In the Dark

For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.

from Four Quartets, ‘Little Gidding’ by T. S. Eliot.

For the last three years I have been sharing a list of things I plan, to do in the New Year. Unfortunately it seems to have been pretty much the same list each time. Here it is again for completeness.

1. Go to more live concerts. Although I enjoy the radio and recordings, I far prefer to listen to live music at concerts. Attending such events helps also support the venues and musicians as without an audience both would die.
2. See more of Ireland. I moved to Maynooth five years ago but, apart from one visit to Galway and one to Armagh, I still haven’t travelled much beyond the Dublin area. I must get around more, especially to the South.
3. No more working weekends. I’ve been in the office for at least one day every weekend since I started at Maynooth. I did the same when I was at Sussex too, and seem to have relapsed. I have always had problems managing my own work/life balance but I realize it’s not setting a good example to younger folk to be getting it so obviously wrong. I’ll add not reading work emails at weekends to this.
4. Be a better colleague. This is something I think one should always strive to be, but I have particular need to improve. I know that over the last five years or so things weighed very heavily on me behind the scenes and I ended up letting people down on too many occasions. I apologize for that and will try to do better in future.
5. Read more books. I used to be a voracious reader of all kinds of books, both fiction and non-fiction, but I somehow got out of the habit. I now have a stack of unread works that I must try to read before the year is out!
6. Finish more things! Not unrelated to No. 4 above, I have been very poor over the last few years at completing projects and writing papers. I need to clear the backlog and get on with some new things.
7. Do more to promote Open Access publishing. I’m not surprised that the status quo in academic publishing is proving hard to dislodge, but I believe that change can be achieved if researchers take the initiative. I’m proud of what we have achieved so far at the Open Journal of Astrophysics but there’s much more to be done.

I achieved very few of these in 2020, 2021 or 2022. The pandemic made the first two impossible but at least I managed to get out to a few concerts in 2022 and plan to see more this year. The Irish National Astronomy Meeting in 2023 is in the fine city of Cork, and I’m looking forward to going there. Number 3 changed when we had to start working from home, which made it difficult to get away from work at all but since I moved into my house in August 2020 I at least have a study on which I can close the door. I haven’t improved much on the 4th one either, although the reasons for the past two years are different. Likewise with 5 and 6. I have done as much as I possibly can on 7 but it’s been a bit of a struggle getting papers turned around promptly. I think there are a lot of busy and/or tired people out there!

I didn’t cope with the stress and isolation of being a Head of Department during the Covid-19 era as well as I might have done. I don’t know whether it was the high levels of anxiety that sapped my energy or whether I’m just feeling the effects of age. Anyway I’m glad I completed my term in September last year, and have at least managed to complete a couple of papers since then. I hope to finish another in the following week or so.

Finally I should mention that the traffic to this blog was up a massive 4.5% in 2022 compared with 2021. Interestingly the most popular post of the year wasn’t either of the two about Chorizogate (here or here) but an old one I wrote in 2012 about the Shell House Raid which came back to life because of a film on Netflix.

At long last, this year’s Christmas issue of Private Eye has made it to Ireland. Just two weeks late. Too late to enter the crossword competition, mind, but better late than never.

I shall read it this evening after my New Year’s Eve supper of roast rack of lamb and a bottle of Amarone della Valpolicella…

I don’t think I’ve ever had a less indulgent pre-Christmas week than this year. I have more-or-less recovered from whatever it was that afflicted me, except that whenever I go out into the cold I seem to start coughing again so I haven’t been out much. I decided to lay off the booze until I felt fully back to normal, with the result that I haven’t had any alcoholic drinks at all for over a week. I have also been eating very little and nothing at all of a festive richness for which I have no appetite. I will however have a proper Christmas dinner, even if I have to force myself.

Pottering around in the garden the other day I was a bit sad to find a dead bird in the garden, a young starling. I’ve tried hard to keep my feathered friends going through the cold weather, by putting out various kinds of food in an assortment of feeders, but this one alas didn’t make it.

The weather is much milder than last week (when it was positively Baltic) though we have had sleet and fog today. There is still a steady stream of birds looking for food, among them a robin that actually manages to perch on the feeder to eat. I’ve never seen a robin succeed in doing that before. The robins usual stay at ground level and collect bits that fall from on high.

Normally I get quite a few items of post at Christmas from the UK, but not this year. The postal strikes have put paid to that. Among other things I was hoping to have a go at the usual bumper Christmas Private Eye crossword, but my subscription copy has not arrived. Lots of other things haven’t arrived either, including some financial documents that will tell me when I can afford to retire. I suppose that calculation will just have to wait.

Quite a lot of Open Journal business for 2022 is still pending but it seems authors, referees and editors have now all pulled down the shutters for the break. I guess all that will have to wait until the New Year too…