What's the Polish for 'puncture'?

My Cannondale Caffeine is four years old, and well-used; it's never had a puncture - until today, that is. And upon this particular day, it had three punctures.

Left: puncture number one, fixed (or so it seemed). In my rucksack a spare inner tube and neat double-action pump. All done in six minutes, and I'm off on my way to a lesson at the law firm.

I cycle a hundred metres further, and the brand new inner tube punctures. I call in to say that I'll be a bit late, throw the bike on a 319 bus bunged up in barely-moving traffic and head off slowly up Puławska to Metro Ursynów.

I tie the bike up at the Park + Ride (below, ten stands for every bike) and hurry to my lesson. I arrive 18 minutes late.


The Park+Ride is equipped with bicycle repair tools. Including (so suggests the icon) a track pump with pressure gauge. The very acme of sophistication! "Has your bicycle broken down? Borrow tools, free, from a parking supervisor", says the sign, sponsored by the city transit authority and a bike shop/workshop on Saska Kępa and Solec.

After my lessons, extended by 20 minutes to make up for tardy arrival, I pop into my local bike shop on ul. Czerniakowska for a new inner tube, puncture repair kit and a repair of the rear wheel. All done, I proceed to work. And on my way home, I replace the rear wheel at Ursynów P+R, and ride off towards Jeziorki... but on ul. Poleczki a sudden massive explosion - a catastrophic failure of the new inner tube (below). I am as sick as the proverbial parrot, pile the bike onto a 306 and then a 319 and get home, eventually, crestfallen. Big time.

Three punctures in one day. Ah! What's the Polish for 'puncture', as in "I had two punctures on my way into work, and one on the way home"? Stanislawski gives 'puncture' as przebicie opony (seven syllables for two) or the more informal złapać gumę (lit. 'to catch rubber'). A flat tyre? Flak (as in 'tripe'. Without the onions.). Nothing less informal. (Płaska opona is not an option.) Getionary? Check here and here.

This time two years ago:
Welcome the Ice Saints

This time three years ago:
The devoted Shriners
Like a Kodachrome

This time four years ago:
The future of cities (and suburbs)

Lost in the wonder of it all

The first time it struck me was as I was pushing my bike up the steep part of the Vistula escarpment above ul. Myśliwiecka. Below: Thousands upon thousands of dandelions backlit by the sinking sun. A sight that truly stirred my soul. A dozen attempts to capture the scene, delicately juggling different exposures to bring out the white seedheads while not losing the shadow details, then more work in Lightroom and Photoshop to get an approximation of what I saw and felt at the time. (Click to enlarge images.)

Below: Park Ujazdowski, above the escarpment. More of the same - dandelions in flower are everywhere (and my sympathies go out to those allergic to the pollen). The plant, however, has medicinal properties, including "assisting with urinary tract infections in women" and is said to possess "anti-inflammatory effects".


Left: even more dandelions, by the Wyścigi tram loop along ul. Puławska. The sun, that four and half billion year old thermonuclear reaction that keeps us alive, has today been warming the earth and blessing us with its rays. As I write, just before 9 pm, it's still over 22C, having hit a high of 25.3C earlier today. Hard to believe that just one week ago, Warsaw was waking up to the sight of snow on the ground.

This time last year:
Meet my five bicycles

This time three years ago:
Celebrating my garden

Loose lips sink ships - Part II

Eileen took a lunchtime break from work and quickly walked up the cobbled streets to St Francis' Church for confession. She just had to talk to Father Boyle. Low-hanging dark grey clouds blew in across the Mersey, drizzle turned to cold, heavy rain. There was no relief from the misery.

"Bless me father, for I have sinned. It is three weeks since my last confession and here are my sins."

Once again she explained to the priest how she was sure that someone had passed on to Nazi spies details of Allied shipping movements. "Now, Father, would you have heard someone confessing to giving secrets to the Germans?" Behind the screen of the confessional Father Boyle shook his head. The poor girl was losing her mind. He had been observing the process over the months. "Not only has no one confessed to me, and I can assure you, my daughter, that I've not heard any priest even suggest that such a sin has ever been mentioned in the confessional. Mind you, I heard quite a few stories of betrayal after the Irish Civil War. Not this time. Not this war. Put it out of your head, my daughter. I want to make myself clear - you must forget about Billy. Many women have suffered loss of a loved one - a father to their children - and are somehow they are coping. We must learn to cope. Pray to Jesus to give you the strength to overcome your grief and look forward to the future..."

Spring was coming. Memories of that hellish February day when Billy's mate Danny had told her about the loss of the Newton Ash with no survivors were most unbearable when the skies were leaden. But the freshness of that April lifted her spirits. And soon the first full summer of peacetime would follow, and with it Wakes Week, when the factory would close and the annual works outing to Southport would take place.

Eileen's workmates were good. They strove to get her mind off her loss. It was now a little over three and half years ago since her boyfriend's ship was sunk! But Eileen's mind would still wander over to that fixed notion that someone's carelessness or spite had done for Billy. And all those places associated so deeply in her mind with their time together. Father Boyle told her to abandon black mourning clothes and to buy a summer dress, which she did. New songs - ones without any association to the dances that she'd been to with Billy - new songs on the wireless had the power to drag her thoughts away from tired old obsessions.

And came August; a fleet of coaches stood outside the factory to take the young men and women to Southport for a week of revelry. Crates of beer were loaded on board, there was laughter, singing. Somehow the sea, glinting to her left in the sunshine was not that merciless devouring force, but a merry adornment to a happier future. Eileen managed a smile in the bracing winds that blew down the beach.

Running along the sand with her friends, she felt better than in years; ice creams, ginger beer, giggling on the sea front - and then, behind the bandstand - stop the world - it was him.

Billy, pushing a pram, a young woman by his side. It was Billy clear as anything. From twenty paces, he looked straight at Eileen, with an expression of guilty terror, eyes wide open, mouth agape... he said a few words to the woman and then abruptly made a 90 degree turn, shoving the pram into the empty roadway and disappearing into the throng of holiday makers on the other side of the street.

Eileen described the scene to Father Boyle. Was it wrong, she asked of the priest, that she'd have preferred Billy dead?

This time last year:
Stunning infra red photos of Jeziorki

This time two years ago:
Sweet summer's rain, like God's own mercy

Loose lips sink ships - a short story

"There'd never be anyone like Billy for me, ever again." That thought ran obsessively, over and over, in Eileen's mind for the past three years, endlessly; cruelly. She kept tormenting herself at the loss of her boyfriend who went down with his ship in the North Atlantic, just as the war was starting to go Britain's way. With his shock of bright red hair and his permanent grin, a short man so full of energy and life, Billy had given her so many wonderful moments among the dance halls, tea rooms and picture houses of wartime Liverpool.

At first she denied his death. He could have been picked up by a U-boat and then kept a prisoner by the Germans. But the war ended, her hopes diminished then finally faded. She kept that photo of the two of them taken at Jerome's photo studios when he was on shore leave before Christmas 1942; a small one in her purse, a larger one in her lodgings and a similar one above her workplace at the Dunlop factory.

She'd gaze upon it so many times each day. Billy. One day, looking at the calendar, she realised he'd been gone for longer than they'd actually been going out together. And a year later, she could still not get him out of the forefront of her mind. Billy. Six months younger than her, he was. Always 'exuberant', though never crossing that border into 'wild'. Self-control, her mam called it; her mam loved him just as dearly as she did. “An actor giving it all just to his one girl,” that's how her mam described him.

In all her life, Eileen had never been as happy as during those two years and three months during which she and Billy had been together. And all those little gifts, those little luxuries he'd brought Eileen back from New York. Every trip over. Now she kept them in a little museum-shrine on her dressing table. He'd spend every minute of his shore leave with her whenever his ship docked in Liverpool. Kissing passionately under the Ovie.

“What on earth did he see in me?”, she'd ask herself while they were on the town, dancing so energetically at the Rialto or Locarno. She thought of herself as plain, even though objectively speaking she did have a good figure, a narrow waist and longish legs. Eileen was lacking in self-confidence all her life, and Billy gave it to her. And all of her girlfriends and workmates looked on at them admiringly, jealously even.

Two years and three months of bliss, followed by three years of morbid despair. Guilt at the pleasure gone; Catholic guilt. "The sin of pride", Father Boyle used to called it when she confessed to him about how pleased she was when the other girls would watch her dancing with Billy. When she shared her loss with her parish priest, the sympathy he offered was tempered by his knowledge that the dead boy was a Protestant from North Wales. But the dark church interior with its stone floor, statues, candles and smell of incense and wax offered her temporary relief from the constant association of happier places with memories of Billy, all those places where they'd stroll and chat, and spend time together.

For weeks after hearing the news that Billy's ship had gone down with all hands off Iceland, Eileen still held out hope that maybe he'd been picked up by some other vessel, but that hope took a long time to die. Had it taken Billy a long time to die? Had he drowned, trapped in a diminishing pocket of air below decks, his lungs fighting to the very last to expel sea water? Had he died of exposure in the pitiless cold of the North Atlantic in winter? Had he burned alive in a sea of flaming gasoline or been blasted to pieces as a torpedo ripped into the side of the ship? Or drifted in a lifeboat until hunger and thirst had claimed the last man on board? These thoughts dwelt in her mind; wanted but unwanted, they would pierce her consciousness day after day, at work and at rest, summer and winter; these thoughts could be brought on by the sight of the open sea from Wallasey, or of a Merchant Navy seaman on the tram or the strains of a tune they'd danced to; there was no avoiding Billy's memory.

"Loose Lips Sink Ships," the visiting American sailors would say. "Careless Talk Costs Lives" was on posters in the pubs and on the brick walls. Whose lips? Whose careless talk? Which of her workmates at the Dunlop factory, in a fit of jealousy at her happiness, had informed a Nazi agent as to when Billy's ship was setting sail? Father Boyle? Was it Irish nationalists? The longer she wallowed in the tragedy, the more convinced she was that some blabbermouth was to blame for her unending sorrow.

Part II here.

This time three years ago:
Driving home at the end of the working day

(Funny that; once I'd drive to work and consider it normal. Today I consider it odd and anti-social.)

Patching up the holes

There are a few bits of our road that have become utterly despicable; pock-marked and shell-holed as though they've come under sustained bombardment from the mortar fire. Below: the lowest-lying stretch of ul. Trombity, susceptible to flooding whenever the rainfall's heavy. Then come the frosts; the ice expands in the cracks; the asphalt breaks up, holes appear and the whole thing gets worse and worse.

I was delighted to see as I returned home on Friday evening that a road repair crew was busy on ul. Trombity, patching up the worst of the winter's damage to the surface. I was even more delighted to see them still at it on Saturday (below).

Below: by Monday morning, commuters will be in for a treat! No more worries about suspension and scraped bottoms. How long will this last? Not long. The underlying problem has not been fixed - namely running surface water off the road and into the nearby pond. There is no guttering along ul. Trombity, neither are there any storm drains. So water will continue to gather here, freezing in winter, cracking the surface, creating ever-deeper pot-holes.

We have just been informed (in a long-winded and none-too-clear way) that the local property tax will go up. Good. It's laughably low (the equivalent of around £30 a year, compared with London rates of £120 a month). I'd happily pay more local tax in exchange for proper infrastructure - properly maintained asphalted roads, drains and sewerage.

This time two years ago:
In search of the Sublime Aesthetic

This time three years ago:
Flying in from the Faroes

Double-headed rail action, Jeziorki

While out and about with camera today, I chanced upon three double-headed trains. Below: the classic Jeziorki coal train shot, a pair of TEM-2 Tamaras hauling wagons to Siekierki power station via the sidings at Konstancin-Jeziorna, as they approach W-wa Jeziorki station.

Below: I've not seen this configuration before; a Czech class 181-050 electric engine double-heading with a diesel 311-D loco, bringing laden coal wagons to the Okęcie sidings along the electrified main line from the south. The diesel engine was doing its bit too, lots of black smoke billowing forth from it.

Below: a pair of Koleje Mazowieckie class EU-07 engines running light from Warsaw towards Radom (one has obviously broken down). Note the tracks on the right that run into undergrowth; these were the tracks to the aggregate loading ramp, ripped out three years ago by developers for a housing estate that was not to be.

By 'old school' I mean pre-war

Yesterday on Marszałkowska (the stretch between Pl. Zbawiciela and Pl. Konstytucji) I chanced upon this tempting display of shoe polish tins in a display cabinet built into a gateway. Five upturned tins, a faded photo of men's shoes. (Click to enlarge)

On the other side of the entrance, a more appealing display - some decent-looking footwear, perhaps the answer to what's lacking in this department here in Warsaw (see post about my shoes). Worth paying Pan Wielądek a visit to see what he can cobble together...

Good to see craft skills hanging on in spite of price competition from the Far East. Here and there, one can still find retailing that pre-dates communist state-owned shops and today's chain stores. Two doors further up Puławska, this tempting display (below). The word dziewiarstwo (męskie and damskie) was new to me; PWN Oxford defines it as 'knitwear'. So now you know!

Seeing these unremonted façades puts me in mind of Cuba; I've got Buena Vista Social Club music going around my head as I process these photos. Unusual association for Warsaw.

This time last year:
Britain chooses a coalition government

This time two years ago:
Landing over Ursynów

This time three years ago:
On being assertive in Poland

Men at work

Men at work, on ul. Puławska, erecting scaffolding. A sight so stirring in its majesty that I jumped off the tram to get some shots. The geometric composition, the colours, the action (things were moving quickly - something you can't see on still images). But wait a minute - not a single hard hat? Instead, the ubiquitous baseball cap.

Pedestrian access has not been cordoned off (imagine that plank slipping as a person walked underneath). At least there are guard rails on the scaffolding, but generally I feel that health and safety at work is nowhere as rigorous as in the UK. Which explains why construction industry fatalities in Poland are proportionately five times higher than in the UK.