At 6:18 on the afternoon of Tuesday 4 ^th August a huge store of ammonium nitrate exploded at the port of Beirut. The blast, one of the most powerful non-nuclear explosions in history, killed nearly 200 people, injured thousands more, and left over a quarter of a million homeless. In the immediate vicinity, the blast wave overturned cars and tore the cladding from buildings;

I have been coming to the Lake District on and off for much of my life. It is my favourite corner of England. I first came in 1981 when I was seventeen, as one of half a dozen venture scouts from Ballymena on a summer youth hosteling trip. Then, in the early nineties, we would make annual trips to gather here with my wife’s siblings and their families, overseen with smiles and cooking by my tireless mother-in-law.

Comet NEOWISE has come but not yet gone. If there is no cloud cover for the next night or two, you might be able to catch its wispy presence low in the north-west before it fades from view. Don’t feel bad if you haven’t heard of comet C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE), to give this heavenly traveller its full name. It was only discovered on March 27 this year.

My new best buds… When I started out on this blog back in ’08 I made a passing observation about my age, having noticed I was increasingly lifting my glasses to read the date on my watch. Not long afterwards I upgraded to varifocals. Now I have another upgrade to report: I have acquired hearing aids. It was not an easy transition. On the face of it, why wouldn’t getting a pair of hearing aids be just like getting glasses?

The latest in a long line of R&D strategy documents from the UK government reveals some promising evolution in its strategic thinking.

The lockdown might have flattened the curve of infection and death, but it has also flattened the curve and swell of life. Existence has shrunk to fit within four walls; life ‘outside’ has largely been compressed within the flat rectangles of my phone and computer screens. You might think that, as an academic, I would revel in the life of the mind, the kind many of us now have to accept whether we like it or not. And I do, normally.

The new and improved Times Higher Education (THE) Impact Rankings 2020 were published this week with as much online fanfare as THE could muster. Unfortunately, they are not improved enough. Sydney University’s Duncan Ivison makes case for impact rankings. And then you notice the advert.

Just three weeks ago, on eve of the weekend, my wife and I met an old friend for dinner at a restaurant in Southwark. Even then, the most normal things in the world were beginning to feel risky. Our friend works for Public Health England, but even if he hadn’t, the conversation would still probably have locked onto the coronavirus pandemic.

It is 31 ^st January 2020 and as of 11 pm tonight the UK will no longer be a member of the European Union. We have arrived at Brexit day. But this is not my Brexit. I did not want it. I did not vote for it. I argued against it with as much reason and reasonableness as I could muster.

My computer tells me I took over 3,700 photographs in 2019. Yikes! However, I have winnowed them down to just 31, should you care to take a look. I have been fortunate this year to travel far and wide – or should I say reckless? Either way, if you click on the image above, it will take you to the album on flickr.

In a kinder, happier age, when I used to write regularly for the Guardian’s science blog network, I would post summaries of the books I had read at the end of each year. Since the network closed in 2018 I have rather lost the habit. Looking back a the list of titles I got though in 2019, I realise how much I share with Robin Ince the problem of retention.