Everyone has a blog, that’s a fact – and the topics range from whether the England football team should play a diamond formation to whether Brown isn’t as cosy with Bush as Blair used to be. In fact, the internet’s probably becoming so helplessly inundated with all these scrawlings that a process called ‘unblogging’ will have to soon be invented. It’s mayhem.

     Anyhow, you see, for as long as I’ve withheld the temptation to submit to the sprawling ‘blog’ monster, I’ve acclaimed myself for doing so. Yet now I have succumbed, simply because of clocking on to its intrinsic offering: allowing people to read something you’ve written, irrespective of how popularised the format has already become. Deciding upon my theme, initially, was a chore. Questions flung themselves against the walls of my head; ‘What do people want to read?’ ‘Who will most likely be reading if I post on this particular website?’ Then, as if some majestic tidal wave swept aside all thoughts of Gordon Brown, X-Factor injustices and top ten tips for a ‘Green Christmas’ I was left with one remaining, sturdy subject; my 7 month stay in Poland.

     So that’s it. That’s the focus of this blog; my travels and travails in a darkened pocket of central Europe – and I guess a pocket that, at the time, mirrored my level of existence with a profound precision. It seemed that the territory I was leaving for, along with the job I was about to undertake, would be as alien as my post-university indifference had been commonplace. Teaching English looked to present a palpable challenge; particularly after a sleepless New Years Eve and whirlwind, budget-airline transition between Luton Airport and the heart of Silesia in south Poland.

     On January 2^nd, I woke up in a small, darkened flat on the top floor of a block of functionally built flats left over from the evaporating communist downpour. My phone rang; it was my boss – Rafal. He was coming to collect me in half an hour and take me to the school. I squinted out of the dusty window, deducing lines of battered vehicles cutting through the snow-covered road towards a vanishing point in the distance. Geometrically flawless and weathered tower blocks lay crooked and weathered next to their luridly redecorated counterparts. I could see Lowry-esque figures in the street beneath me; forlorn and bent double by the concentrated wind. Small, yappy dogs provided the audio track for this dreamlike early-morning stage show, and I remember wondering if it would ever be possible to get any form of rest with such continual and abrupt disturbances. Noise was coming from above and below too, the chiming of pots and pans rattling on gas stoves and the cushioned thuds of padded flat doors swinging shut on their weary hinges.  

      I’d barely had a chance to draw breath over the last twenty-four hours, let alone brace myself for the impending hairpin turn my life was about to take. I showered and dressed hurriedly before hearing one more resounding noise; a car horn coming from a van which was quivering on the pavement outside the flat’s stony-stepped entrance. It was a glossy, blue van, frosted from the overnight chill and with a Union Jack flag painted on one side of it. It looked like a decorated scarab beetle relic. Behind the wheel was a middle-aged man with a blonde stack of hair on top of his head. He was wearing fingertip-less gloves and his clumpy fingers grasped the steering wheel as though the subtle vibrations from the engine were serving to heat his body through the only part of his skin he dare expose. A cigarette hung out of his bulbous lips which he sucked on and removed from his mouth rhythmically. More noise was evident as I could hear the unmistakably contrived beats of modern funk music emanate from the vehicle. That’s it I pondered; was this a genuine teaching placement or some last-ditch effort by a deluded forty-something man to revive a musical pubescent fantasy? I momentarily thought back to my telephone interview. Rafal had been keen to press the guitar-playing side of things. I had flashing visions of some David Brent type comedy creation, hell bent on bringing order and vivacity to a working environment with the aid of his musical misconduct.

      Puzzled and dazed in equal measure, I slung on my jacket and made my way down the stained stairwell.