protestantism and the Age of Enlightenment took gradual hold of the newly-United Kingdom.
And yet there I was placing a candle on an unknown grave, offering a silent prayer for an unknown soul in a foreign land, neither he nor I feeling part of a world that could stop for the silent fall of another autumn leaf.
They had laid on extra trams to ferry Krakowians to family graves and back to family homes. As always in any Polish crowd, there was character and style. Smart men with dickie-bows and pork-pie hats, who in England would look faintly ridiculous, strolled proudly past, escorting fur-coated women of a certain age, balancing freshly-sculpted bouffants through the crowds. Mothers held their smiling children’s hands as fathers struggled slightly beneath plastic bags full of candles for second cousins, twice removed. But at least he knows their names and, this year, just maybe, they’ll remember his.
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