CHRISTMAS EVE 1992 Kraków, Poland “We’re closed.” That’s what I said to the woman as the chimes by the front door announced her entrance. I didn’t even bother preceding it with a ‘sorry’. It was quarter to two on Christmas Eve and I was just about to lock up shop and go home. Who can [...]
As a writer, it goes without saying that I have always been an avid reader. And the older I get, the fussier I become with my reading, and the harder I am to please. But that does not seem to be the case with many other readers. The astounding success of a number of contemporary [...]
I want to fly backwards in time, and head for my old Art Nouveau apartment – the one my children and I used to share with our newly opened school. It was right in the historic heart of Kraków, within earshot of the quarter-hourly chimes that drifted from an aortic plethora of medieval churches and [...]
The other day I found myself on a Ryanair plane to London, with two and a half blissful hours of peace in front of me. Yippee! - I thought giddily to myself. No internet to interrupt the long, imminent reading session that lay ahead! I snuggled down in my seat (‘snuggling’ is something that’s pretty [...]
It’s Halloween, the end of the half-term holiday, so their huge Art Nouveau flat is not infested with the usual chaos and commotion of their new private school. Just her two children and her husband. She’s looking forward to seeing all three of them again, after her weekend away in the Tatra mountains. Forgiveness is still rife [...]
Yesterday evening I went out to dinner with my husband. Nothing unusual in that, I suppose. Except that we’ve been separated these last two years. In fact, that’s when I started this blog - November 2017. It was supposed to serve as a kind of therapy for my battered heart. And, if my mellowed feelings [...]
As it’s technically still summer, with the flowers in my garden still healthy shades of red and yellow and pink (those that escaped the hungry jaws of my mad Belgian Malinois dog), and the cobalt-blue sky hanging covetously over our high garden wall as though protecting this secret paradise from the autumn winds that lie [...]
