Archive for the Biographical Category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

The Day’s Events

Posted in Biographical with tags , , , on April 21, 2010 by telescoper

Just a quick post today, because I’m worn out. Today was Cardiff University’s Open Day – not the small-scale one’s we have from time to time in the School of Physics & Astronomy, but a full-blown university-wide affair. The School is in the Queen’s Buildings, which are a little way to the East from the splendid civic buildings in the Cathays Park district of the city centre that constitute the core of the University. Naturally the organizers tend to concentrate on showing off it’s finer buildings, so many activities are centred on the posher parts, and often we don’t get that many visitors in our building especially if it’s raining and visitors don’t fancy the 15 minute walk. Today, however it was gloriously sunny and even the Physics department was packed with visitors, prospective students and their parents.

I’d agreed some time ago to give a public talk as part of the School’s activities, which meant that this morning I had a tutorial, an undergraduate lecture and a public lecture all one after the other. I was very surprised when I got to the venue for my open day talk to find it was absolutely full, with standing room only. By lunchtime I was already knackered, although the public talk was a lot of fun and the audience were very attentive and friendly. Some of them even laughed at my jokes. I got lots of questions at the end, which I always enjoy, although I was flagging by then after talking more-or-less continually for three hours.

This afternoon it was someone else’s turn to do the talking. It was the occasion of the PhD examination of Rob Simpson (orbitingfrog) for which I was Chair. Cardiff is unusual in having a Chair for PhD oral exams, as well as internal and external examiners. The Chair acts as a kind of umpire, making sure the rules are followed, but doesn’t play a very active role other than that. In fact I had the chance to chip in here and there – chiefly on matters of statistics – but also managed to get the Guardian crossword done.

I won’t talk about the substance of the examination, but it suffices to say that the examiners recommended that he be awarded the PhD subject to some corrections being made to his thesis. No doubt he’s out on the town celebrating as I type. Well done, Rob!

I got away just in time to go an collect my Tuxedo from the dry cleaners on the way home. It being good weather I thought I’d wear it for Friday’s annual Chaos Ball. I don’t know how widespread this usage is, but in Britain I’ve always thought the word Tuxedo refers to the white (or cream)  alternative to a traditional dinner jacket. That’s what I meant, anyway. I bought mine years ago in an Oxfam shop in Nottingham and hardly ever wear it, but it’s nice to push the boat out every now and again. Although it was bought second-hand about 8 years ago it still looks quite posh. Apart from the bullet hole in the back you would never have guessed it had been worn before…

7 Comments »

Life, the Universe, and Coloured Pencils

Posted in Biographical, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , on April 18, 2010 by telescoper

Yesterday’s post got me thinking about what it is that makes scientists decide on their own speciality. It’s got to have something to do with the intersection between interest and aptitude, in that I think we learn gradually through our time at School that there are some things we can do well and others that we can’t but the things we can do well aren’t always things we find sufficiently interesting to make a career doing.

I suspect luck also plays a big part, in that the choices one gets to make must be taken from the options at a very particular time. I ended up doing research in cosmology after my first degree, but it wasn’t any kind of a grand plan that got me to Sussex in 1985 to do that but it just seemed the best choice to me out of all the half-a-dozen other places I visited.

Before I meander off the point again I’ll just pass on something that one of my teachers at school told me, and which probably had a big effect on an impressionable teenager. It was my chemistry teacher, Geoff (“Doc”) Swinden, that probably had more influence than anyone in making me decide to become a physicist.

By the way he was called “Doc” because he had a PhD (or perhaps a DPhil, as I think  he got his doctorate, in organic chemistry, from Oxford University). I didn’t go into Organic Chemistry, of course, but that was mainly because I hated the practical aspects of chemistry and pose a considerable threat to the safety of others when placed in any kind of laboratory environment.

Anyway, I remember very well a comment of Doc Swinden’s to the effect that anyone wanting to be called a proper scientist should avoid any subject that required the use of coloured pencils. That ruled out biology, geology and a host of others and left me firmly in the domain of physical science. I ended up going to Cambridge to do a degree in Natural Sciences, which allowed me to do chemistry and physics for a year and then decide which to continue. Obviously I went the way of physics.

I don’t regret going into physics at all, but I don’t think this bit of advice was all good. When I went to Cambridge to study Natural Sciences, I had to pick an extra subject to do in the first year to do alongside my main choices, chemistry, physics and mathematics. Among the options were geology, biology of organisms, and biology of cells but, mindful of the possibility that all of these might require the dreaded coloured pencil, I went for a course called Crystalline Materials. It’s true that I didn’t have to colour anything in, but it was the most mind-numbingly awful course I’ve ever taken. I very nearly failed it at the end of the first year, in fact, but still managed to get  a First-class mark overall.

Going back to yesterday’s post, I realise that one of the reasons I’m less gung ho for Mars exploration than some of my colleagues might be that it’s a bit too much like geology or even biology. It seems the ghost of the coloured pencil is still haunting me.

9 Comments »

The Next Three Weeks

Posted in Biographical, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on April 11, 2010 by telescoper

Busy day today, getting ready for tomorrow’s return to teaching. The year’s second semester is always a strangely fragmented affair because of the Easter hiatus. We teach for eight weeks from late January until late March, have three weeks off for Easter, and then return to teach another three weeks before a brief revision period and, then, the examinations. It’s an awkward business, that gap.  There’s also quite a danger of missing lectures later on, if you happen to be teaching on a Monday, owing to the Spring Bank Holiday. I lose a lecture in that way,  for my first year module Astrophysical Concepts, although it’s only in revision week so I’m not going to be struggling for time. I hope.

I’ve organized my first year lectures (if “organized” is the right word!) in four sections and managed to make sure I finished three of them, representing areas covered by three of the four questions in the forthcoming examination, before the break. Now I just have half-a-dozen  lectures on cosmology to get through, so this bit should be reasonably self-contained and it won’t matter too much if the students have forgotten the other three parts I did before Easter.

I’ve also got my third-year particle physics lectures to finish off in this period, so it’s going to be quite a busy three weeks. Still, I’ll have plenty to distract me from the General Election campaign which will cover pretty much the same period. Polling day is May 6th, and my last (revision) lecture will be on May 7th.

Another curiosity about Cardiff’s calendar is that we only get three weeks for Easter. I seem to remember it’s usually been four weeks in the other places I’ve worked. One of the downsides of this is that we’re back to term-time while the annual National Astronomy Meeting is going on. This moves around from year to year, and this time is in the splendid city of Glasgow. I’d like to have gone, and would have done if I hadn’t had so much teaching concentrated in this period. Regrettably I’ll have to give it a miss this year.

Anyway, I was getting my notes together this afternoon, sitting in the April sunshine among the new flowers and listening to the birds singing. Completely by accident I came across this little quote from Johannes Kepler, translated from the Mysterium Cosmographicum, which I thought I’d share with you…

We do not ask what useful purpose the birds do sing, for song is their pleasure since they were created for singing.  Similarly, we ought not to ask why the human mind troubles to fathom the secrets of the heavens…  The diversity of the phenomena of Nature is so great, and the treasures hidden in the heavens so rich, precisely in order that the human mind shall never be lacking in fresh nourishment.

4 Comments »

Petite Fleur

Posted in Biographical, Jazz with tags , on April 9, 2010 by telescoper

So the short Easter break draws to a close. I haven’t had much time off at all as I’ve been trying to catch up with some papers and other stuff. I was in the department over the weekend and on Monday and have only really had yesterday and today completely off. We’re back teaching on Monday.

However, things haven’t turned out too badly as we’ve got very nice weather right now and it’s set fair for the weekend. I’ve spent most of today in the garden and got quite a lot of preparation done, although my hands are now covered in scratches. It’s still quite warm approaching 7pm so I’ve decided to sit outside and have myself a cocktail before dinner.

I have a complete set of cocktail-making gear: measures, stirrers, shakers, and ice-crusher as well as the various tools needed for making the trimmings, such as a canulating knife. I also have a reasonably complete range of glasses appropriate for various drinks. My taste in cocktails is, however, fairly limited. Not being partial to Gin eliminates quite a few and I’d rather drink a good Malt on its own than have cocktails with cheaper whisky in them. However, I do have several books of cocktail recipes and, now and again, I pick recipes to try out.

My favourite pre-dinner cocktail, especially in summer, is called a Petite Fleur. It’s a great aperitif, with a refreshing sharpness to prime the palate.  It’s also very easy to make:

1 Measure White Rum
1 Measure Triple Sec (or Cointreau)
1 Measure Grapefruit Juice (preferably fresh)

Shake the ingredients well together with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Decorate with a twist of orange peel.

Mentioning this cocktail also gives me the excuse to include the tune of the same name that was a big hit  originally for the great Sidney Bechet (and then later on over here in the UK for Monty Sunshine, erstwhile clarinettist of Chris Barber’s band). Here’s the wonderful original version, with Bechet on soprano saxophone, which is the perfect accompaniment to a spot of self-indulgence. Enjoy!

2 Comments »

My Friend Erdös..

Posted in Biographical with tags , , , , , , on March 28, 2010 by telescoper

After one of my  lectures a few weeks ago, a student came up to me and asked whether I had an Erdős number and, if so, what it was.  I didn’t actually know what he was talking about but was yesterday reminded of it, so tried to find out.

In case you didn’t know, Paul Erdős (who died in 1996) was an eccentric Hungarian mathematician who wrote more than 1000 mathematical papers during his life but never settled in one place for any length of time. He travelled between colleagues and conference, mostly living out of a suitcase, and showed no interest at all in property or possessions. His story is a fascinating one, and his contributions to mathematics were immense and wide-ranging.  The Erdős number is a tiny part of his legacy, but one that seems to have taken hold. Some mathematicians appear to take it very seriously, but most treat it with tongue firmly in cheek, as I certainly do.

So what is the Erdős number?

It’s actually quite simple to define. First, Erdős himself is assigned an Erdős number of zero. Anyone who co-authored a paper with Erdős has an Erdős number of 1. Then anyone who wrote a paper with someone who wrote a paper with Erdős has an Erdős number of 2, and so on. The Erdős number is thus a measure of “collaborative distance”, with lower numbers representing closer connections.

I say it’s quite easy to define, but it’s rather harder to calculate. Or it would be were it not for modern bibliographic databases. In fact there’s a website run by the American Mathematical Society which allows you to calculate your Erdős number as well as a similar measure of collaborative distance with respect to any other mathematician.

A list of individuals with very low Erdős numbers (1, 2 or 3) can be found here.

Given that Erdős was basically a pure mathematician, I didn’t expect first to show up as having any Erdős number at all, since I’m not really a mathematician and I’m certainly not very pure. However, his influence is clearly felt very strongly in  physics and a surprisingly large number of physicists (and astronomers) have a surprisingly small Erdős number. According to the AMS website, mine is 5 – much lower than I would have expected. The path from me to Erdős in this case goes through G.F.R. Ellis, a renowned expert in the mathematics of general relativity (as well as a ridiculous number of other things!). I wrote a paper and a book with George Ellis some time ago.

However, looking at the list I realise that I have another route to Erdős, through the great Russian mathematician Vladimir Arnold, who has an Erdős number of 3. Arnold wrote a paper with Sergei Shandarin with whom I wrote a paper some time ago. That gives me another route to an Erdős number of 5, but I can’t find any paths  shorter than that.

I guess many researchers will have links through their PhD supervisors, so I checked mine – John D. Barrow. It turns out he also has an Erdős number of 5 so a path through him doesn’t lower my number.

I used to work in the School of Mathematical Sciences at Queen Mary, University of London, and it is there that I found some people I know well who have lower Erdős numbers than me. Reza Tavakol, for example, has an Erdős number of 3 but although I’ve known him for 20 years, we’ve never written a paper together. If we did, I could reduce my Erdős number by one. You never know….

This means that anyone I’ve ever written a paper with has an Erdős number no greater than 6. I doubt if it’s very important, but it definitely qualifies as Quite Interesting.

20 Comments »

Life Cycles

Posted in Biographical, Science Politics with tags , , , , , on March 13, 2010 by telescoper

This was a strange Saturday. Usually I don’t do very much on the weekend, except for a bit of shopping, tidying up, and of course the crosswords. Today, however, was one of our undergraduate Open Days wherein prospective students visit the department (usually with their adoring parents) in order to have a look around, learn about our research, and meet some of the staff that will be teaching them if and when they come here.  Our usual Open Days are Thursdays, but some people find it very difficult to get here on a weekday – parents working, school commitments, etc – so we have a few Saturdays too. Since I live within walking distance of the department I don’t mind taking part.

Bizarrely, my job today was to act as a tour guide around the experimental physics labs. I must be one of the least qualified people in the School to do that, as I’m a theoretical astrophysicist. As it happens, we had two groups to show around today and the other guide was Ant Whitworth, also a theoretical astrophysicist (though one who works on star formation, not cosmology like I do). Ours not to reason why. I got a free lunch out of it anyway, and also managed to find most of the places I was supposed to take the visitors to, most of which I’ve never seen before!

Anyway, it was nice to meet and chat with so many young people interested in physics. I hope to see at least some of them in October. Funding will be very tight this year for new undergraduates and although we’ve asked the University to increase our quota to take more students in, we haven’t so far been allowed to do so. I think that is the situation around much of England too, so I think some might not find a place at their chosen institution. I hope there aren’t too many disappointments when the A-level results come out.

The recruitment of undergraduates for next year is part of the cycle of academic life. We’re currently doing the same thing with postgraduates, although fewer people are involved in that case. The end of term comes up next week, then it’s the Easter break. Soon after that we’ll be back into examinations. Some will be graduating this year and we’ll have to say goodbye to them as they make their way into the big wide world. Others will leave for the summer and return to continue their studies next year.

The cycle of academic life is embedded within that of the seasons too. Today was a beautiful spring day in Cardiff. We’ve had sunny weather for a week or so already, but yesterday and today were the first days mild enough in temperature to be called spring. Yesterday evening as I walked home I noticed it wasn’t dark at 6pm, a sign that the days are getting longer. Soon I’ll be able to walk home through Bute Park,  which I can’t do at present because the gate on the east side is closed at sunset. I did, however, go back that way this afternoon after the Open Day activities were over.

There’s a lot of construction work going on, associated with Cardiff City Council’s plan to turn Bute Park into Bute Lorry Park, and one has to complete an obstacle course to get into it on foot these days. Still, once away from the affected areas the rest of the Park is shaping up again for spring and summer and there was quite a crowd there today, just quietly enjoying it for it’s own sake. You know, like a Park should be. I’m not looking forward to having to dodge juggernauts on the way, which is what is what the future seems to have in store.

Apart from the seasons and the cycle of academic life, I also thought on the way home about another cycle that is about to unfold. A General Election is due to be held this year. It seems like yesterday that I cast my vote in the last one, while I was living in Nottingham. Now the politicians are gearing up for the interminable months of electioneering that inevitably presage such events. I’m not at all sure at this point who I’m going to vote for. I’m disillusioned with the main parties and skeptical of the alternatives.

I heard last night on Twitter of a story that Lord Mandelson has promised that “The Science Budget will be spared from cuts”. That’s interesting because we’ve already suffered plenty. Perhaps the word “further” was accidentally omitted. Not that I believe him anyway. Why should I? It’s obviously just electioneering. Science Minister Lord Drayson also recently announced on Twitter that under the next Labour government, the UK will be the best place in the world to do science. I don’t believe that either, although I do have a little more faith in Drayson than I do in Mandelson.

I think the deep cuts already made to fundamental physics have in any case guaranteed the exodus of a huge number of talented scientists. And that’s emphatically not the result of the recession. It’s the result of deliberate government policy, sustained since 2007. I won’t believe New Labour’s claims about science until they own up and reverse the damage they have done, which I don’t think they’re going to do.

I have to admit that I am very fearful not just for the future of astronomy in the UK, but for the UK as a whole. Although people talk about the country being out of recession, the fact remains that we’re teetering on the brink of insolvency. I have a deep-seated feeling  that this election is critical. Very difficult decisions will have to be made over the next two to three years, and if we get them wrong, we could be propelled into a catastrophic decline. The trouble is, I don’t trust any political party to deliver a coherent plan for the recovery. The more I think about it, the more my optimism ebbs away. I hope I’m proved wrong.

Now after all that I haven’t done the Guardian crossword yet! Where’s my pen?

5 Comments »

Scientists in Residence

Posted in Biographical, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on February 23, 2010 by telescoper

I’ve managed to get through the hectic  first couple of days of what promises to be a very hectic week without feeling too much of the strain, which is quite a pleasant surprise given my advancing senility.

This week a whole bunch of Cardiff astronomers are taking part in a Scientists in Residence scheme at Monkton Combe School which nestles in among the lovely hills in the picturesque countryside near Bath. The idea was to try to give the pupils some sort of idea what it’s like being a scientist – specifically an astronomer – by having an intensive series of teaching sessions run by scientists who visit the school for several days running.  A whole range of different types have taken part, from graduate students and postdoctoral researchers all the way down to Professors. Some, in fact, have been staying overnight there too.; it’s a boarding school, in fact.

As with most things these days, I’ve been a bit of a freeloader in this thing – the course materials were prepared by others, principally Chris North, so all I had to do was turn up and lend a hand on the day. Members of the department with duties at Cardiff have only been able to go for part of the time and even that has meant, for me at least, a bit of dashing backwards and forwards on the train. On Monday I had a full complement of meetings, lectures and exercise classes in Cardiff before heading off to Bath to give an evening lecture on The Big Bang to what turned out to be quite a large and attentive audience of sixth-form students. When I finished I had to get the train back to Cardiff – about 70 minute journey – in order to be able to give Columbo his evening insulin fix in good time.

This morning I was up at six to get the train again to Bath – after doing the necessary with Columbo again – in order to take part in a classroom session where we took the students through activities centred around the idea of using the orbital motions of astronomical objects to work out masses. I found this very interesting. On the one hand the students were keen and very easy to interact with, but on the other this experience reinforced the impression that today’s A-level physics students are given a syllabus that is diluted beyond all recognition compared with what older generations of physicists learned. Even in a private school, with excellent laboratoty facilities and highly motivated teachers, it is difficult for todays 16-18 year olds to learn anything meaningful about what physics is really like.

Not having kids of my own, I’ve only observed the changes in educational standards over the last decade indirectly, so this couple of days was a bit of a reality check for me. Unless someone can be persuaded to force schools to teach science properly again, university lecturers will have to carry on doing what is essentially remedial teaching.

Anyway, I’ve found the last couple of days very interesting and I hope the others taking part in the week will enjoy it as much as I did.

You might reasonably ask why a bunch of University academics – mainly funded by the taxpayer – should be running backwards and forwards organizing activities for a posh private school? The mercenary answer is, of course, that some of the kids we’ve been talking to might actually turn into Cardiff undergraduates one day and even if only one does so, the income that generates for the School of Physics & Astronomy more than pays for the number of person-hours we have put in. But even if that doesn’t happen it’s still worth it. Our plan is to offer this type of activity to all kinds of schools in  local areas, not only for our own recruitment, but also for the general purpose of “outreach”, communicating an interest in science in the society beyond academia. This week is the first time we’ve done it. Undoubtedly some things will work and others won’t. This week we will iron out some of the problems before we take it on the road to more challenging audiences.

It will need to be a good show if it is to go down well in the Valley Comprehensives, and what better way to improve it than to practice on the rich kids?

1 Comment »

Talk, Nosh and Gridlock

Posted in Biographical, Books, Talks and Reviews, Cute Problems with tags , on February 18, 2010 by telescoper

I paid a flying visit yesterday to the beautiful city of Edinburgh in order to give a seminar at the Institute for Astronomy, which is situated with the historic Royal Observatory. I was there not long ago, in fact, to do a PhD examination but on this occasion all I had to was stand up in a lecture room and rabbit on for an hour or so. That part of it seemed to go reasonably well, in that no more than half the audience fell asleep while I wittered away.

The morning flight from Cardiff to Edinburgh was uneventful and got me there in time to chat with various people and have lunch before the talk. I elected not to rush straight from the seminar to the airport in order to return the same day, but stayed overnight giving some of  the locals the dubious pleasure of paying for my dinner and enduring my company during it, which they did with great patience. I’d like to thank Alan, John, Alina, Stefano and Brendan for rounding off such a nice day with such a pleasant evening.

In the restaurant we ended up setting each other little geometry problems drawn on napkins, to the palpable disdain of our waiter who clearly wanted us to leave.  However, since I had to get up at 5am the following morning (i.e. this morning) to get the flight back to Cardiff, we didn’t stay out too late. I got back to the B&B where I was billeted in good time to check last night’s football results  before retiring to grab some shut-eye. Newcastle United 4 Coventry City 1 was the result, so it was good news to end the day…

I had to get up at the ungodly hour of 5am in order to catch the flight at Edinburgh airport, but the return flight was right on time. This was fortunate because, not long after the plane landed, a blizzard descended on Cardiff. Snow has fallen intermittently all day. Although I’m a bit tired after getting up so early – hence the brevity of this post –  I’m relieved I managed to get back to work without any major travel hitches.

Anyway, my contribution to the little problem-setting session that took place between the plates and wine glasses was this one, which I was asked during the interview I had to undergo to get a place to study at Cambridge:

Consider an infinite square grid made as shown above from 1Ω resistors. What is the resistance between any two adjacent nodes of this network?

If you’re really interested, a general solution for the resistance between any two (not necessarily adjacent) nodes is given here but you should be able to get the answer for adjacent nodes by a much simpler line of reasoning!

16 Comments »

Match Day

Posted in Biographical, Sport with tags , , , , , , , , on February 13, 2010 by telescoper

Unusually for a saturday, I’ve been a bit busy today and I’m also going out later, so I’ll refrain from one of my discursive weekend posts and keep it brief (but not necessarily to any particular point).

Today, of course, is the date of Wales’ first home match in this year’s RBS Six Nations Rugby competition. They lost to England 30-17 last week (at Twickenham) largely because of a bit of indiscipline by Alan Wyn Jones who got himself sent off the field for ten minutes after tripping an England player. England forged ahead during the time Wales were down to 14 men and although Wales fought back later on I thought England deserved to win. It wasn’t, however, a very good game to watch.

The scene was thus set for a home game for Wales in Cardiff  today against Scotland (who lost at home to France last week). It’s really impossible to describe how special it is to be in this city when Wales are playing rugby. The Millennium Stadium can hold about 75,000 which is large compared to Cardiff’s population of around 330,000. The Scottish fans, easily identified by the kilts and the smell of alcohol, were out on the townin large numbers last night. No doubt many of them woke with substantial hangovers this morning, but it has been a beautiful sunny day and the sight of the Scots – blue and tartan – mixing with the Welsh – red and green with a liberal sprinkling of dragons- was marvellous to see as I walked around this morning running a few errands.

The atmosphere in town was just sensational, unique to Cardiff, and enough to make you just want to walk around and soak it up. Actually, enough to make you wish you had a ticket for the match too, which unfortunately I didn’t. Still, it was live on TV.

When I got home the crowds were already walking down past my house towards the stadium, which is only a mile or so away,  for the 2pm kickoff. Among them was the sizeable frame of legendary Welsh rugby hero JPR Williams. He’s quite  old now – a quick look on wikipedia reveals that he was born in 1949 – but he hasn’t changed much at all since his heyday in the 1970s.  Taller than I had imagined.

Anyway, I did a little gardening in the sunshine just before the match started and, standing outside, I could hear the sound of Land of my Fathers being sung before the kickoff all the way from the Stadium. It made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. Tremendous.

The match itself was strangely disjointed to begin with but ended in extremely exciting fashion. Wales playing surprisingly poorly in the first half and Scotland surprisingly well. Wales appeared nervous and a bit disorganised and the two Scottish tries both involved defensive errors by the Welsh. The half-time score of  Wales 9 Scotland 18 was not what I would have expected before the start of the game, but was a fair reflection of the balance of play at that point.

The second half initially followed a similar pattern, Scotland edging 21-9 ahead at one point,  but Wales gradually crept back into it. However, it was a yellow card for a Scottish infringement that led to Wales gaining enough momentum to claw their way back to 21-24 with a try created by Shane Willians and scored by Leigh Halfpenny. Then, with less than a minute to play,  Scotland lost another player for a cynical piece of foul play that prevented another Welsh try. Wales decided to take the penalty kick to tie the game at 24-24 with just 40 seconds left. The Scots restarted with only 13 men on the field and only seconds left to play, hoping to run down the clock and finish with a draw. However the Welsh were scenting an unlikely victory and the Scots were very tired. The Welsh managed to keep the ball alive – the next dead ball would have been the end of the game – and, unbelievably, Shane Williams popped in to score a try. The match ended Wales 31 Scotland 24.

It wasn’t the best rugby I’ve ever seen in terms of quality, but it’s definitely the most dramatic final ten minutes! I’m not sure the referee was right to allow the restart after the kick to level it at 24-24 as it seemed to me the time was up then. I’m sure the rugby fans in Cardiff  tonight won’t be quibbling, though. The city will be buzzing tonight!

Today was also the day for two important footall matches. In the FA Cup, Cardiff City travelled to Premiership leaders Chelsea and, predictably, got thrashed 4-1. The other match that interested me was Swansea City versus Newcastle United in the Championship. That finished 1-1, a result I was happy with since Swansea are playing well and Newcastle had lost in feeble fashion 3-0 away at Derby County earlier in the week. They go back top, if only by one point.

All in all, a most satisfactory day, and it’s not over yet. Tonight I’m off to the Opera (for the first time in what seems like ages). So guess what tomorrow’s post will be about….

16 Comments »

Of the Last Verses in the Book

Posted in Biographical, Columbo, Poetry with tags , , , on February 5, 2010 by telescoper

I was having some quality Columbo time last night, giving my old moggy a good going-over with his favourite brush while watching a DVD featuring the detective with the  same name. Columbo (the cat) loves being brushed with a metal brush, especially on his head and his face. If I stop he grabs hold of it and pulls it back onto his muzzle as if to say “All right then, I’ll do it myself.” He likes such a firm application of the brush that it seems incredible to me that it doesn’t hurt him, but he clearly enjoys it,  so what the hell…

When I’d finished he looked even more handsome than usual, but as he sat next to me on the sofa I reflected on the fact that he is starting to show his age a bit especially around the face – possibly owing to his penchant for the brush! Nowadays his purring sounds more like snoring, his kittenish moments are rarer and crotchety episodes a bit more common. He also gets stiffness in his legs from time to time, which the vet attributes to rheumatism and, although it doesn’t cause him actual pain, this problem  makes him a lot less active than he used to be.  Still, he has a right to take things easy. He’ll be 16 next month, which is quite a venerable age for a Tom cat.

I’ve been feeling pretty old myself this week,  probably caused by fatigue associated with the onset of lecturing. All that walking up and down and waving your arms about can be quite tiring, I can tell you. Not sleeping much might have something to do with it too. I’m also feeling miserable because I  need new spectacles,  another sign of ongoing physical deterioration.  I’ve got less excuse for feeling my age than Columbo, however, as I’m only 46. I think that’s only about 6 in cat years!

However, getting older definitely has its good points too.  Twenty years ago I would never have envisaged myself sitting at home reading dusty old poetry books rather than going out to some sleazy nightclub, but the cardigan, carpet slippers and Columbo are suiting me just fine these days. Next week I’m going to go wild and have a night at the Opera, something that always makes me feel young. I may be no chicken, but I’m still younger than the average  opera-goer!

I haven’t posted any poems for a few days, so here’s one that seems to fit. It’s by a relatively obscure poet and politician called Edmund Waller. The wikipedia page about him isn’t very complimetary about his talents as a poet, but he is at least credited with having pioneered the use of heroic couplets in English verse. His biography is interesting too. He narrowly escaped being executed in 1643, during the English Civil War,  and was instead imprisoned in the Tower of London. He was only released after paying a fine of £10,000 – a truly enormous amount of money for the time. Although banished on his release, he subsequently returned to politics and lived to the ripe old age of 81.

Although his poetry is very unfashionable, this one is quite well known and – I think – rather marvellous, especially the last verse which puts me in mind of the lines from Leonard Cohen‘s great song Anthem:

There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.

The poem is called Of the Last Verses in the Book.

When we for age could neither read nor write,
The subject made us able to indite.
The soul, with nobler resolutions deckt,
The body stooping, does herself erect:
No mortal parts are requisite to raise
Her, that unbodied can her Maker praise.

The seas are quiet, when the winds give o’er,
So calm are we, when passions are no more:
For then we know how vain it was to boast
Of fleeting things, so certain to be lost.
Clouds of affection from our younger eyes
Conceal that emptiness, which age descries.

The soul’s dark cottage, batter’d and decay’d,
Lets in new light through chinks that time has made;
Stronger by weakness, wiser men become
As they draw near to their eternal home:
Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view,
That stand upon the threshold of the new

(And, please, no jokes about “cottages”….)

16 Comments »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »