Winter garden

Snow that fell over night has been blown by the north-easterly wind into a number of drifts across the garden and drive. Like a stationary wave, the drifts curl and overhang, unlike a sand dune, which is made of non-adhering particles.

The drifts would reach a peak depth of around one foot (30cm), whereas on other parts of the lawn blades of grass would be showing through thin snow.

Snow that had settled on top of the bottle used as a mole deterrent and marker (the moles have not yet dared stage a return to our lawn) has been blown into the shape of a Smurf's hat.

Since Thursday morning the temperature by day or night has not exceeded -10C.

Roads work today as rails let me down

Ah! dawns like these. Yesterday the roads let me down, today, I shall let the train take the strain. Set off from home, along ul. Karczunkowska... not a bus in sight. But the roads are clear of snow, the ploughs and the gritters have been working hard overnight to ensure black asphalt. But note also complete lack of pavements on Karczunkowska, cleared of snow or otherwise.

On the edges of the roads we have breja - frozen muddy snow slush; even with salt and grit on the roads it will not melt. The temperature was -13C when I took these pics. (Daytime high again was -11C.) With temperatures this low, breja does not even melt inside buses.

On the road to Jeziorki, this scene fills me with that old familiarity of things from beyond my childhood experience. Scandinavia or the USA in the 1940s/50s? Looking at the pic, I find it precisely satisfies the sense of what I saw and felt at the time.

I arrive at W-wa Jeziorki station in good time for the 09:06 into town. I wait in the cold for around half an hour for a train that would never come. The lady at the level crossing gatehouse tells me that the first train to Warsaw is expected around 11:30. Fortunately there's a bus at hand to take me to Wilanowska and the Metro.

Across the road from my office, I snap this snow-covered Fiat 125P ('Duży Fiat'). The design dates back to 1967. On my way home tonight the Radom train arrives a mere five minutes late and arrives at Jeziorki with another five minute delay. Getting back to normal, in other words.

Proper winter hits Warsaw

At last - snow. Leave the house at ten past seven, way before sunrise, then the dreadful Puławska. The snow ploughs were not out in force today; commute times were multiples of the usual crawl. But once at the Metro, things worked out fine. To Politechnika where I find an obliging number 35 tram coming along (way behind its scheduled time, but ideal for me).

And onwards, on foot, down ul. Górnośląska towards the office. (Right) I pass the archetypal Polish podwórko (courtyard) in a kamienica (tenement), pop in and take a snap. Early attempts at sweeping a corridor through the snow prove to be futile, as it keeps on falling all day long. The place looks a bit shabby; it's just around the corner from the Sejm (parliament) buildings. You'd not find anything like this around Westminster.

Then off to a meeting in town. Delayed by half an hour because the lawyer I'm meeting is stuck in traffic - no problem. I take the 171 bus. One every ten minutes - but not today. Look at the crowd at the bus stop. Leaving this behind, I walk to Rondo De Gaulle'a where I catch a tram (rail transport runs so much better).

En route to Al. Jerozolimskie and the tram stop, I walk through Park Śmigłego Ridza (below), where the gritters and snow-clearers are working hard to make the pedestrian's life easier. Daytime high, by the way, is -11C. Cool, eh?

Outside the Warsaw Financial Center I witness the ultimate in cycling madness. Fixed wheel courier bike, no brakes, no gears, no lock (an amateur bike thief would crash in seconds on this thing!), skinny tyres.

Returning to the office, I take the quickest route - tram. The snow does not hold them up. Just gone three, and it's getting dark. Although the shortest day is still to come, we've already had the earliest sunset a few days back.

I swap tram for bus and get snarled up in a monster gridlock on Pl. Trzech Krzyży. The 171 bus is an elderly Ikarus; it stinks of fumes (carbon monoxide levels dangerously high); the condensation from passengers' breath has frozen on the inside of the windows. Not something often seen in the UK! I rub a little hole in the ice and snap a jeweller's shop (below).

And home... Puławska was utterly awful today. At 22:30 I picked Moni up from the Metro, and the road was still one solid jam.

Jeziorki in the snow

Above: On the way to work - the new PKP timetable comes into force. (As indeed, new timetables do right across Europe on this day). Worse in the morning, worse in the evenings, it transpires. A 30 minute journey has now become 37 minutes. Changes makes things chaotic, snow makes it worse. The platforms of W-wa Dawidy (the station that's devoid of a single sign telling passengers where they are) are, funnily enough, swept.

Unlike W-wa Powiśle, (right) which hasn't had any snow clearance all day long. This is a busy inner city suburban station, and leaving the platforms in this state is asking for trouble. The station's four clocks all stopped at four minutes past six (am or pm who knows), the trains were all running late (new timetable). Bałagan, Panie.

Above: Not much better out in the suburbs. Back in Jeziorki, ul. Buszycka's road surface offers the traction of a well-polished skating rink.

Cheaper by taxi

Coming back from a lads' night out (celebrating Adam R's 49th), I take a cab from Metro Wilanowska. It delivers me at home eight minutes later, where I receive a pleasant surprise. The fare is a mere 34zł 80, lower than it's been in years. Later, I realise why. On Karczunkowska, I see a new roadsign (above left - looking west, right - looking east towards ul. Puławska). This is the second (outer Warsaw) taxi zone boundary, and it has been moved from ul. Ludwinowska to Jeziorki, three kilometres further out. This means a typical saving of nine zlotys for a taxi ride home after 22:00. This is the second southward extension of the taxi zone since we moved to Jeziorki (originally the border was just beyond ul. Poleczki, by the Statoil garage). These two extensions have moved the second taxi zone boundary out 5km further south and save me 15 zł a ride.

Taxi drivers were less than enthusiastic about the move, and intend to take the city authorities to court. However, with these lower prices, I for one will be more inclined to take a cab home rather than the draughty old 709 bus.

By the way, notice the lack of pavement on either side of ul. Karczunkowska. The city was planning to do something back in January - but didn't follow through. All that surveying work went to waste.

Another book launch

To another book launch this week! This time, the book in question is Piotr Frączak's Przypadki Anatola F. A book about the worldview of an ineffectual intellectual, failed by communism, a failure in capitalism, who dislikes the state and the market, who is insufficiently assertive to get the world he believes he deserves for himself. An unhurried dreamer; a bit of a loser. A Polish Everyman. Based on notes taken down by the author since 1984, the painful transition from one system to another, the dreams and disappointments are painfully and comically recorded.

Moni and I attend the packed launch as the book's illustrator is none other than our neighbour, Kamila Wojciechowicz, who provided 50 illustrations that give the book its quirky, offbeat character. Like Ronald Searle, Nicholas Bentley, Willie Rushton or (in particular) John Glashan, whose cartoons gave dozens of humorous British books a specific character, Kamila's illustrations have the potential to turn Przypadki Anatola F. into a Polish cult classic. And this is her first book!

Above: Kamila (left) signs a copy of Przypadki Anatola F. for Moni. In the bookshop where the launch takes place, Moni discovers a copy of Owadzie opowieści, written by her classmate at primary school, Jan Sienkiewicz. It seems the people she grew up with are all making names for themselves - and at such youthful ages!

Later, Moni and I met up in town with Eddie and had dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe. The children ate themselves into a state of immobility - the portions were huge. As we left, it started to snow. Left: A pause to snap the Palace of Culture with the Hard Roc (missing its 'k') neon in the foreground. A clash of communism and capitalism that Anatol F. would be familiar with.

Under the Liberator

To the Warsaw Uprising Museum for the launch of Bankowe Szańce by Edmund Baranowski and Juliusz Kulesza, both teenage participants in the rising. The book (in Polish only for now) tells several wartime stories with a common thread - banking and finance. The story of Poland's gold - all 38 tonnes of it - and how it was taken out of Poland by National Bank of Poland staff as the Blitzkrieg raged all around, and how it came to end up in London via the Sahara Desert - is thrilling stuff. Equaly interesting is the story of Akcja Góral - the biggest bank robbery in Nazi occupied Europe - which happened in Warsaw on 12 August 1943. The equivalent of over a million dollars at the time was seized by around 50 Home Army soldiers who attacked an armoured car carrying newly printed banknotes. And also the story of how the Polish underground state forged banknotes on a massive scale - and how the Germans found out about this. Co-author Juliusz Kulesza was an apprentice working at the state security printers PWPW at the time.

But there was another story, little known, that appears in the book, concerning the fate of the granddaughter of Leopold Kronenberg, a famous Polish banker. She was executed by the Home Army during the Warsaw Uprising. A medical orderly, she was helping to move a stretcher case, when someone looking through the contents of her handbag found a Gestapo identity card. She was shot by Polish soldiers. It now transpires that she had been working for British military intelligence at the time. During the Q&A session with the authors, an AK veteran stood up to say that he was in the counter-intelligence unit that executed her, and that until this very moment he had been unaware of the fact that she had been a double agent.

Many of the audience today were AK veterans, like my father, in their 80s or even older. Only a handful were on walking sticks. The majority looked well and younger than their years.

The book is available online via Askon publishers (www.askon.waw.pl). Next Askon book launch will be on 29 January in the Royal Castle in Warsaw - Silent and Unseen. E-mail me if you want to come - places are limited and in great demand, everyone wants to meet the author, 96 year-old legend General Stefan Bałuk, commando, writer, photographer, forger and get a signed copy of his book!

In which I walk to work

Well, to Platan Park anyway for my first meeting of the morning. Puławska is now a no-go zone for commuting as far as I'm concerned. I'd rather walk over five and half km from home to Platan Park than 1km from home to the bus stop on Puławska, wait for bus, then stand in a jam-packed rickety old Ikarus that takes 20 minutes to cover the four and half km to Poleczki and then another 1.1km walk from the bus stop on Puławska to Platan Park. Why no bike or car? Tonight I'm dining with clients. Things come to a pretty pass when walking is quicker than public transport!

Everywhere I look I see the destruction wreaked on the land by motorists. Above: across the road on ul. Trombity, neighbours have put out white-painted concrete bollards (from flower-pot moulds) to protect their grass verge. Below: The far end of ul. Dumki. A rat-run chosen by owners of four-wheel drives - the only way around the roadworks on ul. Trombity and Kórnicka.

As I walk, I also notice the derelict houses along the way. Below: One on ul. Dumki. In the UK, property doesn't lie idle; it belongs to someone - if they have no use for it, they sell it and buy holidays, cars, clothes etc. Here, because of uncertain title and uncertain markets, empty properties can just languish for decades.

Below: Derelict house on ul. Sztajerki. This place has also been abandoned for as long as I can remember. What am I doing on Sztajerki?

I'm forced to detour, as Poloneza is now finally closed to pedestrians and cyclists - the contractors have placed security guards to prevent local residents from crossing the railway tracks. So on, via Sztajerki, to ul. Oberka, and another derelict house (below).

Look on this picture and be aware that in a few weeks time this derelict house will be gone - it is smack in the path of the S2 South Warsaw Bypass. There's a barking dog here, which suggest that some homeless people are living here.

I end up walking a lot more today - from Rozbrat bus stop, via my office and the Gromada hotel, to the Old Town, then back to Metro Świętokrzyska. Over 12km (8 miles) walked in a full working day.