What a difference a day makes

Making my way from an early meeting back to the office, I find myself pondering on what constitutes an 'ordinary' day; the lifetime mean, the average. Think dull. This, I think, is it (above, ul. Poloneza). An overcast, damp, chilly Friday; heavy traffic, people in a rush. The flavour of everyday life, this is what people go on holiday to get away from.

In Poland, weather forecasters delight in telling their listeners of a 'niekorzystny stan biometeorologiczny', which means 'unfavourable bio-meteorological state'. Whenever the barometer falls, Polish offices and factories are full of lethargic people complaining that they can’t work effectively because of the low air pressure. They call themselves ‘cisnienowcy’ (‘those affected by [air] pressure’) or ‘meteopaci’ (‘those with weather sickness’). Should such medical conditions ever be discovered by British doctors and promoted incessantly by British weather forecasters, the UK's population would be moping around in a state of inertia most of the time, given the climate. (Above right:) Corner of ul. Pulawska and Plaskowickiej.

But a mere 24 hours later, I wake up to a cloudless sky and sunshine that brings out the gold in the autumn leaves. (Left:) The view from the kitchen window at ten to nine this morning. (Below:) The view of our garden from my bedroom window 20 minutes later.

My take on the 'science' of biometeorology (after 40 years in the UK and 10 years here) is that your emotional state when the weather is dull and overcast should be taken as the norm, whilst beautiful sunny days should be seen as uplifting and joyful. Even if they are more abundant here in Warsaw than in London. My belief is that it is sunlight, and the absense of it, rather than air pressure per se, that causes weather-related mood swings.

Meteopaci and ciśnieniowcy tend to believe that their maladies can be cured with magnez (magnesium), conveniently believed to exist in therapeutically-significant doses in both chocolate and cake.

It's not just a Poland thing though. The halny wind that blows down from the mountains causing headaches is the equivent of the German Föhn and the American Chinook. The French Mistral, confusingly, is said to bring good health.