The Burnt Maze

Last year I had the same blog name but hosted over at Blogger. For one reason or another I just couldn’t get comfortable in my blog skin so one confident day in August I deleted it. A whole year of blog posts gone in a couple of quick clicks. Ug. The only thing I really regret is that my post ‘I Met A Girl‘ was lost. I regret it because it was my first published piece and was in the name of charity and charity, as we all know, begins at home although more specifically for me it was on a green sofa with a steaming cup of coffee and a view out of my window of a Polish city in winter. Brrrr.

The piece was published in a book for the charity Red Nose Day entitled Shaggy Blog Stories: A Collection Of Amusing Tales From The Blogosphere and was compiled by Mike Atkinson of Troubled Diva. I really enjoyed the whole experience of being involved and not only because it was for charity but also because it was great to feel that great vibe that was buzzing for a while in the UK blogosphere.

Anyway, according to the book blurb:

Shaggy Blog Stories features hilarious contributions from Richard Herring of Fist of Fun fame, BBC 6Music presenter Andrew Collins, comedian Emma Kennedy, and James Henry, scriptwriter from Channel Four’s The Green Wing.Authors Abby Lee (Girl With A One-Track Mind), David Belbin, Catherine Sanderson (Petite Anglais) and The Guardian’s Anna Pickard have also contributed pieces to the book.

So, I thought, in the name of charity and self-publicity, I would republish the post that featured in the book…here.

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I Met A Girl

Standing there, grubby plastic basket in hand, not so patiently waiting for the incredibly slow queue of work-weary evening shoppers to trickle through the check out I heard a voice behind me.

‘Przepraszam’.

‘That’s most certainly not a Polish accent’. I remember someone in my head thinking as the automated override system deployed at such tired times turned me in the direction of the voice.

Big smile, fantastically white teeth and a healthy complexion. American, of course. There is no other country on the face of this spinning sphere of hilarity, which breeds offspring with teeth whose image flirts so outrageously with horsiness before tugging you back to a picture perfect CNN news reader.

After an equally smiley preamble the conversation trotted steadily forward, as thankfully did the queue (Polish queues seem to move at almost glacial pace and can easily be compared to a heavy-shelled tortoise in brand new high heels who has been reassured that she needn’t put quite so much effort in, as the hare has got bored of proverbs and has gone to the pub).

Purpose of visit – check. Reason for choosing Poland – check. Highlights to date – check. Sharing of carefully selected personal but not too personal information – check.

We quickly established that we both lived in the same stylistic concrete wonderland of an apartment block so we decided to continue our verbal journey of exploration on the grey walk home to the huge and dusty Soviet era breeze block.

Due to my almost offensively sieve-like memory for names I don’t remember the other girl’s name but they were sisters that much I know for sure. Not sisters in the sibling sense, you understand. Not even sisters in the womankind sense but rather ‘Sisters’ in the Holy Trinity sense and Protestant missionaries to boot.

I’ve never met any missionaries before but I would imagine that the natural instinct with such messengers of God is to shift the focus quickly from the trivialities of the moment (never let it be said I don’t love more than a healthy dollop of triviality in any conversation) to the all too important question of one’s eternal soul. Did I believe in…God? I answered warmly and honestly (whilst trying to sound as far from pretentious as was possible – it’s really not possible given what I was about to say) that I had always held value in the old proverb “The nearer the church the further from God”.

Sister Nice Smile mentally chewed over what I had said and voiced at least an outwardly polite appreciation for the idea whilst Sister Something Something seemed more than mildly offended. Well, she’s new to the game by her own admission so no doubt she’ll toughen in time. And in a country, which is deemed to be 90% Catholic she will have to learn quickly if she’s to gain any ground in the ‘your soul’s in my church gang’ stakes.

To be honest, I usually have a very real (but nevertheless irrational) aversion to a certain type of religious person. Perhaps because I’m that special brand of English (Church of England default setting at birth although I never actually got my Cub Scout badge for Baptism). Who knows but to quote Alistair Campbell, the most notorious spin-doctor of the Blair Government, “We don’t do religion”.

All in all, however, they did seem like genuine and pleasant people and I have a curious feeling that I’ll be seeing them again if for no other reason than to bathe in the light from those fantastically white teeth. Must get me some of them - at least for a test drive anyway.

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Well, I hope you enjoyed it. If you did and would like to read any of the other contributions then they are all available in one beautiful book via the Lulu website. Do with it what you will but many seem to agree that it’s a great bathroom book