Poland dreams of a superconnector hub

The Polish government recently dusted off plans (around since 2005) to build a central airport for the country, somewhere between Warsaw and Łódź. In this iteration, the plans are no longer for an airport, but for a 'communication hub', for intercontinental flights, high-speed rail and the motorway network. And the railway line connecting Chinese factories to Western European consumers.

The preferred location for this project is Baranów, some 40km west-south-west of Warsaw, about a third of the way to Łódź. The currently quoted cost of the Centralny Port Komunikacyjny (CPK) is 30 billion zlotys (about  £6.1 billion). The question is not really about whether or not Poland can afford it, but whether Poland needs it.

Wading through pages and pages of debate about the CPK on Skyscrapercity.com tells you more about the state of the political arguments than the economic ones. It's the lack of any serious analysis available, untainted by politics, that prompts me to write this post.

First things first. If a mega-airport is to be built, it must serve a mega-airline, one that flies hundreds of billions of passenger-kilometres annually. Airlines like Emirates, Qatar, Etihad and Turkish, are known as super-connectors, linking two very distant cities via their home hub airport. Turkey is in the process of building a brand-new super airport, to be the world's largest, with six runways, with the capacity to handle 150-200m passengers a year. This compares to London's Heathrow, which last year handled 75m passengers, or Warsaw's Okęcie, 13m passengers. Or indeed Dubai's 84m.

If Poland's CPK were to be economically viable, it would need to have the capacity to compete with Frankfurt (60m) and Schiphol (63m). Central Poland currently has four airports,'Warsaw' Modlin (3m) plus Łódź and Radom which taken together added a mere 250,000 passengers last year. So growth would need to be spectacular if a CPK were to serve the 40m the government says will be using it when opened in 2027.

Poland national carrier LOT (seasoned travellers say the initials stand for 'Late Or Tomorrow') has got back on its feet financially, breaking into profit last year. But still, despite a new fleet of Boeing 787 Dreamliners and many new routes, LOT is still a tiddler compared to the big players on either short-haul routes (where the low-cost carriers such as Ryan Air and WizzAir dominate) or on the long-haul routes, where the super-connectors rule.

Before a super-hub airport starts making financial sense, there needs to be an airline able to put it to good use. Without illegal state aid, without subsidies burning holes in taxpayers' pockets.

There is the argument 'build it and they will come'. I remember when the Złote Tarasy shopping mall in Warsaw was being planned, many people said that Poles were too poor for it, that people passing through Śródmieście were only interested in catching a train, that the edge-of-town malls such as Klif, Panorama or Promenada were located in more logical places for retailing etc. And yet Złote Tarasy proved to be a successful venture.

The CPK project is not just about the airport. An important part of the plan (yet not in the overall budget for the project) is the high-speed railway line that will go through it en route from Warsaw to Łódź, where the line will split into one to Wrocław and one to Poznań. Great! All in favour of that.

And the motorway... the two lanes of the A2 between Konotopa junction west of Warsaw and Baranów are currently under getting close to full capacity, so building a CPK will mean the A2 will have to be widened from the junction with the A1 at Stryków all the way to Warsaw.

Just 16km from Baranów passes the Skierniewice-Łuków railway line, used by the Chinese container trains that run from Chongqing Logistics City and on to Łódź, Duisburg and East Ham. Could this strategic railfreight line somehow be tied in with the CPK? If so, how?

Poland's economy grew by 4.7% year-on-year (preliminary estimates) in the third quarter of 2017. There's plenty of upside;  financial institutions that carry out forecasts are busy revising their 2017 and 2018 estimates upwards. By 2027/28, when the CPK is said to become operational, the Polish economy will have grown by a quarter or a third on where it is today, even by very conservative estimates. Will Okęcie and Modlin together be big enough to serve Warsaw? Or will Warsaw find itself where London is today - seriously lacking airport capacity?

In theory, the elements are all there, but I'm sceptical that a great economically cogent plan can be drawn up to capitalise on this potential will be drawn up. Delivering the airport and the links can be done - grands projets on this scale are nothing extraordinary in themselves, but ones that don't end up as costly white elephants require careful modelling and management. 

This time last year:
The magic of superzoom

This time five years ago:
Welcome to Lemmingrad

This time seven years ago:
Dream highway

This time eight years ago:
The Days are Marching

This time ten years ago:
First snow, 2007
[not even had first frost yet this year!]

Warsaw-London-Ealing

Once again, backwards and forwards, the Warsaw where I live, the London where I was born and lived, catching that atmosphere...

Rather than get ofp the train at St Pancras, I continued for another three stops to change at Blackfriars Bridge station (below), for this splendid view of the Thames and the City of London, with Tower Bridge in the distance, the Shard to the right.

Change at Blackfriars for the District Line and straight through to Ealing Broadway. Below: Haven Green, the Baptist church in the distance, a view that's quite Edwardian in atmosphere, modern traffic regardless. In a year or two, the CrossRail (Elizabeth Line) project will be complete, and this will make Ealing Broadway an even more important transport hub.

Below: St Stephen's church, converted to flats, again, that Edwardian feeling is there - when Ealing was rightly regarded as the Queen of the Suburbs.

Night falls on Ealing. Below: Mortimer Road

Below: Amherst Road by night.

Gallic touch in Ealing; a Citroen 2CV van on St Stephen's Road.

Flying back to Warsaw from Luton, afternoon sunshine brings out the vivid colours of the corporate logos. WizzAir flies four times a day to Warsaw, using Airbus A321s, capable of carrying 234 passengers.

Bonus shot, below: a shunter in the livery of Trakcja PRKiI at W-wa Okęcie station. As work is coming to an end here, these engines will become a historic sight.

This time two years ago:
With my father and brother in Derbyshire

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

This time seven years ago:
Setting sun in the mountains

This time eight years ago:
That learning moment

The ebb and flow of globalisation

Two snippets of news from the Nikon corporation that emerged last week suggest that globalisation is not a one-way street, and that it has its limits.

We learnt that Nikon is pulling out of manufacturing operations in China. Wow. The cheaper end of the Nikon camera range have been made in China for 15 years. The news suggests that a) Nikon is withdrawing from the point-and-shoot end of the photo market, where camera-equipped smartphones are big competition, and b) that China is becoming increasingly expensive as a manufacturing base.

The second piece of news is that Nikon is closing its sales operations in Brazil. A nation of over 200 million - the 'B' in 'BRICs-, is being told by Nikon that if they want a new Nikon camera they have to go abroad to buy it, or buy a grey import without an official guarantee or support. This suggests that global growth led by developing nations is not a given.

These two pieces of business news show that the forces driving global corporations over the past two decades or so are faltering. Set up a factory in a country with ultra-cheap labour and manufacture products cheaper than ever before so you can sell them into emerging markets and thus grow your global market share, ran the mantra. And the rich world too benefits, as rich-world companies make more profits, and things they sold cheaply to rich-world consumers can be sold even more cheaply with the increased economy of scale.

How many cameras do we need? Well, I have three Nikons (D3300, CoolPix P900 and CoolPixA) plus camera in my phone, and I will definitely buy a mirrorless full-frame Nikon as soon as Nikon makes one. But for most consumers who want an additional camera to the one in their phone, I suspect that one (proper) camera is enough. For it to be sufficiently better than the smartphone one, such a camera needs a high-quality zoom lens (or interchangeable lenses) from super-wide to super-tele, it needs a high shooting rate (three frames a second minimum), excellent low-light capability, and images offering high detail and dynamic range.

The smartphone is killing off low-end digital cameras - good, we have too much stuff, we can do without useless items around the house.

What does this mean for the Chinese people who made cheap Nikons? Not a whole lot. The factory was in Wuxi. No, I've not heard of the city either, but it has a population of 6.4 million. Bigger than Birmingham and Manchester put together. Bigger than Warsaw, Kraków, Łódź, Poznań and Wrocław put together. Wuxi has ten skyscrapers over 200m tall, three of which are over 300m tall. Solar technology, software development and electromobility are taking over from precision manufacturing as the main drivers of Wuxi's growth. Nikon's former employees will have little difficulty in finding new jobs in Wuxi.

Professional and advanced-amateur photographers in Brazil, on the other hand, will find it more difficult to buy a new D850 or D7500 camera, new lenses and accessories - the market will find a way, but the kit (and servicing it) will become more expensive.

Meanwhile in London, I pop into a Five Guys for a takeaway hotdog. I pay £4.99 and tuck in. It is good, taste-wise, this beef hotdog is outstanding. But it is tiny. Literally six mouthfuls and it's gone. A nice aftertaste. I'm left hungry but with less than 3,000 paces to walk, I'll not faint through lack of food. A tiny little hotdoglet for a fiver. In other words 24 złotys. Now, at any Scottish restaurant in Poland for this price, I can buy two Big Macs, two medium fries and two medium Cokes (not that I would want to!), a Big Mac meal being 12zł.

London has become absurdly overpriced, the result of global money pouring in from around the world, not all of it honestly gained. The money is pushing up housing prices to the point where locals can no longer afford to live in town. So the service sector is run by migrants willing to accept uncomfortably crowded living conditions in overpriced flats in Central London, or by migrants willing to accept long and expensive commutes into Central London from distant suburbs. One way or another, wages and high rents mean eating out in London is extremely expensive. And as I pointed out on this blog more than once, public transport in London is 13 times more expensive in Warsaw, despite wages being only three times higher.

The economy, powered by the invisible hand of the market, does not tolerate absurdity for too long. Mechanisms, be they political, regulatory or purely economic, are triggered by unsustainable absurdity. I'll leave the last word to Danny the Dealer from Withnail and I: "London is a city coming down from its trip and there's going to be a lot of refugees."

Things even themselves out in the end. The only question is how dramatically will it happen.

This time four years ago:
Leeds, a city made uglier by crooked developers

This time five years ag0:
Węzeł Lotnisko (now Węzeł W-wa Południe) - works continue

This time nine years ago:
To Lepiarzówka, on the Polish-Czech border 

This time ten years ago:
Its Independence Day

Trumpkins, Brexiteers and the missing middle

It's been a year since that dread morning when I awoke, and in a replay of 24 June 2016, discovered that the Wrong Side Had Won. President Trump? The words sounded like an oxymoron and still do.

We can see more clearly today how the social media, an effective amplifier for social discontent, was hijacked by an unfriendly power which could see its potential in magnifying social division.

And the same in Britain. The same phenomena - advertising, comments, Twitter trolls and Facebook campaigns instigated or amplified by the Kremlin and its band of 'useful idiots' forced an issue that few Britons really cared about before 2004.

Putin and his fellow KGB-related kleptocrats are failing to deliver social or economic progress to ordinary Russians, who instead look West to see how society could be organised - as a network, rather than an authoritarian hierarchy. Rather than deliver the reforms Russia needs, Putin instead is using sophisticated propaganda to diminish the west, by attacking the very roots of its success.

Strength and progress through teamwork, through trust, through the concept of win-win (as opposed to adversarial dealings), the superiority of the committee over the hierarch, of delegation, of bottom-up initiatives within a civil society, have proved more successful than totalitarian command-and-control. Just compare North Korea to South Korea, or Estonia to Belarus.

And the network model relies on balance, on compromise, on accepting diverse points of view, of moving two or three steps forward and maybe a step or two back, but generally moving in the right direction.

With the political discourse in the US, UK and indeed Poland being moulded the way it is, the middle ground is losing ground. I used to be sure that if you had a life in balance, acted pragmatically, shunning extremes - and indeed being attacked by ideologies from both sides - you were moving along the good path from barbarism towards civilisation, from the bestial towards the angelic.

But the Putin doctrine of dividing to rule makes this more difficult to achieve than ever. Take the Brexit debate. I have yet to hear any Brexiteer tell me how Britain's membership of the European club these past 43 years has made their life miserable (in the way that communism in Eastern Europe really did make people's day-to-day life awful). And I have yet to hear any Brexiteer offer a cogent plan for how the UK will become more prosperous after leaving the EU.

Brexiteers have become infused with an ideology - something quite un-British. It has become a matter of faith that somehow, free of the shackles of Brussels, Britain will once more achieve global greatness. Faith, belief - but no firm evidence-based proof or roadmap of how or when this will come to pass. Brexiteers spit on the EU using terms like 'unelected bureaucrats' (which bureaucrat was ever elected?) or 'EUSSR' (where's the EU's Gulags, Holodomor or Katyn? Where's its KGB?). Brexiteers rarely have the slightest inkling of how the EU works other than what they read in a newspaper published by some tax-dodging non-UK domiciled media baron.

On the other hand, there's Jeremy Corbyn, by normal standards a students union Trot who's failed to grow up. In a normal world, he'd stand no chance of ever taking power. Today, his Labour party is ahead of the Brexit-riven Tory party in the polls. [Though as Tony Blair notes, under such circumstances, Labour should be 15-20 points ahead of the Tories, not 2-3.]

The middle ground is shrinking. Being reasonable no longer seems to be a viable strategy, rather like (invoking Godwin's Law) being reasonable towards Hitler was not reasonable. Once I could comfortably sit on the fence. Once I could style myself an extreme moderate.  Once it was: "The EU? Well, it has a lot of faults, I'm against the federalisation of Europe blah blah but all thing considered, better to have an EU and be in it..." But today I've become a fervent supporter of the European ideal from all the idiots and Russian agents of influence who wish to break up this force for stability and civilisation. Once I'd think of Barack Obama as a well-meaning by wooly-minded liberal who's dangerously naive about Russia. Today I see him as a Great Leader and Beacon of Humanity. Nuance has gone. The middle ground has dropped out of arguments.

The evil genius at work in the Kremlin has pushed the West to this pretty pass. By using the very mechanisms that make the West an open society, Putin has forced in voices intended to disrupt our way of life, to feed dismay, distrust and disbelief.

Rank-and-file Trumpkins and Brexiteers (not their organisers) are generally the less intelligent section of society. Their lives are full of discontentment; they have taken many wrong life decisions (beginning with not taking education sufficiently seriously) and are looking for someone or something to blame. Scapegoats include 'the elites' and immigrants - "the other".

To stir them up, Russia is using a sophisticated blend of propaganda. It is not saying (like it did in Soviet days) "look at us, we are the future, we have the answers". Rather, it is deflecting the world's gaze from Russia, and saying "look at you - the West is in decay, liberalism has failed". It does so by espousing right-wing and left-wing arguments at the same time, and using the targeting tools of the social media to spread dissatisfaction within different social groups.

When Ukraine was kicking off, the Russian trolls were simultaneously saying 'Ukrainians are fascists' and 'Ukraine is led by Jews'. the fact that these statements were entirely contradictory was irrelevant - they were targeted at entirely different target groups. The aim was to get the West's far left and far right to take an anti-Ukrainian stance.

If mankind has learned anything in these dark years - the darkest I've lived through since the end of the Cold War - by far - it is that Truth, Facts, Scientific Evidence are crucial. We can all spin narratives one way or the other, but we should cast aside ideologies and press on towards a search for forensically verifiable evidence, that stands up in a court of law, that stands up to peer review. We should strive for the highest standards, and question everything until we are sure it is right.

We should close our ears to moral relativism ("well you bomb children's hospitals too") and stick up for the right way - shunning pessimistic, defeatist voices.

There is a march of progress. Mankind is slowly, inexorably moving away from the reptilian, from the simian, evolving slowly towards a more beautiful future. Our way there will not be paved by voices of hate or jealousy.

This time six years ago:
Bad news for Jeziorki's rat runners

This time seven years ago:
Death on the tracks

This time eight years ago:
From Łady to Falenty

Return to Gliwice and its new station

Last time I was in Gliwice, the station was being remonted, with duckboards outside straddling pools of mud, passengers being diverted this way and that - bałagan, Panie. What a surprise when I stepped off the Pendolino from Warsaw this evening. The station is finished and looks great! Below: first impressions. The lighting levels fluctuate, rising then falling in intensity; interesting!

Below: I walk to the end of the platform to see the station name in lights - not the neon that Wrocław Główny has, nevertheless effective and conforming to a Polish standard for main railway stations.

Left: the stairs down to the tunnel that links the platforms and the main hall. Interesting use of metal tubing in conjunction with blue-tinted glass and light-grey concrete. Good signage and full support for disabled passengers. EU funds put to good use.

Below: the main hall, with that wonderful abstract mural which has survived the remont intact, remaining the focal point. As I wrote, along with Gdynia, one of the finest works of public art on PKP's network of stations, this photo hardly does it justice.

Below: outside, the station structure has been retained, the facade cleaned up and beautifully illuminated. Last time I was here, temporary wooden roofing was placed above the walkways to protect passengers from falling debris.

The civilisational changes happening across Poland are raising the quality of people's everyday life; we must appreciate this; it did not happen because the Big Man deemed it be so.

This time last year:
Poles and Brits go shopping differently

This time two years ago:
Reanimated - my father's car 
[Still on the go, with new MOT]

This time three years ago:
Defending Poland against hybrid warfare 

This time four years ago:
Another office move

This time six years ago:
PiS splits again - Solidarna Polska formed 

This time seven years ago:
Tesco vs. Auchan

This time ten years ago:
My father's house

Loving Vincent - review

This a remarkable film, on a number of counts, and must be seen.

It is the first animation to be made up of oil paintings - 65,000 frames based on 853 oil-on-canvas paintings, photographed to make the feature-length film, the work of over 100 artists. Each one either took a Van Gogh painting as a starting point, or created a new image based on his style (perspective, brush-strokes, colour work) and made them move. The visual result is amazing. The viewer is transported into a world of Van Gogh's paintings come to life; an other-worldly, a dream-like departure from reality into the painter's point of view.

Loving Vincent explores mental illness and its link with artistic greatness. Truly great artists are rarely neurotypical. Van Gogh suffered from multiple mental disorders, including Asperger's syndrome and schizophrenia. He was an obsessive-compulsive painter, resulting in a prolific output. Like his brother Theo, Vincent was also suffering from syphilis, not surprising given the ubiquity of prostitution in late 19th century France. The ever-changing mental state of the artist is a thread running through the film, commented upon by many of the film's characters, most of whom he had painted in real life.

The film's narrative is presented as a whodunnit, with one of Van Gogh's subjects, Armand Roulin, tracing his final weeks, meeting other people from Van Gogh's life (and other subjects of portraits) to establish the circumstances of his death. This has puzzled historians for decades. The fact that the gun used was never found, nor were his painting materials on the day, and the deathbed confession of a local man who claimed to have taunted Van Gogh (though never shot him), provides a pretext for investigation. The film faithfully shows the different theories surrounding Van Gogh's death, leaving them open to the viewer's interpretation.

Seen through the eyes of the lazy, alcoholic son of the local postman from Arles than Van Gogh befriended (and painted), it is also a story of redemption. Armand Roulin's mission (to deliver a final letter from the dead Vincent to his brother Theo), changes his life for the better as he realises that Van Gogh was far more than a madman. Armand travels to Paris, then on to Auvers-sur-Oise, where the artist spent his last few months. Here he hears differing accounts of Van Gogh's life and death.



Some great insights into human creativity emerge. The character of Dr Gachet, who treated Van Gogh and who understood him well, is portrayed as a failed artist who recognises the genius within his patient, whose frustration at having tried and failed at odds with Van Gogh's natural talent. And Gachet's daughter, who notes that Van Gogh had incredible powers of observation, able to see nature in the smallest detail, and record it. The film, likewise, has great depth and insight.

Another film of recent years springs to mind - Mr Turner, with Timothy Spall in the title role as the great British artist. Again, what makes the film work is the dissection of the artistic drive - and the fact that J.M.W. Turner was not a neurotypical individual.

This Polish-British co-production brings out the best features of both nations; Polish deep work harnessed to British team work. The ability to focus intensively for long periods of time, coupled to the networking abilities of organising cross-disciplinary skills from the worlds of film finance and art. Co-written and co-directed by Hugh Welchman (Oscar for the 2006 animation Peter and the Wolf, made in Łódź) and accomplished animator, Dorota Kobiela.

Loving Vincent represents the best of Europe. A Polish-British film about a Dutch painter who lived and worked in France. The jam-packed cinema in Warsaw suggests this film will do well commercially as well as critically. More than a biopic, it is a work of art in its own right, inspired by a great story of human artistic endeavour, a journey deep into the creative mind.

This time four years ago:
UFO credibility test

This time five years ago:
Junction ready for road to unbuilt sports centre

This time six years ago:
Park nad Książecem - Vistula escarpment, beautiful autumn

This time nine years ago:
Obama wins US presidential election

Karczunkowska viaduct - work begins in earnest

On Monday the heavy construction equipment moved in - a large vertical drill and a pile driver. Last week, access to the 'up' platform was changed via a new pedestrian level crossing (below).

The drilling is done slowly, the screw turning silently into the soil. The pile driver (below, left), on the other hand, is so loud I could hear it in my triple-glazed bedroom 970m away (in a straight line).

To get this shot of the equipment below, I scrambled up a mound of earth on ul. Karczunkowska between ul. Gogolińska and ul. Kurantów.

As I wrote recently, I totally disbelieve the promises that the viaduct that's being built here will be opened in 12 months' time. Nothing I've ever seen in Polish infrastructure construction would prepare me for such a phenomenon. The sign-off and hand-over process alone, getting the final inspections and paperwork sorted takes longer than 12 months (Google the history of the new viaducts over the S2 on ul. Nowozachodnia, ul. Czysta and ul. Rebusa; and see story on my blog about the footbridge at W-wa Okęcie).

To add to the complexity of this particular job, on top of the viaduct will be two bus stops, serving the two platforms. This means they will need wheelchair lifts. Experience shows that these take the longest to sign off (think W-wa Okęcie again, W-wa Służewiec and Czachówek Płn).

This time two years ago:
Sublime autumn day in Jeziorki

This time three years ago:
CitytoCity, MalltoMall

This time four years ago:
(Internet) Radio Days

This time five years ago:
Another office move

This time six years ago:
Manufacturing a City of Culture

This time seven years ago:
My thousandth post

This time eight years ago:
Closure of ul. Poloneza

This time nine years ago:
Scenes from a suburban petrol station

This time ten years ago:
Red Arrows over Lincolnshire from 30,000 ft

Throwing it all away...

For my father

Office refurbishment and time to clear my desk. I started on Friday afternoon and finished this afternoon - and what a difficult task. Three full bin-bags of rubbish plus several bits and pieces taken home (and some still to take), but final outcome - clear the desk and there's a whole heap less clutter to bog you down in your working day.

Decluttering is a trendy thing, with Japanese and Scandinavian guides to getting rid of your possessions topping the UK bestseller lists. We live lives increasingly cluttered lives, 'stuffocation' I've written about. Physical goods are becoming cheaper and cheaper, even as property prices (especially in London) become unfeasibly expensive. We get an endorphin rush from the act of buying things, and so often end up with stuff we neither need nor want, but it ends up stuffocating us.

It's not just about acquiring new things - it's about getting rid of old things. Even if we live by William Morris's golden precept not to bring anything into one's house that's neither beautiful nor useful, we will still end up, after many decades, to have more stuff than we have room for.

The same in the office. You go to a conference. You get a nice bag, with a report printed on thick glossy paper. And a note pad, and ballpoint pen, and lanyard with your delegate's badge. And a gift, like a leather-bound folder with space for credit cards and paper. And this goes on, year in, year out, and your desk is groaning with the stuff and you cannot bring yourself to chuck it out.

After all, someone's spent money manufacturing these things, so they must have value...

Spending time with the bin-bags and deciding what goes in and what's spared made me realise a few important things.

Don't chuck out:

1) Things that can be useful in future (pens, paper-clips, rubber bands, note-pads, name-badge holders etc) - but don't keep them to yourself. Put them in the stationery cupboard for everyone to share.

2) Things of historical value. Old copies of CBI News that I used to edit from the late 1980s into the late 1990s, one with Lech Wałęsa on the cover, or another with a debate about Europe (below) or a supplement about Poland from 1992. These don't exist any more outside of an archived copy of each issue in the British Museum library, all dumped by someone doing what I was doing today. I have three examples, which I'll keep to the end of my days.

3) Things of sentimental value. This is the tricky one. It's easy to say that everything has sentimental value. It doesn't. It's equally easy to say that nothing has any sentimental value. Equally untrue. Consider what you really, really, really want to hang on to. Otherwise, chuck it out.

It's a generational thing. My parents' generation, who went through the deprivations of war, who lost the things that their own parents had worked so hard for, and then, in the austere post-war years, had to work hard to establish themselves in a new country, could easily drift into hoarding. The extreme example was Edmund Trebus, the Polish soldier who ended up in a house in North London surrounded by hoarded junk, and his own BBC documentary.

My father hangs on to things on the basis that a) someone once took the trouble to make them, b) they may come in handy someday, not necessarily for the reason they were made, and c) it costs money to replace them. Hence the large collection of nuts, screws and washers in the garage, stored in old jars.

But the young generation that grew up in an age of plentiful stuff, just disposes of things without thinking. My younger colleagues find it painful watching me deliberating over whether to throw or keep something. I'm somewhere between the two generations, though tending towards my father.

In 1978, my father bought me for my 21st birthday a ghetto-blaster radio/cassette player with big speakers; it cost £118, which in today's terms is £675, enough for a well-specced laptop which will do you a whole lot more than just play music. That old ghetto-blaster is still there, in his room, taking up space... but it still works, and it was my 21st birthday present, and so... it's still there.

Books go into bookcases, and if the bookcase is up against an external wall, it makes for good thermal insulation. Plates and cutlery go in the kitchen - but when is the last time you had a four-course meal for 12 people at your place? Time to let go of much of the stuff in the kitchen, really. Clothes - for me not particularly difficult to get rid (to charity) stuff that's slightly frayed but still useful. And I buy much of my clothing in charity shops in Pitshanger Lane, Ealing, thus doing my bit for the circular economy.

The local authority in Ursynów advertised a garage sale yesterday - turn up and for free! sell your unwanted stuff to people browsing for knick-knacks. The weather yesterday was quite appalling, but no doubt there will be another bring-and-buy (quite a novelty in Poland), but a great initiative.

Being forced to declutter radically every now and end then is, according to Japanese decluttering guru Marie Kondo, an experience that brings a purgative joy.

My IT meltdown last month, in which I lost two years' worth of data, presentations, articles etc, passed without any major repercussion. If data is valuable, it will have been duplicated (uploaded, emailed to someone else, saved on pendrive etc). If not - no one's missing it, not least me.

Let us strive to live a life without clutter (but not get obsessed about it). Laurence J. Peter's quote, “If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?” (often misattributed to Albert Einstein) is a signal to get the balance right.

This time last year:
Hammer of Darkness falls on us again

This time two years ago:
The working week with the clocks gone back

This time four years:
Slowly on the mend after calf injury

This time fiveyears ago:
Thorunium the Gothick

This time six years ago:
Łódź Widzew or Widź Łódzew 

This time eight years ago:
A touch of frost in the garden