I am tired verging on exhaustion, and have arranged the British Telephone company to give me a reminder waking up call at seven am tomorrow with delivery of the new refrigerator anytime between 8,50 and 12.50, with the vehicle driver, fitter and collector telephoning me from two hour before the approximate time of delivery.
I will therefore go to bed soon, and have felt like going back to bed for much of the day. I cannot remember why I did not do this as when I have done so , even if is for half an hour, I felt that much better and productive afterwards. Today has been a struggle and not without mishap.
I developed an interest in Poland because of World War II but did not meet someone from Poland until towards the end of the 1960’s, an emigrant and his family who had lived through the time of the Nazi’s, and then the time of the Stalinist’s, before coming to the UK. I paid attention to the progress of the Solidarity movement and then my mother and aunt told me of a Polish priest who befriended them after coming to their parish for a summer. They had taken him out to lunch and when returning to Poland he had written and sent them a Christmas card. When he returned to the parish for a second time the condition of my mother had deteriorated and my aunt had recognised that she should not go out unaccompanied and which also meant a sitter for my mother who could not be left on her own. They were still determined to take their friend out for a meal and so they contacted a Catholic couple who lived nearby who in turn made the arrangements with the priest and they were therefore able to take him for a meal at a Wetherspoon’s pub restaurants which had taken over the old and closed Odeon Cinema building close to Wallington station, and where as a child I had gone to the cinema, every Monday and Thursday evenings for several years, for the Saturday morning Children’s show and occasionally for the Sunday evening when there would be a long programme and the cinema organ would rise up to be played during an extended interval between the two films.
The lunch was reported to have been a success although the two had sat smiling throughout the meal, saying little, and insisting on paying everything with cash. Later I met briefly one of the early new arrivals from Poland before the entry of their country into the EEC commenced the major exodus with an estimated half a million coming to England and some two million leaving the country in order to find a better life for themselves and their families.
What happened is that having boarded a train from Victoria to Wallington we were told that the absence of a driver meant we had to take an alternative train which involved a different route for part of the journey but which would take us to West Croydon where there would be a train to Wallington from London Bridge, or we could wait to the next scheduled departure half an hour later. However the information was inaccurate and this was not realised until instead of the train going on to West Croydon it commenced to turn in another direction and I was one of several who alighted in dismay on an unfamiliar station with no idea how to continuing the journey without retracing the route back to Victoria. It was sufficiently late in the evening for the station to be unmanned. It was during a period when I was staying at the former home of my mother, and had visited her in the morning and then gone into central London to see an International film. Those of us who alighted and remained on the platform engaged in conversation about our predicament and this included a young woman who also was heading for Wallington and who had a little English and who was from Poland. Together with some of the others we worked out that we had to take a train back a couple of stations and then get on another train which took us to West Croydon and then I and my new companion went on to Wallington and during this mini adventure I mentioned about my mother and aunt and the Polish priest, as she attended the same Church. On arrival at Wallington as it was late and dark I escorted the young lady part of the journey to where she was living and then she was able to continue more of the way with another lady who had also alighted at Wallington and was going in the same direction. I though of her again tonight as I watched the programme on the number of her compatriots following in her footsteps.
I was also reminded of this incident because of an earlier film which I had watched as part of the British Season which is being shown on TCM and Channel Film Four channels, called The Sailor of the King. I had seen the film before but forgotten that it was shown with two endings and the audience invited to say which they preferred. In the film Michael Rennie is a young navel officer during World War I who engages in conversation with a young woman in his train compartment as they travel from Portsmouth to London and which requires a change of train at stop where there is just an Inn which takes in lodgers, and where because of the war they find the next train involves a wait of three hours so they go for a meal to pass away the time, and then a walk, and then miss the train, and discover there is only one a day, so they have to stay overnight, with the consequence that she find herself pregnant and goes to Canada to have her son, who grows up a Canadian but enlists in the British Navy and wins the VC during a naval event in which Rennie is the senior commander of three vessels en route to escort a merchant convoy during World War II who become involved with trying to sink an important German raider. WOW. The relationship on the train journey is a sub plot for the main story of the film which is that because of limited fuel Rennie has to take the decision to send the two other ships in search of German raider and because only one encounters the vessel, it is sunk with a loss of all hands except for Rennie’s son and one other severely wounded rating. Before being sunk the British ship successfully damages the German boat with a torpedo forcing the captain to take his vessel into a natural harbours hidden by tall rocky cliffs to make repair. Advised of the development Rennie is one of several British ships who go in search of the their enemy, in the hope of catching up before the repairs are completed. Rennie’s son devises a plan to hold up the repairs by stealing a weapon and ammunition, making his way to the top of the cliffs and finding a secure position from which he is able to kill and wound making the repairs. He survives blasts from the ships main guns, and going without water in intense heat for the rest of the day. The repairs are made during the night and a party of armed men is put ashore so that the following morning he is prevented from delaying the German ship further. However when they put to sea they are sunk by Rennie and a German officer who is picked up ensures that the Captain hears about the sailor who held them up for a further 18 hours which led to the sinking.
In the first ending the son is killed and his mother receives a posthumous VC thus meeting Rennie again at the Palace who is next in precedence to get his knighthood. In the second the son survives so they receive their honours together. The son is assigned to Rennie’s command which involves escort work in the North Atlantic which will enable the son to visit his mother and by inference for Rennie to meet with his brief encounter once more. Because the film was planned before World War 2, it is based on a C S Forrester World War 1 story but not completed and released until 1953, the fictional event was updated to the World War II but even in the early 50’s such was the general attitude towards illegitimacy, pre marital relationships and the treatment of sex in the cinema and in society in general that much of what I have said about the relationship between the brief encounter, and that the young hero is the son of Rennie, is inferred and written in such a way that it is not evident that that he knows of the relationship when the film ends. The mother is the kind of woman who will keep such a secret even when she meeting the father again because it appears to be in the best interests of everyone concerned. Now isn’t that a familiar story!
An important theme in the film, expressed by Rennie in a conversation with a junior officer and in a manner which men, until the present decade, were always discouraged from having, he bares his soul about not having always acted as his first inclination, and the missed opportunities and regretted decisions with hindsight as a consequence. He took the sensible and justifiable decision not to engage the German ship because of the fuel shortage and consequently risk to the convey there were still to meet up with, and the result was the loss of another vessel with possibly all hands. While at an early age I learnt not to have regrets when with hindsight a different choice or different action might had led to a more positive outcome, this has not prevented me to think about what might have happened, an especially what happened to and other individual involved, however casual and brief our involvement..
Yesterday I was reminded of the amazing coincidence when undertaking my final period of practical work in the summer of 1964 before qualifying as a child care officer, I had met in the street the person who had ended a sales course for selling office equipment, second to my first position, and by a quick thinking had been appointed to work, the best available territory with success and now held an important position in the company. For we had both found it what had happened to each other five years later and that the outcome had been mutually positive.
This was not the significant unplanned and unexpected encounter during my placement that summer. I have previously written of my first experience in work at the age of sixteen in a local government officer in central London. I had been attached as an office junior to a section of six men who had all fought for their country, one in the first World War and the others in the second, one at sea, two as pilots and the remainder in the army. The section was one of three, led by the brother of a former Labour Government Minister and attended by a typing pool of I think three, maybe four individuals who were also responsible for providing everyone with tea or coffee, morning and afternoon. Shortly after my appointment one the ladies had decided that I should be asked to also help out with the tea making. I had never made myself a cup of tea or coffee, let alone anyone else, having been raised in households with aunts, and I was too shy and embarrassed to explain this inadequacy and my Effort was duly disastrous from a, combination of not keeping the kettle on until it boiled and not putting an appropriate quantity of tea in the pot. This happened in 1955 and in 1964 I went for my lunch in the County Council staff restaurant and met again the very typing pool lady who had decided I should make the tea. She had changed her location the service which had employed us was altered and moved from central to west London. There was yet another encounter with someone from my past, in this instance the very recent past. I went to Ruskin College from 1961 to 1963 where the deputy principal was a fine theoretical economist and former economic adviser to the government and he had rated my economic essays and examination papers highly, to a level which would have enabled me to be recommended by the college for interview to an Oxford College to read Politics Philosophy and Economics for a second public Examination, gaining a credit for the first public examination and which would have involved a paper in Latin. I had significant less contact with him during the second year, so it was a pleasant surprise when walking from my lodgings into the city centre on a sunny Saturday morning I also met him in the street, walking to his lodgings as he had come to the city for a weekend break. I suspect from, time to time most people have an encounter of this nature, but to have two and then three within a period of three months in one place where one had not been before remains special and memorable.
Another event which reminded of these occurrences was more in the vein of the sailor and the young Polish woman and train journey encounters. One weekend towards the end of the placement I had taken the train from the city into London, on my way to seeing my birth and my care mothers, and their older sister. An exceptionally well groomed and attractive air hostess in uniform, entered and sat opposite me in a compartment where we were joined by one or perhaps two others. I was feeling unusually confident, possible because I had heard that I had passed the theoretical examination set by the university, or that it had been intimated that my placement had gone well, and that despite earlier difficulties I was on my way to obtained formal approval to practice, but I engaged in conversation with the young woman, not with any romantic intent but as a mark of my new found self confidence. I can remember little of the details of the conversation except that we both talked away oblivious to the presence of others and that she readily accepted my invitation to for a coffee or tea in the buffet car and such was out chat that the train was soon drawing into the terminal and it was time to collect our things and depart, me to Victoria and to Wallington, and she to London Airport. I said goodbye, and I can still see the look of disappointment that we were parting without any exchange of information or agreement to have further contact. For a moment I considered catching her up, and then the moment was lost. Had it been a Hollywood film then the outcome would have been different. I know how my life subsequently turned out and indeed over the next three years it was change dramatically in a number of positive and undeserved ways, so the only regret is never knowing if I had been right in the interpretation of that moment and what had happened to the person subsequently. I have always understood why as part of some religions there is the belief of the resolution of such questions.
I cannot end this writing without returning to the substance of the programme about the movement of at least half a million Polish citizens and others from Eastern Europe to the UK since their entry into the EEC, and where the programme focussed on the impact on the former new Town of Peterborough, and where a former Labour Council leader had once hit the national headlines when his Council had been among the first to offer a home to Ugandan Asians after their eviction by Amin. He had become only one of many others long standing local citizens who felt overwhelmed by the impact of tens of thousands new residents which had swelled the population by at last one tenth since entry into the EEC and among those expressing concern was a woman of Asian background
Some of the complaints and concerns were justified in reality, particularly the problem of the primary schools becoming full to bursting and the problem of trying to educate an increasing majority of children where English was not the main language,. However most of the complaints were valid in terms of being able to blame the new arrivals. This was expressed by one resident one resident who admitted the area was becoming run down but he put the blame squarely on the younger generations local whites and this was borne out soon after, by the behaviour and comments of a group of beer drinking uneducated racist yobs, the kind who beat to death older white folk who tell then off because of their unacceptable behaviour. The local man made a point of saying that the Eastern Europeans were not a problem because they worked hard and paid their taxes.
There were two examples of this work hard ethic in the programme. Both involved long hours of manual work. In one the employer said that not only did his new employees arrive on time, but if the could not find the next task themselves they came to him rather than wait around to be told. A similar recommendation was made by the farmer struggling to keep up with demand for his products and who was offering £7 a hour which might not seem much for a 40 hour week except he was offering all the hours of daylight and one young man said he was getting £2000 a month which enabled him to run two cars, one for work and one for pleasure at the weekend. When the local white youths were told of the job opportunities available, they were not interested, one admitted becomes it meant working with the Eastern Europeans, but all the others because it involved hard work and they preferred to sign on.
This is not to minimise the problems being created with the most important the feeling of being overwhelmed by the pace of change and feeling a foreigner in one’s own land. This is understandably more difficult for those of the older generation who tend to look back rather than forward. The point was also made that because of the number of single men or men on their own there had been an increase in the number of houses where it was known young women were offering their specialist services. This is always the situation where they are itinerant workers or service personnel. I once did a Drug Advisory service visit to a residential and affluent county area where there was a significant increase in drug use and the provision of young women offering similar services because of the deployment of a couple of thousand workers building a power station, although it was only part of the overall problem but it was only part of the overall problem, as the other young women had been providing services including drugs to American servicemen at the local air base, where the problem had come to attention after a B52 had flown upside down over the town when under the influence The young women involved were said to be organised day trippers from another city. There was also a regular and long standing market for drugs obtained from Europe via the local ferry, aging former flower children were known to be continuing to grow pot on their rural premises, and London city commuters were known to have become partial to cocaine as a recreational drug, as were young people who took over city and town centres at weekends, overwhelming public houses, restaurants and night clubs. There appeared to be few Asians or migrants in the area concerned.
However if many of the concerns are more of feelings and coping with rapid change, in Poland the departure of so many of their working age men folk had become critical with significant shortage of workers at all levels. As expressed by the former Leader of Solidarity and elected President people had such high expectations of personal economic advancement as well as of democratic freedoms which had not been realised and which were unlikely to be realised despite the latest change in government. By moving to the UK and elsewhere in Europe they could earn in a week what it took them a month back home. There were some gainers with women now being able to do jobs previously restricted to men, thus increasing their personal and family buying power, but also this appeared to be doing was to increase their appetite to move to the UK and other European countries. A point which was brought home when one Polish city government official came on come back home mission to Peterborough and only one person at a meetings aid they wished to return because they were homesick, adding but she would have to be able to earn more before doing so. The explanation for the popularity of the new arrivals, especially those from Poland was demonstrated by film of a local Catholic church where the congregation had increased threefold. I wager the only reason why the yobs interviewed have gone anywhere near a church would be to desecrate it.
I will therefore go to bed soon, and have felt like going back to bed for much of the day. I cannot remember why I did not do this as when I have done so , even if is for half an hour, I felt that much better and productive afterwards. Today has been a struggle and not without mishap.
I developed an interest in Poland because of World War II but did not meet someone from Poland until towards the end of the 1960’s, an emigrant and his family who had lived through the time of the Nazi’s, and then the time of the Stalinist’s, before coming to the UK. I paid attention to the progress of the Solidarity movement and then my mother and aunt told me of a Polish priest who befriended them after coming to their parish for a summer. They had taken him out to lunch and when returning to Poland he had written and sent them a Christmas card. When he returned to the parish for a second time the condition of my mother had deteriorated and my aunt had recognised that she should not go out unaccompanied and which also meant a sitter for my mother who could not be left on her own. They were still determined to take their friend out for a meal and so they contacted a Catholic couple who lived nearby who in turn made the arrangements with the priest and they were therefore able to take him for a meal at a Wetherspoon’s pub restaurants which had taken over the old and closed Odeon Cinema building close to Wallington station, and where as a child I had gone to the cinema, every Monday and Thursday evenings for several years, for the Saturday morning Children’s show and occasionally for the Sunday evening when there would be a long programme and the cinema organ would rise up to be played during an extended interval between the two films.
The lunch was reported to have been a success although the two had sat smiling throughout the meal, saying little, and insisting on paying everything with cash. Later I met briefly one of the early new arrivals from Poland before the entry of their country into the EEC commenced the major exodus with an estimated half a million coming to England and some two million leaving the country in order to find a better life for themselves and their families.
What happened is that having boarded a train from Victoria to Wallington we were told that the absence of a driver meant we had to take an alternative train which involved a different route for part of the journey but which would take us to West Croydon where there would be a train to Wallington from London Bridge, or we could wait to the next scheduled departure half an hour later. However the information was inaccurate and this was not realised until instead of the train going on to West Croydon it commenced to turn in another direction and I was one of several who alighted in dismay on an unfamiliar station with no idea how to continuing the journey without retracing the route back to Victoria. It was sufficiently late in the evening for the station to be unmanned. It was during a period when I was staying at the former home of my mother, and had visited her in the morning and then gone into central London to see an International film. Those of us who alighted and remained on the platform engaged in conversation about our predicament and this included a young woman who also was heading for Wallington and who had a little English and who was from Poland. Together with some of the others we worked out that we had to take a train back a couple of stations and then get on another train which took us to West Croydon and then I and my new companion went on to Wallington and during this mini adventure I mentioned about my mother and aunt and the Polish priest, as she attended the same Church. On arrival at Wallington as it was late and dark I escorted the young lady part of the journey to where she was living and then she was able to continue more of the way with another lady who had also alighted at Wallington and was going in the same direction. I though of her again tonight as I watched the programme on the number of her compatriots following in her footsteps.
I was also reminded of this incident because of an earlier film which I had watched as part of the British Season which is being shown on TCM and Channel Film Four channels, called The Sailor of the King. I had seen the film before but forgotten that it was shown with two endings and the audience invited to say which they preferred. In the film Michael Rennie is a young navel officer during World War I who engages in conversation with a young woman in his train compartment as they travel from Portsmouth to London and which requires a change of train at stop where there is just an Inn which takes in lodgers, and where because of the war they find the next train involves a wait of three hours so they go for a meal to pass away the time, and then a walk, and then miss the train, and discover there is only one a day, so they have to stay overnight, with the consequence that she find herself pregnant and goes to Canada to have her son, who grows up a Canadian but enlists in the British Navy and wins the VC during a naval event in which Rennie is the senior commander of three vessels en route to escort a merchant convoy during World War II who become involved with trying to sink an important German raider. WOW. The relationship on the train journey is a sub plot for the main story of the film which is that because of limited fuel Rennie has to take the decision to send the two other ships in search of German raider and because only one encounters the vessel, it is sunk with a loss of all hands except for Rennie’s son and one other severely wounded rating. Before being sunk the British ship successfully damages the German boat with a torpedo forcing the captain to take his vessel into a natural harbours hidden by tall rocky cliffs to make repair. Advised of the development Rennie is one of several British ships who go in search of the their enemy, in the hope of catching up before the repairs are completed. Rennie’s son devises a plan to hold up the repairs by stealing a weapon and ammunition, making his way to the top of the cliffs and finding a secure position from which he is able to kill and wound making the repairs. He survives blasts from the ships main guns, and going without water in intense heat for the rest of the day. The repairs are made during the night and a party of armed men is put ashore so that the following morning he is prevented from delaying the German ship further. However when they put to sea they are sunk by Rennie and a German officer who is picked up ensures that the Captain hears about the sailor who held them up for a further 18 hours which led to the sinking.
In the first ending the son is killed and his mother receives a posthumous VC thus meeting Rennie again at the Palace who is next in precedence to get his knighthood. In the second the son survives so they receive their honours together. The son is assigned to Rennie’s command which involves escort work in the North Atlantic which will enable the son to visit his mother and by inference for Rennie to meet with his brief encounter once more. Because the film was planned before World War 2, it is based on a C S Forrester World War 1 story but not completed and released until 1953, the fictional event was updated to the World War II but even in the early 50’s such was the general attitude towards illegitimacy, pre marital relationships and the treatment of sex in the cinema and in society in general that much of what I have said about the relationship between the brief encounter, and that the young hero is the son of Rennie, is inferred and written in such a way that it is not evident that that he knows of the relationship when the film ends. The mother is the kind of woman who will keep such a secret even when she meeting the father again because it appears to be in the best interests of everyone concerned. Now isn’t that a familiar story!
An important theme in the film, expressed by Rennie in a conversation with a junior officer and in a manner which men, until the present decade, were always discouraged from having, he bares his soul about not having always acted as his first inclination, and the missed opportunities and regretted decisions with hindsight as a consequence. He took the sensible and justifiable decision not to engage the German ship because of the fuel shortage and consequently risk to the convey there were still to meet up with, and the result was the loss of another vessel with possibly all hands. While at an early age I learnt not to have regrets when with hindsight a different choice or different action might had led to a more positive outcome, this has not prevented me to think about what might have happened, an especially what happened to and other individual involved, however casual and brief our involvement..
Yesterday I was reminded of the amazing coincidence when undertaking my final period of practical work in the summer of 1964 before qualifying as a child care officer, I had met in the street the person who had ended a sales course for selling office equipment, second to my first position, and by a quick thinking had been appointed to work, the best available territory with success and now held an important position in the company. For we had both found it what had happened to each other five years later and that the outcome had been mutually positive.
This was not the significant unplanned and unexpected encounter during my placement that summer. I have previously written of my first experience in work at the age of sixteen in a local government officer in central London. I had been attached as an office junior to a section of six men who had all fought for their country, one in the first World War and the others in the second, one at sea, two as pilots and the remainder in the army. The section was one of three, led by the brother of a former Labour Government Minister and attended by a typing pool of I think three, maybe four individuals who were also responsible for providing everyone with tea or coffee, morning and afternoon. Shortly after my appointment one the ladies had decided that I should be asked to also help out with the tea making. I had never made myself a cup of tea or coffee, let alone anyone else, having been raised in households with aunts, and I was too shy and embarrassed to explain this inadequacy and my Effort was duly disastrous from a, combination of not keeping the kettle on until it boiled and not putting an appropriate quantity of tea in the pot. This happened in 1955 and in 1964 I went for my lunch in the County Council staff restaurant and met again the very typing pool lady who had decided I should make the tea. She had changed her location the service which had employed us was altered and moved from central to west London. There was yet another encounter with someone from my past, in this instance the very recent past. I went to Ruskin College from 1961 to 1963 where the deputy principal was a fine theoretical economist and former economic adviser to the government and he had rated my economic essays and examination papers highly, to a level which would have enabled me to be recommended by the college for interview to an Oxford College to read Politics Philosophy and Economics for a second public Examination, gaining a credit for the first public examination and which would have involved a paper in Latin. I had significant less contact with him during the second year, so it was a pleasant surprise when walking from my lodgings into the city centre on a sunny Saturday morning I also met him in the street, walking to his lodgings as he had come to the city for a weekend break. I suspect from, time to time most people have an encounter of this nature, but to have two and then three within a period of three months in one place where one had not been before remains special and memorable.
Another event which reminded of these occurrences was more in the vein of the sailor and the young Polish woman and train journey encounters. One weekend towards the end of the placement I had taken the train from the city into London, on my way to seeing my birth and my care mothers, and their older sister. An exceptionally well groomed and attractive air hostess in uniform, entered and sat opposite me in a compartment where we were joined by one or perhaps two others. I was feeling unusually confident, possible because I had heard that I had passed the theoretical examination set by the university, or that it had been intimated that my placement had gone well, and that despite earlier difficulties I was on my way to obtained formal approval to practice, but I engaged in conversation with the young woman, not with any romantic intent but as a mark of my new found self confidence. I can remember little of the details of the conversation except that we both talked away oblivious to the presence of others and that she readily accepted my invitation to for a coffee or tea in the buffet car and such was out chat that the train was soon drawing into the terminal and it was time to collect our things and depart, me to Victoria and to Wallington, and she to London Airport. I said goodbye, and I can still see the look of disappointment that we were parting without any exchange of information or agreement to have further contact. For a moment I considered catching her up, and then the moment was lost. Had it been a Hollywood film then the outcome would have been different. I know how my life subsequently turned out and indeed over the next three years it was change dramatically in a number of positive and undeserved ways, so the only regret is never knowing if I had been right in the interpretation of that moment and what had happened to the person subsequently. I have always understood why as part of some religions there is the belief of the resolution of such questions.
I cannot end this writing without returning to the substance of the programme about the movement of at least half a million Polish citizens and others from Eastern Europe to the UK since their entry into the EEC, and where the programme focussed on the impact on the former new Town of Peterborough, and where a former Labour Council leader had once hit the national headlines when his Council had been among the first to offer a home to Ugandan Asians after their eviction by Amin. He had become only one of many others long standing local citizens who felt overwhelmed by the impact of tens of thousands new residents which had swelled the population by at last one tenth since entry into the EEC and among those expressing concern was a woman of Asian background
Some of the complaints and concerns were justified in reality, particularly the problem of the primary schools becoming full to bursting and the problem of trying to educate an increasing majority of children where English was not the main language,. However most of the complaints were valid in terms of being able to blame the new arrivals. This was expressed by one resident one resident who admitted the area was becoming run down but he put the blame squarely on the younger generations local whites and this was borne out soon after, by the behaviour and comments of a group of beer drinking uneducated racist yobs, the kind who beat to death older white folk who tell then off because of their unacceptable behaviour. The local man made a point of saying that the Eastern Europeans were not a problem because they worked hard and paid their taxes.
There were two examples of this work hard ethic in the programme. Both involved long hours of manual work. In one the employer said that not only did his new employees arrive on time, but if the could not find the next task themselves they came to him rather than wait around to be told. A similar recommendation was made by the farmer struggling to keep up with demand for his products and who was offering £7 a hour which might not seem much for a 40 hour week except he was offering all the hours of daylight and one young man said he was getting £2000 a month which enabled him to run two cars, one for work and one for pleasure at the weekend. When the local white youths were told of the job opportunities available, they were not interested, one admitted becomes it meant working with the Eastern Europeans, but all the others because it involved hard work and they preferred to sign on.
This is not to minimise the problems being created with the most important the feeling of being overwhelmed by the pace of change and feeling a foreigner in one’s own land. This is understandably more difficult for those of the older generation who tend to look back rather than forward. The point was also made that because of the number of single men or men on their own there had been an increase in the number of houses where it was known young women were offering their specialist services. This is always the situation where they are itinerant workers or service personnel. I once did a Drug Advisory service visit to a residential and affluent county area where there was a significant increase in drug use and the provision of young women offering similar services because of the deployment of a couple of thousand workers building a power station, although it was only part of the overall problem but it was only part of the overall problem, as the other young women had been providing services including drugs to American servicemen at the local air base, where the problem had come to attention after a B52 had flown upside down over the town when under the influence The young women involved were said to be organised day trippers from another city. There was also a regular and long standing market for drugs obtained from Europe via the local ferry, aging former flower children were known to be continuing to grow pot on their rural premises, and London city commuters were known to have become partial to cocaine as a recreational drug, as were young people who took over city and town centres at weekends, overwhelming public houses, restaurants and night clubs. There appeared to be few Asians or migrants in the area concerned.
However if many of the concerns are more of feelings and coping with rapid change, in Poland the departure of so many of their working age men folk had become critical with significant shortage of workers at all levels. As expressed by the former Leader of Solidarity and elected President people had such high expectations of personal economic advancement as well as of democratic freedoms which had not been realised and which were unlikely to be realised despite the latest change in government. By moving to the UK and elsewhere in Europe they could earn in a week what it took them a month back home. There were some gainers with women now being able to do jobs previously restricted to men, thus increasing their personal and family buying power, but also this appeared to be doing was to increase their appetite to move to the UK and other European countries. A point which was brought home when one Polish city government official came on come back home mission to Peterborough and only one person at a meetings aid they wished to return because they were homesick, adding but she would have to be able to earn more before doing so. The explanation for the popularity of the new arrivals, especially those from Poland was demonstrated by film of a local Catholic church where the congregation had increased threefold. I wager the only reason why the yobs interviewed have gone anywhere near a church would be to desecrate it.
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