As promised, to celebrate his 90th birthday I have now set up a separate blog to tell my father in law Czes’ fascinating and inspiring tale of his time as Polish Forced labourer "Zwangsarbeiter" in Germany in WW2 .
You can find the blog at http://polish-patriot.blogspot.com
I ask the reader to take what Czes told me as a genuine memoir. His mind even at 90 years of age is still razor sharp. Nevertheless I'm sure some of it will have been mis-remembered after more than 60 years, and some of it may even be downright embellished, but I hope reading it gives you as much pleasure as it has me hearing it first hand, and it gives you a first hand insight in to what it was like between 1939 and 1945 for those who were non-combatants, but still prisoners of war.
Friday, July 4, 2008
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
What the hell is a "Round Tuit" anyway and why is it round?
Well I finally did it......! I quit my job, after the moribund company I worked for was bought out by the Mighty Amway Corporation from the Good old US of A.....
My reasons for quitting should be obvious to all reasonable minded people, but if you still don't get it, just Google "Amway Sucks." I rest my case....
Well I've done my Garden Leave (thanks Amway!) and I really am now unemployed. I have time to play Amateur Radio to my heart's content, put up annoying structures in the back garden, hang wires off the house and get on with all the things I was going to do because I never got a Round Tuit.
After all these years, I now know what a Round Tuit really is and I am the proud owner of one.
As of today, I'm officially "self employed", setting up two websites, (radio and business) and am planning to split this blog in to at least two; this general one for ramblings, and one soley for recounting the wartime exploits of an "Zwangsarbeiter" a certain, now 90 year old (bless him!) Polish relative by marriage. About 3 years ago I sat down with him with a tape recorder over a 3 month period and just got him to reminisce. What I have transcribed I think you'll find is both fascinating and horifying at the same time.
Watch this space for more details.
My reasons for quitting should be obvious to all reasonable minded people, but if you still don't get it, just Google "Amway Sucks." I rest my case....
Well I've done my Garden Leave (thanks Amway!) and I really am now unemployed. I have time to play Amateur Radio to my heart's content, put up annoying structures in the back garden, hang wires off the house and get on with all the things I was going to do because I never got a Round Tuit.
After all these years, I now know what a Round Tuit really is and I am the proud owner of one.
As of today, I'm officially "self employed", setting up two websites, (radio and business) and am planning to split this blog in to at least two; this general one for ramblings, and one soley for recounting the wartime exploits of an "Zwangsarbeiter" a certain, now 90 year old (bless him!) Polish relative by marriage. About 3 years ago I sat down with him with a tape recorder over a 3 month period and just got him to reminisce. What I have transcribed I think you'll find is both fascinating and horifying at the same time.
Watch this space for more details.
Monday, April 14, 2008
In praise of cock-ups
Someone recently sent me a video of some French Canadian soldiers getting theirselves in a to a mess with a missile. I forwarded it to a friend who had spent some time in the service of a major regional power. Before we read the response, have a look at the video.
Priceless eh, but his reply was even funnier and made me realise that despite our millitary being undoubtedly brave, and sadly essential, sometimes it must be scarier for them to face their colleagues than to face the enemy!
I quote.......
“The video reminded me very strongly of my military experience (conscripted) back in '85, where during the first 3 month training period, we were at a missile test range where we were doing ground launch tests of a new dogfight missile off a static launch rail. Unfortunately some knucklehead forgot to strap down the rail, so when the missile took off, the rail went vertical and the missile went straight up. Everyone scattered as far as they could, except for one guy who ran from behind the sandbags to stand right next to the launch rail. When asked later, his response was something along the lines of "what on earth is the probability that it would land back on the launch rail"
Lateral thinking at it's best, I'd say, clear evidence that, in the lower ranks, the millitary have some common sense!
Priceless eh, but his reply was even funnier and made me realise that despite our millitary being undoubtedly brave, and sadly essential, sometimes it must be scarier for them to face their colleagues than to face the enemy!
I quote.......
“The video reminded me very strongly of my military experience (conscripted) back in '85, where during the first 3 month training period, we were at a missile test range where we were doing ground launch tests of a new dogfight missile off a static launch rail. Unfortunately some knucklehead forgot to strap down the rail, so when the missile took off, the rail went vertical and the missile went straight up. Everyone scattered as far as they could, except for one guy who ran from behind the sandbags to stand right next to the launch rail. When asked later, his response was something along the lines of "what on earth is the probability that it would land back on the launch rail"
Lateral thinking at it's best, I'd say, clear evidence that, in the lower ranks, the millitary have some common sense!
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
No more biscuits or free fruit.
Bless me Father because I have sinned, it has been 3 months since my last blog, and quite a lot has happened to keep me away! I seem to have been round the world at least twice but despite my best efforts, I now work for a company in administration! Despite trips to the US (twice) Taiwan, and Korea our financial benefactors have pulled out the last promised tranche of their loan and I found myself this morning saying goodbye to a number of colleagues and hello to administrators.
Particularly frustrating considering how close we are to delivering product. Well we’ll see how the next two weeks go.
A second major casualty seems to have been the free fruit and biscuits; we will all be suffering from scurvy before the week is out mark my words.
I’m pleased to say that now (unless a thousand others are lurking passively in the background), I seem to have three readers of this blog, and the latest one is most welcome and knows who he is. Welcome JRM, it’s been a while, this is for you!
"They paved paradise, put up a parking lot.
With a Pink Hotel, a boutique and a swinging hot spot......."
The Uncertainty Principle of Physics states that if you know the mass of an object you cannot determine its velocity, and vice versa. In the first half of the 20th century, Werner Heisenberg postulated that simple-sounding principle, which implied that the mere action of measuring something changes it, such that you can never measure anything absolutely.
Another way of looking at it implies that, being there changes where you are.
This principle can be applied I'm sure, to much of what surrounds us in this new millennium. The mere presence of mankind in this world changes it. It's particularly noticeable with regard to beauty spots, as holidaymakers strive for more and more distant and unspoilt places to drop Coke cans as developers put up concrete. I note the Western European Monocuture that seems to be developing everywhere I go.
Joni Mitchell's song "Big Yellow Taxi" observed this trend at the end of the 60's in a few carefully crafted lines. Predictably, the "Love Generation", post - war baby- boomers with too much disposable income, who went to Goa to escape their apparent tribulations, found that the "end of the hippie trail", their "paradise" inevitably sprouted the "Pink Hotels" that had been so eloquently used to epitomise 1960s California.
The question to be asked is "is this type of change inevitable?"
How many times have you re-visited a favourite place to find it changed? It can change in obvious ways. Try following a "Favourite Walks" section from Spanish or Greek tourist guide book more than a few years old, and you'll see what I mean.
"Follow the river for a mile until you get to the small well, here the path diverges from the river......"
has become.
"If you look carefully you can see the culvert where the stream used to be, follow the pavement past the souvenir shop......."
You get the picture.
Places also seem to change in far more subtle ways. The physical changes may be small, but they are very different. A place is also people and memories.
The people you met the first time are not there this time. You realise then that the holiday was more than just the place. You change and the people you go with change. These things always combine to make the place different.
But does the Uncertainty Principle apply to life? The simple fact of living life changes life? Life changes people for sure. They change shape, get wrinkles and bunions, but this is just an example of Entropy, another physical principle that states that all things go from a state of order to disorder.
Return to the honeymoon isle and it's not the same. Even though the rocks are in the same place, the cafe is still there, the tide still goes in and out, and the tired Greek still drops fag-ash in the keftedes. It's different, you are different, and you changed it by the mere fact that you went there the first time. The first time you saw it with a different pair of eyes, but who's to say that the place hasn't changed? The teenager who raced snails in the rain has responsibilities now.
You have changed life with the smallest of decisions.
Heisenberg strikes!
You live life therefore you change it. Having that child, getting that job, not taking that flight, made life different from what it could have been.
Each small decision in life causes a fork in your reality, and opens up an alternative one, but unlike the cheap science fiction, there's no going back to the junction and living the alternative reality that would have been just as real if you'd turned right not left.
Particularly frustrating considering how close we are to delivering product. Well we’ll see how the next two weeks go.
A second major casualty seems to have been the free fruit and biscuits; we will all be suffering from scurvy before the week is out mark my words.
I’m pleased to say that now (unless a thousand others are lurking passively in the background), I seem to have three readers of this blog, and the latest one is most welcome and knows who he is. Welcome JRM, it’s been a while, this is for you!
"They paved paradise, put up a parking lot.
With a Pink Hotel, a boutique and a swinging hot spot......."
The Uncertainty Principle of Physics states that if you know the mass of an object you cannot determine its velocity, and vice versa. In the first half of the 20th century, Werner Heisenberg postulated that simple-sounding principle, which implied that the mere action of measuring something changes it, such that you can never measure anything absolutely.
Another way of looking at it implies that, being there changes where you are.
This principle can be applied I'm sure, to much of what surrounds us in this new millennium. The mere presence of mankind in this world changes it. It's particularly noticeable with regard to beauty spots, as holidaymakers strive for more and more distant and unspoilt places to drop Coke cans as developers put up concrete. I note the Western European Monocuture that seems to be developing everywhere I go.
Joni Mitchell's song "Big Yellow Taxi" observed this trend at the end of the 60's in a few carefully crafted lines. Predictably, the "Love Generation", post - war baby- boomers with too much disposable income, who went to Goa to escape their apparent tribulations, found that the "end of the hippie trail", their "paradise" inevitably sprouted the "Pink Hotels" that had been so eloquently used to epitomise 1960s California.
The question to be asked is "is this type of change inevitable?"
How many times have you re-visited a favourite place to find it changed? It can change in obvious ways. Try following a "Favourite Walks" section from Spanish or Greek tourist guide book more than a few years old, and you'll see what I mean.
"Follow the river for a mile until you get to the small well, here the path diverges from the river......"
has become.
"If you look carefully you can see the culvert where the stream used to be, follow the pavement past the souvenir shop......."
You get the picture.
Places also seem to change in far more subtle ways. The physical changes may be small, but they are very different. A place is also people and memories.
The people you met the first time are not there this time. You realise then that the holiday was more than just the place. You change and the people you go with change. These things always combine to make the place different.
But does the Uncertainty Principle apply to life? The simple fact of living life changes life? Life changes people for sure. They change shape, get wrinkles and bunions, but this is just an example of Entropy, another physical principle that states that all things go from a state of order to disorder.
Return to the honeymoon isle and it's not the same. Even though the rocks are in the same place, the cafe is still there, the tide still goes in and out, and the tired Greek still drops fag-ash in the keftedes. It's different, you are different, and you changed it by the mere fact that you went there the first time. The first time you saw it with a different pair of eyes, but who's to say that the place hasn't changed? The teenager who raced snails in the rain has responsibilities now.
You have changed life with the smallest of decisions.
Heisenberg strikes!
You live life therefore you change it. Having that child, getting that job, not taking that flight, made life different from what it could have been.
Each small decision in life causes a fork in your reality, and opens up an alternative one, but unlike the cheap science fiction, there's no going back to the junction and living the alternative reality that would have been just as real if you'd turned right not left.
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