What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.
T. S. Eliot, from Little Gidding, the last of the Four Quartets.
I wasn’t really planning on posting a retrospective of the year 2024, but the rain is pouring down outside so I’ve decided to use up a bit of time before going out in the hope that the rain stops.
The past year has been very busy with significant life events. One particular highlight has to be a wonderful once-in-a-lifetime trip to Sydney in February. I don’t know if I’ll ever get the chance to visit Australia again, but if I do I’ll take it! Shortly after returning from that trip I went back to Barcelona until the summer, leaving briefly for visits to Rome (Euclid Consortium Meeting), Valencia (Department Colloquium), Newcastle (to do a PhD examination) and Oxford (to give the inaugural Pride talk at the Department of Physics).
Unfortunately, at that point my laptop gave up the ghost so I had to come back to Maynooth a little earlier than planned to salvage what was on it and get a new one. And so ended my sabbatical. I’d like to take the opportunity again to thank everyone at the Universities of Barcelona and Sydney for making me feel so welcome and, of course, to Maynooth for granting me a full-year sabbatical in the first place.
As well as giving me some time for my own research, the year saw significant progress with the Open Journal of Astrophysics, both in terms of numbers of papers published (120 in 2024) but also some much-needed work on automation and an increase in the size of the Editorial Board. It’s hard to predict what will happen in 2025, but I’m glad that a significant number of members of the astrophysics community seem to be regarding OJAp as a viable avenue for communicating their results.
I will also mention – for those that care – that the Open Journal of Astrophysics is now listed in Scopus, but all the numbers they have published about the journal are inaccurate. I have spent months trying to get them to correct the figures but, although they have admitted errors, they have failed to do so. My next step will be to take legal action against Scopus (which is based in The Netherlands) under the Dutch Civil Code.
The big event workwise at Maynooth was the merger of the Departments of Theoretical Physics and Experimental Physics into a single Department of Physics. So far this has been largely paper exercise. What will result from it in the long term remains to be seen. I was given two new modules to teach last Semester and have another new one next Semester (as well as one I’ve done before). Although this made for a heavy workload, it wasn’t as bad as what happened after the only other sabbatical I’ve had in my career. I got a one Semester sabbatical when I was at Nottingham, but the Department simply moved my first-semester teaching to the second semester in addition to what had already been allocated for the second, so I had a double teaching load when I got back!
There has been a significant change in my personal circumstances too. During 2024 I finally completed the sale of my former home in Pontcanna, Cardiff. I had intended to do this years ago, but the pandemic and subsequent workload issues made it difficult to travel and sort this matter out. In the meantime bought my house in Maynooth with a mortage so I owned two properties, one of which was empty for much of the time. After much stopping and starting, and being badly let down by more than one prospective buyer, the Cardiff house is now sold. I now feel much less delocalised. I also felt very rich when the proceeds hit my bank account, but only briefly. I used a big chunk to pay off my mortgage and put the rest into fixed-term investments for retirement.
Anyway, writing about Sydney reminded me that there are parts of the world in which it is 2025 already, so let me end with a “Happy New Year” and a few interesting numerological facts about the number 2025:
P.S. It’s still raining.
P.P.S. Athbhliain faoi shéan agus faoi mhaise daoibh!
In the Dark 