Born in Bristol, a green and pleasant city, I moved at age four to Combe Martin on the very edge of Exmoor. Of all the places I have visited in my life I can honestly say (although perhaps not entirely objectively) that Exmoor is the most beautiful and charming place in the world. High praise.

I spent the next 10 years living the boyhood dream:

• Climbing to the tops of trees, jamming my foot into the V where the branch meets the trunk, looking out across my empire to the lands I would later conquer and then wondering how on earth I was going to get back down again.
• Sitting in our field on the cut and dried grass looking out across the valley and listening to the church bells on Sunday calling the villagers to mass.
• Hunting for the Beast of Exmoor and making up tales of previous sightings.
• Trying to cross fields of bullocks and cows without spooking them or being caught by the farmer.
• Making bows, arrows and catapults and then going ‘hunting’ - usually accompanied by my fearless cat Angus.
• Pushing my heavy-as-a-tank bike to the top of hills and screaming down again.
• Building dens (including an underground one with a hidden entrance and a chimney).
• Searching for little pieces of silver around the disused silver mine five minutes from the top of our field.
• Using old maps of the village to discover long since overgrown lanes that allowed us to get around the valley village (the longest in Britain) without being seen (very important for explorers).
• Crabbing and exploring rock pools.
• Climbing rocks and jumping into the sea during the summer months.
• Travelling from one cove to another by swimming and climbing rocks.
• Bobbing around the cove in a row boat.
• Using my telescope to search the other side of the valley for new places to explore (and to spy on my maths teacher and his wife playing tennis - that way I would know when it was safe to go and call on his son).
• Picking blackberries from the numerous bushes around and sometimes sheep’s wool from barbed wire.
• Using the tractor tracks in our field as a bob-sleigh run when it snowed.
• Carving a network of pathways out of a huge field of brambles in part so we could disappear like the Vietcong and evade my friend’s brother and his gang.
• Excavating mud banks in search of treasure.
• Building a teepee out of wood and turf and then having my first marshmallow cooked over a fire.
• Going shopping on a Saturday morning with my mum and visiting the baker, butcher, greengrocer and dairy. This memory is important as these days the big supermarkets are pretty much all most of us have.
• Digging hand and footholds out of vertical gulley walls so we could climb up and explore new areas otherwise inaccessible to us.
• Being scared of our family house as it was old and spooky with a granny annex that wasn’t lived in and wasn’t heated.
• Scaring my sister (I suppose so it lessened my fear) - once by tying some cotton from her bedroom door handle to that of the granny annex door handle. When she opened her door the door to the spooking annex closed. I’ll pay for that one day.
• Eating unbelievably healthy food and, on the odd occasion, home-made doughnuts or drop scones.
• Drinking barley water and eating a lump of cheddar cheese and a cut up apple what seemed like everyday after school.
• Going on family walks on Sundays along the coast including to one place called Great Hangman that has the highest sea cliffs in England.
• Taking part in the annual carnival and bloody loving it.
• Watching and taking part in the annual Hunting of the Earl of Rone, an annual custom that takes place over the May bank holiday weekend.
• Feeling free and loved.

I have so many wonderful memories from my childhood. Certainly too many to list here but I hope it gave you an insight into one boy’s childhood in the wilds of Devon.

Photo: Miss Beee

Me and lil’ sis ready for the carnival.

Picture: Earl of Rone

So. What are the most vivid memories from your childhood? Using a rope on a tyre to fling you into the middle of a river? Trying to ride your dog to town? I’d love to hear some of them.

Katowice (the city I currently live in) is referred to by many as the armpit of Poland. Ouch. I used to call it Crapowice until I found out that there actually is a place called Krapowice in Poland (OK, KrapKowice).

To be honest, it’s not actually that bad, well, it’s not that bad in the summer (if you live above the tree tops) and it is getting better as investment pours in. In the winter, however, it is a desolate place filled with people whose lives are etched on their faces. Alcoholism is rife and people look at each other with mistrust and loathing.

My girlfriend is not from here but studies here. She is why I came back from Italy, came back from a pleasant place between Milan and Lake Maggiore. You see, I realised that whilst I would rather have a long distance relationship with her than no relationship, I did have the power to change things for us for the better.

Just to illustrate the difference I’ll pop a couple of photos up for you to see.

View from my apartment in Italy

View from my apartment in Poland

I’m exaggerating the point, of course, but it’s true to say that I much prefer living in Poland to Italy. Perhaps over the summer I’ll write something about why.

Anyway, I am in my last week in Katowice. The school year is in its death throes and soon I will be free, FREE! If that sounds a bit over the top then that’s because it is. My need for a holiday, a break, is fuelling a melodramatic drive for the finish line and I can almost see the end.

Next Thursday I’m heading back to beautiful England for the summer before moving to the south of Poland near the mountains. Oh, yes! Skiing and hiking, ahoy!

Will I miss Katowice and its politeness-lite inhabitants? Probably not. Am I glad that I came here? Absolutely. Had I not then I never would have met my girlfriend and that’s just not something I care to think about.

A couple of Krakowian nuns from different teams but what do you think they’re talking about?

I’m a big fan of the idea of European nations working together in the areas of trade and security but far from keen when it comes to social engineering and governing in secret.

If we think of the EU as a football team then you wouldn’t keep the manager on if he was utterly incapable of leading the team to victory. In short, the EU’s coach is a dud and I object to the argument that you either support the current shitwits or you want to get out of the EU.

A sad day for democracy.

Thank you to my girlfriend for finding this gem.

I love this film so much.

How did it come to this? How do I find myself back in the 1980s? One minute I’m walking along the street in 2008 and the next I’m sitting in a cafe bar in another era.

It all started so well. I’ve come to Krakow on this fine day, as my girlfriend has an interview for an internship with a brewery (free samples?).

After almost being forced to find some wood to build a bridge to get to the platform from the fantastically slow train (Polish train journeys take longer than they did 20 years ago) we walked through the historic and picturesque outskirts of the main centre of Krakow, through Europe’s largest market square and past the many flower stalls and terrace cafes full of tourists and locals united in their appreciation of the day and the place they so fortunately found themselves in.

We purposefully headed off piste to avoid many of the tourists (see: British stag parties) and wandered along charming cobbled streets that offered up interesting and unobtrusive cafes and eye-catching churches. When we eventually reached the Wawel castle (which doesn’t look as though it could repel a gaggle of grannies) the sun had begun to massage our skin and slow our pace. It was wonderful.

Now fast forward 30 minutes to an industrial estate on the long road to Zakopane. Now fast forward again but this time only by 15 minutes and you’ll find me sitting in a cafe bar right out of the 1980s. I’m alone but what can I see? What makes me feel like I’m in the 1980s?

* Well, the decor, for starters, and the smell of spray can wood polish.
* Brown table clothes and brown furnishings (no corduroy, however).
* An abundance of brass.
* Bottles and bottles (and then some more bottles) of Martini.
* A sign promoting French wine - notable because it’s the only wine they offer.
* Net curtains.
* A waiter with slicked back hair. Italian looking but most definitely Polish.
* Bad coffee. My first in a month (I was trying to avoid caffeine) and it tastes worse than awful.
* The milk is room temperature (maybe more) and the sugar bowl could well be an ashtray - actually, on closer inspection it is an ashtray.
* Fake flowers.

Things that tell me I’m in Poland:

* The radio is playing. Even in some of the more respectable places the radio is still found to be blaring out. Christ, it’s annoying. At the moment there’s a song about sausages (kiełbasa). They must really love sausage to sing about it.
* I feel like a monkey in the zoo. All the kitchen staff have come out to cop an eyeful of the foreigner.
* The customer service is non-existent. I asked (in Polish) for coffee but I may as well have asked the charming waiter if I could stroke his face and call him Liebling for all the good it did me. I seem to be in the way here. Maybe the EU is paying them to keep the seats empty (I wouldn’t put it past them) and they’re worried about the army of clipboard holders and tick box experts arriving.

Shall I go? No, I think I’ll stay here a bit longer and confuse them by pretending to drink out of my empty cup.

I ordered an espresso (or EXpress…O), as the swarthy waiter corrected me and 10 minutes later a large mug of brown water appeared. I can only assume, from the look of it, that they made an espresso (a brief flirtation with coffee), put it in a huge mug and then placed it in the garden last night so the rain could top it up and the morning sun could slightly warm it.

The pasta-eating Pole is now standing next to me and smoking whilst the pot boy has one eye on me and one eye on the bowl of food he’s eating. He’s lolling against the door frame and scooping dollops of something from the bowl using only his tongue. Classy joint, this one.

When my girlfriend’s finished (which is soon hopefully) we’re planning to meander back to the beautiful part in search of something scrumptious. Where is she?

I think they’ve slipped something into my coffee (obviously not coffee). I’m beginning to feel extremely tired. It could be the drink but equally it could be the assault on my senses by the wood polish, the waitress’ perfume (that might be another brand of wood polish, thinking about it) and Mussolini’s cigarette.

I need to get back to my own time and fast.

Update: Thankfully the afternoon was better than the morn. We found a wonderful pizza place set in a garden beneath a canopy of climbers and flowers that was hidden at the end of passageway. We had an interesting pizza: Avocado, almonds and turkey. An interesting mix but tasty, oh so tasty. Huzzah! Here’s a picture of something nice.

I came back from work today to the sad news that the British government has won the vote in parliament against strong opposition both inside the House and outside.

Britain has the longest period of pre-charge detention in the western world and the government has just taken the first step towards increasing the amount of time someone can be detained without charge from 28 days to 42 days.

The road down which this government is taking us is extremely worrying. In a 117-page report on surveillance, the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee stated that they were seriously concerned by ‘the way that local councils and other agencies were using spying powers to deal with low-level crimes such as dropping litter’ and how ‘the multibillion-pound identity card scheme could be used to carry out surveillance on millions of people’.

Please remember that this is the government that used anti-terror laws to arrest a 90 year old survivor of Auschwitz who heckled a Labour party speaker at their annual conference.

When will I again feel proud of my country?