A Slice of Bread and Butter
The voice of The Bread and Butter Thing - with stories from the frontline of the cost of living crisis from one of the UK's leading food charities.
A Slice of Bread and Butter
From Poland to Manchester: How Zosia found purpose in giving back
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Behind every food bag at Bread and Butter is a dedicated volunteer like Zosia. Having escaped living under martial law in Poland, Zosia arrived in the UK in 1982 and immediately took on multiple jobs without seeking government support. This self-reliance continued as she raised three children while working. Join Mark and Alex as they talk about managing on a modest pension, property prices and finding purpose in giving back.
Welcome back to A Slice of Bread and Butter with Mark and Alex from the Bread and Butter Thing. We're a charity that delivers affordable food to the heart of struggling neighbourhoods, to help nourish communities and act as a catalyst for change.
Speaker 2We provide access to a nutritious, affordable range of food, which means our members can save money on their shopping, feed their families healthily, as well as access other support too, right in the heart of their communities.
Speaker 1Yeah, and this is where we share a slice of life with somebody involved in bread and butter and hear about how they connect with us. I went to meet Zosia. She's one of the volunteers at our Altrincham Hub.
Speaker 3I'm Zosia Gwizdek. I live in Timpley, I am retired. I finished my job a couple of years ago. I worked for the Manchester Metropolitan University Library for 20 years. I was a senior library assistant and there was a good time for me to leave. You know, they introduced a good package two years ago. Well, I'm 65 now. I was looking for a part-time job, but meantime my daughter got pregnant so she asked me to look after the grandson. So then obviously I was just busy with I'm still busy, and now she's expressing the second one and I'm here with my husband and one of my son, you know, live with us. So, yeah, yeah, just my son, you know, live with us. So, yeah, yeah, just go, sort of, you know.
From Poland to Manchester
Speaker 1Where are you from and how long have you been over here?
Speaker 3Sorry. Yeah, I come from Poland, Whereabouts the northeast of Poland, that's the Mazury part. I came over to this country, to Manchester 82. At the time I just wouldn't come back because Poland was under martial law so obviously there was a war, so it was just a bit of struggle. But you know, I had a life sorted in Poland but I had to sort of leave everything behind me and then, you know, start again here, got a job, got accommodation, three jobs, you know. Try to pay for the, you know for the accommodation.
Speaker 1You were holding three jobs at once.
Speaker 3Well, yeah, look after myself. I wasn't even thinking to go and just claim anything, you know, because it wasn't in my mind.
Speaker 1So you weren't looking for any kind of government help. It wasn't in my mind. So you you weren't looking for any kind of government help. You were just of that mindset where you're just thinking I need to work hard to make money to pay for myself absolutely.
Speaker 3But the first, first place where I went to sort of have a look, there was a polish club at the chitin chitin yeah, yeah they were fantastic. And then straight away managed, you know, to get you behind the bar. Then obviously, I went to abraham os, you know study english, for you know a few months, but that was a bit of challenge. And then, a couple years after I met, met my husband rick. He is actually polish but born in manchester okay.
Family Values and Volunteering Journey
Speaker 3Just have the job, look after myself, you know, study a bit of English. That's what I did at the time.
Speaker 1yes, you sound a very family-orientated person, looking after your grandchild and grandchildren to come. Is that what drives you family?
Speaker 3Well, I love family. There was six of us in my family three sisters, two brothers. We've always been very close. We're still close. We have really good connection. Yeah, everybody thinking about each other.
Speaker 1Nice, tell me about how you came across bread and butter thing.
Speaker 3As soon as I finished my job, obviously I was thinking, you know, either to do a bit of charity work. I've got one friend, gabrielle, who actually she does the exercise on Wednesday in Old Tringham, hope, and she said, oh, there is something else. So obviously I, just one and a half year ago, I've started, it's nice, it's a lovely, lovely place, but I didn't realize how many people actually coming, you know, to getting those bags and how we're helping them or whoever, whoever, but I suppose that's sort of like a wastage, you know, from the shops, from supermarkets, which I think, at least, is going in the right places.
Speaker 1Yeah, what drives you to do it, then? Because you volunteer every week.
Speaker 3Yes, yeah, I volunteer. I think it's a fantastic things to do, really, you know, because people you could tell people struggling. I'm very lucky I'm now. I haven't got state pension, I'm still struggling. My husband's got state pension, you know, the mortgage is paid, which probably was the obviously the most expensive thing in my life. But for the young generation with the children well, obviously without children, it must be really hard.
Speaker 1How much did your first house cost?
Speaker 3Our first house cost 50,000 0, 50 000. Yeah, 50 000 yeah yeah, yeah, 5 0, but at the time, yeah, that's right. But that's that. I thought that was expensive, but we still work full-time with three children.
Speaker 1It seems to have accelerated so much, doesn't it? Houses are so expensive now in comparison.
Speaker 3Well, you know, during that time, you know, my husband lost his job, you know. So we had to remortgage a few times.
Speaker 1Yeah, you don't have a state pension, so do you have any pension?
Speaker 3I've got a little private pension from my work.
Speaker 1Do you mind me asking how much that pays?
Financial Challenges in Retirement
Speaker 3£7,000 a year.
Speaker 1It's not a lot, is it? It's not a lot Exactly Because you've paid the mortgage off? Yes, it's not as bad, but rates are expensive as well, aren't they? I?
Speaker 3just got council tax today.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 3Was it over £2,000?.
Speaker 1Wow.
Speaker 3That's in Trafford.
Speaker 1That's expensive.
Speaker 3But we're managing, we're managing. I'm hoping you know, because I get my state pension in September. You because I get my state pension in September.
Speaker 1You're one of the women that were affected by the change of age in the state pension then.
Speaker 3I have been. I was 60, then they moved to 62, 63, and now he's 66. I think it's a little bit unfair. I would probably carry on working, but it's really hard, hard work.
Speaker 1You know to work till 66, 67. And, as you say, your grandchildren need looking after so that your Monica can afford to go to work.
Speaker 3The work she does is a counselling job. We're trying to sort of help her out. Then they could be able to pay the bills and mortgage. It is hard for them, but they're not complaining, you know, they just get on with things.
Speaker 1You had to flee war, and yet you say they have it hard.
Speaker 3I don't know, because I always think I'm like a family person. I always think, you know, I know that people go, they are worse off than me and you're trying to help them whatever way. You know. I know that people go, they are worse off than me and you're trying to help them whatever way you know I can. But obviously, at the time when my children had been born, I had, you know, a few jobs working in a shop, doing catering, doing caring job. I wasn't even thinking you know how hard it was.
Speaker 1Three children under five.
Speaker 3Under four. Yeah, there were three half-children half-and-monica.
Speaker 1And you were still working.
Speaker 3I was still working. I was still working. You know doing all different. You know jobs. Then when I got a full-time job in a library, I said, right, I have to finish with all these jobs. It was just lovely working in a library. Doing all these different courses improved my English.
Speaker 1Going back to bread and butter, we always try and say it's community-led bread and butter, but is it okay for the community? Does it work?
Speaker 3I think it does, looking at how many people are actually coming and buying those three bags, not knowing what is inside the numbers you know from, let's say, 70 to 80.
Speaker 1So there is demand for that, yeah, it's always busy, isn't it? It's always busy.
Speaker 3What's the strangest thing you've seen that you've had to put in a bag? I am packing fruit and veg. Last Tuesday we put some monkey nuts.
Speaker 1But it's everything is useful. It's normally in the chilled bags that you get strange things.
The Heart of Community Support
Speaker 3Well, that's like grocery the grocery you know, I've noticed Because it starts with the grocery. Oh, the sweets, the cakes.
Speaker 1At the hub last Tuesday I saw green Fanta. I've never seen it before. I'm just really pleased that they didn't put it in the bag and they just put it at the side if anybody wanted any.
Speaker 3Absolutely. I think I don just really pleased that they didn't put it in the bag and they just put it at the side if anybody wanted any. Absolutely, I think I don't know whether some parents realize you know how bad. Yeah it is. Yes, yes, but but like you said, it's personal choice.
Speaker 1Sometimes people don't recognize some of the vegetables. I've seen some vegetables that I've not recognized either. There was a huge one. Somebody told me it was like a Chinese leek. It looked like a spring onion but it was like two foot long. Ok.
Speaker 3But it's a nice way of learning, finding out what to do. You know with those items, but you know with the vegetables. You can't go wrong, really. No Trying to be creative. Yes.
Reflections on Housing and Generational Divide
Speaker 2Ah, lovely Zosia. We know Zosia, and anybody who follows us on Instagram and TikTok will also know Zosia, because she's a bit of a social media star, is she? She makes a beeline for us any time that we go to Ulty and it's always like oh, I would never have had that impression.
Speaker 1When I met zosia, she was definitely came across to me like a humble christian.
Speaker 2That is really quite private she loves a bit of glam though as well, doesn't she? Yeah, she wants to be appreciated, yeah, so tell me martial law.
Speaker 1Wow, that's a tricky one, isn't it? Martial law in poland? That must have been really difficult. So basically, martial means military law yes, so you are under curfew and you have to abide by all the rules. It's not like the police wow, and when was this?
Speaker 2what time period?
Speaker 1I think it was back in the 80s Solzhenitsyn was the guy that rebelled against it, and it was all around the time when the Berlin Wall was coming down as well, and it's just behind the iron curtain do you remember that?
Speaker 2phrase yes.
Speaker 1Yeah, it was communism, it was martial law, it was oppressive as a government and tough right. And how do you get out of that? Yeah, because a lot of places that have martial law. So north korea is a good example, right? Yeah, try and leave north korea.
Speaker 2You can't oh my goodness. So she came from poland to cheatham hill. It's my old stomping ground. Che Cheetham Hill. It's a colourful place.
Speaker 1Yeah, and what were you doing at the top of the tower block in Cheetham Hill, alex?
Speaker 2Dangling our legs off the side. It was great. It was the best view of the city, honestly. Yeah, the old council block was being converted into apartments and and on one side it was sort of a low-income community, but on the other side it was pressed which, which was the orthodox jewish community. So, depending on which window you looked out at, you saw two really quite different worlds absolutely it was a great place to live I have fond memories, I think.
Speaker 2What struck me? Obviously working multiple jobs we hear about this time and time again and the fact that it didn't occur to her to look for help, to seek out any extra support.
Speaker 1She was just cracking on I think we still see that right and and this is another one of those kind of common threads that we come across so often people that we talk to not just on the podcast but every day, they don't think because they just think it's normal, because it just feels normal to them yeah, and tell me what happens if you retire and you haven't paid your mortgage off well, can you actually afford to retire if you haven't paid your mortgage off?
Speaker 1because there's a retirement age, right? But yeah, bloody hell, the number of people nowadays that are still going to retire like poor zosia with a mortgage to pay still. So they've got to find a way of still paying it. There is no insurance that kicks in. There's no magic thing that says all debts are cancelled because you're retired. It's tough and you know it, I know it. More and more people get into retirement age still with debts and mortgages around them and they're just going to have to work longer and longer and longer but then, with the job market being so tough, there's certain employers that will proactively seek out elderly people.
Speaker 1Shout out bn q yeah, they will, because they're chatty and they're happy to do a simple task on the checkout or whatever, aren't they?
Speaker 2yeah, have you heard, in various scandinavian countries they'll have a slow checkout where you've got an older person on the till and older people who haven't got to rush off anywhere. You can just take your time coming through and having a good old chinwag with people. What a lovely, simple thing to do.
Speaker 1I saw one for mums the other day. Oh, did you Just for mums to go through? And I wonder if that's the opposite. I'm busy. Get out of the way, I just need to get through.
Speaker 2Or here let me hold your baby, yeah yeah, absolutely shout out to booths.
Speaker 1Then the northern retailer, because they posh, they're posh, yeah they're posh, but they actually like the scandies, do they? They look for the grey pound. They know so they train all their staff to be chatty. So if you ask them for something, you know if. If you go into other retailers and you say where's the soup, or whatever, they're all trained to walk you around but they'll barely speak to you as they walk around. But these guys will chat to you and engage you in conversation throughout and you go out going. What a lovely experience.
Speaker 2Oh, that's nice. I didn't know that.
Speaker 1Yeah, but you pay for it, don't you?
Speaker 2A quid per word. Oh, I like that when brands have those little unseen sort of values and qualities.
Speaker 1Timpsons Timpsons is Well. I love Timpsons for that sort of thing because they're big in adoption as well.
Speaker 2What do you mean?
Speaker 1Huge supporters of adoption, so they will support families and support kids that are adopted into careers through Timpsons, as well as people coming out of prison.
Speaker 2Oh, that's ace, that is.
Speaker 1Again, stuff that you don't see.
Speaker 2Unseen kind-ish, so you don't have to put everything on social media.
Speaker 1No, you don't, no, you don't.
Speaker 2And tell me about Green Fanta. This is a new one on me.
Speaker 1When I first saw his usher at the hub in Altrincham there was a Beetlejuice promotion. Oh was it? But it was Green Fanta. I just thought please, god, don't let that be going in the bags. It wasn't, but people were giving it out as extras. Is it not just apple?
Speaker 2ties repackaged.
Speaker 1Well, no, because that was the weird thing, because it was Fanta-flavoured, orange-flavoured green goo sort of thing. It was weird.
Speaker 2Hayley in the office the other day was talking about green ketchup. I don't remember this.
Speaker 1Yeah, all right. So green ketchup doesn't taste the same, because Heston Blumenthal yes because Heston Blumenthal, he will always tell you that sight and your nose and your senses, it's not just taste. So when you are presented with green ketchup, it doesn't taste the same as red ketchup, because you've seen it and it's green. But if you were blindfolded, I'm sure, yeah, but do you eat that way?
Speaker 2No.
Speaker 1Which I think is why it didn't work.
Speaker 2They do those dining in the dark nights, don't they? And where everybody comes out and just says everything tasted like chicken, it just sounds pointless, which just goes back to yeah, oh, I can't even say his last name Heston Blumenthal. Blumenthal's point.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, yeah. Going back to the houses, though, and mortgages and stuff because of people not having much pension either, and me being this accountant in charity clothing, also seeing a lot of this equity release stuff.
Speaker 1So if you come across this where people will go to a broker so if they paid off the mortgage, yeah they'll say right, okay, we'll give you x percent of the value of your house as a lump sum for your pension or whatever you want to do with it, and then when you die, obviously we get that percentage of your house. So let's just say your house was worth 200 grand. Yeah, yeah, they would give you a set amount of money for half of it, and then when you die, they get it sold and whatever half of it comes to, they get.
Speaker 2What happens with people with kids or inheritance and all the rest of it.
Community-Led Solutions and MP Engagement
Speaker 1People are cashing it in because they haven't got pensions Right yeah.
Speaker 2No, this is new news to me.
Speaker 1It's another thing that is happening because people have paid their mortgages and they're just thinking I'm sat on this asset yeah I'd like to give it to my kids, but actually I'd also like to be able to live. Yeah, but speaking of housing, clearly it is still a challenge for the opposite end, the younger generations, the gen zers they're all still at home, aren't they?
Speaker 2with mum and dad yeah, no, mine is yeah, and do you charge him?
Speaker 1He's at university, but if he does come home, what we said to him is you're only allowed home if you get a job, because the last thing you want is them to.
Speaker 2Yeah, dossing.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2I saw something the other day where these parents charged their working child £200 a month Bed and board. Bed and board, but then they were using that as a lump sum to give back to them, to put a deposit down on a house. Nice, nice, I thought, oh yeah, I like that. So it's almost like a sort of a saving scheme even though it's disguised as something else, a bit like you being an accountant in charity.
Speaker 1Worker clothes I love doing this podcast because of the people that we meet. Like Zosia, it reminds me time and again of how much people care about their own communities. We've heard people politicians say community is lost. I don't think it is. I think it may be lost to Westminster. He says, putting his political hat on. But we don't see that. We see community and we see the amazing things that people do every day.
Speaker 2So when MPs have visited our hubs, what has been their impression?
Speaker 1So, I'm not going to name names. In fact I will name one name that everybody will know, ed Meliband. I went to see him and was expecting a cliche Westminster politician because his constituency is in Doncaster in Yorkshire, right, and as I turned up the volunteers knew him. He was having a conversation with one of the pensioners that was there because she rang him when he'd said that the flood couldn't be in her back garden when it was all flooded and she said well, bloody, come down here and I'll show you. And he did. He actually went and knocked on her door and he said show me, and hats off to him. He was there and he was like bloody hell, I didn't expect it to come this far. Really sorry, let's get something sorted out. No way proper hard-working constituency mp. So that dude must be working his socks off. But the number of ms that rock up nobody knows. And they say who's that then?
Speaker 2That's your MP, and they're there for the photo op.
Speaker 1We invite them and try to actually tell them about what we do and the data that we get from our members and what they tell us about. So we try to educate the MPs that way and say, can we have a look at what it looks like to be food insecure, but what the community is doing to solve this?
Speaker 2Because you walk in and you feel like you're gate-crashing a party sometimes. Have any of them been like, wow, I can't believe the sense of belonging.
Speaker 1Yeah, that's a nice thing for them to see, because the more MPs see that, the more they can actually take that out to Westminster and say this is a good thing that is happening and grassroots, community-led stuff is a good solution.
Speaker 2More than just food. Yeah, three little magic words that I use a lot yeah, more than food.
Speaker 1So if you'd like to know more about the Bread and Butter Thing and what we get up to, you can find us at Team TBBT, on TikTok, on Instagram, on Twitter, on LinkedIn or online at breadandbutterthingorg.
Speaker 2And if you have any feedback or thoughts on the podcast or you'd like to come on and have a chat, drop us an email at podcast at breadandbutterthingorg.
Speaker 1Lastly, we're always open to new members at all of our hubs, so if you or someone you know would benefit from our affordable food scheme, you can find your nearest hub at the Become a Member page of our website.
Speaker 2And please do all those things that podcasts ask you to do Like us, subscribe, leave us a review, share us with your friends and chat about us on social. Please, please, please.
Speaker 1See you next time.
Speaker 2Bye.
