To The Auction

I thought you might be a bit worried about me yesterday, and so to prove I am a `good and dutiful daughter' I am letting you know at once that I am all right, and that I HAVE NOT be a `naughty girl'. Well - only a wee bit - by playing truant from the office. But, as usual in my case it backfired on me. (Do you remember the tooth I had out in Reading? And the pint of Blood I gave at the Donor Session in Moorgate? - And all the other incidents of similar ilk?). Well, as I particularly wanted to go to one of the big Auction Rooms in London, and as this would probably be my last chance to go to one, I arranged with a girl in the office to tell my boss on Thursday morning that I had rung up to say I was `not well' and had `a funny tummy'. And would you believe it, when I woke up yesterday I really wasn't well, and I really DID have a funny tummy? (I could see that old typist in the sky wagging his carriage-return finger at me and saying "That's what you get for telling lies!). Anyway, well padded up, and with a spare toilet roll in my bag, I set forth to meet Jim at Orpington Station at 9.30 and we caught the next train to Charring Cross where he introduced me to Mike Glukchick? (I don't know how to spell it, but that was how he pronounced it). This Mike is the father of the boy who has been held recently in the Ukraine. There is still no news of his son and Mike said he feels he will never see him again. Mike came from the Ukraine himself some 30 years ago as a refugee, and he told me that he pleaded with his boy not to go there for his holiday, but his son just said "Oh Dad you are so old fashioned, all those things happened 30 years ago and it is all changed now". Mike had a good business going in Canada which he build up after leaving the Ukraine, and it was in Canada that he met his English wife (the boy's mother), but she became homesick and wanted to come back to England after they were married, so he sold up and started up another business in Greenwich and he also worked nights at Farnborough Engineering (that was where he first met Jim) but his wife never really settled down and finally left him and the boy. He eventually married again, this time to a Polish girl, and apparently had quite some difficulty in getting her out of Poland in the first place. He made us laugh when Jim asked him how his second wife was going on, and with a saucy twinkle in his eye Mike said, "She no ****** good either - will have to send her back to Poland". He works on No. 4 gate at Charring Cross Station as a ticket collector now, and when we came through yesterday morning he greeted Jim as if he were his long lost brother. "Ah Jimmy" he said, beaming all over his face, "How are you my old friend? It is a long time since we met. We must go have a coffee, yes?" So we all went off together for half an hour and had a most interesting chat and a coffee (I did wonder if it was his tea-break, or if, like me, he was just playing truant for a while, but I didn't ask him). Anyway, my first impression was that he was a nice man, genuine type etc, but I have discovered from past experience that you have to know someone for a period of time before you can really say that about anyone (I do, anyway).

Grace Russ - 19th August 1977