Male dominated society – red cloak experience

Today Luke couldn’t give me a ride, so I walked to the town centre and beyond… 40 minutes of exercise! It would have been bliss, if it wasn’t for all the people staring, men shouting, cars stopping… what have I done?

I was wearing my Belgian raincoat – cinober red. I had jeans and an umbrella, since it was raining, and apparently I was some sex symbol for all those tolerant Britons around…

Cars were slowing sown, then speeding up the second they’ve gone past me (and I mean Literally every single one, even if a woman was driving it). Working men have been shouting ‘Y’allright love’ at me. College students were considering, and middle class women averting their eyes.

I am not joking. But I have no clue wtf???

This is the second time when I was wearing my Birka coat in the UK. The first time was soon after coming here.  I was going to a job interview, and the woman whom I’ve asked for directions would not look in my eyes.

OK – at least I took the hint and took the coat off…

All this abuse has stopped when I tied my hair up and zipped the coat up to my neck… That’s why I think it’s a symbol of an easy woman over here or something.

Comes to my mind that a Polish woman mentioned once that when she came to the UK in the sixties, she was stared at when she went to a pub to have a glass of beer. Apparently the liberty of British women is very, very recent (and awkward).

So – please give me a break, no more talk about how women in Poland are Catholic and submitted to men. Not true, Guys. I get to wear what I want, go where I want, and get tipsy when I want – and I don’t get the  Broken Chain Syndrome over that.

Praise of Warwick

I posted it on polandian.pl on Dec 7 as a comment, but I’d like to keep it here:

And here in Warwickshire we have -4C, frost on the streets, and a bit of snow every two weeks, just to make some cars crash on the M6. It may mean that they will put the real fire on in Thomas Oken Tea Room in Warwick. Perfect place to spend the Sundays in, if you like English Midlands. My idea of Sunday – go to the capital town, plant myself in the middle of the town square, marvel a bit, make comments on the great metropolis of Warwick and how I enjoy the capital town life, giggle a bit feeling mischievous to ever call Warwick a metropolis, maybe do a small purchase in the cast iron kitchen utensils ’shoppe’, and hide in the Tea Room away from the biting frost. Mind you, the fact that they serve Warwick Market Ale has nothing to do with it. It’s just I’m loosing any resistance to frost.

Are Poles Immigrants?

No. We are EU. Upon this agreement that all the countries signed up for, there is free movement within EU. So I can go wherever I want and work there if I want to. There are certain limits, for example in Germany we still need to obtain a work permit first. But I am not an immigrant in the UK – I am simply living here, entitled to be here, just as any person from within EU is entitled to be in Poland.

I know exactly why is it that the UK newspapers are full of  ‘Polish immigrants’. You are not allowed to say anything against your Commonwealth citizens, and you would want to. So you went your anger on Poles, because this should not attract the racism accusation.

There were several Poles already stabbed in the back in London. I think that very soon we may raise just the racism accusation that you are rightly afraid of.

Poles, but not of use

Island posted a hilarious blog entry on polandian.pl. He used the word ‘pole’ in several different meanings and contexts. That brought to the mind of one reader the question, why are people from Holland not called Holes? Or Moldova – Moles, or Germany – Germs. That was fun.

But seriously, good question. Can we be Polans instead? Sounds to my untrained ear like a name of human, rather than an item. German, Russian, Polan.

That would almost be right, one of the tribes of Slovians (or Sclaven in Latin, whichever) that mingled into the today’s Poland, were Polanie. I definitely don’t want us to be Slavs – because it means nothing, while it should mean ‘word speakers’. And you associate it with slaves in English. Besides, slava (sława) is glory, so it makes only very nationalistic sense.

And do you call people from Czechy Checks? I heard that their parliament voted over advertising tourism to Czechia, because they want to be a -ia like everybody else, instead of Sth Republic. And Russians voted on not calling themselves Russkiye, but Rossiyanie, to avoid being Russkies.

So why not we. Let’s remove this tool of phallic wordplay from the hands of Island!!!

Why immigration bothers the Brits???

It looks like the economical knowledge in the UK is scarce, if not nonexistent. People are constantly talking about how foreigners are ‘taking’ ‘their’ jobs, without realising how little sense it makes!

First, if someone has not been offered a particular job, then it’s not theirs – and ultimately it is the employer’s anyway, so there is no basis for claims… Employers will want to select people to best fit their business, not to best fir the interest of prospective employees.

Second, what is completely insane, is this concept of jobs being offered only to locals. Job and salary are both goods that are offered on the market. I shop for the best salary around, just like I shop for the best dress. It’s an exchange. The Brits don’t understand this concept at all. A friend of mine, Darren even answered to me: I admire your Easter European attitude. Well, it’s not about attitude, it’s about the money. People will need to realise that jobs are not fixed to the place, the same as goods aren’t.

People can move and naturally they will move where it makes sense to go. For example, in the UK there are twice as much Germans and French as all Easter Europeans, because of lower taxes. Very soon the Irish and British workers will come to Poland to look for jobs. I wonder what will they say then?

We may react stupidly and rudely, just shouting: the English plumbers are undercutting us!

All this undercutting allegation is another evil untruth that is happening right now. Think about it logically – if I am receiving a lower wage than someone else, it’s not because I haven’t tried to  increase it. This is really a form of racist abuse – shouting that Poles are cheap labour.

In truth, most of us are highly educated or educated in a vocation. But when we come to the UK, tempted with the higher prices on job market, we are hit by a wall. It has happened to me, a Uni graduate with three years experience in accounting – I had to work in a pub, because my money run out.

Getting out of a bad job in the UK is very hard, because of how abusive your class system is – once somebody is a barmaid, they are underclass. I managed to become Assistant Accountant in 1 year. Good for me. But plenty of others just don’t realise that they are being classed as underclass, because we don’t have such strong stratification. They only complain of being treated like children.

Once somebody has accepted a low position, they will not be offered better jobs. There are plenty of Poles who are only offered floor washing, then since they are classed as cheap labour – they get offered minimum rates, and then accused of undercutting the locals.

I even had this situation, talking on the phone with a job agency: I was in an 18k job, and looked to move up to 24k (found after a month). But the guy from Thomas Jean Associates told me this: ‘aren’t you an EASTERN European??? You should be on 16k!’ Never mind, there are plenty of those weasels around.

So, tell me, is the UK really a tolerant country?

Pig flu

…it came and it will go away… except that the new regulations will be put in place, new controls established, chips injected, certificates required – and we will all pay for this in the price of meat, already very expensive in the UK…

Is it allowed to keep hens in ones backyard, kill them and eat them? I bet it’s a crime.

Hand washing in Peak District

We went on Friday – to Edale, camping. We liked it very much, the area is beautiful, the towns cute, and the camping pitch costs a fiver per person.

In general the British campsite is your normal campsite – a pasture with a public facility nearby. It’s nothing like those camping villages in Croatia, but remoteness and quiet made up for the luxury.

The funny thing is that there are meters in the showers that give out lukewarm water, while in the sinks the water is quite warm. I forgot my flip-flops and had to stand barefoot in the shower, and it was cleaned every day I suppose – but in such a ruined state I am not sure if anything can be clean.

The worst thing to endure was the old type taps, which meant I had to fill the sink with water to wash my hands, and I felt the soap residue in there, and a hair… gruelling. I will buy a plastic bowl next time.

People on the camping were nice and quiet, most of them families. They came with amazing quantities of stuff, carloads of stuff – even tables! We felt really silly with our tiny tent and seating mats, but all the more outdoor thanks to it.

British Kids

I think that no nation in the world loved their children as much as the Brits do. But – the parents would NEVER admit to it!

If one reads the papers, kids are the major scapegoat blamed alongside immigrants and Poles (we’re not immigrants, we’re just visiting) for every single malice in the world. But if one actually speaks about kids at work the picture gets different.

Robert for example came in the canteen one day and started loudly complaining at this rascal, his boy. What happened – the kid was sneaking out, driving in and out, making noise in the house all night, so Robert scolded him mightily and went to bed. In the morning, as it turned out, there was something unusual about the guest bedroom, so Robert stormed in, and what had he found? His very own off-spring and a girl in the guest bed.

Wooow. We all could not stop laughing, especially after looking at how loudly, proudly and happily Robert has been talking, almost bragging, about this rascal, his boy, and that girl. He was saying: ‘I’m gonna disown him (wide smile), in my own house (grin), I told them to get out right now (wider grin)!.

So that’s another pet theory of mine – English kids are loved more than life and spoilt rotten, but the old folks cover this weak spot with a lot of chastising, just to appear tough. For proof – look at the teenage girls: so much pocket money spent of new looks all the time (cheap stuff, OK, but a constant supply of new ones). Boys get to ride the small motorbikes. Kids can drink alcohol, and I’ve not heard of Police calling the parents if they spot a drunken kid. Much less if they spot kids out of school in school hours.

What I’ve also read once, and it was one of the Cambridge English Language books, is that British kids don’t have chores at home – the wife does everything. This is so different from Poland! My sister and I had to get up earlier to make breakfast, clean the house, hang the laundry, cut the grass, wash the car, you name it. But on the other side, we live with the parents and get money until 25, while young Brits are grown up at 17.

I think that I envy the laziness, and being left alone, but on the other hand, I will not let my kids lay about while I fetch them stuff. I would be offended out of my wits if a younger person wanted me to fetch stuff. But I guess I will buy my kids a motorbike.

Meat

Yesterday we’ve realised with Luke, what is it that we are missing when going out for a walk or to town. In Poland, Czech, Germany – everywhere in the Continent, if one is hungry, one can buy a chicken thigh, a roast sausage, a roast piece of pork – generally a piece of meat, and a roll. Here, in the UK, all there is to buy on the streets are hamburgers and pies. It looks as though nobody is bothered too much with this scarcity, since this is their traditional food – but for me it’s not real food, it’s made up of strange mass. The pie dough is basically flour with suet, and hamburger meat is only a little meat with something that makes it taste like sand… maybe bread crumbs, like in meatballs?

I have a pet theory about this lack. I read this book: ‘Salt. A History’ by Mark Kurlansky. Kurlansky says that in Great Britain people have never wanted to eat rock salt, and the sea salt which they wanted was produced by burning wood to heat brine vats of sea water. This process was damaging for English forests and very expensive. People would buy sea salt to conserve meat, and since they would not eat vegetables (and still won’t), and meat with salt was expensive, they usually had to eat pie or go hungry. That’s why, according to Kurlansky, there were great plagues – because starving people were weak and got infected easily.

I think that this argument matches the reality. For the Britons roast meat is the Sunday treat up to the present day. A roasting joint is an expensive item of food. They put up much more fuss about it that we in Poland – they roast and then go about the pleasure of ‘carving’,  reserved for men, while we roast, fry, steam-roast the meat, then cut to a finger-thick pieces and eat while hot.

It seams that the Britons are so obsessed about meat because they’ve never had much. For example, another work coleague of mine, Rachel, told me one day about her Christmas preparations. Apparenlty she has spent a lot of money ordering a delivery of ten pounds of assorted beef cuts from the butcher. I was, as she put it, the choicest mmmeat that they’ve ever tasted’.

18 years ago, on the Government level, there was a visit of the EU to Poland. Our dignitaries had roast chickens served to them – and then we learned from the newspapers that, apparently, to Westerners, chicken is not real meat, it’s for poor people. Well, we never thought about distinguishing this way… It’s animal tissue: meat, fish, cheese.

Maybe this is also why they are constantly remarking about how unsafe they are feeling coming to Poland? Robert, a colleague of mine, said that he’s been to Poland 15 years ago and felt that everyone wanted to rob him. I don’t remember wanting to rob anyone from the West, I remember admiring them. If I had known then that those Westerners who appeared so cool to me, looked at me as a potential crook, I’d have been as angry, as I am disappointed now. But I suppose that coming from a country where it’s so hard to earn to buy meat, he must be feeling endangered all the time, and even more in an unknown environment.

Office

It looks as though the UK officials are not that much better than their Polish counterparts. Last time I spoke to the Polish Revenue people, they were all smiles and helpfulness. So were the HM Customs & Excise – to a point.

I’m trying to get a non-tobacco product to the UK, but apparently it’s classified as cigarettes, with a hefty excise fine on it. OK. Cigarettes are bad for you. However, I continue, this is a non-tobacco product, and it’s designed to help you quit smoking. Can it be classified differently? NO! That really got the officer itchy. That’s the GOVERNMENT who classified it!

What more to say, except for thank you, bye bye?

It looks to me that pettiness and lack of flexibility are a standard and protected virtue around the Islands. It’s so annoying. It kills creativity.

-

Apart from dabbing in the obscure magic of sales, I decided to go back to work for a while. I visited and agency in Leicester. And I found that after what I’ve been through in the last job, I’d rather die than be in a permanent job in England again… Maybe they can offer me some temping.