Warsaw
‘Hmm, let me see,’ said Tomasz the painter,
rubbing his temples. He was trying to think of a plumber who could install a new bathroom shower. ‘Well, there’s Jacek — no, sorry, he’s gone to Dublin. There’s Lech — no, I’m afraid he’s away, I think in Bristol. There used to be that guy, what was his name, Jackowski — no, he’s in London.’
He thought for a few more minutes. ‘Sorry,’ he said at last. ‘Can’t recommend anyone.’ Thus did I discover that within a hundred-mile radius of my Polish country house — a territory that includes the city of Bydgoszcz (pop. 400,000), and the surrounding Pomeranian countryside (add another 100,000) — there was not, at that moment, a single plumber to be found.
That was last summer. Since then — since they started regular flights from Bydgoszcz to Dublin and Liverpool, since people started offhandedly referring to ‘the million’ Poles living in the British Isles — things have got worse.
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