The benefits of 'place nostalgia'

An interesting academic paper has appeared that suggests people are likely to feel more nostalgic towards the seaside, lakes or rivers than they are towards fields, forests and mountains. Or indeed the built environment. The study, led by the University of Cambridge and conducted in the UK and US, suggests that coastlines may have the optimal visual properties to make us feel positive emotions, and argues that ‘place nostalgia’ offers significant psychological benefits.

Yes. I absolutely agree. The sea, the rhythm of the crashing waves, sea breezes, the sea sparkle, that fresh smell – yes, it's emotionally powerful. Whether a peaceful sunny day by the sea or under dark clouds propelled by a howling gale, it is always a memorable experience (unless you live by the sea and it becomes commonplace). Memories click, connect, get triggered by smells, tastes, sights, sounds or sensations; the seaside offers many. The Daffodils effect (Wordsworth's most famous poem, about a qualia memory of lakeside flowers) tells this to us: "For oft when on my couch I lie/In vacant or in pensive mood/They flash upon that inward eye/That is the bliss of solitude". Place nostalgia can be triggered (by a sensory input) or bidden (conjured up by the mind) or spontaneous, the last being the most mysterious.

I have written many times about the emotional power of nostalgia coupled with spirit of place in my blog; the two are closely linked. [Hence my fondness for the poetry of Sir John Betjeman.] Now, in the Cambridge university study,  Searching for Ithaca: The geography and psychological benefits of nostalgic places by Militaru, van Tilburg, Sedikides, Wildschut and Rentfrow, misses out on one crucial word; 'qualia'. 

Qualia are the raw, uninterpreted subjective sensory qualities of experience. They are inherently personal and private. Memories of qualia are key to what drives nostalgia; the longing to relive a moment experienced, a moment that our consciousness holds dear. Memories of such moments, such experiences, shape our personalities, make us who we are. Qualia are strongly associated with place, how we experience place through the sense.

Had I been approached by the researchers, I''d have indeed said that the strongest qualia memories I have are from holidays in the Northern French seaside town of Stella-Plage in the 1960s and '70s. I have been there six times; on the other hand I have been to the beaches of the Llyn Peninsula in North Wales maybe 16 times – and yet the nostalgia sparked by thoughts of Stella-Plage are stronger than those of Porth Oer, Porthdinllaen or Llanbedrog (strong those they are). Why should that be? Experiences at a more formative age? Or the fact that France was more exotic and different to me than North Wales?

Both seasides trump another familiar, nostalgia-jogging place for me, Oxshott Common, near Esher in Surrey that I must have visited at least a hundred times. But then, it is forest and heath land, not open water. "All that's missing is the sea"; something extra special. The aquatic ape hypothesis fits in nicely with thoughts of atavistic memories of migrating along ocean shores. More about the sharp pangs of nostalgia for Stella-Plage brought on by the smell of suntan oil and cigarette smoke here.

This time last year:

From automatic action to mindful control

This time two years ago:
Keep on keeping on

This time three years ago:
Time and Consciousness

This time four years ago:
Altered states – higher planes

This time eight years ago:
Warsaw-Radom line modernisation – Czachówek

This time 15 years ago:
Climbing Mogielica

This time 16 years ago:
Good graffiti, bad graffiti

Life, as measured in cats

Three weeks old on Saturday, the kittens are still displaying exemplary development (and their mother an absolute star when it comes to carrying out her maternal duties). The moment arrives when their little legs are no longer splayed out horizontally like crocodiles' ones, and the kittens can take halting steps. And curiosity to see what's outside Plato's cave is taking hold. Below: the kittens are starting to see what's goin' on on this side.

Below: name? Potentially 'Saturn', in keeping with the planetary naming convention (Jowisz, Wenusia). He was the first-born. A combative and pugnacious little fighter, so his nickname is 'Scrapper'. "Oi! You lookin' at me?"

Below: Czestuś and mum. Wenusia is looking part resigned (she has another five weeks of feeding this lot ahead of her) and part relaxed. She's safe, well fed and well cared for. And everybody loves Wenusia.

What a little beauty! I'm becoming more certain that the three (almost identical) tabby-and-white kittens are female. This one seems more independent and the furthest ranging. I am minded to call her 'Celeste'. Her distinguishing mark is a white blaze to the right side of the forehead, with a smaller white flame to its left. 

Below: four out of five kittens can't be wrong. With the exception of Celeste, out exploring, the rest of the gang have returned to the birthing box for a feed.

I can't tell you how marvellous these kittens are. How glad I am that I did not listen to the voices trying to persuade me to sterilise Wenusia. She is fulfilling her purpose as a mum. And the little ones are miraculous.

UPDATE 10 July 2025: Celeste and Czestuś are the first two kittens to leave my bedroom and make an incursion into the kitchen.

This time last year:
Entropy and stress

This time nine years ago:
I am environmentally illiberal

This time 11 years ago:
Thoughts on brewing and investing

This time 12 years ago:
Cruisers and low-riders – cycle fashion

This time 17 years ago:
Bike ride to Święty Krzyż

Thoughts upon the Road, Eastern Poland

It's been a while since I was east of the Vistula by car, but the recent road trip and last week's return from Kazimierz Dolny has provided me with a decent glimpse of how much infrastructure has improved on the right bank of the Vistula, and how much eastern Poland has developed, over the past 20 years.

One positive indicator is the number of food outlets that have appeared in small-town Poland. Once you could breeze through one small town after another and find nothing. Today, be it a kebab shop, pizza place, patisserie, ice-cream parlour or café, an enterprising local person is likely to have invested not only in a place to eat, but a focus for the community. Below: the centre of Siemiatycze (pop. 14,500). The building in the picture boasts no fewer than four eateries including a sushi bar; however, we popped into a smoked-meat shop (wędliny) out of shot to the right, drawn by the most appetising scent that I shall never forget. Loads of kabanos, kiełbasa and boczek, some of it from wild boar. Wonderful stuff.

Reflections upon The Road...

Road accidents: in 2024, 1,896 people died on Poland's roads, compared to 3,202 in 2014 and 5,712 in 2004. The number of cars per 1,000 people in 2004 was 246; in 2014 was 520; today it's 723 (Poland currently has the highest car density of any EU member state). So upgraded road infrastructure and civilisational advance have made a significant difference. Most villages have pavements alongside the roads. Road signs, and speed radars, road junctions profiled for safety and safer cars all help. Behaviour too; in four days on the road, I did not witness a single example of egregious driving.

Four days on the road – a big thanks to Andy P. for the concept and the driving. Together with Roman P. we enjoyed erudite conversation, popular-culture trivia, a great soundtrack (including classic war-movie themes from the 1950 and '60s) and excellent food and drink wherever we stopped.

This time last year:
Britain changes course

This time two years go:
Lawn to meadow, meadow to forest
[two years on, the re-wilding has taken hold]

This time five years ago:
Town and country in summer

This time six years ago:
Across the Pilica to Strzyżyna

This time seven years ago:

West Ealing to Castlebar Park – waiting for Crossrail

This time eight years ago:
Trump flies into Warsaw

This time nine years ago:
Making Poland's railways safer

This time 18 years ago:
Lublin and the Road

Zamość the Magnificent

Day three of the road trip brings in Zamość; I've been here before a few times, it's a fantastic place to visit. (An introduction to it here.)

Stunningly beautiful, unique in Poland in its scale and splendour, Zamość was designed as the ideal Renaissance city. Ain't it beautiful? Just as Edinburgh or Prague are best visited on gloomy days in late November or early February's perpetual dusk with street lights reflecting off the wet cobblestones, so Zamość, Sandomierz and Portmeirion should be visited on cloudless blue-sky days that suggest the Mediterranean. Below: the town hall dominates the northern side of the market square.

Below: the square of the Great Market (Rynek wielki), around which Zamość was planned in 1580, is flanked by merchants' houses with colonnaded arcades. 

Beauty overload. Down every side street a new vista.

A walk through the historic centre of Zamość is so rewarding. Italy has been brought north by Paduan architect Bernardo Morando, commissioned by Jan Zamoyski to design a Renaissance 'ideal city', the only one in Central Europe.

Below: classical perfection, proportioned with the humanist ideals of the Renaissance in mind. The Great Market is popularly said to be exactly 100m by 100m although the metre was not being defined for another two hundred years as one ten-millionth of the shortest distance from the North Pole to the equator passing through Paris. And yet a quick check with the 'measure distance' tool on Google Maps shows that it's pretty damned close!

Below: not just streets, but courtyards and communal gardens set back from the thoroughfares. Pop through this arch, and enter a more private space.

Below: over three hundred years before Ebenezer Howard came up with the concept of the garden city, Zamość was providing its citizens with a quality of life that Victorian Britons would have envied.

Church architecture fits in perfectly. The Baroque Franciscan church dates back to the late 17th century.

Whilst I have bewailed the overtouristed nature of destinations such as Prague, Kraków, Sandomierz and Kazimierz Dolny, Zamość as yet has to fall victim to its own attractiveness. The holiday season is in full swing, yet the crowds are not here. There are plenty of places to sit down and eat, and the side streets are not choked with throngs of gormless folk grazing on ice cream and fizzy drinks.

It's quiet and peaceful, and I love it. The optimal tourist/attraction ratio.

As night falls, the sky remains immaculate, the town remains peace with itself. 

A beautiful town that has maintained its soul. The atmosphere takes on a dreamlike quality, real and surreal in equal measure, like a Giorgio de Chirico painting.

Morning calls for another circuit of the old town; an exploration of the fortifications which ring Zamość from the south and east.

Below: Zamość skyline from the top of the defensive wall.

The Franciscan church, this time from the back, this time in the morning.

Another visit is in order; but the weather must be like this to get the vibe right.

This time last year:
Assessing the passage of time while asleep

This time two years ago:
Summertime dreamland

This time four years ago:
Getting our heads around UFOs

This time seven years ago:
Bristol-fashioned

This time eight years ago:
The imminent closure of Marks & Spencer in Warsaw

This time 13 years ago:
Along mirror'd canyons

This time 14 years ago:
Mad about Marmite 

This time 15 years ago:
Komorowski wins second round of Presidential elections?

This time 16 years ago:
A beautiful summer dusk in Jeziorki

This time 17 years ago:
Classic cars, London and Warsaw

Przemyśl, and a reminder of Putin's presence

The second leg of the road trip, from Białowieża to Przemyśl, was a stark reminder of the evil that lurks beyond Poland's eastern borders. I got the impression that things had greatly changed around the Polish-Belarusian border since my bicycle journeys to these parts in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The clampdown is in place. Traffic is light. Quiet stretches of river border are monitored by banks of cameras mounted on high masts. No-entry signs proliferate on forest roads that lead to newly fortified border. Military and border-guard vehicles are much in evidence. This is not an area one wants to hang about in.

South of Włodawa, however, the Polish-Belarusian border gives way to the Polish-Ukrainian border, and the atmosphere of quiet threat subsides. The front line between democracy and dictatorship now lies over 1,100km (800 miles) further east, where each day Ukrainian soldiers face down Putin's army that threatens us all. 

Simon Davies is a Liverpudlian business owner who decided after Russia began its full-scale invasion to deliver humanitarian aid to Ukraine. We met him as he was on his way to make what would be his 13th delivery. With a Transit van and trailer packed with clothing, food and medical supplies, Simon parked up for the night to stay at the same hotel that we were in. We chatted a long time over beers. Today, he crossed over the border into Ukraine. 

Listening to his stories filled me with amazement at how much change for good a single-minded person acting consistently can make. One snapshot. In the van was a large bundle of drill-bits used for brain surgery. These are made of titanium and diamond, and cost £1,200 a pop. The surgeon who donated them to Simon said that with proper sterilisation they can be used indefinitely; the NHS, however, mandates that they be single-use. For emergency front-line surgery, such niceties can be overlooked.

Simon's Facebook page says he made it OK to Orikhiv after unexpected hassle at the border. Orikhiv is in the Zaporizhzhia oblast, on the southern front. According to The Economist, (10 March 2024) "Orikhiv is a ghost town. Every single building has been damaged or destroyed. Soldiers say there may be 1,000 civilians left out of a pre-invasion population of almost 14,000. There is no gas, electricity or mains water. Air-launched glide bombs have left huge craters in the streets or collapsed whole sections of blocks of flats. In the street in front of a bombed-out pharmacy, orange crocuses are making a defiant appearance." Most of Orkhiv's residents are too old or poor to leave. For them, a delivery of humanitarian aid such as that which Simon has brought all the way over from Liverpool makes a vast difference.

If you'd like to contribute to Simon's superhuman efforts to bring aid to people whose lives have been blighted by Putin's aggression, here's the link: https://www.gofundme.com/f/ukrainian-aid-delivery.

This time two years ago:
The four-day working week

This time four years ago:
First half 2021 health

This time six years ago:
Classic Volgas, Ealing and Ursynów

This time seven years ago:
Memory and Me

This time nine years ago:
Sticks, carrots and nudge - a proposal

This time ten years ago:
London vs. Warsaw pt 2: the demographic aspects

This time 12 years ago:
Serious cycling

This time 14 years ago:
Outlets for creativity

This time 15 years ago:
The day I stopped commuting to work by car

This time 17 years ago:
Look up at the Towers of London

This time 18 years ago:
Wild deer in the Las Kabacki forest

Białowieża – more than bison

Let me start with acknowledgements. Thanks to Andy P for suggesting, organising and executing a four-day road trip through eastern Poland with his brother Roman and myself, taking in Białowieża, Przemyśl and Zamość. And thanks to my children for popping over to the działka to look after Wenusia and her kittens (all are doing fine).

Below: this is what Białowieża is associated with – Bison bonasus, in the European Bison Show Reserve (Rezerwat Pokazowy Żubrów). The European bison had been hunted to near-extinction in the early 20th century before being saved here. Bred in captivity and released into the wild, bison are no longer under threat of dying off, with over 2,600 counted, all but 200 of them living free. At this time of year, the bison have shed nearly all of their winter coats.

Below: wolf and I, eye to eye. Canis lupus, from which the dog was domesticated some 14,000 years ago. The current wolf population of Poland is believed to be around 5,000 individuals, with the north-east of Poland seeing the greatest concentration. 

Wending our way by road through the last and the largest remaining part of this immense primeval forest. The puszcza is dense; from the road, you cannot see more than a few metres in.

Below: the memorial to the Polish forestry workers and their families deported into the depth of the USSR in February 1940. This was also the story of my grandfather and his family, including my mother (then aged 12), although they lived 230km south-east of here.

Below: the Soviet repressions against Polish citizens that began in September 1939 continued with the return of the Red Army in 1944, with further waves of deportations.

Below: the former Białowieża Towarowa station (closed to passenger and freight traffic in the 1990s) is now a hotel, where guests can sleep in pre-revolutionary Russian railway carriages. The station building hosts a restaurant.

Lovely atmosphere, approaching that of British heritage railways.

Below: though steam engines no longer move trains around, there is one form of motive power that still moves passengers along these rails – human legs. A draisine powered by up to four cyclists goes up and down the track on three routes (4km, 7km, 14km). Cost depends on distance, up to 200zł. An excellent way of seeing the forest.

Below: biała wieża (white tower) – though not the one after which the town (or more accurately village) of Białowieża was named. Burnt down by the Russians in 1915 and bombed by the Germans in 1939, Białowieża experienced no fewer than nine different national administrations in the 30 years between the outbreak of WW1 and the end of WW2. [Imperial Russia, Imperial Germany, Lithuania, Poland, Bolshevik Russia, Poland, Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Polish People's Republic.]

A taster trip to Białowieża that has convinced me of the necessity to return for a longer stay (at least two-three whole days), to capture the experience more fully!

This time last year:
TriCity miscellany

This time two years ago:
Footpath between Widok and Chynów station is opened

This time three years ago:
Summertime, and the living is lazy

This time four years ago:
Thoughts occasioned by the picking of fruit

This time six years ago:
First half of 2019 - health in numbers

This time seven years ago:
Key Performance Indicators - health - first half 2018

This time eight years ago:
Three and half years of health and fitness data

This time nine years ago:
First half of 2016 health & fitness in numbers

This time ten years ago:
Venus, Jupiter – auspices

This time 11 years ago:
Down the line from York

This time 12 years ago:
Cider – at last available in Poland

This time 13 years ago:
Despondency on Puławska

This time 14 years ago:
Stalking the stork

This time 16 years ago:
Late-June lightning

Letters to an Imaginary Grandson (V)

What do you want? What do you need? Can you tell apart wanting something from needing something? It's a hot day, you're on a long walk. You are thirsty. Dehydration can be dangerous. You need water. But you want a sparkling, fruit-flavoured soft drink. The carbonated sugary drink is twice as expensive. And it’s bad for you. Water is the cheapest thing in the shop, and it's literally what your body needs. What's going on in your brain that makes you reach for that tin of fizzy pop? A sense of reward or entitlement maybe?

All around you, corporations – big businesses – are telling you that your wants are actually your needs. That you can justify giving in to your wants. "It's me time!" "Go on – indulge yourself!" “Retail therapy!” Throughout my childhood, I was bombarded with advertisements for confectionery from all angles. Ad breaks on TV. Eat sweets. Chocolates. Biscuits. All for pennies. Full-page ads in my comics. Billboards. Eating large amounts of sweets was as natural for children as chain-smoking was for adults. The result? Bad teeth. Dental decay, regular (and painful) visits to the dentist. Accretion of fatty tissues around internal organs. Heart problems in later life.

Was that sugar needed? Not at all. The sugar that makes eating fruit pleasurable is a biological adaptation; it’s a signal from the taste-buds to the brain that the fruit you are eating has reached its maximum vitamin value, and needs to be picked and eaten. Eat it, and build up your Vitamin C reserves before the winter. But eating sweets? There’s no benefit whatsoever. The energy that sugar delivers comes in the form of a brief spike that burns as quickly as old newspapers on a bonfire, a sugar rush, and in any case your liver cannot transform all that sugar into useful energy, the bulk of it just turning into body fat.

And so it is with so many of our wants; they have negative long-term consequences that are unintended or unexpected at the time of consumption. New clothes, big cars, exotic holidays… do we really need these things? Tot up the money that the average person spends on needs, and how much they spend on wants, and the difference between the two over a lifetime can be huge. The difference between living a comfortable old age and doing so in poverty and discomfort.

You will often be upsold to; a salesperson will turn your need (cheap) into a want (expensive). A more powerful engine. Alloy wheels. Metallic paint. The difference between the base model and the top of the range with all the extras can be double the price. When you’re in this situation, you are vulnerable. If you know where your needs end and your wants begin, you are in a better bargaining position; the salesperson can’t twist your arm.

Addressing your needs means ironing out discomfort – thirst, hunger, cold, illness; you need shelter – ideally your own home, not a rented one. It needn't be fancy, but it should be comfortable, cosy, and yours. In the same way as being able to define the border between wants and needs, you need to be able to define the border between comfort and luxury. Luxury isn't merely about luxuriating; it is principally showing off. It assumes that other people are easily impressed by the trappings of wealth. Do you want to impress? Does this count in life?

This time five years ago:
Garden pub for the działka

This time six years ago:

Down the line to Warka

This time 11 years ago
Down the line from York

This time 12 years ago:
Czester and his sister

This time 14 years ago:
The Cold Weather Guys - a short story

This time 15 years ago:
Bike ride along the banks of the Vistula

This time 16 years ago:
Three hill walks around Dobra

This time 17 years ago:
90th Anniversary of the Polish Navy

This time 18 years ago:
Memory and comfort

Winding down or growing up?

 All around us, the battle between entropy (everything breaking down, winding down, decline, contraction, things coming to and end) and syntropy (creation, expansion, birth, growth). Old friends get ill, things that were once good turn less good, then bad, then disappear altogether. At the same time, babies are born, new ideas arise, things become more complex, systems organise – either spontaneously or with human intervention – and a purpose appears to be fulfilled. 

Entropy is a measure of the disorder, randomness, or uncertainty within a system. The core principle associated with entropy is the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which states that the total entropy of an  system can only increase over time. Everything turns to shit, literally and metaphorically. Our food gets pooped out, strawberries left on a plate for a few days turn to slime, hot drinks cool, cold drinks warm up, atoms decay. 

Entropy marks the direction of time; from low entropy to high entropy, the only way it can go. A drop of ink disperses in water, but inky water never recoalesces itself back into the drop. A melted ice cube on a kitchen table will never regain its form. Time marks the direction of movement from a state of lower entropy (more order, concentrated energy) to higher entropy (more disorder, dispersed energy). The implication of the Second Law is that the universe as a whole is moving towards a state of maximum entropy, (the so-called heat death, at which point the last atom in the cosmos ceases to vibrate).

Our lives are part of that. Accept entropy with openness. You cannot defeat it in the material realm.

While we all observe entropy, reality is not all a one-way slide into oblivion. 

The concept of syntropy was proposed in 1941 by Italian mathematician Luigi Fantappiè as a complementary force to entropy. He posited that negative entropy has qualities associated with life: the cause of processes driven by negative energy lies in the future, in the same way that living beings work for a better day tomorrow. Fantappiè defined syntropy as the tendency towards energy concentration, increasing order, organisation, and complexity. Syntropy can be described as a 'converging' energy, as opposed to entropy's 'diverging' nature.

You can see it in biological system. Life itself seems to defy entropy. I am witnessing this in the form of Wenusia's kittens; living organisms that 11 weeks ago were a bunch of unfertilised eggs in her womb, that now have internal order, and grow and develop, and contradict the general tendency towards disorder. Syntropy suggests a 'pull' from future attractors or final causes – teleology; purpose; causality.

At first glance, the universe seems to be a battle between between entropy and syntropy, in which one is trying to dominate the other. Rather, it is about a dynamic balance between the two. Entropy and syntropy are essential – universal complementary behaviours of energy in space-time. Entropy pushes systems towards decay and disorder, while syntropy pulls them towards organisation and complexity.

Living systems are examples of this. They are constantly battling entropy by using energy to build and maintain their complex structures and functions (syntropy). However, this localised increase in order always comes at the cost of an even greater increase in entropy in their surroundings (cat food gets turned to cat milk, which gets turned into kitten mass, while the empty cat food tins pile up outside).

I would argue that syntropy strays into the metaphysical realm, beyond classical physics into the phenomenon of consciousness. And this, now, is a question of belief, an unfalsifiable proposition that consciousness is the fundamental property of the universe.

Syntropy is linked to consciousness in the opposite way to how entropy is linked to matter, energy and spacetime.

Syntropy gives us cause for hope. It simply isn't true to say "everything is turning to shit".

This time last year:
Tadeusz Lesisz – the exhibition

This time six years ago:
Jakubowizna in high summer

This time seven years ago:
Warsaw's Raffles Hotel opens

This time 10 years ago:
The ballad of Heniek and Ziutek

This time 11 years ago:
Yorkshire's yellow bicycles

This time 16 years ago:
Horse-drawn in the Tatras

This time 17 years ago:
Rain, wind and fire

This time 18 years ago:
The Road beckons