Category Archives: ramblings

photography, ramblings

Spring Rolls

Well, we’re rolling on towards Spring anyway. And just to prove it here are some photos from our garden today.

First the snowdrops. We have only a couple of small clusters under the apple tree but they’re still looking good …

Snowdrops

Most of the early mauve crocuses are now past their best, partly I think due to last week’s breezes knocking them over. But here are a couple that are still good.

Crocuses

I especially like this one …

Crocus

And finally a feral pigeon enjoying the Spring sunshine between bouts of feeding and rutting.

Feral Pigeon

The photo doesn’t show off the wonderful iridescent pink and green shades on their necks and breasts which are really stunning when they catch the light right. Well who wouldn’t want iridescent pink breasts?

current affairs, ramblings, science

Fukushima Revisited

In yesterday’s Daily Telegraph there was a very interesting perspective on the Tōhoku earthquake disaster, almost a year on, from journalist Michael Hanlon in which he argues:

The world has forgotten the real victims of Fukushima
A natural disaster that cost the lives of thousands of people was
ignored in favour of a nuclear ‘disaster’ that never was


In the article Hanlon says, and I quote directly as I cannot say it with such conviction …

Most terrible of all, was the black wave, a tide of death which we saw apparently creeping over the landscape …

Hundreds, thousands of people were being killed before my eyes [and] like all journalists, I began writing about the disaster much as I had written about the 2004 earthquake and tsunamis which had devastated the coasts of the Indian Ocean.

But then something odd happened. When it became clear the waves had struck a nuclear power plant, Fukushima Dai-ichi … it was almost as if the great disaster we had witnessed had been erased from view. Suddenly, all the reports concentrated on the possibility of a reactor meltdown, the overheating fuel rods, and the design flaws in this ancient plant …

[A]round day three … I realised that something had gone seriously wrong with the reporting of the biggest natural disaster to hit a major industrialised nation for a century. We had forgotten the real victims, the 20,000-and-counting Japanese people killed, in favour of a nuclear scare story …

[N]ot only was the global media’s reaction to the Tohoku earthquake skewed in favour of a nuclear “disaster” that never was, but that this reporting had profound economic and even environmental implications …

[A]lthough outdated, riddled with design flaws and struck by geological forces that went way beyond the design brief, the Fukushima plant had survived remarkably intact.

There are bitter ironies in all of this … governments in Europe, including ours, were offering to fly expats home from places where the radiation levels were lower than the natural background count in Aberdeen or Cornwall.

As Wade Allison, emeritus professor of physics at Oxford University, says: “The reporting of Fukushima was guided by the Cold War reflex that matched radiation with fear and mortal danger. Reactors have been destroyed, but the radiation at Fukushima has caused no loss of life and is unlikely to do so, even in the next 50 years. The voices of science and common sense on which the future of mankind depends were drowned out and remain to be heard, even today. The result has been unnecessary suffering and great socio-economic damage.” …

[P]olicymakers should have waited until at least some science was in before cancelling programmes which, in the case of Germany, will lead to some 70 million metric tonnes annually of increased CO2 emissions, because the shortfall will almost certainly be met by coal-fired power. Nobody, to date, has died as a result of radiation leaks at Fukushima Dai-ichi. Zero — a number you will have read even less about than the 20,000 dead.

Yes, OK, I’m guilty as well. But then as a scientist I was at least concerned to try to keep the nuclear problems in perspective — as my posts over the months will testify. Nonetheless there has been a humanitarian disaster which we have all quietly forgotten. Shame on us!

food+drink, ramblings

Collop Monday

Thanks to IanVisits for reminding us yesterday that today is Collop Monday. I agree with his suggestion that it should be restored as a festivity.

For those who might have not forgotten about Collop Monday — or more likely have never heard of it — this is the day preceding Shrove Tuesday when the remaining pieces of bacon or pork from the winter store, which would be “life expired” by Easter, were traditionally eaten. It was sort of the feast preceding the feast before Lent.

As Wikipedia says “The British name Collop Monday is after the traditional dish of the day, consisting of slices of leftover meat (collops of bacon) along with eggs”.

So having been reminded of the feast what could we do but … feast! After all one never needs much of an excuse to eat bacon.

We always have a large pack of smoked bacon offcuts in the freezer. The local supermarket near where my mother used to live nearly always has these packs. They’re cheap and usually contain lots of half rashers and/or thick ends of bacon: brilliant bacon but not uniform and nice for supermarket packaging. Who cares?! They’re tremendous for just about anything you want bacon for: there are scraps for quiche or risotto or to use as lardons; rasher-ettes for bacon butties; and chunky bits you can chop up, fry for jumbo bacon butties, for breakfast or, well, just eating. So whenever we’re there we buy a couple of packs.

This evening we cracked open a pack of said bacon offcuts. It contained the usual selection. So we ate our fill of a good English fry-up of bacon, eggs, tomatoes and mushrooms; with lots of bread and butter; and a couple of beers.

What better way to celebrate an old English tradition!

current affairs, medical, ramblings, science

Curing the NHS

Recently I’ve been looking at the NHS as an outsider and a user. This has led me to think about the organisation, it’s shortcomings and whether anything really can be done to improve it.

The Health Service is something that we all want, and for which we all pay taxes. So we expect that when we need it not only will it be there, free at the point of use, but we will get the best possible treatment, speedily, in a good environment, from professional people and a professional organisation.

Sadly one or more of those elements are nearly always lacking, often conspiring to make patient care less than optimal.

Don’t get me wrong. Many parts of the health service are excellent. And in an emergency they generally work brilliantly, at least in the short-term.

Recently Noreen and I attended a Patient Participation Group which our GP practice has started. Everyone there was self-selected and had volunteered; they were not “yes men” hand-picked by the practice. And everyone there had nothing but praise for our excellent GPs, nurses and admin/reception staff — indeed we found it quite difficult to come up with anything major we thought they needed to improve. The only significant thing we homed in on for improvement was some of communicating with the body of patients as a whole. But our doctors are lucky; they have excellent staff throughout the practice and new-ish purpose-built accommodation. Nevertheless they are now short of space to do all the things they want to do.

Many parts of the Health Service are not so lucky. Visit the average NHS hospital and you’ll find a run-down building containing a large number of staff many of whom (especially at the lower levels) appear poorly paid, poorly trained, poorly managed and demotivated, giving off an air of being oppressed and disinterested. One suspects there may also be bullying by both management and unions. They seem ground down and struggling to do a good job against a background of inefficiency, waste and the awfulness of the people (mostly patients!) they have to deal with.

And that’s a two way thing. Staff (and an organisation) that don’t care about patients encourage patients to not care about how they treat the staff.

This has to lead to an attitude of unprofessionalism. As an example I am continually horrified by the awfulness of the communications I receive from all parts of the NHS. They are written in poor English (GOK what their Gujarati translations are like!); poorly typed; poorly designed; poorly printed. One recent letter I received was offset such that the right hand edge of the text was missing, it was faintly printed, poorly worded and covered in printed-on splodges of toner. It looked slapdash and unprofessional; the work of a not very careful 10-year-old. Frankly I would have been ashamed to even put it in my rubbish bin, let alone send it to anyone. And yet this was an important communication.

Go to a private hospital and you generally find exactly the opposite of all this: personable, helpful, interested, caring and motivated staff at all levels and good communication.

Why does the NHS have to be this way?

The simple answer is that it doesn’t.

Whilst bringing the whole of the NHS up to the standards of the best private hospitals may be neither achievable nor affordable, it should be possible to achieve a 500% improvement. (And this doesn’t mean US-style healthcare where one has to pay for everything or go without.) It won’t be easy; but if there’s a will I believe it could be done. In broad terms this is how I see it being done …

  • The NHS always maintains it is short of money. It isn’t; it has shedloads of money to do everything it should (and we want it to) sensibly do. But …
  • It also has too many meaningless, politically imposed, targets.
  • In consequence there are also far too many managers.
  • It probably also has too many (non-productive) admin staff. There always seem to be lots of people walking about carry pieces of paper but apparently doing little else. I’m not saying they are all unnecessary, but does anyone really know?
  • On top of this there appears to be an especially corrosive and pervasive culture; a culture of mistrust and of doing the minimum necessary; a culture which generates unprofessionalism and a couldn’t-care-less attitude.

So what can/should we do about it?

  • Well first of all there has to be a real will to do something and act sensibly, not just out of short-term political expediency or protecting one’s backside.
  • Then the budget has to be maintained at least at current levels, in real terms.

  • In doing that there has to be a vast improvement in cost control (yes, drug spend does need to be monitored, but hopefully not rationed), which means good stock control and the reduction of waste.
  • Scrap all but the most essential of targets and have what targets there are set by the clinicians for it is they who really understand what the patient needs. One target which must remain is to ensure the service is the same across the whole country; there must be no postcode lottery.
  • That should mean a reduction in the number of managers required, which will free large sums of otherwise non-productive money for patient care.
  • Then we need to look very critically at the number of non-clinical, non-managerial staff required. Reductions, where sensible, should be achievable by streamlining much of the (still largely paper-based) admin. That doesn’t mean an all-singing-all-dancing ginormous IT system; it means a large dose of analysing what really happens, what needs to happen and lots of common sense.
  • Much of all of this can be achieved by empowering all NHS staff to make the right decisions for the patients (both individually and collectively), empowering the staff to help improve their environment (why shouldn’t they repaint a wall or fix a door handle? — they’d do it at home!) and take pride in what they do.
  • All of this will only happen with a major change in culture to one which cherishes and values both the employees and the patients; a culture in which the staff treat the patients (and each other) as they would wish to be treated themselves. That has to start at the top: the top of each hospital/practice and the top of the NHS, ie. with the politicians and Civil Servants. Lip service won’t do; management have to demonstrate that they mean what they say. It also needs the staff — and the unions — to engage with, and believe in, the process and have an element of trust in it.

None of this will be easy. I’ve worked in an organisation where it has been done. It is difficult, painful and takes time. It needs a determination from everyone to make it work. Heads will have to be banged together. It almost certainly means shedding staff: if nothing else the non-believers have to be encouraged to change or move elsewhere — for their good and that of the organisation. It needs good, no-nonsense, management at the top; management with a long-term vision, a determination to make the right things happen and the charisma/skills to be able to fully engage with their staff at all levels. It also needs the unions to be willing to embrace the change (or be sidelined).

What is not needed is what we currently have: short-termism, poor management, bullying and continual change driven b
y political expediency.

Someone has to get a grip. Sadly I don’t see who that someone is.

personal, photography, ramblings

Grandma Marshall

3 Comments

This week’s theme over at The Gallery is A Family Story. As Tara says

This week I want you to dig back into your archives — be that last week, last year or the last century — and tell me a story. You know those quirky little stories you pass on from generation to generation? Every picture tells a little story, but some tell a really special one. I want to see THAT photo.

So … This is an oil painting of my father’s mother done by my mother, probably in the early 1960s. I photographed the painting a couple of years ago.

Grandma Marshall

It is a scarily accurate representation. Yes, she was as miserable as she looks; I never recall her being in the least bit fun — but that’s what strict Baptism and being left by your husband for a young floozy during WWII does for you, I guess. (Somewhere I have three illegitimate half-aunts by my grandfather.) Only now am I beginning to understand some of what happened and the ramifications — but that’s not itself the point of the story.

My grandmother died in 1973. I had no contact with her, or my father’s brother and sister, after the mid-60s (when I would have been in my mid-teens). My father more or less disowned his sister when she married her (widowed) cousin (she knew she could never have children so that wasn’t a consideration).

My grandmother’s death brought about the final rift between my father and his family. My father understood that his brother and sister were accusing him of only being after his mother’s money (there wasn’t any!) when he was asking questions merely because he was his mother’s executor. He stood down as my grandmother’s executor and a rift was created. A rift which was never healed.

I missed my aunt. She and I had always got on well and she took a keen interest in how well I was doing. To be honest I didn’t miss my grandmother or my uncle, but then I saw little of them anyway. I knew I dared not re-make contact while my father was alive as that would only make matters worse.

When my father died in 2006, at the age of 86, I figured that if they were still alive his brother and sister (both younger than my father) deserved the courtesy of knowing. I had to do some research; I knew only my aunt’s and my uncle’s approximate addresses from my teenage years. Where were they now? Were they even alive? I thought my aunt probably wasn’t — a gut feeling which turned out to be wrong; it was my uncle’s wife and their eldest son who had died.

I found addresses; I hoped they were correct. I wrote them both a short letter with a Christmas card. In it I said that I hoped they would excuse my intrusion, that I thought they should know what had happened and an invited them, if they chose, to get in touch otherwise I would remain silent. The most I expected was a return Christmas card with a polite note. But within 24 hours I had both my aunt and uncle on the phone. They were delighted to remake contact. So after a gap of well over 40 years I met up with both of them, and my cousins plus some of their children.

As a result of healing the rift I have learnt a lot more about my family, and especially the circumstances surrounding all the angst. There was, of course, far more than met my teenage eyes. I am in the process of putting together all my aunt’s and my father’s papers. I can now see why my grandmother, my grandfather, my father and his siblings were as they were/are — and some of the joins that weren’t made thus causing the rift. Luckily my aunt decided at a young age to rise above it, and did so. She became a very senior nurse and declined more than one appointment as a Matron. Despite my father I too have mostly managed to rise above the negativity although somewhat later in life.

As to the painting, Noreen and I discovered it amongst my mother’s art work when we were clearing out her bungalow after she moved into a care home a couple of years ago. (My mother is now 96 and still drawing and painting!) Knowing my aunt (the youngest child) was close to her mother, I sent her this photograph of the painting.

In June 2010 I was invited to my aunt’s 80th birthday party. Not knowing what on earth to buy her I thought she should have the painting. Luckily my mother agreed. We had it framed. You cannot imagine how delighted she was! Here she is, looking unnaturally solemn, after being presented with the painting.

Jessie with Portrait of her Mother

amusements, medical, ramblings, science

Did You Know ….

There is a brothel in Prague where the “services” are free, but live video streams of the “activity” in the brothel are shown on their website (for a fee).
[Wikipedia]

Male chimps, bears, dogs — indeed almost all mammals except humans — have a bone in their penis, called the baculum (photo is a raccoon baculum). No-one knows why it was evolved out of humans.

In the US, of those men who take paternity tests some 30% find out they are not the father of the child concerned – although of course these are cases where there is doubt to start with.
[Sheril Kirshenbaum, The Science of Kissing]

arts, history, photography, ramblings, topographical

Awayday

Yesterday we had an awayday. As part of her Christmas present I said I’d take Noreen to Chichester before mid-February to see the Edward Burra exhibition at Pallant House Gallery. I also knew we’d also get at least a wander round the cathedral and a sniff round any bookshops we stumbled across. And of course there’s always lunch and coffee and cake and …

So yesterday was the day. Although we didn’t spend quite as long poking around Chichester as I’d hoped (the decrepit old knees won’t take a lot of it these days) it felt like a bit of a marathon, what with living the other side of London.

We left home just before 8am, took the train into Marylebone and a taxi across to Victoria where we were eventually allowed onto the train to Chichester. ETA 1115. (Coming home took just as long.)

The first stop was the cathedral which was welcoming and actually quite busy for a winter Tuesday. The heart of the building is Norman and there are some lovely decorated arches. But to be honest beyond that I didn’t find it one of the most entrancing cathedrals I’ve visited, although given that there are gardens (not visited) it would probably be much better on a summer’s day.

There is a (Victorian?) stained glass window and a memorial tablet commemorating the Tudor/Jacobean composer Thomas Weelkes and another tablet commemorating Gustav Holst. The stained glass window by Marc Chagall is also worth seeing.

There is also a rather lovely and unexpected piece of Roman mosaic which was discovered under the foundations and is now visible, in situ, behind a glass viewing panel in the floor. The cloisters, with their wooden vaulted roof are unusual and rather rather nice.

Roman Floor below Chichester Cathedral Cloister, Chichester Cathedral
More photos on Flickr

Lunch in the cathedral café was simple, good and welcomly warming on a bitter January day. Noreen had a pasta bake with veg and I had a fish bake also with veg. With a soft drink each this was, I thought, good value at under £18 for the both of us.

After lunch we wandered slowly past the market cross to find the Pallent House Gallery which was staging the Edward Burra exhibition. We hit a day when the gallery were doing half-price admission. Unexpected result!

I’ve never been sure about Burra’s paintings but he was a friend of Anthony Powell, especially pre-war, so a viewing was a necessity. Having seen the paintings in the flesh I’m still not sure about them; to be honest most of them really don’t do much for me. Many were smaller than I’d imagined, although there were also some which are much larger than expected. One or two of Burra’s late landscapes were rather nice, but his earlier work is extremely “disturbed” being often a cross between Heironymus Bosch (a known influence on Burra) and Salvador Dali. All in all his paintings look better in reproduction. Having said that Burra is probably more important than is often credited, under-rated and under-exposed — but this latter is doubtless because most of his surviving work is on private collections.

By now it was early afternoon and still bitterly cold. A meander through the town unearthed a secondhand bookshop, but nothing interesting to spend our money on. So we whiled away an hour drinking coffee and eating cake then made our way towards the station.

We just missed a train. This meant an amusing but cold 30 minute wait for the next one. I don’t know what it is about this area of the country but the train stations seem to be populated by a peculiarly local inter-mix of teenage school girls, low-life and the inhabitants of the nearest loony bin. At least it makes for an amusing way to waste the time between trains.

Nutter Triptych, Chichester Station
More photos on Flickr

The train back to Victoria was another amusement. It consisted of a 3 year-old who insisted, despite his mother’s instructions, on working the squeaky hinge of the lift-up tray on the seat. Two lads of about 20 who were Tottenham Hotspur supporters going to see Spurs play and who in 90 minutes managed to drink four cans of premium lager each! How they were standing by the time we reached Victoria GOK; but at least they were harmless. Although best of all was a large group of sub-teen French school-kids who at one point broke into a rendition of Queen’s I Want to Ride My Bicycle in cracked English. I was waiting for them to do the ‘Allo ‘Allo version of The Wheels on the Bus but sadly this never materialised. It would have been a fitting end to an interesting day.

history, personal, ramblings

Families

Yesterday I ended up spending a large part of the day immersed in my family history. It all started because Noreen (who has done at least as much work on my family as her own) noticed that one of the files we had from my mother had a birth certificate in it.

We have three crates of stuff from my mother, much of which is organised as a family timeline and history in ring binders, all of which has been refiled. But we realised we hadn’t been through the miscellaneous files for certificates, which I prefer to file separately. We started on the crate of miscellaneous files thinking we’d find a couple of certificates. We found a couple of dozen!

In entering all the certificate data into my family tree app I came across a death certificate for my g-g-g-grandfather, one James Gambridge (born ca.1789, died 1857) which records his occupation as “Cook on Her Majesty’s Ship Victory”. No this is too good to be true! He would have been about 16 at the time of the Battle of Trafalgar (in 1805). Is it possible he served under Nelson at Trafalgar?


Answer: No.

The crew (an incredible 850 officers and men) on HMS Victory at Trafalgar is well documented. And James Gambridge isn’t amongst them. (Nor is there a James Cambridge, the ‘G’ often being mis-transcribed as a ‘C’.) Now one shouldn’t always believe what is given even on certificates, and this rang alarm bells.

Yet I knew James Gambridge’s occupation was given as “Gunner” on his daughter Sarah Ann’s (my maternal g-g-grandmother) marriage certificate (in 1848). So maybe he was an enlisted sailor. Hmmm … more work required.

Then, talking over dinner, Noreen made an almost throw-away comment: “Of course there’s also Leading Seaman Albert Edward T Hicks of Dover who on the 1901 census is shown as serving on HMS Victory at Portsmouth”. What?

Now the Hickses are my father’s mother’s family and, yes, they come from Dover. “Oh yes”, says Noreen, “he’s one of yours”.

Now my g-g-grandfather was a certain Jabez Hicks of Dover, sometime mariner. And we know his son James Albert (1847-1888; not in my direct line) was also a mariner. Noreen is even more fascinated by this family than I am and has established that James Albert had a son Albert Edward Thomas (b. 1875). Both James Albert and his wife died quite young and it seems that the five surviving children were parcelled out around their aunts and uncles (who were likely also their god-parents).

Young Albert Edward was sent to live with his uncle Edward Israel Hicks and on the 1891 census is at the Royal Naval School at Greenwich. So much can be established from census records etc. (Albert Edward Hicks is quite common as names go, but Albert Edward T Hicks isn’t.) And hence Noreen’s discovery of Albert Edward T Hicks on HMS Victory at Portsmouth on the 1901 census.

This I now start to think I don’t believe.

So let’s see what, if anything, the National Archives come up with. God bless this new-fangled internet thingy ‘cos I can do this from home on a Saturday evening!

So after a bit of grubbing around — and much swearing at the awful slowness of the National Archives’ website — lo and behold I can find a Naval service record for Albert Edward Thomas Hicks of Dover. And the document is available for download (for the cost of a pint of beer).

He joined up for 12 years on his 18th birthday in December 1893 as a ship’s boy. He eventually retired from the Navy in October 1919 as a Petty Officer on HMS Lupin (almost 26 years service). He served several tours on HMS Victory (as well as, inter alia, HMS Hood (1891) and HMS Pembroke) and throughout the First World War. Absolutely amazing.

But following the same pattern I cannot find any service record for James Gambridge — and all the records are supposed to be there. One last desperate effort: let’s just do a general search for him, forget about targeting naval records. Wow! And there is a James Gambridge who served in the Royal Navy and Royal Marines between 1804 and 1839. Now this doesn’t quite fit as quoted ages etc. don’t properly match and I don’t yet have the full document (it isn’t one that’s online) to check it all. But yes, it may be a possible fit.

I never knew I had forebears in the Navy, let alone dreamt that they may have served on HMS Victory (albeit not at Trafalgar). And now I find I may had had two such. And both sides of the family. Wow!

Now I need to find more about my paternal grandfather’s service in WWI and WWII, which isn’t proving easy. I know he served as RAF barrage balloon ground crew in WWII. And in WWI he was a conscientious objector but volunteered to serve in the RAMC as a stretcher bearer at the front. How brave is that!

ramblings, thoughts

It was ever thus …

We are currently in the throes of having our bathroom completely gutted and rebuilt. Not fun but bearable although being down to a lavatory pan, bucket and tap in the corner for several days was a bit of a trial — though better than many of our forebears would have had.

At the same time we have embarked on a massive house clearance exercise. (I was going to say “house tidying” but that is to underestimate the 30 years of rat’s nest we inhabit.)

So yesterday we were going through the very top shelf over my desk and in the farthest corner I found my old notebook of quotations etc. started when I was a final year undergraduate in 1972. In it I found the following editorial from Phoenix, the then student newspaper of the University of East Anglia, dated 15 January 1976.

Boredom

We’re only three days into the Spring Term at this writing, and already the complaints about boredom are beginning to surface. On one level, this is within the realm of the perfectly normal, and something we accept without really noticing. On another level, the boredom and frustration students mention regularly indicates a problem that has been long overlooked. There is no reason for boredom, but the structured nature of teaching methods is resistant to change, and there is little immediate likelihood of anything new appearing.

We wonder from time to time about the rationale behind the endless booklists, tiring and too often fruitless trips to the library, and papers that demand not creative thought, but merely the cataloguing of odd bits of data from the mountainous collection of esoteric journals. If the university is to be something more than a cloistered society of pedestrian academics, it must stimulate students to think creatively and constructively, rather than mass produce a stream of individuals whose greatest accomplishment has been to take a degree without wondering why.

Scary that nothing changes and that students at this date were already aware of the futility of what some of their peers were doing.

What’s even more scary is that I suspect (no real evidence) this was penned by one of my friends, three of whom — Pete Cadwallader, Ged Sursham (hope I’ve remembered the spelling correctly) and Joe Beals — were as I recall at that time the editorial and production team of Phoenix.

Oh and in the way of student things, the paper was called Phoenix because it had risen from the ashes of the previous paper, Twice, which had in turn risen from the ashes of its predecessor Once.