Although I no longer live in Britain, every morning I look at the UK news media to check the previous night’s football results and find out who is the latest Prime Minister.
I think we need to know whether the lettuce voted leaf or romaine ‘cos the answer to that little gem could be the tip of the iceberg that may end up determining whether its popularity will rocket… (continued, p. 94)
Autumn is definitely here. It’s very nice to live in a tree-lined street but the consequence of that at this time of year is that there are leaves everywhere. They don’t call it “fall” for nothing. Actually I let the leaves lie until they compost down on the actual garden but unfortunately the side of my house is a bit of wind trap and they tend to accumulate there in large quantities. When they do start to break down it makes a slippery hazard for anyone visiting, especially if it rains.
So this lunchtime I cleared away most of the leaves from the path leading up to my front door, in which task I was joined by a little robin who was no doubt hoping I would disturb some bugs or at any rate something edible when I swept up the leaves. I’m not sure this is the same robin that came in my house earlier this year, but it wasn’t afraid to come very close.
Reading a little about robins I discovered that many don’t live to reach their first birthday, but those that do have a good chance of living quite a while longer. The record is 19 years! Today’s robin could be the same one I’ve seen before, but I can’t be certain.
That reminded me that it was about time to start putting the bird feeders out again so I went out and bought some seed and peanuts and fat balls, although I think I’ll keep those for when it’s a bit colder.
At some point soon I’ll have to get the ladders out and trim back the ivy which is once again reaching the top of the wall. That will have to wait a few days, though, as my garden refuse bin is now full and won’t be empty again until Wednesday.
Last night I participated in an event at Maynooth for Space Week which I think went very well. We had a big audience so the decision to move to a bigger lecture theatre was a good one. Nobody took count but I think we had as many as 400 people of all ages, including some very young kids, some students and a variety of others.
I was the last one up to speak and took a few pictures at the three talks before mine but obviously couldn’t take a picture of mine so I’ve included a pic of some of the hi-tech equipment I used for a couple of demonstrations:
If anyone wants to see the pictures I showed you can find them here:
There was an official photographer there last night so I’ll upload any pictures I come across in due course. Watch this space.
UPDATE: Here’s a picture of the four speakers
Last night’s four speakers: Créidhe O’Sullivan, Me, Emma Whelan and John Regan
Anyway, thank you to everyone for coming last night and especially to all the people who helped organize and run the event, including our student volunteers. We’re planning to do similar event for space week next year and hopefully this will become a regular feature in the calendar.
It’s not often that you get the chance to be present at the world premiere of a symphony, but that was the case last night when I went to the National Concert Hall in Dublin. Ina Boyle Symphony No. 2 The Dream of the Rood was composed by Ina Boyle in 1930 but hadn’t been performed anywhere until last night. In fact Boyle was a prolific composer but few of her works were performed in her lifetime, largely because of her geographical isolation from the musical mainstream, and many still have not been.
Reading in the programme notes that Ina Boyle had composition lessons with Ralph Vaughan Williams, for which she travelled to London, I expected her Symphony No. 2 to show his influence but if it reminded me of any composer it would be Arnold Bax. Anyway, it’s a substantial work in three movements for a large orchestra.
The piece is inspired by a 10th-century Anglo-Saxon poem about the crucifixion of Christ, “rood” being an old world for “cross”. It opens with a rather folksy theme but the first movement – easily the best of the three – develops into sweeping melodic lines and moves into a more vigorous section describing the felling of the tree from which the cross was made. The other two movements (marked Adagio and Grave) represent a funeral procession and an exhortation to reflect on the meaning of the rood. Overall I thought there was too little tonal or rhythmic variety in the piece for it to be totally convincing as a symphony. However, as I’ve written on this blog many times, I go to concerts determined to get as much out of them as I can even if it isn’t fully satisfying in its entirety, there are parts of this work which are very good.
Traditionally in a concert of classical music the Symphony comes after the interval and the Concerto for so instrument comes before. This usual ordering was turned on its head at last night’s concert as after the wine break we had violinist Maxim Vengerov playing two works. No doubt most people came to hear Maxim Vengerov rather than the Symphony by Boyle and it was a good plan to put the latter first to discourage people from leaving at the interval.
I was surprised when Vengerov appeared on stage resplendent in a cobalt blue suit with matching trainers, but there is no question that he is a very charismatic performer. The Violin Concerto No. 1 by Sergei Prokofiev is a very interesting piece that veers between a tender, almost childlike, simplicity and pyrotechnic energy verging on the savage. It does have some of the call-and-answer moments between soloist and orchestra of a traditional concerto, but at times this piece feels more like a blazing row than a civilized discussion.
The second piece was Tzigane by Maurice Ravel, a much shorter work in the form of a rhapsody starting with a long solo cadenza for the violin leading into a succession of virtuosic dance-like passages of increasing complexity and excitement. It’s obviously a technically demanding work but Vengerov looked like he was enjoying every minute!
Maxim Vengerov last night. The suit looked brighter in the flesh. Picture Credit: National Symphony Orchestra
Vengerov, who has played many times in Dublin, was a huge hit with the audience and was greeted at the end with rapturous applause. He rewarded us with an encore of a Bach piece for solo violin, dedicated the victims of the conflict in Ukraine.
And then it was back to Pearse station for the train home to Maynooth.
P.S. I wonder if Maxim Vengerov has a brother called Minim?
Yesterday saw the end of this year’s County Championship cricket season*, which many people regard as the official end of summer. As if to prove the point today, strong westerly winds have brought a deluge of rain all morning.
While I was waiting for my coffee to brew before venturing out into the rain this morning I was thinking about some idiomatic expressions for heavy rain. The most familiar one in English is Raining Cats and Dogs which, it appears, originated in a poem by Jonathan Swift that ends with the lines:
Drowned puppies, stinking sprats, all drenched in mud,
Dead cats and turnip tops come tumbling down the flood.
My French teacher at school taught me the memorable if slightly indelicate Il pleut comme vache qui pisse, although there are other French expressions involving, among other things nails, frogs and halberds.
One of my favourites is the Welsh Mae hi’n bwrw hen wragedd a ffyn which means, bizarrely, “It’s raining old ladies and sticks”. There is also Mae hi’n bwrw cyllyll a ffyrc – “It’s raining knives and forks”.
Related idiomatic expressions in Irish are constructed differently. There isn’t a transitive verb meaning “to rain” so there is no grammatical way to say “it rains something”. The way around this is to use a different verb to represent, e.g., throwing. For example Tá sé ag caitheamh sceana gréasaí which means “It’s throwing cobblers’ knives”.
Talking (of) cobblers, I note that in Danish there is Det regner skomagerdrenge – “It’s raining shoemakers’ apprentices” and in Germany Es regnet Schusterjungs – “It’s raining cobblers’ boys”.
Among the other strange expressions in other languages are Está chovendo a barba de sapo (Portuguese for “It’s raining toads’ beards”), Пада киша уби миша (Serbian for “It’s raining and killing mice”), Det regner trollkjerringer (Norwegian for “It’s raining female trolls”) and Estan lloviendo hasta maridos (Spanish for “It is even raining husbands”).
No sign of any husbands outside right now so I’ll get back to work. My PhD student is giving a seminar this afternoon so I have to think of some difficult questions to ask her! (Joking).
*For the record I should mention that Glamorgan drew their last game of the County Championship against Sussex (at Hove) and thus finished in 3rd place in Division 2. They might have beaten Middlesex to second place had they won and Middlesex lost their final matches but in the end both games were high scoring draws. Glamorgan lost to Middlesex in feeble style a couple of weeks ago so I think it was fair outcome.
Regular readers of this blog (Sid and Doris Bonkers) will recall that a couple of weeks ago I complained about a ridiculous gas bill. Well, a fortnight (and a lot of hassle) later, SSE have at last decided to use the real meter reading instead of the absurd estimate, with the result that my bill has changed slightly:
How it startedHow it went
That’s a difference of £86,444.90. I’d call that a result.
The story doesn’t end there, however, as I have yet to persuade SSE to actually give me the (almost) thousand pounds they owe me. They seem to think they should just keep it as an interest free loan to offset future payments.
There may be no longer be any momentum in the direction of building a new Student Centre at Maynooth, but over the last few days I’ve been studying the details of the review of the “Building Momentum” pay proposal for public services employees over the next couple of years. The proposal has been put to a ballot of members of various public sector unions, including the one to which I belong, the Irish Federation of University Teachers (IFUT).
Unlike what happens in the United Kingdom, there is a single agreement covering all public sector workers and the unions that represent them and, also unlike the United Kingdom, University staff are treated as public sector employees, rather like civil servants. We are all members of the same pension scheme too, also unlike the UK.
Back in August, there was talk of industrial action over the inadequacy of the Government’s existing offer given the recent increases in the cost of living, but the ballot on that was suspended to allow voting on the revised offer that emerged from a review, perhaps in response to union pressure. As IFUT explained,
Arising from this review a set of proposals were agreed in August which include additional pay increases for members in 2022 and increases in 2023. When the additional increases are taken into account, members’ pay would increase by a minimum of 9.5% during the period covered by Building Momentum (2021 – 2023).
Although expressing reservations, which I share, IFUT states
After careful consideration and scrutiny of the proposal, and taking into account the views of the membership as expressed by our Council, the Executive Committee advises that IFUT members should vote to accept these proposals.
I would have preferred if a bit more could have been done for University teachers at the lower end of the pay scales but, on balance, together with the cost-of-living measures announced in Tuesday’s budget, I think it’s a reasonable compromise, which will bring some degree of certainty to the financial situation of many people. I have therefore voted to accept the offer.
Yesterday I managed to smash my mobile phone. It had been on the blink for some time because the screen was coming loose from the body of the phone, but it still worked OK. Yesterday however I managed to drop it on the floor whereupon it fell to bits and died. I took it to a local repair shop to ask if they could fix it. The guy there shook his head sadly and said it would cost €250 to repair. Since it was 5 years old anyway, I thought it was best just to buy a new phone, which I did, for about €350 (complete with screen protector).
It was even a struggle to get the SIM card out of the wrecked phone because the frame that holds it had twisted. In the end I managed. The new device therefore has the same phone number as the old one. It would have been a pain to have had to change that!
Dead Phone Society
I found it quite scary to realize how much I depend on my smartphone. Not only does it have apps for private things, such as banking and social media, but I also need it to authenticate access to work things from home as these have multi-factor authentication (MFA) that requires an app.
I was able to recover most things fairly straightforwardly but I still haven’t got the authenticator to work. I’ll probably have to take a trip to IT services to get that sorted.
On the bright side I managed to get the new phone to connect to eduroam, something my old phone never did…
The panel discussion I took part in was called Do I Belong Here? The answer, at least initially, was “no” because I went to the wrong room. I blame that on the fact I was wearing my new glasses. When I did make my way to the correct lecture theatre the discussion involved people from diverse backgrounds who have experience of finding their place at university and how to make a valuable contribution by retaining their identity and getting involved with opportunities and activities. I think it went reasonably well, and I enjoyed having the chance to chat to students afterwards in the foyer of the new TSI building.
On the way home afterwards I discovered that my local supermarket is selling bottles of Barolo at half price, so I bought one to have with my dinner which now beckons!
It’s almost that time of year again. The Autumnal Equinox (in the Northern hemisphere) takes place in the early hours of tomorrow morning (Friday 23nd September 2022) at 02.04 Irish Summer Time (01.04 UT). That is way past my bedtime so I thought I’d post this a few hours early.
Although the term `equinox’ refers to a situation in which day and night are of equal length, which implies that it’s a day rather than a specific time, the astronomical equinox is more accurately defined by a specific event, i.e. when the plane defined by Earth’s equator passes through the centre of the Sun’s disk (or, if you prefer, when the centre of the Sun passes through the plane defined by Earth’s equator). Day and night are not necessarily exactly equal on the equinox, but they’re the closest they get. From now on days in the Northern hemisphere will be shorter than nights and they’ll get shorter still until the Winter Solstice on 21st December at 21.48 Irish Time.
Many people take the autumnal equinox to be the end of summer. There is a saying around these parts, however, that `Summer is Summer to Michaelmas Day’ (September 29th), which is not until next week. I must say, though, though it doesn’t feel particularly summery today.
Anyway, this is Welcome Week in Maynooth and we’re due to start teaching first year students next week, on Monday 26th September. It seems to be a bumper year for our intake, with 113 so far registered. That’s more than we’ve had in the 1st year since I arrived here. Returning students commenced on Monday 19th. I already gave my first lecture on Vector Calculus and Fourier Series to this class yesterday; I have another with them tomorrow. We have about the same number of students in Year 2 this year as we had last year.
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In the Dark 