Extract 4 - Poland

Barbican, Warsaw Please note, this illustration is not from the book.

Some time after midnight came a loud rapping on the van door. Outside were a couple of young policemen, rather officious, obviously bored with their night shift and looking for something to happen. I showed them my passport, made sure that I wasn't illegally parked, pleaded no Polish and thought I'd got rid of them.

Ten minutes later they were back, with a colleague even more officious. He embarked on a lengthy argument with me, uninhibited by total lack of mutual understanding, except for the word "dangerous", which he repeated boringly often and backed up by melodramatic theatre with a pistol. The fact that my "Bullshit" turned out to be also in his English vocabulary sent Anglo-Polish relations below freezing point. It was indicated that I was to accompany them, complete with van, to the Police Station.

I nearly answered, more out of bolshiness than anything else, that I had taken a sleeping pill and couldn't drive anywhere before morning. But I bit my tongue just in time. Although I had copies of my prescription with me just in case, the mention of drugs of any sort could only inflame the situation - especially given the language problem. I had envisaged many ways in which this trip might founder, but being banged up in a Polish nick for possession wasn't among them.

Hoping that my drug-dilated pupils wouldn't be spotted under the arc lights of the interrogation room, I climbed into the driving seat with a conspicuous ill-grace and followed carefully through a maze of country lanes, going very slowly and taking good care not to bounce off any trees. It would serve them right, I thought sourly, if my remaining thimbleful of petrol chose this moment to run out, and they had to tow me in...

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