'Twas on the Thursday morning, the electrician called...

Thursday morning. Getting ready to go to work, when my phone rang. It was the electrician who was outside my działka to change the meter. "You were meant to be 'ere between 08:00 and 10:00 to let me in!"

"Hang on a second," I replied, "I haven't agreed to this..." And then I remembered. On Tuesday evening, on returning from work, I opened the mailbox to find an avizo - so ofp I went to the post office to receive a registered letter from PGE, the electricity supplier. I say 'letter', actually it was an A5 envelope containing no fewer than 79 pages in total - contracts in duplicates, handbooks, explanations, termination letters, errata slips - not stuff you'd want to be reading on a Tuesday evening after work. And not on the day before the Annual General Meeting and Board Meeting.

 

I left it. The fat envelope sat in my rucksack all day Wednesday, unread, and then on Thursday morning the bloke called. All uppity he was that I wasn't there to let him in. Patiently, I explained that it takes two to be umówiony, and that I had not agreed to be there, that particular Thursday morning. Between 08:00 and 10:00, especially when that day I had to be in the office to run a seminar on digital disruption/digital transformation.

Later, I referred to the contents of the A5 envelope. Inside the umowa (contract) it did indeed state that if I wished to change from the G11 tariff to the more advantageous for me G12W tariff (cheaper electricity at weekends, which is when the działka would be in use), the meter would have to be changed. On Thursday 26 April. Between 08:00 and 10:00.

All of this would have been fine, had the letter reached me sooner than the evening of Tuesday 24 April, on the eve of the Most important day of my firm's business calendar. The letter was sent (according to the postmark) on 17 April from PGE Obroty S.A. in Skarzysko-Kamienna; it took a full week to travel the 140km to my post office on ul. Puławska. That's 20km (12 miles) a day. I could literally have walked with it quicker.

PGE Obroty S.A. could have used sent me an email or an SMS saying 'we're going to change your meter in nine days time - is that OK?' The company had both my email address and mobile number on the last form I'd sent them (in reply to my original letter of 16 February). But no. They will send it all by post, knowing that this is the most primitive and business-wise, least effective way of reaching the customer.

And why seventy-nine pages? Who reads this stuff? Everything, in Einstein's words, should be as simple as possible, yet no simpler. Has any lawyer or business-process manager gone through those 79 pages, paragraph by paragraph, line by line, questioning whether this has any meaning or relevance, and why we have to send this, is this clear communication?

This is what they sent me:

Now, among all this bumph, bądź mądry and find that one sentence that mentions the impending visit of the guy to change my meter.

How much time does it take one human being to read through all this stuff? How much of it do you really have to read? What happens if you don't? How much of it is understandable? Do you know the formula to working out how much you have to pay for electricity? It looks like this:

This is babble. Who understands this? If whoever wrote this thought - "they don't understand, but so what?" - then that person doesn't merit a customer-facing job. Without explanation, just dumping this in the contract is a heinous error of judgment.

In Britain, consumers may complain, but they are years ahead in terms of the service they receive from the utilities.

In Poland, I too have a choice. And here's my message for state-owned PGE. I'd prefer to buy my electricity from a Polish firm than from a German, French or Swedish one. But if it communicates with me per noga, then I must say I'd pay over the odds to a supplier who gives me what I want.

A smart meter. An app in my phone that lets me monitor and control my electricity usage. A contract that's clear and easy to understand.

And if not...? The Polish electricity regulator, URE, has insisted that among the 79 pages included in that fat envelope is one sheet giving me the right to annul my contract with PGE and switch to another provider.

UPDATE Friday 4 May 2018: I get an SMS at 15:57 from Poczta Polska to say that the signed contracts, which I posted by registered, priority mail on Monday 30 April, reached PGE Obrót S.A.'s Skarzysko-Kamienna offices today... not bad given that Tuesday and Thursday were both public holidays.

This time last year:
The Gold Train film shoot - Day Three

This time three years ago:
45 years under one roof

This time six years ago:
May Day in the heat (it was 31C in Warsaw!) 

This time eight years ago:
Bike ride across rural Poland

This time 11 years ago:
Mazovian landmark from the air

Weather-wise, the best April ever?

This is an exaggerated stereotype - the way the Polish climate can change from snow and frost to t-shirt weather in a week. Let's compare today, 30 April (below right) with 30 March (below left).

Today, as London shivered (6C), Warsaw enjoyed nothing but the bluest of blue skies and 30C of heat. I can't remember such a sunny April ever. The Polish met office has declared this the hottest April ever recorded as nature exploded into life at an amazingly rapid pace. Today, I feel my face slightly sunburnt; a two-hour walk around midday did it for me. I can't ever remember being sunburnt in April before! It is as though summer has arrived seven weeks early this year.

Below: across the tracks, a field of rapeseed turns bright yellow.

There's been much ploughing going on around Jeziorki (long may it continue!) Here on ul. Dawidowska, the plough has come right up to the fence. In the distance, houses along ul. Trombity, and on the horizon, the chimneys of Siekierki.

Below: two red flowers (not poppies - tulips?) and cherry blossom on ul. Kórnicka; 22 April.

Below: Chynów, two days earlier; perfect skies.

Below: Jakubowiza on Saturday. Apple orchards in full bloom!

Below: back to Jeziorki, today... a new pedestrian crossing was delivered to us on the junction of ul. Karczunkowska and ul. Pozytywki. Guys were painting it yesterday; this morning it was fully in use. Waiting now for the two new bus stops - one across the road, and one behind me. Note speed limits: 50km/h on Karczunkowska and 30km/h on Pozytywki. Abide by them! Especially when there are pedestrians about!

Cause and effect, what goes up must come down etc. I force myself to remember that on the morning of 4 May 2011, there was snow on the ground, minimum temperature 0.6C (this morning's minimum was 16C!). And in two weeks' time the Ice Saints (Servacy, Bonifacy and Pankracy) might visit, followed by Zimna Zośka on 15 May. We shall see!

This time last year:
The search for the Gold Train: Day Two

This time two years ago:
Semi-automatic (short story)

This time six years ago:
So good to be back in Warsaw

This time seven years ago:
At the President's

This time nine years ago:
Summer's here, and the time is right...

This time eleven years ago:
Why I'm staying in Warsaw

Diverse birdlife returns to Jeziorki

A spring explodes all around, so the rarer birds fly in to join the ducks and coots that life on our ponds here in Jeziorki. This winter saw a shorter period of ice cover than last year; there were only a few weeks without any birds.

Below: this is male mute swan 2KC1, a long-term regular round here (this is him with his family last October)

Below: an adult black-headed gull. In Polish, mewa śmieszka. A long-term resident at the ponds, the gulls were back in March, they are gregarious and noisy.

Below: a pair of black-headed gulls nesting in the reeds on the west side of the ponds, across from the wooden piers.

Below: a male common pochard (Polish: głowienka zwyczajna), a diving duck. It's quite something to see something so duck-like suddenly disappear entirely under water. Female common pochards are as different as ducks and drakes are among mallards.

Finally - the grebes. Rarest of the waterfowl that has made Jeziorki its home. Below: black-necked grebe (perkoz zausznik). The Polish name suits it better - so what that it has a black neck? It's what they have behind the ears that is most characteristic!

And now my favourite - so good to see them back - the great crested grebe (perkoz dwuczuby). Last year there were two pairs, today I saw one pair; I hope more fly in.

Taken a few days earlier, a stork in a field along the north end of ul. Trombity. It stood there for a while before lazily taking ofp and flying across the railway tracks.

This time last year:
Gold train film shoot - day one

This time five years ago:
Jarosław Gowin quits his post as justice minister

This time nine years ago:
The cycle-to-work season starts

Karczunkowska's closed again

Coming home after work yesterday, I noticed a new temporary road sign announcing the closure of ul. Karczunkowska (again), so today a walk to investigate was in order. According to local news website, the closure is planned between 23:00 on Friday 27 April and 06:00 on Monday 7 May, in other words the long May week of two public holidays, when many Poles will take three days off work to give nine days holiday. So - good planning... Below: the sign on the road near the junction with ul. Trombity. The message does not seem to get through to drivers, who have to find out for themselves just how closed the road is. To save you the bother - it is closed. Cars will not get through. Bikes and pedestrians - yes.

Below: the next sign is on the road approaching the junction with ul. Nawłocka. But still they come, hoping that there's some way through. There isn't.

Below: across the tracks over the level crossing behind Biedronka and on to ul. Gogolińska. Another sign says the road's closed. And yet those drivers persist.

Below: around the corner, beyond the junction of ul. Gogolińska and Karczunkowska, the road is totally and utterly blocked. Pedestrians and bikes can squeeze through a passage to the right of this pic, but for other road-going vehicles - no. Don't waste your time. Do as you did last time Karczunkowska was closed - go around Nowa Iwiczna or down Baletowa.

Below: a rather crap shot from my Nikon CoolPix P900 (which is never happy in wide angle mode), showing Karczunkowska cut right down its entire width to get at the sewers. Without the ability to shoot in RAW format, exposure is a compromise; the get the detail in the shadows I lost the detail in the highlights.. Still, it shows how serious this work is.

But there are always the adventurous ones. Like the woman in the Yaris on Pruszków plates who first headed south along Gogolińska looking for a short cut, finding none, turning round, to discover that it's impassable to the north too. She sped past me (I was on foot, narrow road, no pavement) with her phone clamped to her ear. The short-cut that people want to make, between ul. Gogolińska and Kurantów, is not on. This bit of Kurantów is formally (and I checked on the land register map) a private road. The main bit of Kurantów runs out of asphalt 200m from this spur; physically impassable to all but off-road vehicles - except that the owners of the land at the top have blocked the path off to stop the rat-runners.

I very much doubt the work will be finished by Monday week. Indeed, I very much doubt the whole project will be completed this year. Even if there are no more major cock-ups such as the failure to detect the clash between sewers and power cables at the railway crossing, even if the guys work weekends and evenings (as they were today), I can't see this happening quickly. It will be fun to come here on Monday morning to see all the frustrated motorists forced to make U-turns.

It's actually comical to see drivers ignoring three, four, five signs saying 'no entry' or 'no through road' or 'diversion' and then being forced to turn around.

This time last year:
Little suitcase in the attic

This time two years ago:
What I read each week.

This time three years ago:
Defending Poland, contributing to NATO

This time five years ago:
Balloon over Warsaw 

This time seven years ago:
Happiness, Polish-style

This time eight years ago:
And watch the river flow...

Working week in town in photos

A very reasonable week weather-wise for the time of year. Below: looking up ul. Emilii Plater towards the Cosmopolitan building, with the InterContinental hotel and Warsaw Financial Centre to the left. Trees now fully in leaf.

Below: many people's first view of Warsaw, emerging from the W-wa Centralna station, the Lumen building to the left, Palace of Culture looming across from the right.

Below: a pair of 1960s Jelcz 043 ogórki ('gherkins'), classic buses from the 1960s with period backdrop.

Below: here's a find - parked (abandoned?) outside the Teatr Polski on ul. Karasia - a 1960 Hillman Minx Series III. Theatrical prop or what? The car has remnants of 'CS' plate, suggesting that it spent its useful life in Czechoslovakia..

Old cars can live again... I snapped this restored and repainted body of a Porsche 356 of similar vintage (below) on ul. Świętokrzyska. The economics of doing up classic cars are simple; it costs just as much to do a bare-metal restoration of a Hillman Minx (if not more, it has four doors) as it does to work on the Porsche. Yet the Porsche will command a price ten times higher than a Minx restored to the same condition; €100,000 or thereabouts. So Minxes rot and die, Porsches live again.

Vistula sunset yeah!

This time two years ago:
Brexit: head vs heart, migration vs economy

This time three years ago:
Golf course update

This time six years ago:
The Shard changes London's skyline

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

This time eight years ago:
Plans for the railway line to Radom

It's binary, isn't it?

There either is a God or there isn't one.

There either is life after death or there isn't.

It's binary, isn't it? Some people spend their time promoting either view with great fervour and passion. Atheists and the religiously devoted slog it out day and night online trying to convince the other side of the rightness of their arguments. On the one hand - religion - received truth, passed directly from God to man in written form. On the other - science - which tries to explain the universe with a series of defining laws and mathematical constants that rule out the need for divine / supernatural / metaphysical intervention from a supreme being.

But this scientific notion that we just happened to come into existence as an accidental merging of stellar dust which evolved into a conscious being is relatively new one. It only began to take hold during the Enlightenment, as alchemy gave way to science, based on empirical results of repeatable experiments. No more mumbo-jumbo. No more magick spells.

Prior to the Enlightenment, an atheist was someone who didn't believe in the same God as you did. Everyone believed in some form of supreme being or other. Just a question of what He was called. And nuances of doctrine.

Newtonian physics changed all that; no longer was a deity required to keep the universe ticking over. A deity was merely required to set the whole thing off, and then could step back. With the realisation the the universe was not a steady state, but that galaxies and stars formed from out of the Big Bang - was one needed at all?

It's binary, no?

The word 'binary' suggests either a male Godhead, omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient or no God at all. Well, it all depends how you'd define the terms 'deity' and 'afterlife'. Our understanding of the purpose, the meaning, the direction, the relevance of the universe is about as limited as our cats' understanding of electricity. Making the Godhead humanoid ("So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him" Genesis 1:27) smacks more of bipedal aliens doing a bit of genetic engineering on planet Earth than that of a universe unfolding to realise its ultimate destiny.

We humans have a hard time getting our heads around metaphysical concepts such as God or afterlife; it's easier to dismiss them outright or create some simple story around the concepts than it is to dig deeper. Many of us - by no means all of us - feel a natural draw towards the numinous, the mystical, the supernatural; for some, this yearning is assuaged by weekly church-going. For the more intellectually curious, accepting dogma passed on down the millennia is not enough; curiosity means reading around the subject, dipping into the received wisdoms of other faiths, but most of all being open to your own innermost feelings.

You either have those feelings or you don't - that much is binary. What you do about them isn't. For me, it's a lifelong quest, continual reassessment of belief, tested against hard science, seeking answers to the deepest questions concerning the purpose of our existence. It's not yes/no, black/white. And certainly, humanity will have a slightly better understanding in the future, as some of the mysteries of science (dark energy/dark matter, origins of life, seat of consciousness etc) are uncovered. This will help us probe the borders of the natural and supernatural, the physical and the metaphysical.

I believe that at our current human level of spiritual evolution, our supernatural powers are very weak, hardly noticeable, but nonetheless there. I feel it but can't measure it. Experiments into extra-sensory perception, premonition, telekinesis or spoon-bending powers are neither here nor there and belittle the whole field. Scientific experiments designed to prove or disprove such notions are doomed to fail as they are asking the wrong questions and using the wrong methodology.

My lifelong experiences of deja vu will not be put into a box and filed as 'random misfirings of synapses' because they do not subjectively feel like that. There's more to them than something that an experiment with lab rats can prove or disprove.

The shackles of Newtonian reductionist materialism, however, have been removed. Science has moved away from claiming everything can be explained - and if not now, then in a very few years - towards a more realistic view that maybe there are things that we can never know.

For the time being - please, accept the mystery.

In the long term, life after life will bring us closer to a universal unity of consciousness; everything understands everything. For that, you will have to wait an Eternity.

This time two years ago:
Work on the railway line, work on the golf course

Five closed hectares in central Warsaw

I thought I knew Powiśle well; I'd worked there for five years, travelled through W-wa Powiśle station, walked many walks up and down the Vistula escarpment... and yet only yesterday did I discover a secret, walled-off zone right in the heart of the city - all five hectares of it.

Below: A footpath in the park on the Skwer Bohdana Wodiczko, under a lamp, ends in a gate, shut tight. What's beyond?

The park lies on the escarpment; a high brick wall runs up and along the ridge. Here and there, one can stretch up and peek over the wall. And here's a special vantage point... clamber up and... Let's take a look, shall we?

Looks like some kind of cloisters... On the horizon you can see the national stadium (right) and the Most Świętokrzyski. Below: further along the wall, further along the escarpment ridge, there's some railings, through which I can get a shot of what's within. Trees in leaf, blossom abounds. A lovely walled garden, hectares of the stuff, closed off from the outside world.

Well, I just had to check. This is the convent of the Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul (Zakład Sióstr Miłosierdzia św. Wincentego à Paulo w Warszawie) The order is also known as the Szarytki. Well I never!

Here it is on Google Earth; to the left we have Nowy Świat, the right, the Vistula, at the lower edge Al. Jerozolimskie, along the top runs ul. Tamka. And in the middle, the convent. Click to enlarge.

Now, before we start accusing the nuns of hogging prime land in the heart of the city, I did some googling and discovered that they had plans to turn this closed object into an old folks' home. A very worthy use for such splendid land! However, the Szarytki did not reckon with the heritage buildings inspectorate, which didn't give them planning permission. And so, closed off behind walls, unvisited by tourists, unloved by Varsovians, the convent remains a mystery.

This time last year:
Progress by the ponds

This time five years ago:
Kaczyński's ignorance, deceit or folly? 

This time six years ago:
The British electrical plug and socket reigns supreme

This time seven years ago:
Easter, and the end of Lent

This time eight years ago:
That Icelandic volcano (anyone remember what it was called?)

This time nine years ago:
Views of Historic Toruń

This time ten years ago:
One swallow does not a summer make

Polarized into existence

Spring. An April like no other I can remember in terms of hours of sunshine and temperatures.
I go to Chynów by train to inspect how work's going on my country retreat (below). Having first clapped eyes on this place in late October and bought it in late November, seeing it as spring explodes is a real treat. The kitchen and front room floors have been dug through, the soil beneath is being extracted to be replaced by insulating material before the (heated) flooring goes on.

Plenty of time before the Warsaw-bound train pulls into Chynów, so I explore the rural byways between Jakubowizna and the station. The journey from town took 52 minutes on the Radomiak limited-stop service, which doesn't stop at W-wa Jeziorki, but does stop at Chynów.

Below: Chynów station awaits redevelopment as the Warsaw-Radom line modernisation work moves southwards. The second set of signals is for a freight siding that will no doubt be removed.

Below: earlier today, around 08:20, ul. Świętokrzyska under a perfectly crystalline sky

Below: back in Jeziorki, the low evening sunshine and the fresh greenery puts me in mind of another time and another place... the Sublime Aesthetic.

Below: cherry blossom in my garden.

This time four years ago:
The Road to Biedronka

This time five years ago:
Lighter, longer lens

This time eight years ago:
Making sense of Polish politics