How Poland is responding to the Syrian refugee crisis - and why....

Poland goes to the polls in 10 days time and according to an article I heard on Radio 4 last night, the election debate is dominated by the migration crisis.

The political right wing do not want to take in Syrian refugees, especially not in line with any suggested European quota and there appears to be a good deal of support in the national population for this.

Poland is, according to the article, Europe’s largest monoculture and many of the people interviewed last night – including a half Syrian woman who runs a charity to help refugees – are adamant that they do not want a large influx of people coming into the country for fear that it would have a negative impact on Polish culture and religion.

The article said that the rhetoric in Poland has been likened to that of the Nazi’s in the Second World War. Strong stuff then.

'What the West accepted'

But I’ve been very fortunate to go to Poland a number of times in the past few years (Gdansk/Gdynia/Sopot, Warsaw and most recently Krakow) and this isn’t the Poland I’ve experienced.

So this morning I contacted one of my Polish friends to find out how much of the story is true and how much is filtered through the media’s need to make a story interesting and clear-cut, eschewing all grey areas.

“Imagine that 70 years ago 80% of England was destroyed...Noone in the generation of your grandparents had a university degree.”

His feedback was, as always, fascinating and insightful.

“Absolutely we are a monoculture” he said, “95% Catholic, 99% Poles. But this wasn’t our choice. This was a result of what the Nazi’s and Soviets did and what the West accepted.”

Even stronger stuff then.

“Before World War II it was 60% Poles and the rest was a mixture of Ukrainians, Germans and Jews. And they managed to get on together.”

“Imagine that 70 years ago 80% of England was destroyed. 90% of people with higher education were killed or in exile.  Noone in the generation of your grandparents had a university degree.”

“Then follow that up with 40 years of communism that effectively discouraged any entrepreneurship, development and openness. How on earth can we expect grandsons of peasants to act as a normal Western society?”

Different Polish tradition 

He paints a vivid picture. And yet this isn’t and hasn’t been my impression of Poland or of the Polish people that I’ve become friends with over the years.

There are many remnants of a very different Polish tradition that exist and are exercised in the country today, that I’ve experienced first-hand, and that are at odds with the anti-refugee sentiment.

Firstly, and perhaps most famously, is Polish hospitality. I have travelled to a number of countries and the vivacity of spirit, the sense of sociable adventure and desire to ensure that you have a good time, you eat well, you drink well, you are warm and well cared for when you are with Polish people is second to none.

And this dates back and back – read Norman Davies God's Playground: vol. 1: A History of Poland if you want to reference it.

(My only caveat to this welcome is be prepared to deal with the most gruesome hangover of your life the next day. Also you need to know from the get-go that you can’t handle vodka a) like a Polish person can and b) that vodka is seriously tricksy and will make you think you can handle it like a Polish person can. Double danger…..You have been warned!)

Secondly there is what I would describe as a real European intellectualism in the country. There is a passion for story, for sharing with you the riches of the nation’s history, its culture, its traditions.

Technicolour vision

History for many Polish people is a lived thing. Most of my friends were kids when communism fell and in some senses that makes their stories ever more poignant – there is a before and an after, and it is remembered through the technicolour vision of a child’s eye.

The child who remembers not knowing for when she was little that oranges were orange because Polish trade agreements meant items were only imported from fellow communist countries and so their oranges came from Cuba and were more green than orange.

The child who remembers the first MacDonald’s opening in Warsaw and despite everything they know today about the downside to the fast food industry – the environmental and health impacts – they still struggles to not see those golden arches as indicative of a better, more open and free way of life.

"We lack a class of public servants that would think of their responsibility towards the republic and its people"

The adult who even today will read something about the events that took place in the Second World War and be surprised because they were taught an entirely different and at times blatantly inaccurate version of history. There is a jolt, a shock as they experience worlds colliding that they had thought they had reconciled.

Tribal

I ask my friend if he would consider going into politics, if he would be part of making the change he feels is needed in Poland today.

“I wouldn’t think of going into politics. Ever,” he says.

“It’s currently more based on serving the party rather than the state. It’s very tribal and this is actually what I think needs changing.”

“We lack a class of public servants that would think of their responsibility towards the republic and its people. We have only party members and people serving closed communities.”

He jokes about ending his rant, but it has been a revelatory conversation. I believe Poland and the Polish people have so much to give to the world,  especially as they are so central and have such an acute sense of being part of the continental landmass of Europe – something that we seem to be intellectually, emotionally and spiritually severed from in the UK.

I can’t help but hope my romanticised and idealised version of Poland is the one that breaks through this crisis and that it becomes the best it can be – a hospitable, welcoming, intellectually engaged and engaging nation that moves beyond the tribal and the self-serving to embody older and newer traditions of inclusion and refuge and a place of solidarity and hope.

For more information on….

The Polish Parliamentary Election 25 October 2015 click here

For more Polish history read:
God's Playground: A History of Poland, Vol. 1: The Origins to 1795 (Volume 1)

God's Playground: A History of Poland, Vol. 2: 1795 to the Present (Volume 2)

What makes these books fascinating if you’re from the UK is that we’re so used to thinking and learning about events from (understandably!) a UK centric version of history. In the history of Poland you get a history of Europe and the viewpoint is dizzyingly and stimulatingly different.

If you want something a little more literary then you can’t go far wrong with the beautiful magical surrealism of Bruno Schultz – Street of Crocodiles

The Grace of Unconditional Love

This is me procrastinating (or trying not to not). Reginald is curled, sleeping in the crook of my legs, head cushioned against my calf, heat pouring out of the pads on his perfect little feet, paws pushed against my other leg, not pushing me away, but keeping me close, for comfort.

His eyes crack, a slit of frustration at my every movement. I am, however, allowed a notebook, held firmly against my hip bone, allowed the gentle vibration of pen across page. Moreover, I am in love. And. I am reminded, directly, of the first time I ever experienced unconditional love.

I was ironing. My mother lay sleeping on the sofa just in front of me. The house held in the late afternoon quiet of early June: children ensconced in schools; parents avidly earning their keep at desks, depots, in front of computer screens and customers. The gentle moseying of pensioners and young mums, breathing in a space, a baby snoozing respite, a point in the day that momentarily demanded nothing of them. An unconventionally magic hour.

The dust snowed rhythmically in the sunlight, refracted and dancing through the net curtains. The iron sighed and steamed; creases desisted and clothes became hot and smooth and all at once, listening to the catch of her breath, my body became love. I was the dancing dust, the dappled light, the steam, the silence, the sigh of the occasional lazy car sliding past the front room window. I was the sleeping mother and the love-filled daughter; the turning earth, held, momentarily, in perfection.

"There is nothing I cannot, nothing I will not do for you" I breathed to the sleeping mummy. And for that moment there were no limits, only capacity which in turn made way for more capacity. I was the expanding, expansive universe.

It was a grace that carried me through the tumble and rumble of the next few weeks, of sleeping at the foot of her bed in the hospice, dog-like and determined she should not now, nor ever whilst so long as I continued to breath, feel herself alone, feel fear at the hands of strangers.

I crashed onto the rocks that were her death. Naked, unprotected, unprepared, like Milton's Satan I fell through the heavens, through the earth and kept falling. My lake of fire the burning sensation of having to continue, to be normal, to be.

Tonight my kittenish cat sleeps snuggled up to me. He fidgets a bit but is mostly a warm furry ball of heart beat and I love him and I'm grateful for this time we have, for his love. This is my procrastination as I wonder how to tell the tale of my relationship with my mother, through fantasy and fiction, wonder if, how and why I am compelled to share it.

Grief, or, things I normally avoid blogging about...

Grief is such a peculiar creature. She doesn't behave at all how you'd expect her to. Like today, just over four years since my mum died and boom, I had to run to the ladies and have a cry because a dear and wonderful friend text me to say she's going to run a coffee morning to raise money for Macmillan nurses and would like to do so in memory of my mum.

Such a nice, thoughtful thing to do, so why the tears?

Reading the word 'Macmillan' in relation to mum my memory jumps, split-second, to attention.

Flash one: the image of the first Macmillan nurse who came to visit us, a kindly blonde haired lady who misunderstood the extent of mum's illness and thus wove a beautiful tale of a future we wanted to believe in, with my mum, sister and I taking trips to the coast, where we wheeled her up and down the promenade, poorly, yes, but happy to be out and together. We wanted that reality so much.

Flash two: an image now of the second Macmillan nurse, a blonde haired, tanned gentleman, who quickly sized up the situation we were existing within, foresaw that we could no longer continue in her little devon terrace without the necessary equipment (a hospital bed, a wheel chair and walking frame) and knew he couldn't get us those things as quickly as he could get mum a place at the hospice. "It's just for a few nights Mrs Megson," he said, and we were reassured, grateful. "Just till we get all the furniture in here and have it all nice for you."

With breakneck speed the cancer ate her all up, faster than the oncologist predicted, faster than Macmillan could've known, faster than the hospice expected. Less than a week later she inhaled for one final time.

And my grief reminds me, in flash backs more often than not, that quietly, in the background of existence, I am still waiting for the exhale, for the moment where we can pick up from where we left off.  I've so much to show her, so much to share.

Because you see that's the oddest thing, the thing that makes grief the most peculiar creature: there has almost certainly never been a time in my life when I have been happier, more contented, more delighted and more grateful for the world I find myself living in and yet.....And yet happiness is no foil for grief. She stalks the sunny days as much as the dark nights; laughter and high jinx are no protection from the sharp claws with which she'll knead you.

And cat like, this pain is one borne out of love, a kittenish throwback of shocking flashbacks and a deep deep harrowing knowledge that life is finite and once gone won't ever come back.

7 things I learned from failing #NaNoWriMo that have already made me a better writer…(and might help you too!)

This is the second time I’ve committed to NaNoWriMo, but the first time I’ve FAILED to make the magic 50k word count. 

Oddly I’m happier this time round and I’m writing more and better since the end of November. Why? Well, the lessons learned are listed below…

Cats never fail! But thanks Chuck Olsen for the photo

1) Know your enemy
80% of the novel writing effort is spent fighting demons that say, “You can’t write,” and, “You shouldn’t be wasting your time writing, who do you think you are?” whenever you sit down to write.

Lesson: Knowing that means I’m ready for them. They’ve immediately lost the edge of ‘surprise attack’.

2) Learn how to be a demon-fighter
Continuously turning up and writing pretty much every day reduces that demon fighting effort to more like 20%.

Lesson: By turning it into a routine, writing just becomes less of an effort and more normalised. I think this lulls the demons into some sort of sleepy state…

3) Mission possible
It is possible to write 40,000 words in a month and still…. go to work, have a social life, read some books, sleep 7 hours a night, meditate for 20 minutes a day, deal with family crises and have 8 days in the month where you don’t write a word at all.

Lesson: The Jane Austen/make-do-and-mend method, where you make the most of the scraps of time available, is actually pretty effective and much more workable in my world.

4) Live your choices; love your choices
It isn’t possible to write 50,000 words a month with all of the above happening though.

Lesson: And that’s okay! There’s a strong theory that you have to give up things that you love or care about if you’re a ‘real’ writer. That’s probably true for some people but look, I had a life AND wrote 40,000 words. The most I gave up on was some household chores.

The thing is, ultimately you get to choose. You. Not anyone else. Set your targets according to your choices.

5) Keep a track record
A novel is a really big thing. Even a short novel.

Lesson: Keeping a track of who, what, where, when is super challenging. I found my main character went from working at a local council, to being an accountant, to being an IT consultant (you get the drift, she wasn’t the most exciting person, right?!) depending on what I needed her to be able to do work wise to keep the story going. I found having a ‘Legend.doc’ and a ‘Timeline.xls’ really really useful.

6) Kill characters rather than your enthusiasm
Most people on NaNoWriMo seem to be writing fantasy novels with lots of battles and deaths.

Lesson: The point is they were having fun. Writing should be fun first and everything else after!

7) Find your favourite format
Writing a novel is harder and slower than reading a novel. More to the point I found the sense of having to focus on pushing the story forward (and pushing the word count probably…) meant that I didn’t get the same level of joy that I get when I’m playing with a much smaller world.

Lesson: Consequently…I’m revisiting the short story format again! I’m engaging with the short story in a much more conscious way than before and enjoying my writing more. NaNoWriMo helped me to think much more about format and what works best for the kind of stories I most want to tell.

I'm pretty sure I'll NaNoWriMo again. I'm not done with the novel and I find the focus of telling a big story in a month a really revealing writing exercise in terms of understanding my own writing process and preferences. This year was a WIN for me on that basis alone. So here's a big fat cheer to the success of failure!

5 ways being a journalist is a lot like being a smoker - and 1 way it isn't...

Journalism, like smoking, is an oddly addictive profession that isn't necessarily good for your personal health or the health of those around you. Often unsociable and these days associated with stereotypes of bad behaviour, is it a journalism ban that we most need to see in this country? 

Rebecca Megson lights up the similarities between smoking (which KILLS by the way kids) and journalism...

All the President's Men
- Journos pursuing lies at the heart
of 'democratic' government*

1) The cool and the beautiful do it on the big screen - making it look cool (Hoffman/Redford, journalistic truth-hunters extraordinaire in All the President's Men) and beautiful (a la the iconic smoker Mrs Mia Wallace in Pulp Fiction. Less pretty when's she's OD-ing later but that's off topic...)

2) The first time you try it (smoking/journalism) you can feel quite sick and disgusted by it...

3) ...but before you know it you have an insatiable hunger for the newsroom/next smoke. Your heart races with excitement/stress. The adrenalin is pumping over whether you'll get the story/get caught smoking by your neighbour ('who will tell your mum what you've been up to young lady'). There is a sense of survival.

Mrs Mia Wallace in
90s cult movie Pulp Fiction**

4) As a journalist/smoker you are something of a social pariah, especially amongst professions that mistrust you (TIP: don't go to a party predominantly filled with scientists and/or doctors and admit you are a smoker/journalist unless you are ready for the cold hard stare of 'Oh, well that certainly changes how comfortable I feel about talking to you').

5) There are particular types of smoking/journalism (aka weed/investigative) that will find you locking yourself in a darkened room for days at a time, rejecting friends and family, living off snack foods and paranoia. You vet anyone you speak to for trustworthiness and then (once they pass the test) reveal everything you've found about the latest conspiracy theory.

And one way it isn't....

1) Unlike tobacco, the very best journalism can be a force for good....

For example, CBS aired the first TV news segment alleging links between smoking and lung cancer in 1955 which revolutionised what we knew and thought about smoking//The Guardian broke the first news story into what would become the hacking scandal, revealing the dirtiest and most unwholesome side of journalism imaginable at that time.

And that is what makes journalism a worthwhile career to pursue (and why we shouldn't ban it!)


*All the president's men" by IMPAwards.com. Licensed under Fair use of copyrighted material in the context of All the President's Men (film) via Wikipedia
**Pulp Fiction cover" by The poster art can or could be obtained from Miramax Films.. Licensed under Fair use of copyrighted material in the context of Pulp Fiction via Wikipedia

On finding your path or being really frustrated reading The Alchemist

A two-part blog on figuring out your purpose and then getting on with it - despite your best efforts to sabotage yourself...

Years ago a really great friend of mine lent me The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho.  I really admired her and thought highly of her taste in books so I read it avidly.  It's a short book so it didn't take long to read. It was quickly evident to me that it was an allegorical tale but I stuck with it.  I expected there would be a great REVEAL at the end of the book, something that would help answer all the questions I had at that time about my purpose in life.

Let me just point out that if you haven't read it and don't want to know what happens at the end you should probably stop reading about here.  This is your penultimate paragraph SPOILER ALERT.

I'd just finished university. I'd completed a degree in English that I had entered full of optimism about becoming a journalist and a great writer. I'd been somewhat disheartened by the ruthlessness of media behaviour at the time and totally fallen in love with the process of studying so I'd emerged feeling quite confident that actually I was going to do a PhD in English Literature and become an academic.

Ma and Pa had other ideas.  They were supportive; "That's really great love", but had some practical reservations, "So how are you going to pay for it?" I blithely explained I could probably do some part-time teaching.  They pounced on this and before the day was out I had pretty much completed an application to take a PGCE in Secondary English.

The long and short of it is I signed up for a PGCE, got three weeks in, knew I hated it but was determined not to be beaten by it so stuck it out.  Once I qualified I did the only sensible thing any person in my situation would do, I ran away to the theatre, and there I met my friend, who, after some time, proffered me her copy of The Alchemist.

So, here we have a novella about a shepherd who dreams of treasure.  He ditches his calm and peaceful life with his sheep in order to go on a long and winding journey to find said treasure.  Only, when he gets to the place where the treasure is supposed to be he finds out that actually it is back home under the place where he originally fell asleep and dreamt about the treasure.  Urgh.  The irony.  Only Alanis Morisette enjoys that level of it.

I threw the book across the room when I first finished it to be honest. I was calmer when I returned it to my friend but I let her know I was disgruntled.  "Why does nobody ever write one of these kind of books about a real girl who works in a real office and doesn't know what to do with her life? Why does it always have to be allegorical."  I was moody and a bit petulant.

My friend was sympathetic and, knowing my own dream was to be a writer, suggested that was up to me to write that very book.  I nodded with a desperate sinking feeling that I couldn't do it and who the hell was I to sit around dreaming of being a writer, I should just get real and get on with the business of living, which consisted of earning enough money to pay the bills and generally getting over myself and my ridiculous writerly ideas.

Well, that was a few years ago.  I've journeyed to a few places since then - literally and metaphorically.  Wherever I've travelled the dream of writing comes with me, like some mangy stray dog, ever more insistent that I pay it attention to it, feed it, love it.  So although I came to Bristol just over two years ago with every intention of throwing myself more wholeheartedly and deeply into the theatre*, I found myself one bright September day in 2012 NOT rocking up to the first day at Bristol Old Vic theatre school but rather to UWE to start my MA training in Journalism.

And that is your first clue, in the non-allegorical, true-story, of figuring out what your purpose is in this world.  It's pretty unlikely to be something you haven't already thought about, even if you've denied the thought. It's more than likely going to be something the universe keeps tipping in your general direction.  It might be that the people you hang out with or date tend to be artists or creative types, or lawyers, doctors, wannabe actors - whatever your thing is or really damn close to it.  You probably spend your time supporting and helping them to be the thing you know THEY should be.  It might be that you find the shows you watch on TV always seem to have a character in it doing the thing that you once thought you'd really like to do but you never got round to it.  In all sorts of ways, the thing that is most essentially you will already be a part of your life, you're just probably too close and too resistant to quite go for it yet.

In my next blog I'll share with you my 'shepherd realising the treasure was back where he started' moment. Only in real life it's not a single moment, it's a series of moments....

A bientôt


#findingyourpath #underyournose #amwriting #amblogging


*Amongst other things I was just emerging from an 'accidental' and unchosen corporate career that had made great parental sense but not fulfilled me.  Bouncing out of it I, of course, again ran away to the theatre....

Auschwitz-Birkenau: the unquiet of heritage tourism

I wanted to go to Auschwitz from the moment I knew I was going to Krakow to meet up with some friends for a few days earlier this month. 

My parents were both born and grew up in Leeds, just after the Second World War.  They had lots of Jewish friends and, obviously, the war was something much closer in time and memory to their lives.

Their connection to it and to people who had been affected by it drove their personal/political outlook, and in turn affected mine.  They believed that both fascism and the Holocaust needed to be spoken about and spoken against - passionately and regularly; they believed that we should all be on guard and active against such events happening again.

So it seemed entirely appropriate that, as my most wonderful friend (and WWII historian...) Rachel and I were in Poland together, close to Auschwitz-Birkenau, we should go.

On the other hand, there is something distinctly uncomfortable about the ‘desire’ to go to a site where atrocities have been committed.  We did not want to partake in any sort of ‘day trip’ that made a theme park out of crimes against humanity.

And to be fair, the State Museum of Auschwitz endeavours to cater against this.  Between the hours of 10 – 3pm you have to be part of a small(ish) tour-guided party but if you arrive between 8am and 10am (or after 3pm, until close) you are free to roam the place on your own.

Auschwitz-Birkenau is actually two camps – Auschwitz the original camp and Birkenau the significantly bigger overflow camp where millions of people were put to death in gas chambers – some after having worked in the camps, some barely hours after arriving into Birkenau on the transports.

If you want to avoid the tourism crush you need to get to Auschwitz itself before 10am (we failed, partially because travelling with me should come with a health warning about the likelihood of getting lost.  The 10 – 15 minute walk to Auschwitz from the train station, according to all the best guidebooks, was, thanks to my special directions-based curse, closer to an hour.  And we arrived at Birkenau first…).

Auschwitz should be seen first because it is a museum. It is smaller, busier and has all the trappings of a tourist site (the shops, the cafés, kiosks, loos, the hoards of people and the coaches and car park outside).  Walking under the ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ gates, with the mandatory tour party and headset, feels odd, and indeed familiar - doubtless because we have seen 'those gates' on television and in films so often.

Rachel and I found Auschwitz surreal and uncomfortable. It was loud, busy and cramped. But a part of that is because we had been to Birkenau first, which was altogether a different and much more contemplative, memorial, experience.

We spent three hours wandering around Birkenau.  It was vast, silent, apart from the frogs and the birdsong. More camp huts than we could count stretched out in all directions in the preserved areas of the camps; endless chimney stacks in the areas where the huts had long since been burned down. We walked up the length of each crematoria, stood at the entrances of the now burned out gas chambers, still and unquiet. Everywhere there were watchtowers and miles of barbed wire, utterly at odds with the pastoral landscape. 

People I’ve spoken to say you should go there in winter to really feel the rawness of the experience. I say simply go there when you get the opportunity, if you want to.

The reality is that we are fed and free from fear, limitations that can only barely be mitigated by standing in the cold for a few hours, staring at broken bricks and information boards.

As we were leaving we stopped off at the information desk to enquire about buses back to Krakow.  A group of Orthodox Jews were in front of us. They had just discovered the 'you-have-to-be part-of-a-tour-guided-party' rule.  They were not impressed.  They had not travelled all this way to receive a history lesson.  They had not travelled all this way to be part of a tour-guided party.

The mother of the family angrily cried out that she had lost five grandparents in Auschwitz and she had a right to be allowed in to honour them.  The younger son banged on the window of the information desk and demanded to see the supervisor. The harassed woman on the other side tried to reason with them, remaining adamant that they had to have a guide (though she was also frantically trying to sort them out a personal guide and, I suspect, would have waived any fee).

Rachel and I caught the bus back to Krakow just across the road from Auschwitz - thus avoiding any unnecessary but likely hour long walks back to the train station - and wondered how often altercations like the one we had just witnessed took place.

We felt bruised by our chaotic experience of the Auschwitz museum; overall the day had been exhausting, moving and compelling.  We returned to our hotel room, drank tea, read books, wrote and mused on the day and the history, trying to process the enormity of the Holocaust.

That was two weeks ago and I'm still processing I think.  WWII was not, ultimately, the war to end all wars.  The Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial, set up to ensure we never forgot and that we never allowed such horrors to be repeated, can seem like an exercise in idealism in a world where war and horror are part of our daily flow of news. None of the realities of now however undermine for me the importance of the act of remembering, of looking and of making ourselves look. The contortion of our minds to try to understand a past that is endless moving away from us, is, for me, a necessary exercise however challenging to assimilate.

Things to read to help with the 'processing'...
This way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen by Tadeusz Borowski - unsentimental tales of life in Auschwitz-Birkenau (and a couple about the dizzyingness of life afterwards) by Borowski who survived Auschwitz and took his own life in 1951, not yet 30 years old.  Visceral, blunt, heart-breaking. 

God's Playground: A history of Poland - Vol II by Norman Davies - Beautifully written. The second volume covers the modern period from a mostly unknown (in the UK at any rate) view point, creating a pivot upon which to turn any previously Anglophile understanding of modern history.  

The Pianist by Wladyslaw Szpilman - Apparently there was a movie??  First few pages brilliantly map the journey from being a free person in a free city through the incomprehensible trauma of being under siege and then occupied.  We're so used to seeing how things look when 'war torn' on the news, I'm really interested in that moment of change just before and just afterwards...

Jewish Poland Revisited: Heritage Tourism in Unquiet Places by Erica T Lehrer - this is currently hanging out in my 'wish list' and likely to be the most money I've spent to date on a kindle book (just awaiting payday...).  I flicked through a copy in a bookshop in the old Jewish quarter in Krakow but was at that 'crikey I've spent a lot of money already' point in the trip and so, with great strength of will, put it back down.  I'm attracted by the title (which I've bastardised for the title of this piece) and subject matter because I think ultimately this is what I bore witness to and was a part of - heritage tourism and the unquiet it creates....