Original features.

Zygmunt, my 86 year old neighbour on the floor below me has gone for his usual bi-monthly trip to New York to get his pacemaker checked. He has an old pal there who is a specialist. Meanwhile, his younger sister Basha has decided to have a clearout and sling a lot of rubbish. I'm a hoarder but in their place you can hardly move.

I've only ever been invited into the main salon and have never managed to get deeper into the apartment. They have lived there for 60 years. Much of the furniture is - like the flat - grand and impressive, and most probably was bought by the flat's original owner 100 years ago. You wouldn't want to move it in a hurry. A feast for the eyes, it is combined with garish kitsch which elderly people seem to acquire a taste for. Nylon clad dolls, miniature plastic and glass ornaments, teddy bears, battery powered figures which light up and dance, and other hideous knick knacks.

In the guise of helper I have seized the opportunity to take a look at the rest of their flat which has long been kept hidden and my first glance confirmed what I'd long suspected. A treasure of orginal fixtures and neglected furniture. At the other (and less ornate) end of the flat is - at in my place - the second stairwell which would have been used by the servants. Wooden panelling in the hallway (covered by years of yellowing gloss), ebony coathooks and a splendid oak framed mirror stand outside the disused kitchen which is just as it was when it was built in 1906. Art Nouveau tiling on the walls, a white tiled Aga type cooker with brass hooks and rails, a belfast type sink with brass taps, and an exquisitely tiled turquoise and cream tiled floor. Basha and an elderly helper discuss 'updating' it all, getting rid of everything and turning the room into a bathroom. I know that if I offered to fit a cheap plastic shower for them I could strip the whole space and take it upstairs.

This forgotten room is filled with copious bin bags of clothes, rubbish, and fragments of antique furniture. Serving as a junk room, the door is opened only to throw in another broken chair or worn out coat. The layout of my apartment is the same upstairs on the top floor, although I have prettier ceilings, more light and less original features.

Basha is in her sixties and a lunatic. Hundreds of pills are invariably spread out on every horizontal surface. Her brilliant make-up is applied as a clowns on smack, the outfits are ludricrous and accessories favoured include dead animals and extravagant costume jewellery. When I knocked on the door she appeared in a blonde wig and panama and insisted I don what she presented me with before I could enter. Sat sporting a purple velvet smoking jacket, long brown locks and a bowler hat, I drank vodka while she attended to her Santa Claus which lit up and skipped around on the table making HoHoHo noises. Dust covered framed photographs of Basha and Zygmunt in their youth sit on the grand piano along with dusty deflated balloons on sticks.

Quite early on in the evening Basha began pulling out curled up sepia snapshots of herself in her twenties and proclaimed belligerently how beautiful she was and how she had been adored. I've become accostomed to this routine and make all the right noises at each new photo presented to me. They have no children and no family to speak of. I often hear them arguing when I pass their door, Basha screeching obcenities and poor Zygmunt pinned into an armchair, his pacemaker working overtime.

The perfect flatmates.

My apartment is vast - over 2100 square feet - and can be quite lonely sometimes. I tend to leave the lights on. Having dwelt on it for sometime, and against all advice from friends, I finally decided that I would like to find a flatmate.

I live on the most desirable part of one of the most famous streets in Poland, and after posting a couple of pictures online asking for minimal rent was not surprised at being swamped with emails. Being the start of the academic year a large proportion of prospective candidates were students. Four weeks and many meetings later, I narrowed it down to two lively and pretty girls, with a couple of bedrooms to spare and not wanting to disappoint one of them I eventually settled on both. One a natural platinum blonde - a rarity indeed even here in Poland, and the other a raven-haired dancer. A typical male choice of course for which I refuse to apologise! They've been with me now for a few weeks and it is easy, fun and much warmer at home. They have the run of the house as long as they don't fill it with hideous things and we share everything.

What happened to Autumn?

I remember long leafy autumns in East London, Victoria Park in the rain, a slow gradual slide into a winter not particularly cold. Dark evenings when the shops light up the dim streets with colourful displays and living room windows give us an eye into the lives of people returning home after work.

Here in Lodz we plummet from the high temperatures of summer to just above zero almost overnight. Unprepared and unwillingly to succumb immediately to the start of another long and bleak winter, I freeze in light tops with no hat or gloves. They tell me that until the snow falls we are indeed in autumn but I find that of little comfort when I'm shivering at the tram stop. It's easy to spot the British here in Poland as they too are still wandering around in t-shirts apparently oblivious to the chill.

Word of the week: Jesien meaning autumn.

A few days in Dusseldorf.

I saw out the last days of the summer in Dusseldorf with my Big German Friend, his wife Chrissie and their adorable seven month old baby. They have a beautiful apartment above a trendy coffee-shop in a pretty tree-lined street filled with luxury cars. Chrissie's artistic eye ensures that every corner of the flat is deeply pleasing and a joy to be in.

At the weekend classic cars are brought out from their dark hiding places and paraded for all to appreciate while sipping caffe lates and peeking out from the Rheinische Post. Laid back and unpretentious, Dusseldorf exudes relaxed confidence and wealth and I imagine is what Monaco feels like without the gauche and suntans. Even the wide Rhine gliding through the middle of the town has a serene tranquility which the Thames and the Seine lack.

We soaked up the sun in their garden which is a 10 short stroll from the house and a stones throw from the river. I was impressed with their friends, interesting and interested, well-travelled and fun, warm and well-informed. This is what I miss most in Poland.

There is always a part of me that wants to stay in Dusseldorf. Buy a pretty period house in a leafy street with an old Jaguar parked in the drive and BFG just down the road. Another of Dusseldorf's attractions is it's size... it's surprisingly small with a population of less than 575000. It feels like you can get anywhere in the city within the space of 15 minutes.

BFG works long and hard and he was rundown, when I left he was about to jet off to Ibiza for 5 days of golf and leisure... although he told me golf also has it's stress!

Puncture repair kit.

On our daily ride round the park I got a flat tyre and ended up wheeling my bike home with the dogs in tow. Some time ago I bought a puncture repair kit in anticipation of such an episode and was actually relishing the challenge of doing something I haven't done since I was a teenager.

Whenever my dad was conducting repairs around the house he used to get me to 'help' which usually meant squatting by him for what seemed like an eternity while he fannied around with an ancient two bar electric fire, my favourite TV programme taunting me in the next room. Those dreary DIY sessions included bicycle servicing and mending punctures. It is of course a simple procedure and yet like many mundane chores inexplicably satisfying.

I opened the puncture repair kit and was comforted to find it is just the same as it was when I was running around in school uniform shorts and blackened knees. My kit consisted of 3 tyre levers, several rubber patches of differing sizes, glue, and a small abrasive file.
I pumped the tyre up and immersed it in a basin of water to locate the hole - a tiny line of bubbles confirming it's presence. I dried the area around the perforation and roughened it with the file to give the glue 'a key.' I applied a film of glue and allowed it to become tacky before removing the foil backing from the patch and placing it in position.

I left the repair to dry and explored the inside of the tyre carefully with my fingers for the possible cause of the puncture... a measure that is often forgotten. And there it was, a small sharp piece of metal embedded snugly and waiting for me to replace the inner tube so it could strike again. I removed the spike with the help of pliers and was grateful it had pierced my tyre and not the dogs paws. If I had a son, no doubt I would have him sat next to me helping, in the event it was Molly & Daisy watching intently, any movement around the bikes immediately incurring their excitement.

The next day I refitted the inner tube and set off half expecting the tyre to go flat again, my efforts, however, had been a success.

Moving up to Extra Large.

During my occasional bouts of weightraining I am often accused of looking gay. After careful consideration I have attributed this to the fact that I continue to wear t-shirts which have become too small while I 'beef-up'. Tight clothing is definately not cool, not on a heterosexual male anyway, so in order to eradicate this problem I have ditched my suddenly miniscule looking tops and took a quick trip down the shops to stock up on Extra Large.

This required quite an extensive psychological shift. I remember once being a Medium and the move up to Large was a vague and not particularly successful one. On examining my previous clobber on its short journey from drawer to dustbin I found that there were plenty of Medium in amongst the Large. No wonder I looked a bit of a Nancy, I've never been one to linger in front of a mirror and simply didn't notice. Generally, no-one wants to move up a size in clothing... unless you're a spotty seven stone schoolboy, beside which, when I was a Medium (in another aeon) Extra Large seemed massive.

Always reluctant to throw anything re-usable away, I would have rathered give my unwanted clothing - some of which had never been worn - to a good cause, but there are no charity shops in Poland and recycling is yet to take hold.

An unexpected adventure.

I set off in Esmeralda with Molly & Daisy for a Sunday jaunt in the woods on the outskirts of town. I picked up Bookshop Babe on the way and by the time we arrived it was looking menacingly overcast. We ventured well into the forest which apparently is the largest city forest in Europe as it is technically still part of Lodz. In the past I have come face to face with deer and wild boar. After an hour or so in the dark and eerie woodland, the sound of rain filtering down through the thin trees and gently landing on the forest floor persuaded us to turn back along the path from whence we had come.

I am reminded of the riddle "How far can one walk into a wood?" It never fails to befuddle and yet on hearing the answer it is delightfully obvious... "Into the middle, any further and one is walking back out again." My Big German Friend was so taken by it that he uses it when interviewing prospective employees.

Summers in Poland can be sweltering and the searing heat is often fragmented with storms the like of which I have never experienced in London, or indeed anywhere in England. I once passed through one on a night train and was thrilled and spellbound by the great shafts of lightning piercing the night sky, I remember peering through the driving rain running across the windows and wished that I could leap off and run out into the middle of the monsoon.

As we returned to the edge of the forest the rain had intensified and we took shelter in the concrete confines of a disused bus shelter. The light had dimmed to such an extent that a torrential downpour was plainly imminent. As we stood there looking out I took the moment to enact what has almost become a film cliche... I held BB in a close embrace and our lips met for the first time. It seems that in the movie world all the most romantic and dramatic scenes take place in extreme weather... or at the very least in the rain.

Having distracted ourselves for a spell we turned back to reality and the fact that the rain was not going to let up, so we ran for the car and, jumping in, set off for home. Road drainage is very poor in Poland, even on new roads in the city centres, and this makes for very difficult driving conditions when there is a serious shower. Deep pools had already established themselves across the wide communist boulevards, this combined with the leisurely to and fro of Esmeralda's windscreen wipers made the going slow and precarious. It can be difficult to judge just how deep these pools are until one is in the middle of them and it's too late.

After a little while we reached a main intersection, the rain was so furious now that visibility was minimal, and having narrowly missed a collision with another car who pulled out in front of us I managed to spot a place where we could pull over and wait for a respite in the weather.

Here we sat cocooned, Esmeralda's 1960's original style interior offering a pleasing relief from the raging elements. The rain hammered down and the windows quickly steamed up. We marvelled at the torrent, chatted and tried to comfort the dogs. And there we sat while the thunder roared and flash lightening illuminated all. Molly cowered at BB's feet and poor Daisy managed to squeeze underneath my seat, so frightened was she.

When I next wiped the window a little later I was confronted with a scene of pandemonium. Three cars had crashed into each other and another two had been abandoned nearby and were almost completely submerged. A steady stream of traffic in order to avoid the intersection which was now a sizeable lake were driving up and over the grass verge and tram lines to get onto another road. I opened the door to find that we were in a good eight inches of water and knew that we had to move immediately.

Notwithstanding the fact that I love Esmeralda, it's never far from my mind that a 26 year old car can be prone to trouble. She groans and squeaks and occasionally there's a discrete knocking from deep within her bowels, but she has never let me down and this day was thankfully no exception.

We followed the other madcap motorists up and over the tram lines and onto another highway. The storm was still ferocious and the thunder and lightening quite terrifying. BB lived not far and we managed to make it there by which time the tempest had abated somewhat. She invited me in to sit out the remaining squall but I determined to get home with the poor dogs. We made it back in one piece although I had to make a few U-turns due to vast ponds and accidents. At one point I nearly made a grave error when I approached a mass of water, the continuing downpour making it tough to tell its depth, it was only at the last second I noticed through the rain the top of a street bin peeking from the blustery surface.

I was glad to get home, the dogs even moreso and headed straight for the sanctuary of the dark bathroom where they sat quaking for the rest of the evening.

Word of the week: Burza meaning storm.