Eclipse chasers

You’ll have the seen the media use this term, I’m not sure whether it’s faintly complementary or maybe hints at a little OCD, but I have to confess that ever since my first one near Paris (1999), I’ve always been ready to go the extra mile to catch one. And although they occur fairly regularly, roughly 2-3 times per year, they’re frequently over the sea, often very brief, or in locations where cloud cover is more or less guaranteed.

So I was quite happy to gather the family and head to Oregon in 2017 for another, and then hop on a plane to Montreal (2024) for a third. Plus I got lucky every time with regard to cloud cover, but could I make it four in a row with the eclipse in Spain? This was a tricky one for several reasons. First it was very late in the day, just half an hour before sunset, plus totality would only last one and a half minutes. Then there was the question of do we go to the West coast - with a clear view over the sea but significant risk of cloud, or head to the East coast, better chance of a clear sky but having to look inland with the problem of mountains blocking the view.

In the end we settled for the East coast and the town of Peñiscola, almost bang on the line of totality, and although a bit South of the Costa Brava, mile after mile of beach front hotels and lobsterised tourists. You get the idea. But we were slightly distant from the hoards, having rented an Airbnb on a hill above the town, and were joined last weekend by various friends and family, and by Monday there was already a tangible sense of anticipation as the crucial minute and half loomed.

The big day

A key bit of preparation was finding a location from which we could be sure we’d be able to see the sun at 20:31. As it happened, a 5 minute walk from our villa we found a spot that would provide the necessary view, but with the sun starting to disappear behind a nearby hill within a couple of minutes post-eclipse. Others found a better location designated by the local authorities, and so on Wednesday afternoon we split into two groups to our preferred positions and settled down to wait.

We had been up-dating each other every few hours on the weather prospects, for a good couple of days, and knew that a cloudless sky was far from certain. And sure enough come Wednesday a solid bank of grey cloud pushed in from the sea and threatened to completely block our view. However, sitting on some fairly uncomfortable rocks (my wife sensibly brought a chair from the villa), and with a sizeable crowd gathering next to us, our collective gaze was glued to the West and a crucial strip of blue sky between the cloud and the hill.

What this meant was that at around 19:30 when the moon began to drift in front of the sun, we couldn’t yet see it. It was probably not until 20:15 that the sun came into view, and everyone donned their eclipse specs. It’s seriously difficult to express the feelings that run through you as the sun slowly becomes obscured, and knowing what’s about to come. Even when it’s almost complete, remove the glasses and look around and the world appears as bright as ever.

And then, right on cue (thank you NASA), that final brilliant point of light is extinguished and we all remove our specs. There isn’t really any word in the English language to describe, not just what you’re seeing, but also what you’re feeling. It’s a natural phenomenon unlike any other, you know you have only moments to enjoy it, and there is absolutely nothing we, as a species, can do to change that. One of our companions, Rosie Millard had asked us beforehand whether it’s an emotional experience, and from my previous eclipses I couldn’t really remember. This time I gave that more thought, and my goodness, it certainly is an emotional experience! In fact Rosie wrote a lovely article about this which was published in the Spectator yesterday - read all about it here!!

What next?

Post-eclipse we regrouped at the villa, gin and tonics appeared, along with a couple of bottles of wine, and for our companions who had never seen totality before, relief for us to see a collective exhilarated wonderment. (Having persuaded them to come along during their busy summer schedules!)

So talk of course turned to where next. My wife and I had already booked a hotel room in Tunisia for 2nd August next year, when totality occurs late morning and will last for 5 minutes. Apparently the best total eclipse to be had anywhere on the planet this century. I know that the others in the group were already looking into accommodation possibilities by the time we parted ways yesterday.

But let me finish on why I find a total eclipse of the sun so special, and why having seen one I want to keep seeing them. It’s knowing that it really is such a cosmic fluke that they happen at all, that the sun is 400 times wider than the moon, and happens to be 400 times further away from the earth. But you all know that. What’s less well known is that they won’t go on forever, because the moon is slowly moving away from the earth (3.8cm per year), and eventually it will be too far away to perfectly block the sun, although not for around 600 million years according to NASA. An interesting twist here is that as the sun ages it gets bigger and brighter, but factoring in that variable is a challenge even for NASA.

Either way, I do hope I get to see a few more while I’m still on this planet. And let me finish with a musical reference, as I often do, and I think whilst a ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ is all well and good, no-one captured the real thing quite as well as Pink Floyd, over half a century ago.

“Everything under the sun is in tune, but the sun is eclipsed by the moon”

King Charles III

How it raises ones spirits to see one of ones former colonies host such a tournament, and to see Mr Trump welcoming foreigners with his infectious distrust. My darling mama would have been delighted, perhaps with the aid of a glass of sherry. And for those of us of a certain age, doesn’t one find that the World Cup reminds one of when one was a youngster, watching Geoff Hurst, Bobby Moore and the lads, delivering one the ultimate sporting triumph. And who can forget the immortal words of that great British servant to broadcasting, Kenneth Wolstenhome, ‘one thinks it’s all over, it is now!’

Chris Mason

Here in Downing Street, what could be more appropriate than seeing an underperforming Sir Keir Starmer being subbed off at the end of the first half, to be replaced by the popular but untested Manchester signing Andy Burnham, now in that famous No.10 shirt? But how do we view a player who is effectively a novice, taking to the international stage? The fact that he isn’t actually on the pitch yet hasn’t stopped questions being asked about whether he’ll play left of centre, and there are genuine concerns within the team that he might even favour an extreme left wing position. Rest assured that I’ll be reporting regularly on his performance and that it’ll only take a minor infringement for me to produce an early yellow card.

JD Vance

The Lord moves in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform. And I’m not talking about Lionel Messi, who has come to our country with what some seem to think is God-like status. Those folks, who have chosen not to wear MAGA baseball caps, should note that there’s an important difference between Messi and DJT Messiah. And it would be wise for Argentina to remember that they’re in the same continent as Venezuela and to just think carefully about what Donnie did to them.

Liz Truss

Naturally, before the England-Argentina game I phoned Thomas Tuckle to wish him a successful first half, second half, added time and penalty shoot out. Acknowledging that he’s German I could forgive him for not knowing who I was and for initially thinking it was a prank call. But when I reminded him that he and the boys were guests of DJT, a personal friend of mine, he was only too happy to welcome my offer of help with managing the fiscal complexities of running an international football team. It was a crackly line but it sounded like ‘lettuce give that some thought’.

Professor Brian Cox

What a great tournament wasn’t it, and for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with football! It’s extraordinary to think isn’t it, that in the context of space-time and the age of the universe, the World Cup is effectively come and gone in the blink of an eye. And yet at the atomic level, when combined, the Spain and Argentina players are nothing more than literally trillions of atoms, most of which are as old as the universe itself. What’s even more amazing, is that according to quantum theory, at 90 minutes with the score at 0-0, we were looking at what was in effect Schroedinger meets Jules Rimet. With the box closed the trophy was simultaneously in the hands of both teams!

Ludwig Wittgenstein

What is the point of the World Cup? It flies in the face of any concept of egalitarianism, like any sporting tournament it seeks to reward the elite while ordinary players like Haaland and Mbappe are left to toil in the fields. Ask Plato or Aristotle what they would have made of it, and they’d probably have said ‘what’s football?’ It is the ugliest manifestation of the Hegelian dialectic, an artificial creation of conflict, with progress through conflict resolution achieved by kicking around an inflated plastic globe. So much for his ‘Science of Logic’. If his reflections on phenomenology had any rational basis there would been no need to repeat the entire process in another four years. On your Marx!

My wife

Thank God it’s over.

It was the phrasing that particularly irritated me. Was Starmer really ‘belittled’ by Trumps comments? If Mason had expressed this ever so slightly differently - for example, ‘Trump attempted to publicly belittle…’ the reporting would still have accurately quoted Trump, but left it to the viewer to decide whether or not the belittling had actually been successful.

In my view Trump most definitely failed to belittle Keir Starmer, even though Mason’s report placed the BBC very much on the side of ‘job done’. Quite reasonably, the PM has decided that he does not want the UK drawn into any conflict in the Middle East, not least because of our commitment to and on-going support for Ukraine, and perhaps more importantly because he recognises international law.

The episode reminded me of a year ago when Trump tried to humiliate Volodymyr Zelenskyy in front of the cameras in the White House. And we’ve heard more of this kind of public criticism from Trump this week directed towards Spain and France. What emerges from these outbursts is the image of a US president totally devoid of diplomatic skills, something that the BBC and Chris Mason might want to bear in mind when reporting these stories.

Note for Chris - maybe next time how about something like ‘Donald Trump today attempted to belittle Keir Starmer but found the prime minister defiant and unwilling to give ground’.

The charge is ‘misconduct in public office’, for which the maximum sentence in the UK is life imprisonment. Here I have no intention of getting into the Epstein side of the story or any presumption of innocence or guilt, but instead share my thoughts on the Royal Family and whether or not Mr. A M-W might have precipitated its demise.

My first recollection of the Royals dates back more than 60 years, a period in the last century marked by the Queen regularly popping infants, and me learning from my parents that although the baby Royals were like me in many ways, they had been born into lives of huge privilege but very little choice. And note the emphasis on ‘but’, I’d be told, tucking into baked beans on toast for dinner while the royal infants were eating lobster washed down with Dom Perignon.

Over the years I have constantly found myself questioning why we have a Royal Family. I mean, I know why they exist in the historical sense, but are they really a necessity and do they serve any useful purpose? After all, there are plenty of countries without one (like France where I now live) that seem to manage just fine. Clearly there are numerous fellow Brits who openly adore them, even viewing them as somehow being closer to God than the rest of us. To me this juxtaposition of an imaginary being with an antiquated, expensive and unnecessary institution is so fanciful it defies reason.

Plus of course, the Royal Family is the beating heart of the class structure in the UK. Together with the diaspora of dukes, earls, barons, counts etc. etc. they underpin a cultural acceptance of a Britain that normalises the rich man in his castle and the poor man at his gate. This has long been seen as the natural order of things in the UK, with the view that the Royals are in so many ways, superior to the rest of us. This is something I really struggle with - I generally see all of humanity as being equals.

But will the misdemeanours of ‘A from Balmoral’ change our views? There are polls showing that approval for Mr. A M-W has indeed slumped, but then again he has long been seen in a rather negative light. As for the rest of the family there is perhaps a slight drop in support (mostly with the younger generation) but King C III has largely managed to distance himself from the current shenanigans. All of which suggests to me that just as the family managed to survive the end of Charles I, the current bunch will probably come through this bruised but nothing worse.

Here in France they knew what it takes to become a republic, it needs many heads to fall, and something rather more provocative than misconduct in public office.

However I will continue reading my favourite writers, so stay well and see you again soon.

The former covers material too vile for me, which in any case has provided subject matter for many skilled investigative journalists - and I’d thoroughly recommend this recent post from Carole Cadwalladr. In it she refers to the ‘impunity of the billionaire class’, which is where I turn my attention today. And a spoiler alert - if you haven’t watched The Night Manager but are planning to, then come back later.

Season 1

So my post today is really all about billionaires, and their ability to create and live within bubbles that insulate (or isolate) them from the world that the rest of us inhabit. A world of private jets, private islands, private security, private everything, where they can ignore the laws and rules that apply to you and me. Trump is undoubtedly one of the most unpleasant of these individuals, but he’s by no means alone. There are at least 6 billionaires who are currently Presidents or Prime-Ministers of their respective countries.

And to digress briefly, of course not all billionaires are like this, a long time ago I actually got to know one for a few years when he funded some of my research. During that time it meant business class flights to LA for annual meetings, which was all very enjoyable, but you don’t really see the difference until you notice that the driver meeting you at LAX is in a chauffeur’s uniform and you’re escorted to your hotel in a black limo with tinted windows.

But enough of that, why get into politics, what’s the attraction we might ask? I imagine that if you’re a billionaire, there must be a permanent worry that the Radical Left Scum (to quote Trump) are hellbent on doing all they can to relieve you of your fortune, and that one sure fire way to stop that happening is to become top dog in your country. Fortunately for the super-rich there are millions of us out there, gullible enough to elect them to office, somehow duped into believing that being very rich equates to having the necessary political and diplomatic skills needed to govern.

In Season 1 of the The Night Manager we are introduced to fictional billionaire and illegal arms dealer Richard ‘Dicky’ Roper, played by Hugh Laurie, who slightly unexpectedly (at least to me) proves to be the most wonderful baddie. And although perhaps we’re not actually formally told that he’s a billionaire, it’s pretty clear that someone who doesn’t break sweat at transferring $300million on his iPhone isn’t short of a few quid.

Season 2

One thing I liked about the Night Manager is that it conveys a slightly old-fashioned Britishness, and if you’ve ever seen a James Bond film you’ll know what I’m getting at. Part of this means that at the heart of the resistance is British Intelligence (no oxymoron jokes please), where we find not only our hero Jonathan Pine (Tom Hiddleston) trying to save the world, but also the inevitable bad egg.

There’s a nice example of what struck me as classic Britishness, with deference to British sensitivities in the final episode. The producers have no qualms in showing us Roper shooting his own son, but when it comes to Roper shooting his dogs, in a remote house in the Colombian jungle, that would just be too much. We see him point the gun but the camera has thankfully moved outside when we hear the three shots fired. Even that is borderline acceptable, it is not unknown for TV dramas to lead to questions/debate in the House of Commons.

This might all seem remote from the White House and Donald Trump, but is it? OK, Trump probably wouldn’t shoot his own son, and he may not literally have his finger on the trigger, but he has calmly and with no apparent remorse, sanctioned the murder of his own citizens. And if I refer to the use of military force, with fatalities, to bring about regime change in a South American country, am I talking about Trump or Roper?

Season 3

At the end of Season 2 of the TNM comes a horrible moment involving agent Angela Burr (the superb Olivia Colman), but not before she’s had a chance to get a message to Jonathan Pine that the Roper story goes much higher. Cue season 3, and what must presumably be either royal family or more probably government.

One can readily imagine a late afternoon cabinet meeting where the PM and team are making tough economic decisions, and choose to call the press for an announcement the following lunchtime. The cabinet members head to their respective homes, with the mutual understanding that confidentiality is everything. Except that as soon as he’s home, one of them emails the news to an old friend, a billionaire, who armed with this information knows that shifting $300million between bonds, stocks, currencies or whatever, and he can sell again the following afternoon and make a swift $10million.

Is this Mandelson and Epstein, or some fictional cabinet minister and ‘Dicky’ Roper. And is there really that much difference these days?

Much of America is rightly horrified, but incredibly a Fox News Poll from just three days ago reports that 17% of all voters think ICE are not aggressive enough!! Fox News may not be the most reliable source of unbiased polling, but writing as an outsider from the tranquility of Provence, it doesn’t require the skills or insight of an investigative journalist to see that America has problems. And that these have been deliberately foisted on the country by Trump, his sycophantic inner circle and a handful of billionaires.

I’m not going to give you an analysis of what’s been happening in Minneapolis, many far-better informed writers than me have covered this extensively, but I do want to share with you this beacon of light from Bruce Springsteen.

Donald Trump has publicly insulted Bruce Springsteen on social media in response to Springsteen’s outspoken but wholly accurate assessment of his presidency. In May 2025, Springsteen was on tour in Europe and I went with friends to see him in Marseille. In fact my post that week was all about the concert and Springsteen’s powerful criticism of Trump during the show. In return, Trump took to Truth Social describing Springsteen as:

• “highly overrated”

• “not a talented guy”

• “just a pushy, obnoxious JERK”

• “dumb as a rock”

• and a “dried‑out ‘prune’ of a rocker” whom he suggested should “keep his mouth shut until he gets back into the country.” (The Times of India)

For each of these childish observations Trump could easily have been talking about himself, and we can ignore them. But don’t ignore the video I’ve pasted above. When you watch it you can hear the anger in Springsteen’s voice, you can see it in his face, and you can feel it expressed in the lyrics. It’s already had millions of views, and it’s a welcome reminder to those of us around the world with friends in the US, of a genuine defiance, and a defiance that has a voice.

Patriotism is a word that seems to have many interpretations. Trump and his ‘ICE patriots’ apparently see the murder of their fellow citizens as somehow signifying a love of ones country. Springsteen clearly has a very different view.

I know you may well have already seen the video - if you have, then watch it again.

The reader perspective

When considering users, there are many who write regular posts, but far more (at least that’s my impression) who are readers only. I’m both, but as a reader, one of the things I really like about Substack is the number of very good writers. In fact there are so many that without some degree of selectivity it would be easy to spend 4 or 5 hours every day trawling through the bottomless pit of interesting articles.

For me, the brakes get applied in the form of paid subscriptions. Almost all writers on Substack offer paid subscriptions, and generally this gives you access to full articles (rather than just the first one or two paragraphs), the ability to comment and other assorted privileges.

I currently limit myself to one paid subscription (I won’t say who) and have no intentions of increasing that number, even though there are many other writers with whom I’d definitely enjoy greater engagement. But today I want to focus more on how I view Substack as a writer/contributor.

The writer perspective

This is where things get tricky for me. Substack is a business, I believe it takes around 10% of paid subscriptions and apparently makes a tidy $45million per annum. It doesn’t take much of a business brain to see that it’s very much in Substack’s interest to actively support those writers who are bringing in the $$$.

Substack does this through its algorithms, a topic that regularly comes under scrutiny here, that ensure that if you’re making $$$ then your Notes, your Newsletters and any other output will be widely distributed in order to actively help expand your readership and therefore paid subscribers.

So I look at my subscribers, which right now number 131 and see from the growth curve that after steadily increasing for the first six months, this number hasn’t changed since last September. I know other regular writers like me, who in the same period have gone from zero to several thousand subscribers.

There could be several reasons for this, it may be that my varied subject matter is simply not very interesting, or perhaps my writing lacks the necessary fizz to get people hooked. I hope that’s not the reason, and I’m reassured by the numbers of you who I know read my posts. My weekly contributions normally receive around 200 views - typically around 60-70 of these come from my subscribers with the others being ‘followers’ or people who’ve just randomly stumbled on a link somewhere. By the way, there is one topic I write about that always gets far more hits, and that’s Trump.

Another possible reason for my low subscriber count is of course, that I don’t take paid subscriptions, so from the Substack algorithm perspective, I’m absolutely not worth supporting and if anything, it makes more sense to keep my subscription numbers down. I can almost hear Substack whispering in my ear ‘go on, do it, take paid subscriptions’. And I’d be willing to bet that if I did, my numbers would soon start rising again.

So I’m left with a bit of a dilemma. Do I bow to the unspoken pressure to help Substack make a few $$$ and start accepting paid subscriptions, do I just carry on doing this mainly for my own pleasure, or do I conclude that Substack isn’t the platform for me? And in fact, if your audience likes what you write does it really matter whether you have a few dozen readers or a few thousand? In the year I’ve been doing this, my posts have had a total of 10,000 views - so many thanks for sticking with me!

I’d be interested to know if any of you have any thoughts on this topic. In the meantime I leave you with this YouTube video of Canadian classical guitarist Drew Henderson playing some Bach. Take 10 minutes out to watch this - you won’t regret it.

This week my first thought was to give you a seasonal update on winter in Provence - I wrote more or less the whole thing but then decided to keep it for another time. Then I wondered about sharing my thoughts on María Corina Machado giving Donald Trump a plastic replica of her Nobel Peace Prize. Wait until he finds out! And then at the last minute I thought I’d have a go at something new, and I came up with a couple of cartoons.

All of this made me realise that while cartoons often look as though they’ve been knocked off in a couple of minutes, there’s actually a bit more work involved than I was expecting. By the way, this is not a self-portrait - as anyone who knows me will testify, but I think the question is a fair one for mid-January.

This one is really with thoughts for many very good friends in the US currently having to live through the kind of nightmare I don’t think anyone could have imagined just a year ago.

Stay tuned - my post next week will be a reflection on my first year on Substack, the pros and cons, and why for some of us it may not be the ideal platform.

It was also around that time when I got my first guitar, an Epiphone acoustic, I totally immersed myself in learning how to play it and Space Oddity was one of the first songs I figured out - the chords are nice and simple with that classic C to Em opening. Since then I’ve been taking my protein pills and I still play it regularly today. His songs are generally quite easy to learn, together they’re like a crash course for the ravers, but what hooked me was just how different Bowie was, how he used his own vocabulary and crazy phrasing in his song-writing, and some very unusual words at times - have you ever ‘gazed a gazeless stare’? And those great songs kept coming, with Life on Mars and Starman, and then at last came the chance to see him in concert. In 1972 I was living in Newcastle, and he was setting off on that lengthy Ziggy Stardust tour that included the US and Japan, and among the final concerts, Newcastle City Hall.

In those days there was no buying tickets on-line, it was a case of noting the date in the music mags when tickets would go on sale, and then walking to the City Hall on the day, joining the queue and handing over the cash. As you can see, for £1.50 (roughly £23 in today’s money) I got a pretty good seat, and to this day I can still remember that concert. I was a regular at the City Hall back then, and I still have all my old ticket stubs - T.Rex, Supertramp, Lou Reed, Deep Purple, Barclay James Harvest, Wishbone Ash and many more. But Bowie was always that bit different to these other artists, because he was constantly changing and reinventing himself. I saw him again two or three times, and the one thing that didn’t change was his extraordinary presence on stage, he had a charisma that I think I only ever saw in one other artist, Freddie Mercury.

I’ll be listening to some of those songs again today; and tonight if the skies are clear as they often are here in Provence, I might take a step outside after dark because somewhere up there ‘there’s a starman, waiting in the sky’.

So for better or for worse, and following literally seconds of inward reflection, here are my resolutions, my goals, my to-do list for 2026.

• Test the hypothesis that eating foie gras does not lead to weight gain.

• Keep teeth gritted and smile politely at mes voisins (my neighbours) after France beat England 1-0 thanks to a deflected own goal in the 94th minute of the World Cup Final.

• Ungrit teeth and draw puzzled looks from mes voisins as I run through the hamlet yelling ‘get in’ after Arsenal win the Premier League.

• Finish learning Chopin’s Nocturne Op.9, No. 2 on the guitar (this one is serious). And to all guitarists, click on the link and give it a go, it’s really not that difficult.

• Devise a recipe for ‘Poulet à la Chlorine’ for my friends back in the UK.

• Whenever I’m at Marseille Airport, lighten the mood by winking at customs officials as I go through passport control.

• And when flying over the UK, remember to make written notes of any geological or other signs that Britain is Broken.

• Reduce my wine intake to one bottle per ____ (please advise by filling in blank).

• Spin out a new company, LifeLong, offering ‘immortality or your money back’.

And that really is it. You may well look at this list and think crazily over-ambitious, I know many of you will be setting the bar rather lower with things like, run a marathon every week, lose 10kg, learn three foreign languages etc. But the fact is, some of us like a real challenge.

Happy New Year to all, I thank you for sticking with me and look forward to sharing more nonsense with you from Deepest Provence in 2026.

When I set off on this Substack journey, I mentioned music as something I’d be writing about, but so far not a squeak, not so much as a semi-quaver. My post this week only just ticks that box, following as it does, an article of almost the same name in a recent issue of Nature, should you want a longer and more serious analysis. The article begins with reference to a piano piece in the key of D minor called Pianita 17, which I have not been able to ‘track’ down, but which was generated by an AI model trained on thousands of hours of YouTube videos.

The problem for AI is that when it comes to music, or literature, or art, or anything else, it is obliged to use material that is already out there. It’s difficult to define ‘creativity’, but if we require creativity to contain at least some element of originality, then perhaps AI can never be anything more than derivative. But let’s see what you think. You’ll find below two sonnets, one written by me and the other by AI. The subject of both sonnets is Nigel Farage, but one is written in the style of Shakespeare and the other Philip Larkin. Can you work out which is mine, and which is ChatGPT?

Sonnet 1 (with apologies to W. Shakespeare)

O grievous tongue, whose honeyed lies take wing,
And charm the crowd with promise thin as air;
Thy words, like painted gold on rusted ring,
Do mask self-love with false concern and care.
Thou strut’st the stage as champion of the plain,
Yet sow’st division where thou claim’st to heal;
In stirring fear, thou findest private gain,
And call’st it truth whilst bending what is real.
Thy voice grows loud where reason’s breath is weak,
Thy cause made bold by anger, not by light;
In pride thou stand’st, yet ne’er in conscience meek,
A shadow dressed as guardian of the right.
O England, mourn the noise that drowns thy song:
Such men endure not time, though they seem strong.

Sonnet 2 (with apologies to P. Larkin)

What parasitic worm is this that crawls
To woo the poor ignorant fools that throng?
And in supplication nod while he drawls
Unable to distinguish right from wrong.
Self-int’rest is your sole motivation
You have no thought for the working man
Yet seek election to lead this nation
With support from Putin whene’er you can.
Your lies they twist the truth and thus deform
The basis of reason and what is just,
Under a banner that pledges Reform
Yet could not sit further adrift from trust.
These sorry times that lend your voice a stage
We must hope one day for a better age.

And regardless of who wrote which, perhaps the more important question is whether you see any ‘creativity’ in either of these - which is not the same as asking which do you think is better, which doesn’t really matter. Like it or not, one of them truly is creative, and as for the other, well it comes back to how we define creativity.

Whatever your thoughts, thank you for sticking with me this year, a bonne fin d’année from Deepest Provence, and let’s reconvene in January.

You’re all far too sharp - most of you rumbled me and guessed that it was indeed me who wrote Sonnet 2. So, given that ‘creativity’ can’t be measured or quantified, do you think ChatGPT was more creative than me? Bearing in mind that Sonnet 1 is 100% derivative whereas my own offering was most definitely 100% original.

The problem for AI is that when it comes to music, or literature, or art, or anything else, it is obliged to use material that is already out there. It’s difficult to define ‘creativity’, but if we require creativity to contain at least some element of originality, then perhaps AI can never be anything more than derivative. But let’s see what you think. You’ll find below two sonnets, one written by me and the other by AI. The subject of both sonnets is Nigel Farage, but one is written in the style of Shakespeare and the other Philip Larkin. Can you work out which is mine, and which is ChatGPT?

Sonnet 1 (with apologies to W. Shakespeare)

O grievous tongue, whose honeyed lies take wing,
And charm the crowd with promise thin as air;
Thy words, like painted gold on rusted ring,
Do mask self-love with false concern and care.
Thou strut’st the stage as champion of the plain,
Yet sow’st division where thou claim’st to heal;
In stirring fear, thou findest private gain,
And call’st it truth whilst bending what is real.
Thy voice grows loud where reason’s breath is weak,
Thy cause made bold by anger, not by light;
In pride thou stand’st, yet ne’er in conscience meek,
A shadow dressed as guardian of the right.
O England, mourn the noise that drowns thy song:
Such men endure not time, though they seem strong.

Sonnet 2 (with apologies to P. Larkin)

What parasitic worm is this that crawls
To woo the poor ignorant fools that throng?
And in supplication nod while he drawls
Unable to distinguish right from wrong.
Self-int’rest is your sole motivation
You have no thought for the working man
Yet seek election to lead this nation
With support from Putin whene’er you can.
Your lies they twist the truth and thus deform
The basis of reason and what is just,
Under a banner that pledges Reform
Yet could not sit further adrift from trust.
These sorry times that lend your voice a stage
We must hope one day for a better age.

And regardless of who wrote which, perhaps the more important question is whether you see any ‘creativity’ in either of these - which is not the same as asking which do you think is better, which doesn’t really matter. Like it or not, one of them truly is creative, and as for the other, well it comes back to how we define creativity.

Whatever your thoughts, thank you for sticking with me this year, a bonne fin d’année from Deepest Provence, and let’s reconvene in January.

Stay tuned - and a happy Christmas to all.

But considering the sort of content one might expect to find in a ‘security strategy’, this is a strange place indeed to find Trump’s musings on the future of Europe. The document states that European civilization, which has been maturing nicely over the last few millenia, could be gone within 20 years, which we can assume that Trump must view as a threat to US security. But there is a sinister implication in all of this, because for these words to be taken seriously, they must have been written with the sort of certainty that only the perpetrators of such an apocalypse could deliver. Whatever the reasoning, let’s not forget about Trump’s legendary cognitive ability, and just ensure that we’re properly prepared to be erased when the time comes. So wherever you are in Europe, here are my top tips:

1. Wear something comfortable.

2. In preparation for whatever Trump says next, keep in mind that ‘having dementia’ is not the same as ‘being demented’. And that they are not mutually exclusive.

3. Enjoy a few of those final moments listening to ‘80s synth-pop duo Erasure, and some of their catchy melodies.

   

4. Watch the skies for that fleet of flying erasers with US flags on the side.

5. Relish the prospect of never having to watch England play cricket again.

6. Put the kettle on.

7. Er……

8. That’s it

It’s ironic isn’t it, that the greatest threat to Europe right now, is not Russia or immigration, but Trump’s America.

I expect some of you are old enough, like me, to remember 1966 and England winning the World Cup. I was 8 years old at the time, and like many households we didn’t have a TV, that was until England made it to the final. My dad then decided the time had come and on the 30th July we were gathered around a wooden box with four legs, with an aerial on top and a flickering black and white screen. I should add that TV usage was strictly limited thereafter, with only Tomorrow’s World and Blue Peter permitted at first, but eventually Dr Who too.

However, back in 1966 there were only 16 teams that made it to the finals, unlike the 48 that made the draw last week. And only 32 matches were played, in contrast to the 104 that will be played next year. The reason for this enormous expansion of the tournament is simple - money. What all this means, primarily for the US and to a lesser extent Mexico and Canada, are revenues in the billions of dollars, for bums on seats, merchandise, half-time burgers and of course all the TV exposure and associated advertising. With an influx of an estimated 5 million supporters from all over the world, it’ll be interesting to see how they engage with Trump’s ICE agents, and how many end up getting deported. When one considers that the US had already completed 2 million deportations this year by September this year, what could possibly go wrong?

So what comes next for Gianni Infantino, a FIFA Physics or Literature Prize? Surely, knowing his love of money, a better present for Trump would have been a FIFA Economics Prize. And as for England, I think I’ll need to be in the running for a FIFA Longevity Prize if I want to see them win it again.

One of the highlights from last year (Physiology Prize) was the discovery that many mammals can breathe through their anus. Given that breathing is only a biological nuance away from speaking, one can’t help but speculate - with Donald Trump being the obvious example, that some mammals can also speak through their anus. It’s rather surprising that no-one has actually stepped forward to test this hypothesis and do the necessary experiments.

The Ig Nobels differ from the Nobels in that they recognise research that makes people LAUGH, then THINK. A feature of the formal ceremony is that the awards are presented by actual Nobel laureates, in a hall full of raucous scientists throwing paper aeroplanes. The ceremony is typically held at Boston University, with each of the ten winners getting just one minute to explain their research. The whole idea goes back to 1997 and Marc Abrahams who edited the Annals of Improbable Research.

My personal favourites this year address the question of what a nursing baby experiences when their mother eats garlic, and whether drinking alcohol affects the ability of bats to fly. It turns out the answer is yes, which the authors suggest may in turn explain why bats avoid fermented fruit. And among my favourites from years gone by are the 1993 Physics Prize which discovered why toast tends to fall buttered side down, and the 2019 Physics Prize in which fluid dynamics was used to answer the question, can a cat be both a solid and a liquid? Again the answer is yes.

Such is the wonderful world of science.

First thing to be aware of is that it is not unusual in Universities for Professorships (also known as Chairs) to be named in honour of individuals who have made a particular mark in their field. In my case, Norman Ashton was a groundbreaking clinical ophthalmologist who worked extensively on retinopathy of prematurity. He died in 2000, the year that I was appointed to his named Chair. Sometimes a named Chair in itself can appear to be a somewhat arbitrary mark of respect from one’s host University. I remember when I started work as an academic at UCL back in 1990, one of my colleagues who occupied a nearby office in what was the Department of Physiology, was a quietly spoken and elderly professor by the name of Bernard Katz. But he was no ordinary Professor, he was Professor Sir Bernard Katz, a neuroscientist who won the Nobel prize in 1970, essentially for discovering the synapse.

For scientists (and not forgetting economists, authors and peace brokers) a Nobel prize really is the ultimate accolade, and accordingly UCL established a Professorial Chair in the name of Bernard Katz. Such are the machinations of academic life – but named chairs are a slight digression from my focus today which is what it means to become Professor Emeritus. The word Emeritus has nothing to do with merit, or Emirates or having a season ticket at Arsenal, but comes from the Latin meaning ‘a veteran soldier’. And the reality of becoming Emeritus comes with a number of consequences. First, it allows one to continue using the title ‘Professor’ after retirement, so for example if I’m booking a table for dinner at a local pizzeria I can book it in the name of ‘Professor Emeritus Stephen Moss’ rather than plain old ‘Mr Steve Moss’ – perhaps in the hope of securing a better table, or getting a complementary glass of fizz on arrival. I hasten to add this is something I’ve never done!

It also means I can continue to use my UCL email address and take advantage of certain University facilities. This has actually been rather useful, particularly when it comes to on-line library access to thousands of scientific journals. But it also means I continue to receive emails every day from UCL management, most often reminders that I have fallen behind with my ‘Equality, Diversity and Inclusion’ training, my ‘Health and Safety’ and ‘Cybersecurity’ training, my ‘Managing Conflicts of Interest’ training and so on. And here I have to admit that being retired and living in Provence I’m now a little less diligent than I once was when it comes to considering the disposal of methanol, or the corrosive nature of sulphuric acid.

But what has really struck me in the couple of years since retiring, is the proliferation of such ‘training’ or ‘enabling’ courses, a manifestation of the need for Universities (just like numerous other public institutions) to be perceived by the outside world as being right there at the cutting edge in addressing, from a managerial and structured perspective, the myriad dangers and threats that once upon a time we each used to deal with on an ad hoc basis as individuals. Committees and ‘working groups’ are therefore assembled within Departments to oversee these responsibilities, termly or even monthly meetings become written into the academic calendar, minutes are taken, reports on any Departmental incidents/breaches are carefully documented and submitted to the Department Head and quite possibly the Dean, new and ever more complex guidelines and rules are devised, and thus in the name of seeking ‘operational perfection’ we unwittingly invite the intrusion of more and more bureaucracy into our everyday lives.

The latest ‘facilitation and enabling’ activities from UCL were a requirement for Departments to report on the impact of Celebrity Traitors, Celebrity Masterchef and Celebrity Strictly on PhD completion rates, and the management of collaborations with highly stressed US colleagues in the age of Donald Trump. The latter has presented real challenges as we try to provide moral and emotional support to traumatised American colleagues, while at the same time adhering to strict rules over sharing materials and maintaining confidentiality. There really is no escape, but I think what no-one anticipated was how this need to be seen to be diligent and minimise risk has proven to be infectious, to the extent that for many of us it has pervaded our personal lives. For me, this means that at home my wife and I now have timetabled weekly meetings to manage our shopping trips to the local market. Once upon a time it was a simple shopping list, but now we document not just what we plan to buy, but we also accurately forecast the cost implications, and at least for me assess the possible impact of our purchases on my own body-mass index, consider the risk of rain while we’re outside exposed to the elements, and ensure that the timing and route of our visit is compliant with French legal requirements concerning vehicle use, speed limits, parking restrictions and so on. Thankfully, my wife minutes these meetings, and should we identify any areas in which we seem inadequately prepared or informed, corrective actions are taken and if necessary, appropriate admonishments are enforced – such as denial of a croissant at breakfast.

Having given you a glimpse into life as Professor Emeritus, it is time now for this veteran soldier to conclude, as I need to discuss with my wife our winter plans for the minimisation of energy use and carbon footprint. And can I advise that if you actually believed any of that last paragraph then you really do need to take a course on identifying misinformation.

The briefest of offerings this week as I am travelling, arriving in Montreal a couple of days ago and now deep in the wooded and snow covered wilderness of New Brunswick.

Before taking to the air I finished another picture and thought I’d share it with you. It’s one of the typical narrow lanes in our local town of Apt, and the first time I’ve attempted a subject like this, starting with pencil, then pen and ink, and then soft oil pastels. Watercolour would definitely have been easier than the pastels, and I’m still finding my way when it comes to using them, but I like the colours.

And I also wrote a short poem for friends - attempting to explain the basic principles of nuclear fusion in rhyme. I have to admit it’s not a topic that readily lends itself to this particular muse, but decide for yourselves whether or not you think it makes sense.

Ninety-three million miles from here
Lies not your sons, not our son, but the sun
Not burning, but fusing its hydrogen core
For billions of years, and with more yet to come

And for those us here around our 70th year
Slowly drifting through space since our birth
By our age our star is that bit further away
There’s a whole extra metre between the sun and the earth.

And the reason we’re drifting away from the sun
Will fascinate the physicist and flummox the fool
It’s the slow loss of mass as the hydrogen gets fused
That weakens the sun’s gravitational pull.

As someone approaching their 70th year, it interests me that the earth is now approximately one meter further from the sun, than it was the year I was born. I hope the poem manages to explain why.

Before taking to the air I finished another picture and thought I’d share it with you. It’s one of the typical narrow lanes in our local town of Apt, and the first time I’ve attempted a subject like this, starting with pencil, then pen and ink, and then soft oil pastels. Watercolour would definitely have been easier than the pastels, and I’m still finding my way when it comes to using them, but I like the colours.

And I also wrote a short poem for friends - attempting to explain the basic principles of nuclear fusion in rhyme. I have to admit it’s not a topic that readily lends itself to this particular muse, but decide for yourselves whether or not you think it makes sense.

Ninety-three million miles from here
Lies not your sons, not our son, but the sun
Not burning, but fusing its hydrogen core
For billions of years, and with more yet to come

And for those us here around our 70th year
Slowly drifting through space since our birth
By our age our star is that bit further away
There’s a whole extra metre between the sun and the earth.

And the reason we’re drifting away from the sun
Will fascinate the physicist and flummox the fool
It’s the slow loss of mass as the hydrogen gets fused
That weakens the sun’s gravitational pull.

As someone approaching their 70th year, it interests me that the earth is now approximately one meter further from the sun, than it was the year I was born. I hope the poem manages to explain why.