About the boy

I lived in the country as a boy. Not in a village but in a group of three houses about a half mile from the nearest village. Until I was  8 or 9 I was a great friend with the boy next door. He was about 18 months younger so I was the natural leader in our play although I think that despite occasional squabbles we had a fairly equal and amicable relationship.

It was a sadness for me when he left to go to a small farm in a nearby village. After this there were no other children in my immediate vicinity. I was going to school in the nearby village but I rarely went there at weekends. I was, looking back, a fairly quiet, bookish sort of child. I was a fluent reader and I read a lot.

I was valued by village children by having access to fields by my house where we could play. I remember particularly cricket. We would set up a pitch avoiding the cowpats with a wicket at one end only. Play would be with an old tennis ball most probably and with all sorts of home made bats. Although the village children had access just as much as I did to potential playing areas it was acknowledged that the suitable fields near my house were vaguely under my jurisdiction. I got to choose and was invited to play.

On other occasions particularly school organised games it was a case of two captains chosen by the teacher then each captain picking in turn from the remaining players. I wasn’t very good and was usually among the last to be chosen. I avoided this humiliation if we played near my house. It was “my turf, my rules”. I chose myself as one captain. All very unjust but that was the way it was. I wasn’t very good but I definitely fancied myself. Sadly my natural ability (?) never seemed to appear. I had the final insult at secondary school when our pitch disappeared in my second year for building or some such.

There was no referee for our childhood matches so appeals were many and vociferous. As I recall while catches were fairly definite, things like run out were often disputed. I don’t have such strong memories of playing football although we did. I was quite disgusted when rugby was the winter season game at secondary school. I wasn’t much good at football but I was rubbish at rugby. As I remember the game I liked best was crab football played in the gym when the weather was particularly bad.

Another village boys activity was bow and arrows. My bows were rather feeble but some had splendid bows. I remember one boy just shooting up the air and his arrow seemed to fly on forever.

In frosty weather we took the opportunity to make a slide. I sort of enjoyed this although I was no good at the duck slide. This consisted of immediately on the slide bending the knees and crouching. Rather difficult to not to end on your backside feeling foolish. I remember being quite impressed by one boy who fell over on the slide, cracked his head on the nearby kerb, vomited and then went round for another go.

My contact with small boys ( other than my grandchildren ) is nowadays giving reading support at the local village school. Obviously J K Rowling and Harry Potter features. Hence I was asked last week what to call a wizard with diarrhoea – I was told the answer is Harry Plopper.

Truth

Stimulated by the editorial article in the Economist I have been thinking more about the role of truth in society. The article was stimulated by the casual relationship Donald Trump has with the truth.  Few of Trump’s remarks bear any resemblance to truth such as Obama as the founder of ISIS. The article remarks that Trump gets away with his sayings which border on the insane because they correspond with some opinions. Increasingly truth is seen not as an objective fact supported by evidence but rather as a matter of opinion.

This attitude, it is suggested, is supported by the internet where wacky opinions widely enough circulated gain a veneer of truth. A depressing number of people subscribe to these opinions and in the self-reinforcing world of the internet gain credence.

It is not just on the internet but the viciously polarising TV in the US means that bigots need not step outside a medium which reinforces their opinions which then harden into convictions.

A nasty example is evolution. This is anl established scientific fact but  creationists argue the world was recently created and demand that their opinion is as valid as evolution. Without feeling any need to produce evidence  creationists demand that schools “teach the debate“ putting it on some kind of equal footing.

We have had a unpleasant example in the UK during the recent EU referendum. Leavers consistently asserted for example the EU cost 350m a week. This and many other pseudo facts they produced was a lie. Efforts by the BBC and others to tell the truth were drowned in the noise. In fact leavers are showing a tendency to try and shout down even mild contradictory voices. For example Mark Carney , governor of the Bank of England , was accused by a some on a parliamentary committee of exaggerating the effects of Brexit by predicting a recession. In fact he did no such thing and was able to rebut the allegations. However many will now recall the allegation but not the rebuttal.

An example of a lie which has gained some remarkable support is homeopathy. Essentially this revolves around the idea that a toxin diluted many millions of times may be a cure. There is no evidence homeopathy works beyond the known placebo effect ie.. If you believe something will help it probably will. Such is the power of the mind over the body that drug experimenters take special care to avoid the placebo effect confounding trials. The “gold standard” of trials is double blind which means neither experimenter or participant knows which is the test material and which is the control.

I’ve conducted double blind trials which sounds fairly easy but is difficult to do. I compromised that I knew what formulation was under test but evaluators didn’t. I could only afford to do a limited number of tests, too small for 99% confidence. I could only conclude that I had indications of the truth.

Establishing truth is often hard while having an opinion is easy. Increasingly folk in public life are forsaking the truth in favour of opinions. These opinions are quite capable of both being irrational and ignoring counter evidence.

I don’t have an answer to this other than to recognise a growing problem. Michael Gove has become notorious for saying effectively ignore experts, rely on your opinions. As someone has remarked sourly the next time his car breaks down he should not call in an expert just ask passers by for opinions.

The only item of advice I can suggest is that your news input should be from a wide variety of sources. Don’t rely on organs which reinforce your opinions but sometimes look at those that have a different view. Remember if someone asserts something “it ain’t necessarily so” ( as in the song in Porgy and Bess ) and ask yourself where is the evidence. Be sparing in taking anything as a matter of faith.

Packing porn

In between finishing university and starting a job I had a period of some 3 months. Part of that was taken up with marriage and honeymoon but there was still a good 2 months spare. I didn’t want to go and live with my parents. I was engaged to Annette and we had a convenient arrangement where she lived about a 100 yards from my bedsitting room. She had also finished her course in textile design so we looked for a job together so we could both continue living in Leicester.

We found a job with wholesaler Thorpe and Porter a few miles away.  T&P had a business supplying small newsagents with books. These were 95%  general mainly children’s books but also 5% the soft porn of the time. I hasten to add this was the softest conceivable which would be considered perhaps mildly risqué now. I always thought this was a very strange companion to the main business but presumably worthwhile.

Our job consisted mainly of packing bundles of books for dispatch and unpacking and storing returns. The pay was disappointingly small but the work was undemanding. We worked as a team with a boy and girl who were between school and university: the boy I remember was going to Bristol to study drama. After an initial trial we worked essentially unsupervised.  We got along very well together and we were quite productive.

There was another girl briefly in our team but she wasn’t at all congenial and was soon removed to another job. Not before I was scandalised that she took time off to request a bank loan so she could go on a foreign holiday. I had been brought up to think the only respectable loan was a mortgage.

Generally we had little to do with the soft porn side of the business. It is however a lasting regret that when we had “Fanny Hill in pictures” as a return I didn’t look more closely. As it was destined to go to waste paper I was welcome to take it but I missed the opportunity; I suppose with Annette by my side I was too shy and embarrassed.

When I finished university I hadn’t got a job. However science graduates were in high demand so I wasn’t worried, in fact looking back I was rather complacent. As our wedding grew nearer my prospective mother-in-law commented ever more loudly “ no job and nowhere to live”. It was a good thing we got on together and she thought well of me.

While I was with T&P I was going for interviews. Several possibilities were presented including doing a Masters degree at Battersea in London. The actual choice was rather an accident. Unilever advertised for scientific staff to work as Information Scientists at all their UK research sites. Seeing that Port Sunlight worked on adhesives about which I thought I knew something after my year with Bostik I applied there. My interview went badly but I came away hugely impressed by the work being done. Convinced I wouldn’t get the job I also applied elsewhere for similar work.

However it turned out the real interview occurred as I was being shown around the site and my casual conversation impressed and I had a job offer .  I soon found out adhesives was only a minute part of their interest which were mainly in consumer detergent products. After I accepted we went to look for accommodation.. Birkenhead on a rainy Thursday afternoon was dispiriting but we eventually took a flat at Parkgate overlooking the Dee estuary. We were to live in this flat for about 2 and a half years before buying a house. I was to work at Unilever Research for over 15 years but only the first couple as Information Scientist.

Milk on the doorstep

For many of us the daily delivery is a thing of the past. However I owe it a debt as I earned my first proper working money as part of the delivery chain. It was the summer of 1960 and I was broke. I had applied to work for the summer at Butlins. My friend was accepted and I was rejected ( all say Ah! ). I canvassed all the sources I could think of and got an offer from the Co-op Dairy to fill in while their secretary was on holiday.

To me this was very much a baptism of fire. I had almost never used a telephone ( there was no question of having one at home ) and a lot of telephone work was required. My real humiliation came on my first Sunday. Part of the job was to add up all the returns. The tradition was as soon as work finished we all went home. I was painfully slowly adding up the returns using a calculator. The foreman, impatient to be away, seized the sheet, added them all in his head very quickly, gave me the answer and we all left. And he was exactly right!

Weekdays were less stressful and I got into the swing of things. The boss must have taken pity on me because I was kept on for the rest of the holidays as a warehouseman. I had fears that I was too lacking in strength to move the standard stack of 5 crates or a hundred bottles. I need not have worried because using a trolley it was more a matter of an easily learned knack than shear muscle power.

The main subdivision was between pasteurised and sterilised milk. Pasteurised was kept in a massive cold room when not out on rounds while sterilised was just in different bottles in the general warehouse. The third category was “pop” as it was known; one third of a pint bottles of orange squash made up in the warehouse from concentrate. One of the senior workers regarded this bottling plant as his fiefdom and I wasn’t allowed near.

In contrast milk arrived ready bottled by lorry from a central bottling plant at Fole. Unloading the lorries was a big part of my job. I was rather appalled when the driver would casually break a few bottles so the spillage lubricated the lorry deck enabling the stacks to be dragged around more readily. This really did require plenty of muscle and I struggled. Looking back I must have seemed terribly young and naïve but I must say I was treated very well being regarded as rather a source of amusement and entertainment..

The dairy was a source of big inequality. A roundsman, on commission, was getting a great wage while a junior warehouseman was on something not much above minimum wage. The roundsmen seemed to me rather profligate with flash cars and motorbikes.

I only went out on a round a few times. I never mastered the art of carrying 4 bottles at once in one hand holding them between the fingers. I used a bottle carrier, the mark of a neophyte. You soon learned how the roundsmen earned their money. They had memorised the whole round, who took what and who were good payers. Although they were obliged to keep books they knew exactly how much was owed, keeping a running total in their head.

Each round had its own regular stopping point for cups of tea etc. I have since of course learned all the jokes about the milkman. I can only say I saw no sign at all. Generally the stopping points were with middle aged housewives, in rather poor homes, and were brief.

I went back for a second year in the holidays. Annette was also working for the Co-op in the pottery department. Sometimes she would come to the dairy to get some milk for their tea breaks. This was always a source for some good humoured comment. I was entrusted to take the milk to the Co-op milk bar then just by the main shop ( it closed long ago ). This meant crossing a street which has a slight gradient.

New and overconfident I tried to cross at right angles. Now 100 bottles of milk weigh quite a lot, several hundredweight. Once this goes out of vertical it topples, and it did, smashing down into the gutter. Those gutters ran with milk while I was redfaced  completely bewildered.. Although not really amused the dairy boss made good my loss.

It would be silly to pretend that this holiday job gave me a great insight but it made me realise something of the working life of some people. I had other holiday jobs, all entertaining in their own way but probably none which put me so much in touch with the man at the bottom of the heap struggling to maintain his family on low money..

Spaceflight

I’ve always been very interested in Spaceflight. In the late fifties/early sixties I was a member of the British Interplanetary Society. Their work was highly speculative although based on sound scientific principles. I resigned when I got married in an economy drive. Ironically this was just as the great efforts to build lunar rockets was getting under way. I was far too busy establishing my career to take more than a passing interest.

I do recall however all work stopping as we watched the Apollo 11 launch. Later after lunar landing I hosted a few friends from work at my house to watch the walk from Apollo 12. We were mighty disappointed when the camera failed.

It is a matter of history now that the early enthusiasm faded, particularly in the USA.. The space shuttle never fulfilled its early hopes and the International Space Station was a political construct which has never justified its huge cost. Arguably the ISS has hobbled NASA with endless requirements for huge expenditure. There have been occasional ambitious plans announced but always failing through lack of money.

NASA has done some splendid robotic exploration with missions to Pluto, recently Jupiter and the Curiosity rover on Mars.

In the decades since Apollo, satellites have proven their commercial value. Weather, telecommunication and GPS have all proven well  worthwhile. Separately the USA military have a surveillance program about which not much is known except they do have a mini space shuttle. Whether this is manned or not is unknown.

It appears however that the baton is being taken up by private companies. Several are taking substantial form promising smaller, more capable satellites in the near term and more ambitious flights in the future. The most outspoken company is headed by Elon Musk as Space X. Their launcher recently suffered a disastrous explosion on the pad at Cape Canaveral but the past record of Space X has been impressive most particularly in recovering to a soft landing the first stage of their Falcon rocket.

Musk is a remarkable man who made his initial fortune in  Silicon Valley and who also heads Tesla, the electric car company. His stated objective is to establish a colony on Mars. While this seems scarcely credible; this is someone who is driving two remarkable innovative technology companies and already has an impressive track record.

 Space X is one of a handful of largely American companies who are pioneering a faster cheaper approach to spaceflight. Their innovation is as much about approach as technology. Established companies like Boeing, Lockheed and Ariane essentially are carrying massive satellites which are so expensive that a failure is very damaging. The new approach is willing to risk failures with smaller cheaper satellites.

Among the dreams of the new generation is space mining. This is unlikely to be minerals in the first instance but rather water. Apart from being essential to life water can be split into hydrogen and oxygen , two very important fuels. The electricity to do this could be from solar cells which are much more efficient in space.

It seems very clear to me that the next decade in space could be very exciting and the 2030’s show immense promise.

Whitby 3 Alex and Ellen

Over the bank holiday we had Alex and Ellen to stay for 2 nights in our new flat. We are still very much camping out there although our new beds have arrived ( Martin and Lindsey tried the new double one night ). From their camping expeditions they had a sleeping mat but Ellen seemed to ignore this being quite happy sleeping just in her sleeping bag on the carpeted floor.

Ellen is quite charming, wilful but delightful with it. Generally she and Alex play together quite well albeit with squabbles fairly frequently. The flat looking out over the east side of Whitby partly overlooks the station. This station must be rather unique as it is both a regional railway station and the terminus for the North York Moors Railway, a heritage steam railway which runs through to Pickering some 20 miles south. Alex is a great steam engine enthusiast  ( along with Martin he is a volunteer on the railway ) and was always looking out to see what might arrive.

One day we walked to the Co-op superstore which is next to the station pausing to admire a “Black 5 “ “Eric Treacy” which had just hauled in the latest train and was looping around to pull it back. The NYMR run a fairly full schedule to Pickering during the holiday season.

One afternoon we went to see the latest Ice Age movie at Whitby Pavilion. I wasn’t hugely impressed by the movie although I was amused by some of the sly references ( that Pythagoras, he’s got the right angle ) . The Pavilion cinema cum theatre is quite small and rather old fashioned. Annette was amused by the special cushions provided for children. As it happened this was a very dull damp day. Although we have just about got a TV going the transmitter was down that day. We were saved by the big play area in Pannett Park which is opposite our flat. This park also houses the museum and art gallery.

Whitby makes a great deal of its famous citizen, James Cook. As we might have expected he features largely in the museum. However the museum contains an eclectic range of artefact’s and exhibits. The sea and ships have a big place but for example there are some of the most exquisite dolls houses. I should say these were Victorian houses fully fitted and furnished in miniature. We whisked around quite quickly but clearly it will repay a more leisurely visit.

Like many others I’ve been following all the Brexit news. What is striking is the level of acceptance of the referendum result. I’m also struck by the level of complacency which has crept into public attitudes. Consumer spending is up as are house prices. There has been a quite extraordinary degree of shoulder shrugging. The recent economic results have been quite good but these are all pre referendum and indeed the economy was doing quite nicely. There have been some unwelcome developments since the referendum. The abandonment of the previous effort to balance the public budget has been accepted without a murmur, if anything there has been relief that the austerity campaign has been dropped. The long term result that debts will continue to grow arouses no comment.

It is encouraging to hear manufacturing is up. I suspect this is a good effect of the plunge in the value of the pound. We have to expect that inflation will rise as a result also.

A considerable part of the business as usual attitude is down to Teresa May. The swift replacement of Prime Minister and her appointment of Philip Hammond as Chancellor has certainly calmed business nerves. However it must be said the real work of Brexit hasn’t even started yet. It appears that the glib answers of the leavers about a Norway, Canada or Switzerland model have been dropped.

While there is apparently some government agreement that a “unique” relationship must be pursued what this might be is opaque. It seems fairly clear that access to the single market and the free movement within the EU are likely to become the key factors.

Socially the ugly result has been a marked increase in hate crimes. The racists in society have taken great heart from the referendum result and clearly believe the climate is now favourable.

I’ve just had to buy a new tyre after a puncture. I was looking at the EU prescribed markings on tyres. I mused  whether this is the regulation that leavers felt should be abolished. I found it helpful.