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====== Andrzej Świdziński interview transcript ======

This is a full text transcript of [[:stories:pfsl:andrzej-swidzinski]].



  Oral history recording transcript
  Duration: 1 hour 08 minutes
  ----
  Chapters
  01 Childhood and Youth Memories
  02 Passion for Music and Band Beginnings
  03 Creativity, Parish, and Community”
  04 Artistic Life and Memories of Poland
  05 Generational Change and the Legacy of the Polish Community



Magda Jarczyk: My name is Magda Jarczyk and today is Sunday, 28th of March 2021, and this is an oral history interview for the project Poles of South London. Today we are interviewing Andrzej and to start with could I please ask you to briefly introduce yourself? 

[00:00:18]

Andrzej Świdziński: Hello, I'm Andrzej Świdziński, the youngest son of Zbigniew and Basia Świdzińska, who were one of originals in the parafia Balham and Clapham. Basically, they met and married, and bought a house in Balham. And we’ve lived in Balham most of our lives. All my brothers and sisters have now moved to other areas. I also have moved out of Balham. My mother is still alive and still lives in the same house I was born in in Balham. My parents were very, very much involved with the formation of the Polish White Eagle Club. My father was the sekretarz for Lord knows how long, he also assisted Cynar in original planning and idea of forming the club and was the structural engineer and architect behind the old people's home behind the Polish Club, and also the sala młodzieżowa and things which we'll come to when we start talking about bands. 

MJ: Thank you. And my first question is, how do you remember growing up in the ‘60s, ‘70s in Balham? How was it for you? 

[00:01:34]

AŚ: Very fondly. [laughter] The Polish parish was a very, very tight knit community. We had the przedszkoła at Nightingale Lane. Bogdanowicze, Ciechanowicze were families that lived very, very close by us. We would constantly play together, be involved in Zuchy together. At the beginning Cynar was very, very encouraging and we all służyliśmy do mszy, we've all served at mass, which was great fun because Lech and myself were very much into hopping out of the mass very early, because Cynar was also a very, very good businessmen, we'd got out and sell the Gazeta Niedzielna outside the church and shove it under people's armpits to encourage them to buy. [laughter] Once it was purchased, of course, we would get a cut of the money. So we would walk away from the church every Sunday, very happy with some money to buy sweets and possibly a little dinky toy or something like that if we had a very, very good day. And then after that, of course, we went to proper school. Again, we were an extremely large community at school. I met lots and lots of other Polish people from our parafia who didn't go to przedszkoła with me or didn't go to Harcerze like Tony Piwowarski, Bogdan Bławat, Andrzej Meyer. We were a massive community, a lot of us. Of course, there’s the girls as well, which of course at a young age, I wasn't very much interested in, but there were the girls as well. 

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