The flatmates have returned to their family homes for the Christmas break and I have the place to myself again... what bliss. For the last week Brunette Flatmate had her boyfriend staying for the second time, he'd travelled from the other end of the country and spent six days in Lodz glued to the box, that's when he wasn't sleeping.
Like the flatmates, The Boyfriend never once took a book of a shelf to have a look, never proposed an outing of any kind, never showed any curiosity about this city to which he has only visited once before. The Boyfriend is 21 and overweight. My closest friend back in London is 70 and she has more vitality, strength, intelligence and wit than these slovenly non-entities can ever hope to be blessed with.
Surrounded on every wall by books in Polish and in English, luxurious large format photographic books with minimal if no text, history, geography, art, biographies, pulp fiction and worthier novels etc etc. Over ten thousand books on every conceivable subject. None of my young comrades, however, are the least bit interested. They prefer to watch crap tele (I have just one fuzzy channel) or sit at their computers sending banal messages to each other on social networking sites. None of them are familiar with Poland second largest city, they have never been to any of the parks, have never visited the museums or art galleries, have never even suggested a stroll down the main street. Blonde flatmate attends college for just three hours daily and the rest of the time sits on her rapidly expanding arse doing sod all - watching films and online 'chatting'. She says she never has time to clean or hoover. Neither does she have the time for a part-time job. And now the parents of my soon to be ex-tenants must fork out more cash so that their offspring can move to accomodation that will be pricier, dirtier, uglier and further. Simply because their children are not willing to lift a finger.
