I’m staring out of my frosted kitchen window right now, gazing at the white-coated garden that has been rendered Siberian after last night’s heavy snowfall. And while drinking in the wintry scene, I’m remembering another freezing February day, all of four decades ago and a thousand miles away from where I am now, as I [...]
EMPTINESS The snow is falling and I am falling with it. Softly, silently it falls. No sound as the flakes touch land. Just a vast, empty winter’s landscape, inside and out. Enough is enough. Let there be oblivion: an end to the live sparks of human emotion. Just the snow out there, softly falling, carrying [...]
Here's a not-your-average Christmas story. I should know. I was there. The crackling strains of Silent Night filled the room from the antiquated radio. It was a German recording of Silent Night, very close to the original score that had been composed by Franz Xavier Gruber in December 1818. ‘Could you turn it louder?’ I [...]
Here’s a true-story Advent Tale with a difference. The sky was gradually darkening. She sat on the deep window sill in her bedroom, hawk-like in her vigilant perch. Sometimes it seemed to her that from this position she could view the entire world. Clusters of young stars were popping into existence, their neon dust [...]
It all happened one Halloween night, when the silver steeples and pinnacles of Kraków gleamed in the light of the full moon, and the stars shivered from on high. In the midst of this chilly world sat my Uncle Dariusz, huddled in the twelfth-century tower atop St Mary’s church, getting ready to open the window [...]
BEWARE - this is a cautionary tale for all vets, dog owners and dog lovers. I have a very good friend who lived in Krakow for many years. Let’s call her Anna. She loves animals and used to look after our previous dog, Floppy, whenever we went away on holiday. Now please believe me when [...]
Falling in love again. That’s what the sultry Marlene Dietrich sang, way back in the nineteen-thirties. 70-plus years on, she might as well still be singing the same words. I mean she’s right, isn’t she? We fall in and out of love again and again and again. Or is it just me? – in which [...]
