Jon Snow Is Everywhere
It’s a good cause and I agree with the charity’s aims.
Trees for Cities Advert with Jon Snow
Adverts for Trees for Cities are everywhere on the Underground and they feature Jon Snow.
I was at Liverpool University, just before Jon Snow organised the protest against Lord Salisbury, who at the time was Chancellor of the university. There must have been an earlier protest, as I remember something about 1968. In Engineering, who didn’t take too much of a political stance. the reasons were a bit above our head. Although, we did think that Lord Salisbury was not the sort of old right-wing political buffer, who should hold that position. Wikipedia says this about the protest in 1970.
Apart from his political career Salisbury was Chancellor of the University of Liverpool from 1951 until 1971. In 1970, students at the university staged an occupation at Senate House to demand his removal, over his support for apartheid and similarly reactionary views.
I think it is true to say, that today, anybody with those views wouldn’t hold such a position.
In the end Jon Snow was rusticated for organising the protest, but the University did later award him an honorary Doctor of Letters in 2011.
C’s tutor at the University was Robert Kilroy Silk. He was also one of the organisers of the protest against Lord Salisbury, but I have read that at the last minute he didn’t turn up. It couldn’t have been because he was giving a tutorial to C, as she had graduated from the university in the previous year and we were living in London. Obviously, no punishment was handed down to Kilroy Silk.
C always found him odious and I can remember her stinking with tobacco smoke after she had been to one of his tutorials, where he chain-smoked Capstan Full Strength all the way through.
He obviously left the right impression on her, as once we were standing next to him at Newmarket racecourse and no matter how I tried, I couldn’t get her to approach him and speak of her times at Liverpool under his tutelage.
So now I think justice has been done. Kilroy was here, briefly and Jon Snow is everywhere. Sadly C is no more, but I still have her memories of her tutor in my mind.
Daddy Of Them All
A ram has made a name for himself by escaping and fathering 33 lambs in one 24 hour session. It’s all here in the Daily Mail.
This reminds me of a conversation with a Research Vet at Liverpool University in the 1960s.
At the time, the M62 was being built, and the Ministry was worried that sheep would get on the motorway. The University had been asked to find a solution and found that moorland sheep could easily climb a chain-link fence several feet high. Judging by the lack of reports of sheep on the motorway these days, I’m sure that the research indicated a solution that worked well.
To a Reception at the House of Lords
Last night, I went to a reception for Liverpool University alumni at the House of Lords.
It was an excellent do, with drinks and nibbles, some of which were gluten-free, in the Peers Dining Room hosted by Lord McNally.
In some ways afterwards was the highlight, as a small group of about eight of us, walked out through an empty, except for one security guard, Westminster Hall. We asked if it would be OK to take a picture and several of us did.
An Empty Westminster Hall
It really is a magnificient building.
Never when I was lying in hospital in Hong Kong, did I think, I’d ever be able to go to something like that again.
So never give up on life! You might miss the good surprises it has in store for you!
How Things Have Changed
Tonight I saw a friend back to the bus stop. Whilst waiting a guy came past, who’d obviously been to Royal Ascot, as he was fully dressed complete with a black top hat.
It just shows how you can gwnerally walk the streets dressed in any manner you want. It reminded me of how C and I used to walk back from University balls in Liverpool, through Princes and Sefton Park to the Halls of Residence, in dinner jackets and long dresses.
But it wasn’t so long ago, when to do something like that would have been to attract all the wrong sort of attention.
There is always the story of Ted Kid Lewis, who was possibly London’s greatest ever boxer, walking home smartly dressed, before the Second World War in the East End and being set upon by four thugs. As he knocked the fourth out, he produced his visiting card and dropped it on his attacker.
I don’t know whether my father ever saw Lewis fight, but I can remember him telling me the tales of the Aldgate Sphinx.
Hope For Cancer Sufferers
On Wednesday I was invited around the Cancer Trials Unit at Liverpool University. I have to declare two interests in that my youngest son died from cancer of the pancreas and I contribute in a small way to their research.
It is an impressive unit and the visit left me with the feeling, that if their attitude, thoroughness and methods are repeated in hundreds of other similar units across the world, as I suspect they are, then there may well be some better news for cancer sufferers in the future.
Widowhood Research
Kate Bennett of the School of Psychology at Liverpool University is recruiting volunteers for studies into widowhood.
This is Kate’s description of the first study.
One is a two week study looking at a model of bereavement called the Dual Process Model. This study takes part over two weeks. At the beginning we will interview participants about their general experiences of bereavement, and they will complete a questionnaire. Then over the next week they will complete a daily diary about their experiences – they can write as much or as little as they like. At the end of the first week, there is a short interview and a questionnaire. In the next week they complete the diary everyday, and then are interviewed and have a questionnaire at the end. This study is being run by myself and my student Lizzie Evans.
And the second.
The second study is an interview study which focuses on changes in social relationships, activities and support before and after the loss. This forms part of my student Laura’s PhD.
There are more details, including how to join, at this web page.
The Anonymous Widower 