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

Through-road or dead end?

Within a radius of 5km of my dzialka, there are very few paths that I have yet to explore. New walking routes are something I eagerly look out for, to add variety to my daily strolls. Today, I came across what I hoped would be two such discoveries, around Grabina and Kozłów...

Below: "Hello, what's this?" I'm walking north from Grabina towards Kozłów, forest on either side of me. Then, to my left, I see a  pile of soil and builder's rubble, and this draws my eye to a path I've never noticed before. Stop. Check phone.No sign of this on Google Maps nor on Open Street Maps. The path appears to lead to a clearing... Worth checking out – could be a new route.

I go. At the end of this track is a building site; upon it a new house in early stages of construction. And that's it. No further. A no-through road, evidently cut through the trees to provide access to the plot. Rather than double back the way I came, I decide to turn left and take my chances in the forest, reckoning that beyond it to the north should lie the road from Grobice to Staniszewice. After a couple of dozen paces into the thick of it, a car passes in the near distance – at least I'm heading in the right direction, and my navigational instincts are true. 

The forest is not quite impenetrable; dense brambles chest-high scratch and tear at my clothes and hands but soon I emerge into the open, out onto the asphalt. Won't be taking that path again. Turning west, I head towards Grobice, and then make a northward turn into a footpath running parallel to the Kozłów road. I've walked this path many a time, so the sight of another hitherto unexplored track (below) branching off at right angles into the forest piques my interest. Will it take me through to ulica Sosnowa, the path linking Grobice to the main road (DK50)? Will this one be the new route I'm searching for?

Again, neither Google Maps nor Open Street Maps show anything here other than the boundary line between the villages of Grobice and Nowe Grobice (on OSM only). I set off down this track. After a few minutes' walking comfortably, I can see that I'm approaching a clearing. But beyond it, no sign of the track continuing, just a solid wall of dense vegetation (below).

Once again, I press on through the undergrowth, getting scratched in the process. The trees in the distance start to thin – maybe a sign that ul. Sosnowa is near. But no; another clearing, to the left some horse-jumping infrastructure. But at least I now know where I am – and it's not where I want to be. So onwards, westwards, pushing through more undergrowth. Here and there tracks made by wild animals, easier to follow, but then I face thickets of tall shrubs and saplings, quite impenetrable without a machete. Ten paces forward, twenty paces back and around. It's hard going.

Finally I break through into a familiar clearing; I turn right and a hundred metres or so further on I emerge on ul. Sosnowa. A left turn and I'm on my way to Grobice, at last. A short cut this wasn't. Nor the last one. Should I really be playing explorer at my age? Well, I must say that while neither of today's quests opened up new routes, they did contribute to my local knowledge, and past such explorations have resulted in paths that are now part of the canon of my regular walks. It's worth diving into the unknown and seeing if new value can be found.

As long as I'm not crossing fenced-off land or going through private property, I am within my rights to ramble at will off the beaten track.

This time last year:
To Warka the back way

This time two years ago:
A year with panels

This time three years ago:
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 15 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 sunsets

The benefits of 'place nostalgia'

An interesting academic paper has appeared that suggests people are likely to feel more nostalgic towards the seaside, lakes or rivers than they are towards fields, forests and mountains. Or indeed the built environment. The study, led by the University of Cambridge and conducted in the UK and US, suggests that coastlines may have the optimal visual properties to make us feel positive emotions, and argues that ‘place nostalgia’ offers significant psychological benefits.

Yes. I absolutely agree. The sea, the rhythm of the crashing waves, sea breezes, the sea sparkle, that fresh smell – yes, it's emotionally powerful. Whether a peaceful sunny day by the sea or under dark clouds propelled by a howling gale, it is always a memorable experience (unless you live by the sea and it becomes commonplace). Memories click, connect, get triggered by smells, tastes, sights, sounds or sensations; the seaside offers many. The Daffodils effect (Wordsworth's most famous poem, about a qualia memory of lakeside flowers) tells this to us: "For oft when on my couch I lie/In vacant or in pensive mood/They flash upon that inward eye/That is the bliss of solitude". Place nostalgia can be triggered (by a sensory input) or bidden (conjured up by the mind) or spontaneous, the last being the most mysterious.

I have written many times about the emotional power of nostalgia coupled with spirit of place in my blog; the two are closely linked. [Hence my fondness for the poetry of Sir John Betjeman.] Now, the Cambridge University study,  Searching for Ithaca: The geography and psychological benefits of nostalgic places by Militaru, van Tilburg, Sedikides, Wildschut and Rentfrow, misses out on one crucial word; 'qualia'. 

Qualia are the raw, uninterpreted subjective sensory qualities of experience. They are inherently personal and private. Memories of qualia are key to what drives nostalgia; the longing to relive a moment experienced, a moment that our consciousness holds dear. Memories of such moments, such experiences, shape our personalities, make us who we are. Qualia are strongly associated with place, how we experience place through the sense.

Had I been approached by the researchers, I''d have said that the strongest qualia memories I have are indeed from the seaside; from holidays in the Northern French beach-resort town of Stella-Plage in the 1960s and '70s. I have been there six times; on the other hand I have been to the beaches of the Llyn Peninsula in North Wales maybe 16 times – and yet the nostalgia sparked by thoughts of Stella-Plage are stronger than those of Porth Oer, Porthdinllaen or Llanbedrog (strong those they are). Why should that be? Experiences at a more formative age? Or the fact that France was more exotic and different to me than North Wales?

Both seasides trump another familiar, nostalgia-jogging place for me, Oxshott Common, near Esher in Surrey that I must have visited at least a hundred times. But then it is forest and heath, not open water. "All that's missing is the sea"; that something extra special. The aquatic ape hypothesis fits in nicely with thoughts of atavistic memories of migrating along ocean shores. More about the sharp pangs of nostalgia for Stella-Plage brought on by the smell of suntan oil and cigarette smoke here.

This time last year:

From automatic action to mindful control

This time two years ago:
Keep on keeping on

This time three years ago:
Time and Consciousness

This time four years ago:
Altered states – higher planes

This time eight years ago:
Warsaw-Radom line modernisation – Czachówek

This time 15 years ago:
Climbing Mogielica

This time 16 years ago:
Good graffiti, bad graffiti

Life, as measured in cats

Three weeks old on Saturday, the kittens are still displaying exemplary development (and their mother an absolute star when it comes to carrying out her maternal duties). The moment arrives when their little legs are no longer splayed out horizontally like crocodiles' ones, and the kittens can take halting steps. And curiosity to see what's outside Plato's cave is taking hold. Below: the kittens are starting to see what's goin' on on this side.

Below: name? Potentially 'Saturn', in keeping with the planetary naming convention (Jowisz, Wenusia). He was the first-born. A combative and pugnacious little fighter, so his nickname is 'Scrapper'. "Oi! You lookin' at me?"

Below: Czestuś and mum. Wenusia is looking part resigned (she has another five weeks of feeding this lot ahead of her) and part relaxed. She's safe, well fed and well cared for. And everybody loves Wenusia.

What a little beauty! I'm becoming more certain that the three (almost identical) tabby-and-white kittens are female. This one seems more independent and the furthest ranging. I am minded to call her 'Celeste'. Her distinguishing mark is a white blaze to the right side of the forehead, with a smaller white flame to its left. 

Below: four out of five kittens can't be wrong. With the exception of Celeste, out exploring, the rest of the gang have returned to the birthing box for a feed.

I can't tell you how marvellous these kittens are. How glad I am that I did not listen to the voices trying to persuade me to sterilise Wenusia. She is fulfilling her purpose as a mum. And the little ones are miraculous.

UPDATE 10 July 2025: Celeste and Czestuś are the first two kittens to leave my bedroom and make an incursion into the kitchen.

This time last year:
Entropy and stress

This time nine years ago:
I am environmentally illiberal

This time 11 years ago:
Thoughts on brewing and investing

This time 12 years ago:
Cruisers and low-riders – cycle fashion

This time 17 years ago:
Bike ride to Święty Krzyż

Thoughts upon the Road, Eastern Poland

It's been a while since I was east of the Vistula by car, but the recent road trip and last week's return from Kazimierz Dolny has provided me with a decent glimpse of how much infrastructure has improved on the right bank of the Vistula, and how much eastern Poland has developed, over the past 20 years.

One positive indicator is the number of food outlets that have appeared in small-town Poland. Once you could breeze through one small town after another and find nothing. Today, be it a kebab shop, pizza place, patisserie, ice-cream parlour or café, an enterprising local person is likely to have invested not only in a place to eat, but a focus for the community. Below: the centre of Siemiatycze (pop. 14,500). The building in the picture boasts no fewer than four eateries including a sushi bar; however, we popped into a smoked-meat shop (wędliny) out of shot to the right, drawn by the most appetising scent that I shall never forget. Loads of kabanos, kiełbasa and boczek, some of it from wild boar. Wonderful stuff.

Reflections upon The Road...

Road accidents: in 2024, 1,896 people died on Poland's roads, compared to 3,202 in 2014 and 5,712 in 2004. The number of cars per 1,000 people in 2004 was 246; in 2014 was 520; today it's 723 (Poland currently has the highest car density of any EU member state). So upgraded road infrastructure and civilisational advance have made a significant difference. Most villages have pavements alongside the roads. Road signs, and speed radars, road junctions profiled for safety and safer cars all help. Behaviour too; in four days on the road, I did not witness a single example of egregious driving.

Four days on the road – a big thanks to Andy P. for the concept and the driving. Together with Roman P. we enjoyed erudite conversation, popular-culture trivia, a great soundtrack (including classic war-movie themes from the 1950 and '60s) and excellent food and drink wherever we stopped.

This time last year:
Britain changes course

This time two years go:
Lawn to meadow, meadow to forest
[two years on, the re-wilding has taken hold]

This time five years ago:
Town and country in summer

This time six years ago:
Across the Pilica to Strzyżyna

This time seven years ago:

West Ealing to Castlebar Park – waiting for Crossrail

This time eight years ago:
Trump flies into Warsaw

This time nine years ago:
Making Poland's railways safer

This time 18 years ago:
Lublin and the Road

Zamość the Magnificent

Day three of the road trip brings in Zamość; I've been here before a few times, it's a fantastic place to visit. (An introduction to it here.)

Stunningly beautiful, unique in Poland in its scale and splendour, Zamość was designed as the ideal Renaissance city. Ain't it beautiful? Just as Edinburgh or Prague are best visited on gloomy days in late November or early February's perpetual dusk with street lights reflecting off the wet cobblestones, so Zamość, Sandomierz and Portmeirion should be visited on cloudless blue-sky days that suggest the Mediterranean. Below: the town hall dominates the northern side of the market square.

Below: the square of the Great Market (Rynek wielki), around which Zamość was planned in 1580, is flanked by merchants' houses with colonnaded arcades. 

Beauty overload. Down every side street a new vista.

A walk through the historic centre of Zamość is so rewarding. Italy has been brought north by Paduan architect Bernardo Morando, commissioned by Jan Zamoyski to design a Renaissance 'ideal city', the only one in Central Europe.

Below: classical perfection, proportioned with the humanist ideals of the Renaissance in mind. The Great Market is popularly said to be exactly 100m by 100m although the metre was not being defined for another two hundred years as one ten-millionth of the shortest distance from the North Pole to the equator passing through Paris. And yet a quick check with the 'measure distance' tool on Google Maps shows that it's pretty damned close!

Below: not just streets, but courtyards and communal gardens set back from the thoroughfares. Pop through this arch, and enter a more private space.

Below: over three hundred years before Ebenezer Howard came up with the concept of the garden city, Zamość was providing its citizens with a quality of life that Victorian Britons would have envied.

Church architecture fits in perfectly. The Baroque Franciscan church dates back to the late 17th century.

Whilst I have bewailed the overtouristed nature of destinations such as Prague, Kraków, Sandomierz and Kazimierz Dolny, Zamość as yet has to fall victim to its own attractiveness. The holiday season is in full swing, yet the crowds are not here. There are plenty of places to sit down and eat, and the side streets are not choked with throngs of gormless folk grazing on ice cream and fizzy drinks.

It's quiet and peaceful, and I love it. The optimal tourist/attraction ratio.

As night falls, the sky remains immaculate, the town remains peace with itself. 

A beautiful town that has maintained its soul. The atmosphere takes on a dreamlike quality, real and surreal in equal measure, like a Giorgio de Chirico painting.

Morning calls for another circuit of the old town; an exploration of the fortifications which ring Zamość from the south and east.

Below: Zamość skyline from the top of the defensive wall.

The Franciscan church, this time from the back, this time in the morning.

Another visit is in order; but the weather must be like this to get the vibe right.

This time last year:
Assessing the passage of time while asleep

This time two years ago:
Summertime dreamland

This time four years ago:
Getting our heads around UFOs

This time seven years ago:
Bristol-fashioned

This time eight years ago:
The imminent closure of Marks & Spencer in Warsaw

This time 13 years ago:
Along mirror'd canyons

This time 14 years ago:
Mad about Marmite 

This time 15 years ago:
Komorowski wins second round of Presidential elections?

This time 16 years ago:
A beautiful summer dusk in Jeziorki

This time 17 years ago:
Classic cars, London and Warsaw

Przemyśl, and a reminder of Putin's presence

The second leg of the road trip, from Białowieża to Przemyśl, was a stark reminder of the evil that lurks beyond Poland's eastern borders. I got the impression that things had greatly changed around the Polish-Belarusian border since my bicycle journeys to these parts in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The clampdown is in place. Traffic is light. Quiet stretches of river border are monitored by banks of cameras mounted on high masts. No-entry signs proliferate on forest roads that lead to newly fortified border. Military and border-guard vehicles are much in evidence. This is not an area one wants to hang about in.

South of Włodawa, however, the Polish-Belarusian border gives way to the Polish-Ukrainian border, and the atmosphere of quiet threat subsides. The front line between democracy and dictatorship now lies over 1,100km (800 miles) further east, where each day Ukrainian soldiers face down Putin's army that threatens us all. 

Simon Davies is a Liverpudlian business owner who decided after Russia began its full-scale invasion to deliver humanitarian aid to Ukraine. We met him as he was on his way to make what would be his 13th delivery. With a Transit van and trailer packed with clothing, food and medical supplies, Simon parked up for the night to stay at the same hotel that we were in. We chatted a long time over beers. Today, he crossed over the border into Ukraine. 

Listening to his stories filled me with amazement at how much change for good a single-minded person acting consistently can make. One snapshot. In the van was a large bundle of drill-bits used for brain surgery. These are made of titanium and diamond, and cost £1,200 a pop. The surgeon who donated them to Simon said that with proper sterilisation they can be used indefinitely; the NHS, however, mandates that they be single-use. For emergency front-line surgery, such niceties can be overlooked.

Simon's Facebook page says he made it OK to Orikhiv after unexpected hassle at the border. Orikhiv is in the Zaporizhzhia oblast, on the southern front. According to The Economist, (10 March 2024) "Orikhiv is a ghost town. Every single building has been damaged or destroyed. Soldiers say there may be 1,000 civilians left out of a pre-invasion population of almost 14,000. There is no gas, electricity or mains water. Air-launched glide bombs have left huge craters in the streets or collapsed whole sections of blocks of flats. In the street in front of a bombed-out pharmacy, orange crocuses are making a defiant appearance." Most of Orkhiv's residents are too old or poor to leave. For them, a delivery of humanitarian aid such as that which Simon has brought all the way over from Liverpool makes a vast difference.

If you'd like to contribute to Simon's superhuman efforts to bring aid to people whose lives have been blighted by Putin's aggression, here's the link: https://www.gofundme.com/f/ukrainian-aid-delivery.

This time two years ago:
The four-day working week

This time four years ago:
First half 2021 health

This time six years ago:
Classic Volgas, Ealing and Ursynów

This time seven years ago:
Memory and Me

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

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

This time 12 years ago:
Serious cycling

This time 14 years ago:
Outlets for creativity

This time 15 years ago:
The day I stopped commuting to work by car

This time 17 years ago:
Look up at the Towers of London

This time 18 years ago:
Wild deer in the Las Kabacki forest