I am a planner. With the exception of fun, free time (I don’t even wear a watch when I’m not working) and my personal relationships, I plan everything. Long after I should have stopped I am still thinking of all possible permutations. At the end of September I moved to a new school in a new [...]

Star Bucks, Seattle Best, Costa Coffee and their less well-known imitations. What do they all have in common? They all provide an opportunity for people to be parted from vast amounts of money in exchange for a timeshare in some Friends-lite version of life. Whenever I’m stupid enough to go into these chains (which isn’t [...]

Well, things have been busy and things have been different. Things, many things, are everything that they weren’t before. But - in the main - things are good! I got back to Poland almost a month ago and have been getting used to a new city, new school, new timetable and new attitude to free time [...]

So. There’s a bloody big fire in the middle of the Channel Tunnel and firefighters have been battling for over seven hours. Problems for all but no deaths, thankfully. BBC anchorman, Taffy McPantyhead or whatever, asks the reporter at the entrance to the Channel Tunnel Brit-side what is going on. “There’s a fire. It’s in the middle [...]

I turned on the goggle box earlier and up popped Grange Hill. Now, for those of you not born in 1970s England, Grange Hill was a kids programme set in a London comprehensive school. This programme was phenomenal and it served the young public well. It tackled all of the big issues that matter to school [...]

I saw this trailer a couple of years ago when I was living in Japan. It’s as weird today as it was then but I gather it’s a serious animation. All I can say is that I would love to have been around the table when they came up with this one. It obviously didn’t [...]

Stereotypes are alive and well. In fact, I love indulging myself sometimes with a good stereotype. Some people get ‘upset’ by stereotypes but I find that these people general get upset about everything. I’d go so far as to say it seems like they’ve been grown in pods, sealed to ensure no humour gets in. Stereotypes, [...]

I always thought that BBC News was the best in the world (biased, of course). You see, American friends of mine have told me that they don’t watch American news as it’s too narrow in its focus, not global enough, that it doesn’t show what’s really going on in the world. Please, someone correct me [...]

I’ve just spent the bulk of the evening searching the Internet for language learning techniques. Tips that will help me commit Polish to my sadly lacking memory. Tips that will open the floodgates and float me into the bay of conversation in a foreign language where all the interesting people and experiences hang out. So. [...]

England no longer has lazy, hazy summer days of strawberries with cream and sugar, barley water, butterflies in corn fields, wasps on jam, and old people snoozing in deckchairs. It has lost the warm colours and comforting fragrances. It is a shame. Today we managed to blow the cloud apart and step outside. The sun [...]