There can’t be many people who have traveled around the world without intending to, or indeed without realizing they were doing it until the final hours. But today I have become such a person.

I’m flying back to London from the ICIAM congress in Tokyo. Tokyo is just 1/3 of the way around the world from London, so one would normally fly east to get there and west to return. But Putin’s war has closed Russian airspace, and planes are diverting to new routes. Last Saturday I flew east to Tokyo, a long trip around the southern edge of Russia. And today, on this plane returning to London, I woke up from a nap to discover we were over Alaska, not Kazakhstan! Eastward to Japan, eastward again back to England through 16 time zones.

One of my biographemes has been that I’ve been around the world five times: in 1964-65, 1971-72, 1982, 1990-91, and 2003-04, every one a journey of many months including a drive across the USA with a visit to my Aunt Jane in Tucson. Four times heading west, once east. This week it seems I’ve unwittingly added another eastward circuit to the list.

[26 August 2023]

Today, on the eve of my last regular day in the office, I gave 53 years of index card notes to the Balliol library, about 1200 cards in all. I will keep writing, but I hope this means the collection will be safe no matter what happens up ahead.

My beloved Copernican Principle asserts that if you want to know how long something will last, your best starting estimate is how long it has lasted already. Balliol was founded in 1263. As Copernican precautions go, this looks about as good as it gets.

[10 August 2023]