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July 2024 (6 months before publishing this article)
Here’s a touch of July during chilly January! Last year we decided to buy a greenhouse for overwintering house plants, growing cuttings, and extending the season for things like tomatoes. The kit of parts arrived some time ago, and finally it was being installed on the base prepared earlier.
JHM: I posted about Blunder Lock; and wrote some thoughts on John 15:1-8. World events: Keir Starmer led the Labour Party to a landslide victory; and Donald Trump was shot in an attempted assassination.
January 2024 (1 year before publishing)
We were in Yorkshire on 1st, stayed with Debbie and Steve for the night, visited Beth and Paz on 2nd, and then drove home in the afternoon.
Later in the month I made good progress scanning old photos; this is a great memory jogger, helping me piece together some of my life and that of those around me. There’s nothing better than documentary information, whether that’s photographic, video, sound, or in written form. Some of the results appear in these Blast from the past posts.
The image shows an original transparency alongside the scanned version. The colour match looks pretty good.
JHM: I wrote about Mach diamonds; and events in Russia. World events: Japan landed its SLIM probe on the Moon; and a U.S.-led coalition launched air strikes at Houthi militants in Yemen.
January 2023 (2 years before)
We had some crisp, frosty conditions during January that made the countryside look really beautiful.
Towards the end of the month I discovered some reddish bumps on my left shoulder, mostly at the front with a few at the back. I had various thoughts about what it might be, and in the end found out it was shingles. I had no discomfort or pain, just the rash, and the GP prescribed a course of antivirals and antihistamine.
It was strange to think that the virus had been inactive in some nerve cells since I was a child!
JHM: I posted my second Blast from the past post; and a short item about our Israeli coffee mug. World events: Croatia adopted the Euro and joined Schengen; and Jacinda Ardern resigned as New Zealand Prime Minister.
January 2020 (5 years)
I visited my friend Stephen in Gloucester Hospital, and he seemed in good spirits and to be doing well, he was looking forward to getting back home as soon as possible after his surgery.
I managed to get some video of our cat, Erin, chasing her tail. Cats and dogs both do this sometimes, especially when they are young. And I was trying different methods of making still images from my old VHS videos that I had on my laptop as ISO images. The VLC media player seemed the way to go and I was pleased with some of the results I was getting.
JHM: I wrote about upside-down leadership; and an examination of church. World events: An impeachment trial against President Trump began in the USA; and the Chinese city of Wuhan was quarantined to contain the spread of Coronavirus infection.
January 2015 (10 years)
I was tracking the progress of several space missions; Dawn was closing in on the minor planet Ceres in the Asteroid Belt, while New Horizons was beginning the science phase of its mission to Pluto and Charon, and there was hope that the Philae Lander would soon wake up.
I had a new driving licence through the post from DVLA. Unlike my current licence, this one proudly displayed the EU emblem in the upper left. Like almost half the voters in the referendum, I voted to remain in the EU. Leaving was a terrible mistake.
JHM: I wrote about Elon Musk; and the opposite of envy. World events: Lithuania adopted the Euro; while Boko Haram, Islamic State, and Al Quaeda killed innocent civilians in Nigeria, Cameroon and Paris.
January 2010 (15 years)
The demolition of the building where I first worked on joining Unilever was almost complete. And the very last piece still standing contained the ground-floor corner window where my desk had been! It seemed strange to see the old Knowledge Systems Group office (KSG) vanish! By the end of January there was nothing left.
The photo (right) shows items on my desk on 24th, including a mug of tea, a Conference pear, my Samsung Steel phone, notebook, roller pen – and a piece of the old building rescued from the cleared site!
JHM: I wrote about John 21; and we planned a meeting at Moggerhanger. World events: The Burj Khalifa opened in Dubai; and Yemen declared war on Al Qaeda.
January 2005 (20 years)
I was busy with some decorating in the hall, stairs and landing of our house in St Neots, there were cracks that became very wide when I scraped out the loose plaster, so those had to be filled and sanded down before I could begin to apply paint. But by the end of the month things were looking a lot better and we preferred the new colour to the pale yellow we had used before.
Unilever was restructuring the computing departments within research and this affected the Web Team where I was working. It seemed we would survive as a group, and with a similar remit, but within a very different organisational structure and changed leadership. We were in the process of understanding how we’d be affected going forward.
JHM: I wrote about paint and light. World events: The dwarf planet Eris was discovered; and George W. Bush was inaugurated for a second term as President of the USA.
January 2000 (25 years)
On Sunday 23rd I flew to Boston with my boss, Pete Keeley. We were picked up from home by a Unilever car and driven to Heathrow for a business class flight, then from the airport by cab to our rooms in the Boston Park Plaza. We were attending a Sun Microsystems conference on their Java Development Tools and the various uses for Java. There was a heavy snowfall while we were in Boston and we tried walking through it to explore the city before flying home; that was quite an experience!
At home, I walked some of the nearby streets and footpaths around the old A1 at Crosshall on the edge of St Neots. Although I’d got my bearings pretty much for the main streets in the town, some of the smaller footpaths were still new to me.
World events: The last, wild Pyrenean Ibex was killed by a falling tree; and America Online and Time Warner merged.
January 1995 (30 years)
(Wikimedia)
Judy had recovered well from surgery and an issue with chemotherapy for her bowel cancer and returned to work at Cotham Grammar School teaching biology. She very much wanted to teach until June to see her students through their exams. Debbie, Beth and I supported her as best we could, but teaching is a tough, stressful, tiring career and I think we all wondered if it might be too much. Nevertheless, she got off to a great start with her usual determination.
World events: Austria, Finland and Sweden joined the European Union; and Valeri Polyakov completed a year aboard the Mir space station, a duration record.
January 1990 (35 years)
I began designing the LARS System configuration for the PCs at work. It would be beneficial to have all the research station’s machines set up the same way so staff would have a familiar environment wherever they were working.
Judy ordered some double-glazed windows to replace the worst of the house’s original decaying wooden window frames. This was a much needed improvement.
A severe storm caused damage to trees and buildings overnight on 25th January at the Research Station. Trees fell or had branches torn off and roofs were damaged.
World events: Commercial customers first had access to the internet in the USA and the Netherlands; and the Morris Worm caused issues on Unix computers.
January 1985 (40 years)
I was the Computer Representative for the Plant Science Division at Long Ashton Research Station. This involved liaising between the Computing Group at Rothamsted and the research staff at LARS. Desktop personal computers were just beginning to appear, but computing at Long Ashton depended on the Research Council’s VAX/VMS systems.
Judy was teaching Biology at Cotham Grammar School in Bristol. Debbie was nine-years-old and Beth was six, they were collected from school every day by a friend and then Judy picked them up on her way home.
World events: The Internet’s Domain Name System was created; and Ronald Reagan was sworn in for a second term as US President.
January 1980 (45 years)
(Wikimedia)
One of our research papers appeared in January, based on work done in 1978, here are the details:
Williams RR, Arnold GM, Flook VA, Jefferies CJ. The effect of picking date on blossoming and fruit set in the following year for the apple cv Bramley’s Seedling. Journal of Horticultural Science. 1980 Jan 1;55(4):359-62.
I enjoyed the scientific work while it lasted. We didn’t know it at the time, but the Research Station was to close 23 years later and is now a housing estate.
World events: GPS time began on 6th January; and Andrei Sakharov was arrested in Moscow.
January 1975 (50 years)
During this period I had gathered and processed information for my master’s thesis on plum flower and fruit development. The experimental work was complete, a lot of photographic processing was behind me and I had just had copies of the thesis bound and submitted in December. Now it was a matter of waiting for the viva and a decision by Bristol University.
Judy was expecting a baby in March and she had made a basketwork cane crib as well as knitting various baby clothes – all in non-committal yellow and white as we had no idea whether to expect a boy or a girl.
World events: Guilty verdicts were returned over Watergate; and work on the Channel Tunnel was abandoned.
January 1970 (55 years)
My final year project at Bath University was an experiment in propagation of Bergenia, and I needed to go in over the holidays to take measurements. After New Year, but before our new terms began, Judy was able to come to Bath with me on one of these occasions.
World events: Unix time began on January 1st; and the Nigerian Civil War ended with a Biafran surrender.
January 1965 (60 years)
(Wikimedia)
I began my second term in the lower sixth at Cirencester Grammar School, studying chemistry, biology and physics and additional maths.
I was finding A Level Chemistry tougher than I’d expected. It was one of my favourite subjects at O Level when everything had seemed very logical and precise, but organic chemistry was new and seemed more flexible and varied. Physics was OK, but getting more mathematical, and biology was completely new as I had not been able to do all three at O Level.
World events: Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as President of the USA; and the state funeral of Sir Winston Churchill took place in London.
January 1960 (65 years)
In January it was back to school for my second term in the First Form at Cirencester Grammar School. We were all properly in our stride by now while my sister, Cindy was in her fourth year at Querns School, and Ruth and Rachael were at home with Mummy, not at school at all yet. I was eleven-years-old, Cindy was eight, Ruth four, and Rachael three.
The page from my maths exercise book suggests I was pretty good at adding decimals!
World events: Construction of the Aswan Dam began in Egypt; and Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh descended almost 11 km into the Mariana Trench in the bathyscaphe Trieste.
January 1955 (70 years)
I was six and in my second year at Querns School, starting the second term.
Daddy worked at Watermoor Nursery as the foreman assisted by Miss Brown. They took cuttings, split larger herbaceous plants, and kept the rows hoed and watered. They would have had extra help at busy times. The recipe for John Innes compost would have been used by them around this time.
World events: USS Nautilus, the first nuclear-powered submarine began sea trials; and the Soviet Union announced the end of the war between the USSR and Germany.
January 1950 (75 years)
I was eighteen-months-old at the end of January, walking and talking no doubt. We must have been getting settled in our new council house, 17 Queen Anne’s Road on the Beeches Estate. I imagine we had mostly second-hand furniture or cheap utility items.
This is the cover of a seed catalogue of the period, rescued I believe by my father from the office of my Uncle, R W Jefferies after his death. He was in charge of the seed department and had great stacks of documents on his desk, recent items on top and older material buried further down. It all had to be cleared, of course, but Dad and his brother Bob kept some of the more interesting items.
World events: The UK officially recognized the People’s Republic of China; and Jerusalem became the capital of Israel.
January 1945 (80 years)
(IWM)
Mum and Dad wrote often to one another, a phone call was possible, but didn’t always go through, was difficult, and not very private.
On radar, Dad mentions tracking a group of 5 V1 cruise missiles (‘Buzz Bombs’) on 3rd January, and a group of more than two hundred German aircraft on 16th. He heard on 17th that Warsaw had been taken by the Russians.
On Wednesday 24th he travelled to Cirencester by train on leave, returning on duty in early February.
World events: The Soviet Union began the East Prussian Offensive, to eliminate German forces there; and Adolf Hitler made his last public speech on radio.
January 1940 (85 years)
Mike (aka ‘Tigger’ and later my Dad) was thirteen-years-old and starting a new term at either Cirencester Grammar School, or Rendcomb College. Lilias (later my Mum) would have been eleven, living in Coagh, County Tyrone with her mother Selina and little sister, Annabelle (about two). Lilias would also have have been starting a new school term, in her case at the village school.
(No earlier info) – Feb 194o >
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Journeys of Heart and Mind 
