Back from Holidays

Hi folks!

About a week ago we came back from a week long vacation/conference in Mazury, not far from Olsztynek  .

We had a fabulous time and the weather was mostly kind to us.

But one of the problems of holidays is that when you come back home, you have a lot more work to do.
For us, this statement was an understatement!
In the last week the following has happened to us:

• We were given notice to leave our flat
• We had to insure our car
• Our tenants in Australia stopped renting our house (without notice)
• We had to apply for a visa to stay in Poland (which involved driving about 300 kms)
• Jola had to go to daily training for her new job at pre-school
• Jola discovered that she was getting 20% less salary than we expected
• I (Malcolm) have read Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde by RLS
• The kids have both had fevers (which fortunately only lasted two days each)
• And a few other annoying things that I can't really explain in dot points

So, you'll have to forgive us if we have been a bit slack writing our latest Monthly Journal.  I know it might seem that we are complaining and completely stressed, but it's not true.  We are strangely calm and happy.

PS. as I have been typing up this Blog, I have received an SMS saying that we have been offered a place to rent.  So sometime in the next few weeks we will be moving.  Hooray!

Not wishing for winter

This post is a response to my friend Kathy's post here

For the last week or so in Poland, the weather has been fantastic.  At times I find it hard to believe that only four months ago the temperature was struggling to reach minus 10.

I do not miss the winter.  Not at all.

(Not even a little bit)

The Politeness of Polish Supermarkets

Over the last couple of years I have spent a considerable amount of time in Polish supermarkets.  Not by choice, but because I have to eat occasionally - and Polish supermarkets don’t usually deliver.

One problem with Polish supermarkets is that each supermarket keeps slightly different produce, which means that doing the weekly shopping requires visiting about three or four different shops.  This is compounded by the fact that bread only lasts for about 48 hours before it starts to mutate into something that requires something stronger than teeth to devour.

A good thing about supermarkets however is that they are a good place to try out my Polish and to interact with average Polish people.  Unfortunately however it is not always a positive experience, because Poles (like most people) can sometimes be rude.  In fact about six months ago, after making very careful observations (and some sideways glances) I prepared this table.

You will note that there seems to be a very strong link between politeness and carbon dioxide.  This was a big surprise to me!  Of course my research is very localised, and before I can make any scientific statements I will need to apply for a million dollar research grant to prove my point.

CAPTAIN RHUBARB AND THE IMAGINATION BUCKET

This is a feeble attempt at a children's story.  Tell me of you like it!  If you are a bit of an artist/illustrator then feel free to help me with some pictures...

Once upon a time, a long long time away (after about a million sleeps), there was this boy.  I can’t remember this boys name, but it might have been Tommy or Bobby or Alexander.  I don’t remember.

One day when this boy was playing with his father’s telescope he looked up into space and he saw a spaceship.  It was a very small spaceship far far away.  Inside the spaceship he could see a little girl calling for help.

Oh no!  He thought to himself.  I have to rescue her!  So he found his father’s telephone and called the Emergency Space Services…

Hello, this is the ESS, how can we help you?…  What? A girl trapped in a spaceship?…  Yes, we’ll send our fastest spaceship straight away!

The problem was that the fastest spaceship wasn’t very fast at all.  In fact it was very slow.  Very very slow…  It was so slow that when Billy or Timmy or Archibald watched it through his father’s telescope he could hardly see it moving.

Danny or Sammy or Frederick was very sad for the little girl in the spaceship far far away.  But then he had an idea!  He went down into the basement, looked through his mother’s cupboards until he found something.  It was his imagination bucket!

The imagination bucket was very old, even older than his school teacher.  It was made of wood and had a metal handle.  But it was a very special bucket because whenever he imagined something, the something that he imagined would come out of the bucket.

And so Jimmy or Becky or Theodore started imagining things.  But all he could imagine was picking strawberries at his grandfather’s farm.  Soon the basement was full of strawberries and so the boy went upstairs and imagined some more.

Next he imagined picking potatoes, and as they came out of the bucket his house filled up.  Then he imagined picking rhubarbs until there was a mountain of rhubarbs.

Then he imagined that all of his friends were imagining picking imaginary things until soon the pile of imagined things coming out his imagination bucket reached to the sky!

But the little girl was still trapped in the spaceship.  And so the little boy (I don’t remember his name) imagined that he crept silently into a dark cave and rescued a super hero from a dragon.  And the name of this super hero was CAPTAIN RHUBARB.

Captain Rhubarb flew out of the imagination bucket as fast as lightning.  He flew up over the mountain of rhubarbs, around the pile of imaginary imagined things and up into space.  He flew past the very slow spaceship of the ESS.

And then, Captain Rhubarb landed on the spaceship where the little girl was stuck.  The little girl was very happy to see Captain Rhubarb and she invited him inside to have a cup of lemon tea.

Captain Rhubarb and the little girl then waited patiently for the ESS spaceship to arrive.  When they finally got back to earth the little girl gave the little boy a little kiss.  And they all ate strawberries and potatoes and rhubarbs for the rest of the month.