In the Dark

…Worcestershire won by eight wickets.

Before  I get to that let me catch up on the Second day of the County Championship match between Glamorgan and Worcestershire, as I didn’t have time to post  yesterday evening.

In generally fine weather, Worcestershire reached a total of 403 all out, including a century from Tom Kohler-Cadmore. Their innings closed just in time for tea.

In arrears by 196 on the first innings, Glamorgan really needed a good start, and they seemed to get that when openers Selman and Rudolph were still together with the score on 74. However, Rudolf and Lloyd  fell in quick succession and the innings became even more precarious when Selman was out. At stumps, Glamorgan were 141 for 3, needing another 55 to make Worcestershire bat again. Colin Ingram was still there and playing some shots so there was still hope.

Sadly, however, Ingram fell early on the third morning and thereafter, apart from Aneurin Donald (57), Glamorgan offered very little resistance. Donald was hit on the head by a nasty delivery from Josh Tongue. It looked bad but he carried on, only to edge one into the gulley two balls later. Josh Tongue took five wickets on his County debut, as Glamorgan were all out at about 12.30 for 223.

Needing only 28 to win, a Worcestershire victory was an inevitability though they did lose two wickets on the way.

Glamorgan’s batsmen can have no complaints. The conditions for batting were generally good throughout the match: not much sign of swing, not much movement off the pitch, and just a hint of variable bounce. They just didn’t perform well enough. There’s no question that the better team won. Glamorgan have lost their first two games of this season, but they mustn’t allow themselves to get demoralised. It’s one thing to lose a game on the pitch, but quite another when you start losing games in your own head.

Despite the result I enjoyed watching my first County Championship match as a Glamorgan member. I enjoyed the banter in the crowd, and saw some good cricket. It’s just a pity that not much of it was from Glamorgan..

Next cricket at Sophia Gardens is a one-day match a fortnight today against Surrey. Maybe they’ll have more luck in the limited-overs format?

Last night I went to St David’s Hall in Cardiff for a performance of the St John Passion by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and the BBC National Chorus of Wales under the direction of John Butt. The concert was broadcast live on BBC Radio 3, so you can listen to it for the next month on the BBC iplayer.

The St John Passion is on a smaller scale than Bach’s other (later) setting of the same story, the epic St Matthew Passion,  being almost an hour shorter and composed for a single orchestra and choir; the St Matthew Passion has two choirs and two orchestras. The St John Passion is nevertheless a very dramatic work, with many contrasts:  moments of intimacy expressed by solo voices lie in between grand chorales and orchestral interludes.

A few things struck me particularly in what was a very enjoyable concert. The first was the fine performance by tenor Gwilym Bowen as a rather boyish-looking but earnest Evangelist, a very demanding role. It’s interesting that the part of Jesus is so much more limited, though it was very well sung by David Soar (bass). Other solo vocalists were Elizabeth Watts (soprano),  William Towers (countertenor), Nick Pitched (tenor) and Ashley Riches (bass-baritone), as well as some members of the chorus.

The BBC National Chorus of Wales was in fine voice. Outnumbering the orchestra by a considerable margin they managed to generate a wonderful sonority without losing the ‘bite’ that this piece demands. This of all stories needs more than a pretty sound from the choir.

Another thing that struck me watching the orchestra was the phenomenal work of the principal bass, David Stark. He was constantly at work, adding the bottom notes to the accompaniment of the recitative as well as providing the foundation of the string section in the full orchestra. I hadn’t realised before quite how much the double bass had to do in this piece. I was close enough to see the density of ink on his score!

The orchestra for the St John Passion is relatively small but it’s used very cleverly by Bach. For example, there are several sections in which he uses two solo instruments whose melodic lines intertwine. Pairs of  flutes, oboes, cellos and violins all perform in this way at different times to wonderful effect. There is also a bassoon which, for this performance, was located among the strings rather than with the flutes and oboes.

With a piece like this it’s difficult not to reflect on the subject matter as well as the music. I’m not a religious man, but I don’t think you have to be a believer to appreciate that the power of the story of the Passion is its universality.  By that I mean that it demonstrates the capacity we humans have to inflict pain and suffering on each other. It also reminds us that one day we too will die. All we can hope is that it does not come in such an agonising way as it did for Jesus, but we all know it is going to happen. As Herodotus put it: “Call no man happy until he knows the manner of his death”.

I don’t believe that ultimate  hope for humanity lies in any kind of supernatural intervention, but that we have to make it on our own salvation in the here and now. That’s all there is. On the other hand, any species that could produce Johan Sebastian Bach can’t be entirely beyond redemption, can it?

This image, courtesy of the Cardiff University Library, is of a pocket watch that belonged to the poet Edward Thomas.

It stopped at 24 minutes to eight on the morning of 9th April 1917, the precise moment when an artillery shell exploded, killing its owner. This happened in the first few hours of the Battle of Arras in the Pas-de-Calais area of Northern France.

In detective stories the stopped watch is a clumsy cliché often used to indicate the victim’s time of death, but in this case I find the image intensely powerful.

Despite heavy casualties the battle in which Edward Thomas fell went well at first for the British and Commonwealth Armies who made substantial territorial gains in the opening stages. Soon, however, the defending Germans regrouped and another bloody stalemate ensued that dragged on for another month, leaving about 300,000 casualties on both sides.

I was saddened today to hear from friends and colleagues of the death of Professor Gary Steigman (above).

Gary was a leading figure in the theory of cosmological nucleosynthesis, ie the formation of light elements by nuclear fusion reactions in the Big Bang. As well as being an eminent scientist he was also a warm, generous and extremely likeable human being. Our paths crossed only a few times, the last time being some years ago, but I remember him very well for his kindly and courteous manner. He’ll be greatly missed by a great many people.

Rest in peace, Gary Steigman.

This photograph has gone viral today, and I couldn’t resist sharing it here.

It was taken during a march by the fascist English Defence League in Birmingham yesterday. The young lady on the left is Saffiyah Khan, who was not part of the organised counter-demonstration but stepped forward when a group of EDL thugs surrounded another woman who was. The man on the right  threatened her with his fists and a policeman intervened in an attempt to defuse the situation.

 Ms Khan kept her hands in her pockets all the time, her smile conveying a sense of amused contempt that is truly an image for our times.

The man at the right in the picture is Ian Crossland, a leading figure in the EDL. He later wrote on Facebook that Ms Khan was “lucky she got any teeth left”.

By the way, here’s an excerpt from Mr Crossland’s Facebook page:

Saffiyah Khan is half Pakistani and half Bosnian, but I’d far rather live in a Britain made in her image than in his.

Well, I’m now officially on holiday for two weeks and probably won’t be blogging much during this break, especially about work-related things, but I couldn’t resist a quick announcement of something very exciting.

We received confirmation last week that the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC for short) to set up a Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT for short) involving the Universities of Cardiff, Bristol and Swansea. This will be coordinated by the Data Innovation Institute at Cardiff University and it covers  a wide range of data-intensive research in astrophysics and cosmology carried on at the three member institutions. ‘Data-intensive’ here means involving very big data sets, very sophisticated analysis methods or high-performance computing,  or any combination of these.

The Centre for Doctoral Training will be coordinated by the Data Innovation Institute at Cardiff University. It will commence in September 2017 so we will be open for applications immediately, ie. next week.

For further information, please see the Data Innovation Institute webpage which will be updated as more details are available.

By the way, for  this special programme, STFC have relaxed the  rules relating to  nationality, so full funding is potentially available for  non-UK citizens under this scheme.

If you’re looking to do a PhD in data-intensive physics or astrophysics, get writing your application now and keep an eye on this page for further announcements.

To secure a PhD place at this STFC CDT administered by the DII you’d better apply PDQ! 

No time for a post today, I’m afraid, so here’s a photograph of a Spectacled Monkey.. 

No time for a post today so I thought I’d share this amazingly clever poem.

OK, so from a literary point of view it’s not the greatest poem ever written, but what’s “amazingly clever” about it is that each individual line is an anagram of the title…

I was looking in my drawers this afternoon and came across this, which is a memento of something that happened 20 years ago. I just missed the anniversary by ten days!

Believe it or not, that’s me at the bottom left sans beard..

I did an item on the Tomorrow’s World Live show – which was not broadcast but performed in front of an audience of a few hundred people in a temporary theatre. In fact there were four shows a day for the period of the event (19-23 March 1997). Each show was only about 30 minutes long, but it was quite hard work as there were many technical things to sort out in between performances.

My role was to do a little piece about the refurbished Hubble Space Telescope and then answer questions on astronomy and cosmology from the audience. I had no script for that bit, as it was impossible to know what would be asked. I answered with varying degrees of success.

Other items featured on the show were a clockwork radio, an  electric sports car, and a device for scrambling an egg without breaking its shell. I couldn’t see the point of the last invention, as one would have to break the shell to eat the egg anyway.

The best bit about being involved in Tomorrow’s World Live was meeting so many of the presenters, all of them proper professionals (unlike me) who were very friendly and helpful. Only two presenters were involved in each show,  and  each pair only did one or two shows, so over the five days I got to work with the whole set, including Craig Doyle, Philippa Forester, Howard Stableford, Vivienne Parry and Shahnaz Pakravan. I didn’t envy them as they had to work not only with amateurs like me, but also had to learn a detailed script and deal with the gadgets. I was relieved that I could basically just wing it.

My clearest memory of the whole event was the technical rehearsal early  in the morning before the very first show. Nothing worked properly, and I was convinced that it was all going to be a complete disaster. Somehow, however, it all came together and there weren’t any major problems in any of the real shows.