A museum piece

While I was working for Castrol R&D they decided to establish a museum at the Swindon headquarters of Castrol UK. As a company Castrol is extremely conscious of strong public relations and saw the museum in this light.

An appeal was made for old Castrol artefacts to exhibit. Among those produced were Castrol cans from ( I guess ) the immediately post war era. These cans were quite dirty and my group was given the job of cleaning them up prior to use as exhibits. We set about the job and soon realised that the quickest and easiest method was ultrasonic cleaning. We had taken a keen interest in ultrasonic cleaning although as the tanks were fairly small and often replenished infrequently the commercial sales had been disappointing.

We had a laboratory ultrasonic cleaning tank so we set about the job. It was very nearly a disaster. What we hadn’t reckoned with was the poor quality of the can decoration. Cleaning the can was set to strip it back to bare metal. Fortunately we realised in time to switch off at the stage where the decoration was dulled but not removed.

I was invited to the opening of the museum This was to be done by the person behind the Castrol sponsored land speed record contender Thrust 2, Richard Noble and his driver Andy Green..I see that the successor, Thrust SSC is also Castrol sponsored.

Castrol is good at providing plenty of razzmatazz at this sort of event. So it was to the strains of Tina Turner singing “Simply the best”( on record not live ) that we opened the museum and toured it taking the opportunity to talk to Andy Green.  It is an excellent effort but sadly kept for customers and dignitaries.

Talking of razzmatazz every six months we had a presentation at the R&D centre by the senior Castrol folk. On at least one occasion the event went right over the top and became how I imagine a Nuremburg rally would have been. While these events were I suppose good for morale they could be a bit too much of a good thing. Sometimes they were quite thought provoking as when the CEO of Castrol India spoke. He said while India was a poor country the middle class with some disposable income while a minority in India were still far larger in number than any country in Europe.

Ever keen for publicity group subsidiary, Kerry, had earlier been involved in the “Mary Rose”, Henry V111 flagship restoration. At the time it was suggested that Prince Charles had prevailed upon Kerry to provide an ultrasonic cleaning bath for which Castrol was to provide the cleaning content.

What had not been expected was that the largest artefacts were huge wooden gun carriages which the Mary Rose trust needed cleaning. This necessitated an equally huge ultrasonic tank, the largest I had ever seen, of some two cubic metres capacity. This was vastly expensive.

I was designated to provide the cleaning product. I visited the trust at Portsmouth and soon established it would be ruinously expensive to provide what the trust wanted. Eventually after some fraught time with Kerry I came up with a product broadly acceptable to everyone involved. In this case a more senior man represented Castrol at the commissioning.

My visit to the trust was very interesting but I rather foolishly elected to drive the round trip from Manchester in a day. Five hundred plus miles had me exhausted. I remember taking a break and reflecting that if I had been driving back from Swindon which was a regular trip I would have been home.  Fortunately it was the height of summer so I had a lot of daylight for my journey. I particularly recall a huge cooking pot among the recovered items stored in a large warehouse.. The importance of careful conservation was shown by a comparison of recovered arrows. Those not conserved were unrecognisable twisted sticks.

Vests

It is , I believe , a common experience for socks to go missing. This results in a collection of odd socks in the sock drawer. I’m always reminded of a picture Frances had on her wall as a teenager. It shows a young man gazing soulfully into the distance. Captioned “teenage angst” the thought bubble from the young man says “ I feel like a lost sock in the laundromat of oblivion”.

My cunning solution is to buy socks in roughly identical batches. This drives Annette trying to match after washing to distraction but I  know I can mix without problems. The fact that the toes are different colours doesn’t worry me  (or anyone else ).

Now I have a different problem. My stock of vests has dwindled to one. Where all the others have gone is a big puzzle. I know I’m a bit forgetful and disorganised but vests always live in one place. Annette can’t find them either. She is far more organised than me; in fact my usual cry is “I can’t find…” knowing she probably can.

I’m not a terribly disorganised person usually. My first job was in a sense a job of organising scientific information and I think I made a fair fist of it. At any rate good enough to stay in employment although thinking back they did organise a secondment from which I never returned… perhaps they were dropping a gentle hint.

Finding things is a general problem. For me and I guess for many others. I suppose I haven’t helped myself as gardening and outdoor tools are split between garage, garden cabin and shed. I can never remember what is where.

I do have routines for some things like keys. As I smugly say to Annette when she is searching for her keys- “.I always put mine in the same place so I know where they are”. I half recognise this is both irritating and no help.

It brings to mind “Have a go” an early radio quiz show. Compere Wilfred Pickles had a much used question along the lines- “If you could say to your spouse I love you darling, but…. What would the but be?” Answers were usually comical along lines of “ I wish you wouldn’t squeeze the toothpaste tube in the middle”. Mine varies but probably I wish she didn’t  at any time shortly after 9 announce she is tired and going to bed. When I finally retire I usually read for a while. At least she leaves the light on for me.

I wonder if you can get coded vests. Just discreetly coded not like the brash socks with slogans on them like Mr Happy. I suppose the joke message socks are usually desperate Christmas presents. My vest problem is too desperate to wait until Christmas. Anyway who wants vests as a Christmas present?

Another thing – we have probably all become irritated by “words of wisdom” which aren’t really that wise, or at any rate often impossible. You know the sort of thing- If life treats you like a lemon make lemonade.

I’ve come across an amusing take on an Oxfam slogan

Give a man a fish and he eats for a day
Teach a man to fish and he eats for lifetime
Give a man a fire and he is warm for a day
Set a man on fire and he is warm for the rest of his life.

Post truth

It is very sad that post-truth is word of the year in the Oxford English Dictionary. They define it “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping opinion than appeals to emotion or personal belief”. Simplifying that means a lie. There is reason for this entry after the Brexiteer and Trump campaigns which had little resemblance to facts and a whole lot appeals to emotion.

Science fiction writer Philip K Dick said “reality is that which ,when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away”. As a scientist I’m fairly committed to objective fact. I recognise scientists sometimes get it wrong but there is a checking procedure in place. This sometimes doesn’t work quickly but it ensures only the objectively true survives. We have now people in public life who actually think it is OK to lie. To take just one example brexiteers banged on about the £350 million a week the EU cost. As was pointed out frequently this is not true. However it was not withdrawn and ill-informed people might well have thought it was true.

Just to be precise the gross total paid to the EU is £350m a week. However money flowing to Britain from the EU was rather more than £150m so the true figure was rather less than 200m. Did Brexiteers even care about the difference? Is it still going to the NHS?

Part of the problem is that TV, newspapers and particularly social media are increasingly careless of the truth. We have always lived with opinion dressed as fact, a drearily familiar part of election campaigns.  A boundary has been crossed when downright lies are presented as facts. A nauseating example is a Trump campaigner asserting on Facebook that Trump won the popular vote in the US election. He didn’t. The facts are well known and published and one can only presume the person posting was either spectacularly ill-informed or more likely deliberately lying in the knowledge his audience were unlikely to check.

In response to the outcry over this and other lies Facebook have promised, with great reluctance, some sort of action. To be fair to Facebook they are not in any sort of editorial capacity and their defence is that they are just a platform.

It is rather difficult to know where to turn in search of facts. The red top newspapers can be ignored, TV is often dodgy and social media very dubious indeed. The broadsheet newspapers are good in parts. Periodicals are often better taking a more leisurely and measured view. My personal favourite is the Economist which presents a lot of statistical information alongside its articles. I’ve read it for many years and I’m familiar with its biases.

Incidentally I used to read a lot of publications in my local library when I was a young man. I recall talking to my hall sub-warden about this ( I suppose I was quietly boasting how well read I was ). He asked whether I read the Economist, recommended it and I’ve been a fan ever since over 50 years.

The internet is a source to be used very carefully. There is much good stuff and equally a lot of rubbish. I’ve found Wikipedia to be quite good ( not to be confused with Wikileaks which is very biased ). As a source of quick reviews Wikipedia is hard to beat with sometimes its attention to detail rather nerdy.

I long ago worried that every news story I’ve had close personal knowledge about was presented in a somewhat distorted way. The ultimate was “ funny water” identified by a reputable Eastern European scientist. This was thought to be a polymeric form of water.  I was at Unilever’s R&D centre at the time and he was invited for a stay to investigate further. There was a suggestion that the polymer could propagate turning all water into a form which was unsuitable for life. The UK broadsheets picked this up suggesting all life on Earth could be wiped out. Since it was a great struggle to produce it in fine glass capillaries this was never going to happen. In fact it was soon discovered to be an artefact caused by tiny amounts of glass dissolving in the water although that was only reported in the scientific press..

Shades of the Large Hadron Collider producing black holes to swallow the earth.

So be sceptical, try and get your facts from reputable sources and a variety of them.

I fondly reminisce about the days when there were “proper” telly programmes and not all this “How clean is your Big Brother super nanny Get me out of Hells Kitchen Love Island” so called reality TV ( it’s all fixed anyway) . Any resemblance to “reality” is in in the realm of fantasy.

A trip to London

When I was 16 and 17 I was in a group of a half dozen friends; a teenage gang I suppose you could say. For most of this time this was my main social outlet. We mainly met up on a Saturday evening to play cards in one another’s houses. Sometimes  we went to pubs getting particular pleasure from being under age. The only other time I’ve been a pub goer was when I was with a group in Liverpool as a research student.  Essentially we were school friends, all boys, except that Anthony had left to go to a Birmingham Technical College where he met Paddy who was included. Paddy was so-called because he was second generation Irish and our nicknames were not very imaginative.

All of us were too old for family holidays so we resolved to go on a group trip to London I arranged for us to stay in a B&B on Putney Bridge Road where I had earlier stayed with mother. Eventually only  three of us went, Anthony, Paddy and myself.

We travelled down from Birmingham on the new Midland Red express service. This used special express coaches down the then new M1. We were hugely impressed; after careful checking against the mile posts we were cruising at 70 mph. This was then an impressive speed particularly in a coach. It was faster than I had ever travelled on any road. The service was designed to be rather special and not another bus journey. For many years I had the luggage tag on my suitcase.

We were train enthusiasts and our first evening was spent travelling around on the London underground. Provided you never left the system you could travel anywhere for the price of a local ticket. We thought this was magnificent, round the Circle Line at least once and crisscrossing the centre by interchange stations. There was an obscure line which only connected two main stations so we had to sample that. The snag was that to travel the further reaches which were not interchanges you had to exit the station , buy another ticket and board again going the other way.

We came up with a scheme to cheat the system. This was complex involving one buying a complete ticket and the others just buying two local tickets. It didn’t work but flushed with riding around so cheaply anyway we really didn’t mind.

By way of reaction to the “South East “ accents we exaggerated our “Brummie” accents.  I had only the slightest Midlands accent and it has been an annoyance all my life that wherever I go outside the Midlands people say “ you’re a Brummie aren’t you”. I’m not but I was labelled anyway.

We had limited amounts of money and even then, in 1960, London was expensive. We had one slap up meal once a day, otherwise ( very ) occasional snacks. Our main meal was taken in a workman’s café at the end of Putney Bridge Road. I had Cornish Pasty, new to me, but filling and delicious. I’ve never had another so good since but then hunger helped the taste.

Anthony was in the Young Conservatives not through any political conviction but rather they were known for a good social life.  I suspect his parents had something to do with this.Through the association he arranged for us to visit the houses of Parliament and meet our local MP. We sat in on a debate. I was surprised by the slouching in the seats until I realised it was to be close to the electronic speakers relaying what was said. Trivial but we were impressed by the toilet paper marked House of Parliament. I seem to remember Paddy taking some as a souvenir.

We were impressed by all the little things about metropolitan life for example the massive 6 wheel trolley buses along Putney Bridge Road and the ambulances with their ringing bells.

My involvement wound down quickly when I started to go out with Annette. Another member joined the army and the group came to a natural end when the rest left school.

Sadly both Anthony and Paddy died young in accidents. I have kept in very occasional contact with others in the group.

A trip to California

In the early 90’s I was invited to join a meeting of Castrol Technical staff at Newport Beach California. In America Castrol was growing its Production Engineering business by taking over a number of smallish independent producers, So that a more coherent group business could be built the technical leaders met twice a year. It was the custom that a leader from international Research and Development in the UK would join them and I was the attendee on one occasion.

I already knew that there was some feeling that the central R&D was too powerful and didn’t take account of the know-how in all the small companies. A colleague at the previous meeting met with some Anglophobic attitudes and he was pointedly given a tour of Valley Forge Revolutionary War site.

It was arranged that I would go via Chicago and meet up with some US colleagues at the HQ of Castrol in the US. I met with John C and the technology head John H. It was explained that John C and the lead technical man from a local company recently bought, Dave, and myself would fly on to Los Angeles. We would meet up later in the day with John H who would be joining us for dinner before we all went to the meeting site a little way down the coast.

We flew out with American Airlines with all black hostesses. As the flight progressed these hostesses were obviously having a party time in the adjacent section. They had the passengers doing in seat exercises and were doing some sort of concert party. One hostess wearing a blonde wig was imitating someone I didn’t recognise. I commented to John C and he replied “ they all get wacky as soon as we cross the state line”.

We arrived in late morning and hiring a car, drove to a restaurant at Venice Beach. My main memory is sitting in the balmy outdoors in January. After a brief look at the beach we then drove to La Brea tarpits. Millions of years ago animals including pre historic ones had become trapped in the natural ponds of tar. Their bones had been rescued and were in an exhibition, while the tarpits still existed forming a strange oasis in suburban Los Angeles.

We then drove up the Pacific Coast Highway and around Hollywood. By the road were hawkers selling maps of stars houses but we just drove around using John C’s local knowledge having a relative living in the city. I don’t recall any notable names.

We then went back to Los Angeles International to meet John H’s flight. When he arrived to my astonishment John C embraced him fussing as though he was meeting a long lost friend. They had been together earlier that day.  I was astounded, there was no way I would have treated my boss like that. Don’t worry said Dave he is always like that.

I thought this was the extent of John C’s jokes at his bosses expense but this wasn’t the case. We all went to a restaurant where it amused John C to imagine that John H was irresistible to women.” Look John, they keep looking over to you” he would say of a nearby group of ladies. Now John H, who was just an averagely appearing guy, took all of this in good stead, obviously used to this long standing joke. To me, who saw John H as a very big wheel in the company to be treated with some deference this was absolutely amazing behaviour.

We went on that evening to the meeting hotel at Newport Beach where we started the next day in a lovely meeting room overlooking the beach. There was no time for breakfast in the dining room, instead food was brought to the meeting room and we grazed the buffet as we talked. It was immediately obvious that Curtis was an Anglophobe and resented my presence. Nevertheless the meeting proceed fairly smoothly. In the evening we went out to a Mexican style restaurant except that this expression was avoided and thus we had to say “South Western American” food. Whatever it was called it wasn’t to my taste.

It emerged that Curtis had resented what he found was the arrogant attitude of one of my colleagues. At the end of the meeting he allowed I wasn’t too bad for an Englishman. I felt I had done my bit for international relations.

The First Gulf War was just starting and John H, who bitterly opposed it, was firing off emails of protest. I recall watching some of the CNN coverage in my room. They were reporting from Bagdad showing those fantastic pictures of cruise missiles passing down their street.

After the meeting myself and some others visited the local Castrol plant. It was much like the UK plant at Hyde with which I was familiar with one or two nice touches added. At lunch I commented on the drink that was served. It looked like Coke but I was soon told it was iced tea.  I have always enjoyed this on visits ever since. I took the opportunity to buy a Castrol jacket. I was amused by a cartoon on the wall of the secretary’s office which I copied to take back. It was of a gingerbread man and the caption said ”The ideal man-He’s small, he’s sweet and if he gives you any hassle bite his head off”

A very black day

So the US has elected Donald Trump as President. Not only is he a nauseating man but the old Groper seems to have few policy ideas. Those he does have are racist and he glories in being extremely divisive. The enemies of the free world are gloating. I’m seriously worried about democracy, the appeal to the racist and bigoted in society seems so powerful to some that all rationality is cast aside. This is the second election where bigotry has triumphed over tolerance.

I find it sickening when Trump talks about the “working classes”. His only economic ideas mentioned so far are to start a tariff war and reduce taxes on the wealthy. Any working person who thinks either will help them will soon find the truth.

The most terrifying fact is that such an impetuous and thoughtless man has his finger on the nuclear button. Hilary Clinton summed him up when she commented he can be baited by a tweet

A trip to California

In the early 90’s I was invited to join a meeting of Castrol Technical staff at Newport Beach California. In America Castrol was growing its Production Engineering business by taking over a number of smallish independent producers, So that a more coherent group business could be built the technical leaders met twice a year. It was the custom that a leader from international Research and Development in the UK would join them and I was the attendee on one occasion.

I already knew that there was some feeling that the central R&D was too powerful and didn’t take account of the know-how in all the small companies. A colleague at the previous meeting met with some Anglophobic attitudes and he was pointedly given a tour of Valley Forge Revolutionary War site.

It was arranged that I would go via Chicago and meet up with some US colleagues at the HQ of Castrol in the US. I met with John C and the technology head John H. It was explained that John C and the lead technical man from a local company recently bought, Dave, and myself would fly on to Los Angeles and meet up later in the day with John H who would be joining us for dinner before we all went to the meeting site a little way down the coast.

We flew out with American Airlines with all black hostesses. As the flight progressed these hostesses were obviously having a party time in the adjacent section. They had the passengers doing in seat exercises and were doing some sort of concert party. One hostess wearing a blonde wig was imitating someone I didn’t recognise. I commented to John C and he replied “ they all get wacky as soon as we cross the state line”.

We arrived in late morning and hiring a car, drove to a restaurant at Venice Beach. My main memory is sitting in the balmy outdoors in January. After a brief look at the beach we then drove to La Brea tar pits. Millions of years ago animals including pre historic ones had become trapped in the natural ponds of tar. Their bones had been rescued and were in an exhibition, while the tar pits still existed forming a strange oasis in suburban Los Angeles.

We then drove up the Pacific Coast Highway and around Hollywood. By the road were hawkers selling maps of stars houses but we just drove around using John C’s local knowledge having a relative living in the city. I don’t recall any notable names.

We then went back to Los Angeles International to meet John H’s flight. When he arrived to my astonishment John C embraced him fussing as though he was meeting a long lost friend. They had been together earlier that day. I was astounded, there was no way I would have treated my boss like that. Don’t worry said Dave he is always like that.

I thought this was the extent of John C’s jokes at his bosses expense but this wasn’t the case. We all went to a restaurant where it amused John C to imagine that John H was irresistible to women.” Look John, they keep looking over to you” he would say of a nearby group of ladies. Now John H who was just an averagely appearing guy took all of this in good stead, obviously used to this long standing joke. To me, who saw John H as a very big wheel in the company to be treated with some deference, this was absolutely amazing behaviour.

We went on that evening to the meeting hotel at Newport Beach where we started the next day in a lovely meeting room overlooking the beach. There was no time for breakfast in the dining room, instead food was brought to the meeting room and we grazed the buffet as we talked. It was immediately obvious that Curtis was an Anglophobe and resented my presence. Nevertheless the meeting proceed fairly smoothly. In the evening we went out to a Mexican style restaurant except that this expression was avoided and thus we had to say “South Western American” food. Whatever it was called it wasn’t to my taste.

It emerged that Curtis had resented what he found was the arrogant attitude of one of my colleagues. At the end of the meeting he allowed I wasn’t too bad for an Englishman. I felt I had done my bit for international relations.

The First Gulf War was just starting and John H, who bitterly opposed it, was firing off emails of protest. I recall watching some of the CNN coverage in my room. They were reporting from Bagdad showing those fantastic pictures of cruise missiles passing down their street.

After the meeting myself and some others visited the local Castrol plant. It was much like the UK plant at Hyde with which I was familiar but with one or two nice touches added. At lunch I commented on the drink that was served. It looked like Coke but I was soon told it was iced tea.  I have always enjoyed this on visits ever since.I took the opportunity to buy a Castrol jacket. I was amused by a cartoon on the wall of the secretary’s office which I copied to take back. It was of a gingerbread man and the caption said ”The ideal man-He’s small, he’s sweet and if he gives you any hassle bite his head off”

My boyhood home

I lived in the middle of the countryside about a half mile from the nearest village. We were not cut off in that three buses a day passed the door. My house was one of three adjacent, two semis and a bungalow. The owner of the bungalow had the semi’s built for rent as part of his investment.

The house he had built in early 20’s was dire. It was constructed to the lowest possible standards and completely lacked any amenities. No electricity or gas, no sewer and even until the late 30’s no mains water. It fooled the passer by looking quite modern. When my best friends mother first saw it she exclaimed” I thought you lived in a cottage “.

Even the minimum standards were shoddily performed. I can remember a crack in my bedroom wall you could see daylight through.

Heating was by coal fires. Always a fire in the living room, occasionally, on a Sunday, a fire in the front, best room and only in the bedroom if I was ill Lighting was by a paraffin lamp suspended from the ceiling.in the living room otherwise candles and later cycle lamps. The paraffin lamp was subject to a massive taboo: on no account was I to touch it. This was a sensible way of ensuring no accidental fire but it meant I was quite frightened of it.

Mains cold water had arrived by the time I was born. Even so the original hand pump was by the sink and the well was in the garden. Although the well had a big concrete top I was always hesitant about stepping on it.

I said I was in the middle of the countryside; quite literally so with fields all around. These became my playground. Until I was 7 or 8 I had a companion in the boy next door. He was about a year younger than me so consequently it was mostly at my suggestion in choosing  activities. After he left I suppose I was quite solitary. I had little contact with village children although I knew my contemporaries quite well as I went to school in the village. The school was I suppose fairly typical of a small village school. It was tiny at about 50 pupils. When I started in 1947 it catered for children up to the then leaving age of 14. With the introduction of secondary education for all the following year the school went back to 5-11 year olds.

When I first started I was taken every day by mother but by about 7 I was walking on my own. This was subject to strict rules; face the oncoming traffic, never accept lifts, if ever accosted pretend my father was just behind the neatest hedge. I was so obedient that I caused some embarrassment by refusing a lift from someone I should have known but didn’t. My stalwart for lifts was Mr Jackson from another nearby village. He was an insurance agent so quite often setting off on his first call as I was walking.

Although the first part of the route to school was along our lane about half way I had a choice of a short cut or continuing along the road. The short cut was always intriguing, diagonally across a field with regular undulations and through a churchyard to come out by the school. I always found the undulations puzzling until years later I discovered they were probably from generations of strip farming long ago. The church yard, certainly its elaborate lich-gate, was effectively part of the school playground. The playground proper was a triangle of land in front of the churchyard and a smaller are at one side with a  small .tree commemorating the coronation of King George.

The short cut field sometimes had cattle grazing, sometimes a bull. Although frightened I often crossed taking care to circle round any livestock. Looking back I don’t know why I took this risk which would have appalled my parents had they known.

Around the house I came to know the fields rather well. The field opposite my house had a stream flowing round part of it and then away underneath a low bridge connecting the two parts of the next field. The arable fields behind my house mostly had drainage ponds at their corners. These filled in the winter and dried completely in the summer. One field had a pit which was used as refuse dump. I spent ages foraging through this without ever finding anything much.

I must be looking older than I feel. In Sainsbury’s I asked a cheery middle aged assistant where the firelighters were. She looked at me using a walking stick, and kindly asked if she could fetch a pack for me. I was quite shocked she thought it would be too much effort for me

My favourite poet is Wendy Cope. She is jealous about her modest earnings relative to prose writers. She feels that folk readily quote a poem but never buy her books. Her partner jokes her epitaph will be “all rights reserved”. I have bought the book in which  Another Christmas Poem appears so I feel justified ( hope that’s OK Wendy )

Bloody Christmas ,here again.
Let us raise a loving cup:
Peace on earth, goodwill to men
And make them do the washing up.