Where are the small boat babes?

Realising that I was one of only two non-Polish women while partying with the youngsters from my local Pizza Express – my home-from-home for a decade now – I had to laugh at myself. How I love my waitress mates; Marta, Polina and Camila have become almost like family, showing up self-funded and shoutily supportive at my theatrical endeavours over the past couple of years. Now one of them has left to return home, I felt a sense of loss.

And to think I used to believe that Poles coming here was a bad idea. Growing up adoring my communist, trades-union-organiser father, my objection to mass immigration was to do with the cheap labour, union-busting angle rather than something stuffy like not liking the smell of their cooking (I love pierogi). I still think it’s ludicrous that we have so many idle youngsters wasting their lives on the dole – my preferred word for unemployment, which makes it sound like the waste of life it is, rather than ‘benefits’, which makes it sound like something improving – when they could be working in restaurants, making friends, learning a trade and having a laugh.