Christmas and post Christmas madness is over, only till the next year. Every year I promise I will not do it again: searching the local land for carp, begging my mum to start bigos for me in her house 1000 miles away so the smell of sour kraut will not reach my house, moving furniture to squeeze a tree, moving a tree to squeeze the presents, soaking butter beans for the night, mixing them with boiled potatoes and cabbage (again), convincing the girls that water with prunes makes traditional soup ( will I ever find out why), threatening the girls that there will be presents if they don't try all 12 dishes which they detest anyway. This is the Christmas Eve time when peace falls on my head but I am too tired to notice. One day I will go away....

Today I went to the bank to transfer money to my landlord. A nice assistant came to me and asked me if I wanted to do it quicker by another window, I accepted with relief. She asked me for two ID's and disappeared for an hour...........What happened? Frozen food in my bags started melting and she was still behind the wall, keeping me in the dark, did they forget about me? I tried to ask around but everyone else was too bisy, they asked me to wait a minute more...........And then the fear came.....aha, there is something wrong with my Polish driving license,or maybe they decided that I am a suspect of some crime, or I don;t have a right to stay here. But I have a right to stay, I have been living and working here for so long, what is this fear about? I knew it.........I knew it from the long queues in Poland in any public institution which had power to grasp your heart and squeeze your soul in the process of paying a bill, inquiring about your own account, or (God forbid) applying for passport, while trying to blank your existence against the white-yellow walls coated with the smell of home made sandwiches and cigarettes. And I am not speaking about the old, serious communist octopus which was working like that by law, I recall those new and glittering, marble-covered baby institutions from the Third Poland, born after 1989 which still adapt the old approach between the symptoms of the light, democratic, stylised capitalism. I was sitting in my Barclays Bank feeling like the K from the Castle, pushed into the chair by my fear that THEY will find out in a minute some good reason to take the account from me, call the Police, and expel me from the country. What a madness...........trying to breath normally, I attempted to smile when the shiny assistant came back explaining the rules.......Yes, thank you, I appreciate your effort, I managed to murmur. She apologised again and I went out into the street soaked in the spring sun, not knowing anything about my dying. How is it possible, I ask myself, where does it come from? How deep is this fear rooted? How many others do need to feel like that? Am I the only one? My children don't know what I am talking about..........that;s a relief, and they shouldn't, no one should........I had to pack my fear and I moved to the Asian grocery shop where I took it out on the pack of prawns which got stuck in the freezer. A fight was intense but bloodless, the assistant came to offer me help but received a short rebuke from the reborn-K who now knows her rights towards the prawns and don't want to be taught. The poor guy smiled back..........but was obviously hurt...........We have known each other for three years............there was no reason for such behaviour........I came back on the evening to apologise, I said I had had a bad day.............he smiles again, this time with sun on his face.

I was running today in the morning in the heat on Plumstaed Common. There were some boys playing football with their parents. And people with dogs seeking some shadow for their slowness. We were all trying to avoid the ground, but it is not easy to fly in this kind of weather. So we chose to melt in the scent of freshly cut grass which atrracted us to the place at eight o'clock in the morning.
I imagined family picnics somehwere else in the park, not here in Plumstead Common though, people waking up early to spend the whole day out, packing flasks of coffee, strawberries and cream, foot balls and blankets and joyful screams in plastic bags. Somewhere else. Maybe in Greenwhich. I was invited to a picnic to the Greenwich Park a month ago by a lovely family. Parents, children and so friendly aunts who were offering us bubbles and their love, sacrifying this quality time to the landscape. I felt so happy and attached, filling the cut-out shape of my belonging with a great precision: I had quiche and crisps and a run across the field. We were waving to the tourists passing by on the tiny rattling train, mounting with effort towards the invisible zero longtitude - the peak of the Western genius. Everything was perfect, And my daughetr was in smiles. We were doing all normal things on the heath, enjoying ourselves, grasping the warmth of connection. The grass smelt like home, and the crisps did go with the cream in the unexpected way. I have never had crisps with cream. I have never been to the English picnic. The grass in Plumstead smells the same, but people do not have picnics here. I had to run across the heath, since stopping would seem so inappropriate. Why a single person would like to stop on the Plumstead heath? Maybe to admire a view of the other side of the river? Or to wave to the boys playing football with their parents? Or to sit on the piles of empty cans and grunge a puzzle of life? Or to talk to another running person who doesn't know who to stop? Next week I will take a blanket and a whole basket of straberries to the Plumstead common, I will also take a book to read and and will lie on the grass which smelss the same. Maybe I will even paint a picture of the view on the other side of the river. And everything will be perfec

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