The Persistence of Time or I should have built a 'retrospectascope'

 

'When I had a fringe Salvador' - digital art by George Roberts October 2025

'Growing up'

I had no sibling, sister or brother

So I listened to Dad and Mother

 

But one day I realised

What they said was

Utter Bollocks!

 

I was often told at school

Not to play the bloody fool

 

But one day I realised

What they said was

Management Bollocks!

 

Grandees of Commerce and State

Agree it’s a sad but true fact of fate

That you need loads of losers

To make just a few big winners

 

But one day I realised

What they said was

Economic Bollocks!

Schrödinger's cat

 

Schrödinger's cat - digital art, George Roberts October 2025

Quantum physics is all very well but no one explains why Erwin Schrödinger' chose a cat to put in that box. He could have secreted a miniature Schnauzer or an okapi or even a badger in a sealed box but instead opted for a domestic cat. Can animals only exist in multiple states in boxes or would a tied sack have sufficed for this particular mind experiment?  

There is no accounting for taste in pet husbandry and packaging at the Planck scale!

Tartiflette

 

You will never regret 

Eating Tartiflette 

Although you may feel queezie 

Because it's all so cheesy 

Recurring Patterns or I wonder what I will do when I grow up?

 

'Free Form' - abstract digital art  - George Roberts. September 2025

When I was a kid, many moons ago, I remember using the difference in the viscosity of paint and water, to create swirly patterns on dipped paper.  Now, with the aid of fractal math and video editors to distort the resultant images, I am back doing the same stuff and making similar patterns, sixty or more years after, but this time in digital format.

Similarly, I still enjoy grilling fish on an open fire in our small backyard, just like my Iron Age antecedents did thousands of years ago. Nothing much changes in East Anglia.

Liquified

 

Liquified - digital art September 2025, George Roberts

Orchids began to melt 

Rain drops fell as steam!

The tiger adjusted its equatorial belt

And gibbons started to scream

The Jealous Sun

 

The Jealous Sun
- digital art, George Roberts Sept 2025

The Milky Way - Then and Now.

 

The Milky Way from  Étoile-Saint-Cyrice. France, in 2016.
Canon 400d DSLR on a fixed tripod

" Ageing is a most surprising event. We all know it's happening to us, from the moment we become sentient to the moment we no longer are. So why the surprise? 

Well, each of us is the centre of our own story and in the day to day hub-bub of delivering our unique role in the universe, we lose sight of the passage of time.

For much of life, time is experienced as a series of events: births, marriages and deaths being the 'big three'. We also split time into zones, Pre-school, School, University, Work and Retirement. We seldom think of time as a finite resource to be used with care and never squandered. Perhaps we can only move effectively through the 'now space' of our lives, if we relegate time to the mechanical beat of  'before and after'.

Time's best trick is to pretend it advances linearly. Sure, the way we measure it, the steady tick of the metronome, makes it seem that any second is like any other. But, I'm pretty sure that since my seventy-fifth birthday, the passage of time is accelerating as I decelerate in almost every other possible way.

'Age' doesn't have to mark time with 'decline' and in some areas, just like an ageing Camembert, I have matured. This is why the prudent ageing gentleman should always wear stronger smelling cologne, post 70th birthday!

The above photograph was taken in 2016 from Olly Penrice's balcony looking west, just after sunset. Quite an inexpensive camera and lens combination being used with enthusiasm rather than expertise. Nearly ten years on I have more expensive cameras , lenses, software and other 'techy gee-gaws' to play with. As I am a bit more experienced in astrophotography, I thought I would dig in the archive to find the data from 2016 and give it the 2025 data processing treatment.

Olly gave me my first lesson in processing digital data for astro-photography and from the week spent with him, my hobby and interest have developed. Both Anita and I remember the week we spent with Olly and Monique with great happiness. 

When I looked at the image I could see the Milky Way rising above the trees, sense the salamander on the steps, hear the boar moving in the dark and smell the wood burning on the fire. Memories involve all our faculties and can be happy and sad simultaneously!