Rainy summer Warsaw moods

One I've done before, but it works well. Outside W-wa Śródmieście station, there's a puddle which has been there for years (see this post from 2014) into which falls a reflection of the Palace of Culture. Stand here and catch the commuters and tourists passing to and from the station, reflected upside down in the puddle. Rotate the image through 180 degrees... and something interesting appears!

The Palace of Culture has become a hotspot for nostalgic vehicle tours of Warsaw. You can choose between Maluchs (Fiat 126Ps), the larger Polski Fiat 125P, Jelcz ogórek buses (there's three now stationed here), the occasional Berliet 'pig snout' bus from the early '50s, and two Polish light commercial vehicles - the Nysa and the Żuk (left). Both were Polish designed and built, few are left, so it's good to see them well looked after and offering an interesting tourist experience of the past.

Below: on my way from work, the sky is brusing. I must go home at once or risk a soaking. The western entrance to W-wa Śródmieście is down the steps in the distance.

I catch a train heading to Skarżysko-Kamienna, but it's a przyspieczony (limited stop) service which doesn't stop at Jeziorki. It's a double-decker, I'm seated downstairs, I snap this shot of W-wa Zachodnia (below) on my way to W-wa Służewiec, where I change to await the slow train home.

As I arrive at W-wa Ślużewiec, the heavens open. Fortunately, there's ample space under a roofed area on the platform where I can keep dry. Left: an SKM train headed for town calls at the first station from the airport; W-wa Ślużewiec is now very well served by trains to town (eight an hour during the peak - four from the airport, two from Piaseczno and two that terminate here).

Below: a multiple exposure shot of a Polish Air Force Mi-8 VIP helicopter (the so-called 'salonka'), which was flying round in circles in the pouring rain, awaiting clearance to land at Okęcie. After four laps above Służewiec, it finally made its way to the airport.

Back in Jeziorki, still raining hard. I take a bus home, which means I'll not hit the 10,000 paces today! My Koleje Mazowieckie train below will call in at Chynów station in 28 minutes' time.

Weather in coming days looks set to remain wet and cool for the time of year - but then the soil and crops needs the water.

This time three years ago:
Marathon stroll along the Vistula

This time four years ago:
Complaining about the lack of a river crossing between Siekierki and Góra Kalwaria! 

This time five years ago:
S2 update (nearly ready, as it happened)

This time six years ago:
Progress on S2 bypass - photos from the air

This time eight years ago:
Up Śnieżnica

This time 11 years ago:
July continues glum (2007 - a rainy summer)

The weightless economy

The developed world's gross domestic product is growing below-trend; bouncing back from such a dip as the global financial crisis it should be doing better than it is. One reason is that the way GDP is measured still concentrates on physical goods and services - and the value created by the virtual world is underestimated. This article in Monday's Independent explains how difficult it is to put a figure to this move from the physical to the digital. So much of our economy today is weightless, intangible.

This struck me last Thursday in London. On my way to Ealing Broadway tube station, I paused to take a photo and realised that there was no memory card in the camera - I'd forgotten to take it out of my laptop the previous evening. So I bought a new one (Kingston 32GB) for £18. Rather expensive, but as a captive of circumstance, I had to choose between spending the money or lugging a useless camera around with me all day while missing shots.

In the old days, for £18, I'd have been able to buy a roll of 36 exposure 35mm film, develop it and get back 36 prints plus a CD with crappy low-res digital scans of the negs. Today, my Nikon D3300 can - cram 675 photos in fine .jpg and RAW format on to this £18 card (that I could probably have bought at half price online). That's 675 photos, again and again and again until the card packs up. I've only had one fail on me - a 256KB (yes! that small!) card which was over ten years old. In the days of film, I'd be shooting  and processing between two and four rolls of film a month. Then the photos would be piling up in cupboards, drawers, albums filled and filed on bookcases - today, a single hard 1TB drive with external back-up holds 11 years' worth of digital photos.

Think of the supply chain that stood behind my photography in the old days. Film manufacturers, distributors and retailers. Film-processing machine makers. Operators skilled in running the machines that could develop negs and print photos. Makers of those envelopes in which the negs and prints were presented. An entire industry - gone.

And music. In the old days, I'd be forking out loads of money on buying music. That £18 is what I spent over 21 years ago on my last CD purchased before moving to Poland - David Bowie's Low. Working across the road from the Virgin Megastore and not too far from HMV on Oxford St, I'd be shelling out fistfuls of tenners on vinyl LPs, then music cassettes, then CDs and DVDs.

Today I consume my media from YouTube; I can find the obscurest piece of music lodged in my memory there. Blast Furnace and the Heatwaves' cover of Robert Johnson's Me and the Devil off of the Blue Wave EP? Proszę bardzo. The longest of the long tail (a mere 200 views since it was uploaded last October, but I've been looking for this particular piece for 40 years). So why should I ever spend money on buying music again? I'm not listening to less music than I was Before Internet, it's just the internet delivers what I want - no matter how obscure - for free. And those fistfuls of tenners I used to spend on vinyl, cassettes and CDs no longer go towards the calculation of the nation's gross domestic product. All those vinyl pressers, album-sleeve printers, packers, distributors - jobs gone.

In the old days, I'd be forking out on newspapers. A paper on the way to work some days, but an Evening Standard on my way home every night. Before it became a free paper. Let me tell you this, Londoners - the moment Transport for London puts WiFi into your tube trains - newspapers will be dead. People will be glued to their Twitter, Facebook and breaking-news feeds. I have a full paper-and-digital subscription to the Economist - and that's all the paid-for media I consume. Newspaper owners are losing money rapidly, to the detriment of proper reporting.

Pay TV? Forget it. Any kind of TV. The idea that at a certain time, a certain programme is to be broadcast - and if I'm not on the sofa in front of the set, I miss it? How quaint. How 20th century. Not for me.

During the dot.com boom of 2000-2001, many thought that digitisation would be a little add-on to bolster an already well-functioning economy. Then the bubble burst, confirming that view. Yet the digital revolution has proved to be disruptive and transformational. We do things differently in the digital world - digital has not simply been about doing what we do better, faster and cheaper, but about a total re-shape of what and why and how we do it.

Today's economy is increasingly about intangibles. How can you measure the value you get from Google, for example? How much would you pay if you had to pay to access gmail, Blogger, Google maps, Google Earth, Google Drive, Google Calendar, Google Translate*, YouTube and the world's favourite search engine? Of course, if you did have to pay, someone would offer a free alternative very quickly. So let's put it another way - how much would you have to be paid to forego using the internet for a year...? Think about it. All those free services... How much would it take you to quit? £1,000 (5,000 złotys)... £10,000 (50,000 złotys) a year?

Now that's probably a truer figure of the value of what you're getting for free - and it's not being calculated into the world's gross domestic product.

*DeepL.com is a superior alternative to Google Translate - my entire office has switched to it now - thanks Andrew Nathan for suggesting it to me!

This time three years ago:
Seven days in Warsaw in seven photos

This four years ago:
Best Bacon From Poland: ad on London bus, 1969

This time nine years ago:
Sunset across the tracks, Nowa Iwiczna

This time ten years ago:
The storm the forecasters missed

This time 11 years ago:
Peacocks in the park

Grodzisk Mazowiecki revisited

Back after nearly five years in Grodzisk Mazowiecki, I pass through its lovely railway station on my way to a business meeting. And on my way back, I stop to take some shots to see how the place has changed. Worth noting that according to official stats, registered unemployment for the Grodzisk poviat (district) was 8.1%. Today, it's 3.2%. Local employers - big-name foreign investors, household-name brands, are resorting to advertising job offers on billboards - the labour market is running dry. Local people have more money in their pockets - and this can be seen in the shops and cafes. The local authorities have more tax revenue, which is spent on making this town of 30,000 inhabitants look much better.

Poland has some lovely examples of railway station architecture. Here is Grodzisk Mazowiecki station, along Line No. 1 (Warsaw-Katowice). Some 30km from W-wa Centralna. The current building replaces the original station (opened in 1845), which was badly damaged during WW1. Built in the early 1920s, its architectural style is Polish Dworkowy, the dworek being the manor house beloved of the landed gentry.

Below: front facade facing ul. 1 Maja, July 2018.

Below: August 2013.

Below: platform-side view, seen from modernised footbridge, July 2018.

Below: August 2013. The new electrical gantries are prominent in the current view, as are improvements to the platform and trackbed.

Below: booking hall, July 2018. Proper electronic signage.

Below: general view of the interior, August 2013.

Below: waiting room, July 2018. Very contemporary.

Below: waiting room/booking office, August 2013. Shabby and tired.

The main railway line between W-wa Zachodnia and Grodzisk Maz is currently undergoing refurbishment - the slow line for suburban trains has been lifted and is being replaced with new track. At the moment, the suburban train from Warsaw out south-west to Żyrardów and Skierniewice bypasses all intermediate stations between W-wa Zachodnia, first stop Grodzisk Maz. The upside for passengers travelling between the two is just 19 minutes (not bad for a 26km journey!). No driver could do that in a car. The downside for Grodziskians heading to town is that this state of affairs will not last forever; once the remont is complete, the suburban trains will once again call at Milanówek, Pruszków, Ursus and Włochy.

This time last year:
S7 extension - last summer of quiet (not true, as it happened!)

This time two years ago:
Getting out of Mordor

This time eight years ago:
Ćwilin, conquered

This time nine years ago:
Sunset across the tracks, Nowa Iwiczna

This time ten years ago:
The storm the forecasters missed

This time 11 years ago:
Peacocks in the Park

High summer, Jakubowizna

Back in Poland, I venture down by train today to spend a bit of time relaxing on my działka. Jakubowizna is looking fine in high summer; the fruit season is coming on. Below: on my road there are plenty of orchards, the apples still three months away from being ready to harvest. The orchards are well-tended, although here and there I see some that have gone to seed, their owners having abandoned them. I toy with the idea of a cider press...

Below: that old Kentucky klimat is to be found across southern Mazowsze...

On the działka, how's it going? Still a lot to do. Right now the main action is in insulating the foundations - digging a moat round the outside into which insulating granules will be poured so that heat won't escape from the floor (as I have under-floor heating, this is essential)

Two sides of the house already dug (south and east), two to go (north and west). Rain the big enemy right now. Below: the foundations along the east side, by the garage door.

Below: grapes. I have a large number of grapes - like the apples, three months away from being ready to pick. Cherries have come and largely gone (I need a much longer ladder than the one that's here). And plums will be coming along too.

It's an extremely relaxing place to be, very quiet, the occasional airliner making its turn into final descent into Okęcie, otherwise just birdsong. Time to set ofp back to Jeziorki, a 28-minute journey by train. Below: the journey to Chynów station is a ten-minute walk, I get this Eric Ravilious-style landscape along the way.

Below: orchards everywhere. This one not so well tended, not cultivated for efficient harvesting. But it will be a bumper crop this autumn!

Below: if you click to enlarge, you'll see a Warsaw-bound train at the vanishing point. It's still over seven minutes' travel from the platform at Chynów station, approaching Krężel, three kilometres south. The tracks run dead straight for 15km from south of Czachówek junction to beyond Michalczew.

Below: as my train to Jeziorki crossed the Skierniewice-Łuków line, I caught this westbound container train passing under the viaduct heading for Łódź, then onto Duisberg. This is part of the Chinese 'One Belt One Road' / New Eurasian Land Bridge programme to speed up container flows compared to the long sea journey to north-west Europe.

Bonus - Karczunkowska update. Biggest news on my return from a week in London is the appearance of what is likely to be a roundabout at the junction of ul. Nawłocka and the road to Biedronka. In the distance, the viaduct over the railway line slowly takes shape.

Good to be back in Poland!

This time two years ago:
Aerial cavalcade ahead of NATO meeting

This time four years ago:
Ukraine: still an important foreign policy problem for the West 

This time six years ago:
More about Modlin airport

This time nine years ago:
Get on your bike and RIDE!

West Ealing to Castlebar Park - waiting for Crossrail

All change at West Ealing! Work on getting the new Elizabeth Line ready (as London's Crossrail will be called) is reaching the end, and for West Ealing - the nearest mainline station to my father's house - a new importance. No longer a sleepy stop where infrequent commuter trains call, along with those less-frequented stations along the Great West Railway's line to Paddington - now, West Ealing will be on the Underground, a junction station serving GWR and the Lizzie Line (as it's informally called).

Since May, the new Crossrail stock is being live-trialled on the line between Paddington and Hayes & Harlington, stopping at Southall, Hanwell, West Ealing, Ealing Broadway and Acton Main Line along the way. Below: a westbound service for Hayes & Harlington calls in at West Ealing. Full-size trains will be making their way under London (hopefully from December), linking Paddington and Liverpool St stations.

Below: take a good look; get used to it; this rolling stock will no doubt still be in service in 50 years' time. (Today, I travelled on the Bakerloo line, on a train built in 1972).

Andy P. has travelled on the new trains from Ealing Broadway - here's how they look inside. The Tube-train like interior is the result of the Tube being more popular than Network Rail, on account of its greater reliability, he says. [Photo: Andy Picheta]

West Ealing - an important part of my childhood. For whether over Drayton Bridge, by the station entrance, or over Jacob's Ladder, a footbridge to the west of the platforms, I'd go this way with my mother to my nursery school on The Avenue. I still remember steam trains submerging the bridges with damp grey fog as they chuffed beneath. And below was the siding the served the Co-operative's milk service; this abandoned platform would be full of milk tanks.

And finally it arrives, perhaps one of the shortest (2.5 miles/4km) lines on British network rail - the shuttle from Greenford to West Ealing. Well do I remember this from my childhood and youth - slam-door diesel units (single-car or two-car sets) running backwards and forwards providing an alternative to buses and tube services between London's western suburbs and the city centre. Looking at the traffic on this line, I doubt if there's enough revenue coming in to cover its cost. Probably around 16-20 people used it today, peak time (17:36 departure); because it no longer starts at Paddington, and there's a long walk to cross the platforms, I guess many regulars will give up on it and will change at Ealing Broadway and catch a bus.

Below: looking down the line towards South Greenford (well, Perivale actually) and Greenford.

Well do I remember my very first visit here. The late winter or early spring of 1970; my father was just about to put down an offer on the property we moved into in May of that year. One foggy night, we walked from our house in Hanwell to look around Cleveland Road and surrounding area. We did so, and then walked on to Castlebar Park Halt, as it was then, to await a train to West Ealing. Back then, there were no trees, just a platform among the meadows than stretched across from the posher parts east of the line, and the council estate beyond the fields to the west of the line.

Below: imagine no trees, no fencing, no electronic information boards, no CCTV cameras, just a concrete platform. Here we stood, gazing down the line towards Greenford, until we could make out the lights of a single, green diesel railcar heading towards us. In the fog, we were an island, the train a ship to take us back to civilisation.

Below: I remember when this was all fields - then the fields were built over - and now those buildings have been demolished. In the distance, the well-built 1950s council estate; in the foreground an estate that didn't stand the test of time. Out of shot to the right, the Old Bill - a flat-roofed pub known for fisticuffs and drugs raids, closed in 2006. This was not a good area.

The Lizzy Line is holding property prices in its catchment area relatively stable; once full operational, West Ealing will be half an hour away from the City of London, shaving 40 minutes off the day's commute. That's over three hours a week. I dare say that was once an area known for scuzzy accommodation for ne'er-do-wells (brick courtyards full of broken plastic toys) might become a sought-after location for future financial elites - but then there's Brexit.

This time last year:
Trump flies into Warsaw

This time four years ago:
Making Poland's railways safer

Bristol fashioned

To Bristol, along Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s Great West Railway, calling at Reading, Swindon, Chippenham and Bath, the journey fast and pleasant. A business trip to see a prospective client, four hours’ spare time to have a look around. I’ve not been to Bristol before – certainly not to the city centre, so I made the Most of the chance to see another great British city, historically and economically. As a port, it shares much with Liverpool; built on the transatlantic trade in cotton and slaves. A university city too, the fine buildings located in the centre.

My exploration of Bristol began and finished at Temple Meads station, built in 1843 as (at the time) the western terminal of the GWR. It’s a large station with 15 platforms and an iron and glass roof. The cry of seagulls greeted me as I stepped off the train. Of for my meeting, then a chance to explore the city centre, after which I walked right across town to see the famous Clifton suspension bridge. I must have seen it in early childhood around the time we lived in South Wales. My mother drew a picture of it in pencil on a wooden brick I played with. Along the way, impressive architectural heritage. Unlike Liverpool, there’s no waterfront focal point; the Avon is a much narrower river than the Mersey. And unlike Liverpool, the city is built on steep hills overlooking the river, creating a geography of streets sloping steeply towards the waterfront.

Across the Avon I could see the SS Great Britain, technological marvel of its time, an iron-hulled steamship powered by screws (although the sails were still there). For 1845, a breakthrough. The world's longest passenger ship at the time. Further on, abandoned wooden wharves stand rotting in the shadow of the suspension bridge, a picture of decaying Victorian infrastructure that’s quite unusual in modern Britain.

A massive day’s walking (total over 21,000 paces of which 15,000 were in Bristol). My ticket was purchased via the TrainLine app; this was my very first rail journey in the UK without a piece of paper or card to show to the guard. I’ve been using my phone for plane and train tickets (in Poland) for some time so it’s good to see an alternative to buying online and having to collect the tickets from a machine at the station before departure in the UK.

Below: Temple Meads station. Opened in 1843. That's 175 years ago. Since then, trains have been bringing people here continuously. That's amazing. Gothic Revival, the magnificent roof over the platforms to the right, the main building set at an angle.

Below: the SS Great Britain, along with HMS Victory (Portsmouth), the Cutty Sark and HMS Belfast (London), is one of the famous museum ships that present Britain's glorious maritime past.

Park Street goes up a steep hill from the Cathedral to the Wills Memorial Building, which despite its medieval appearance was opened in 1925 - the last major piece of Gothic  Revival built in Britain. Today it's part of the university . The street itself is testament to the decline of  British retail, with many charity shops and used clothing stores on either side.

The university buildings remind me of Harrow School, but are late-19th century (University College Bristol opened in 1872, the University of Bristol - with royal charter - as late as 1909. Established with money made by selling cigarettes (the Wills family) and chocolate (the Fry family), Bristol is one of the UK's nine 'redbrick' universities, set up at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. Below: the School of Geographical Sciences.

Below: Bristol's very own Wallace Collection - in the 1940s, Bristol was home to the aviation industry (the Blenheim, Beaufighter and Brabazon); today, Bristol is famous for its claymation movies, made by local company, Aardman. Here is Wallace, dressed as a gnome, outside the city's cathedral, established in 1140, though with plenty of Victorian add-ons, including the towers.

Below: I had to wait a few minutes to get this shot of the Foster's Almshouses, there were so many foreign tourists snapping away at it (from France, the US and China). A Victorian building standing on the site of a poorhouse dating back to the 15th century, funded by merchant John Foster.

Below: this waterfront building dates back to 1823; Purifier House was a former gasworks converted into flats. A ground-up rebuild took place (photos on Google Earth Street View show only the left-hand wing standing in 2016).

Below: the Clifton Suspension Bridge, completed in 1864 can rightly be said to be iconic, its image being used so often to promote Bristol and indeed the UK.

South of the bridge, a stretch of waterfront abandoned to the elements; rotting wharves that should have been preserved or demolished, very attractive to the photographer and urban explorer.

The old wharves stretch on and on along Hotwell Road... It's a real surprise to see such dereliction in such a prime location today.

Bristol requires a revisit. A bustling, dynamic city of half a million people, I'd rank it as one of the UK's must-see cities (though Liverpool appeals to me more somehow). Four hours is not enough to explore it. Architecturally, there are many gems to be seen, but the city attracted too many Luftwaffe bombs, losing over 3,000 buildings during WW2. The gaps were filled by much mundane '60s and '70s stuff that creates an overall sense of loss; how the city might have looked with far more of its original architecture intact.

This time last year:
The imminent closure of Marks & Spencer in Warsaw

This time five years ago:
Along mirror'd canyons

This time seven years ago:
Mad about Marmite 

This time eight years ago:
Komorowski wins second round of Presidential elections?

This time nine years ago:
A beautiful summer dusk in Jeziorki

This time ten years ago:
Classic cars, London and Warsaw

Climate change worries

 A prolonged spell of settled weather is hanging over Britain. In London, where not a drop of rain has fallen in four weeks, and where no rain is forecast for the next two weeks, I am a) enjoying the sunshine but b) increasingly worried about climate change. I cannot remember from my childhood or youth - including the summer of 1976 - any major moorland fires like the ones at Saddleworth and Bolton right now. And the hottest June ever in the UK was... last June.

Watching a BBC2 documentary last night about the Russian Far East, the effects of climate change on reindeer populations, the gigantic sink holes opening up as permafrost melts and the massive release of methane - a greenhouse gas far more potent than carbon dioxide - and the deforestation of an area larger than Amazonia - filled me with pessimism. Maybe we are too late to slow down and stop climate change. Maybe it is accelerating. If the world's temperature were to increase by four degrees Celsius by the end of this century (a 93% chance according to this report from the Carnegie Institution for Science) where will it be by the end of the next century? How long before mankind bakes itself to death? How will evolution - where hundreds or thousands of generations are need to adapt to environmental conditions - cope with the speed of change?

We are short-termist in our outlook. Instant gratification is what we crave. The consequences are all around us, lives wrecked by the mad rush for what it is that brings immediate pleasure. And laziness; drive rather than walk; drive rather than travel with others; eating cheese in ready-to-serve slices, each separated from the next by plastic film because its easier than slicing it ourselves.

The reindeer of Siberia are starving to death in winter because rain falling (instead of snow) onto icy ground freezes hard and the animals cannot get to the lichen underneath that forms their staple diet at that time of year. The herders are leaving their traditional pastures, seeking new forms of employment. When the BBC filmed illegal logging going on in Siberia, it was the crew that was arrested and deported, not the illegal loggers. What chance have we of saving our planet when venal thieves are focused on short-term gain?

It is pleasant to stroll around Ealing in the sunshine, but at the back of my mind the worry, the guilt, the association with fellow humans who haven't yet seen it coming. They, who laugh and say "cluck cluck the sky is falling" (as in the tale of Chicken Licken); they who persist in use of over-sized fossil-fuel guzzling vehicles and other forms of egregious behaviour in face of climate change.

Below: my childhood Ealing did not look like this. The crystalline skies that impressed Sir John Betjeman in Australia on his first visit, the ones he said were never like that over England, are now indeed here.

Environmentally, I am an illiberal. I'd welcome far more drastic measures against those who spoil the planet in which my children will grow old... what will their grandchildren inherit from us, here, today?

We are more than meat robots in an accidental universe. We have been so immeasurably gifted to be here, alive, today, conscious, observing our world, full of wonder, and yet our short-term dash for convenience and pleasure and wealth is leading to consequences future generations may not be able to deal with.

This time last year:
Jeziorki hatchling update

This time two years ago:
Brexit: where next for mankind?

This time three years ago:
Three hundred kilometres in a suburban train

This time five years ago:
Serious cycling

This time sevenyears ago:
Outlets for creativity

This time nine years ago:
The day I stopped commuting to work by car

This time ten years ago:
Look up at the Towers of London

This time 11 years ago:
Wild deer in the Las Kabacki forest

Meditations upon the Piccadilly Line

Crossing London from St Pancras towards Ealing, as I do each month, a mundane underground journey... Today, the crosswords done, no WiFi or reading matter left, I gazed at the familiar diagram of the Piccadilly Line, known to me from childhood. the stations along the way, from Cockfosters in the north east to Uxbridge and Hounslow in the west, extended since to Heathrow Airport.

Opposite me, on a nearly-empty Sunday morning service, the diagram. I pondered on those names, letting my mind roam among the memories of the stations, the areas they serve, the associations those names conjured up...

My first forays on the Piccadilly line were as a child in the mid-1960s; I was born with a squint in my left eye and had an operation to straighten my gaze at Moorfields Eye Hospital. I must have visited it twice (at least), taking the Tube from Boston Manor, the nearest station to our house in Hanwell. I still have vivid recollections of the moment the train started going underground, east of Baron's Court. Backs of tall, brick terraced houses overlooking the tracks, still dark with soot, the cables running parallel to the train as it dived into the tunnel,

Looking along the line, from west to east, I know the stretch from Acton Town to Kings Cross St. Pancras very well indeed; I am able to visualise the stations above ground and their immediate vicinities. Leicester Square, across the road the (long-gone) Happy Garden restaurant was a favourite lunchtime venue (for the duck noodle soup) during my days working at Centre Point; Covent Garden - lift-only access to a street teeming with tourists; Green Park station on a sunny day; Hyde Park Corner with its many entrances via subway; Knightsbridge - if the train window aligns itself with a station name-sign, you can see six consecutive consonants (GHTSBR) as you look out of the window; making little sense at first sight; South Kensington - alight here for the museums - and the long pedestrian tunnel linking them.

Yes, all of London's Underground resonates strongly with me, the Piccadilly, District and Central lines most of all as they link the Ealings and Actons (as Sir John Betjeman put it) with the heart of the capital.

West of Acton Town - South Ealing and Boston Manor; my first regular Tube journeys to school - until we moved to posher surroundings, after which Ealing Broadway became the station for my short commute to school, near Acton Town. And Saturdays, on my way to Polish scouts, I'd travel the line east to Hammersmith and track back to Ravenscourt Park on the District Line. Sometimes, I'd find an empty carriage at the end of a unit with the driver's door left unlocked. I'd pull down the handle and let myself in, sitting in the driver's seat as the train sped through Chiswick Park, Turnham Green, Stamford Brook and Ravenscourt Park on the fast line; I'd take care to leave in good time to alight at Hammersmith without getting caught by platform staff.

 The Piccadilly line north of Ealing Common - North Ealing, Park Royal and Alperton - I know less well; the Sudburys and beyond not at all. Eastcote and that. Below: Piccadilly line train cuts through suburban parkland, One Tree Hill, just north of Alperton station.

The line to Heathrow I know much better - Osterley, the Hounslows, Hatton Cross and the three Heathrow terminals.

North east of Kings Cross St Pancras is terra incognita (I can honestly say I've never, ever, alighted at Caledonian Road, Holloway Road, Arsenal, Turnpike Lane, Bounds Green or Wood Green); I have explored Southgate and Cockfosters on account of their magnificent station architecture, though the last visit was well over 30 years ago.

Below: former Victoria Line 1967 stock now used for tunnel cleaning, standing at Acton Town; the station is very much as I remember it from my schoolboy days, except for the modern footbridge in the foreground)

This time last year:
S7 extention from airport to Grójec gets go-ahead
[no sign of any work as yet]

This time two years ago:
Metro Wilanowska redevelopment gets under way

This time four years ago:
Local politics, local politician

This time five years ago:
Communication breakdown

This time six years ago:
Getting ready for the opening of Modlin airport

This ten ten years ago:
Maybugs in July - a plague of cockchaffers