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Notes from bygone years – October (Noctober after dark?).
Hint: Click on the thumbnails for larger images.
October 2023 (1 year before publishing this article)
An exciting scientific paper published in the journal Nature described how X-ray data and clever data manipulation had made it possible to recover small scraps of text from scrolls lost when Vesuvius erupted in October 79 CE. Hope was expressed that it might become possible to recover much larger sections of text, or even whole scrolls.
Our cat, Erin, was not feeling well; due to a tumour she was not eating very well and often threw up afterwards. She was losing weight quickly as a result. The vet suggested a steroid injection to see if it would help her cope better, but it would clearly be only temporary relief. It seemed well worth a try and during the second half of the month she seemed very much her old self again.
We visited Westonbirt Arboretum on 23rd October to enjoy the autumn colours, and Donna’s Uncle Ken died on 26th after a long illness.
JHM: I published Blast from the past… 11; and an index on posts about church as a network. World events: Mike Johnson was elected as Speaker of the US House of Representatives; and the Cricket World Cup was held in India.
October 2022 (2 years before publishing)
I began intermittent fasting, only eating between 11:00 and 21:00, as part of a Zoe trial. I’ve changed the timing slightly, but I’m still following the principle two years later.
There was a Roman Army historical display in the old amphitheatre on 2nd October, it was great fun to watch the events going on and look at the Roman equipment. They fired a melon from a ballista and it sailed right out of the arena. Seeing a crowd at the amphitheatre gave me a sense of scale and made the place look much larger. The crowd in the photo is using about a third of the seating space.
On Mondays I enjoyed meeting my friend Stephen for a walk, a coffee, and a chat.
JHM: I decided to make a fresh start. World events: Ukraine attacked the Kerch Strait Bridge; and Liz Truss announced her resignation.
October 2019 (5 years before)
I spent some time working out the route of the old canal through the built-up parts of Cirencester, it was an interesting exercise, poring over old maps.
We were also helping Donna’s Mum and Dad quite a lot, I get on well with Tony; we’ve always enjoyed chatting and he seems to trust me. He was mostly wheelchair-bound at this time as his Parkinson’s progressed, but on a good day he could still do quite a lot for himself.
On 19th I joined the People’s Vote march in London, quite an experience!
JHM: I wrote an article on climate change; and another about Cirencester Wharf. World events: There was a Turkish incursion into Syria; and tourists visited the summit of Uluru (Ayers Rock) for the last time.
October 2014 (10 years)
My friends Jim and Pam ran a church Mums and Tots group (Puddles) in St Neots. Jim ask me to take a set of photos of each mum with their child for official use by the group, here’s a more general shot that I included for them.
I was meeting frequently with different people, there was the Open Door small group once a week, coffee shop meetings with some friends in town, meetings with my friends Jim, Sean and Kevin rotating around our three homes. It was all good and seemed useful, but three such different groups!
JHM: I wrote about the ‘seal’ of an apostle; and about simplifying my blog. World events: Pope Paul VI was made a saint; and Alan Eustace set a world record highest and longest free fall jump.
October 2009 (15 years)
Donna’s Mum and Dad came to stay for a weekend in the middle of the month and we drove over to Olney for a walk and then to Stoke Bruerne to look at the canal and the ladder of locks. There were some great autumn colours on the day. The photo shows Isobel, Tony and Donna on a bridge.
JHM: I posted about a home meeting; and an article on Google Wave. World events: WikiLeaks published the membership list of the BNP; and Microsoft released Windows 7.
October 2004 (20 years)
At the end of the month we visited Cirencester to visit my Mum and Dad, and while we were there we popped over to Westonbirt Arboretum to look at the autumn colours. There’s always a wonderful display there, and the trees were more or less at their best.
JHM: I wrote an article about moles and what they can teach us; and about walking in the light. World events: Explorers reached the bottom of the world’s deepest cave; and the first European constitution was signed.
October 1999 (25 years)
These are the web development servers in the open plan office where I worked as part of the Web Team. Today these would all be virtual servers hosted at a data centre elsewhere in the company. It was very useful to have multiple copies of each website, one for the developers to work on, another for testing purposes, and a third for the live service.
World events: NASA lost a Mars orbiter due to a mix-up over measurement units; and there was a serious rail crash in London.
October 1994 (30 years)
Things seemed to go from bad to worse with Judy’s colon cancer. In October (I think) she began the first of three courses of chemotherapy (5-fluorouracil) to shrink the metastases and slow them down. This was expected to give her at least a couple of extra years of healthy life. But after starting the first course she became quite unwell and the doctors discovered that she lacked an enzyme that normally enables the body to dispose of the drug. She had to spend some weeks in hospital, quite dangerously ill for some of them.
World events: Tim Berners-Lee founded the World Wide Web Consortium; and Iraq withdrew its forces from the Kuwaiti border.
October 1989 (35 years)
I had been working in Long Ashton’s Electron Microscopy Lab, helping to manage the instruments and operating the Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) for staff unable to do the work themselves. But with a further reshuffle at work I’d been moved to the Computing Section and was now working on MS-DOS and developing the environment that became the LARS System.
World events: The Dalai Lama won the Nobel Peace Prize; and the Loma Prieta earthquake hit the San Francisco Bay Area.
October 1984 (40 years)
I was the Computing Representative for Long Ashton Research Station’s Plant Science Division.
The photo of Lilias (my Mum) and my nephew, Tom, is a still from my Dad’s cine collection in October 1984.
World events: The Provisional IRA attempted to assassinate the UK PM and Cabinet ; and The Terminator premiered.
October 1979 (45 years)
(Wikimedia)
The Good News Crusade came to Portishead and a number of us from Yatton and Claverham were involved. There were several days of the Crusade itself, and then we (and others) arranged some post-Crusade meetings as well.
Mum and Dad had a late touring holiday along the Devon and Cornwall coast. Dad took several 35 mm transparency films of that holiday.
World events: A National March for gay rights was held in Washington DC; and the eradication of the smallpox virus was announced.
October 1974 (50 years)
We were living in our flat at 20 Belmont Road, and I already had a Scottish Widows life assurance policy as a first step towards securing a mortgage. We were still not well-placed despite having quite a lot of available reserves in our joint bank savings account.
World events: Harold Wilson’s Labour government won a general election; and five bombs were detonated in Manhatten.
October 1969 (55 years)
I was back in Bath University and the fourth year was underway with the final exams looming after Easter. Judy’s position was similar, back at Aber (Aberystwyth) for her third and final year. She took the photo from a ground floor window in Alexandra Hall on the Aber seafront as the sun was setting.
World events: Hundreds of thousands demonstrated against the Vietnam War across the United States; and the first ARPANET message was sent between two computers (the start of the internet).
October 1964 (60 years)
The autumn term meant the start of my time in the Lower Sixth at Cirencester Grammar School. During half-term a friend and I dug a hole in the Lower Garden just east of the footpath behind Churnside (37 Victoria Road). We found some Roman stonework, small pieces of burnt clay, pieces of a broken amphora rim, and a small piece of Samian ware with a failed repair, also a piece of tegula (roof tile). We had no idea this was a bad thing to do!
World events: The world’s first high-speed rail system opened between Tokyo and Osaka; and Martin Luther King Jr. received the Nobel Peace Prize.
October 1959 (65 years)
I was in my first term at Cirencester Grammar School. Amongst other subjects I had to learn some Latin, it wasn’t my favourite subject at the time. The image shows a Latin exercise in which I managed to get seven correct answers out of nine. I think my favourite subjects were maths, geography and chemistry.
World events: Luna 3 returned the first images of the far side of the Moon; and Astérix the Gaul first appeared in a French comic.
October 1954 (70 years)
Wikimedia
Cindy turned three and I was in my second year at Querns School; we were living on the Beeches Estate in Cirencester. 17 Queen Anne’s Road was a three-bedroom semi so I had my own room. Mum and Dad’s room had a special feature, a wall-mounted electric fire with two switches. I never saw this heater in use, but there was also a two bar plug-in electric fire that was used downstairs on very cold days in the winter.
World events: Texas Instruments announced the first commercial transistor radio; and the Paris Agreement was signed.
October 1949 (75 years)
I was 1¼-years-old, and life went on well enough as far as I’m aware. We were living in my grandparents house in Victoria Road, Cirencester and Dad was busy working on the nurseries, part of the old family business founded in 1795.
World events: The People’s Republic of China was founded; and the cornerstone was laid for the United Nations HQ in New York.
October 1944 (80 years)
(Wikimedia)
As October passed and Mum and Dad spent more time together, they became what today we would call ‘an item’. His brother Bob, an army officer and 15 years older than Dad, was married to Betty from the town of Dungannon 13 miles south of Coagh. Dad visited them from time to time, but spent much of his off-duty time with Lilias and her family.
World events: The first German Me 262 jet fighter was shot down; and Warsaw was destroyed by the occupying German forces.
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