Reverie-generated qualia memories

Up in the hunter's pulpit in Adamów Rososki. Nice place on a summer Sunday afternoon; a wooden cabin on stilts overlooking fields and forest. Settle in, settle down, crack open the tinnie: Guinness Draught (with free kitten toy inside each tin). Out of the fridge and into a small cool-bag, the beer is suitably chilled. 

The field in front of me is green and yellow; goldenrod and tansy are coming into flower. As I sip the Guinness, I am cast back my first Guinnesses as a teenager. The Wye Valley, on the English side of the river. Yes, and the first Guinness I drank in Ireland in 1981. I remember the taste, the experience. Not Watney's Red Barrel or Skol lager but a far superior beverage. As the beer begins to have its effect, I allow myself to drift off into a reverie; I find myself savouring earlier memories – indeed, some of my earliest memories – from the journey from West London to South Wales when I was three...

A recurring memory (or set of memories) from childhood relates to when we lived, briefly, near Newport, South Wales. Much I recall of that happy time, but this specific set of memories relates to the journey there, by car, most probably in the spring of 1960. 

My father, a civil engineer, was posted to Newport, Monmouthshire, to supervise the construction of the foundations under what would become the Llanwern steelworks. This would have been late 1959, when I was two. From memory, my father went out first (photos of Christmas 1959 were from our West London home), my mother and me joined him later. I seem to recall making the journey several times. 

Many memories flooded back to me today as I sat there high up in the hunter's pulpit, sipping stout.

Our route took us west along the A40 (this was before the M4 and M40 were built). One memory was of leaving London, the A40 in Hillingdon as it crosses Long Lane. To the right there was a yard where construction equipment for hire was stored. Cranes, what have you. My father explained that his company hired pile-drivers and vertical drilling machines from here. The old road would wind through small towns and villages, the occasional wood, up and down hills – and traffic jams would be frequent. I remember that we were part of an enormous jam once – a bank holiday? As we stood there. stationary minute after minute in the heat, a car drove by the other way (traffic flowing freely). I remember it well; it was an estate car with wooden frame in the rear, not a Morris Minor but something older and bigger. Maybe a custom conversion, maybe even pre-war. Inside were several older children. They were laughing at us. My father, evidently cross at being stuck in the jam, said "huliganie" (hooligans). I had just learned the word 'cyganie' (gypsies, Romany), and associated the car-load of mocking children with gypsy-folk. 

As a child, I could distinguish cars, lorries and buses very well. The lorries I liked best were the ERFs and Fodens and the big Commers with their distinctive diesel growl, especially as the driver dropped a gear to labour up a steep hill. And the roadside food... Much as my mother distrusted the snack-bars, trailers parked up in lay-bys, there was often no alternative. I remember one such place; we stopped there more than once. The woman serving the hot dogs (with British bangers rather than frankfurters) would ask each customer in turn "With onions or without onions?" in a sing-song voice that my mother imitated as we drove on. Again, I remember the greasy smell of the onions and the fatty sausages with mustard served on a white bread roll.

 

And I remember the petrol stations along the way. National Benzole and Cleveland, brands long gone, sold from pumps standing outside tin shacks with corrugated roofs, My mother would tell me that well before I could read, I was able to identify all the petrol stations by their logos – Shell-Mex, BP, Esho (as I'd pronounce Esso), National (Benzole), Cleveland and BP.

In Herefordshire and Gloucestershire – orchards. It is the sight of the orchards around Chynów that snaps me back to those childhood memories. They also remind me that as a small child, even then, the sight of those orchards set off anomalous memories; a strong sense of familiarity, from where I knew not; I'd been here before but not here. Another time, another place.

This time last year:
Procrastination, time and mindfulness

This time time three years ago:
Summer as it should be

This time four years ago:
Measuring the unmeasurable

This time six years ago:
Heading Home [my father leaves Warsaw for the last time]

This time eight years ago:
From my father's historic return to Warsaw

This time nine years ago:
Country life in a capital city 

This time 11 years ago:
My ogród is my działka

This time 13 years ago:
Mazowieckie province tempts with mini- and micro-breaks

This time 15 years ago:
Pride and anger

Late-July photo round-up

July has proved to be a rather nondescript month weather-wise (except for the first week, which was fine). No meteorological records have fallen, which is probably a good thing; local farmers can't complain about drought or flooding. 

Below: a female red deer takes fright as I approach from the south and bounds off into an abandoned apple orchard. There's a significant population of deer in this area; I have a one-in-three chance of seeing one on an evening walk around here, so I have my camera and lens set to catch a photo opportunity. Looking at this deer in mid-air, I can note the commonality with the cat; same mammalian body plan, the main difference being between the head of a carnivore (eyes on the front of the head for hunting) and a herbivore with eyes on the side of its head to watch out for predators. Red deer lack a proper tail; evolution evidently has no need for one.

Below: end of July and there's more than half an hour's evening daylight less than on the longest day in late June. The sun sets just before half past eight, and yet the hottest days (and nights) of the year are still ahead. The northern hemisphere is still warming up.

Below: a lovely Nysa 522 van in Milicja livery, photo taken on the set of the TVP series Wojna zastępcza, ('Proxy War') being shot in Warsaw's Krakowskie Przedmieście. The series, to be aired later this year, is set during Poland's transition from communism to democracy.

Below: summertime, and the tourist trams are running in Warsaw. This is an ex-Poznań Konstal 102N, built in the late 1960s, making its way along ulica Prosta. More information here.

Below: back in the countryside. View of a farmhouse from within the forest, Gaj Żelechowski. 

Below: wild hop cones at the end of July. These will be ripe for picking in mid-to-late September, by which time the hottest of days will have passed... I pick the ripe cones and boil them to make a hop extract, which, when cooled and diluted with cold water make a excellent thirst-quenching alcohol-free beverage.

Two train pics. Below: southbound push-pull double-decker semi-fast Koleje Mazowieckie train being pushed to Skarżysko-Kamienna via Radom (engine at the rear). It has just left Chynów station and is approaching the level crossing near Widok.

And finally – the InterCity Witos express heading to Warsaw, having left Przemyśl on the Ukrainian border less than five hours earlier. The train is hauled by EPO8 007, built in January 1976 (it will be celebrating its 50th birthday in five months' time!). Quite rare to see these old locos hauling expresses on this line, EPO9s and EU44 Husarzs being more common.

This time two years ago:
Late-July photo round-up

This time four years ago:
Stewardship of the Land, Jakubowizna

This time five years ago:
The cost of Covid complacency

This time six years ago:

Uprising commemoration - Day Three

This time seven years ago:
Ahead of the Big Day

This time nine years ago:
Once in a blue moon

This time 11 years ago:
A return to Snowdon - Wales' highest peak

This time 12 years ago:
On the eve of Warsaw's Veturillo revolution

This time 14 years ago:
Getting ready for the 'W'-hour flypast

This time 15 years ago:
A century of Polish scouting

Aesthetics of New Asphalt

There's something special about newly-laid asphalt. Aesthetically, it's blacker than it will ever be, quickly fading to grey. It brings a new quality to roads that were hitherto mere farm tracks; dusty in summer, muddy in autumn and spring. I wrote about the roadworks between Chynów and Piekut in June; less than two months later, the work's (almost*) done.

Below: the road about to enter the forest, looking east. Chynów in the foreground, Piekut beyond the treeline, Węszelówka over to the left.

Below: looking west at the level crossing; a Kraków-bound InterCity train is rushing through, next stop Warka.

New asphalt bring so many benefits to society; ones that the average car-driver, thinking only of themselves, can't imagine. Below: looking towards the end of the new stretch; the photo shows some of the beneficiaries of the new road surface. The farmer, tending his orchard, will have a smoother journey with his apples once picked. No bumps – no bruising. No bruising en route to the collection point or to the warehouse means less spoilage and waste. Further on up the road, you can see a mum and her three children out on an evening bicycle ride. I saw a total of ten cyclists on the new asphalt in the space of half an hour. This would not have been a thing on the old road – stones, dust, mud, potholes. And I must say, walking on smooth asphalt is easier than walking on an irregular surface of stones and earth. If more folk can be encouraged out for some evening exercise, it's another win for the asphalt. 

Below: the western end of the road, ulica Spokojna in Chynów, out of the forest and into the orchards. A distant tractor is driving over the previously existing asphalt that had been laid back in 2015. Now the road is complete, local people can get to the shops more comfortably, by car – or bicycle.

Meanwhile, the really big roadworks are going on to the north of Warka; ulica Gośniewicka is undergoing a much-needed remont. Its surface had been badly potholed and crumbling due to the weight of heavy goods vehicles making deliveries to the Warka brewery or taking fruit from the chilled warehouses along the road. Work started in February and is likely to finish in November. In the meantime, traffic going this way has to face three lots of contraflow lanes with traffic lights that take four minutes to change. Until this work is complete, I take an alternative route through Gośniewice and Prusy.

* Whilst the asphalt is ready, the road is technically closed, with no-entry signs at either end. Dumper trucks are still taking away spoil from the field where it has been stored, and there are no markings (white lines, road signs, etc). Locals know about this, and so have started using this route.

This time four years ago:
Samsung Galaxy phone camera vs. Nikon D3500

This time seven years ago:
Karczunkowska viaduct takes shape

This time eight years ago:
My father's return to Warsaw, 2017

This time nine years ago:
My father's first visit to Warsaw in 40 years

This time ten years ago:
What's worse – unemployment, or a badly-paid job?

This time 11 years ago:
A return to Liverpool

This time 13 years ago:
Too good to last (anyone remember OLT Express airline?)

This time 14 years ago:
Poland's Baltic coast as a holiday destination

This time 16 years ago:
The Warsaw they fought and died for?

This time 18 years ago:
Floods, rainbows and hope

A local murder and church-state relations

Saturday morning and I'm scrolling through my Facebook feed. The local volunteer fire brigade (OSP Chynów) posted an intriguing story late on Friday about a curious and macabre incident that occurred the previous evening in Lasopole, less than two and half miles away.

The fire brigade had been called out to deal with a burning person on the road at 22:20 on Thursday 24 July in Lasopole. The fire engine from Chynów was joined by two more from Drwalew and another from Grójec. The emergency medical services, the police and the prosecutor's office were also on hand, but were unable to save the victim. whose body had 80% burns and several wounds to the head. [Photos from the fire brigade]. 

On Monday morning, I'm getting social-media alerts from friends about this incident – this is evidently  quite an extraordinary story.

It transpires that this was a murder. The perpetrator (who has since admitted to the killing) was a 60-year-old parish priest, who'd axed a 68-year-old homeless man in the skull before pouring petrol on him and setting him on fire. A local cyclist saw this from afar and managed to remember the registration number of an 'expensive terrain vehicle' that he saw driving away from the scene with its lights off. He reported it to the police who quickly tracked it down to the parish priest in Przypki, a village some 20km to the north-east of Lasopole. Because the priest possessed firearms as a huntsman, anti-terrorist police had to be deployed in the arrest. He has been arrested and charged with zabójstwo ze szczególnym okrucieństwem, 'murder with particular cruelty'.

Below: the crime scene. Note the stains on the asphalt and the votive candle on the roadside. Chilling. A thunderstorm is forecast for this evening; traces of this brutal event will likely be erased.

So – now the case is with the prosecutor's office. Initial investigations point to some real estate being involved, an apartment in Warsaw. Lots of ins lots of outs lots of what have yous. The story will no doubt run and run in the Polish media, and is certainly one to follow. If the priest ends up with a sentence that's considered too lenient, anticlerical sentiment may receive a boost. If details emerge of hidden wealth, shady real-estate deals etc, it will also not help the church's image in Poland either.

In the meanwhile, the case has gone viral. I get the following meme from Jacek L in London this morning. "The parish priest is already close, is knocking at my door..." Armed with an axe and petrol canister. [The text is from the controversial song 1992 by Paweł Kukiz and Piersi.]

Finally a reminder that 35 years have passed since the murder of Fr Tadeusz Stokowski and his housekeeper Marzanna Kubiak in nearby Michalczew. The murder remains unsolved.

This time last year:
A new cider season is underway

This time two years ago:
An eternity in Heaven?

This time three years ago:
Habit or obsession?

This time four years ago:

Dust to dusk

This time six years ago:

My father's last arrival in Warsaw

This time eight years ago:
What makes scenery scenic?

This time nine years ago:
Theresa May flies into Warsaw

This time ten years ago:
Announcing the start of the Radom railway line modernisation

This time 12 years ago:
In praise of the (Polish-built) Fiat 500 

This time 13 years ago:
Llanbedrog Beach and a farewell to North Wales

This time 14 years ago:
To the Polish seaside, by night train

This time 15 years ago: 
Accounting for the past – 20 years on from PRL's fall

This time 16 years ago:
An introduction to fine British cheefef

This time 18 years ago:
Over the Peaks by bus

Peak Kitten

Is there a time when kittens can get no cuter? Let me introduce the gang at six weeks... from the left, Celeste, with her long hair, then (back row) Pacyfik, then (front row) Arcturus, then in the foreground Scrapper, and to the right, Czestuś the ginger tom.

Their personalities are developing nicely. Scrapper's is the best defined (najbardziej wyrazisty) – wherever there's a fight going on, Scrapper is involved. Pugnacious, and, as you can see, a curious kitten. Czestuś is a bit of a mummy's boy, laid back and interested in taking naps. He is friendly and looks at me a lot, often giving me slow blinks. Celeste is the explorer, out in front when it comes to pushing the geographical frontiers. The first kitten out of the birthing box, out of my bedroom, and in the last week, first out of the house and into the garden. She has long hair (a recessive gene), and like all of her siblings except Czestuś, has a short kinked tail (another recessive gene). Pacyfik ('Pacific') is so called because he was the only kitten not to squeak loudly in protest when lifted out of the birthing box to be weighed. And his near-twin, Arcturus, who has the most white in colouration, which is the only way that I can distinguish him from Pacyfik.

Wenusia continues to be the dutiful mother. Now they are starting to venture outside into my garden, she monitors them, aware of each one's position and momentum. Wenusia is skin and bone despite eating the best part of two large tins of cat food a day (plus dry cat food, plus milk plus Greek-style yogurt. And mice – Wenusia brought home two freshly killed mice and proceeded to eat them on the kitchen floor, leaving not a trace). This month I've spent almost as much on feeding Wenusia as I have on feeding myself! She is still feeding her young several times a day, so she absolutely deserves it. Not only feeding, but also grooming them, licking their fur. She loves them all.

Below: Arcturus and Pacyfik. Or is it Pacyfik and Arcturus? Arcturus has a white belly and a broader white stripe on his back.

Below: Czestuś doing what he does best – sleeping, contentedly.

Their favourite toy at the moment is the white ball that comes in a tin of Guinness Draught Flow stout. It contains the nitrogen dioxide that gives the beer a smooth, creamy head; the ball is firm and has a rim all round it, giving it a slight unpredictability to its motion. An excellent kitten toy – hours of fun – that comes with free beer (8.99 zł for 440ml). As I write, Scrapper and Arcturus are fighting, Czestuś and Celeste are drinking mummy's milk and Pacyfik is chasing the ball.

This time last year:
Specialists, generalists and rabbit holes

This time two years ago:
The US House Committee on Oversight and Accountability hearing on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Implications on National Security, Public Safety and Government Transparency. 

This time three years ago:
Gloucestershire, 1830 and Ohio, 1946: automatic writing

This time four years ago:
New phone, new laptop, Part II

This time five years ago:
Two images from my early childhood

This time six years ago:
How PKP PLK's planners should treat pedestrian station users.

This time seven years ago:
Foreign exchange: don't get diddled!
[for the saps who pay £250 for €200 at the airport]

This time nine years ago:
Defining my Sublime Aesthetic

This time 11 years ago:
Porth Ceiriad on the Llyn Peninsula

This time 13 years ago:
Jeziorki sunset, late July

This time 14 years ago:
Jeziorki sunset, after the storm

This time 17 years ago:
Rural suburbias - the ideal place to live?

On brand

After six years' of hard use, it is time to replace my footwear of choice. My 2019 Loake Pimlicos are hereby replaced with brand-new pairs of the same. The difference between the old and the new is the result of entropy, time's arrow. Since June 2019, I have walked over 25 million paces, of which the majority was while wearing this wonderfully solid and comfortable pair of boots (the old one below).  I have worked out that I have easily covered 12,000 miles in them. They have been through mud and rain and dust (though not snow – I have a pair of Ukrainian army boots for the harshest winter conditions), and I confess to not looking after them all that well. I guess that with the application of dubbin, drying them out by stuffing them with old newspapers, and – above all, sending them back to the factory for a re-heel, I could have extended their life even more.

If something is good – stick with it. Two weeks ago, I popped into the Loake showroom on ulica Chmielna (it opened ten years ago) and ordered myself two pairs of Pimlico boots. Two weeks later I receive a phone call that they have arrived. I pop into town to pick them up. 

All being well (healthwise, geopolitics-wise), these two pairs, worn in rotation, should last me until I am into my 80s, by which time they will look like the old ones. Although I must say, comparing the photo of the old ones when new, I can see that the new ones are slightly more pointy in the toe. 

Below: whilst not into consumerism, I do love the Loake customer experience. Each shoe comes in its own bag, the bagged shoes come in a box, the box comes in a bag, all branded. (Also in the box, a tin of dubbin, a grease that's not there to polish the shoes but to restore the leather after they've been out in the wet.) I'm happy to pay for such a quality experience. Above all, I'm happy to support a family business – a fifth-generation family business – one's that's blithely unconcerned with greedy shareholders bitching about the next quarter's earnings, but one that remains focused on long-term sustainability. If you can avoid buying stuff from corporates, do so.

I have been loyal to the Loake brand for 45 years; in 2030, the company will be celebrating its 150th birthday, by which time I will have been a customer for a third of its history! Below: my 2010 line-up of Loake shoes.

Buying cheap shit that lasts a season before being consigned to landfill is bad for the planet and bad for society. It enriches the richest. Support sustainable businesses instead. So, you may well ask; what of the old pair? The end up in my old boot museum... Art to enliven a corner of my living room. Below my old Pimlicos, and below them, a pair of even older Loake Kalaharis. 

This time last year:
The importance of Israel Poznański

This time three years ago:
Adventures in speech recognition

This time five years ago:
A Short Pilgrimage to Bid Farewell to the Day

This time nine years ago:
Thoughts, trains set in motion

This time 11 years ago:

Rondo ONZ 1 at sunset – the City Sublime

This time 12 years ago:
Up that old, familiar mountain

This time 13 years ago
More from Penrhos

Letters to an Imaginary Grandson (VII)

As a child, I was fascinated by the notion of endurance; from the Le Mans 24 Hours, the Peking to Paris race, the first aerial circumnavigation, the Long Range Desert Group raids far behind enemy lines. Long-distance journeys – expeditions, treks, these inspired me greatly. I'd re-enact these feats with Lego in our back garden that served as ocean and tundra. Getting ready, taking everything that you need, but no unnecessary baggage.

Physical endurance – getting into your stride, getting into the groove and getting on with it, hour after hour, day after day. As they pass, mile after mile of ocean or steppe, a comforting monotony is established. You settle into it. Distance ceases to be the enemy.

A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. My daily walks, which average more than 8km or five miles, are never easy to start. The lazy side of my brain is telling me that I've already chalked up a good series of walks this week, and that today I can afford to have a shorter walk. But once I get going, once I'm in the groove, it gets easier. The temptation to take the easy option passes.

When I started at Gunnersbury Grammar aged 11, my parents applied for a local authority travel pass, for children who lived three miles or more from school. A man with an opisometer at the town hall showed my mother on a map that we lived a few hundred yards short. And so my parents' application failed. [I have tested this with Google Maps and indeed, this is the case.] 

This shows that in the late 1960s, it was considered acceptable for children to walk three miles to school. This is about an hour's brisk walk. Slightly longer than the walk to the beach from Maison Maternelle and the Polish cub-scouts' barracks in Stella-Plage on my summer holiday in 1969. 

Long walks have not held terrors for me since the cub-scout camps that I attended since I was seven. There was always something interesting to look forward to at the end of the walk; boredom is often what stifles the ability to endure.

One walk I remember well; Polish scout camp in Hampshire, 1970. I was 12. We were on a long route march, early start. I'd skipped breakfast; the scrambled egg was too runny. After several miles walking with a heavy rucksack, I started feeling unwell. I did not know it, but my blood-sugar level was dangerously low. I felt ill – nauseous and wobbly; I had to stop and sit down. I'd never experienced this before. Someone offered me a boiled sweet. A single orange-barley drop. Once I'd popped it in my mouth and the sugar began to dissolve and enter my bloodstream – I felt miraculously better. From that day on, I came to understand the importance of preparation for sustained physical effort – above all, food and water, and proper clothing, protection against heat and cold and wet.

My first real test of endurance was at the age of 28, cycling from the Santander on the north coast of Spain to Faro on the south coast of Portugal. I covered 1,100 kilometres in ten days' cycling. Some days I'd rack up over 180km. This journey, well-planned in advance, was one of the most important events in my life. It gave me a perspective as to what's physically doable.

Physical endurance is mostly mental. Mind over matter. Overcoming doubt, laziness, boredom, and knowing that you will prevail. Once you reach a goal, that challenge, that distance, becomes a milestone by which to measure future endeavours.

Somehow physical endurance comes easier than the mental stamina needed to stay focused on a given subject (especially a none-too-pleasant or boring one) such as revising for an exam. But it does create a framework within which to measure mental endurance.

This time last year:
Łódź for the weekend

This time two years ago:
Wes Anderson's Asteroid City

This time three years ago: 
Quarter of a century in Poland

This time six years ago:
22 years on the 22nd

This time six year:
A tale of two orchards

This time eight years ago:
My 20 years in Poland

This time nine years ago:
PiS, Brexit, Trump and cognitive bias

This time 12 years ago:
Portmeirion, revisited, again
[My last summer holiday - not had one since!]

This time 13 years ago:
Beach day, Llyn Peninsula

This time 14 years ago:
Down with cars in city centres!

This time 15 years ago:
8am and 26C already

Letters to an Imaginary Grandson (VI)

Do things tend to be black or white or are they more likely to be nuanced? Something a bit messy, rather than just being one precise answer or solution?  Nuance is an important concept to grasp. As is judgment. The sooner you understand these concepts, the faster you will attain mastery, and things start will to click properly into place. And you will learn when to push, when to let go, when to act, when to be silent.

Where does the truth lie? To the left? To the right? Somewhere in the middle? Or wherever it's convenient for you to place it? The answer is most often "it depends on context". Experience, external advice, intelligence and intuition – these are the tools at your disposal. You must use them with precision to guide you through your social interactions. Your experience being limited at first means primarily learning from the mistakes of others. Observation. How do you see others? Others are looking at you.

How to behave? Consciously. Don't charge ahead on impulse. Be mindful. Be in the moment. Recognise what's really happening. Read the faces – try to read the minds – of those around you. Whatever you say or do, as well as whatever you don't say or do, marks you in their eyes for better or for worse. The words you choose in social situations are so vitally important. Do you wish to express sympathy? Do you actually feel that sympathy, or are you conforming to expectations? If you don't feel it – isn't it appropriate to make a show of feeling it? Do you approve or disapprove? How do you signal your disapproval? What is your opinion? Is that really your opinion? Have you tested that opinion? Or are you just repeating something you think sounds clever? Have you checked it for internal contradictions or cognitive dissonance? Have you considered the possible unintended consequences of saying it? Is this just a handbrake on your spontaneity?

How you behave is up to you – to a certain degree. You have personality traits, characteristics, moods over which you have a limited degree of control, especially when young. Risk-taking behaviour. And people will judge. But the most important judge of your behaviour is you. Monitor yourself. A constant feedback loop of "how did that social interaction go? Did I say the right things? Was I too impulsive? Or too withdrawn? Was I in control of my emotions?" Monitor, draw conclusions, determine to improve this or stop doing that, habitualise those behaviours that have a long-term positive effect.

Society is based on trust. You must show behaviour that makes it easier for others to trust you. If they know you and like you, they will trust you – that trust has to be won over the course of many small interactions. Keeping your word, being on time, being agreeable – even in tricky situations. Showing your disapproval in measured ways.

It is, indeed, never too late to mend, but it's better to do so early, iron out those behaviours that can cast you in a negative light to others. If you can fake sincerity, you've got it made.

In the social context this is the difference between being popular and being ignored or avoided. In the professional context it is the difference between being promoted and being sacked. Judgment is hugely important in life. Judge yourself wisely.

This time four years ago:
Memory, collective memory, and proof of memory

This time seven years ago:
And did Her feet...?

This time nine years ago:
40 years ago – Montserrat, holiday that would shape my life

This time ten years ago:
Last night's storm

This time 11 years ago:
Drifting south with the sun - bicycle hobo

This time 13 years ago:
Royal Parks in the rain

This time 14 years ago:
Storm clouds over Warsaw, Dolinka under water

This time  15 ago:
Round-up of pics from Dobra

This time 16 years ago:
Conservatism - UK or Polish style?

This time 17 years ago:
Wheat and development

This time 18 years ago:
A previous visit to London

Out of the box: exploratory kittens

It's half past four in the morning. I am aware of stirrings on my bed by my feet. I wake. The kittens have managed to crawl up the bedding and in the darkness are making their way towards my head, treating my body as an obstacle on an assault course. Because I know that these are innocent bundles of fluff (albeit clawed ones), my reaction is not shock or horror. The first one reaches my face. My bed, overrun by kittens. I reach for the bedside light switch. Wenusia (the kittens' mother) has been outside. She favours hunting at dawn and dusk; I assume the bedroom light has alerted her, she bounds in through the kitchen window to see what's going on. 

The kittens are collected and returned to their birthing box, their exclusive home for the first three and half weeks of their lives. But it's not yet time for sleep, so they emerge from the box and start clawing their way up my bedsheets again. By five am the situation has stabilised, all five plus mum are back in the box and I can go back to sleep again.

The time of innocence is almost over. They will be five weeks old tomorrow. Kittens grow and start to explore their world. Everything is new to them. The taste of solid food (from mum's bowl). The front room. The kitchen table. They will range. I must discipline myself to keep things out of harm's way.

What interests me is the dynamics of personalities within the littermates. Who's in with whom, who's mummy's favourite, who takes whose side in a fight. Seeing how this plays out will determine which kitten gets given away and in what order; right now, I am closely attached to them all.

Wenusia enters the final two to three weeks of breastfeeding. Despite eating vastly more than ever, and taking a liking to milk (which she ignored as a kitten), Wenusia is not just thin – she's skin and bones; the kittens are sucking out more than she consumes. Wenusia is a small cat; being so diminutive made me underestimate her age (and thus the chances of her getting pregnant as early as she did). Once the kittens have been weaned and go to 100% solids plus cow's milk, Wenusia will be sterilised, her life fulfilled in motherhood. Until now, she would use the birthing box exclusively when feeding her offspring; now she's happy to act as a mobile refuelling station on the kitchen floor – or on my bed.

Below: Scrapper (Scrappuś). Peak kitten, readers, for the next few weeks. Then kittens turn into cats.

Below: Czestuś biting his mum's ear.

Once a day, Wenusia accompanies me to the forest next door. She follows me to the end of the drive, out onto the road before entering the forest, then we go to our special spot, where I sit on a fallen log, and she sits beside me (below).

This time last year:
Do you think in a language?

This time two years ago:
Faith, construction, history in Wrocław

This time three years ago:
A better tomorrow – geodiversity

This time four years ago:
Warka – small-town Poland's moving up

This time five years ago:

Summer działka joys

This time six years ago:

Local round-up

This time seven years ago:
New Nikons on the way!

This time 13 years ago:
Work continues on S2, going under the railway lines

This time 14 years ago:
Stand Easy! – a short story

This time 17 years ago:
God Save The Queen - I mean it, Ma'am

This time 18 years ago:
On the Road Again

We didn't start the fire: Shifty by Adam Curtis

[This post is primarily for my readers who grew up in the UK in the last quarter of the 20th century, and for those international readers with an interest in Britain of that era.]

A five-part BBC documentary by Adam Curtis available on YouTube (links to all five below). Emotionally powerful; massively nostalgic, full of surprises as well as those "ah, yes!" moments where we are reminded of an event or a personality from the era and you make the connection. 

Funny, surprising, moving, but also making a powerful point Shifty shows how the seeds of today's screwed-up society were planted long ago. Curtis places the tipping point in May 1979, with Margaret Thatcher's election victory.

Watching Shifty, my children can see and understand the world in which their parents grew up as young adults and how it shaped their lives and their outlooks. And how those years shaped the world we live in today.

Curtis's method focuses on digging out archive material and found footage and putting them together without a voice-over, relying instead on captions and connections. The use of found footage is akin to understanding the history of life on earth from the fossil record. Very few organisms fossilise, and the fossils we have present an incomplete picture. In the same way, until the digital revolution, only tiny fragments of society were preserved in film (or indeed video) footage. The archives yielded many vignettes that initially seem puzzling and out of context but then after a while they click together and everything makes perfect sense.

One of Curtis's big themes that runs through all five episodes of Shifty is that we live in an age of the remix; just as our music is sampled and remixed, so our history, our social myths, our culture is chopped and reshaped to suit political needs. 

Shifty considers the changes that were brought about through Thatcher's monetarism, privatisation and deregulation, all now seen for their negative long-term outcomes. 

I spent most of the Shifty years working at the Confederation of British Industry, at the interface between business and government, I remember Sir Terence Beckett's "bare-knuckle fight" with Thatcher over interest rates. Cranked up to kill off inflation, they pushed the cost of working capital to 26% and killed off vast swathes of British manufacturing instead. I remember Sir John Banham bemoaning the replacement of engineering by financial engineering and slamming the obscenity of corporate raiders who'd "put companies into play" – buy them, break them up, strip their assets and leaving thousands out of work. Deregulation.

In the past there had been safeguards; a civil service that maintained the status quo. Mercenaries replaced the missionaries. Greed was good. A money-oriented society emerged.

Curtis mentions how Thatcher's revolution in the City of London allowed banks to compete with building societies in mortgage lending, but he didn't fully explain the consequences; ever-rising house prices, as banks leveraged a product with growing demand but static supply to make easy profits.

While the red braces of the post-Big Bang City made their bonuses and bought their Porsches and their country piles, new money blended with old, but old money ensured that its privileges remained secure.

In the final episode, looking at the Blair years, Curtis criticises Gordon Brown (then chancellor of the exchequer) for relinquishing control over monetary policy to an independent Bank of England, suggesting that this was politics handing over the last power it had to the money men. I'm sticking to economic orthodoxy here and would argue that interest-rate decisions are best kept away from the likes of Liz Truss or Boris Johnson or Kaczyński or Trump or indeed any politician.

Racial tensions and those who stoked them, politicians, comedians, musicians – is another thread running through the series that emerges in current-day debates about migrants. Open vs. closed people; open vs. closed societies.

God and science – Curtis follows the work and private life of Stephen Hawking. His differences on how the Universe began (according to him, an atheist, it didn't) led to his divorce from his wife Jane, a devout Christian. Curtis contrasts Hawking's mechanistic, physicalist worldview with those of Paul Davies and David Deutsch. The story of a random, purposeless cosmos plays into the hands of materialists. There is no God, just matter. So grab that cash with both hands and make a stash.

Shifty notes the birth of the surveillance society – CCTV began to monitor our streets and property in the early 1980s. The very word 'shifty' can mean "having the appearance of being dishonest, criminal or unreliable", as well as "subject to changes in direction". 

Technological change played a huge part day-to-day life. These were the early days of computers, corporate and personal; databases, data privacy and the infancy of the internet is also documented. Right at the end of the final part, there's a 1999 clip of David Bowie being interviewed by Jeremy Paxman for BBC Newsnight. Bowie: "I think the potential of what the Internet is going to do to society – both good and bad – is unimaginable. I think we're actually on the cusp of something exhilarating and terrifying." Paxman replies: "It's just a tool, isn't it?" "No it's not," ripostes Bowie with a grin, "It's an alien life form". 

The fifth part ends with Bowie's Absolute Beginners played over black-and-white images of the French Revolution of 1848 and American strikers rioting in the 1930s. The choice of music for the documentary series is excellent, not the obvious songs, but ones that resonate with the spirit of the age.

[A big thanks to Roman P. for pointing me to this excellent interview on The Rest is Entertainment, with Adam Curtis interviewed by Richard Osman and Marina Hyde. I watched this twice – once before and once after watching the entire five parts of Shifty.]

Curtis is a truly great documentary maker. If his stuff gets recommended to me by friends who are right wing and friends who are left wing, it must mean he is doing something significant rather than treading the mainstream path.

I ponder how much of Shifty is applicable to Poland. Not a whole lot. Polish society today tends to be more optimistic about the future, despite the glowering threat of Putin just across the border.

Links:

Part 1. The Land of Make Believe 

Part 2. Suspicion 

Part 3. I Love A Millionaire 

Part 4. The Grinder

Part 5. The Democratisation of Everything
 

This time two years ago:
Wrocław's Hala Stulecia (Centennial Hall)

This time three years ago:
A Better Tomorrow - the lie of the land

This time four years ago:
New phone, new laptop

This time five years ago:
Longevity and Purpose

This time seven years ago:
New bus stop for Karczunkowska

This time 13 years ago:
Who should pay for railways?
[How America built an electric railway line over the Rockies - over 100 years ago!]

This time 15 years ago:
Grunwald - the big picture

This time 17 years ago:
"Take me right back to the track, Jack"

This time 18 years ago:
The summer sublime

The Aesthetic Attention Span, or How Long Before We Need The New?

Life moves in cycles; optimally, these are spirals, we return to where we were but one notch higher up. We learn, we understand, we evolve. Sometimes, however, the cycle spins downwards. History, a series of events that have a tangible effect on our lives, moves erratically, but does tend to echo, repeat, rhyme. Anacyclosis. What goes round comes around.

But the aesthetics of our times? Architecture, design, fashion, literature, music, cars, graphics – yes, things change, the quest for novelty and innovation is limitless and it shapes the spirit of our age, indeed any age. This is the zeitgeist. 

We tend to label the look-and-feel of our built environment, our surroundings, by decades, book-ending them conveniently. In my mind's eye I can scroll through my memories of Britain from the early 1960s, still emerging from postwar austerity, drab colours and clothes, through the colourful '70s to the mid 1980s in distinct phases, each defined by music, clothes, car designs, high-street logos, typefaces and indeed colours. And then, sometime around around the mid-1990s, aesthetic change starts to become change for change's sake, not for the sake of modernity. Form and function, that sort of thing.

Look at a car from the 1920s, and compare it to one from the 1950s. An infant could tell you which looks more modern. But look at a car from the mid-1990s and compare it to something off the production line today... Does it really look more modern... or just different?

Below: thirty years of automotive design progress, 1925 to 1955.

Below: thirty years of automotive design progress, 1995 to 2025.

If I were to have my pick of the above four, I'd go for the 1955 Oldsmobile. And stay with it until the end of my life. Because I like its looks more than the more recent designs. One reason why the automotive industry has failed to prise any money out of my bank account over the past quarter century has been its inability to design a car I'd actually like. The crumpled-tin look of contemporary car design turns me off. Just look at the grotesque 'face' of the current Toyota Whatsit (above right). It looks like a whale feeding on krill.

Music, clothes, typography – has that much changed since 1995? The technology obviously is quite different, as is the political vibe. But visually, aurally, aesthetically, 1995 is far closer to today than 1955 was to 1925. Aesthetic change for the sake of aesthetic change – built-in obsolescence – is a driver of economic growth and a wasteful one at that. How can you possibly be seen to be driving a 1959 Cadillac in 1962, by which time the fins had shrunk and men wore pleatless slim-line pants and pork-pie hats rather than broad-brimmed trilbies and trousers featuring acres of pleated cloth. Just a few years, and what a difference. From Humphrey Bogart to Steve McQueen. Cool change. But what's changed in men's fashions since the mid-1990s?

One of the first films I watched on my own in the cinema (and the first film I bought on DVD) was American Graffiti (George Lucas, 1973). A film that wallows in nostalgia – the music, the fashion, the trends, the cars – from an era just ten years before it was shot. Do you feel nostalgic about 2015? I could name you a hundred songs from 1975, for example, but not one from 2015. Did we wear different clothes in 2015? Did people go around with different hairstyles?

Access to the tools of design was once hard-won; a draughtsman's drawing board and all the instruments needed to turn a concept into a sketch into plans for a working prototype. Today, software makes possible professional-level design to anyone who has a desire and a knack to do so. The same with music, with movie-making, with any form of creative endeavour. The barriers of entry have fallen. Great, you may say. More democratic. No more closed shops. Everyone can now create.

But what's happened is that the long tail has stretched out towards infinity. A handful of titans dominate each industry at one end, while a vast number of creative people struggle for a handful of page views at the other end. Our blockbuster movies tend to be remakes or franchises, nothing new is breaking out of the underground. Yet surely somewhere in that long tail is a talent or talents that could launch an aesthetic movement to equal Art Nouveau or Art Deco, the New Look or Rock'n'Roll. But it's all too fragmented. That talent needs to be planted in a soil, in a social milieu, aesthetic change does not occur in a vacuum.

While I feel that humanity is indeed in a historical inflexion point, that seismic geopolitical and socio-economic change is afoot, I can't say the same about the arts and culture. Our attention spans, shortening year by year, flick to the default – "I'll stick to what I like". Kitten videos.

The Shock of the New? There are enough shocks out there already, thank you, without introducing any aesthetic shocks.

It will be interesting to return to this post in ten, twenty and thirty years' time. Is an aesthetic revolution around the corner? Or have we emerged out of a particularly creative period in human history, and now have nothing more than algorithm-generated mediocrity and AI slop to look forward to? Are paradigm shifts in aesthetic sensibility caused by the supply side (gifted innovators) or by the demand side (society bored of the old and itching for something new) – or 100% of both? 

I was there in November 1976 when the Sex Pistols, supported by the Clash, visited Coventry with the Anarchy tour. That was one of those aesthetic tipping points. I wait for something similar.

This time two years ago:
Wałbrzych, Książ and Riese

This time ten years ago:
Something new in the skies over Okęcie

This time 11 years ago:
How the other half lives - a Radomite's tale

This time 12 years ago:
On guard against complacency

This time 13 years ago:
Ready but not open - footbridge over Puławska

This time 14 years ago:
Dusk along the Vistula

This time 15 years ago:
Mediterranean Kraków

This time 15 years ago:
Around Wisełka, Most Łazienkowski, Wilanowska by night

This time 16 years ago:
Summer storms

This time 18 years ago:
Golden time of day