It was my birthday yesterday.
Let me take this opportunity of thanking friends and former colleagues – from all over the world – who sent me birthday greetings. Very much appreciated.
One friend greeted me on achieving three quarters of a century. Now that sounds really old. Another wished me 25 years more. I replied that 10-15 would do me nicely.
In 1948, average life expectancy for males in England and Wales was only 65.9 years. Now it’s 79, due undoubtedly to increased living standards over the intervening decades leading to healthier diets, and better health propped up by the National Health Service that had been founded just a few months before my birth.
I wonder what hopes my Mum had for me on that day.
I was living in Congleton, Cheshire with my parents, Fred and Lilian Jackson, my brothers Martin (b. 1939) and Edgar (b. 1946), and sister Margaret (b. 1941). I started school around 1953.
Come 18 November 1958 – my 10th birthday – we had been living in Leek, Staffordshire for 2½ years already. I attended the local Catholic primary school, St Mary’s, just a few minutes walk from home, and hoped eventually to win a place at the Catholic grammar school in Stoke-on-Trent a couple of years later. Which I did.
Christmas 1958 in Leek (with my elder brother Edgar).
Moving on to 18 November 1968, I had just started the second year of my BSc degree course in environmental botany and geography at the University of Southampton. I had enjoyed my first year there, living in South Stoneham House, one of the halls of residence southeast of the university campus. I’d been elected Vice President of the Junior Common Room at the end of the first year, and that guaranteed me a second year at Stoneham. I guess I celebrated my 20th birthday in the pub with a few friends.
Over the previous summer vacation I’d attended an excellent botany field course on the west coast of island. And afterwards had spent several weeks with my girlfriend at her home just south of York or at my parents’ home in Leek. We also enjoyed a walking tour together of the North York Moors, staying at youth hostels (YHA) each night.
But our relationship was not to last. Just before the beginning of term in October, I received a Dear John letter from her. But not one to be downhearted for long, I picked myself up but forswore dating for a while.
And I threw myself into a new interest: morris dancing. Together with one of the botany department lecturers, Dr Joe Smartt, we founded the university morris side, the Red Stags (still active today, but in a different format and no longer associated with the university).
The Red Stags Morris Men after performing at the University of Southampton Open Day in March 1970. That’s me, kneeling on the right.
Along with my continuing enjoyment of English and Scottish folk dancing, this foray into morris dancing became one of my principal hobbies for the rest of my time at Southampton, and afterwards for several years.
I graduated from Southampton in June 1970, and by September I was studying once again at the University of Birmingham.
By my 30th birthday in November 1978, I already had MSc and PhD degrees from Birmingham under my belt, and had been working for the International Potato Center (CIP), an international agricultural research institute based in Lima, Peru for five years.
Steph (who I met in Birmingham) and I had been married for just over five years, and our first daughter Hannah was born in April. We were living in Costa Rica, but my work with CIP took me throughout the region, as well as to Mexico and the islands of the Caribbean.
If my memory serves me right, I ‘celebrated’ this birthday, a Saturday, on the Caribbean island of Montserrat. I was stuck in my hotel room in Plymouth (the island’s capital until it was destroyed in the Soufrière Hills volcanic eruption of the 1990s) while it rained cats and dogs outside.
In 1988, I had been teaching at the University of Birmingham for over seven years, in the Department of Plant Biology. It was a Friday. My 40th birthday. By then, my colleagues and I had developed a ‘tradition’ of celebrating in the Staff House bar at lunchtime (disgraceful!) with a bottle or two of Beaujolais Nouveau, the release of which always occurs around my birthday. Enjoying a bottle of the ‘new release’ was quite the rage in the UK back in the 1980s, perhaps less so today.
Hannah had turned 10 that year, and Philippa (born in Bromsgrove in 1982) turned six.
I left the university in 1991, to head the Genetic Resources Center (GRC) at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) at Los Baños, south of Manila, in the Philippines. In 1998, my GRC staff helped me celebrate my milestone 50th birthday. There must have been lots of snacks such as pancit and spring rolls and the like, ice cream (always vanilla!) and lots of cake. Probably donuts.
Then, in the evening, Steph and Philippa served champagne, and our helper Lilia had made a cake. Hannah was already away at university in Minnesota (where she still lives).
Steph and I celebrated our 25th (Silver) wedding anniversary just a month earlier.
A decade on, and I had changed jobs at IRRI, having moved from GRC to become the institute’s Director for Program Planning and Communications in May 2001.
I had an office suite in the main administration building, and my staff and others from nearby offices in HR and finance joined me to celebrate my 60th birthday.
Then, in the evening, Steph and I enjoyed the company of very close friends Corinta Guerta from my office, plant physiologist (and my closest friend at IRRI) John Sheehy, and Director for Development Duncan Macintosh (from Australia) and Cel (his Filipina girlfriend and now his wife) for an intimate dinner that almost ended in disaster before it had begun.
Nevertheless,we had a great time, but I think I must have drunk too much because I chose the wrong settings on my camera and the resulting images were not the best quality.
I retired from IRRI in 2010, and Steph and I returned to our home in Bromsgrove that we had first moved into way back in 1981, but which we’d kept furnished by unoccupied during the 19 years we stayed in the Philippines.
I celebrated my 70th birthday in 2018, and we did something I’d wanted to do for several years: a weekend away in Liverpool, visiting the childhood homes of Paul McCartney and John Lennon (both managed by the National Trust), as well as The Beatles Story beside the Royal Albert Dock.
We had a great weekend, taking the train from Bromsgrove (via Birmingham New Street) to Liverpool Lime Street. That was an added bonus. I love train journeys!
So here we are in 2023. It has become a tradition over the years for Steph to prepare my favorite meal on my birthday: homemade steak and kidney pie. I always look forward to that one special meal. And, as always, it was delicious, served with a bottle of good Portuguese red: Montaria Gold 2020 from the Lisbon region, a blend of Syrah, Alicante Bouschet, Trincadeira, and Aragonez grape varieties, made by Luis Vieira.
Had the weather been better we would have taken an excursion yesterday. But since the forecast had promised rain (which was the case) we headed north on Friday to the Alnwick Garden and the beach at Amble afterwards.
Oh, and we’d quietly celebrated our 50th (Golden) wedding anniversary a month ago.
A balanced diet . . . 