Tag: Scotland

Leave me alone!

Published on by Maciej ModzelewskiLeave a comment

Once upon a time, as a young journalist in post-communist Poland, I regarded the BBC as the golden standard of journalistic independence and professionalism. So you can imagine my disappointment when, after emigrating to the UK and making Scotland my new home, I realised that nothing could be further from the truth—the emperor-is-naked moment being the 2014 Scottish independence referendum. For that reason, among others, I don’t have a telly, and I don’t need a TV licence. And yet that wretched body keeps nagging me over and over again to buy one. There’s no way in hell I’ll ever do that, so stop distracting me from reading Lytton Strachey by the window. Actually, here is a thought: why not invent a licence for the window view? But know that—though for some reason I am eagerly awaiting the linden tree to bloom, as if the scent of the blossoms could exorcise the exhaust fumes—I’d rather draw the curtains than pay you a penny. Of course, you could always make bookshelves taxable by length or, better yet, charge a word fee, though in that case, I’m not so concerned: I don’t talk much, and my writing is usually concise.

More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com

Not quite family

Published on by Maciej ModzelewskiLeave a comment

After spending the greater part of my adult life in Scotland, I’m starting to wonder who I really am, because—technically a Pole—not only am I not visiting the old country, but I have even stopped using my mother tongue, since there aren’t very many opportunities for it, and English has now become not only my spoken and written language, but I even think in it. To be frank, I no longer know or care what happens in Poland, and if it were not for the passport I have to renew every ten years, I doubt I would pay more attention to the place than I do to the Solomon Islands. However, I can’t really call myself Scottish, or British for that matter, as I have never really applied for citizenship, mainly because I would have to swear allegiance to the current monarch and his heirs and successors, a thought that burns my republican soul like hellfire. So, I live my little life as an emigrant—a state of mind akin to that of a poor distant relative living in a spare room—if I may allow myself such an analogy—a household member, but not quite family.

More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com

Haggis

Published on by Maciej ModzelewskiLeave a comment

I have always wondered what haggis tastes like
because, despite living in Scotland for two decades,
I’ve never actually had the opportunity to try it,
and not for lack of desire, but due to dietary restrictions,
which would also apply to more foreign delicacies
like Yorkshire pudding (some Scots will appreciate the jest),
in toad in the hole in particular. Perhaps I’ll order it
for my last supper.

More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com

oil painting showing a woman in a white coat with a white umbrella walking through the city on a windy rainy day

Journal (Babet is coming)

Published on by Maciej Modzelewski1 Comment

Storm Babet is coming, and in preparation, I did some shopping so that I wouldn’t have to go outside for the next two or three days. The only thing that worries me a little is the window in my bedroom, which sometimes leaks when it rains and there is a strong wind, but I have long had a towel rolled up on the windowsill so that water can soak into it in case of a leak, and I will have to monitor whether anything is happening.

Of course, a storm like Babet is an exception, but it’s not like Scotland doesn’t have stormy days in autumn and winter. Sometimes the wind blows so hard that it is difficult to walk, especially on the long, straight streets that follow the direction of the wind and are tightly flanked by rows of tall buildings on both sides (I just learned that this kind of street is called an urban canyon or street canyon—every day is a school day). So I’m sure we will be just fine. The only thing is that instead of an evening walk, I will have to limit myself to riding a few miles on the stationary bike in my living room. I haven’t used it for a long time, so it’s worth starting to exercise with it again anyway.

an oil painting showing ancient Athenians debating in the agora

Journal (The doorway to wisdom)

Published on by Maciej Modzelewski1 Comment

Knowledge of languages is the doorway to wisdom, as Doctor Mirabilis once said, so over the many years of my school education, I learned, or rather, tried to learn, Russian, German, French, Italian, Latin, and ancient Greek. In the end, I only managed to scrape a smidgen of English, and even this was only after I moved to Scotland as an adult. On the other hand, one could repeat after Anne Dreydel that there’s no point in speaking many languages if you have nothing interesting to say in any of them. And for that, you need something more than just repetition of random facts approved by some Ministry of Education official, which, as Michel de Montaigne rightly noted, only stuffs the memory and leaves the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void.

Since there is no way, for obvious reasons, of joining the bunch following Socrates, the second best I could do was study philosophy at the university, which was my plan if I hadn’t failed my matriculation examination—the maths part, to be precise (my literary essay turned out to be one of the best of the year, so I clearly placed emphasis on the wrong part of my education). I passed it two years later, after leaving the army, but it was too late to pursue the original plan. I had to put on the braces of adulthood and get a job, which was a lesson of a sort. But I never really forgot about it, and from time to time, I tried to study philosophy on my own. The problem was that the books I read either bored me immensely or were too difficult to understand, so at some point, I just gave up.

A few years after coming to Scotland, when I finally managed to achieve a level of English that allowed me to read newspaper articles and technical texts at work with relative ease, I reached for a novel, but it was a total fiasco. And then, by sheer chance, I came across The Tragic Sense of Life by Miguel de Unamuno. It was an e-book, so reading it on one of those fancy e-readers with a built-in dictionary that lets you see the definition of a word if you highlight it turned out to be a delight. Following that one, I started searching for more using the phrase “philosophical essays.” Soon after, I also managed to find a few second-hand bookshops with shelves dedicated to philosophy. With every book I read, my appetite increased.

But then, at one point, I reached a limit. It was soon after I finished reading The Essential Plato, with an introduction by Alain de Botton. I bought Sartre’s Being and Nothingness. I tried to read it. I really did, but it was just too much. I gave up after about eighty pages. The next failure was Kenneth Burke’s A Grammar of Motives, although this time I persevered and made it two-thirds of the way through the book before giving up. So, now I know my limits and that I’m not going to be a philosopher or a philosophy scholar. But I can still enjoy a book of essays by A. C. Grayling, or the aforementioned Alain de Botton, or even Michel de Montaigne, although Charles Cotton’s seventeenth-century English is not easy to read, probably even for a native speaker.

an oil painting showing a busy street in a Scottish city

Journal (The power to cause harm)

Published on by Maciej Modzelewski1 Comment

Does Suella Braverman—by claiming that multiculturalism has failed—suggest that we should all subscribe to some manufactured by the likes of her image of Britishness? Because even if I tried to fit that delusion, I have a really hard time guessing what that actually is I was supposed to become since, after seventeen years here, in the UK—in Scotland, to be more precise—I’d say there’s no such thing as British, at least where I live, and if you ask any random Aberdonian on the street who they are, you’ll most likely hear Scottish. I’m pretty certain the same applies to Wales and Northern Ireland, although the situation in the latter is way more complex. Even in England, people are still likely to call themselves English first rather than British (a lot depends on how you phrase the question).

Coming from a country that went through half a century of totalitarianism, I always feel an unpleasant shiver running down my spine when I hear a politician, especially a representative of the government who controls the security services and the police, utter such bold statements. They should know better that such words have the power to cause harm, which is why I’m horrified that she says them so casually, or in fact, uses them at all.

There is a saying in my native language that overzealousness is worse than fascism, and I’m afraid it fits this situation perfectly. I will keep Braverman’s words in mind next time I watch V for Vendetta, which has been my tradition every fifth of November for quite a few years now.

a room full of books and a sky with books instead of a ceiling

Journal (Tsundoku)

Published on by Maciej Modzelewski1 Comment

Why do we collect books? For reading, obviously, but sometimes also to compensate for a sense of intellectual inferiority. There is strength in numbers; quantity uplifts, at least until someone pops that balloon by asking how many of them you’ve actually read.

Back in Poland, as a journalist, I was around well-educated people, and although no one ever asked me about it, my HNC equivalent was no match for their masters and PhDs. It may sound silly, but it was a well-hidden thorn in my soul, especially since I could only blame myself—switching between universities, moving from one field of study to another to complete nothing in the end—pure me. Of course, not all of this madness was in vain. Like a true Renaissance man, I could hold a conversation with almost anyone, and this helped me a lot in my journalistic work. But despite this, I couldn’t shake the feeling of inferiority of a provincial boy that I was.

And this is where obsessive collecting came to the rescue. It took me many years, but I had acquired quite a large collection of books, and I was proud to see the admiration on the guests’ faces as they looked around the room that looked more like a library than a living room. It wasn’t like rich people bought entire collections of books just for decorative purposes. I actually read at least some of the books I had. Besides, a large part of my collection consisted of various dictionaries and encyclopaedias—there were no smartphones back then and the Internet was still a novelty—which I used for work and when writing poetry. However, I’d be lying if I denied that this show-up part had no significance.

The most tragic thing about all this was that I had to leave all these books in Poland. It would cost me a fortune to get them to Scotland. But after seventeen years here, I’m slowly building a new collection, although this time I try not to overdo it and, of course, to read them regularly, but the ratio of books read to unread is still not the best. It seems that the Japanese term tsundoku is still closer to the truth than not in my case.

a white van parked on the side of a country road with a mountainous landscape in the background

Taxonomy for beginners

Published on by Maciej Modzelewski1 Comment

I can’t be a crazy cat lady since I’m a man,
and I don’t have even a single cat, but that’s a minor detail.
Living in the north of Scotland, if anything, excludes me
from the bon chic bon genre.

I could always have become a white-van man
if I had bothered to get my driving licence first.
And, of course, there is always the obvious choice—
a Polish plumber.

A word of advice if you are in a similar dilemma:
whatever label you choose, make sure it’s clear.
People forgive you anything but ambiguity.

a man is looking through a book in a pound shop

The first time at home

Published on by Maciej Modzelewski1 Comment

Have you ever been to a pound shop?
I still remember, as if it were just yesterday,
my very first time in one.
It was right after I arrived in Scotland.
Imagine a recent immigrant, still without a job
and already on a very tight budget,
in a place where everything costs only a pound.
I found it an absolutely marvellous idea,
especially after discovering a well-stocked bookshelf.
Of course, I did not know a single word in English then,
so there was no chance of reading any of them,
but the mere fact that I could have some for the future
was enough, like a beacon of hope
that sooner or later everything would fall into place,
because where there are books,
there is home.