My brother, pork and vodka

I hadn’t drunk any strong alcohol for more than a month until last weekend. Last Saturday I met my brother. I hadn’t seen him for six months. We met at his house and celebrated the occasion with a meal. My brother and his wife had bought a whole pig so we had a lot of fried pork and sausage. My brother prepared the pork himself. It tasted wonderful. We drank more than two glasses of vodka. I stayed at my brother’s for about three hours. We talked and talked.

My brother bought a whole pig

Fractura claviculae update

Now that I’ve chucked away that ridiculous harness and the bone is knitting nicely, it’s time to hug and kiss those who made life in the last four weeks uninterruptedly normal.
Thank you to Basia, Justyna, Krystyna, Magie, Michał and Wojtek for their daily help and being best nurses imaginable.
Thank you to all my students for their concern and support.
Thank you to Piotr, my doctor, for his common-sense approach and ingeniously simple treatment.
Thank you to Ewa T for redirecting my thoughts to where greater pain is.
Thank you to the drivers of 97 26 taxi company for their excellent service and stories told.
Finally, thank you to Marzena, my former student and singing neighbour, for all her help and a memorable walk home when she offered to be my heroic private sherpa. My heart melted.

Affliction

pot-bound cyclamen
banished from the rock and skies
it never adorned

Stories from faces 4

Maggie is one of my best friends. We first met when we were at primary school and we’ve been friends ever since. Maggie is a very slim and tall woman and she looks good in almost anything, most people would say she’s very attractive.
I think they are right. Maggie is a thin-faced girl, with medium-length dark blond hair and a fringe around her oval face. Her rather thick eyebrows and small eyes tell that she is honest and loyal to her friends. Her long straight nose makes her look strong and sporty. Maggie’s lips are thin and she’s got that cheeky smile.
Open and relaxed, she can be very careful and cautious at the same time. Maggie is an outstanding woman, ambitious, imaginative and cheerful. I can’t imagine my life without her as my best friend.

Stories from faces 3

I’m over forty and I work in a bank. It’s a developing bank so I work hard and sometimes have to be there extra hours. In my job I spend a lot of time in front of the computer but I also meet customers. Too much time before the PC screen made me wear glasses. I keep my greying hair cropped, which conceals its colour a bit. I like to have a three-day stubble on my face to hide emotions. It’s helps me when I have to sell products not exactly as good as my customers think.

Stories from faces 2

When I saw her for the first time, she was in her thirties – a beautiful elegant woman with long shiny hair, green eyes, and full red lips. Her skin looked clear and bright. She was carefully dressed. She wore a mink coat and suede gloves. There was a beautiful hat on her head.
At first she looked just amazing, but when I had a closer look, I noticed her eyes were very sad. It appeared that she had a problem, her husband had a lover. She wanted to divorce him but was worried about her family, because they had two small daughters and she had never worked.
I met her five years later and didn’t recognize her at all. She came to my office completely drunk and crying. She looked very poor. Her once shiny hair was greasy, her bright skin became sallow. It turned out that her husband sued her, got a divorce and took the children with him since she was an alcoholic. She had started drinking because of her husband’s numerous affairs.

Stories from faces 1

Today is my birthday, I’m seventy. I don’t think I regret anything, but sometimes an intrusive thought haunts me.
It was forty years ago, on the hot autumnal afternoon. I was waiting for my train to take me home, to my family. Another train arrived and suddenly I felt like getting onto it and going somewhere, no matter where and for how long.
Today I still ask myself – where would I be now if I had got onto that train?

A day in the life of Alfred Molina

A warm afternoon. The skyscrapers of LA turned red in the sun. Alfred Molina was just returning to his hotel in the suburbs of the city, watching through the cab’s windows the beautiful sunbeams falling down on the pavement. His life was like a big journey, a journey of failure. Sitting uncomfortably in the cab, he was holding those files he had shown to Steve Coogan.
Molina without future, Molina without good ideas for the next production, Molina without a cousin – he saw these headlines in the newspaper of his life. People made him feel lonely. In his old-fashioned clothes, not an artist but a pathetic actor. Another traffic jam. More time to think about his life, full of accidents and mistakes. He just made another mistake, meeting Steve Coogan. In a tiny café, over English tea, he paid him compliments, did everything to make friends. Perhaps he exaggerated with his pompous speech, but … he tried so much to sound real. The documents … Molina drew that stupid family tree the whole evening, investigating Coogan’s family. The fear of being rejected triumphed again. “I will never trust people,” he thought. It was his new resolution.
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Decisions

Today I’ve learnt that on Wedsnesday a friend of mine decided to finish his life. I can’t find the right words to say what I feel and I cannot imagine what his family feel now. We all have our ups and downs, but we always seem to find enough strength to move on … He didn’t.

Being Steve Coogan

19th May ‘97, Saturday, a few minutes past 11pm
In my old armchair, immersed in thinking … without a mask and all those comedies – “You are the best actor! What an incredible new production! Please give me an autograph!” Silence. Those people … they’re lying to me all the time, all of them … Silly silence. On the outside, the strong, intelligent Steve Coogan; inside, a small creature, real only for this diary, sad, miserable and lonely.
But wait a moment … just think, I have a “cousin”, Alfred Molina. That Italian connection and the ridiculous family tree with all the names of my grand, grand, grandfathers and mothers … He’s a total jerk. He thought I would believe that nonsensical story and say: “Yes, we should do a film together.” … and then maybe I would play Steve Coogan. Everybody has needs. People think about their own interests; like him – a poor actor without future, a fatty, plump ball with the enormous body leaning over the table, the slanting eyes saying as if in a hypnosis: “Just do it for me! I want to be as popular as you! Think about the money and people who may buy this poor story!” Ridiculous! How on earth did he make it up? All his sickly compliments on my position, popularity, films, even the coat … Yeah, he was right, it’s good material for a comedy!
Today in the café I tried to be cool-blooded, reserved, to tell him: “I just can’t stand your falsehood. I want the truth.” He seemed to be a small intolerable intruder who wanted my private phone number too! People are ridiculous. I make comedies but life is a big comedy, a black comedy! Drinking real tea, which is very hard to come by here, I was just thinking about him, his films and acting, nothing good, the girl who didn’t recognize him, those pathetic documents in his folder. All this made me sick of Alfred Molina, my alleged cousin … He was cheating all the time and couldn’t act it well.
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