I Present This Without Comment

I’ve had to resign myself to being the kind of guy that crazy things just happen to. I didn’t choose it; in fact, I would sooner that it wasn’t the case. It’s almost like a passive, unwanted and unhelpful X-Men-esque mutation. But there we go. In light of this propensity for attracting insanity, I don’t quite know why I thought that going on a glorified, year-long drinking holiday in Poland would be a good idea. But it certainly has delivered, as far as the madness goes, anyway.

Prime example: Needy Street Performing Girl. We – my flatmates Mark and Jeff the Dutch - were in a bar, and then that bar closed. Despite us paying rent (sometimes before they start nagging and leaving passive-aggressive notes on my door), we can’t get in to our halls between 3 and 4. It’s spectacularly annoying, especially because they don’t trust us with keys. Anyway, it was about 2:45, so just the wrong time to try and get in, so we decided that we’d go for another couple in a 4-zloty bar. 4-zloty bars are great, they really are. You pay 4 zloty, about 80p, for a half of beer, or a vodka or something, with 8zl getting you a plate of food. They’re also open 24 hours, and I think maybe designed solely for students, the homeless and the alcoholics. Anyway, we went to one of those, and somehow – I forget exactly how or why – we ended up talking to a street performer. Her name? I haven’t a clue. She said she “only has a nickname”, which obviously led me to ask what her nickname was. Yeah, it was that kind of conversation. “What name do you like?” I said I thought Charlotte was a nice name. “But that’s the name of a prostitute!” she said.  Erm... Asking someone “what name they like” is also a pretty prostitute-ish thing to do; now you mention it. I think we settled on Dorothy, in the end. Anyway, she seemed nice, so we stuck around chewing the fat for a while. She then, for some reason, decided to stay at our place. We did our best to put her off, saying that the house was a tip and that we were bad hosts, our mothers would disown us, any excuse possible: but no dice. Eventually, 5.30am came, I cracked, and the four of us went home. We wanted our beds, you see, and I thought her presence wouldn’t be too problematic. I’ve always been an optimist. We had all tried to persuade her to go back to her own house (which she had, apparently. She wasn’t homeless or anything. Why did she want to stay with us?), but she wasn’t having any of it. “You seem like such nice guys!” she kept saying. Probably also the kind of thing a prostitute might say. Not that I know. I don’t have first-hand experience at all, mum, honest.

Unrelated, but pretty as anything

Our flat is, let’s be honest, disgusting. Our flatmate, Pete (also known as ‘The Washing Up Fairy’) occasionally cracks and cleans stuff, but he wasn’t there that weekend, so every single item of crockery or cutlery that we possess was piled up in the sink. The floor’s a state, because they didn’t provide us with a mop, so we’ll be buggered if we’ll buy one. The bin was overflowing like you wouldn’t believe, because I’m afraid of the rubbish chute after I shut my fingers in it. To complete the image, there was a mysterious puddle on the sideboard that I was reluctant to touch (not that we had any paper towels with which to clean it). It had been there for some time, but, curiously, wasn’t evaporating. Dorothy looked around with a look of growing horror. I washed up a cup for her, and she said she’d wash up everything else. I would like nothing more than having a strange Polish musician doing our washing up, but to be fair, she was a house guest, and I couldn’t bring myself to do it. “Oh no, don’t worry about that, you’re a guest!”

Then things started getting odd. She wanted to share a bed with someone, so as not to sleep alone. “No sex, I’m on my period anyway,” she announced to a look of mutual panic and horror between the three of us. “I’m alright though. If you tried anything, I’d pepper spray you!” she said, cheerfully, then went and showed us the pepper spray itself. Mark and I looked at each other, and telepathically debated actually getting pepper sprayed to see what it’s like. We decided against it, you’ll be glad to know. Anyway, back to the sleeping arrangements. We made some excuses, and made her up a bed on the floor of our room, like you would an animal. Our dormitory gave us some blankets when we moved in that are actually less than worthless. “In my country, giving someone a blanket like that would be an insult. We use that shit to dry down horses!” Jeff once told me in a fit of bitterness. Accordingly, we collected all of our horse-blankets, and let Dorothy arrange them as she saw fit. We surreptitiously moved everything of value next door, whilst she had a smoke, and Jeff went through her jacket pockets to see if she had any ID. No, she did not. Of course she didn’t. But, to conclude, we had a menstruating street performer with no name who sweet talked her way into staying with us, armed with pepper spray, and who didn’t actually steal anything.  Quite a sweet girl, in her way, I guess.

Living here is, at best, exciting. At worst? Grim. As I said, you can’t get in between 3 and 4am. That is, in itself, annoying, but last night, we found the creepy flipside to that. We got there at 2.45, and nobody was there to let us in. So we rang the bell, and knocked, and after about ten minutes, one of the Reception Ogres came storming out, shouting at us in Polish. I waited for her to let up, and told her, in Polish, that we didn’t speak Polish. She eventually gave us our keys (we pay her wages, come on) and we went upstairs. About half an hour later, whilst we were having a smoke, we saw a guy downstairs, who couldn’t get in. After a very Italian shouted conversation from our balcony, we went down and tried to let him in. We couldn’t. The doors were locked. That’s right, you can’t leave between 3 and 4 in the morning. Not even if you need an ambulance, I imagine. It’s like the Hotel California, but with a far worse standard of bedding.

See that? Gridlock and misery.

Last week, I was woken up by screaming girls. That’s never a good thing to wake up to, in any circumstances, so I got up and had a look at the (bloody poxy bastard) club over the road. There was a while hoard of young teenagers, mostly girls, crowding around the door. I told my flatmates, so we all stood on the balcony, trying to work out what was going on. Eventually, someone told us that the Polish Justin Bieber himself was playing there. Yeah, that’s right. You couldn’t make that up, really. Obviously, we eventually ran out of cigarettes, and had to go out for some more, and got caught up in the crowd of slow-moving, starstruck Polish teenagers. We were getting towards fight-or-flight responses, when a man climbed up from the crowd, onto a bench, looking over everyone's heads, and bellowed "kurwa piwo!" That literally translates as "bitch, beer!" I'm not suggesting that there is such a thing as universal truth, or true Zen, or anything like that, but that guy came closer to it than anyone I have ever met before. Then, later that day, it started snowing. I really hate snow, in a way that I can't adequately express. It's like a primal, deep-seated hatred that eventually manifests itself as me sitting sadly inside drinking whiskey as it falls from the sky, silently mocking me, daring me to run out of cigarettes again. Also, where I live is basically a wind tunnel - so, horizontal snow. I'm a proud Englishman, a Man of Kent no less, and horizontal rain doesn't bother me in the slightest. In fact, it's a little taste of home. But horizontal snow? Nah, you can keep that. 

As it happens, I’m going back to England next Thursday. I’m quite looking forward to it, I must say. I miss oven cooked food, ale, Marmite and the Southern accent. I was at a party the other night, teaching a French girl to say “bugger me sideways”, which nowadays seems to be my default setting: drinking/teaching foreigners how to say strange English exclamations. I forgot that there was a girl from London there, and nearly jumped out of my skin when she said it after the French chick. Also, I miss a good wardrobe. Thanks to a very badly laid out (learn Feng-Shui, administration, come on) room, when the wardrobe door is open, it blocks out the light, meaning you can’t see anything. I do literally get dressed in the dark. Sadly, I do have to fly back. See, if the Good Lord had wanted us to fly, he'd have given us wings. He almost certainly never wanted nice boys like me to have to be sat next to a stinky Frenchman for long periods of time. So, that'll be fun, especially because I'm growing my beard, and probably look like a recent convert to Islam. So, always assuming, I make it through customs, prepare yourselves, England, for the prodigal son/king in exile returns!