20 east

I like to think of them as bad but atmospheric! Taken with the Canon G9, two from the roof of the Olympic building a couple of weeks ago and three from the car window last night.

Looking north from the Olympic building with Wisła Strada highway on the left and the Electricity & Heating plant at Żerań (working since 1954) on the other side of the river to the right.

Looking towards the western side of the city centre from the Olympic building. Intraco is far left and I think the tall one with a light on top is the Daewoo building (Warsaw Trade Tower/Centre).

A fuzzy PKN with traffic!

Jerozolimskie through the windscreen.

Looking across Pilsudski Square towards PKN.

The garden troops have been hard at work culling the reeds around the edge of our two small lakes. It takes about three years for them to reach this height and about 3 days to cut them all down and burn them. They didn’t find any nests of the Great Crested Grebe yet but they did find a few mice! Eeeek!

The reeds were at the point where they had completely overtaken the lakes so having them cropped will make access to investigate the pond life much easier come the spring.

The temperatures have been dropping, currently around minus 7C and we’ve had some half-decent snow falling as well. It depends which forecast you look at as to whether it will continue or not but we will at least have ourselves a winter weekend.

A snowy driveway scene.

The gardeners here have a life consisting of clearing either snow, leaves or grass!

The birds may appreciate the food a little more on days like this.

Today Zosia finally managed to dislodge the first tooth. She’s very excited by the whole thing! It seems a little strange to me, a person interested in holding onto my teeth as long as possible, to look upon the unbridled joy Zosia can display at having lost one. She genuinely sees this as a step in the right direction and I suppose it is. There’s a fair amount of peer pressure as well from playschool, to see who can lose the most teeth the fastest.

These shots taken within a few minutes of it coming out. Sorry about the blood!

Coming soon, something altogether less bloody – “Nelson – the bidet series!”

In the Workhouse – Christmas Day (George Robert Sims – 1879)

It is Christmas Day in the Workhouse,
And the cold bare walls are bright
With garlands of green and holly,
And the place is a pleasant sight:
For with clear-washed hands and faces
In a long and hungry line
The paupers sit at the tables,
For this is the hour they dine.

And the guardians and their ladies,
Although the wind is east,
Have come in their furs and wrappers,
To watch their charges feast:
To smile and be condescending,
Put puddings on pauper plates,
To be hosts at the workhouse banquet
They’ve paid for – with the rates.

……………………………contd

Here’s our banquet, arrived in box. On the way from the hotel it took a few knocks. The damage not drastic, ’twas wrapped in plastic. To the table everyone flocks!

The turkey was tasty and the clam chowder soup also went down well. The giblet gravy got very mixed reactions as did the ’squash’. The cranberry and apple sauce was very tasty but the potato puree was altogether too liquid. Thankfully, Mrs S had cooked some excellent roast spuds and veg to substitute. Desert was a concoction of Britishness by mixing mince pies with brandy cream sauce, which was very well received.

Our Christmas table was short of quite a few people we’d liked to have had there. Of those who should have come we were missing sister-in-law and youngest nephew as they were sick. Those who we were unfortunately not expecting include – father-in-law (at sea, literally), my entire collection of family & friends (in the UK), other friends (spread everywhere between Ełk and Oslo) and many Warsaw friends who have left the city to spend Christmas elsewhere (around Poland or in the UK). Warsaw is amazingly quiet at this time of year, a blissful loneliness.

We fed the animals too. Nelson had a packet of Whiskas plus some Xmas turkey. For the birds we filled the feeders for a mixture of Blue Tits (Modraszka), Great Tits (Bogatka) and Greenfinches (Zaganiacz zwyczajny) with the Jays (Sójka) picking up the seeds dropped to the ground.