Put an upturned bucket over a patch of grass in your garden. Lift the bucket every day and take a look, then re-cover the patch… How long does it take for the grass to die?
What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every few days.
Click to enlarge
Trees provide shade, most welcome on a hot day, and they provide shelter when it rains (though this may be unwise during thunderstorms).
But notice the absence of grass beneath these conifers. Shade and shelter are exactly what other plants don’t need; they depend on plenty of light and water to enable them to grow. Light is essential as it provides the energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, and water is essential as the raw material for this process. The oxygen is released into the atmosphere, while the hydrogen is bonded with carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to make energy-storing sugars for use at night and to build cellulose, the main support molecule that gives stems, branches and tree trunks their strength.
The lack of light and water under tree canopies creates a kind of local desert. You can see this clearly in the photo from the presence and absence of grass. So how do the trees survive? That’s a great question! Their roots spread out widely and deep, far enough to reach moist soil and deep ground water. In persistent rain, water drips from the drenched leaves above. And root, trunk and branch all contain stores of water so a tree can cope with a long, dry summer far better than the grass can.
Light
Here’s an experiment anyone can do. Put an upturned bucket over a patch of grass in your garden. Lift the bucket every day and take a look, then re-cover the patch. See how long it takes for the grass to turn yellow. How long does it take for the grass to die?
For plants, light is essential. There are some animals that live in dark caves or underground, with no light. Earthworms are a good example, but like all animals they get their food by consuming plants and other animals. But for most creatures, including us humans, light is essential nonetheless. Whether we are plant eaters (like cows and sheep) or meat eaters (like lions and wolves) or omnivores eating either or both (like humans and rats) we still need light to see in order to find and identify the things we must eat to stay alive.
Water
For plants, water is part of their ‘food’, it’s needed to make sugars. For animals water is of no value as food, but it’s essential to prevent dangerous dehydration. All animals know when they’re thirsty and they’ll find water and drink to keep themselves alive. Think of a man lost in a desert, the cartoons have him croaking out, ‘Water.. Water..’ Imagine someone unable to find water, they’d die of thirst long, long before they died of hunger. Most of us would be in danger after a few days without drinking, but we could live for several weeks with nothing to eat. And of course, if you are a fish too little water would mean you couldn’t breathe, and if you were a land animal too much would mean you would drown.
Spiritual (not religious)
The idea of essentials has been carried over into spiritual ideas too. Light and water (and food) are so clearly necessary for life that they make good analogies and illustrations. What did Jesus mean when he said, ‘I am the way, the truth and the life’? Or when he explained to the Samaritan woman at the well that he would provide water that never runs out, or when he told his followers, ‘I am the bread of life’ or ‘I am the light of the world’?
He was simply saying, I am essential, you can’t live without me. I’m necessary for life. Just as in the physical world, how would it feel to live in the dark, without water and without sustenance? How long would you last? How long would I last?
Many people today feel sure there is no spiritual aspect to life at all, it’s just about living your life in the here and now and then dying from accident, illness, or just old age. Others think there’s much more to life than that. At the very least there are moral and philosophical truths to consider. We should care for one another, help one another, and cooperate in helpful and kind ways.
Food for thought. Let me know below how you think about the essentials of life. Do you have any thoughts to share on this?
If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome!
By the end of the month they were in a Bombay transit camp and able to visit the city, armed now with Rupees in place of the sterling cash they’d handed in aboard the ship. (1945)
June 2025 (3 months before publishing this article)
Click pics to enlarge
Jim and Kevin
We had a visit from our friends Jim and Kevin from St Neots. They were on their way to a meeting in Swindon and needed to pass nearby, so decided to travel early and visit us for lunch. We enjoyed the food at The Greyound in Siddington, sitting out in their garden.
Donna’s laptop failed, it booted into the BIOS but didn’t list the hard drive as present, so I assumed it was a corrupt BIOS or some faulty memory. It turned out to be a faulty memory chip soldered on the motherboard so it couldn’t be repaired and she had to replace it. She bought a Lenovo with an Intel Core i5 chip and is very pleased with it.
The flower show
We visited Avebury and checked out some EVs in Swindon on the way home, and we spent a day at Blenheim Palace to see the flower show and the Churchill Museum.
On the last day of the month we bought a 2-year-old Nissan Leaf EV from Cinch in Bristol. So we’ve finally gone electric! We weren’t able to drive away with it, but we paid the money and got the paperwork under way for collection a few days later.
Donna dropped me off at the Daneway Inn and I walked the canal from the Daneway tunnel portal to the locks at Siddington, and then back along the Cirencester arm and home. Including some diversions to see other parts of the canal, I walked about 15 miles in all.
The political situation in the world remained very strange. I was trying to come to terms with the dreadful (and very unpresidential) outburst in the White House against Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy; but on the good side, it seemed that European nations including the UK were becoming more alert to the dangers posed by Russia under President Putin and at last we were preparing to defend ourselves should that become necessary.
Colombia
Our grandson, Aidan, set out on a South American adventure and was on the north coast of Columbia by the end of the month. He flew to New York and spent a few days there, then a second flight took him to Bogota and he bussed north to the Colombian Caribbean coast where he took this photo. Much more of the continent lies ahead for him to explore.
The crazy tangle of roots after removal from our drains
Our drains started making gurgling noises and there was a bad smell in the upstairs bathroom, when I lifted an inspection cover on the patio, I found it was full of roots, but after removing them the problems were immediately resolved with even more gurgling.
Visiting Anglesey Abbey
We visited St Neots to see friends and explored Anglesey Abbey, one of our favourite National Trust sites in the area.
For the first half of the month we were in Weston-Super-Mare. We spent a fair proportion of the time in Grove Park as that’s where the dogs expect to go for exercise and a sniff around each day. Donna was delighted to see Mrs Sqirrel finishing off a banana, close up and quite unafraid. I was able to capture this photo.
With Tony and Faith
We met Tony and Faith in Clarence Park and it was great to chat with them. Dan is in Cambridge these days working as a Fellow at one of the colleges. They are such good friends from a much earlier part of my life so it was a real treat to see them again.
I collected Paul and Vanessa from the railway station in Weston following their Croatian holiday. And back in Stratton, our builder came to look at the job in advance of work starting to insert additional lintels above the existing concrete ones.
My friend Phil and I walked from South Cerney along the route of the Thames and Severn Canal and back along the old railway line. It was an enjoyable walk in good weather and with interesting conversation along the way for good measure. A thoroughly enjoyable day.
Coffee in Stroud
Confirmed cases of COVID-19 were still rising, this continued to be an alarming pandemic. On 20th we took Isobel over to Stroud, introducing her to Minchinhampton and Rodborough Commons and the ‘Lock Keeper’s Cafe’ on the canal in Stroud.
Donna and I gave Isobel a Chromebook for her birthday. These desktop devices are cheap and very easy to use but they have limited lifetimes as the Google software becomes more and more demanding. But still, we think it will be far more usable for Isobel than Windows which she’s been struggling with; it’s just too complex, but the Chromebook is simple and easy by comparison.
JHM: I posted a very amusing COVID-19 risk assessment chart; and described an encounter with an elephant hawk moth caterpillar. World events: At 93, Benedict XVI became the longest-lived Pope; and the number of COVID cases worldwide passed 25 million.
Sara’s birthday party was on 5th September this year. She had friends round to the Village Hall in Thorganby where Debbie had arranged for a series of animals to be brought in for stroking, handling and so forth by the children. This was followed by hand washing and the party food and cake with candles.
VHS to DVD
I was copying my old VHS cassettes with family videos on them to DVD to save the contents for future use. Once I had the DVDs it was easy to create ISO files from them to store with all my other family history material. The photo shows the current state of this work on 3rd September.
World events:Elizabeth II had been on the throne for 63 years and 217 days, becoming the longest-reigning British monarch in history; and Gravitational waves were detected for the first time.
We held two Cornerstone Directors Meetings in September, mainly to review the launch and consider what would be needed for the continuing catering and outreach. The meetings did not go smoothly and it became clear that the manager, Paul (who had also provided the funding for the launch) had ideas of his own that didn’t chime well with the rest of us. It was a worrying start to what we’d hoped would be a successful and long term presence of a Christian bookshop and cafe in St Neots. I began taking photos for advertising purposes (see above).
I visited Thorganby for Sara’s birthday, but unfortunately have no photos of the occasion. Jim, Sean and I began meeting with our friend David from New Zealand (working in London). We met in a pub in Watton-at-Stone.
We went on a cruise holiday with Donna’s Mum and Dad aboard the Thomson ‘Emerald’. Initially we flew to Corfu and joined the cruise from there. We left Corfu after nightfall and woke up in Brindisi, Italy. The following day was stormy and rough so we skipped our planned stop at Ravenna and reached Trieste, a truly beautiful city.
Inside a Roman building
The next stop was Venice, and then Split on the Adriatic coast. The Roman Emperor Diocletian built a palace here and the central part of the city is built inside the old palace walls. Several Roman buildings remain partially or completely intact. Next was Dubrovnik and then back to Corfu where we met our old friends Geoff and Dawn before flying back to the UK.
Mum’s arteritis seemed to be coming under control at last. She had been on regular doses of steroids to save her eyesight but now the dose levels were being slowly and cautiously reduced.
Back at work at Unilever, I was helping renew the Colworth Travel website, previously a Lotus Notes system.
World events: Israel demolished multiple settlements and withrew its army from the Gaza strip; and controversial drawings of Muhammad were printed in a Danish newspaper.
We finished redecorating our lounge in September, in a relaxing, cool, pale green colour. Now all that remained was to bring the furniture back in from what used to be the dining room. The decorating took a long time because I restored the surface of the walls first by filling scratches and holes, then hand sanding the filler. After painting it looked as good as if we’d replastered the entire room.
A group of us from Unilever Colworth travelled to Amsterdam to meet colleagues from the Vlaardingen lab and staff from Info.nl, the computing company developing the replacement for WebForum for us (probably to be called Research onLine).
Roman Londinium
At the end of the month I visited the Museum of London where Roman Londinium was illustrated by reconstructions and models. The photo shows a Roman ship at the quayside in the Roman town.
World events: The Nokia 3310 mobile phone was released; and Microsoft released the Windows Me operating system.
Judy worked hard on collating and indexing her collection of photos. The meetings with Tony, Faith, Paul and Jenny were going well by this time. on 16th the six of us ate at Tony and Faith’s, and at Paul and Jenny’s on 22nd. We hosted sometimes as well. and afterwards we always had an outstanding meeting.
Lynmouth
We met Cindy and Paul at Dyrham Park on 17th and ate cream teas in the Orangery; Judy’s NHS loan wheelchair arrived on 20th and we used it to give her an outing to Lynmouth for a stroll a few days later.
It was getting steadily more difficult to treat Judy’s pain so her GP put her on an improved pain management routine; it seemed to work really well for which we were both very grateful.
I was working at Long Ashton Research Station (LARS) in a PC support role and was just starting to look at networking Windows 95 using the Microsoft networking software instead of Trumpet Winsock. LARS was sounding enthusiastic about hosting my Microscopy web pages on the LARS web server.
World events: The Italian ex-Prime Minister, Giulio Andreotti, went on trial accused of Mafia connections; while The Washington Post and The New York Times published the Unabomber Manifesto.
We visited the Bristol Kite Fiesta at Ashton Gate, but it was not a good day for kites as there was insufficient wind to display them well. Everyone did their very best, but it was not quite the spectacle it might have been. Nonetheless we enjoyed our day out in the sunshine and bought a few items, Debbie bought a two-line kite.
Garden party
We also visited Cirencester to spend time with my Mum and Dad, and Bibury, where Cindy and Paul had a big garden party. Fortunately the weather was kind, if it had been wet their house would have been massively overcrowded, I think.
World events: Presidents Bush and Gorbachev meet in Helsinki to discuss the Persian Gulf crisis; and the two German states and the Four Powers signed the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany in Moscow, paving the way for German reunification.
With our holiday over, we began working on the house and garden at Stowey Road after our move from Rectory drive in August. In the photo I’m adjusting the levels where there was a dip in the back grass. There used to be a rhyne here (the local word for a drainage ditch) and the ground had subsided over time.
Walking to school
Debbie and Beth started back at junior school, just a short walk across the road for both of them. Beth was in her first year at junior school while Debbie was already in her fourth year, moving on to secondary school at Backwell in September 1986.
World events: The wreck of the Titanic was located; and a powerful earthquake struck Mexico City killing and injuring tens of thousands of people.
Here are Debbie and Beth riding on the beach donkeys at Weston-super-Mare. Grandad is leading the donkeys. In the background you can see the Beach Hotel and, on the right, part of the grand pier.
Beth, Nana and Debbie
Beth was nearly 2½-years-old and Debbie 5½. Judy was just about to begin a teaching career having earned her qualification before Debbie was born while we were still living in our flat in St Andrew’s, Bristol. I was working at Long Ashton Research Station on fruit crop pollination, and with the Open University summer school behind me, getting back to working through the next topics and submitting assignments.
World events: The Gotthard Road Tunnel opened in Switzerland as the world’s longest highway tunnel, at 16.3 kilometres; and Iraq ordered its army to ‘deliver a fatal blow on Iranian military targets’, starting the Iran–Iraq War.
We visited Mum and Dad in Cirencester during September and went out with them for a walk at the gravel pits near South Cerney. The very poor photo is a still from some 8mm cine taken by Dad while Mum was looking after Debbie. Judy and I were walking along the bank of one of the lakes.
In addition to moving into a new house, we were also beginning to explore the village a bit, find out where to buy bread, groceries, decorating supplies and so forth, get to know our neighbours, and generally get to grips with our new surroundings. We began going along to Horsecastle Chapel at the other end of the village on Sunday mornings and get to know people there, and we began to think seriously about getting baptised.
Judy elected to stay at home to look after Debbie while I carried on working at Long Ashton, despite a promotion to Scientific Officer (SO) we were now less well off and with a monthly mortgage payment to find.
I was beginning to work more completely with Ray Williams’ Pollination Team consisting of Ruth, Myfanwy (Miv), and Val. My old boss Ken and I moved with the others into the Pollination House. Our old offices in the Wallace Lab were taken over by the Electron Microscopy Group under Dr Thomas.
Pete and Cindy went for a boat trip on the Thames, the photo shows Dad and Rachael taking photos just before they drove off from Churnside.
We were both starting to think seriously about what we would do once we were married, the date for that was 3rd October so very rapidly approaching. There were still a few remaining arrangements to make and we spent a little time on that. But our education was over and we had a BSc each. I’d written to Long Ashton Research Station (LARS) to ask if there were any posts available or likely to become available soon, and I drove down for an interview with Ken Stott who ran the Willow department. He was doing some research on growing willow and poplar as sources of biofuel for electricity generation and was looking for a new member of staff to help with girth and height measurements over a period of years to estimate the growth rates under different systems of management. It sounded promising but it would be a few weeks longer before I would hear the result. I’d done a three month industrial sandwich at LARS as part of my degree course, so they already knew me and I hoped that might help. And of course I was also keeping an eye on job openings with the Ministry of Agriculture and other horticultural businesses and organisations, but had found nothing promising so far.
Judy meanwhile was waiting to see when and where I would find work so that she could hunt for something in the same geographical area. She would take anything she could get at first, just a shop job or something like that. We couldn’t even begin looking for a bedsit or small flat until we knew where we’d be based. We’d decided to spend a week in Bournemouth for our honeymoon but couldn’t plan beyond that. Added to that, our savings were very limited.
World events:Jimi Hendrix gave his last public performance, two days before his death; and US President Nixon visited the UK and other European states.
In September my grandparents and Aunt Annabelle were visiting from Ireland. The photo list shows that Dad took some photos at the time. Click the image to read the detail. They visited Blenheim Palace and Coventry Cathedral during their visit.
Following our August adventures in Scotland, the Explorers’ Club held an evening meeting at the Grammar School for parents and other family members to hear all the details. Part of the preparation for this was to draw some very large maps to show the journeys and walks we had done with coastlines, mountain peaks and towns marked clearly. The way this had always been done in the past was to mark a grid of squares on the paper and then copy any lines or shapes we required from the grid squares on the ordnance survey maps of the area. This was time consuming, so I photographed the OS maps on transparency film and we projected the slides onto the large sheets to get more accurate maps with far less time and effort. Mr Castle who led the Explorers’ Club could immediately see the sense of this so the new method was adopted.
I became a bronze prefect at the beginning of term, and part of that role with two other prefects was checking the register every morning for a third form class upstairs in the Red Brick Building. Once the teacher arrived for their first lesson our work for the day was over and we could get along to our own first lesson or, if it was a free period, work in the prefects’ common room. One of the other prefects was Judith Hill, we really liked one another and just over five years later we were married, but that’s the story of how we first met. I have to add that the third years were incredibly hard to manage – and Judy was far better at it than I was. The third team member was Hilary Howell, one of Judy’s best friends and the daughter of my Physics teacher.
I was in the Upper Sixth while Judy was Lower Sixth, but it turned out that we were in the same Zoology classes. Because the Grammar School was only three-form entry (about 90 pupils per year) and because only 30% or so stayed on for sixth form and biology was not a popular A level choice, the A level biology classes were very small, maybe five or six pupils a year. As a result, half the syllabus was taught to Upper and Lower Sixth one year and the other half the following year as this was more efficient use of staff time. So Judy and I were learning the same topics and doing the same practicals in 1965/66. I’d already covered the other half of the syllabus in 1964/65 and Judy would cover that part in 1966/67. It was a bit complicated but it worked well and brought the class size up to ten or twelve.
When it came to practicals, we were asked to choose a partner to work with and I was quick to pair up with Judy since we already knew one another and got on well together. And it was the rat dissection that cemented our relationship, bringing us close physically (essential if you’re sharing a rat – they’re not very large and you need to examine them close up to make drawings and so forth) and bringing us closer as friends as well (doing something practical together always has that effect). So that rat has a lot to answer for! Two daughters in due course as it happens.
(Debbie, Beth, if you’re reading this, a small part of the reason you exist was a yellow-stained rat preserved in formalin! I enjoyed writing that, a hugely amusing sentence to have composed. It’ll keep me chuckling all evening, I dare say.)
World events: The Pakistan Navy destroyed the Indian port of Dwarka; and Pakistani Forces achieved a decisive victory at the Battle of Chawinda, halting an Indian advance and stabilising the front.
Mum and Dad had a visit from Jim Fuller and his wife from Boston in the USA. Jim and Mum were distant relatives. Mum, Dad, Cindy, Ruth and Rachael went out with the Fullers to visit Bibury and some other places in the Cotswolds though I had to go to school (which I was not happy about). But Jim Fuller had an 8 mm cine camera and took some interesting sequences with it. The photo is a still from the film, Jim was behind the camera but you can see Figum the cat, Rachael, Dad, Mum, Cindy, Ruth and Mrs Fuller.
Maths book
The image at left shows a page from my maths exercise book from about September in 1960 (exact date unknown). I was just starting in the 2nd Form at the time.
World events: Two American cryptologists defected to the Soviet Union; and OPEC was founded by Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.
My third year at Junior school began in September, I was at Querns School and I think I was in Miss Millington’s class. I was a bit scared of Miss Millington, partly because she had a northern accent and I was only used to hearing three accents, local Gloucestershire, County Tyrone (my Mum and my Irish grandparents) and a slightly more upper class English from some of my fellow pupils and also an aunt or uncle here and there. So the short northern ‘a’, and the ‘oo’ in book sounded weird to me. (And weird always seemed a bit alarming.) I often thought of Miss Millington as ‘Barrel buttons’ because she sometimes wore an off-white cardigan that had black buttons like those on a duffle coat, they looked like miniature barrels to me.
This photo is from the Facebook ‘Old Ciren’ group. The Cirencester Town Station building is a Brunel design and still exists (the building’s listed), though stripped of its canopy. A small section of platform remains. The photo is listed on Old Ciren as 1950 but it may not have been taken in September.
I well remember travelling on this branch line, sometimes with my grandmother just for fun to Kemble and back to see the mainline trains hurtling through, sometimes to change to catch the Cheltenham Flyer on its way to London, Paddington with stops at Swindon and Reading.
Of course, in September 1950 I was too young to understand any of this, but I would have been running about and chatting freely with Mum and Dad and no doubt loved to see trains. I had a little clockwork engine that didn’t need rails, it just ran about on the floor until it bumped into the furniture or the skirting board.
World events: The Turing Test was published as ‘the imitation game’; and The comic strip Peanuts was first published in US newspapers.
On 6th Mike left Blackpool and boarded his ship, the RMS Orbita, in Liverpool, they sailed at 11:15 on 7th, and saw the Welsh and Irish coasts. Mike wrote a long letter to Lilias and there was a musical evening on board.
The 9th took them through the Bay of Biscay and they spotted Portuguese fishing vessels along the way. On the next day they saw Lisbon, a sailing ship, and some porpoises, passing Tangiers and Gibraltar into the Mediterranean on 11th. There were various jobs to do including standing guard duty on the officer’s stairway. They started wearing Khaki Drill Uniform on 12th.
The ship passed between Malta and Sicily and they saw both. They stopped at Port Said and then entered the Suez Canal, and at Suez the ship took on fresh supplies and water. By 21st they were sleeping on deck because of the ‘dreadful heat’. By the 23rd they were into the Indian Ocean, finally reaching Bombay (Mumbai) on 28th and by the end of the month they were in a Bombay transit camp and able to visit the city, armed now with Rupees in place of the sterling cash they’d handed in aboard the ship.
There’s not enough information to write something for every month in the 1940s. Dad’s diaries start in January 1943, so for January 1940 to December 1942 I’ll write about things I know, or draw on dated photos and documents. Sometimes I might use a photo or document with a guessed date.
Somerford map
This time I’m going to write about Somerford Nursery. This was in the village of Somerford Keynes and was originally part of the land farmed by the Jefferies family (or perhaps the Gregory’s). But when I first remember it, Somerford Nursery was a piece of land of nearly 18¾ acres (around 7.6 ha) with a house and garden for the foreman. I don’t think all of this land was in use all of the time, some was rented out for grazing, or a hay crop was taken. The foreman I remember best was Roger De Moor, Belgian, always helpful and friendly, and clearly good at propagating and growing nursery stock. The nursery was devoted to ornamental trees and shrubs; Dad was the business’s main nursery manager, overseeing six nurseries, at first helping his brother, Bob, but eventually taking over more or less completely. He did an almost daily round, visiting each nursery in turn, moving plants and other items from one to another as required. Sometimes he would take me along for the ride.
The nursery was accessed along a short track on the east side of the road through the village, with a five-barred farm gate at the end. And then it opened out with beds edged with cinder blocks and filled with potted plants. The foreman’s house was a little to the right and trees and shrubs growing in rows were over towards the left. There were several wells and pumps, mostly already disused by the time I was at school but essential to the business before the Second World War.
You can view the map in full online, the area was surveyed and mapped by Ordnance Survey between 1892 and 1914.
World events: Adolf Hitler made a Berlin Sportpalast speech declaring that Germany would make retaliatory night air raids on British cities and threatening invasion; the Blitz began on 7th September and although tough for civilians and ruinous to cities, it probably saved the RAF from collapse and an invasion of Britain never became feasible.
Anything that appears in this section will have some connection with the 1930’s but may extend beyond the decade to follow a meaningful topic more fully.
On leave, 1939
My grandfather, Edward Arthur Jefferies, governed and managed the family business following the death of his uncle, William John Jefferies in 1929. He managed the business on his own for some time, but as his three eldest sons became involved in different aspects of the business he decided to make them all directors. So in 1939 they officially began sharing the management with their father. As all three of the brothers joined the armed forces during the Second World War, it would have fallen to my grandfather to continue taking most business decisions on his own, but after that the brothers would have been able to devote more time to affairs in Cirencester (the photo shows Richard with his wife Millicent in London in 1939). The brothers had different roles, John took charge of the garden design and landscaping department. Richard managed the seeds business, and Robert looked after the day to day management of the various nurseries. Meanwhile Dad was only thirteen and was still at school in Rendcomb.
World events (September 1935): Sir Malcolm Campbell became the first person to drive an automobile at 300 miles per hour. (September 1930): In the 1930 German federal election: the National Socialists won 18.3% of the votes, making them the second largest party.
As with the 1930s material, everything in this section will have a connection of some kind with these two decades.
OBITUARY: WILTS & GLOUCESTER STANDARD SATURDAY 16TH JULY 1904
DEATH OF MR JOHN JEFFERIES
‘We record with much regret the death, which took place early this (Friday) morning, after a few weeks illness, at his residence, Minerva Villas, The Avenue, of Mr John Jefferies, one of the oldest, and most valued of Cirencester’s inhabitants. Mr Jefferies, who had reached the ripe age of 86 years, was one of the leading horticulturists and nurserymen of his day. Born at Somerford Keynes, in the neighbouring county of Wilts, he became, when quite a young man, manager to the late Mr Gregory, seedsman and nurseryman, of Cirencester, whose father established the business more than a century ago. In 1850 Mr Jefferies acquired the business from Mr Gregory. At that time the nurseries were far different to what they are now, and included a large area between Victoria-road and Watermoor-road, held of the Abbey estate, and now built over, and also a considerable extent of ground including what is now the garden of Cirencester House and surrounding land. When occupation of this land was resumed by a former Earl Bathurst, and when the Nursery property belonging to the Abbey estate was sold for building purposes, Mr Jefferies purchased what afterwards became the Tower-street nursery, and established extensive nurseries at Somerford Keynes, Siddington, Watermoor and London-road. Joined and aided by his sons, the business rapidly extended. till it became one of the foremost firms in the kingdom, its reputation for the growth of forest and ornamental trees, the celebrated Cotswold roses, and other specialities, being high and widespread. Twelve years ago, Mr Jefferies retired from active business pursuits, and his eldest son, Mr William John Jefferies, to whose energy and ability the success of the establishment was largely due, continued the firm under its old style of “John Jefferies & Son.” The opening up and planting of the Avenue as a pleasant through thoroughfare to Watermoor-road was primarily due to Mr Jefferies’s liberality and public spirit. Personally, the deceased gentleman was one of the most genial and amiable of men. as he was one of the most unassuming and unaffected, and his loss will be keenly felt by his large family circle and many friends. Up to the beginning of the slight indisposition which developed into what proved to be his last illness, his four-score-and-six years sat lightly on him, he took a keen and lively interest in current affairs, while the placid and cheery disposition that always characterised him remained unperturbed till the end, when, in the fulness of time, his long, useful and honourable life was peacefully laid down, and he entered into his well-won rest.’ (Phew – they were mighty wordy in those days!)
World events (September 1900) The 1900 Galveston hurricane killed around 8,000 people. (September 1905)Albert Einstein submitted the paper in which he put forward the equation E = mc2. (September 1910) The Vatican introduced a compulsory oath against modernism for priests at ordination (September 1915): The first military tank was tested by the British Army.
If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome!
We cannot know exactly what this area would have been like when it was full of active volcanoes, but we can get a rough idea from modern subduction regions on Earth today. Under the Mediterranean, for example, the African plate is being subducted underneath the plate carrying Europe.
This is one of the waterfalls along Stock Ghyll just north-east of Ambleside, Cumbria in the English Lake District. It’s beautiful countryside, and the nearby Force Cafe and Terrace served us a wonderful ‘Full Force’ breakfast. In the local dialect, a waterfall is known as a ‘force’, and there’s a whole string of them along this stretch of Stock Ghyll. A ghyll or gill is a narrow, deep, wooded ravine with a stream running though it. The term can also be used for the stream itself. Donna and I made our way carefully along this muddy, stony footpath, and it was well worth the effort.
Stock Ghyll runs right down into the town of Ambleside where it once powered a series of watermills, and finally flows into the nearby lake of Windermere.
Bobbin mills
Bobbin mills were common in Ambleside in the 19th century. Coppiced timber was cut to length and shaped on a lathe, then wooden discs were attached to both ends and the completed bobbins sold to the textile spinning and weaving businesses in the industrial cities south of the Lake District where they were used to store thread after spinning and before weaving. They contributed to the rapid growth of spinning and weaving factories in northern England. Wooden bobbin manufacturing died out with the 20th century introduction of plastics.
Formation of the Lake District
Skiddaw in the distance
The granite structures of the fells and mountains of the Lake District erupted from volcanoes during the Ordovician period some 460 million years ago.
Much more recently, repeated glaciations ground out U-shaped valleys arranged more or less radially and when the glaciers melted during warmer periods, lakes remained in the valley bottoms. Rivers flowing into the lakes or sometimes from one lake to another, have silted up some of the lakes at one end, and these flat, silted zones are now rich areas of pasture and crop land as well as places where urban construction has become possible. The photo above shows the mountain of Skiddaw in the distance and farmland in the foreground. The town of Keswick, out of the frame to the right, is also built on this flatter land laid down as sediment in the northern part of Derwent Water.
What else can we learn
One thing is very clear, what happens in one time period may be changed drastically at another, later time.
We cannot know exactly what this area would have been like when it was full of active volcanoes, but we can get a rough idea from modern subduction regions on Earth today. Under the Mediterranean, for example, the African plate is being subducted underneath the plate carrying Europe. The Alps and the Pyrenees have risen as a result, and volocanoes like Etna and Vesuvius are still actively pumping out magma or ash. The Mediterranean region is also prone to earthquakes. Now imagine (if you can) a mile or more depth of ice resting on top of the Alps grinding down the rocks to form U-shaped valleys as they slide due to gravity across the rock surface far below.
In Roman times, the areas of river sediment like that in the photo above would have been smaller than they are today and the lakes would have been correspondingly longer.
It’s very much a dynamic process. It’s a bit like the life of a person, we start as a new born infant and learn to talk and walk, then run. We learn to eat, and we learn to reason. at school we learn a lot more about the world we live in, politics, science, other languages, geography, history; we fall in love, we marry and raise a family; we have a career and learn how to manage the work environment, run a business, serve customers, manage bank accounts and so forth. The world is our playground, we travel on business or just for fun, we become grandparents as we grow older and retire from work. There are many beginnings and endings along the rich tapestry that is a human life. And lives intertwine in so many ways – friends, family, work colleagues, neighbours. Just like the Lake District, at any point it’s impossible to know what the future might hold.
Life is the same. What happened in my life when I was young is very different from what is happening in my life today. Change and unpredictabilty are the only things that are consistent throughout. If the ice hadn’t melted when it did, the Lake District would be far different from the place we know and love.
How do we deal with this built-in uncertainty? One way that many have found is faith, following a guide that we trust in ways that stretch us and help to shape our characters. Faith can be like an anchor in a choppy sea or even a full-blown storm, holding us safely in the right place until calmer conditions return. I recommend having an anchor in this experience we call life. But if you choose an anchor, choose carefully, there are some pointers elsewhere on this website. Hunt around and see if there’s anything here that you find attractive or compelling.
I’m always fascinated by links and similarities between one thing and another, life is full of them and sometimes they help to broaden our vision and understanding in ways that are quite unexpected.
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Living fossils can be found and recognised over long periods of geological time, and appear very similar throughout. And they may have little diversity, in other words the species in the group all tend to be similar to one another.
The first two are required for recognition as a living fossil; some authors also require the third, others merely note it as a frequent trait.
To put this more simply, Living fossils can be found and recognised over long periods of geological time, and appear very similar throughout. And they may have little diversity, in other words the species in the group all tend to be similar to one another.
Here are some examples, listed in order of their discovery. In some cases the fossil organism was already known before a living form was discovered, in other cases the living form was known first:
Mymarommatidae or ‘false fairy wasps’ (2007ish, North America)
Syntexis libocedrii or ‘cedar wood wasp’ (2011, California to British Columbia)
What else can we learn from this
Two things really. The first thing is that species can sometimes exist for very much longer than normal. And the second thing we learn is that species with astonishingly similar appearance may rise independently more than once. So-called fossil species may be no more than independently arising lines that happen to look very similar.We see the same thing between different living groups, so there’s a marsupial mouse that looks quite like its European namesake. This is known as parallel or convergent evolution.
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Charlie Barnett was a famous test and county cricketer … when he retired from cricket, he set up a business in Cirencester, selling fish, game, and more exotic items such as seagull eggs (1950).
May 2025 (3 months before publishing this article)
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I invited my friend Mark to the Small Group barbecue at Bernard and Vivien’s in Berryhill Road. He enjoyed the food as well as the chance to meet and chat with some new people. Al, especially, enjoyed talking with Mark.
At the Old Prison
On 16th we took Donna’s Mum, Isobel, to the Old Prison Cafe in Northleach; it’s one of the places we like to visit from time to time as it’s not very far from home and is in relaxing surroundings. You can still visit the old prison cells, but they don’t look relaxing at all!
Paul and Vanessa visited for the day on 18th. We met them at Lynwood in the Market Place for coffee and cake and then back at our house for lunch, with Isobel as well. We chatted in the afternoon round the dining table and then on the patio.
While going through some items from storage boxes I came across this old hunting knife, it has an antler handle and a leather case and I used it as a teenager as a scout knife. But I think it was given to me by an uncle who might have acquired it from his days in the British Army during World War 2. But wherever it came from, it’s not an object I could legally carry around while walking the streets in 2025!
Rococo Gardens
The snowdrops in Painswick’s Rococo Gardens looked lovely as they always do in season. Every year there are more, partly because gaps are being filled by natural spreading , and partly because additional areas are being planted up.
We had some issues with the new heat pump, mostly due to incorrect wiring during installation, but the engineers came back quickly to make fixes. The heating seemed better and better as time passed and we got to grips with the lifestyle changes – like using a summer duvet in the winter.
JHM: I wrote about truth and facts; and about an asteroid heading our way. World events: The Baltic states synchronised their power grids, connected to Europe and disconnected from Russia; and Thutmose II’s tomb was discovered.
We visited Springhill on our way north to Portrush. Mum used to talk about this old house and garden which she really loved. It was the home of William Conyngham who founded the village of Coagh where Mum was born and grew up.
We were on holiday with my daughters and their families, this time in Northern Ireland. On 7th we set out from the house and walked east along the coast to visit Dunluce Castle. Only Aidan and I went inside as we arrived near to closing time, but itwas well worth seeing.
Near the start of our walk
It’s a magnificent coast as you can see from the photo, there are beautiful beaches and rugged cliffs along the way. So it was a memorable walk. The second image shows some of us near the start of our expedition, on Portrush’s east beach with the town in the background. As always, click the thumbnail for a larger version. Read more about our holiday.
Back at home later in the month, I decided to finally close down my account on X. Back in the day when it was still Twitter I used it a lot and enjoyed the conversations, but in its later form it became full of unpleasantness and anger. I had already found a better, more friendly home in Bluesky – so goodbye X.
Beth and Paz celebrated their silver wedding this month, a grand achievment!
Cairn Gorm summit
And we also had our family summer holiday, this year in Scotland. Beth, Aidan, Meredith and I made our way from the ski-lift car park to the summit of Cairn Gorm, but were unable to go further because of heavy cloud. On the way up we were lucky enough to spot a small herd of reindeer.
Freshwater beach, Aidan and Heidi
We visited a freshwater beach at Loch Laggan, a very strange thing to see, with patches of grass and seedling conifers growing in the sand.
We stayed in a big, old house in the village of Newtonmore. It held a few surprises for us, for example taking a shower caused water to drip through the ceiling in the dining room! But despite the quirks, we loved the house and the area.
Donna and I visited Boat of Garten where friends from near Cirencester were visiting family. Also in August, I went for a walk through the Beeches Estate where we lived until I was eleven-years-old; it brought back a lot of memories and I was able to jot them all down later when I got home.
Beth, Debbie and their families camped at Siddington. It was lovely to have them so close and to be able to pop out to spend time with them. in the photo you can see several members of the family and my sister, Cindy.
Near Snowshill
Paul and Vanessa came to stay for a long weekend and we did a circular walk from Snowshill, then we went to stay at their flat in Weston-super-Mare to look after the dogs while they were away. The photo shows Vanessa, Maizi, Paul and Donna.
And finally, Thomas Holme came to live with us for a period of time, starting on 22nd.
We went to a ‘Wings and Wheels Day’ at Old Warden airfield, not far from home in St Neots. It was amazing, with a series of vintage aircraft flying and vintage cars on display, and with a picnic as well. Donna booked the occasion well in advance, and as it turned out the weather was perfect.
Hillman Minx
The cars and trucks were a mix of civilian and military vehicles from throughout the twentieth century, some from before World War I. And many of them were in the air or driving about, often flown or driven by people in period costume. It was an amazing day!
Also in August – I released a new version of JDMC, Ed and Jo were married, Peter and Dadka came to live with us for a while, and we had a visit from Beth, Paz, Meredith and Verity. Quite an eventful month.
The Cornerstone cafe and bookshop opened for business in St Neots; after a lot of hard work by many people guided mainly by our friends Keith on the construction side and Jim on catering. We were able to hand over to Paul who had provided the original idea and most of the funds, and a series of volunteers for the day-to-day running of the business. Cornerstone also offered a small meeting room for local businesses and clubs, and a comfortable space for conversation or counselling. The first directors’ meeting would follow on 1st September, involving Paul, Jim, Donna and me, and Mark.
Donna and her Dad
We visited Broadstone near Poole to see Donna’s Mum and Dad. There was a naval display on, with ships off the coast and Royal Navy planes and helicopters in the air as well and we ate later at a local pub.
And finally, our Swedish friend David came for a short visit.
Donna’s church cell group went to an open air music event in Bedford, in the photo we were enjoying picnic food with our friends before the music began. A few weeks later the cell group went Greyhound racing, another fun social event.
Roman well
Towards the end of the month, I looked around Loves Farm on the edge of St Neots with our friends Ken and Gayna. Archaeological excavations were going on where a new area of housing and facilities were to be constructed. Iron Age, Roman, and Saxon remains were discovered and recorded on the large site. It seems clear that this land had been farmed continously from Iron Age times right up to today. The Roman well in the image was carefully lined with stone, and ancient ditches were clearly visible as bands of darker soil across the site with several roads and trackways also identified.
Donna travelled with her Open Door cell group to the New Frontiers annual event at the National Agricultural Showground at Stoneleigh; I drove up for the day on 1st August. The photo shows the book and music shop.
Table skittles
Knowledge Systems Group (KSG) met for lunch at the Beds Arms in Souldrop close to Unilever Research, Colworth. We often went there and played table skittles, a game local to the Northampton, North Befordshire area. Three ‘cheeses’ are thrown at the skittles and apart from that, the rules are very similar to normal ninepin skittles.
Other events this month were a visit from Donna’s Mum and Dad and a weekend with my Mum and Dad at Cirencester. We also visited Cindy and Paul at Bibury and I travelled to Amsterdam for a Unilever meeting on an intranet website, Research onLine.
World events: The Russian submarine Kursksank in the Barents Sea; and Tsar Nicholas II and his family were canonized .
Beth worked hard on her A-level biology project with help and advice from Judy. Debbie was well into her University degree work. Beth appears again in the distance in the second photo. It was a very hot and dry summer, vegetation was scorched, even deep-rooted trees were suffering and grass everywhere was dry and brown.
Blagdon Lake
Judy was still mobile and capable, leading a pretty normal life, though clearly losing weight and often suffering a little discomfort. I continued at Long Ashton Research Station, working for the Statistics and Computing Department and independently developing a Microscopes and Microscopy web site as a resource for professional microscopists. It was developed on my PC at home, and at first hosted only on the Long Ashton web server, but later a microscopist at an American University asked if he could mirror it for faster service in the US and after that it ran on both servers.
Meeting regularly with Tony, Faith, Paul and Jenny was becoming more and more special. Every time we all felt encouraged and peaceful, knowing that whatever the future held, everything would be OK.
It was around this time that Judy began collecting up all her old photos, putting them in albums, and and writing short notes about when, what and who appeared in the images. She was also getting them into date order as far as possible. Clearly she was planning ahead for me, Debbie, Beth and other family members. I’ve always been very appreciative of this, especially as I write these notes for the Blast From the Past series.
World events:Aided by NATO, Bosnian and Croatian forces continued to fight Serbian seperatists; and Eduard Shevardnadze survived an assasination attempt.
Debbie returned from her French exchange visit on 8th and we collected her from Lulsgate Airport. She had lots to tell us about her trip and had brought back some souvenirs including a huge French banknote!
Symonds Yat
Later in the month we visited the Forest of Dean and walked via Biblins Bridge to Symonds Yat where we crossed the river by the rope ferry, stopped for ice-creams, and returned to the car by the same route. And at the end of August we enjoyed a time at the Bristol Flower Show up on Clifton Down, and a trip on the North Somerset Steam Railway.
World events:Iraqinvaded Kuwait, leading to the Gulf War; and East and West Germany announced they would unite on October 3.
We had a holiday at Ogwen Bank in North Wales. Debbie and Beth are sitting just outside our caravan in the photo. The site was close to Bethesda so we were able to visit lots of interesting places all over Snowdonia
Debbie, Beth, and me!
One of the places we visited was Benllech Beach, lovely sand and rocks as you can see. I’ve always enjoyed messing around at the seaside, especially building miniature dams. So there were three kids on the beach and one adult – Judy, who took this photo.
Amongst other things we visited a working slate museum, a woollen mill, The island of Anglesey with its sea zoo and butterfly house, a couple of castles and more. Judy and the girls visited Port Meirion while I stayed at the caravan and worked on an Open University (OU) course.
Apart from the OU courses which ran through the summer, August was always a great time for family life. The girls were on holiday, so was Judy, and we were able to go out for day trips as well as have a week or two away somewhere.
Beth was interested in the cat, while the cat seemed to be interested in the paddling pool! And the sandpit in the background appeared to have been the scene of a nasty tractor accident. Just an ordinary summer day at 22 Rectory Drive.
Beth was just 2¼-years-old and Debbie was five and a half. Judy was considering beginning a teaching career having earned her qualification before Debbie was born while we were still living in our flat in St Andrew’s, Bristol. I was working at Long Ashton Research Station on fruit crop pollination, mostly on apples and plums; and I also had a week away at an Open University summer school.
World events:Hurricane Allen pounded Haiti, killing over 200 people; and the Gdańsk Agreement was signed in Poland allowing the free trade union, Solidarity.
Debbie turned five months old and was growing quickly in both size and ability. She was developing better coordination, holding things and beginning to interact with adults and distinguish between them.
We started to get the house tidier and items put away. We had much more floor space than at the flat and although our furniture was the same it seemed lost in a large space rather than crammed together. We had only the old, green carpet we’d brought with us; it had filled the lounge/diner at the flat, now it just covered the dining area! Every other section of floor was bare boards, including the stairs, but the kitchen retained the covering left by the previous owners.
I began cycling to work from Yatton to Long Ashton, for a couple of years I’d been used to cycling from St Andrew’s, Bristol. What a change! No more dangerous, heavy traffic to contend with, instead a longer but much more relaxing trip through attractive countryside and the villages of Claverham and Backwell.
World events: The Helsinki Accords recognising Europe’s national borders and human rights, was signed in Finland; and NASA launched the Viking 1 planetary probe toward Mars.
Judy was away on holiday for two weeks in the Lake District with her parents and brother, Frank. She took this photo at Watendlath Packhorse Bridge near Keswick.
Judy and I were planning for our wedding in early October, there were just some finishing touches to put in place really, but we didn’t want to run out of time.
Pete, a good friend from University, discovered the Ministry of Agriculture were empl0ying graduate students to interview farmers during the summer of 1970. We signed up for this survey work as we both had our own transport, and spent several weeks driving around the Cotwolds with the questionnaires interviewing the farmers and some of their employees. We lived at Mum and Dad’s house in Victoria Road as our base of operations. Part of the time they were on holiday in Northern Ireland with my sisters so Pete and I looked after the place while they were away.
World events: The Soviet Union launched Venera 7 towards Venus; and rubber bullets for riot control were used for the first time.
This was the month of the Grammar School Explorers Club expedition to Scotland, organised and led by one of my biology teachers, Mr Castle. I was one of two sixth formers who travelled with him in his Bedford van with the lighter equipment (the heavy stuff went by train). Graham and I camped just outside Edinburgh while Mr Castle returned by train to travel north again with the fourth and fifth form members of the expedition. Most of us would travel by coach while Mr Castle brought the van and equipment. Graham and I were assistant leaders.
We walked up the Dee Valley into the Cairngorms, then to Ben McDhui and Cairn Gorm, descending along the ski lift route. We visited Pitlochry for a night or two and then to Mallaig and the ferry to Skye where we viewed the Cuillins from Elgol beach and went to the Portree Highland Gathering. After a night at the coral beaches, we returned to the mainland to visit Fort William and walk to the top of Ben Nevis.
It was quite a journey and an experience I shall never forget.
Our annual holiday this year was in Northern Ireland, staying at Holmlea in Coagh, Co Tyrone with Mum’s parents. The photo was a brief stop near the Spelga Dam in the Mountains of Mourne during a day out. I had scrambled up the steep bank and took this image of Dad taking a photo of Mum and my younger sisters, Ruth and Rachael, Granda is sitting in the car. Granny and Cindy may have still been in the car as well. How did we all squeeze in for the trip? Ruth and Rachael were small enough to sit on an adult lap, probably with Mum and Granny.
We’d have done a number of trips out like this one, almost certainly including a day at the seaside at Portrush, maybe a trip to see the Giant’s Causeway, and definitely visits to Cookstown and to Mum’s cousin on the farm at Killycurragh on Slieve Gallion. The first (and only) time that I milked a cow was at Killycurragh, but what I remember most was high tea, where the table with its white cloth groaned under a huge choice of delicious food, much of it home grown and home made.
World events:The Beatles began a 48-night residency at the Indra Club in Hamburg; and Russia launched Sputnik 5 carrying two dogs, mice and rats, and plant specimens. All the animals returned safely after a day in orbit.
In August we visited Windsor Castle, I don’t remember this trip although I was seven-years-old at the time.
Mum sent the postcard to her younger sister, Annabelle, and wrote on the back,
‘Christopher & Cynthia couldn’t take their eyes off the soldiers & had to send you this picture so that you could see them too. Wish you were all with us. Much love from us all. Your loving Sister, Lilias.’
I needed a photo for the summer of 1950 but couldn’t find one. I’m guessing this is a bit more recent, perhaps between 1950 and 1960; but it does capture business life in Cirencester in that era. In those days there were no supermarkets, you would have visited a variety of small bakers, butchers, grocers, greengrocers and so forth. Barnett’s was one of these.
Charlie Barnett was a famous test and county cricketer, born in Gloucestershire. When he retired from cricket, he set up a business in Cirencester, selling fish, game, and more exotic items such as seagull eggs. The photo shows him working in his shop.
We must have been settling into our new home in Queen Anne’s Road at this time. There were probably boxes to unpack, clothes to put away, as well as the normal household chores of laundry; and for Dad there’d have been the task of getting the garden area tidy, clearing weeds, removing building rubble, stones and so forth, and planning a garden.
World events: North Korea’s Air Force was largely destroyed by anti-communist forces; and Uruguay beat Brazil 2–1, to win the 1950 World Cup.
On 2nd August Mike had the bad news that he was being posted overseas. He had to rush to get Lilias to Cirencester as fast as possible, perhaps something they’d planned to do a little later.
He arrived in Stranraer on 3rd and was in Coagh on the evening of 4th. By 7th they were on the train south from Stranraer. On 8th his mother, Nor, met them at Cheltenham Station with the car and Mike drove them home. They then had five clear days to enjoy time together in Cirencester and around the south Cotswolds until Mike was required back by the RAF on 14th. But this was a really good day because the victory over Japan was announced and the war was finally over. Medicals, inoculations, and the issuing of tropical kit took almost two weeks; then there was a final twenty-four hour period when he was able to get back to Cirencester to see Lilias and his parents, and the last three days of August were spent on duty in Blackpool waiting for a ship to become available.
World events:Winston Churchill supported the idea of a pan-European army; and Pope Pius XII declared evolution to be a serious hypothesis that does not contradict essential Catholic views.
There’s not enough information to write something for every month in the 1940s. Dad’s diaries start in January 1943, so for January 1940 to December 1942 I’ll write about things I know, or draw on dated photos and documents. Sometimes I might use a photo or document with a guessed date.
Cinder-block bins
For August 1940 I’m going to write about another of the John Jefferies & Son nurseries, this time a very small one, the Abbey Nursery. The medieval Abbey owned a great deal of land, not just in the town but in the surrounding countryside. Part of the Abbey’s land lay inside City Bank, and part of it formed the Abbey Nursery. It had a shed for equipment, and cinder block bins for sand, grit, gravel and other garden materials. The bins are still there, just inside the gate on the left. Today the land is a nature reserve and is open to the public.
All Cirencester people will know where City Bank is. As the name might suggest, it has to do with a city (which Cirencester is not). But in Roman times its predecessor Corinium was a large and important city only exceeded in size by Londinium, present day London. In the later years of Roman Britain, most cities aspired to a wall, perhaps defensive, or perhaps just a way to demonstate high status. So there was a city wall. In medieval and later times, the useful cut stone was robbed from the old walls and used to build the town anew. What was left of the old walls was a bank of tumbled stone and soil, covered with grass and scrub, hence City Bank, not City Wall.
In 1940 and up until John Jefferies and Son’s nurseries gradually fell out of use from 1975 onwards, the Abbey Nursery was used mainly for growing Christmas trees for sale in November and December, but was also the storage site for the Cotswold stone and paving slabs used by the landscape construction part of the business.
In August 1940 my father, Mike, was nine-years-old and lived with his parents at ‘Churnside’, 37 Victoria Road. His Father, Edward (Ted, Guv, or ‘the Governor’) was 60 and his mother, Norah (Nor) was 61. His brothers, John, Richard (Dick), and Robert (Bob) were 33, 30, and 27 respectively.
World events: Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia were annexed by the Soviet Union; and the Royal Air Force bombed Berlin for the first time.
Anything that appears in this section will have some connection with the 1930’s but may extend beyond the decade to follow a meaningful topic more fully.
An illustration from the book
Uncle John and Auntie Jo were married on 15th September 1932. John was my father’s oldest brother, born in 1907 and 19 years older than his little brother. This is a large gap between the oldest and youngest in the family so it seems my Dad may have been an unexpected late addition!
John and Jo lived at 4 Tower Street, Cirencester; it was a three-storey town house and the features I remember most were a floor to ceiling mirror in the narrow hallway which made the narrow space look much more spacious, and the front reception room with a stone fireplace. There was a fine collection of hand-bells on the mantelpiece, collected over the years it seems and not a set, but nevertheless, in tune with one another. I remember a long passageway with the kitchen at the far end and a little, shady garden beyond that. The floor above must have contained bedrooms and a bathroom, but the top floor was the most exciting as there was a storage room at the front with all sorts of intriguing items discarded from everyday use. An Aladdin’s cave! John and Jo’s daughter, Jill, was my godmother so I was invited round from time to time. She always had something interesting for me to see or fun activities to do.
John and Jo had a poodle (one of the larger kind). He was called Gigot and I remember Auntie Jo collecting the wool when he was clipped and storing it year by year until there was enough to be washed, carded and spun into yarn. Gigot was a mid brown colour and she knitted herself a cardigan from the wool!
As a young child I always found Uncle John a bit solemn and aloof, even a little bit scary, but of course he was quite good fun in many ways if perhaps a little on the serious side. He became Chairman of Cirencester Urban District Council, almost but not quite the Lord Mayor. Cirencester had no mayor in those days, though today it does, and the chain of office is still the one once worn by John.
When my grandfather died, John and his brothers Dick and Bob took over John Jefferies & Son as directors. John’s role had long been managing the landscape design and construction side of the business, using the entire top floor over the shop in Cirencester Market Place as the design studio. I remember Desmond Walker who helped as John’s deputy in the design office. Desmond lived right next to Tower Street Nursery and had a mulberry tree in his garden.
World events (August 1935): The volcanic island of Anak Krakatau began to form permanently in the Sunda Strait. (August 1930): United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Social Security Act into law.
As with the 1930s material, everything in this section will have a connection of some kind with these two decades.
My father, Mike, was born on 4th June 1926. He would almost certainly have been born at home – Churnside, 37 Victoria Road, Cirencester. His parents were Edward Arthur Jefferies and Norah Jefferies (nee Monger), usually known as Guv or Ted and Nor. Mike had three much older brothers, John, Dick and Bob (19, 17, and 15 years older). Because he was a bouncy baby, his brothers called him ‘Tigger’ and this stuck. He was still known as ‘Tig’ by the brothers and by his parents while they were still alive. Churnside would itself have been fairly new when Dad was little, the house is Edwardian and was built shortly before Guv and Nor were married. This and the house next door are semi-detatched so were built as a pair, I believe they were the first houses on this section of Victoria Road.
World events (August 1900): International troops entered Peking to free European hostages during the Boxer Rebellion. (August 1905): Norway voted to break from the union with Sweden. (August 1910):Japan formally annexed Korea. (August 1915): In the First World War Gallipoli campaign, the Battle of Sari Bair was fought.
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One thing you could do was fix a piece of flexible card to the rear frame so that it made contact with the spokes of the back wheel. Then it made a marvellous noise that rose in pitch the faster you went (1955).
Apr 2025 (3 months before publishing this article)
Click any photo to enlarge
My friend, Dave, from Unilever days came down for a chat, a coffee, a walk and lunch. It was great to see him, as always. We took a look at the Roman amphitheatre and ate at Blend in the old brewery building.
Donna moving compost
It was Donna’s birthday this month and we visited Hidcote which has to be one of our favourite gardens. Our grandson, Aidan, was trekking in South America, exploring the Caribbean coast of Colombia, sending back regular comments and photos on the family WhatsApp channel. He’s taken some time out between A levels last year and starting University in York later this year.
At home, Donna and I were building and filling two raised beds where she plans to grow vegetables this summer and we had a dumper bag of a soil/compost mix delivered and barrowed it all to the back garden.
JHM: I wrote about dinosaurs and the Bible; and the little wren which is a bird and a coin. World events:Fram2 carried astronauts on a polar orbit for the first time; and Pope Francis died at the age of 88.
The new heat pump system was running by the end of the month and we had warm radiators for the first time on January 31st. What a joy! In the photo Akki, the team’s electrician, is commissioning the system.
Our leaking chimney was also repaired this month and a damp ceiling dried out well with no more drips in heavy rain; some alterations and improvements to the house were finished as well. We now have windows we can open in our bedroom on hot summer evenings, and that will be a huge benefit. Everything is getting better (but it’s all costing money too).
The CBC Small Group I go to every week had a social evening with a meal at Tony and Penny’s, there must have been ten or twelve of us there and it was a great time.
Our new greenhouse was erected today and looks just great. More good news is that Labour won the General Election and Roz Savage won our local constituency (South Cotswolds) for the Lib Dems.
The rather less good news was that Isobel had a fall while she was away with Donna for a Warner’s break. She had a partial hip fracture which resulted in a partial hip replacement operation and the need for recovery and physiotherapy.
Leaving Wales
Our friends Jim and Pam from St Neots stayed with us for one night. They arrived in a large camper van and were heading for a touring holiday in Wales. And on 17th I started my ‘Image of the day‘ series of posts here on JHM. On 28th we set off for Ireland via Fishguard and Rosslare for our annual summer holiday with the family.
Our solar panels were commissioned and fully working by 3rd July, and they came with a phone app that would let us monitor their activity as well as that of the 10 kWh battery that we’d bought. It was great to see the power flowing on sunny days, meeting all our needs day and night on good days and often exporting power to the grid as well. We knew things would be less impressive in the winter months.
With Debbie and the grandchildren
The Small group I’m a member of met for a meal at Phil and Judith’s house in South Cerney, it was good fun as always and an opportunity for longer conversations. Donna and I visited Batsford Arboretum, and Debbie, Aidan and Sara came to visit us for two nights at the end of the month. In the photo we’re strolling in Cirencester Park heading for the town centre.
We visited Bradford-on-Avon to visit an old garden and take a look at the town. Much to my surprise, there’s a particularly well-preserved Saxon church there. It wasn’t open so we couldn’t look around inside, but it was fascinating to see a structure that dates back before the Norman Conquest. It may have been built in 1001 CE, so very late Saxon. (See: Wikipedia article)
We ate breakfast in Cirencester’s Toro Lounge, the first time we’d done this since the COVID outbreak.
Gloucester Cathedral
Near the end of the month we visited Gloucester Docks and the Cathedral with Donna’s Mum, Isobel. The docks area is being redeveloped as a shopping centre with restaurants and a museum as well as all the old docks themselves now in use as a large marina. There’s a large plaza, places to sit, car parking nearby, and an easy walk to the city centre and the cathedral.
JHM: I wrote about a local musician; and a free way of writing online. World events: Russian voters backed an amendment permitting Putin another two terms as president after 2024; and the number of COVID cases worldwide passed 15 million.
Our family holiday was at Noordbeemster in the Netherlands, we crossed on the ferry from Harwich. One of the places we enjoyed during this week away was the Zuiderzee Museum in Enkhuizen. In character it’s very like the Welsh Folk Museum and the children enjoyed it just as much as the adults. The photo shows Meredith in the distance and Aidan trying out weird Dutch traditional toy vehicles. Pump the handle to move and steer with your feet. This proved to be much harder than you might think!
I drove to Burton Latimer to meet Rachael and our friend, Jody, for lunch and to talk about meeting again in our homes to hear what the Holy Spirit would say to us together.
It was an exciting month for astronomy as the New Horizons probe flew by Pluto and Charon and began to return data on 15th.
I visited the Christian Bookshop in Letchworth with my friends Jim and Paul to see if we could learn anything that would help us develop the new cafe/bookshop in St Neots. We were looking for good ideas, things to avoid, and advice from people who’d been through a similar process.
Train ride
Our family holiday was in North Wales at the end of July this year. The photo shows Beth and Paz with their daughters Meredith and Verity on the narrow-gauge steam train, something we have to do on every holiday! This time we were on the Welsh Highand Railway. A few days later we went to visit the Dinorwig pumped storage power station which is an impressive feat of engineering.
World events: The first 24-hour flight by a solar-powered plane was completed; and Slovenia became the 32nd member of the OECD.
Debbie and Steve were married in Cornwall at the end of July. It was a quiet but special occasion, with just the two of them, Donna and me, and Steve’s parents. We explored the local area briefly while were there, Steve’s Dad and I very much enjoyed the amazing Bicycle Museum.
Steph, Donna and Sondra
Our friend Steph Bennett and her daughter, Sondra, came to stay earlier in the month. During their visit we travelled to Paris by train via the Channel Tunnel and spent a day or two in the city. In the photo we’re on our way to the top of Montmartre.
World events:Eris was discovered, the most massive known dwarf planet in the Solar System; and the Huygens spacecraft landed on Titan.
Our friends Karen and Gert were married in Ampthill and I had the job of taking the photos, most were taken on Kodak colour negative film, and a few on my first digital camera. These were low resolution, but were better than film in low light conditions.
My Uncle Dick’s funeral was on 25th, and my branch of the family gathered at Churnside in Cirencester before the event and returned afterwards for a meal together. It was the same day that an Air France Concorde caught fire and crashed near Paris with tragic loss of life.
A Ford Anglia
We went along to the Tilbrook Village Fete where I spotted a 100E Ford Anglia just like the one I’d owned in 1969. It was great fun to see one again after all this time. I remembered the three-speed gearbox and the windscreen wipers using a partial vacuum from the engine. They were not the best wipers in the world!
Judy’s health was definitely declining slightly and she continued to lose weight slowly. But apart from that she was doing quite well and was not in pain at the start of the month. By the end of July, though, she needed some paracetamol now and then, especially when travelling in the car.
My Mum and Dad came down on my birthday and we were able to sit outside on the patio in the evening. Debbie and Beth were with us and Nick joined us as well.
We continued meeting regularly with our friends Tony and Faith, and Paul and Jenny for the most amazing times of spiritual experiences, feeling very close to one another and very close to Jesus too. They were such special occasions, not prayer sessions and not about physical healing, but they were about spiritual revelation and growth for all of us. Dad sometimes jokingly referred to them as ‘The Gang of Four’ or all six of us as ‘The Crazy Gang’.
Dad retired from Country Gardens this month where he’d worked to ease the handover of the old family business as a going concern to the new owners. His nephew Tim had worked with him on this, and being younger Tim continued with them after Dad left. Mum was pleased to have Dad at home and with time to walk into town or go out for daytrips, and even on longer holidays.
Cindy, Paul and little Sebastian visited us in Yatton. Seb was unable to walk without some support, but with his walker to aid him he was already bombing along really confidently – and fast!
Mum and Judy
We visited Mum and Dad on my birthday, we spent some time chatting in the garden as it was a lovely summer’s day. The photo shows Mum and Judy, with Dinah the Siamese cat sitting on Judy’s lap for a relaxing stroke.
World events: East and West Germany merged their economies; and Belarus declared sovereignty in a move towards independence.
I was at the RMS Microscopy Conference at York University on 12th, this was to help me get to grips with some new techniques, including electron microscopy and fluorescence microscopy. At this point I was still attempting to localise the plant hormones known as gibberellins in frozen plant tissue for Long Ashton’s Plant Sciences Group.
Debbie, Beth, and dolls
Judy continued teaching Biology GCSE and A Level at Cotham Grammar School in Bristol. Debbie (10) was studying at Backwell School, and Beth (7) was at Yatton Junior. We were living at 22 Rectory Drive in Yatton west of Bristol; the photo was taken in our front garden.
World events: The Rainbow Warrior was bombed and sunk; and P. W. Botha declared a state of emergency in South Africa.
The new Jefferies garden centre at Kingsmeadow was doing a good trade during the summer months after opening to customers in April. The Tower Street garden centre continued operating, as well as the shop in the Market Place (now Vodafone). And although the nurseries were still in use, they were beginning to fade away in terms of the value they added to the business. It was becoming cheaper to buy in nursery stock than to employ staff to raise plants locally.
Kathy, Debbie and Joanne
We travelled up to Frank and Kathy’s home for the Christening of their new daughter, Joanne, almost certainly in the car with Judy’s parents.
This was the last full month that we lived in our flat (upper flat in the photo) in Belmont Road, Bristol before moving to Yatton on 2nd August. The flat was very cluttered at the end of July, everything was piled up or packed in boxes ready for the move. This was at once exciting and very inconvenient.
Debbie was four months old on 12th and was dedicated at Zetland Road Fellowship on 27th according to a note in my Dad’s photo notebook. So a lot was happening in July 1975!
World events:Cape Verde gained independence after 500 years of Portuguese rule; and the Apollo–Soyuz Test Project docked American and Soviet crewed spacecraft in orbit.
My degree ceremony at Bath was a little earlier than Judy’s at Aberystwyth (or it might have been the other way around), but we both had our hired robes for the period between the two and the photos were taken at her parent’s house in Cheltenham during that week.
I travelled to Aber with Judy’s parents and brother and crept into the hall at the back to watch and listen as there were insufficient tickets for Judy’s family and for me as well. Then at Bath Judy came along with my parents. The next big occasion for us would be our wedding in October, and planning for that was pretty much done and everything arranged apart from little jobs like writing name cards for the tables at the reception and so forth.
World events: France tested a hydrogen bomb on Mururoa Atoll; and the Aswan High Dam in Egypt was completed.
At the beginning of July we visited Oxford for the day, Günter Klauß who was staying with us on a school exchange came too and very much enjoyed the trip. Mum sent an Oxford postcard to Granny in Northern Ireland reporting that Ruth had learned to swim a few days earlier.
On 10th, Günter returned home to West Germany, we took him to Kemble Station to see him off on the train to London. This was also the end of my first year in the Sixth Form at Cirencester Grammar School and Mum’s 37th birthday was on the 5th.
World events:Mariner 4 flew by Mars, becoming the first spacecraft to return images of the planet; and Edward Heath became Conservative Leader in the UK.
The Cotswold Roses would have been flowering freely on the London Road Nursery (now Partridge Way and Pheasant Way on the eastern side of Cirencester). The photo of the catalogue for the following season gives some idea of what they would have looked like.
The school holidays were always a time to look forward to, the freedom to do whatever I liked was great and we would certainly have some family days out to enjoy and a summer holiday away somewhere.
Mum’s birthday was on 5th, she was 32; mine was on 31st, my twelfth; Dad’s birthday was in June and he was now 34; Cindy was 8-years-old and about half way through her time at Querns School (juniors); while Ruth and Rachael had not yet started school at all being just four and three.
World events:Kwame Nkrumah became the first President of Ghana; and Francis Chichester won the first Single-Handed Trans-Atlantic Race aboard Gypsy Moth III taking 40 days.
My seventh birthday was the 31st of July in 1955. Mum and Dad gave me a somewhat faded red bike that was almost too big for me to ride, even with the saddle and handlebars set as low as possible. I found it quite daunting at first, but once I’d learned to ride it, I loved that bike. One thing you could do was fix a piece of flexible card to the rear frame so that it made contact with the spokes of the back wheel. Then it made a marvellous noise that rose in pitch the faster you went. Before long I was riding my bike to Querns School, though Dad came with me to make sure I was safe in all the town traffic. The photo shows our back garden at 17 Queen Anne’s Road where we lived at the time. It was taken in September 1960, but wouldn’t have changed very much since June 1955.
Mummy was 22-years-old on 5th July and I was two at the end of the month. I was admitted to Cirencester’s Memorial Hospital as a one-year-old (date unknown, so probably not July) and was apparently very taken with a large teddy bear they had on the ward. I was suffering from a serious bout of diarrhoea and, presumably, dehydration and was kept in for a week. The photo shows the hospital in 1950 (from the Facebook group, Old Ciren).
World events: North Korea’s Air Force was largely destroyed by anti-communist forces; and Uruguay beat Brazil 2–1, to win the 1950 World Cup.
A three watch system was started, and Mike spent a good deal of time writing and reading letters to and from Lilias, his family, old school friends, and RAF friends now at other stations. In one of her letters Lilias mentioned a problem with serious period pains, a cause of concern for them both.
Generally, RAF duties were rather light during July with the war in Europe now over. Mike mentions activities like cricket, softball, swimming and tennis as well as lectures on topics like returning to civilian life.
On 16th he was off to Staxton Wold radar station near Scarborough where there was rifle, machine gun, and hand grenade practice. Mike had a B+ Pass from the course at Staxton Wold. On 26th he was disappointed to learn that Labour had won a landslide victory in the General Election.
He spent Friday 27th travelling to Cirencester, Saturday with family and friends, and Sunday 29th travelling back to Skendleby and normal duties again with some new radar equipment. The picture shows a Midland Railway engine, probably still in use by the London, Midland, and Scottish (LMS) when Mike made his journey to Cirencester.
World events: Germany was divided between the Allied occupation forces; and the first atomic bomb test (Trinity), used 6 kg of plutonium to explode with the force of 22 million kg of TNT.
There’s not enough information to write something for every month in the 1940s. Dad’s diaries start in January 1943, so for January 1940 to December 1942 I’ll write about things I know, or draw on dated photos and documents. Sometimes I might use a photo or document with a guessed date.
Peace
For July 1940 I thought I’d write about the London Road Rose Nursery. This was a large field with a north facing slope, typical of hilly ground in the Cotswolds generally; it was limestone brash overlain by a shallow, stony subsoil and thin topsoil, by no means the most promising site for rose growing. Today it is an area of housing, Pheasant Way and Partridge Way. The field was owned by John Jefferies & Son and must have been bought by the company quite early.
To help keep the poor soil in reasonable condition a rotation was employed. It included a cereal crop, and roses the following year. I don’t know, but it’s possible (even likely) that a crop of mustard or some other nitrogen fixing choice would have been grown in a third year and ploughed in during the autumn to fertilise the soil and add organic matter. From the 1960s I recall stooks of corn (wheat or barley most likely) and the use of a threshing machine to separate and clean the seed for bagging and to produce straw. In 1940 it might have been done the same way or perhaps in those days there would have been more hand labour involved.
Corn seed would have gone to the Jefferies warehouse in Tower Street for further processing, cleaning and bagging for onward sale to local farmers for delivery in the autumn and sowing in the field in the autumn or the spring for early or later harvest. Straw was useful for packing plant orders for despatch in the winter months, and excess quantities could be sold to farmers and horse owners for bedding, or if long enough and of the right quality, sold for thatching.
See July 1960 above for more on the Jefferies roses. Wikipedia has a good background article on roses. The bloom in the image is a cultivar named Peace, the photo is taken from that article. It’s a hybrid tea rose with a good fragrance, presumably named shortly after the end of World War II. My father had two rose beds in the front garden at 17 Queen Anne’s Road, and the one nearest the front door was Peace.
Anything that appears in this section will be material that I believe belongs in this decade. Items will not be in sequence within the decade, but where I can make a good guess of the date I will do so.
An illustration from the book
When Tigger (my father) was about six or seven (a guess) his father, my Grandpa, wrote a little story for him. His mother (Nor) had a hand in this too for the book is machine stitched. I well remember her treadle sewing-machine from the 1950s when I was a child, clearly he had asked her to use it to stitch along the central fold of the sheets of paper making up the book.
The book has the title ‘Mr Fizwig, his monkey, and their adventures’ and was ‘Written for Tigger’. The illustrations have been coloured, mostly by a child of Tigger’s age, and a list of page numbers added along with the word ‘chapter’. Taken as a whole this provides a touching insight into family life around 1932 at ‘Churnside’, 37 Victoria Road, Cirencester.
You can read the book if you want to, it will open in a new browser tab. I’ve assumed a date of Christmas Day 1932, but it might have been written at any time and was not necessarily a birthday or Christmas gift. After a few years it was most likely forgotten, but never discarded. But now it’s here for anyone to read.
World events (July 1932): The Dow Jones reached its lowest level of the Great Depression, at 41.22; and Norway annexed northern Greenland.
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What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every few days.
Click to enlarge
This boat, seen here on the Gloucester and Sharpness Canal, is based at Saul Junction in Frampton on Severn. It might look like a tourist boat available for hire by the public, but it serves a different and entirely charitable purpose. Two similar (but not identical) special boats were built to provide opportunities for disabled or seriously ill people to experience a day on the canal for free. And for those that want to, they are also given the chance to explore the boat, see how it all works, hold the steering gear and so forth. The boats are designed for wheelchair access too. Check the See also link below for details and photos from the Willow Trust website.
I love to see examples of effort and resources being expended by enthusastic teams to greatly benefit those who need and deserve help. Every one of us can see the need for support of this sort, though not all are able or willing to provide it. But every single person in the world can do something positive to help others one way or another. It might be as simple as a kind word at the right moment, or a helping hand to steady someone losing their balance, or even just a smile. All it takes is an open eye, an attentive ear, and a willing mind.
If you are a wealthy person you might give thousands of pounds towards maintenance and fuel costs for these boats; if you have some spare time but no money, you might give time and energy to help with tidying and cleaning a boat between trips or helping in other practical ways. No matter what we do or do not possess, there’s always something we can offer.
It’s about contributing something, anything, in a world that’s not always fair or kind. And there are so many considerate, helpful organisations out there – everyone can find worthy opportunities in every town and most villages around the globe; even where there’s no local group or organisation, there will be many local opportunities to find and fill a need of some kind.
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Orchids grow wild here in the UK, they’re not as showy as many of the tropical ones, and the flowers are far smaller, but they are still beautiful plants.
What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every few days.
Click to enlarge
Orchids produce such beautiful flowers, often in great abundance, and they last for months if protected from too much heat and strong sun. This lovely, white Phalaenopsis flowers every year for us, but this year it had a bad plague of scale insect on the backs of the petals and on the leaves.
Scale insects are not hard to deal with as they can be wiped off with a soft tissue moistened with methylated spirit. Or even just wiped away gently with your finger. But you have to be persistent because you need to remove all the adults and then keep on removing the smaller insects until you have broken their reproductive cycle.
Orchids grow wild here in the UK, they’re not as showy as many of the tropical ones, and the flowers are far smaller, but they are still beautiful plants. Some orchids have flowers that mimic insects such as bees, butterflies, and flies. The insects are attracted to the flowers, and sometimes even attempt to mate with them; they act as pollinators, spreading the orchid pollen from one flower to another and so helping the orchid produce viable seed.
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Like all dogs, Marple and Maizi spend a lot of time asleep. They sleep at night of course, just like we do; but they also sleep after meals, after walks, and any time they fancy during the day.
What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every few days.
Click to enlarge
Here’s a five-year-old photo of my brother-in-law Paul’s dog, one of a pair of black Labradors, lovely, soppy, friendly creatures. This one is Marple, I think, though it’s hard to tell them apart without seeing both at the same time – if not Marple, she is Maizi.
Like all dogs, Marple and Maizi spend a lot of time asleep. They sleep at night of course, just like we do; but they also sleep after meals, after walks, and any time they fancy during the day. Apart from doing what they are told they have no responsibilities, no chores, no planning or organising, but plenty of time to rest. And like all carnivores, they mostly want to find something to eat and then rest until hunger pangs set in again. It’s a dog’s life!
Now five years older, at 14-years-old, they sleep even more than before.
Paul and his wife Vanessa live in Weston-super-Mare, a seaside town with a wonderfully long and wide beach and some fine woodland on a hill. Needless to say, Marple and Maizi have always loved visiting both the beach and the woodland. And it’s in those environments that I’ve seen some of the special closeness of interaction between human and dog; the throw, chase, catch, bring back, drop process for example, redone over and over and over again!
The close interaction between people and dogs developed a very long time ago, in his book, ‘Sapiens’, Yuval Noah Harari writes:
We have incontrovertible evidence of domesticated dogs from about 15,000 years ago. They may have joined the human pack thousands of years earlier. Dogs were used for hunting and fighting, and as an alarm system against wild beasts and human intruders. With the passing of generations, the two species co-evolved to communicate well with each other. Dogs that were most attentive to the needs and feelings of their human companions got extra care and food, and were more likely to survive.
Labradors possibly take this cooperative union further than almost any other breed. The bond between dog and owner can be really close. It’s been my privilege to see that very clearly with Paul, his wife Vanessa, and their dogs Maizi and Marple.
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Notice how every part is sized precisely for the task it performs. The main stem is stout and sturdy, the stems that spring from it are much smaller and each one carries a number of flowers.
What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every few days.
Click to enlarge
This photo was taken at a different time and place from the previous Umbellifer image, but the structure of this flower is very similar to the previous one. The main difference is that this time we’re viewing it from below. This reveals the exquisite architecture of an umbel.
Notice how every part is sized precisely for the task it performs. The main stem is stout and sturdy, the stems that spring from it are much smaller and each one carries a number of flowers. Those flower stalks in turn are smaller yet, and each one carries a single, tiny flower. It’s exactly how an engineer might design something, each part as large and strong as it needs to be, but no more. Why and how? Well, in the case the engineer, because lightness means less material, less mass, and therefore lower cost. Failure will be unusual because the forces will have been calculated and the values increased just a little to ensure safety.
Your car is designed this way, it could be designed and built to survive a collision with little or no damage, but it would be unaffordable because of the high cost of the extra material required, and it would consume much more fuel because of its high mass. That’s why you drive a car when travelling, not a tank!
The same argument applies to plant structures. The umbel could be made to survive a hurricane, but it would demand much more photosynthesis to provide the cullulose and other materials required to make it tough enough to survive such powerful winds. That’s why coconut palms have far stronger stems than the umbellifer! Living things are not designed by engineers, they adjust to their environment little by little over many generations by a trial and error system we call evolution.
Sometimes people say, ‘It’s only a theory’, meaning that something is a bit shaky and not to be trusted. That is to misunderstand what scientists mean by the word ‘theory’. In everyday use the word has a sense of an untested idea, something you just dreamed up as a way to explain something – might be wrong, might be right. Scientists have a word for that, but the word is not ‘theory’ – it’s ‘hypothesis’. In science, a theory is something so well tested as to be essentially unrejectable. Evolution is a theory in that sense, like the theories of relativity or quantum physics or plate tectonics. Theories have almost no room left for argument.
You can’t believe in evolution, it’s not a matter of faith but of overwhelming evidence. Following Jesus, as I and many others do, is based on faith, and I write about that too on Journeys of heart and mind.
You might be surprised to learn that engineers sometimes use evolution to design things like aircraft wings. The software to do that makes a long series of small tweaks to an initial design and calculates which changes improve performance. And this process is repeated many times enabling the final result to be stronger, lighter and more effective. An aircraft wing (or other structure) created in this way is not designed with paper and pencil or with CAD in the normal way, it evolves.
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