As you get older things grow on you

As you get older things grow on you.  I don’t mean as you age, you grow fond of things.  I mean they actually take root and grow on you.  For example, hair will suddenly sprout with unexpectedly luxuriousness from your nose and other areas where it never usually appears.  It is not an endemic phenomena as normal head hair becomes fragile, thin and sparse.  It is as if a gardener formally ordered and careful with his borders has suddenly decided to fertilise everywhere but the flower gardens.  He seems to have developed a sense of humour about where he finds to place seeds.  “This will be good for a laugh!” seems to be his overall horticultural intent. 

If it were only hair, things would not be so bad.  But other skin growths seem to have caught the gardener’s sense of humour.  They appear willy-nilly on a shoulder, forearm, under an eye or the back of a hand etc.  You examine them with poor eyesight wondering what is the punch line here?  Late at night if unable to sleep, they become harbingers of death and your thoughts run amok fear filled.  Perhaps these two jokers will combine against you – the hair and the growths?  So you wage a war against the hair so that you will be able to see the other enemy.  Clear away the undergrowth so that these lumps cannot sneak up under cover so to speak.  It’s quite exhausting and becomes a war of attrition with daily battles fought to stay on top of things.  At times, eyesight failing, you want to throw in the towel it is easy to succumb to the inevitable.  This taking care of oneself requires such continual effort.

My grandfather said it was vital during the war.  Coming back from the Somme and other horrors he rarely spoke of what went on in those fields of horror.  We knew he had been mentioned in dispatches, that he had been wounded in the arm but these did not come from him.  They were either said of him or done to him.  The only thing I remember him telling me about the war was the importance of looking after your feet in the trenches.  He told of trenches filled with muddy dirty water.  Of boots and socks soaked through.  The rats were as big as cats.  He said they had to be meticulous with cleaning your feet, washing and drying them as you would a new born babe.  Being careful of creases, drying them thoroughly.  Then using only clean dry socks cover them and lace on your boots.  Any small sore spotted required immediate action.  In those damp conditions ‘foot rot’ could easily set in.  The first sign would be a numbness followed by redness and blueness.  Gangrene would follow and amputation the only solution. 

As my grandfather told of his feet care in the trenches he said how his life depended on good foot care.  This extended to his boots which were polished and heated with candles to dry and let the shoe polish penetrate properly.  Then elbow grease did the rest.  I remember how his arm flew as he beat upon the shoe to demonstrate the technique.  “You have to see your face in it”, he explained.  Of course those boots would be sodden and caked in mud again soon enough but it seemed this ritual of feet cleaning and caring for this boots were his defense against the war and the elements.  His army tunic hung in the garage for years, stiff and bloodstained with the hole in the arm where he had been wounded.

Today, I tried to find out exactly what he was mentioned in dispatches for. I know it was on the 16 March 1919 from Sir Douglas Haig.  Loads of websites offered me information, if I paid, but I refused to pay.  I eventually found Douglas Haig’s entire collection of dispatches in book form and begin to download the huge file.  I am hoping to solve this mystery that occurred almost one hundred years ago, once and for all.    I am downloading the file as I write this. 

Reading of the battle of the Somme on 1^st of July 1916 there were 60,000 casualties on the first day.  The battle raged until 18 Nov 1916 and at its end neither side had advanced any further from where they had started on day 1.  But, in that short period 1.5 million were lying in the mud dead, wounded or missing.  Perversely, I learn, that the British soldiers were ordered to go over the top and walk (not run) to the German lines, so convinced were the generals that their earlier bombardment had taken out German artillery.  They were wrong and so 60,000 men simply walked into live rounds of ammunition and got mown down.  Anyone who refused to clamber out of the trenches was usually shot by their own officers for cowardice.  In this mindless battlefield the suffering cannot be imagined nor described.  The fear and horror hard to grasp.  My grandfather never spoke of it, perhaps because there were no words.  But focused instead on the one thing, care of his feet, that sustained him through it.  After the war he returned to his quiet village corner shop.  He was  a different man.  Whatever had happened on those dreadful dying grounds had made him lose all fear.  Nothing life sent changed that.  Two customers entered his shop with guns threatening to shoot each other.  He vaulted over the counter and threw both of them out off his shop, after cuffing them both, without a seconds thought.  He had crossed a line that most of us will not cross until our deathbeds.  It’s been said by Shakespeare that

"Cowards die many times before their deaths,
The valiant never taste of death but once." 

I am curious to know what happened that had caused the mention in dispatches from the front line on the 16 March 1919.  I search the file and there is no mention of my grandfather’s name.  I check the London Gazzette that records most of the names of those mentioned but not all.  Again no success, I read that regiment diaries often contain such details and check out his regiment’s account.  How thrilling to find Benjamin Stringer mentioned in an account in Spanbroekmolen on the 4 June 1917 were he is mentioned heading of with others to attack a trench of Germans.  They killed twenty and took prisoner a German officer and 31 prisoners.  My grandfather is wounded in the fight and I realise this is the bullet hole in the arm of his jacket.  It is as if the past is here again and my grandfather is polishing his shoes to a military shine and explaining the importance of caring for feet.  Today has been epic and moving in a strange way.  As if things have come full circle and I was meant to find this today.  Life threw horrors and difficulties his way but his answer was to focus on what he could do on a daily basis to strengthen himself.  So, perhaps all of us need to find those small precious rituals that will sustain us when we face the impossible.  May you find yours!

Hugging our treasure troves of identity

Returned triumphant today Identity Card in hand!  Spent the morning in a long line of Nigerian, Somalia, Eritrea and Syrians and waited for an hour to collect it.  Began by feeling very sorry for my fellow queue members.  It seems work permits/ID officers, the world over; seek to instill Job-like patience in their clients.  I remember in Greece having a practical suitcase of documents, wedding certificate, utility bills, passport, qualifications - translated in Greek and stamped by relevant authorities (25 pounds per document), my birth certificate, work contract, bank statement, drivers licence, rental agreement only to be asked for my grandmother’s birth certificate!  No wonder all around me people clasp to their chests their own paperwork.  Armed with documents signed and stamped, those without such armour gradually feel a growing fear as they approach the official window. Some lose heart and scurry away from the field of battle and with each one that flees the rest of us hug our precious paperwork a little tighter. How precious they have become, shielding us from the public humiliation of failure and defeat.

One Somali woman cloaked in a long chador dropped her papers by accident.  Her head covering had caught on the corner of a sheet causing an avalanche of documents in all directions.   Everyone is shocked by her carelessness and she throws herself on her knees on top of the paperwork obviously expecting others to seize this treasure trove of identity.  Frantically, she retrieves them eyes scanning in case she has missed a vital one.  The rest of us hug our armour a little closer to our hearts in case we too falter on the eve of battle.

By now I am not so sympathetic to my fellow ID hunters.  An hour has passed and the three men in front look and sound like a Nigerian drug cartel.  The large lady pushing me from behind, with a colourful head scarf, has not only a horrendous hacking cough (with my luck it is probably Ebola) and her face is covered in weeping sores especially around her mouth and nose.  Now, I am suddenly of the opinion there should be two queues one for EU citizens and the other for non-EU characters.  I have noted the lack of UK queuing etiquette in front.  One fidgeting man with a woollen hat filled with hair braids thinks he is entitled to allow all family members, friends and passing acquaintances to jump in beside him in the queue.  I am impressed at how quickly one’s sympathy can turn to resentment in the mist of inconvenience and discomfort.

Much of Southern Europe has experienced this sea change.  As the economic situation deteriorates people have turned on immigrants/refugees with depressing consistency.  It appears inbred in our species that when things become difficult we need to blame someone.  Usually, we round on our governments who in turn will find a convenient scapegoat to deflect that anger on.  The invading foreigners are a good bet.  Easily identified and fairly defenseless they make handy targets for our discontentment.

The Mediterranean islands are becoming the front-line of the exodus of despair from Africa and the Middle East.  Many don’t make it to these shores and meet a watery death instead.  We never hear their last gasp for air as the sea consumes them.  But the rotting corpses create their own gas and this final fermentation of the life force raises them from the depths.  Their rotting bodies expose the vile/violent regimes that they have fled from and the corrupt/distracted governments to whom they flee for safety. 

In a bit of a sushi pickle

Was a little cruel.  Yesterday evening Daniel and I went for a walk along the sea front towards St Jullian’s Bay from Sliema.  Feeling a bit peckish we decided to get a take out from a Japanese sushi restaurant.  I knew I had 13 euros but the cheapest selection on offer was 17 euros.  So I told Daniel to go ahead and order while I walked to the nearest cash dispenser along the road to get some more money.  It was his anxious, “Don’t be too long” as I left that gave me the idea.  The walk to get the money took longer than I expected and when I returned to the restaurant Daniel looked relieved to see me come through the door.  But, his face fell when I told him,

“The hole in the wall machine took my card!”

Daniel was panicked, “What! I don’t have my wallet with me”

I complained bitterly about losing my card and Daniel pointed out,

“They have already started preparing the food, what shall we do?”

I told him,

“Look we’ll explain the situation and they’ll understand, I can come back tomorrow and pay them then.”

Daniel looked at me as if I was crazy, “They won’t let us take the food without paying!”

There was a whole table of men dressed in posh suits eating at a long table next to us so we had to whisper to keep our situation to ourselves.

We argued to and fro and he was getting annoyed with the whole mortification of the situation.  I suggested we offer to wash dishes to pay for the meal.  He said angrily that would not work.  I came up with a whole string of equally useless suggestions (including running for the door) and he held his head in his hands in despair telling me to be quiet so he could think.

When, I eventually told him that I had actually got the money from the cash dispenser the look he gave me was priceless.  Don’t even ask why I do such things.  I have completely no idea!  I laughed all the way home delighted with the entertainment and the sushi.

Supernovas and Us

A supernova exploded this week!

supernova

http://www.physicscentral.com/explore/poster-stardust.cfm

A supernova, a single star, explodes quickly

With the brilliance of a whole galaxy

For only a few days/weeks it illuminates

The black space around

Blasting out elements and gas

In the grandest of all firework displays

It can radiate as much energy in a flash

As our Sun would give in its entire life span

Only at the supernova’s temperatures of incubation

heavy elements such as carbon, oxygen or silicon are born

Since our bodies have within us these heavy elements

Each of us contain the remnants of these supernovas

Not a tiny fragment of stardust hidden

In some incidental crevice of fat or muscle

No, 93% of our body is stardust

Perhaps within us is burned the memory

Of that bright beginning

That’s why we spend our lives

Searching for the light within and without

O SON OF BEING!

Thou art My lamp and My light is in thee. Get thou from it thy radiance and seek none other than Me. For I have created thee rich and have bountifully shed My favour upon thee.

            (Baha'u'llah, The Arabic Hidden Words)

We are not rich by what we possess

Went for a long walk along Manoel Island in Malta and inspected the massive super yachts moored there.  As you walk along the peer the absolute luxury of these boats fuels a rage deep within.  It has to do with that excess display of wealth that is just plain annoying and obscene.  I know you are probably asking why I do this to myself or you?    But there is a masochistic compulsion to view how the other half lives in all of us.  So join me on the peer.

One of the largest is the Indian Empress, owned by Vijay Mallya it is massive and he earned his money in creating Kingfisher airlines.  

The sun deck is particularly expansive.

Walking on a little we come to the boat My Amore which you can buy for a mere million I think. 

It has a lovely broad body but the ugliest cut off nose.  When you look side on you would see what I mean.  But who cares about noses when you can have this sort of space in your life?

Moving on quickly I come to the Zarina.  It makes its neighbour seem shoddy/cheap coming in at around 7 million.  It is a different world out here on the peer.  After all even wealth is relative.

It is spacious inside too.  But the deck has that extra luxury factor that just is unfair.  It reminds you that  these people have time to eat on their deck and sit in their Jacuzzi - dam them! 

Inside the opulence continues.

I could go on and on but I have had enough of this torture.  It is comforting to think that I could not afford to fill the fuel tanks of these monsters never mind mooring fees/crew salaries.  I walk away comforted that all these monsters bleed their owners of cash and not me.  After all, in the words of  Immanuel Kant

“We are not rich by what we possess but by what

we can do without.” 

―

The Unexpected Conversation - back where we started!

There is a scene in Jurassic Park (the first and in my opinion the best by far) where the hero and a boy race down a huge tree followed by a jeep which threatens to crush them as it fails, slowly breaking branches behind them.  It always struck me as unfair that in a movie where dinosaurs (already pretty unlikely) have been trying to kill you that even the inanimate object (the jeep) should also endeavour to end your life.  However, the scene serves to get pulses racing as they scamper down the tree chased by the rogue jeep.  They succeed in reaching the ground only to find themselves back in the open topped jeep as it falls over them.  There is a humorous line where the boy points out that they are back in the vehicle again, exactly where they started.

I too, found myself with feelings of deja view as I perched on the front seat of the school mini bus heading home.  It struck me as ironic that after half a century I was back on a school bus surrounded by kids aged 3-17 again.  Not that I enjoyed it the first time.  It’s not one of those life events that are so good you wish to repeat it.  If some one had told me I’d be back where I started in a school bus I’d have laughed in disbelief.  But, one of the joys of school buses when you are older is that instead of obsessing about the spot on your nose, a lad you fancy on the back seat or fearing the bully near the door, at fifty plus you can enjoy the objective analysis of what actually happens on school buses.  Today, two small twin girls are talking animatedly together.  The school always separates twins into different classes.  It is either to allow them to develop independently or to confuse teachers like me who find identical twins impossible to tell apart or name.  These two have obviously missed each other and spend the bus ride home foreheads almost touching as they lisp the day’s events at school to each other.  A bigger boy beside them asks.

“Which of you is the older twin?”

This prompts much lisping between the girls as they lean even closer to each other whispering together and then one responds emphatically,

“We are both the same age!”

The older boy snorts in annoyance and in a worldly ‘know it all’ tone snaps

“One of you had to come out first.  You couldn’t be born side by side coming out of your mother!”

The two twins confer again and I am concerned where this conversation could end up.  I fear a lot of education/miss-education takes place on school buses.  My youngest son was told in authoritative tones that all of humanity came from a vending machine operated by a space travelling monkey (it was a complicated but strangely plausible story) by a fellow bus traveller from school.  All our and his teachers’ attempts to replace this fiction met with failure for months.  This tale of space travelling monkeys had its own appeal to my four-yearold son and he was reluctant to part with it.  So, I listen in to this conversation ready to intervene if this becomes explicit or more graphic for these five-year-old twins.  However, they are more than up for this conversational gambit and respond unexpectedly with

“We were born by circumcision, at the same time”

The older boy is silenced by the mention of this medical term and blushes crimson red for the rest of the journey.  I have to cover my mouth to avoid bursting out laughing at the whole exchange.  Being back where you started can be really funny.

DRAGGING MY ENTRAILS BEHIND ME

It was crazy really my being here in Brussels. Once, I had been a scientist but had no justification as masquerading as one now.   Twenty years of child rearing, part-time education stuff all did not serve to keep the physics I once knew fresh and updated. Escaping to a Greek island for almost a decade, now felt ridiculously arty and unforgivable.  The only reason I was here at all was due to legislation recently passed requiring all EU funding panels to have 40% women at least.  Scrambling to find enough female physicists my application had wound its way through because of mutual desperation. They were destitute of women physicists and I was eager to earn money. It was marriage of necessity not love.  Both parties were worldly wise and cynical about the whole seedy affair. My goal was to do the job. Sit on a science funding panel and make decisions as to which application got EU backing.  With luck I could return home unscarred and financially better off.  It is a little known fact that when you live on an island in the Mediterranean and get employed in northern times even a part-time salary is rich pickings compare to locals earnings.  I had managed to pull of my first session as an independent science adviser for the EU in Brussels two years previously and did what was expected despite my misgivings so that made the whole trip this time less crazy. Not wanting to fall victim to the rip-off prices of Brussels hotels I stayed not in the luxury hotel complexes but a dire section of Brussels in a real armpit of a hotel.  It felt tricky but with a bit of luck I felt I could do this once again.

Administrators Rule the world

EU funding in the science field is decided by panels of independent science advisers who come from all over Europe to consult together as to the worth of online applications for funding.  Having had a chance, at home, to mark these applications online against the grading criteria set up by the EU funding regulations this week in Brussels was about us reaching agreement in panels of three members face-to-face. We may have been using the same criterion but, human nature being diverse, scientists in the room can have endless takes on the benefits of proposals. At times I felt strangely heartened as many of my intuitive feelings about proposals seems spot-on.  For example, one excellent applicant seemed well-qualified had superb references, international experience in impressive labs, but I queried the fact that with all these periods in state of the art research establishments the applicant had never built on or maintained any relationships with the previous research groups. To me I smelt a rat.  He was either as odd as can be or quite deeply unpleasant neither of which characteristics is worthy of funding for yet another expensive research study abroad. The goal was to send good minds abroad to a 4 star research establishment so that they could bring their excellence back into the EU.  Sending a brilliant but socially handicapped one would be a waste of limited resources. If he hadn't got on with the group in CERN, Tokyo or Copenhagen odds were he would also fall out with the Americans. Given that I did use this all from an application written by the guy it pleased me no end when my colleagues on the panel who knew the applicant bore out my initial misgivings. I told myself that even if my physics was rusty my intuition had not atrophied and was surprisingly spot on. My confidence grew when on the third day I went through another application.  I spotted beneath the wording on computer simulation activities in the project that this person actually was going to China and intended running a nuclear power plant in critical mode to test the strength of the computer model he had designed.  I had a meeting with the French nuclear physicist a fellow panel member who was convinced the whole project was merely a software simulation. After two hours of poring over the proposed he started cursing in French as he realised this applicant actually wanted funding from the EU to deliberately run a real nuclear reactor into critical mode. He'd obviously already got permission from the Chinese authorities to use one of their plants. The two of us informed the ethical committee of our anxiety and moral issues with this plan which we both felt should and could never be EU funded. That evening as I made my way through the grubby hotel lobby I felt like Clint Eastwood when he’s saved the day.  Fool, fool!  Little did I know the humiliation that was only a day or two away.

Dragging my entrails behind me

Each group in Brussels has a team of administrators who have grown in influence and number, seeing to their needs, directing events, providing training etc  These bureaucrats are seriously worried that scientists will get them into trouble.  So having learned from past disasters think of new more complicated hoops to protect themselves from complaints/criticism or litigation. With each year the list of requirements grew ever more onerous.  This particular year they had decided that when submitting the final reports we should not mention any names of people involved.  Obviously, there was too much chance of someone saying “Charlie has not enough experience.”  When perhaps the applicants name was Charlene.  Such mistakes suggest to the applicant that a complete idiot has read their time consuming thirty page application form and make them question the EU’s ability to make coherent and fair decisions.  Equally unforgivable is not naming the research group correctly, either the one the applicant comes from or the place where they wish to travel to.  So all names of research venues had to be eliminated as well.  Given that previous reports had claimed that certain qualifications were not sufficient to justify funding no mention of qualifications, geographical or institutional should be included either.  Projects themselves should not be mentioned in final reports either because a report mentioning spin coupling is a worthy direction to fund could inadvertently show that the report writer had no notion of the actual project intent.  So there you have it the final report on each applicant had to consist of vague statements that stayed clear of science/activity/applicant/research purpose or place/qualifications/names of referees etc.  So bland and uniform did these final documents become that I could not even identify which original project there were detailing.  That may seem entirely reasonable to you but in the world of physics the landscape is sufficiently small that internationally and good physicist in the field will know by name the good research groups and what they specialize in.  Leaders in various fields will be known for their strengths and weaknesses much as football supporters will tell you the names of players on various teams.  I know no footballers names nor physicists.  I am blissfully ignorant of research teams and so when it came to the final plenary session I came to it ill prepared and virtually illiterate.  The previous plenary a couple of years before had only dwelt on the top twenty projects which would receive funding and since none of the projects I had been involved in had reached this stage it seemed I could relax.  We were instructed  to get rid of our papers and notes on the applications.  So I had shredded all my painstaking background research into the quality of publications, research groups etc  Because I knew nothing I had to do a lot more digging to find information.  Once all this was disposed off the only thing we were asked to keep was our final reports that would be sent to participants.  These vague stripped reports meant nothing to me and as I sat there with only these bland musings on my lap I felt the beginning of fear.  Last time only the top funded projects were picked out at random for the experts to speak to as to why they awarded funding to this project.  But the bureaucrats had the last laugh, they had changed the format and projects both passed and rejected were pulled at random from the mix and experts would have to defend/explain their decision.  I remember looking around in distress as one by one projects were called out and experts got their feet to eloquently explain what the project was about and its strengths and weaknesses.  Sweat broke out on my brow as I carefully examined the bland stripped moronic reports about my projects on my lap.  With no name whatsoever there was nothing to distinguish one from another.  I wanted to scream and sank lower in my chair as expert after expert got to their feet and elaborated on their projects.  Shit! shit! Shit!  I write these three times because three times my projects were picked at random and three times I rose to my feet among my peers and stood like an Irish version of Mr Bean describing that work of art as a large painting. 

The humiliation even as I write this comes back to haunt me and I blush in memory of that fateful afternoon.  I returned home humiliated beyond words and am reasonably sure my name is recorded and retold in physics circles and throughout Europe as the independent science adviser who could not remember one solitary fact about any of her projects for which she was responsible.  That might as I checked out of my dismal hotel it was with a deep inner conviction that I deserved such a zombie landscape.  In the words of Buzz Light Year, “One minute you are a superhero and the next you are supping down Darjeeling” and feeling an utter moron!