Meagre, disappointing snow

I opened the blinds on Sunday morning expecting a garden covered with purest white snow - instead, all there was on the ground was the thinnest coating of soggy flakes. And so I headed for Chynów, hoping that the +1C in Jeziorki would somehow turn into a -1C in Jakubowizna, which received a more generous overnight snowfall. It did not. Thirty kilometres south, the weather was the same as it was in Warsaw; bleak, thin, damp snow. On arrival at the działka the kitchen thermometer read 5.5C, the one in the front room read 6.0C. Time to heat the place up, wheel out the motorbikes and turn the engines over, wheel them back in and go for a walk.

Below: the path to Adamów Rososki.

Below: the path to Jakubowizna.

Left: apples left to freeze, an unharvested orchard, Jakubowizna. Elsewhere, orchards have been pruned, or cut down and the land ploughed up awaiting new saplings. An apple tree is optimised for eight or nine seasons, then the trees need replacing. Although it was a good year for apples, the pandemic kept many pickers away. 

Back home for a sauna - an excellent investment in the house in Jeziorki when it was being built was a small room with a fitted Swedish Tylo dry sauna. Just the thing to warm up bones and get the sweat pores open. Two or three times a week from late October through to early April.

The tenth day of 2021, and other than a few hours of wan sunshine breaking through thin clouds on the afternoon of Tuesday 5 January, it had been uniformly dismal. A week and one day to go until Blue Monday - the so-called 'most depressing day of the year'. Spring seemed an eternity away but winter won't properly come either. Pumping out the exercises gets the endorphins flowing around the body, a short-term pick-me-up; a quick burst of 30 press-ups or 10 pull-ups

I opened the blinds yesterday to see dazzling sunshine! All day long the sky was blue - sadly work required me at my home-office desk, numerous calls (mostly Brexit related from bewildered exporters); apart from a short stroll down to Lidl for seniors' hours shopping, I hadn't the time for a daylight stroll to make the most of the sunshine. An evening walk under the stars, the ponds freezing over, had a positive effect; though the sun had gone down, the frosty evening lifted my spirits

This morning, though there's thin cloud, for the first time this year I felt a sense of the hope that spring is imminent, maybe a dozen or so weeks away, but it will come. I had a strong flashback to the early months of 1977, as a student living in Coventry, taking a bus to the edge of town and walking a disused railway line - that same sense of a spring coiled, primed, ready to emerge, powerful - bringing with it new energy and hope.

Covid is a downer, but compared to the darkness and gloom of a miserable sunless, snowless day in winter, the threatening pandemic is in the background, something to guard against. But overcast skies, drizzle, and damp cold (as opposed to a crisp frost) I find hard to deal with. Snow promised overnight with a light frost, so tomorrow should be nice...

Bring me sunshine.

This time last year:
The Inequality Paradox - a summing up

This time two years ago:
Familiarity, tradition and identity

This time three years ago:
Black hat merry-go-round 
(I've found four so far this season)

This time four years ago:
Skarzysko-Kamienna and Starachowice, by train

This time five years ago:
The world mourns the loss of David Bowie

This time seven years ago:
Where's the snow?

This time nine years ago:
Two drink-free days a week, British MPs urge

This time ten years ago:
Depopulating Polish cities?

This time 11 years ago:
Powiśle on a winter's morning

This time 12 years ago:
Sunny, snowy Jeziorki

New sewers, new estate

Closed off for four months, ulica Pozytywki is open again (below). Under the newly-relaid paving lie new laid sewer pipes, connecting houses on the street (existing and new) to the sewer main running along ul. Karczunkowska. Some road closures in Poland are in name only - this one was serious. A hole in the ground, some two to three metres deep, stretched from the wall on the left to the fence on the right, with no pedestrian access. This meant my regular walk to Lidl has had to be along the main roads rather than down the quiet ul. Pozytywki and ul. Cymbalistów; noisier, more dangerous and an additional 400m or so along which to carry the shopping home.

Looking back from the junction of ul. Pozytywki and ul. Cymbalistów, the pond to the left. The construction crew that has been on-site since the summer is packing up. Final details are being sorted.

Houses and farms south of ul. Karczunkowska are now connected to the town drains. As is the new estate, which has appeared on the quadrangle of land between Pozytywki, Cymbalistów, Katarynki (to the south) and Czarkowskiego (to the east). 

From my observations, I'd guess that the majority of the builders on this project are from Ukraine, judging from the electro-folk pumping out of loudspeakers on the site.

A dense development ("Each house with 340m² of garden!" shouts the billboard advertising it) of  neo-moderne townhouses; I think it will sell. This is still Warsaw, so it has the cachet of actually being in the capital rather than some peripheral village with no infrastructure. The bus stops of ul. Puławska are within easy walking distance, as is the local Lidl and Rossmann. For young families wanting to escape a block of flats, this should be ideal - a trend the pandemic is likely to reinforce. But just look at the mud!

Mud is a feature of edge-of-town Warsaw. Below: this is ul. Dumki - look it up on any map of the city. The authorities ought to either ban all motorised traffic (which churns it up) or get the street asphalted. But this is disgraceful. Note the white-green-white markers on tree and post, denoting a szlak turystyczny - tourist trail. Good luck with that!

UPDATE 16 January: It had to happen, didn't it... the same puddle as seen above, froze over a week later and got covered in snow; it lay in wait for a car to come this way - and it did. The driver abandoned it to seek help. Abandoned it in the middle of a Warsaw street, the one marked on your Google Maps app as leading from ul. Kórnicka to ul. Trombity.

Evening falls, and a train rushes south heading for Piaseczno. At least the rail infrastructure is sound.

Below: bonus photo from the recently-released orthophotographic map of Warsaw - this is the shadow of our house on ul. Trombity and the neighbours' house plus our gardens thrown onto the newly ploughed corduroy fields. Taken in April, before the trees came into leaf. 

This time last year:

The ultra-rich - deserving, or not

This time five years ago:
Globalisation and its part in PiS's return to power

This time six years ago:
UK overtakes France as the world's fifth-largest economy

This time ten years ago:
Wetlands winter meltdown

This time 11 years ago:
Winter's walk to work

This time 12 years ago:
Winter drivetime, Jeziorki North

Slippers, e-commerce and the local economy

Over the years, my personal preferences have narrowed down, I'm not tempted by novelty and buy what I know. Slippers. Since moving to Poland 23 years ago, I have always bought Polish-made sheepskin slippers. For winter, they are ideal, keeping the feet as warm as toast. My previous pair of slippers being on the point of expiry, I bought myself a new pair - and here's the novelty - I bought them online. 

Normally, I know where to find purveyors of góralskie (mountain-folk) produce, from slippers to oscypek cheese - they usually hawk their wares close to mainline railways stations. Not wishing to venture into town, I looked online, and found myself the exact pair (always one size smaller that usual, to ensure a tight, snuggly fit). Ordered on Saturday, they arrived this morning by courier. It feels so good to insert my feet into the soft tightness of a brand new pair of these slippers! The nearest thing your feet will experience to the sensation of stepping barefoot into a Rolls-Royce.

The manufacturer is Polish - Produkcja Pantofli i Galanterii BABA, in Łącko, a small town in the hills south-west of Nowy Sącz, more famous for its (illegal) śliwowica łącka, a home-distilled plum-based spirit that's 70% alcohol by volume. I am delighted that such traditional shoe manufacturers still prosper, and that e-commerce brings their products to my door without having to step into a pandemic. Or into the rain.

The slippers are identical in pattern to the traditional 'zakopianka' slipper. To keep their shape in storage and in transit, the slippers are traditionally stuffed rigid with sheepskin off-cuts, thus also solving the manufacturer's problem of waste disposal. Prices are higher than the pair I bought back in 2008 (44.75 złotys or £8.95 today, compared to 30zł in 2008 and 20zł in 1997). Incidentally, these can be bought online in the UK, where the same pair will set you back £30.

Slip Into Something More Comfortable

Here's the pair I bought in Kraków in 2008; another similar pair served me from 2013-19. The latest pair is my seventh since arriving in Poland in 1997.

"Now far away/In slipper'd ease"

I am the more delighted with these slippers, knowing that they are locally made in Poland using locally sourced materials, and not by eight-year-old Uyghurs in slave-labour camps in remote corners of Xinjiang province. And the delivery mechanism is also a matter of local pride...

I bought the slippers on e-commerce platform Allegro, a company listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange; they were delivered this morning by a courier from InPost, also listed on the WSE. I chose home delivery, but I could have also picked up my parcel from the local InPost paczkomat (parcel locker). I have ordered a new Panasonic beard trimmer from Allegro which should arrive at the paczkomat round the back of my local Lidl, 837m from home (it says). We shall see how that goes. The old Panasonic beard trimmer was bought 21 years ago and has finally given up the ghost.

This time last year:
The Inequality Paradox - Part I

This time two years ago:
From West London to South Warsaw

This time five years ago:
Anger and hate have no place in political discourse

This time seven years ago:
Is Conservatism rural or urban in nature?

This time eight years ago:
Poland's roads get slightly less deadly

This time nine years ago:
It's expensive being rich in Warsaw 

This time 11 years:
Winter commuting in colour and black & white

This time 12 years ago:
Zamienie in winter

This time 13 years ago:
Really cold (-12C at night)
[last night's low: +4C, up +2C on 2020.]

"communication/This is the gift you must not lose"

Another New Year, this one quite different to any I've experienced. Vaccine hope balances against the news that Covid-19 cases are once again rising at a fearsome pace. 

Another New Year, and so - resolutions. Over the years I am getting better, and stronger, but still feel guilt at time wasted, time spent on irrelevant or futile pursuits. It's far easier to stop doing things you shouldn't be doing than it is to actually do the things you should do. This is all under control. All the paces and press-ups - yes, that's working, but I'm doing those to keep body and soul together, in good form, for longer.

For why? What's the purpose of a longer life? It is to fulfil human potential. To observe, to discover, to share those observations and discoveries, to share insight, to seek truth and beauty through art, to hone one's philosophy of life. To write, take photographs, take notes, put it down for posterity. 

I must write more, communicate more. It is easy during these times of lockdown to "yawn/And be withdrawn/And watch the world go by". A spiral of not noticing lack of human contact until solitude becomes the default; a lack of engaging, intellectual conversations to expand new horizons - new ideas that build on existing ideas and stop them from getting entrenched. Fixed ideas are no good; stale thinking, repeating tired old nostrums, prevent us from reaching out towards an unfolding universe. 

Yet these are good times for isolation - technology gives us such marvellous tools - tools that we could not have imagined just 30 years ago. Having a Zoom call before Christmas with old friends in England was marvellous - obviously not a patch on being with them all in person, but an excellent substitute in these times. Twitter is good fun as well as being a replacement for TV news. But it can become a great time waster. Reading and writing is better. I currently have three books (on Blurb) on the go, for self-publishing. These days we can all publish, produce films, create art - the tools are at hand to everyone, the barriers of old have been torn down by technology. All that's needed is a voice and something to say. I'm belatedly getting there - I know where I'm going and what I want to say (eventually) - it's just a matter of Getting Round To It.

This year's Lent starts in six and half weeks, and being six and half weeks long, it's 13 weeks to Easter - a quarter of the year. An early Easter this year, falling on 4 April. As I did last year, I shall use the 46 days of Lent to examine in depth my spiritual development. There is a goal, I know I can do it. What starts in Lent has to expand to fill the rest of the year, crowding out the time wasted.

[Ah - a dream book has been initiated. Every morning after waking up, I shall spend a few minutes jotting down what I remembered from my dreams.]

This time last year:
Wealth and inequality - an introduction

This time two years ago:
Gratitude for a peaceful 2018

This time three years ago:
Fighting laziness - a perennial resolution

This time four years ago:
A Year of Round Anniversaries

This time five years ago:
Walking on frozen water

This time six years ago:
Fireworks herald 2015 in Jeziorki

This time seven years ago
Jeziorki welcomes 2014

This time eight years ago:
LOT's second Dreamliner over Jeziorki

This time ten years ago:
New Year's coal train 

This time 12 years ago:
Welcome to 2009!

This time 13 years ago:
Happy 2008!

Review of 2020: III. A year in numbers

How did this year look? The seventh consecutive year in which I have recorded health and fitness metrics daily. A useful exercise; planning for an active and healthy old age. 'Beat last year' remains the motto and the ongoing target.

Lockdown has hit the number of paces walked in the average day, although the number of minutes of moderate-to-high-intensity walking increased by an average of six minutes a day over last year; this metric having been introduced by my health app in August 2018. Incidentally, I walk faster in winter than in summer. Cold weather induces a quicker pace, and there are fewer photo stops along the way.

My press-up routine has changed to prioritise quality over quantity (focusing on a plank-straight back and neck, chest right down to the ground, then up to arms fully extended, rather than rapid cursory nods). 

Other than paces and number of press-ups, improvements all round. The reduced alcohol intake is a lockdown side-effect; some socialising over the summer, but far less than normal, and with zero socialising in early spring then late autumn/winter. And of course no alcohol at all during Lent (my 29th one in a row). The 15.5 units/week is still above Public Health England's guidelines of 14 units/week, but well below the old 28 units/week for men that was the standard in the 1990s.

Figures below are per day - for each and every one of the 366 days of 2020 (unless stated otherwise).

Measurable and manageable
	2014	2015	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020
Paces (daily average)	9.8k	10.7k	10.6k	11.0k	11.4k	12.0k	11.1k
Moderate to high  intensity (mins)	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	24	30
Alcohol drunk (units/week)	33.4	28.0	25.0	20.8	19.7	18.5	15.5
Dry days over course of year	94	123	155	186	196	198	208
Days with zero physical training	234	266	148	83	27	17	11
Press-ups/day	N/A	N/A	N/A	25	60	90	83
Pull-ups/day	N/A	N/A	N/A	2	7	5	11
Sit-ups/day	65	41	71	N/A	N/A	N/A	16
Sets of weights exercises/day	N/A	N/A	N/A	2.1	2.2	2.3	2.4
Plank time (min: sec/day average)	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	3:40	4:10
Portions fresh fruit & veg/day	N/A	4.3	5.0	5.2	5.3	5.4	6.1

Sit-ups have been reintroduced to the daily regime, as an adjunct to holding the plank, mainly to regain spinal flexibility rather than as the primary stomach-muscle exercise. Again, higher quality repetitions - back fully flat on the floor, then twist so that right elbow meets left knee, then left elbow meets right knee. My record plank-holding time was 4 minutes and 20 seconds; most days it's repetitions of one-and-half minutes for two or three times. Weights - one set = 10 x lateral rises, 10 x interior rotations, 10 x exterior rotations, with 5kg dumbbells. Pull-ups - up until chin meets bar, from position where forearms are parallel with the floor. 

Another lockdown bonus has been diet - more portions of fresh fruit and vegetables. Lunch in town all too often would be pizza, burger or Vietnamese food; eating at home means more greens. Spinach, leeks - and lots of cherry tomatoes. And being at home more means fewer lazy days in which I didn't feel inclined to do any exercises.

Fun Fact: since 1 January 2014, I have walked over 22,350km (13,500 miles).

Signing off for 2020, I'd urge all my readers to avoid complacency (subconsciously thinking "because last year/yesterday was good, next year/tomorrow will be good") and to be grateful for everything they have - mental health/state-of-mind, and physical health.

Postscript, 08:30 Saturday 2 January. I take blood pressure reading, first morning since early December. It remains optimal - 107/73 (average of three readings).

This time last year
2019 - a year in numbers

This time two years ago:
2018- a year in numbers

This time three years ago:
2017 - a year in numbers

This time four years ago:
2016 - a year in numbers

This time five years ago:
2015 - a year in numbers

This time six years ago:
Economic forecasts for 2014 - and 2015?

This time seven years ago:
Economic predictions for 2014

This time eight years ago:
Economic predictions for 2013

This time nine years ago:
Economic predictions for 2012

This time ten years ago:
Classic cars, West Ealing

This time 11 years ago:
Jeziorki 2009, another view

This time 12 years ago:
Jeziorki 2008, another view

This time 13 years ago:
Final thoughts for 2007

Review of the Year 2020: II. Investments

After all of last year's work on the działka and the purchase of the adjoining orchard, my investment priorities for this year were to fence the whole plot as one parcel of land, with a front wall along the length of the plot adjoining the road, with a gate and a drive. This was only partially achieved, given the pandemic. Firstly, I needed a geodeta (sworn or legal surveyor), to mark out the boundary between my new plot and the forest next door. I'd wanted to do this in late March; it happened in June. The next step was to remove the fencing along the east side of my original plot and move it 25 metres eastward along the now-legally delineated border with the forest. Planned for April/May, this finally happened in November, though there's no wall facing the road (only a wire fence) and no drive. All this waits for 2021.

Another fiasco this year was the solar panels; the government subsidies were withdrawn 11 days before the original deadline ('because money had run out') so there will be no 5,000 złotys to offset the 21,500 złoty investment for the installation of the ten panels. Electricity supplier Innogy Stoen Operator has yet to send an annex to the contract, despite changing the meter to a two-way one, meaning that we're still on the old tariff and paying normally for electricity.

Plans for next year? On the działka - the wall and the drive; the latter will mean removing four apple trees which stand in the way. Some landscape gardening will be in order too.

I have ordered and paid for a full set of roller-blinds for the house, not so much for the sake of security, more to do with keeping out early morning sunlight (midsummer sunrises at 04:15). Also on the cards - knocking down the wall between the two downstairs rooms (if structurally possible) and installing a spiral staircase to link the upstairs room with the downstairs rooms directly (at present, the stairs are outside).

Wilder fantasies/follies for the działka include my 18th century English pub... 

...and an Indian-style step-well, all the better to retain rainwater

Public investments are well documented on this blog, in particular the S7 extension from the airport down to Grójec and the LK8 Warsaw-Radom railway line that is now (almost) complete between Warsaw and midway point Warka. Fingers crossed for the projects' swift completion.

This time two years ago:
Exploration of a largely unknown Ealing

This three years ago:
Eric Ravilious
[Since then, the artist has found new audiences via Twitter]

This time five years ago:
Dark thoughts at 2015 comes to an end

This time six years ago:
Shots from the sky

This time seven years ago:
One-millionth of a zloty 

This time nine years ago:
Random year-end thoughts

This time ten years ago:
Beery litter louts

This time 11 years ago:
Miserable grey London

This time 12 years ago:
Parrots in Ealing

This time 13 years ago:
Xmas lites, Jeziorki

Review of the Year 2020: I. Covid

 A year unlike any other I have lived through. As my father, who survived the invasion of Poland in 1939, Nazi occupation, the Warsaw Uprising and prisoner-of-war camps, you can get used to anything. And so I have, lockdown, inability to travel, to socialise, to shop normally; I've got used to it by now. SARS-Cov-2 is still ripping through the global population, helped by dithering politicians, slack populations and complacency.

It didn't have to be like this, but it is.

Imagine an early lockdown in mid-March, all over the world. Swift, sharp and rigidly enforced. Fourteen days at home with just a handful of life-or-death exceptions permitted. Fourteen days later - Covid-19 is over; the virus dead - extinguished. The virus just died off, unable to infect new victims. Yes, there would have been a human cost to such a draconian lockdown - collateral damage - but by early April life could have returned to normal. The human cost would have been a drop in the ocean compared to what we are seeing around us today because the number of cases of Covid-19 in mid-March was a tiny fraction of what it is now. The global economy would have quickly rebounded, there would have been no new mutations to worry about, the death toll from Covid-19 would have fallen to zero before the end of May. Everything would have been back to normal by the summer of 2020.

Impossible, you say.

But this is exactly what has happened in communist China. One-fifth of mankind lives there; the last death from Covid-19 was reported on 17 May, the last of 4,634 deaths. In the third quarter of this year, China's economy grew by 4.6% compared to the same quarter of 2019. Back to work, no worries. [OK, communist leaders lie, but even if they were lying by a factor of ten, it's still impressive.]

Meanwhile, in the West, individualists declare their right not to wear masks, they deny a pandemic, they compare it to flu, they protest in the streets against lockdowns, carry on doing their own thing - and we're seeing new cases surging. 

As I wrote in early November, Poland, which had had an early and effective lockdown in mid-March, got complacent at the end of the summer holidays, schools and universities reopened and cases soared - in effect Poland's first wave - and deaths per million have since reached comparable levels to what the UK had suffered in April.

Our World in Data has great comparable graphs.

I'm keeping myself away from town (not having been in the office since 2 October). In the summer, it was almost back to normal; one week I visited the office three times, open-air dining was OK, I went on long motorbike rides. But from early October, it was evident that the good times were over. I stayed on my działka in Jakubowizna, overnighting as long as possible, weather-wise, before the cold and the dark set in. Compared to infection rates in Warsaw, gmina Chynów was a safer place to be.

Today, Poland is facing a pick-up in new cases after a slow-down in reporting over Christmas, while in the UK, the number of new cases per million is two-and-half times that in Poland. The only real hope is with the vaccines; how quickly they will be delivered is a test of the efficiency of a country's systems. This is the time when party politics, ideology and worldview (światopogląd) need to get out of the way. 

In the meanwhile, life goes on... Shopping at Lidl between 10 and 12 (for the over 60s only - after a visit from the police, the sight of younger shoppers there has become rarer), a daily walk avoiding people (especially the maskless) and no trips to town. Journeys to Jakubowizna by train are low-risk as I head away from town in the mornings and towards town in the evenings, so there's never more than a handful of people in the carriage. I wear two masks; a surgical mask over my nose and mouth, and a 'kominek' (snood) covering the mask. This hooks over my ears and covers my face and neck. (Wearing this, I was actually asked in Lidl whether I was indeed over 60 - I thanked the young asystenka for the compliment.)

Suitably attired - summer selfie, July 2020.

My first Christmas in Warsaw for many years... 17? I missed not seeing my brother and his family at their Derbyshire house, where I've spent Christmas Day certainly every year since starting this blog if not earlier. But we did manage a two-hour-long Zoom call. A partial answer to travel bans.

I can't say I long to travel right now. Rather, I long for summer, for long, hot, sunny days under a blue sky, borders open, and the ability to move about the continent as was once the case.

This time last year:
Last night in Ealing, twenty-teens

This time two years ago:
The Day the World Didn't End

This time five years ago:
Hybrid driving - the verdict

This time seven years ago:
Pitshanger Lane in the sun

This time 11 years ago:
Miserable, grey, wet London

This time 12 years ago:
Parrots in Ealing

This time 13 years ago:
Heathrow to Okęcie

Jakubowizna, moonrise kingdom

You choose your days; when the clouds part to leave a clear sky, the sun beckons, even though the air is frosty. In strict chronological order, on my walk from Chynów station back to the działka...

Below: Jakubowizna moonrise. The moon is to the right, just about visible. In the foreground, mud and beastly oomska, the result of the unfinished work by the station - this should shortly become the drive from the road to the newly-opened underground passage that leads to the platforms. The footpath there, at least, is ready.

Below: a neat and tidy village. I am reminded of my mother's remarks when visiting me on Polish scout camp in Honiton, Devon, in 1971. She observed that the farms in England were clean and well looked-after, the result of an economic system that rewards effort, based on the sanctity of private property. If she could see rural Mazovia today, she'd see that she was right. Having worked on a Soviet labour camp in her youth, her observations have a clear frame of reference.

I turn round through 180 degrees. This is the view looking back towards Chynów station, below; it's 20 minutes before sunset (which today is now seven minutes later than the earliest sunset). Dogs are barking furiously in every second farmyard; angry at being left out in the cold, they take their aggression out on every passing human.

Art by accident - how does one use a stencil to get this effect? The question is redundant, as this bus stop no longer functions as one. A lovely bit of design; album-cover material.

Below: moonrise at the Edge - this is the end of Jakubowizna, beyond lies Machcin II, straddling the road. Note the reflection of the setting sun in the basement window of the house to the left of centre. Seven minutes before sunset.

Machcin II. Note how far the moon has risen since the first photo (taken just 23 minutes earlier). Here, I turn left and head northward toward Grobice.

Below: time to head west and return... past the pollarded willows and wintering orchards. Rainwater in the puddles has frozen; crunching over the thin ice is eminently satisfying.

Clear skies, summer or winter, unleash the Sublime Aesthetic. Beauty that contrasts with the Dull or the Grim. My soul is alert to the wonders around me. Qualia, moments that will return, unbidden.

This time three years ago:

Rural sunlight, Derbyshire

This time six years ago:
Derbyshire in the snow

This time seven years ago:
Is Britain over-golfed?

This time nine years:
Everybody's out on the road today

This time ten years ago:
50% off and nothing to pay till June 2016