Gardening of two kinds

Victory-over-Virus Garden

Blah! Only five hours sleep last night and I awoke with a headache. Naturally I thought at once of the Vile Germ and did some deep breathing while I could. After an hour of chasing the sandman, I got up and made a cup of coffee. I hope this cures my headache and meanwhile 1) no more afternoon coffee and 2) no more editing student stories at midnight.

Yesterday morning B.A. and I went to Tesco and carried home our last bags of compose for the trug. It was truly sad how we failed to keep sums in our heads as we argued about whether or not we had 420 L. B.A. thought we didn't, and I thought we did. When we lined up our collection of sacks on the grass, we discovered we had only 400 L. B.A. won that one, but I decided we should go ahead and fill the trug with what we had. We can put on 20 L of fresh compost in the autumn.

It was not a difficult operation. I emptied the sacks into the trug, and B.A. whacked at it with a gardening fork. Then B.A. went inside, spent from his exertions, and I planted my broad bean seedlings, cardboard tubes and all. After brunch, I returned to fuss over them, which meant draping butterfly netting over flowerpots stuck in the corners.

The lady downstairs was so entranced by the trug, she asked if she could come over and look at it. We had a nice conversation, moving apart when we realised we were breaking the social-distancing rule.

Although it was not warm--and tonight I am definitely putting newspapers over the beans--it was sunny, and I kept warm by grubbing up the dandelions. It is now a race between me and the dandelion blossoms. Apparently dandelions can go into the composter until they blossom, and this is a serious issue now that the Council is not picking up garden refuse. At the moment, our state-funded brown bin--which has a 240 L capacity--is half full, mostly of young dandelions.

I pulled out dandelions in the sun for two hours, and eventually B.A. came out with a garden chair, the Spectator and a cup of tea. It wasn't warm enough for sitting, so he soon went back inside. He returned with a load of laundry to hang, redeeming himself in the eyes of any judgemental neighbours who might have contrasted his repose with my labour.

Speaking of neighbours, I've seen mine more often in the past month than I had in a year. This is presumably because I've been out in the garden every day, but I suspect the neighbours are out in theirs more often, too. The Moppet's mother came out in a fluffy pink bathrobe to sit in her garden, and Sandy comes out periodically to smoke a cigarette. I've even seen our neighbour on the other side, whom we have never met and B.A. has still never seen. I've always assumed he is an airline steward or has some other peripatetic profession, as there is almost never any noise coming from his flat.

At 3:30 PM I went in for a cup of coffee and to work on my student's short story. My student, having formed the impression that proper stories are over 3,000 words long, half-killed herself turning out a 3,800+ long adventure tale. After hearing she needed to edit it, she was daunted--and no wonder. Editing is a lot of work, and it's very painful when it's your own story and cutting parts out feels like jabbing a fork into your leg.

Photo by Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net)

I haven't taught children since I was twenty-one. For three years I taught writing skills to mature students at a community college, for two I taught essay-writing to my fellow students at theology school, and before my full-time gig I made $40 an hour editing doctoral theses in theology. I also proofread the scholarly work of Polish pals, all over 21 and smart and mature enough to do graduate degrees in a foreign language. Therefore, I find it very hard to read a piece of writing and not red-ink everything I think is wrong with it. I would feel I was not doing my job. So what if she's twelve? Gordon Korman wrote his first book when he was twelve.

Well, I'm joking about the book stuff. I was haunted by Gordon-Korman-wrote-his-first-book-at-twelve from the ages of seven to thirty-seven. It's too much pressure for a child to put on herself, especially when she thinks stories are dropped into the author's mind from above. It never occurred to me to sit down and consciously examine G.K.'s books to see how he did it.

There is nothing like going through a child's story to think about the relationship between imagination and structure. Imagination is a like a privet hedge free to grow all over the place. Structure is the shape of the hedge. Editing is like topiary, turning what could be a boring bush into something that will grab the audience's attention from beginning to end.

Editing also is the difference between Real Life and Art. Real Life, lived minute by minute, is mostly mundane and not of much interest to strangers. Art, however, takes interesting episodes or images from life and sets them in an unobtrusive narrative frame.

When writing stories, it is fun to begin at a beginning and to write until the end. Serial stories for newspapers certainly have to be written that way. Perhaps the first drafts of many scripts are written that way. However, films aren't shot that way. They are shot scene by scene, edited, and stuck together. They are transformed from a written daydream pleasant for the dreamer into something magical for thousands or millions of viewers.

But as I mentioned, editing one's own story, or having one's own story edited, is painful. It is hard to remember that a piece of writing is not really an extension of our very selves. When I bake a pie, I am perfectly capable of discerning that it could be flakier or less sweet or do with a bit of cinnamon without going into fits of depression. I just decide to try again. When I make pierogi dough, and a Polish pal looks critically at the lump and tells me it needs more kneading, I don't fall into a sulk. I believe she knows what she's talking about, as she has been making pierogi dough since she was seven, like her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother before her. Why, then, do writers go insane over editing?

Of course, there are terrible editors out there. Some people just cannot hear the difference between good phrases and bad, between educated speech and regional solecisms, or between fresh metaphors and clunking cliches. Being edited by someone like that is torture. However, some editors are excellent landscape artists, as it were, and turn a slightly off-kilter privet squirrel into a glorious green beast.

I hope I have shaped my student's privet squirrel into a glorious green beast, for between writing remarks all over her submitted draft and inserting my suggestions into a new draft, I spent seven hours on it. This is not because she isn't bright but because she is. If I didn't think she had the talent and drive to become the next Georgette Heyer (who published her first book at 19) or Rosemary Sutcliff, I wouldn't bother.

"What did you do during the Great Pandemic?"

Hello from our tiny corner of the international quarantine to yours. I am trying to image what my readers are doing and what their little corners look like.

My parents have a big house and two small gardens, but the temperature keeps them in the one and out of the other. I imagine its the same for my paterfamilias brother, who is probably doing all his karate exercises and beating the stuffing out of his heavy bag in the cellar. My other siblings who, like us, live in small apartments, go for runs. They're all working from home. I'm working from home. Five out of five siblings are still employed, thank heavens.

What will you say when your grandchildren or great-nephews and -nieces ask "What did you do during the Great Pandemic?"

I will say, "Well, I was in Britain, and everyone was very concerned about food all at once. So first I collected as many tins as seemed fair, and then I started growing vegetables. I had never been interesting in gardening before, but after 10 years in a gardening-mad nation, I gave it a try."

"Would it not have made more sense, Auntie, to have become a virologist and helped to find a cure?"

"That is a very clever thought, and I hope you will study and train for such a useful career."

Anyway, an insightful doctor in Milan said that we should not dream about when this time is over but  truly experience and learn from it, so I shall return from the future and talk about yesterday.

Yesterday I went to work after we returned from Tesco with our sacks of compost, but like St. Martha Konfederacja a viable option and will my majority-American readership care? Which of my assigned stories should I do first? Why should traditionalist Catholics take an interest in St. Faustina?

My beanie babies.

I was distracted by many cares. How to send my homeschooled students their corrected stories, and how to correct their stories without giving them a deep distaste for story-writing? How much stick to give Poland's "Law and Justice" party for kicking the anti-eugenic bill into the long grass or "Parliamentary freezer", as the Poles call it? Is there a party more likely than PiS to pass the bill? Is

Soon I had a raging headache, which was worrisome as that is a symptom of the Vile Germ. However, I comforted myself that this felt like a work headache, but made sure B.A. wore his mask when he went to see a priest for confession. Mad props to the local parish priest for hearing confessions, by the way. When all this is over, the faithful will most definitely remember which priests took the risk, and which priests didn't. Anyway, I took two ibuprofen, stopped trying to do everything at once, and my headache cleared.

Our most complicated project ever.

After a productive day (three articles and an update on the Polish parliamentary situation), I collected B.A. and rushed outside to finish building the Vegetable Trug. B.A. did most of it; I mostly held pieces of wood still while he screwed them together. Then I screwed the west end of the trough to the frame, and I suddenly remembered being 20 or so, watching my idol of the time building a medieval  hoisting device in the attic of a Victorian-era college building.

B.A. and the trug.

As B.A. tightened the bolts, I rushed off to Tesco to get another bag of compost. I wore my mask for the first time and discovered that breathing through a thick fabric mask is not that simple. There was only a very short queue outside Tesco, and there was still compost, hooray. Today we will get the last of what we need--if there is any left, of course.

Depending on how long the quarantine lasts, or how long the pandemic lasts, really, we are more and more likely to become a generation that doesn't take supplies for granted. I suspect we will demand more from our holidays, which will be fewer but longer, more expensive, and in smaller planes. I sincerely hope there will be a resurgence in local manufacturing, but I've gone on about that before.

It was Easter Friday, so B.A. grilled up two delicious Scottish steaks delivered by the butcher on Monday, and he served them with brussel sprouts. I love brussel sprouts, so I will attempt to grow them for our Christmas supper. This is assuming we'll still be in quarantine at Christmas. If so, we will be glad of our homegrown vegetables, to say nothing of the two big jars of blackcurrant vodka steeping away in the sideboard.

Then I was too lazy to commit to a show, so we read the internet, and I talked to my parents on Skype. They had gone on one of their wild and adventurous drives to post mail and admired the local daffodils.

Compost Victory in Sight

Yesterday was a much better day, for I kept off the sugar and pressed on with work, cranking out four articles and passing along an additional quote to be added to a previously published one. Also, our Veg Trug arrived, both weeks later and weeks earlier than I expected. Beautifully designed in the West, it was shoddily manufactured in China, but B.A. wielded the wood glue, and all will be well. By the time it falls apart, the quarantine will be over and I can hire a lovely local to make me a proper raised bed out of good British oak.

After B.A. and I had built as much of the Veg Trug as we could without the gluing part, I went to Tesco in search of compost. All soil and compost had disappeared the day before, so I was not too hopeful. However, to my joy there was a full pallet of Miracle Grow All-Purpose compost, so I put it in my Ikea bag and lugged it home. 

This morning B.A. and I went back to Tesco with two Ikea bags before the NHS-and-Elderly Hour and each carried a 40 L bag of compost home. I feel that this is a great victory over the Vile Germ, the suspension of our civil liberties, and a car-centred society.  Only 140 L to go!

I also amused myself, yesterday evening and this morning, by conversing on Twitter with a gay Muslim You-Clap-For-Me-Now fan in Qatar and a White Nationalist from who-knows-where. I'm quite pleased that I didn't ask the Qatar chap how he treats his mother's maid and that I haven't pointed out to the White Nationalist lady  that the biggest enemy to ethnic homogeneity in European nations is the birth control pill. The first reply would have been cheap and the second  probably pointless, as White Nationalist lady might fervently agree with me and want to know how many children I have. 

The Qatari was slightly amazed I'm talking to the White Nationalist at all, but I'm always intrigued by people who stick by incredibly unpopular views. What lies beneath them? Do they have coherent arguments or just strong emotion caused by--what?  

(I do draw the line, however, at her idea that Canada and the USA have been "white countries." Not only have there been black people in North America since 1619, there have always been millions of First Nations people. Meanwhile, it seems inevitable that Latin America will spread upward into the USA, and if I were American, I would learn Spanish and get with the historical program.) 

I'm also glad I looked up the biography of Baroness Warsi before publicly suggesting she has more privilege in her little finger than the drunken young Scot who told me and a Polish shopkeeper to speak English. In fact, Baroness Warsi clearly worked hard to get where she is now, so mad props to Baroness Warsi. Meanwhile, the Polish shop has gone out of business, weep weep, so the shopkeeper may be as much a victim of history as the Scot.

Right-o. I was going to give up politics on my blog for the duration of the lockdown, and now look. The pull of ethnic politics is just too strong for me; I blame my elementary school's International Nights and Italy's World Cup victory in 1982.  

In gardening news, I also bought a strawberry plant, and it is sitting happily out-of-doors. And if all goes well, the Veg Trug will be finished today and filled with compost tomorrow. I will be able to plant my precious broad bean babies in it, a much richer environment than the old raised bed the radishes and lettuce are growing so slowly in.

Update: It did not end well with the Irish White Nationalist. He (turns out it was a he) She seems to lack intellectual integrity. But although pointing out that a vast number of disparate peoples fall under the category "white," I forbore from observing that at certain times in history, some unpleasant white people have regarded the Irish as subhuman. Of course, she could have replied that as she is dedicated to "White Togetherness", she objects to any European ethnic group labelling another subhuman. But ultimately she has decided that I have dismissed the apparent sufferings of white children in London, so no more interesting conversation.

Update 2: Actually we chatted some more, so I think it has ended pretty well.  

Choosing to Love

Despite the good weather, yesterday was a bad day for me. This was in part because I greedily ate Easter milk chocolate, which almost inevitably led to sugar-triggered depression, and part because of an aggressive viral video called "You Clap for Me Now."

The message of the video is that there are many Britons of Colour and non-British migrants working on the "frontlines" of the coronavirus crisis--in hospitals, as deliverymen, as shopkeepers, as farm labourers--and that on Thursdays, when Britons quarantined at home clap for the NHS, "you clap for me now." This would be innocuous, except that the message takes the form of a rather bad self-aggrandising poem, everyone who recites a line or two of it stares stone-faced at the camera, and the implication is that before the coronavirus clapping, Britons-in-general were a pack of nativist, racist, foreigner-bashing yahoos.   

To put this in perspective, Britons-in-general have been locked up in their homes for three weeks, many of their civil liberties suspended/criminalised, bored, grieving, frightened of illness, food shortages, the economy collapsing and, thanks to yesterday's headlines, the loss of two million jobs. Nevertheless, on Thursdays at 8 PM, those in this terrified country who enjoy mass demonstrations cheer and clap from their windows for the National Health Service (not the deliverymen, shopkeepers, and farm labourers, by the way). 

Sadly, it looks as though people who very much resent Brexit, which was first and foremost a rebellion against a continental European power, have used the simple-hearted demonstration as a stick to beat the vast majority of Britons whose grandparents were born in Britain. And this makes me absolutely furious. This is the worst time for an American-style conversation about race. 

There are, of course, people who absolutely love this video and the excuse to wallow in their resentment of the British. Among the Twitter traffic was the whine of a Dutch (Dutch!) NHS worker that someone had told her to go home while she was speaking in Dutch on her phone. There was no indication that this had happened to her more than once. There was also no indication that she was aware that public mobile phone calls in any language are one of the irritants of life, but I digress. 

I have lived as a foreigner in the UK for almost eleven years, and I can count the number of unpleasant remarks made at me for being foreign on one hand. (I don't include "So where are you from?" as unpleasant or unusual, as Torontonians ask each other that all the time, usually meaning "Where before Toronto?" or "Where did your ancestors come from?") The unpleasant remarks have almost always arisen from a misperception that I am Polish, and they have mostly come from a class of Scots euphemistically called the Socially Excluded. 

If I liked, I could wallow in my fear and resentment of the Socially Excluded, people who made my first years of reliance on the Rough Bus so alarming. However, the lives of the Socially Excluded seem pretty hellish, so I'd feel rather low sneering at them as a hobby or as a very ineffective way of making myself feel better. When I dutifully reported anti-Polish remarks directed to me (and then at a real Pole, who intervened) at a foundation that records this sort of thing, I ignored their request to call the police. 

That reminds me that the one amusing thing about the race-baiting "You Clap For Me Now" is that there are are least two or three Poles in it, roughly the number of Polish characters I have seen on British television in 11 years. British television vastly over-represents some minority groups, but very much under-represents Poles. But I digress again. Or do I? It triggers the thought that "You Clap For Me Now" is as much rooted in reality as an episode of "The Stranger."

The way to stop being angry at such videos, I suspect, is to stop watching them and (as B.A. begged) put them out of my head. They are just as unrepresentative of reality as any other entertainment/propaganda recorded in Britain. Yesterday, I was horrified thinking that the NHS might be full of people secretly harbouring racial resentment against the vast majority of their vulnerable patients. Heaven knows, deeply racist sexist violence against poor white British girls (another misery experienced by the Socially Excluded) definitely exists. However, today I've decided that a racially resentful NHS is very unlikely--or at least very unlikely in Edinburgh. There being no real way of knowing, the way forward is to assume from my experience of life in Scotland that this is untrue. 

I can just carry on living in Scotland, among my few fellow foreigners and the vast majority who are Scots, as happily as I can under the circumstances. 

Easter Week Treats

At a fraction of their Lenten price! 

I don't have much time to write before work this morning; I'll try to come back at lunchtime. Today I had an early session outdoors with the daisy grubber and planted some runner beans for the windowsill. The apple tree is beginning to show pink buds, but I'm concerned about the slow start for my radishes and lettuce. Stay tuned.

Yesterday I returned to work and spent the day on three articles. The one I worked hardest on, asking for comments, etc., was about a U.S. congressman who introduced a bill to stop American funding of the World Health Organisation. Unfortunately, the importance of this story was trumped by Trump, who cut off American funding of the World Health Organization before my story was published. 

The apple tree looks promising.

After work, Benedict Ambrose and I zipped off to Tesco to buy a few groceries, but more importantly compost. We found 40 litre packages, and B.A. carried one home in a big blue IKEA bag. This evening we will attempt to carry 3 or 4 between us, for we received a message from Amazon saying that our Veg Trug is coming tomorrow, not in May. We still won't have enough compost to fill it, so we will be making more Herculean trips. For some reason unknown to me, our local big-name hardware store doesn't deliver compost. 

When we returned from Tesco, I dug up a lot of dandelions and B.A. made an excellent fry-up for supper. We listened to Bach's entire "Wachet auf" cantata as we ate and slurped red wine and were in no hurry to get up from the table. Then we chatted with my parents over Skype. 

Now for some photos.  Here are two more from our Easter Monday walk: 

Note the interesting countryside graffiti.

And here is what the postie brought me yesterday:

A Day Outdoors

This is what 50 dandelions look like.

This will be a post of photos because not much can be said about yesterday.

We watched Easter Monday Mass at Warrington. I counted the number of dandelions I pulled up--141--and I thinned out our lunchtime żurek with properly Polonized vegetable stock. B.A. made risotto with the leftover sauce from his Easter lamb dish. I ate most of the leftover mazurek and thought about the mazurek I will make for Pentecost.

The most interesting thing we did was go for a country walk from our front door. B.A. found new paths, and we saw new fields and new views. I'm sorry my photograph of the electronic highway sign, seen from a bridge, did not come out very well. It said "Easter Weekend. Stay Home. Do Not Travel" to all the travelling cars. Very amusing.

Although it was not a warm afternoon, it was sunny. By the way, lest the police be summoned, my day was "outdoors" also because of two lengthy sessions of dandelion grubbing. I'm on a particularly bad patch right now.

Without further ado, here are some lovely photos to bring the Scottish countryside into your quarantined life.

Candy-cane tulip.

A new path.

A loud hum from the bees.

More dream houses.

Train to Waverley.

Church on a hill

A leafy new path.

Grassy steps.

Elephant!

Pastoral.

Flowers.

Barred from beauty spot!

If I ever learn to drive, my dream car.

Primrose bank.

I reflected to Benedict Ambrose that being able to travel exercise only as far as we can walk makes me appreciate our local countryside more than ever before. I also thought about how glad I am we live where we live, so close to a body of water but also to the countryside. I'd have to walk a very long time from my parents' home in Toronto to reach countryside nowadays.

At the same time, our walk reminded me of a marvellous bicycle ride I had with my now-cloistered Benedictine friend around her part of an apple-growing region southwest of Warsaw. I've never seen such beautiful countryside. I hope to go there again one day.

Update: Forgot to mention that we tried last summer's cider! I think it turned out very well. It certainly tastes apple-y. 

Therefore Let Us Keep the Feast

An end to Lent---and something to think about upon waking instead of the coronavirus! Hooray for Easter, holiest day of the Christian calendar, and an opportunity to cook, bake and eat once-a-year foods. For a full exposition of the spiritual riches of the day, I direct you elsewhere.   

First of all, I called an Easter Day truce with the dandelions, and so the imperilled worms had a day off from collateral damage. Instead of gardening, I hunkered down before the internet with a cup of coffee, toasted hot cross bun and a plate of streaky bacon. 

Mass in Warrington was at 11, and we dressed up in Easter finery--I even dabbled in cosmetics--while  our computer screen transmitted the altar party setting up. Fr. de Malleray had dispelled part of the mystery of who the men all were by saying that they were all living in the same church complex. I think the lads are very lucky to be so close to the sacraments and that if when you're forced into monastic seclusion, what a lucky thing to be in a monastery--or a church complex, as the case may be.  

Easter Sunday Mass unfolded the way Easter Sunday Mass generally does, and we listened with interest to Fr. de Malleray's homily. During Lent he gave it to us with both barrels about the virus of sin, but on Easter Sunday he lightened up enough to talk about mastering virtue and "training for eternity." To illustrate the need for training, he mentioned a number of skills in which we might be trying to master, like watercolour painting, oil painting, mountain climbing and scuba diving. 

"This is a middle-class parish," I muttered to B.A. with mock horror.

Where was the pigeon-fancying? Or, for that matter, the polo? Or, indeed, the hard graft of Polish studies? But I jest. Back to Easter Sunday.

The sad part of Easter Sunday was, of course, not having any Easter Sunday guests. However, like a good son, Polish Pretend Son sent of a photograph of himself and his pal holding traditional Easter święconka baskets. They looked so smug, they had clearly found a priest to bless these baskets. As thanks, I sent PPS photos of B.A. and me in our Easter finery in front of the computer.  I admit that this was a little flat compared to the glory of fulfilling tradition despite the Vile Germ. Hey, I risked death to get the zakwas.

B. A. and I had the żurek for lunch, and it was a bit gloopy, thanks to me using all the flour at the bottom of the bottle, not just the juice. Error. Today I will attempt to thin it with appropriately Polish-ed vegetable stock. We also had pieces of the mazurek, which is all it should be. Then, after another session in front of our computers, we went for a walk to the beach shore.

At the beach shore we were not accosted by police officers, which was nice. There were people scattered around, mostly couples with small dogs and parents with two or three children. The local beach shore is not a particularly nice place to sit, as it is covered with pebbles and sharp-edged shells.   However, it is a nice place to skim stones, as B.A. proceeded to do, after reminiscing about the Boxing Day long ago when he taught Polish Pretend Son to skim stones. He plans to teach PPS's future sons to skim stones, too. 

In Scotland, skimming stones seems to be a male hobby, which is fine by me. The traditional female role is to watch the activity, so that when the stone bounces 12 times, someone other than the stone-skipper has seen it. This is fine by me, as my life vocation is keeping a man happy and, to the best of my ability, alive and healthy. Men respond very well when women cheer them on from the sidelines--which reminds me of Polish Pretend Daughter-in-Law squeaking encouragement to her husband and brother-in-law when we watched them playing football. 

Men don't like being compared to plants, so I will not go into a lengthy disquisition about how, like plants, they just need to be fed and watered and kept in the metaphorical sun and protected from metaphorical frost.  

I was taking photographs, and B.A. suggested I snap a photo of a tribute-in-progress to the NHS. The NHS has become a folk religion, which ordinary British people feel much more deeply than the elite religion, which is sex-and-gender. One of the interesting things about the pandemic, by the way, is that British children have taken back the rainbow, presumably out of the sheer joy of using all the colours at their disposal, and re-established it as a sign of hope that a scourge will end. Actual bows, not stripes, decorate windows wherever we go, alongside childish handwriting praising the "NHS" and "key workers" and directing us to "Stay home." 

Another aside: I grew up with state-supplied medical care for all, and I do not remember anything like this heartfelt emotion for OHIP, that is, the Ontario Health Insurance Plan/L'Assurance-Santé de Ontario. OHIP was just there, like my father's family-plan dental health coverage from work, but, like the dental coverage, I certainly did miss it when I couldn't have it any more. But let's not go there. Let's just say that one state medical system is not identical to others, and I'd rather be sick in Ontario, Germany or Italy than here--as grateful as I am to a certain Czech brain surgeon and a certain English oncologist. 

We returned home unmolested by police, admiring a handsome house for rent along the way, and I

sent a link to the rental information to my paterfamilias brother, who Skyped me to find out why.  Apparently the rent on the house would be too much even for him, were his family to relocate to Scotland for a year or so. Meanwhile, B.A. set about making dinner, which was lamb shanks in a very delicious tomato-based sauce with peas and mashed potatoes. We drank a New Zealand pinot noir with this, and little bottles of Ontario ice wine with the pieces of mazurek that served as pudding.  B.A. blessed the lamb with holy water before we ate it.  

Dinner was very nice, but I very much wished we had guests, too. I would have been very happy to have the rest of the Men's Schola at the table.

"You wouldn't have got a word in edgewise," B.A. reminded me. 

"No, but I would have enjoyed listening," I said quite truthfully. 

Then it was rather late, and I was too lazy to commit to a show, so we chatted to Mum and Dad on Skype and read the internet instead. Having entered a Twitter discussion about quirky Polish phrasebooks, I attempted to track down the alarming Polish-English phrasebook/interrogation manual I found years ago in the Glasgow University Library.

Afternoon coffee and a day of eating beasts for the first time since Shrove Tuesday conspired to keep me from sleeping once it was bedtime. Thus I washed all the dishes and then read Veg in One Bed by Huw Richards until after 1 AM. My broad beans are doing beautifully on the windowsill, but it does seem a bit cold outside to start the hardening process. 

This morning B.A. got up early to wash the dishes and discovered them already done, so he put them away. I am thinking again about absent friends and everywhere we will go when we can: the New Town, the West End, Wrocław, Łódź, Rome.