Our gang

It was, I suppose, typical teenage boy behaviour to form a gang. I hasten to say not a lurking on street corners, mugging old ladies, type of gang. Rather we were a group of students looking to form a social group. The core members were myself, Anthony and his friend Paddy both doing A levels at college in Birmingham and my school friends Bob and Trevor doing A levels at school. Truth to tell we were all rather nerdish and as we were all studying sciences we did occasionally discuss science. Trevor was hot on the philosophy of science and would talk ponderously about a priori assumptions. I must say this was just a tiny part of our activities which mainly consisted of going to pubs ( we were all under age ) and playing cards at each others homes.

As a group we were fairly short lived starting just before the 1959 general election and gradually disintegrating by the autumn of 1960. I can pinpoint the start fairly exactly. The school were setting up a series of mock hustings for the major parties. Bob, who was annoyed at being left out, decided to set up a fourth party and horn in with a loudspeaker. Needless to say this idea was firmly squashed by the school particularly when his nascent party was called the Independent Marxists. His loudspeaker was a lash up which was firmly banned. Rightly so as his concept was to shout down any opposition.

We had met Paddy and thoroughly approved and so our gang became established. There were other occasional members but we five were the core. The main attraction of pub going was the feeling of illicit behaviour as we were all under age which was 18. In fact by the time we disintegrated we had reached 18 after which pub going seemed less interesting.

The general idea is that we met up on a Saturday evening at a members house ( often Anthony as his parents were the most amenable) and decided to either go out or play cards. The card playing was mainly poker ( 5 or 6 card draw ) with a dash of others such as Cheat for variety and banter.

We didn’t just drink and play cards; we had a Christmas get together at Bob’s house and group outing to London in Easter 1960 The London trip was only myself , Anthony and Paddy in the end, but very successful. Anthony was a Young Conservative, just for the social life, but we got a visit to the Houses of Parliament from his contacts. Just to show how nerdy we were we spent the first evening travelling around on the Underground as we were all interested in railways, amusing ourselves also by thinking how we could beat the system of fare paying. We came up with a scheme which failed.

I’ve said we disintegrated in autumn 1960. Bob who was fed up with school joined the army. I was starting to go out regularly with Annette. We had a summer scheme to work at Butlin’s where Anthony and Paddy were accepted and I wasn’t,  I worked in the Co-op dairy instead. It worked well in the long run as I had my first date with Annette. Trevor was going away so didn’t apply.

I’m talking about Paddy whose real name was John. He was second generation Irish so that was the unimaginative nickname he was given. His family lived in a small council house so we rarely met there. I di recall his father being very friendly but I could hardly understand what he was saying. One of our occasional members was a super nerd. He always dressed rather formally but seemed to have pockets everywhere. He carried around an immense amount of stuff. If we needed say a screwdriver, he would grin and produce one.

In the nature of things we were breaking up to move on in life. As I’ve said Bob joined the army,  Trevor joined a pharmaceutical company doing a year in a local shop before university, Paddy got an RAF scholarship to study electrical engineering at university and went on to become a fighter  pilot. Anthony and I went on to study for a degree after Anthony had a false start and changed courses.

Unfortunately both Anthony and Paddy died young and Trevor has been bedridden after a sepsis incident.

I’m rather surprised looking back that Bob and I were friends.  He was completely opposite to me being self confident to the point of being bumptious. I do owe him for drawing my attention to Annette. She seems nice he would say to me, I’ll ask her out. Bob thought he was God’s gift to women but Annette had no doubt about rejecting him. The seeds were planted in my mind and I slowly got to know her. Nearly seventy years later this still is a very good idea.

My friend Anthony

My friendship with Anthony started on our first day at secondary school and continued up to his early death in a car accident. Always Anthony never Tony or Ant, his parents were very much opposed to any diminutive. On that first school day we got together by a fortunate accident. Our school aped the public school system of “houses”. In our case this was totally synthetic and only used for infra school sports. Rather at a loss after lunch that first day I joined a group of new boys wandering to the edge of the playing field where there was some desultory wrangling about the merits of various houses. Anthony and I were the only members of Barfords house in the group so we stuck up for them and were thus thrown together.

From then on in our first year we were firm friends.  Anthony introduced me to train spotting which became a favourite activity. We exchanged visits. Like me he was an only child and Bill and Nancy, his parents, were a revelation to me. Bill was manager of the bleach works of a local tape manufacturer while Nancy was a clerk at a cold store. Bill was wiry, with a toothbrush moustache while Nancy was a slightly faded blonde. Both were younger that my parents and their attitudes and way of life was very different to my home life.

Bill would help with housework at weekends and then we would go out. We made trips to Rugby and Crewe where they shopped and Anthony and I spotted trains. One fine day they decided on a day out and we went for a picnic at Lake Vyrnwy. They had a pre war Morris 8 car which struggled on some hills.

It probably helped that I was the only boy from my primary school while Anthony, while one of several, had no friends among them.. We were otherwise rather similar in interests and abilities. The main difference was Anthony had a fine singing voice and was part of the school choir.

As we grew older inevitably while still friends we diverged a bit. Anthony was a good swimmer and spent a lot of time ogling girls at the baths. I was a non swimmer and far too shy around girls. In general Anthony was far more self confident and outgoing than I was. We still spent a lot of time together and one summer I spent a week with his grandparents at Bilston.

We diverged after GCE when I entered the sixth form while Anthony, denied entrance, went to technical college in Birmingham. His best friend there, Paddy, joined a group of us which included Bob and Trevor from school. We would meet for mild escapades and card playing at weekends. Going to pubs ceased to be as exciting when we turned 18 and reached legal age.

Anthony went to Aston University to study maths  but failed the first year. He then came to Loughborough,. where I was.. to do a degree in civil engineering. At university we actually saw little of each other. Most of my free time was taken up with Annette while Anthony, who had a motorbike, had many interests. I most recall him talking about hitch-hiking races. I only ever used hitch hiking once for transport.

When we graduated we both married; Anthony to Christine a rather quiet girl who came from a moderately prosperous family. I remember being slightly surprised as Christine was a rather down to earth girl and not all the sort of brash person I expected. I liked her. They spent a year in London where they had their first baby. I committed the great sin when by rather than cooing I exclaimed “but he’s got a funny shaped head”. I remember Christine saying she was rather concerned and nobody else had mentioned it. I think she was rather relieved that I had commented.

After his London year Anthony was on site at the big M6/M56 junction near Manchester and they were both living in the site encampment in a caravan. First born  baby Julian was being raised by Nancy. I remember that Anthony had built an elaborate porch to what was after all a caravan.

After this Anthony got a job with a smaller company which seemed to specialise in producing aggregate by demolishing WW11 airfields. They appeared to settle to a country cottage .near Twycross. We exchanged occasional visits and went on outings as a foursome including once to Blackpool Illuminations. I think the last time we met was when we visited them to show off baby Martin. On our next visit the house was shuttered and empty. I found out only later that Anthony and Christine had split up and he had married again to someone of whom his parents did not approve ( a young bimbo was one description! )

My mother wrote to me of his death shortly afterwards. I couldn’t attend the funeral as I was in the throes of trying to keep my job with Unichema. It is my lasting regret that I didn’t visit Nancy in her old age. She had asked me to go when she had Christine with her as they stayed very close. I did attend Nancy’s funeral when I was pleased to see Julian and his brother Marcus as fine young men and to tell them a little about my relationship with their

Lunatic thoughts

I should hasten to say I’m using lunatic in the sense of pertaining to the moon. It seems incredible that we are at the 50^th anniversary of the moon landing in July 1969. After the shock of Sputnik’s from Russia the conquest of space became a surrogate for the Cold War. After early mishaps in 1957-60 the NASA program progressed steadily thro’ Mercury 1 man capsule; the Gemini, 2 man capsule through to Apollo , a 3 man capsule. Although there was a stepwise process NASA was taking a big risk with Apollo11. Although there had been the circumlunar flight in Christmas 1968 so arguably most steps had been tested the whole system was hardly technically mature.

On this occasion and for most succeeding ones this worked well. However the American taxpayer soon became bored and the final missions were cancelled. The drama had been with Apollo 13 where the fuel cell fuel container exploded on the way to the moon and a very risky plan paid off when the astronauts returned safely. Like many I followed the progress as 13 looped around the moon and successfully returned to earth. I remember we were due to go out on the evening of the return which was live on TV. We didn’t leave until we saw the successful splashdown. I had heard the famous “Houston, we have a problem” on the morning radio news a few days before and thereafter watched progress anxiously.

I was very interested in space as a teenager, joining the British Interplanetary Society ( BIS ), and attending one Birmingham meeting. However I was busy being a student through the Mercury, Gemini stages and was making my way as new worker through Apollo stages. I did listen to Al Shepard on an early Mercury mission. In an economy measure which I’ve regretted ever since I resigned from the BIS when I married in 1965.The fee wasn’t gigantic but I felt that as a newly wed I should make every possible saving.  I thus missed out on the BIS info over the most exciting phase of the manned space program.

For Apollo 11 launch work stopped in the lab ( I was working for Unilever at the time ) and we congregated around a TV in another lab. Generally I was following the regular updates in the news. The main exception was for Apollo 12 when the astronauts were due to descend onto the lunar surface at lunchtime. I lived close to our labs and with a few colleagues went home to watch the TV. We were disappointed as the lunar camera was accidentally pointed at the sun and the detector burnt out. For those too young to know NASA was deliberately broadcasting live with only a few seconds delay.

It is hard now to recapture the mood of the early 70’s. These was a general feeling of “job done”, the cost was large and the truth was the American public was bored. Although there was a vast amount of scientific investigation this was uninteresting to most people. There was also a sort of general assumption that space exploration would move along almost automatically. Although an era of space stations in earth orbit along with the space shuttle technology was entered the funding for NASA fell sharply. The robotic exploration program suffered setbacks in the 80’s and 90’s with lots of Mars lander failures. The shuttle disaster of 1986 was a big shock and NASA was shown to be less competent than was thought.

There has been a slow revival of interest. In some ways this has been partly led by the private sector. There is money to be made launching commercial satellites and in space tourism. While NASA has grown middle aged and risk averse its morale has been boosted by some big successes. I would particularly cite Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity. These were expected to only have a life of a few months but in fact endured for 10 and 15 years respectively.. The technical reason is that periodically Martian winds blew accumulated dust off the solar panels enabling battery life to be much extended.

For me the spirit of the Apollo era is captured by Space X. Controlled by visionary entrepreneur Elon Musk, Space X is building and flying the largest rocket flying today. While still smaller than the Saturn V of the moon missions the Falcon Heavy is a remarkable machine. I got a similar excitement watching its first launch in February 2018 as the Apollo launches.

The most spectacular part of the Falcon Heavy flight is the landing of two side boosters back on earth. To explain the Falcon Heavy is effectively three Falcon 9 rockets together with only the first stages of two acting as boosters for the complete vehicle. All the first stages are designed to be reusable and to land back on earth. I can only say this was marvellously shown on video as the two side boosters landed back at the launch site almost simultaneously. The centre first stage was intended to land down range but narrowly missed the drone ship landing site.

Space X is currently building a larger rocket as are NASA and others. It appears that money is forthcoming to make a return to the moon more likely. A voyage to Mars is a possibility for the next decade.

Dark Matter

At first sight this may seem an esoteric subject entirely unsuitable for non scientists. This is not so as was shown by a talk by Professor Sean Paley which I recently attended with Annette. She had qualms about attending but in the event found the talk interesting and instructive. Professor Paley is in charge of the deep underground laboratory at Boulby in N Yorkshire of which more below. I will try to be as clear as Professor Paley in my description.

But first a little background. The universe is thought to contain three types of matter. These are normal, light matter which we can see, dark matter which we cannot see and dark energy which is the force pushing the universe apart. These comprise about 5% light matter, 25% dark matter and 70% dark energy to make the total universe.. While dark energy and dark matter can be lumped together, since matter and energy are interchangeable, it is convenient to consider them separately. Their effects are different. Dark Energy is totally mysterious and is only known because the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate.

Dark Matter is quite literally another matter. It is thought to be related in some way to normal light matter and capable , in principle, of being observed by the same techniques. We know that dark matter exists because we see its gravitational effects. Galaxies which are conglomerations of billions of stars like the sun are spread throughout the observable universe. Galaxies are often spiral shaped with a thick centre and arms running very far into space. The spiral galaxies are rotating and normal gravity from light matter isn’t enough to stop the arms flying off away from the centre. In order for the galaxies to be stable there must be something exerting enough gravitational force to hold the galaxy together. However we cannot see this matter hence the term dark matter.

The way in which many types of normal particle are detected is by observing the minute flash of light the particles produce when they hit other matter. Experimentally this would be a large amount of some ordinary matter ( such as a liquid gas ) surrounded by photomultiplier tubes which amplify the flash of a particle hitting. Examining the collision enables  the incoming particle to be characterised.

There is however a problem in that the surface of the earth is constantly irradiated by a large number of particles. These originate from all kinds of sources such as the natural radiation produced by the sun The most energetic are known as cosmic rays  originating in outer space and striking the earth with very large energy. This particle flux is so large that there is little chance of picking up dark matter particles. The answer is to do the detection attempts deep underground where much of this radiation is absorbed by the overlying earth. A potash mine at Boulby mines polyhalite, a fertiliser mineral, from depths over a kilometre down. Prof Paley and colleagues have a laboratory down this mine where he estimates the particle flux to be a billionth of the level at the surface.

It is at the deep science lab and a few similar in other parts of the world that attempts to detect dark matter are being made. The lead candidate are WIMPS- weakly interacting massive particles.. Weakly interacting because they readily pass through normal matter, massive because they will have to be big to exert enough gravitational attraction. So far no experimental observation has been made.

The detection efforts are being expanded to ever greater amounts of mass and ever increasing energies. As Prof Paley pointed out only about a third of the expected total observable characteristics have been explored. He expected that detection would occur with larger experiments. There is a difficulty in that known particles called neutrinos also pass through normal matter and the most sensitive instruments would pick up neutrinos which exist in such large numbers that they would drown out any WIMP.. He said he was confident that a detection would be made within the next ten years.

There was an interesting sideline to the work at the underground lab. The mine was used to mine salt also and bacteria have been discovered even in the extremely salty solutions. This is of great interest as it suggests that bacteria could conceivably live deep underground in Mars. The Mars surface is too cold and suffers too much radiation for bacteria.

April Fool

The only time I really suffered an April Fool joke at work was at Castrol in the early 90’s. To explain the background  I need to explain my relationship with Peter, my boss. Peter was notorious within the company as a stickler for discipline and good order. He had transferred from the laboratory in Hyde and he regarded Pangbourne as rather sloppy in its general attitudes. As an illustration when all of his Production Engineering group moved into a new block he chose his office away from the picturesque side and facing on to the inner quadrangle. His explanation was that he liked to see what was going on ( subtext to look for bad behaviour). He regarded flexible hours working with grave suspicion; he was used to chasing late comers.

An illustration of his management style occurred as we were planning the new  block and deciding what furniture to install. A number of samples of chairs, tables and cupboards were brought and many of his staff examined them. One was sufficiently unwary as to express decided opinions. Peter soon slapped him down saying he would make the decisions.

Generally I got on fairly well with Peter. Rather than be messed about by the company I had left for a spell elsewhere. Peter had respected this and went out of his way to keep in touch.  I had grown used to his brusque manner. I suspected this actually hid a degree of shyness. Even so his rudeness to others sometimes rather shocked me. As an example his secretary was naturally a warm friendly lady although quite efficient. It seemed entirely natural to her to call him by his Christian name and enquire after his family. It was however in character that he upbraided her saying “you’re rather flirtatious aren’t you”.

One of his beefs about me was that I was rather untidy. In my defence I have to say this was rather more apparent than real. Rather than file everything away ( I hated filing ) I kept piles of related documents etc that I was working on at one time on my desk. It was in the nature of my job that I was working on several things at once and it seemed more convenient to keep things I was working on to hand. I realised this seemed to Peter, who adhered to the clean desk philosophy, downright scruffy. Generally he thought I was doing a decent job so despite plenty of muttering I was allowed to get on with things in my own way.

Peter had many prejudices. These included women, people with Ph D’s and people from marketing. It was a tribute to his trust in me that I was allowed to recruit a young lady with a doctorate, from marketing. He darkly muttered this had better work well for my sake. I’m pleased to say it was a success. He had strong opinions on dress. On one of the first occasions I went out on business I wore a smart jacket and trousers. I was called into his office the next day and told next time I should wear a suit.

Quite apart from this we had just acquired a posh new colour printer in our lab. This was at a time when these were rare and my team were encouraged to use it and explore its potential.

It so happened that I was away on business one April First. When I returned I found a leaving card on my desk  signed by my team and a pile of bin bags and a note from Peter saying “and tidy up before  you go”. Of course I wasn’t leaving. This note was I felt  half joking but also half serious. It wasn’t long before Peter retired and for him to join a jape like this was out of character although he was mellowing.

 The leaving card had many of the usual sort of messages while one I found rather puzzling which said something along the lines of enjoy your walks with the dog . When I approached the writer he said that retired folks walked their dog so he expected that is what I would do. Now I’m not a dog lover and although older than my team I was nowhere near retirement. ( little did I know I would retire early from Castrol somewhat later ) so I duly chuckled.

Affixed to my door was a beautifully printed logo and notice saying “ Man from Surface Treatment”. The Man from Uncle TV series was still fresh in people’s minds and my team was Surface Treatment so apart from being practice with our new printer this was thought to be hilarious.

I regret I didn’t keep the card although when I did actually retire I did have a farewell lunch and the site photographer took pictures. I hasten to say this wasn’t special to me but standard practice. In fact because my retirement was early and rushed my farewell lunch actually occurred after I had left.

In reality I didn’t want to fully retire and I spent a further ten years happily in part time work.

There are many anti lawyer jokes, particularly in America. Rather savage-

Where can you find a good lawyer?
In the cemetery