Vintage aerial views of the ground

"When you're asleep they may show you
Aerial views of the ground,
Freudian slumber empty of sound.

Over the rooftops and houses,
Lost as it tries to be seen,
Fields of incentive covered with green."

- Entangled, from the 1975 Genesis LP, A Trick of the Tail

I only recently discovered Britain from Above, a phenomenal resource of aerial photographs taken between the early 1920s and early 1950s. I'm amazed at the high resolution of the b&w pics, and the sheer quantity of material available. It's free (you need to register though). You can search by keyword or browse using a map. Here are some shots of Ealing...

Below: St Stephen's Church, 1935. How few the cars! In the distance, where the Haymills Estate stands today were large houses on the south side of Cleveland Road. Note the turreted houses on the corner of St Stephen's Avenue (running from the bottom left corner to the church) and Colebrook Avenue...

...these turreted houses at the ends of blocks are still here. Below: looking towards St Stephen's Church from Argyle Road, visible on the right (just) are the two turreted houses at the north end of Colebrook Ave. St Stephen's Church was deconsecrated in 1979 and converted into flats. The steeple remains a local landmark.

Below: another Ealing church, this time photographed in 1952. This is the Methodist church on Windsor Road, Ealing Broadway, now the Polish parish church. Lots of cars parked along Windsor Road. On the other side of The Mall are visible the British Railways platforms of Ealing Broadway station...

Below: looking like a b&w photo of a model train set, this was Ealing Broadway station in 1952. Train-spotting anoraks will have a field-day on Britain from Above (you'll not be thanking me as you click on the map to open yet another photo at half-past two in the morning...). I'm amazed to see that Ealing Broadway back then had in effect what was a Platform 9½... There it is at the top, north of Platform 9, and only long enough for two carriages (interesting coupling of older clerestory-style and newer flared-sided Q Stock units). On Platform 5, there's a red Central line train of 1923 Standard Stock, with 'switch' compartment between the driver's cab and passenger compartment. I can still remember these in use in the early 1960s - and the older Q Stock trains in use in the early 1970s.

You will find Britain from Above addictive at first, before it settles down into become yet another extremely valuable online resource for dipping in and out of.

After examining Britain pre-war and post-war for any length of time, I find the atmosphere, the klimat of the photos seeps into my consciousness, I'm there in spirit; I long to dig my hand into the pocket of my baggy trousers and pull out a half-crown, don my hat and raincoat, down the rickety wooden staircase of my digs, turn left into Castle Street, saunter round the corner to the Red Lion, order a pint of frothing bitter and a double whisky, smell the smoke of Craven 'A's and Senior Services, while reading the morning's edition of the Daily Herald.

This time two years ago:
Adventures of a Young Pole in Exile - review

This time three years ago:
Ealing in bloom

This time four years ago:
Keeping warm in January

This time five years ago:
If you can't measure it, you can't manage it (health, that is)

This time six years ago:
Sten guns in Knightsbridge (well, Śródmieście Południowe, actually)

This time eight years ago:
To The Catch - a short story (Part II)

This time nine years ago:
Greed, fear, fight and flight - and the economy

This time ten years ago:
Is there an economic crisis going on in Poland?

More from Walker's London

"Great was my joy with London at my feet -
All London mine, five shillings in hand
And not expected back till after tea!"

- from John Betjeman's Summoned by Bells; Chapter 6, London.

My morning meeting on Chancery Lane over, time to get in my daily dose of walking London thoroughfares, narrow and broad, well-trodden and little known. Follow me, then, on a Most beautiful sunny day in late January, for a walking tour of the West End...

Just off Chancery Lane is Carey Street, once home to the bankruptcy court, hence the old saying that someone's 'on Carey Street', it suggests that they are insolvent.

Below: turn through 180 degrees, and here's the back of the Royal Courts of Justice.

"Five floors up the Charing Cross Road and never a job at the top of them." Up there, maybe, still work the successors to fictional theatrical agent, Raymond Duck.

This is the lowest of low seasons for tourists - as a result, a walk along Oxford Street around lunchtime was actually pleasant - not being jostled by frenzied shoppers barging by with large bags and boxes, I could focus on the architecture. Below: look up from the shop fronts! An eclectic mix of facades at the Tottenham Court Road end. The area around the junction of Oxford St, Tottenham Court Rd and Charing Cross Road is still a huge building site after the best part of a decade, given the overrun on Crossrail.

Below: the architectural splendour of what was the Waring & Gillow's furniture showroom, now clothing retailer H&M's flagship London store.

Below: the 1950s replacement for the John Lewis department store destroyed during WW2. A rare example of the British expression of modernist architecture that I actually like.

Below: by Bond Street, Debenhams flagship store, visually enhanced in 2013 with a new facade.

Below: Selfridges. Opened in 1909, this department store is considered the best on a street known for its department stores.

Below: waiting at Marble Arch for the Central Line train back to Ealing Broadway.

Below: glorious winter afternoon, Cleveland Park.

This time three years ago:
Daffodils and crocuses in bloom, in January!

This time four years ago:
Populist start to election campaign

This time five years ago:
Straż Ochrony Kolei explained

This time six years ago:
The end of winter? So early?

This time seven years ago:
How much education for the nation? 

This time eight years ago:
To the Catch - short story

This time nine years ago:
Eternal Warsaw

This time 11 years ago:
From the family archives

Ten-year challenge: 1

Below: view from my bedroom window, January 2009

Below: view from my bedroom window, January 2019

Note to self: get gardeners to severely prune the nearest tree - will soon start to become a problem for the foundations!

This time two years ago:
Getting my act together - or not!

This time three years ago:
The Polish Individualist

This time five years ago:
The Holocaust and the banality of evil

This time six years ago:
Snow scene into the sun

This time seven years ago:
More winter gorgeousness

This time eight years ago:
New winter wear - my M65 Parka

This time nine years ago:
Winter and broken-down trains

This time ten years ago:
General Mud claims ul. Poloneza

This time 11 years ago:
Just when I thought winter was over...

Pond, dusk, winter reprise

Weather makes this evening's dusk stroll along the lake worthy of a follow-up post. Below: I mentioned the reeds - they are taking over. This is the southern end of the northern pond; to the left in the distance is the little wooden pier. The entire area is being choked with reeds; a few more summers and the water will disappear and we'll be back to where we were before 2011. Some judicious pruning back of the reeds is necessary

Left: the humans have only just departed! They left no rubbish, which is good. Plentiful traces of ice-skate tracks and paw-prints from dogs and their owners' footprints suggest that many people took to the pond today. As the sun set, they all took off for home, leaving the entire area empty and free for me to roam all over.

Below: the wooden promenades out into the ponds. No bird life visible here today. By the houses, thrushes, sparrows, rooks, magpies and jackdaws; on the lake - nothing.

Below: the corner of ul. Kórnicka and ul. Baletowa.

Dreams of birth?

I write about dreams from time to time; not from any 'interpretation' point of view, but rather seeking more scientific answers. Dreaming is an essential part of our human condition - indeed, many pet owners are sure their cats or dogs dream too. The scientific study of dreams is oneirology, and while relating individual dreams can be boring to everyone other then the dreamer, grouping dreams by type is useful.

I dreamt this morning of Hanwell station, though not Hanwell station - it was bigger and grander and located further west than in reality, a brictorian edifice modernised in the 1960s with BR Rail Alphabet signage, a BR-era cafeteria and lighting. Yet what makes this dream significant is the passages. To get to the platform from the Uxbridge Road, I had to crawl - on hands and knees - through a narrow tunnel under the tracks, lined with ceramic tiles. The tunnel was so narrow in places that I could feel my back scraping on its ceiling. I had to crawl quickly to catch my train... here and there, I had to avoid horse dung. How on earth could horses pass through here?, I pondered. Still, I pressed on, reaching the stairs at the end, at the top of which was yet another narrow passage sloping down to the platform.

In the photo below (courtesy of Google Maps Street View - an excellent resource for tracking down the topographic settings of one's dreams), we have the Uxbridge Road. In my dream, instead of the 'Advertise here' billboard there ran a tunnel cut into the railway embankment to emerge by the station buildings on the other side of the tracks. The station in my dream was located 1km the west of Hanwell station, and far bigger, with a smoke-filled cafeteria and wood-panelled booking hall.

The narrow-passage theme recurs in many of my dreams over my lifetime (as indeed do British railway stations). The narrow passage occurs in different contexts - squeezing onto a crowded Warsaw tram with extremely narrow, disfunctionally-folding doors up three or four very steep steps is one I've dreamt of several times.

Like Alice's rabbit-hole, the narrow passage is a metaphor - but for what? I have heard it posited maybe 30 years ago now, that such dreams are memories of birth, of the struggle out of the birth canal. Since then, the theory of dreaming-as-memory-consolidation has taken hold, but this is clearly more than the filing of quotidian experiences from which to form experience-based intelligence. [Although I must say that Friday's railway trip from W-wa Stadion to W-wa Zachodnia and reading a Wikipedia article about the Elizabeth Line that will pass through Hanwell must have set off the railway setting for the dream.] The narrow passage theme, however, is something atavistic - the universal state of being born - although the growing numbers of birth by Caesarian section (around 4%) may suggest that children born this way might not dream narrow-passage dreams. People born by Caesarian delivery who experience this type of dream often enough for it to become a familiar part of their dream repertoire would be interesting to talk to!

I shall be writing extensively during Lent about memory, consciousness and quantum physics, in a layman's attempt to bridge the gap between the material and spiritual. Dreams are, I believe, an integral part of the puzzle, the hard problem of consciousness. They exist, we experience them, yet they are ephemeral. Like the qualia we experience in waking life, dreams can be stored in our memories as fuel for further dreams. This enables the phenomenon of lucid dreaming, whereby you are conscious (in your dream) of dreaming, of being in a dream state, of experiencing familiarity in your surroundings and the type of dream.

The other significant type of dream I've had throughout my life is the 'disappointment' dream; in my childhood it was disappointment that a toy turned out, once in my hands, to be of poor quality, not the thing I had wished for, quite different to how I had initially imagined it. In my adult life, the toys have become cameras, with disappointingly poor viewfinders verging on the opaque, malfunctioning shutters, bits coming off. And the air crash dream - watching a plane crashing or falling from the sky.

More common to all of us though are dreams of being lost, dreams of falling from a great height, dreams of social awkwardness (being naked in a crowd, for example), dreams of being late. One regularly reported dream that I've very rarely (certainly not in recent decades) had is the dream of being chased by malevolent beings.

Neuroscience considers the study of dreams to be rather fringe and too subjective for serious research other than in the combating of psychological disorders; I believe that the still rather edgy area of consciousness studies will move us more and more into taking dream research seriously; after all this is something that we all experience and yet no one fully understands. It is one of those great areas that straddles the gap between empirical, reductionist materialism - we all dream, that cannot be denied - and spirituality - the quest to find our consciousness's place amid the eternal and infinite.

This time last year:
Foggy, icy, slippery day in Jeziorki

This time five years ago:
Hannah Arendt and the banality of evil

This time six year ago:
Snow scene into the sun

This time seven years ago:
More winter gorgeousness

This time eight years ago:
New winter wear - my M65 Parka

This time nine years ago:
Winter and broken-down trains

This time ten years ago:
General Mud claims ul. Poloneza

This time 11 years ago:
Just when I thought winter was over...

Jeziorki, winter dusk

At last - proper winter comes to Jeziorki. A light snowfall, mild frost (from -5C to a daytime high of -3C); as the afternoon turns to evening, time for a walk. The sun set today 48 minutes later than at its earliest in mid-December. Out of the house, turn onto ul. Trombity; towards the northern end, the railway infrastructure is visible beyond a small orchard (below).

Below: view looking north from the old pedestrian level crossing on ul. Kórnicka; in the distance the lights of W-wa Dawidy station.

Below: looking along ul. Kórnicka towards ul. Baletowa on the corner of Trombity.

Below: onto the ponds, in the distance an airliner takes off from Okęcie. The reeds and rushes are taking over the ponds again - a greater area, greater density than last year. If this is not dealt with, within a few years the ponds will be clogged with reeds, and they will lose their purpose of soaking up floodwaters over-spilling from neighbouring fields - risking repeat of the 2010 Corpus Christi floods.

Below: I scramble to the top of the small island towards the southern end of the northern ponds to get a view that's impossible to get with dry feet at any other time of year.

Below: at the southern tip of the ponds, I make way up to ul. Dumki and 'dry land'

Below: ul. Dumki makes its way around the ponds asphalt and lighting as far as the last house. Beyond that a dirt track, impassably muddy until winter froze it.

Bonus shots from last week: below: 2018-19 Christmas lights on Nowy Świat. Fine-looking city, Warsaw!

Below: a time exposure taken as my Radom-bound train home pulls into W-wa Śródmieście station.

In other news: the Lidl on the corner of ul. Puławska and Cymbalistów has just introduced pay and display parking. The car park is free to shoppers for the first hour, then 4zł per hour. No ticket in window? 95zł fine. Great! Anything to promote more people to do local shopping on foot.

This time last six years ago:
Shooting into the winter sun

This time seven years ago:
Warsaw - Ready For Winter 

This time nine years ago:
Łazienki park, glorious midwinter

This time ten years ago:
At the Rampa - work stops

This time 11 years ago:
Polecamy MROŻONKI - old-school retail

Las Kabacki - forest in winter, with rails

Walking to the Las Kabacki forest from home, I passed upon this lovely 1950s America scene, against a clear blue sky, below. In the distance, the PWPW security-printing press and Karczunkowska Office Park.

Below: the forest itself is icebound; the snow has largely melted but the paths remain icy - where the snow was compacted then frozen again. Safer to walk along the edge than slip and slide down the middle.

Today was an opportunity to photograph the far end of the Metro rail-link (pictures from its source at W-wa Okęcie, over Puławska and into the western edge of the forest here). Below: looking west from ul. Moczydłowska.

Below: looking east towards the Metro depot. To the left, new housing development, surrounded with spike-topped fencing, not only to keep strangers out of the estate, but to keep neighbours out of one another's gardens. Paranoia!

Below: looking back west, the snow-covered section of track in the above photo is visible in the distance, giving an idea of how big the new estate is.

Below: reverse view from the above shot, looking at the (heavily graffiti'd) gates and wall around the Metro depot. Inside, hidden from view, the sidings and shed and above-ground infrastructure of Warsaw's Metro technical base.

Below: two white houses on the corner of ul. Leśna and ul. Moczydłowska, on the edge of Las Kabacki forest.

A grand day, weather-wise, first sunshine in weeks, sorely needed!

This time two years ago:

1967: The Year The World Started Turning To Colour

This time five years ago:
Rain on a freezing day (-7C)

This time six years ago:
Jeziorki in the snow

This time eight years ago:
Winter's slight return

This time nine years ago:
Unacceptable

This time ten years ago:
Pieniny in winter

This time 11 years ago:
Wetlands in a wet winter

By rail to Chynów and back

Somewhere south of Czachówek Górny, a line branches off and curves away to the east, to join the Skierniewice-Łuków line.

And on the Skierniewice-Łuków line, a train full of Chinese consumer goods heads west.

Below: I get this snap through the driver's cab. We are south of Czachówek Południowy, looking down the line towards Sułkowice. This is the furthest extent of the first stage of the modernisation work of the Warsaw-Radom line, completed in 2017. In the distance, old track is being ripped up on the second stage, from Czachówek Południowy to Warka.

Below: looking towards Sułkowice, this time from Chynów. The 'up' track has been removed here, new gantries are in place awaiting cabling.

Below: from the spot above I pivot through 45 degrees to snap this familiar orchard in Jakubowizna in the winter sun.

This time five years ago:
It's healthier to live in the city than in the suburbs

This time six years:
Ikaria - the island where people forget to die

This time seven years ago
Miserable depths of winter

This time eight years ago:
From - a short story (Part 1)

This time nine years ago:
A month until Lent starts

This time ten years ago:
World's biggest airliner over Poland

This time 11 years ago:
More pre-Lenten thoughts

Winter's week pictorial round-up

Snaps from this week. Below: taken from around half-way up Warsaw Financial Center, in the distance cranes and a new tower begins to rise above the skyline - this will be Varso Tower, the EU's tallest building. By this time next year, it should be nearing full height...

The pedestrian underpass under the elegant Al. Ujazdowskie used to be full of little shops selling books and paintings, food and clothes. All gone now. The toilets have gone too. In their place, vandalised walls and the stench of urine. A shame.

Below: after the punch-up, W-wa Zachodnia, the passage between the railway station and the bus station.

Below: east of the Vistula. The old mural adverts from the PRL still there. Construction work on the new street linking ul. Zamoście and Targowa finished last July, the street remains unopened. The chances of Jeziorki's viaduct being finished but unopened for months are high.

Below: ul. Frycza-Modzelewskiego, just outside W-wa Wschodnia station has recently been modernised with a decent road surface replacing mud. Right-bank Warsaw is quickly improving.

Below: meanwhile in Jeziorki, we're not so lucky - wading through mud to get to the station whenever its rainy - and it's been this way for nearly two and half years.

Below: an oil train on the coal train line, a Lotos-livered diesel loco heads a rake of cisterns passes W-wa Jeziorki station. Note the viaduct in the background.

Below: moon and Orion over Jeziorki

Below: Palace of Culture, with ul. Świętokrzyska in the foreground, Christmas lights still ablaze.

This time four years ago:
UK migration and the NHS

This time seven years ago:
Miserable depths of winter

This time eight years ago:
From - a short story (Part 1)

This time nine years ago:
A month until Lent starts

This time ten years ago:
World's biggest airliner over Poland

This time 11 years ago:
More pre-Lenten thoughts