Just For Lookin' Thru

Paulina will be awarded her doctorate in July. In the UK from Poland for a holiday in Somerset, she’s bored sitting about in her family’s home so she’s signed up with an agency for some temporary work. I met her and Nora before a charity function where I’m waiting to interview some of the guests. Paulina’s PhD is in chemical engineering and she tells me there will be work for her, in some country, but maybe not in Poland where her fiancé is living. She is rueful, “Germany perhaps, but then I won’t see him.” She is resigned to living where she finds work, and missing her loved ones. A guy dressed in kitchen wear comes out and says, “There are Russian jets in our air space, and they’ve got ships in our territorial waters, off Scotland .. and they won’t leave." When he gets no response from this cheery piece of news, he disappears back through the swing doors. The barmaid leans forward and yells into the room, to no-one in particular, “We’re going to war, and I don’t give a sh...

The tall young man at the back of the church stands with an air of complete assurance, his height lending elegance to his simple grey lounge suit. His hair has a natural curl, cut short and neat, his face a pleasing mix of even featured attractiveness and authority. He scans the interior, walks with swift, long strides up the aisle to the altar where he confers with an obese man, shabbily dressed in faded black sweatpants and crew neck sweatshirt, his hair and beard greasy. This enormous man is pale, his skin the sickly hue of a corpse beside the pink faced young man beside him and, when the exchange is over, he moves away, slowly pushing the bulk of his stomach ahead of him, breathing with difficulty. The young man hurries to the back of the church, gives instructions to a pre-pubescent boy, and walks forward to stand beside a fidgety dark haired young man in the front pew. The boy gathers up the orders of service, placing one on each seat and the two men stand together, their backs...