20 east

Tomorrow is Children’s Day in Poland, something that is taken very seriously. For some reason, even though the day itself is also not a workday, most of the action was happening today. Here’s what we got up to –

The morning was devoted a ‘festyn’ organised by Zosia’s playschool. They have three schools and children and families from all three were invited. They took over the grounds and sports hall of a local proper school for the day and organised events both outside and in the hall. The weather was fantastic today, up to 29C and non stop sunshine, so it went down very well.

Dancing outside was fun

Indoors, the best display was from the karate squad (boys and girls)!

Zosia decided to join the proud-parents-paparazzi for most of it

After that we moved on to Arkadia shopping centre to buy Zosia a toy for Kids Day and get something to eat. The most interesting photo opportunity was this (not the people, the sign behind them)

We then shot off across the river to the M1 centre at Targowek to pay for a new bed and they had a whole kids entertainment thing going on outside with colourful butterflies

being chased by a black&white bad guy with a net.

They also had people blowing the most enormous bubbles

That done, we headed home only to find that in the park opposite they had yet another event going on so we parked the car and wandered over. The band “DAAB” were playing;

(Apologies for not getting the sax and trumpet guys in the shot but they were on the other side of the set)

According to the unofficial website, “Zespół DAAB jest najpopularniejszym polskim zespołem reggea’owym” (DAAB are Poland’s most popular reggae band) and they did a fine job, I must say.

The park was full of the usual stuff including, of course, a set of bouncy castles (tigers actually), ball pools and all that jazz.

Just before heading home we did what all Poles do on such occasions and got ourselves a gofry (waffle)

I’m not sure why Zosia is looking so scared about this gofry, can she be worried about calories at age five? Perhaps she thought daddy was going to splat it in her face, like he always does!

That was about it, a day of non-stop kids activities. Didn’t take Zosia long to fall asleep!

One final notable picture was this, grabbed at the junction of JPII and Solidarności. A massive Nikon advert in the process of being installed on the face of a building. As if this city doesn’t already have enough of this trash!

If the lights hadn’t changed I was about to pop up there and cut his rope!

Sad news last Wednesday that Beryl Cook, painter, died (aged 81). I can’t claim to be the world’s biggest Beryl Cook fan but I always found her work to be down-to-earth, honest (unpretentious), colourful and amusing (if a bit samey). It is always refreshing to find good honest work amongst all the dross.

I’d love to have one of her works hanging on the wall but no doubt their price is far beyond our reach. We do have a painting by a Polish artist, Mrozek, which comes close. This one could easily be a self-portrait!