School Fair

We try to attend Kings Norton School Fair partly because Ben and Alice attend the school but also because Frances is PTA treasurer. This year the winter, pre Christmas school fair was in doubt and Annette decided to take a stall. The modest fee of £10 is some support for school funds and Annette initially just saw stall holding as support.

She also both raided her store of craft objects and made some specially for the fair. She aimed to have some very cheap trinkets as children’s pocket money purchases and some slightly more expensive aimed at adults.

We turned up at the school and unloaded. All were in three bags with gold branches poking out on which to hang decorations. I went off to park at Frances’s house while Annette started setting up. On a snowy frosty day I had to be careful walking back to school. At the main entrance I was thrown because the door sign redirected to the infant hall. As I was turning away the receptionist came out to say the main entrance was in operation and she directed me to the main hall.

My contribution was then to sit on a chair while Annette completed setting out the stall on a standard dining table although disguised with cloth etc. We were right by the school  Christmas tree. We were prepared long before the “witching hour” of 3.15 when school finishes. Right up until that time people were arriving and setting up stalls. There was a fair range of types. I think the only trade stall was by Usborne children’s books. Their books are to a very high standard and I’ve had the opportunity via an Usborne representative in our book club to see even more of their huge range of both fiction and non-fiction titles. Several stalls were selling sweets and also some new toys. The PTA had stalls selling second hand toys and doing lucky dips etc.

As school closed there was a flood of people. The hall became very crowded. Slightly to our surprise the best sellers appeared to be some of our more elaborate and expensive decorations. It was quite noticeable that it was often grandparents accompanying their grandchildren who were buying. There was one other craft type stall who I think suffered from being in a smaller room off the main hall. It was very apparent that the lucky dip was the most popular being almost mobbed by customers.

When the initial crowd had subsided a bit I took a walk around the whole fair. This wasn’t a simple process as the infant hall is a rather tortuous walk away. In fact I was very nearly lost on the way. Seeking to support the afternoon I bought a strip of raffle tickets. Amazingly I won a meal for two at a Greek restaurant in Kings Norton. Somehow the raffle supervisor knew I was Frances’s father and tracked her down. I have passed the win to Frances and Matt and told them the additional prize is that they get us as a babysitter.

Not long afterwards folks started to pack up. We had to wait for Frances to collect all the takings. I certainly would have worried about her carrying upwards of £1000 cash home on her own. As it was there was Matt as well as us.

As Matt had taken time off he had to work at his desk once we got back. Alice was going out to a nearby friend. I appreciated this because this gave time alone with Ben. When Alice is around he tends to follow her around and join with whatever she is doing. He is a bit difficult to isolate so we can talk and play with him.

He is talking a lot better now. I’m not really tuned in to him and with deafness as well I’ve found it difficult to understand him. I appreciated the time to talk. When I asked about his school friends and guessed their names may be Peter, John or Harry he soon told me those were old names; his classmates are Harrison, Finn and various other new fangled names I’d never heard of before. I wonder if he thinks Ben is an old fashioned name.

Christmas Concert

Our grandson, Alex, is taking lessons in trumpet playing. He started on the cornet several years ago and graduated to a full size trumpet about a year ago. While his initial music teaching was at Fylingdales school he moved to Saturday morning sessions at the Caedmon centre in Whitby.

He seems to be showing good promise. The Whitby music centre organises a Christmas concert for all its pupils. As far as I can see the music centre is an offshoot of the county education department which gives paid for tuition to anyone in the area wishing to play an instrument. The pupils are mainly children with a sprinkling of adults. The centre is supported by the Arts Council. Caedmon site is a school whose facilities are used by the music centre.

Alex actually attends Eskdale school which is slightly further out along the Scarborough Road. The secondary education in the area is in flux. The former system was that Eskdale was a middle school, Caedmon an upper school. Now both will offer education through to at least 16

For the concert the music centre groups the players into bands, largely on an ad hoc basis Alex was in the Whitby Area Concert Band. They played three pieces. I must say Alex seemed very relaxed about the whole thing, chatting to his neighbours between items.

Before the concert Martin tried to persuade him to wear a waistcoat. He wouldn’t and he looked very smart anyway. I have to be absolutely honest and say that while accurate all the items had a  slow tempo which to my mind detracted from the overall effect.

The Concert Band was mainly brass and there were other groups of woodwind, choir and strings. After the interval  came the older more experienced players. Then the instruments were more mixed. For me the highlight was the Big Band. Their rendition of “Take the A train” was excellent, strongly reminiscent of the big bands of the forties and fifties. To my mind they slightly spoiled the effect with a singer for “Fever”.

Martin tells me Alex is slated to graduate to the Big Band after a bit more progression with the trumpet. It was somewhat amusing that the tutor while filling in for an absent instrumentalist also tried to conduct as well

Our children never showed much interest or aptitude in music. I’m rather sorry we didn’t push them a bit harder. I’m delighted that Alex is showing promise. I was hopeless myself. After testing my music teacher diagnosed me as tone deaf while kindly saying I had other talents.

Annette is a passable pianist but I’m sorry to say I gave her no encouragement and she pretty much ceased after our marriage. When we inherited her mother’s piano she took it up again for a while but never progressed. I’m afraid the piano has largely been a toy for grandchildren to play on. Ellie started on the rudiments but that soon lapsed

Coal Mining

I am more than fed up with the sentimentality which surrounds any media reference to mining. The sort of report that refers to .. lost industry… community spirit… salt of the earth.. Pah!

It is obvious to me that this refers at best to a few mining villages and has little to do with reality. I’m a miners son married to a miner’s daughter and the reality of mining life was very different to that depicted by those who I suspect have never been near a pit in their lives. Mining, particularly underground, was brutally hard, destroying health and self respect. People looked down on miners.

My father went down the pit as a young man as soon as he was old enough. In the community where we lived there were only two choices for an unqualified labourer. They were agricultural worker or miner. Mining was well paid by comparison and for a young fit man it had that advantage. The dangers were something which happened elsewhere and there was no looking to the future. There was the occasional industrial trouble although threatened riots in 1921 were bluster seen off by firmness. The strike of 1926 showed that while miners were the trades union shock troops the loyalty only flowed one way. The general strike soon ended and the miners were left to struggle on their own.

The result was a decline in miner’s fortunes followed by the exertions of WW11. Mining, although a conscription free job, couldn’t hold enough labour and afterwards with National Service a proportion of conscripts were directed to the mines ( these were called the Bevin Boys ).

By this time my father was getting towards late middle age and his health was cracking up. After a long period off work he was given a lighter job on permanent afternoon shift. The mines worked three shifts; days 6am-2pm, afternoons, 2pm-10pm, nights 10pm-6am.( coal was only produced on days and nights, afternoons were devoted to repair and maintenance ) Although it was a necessary move my father resented it and would refer bitterly to afternoons as “the old men and cripples shift”. He felt his health and life had been ruined by mining and although he carried on into his early sixties he retired when his pit ( Pooley or North Warwickshire) closed.

By contrast my father-in-law had an easier time. He always worked on the surface ( on the bank as he would say ) firstly on screening and washing finishing up as colliery winder. My abiding memory of him at work was at Amington pit which was the relief shaft for Pooley. There would only be a dozen or so winds per shift so he was mostly just having to wait patiently for the bell to call him. He had no way of foreseeing when this would be so he had to be always alert. In an emergency he might have been called upon to make many lifts. He would be the only worker around ( everything else had closed ) so he didn’t even have company.

The only career advice I ever  got from my father was “don’t go down the pit”. As part of the end of school activities in my final year we went down the training face at Birch Coppice. I’m very glad I went down then for the experience but never again.

At that time, some sixty years ago, there were lots of pits in the Midlands which are now all closed. In fact I believe there is no deep mining in the UK. Open cast is cheaper but still not competitive with imports which supply our dwindling needs.

There were no canteens down the pit. My father would take a few sandwiches and a bottle of water for his shift. This was called his snap and the sandwiches were packed in his snap tin stored  in turn in a big pocket in his jacket. Incidentally I was always wryly amused that jam was called colliers ham.

After his shift and riding home he was always thirsty. That first welcome drink of tea would be cooled by tipping into a dish- he would too thirsty to wait.

He would be cycling home at night. Just after the war he was still using acetylene lamps. These needed charging with carbide and water every day. The ready availability of batteries came as a real boon from the late forties on. Because his route was across a large area of waste ground by the colliery slag heap he kept a bicycle specially for work. His “best” bicycle was kept for other occasions.

As I’ve alluded to earlier miners were looked down upon- I suppose like eg. dustmen. Mining was easy to enter in the post war labour shortage but difficult to leave as few employers wanted ex-miners.There was little pride in mining. My father even refused to join a miners club in retirement when we lived close to one.

Garden

You will probably have noticed I post much less about my garden these days. As I’ve grown older and less fit my gardening time has decreased. With a painful hip if I spend an hour that is my limit.

Since having help with all the real work I did potter around the garden but I find I’m doing that much less. Our growing has reduced to soft and top fruit , runner beans and a failed effort at purple sprouting broccoli..

My gardening morale has not been helped by an awful growing season in 2017. Even an old reliable apple tree failed completely as did a formerly prolific plum. In fact pretty much all our fruit both top and soft failed. The only half way normal crop was blackberries and raspberries. This was a very big blow which I attribute to late frosts which caught all the blossom. Apart from this we have had some cultivation failure. Two plum trees I bought have proved reluctant to grow and never gave any fruit. I’m reasonably sure we had pollinators for them as we have others of the same variety in the garden.

Another cultivation problem has been rhubarb. This is reckoned to be very easy. We do have very fast draining soil so possibly they were not watered enough.. Annette doesn’t care for rhubarb so this failure leaves her unworried. I have been reconciled to losing all our sweet cherries to birds and currents haven’t been a complete disaster

One experiment which I pooh-poohed was Annette growing a few new potatoes in containers. The containers were plastic buckets with holes in the bottom. In fact this worked fairly well. I think the reason is that they were well watered whereas our ground crop was deficient in water. Certainly our potato crops have been disappointing.

One slightly poignant success has been baby conifers. I set aside some a few years ago( mainly self sets originally ) with a view to providing Christmas Trees. This was when the grandchildren were small and coming here at Christmas time. Neither of these are true anymore just when my conifers are reaching a decent size ( one is already too big ). We now convene at our youngest daughter’s house and they insist on buying a tree. I guess there is nothing for it but to cut them down.

Speaking of cutting trees the one thing I spend a lot of time on is cutting up wood. This is to feed our open fire where we burn a combination of coal and wood. I must admit to being a bit less confident on the merits of an open fire after seeing evidence that the small particles produced can be a health hazard. The merit of burning wood is that it is, in principle, carbon neutral as a renewable resource. Our open fire is more thermally efficient having a back boiler which also feeds the central heating system. I recognise that the system isn’t as efficient as a freestanding ( apart from a flue ) wood   burner. Martin has wood burners and they are very good. The main problem in his home office is a time to heat up ( he lights before breakfast ) and controllability, with a considerable lag.

Anyway I have become something of a fanatic in gathering and cutting wood. For a long time I was using cut up wooden pallets for fuel. Before retirement I had the damaged pallets from work and afterwards I was using garden centre throw outs. More recently I have had wood from trees cut down locally. This is more difficult to cut up  and I have probably invested more than is strictly worthwhile in chain saws, log splitter and saw horse. I have also become slightly fanatical about using any wood in our garden.

For next season we are hoping for a better year from soft fruit. We have expanded our raspberry area. We definitely hope to grow runner beans. Annette was saving seed but mice in the utility room have eaten a portion.

News and trust

It seems as though every day brings out a new trust issue with the news media. It is very worrying that apparently Russian trolls not only sewed division in the US election they also trolled the UK referendum on the EU. I think they are well pleased with the result in both cases.

I’ve been turning over in my mind what news media to trust and what to reject. It is rarely a clear cut distinction. Among newspapers the tabloids can be rejected, Sun, Daily Mail, Daily Express, Daily Mirror. They rarely resort to outright lies but the twists are so large as are the omissions that they don’t stand as reputable sources. With the broadsheets it is vital to allow for their bias. The Guardian has very left wing stance and its coverage while detailed reflects this. The Daily Telegraph has been captured by the Brexit section of the Conservative Party and needs to be read with that in mind. The Times has its prejudices  ( anti royalist for example ) but it gives wide and reasonable coverage. The Financial Times has a strong free market  stance but its coverage of economic and business news is unrivalled. On the other hand the Financial Times demands some knowledge of economic and market jargon.

As might be expected the internet sites of the UK newspapers follow their printed stance quite closely.  Outside these almost all news sites range from dodgy to worthless. Social media is infested with lies and has nothing worthwhile to offer the news seeker. For informed comment outside the sphere of news Wikipedia is surprisingly good. The range of information is immense although sometimes poorly presented.

The internet does offer some information not easily found elsewhere. The TED talks are given by individuals reckoned to have specialist knowledge. They can be opinionated but informative. Youtube has the whole gamut from informative to cranky daftness. Some daftness comes from conspiracy theories. Ie such as the Apollo missions didn’t really land on the moon, it was all done in a film studio. Conspiracy  theories are mostly hogwash; humans have evolved to see patterns even though sometimes there are none. Conspiracy theorists twist the facts beyond all recognition- avoid

Television is a rather dubious area. The BBC is fairly good. Its news bulletins are often fairly limited and they have a clear bias towards certain subjects. However their facts are trustworthy. Similar comment could be made about ITN. Beyond these is pretty much a fact free zone. The US CNN are worthwhile for giving an American view which is often strangely blinkered. Channels such as RT are propaganda channels and replete with false information.

Weekly magazines vary immensely. The pick of the bunch is the Economist. Despite its title it is a news magazine with a section devoted to business and economics. The Economist generally has a liberal free market stance. Its items are full of information so even if your conclusions are different at least they are well informed. Of all sources the Economist is probably the best.

New Statesman and New Society are generally rather left wing but New Society has items which would never be found elsewhere. The Spectator is generally right wing. There are many magazines which are mostly apolitical and devoted to particular topics. Some more general ones such as New Scientist don’t hesitate to put forward opinions but these are fairly well separated from news items. 

There are some general observations. Donald Trump who has protested most about false facts is the biggest liar of all; politicians have always twisted the facts but he has carried fact twisting to a new level. Be sceptical -every news story I’ve personally been close to has been misreported in some way. Look for evidence. Assertions without any evidence are always suspect.

Ask yourself whether the “fact” is reasonable and fits with what is known. Extreme facts require powerful evidence from two or more sources.

Liverpool port and docks

Watching the Timeshift on docks and dockers on TV made me realise we observed the Liverpool docks at a pivotal time. In autumn 1965 we moved to the Wirral peninsula just across the Mersey from Liverpool. Crossing the Mersey by ferry was a very cheap boat ride; 4d in old money( 2.5p after decimalisation ).

We would travel from Birkenhead Hamilton Square ferry terminal to Liverpool Pier Head. At that time there were two ferries, one at each station setting off at the same time to cross mid river. I always enjoyed sitting waiting for the ferry to cast off on a crossing of perhaps 5 minutes. Sitting on top deck in the open gave a great view of the river traffic and the cities.

At that time the transatlantic liners were still travelling from Liverpool. It would be quite usual to see 2 or 3 moored at Pier Head. This era was ending and within a few years they were gone replaced totally by air travel. At the time they seemed gigantic although I now realise cruise ships are often much larger.

Although containerisation had started most items were handled individually. I vividly recall during a dock strike driving through Birkenhead docks and seeing goods of all sorts on every spare piece of ground. Most were in pallets or other intermediate packaging. I guess all the perishables were in the many warehouses.

Generally Liverpool and Birkenhead didn’t handle bulk cargo such as coal, oil or grain. Oil was handled a little upriver at Eastham docks just by the entrance to the Mersey Canal. This was also handy for the giant Shell Thornton refinery at nearby Ellesmere Port

As containerisation spread the large Liverpool docks had to change. The Docklands Overhead Railway was already down ( I marvelled at the carriage in the museum ) and by 1970 the south docks had closed. These were south of pier head and not in as deep water as the north docks where the new Seaforth Container port was coming into action.

The south docks included the historic Albert Dock and there were many suggestions for how it might be preserved. I was a student in Liverpool in 1971 and one of our number secured permission for a small group ( three on the day ) to walk through the south docks. It was an eerie and rather sad experience through a deserted area with much still in place. I marvelled at the gigantic pillars of iron under the huge brick warehouses of the Albert Dock which surround a rectangular pool some few acres in size entered by a lock at one end.. The Albert dock is almost by pier head and we proceeded to walk through the whole complex emerging some miles upstream’; a journey occupying about a half day. ( we should really have been working but we could set our own timetables within reason, later I often worked at weekends )

I thought we were seeing buildings soon to be demolished. However some bold thinking rescued the Albert Dock now the home a wide variety of shops and restaurants including the Tate Northern gallery and two hotels Upstream of the Albert Dock the dock area was cleared and became the Liverpool Garden Festival  site Clearing a centuries detritus was expensive Much later we stayed in the Holiday Inn in Albert Dock. The rooms are rather bizarre with scoured brick walls and vaulted ceilings. We are talking walls of massive thickness, several feet at least, as the warehouses were built to take big loads.

The reputation of Liverpool as a hotbed of crime and violence was rather justified at that time. Although the Technology College had an enclosed car park everyone I knew had their car damaged at some time while parked there. One friend on a lower floor laboratory was quietly working away when a brick came flying through his window. There was a kind of perverse pride among locals in the crime and “scallys” were talked off in a way part admiring their cheek.

One impudent incident occurred when the college principal had just taken delivery of a new carpet., still in a roll. Two men in overalls turned up, carried it away and it was never seen again.

I was in a laboratory with 3 others and a fourth regularly joined us. I would never have gone to a dockers pub on my own but with 4 companions we tried it. We were very clearly unwelcome and after a quick drink we left for somewhere more suitable.

The Man in the Wood

The man is Keith who owns part of a wood near Scarborough. Martin and Lindsey met him first as a builders assistant when they were having so much work done on their new house. They have become quite friendly with him. Martin spent a long weekend with him at the Woodland Gathering in Wiltshire earlier this year. Keith has let Martin have a small area of his wood for den making etc.

Having now spent most of a day with Keith I can say he is a fascinating man with many interests. He has built a quite amazing camp in the wood and apparently spends many hours there. A former potter he is now semi retired just doing odd jobs on a part time basis.

His camp is spread over  an acre or so. All  the materials apart from timber have been scrounged, largely from discarded items thrown away as worn out or broken.  He has a cabin built from an old box trailer with an extension for sleeping area. This has the sort of kitchen one  might find in an old fashioned gypsy caravan. His one concession to modernity being a camping gas type ring. Just as in gypsy caravans there a lots of nooks and crannies. The cabin is equipped with a wood burning stove with a home built oven attached. The cabin looks out onto a bird table and feeder

We spent most of our time in cabin two which is larger, has rescue furniture such as old conservatory furniture just seating the seven of us. plus an open wood fire. This cabin has a home built fire place ( which backs onto a home built pottery kiln ) but is otherwise made from rescue materials. In this cabin we had a soup and bacon sandwich lunch heated over the fire. The children then toasted marshmallows while we had biscuits as dessert. We also had coffee but cheated by boiling the kettle on the gas ring in cabin one.

Keith also has a converted summer house complete with roof tip viewing area on the edge of the wood looking out over open fields. From this vantage point he can watch various birds and animals including foxes and deer.

 Inevitably there are projects under way. One such is fixing a small circular saw and its stand

This by no means completes his constructions as he has a home built garage housing an old dumper truck and trailer; a shed housing a generator, a very large wood pile and much more. The dumper truck dates from the late fifties/ early sixties judging from its Petter diesel engine. The garage features half open sides and a thatched roof. Among the more bizarre constructions is a platform which apparently houses a concert by a guitarist relative. Apparently they play at the annual party in the wood hosted by Keith. 

This description doesn’t do justice to the wonderful collection of found objects decorating the cabins. This excepts the summerhouse viewer which contains pictures painted by Keith. These are largely forestry and rural scenes and seemed very good. One had pottery leaves.

Alex and Ellen loved the camp. Although cold, windy and showery they spent most of the time roaming around. Keith has an old ride on mower which we didn’t see but apparently Alex likes to drive. My feeling was that this is a paradise for children with even a modest interest in nature. The dumper truck is a bit too fierce for Alex to drive as yet.

There are other camps in the wood although all were unoccupied when we visited. One had a virtually complete small sawmill.

Although Keith is married with a grown up daughter he apparently spends many weekends working on his camp or communing with nature. Despite his annual party I got the impression he enjoyed being solitary or at most having a few folks around.

A level single track led to the site but turning at the end did pose a small problem. On a wet day we only suffered wheelspin once while manoeuvring.

Old time radio

Living in the country when I was a boy in a house without electricity our main source of news and entertainment was the radio. We had a battery radio so we didn’t need mains electricity. This was a battery radio quite unlike modern ones. It had two batteries, a lead acid “accumulator” of which we had two, one in use and the other charging in the nearest village.

The accumulator powered the valve filaments and lasted maybe 5 days. One of the frustrations was the accumulator running out in the middle of a programme. The cells were in a thick glass jar with a metal handle. This enabled it to be carried on a bicycle. The high tension battery was about the size of two bricks, a solid battery like a present day lamp battery but much larger. This supplied up to 120 volts with a series of tapping points for lower voltage. It would last several months and replacements were ordered from the Co-op to arrive with our grocery delivery.

While there were some dedicated children’s programmes on “Children’s Hour” such as Larry the Lamb( "Please Mr Mayor" was a frequent quavering plaint ) and Norman and Henry Bones ( the boy detectives ) most of my listening was to programmes enjoyed by my parents.

Among the earliest was ITMA ( It’s that man again- the man being comedian Tommy Handley ) Most of the word play and jokes were over my head. I do recall Colonel Chinstrap who interpreted everything as an invitation to have a drink ( “ I don’t mind if I do “ ) and of course Mrs Mopp ( “ Can I do you now, sir “).

My father was a great fan of “Have a go”. I suppose this was among the first reality shows. The format was Wilfred Pickles interviewing, and then questioning for prizes, members of the public. The questions were designed to be answerable and small cash prizes were offered if correct. When answered Wilfred would say triumphantly “ Give him the money, Barney” to Barney Colehan the shows producer. Later Barney was supplanted by Mabel Pickles, Wilfred’s wife. The interviews were light hearted designed for comic effect but not at the expense of the interviewee. An example often used was “ If you could say to your wife “ I love you darling but” what would the but be”? One answer I recall was “ I wish you wouldn’t squeeze the toothpaste in the middle”.

Generally comedy programmes were in favour. I always thought the most bizarre was “Educating Archie”. The format was that a comedian was trying ( and failing ) to educate Archie, a sassy child. The bizarre arose because Archie was a ventriloquists’ dummy – on radio!

Other comedy favourites included “Take it from here” and “Much Binding in the Marsh” the latter set in a spoof RAF station. In the just post war years with National Service meaning the forces were a common denominator, many programmes and jokes used the forces as a basis.

As I grew older I became a bit more adventurous and strayed beyond the BBC Home Service and Light Programme. Radio Luxemburg was exciting because it was completely different. We could only pick it up at night as it was on the fringes of reception.  I enjoyed “Smash Hits”. The idea was to request a record you hated which was played and then smashed. With old shellac records, pre vinyl, there was a very satisfactory smashing noise.

Our listening wasn’t all comedy as Any Questions was a common choice; along with Friday Night is Music Night. Many years later we went to a broadcast of Friday Night is Music Night in Middlesbrough. I was amazed how little the format had changed with a guest singer or duo and BBC orchestra.

I was entranced by the Goon Show. A completely different comedy show it set a pattern to surrealist comedy. I suppose one reason for my devotion was that my parents just didn’t like or understand it. In truth much passed me by  but the wacky voices held my interest. An example of a plot was “Ill met by goonlight” ( a title sending up the film “ Ill met by moonlight”) The plot involved heroic saboteurs ( Seagoon etc )  on Crete hitting the Germans over the head with socks filled with spaghetti thus convincing them Italians had turned against them.

One good joke I remember was based around the new Egg Marketing Lion branding. As Neddy Seagoon said” It’s all a lie, they aren’t lions eggs “

Cortina

I’m devoting a post to the Ford Cortina car. I find automotive technology generally, and this in particular, interesting. I guess this interest is fairly personal to me so maybe now is the time to give up and read something else. I have a personal interest in that I had, slightly by accident, the last model in almost the last year of production.

The Cortina entered production in 1962. It was named after Cortina d’ampezzo an Italian ski resort, a name designed to be useful in many markets and languages. At first it was the Consul Cortina in the UK harking back to a name Ford used for many years but the Consul part was soon dropped.

The main competitor was the British Motor Corporation and their design philosophy was completely different. Ford looked to make a very simple car with a traditional “3 box” layout as opposed to BMC with front wheel drive transverse engine , hydrolastic all independent suspension of the BMC 1100 series ( later 1300 series ).

This design philosophy difference continued for years with BMC continuing with the 1800 and Maxi to espouse front wheel drive, hydrolastic suspension while Ford continued with its much simpler designs. Ford won the sales contest decisively. Ultimately BMC tried to go to more conventional models with the ill fated Marina. Ironically The BMC philosophy captured the industry and its transverse engine fromt wheel drive became to norm for small and medium cars. But by then the successor Rover company had gone out of business.

The Cortina was not only a very simple car with an enlarged Anglia engine of 1200cc ( 1500cc added later ) but the rear suspension was the old fashioned leaf sprung live axle while the front suspension was by Macpherson strut. This independent suspension was an ingenious method pioneered by Ford but later very widely adopted, The car got front disc brakes in 1964.

The Cortina was wildly successful , it was cheap to make  (so profitable ), light, reasonably economical and possessed a large boot. The BMC 1100 was none of these things. While a technological marvel, far more advanced than the Cortina, it sold well but made very little money for BMC.

Ford realised the PR value of racing and looked to Colin Chapman’s Lotus company for a racing version. Lotus was already making a twin cam 1600cc version of the Ford engine so that was an obvious choice. The rear axle was coil sprung and with a more positive location . The Lotus Cortina enjoyed significant success but it was always a strange sight to see it cornering on 3 wheels with the outside front in the air. Perhaps the most amazing feat was The RAC rally when Jim Clark, a F1 driver, drove a Lotus Cortina with great verve. With co- driver Brian Melia, Clark achieved high placing despite having no experience

The Cortina engine was a modification of the Anglia engine which began to show its age. This was remedied in the Mk11 which had a crossflow engine. So called because inlet and exhaust were moved to opposite sides of the engine. The car was completely restyled and engine capacity slightly increased so that the base engine became 1300cc

The Mk111 marked a major departure. A complete restyling took on the “coke bottle” look with a wider body of the same length. The front strut suspension was replaced by a double wishbone while the rear axle now had coil springs and a 4 link location. This latter followed the design philosophy of the earlier Lotus Cortina. There was a major engine addition with the 2000cc Pinto single overhead cam engine, later available in 1600cc form.

I always felt the Mk111 was the ugliest Cortina, over ornate and too American..

The mid 70’s saw a complete rethink in style plus improved anti corrosion techniques ( this had been a problem with the Mk111) much simpler in shape with increased glass area.

Finally 1979 saw the introduction of the Cortina 80 facelift of the Mk1V design which became universally known as the MkV.. Although still selling well the MkV became the final model.

After redundancy from Unilever I took a job with a tiny company on Teeside. Part of the package was a new Cortina 2.0 GL. I had been a great fan of the BMC later British Leyland  technological approach but after looking askance at first I became a great fan. After many years experience it was a well sorted car which felt rugged and yet drove well.. I was only to spend a year on Teeside but I unhesitatingly bought the car when I left. Driving back and forth between Merseyside and Teeside at weekends I had driven 27000 miles in a year, far more than before or since.

Immediately after work on a Friday I would drive the 3 hours, 150 miles back to Merseyside.  Down the A19 and A1 then through Leeds and onto the M62 trans Pennine motorway. On reaching the motorway a Rolling Stones tape to liven me up and a steady 70-75mph cruise round Manchester and then the North Cheshire motorway back to Merseyside.

I kept the car until it was surplus to our needs in 1991 with Martin taking over for a while before he left for university but then it had to go. It was the only car I have ever had which went “round the clock” ie over 100,000 miles. It went down to the south of France at least once and acquitted itself well. With two adults and 3 children aboard we needed a roof rack for all our luggage but it still kept a steady fast cruise on the autoroute.

To my lasting regret I gave most of my records to new buyer. Although he was local I never saw the car again..

A voice from the grave

I have in a previous post talked of my cousin, Winifred, who died on 2 Oct. After many years of seeing her infrequently we saw her a lot in her final few weeks. I didn’t even know she was ill for a long time until I had a peculiar  phone call asking if I knew where the keys to her house were.

This phone call from a clearly harried nurse gave no information, not even a number  where I could return the call. Not getting any reply on Winfred’s phone we eventually drove over to Bedworth to find her in a sadly reduced state. Winfred had always been a rather private person and although she made light of her illness it was obvious she was seriously ill. It was from a concerned neighbour that we eventually found the cause which was cancer of the oesophagus.

As I probably said previously Winifred was a great favourite of my parents. All the ( regrettably short ) time we were able to visit her I felt they were urging us on to do whatever we could.  This was little enough. Winifred’s home in Bedworth is an inconvenient drive from our home. Gradually we found a route via the M6/M42 which made the thirty miles a little easier.

As “next-of-kin” I have been making the arrangements. This was helped by a pre paid funeral plan, professional  executors and her church friends.

Her funeral  a few days ago was as she had specified in some detail. Just beforehand I was alerted by a church friend that the local Citizens Advice Bureau was sending a large contingent. I knew Winifred was a staunch volunteer but they did her the great honour of closing so that over 20 could attend. The manager wrote a lovely tribute.

It turns out that as part of a survey the CAB had recorded Winifred talking about her life, mainly in the CAB but covering the whole. Recorded before she was ill this was a very moving listening experience.: even a little spooky to hear her voice talking about her life.  Some was new to me and some even is a bit hard to fit with what I knew or had been told.

Winifred lived in Coventry and was evacuated to stay with my parents who lived in the country. No matter how loving and caring they were this was a massive wrench for a five year old. Fortunately she made great friends with Toby their dog. She was to be a dog lover for the rest of her life.

I’m not an animal lover and because Winifred had large dogs which lived in her house we found it awkward to visit so that when we met she visited us.

Of our generation one other has died and two are severely ill. The family at the funeral was limited to Annette and myself plus a cousin-in-law who travelled down from Carlisle This is Brenda, George’s widow,  who we know well and she stayed here. We were not expecting many at the funeral and were amazed that the church counted 97 in the congregation.

Winifred is now buried alongside her parents in Canley Garden Cemetery. I learned to my surprise my maternal grandmother is also buried there. We are still clearing Winifred’s house. Among surprises is a photo of me as a little boy along with two small girls who were distant relatives and an older girl from the village. I’m sure I have never seen this before. I feel the older girl is significant, perhaps as a baby sitter or someone mother took under her wing.   Maybe I will never find out but I’m still hopeful at this time. The other small girls I can contact. They are distant relatives with whom our parents made lots of joint expeditions when we were young. They had a car relative to our motor cycle and sidecar. I thought it great on occasion to ride in their car.

Energy 4

Preceding posts on energy have taken a swift gallop through the energy issues of today and ways forward on the massive issue of climate change. There has been a vast amount of research which is continuing. Essentially this can be divided into two main types; that aimed at directly reversing or alleviating climate change and that looking at alternative sources of energy.

The very idea of directly combatting climate change is controversial. There are those who maintain that any intervention large enough to make an impact is making an experiment on the earth’s climate with possibly major side effects. Since climate change stems from one inadvertent change they argue it would be risky to attempt another. There is general agreement that the best way forward is to limit carbon dioxide emission. However there is a growing realisation that present efforts are unlikely to be sufficient.

The Paris agreement seeks to limit global temperature increase to no more than 1.5 degrees. It seems unlikely this will be achieved. Possible direct action includes releasing white particles high in the atmosphere to reduce the sun’s radiation. While there is god evidence this will work it doesn’t affect things like ocean acidification. This acidification is result of sea water dissolving CO2 to give a weak acid. Another possibility is to fertilise the growth of marine plankton which will grow, absorb CO2, die and sink to the bottom of the sea. In this way CO2 is buried. A most fantastic possibility is to erect a gigantic sunshade in space to reduce the input to the earth from the sun.

.All these and others have the fundamental problem of scale. Such a massive effect is necessary that it will be almost impossible to test first

There is a slight possibility that CO2 could be removed from exhaust gas and buried in such as old oil wells. This has been planned but so far has not been demonstrated. So called “clean coal” was best thought of as a political gimmick.

Turning to novel sources the most intriguing and most researched is fusion. Essentially this means duplicating the sun’s reaction in a controlled way on earth. Fusion is a nuclear reaction but should not be confused with present day atomic power stations. It is fundamentally different and would produce very little radio active waste. Many billions have and are being spent but the problems remain unsolved. There is a joke that “fusion power is thirty years away and always will be” It was first promised when I was young and mankind is very little closer now. The issue is containment of plasma at temperatures of many millions of degrees.

Wave power has excited much interest over the years. No economically feasible method has emerged from all the ducks, snakes and a whole menagerie of ideas. Slightly more promising is tidal power. Essentially a form of hydroelectricity the general idea is to fill a reservoir at high tide and let is potential energy be released through power turbines. The issue is that very few places have a sufficient tidal range although apparently the UK hosts some. Rather more obscure is to exploit the difference of temperature between the top and bottom of the ocean. A difference in temperature means a heat engine can be used The system needs  a long vertical submerged tube in the ocean.. This was much discussed in the energy crisis of the seventies but seems to be of little interest now. There is one research system in operation.

Plant photosynthesis is not very efficient but careful study of the mechanism has been yielding results. It looks at least possible that plants could be modified to give better photosynthesis by the kind of genetic engineering which has developed at such a rapid pace.

However we can readily predict that any such plant modification would produce vigorous protests. In fact the objections of well meaning but ignorant protesters will probably be the biggest obstacle to any radical change in the energy landscape. Current objections to wind turbines and fracking give a foretaste of the protests so easily aroused by any change. The existential challenge remains and such single issue groups will be another barrier to its resolution.

Energy 3

Earlier posts under this title have pointed out that energy consumption must increase despite advances in the efficiency with which energy is used. They have pointed out that fossil fuels and climate change are existential problems for mankind. Electricity is unique in its flexibility as an energy medium of transmission but the big problem with electricity is that it is difficult and expensive to store.

At present the transportation business is the second largest user of energy in society after space heating/cooling which is the largest. Various parts of transportation present their own unique features but the development focus has been on passenger cars. The technology most discussed with cars is electric vehicles.

Fundamentally there are two types of electric car, those purely driven by batteries and those which are hybrid having both a petrol and electric engines. While early on hybrids captured most of the market there has been a resurgence in pure electric cars. This surge has particularly been driven by Tesla a US manufacturer who have been very successful.

The issue with battery only cars has been range. Tesla is now selling cars with a 300 mile range and batteries which can be quickly charged. This recharging can be in tens of minutes to big fractions of the total capacity. However “range anxiety” is still a potent factor limiting all electric cars. Quick charging is not nearly as fast as filling up with petrol giving a typical petrol car a range of 400 miles plus. The anxiety over running out of charge has been compounded by the relative lack of charging facilities outside the home.

It is time to firmly lay to rest one myth. Electric cars may be pollution free at the tailpipe. However the electricity they use is supplied from the grid from multiple sources which include some renewables but often a lot of coal, oil and gas.. The overall energy equation needs to take account of the large amount of energy used in producing the car and battery.

Battery efficiency is key. The battery is certainly a lithium ion type which actually describes a range of broadly similar battery technologies. The battery is an expensive component which does not last the life of the car. Recycling of battery parts is claimed but not actually done as yet. To drive down battery production costs Tesla with Panasonic is building a big factory called the Gigafactory in the US. Batteries are getting more efficient but there is still a big need for improvement.

One important feature of most electric vehicles is regenerative braking. This means that when slowing the car turns the motor/generator putting electricity into the battery.

Hybrid electric is much more common than pure electric. There are fundamentally two types of hybrid,: parallel and serial. In the parallel both petrol engine and electric can drive the car  while in serial the wheels are always driven by the electric motor while the petrol engine charges the battery. Parallel is the most common but the best arrangement is far from agreed with many variations.

While originally hybrids only used a petrol engine to recharge the battery it is increasingly common for mains electricity to be also used for battery charging. This is the so called “plug in” hybrid. An abbreviation has come into use as PHEV which is Plug in Hybrid Electric Vehicle.

Incidentally the Toyota Prius, which was the first hybrid on the mass market, uses earlier battery technology earlier lithium battery technology..

Other transportation systems are being contemplated. The diesel electric locomotive is well established. Somewhat similar systems are possible for buses. The economy advantage is that the diesel engine can run in its most efficient range. In principle trucks could use a similar system although the tractive effort required is much larger.

There is interest in electric aircraft. The problem is twofold in that regenerative braking can only occur on landing but more importantly that weight is a big consideration. Hypothetical hybrids with many electric motors driven from batteries charged by a gas turbine have been suggested but not built as yet.

There are other possibilities for storing energy. One is to use a flywheel turning very fast which is spun up as the vehicle ( usually a bus ) brakes with the flywheel energy then used as the bus accelerates away from a stop

There are also possible alternative fuels. Hydrogen which is less dense than petrol and difficult to store could either power an internal combustion engine or be used in a fuel cell.  A fuel cell converts hydrogen and oxygen from the air into electricity. The big attraction is the possible generation of hydrogen on the car from petrol thus making use of the existing distribution infrastructure. No economically practicable method is known at present.

It is fair to say there is a ferment of research and development at present. Overall the electric vehicle looks to be firmly in the lead but we can expect lots of possibilities in the near future. To inject a note of caution, for all the glib talk of banning petrol and diesel fuels they are at present the economic choice and alternatives have a way to go before matching them.

Energy 2

Having discussed some general topics it is time to get to some specific issues. To recap energy use will increase as our civilisation becomes more sophisticated. Fossil fuels produce carbon dioxide and climate is changing as a result. This change in climate threatens life on the planet.

So what’s to be done? The first part of the answer is to use fossil fuels better. This means burning gas rather than coal and burning it more efficiently. It is slowly becoming clear that it is better to use electricity because even with fossil fuels burning in a power station is more efficient than in ( say) cars.. This is perhaps the place to nail the lie that electric cars are zero emission. They are at the tailpipe but if fossil fuel is burned to create the electricity then mankind benefits only from the greater efficiency of a power station over an internal combustion engine.

It is far from clear whether pure electric cars or hybrid cars ( those having both electric and internal combustion engines ) will succeed. On one hand pure electric have lower emissions and on the other battery limitations mean that pure electric are range limited.

This points to the great problem with electricity. That problem is that electricity is almost ideal as a means of energy transmission but is very difficult and expensive to store. At present our mains electricity must be generated as it is consumed.

There have been big advances in batteries in the past fifty years but even with that batteries are expensive, slow to charge and only barely meet the demands upon them. This is such a problem that in the UK we have resorted to pumped water for large scale storage. Essentially this is a reversible hydroelectric scheme. When demand is low water is pumped by electricity to a high storage reservoir. When demand is high the stored water is released through turbines generating hydroelectricity. This process inevitably loses some energy but it is the only acceptable method at present. There is some suggestion that large batteries might help and US Solar City are planning a 100MW battery in Australia.

As was said earlier all energy ultimately comes from the sun. Photosynthesis powers plants and hence has provided us with fossil fuels. However photosynthesis has a very low efficiency which means that crop based fuels will be of limited use. Crop based fuels are carbon dioxide neutral in the sense that the growing plant consumes carbon dioxide which is then returned to the atmosphere when it is burnt. The carbon necessary for all plants is taken from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Plant growth removes C02 from the atmosphere but all that C02 is returned when the plant rots.

Rather than use plants as intermediary solar electric directly turns the sun’s rays to electricity. The problem is that solar panels are not very efficient. Over the past few years prices of solar panels have fallen a lot but they are still quite expensive. However the fundamental problem is that solar panels only generate in the daytime and preferably during a sunny day.

Wind turbines have a similar problem of intermittency ie. they only generate when the wind is blowing. It is unclear whether wind or solar power is fully cost efficient compared to fossil fuel power. There are indications that wind and solar are approaching cost parity with fossil fuels after a long period when they have be subsidised by government. These subsidies were not paid by general taxation but by taking money from existing generators.

Because wind and solar are intermittent there is the question of balancing supply and demand. At present while wind and solar are a small part of total energy production this is a minor issue but as their contribution rises it is set to become a major problem. Managing the national electricity grid will become an issue.

At present the only known none carbon method of steadily generating electricity is nuclear. For well rehearsed reasons this is contentious. It is very expensive using the conventional nuclear station. It is said that “mini nukes” built on a modular basis will be cheaper but  this is a paper exercise as none have been built.

It is apparent that at least some of the supply/demand balancing will demand load shedding. In its modern form this means paying large users a fee for allowing their supply to be cut. As the UK has very little spare capacity this already happens at peak demand.

It is possible that if electric cars become widespread then batteries would only be recharged at times of low demand and there is even the suggestion that car batteries could supply at peak times. This would require complex controls but computers may make it feasible.

Energy 1

I have quite a bit to say about energy so I’ll number my posts. Energy is vitally important to civilisation. Very roughly increasing energy use and increasing civilisation are correlated. In other words as civilisation advances energy usage goes up. While it is quite possible for the amount of energy usage to decrease per unit of advance of “civilisation” I don’t think there is any instance of the absolute energy usage  decreasing which has happened historically or indeed that can be conceived for the future.

We have seen advocates of a “hair shirt” approach but they have never actually put their theories into practice. I cannot imagine going without my washing machine, my computer or keeping warm in winter. Certainly we want our civilising appliances to be as efficient as possible; our houses to be as well insulated as possible but if we are to advance our living standards then overall our energy use will rise.

The existential problem for mankind is that our existing energy sources are killing the planet. It cannot be denied that the planet is warming and the climate is changing. It has been quite visible in my lifetime with milder wetter winters. I wonder how the climate change deniers in Texas reconcile their belief with Hurricane Harvey and its effects. As hurricane frequency increases they must be ready to see the truth.

What is possibly slightly more contentious is whether man made emissions of carbon dioxide and methane are the cause. The overwhelming consensus among scientists is that they are. The counter evidence for some other cause is very thin. It seems that the climate change deniers somehow imagine a political plot. What this could be and what benefit is possible for acceptors seem to exist only in the warped minds of conspiracy theorists. It is sad that America is lumbered with a president that thinks that way.

It is possible I suppose this is part of Michael Gove’s scepticism of experts. Certainly experts aren’t always right. But in this case the evidence is all around, the climate is changing as I’ve said above quite clearly in my lifetime. It would be quite extraordinary for mankind to just sit back and hope for a miraculous change to avoid extinction.

Incidentally I have become extremely tired of the frequently trotted out “over population” by people who seem to lack an understanding of the gigantic demographic transition taking place right now. As soon as people see that their children will survive they stop having so many. The problem is now localised to Africa as everywhere else the transition is well underway. Population will increase for a while as those late to the transition have a lot of people of childbearing age. Although these will have far fewer children than their parents precisely because there are lots of them population will increase for a while.

The replacement ratio ( which keeps population stable ) is about 2.1 children per couple. Post transition the population will fall as all the indications are that modern affluent societies are below 2. In some cases far below and population fall is an issue in a few countries such as Japan now and will become a much more widespread issue in the future. The Chinese numbers are slated to fall before the end of the century.

All our energy comes from the sun, that great fusion reactor in the sky. This can be largely indirect as in wind power or the result of many millennia  as with fossil fuels. Oil , gas and coal are the result of many millennia of plants growing with energy from the sun and then dying under non rotting conditions.

In my lifetime we have gone from coal as the main energy source to a situation where it is disappearing fast. At one time Britain mined about a quarter of a million tons in the fifties to now where there is no deep mining and not much opencast.

There is a deal of sentimental twaddle talked about the loss of coal mining communities. I’m a miner’s son  and the coal miners life was extremely hard. My father always said to me “I don’t care what you do, just don’t go down the pit”.

I was very glad to to go down once just for the experience but I vowed never again. When I was young  three quarters of a million men were committed to the horrible job- not one today which I see as a huge advance.

Alexander McCall Smith

Alexander McCall Smith

Who is he I hear you say. He is a former Scottish academic who is a prolific writer. To a slight extent his books use his academic knowhow in ethics and law but essentially his writing is “feel-good” books in a variety of settings.

I went to see him at the “Warwick Words” literary festival. I first went to an event there several years ago- it was a poetry slam organised by Spoz Esposito. A slam is a light hearted contest in which contestants declaim their poems for no more than 3 minutes. Judges then select those felt to be best through to second round and so on until a winner is reached. The first slam I attended I was chosen as one of the judges. I thought the contributions were excellent and judging was extremely hard.. The funniest poem of the evening was read by Spoz himself while the results were tabulated. I don’t usually enjoy vulgar work but his poem was both vulgar and hilariously funny ( it concerned a driver on the motorway who urgently wants to go to the toilet ) Obviously the success or otherwise depends on the contestants and subsequent events didn’t reach the same high standard.

Born in present day Zimbabwe McCall Smith has had his biggest success with  “The No 1 ladies detective agency” series set in Botswana. The books have a great sense of place as Botswana is a country he knows well quite apart from his youth in a nearby country. In fact he founded several institutions while in Botswana on secondment to the University. The detective agency is only loosely about detective stories being mainly about the principals and their various lives. As in all his work the books are full of humorous commentary.

McCall Smith is astonishingly prolific and much of his work is in series which are extremely varied. He first achieved success with a series about German academics when he mocks their pretentiousness. A university teacher with a doctorate would be known as Herr Professor Doctor…. He has also had a series set in London about the affairs of the occupants of Corduroy Mansions. A rather similar series is set in Edinburgh in Scotland Street. This series is notable for its short chapters interweaving the lives of the flat dwellers. The structure can be most readily understood as it is written as columns in the “Scotsman” newspaper which are then collected into books.

In my opinion the star character in Scotland Street is a small boy, Bertie. Bertie longs to be a small boy like any other but his mother is determined to be achingly politically correct and despises anything gender specific. Thus he is dressed in a crushed strawberry colour corduroy bib suit when he longs to be dressed in jeans like other boys. He yearns for a Swiss Army type penknife which of course is not approved by his mother. McCall Smith has huge fun at the expense of Irene, Bertie’s mother, who seems to have just about every “right-on” opinion ever heard of.

In his talk McCall Smith mentions how Irene reacts to anything she considers detrimental. At nursery school she insists he learns to write. Thus when Bertie in a small rebellion writes on the toilet wall he is instantly identified because he is the only pupil who can write. Irene is mortified.

Totally different is the “Sunday Philosophy club” series featuring Isabel Dalhousie. Isabel is the editor of a philosophical publication on modern ethics. Although only part time and combined with being mother to a small child she takes this very seriously.  The stories, set in Edinburgh, give McCall Smith the chance to muse on various issues. The stories are fairly light hearted revolving around various puzzles in everyday life.

All of the work has one unifying feature which is that whatever the intervening incidents all works out well and culminates in a happy ending. The Warwick event was in the form of a question and answer session and he proved an affable and amusing speaker

Winifred

My cousin Winifred died a couple of days ago. As “last man standing “  ( our two surviving blood relatives are both very ill  and our in law relative isn’t much better ) I get to arrange some things. Thankfully she had a pre paid funeral plan and a professional executor.

Over the past few years I haven’t seen much of Winifred even though she lives relatively close. I had no idea she was even ill until a few weeks ago when I had a strange phone call saying she was leaving hospital and did I know where her spare key was. On deciding to investigate I found her in a sadly reduced condition.

She was reluctant to tell me what the problem was although she eventually confided in Annette that she had cancer. I was glad that we had some short time together and that we visited her in hospital the day before she died She was my parents favourite and I could hear mother urging me to do all I could.

Very vivid in her memory was the time she was evacuated during WW11 from her home in Coventry to live with my parents in the country .In fact I have a definite idea that the timing of my birth was down to the influence of Winifred on my parents. They loved having a charming 5 year old staying and I can see my mother saying damn the war lets have children now. My surviving cousin has told me that my mother wished for a girl like Winifred who was always their favourite niece. My mother never gave me the slightest hint of this, if indeed it was true.

My mother was very interested in skills like knitting and sewing and did make a slight effort to teach me but I was hopeless and she gave up quickly. I know she was pleased that Annette has a multitude of craft skills although our own children are not greatly interested. Our granddaughter Alice shows interest in art so perhaps she will develop that in later life.. Annette has also tried to interest the others so we shall see.

Winifred had interests quite different from mine, in animals and religion. It was her interest in animals that was the  reason we didn’t visit her but that she always visited us. We went with another set of cousins to visit her years ago She had a non-housetrained large dog and the ambience was quite repellent.

Through her religious beliefs she had been an active member of her local church. I must say her fellow churchgoers have been quite magnificent. Winifred lived on her own since her father died some 20 years ago and they have looked after her, accompanying on hospital visits, shopping and just being company. Unfortunately they didn’t make any contact with me and it is only in the past few weeks I have come to know some, particularly the couple who live nearby.

When my mother was pregnant with me Winifred’s mother managed to come to live temporarily in a nearby village so they were reunited there away from the horror of the Coventry bombing. Their house in Coventry was damaged in a raid but was repaired after the war.

Winfred had an aunt ( and namesake) who had a huge influence. She was herself a nurse and encouraged Winfred into the profession. Ironically Winifred with no children of her own became a midwife.

Among many poignant things left behind is her father’s soldier’s will. He was in the army all through WW11. His will left everything to his wife, my aunt Amy. He survived and lived to a good age latterly, after Amy died, sharing a house with Winifred.

Visiting children

Now we have a flat at Whitby we see Martin and family fairly often when we visit. We are also trying to keep in constant touch with Alison and Frances and their families.

Frances in Birmingham isn’t too much of a problem. We could visit for a few hours without great difficulty as she is less than a hours drive away. Her daughter Alice seems to grow taller every time we see her. She is head and shoulders above her cohort. This is genetic as Matt while being just averagely tall has two very tall brothers. Alice and Ben have both had their hair cut shorter; Alice to shoulder length while Ben has his great head of hair cut back to something I would think fairly average for his age.

Frances is taking a six month secondment to work on the new library system for the Dubai campus which Birmingham University is opening next September. This position will be based in Birmingham but as far as I can see should enable Dubai based students to access at least some of the home based documents. She isn’t too disappointed that travel to Dubai is not planned.

Their house while “modern estate style” is enlarged and is at the end of a cul-de-sac and backs on to Kings Norton Park. Because the park is bordered by trees and shrubs behind the house they are not bothered by any park activities but at the same time they have good access to the park via a gate in their back fence.

Visiting Alison in Guildford is more difficult. It takes maybe 4 or 5 hours by road. We were very interested to see the recent changes when we visited last week. Alison is a restless spirit and is continually making changes to her house. The latest is a very major change to include a second storey with an attic room for Ellie. The building work has been dogged by problems. The most recent is that the builder has injured himself and cannot work for a few weeks. The room is habitable but the adjacent bathroom remains to be completed.

Alison now has Alina staying with her as au pair. Alina from Germany is the daughter of a colleague. She gets on well with Ellie and I was amused to notice that when she joined Ellie’s bowling party she looked quite one of them despite being several years older.

Alison says work on her environmental science Masters degree is complete but her job remains mired in uncertainty. Apparently the new buzzword is stewardship which seems to mean taking a holistic view of the products; supplying a data sheet of hazards and usage isn’t enough.

Our visit coincided with the last of Ellie’s birthday celebrations, she is now a teenager as from September 11. This took the form of a ten pin bowling party at the local leisure centre. I was very pleased to see that Steve worked well together with Alison in cutting the cake and distributing party bags. Although they have now been divorced for several years it has been a most amicable split which I am very pleased about not least because it has minimised the effect on the children. It doesn’t seem that long ago that we visited when Ellie was born.

Nate is maturing very nicely. He clearly studies carefully the many books in his library. I was quite amazed at the understanding he displays of some quite esoteric subjects. It was a real joy to discuss some with him; I reckon his knowledge in some areas will be a challenge for me to keep pace.

Our trip together was to nearby Watts gallery. George Watts was a Victorian artist. He painted on a grand scale. He is called the English Michelangelo and some his work was murals. One mural has been rescued from its original building and is on display.

The gallery ( which also has some massive sculpture ) is part of a group of buildings which include an impressive brick chapel, his house and of course a large gift shop.

Coventry

Every year we spend the best part of a day in Coventry. This is mainly because our car dealer , TMS, is based there, where we go for annual service and repairs. As this is probably at least 25 miles away it probably seems rather unusual. However Volvo dealers are few on the ground and the most convenient near Cannock closed some time ago.

I prefer to go to a main dealer for servicing. This is more expensive but it does mean all the software upgrades are fitted at the same time, a facility many local garages won’t have.

Essentially provided we leave about 9 and return before 3pm we avoid the worst of the traffic. The location of TMS means circumnavigating Coventry as they are based near the airport. The A45 provides our route around the city but even that means contending with a lot of busy junctions.

The dealer is near a well travelled bus route so going into the city centre is no problem. Our first port of call is the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum. Over the 5 years we have been visiting we have explored practically all the permanent exhibitions. The most interesting is the city through the ages. We have very much reached the “do you remember…” stage where mid  20th century items excite our nostalgia. It is quite remarkable what changes have happened. They creep up slowly and then quite suddenly the world is different. The giant change in my lifetime has been microelectronics. ( mobile phones and the internet )

Even when I was at work in the early 70’s I remember arguing about whether we could justify adding a square root function to a new calculator. This cost £500 plus then ( thousands now ) and was the size of a typewriter. We thought we were very advanced having one large computer in the whole group of laboratories. Of course the scientific staff were not allowed near. this being reserved for a host of specialists.

Having looked around the Herbert we retire to its coffee shop for coffee and munchables, fruit loaf most recently. Then a walk into the shopping area by the cathedrals. The former cathedral was bombed out in the blitz in 1940 and the new cathedral is alongside with the old left as a ruin as a reminder. We have visited in the past and even for a non church person like me it is a moving experience.

The shopping area is looking a bit jaded now. After the war is seemed an impressively modern centre, all pedestrianised long before it became a general fashion Cars are separated into cavernous parks below the centre.

On this visit we spent some time in Waterstones booksellers. The basement ( adult non fiction ) was very quiet and I was happy to sit and read about the Jeremy Thorpe scandal in a recently published book. It doesn’t seem very long ago and it is a slight shock to realise it has passed into history. It had nearly the same impact as when my children studied the Cuban missile crisis in history at school. I was a student at that time and it stays fairly vivid in my memory but as a history topic! All I can say is that history as a subject was different when I was at school; I recall being rather disgusted when we stopped at 1870.

I find it difficult to visit a bookshop without buying a book. I settled on a new book about Philip Larkin. I well remember reading the Andrew Motion biography when Frances had decided to study English at A level. I thought I should make an effort towards keeping pace with her. Along with a book on WW11 special weapons this made a reduced price deal.

We then went on past the main shopping area to Ikea and straight to the restaurant. Two mains, tea and coffee for £9, surely unbeatable value. We then made the mistake of looking in the shop. Ikea trails seemed never ending and we were quite worn out before returning to TMS.