I met Georgio Brianti again, he was my new Group Leader, he was welcoming to me. There were still many old friends around, but a slightly different atmosphere from the one that existed in the early days. The technique seemed to be to surround oneself with a protective ring of loyal advisers and hold the ring! Gearge's first task was to eliminate someone who did not fit in, not a good beginning but quite on a par with all the scheming that was going on to preserve the status quo
and the safety of the jobs of people in positions of authority.
to be continued
Wednesday, 30 December 2009
Anniversary Day!
We made it! 60 years of happily married life together. A wonderfull card from the Queen with a nice photo of her and a greetings text. We skyped to Helena and spoke to her and Christina and showed them the card over the video camera. We are quite overcome with flowers and cards and have been made aware of our friends and family's concern.
I would have enjoyed it much more if I had been fit. Kate and Chris visited us and daughter Christina came to us in the evening. As I had been up since 2.30 am I went to bed in the radio room at about 11 pm. To my great surprise I slept till 8 am. The first night's good sleep for a week.
Slowly but slowly,I am miraculously being retored to health. Someone must have been praying for me!
I spoke to David Long for a while and had his congratulations.
On the 31st.with Christina here we tried the cake that Helena had baked for us. It tasted as good as it looked, here is a photo.
Monday, 28 December 2009
Chrstmas with Richard and Jackie!
We drove to Norwich on Wednesday 23rd December and after leaving hone at about 10.30 am arrived before 4 p.m.
They have a lovely new house, only some few years old with large rooms and a big garden. We were impressed with their choice.
They made us very welcome in spite of Frank's graveyard cough and his addiction to his eeepc900. There were daily apero sessions, lovely meals in the evening and a glorious Christmas Day lunch.
Ursula went out for a walk with them on Boxing Day but I lay low with my coughing.
We came home horrendously on Sunday, leaving at 11.30 and getting home at 4.30. Alas too many cars, people,lorries..but safely despite not obeying my navigator's instructions.
A lovely break with much TLC from our hosts. Thank you Richard and Jackie.
They have a lovely new house, only some few years old with large rooms and a big garden. We were impressed with their choice.
They made us very welcome in spite of Frank's graveyard cough and his addiction to his eeepc900. There were daily apero sessions, lovely meals in the evening and a glorious Christmas Day lunch.
Ursula went out for a walk with them on Boxing Day but I lay low with my coughing.
We came home horrendously on Sunday, leaving at 11.30 and getting home at 4.30. Alas too many cars, people,lorries..but safely despite not obeying my navigator's instructions.
A lovely break with much TLC from our hosts. Thank you Richard and Jackie.
Saturday, 28 November 2009
Manchester 1960
By some skullduggery I was appointed to a post at the Rutherford Lab and posted to Manchester in order to help with Sam Devons's Heavy Ion Linac. My brother was married that year in Bridlington and Ursula came with me to Manchester and met Sam and the site of the linac. It had been a garage and was next to the Maths Tower and opposite to the Main University building including the library.
The pay from Rutherford was better than could have been expected from the University. We had a friend in Manchester, Charles Hawke, who had been a member of the Met Vic Erection team in Geneva. He met Ursula at the airport after her hair raising flight from Heathrow. Her plane had to go back after it almost reached Manchester because the undercart wouldn't come down. The stewardess abandoned Ursula to a kind gentleman who helped with the children.
She was installed in a hotel in Altringham while I drove the car back from Geneva and then joined her. Our house was rented from The University, and was cold, not very well decorated and on a busy crossing in Fallowfield. We had hoped to be integrated with the University but alas with Jodrell Bank causing financial embarrasment to the University this linac project in an old garage didn't cut much ice with them. We were virtual outcasts!
Gradually we made friends, especially the Anglican Chaplain to the University and his family. We almost developed together! Also Jackie Pearce, a friend of Judy Chell, who became a great comfort to us. We were visited by Hugh Hereward, who I had heard was visiting, as his hotel reservation was flawed he spent the night on our sofa! Ulf Kracht same once and Charles Hawke was a frequent visitor. Ian Grant was also on the same project and became a good friend.
In due course the accelerator came together and functioned satisfactorily. It was a huge beast, one could walk inside it. It ran at a frequencyof 75 MHz. The low energy end ran at 25 MHz and had been constructed with the help of students. It was a Wideroe parallel line device. Wideroe was working for the Germans in Hamburg during the war whilst the RAF were boming the place. He was starngely enough around at Cern in its early days!
Whilst at the University, David Long came for a week or two to help with the electronics, it was good to have him with us and I think he enjoyed himself!
Devons left for a post in the States and a new Professor was appointed, some of us didn't find him very sypathetic and eventually he disappeared too. George Nassibian was in charge of the Hilac, a good friend and a very competant engineer. I managed to recruit Tony Smith to CERN later on, he and his family came to Geneva. He elped me on the PSB. Sadly Rosemary his wife died a few years later, she told me that Geneva time was a very happy one for her.
I was very happy at Manchester, and my son was born there! Eventually we bought a house in Gatley at a cost of £5,000. 4 bedrooms two reception rooms a big kitchen and half an acre of garden! There were fruit trees and a garage on the Styal Road. We had to rewire, install central heating and decorate the house. The traffic on the Styal Road was so intense that one had to back in, in order to come out frontwards in the busy rush hour every morning.
In Fallowfield we were happy to be next door to Professor Vinaver and his wife. They were very friendly to us. When Christina passed her exam to get a place in Withington, we celebrated with a bottle of champagne and Professor Vinaver opened the bottle for us! There was a time in the winter that we were looking after the Vinaver's house next door. With all the heaters going full blast the main fuse blew. It was the fuse for the two houses and it was in our basement. I shorted it out with a nail as no one was going to come and fix it and the Vinavers were due to arrive any minute. Fortunately I never heard a word about it again! In Gatley we made friends with an optician and his family who lived opposite.
Schools for the children were plentiful and good. First Christina then Helena managed to get into Withington School.
Once the Hilac was commisioned I was posted to Liverpool to work on Nina, a proposed electron synchrotron to be built at Daresbury. I went by train every day, sometimes calling in at the Hilac to see how things were going and offer help! On one occasion the train caught fire and we had to leave the train in a tunnel, I remember a lady with a white coat who come out of the tunnel a bit like a badger. Merrison at Liverpool thought my explanation for arriving late was the nost original that he had ever heard!
Francis Farley paid a visit to Manchester, he thought I had been made a professor and was put out to find I was just another hand to the pump. He became Dean at Shrivenham. He worked on Caesar in Cern but as far as I was concerned he only produced a Methuen monograph on valve circuits, something we knew all about from Malvern days.
Manchester was heavenly. lots to do and a nice crowd of people. I do have some pictures.
Nearly all our holdays were taken in the Lake Distict at Delmar Banner's cottage at High Bield.
George Nassiian was recruited to Cern, he persuaded me to think about returning to Cern to work on the PS Booster. Gradually I became interested and eventually accepted a position in his group. This gave rise to my final endeavour, a 15 year stint in Geneva in the PS Division.
The pay from Rutherford was better than could have been expected from the University. We had a friend in Manchester, Charles Hawke, who had been a member of the Met Vic Erection team in Geneva. He met Ursula at the airport after her hair raising flight from Heathrow. Her plane had to go back after it almost reached Manchester because the undercart wouldn't come down. The stewardess abandoned Ursula to a kind gentleman who helped with the children.
She was installed in a hotel in Altringham while I drove the car back from Geneva and then joined her. Our house was rented from The University, and was cold, not very well decorated and on a busy crossing in Fallowfield. We had hoped to be integrated with the University but alas with Jodrell Bank causing financial embarrasment to the University this linac project in an old garage didn't cut much ice with them. We were virtual outcasts!
Gradually we made friends, especially the Anglican Chaplain to the University and his family. We almost developed together! Also Jackie Pearce, a friend of Judy Chell, who became a great comfort to us. We were visited by Hugh Hereward, who I had heard was visiting, as his hotel reservation was flawed he spent the night on our sofa! Ulf Kracht same once and Charles Hawke was a frequent visitor. Ian Grant was also on the same project and became a good friend.
In due course the accelerator came together and functioned satisfactorily. It was a huge beast, one could walk inside it. It ran at a frequencyof 75 MHz. The low energy end ran at 25 MHz and had been constructed with the help of students. It was a Wideroe parallel line device. Wideroe was working for the Germans in Hamburg during the war whilst the RAF were boming the place. He was starngely enough around at Cern in its early days!
Whilst at the University, David Long came for a week or two to help with the electronics, it was good to have him with us and I think he enjoyed himself!
Devons left for a post in the States and a new Professor was appointed, some of us didn't find him very sypathetic and eventually he disappeared too. George Nassibian was in charge of the Hilac, a good friend and a very competant engineer. I managed to recruit Tony Smith to CERN later on, he and his family came to Geneva. He elped me on the PSB. Sadly Rosemary his wife died a few years later, she told me that Geneva time was a very happy one for her.
I was very happy at Manchester, and my son was born there! Eventually we bought a house in Gatley at a cost of £5,000. 4 bedrooms two reception rooms a big kitchen and half an acre of garden! There were fruit trees and a garage on the Styal Road. We had to rewire, install central heating and decorate the house. The traffic on the Styal Road was so intense that one had to back in, in order to come out frontwards in the busy rush hour every morning.
In Fallowfield we were happy to be next door to Professor Vinaver and his wife. They were very friendly to us. When Christina passed her exam to get a place in Withington, we celebrated with a bottle of champagne and Professor Vinaver opened the bottle for us! There was a time in the winter that we were looking after the Vinaver's house next door. With all the heaters going full blast the main fuse blew. It was the fuse for the two houses and it was in our basement. I shorted it out with a nail as no one was going to come and fix it and the Vinavers were due to arrive any minute. Fortunately I never heard a word about it again! In Gatley we made friends with an optician and his family who lived opposite.
Schools for the children were plentiful and good. First Christina then Helena managed to get into Withington School.
Once the Hilac was commisioned I was posted to Liverpool to work on Nina, a proposed electron synchrotron to be built at Daresbury. I went by train every day, sometimes calling in at the Hilac to see how things were going and offer help! On one occasion the train caught fire and we had to leave the train in a tunnel, I remember a lady with a white coat who come out of the tunnel a bit like a badger. Merrison at Liverpool thought my explanation for arriving late was the nost original that he had ever heard!
Francis Farley paid a visit to Manchester, he thought I had been made a professor and was put out to find I was just another hand to the pump. He became Dean at Shrivenham. He worked on Caesar in Cern but as far as I was concerned he only produced a Methuen monograph on valve circuits, something we knew all about from Malvern days.
Manchester was heavenly. lots to do and a nice crowd of people. I do have some pictures.
Nearly all our holdays were taken in the Lake Distict at Delmar Banner's cottage at High Bield.
George Nassiian was recruited to Cern, he persuaded me to think about returning to Cern to work on the PS Booster. Gradually I became interested and eventually accepted a position in his group. This gave rise to my final endeavour, a 15 year stint in Geneva in the PS Division.
Friday, 27 November 2009
First Spell at CERN
I had been working on the same type of accelerator at Harwell that Cern were planning to build. So in some respects I had a head start. I developed a "lock in oscillator" so that I could couple easily into the field patterns of the cavity modes. This way one could measure the electric fields of almost any mode in the cavity. I had to measure the Q factor and check that there were no appreciable losses. I developed my own methods and even gave a talk at the IEE in London which was well supported by ny Harwell colleagues. Alas when Nils Bohr came to inaugerate the PS I was ill, so I missed the fun!
I was at the controls of the linac when the PS made its first acceleration. Mervyn Hine was at the helm of the PS. He was the most patient of all men, excusing us for not doing exactly what was wanted and repeatedly encouraging us. Franco Bonaudi was his runner. I hit my head in the tunnel once on a trip to the PS control room from the linac, out for a short while but recovered soon after!
Lots was going on at Cern. Caesar was being put together, people were all loking round for ways to stay on after the PS and the SC machines were built. My friend Anthony Dopping-Heptonstall was at the SC. He had come from Mullard as had Bramham and Montague. Alas he deplored the waste of money at cern and tried to correct it. As a result his contract was not renewed. So when the chance came to elect to move on, I followed his path and left to go to Manchester to work on a heavy ion linac. A friend of Hereward, George Nasibian welcomed me with open arms.
Cern was a wonderful place, alas there was much of the old boy routine and one person that I knew and was friendly with had been a machinist in Manchester but rose to be one of the top grades at Cern. His only claim to fame was his activity as a trade union man in England! There were many such examples, similar to what went on at the UN. For this I was glad to go back to England and work for my living! Some people were brilliant, but I had to wait another few years until I could find them at CERN. It was the beginning of things for high energy accelerators, the really right people were yet to appear on the scene.
We had a lovely flat in Satigny, the second floor of a house on the La Boverie estate. The owner and his wife were quite sharp. I was promised a garage and when it didn't materialise I stopped paying rent! That worked like a charm, I was given a garage immediately.I had a oartsh of grass which I had to scythe by hand, also a patch of garden to cultivate for veg. The first chap downstairs was very odd. We taught them how to play bridge. Eventually he decided that the country was not for him and went back to town. We were then lucky to have the Preiswerks as our neighbours. He was quite senior at Cern, his wife Trudi was a dear. When we left they persuaded us to stay using their furniture as ours was on its way to Manchester! Before we finally left Kate was born and we had John and Rene Adams to our Christening party. The cave at Satigny had a tolerably good vin mousseux and we used it well for the party
I was at the controls of the linac when the PS made its first acceleration. Mervyn Hine was at the helm of the PS. He was the most patient of all men, excusing us for not doing exactly what was wanted and repeatedly encouraging us. Franco Bonaudi was his runner. I hit my head in the tunnel once on a trip to the PS control room from the linac, out for a short while but recovered soon after!
Lots was going on at Cern. Caesar was being put together, people were all loking round for ways to stay on after the PS and the SC machines were built. My friend Anthony Dopping-Heptonstall was at the SC. He had come from Mullard as had Bramham and Montague. Alas he deplored the waste of money at cern and tried to correct it. As a result his contract was not renewed. So when the chance came to elect to move on, I followed his path and left to go to Manchester to work on a heavy ion linac. A friend of Hereward, George Nasibian welcomed me with open arms.
Cern was a wonderful place, alas there was much of the old boy routine and one person that I knew and was friendly with had been a machinist in Manchester but rose to be one of the top grades at Cern. His only claim to fame was his activity as a trade union man in England! There were many such examples, similar to what went on at the UN. For this I was glad to go back to England and work for my living! Some people were brilliant, but I had to wait another few years until I could find them at CERN. It was the beginning of things for high energy accelerators, the really right people were yet to appear on the scene.
We had a lovely flat in Satigny, the second floor of a house on the La Boverie estate. The owner and his wife were quite sharp. I was promised a garage and when it didn't materialise I stopped paying rent! That worked like a charm, I was given a garage immediately.I had a oartsh of grass which I had to scythe by hand, also a patch of garden to cultivate for veg. The first chap downstairs was very odd. We taught them how to play bridge. Eventually he decided that the country was not for him and went back to town. We were then lucky to have the Preiswerks as our neighbours. He was quite senior at Cern, his wife Trudi was a dear. When we left they persuaded us to stay using their furniture as ours was on its way to Manchester! Before we finally left Kate was born and we had John and Rene Adams to our Christening party. The cave at Satigny had a tolerably good vin mousseux and we used it well for the party
Friday, 20 November 2009
My Third Job!
After leaving Marconi's, although they tried to persuade me to stay, I took a very temporary job with a local wireless shop. Mending receivers and getting an introduction to the cheap television now available was just fun. I also did a bit of evening class teaching at the Mid-Essex Technical College to swell the coffers, which it did. All the while I was looking for what would be my career job, I tried with the Civil Service Commissioners who offered me an AEO post. Thinking I could do better, I applied for a Cancer Research Post with the MRC. After my interview, one of the board stepped out and told me that the job was mine but he had a better one for me with AERE at Harwell if I cared to apply!
In due course I was told to attend at Harwell. So with bags packed and helped by my brother we staggered to the station in Gidea Park. The case was one that he had bought in India, it was large and very heavy!
At Harwell I was shown into the presence of my new boss, the leader of an electronics group whose name I have long forgotten. He asked me whether I should like to stay at Harwell or be posted to Malvern! I elected to go to Malvern to see what was there and then afterwards to come to a decision. So off I went to Great Malvern straight into the arms of Frank Goward who led the Synchrotron Group. After a wonderful week I had to return to Harwell to give my decision, so my fate was sealed!
Ursula and I planned our marriage and I went back to Malvern to The old ABL Lab shared by the British and the Americans during their wartime exploits of Radar Research. TRE as it was called was moved from Swanage where it was very vulnerable to the enemy to Great Malvern where it took over the Boys Public School.I lived in barracks along with most of the others and Ursula and I got ready for married life from January 1950.
I did experiments on the accelerator, on explosives, and some other projects. I met some very senior people including Sir John Cockroft, Skinner, Curran and a few others. My group leader had Claus Fuchs at Harwell as his boss and duly reported all that we did to him.....straight to the Kremlin as we now know. Pontecorvo was found out, and some the English band of traitors gradually discovered.
The synchroton was a working machine, the first in the UK, but another group alongside had already developed the electron linac and were working on a brand new electron linear accelerator using dielectrics. This was designed by R.B.R.S.Harvey...alas there was a problem. A new phenonomen was just surfacing and ,it was called "multipactor". This precluded any acceleration in the new machine due to secondary electron emission. With Adlam and Mullett I worked at finding out more of the properties of the dielectrics. This brought me into X band radar components and cavity investigations and was wonderful. I met the man who eventually became professor at Sheffield, Cullen, and later he showed John Adlam and I around his lab there. Gordon Thomason an electronic wizard was another of my Malvern friends and we visited him at Abingdon later on. Harvie elected to leave accelerators when the group was moved to Harwell and went to Baldock. I met up with him later on. There were some amazing people at Malvern, some with no paper qualifications but absolutely brilliant in electronic wizardry. A character named Hubert Gent went about in a cloak. I learnt that the only circuit one needed to know was the Miller Integrator, two others developed from it, and with the cathode follower and the grounded grid amplifier one was in charge! Alas transistors spoilt it all.
In Malvern Ursula and I joined the Piers Ploughman Club and we performed in some amateur dramatics there. Noteably "Little lambs eat ivy" and "Midsummer Night's Dream". I took the part of Oberon and Ursula would have been Titania except thet Christina was on the way and Thelma Lee took over that part!
Other chacters at Malvern were Peter Dunn, John Dain, Herbert Watson, Donald lees Jeff Jones and Laurie Medcalf and lots more.
We were to be moved as a group to Harwell but being junior we had to wait for a council house at Abingdon. So for 8 months I had to spend the working week at Harwell and only come home to Nalvern for week ends.
To start with in 1949 we rented a furnished bungalow in the Link. Then we moved to the top floor of a house in Hornyold Road, where we had two rooms and I made a "landing" kitchen.Then when Christina was imminent we were allocated a Ministry flat in South Lea. To our joy Christina was born in Brunswick House on Graham Road. Years later it was up for sale and we made enquiries! We had a share in the South Lee house greenhouse and a patch of veg garden. We met tree lupins for the first time there and watched the coronation on Les Dawson's TV...a miracle in those days! We had a black cat called Wallace who seemed to wait for my return on Friday night after being away from Malvern during the week. Wallace came eventually with us to Abingdon, got lost once and then came back. We left him with the next-door-neighbours, the Bacons, when we went to Geneva.
I made a concrete garden path in 57 Sellwood Road, talked to the cow in the field at the end of the garden and planted lupin trees from seed gathered in Malvern. I went to work evry day using the Harwell transport system (bus), this ensured that I got home every night at a good time except when Thonemann who ran Zeta had a "good idea" and decided to press on regardless, driving us home himself!
Helena was born in the "Warren" at Abingdon. While waiting for her arrival I used to take Christina around on a little seat fixed to the handlebars of my bicycle, apparently it used to be quite an alarming experience for her she now tells me!. We had many friends in Sellwood road, even one of the later directors of the accelerator group who arrived from South Africa and lived there with his family! The packing case in which his furniture came became a playroom for his children. Ben Kingdom from Malvern was a neighbour too with wife and family, and he still lives there!
At Harwell we from Malvern were dazzled by the equipment that one could extract from the stores. The Malvern crowd that I knew were housed in building 152, just inside the wire from Staff Club B.
There John Adlam and I began work on measuring accelerator fields using perturbation techniques which we developed. A character called (no name) used to come in and offer useless help, apparently he was keeping an eye on us. I suggested running the accelerator using the signal from the light programme (radio) as it was extremely stable...he cogitated a bit about this, and went back to his office in Hangar7 to think it over! Alas another character called (no name) decided that he wanted to recruit John permanently as his number cruncher, John refused and we were split up. John was sent to do a job for which he had no knowledge or experience, so I threw in the sponge too and moved over to the Zeta group. This was a bit of a red herring too. After a while I applied for a post at CERN where I was welcomed almost with open arms. Goodbye to Harwell and Hallo to Geneva! Cockroft told me I was going to the "fleshpots". True the salary was double but it still wasn't sufficient. We still had ration books in England so Switzerland was a big change.
We began in a Pension "Salm" in Place Reverdin, then took a new flat in Avenue Wendt. Donald Fry came to lunch once while our piano was being rebuilt, he was head of general Physics at Harwell before becoming Director at Winfrith Heath. Years later while taking the AERE plane from Manchester to Abingdon I met him on the plane. He shifted some important person out of the seat alongside so that he could chat to me about all the goings on!
In due course I was told to attend at Harwell. So with bags packed and helped by my brother we staggered to the station in Gidea Park. The case was one that he had bought in India, it was large and very heavy!
At Harwell I was shown into the presence of my new boss, the leader of an electronics group whose name I have long forgotten. He asked me whether I should like to stay at Harwell or be posted to Malvern! I elected to go to Malvern to see what was there and then afterwards to come to a decision. So off I went to Great Malvern straight into the arms of Frank Goward who led the Synchrotron Group. After a wonderful week I had to return to Harwell to give my decision, so my fate was sealed!
Ursula and I planned our marriage and I went back to Malvern to The old ABL Lab shared by the British and the Americans during their wartime exploits of Radar Research. TRE as it was called was moved from Swanage where it was very vulnerable to the enemy to Great Malvern where it took over the Boys Public School.I lived in barracks along with most of the others and Ursula and I got ready for married life from January 1950.
I did experiments on the accelerator, on explosives, and some other projects. I met some very senior people including Sir John Cockroft, Skinner, Curran and a few others. My group leader had Claus Fuchs at Harwell as his boss and duly reported all that we did to him.....straight to the Kremlin as we now know. Pontecorvo was found out, and some the English band of traitors gradually discovered.
The synchroton was a working machine, the first in the UK, but another group alongside had already developed the electron linac and were working on a brand new electron linear accelerator using dielectrics. This was designed by R.B.R.S.Harvey...alas there was a problem. A new phenonomen was just surfacing and ,it was called "multipactor". This precluded any acceleration in the new machine due to secondary electron emission. With Adlam and Mullett I worked at finding out more of the properties of the dielectrics. This brought me into X band radar components and cavity investigations and was wonderful. I met the man who eventually became professor at Sheffield, Cullen, and later he showed John Adlam and I around his lab there. Gordon Thomason an electronic wizard was another of my Malvern friends and we visited him at Abingdon later on. Harvie elected to leave accelerators when the group was moved to Harwell and went to Baldock. I met up with him later on. There were some amazing people at Malvern, some with no paper qualifications but absolutely brilliant in electronic wizardry. A character named Hubert Gent went about in a cloak. I learnt that the only circuit one needed to know was the Miller Integrator, two others developed from it, and with the cathode follower and the grounded grid amplifier one was in charge! Alas transistors spoilt it all.
In Malvern Ursula and I joined the Piers Ploughman Club and we performed in some amateur dramatics there. Noteably "Little lambs eat ivy" and "Midsummer Night's Dream". I took the part of Oberon and Ursula would have been Titania except thet Christina was on the way and Thelma Lee took over that part!
Other chacters at Malvern were Peter Dunn, John Dain, Herbert Watson, Donald lees Jeff Jones and Laurie Medcalf and lots more.
We were to be moved as a group to Harwell but being junior we had to wait for a council house at Abingdon. So for 8 months I had to spend the working week at Harwell and only come home to Nalvern for week ends.
To start with in 1949 we rented a furnished bungalow in the Link. Then we moved to the top floor of a house in Hornyold Road, where we had two rooms and I made a "landing" kitchen.Then when Christina was imminent we were allocated a Ministry flat in South Lea. To our joy Christina was born in Brunswick House on Graham Road. Years later it was up for sale and we made enquiries! We had a share in the South Lee house greenhouse and a patch of veg garden. We met tree lupins for the first time there and watched the coronation on Les Dawson's TV...a miracle in those days! We had a black cat called Wallace who seemed to wait for my return on Friday night after being away from Malvern during the week. Wallace came eventually with us to Abingdon, got lost once and then came back. We left him with the next-door-neighbours, the Bacons, when we went to Geneva.
I made a concrete garden path in 57 Sellwood Road, talked to the cow in the field at the end of the garden and planted lupin trees from seed gathered in Malvern. I went to work evry day using the Harwell transport system (bus), this ensured that I got home every night at a good time except when Thonemann who ran Zeta had a "good idea" and decided to press on regardless, driving us home himself!
Helena was born in the "Warren" at Abingdon. While waiting for her arrival I used to take Christina around on a little seat fixed to the handlebars of my bicycle, apparently it used to be quite an alarming experience for her she now tells me!. We had many friends in Sellwood road, even one of the later directors of the accelerator group who arrived from South Africa and lived there with his family! The packing case in which his furniture came became a playroom for his children. Ben Kingdom from Malvern was a neighbour too with wife and family, and he still lives there!
At Harwell we from Malvern were dazzled by the equipment that one could extract from the stores. The Malvern crowd that I knew were housed in building 152, just inside the wire from Staff Club B.
There John Adlam and I began work on measuring accelerator fields using perturbation techniques which we developed. A character called (no name) used to come in and offer useless help, apparently he was keeping an eye on us. I suggested running the accelerator using the signal from the light programme (radio) as it was extremely stable...he cogitated a bit about this, and went back to his office in Hangar7 to think it over! Alas another character called (no name) decided that he wanted to recruit John permanently as his number cruncher, John refused and we were split up. John was sent to do a job for which he had no knowledge or experience, so I threw in the sponge too and moved over to the Zeta group. This was a bit of a red herring too. After a while I applied for a post at CERN where I was welcomed almost with open arms. Goodbye to Harwell and Hallo to Geneva! Cockroft told me I was going to the "fleshpots". True the salary was double but it still wasn't sufficient. We still had ration books in England so Switzerland was a big change.
We began in a Pension "Salm" in Place Reverdin, then took a new flat in Avenue Wendt. Donald Fry came to lunch once while our piano was being rebuilt, he was head of general Physics at Harwell before becoming Director at Winfrith Heath. Years later while taking the AERE plane from Manchester to Abingdon I met him on the plane. He shifted some important person out of the seat alongside so that he could chat to me about all the goings on!
Monday, 16 November 2009
Bridgend Days
Uncle Bill was an Inspector of Police at Bridgend. He moved there from Penarth. Instead of a Police Station with law court, house and vast garden, tended by those in jail, he had a small house on Merthyr Mawr Road. He had a chauffeur, first Merrick ex guardsman then Jones. We often went on picnics to the sea side at Scare Bay. I have a picture of Merrick with busby and one of he and me in swimming togs on the beach at Porthcawl.
Our milkman was a real character, sometimes he would take my brother and I to Marcross in his delivery van, where he had a pub, the Horseshoes Inn. The van stank of spilt milk, rather a similar smell to vomit! They would feed us well and sometimes we were slightly ill afterwards, too much lemonade or ginger beer. He loved us to put the gloves on and fight each other, rather unfair as David was 2 years my elder! The adjacent farm was Tynacyia, run by Dai Evans. We often went for the day with all the family. May and Ann and a son David were there too. My brother kept up with them almost until he died. I once went for a week haymaking, it was a very hard slog. On Sundays the pubs were all shut. However the drill was to knock at the back door, and when allowed in you ordered your drink in the parlour and even the local bobby was there!
There was an amusing story told me by Ann. They all went to church on Sundays.On one memorable occasion someone broke wind rather loudly, they were all quite embarrassed and someone started laughing, they were unable to control themselves and all fell about laughing and walked out! I am not sure whether they went back next Sunday or not!
There was a derelect steam roller in one of the barns, It gave us boys great pleasure in climbing all over it! The farm was fun.
They used to feed us magnificently, lunch and then tea, goog homemade fare, jam and cream too!
Dai was in trouble with the law at one time, He caught a mushoom stealer, the victim offered him his dog in recompense but as he walked away he whistled to the dog to come back to him. Dai was annoyed greatly and drawing his knife cut it's throat!
This is probably where the poem came from.. Someone telling a tale:-
Dai Jones bought a boat..
reply... sold his coat?..
no no ...bought a boat..
reply...cut his throat?
ay ay...cut it from ear to ear..
reply...shaving I spose?
Years later, Ursula and I went to Marcross for a holiday, staying in the simple b and b near the beach and having Uncle Charlie come over for lunch. We saw Ann and May again and even went to the big Manor House where Dai and his wife had moved to,at a place called Llanmihaqngel. Royalty were supposed to have slept there in bygone days! A wonderful old mansion. It is still there and it is a b&b now!
Dai advised Ursula always to sit in the front seat of a bus to avoid being upset by the motion! Then to move wiith the bus as it went round corners. Sadly Dai fell off a haystack one day, came into the house and died!
Here is a picture of the family from those times.
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