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Sunday, April 18, 2004 |
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In 1995 we drove across Europe to spend a week in a chalet in Poland. When I was a child, my family lived in the States where Polack jokes were de rigoure amongst my friends. Consequently, I imagined that Poland was a bit 'rustic'. I pictured a nation full of people wearing sackcloth and eating potatoes. The reality was very different.
The Poles we saw in the Zakopane area were immaculately dressed. Their clothes were a bit old fashioned with a touch of the seventies about them, but they were spotless. Their hair was short and tidy, and all the men, it seemed, had the obligatory Eastern European moustache. If you saw someone looking scruffy, you could be sure they were tourists, mostly from the recently re-united Germany.
Their houses were wonderfully big constructions, many new, with steeply pitching roofs clad in distinctive snake-skin tiles designed to throw off the heavy snow they get in the winter. The older houses in the countryside had tin or split pine shingle roofs. We were told that Zakopane was a major ski resort in the winter. Thanks to it's relative cheapness, Western Europeans were flocking there for the slopes in the beautiful Tatri mountains. We were there in summer and did a lot of walking in the hills, so we got to see something of their agricultural ways. It seemed to me that the houses in the country were still following an old practice of making hay. Every house seemed to have these remarkable haystacks in their garden.
I spent five of my school years growing up on a farm in Scotland. I'm used to working with hay, but these things had me baffled. How did they get the hay piled up so steeply? I found that answer when we walked past an old barn.
Isn't that such a brilliantly simple design? The hayracks are made by hand from local materials. This eco-friendly solution is probably forced on the southern Poles for economic reasons. Nevertheless, the result is that the air in southern Poland is crystal clear.
The hills are full of old, abandoned houses. I think the southern Poles have become a lot more prosperous since the Berlin wall came down. It was beautiful in 1995; I wonder what it's like now.
7:16:01 PM 
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All the following have something in common:
They are all my 'type'. Tall, slim and pale with black hair. It started when I was young. I remember being mesmerised by Kate Bush when I was at school, while everyone else was stuck in Debbie Harry. My first serious girlfriend was a Kate clone, until she stared putting on a whole lot of weight. I don't think it was the weight that did for us, but then again... No, I think it was more to do with being a teenager. All that anger! I needed a stronger, more assertive person to keep me sane. My next girlfriend was just that. Trouble was, she grew up faster than I did. After a couple of years we split up amicably. She wasn't my type, but, though I haven't seen her in nearly twenty years, I still hold her dear. She is one of those really nice people that everyone likes. I still get news about her through my family. Apparently, she told my brother that I was the only passionate man she'd ever gone out with. I find that really sad because she deserves better. My next one was an unstable nutter from a family of nutters. The less said about them the better. She definitely wasn't my type. Then I met Jill. She's tall, slim and pale with dark hair. In every real romance, the woman is the gatekeeper. She's the one who choses her mate (in any civilised society). Jill picked me, so I guess she's not too bright, despite having one degree in Russian and German from Oxford and another in Computing. She's tolerant, of me, and the mother of our two beautiful children. She's the only woman who could ever really matter to me. I don't tell her I love her often enough, but I do.
She, is my type. |
Last update: 24/4/04; 10:30:27 am .
