Shy of Retiring

Despite my having vowed not to run another half marathon, my son persuaded me. It wasn't so much that I couldn't, as that I didn't want to run another. The distance is a bit far for me to enjoy now, and I have taken to throwing away run medals and t-shirts (not because I am a great runner but because after a lot of years you accrue a lot of technical t's just for taking part). But James has more recently taken up running, and has built up to that distance through dogged hard work and persistence while I sort of idled a bit. This one was the Denbies Bacchus Half Marathon. At first it sounded mad to me - Denbies is a vineyard, and at each water station they also offer a wine tasting. Now I have proved through experiment that I can drink and run: a few ill-judged long training runs in summer heat drove me to call it at the pub, and more recently my small run group tried a gentile jog along the canal to a pub and back. But even so, the idea of a half marathon fueled b...

There is a movement among some academics to celebrate the bad reviews - the ones that led to rejected papers - because the good reviews simply confirm us, but the bad ones make us think. I got a bad review for one of my eBooks - The Art of DSP  which is in fact one of my best books (in my own opinion). A really angry review, actually. Apart from taking issue with a typo (which I have since corrected) the reviewer took issue with my saying: "we need to admit how little mathematics we have that is practically useful" which I admit is a deliberately challenging statement. So the reviewer said: I am stunned by that statement and offended at this arrogant insult to my intelligence Fair enough. We are all entitled to our opinion, and this is not the first time in my career that I have been told in no uncertain times that I am wrong. It is interesting, by the way, how much passion math can invoke. I admit to being sometimes 'stunned' - but I am long past bei...

Jamie's 30-Minute Meals, Take #2: So, following the fiasco of the 30-minute Sea Bass with Panacetta and all sorts of other weird stuff, undaunted I returned to the fray. The 30-Minute Sea Bass took 70 minutes, and in consequence some parts of the meal were well overdone - but Sarah and I agreed that on balance it generally, overall, tasted quite nice, so I determined to persevere. The problem, for me, with Jamie's 30-Minute Meals is the way they blindside you half way thorugh with surprises. So for instance with the Sea Bass with Panacetta, I diligently chopped the coriander and so was taken aback four sections later when it said: 'add the coriander you set aside'. Set aside?? There was no mention of setting aside any coriander - all the coriander was gone. And at that point, already running 30 minutes over time, taking even a couple of minutes to cut more risked the Sea Bass turning from its post-Golden brown to a definite mushy paste. Indomitable, however, I det...

An admission: Despite coming from a family of committed Liberal political campaigners, I have for many years voted for the individual: for the local councillor or MP I thought would best represent - well, me actually, not The People. And not just because a life in a Liberal family conditioned me to a lifetime of electoral defeat (I live in Surrey...). I always read election literature from all the parties, look up what they say in newspapers and at the hustings (and now, on line or, even though I almost never watch TV, yes, I do sometimes at election time). I guess that is kind of weird actually - because the accepted narrative is that people are 'fed up' of politics and 'distrust' all politicians - whereas I am really interested, and trust almost all of them to some degree until sometimes (rarely, I should say) I am confronted with incontrovertible evidence of their perfidy. I even feel sorry for Donald Trump, for goodness sake, and I am not even American. Because ...

"Everything they taught you was wrong"... A biochemist said that to me recently: entering upon a PhD, remembering what had been said when she embarked upon A level, degree, MSc, PhD.... At each stage the new teacher, lecturer, tutor, supervisor .... everything they taught you was wrong, now we start to learn what is right. We are all familiar with it - at various stages in our education, someone takes apparent delight in disillusioning us - everything we learnt is wrong, so we have to start again. But the thing is, it wasn't wrong. When we learn something - anything that is at all complex - we have to simplify it. Almost everything worth learning is unutterably complex - complicated almost or actually beyond understanding. So what we do is, to learn an aspect of it. 'Aspect' is a visual term - it describes the way you look at something: the view you take of it, how it looks from a given viewpoint. Take a house for example, Not much more familiar, nor m...

When I was an undergraduate at University, I enjoyed going to Student Union debates. They were interesting, often passionate, debates - sometimes discussions, often arguments. Much of what was debated directly affected us students and the University - I recall one heated debate over whether the Union should promote the idea - revolutionary in the 1970s - of a coffee bar: the notion that student social life then might revolve around something other than cheap alcohol was actually quite new, and strange as it may now seem coffee shops were then rare. That was the main stuff of the Union, really - how best to direct limited funds to support student societies ('Socs', they were called); what to request from the University in terms of student welfare; how to encourage better teaching; what amenities should be provided on campus. Some debates were wider - issues over which we had no real influence whatsoever - the future of nuclear power, of nuclear weapons, what we should ...

I am, without boasting, good at growing house plants. I wasn't always. House plants used to die and wither for me, just as they do for most people. But then I discovered the mysterious secret of looking after house plants. My house plants now flourish: they grow glossy healthy leaves, they flower, and they propagate. I give them away for Mothers' Day and at Christmas and at birthdays. I have African Violets that are the sixth generation of propagation from plants bought for £1 at the supermarket. I have Peace Lilies a metre high, grown from off-shoots of plants three years ago. Here, I will let you into the mysterious secret of successfully growing house plants. Every day, I check the plant's soil. If it is dry, I water it: if not, I don't. That's it. Every day. Every single day. That's it. The mysterious secret of looking after house plants. Look after them. That's it.