Carrots and Cats

Today I planted carrots, reasonably confident that the carrot fly season is over.  The broad bean season is over too, and I must say that there was no point letting them get big enough to shell. The actual broad beans turned out to be tiny whereas the young pods were quite delicious.

I had hopes of convincing Polish Pretend Son to build a walled garden, but after a day in the August heat, I realised that, as cold as it gets in winter, Poland has no need of walled gardens. It's cold and rainy Britain that needs the walled gardens. No wonder ours are famous--if only among ourselves.

One of the most cheerful sights in the Polish countryside was a brightly coloured village garden with lots of flowers and neat rows of vegetables. We didn't see any horses--just the two ponies outside the living country museum (one looking suspiciously like a Welsh Mountain Pony)--but we saw a few slim cats slinking around.  Naturally many of the village houses had dogs, and some even had signs warning "Bad dog." I don't think Scottish dog owners are so honest about their pets.

Naturally the dogs barked up a story as we walked by on our epic walk to Polish Pretend Daughter's rehearsal two villages over.

"Another burek (mutt)," Polish Pretend Son observed.

 There were also many chickens and ducks, but now I must eat supper.

Pierogi, Naturally

I can tell that I am on a diet because it is not Lent and yet here I am thinking about food. Reading cookbooks will surely follow. If Rose Petal Jam can ever be ordered for less than £20, I might finally buy it.

Polish food is quite delicious. Should anyone feel tired of life, let them start eating Polish food. It will perk them up right away. Polish customer service is, however, famously hit and miss. Benedict Ambrose and I have (or had) a favourite teashop in Kraków ruled by pair of rude and cranky old ladies. This year they outdid themselves in rudeness by locking up the shop and going away for months without mentioning this on their website.

Service at the country hotel was quite nice, though, and naturally the first thing we ate when we got there was pierogi with confit of duck. Yum, yum, yum.  Well, for me that was the second thing. The first thing was chłodnik, a cold beetroot soup of incomparable tastiness.

Another evening I chowed down on a kotlet schabowy, which you and I knew latterly as a pork schnitzel, with potatoes and fermented cabbage erroneously called sauerkraut. Germans have sauerkraut and the sauer comes from vinegar. Poles have kapusta and they salt it and put it in jars. I apologise to my ancestors, but kapusta is better.

There were some experimental foods, too. Polish Pretend Son ate fish burgers so often that I tried the fish burger. The fish was a New Zealand whiptail (aka hoki, aka Blue Grenadier), fried and scrumptious on top of veggies with sauce. There was also gazpacho, which I did not like as much as glorious chłodnik.

Back in the super-traditional realm, there was a black blood sausage so ontologically bloody I couldn't actually eat it. Benedict Ambrose could. This was at the big cookout in the field put aside for parties, and B.A. also ate a flat chop called karkówka because it comes from the pig's neck (kark). I stuck to kiełbasa and salad for the duration. Well, I did have a light and fluffy piece of sernik (cheesecake).

Breakfasts were intensely good because traditional Polish breakfasts consist of sliced meats, soft white cheese, yellow hard cheese, eggs, sliced tomatoes, sliced cucumbers, sprouts, sliced bread, boiled wieners known as parówki and a host of other good things. There was also natural yogurt made in the hotel and homemade jam to go with it.

For our last meal we all went to a pizzeria and ate cheesy crispy pizzas which were incredibly inexpensive and also quite good. In Kraków B.A.  had had a pizza in an "Italian restaurant" and I had had a hamburger, which was alright, but really in Poland you should eat Polish food. We were driven to the "Italian restaurant" because it was so late,  B.A. drew the line at kabobs, and the window that used to sell placki (potato pancakes) was selling ice-cream instead.

Speaking of ice-cream, the hotel had lovely sundaes, but amusingly even more memorable were the chocolate-covered Magnum Almond Ice-cream bars B.A. and I found in the freezer of the village shop. It was like meeting friends from home unexpectedly. Meanwhile, it was boiling hot, so we got one each. Just as we began to eat them in the street, the heavens opened. We rushed to a nearby bus shelter and we watched the violent storm in safety while munching away.  It was marvellous.

Godfather and Great-Uncle E

Uncanny.

I am reading an interesting book called Atomic Habits. Atomic Habits says change comes not from stating your goals but by professing your identity. Every morning I am going to identify as a slim, healthy, even-tempered, pious, polyglot writer. We'll see how that works.  So far today I have studied Italian, studied Polish, exercised vigorously, and written two articles. Not bad.

But my theme today is language-learning, and the satisfaction that comes when you can understand things you didn't understand before and you can speak to people you couldn't speak to before. For example, while Benedict Ambrose and I were in Poland last week, I finally had a conversation with my Goddaughter's Godfather.

I should probably explain that the country hotel B.A. and I were staying in is very dear to the hearts of Polish Pretend Son and his extended family. PPS and Polish Pretend Daughter-in-Law had their wedding reception there. Then their baby had her christening party there. As Benedict Ambrose and I ate our breakfast there last week, he remarked that it was full of happy memories.

One happy memory was meeting various friends and relations of PPS in the minute hotel restaurant before PPS headed the male ones away to his bachelor party. One of the relations was the future Godling's future Godpapa, and I don't think we exchanged any words other than Polish "Hi" and Polish "Nice to meet you." However, this was not surprising, for there was quite a crowd.

The crowd was smaller at Godling's christening, and being Godling's Godmama, I was thrown together quite a lot with her Godpapa, but we still didn't have much to say to each other. This was largely my fault, for uppermost on my mind was the Skład Apostolski and how I was going to repeat it at the speed of people who have all been saying it in Polish their whole lives. But that said, the Godfather is a man of few words, I was later informed.

Therefore, it was a communications revolution last Monday night when, after taking a break from a noisy outdoor barbecue featuring young people, I left B.A. snug in bed with his book and returned to our table. There I had an actual conversation with the newly appeared Godfather.

"By then it was very dark," I wrote in my trusty journal, "and there were amused screams and still loud music and quite a lot of merriment for the scant dozen or so young men and women."

They were mostly young women, all dancing around as far from our table as they could and yet still be near the food and drink. I sat down at the head of this table, and to my surprise the Godfather engaged me in a Polish conversation about B.A.'s and my day trip to Kraków. We discovered that we have an acquaintance in common there, and PPS laughed uproariously when I said "świat to mały" ("It's a small world"). Apparently this is the most Polish response to such a revelation.  I also learned what Godpapa does for a living and where he lives and where exactly he is on the PPS family tree.

PPS was slightly amazed by this conversation and put it down to Godpapa having got himself a fiancee and therefore a newfound ability to talk to women. However, I think it was because B.A. was absent, and I no longer had an excuse to speak English instead of Polish. Godpapa, like other laconic people forced to learn it as a foreign language, believes he speaks English poorly.

It was my third proper Polish conversation of the day. My first Polish conversation had been with PPS's Great-Uncle E that afternoon. B.A. and I had had a very hot and sweaty noon hour walk around a harvested wheat field. We were heading back into the hotel for money and masks, so that we could go to the village shop, when B.A. was hailed by Great-Uncle E. Great-Uncle E, who is over 80, I believe, was sitting at one of the tables between the mansion and the palace gardens. He was clearly laying in wait for people to talk to, and he recognised B.A.

"Dzień dobry! Dzień dobry!" shouted B.A. while frantically waving me over, and I had a short and friendly chat with Great-Uncle E before I decisively ended it so we could get our things and sneak off to the shop.

But my second Polish conversation was also with Great-Uncle E because I could see the poor man still sitting at that table from our hotel room when we got back. My conscience besmote me, and after an hour of reading or so, I got up and went out to talk to Great-Uncle E again.

It was marvellous. Great-Uncle E has only a limited number of topics, and not only did I have a preview of some of them in our first conversation, I had had another preview of them after breakfast back in March. This means that I understood them beautifully the third time.

Another great thing about Great-Uncle E is that he just likes chatting and is therefore perfectly happy answering my questions and doesn't mind getting only "Acha!" and "Rozumiem" ("I understand") in response. Thus, I learned exactly where Great-Uncle E is on the family tree and also how many children and grandchildren he has and which one has a job in America. I also established that PPS's cousin-the-priest is Great-Uncle E's son, so that was exciting. And eventually the priest-son drove up in a car and took Great-Uncle E away.

"Well done!" shouted Benedict Ambrose, leaning out the window.

The trick, really, is to study Polish almost every day for years and years and then relax when actually called upon to speak the language. Relaxing is hard.

This morning I played the former Father Jacek Międlar's fiery "Narodowa duma" speech while I was on my exercise bike in the kitchen and was delighted when, as expected, cries of "Narodowa duma" came seeping in from the sitting-room. I was also delighted that I understood the speech so much better than I did when I heard it the first 20 times, five years ago. Like Great-Uncle E, Międlar's range of topics, though decidedly different, was narrow.

Sitting in the Back with Godling

My favourite of Godling's toys

I once read in a book about contentment that the most important part of a holiday is the end. It's the end that you remember most, the part that determines your memories of the trip and how much lasting happiness you get from it.

The way our holiday ended was a trip from Polish Pretend Son's house to the airport, with my Goddaughter (Godling for short) in the back with Benedict Ambrose on the left and me in the middle. We had a few car trips like this, for which B.A. and I are very grateful to PPS, especially as we have never driven him anywhere ourselves. I enjoyed all these trips, not least because they were on the normal (i.e. the right) side of the road, but I especially loved the opportunities to spend more time with Godling.

Godling is 7 months old and beautiful. She has dark slanted-down eyes, a lot of reddish-blond hair that is as yet so fine that she looks bald, two minuscule bottom teeth that have only recently appeared, and a lot of baby fat. She is at the stage where she can't crawl, exactly, but she can pull herself forward with her arms to get what she wants. When she realises she needs to employ her knees and lift her tummy, she'll be a speed demon. She hasn't said a discernible word yet, but she is certainly vocal. One of her monologues sounds like "Gid-gid-gid-gid-gid-gid." She can be entertained with such simple toys as a golf ball or a beer mat attached to a piece of string, and when I gave her a cardboard English-Polish book about animals, she was more interested in gumming the corners than in looking at the pictures. She is, usually, a very happy baby.

I am suddenly overwhelmed by a desire to get my passport, get on the bus, and get on a plane to see Godling again.

Godling's principal toy is a wooden fish inset with a row of beads that rattle back and forth. She had this with her in the back of the car when we went to the airport, but she found it insufficiently entertaining, so I rummaged in my handbag and found a small flashlight on a chain. I clicked this on and waved it back and forth, which distracted Godling from fussing. Entertaining Godling was how our holiday ended, and it was awesome.

I had lots of opportunities to entertain Godling during the week, especially thanks to impromptu dinner parties outside the country hotel we all stayed in. The hotel consists of two parts--a large butter-yellow "clubhouse" and stupendous butter-yellow mid-19th century ex-German Schloss. Between the house and the palace, there are beautifully landscaped gardens with a fountain in the middle, and behind the palace there is the smaller part of the golf course. The properly huge part of the golf course is across the rural highway, to which golfers scoot in buggies on the driveway between the house and a row of umbrella-covered tables. In the evenings,  we sat at one of these tables, drank prosecco (Italian champagne), ate filling and delicious Polish suppers, watched PPS spray wasps, and slapped at  mosquitoes.

A changing and fascinating array of PPS' family members and friends joined us outside the hotel as the week went on, and sometimes I held the baby. On one particularly memorable occasion, Godling's mother played folk tunes on her fiddle while my husband beat the rhythm on a tambour. The baby was passed around the table, but she soon stopped with me.

On an earlier memorable occasion, Pretend Polish Daughter-in-Law and Godling spent part of the afternoon on the small golf course, not far from where BA was reading his book and watching golfers contend with the water trap, rolling about by one of the holes, into which Godling threw a golf ball--her first hole-in-one. PPDIL wanted to go the driving range and practise her swing, so we went along, too. BA walked to the range, and I sat beside PPDIL in the golf cart, clutching the baby as she zoomed across the road and around the golf course. While PPDIL, now barefoot, taught BA how to hit the ball and proceeded to hit two baskets of balls herself, Godling and I played with a golf ball.

Apparently Polish Pretend Daughter-in-Law would like me to  come back and entertain Godling while she does something else for a few hours of the day, and if they had a room to keep B.A. and me in, I would do it in a heartbeat.

BA and I were supposed to have a small dinner party yesterday, which I hoped would take the sting out of being suddenly alone again. Unfortunately BA picked up a tummy bug of some kind in Poland (no symptoms of the Vile Germ, I'm relieved to report), so we had to cancel our party. Instead we watched a film about a woman who runs an informal boarding house in 1970s California (the boarding is clearly to help pay for the beautiful old building's restoration) and often invites people to dinner. Seeing the crowd around the table, and the impromptu conversations with boarders and drop-ins in the kitchen made me feel intensely nostalgic.

Poland, Sunny Poland

Benedict Ambrose and I have bought airline tickets for Poland, and the price of Ryanair tickets are now so expensive, I cried. They are more than four times as expensive as they were in late February. But that said, we are going to Poland as the treasured guests of friends and do not anticipate many more expenses. We will not be spending more during our one week holiday in Poland than we used to pay for our glorious ten to twelve days in Italy.

Twelve whole days! That was before I began working full-time, of course. B.A., being British, has oodles of vacation days. My most recent long holiday was last July when we joined family members in Berlin. We had a week of sightseeing and family meals, and then I went to Poland for two days and B.A. went home.

B.A. waved me off at the bus platform before he headed for the airport. The Poland-bound bus driver steered the wheel with his elbows whenever blowing his nose on a paper handkerchief. He chatted merrily in Polish with his co-driver, and when the bus crossed the border into Poland it began bouncing up and down, so bad was the road all of a sudden. I found all of this quite comforting.

What I liked best about Berlin was drinking coffee with B.A. in the Hotel Adlon and then on a boat going down the Spree. I did not much like Potsdam or any of the palaces we wandered through because I am not one for urban sightseeing anymore, except from boats. I much prefer to walk for miles in the countryside and the survey the landscape from the top of a hill. Had our Poland plans fallen through, I would be planning a week's march along the John Muir Way--not the whole thing, but  from Helensburgh to home, punctuated by B&Bs because B.A. does not enjoy camping.

We have not worked out yet what we will do in Poland besides admire my goddaughter and eat delicious cuisine polonaise. This must be discussed with our hosts. Perhaps we will walk for miles and miles in Przemkowski Park, if no other national park is nearer. If Kraków were not too far away,  I would pay a call on Polonia Christiana.

Well, it is something to look forward to, and in the meantime I will cut all personal expenses, take a lot of vitamins, and not give the airline or the boarder guards any reason to suspect me of harbouring the Vile Germ.

Joy of Summer

I used to wonder why June 21, the first day of summer,  was called "midsummer," but now that I live in the UK, I know.

Summer in the UK begins when the rain stops and the sun actually feels warm, and this year that was today. I had a very splendid day, too. I used to love autumn best, but now that I live in the UK, my allegiances have switched to early summer, i.e. May. 

This morning I did an hour of Polish study, and then I dragged myself outdoors to the back garden and did two hours of weeding between the paving stones in the lovely sun. Then I hung out a load of laundry, and had some rosół (Polish chicken soup) left over from the dinner party we had last night. It turned out beautifully, so no more stock cubes for me ever. 

Then I did some more laundry and wrote three articles. It was launder, hang, write, fetch and fold, launder, hang, write, fetch and fold all day. Then B.A. made chicken croquettes, so I stopped working to eat. And then a Polish pal came with his mother to borrow a piano, and I rushed for the homemade black currant vodka, squeaking Czy macie ochotę na czarną porzaczkę? before our Polish pal had time to warn his mother about me and my linguistic obsession.

In my sitting room, where twice a week I harangue my Polish tutor po polsku, I am rather better at Polish than at church, so I did much better chatting with our Polish pal's bewildered mother than I usually do chatting with our Polish pal. So that was extremely awesome and rather put a crown on our first summer day. 

The denouement was sitting outside with B.A. screened by beech hedges as we pondered my handiwork, the telephone wires and the currently naked trellis against the shed and drank white wine. By the way, the apple blossoms have mostly blown away, but the roses (pink and white) have begun to bloom.

Tomorrow I will do an anti-dandelion search-and-destroy mission before I go to Barre class.  Yes, I do love summer.

Burning Harry Potter

Dzień dobry! It's a beautiful sunny day, and although work and illness have conspired to keep me away from my beloved Polish studies for weeks, I discovered that I was still able to discuss complex topics with my Polish tutor po polsku in a reasonably fluent fashion.

This makes me very happy. Literally. The endorphins only chatting away in non-English can bring are coursing through my veins.

Polish Tutor brought up the news that some priests in Poland have burned a pile of Harry Potter books and expressed shame that this is being reported throughout the world. My question was why this story was of such interest to the newspapers of the world. It's not like the priests burned the Koran. Teen wizards are not going to rise up and burn down their local Polish embassy.

When a colleague brought my attention to the priests-burn-Potter story a couple of days ago, I didn't  read it because I already know that Polish priests don't like the J.K. Rowlings organon. They also don't like New Age, pentagrams, Odin worship, Halloween and the goodly number of other things they warn about on posters tacked up near Polish church doors.

Poland is a wonderfully different place from Canada and the U.K., and although I sometimes find the differences challenging, I was brought up to respect differences. That includes solemn warnings against and fiery rejections of symbols of the occult.

I shiver at the idea of burning books because my generation of Canadians had it banged into our heads that the Nazis burned books by Jews because they were written by Jews and next they gassed and burned the Jews. However, I also have a friend--an Oxford grad with a PhD from elsewhere--who burns occult books when he finds them on friends' shelves. I learned from this that there is a very big difference between burning paper because of the ideas printed thereon and burning them because of who wrote them. As long as the Polish priests burn  Harry Potter books because they extol magic and not because they were written by a woman or a Briton, I don't care.

Meanwhile, Canadian author Michael O'Brien famously thinks Harry Potter books corrupt the imagination, so although they are popular and fun, they are not universally loved by people who are not Polish priests.

So my question stands. Why is it that a Harry Potter book-burning party by priests in Poland is considered newsworthy outside of Poland?

Is it because it adds to a narrative that the Poles hate books and learning?

I sincerely hope not, given that this is the narrative the Nazi-led Germans tried to establish in 1939.

Is it because it adds to a narrative that Poland is being "held back" by Catholicism?

Again, I sincerely hope not, since that was the narrative the Communists tried to push during their almost 50 year domination of the country.

Is it because it adds to a narrative that Catholics Poles were somehow complicit with the book-burning Nazis?

I sincerely hope not because that particular lying narrative spits on the bones and ashes of the three million non-Jewish Poles who died alongside the three million Jewish Poles who perished during the Nazi/Soviet occupation of Poland.

Anti-polonism annoys me very much, and although stories about priests burning children's books embarrass some young Polish ex-pats, what they mainly do is play into Polish fears that the world hates Poland and is out to get her. Although standing together against an outside enemy does stop Poles from quarrelling with each other for a few minutes, anti-polonism ultimately isn't good for anyone. It's both a form of lying and an example of virulent xenophobia.

Again, I don't like burning books. That's part of who I am as a Canadian born after the Second World War. It's a bit of a drag, really, as it makes disposing of unwanted books more difficult. Taking a lot of paperbacks to the charity shop is a pain, and just throwing them in the recycling makes me feel guilty. It's superstitious, really. I should burn an unwanted book or two in the garden occasionally on principle. One of my own books, written by me, has been pulped, incidentally: hundreds of copies (weep weep) robbed of their covers, shredded and boiled.

That, of course, was just a prudential decision by my publisher and signified nothing more than his loss of faith in his ability to sell the books. It had nothing to do with the content or me. If someone does want to burn her copy of Seraphic Singles (or Anielskie Single) because she dislikes it, though,  I think this well within her Freedom of Expression.

Mystery of Galaretka Solved!

Once I was a mighty blogger... Oh well!

Devoted readers will have divined that I am very, very, very busy with a series of news article for work. The house is a mess, my Polish lessons have been put to the side (mostly), my snail mail correspondence goes neglected ...

Somehow, though, I will drag myself back to my normal schedule--the one that involves dusting, hoovering, studying Polish for an hour, and studying German for 20 minutes. Today my Polish tutor came by, and I was still able to hold a comprehensible conversation, so that's good news.

Another bit of good news is that someone on Facebook linked to this excellent, informative blog. The woman makes her own pączki; I am amazed.  The linker linked to this, however, as an example of food that should never be eaten. Naturally the linker is wrong: it looks absolutely delicious. And now I understand what karp w galarecie means. It is a phrase from Polish in 4 Weeks Part 2 that I never bothered looking up. Clearly it is "carp in aspic", which I will not be making, for nobody, not even a Pole, really likes carp.

Looking at "Polish Your Kitchen" makes me long for Easter. I love making Polish Easter Breakfast; if you're reading this because you hate my LSN coverage, perhaps that will humanise me a bit in your eyes. Is there anything more revolutionary than sausage soup and jam tart for breakfast? Well--maybe chicken Jello for supper! Woo hoo!

Benedict Ambrose and I prepared for Lent on Pancake Tuesday by going to an Argentine restaurant for steaks and Malbec instead.  He had French fries with his; I had fried onions. We split some sort of Argentinian almond tart for pudding; dulche de leche featured. It was all glorious. We will return on Easter Monday.

The next day we went to Ash Wednesday Mass according the Extraordinary Form of the Latin Rite and afterwards broke our fast with cheese-and-onion pasties from the train station. There was a goodly quantity of diced potatoes mixed in with the cheese and onion, and it was positively the definition of British Lenten food: stodgy carbohydrates.

This should be the most humbling time of the year for Latin Rite Catholics. The Islamic Ramadan Fast is based on the Lenten Fast of 6th/7th century Christians, which shows how far we've fallen since then. The Greek Catholics--or at least their priests, monks and women, not to mention the Greek and every other kind of Orthodox--or at least their priests, monks and women--leave us Latins in the dust.  When they mock us, we should admit that they are just and weep tears of sorrow and repentance.

It was very embarrassing to see, on a TRAD Facebook page, Trad Catholics encouraging each other to eat great cuts of meat on the Thursday between Ash Wednesday and Friday.  Well, it was not so embarrassing that I wouldn't mention it on my blog. I write about  Catholics scandals all day long, so here's one about us Trads. No feast without a fast, people (unless you're under 18, pregnant, ill or have or had eating disorders).

Out Every Night

"I'm not going out!" I yelled at my mother just now.

She had headphones on and, I suspect, Netflix on at full blast.

The Aged P has gone rather deaf. Her father was rather deaf, too. His family thought it was from shooting down the Luftwaffe. However, after a few years of the 40-something Aged P telling her children not to mumble, she began to suspect genes, not the Luftwaffe, were to blame for her father's early onset deafness.

When Aged P took off her headphones, and I repeated that I was staying in, she gave a sardonic but friendly cheer.  I think it a good idea to stay in from time to time--even though my parents will surely watch television instead of engaging me in board games--to prevent accusations that I am treating my parents' house like a hotel.

Let me think. Where have I been going? Saturday night--stayed in to battle jet-lag. Sunday night--family dinner with sisters and nephew. Monday night--in Koreatown North with literary pal. Tuesday night--V&A pub with kindergarten chum. Wednesday night...

Wednesday night I went out in fear and trembling to an inter religious dialogue event at my beloved theologate. I found out after I graduated that my dear old college was considered rather liberal.  Meanwhile, while I was there I was rather indignant that some students thought I was rather conservative.

"I'm centre-left," I wailed at the time.

"I'm centre-left," I wailed at Boston College.

The amusing thing about Lonerganian-- and I was trained by Lonerganians to be a Lonerganian--is that, be we Marxists or be we free market anarchists, we all think we're in Lonergan's "not-so-numerous center." (Lonergan, a Canadian, used American spelling, which irks me.) Anyway, I'm clearly no longer centre-left or even in Lonergan's not-so-numerous centre. No, I am clearly a bloodthirsty TRAD, so I was a bit worried about my reception.

However, the wonderful thing about my theologate was always its hospitality, and I was welcomed back with smiles, hugs, news and gossip.

One of my favourite former professors gave a paper about Catholic-Native Spirituality syncretism.  I was so moved by his description of the dire poverty of the Plains Indians in the early 20th century, that I felt rather bad about having described my mangiacake self as marginalised. As marginalisation goes, being taunted by classroom nitwits for three years is not that serious, I admit.

After the lecture I took the subway north with my very favourite former professor, and our conversation was moving too.

Then on Thursday, Valentine's Day, I hastily donned some clean clothes after work and went to my youngest brother's for dinner. When he answered the door, I discovered that he had turned into a Toronto Russian. That is, he now has Toronto Russian-style facial hair and a gold chain. He revealed that Pirate is also intentionally dressing a la Russe. This interested me very much, for being mistaken for a Russian surely prevents one from being reviled as a mangiacake.

Naturally I approved the imposture, and wondered aloud if either brother or nephew might be interested in learning Russian. Naturally I had read Winter of the Moomins in Polish on the way there. I prefer to read Polish on the TTC, not only because its a great opportunity, but because the vast majority of people around me are also thinking in at least two languages. It makes me feel like a real Torontonian instead of a born Torontonian.  There's a sociological paper in there somewhere.

Meanwhile my brother eyed my fake bear skin hat askance. Apparently it looks too real and might get me attacked with paint. I think I would be much more likely to be attacked for this hat in Edinburgh, and that in Toronto it's too cold for paint-attacks.  Besides, Toronto vegans probably think it's not nice to throw paint on foreigners, and given my hat, my tweed coat, and Zima Muminków, I look very foreign, let's face it.

After a very delicious dinner and a bottle of wine, we went woozily into the cold and snowy streets for dessert.  My brother lives in a spacious (for Toronto) apartment in a now-fashionable district, so I enjoyed looking at all the snazzy shops and inviting bars on the way to the ice-cream parlour. There, despite tentative plans to become each other's fitness accountability buddies, we shared a banana split.

It was past midnight when I got home, and I felt a bit guilty. However, I consoled myself that my mother was unlikely to sniff at me for getting back so late on a work night when I had been out with my own brother.

Post removed--moved to LSN

I wrote vociferously this morning about a probable attempt to blacken Poland's record during World War 2. The article has now been modified and submitted to LSN.

Update: And here it is.

MSNBC anchor Andrea Mitchell has apologised on Twitter although not on television yet, as far as I know.

To boil the controversy down: Mitchell wrongly said the "Polin" Museum is a museum dedicated to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. It isn't.  It's dedicated to the entire history of the Jewish community in Poland.

But to add insult to inaccuracy, Mitchell also said that the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was against the "Polish and Nazi regime."

Poland was occupied by the Germans and the Russians in 1939, then by the Germans alone soon after Hitler turned on Stalin in 1941, and then by the Russians alone when the Second World War ended in 1945.

There was no "Polish regime" in existence during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. This revolt took place from April 19 to May 16, 1943. It was against the Germans. The Warsaw Uprising, which lasted from  August 1 until October 2, 1944, was also against the Germans. 

I am of German descent, and I have not problem admitting those facts. So what was Mitchell's problem? 

For more information about what the Polish Christian experience of the German occupation was like, please see my LSN article. It's short but to the point.

Meanwhile it astonishes me that a 72 year old American journalist could is so ignorant of basic facts from the Second World War. It worries me, too.

Dixit and Buka

Polish Pretend Son playing Dixit

Today is the feast day of my patron saint, and so I got up early to catch the 7:13 AM train to Edinburgh and go to morning traditional Latin Mass. When I checked which vestments were being laid out for Father (white for St. Titus or red for my girl), the altar server promised Father would at least say the Collect for St. D.  What a delightful surprise when Father appeared fully decked out in red. Happy Saint's Day to me!

For a Saint's Day treat, I will blog instead of doing yet another load of laundry. I still have the Spa Day story to tell.

I do not go to Poland to relax. It is probably possible to relax in Poland.  If you are with Polish friends, and they do all the talking to necessary strangers--beautiful, 100% accurate Polish falling effortlessly from their lips--then you can sit back and float on a gentle wave of Polish hospitality. If you are with me, however, you have to put up with my cat-like leaps upon the valiant beast of the Polish language, my smugness when I bring you a treat (the cappuccino, the train ticket, the RyanAir printout), and my despair when the beast proves too slippery for me.

However, it is nice to take a day off from linguistic striving, and B.A. and I very much enjoyed a glorious day in a rural Polish spa hotel. We woke up in a spacious, modern, somewhat Danish-looking suite under the eaves of the restored Prussian palace. We ate cold meats and cheese in one of the palace's elegant dining rooms. We admired Polish Pretend Son and Polish Pretend-Daughter-in-Law when they finally came downstairs themselves, and we drank a lot of coffee.

We all had massage treatments scheduled for the early afternoon, so we whiled away the time by going for a walk in the post-Soviet countryside. As it was January, there wasn't much to see except the village shop, the village hall, a roadside shrine, a few dogs, a good many backyard chickens and a few roosters. As we approached a frozen field edged by a distant forest, we saw some deer emerge.

"What do the hotel guests do when they want to leave the hotel?" I asked.

"They don't," said Polish Pretend Son.

Once I was wrapped in towels in the spa in the palace's extensive cellars, I didn't want to leave the hotel either. First I had a massage, and then I sent B.A. to the masseur and sat in a salt air chamber until I was cold. Then I sat in an infra -red sauna. Then I had a shower. Then I sat in the super-hot-rocks sauna. Then I went back to the salt air chamber until I was cold again. Repeat. This went on for a couple of hours.  (PPS mostly sat in the salt air chamber reading articles about Jordan Peterson on his phone and drinking champagne.)

Afterwards PPS drove us all to the nearest town for an early supper. PPS brought white wine along for us to drink, and we ate the best pierogis in history. They were stuffed with duck meat and daubed with quince jelly, and I would order them for my last meal. It might be worthwhile spending a whole week in that town, just to eat in that restaurant every day. One could look at churches in the surrounding villages in between meals, if one could drive. (Bicycle?)

Afterwards we went back to the hotel spa to have beer baths. We sat in large beer barrels filled with hot beer with hops floating very obviously in it. This is apparently very good for one's health, and it was also good fun. We drank mead left over from the PPS&PPDL wedding as we sat in the hot beer in our bathing suits, quarrelling amiably and getting sleepy.

However, there was one last task to accomplish, and it was a board game called Dixit. PPDL was very excited by the prospect of playing Dixit, for she thought it a good way into delving into the psychology of your friends and loved ones. B.A. was not excited at the prospect, and went to bed at 10. However, the remaining three met again in a dining room to play this psychological game.

The rules weren't too difficult. To sum up, everyone has cards with surreal drawings on them. Whoever is "Storyteller" for that round, chooses one of his own cards, pronounces a verbal clue to what it means to him  (like "Act of Contrition" or "Minimal State"). Then the other players look at their cards, determine which cards might conceivably inspire that concept, and hand them over to the Storyteller.  The Storyteller looks at them and places all the chosen cards face-up on the table. Then the others have to guess which card was the Storyteller's card. Players get points if they chose correctly, and the Storyteller gets points if only one player chose correctly. If all the players guessed, the Storyteller gets no points.

"This is a stupid game," said PPS because he was losing. "This is a game for women."

Eventually PPS figured out a strategy based on trying to think of verbal clues that PPDL would understand and I wouldn't. Sometimes I was able to thwart this, and so I was ahead and winning until PPS looked at his cards and pronounced "Muminek."

Muminek is the Polish for Moomin, as in the Moomin Trolls. For some reason, I never read the Moomin Troll books, but all Polish children all read about the Muminki. Thus, when we all put down our cards, and PPDL saw a sort of gobbling ghost figure on one of them, she divined that PPS saw it as Buka, a terrible monster from the Muminki books. Expecting something more troll-like, I didn't.

"Buka is my favourite of all the Muminki characters," said PPS smugly and eventually won the game.

When B.A. and I went back to Poznań I bought two Muminki books from the cool bookshop in the Imperial Palace. Clearly I have to fill in the Muminki gap in my Polish studies.

This reminds me of spies, by the way. I often wonder how British and American spies in Cold War Poland perfected their cover. I think they would haven been easy to catch because, even it their accent was perfect, all you would have to do is ask them about a children's book every Polish child would have read at school. Maybe, though, MI5 and the CIA were well aware of this and so grilled their spies on the funny poems of Elementarz and the monsters in Muminki.

Blanking

Ah, the stuff of nightmares. Imagine that you are in a hotel dining room in Poland, surrounded by the friends and family of a Polish friend who has recently passed his PhD dissertation defence.

"Speech," you call out cheerfully.

"YOU make a speech," says your friend.

"Sprobuję" ("I'll try"), you say, and then go absolutely blank. Seven years of Polish studies vanish from your brain.

Naturally you fall back on English because it is easier and everyone in the room under 40 has a very good grasp of English anyway. Fortunately I have no anxiety about speaking English to groups.

That happened to me last week, and instead of beating myself up or deciding that Polish Pretend Daughter was right and I will never speak Polish because it is too hard, I am attempting to find out why I blanked.

For the record I also blanked when I was upbraided by a security guard in the Stary Browar mall and, most humiliatingly, when a young man asked me at a bus stop when the last airport bus had left. (Both times, however, I fell back on "Przepraszam" [I beg your pardon]."

Also for the record, before we travelled I promised B.A. I would not freak out if I couldn't speak Polish correctly or if people insisted on speaking to me in English. I broke this promise at least three times, most flagrantly in Sołacz Park after losing my glove and being attacked by the self-cleaning coin-operating loo. At that point I decided I was really too stupid and clumsy to live, and my mother was right thirty years ago when she said I wasn't very good at languages.

At this point you may be thinking that my money would be better spent on cognitive behavioural therapy, not Polish lessons, and you may be right. This is why I am now reading about panic and anxiety and their relationship to speaking foreign languages.

So far this article is quite interesting and more relevant than a book I got from the library which seems to be for people who are anxious almost all the time. The insight that what bedevils many language learners is performance anxiety rings true.  I also like the advice to memorise situations. The most important thing I have to say in Polish is literally, "My husband cannot go through the x-ray because he has a shunt in his brain" and so I memorised that and have trotted it out with great success twice now.

The cheerful side of my broken Polish-speaking is that, even though I often murdered case endings, I always got the job done and my mistakes made Polish strangers smile--which is in itself an accomplishment, as Poles are not given to the shallow simpering the Anglo-Saxon peoples deem common politeness.

"I cannot get this stamp to stick," said the lady in the post office, attending to my postcard to France.

"It doesn't matter," I said, illogically, and the post office lady fought back a giggle.

"Embrace sloppiness," says Donovan Nagle, who is working on Arabic, probably the trickiest major language for native English speakers, so massive respect to him. I embrace the smiles--which are always nice smiles, by the way, the smile of people who are trying not to laugh and hurt my feelings.

Another thing to remember is that English is now the world language, and anyone born in Europe who wants to get ahead in academia or business has to learn it. Therefore, European children start learning English when they are quite small and thus have something like ten years of lessons before they are unleashed, at 16 or 18, say, on an English-speaking country for further studies. That gives them quite an advantage over the 40-something native English-speaker who has been studying a less "practical" language for only seven years.

But Donovan Nagle is quite right: if you want to learn to speak (not listen, not read, not write), you have to speak. And as he says elsewhere, improvement takes time.

Home From a Week in Poland

We were in Poznań for a week.

Last night I returned to Saint Benedict Over the Apple Tree after a week's holiday in Poland. It was the first time I came home to the new place after a week away, and it didn't feel like home yet. Maybe this will come after we put in the work and time to do it up.

The flat was absolutely freezing. I had much ado to get the boiler up and running and the heat to come on.

Benedict Ambrose had gone to a dinner party. We had a rushed and funny farewell when we alighted from the airport bus just short of the Caledonian Hotel. B.A. ran for one bus, and I trudged through the unexpected snow to a stop for our usual bus. B.A. had  texted his host from the tarmac to say he didn't think he'd make it to his (men-only) party at a decent hour, but his host, the Master of the Men's Schola, texted back to ask him to come anyway.  So off B.A. went, and I went home alone to wrestle with the boiler and have a hot bath.

B.A, and I spent five nights in Poznań and two nights in a country spa hotel with Polish Pretend Son and Polish Pretend Daughter-in-Law. Our mood was celebratory as PPS had on Friday passed his PhD dissertation defence and Saturday was my birthday.

It snowed in Poznań on Saturday morning, but after that the weather was fine: either sunny with a dry cold or cloudy with a damp cold. B.A. and I stayed in a bachelor flat on ulica Kopernika  (Copernicus St.), which is inside the limits of the Stare Miasto (Old Town). The bed was too small for an old married couple, and our boots tracked rock salt into the room, but the shower was powerful and there was a kitchen sink, a fridge and a coffee machine. There was also a fancy hot plate, but in the end we didn't cook: we ate heartily in restaurants, usually cafes and milk bars.

"The Watcher" is a frequent graffiti sight in Poznań,

We did go to a supermarket, though. We were a ten minute walk from the famous Stary Browar (Old Brewery), possibly Europe's largest and most beautiful shopping mall. If all shopping malls were created out of old brick industrial buildings, our cities would be prettier places. Anyway, the Stary Browar had a supermarket called Piotr i Paweł  (Peter and Paul), where we bought bread, cheese, ham, buns and coffee.

We went for many walks in the bitter cold, braving the bus only on the way to the airport and the tram, never. We went to the Stary Rynek (Old Market) and watched clockwork goats butt heads at noon while a live trumpeter stood high in the tower of the Town Hall and played the Hejnał. (I was much more impressed by the trumpeter than by the goats.) We visited the baroque Franciscan church nearby and returned there with PPS and PPDL on Sunday for the 2 PM Traditional Latin Mass. Afterwards PPS drove us all to the spa hotel, about which more anon.

We returned to Poznań by train late on Tuesday afternoon and bought rogale świętomarcinskie (St. Martin croissants) from Piotr i Paweł on our way back to our AirBnB bachelor flat. I consumed one--heavy with ground white poppy seeds and sugar--with coffee from the machine whereas BA fasted in anticipation of an evening pierogi feast. After this supper, we went for a long walk around the frosty city.

On Wednesday we sightsaw in earnest, visiting the ancient cathedral island where both Poland and Polish Catholicism were born. First we had a look at the much-renovated (after various destructions, the latest occurring during World War II) cathedral, and then we went to the Archdiocesan museum. (I think a visitor can safely skip the Archdiocesan museum and go to the archeological museum instead.)  Afterwards we walked back to the Stary Rynek area and had a delicious and cheap pork schnitzel lunch at Od Dziadka at ul. Szkolna 7.

Archdiocesan Museum

Stuffed to the gills, we went went to the Narodowe Muzeum (National Gallery) to look at Art, but unfortunately the Muzeum was closing in 15 minutes, so instead we went to the famous Raczyński Library across the street. Our guide book had assured us that no building in Poznań was like it. This was true, insofar as the handsome Renaissance-inspired front part was not very deep, used principally for offices, and attached to a very modern-looking library. Here B.A. was prodded by a security guard when he fell asleep over a copy of the Spectator, and I read a few things, just because we were there. My limited vocabulary oppressed me, as did the cold and hyper-contemporary architecture.

We had a much better time in the Imperial Castle, which was Kaiser Wilhelm's last palace, and too useful for the Poles to knock down once we and they had rid themselves of Kaiser Wilhelm. The wing currently in use is a cultural centre, with stages and a cinema, a bookshop and a snazzy cafe-bar.    Here B.A. and I had coffee (and later beer and lemonade), bought books, and saw an American film with Polish subtitles. I read B.A. placards about the carvings of animals around the front of the castle, and we were both impressed that I could do that. I hasten to say that my spoken Polish was pretty rubbishy all week although it always got the job done. I suspect that after a week or two in a Polish city, my speaking skills would be as good as they are when I am speaking to my Edinburgh tutor and the case endings would automatically fall into place.

On Thursday morning around 8 AM I got into trouble with an elderly lady and a security guard in the Stary Browar when I pushed the automatically revolving revolving door. "I'm sorry, I didn't understand," I said (in Polish) and rushed off to Piotr i Paweł for buns. B.A. and I spent the post-bun morning in the National Museum where we very much enjoyed looking at 19th century Polish art and the very earliest of the 20th century art.

The 3-D painting in Sródka

Afterwards we ate a pierogi lunch in the Stary Rynek, and then B.A. went back to the flat to do some work. I walked to the cathedral island and then over it to the other side, where I had a look at the 3-D mural in the Sródka district.  It was pretty cool--worth the icy walk.  After visiting the outsides of the Poznań Museum and the Archeological Museum (and looking at the cold, cold Warta River from the safety of a glass-covered walkway), I went back to the flat to fetch B.A. and go with him to the nearby Sowa (Owl) cafe for coffee and cake.

In the evening we went to the commie-throwback Pyra (stuffed potato) Bar and then to the "Multikino"  (multiplex) in the Stary Browar where we watched Glass (subtitles, no dubbing) in unusual comfort--in enormous padded seats with oodles of legroom. We aren't normally superhero film people, but English-language pickings were a little slim and B.A. refused to see A Star is Born.

Friday was our last day, and after we stashed our enormous suitcase in a locker in the bus station, we went for a very cold walk in the Jeżyce district, where we had lunch in a rather grimmer bar mleczny (canteen)  than we were used to, and then hit upon the inspired notion of going for a walk around Sołacz Park. The Sołacz district is full of "villas" built by then-rich people, and so is worth going to see if you are, as we are, big fans of domestic architecture.

I lost one of my gloves on the way to Sołacz, as I discovered only when I was in the coin-operated and self-cleaning loo in Sołacz Park. While looking around the loo for this glove, I hit a wrong button and was attacked from below by great jets of water and a good deal of noise which made me scream. The loss and the fright made me rather irritable, and as usual I sinned terribly against all the Stoic principles I keep reading about. However, B.A. prayed fervently (and I prayed briefly and grumpily) to St. Anthony of Padua, and on the way back from Sołacz the saint threw the glove under my feet.

The Watcher jogging in Sołacz Park.

It was quite mystifying, really. We retraced our steps carefully to find the glove, eyes on the pavement, and we didn't see it.  B.A., who was ahead of me, didn't see it at all. I didn't see it until I found myself tripping on it. At first I thought its mate had fallen from my bag, but no. It was the glove, suddenly appearing between my ankles. Thus our trip to Poland seemed to end with a mini-miracle and we gave short thanks outside the Church of St. Florian as we walked the long walk to the bus station.

After we came home, we concluded that Poznań was well worth a week's visit and that there was much more to see and do then one Polish friend in Edinburgh alleged. Some parts were, of course, rather grim, and even the lovely historical buildings appeared rather battered, but that is not unusual for Poland, to say nothing of any city (besides super-rich London) that suffered massive destruction in two World Wars.

Was I born for this?

I should at least apply. I am putting the news here so I don't forget where to find it.

Trim the Hearth and Set the Table!

After Mass today a parishioner mentioned that I had written many articles for LSN this week, which surprised him. He thought that perhaps we would slow down towards Christmas. Ho, ho, ho, as Santa Claus would say.

I don't remember what I wrote earlier this week, but I turned in three stories on Thursday and two stories on Friday, and then I danced a little Friday-at-7:15-PM jig and rushed off to the kitchen to make 3 dozen pierogi.

It is the Fourth Sunday in Advent, and your humble correspondent has been preparing for Christmas as much as I can, given my full-time job. I turned to Facebook to ask job-working mothers how on earth they do it, and they said (in sum) that they do what they can when they can do it. One suggested prioritising, e.g. writing Christmas cards instead of vacuuming.

I didn't feel I could give up vacuuming, and I prioritised pierogi over getting to the post office, so the Christmas cards didn't go out until yesterday. However (and more importantly), the big parcel of presents for my family in Canada has arrived intact. That was at the very top of my To-Do list, once B.A. and I discovered we wouldn't be going to Canada for Christmas ourselves.

We are going to our friends' place in the countryside of Fife for Christmas Lunch. But tomorrow we are having a Polish Wigilia (Christmas Vigil) supper, and I have enjoyed myself immensely making as many Wigilia dishes as I can ahead of time.

No matter which region in Poland you are from (and as PPS's Pretend Mother, I culturally appropriate from  Lwów), pierogis are crucial at Christmas time. They are tricky to make. Because I haven't made them in awhile, I asked my Polish tutor to come over and give me a refresher course. Frankly, the best advice I can give any non-Pole about pierogi making is to get a nice Polish woman to come over and make them for you. Even if she is only 20, she will have had 15 years experience in making pierogis with her grandmother aka My Babcia.

"This reminds me of making pierogi with My Babcia," enthused 20-something Anna on Thursday morning at 9:45ish, and then I thought about my own Scottish-Canadian grandmother off and on all day, even though I strongly doubt she ever ate a pieróg in her life, much less made one.

I was going to write a step-by-step guide to making pierogi, but I am too sleepy. Instead I recommend that you find a good tutorial on YouTube. Anna's favourite recipe is here, and it is a good one. (Paste it into Google Translate.)  It made the easiest-to-handle pierogi dough I've ever met.  Meanwhile, I will pass along some of Anna's tips, which were:

1. Don't put too much filling in the middle.
2. Wet the edges of every pieróg circle with warm water, using your finger.
3. Mash down the edges with a fork, and then flip over and mash the edges down with a fork again.

As a result of Anna's recipe and good advice, none of my uszki (soup pierogi) and only two of my pierogi leaked in the boiling water. I have made pierogi with cheese and potatoes and pierogi with mushroom and cabbage. They are now in the freezer. In addition to these, I have made kompot (stewed fruit) and kompot (juice from the stewed fruit) and kutia, which is a poppyseed pudding eaten from Warsaw to Moscow, I imagine, and in the households of those who were booted out of Eastern Poland when the borders changed in 1945.  I have also made two sweet little jam jars of herring salads, and at a certain point I realised that even though I promised B.A. I would not make the traditional twelve dishes for Wigilia, I am probably going to do it by accident.

So I confessed to B.A. and he said he didn't mind if I made all 12 as long as I didn't make myself miserable. And I won't be miserable, especially as he is going to make the salmon dish.

I have already made the cake to go into my British-Canadian trifle... and this is where I realise I probably sound a bit mad. But you have to understand that my mother makes hundreds of cookies of a dozen different kinds every Christmas before she makes all our traditional Christmas Day foodstuffs. Both my mother and I (and probably my youngest sister) both really enjoy Christmas baking, and it was a moment of great disappointment when I realised I just do not have the time to bake any more cookies before Christmas Day. Weep, weep.

As for the tree... Every year we put off getting the tree until the 23rd or so because, traditionalists to the bone, we don't like decorating for Christmas before Christmas Eve. Because Scots start buying their trees on December 1, there has always been a risk that B.A. and I wouldn't be able to find a tree on the 23rd. Today was that day. However, I said a prayer and lo: there were two small trees-in-pots in Aldi for £4.99. So now we have a small tree-in-pot, and apparently B.A. is going to decorate it tomorrow.

I will now respond to a few comments. Work has been so busy, I really haven't had the time to read comments, let alone write on the blog.

Advent 2: Black Currant Vodka

The Advent Candelabra is my Christmas present from B.A.! 

Some years ago, when Polish Pretend Son expressed unhappiness at being unable to smoke indoors at certain dinner parties, I rashly promised to buy a flat he could smoke in. It was, of course, a joke. However, now that Benedict Ambrose and I have our own home there is no ordinance forbidding PPS from smoking indoors, and it does seem inhospitable to forbid it, especially after years of promising PPS he could smoke indoors when we left the Historical House.

B.A. flip-flopped on the issue. First he said "No". Then, during the merriment of a Schola dinner party on Friday night, he said "Yes."  Then on Sunday he said, "Pipes only."  And, thus, PPS went out for his customary cigarette between meat and pudding, and then when pudding (piernik [gingerbread cake] & mazurek królewski  [ornate jam tart] ) was sufficiently demolished, no fewer than three guests lit their pipes.

Welcome to Traddieland.

The fact that we are no longer at the Historical House is most dramatically illustrated by fire. For nine years, we could not light a match indoors, lest Scotland's Treasure burn to the ground. Not only could no-one smoke indoors (and indeed had to go down three flights of old stone staircase to smoke outdoors), we could not light candles, not even on a birthday cake.

I bought my first box of matches in over a decade at Tesco on Saturday, and (excluding the gas hob) fire was introduced to our home yesterday evening when we lit two purple Advent candles on the dining-room table. And then, after the carrot soup, the roast chicken, roast potatoes, gravy and peas--and PPS's cold outdoor cigarette break--I lit two numerical candles on PPS's gingerbread birthday cake. From the expression on his face, I guessed PPS had mixed feelings about his age confronting him in candle form.

"Can you believe PPS is [redacted]?" I wailed later to the Schola Bass. "He used to be 23!"

"I never think that way," said the Schola Bass cheerfully and took his Hobgoblin beer to the sitting-room so I could clear up.

This morning I counted the bottles. We were expecting seven guests, but in the end we had only five. The seven of us still managed to get through three bottles of red wine, one and a half of white, three (four?) 500-ml bottles of homemade apple cider, three bottles of Hobgoblin , some blackcurrant vodka and some blackcurrant vodka liqueur. That's actually rather abstemious for Scotland. Oh, and five of us had gin-and-tonics before supper, naturally.

B.A. and I made the apple cider, of course, and the more he drank it, the more B.A. liked it. He usually thinks it is too dry, but I think it's lovely. It tastes beautifully of apples.

I made the blackcurrant vodka and the liqueur myself. It was easy. In July 2017, I picked a bagful of black currants from their parent bushes, washed and dried them, put them in a big preserving jar, poured over a big bottle of vodka, and left them alone until Saturday night. On Saturday night, I poured out the liquid, pulverised the swollen blackcurrants, and squished the rest of their vodka/juice through cheesecloth. Then I turned half of the result into liqueur by adding simple syrup and putting the sweetened liquid in two nice bottles.

"You're a real housewife," said Polish Pretend Daughter-in-law, and I felt very pleased. This is a development. I grew up in two of the only three decades in human history when being a housewife was considered shameful, so naturally I never wanted to be one. I was also highly annoyed with PPS on some advanced birthday of my own when I mourned not having a "proper job" and he suggested I make vodka cordials instead. But that was before I stayed a a friend's home in Poland and discovered how important cook/build/pick/brew/distill-it-yourself is in Polish culture.

Now that I have a "proper job" instead of freelancing,  I love all the super old-fashioned housewifely things--like making flavoured vodka and apple cider--I do in what's left of my free time after language studies. And annoying as dusting-and-hoovering is, it is less annoying now that I make an annual salary, too.

PPS and PPDIL both live in Poland now; this was just a weekend visit. The newlyweds were feted from the West End to the New Town to our humble neighbourhood, and at about 10 PPDIL fell asleep on the bed in the corner of our dining room. I found this perfectly sensible, for many a time have I crept away from Schola dinner parties, the men wreathed in smoke and shouting about clerical and musical personages from the halcyon days before their Tiber swims, to fall asleep on the coats on the Bass's bed. As far as I know, I was the only guest ever to do this, so I felt that PPDIL, covered in a beautiful Russian shawl under a cloud of pipe smoke, was a real chip off the Pretend Canadian Mother block.

The dishes were done by 1 AM, and unsurprisingly, I slept past 10 AM. Then I had much to do to stop the dining-room, which doubles as my office, from smelling of pipe tobacco, and I didn't quite manage it.

I thus hereby create a new ordinance called the Polish Pretend Son Privilege: no smoking anything unless PPS is here. After all, I never promised anyone else a flat he could smoke in.

Update: Traddies will be interested in my review of Dr. Kwasniewski's latest book, which I compare to piernik, not because he is Polish-American, but because I had gingerbread on the brain.

Hats vs Minimalism (+ Chocioły)

Chochoł

This week I read Goodbye, Things by a Japanese minimalist named Fumio Sasaki. It is an entertaining read, and I suspect it was cobbled together from his blog.  The photographs are inspiring, too: Saskaki shows what his bedroom looked like when he was a miserable materialist, then what it looked like when it was down to simple furniture, and finally what it looked like when he got rid of all furniture except a fold-away futon mattress and achieved tranquility.

I am somewhat envious of Sasaki--especially as his apartment has honey-coloured wood floors throughout. Our flat has wall-to-wall carpeting, and B.A. says it must stay for the sake of our downstairs neighbour. According to the internet, the noise of upstairs neighbours thumping around is one of the most niggling strains in British community life.

Nevertheless, I am doing what I can to rid ourselves of all unnecessary belongings. This week I made two trips on foot to a charity shop with bags of books, bedding and kitchen utensils. A suitcase of summer clothes now lives in the shed. The sitting-room is still, however, festooned with artificial owls: owl prints on the walls, owl cushions on the chairs, brass owls on the side table, ceramic salt-and-pepper shaker owls on the kitchen table, painted owl on the china coffee cup on the leather-topped side table I said we could keep after all.

That the leather-topped table survived the purge is evidence I love my husband more than minimalism. Meanwhile, he finally glued the pieces together so that the table would stop falling part every time I touched it, so I am feeling more friendly towards it.

I also seem to love hats more than minimalism although the fun of buying two new winter hats online (on special!) wore off almost as soon as the postwoman delivered the box this morning. Still, one must have winter hats, and I have a bad habit of losing at least one wool beret every year. For a less formal/old-lady look, I also bought an olive-coloured corduroy fisherman's/fiddler's cap. At 59 cm it is a bit snug, but "extra-large" (61 cm) was too big.

This morning I looked at the hats crowded in our bedroom closet with some dismay. They are as following:

1. pale-green and black bespoke mini-hat for cocktail parties and weddings;
2. large royal blue straw hat for weddings;
3. enormous brown "straw" (actually starched paper) hat for hot climes;
4. navy blue French Scout hat for hiking (at 60 cm just a touch too big), except it looks out of place everywhere except in France or at super-trad Girl Guide camp;
5. delightful confection of black straw, black net, and blue-and-green feathers for cocktail parties and weddings;

 plus

very posh-looking pink hat my youngest sister bought for a wedding in England and I am keeping for her in case there are other English weddings; and
white Panama hat I bought B.A. for hot climes

In addition, I have 6. an open-work crocheted beret which is totally unsuitable in wet or cold weather,  7. a blue beret my mother knitted and now 8. a new forest green beret and  9. this snazzy fiddler's cap.

B.A. has two green tweed caps, size 57 cm. I feel vaguely ashamed that my head is 2.75 cm larger than my husband's. My theory is that he was built along nimble Pict lines, whereas I am a lumbering (if short) Viking woman.

Meanwhile, it is very difficult to find women's hats that fit my large head, the principal reason why I am loath to get rid of any of my occasional-wear hats. I haven't been to a cocktail party in years, but there is a chance more of my friends and acquaintances will marry.

Come to think of it, I may rid myself of the bepoke mini-hat, for anyone with as big a head as I do, let alone the bizarrely thick hair, has no business wearing a mini-hat. The phrase "organ-grinder's monkey" comes to mind.

I am also reminded of the Chochoły from a Polish play called Wesele ("The Wedding Reception"*). Chocoły are either animated bushes wrapped in straw or living haystacks. I love the concept for they epitomise the strangeness of Poland and other countries east of the Oder: the unfamiliar kings and queens, the bizarre new monsters, Christmas trees hung upside-down, fearless mushroom-picking, etc. Wesele is pleasantly weird, too, as you will discover if you watch the film.

When Polish Pretend Son was planning his wedding, I asked if there would be a Chochoł to haunt the proceedings.

"You will be the Chochoł," said PPS, and so I was, only in blue, not straw.  

Chochoł

*This is usually translated as "The Wedding", but that is not strictly accurate.

Update (noted in hall cupboard): 10. Faux-fur winter hat for east of Oder--or west of Yonge Street--only.

Update 2: I have taken the mini-hat and enormous brown hat to a charity shop, along with a potato peeler, a silk Chinese blouse, a few owl figurines, and a large, rolled-up, deep-pile green rug. B.A. hated the rug, so he is delighted.

Polish Pretend Son and Daughter-in-Law's Midnight Wedding Ritual

Polish Minimalism. 

After Polish Pretend Son's wedding service (ślub, pronounced shloop) and nuptial Mass, he drove off with his bride in the rented white Corvette they had arrived in and the rest of us followed to a charming 19th century palace-turned-hotel for the reception (wesele,  pronounced ves-SEL-eh).

The little hotel was for the "exclusive use" of the wedding, as adverts say, and it is very elegant indeed, having been lovingly restored by its Polish owners from the decrepit state the palace had fallen into after its former German occupants had fled westwards. There are lots of ruined little German palaces dotted all over western Poland, and as soon as B.A. and I win the lottery, we will buy and restore one ourselves. 

In keeping with the aristocratic nature of this dwelling/hotel, the wedding feast was a Polish-French hybrid, with a late afternoon, rather French, dinner served in the elegant dining rooms and a side room groaning with every Polish dish you can imagine in case anyone felt the slightest hint of a pang of hunger afterwards. 

What happened after dinner, however, was entirely Polish and very ancient, and even gave me goosebumps. First, the dining-rooms were invaded by Polish minstrels who bade us all perform the ancient Polish walking dance called the chodzony (pronounced hodZONE-ih). We walked out  into a field behind the palace where we were led in the various progressions of the dance as a violin scraped and a hurdy-gurdy groaned. It sounded and felt so ancient, we could have been in any era, were our clothes not so very, er, twentieth century.

Then we all processed back inside, and the bride and groom danced their first dance as wife and husband. As Polish Pretend Son is a tango fanatic and Polish Pretend Daughter-in-Law is very good at dances of all kinds, it was truly an impressive performance. 

At midnight, however, we were plunged back into the Middle Ages, or perhaps even further back, even before Christianity came to Poland, during the oczepiny (pronounced oh-chep-EE-nih). 

Nowadays, oczepiny are usually just a set of games that ritually humiliate the bride and groom in a mild and good-humoured fashion. They remind me of the dumb games American and Canadian women traditionally play at bridal and baby showers. At their worst they are as bad as garter-tossing and other stupid things we Anglos too often do at weddings. 

However the traditional oczepiny involve an elaborate ritual in which the bride is reminded that she is leaving the happiness of her youth and maiden fancy-free living behind and now has to knuckle down and be wifely. Everyone around sings cheerfully. 

Meanwhile, the bridal wreath is taken away from the poor girl and the traditional headscarf of the Polish married woman is forced on her head.  Polish Pretend Daughter-in-Law seems to have second thoughts about this, for she threw her pretty scarf on the floor twice.  I believe rejecting the kerchief is traditional, but PPD-i-L said later that, swept up in the moment, she really meant it. 

The whole thing--including the climax---sent chills up my spine. It wasn't just the fact that the ritual was so otherworldly and ancient. It was also an unusually frank reminder that marriage, like life, is very hard and, in fact, a bit of a gamble, and that if she accepts the wrong man, a bride's life will be unhappy. 

Update: PPS doesn't want his wesele videos public, so I've put up a photo instead:

Update 2: There are no nice photos of me from the okay-for-public-consumption file. It's too bad, but  months of unrelenting stress does that to a woman my age. Now when I see a woman who's "let herself go", I realise that there may have been some inescapable reasons for that. One of the nice things about PPS's wedding, which happened shortly after we were told we couldn't go back to the Historic House, and they wanted their Historic Centre Flat back, thanks, was that we had three days' respite from worry.  

Polish Pretend Son's Wedding Mass

Polish Pretend Son loves the Traditional Mass so much, he hopes this video of his and Polish Pretend Daughter-in-Law's wedding helps to spread devotion to the Rite.

If you watch carefully, you may even see me under an enormous blue hat. (Hint: I am not the pretty Welsh blonde who is also wearing a large blue hat.)

I will have more to post and much more to say about the wedding. Isn't the bride beautiful?

Caveat: There is not a word of English in this video. When it is not Latin, it is Polish. But it is so gorgeous, that shouldn't matter.

Caveat 2: The groom also has fond memories of his years in the UK, so there are some unusually British elements at this Mass. First, Polish women tend not to wear fancy hats to weddings; female guests were specifically asked to wear them. Second, the groom's attire is very Saville Row-ish, if not, as I fear it may be, actually from Saville Row. Third, the entrance antiphon sounds very British indeed.

The bride and groom arriving together to Mass is, however, the normal Polish custom.  The groom has already bribed the bridesmaids at the bride's door, and the bridal pair have been blessed by their parents.

Upping my gra

I have been terribly lazy about improving my Polish skills since the end of July. Maybe reading Voyage of the Dawn Treader in Polish does not strike you as lazy, but reading is my strongest language skill. My absolute weakest--even weaker than speaking--is listening. Essentially I've been treading linguistic water instead of practising my crawl.

So this morning while preparing an apple crumble for tonight, I listened to Lesson One from Real Polish, and it is at a perfect level for someone who has studied Polish grammar for some time but has slacked off on the listening and speaking. The lesson consisted of the teacher reading a simple story from a third-person perspective, and then from a first-person perspective, and finally asking questions about the story. Believe it or not, I still could not get all the words because I have not yet read the transcript.

Along with "Save half of everything you ever make", "Don't wreck your listening skills by zoning out in class" is among my top tips for children.

It came as a relief that I could understand most of the first ten minutes of Piotr's September 1 update without reading the transcript. One of the worst things about the first few years of night school Polish class was feeling like my ears were plugged. There was one beautiful evening when I returned to class after a trip to Poland and for the first time ever my teacher sounded as clear as a chime tinkling in the breeze. Sadly, that wore off as the weeks wore on.

In the end I had to quit night school because I am on duty until 7 or 8 at night. Eventually I got a tutor, and she was a great help until Mr Mortgage demanded our disposable income. Until June my primary goal was to be able to speak Polish to guests at Polish Pretend Son's wedding. (I did not actually do this very much, as most of the people I met at PPS's wedding were fluent in English: instead I spoke Polish to ticket sellers, shopkeepers, cab drivers, servers, and hotel staff.)

I also have a goal--more of an attainable dream, really--of speaking Polish so well I can interview a Polish bishop without difficulty. Perhaps I should sit down with Polish Pretend Son and come up with a workable plan. Although not a professional linguist, PPS is finishing an English-language PhD in  Philosophy and I'd like to know how he developed the specialist terminology to do that.

What language-learning tips do you have?