Dignity and ageing

As I lay face-down on the carpet in the upstairs hall in between two sets of back extensions*, the thought crossed my mind - is this not a little, uh, undignified for a man of 64? I mean - I cannot envisage my father in such a position when he was this age. Nor straining to do 15 pull-ups to the bar, nor waving a pair of five-kilo weights around, nor charging up and down Argyle Road propelled by a pair of sticks.

It would have been 1987 when my father was my age - by then, both sons had left home, and he was still five and a bit years away from finally retiring (to become a grandfather). He'd drive to work each day in his company Ford Sierra (B 808 WUC) and occasionally pop in to help me out in my house with some DIY or work in the garden. But he wouldn't be doing press-ups and sit-ups. The only plank he'd hold would be placed between two bits of scaffolding to stand on while painting a wall.

He wouldn't stay up to midnight to listen to the radio [here I must plug the most excellent soul-music show on West Wilts Radio, hosted by my Gunnersbury classmate, Martyn J, Fridays 9-11pm UK time]. Nor would he ever wear jeans or leather motorcycle jackets.

But then Sir Michael Jagger (born 20 years after my father and 14 years before me) was still performing live as recently as 2019.

Somewhere during those twenty years, a demarcation line between generations had been drawn - what was unacceptable to my father's generation has become commonplace today. I'd challenge you to find a larger gulf between any two generations in human history as that which lay between our two.

I remember our neighbours from childhood on Croft Gardens, Hanwell, Mr and Mrs Jones - he was born at the end of the 19th century and saw action in the trenches of the Western Front during WW1. So in 1963, he'd have been my age. He told me about how you could get to Southend-on-Sea on the District Line from Ealing Broadway before 1939. I remember him in summer, newly retired, out in the back garden mowing his lawn with a small, hand-pushed mower with a wooden handle; wearing a sleeveless sweater over a checked shirt and a pair of baggy corduroy trousers. A generation older than my parents, the Joneses (whose grandchildren were my age) were very much like my parents in demeanour and outlook. First-hand experience of war in one's youth colours the rest of one's life profoundly.

The wartime generation was a practical, rational generation, not open to the novelties that society began experimenting with from the 1960s onward. They marched on into old age with dignity. 

* Back extensions - the antidote to the plank - lie face down on the floor, hands clasped behind the head. Arch your back so that both legs and your upper torso are raised - hold that position for three seconds, and repeat eight times. Then rest to get your breath back, and repeat another eight times. Thanks to Paul W. for suggesting these to me last February.

This time last year:
Longevity, telomeres and exercise
[I see that this was probably my peak month!]

This time two years ago:
A day of most profound sadness

This time three years ago:
Vintage aerial views of the ground

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

This time six years ago:
Ealing in bloom

This time seven years ago:
Keeping warm in January

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

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

This time 11 years ago:
To The Catch - a short story (Part II)

This time 12 years ago:
Greed, fear, fight and flight - and the economy

This time 13 years ago:
Is there an economic crisis going on in Poland?

Death and you: a thought experiment

Consider this: billions of people have experienced death - and yet you haven't. 

But what if... you won't? What if this Universe is fine tuned for you?

You may have have lost loved ones - you know very well that death is real; no one to date has ever cheated it - no one born in the 19th century, for example, is still alive today. 

So here's a thought experiment.

Let's assume you're currently in reasonable health. The years are passing; but one day you read about a technology just around the corner that can actually reverse ageing. And indeed, ten years later, a treatment becomes available. Early adopters pay millions for the chance of becoming biologically younger. But then another 15 years into the future, the firms selling such treatment scale up, allowing them to cut the price so that most middle-income people can easily afford it. Margin times volume equals profit. Think about the ubiquity of the mobile phone; compare the price and the features of today's smartphone with one from 1997.

And so, you reach your 80th birthday, but your biological age is nearer to 60. Twenty years later, another spate of breakthroughs emerges onto the market. Suddenly the double-century becomes a possibility; you look at yourself in the mirror and you see someone in their early 50s. Yes, you could easily reach 200, you think - as long as you avoid accidents. 

OK - so perhaps you have an accident and you do die - then what? Mankind could be on the brink of being able to bring people back from the dead. Give it several more decades... You are returned to biological life. Who knows - in this Universe, made just for you, maybe you will live forever?

Me? I'm old fashioned - I have a rich experience of past-life flashbacks, almost daily, and from time to time dreams - which to me suggest that consciousness, as separate from the ego, can experience anomalous qualia memories (those moments when you are subjectively aware of experiencing a particular set of sensations). I had one a few minutes ago when I opened the front door to receive a faceful of damp air, above freezing, air that has heralded a thaw, a feeling a recall from a previous existence - America in the 1950s. Had one yesterday too, when reading about the early years of the RAND Corporation in the USA, the description of its moderne headquarters building triggered strong familiar and pleasant flashbacks as I was dropping off to sleep. A dream I had last Friday - a lake, mid- 1950s USA, night, I am trying to break into a Cessna floatplane moored to a pier, but I can't find the magneto switch I need to flip to start the engine. 

The consistency of such experiences - anomalous memories - I have written about on this blog for many years, and they give me a clue to what awaits me when my physical body expires. An upward spiral of understanding, life by life reaching ever-so-slightly closer towards unity in God.

This time last year:
We sleep, we dream - what's that all about?

This time six years ago:
Searching for growth

This time nine years ago:
The more it snows - a decent snowfall in Warsaw

This time ten years ago:
A Dream Too Far - short story

This time 11 years ago:
Compositions in white, blue and gold

This time 12 years ago:
Dobra and the road

This time 13 years ago:
Polish air force plane full of VIPs crashes on landing in bad weather

Pictures in the winter sun

Sun in winter is special; it behoves one to make the most of every ray. Time for a long walk. 

Below: hints of New Mexico, Jeziorki. Ulica Baletowa looking towards W-wa Dawidy station and the S7 extension carried over the tunnel in the distance. Evergreens look good against blue skies any time of year.

Below: the reverse shot - the tunnel carrying the S7 (under construction) over ul. Baletowa. In the distance, through the tunnel, the level crossing by W-wa Dawidy station.

Below: classic Jeziorki winter, by the southern pond. Note the broken silver pines - toppled over by last week's strong winds.

A man strides onto the ice, without hesitation. In his hand, an axe. He squats down and starts hacking at the ice. Looks like he's making a fishing hole.

Two hours later, I'm walking back the same way and step out to look at the hole. Although it's not that cold (-2C), the water at the surface has frozen over. I go to get a stick; it takes several blows to break the ice that's formed during this short time. With the stick, I gauge that the pond is covered by a sheet of ice some 20cm (eight inches) thick. Plenty of footprints and ice-skate tracks suggest that the ice is absolutely safe.

Below: over the years since the ponds have been deepened and the park built around it, the reeds have grown back. I can now walk over the ice and see the far side of the pond - it's not good. What was open water is now so overgrown to be almost impenetrable.

Below: between rail and road - a southbound Koleje Mazowieckie double-decker train passing a northbound Inter City Dart train on its way from Kraków to Olsztyn via Warsaw.

Below: there's still ten metres of concrete and asphalt needed to connect the end of the S79 (where I stand to take this photo) to the beginning of the S7 extension that will run down to Tarczyn and Grójec.

Below: under the railway lines, over the expressway. Above me to the left, the electrified Warsaw-Radom main line; above to the right is the un-electrified coal train line from Okęcie sidings to Siekierki power station. Underneath passes the S2 as it crosses southern Warsaw.

Below: the interstices, where few wander. Some lines of W.B. Yeats' verse sprayed onto the concrete underneath the railway bridge. Quite unexpected!

Below: it's winter, so the coal train runs more often than in summer. Siekierki is not just a power station - it's a heating plant, the hot water generated gets pumped around as district heating for local housing estates.

Left: not a householder keeping warm by burning crap - this is steam, not smoke - and it's coming out of the chimney stack at Siekierki power station, 10km to the north-east. In the foreground, the railway line.

Below: A LOT Polish Airlines Bombardier Dash 8 Q400 coming into land. It's so low as it crosses the S79 that I can catch this shot with the kit zoom lens on my Nikon D5600 extended to 55mm.

Below: bonus shot from town - a Nysa 522 minibus, used for nostalgia-themed tourist trips around Warsaw. It stands, minus registration plate, outside the Palace of Culture. Only contemporary posters give a clue as to the date of this photo.

(Happy birthday, Mon!)

This time last year:
Magic sky

This time two years ago:

Too good to skip over

This time four years ago:
The Hunt for Tony Blair
[Apologies to UK readers - the YouTube link is geo-blocked there]

This time six years ago:
Lux Selene

This time nine years ago:
David Cameron, Conservatism and Europe

This time 10 years ago:
Citizen Action Against Rat Runners

This time 11 years ago:
Moni at 18 (and 18 months)

This time 12 years ago:
Building the S79 - Sasanki-Węzeł Lotnisko, midwinter

Classical and meta-classical physics, the Ego and Consciousness

Kick a football and you intuitively know where it will end up, based on the strength of your kick and the angle. You kick the ball up - it flies into the air, reaches its zenith, and arcs back down towards the ground with a velocity of 9.8 metres per second per second. We can similarly intuit how it will bounce. Like the analogy of the billiard table to describe Newtonian (or classical) physics, we understand it perfectly without having to know the mathematics describing the forces, vectors and masses involved. 

But imagine kicking it skywards and watching it accelerate away from you with ever-increasing speed, in contravention of the gravitational pull of the Earth. This is what's happening at the cosmic scale - galaxies are flying apart from one another faster and faster - in contravention of Newtonian physics, which suggests that the acceleration should slow down and the Universe should contract in upon itself. To explain why the Universe is expanding at an ever-increaing rate, science has had to invent Dark Energy, something that no one can see or feel or detect in any way. Dark energy is essentially no more than a mathematical framework can make sense of our observations. Without hypothetical dark energy, the laws of physics make no sense when looking out into the fringes of the observable Universe.

And then there's the subatomic realm. The billiard balls you understand. But within the atom, there is the electron, which can behave like either a wave or a particle until someone intervenes to check which it is - and at that very instant it becomes one or the other. Until an observer takes a look, the electron's position or its momentum is no more than a probability. And this is almost incomprehensible. Yet this is the basic premise of quantum mechanics, which has been with us for the best part of a century, a scientifically established fact, proven thousands of times over in labs all over the world - but try to interpret it philosophically - there's no consensus.

Einstein and Heisenberg didn't overturn Newton. Classical physics wasn't supplanted by the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics, in the way that alchemy was displaced by chemistry - it was bracketed by them. They explained that which is happening far beyond the edge of our own galaxy and the behaviour of particles which are too small for us to comprehend. And yet science has yet to reconcile quantum mechanics with relativity - in particular, gravity's place within the subatomic realm, and gravity's relationship with the other three fundamental forces - electromagnetic interaction, and the strong and weak nuclear interactions.

With the certainties of Newtonian physics undermined, we feel free to look for answers beyond the straightjacket of reductionist materialism.

The ancients had an instinctive rather than rational understanding of the world. The secret of the famous hermetic text, the Emerald Tablet - the notion that as above, so below - could be taken to mean the mystery of the galactic and the subatomic. In between the macro and the micro, there is our own human scale - that which we have always been able to perceive with our unaugmented, pre-technological Mk. 1 Eyeball. From the smallest grain of sand to a sky full of stars. Since the time of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution that it spawned, the human scale has become our domain; over the past three hundred years we have achieved mastery over much that resides within it.

That mastery has resulted in a rich material world, one that satisfies the ego. We surround ourselves with things that we think should bring up happiness and status, and we organise our lives accordingly. God, as purveyed by religion, has largely failed; rational materialism has taken the place of supernatural 'magical thinking'.

By dismantling the sense of magic around us and replacing it with explainable matter, we have lost much as a species. We have lost touch with the world around us, the world that 'primitive' peoples feel they are an intrinsic part of, rather than masters of. Our pre-industrial forefathers might not have lived in a technological civilisation, but all of them, every one, implicitly believed in the supernatural. Having been born into a technological civilisation, we feel can comfortably jettison those unnecessary beliefs in the supernatural and the metaphysical, because our egos are more than adequately compensated by material rewards.

But look at the price we pay - and the price our planet - is paying - for rejecting the spiritual.

Yet this is not the time to swing the other way and reject technology and material goods, but to optimise them; above all it is also high time we reconnected with our consciousness, which in its otherness from our ego is as different as quantum mechanics is from Newtonian physics. 

The thing with meta-classical physics is that it is literally beyond one's grasp - we can no more peer inside the atom's 'shell' as we can see (without the most powerful of telescopes) the farthest reaches of the Universe. And so - it doesn't concern our everyday life, which is locked into the Newtonian frame of reference. The classical world is the world of our biology; our biology predicates our ego. Our consciousness - pure, and untouched by biology - is what we'd have in common with the person we'd be had our parents never met.

I can imagine an advanced civilisation in which innate 'magical thinking' wasn't rejected, but instead was fine-tuned over millennia into psychic powers that work in conjunction with technology. Here on Planet Earth, the triumph of technology over mysticism has left mankind in a dead end, denying the  spiritual side of our natures, we end up nursing anxieties and neuroses that are entirely unnecessary. Wanting things we can't afford and getting into debt to finance them.

We should consider consciousness in the context of meta-classical physics - everything that is science, yes, and rational, but beyond Newton. Consciousness as quantum phenomenon, perhaps - or an intrinsic building block of Universal reality - rather than in the context of reductionist materialism. Some voices would have you believe that your consciousness is no more than an epiphenomenon resulting from emergent complexity, that is limited to the human brain and to a lesser extent to the brains of higher-order animals. But I believe it runs far deeper than that.

Accept the mystery of meta-classical physics and you'll be better placed to accept the supernatural, the numinous, the Divine. Revel in the primacy of your subjective conscious experience.

This time last year:
The Sun and Snow

This time two years ago:
Farewell to my father's car

This time four years ago
Notes from the Arena of the Unwell

This time five years ago:
The magic of a dawn flight

This time six years ago:
Warsaw as a voivodship

This time eight years ago:
Around town in the snow

This time ten years ago:
Reference books are dead

This time 11 years ago:
A winter walk to work, and wet socks

This time 14 years ago:
Blue Monday

Qualia compilation 4: playing with Lego

One of the greatest joys of childhood was total immersion in play. With imagination, a box of Lego was the portal to a world of creativity, time being the only constraint. Today's Lego is moving more and more towards verisimilitude with an ever greater range of shaped pieces. For me, the lack accuracy - and of little Lego people (introduced in the late 1970s) was not a problem; I'd place a 1x1 cylindrical brick on top of a 1x1 square brick, and that would represent a human being - a driver, pilot, engineer or passenger. These were the Lego people that inhabited my world. They'd be named (or numbered) for the letter or number on the square brick. And their heads would be blue, red, white or yellow.

My Lego modelling output did not look remotely like the real thing (for instance my Apollo Saturn V rocket being square rather than cylindrical in cross section), but this did not matter - in my imagination, the rocket was the same shape as the original. The colours of 1960s Lego bricks - white, red, blue, yellow and clear, with grey base boards - these are the colours of my childhood.

The specific pieces of Lego that trigger the strongest qualia memories are the ones that cannot form anything other than themselves - the national flag set, the road sign set and the petrol station set.

Below: one winter's day, with fresh snow on the streets, a crisp frost and a blue sky, I walked past the Radisson SAS (as was then) hotel on ulica Grzybowska in Warsaw; outside fluttered the flags of Denmark, Sweden and Norway - and all of a sudden the Lego flag set flashed back to me.

Below: the Shell service station set bought for me by my parents didn't include the tanker truck, but I recall the little yellow petrol pumps and the Shell sign.

Another set that often sparks qualia memories is the road signs, below, which in the mid-1960s were still a bit exotic, being the continental-style signs that were being introduced onto British roads from 1 January 1965. 

British road signs from before that date themselves trigger strong pangs of nostalgia (below).

Outside our house on Cleveland Road, there was a roundabout sign like the one above, well into the 1980s. 

One Lego road sign that I recall from the set (suggesting it was a continental European traffic-sign set) was this sign, left, informing drivers of a pedestrian crossing one (informing rather than warning - that's the universally used pedestrian-in-a-red-triangle sign). This does not exist in the UK, probably because of Belisha beacons, which serve the same purpose.

This time last year:
Onto the frozen pond

This time two years ago:

A walk through lights-out London

This time three years ago:
Mid-Jan pictorial round-up

This time seven years ago:
UK migration and the NHS

This time 10 years ago:
Miserable depths of winter

This time 11 years ago:
From - a short story (Part 1)

This time 12 years ago:
A month until Lent starts

This time 13 years ago:
World's biggest airliner over Poland

This time 14 years ago:
More pre-Lenten thoughts

Hoofing it

A big thanks to Andrew N. who popped over on Friday for a stroll around Jeziorki, bringing with him an extra pair of Nordic-walking poles, which I used. Andrew, who walks huge distances around Las Kabacki with his wife at unfeasible speeds (up to 8km/h), showed me how to use the poles to propel yourself faster.

The benefits of Nordic walking are not just covering ground at a higher speed; they are exercising parts of the body that mere walking doesn't. An hour-and-half of Nordic walking with Andrew convinced me that this is something worthwhile. I was shocked at how much ground we'd covered during the first hour compared to my usual pace. And I could also feel the muscles in my forearms aching by the end of the walk, as well as the muscles between the front of my shins and my feet.

From Wikipedia:

Compared to regular walking, Nordic walking involves applying force to the poles with each stride. Nordic walkers use more of their entire body (with greater intensity) and receive fitness- building stimulation not present in normal walking for the chest, latissimus dorsi muscle, triceps, biceps, shoulder, abdominals, spinal and other core muscles that may result in significant increases in heart rate at a given pace. Nordic walking has been estimated as producing up to a 46% increase in energy consumption, compared to walking without poles.

So yesterday I walked to Decaffalon* in Piaseczno and bought myself a pair of fixed-length carbon-fibre poles. The shop has a useful device for measuring precisely what length of poles suits your height so that your forearms are parallel to the ground. Together with the poles I bought a bag to carry them when not in use. The fixed-length poles have the advantage of being specifically tailored to your height, and are lighter and stronger than the adjustable telescopic poles that can collapse for easier transportation and storage.

Today I tried the poles out in practice.

One thing I found after I'd got back is that I was walking with a longer stride (89cm rather than 80cm without the poles); I blasted a 4.2km circuit in 46 minutes, so averaging 6.1km/h or 3.8mph. That's about 15-20% faster than usual. My Huawei Health tracker defines 'medium- to high-intensity walking as being over 100 steps/minute, on today's walk I managed 114 steps/minute. Not whistling show-tunes, then. The rubber-tipped poles worked fine over asphalt and pavement, but were not so good on sand, mud or ice; if they slip, you get no forward propulsion from your arm thrust.

The acquisition of the Nordic-walking poles will prove to be a watershed. From now on, walking will be divided into walking for exercise (along asphalt and pavement - off-road is suboptimal with the poles), to build up strength and speed - and walking for pleasure - seeing what's new, taking photos, exploring, taking the off-road routes, or walking to the shops with rucksack. 

Now I need a measured circuit, one that will take an hour or so to get around, plus another one that crams in 10,000 paces, without traffic lights, muddy bits or distractions - a suburban circuit for Jeziorki, and a rural circuit for Jakubowizna. And dressing appropriately - not too many layers, or I overheat and drench with sweat.

*As in 'decaffeinated sports shop' - the largest in Central and Eastern Europe, but offering a vanilla range to suit most rather than specialist kit for advanced practitioners. 

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

This time four years ago:
Ice - proceed with utmost care

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

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

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

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

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

This time 12 years ago:
Conquering Warsaw's highest snow mounds

This time 13 years ago:
Flashback on way to Zielona Góra

This time 14 years ago:
Ursynów, winter, before sunrise 

On ice - thick ice

Several days of sub-zero temperatures has once again caused our ponds to freeze over. By the fifth night, I felt confident enough to venture out onto the ice. Below: out through the reeds by ulica Dumki, I am certain the ice is solid.

Below: out on the centre of the pond - photo taken from my phone set to wide-angle lens mode. Though the pond had almost dried out to its bed in 2020, a wet summer last year has raised the water level by about a metre and half.

 

Left: same view, but taken with my Nikon D3500. Not as sharp as the phone's lens. Looking down, it looks to me like the ice supporting my weight is at least eight inches (20cm) thick. No threatening creaking sounds underfoot; I feel entirely secure. Caution needs to be exercised where open water can be observed, such as where the canal emerges into the pond under ul. Dumki or the canal between the two main ponds.

Below: ice on ice shows the layered nature of the frozen pond. After the previous thaw, a layer of rainwater settled on the ice, which then froze, this time, without snow.

Below: skaters were quick to take to the pond as a free alternative to Warsaw's rinks. Note the buses in the distance on ul. Baletowa; this is bus route 209 temporarily terminating at ul. Jeziorki, as once again the level crossing is closed for maintenance work to the drainage.

Below: looking south, with the wooden pier to the left.

Below: rotting vegetation at the bed of the pond releasing methane, bubbles of which have been frozen into the ice.

Below: nice quiet little beach community - four properties, still unsold, face the pond on ul. Trombity. Another new home is being built to the left (a large detached house).
 

This time three years ago:
Kraków in winter

This time four years ago:

Jeziorki mid-January catch-up

This time five years ago:
On ice

This time six years ago:
Tweeting and blogging

This time eight years ago:
The sad truth about the pavement for Karczunkowska

This time 12 years ago:
A haul of wintery wonderfulness

This time 13 years ago:
Optimal way to work?

This time 14 years ago:
Highest point in Jeziorki 
(photos of the Rampa before demolition)

Qualia compilation 3: Greenwich in winter

BOOMF! Flashback of the week, repeated frequently - it's Friday 2 January 1970; I'm 12, the last day of the school Christmas holidays. My father is seeing a client in south-east London, from memory to do with the extension of Thamesmead. After the meeting we will go and visit Greenwich. It's a beautiful sunny day; there's frost in the air and a light covering of snow. I take with my Christmas presents - two volumes of the Pocket Encyclopaedia of World Aircraft in Colour by Kenneth Munson, published in 1967. As I write these words, I have them both in my hand, here in Jeziorki, allowing me to relive the moment. 

I was sitting in a warm corridor outside the room in which my father was having his meeting, reading the books. Full of detail and data and colour illustrations of warplanes - bombers, fighters, attack aircraft, trainers, transport and patrol aircraft - I could not be bored. Soaking up the facts and figures that I can still recall to this day - the engines that powered the planes, their top speeds, their size, their weapon load, time passed rapidly. NATO codenames for the Soviet-bloc fighters and bombers - Fitter, Fishbed, Flashlight, Badger, Bear, Brewer, Mallow, Madge, Cub and Colt - were constant reminders of the Cold War, the ever-present foe.

There was, however, one plane that in particular struck me that day - the North American FJ-4 Fury; somehow I spent more time studying that one - a feeling of anomalous familiarity with its shape, its markings - a plane that first flew in October 1954 and served with the US Navy and US Marines. 'Quantico' spontaneously springs to mind as I look at it.

After my father had finished his meeting, we set off to Greenwich, walking up the snowy hill through the park to the observatory, where I learned about John Flamsteed and Sir William Herschel and the telescopes used by early astronomers, saw the Greenwich Prime Meridian, and then visited the National Maritime Museum, which struck me as being like the nautical section of the Science Museum but on a much larger scale and in a much grander building. Wonderful wooden models of sailing ships with highly detailed rigging and canvas in display cabinets vied for my attention with more modern Dreadnaughts, battleships and destroyers.

A great day out, which imprinted itself upon my memory, often triggered by sunny, snowy days even in wintery Warsaw.

This time last year:
Meagre, disappointing snow

This time two years ago:
The Inequality Paradox - a summing up

This time three years ago:
Familiarity, tradition and identity

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

This time five years ago:
Skarzysko-Kamienna and Starachowice, by train

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

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

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

This time 11 years ago:
Depopulating Polish cities?

This time 12 years ago:
Powiśle on a winter's morning

This time 13 years ago:
Sunny, snowy Jeziorki

What's new in Jakubowizna?

It was eight weeks since I locked up the działka for the winter - on Friday and today I was back for some country air and to check up on the place. Delighted to find no misfortunes have visited! 

Newness to report. First surprise - it seems my street now has a name. Ulica Owocowa. Literally, 'Fruit Street'. But it's not yet 100% clear... The first house on my street is actually in Chynów - so is this the name for the short stump of the street that's not Jakubowizna? Or will the street name continue for its whole length? To the end of the asphalt? Or beyond - into the orchards and woods?

Below: OpenStreetMap already has the name entered on it (unlike Google Maps). Click to enlarge.

Below: zooming in makes matters no clearer. What was once 'Chynów 226' is now ul. Owocowa 11, Chynów. A word about Polish village house-numeration. If there's a street name, the house will be Street Name + Number, Village Name. If a village has no street names (as is the case with the whole of Jakubowizna), houses are numbered Village Name + Number. But what happens when Chynów ends and Jakubowizna begins?

Taxi! Fruit Street, toute suite! We shall see how this develops. Meanwhile, far away in another part of the village - Jakubowizna's pavement is laid, end to end. All 1.4km of it. Tidied up, job done. Lovely. Walking up and down the muddy verges of Warsaw's busy ul. Karczunkowska, I can really appreciate a decent stretch of pavement. 

Below: pedestrians, an elderly cyclist pushing his bike along the roadway and a passing car give an idea of how pavements improve safety and decrease stress and anxiety among the rural vulnerable road-user community.

Below: the village of Widok, south of Jakubowizna, received its pavement three years ago, which was extended as far as the level crossing last year.

Below: looking south from the level crossing at a Kraków-bound InterCity express hurries towards Warka and Radom beyond. Modern PESA Dart train on this service.

Below: Chynów station, just before sunset. A new Koleje Mazowieckie Newag Impuls train pulls up to the platform. Of the five trains that passed me on my walk today, four were modern rolling stock, one was a modernised EN57. The entire line to Radom has been thoroughly upgraded (we still wait for Warka Miasto station to open, and for modern electronic signalling to enable trains to go faster).

This time two years ago:
Policy responses to inequality

This time three years ago:
A Royal Visit to Warsaw

This time four years ago:
Transport news

This time five days ago:
Uneasy Sunny Day - smog

This time six years ago:
Public media? State media? Party media?
[yet another year of not watching a single second of TVP]

This time seven years ago:
Beer, consumer choice and the Meaning of Life

This time eight years ago:
What's Cameron got against us Poles?
[whatever it was, it will have turned him into a utter loser in future history books]

The time ten years ago:
Anyone still remember the Przybyl case?

This time 11 years ago:
Wetlands midwinter meltdown

This time 12 years ago:
Jeziorki rail scenes, winter

This time 13 years ago:
Winter drivetime, Jeziorki

This time 14 years ago:
Kraków, a bit of winter sunshine

The spreading city - a vicious circle

I've not been to Nowa Iwiczna for several months; most of my rambles south of Jeziorki have been around the S7 extension roadworks west of the railway line. From the border of Warsaw, south of W-wa Jeziorki station, I take the footpath following the railway to its east (below) - this was once the path of the siding into the runs parallel to the rampa na kruszywa (aggregate transshipment ramp). 

Below: crossing the border (ulica Graniczna) between Mysiadło and Nowa Iwiczna, I notice that the path has widened and hardened for vehicular access. Soon I see why - a development of ten homes, two terraces of five houses on ul. Torowa (lit. 'track street'). Any space that a developer can squeeze in more housing - even if it's right by the railway line (you can make out the electricity gantries beyond the trees to the left). The row of houses to the left are less than 50m from the coal train line - which residents of Osiedle Etap by W-wa Jeziorki station complain bitterly above despite being twice as far away.

Below: the same thing is happening around the corner on newly-built ul. Turystyczna (lit. 'touristic street'), also in Nowa Iwiczna. Here, the houses are less than 30m away from the line, although there are no frequent passenger trains using the line here - only the long, heavy and loud coal trains. Photo taken from the pedestrian-only level crossing (bicycles can cross too - but you'd be hard pressed to get a motorbike past the barriers).

From this development to Nowa Iwiczna station is an eight-minute walk via that crossing. But to drive to the station is a journey of at least 2.6km, entailing two level crossings. I suspect walking makes sense to all but the laziest polluter-commuter. An alternative to taking the train is driving to town, along ul. Puławska, notorious for its traffic jams. Below: the section of ul. Puławska from ul. Energetyczna to ul. Okulickiego in Piaseczno is being widened to three lanes each way; a bottleneck bunging up the road. I can only hope that the long-(like ten years or more) delayed bus lanes for Puławska will finally appear. No excuse - especially now that the S2 tunnel has opened.

We know how all road-widening ends; "It's so much easier to drive to town!" More people do so, leading quickly to more congestion and calls for further road-widening. Meanwhile, as seen in the photos above, more and more development, more housing, more people, are moving out into Warsaw's suburbs. I can only hope that the growth of working from home will reduce numbers of people needing to make the daily trip to town, and once the pandemic has eased people will feel more comfortable using public transport and ditch the car.

For my Polish readers, this carbon-footprint calculator, courtesy of BNP Paribas, is worth looking at, in case you feel you're doing your bit to save the climate. It's sobering.

[Postscript, 9 January 2022: at the northern end of ul. Główna, Bobrowiec, less than 5km from Nowa Iwiczna, I see another development arising out of the fields. Sprayed on the chipboard surrounding the building site are the words: Jebać szeregowce - "Fuck terraced houses".]

[Postscript, 12 January 2022: fellow Warsaw blogger Student SGH sent me this wonderful photo from Nowa Iwiczna - the promise clashes with the reality. On a new house, a large banner proclaiming 'I wouldn't buy this house a second time'. Caveat emptor.

This time last year:
New sewers, new estate

This time two years ago:

The ultra-rich - deserving, or not

This time six years ago:
Globalisation and its part in PiS's return to power

This time seven years ago:
UK overtakes France as the world's fifth-largest economy

This time 11 years ago:
Wetlands winter meltdown

This time 12 years ago:
Winter's walk to work

This time 13 years ago:
Winter drivetime, Jeziorki North

Random January photos from Warsaw

Just some random snaps to show how glitzy and rich Warsaw has become. Below: Plac Grzybowski, looking west towards Aleja Jana Pawła II. A scene unrecognisable from pre-EU accession times. The investment has poured in, as have the jobs. Quality jobs.

Below: ul. Próżna, just around the corner from my office. Once a street of ruins, a street that had survived the destruction of the Ghetto almost intact but was in a dreadful state by the late 1990s.

Below: I wrote about last month's opening of the S2 expressway tunnel under Ursynów, which now effectively allows transit traffic to pass through Warsaw without encountering any traffic lights. This new ad, just west of Węzeł Lotnisko, the S2/S79 [and future S7] junction, is for an eaterie on the other side of the tunnel (actually 8km away and 1km off the S2). A bit more info (such as opening hours) would be useful.

Below: completed and opened last year, the new Ferrari showroom on ul. Wirażowa is immediately suggestive of a wealthy population. Work started in 2018, testament to how rapidly Warsaw was rising in international rankings of wealth. Before moving here, Ferrari's Warsaw showroom was housed (somewhat symbolically) in the former building of the central committee of the Polish communist party, the PZPR.

Fossil-fuel-powered trappings of wealth are not for me - I'd rather spend the cash on domestic comforts and doing up the działka (and maybe another classic motorbike?)

This time two years ago:
The Inequality Paradox: pt.2

This time three years ago
Jakubowizna in mid-winter

This four years ago:
Warm winter's day in Jakubowizna

This time five years ago:
Seeking an aesthetic in the Grim

This time six years ago:
UK overtakes France as the World's 5th Biggest Economy 

This time eight years ago:
Ice in the Vistula

This time 12 years ago:
A consolation to my British readers

This time 13 years ago:
Winter in its finery

The time 14 years ago:
Snow fences keep the trains running