Sunday, 28th December, 2025
Out in the garden last night at the end of December it was warm and bright. I was being over looked by this lunar – tic who was hanging around.
One shivers slightly, looking up there.
The hardness and the brightness and the plain
Far-reaching singleness of that wide stare
Is a reminder of the strength and pain
Of being young; that it can’t come again,
But is for others undiminished somewhere.Philip Larkin – Sad Steps
In poetry, a crescent moon is often used as a metaphor for a new beginning. For Larkin, it was a new beginning that can’t come again. Don’t you just love him? The harsh, dark realism of his thoughts.
Having spent Christmas Eve with young people – kids with their whole lives ahead of them, Kids who wore their dreams on their sleeves for all to wonder at, Larkin’s words are an honest dagger to the heart for those of us who are so old we can only manufacture small lights of hope ahead. We can look to viewing new places and touching old friends but all the while bounded by the sadness that is time.
Last night I completed watching a potentially harrowing film on Netflix call Goodbye June. I know you will think I am mad but it had to be done. June – the Mother played by Helen Mirren – was in her final days as she died of cancer. Her family were in constant attendance and brought all the emotional baggage of family relations with them. The whole process was wonderfully redeemed by the way this family rallied around June in her final hours with admirable strength. She passed away as they performed the Nativity for her in the hospital room. There was something incredibly uplifting about it. I still cried.
… a reminder of the strength and pain
Of being young; that it can’t come again,
But is for others undiminished somewhere.
Does meeting on the dark side of the moon involve living or dying? For me it is living long and dying late. Going out for a walk through the woods.
It is a grey, chilly Winter’s day. Even the birds are conserving their energy today. Ivy climbs vigorously up the trunks of dormant trees and dead leaves rustle in the undergrowth.
Nature will regenerate as the Spring warms up but there are signs of the present past as I walk down the tree-lined path. Who tied these ribbons of memory? Are they for memories of love or death or longing? And do you care, Dear Reader?
Monday, 29th December, 2025
Oh, it’s coming, Dear Reader, 2026 is almost here. Going to be a very big year, a momentous year. I can just feel it. WooHoo!
Crisp – cold even – morning with a gorgeously, inviting sky. I woke at 3.33 am and struggled to get back to sleep. Why do I always wake up on these mystical numbers? By the time, Radio 4 Today programme came on at 6.00 am, I was falling asleep. Unfortunately, the programme was gripping for that time in the morning.
Each day over Christmas, they invite someone with a particular specialism to be a Guest Editor for the day. This morning, it was Mustafa Suleyman. He is a leading light in the advancement of Artificial Intelligence.
Of course, AI is all the rage at the moment. It is hard to turn on a news programme without hearing it mentioned. It is hard to read a serious newspaper (I exclude the Daily Fail & the Daily Sexpress colour comics) without at least one item on AI being included.
AI has been with us for years but is going to be absolutely revolutionary in the 21st Century akin to the Industrial Revolution of the 19th Century. Then, thousands of workers left the fields where they worked in Agriculture and moved to create towns where they worked in Manufacture. The dislocation engendered dire conditions which it took decades to ameliorate and it spawned the Labour Movement.
More than 30 years ago, I was using Artificial Intelligence in its infancy with Authorware. I had a problem to solve and that is the best way to adopt and adapt new technology. I was trying to create computer-based individualised learning programmes which could be delivered to large numbers of students by small numbers of ‘teachers’. In fact, they didn’t need to be fully qualified teachers but could just be Learning Support workers who were cheaper to employ.
It involved providing teaching content integrated with testing and assessment followed by tailored extension according to previous achievement. It was all to be put through the Intranet that I had designed and launched for staff and students. I learnt fast because I needed to.
Today in Education, you will find students using AI to write their essays for them and that immediately throws up the problem. How do you push out AI across our world without it being used to force for bad. It should not be a tool to help people cheat. What will those whose jobs are lost to AI do to earn a living? Here are just a few:
- Interpreters and translators
- Proof readers
- Statistical assistants
- Telephone operators
- Sales representatives
- Legal Assistants
- Diagnostic Healthcare
Anything where the centre of the work is rote learning and replication, logical development is ideal for AI and those jobs will no longer be done by humans. Just as in the last revolution, Ford replaced thousands of workers making cars with each worker doing one task on a production line to build a car and then moved on to replacing most workers with robots so it will be for AI.
What Artificial Intelligence can’t do is be human and the speaker this morning helped me understand the difference. He boiled it down to the ability of humans to feel pain and sadness, to emapthise with others feeling those things which AI can’t do. So, for example, the job of Diagnostic Healthcare can be done by AI machine – x-raying a body to look for cancer and then looking unerringly through the scans to find it without getting tired, bored or distracted. Whereas, the human sympathy and empathy of Healthcare will still need human input.
As a retired old Blogger, my use for AI is much less urgent. So many people want words because they find them so difficult. I don’t. In fact my hackles rise when AI suggests improvements to my writing. I particularly want help with graphics. Above are three versions of the same photo. The one on left is the original. In the middle one, ChatGTP added Santa Hats and on the right Baby Piglets were the presents. The problem is that it is all so effortless.
Tuesday, 30th December, 2025
I’ve just received a video clip from a skinny, old man who is skiing in France before returning to Florida. Looks like he’s got plenty of snow.
On this day, 47 years ago, our guests were struggling across the country and across the Pennines during a gritter strike in thick snow. It is our Wedding Anniversary today and I have helped my wife celebrate by ordering her a new set of pans to replace those bought 30 years ago. What more could a girl want? Well, it seems quite a lot.
It is a gorgeous day outside but quite cold. Started the morning with Porridge. Chef is cooking Scallops Gratin for Supper and Langoustines with Focaccia and a bottle of Champagne. Went down to the Marina for a walk. The light was glorious.
We have been discussing how to mark our 50th anniversary in 2028. It has been tentatively decided that an Australian trip would be a good idea. Been meaning to go for years so we will make a real go of it – Fly First Class Flight. Stay for at least a month. No expenses spared. It will be once in a life time.
Always wanted to see Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Opera House and Bondi Beach so that is the plan …. assuming we are still alive. Might even meet up with an old school friend of mine. Lots to look forward to, Dear Reader, down under.
Wednesday, 31st December, 2025
And so another year is on its death bed. I remember the feverish anticipation of the new millenium, the excitement and the fear. I was still in my 40s. I was starting out on the project of building a house on a Greek Island. At the same time, there was all the build up to the Millenium Bug and how it could destroy computers and the internet. Hard to believe 25 years have passed. In that same time ahead, we will be 99, Dear Reader. Hard to believe it’s going to happen.
Crystal clear morning with a touch of frost. We did go down to 2C/36F and the cars have a dusting of cold. Walking outside will mean Fleeces today because it is not going to get much warmer throughout. Going out to collect the new kitchen pans. Ordered them from ProCook yesterday and they have been delivered to a collection point nearby this morning. Fantastic service.
I’ve been having a bit of a culture binge over Christmas. Last night I completed the Peter Schaffer Mozart Biopic on Sky Atlantic. Contrary to my expectations, the almost 3hrs of drama held me from start to finish. I had forgotten how much I loved the music of Mozart and to see it in dramatic context of his life made it even more delicious. Particularly, I thought it captured the contradistinction of man and art.
The utter genius of the boy who wote his first opera aged 10 yrs, who could just pick up a music score and hear the whole arrangement in his head, who could play so many of the instruments himself that he wrote for, who could dash off the wonder that is Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovani or Cosi Fan Tuti and then his final, glorious but unfinished Requiem and then to run along side the drunken, drug-taking, whoring, Roué who parted from his utterly supportive wife as he sort new pleasures. All this and he died aged 35 yrs at the height of his creative powers.
You may know of the famous sculpter, Eric Gill whose work was aclaimed worldwide but who suddenly fell from grace when his diaries revealed that he had sexually abused his young daughters over a lengthy period of their childhood. It revisited the debate about the separation or interrelationship of art and reality, creator and creation.
In a sense, it is there in the life of Mozart but it is definitely there in the life of one of my heroes, Philip Larkin. Hero is not the right word. I don’t think I would like Larkin at all if we had met. As atheists, he and I agree on his view of the bleak hopelessness of life.
Key themes in his poetry are:
- Monotony and Boredom of Life
- Futility of Love and Relationships
- Loss of Faith and Meaning
- A focus on unhappiness, failure, and limitation
- Inevitability of Death and Extinction
What is shocking is what you realise about him in his letters and personal life. You find his out and out Racism, Misogyny, bigotry and, frankly, a degree of Fascism. His father was strongly pro-Nazi in the 1930s. Larkin himself was an isolated, insulated man with parochial tastes and used his women casually.
Does this change my view of his poetry. I must admit it has given me pause for thought in the past but, ultimately, works of art can only be appreciated as free-standing pieces and Larkin’s poetry speaks to me so strongly that I am constantly saying to myself, Why didn’t I think of that? I wish I’d written that.
Over the past few days, I have been binge listening to the Poet Laureate, the Huddersfield poet, Simon Armitage, revisiting a number of Larkin’s poems on BBC Radio Sounds. Whether you know him or not, it’s well worth a listen.
Thursday, 1st January, 2026
It’s come. Happy New Year, Dear Reader. Happy 2026. I told you, it’s going to be an exciting year of risk and danger but plenty of enjoyment as a reward.
As a regular reader you will know that I have a Memory Box which throws up what happened across the years on any given day. On the last day of 2006, I was watching the old year die behind the hills of this bleak, Pennine road. At the time, I thought it was romantic. Now it just looks empty.
Twenty years on, I walked down the beach road last night and, in spite of the lights, it was cold and equally bleak. Almost no lights out at sea as I stared into the inky blackness. Maybe a bit warmer than the Pennine Moors. To the right is the endlessly undulating sea. To the left is the newly developed and brightly lit enchanted parkland path leading to old and fading civilisation.
Of course, light and darkness are emotional states. Light in the darkness symbolises hope, enlightenment, knowledge, and goodness overcoming times of struggle, confusion, or profound sadness.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what’s really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.Aubade – Philip Larkin
For Larkin, Light can offer only fleeting comfort while darkness signifies loneliness or the ultimate void, existential terror and despair. Don’t you just have to love his optimism! He’s right though. He articulates completely what so many of us think.
Friday, 2nd January, 2026
And so it goes, just like you said it should be …. Coming to the week’s end and well on into January and 2026. Soon, it will feel completely normal, taken for granted, and we will be anticipating 2027. Bring on the fireworks!
I have rather over indulged myself recently like so many others. Now I have to pay for it by reigning in my instincts. The diet has been readdressed and the exercised routine tightened. Home made Museli and Home made Soups are the order of these days. More concentration in the Gym rather than walking outside is another readjustment.
I’ve decided to indulge myself in a non-calorific way instead. I’ve been listening to the wonderful, Elgar Cello Concerto – self reflective and elegiac. Written in the immediate aftermath of the First World War, it was not a success until the mid 1960s and long after his death. It was Jacqueline du Pré who brought it to public attention and it is now one of the most played classical pieces.
Talking about over indulgence, I was brought up short by a poverty report discussed in the Manchester Evening News this morning telling me that Deprivation levels are higher than ever in Oldham today. Ashton Road and the Eldon Street Estate, parts of Hathershaw, St. Mary’s, Coldhurst, Holts, and Glodwick are some of the most deprived wards in the whole UK. Many of them have occupied that position since I first went there to teach in 1972. Nothing has changed their reputations for more than 50 years. Objectively, no doubt, they are better off but Relatively not.
It is unbelievable that nothing dramatic has happened to improve the lot of Gtr. Manchester inhabitants in general and Oldhamers in particular over half a century. When I walked through Manchester and down Oxford Road to the Business School in the early 1970s, it was impossible to get there without seeing lots of beggars. It always struck me as ironic the contrast between the affluence the central tenet of the Business School raison d’etre and the utter hopelessness of those outside on the street.
And after 50 years when we have Never had it so Good, where Things can only get Better and where we are enthusiastically going to Level Up, little has improved. You only have to look at the quality of the infrastructure, the old, damp and cold housing, the lack of meaningful jobs, the poverty of ambition and absence of inspiration to see we have failed.
What also strikes me is how inurred my life is from these things. I can’t remember the last time I saw someone begging other than in Greece. It was a regular feature of Huddersfield and Manchester. Here it isn’t. There must be poverty as everywhere but it is not so dominant or obvious. Supermarkets still collect for foodbanks and adverts are placed for people wanting to rent a small home and I shudder at the thought but it isn’t a central feature. I so hope this Labour Government are given the chance to make that difference over the next 10 years.
Saturday, 3rd January, 2026
We had a clear, moonlit sky last night and a frost this morning but it was soon burnt off by strong sunshine. I slept rather fitfully and woke to listen to a podcast about predictions for the year ahead. The News Agents were predicting the resurrection of the Labour Government with much better economic news and the rise of Starmer on the back of it. They were also predicting World instability and discussing the chances of the reintroduction of Conscription. It all chimed into my dreams and waking thoughts.
Somewhere around 1958, I was exploring my world and wandered in to one of our outhouses in the garden. It was what we called the Boot House which was supposed to do what it said on the tin – somewhere to store muddy boots out of the house. Another was an outside toilet and another was a Coal House for coal and firewood. These outhouses were still used but were really relics of another age when houses had open fires and outdoor toilets as a standard. The house had been built by my Great Grandfather’s firm over a 100 years ago.
Actually, this row of outhouses had been built over the Water Well and in my early life the kitchen still contained a hand pump for bringing water up. Although we did have taps and running water installed through lead pipes, Mum insisted on using the well water hand-pumped up to wash the girls’ hair in because the water was so soft.
Just putting down these words shocks me and makes me realise how far we have come over my lifetime. It was provoked by a dream I had in the early hours of the morning. I was around 7 years old, my father had introduced me to gardening by buying me a garden tool set and a packet of turnip seeds to try out for my birthday. I went into the Boot House and uncovered this trunk. Inside there was a sinister looking thing which I now know was a gasmask. There was an army cap, a damp and mouldy suit, shoes and some curling old papers. I think there was also a stick that I now find was known as a swagger stick that officers carried. That trunk had been stored in there for almost a decade.
It was confusing and exciting. I asked my parents and they didn’t seem too keen to talk about it but knew they had to. I learnt that it was my father’s Demob Trunk and I was amazed to hear that, although he had been a Captain in the Royal Engineers serving in Palestine for most of the war, he had left the army as a Major. Major Eric Sanders returned from directing squaddies building bridges in Palestine to directing craftsmen to build houses in the east Midlands
Of course, after the war, Rationing continued until July 1954 when I was 3 years old and Conscription didn’t end until 1960 having taken a number of Dad’s apprentices who didn’t return until 1963. Shocking to realise how close I was to it all and I think this dream could have been provoked by the current view that World War III is almost unavoidable with Europe having to commit huge resources to resisting Russian and Chinese and American Imperialism.
The idea of UK Conscription being part of the planning is seriously being discussed in dark corners of the Government and Civil Service at the moment. Anyone – male or female – aged under 40 yrs old could well be called up. Ironically, the Millennial and Generation Z cohorts are the generations most rapidly losing faith in democracy. It appears many would prefer a strong, autocrat because their elected leaders don’t seem to be performing for them.
Our cohort may have been born on the fringes of war and may die on the fringes of war again without ever having to fight.
Sanders Blog 