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.

POTTYED POLAND

When I first went to Australia, in 2003, I contacted a couple of newspapers, possibly half a dozen, and asked if they wanted to have a Pom's eye view of their wonderful country. One came back and said yes but make it funny. So I did; well I thought I did. I then extended these little pieces to the other countries I visited and this one was for my time in Poland.

Everyone thinks Poles only drink vodka. This is not true. Everyone thinks Poles drink a lot of vodka. This is also untrue. They do drink vodka when they celebrate and, to be honest, they do celebrate quite a bit. You see they don’t just have birthdays once a year, or in my case once every four years these days, I think I'm an Olympian, they have namesdays as well, which means that they celebrate at least twice a year. By the way people always told me I would slow up as I got older and this is why I have slowed up on the number of birthdays I have.

Seriously, every day of the year, in Poland is given over to two names, one male, one female. So a family with, say, three children could, with careful planning and naming, celebrate ten times in each year. Allowing for Christmas and Easter, also well celebrated, and May 3, the National day, you could have a family get-together every month if you organised your conception and naming well. Of course not everyone does. If, by chance, your parents named you Viktoria and you were born on 22 December, then you would be celebrating for four days in a row and then it would all be over for another 360 or so. Ryszard, as I am known in that part of the world, celebrates on April 3, fitting neatly between Christmas and my natural birthday in July, though rather close to Easter. Tashy, it would appear, has no known namesday.

So celebrations are plentiful and the vodka flows like the Volga and quite prolifically. At my first such event, I sat down with some trepidation and noticed a small shot glass in front of me. It seemed to be only the men who had these and soon it was full of Vodka. Suddenly, a gentleman guest stood up, raised his glass, shouted something about an Austrian ski resort, and downed the vodka. The rest of us followed. Not too bad, I thought. I did notice that my glass was re-filled but thought nothing of it, hoping I could avoid taking another drink or, as the Queen does, just let the vodka touch my lips. I think the Queen does this with all alcohol and very sensible too. Just as I was thinking this, another male guest rose, his glass did the same, he downed it in one, and we all joined in again.

My glass filled up again and I was beginning to fear the worst. Sure enough we were up again, I think we should have been saying ‘na zdrowje’ but I’m sure it sounded like ‘Solden’. It was after this third intake that I noticed all the Polish men had glasses of orange juice next to their shot glasses and, after each shot, would swallow a fair quantity of orange. I was drinking neat vodka; they were drinking vodka followed by orange and, because of all this leaping up and down, they were mixing the two quite well. On the next erection (that means we all stood up, OK), I followed my vodka with a good gulp of orange and felt a lot better. Well to be truthful I couldn’t feel much by then but what was there felt good.

Fortunately there were only 4 Polish men there so that was it but at a big party I can well imagine what might happen. I certainly felt that any more ‘Soldens’ and I would have been on the downward slope or, as they call it there, the piste.

This leads me neatly into another experience I had with alcohol in Poland. I had been persuaded, when out once, to try a drink called ‘Mad Dog’. It wasn’t that bad, in small quantities of course. Basically you put a measure of spiritus (90% alcohol) in a glass and water it down with neat vodka. You add a little blackcurrant juice and some Tabasco, for flavouring. If you do it right you get a lovely effect through the glass of 3 different coloured layers.

Next you set fire to it, quickly place your hand over the top, this extinguishes the flame or sets fire to your hand, usually a 50/50 success rate here, and then you peel off your hand and drink the liquid, possibly through one layer of skin if you got it wrong. As a warning to those who may wish to try this at home, don’t. Or, if you try it anywhere else, be careful. I saw someone, who failed to wipe the rim of the glass after pouring the spiritus in, get quite a nasty burn as the flame was both inside and outside the glass and placing his hand over the bowl of the glass failed to extinguish the large amounts of oxygen on the outside. Basic science there.

When we were making our cookery and customs pilot TV programme, it was decided we would finish by showing a drink that we had found in the country we were in. As we were still in Poland, we used the dear old Mad Dog. We poured it out and I was supposed to have the first drink. All went well, I downed it in one but the cameraman said he wanted to shoot again from a slightly different angle. He said this with a smile. I drank another. This time he said there was a noise in the restaurant so just one more. He was still smiling. The third time, my own personal protective spirit helped out, as the glass failed to attach to the palm of my hand and when I inverted it, the liquid all spilt up my arm. So we did it one more time. The cameraman was still smiling, both of him.

Now, as a trained statisticians and fully numerate, I worked out in my little head, well each time it came round anyway, that 3 drinks of 90% proof meant I was now 270% alcohol. I kept well away from lighted flames for the next two days.

Let's change the subject here. I so love dealing with politicians but I also seem to be a little bit unlucky for them. When I lived in Thanet, I met with Jonathan Aitken in early 1997. A few months later he lost his seat and was then imprisoned for 18 months for perjury. In early 2000, my son and I met with Edward Heath, discussed our then project with him and received a very kind letter of support for what we were trying to do. Sadly, he died a few years later, although our rapport did continue as he died on my birthday.

And when I was in Poland, I dealt with the Polish Minster for Education, who luckily had her constituency in Poznan where I was then living. It was in November of 2002 that we first sought the patronage of the Minister of Education. We visited her at her offices in Poznan, climbing nine flights of stairs; I hate lifts. At the meeting she was very positive, saying how much she liked the idea (I didn’t ask for any money you see) and offering to promote the project throughout Poland and even suggesting the Ministry of Education might like to be a partner in the project. I thought that maybe I would need to bring a gift next time as the previous visitor had arrived with a large box containing, I think, a replica cannon.

However, with no mention of such gifts, she told us to come back in two weeks time and we would then finalise things. Two weeks later, another nine flights of stairs, and we duly sat, breathing deeply but just pleased to be breathing, in reception waiting for our 10.30 appointment. At 10.45, feeling a little lonely as the place was rather empty, my Polish girlfriend, who shared this whole project with me and indeed did most of the liaison work in Poland as my language skills are limited, popped in and asked the receptionist how long the minister would be. We were told that she was unwell and wasn’t there today. She would be unwell till next week. Please note, a minister with the foresight to know for how long she would be unwell but not to think of phoning anyone with whom she had an appointment during this time of sickness.

I was not over impressed; in fact I marked her down as a bit of a joker (later events would show the r to be unnecessary). We then climbed down the stairs, nine flights if you remember and burst out into the street, the air fairly rushing back into my lungs.

In early December, after several phone calls to her office, we were told that the minister hadn’t forgotten about us, she was just thinking how best to act. I thought maybe a Shakespeare comedy but said nothing. A week passed and we phoned again to be told that unfortunately the minister had mislaid the information we had sent and could we send it again. From Shakespeare to Beckett and waiting for infot. Then, as the festive season started, we were told that the patronage letter was on the minister’s desk, awaiting her signature, no doubt along with my Christmas card. We would have it within a week; a great start to 2003, I thought.

Three weeks later and there was no letter and no Christmas card. Now, when we telephoned, a woman told us that our material had been passed to another department for their comments and approval before any letter could be written (except of course the one that was presumably still on her desk, waiting for signot). The next week and the patronage letter re-appeared and we would have it soon. It just needed a signature. At this point I did begin to worry about the literacy skills of the Minister. Was she secretly taking writing lessons so she could sign this? It had now taken almost 3 months.

But I needn’t have worried. In late February of 2003 our letter, beautifully signed, finally arrived and our global project, hopefully involving schools all over the world and with the Polish Ministry of Education making all Polish schools aware, finally had Ministry patronage. Well, no, actually. It was refused because it was too local. Yes, really. It covered Planet Earth but was too local for the minister. And I can’t help but notice those writing lessons didn’t work; someone else signed it. Maybe they share a desk and perhaps a pen.

A subsequent phone call to her office revealed that our letter asking for support had said in its second sentence that we were working with ten schools in Poznan. That was true but the other five pages explained how we will work with, and involve, all schools in Poland and indeed the world. Only for an extra-terrestrial would this be too local. Me thinks she had, unfortunately, misused her old qualifications and this resulted in the random division of my letter and the ignoring of most parts of it.

I also feel that Beckett has turned into a Moliere farce. By the way, we phoned her office after the letter came and she was unwell again and would be till the following Wednesday. Did you know that Moliere, he wrote things like La Malade Imaginaire (the imaginary illness) had almost as many detractors as friends? Only almost as many so he never became a minister.

My concern was then that this Minister might be able to stay on in power after she was sacked. You see most sacking letters, certainly in the political world, usually begin with a load of lies about what “a stalwart of the government so-and-so has been”, how “it has been a pleasure to work with them” and “without their unstinting support the party could not have succeeded”. So, if you only read the first few lines the “piss off we don’t want you any more” section, no doubt couched in political jargon, may be missed and you would just continue doing your job, or being unwell, for ever.

Travel in Poland is a surreal experience in many ways. My first experience on a Polish train was when we headed south to Zakopane. The guards who walked down the train carried guns, big ones. The fellow traveller in our compartment on this overnight journey advised us not to sleep together. At first I thought this was a little personal but it turned out he meant for us not to both sleep at the same time as when we awake we may find we had no luggage. I later learned that some Poles are very astute when it comes to such journeys. It was not unknown for gangs to get on the train, make a lot of mess and then someone pulls the communication cord and all the criminals jump out carrying your belongings and run into the fields. Your stuff will then, probably, be sold on the black market. I even heard that sometimes they will use an anaesthetic spray in a compartment and when the passengers fall asleep – need I say more? I must point out that the vast majority of Poles I met were law-abiding and I am sure things like this happen elsewhere too but I did see the purpose of those guns.

I also confused a ticket inspector on one journey back into Poland from Germany and was pretty glad he had no gun on him, well visibly anyway. I had left Poland by coach and when you reach the border, the courier collects all passports and takes them into the check point booth to be stamped. With some 50 passports it would be easy to miss one. They did, mine. Therefore when the guy looked at my passport to stamp me back in, he had a problem. I had never left. He thumbed through it a few times, looked at me, thumbed it again, looked back, shrugged his shoulders and stamped me back in. Officially I may well be the only person who has entered Poland more times than he has left. This reminds me that these coach and train journey were because around the time of my initial visits I had an incredible fear of flying, indeed had never flown and so remained at ground level. The reminder is to do with my leaving and returning as the definition, I understand, of a successful pilot is one with the same number of landings as take-offs.

Now let us move to the roads. Trams are gods. They have the right of way and at roundabouts this can be very exciting. The tram tracks come down the middle lane on one road, cross to the middle of the roundabout and then turn left or right as the whim takes them. If you hit one, you are in the wrong; if one hits you, you are in the wrong. Of course, once you know the numbers you can have a bit of guess which way they are going and to make things simpler they all have little bells they ring, which over the roar of lorries and other traffic is a bit like whistling under water as far as sound goes.

They drive on the right and apart from these marauding trams, compared to say Italy or France, the driving is very civilised. You have to have your lights on between November and March regardless of road conditions so I was told. I was once stopped for not obeying this simple rule but was let off as I was English, a very useful attribute in those days. In another case, my punishment was a little bit more interesting. I was driving out of Poznan for a day in the country, possibly filming one of our pilot TV programmes. Suddenly I was waved down by two traffic cops with a radar gun. Now the speed limit on that road was 100. I was at least 5 under that. Sadly they work in kilometres per hour and I use miles, so I felt it best to stop. I needed to have with me, apart from my passport, my UK driving licence, the car documents and a letter from the owner saying I had permission to drive. According to Meatloaf, two out of three ain’t bad; he didn’t mention what nought out of three was.

Anyhow, the lady police officer, obviously senior to her young male colleague, asked for my documents. I guess she spoke no English, I spoke no Polish so communication went through my girlfriend. As instructed, I handed the lady my passport and she took my details, although I wondered what good an address in Kent was and she then said that she would have to fine me 2000 zloty, about £400 at that time. I explained, through my interpreter, that I only had 100 zloty (mathematicians among you will see this was about £20). As this was being explained, I suddenly felt a hand stroking my arm. This is going well, I thought, as the stroking continued for a minute or two and then I learned she had asked, in a very tactile way, wasn’t I cold? I was wearing a short sleeved t-shirt, it was February and possibly a degree or two below freezing. I thought it useless to explain I was born in Newcastle where we don’t deal in coats.

She then said to put the 100 zloty I had in my passport, we were now standing beside the car so her colleague wouldn’t or couldn’t see, and that would be it. I did so, luckily finding another 20 zloty which I added to the 100. She went away, came back, handed me back my passport and told us to go on our way. Whether as a warning, or because she enjoyed our touching experience I don’t know, but she told us she would be on the other side of the road between 4 and 6 that night.

We climbed back in the car and my girlfriend said that I had been extremely lucky. I, meanwhile, had opened my passport and found the 20 zloty note still there. I couldn’t believe how honest she sort of was; she said she would settle for 100 and she did.

Talking of notes reminds of another surreal moment when I went into the Polish bank where I had an account and asked if the could change a 200 zloty note and they said no, they didn’t have any money. I found this just a little disconcerting, as it was to discover that all foreign language TV programmes are dubbed; into Polish, orally; by one man, yes, one voice for all characters and even barking dogs. Lovely. Although this dubbing experience also has an amusing anecdote to it.

One TV station came out when we recorded our song and the interviewer was very insistent that I should have the last word. She asked me a question, I gave an answer and this appeared on Polish TV that night. Unfortunately, when they superimposed over my voice they left a little too much volume to what I said. The translation bore no relation to my comments. The interviewer knew how she wanted it to end so had used my comments in English to end, so she could voice-over it, rather than those of my partner who obviously spoke Polish.

But back to the roads for a minute. At 11pm at night they turn off the traffic lights, well not strictly off, but they just flash and you’re on your own as far as right of way is concerned. I didn’t see any accidents, so this economy measure doesn’t seem too damaging. I also found out that some companies will turn off, or shut down, without telling you either. Once it was decided to base our work in Poland, basing anywhere but the UK was a stupid idea and I shouldn’t have allowed myself to agree to it, we began using a Polish company to design our website. It took time. The Spanish expression of maniana is very popular here. Timekeeping and deadlines do not really interest the Poles. They also have this infuriating habit of cancelling a meeting, perhaps for very good reasons, and forgetting to tell you. And then, when we were briefly out of the country and trying to make contact, we discovered the guy who ran the web design company had closed and forgotten to tell anyone that as well. A few months later, to a great fanfare, he returned and opened a night club and then a few months after that, this suddenly had padlocked gates and never opened again.

I hope you are not eating while reading this. Parents have an interesting way of describing many things to their offspring. I had a friend who once revealed to me that, if she had children, she would like to see what happened if she taught them that the fridge was the cooker, the washing machine the fridge and the cooker was the washing machine. Chaos was the word that came to mind although one of my own son’s, no names here as I don’t want to embarrass the eldest, once climbed into the tumble dryer presumably believing it to be the car and wanting a day out. My friend, to my knowledge, never had children.

My own parents, remember they had to cope with a child called Tashy, followed this naming practice, especially in the natural bodily functions which we all perform. They were known as number 1 and number 2. Now I don’t want to sully this piece of literature with a more accurate description; suffice it to say that 2 is built on a more solid foundation than 1. After an initial year or so on the potty, I progressed to the toilet. At the time it seemed a fairly good design, both for number 1 and 2. You could sit, being male this was only necessary for one of the two or, I suppose, two of the two.

Isn’t the English language fun? Sitting on the toilet is only one letter short of what you are actually doing there. I think it was the great cricket commentator, Brian Johnson, who once, when describing the batting stance of a guy called Henry Horton, said he looked as though he sitting on a shooting stick, but sadly spoonerismed his words,

Right, where was I? Oh yes, number 2 and the design of the toilet. Funnily enough, talking of design, when I first visited France, dix-neuf cent soixante-treize, makes me feel as though fewer people know how old I am, in some places, in hotels, the toilet was just a hole in the floor. Put a whole new meaning to squat thrusts. I was actually conceived in Geneva, luckily both my parents were there at the time, so, had I been born there I could have been bi-lateral or something and done my un and deux.

However, this piece started because, when I arrived in Poland, I found the design of at least some of their toilets, well, interesting. I have put up a picture so you could see. The bowl is at the front. By the way, those of you with excellent eyesight, and the wish to do so, will note I have a broken toe (No. 2 on right foot). A doctor recently asked me when it was broken and I couldn’t tell him. He said ‘surely you must have felt it’, but I hadn’t. At least I can now tell him it happened some time before 2002.

Anyway this design flaw in Polish toilets worried me a lot. I had been led to believe that one wished for the waste to disappear as soon as possible and, under the Polish system, it doesn’t. It is, so to speak, staring you in the face during the final cleaning moments. It would be possible, I think, should you lie flat-out on the toilet seat, Brabham BT55 style, that you might succeed in disposing of your assets quicker but the cistern precludes this idea. It is possible to sit the other way round but this would require a clever reversing technique on completion or the necessity to get your leg over at the end. Sadly no one ever told me why these toilets were designed this way.

Which leads me neatly into the bath, less neatly on the one occasion when I did try the leg-over method. Many of the baths were three-quarter length. There was no way that even a compact, pocket-rocket like me, could stretch out. You had to sit there with your knees around your chest. Now presumably for some of the plumper older ladies in this world this was just a reverse of normal life, just joking, but it didn’t really allow for the relaxing, thinking that I so enjoy. Again I got no answer for this design but I did discover, and this was the major topic in my 10 minute pilot TV Pott(y)ed Guide, that in the more rural parts of the country, full-size baths were in use, though mainly as water storage on allotments.

I thought this showed that although, as EU commentators had us believe at the time, Poland was a growing nation, they had, at some stage, already been that size, which was when they fitted the baths now on allotments. I assume that nowadays all Polish baths are full-size; they possibly got an EU grant to achieve this. In fact there may now be a small-size bath mountain sprouting up somewhere outside Brussels.

This size adjustment also happens in other areas too. The picture to the………………….. left, sorry about the delay in typing there but I do have a problem with left and right. Don’t know why but it has been with me since as long as I can remember. When I took my driving test I, surreptitiously, had an L and an R written on my hands. Well,not both hands obviously, as this would have been of little help. On the right hand or, more accurately, the correct hand. What’s more on Boxing Day 1953 I was lucky enough to have an accident which has helped me a lot in later years. In those days, before health and safety were even spoken in the same sentence, we had real toys in our Christmas crackers. I had got a tin clicker thing, which was about the size of a golf ball and you pressed the middle and it went click. I was a simple child and was quite attached to it. On Boxing Day, father was taking me and my sister, she was in a pram, out for a walk. Well she wasn’t really walking although her little legs were going up and down a bit. As always, I ran down the path, slipped on the ice and fell to the ground. Even in those days I knew how to land safely and despite the speed of my fall, suffered no broken bones. However, I did deeply embed the beloved tin clicker into my left palm. Running back to the house, and leaving a trail of blood across mother’s black and white tiled hall, I showed the resultant damage to my parents, who reacted accordingly. Mother nearly fainted, closed her eyes, turned away, opened them and saw her hall floor. Red on black and white can be quite impressive, so she loudly exclaimed that I was bleeding to death and she would have to clean the floor. Father, a very calm man outwardly, phoned an ambulance and held my hand above my head, presumably giving me the appearance of a ginger haired child and maybe part of the reason that three of mine are so endowed.

The walk was cancelled. Several hours later, my father and I returned home. I had a tangerine in my right hand and three stitches in my left. The tangerine was given as I was very brave with the stitches. I had little choice, as the casualty department had run out of numbing injections, so I felt everything. Now I can tell left from right simply by looking at the tangerine sown into my right palm. Sorry, that was stupid; I can still see the stitches on my left palm. It causes many problems when I go to a palmist.

Have I wandered a bit here? Where was I? Oh yes, the picture…………………..had to look again, on the left shows a very long open Polish sandwich. Of course it’s not on the left now but it was all those days ago when I started this.

My final surreal item about Poland concerns some of the small shops. They can often be found, almost underground, at the bottom of the large apartment blocks. In some cases they are even found inside, as one of the flats. I know there was an internet café, where people could log-on or just sit and relax in one block, and above it a hairdressers. I guess they thought they were a cut above the rest.

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