Twilight rambler

Welcome to Warsaw. Below: here we have the junction of two Warsaw streets - to the left, ulica Hołubcowa, to the right, ul. Sporna. Under the flight path to Runway 33 of Warsaw Okęcie airport there is little scope for development other than growing cabbages and carrots. Long may it stay this way! 

Sunset today was just before half past three. Not long before we hit the Plateau of Afternoon Darkness, that eight-day period when in Warsaw the sun will set at 15:23. No camera on today's walk - rain alternating with wet snow. All photographs taken with my Samsung Galaxy S20.

Further along ul. Sporna, heading east. Fields - some 80 hectares of mostly fallow land, some cultivated plots, stretch between the railway to the west, ul. Jeziorki to the east, ul. Baletowa to the south and ul. Farbiarska to the north.

Back on the asphalt - ul. Jeziorki, which runs through the district of Jeziorki. Very soon, this narrow street will be bunged up with traffic heading in both directions. No pavement. Not pleasant for pedestrians.

"I have trod the upward and the downward slope" - Tourist trail (szlak turystyczny) MZ-5142-z rises from ul. Dumki towards ul. Sarabandy, on its way from W-wa Dawidy to Ciszyca on the banks of the Vistula.

I pass the Dean's house, a corner of that 1950s Ivy League campus that's magically transported itself through space and time to 21st century Warsaw. Old books by the fire, a tumbler of single malt, and the encroaching darkness without ceases to be a woe...

Nice to get back to a warm home, put the kettle on and enjoy my uniquely Anglo-Polish beverage, namely Krakus-brand barszcz concentrate with a teaspoon of Marmite XO. Ideal for the time of year.

This time two years ago:
Late-November pictorial round-up

This time last year:
Artificial Intelligence vs Artificial Consciousness

This time four years ago:
Viaduct takes shape in the snow

This time seven years ago:
No in-work benefits for four years?

This time eight years ago:

Third snow-free November in a row

This time nine years ago:

Another November without snow

This time ten years ago:
Snow-free November

This time 11 years ago:
Krakowskie Przedmieście in the snow

This time 12 years ago:
Ul. Poloneza closed for the building of the S2

Where the two contracts end

Sundays means far fewer construction workers on the S7, so a good chance to see what progress is being made. I walk to ulica Baletowa then head up to where Polaqua's contract to build Odcinek  (stretch) A of the S7 meets the S79, opened to traffic in September 2013.

Below: photo taken from the service road, looking north towards where the S7 ends and the S79 begins. The S2 runs beneath the junction; a slip road joins the S2's eastbound carriageway with the S7's southbound carriageway (the lane nearest the camera). The lighting is mounted on low stanchions because this is where the flight path for Runway 33 crosses the expressway, and we don't want planes tripping over them. Incidentally, these lights come on at night every night since autumn 2013 even though no traffic uses the S79 north of the junction with the S2. Eight years' worth of wasted electricity and light bulbs.

Below: at the moment there remains a ten-metre gap between the two expressways, S79 to the left, the S7 extension south.

Below: the S7 extension is built to be more durable, with a concrete base.

Below: photo from two weeks ago, when the concrete machine was layin' it down - although this was the tail-end of the Independence Day public holiday, so it was left abandoned.

Below: this is where the service road running alongside the S7 extension meets the service road running alongside the S2 (behind me - the asphalt ends and paving stone begins).

Below: looking south along the S7 extension service-road; in the foreground ul. Baletowa and the tunnel under the expressway; in the distance, Węzeł [junction] Zamienie, on the horizon the new viaduct carrying ul. Dawidowska over the expressway. To the left posts for acoustic screens.

Views that we'll soon never see once those acoustic screens are in place. Below: looking east along ul. Baletowa towards ul. Puławska and the Las Kabacki forest beyond.

Below: looking west along ul. Baletowa towards Dawidy, Warsaw's border is where that distant traffic light shines red. Beyond that junction, Baletowa becomes ul. Warszawska.

Will the S7 extension be open by next November? At least to Lesznowola?

This time last year:
In praise of the Nikon D3500
[I still believe this is the best value-for-money digital camera to date]

This time two years ago:
Agnieszka Holland's Mr Jones reviewed

This time three years ago:
The Earth is flat

This time four years ago:
50th Anniversary of the Fiat 125p

This time five years ago:
Fidel Castro's death divides the world

This time six years ago:
London to Edinburgh by night bus

This time eight year ago:
The Regent's Canal, London

This time ten years ago:
An end to the entitlement way of thinking

This time 11 year:
West Ealing - drab and sad end of town

This time 12 years ago:
To Poznań by train

This time 14 years ago:
Late autumn drive-time 

Comfort, discomfort and winter cold

The arc of history had provided us with continually improving quality of life, but it is the banishment of cold and damp that I remember as the biggest step improvement when growing up.

Winters in London in the 1960s were not that cold (with the exception of the winter of 1962-63, see below), but the housing stock was inadequate for the climate.

Our 1930s end-terrace home in Hanwell (on the right of the photo above) was typical in construction - built of two layers of London brick (9" x 4.5" x 3") with an air cavity between them. Single glazing. Up in the loft - no insulation. Colder winters, when they came, were uncomfortable. Heating the house with electricity was expensive, with three-bar electric heaters (such as this Belling, below) were the usual way of heating rooms. We had several of these. The corridors and staircase were cold. The bar heater was dangerous too. Once, a foam-rubber sofa cushion got too close, touching the wire guard. It soon filled the house with the stench of burnt rubber; the cushion with a blackened hole on the side revealing the foam within a reminder of how close we'd been to having a serious house fire.

Every British home once had one
From Electric Radiators Direct's History of Electric Heating

Having a bath was a thoroughly unpleasant experience; getting out of the hot water into a chilly room in which the only source of warmth was a paraffin heater (electric bar heaters were a definite safety risk in bathrooms!), shivering in towels. The small immersion heater was good for about six inches (15cm) of hot water; pour in any more and it would soon go cold.

Bedding was from the pre-duvet era - a bedsheet, a blanket or two, an eiderdown, a candlewick bedspread. Making the bed in the mornings was hard work, having to pull the bed away from the wall, tucking in the sheet and blanket and covering it neatly with the bedspread. And in winter, I'd regularly sleep with a woollen  'night jumper' (nocny sweterek) over my pyjama shirt, plus a hot-water bottle, which in our house was somehow called a maciek. The three-bar open electric fires were never left on at night after we'd gone to bed - too risky!

The cold was damp cold. Nothing like the glorious frosts that would often visit Warsaw - clear winter's days with blue skies and bright sunshine and minus 10C outside. In London in January it could often be plus 3C and rain, thick cloud cover, windy and damp. The uniform for boys at Oaklands Primary School included short flannel trousers, right up to the final year (fourth year juniors). So for three years in infants and three years in juniors, I'd be wearing shorts to school even in midwinter with snow on the ground - no exceptions, ever. Clothing for winter was inadequate. I can recall the sensation of my school scarf (striped green and white) wrapped around my neck and face, and breathing fog in through it. Damp wool. Damp gaberdine school raincoat. Wet shoes drying in the corridor at home.

In the late 1960s, my father installed a storage heater in the corridor. This drew cheap electricity at the night-time rate and heated a large block inside, which would continue to radiate heat all morning after it was switched off. A small improvement, mainly in heating bills.

All this changed when we moved from Hanwell to West Ealing, to a detached house with all the modern conveniences of the 1930s when it was built, including gas-fired central heating. My father would go on to replace it with a more modern system in 1975, but from 1970-'71, winters ceased to be physically uncomfortable. The bathroom was warm, there was plenty of hot water, and my father installed secondary glazing and loft insulation. By the time I was 13, winter was no longer associated with physical discomfort at home. Cosiness reigned. Warm radiators, hot baths in a warm bathroom. Duvets eventually replaced blankets and bedspreads, clothing and footwear became better designed for cold-weather comfort.

When I moved into my own house in November 1982, I had to go through the discomfort once again. The 1930s mid-terrace house was not at all well built; the wind from the west would howl in through the window bays and actually lift the carpet from my bedroom floor. My father was an immense help to me, installing gas-fired central heating, insulation in the loft and filling the cavity walls with foam. The following winters would not be so uncomfortable. 

Being cold and unable to warm yourself up is an unpleasant feeling; not something I'd wish on anyone. Decent housing must be well insulated - here in Poland houses are built from thick air-bricks forming a solid thermal barrier, and stuck onto the outside of the house is  typically some 200mm (eight inches) of expanded polystyrene foam. When well heated inside, even a night at -20C (and there have been many) holds no terrors inside such a house. In big Polish towns, blocks of flats are heated by district heating systems, which pipes hot water from power stations (which in the UK goes out into the atmosphere via huge cooling towers). The disadvantage of this is a lack of control - the sezon grzewczy (heating season) is determined arbitrarily by the administrator; to cool an overheated flat, simply open the windows.

Not so on my działka, however; a kilowatt-hour of energy generated by gas is four to six times cheaper than one generated by electricity (unless you have solar panels). Year-round living in rural parts is still uncomfortable in winter.

It's nice to be warm as toast all winter long - but at what cost? Gas is much cheaper than electricity, yet gas comes from Russia, we're all at Putin's mercy. And the CO₂ emissions. Time to put on an extra sweater and turn down the thermostat a notch...  At 19.5C the house is warm enough. At 18C, it's too cold for comfort - even in thermal vest, flannel shirt and woollen cardigan.

We should aim to remove sources of discomfort from our lives - live in comfort, but don't aim to live in luxury.

This time last year:
Frustration as completion of Chynów station draws near

This time three years ago:
London in verticals

This time four years ago:
Roadblock and railfreight

This time five years ago:
Sunny morning, Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens

This time six years ago:
Brentham Garden Suburb

This time seven years ago:
Ahead of the opening of the second line of the Warsaw Metro 

This time eight years ago:
Keep an eye on Ukraine...

This time nine years ago:
Płock by day, Płock by night 

This time ten years ago:
Warning ahead of railway timetable change

This time 13 years ago:
Some thoughts on recycling

Justify the Buy - Nikon D5600

I'm always going on about repairing, borrowing, or buying used (see Sarah Lazarovich's Buyerarchy of Needs) and yet I've just bought a new camera which to a great extent duplicates the one I already have. 

Why?

The answer lies in Nikon's consumer-camera strategy. Nikon in its wisdom has decided that the way forward is the mirrorless camera, as opposed to the digital single-lens-reflex (DSLR). In theory, the mirrorless camera should be smaller and lighter than the DSLR, and indeed in the world of pro cameras, with full-frame (FX) format sensors, this is the case. But it isn't the case for Nikons with the smaller DX format sensors.

I am absolutely delighted with my Nikon D3500; it spends many hours a week dangling around my neck as I go for my long daily walks. It is utterly dependable and takes great photos; one charge of the battery is typically good for three to four weeks.

This week I bought a Nikon D5600, the next model up from the base-model brilliance that is the D3500. For an extra 700zł, the D5600 has several features that above all will save me time:

• Self-cleaning sensor. Sadly missing from the D3500 (the older D3300 had one). This means that after a while, changing lenses in the field, dirt builds up on the sensor, leaving spots which are visible mainly in skyscapes. These can be removed in Photoshop, but it takes time. Cleaning the sensor is tricky, requiring 95% spirytus rektyfikowany and a lint-free swab. And a very steady hand. Not something you want to be doing often.
• A viewfinder grid option. I am a stickler for straight horizons and parallel verticals. Again, I can do this in Photoshop, but grid lines in the viewfinder help enormously with composition. The D3500 doesn't have these, the D5600 does. Saving time on rotating the image in Photoshop (by a fraction of a degree, often).
• Tilting rear touch-screen. The tilt feature comes in handy when taking overhead shot, when the angle needs to be as high as possible - you can live-view and compose the image on the screen tilted down towards you. Handy for crowd shots, and offers a more interesting point-of-view in landscape photography.
• A better autofocus system with more points, and using the touch screen and live view it's easier to pick the where on the picture you want the focus to lock. The D3500's 11-point system is fairly rudimentary by comparison; an out-of-focus photo is not something you can do anything with in the digital darkroom. I have lost quite a few photos, or else they are publishable, though sub-optimal.

And that's about that! The D5600 shares the same sensor as the D3500.

So why did I buy a new camera?

The simple answer is that Nikon has ceased production of the D3500 and D5600. They have been discontinued on the Japanese market, you are unlikely to walk into a MediaMarkt, Euro RTV AGD, Saturn or MediaExpert here in Poland and find either. Online, the offers come and go, a stocks are gradually run down. Nikon is now heavily pushing the mirrorless Z50, which has a DX-sized sensor with fewer pixels than the DSLRs it will eventually replace; the Z50 has far less battery life, it is actually heavier than the D3500 - and costs twice as much! So buy them while you can. Click to read more easily.

Below: the box arrives - courtesy of MediaExpert,  delivered by InPost in Zamienie.

Open the box - inside D5600 body, Nikkor 18-55mm AF-P DX VR lens, EN-EL14a battery and charger, and strap. Needed - an SD memory card (avoid those microSD cards with adaptors - they are prone to malfunction, I've found. The full-size SD card words best for me. Also needed a 'clear lens-cap' aka filter, a basic Skylight 1A protects the front element of the lens and you won't have to be popping the lens-cap off before taking a shot. I also have a rotating polarising filter to accentuate blue skies on sunny days, which also serves to cut out/accentuate reflections from water, windows etc.

And that's it - ready to go - good photographic tools, so much better than what you'll achieve with a smartphone (see comparison pic below, D3500 with Nikkor 18-55mm lens and polarising filter, left, Samsung Galaxy S20, right). Click to enlarge.

This time last year:
First frost, 2020

This time three years ago:
Edinburgh, again and again

This time eight years ago:
Ahead of the opening of Warsaw's second Metro line

This time nine years ago:
Keep an eye on Ukraine...
(Portents of troubles to come)

This time 10 years ago:
Płock by day, Płock by night 

This time 11 years ago:
Warning ahead of railway timetable change

This time 14 years ago:
Some thoughts on recycling

Sleep - a portal to another Universe?

It's the time of year to obsess about sleep - to get your sleep right; to maximise its effectiveness as the free-of-charge wonder drug that boosts your immune system while rejuvenating you. 

The cusp of wakefulness and sleep, as you slip away, is fascinating - I try to stay conscious so as I can be aware of those odd, almost dream-like thoughts - indeed precursors to dreams - and attempt to parse them... and then nod off as I try.

I am blessed with sound sleep. Typically eight and a quarter hours, waking once or twice in between (depending on evening fluid intake). Optimal sleep (as I wrote here) is bed by 22:00, zonk out, wake at 02:00 after four hours of sleep, 15 minutes interval, then another four hours of sleep and I wake naturally at 06:15. That's how it was last night. 

The pause at the halfway stage is a remnant of pre-industrial times, when our sleep (especially in northern latitudes in winter) would be punctuated by a break of up to two hours, assuming our ancestors went to bed shortly after sunset and rose just before sunrise.

While in the process of dropping off, feeling consciousness slipping away is to be savoured, for it is very much an altered state. One's train of thought is shunted onto a mysterious track and if you find yourself here consciously, and examine it, running it back, you may find it makes no sense at all. Often this would be an examination of the day; I'd find myself worrying about some work not done, or some minor problem... then considering it, I'd discover that it didn't exist at all. 

This is something that intrigues me; this is a phenomenon that sits within the brain/mind problem, on the cusp of the world of classical cause-and-effect physics and quantum mechanics - if Penrose and Hameroff are on the right track by postulating that consciousness is quantum in nature.

Our dreams - what are they really? Are they no more than a subconscious audit of the day's thoughts, concerns and emotions? Or is something stranger going on? Non-local consciousness at play?

I woke at 2am, emptied my bladder, returned to bed - and attempted to connect my consciousness into that of the Universe. The first word that swims unbidden into my consciousness is: 'CONFIRM'. After a while, the second one appears 'SEFTON'. A little later, 'LALE STREET'.  Note - these are not auditory hallucinations; they pop up telepathically, but clearly, unambiguously. I wake at 06:15 and check Google Maps. I find that Sefton, as a place name, appears in the UK (in Merseyside), in New South Wales, New Zealand and Illinois. None has a Lale Street. I check Lale Street. There's but one - on Honolulu. My nocturnal hope of waking to find it and to ascribe significance, just as I did that night in June 2004 when I woke to find the exact wooden hotel, the Zig Zag Inn, in Zig Zag, Oregon. Or the night two years ago when I woke to find the location of my dream of Biarritz.

But in an alternate Universe? Could there be a Lale Street in a place called Sefton but in another dimension? In an alternate timeline? On a parallel plane? Proponents of a multiverse consisting of an infinite number of alternate universes must accept that in one of them there is. The one difference between Sefton and Zig Zag and Biarritz is that the latter two were dreams, while Sefton was only a word that popped into waking consciousness during a brief period between sleep.

On a sleep-related note, I have long been fascinated by the linguistic gaps and overlaps that exist between English and Polish. The following occurred to me yesterday - that the notions of sleeping, dreaming, falling asleep, being asleep - and sleep itself - align themselves differently in the two languages. Sleeping and dreaming seem quite interchangeable in Polish; the notions of dreaming during sleep and dreaming of something while awake (śnić and marzyć respectively) are indistinct in English.

English	part of speech	Polish
dream	noun	marzenie
dream	noun	sen
sleep	noun	sen
sleepy	adjective	senn-y/-a/-e
asleep	adverb	we śnie
to sleep	verb	spać
to fall sleep	verb	zasnąć
to dream	verb	śnić
to dream	verb	marzyć

This time two years ago:
A month and much progress at Chynów station

This time three years ago:
Tram tips for visiting Edinburgh

This time four years ago:
Warsaw to Edinburgh made easier

This time six years ago:
Stuffocation: the rich-world problem of dealing with too many things

This time nine years ago:
Heroes on the wall (for my father)

This time 11 years ago:
Tax dodge or public service?

This time 12 years ago:
Warsaw's woodlands in autumn

This time 13 years ago:
Still here, the early snow

This time 14 years ago:
Another point of view

Zamienie and Nowa Wola - changing fast

I learned early on that it makes little sense googling 'Zamienie' because the search engine ignores Polish diacritic marks and capital letters. As such, Google mistakes this Warsaw exurb with the word 'zamienię', which means 'I will exchange' or 'I will swap'. Or at least it used to. Indeed the first search result that appears on Google offers me an XBox 1S in exchange for an XBox 360. But the search engine has becoming cleverer in the intervening 20 years since I first tried looking for Zamienie online. The next two results are both links to the Wikipedia pages in English and Polish respectively for "Zamienie [zaˈmjɛɲɛ], a village in the administrative district of Gmina Lesznowola, within Piaseczno County, Masovian Voivodship, in east-central Poland." And only then do we get back to the small ads: "Swap BMW E36 for a motorbike."

While local residents wait for the new footbridge to connect Zamienie to Jeziorki and thus to Warsaw, I take a stroll to see the latest development, heading down towards Nowa Wola, before returning via Nowa Iwiczna and Mysiadło to Jeziorki.

Below: emblem of the old Zamienie, the remains of what was once a dwór - a landed estate with outbuildings in parkland; nationalised after WW2, turned into a vaccine plant, sold in the early years of this century, now partially abandoned, on its fringes new housing developments are rapidly springing up.

Highways running through communities split them apart; mentally, Zamienie will become 'across the S7' in the mind-maps of Jeziorki residents, more remote. Below: completion of the S7 is but one winter away. Local motor traffic will soon be directed across the viaduct in the distance, while pedestrians will have no alternative but to use the footbridge which is being built immediately behind this viewpoint.

And in Zamienie, just outside Warsaw's borders - new blocks of flats, below. I wonder what the attraction is. Surely it's better to live in a flat in Warsaw proper, in a suburb like Ursynów or Gocław, well connected to the city centre by public transport, and forego car ownership?

I walk through Zamienie, crossing ulica Raszyńska to reach Nowa Wola, a village that's turning into an full-blown exurb as new housing developments take over from fields. At least the infrastructure is catching up. Ul. Płonowa (lit. 'crop street', below) is no longer full of crops, but it is now asphalted from end to end. And it is busy, being the only way in or out of this development of new estates (with a further three under construction). But where are the shops?

If there's a new Nowa Wola, there's also the old one, strung out in typical Polish-village fashion along one road (ul. Krasickiego), which runs into Piaseczno via Nowa Iwiczna. Traditional rural housing.

Marian shrines along ul. Krasickiego speak of local devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. The one to the left is on the corner of ul. Płonowa, the one on the right is on the corner of ul. Postępu.

Nowa Wola has a fair-sized pond, an attractive water feature when all around is flat fields. Across the water looking east is the local voluntary fire service (OSP) station.

Below: looking north across the pond towards ul. Krasickiego. A nicely maintained park with exercise equipment and swings. I fear this pocket of rural quiet will soon be subsumed to the roll-out of exurbia as further estates spring up in nearby fields. And the roar of the S7 extension, muffled and hidden by acoustic screens, will remind residents that they have been cut off from Nowa Iwiczna to the east.

Here it is - the march of progress. Four-story townhouses emerging from fields once full of cabbage, carrot or potato. High-tension power lines strung out across the sky. Before too long, this will all be housing. But will there be the local amenities - the shops, cafes, restaurants? Public transport?

Back in Jeziorki, the fields between Mysiadło and ul. Karczunkowska. I fear these too will be filled with new homes before too very long. It is a sobering thought that the same percentage of Poles (68%) live in Poland's towns and cities as British people lived in British towns and cities 150 years ago, according to the census of 1871, when 32% of the population was still rural - as in Poland today. There's still much urbanisation ahead for Poland - and I fear that this is where it will be happening.

16,000 paces (12.8km) walked today - I made the most of the weather. Rubbish yesterday, rubbish tomorrow.

This time two years ago:
My father's last (written) words

This time four years ago:
Kolej Grójecka

This time six years ago:
PIS, thinking wishfully about the village

This time eight years ago:
An unseasonably warm autumn in Warsaw

This time nine years ago:
Shedding light on an unused road

This time ten years ago:
S2-S79 Elka from the air 

This time 11 years ago:
Fish and chips in Warsaw

This time 12 years ago:
Spirit of place - anomalous familiarity moments 

Non-local consciousness - science and spirituality

For Marek and Teresa

"I was just thinking about you when you rang," is something that many of us experience - some of us more than others. Is this nothing more than coincidence? Or are some unseen forces at work...?

One person is in a room with an old-style fixed-line telephone. Sitting at home are four of their friends. The phone rings. It could be any one of the four. Before picking up the phone, the person in the room must say which of the four is calling. Mathematical probability would imply a 25% chance of being right. But what if the guess is right in 45% of cases? That was the outcome of a series of experiments into non-local consciousness by parapsychology researcher Rupert Sheldrake, over hundreds of iterations. A result greater than chance.

Here's another case. Can you tell whether a person is alive or dead by looking a their photograph? Dean Radin et al. conducted a study entitled Prediction of Mortality Based on Facial Characteristics in which participants were wired to EEG machines and shown standardised grey-scale photos of faces, half of which portrayed people that were alive, the other half of whom were dead. Again, the results were better than chance (53% vs 50%), with some participants scoring over 60%. 

Personally, I don't believe that non-local consciousness allows itself to be detected by scientific method, as I wrote this summer. Yet without rigorous experiments and scrupulous analysis of results, how will science ever accept that unrelated events (knowing who the caller will be, telling from a photo if someone's alive or dead) are somehow connected, despite the absence of any causal link. Mainstream science is not particularly interested in even contemplating research in this field, fearing ridicule.

Nevertheless, I do believe that these effects exist - though they are weak and non-repeatable they are present. Our consciousness - mysterious, indefinable, knowable only to ourselves as a purely subjective experience - lies at the heart of parapsychology.

I wrote several years ago about monism and dualism, and again last year. Either the Universe is One - everything is in the domain of matter, energy and the laws of physics - or that body and soul are separate - with a material, observable world for one, and an invisible realm for the other. A growing number of spiritually inclined philosophers and scientists talk instead of 'nondualism' - ruling out an immaterial Kingdom of Heaven, seeing instead consciousness as an intrinsic property of the Universe, alongside mass and charge. Nondualism has its roots in Hinduism and Buddhism, stressing the unity of body and soul, rather than ruling out the latter as reductionist materialism does.

The eclipsing of classic Newtonian mechanics by quantum physics opened new perspectives for the spiritually inclined who seek to reconcile a spiritual outlook on life with science. Almost a century after the basics of quantum mechanics were calculated there's still not one generally accepted interpretation of what's going on at the subatomic level, and so the door to unorthodox thinking remains wide open.

Do we grasp gravity at the subatomic level? Do we believe in quantum gravity? Are we capable of understanding string theory? Can we observe any of these in action? In physics there are strong forces and weak forces - in the field of parapsychology, the effects are generally weak, yet are sufficiently present for people to notice them in their day-to-day lives. Some people have better-developed 'sixth sense' than the rest of the population; I would again draw upon The Curve to demonstrate what I mean...

On the horizontal axis - the entire population. On the vertical axis non-local consciousness; parapsychological powers; spiritual awareness. To the right of me, a relatively small number of humans, far, far ahead of me in these fields. An exponential curve (although on this particular one, I'm further to the left).

The field of non-local consciousness phenomena is a broad one. I recommend the essay that won the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies prize, by Dr Jeffrey Mishlove, which covers much ground from near-death experiences, to reincarnation, communication with the dead, possession, xenoglossy, terminal lucidity and other phenomena. A fascinating read - for me the reincarnation part resonates most strongly - other parts less so or not at all. But then, as my personal revelation this summer has it - "everyone who seeks God will find their own path."

This time last year:
Fenced in at last

This time four years ago:
Poznań's Old Market

This time five years ago:
Brexit, Trump and negative emotions

This time ten years ago:
Premier Tusk's second exposé

This time 11 years ago:
Into Poland's former Heart of Darkness

This time 12 years ago:
Commuter schadenfreude

Pleasance, the feeling of feeling pleased

I want to return to a notion I touched upon last week - the archaic word, 'pleasance'. Google Ngram viewer reveals that 'pleasance' had its heyday in Tudor times, fading away before returning to more modest usage from the late 17th century until the end of the 19th century. Shakespeare uses the word but twice, once in a love poem, and once in Othello. As I type the word, Blogger helpfully underlines it in red, suggesting 'pleasant' instead.

Wiktionary gives: (Obsolete) The feeling of being pleased. [14th-19th c.] 

It is not so much feeling 'pleasured', but the experience of feeling pleased.

Note the passive voice. It's something that happens to you, not something you do ('I go out and enjoy').

It is momentary feeling of mild euphoria. It feels familiar; it brings back pleasant associations. It comes on quickly and passes quickly - but you notice it; it lifts your spirits. It is very much a qualia thing - a subjective conscious experience. I try to identify it, pin it down. An effect - so it must have a cause.

I had one on Sunday morning in the kitchen, stirring a home-made lentil and spinach curry and rice as I finished my coffee. And another one while eating it later on the działka, that feeling of feeling replete. This makes me wonder whether these particular qualia (individual instances of subjective, conscious experience) are endogenous (hormones released upon feeling sated by food) or exogenous (the ingestion of a stimulant).

But moments of pleasance can just happen, untriggered, unbidden, and these are the ones I want to focus on, as they appear utterly random, without obvious causation. Pleasance always accompanies those Wordsworthian flashbacks - whether from this life or elsewhere. My flashbacks are never anything other than pleasant and familiar. This is, I believe, significant - I don't have unpleasant ones that feel unfamiliar.

One I had just now (again in the kitchen), out of nowhere, a flashback to the coach carrying our Polish scout troop back to Hammersmith after our annual pilgrimage to Aylesford Priory in Kent; it's a Sunday, the coach driver has BBC Radio 1's Pick of the Pops on the radio. I'm looking out of the window at South-East London, known to me at that time only from these journeys. I must have done this trip by coach seven or eight times, with the cubs then the scouts. I could feel that precise atmosphere - the summer holidays had just ended, the school term just begun, autumn was drawing near. 

And in a second it was gone; just a pleasant micro-memory of a old, familiar memory remained to tinge my consciousness with its flavour.

This particular flashback has occurred to me often enough to be entered into the qualia compilation category. 

Another flashback that conjures up pleasance is an unbidden recall of the Hornby Dublo model railway catalogue from the early-1960s. These toy trains were decidedly too expensive for me to have, but simply having the catalogue to gaze at generated much anticipatory pleasance, something that was never to be consummated; never mind - I could imagine the engines, the carriages, the track... "Ah, vanitas vanitatum, which of us is happy in this life? Which of us has our desire, or having it, is gratified?" The last line of William Thackeray's Vanity Fair contains much truth - never having had a model railway, the memories of the catalogue - and my childhood imaginings of the models - remain powerfully pleasant in my mind when they flash back.

I have become particularly sensitive to these flashbacks when they appear within my stream of consciousness. Where are they from, why do they appear, are there triggers deeper than I am aware of; and above all the similarity between these - which I can clearly identify from this life - and those that I  feel exactly the same, but are from a pre-1957 past.

And here's one - I recently wrote about the experience of firing from a WW2-era M1 carbine. That phantom gun is with me; early today I felt the exact sensation of steadying my aim by wrapping the carbine's khaki web sling around my left elbow - yet the guns on the shooting range were all without slings. As I imagined this, I had no target, no warrior-like emotion, just that feeling of twining that strap around my arm to get a steadier shot. Completely unbidden - I was thinking about eating a box of blueberries at the time. But again, it was a moment of pleasance.

By the way, the Othello quote is nicely synchronistic:

I remember a mass of things, but nothing distinctly;
a quarrel, but nothing wherefore. O God, that men
should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away
their brains! that we should, with joy, pleasance
revel and applause, transform ourselves into beasts!

Such times we live in...

This time last year:
Another dream of Dziadio

This time six years ago:
Teetering between rage and reason

This time seven years ago:
Poland - it works!

This time eight years ago:
Bricktorian Birmingham

This time ten years ago:
Fog hits Modlin Airport

This time 11 years ago:
The local elections and what they mean

This time 12 years ago:
Synchronicity of shape - Powiśle, Hanger Lane, Mel's Drive-In

This time 13 years ago:
The last of Jeziorki's noted landmark - the Rampa na kruszywa

This time 14 years ago:
Jeziorki spared high-density development thanks to airport zoning

Dealing with the Hammer of Darkness

 As long-term readers of this blog will know, around this time of year, especially those gloomy days when the sun fails to poke through the leaden clouds, I get mild symptoms of Seasonal Affective Disorder. Not debilitating by any means, but enough to be noticed, enough to get me down, robbing me of my usual joie de vivre.

At long last I have worked out a partial solution (other than spending four months of the year in the Southern Hemisphere). It is to ignore the time change at the end of October.

Before the clocks went back, I'd go to sleep around 23:00 to 23:15, and wake up between 07:00 and 07:15. 

This year, I have ignored the social hegemony of the clock and have kept to my natural, summer, rhythm - I go to sleep at the same time relative to the sun - not an hour later as the rest of the Northern Hemisphere does - and I wake at the same time relative to the sun.

This means being totally ready for bed at 21:45, and being asleep by 22:00-22:15. So I wake, naturally, at 06:00-06:15. And I must say, I'm finding this easier to achieve than I had thought just two weeks ago, when I wrote about the impending time change.

In the old days of having to get up to go to the office and of rigid TV schedules, this would have been impossible. That film I've wanted to see would have been on, starting at half past nine in the evening and ending 90 minutes later. Today of course, we can watch what we want, when we want to watch it. And do much of our work from home.

During the working week, I do my daily paces in daylight, as far as possible - any work that's needed for the following day can be done during the hours of darkness. Rather than working 9 till 5 (or even 8 till 4), I work until around 2pm, then go for a walk, return as it gets dark, and the work on until 7 or 8pm, as required.

So I am starting to become Master of My Own Time. Society proceeds at its own pace, I at mine. So I'm one hour ahead. Unless there's a Big Night Out (three so far since the time change, resulting in bedtimes past midnight), I'm sticking to this regime - and it works.

Late nights = higher blood pressure the following morning. That's clear from my regular blood pressure readings - an observation of cause and effect. That hour's time change can actually be dangerous if you just go with it.

At this latitude, the difference between day-length in midsummer and midwinter is nine hours. We oscillate between sixteen and half hours of daylight in late June and around seven and half hours in late December). Those daylight hours can be split into three and three-quarters after noon and three and three-quarters  hours in the morning. Year-round summer time would keep it that way. But the autumn time change robs us of an hour of afternoon daylight, adding it on in the morning. Frankly, being by nature an owl rather than a lark, that's not good for me. I really don't give a stuff at what time the sun rises, rarely being up to observe this phenomenon. But a late sunset - and lots of evening daylight - is what I crave.

As I wrote, the concept of midday being halfway between sunrise and sunset is naturally ordained. It is at noon the sun is at the zenith of its daily course, throwing its shortest shadow of the day, whatever the time of year. Midnight is noon's polar opposite, being halfway between sunset and sunrise. 

Historically, our northern European forebears would have slept longer in midwinter, going to bed a few candles after sunset, waking up with the sun, but with a longer interval between their first and second sleeps [see here]. And yet since electricity lit up our lives, we have shifted to a different circadian rhythm that the one set by the sun. We cherish our leisure hours - we like to play sports on summer evenings until 9pm, eat dinner al fresco on warm nights, stay up late to watch TV; our daily routines are out of sync with the solar day. The midsummer day starts early, even with the time change, the sun rises in Warsaw at quarter past four. Yet convention, society, employers, TV schedules, have determined that those daylight hours are less valuable that the evening ones.

Another tip I have is roller blinds, which I had installed on the działka earlier this year. They completely block out daylight, allowing me to sleep in way past sunrise in midsummer. Back in Jeziorki, dropping the blinds early, switching on several low-mounted, dim lights, creates a warm, cosy mood and cuts out that most depressing time of day, around dusk, when what little daylight there is ebbs away.

This is, for the Northern Hemisphere, the busiest time of year. Racing towards Xmas - get everything done, budgets achieved, new budgets drawn up - before the Xmas party season starts. Now there is no historical basis for stating that Joshua ben Joseph, a Christos of Nazareth, was born in late December. The early Christian Church took that decision in the 4th century AD, probably hitchhiking on the pagan festivals of Sol Invictus and Yule. It makes sense to celebrate the passing of the shortest day and earliest sunset, the returning Light. Working hard takes your mind off the gloom and dismalness going on outside during the run-up to the contemporary materialist feast of Xmas.

Anyway. 

It's now quarter to nine - quarter to ten in old money - and I will soon be getting ready for bed, ready to rise tomorrow, shortly after six. So far, so good. I'm coping. And at the last weekend of March, I intend to return to the summer routine - going to sleep around 23:00, and rising around 07:00. 

Unless I've morphed into a lark before then.

UPDATE 24 November: Ten days later and I'm sticking to this new routine. I'm fine with going to bed at ten and waking up around 6:15.

UPDATE October 2023: I came across this research pointing to a link between eye colour and seasonal affective disorder - people with blue eyes are less prone to it, which explains why latitude alone doesn't necessarily determine susceptibility to SAD. And this study from the British Medical Journal suggests that there's another danger with time change at the other end - heart attacks and stroke increase significantly after the clocks go forward in spring. (Again, going to bed an hour later and waking up an hour later could be an answer.) Time to stop fiddling with the clocks!

This time four years ago:

Poland's dream of a superconnector hub

This time five years ago:
The magic of superzoom

This time nine years ago:
Welcome to Lemmingrad

This time 11 years ago:
Dream highway

This time 12 years ago:
The Days are Marching

This time 14 years ago:
First snow, 2007

Free will, determinism and our supernatural powers

The debate as to whether humans have free will is as old as philosophy. Do we really have the will to shape our own destinies, or are we merely guided there by deterministic forces beyond our control? Or is our journey through life random and meaningless? 

Do our actions resulting from our own free will forge our future? Or has it been decided for us, long ago? By causation, or by metaphysical notions? "It is the stars, the stars above us, govern our condition" [King Lear, William Shakespeare]. 

We have no control over who our parents were, over our genetics, over the environment in which we were born and raised. A multiplicity of factors reign over our lives, from the economy to the weather and the society in which we live. Each day we walk on the edge of chaos - devastating unexpected events can shatter lives, from health diagnoses to life-changing accidents, over which we have little control.

Individual issues get resolved, new ones pop up. As I wrote in May this year, it doesn't all come right in the end; we never achieve closure on everything, no matter how long we live.

Yet I feel (in a non-empirical way) that we have more control over our destinies than a rationalist materialist might accept. But only if we consciously will it so, and believe in our powers (weak though they may be).

Can you draw an optimal outcome out of the future by strength of mind? By willing it so? The rationalist-materialist would argue that this is magical thinking - this is non-causation. There is no link between you willing something, and it happening, they will tell you.

What do I believe we can ask for? 

Freedom from anxiety; evading chance accidents (not being in the wrong place at the wrong time); comfort, peace of mind, joy - pleasance (an obsolete term, the feeling of feeling pleased). Above all, we can ask the contentment that comes from moving forward on the long road to spiritual understanding. And when these things do come to pass, feeling grateful for them is essential. They should never be taken for granted. Complacency is spiritual death, as is boastfulness.

What do I believe we cannot ask for? What we should not be asking for? Wealth, luxury, power, admiration, adoration, fun, kicks, thrills; the here-today-gone-tomorrow, the short-term high. The sugar-rush of the ego being fed. You cannot petition the Lord with prayer - for these.

We still don't know whether the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics is right or not. But let's just grapple with it for a moment. In multiverse in which an infinite number of universes co-exist, there must therefore be one just for you! [Well - maybe not everyone, not the Trump-like p-zombies, meat-covered biological robots that act on instinct and possess no soul. Not the człowiek, który się nie zastanawia.] But given that you are here, and reading this, I assume that you, like me, are a consciousness actively engaged in a search for truth. 

Quantum mechanics, which is nearly 100 years old, has been scientifically proven but it still defies philosophical understanding. It is not intuitive, as Newtonian mechanics is. Everyone can understand what happens to a ball thrown into the air, and grasp the mathematical formula that expresses its motion. Yet we cannot wrap our human brains around the notion of superposition of particles. The idea that articles adopt all possible paths - all possible positions - until their wave functions are collapsed. All possible futures are therefore possible, until wave-function collapse limits them to just one. What causes the wave function to collapse? The Copenhagen interpretation suggests it is the presence of a conscious observer. Erwin Schrödinger claimed this was ridiculous, devising his famous thought experiment ("is the cat dead or not dead?") to highlight the absurdity. The many-worlds interpretation, however, holds that the cat is dead in one universe and alive in another, the bifurcation occurring at the moment the state of the subatomic particle is resolved. It decays in one, the cat dies. It doesn't decay in the other, the cat lives.

The implication of the many-worlds interpretation is that you are living in a universe, very similar to the one I'm currently living in, indeed, interfacing with my one in many ways - but one that has been fine-tuned for you, not for any other consciousness. Caveat: this is but one interpretation, I'm only holding this open for consideration.

I challenge anyone who says that the supernatural, the paranormal and the metaphysical are all phooey, all New Age woo-woo, to give me their interpretation of quantum mechanics in the comments box below. My interpretation is that the subjective conscious observers do have a role in the collapse of the wave function - but that role isn't understood; it is weak, and it will grow in strength as consciousness evolves. I likewise challenge those who say that all material phenomena have to have a cause to tell me what was the underlying cause of the Big Bang...

This time last year:
Hammer of Darkness cubed
[This year I've significantly mitigated the effect of Seasonal Affective Disorder, by going to sleep at the pre-clock-change time. I go to bed at 10:00-10:15pm, (summer time 11:00-11:15) and wake up at 6:00-6:15am (summer time 7:00-7:15). I've ignored the time change, I'm feeling better for it.]

This time three years ago:
Magic day, in and around Jakubowizna

This time four years ago:
Warsaw-London-Ealing

This time six years ago:
With my father and brother in Derbyshire

This time eight years ago:
In praise of Warsaw's trams

This time 11 years ago:
Setting sun in the mountains

This time 12 years ago:
That learning moment

Sunny holiday local check-up

 Ah! The sun is out and I want some... Time for a walk to benefit from autumnal rays, and while conditions allow, to take a peek at how the S7 extension is getting on south of Zamienie. I see, looking at past years (bottom, marked with asterisks), that the national holiday celebrating Poland's regained independence is a good opportunity for photographing progress of local road-building.

Folk were out in force cycling, jogging and walking hither and yon all over the building site, with their children and their dogs - and work was still going on! Not at the usual frenetic pace, but from time to time a dumper truck would roar past. Despite the public holiday, work was very much in progress today.

Below: the new footbridge over the S7 extension will be the only pedestrian link between Zamienie and Dawidy Bankowe to the west, and Zgorzała and Jeziorki to the east. It's taking an inordinately long time compared to the pace of work elsewhere. The new road bridge, some 500m further north (just beyond the warehouse), takes four lanes of motor traffic but has no pavement. Bastards. The top end of the S7 can only be crossed on foot in three places: the tunnel along ul. Baletowa nearly two kilometres away to the north, this viaduct; and then the next one, a kilometre and half to the south, for cars and pedestrians. Entirely insufficient. Communities will end up being split in half.

Below: my first view from that new viaduct which links the two sides of Nowa Wola. Looking south towards Lesznowola

Below: looking north from the same viaduct, note the marked sweep of the S7 as it weaves between Zgorzała (to the right) and Zamienie (to the left on the horizon). Note the service roads on either side of the expressway, and the drainage ditches between the services road and the S7 itself.

Below: Ursynów rises on the horizon on this telephoto shot that shows both the footbridge and the distant cars-only viaduct crossing the S7. Note the posts for the acoustic screens that will muffle the worst of the noise from the residents of Zgorzała.

Below: steps link the service roads on both sides of the S7 to the viaduct carrying the local road. Turf has been laid, rather than waiting for grass seeds to germinate.

Below: a shot taken on Monday evening, looking north towards Warsaw's skyline, from where the slip-road from węzeł (junction) Zamienie joins the northbound carriageway. Note the 'Turdis' to the left (the flashing light on the roof was from a truck passing in the background).

I leave the S7 and head back to Jeziorki via the fields between Nowa Wola and Zgorzała, before crossing the railway line. This area is one huge expanse of housing developments, being built up at tremendous speed. I've just looked at Google Earth imagery from February this year - already out of date.

Below: I don't wanna house that looks like that! End-terrace on the border of Zgorzała and Nowa Wola. Architecturally dismal. People have now moved in. A car or two with every house. Traffic will get worse.

Below: this wasn't here last time I passed by... from behind a field of maize appears yet another new development; the land between Zgorzała, Mysiadło, Nowa Iwiczna and Nowa Wola is rapidly filling up with houses and flats. Despite this frenzy of house-building (around 15 estates in total), access roads remain limited to two muddy tracks (ul. Gogolińska south of Warsaw's border, and ul. Przepiórki), and two asphalted roads to the south (ul. Kielecka and ul. Dzikiej Róży).

Below: looking east along Rów Jeziorki ('Jeziorki Ditch'), the line of silver birches demarcating the southern boundary of Warsaw. To the right, beyond the rushes, a potato field. Beyond that - newly built rows of terraced houses.

Below: looking south along ul. Gogolińska, one of just four access roads to the sprawl of development mentioned above. No asphalt - must be a river mud after a week's rain. Potholes merely filled with gravel. Another new building is appearing - fortunately, this is designated for shops and restaurants - sorely needed by the locals.

Below: "Grass triumphs, and I must say, I'm rather glad." The last line of John Betjeman's Metro-land, expressing his satisfaction that the Metropolitan Railway's plans to extend suburbia all the way out to rural Buckinghamshire failed. This is where the PiS government's flagship social-housing project, announced in October 2017, was to have been built, filling this field with flats for 8,000 people. Word was in May that it would not happen; indeed, on the Mieszkanie Plus website, there's no mention of a project for Jeziorki. All mentions of it have been deleted.

This time last year:
Zamienie is changing*

This time three years ago:
Thoughts on the 100th anniversary of Poland regaining its independence

This time four years ago:
Globalisation in retreat

This time eight years ago:
Leeds, a city made uglier by crooked developers

This time nine years ago:
Węzeł Lotnisko (now Węzeł W-wa Południe) - works continue*

This time 14 years ago:
Its Independence Day