A Good Day

I had to go to a meeting just outside Cambridge last Wednesday. I had planned to drive there and back from Bristol in the day but H said that was silly and that I should stay overnight. It was a bit late to sort out a hotel so I stayed in a guest room at my old college on Tuesday night. That meant I had a few hours to spare before the meeting on Wednesday. That was a good day…

A quiet walk through the college Deer Park before a full English breakfast in college.  A gentle walk around the centre of Cambridge. Seeing the sign “Second-hand Philosophy” on a shelf in Heffer’s bookshop (why did I find that amusing?). Walking over Garrett Hostel Bridge and along the backs. Coffee on the top floor of the Graduate Centre, with a chance to read the paper and make a couple of phone calls. The smug feeling of parking the car near the centre of Cambridge for free and having the Porter come out to work the rising bollard for me.

A good meeting, and a chance to meet old colleagues. A drive back across country to avoid motorways. A stop in Bibury, still attractive even when inundated with tourists, to stretch the legs. Half a dozen young Japanese tourists wearing surgical masks (anyone reading this in the future needs to remember about swine flu). Watching a beautiful Gray Wagtail scuttling along the stones beside the river while the tourists, quite oblivious to it, were busy taking photographs of the ducks.

We rush around too much and miss a lot. Nice to have a good day once in a while.

Islands in The Wash

H and I were over in King’s Lynn for a couple of days last weekend. I had a bell ringing engagement there on Bank Holiday Monday afternoon (http://www.campanophile.co.uk/show.aspx?Code=81550 if you are interested but don’t expect an explanation if you don’t know what I am talking about). It gave us the chance to see my cousin and her husband. She is my last link with King’s Lynn since my father and both of her parents passed away over the last few years. I wouldn’t normally use an expression like “passed away” but it seems to suit their generation.

We were fortunate to get a good deal at the “Dukes Head” hotel in the Tuesday Market Place. I use the word ‘fortunate’ advisedly. I wouldn’t have wanted to pay the full rate. When I was a youngster in Lynn (well, it was 50 years ago) the Dukes Head was the hotel. It’s looking a bit sad now, with serious plumbing issues in at least two bedrooms and the most boring cold breakfast buffet I have ever seen, although the cooked breakfast was good, apart from there being no smoked salmon for H. Talking to the staff, it seems to have got caught in up in a lack of investment and a potential sale which has stalled because of the credit crunch.

Perhaps you shouldn’t go back. My first bank account was with the Midland, on the corner of the Tuesday Market Place. I had to spend more time there (when it was an HSBC) while I was looking after my father’s affairs. Now it is a Nando’s. I was reminded of that Natwest advertisement, with the elderly lady saying that her local bank branch was now a wine bar. Actually, I found the new HSBC, in a new shopping centre next to Anne Summers and opposite the defunct Woolworths. Sic transit gloria mundi or something like that.

The more perceptive among you will be wondering what this has to do with islands in The Wash. Well, H wasn’t involved in the bell ringing and when trying to find something to do she came across the “Sir Peter Scott Path”. This runs from the lighthouse at the River Nene outfall where he lived in the 1930s round the sea wall to West Lynn. The idea was that I would drop her off at the start and she would walk back to Lynn while I was ringing.

We had plenty of time so I walked a bit with her. Comparing the path on the current 1:25000 map with the rather delapidated 1″ map (1954, cost 4/-) which I bought when I was at school, it is amazing how far further out the sea walls have been pushed as more land has been reclaimed. A Dutchman would feel at home here. So the Sir Peter Scott walk is on sea walls which didn’t exist when he llived there, although he may well have walked on the salt marshes or punted in the creeks while wildfowling.

It was quite misty out to sea but we soon saw what appeared to be a rather large island. “Don’t be silly” says I “there are no islands in The Wash”. Of course, for someone trained as a scientist this was a pretty stupid thing to say in the face of the evidence. But the current map showed nothing out there although there is a much smaller island closer to the sea wall a bit further round.

Well H got back OK, even in time to sit on the other side of the river for a bit listening to us ringing.

When I got back I did a bit of internet research. There are two islands, both built in the 1970s as part of an experiment on the feasibility of freshwater reservoirs in The Wash. The idea was dropped but now the larger island is a very successful seabird and wildfowl habitat.

The best reference to all this is http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/428938.html, which gives several further links, including one to Google Maps where you can clearly see both islands. I also found http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7659304.stm which is a video of a BBC Look North item about the islands.

All very interesting. But why is the larger island not shown on the current 1:25000 OS map? Is it to try to discourage people from walking out there over the mudflats at low tide (which would be a very hazardous thing to do)?

Worms Head – the Gower

I’m not much good as a blogger am I? I post so infrequently. I guess the problem is that I am just too busy. Although if I really wanted to do it I’d find time, wouldn’t I? My old mum used to say “If you want something done, ask a busy man”.

I’m wandering already. What I am leading up to is that we went out onto Worm’s Head today. It’s at the end of the Gower (South Wales) and is a bit of land that is cut off except for about 2 hours either side of low tide. There is a very rocky causeway out to the “Inner Head”, a high grassy hill, then a another very rocky section known as the “Low Neck” leading to another grassy bit, over a natural rock bridge leading eventually to the highest point. I think that the word “Worm” refers to a dragon. The Inner Head is the body and the highest point is the dragon’s head.

I didn’t want to go really. I’ve been working hard, had a headache from looking at a computer too much and a bit of a stomach upset (maybe that was the cause of the headache?). I went because I would have had to put up with pained looks from H for weeks to come. But it was good. Perfect weather, perfect tides – low water about 14:00 and spring tides so a long window to get out and back. There were a lot of people out there but I don’t mind that. Anything that get people off their backsides and out into the fresh air is good in my book.

The last time we went was in Autumn with a high wind blowing. The wind was the reason why we wimped off the highest point – the dragon’s head. It just didn’t feel safe there. But today was fine and we made it this time. On the way back the tide was low enough for us to walk over the flatter rocks,  rather than the rough scramble over the Low Neck.

Looking back to the Dragon's head

The picture was taken just as we got back onto Inner Head. You can see the natural arch (”Devil’s Bridge”, it is called) and the highest point. We were there!

Well, we are back. Still feeling a bit rough, but a good day. I should stop feeling sorry for myself and get out more. And write this blog more often.

Books Graveyard

There’s this company in Bristol called “Book Barn”. Or rather, there was this company. They dealt in second hand and remaindered books and had a massive warehouse. They closed a bit ago when the lease on their warehouse had expired. They seem to have walked out leaving a warehouse full of books. The landlords, perhaps hoping to avoid the cost of a lot of skips, just made it known that anyone who wanted could just come and help themselves, up to some date (which I think is quite soon, so don’t all rush).

Of course, this got out and people were coming from all over the place. Some were book lover and collectors,  some wanted to stock up charity shops, some came in white vans hoping for a quick buck.

I went along last Friday out of curiosity. I think most of the good stuff (and I don’t think there ever was much of that) had gone by then, although I did manage to find a 1961 copy of “The Eye of the Wind” – Peter Scott’s autobiography. I spend a fair bit of time at Slimbridge and I have some of his other books, so that was a nice bonus.

Some of the books were on shelves but many were just piled on the floor. I am not sure if this was done when the owners cleared out or if people just threw them there while going through the shelves. You got this surreal view of dozens of people just picking through the piles of books, like so many vultures. No, that’s unfair. Everyone I came across there was friendly and polite. they vertainly weren’t fighting over first editions!

In fact most people, like me, were a strange mixture of bemused and sad. I love books. I never turn down corners or bend back spines. I regard myself as pretty computer literate but I haven’t made the break with books yet (although I have played with a Sony Reader on display in Waterstones). And here was me with little choice but to walk over mountains of them just to get around the place.

Ironically, the only books in good condition were mainly manuals for obsolete computer software. Remaindered, I guess, rather than second hand.

While do I feel so sad about this?

A book mountain

Where does the time go

I really did mean to write this blog regularly. No, frequently. “Regularly” could be once a year. Stop being a pedant.

Since my last post the world has gone into economic meltdown, the US has a new President, Gaza has been flattened and lots of other things I can’t think of just now have happened. Oh yes, I got a smart phone for Christmas. Well, actually, it was a company purchase at the beginning of December but H, who is the company secretary, took it away and wrapped it up for a present. I’m pleased with it, even if it does take me much longer to do things I could do on my old phone quite easily. But I have finally reached the Holy Grail of having my calendar and contacts all in one place an synchronised with the ones on my PC. I could do that with my old PDA, of course, but now I can make a phone call without having to juggle two gadgets.

Going back to the beginning of the previous paragraph, I strayed from what are really rather important things to a load of self-obsessed stuff. If I was giving a sermon (which this blog is certainly not meant to be) I might make a big point about that. I might point out that a lot of the ill in this world is caused by people thinking only about their own interests and not looking more widely.

Oh, shut up Robin. That last bit was fairly nauseating. I will just say that what has been going on in the world over the last few  months has had me angry and depressed in equal measure, with just a few rays of hope (maybe just one).

I ought to explain myself a bit more. I really will try to write more frequently.

The value of an image

Technology Guardian of 27 November 2008 has a story about a church which used a couple of pictures on its website which were sourced from the Getty picture agency but without paying for them. Getty sent the church a demand for £6,000. I’ll talk about the rights and wrongs of this a bit later but it reminds me of one of my own experiences.

Some time ago I was involved in arranging a weekend meeting in a certain town (I am being coy about the name to avoid raising any legal hares).  We had to produce a booklet with the programme of the meeting and we wanted a cover picture which would attract people to the location. We gathered all sorts of images from websites, publicity brochures and so on and the one we all liked appeared on the town’s publicity brochure and, I think, their website. It was of a statue seen through droplets of water from a fountain, all glistening in the sun.

We could not have simply copied the picture even if we had wanted to, as we needed an original to get the required quality. We were going to ask the town publicity department – after all, we were going to publicise them. But then we had second thoughts: we were very short of time, the town might not have an original and they might not even own the copyright themselves. So a friend went out and took the very same picture and we used that. I think he even took the publicity brochure with him to make sure he got the angles right. I think we were legal there. I understood that it was the actual physical image, not the idea, which was copyright.

To come back to the church. I don’t know the details but they must have been very careless. They may have been in the wrong but the actions of Getty seem not less than rapacious – the article claims that the cost of actually licencing the pictures properly would have been just a couple of hundred pounds. And presumably the images were of their own church, so why did they not take their own pictures? My own company website has a picture of a well known local landmark. I took it myself but there must be very similar images in various picture agencies. I am sure I can prove I took it but perhaps I had better look for the original…

Showers and acupuncture

If at all possible, I take a shower every morning. Now you may be thinking that my personal bathing habits are a bit too much information but bear with me. Quite apart from any hygiene considerations, I feel much better after a shower. To a large extent that is understandable, particularly if I awake feeling a bit stuffed up. I guess it’s the hot moist air that helps. But there is something else. Even taking account of the difficulty of making objective judgements based on self-observation, I am convinced that having hot jets of water on the back of my neck give me an additional boost in addition to all the usual benefits of a morning shower.

I’ll return to this but first a digression on acupuncture.

A very good friend from university days, Stephen, became a GP although he is now retired. Some years before his retirement he did a course on acupuncture and operated a successful acupuncture clinic as part of his practice. Now, Stephen is a very rational person and I am a bit of a cynic about complementary therapies so I asked him once what it is all about. He replied with two points. If you itch, you scratch. A bit counter-intuitive that. You have an irritation which presumably arises from excessive firing of nerve endings and you cure it by stimulating those nerve endings even more. Second point. The classic acupuncture texts show diagrams with some sort of lines of force and key points (forgive me, I do speak from some ignorance here).  If you look at an anatomy textbook, those acupuncture diagrams are very similar to the diagrams of the nervous system of the human body.

So is acupuncture just a way of stimulating nerves? That sounds simple but I guess that knowing which nerves to stimulate is the difficult bit. Stephen also said that you don’t have to do it with needles – simple pressure can work. But needles do seem to be better. Maybe more stimulation or perhaps there is just a bit of psychology as well?

Back to my morning shower. I mentioned this back of the neck effect to Stephen and he said that is one of the key acupuncture points. So have I been giving myself a little acupuncture session every morning?

Channel Islands Fortifications

Being born in 1946, a large part of my schoolboy reading was based around the Second World War: the Dam Busters, Colditz Story, that sort of thing. One book which brought me up short was called, I think, “Islands in Danger” and described the occupation of the Channel Islands during the war. Most of the other books were pretty gung-ho but this was about a part of the UK which had been occupied. I hadn’t realised that had happened. (For anyone into Channel Islands history, the term ‘UK’ may not be appropriate but that is another story, going back to William, Duke of Normandy, in 1066.)

I have always wanted to visit the Channel Islands but somehow that never happened until just recently. It wasn’t a holiday, it was a visit with a group of bell ringers. We stayed on Guernsey and visited Jersey and Alderney one day by air to ring at the towers on those two islands. We had a couple of extra days, giving us the chance to walk some of the Guernsey coastline.

One thing which stood out was the immense effort the German occupiers put into fortifying the islands.  We saw a lot of it on the Guernsey coast and on Alderney, where we were given a thorough bus tour of the island in addition to ringing at St Anne’s church (and having our organiser interviewed by Radio Guernsey).  The work on Alderney has a sombre undertone: the inhabitants elected to be evacuated before the occupation and, I guess, away from any public gaze the fortifications were build by large numbers of slave labourers, mostly from Eastern Europe.  There is a memorial to them, and a plaque on the church wall, but their suffering and death in many cases deserves better recognition.

What struck us, looking at observation towers and gun batteries on the south west coast of Guernsey, was that all of this effort and suffering was in vain. The fortifications were never put to the test because the invasion of France passed them by.

My interest raised again, I bought a copy of “The German Occupation of the Channel Islands” by Charles Cruikshank in a book shop in St Peter Port. I am just getting into it but already I learn that, as early as the 1920s, the UK govenment decided that the Islands had no strategic importance. I am not a military strategist but it does make some sense: too near France to be defended by the British, too far from England to be useful to the Germans. Of course, the political significance is something else altogether.

Given this, why did Hitler insist that the Islands should be turned into a fortress? I suppose it was political – the significance of having occupied British soil. But what would have happened on D-Day if he had put all of that effort into strengthening the fortifications on the Normandy beaches. Playing the ‘what if’ game is dangerous, so I won’t continue.

I’ll just finish by saying that the seven towers we visited were some of the best-kept bells I have ever rung on, and that all of the Island bell ringers we met were most welcoming. A nice footnote to some rather sobering insights into the futility of war.

Graduation with trains

To Plymouth yesterday for #2 son’s graduation. He kept us waiting – he is 33 years old – but he has done well and we are proud of him. No A Levels so after working in various hotels he did a foundation course at Plymouth and was then accepted on a degree course. A really nice touch at the ceremony was that, as the academic procession went out at the end, they formed up into two lines and applauded the new graduates as they walked out between them. Do people go to university too young? I think that the life skills he gained working in hotels really helped him in his degree course and in the job he now has. And it was nice to see my 6 week old grandson again.

I travelled down from Bristol by train and really enjoyed it, especially for coastal bit for which I think I need to thank Isambard Kingdon Brunel. I’m not a train nut but I like trains. It might run in the blood as my paternal grandfather was an engine driver on the Great Eastern Railway, based variously at Dereham, King’s Lynn and Wisbech. He drove for a bit on the Wisbech to Upwell tramway. (Think Toby the Tram Engine for any Thomas the Tank Engine fans.) My Grammar school was alongside the King’s Lynn to Hunstanton line and formed a barrier between us and the local Secondary Modern (Oh dear, room for bags of social comment there).

Now, there was a level crossing, complete with crossing keeper, where the line crossed the main road next to the school. There is a level crossing just as you come into Exeter (home of the Met Office) St Davids station. When we crossed it yesterday and I saw the people, bikes and cars waiting I had a sudden surge of nostalgia. I remember standing by the crossing near what was to be my future school and seeing the Royal Train carrying the body of George VI back from Sandringham. I was only 6 years old then so I am not sure if it is a real memory or just a story I grafted onto things I had been told later. But I am sure I was there.

I am sure that when I was 10 or so I used to cycle down to North Wootton station (the first one up the Hunstanton line) to watch the trains. It was a rather quiet station and I remember being invited up into the signal box at one point. Would you let kids do that now?

Well, we have gone from a small boy watching trains to his son getting a BSc in Internet Technologies and Applications, all in one blog post. You can’t say you don’t get breadth.

Coriolis, bath water and science

It’s an interesting paradox that, while science is based on observation, any good scientist (or indeed any thinking person) will know that you can’t always believe what you see. This came home to me a while ago when having a light-hearted conversation about which way the bath water swirls as it goes down the plug hole. “This is a real effect”, a colleague said, “I saw it when I was on holiday in Africa”. Now, I’ve never been to Africa but what she was describing, which I have had confirmed by other people, is a way of extracting money from tourists in African countries which lie on the Equator.

When a tour bus arrives in a town bisected by the equator, usually conveniently indicated by a white line down the middle of the main street, a man will appear holding a large tin can with a small hole in the bottom. Holding his finger underneath the can on the hole , he fills it with water and adds a few leaves or twigs on the surface to show movement of the water. Standing on one side of the equator, he releases his finger, the water flows out and everyone can see which way it swirls out of the can. He then repeats the exercise on the other side of the equator and, lo, the water goes the other way. My colleague was convinced this was a real effect. She had seen it with her own eyes.

Now, the physics going on here is the Coriolis effect. I read about it in the “Feynman Lectures on Physics” which some relatives, both librarians, gave me the Christmas before my A-levels (bless them). Since then, nobody has told me that this is wrong (the Coriolis force, I mean, not getting nice Christmas presents). On the surface of the Earth the force varies with latitude – it is zero at the equator and a maximum at the poles. I freely admit I have not done the sums but, given the size of the Earth, I just can’t believe that walking a few yards to the other side of the road is going to change the direction and size of the force enough to affect the movement of a bit of water. If you lookat the way that ocean currents and winds circulate on the Earth, there is not much rotation quite a long way either side of the equator.

So there are two possibilities here. Either this is some effect unknown to physics or it is a trick. Maybe the guy gives the water a bit of a twirl as he pours it into the can. Occams Razor, or even just common sense, tells us that the first explanation is more likely.

So is there a paradox here? A paradox beween relying on obervation and not always believing what you see? Not, I think, if you are doing the science properly. I have said before that an observation on its own is no better than gossip – you need to try to fit it to an hypothesis. The hypothesis here is based on the effect of the Coriolis force, as seen in weather and ocean currents. If, as I suspect, calculation would show that the force is miniscule in a can of water then we need to seek an explanation – we need more data. One possible, and rather sneaky, way of doing this would be to take the man and his can to another location where the ‘equator’ is marked out, unkown to him, a mile or so away from the real equator. I bet he would still demonstrate water going both ways, especially if there were tourists there to give him some money. This isn’t judging such people, by the way. Good luck to them. I would do the same thing if I had to live in the sort of poverty that most people in Africa experience.