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.