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Britain will always be my motherland, but Ewelina and I have a home in Poland. A personal reflection on love, family and living between two countries.

Last Wednesday, I spent a lovely evening with two friends, both of whom are in their seventies and former military officers. One is a retired Lieutenant-Colonel in the Royal Military Police and the other a former Major in the Intelligence Corps. As a lowly former Guardsman, I was very happy to act as Mess Steward for the evening. As these evenings often do, the conversation wandered across a wide and diverse range of subjects. At some point, we spoke about a friend of ours wh

This week's missive comes, for the first time, directly from Toruń, Poland. Mrs Bailey is in full interior design mode, while my father-in-law and I have been promoted to volunteer furniture movers and general porters. During the sweltering heat of a 36-degree Polish Monday, I somehow found myself carrying a desk home on a tram and a connecting bus. Fellow passengers looked at me as though I'd taken leave of my senses, although one older gentleman caught my eye and seemed to

Being kind, I would class my Polish as awful. You are forgiven for thinking that after more than twenty years of marriage I would at least possess a rudimentary understanding of the language. Sadly, that is not the case. So I begin this essay by acknowledging just how lamentable the situation really is. When Ewelina and I first started dating, I made a determined effort to ingratiate myself with the focus of my romantic intentions by learning a few Polish words and phrases. I

The articles I write are usually well considered, polished, and attempt to form a logical narrative. This one is a little different. It has been written directly from the pen without much censorship. Why? Today I celebrate my fifty-ninth birthday. I am not one for parties or grand celebrations on these occasions, but today I decided to take the day off. Ewelina is at work and I have the house to myself. When I first started writing these posts, I promised myself that I would

The traditional idea of retirement no longer feels entirely convincing to many of us. The image of quietly stepping away from work, withdrawing from productivity, and settling into a life built entirely around leisure belongs to a different era. For some people it still holds genuine appeal, and rightly so. But for others, especially those who still have energy, curiosity, experience, and ambition, it feels strangely incomplete. I am increasingly convinced that what many of u

My maternal grandfather, Reginald (Reg), retired from work in the mid-1970s. As was not uncommon at the time, he was gifted a carriage clock, which took pride of place as the centrepiece in his living room until the day he passed away. As a younger man, I was struck by the irony of this gift. In my ignorance, I saw it as an unkind and potentially cruel reminder that, for him at least, the clock was now ticking. There were fewer days ahead than behind. The clock was not warnin

I am not suggesting that retirement should involve finding the nearest comfortable chair and become one with it. That would be absurd. What I am questioning is something more subtle. The idea of keeping busy for the sake of keeping busy. It sounds sensible, almost virtuous, but I would argue it is a poor strategy not just for retirement, but for life itself. Retirement offers something quite rare. A shift in mindset from I have to do this to I choose to do this because it mat

I am quite comfortable with a challenge. I have always enjoyed doing something unexpected, or resolving an issue that nobody thought was possible. Give me a problem, a bit of doubt from other people, and a narrow route through, and I usually feel more alive rather than less. But of all the challenges heading my way, learning Polish feels the most daunting. That is not because I think I am incapable of learning it. It is a difficult language by any measure, and I do not say th

It has been a challenging few months. Not in a dramatic sense, but in the quieter way that leaves you replaying events and wondering how things became more complicated than they needed to be. Because, if I am honest, much of it could have been avoided by something very simple. A phone call. “Have you got a minute?” I was recently involved in a situation within a volunteer organisation I care about deeply. Nothing unusual on the surface. A difference of view. A few decisions t

This started as a work problem. It turned into a lesson about how I think, how I work, and what AI is actually useful for. This is not a how-to. It’s simply a record of what happened. I did not start out trying to use AI. I was trying to fix something that had been bothering me for a while. Remedial works were being tracked, but not in one place. Some lived in spreadsheets. Some arrived by email. Others appeared in audit forms or were mentioned in passing conversations. Every

There is a curious reluctance around thinking too far ahead when life appears to be functioning perfectly well. We are encouraged to be grateful, to keep going, to wait until something breaks before examining how it works. Planning, it seems, is only respectable when driven by necessity. Anything else risks you being labelled as a daydreamer. I have come to believe the opposite. The periods in life when energy exists, when routines hold, and when nothing feels particularly wr

Why Poland, you may ask. Well, why not? This is the part where I am supposed to regale you with stories of careful research into semi retirement destinations across Europe. Long evenings searching the web, conversations with expats, spreadsheets comparing cost of living, healthcare, climate, and lifestyle. I would like to tell you that story, but I cannot. The truth is far simpler. My best friend, the love of my life, my wife, is Polish. That single fact renders most of the u

It feels important to say this clearly at the start. I am not running away from my life. I have a good job, responsibilities, people who depend on me, and a life that, from the outside at least, looks settled enough. There has been no dramatic collapse, no sudden revelation, no urge to disappear into the sunset. But somewhere along the way, a quieter thought began to surface. Not loudly. Not urgently. Just gently nagging away in the background. If I ever start talking about l