Sunday 1 June

We're home again, after eight days in Ireland. On both Saturdays we stayed at hotels in Dublin. I made the mistake of leaving the bookings until only a few weeks beforehand. I then discovered that practically every hotel in the city was fully booked for both weekends, and I ended up having to make reservations in places that were way above our normal price bracket. Since Dublin is in any case a grossly expensive city, this cost us more than I care to think about. For the first night of our trip, we stayed in the Clarion, a newish hotel in the old docklands area which is being redeveloped as a modern commercial centre. The Clarion had apparently overbooked, and didn't have the room that we had reserved, so they gave us a free upgrade to their penthouse suite. Very plush, with acres of space and a fine view over the city, but somehow I don't appreciate that sort of luxury. I would have been happier in humbler, cheaper accommodation.

That evening, we walked over to the Temple Bar area looking for a restaurant, and found what looked like a very interesting Indonesian restaurant, The Chameleon. But it was fully booked for the evening. We were about to go off and look elsewhere when it occurred to us that we were going to be back in Dublin again a week later, so we asked if we could make a reservation for the following Saturday. Sure enough, they were able to do this, and we looked forward to an interesting meal on the last evening of our trip. We then went off to eat at another restaurant, which advertised itself as being an entirely non-smoking establishment. We heard that the Irish government has passed legislation forbidding all smoking in public places as from next January. I wish the British government would follow suit. But there's no point in going to a smoke-free restaurant if the food is not up to standard, and I really can't recommend the Palm Tree Restaurant.

For the next three nights we stayed with our friends Richard and Pat. We met them for the first time last year, in China, where Richard was the Irish delegate to the IMU General Assembly in Shanghai and I was on the UK delegation. Richard and Pat are very good company, and we spent a good deal of time with them in both Shanghai and Beijing. Richard works in the math department where I was the external examiner last week. On Sunday and Monday, he and Pat took us out to see some of the Irish countryside (the Wicklow mountains, including stops at Powerscourt gardens and Glendalough, and the megalithic tombs at Newgrange). On Tuesday I was busy all day with examining. Pat was going to take Mary into Dublin for some further sightseeing in Dublin. But Mary was too tired for that, and spent a lazy day reading. In the evening we were taken out for an examiners' dinner at Becketts, a country restaurant where we had an excellent meal. In fact, we had excellent dinners practically all week, and I can't now remember the menus of most of them.

On the Wednesday we travelled by train to Cork, where I was attending a mathematical conference for three days. The train leaves from Heuston Station in Dublin, which is not very central and is difficult to get to from where we were staying in Maynooth. I discussed with Richard the possible ways of getting there by various buses and trains. But when he mentioned the problem to the Head of Department after the examiners' meeting, the response was "Oh, we can't possibly let our external examiner use public transport. We must drive him to the station." So an obliging junior lecturer was leaned on to take us on the 30 minute drive to the station. I'm not used to that sort of VIP treatment, and it came as a nice surprise.

I think that's enough for today, so I'll leave an account of the Cork part of the trip until next time.

Wednesday 4 June

The train journey from Dublin to Cork lasts three hours and takes you back about 50 years.

Dublin is a prosperous (and expensive) modern international city, surrounded by satellite towns which all seem to be growing at a great rate with affluent new housing developments. We were told that over a third of the population of Ireland lives in the Dublin area, and it looks as though that proportion is increasing rapidly. After leaving the city, the train makes its way across practically empty countryside. It's all very green, of course, but there are scarcely any towns or even villages until you get to Cork.

I have been to Cork several times before, but I had never noticed until this visit that the town seems to be caught in a time warp. Compared with Dublin it is impoverished and rather shabby. On our first evening there we looked for somewhere to eat, and couldn't see anywhere in the city centre that looked attractive. Eventually we settled for a restaurant called Kelly's which looked as though it hadn't been altered for half a century. The food was equally old fashioned, the sort of meals that grandma (or more likely great-grandma) would have cooked. We chose the lamb cutlets, which came in a thick dark brown gravy, with overcooked vegetables and a separate side plate piled high with mashed potatoes. It was all quite palatable, but it reminded me of my childhood. I haven't seen food like that for a very long time.

We stayed in a cheap B&B. The choice was between that and Jury's hotel. I have stayed in Jury's before, it's a smart modern hotel, but it costs more than twice as much per night as the B&B. After the outrageous prices that we had to pay for Dublin hotels, I wanted to economise a bit. The B&B took a bit of getting used to. Like Kelly's restaurant it was run-down and shabby, and looked as though it hadn't been decorated or modernised for at least 50 years. It also hadn't been cleaned very thoroughly. There were rolls of dust round the skirting board in the bedroom, and the bathroom window frame was thick with mildew from condensation. The manager was a depressed-looking and distant woman who gave the impression that the job of running this large house was too much for her. But she did get the staff to clean our room properly after we grumbled about the state of it.

But I don't want to give a negative impression of Cork. We actually enjoyed our three days there very much. I was at an extremely well organised and interesting conference at the university, where there were several old friends taking part. There were also a few spouses there (wives, to be precise: mathematicians are almost invariably male, and their spouses female) to keep Mary company.

We left Cork on Saturday afternoon for the train journey back to Dublin, where we stayed overnight in another exorbitantly expensive hotel before flying back home. The previous week we had booked a table for dinner that evening at an attractive looking Indonesian restaurant, the Chameleon, in the Temple Bar district. The staff there, including a couple of cute gay waiters, were very friendly, but the food was disappointing. So I can't really recommend it.

From the point of view of this journal, the interesting thing about the Irish trip is the contrast between this year's visit and last year's. Then, I was on my own; this time Mary was with me. Last year, I had the opportunity to enjoy a taste of Dublin's gay life, with a visit to the Boilerhouse sauna. This year I didn't have that freedom, but on the other hand I had Mary's company. I was particularly glad of this in Cork, where there isn't any gay scene that I know of. I wouldn't have enjoyed that part of the trip nearly so much if I had been on my own.

Tuesday 10 June The Grandfather: Part II

We have been waiting for news for the past few days. Not that we have been waiting by the telephone all day, because there have been plenty of other things to keep us busy. Mary has been planting things out in the garden, and I spent the whole weekend marking exams. But all the time we were wondering when we were going to hear from Steve. The due date for the baby was 9 June, and yesterday morning right on cue Steve phoned to say that Jo was having contractions and they were taking her in to the hospital in Rio Tinto. My grandfather's birthday was 9 June (he was born in 1878) and I thought it was appropriate that my second grandson should be born on the same day 125 years later.

However, it was not to be. We had another phone call last night saying that it was a false alarm and the hospital had sent them home again. We didn't have long to wait before the next phone call, though. I was at work this afternoon when Mary called to say that Steve had just phoned again, from the delivery room in the hospital, to say that the baby had been born half an hour before. So our grandson Tom now has a baby brother David. Tom was very excited about this, and they have photos of him holding his little brother and presenting him with a teddy bear. I phoned Steve earlier this evening to congratulate him, and was told that Tom is now showing classic signs of regression and was insisting that his grandmother Carol should undress him and give him his bath before putting him to bed. Carol, Jo's mother, is staying with them for a couple of weeks. She suffers from agoraphobia and can't usually face the journey to Spain to see them. But the prospect of being there for the birth of her grandson was enough to tempt her to travel.

When Tom was born, we were staying with Steve and Jo, and it was all very exciting. Second time around, I suppose it's inevitable that it doesn't seem quite such a big deal. And with us being a thousand miles away it certainly isn't such an immediate experience. But we're very pleased about it, and we're relieved that Jo and David are both doing well and are expected to leave the hospital in the next day or two.

Mary and I won't be going to Spain until September. But we hope to see the new grandson before then, because Steve and family may be coming to England in August.

Now I'm going to sign off and have a celebratory glass of port.

Friday 13 June

Some time last month the women's page in The Guardian had an article by Katharine Whitehorn entitled Things I wish I'd known at 60. She starts by pointing out something that I keep noticing, now that I'm in my 60s:

I didn't realise – perhaps few did – just how out of date one's perceptions of older people are ... [T]elevision, for example, simply hasn't caught up with the reality. Almost every time they have to show a pensioner on the news they show someone who reminds you of the PG Wodehouse character, about whom they couldn't decide if she was a well-preserved 120-year-old or a 90-year-old who had been aged by grief.

In fact, as she points out, with modern medical care most 60-year-olds can expect 20 or 30 more years, "and those extra years can be marvellous".

With kids off your hands, mortgages paid and problems that seemed appalling receding into the past, you find a new freedom.

You're much as you were in your 50s in many ways, but with an important difference: you realise that friends in their 50s are still ambitious, still anxious about the next step, but you're not. You no longer think: "Is this all?" You feel you've done it, you cheerfully say "No" to things you would once have felt obliged to do.

Could we, I wondered to my husband, have always been as serene as this? No, we decided; you can only come to it after the turbulence of earlier years. A sunlit haven is fine after a life on the high seas, but if you had never ventured, never set sail, you would just be rotting on the beach. It was good.

I thought of that article as I pottered around the garden today. I had decided to take a couple of days off work. I could have justified this on the grounds that I worked all last weekend grading exam papers. But actually I don't feel the need to justify myself like that. It's more as though I'm getting demob happy as retirement draws nearer, and I can cheerfully say "no" to things I would once have felt obliged to do.

I originally intended to spend the day making a start on repainting the garage doors, but by the time I had finished breakfast and read the paper I had come to the conclusion that I just couldn't be bothered to do that today. It was a fine June day, sunny but not too warm, and it seemed like an ideal day for just being lazy. Mary felt the same way, and we both decided to treat ourselves to a day of idleness.

It wasn't a completely wasted day. I did a few useful little jobs like sweeping the dead blossom from the patio, and waxing my boots in preparation for next month's walking holiday in Scotland. Come to think of it, those were just about the only useful things I did. I spent most of the afternoon surfing around the net. I even did one of those pointless quizzes:

Your WOLF DAEMON shows that you are solitary,
ferocious, and often intimidating, but not
without your sufficient loyalty and poise.
People tend to misunderstand you, but you
prefer your own company, anyway.

What Animal Would Your Daemon Settle As?
brought to you by Quizilla

Actually, I had to cheat to get that result. My first attempt came up with an eagle, but I wanted the wolf.

It's absolutely true what Katharine Whitehorn says. If you spent your whole life the way that I spent today, you would feel that you had completely wasted it (and you'd be right). But there comes a stage when you feel that you have earned the right to indulge yourself once in a while. "A sunlit haven is fine after a life on the high seas, but if you had never ventured, never set sail, you would just be rotting on the beach."

Wednesday 18 June

Last Friday's outbreak of idleness didn't last too long, I'm glad to say. By Saturday afternoon I had had enough of sitting around reading the paper, and I psyched myself up to make a start on the job of repainting the garage doors.

I quite enjoy painting. It's a task that demands concentration but not thought. The snag is that the actual painting only takes a tiny fraction of the time when you're doing a decorating or maintenance job. By far the major part of the job is the preparation, chipping and scraping away the loose paint, sanding, cleaning, and then sanding down again between coats. If ever you have watched a good professional decorator at work you'll have noticed that they use far more sandpaper than paint.

I spent all Saturday afternoon doing the preparatory work, including sanding down the wood filler where I replaced the rotten wood a couple of months ago. On Sunday I gave a coat of primer paint to the areas that needed it. That still leaves the undercoat and gloss coat to do. Some other time. With luck I'll get the whole job finished before winter sets in.

Recommended reading: The Blackwater Lightship by Colm Tóibín. I took this with me to read on our recent trip to Ireland, since it seemed appropriate. I didn't have much time for reading in Ireland, and I only finished the book a few days ago. It's a story of three generations of Irish women, grandmother, daughter and granddaughter, who have all been estranged from each other for years, and the way that they find a reconciliation of sorts when they discover that their brother/son/grandson Declan is dying of Aids. It's a very convincing and sensitively told story. Without driving the point home in any obvious way, the author shows how Declan's gay friends form a much closer and more supportive family than his feuding blood family.

Colm Tóibín's subtle and understated writing will stay with me for a long time.

Sunday 22 June

We had an unexpected treat yesterday.

The story starts on Friday, when I had a meeting in London. It was long and stressful, but I won't go into that. The meeting was followed by an interesting lecture, and then a reception and dinner to which Mary also came. It's too late to get back to Leeds the same evening after dinner, so we had arranged to stay over. Our original plan was to stay two nights in London, and go to a show on Saturday evening. But Mary was feeling a bit short of stamina, and there don't seem to be any must-see shows on in London at present, so we cancelled the second night's stay. Plan B was to spend an hour or two on Saturday morning at the British Library and then take the train home from Kings Cross station.

The British Library (not to be confused with the British Museum) is just a hundred yards or so along Euston Road from Kings Cross and I have passed it many times, but I have never been inside before. It is a huge rambling building, looking from the outside like a prison, with layer on layer of windowless brick walls, very uninviting. Inside, it is quite different, a spectacular building full of amazing treasures like Magna Carta, the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, the Gutenberg Bible, the First Folio of Shakespeare's plays, and a big selection of musical manuscripts from the score of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony to the lyrics of Lennon and McCartney.

The unexpected treat was a special exhibition at the Library, devoted to the Lindisfarne Gospels. This was so impressive that we stayed all day at the Library and didn't get back home until evening.

Lindisfarne, or Holy Island, is an island just off the coast of Northumberland, connected to the mainland by a causeway that you can drive over at low tide, but is under water when the tide comes in. Many years ago, when we lived in Newcastle, it was a favourite destination for a day trip. One time, there was a professor from Texas visiting our Department, and we took him out one weekend for a trip to Lindisfarne. We explained to him that we had to time the trip carefully so as not to get stranded by the incoming tide. He found the whole situation difficult to understand, and he said "Why don't they just build a bridge?" I really had no answer to that, but it made me realise what a profound difference there is between European and American attitudes to the environment.

Holy Island, with its causeway and its castle to defend it, has been a religious sanctuary for about 1500 years. In the eighth century, it was one of the main centres of Christianity in England, and in the period from about 710 to 715 A.D. one of the monks there wrote the Lindisfarne Gospels, an incredibly ornate illustrated manuscript of the four gospels in Latin. A couple of hundred years later another monk wrote a word for word translation into early English between the lines, making it one of the earliest surviving documents in English.

Thirteen hundred years later, it still looks almost new. The vellum pages have not aged, cracked or yellowed, as paper would, and the colours of the illustrations and decorations are as vivid as they would have been then. The original book is in a secure display cabinet, of course, but in the exhibition there is a console where you can electronically "leaf through" a full size virtual replica. Even Mary, who normally scorns anything to do with computers, was fascinated by this, and sat for ages at the console (to the annoyance of the kids who were waiting for their turn). You can see a rudimentary small-screen version of this display online here (click on the link to "Turning the Pages").

Thursday 26 June

The first time I went to Moscow was in January 1998, a few months before I started this journal. It was interesting and exciting to be visiting Russia for the first time, but Moscow in January is not to be recommended. It was bitterly cold, and the whole city looked impoverished and depressing. We were staying in a wretchedly inadequate hotel with appalling food and surly staff.

The second time I visited Moscow was in June 1999. This time, we were in a much better hotel, the weather was fine and the city seemed more cheerful and prosperous. But the visit didn't have the excitement or novelty of the first one.

The third visit was in June 2001. The hotel was the best yet, and they looked after us very well indeed. But I was beginning to think that I had seen enough of Moscow.

Two years later, I'm leaving for another visit to Moscow. The flight from Heathrow is very early on Saturday morning, so I'll go to London tomorrow and stay overnight with a colleague. This trip will be a virtual rerun of the previous one, with an excursion on Sunday, business meetings on Monday and Tuesday before returning home on Wednesday. We'll be staying in the same luxurious hotel as last time, and I'm sure there'll be a succession of lavish banquets with the vodka flowing freely. But I'm very glad that this is the last time I'll be going on one of these trips. I have seen enough of Moscow for one lifetime, thanks.

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