Kitten time again!

Well, an unexpectedly early pregnancy – and a quick one. Feline gestation is normally 63 days, Wenusia sprinted through it at a rapid pace and this morning delivered three black-and-white kittens. And she's very young; still a kitten really. When she adopted me five and half months ago, she was around ten weeks old. So a mum at around eight months. She'd not even shown signs of coming into heat (ruja) – the plaintive caterwauling associated with a desire to mate.

Wenusia, who has been visibly pregnant for around three weeks, spent last night outdoors and came in at half past eight this morning; she was not interested in her food, she was very clingy, wanting to be near me all the time, and was vocalising loudly. [Again, Gemini AI was very useful and accurate in telling me signs of an imminent arrival of kittens.] 

I pointed Wenusia to her birthing box, which I'd prepared a few days ago. I'd accustomed her to the concept, letting her crawl in and out repeatedly. This time, she went in and stayed in. Shortly after ten am, she gave birth to the first kitten. I opened the box and found the cat alive and and a kitten also alive at the same time. Take that, Schrodinger! Then, a second arrived 45 minutes later, and the third half an hour after that. 

Below: mum and three kittens doing well. 

Life is miraculous. To witness three feline births, to see Wenusia realised in motherhood, purring contentedly two hours after delivering the first kitten, all three suckling away efficiently, is quite something. A wondrous experience. It's over 12 years since I last witnessed such an event. Outside, the sun is shining and the blackbirds are singing a joyful chorus. In my bedroom, I can hear the squeaking of new life.

UPDATE 14:45-15:00

In quick succession, out pop another two. Amniotic fluid, placentas (five eaten), blood, damp cardboard, wet, bedraggled fur and squeals. Mum and five kittens doing well (no sign of a runt in the litter).

The future? That's not for now. Let's just be in the moment; relish the new life.

More soon.

This time four years ago:

The Morning Road Walked

This time 11 years ago:
Poppies in bloom, Jeziorki

This time 15 years ago:

Historical photos of work in progress on the S79

This time 18 years ago:
The year nears its zenith

Awaiting the asphalt: from Chynów to Piekut

I'd read about this on Gmina Chynów's website; the winning tender had been announced for upgrading the stretch of ulica Spokojna ('Peaceful Street') from the point where the asphalt ends all the way to Piekut, a distance of about 1.8km. The job had been broken down into two contracts, from the edge of the existing asphalt at either end to the border between the two villages. Within six weeks of announcing the winning bid, work begins. I can't imagine such a tempo in the UK!

Below: the third of June, and road signs announce the beginning of the work at the Chynów end.

Below: levelling the ground east of the level crossing. The road is being widened by a metre or so at either side as well as being properly hardened.

Below: for locals, temporary inconvenience. But once complete, a cycle ride from Piekut to the shops in Chynów will become so much easier; end-to-end asphalt rather than a beat-up dirt track, muddy in spring and autumn, dusty in summer.

Below: plenty of dumper trucks running to and fro, carting discarded soil and vegetation to a fallow field between two orchards where the spoil is held (see further down).

Below: looking along the road towards the edge of the forest towards Piekut. Top level of the old dirt track has been scraped flat and is awaiting gravel and then the asphalt.

Below: a low-loader truck used for ferrying plant to the site, parked up alongside orchards. To the left, the field has been given over for storing soil and vegetation removed from the roadside. Quite a pile.

Below: the Piekut end, where the asphalt restarts at the edge of the village.

Two days later, the aggregate that will form the layer under the asphalt is delivered, and piled high alongside the soil and vegetation. The latter has been through a wood-chipper.

I scale the highest heap, which is about six metres high. From the top, I have an excellent view. You can see the road running through the middle, the village of Piekut in the distance, and to the right of the warehouse, the yard where road-building plant is left overnight. In the foreground, a modern orchard, with apple trees under hailstone-protection netting.

It will still be many days before the job's done, and I intend to ride its length on my motorbike once its open.

This time two years ago:
The sounds of summer

This time three years ago:
My działka - powered by the sun

This time five years ago:
Poland's town/country divide explored

This time nine years ago:

A long walk to Czachówek

This time 11 years ago:
Half a mile under central Warsaw, on foot

This time 12 years ago:
Dzienniki Kołymskie reviewed

This time 13 years ago
Russia-Poland in Warsaw: the worst day of Euro 2012

This time 13 years ago:
Thirty-one and sixty-three - a short story

This time 16 years ago:
Warsaw rail circumnavigation

This time 17 years ago:
Classic Polish vehicles

This time 18 years ago:
South Warsaw sunset

Letters to an Imaginary Grandson (IV)

If there's one story that we all buy into, one narrative on which we can all concur, it's that certain pieces of paper possess an intrinsic value; pieces of paper that can be exchanged for goods or services. Or converted into zeros and ones that do the same thing. Money. We all agree what a 100-złoty note is worth in terms of what can be bought with one, and that a 200-złoty note is worth exactly twice as a 100-złoty note. We all agree that is better to have money than not to have it, and that it's worth having a lot of it. Money is a proxy for status; what it buys signals your supposed place in the status hierarchy. Money, then, is serious.

As a child, an inordinate amount of the pocket money that my parents would give me each week would get spent on confectionary. All forms of sweets and chocolates, ice lollies, bubble gum and fizzy drinks. The result (though I was too young to link cause and effect) was an endless succession of trips to the dentist for fillings and extractions. Painful. This ended as soon as I stopped wasting money on Fruit Gums, Mars Bars, Cadbury Dairy Milk, Spangles, Crunchies, Flakes etc. Spending thruppence or sixpence at the sweet shop several times a week was a bad thing, then. 

Pocket money spent on toys was money better spent. On Facebook, I follow many accounts for diecast collectors and builders of plastic models. (Not that I'd spend money on buying these today; merely looking at photos gives me a satisfying pang of nostalgia.) The plastic kits taught me some (not many) craft skills; as a child, I was gluing together a plaything rather than constructing a historically accurate model. Still, I learnt much about Spitfires and Lancasters.

Childhood pocket money was spent as it was spent; there was little sense in hoarding it in a piggy bank as I never had any ambition to buy anything bigger than a Series 6 Airfix Kit or a large Dinky or Corgi toy.

Real money started for me in 1974 with my summer-holiday job as a 16-year old, working in the canteen at Beecham's (which later merged to become Beecham Smith Kline and is now Glaxo Smith Kline). The job paid £18 a week (or £170 in 2025 money). With inflation, which was 16.0% in 1974 and 24.2% in 1975, it made little sense to save. Money from this and all subsequent holiday jobs in warehouses up and down the Great West Road and industrial estates in Hanwell or Perivale was all spent on going out and on clothes. While still living with my parents, I was financially independent in that I never had to ask them for money – that was important for me. 

I was a student at that golden time when the government covered your tuition fees and paid you a student grant. In my first year at Warwick University, I actually managed to save some money from my grant and from Christmas, Easter and summer-holiday jobs. My post-grad studies at City University, London was funded by my parents; there was no student grant and my holidays were spent on internships. But I landed a job as soon as I'd finished, and after a year of earning a regular salary, my parents convinced me to do a really smart thing.

Buy a house.

The year was 1982, and house prices were still within reach of someone who'd just started work. I was earning £5,700 a year, the house cost £28,500; my parents chipped in the 10% deposit. [In today's money, that salary was £20,260, the house was £101,304 – a five-fold multiple.] Paying the mortgage was tough in the first years. Getting married helped. But essentially, buying a house as soon as I possibly could was a really smart move. Initially, my friends laughed at me: "How's the mortgage, Mike?" Soon enough, the London house-price boom kicked off. Within three years of buying my house, similar mid-terrace properties were going for £50,000-£55,000. Today? Around £500,000.

Subsequent investments in property have all worked out well for me. And they worked out well historically. Many people who lost real estate in Poland because of WW2 and communism got them back after 1989, whilst money tied up in stocks and shares or in bank deposits were wiped out by war or rendered worthless by inflation.

It must be stressful being retired and not having a place of your own, having to find the monthly rent or service charge on a flat from a pension. Having freehold ownership of your own place is a huge financial comfort in old age, peace of mind. Even a shed on a piece of land that belongs to you, out in the sticks, is better than renting.

This time last year:
Poland's sleeper-train services – summer timetable

This time two years ago:
Conscience, consciousness and sensitivity

This time three years ago:
Little annoyances and optimising one's life

This time four years ago:
The 13th thirteenth

This time five years ago:

Ghastly June day in London

This time six years ago:
Perfect weather week in Warsaw

This time seven years ago:
Further progress is unimaginable

This time eight years ago:
Baletowa reopens as rail works move on

This time nine years ago:
Polish doctors in UK offer new healthcare model

This time 14 years ago:
The closure of the Góra Kalwaria-Pilawa railway link

This time 16 years ago:
My blazing bus pic gets on front page of Gazeta Stołeczna

This time 17 years ago:
Storm clouds rising

Country sky, city sky

Early June, moving along. Shady days. It gets dark now just before nine, but there's not been much sunshine over the past few days.

Below: clouds threaten to dump rain on my walk, heading south from Chynów towards Krężel and Michalczew. Fortunately, it stays dry all the way out (and back by train).

Below: a rare sighting of a Koleje Mazowieckie push-pull loco running light. This is the class of engine (EU47) attached to the double-decker 'accelerated' trains (the ones that stop at only more important stations). These services run on the Radom line on Mondays to Fridays, so seeing an engine on its own on a Sunday is a great surprise.

Below: trackside scene looking from ulica Kolejowa ('Railway Street') towards the orchards south of Widok. Note the flock of woodpigeons on the medium-tension electricity wires.

Below: ulica Kolejowa looking south towards the level crossing on ul. Spokojna. That dot on the asphalt is a distant pheasant.

Below: I spot this hare making its way across the road south of Janów, before it crossed the railway track and disappeared into the Watraszew forest. Before long, the bells of the church in Michalczew start calling the faithful to Mass; several cars pass this way.

And into town. Below: Stalin's gift to the Polish people glowers over Pijana Wiśnia, run by Ukrainians and playing Angolan Kizomba dance music on Fridays. The only alcohol served in wiśniówka - cherry vodka. A weird concept, but it works (there's three Pijana Wiśnias in Warsaw).

Below: Plac Grzybowski. The sky is beginning to bruise. To the left, the Church of All Saints, where my father was christened in 1923. To the right, the Cosmopolitan Twarda 4 tower.

Below: ulica Grzybowska. Changed beyond all recognition since my father's boyhood.

This time last year:
A vote for Europe

This time three years ago:
Savants, UFOs and psychic abilities

This time four years ago:
A proud moment

This time five years ago
Rail progress - Krężel to Chynów

This time ten years ago:

Aberdeen, dour city

This time 12 years ago:
Fans fly in for the football

This time 14 years ago:
Cara al Sol - part II

This time 15 years ago:
Still struggling with the floodwaters

This time 16 years ago:
European elections - and I buy used D40

The time 17 years ago:
To the Vistula, by bike

This time 18 years ago:
Poppy profusion

You can't reduce away the magic

Yes! Here it is! Something so routine – the daily walk – and, of a sudden I catch it, I grasp hold of it, I live it, I document it. This is it... The magickal moment. Don't let it fade! Relish it with every sense. The warmth of the sun's rays on my skin. The scents of a late-spring evening. The blackbirds' banter. The familiar sights, familiar over lifetimes. Life on Earth.

Take a look around... Between Grabina, Grobice and Adamów Rososki, the sun getting lower in the sky.

This is the joy. Cement it in my memory. To the end of this life and into the next ones. Nostalgia for the present. 

The moment passes. "Magical moment/the spell it is breaking". I walk away and look back from the distance. At the bottom of the hill I turn around to look back. One of the XII Canonical Prospects. 

Below: a few seconds later, I turn and catch this young male roe deer between two orchards. I still have the long lens on the camera; we stare at one another momentarily, the deer turns and darts off to the right.

I track down the source of the scent to this flower, which back home Google Lens identifies as Philadelphus coronarius (sweet mock orange or jaśminowiec wonny). Wikipedia describes it as being "valued for its profuse sweetly scented white blossom in early summer". The air is full of this perfume. It is beautiful. Imbue qualia with meaning.

Heading home, my phone notifies me of a number of YouTube podcasts that might interest me. One grabs my attention: Sabine Hossenfelder talking about qualia! This I must listen to! Ms Hossenfelder (1.7m subscribers), is, along with Neil Degrasse Tyson and Sean Carroll, a great science populariser, with a talent to explain complex concepts. All three, however, share one major flaw – they are materialist-reductionists, for whom the slightest whiff of the spiritual is anathema.

I listened to her podcast – twice; I'd recommend it.

She says: “the 'hard problem of consciousness' is the idea that even if you understand  all the physical processes in the brain,  you still haven’t explained why experience  feels the way it does. This philosophical view made qualia seem almost mystical, cut off from scientific investigation. I’ve always thought this is bullshit. You can measure what’s going on in the brain." 

You can indeed. But you can't equate neuronal activity to consciousness. So what that you can match the neural correlates of brains of people seeing the colour red? I'd compare that to those scientists who, in 1952, after Urey and Miller famously turned inorganic compounds into organic compounds, claimed that science has just discovered how life began. And therefore there's no need for any metaphysical explanation for abiogenesis (the leap from non-life to life). It's one thing to create organic compounds out of primordial soup by passing high voltages through it, it's quite another to create the simplest single-celled organism that will feed and breed. It's one thing to say "roughly the same thing is going on in human brains when they see red" and another to say "we can reduce complex emotional responses, feelings, memories and qualia down to electrical currents passing through the brain". 

To my surprise, the overwhelming majority of the comments under the video gives Ms Hossenfelder a right good kicking on this one. The magic of what it is to experience life cannot be reduced away by physicalism.

This time three years ago:
Blues and greens of early June

This time six years ago:
This land is my land
[when I bought the orchard adjacent to my dzialka]

This time nine years ago:
Preening stork

This time 12 years ago:
Preserving meadowland – UK and Poland 

This time 13 years ago:

Poland's transport infrastructure progress

This time 14 years ago:
Cara al Sol - a short story

This time 15 years ago:
Pumping out the floodwater

This time 16 years ago:
To Góra Kalwaria and beyond

This time 17 years ago:
Developments in Warsaw's exurbs

Farewell, beloved grapefruit.

I love grapefruit – specifically the pink variety; for the past few years I've been eating half a grapefruit daily and using the peel to brew me up my favourite tea. [Peel from half a grapefruit, two bags of Herbapol wild-cherry infusion, two bags of Herbapol raspberry-and-cranberry infusion, spiced up with a touch of ground cinnamon and ground cloves, in a large 660ml glass.] 

This has now stopped, given the nine-pills-a-day regime I'm on after my heart attack.

Grapefruit, eh? The first I heard of grapefruit and meds was at our school reunion; one of our classmates went on to be a part of the team that developed Viagra. He confided to us that half a pill is as effective as a whole one, and that a quarter of a pill washed down with grapefruit juice is also as effective as as a whole one. I am also hearing from people on medication for diverse medical conditions that grapefruit is to be avoided.

So I asked Google Gemini: "Taking the following pills, should I be eating grapefruit?" 

I listed the nine drugs one by one and received the following reply: "The most significant and potentially dangerous interaction for you is with Inspra (eplerenone). Consuming grapefruit with Inspra can lead to dangerously high levels of the medication in your blood, increasing your risk of hyperkalemia. Additionally, grapefruit consumption may significantly reduce the effectiveness of two other vital cardiovascular medications: Efient (prasugrel) and Roswera (rosuvastatin). These drugs are crucial for preventing blood clots and managing cholesterol, respectively. A reduction in their effectiveness could lead to suboptimal treatment outcomes and an increased risk of adverse cardiovascular events."

The recommendation was unambiguous.

"Given the strong interaction with Inspra, the following actions are strongly recommended: Immediately Cease Grapefruit Consumption: Given the critical and contraindicated interaction with Inspra (eplerenone) and the significant potential for reduced efficacy of Efient (prasugrel) and Roswera (rosuvastatin), the safest course of action is to immediately and completely stop consuming grapefruit or grapefruit juice."

So – given that the most significant and potentially dangerous interaction with grapefruit is Inspra, I re-read the leaflet enclosed in the box. No, not a single mention of grapefruit.

I ask Google to produce me a research paper about grapefruit and Inspra. The result is thorough and enlightening. In a nutshell:  "The primary mechanism underlying many grapefruit-drug interactions involves the inhibition of the CYP3A4 enzyme. Grapefruit contains specific compounds called furanocoumarins, such as bergamottin and 6′,7′-dihydroxybergamottin, which are potent inhibitors of the cytochrome P450 3A4 (CYP3A4) enzyme system." And: "CYP3A4 inhibition is potent and irreversible" Gulp! I've been taking Inspra and eating grapefruit for seven weeks! I am told to also avoid Seville oranges (the bitter ones that often feature in marmalade, and citrus peel in general, and to limit lime consumption. Sweet oranges and lemons are OK. And bergamot oranges*

Then I asked the AI to look at the Polish-language leaflet that comes with Inspra. It replies: "An examination of the Polish leaflet accompanying Inspra 25mg confirms that it does not explicitly mention avoiding grapefruit (grejpfrut) in its interactions, warnings, or contraindications sections. This can lead to questions for patients who may encounter conflicting information from other sources. Despite the absence of explicit mention of grapefruit, the Polish leaflet and the Summary of Product Characteristics (ChPL) for Inspra 25mg do include several crucial warnings and contraindications that are highly relevant to potential interactions, including those with grapefruit. These include: "The inclusion of 'concomitant use with strong CYP3A4 inhibitors' as a contraindication serves as an implicit warning against grapefruit. Grapefruit is widely recognized in pharmacological literature as a potent inhibitor of CYP3A4. Therefore, while not explicitly named, the leaflet's directive against strong CYP3A4 inhibitors encompasses the interaction with grapefruit. This approach suggests that the manufacturer may assume a certain level of pharmacological knowledge among prescribing healthcare professionals. However, for patients, this implicit warning may not be apparent, highlighting a potential gap between professional prescribing information and patient-facing materials."

Alarm bells here. The leaflet, if telling me nothing else about Inspra (eplerenon) should clearly say AVOID GRAPEFRUIT! I look for whom I should contact. Inspra is branded as an Upjohn product. The leaflet says I should contact Mylan Healthcare Sp. z o.o., and gives a Warsaw telephone number. I am put through to Viatris Trade (ul. Postępu, Warsaw). I get through to an automated message, which tells me to press '3' for enquiries about adverse medical effects. I do so. An American woman's voice informs me "I'm sorry, but the number you dialed has not been recognised." 

Son I phone the regulator, the snappily named Urząd Rejestracji Produktów Leczniczych, Wyrobów Medycznych i Produktów Biobójczych**, and get through to an intelligent human to blow the whistle on the bastards. Not only is there no information on the leaflet about avoiding grapefruit, but there's no direct contact with the pharmacovigilance department of the responsible entity for Poland; the leaflet needs to be reprinted with immediate effect.

AI can really useful. No bullshit, no making stuff up, no hallucinations in this case – just the science, with references and notes. 

Moral of the story: this blog post is a matter of record – should I go on to suffer any adverse side-effect resulting from seven weeks of taking Inspra 25mg while consuming 100-150g of grapefruit daily, the world will know why. And I know against whom I should take legal action.

* Bergamot oil is used to flavour Earl Grey tea. Something else I must avoid.

** URPLWMiPB, or Office for Registration of Medicinal Products, Medical Devices and Biocidal Products

This time last year:
Sixty-Six and Two-Thirds

This two years ago:
Marching for Openness and Normality

This time four years ago:
40th anniversary of the Osieck railway accident

This time five years ago:
Moonrise, Nowa Wola

This time six years ago:

Awaiting the Summer Sublime

This time nine years ago:
4 June - a date remembered for...?

This time ten years ago:
Corpus Christi, rural Mazovia

This time 11 years ago:
25th anniversary of Poland's transition

This time 12 years ago:
Poland's infrastructure progress

This time 14 years ago:
Wetlands in late-spring

This time 15 years ago:
Jeziorki's flood of floods: Puławska and Pozytywki

Jeziorki's flood of floods: Sarabandy and Karczunkowska

Jeziorki's flood of floods: Trombity and Kórnicka

This time 16 years ago:
Another time, another place

Letters to an Imaginary Grandson (III)

What do we know? And how did we get to know it? Let's start with the big picture. We know (rather than just assume, imagine, hypothesise or fantasise) that we live on a planet orbiting a star; our solar system being a part of a galaxy; one galaxy among a vast number that constitutes the known universe. We can but speculate how many stars there are in our galaxy or how many galaxies in the universe – or if this universe is unique, or one of many universes. And whether life is common across the universe, or rare. Or whether there is a spiritual realm, separated from the material one of atoms, molecules and forces. We know what we know – and what we don't know. The study of what it is that we know is called ontology. 

But how do we know what we know? The study of how we came to know what we know is called epistemology. Volcanos and thunder were once thought to be the result of divine displeasure; today they're known to be vents in the Earth's crust through which hot lava escapes and shock waves in the air caused by sudden thermal expansion of plasma in lightning. That knowledge was acquired by human curiosity, testing various hypotheses against one another over time, and the scientific method, using repeatable experiments to validate theories.

Ontology (the study of what it is we know) and epistemology (the study of how we know what we know) – Greek-derived words, of which there are a great many in our language – are worth bearing in mind, as they help structure our understanding of knowledge.

Ontology is about stuff like reality, paradigms, concepts, world-views. What exists. What is being – what is it to be. What are thoughts. What is our place in the Universe. Epistemology is the theory of knowledge, how we acquire knowledge, what are the limits of what we can know.

So – how do you know that you exist. Simple! You are aware of it. You are aware of your own existence. You are conscious of existing; you are conscious of being conscious. This is the most basic, the most powerful statement of fact upon which to ground your own personal theory of knowledge.

Be aware also of what you don't know; be aware of cognitive biases in your thinking that can lead to poor judgment, irrational decisions or illogical interpretations. Identify them; question baked-in assumptions that surface in your train of thought. The older you get, the more you actually know, the more you realise you don't know. Being aware of how much you don't know makes you appreciate what fields of knowledge you should grasp, what you need to do to fill the gaps, and what sort of knowledge is of practical value (an understanding of how electricity works) and what isn't (London Transport bus numbers of the 1970s). There are vast areas of knowledge where you will have gaps in knowledge that you're destined never to fill. Acknowledging with humility that this isn't important to you, and being aware of that decision. I shall never speak Hungarian, grasp calculus, or master technical drawing.

You will have to choose whether you see yourself as a specialist or a generalist – either able to talk with a superficial degree of familiarity about a subject for several minutes, to establish your credentials for erudition – or able to focus deeply on a few complex areas with an expert's knowledge.

The last man considered to have 'known everything' was either Gottfried Leibniz (1646 – 1716) or Thomas Young (1773 – 1829). By the time of the Industrial Revolution, it had become impossible for even the most gifted polymath to have knowledge that spanned all branches of human thought to any significant degree.

Be honest about what you don't know – don't bullshit, especially not to people who don't know any better. Do not boast about what you know – share what you know.

This time four years ago:
Consciousness, memory and familiarity

This time six years ago:
Classic Volgas, London and Warsaw

This time seven years ago:
Memory and Me

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

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

This time 14 years ago:
Rail chaos hits Warsaw

This time 15 years ago:
Hurting and healing: a certain symmetry

This time 17 years ago:
I no longer recognise the land where I was born

This time 18 years ago:
A wet start to June

Cleaning it up

I love this! Bringing together local folk to voluntarily clean their roadsides, the ditches and the forests of all the rubbish that mindless brudasi dump there. This is pure win-win-win. It's establishing relations between neighbours based on trust and cooperation; it's making the neighbourhood aesthetically more pleasing; and it's restoring nature to its original condition. A great initiative that I was delighted to be a part of.

I answer the call of Stowarzyszenie Przyjaciół Gminy Chynów (the association of friends of the Chynów municipality). Along with 12 other people of all ages, we meet up to pick up bin bags set off to conduct a sweep of the highways and the hedges from Chynów down to the level crossing at Węszelówka and back along ulica Kolejowa. Three kilometres (probably more if one includes forays deeper into the forest to recover car-parts and other larger items) in total.

Below: strung out along ulica Spokojna, between Chynów and Węszelówka, picking up the beer cans, vodka bottles, cigarette packets, energy-drink tins, ice-cream wrappers and other detritus that local litter-louts and passing motorists have deposited along the roadside. The enfilthification of our beautiful land ends here! [Incidentally, we learn that this stretch of road, all the way to Piekut, will get asphalt at last. Hurrah!]

Below: in action. Drivers tipping crap out of their cars, householders chucking out their waste, the outdoor drinking community leaving their feldalkohol receptacles behind them. Bag after bag gets filled – blue, yellow, green and black.

Below: a culvert under the railway line, spotless after the cleaning. Someone saw this as a good place to leave their household waste. It isn't. Don't do this.

Pristine forest. It deserves to stay this way, and not be turned into a dump for old household appliances, furniture, car parts and builders' rubble.

Below: at prearranged spots, full bags of segregated rubbish are left to be collected by a car sent round by the municipality along the route of our walk.

And a big thank you to Ewa Bolek, Kawiarnia terapeutyczna Ciocia Halinka and Stowarzyszenie Przyjaciół Gminy Chynów for this most excellent initiative and to Hotel Chynów for sponsoring the social event at the end of the cleaning-up session. I look forward to the next one!

[Something I noted that shows social maturity – over glasses of nalewka and Polish wines, there was much lively discussion among neighbours, in particular about local issues, but no mention of tomorrow's presidential election. Thus the potential of someone souring the atmosphere was avoided, and everyone was happy.]

I look forward to a repeat of this event; a few of us suggested that we conduct a sweep of ul. Wspólna (from Chynów station to the church); I reckon a yield of half a tonne of małpki (100ml and 200ml vodka bottles) can be obtained along with a short detour down ul. Ogrodowa.

 "What we gotta do as the people – we got to get together and clean that up" – James Brown, Talkin' Loud And Sayin' Nothing.

This time last year:
Ciechanów

This time six years ago:
It's the 31st of May and where's the viaduct?

This time eight years ago:
My mother's school – subject of exhibition at national army museum
(from June 2025-September 2026 it's showing at Kraków's Schindler's Factory museum)

This time nine years ago:
Stormy end to May

This time ten years ago:
Where's it better to live: London or Warsaw?

This time 11 years ago:
Jeziorki, magic hour, late-May

This time 13 years ago:
Świdnica, one of Poland's lesser-known pearls

This time 16 years ago:
Spirit of place

Letters to an Imaginary Grandson (II)

There will come a day when people will no longer be telling you what to do. When to wake up, when to go to school, what subjects to study, when your essay has to be in by. Teachers and parents will one day no longer be giving you orders. You alone will decide what to do with your time. Yes, you will need a job to pay for food, clothes and housing. But you will choose that job, not your parents nor your teachers.

The Lebanese poet Khalil Gibran says that raising children is like firing a bow from an arrow; for parents, the force with which they pull back the bowstring, the direction in which they point the bow and its angle of elevation will all determine where the arrow will land. But once the arrow has been loosed from the bow, they no longer have any further influence over its subsequent trajectory. 

You will one day be that arrow, shot from your parents' bow. You are on your own now, their work as archers done.

So – thinking about that day, you are thinking of your freedom, to do furthermore as you will. But who then will define your goals? Who will fill your day with tasks? Who will set deadlines? Will it be you? 

The difference between winners and losers lies entirely in self-discipline. Training, practice, rehearsal. Getting in your ten thousand hours needed to achieve mastery. You have to be tough on yourself. It will be no use outsourcing that to someone else. Laziness and procrastination are signs of weakness and will result in poor life outcomes. Failing to plan is planning to fail. You will not make the most of your potential.

But pushing yourself too hard – especially in pursuit of purely material goals – is also harmful. Finding that balance between taking it easy and charging on willfully is crucial. Stress starts to hurt when you can no longer cope with everything on your plate. Living with long-term stress has negative effects on physical and mental health. But having no stresses at all, no aims, no ambitions, is also dangerous. The concept of 'eustress' – good stress – is useful. Enough that you can cope with. Everyone has a limit of how much stress they can tolerate before it overcomes them. For some it's higher, for other its far lower. It is important to define that limit for yourself, through experience.

That limit changes over life. The maximum you can cope with peaks in your mid-20s to mid-40s. You are physically at your most robust. Later, you will need to settle back and learn to enjoy the fruits of your efforts. Materially made, it's then time to contemplate more elevated matters. And here, again, it must be you that determines what you pursue and at what pace. The balance between rigour and taking it easy. The balance needs to be struck; you need to define when it is that you are genuinely tired and are in need of rest – and when you are just feeling lazy. And when you identify yourself as just feeling lazy, you are the only one who can get your arse in gear.

Self-discipline is built around structuring your day so that time doesn’t evaporate before you know it. First thing in the morning – write it down. What you have to do, and when you should do it by. Set yourself goals and deadlines. Get into this habit as soon as you can and stick to it. Be consistent. Day in, day out. Whether it’s written down on paper or recorded digitally – this doesn’t matter. What counts is that this behaviour becomes habitual. At the end of each day, you become your own judge, your own taskmaster. What didn’t get accomplished that day, put forward to the next day – and at least this way, you are aware of your own procrastination. When you see a task getting kicked down the road, you know there’s a problem. Deal with it; get it sorted or outsource it to someone else.

Writing it down is one of the most important habits you can have. A pocket notebook that’s always with you to jot down your thoughts. A desk notebook with your day’s tasks mapped out. 

You are in charge of yourself. 

This time last year:
"Fill the edge of your bed with pebbles"

This time two years ago:
De-growth: A personal manifesto, Pt II

This time three years ago
Old signs in Wrocław and Gliwice

This time four years ago:
Are aliens good or bad?

This time five years ago:
Thoughts – trains set in motion

This time seven years ago:
Great crested grebes and swans hatch

This time nine years ago:
Jeziorki birds in the late May sunshine

This time ten years ago:
Making sense of Andrzej Duda's win

This time 14 years ago:
A walk down ul. Gogolińska

This time 17 years ago:
Twilight in the garden

This time 18 years ago:
Late-May reflections

Birdland

It's been a year since I downloaded Cornell Labs' Merlin Bird ID software to my phone (thanks for the suggestion Ian S!). Since then, I've been using it to identify bird calls and songs when out and about on my walks. Today, I took the trouble to create a spreadsheet and make a note of the local birdlife that the app has identified. Turns out I have 45 different species of bird within walking distance of my działka. The most common (and also my favourite in terms of its song) is the Eurasian blackbird; the chaffinch, chiffchaff, blackcap and song thrush occupy the rest of the top five places. Rarities include the short-toed treecreeper and the Eurasian green-winged teal, both of whose calls I have only recorded but once over the past year.

Below: a bird that's not present on the British Isles, whose call is easily identified – the hoopoe (Upupa epops, or dudek in Polish). Hoopoes are notable for their crown of feathers which can be raised or lowered at will; they sunbathe by spreading out their wings and tail low against the ground, which can be seen on the lower two photos (taken at extreme range, so poor resolution). Open heathland, forests and orchards are the hoopoe's habitat.

Using this app regularly has given me new insights into the natural habitat of where I live, and allows me to observe birdlife around me. I particularly like the songbirds – not one-note wonders like the hoopoe or woodpigeon, but birds whose richly varied range of notes suggest a lexicon of meanings, syntactically structured to reflect what the singer is experiencing. Here, the Eurasian blackbird comes top, with the song thrush and nightingale thrush coming close. I wonder how long it will be before AI unravels the code.

Below: a juvenile female deer encountered in the forest. We stood like this for a moment or two before she turned round and bounded back in the direction from which she came at top speed.

"Sometimes you find a yearning for the quiet life/The country air and all its joys"

This time two years ago:
De-growth – a personal manifesto

This time two years ago:
Start Late, Finish Late - more on the Speed of Life

This time eight years ago:
Swans' way

This time nine years ago:
Sam Smith, Shepherd Neame and the Routemaster bus

This time 11 years ago:
Rainy night in Jeziorki – no flood this time!

This time 12 years ago:
Wide-angle under Pl. Wilsona

This time 13 years ago:
Ranking a better life

This time 14 years ago:
Questions about our biology and spirituality

This time 15 years ago:
Paysages de Varsovie

This time 16 years ago:
Spring walk, twilight time

The pareidolias of smell

We know about pareidolia – seeing the face of Jesus on a tortilla, a cloud as a mounted General Custer, or a pyramid on Mars. Last Friday week I noted down the term 'pareidolia of smell' to refer to when you sniff an aroma that reminds you of something else entirely... Two weeks later, I experience just that. I had washed out a one-kilo plastic bucket that had contained Lidl's sauerkraut with carrot (a dietary staple of mine). I reuse these buckets to store spent coffee grounds, which make for an excellent fertiliser. Anyway, the plastic bucket was on the dish-rack on the draining board; I lifted it up to check if it was dry, held it to my nose for a sniff.

And wow.

Suddenly, I was getting the smell of a Greyhound Bus terminus somewhere in America, and the date came to me clearly... it was 1947. A smell that compounded cleaning fluid, stale tobacco, sweaty bodies and diesel fumes wafting in. The moment evaporated in a flash, but I experienced it. Below: for a second, I was here.

More common ones are the smell of my morning coffee, brewed in a Bialetti moka pot, which reminds me of the Italian café on Gray's Inn Road, opposite the Eastman Dental Clinic. It was here I had my first proper Italian coffee and pizza before crossing the street for orthodontic treatment. The smell in my kitchen each morning triggers that memory. And again, AI captures the scene it perfectly. This was it!  Can you smell it?

And another new one; recently I noticed that the teabags I'd been throwing out with the food waste onto the compost heap at the end of the garden do not biodegrade. So I've started doing something my father used to do – let them dry out, then snip the bags and tip out the dry leaves. I drink a lot of Herbapol fruit teas, which are 100% dried fruit – sour cherry and raspberry/cranberry infusions. Once dry and in the bucket, the smell reminds me of the pantry in our kitchen in Ealing, a 1930s built-in cupboard made of oak, full of sweet things beloved by my mother – jams and the like. Again, the smell is a perfect match that triggers the exact memory every time.

One more that occurred about a week ago; half past three in the morning, I wake up for a pee, and let Wenusia out. I open the front door; it's about an hour before dawn, there's a soft drizzle outside, and quite chilly. The smell of air, the petrichor, takes me back to a magical time and place beyond my current experience. I try to replicate it by opening the front door on subsequent nights but never quite get those same precise qualia. Now, from the scientific point of view, are my olfactory organs detecting a molecule-for-molecule match? And comparing them – without my conscious bidding – to qualia memories from childhood and youth, stored in some part of my amygdala? 

At this time of year, my rural walks are bountiful when it comes to smells; floral scents in particular that waft through the air in corridors; I notice a scent, it intensifies, passes; I walk back a few paces to catch it at its most intense, consider it, memorise it, before walking on. So important 

Marcel Proust's madeleines made famous in À la recherche du temps perdu; involuntary memory, triggered by the sensory experience of a smell conjure up qualia moments from the past. And, I hold that for me at least, those qualia memories can extend beyond my own lifetime.

This time last year:
Qualia compilation 7: Motorways at night, Yorkshire

[Here, an unbidden memory from 50 years ago unlocks memories from past life.]

This time three years ago:
Interstices (junction of S7 and S2 expressways just ahead of its opening to traffic)

This time four years ago:
Joys of Spring

This time five years ago:
Jeziorki in May

This time six years ago:

Spitalfields and Smithfields – more from London

This time eight years ago

That tune going round your head now...

This time nine years ago:
The eyes... the eyes... 

This time ten years ago:
New old terminal open at Okęcie airport

This time 12 years ago:
Arrogance vs. humility 

This time 13 years ago:
Warsaw looking good ahead of the football-fan influx

This time 14 years ago:
Heron over Jeziorki

This time 18 years ago:
Present rising, future loading

Cutting the cholesterol: drugs, diet or exercise?

On Tuesday I had a blood test done. This morning, the cardiologist assigned to me called with the results. "In general, very good. LDL cholesterol is down significantly, but still needs to be lower". Saying this, she prescribed me yet another (ninth!) drug to be taking daily. This is Etibax (ezetimibe). It will be working together with a statin, Roswera, which I've been taking since my heart attack. The statin reduces the amount of cholesterol the body produces; the ezetimibe works by blocking absorption of cholesterol from the small intestine. Taken together, the two mean that less cholesterol makes it into the bloodstream to clog up the heart.

So – after my heart attack, my LDL (that's the 'bad cholesterol') level was 151mg/dl. It's now down to 80mg/dl. But as someone at high risk of further heart attacks, it needs to be below 55mg/dl. By adding ezetimibe to my daily drug intake, the cardiologist expects that I will reach that target.

Then what? Am I condemned to swallowing nine pills a day at the current dosages? I've started looking at my diet like never before. 

Stuff that's bad: saturated fats, found in red meat, butter and cheese. Red meat is something I've relegated to 'rare treat' status years ago; butter I've just quit (replacing it with ProActiv cholesterol-reducing spread; 30g a day can reduce LDL cholesterol by 7% to 10% within a few weeks). Google Gemini says that it works differently to statins  or ezetimibe; "plant sterols/stanols can provide an additional LDL-lowering benefit complementing the effects of the meds. I have stepped up porridge consumption from two to seven bowls a week, one every morning. It will, confirms Gemini, "definitely contribute to your LDL cholesterol reduction goals." Oatmeal, it says, "provides a very significant and scientifically proven dose of beta-glucan". To the porridge I add pumpkin and sunflower seeds, which provide more beneficial fats, fibre, plant sterols and antioxidants, all of which contribute to better lipid profiles and overall cardiovascular health. And sprinkled with ground milk-thistle (ostropest), which offers "liver-support properties and general antioxidant  content". Otherwise, more fruit, more veg, more legumes (kidney beans, lentils and chickpeas). And avoid the fatty skin of duck (another favourite).

Exercise? The cardiologist said I should avoid exercises that exceed my safe limit for heartbeats per minute, which she said was 175 minus my age, so 108. Using my pulse-oximeter clipped to my right index finger while holding the plank, I could see the BPM steadily rising minute after minute; I quit at five minutes, at which time my heart rate was 90 beats per minute. So that's comfortably safe. Back extensions ditto. Slowly, I shall add more and varied exercises to the daily routine. 

Walking? Best thing possible. Since leaving hospital, I've increased my daily average to over 13.5k paces a day, though walking slower than before and usually doing two shorter loops rather than straying too far from home. Faster paces, with the Nordic walking poles, will resume after further consultation with the cardiologist.

Below: in such a landscape, in spring, it's impossible not to heed the call of a decent, healthy walk.

And a side point: AI has really stepped in as a trusted health advisor. This is not an area where it is prone to hallucinate – large language models have been trained on a vast corpus of medical literature (plenty of links to clinical trials and academic studies). As well as plenty of sober caveats. All in all, really helpful stuff, the promise of expert systems (which my brother was telling me about 40 years ago as he did his postgrad studies in AI) finally arrives.

Drugs, diet or exercise? All three. Can I do without the drugs? I'd like to reduce my intake to the minimum, but cutting them out altogether is not a realistic goal, I fear. Belief in the power of belief is vital. Overarching. A positive expectation, optimism, mind over matter. If I believe in the pills, they will work. If I believe they are harming me, they might well end up doing just that.

So – the key over the next few months will be to get that LDL cholesterol level down to around 50mg/dl –  and keep it there – for life!

This time last year:
Świnoujście – slight return

This time two years ago:

Czachówek Wschodni and its new, raised, platform

This time three years ago:
S7 extension progress

This time two years ago:
Town and country

This time nine years ago:
Beautiful May Sunday

This time ten years ago:
Three days – three Polish cities

This time 13 years ago:
Part two of short story The Devil Is In Doubt

This time 14 years ago:
"A helpful, friendly people"

This time 15 years ago:
A familiar shape in the skies

This time 16 years ago:
Feel like going home

This time 17 years ago:
Mr Hare comes to call