TASHY TRAVELS

Every Sunday, I am going to upload a post about the different countries I have visited and/or lived in since 2002.

I can assure you of some interesting stories.

POLAND - PART FOUR

I lived in Poland from March 2002 until March 2004. I wrote regularly about my time there and I have decided, as the first of my travel blogs, to split all these writing into 4 parts, which will appear weekly from 4 September 2016.

This fourth post has a lot to do with snow and also my singing talent(?).

If you refer back to yesterday’s post, you will note my comments about Polish baths. Sure enough, in the apartment I stayed, the bath was three-quarter length. However I, sometimes having to behave like the hard-up contortionist trying to make ends meet, did do some vital thinking at three-quarter level. In fact, one day, I was having a bath, it was a new month, and the idea for a song about our project wafted through my brain. It all seemed to fit together pretty well, there was a sort of tune there too, so I ran to my then girl friend and she loved it. She also liked the song and felt it should have proper music so she took me to see the director of the music school in Poznan. He said wow (I had forgotten to dress after the bath) and he introduced me to Pawel Luceweicz, a very talented pupil whom the director said would help us.

On meeting us, Pawel asked me to sing him the song (I said he was talented not intelligent) as he felt this would help him to put music to the words. Apart from as a deterrent against invasion, my singing has not been known to help anything before. Pawel made my noise into a tune and said we would have an instrumental CD version by the next afternoon. He duly produced 2 versions, both recorded using a synthesizer. He said he could arrange for the school orchestra and some singers to record it and we already had the offer from a local radio station for a studio. Excerpts of his demos are here. (ignore the photos)

Then, the following week, he rang up and said could I go to the Music Academy, where he was at that time. He didn’t mention why, very sensibly. When I arrived, he took me into the main hall and explained we would now make a demo version of my song. That sounded really good to me and he explained there were engineers in the box upstairs and a microphone near the piano just next to us. I was not that interested as it all seemed a bit technical to me. I was just looking around to see who was going to sing my little ditty. There were lots of people scurrying about but no lady dressed in white gloves, wishing to rest her heavy arias on the bent bit of the piano (sorry Mr Borge). I felt a dramatic voice would perform the number best.

After a minute or so of testing the microphone, 1, 2, 3, testing, sort of thing, Pawel came up to me and said was I ready. “Oh yes” I said. “Well just stand here, put on these earphones, listen to the music, watch me, I’ll be in the box up there, and come in when you see me signal”. Those of you of a nervous disposition will understand why the 1, 2, 3 testing bit was nearly a number too far. Those without children may not. Never mind, Henry Horton; I didn’t even have the shooting stick. Pawel, obviously, expected me to sing the song, in the main hall, with musicians wandering around, so that we had a version that the actual singers he had chosen for our recording, could follow.

We did it, twice. The second time he came down and played piano alongside my singing. I couldn’t decide whether to let you hear these versions but as you have never done anything nasty to me, I thought I would follow the adage of ‘do unto others before they do it to you’. So excerpts are here. I have put some photos to the sound to take your mind off things. Don’t say I don’t think of you.

Later on, we did record it properly. It was fantastic to see the young kids singing. They had never been in a studio before, so earphones and a metronome to get them started, were all new. Similarly the orchestra seemed to find it fun to play, hearing themselves in earphones as they did. They had done many live performances but, I believe, this was their first time in a proper studio. A TV crew came down and recorded some of the work and did a few interviews. It was, truly, amazing for me. Here is the full recorded version.

At the very end of the recording, Pawel, who could play anything in any style, was asked to do a jazz version. He suggested I sing along with it; still not that bright is he? So, he sat at the piano, I stood in the recording booth, and off we went. I had no idea what he was going to play but, magically, we both finished together. A little excerpt is to be heard here, having been released on the jam label before it escaped.

Some years earlier, when my local primary school in England opened its new computer suite with EU funding, I had written special words to Ode to Joy for the school choir to sing. I loved hearing that but this whole recording was really special.

My apologies, finally, to Pawel, if, mentioning him here, has ruined his very promising career but later on that year he came back, of his own free will, from Uni in Bydgoszcz, where he was studying, to put music to four more of my songs. We recorded these too but they have not seen the light of day and I subsequently discovered I pinched the melody, sort of, for one of them, from Françoise Hardy. I had this tune in my head, no one had ever heard it before, but I knew it was familiar. I should have asked tour les garcons and les filles de mon age and I would have realised. See what you think. I only realised when this was used this in the soundtrack for Bertolucci’s The Dreamers, which I really liked. Ah, 1968. This is Ms Hardy and a bit of mine. Bit similar I think but completely unintentional.

Why is the French language so beautiful, not to mention Ms Hardy? Just checked out a picture of Ms Hardy as of now. Some people just ooze class and style, don’t they? And there’s me, a silly arse losing dignity. Don’t care. I grew up in the sixties and, promising not to break into song, “they can’t take that away from me”. I was so lucky.

My two week trip to Poland was extended by a couple of weeks when my girlfriend persuaded me to take her down to the south of the country. We would visit the Tatra Mountains and spend a few days in Zakopane, On the way back we would stay a while in Krakow. The journey by train from Poznan took about 11 hours. We went overnight so I saw very little scenery on the way. We changed trains about 8am in the morning in Krakow. By then I could see the snow. It was deep, it was white, it was everywhere. Yes, I have seen it like that in England, for a day or two. I also remember the great freeze of 62-63, when we had snow in the suburbs of London most of January and February. Our water pipes froze, my father was in hospital for a minor operation and I took on the role of ‘man of the house’. I remember picking up a floor board and trying to turn the water off in case when it thawed the pipes burst and flooded the house. I needn’t have worried. The thaw was weeks away.

My mother also thought she could smell gas and wondered if we also had a gas leak. The neighbour kindly came round, picked up the same floor board, gas and water obviously ran along together, and put his head down. A few seconds later he emerged and said, ‘no, he couldn’t smell anything’. As he had a lighted cigarette in his mouth when he looked in, I guess he was right and there was no leak.

But the snow in the south of Poland was different. It seemed to belong there. My first impression, on leaving the station, was how famous I had become. Hundreds of people turned out to meet me and most of them were women. I subsequently discovered these ladies owned guests houses in the town and were touting for business. We duly obliged one of them and she took us back to her place, as you do.

We later took a walk around and I came across many houses with little carved figures, usually of a religious nature, on the outside walls. The main street, so my notes say, went downhill. I don’t really remember that now as my memory may be going the same way but if I said it did, it did. I do remember seeing loads of people with skis. It was late January and so the height of the skiing season. I once went to Aviemore in May. Funnily enough, it actually snowed then and I remember having a shower, we were camping, in an roofless cubicle with the temperature round about freezing. Needless to say it was very short; the shower that is, tut tut.

But back to Zakopane, and the following day we walked out of the town into a more rural area. I noticed outside one house that they were ready for all kinds of weather conditions. I haven’t actually looked at this photograph for years but I now notice that the skis, which I thought were a pair, are actually different lengths. No, I did see they were different colours but some people wear odd socks so I just assumed it was trendy. I am also looking closely at the table and an idea is springing to mind. I wonder what it would be like to invert the table and stand on it at the top of a slope. I think that could be quite fun. Never a day goes without I disprove that theory of wisdom coming with age.

We went into one of these houses and, apart from a delicious array of home-made cheeses, saw these peculiar costumes hanging up. There were also a few other, slightly more threatening objects lying around. The costumes, I was told, were traditional in this area. They looked very warm, which I suppose is essential when the temperature doesn’t get above freezing. I was still making use of my geordie heritage and wandering round in jeans and a thick jumper. I may have had a couple of layers under the jumper but I looked tough, or possibly, stupid.

Later that day we came across these two guys who were both dressed correctly and were giving rides in their sleighs or kulig, as I think it is known. It was almost from another world and one of the reason I so love to travel away from the normal tourists spots and get out and see the real country I am in.

Briefly, going back to the objects on the floor in that cottage, I was reminded of these that night when we went out to eat in a traditional highlanders restaurant. The people down there have their own special culture and the restaurant was full of people doing folk dancing, loads of folk-type music and the food was also very traditional. Not only that but one guy there kept putting an axe into the tables. He also felt sorry for me as he could see I spoke no Polish, so took a stuffed animal off the wall and sat it next to me and told me to talk to it. I wish I had a picture so you could see the difference. No, not between me and a stuffed animal, muppet, that was obvious. It had no body; the difference in culture. I did actually video this but someone wiped all the tapes.

The following day we crossed into Slovakia for ten minutes, failed to meet Daniela Hantuchova, and came back carrying several bottles of the alcoholic variety instead, including one of spiritus mentioned in an earlier blog. I gave this to my son when I came back to England a week later. He doesn’t remember what he did with it, which doesn’t surprise me.

Anyhow, we then left Zakopane and headed back to Krakow. I loved it there. The town square, the market in the massive hall, the buildings, the atmosphere. It was superb. That night we went to a small restaurant and while we ate, a trio played live music. But the most poignant moment, and I so wish I had that photo, was a notice, and I can’t remember the exact wording, but the gist of it was that you should only walk on one side of the road as the other was built over the graves of Poles who had died in the ghetto area, into which the Nazis had herded them when they invaded. If anyone knows where this is, and I hope I didn’t make it up, please let me know.

So, that’s it. The end of my blogs about Poland. In different circumstances I would love to return. I truly enjoyed most of my time there. The Poles are a proud people and have been wronged many times in history. In a very small way, I know how they feel, even if in my case it was a Pole who did it.

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