My pleasurable education of reading

At home I wouldn't be seen dead reading a book, not until I left school anyway. If I did they'd have thought I was either mad or ill, and I didn't want them tucking me up in bed or sending for a doctor without good reason. When I did leave school, I read at work, and it was taken more amiss than before. After being sacked for this from a couple of factories (that I couldn't stand anyway because of the stink and noise, not to mention the work), I was careful to get jobs as an errand boy or messenger, pushing a bike with a high front loaded with cloth or groceries from one place to another. On my way back I'd lean the bike by the wall of a canal bridge and take half an hour at my book or comic. I was consequently looked on as intelligent because I never lost my way, but not very diligent because I took so long over it.

Moreover I began reading by the fire at night after Mother had gone out. Sometimes the book turned to be so interesting, that I stuck at it, and by the time Mother came back at half past ten I'd forgotten what I'd expected from the book when I opened it.

After that other good books were chewed into my maw; and I began to see that all was not well with the life I had chosen to lead, because it was life itself that had chosen to lead me a dance that I did not want. To put it bluntly, I was fed up with work, with home, and with living the way I did.

Problems of the modern world. Environmental issues

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Extreme weather conditions and natural disasters

Every day television, radio and newspapers bombard us with news of hurricanes, typhoons, violent storms, floods and droughts. The world's climate is getting stranger and stranger. Freakish weather brings floods to normally dry Italy, snow to warm Mexico, and droughts to humid Argentina. It produces snowless winters in the Austrian Alps, blizzards in New York and heat waves in Russia.

Many experts say that extreme weather - hot or cold, wet or dry, may be the result of global warming, itself a consequence of air pollution. Gases such as carbon dioxide, released when fossil fuels such as coal and oil burn, produce too much heat in the atmosphere. The best estimates are that in this century the temperature will rise by some 2-3 degrees Celsius. However, even relatively small variations in the Earth's temperature lead to violent changes in the weather patterns. One especially alarming prediction seems to be coming true: in a warmer world extremes of wet and dry will intensify. Hence, we can observe more and more heavy rainfalls, storms and floods which are followed by long periods of droughts and heat waves.

Poland has also been affected by weird weather. The natural division into four seasons is gradually disappearing and a new pattern seems to be emerging: summers that are hotter and wetter than usual, and winters that are milder and snowless. In summer 1997 many south-west parts of our country were hit by torrential rains which caused the serious flooding of the Oder River. As a result, huge areas including a few Polish cities such as Kudowa, Opole and Wroclaw "drowned" in water. The flood killed 54 people. Another bad season was the summer of 2001. In Gdansk an enormous cloudburst destroyed 1892 houses. At the same time, the Vistula River flooded many towns and villages in south-eastern Poland.

The consequences of climatic changes are expensive and tragic. Extreme weather conditions threaten human lives and cause an enormous amount of damage. In Poland many people drowned or were left homeless, some lost their cattle and farmland.

What can be done about extremes of global climate? Some scientists say that the developed countries should reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases by using less energy and making more fuel-efficient cars, for example. They hope that maybe solar power and hydrogen will replace coal and oil before the effects of global warming become even more disturbing. Meanwhile, we have to get used to anomalies in the weather and learn how to cope with them.

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