Tonight of all nights... GO TO BED EARLY!

[That is, if you are in the least bit troubled by seasonal affective disorder.]

The prospect of an extra hour in bed is tempting at this increasingly drear point in the calendar. But that hour is merely lent to you by 'them', and 'they' intend to take it back from you at the end of the day. As the clocks go back at two am tomorrow, Sunday 26 October, to be set for one am, the effect is that we gain an hour's daylight in the morning, but lose it in the evening. 

That loss of an hour's evening daylight, every day, between now and the end of March 2026, can exacerbate the mood disorder brought on by the encroaching winter darkness. The condition is more marked (affecting more people more strongly) the further towards the poles one lives. Symptoms of winter SAD often include falling asleep earlier in the evening, oversleeping or difficulty waking up in the morning, nausea, and a tendency to overeat, often with a craving for carbohydrates and subsequent weight gain. There is also subsyndromal SAD (which I get), a milder form, which affects two and half times more people than the full-blown SAD.

Since equilux a month ago, I have as usual noticed that I tend to go to bed earlier and sleep longer (typically being in bed by 22:30 and sleeping for nine hours, waking at 07:30). In high summer, I tend to sleep for just over seven hours.

My remedy to the Hammer of Darkness is to ignore the time change; make the most of the decreasing daylight hours by going to bed earlier and getting up earlier on Sunday morning. Eschew that lie-in. Tonight, and for as many nights as you can, go to bed at least one hour earlier, and wake up an hour earlier. This will mean waking up before dawn, witnessing sunrise, making the most of mid-December's seven-hour days, and going to bed as early as you can. 

Yesterday it rained all day, but this morning was beautifully cloudless, I was up for an early walk (not a long one it must be said) before breakfast, but that walk in the sun set me up for the day, and I caught the sunset too. Today it was at 17:20. Tomorrow it will be at 16:18. Each day sees less and less daylight, until we reach the plateau of darkness (from 9 to 16 December, the sun sets here at 15:24, and from 27 December to 2 January, it rises at 07:43). From the Winter Solstice, the day's net length will start to increase, noticeably by New Year's Day. And then, on 18 March, we reach equilux. The day will be just over 12 hours in length.

Below: morning in the wood next door with my six cats. Czestuś (right), being orange, blends in perfectly with the fallen foliage at this time of year. Photo take shortly after nine am today; were I to have taken it tomorrow, the sun will be casting these shadows shortly after eight am. Make the most of the morning light!

Unlike preparations for the spring time change, which take several days, combating SAD or SSAD at this time of year is simple – just go to bed a little earlier today, and wake up a little earlier tomorrow.

Never mind the time change. The only clocks that count are your body clock and the rising and setting of the sun. Czas jest umowny; time is something we socially agree upon, what time we meet, at what time television programmes etc are shown. YouTube and Play Again functions means we are no longer slaves to TV schedules; if something's on too late, watch it at some other time. But if you are prone to the seasonal blues caused by long nights and insufficient daylight, the least you can do is to benefit from that morning hour and go to bed early.

Stop scrolling. Go to bed... now!

This time three years ago
Public transport improvements

This time last year:
Sublime autumn, Jeziorki

This time six years ago:
New track from Chynów to Warka

This time seven years ago:

The possibilities of a quantum universe

This time eight years ago:
More about sleep

This time nine years ago:
Scenes from West Ealing and Hanwell

This time ten years ago:
Four years of PiS

This time 13 years ago:
High Victorian Manchester

This time 16 years ago:
Clocks go back – but when to set them forward?

This time 17 years ago:
Warsaw's Metro Line 1 reaches Młociny

Triumph: Easter Sunday 2024

Today I celebrate. As every year, the view from my window has changed radically from Ash Wednesday (typically overcast, sleet falling from leaden clouds, the vegetation dead) to Easter Sunday (typically warm, trees coming slowly into leaf). This year, the seasons have changed sooner than usual, despite an early Easter. Right now it's 26C outside, the windows and door are open (it's a mere 22C inside), green shoots, butterflies and bees have emerged to enjoy the sunlight.

Spring has triumphed over winter; a new phase begins. Birds are busy building nests; the garden is full of birdsong. Blossoms, leaves – then fruit, vegetables. Already, I have noticed the first shoots of sorrel emerging from the ground; within a week or so, there should be leaves for salads, stews and soups.

Lent is over; so meat is back on the diet, although I can't say I miss it that much (OK, for pure pleasure, a nice fillet steak takes a lot of beating, but for day-to-day menus there's no need). I broke with tradition by not having a midnight beer and whisky; those can wait until tomorrow. Girth round the middle is 94.2cm (down from 101.6cm in January 2014 when I began logging my exercise and alcohol intake)

And so, that was my 33rd Lent in my 66th year, and I find myself in good physical and mental health and spiritually uplifted, for which I offer up gratitude to the Cosmic Purpose. No room for complacency, for taking blessing for granted. A milestone in the eternal journey from Zero to One. Still much to grasp, to understand, to ponder.

It is time to celebrate a work in progress, for triumph will not come until the end of times.

Triumph of good over evil

– Of life over death

– Of emergence over entropy

– Of complexity over chaos

– Of health over illness

– Of wisdom over ignorance

– Of friendship over enmity

– Of peace over war

– Of fairness over injustice

– Of calm over anger

Best wishes to all my readers. A good time for Handel's Messiah, performed here by the John Alldis Choir with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Karl Richter. Our family favourite version.

Some contrasting Easter Sundays from years gone by.

Easter Sunday 2019
In Ealing, enjoying 24C on 21 April

Easter Sunday 2013
(It used to snow on Easter Sunday – that year, it also fell on 31 March)

Easter Sunday 2008
(Snow on Easter Sunday – in England! On 23 March that year. Very early)

Memories of Seasons

The longer pause between the first sleep and second sleep of the night can be mistaken for insomnia - it is, however, a natural phenomenon. Rather than worry that 'I can't get back to sleep', one should use this natural return to the wakeful state for quiet contemplation; sleep should naturally come. The pause could be longer if you went to bed early, had a nap during the day or slept in the previous morning.

This was the case for me last night, I went to bed at 10pm, having slept in to 9am! During the break between sleeps, I pondered upon my childhood memories of the passing of seasons and came to an interesting conclusion - I have no recollections of spring! 

My awareness of the passing of the seasons would begin with the excitement of the approaching summer holidays - six weeks off school, playing in the garden as it filled with fruit - first, the berries, then as autumn approached - apples; long evenings, playing in the street - then the family vacation (five out of ten of my childhood holidays were to Poland or France). Summer would end; then there'd be the start of the new school year, all floor-varnish and Magic Marker smells - the onset of autumn, the nature table in our class, my birthday (usually rainy); wet horse-chestnut leaves in the park; mists; the days darkening. And then excitement as Christmas drew nearer, the chance of some brief snow, New Year - and then - nothing. No more seasonally inspired emotions until the end of the school year, class outings to London or Windsor Castle - and then the long, lazy, summer holidays again.

Spring only really got to me as a teenager; leaves reappearing on branches, the gradual onset of greenery in the garden and in Cleveland Park; birdsong; longer evenings as the clocks went forward. Yet somehow, my appreciation of the waxing year, spring in bloom, didn't strike me as a child. Only the waning year; that overhanging melancholia as summers came to an end, bright days replaced by foggy, damp autumns by the black-and-white television and the orange glow of electric fires; the encroaching darkness and appearance of Christmas lights in the high street, the magic of snow. 

Other than the lilacs on the tree in the back garden, and magnolia in bloom in the front garden, I can't say I ever noticed flowers as a child. (Now as I write, I can recall lilies of the valley growing just outside the back door. But I can't even remember in which month they or the lilacs and magnolia blossomed.)

Perhaps it has something to do with the temperate climate of the British Isles; snowdrops, crocuses and daffodils can appear in February; winters are short and mild, and so the passing from winter into spring is long and not well defined. In Poland, springs tend to explode - I have experienced the change from snow on ground to T-shirt weather in one week. Here, winter, a drab, grey, damp, monotonous winter, drags on and on, right into early April.

Perhaps it has something to do with the school year, perhaps with me having been born in October, my earliest firm memories going back to Christmas 1959, when I was two years, two months and three weeks old. The Christmas tree, decorations and presents anchoring the seasons at the year's darkest point.

"Sunshine, I'm only dreaming,
Sunshine, I'm only dreaming... 

But this is England on a winter's afternoon,
There is no sun, there's just a pale and tired moon,
And shivering sparrows on the smoking chimney tops,
And all the children suffer from cold and flu and raindrops"

- from Don't Stop the Carnival by the Alan Price Set (a hit in early-1968, when I was ten)

Whatever the reason, I feel no connection with spring in childhood in the same way I can connect with memories of summer, autumn and winter. Which is strange - because right now, I crave it, knowing that spring is still 11 to 13 weeks away. I'm craving something that, as I child, I was hardly aware of. Unlike Poland, where spring can explode out of winter in a matter of days, in England it's a long, subtle process lasting from the first snowdrops (late January), to trees in full leaf (early May). Too weak to even recognise for a child.

This time last year:
Pictures in the Winter Sun
[Could do with a glimmer of some right now!]

This time two years ago:
Magic sky

This time three years ago:

Too good to skip over

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

This time seven years ago:
Lux Selene

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

This time 11 years ago:
Citizen Action Against Rat Runners

This time 12 years ago:
Moni at 18 (and 18 months)

This time 13 years ago:
Building the S79 - Sasanki-Węzeł Lotnisko, midwinter

The Year has Achieved; fruition

The past few days have been blissful - cloudless skies, the sun no longer beating down - just being there, on the goldenrod and the tansy, on the plums, apples and pears. Five days without rain, and the fruit is ripening rapidly. Walks are splendid, the countryside is the place to be (though a trip into town on Friday made for pleasant contrast). The year is at its zenith, mature and fruitful. The air is full of the smells of ripeness.

Apple harvesting has started in earnest. Below: six empty crates heading back for a refill after a load has been delivered to the punkt skupu (collection point) on ul. Wolska. In the background, Chynów's fire station/cultural centre.

Autumnal scents draw me into the forest, I am increasingly aware of the subtle differences in podłoże (terroir) - the soils, what's underfoot. Is it grass, or moss, or scrub, or brush - and how that affects the trees above, which species, and how tall they grow. Is the forest conscious? Below: a mossy clearing. Why a clearing here? How long before it is claimed by the oak saplings visible in the foreground? Or will they fail to take hold, like the barren sticks behind them?

Below: the logging activity in the forest beyond the orchards has opened up new trails for me; down at the bottom end of the forest, a swamp. All that's missing is dragonflies with three-foot wingspans for a return to Palaeozoic vibes.

Below: from Chynów looking northward towards Sułkowice; one of my XII Canonical Prospects. This time with an ultra wide-angle lens.

The sunsets are galloping forward earlier each day as we approach the autumnal equinox; today, the sun set in Chynów at 19:11, a quarter of an hour earlier than last Monday. But the skies are pure, and dusk on my działka triggers that sense of elation and the occasional past-life flashback. Below: Is this the road to Itta Bena? Or Adamów Rososki? Another of the XII Canonical Prospects.

All is well, but as the Rabbi says, when all's well, remember it can all turn shit-shape real soon. Less than two months until the Hammer of Darkness comes down again. Best get ready now.

This time last year:
Jabłkowizna!

This time six years ago:
Low water level - Jeziorki lakes

This time seven years ago:
Around the Czachówek diamond, again

This time ten years ago:
Second line of the Metro runs into delays

This time 11 years ago
Army helicopters in action at Kielce defence show

This time 12 years ago:
World's largest helicopter over Jeziorki

September

Summer's over - meteorological summer, at least, ended yesterday. Yet astronomical summer continues through unto 21:21 (Warsaw time) on 22 September, when the sun will cross the equator, heading south, marking the beginning of astronomical autumn in the Northern Hemisphere. And so it is that the date marking the transition from the summer to the autumn of one's life also varies. Maintaining a cheerful disposition, as I noted the other day, is useful. 

As is a helping of Earth, Wind & Fire, exuberantly funking their way through September.

Walking around Jakubowizna at this time of year brings delight after delight. Below, a rowan bush, jarzębina (Sorbus aucuparia). The fruit is attractive, but bitter in taste - and purgative. The key ingredient in jarzębiak.

Below: out of the orchards, into the wood. Apple picking has started; you can hear it - voices, portable radios, the sound of apples being placed in plastic buckets - but rarely can you see it behind the serried rows of trees.

In the forest, tree-felling is still in progress; logs have been gathered up and are awaiting transport.

Beyond the forest, more apples. I have one rule here - I'll never take apples off the tree. That's theft - depriving the farmer of income. I will, however, pick fallen apples off the ground. I cut the bruised parts away, and peel the skin, which will have absorbed high doses of pesticide. One apple a day is more than enough to provide an 80g-portion of the fruit.

Below: an oak apple gall growing on an oak leaf. Inside, the larva of a gall wasp.

Below: on the road to Machcin II. Up to the end, turn right, and through the main part of Jakubowizna, where the new pavement is being laid on one side of the road, the drainage ditch being cleaned and deepened on the other.

Water-tank sunset's fine, Chynów. Ulica Działkowa runs through puddles into town, apple orchards on both sides.

Back on the działka I experience elation at the wonder of it all. I catch sight, well over the horizon by now, Jupiter - at first I thought it was an airliner approaching from the south-east, but a snap with the 70-300mm lens zoomed right out shows clearly the planet's four Galilean moons.

And that brings us back, dear reader, to Earth, Wind & Fire's horns rousing Jupiter: those horns are something - punching out 25 notes in 4.1 seconds with total, synchronised precision to give the effect of hammers stabbing - brilliant.

Hope you enjoyed the music! 

This time two years ago:
Fiftieth anniversary of me starting grammar school

This time three years ago:
Two films about the legendary Polish 303 Sqn

This time five years ago:
Kępno's intriguing station

This time seven years ago:
Thoughts occasioned by the 75th anniversary of the outbreak of WW2

This time eight years ago:
A green light for consumer spending

This time ten years ago:
Procrastination - is it the same as laziness?

This time 12 years ago:
Remembering the outbreak of WW2

First snow for ages!

Ignoring the snow that came and went in a few hours on 29 January of this year, it's been a long time since a proper snowfall visited Jeziorki. Today's snow won't stay long, as temperatures are heading above zero, with rain and +4C forecast for tomorrow night. So while the atmosphere is right, time to drop everything for my constitutional spacer at dusk. I head off up footpath MZ-5142-z (below) towards the ponds.

There's no one around, although I can see footprints in the snow. The lake is not entirely frozen over; the swans, however, have finally had enough and flown off in search of open water.

Below: onward to ulica Kórnicka, looking north-east towards ul. Baletowa. The new estate of four houses has been under construction for three years or so; builders were there today, but no sign of new owners moving in. Blue bin-bags out today - paper and cardboard.

Below: looking south-west from the corner of ul. Kórnicka and ul. Trombity, and the drainage ditch that connects the culvert under the railway line and the ponds.

Below: twilight falls; the previous southbound train still didn't have the lights on for the passengers - this one did. Five minutes past sunset.

Below: by the time I reach the other end of ul. Trombity, the lights come on in the street and houses. And still the snow gently falls... Looking across towards ul. Karczunkowska

Below: final look up ul. Trombity, at the junction with Nawłocka (left) and Dumki (right).

And how did Felusia react to seeing snow for the first time? While she had her lunchtime nap, the snow began to fall; when she woke up, the world outside looked very different to how it did this morning. A fascinating phenomenon for a curious and observant cat. I sense that she's Been Here Before, and what she's seeing is strangely reminiscent of something she can't quite put her paw on...

This time last year:

Politics and personal responsibility

This time two years ago:
Consciousness, memory and spirit of place

This time three years ago:
Polish Perivale

This time four years ago:
Power in the vertical

This time eight years ago:
And still they come [anomalous flashbacks that is]

This time nine years ago:
Classic glass

This time ten years ago:
What's the Polish for 'pattern'?

This time 12 years ago:
"Rorate caeli de super nubes pluant justum..."

Hammer of Darkness cubed

I don't know whether the effects of Seasonal Affective Disorder get more pronounced as one grows older, or whether it's just that I'm better at describing what I feel as I get older. The sun setting in the late afternoon, the loss of daylight affects me in a negative way. The clocks going back on the last weekend of October is the time when SAD kicks in, although I suffer only mild to moderate symptoms (subsyndromal SAD). 

Symptoms I get each year are increased appetite for carbohydrates (comfort foods vs say, salads); difficulties with concentration, and lower levels of cheerfulness and sociability. "Loss of interest in activities" is another one. I tend to sleep longer - an atavistic nod towards mammalian hibernation. Without pre-lockdown alarm calls to wake me, my body clock tells me when to sleep and when to rise. In summer this tends to be around seven and a half hours, while in the dark months it lengthens towards nine (last night I slept from 23:10 to 08:15 this morning).

Yes, I can get over these by self-administering Cognitive Behavioural Therapy - writing this post is part of that - and of course, exercise is very effective at lifting mood. But the craving for sunshine is powerful. 

Thinking back to the beginning of lockdown, the sun set at 17:43, nearly TWO HOURS(!) after it set today (15:47); within two weeks of lockdown, the clocks went forward, and so the sun set at five past seven. Suddenly, three whole hours of afternoon and evening daylight more than today...

This would happen anyway; but there's an epidemic going on, and the most powerful man on the planet has been deprived of his power but does not intend to let go. US secretary of state Mike Pompeo's tweet two nights ago saying that the White House was busy working on a second Trump administration chilled me to the bone. I woke up at quarter to three and could not go back to sleep for worry. The prospect for the world of Trump forcing Republican members of the electoral college to go against their state's preferred candidate is terrifying - American will go down the plughole of fallen empires faster than any in history.

Then there's Covid. As I wrote before, we don't know where we really are. OK, fewer cases reported today. But yesterday was a public holiday, so today's figures should be treated as a Monday (lowest of the week). Will they return to a frightening growth trend or start to plateau? Who knows. How many cases go unreported? Half as many again, or two, three, five, ten times as many? Who knows. Antibodies, herd immunity, vaccine availability - who knows. What I know instinctively is that if you suffer from SAD, your immune system is weaker than in summer, and you are more prone to picking up viral infections. This is one reason why we have seen the current dramatic increase in cases in the Northern Hemisphere (meanwhile Chile's new cases hit a peak in mid-July and are now a fifth of that level).

On top of this, Poland's neighbour Belarus faces serious unrest as another jumped-up despot refuses to accept the results of an election that overturned his rule, and people are being kidnapped or beaten to death.

So in the meantime, I hunker down, avoiding people as far as possible. The asymptomatic carrier could be entirely innocently super-spreading Covid among the more vulnerable.

It's just under four weeks until 7 December, the first of ten (!) days during which the sun sets at its earliest, that is 15:23 (in Warsaw). It continues to do so until 17 December, by which time a rapidly approaching Xmas (or Christ's Mass) tends to lift spirits. The pagan feast of Sol Invictus, the invincible sun, that by 26 December is noticeably setting later (by four minutes) had been a celebration of this turning point. Then we get to Blue Monday, claimed to be the most depressing day of the year. Next year, this falls on 18 January... This may lead to another uptick and rising number of Covid cases, and a third wave.

And two days later, we will see Trump being ejected from the White House, by force if needs be (the US armed forces swear allegiance to the Constitution, not to the president). The only one-term president of modern times to lose two consecutive popular votes.

Once we pass that moment, in 68 days' time, my guess is that the pandemic will be well and truly on the wane. By then, spring will still be a way off, but there will be more daylight. A third wave will not be as deadly nor as rapidly spreading as the second one here in Poland.

Hope and Healing - the catchwords for 2021. I hope. There will be a spring, but first the healing powers of Lent.

This time two years ago:
Magic day, in and around Jakubowizna

This time three years ago:
Warsaw-London-Ealing

This time five years ago:
With my father and brother in Derbyshire

This time seven years ago:
In praise of Warsaw's trams

This time ten years ago:
Setting sun in the mountains

This time 11 years ago:
That learning moment

Energy, focus and state of mind

I can see a seasonal trend in my life; summertime and the living gets easy - I'm less demanding of myself, I do less exercise, less writing; if the sun shines for long enough, the motorbikes beckon, otherwise walks, time on the działka, pootling, pottering - not really getting anything accomplished. I feel guilt if I'm not accomplishing. Am I fulfilling my human potential? Or am I recharging batteries ahead of a season of hard work and poor weather? Looking back at Lent earlier this year, I managed one blog post per day and ten sets of exercises a day every day for all 46 days. Over the lazy days of summer, I'm only averaging around three sets of exercises a day and a similar number of blog posts per week. And feeling guilty about it.

Summer seems to have come to an abrupt end, with several dull, rainy days in a row. Rather than cherishing the return to a time of higher productivity, I am sensing the dread at the approaching Hammer of Darkness, even though it's still two months off. That time of year after the clocks go back, when seasonal affective disorder starts kicking in. Time to withdraw; time to open the doors to the rich, inner world of the Imagination. But this year there's the American presidential elections, which could once again go so horribly wrong. And Belarus. And Brexit. And Covid. Known unknowns, things that could spiral into tragedy all too easily.

Below: smoke from the blazing local-authority waste-dump on ulica Mirkowska in Konstancin, 9km away, merges into low ceiling cloud, yesterday evening. Grim, dismal, depressing.

Light. We need the light, literally and metaphorically. Even on moonless nights, a cloudless sky gives views of a starry firmament, pinpoints of light, reminders of the prospect of worlds alive with sentient life and an ordered, unfolding universe. But clouds cover. They create ambiguity, uncertainty, a lack of definition. Cloudless days in mid-winter, short though they be, bring vastly more joy than overcast days in late summer.

This time last year:

50 years on - Gunnersbury Grammar school reunion

This time three years ago:
All things visible and invisible

This time five years ago:
Work starts on Warsaw-Radom rail modernisation

This time six years ago:
Won't be long 'til summertime is through

This time eight years ago:
It was a good year for the apples

This time ten years ago:
Early-September moan about the commuting

First inklings of the end of summer in Jeziorki

Summer blends into autumn imperceptibly, but day-on-day intimations of the change can be observed and felt. The feeling of that first moment when one senses autumn's approach is called mono no aware by the Japanese, the beauty of transience, passed over me today. The sun set today at 19:36, the same time as it set on 16 April. Change is in the air.

Below: a white poplar stands behind a fallow field on which Jeziorki's dominant wildflowers, goldenrod (nawłoć) and tansy (wrotycz) grow in abundance. The little yellow button-shaped flowers of the tansy have just started turning brown. Before long, the flowers of both die leaving long dry stalks that snap in the hand.

Despite a few heavy showers this week, Jeziorki's ponds get dryer and dryer. If this drought continues, it will be possible to walk with dry shoe from one side to the other - it already looks that way (below), with the southernmost pond reduced to two puddles. However, the pond bed remains muddy. Oysters live here, and the gulls have fished many out, leaving shells on the dry margins.

The drainage ditches that funnel water from surrounding fields into the ponds are also dry. Below the ditch the runs under ulica Dumki.

This looks ominous - the old scrapyard on the site of the former aggregate yard by W-wa Jeziorki station has been levelled to the ground; gone are the bunkers, the electricity generating plant and the large depot. I worry that work on the Mieszkania+ housing estate for 8,000 people will begin soon. Below: clearing the ground.

Better news - seeing surveyors (geodeci) on ul. Karczunkowska raises my hopes for a pavement. Below: after heavy rains, the verge of the road is one huge puddle. Pedestrians are forced to choose - wade through the mud, or walk along the asphalt and risk being run over by speeding traffic.

Below: by the viaduct, the infrastructure of pedestrians and cyclists is more than adequate - and then suddenly it stops. There's 200m of pavement missing between here and the next houses.

Further north, work on the S7 continues at a great tempo. The temporary bypass routing traffic from ul. Baletowa is in place, allowing the contractor to start work on the viaduct that will carry the S7 over Baletowa. Ready by the summer of 2023? Maybe sooner...

Bonus shot: domesticated geese roam the streets of Jeziorki! There were three, now there are five!

This time two years ago:

Nikon's new mirrorless cameras - too big and heavy for me

This time six years ago:
Short, sharp diet proves I'm allergy-free

This time seven years ago:
More photos from Radom Air Show

This time eight years ago:
Twilight on ul. Karczunkowska 

This time 11 years ago:
First hints of autumn in the air

This time 12 years ago:
Slovakia - we were not impressed

This time 13 years ago:
Jeziorki - late August cultivation

Reflections on late-August

There's no sign of autumn in the air; no chilly dawns, no mists rising off the fields, no scents of an impending Fall. A beautiful day today, crystal blue skies from morning to dusk - not just warm, but hot with a maximum of 32C, even some evening gardening on the działka has brought me out in a sweat. The sun is now setting at a quarter to eight, so we've lost an hour and a quarter of daylight since summer solstice two months ago. In another month's time, we will have lost another hour and a half - the change in day-length accelerates towards the equinoxes and slows towards the solstices.

Below: the scene outside my działka, looking across at the other side of Jakubowizna, around half past six.

We will also have lost the warmth of summer evenings, the hot noonday sun, the comfort of strolling out in one layer as the sun sets. Indeed; the sun has set ten minutes ago, as I write, and the temperature outside is 28C. 

Make the most of it. Today, I walked over 17,500 paces.

I predict a massive surge in Covid-19 cases in early November, just after the clocks go back across the Northern Hemisphere. We'll lose an hour's evening daylight instantly; the hammer of darkness will hit all those with Seasonal Affective Disorder, which in turn hits the immune system. Samopoczucie* goes downhill, and susceptibility to bugs increases. This is the time of year both my parents died; it's like they couldn't face yet another season of darkness and cold again.

Lockdown befell us just as spring arrived. The days were getting longer - and two weeks later, the clocks went forward giving us that extra hour of daylight. The pandemic might have been in full force, but there was sunshine, there was warmth, there were trees in bloom, there was summer on the horizon. 

But an autumnal upsurge in the pandemic will have no upside other than the distant prospect, half a year away, of another spring. Until then, drizzle, rain, mud, chill turning cold and darkness, trees reduced to bare skeletons, no leaves, no fruit, no flowers. Chill in the bones and sinews; coughs, sneezes, sore throats - Covid-19?

Every hour of summer therefore, is precious; waste it not. A local walk or the garden, a lie-down in the sun even, a bike ride. Fresh summer fruit and vegetables. A glass of wine at an outdoor restaurant table.

In summertime, when the living is indeed easy, there is a strong temptation to take it easy. To lounge around, to idle. Looking at my exercise log, I can see I'm at my hardest-working in the early spring, around Lent time. Summer days when I complete all ten sets of exercise are few and far between, this year and in previous years. Blog posts are less frequent. I get lazy. But seeing that summer won't last forever begins to motivate me. Ride the motorbike! Soon, the wet, cold, dark days will preclude that joy. Make the most of a dwindling resource - time. 

For soon, we shall go from living the Sublime to merely dreaming of it.

Late summer/early autumn - a metaphor for my Time of Life.

*Samopoczucie - a great Polish word without a direct English equivalent. Literally, 'self-feeling', how you feeling physically and mentally. What condition your condition is in.

This time two years ago:
Conscious of a waning summer

This time six years ago:
Plans for modernising the Warsaw-Radom railway line

The hammer of darkness comes down again

Below: photo taken today at two minutes to four. WAAAAH! It's that dread time of year when the clocks go back and evening falls stupidly early and continues doing so until the last weekend of the following March. Many of us suffer to some degree or other from seasonal affective disorder, and lack of sunshine brings the blues.

We live on a planet that's tilted at 23.5 degrees from vertical as it orbits its star. The further away from the equator you are, , the greater the change in length of day over the course of that orbit. Were there no tilt, we'd all be living in perpetual equinox, from pole to pole.

Watch the earth as seen from the sun; keep your eye on northern Europe and the season name in the top left corner [Wikipedia].



One solution is to up sticks at this gloomy time of year and move to the southern hemisphere for the duration, and return north as spring begins to work its magic in Europe.

The other is to knuckle down and get on with it. Work hard, save hard, distance yourself from pleasure and, in a spirit of monkish asceticism and abstinence (with a break for Yuletide), brace yourself for the Four Darkest Months. Expect to feel gloomier than usual until the onset of spring.

Below: TimeAndDate.com's excellent sun graph. You can see where the clock spings forward and falls back. And you can check any place in the world on any day of the year.

Although today there's only nine and three-quarter hours of daylight, that's a full two hours more than at the winter solstice (7hrs 43mins for Warsaw). So the the next four months things will be no better than today. We can but look forward longingly to the splendour of a 16 and three quarter hour-long day next June.

I have long been suggesting that the waiting five months to return the clocks to summer time is a mistake, and the clocks should go forward during the last weekend of February, rather than March. This would give us symmetry - clocks go back two months before winter solstice and go forward two months after it - not three as at present. Indeed, the next time the day's as long as it is today will be 12 February - and yet we'll be deprived of that extra daylight in the evening for another month and half.

But here's a more radical suggestion. Let's fix the time of sunset. The same time, every day, the year round. Technologically, this is easy in today's networked world, if the will is there...

Now, at the summer solstice, the sun sets in Warsaw at 21:01; during the winter solstice, the sun sets here at 15:23. Most of us go to sleep around 23:00, around two hours after sunset on the longest day, and six hours after leaving work.

So just imagine this: going to sleep every day, the whole year round, two hours after sunset and six hours after finishing an eight-hour working day. In midsummer, you'd finish work at five pm as usual, get home at six, have three hours of daylight for outdoor sport and leisure - then two hours more at home before going to sleep. And in midwinter, you'd be doing exactly the same...

Imagine the clocks, instead of going backward and forward once a year, doing so every day - by a few minutes a day (more around the equinoxes, less around the solstices). This is not difficult - a signal is sent to every wi-fi-equipped watch, laptop, computer etc. The result is that the sun sets every day at 21:01. Summer, autumn, winter, spring. However, in this scheme of things, sunrise on 22 December would be at quarter to two in the afternoon, instead of quarter to eight in the morning. But who'd care? As it is, we wake in the dark, leave home in the dark and get to the office just after the day has broken. We sit out the best daylight hours of the short winter day and leave the office an hour after sunset. With the sun going down at a fixed hour, there'd always be the same amount of daylight at the end of each working day.

What do you think?

This time last year:
The working week with the clocks gone back

This time three years:
Slowly on the mend after calf injury

This time four years ago:
Thorunium the Gothick

This time five years ago:
Łódź Widzew or Widź Łódzew

This time seven years ago:
A touch of frost in the garden

Compositions in blue and white

Weather-wise, the appearance of cloudless skies and bright sunshine after a fortnight of February gloom has brought good cheer, and a some rays of optimism. The temperature today rose from -1C at dawn to +9C in the afternoon

Photo recipe: Take a brilliant blue sky, place a circular polarising filter on to your lens (the wider the lens the better), find a white subject, position yourself between the sun and the subject, turn the filter until maximum contrast is obtained, and snap.

Stare at leafless trunks of the slender silver birch trees of Jeziorki. Enlarge the photos, stare at them, and use your will to bring on the spring...

Some suburban blue and white... Across the tracks from Mysiadło, the Little Boxes estate.

And finally - blue and silver. Still my favourite skyscraper in town (although the Cosmopolitan building is very attractive too), Rondo ONZ One. Photo taken yesterday afternoon.

Five weeks until the start of astronomical spring, six weeks until the clocks go forward. Lent starts on Wednesday.

This time three years ago:
Waiting for the change to come

This time four years ago
A wetter Poland?

This time six years ago:
Heavy overnight snow

This time seven years ago:
Changing Jeziorki skyline

Midsummer, midwinter - but... midautumn?

After 56 full years of rotating about the sun - it hit me. In English we have the concept of midsummer and its antonym midwinter - neither of which actually refer to the middle of the season in question - but (and in particular midsummer) to its astronomical beginning. We do not, however, have the concept of midspring or midautumn. As I write those words, Google's helpful spellcheck underlines both of them with a red wężyk ('little snake'), as they do not exist in unhyphenated form (below).

Today was the day that marked the division between Poland's famous 'golden autumn' with warm, sunny days, and the run-up to winter proper. This morning, the temperature in Warsaw went into negative territory, -2C, although the perceivable temperature (taking wind and humidity into account) fell to -5C. Hardly a crushing frost, but a signal that change is on its way. The Financial Times's new Warsaw correspondent, Henry Foy, even went so far as to tweet -2C as being something extraordinarily tweetable (living proof that polar bears stalk the streets here). However, typing in 'first frost' into the search box on this blog (top right) reveals earlier ones than 24 October. However, -2C is 20 degrees colder than it was on Monday afternoon - a major thermal transition.

Fellow Warsaw blogger Scatts once wrote that this city has two seasons, the green one and the grey one. I posit that Poland has six; white winter, pre-spring, proper spring, humid summer, golden autumn and chilly, drear, grey autumn. Whichever view you take the seasons are changing - either from green to grey, or from golden to dreary.

Out come the winter clothes - woolly hats, scarves, thick gloves, warm coat - stuff that weighs heavy on the shoulders but heavier come April when the snows subside (looking back at my blog for 2013, the last snow cleared on 7 April). That's all of November, December, January, February and March, plus the bulk of April before it gets properly warm again - and even early May can be snowy.

The clocks go backward in the wee small hours of Sunday morning, so Warsaw will be leaving work in darkness until the last weekend of March. The encroaching darkness brings about seasonal affective disorder (appropriately acronymed SAD). Today in Warsaw we had just over ten hours of daylight. In 58 days time, on Midwinter's Day, winter solstice, 22 December, we'll have a little over seven and half hours of daylight.

Today, the sun set at 17:23. By Monday, because of the change from summer daylight saving time, the sun will set at 16:17. Losing an hour and six minutes of daylight at the end of the working day is a terrible blow to one's samopoczucie (no good English translation exists for this useful Polish term).

And arriving at the station today, all the trains were massively delayed - some by up to 90 minutes, mine by a mere 45 minutes, because of an earlier broken-down train at W-wa Śródmieście. I thought this was that typical phenomenon - change of season and the entire rail network collapses - but no, this was a one off, not a 'sorry, taki mamy klimat' moment.

Still, the sun shone, it was a lovely day. Make the most of every minute of sunshine, it is a rapidly disappearing commodity. We shall cherish those fine days when spring makes its welcome return. It's a long-held dream of mine to be able to jet off to the southern hemisphere (New Zealand, Chile) and stay there until spring returns to Warsaw...

This time last year:
Symphony in Socialist-Realism

This time last year:
Glasgow snapshots

This time two years ago:
A slow farewell to our Powiśle office

This time three years ago:
A slow farewell to my Nissan Micra

Waiting for the warmth to return

Today, 1 March, is St David's Day - the patron saint of Wales. Today, people of the Welsh persuasion around the world (and in Wales) will proudly wear the Daffodil - the national flower - in their lapels.

Wait a moment - daffodils? Now? But in Warsaw? It will be an age before flowers start appearing through the soil (well, six weeks at least - maybe crocuses and snow-drops a bit earlier). Spring is still astronomically three weeks away, but the real beginning - when that marvellous miracle of rebirth happens all at once - is not due until the second half of April. Another seven or eight weeks of yearning... (meanwhile London's lawns have been graced with early bulb flowers since  early February - there's no shortage of daffodils for the Welsh).

The is przednówek or przedwiośnie, the latter half of winter, which drags on and on.

Ogród Saski, awash with meltwater.

There's overnight snow forecast, which will have melted by the late morning, maximum temperatures +4C, then falling again and some more snow that will have melted by Sunday lunchtime. And no prospect of improvement in the coming days. Nor much chance of strong frosts and heaps of powdery snow now. Sunshine is being meanly rationed by the weather gods... After over four months of waiting for the sun, the last few weeks are the hardest.

Heaps of dirty ice line the pavement, ul. Puławska.

Yesterday, I decided I'd had enough of my big M65 Parka and furry lumberjack hat, so in an attempt to to bring on spring with a change of outwear, I went out in a (lined) trenchcoat and trilby hat - big mistake. The bitter wind nearly had my hat off several times, and my ears were permanently cold. The burden of winter wear - furry hat, warm scarf, bulky parka with hood, gloves and Biedronka boots (warm, hard-wearing but more suitable to building site than office) - is beginning to lie heavy on my shoulders.

O spring! How I long for thee!

This time last year:
Remembering Poland's 'Accursed Soldiers'

Two years ago:
Getting the balance right between work and play

This time four years ago:
Sublime Jeziorki sunset

This time five years ago:
Sunrise getting earlier