Information Science

 

 

My first job after graduating was in Information Science for Unilever at Port Sunlight on Merseyside. I had a bruising time in my final exams failing the organic practical test. Despite this I got a degree although not as good as I had hoped. My personal tutor grumbled that students who fail exams were not usually awarded degrees and strongly suggested I should be relieved by the outcome.

Nevertheless my confidence was shaken and I resolved to seek a job which did not involve practical work ( not “on the bench” in the jargon of the time ) After some searching I took the job with Unilever. Information Science was very new and the Unilever laboratory was among the leaders in the field. Essentially the job was in two parts- archiving and indexing research reports, and current awareness. This latter meant keeping project teams abreast of everything they needed to know.

In a sense this was acting as a super librarian. The difference was that we were expected to become close to the scientists in our particular areas, understanding their projects, and actively seeking out information for them. This was a two way process; one way we searched the scientific literature for them and they came to us with questions. The other way we needed to understand their projects well enough to know what literature was important.

There wasn’t much tuition- it was a case of learning on the job. It was a bit easier in that the team of about ten was in transition and four of us were  new. The section manager arranged for all other section managers to individually talk about their current projects which gave us an overview of the laboratory activities. With a total complement of about a thousand and about 250 scientists the activities were many and various. Essentially the laboratory supported the Unilever soap and detergents business so this meant everything from basic surface science to product development and test. There were also active groups supporting engineering, plywood and adhesives and other activities within the interests of a large and diverse company.

I was allocated analysis, engineering and the hard surfaces product development division. This latter covered mainly dishwashing and floor cleaning but as its name suggests any type of hard surface cleaning. This contrasted with personal cleaning and fabric cleaning; the other main product development groups. Almost as an incidental I took on the organisation of the library.

One major weakness was my knowledge of foreign languages. While English is the main language of science others have a role. Despite my weak French and German I became a volunteer abstractor for a major UK journal with the objective of improving. I found this laborious and time consuming and I gave up after a couple of years.

To  keep senior managers informed we took the Financial Times. For a while it was my job to search it first thing before it was circulated. I always felt a job which required newspaper reading first thing on arrival couldn’t be bad ( It was considered bad form to put your feet up on the desk while doing it! )

The job posed many challenges. The project scientists varied a lot in their attitudes from those keen to be helped through to those who scoffed. What made my life difficult was that essentially I always knew much less about the projects than those working on them in the lab- I soon learned to be humble.

The engineering group were easiest. They were company trouble shooters so they had many and varied interests mainly around wear and corrosion. Their job interested me and I relished the compliment their section manager gave to me ( couched in careful language “ quite useful and helpful”.)

An event occurred which was to be very significant for my whole career although I didn’t realise it at the time. The Divisional Manager of Hard Surface Cleaning, Bill Bone, decided to get all his staff together and spend a day brain storming possible advances. He asked me to take notes and produce a list of the ideas. My section manager straight away said I would be overwhelmed and suggested I record the whole session and then abstract  notes afterwards.

This is what I did spending a weekend reviewing the tape and producing a summary of the ideas proposed. Even though I say so myself I finally got a document which reduced a somewhat chaotic discussion to a manageable list of ideas.

Bill Bone obviously at least then knew my name, hopefully thought I had done a decent job, and sometime later suggested it would be good for me to take a secondment to his group for six months to widen my experience; to see life as a consumer rather than a producer of information. My immediate boss agreed. This offer was supported by the deputy lab manager who was my ultimate boss. I had severe doubts but I judged it would not be politic to refuse. Bone was a big wheel in the organisation and a request from him carried the force of an order.

The secondment became a turning point. I enjoyed  product development and I was quite effective. I liked the idea I was the principal investigator rather than simply supporting someone else. I left information science and my secondment grew into a year and then two and then a permanent position. I’ve since spent all my career in some form of product development.

I was fortunate in my first section manager out in the lab, Arthur Johnson. It was his first managerial position. While the other managers in Bone’s division were rather reluctant to take me on, he was willing to take the chance. He soon said how I did my job was up to me as his role was to set the objective and facilitate my work. I got on very well with him; he was quite free with advice, and this was usually sound, but all the time he emphasised that it was my responsibility to meet the objectives as I saw fit. Ironically although we got on well Arthur had little regard for information work. He would say unless it was published in the premier surface science journal he wasn’t interested as it would be beneath him. Regrettably this type of arrogance was quite common and led to quite a bit of wasted effort as work which was known and published was duplicated needlessly.

The part of information work I enjoyed most was the “detective” work in digging for information that wasn’t obvious. The skills I developed then have been useful ever since.

Christmas newsletter

 

 

I was encouraged and amused by an item in the Economist Christmas issue about family newsletters. Now regarded as of some historical merit a small collection has started at the Harvard Schlesinger library on the initiative of an archivist at the US Smithsonian Museum. The item tells the story of a family newsletter begun in 1948 by Marie Harris.

The item goes on to say this is a post war  or later custom when technology permitted relatively simple copying. In fact Marie Harris had to mimeograph her first issues. More recently with computers and printers this has become much easier. I started in the 90’s when I had a computer and printer.

I was always rather put out to get cards from people with whom I was in infrequent contact which just had their names. While it was pleasant to get the card and keep the link alive it was irritating to me than it said nothing other than they were still alive and still willing to stay in contact. Fine as far as it went but I longed for more. This stayed a minor irritation until I began lodging with David and Jean at Bucklebury.

I had just restarted a job with Castrol at their Technology Centre near Pangbourne in Berkshire. This was too far for daily travel from our Midlands home and my newly settled family didn’t want to move. So I was introduced to David and Jean. They had inherited a house at Bucklebury and I rented the granny flat. David was a religious minister at a mission in London where they lived during the week so the house was empty most of the time I was resident as I travelled back at weekends. Periodically David , his family and various friends would stay during the week. David with family and many contacts through the church sent out a Christmas newsletter to keep his many friends informed.

I saw his newsletter and thought it was an excellent idea, and decided to do the same albeit on a smaller scale. David sent out 500 copies but at the most I have sent out is 50 and nowadays it’s more like 25. Annette thinks it is pretentious but I enjoy reading missives from those few we know who send similar newsletters. The amount of news I include has got less as I’ve withdrawn from organisations I was involved with. I have been fortunate to record our grandchildren as they have arrived and some wider family news.

Below is our 2020 letter. It  has less news than previously as we have spent most of the year sheltering from Covid.

Sadly David died some years later trying to save people from a burning car. He was a lovely man with an impish sense of humour.

Beechcroft
Lichfield Road
Hopwas
Tamworth
B78 3AG

01827 63807 and 07789 007194

Philip.hall@philiphall.co.uk

Dear

What a strange year 2020 has been.  We have both been sheltering on grounds of age plus Philip is a stroke survivor. Prior to the first lockdown Martin proved to be very realistic in his advice to the family. As a result we sheltered a couple of weeks before the nation. It appears that Alison had Covid 19 in the summer although she showed none of the symptoms which have been much publicised. It was only after the event with other symptoms her doctor advised she probably had coronavirus.

The first lockdown did prevent us from attending the wedding of Alison and Debajit. They decided to go ahead with the registry office wedding attended only by their children and one friend as witness. Right up until the last minute Frances had hoped to attend just travelling for the day but she decided the risks were too great. Alison and Debajit had hoped to holiday in India including visiting his parents. This proved impossible and sadly Debajit’s mother died in the autumn. At least Alison met her when they visited last year. Alison was very pleased to obtain a long term role with her agrochemicals employer where she now has responsibility for product stewardship Europe wide.

We did visit Whitby in the early autumn. A major objective was to visit Martin’s new house. They had longed for a larger property with a bigger garden. They have moved to a property in a great location in Robin Hood’s Bay which not only has a good garden but a modest amount of additional land. They are already busy planting trees. Their previous house about a half mile away is being retained as a holiday let. This is also the location of Martin’s homeoffice in a converted wash-house. They have taken to keeping hens which Ellen is already adopting as pets.

All the grandchildren have faced great disruption at school. Even this autumn Whitby school had to close for a time. With Ellie taking GCSE next year and Alex the year after this could have serious consequences. Fortunately all are part of the “digital generation”, were well equipped to study at home and have parents who can help..

Annette, as well as painting, has taken to jigsaws in a big way. Lately Philip has been digitizing slides taken many years ago. Lacking an effective slide projector we haven’t seen them for a long time, so much so that we struggle to remember some occasions. It has been very nostalgic to see records of when our children were small.

Like most others we have become used to video calls, initially over WhatsApp but mainly on Zoom. Alison and Frances both have access to full Zoom licences through their employers. Philip’s U3A book group decided to purchase one. The book groups did manage a couple of garden meeting in the summer but even “socially distanced” meetings were a bit awkward

With vaccine progress there is light at the end of long tunnel. To what extent some normality is returned remains to be seen. As well as wishing you a healthy and peaceful new year we add the hope that you “stay safe”

Space X

 

 

Although superficially there is no connection with electric vehicles in fact there is a close connection between Tesla and Space X. The previous post was about electric vehicles and now a post about space travel which appears very different.. The connection is visionary scientist and entrepreneur Elon Musk who leads both. Tesla is a public company and its vast rise in value in the past year sees Musk into the ranks of the super rich. In contrast Space X is his private company, which he started and financed in its early days and which is devoted to space travel. Musk sees mankind’s future as a multi planetary species and is using Space X to develop spaceships to travel to Mars.

Space X, as a private company funded by Musk and a few other wealthy investors has to be as close to a commercial profit making organisation as possible. To this end over at least a decade they have developed Falcon 9. This rocket has contracts from NASA to supply freight to the International Space Station ( ISS )and just in the past year to fly astronauts from the US to the ISS .Since the retirement of the Space Shuttle in 2011 US astronauts have been transported by Russian Soyuz rocket to the ISS. In addition the Falcon 9 is used as the launch vehicle for many satellites for a variety of customers. These range from the quite small, of a few kg, up to communications satellites of several thousands of kg.

Falcon 9 is not the only rocket capable of an orbital capacity of several tons ( competitors include US United Launch Alliance, Europe’s Ariane and Russian Soyuz ) but it has some unique properties. Firstly it uses a cluster of nine engines so failure of one doesn’t fail the whole mission. More importantly the first stage is designed to land back on earth for reuse. This reduces the cost per launch considerably. As Musk has said of the era of throwaway rockets it makes no sense to fly the Atlantic with an aeroplane, junk it and build another to fly back.

The fuel necessary to fly back to earth does impose a limitation on the weight carried to orbit but the savings in cost are large. This saving means Space X can offer orbital capability much cheaper than other companies or organisations. The saving is such that Space X can offer launches for less than 20% the price charged by others. This has led to Space X capturing a large market share over the past few years.

Another string to the bow at Space X is the development of Starlink; many hundreds of satellites in low earth orbit to provide wireless links to the internet. This should bring internet capability to remote locations where wired or conventional wireless links are impractical. Starlink should not confused with existing high ( or  geostationary ) satellites which provide expensive internet connections with high latency. Latency is the measure of the time taken from computer to internet backbone. Radio waves travel at the speed of light but even though this is very fast  a round trip of nearly 50000 miles to high earth orbit takes far too long for many applications. A round trip of 1000 miles permits much more use for example making internet multiplayer gaming possible. The investment required for world wide coverage is estimated at about £10 bn. Space X is moving stepwise and is just starting consumer testing in a limited area of southern Canada and  the northern US.

For those few customers who need a higher orbital capacity Space X has Falcon Heavy which essentially is three Falcon 9 linked together giving an orbital capacity in the high teens of tons. Famously the first trial launch of Falcon Heavy carried a Tesla car as payload rather than the more usual inert weight of concrete. Musk amused himself by for example fixing a “Don’t panic” notice to the dashboard of the car.

Musk is both a humourist and a fan of science fiction. In naming the barges which act as landing platforms for Falcon 9 first stages he has chosen names with the style of Iain Banks, a science fiction author. So one is called “Of course I still love you” and another “First read the instructions”.

Having successfully developed Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy Space X is now developing a Mars spaceship called Starship. This is far larger than anything built to date, far larger even than the immense Saturn 5 which carried the Apollo missions to the moon in the 60’s and 70’s.

Starship has been in development for just over a year. The first serious Starship flight has just happened. A prototype with three engines instead of six flew to 2 miles high , turned on its side, descended and then flipped into the upright position ready for landing. Fuel was not properly supplied for landing so the prototype  crashed ( Among the cognoscenti this is known as a RUD for Rapid Unintended Disassembly; sounds so much better )  Starship is massive, the height of a 10 storey building, but in use it will set above a booster first stage larger still. Hopefully an unmanned Mars mission will be possible in 2026.

A feature of the Space X ethos is that they are very open about progress. Most flights are streamed live. A small ecosystem of Space X watchers has grown up around the assembly site at Boca Chica in Texas. This site is quite open and cameras are trained on it day and night. It would be no exaggeration to say Musk has cult status and probably a dozen Youtube channels devote themselves to the activities of Space X. These include a channel regularly overflying the site. Some channels devote themselves to all of  Musk’s activities while others focus on particular facets.

Incidentally while the name Space X is now vey widely used the company is actually called Space Explorations. The company is both large and costly. While Musk has now the money to go a long way he will probably rely on some kind of collaboration in the future.

Electric Cars

 

 

With the government banning sale of new petrol and diesel engine cars from 2030 this throws new emphasis on electric cars. Although there were other possibilities for carbon free car engines these seem to have faded from view with electric having established itself. There are two types of electric car, battery electric ( BEV ) and hybrid. Hybrid cars have both a petrol engine and an electric battery. Hybrids are to be phased out by 2035. There are several ways of arranging hybrids eg. Some can only be charged from the petrol engine ( so called self charging ) where as others can also be charged by mains electricity ( PHEV )

At present in the UK both types sell in about equal numbers although their sales are still a small fraction of total car sales.

Battery electric cars have been brought to public attention by one brand, which is the first new car company to be founded in nearly a century, Tesla. About a half of all BEV are made by Tesla. Tesla was founded by a remarkable man in Elon Musk who still owns a large chunk of the company.

Elon Musk became a wealthy man by starting one of the companies which became PayPal. With both science and business training Musk used his wealth to found Tesla in the early years of the century. He strongly believes that mankind needs to tackle low carbon energy to combat global warming and he sees BEV as part of the solution. As well as cars Tesla is also concerned in solar energy and the use of battery storage for both domestic and grid use. As a restless entrepreneur Musk has a private space company , Space X, rapid transport interests in Hyperloop and research company Neuralink . Musk has strong beliefs in things like the need for mankind to expand beyond earth. While many are sceptical Musk has the money and ability to see things past development . What separates Musk from idle dreamers is that he thinks things through and then carries them through. He is the Thomas Edison of the 21^st century.

Tesla is no ordinary car company. The range is deliberately futuristic in style. The cars are largely controlled by elaborate software. Almost all functions are controlled from one large touchscreen on the dash. There are no normal instruments. The cars are internet enabled and the controlling software is updated over the internet as new possibilities become available. For extra money new Tesla cars have self driving functions while for many years limited self driving has been available as Autopilot. Tesla has strong views on self driving avoiding the very expensive technology used by some competitors. Although Tesla cars are already built on the scale of hundreds of thousands the company is building giant factories ( Gigafactories ) to produce millions.

The big problem with BEV is the battery. Almost all use lithium ion technology which is the latest and best. Batteries are expensive; costs are about $100 kWh. However the cost to recharge using untaxed electricity is modest. Overall electric cars require less maintenance and running costs are much less than with an internal combustion engine ( ICE )  car.

The other issue with batteries is weight. While petrol supplies a lot of energy per unit weight batteries are hugely less energy dense. This means that to provide a respectable range the battery is large, heavy and expensive. To an extent the weight issue can be mitigated by placing the battery low in the vehicle lowering its centre of gravity. Tesla have pioneered the approach of the battery being flat and under the vehicle floor which keeps the weight as low as possible. While heavy, Tesla cars have good roadholding assisted by the low centre of gravity.

Generally BEV are expensive. Cheaper BEV have small batteries which in turn means shorter range. Tesla started the company making very expensive, top of the range cars. Their mid range car introduced more recently is still quite expensive at possibly £35,000 for bottom of the range ( no UK prices at present )

The big performance advantage of BEV is acceleration. Unlike internal combustion engines electric motors can supply maximum torque at zero revs. Tesla cars are very rapid and have special battery settings ( ludicrous mode ) which enables a higher than usual current to be drawn from the battery. This gives acceleration as good or better than supercars.

The Tesla Model 3 ( the mid range model ) gives better all round performance than even the best ICE car in independent tests,

One feature of Tesla cars is the flexibility in purchase choices. It is easy to provide all wheel drive or to provide options in battery size.

 Massive research is being devoted to battery development This is delivering modest improvements in similar types to existing batteries leading to perhaps 5-10% range gains. There are types in development which promise much more if various problems can be overcome. To address both the expense problem and raw material issues there has been a lot of interest in types of Lithium ion cell which avoid expensive or rare raw materials. One such is cobalt where the additional issue is the source is in a third world country known for abysmal labour standards. There is a trade off where less expensive and more common raw material comes with a performance penalty

Considered as a system any switch to electric vehicles will require suitable power points to be made widely available. It is common for electric car use to require overnight charging ready for use the next day. This is usually in the owners garage. Fast recharging has been developed for long trips. The latest fast chargers can recharge a battery at 15% back to 85% in about 30 minutes. Electric car makers often talk about the time to drink a coffee as a reasonable time. Generally batteries are not fast charged beyond 85% or so because of the risk of damage. There are few fast chargers at present.

Well established ICE car makers are bringing electric vehicles to market. It seems that 2020-21 will see many new models. At present Tesla has superior BEV technology and is dominating the market. Tesla are doing a lot of battery development but it remains to be seen how others will react

Coal Miner

 

 

I’ve been thinking about my father both recently, and over the years. I feel I’m come to understand him a lot more than I did; firstly as an adolescent forging my own identity and secondly as a young man too busy to reflect and perhaps too arrogant to attempt understanding. One salient fact which seemed perfectly natural at the time but I now realise was rather odd. This was that from the age of 10 onwards until I left home I never saw him from Sunday evening until the following Saturday. To explain I need to  return to my fathers back story.

My father became a coal miner in about 1920 as soon as he was old enough. Before that he had been a vicars groom and houseboy and then worked on a farm. Where he lived in a village north of Atherstone the alternatives for a young fit man with no skills was either mining or agricultural labourer. I don’t think he hesitated long before mining which was relatively well paid. In fact as a young man he was fairly well off for a labourer, certainly enough to have a motorcycle.

After marrying fairly late in life ( he was 34 ) the motorcycle went but he still had a decent lifestyle for his neighbourhood. Then during the war with extra shifts and a relative reduction in wage compared with factory workers things worsened slightly. He was still affluent enough to buy another motorcycle this time with sidecar. He was finding heavy work increasingly difficult reaching a point eventually that he just could no longer manage it. Seeking an explanation he was diagnosed with fibrositis. Essentially he had damaged his back muscles so much that rather than natural repair they were permanently replaced by scar tissue.

This led to about 2 years off work. The family finances became increasingly strained falling from adequate to really rather poor. After unsuccessful treatments he eventually was given a job as a haulage hand on the afternoon ( 2pm-10pm ) shift. The pit worked 24hours on a three shift basis with nights and days producing coal and afternoons devoted to repair and maintenance. The job involved loading, unloading and controlling the underground railway from the shaft bottom to near the coalfaces. Although paid less than a faceworker the job was much less strenuous.

This regular shift pattern meant he arrived home shortly before 11pm when I was in bed and he would still be in bed when I left for school. Very occasionally I was allowed to stay up until he came home. First priority was a dish of tea. A cup of tea was too hot for the thirsty man so it was poured into a steep sided saucer and drunk from that as it cooled more quickly.

The fibrositis meant that although he could walk and cycle fairly normally, bending was an effort and lifting any significant weight impossible. He was very conscious of not being as good a provider as he wished. From about 1950 until retirement I can only think of one holiday he took away from home. Weekend and holiday times were set aside for recuperation. We still had the motorcycle combination but trips were to see relatives.

All my holidays and trips were with my mother only. We went to London both on a day trip and to spend a week. One trip was to see the D’oyly-Carte opera company in Birmingham where on other occasions we went to museums. I realise now mother was making an effort to see that I had as wide an experience as she could provide from limited resources. From about the time I was 14 she also made sure we took a “quality” weekend newspaper in addition to  the family Sunday Express. I enjoyed the Observer and I think she did also.

My father had left school at 12. He was a reasonably fluent reader, certainly good enough to enjoy reading for pleasure. Writing was another matter. Any serious writing demanded thorough preparation including a rough draft plus frequent appeals to mother over spelling.

Careful preparation was fathers watchword in his hobby of gardening and also in preparing for work. His work boots were carefully prepared with long laces so that he finished normal lacing with a knot and enough to spare to pass a couple of times around the boot top then with any remaining excess tucked into the circular boot top turn..

His jacket was always modified with a very large inside pocket to carry his “snap tin”. This lidded metal box carried a small snack to be eaten underground at break times. This was accompanied by a bottle of cold tea.

As he grew older father was quite bitter about his job choice. He was very conscious that in the social hierarchy  miner came close to the bottom. In general although always affable he didn’t particularly choose to associate with fellow mine workers. There were a few he liked as individuals  but he avoided joining things like miners clubs.

I have thought since that he was rather suspicious of higher education. He consented to Loughborough College because my cousin John had attended there previously. I have often thought he would have been more comfortable if I had become a skilled tradesman ( plumber, electrician or the like ) and lived in the same village. The only careers advice he ever gave me was “I don’t care what you do as long as you don’t go down the pit”

I was very pleased at the end of my school life when I was 18 I went with my fellows down a training face at a West Midlands colliery. Tolerable enough for a day but not for a working life.

Quantum Computing

 

 

I like to keep up with developments in science and technology. New and fascinating things are constantly being discovered and new technologies developed. When you are engaged as I was in industry you have to focus on one tiny part of the whole universe of science. I find it interesting and stimulating to look much wider now that I am no longer constrained. Even so the whole is so large that you have to keep some kind of focus even if far wider than when working.

I no longer read scientific journals which report original work. In their place I read news about this work written in a more accessible form. My main tools are “New Scientist” weekly magazine and the internet .I’m also a member of a science and technology interest group of the U3A. One subject exciting a lot of interest is quantum computing and you may well have read about one particular claim in the press. The claim ( made by a division of Google) is of a quantum computer which can do in minutes what a classic computer would need years to do.

I have to say I’m not  particularly well suited to explain; my knowledge is more of the interested amateur kind. But here goes-. A classical computer uses some physical property to represent 0 or 1. This amount of information , whether 1 or 0 is called a bit. It represents the smallest amount of information. For practical purposes 8 bits together are called a byte and information is usually measured in thousands, millions or billions of bytes. A billion bytes is called a gigabyte or GB.  It doesn’t matter what the physical representation is although it is usually electronic where say a current is low representing 0 or high representing 1. In principle any physical form would do, say as a daft example, a shelf of books where the paperbacks represented 0 and hardbacks 1. This in practice would be hideously large and inconvenient but the idea of a bit stays the same. The point is we are talking a unit of information as a theoretical concept.

The digital world is made up by slicing up information into bits, manipulating them and presenting something useful to humans. One key advantage is that while continuously varying a property ( analogue information  ) is prone to error digital information is unambiguous – it is either 0 or 1. This means that digital copies are exact..

Quantum physics deals with the world on a small scale( usually very small atomic or smaller). It is very well established as a theory but one of the big puzzles of physics is that matter on a large scale is explained by relativity and the two don’t match. The idea of quantum theory is that properties on small scales are divided into quanta and these are indivisible. Thus you can have one quantum or two but never 1.5. For instance within the atom you can take one energy level. But this must change abruptly to the next energy level and never to somewhere in between.

Quantum is stranger than that because say for a particle at one energy level you cannot say exactly where it is. You can only give a probability of a location.

In a quantum computer the equivalent to a bit is called a qubit. However the situation is quite different in that instead of 0 or 1 it is both . Thus in computing terms a qubit is vastly more powerful.

Rereading this if it seemed puzzling, don’t worry, some the best scientific brains find quantum phenomena very strange. For example if two quantum states are set up so they are entangled and then separated they both behave when collapsed ( that is to either 1 or 0) in exactly the same way. This “spooky action at a distance” as Einstein called it appears to happen instantaneously which defies relativity.

Google have set up a quantum computer with 53 qubits. This is a massive engineering achievement as quantum bits are incredibly sensitive collapsing at the slightest provocation. With this they have solved a particular computing problem much faster than a classic computer. This is claimed to represent quantum supremacy which shows that quantum computers do something that effectively classic computers cannot.( taking minutes not years )

This claim is disputed by some who say things like it was an easy test choosing a problem Quantum computers are good at or that classic computers could be reprogrammed to do the job much faster ( days rather than years )

It is generally agreed that it is a big step along a what will probably be a very long road. The guess is that maybe say by the 2030’s quantum computers residing in the cloud could be accessed for difficult problems in the same way that powerful classic computers are now.

You may have read alarming reports that this means no encryption and hence no banking is safe. This is true in principle but we are a long way away from quantum computers being able to crack the hard sums at the root of internet encryption. One estimate is that it would require a quantum computer with 20 million qubits to render the common encryption unusable ( Google are at 53 ).

First summer holiday

  

When I was still a young boy in 1947 we went on a summer holiday.. It was the first for me after wartime restrictions. My father hadn’t yet suffered his crippling illness and had been working steadily. He had been able to buy a motorcycle and side car. This was a pre-war side valve Norton with a single seater sidecar. The sidecar was a later addition and the bike still had the gearing of a solo machine. There was a great deal of excited planning. We went with my Aunt Alice and Uncle Arch and their two boys George and John. At the age of 9 and 11 the were not interested in playing with a 5 year old like myself. After deliberation with literature from several holiday resorts we chose Southsea. This was the holiday resort part of Portsmouth. A degree of negotiation and decision was needed about our holiday “digs” with my father needing also somewhere to garage our motorbike. This wasn’t used at all during our stay.

My Aunt and family travelled down by train while we went by our motorbike. I was packed around with luggage in the sidecar. The side car was open but fortunately it was dry; I don’t remember being particularly cold but I was well wrapped up.. Father had got a route from Uncle Phil which consisted of a series of towns through which to pass as we travelled.  Mother riding on the pillion would shout directions to father to the next town. The road system was still rather basic and few towns had by-passes; motorways were unknown and the A roads unimproved from prewar.. As a result our journey took all day. I got a lot of praise for not complaining about being packed in tightly. We had never undertaken such a long journey before. I recall that as we approached the south coast all the road verges were crammed with  corrugated steel huts which had contained supplies for D-day and just after; Portsmouth had been one of the major supply ports to Normandy.

One of my favourite toys was a model yacht only about 10 inches long in bright red with a folding mast. The husband at our boarding house rigged the mast and sails for me doing an excellent job. Most resorts then had a pool devoted to model boats. However when I came to pack away on return, folding down the mast, I had to also disconnect the rigging. I could never afterwards get it back to the same wonderful condition.

Our visit coincided with Portsmouth “Navy Days” when naval ships in the big dockyard were open to the public. This was a great and thrilling opportunity to board the ships which had so recently been at war. I particularly recall the newly built battleship Vanguard with its massive guns ( 15 inch bore). Vanguard had been commissioned just too late to take part in the war and was being spruced up to take the then Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip on a major Commonwealth tour.

The smaller ships required some agility to get around. Some of the access ladders were vertical. If this was the case then invariably a couple of sailors were deputed to assist. I remember mother cynically remarking they enjoyed the  duty with its opportunity to look up girls skirts,.

There were many ships whose variety and number was amazing. Not open but alongside were some midget submarines and I recall marvelling at their compactness. I don’t remember going on board a full size submarine but an aircraft carrier seemed huge with vast flight deck. The aeroplane lifts from hangar to flight deck were very large and impressive.

As well as ships there were various events. The one I recall most vividly was a Marine marching band. As a small boy I was sent to sit at the front before the adult crowd. So I duly sat at the front only to be terrified as the these enormous marines marched directly towards me. They did, of course, turn and march back but I didn’t know that; I thought I would be trampled. My father was a brass band fan and talked about the performance long afterwards.

Returning by bus from the docks was an enormous queue. We waited patiently as several buses arrived, filled, and left. Finally when we were at the head of the queue and a bus arrived folk from further back in the queue dashed for the doors. My father was incensed by this and normally the mildest of men he sprang into action, physically held back the queue jumpers and ensured an orderly boarding in turn.

I don’t recall the beach life but there is a photo from the time of a small boy in long black trunks looking shyly at the camera

South of France

 

 

When we were younger several holidays were spent in the south of France. The Cote d’Azur was famous for its association with many artists and had become the post war holiday destination for many celebrities The traditional Riviera had become extended further along the coast. In particular Saint Tropez was in the 60’s at the height of fashion and glamour. Although desirable it was far too expensive to even consider for a holiday. St Tropez which is actually quite small is on a sort of peninsula looking to the landward side of the bay. At the end of the peninsula is the famous Pampelonne beach while also there is a quieter less attractive and much smaller beach at Les Salins. The peninsula is hump backed and on top of the hump is the inland village of Ramatuelle. This village is much older and was a fortified village against seaborne pirates. St Tropez itself originally was a tiny harbour but became glamorous by association with French actress Brigitte Bardot.

The French south is a long way, about a thousand miles from the English North West, as we found on our first attempted visit. We diverted because the journey was just too hot and tiresome in a tiny Hillman Imp. We went to the nearer Atlantic Coast near Les Sables d’Olonne and had a great holiday although it didn’t meet our original plan. It did whet our appetite for visiting France.

Having visited and enjoyed the Atlantic coast we next went a bit further south; still not as far as the Riviera. This visit in 1968 went well until the return journey. A bout of bad weather caused us and many others to head north early. The result was a day of traffic jams as we all followed the one major route north from Les Landes. We eventually got on the midnight ferry. I was so exhausted I slept on deck through what was fortunately a fine night.

In France of course they speak French. I was hopeless at French at school ( wasn’t even entered for the final GCE exam ) and Annette wasn’t much better. However we did go to French evening class in Birkenhead. This was surprisingly entertaining and improved our knowledge over two sessions in two successive years. Incidentally evening courses were amazingly cheap in those days unlike today.

We eventually reached the Riviera travelling in greater style in an Austin Maxi. Generations of painters have enthused about the marvellous clarity of light. This combined with the semi tropical plants and the stunning views makes for a great visual experience.

After one visit we then had two children in fairly quick succession and could not return quickly although we resolved to do so when the children were a little older. This time we went to Ste Maxime which is a less famous resort near the foot of the St Tropez peninsula. We camped at “camping des Mures” a largish site outside St Maxime. Driving into St Tropez becomes an endless traffic jam in high season. It was still just about possible to bypass the resort itself and head for the beaches. Although some stretches are private a lot is still open to the general public.

During our camping holiday our children were about 4 and 2. Travelling such a long distance with small children demanded some journey planning. We aimed to set off in the early evening, travel  through London in the small hours and catch the short ( Dover-Calais ) ferry and be heading south as it became light. We then aimed to travel around Paris before the morning peak and then on to  afternoon before staying at a Holiday Inn just before Lyon. Leaving the next day after breakfast we aimed to be at the destination by mid day ready to make camp. In this way we planned not only to minimise traffic in the UK but maximise the travel time when the children were asleep. Return to the UK was by setting off in the evening, travel overnight and aim to return without any other overnight stops to the UK. This gave a full 24 hours of travel leaving the channel port just in daylight and arriving by tea time,. We were living near Birkenhead..

Long car journeys are boring for small children so Annette made light trays fastened on the car seats and populated by small toys. Playmobil was particularly suitable so some new sets were included. Travel down the French autoroute wasn’t cheap but with stopping areas ( Aires) every 10-15miles and service areas maybe every hundred it was fairly straightforward. Because of the cost the traffic was only dense on the free stretch around  Paris. Even in early morning this was hideous and needed great concentration.

We were amused on one journey to be followed for miles by an UK registered car. On one junction we took the wrong exit and had to return to the autoroute. When we stopped at a service area our follower stopped also and thanked us for our navigation. I don’t think they realised they had faithfully followed our mistake.

The French government realises it has a wonderful tourist asset in the Riviera and has been looking to expand much further along the Mediterranean coast towards Spain .They have encouraged the building of new facilities including a new township at La Grande Motte. In this case they have attempted  very futuristic apartments in a pyramidal shape. These large buildings perhaps 10 storeys high make for a striking skyline.

By  Ste Maxime there is a new village, Port Grimaud, built to serve boat owners. Essentially this is a marina with attractive houses built right alongside a sea access mooring. This was convenient walking distance from our camp site. Although brand new it already had a settled appearance. There was one enormous problem that the walkways alongside the canals are unfenced. With two toddlers anxious to walk and explore this was very anxiety inducing. We only managed to resolve the problem by wearing the kids out on the walk then putting them in push chairs around Port Grimaud itself.

In our last visit ( now in a Fiat 131 estate ) we decided to eschew camping and rent a flat. By this time our youngest and latest was about a year old and when not sleeping wanted to practice walking. The traffic to Ste Tropez was even worse so we just went to Pamplelonne beach once. As it happened this was my fortieth birthday. French beach life was quite staggering; topless sunbathing had become fashionable there and I was amazed. It is now normal at practically all Mediterranean resorts but was still rather daring and very French then. I was always impressed by the beach vendors who always seemed to approach in correct language.  They must pick up on quite subtle clues. We spent a lot of time on Ste Maxime beach. When she wasn’t asleep I spent a lot of time walking Frances along the water line. I don’t think I have ever felt more proud than walking slowly along holding the hand of this charming blond little girl. I certainly imagined we were getting a lot of envious looks.

This was our last trip to the south while the children were small. It just wasn’t fair to subject them to such long car journeys. With no air conditioning the heat was oppressive in the car  although so nice when we stopped. As Alison said plaintively as we travelled” It’s a long, long, long way to the seaside”

Bird reserves

 Hilbre Island

 

I’m not really one for visiting bird reserves but Annette is a keen birder so as a good husband I go along. I will readily admit we have had some amazing and memorable visits although I’ve also spent plenty of time in bird hides wondering what I’m looking at. One memorable visit was entirely unofficial. We were not even members at the time  of the RSPB, the main birders organisation and owner of many reserves.

This visit was to Hilbre Island. This is a small island near the mouth of the Dee estuary It is uninhabited except occasionally in the summer by researchers. The key is that at low tide the sea recedes entirely from the island and it is possible to walk out from the nearest coast at West Kirby on the Wirral. There is window of a few hours between tides when this is possible.

I say walk out but this isn’t a totally simple operation as there are areas of soft sand where one can become stuck. We went with Malcolm and Jenny. Malcolm was a fellow research student with an interest in birds and wild life. I can’t recall now whether Jenny was his wife or simply his fiancée at the time. He married her later. Guided by him we chose a suitable tide break and set off. Our route followed the tracks of a Land-Rover taking supplies to the reserve researcher on the island. We thought this would be the safe route although my memory is that  was straightforward until the final few hundred yards.

The Land-Rover route took us by the small islet just to the south of Hilbre known as Little Eye and then across to the island. It was a fine day and a fairly enjoyable walk albeit rather featureless. I remember the Welsh coast seemed little nearer than when we had set out.

Earlier we had a flat at Parkgate on the Dee estuary. Walking out from there was much more treacherous with the occasional deep channel which had to be crossed even at low tide. Although the upper Dee reaches were silted up ( Chester was once a port ) and presented a vast expanse of coarse grasses there was a mini sandy beach by the main river channel which was fickle appearing sometimes and not others. When it did appear locals visited to sunbathe.

I don’t recall that we saw anything on Hilbre other than the routine black backed gulls perhaps some herring gulls and guillemots. But I suppose the achievement was to reach the reserve not to see anything special. The island just consists of tussocky grass with one simple shelter- nothing is more than a few metres above high tide. As I recall we didn’t stay long; we were conscious of trespass and also the tide rushing back in. We retraced our steps and I half recall we finished up in a pub. The crossing took about an hour at a steady pace but it left some sense of achievement..

Bempton Cliffs

This RSPB reserve is on the east coast north of Hull. As the name suggests it is a site of high cliffs where many sea birds nest. Although the reserve is of interest for the cliffs the immediately adjacent area inland is part of the reserve.

On our first visit on a fine summers day the inland grass was short, it may have been grazed. Walking to the cliffs from the entrance it was a delight to hear larks singing as  they hovered overhead.. Sadly larks are now quite rare in the country. My mother always said her favourite song was from the skylark.

60 years ago larks were more usual. I well remember as a young boy lying on my back in a pasture and watching a lark hovering in the sky and filling the air with its melodious song.

There was an almost brutal transition from pasture to by the cliffs. The cliffs shield the inland area which are quiet. In contrast from the edge of the cliffs there is a loud raucous cacophony as many hundred of seabirds fly around leaving or returning to their nest sites on the cliffs. The birds are mainly gannets with some puffin, razorbill and others. The cliffs are whitish, mainly chalk, hundreds of feet high, and with lots of ledges suitable for nests. The cliffs extend for miles in either direction and the reserve must cover perhaps a mile of them. There are viewing areas which look right down on the nest sites only yards away.

There is an air of constant restless movement. One has the impression every possible site has been occupied. All the time the loud cries of the birds drown out any other sound from inland in fact you need to speak loudly to be heard.

No subsequent visit was as magical with lark song. The grass has been allowed to grow and is now a couple of feet high except for tracks cut for visitors.

Democracy

 

 

I feel that the type of democratic liberal systems enjoyed in the West are having a bad time just now. One reason is that a big chunk ( more than half ) of the world’s population live under totalitarian systems. Many are failing but some, particularly in the Chinese case these are doing rather well. Over the recent years the Chinese economy has performed much better than any in the West. The Chinese Covid response has been more effective and life in China has responded well to the “new normal” with economic life more or less returning to its previous growth rate. The Chinese regime is busy pointing out its good performance.

However I think the main failure lies with the governments of America under Trump and the UK under Johnson.

To take America first. I am praying that electors at the forthcoming presidential election get rid of Trump. It is almost redundant to cite his shortcomings , his egocentric behaviour, his racism, his division of society, his climate denial and his dishonesty. The big change which affects us all is that he has completely forfeited any effort at world leadership. While the USA was far from perfect it did proclaim high ideals and often attempted to live up to them.. All through the post war era the enemies of democracy and freedom accused America of failures. Now Trump has amply justified the critics of America by proclaiming nationalism and lauding the Russian strong man tactics.  His blatant lying such that he unashamedly says truth is “fake news” equates to the lies of the totalitarians.

There has been an attempt by economic journals who really should know better to suggest his economic policies have been successful. What these have amounted to is an enormous one off tax cut mainly favouring corporates. Rather than increasing investment these have fuelled stock market rises that Trump is happy to claim as success. These cuts are unrepeatable because they increase government debt so much.

More seriously still Trump has thoroughly infected the Republican party. While the Republicans were responsible for some very shoddy tactics such as blatant gerrymandering of constituencies this has extended to some blatantly anti democratic practices. An example is restricting ( attempting, as it has been stopped in the courts ) postal votes to one centre only in an constituency. This meant many thousands of voters would have to travel and queue at one centre. Since is poorer people who would be most affected Republican politicos  felt this in their interest. This voter suppression is a gift to critics of democratic society and sadly is just one example of the shoddy behaviour Trump has reduced his party to accept as somehow fitting behaviour. The hypocrisy over Supreme Court nominations is another example as Trump tries to pack the court in his favour.

Part of democracy is the necessity of working together. Trump demonises the opposition and his aggressive attitude has led to a near break down in public life. Not all is down to Trump. There has been an increasing “winner takes all” attitude rather than realising minorities have rights and interests.

The UK presents a slightly different situation. The election of Corbyn and the extreme influence of fanatics represented a big failure in the Labour party albeit one which has now been corrected. The correction happened only after the Johnson Conservative party won big in the general election. While not on the Trump scale Johnson is unfit to be a democratic leader. His attitude to the truth is poor. He has a background of unashamedly lying whenever it suits him. His total invention of some reporting from Brussels when in fact he wasn’t even there got him fired as a journalist. He has continued in this vein right up until his “ following scientific advice”  when he was in fact ignoring it over Covid response. His lies over his relationship with Jennifer Arcuri ( which she has now admitted ) were kind of excusable as a private matter, but his corrupt behaviour was not.

Far more serious is the contempt Johnson has shown for parliamentary norms as in his attempted prorogue of Parliament last year and his willingness to flout law by reneging on international agreements. The latter is most puzzling as it appears to gain little while showing that he is willing to disregard agreements he entered. As he , himself, engineered the agreement he is showing that he is not to be trusted. On both occasions we have had characteristic bluster but no sign of shame. One gets the impression he feels these were good “wheezes” of which he is proud

The need going forward is to get rid of these two chancers and put somebody more respectful of democratic norms in their place. The damage Trump has done will not be easily rectified. It is arguably too late to regain leadership, moral or otherwise, of the liberal democracies. However the democratic decline will not be cured by replacement of two bad actors. Division preceded them as did decreasing election involvement.

It is hard to see improvements. Some kind of proportional system would allow smaller groups to have a parliamentary impact rather than the extra parliamentary tactics they are forced to employ at present. This would prevent or at least limit the kind of capture of a major party that Corbyn and his cronies attempted. It is a long running scandal that the Liberals with wide support have such a pitiful parliamentary representation. The usual argument is that this tends to lead to insecure governments who must rely on support outside of one party. One could argue this would be a very good thing.

Another possible route forward is by proportional conventions. The idea is that a group is chosen proportional to the demographics of the whole population and asked to examine and advise on a particular issue. Hopefully a small group will not show the sharp polarisation that occurs now. Obviously the idea is fraught with risks of capture by some extreme view but it apparently worked well when tried on climate change. The resulting recommendations are regarded as sensible and could provide “cover” for uncomfortable political decisions.

55 years and counting

 

 

One recent morning Annette asked me what day it was. I replied Friday. This type of question wasn’t too surprising because the days blur together and on one occasion I was convinced it was Wednesday when in fact it was Thursday. I had a modicum of excuse that some TV programs had been postponed a day and I was using them as a reference point. No what date she insisted and I realised it was our wedding anniversary. Furthermore it was 55 years since our wedding.

We were just starting to leave the house post lockdown  and I suggested coffee at the local garden centre ( outdoors ) as a ( very) modest acknowledgement. As we hadn’t visited there for many months it was interesting to see all the changes

Looking back it very clear the high points were our children. Martin was born in 1973 and we were absolutely thrilled. His conception had not been trouble free and he was an interest and delight from day 1. Alison born in 1974 only 20 months later which wasn’t ideal timing but we were very pleased nonetheless. This did mean that Annette,, who had given up work, had the onerous job of raising two small children. Fortunately they got on very well together. In fact Alison’s first word was not mama or dada but buffer as she couldn’t quite say brother. We were so convinced that we had completed our family that we disposed of all our baby gear.

Even when courting we had thought the ideal number of children was three and after a few years we decided to go for number three with Frances born in 1978. She fitted in straight away. Martin was very proud of his baby sister and insisted she was taken to his school, which he had just started, to exhibit to his teacher.

Maybe we were fortunate but the children have remained close to each other and a great source of interest to us as parents. We now delight in grandchildren as they each have a boy and a girl. Both our girls were outstanding students and gained high academic honours .Martin had a terrible time at university as I recount below and is a tribute to his character that he managed to finish his course, albeit a year late.

I had issues with redundancy twice in a year but this was surmounted until I had a stroke in 1993. Fortunately although a massive blow I had great support from my wife. It was unfortunate that at the same time I had a nodule on my vocal chord. Full anaesthesia is dangerous for stroke patients so I had the minimum necessary for the vocal chord op. I wasn’t quite at the stage of drinking a pint of rum and then biting down on a stick as in Napoleonic era naval days but it certainly wasn’t an experience I would wish to repeat. I was working for Castrol at the time and I had magnificent support. My boss ensured that a colleague visited me every few weeks during the seven months I was away. I had just been allocated a portable computer which I had with me and it proved invaluable not least because my handwriting had become very poor. Although not Internet enabled I could communicate with colleagues without talking (with poor speech ) and remaining sitting.

I returned to work for nearly two years. I used to joke it was the best paid therapy in the world. Even so I retired early from full time work. I volunteered for early retirement and was only slightly miffed that nobody argued that I should stay because I was so valuable.

I had only just returned to work when Martin, our eldest son, was diagnosed with Hodgkins disease , a type of cancer. It was fortunate in retrospect that Martin was at Salford University and was referred to Christie hospital in Manchester with its superb reputation. The cancer staff worked closely with the adjacent cancer research centre. Martin had to suspend his course of study and undergo 6 months of chemotherapy followed by a short and intense course of radiotherapy. Annette assumed heavy burdens during this time..

In hindsight returning to University days after finishing treatment wasn’t a good idea. Following a long standing undertaking his girlfriend had gone to Australia on a one year working visa. This, and all the accumulated stress, made completing his studies difficult and he wanted to drop out. I was able to persuade him to finish only by promising his fare to Australia  to see her. This worked extremely well as he joined her for the final few months of her year and also on a working visa. They worked together in Sydney and later were able to make a trip to New Zealand.

I have rarely felt so proud as on his return. I had gone to meet him at Heathrow and I was quite bowled over by the smart, bronzed man I met. I really felt his few months in Oz had cemented his cure. His smartness had earned an airline upgrade to business class. As for the girl; he married her and they now have two lovely children themselves..

We celebrated our half century by a trip to Australia and New Zealand. Both marvellous countries and a shame they are so far away, we found the journey forbidding. I shall need to think of a suitable Diamond wedding gift. ( Yes, I realise diamonds are obvious )

1965

 

 

I’m inspired to write this post after reading the book by Christopher Bray with the title 1965. Bray regards 1965 as pivotal in the making of modern Britain. As he points out it is the midpoint not only of the calendar sixties but the historians long decade from 1956 and the Suez crisis until 1973, the Yom Kippur war and the oil price shock.

Bray strays well outside 1965 to consider events particularly in the early sixties and he views the year by some moderately famous artists. Incidentally Bray is very opinionated as when he devotes a chapter to a rant against the Beeching railway cuts

I was attracted to the book partly because its contribution to modern history but also because 1965 was a year of great personal change for me. I left University, started work and got married.. As Bray points out unemployment was almost ridiculously low at 1.5%. As a science graduate I had a range of possibilities. I considered doing an MSc in Analysis at the then Battersea College in London, a job with the scientific instruments industry body near London and a job with Unilever at Port Sunlight near Birkenhead. I had applied unsuccessfully to the Atomic Energy authority mainly because everyone else did and they seemed to be hoovering up so many new graduates.

It sounds trivial now but I rejected London because it meant I would have to sell my car.  I had become the proud owner of an old Morris 1000 van. This was a well used example of a moderately up to date vehicle which amazingly stayed in production into the seventies. A car of any sort was becoming much more common. The equally trivial reason for rejecting scientific instruments was the training course they proposed.

My future mother-in-law was infuriated by my job searching. Getting married with no job and no home she grumbled. Looking back she was right and I was confident to the point of being rather blasé. We ( or rather Annette) had the not unusual squabbles over the wedding with her mother. Her mother had firmly vetoed the idea of making the dress herself even though Annette was a highly qualified textile designer. It happened that during a visit to London we saw a dress on sale which Annette bought there and then. I have sometimes thought since that mother-in-law, parent of just one girl  (and four boys ) would have enjoyed wedding shopping with her daughter.

Bray makes much of some the artistic figures of the time. I would have considered myself well informed but I doubt I had heard of Sylvia Plath and had only a very hazy idea of R D Laing. In contrast I was very aware of the spy genre writing. My college friend was very impressed by James Bond but the matter of fact agent of the Ipcress File was a revelation. The cold war rumbled on but had become a backdrop. A great number of pseudo intellectuals espoused, if not communism, then its avowed philosophy. The fact that the philosophy was not followed in Soviet Russia escaped all the fashionable Marxists.

Through my time at university there had been a striking change in male dress. When I started I wore a tie and washed my drip dry shirts leaving them to hang in the dedicated area in our block. Gradually this semi formality ceased and by the end I was wearing dark casual shirts with a pullover instead of a jacket. This was like almost all of my fellow students.

For my final year I lived in the bedsitter that I occupied in my industrial year. By then Annette was in lodgings nearby and although I couldn’t visit her she could freely visit me. This was part of the rather bizarre double standards in boy/girl relationships. Although the cooking facilities were sparse with two gas rings she could prepare our meals with a little forward planning. We lacked the money to eat out although we still frequented coffee bars.

I enjoyed living independently so much that in the summer of 1965 between finishing University and starting a new working life and marriage we both took temporary jobs at a book wholesaler.

Bray cites the “Avengers” TV series extensively for turning to surrealist plots and backgrounds after a mundane beginning. It certainly didn’t hurt having glamorous Emma Peel with her dizzy fashion sense as lead character. He sees this as the mainstream TV equivalent of the LSD fantasies of the super trendy. All this was happening in London and I did not see any evidence whatsoever of drug culture in the provinces. The drug of choice where I lived was alcohol and there was some over indulgence. On the whole in my university of technology there was rather a determination to enter the jobs market at a higher level. Recreational subjects were ignored except for token general studies. Because excellent facilities were shared with the adjacent teacher training college who specialised in future games and PE teachers there was a great emphasis on sports. While girls were not specifically excluded rather few chose science and technology.  My course entry of about 60 contained only two girls.

While I didn’t want to live in London we visited quite a bit. Britain is very London-centric and so much of culture seemed centred there. This was mainly 1965 and onwards when we had a bit of money to spend. Annette had a college friend living in London and we visited her a couple of times.

As Bray acknowledges there is no doubt that the music of the year was by the Beatles. In Help, the film and album there was a debt to the surrealists. In the album Rubber Soul there was a musical sophistication that pointed the way towards their later evolution. Both established their amazing popularity.

It is hard now to summarise the year. Perhaps best described as change coupled with liberation. A great mixture of ideas, some well rooted, some recent, established a feeling of excitement and fluidity. While this led on to the fatuous hippies and yippies of the later sixties I grew increasingly against the whole lifestyle. I was concerned with establishing my career and our home as we bought our first house in 1968. While my environment was liberal it wasn’t permissive.

One side benefit for me was that the working class became trendy or perhaps more precisely the flat classless speech exemplified by Michael Caine playing Harry Palmer in the Ipcress file. I aspired to this but I’ve never quite got rid of a slight “Brummie” twang. At any rate regional accents became much more acceptable and Southern or BBC English voices ceased to be the only possibility short of an upper class bray. Ironically speech was one of my abilities affected by my stroke. For a while I was slow and robotic so I am content with with the current which is pretty close to the original.

Mayor's Ball/ C S Forester

 

 

Annettes’s mother was very proud that her Uncle Ted had become Mayor of Tamworth in the early 60’s after a long slog through local government. Her sole request from him was to provide four tickets to the Mayor’s Ball to be held on December 27^th. Her objective was than her son Ray and daughter Annette would go with their partners, Me with Annette and Pat with Ray.

It happened that Annette’s family had a Christmas routine. Christmas Day at home entertaining Bert and Mays’s immediate family. Then on Boxing Day to May’s younger sister, Nell, who also had their mother living with her and her husband; then on the 27^th to Bert’s brother and sister who lived together at the family home nearby.

So on the 27^th we all met up at the Laurels, the name of the family home. Ray and I wore lounge suits but the girls had gone to considerable lengths to assemble appropriate dresses. Bert was determined to make a record so we were trooped off into the Laurels front room ( only ever used at Christmas it seemed to me ) where we were photographed separately and together.

I was a bit apprehensive that it would be a very formal affair where I would feel inadequate in both dress and dancing ability. Although there were a few in dinner jackets and ladies in long dresses we felt quite comfortable being in the majority of dark suits and short dresses. I had avoided dancing lessons just being taught a few elementary steps by Annette. She was determined that I should be a nearly adequate partner.

I most remember the interval entertainer. He did the “Deck of Cards”. Although I realise now this is quite well known it was the first time I had heard it. There are variations but essentially a soldier is caught playing cards and protests that the cards are his bible. Thus the one reminds him there is one God, the deuce that the bible has two books, the trey of the holy trinity and so on. The culmination is the deathless lines” I know, I was that soldier”

I only ever wore a DJ ( rented of course) to the final Fountains Ball at university. So called because it had been held in a big marquee around a fountain in front of the first hall of residence. For 1965 it was held in the adjoining dining halls of two residences in the, then new, student village. This wasn’t a roaring success as we had what seemed a good idea to provide as partner to my best friend one of Annette’s friends. In the event my friend over indulged in drink and was no company at all for Annette’s friend. To take the ladies back to their lodgings I had to leave my friend to be put to bed by others

This photo shows Pat, Annette, Ray and myself just before the ball.

C S Forester

Forester ( a nom de plume ) was a very popular author writing in the 30’s through 50’s dying in the 60’s. His most famous for his character,  Horatio Hornblower in naval books set during the Napoleonic Wars. There were a series of books as Hornblower rose through the ranks. These are not the well worn thrillers but rather the setting for the complex character of Hornblower. Hornblower is presented as having a confident front hiding an extremely unself confident persona.

The settings in the Royal Navy of the time are precise and detailed. Many incidents described have historical parallels. The major naval battles of the time such as the Nile and Trafalgar are a background as Hornblower was engaged elsewhere in some other mission  It is the Hornblower books which survive today although Forester wrote other famous works. An example is “ the African Queen” a film from 1951.Forester came to the Hornblower series fairly late in his writing career and in the 30’s and 40’s wrote many one off novels mainly on military themes and set variously in the World Wars and the Penisular War.  His extensive research formed the basis for the 1960 film “Sink the Bismarck”. Most recently the film “Greyhound” recently released starring Tom Hanks is based on the 1955 novel “ The Good Shepherd”

When I was a teenage reader I read all of Foresters work I could find.. I always found them enjoyable, readable and informative. His strangest work I found was “Randall and the river of time”. Published in 1950 it depicts Randall as firstly an army officer in WW1 and then his transition into civilian life as a scientist and inventor. Swept along by events he marries, accidentally kills his wife’s lover, survives a court case and is last seen carried off to a new life in America. I can’t recall why my family had this book which is quite unlike his other work with its emphasis on fate. The depiction is of things happening to Randall by chance and directing it down particular paths almost without his own volition.

The naval Napoleonic war theme was obviously popular and was taken up by other writers although mostly of inferior quality. Among better examples the Bolitho series written by Alexander Kent( the pen name of Douglas Reeman ). The most famous of the successor novels are those written by Patrick O’Brian. This massive series of 20 books was started at his publishers suggestion after Forester’s death. O’Brian chose double protagonists in Jack Aubrey, a naval officer and Irish/Catalan naval doctor Stephen Maturin. O’Brian led a strange double life, leaving his wife and child and settling in the south of France with his second wife, changing his name, and making his living as a researcher and translator. The O’Brian books reveal an astounding scholarship of the Napoleonic period not just about naval matters.. So successful was the concealment of his early life that O’Brian spent his final days at Trinity College Dublin although he was not , in fact, Irish as he pretended to be.

Christian Culture

 

 

I happened to be reading a book which in its plot depended on some knowledge of the Bible and general Christian ethics. It wasn’t until I completed it that I thought it was a bit odd that I recognised the background so readily. I’m wondering if my children and grandchildren would find it so easy.

I went to a Church of England primary school. Right from the early age we had bible stories. We had a time where the local vicar would visit sometimes. and take classes. I suppose I enjoyed the Bible stories as stories without making any very strong connection with religion. In fact my connection with religion was really as a teenager in confirmation classes. The vicar was repeatedly challenged about evidence which supported his belief. His answer, which I’m sure has wide application, is that religious belief is a matter of faith and that to look at it rationally seeking evidence is the wrong approach.

I didn’t find this evidence free approach satisfactory. I approached the Unitarian church who seemed to me to have a more plain speaking approach. I recall my shock when I talked to a female Unitarian minister. This was at a time when the C of E clergy was all male so the female minister seemed to me to be a large point in favour of the Unitarians. I was impressed enough to continue but withdrew when I was asked to join their Fellowship of Youth

My parents felt I should go to Sunday School. I went under protest intermittently until I reached secondary school age when I stopped completely. Secondary school religious instruction largely consisted of more Bible stories. I found this boring having heard them before. It wasn’t until sixth form when questions of morals and ethics were discussed that my interest was rekindled.

Later as a student I talked  with the college chaplain  He took a very refreshingly, almost secular approach. I remember he recommended the Economist as balanced reading and said I shouldn’t be misled by the title as it is only partly about economics. I found his recommendation excellent and I’ve been a reader ever since ( sometimes intermittently ) I shared a study with a convinced Catholic who tried to persuade me. I did meet and talk to a Catholic priest but there was no meeting of minds.

As a young or mid aged man I gave little thought to religion. Inasmuch as I ever thought about it was in connection with my children. Our two eldest did go to a holiday school run by the local church. I was quite impressed particularly as they seemed to have some good songs. The children enjoyed going.

Later in life I often talked with my cousin who was a convinced humanist. He had a rather similar background to me and I did find his position persuasive. What I did dislike was his rather contemptuous dismissal of believers. This I thought was rather at odds with the sensitivity and empathy he displayed otherwise in his life. He was a do-gooder quietly and without making any fuss. He was a long term volunteer for organisations such as Oxfam..

My final position is that I’m a convinced unbeliever. The total lack of evidence for an afterlife goes against all my training and belief in science. I rather envy those who have faith but I can’t find it in myself to join them. I note that people with faith are often happier, live longer and enjoy the church community. I suppose I’ve lived my life since I was a student saying “where’s the evidence” and I can’t stop now.

I generally accept the Christian moral and ethical framework but I think the church plays altogether too large a role in society. Particularly in morality I think the church conservatism has hindered our moral evolution. I’m speaking here of the C of E as some positions in some churches such as opposition to abortion I find contemptible  I have only attended one humanist funeral but I found it much better than the Christian alternative.

I am fairly happy that the moral and ethical positions in modern life are broadly Christian in their origin. In this I’m deliberately saying Christian rather than church. My feeling is that churches in general have not shown a lead but have rather been a drag on necessary changes. Examples are far too many to enumerate but too many churches have been overly male dominated and failed to take any account of the vast change of status.in women in society. We haven’t reached equality yet but the direction of travel is clear. I find it irritating that the church position ( by which I’m thinking C of E ) is given undue weight in discussion. I think that people are far more ready to ignore church views and think for themselves. I would be happier if the falling church attendance wasn’t accompanied by an increase in faith groups such as flat earthers which are just plain daft. An example where the church has been ignored has been the remarkable transformation in opinions on homosexuality where the reactionary church view has been swept aside in broader society. I suspect the next change will come with regard to drugs where the comparative safety of low strength cannabis will be recognised while opiate addiction will remain a scourge.