Whenever I am in Tarnowskie Gory I grab any opportunity to play live guitar. Starting from my first concert in Galeria in Christmas 2005 up until to the Golden Gate 25th Anniversary Party in the summer of 2016, I enjoy the thrill of being onstage with others and, more importantly, that first Tyskie after playing well. Back in Wales I work strange hours and my days are full with my family so visiting Poland is the only chance I get to play live anymore. When I knew my wife, daughter and I would be coming to TG for a wedding in September I knew I had to try and arrange some kind of concert.
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In Galeria in May this year, that being 2015, current Golden Gate Native Speaker Ben Sixsmith and I performed a beautiful acoustic song by Green Day called Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life). We performed it acoustically. Did we perform it beautifully? I don’t really care. We played it as well as we could and we did so in honour of Alina Myszka – an English Native Speaker from 2005 to 2006 and, really, the last female Native Speaker who ever had an impact at Golden Gate. She unfortunately died in April but isn’t forgotten.
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The way I remember it, I finished teaching in Golden Gate on Tuesday, flew back to Britain on Wednesday and by Monday I was a policeman. That was December 2007. On February 25th 2019, after more than ten years in the police, I’ll be a teacher at Golden Gate again. The school is very dear to my heart. Golden Gate brought me to Tarnowskie Gory, one night in TG I met the girl from Ohio who became Mrs Williams and now we have a little daughter, Zosia. I know I’m a Gorol but I feel like I’m coming home.
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The Golden Gators you can see and hear in the year 2011 are a superb band. I have seen them a few times on my visits back to Poland and they keep getting better and better. They play long gigs to big crowds and often get well rewarded for doing so. In January 2007 on a freezing hill in Bytom - surrounded by angry biker gangs, fire and a Nazi - it was a different story for The Golden Gators…The Original Golden Gators.
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If I ask a Pole a question and they answer ‘no’ I have to think – are they answering me ‘no’ in English, which means ‘no’, or are they answering me ‘no’ in Polish…which means ‘yes’? If they answer ‘nie’ I have to make sure I have heard them correctly because ‘nie’ sounds very much like ‘yeah’. Of course ‘nie’ means ‘no’ in Polish and ‘yeah’ means ‘yeah’ in English. Are you confused? I was. The title of this piece of writing is using ’No’ in the Polish way – Is Polish difficult? Too right it is. It is an absolute nightmare.
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