THE SVEN FILES: FATTY'S NARROW ESCAPE

By Major Harold Wayne-Bough (Ret'd)

After the Memsahib implied last issue that I’m second cousin to Old Nick, I’ve heard some pretty rum comment about my (alleged) tendency towards nocturnal metamorphosis, comparisons to Michael Howard, etc. I’ve laughed them all off, of course. But the truth is, that isn’t the first time I’ve encountered mysterious forces at work …

Last September Fatty Fortescue, Bodger and yours truly left the Memsahibs at home (in fact Fatty did that in 1983) and went off on a male-bonding survival weekend in the Pieniny, including a white-water rafting trip down the Dunec. We started off from a guesthouse in the mountains which can only be reached by a rather perilous ride in a Land Rover up the mountainside. We had arrived in the evening, so this took place in pitch darkness, much to the glee of Bodger, who had been wearing his regimental balaclava since Kraków, and was by now sporting his night vision goggles from the Russian market as well. He kept his Action Man outfit on through dinner, fortunately Mrs Akiko has seen stranger sights than Bodger trying to eat noodle soup through a hole in his mask (knitted by Mrs Bodger).

After dinner we settled down in the lounge to relax on the eve of our battle with the Great Outdoors. Fatty found a video left behind by some Swedish hikers who’d just left. Much to his chagrin, it wasn’t a Swedish movie (and I’m not talking Ingmar Bergman, I think you chaps will know what I mean), but an action film called “Deliverance”. We rather liked the beginning, three chaps canoeing down a river, come to mention it I did bear a striking resemblance to Burt Reynolds in my younger days. However, by the end of the film everyone had gone a bit quiet. Especially Fatty. We all turned in, but I don’’t think Fatty had a peaceful night, I heard his bed creaking everytime he turned over, which was about every minute. I think he was dreaming he was a doner kebab being gently basted with soy sauce by the charming Mrs Akiko.

The next morning, after a copious breakfast of dried seaweed and sushi we set off bright and early for the river, armed with a picnic donated by the kind Mrs Akiko, who waved us off laughing merrily. I think she was amused by Bodger’s frogman get-up. We boarded our raft and pushed off to pit our wits against the mighty Dunec. Fatty sat up front, which meant that Bodger and I had to sit well back to counterbalance him. Bodger wasn’t much help, frankly, his oxygen tanks were hindering his paddling and I was doing most of the work. The river wasn’t too difficult to negotiate at first, and we spent a pleasant few hours meandering downstream waving cheerily to the locals, who appeared periodically on the river bank to wish us well. We planned to do half the run, heave to somewhere and sleep under the stars, then continue down to the pick-up point the next day. We’d got a fierce rhythm going, and Bodger was coxing with a Fijian dragon-racing chant he’d learnt on manoeuvres in the South Pacific. The river started to get quite fast, and in the end we went into a spin and had to just go with the flow, literally. Fatty lost it completely, and lay flat on the floor of the raft screaming as Bodger and I skilfully steered through the most perilous stretch of the river. This is where training shows through, and my experience on the spinning teacups at Alton Towers last summer gave me quite an advantage.

By the end of the first day we were exhausted, but mighty pleased with ourselves. We built a fire and were sitting around it re-living the day’s highlights, when a couple of local yokels appeared out of the bushes, carrying our sleeping bags and looking a bit cross. They’d been following us all the way along the river in a pick-up truck with our bags, and had been trying to signal to us from the bank the safest places to stop but we’d just waved back happily like foreign idiots and kept going. It turned out we had done the whole run in one day and were about 500 yards from the pick-up point. We felt a bit silly, I can tell you, and tried to placate them with some tofu sandwiches and a couple of Daphne’s dainty iced fancies which they spat out again. The Memsahib would not have been impressed with their table manners. They were real hillbillies, the elder one was boss-eyed and the younger one, who was toothless as well as gormless, kept looking at Fatty in a queer sort of way. Eventually we thanked them profusely, gave them a few bob and shooed them on their way.

Come bedtime, Fatty looked distinctly uneasy, and spent a long time checking the Chubb locks on his sleeping bag. I started singing “Duelling Banjos” - “Dinga-ding-dang-dong” - to wind him up, to which his muffled voice replied from inside his sleeping bag “Sounds like Match of the Day”. Eventually I drifted off to sleep as the fire died, and didn’t know another blessed thing until the morning, when I awoke to find Bodger and Fatty polishing off the last of the raw squid, and looking a bit shifty. “The queerest thing happened in the night, Harold,” said Bodger.

He had been startled awake by a noise, and had awoken to find our two friends from the Countryside Alliance rummaging in his Bergen. First of all he’d reached for his 12-bore, but then remembered he’d sold it back in 1982, so reverted to old regimental survival tactics and pretended to be asleep. He heard the mountain men getting closer and closer to Fatty’s sleeping bag, and was wincing as he remembered scenes from the film. Male bonding was starting to take on a whole new meaning. Bodger was wishing to blazes that video had been Swedish Night Nurse on the Job. All of a sudden there was a flash of lightning, a clap of thunder, and the bumpkins ran off in fright. Bodger had peeped through a hole in his sleeping bag to see, in the dawn’s early light, a large, blond, Scandinavian-looking chap in hiking gear sitting on a rock listening to a Walkman. Cripes, thought Bodger? He sat up and said hello. The hiker gave a big smile and said “It’s OK, you’re safe now”, and went back to softly humming “Dancing Queen”, which lulled Bodger back to sleep in no time. When he awoke it was daylight, the hiker had gone, and Fatty and I were snoring peacefully.

He asked me what I made of it. I had a vague feeling like when you’re desperately trying to remember a name, and it’s on the tip of your tongue, but you can’t quite think of it. Damnedest thing. I suggested to Bodger that perhaps he’d had a dream. But he showed me footprints of great big hiking boots close to where we’d been sleeping – they couldn’t have been our prints, as Bodger was wearing his flippers, Fatty had his Pathfinders on (with animal tracks) and I was in my trusty green wellies. And – incontrovertible proof – Bodger pulled out of his wetsuit the cassette cover of “Abba Gold”.

I told Daphne the story some weeks later. She looked quite unfazed, and said simply “Sven”. “About four o’clock in the morning,” I replied. She gave me one of her withering looks that have been known to make a compass needle turn south, and said “Not when, Harold. Sven.” and carried on polishing the silver. I remain baffled to this day. The truth is out there, somewhere.

HAROLD - PRINCE OF DARKNESS?

Someone once said that Adrian Mole at 60 would be a lot like Harold. What a cheek! Harold has no pretentions to be an intellectual, and certainly doesn’t go around scattering his seed with gay abandon like that Mole chap. Although I must say the delectable Pandora does remind me a tad of myself in my younger days.

So much for my current bedside reading. We have passed up our winter jaunt to the mountains this year in favour of something closer to home. “Sven” was so disappointed he went off skiing on his own (!) leaving Harold intending to stay glued to his armchair in front of the Six Nations, but I was determined to catch up on the cultural delights of Warsaw. The Impressionist exhibition at the National Museum is a must-see, the courtyard has been turned into a replica of Montmartre, so you can get yourself into a Gallic frame of mind while you’re waiting to go in. Harold did just that, entertaining the waiting queues of schoolgirls with his Maurice Chevalier impression and singing “Zank ‘eaven for leedle gurls”. Inside the exhibition, Harold said the Renoir ladies looked like me cutting my toenails in the bathroom. That’s the most romantic thing he’s said in ages.

I also dragged Harold off for a night at the Opera. He wasn’t very keen to start with, but once we got there he loved it. He sat open-mouthed in rapture, with his head thrown back and his eyes closed, soaking up the performance. My enjoyment was slightly spoiled by an intermittent rumbling noise, must have been the metro passing underneath. In the bar afterwards, I asked Harold how he’d enjoyed his first opera. He replied that he’d been transported to another world, which just goes to show - he’s quite a culture vulture really!

Or do I mean vampire? We went for a Valentine’s dinner at the Marriott’s Chicago Grill. It might not seem like the most romantic spot in town, but at least Harold can see what he’s eating. Despite the panic over BSE, they are still serving prime beef. Harold’s always said it wouldn’t make any difference in my case, amyway. Neither of us has ever been to Chicago, but I can’t imagine it is anything like the Chicago Grill - nobody was wearing a stetson hat for one thing. In fact, nobody was eating in there at all. When we saw the menu we realized why - the Marriott is suffering from mad price disease. However, we were already seated and I was far too overdressed to go slumming it downstairs at Champions, so we decided to see it through. When the waitress asked how Harold would like his steak, he slapped his knee and answered in what was supposed to be a mid-Atlantic twang: “Just wipe its ass and throw it on the plate, honey!” She took him at his word. The cow (vegetarians look away now) was only just dead, and the meat was bright red and glistening ... Harold’s fangs flashed once, and then his face was in his plate, and all that could be heard were chomping and slurping sounds. When he had finished, the waitress was nowhere to be seen! I started to feel a bit queasy when he got very insistent that we be home before midnight… there really is something of the night about Harold occasionally. Lucky I eat a lot of garlic. Happily, it transpired that he just wanted to catch the football results! What a relief. Sometimes I let my imagination run wild.

For the record, Harold’s 16 oz. Porterhouse steak was succulent, and my 8 oz. peppered fillet melted in the mouth. Everything is prepared tableside - but for the price (I daren’t say how much, the Inland Revenue might be reading) I think there should have been a rodeo show thrown in and Dolly Parton singing some country and western classics. Harold agrees (at least about Dolly Parton). I may turn out to be the most expensive mad cow in Warsaw.

BEWARE THE BROWN VODKA

Harold has a few annoying habits.

One of them is his inability to reproduce a tune accurately. Whatever he sings or whistles, from the James Bond theme to the National Anthem, ends up as the theme from Match of the Day. He claims in self-defence that all tunes ARE actually Match of the Day, either slowed down, speeded up or played in a different key. He might be right, of course.

After a few glasses of port on an evening, he falls asleep dreaming of buying a villa in Portugal and finding his next door neighbour is Tiger Woods, or perhaps he’s being Benny Hill in those final credits, and the next day his pillow looks like someone’s been murdered in the bed. I call him the Vicar of Dribbly.

However, as it was his birthday recently (he won’t let me say which one in case Lesley Joseph is among my readership), I tried to look at him in a kindly light and took him for dinner at the Hotel Bristol’s posh restaurant, the Malinowa. In the Column Bar, where the prices have gone sky-high (£6 for a gin and tonic!) we bumped into Harold’s old pal from the Buffaloes, Fatty Fortescue, with his granddaughter. At least, I assumed she was his granddaughter, although it was a bit odd that she didn’t seem to speak English. And I really think Fatty should have made her wear something warmer on a cold January night than just a vest and thigh boots. Harold seemed quite concerned, and I had to drag him away eventually to the Malinowa dining room before they gave our table away.

I have to say the room is quite unprepossessing, after the grandeur of the Column Bar. It looks like a rather ordinary hotel dining room. However, the food and the service are top-notch. They bring you a complimentary “amuse-gueule” before your starter arrives, which is like a small starter itself. It was a piece of poached chicken with a bit of rocket salad on the side, drizzled with a raspberry coulis. Delicious. For starter I had two kinds of foie gras - one piece cooked in a filo pastry parcel, the other piece au naturel. Harold had eschewed the oysters and caviar (unpriced - asking for trouble) for langoustines, (which were translated as Dublin Bay prawns, although as everyone knows, n’est-ce-pas, “langoustines” are crayfish, and Dublin Bay prawns are translated in French menus by the Spanish “gambas”) in a “sauce of flowers”. Not sure what flowers were used, but the sauce tasted faintly of parma violets. Both dishes were beautifully presented, but after long admiration, taking of photographs, showing them to the people at the next table etc., they were duly demolished with the help of a bottle of 1994 Chateauneuf du Pape – at 300 zlotys, perhaps a little extravagant, but it was a special occasion after all.

A comfortable gap between courses was allowed before our mains were served in a flourish of silver chafing dishes: I had warm lobster salad on a bed of braised fennel and lasagne slices – heavenly! Harold went for a manly dish, the venison, which came plentiful and pink, just the way he likes it, in a rich gravy with not too many vegetables to distract him. It was all rather nouveau, so if you’re a fan of gołonka you might find the portions a tad light. However, our belts were groaning by the end of the main course, which was a shame, as the Malinowa has the best cheese trolley I’ve seen this side of the French border. Luckily I didn’t order a dessert, since coffee comes with a selection of home made chocolate truffles, of which I forced myself to sample quite a few. Well, all of them, actually.

The prices at the Malinowa – with a few exceptions – are no worse than any other first class restaurant in Warsaw, and if you stick to one main course and a reasonable bottle of wine, a Beaujolais say at about 130 zlotys, with your complimentary hors-d’oeuvre and chockies you can have a superb meal without mortgaging the Range Rover. One last blipette didn’t spoil the evening, but I mention it as a warning in case you’re thinking of dining at the Malinowa. Harold let himself be talked into trying a so-called 50-year-old vodka from the liqueurs trolley. Frankly, this has to be scam of the century (although the century was less than a week old at the time). Although nicely coloured with burnt sugar to give it an old look, the fumes nearly succeeded where nose clippers had failed. Harold pulled a face as he drank it, and muttered something about drain fluid. I pulled an even worse face when I saw the bill. For 109 zlotys, he could have had a really nice cognac. But we live and learn. Vodka, unlike claret, and my Christmas cake, does not improve with age, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

THE INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE OF CHAPS

by Major Harold Wayne-Bough (retired)

While the Memsahib’s been plugging away at learning Polish, and getting pretty grumpy in the process I might add, I’ve been quietly pottering about and getting everything I want without having to utter a sound, let alone attempt the teeth-juddering oral contortions required to speak the local lingo. I’ve managed to travel around the world in my time without having to resort to all that foreign gobbledegook. We chaps, y’see, can manage without words. It’s quite simple: life (for men, anyway) is simply made up of needs. Bodily needs. Food, drink, … er … and one or two other things. Now, it’s simply a question of working out a simple visual signal which conveys this need without (and this is crucial) making a fool of oneself. What is remarkable is that, without the aid of teachers or dictionaries, this sign language has evolved independently throughout the world, in places as diverse as Tibet and Tonbridge, Kingston Jamaica and Kingston-upon-Thames, and is identical wherever you go!!

Let’s take ordering a drink – pretty high in most chaps’ list of priorities, I would say. Chap goes into bar. Chap walks around bar for a bit (purpose of this will become apparent later). Chap sits at bar and marks his territory by placing his property strategically on the bar: smoking accoutrements, mobile phone (a present from Daphne so she can keep tabs on me – I keep it switched off, of course). Chap makes eye contact with barman. (Eye contact is a vital element of international chap talk – without it you wouldn’t know who you’re not talking to). Chap raises finger, to indicate he requires a libation. Barman lifts his head and eyebrows slightly, to indicate he is listening. Chap also lifts eyebrows. If Chap is known to Barman, this means “The usual, John”. (Very important point in non-verbal bar talk – once you’ve established your tipple, NEVER SWITCH TO A NEW DRINK). (And barmen are always called John). If Chap is new to Barman, this means “Mine’s a pint of your best ale, please, goodly innkeeper”.

After the initial contact, Chap can sit all night at a bar, obtaining a steady stream of libations without uttering a word. When glass is empty, establish eye contact again and nod. If you need an ashtray, mime tapping ash off a cigarette. Barman will understand perfectly. With luck, small talk with fellow drinkers will be limited to lending them your matches (Fellow Drinker waves cigarette at Chap, Chap hands over matchbox, Fellow Drinker returns matchbox with a nod and a smile, Chap returns nod without a smile) or the occasional exchange of admiring glances if a particularly handsome filly trots past. To be on the safe side, Chap could always take an English newspaper and pretend to be doing the crossword. If Chap is a non-smoker, of course, life is even easier.

At some point Chap will need to answer the call of nature. The location of the facilities will have been established on the initial recce, to avoid the need to ask (and thereby risk looking silly). In order not to lose seat, and with it face, Chap leaves half-drunk pint and smoking accoutrements on bar. If the facilities are communal, Chap observes unwritten rule of lavatorial etiquette, which involves whistling, humming, clearing throat and other vocal (but not verbal) indications of territoriality. The tune whistled (I favour the Dambusters myself) and the depth of throat-clearing are designed to signal to other occupants that, in the event Chap has inadvertantly interrupted a private conversation, he will be on his way as soon as his business is finished.

When Chap feels he’s had enough and it’s time to wobble off home, establish eye contact once more with Barman (although it could be a bit difficult, as Chap might be seeing two, or even three, of him by now) and mime writing something down, using left hand as a writing pad and holding an imaginary pen in the right. Of course, if Chap is left-handed he can do it the other way round. This means: “I shay, ole shap, how mush do I owe?” Barman will nod and, after about 20 minutes and a few more reminders with the writing pad, will bring a piece of paper which Chap does not need to look at as he will not be able to focus on all the zeros anyway. Chap produces large denomination banknote and, if Barman does not look angry or impatient, makes a magnanimous sweeping-away gesture with his hand, indicating “Keep the change, my good fellow”. This will avoid Chap having to remonstrate with Barman about being over-charged and risking making a fool of himself. If Barman does look angry or impatient, Chap should check that the banknote is in fact legal tender in the country, and throw any empty change from his pockets onto the bar nonchalantly before nodding in a decisive manner (meaning “Thank you show mush for your good shervishes, my man, shee you again neksht week”) and striding off into the wall, and eventually through the door, leaving his smoking accoutrements and mobile phone on the bar.

At this point Chap will require locomotion in a homeward direction. Hopefully there will be a taxi rank not far from the inn. This can be recognized by a group of blurry white lights with cars underneath them, although do check they are marked “taxi” and not “policja”. This is where a little of the local parley-voo is unavoidable. All you have to remember is the name of your street. Don’t worry about numbers – in Polish, 44 sounds just like 36 or 29 and will only confuse matters. If you live near the corner of another street, you can add the name of the adjoining street preceded by “od”. If you don’t, or if you can’t remember where you live, let the cabbie work it out while you fall asleep in the back of the taxi. Remarkably, when you wake up you will be at your front door. Throw another large denomination note at the driver before falling onto the pavement.

It is interesting how non-verbal communication only works between men. When you get in the house and attempt to convey to Her Indoors with a jaunty step and a bright smile that you are perfectly sober, She always accuses you of being drunk and of kicking the cat. If only women had the intuitive powers of us men.

IT'S GRIM UP NORTH (Pt II: GDANSK)

Gdansk of course used to be the German Danzig, and retains an air of former teutonic grandeur, not to mention hordes of German tourists, as we found when we arrived at our hotel, to find we had been bumped off to accommodate another busload from the Vaterland. So we ended up in the Hanza Hotel on the waterfront – allegedly the best hotel in Gdansk, and considerably more expensive than the one we’d originally booked into. However, at least the price was more or less justified by the facilities which were as near 4 star as anyone could expect. They could make a few improvements – for example, breakfast is only served until 10 o’clock, even at weekends; and the receptionist was totally ignorant about chemist’s opening hours, which was tiresome as we’d run out of Rennies and both had an uncomfortable night after resorting to crème-de-menthe as a remedy for indigestion. I would recommend to anyone visiting Gdansk that you purchase, on arriving, the “Gdansk in your Pocket” guide, which has tons of useful information of that sort as well as all the restaurant and cultural listings. It’s available from any tourist office or bookseller in Gdansk (though not in the Hanza hotel, unfortunately).

The waterfront district plays heavily on the city’s maritime history, and Harold treated himself to a captain’s cap which he wore at a jaunty angle, calling out “Ahoy there!” and “Coming through!” at all the pretty girls, accompanied by his Popeye walk, which as you can imagine impressed them no end. He was somewhat disconcerted when he encountered the Gdansk Kaper, a retired Hell’s Angel dressed up as a pirate who swaggers (or whatever it is pirates do) around the Old Town wheeling a bicycle disguised as a pirate ship. The Kaper waved his plastic cutlass at Harold and pretended to kidnap me. Bluebeard and all that. Harold wanted to take him on with his Swiss Army penknife, but I told him not to be silly and get his credit card out instead, as I had spotted some highly attractive amber jewellery, which is the main reason for visiting Gdansk.

We stopped for lunch at a jolly place called the Sphinx on ul. Długa, one of Tom Maltom’s Egyptian-themed restaurants (there’s one in Krakow too). The main dishes are shoarma (pitta bread) loaded with meat and fried onions and served with salad and/or huge portions of chips – for between 9 and 15 złotys a throw. Harold did fair justice to a thin crust pizza the size of the Millennium Dome (12 złotys) while we watched Długa Square invaded by a horde of waddling Charlie Chaplins – everyone in Gdansk seemed to be in fancy dress that weekend. We saw some fascinating “statue” artistes, who did not blink an eye, even when Harold growled at them “Get a flipping job!” (He’s never had much interest in the Arts).

After a hike to the ex-Lenin Shipyards which I did not prolong, there being no amber shops in that part of town, we returned to visit the magnificent Mariacki Church … for some reason Harold was expecting to see a Mexican band in big sombreros but there weren’t even any Bolivians in ponchos, all having gone to Sopot … and the even more delightful Mariacka street, where I thought I’d died and gone to amber heaven. In the evening we had a light supper at a waterside restaurant called Goldwasser, where the fish was decent but the glass of non-specific dry white wine was quite undrinkable, and despite the waitress’s assurances that it was French vin de pays, I could tell it was Sophia! They had the cheek to charge us 16 złotys for it, even though I sent it back telling the gel it was “niedobre”.

On our second evening in Gdansk we studied the restaurant guide and chose one generally reputed to be among the top three, Retman. We had misgivings as soon as we walked through the door – despite booking in advance there was no table laid up, and there was a TV going in the main dining room. The menu appeared to be mainly boiled or fried fish, so we went for the only two grilled options – trout for Harold, cod for me. When we asked for the wine list, it appeared there wasn’t one, but the po-faced waiter produced two acceptable choices of French dry white, although I do so hate having to ask the price aloud. It looks as though one can’t afford it. In the end there was a decent Bordeaux at 75 zlotys, which at least took away the taste of the Sophia from the previous evening.

We are in serious disagreement with Retman’s high rating in the “Gdansk in your pocket” guide: “this restaurant captures the essence of 18th-century Gdansk, complete with heavy, ornate furniture and Old Gdansk-style cuisine”. The furniture was indeed heavy and ornate, although a linen tablecloth would have set it off to best advantage, but I doubt that TV’s were an integral part of 18th century Gdansk decor! The cuisine, when it arrived, was almost undistinguishable from our good old British fish and chips. Harold’s trout was scandalous – three (smallish) chunks of a fish which had been chopped into sections like an eel. It’s not often Harold leaves a Polish restaurant still hungry, but Retman was the exception, despite the free salad bar. Harold likened Retman to a downmarket Harry Ramsden’s. The chairs were indeed nice, but at least you get a tablecloth at Harry Ramsden’s.

After dinner we proceeded up ul. Długa in search of a sticky. However, at 9.30 on a Friday evening in the height of the tourist season, Gdansk was battening down the hatches. We were turned away, not even apologetically, by a series of hatchet-faced manageresses, and retreated to the waterfront in search of a welcoming waiter. People were scurrying away home and most of the terraces were already empty well before 10 p.m. Not even a German towel. It reminded us of Middlesbrough town centre where we’d once ended up by mistake. We wondered if the martial law curfew had ever been lifted in Gdansk? Or were Lechia playing at home to Millwall the following day? Or perhaps they were expecting the Viking longboat from Sopot to come chugging up the Mitława canal and disgorge a hundred drunken, hungry Norsemen (or Millwall supporters) intent on rape and pillage? Gdansk did share similar past experience with Middlesbrough, which was also within Viking striking distance and hence had also learned to close early. At the mention of rape and pillage I caught a gleam in Harold’s eye – or was it Sven’s? The Kaper came cycling his boat down the quayside on his way home. “Ahoy there, cap’n,” he hailed. Harold responded with what sounded like “cough”, an old nautical salute no doubt.

IT'S GRIM UP NORTH (PT 1: SOPOT)

Sopot is Poland’s premier seaside resort, once the playground of the rich and fashionable, now it’s just a small seaside town comprising a beach, a pier and a main street which is patrolled by holidaymakers in the daytime, holidaymakers and drunks in the evening, and Peruvian pan-pipe players at all hours. The pier is, according to whichever guide book you pick up, either the longest wooden pier in Europe or the longest wooden pier on the Baltic. There is nothing on the pier, not even an Elvis show. Once you have walked the length of the pier four or five times you have exhausted half of Sopot’s attractions, and all that remains is to get on a boat.

Various types of marine traffic call in at Sopot pier. A relative newcomer is Viking II, a reconditioned fishing boat done up like the Viking longboat in Asterix cartoons, complete with red and white striped sail, which does 45-minute trips round the bay during the day, and dinner cruises to Gdynia in the evening. The canopied restaurant on deck serves such typical Viking fare as kielbasy, chips and Zywiec, and the seats are adorned with animal skins which you can wrap yourself in when the wind comes up and don a two-horned helmet for the Erik the Viking photo opportunity. The Viking II is sister ship to the Viking I, last seen on the Vistula at Kazimierz Dolny. The sight of a Viking longboat materializing through the Baltic mist is quite impressive, I imagine the town drunks must have sobered up rather quickly the first time they saw it.

However, as we had just spent half an hour sheltering from a downpour under Sopot pier, I ignored Harold’s pleading glances towards the Viking boat (I think his alter ego Sven resurfaced briefly at the sight of it) and piped him aboard the ferry to Hel. The journey, via Gdynia, takes 2 hours, and when Hel finally appears it looks rather like the Isle of Sheppey, only not so exciting. It has one main street with a good many bars and fish restaurants, and – our hearts sank – yet another group of poncho’d Peruvian (or possibly Bolivian) Indians playing the pan pipes! This truly was a descent into Hel. We ate very agreeable grilled cod fillet with chips and salad for less than 50 zlotys all told, including a couple of beers, and after a slow wander through a fairly uninteresting market (not even a T-shirt saying “I’ve been to Hel and back”) boarded the ferry back to Sopot.

The Grand Hotel in Sopot was once, I am sure, quite grand. However, despite reports of recent renovation, it reminded me of nothing so much as the Overlook Hotel in The Shining. The view of the sea and the pier is nice, and the rooms are large, but the Orbis idea of luxury still leaves a lot to be desired. Nice bathroom, but it would have been nicer if the loo door had shut properly, and the corridors were about as cosy as a reform school. The staff were efficient and spoke good English, but unsmiling in that Orbis way they have. This would have all been quite acceptable had the room rate been commensurate with the level of comfort, but the Grand is essentially a 3-star hotel charging 5-star prices (445 zlotys a night). For that price, one expects fluffy towels or at least an extra pillow. However, the breakfast is first-class, and is taken in the dining room overlooking the sea, where it is served until 11 a.m. The cocktail bar is an absolute gem – how clever of Orbis to perfectly recreate a 1970’s communist-era entrapment scenario! Right down to the inebriated Russian (“I’m a businessman – now”) and what must be the only three-generation team of government-sponsored escort girls, who sat grimly smoking while the barman, glued to the Bond film on the TV (nice touch!) studiously ignored the customers. As theme bars go, this one gets first prize.

There are three good restaurants in Sopot, otherwise it’s fish and chips, kielbasa or rotisserie chicken on the prom, chips optional but Pan pipes compulsory. We had a couple of beers on the main square and enjoyed watching the town drunks doing their own version of the Lambada and annoying the Bolivians, some small compensation for them having annoyed us all day. We decided to have dinner at Le Balzac, a name which Harold always insists on mispronouncing. The interior is extremely refined, bordering on fussy, with an invisible pianist hidden away in a
back room. The middle-aged headwaiter was straight out of The Birdcage, camper than a row of tents, and flapped around sibilantly, endlessly lisping “prosze bardzo” and “uprzejmie”. Harold muttered something in reply which also began with “up”, but was in English.

We kicked off with soup – Harold started with wild mushroom and I went for French onion, both of which were freshly-made and delicious. For main course Harold had Italian-style lamb (i.e. in tomato sauce with pasta) washed down with a bottle of Cotes de Beaune, while I remained faithful to the maritime tone of the town and had sole fillets stuffed with salmon mousse, an elaborately constructed dish which I took great pleasure in demolishing with the help of a half bottle of Alsace Riesling. Harold kept interrupting his eating to flick through his Polish-English pocket dictionary – I thought he was trying to decipher the more obscure items on the menu, but he muttered that he was looking up the Polish for “shut” and “door”. It was a wet night, admittedly, the poor dear must have been sitting in a draught.

The final damage was quite steep, but the evening was thankfully free of Pan pipe music or chips, and our Larry Grayson impersonating waiter was simpering at Harold as we got into our taxi. So, he’s lost Blondie in Krakow but can always take comfort in the knowledge that he has a devoted admirer in Sopot. What is he like, eh???

NEVER AS GOOD AS THE FIRST TIME: KRAKOW REVISITED

Nothing is ever the same second time around, is it? After our triumphant visit to Krakow at the beginning of the year, we took our visitors with us this time - Sid Grimthorpe, Harold’s former NCO from somewhere north of Scarborough, and his wife Ivy. Lovely people, salt of the earth and all that, but I had great trouble deciphering a word they uttered. They spoke a guttural dialect vaguely resembling working-class Icelandic - it made Polish sound quite mellifluous by comparison.

We took them to the Kawiarnia Ratuszowa under the Rynek on the first evening, which was a good choice. It’s essentially a steak-and-chips place, but the food is always copious and good value for money, which is important where Sid and Ivy come from, and fresh, which is important to us. I think we all had steak, salad and chips in some form or other, and the bill was about 150 zlotys for four of us. Sid made approving noises in his native tongue, something along the lines of “Eee, arby reet hawa yer ganny son” (I’m sure all those from north of Watford will know what he meant!).

After dinner, Harold of course wanted to have a snifter at Panaceum and look up his old girlfriend Blondie, she of the long blonde tresses and quivering thighs. Indeed she was still there, but not as Harold remembered her. Gone was the shimmering mane of gold and the split to infinity skirt - she now sported a skinhead crop, nose ring, tattoo and Doc Marten boots. Harold smiled ingratiatingly in hopes that she would remember him and tell him her twin sister was in the back slicing lemons, but if she did remember him she certainly didn’t let on, and stomped sulkily back to the bar after slamming down our drinks. Harold was quite mortified, and convinced himself he must have inadvertantly jilted her last time, hence the embittered transformation. I made sympathetic noises, but had already spotted the sullen spiky-haired gel in a leather jacket and combat pants hanging around near the door. I hadn’t got the heart to tell Harold the truth, at his time of life it might have killed him.

The next evening, after a day tramping through the salt mines, we returned to the Elefant Pub which had so impressed Harold on our last visit - only to find it wasn’t called the Elefant Pub at all! It was in fact called simply Pub C.K. Browar, but the PUB sign over the door is adjacent to the sign over a department store called … Elefant. Oh well, it will always be the Elefant Pub to me. Sid, being a northern man, immediately took a shine to this very male drinking establishment and he and Harold had fun working their way through the Polish equivalent of a yard of ale - a 3-litre glass pipe with a tap at the bottom, full of cloudy beer (made on the premises - the pub is also a micro-brewery). Ivy and I had to almost drag them out bodily before they started on a second, as we’d reserved a table at Pod Aniolami, which we had so much enjoyed on our previous visit. Alas, we were faintly disappointed this time. Our first two choices of wine were not available, neither was the lamb main course. This is frankly inexcusable at the height of the tourist season. Harold ordered smalec to show Sid and Ivy some typical Polish cooking. Their reaction was not really enthusiastic, and the Polish speciality came off badly when compared with the scrapings off Ivy’s mother’s chip pan. Sid liked the red barszcz, but Ivy claimed the duck was tough (although Harold’s was delicious). My bigos was all right, but no more. Frankly, how exciting can bigos get? Having visitors from England, particularly ones as outspoken as the Grimthorpes, sometimes opens one’s eyes to faults one has a tendency to overlook as a resident in Poland. Such as the food. And the number of restaurants and cafes which charge you to use the loo, even when you’re a customer. Or the fact that shopkeepers NEVER have any change. We saw one girl open an empty till at the start of business one morning. For goodness sake, don’t they have banks here? It makes it very difficult trying to impress people, I do wish the locals would make more of an effort sometimes.

The next day we did our Jewish thing, and packed the Grimthorpes off to Auschwitz while we tramped around Podgórze for hours looking for the Emalia factory. When we eventually found it, of course it was nothing like it was in the film, and there was not even a plaque to commemorate Oskar Schindler. It was just an ordinary factory producing something or other. We dined in Kazimierz again, this time at the Klezmer Hois, which has a bigger dining room than Ariel, though still resembling your Aunt Myriam’s sitting room in Golder’s Green. The food was better than at Ariel, I thought - I tried chicken knedlach, or dumplings, which were delicious, and Harold’s trout was excellent. Sid had a huge vegetable omelette, and Ivy had chicken schnitzel , which she said was dry. I started to get the impression Ivy wasn’t over-keen on Abroad. There were two klezmer bands, the first young and rather soulful, the second older and more traditional Jewish wedding music. A large group of American ladies sitting behind us shouted at each other constantly throughout both performances, while we and the rest of the diners were trying to listen to the music. Harold finally thought up the most anti-American gesture he could make without mentioning the war, and lit a large cigar, blowing the smoke quite deliberately at the chattering matrons. Sadly even this did not shut them up.

Ivy wanted to spend the whole of the last day shopping in the Sukiennice, so we set up base camp at a terrace café on the square and occasionally relieved her of bags full of wooden carvings, Polish dolls, amber jewellery and embroidered tablecloths, freeing her arms up for more purchases. Sid sat nursing a Zywiec and muttering in his own language, something about “divvy gan yam weeya” which I think was a mild indication of concern about space in the suitcase.

On our last evening we tried a new place – U Szkota – a cellar restaurant and bar a shade upmarket after some of Krakow’s seedier student bars. The décor is olde-worlde and the Scottish theme extends to waiters in kilts and haggis on the menu – although we refrained from pointing out that the hunting scenes on the walls were most un-Scottish. Ivy and Sid, cautious after the exoticism of the Jewish restaurant, played it safe with sirloin steaks in various incarnations, but thankfully this time Ivy declared hers delicious. Harold went for roe deer (or “Bambi”, as he insensitively calls it) which was very good. I, unwisely (not like me at all) chose goose. I realized later, as I was sawing through the leather-like pieces of meat, that goose can never be fresh in a restaurant due to its size, and had obviously been cooked earlier, sliced and frozen. Let that be a lesson to me.

On our return to Warsaw, we took Sid and Ivy to Champions Bar at the Marriott for their farewell dinner in Poland, where we had burgers and pizza with chips. They thought it was reet smashing, like.

N.B. If you wish to try some of these restaurants yourself, the addresses can be found in “Krakow in your pocket”, a handy little guide available for 6 zl from any Krakow bookseller or tourist office.