Qualia compilation 6 - Coventry

I spent two years living in Coventry as a student, both times in the southern suburb of Earlsdon. My first year at Warwick University - my first time living away from home - was spent off-campus, a more 'authentic' experience than the cloistered island of academia. Coventry at the time (1976) was a fading industrial city, its motor-car factories by then in terminal decline. A city with its mediaeval heart bombed out by the Luftwaffe and replaced by a modern 'precinct', the post-war centre of Coventry interested me not.

Although I rambled far and wide during my four student years (the other two being spent on campus from which I'd roam south into the Warwickshire countryside), there are two specific memories of Coventry that flash back to me from time to time, more strongly than any other memories of the city. [My rural Warwickshire memories are dominated by flashbacks from the area around Catesby, but that's a separate story.]

The first Coventry qualia flashback relates to my discovery of the old gasworks on the Foleshill Road. They have long since been demolished, the site of the Coventry Arena. But in the late 1970s, the place was derelict; production of gas from coal had ceased, and the site, sprawling over many acres, was largely abandoned. There were some Gas Board offices still functioning, I recall. But - as was common at the time - nothing was closed off, there were no security guard patrols, I could just wander in and stroll around. The site was criss-crossed with railway sidings, above them high towers made of steel frames that once held aloft powerful lights to enable night-time operations. It was an overcast and cold day in early spring 1977 (or possibly '79); I decided to climb up one of these towers, all of which still had ladders attached to them. The structure was rusty, and creaking as I climbed ever higher; as I got nearer the top, the wind strengthened, and the tower began to sway gently, groaning as it did so. I caught fright and decided to climb back down as quickly as possible!

That industrial atmosphere, late afternoon, early evening, the gloomy sky, deserted railway sidings, a complex of abandoned brick buildings at the edge of the site; chimney stacks that no longer belched smoke - the atmosphere was there. Urbex before its time.

That atmosphere comes back to me unbidden every now and then. At the time I was there, it felt so familiar - but why? There's a link to the Hanwell flashbacks that I wrote about in my previous post; Bricktorian Britain, industry at the city's edge, steam and steel, iron and coal, grime and rust under leaden skies. 

The other memory I can put a more precise time - it was just before Easter in 1977, which Google informs me was on 10 April that year. I had at that time a large Scalextric model racing track (bought second-hand); in the western suburbs of Coventry there was a shop that supplied accessories for slot-cars, so off I went. It was one of those days when spring was in the air, bright with single clouds hurrying across the sky, although it was still quite cold. Unlike my gas works visit, where I could identify the place on an old map but don't remember the precise time, here I can't quite identify where it was - Binley Road? Walsgrave Road? I seem to remember a bridge over a railway cutting, but old maps show bridges over both of these roads (the railway's long gone now, replaced by a road, I see). But the atmosphere, I recall in flashbacks of qualia memory. Again - the brickwork, Victorian brick all around, but with tacky 1970s updates - shop facades in orange and purple, with-it fonts, bells that rang when you pushed the door open, streets full of Ford Cortinas, Austin 1100s, Vauxhall Vivas, Hillman Avengers and Triumph Heralds - the latter two locally built. It was the weather that brings back this scene; at least once or twice a year, the sky, the temperature, the wind - conjures up a day - not a special day by any means - but one that stuck in my memory. A time of change.

The role of consciousness in time, and time in consciousness, is something that I shall write about soon.

This time two years ago:
Masterpiece for the digital age
[No wall yet - no builders; solar panels instead]

This time three years ago:

Johnson, Trump, civilisation and good behaviour

This time five years ago:

Laughin' just to keep from cryin'

This time nine years ago:

Modlin Airport open day, just ahead of its inauguration 

This time ten years ago:

Along Austro-Hungary's strategic railway

This time 11 years ago:

Gone is the threat of Państwo Smoleńskie

This time 12 years ago:

Get on your bike and RIDE!

This time 13 years ago:

Moles in my own garden

Qualia compilation 5 - Hanwell

Growing up in Hanwell, my childhood topography was delineated by the Uxbridge Road to the north and Boston Manor Road to the west. The former - into West Ealing and the shops. The latter - across the road and into Elthorne Park, beyond which ran the railway line and the Grand Union Canal. Trumper's Way connects Boston Manor Road to the canal; the railway, which ran from Southall to Brentford. As a child, my mother forbade me to go beyond Elthorne Park, which made that which lay out there all the more alluring. 

Until I was eight and had eye surgery, I had a strong squint which affected my distance vision. As a result, I could not see the far end of Elthorne Park clearly; I somehow felt it stretched out west all the way to America. The M4 motorway had not yet been built; Windmill Land and Osterley Park were out of sight. 

For my tenth birthday, I received a big boy's bike - a Hercules Jeep, 24" wheels but no gears. Once the mudguards, chain guard and saddlebag were removed, I had a decent mount on which I could bomb down Trumper's Way and ride along the canal towpath (don't tell my mum!). All of a sudden, my horizons were expanded and I could explore territories further afield. A canal-side warehouse, a great looming shed, triggered anomalous qualia memories, especially at dusk, as did the walled-off towers of St Bernard's mental hospital - the former County Asylum. Images of late Victorian/Edwardian England, more the Midlands than the Home Counties.

Another part of Hanwell, just over a mile from home that clicked with my imagination is what's now the Hanwell Community Centre, but was once the Central London District Poor Law School (whose most famous former pupil was Charlie Chaplin). Again, at dusk, towards the end of the school summer holidays, this would be a place with atmosphere, its clock tower and brick structure rising above Cuckoo Park.

In between the two stands Isambard Kingdom Brunel's Wharncliffe Viaduct, spanning the Brent Valley. I recall playing with friends in Churchfields recreation ground to the north, one late summer's evening and watching a works train crossing the viaduct, grey and ghostly.

These places flash back to me in my memory still, living a thousand miles away - and indeed I've not been back there for over two years now. Spirit of place is strong; it lingers, it becomes part of one's consciousness. Part of personality, an intrinsic part of who you are, wherever you are - whenever you are.

In the same way that I have been experiencing anomalous-memory flashbacks all of my life, I am certain that some future incarnation of my consciousness will have flashbacks to Hanwell in the 1960s.

[Some photos from my childhood Hanwell in this post from 2015]

This time last year:
Brooding, moody sunsets

This time two year ago:
Town and country in summer

This time three years ago:
Across the Pilica to Strzyżyna

This time four years ago:

West Ealing to Castlebar Park - waiting for Crossrail

This time five years ago:
tRUmp flies into Warsaw

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

Summertime dreamland

When the sun beats down on pine trees, they emit a specific scent... one that conjures up for me hot days by the seaside in France, or by the conifer screen in my parents' garden on Cleveland Road. Below: the wood at the top of the track between Jakubowizna and Machcin II. Out where the pines grow wild and tall. No plague of insects (so far) this summer; very pleasant walking, filled with qualia memories snapping back, congruent and clear.

Below: I wrote recently about the importance of familiarity - this holds true of landscapes. Summers in Jakubowizna remind me both of Sandy Lane, Oxshott Common, Surrey, which my family would often visit throughout my childhood, and of Stella-Plage in northern France, venue for several summer holidays in the 1960s and '70s. The mix of deciduous and coniferous trees growing on sandy soil is very Oxshott Common, the pines in the sand on a hot day very Pas de Calais. Qualia memories, nostalgia.

Below: one of my many beloved spots; where the forest (above) gives way to orchards on the track that leads from Machin II to Jakubowizna, the back way.

Below: exactly three months earlier: 3 April, exactly the same spot. Note the difference in leaf cover and consequent increase in shade.

The earth progresses around the sun with an axial tilt of 23° from vertical; without that tilt there would be no seasons. If, like the moon - which always has the same side facing the earth as it orbits us - the earth didn't spin, one half of our planet would be in perpetual daylight, the other half in perpetual darkness. Something to ponder as I watch the earth spinning back away from the sun, below, its rays colouring the underside of the cloud cover.

I have a little circuit around the locality which I love to ride on sunny evenings, with the intent of catching the qualia of mid-1950s rural America. Catching sight of my shadow on the road is a powerful emotion. Lived this before - but not in West London.

Fruit note: cherries are later this year than last year, and are rather small. Same goes for wild strawberries - earlier in the spring, I thought there'd be masses of them, as new plants have propagated nicely. However, the dry spring has meant less ground water, less moisture wicked up into the fruit. So indeed there are many wild strawberries - but most of them are tiny. Ripe, but tiny. I estimate I'll have gathered half the amount I did last season. We'll see. Biedronka charging 54.99 złotys for a half litre of spirytus rektyfikowany (95% alcohol by volume), compared to pre-pandemic price of 39.99 złotys, so there will be less poziomkówka or wiśniówka than in previous years!

This time last year:
Getting our heads around UFOs

This time four years ago:
Bristol-fashioned

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

This time nine years ago:
Along mirror'd canyons

This time 11 years ago:
Mad about Marmite 

This time 12 years ago:
Komorowski wins second round of Presidential elections?

This time 13 years ago:
A beautiful summer dusk in Jeziorki

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

Looking forward to the four-day working week?

Ever since the Industrial Revolution, the working week has been getting shorter. Six days of ten hours have gradually given way to five days of eight hours. The likelihood of a four-day working week is getting closer. The global experience of a pandemic and remote work/working from home has accelerated a trend that was becoming apparent in recent years - the impending demise of the nine-to-five, Monday-to-Friday routine.

Last month a trial was launched in the UK, embracing 70 firms and 3,300 employees. They are testing a model called "100-80-100". It looks like this: you receive 100% of your salary; you work for just 80% of your current time, but you commit to deliver 100% of your erstwhile productivity. The outcomes from the trial, which spans different sectors of the economy, will be carefully studied (though there's no control group, so reference will be with historical performance). It will be a balance between output, efficiency, customer satisfaction on one hand; staff satisfaction and staff retention (a big issue) on the other.

On Wednesday, we held a seminar on the subject in Warsaw, with experts from CBRE (world's largest real-estate agents), recruitment firm Hays and the Polish offices of Magic Circle law firm, Linklaters. Interest was such that people (mainly head of HR) were standing at the back of the room, despite extra chairs being brought in. 

The subject is fascinating, because it applies to everyone - employer, employee, customer, client, consumer - voter - a change like this will touch the life of one and all. But equally? A long weekend would be fine. But as consumers, we're getting accustomed to a 24/7 lifestyle - if you want pizza and beer at 2am, someone will have to prepare the order and someone else will have to deliver it.

Will Thursday be the new Friday? Most likely. Some people will want Monday off, some rare folk will happily swap Friday for a Wednesday off. 

This excellent Alex cartoon from earlier this year (it's so cleverly done - you need to be aware of what the British mean when they say "see you next Tuesday") holds some important truths. A short office week is seen as a luxury, a perk, a status symbol...

Returning to work after a break requires a bit of readjustment. The longer off work, the longer the readjustment. In the 1970s and '80s, there existed the concept of a 'Wednesday car' - one that rolled off the production line midweek, when factory workers were most focused on their job, and not re-living the weekend or looking forward to the next one. (Gone now - Total Quality Management, Six Sigma and robots put paid that.) But there's still something there... Hands up who would willingly hold a conference or seminar or workshop on a Monday or a Friday?

So in the medium term - in a perspective of five to ten years, the four-day working week is almost certain - in corporations at least. But how about the public sector? Will the legally obligatory '30 days to reply' stretch out to 40, or will calendar days still count? Will government offices be open on Fridays? How about shift workers? People ensuring essential cover for our 24-hours-on economy? Will their working week also be cut back to 32 hours - but different hours to the vast majority of office workers? 

Parkinson's Law famously states that work expands to fill time time allotted to it. A four-day working week (assuming the 100/80/100 model) will mean cramming in five day's work into four days. Doable? Cut out all the chats over the coffee machine, the cigarette breaks, the sneaky peaks at your social media account, the sheer time spent not working - and a lot can be done. The notion of a 'power hour' of intensive, focused effort proves that effectiveness is a mind-over-matter thing, a question of self-discipline. If the reward for that effort is a weekend extended by 50% - then many employees will judge that the effort is indeed worth it. If work expands to fill time allotted to it, cutting that time may indeed make that work more productive.

But are we all happy working? The 80/80/80 model - a pay cut, a shorter working week and lower output - may also make sense to people who are already financially comfortable and don't feel the need to push themselves for the money. The stress of having to be 20% more productive generates cortisol, the 'fight-or-flight' hormone that has a negative long-term effect on the human body. Younger people whose biggest financial challenge is to buy (or rent) a roof over their heads may feel up to taking on that challenge. But values are changing. The desire to consume in order to show off is in decline; fewer young people want to do a job they hate to buy things they don't need to impress people they don't like. Consumerism is being eroded by more elevated motives; the notion of living to work is being replaced by the notion of working to live.

How about my working life? I offer a different model to 100/80/100. I keep no timesheets, I work at my own pace. During the working day, I'll close my laptop for an hour and half and go for a walk, or go shopping, or a have an extended lunch, or a nap. But if stuff needs to be done, it gets done; if there's a deadline, if something's urgent, it gets done quickly. I'm contactable. But I'm not one for 'pro-activity' - for me a term that suggests selling people things they don't need (like membership when it's clear they can't benefit from it). You think I'm lazy? When necessary, I'll work Saturdays and Sundays, and that's quite often. I'll work until late into the evenings, again, when needed, usually because I've chosen to do my own thing between 9am and 5pm. I've not had a summer holiday since 2014, so I tend to hold the fort in July and August. I enjoy my work, feel a sense of duty, loyalty and commitment to the BPCC (20 years in September!), to its members, and above all to my colleagues - who know they can trust me to get things done just as I know I can trust them. My pay reflects the value placed upon it - not hours. So for me, the notion of 'work-life' balance is meaningless; work is one of those things I do because they interest me and I find them fulfilling. My work is as much an enjoyable hobby as blogging or walking, but it's the one that pays the bills.

A society-wide change to a four-day working week would not affect the way I work. I prefer to work extensively than intensively.

This time last year:
First half 2021 health

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

This time four years ago:
Memory and Me

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

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

Summertime, and the living is lazy

When it's hot and humid, the will to exercise diminishes. This is clear when I look at my walking. I'm still walking the paces (still averaging 11,000 a day, winter and summer) but I am doing them more slowly, without vigour, pausing frequently to take photos. In fact, in summer, there are more longer walks, in winter the walks are more energetic (the more so that I now have Nordic walking poles). Plus it's dark for most of the time, so less photography.

A similar graph can be drawn spanning all my other daily exercise routines. Start the year with good intentions, hammer away at the pull-ups, sit-ups, planks etc; as summer begins to set in, there's less determination, more excuses for inactivity (the chief one being "it's summer - you deserve it"). Then as the evenings start drawing in again, I get back into the swing of pushing myself harder once again.

It seems inevitable. Summer is the time for letting go a bit - for relaxing, taking it easy (or at least easier). Not for giving up altogether, but for acknowledging that there's a time to push oneself and a time to reap the rewards. And not feeling guilty about it!

I have taken one step to ensure less excuses for summertime laziness - I have invested in a pull-up bar and a pair of 5kg weights for the działka. Looking at my spreadsheet numbers, I can see that I am on track to beat last year across nine out of my ten categories (drinking less alcohol, eating more fruit and veg, walking more paces/and at moderate- and high-intensity, plus seven sets of exercises - with one exception - press-ups. These are clearly in decline.  Yet there have been fewer days of zero exercising in the first half year of 2022 than in any previous first half. 

Full results, as always (barring any unforeseen health issue or accident!) at the end of the year. A time to feel gratitude, stave off complacency and pray for health, and luck.

This time last year:
Thoughts occasioned by the picking of fruit

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

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

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

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

This time seven years ago:
Venus, Jupiter - auspices

This time eight years ago:
Down the line from York

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

This time ten years ago:
Despondency on Puławska

This time 11 years ago:
Stalking the stork

This time 13 years ago:
Late June lightning

Consciousness, space and time

I believe that we are getting closer to a new paradigm that will completely overturn mankind's current views of both science and spirituality; a new way of looking at the Cosmos that will hopefully bring the two worldviews closer together.

In much the same way that the scientific method and rationalism replaced alchemy, the Hermetic tradition and Gnosticism as repositories of Western explanation of the physical worlds, the new paradigm will replace materialism as the dominant perspective.

Over the past three and half centuries, science has brought us great advancement in terms of technology and living standards. And yet it has failed to explain the spiritual world that so many of us intuitively feel. Not only has it failed to explain metaphysical phenomena, it actively states that they don't exist. For all its benefits, science hasn't (for example) explained the leap from non-life to life, or what happened before the Big Bang; or why the Universe is expanding at an accelerating rate (dark matter and dark energy have had to be devised, neither of which have been observed); nor can it reconcile General Relativity with quantum mechanics. And above all, science cannot solve the Hard Problem of Consciousness.

There is a materialist-reductionist view of  consciousness, that it's merely an emergent property of matter (atoms joined to form molecules, which formed proteins - life then (somehow) appears and evolves to become more and more complex, and in the most complex of brains - found only in Homo sapiens and perhaps a few more higher-order species -  the phenomenon of consciousness eventually manifests itself - a product (presumably, again unproven by science) of neurons firing within the brain.

Today, a growing body of researchers and thinkers rejects this view, saying instead something that has hitherto been unthinkable - it is not consciousness that could not exist without space and time ('spacetime'), but it is spacetime that could not exist without consciousness. In other words, consciousness creates spacetime, and not the other way around.

Consider your experience of consciousness - it is a phenomenon central to the very essence of you being yourself. Materialism would say that such consciousness exists only within the skulls of sentient beings - and the only ones we know of in the entire Universe are on our planet.

Can you envisage consciousness (such as the very consciousness that you experience) as a property unique to eight billion people in a Universe that's 93 billion light years across? My intuition is that consciousness is everywhere, filling what we perceive to be spacetime.

But in what manner? Is consciousness granular, measured in discrete units down at the Planck level, a property of matter alongside mass, charge and spin, or is it even more fundamental than that - the ocean in which all matter swims, as it were? Are our individual consciousnesses nodes somehow connected in a Universal network, or web, or lattice, or grid? 

Panpsychism - the notion that every thing is conscious - right down to the subatomic particle - is also gaining in popularity. I should say here 'returning to intellectual respectability', for panpsychism has a long tradition with roots in Ancient Greece, India and across the Far East. 

More and more scientists and philosophers are prepared to step away from the old certainties of materialist reductionism. Central to materialist reductionism is the notion that matter - and only matter - exists in space and time, with consciousness is an illusionary epiphenomenon that somehow emerged from that matter.

But there is a long, long way to go before science, philosophy and religion get anywhere close to agreeing about the true nature of consciousness.

Two short videos with the (ever-sceptical) Robert Lawrence Kuhn - the first is with Harvard neurology professor, Rudolph Tanzi. The fact that this is a Harvard neurology professor speaking is mind-blowing.

...and with philosopher David Chalmers, famous for framing what's known as the 'hard problem of consciousness'

This time last year:
Midsummer photo catch-up

This time two years ago:
Stormy high summer

This time three years ago:

The opening of the Raffles/Europejski hotel, Warsaw

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

This time seven years ago:
Yorkshire's yellow bicycles

This time 12 years ago:
Horse-drawn in the Tatras

This time 13 years ago:
Rain, wind and fire

This time 14 years ago:
The Road beckons

Warsaw: midsummer's day, midsummer's night

Midsummer's Day - the middle of summer, or the astronomical start of summer? A busy day in town today, to the office, a conference call, a trade workshop, an economic conference and a business mixer. On my way from the workshop to the conference, I walked along ulica Prosta, popping through the completed Norblin complex (which I last visited before work here started in earnest). Below: looking towards Norblin from the plaza outside the mBank building.

Below: walking along Pasaż Ludwika Norblina. Quiet for the time of day. But it's so nice - a blend of old brick and modern architecture.

Below: looking back at the mBank building along Pasaż Ludwika Norblina. A stone's throw from where my father lived as a small child.

I wrote recently about pre-war German ghost signs in Silesia, here's a sign from Poland's more recent Stalinist past - a health and safety slogan from the early '50s by the look of the typeface that was uncovered during the reconstruction and preserved. 'On each job, take care not only of your own safety, but also equally of your work comrades.'

Below: from the 32nd floor of the Warsaw Unit, looking east along ul. Prosta (lit. 'Straight Street'); the mBank building to the left, the narrow black building is Skysawa tower; beyond that the (shorter) Central Point that sprang out of the ground outside my office during the pandemic; to its right, Rondo ONZ tower, further right is the Intercontinental Hotel. The Palace of Culture is hidden from this view.

Below: looking at the same skyline from street level. Plenty of cyclists and e-scooterists using the cycle path. Build it, they will come.

Below: plac Grzybowski, standing there a vintage Jelcz 043 coach.

I reach the Bristol hotel to see to my delight a whole lot of classic cars (including three Jaguar XK140s, three E-Types, two '65 Ford Mustangs) outside - participants in the Imperial Rally, from Oslo to Lisbon.

Below: looking north along Krakowskie Przedmieście towards the Bristol hotel. Tourist season hasn't yet begun in earnest.

Below: waiting for the train home, W-wa Zachodnia station. This view will soon be history, as work will soon start on the modernisation of the suburban platforms.

Below: the new long-distance platforms as seen from an old suburban platform. Note the difference in lighting. Sunset (the year's latest - 21:01 in Warsaw today) leaving light in the sky nearly an hour and half later.

This time two years ago:
Rural rights of way

This time three years ago:
Not a whole lot going on...

This time seven years ago:
Dreamtime supernatural

This time nine years ago:
Baszta - local legend round these parts

This time 11 years ago:
Downhill all the way to December

This time 12 years ago:
What do I want for Poland

This time 13 years ago:
Summer holiday starts drizzly

This time 14 years ago:
Israeli Air Force Boeing 707 visits Okęcie

Inflation: how do we deal with it, how do we cope?

When I moved to Poland 25 years ago, inflation here stood at 14.9%. Given that only seven years earlier, in 1990, it was 585%, having got it below 15% was quite an achievement. In 2015 and 2016, Poland actually had falling prices. But now, consumer price inflation stands at 13.9% - stoked to a significant degree by government handouts intended to win votes. Economists predict it will peak between 15%-20%.

With petrol around 8zł a litre, household gas costing twice as much per cubic metre as it did a year ago, and food prices soaring, people are talking about little else when you strike up a conversation. 

But how should we deal with it - as consumers, employees, and voters?

What to do? You can put off purchases like clothing and a new car or some building work, but food and fuel isn't anything you can do much about, other than buying cheaper cuts and using less fuel. But should you put off capital projects, building works? Prices of building materials have rocketed and those builders that are willing to do the work are short-handed (so many Ukrainian builders have returned home to fight for their country). As I wrote recently, installing eight solar panels on the działka cost 30% more than the ten panels on the house, a 38% increase per panel. For those paying off mortgages, watching interest rates rise (belatedly, it must be said) must be scary.

The old saying 'mend your roof while the sun shines' suggests that capital investment is best done when the economy is weak and inflation is low. 

Does paying inflationary prices only encourage more inflation? It works both ways.

You can ask your boss about a pay rise - if you get one, that increase in the firm's employment costs will be passed on the client, and ultimately onto the consumer in the form of increased prices for goods and services. So pay rises only fuel the price spiral.

Behavioural economics is a tough subject, because like quantum physics, it introduces so many random elements into a system as to upset classic theories. Do people in a market behave like a herd? Or do even the slightest variations between individual human behaviours at the interface with the market make it all too difficult to model accurately?

At a time of inflation, the urge is to hoard, to stockpile. Wholesalers, intuiting that they will be able to sell their stock at current price plus 10% if they hang onto to it for a few more months, are filling their warehouses to overflowing, ordering extra stock from the factories, who are running behind with their order books. And so they put more labour onto the job, but labour is lacking, so they pay more for it, thus further fuelling the spiral.

Flour, toilet paper, sugar - favoured staples of hoarders preparing for an inflation apocalypse - should we be buying these in bulk? No. We're doing no one any favours, least alone ourselves.

Italian economist Carlo M. Cipolla, in his classic 1976 work, The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity, set out this grid (below), defining the behaviour of the stupid as those "whose efforts are counterproductive to both their and others' interests". How we behave en masse as a market of economic actors at a time of difficulty will determine how quickly we emerge from the current inflationary crisis.

My approach is to take it easy - calm down, we've been here before (even in the UK, when inflation topped 26% in 1975). Spend less, focus on needs rather than wants. And don't vote for political parties offering uncosted spending plans. "Vote for us, and you'll retire on full pay at 55, and get 1,000zł a month every month for each child!" You'll pay for their promises with a weak złoty.

This time last year:
Midsummer wild food

This time two years ago:
Summer Solstice at a Time of Pandemic

This time seven years ago:

Ahead of the storm

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

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

This time 11 years ago:
Death of a Polish pilot

This time 12 years ago:
Doesn't anyone want to recycle my rubbish?

This time 13 years ago:
End of the school year

This time 14 years ago:
Midsummer scenes, Jeziorki