Authors Electric

  My dad, Feliks Krzewinski, at work as a display artist in London in 1960 Most people seem to prefer to do this after those concerned have died. Not so easy if your mother lives to 104, like someone I know. However, if you had a good relationship it’s not such a problem – it’s the things you’d like to get off your chest that’s the issue. My parents were elderly, 42 and 49 when I was born, and I was an only child. They both died over 40 years ago. Having a clear-out, I recently discovered a note I wrote after my first trip to Poland to visit my father’s relatives on my own. My mother was English, and after my father died the Polish side cut off all contact. Unbeknownst to me my mother, on her one and only trip abroad, she told my father’s relatives I considered myself to be entirely English, and didn’t want anything whatsoever to do with my Polish heritage. Many years later, out of the blue, I had a call from my cousin who was in the UK for a visit. I cried my eyes out with relie...

   Lviv Railway Station, an exit to safety for thousands As I am having an operation on my wrist I am writing this post some time in advance, because I won’t be able to type for a while. I thought I would devote it to my memories of Ukraine, as I attended a poetry event at the Ivan Franko University in 2006, and a children’s writing conference in Lviv in 2007.   My father was born not far from Lviv in 1900, and considered Lviv (Lwow as it then was) to be Polish. Ukraine, like Poland, has changed hands many times in the past. However, when it comes to Russia the two countries are 100% united, and recently Poland has been helping Ukraine as much as it can. I was brought up to regard Russia with grave suspicion. I remember at infant school (I must have been six) going up to the teachers for some spellings when we were all writing about what we did at the weekend. The boy in front of me wanted to know how to spell banana. I needed to know how to spell Khrushchev and Bulgani...

Whatever you’re writing, on the whole, people need to get from one place to another. And the more experiences you have yourself, the more likely it is to occur to you to use something a bit different. When I started thinking about this, I decided to list every experience I’d had, but, to my surprise, there were so many that I had to create some categories. So, land, sea or air, and weather. Weather is easiest. Snow and ice are the obvious examples. I first learned to ski in Poland with my father, when I was fifteen. I wasn’t very good at it, and I’m still not very good at it. But I did discover what it’s like to head down a slope which is far steeper than you thought, and the terror when you realise there’s no alternative to just keeping going. On the other hand, there was the sheer pleasure of a gradual descent through tracks in pine forests with hawfinches, crested tits and black squirrels. Skating was something that scared the living daylights out of me. But my six year-old da...