High summer in Chynów - storms, fruit and exercise.

This is a lovely photograph, taken around the corner from my działka, a few minutes after Saturday's sunset. Looking north from Chynów. Good to see local people exercising - quite a few cyclists, roller-bladers and Nordic walkers out at this time of day. 

Taken from the same place, at the same time - but with a totally different lens. Instead of a telephoto zoom at 300mm, a super-wide-angle zoom at 10mm. The red glow of the horizon a few minutes after sunset is all you get when zoomed in tight - but  rise above it, and then the sky gradually turns a deep blue. Nearly three weeks after the year's latest sunset, the day has lost just seven minutes in the evening; hardly noticeable - yet.

Friday's storm caught me briefly; there was trouble on the Radom line (it's still not right since the 28 June reopening); I jumped onto a Góra Kalwaria train that arrived at W-wa Jeziorki when a Radom train was due, which meant changing trains at Ustanówek (below). By the time I reached the shelter at the end of the platform, the downpour began - mercifully it turned into a regular rainfall by the time I emerged from the pedestrian tunnel in Chynów, and got home to the działka just slightly wet.

On Sunday the sun disappeared behind a bank of cloud on the north-western horizon, but a far more ominous one was heaving in from the south-east. Flashes of lightning occurring often; as I turned the corner, the downdraft from the rainstorm suddenly whipped up, tearing leaves off the trees. A good day's walking, 15,000 paces (compensating for a shortage of paces on the rainy Friday).

Taken from nearly the same point as the top photo, but looking the other way. I set off with the wrong camera; I had hoped to do some extreme zooms of the Warsaw skyline with my Nikon Coolpix P900. Sadly, the skyscrapers were hardly visible. When the storm approached, I was armed with the P900 (which does not do wide-angle well) and my phone. Neither is optimised for extracting subtlety from the heavens, nor capable of taking .NEF (RAW) files to work on in Photoshop for an accurate rendition of what I saw and felt. So - an approximation.

I got home from my walk about ten minutes before the heavens really opened. In the meanwhile, the sweet cherries that haven't been picked or eaten by the birds have rotted and fallen; the sour cherry season is getting into full swing, and I've been picking blackcurrants to make more nalewki. Current score - 11 jars of various size, enough for about three litres, once the secondary fermentation has been carried out. Plenty more to come - the classic wiśniówka next! It should also be a good year for blackberries, though the raspberries coming through are meagre and dry.

[Update 14 July - it's been like Groundhog Day this week; I wake up, open the roller blinds, the sun's shining in a cloudless sky. As the day goes on, the clouds build up to the east. As five o'clock comes along, the lid goes down on the laptop, I stroll out for blackcurrants. It's hot. I'm sweating as I pick the berries. To the east, the increasingly frequent claps of thunder from an ever-darker sky - to the west, the sun continues to shine, untroubled to cloud. A contest between east and west. Wind is blowing from the high-pressure area to the low-pressure area - a good sign, because it means the downdraft, caused by large volumes of water falling out of the clouds, is still a long way off. As I finish picking the blackcurrants, the wind starts to veer. The thunder and lightning become almost continuous; as I start climbing the gentle slope up towards my działka, there's no mistaking the downdraft. By seven, the storm reaches Jakubowizna. Lights on - it's dark outside. And yet sunset's nearly two hours away. Repeat the following day.]

Update 17 July - as I cross the tracks to pick blackcurrants, I'm passed by a group of six cyclists. Nice bikes, and cracking performance! No one whistling show-tunes here!

This time last year:
Summer wet and dry
[A pattern is emerging!]

This time three years ago:
Rainy summer Warsaw moods

This time six years ago:
Marathon stroll along the Vistula

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

This time eight years ago:
S2 update 

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

This time 11 years ago:
Up Śnieżnica

This time 14 years ago:
July continues glum (2007 - yet another rainy summer)

Altered states - higher planes

Our daily lives become routine; day in, day out, another week, month, year - the seasons pass, we grow older. But are we wiser? Are we growing in understanding? Living should all be about learning - always. Across all our endeavours. And yet, to quote Bruce Springsteen: "Some guys they just give up living/And start dying little by little, piece by piece" - we can see them all around us, the folks flopped out onto their couches to watch the football or the serials. Neither curious, not observing, not so much alive as existing.

Ultimately, we live to grow to unfold along with the Universe. There is Purpose. Our knowledge, understanding, wisdom are their own rewards, and this is what we should pursue. Sometimes pushing those boundaries takes away our peace of mind - we find new things that trouble us - and yet we must persist. Pushing beyond the comfort zone is the only way to grow.

I feel that the routine is about to grab hold of me and hold me down - and I must fight that feeling. Part of the routine is positive - the habits that help create a healthy mind in a healthy body. But there has to be a purpose for that healthy mind. It must constantly strive to reach ever higher levels of understanding. The negatives of routine need to be kept in mind. Repetition; going round and round in circles rather than rising in a spiral. You get round to that same point where you've already been - but feel you're no higher.

Part of my own problem is that I'm easily distracted - I must have done six or seven things, passed different thoughts through my head on different subjects - rather than Getting On With It and writing this post to the end. I should be writing this, not scrolling down Twitter or continuing to watch a YouTube film I started watching last night. Breadth vs. depth; generalist vs specialist. For me, I feel the depth and specialism will come with time, with age, hence my focus on staying healthy for as long as possible. Understanding is its own reward, but it takes - ooh, I've become distracted - I'm hungry - it's time for a sandwich.

Inability to focus on one task for any length of time means that I take longer to do them than otherwise - but then along the way, plenty of unintended influences pop up to make the journey more interesting (I note the obituary of Edward de Bono in last week's issue of The Economist - a champion of lateral thinking). 

Lateral thinking is one thing, but lifting the thinking to a higher - to the meta-level - is what's needed.

We all need to be able to transcend the here-and-now of Zoom meetings, mobile phones, credit-card balances, weather forecasts and breakfasts that set in.

Meditation makes sense here. Much scientific research has gone into the benefits that can be derived from meditating. These are said to include a state of relaxed awareness, stress relief, greater creativity and efficiency, as well as physiological benefits such as reduced risk of heart disease and high blood pressure.

It's not easy though. Last night I went to bed very early (around 22:00), dropped off quickly, then woke around 01:30, jotted down dreams (as usual), then went back to bed with the intention of meditating. But I couldn't focus! My mind was everywhere - not racing because of caffeine, just - scatty. This thought led to that thought - then onto another, then another... and then I fell asleep. Apparently, mantras help. Going 'om' all day long might work. I could always fork out $960 for a Transcendental Meditation course to learn the magic mantra. The answer is out there, I just have to look a bit harder.

We are biological beings, yet we must strive to rise up, rise above our mere biology and seek that higher state of mind.

Reaching those altered states - not out of boredom - but as part of a quest for understanding and wisdom, is a worthwhile goal. I've written before about alcohol - one should not drink 'empty units', but use alcohol as an accompaniment for social interactions, or to trigger more intense experiences, opening new pathways to creativity when you feel it may help. But never drink for the sake of intoxication.

In this context, meditation interests me - a natural way of losing the ego and rising above the day-to-day concerns of life, reaching a higher level of understanding.

This time five years ago:
Radom line modernisation, Czachówek

This time 11 years ago:
Ćwilin, conquered

This time 12 years ago:
Sunset across the tracks, Nowa Iwiczna

This time 13 years ago:
The storm the forecasters missed

This time 14 years ago:
Peacocks in the Park

Brooding, moody, sunsets

Rainy days usher in July. The sunset walk is obligatory. Big puddles, wet fields, rain drops on leaves, a fresh smell in the air. Warm enough for one layer and a shower-proof jacket in the rucksack. Off I go then. Photos from today, yesterday and Friday evening.

Below: Grobice, looking towards the DK 50, beyond lies the village of Sułkowice.

Below: Nowe Grobice, looking towards the DK 50. A magnificent sky, threatening more rain.

Below: on the DK 50 itself, Warsaw's current de facto ring-road, the transit route for trucks heading east-west between Germany and Russia. Saturday night, and the road's quiet for a while - until the next convoy of trucks hurtles through.

Below: further along the DK 50, in Nowe Grobice, the BP station; time for a hot-dog and a beer.

Below: ulica Miodowa ('honey street'), on the eastern edge of Chynów. Once, you could cross the railway line here, an ungated rural level crossing. Closed during the modernisation of the line. [Still shown as open on Google Maps; OpenStreetMap is more up-to-date.] Now, you have to do a 1.3km detour down to Jakubowizna and back up the other side before you can carry on along ul. Miodowa into Chynów. Click to enlarge - peer into the centre of this photo - it has a most evocative klimat.

Below: between Grobice and Jakubowizna, an impressionist sky.

Below: between Chynów and Sułkowice, a Warsaw-bound train passes the setting sun.

Below: bonus shot - the Sienkiewicz InterCity express links Olsztyn and Kraków once again through Warsaw and Radom. One pair of trains a day; these are currently the only trains not to stop in Chynów. The new timetable, introduced last week, sees two pairs of semi-fast services now cover the distance to Warszawa Zachodnia in a mere 35 minutes.

This time last year:
Town and country in summer

This time two years ago:

Across the Pilica to Strzyżyna

This time three years ago:
West Ealing to Castlebar Park - waiting for Crossrail

This time four years ago:
tRUmp flies into Warsaw

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

Getting our heads round UFOs

Friday 25 June came and went. The long-awaited report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to Congress about unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) recorded by the US military made it to the front pages of the world's news websites - but usually way down the front page. Top news in America was the sentencing of policeman Derek Chauvin to 22 and half years for the murder of George Floyd. 

Here, for example, is how the BBC covered the story:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57619755

So no great shakes. The world's stock markets didn't show the slightest wobble, the Pope didn't feel the need to address urbi et orbi from a Vatican balcony the following Sunday. Social media (other than hard-core UFO accounts) didn't explode into a frenzy of speculation.

Mankind took the news in its stride. Most of us just skimmed over the headline with a 'meh.' "UFOs? Something for the weirdos, the conspiracy theorists, the fantasists." The subject is not one that affects people's day-to-day lives - but neither does the knowledge that the earth orbits the sun, (and not the other way around), nor that dinosaurs used to walk the earth, nor that protons are made of two up quarks and a down quark.

But what exactly was the news? 

The US military has now openly admitted that it has recordings of unidentified physical craft that are not of any known human-made origin. And that these recordings, in many cases supported by observations of trained military personnel, go back to at least 2004.

To quote from the report: "Most of the UAP reported probably do represent physical objects given that a majority of UAP were registered across multiple sensors, to include radar, infrared, electro-optical, weapon seekers, and visual observation." Out of 144 cases investigated, only one was dismissed as a deflating weather balloon. The rest - they don't know.

What the US establishment is saying is this: "It's not our technology. But we also know that it's not China or Russia. Therefore, whatever it is is not a national security threat." 

For most of us, the news came and went, we choose not to know; we choose to remain comfortable with the familiar nostrums of classical Newtonian physics. Which are now starting to resemble the familiar nostrums of organised religions. 

As my brother pointed out the other day, in the 17th and 18th centuries, there existed side by side science, religion - and the occult. The latter being a rag-bag of beliefs in supernatural phenomena not supported by the rationality of science nor by the scriptures and doctrine of religion. Whittled down by the 20th century to oddball groups of spiritualists, Rosicrucians, astrologers, Freemasons, palm-readers and pagans, the occult (from the Latin - 'that which is hidden') has become a catch-all phrase that would include belief in alien visitors from other planets.

And here we are today in a situation where it looks increasingly likely that alien visitors (or at least their craft - they may well be drones) are present on planet Earth. The news has been skilfully defused, packaged, presented in a way that would not induce alarm, anxiety or mass panic in the streets. Detailed disclosure of exactly how much is known about these visitors is still a long way away - maybe generations away. As a species, we are simply not ready to handle the truth. We need to grow up, evolve, rise to a higher plane. Lose the anger, the hate, the barbarism that's still in our species' DNA.

In the meantime, we have lost an authority- science. It cannot explain the technology behind the UAP that the US military have been recording; our comfortable, rational worldview - with us human beings at the centre of it all - has been disrupted. 

How do these craft enter earth's atmosphere, drop from space through the sky into the ocean, fly without means of lift or visible propulsion, perform manoeuvres that would pull human-built craft to pieces? Science can but guess. Electromagnetic drives? Nuclear fusion? Anti-gravity? Worm-holes in space-time? Travellers from other dimensions? Parallel universes? Time travellers? Something to do with applications of quantum physics that we've yet to grasp? 

Science is clueless. Science, familiar and comforting, has suddenly become like the 'woo' that the rational community has been calling studies of supernatural phenomena. The debunkers and sceptics are looking pretty foolish continuing to dismiss recent evidence captured by the US Navy as 'old cameras', 'faulty software' or 'human misidentification'. Science has failed to explain what's going on in scientific terms, and all bets are off. You might as well consult the tarot, channel the departed or have your palm read as listen to a physicist trying desperately to dismiss the phenomena as mental aberrations, flocks of geese or lights of fishing boats reflected off clouds. All bets are on. Again.

Occam's razor has failed us all.

Suddenly any number of theories can be pursued - the occult becomes as relevant as science when it comes to explaining the Universe (except occultists can't build computers or produce RNA-derived vaccines, as scientists do). But in terms of understanding where we are vis-a-vis aliens, a new philosophy is called for that encompasses UAPs into everything we think we know already. An entirely new worldview is called for. A massive shift in our mindset. 

Not only are we not alone in the Universe (this Universe?) but our visitors/neighbours are far more advanced technologically than we are. The science, for which we have depended upon for our progress over the past four centuries, cannot explain how it functions.

Where do we seek answers now? Astrology? Spiritualism? New Age religions? Everything has suddenly become just as valid.

In one sense, there's nothing new here. UFOs have been observed and researched by secret government programmes since the late 1940s; it's time to delve once more into those incidents we read about as youngsters with a fresh perspective - maybe they weren't merely entertainment and modern folk stories and fairy tales - but they were indeed based in a reality that we are only beginning to come to terms with.

Example: the 1952 Washington, D.C. UFO incident.

This time three years ago:
Bristol-fashioned

This time four years ago:
The imminent closure of Marks & Spencer in Warsaw

This time eight years ago:
Along mirror'd canyons

This time ten years ago:
Mad about Marmite 

This time 11 years ago:
Komorowski wins second round of Presidential elections?

This time 12 years ago:
A beautiful summer dusk in Jeziorki

This time 13 years ago:
Classic cars, London and Warsaw

First half 2021 health

This is a difficult post for me to write - it seems at first sight that I have passed the peak of my physical strength, and the inevitable decline into old age beckons. As regular readers of this blog will have read, since 1 January 2014, I have kept a daily record of physical activity, diet and alcohol intake. My motto here has been 'beat last year'. To increase strength, endurance, suppleness, I exercise. This year I added squats and back extensions to the daily regime of push-ups, pull-ups, sit-ups, weights and plank.

First half of 2021, and I can boast that I drank 11% less alcohol than in the first half of 2020 (average of 10.2 units per week compared to 11.5 units per week last year). In the context of Public Health England's recommended weekly intake of 14 units, this looks like neo-Mormonism - but the first half of each year takes in the month-and-half of Lent and total abstinence. Still, I'm on target for the 14 units by the end of the year. I can also boast a few more sit-ups than I achieved in H1 2020 and more minutes of  medium-to-high intensity walking (34 minutes 40 seconds average per day in H1 2021) than last year (26 minutes average per day in H1 2020).

The rest - less good. The year started off well - and then in mid-March I was knocked out by a mystery ailment that robbed me of get-up-and-go for six days - no walking, no exercising. Was it Covid? If so, almost asymptomatic (no coughing, shortness of breath, no headaches, no fever - just an inexplicable fatigue.) And I never got back to the tough regime that traditionally hits its peak in Lent.

It's about physical strength - but also it's about strength of will. The will to keep on keeping on. Looking at the year-end targets, I can see that I am able to hit all, beating last year in all areas except two - paces and push-ups. I should be able to beat last year for less drinking, more fresh fruit & veg, planks, pull-ups, sit-ups and weights - but only if I don't slacken the pace over the summer. As I wrote, summer is for taking it easy; one is physically lazier, more focused on enjoying the sunshine than working out. I am on target by the end of this year - but only if I don't start taking it easy.

Blood pressure higher at the end of this June than in previous years - something I put down to overwork and less exercise (see above). 30 June readings - 2021: 127/87; 2020: 110/84; 2019; 111/81; 2018: 112/79; 2017 134/97 (!). Creeping up there - one to watch. Still, the result from four years ago shows that it can be brought down naturally. Throughout the spring, my readings were generally 'optimal', around 119/79. Have to aim for that.

This time two years ago:
Classic Volgas, Ealing and Ursynów

This time three years ago:
Memory and Me

This time five years ago:
Sticks, carrots and nudge - a proposal

This time six years ago:
London vs. Warsaw pt 2: the demographic aspects

Thoughts occasioned by the picking of fruit

Along with the wild strawberries, the cherries on my działka are now ripe for picking. I must point out that these are czereśnie (Prunus avium) rather than wiśnie (Prunus cerasus - sour cherry), Up into the tree I go for the first time this year. Last June, during Ladder Week at Lidl, I bought a super aluminium ladder (made in Germany) for around 260 złotys (around £50), which extends my reach into my fruit trees considerably, but is still nowhere near high enough for me to get into the tops of my two cherry trees. And so, I have to reconcile myself to the fact that any fruit more than 3.5m off the ground will be either eaten by the starlings, or will rot and fall. So - cherry picking is restricted to low-hanging fruit, to use two well-worn business metaphors. 

Below: a half-kilo punnet (left over from tomatoes bought at Biedronka) filled with cherries. This lot took around 20 minutes to fill; filling the punnet with a similar amount of wild strawberrys took an hour and 40 minutes.

Unlike the wild strawberries, which will all go into nalewki, the cherries are to be eaten and enjoyed on the day. Sour cherries (wiśnie) go to make wiśniówka; they are too sour to eat raw, and need the addition of sugar to be palatable in any form. Czereśnie contain 50% more sugar naturally, so don't need a boost. Not being into cakes or pies, I'll eat my cherries off the tree, after washing.

Fragaria vesca, wild strawberries - poziomki - are something very special. They are tiny, weighing around 2g. (Commercially grown strawberries weigh around 15g.) They are fragrant - and fragile. To pick them, you need to get down. Down and dirty. Down among the buglife. Fragaria vesca shares the ground with Urtica dioica (stinging nettle) and Ixodes ricinus (tick). At the micro-level, the earth smells different - I am reminded of my first Polish scout-cub camps in Gloucestershire in the mid-1960s. Fingers have to coordinate with eyes to nip between the foliage to extract the fruit.

While picking, I listen to the birdsong. It is staggeringly good. Such wonderful voices, trilling, chirping, tweeting, calling to one another in short bursts, or longer fragments that evidently contain some kind of syntactical structure. What one species of bird makes of the song of another species is beyond me - but evidently there's consciousness at play here, and some elementary form of understanding. And indeed, joy and gratitude.

Importantly, my fruit is not sprayed with insecticide or herbicide. Some will have gone off because of infestation from fly or fungus, but there's still many, many more that are untouched and perfect.

The strawberries were less evident last year, but grew profusely in 2019; two-year cycles seem common. So I'm not expecting a bumper crop next year. I do hope, however, that the five or six wild-strawberry patches will expand naturally. They make for the ideal ground cover.

I look forward to another week or two of cherries and wild strawberries before their season ends. Sour cherries will be coming soon - more business for Poland's spirytus rektyfikowany distilleries! Having paid 54zł for the last two bottles of Spirytus Lubelski, I can see prices are soaring - before the pandemic, a half-litre cost 42zł at Lidl. Useful stuff. Antiseptic, hand-wash, gargle for sore throat (diluted 2:1), spirytus is magical stuff, so I can see why the prices have risen!

This time last year:

First half of 2020 - health in numbers

[Will cover this topic soon.]

This time two years ago:
First half of 2019 - health in numbers

This time three years ago:
Key Performance Indicators - health - first half 2018

This time four years ago:
Three and half years of health and fitness data

This time five years ago:
First half of 2016 health & fitness in numbers

This time six years ago:
Venus, Jupiter - auspices

This time seven years ago:
Down the line from York

This time eight years ago:
Cider - at last available in Poland

This time nine years ago:
Despondency on Puławska

This time ten years ago:
Stalking the stork

This time 12 years ago:
Late June lightning

Midsummer photo catch-up

 A busy week at work, too much to do, too little time, so here's some of last week's best photos.

Below: from Zamienie, a view down ulica Starzyńskiego - Dawidy Bankowe, Warsaw's skyline beyond, and in between, a LOT Polish Airlines Boeing 787 Dreamliner about to land at Okęcie airport.

With Warszawa Główna station now open, the area around ul. Towarowa is experiencing a renaissance. The Nocny Market, below, is back to life as the pandemic eases - the old Dworzec Towarowy (goods station) repurposed as a street-food venue a few years ago. To see how the place looked before trendification, click here.

Below: the best display of mammatus clouds I've seen for over 14 years, hanging pendulously over Krakowskie Przedmieście. Click here for another magnificent display.

Below: Bez komentarza.

Below: ul. Puławska after the deluge; a hot, wet summer's night, lights reflecting from the pavement. A 35 tram at ul. Wałbrzyska stop, nearing its destination - Wyścigi.

Car sharing is another reason why owning a car makes less and less sense. Not only can you share a wide range of cars and vans, you can also share a 'retro', like this Zaporozhets ZAZ-968, dating back to the late 1970s. Good to see it still on the road, being enjoyed!

This time last year:
Stormy high summer

This time two years ago:

The opening of the Raffles/Europejski hotel, Warsaw

This time five years ago:
The ballad of Heniek and Ziutek

This time six years ago:
Yorkshire's yellow bicycles

This time 11 years ago:
Horse-drawn in the Tatras

This time 12 years ago:
Rain, wind and fire

This time 13 years ago:
The Road beckons

Wild food in Midsummer

Midsummer on the działka - the joy of sunshine, nature is just beginning to bring forth its bounty. By the roadside grows the sorrel, a leafy weed familiar to all Poles as szczaw, the acidic tang that gives zupa szczawiowa its character. Sorrel has a short picking season, from late-May to mid-June, it needs to be harvested before it grows too high and goes to seed; the leaves then become tough and fibrous. Sorrel has arrowhead-shaped leaves that are easy to spot among other roadside weeds, it grows in clumps and is easy to harvest.  [Note the ox-eye daisies in the background.]

As well as being the basis for one of Poland's classic soups, it also tastes good in salads. For me, however, it goes into a lentil curry. Rinsed thoroughly of dust, cut width-wise into strips, it goes into a shallow pan with pre-boiled lentils, it soon turns into an olive-drab khaki colour after a minute or two boiling. I add piri-piri chili peppers for heat, some Indian spices, goats cheese, Halloumi or chickpeas for protein, and serve with Basmati rice. Sorrel has high amounts of oxalic acid, which can give rise to kidney stones if eaten in large amounts. And this is why dairy products (cream or cheese - or indeed egg) are used to whiten the soup or stew or salad - to take the edge off the acid.

Below: a plate of lentil and sorrel curry with chickpeas and rice. Takes about 25 minutes to prepare.

This is also the time for poziomki (Fragaria vesca, wild or woodland strawberries). These are tiny and require intensive work to harvest. They have a specific perfume and taste, and simply guzzling them by the handful after spending an age picking them makes little sense.

I am making nalewka poziomkowa. Fill a jar with the tiny berries, pour in 95% spirytus rektyfikowany to cover the fruit, screw lid on tight, leave for four to six months, pour off the liquid into bottles, add sugar to the berries (sparingly - 10% sugar/90% drained fruit) and leave to ferment for another couple of months. Drain the berries again, add the fermented liquid to that bottled from the first fermentation. Ready(ish) to drink around Christmas, but better to leave for another month or two after unifying the results of the first and second fermentation. Easy really. The result should be sublime in taste, smell and colour (a rosé pink). And about 55% alcohol by volume. The hard part is picking them. There's about 150g collected in the punnet below - it was about half an hour's work.

The results of the first harvest in the cellar. Five jars, none of them large; I expect to make around two half-litre bottles of the finished liqueur from the contents, once the fruit has been drained for secondary fermentation with sugar added. Unlike the sorrel, which has now gone to seed, the wild strawberries will still be pickable for a week, maybe two, so I hope to step up production of wild strawberry liqueur.

While picking the sorrel and the wild strawberries, I listen to the birdsong. They're clearly not just signalling readiness to mate or warning their flock of some impending threat - these are conscious beings communicating. I rather fancy that they are commenting the local events of the moment to each other, sharing the qualia, the subjective conscious experience. One burst of song suddenly and acutely reminded me of the garden in our family house in West Ealing in the summer of 1970 or '71, just after we'd moved in - a species of bird, I figured, that has long disappeared from the suburban gardens of London, but is still here in rural Mazovia.

This time last year:
Summer Solstice at a Time of Pandemic

This time six years ago:

Ahead of the storm

This time eight years ago:
Fashionable bicycles for Warsaw's hipsters

This time nine years ago:
On Jarosław Gowin and leadership in Polish politics

This time ten years ago:
Death of a Polish pilot

This time 11 years ago:
Doesn't anyone want to recycle my rubbish?

This time 12 years ago:
End of the school year

This time 13 years ago:
Midsummer scenes, Jeziorki