The use of English in Europe after Brexit

An comment on a post I wrote in September 2015 about the use of English in Poland (and indeed across the EU) has just popped up on my blog today. The anonymous commentators asks: "An interesting read after nine years – would be interesting to hear your thoughts on this now after Brexit."

The answer is simple – English remains the European Union's default language, as seen by the landing page of the EU's website, https://european-union.europa.eu/. And looking at the way the English language is used, it is clearly UK rather than US English. Why is the default official language of the world's largest and richest trading bloc that of a country that's no longer a member? 

In EU law, all 24 official languages of its member states are accepted as working languages, but in practice only English, French, and German are in general use across its institutions. Of these, English is the most commonly used, being the most widely understood language in the EU, by 44% of all adults.

Much as the French might strive to make French more popular, it will never overtake English. So given this fact, and the fact that the American variant of the English language is unlikely ever to become the dominant form in EU institutions, will a new, Euro-English variant likely to evolve? Possibly – though the divergence process would take centuries rather than decades. 

At the moment, the house style used on English-language pages of the EU website follows UK-English rules. Date formats ('25 March 1957', rather than 'March 25, 1957'); use of en-dashes rather than em-dashes; 'ise' is used rather than 'ize' in words like 'authorise'; US English words (sidewalk) and spellings (color) are avoided. The only deviation from standard UK English house style is number usage: the numerals 1-10 are used rather than spelling them out, there is no comma separator between numbers over 1,000 (5 000, 10 000 – in keeping with continental mathematical conventions).

Over my 20+ years editing texts written in English by Poles, I can see continual improvement. In recent years this improvement has been dramatic. I'd attribute this to machine translation (which itself has been improving), the increasing use of AI, as well as companies' awareness of the need for clear communication to global audiences. The articles I'm now editing have typically been proofread by a native speaker or at the very least been run through AI-powered software.

The way large-language models work is that they are trained on a vast corpus of works in a given target language. The more online content there is in a given language, the more accurate an LLM becomes in its predictive abilities. As long as you prompt the AI to output text in UK English, it will do so based on the scanning of billions of pages of input text written in English, from all corners of the world (wide web). It's worth remembering that Australian, New Zealand and Irish English usage are all close to UK English, while Canadian English is closer to US English.

However the future of English as a global language is more likely to incorporate more and more US English forms, idioms and styles, mainly as a result of US media output (movies, series, music). Looking at these Wikipedia glossaries (American terms not widely used in the UK and British terms not widely used in the US) it's clear than whilst those American terms are indeed not widely used in the UK, most Britons would probably know or can work out what most of them mean ('boondocks', 'laundromat', 'mailman' etc), the opposite does not hold true ('chinwag', 'faff about', 'mither' etc). The quintessentially (Northern) English Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl highlights this divide; Netflix execs were puzzled by the phrase "flippin' Nora", worried that it might be an expletive unsuitable for younger audiences.

As to the last word on the subject of how use of the English language will evolve across the EU, I shall leave that to Google's Gemini AI:

"Brexit has paradoxically strengthened English's position by removing the perceived bias towards a particular member state. It can now be seen as a more neutral language for intra-EU communication.

Examples of 'Euro-English' in the making:

Vocabulary: Adoption of terms from other European languages, such as 'dossier' (for a set of documents), or 'to control' meaning 'to verify', influenced by cognates in other European languages, like contrôler in French or kontrollieren in German, which carry this sense of inspection and supervision.

Pronunciation: Variations in pronunciation, with certain sounds or accents becoming more prevalent in specific regions or contexts.

Grammar: Simplification of certain grammatical structures, such as the use of the present perfect tense.

Pragmatics: Development of distinct communication styles and cultural norms in Euro-English interactions.

While it's still early days, the use of English in the EU is undergoing a transformation. The emergence of a 'Euro-English' is a gradual process, shaped by various factors and influences. It's crucial to recognize that this evolution doesn't diminish the importance of other European languages. Instead, it reflects the dynamic nature of language and its ability to adapt to changing circumstances. Ultimately, the future of English in the EU lies in embracing its role as a tool for communication and understanding while respecting and promoting linguistic diversity across the continent."

Below: a Lego set of the Tower of Babel (Pieter Bruegel the Elder), inspired by my brother's dream of an Airfix HO/OO-scale set of Hieronymus Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights (both rendered by Google Gemini Imagen)

This time two years ago:
The King's Horse (Short story, Pt I)

This time three years ago:
Hoofing it
(Not horses - Nordic walking!)

This time five years ago:
Signals from space - what's the meaning of 187.5?

This time six years ago:
Ice – proceed with utmost care

This time eight years ago: 
In which I see a wild boar crossing the frozen ponds

This time nine years ago:
Communicating the government's case in English

This time nine years ago:
Thinking big, American style. Can Poles do it?

This time 12 years ago:
Inequality in an age of economic slowdown 

This time 13 years ago:
The Palace of Culture: Tear it down?

This time 14 years ago:
Conquering Warsaw's highest snow mounds

This time 16 years ago:
Flashback on way to Zielona Góra

This time 17 years ago:
Ursynów, winter, before sunrise 

Week with new kitten

What a week! My routines turned upside down, but such newfound joy... Since coming into my life, Wenusia has quickly adapted to me, and I to her. 

She is clean and house-trained and not in the least bit clumsy, careful not to knock things off window sills, work-surfaces or tables, and she's not a furniture-scratcher. She is curious and intelligent; the heavy overnight snow delighted her. I can see from her paw-prints that she has ranged across the działka this way and that, crossing under the fence into the next-door forest, but always making her way back accurately to where she knows there's food, warmth and friendly human companionship.

Overnight, she sleeps in the bathroom (on my chair, on my cushion), and meows in the mornings when she hears that I'm up. Then it's time for food, and popping out into the garden for a wee and a poo, while I eat my breakfast. She will run back into the house when I call her (as long as she's had enough time outside – which usually corresponds to the time I need to prepare and eat my food in peace). However, Wenusia is a fussy eater – she won't touch poultry-based kitten food, but devours fish- and red-meat- based food from the same brand. (Incidentally, Whiskas, from by the Mars corporation, is on my Ukraine boycott list because Mars still has factories operating in Russia paying taxes to Putin.)

After a week with me, she has settled in; may she live long (until I'm in my mid-80s!) and have a joyous life in Jakubowizna.

Fate has brought us together; had I not decided to walk through Jakubowizna last Sunday night, the long way home from the railway station, we would never have met.

Observing my new companion brings on many thoughts about the nature of personhood and agency, about consciousness, inter-species communication, and about the Cosmic Purpose.

This time last year:
Warsaw railway interstitials
[an exploration of liminal spaces around W-wa Śródmieście and W-wa Centralna]

This time two years ago:
Qualia memories – snowy Greenwich, January 1970

This time four years ago:
Meagre, disappointing snow

This time 11 years ago:
The sad truth about Karczunkowska's pavement
[Sod that. I ran out of patience. Still no fucking pavement on Karczunkowska, despite the volume of traffic increasing tenfold because of the S7 junction. So I have moved to a village with vastly more pavement than Jeziorki will ever have.]

This time 13 years ago:
About Warsaw's kebab restaurants
[In 2012, a king-size lamb kebab in pitta bread cost 13zł, today it's more than double that.]

This time 15 years ago:
Making the most of winter

This time 16 years ago:
Progress along Ballay Street

This time 17 years ago:
Shortest, mildest, winter?

Music as a vector of civilisation

 [On waking at half past one am with Smokey Robinson and the Miracles' I'll Second That Emotion on my mind.]

– Civilisation came to an end a few centuries ago. Was it all-out nuclear war? Was it an asteroid strike? Various folk tales persist. The evil one, 'Shmumptin' was to blame. The rebirth of historiography as a profession is low on people's priorities as they struggle to survive...

If we are to look at those humans as they work hard to rebuild, based on little more than the myths and legends they tell one another, what feature of their future-primitive society would be most recognisable to us today?

It is music. 

Unamplified (electricity has not yet been reinvented), but played to an amazingly high degree of fidelity by competent musicians, who have had passed down to them tunes stored in the memories of survivors. Drums, wind- and string instruments, crafted with ever-greater care and precision, to make sounds that conjure up atavistic resurgences of emotion. Not only the tunes, but the lyrics. Passed down orally from generation to generation, sung to children, sung aloud, sung together. Language persists and evolves through song.

Men and women, young and old, gathering to make music, attract crowds of tired humans who have finished toiling to feed, clothe and heal the slowly growing population. They come to listen, to sing, to dance, to engage in the sense of shared culture and tradition.

Some anthropologists claim that singing predated speech, that songs encode information in a more memorable way that disseminates easier and deeper than spoken or even written instructions.

So, imagine the year 2175, a clearing in a post-apocalyptic glade; the harvest has just been brought in, flagons of fruit wine are passed around by people seated in a semicircle, and the musicians enter, taking their places on a raised platform with their hand-crafted instruments at the ready. To your early-21st century ear, the melody seems familiar – some of the lyrics even – could this be Bohemian Rhapsody evolved to fit post-apocalyptic social landscapes? [AI image by Grok – once again beating Google Gemini 1.5 Pro at the task.]

The first portent of civilisation's rebirth will be its music. The last will be streaming services to disseminate that music across humanity.

"Just be thankful for what you got."

{{ I dreamt of a German writer with the surname Ulitz, with connections to Poland, and wondered whether a street had been named after him, Ulica Ulitza. Turns out there was such a guy, though no street in either Katowice or Wrocław yet bears his name.  }}

This time five years ago:
The Inequality Paradox: a summing up

This time six years ago:
Familiarity, tradition and identity

This time seven years ago:
Black-hat merry-go-round 

This time eight years ago:
Skarżysko-Kamienna and Starachowice, by train

This time nine years ago:
The world mourns the loss of David Bowie

This time 11 years ago:
Where's the snow?

This time 13 years ago:
Two drink-free days a week, British MPs urge

This time 14 years ago:
Depopulating Polish cities?

This time 15 years ago:
Powiśle on a winter's morning

This time 16 years ago:
Sunny, snowy Jeziorki

Sleepy time, Christmas to Three Kings

Christmas Eve still isn't a public holiday in Poland, but Three Kings (6 January) is. Passed by Sejm (the Polish parliament) in September 2010 and a day off work since 2011, it pushes the number of statutory holidays in Poland up to 11 (compared to the UK's eight). The temptation to extend the bridge days between Christmas and the New Year right up to Three Kings means that far fewer people are working normally, hitting Poland's productivity and therefore GDP. 

And so my Facebook feed is full of photos of Bali, Hawaii, Turkey and Dubai – however, for those with an eco-conscience, the slack period is a good time for reflection and local walks. As I mentioned in my last post, I have been doing circular walks around Jakubowizna village checking to see if anyone has put up posters advertising a lost kitten (as yet, they haven't). Photos in reverse chronological order...

Around dusk (sunset is now quarter of an hour after the year's earliest; slowly we emerge from darkness). Pavement all the way from the edge of the village to the railway station. Yesterday's snow all but gone.

Below: approaching Jakubowizna from Machcin II. A recently completed house and one under construction to the left of the road. And other one under construction behind the new house, and a building plot advertised for sale on the other side of the road.

Below: the forest between Jakubowizna and Adamów Rososki, looking towards Jakubowizna. One of the XII Canonical Prospects.

Back to work today – I feel it will be a good year for Poland's economy nonetheless.

Bonus photos: the southbound InterCity Kolberg hammering through Chynów station along the 'up' (northbound) line. It is running precisely to time, and somewhere between Chynów and Krężel it will overtake the local southbound Koleje Mazowieckie service.

Below: the northbound InterCity San crosses ulica Spokojna on the border of Chynów and Węszelówka; the train (from Przemyśl to Warsaw) is running two hours late.

I hope for a year of interesting travels around Poland.

This time last year:
Trains in the snow around Chynów

This time seven years ago:
New football pitch for Jeziorki

This time eight years ago:
The Winter Sublime

This time 14 years ago:
Long train running

This time 15 years ago:
Most Poniatowskiego

This time 17 years ago:
Warsaw well prepared for winter

Aligned

A rare alignment in the heavens – you will need to click to enlarge this image  of ulica Ogrodowa in Sułkowice last night in a new tab, then open in new tab to see full size. Look into the top right; you will see a crescent moon, between its horns (barely visible but there) is Saturn; then in a straight line from Saturn, through the Moon, you'll see Venus. Saturn, the Roman god was described as a god of abundance, wealth, agriculture. Saturn's mythological reign was depicted as a Golden Age of abundance and peace. Venus, the Roman goddess, was the Roman goddess of love, beauty, desire, sex, fertility, prosperity and victory.

These days, living indoors in big cities bathed in nocturnal light, we lose the old familiarity of the night sky. Our forefathers would have easily been able to point to most of the constellations in the sky. And alignments as unusual as this one, would have been endowed with a special significance – a portent.

What could such a sign... mean?

On my walk this evening, another frosty night (-4.5°C) I was followed home by a kitten. My first thought was that it had escaped from one of the farms along the main road through Jakubowizna. So I walked the length of the road and then back again, pausing at each house, at each gate along the way to see whether the kitten would pop through the railings having found its way back home. But no – it would shortly reappear and chase along after me. We did this right to the station, and the past the last house it followed me along my lane, to my działka. The kitten, about five months old, is (according to Moni) a calico (tortoiseshell white)/tabby female. I took a mugshot of it and posted it on the Chynów community Facebook page, advertising a kitten found. Two people immediately reposted. I will go back to check whether any posters have appeared along the street in Jakubowizna – if no one responds, it looks like I will have been adopted by a cat.

Now, given that Moni's late cat was called 'Jowisz' (Jupiter), this one has to be named after a planet too, and given the propitious alignment of Saturn and Venus in the heavens, and that it's a female, the only name she can have is 'Wenus', diminutive 'Wenusia' or just simply – 'Nusia'. Below: her markings make for good camouflage at this time of year.

If an ad does appear for a lost kitten, Nusia shall be returned. (Having lost cats in Jeziorki, it's good when someone does respond to a 'gone missing' poster.) If not, it seems that fate has brought us together on a frosty winter's night when Venus, the Moon and Saturn were aligned.

This time last year:
2023: A year in travel

This time two years ago:
Letters to the Postman

This time three years ago:
Progress at Warsaw West station
[The end is in sight – this summer]

This time six years ago:
From West London to South Warsaw

This time nine years ago:
Anger and hate have no place in political discourse

This time 11 years ago:
Is Conservatism rural or urban in nature?

This time 12 years ago:
Poland's roads get slightly less deadly

This time 13 years ago:
It's expensive being rich in Warsaw 

This time 15 years:
Winter commuting in colour and black & white

This time 16 years ago:
Zamienie in winter

This time 17 years ago:
Really cold (-12C at night)

Poland's progress

Today is the first day of Poland's six-month presidency of the Council of the European Union, and is an opportunity to look at the country's recent progress and future prospects. This blog post will be a purely subjective big-picture view (after all, if it's macroeconomic data you want, you can look it up online). 

My views are based on observations, anecdotes, countless discussions with people in business, gut feeling (or instinct), as well as something metaphysical – intuition.

You can look at Poland from close up and point to the negatives – stubbornly high inflation, deteriorating current account, demographic collapse, geopolitical threat, and the precarious economic situation of its major export markets. Yet I remain optimistic – as do the analysts. The OECD's latest forecast for Poland's GDP in 2025, published last month, points to a likely outcome of 3.2%, up from the 3.0% expected by economists for the whole of 2024. This puts Poland into the group of best-performing EU economies, and far outstrips the UK, currently struggling to avoid falling into recession (again). Unemployment is historically the lowest it's been since the end of communism (when in effect it was hidden). Poles are wealthier than ever, which is reflected in their tendency to buy new cars and travel on exotic holidays.

Thirty-five years ago, when finance minister Leszek Balcerowicz unveiled his plan to transform Poland's collapsing command economy, there was a joke going around: "There are only two ways in which Poland's economy can be fixed: the normal way, and the miraculous way. In one, the Blessed Virgin Mary descends from the heavens, raises up Her arms – and the economy is working. In the miraculous way, the Poles do it for themselves." 

Looking around Poland today, I see a country growing in self-confidence, increasingly at ease with itself. The new roads and railways, the new office developments, the logistics centres, the data centres, the refurbished buildings, the countless restaurants, cafés and bars, do not fail to impress. 

So how did all this happen? Miracle or Poles' own efforts? A bit of both. Strokes of luck, good macroeconomic judgment and above all, the determination of a people wanting to better themselves through hard work.

Believing strongly in behavioural economics, I sense that determination is a key factor. It is not controversial to rank populations in terms of their height or body-mass index or (more controversially), IQ. But I'd suggest something more radical – ranking countries by the determination of its entrepreneurial and managerial classes. And here, observing two groups, two nations, from close-up, I'd say that Poles tend to show greater determination, more fire-in-the-belly, more get-up-and-go, than contemporary Britons.

This is purely a subjective view. But seeing the ease with which British companies and British shareholders sell up to foreign bidders makes me think that as a nation, Britons are more content to sit on bags of money than to manage businesses. Tesco, Aviva, Sage, W.S. Atkins, Cadbury's, Pilkington, BOC – a few of the UK firms that came to Poland and sold their business units here to their foreign competitors. The collapse of the UK-owned motor industry is another case. Rolls-Royce, Bentley and Mini are now German-owned; Land Rover and Jaguar Indian-owned; MG is now a Chinese car brand. 

Poland, on the other hand, started from a different position. One (miraculous?) reason why Poland's economic transformation – tough as it was at the outset – has largely been successful is the way the state-owned industries were privatised. These did not end up in the hands of thuggish oligarchs who corralled enough share certificates from workers to become owners of factories, mines and refineries, but were sold to foreign investors, most often corporations. The new owners brought in new technologies and new management methods, and while not always successful, new value was created for the Polish economy as a whole. 

One that I visited before Christmas was the Reckitt factory in Nowy Dwór Mazowiecki, which had been a state-owned Pollena soap factory. Today, the plant is five times bigger, and produces detergents for domestic and export markets, while still employing the same number of people (2,250). Reckitt produces several billion dishwasher tablets there, which are sold in 34 countries around the world. Another factory I have visited in Twining's tea factory near Poznań; a marvel of automation that exports tea to over 90 markets. The Polish head of the factory is also responsible for running Twining's tea factory in the UK. Twining's' owner, Associated British Foods, also has its world-foods factory in Poland, near Zielona Góra,, making Patak's, Rajah and Blue Dragon sauces there, again, mainly for export.

My observation on foreign direct investment is that in most cases, the investor is so happy with the way things are working out in Poland that profits are reinvested here, and new jobs are created. The list of companies that keep growing their global-services hubs in Poland includes Shell, HSBC, Standard Chartered Bank, GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca. Managers visiting from London are amazed by what their Polish employees can do. "Can you do this?" "Yes we can!" "Quantitative analysis?" "Yes!" "Can you find another 50 maths PhDs?" "Yes!" And so it grows from year to year. "Can you jump this high?" "Yes we can!" "Can you jump this high?" "Again – we can!"

And here's my fundamental question: Can Poles jump for themselves? 

Can Poles set up their own companies and grow them, rather than merely manage them (well) for someone else? I believe that as Polish businesses mature, they will be increasingly set on foreign expansion. The UK is a target-rich environment for them. Last year saw the acquisition of Thomas Cook (the world's oldest travel agent) by Polish firm eSky, a start-up 20 years ago; fresh-fish distributor Copernus from Hull by Suempol, Andover Trailers by EmTech, and John Menzies News Distribution by InPost. These come on the heels of the acquisition of JDR Cables (factories in Hartlepool, Littleport and now Blyth) by TeleFonika Kable, and of Rawlplug by Koelner.

The further acquisition of British businesses by Polish ones will be a litmus test of the condition of both economies' level of determination. Poland is increasingly seen by the UK media as an economic success story, and its political influence in Europe is growing. 

May's presidential election will be one to watch.

This time last year:
Time, memory and consciousness

This time two years ago:
Hottest New Year's Day in Warsaw ever 

This time three years ago
"Communication/this is the gift you must not lose"

This time four years ago:
Wealth and inequality – an introduction

This time six years ago:
Gratitude for a peaceful 2018

This time eight years ago:
Fighting laziness – a perennial resolution

This time eight years ago:
A Year of Round Anniversaries

This time nine years ago:
Walking on frozen water

This time ten years ago:
Fireworks herald 2015 in Jeziorki

This time 11 years ago
Jeziorki welcomes 2014

This time 12 years ago:
LOT's second Dreamliner over Jeziorki

This time 14 years ago:
New Year's coal train 

This time 16 years ago:
Welcome to 2009!

This time 17 years ago:
Happy 2008!

2024 – a year in numbers

Well, it's that time of year again, when I can reveal whether or not I'm in better shape than I was a year ago. Age takes its toll, but I'm not into the notion of eternal youth. But by maintaining a regime of exercise, good diet and moderate alcohol intake, I intend to keep my active life going on as long as possible. Healthy body – healthy spirit. This post stands as a guide for the future.

So – did I beat last year? [numbers on a gold background = personal best]

Measurable and manageable
	2018	2019	2020	2021	2022	2023	2024
Paces (daily average)	11.4k	12.0k	11.1k	11.2k	11.6k	11.9k	12.1k
Moderate to high  intensity (mins)	N/A	24	30	35	44	50	51*
Alcohol drunk (units/week)	19.7	18.5	15.5	14.1	13.7	13.6	13.3
Dry days over course of year	196	198	208	231	234	249	243
Days with zero physical training	27	17	11	22	9	10	6
Press-ups/day	60	90	83	20	23	26	28
Pull-ups/day	7	5	11	11	12	6	14
Sit-ups/day	N/A	N/A	16	19	25	33	34
Sets of weights exercises/day	2.2	2.3	2.4	1.1	1.6	2.5	2.7
Squats/day	N/A	N/A	N/A	28	40	45	47
Sets of back extensions/day	N/A	N/A	N/A	0.3	1.3	2.8	4.5
Plank time (min: sec/day average)	N/A	3:40	4:11	4:21	4:58	5:55	6:17
Portions fresh fruit & veg/day	5.2	5.3	5.4	6.1	6.3	6.7	7.3

* daily average Jan-Jun, see below

Exercises, described

Walking/paces – touch and go after my recent torn calf muscle. I failed to hit my target for this year (12,200 paces a day, every day for 366 days), but I bounced back after two and half weeks of recuperation. So, this year (12,100) is still a best, beating my pre-pandemic record (12,000). The 'moderate to high intensity walking' metric is only for January to June inclusive, as my Huawei phone on which the app ran failed finally in early July. The replacement Samsung Health app counts this more generously than Huawei, so I don't want to mix apples and pears here. Since starting to keep count, I have averaged over 11,235 paces a day, every day, since 1 January 2014. According to Samsung Health, I'm in the top 3% of all users.

Alcohol intake: I have massively reduced by alcohol intake – in 2014, the first year of measuring, it was 33.4 units per week (it must have been more than that in the days before I began to measure). For the third year in a row, I managed to get below the current NHS guideline limit of 14 units per week (2 units = 50ml of vodka at 40%, or 150ml of wine at 13.5%, or half a litre of beer at 4%). I achieved this by restricting my drinking to social occasions (family Zoom calls included), with the occasional beer on long summer walks. Zero alcohol for two-thirds of year, which of course includes Lent. Two consecutive days a week with no alcohol, another rule. However, fewer alcohol-free days this year means lower consumption on days when I did drink (5.8 units vs. 6.1 units per drinking day).

Press-ups: focus on quality over quantity (hence much lower numbers than in earlier years). To qualify, the body must go down to the floor so the nose touches it; then up with arms fully locked at the elbows.

Pull-ups: again, proper sort, so fewer. From 'full-dangle' position, up to chin touching the bar, then down to full-dangle, then repeat. My record (only achieved five times this year) is nine in one go. Indeed, on hearing the news that Trump had one, I channelled my anger into two sets of nine pull-ups; a best-ever, and one that I feel I'll never beat.

Sit-ups: feet wedged under the sink, knees bent, back flat on floor, then sit up, right elbow touching left knee, then down, back flat on floor, then sit up, with left elbow touching right knee. 

Weights: with two x 5kg dumbbells, one set of each: 10 x lateral raises, 10 x internal rotator cuff, 10 x external rotator cuff, repeat that lot two or three times, plus 30 back-bends with dumbbells in hand. 

Squats: standing upright, heels raised, squat right down, stand up straight again, repeat (typically do this while kettle boils). Still not able to squat down fully after tearing my right calf muscle.

Back extensions: lying stomach-down on my ZemBord™; legs rise up behind back like a scorpion's sting, moving centre of gravity, causing me to rock forward until my nose touches the ground. Hands behind head. (More here about the apparatus and the exercise.) One set = eight forward-and-back rocking movements.

Plank: holding myself up by forearms, toes on the ground, back absolutely straight. Record time eight minutes and 15 seconds; more usually, two lots of three minutes with a short break in between.

Portions of fresh fruit & veg: one portion = 80g. Daily staples: apple (or fresh-pressed apple juice); banana, cherry tomatoes, berries, spinach, beetroot, chickpeas or lentils or beans, parsnip, grapefruit and/or orange/tangerines. A significant boost this year, due to my weekly shops at Lidl where the fresh fruit & veg selection is superior to that in Chynów's Top Market.

So – tomorrow starts another year, and having set myself the goal of beating last year, and being a stronger and fitter (and more self-disciplined) man aged 68 than I was at 67, off I go, getting on with it… May it remain thus for a long time to come. 

And a time to offer up my gratitude for having been so healthy so far.

This time last year:

2023: my tenth year in numbers

This time two years ago:
2022: a year in numbers

This time three years ago:
2021: a year in numbers

This time four years ago:

2020: a year in numbers

This time five years ago
2019: a year in numbers

This time six years ago:
2018: a year in numbers

This time seven years ago:
2017: a year in numbers

This time eight years ago:
2016: a year in numbers

This time nine years ago:
2015: a year in numbers

This time 10 years ago:
Economic forecasts for 2014 – and 2015?

This time 11 years ago:
Economic predictions for 2014

This time 12 years ago:
Economic predictions for 2013

This time 13 years ago:
Economic predictions for 2012

This time 14 years ago:
Classic cars, West Ealing

This time 15 years ago:
Jeziorki 2009, another view

This time 16 years ago:
Jeziorki 2008, another view

This time 17 years ago:
Final thoughts for 2007

Local hellos and a farewell for 2024

A short post about what's changed in my neighbourhood over the past 12 months.

Pavement along ul. Wolska (below): excellent news for local walkers, especially on misty winter evenings. Road safety and civilisation go hand in hand. This gives me a new way to walk to/from the shops – longer than along ul. Wspólna; more paces. 

New way between Machcin II and Adamów Rososki: the situation where a local thoroughfare is both a public right of way and also private land might have been resolved, with a new track carved out from scrubland. parallel to the disputed one. Still unclear as to whether this will become an access road to a new house, or a long-term solution to the right of way issue.

The former BP petrol station on ulica Grójecka (otherwise known as the DK50) finally opened as a TransOil station in April. No real change over what was there before – I guess the same operator with a different franchisor. Same assortment in the shop; locals say petrol prices here are cheaper than in other petrol stations. Below: awaiting the green light to open, late 2023.

New housing: at least four new house-starts in my immediate vicinity this year, though only one is nearing completion. All are detached dwellings on their own plots. One exception lies further north, in Sułkowice – a four-story block of flats between the railway station and police-dog school (below). Construction started in the spring; interesting to see when the first residents move in.

A goodbye-hello this year to certain roofs in Grobice. Storm Boris hit Central Europe on 14 September bringing deadly floods to Czechia and the south-west corner of Poland. Here, a bizarre situation. In the neighbouring village of Grobice, a localised wind of intense energy tore the roofing off five or six houses and barns, and hurled garden furniture all over the place. Passing through today, I can report that repair work is almost complete, though the scaffolding is still up.

VeloMazovia: Signs have appeared indicating a new long-distance cyclepath for the south of the province. However, there's still no information online as to how it connects up, or how far it will go. Left: the route as it goes through Sułkowice, along ul. Ogrodowa, over the DK50, then along Chynów's ul. Główna. Then down to Warka? Find out soon!

Christmas lights in Chynów. Not much I know, but another spark of local pride, another reason to be cheerful at this dark time of year. And no need to translate the slogan – a sign of increased openness!

Luxor Kebab opened in October on ul. Parkowa, giving Chynów its first sit-down restaurant since the J&B Snack Bar closed in the summer of 2022. Three point five stars as per Google Guides – bez szału (no big deal). Not the best, but far from the worst I've eaten – but it's here! I go for the medium beef kebab with spicy sauce in thin pita bread, 22 złotys.

Discovering the forest west of Hipolitów and Sułkowice: not anything new, but a magical place that I only discovered this year; an unusual landscape featuring eskers (below). More here, here and here.

Farewell to Browar Perun? In summer, a neighbour told me that the local craft brewery in Budziszyn had gone over to part-time production, with workers laid off. Asking about its fate in Piwnica Konesera in Chynów, I was told that indeed the brewery has closed for good. This sad news is not shared by the Perun website as of today's date. In my time, I have supped back some truly excellent beers from this place. The key to survival in this business is good distribution (check out just how many restaurants sell wine by Winnica Turnau).

This time last year:
An Alternative Theology

This time two years ago:
From the Long Review of 2022, Pt IV

This time three years ago:
S2 tunnel under Ursynów opens

This time four years ago:
The first year of Covid-19

This time five years ago:
Last night in Ealing, twenty-teens
[A strangely prophetic post, suitably dream-like in quality]

This time six years ago:
The Day the World Didn't End

This time nine years ago:
Hybrid driving - the verdict

This time 11 years ago:
Pitshanger Lane in the sun

This time 15 years ago:
Miserable, grey, wet London

This time 16 years ago:
Parrots in Ealing

This time 17 years ago:
Heathrow to Okęcie