The mess under the floors of my flat is actually rather funny. Never mind that four storeys of wall are supported by a few thin and bending floorboards with no joists beneath them. Where there are some joists they haven't been screwed in place or buttressed or even nailed. So you can toe them from place to place. And cut very shallowly into the tops is a tangle of old gas and water pipes. Any builder thinking to nail on floorboards above would either flood the place or set it on fire. The various extremely young and polite Poles who are dismantling all this cannot believe what they are seeing. But something is the matter with them. I have yet to hear one of them say, 'kurwa.' I think it must be shock.

30 October

There’s been a good package on the radio this morning from the Polish town of Lodz, all about why young Poles are returning from the UK where they have working very hard and in droves (and multiple professions) for some years. Why? I discuss all this with my builders’ boss. ‘s according to the programme, I tell him, it’s because the Polis economy is on the up – a great beneficiary of EU membership (mm, he says); because the Brexit vote has made them feel unwelcome and uneasy (mm, he says); because after that vote the pound has weakened so what you earn in the UK no longer gives you as much at home with which ultimately to build your new house (and who is better skilled at doing that than many of you are?). Mm he says, and then shakes his head. ‘This is not the reason.’ ‘It isn’t?’ ‘No. They are leaving because they hate the British weather.’ Come again? Poles hate British weather? But Poland is cold and murky and dark and…’No no no. In Poland winter is winter and summer is summer. But here, nothing is anything.’ He has a point. After all, Poland has climate. We don’t. We have weather, which is (partly) why we talk about it or at least use it as a conversation opener. Who’d bother doing that if the weather was for the most part doing day by day what it was meant to do?

31 October

Conversation with Polish builders, prompted by the extraordinary tangle of pipework under the floors. I likened this to Cat's Cradle. Do you have the same game in Poland, I asked. The boss remembered playing it at school but not what it's called. The younger ones, Rafal, Bartek, and the two Karols looked bemused. Of course, scoffed the boss. They just played computer games. They agreed that was true although one of them had a vague memory of other people playing the game. But as to its name?....

1 November

We knew that the lower ground floor of my flat was damp, especially at the back. There can be many reasons for this but we have just discovered a big one. At the back was a lot of decking, which has just been removed. Underneath is the drain where rain water would go. The pipe that runs down from the roof for the rain water, and into which the kitchen of the flat upstairs is also plumbed (sink, dishwasher and washing machine) doesn't connect with any drain. It simply pours out all over the ground outside the back of my flat with nowhere to go except into the walls of the bedroom and my little study. I said it was funny, didn't I?