As the Stefan Golaszewski Plays open this week, I devise a special Bush Theatre Menu with Ewa, the effervescent owner of Patio Restaurant, one of London's best Polish restaurants. We talk about pierogi, blini, Polish ham and pickles, vodka on the house and sour cream, borsch and petit fours or fresh fruit. We touch on the subject of Polish communities in London and the sheer size of the word of mouth network she has operated for over twenty years. The habits of people vary, of course, depending on their age, background and reasons for being in Britain but our informal chat over some delicious dishes, as groups of various ages file into her restaurant, filling it in half an hour, is incredibly interesting? She has seen both old and new come through her doors; generations speaking excellent English or none at all; a healthy cosmopolitan mix of Londoners with no Polish connections enjoying the warmth, hearty food, Ewa's singing, and her theatrical anecdotes of serving a starter at seven and holding the main course until after the Bush show has come down!
This community spirit, a local neighbourhood atmosphere and a central European décor and cosiness make me think of another age, pre-digital, offline, word-of-mouth, yet as an email pops into my inbox from londynek.net, I rejoice in the thought of 26,000 people reading about Bush BEE and any other relevant Polish events in the UK over the coming month. The portal, set up to promote events, spread information and provide Polish-language listings feels like a digital online gate into a fast, efficient, democratic forum where people can find out about events in time, advertise to each other and generally communicate with ease, and crucially in todays lifestyle, speed. Teachers still work in Saturday schools for children of Polish and Latvian parents; newsletters and newspapers still exist; Ewa at Patio still speaks to all her customers in person but londynek and portals like it reach a whole new audience - people too busy to come in person, too young and recently settled here to engage in the community, too engrossed in their own day to day lives to read the newsletters but nonetheless, responsive to the feeds on their iphone, in their own language.
As we prepare for our first event, Kaspars Gorkss from Queens Park Rangers talking about his game, football in this country, his Latvian background and life in London, Hammersmith and Fulham News announce an article about Bush BEE and I talk to the ladies running the Latvian Centre and the Polish and Lithuanian shopkeepers in Shepherds Bush, eager to see them and hear their responses to BEE pilot events.
Click here to see the full line up of Bush BEE events.