Monthly Archives: December 2020

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What should I call you?

A Twitter thread caught my attention a couple of days back, about whether doctors should ever use a patient’s first name without asking permission to do so.

Dr Conor Maguire

It was by Dr Conor Maguire, a Consultant Physician in Medicine for the Elderly, at the Western General Hospital, Edinburgh as well as Vice President (International) and Director of Education at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. He is dead set against using first names without permission, and explains why in the thread that you can read here.

How to address someone (certainly on first acquaintance) is something I’ve had to contend with throughout my working life. In my youth (I’m now in my early 70s) I was taught that it was impolite to use someone’s first name without their express permission. Indeed it was severely frowned on. Quite the wrong etiquette. I never called my parents’ friends by their first names. It’s different today; the younger generation is so much more relaxed about this sort of thing. Yet I still feel uncomfortable when I hear that. It’s also quite common nowadays to be addressed by one’s first name when using a utility helpline, for instance. It certainly grates with me when the young person on the end of the phone immediately addresses me as ‘Michael’. I mostly let it go; no point in having a row when you’re trying to sort out a difficulty with a bill or the like. Occasionally I have been asked by the person I’m talking to could use my name. And I almost always say yes. They’re being polite in asking.

I should add that hardly anyone calls me ‘Michael’, always ‘Mike’. I think my Mum only ever used ‘Michael’ when she really wanted to attract my attention. Uh oh, I must be in trouble, especially when ‘Michael’ was pronounced as a rising inflection, Aussie-style.

My first job at age 24 (in January 1973) was overseas in Peru with the International Potato Center (CIP) in Lima, whose Director General, Richard Sawyer, was an American, as were several other senior members of staff.

Americans are much more relaxed about using first names, even on first acquaintance, but it took me some months before I felt at ease doing so. I don’t think I got round to calling the DG by his first name for at least a couple of years. However, I slowly came to realise that if I met someone, shook hands, and they introduced themselves by their first name, this was a tacit invitation for me to use it, and vice versa.

However, working in a multicultural institution like CIP (and later on at the International Rice Research Institute, IRRI, in the Philippines) it was important to be aware of different cultural norms, and that such first name familiarity is not always practiced nor welcome. At CIP there was a senior nematologist, a German named Dr Rolf Schaeffer. He must have been at least twice my age. But during the two or so years we worked alongside each other, he never ever used my first name, always addressing me as ‘Mr Jackson’!

In Asia, elders (but not necessarily one’s betters) are treated with much more respect generally than I have ever seen in the UK for example. There are many age-based honorifics in many societies. When I first joined IRRI in 1991, I found it odd that my Filipino staff always addressed me as ‘Sir’. Try as I might to get them to use my name, I eventually gave up and accepted that, for them, ‘Sir’ was a much more comfortable way to address me. However, as time passed, some of the more senior Filipino staff did ‘relax’ and call me ‘Mike’. But if they didn’t want to, that was fine as well.

DPPC staff enjoying a Christmas get-together in 2004.

When, in 2001, I was asked to develop a new Office for Program Planning and Communications, I assembled a small team of professionals to help me deliver its mandate. And, in this instance, I insisted that everyone use my first name, not ‘Sir’ or ‘Dr Jackson’. Funnily enough, there was no hesitation on their part, although one of them generally just called me ‘Boss’. After all we were a small team, working cheek by jowl, and relying on each other day in, day out.

In primary and secondary school my teachers were always ‘Miss’, ‘Mrs’ or ‘Mr’. And when I went to university in 1967, we always, always addressed staff by their title, ‘Dr This’ or ‘Professor That’.

However, when I began graduate school at Birmingham in 1970, we affectionately addressed the head of department as ‘Prof’, rarely Professor Hawkes (unless we were referring to him when speaking to someone else), but never ‘Jack’. Yet the barriers were beginning to break down with one or two of the younger members of staff who encouraged the use of their first names. Even so, given my Britishness, I found it quite difficult, awkward even, to use a first name.

Dr Jill Biden, future FLOTUS

This issue of first name use, and titles, is actually quite topical under the circumstances, given the hoo-ha following the publication of an outrageous opinion piece that appeared in the Wall Street Journal on 11 December last about First Lady-elect Dr Jill Biden’s use of her ‘Dr’ title (she holds an Ed.D. degree from University of Delaware).

Written by 83 year old writer Joseph Epstein, a former adjunct faculty member of the English Department at Northwestern University, and titled Is There a Doctor in the White House? Not if You Need an M.D., who questioned Dr Biden’s right to and use of her doctorate title. He even suggested that ‘Jill Biden should think about dropping the honorific, which feels fraudulent, even comic.’ Not only that, he even called her ‘kiddo’. How disrespectful was that?

A you can imagine, this op-ed has attracted a whole lot of attention, ire, and even derision. It has been condemned by former colleagues at Northwestern. And in another opinion piece a few days later in The Atlantic, staff writer Graeme Wood wrote that use of her title was a choice for Dr Biden alone. There followed an outcry on Twitter condemning Epstein’s misogynistic comments, and in support of the future First Lady.

But I guess this begs the bigger question of whether academic titles should be used outside the academic environment. Most medical doctors in the UK do not hold a medical doctorate, generally just bachelor degrees. They use ‘Dr’ as a courtesy title. Likewise some dentists. At my former dental practice in Bromsgrove, the two partners both listed themselves as ‘Dr’ on the practice website, even though they only had a Bachelor of Dental Surgery degree. The MD degree is the norm in the USA.

So, should non-medics use their title? Why not? We’ve earned it after several years of hard slog, completed the requirements for the degree, and were awarded a doctorate by an accredited institution. I use my title, but if others prefer to call me ‘Mr’ that’s fine as well. Let’s not get hung up about this. I also use, on occasion, my OBE that was conferred by HM The Queen in 2012.

But let me get one thing straight. It’s all about respect, and sensitivity to all the different cultural norms we are exposed to daily. What is fine in one culture is almost taboo in another. Never assume that someone wants you to use their first name, or not use a well-earned title. Restraint is the watchword, until the signal is given to proceed to a more informal relationship.

 

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What a year . . . !

That goes without saying . . .

2020 makes HM The Queen’s Annus Horribilis of 1992 seem like a stroll in the park.

Who would have thought, as the clock struck midnight last 31 December that we’d be facing a year of unprecedented restrictions on our daily lives. Oh, and the overuse of words such as unprecedented that have really got my goat these past Covid-19-ridden months. It seems that the politicians and pundits (and others who should know better) have employed this description for almost everything that has happened, even when, with a little more careful planning and foresight, things would not have become so unprecedented. Tell that to the victims of the fourteenth century Black Death or the1665 Great Plague in London, for example. Not to mention the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic. How unprecedented were these events? And it’s not as though more recent emerging pandemics were unheard of. Take, for example, Ebola in West Africa between 2014 and 2016, SARS in 2003, or MERS in 2012.

In the UK it’s not as if the government hadn’t been thinking about pandemic scenarios. Admittedly the thinking was geared more towards a repeat of a Spanish flu-like pandemic, not the emergence of a novel virus such as Sars-Cov-2 this past year. As recently as October 2016, the British government ran Exercise Cygnus, a cross-government exercise to test the UK’s response to a serious influenza pandemic . . .  to test systems to the extreme, to identify strengths and weaknesses in the UK’s response plans, which would then inform improvements in our resilience. Okay. So it wasn’t designed to address emerging threats. Here’s the cop out on the government’s website: Exercise Cygnus was not designed to consider other potential pandemics, or to identify what action could be taken to prevent widespread transmission. I wonder how recently that caveat was added.

Clearly the government took its collective eye off the ball, and was NOT prepared for Covid-19. I guess, since 2016, it has been more obsessed with delivering (or not) Brexit. More of that later.

But what seems clear to me at least, is that unprecedented became the catchall adjective to explain away most if not all failures or shortcomings in the government’s response to the pandemic. With the drastic consequences that has had on all our lives. Not just the restrictions, but the threats to the National Health Service and its staff, and the thousands (more than 67,000) grieving families who have lost loved ones to this insidious virus. Boris Johnson has a lot to answer for. As recently as 19 December he has had to retreat on the advice over Christmas, even though he was strongly urged much earlier by scientists and opposition politicians alike not to relax the restrictions over the Christmas period. What a fiasco!

That’s Covidiot Swayne (behind then ‘Father of the House, Ken Clarke) serving his constituents during a debate in the House of Commons.

And now, as we approach Christmas, with continual mixed messages emanating from Downing Street, a new and more infectious variant of the virus spreading alarmingly, French ports now closed to traffic from the UK, and the end of the Brexit transition on the immediate horizon, it seems we lurch from one crisis to another. The whole response to the pandemic is not helped by the misguided interventions (video) by Covidiot MPs like libertarian Sir Desmond Swayne and others of his ilk (who also happen to be fervid Brexiteers). Give me strength!

Birds of a feather – were there two more reprehensible individuals in 2020 that Boris Johnson and Donald Trump?

While the failings in the UK are plain to see, they don’t come close to the response (or should I say, lack of it) from Donald Trump and his administration. It seems to me that he and his cohorts in Congress have been criminally negligent, made worse by 2020 being a presidential election year. “Screw the victims“, Trump seemed to be saying, “2020 is all about ME!” And his lack of response can be considered even worse when you realise that his predecessor, President Obama, had set up a pandemic response unit in the White House (as a response to the Ebola outbreak in Africa and fears of its global spread), and there were also staff in China to help monitor emerging threats. But Trump being Trump and averse to anything—ANYTHING—that had Obama’s imprimatur on it, dismantled any coordinated response to Covid, with the dreadful outcome that we have observed from afar: five percent of the world’s population but more than 20% of the Covid deaths. And that’s a particular worry to Steph and me since our elder daughter Hannah and her family live in Minnesota, where Covid rates are continuing to climb. There’s been a serious uptick in infections in the Upper Mid-West.

And uptick (a term previously confined to descriptions of the financial markets, meaning an increase) is another word that got under my skin this year. Hells bells! Why not just say increase. I suppose that whoever used uptick in relation to the pandemic statistics thought they were being clever. Now it’s caught on. When can we ever expect a downtick?

Brexit. What more is there to say. Except that it continues to be a complete shambles. Already there are long queues of trucks on both sides of the Channel, some trying to beat the 31 December Brexit end of transition deadline, others caught up in the general pre-Brexit preparations ‘melee’. And now compounded by the fallout from the new SARS-CoV-2 variant.

It’s hard to believe that with less than two weeks to the deadline, there is still no agreement with Brussels. Johnson and his government of Brexit acolytes have seriously mismanaged negotiations with the EU. Words fail me, except . . .

So how have Steph and I coped with Covid? On reflection, not too bad, really. So far we have come through unscathed (touch wood!).

We began self-isolating before the official lockdown on 23 March and kept to a minimum any shopping that we had to do. In fact I ended up doing the weekly supermarket shop on my own as the supermarkets were restricting the number of customers allowed inside at any one time.

Who would try to sell a house during a pandemic? We did . . . and succeeded. What would have been a stressful at the best of times was made even more so by all the pandemic uncertainty. But we got there, leaving our home of more than 39 years on 30 September to move 230 miles north to Newcastle upon Tyne, to be closer to our younger daughter Philippa and her family.

Being retired, we already had hobbies to keep us busy, so there was really no change in our routines. Steph had her various jewelry and beading projects, and the garden. I kept blogging, combining my love of writing and photography (this is my 62nd post of the year, with more than 70,000 words). And taking, whenever the weather permitted, daily walks around Bromsgrove, mostly on my own, but accompanied by Steph when the fancy took her. And we enjoyed more BBQs than usual. Here in Newcastle we are very close to the coast and have enjoyed several bracing strolls along the magnificent beaches that line this stretch of English coast. Exploring the local byways close to our rental home has been a delight. Since we are buying a new house close by, we’ll still get chance to explore here further.

Because of the Covid restrictions we have not been able to see much of Philippa and family, apart from a visit to a country park in October, and a week ago we took the boys for a long walk in Jesmond Dene close to their home.

With Philippa, Felix, and Elvis at Plessey Woods near Cramlington on 28 October.

Enjoying hot chocolate and blueberry muffins at Jesmond Dene on 12 December.

Christmas won’t be the usual family get-together this year. We have already decided that despite the relaxation of Covid restrictions—now limited just to Christmas Day—it’s not worth the risk. We’ve come so far during 2020 in keeping ourselves safe and well. There’s no point risking everything for the sake of a few hours under the same roof, especially as there is light at the end of the tunnel with the vaccination campaign being rolled out. Hopefully we’ll both get the jab soon into the New Year; I think, being in our early 70s, we will be in the fourth priority (though who knows with this government?)

It only remains for me to wish you all . . .

Take care. Keep safe.

Remember . . .

 

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Of mythical beasts and Pre-Raphaelites

In July 2013, during one of our regular trips to Newcastle upon Tyne in the northeast England to visit our younger daughter Philippa and her family, we headed out into the Northumberland countryside to the National Trust’s Wallington, a late 17th century house west of Morpeth (map).

Since we moved to Newcastle a couple of months ago, we have taken advantage of many fine days to get out and about. And last Monday (14 December) we headed to Wallington once again. After a welcome cup of Americano, we enjoyed a walk of just under four miles around the grounds. The house was closed due to Covid-19 restrictions, like most if not all National Trust properties nationwide.

Sir William Blackett (c.1657-1705), by Enoch Seeman the younger; National Trust, Wallington

The Wallington estate was purchased in 1688 by Sir William Blackett (1657-1705) who came from a prosperous Newcastle mining and shipping family. He demolished the existing Fenwick family tower on the site (parts of which can still be seen apparently, in the basement), and Wallington became a country retreat. It underwent further developments, gaining its Palladian facade in the 18th century.

In 1777, Wallington passed to the Trevelyan family who continued to reside there until 1941. Then the 3rd Baronet (of the second, Wallington creation of 1874), Sir Charles Trevelyan, gave Wallington to the National Trust and, in the process, disinheriting his eldest son George (the 4th Baronet). [1]

Approaching Wallington, there are two features which stand out. In the valley below the house the River Wansbeck flows eastwards towards the North Sea. There is a beautifully constructed hump-back bridge over the Wansbeck, which from its architecture must date from around the time that Wallington was redeveloped in the 18th century.

The second feature, and close to the house on a lawn overlooking the approaching road B6342, is a group of four stone dragon heads (or some other mythical creature, perhaps griffins), lined up and glaring (or grinning—take your pick) over the Northumberland countryside.

They were brought to Wallington in the 1730s as ballast in one of Sir Walter Calverley-Blackett‘s ships. Presumably he was shipping coal to the capital. Anyway, from what I have been able to discover, these dragon heads came from Bishopsgate in London after it was demolished to make way for the increase in London traffic. They have been in their current location since 1928.

Like many country houses, Wallington has its fair share of treasures displayed by the National Trust in the many rooms, which we enjoyed during our 2013 visit.

But, for me, the pièce de résistance is the central hall, once an open courtyard that was enclosed (at the insistence of Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood founding member John Ruskin) by Pauline, Lady Trevelyan, wife of the 6th Baron Trevelyan of Nettlecombe, Sir Walter Calverley Trevelyan (a renowned naturalist and geologist) who bequeathed Wallington to his cousin, Sir Charles Trevelyan (created the 1st Baron Trevelyan of Wallington in 1874).

From this satellite image from Google maps you can see the original layout of the house, and the enclosed central courtyard.

Wallington became a retreat for the Pre-Raphaelites, one of whom, William Bell Scott, a Newcastle painter and poet, was commissioned to decorate the central hall with a series of exquisite murals depicting scenes from Northumbrian history and folklore (and often incorporating local personalities into these). I recently wrote a separate piece about Scott.

I shall enjoy returning to Wallington as soon as Covid-19 restrictions are lifted and it’s once again safe to make such visits inside (and after receiving one of the vaccines).

But there’s so much more to see and appreciate at Wallington, since the woods, garden, and park are quite extensive. Last week we re-explored the East Wood and ponds, and the walled garden, before heading down to the Wansbeck which could not be crossed at the stepping stones due to the high water level.

We didn’t complete the full river walk, heading back up the B6342 from the bridge back to the house, and then into the woods on the west side of the house.

The south front of the house is protected by a rather impressive ha-ha – somewhat more formidable than others we have seen at the likes of Hanbury Hall (in Worcestershire close to our former home in Bromsgrove) and Berrington Hall in Herefordshire, for example.

The walled garden, some minutes walk from the house was splendid during our July visit, but had bedded down for its winter sleep a few days ago. Surrounded by red brick walls, mirroring an even more impressive wall just outside the garden and overlooking the garden pond, it never ceases to amaze me just how much these landowners and would-be aristocrats spent on improving their properties.

Because Steph and I are retired, we can take advantage of good weather (and sometimes not so good) to drop everything and head off to glorious properties like Wallington. And although there are perhaps fewer owned by the National Trust here in the northeast, we shall just have to travel a little further afield and visit those parts of northern England that we have not yet had chance to explore more fully yet. Added to the properties of English Heritage, we will have more than enough to fill our retirement for several years to come.

[1] In summer 1966 (or maybe late Spring 1967) I met Sir George Trevelyan at Attingham Park near Shrewsbury, when I attended a weekend course on the reclamation and botanical rehabilitation of industrial waste sites. Sir George was, for many years, the warden of the Adult Education College at Attingham Park, which is now owned and managed by the National Trust, and has been considerably restored internally and externally since the late 1960s.

 

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I was doctored . . . but the benefits were long-lasting

Philosophiae Doctor. Doctor of Philosophy. PhD. Or DPhil in some universities like Oxford. Doctorate. Hard work. Long-term benefits.

Forty-five years ago today I was awarded a PhD by the University of Birmingham. As a freshman undergraduate at the University of Southampton in October 1967, I was naïvely ignorant of what a PhD was [1]. And I certainly never had any ambition then or inkling that one day I would go on to complete a doctorate in botany. Let alone a study on potatoes!

Although registered for my PhD at the University of Birmingham, I actually carried out much of the research while working as an Associate Taxonomist at the International Potato Center (CIP) in Lima, Peru. My thesis was supervised by eminent potato experts Professor Jack Hawkes, head of the Department of Botany (later Plant Biology) in the School of Biological Sciences at Birmingham, and Dr Roger Rowe, head of CIP’s Department of Breeding & Genetics.

Jack Hawkes (L) and Roger Rowe (R)

On 12 December 1975 I was joined at the Birmingham graduation ceremony or congregation by Jack and Dr Trevor Williams (on my left below, who supervised my MSc dissertation on lentils). Trevor later became the first Director General of the International Board for Plant Genetic Resources (now Bioversity International). I’d turned 27 just a few weeks earlier, quite old in those days when it wasn’t all that unusual for someone to be awarded a PhD at 24 or 25, just three years after completing a bachelor’s degree. My research took four years however, from 1971, when I was awarded the MSc degree in genetic resources conservation at Birmingham.

The moment of being ‘doctored’ in the university’s Great Hall.

Sir Peter Scott, CH, CBE, DSC & Bar, FRS, FZS (by Clifton Ernest Pugh, 1924–1990)

As a biologist, it was particularly special that my degree was conferred by one of the most eminent naturalists and conservationists of his age, Sir Peter Scott (son of ill-fated Antarctic explorer Captain Robert Falcon Scott), who was Chancellor of the University of Birmingham for a decade from 1973.

According to the Birmingham PhD degree regulations today, a candidate must enter on a programme, normally of three years’ duration, in which the key activity is undertaking research, combined with appropriate training. Registered students must produce a thesis which makes an original contribution to knowledge, worthy of publication in whole or in part in a learned journal.

It was much the same back in the 1970s, except that we had eight years from first registration to submit a thesis. By the end of the 1980s this had already been reduced to four years.

Like the majority of PhD theses I guess, mine (The evolutionary significance of the triploid cultivated potato, Solanum x chaucha Juz. et Buk.) was a competent piece of original research, but nothing to write home about. However, I did fulfil the other important criterion for award of the degree as three scientific papers from my thesis research were later accepted for publication in Euphytica, an international journal of plant breeding:

  1. Jackson, MT, JG Hawkes & PR Rowe, 1977. The nature of Solanum x chaucha Juz. et Buk., a triploid cultivated potato of the South American Andes. Euphytica 26, 775-783. PDF

  2. Jackson, MT, PR Rowe & JG Hawkes, 1978. Crossability relationships of Andean potato varieties of three ploidy levels. Euphytica 27, 541-551. PDF

  3. Jackson, MT, JG Hawkes & PR Rowe, 1980. An ethnobotanical field study of primitive potato varieties in Peru. Euphytica 29, 107-113. PDF

It took me just over six weeks to write my thesis of about 150 pages. I achieved that by sticking to a well-defined daily schedule. I was under a tight time constraint.

Having returned from Peru at the beginning of May 1975, I still had a couple of things to wrap up: checking the chromosome numbers of some progeny from experimental crosses, then preparing all the hand drawn diagrams and maps (fortunately my cartographic skills from my geography undergraduate days at the University of Southampton placed me in good stead in this respect) and photographs. My thesis was typed on a manual typewriter; none of that fancy word processing and formatting available today. Nevertheless, I did submit my thesis by the mid-September deadline to meet the December graduation. I could hardly return to CIP by the beginning of the New Year without a PhD in my back pocket.

Looking at my thesis 45 years on, it does seem rather ‘thin’ compared to what PhD students can achieve today. In the early 1970s we didn’t have any of the molecular biology techniques that have become routine (essential even) today, to open up a whole new perspective on plant diversity, crop evolution, and crop domestication that were the basic elements of my thesis research.

Back in the day, it was normal for a PhD thesis to be examined by just one external examiner and an internal university one, usually from a candidate’s department and often the person who had supervised the research. Today the supervisor cannot be the internal examiner at many if not all universities in the UK, and it has become more common for a PhD student to have a committee to oversee the research.

So, towards the end of October 1975 I met with my examiners for what turned out to be a viva voce of over three hours. It got off to a good start because the external examiner told me he had enjoyed reading my thesis. That allowed me to relax somewhat, and we then embarked on an interesting discussion about the work, and potatoes and their evolution in general. The examiner found just one typographical error, and I corrected that immediately after the viva. I then sent the thesis for binding and official submission to the university library (where it languishes on a shelf somewhere, or maybe reduced to just a microfilm copy).

On the evening of my examination I rang my parents to tell them the good news, only to discover that my dad had suffered a heart attack earlier in the day. That certainly but a damper on the exhilaration I felt at having just passed my final exam – ever! Dad was resting, but expected to make a full recovery. By December, when the congregation was held, he was back on his feet, and he and mum attended the congregation. Having been allocated only two guest tickets, Steph gave hers up so mum and dad could attend.

They gave me a Parker fountain pen, engraved with my name and date, as a graduation present. I still have it.

So, I completed a PhD. Was it worth it? I actually waxed lyrical on that topic in a blog post published in October 2015. When the idea of working in Peru was first mooted in February 1971, it was intended to be just a one year assignment from September. Registering for a PhD was not part of the equation. But circumstances changed, my departure to Peru was delayed until January 1973, so Jack registered me for a PhD, setting me on a path that I have never regretted.

In any case, once I was established at CIP in Lima, I quickly came to the viewpoint that a career in international agricultural research was something I wanted to pursue. And without a PhD under my belt that would have been almost impossible. The PhD degree became a sort of ‘union card’, which permitted me to work subsequently in Central America, as a lecturer at the University of Birmingham for a decade, and almost 19 years up to my retirement in 2010 at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines in roles managing the world’s largest genebank for rice, and then as one of the institute’s senior management team.

[1] Unlike our two daughters Hannah and Philippa. They grew up in a home with parents having graduate degrees (Steph has an MSc degree in genetic resources from Birmingham). And when we moved to the Philippines in 1991, almost every neighbor of ours at IRRI Staff Housing had a PhD degree. So although it was never inevitable, both went on to complete a PhD in psychology (although different branches of the discipline) in 2006 and 2010 respectively, at the University of Minnesota and Northumbria University.

L (top and bottom): Phil, Hannah, and Steph after the graduation ceremony; Hannah with her cohort of graduands, Emily and Michael in Industrial & Organizational Psychology on 12 May 2006. R (top and bottom): Phil’s graduation at Northumbria University on 11 December 2010.

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Memories of Christmas past . . . and building new ones

Perhaps nothing awakens memories filed at the back of the ol’ grey matter like decorating a Christmas tree each year. And Sunday last we finished decorating ours, for our first Christmas in Newcastle upon Tyne, having moved here from Worcestershire just over two months ago.

We’ve had this particular (artificial) tree for 44 years. After we moved to Costa Rica in April 1976, we bought this tree from Sears, Roebuck & Co. in Miami as part of our airfreight consignment.

Our elder daughter Hannah was born in Costa Rica  in April 1978, and we had great fun decorating the tree for her. I’m sure we must have some photos taken during those days, but they must be packed away in boxes waiting for a move early next year into the house we are buying. And I hadn’t scanned those yet. Likewise of our younger daughter Philippa who was born in May 1982.

However, here is one photo taken at Christmas 1981 in the UK (when Hannah would have been just over 3½ and Steph was pregnant with Philippa; we replaced those curtains and carpet that came with the house not long afterwards!). During the 80s we spent at least two Christmases with Steph’s parents in Essex, and on another two we joined family (including my widowed mother) at my brother Martin’s home in Gloucestershire, and with my sister in Newport in South Wales in 1986. This was a big family get-together as my late brother Edgar and his wife Linda (and young son Patrick) came over from Canada.

L-R Back row: Brother-in-law Trevor, Mum, Steph; middle row: sister-in-law Linda, nephew Alex, Martin, nephew Bruce, Margaret; front row: sister-in-law Pauline, Edgar (with Patrick on his knee), me, Philippa, and Hannah.

We enjoyed decorating our little tree from Costa Rica every Christmas until 1991. In July that year, I moved to the Philippines. Steph, Hannah and Philippa (then aged 13 and 9) celebrated Christmas in the UK on their own, then packed everything away, locked up the house, and flew out to join me in the Philippines a few days afterwards. The tree remained packed away for the next 18 years.

But come December 2010 (after I had retired and we moved back to the UK), we ‘rescued’ our tree from obscurity in the attic. Newly-married Philippa and Andi joined us in Bromsgrove, almost a ‘White Christmas’; there was snow lying in the garden but it didn’t actually snow on Christmas Day (to qualify as a ‘White Christmas’). In fact, throughout my whole life I can remember only one ‘White Christmas’; more of that later.

The last Christmas Day we spent in Bromsgrove was in 2017, because in 2018 and 2019 we were with Phil and Andi—and the grandchildren Elvis and Felix—in Newcastle. Having grandchildren around certainly brings a new dimension to celebrating Christmas. Unfortunately we’ve not yet had an opportunity to celebrate Christmas with our other grandchildren, Callum and Zoë in Minnesota, but we always link up on a video call and become immersed in their excitement as they open presents.

2017 in Bromsgrove
2018
2019
2019
2019

We spent almost 19 years in the Philippines. Filipinos know how to celebrate Christmas, beginning in September (the first of the ‘ber’ months) and often continuing well into February. It’s trees and lights and glitter everywhere. And their special Christmas lights, the parols.

We took one back to the UK in 2010 and proudly displayed it in our porch (probably the only one in Bromsgrove!) every year until it finally gave up its electrical ghost around three years ago. Just seeing it light up brought back memories of so many happy years spent in the Philippines, and the wonderful friends we made.

Now while Filipinos celebrate Christmas in a BIG way—Santa, snow, trees and the like—the Philippines reality is quite different. For me, it was shorts and t-shirts on Christmas Day, even if smarter ones than usual. Even after they had gone away to university in the USA and the UK, Hannah and Philippa returned most Christmases (and we’d even go scuba diving). Hannah’s boyfriend (now husband) Michael came on two occasions as well. Given the size of our IRRI house, we had space for a much taller (almost 7 foot) tree than we could ever accommodate in England. And we still have many of the decorations that we acquired in the Philippines.

One of my important roles during the 2000s, was being Santa for the Staff Housing children and friends at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in Los Baños.

KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA

In 2007, I thought it might be a good idea to spend Christmas with Hannah and Michael in St Paul, Minnesota. Before doing anything else, I checked if seats were available for the Minneapolis-St Paul (MSP) flight on the Northwest Airlines on Christmas Eve, and made reservations. Only then did I ask Hannah if we could visit, provided that Steph was up to the idea. Hannah thought that would be a great idea. So then I asked Steph if she would like to spend Christmas in Minnesota, provided of course that Hannah and Michael agreed. No-one knew I’d already made reservations. It took Steph a couple of days to warm to the idea (she’s not over-fond of intercontinental flights), but at last everything was in place and I confirmed the tickets.

We flew out of Manila on an early morning flight to MSP via Tokyo’s Narita airport, and arrived at our destination just before midday on the same day (Minnesota is 14 hours behind the Philippines).

It was cold, many degrees below 0ºC. A major snow storm had passed through just a few hours before our arrival, but the main highways had already been cleared. We headed straight to the Mall of America to buy some warm clothes for Steph. Since I had to travel in the course of my work with IRRI, and in all seasons, I already had suitable clothing.

There was deep snow everywhere, and as we sat down to eat our Christmas lunch at about 3pm on Christmas Day, it began to snow. My first ‘White Christmas’. We just had to go outside and enjoy the moment.

We had a great time with Hannah and Michael. Phil even joined us by video link from the UK. Seven days passed all too quickly and before we knew it we were on the return flight to Manila, from the frozen North to the heat of the tropics in less than 24 hours.

I was born in Congleton in southeast Cheshire in November 1948. I don’t really remember anything about Christmases (or winters) spent in Congleton, except the communal sledging in the snow that children from the neighbourhood enjoyed in Priesty Fields close by to where we lived in Moody Street. We moved to Leek, 12 miles away, in Staffordshire in April 1956 when I was seven.

Family Christmases with Mum and Dad, and my elder brothers Martin and Edgar, and sister Margaret were enjoyable as far as I recall. Mum and Dad were very hospitable and there always seemed to one group of friends or another spending time with us.

Dad had his own photographic business that provided a sufficient income to keep us fed and clothed. I never recall having to do without, but I now know that things were very tight and difficult financially for my parents for many years.

But as you can see from these photos, we did have fun.

And there were always a few presents. Among my favorites were a toy farm and the beginnings of a collection of plastic farm animals. I played with those for hours. It was never given away after I grew up and left home. So, in 1981, it came back home to me and was enjoyed by Hannah and Philippa. In fact, it was only last Christmas that I decided to give it away, and advertised it on the Bromsgrove Freecycle site. Within an hour it had been ‘claimed’ by someone who wanted a present for her younger sister. It’s good to know that another generation is enjoying it.

Then, one year I asked for a globe just like the one shown in this photo. It must have been the late 50s or early 60s. I kept that globe until 2010. I’m not sure why now, but we took it to the Philippines, and it was used by the girls. I decided to give it away before returning to the UK.

Each Christmas, we lived in hope of one special present each. A comic Annual. My brothers and I had a weekly subscription to the Eagle and Swift comics. I think Margaret had one for Girl. Anyway, each year, there would be an Eagle Annual and a Swift Annual waiting at the bottom of our beds. Who remembers Dan Dare? What a joy!

Rupert Bear Annual for 1960

And there was one more; Rupert Bear. Rupert first appeared as a cartoon strip in the British tabloid newspaper the Daily Express in November 1920, and continues a century on. Periodically we would receive one of the softback Rupert books, but we always looked forward as well to the Rupert Annual at Christmas, which has been published since 1936.

Such happy memories. And now that we have moved north to Newcastle, so many more opportunities to build plenty more as Elvis and Felix grow up. However, we will have to spend Christmas 2020 on our own even though the government will relax the Covid-19 restrictions for five days from Christmas Eve. We have decided to remain self-isolated. As I write this story, the first Covid vaccinations are being given in the UK. We can wait a few months more to make sure we are safe. It will be a virtual Christmas this year. But memorable, nevertheless.

 

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Pandemic books – my 2020 reading list

2020 started where 2019 had ended – half way through George Eliot’s Middlemarch (published 1871-1872). That was a bit of a struggle in places, but I finally got there. And, on reflection, I did quite enjoy it.

Feeling at a loss as to what to turn to, I decided to quickly devour a couple of Arnold Bennett novels. Last year, I’d downloaded the ‘complete works’ to my Kindle.

First it was The Pretty Lady (1918) set at the outset of the First World War in 1914, and progressing through the war years as protagonist Gilbert (GJ) Hoade, a fiftyish bachelor of independent means, progresses in his relationship with French courtesan Christine who escaped to London from the German Army advancing on Ostend in Belgium.

Then it was back to the Five Towns at the end of January for The Price of Love (1914), a tale of lost money.

I finished that by mid-February, so decided to return to George Eliot and Daniel Deronda (1876). But I didn’t get very far. I’d been listening to some fine music on Classic FM one morning while lying in bed drinking my early morning cuppa, when I began to ask myself questions abut the development of music.

That got me into Howard Goodall‘s The Story of Music, that I finished at the beginning of April.

Then I decided to tackle the two books by Hilary Mantel about Tudor Machiavellian Thomas Cromwell that both won the Man Booker Prize (in 2009 and 2012, respectively): Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies. In March she published the last part of her Cromwell trilogy, The Mirror & the Light, but because of the library closure due to the Covid-19 pandemic, I wasn’t able to get hold of it. Until later in the year.

During the pandemic I had expected to read more. But by the beginning of May I’d run out of steam. So it took me almost two months to finish re-reading Adrian Goldsworthy’s Caesar. It was fascinating to understand something about perhaps the greatest Roman (often based on his own words, as he was a prolific writer, ever keen to make sure his place in history was secure). I bought this book around 2007, and first read it while I was working in the Philippines.

Here’s a review that appeared in The Independent when the book was first published in 2006. It’s not an easy read, and I found myself constantly confused by Roman names, as so many individuals had the same or similar name. I couldn’t help being reminded of the Biggus Dickus scene from Monty Python’s Life of Brian.

Anyway, during the first week of July as we were preparing to move to Newcastle upon Tyne once our house sale has completed, I decided to return to the novels of Thomas Hardy, which I had first enjoyed in the 1970s when we lived in Costa Rica. A re-run of the 2008 adaptation by David Nicholls of Tess of the D’Urbervilles was screened on BBC4, so I decided to tackle that novel first to see just how true to the original the screenwriter had stayed. I’m not sure why, but I didn’t find Tess as easy a read as I had imagined. Somehow, Tess just didn’t click with me this time round. Maybe it was because I had so much on my mind. During August and September things were becoming rather fraught with regard to our house sale and move. I wasn’t sleeping well at all. Feeling anxious and stressed all day, every day.

Anyway, I eventually finished Tess and on 30 September the sale of our house went through and we moved north. Settling into our new home (a rental for six months until we found a house to buy – which we have), we registered with the local North Tyneside library, just ten minutes from home. And there, on the new books shelf was Hilary Mantel’s magnum opus, and the last in her Thomas Cromwell trilogy, The Mirror & the Light. Highly tipped to take the 2020 Booker Prize, The Mirror & the Light didn’t even make the shortlist.

Much as I enjoyed The Mirror & the Light, I don’t think it was the masterpiece that The Guardian reviewer Stephanie Merritt claimed. It was a long read, just over 900 pages. I think Hilary Mantel was being somewhat self-indulgent. She does have an accessible writing style, and although it took me over three weeks to finish, I almost never felt as if I was struggling with the text. It was only when she had her main protagonist, Thomas Cromwell, reminiscing in his own mind that the pace of the novel tapered off.

I finished The Mirror & the Light just before we went into our second national lockdown at the beginning of November, so I hurriedly returned it to the library, and searched for a couple of local histories. The first of these was Tyneside – A History of Newcastle and Gateshead from Earliest Times, by Alistair Moffat and George Rosie, published in 2005 (and made into a TV documentary, which I haven’t seen).

This was an ambitious history of the Tyneside region over the past 10,000 years. Ambitious, indeed! But remarkably accessible, with usefully placed boxes which went into greater detail on aspects related to the main narrative. Often, boxes such as these can be a distraction from the narrative, pulling the reader from the points at hand. But the authors have cleverly drafted their text such that the narrative came to a sort of conclusion just before a box, and picked up again afterwards.

I certainly have a better appreciation of the origins and history of Newcastle, and look forward to exploring over the coming years, especially those relating to the Roman occupation of the region between AD43 and AD410.

Next, I picked up A Man Most Driven, by Peter Firstbrook, about ‘Captain John Smith, Pocahontas and the Founding of America’ in the early seventeenth century. Now, I’d heard about Captain Smith since I was a child. Just the other day I talking (via Zoom) about him and Pocahontas with my 8 year old grandaughter, Zoë, in Minnesota, just as I was getting into Firstbrook’s biography. Zoë had been reading all about Pocahontas for one of her remote schooling assignments, and reminded me that Pocahontas did not marry Captain Smith (as I actually believed), but another Englishman named John Rolfe.

A Man Most Driven is a fascinating story of a really driven man who, from his own (and very possibly exaggerated) accounts had certainly had some scrapes all before he was thirty, and lucky to escape with his life on more than one occasion. It also describes how close, and many times the Jamestown colony came to failure, and Smith’s role (from his own and some independent accounts) in ensuring the early survival.

Did Pocahontas (a daughter of the paramount chief of the Powhatan, named Wahunsenacawh) really save his life as Smith wrote in his The Generall Historie? She was just a young teenager when this happened just as Smith was about to have his brains bashed out by hostile Powhatan tribe members near the early Jamestown colony in present-day Virginia. After marrying John Rolfe, Pocahontas came to English and was presented to Queen Anne (wife of James I & VI). But she took sick before she could return to America and died (aged about 21) in Gravesend where she was buried. Unfortunately the site of her grave has been lost.

I then turned my attention to local Newcastle history once again, by former Northumberland county court judge and one-time MP for Newcastle Central from 1945-1951), Lyall Wilkes called Tyneside Portraits. It’s a short anthology of eight men who contributed to the artistic and cultural life of Newcastle since the seventeenth century, as well as its physical appearance through the buildings they designed and built. Among them was William Bell Scott, and Pre-Raphaelite painter and poet whose exquisite murals grace the walls of the central hall at Wallington Hall near Morpeth in Northumberland, a National Trust property we visited in August 2013.

This was the third and last book I had borrowed from the local library before the most recent pandemic lockdown and then Tier 3 restrictions locally. The library has not yet re-opened and I was unable to replace these books. So it was back to the Kindle and a touch of Rudyard Kipling once again: The Light That Failed, first published in January 1891 (his first novel, and not critically acclaimed).

With a number of things to occupy me during December (including my daily walk whenever the weather permits) I reckon The Light That Failed will see me through to the end of the month. I’ll include a summary in my 2021 reading list compilation a year from now.

So that’s another year’s reading accomplished. And what a year 2020 has been. Who could have imagined, as the clock was about to strike midnight on 31 December last, just what we would be facing in the coming months. We’ve made it through the pandemic so far, and having access to books, good music of every genre, and daily fresh air have been key to that achievement.

Keep safe. And let’s hope for a better 2021.

 

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Donald’s legacy: impeached AND a loser!

Whatever he continues to wildly claim, Donald Trump’s tenure of the US presidency will come to an end at midday on Wednesday 20 January 2021. And the nightmare of the past four years that has blighted the lives of millions of Americans, and even more people around the world, will finally come to an end.

Donald Trump will be consigned to the history books, and hopefully we can begin to forget all about him. Although I fear he’s not going to go quietly, and it’s rumoured he will even try to stage a comeback in 2024.

But whatever transpires, there are two important aspects of his legacy that will forever be linked with the name of Donald J Trump: impeached (though not convicted) and loser! I’m sure he finds the latter especially galling, since this is something for which he has shown particular derision (such as his obnoxious statements about the late Arizona Senator John McCain¹ and other war veterans).

But there’s something about Trump’s character (among so many flaws) that sticks in my throat, and is typical of so many bullies. His demand for total respect while denigrating others, and above all, showing disrespect for the Office of President of the United States itself. Time and again he has shown just what an appalling human being he is. Just watch him slap down a reporter recently who asked a perfectly reasonable and appropriate question.

And while we are talking about losing, there’s a nice piece in today’s The Guardian here in the UK. I love this particular sentence: For a man obsessed with winning, Donald Trump is losing a lot.

So while Trump has the opportunity of causing a great deal of mischief—damage even—during his remaining days in office, we can all look forward to 20 January (we’ll be counting down to noon) when he will no longer be Cockwomble-in-Chief, just an also ran cockwomble.

Oh were it possible to get rid of his British counterpart Boris Johnson and his party of inept and seemingly corrupt Tories. We live in hope.

¹ Trump remained fixated on McCain, one of the few prominent Republicans to continue criticizing him after he won the nomination. When McCain died, in August 2018, Trump told his senior staff, according to three sources with direct knowledge of this event, ‘We’re not going to support that loser’s funeral,’ and he became furious, according to witnesses, when he saw flags lowered to half-staff. ‘What the fuck are we doing that for? Guy was a fucking loser,’ the president told aides. From a September 2020 article in The Atlantic by editor Jeffrey Goldberg.

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There were three persons in his marriage – William Bell Scott’s ménage à trois

I’ve just finished reading Tyneside Portraits, a 1971 book written by Lyall Wilkes (1914-1991), former MP (1945-1951) for Newcastle Central and a county court judge for Northumberland.

It’s a collection of essays about eight men (!) who had a profound on the cultural and artistic life of Newcastle upon Tyne, as well as its physical makeup. They were painters, silversmiths, engravers, architects, and an author.

Among the eight was Edinburgh-born William Bell Scott (1811-1890)—painter, poet, and Pre-Raphaelite—who became principal of the School of Art in Newcastle for two decades from 1843. When I was half way through this particular chapter I realised that I knew about William Bell Scott, at least had personally seen some of his work, although from the outset had not drawn the connection.

Pauline, Lady Trevelyan

Anyone who has visited Wallington Hall that lies 12 miles west of Morpeth in Northumberland will know exactly what I’m referring to. Between 1856 and 1861 Scott painted a series of murals on the walls of what had been the central courtyard at Wallington. Victorian art critic and founder member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, John Ruskin had persuaded Pauline, Lady Trevelyan, first wife of the 6th Baronet to enclose this space with a roof.

What’s particularly interesting about these murals is that local personalities, including Lady Trevelyan, are depicted in some. Indeed, painter Alice Boyd, Scott’s former pupil who became his longtime ‘companion’ figures in the scene of Northumberland heroine Grace Darling.

Alice Boyd (L) and Christina Rossetti (R)

Now I say ‘companion’; the relationship was undoubtedly more intimate. Scott had, apparently, a natural attraction for women. At a relatively young age he married Letitia Norquoy, whom he treated shabbily for the rest of their married life. In 1847, Scott became acquainted with the Rossetti family in London, after receiving a letter from a young Dante Gabriel Rossetti, poet and founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. His sister Christina, also a renowned poet, fell in love with Scott. It was more than two years after they became acquainted that the Rossetti family discovered that Scott was already married. It seems Christina pined all her adult life for a relationship that could never be, although she did visit on occasion with Scott and his wife, and the significant other, Alice Boyd. As Princess Diana once famously said: “There were three persons in this marriage“. Scott lived openly with Alice Boyd for more than 30 years, and she and Letitia became friends.