Created 8.vii.25.
This has been a funny five months. A lot of changes for friends and for the extended family, both good and bad changes. I am making more time than I used to in keeping up connectedness with people so that’s good, if a bit of a new competence to find!
I have struggled hugely with the horrors in the world: particularly the increasingly to me quite disgusting figure of Donald Trump looming over so much. I am struggling a bit at the moment with whether I can pick up a genuinely attractive proposition for a little bit of collaboration with some researchers based in the US as I am trying currently to boycott pretty much everything from the States. Pah, Trump thinks he can do tarif wars, wait until I get going … OK, I dream over. I am pretty sure that I will collaborate with them but that, as we get to know each other a bit, I will try to have a conversation about what they make of Trump, the Republican party (and the collapsed Democrats too).
I am only marginally less disgusted with the UK Labour party who seem to me to have become just a less flamboyant version of the Tories. Is their duplicity even greater than that of Boris and his cronies who never pretended they had the slightest interest in “ordinary people”? Surely Labour has always said it was the party for the general people and not just the wealthy? Are they handing everything to the utterly odious Farage and Reform?
Oh dear. Writing this isn’t really going to help is it? In case anyone is wondering whether I am worried about being refused entry to the USA because I have written this: I’m not. I wouldn’t be going there anyway as I’m not flying now as I am trying, belatedly, to compensate a little for the damage I have already done to the planet by my earlier flying. However, currently it would be an honour to be barred!
Enough bile. The header image of this post is of the fire in the MMV apartments back in April, shortly before I came back to the UK. There was something pretty impressive about the blaze and how long it took a substantial collection of fire engines to finally put it out. That felt an odd marker of my transition from the French half of my life back to the UK. I didn’t hear whether the cause was established but I did hear that there were no serious injuries which was pretty impressive as it started in the early hours of the morning when the overwhelming majority would have been asleep with many families in there. Quite a reminder of the power of raw elements like fire.
Life back in the UK since then has been varied with overlaps with some friends and more with family, a good binge on exhibitions and now an in-laws’ family reunion week with many children making me feel very old! Last week I was in Kraków for the SPR (Society for Psychotherapy Research) meeting, a funny mix of work and some overlaps with colleagues and friends from the past. Meanwhile, work rolls on if never as fast I think/wish it will. I am focusing increasingly on creating open access things on the web rather than just trying to complete papers and I’m pretty happy with my latest shiny app which allow practitioners to upload data and get out analyses of their data including this:
The app will probably get some use by researchers particularly from countries in the “global South” who have so far fewer resources than I’ve always had. My main aim these days is to things useful to practitioners anywhere but particularly for practitioners and researchers from this “global South”. Anyway, I’ll sign off from this little update now with some other images.
More images from the fire (as usual, you should be able to click on the first to get them full sized for your browser and to be able to click through them).
And the remnants the following day:
And now a sometimes whimsical selection of images from Kraków. We start with one of my preferred selfies then the grim brutalist building is the national museum there. I’m a sucker for brutalism but that was a bit beyond even my tastes but I was amused to see the ‘photo from its construction in the 1930s inside. Then you have images of the statue to Stanisław Wyspiański (Wikipedia here). Someone is burning a candle for him and there is a superb collection of his portraits in the London National Portrait Gallery: https://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/display/2025/stanislaw-wyspianski-portraits, but it’s only going until 13.vii.25 so get along now if you can: it’s free!
The collection inside the museum is absolutely stunning and I could have many, many more images from there so you see a very small selection only. Zofia Stryeńska was unknown to me but I loved the image and the quote. More on her here. There seemed to me to be an unusually good representation of female artists though they were certainly still in the minority. The print of the three women is titled “Queue still goes on”. I could relate to that though transgendered a bit: that’s how I feel at times these days! It’s by Zbylut Gryzwacz (1939-2004). There’s a little about him here.
Then there are some things that caught my eye walking around the town and finally images of the Veit Stoss altarpiece in the Basilica of St. Mary. Veit Stoss was the artist who carved and painted it, see the Wikipedia page). Those are particularly for my sister Kate who pointed me to it and has always wanted to see it!
Enough now!