Vibert Noble is a keen supporter of several charities, including the UN World Food Programme’s ShareTheMeal, Eiripan and the Mercy Rescue Trust. The latter is a baby rescue centre in Kitale, Kenya that has rescued more than 400 babies to date. Vibert first met Jedidah, the manager of the latter organisation, when she was volunteering at a South African children’s home at the same time as his younger son.
As a keen eclipse chaser, Vibert has travelled to the United States, Antarctica, the Faroe Islands, Mexico and Indonesia in order to experience solar eclipses. He has visits planned to Spain, Egypt, and Australia or New Zealand in 2026, 2027 and 2028 respectively to experience further eclipses.
Vibert loves to travel and regularly visits La Palma, which is one of the smaller Canary Islands. This location is a perfect for enjoying his other passion, star gazing, due to the island’s particularly dark night skies. Vibert also travels to Lapland every January and has undertaken several road trips in the United States, including trips to the Yosemite and Yellowstone National Parks.
To relax, Vibert practices tai chi twice a week and walks in his local area of the Vale of Belvoir, where he has lived with his wife for the last four years. He enjoys going to the gym a few times a week, photography, and has recently started learning Spanish. Vibert holds memberships with his local theatre and independent cinema, something that reflects his very broad taste in shows, films and music. He supports the football team Crystal Palace and the Trent Rockets, his local Hundred cricket team in Nottingham.
What is your typical day, and how do you make it productive?
I wake up around 6 – 7 am. I’ll read the Guardian (online) in bed for up to an hour or so. I’ll then do a bit of Spanish and Finnish practise on Duolingo, again for up to an hour.
I get up around 8 & breakfast would be somewhere between 8 & 9,usually consisting of a freshly-made fruit and protein smoothie and some of my own home-made toast.
The things I do try to do on a fairly regular basis are a couple of Tai Chi Chuan classes (on Mondays and Wednesdays), and going to the gym 3 or 4 times weekly to try to mitigate the effects of advancing age. I’ll generally get a bus to the gym, or in good weather I’ll cylcle the 10 – 12 km.
I also attended weekly Spanish evening classes for a while but I’m not doing so at present, but I’m planning to get a bit of regular Spanish conversation practice by joining a U3A group soon.
Most other things are rather ad hoc. During the day go I might go for a walk alone or with my wife, (5 – 15km) somewhere in the Belvoir Vale. I sometimes meet up with some old colleagues and friends for coffee or brunch. I enjoy going to the local independent cinema in Nottingham for an afternoon film with my wife. Every couple of weeks we like to go to an evening show of some sort or concert, either at the local theatre / concert hall or further afield – often London or Manchester.
I wouldn’t really call it productive, unless the ‘product’ is adressing my own needs. It’s quite self indulgent really. For me, however, there is a nice balance of having enough to do to keep my mind and body active and healthy but leaving enough room to do more productive and altruistic things in the future.
How do you bring ideas to life?
What ideas do I have in my retirement – how to spend my days? How to spend my evenings? Where and when to go on holiday? The Nike advert says it well – Just Do It!
What’s one trend that excites you?
The increasing popularity and availability of plant-based foods.
What is one habit that helps you be productive?
For the mundane things I have to do I keep a ‘To Do’ list and review it regularly to tick things off.
What advice would you give your younger self?
You only need to be good at one thing in life, get very good at it and don’t be afraid of what you don’t know, fake it till you make it.
Tell us something you believe almost nobody agrees with you on?
Policy on tobacco, alcohol and so-called ‘drugs’ should be considered together. The substances that aren’t legal should be legalised and licensed in order to break their link with [organised] crime. The so-called war on drugs isn’t being won we need to accept this and then change the approach. A truce needs to be made and managed.
What is the one thing you repeatedly do and recommend everyone else do?
Qigong. The ‘qi’ of qigong is pronounced the same, and is conceptually the same as the ‘chi’ of Tai Chi. Qigong is a form of coordinating body posture, and movement with breathing. I have been taught Baduanjin – sometimes called the Eight Pieces of Brocade is a form of qigong targetting physical health – each of the 8 steps targetting a different organ or system.
When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do?
I think of of the Tenth Essence of Tai Chi Chuan – ‘Seek stillness in movement’. I’ve seen a version of this essence which adds ‘…and seek movement in stillness’. Immersing myself in music can help with this.
What is one piece of software that helps you be productive? How do you use it?
More than 1 I’m afraid. Komoot is one of a number of apps that helps plan and record hikes/walks. One can plan a hike from scratch with starting and finisihing points to suit, or modify someone else’s hike. After planning the route the app will summarise the terrain and elevation gain. There will a weather condition forecast and give driving directions to the starting point if needed. At the end of the hike it can produce a pictorial summary with up to 20 photographs taken on the hike. When out walking I like to use ‘BirdNET’ and ‘Picture This’ to identify birds by their calls and plants respectively as I don’t have much idea about either. I know, I’ve mentioned 3 apps, but if I have to choose 1 it would be Komoot.
Do you have a favorite book or podcast you’ve gotten a ton of value from and why?
A favourite recent short book is ‘White Holes’ by Carlo Rovelli. Everyone has heard of black holes, but white holes are sort of the opposite and a possible explanation of how black holes resolve in spacetime. Rovelli makes the physics accessible for a non-physicist like me, in this book there’s classic literature appreciation and even a bit of philosophy thrown in. I believe the existence of white holes is not universally accepted, neither has there been observed evidence of them (yet), but please note, there was a long time between the theory of the existence and the subsequent proof of black holes. History is punctuated by people like Rovelli who are outside of what could be considered the mainstream, subsequently being proved right. This book made me think about what I’d previously learned about general relativity, and how quantum theory was incompatible. It encouraged me to try to understand the basics of quantum gravity which would be a great exercise for the mind.
The Duolingo Spanish Podcast is my favourite podcast. It uses intermediate Spanish and also English to tell inspirational true stories of remarkable groups of people, individuals or various topics from the Spanish speaking world. It’s very useful for listening to Spanish as it is spoken by various different populations in the hispanophone world. Season 20 of the Podcast finished in February 2024 of this year but I can’t yet find any information about season 21.
Political podcasts are also a favourite particularly: The Rest is Politics (UK & US), Americast and The Daily.
What’s a movie or series you recently enjoyed and why?
I have recently rewatched all 5 series of ‘The Wire’, and they were as good as the first time I watched them decades ago. The brilliance of this show is how it deals with different subpopulations in society each with their own rules and codes of conduct of what is acceptable and what isn’t. Within each subpopulation these codes are respected. Outsiders looking in, don’t feel the nuances of a particular group’s moral code, they don’t see any acceptable practises or behaviour only degrees of illegality and corruption, whether we’re looking at drug traffikers, local government, law enforcement, the education system or stevedores. Who are we to sit in judgement of those whose backgrounds and situations we aren’t familiar with?
‘Perfect Days’ is a recent film I enjoyed. It is the complete opposite to The Wire in that it is a slow-paced account of the mundane life of one man – a Tokyo toilet cleaner. But there is a depth to this man who takes a pride in his work, and outside of work he has an interest in music and photography. Further depth is revealed when his wealthy sister makes an appearance and asks him to make peace with their severely demented father, but he refuses to. Who are we to look down on and dismiss the life of this man as insignificant and irrelevant when he can experience perfection in the middle of this most affluent and materialistic of cities? He experiences this perfection without the traditional trappings of what our society views as success. He does his job well and appreciates artistic and natural beauty in music and photography of trees.