When earnings rise faster than prices...

 ...consistently – over many years – the nation is happy.

Yesterday, Statistics Poland (GUS) announced that the gross average monthly wage in the corporate sector in December was 9,583 złotys (£1,980), a year-on-year increase of 8.6%. Average monthly earnings in the UK are currently £3,211, having risen by 4.7% over 2024. However, inflation in Poland currently stands at 2.4%, whilst in the UK it is 3.6%. So – taking price rises into account, over the course of 2025, Polish real wages have increased by 6.2%, in the UK by a mere 1.1%.

But 2025 was not an outlier – this same story has been repeating (with a few exceptional years) ever since 2005. Polish wage growth has, over the past two decades, massively outstripped price increases. Prices have nearly doubled... but wages have nearly quadrupled. Yet over those same 20 years, average earnings in the UK have barely managed to stay ahead of inflation. 

A similar story can be told in the US. Whereas cumulative inflation over the past two decades has been lower than in either Poland or the UK, wage growth has been muted.

Below: graph comparing average earnings vs. CPI inflation from 2005 to 2025, Poland, UK and US. The base year, 2005 = 100%. Solid lines: average earnings, broken lines: consumer price index; red = Poland, green = UK, blue = US. Polish wages are for corporate sector, so don't include public-sector employees or businesses employing fewer than ten people.

Yes, Poland's much-praised economic miracle has many left-behinds, but there's an indefinable something in Polish social cohesion that foreign commentators overlook. Whilst the US and UK have seen relatively stable but high inequality, Poland has undergone a significant transformation, moving from one of the most unequal EU members in 2005 to one of the most equal by 2025. The Gini coefficient of income inequality measures the distribution of money coming into households (wages, pensions, and benefits) after taxes. The Gini scale runs from 100, where all income goes to one person, to 0, where all income is divided equally. Poland in 2005 was 35.6 and is currently 26.2 – a significant decrease in income inequality. Over the same time, the UK has seen a much smaller decrease, from 34.7 to 33.1, whilst the US has seen an increase, from 41.0 to 41.5. [Source: Our World in Data]

And now my controversial assertion: Polish employers are less stingy than British or American ones because they are cut from the same cloth as the employees. There's far less of a class barrier between bosses and workers. Yes, Polish bosses are doing well, but many are also the children or grandchildren of peasant farmers or factory workers. Wealth accumulated across multiple generations brings with it a sense of entitlement and 'us-and-themism'. And the idea of "screwing the workers to earn me another million or ten is something" that Poland's boss class feels less comfortable with than in countries where the rich are historically detached from the travails of the masses by many generations. 

As long as wages grow faster than prices, then all will be well. Important caveat, however – labour productivity must grow faster than both! And faster than in competing economies! Poland's productivity growth in recent years has been among the fastest in the EU (albeit from low levels). May it stay that way...

Before the moaners and carpers start to chip in: Polish pay data is average for the private sector (the public sector pays less) and there are big regional differences (10,500 zł in Warsaw vs. 6,500 zł in eastern Poland). The UK also has those regional differences, but the British public sector has seen much higher salary increases over the past year and half than has Poland's.

Sources

Poland: Główny Urząd Statystyczny (GUS) index uses the annual average price indices of consumer goods and services. GUS Price Indices. Average Earnings (GUS) data is based on the Average Monthly Gross Wage and Salary in the national economy GUS Wages and Salaries Data.

UK: Office for National Statistics (ONS) Consumer Prices Index series, the UK's headline inflation measure. 

ONS Inflation and Price Indices. 

Average Earnings (ONS) uses the series for total pay including bonuses. ONS Average Weekly Earnings in Great Britain.

US: Consumer Price Index is from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS); the CPI-U (All Urban Consumers) series, the most widely used measure of inflation. BLS Consumer Price Index Data. Average earnings data from the Social Security Administration and BLS. The index uses the National Average Wage Index and BLS Current Employment Statistics. Social Security National Average Wage Index.

National data cross-checked with the OECD database which gives harmonised CPI and hourly earnings data across all three nations, used to ensure the indexing methodology (re-basing to 2005 = 100) remained consistent across different currency and reporting standards: OECD Data Portal.

This time last year:
By tram out of central Warsaw

This time two years ago:
Base Twelve (why decimalisation speeded up Britain's decline)

This time three years ago:
Memories of Seasons

This time four years ago:
Pictures in the Winter Sun

This time five years ago:
Magic sky

This time six years ago:

Too good to skip over

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

This time ten years ago:
Lux Selene

This time 13 years ago:
David Cameron, Conservatism and Europe

This time 14 years ago:
Citizen Action Against Rat Runners

This time 15 years ago:
Moni at 18 (and 18 months)

This time 15 years ago:
Building the S79 - Sasanki-Węzeł Lotnisko, midwinter

Last chance to experience sun+snow this winter?

Weather forecast suggests that today will see the end of the spell of clear skies that bring sharp frosts at night and wintery gorgeousness by day. So a walk is in order to make the most of it all, to bring elation to my spirits, to extract maximum repeatable joy from the being in the light.

Below: pollarded willow, on the farm track between Grobice and Kozłów. Photo taken just ten minutes after today's meridian (when the sun's at its highest in the sky). 

Left: a female adult sparrowhawk (krogulec, Accipiter nisus), perched on a fence-post, Grobice.

Photo taken at the long end of my 70-300 Nikkor zoom, and – for the first time – using the Generative Upscale AI feature in the latest Photoshop. The picture was cropped tight on the bird, then blown up four times, with AI filling in the space between the pixels as they are moved apart from one another. 

I must say, I am impressed, and cannot find any anomalous artefacts within the image.

Below: new house at the edge of Kozłów; just as I did in early autumn, I took the photo and asked Chat GPT to make me a poster image in the mid-century modern style. And here they are...

Below:  having reached the furthest point of my walk, I turn around to head back, this time towards the sun. On the outward leg, my hands were frozen; with the sun shining on them, it soon felt warm enough for me to take my woollen gloves off!

Below: within two and half months, this snow-covered field will be yellow with dandelions... That cloud bank is drifting ever closer; more snow is due sometime over the next three days.

Below: today's welcoming party – Scrapper (left), Wenusia, and Pacyfik at the back there. Czester, Arcturus and the glamorous Céleste stayed in all morning.

This time three years ago:
Into the wet snow

This time six years ago:
Minimising #Flygskam

This time seven years ago:
Notes from the Arena of the Unwell II

This time nine years ago:
Ice – pond – night

This time 11 years ago:
Sorry, taki mamy klimat – Polish rail in winter

This time 13 years ago:
Music of the Trees

This time 14 years ago:
Studniówka – a hundred days before the exams

This time 15 years ago:
It's all in the mind – but where's that?

This time 16 years ago:
Roztopy – the big melt-down

This time 17 years ago:
The year's most depressing day

Traversing the Machcin wetlands in the snow

At this time of year, it's possible to cross the wetlands that lie between Dąbrowa Duża and Rososz with dry feet. Last year, there was no snow, but a deep frost froze what little water lay amid the rush-covered tussocks and channels. This year, there's snow that's knee-deep in places.

Unlike the wetlands between Sułkowice and Gabryelin, which I visited earlier this month, these marshes have no river flowing through them, this is a sump , a lower-lying area (129m above sea level), into which drains water from surrounding forests and fields. These wetlands occupy slightly over six hectares (about 15 acres) of land; an ever-diminishing body of water at the western end, the rest is boggy. Ideal nesting habitat for the local cranes.

Below: at the western end of the wetland is a small, maybe two metre-high, hillock. From the top, I get a good view across the area. In the distance, just behind the treeline, the unasphalted road running from Dąbrowa Duża to the left and Rososz to the right. 

Below: In the middle of it all. Reed stems rise from an undulating blanket of snow, sculpted into mounds and hollows. The reed tufts emerge like small island, their stems pale and feathery, backlit by the low sun. The air is cold but dry. Moving through this is hard work; I have to thread my way around the tunnocks in an approximation of a straight line, heading for the trees along the horizon. Along the way I see the tracks of large birds, which I can only presume to be cranes. Four or five prints in the snow – then nothing. And then again, the same. The birds must have landed and flown off straight away.

Below: just before leaving the forest east of Dąbrowa Duża, I spot a vapour trail marking an unusual curve in the sky. I check this on Globe ADS-B Exchange and it turns out to be a Polish air force MiG-29 fighter jet. The white dot in the top left corner (click on image to enlarge, then left-click to see full size) is a southbound airliner at a slightly lower altitude.

Left: autumn leaves that fell not provide contrasting colour to the blue sky and evergreens. The track between Machin II and Dąbrowa Duża, on the way home. Note the depth of the ruts left by a tractor. Walking requires significantly more energy and care than usual.

Finally, an interesting feline story. As I approach my działka, I'm met in the lane by Wenusia, and, turning into my drive, by Céleste. They were outside with Pacyfik. The other boys, Arcturus, Scrapper and Czester, were indoors, fast asleep. They'd spent the night outside, patrolling the grounds. For in the evening as I was going to bed, the three of them were on my front patio, observing something in the bushes. I'd popped out to call them in, but they were rooted to the spot, watching an interloper. I went for a torch. A cat, a grey tabby tom, ran off. But my cats stayed outside to ensure he'd not return. I woke around two am, and opened the front door to call the cats in. Scrapper returned, but Czester and Arcturus decided to stay out despite the double-digit frost to keep watch. Both came in at daybreak for food, warmth and an all-day snooze.

[To read of last years crossing of these wetlands, click here.] 

This time three years ago:
When to hold on, when to let go

This time four years ago:
Classical and meta-classical physics

This time five years ago:
The Sun and Snow

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

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

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

This time ten years ago:
Warsaw as a voivodship

This time 12 years ago:
Around town in the snow

This time 14 years ago:
Reference books are dead

This time 15 years ago:
A winter walk to work, and wet socks

This time 18 years ago:
Blue Monday

Migratory consciousness; migratory souls?

What's your earliest memory – the first thing you can remember remembering? 

And why don't we remember the first months of our lives? 

Were we indeed conscious in our first months?

My earliest memory is a memory of a memory. It would be from some time early in 1959, I guess. 

My father would develop and print his own black-and-white photographs in a makeshift darkroom (our kitchen with blackout blinds over the window) right through until the end of the 1960s. One evening, he made a set of prints from Christmas 1958. I am kneeling on a chair next to our Christmas tree, decorated with lights, baubles and tinsel. I am wearing a woollen jumper knitted by my mother. I have a small scab on my forehead/temple, about the size of a thumbnail. There are presents under the tree. 

On seeing the photograph, I remembered that moment clearly. I remembered that scab, and the bump that it resulted from. And I remember having quite a sophisticated thought; as I looked back at photos from the earliest weeks and months of my life on the previous pages of the photo album, I was aware that I had no memories of myself from those times. Yet when I looked at the photo of myself by the Christmas tree, I recalled experiencing that moment, living it, being aware.

And that was the first memory that I can remember*; the excitement of Christmas impending. I would have been around 14-and-half months old at the time. I had precise recollection of the moment captured in the photograph, and the sense of self that associated my consciousness with the little fellow portrayed in it.

When does consciousness slip into this house? It felt fully formed by that age; but was it fully formed earlier? If so, when? And if so, why no earlier memories? 

If we work on the assumption that consciousness is the underlying substrate of reality, the fundamental property of the universe, from which spacetime and matter/energy derive, and that our biological bodies are containers of our immortal souls, which evolve over the aeons – at what point did my consciousness and my body become one? At conception? At the 'quickening'? At birth? Or some time during that first year of my body's life, that time from which we have no memories?

What brings a soul to a body? I had an intuition yesterday while walking through snowy fields. Could it be... music? I started thinking about my earliest musical memories. We had a radio, which my parents had bought soon after getting married. It stood in the dining room, and my mother would have it on for much of the day as she went about the housework. Central to this was Housewives' Choice and Music While You Work, the signature tunes to both which are instantly familiar to anyone around in the UK at that time.

Below: my parents' radio, bought at Barker's of Kensington department store. Screenshot from the Bluebells' Young at Heart video (at 0:41).

This fact makes it nice and easy in our days of AI to track down typical BBC Light Programme playlists with the music I'd have listened to as a very small child. Now, whilst Housewives Choice played records, Music While You Work presented live music played by dance bands (union musicians). So whether discs originally cut by Count Basie, Glenn Miller, Duke Ellington or Tommy Dorsey – or live covers thereof – I would have been exposed to a great many numbers from these bands. Tunes from the 1940s were as close to my early years as tunes from the 2010s are to today.

Count Basie and his Orchestra entered the Capitol Records recording studios in New York City on 21 October 1957, just over a fortnight after I was born, to record an album now known as The Atomic Mr. Basie. The first track, The Kid from Red Bank, as well as several other tracks (Flight of the Foo Birds, Whirlybird and Splanky) have resonated strongly with me since I bought the album in the early 1980s, especially on snowy days under clear blue skies. How, why, I don't wish to speculate. I just feel a strong connection here.

[*But then there are what I'd term the 'birth-canal dreams', one of the most common tropes in my dreambook – squeezing through a narrow passage. Do these dreams prove a memory connection with birth?] 

This time last year:
Sunshine reminds me of spring
[not a whisper of spring right now! It's -8.7°C outside at the moment]

This time two years ago:
Winter's wildness

This time five years ago:
Snow turns to slush

This time six years ago:
London in its legal finery

This time seven years ago:
Winter walk through the Las Kabacki

This time nine years ago:

1967: The Year The World Started Turning To Colour

This time 12 years ago:
Rain on a freezing day (-7C)

This time 13 years ago:
Jeziorki in the snow

This time 15 years ago:
Winter's slight return

This time 16 years ago:
Unacceptable

This time 17 years ago:
Pieniny in winter

This time 18 years ago:
Wetlands in a wet winter

Hard frost continues

Into the third week of snow and frost; the 14-day forecast shows minus temperatures right through into early February. With the sky remaining cloudless, conditions for evocative photography continue.

Below: the wooden church, Chynów, in winter. The tractor has pre-1999 white-on-black registration plates from the old Krosno (!) voivodship. It is still for sale. An old-school Poland scene.

Below: pigeons flying around their loft, high over Chynów. They fly in a tight, coordinated formation; when they all suddenly change direction, their white undersides contrasting against the brilliant blue sky, the effect is dazzling.

Below: out into the forest, the going is not easy. Trudging through virgin snow that's up to 20 cm in average depth, snow that's not been trodden down, is hard work, but at least its not slippery.

Below: heading home. Saturday's second walk was short on account of what hard work it was in the forest, but a third walk (after dark) brought the day in on target in terms of paces.

Sunday was a social day, friends from London visited me on the działka, followed by a walk along the Vistula, followed by more socialising with London friends in a pub in Warsaw's Norblin centre.

Below: half an hour before sunset and Warsaw's skyline is lit up by the low sun. Much of the river has frozen over, but despite nearly three weeks of sub-zero temperatures, there's still plenty of open water.

Below: the three brave girls had just dried themself off and got dressed after a dip in the icy waters of the Vistula. A friend had come at eight in the morning with an axe to make these two holes in the ice.

Left: Arcturus in his element, today. I am trying to limit the cats' exposure to double-digit frost, certainly keeping them all in overnight. But once fed, after breakfast, and after lunch too, they are all very keen to get out onto the snow. After dark, however, the temperature plummets, so the cats are called back to spend the night in the warm.

Below: ulica Główna, Chynów's main street. The DK50 bypass has taken the traffic out of the village. Across the street is the local health centre, the church is in the distance

Below:  sunset over Chynów Poduchowny, as seen from ul. Lokalna

Below: ul. Słoneczna near the railway tracks, as the sun disappears. The snow turns a shade of violet. The sun set precisely at 16:00, so there's now 36 minutes more afternoon daylight than at the earliest sunset (9-16 December)

This time six years ago:

Cars: bigger, heavier, more powerful... why?

This time seven years ago:
Train journey to Chynów

This time 12 years ago:
It's healthier to live in the city than in the suburbs
[Car-driving makes you fatter]

This time 13 years:
Ikaria - the island where people forget to die

This time 14 years ago
Miserable depths of winter

This time 15 years ago:
From – a short story (Part 1)

This time 16 years ago:
A month until Lent starts

This time 17 years ago:
World's biggest airliner over Poland

This time 18 years ago:
More pre-Lenten thoughts

Doris Lessing’s On Cats – review

First book of 2026 (I have made it a New Year's Resolution to read more); a big thanks for Moni for getting it for me for Christmas, and a big thanks to Jacek K. for recommending it. A second cat book for me, after Mornings With My Cat Mii (my review here); that book I read last spring when I was the guardian of one but cat, Wenusia. Like Mii, Wenusia was a foundling kitten. Like Mii, she was "a calico, with black and tan stripes on her head and patches on her back, and a belly that was pure white". But now that I've become the guardian of six cats, a book written by someone whose life was usually shared with multiple cats becomes more apt. 

Doris Lessing's On Cats is not about a single feline life lived together with the author’s, but about her life with many cats over many decades, from the semi-feral cats of her African childhood to the aged, three-legged El Magnifico, whose life brought both joy and discomfort, loss and deep reflection to the author late in life.

On Cats is neither sentimental nor a mere succession of anecdotes; it is a series of sharp and often emotionally painful meditations on the creatures that have haunted, challenged and comforted the author across her life. And as a book written by a winner of a Nobel Prize for Literature, the quality of the prose doesn't disappoint. 

The book brings together three short works; Particularly Cats (1967), Rufus the Survivor (1989) and The Old Age of El Magnifico (2000). As such, there's no single narrative arc; rather, On Cats is a set of essays and recollections that collectively form an elegy for the felines in our lives. This approach mirrors the way how cats subtly inveigle themselves enter our lives: indifferently, with grace and charm, yet with an inevitability that shapes the routine of a cat guardian's daily existence. 

Lessing's many trips to the veterinary surgeon shows she cared deeply about the suffering of her feline charges. She writes often about sterilisation and the ambiguity of doing what's right for human society, whilst regretting the loss of her cats' "wholeness". It's a question I'm weighing up. As someone brought up in the country, she brought with her a rural approach to cat ownership after settling in London in the 1950s; her first two females – 'grey cat' and 'black cat' – would have litter after litter, which she'd give away. Black cat had three litters in a single year. Grey cat would kill the first-born of ever litter. In the end, grey cat was sterilised and resented black cat, who'd continue reproducing.

This unsentimental clarity about the rough edges of cat life – illness, rivalry, birth and death – is what gives this book its power and authenticity. Lessing's prose precisely captures feline gestures and moods. The universality of feline behaviour becomes a lens through which we see ourselves: our attachments, our awkward attempts at communication – both between species and between one another – deeply moved by what cats will accept from us and what they will politely ignore.

On Cats is the antidote to sickly-sweet cat YouTube videos with vocal-fried American accents counting down listicles like 'five ways in which your fur-baby says it loves you'. For any cat guardian wishing to peek into the mystery of the human-feline relationship, the book provides genuine and timeless insight.

This time last year:
The use of English in Europe after Brexit

This time three years ago:
The King's Horse (Short story, Pt I)

This time four years ago:
Hoofing it
(Not horses - Nordic walking!)

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

This time seven years ago:
Ice – proceed with utmost care

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

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

This time 13 years ago:
Inequality in an age of economic slowdown 

This time 14 years ago:
The Palace of Culture: Tear it down?

This time 15 years ago:
Conquering Warsaw's highest snow mounds

This time 17 years ago:
Flashback on way to Zielona Góra

This time 18 years ago:
Ursynów, winter, before sunrise 

Slush and crust – the brief thaw

The Inuit have 70 words for 'snow' (or so goes the myth); Poland has experienced several forms of sub-zero precipitation over the past 36 hours. A heavy fall of fresh powder followed by freezing rain; then a thaw lasting around 24 hours, crusty ice on virgin snow and slush-and-glaze havoc on pavements, roads and indeed rail.

Below: my Samsung Galaxy A56 is 6.4 inches (165mm) high; snow in the garden this morning was nearly eight inches (200mm) deep. A cat running through this will only have its ears, spine and tail visible.

My train into town to a business meeting yesterday morning was 55 minutes late (I'd opted for an earlier departure to be on the safe side, so no big problem in the end), but at least with snow powder one can move through it without slipping. Journey home OK and on time, but once the freezing rains started to fall in the late afternoon, pavements and roads became treacherous.

As I write, it's currently +0.3°C outside, but due to fall below zero soon – and then stay below freezing for the next two weeks! Double-digit frosts are forecast ever night through to at least Thursday 29 January, but with no new snow on the way. So what we have is what will be hanging around, not melting, just getting greyer and dirtier with time.

My new winter boots, bought two weeks ago, are excellent. The brand was recommended to me by the man who runs a militaria shop in Wola, although that shop doesn't sell footwear. I found the boots in another shop in Śródmieście, with a nice reduction (799zł reduced from 849zł). The boots are Lowa, a German brand, though made in Slovakia. These replace my old Ukrainian army boots, which sprung a leak in the late autumn after five winters of heavy use. [The old pair, minus laces, I retain as boots that I can easily slip on and off to go out to the compost heap or get something from the garage. I am practical.]

Two weeks of daily walking (10km a day) and the new boots (which labour under the ridiculous name of Lowa Renegade Evo GTX MID) are excellent. Goretex, leather and Vibram soles, they are comfortable, don't slip, and are warm and waterproof. They've experienced temperatures down to -15°C and have taken me over kilometres of slush-covered pavements with no discomfort experienced by my feet. And no falls.

This morning, I ventured forth into the garden, above freezing for the first time this year, and over a crispy crust of virgin snow covered with a thin layer of ice. I walked around with a satisfying 'crunch' as my feet broke through the thin ice and pushed down through the soft, ankle-deep snow. 

Still unable to use the car (last journey: 27 December), I walked to the shops in Chynów, and back the long way to get my paces in. Again, I choose a route with plentiful virgin snow for that rare experience of crunching through crusty snow. But most of Chynów's pavements were unpleasantly slushy ('slush' = breja, and that other nasty surface, gołoledź, 'glaze' or 'glazed frost'). Really nasty stuff, but my Vibram soles coped well. 

This time three years ago:
Mid-Jan town-and-country pictorial catch-up

This time four years ago:
Winter at its zenith

This time six years ago:
Signals from space

This time seven years ago:
Ice – proceed with utmost care

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

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

This time 11 years ago:
Thinking big, American style. Can Poles do it?

This time 12 years ago:
Inequality in an age of economic slowdown 

This time 13 years ago:
The Palace of Culture: Tear it down?

This time 15 years ago:
Conquering Warsaw's highest snow mounds

This time 17 years ago:
Flashback on way to Zielona Góra

This time 18 years ago:
Ursynów, winter, before sunrise 

More much-needed snow

Marvellous! Overnight a new dump of fresh, fresh snow, covering all the footprints and tracks. Delight for the cats after their breakfast to go out for another romp in the powder. Below: Wenus, haunch-high in snow. Precipitation on this scale is what the soil has been crying out for.

Below: Céleste enjoying herself thoroughly. Temperatures this morning around -5°C, little to no wind. Not the -16°C it has been recently.

Below: snow on the car shows how much has fallen. Arcturus, unable to burrow under the fence, goes over the top to get back in my garden.

Below: Czestuś spent a long time outside. Came back with an appetite!

After spending a while in the snow, I lead the cats back in the house, and set off for my long walk. Passing the auto workshop at the bottom of my lane, impossible to identify cars under the snow.

Below: a Koleje Mazowieckie Służbowy ('service'/'official') train north of Chynów station, almost certainly an empty stock movement or a rescue run. When a train is shown as a Służbowy, it is running as a non-commercial service (przejazd próżny). It carries no passengers and is prioritised by dispatchers to get it to a specific location as quickly as possible (podsył). Note it is a five-car single-unit set, not the more usual ten-car double-unit set. Something's gone wrong up the line to Warsaw...

Below: I pass the car breaker's yard on the DK50, covered by snow. Sad to see an Audi A2 up there (middle), with its rust-resistant lightweight aluminium body and extreme fuel efficiency. Production ceased in 2005; I reckon it will be a collector's classic in years to come.

Below: the snow-ploughs and gritters were out in force along the DK50 (I saw two in the space of about five minutes) and two cars from national highway operator, GDDKiA, monitoring the state of the roads.

As I'm still not doing big grocery shops, I decide to go to Zajazd u Latoszków for my lunch, with mushroom soup and grilled barbecue chicken breast with salad, beetroot and potatoes, all for 30 złotys (£6.20). After walking for half an hour – much of that through deep virgin snow – a piping hot bowl of soup was just the thing. 

Below: another five-car single-unit set, this time heading south towards Radom, this time carrying passengers. Evidently many trains breaking down.

Below: my apple trees. It should be a good year. 1) Biennial bearing, 2) The snow cover, 3) lots of natural fertiliser stored up (coffee grounds). Blossom by late-April, apples by late-September. 

This time last year:

Week with new kitten

This time two years ago:
Warsaw railway interstitials

This time three years ago:
Qualia memories – snowy Greenwich, January 1970

This time five years ago:
Meagre, disappointing snow

This time 12 years ago:
The sad truth about Karczunkowska's pavement

This time 13 years ago:
About Warsaw's kebab restaurants
[In 2012, a king-size lamb kebab in pitta bread cost 13zł, today it's around 30zł.]

This time 16 years ago:
Making the most of winter

This time 17 years ago:
Progress along Ballay Street

This time 18 years ago:
Shortest, mildest, winter?

Wetlands in Winter, 2026 edition

Today's already the tenth, the temperature hasn't risen above freezing since New Year's Eve. This morning, my kitchen thermometer said it was -16.9°C. Walking on ice should be totally safe. I set off after breakfast towards Sułkowice.

Before getting to the end of the lane, I could hear the sky full of honking. Looking up I saw an uncountable number of cranes. Such scenes would have been impossible 20 or even 15 years ago; climate change means that many migrating birds have decided to winter in Poland rather than expend energy flying to Africa. Cranes can cope with a few days of snow and ice, but this is not good weather for them right now. They are scouting for open water and fields without snow cover where they can forage for food. The formation was so big, I could not zoom out far enough to get the whole lot in. Some of these cranes are from the wetlands beyond Dąbrowa Duża.

Over the DK50, through Sułkowice, across the railway line, and into the wetlands. This is the Czarna river, dammed by beavers. The Czarna has been at low levels, almost disappearing in stretches over the summer. This winter's snow is good news for central Poland's rivers.

Below: looking across the Czarna, with open water showing. The wetlands are dry; though the river is somehow trickling through, the land is bumpy clumps of reeds and tall grasses. Not like past years, where small islands of vegetation poked out of the ice. On the river itself here, I can see tracks of hare.

Below: further along the Czarna, walking where I can see the tracks of deer or elk. But I exercise caution as I approach another beaver-made dam. I can hear the trickle of flowing water.

On the way home, I pop into the Lewiatan supermarket in Sułkowice. I'm not using the car while the snow lasts (all that salt, corrosion, ice etc). As a result, I'm food-shopping every second day with rucksack rather than doing a big weekly shop in Lidl in Warka. And here's the funny thing. Although individual items are more expensive or much more expensive than in Lidl, my actual expenditure is much lower (like, 40% lower). It seems I'm only buying food I actually need and can carry. Once they've got you in that supermarket, they tempt you with delicious extras! At low, low prices!!

Below: altocumulus undulatus clouds over ulica Ogrodowa, Sułkowice; in winter, they commonly appear ahead of a front or during transitions between air masses. It's a bit warmer (-5.7°C at ten pm), more snow is due overnight and there's no thaw forecast until next Friday.

Back in Jakubowizna. Pawprints in the snow led me south through the fallow field that lies between my lane and the main street running through Jakubowizna, perhaps shedding light on where Wenusia goes on frosty nights – do you see the polytunnels to the left, and the two chimneys? This may be why her fur smells smoky when she pops through my kitchen window in the mornings.

This time six years ago:
Inequality and wealth – the Polish perspective

This time ten years ago:
Work on rail modernisation, Jeziorki

This time 12 years ago:
In which I get started on Twitter
[Happier times, when it wasn't owned by a ****]

This time 13 years ago:
London Underground is 150 years old

This time 14 years ago:
My enemy's enemy is my...?

This time 15 years ago:
Some thoughts upon the Nature of Warfare

This time 16 years ago:
Snow so deep it needs a plough

This time 17 years ago:
A fieldfare in midwinter