Introduction

BEYOND THE PALESKI

Introduction

I'm sitting at the kitchen table and I'm going to write a book, this book - the one you're reading now. This is my first book and I've only just remembered that I don't know how to write books. But there can't be much to it can there?

I've been here for half an hour so far, wondering just where to start and I couldn't come up with anything so I asked my wife Alicja. Alicja has an advantage over me in that she's actually read a lot of books and she thinks I should begin with what's outside the windows and why we're here and from there on, she's convinced me, the words will just come and the problem will be knowing where to stop.

So, what's right outside the windows? Outside the window behind me is the farmyard and it's under about 3 feet of snow with two tracks cutting through it, one leading to the barn where we keep the car and the other leading to the gate. Somewhere in a tunnel under the snow is a large dog called Misha. She's a Kaukaski (Caucasian sheepdog) and for the next 2 months she will live in her self constructed igloo - a cold weather dog that’s allergic to central heating.In front of me, as I look out of the other window, is a valley leading down to a frozen stream where a small group of kids are skating and, as I look past them up the hill, there are two houses, almost invisible, clad in the same snow as the fields but their presence given away by the smoke from their chimneys.

There isn't a sound out there and there won't be all day because the tractors have gone inside for the winter and the horses and sleighs have come out. It's pretty too, like something from the pages of a Tolstoy novel, a Christmas card scene but real. It was more pretty to me six weeks ago when all this white stuff first came floating down from the sky like a million tons of Ariel Ultra and filled up my gumboots but now I'm fed up with it because I know it will be around for another eight to ten weeks - I long for some green.

Where am I? My wife Alicja and I live on a farm in a tiny village in north east Poland way up near the borders with Lithuania, Byelorussia and that part of Russia which contains Kalingrad but became separated from Russia proper by some historical event of which I know nothing. It's the coldest part of Poland where the winter temperatures have been known to drop below 30 degrees Celsius and the area is as remote as it's possible to be in Europe.

It's a sparsely populated area of lakes and forests little known to, and seldom visited by Westerners except the odd intrepid bird, bison, butterfly or beaver watcher who ventures this way in search of something rare to tick off in his book and tell his friends about when he returns home. The land is farmed by peasant farmers using traditional practices long forgotten in the West, except for demonstrations at agricultural shows, and it's a most beautiful place in which to live - far from any industry of any kind save for the odd agricultural repair shop.

Why do we live here? Good question, and I'll write another book about the reasons some day but the short answer to it is that we were short of money and could hardly have raked up the deposit for a house in England or Australia, whereas here, we could own a house lock stock and barrel and still have the money to renovate it. The biggest problem with the whole idea though was that we knew there was no work in the area and no safety net of social security to fall back on.

So here's what we decided to do. We'd buy a farm, renovate the house and do B&B for those odd intrepid bird and animal watchers. Simple enough idea, a few floorboards, bit of plastering, throw a few walls up here & there, build a bathroom and advertise. There was one condition which Alicja insisted on from the outset; that I was to tell everyone here that I was a strict teetotaler and never to let anyone in the village see me drinking. Otherwise, she said, you'll have every piss pot in the village turning up at our door wanting to drink with you. She was right!

This is a story of what life is like in a small village in the middle of nowhere stuck in a nineteenth century time warp. It's the story of our first year, the laughs we had, the people we met and the reactions of the villagers, most of whom had never met a foreigner until we came here to live.