It's been a long time coming

Friday 28 November 2025. The opening of the passage under Warszawa Zachodnia (Warsaw West) station. I came on Sunday to cast mine eyes upon this marvel, for which I had waited so long.

Goodness! When did work start? Six years ago or longer? It's become a blur. So many memories; of the old underground passage, reeking of the 1980s, cigarette smoke and burnt casein, and its closure; of years of inconvenience, thumbing through back-dated magazines sold for a quarter of their cover price, trying to read the printed timetables in dim light, garbled station announcements saying that my train will be arriving at a different platform to the one advertised... A commuter hellscape that... finally... is over.

In its place, a modern, bright, civilised, convenient station; escalators, lifts, digital signs showing departures in real time; and the promise of modern retail and gastronomy replacing the dives and dinginess of what I considered at the time Poland's worst railway station.

Below: lots of space in this mall....

Left: ...Disco pants and haircuts. This place has got everything!

Though we'll still wait for the cafés and stores to open, soon there'll be a choice of a Starbucks, Costa and a CoffeeToGo; there'll be a Żabka (naturally), an Aldi (wow! I've never been in one, in Poland or in the UK! Wonder if they are licenced to sell alcohol, or is the shop deemed to be too close to the platforms?) A Subway, a Paul, a 1minute SmaczneGo and a Gorąco Polecam (the last one for me), and a second Scottish Restaurant (one at either end of the tunnel), a Relay, a Rossmann and a HeBe. Travellers will not be left wanting for choice, though I wonder what the opening hours of these shops and cafés will be, given that there's a gap of just 68 minutes between the last train of one day and the first train of the next.

Below: if not, there are several sets of these well-stocked and reliable (contactless card) vending machines dotted around the premises.

Below: looking west, with the old tunnel from Aleje Jerozolimskie behind me. The dip in the tunnel ahead leads down to what will be the underground tram stop when the tramline is finally completed (2026? 2027? I neither wish to believe the press releases nor to speculate). Once done – this will be marvellous. To be able to descend from your train and board a tram heading north to Wola or south to Mokotów will be a huge improvement in the travelling lives of Varsovians. For now, the passage down to the tram tunnel to the left is fenced off (and probably will continue to be for some time to come).

Below: to reach other platforms you no longer have to go up via the footbridge. Stairs, escalators and lifts now take you down to the tunnel. This is Platform (peron) 3, serving two tracks, one eastbound, one westbound. Try not to get confused by the track (tor) numbers, one aspect of the old station that's not been reformed. Track 23 eastbound, track 21 westbound. I think. 

Below: the western waiting room/booking hall on the ulica Tunelowa side. Smaller than the one on the Aleje Jerozolimskie side (but less busy). 

Below: here you'll find the 'Neighbour Area Plan' which nicely shows  central Warsaw's railway stations. Not 'train stations', not 'neighbor'. The Radom line terminates at W-wa Gdańska station to the north and skirts the city centre through which it used to go. Much to my annoyance.

Below: access from the booking hall to the platforms is via stairs, escalators and lifts. No more having to walk up 50 steps, then down 50 steps, then down another 50 steps, and finally up another 30 steps to get from Platform 3 to Platform 9. Real-time digital timetables everywhere.

For my purposes, the opening of the tunnel marks a huge leap forward in being able to change trains at W-wa Zachodnia. From a 20 minute walk up and down stairs and ramps, through mud, across the busy road at the back of the station and along a corrugated canyon to reach Platform 9, cut to 15 minutes with a shorter route, down to eight minutes when the western section of the tunnel was opened in October 2024, the interchange now takes six minutes. But ultimately, the Radom line should really go back to serving W-wa Ochota, W-wa Śródmieście and W-wa Powiśle like it always had done. Changing at W-wa Zachodnia is no longer the monumental pain in the arse that it once was. 

Poland is getting on with it; works take a long time, but in the end they get there (hello HS2) and things get noticeably better. Repeat consistently over a couple of decades, and the contrast between then and now is stunning.

Ultimately, vast improvements like the ones I've seen here and elsewhere across Poland's railway network over the past 28 years, demonstrates that it is possible to make rail travel more attractive to passengers. Just don't privatise it. British trains are worse than Poland's and vastly more expensive.

Below: bonus photo – Last Train to Warsaw, just leaving Chynów.

This time last year:

Biorhythms are nonsense. And yet...

This time four years ago:
Twilight rambler

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

This time seven years ago:
Artificial Intelligence vs Artificial Consciousness

[In retrospect, an interesting and prescient piece!]

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

This time 11 years ago:
No in-work benefits for four years?

This time 12 years ago:

Third snow-free November in a row

This time 13 years ago:

Another November without snow

This time 13 years ago:
Snow-free November

This time 15 years ago:
Krakowskie Przedmieście in the snow

A doctor in the house

Doctor, 1: A physician; a member of the medical profession; one who is trained and licensed to heal the sick or injured. 

Doctor, 2: A person who has attained a doctorate, such as a Ph.D, conferred by a college or university.

From the Latin, doctor, the agent-noun from the verb docere, to teach.

Well, for the first time in family history, there is a doctor in the house – daughter Moni successfully defended her doctoral thesis at the Łódź film school today, 14 years after she began her screenwriting studies there. We are all proud.

The process that took almost three hours and involved three academic reviewers and five members of the PhD commission who cross-questioning her on her 300-page thesis, entitled Autorzy, zawodowcy i  współtwórcy ('Auteurs, professionals and co-creators'). This is the first detailed analysis of the way Polish screenwriters carry out their work.

Moni's thesis includes quotes from a series of 12 interviews with working screenwriters from different generations, and shows how the profession changed over time, particularly with the transformation from communism to market democracy after 1990. She looked at how the market and the opening up of streaming and series had shaped the way screenwriters operate. 

From this, Moni developed the notion that there are three basic archetypes of screenwriters working in Poland, the visionaries who drive the creative process from beginning to end, the 'hired pens' on whom directors and producers can rely to turn out a competent script, and the collaborative partnerships that depend on a shared vision of the final product.

The third model is trickiest to get right; trading ideas to create higher value than one person could do on their own. These often fail because of a lack of leadership and of a shared vision. With nine out of ten scripts failing to make it onto the screen. The professional – who is not emotionally tied to the project – can be relied upon to turn out a commercial hit. The auteur, who doggedly pursues their own vision to the end, often creates an art-house or cult, hit but can sometimes cross over into the commercial mainstream.

Collaboration is trickiest. Getting it right means mutual understanding of each other's roles, openness and honesty, feedback and empathy – as well as the importance of the contract. Who should lead? The writer, the director, or the producer? Whose artistic vision is it in the first place – and what should be the role of co-creators or collaborators? Should they be script-doctors, merely there to tweak and improve, or are they there to lift the work to a higher level?

Moni has the green-light to turn her thesis into a book, which will hopefully serve as a valuable asset for aspiring screenwriters.

This time two years ago:
Szczecin dawn

This time three years ago:

Win-win-win-win-win
(in praise of charity shops)

This time four years ago:
Comfort, discomfort and winter cold

This time five years ago:
Frustration as completion of Chynów station draws near

This time six years ago:
London in verticals

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

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

This time 11 years ago:
The Regent's Canal, London

This time 13 years ago:
An end to the entitlement way of thinking

This time 14 year:
West Ealing - drab and sad suburb

This time 15 years ago:
To Poznań by train

This time 17 years ago:
Late autumn drive-time

Qualia compilation 12: moderne living

As a child, we lived in a 1930s end-terraced house that my father (inspired by BBC's Barry Bucknall) modernised in the 1960s. My parents were sociable people and would often visit their friends, the majority of whom also lived in 1930s or Victorian houses. The latter made a different impression on the five-year-old me; they had higher ceilings, ornate carvings, ceramic floor tiles, stained glass and draughty corridors. By the mid-1960s, even the Victorian houses were starting to look different inside, with wall-to-wall carpets, brightly coloured curtains and patterned wallpaper. But the world I was born into was still somewhat drab and austere.

I remember two houses I visited with my parents that stood out and triggered anomalous familiarity. Memories of these two will flash back to me from time to time.

Both were newly built and served as harbingers of a new style of interior space. One was a maisonette in Hanwell, another was a terraced house in Hemel Hempstead New Town. This would have been sometime in the early 1960s; these new homes were quite unlike the fussy cosiness of pre-war or Victorian/Edwardian housing. We drove there in our Morris Minor along a short stretch of the newly opened M1 from Watford, my first ever motorway journey – very exciting, and futuristic.

I can't remember the people we were visiting. It could well have been a colleague of my father from work. I do remember, however, that he was keen to show off his new hi-fi, and that my father was very keen to see it. This was an entirely new concept to me, and when we saw it, at first I thought I was looking at a radiator or some form of domestic heating. Then the man took out a record and played some modern jazz. Whenever I hear Miles Davis's Kind of Blue, I get that vibe; maybe that's what he played. 

The maisonette was also a new thing. The very word 'maisonette' smacked of modernity. On Lower Boston Road, it looked like a two-story semi-detached house from the outside, with large windows, white siding and brick, but you had to climb stairs on the side to get in and it was only on the upstairs. A Polish woman lived there, a friend of my mother's; we visited her during a weekday, so maybe school holidays, most likely before my brother was born. 

I associate the this place with the new house in Hemel Hempstead; both were qualitatively different to the way most of my parents' friends (or indeed we) lived at the time; up-to-the-minute, spacious, clean lines, no clutter.

American style. That's what it was. Those two homes that felt instantly familiar; not from the sets of American black-and-white TV shows I watched (I Love Lucy etc), but a lifestyle that I felt I knew from before. The space age was entering the living room.

Below: I asked both ChatGPT and Google Gemini to illustrate the contrast between styles of homes. ChatGPT produced the result that resonated better with my childhood memories.

This time last year:
Springlike Autumn

This time two years ago:
Encouraging more cycle-rail journeys

This time three years ago:

Time's Telescope

This time four years ago:
Justify the buy: Nikon D5600

This time five years ago:
First frost, 2020

This time seven years ago:
Edinburgh, again and again

This time 11 years ago:
Ahead of the opening of Warsaw's second Metro line

This time 12 years ago:
Keep an eye on Ukraine...

This time 13 years ago:
Płock by day, Płock by night 

This time 15 years ago:
Warning ahead of railway timetable change

This time 18 years ago:
Some thoughts on recycling

Snow magic for the cats

Out into the snow they go... well, not all of them; Scrapper, Pacyfik and Arcturus spent several hours in the snow yesterday. Czester and Céleste spent yesterday inside my warm kitchen. This morning, Scrapper wants some more snow action, but Pacio and Arkcio have decided to stay in. 

Scrapper was first out of the door, before I could get out with my camera. Below: the start of the expedition – who's in and who's out? In the foreground, Céleste and Czester are about to follow Scrapper into the garden while Pacio and Arkcio decide that venturing outdoors is not for them right now. Wenusia was first out, and last back in.

Below: Scrapper is a natural in this environment. He's really enjoying himself, and was very keen to get out as soon as he'd finished breakfast.

Czester's autumn-themed camouflage not working very well here. He was the only kitten in the litter with a normal-length tail.

Below: Céleste (la bellissima) is attired for the snow. Coat by Courrèges.

Below: halfway down the garden. Scrapper is in the lead. He is bounding through snow in huge leaps, clearly very keen on the stuff.

We go to the end of the drive and turn into the forest next door. We regroup at the fallen tree, then go off to explore further. Below: Czester adds a dash of colour to the snow scene.

Below: heading back to the house, through a magical garden of wintery delight, the cherry trees covered with snow. Sgt. Scrapper leads the way

Evening falls, and it's time for me to set off for my long walk. Below: Céleste is at the window to bid me farewell. Ain't she pretty?

From the moment the kittens' eyes opened in late June, every day they've lived has been shorter than the day before. Summer reached its zenith, autumn crept in, nights became longer than days, and now snow had fallen. The kittens have no experience of the year's cyclical nature; they don't know that by next month the day will start to get longer again, and spring will come. 

This time two years ago:|
Kraków's symbol of transformation

This time three years ago:
First proper snow of 2022/23

This time four years ago:

Sleep – a portal to another universe?

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

This time seven years ago:
Tram tips for visiting Edinburgh

This time eight years ago:
Warsaw to Edinburgh made easier

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

This time 13 years ago:
Heroes on the wall (for my father)

This time 15 years ago:
Tax dodge or public service?

This time 16 years ago:
Warsaw's woodlands in autumn

This time 15 years ago:
Still here, the early snow

This time 18 years ago:
Another point of view

First snow, three abstracts (and a fourth with no snow)

Below: bicycle-storage sign on window of Koleje Mazowieckie train arriving at Zalesie Górne station.

Below: modernist architecture along ulica Wołoska. I felt a strong xenomnesia flashback witnessing this from the tram. Scandinavia in the mid-1950s?

Below: ul. Madalińskiego. Pasteloza-style facade with tree in foreground. Again, familiar, recognised.

...and one from last week, before the snow fell. Socialist Realist architecture along Aleja Solidarności.

This time last year:
The snow and sun

This time six years ago:
Photo round-up, London, Warsaw and Kraków

This time nine years ago:
Poland's North-West Frontier

This time ten years ago:
Cars must fade from our cities

This time 11 years ago:
Unnecessary street lighting wastes money

This time 12 years ago:
Warsaw's heros on the walls

This time 14 years ago:
Tax dodge or public service?

This time 16 years ago:
Warsaw's woodlands in autumn

This time 17 years ago:
Still here, the early snow

This time 18 years ago:
Another point of view

Dreaming of the future

I dreamt this headline this morning (I just typed those words as the BBC newsreader spoke the words 'this morning'). Going to bed last night at half past nine, I rose today at half past five, the first thing I did was to jot these words before I forgot them. As soon as I'd fed the cats and made myself a coffee, I asked ChatGPT to produce me a photorealistic image of the headline of which I'd dreamt: 

{{ Having a hotel breakfast. I hastily pull the bread out of the toaster to spare it from being burnt. [Wow! I just typed the word 'burnt' as the BBC Farming Today presenter said the word 'burnt'!] This is a square slice of rye bread, crumbling at the edges. I try to communicate telepathically with the bread, but other than a faint spark of gratitude from it, I'm not getting anything meaningful other than this headline. }}

Logically, by asking the question, the piece of bread in the AI-powered toaster is already sentient. And I'm now asking myself whether I'm imbuing artificial intelligence with the ability to infect matter with sentience.

I seem to be receiving fewer and fewer 'meaningful' dreams than I did; my bedside dream-diary gets fewer entries. But this morning...

Below: sunrise with Scrapper. A short pre-breakfast stroll to catch the dawn. After the cats had eaten, only Scrapper showed any desire to go out for a walk with me.

This time three years ago:
Winter's on its way

This time eight years ago:
Kolej grójecka by Bogdan Pokropiński

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

This time 12 years ago:
An unseasonably warm autumn in Warsaw

This time 13 years ago:
Shedding light on an unused road

This time 14 years ago:
S2-S79 Elka from the air 

This time 15 years ago:
Fish and chips in Warsaw

This time 16 years ago:
Spirit of place – anomalous familiarity moments 

Walking under the clouds Pt. II

Another short day with heavy cloud, rain, drizzle and damp. It rained too heavily for a morning walk, so I held off until three o'clock, less than 45 minutes before sunset. Gloom envelopes the land, but trudge on I must.

What am I even doing coming up this way? A new sign has been put up. 'Unauthorised entry prohibited'. It's  cheaper to put up a sign than fencing off private land or putting up a gate. What legal consequences are there in Polish law for ignoring such signs? If it's your land, and you have title, just fence it off!

Left: this is (or rather was) the New Way, which it now turns out to be nothing more than an access road to a building site at the far end. My hopes for a new thoroughfare, parallel to the one shown on local maps as a public road (but with no-entry signs at either end) have been dashed. So, a new route needs to be found. So I walk through an abandoned orchard (shrivelled apples still on trees, no fence), following the border between Machcin and Adamów Rososki. Past the cottage in the photo above (is it abandoned? Hard to tell, certainly no one around) and then onto the farm track heading east towards Machcin (below).

Below: walking home along the road that has Adamów Rososki on the left and Grabina on the right. This is unusual in England, where roads don't demarcate borders between villages, but rather cut across them.

The incessant drizzle, the darkness and a houseful of hungry cats hastened my return home, so a mere 11,000 paces knocked out today. Again, I went to be shortly before 10pm last night and woke up before 6am this morning, and still feeling fine, mentally and physically!

This time six years ago:
Truth, lies and manipulation
Peter Pomerantsev's This Is Not Propaganda

This time seven years ago:
First frost, 2018

This time ten years ago:
Cameron, Paris, ISIS, PiS and Brexit

This time 12 years ago:

Work restarts on Jeziorki Ponds redevelopment

This time 13 years ago:
Foggy days and Warsaw's airports

This time 15 years ago:
Local elections – the lure of ultra-localism 

Walking under the clouds

Not the best weather for walking, but those daily paces are essential. Below: the former village shop in Machcin, long closed. A reminder to use or lose your local services before they get steamrollered by corporate power and consumers' drive for low-cost convenience. This one might be gone, but there are similar local stores in Grobice, Widok and Rososz; I make a point of popping into these when out on my walks to make some small purchases, water or in summer beer, snacks, cat-food, and anything I've run out of at home. And just to say hello to the shopkeepers, to be recognised as a local. Community is important in rural parts.

Below: something most welcome – the prospect of roadworks and 860m of sorely needed asphalt from the Jakubowizna-Machcin road (from which the photo was taken) to Dąbrowa Duża in the distance. This would link the new asphalt from Gaj Żelechowski and Dąbrowa Duża (completed in April this year) with the network of roads running east from Jakubowizna. Will the new road be opened to traffic before the local by-election for wojt (mayor) of Chynów gmina (municipality) on 7 December?

Left: orchards now without apples or leaves; it will be five and half months before they fill with blossom.

Back home, though it's early afternoon, the sun, is low in the sky. It struggles bravely to peek through the low cloud.

Left: out at the far end of my garden. One circumnavigation of my land is a seven minutes/700-step stroll. Beyond the fence lies yet another orchard. My fence lies within Grobice rather than Jakubowizna, along with the furthest-most three metres or so of the działka. Whilst I have a ban on harming nature (including plantlife) on my land, I do keep the path clear of overhanging branches with the lopper and shears.

Home from my walk, I'm met by my cats, who associate my return with feeding time. I shall not disappoint them!

Three weeks into winter time, and I'm still sticking to summer time, going to bed as I did yesterday at quarter to ten and waking up just before six. Not a minute of daylight missed. The Hammer of Darkness dodged again.

This time two years ago:
Using it not so as not to lose it
(Wars restaurant cars in Polish trains!)

This time four years ago:
Pleasance, the feeling of feeling pleased

This time five years ago:
Another dream of Dziadio

This time ten years ago:
Teetering between rage and reason

This time 11 years ago:
Poland – it works!

This time 13 years ago:
Foggy evening on Aleja Szucha

Brand new used laptop

I write this post on the laptop I bought used in June 2018, a second-hand Dell Latitude E7440, ex-corporate leasing. The service tag at the bottom of the laptop indicates that it was shipped on 15 August 2015, so it's over ten years old. And unlike my previous laptop, a Samsung bought new in 2011 (which fried and died), this Dell is still working fine, albeit without a battery (I replaced the first one, but when that replacement battery died, I discovered they no longer made them). And the QWERTY stickers have been replaced twice (see below). Otherwise, works perfectly!

When I bought it, I was roundly mocked by fellow blogger Student SGH for not saving wisely. "I burst out laughing," he wrote, "that sounds like Panie, Wieśwagen od starego Niemca, tyle co do kościoła i z powrotem jeżdżony." Well, I'm the one laughing now, as I have a piece of kit that stood the test of time.

So if it's working OK, even as a stationery PC, why do I need a new one?

 [Click here for original post and comment.]

Software. And hardware. The main reason for my purchase of a new used ex-corporate leasing Dell Precision 5750 is the latest release of Adobe Photoshop (version 27.0). Asking the old Latitude to run it was like expecting a horse to pull a 12-carriage passenger train. Whilst it could cope with simple tasks like opening a .jpg file and cropping it or altering colour balance, anything more challenging would cause the laptop to slow right down. Of course, six or seven years ago, it would rip through photo after photo at amazing speed. However, all the bells and whistles introduced by Adobe in the successive iterations of Photoshop that have been released since 2018 have slowed down my laptop to a crawl. The final straw came with the introduction of full-blown AI tools in the release before last. Asking my laptop to do AI-assisted noise-reduction would result in several minutes of  'thinking' followed by the application crashing.

So – old laptop (15" screen):
8 GB RAM, 113 MB graphics card, Intel Core i5-4300U CPU @ 1.9GHz

New laptop (17" screen):
32 GB RAM, 6 GB graphics card (what a difference!) Intel Core i9-10885H CPU @ 2.4GHz

Now, I've moved over to the new laptop so that I can actually use the new Photoshop. Below: to put it to the test, I took a photo this evening soon after sunset, to get a grainy photo on which to try the denoise tool. Here it is: wow! I wasn't expecting it to be anything like this smooth!

Interestingly, the new used laptop came from Norway rather than Germany like the old one did; in both cases, stickers were needed to adapt the keyboard to the QWERTY systems used in the UK and Poland. I ordered mine with Windows 11 in UK English. I paid 3,600zł rather than the 6,530zł for a new one on Allegro.

Over the past 18 years I have bought five computers for myself and family at Master s.j., Aleja K.E.N. 105/U6 in Ursynów, and am totally satisfied by the professionalism, helpful personal service and value for money that this small shop offers, far outclassing all the big-brand IT chains. Please support local suppliers wherever you can! These guys specialise in building bespoke PCs, refurbishing ex-leasing gear and repairing old computers. 

This time two years ago:|
Kielce across the tracks

This time five years ago:
Chynów situation update

This time six years ago:

Winding down, moving in, keeping on

This time seven years ago:
Socialist-realist Tychy

This time nine years ago:
Face to face with the UK retailing scene

This time 12 years ago:
Bricktorian Birmingham

This time 13 years ago:
Łazienki's statues renovated

This time 17 years ago:
Last of the Rampa na kruszywa

This time 18 years ago:
Airport zoning halts Jeziorki development

The kittens at five months

It's so good having five of them! According to ChatGPT (thanks Jacek for the suggestion), five is the optimal number of kittens to have in a litter. It is best for their socialisation, emotional wellbeing and physical health. With six, they tend (says Chat GPT) to roam as two patrols of three; five is the largest number that stays together and looks out for one another. The risk of conflict with an external cat is reduced. 

Five months into their lives, and all is well. Wenusia is getting increasingly tetchy in their presence, and will often hiss and lash out with her right paw at (in particular) Scrapper and Czestuś. And then she will signal to me that she wants to be let out. Wenusia comes home far more rarely now, for breakfast, in the afternoon and before I go to bed, with the express intention of cadging a meal, which she eats, and then after hissing at her sons, she will go outside. She now spends around 20 hours or more a day elsewhere, perhaps at my neighbours, cadging treats.  

Meanwhile the kittens stay together as a pack, with as the natural leader Scrapper, or, you know, El Scrapperino if you're not into the whole brevity thing. 

I think it's good to keep a litter of kittens together, to let them grow up together, to roam together. Having five of them is only fractionally more bother than having one. Everything I'd have to do around one takes only marginally more time to do for five. True, the bills for cat food and cat litter are bigger, and there's five times more cat poo to dispose of – but that's no problem in the big scheme of things. The upside is the great joy that the five bring. Below: Arcturus strides forwards, purposefully.

Below: Czestuś sleeping belly-up in the cat-tower in the kitchen, an environment which he feels is so safe and secure that he can adopt this vulnerable posture without fear of evisceration by a potential predator.

Below: Céleste the Forest Cat in her element. Looking more the Huntress here than the Supermodel.

Below: Pacyfik looking contemplative in the forest.

"Milcząc żwawo jedli" – they ate briskly in silence. From the top left: Céleste, Arcturus, Scrapper, Pacyfik; on the right, Czestuś.

Today I bought some bathroom scales. [On offer at Lidl, a mere 29zł or £6. I weighed myself, something I've not done since our old pre-digital spring-type scales finally broke in 2013. I currently weigh 67kg, down from 74kg back then. This gives me a body-mass index of 21.4, smack in the middle of the 'healthy weight' category. Anyway, back to topic...] Using myself as tare weight, I weighed each kitten in turn, held in my arms. The results:

1.    Czestuś: 3.7kg
[     Wenusia: 3.4kg]
2.    Scrapper :3.2kg
=3.  Pacyfik: 2.9kg
=3.  Arcturus: 2.9kg
5.    Céleste: 2.7kg

Interesting that Arcturus and Pacyfik, who weighed exactly the same to the gram aged 12 days, still weigh the same. And that Céleste, who weighed more than them when newborn, is now smaller and lighter, the result of being female. She weighs a whole kilo less than Czestuś, who is now heavier than his mum. Other than Céleste's fall in the ranking, the males retain the same order, with Czestuś ahead of Scrapper, who constitutes the centre of the pack (as opposed to a leader of a canine pack).

********

Giving away just one would bring sadness to me, and a sense of loss and anxiety to the remaining four kittens. So for them all, I shall keep them all. As one colony.

This time last year:
Surviving the gloom

This time two years ago:
Edwardów, south of Chynów, at dusk

This time three years ago:
In which I realise I'm living in old Michałowizna

This time four years ago:
Dealing with the Hammer of Darkness
(Go to bed an hour earlier – ignore the time change)

This time eight years ago:
Poland's dream of a superconnector hub

This time nine years ago:
The magic of superzoom

This time 13 years ago:
Welcome to Lemmingrad

This time 15 years ago:
Dream highway

This time 16 years ago:
The Days are Marching

This time 18 years ago:
First snow, 2007
(It's 9.7°C outside right now at six o'clock in the evening)

Banksy in Warsaw

Who is the world's most famous living artist? 

I asked ChatGPT 5.0 to tell me: "Based on global public recognition, it is Banksy. He is a superstar whose media reach is unmatched. He regularly makes global, front-page news (not just art news) for his stunts. His anonymity and political/social stunts – like shredding a painting immediately after it sold for millions of  pounds – turn every new piece into a worldwide event. His work is instantly recognisable and shared virally across social media. His art is accessible, being on public walls, not in museums. By placing his art on streets and bridges, it is seen by millions of people who will never set foot in a gallery. His style is iconic; the instantly recognisable stencils – Girl with Balloon, rats, chimps with signs. His signature stencil style is referenced in pop culture, making his visual brand ubiquitous." 

I asked Google Gemini 2.5 for a second opinion: "If I had to go for one living artist, based on general public recognition, it would be Banksy. His fame is driven by factors that go beyond the museum circuit: Anonymity – the mystery of his identity generates continuous global media coverage. Accessibility: His art appears in public spaces (streets, walls), making it accessible to millions without needing a museum ticket. Viral content: His works are inherently political, witty, and highly photographic, making them go viral on social media immediately. Stunts: Events like the self-shredding of a painting at auction have turned him into a global cultural phenomenon, not just an artist.

And so when an exhibition of works by the World's Most Famous Living Artist arrives in Warsaw, it is An Event. Below: the Banksy exhibition in Warsaw is certainly proving a draw. Saturday afternoon crowds. (Details at the bottom.)

So there we have it. David Hockney, Jeff Koons, Yayoi Kusama and Gerhard Richter lag far behind in terms of recognition. Banksy is much closer to the cultural zeitgeist, and closer to the ordinary person on the street of our planet's towns and cities. Yet his roots lie in the morally questionable practice of defacing someone else's property with spray paint.

I have a visceral aversion to graffiti of the mindless sort; it fouls the aesthetics of the places in which we spend our lives. We have, as a population, become inured to graffiti as a sort of low-level pollution, along with litter and smoke, though we can pick up the former, and wind clears the air. I believe that corporal punishment (a pair of black eyes delivered to the miscreant under medical supervision), or being drafted into a military clear-up brigade, or simply being forced to pay for the removal of the offending tags, is needed. Zero tolerance, especially for defacing historic stone or brick.

There is a world of difference between a Banksy and a simple tag squirted thoughtlessly on private (or indeed public) property. Some street art is to be admired or is there to make passers-by reflect. But real street art accounts for 0.01% of what is sprayed every day onto surfaces of our urban environments.

From out of that depressing, oftentimes threatening, visual sludge, formed by hundreds of millions of protozoan taggers, has evolved one apex artist called Banksy. Clearly this is art work. Immense amount of thought, planning and passion stand behind it. Banksy supports Causes – anti-war, anti-capitalism, animal welfare, urban blight, climate change, Ukraine, Palestine, the National Health Service. Banksy's aim is to shake up people's indifference to the suffering of others. 

Each new Banksy work becomes an event. Below: the mural Royal Courts of Justice was created exactly two months ago (8 September 2025) and removed from said building the following day. An act of criminal damage (defacing a listed building) or a well-timed political statement? A London art-gallery owner said the piece could have been carefully taken down (presumably along with the fabric of the wall it was on) and sold at auction for £5 million, making its washing away also an act of criminal damage. Banksy tends to give the millions made at auction for his works to charity in any case.

Below: exit through the gift shop. Get your Banksy merch. T-shirts, mugs, prints etc. "Copyright is theft, man!"

The Mystery of Banksy – A Genius Mind is on from 10 October 2025 to 11 January 2026 at the Soho Art Center, ul. Minska 63. Nearly 150 exhibits including those from the Walled-Off Hotel installation in Palestine, the Dismal Land 'fun fair' in Weston-Super-Mare, and the six murals Banksy produced in Ukraine in November 2022. All the works are instantly recognisable; the exhibition confirmed in my own mind Banksy's status as the world's most famous living artist. 

Though in 500 years will his works rank alongside those of Michelangelo, Vermeer, Monet and Van Gogh?

This time ten years ago:
Remembrance Sunday, Northolt

This time 15 years ago:
Death on the tracks