Up at 9.00am, Peter had coffee and porridge ready for me. I took Truffles out in the park for her morning constitutional and duly took a platic bag to scoop up the poo, but was foiled by the fact that she decided to go four times! I had already disposed of the bag and its contents by the time she decided to go for it again, and again and again!
I purchased a three day old codger's ticket for the trams and Metro for the princely sum of £2.40. We went along by tram to Arkadia where I had a trawl through the electronics/CD/DVD store, whilst Peter went off to his rendezvous. I then went to the English bookshop that duly had a copy of the "Secret Army", and I purchased a copy as a present for Jerzy. I subsequently joined Peter and Agnieszka at Blikle for a coffee and a cake. It being Jerzy Wolanski's birthday today (he is 84), Peter decided to invite him and Jadzia Dembinska along to dinner tonight. A birthday cake was duly purchased at Blikle and then we went to Carrefour to complete our shopping for dinner.
After returning home, Peter managed to get the password for his WiFi from Netia - his provider - and I was able to catch up with my e-mails, the blog as well as doing some stuff for Charly. I had made arrangements to meet Jerzy in town at the Centrum station and accomp[any him by tram to the local Mormon Office. He has been getting parish records doing his family research from them. However they recently changed their method of operation and you can now only order the microfilms on the web and pay by credit card. As Jerzy has neither a computer nor a credit card, this proved to be a bit of a stumbling block as far as he was concerned. However a friend of Peter's set it all up for him and was going to order the requisite film, but it proved to be impossible to do. Peter likewise had a go and couldn't crack the system. The idea was that I would accompany Jerzy to the Mormons' Office, where the local staff naturally only speak English, and that of the American variety with an accent that defeats Jerzy's grasp of the language, and voice the complaint that their website is a load of crap and ask them why it fails to deliver. However, I thought I would have a go myself, and armed with Jerzy's user name, password, required film number, I had a go on my notebook. Same as my two predecessors the system refused to accept Jerzy's details. Unfazed by this I decided to create an account in my own name, and following the instructions managed to order the requisite film right up to the point of payment. I then phoned the Mormons' Office and asked if the person ordering the film had to be the same as the person paying. "No", anyone could pay. Did the person ordering have to be the same as the person who came to view the film at their offices? "No". Bingo - I was in business. I told the lady I was speaking to that I was acting on behalf of my uncle. She asked for his name, and when I told her she relied that he was a delightful man, and she was sorry about the changed methods of ordering up data, but that was the way of the world. I phoned Jerzy and cancelled our meeting at Centrum, and told him to come to Peter's half an hour early at 6.30pm.
I also managed to watch a Midsomer Murder on my Arcos before Peter asked if I would like to accompany him down to the Post Office with Truffles. It as nice and sunny and still reasonably warm. We trundled on down towards Zoliborz with Peter wanting to take in a clock to the watchmaker enroute. We arrived at the shop at 5.05pm, but unfortunately the sign stated that they closed at 5.00pm and it did not lie. However the Post Office was still open and there was no queue! We had a look around a nearby market to see if there were any "rydze" (a very tasty wild mushroom) but none of the stalls had any. We caught the Metro back one stop to Marymont and walked back the 200 or so metres back home.
Jerzy arrived on the dot bringing with him a bone shaped chew for Truffles with which she was delighted. I took Jerzy up to my room, along with a large whisky for Jerzy and completed the transaction. I duly received an e-mail informing me that all was kosher and I would be notified when the film arrived at the local offices. Jerzy was delighted.
Meantime Jadzia had arrived and brought along a bottle of her "nalewki" - home flavoured vodka, which we soon sampled. Bortsch for starters was followed by curried chicken breasts, as well as some riotous conversation, which gradually turned more serious as Jadzia decried PiS (the opposition party) and its leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski. She thought he posed a great danger to Poland and was appalled at the way he had polarised Poles. A comparison with Hitler, in terms of grabbing absolute power, was dismissed by Peter who stated categorically that Kaczynski wasn't in the same league as Hitler. The wine flowed and Peter went off to get the birthday cake returning with it errupting with a flaring firework and two candles.
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