I Edit - rewriting my 'history of ideas'

I change my mind, quite frequently when it comes to small details, but only twice have I changed my entire world view.

It is sometimes held up as a virtue that someone has stuck to their principals throughout life, I find such assertions somewhat suspicious. To feel you got it all right in your twenties, would seem to indicate a mind lacking in self-awareness and oblivious to the changes occurring around us every day. And of course there is the constant danger of those two psychological elephant traps, confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance.

The ways in which we rewrite history individually and collectively has been much on my mind in recent years - well the last ten to be precise! It could just be an age thing, I turned sixty this year, and I know that what I remember of the past, and the way I remember it is changing. But aligned to this is an awareness of the emerging insights of neuroscience on memory and aging. Equally, the ever-expanding Web increases my knowledge of the context in which my memories were formed - it’s legacy would seem to be not so much how it tells us with ever increasing speed about the present, but how it tells us more and more about the past.

Every era rewrites history, but there is something qualitatively different this time. The technology of recording has changed rapidly, so too the way previous methods can be converted into digital form and turned into big data. We share more, and more widely, our current experience. However, as millions pass their tenth anniversary on social media, it becomes only too obvious that we will be remembering in novel ways.

'I know you can share, but can you edit and delete?' Many would reply; 'Why bother!' Well I sometimes suspect sheer laziness or horror at the prospect of confronting the past. But if you can bring yourself to review your past posts and shares in a systematic way you soon find yourself asking - do I want this as my legacy? Some posts I delete because they seem so trivial in retrospect, a diversion which undervalues my other contributions. Some I remove because they were so context specific at the time that they have already becoming almost incomprehensible! But the majority stay, and where opportunity arises I often add an update. All of this requires time and energy, I do it because I care about my legacy, the impression I leave behind. And of course the less my online signature, fist or character looks like anybody else’s, the more likely it is to be noticed in the future! There are only two kinds of immortality, the genetic carried in the bodies of our relatives and descendants, and the memetic transmitted vertically or horizontally via the brains of others.

'But you’re altering the facts, the truth!' There are two essential responses to that, one is a scholarly assertion of the scientific method to include doubt, uncertainty, critical thinking and scepticism; the other, is an equally strong assertion of the evidence that human memory is always a filtering and updating process equivalent to that which I’ve already described - that every time we remember, it is our current version which gets saved, overwriting previous versions.

It appears we all use a 'method of loci' (memory palace) whether we are conscious of it or not; and even when we are, it is the unconscious brain that has selected the data that needs to be remembered. Whether we are aware of what we are doing with our memories, seems to turn on our method of retrieval. It seems to me, that our chosen space/ location works best when we follow our natural inclination to observe in order to navigate, a journey method of visualising spatial relationships as we walk through a landscape. So both the form in which a new memory is encoded and recalled are dictated by body movement - the form in which we learn naturally anyway.

An unexamined life is no kind of life at all. Indeed, but rewriting one’s own history, particularly in light of the knowledge one has acquired and from whom, may well be a practical necessity too, we need an organised mind to survive. Presumably it is an evolutionary process, following from our nature as a social species living out our lives in groups. Our brains have a limited capacity, we are limited in the number of people we can come to know and care about. We need to dump information continuously.

Since all knowledge is online these days, even as I draft this Microsoft is trying to make sense of it and make connections, but to be of use to the algorithm my behaviour, feelings and thoughts have to be regular and habitual - otherwise they predict nothing. Indeed what apps really hate is when you start following them, rather than them following you - when you start tweaking and tinkering. Their first reaction is one of security, they assume your device has been hacked by someone else! Most apps assume the user is preoccupied with what the thinking machine can tell them about the present and future, but I doubt this is so when your entire life is online and more and more of the past is there to be seen on film and video. The technology that wins will be the one that offers a ‘calm’ experience. Forms of digital curation at present offer a largely disembodied understanding, those that do best in the future will be those that mimic their user’s messy and sticky experience of the mix between the real and digital worlds.

One of the major questions about the online future is whether the thinking machine will be willing or able to collude with humans, accept the ways in which we learn, lie and cheat our way through life, when it, the machine, can keep it’s cool, remain rational and remorselessly point out the truth - insisting we follow! Ever since my days in the school room, it seems a lot of my learning has been a process of cheating, of learning by directly observing others and reconstructing their knowledge. In so far as I don’t reproduce directly the words of others and claim them as my own, then it’s not plagiarism, but the social process of learning has led me to believe originality to be absurd. Education, like many spheres of life is hung-up on the idea of individuality, implying freewill and autonomy. Sitting in the audience of a lecture I’m often thinking not whether this speaker is good or bad, rather; who told you that? Or worse, you’re reinventing the wheel - I could give you a better reference for that from as little as fifty years ago!

But most of the time I’m thinking, what I’m absorbing is not the knowledge the presenter is intending to impart at all. Out of fifty minutes, that which appears on black or whiteboard, on PowerPoint or video, can be accounted ten minutes at most. From school days onwards what I learnt about most were the teachers themselves and my fellow members of the audience. And all that, was mostly nonverbal. This social learning is not an individual process at all, and as such must include much that others would wish to label cheating. But what is possibly much more individual is the capacity and or willingness to learn new things, and what preoccupies me now is does age matter?

A large part of what I have learnt, and a key technique for learning, appears to be avoidance. How to get out of, or get around problems, seems key to the knowledge I’ve acquired - a sort of lateral thinking by default! Avoidance seems to be a solution if you do eventually return and solve, but in many situations it is advocated as a solution in and of itself. A large part of modern medicine seems to be about providing alternatives to changes in lifestyle which would actually solve the original problem. And in politics, well the pressure always seems to be to be seen to be doing something, anything, whether the original problem is addressed or not.

Well, that’s about as far as I want to go, this time. As always I seem to be lying by omission, nine tenths of what I really feel never gets online! I censor myself, so as not to give too greater offence and lose the few friends I still have. Oh! I almost forgot; I was going to mention those two fundamental changes in world view. Well the first occurred when I studied sociology at university - I went from an individualistic to a socially determined view of how people act. The second occurred in the new millennium when I fully adopted an evolutionary perspective on everything – biological, cultural and social.

(see also, The Story We Tell Ourselves)

'We've been talking about you all morning' - how my degree result was decided

On the day in 1986 that our university degree results were due to be posted (I mean actually pinned-up on a noticeboard outside the admin office) my then partner showed some surprise when I said I would stay at home and try and write. Later in the day she telephoned to say I’d got a First and that she and a close friend of mine had been hugging and jumping for joy on my behalf. Later she told me I had sounded cold and unemotional on the phone, that there was something odd about my reaction. I couldn’t explain my feelings to her because it would have sounded cruel. But what I had been thinking about was the difference between explanation and understanding - she’d rung me up to tell me something I already knew!

How could I know? I should say at the outset that there were no ethical problems, no one leaked anything, spoke out of turn or acted ‘inappropriately’.

In those days the lecturers hoped that each year, out of a cohort of about 30 students, there would be a First - but would not be put-out if there wasn’t. In exceptional years there might be two. I’m prompted to write this because this year, 2017, the media are reporting that up to 40% have achieved a First on some courses. University places have tripled since I took my degree. Assuming that variation in intelligence stays roughly the same in any yearly cohort, then that represents both massive ‘grade inflation’ and a huge drop in standards. I considered myself lucky to go to university aged 24, I was allowed in as a result of both work experience and educational qualifications – I had nothing like the grades of the 18 year old’s around me!

Over the three years I picked-up from staff and other students a sense of what ‘classes’ of degrees meant. Whilst a single piece of work might be given a percentage or a grade to reflect its quality, such a score might disguise as much as it illuminated. The same mark might be given to someone who was excellent at basic tasks, as was given to someone who had done well at something more challenging, but who had neglected something more fundamental. Classes of degree were meant to reflect a body of work where several levels had been achieved, each building on each other, but which could not be achieved by neglecting any one part of it.

The largest difference was between a 2.1 and a First. Then as now, the ‘knowledge base’ in the social sciences was ‘highly contested’. So, if you wrote an essay in good English which demonstrated an understanding of the question, contrasted the main approaches (probably three) taken by the leading researchers on the particular subject in the question and could point out the relative strengths and weakness of each, you ought to get a 2.1. But you wouldn’t even be considered for a First. For that you needed an argument of your own, but which was nonetheless grounded somewhere in the evidence offered on the recommended reading list. Then you had to make a convincing case - conviction alone was never enough.

‘Don’t bother trying to get a First’, people would say. Advice that was kindly meant, since so much of the final mark was based on coursework as well as exams spread over two years. It’s one thing to write the occasional great piece, but to average those kinds of marks! But I just had so much to say in my own voice that I must have quite unconsciously announced an intention simply by the way I started to write from the beginning of my second year!

‘Everything is decided at the External Examiner’s meeting’, we were told. Well I knew his name (a Professor from a university with a better reputation in the subject than ours), but I was not encouraged. I’d read very little of his work, about a page and half I think. Very theoretical, difficult. (And that’s coming from someone who was sort-out by fellow student’s to explain, ‘in simple terms’ what a lot of sociological theory was about.) In retrospect I was probably wrong, he may well have been sympathetic to what I was, at least, trying to do.

At about 12 o’clock on the day of the meeting I collided with our ‘director of studies’ at the coffee machine: ‘We’ve been talking about you all morning’, he said in an accusing manner, ‘and I’ve got to go back in for more!’ Very sensibly he was taking a comfort break - he’d had a physical disability for many years and really needed to keep on the move as much as possible. But it was then that I knew I’d got it, when he implied they were still talking about me.

Now the only reason they’d be talking so much about me rather than anyone else, was if I was the borderline case between a 2.1 and a First (the rank order having been easily decided.) But then I knew that already. My coursework marks indicated a strong First, my exam results a middling 2.1. In those days it was quite easy to keep track of your coursework marks over two years, plus the overall mark for a particular module, know the ‘weighting’ towards the final degree – the exam mark was simply the difference. I knew that my marks gave me a 2.1, but that my lecturers thought of me as a First. Well most of them!

(photo by Nick Hewling)

So the results were posted a couple of days later, and my partner and I trotted off to the annual end of year party hosted by one of her lecturers, someone who had not taught me. ‘We were actually made to sit there and read your essays!’ This from a psychologist forced to read sociology. She then turned to her new boyfriend (a Reader in Archaeology from the university two stops up the railway line), ‘Darling, how did you react when they told you you’d got a First?’ ‘I cried’, was his only reaction.

A week or so later I went to talk to one of the lecturers from the School of Management who had taught me. I went seeking advice on my PhD. All he wanted to talk about was the Examiner’s meeting. (I’d written one of my better efforts for him - on the role of the State during the Miner’s Strike 1984-1985, undertaken whilst the dispute was still going on.) ‘It was us who got you your First ..They didn’t want to give it to you [the sociologists] ..We told them they were setting the standard too high ..Then we just sat there...’ He went on to explain that the sociologists had started from the position of wanting to it give it to me, then began finding reasons not to, he and his colleague hadn’t said much, just waited for the tide to turn.

There was some rivalry between the School of Management and Social Sciences, the former believing they had a stronger footing in the real world (relatively speaking); the later, the better academic credentials. But the teaching was divided for my particular degree – Sociology with Industrial Relations. (As for the PhD, I only completed a year - but that’s another story.)

See also: Lost in a 'can't-do' culture!

Richard Feynman and 'the pleasure of finding things out'

Over the years I’ve often referenced Richard P Feynman (1918-88) on social media as an example of true scholarship. Here I’ve collected together some famous quotes alongside key resource material.

He was a theoretical physicist who won a Nobel prize - but that was probably the least interesting thing about him. He had a reputation as a great teacher and thinker despite writing almost nothing - the many books about him have been compiled by others. Since his death his reputation has continued to grow, and since the beginning of the Web an ever increasing amount of information about him has become available. Google him.

(attribution unknown)

(attribution unknown)

A few quotes about acquiring knowledge, later some about aspects of teaching and learning.

‘…I have a friend who's an artist and he's sometimes taken a view which I don't agree with very well. He'll hold up a flower and say, "Look how beautiful it is," and I'll agree, I think. And he says - "you see, I as an artist can see how beau­tiful this is, but you as a scientist, oh, take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing." And I think that he's kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other peo­ple and to me, too, I believe, although I might not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is; but I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time I see much more about the flower than he sees. I can imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside which also have a beauty. I mean it's not just beauty at this dimension of one centimeter, there is also beauty at a smaller dimension, the inner structure. Also the processes, the fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting -  it means that insects can see the color. It adds a ques­tion: Does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which shows that a science knowledge only adds to the excitement and mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds; I don't un­derstand how it subtracts…’ (Feynman 1999c:2)

‘In general we look for a new law by the following process. First we guess it. Then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what would be implied if this law that we guessed is right. Then we compare the result of the computation to nature, with experiment or experience, compare it directly with observation, to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It does not make any difference how beautiful your guess is. It doesn’t make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is - if it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. That is all there is to it.’ (Feynman 1965:156)

‘…If you expected science to give all the answers to the won­derful questions about what we are, where we're going, what the meaning of the universe is and so on, then I think you could easily become disillusioned. …I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. …I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things…but I don't have to know an an­swer, I don't feel frightened by not knowing.’ (Feynman 1999c:24-25)

Key themes from his life and work were; living with uncertainty (as in the above quote), theory and practice as repeating aspects of the same process (the second quote), reasoning from first principles (safecracking at Los Alamos, first photo), the pleasure of finding things out (see below), active irresponsibility (the second quote below and  the second photo from the Challenger disaster investigation), finally nobody knows how to teach (last quote).

‘…I don’t like honors. I appreciate it for the work that I did, and for people who appreciate it, and I know there's a lot of physi­cists who use my work, I don't need anything else, I don't think there's any sense to anything else. …I’ve already got the prize. The prize is the pleasure of finding the thing out, the kick in the discovery, the observation that other people use it - those are the real things…’ (Feynman 1999c:12)

‘To do high, real good physics work you need absolutely solid lengths of time, …it needs lots of concentration - that is solid time to think - and if you’ve got a job in administration anything like that, then you don’t have the solid time. So I have invented another myth for myself - that I’m irresponsible. I tell everybody, I don’t do anything. If anybody asks me to be on a committee to take care of admissions, no, I‘m irresponsible, I don‘t give a damn about the students - of course I give a damn about the students but I know that somebody else’ll do it - and I take the view, “Let George do it,” …I do that because I like to do physics and I want to see if I can still do it, and so I’m selfish, okay?’ (p.19-20)

‘All those students …how should I best teach them? Should I teach them from the point of view of the history of science, from the applications? My theory is that the best way to teach is to have no philosophy, is to be chaotic and confuse it in the sense that you use every possible way of doing it. That’s the only way I can see to answer, so as to catch this guy or that guy on different hooks as you go along…’ (p.20)

(photo by Nick Hewling)

References and Resources

Feynman, R.P (1985) ‘Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman!’ Adventures Of A Curious Character Vintage: London (Stories originally told to, and recorded by Ralph Leighton, including the safecracking story.)

Feynman, R.P (1990) QED: The Strange Theory Of Light And Matter Penguin: London (Transcribed introductory lectures on particle physics given in 1982.)

Feynman, R. P (1992) ‘What Do You Care What Other People Think?’ Further Adventures Of A Curious Character Grafton: London (Stories originally told to, and recorded by Ralph Leighton.)

Feynman, R.P (1994) The Character Of Physical Law Penguin: London (Based on introductory physics lectures recorded by the BBC in 1965. Some short extracts on YouTube.)

Feynman, R.P (1998) Six Easy Pieces: The Fundamentals Of Physics Explained  Penguin: London (Basic readings taken from The Feynman Lectures on Physics delivered to Caltech undergraduates in 1961/2 and 1962/3, only later worked-up into books using student’s notes!)

Feynman, R,P (1999a) Six Not-So-Easy Pieces: Einstein’s Relativity, Symmetry, and Space-Time Penguin: London (More involved readings from The Feynman Lectures on Physics delivered to Caltech undergraduates in 1961/2 and 1962/3, only later worked-up into books using student’s notes!)

Feynman, R, P (1999b) The Meaning of It All Penguin: London (transcriptions of lectures on science in general.)

Feynman, R.P (1999c) The Pleasure Of Finding Things Out Penguin: London (Based on interview for BBC Horizon in 1981)                                                                             

Feynman, R.P (2006) Don’t you have time to think? Penguin: London (Letters edited by his daughter Michelle.)

Gleick, J (1994) Genius: Richard Feynman and modern physics Abacus: London (Biography)

Leighton, R (1993) Tuva or Bust! Richard Feynman’s Last Journey Penguin: London 

                                                                             

Online:

‘Richard Feynman’ Wikipedia page (note the External Links available, and when the page was last modified!)

Feynman Online! Website dedicated to his memory

The Fantastic Mr Feynman (TV documentary using material from The Pleasure of Finding Things Out plus interviews with other key figures)

Who'd have thought? (2.9.2019)

Lost in a 'can't-do' culture!

When did you first think of yourself as smart? (Or conversely, when did you first start thinking you were dumb?) And who told you that?

The University of Bath taught me I was smart (please note I avoid using the word intelligent.) But I didn’t arrive there until I was 24 and up until the time they offered me a place I never believed I was the sort of person who could go to a university! A fellow student demonstrated a profound lesson in thinking and attitude on the very first occasion we met. It was week one and we were at the ‘fresher’s fayre’ where everyone signed up for the various clubs and societies which promised to transform your social life. Without thinking too much about it I simply joined the political society which was the most representative of my views at the time. I noticed another guy doing the same, but it soon became clear that, with deliberate intention and forethought, he was going around the room joining all the political societies. Now my brain registered that this was interesting - why not get a range of political thought and knowledge? But it wasn’t until months later that I appreciated, from within just one group, how much the activities of all the groups were focused on what all the others were doing!

I soon discovered too, that my new friend, almost 5 years younger, was smarter than me in many other ways. He wasn’t bothered about what kind of degree he got, as long as he got one. But this attitude was born out of a confidence that he already knew he could pass. The question of the hour for him was therefore how little need be done to pass, therefore allowing him to get on with what interested him - which ranged from the highly intellectual, to just messing around at the university’s radio station. I on the other hand, started out lacking in intellectual confidence, but at least knew I didn’t know. All I did, having previously worked at a nine-to-five job, was apply the same amount of effort and routine to studying. Indeed, my work experience had counted a little towards my admission in the first place, since my academic qualifications came nowhere near the number of points required for admission by the university, let alone actually achieved by my fellow students. But now, as far as I could observe, they didn’t care nor need to put in the hours I did.

However, after about a year of getting to know the other students I decided I had caught up with them by putting in those extra hours, and that what was at fault - as long suspected - was the notion of ‘intelligence’ itself. But equally, there was the realisation that ‘exam passing’ was a particular set of skills, in and of itself. But the overriding lesson of my early period at university was an increasing awareness of two elements in my consciousness, the absence of which I have since attributed to me being trapped in a ‘can’t do culture.’ Reading across and around the various suggested reading on offer, led first to a rather shocking insight that my taken-for-granted view of reality and how the world worked was not the only possible one! That there were other models of reality, equally as sophisticated, with a common-sense understanding of their own which could equally well explain the facts I saw around me. Indeed now it seemed the certainty of those facts themselves was under threat. Such models suggested other ways of being in the world, other competencies and if taken-up, offered opportunities to do many things I’d assumed I couldn’t do. Secondly, and more frightening still, it was legitimate to argue in an essay for any view of the world I liked, as long as the form of argument, conformed to a number of academic standards. The shock of realisation was as profound as when as a young child you walk into a new friend’s home and realise that the rest of the world doesn’t live as ‘we do’ at home. Over the years those skills for critical analysis and judgement of ways of living (my subject was Sociology after all) have led to as many negative conclusions as positive ones about my own background and upbringing. After three years I came away with a first class honours degree and a sense of intellectual confidence which has never left me, but also an abiding question; where did the, ‘can’t do’ come from? And why also, in other areas of my life should it persist? I write elsewhere of my experience of being a psychiatric patient for almost 30 years.

I assume nothing is beyond my understanding, although I can never know everything. I’ll never be able to do the Math of relativity or quantum mechanics but I can visualise the topography of light bent by a massive object in the four dimensions of space-time, equally I can see how a Feynman diagram illustrates the paths and interactions of subatomic particles, allowing for the calculation of probabilities high enough for anything electronic to be built on the back of it. But emotionally I have remained crippled in many ways, despite insight into my problems. An intellectual understanding of human behaviour does not lead necessarily to change in actual behaviour. In childhood I picked up the message that much was beyond me, but that one could find a place, in what I was assured was a growing meritocratic society.

I was born in 1959, but it might as well have been 1945 in terms of the socio-cultural ideas with which I was raised. My parents approach to life was imbued with the post-war philosophy of a welfare state within a growing capitalist economy. My father worked in local government, he had trained as an architect and town planner, he considered himself a ‘professional’ and to be exercising an expertise appropriately ceded to him by others; in exchange he deferred to the expertise of other professionals who equally assumed special knowledge in their own areas – particularly educationalists and health professionals. We grew up expecting that with the right qualifications (and a willingness to move around the country) we could choose careers and expect advancement leading to the economic resources to buy houses and raise families who in turn might expect even great prospects than ourselves. All of this was available if we recognised where our talents might lie and applied ourselves. My subjective experience was somewhat different.

Whilst still in the reception class of my infants school I remember getting 6 out of 10 on a spelling test and despite my best efforts feeling ashamed. Already, from somewhere I got the message I was not good enough and was letting somebody down. When I was 12 or 13 I went after school to the local teacher training college to meet with a lecturer (who later became the local university’s first Professor of Education) because tests showed I was four years behind in my writing and reading! Much remedial work followed plus years of failing exams before at age 22 a lecturer at the local college who I liked and trusted, confused me by saying I should apply for university. By then I was firmly convinced all careers advisers were charlatans and I only took the advice of friends I trusted, yet here was one telling me there was more to me than I had supposed myself. Interestingly my parents still cautioned against further disappointment, though my sister, and they themselves, had all achieved a higher education.

The key event as a child had been failing the 11 plus exam, this was what for many years decided the shape of secondary education in the UK, those who passed went to separate and better resourced state schools. The exam was intended as a measure of intelligence and a predictor of developing abilities. Now the education system is selective in other ways, but it remains the case that most people’s common-sense understanding of personality and child development is that childhood is the moment of opportunity, for afterwards personality and capabilities are much more stable and enduring. Those who believe in democracy, latch-on to ideas such as ‘equality of opportunity’ and anything else that may make society more meritocratic. Alas this has meant an ever expanding public sector and the attempt by the bureaucratically minded to develop ever more complex rules to ensure equality of outcomes - systems, which run on ideas about capabilities and the judgement of certificated experts. Somehow out of this, I and millions of others have come to feel excluded despite over the years being in receipt of a disproportionate amount of public resources!

Somewhere along the line my emotional education never caught up with my intellectual achievements - whilst I understand only too well that every thought comes from somewhere and always carries with it an emotional tag. With enough intellectual confidence you can be a genuine scholar throughout life, focused on the ‘pleasure of finding things out’ rather than on status or reward. But even being able to apply intellect to emotional life is a limited advantage. But with each insight of the academic community into what in nature holds families and communities together there comes a new group of experts demanding to spend more of the public’s money to assure rights and entitlements to the very things which cannot be legislated for.

'..the psychology, Yorkshire!'

HOBSON:  It isn’t easy sitting behind that desk Mrs Swinburne.
JILL:  Well you should try sitting behind mine, you’ve got a computer, I haven’t even got a power point.
HOBSON:  I have an impeccable career record and academic record, I have confidential information of all kinds at my fingertips, I have men and women at my command who will obey orders without question, I have legal status and the backing of the judiciary and yet.
JILL:  You remain unfulfilled?
HOBSON:  One thing still defeats me Mrs Swinburne.
JILL:  I hope you feel able to confess it Inspector.
HOBSON: The dark, impenetrable, tantalising, mystery; the psychology, Yorkshire!
Alan Plater, The Beiderbecke Connection (Yorkshire TV 1988)

The recent death of my father has prompted me to reflect on his Yorkshire-ness. Through the culture he had absorbed, I came to learn that Yorkshire had always been England’s largest and most important county, and therefore when viewing the world from within it; beyond the Pennies became another country, and what happened over the Humber was really only the proper business of the Diocese of Lincoln!

Father (Michael) and his elder brother (Peter) were born and brought up in and around York, itself at the heart of the Vale of York, they like Alf Wright’s (James Herriot’s) son Jim, knew the view from Sutton Bank from a young age. Standing on the edge of the north Yorkshire moors looking westward were ‘the Dales’ of popular fiction whilst behind you were the hill farms that made up the daily rounds of the vet, born in Sunderland but brought up and educated in Glasgow. Similarly Alan Plater was not born in Yorkshire either. The central theme of the Beiderbecke trilogy is how outsiders somehow cope with living in Yorkshire. Yet in the end Inspector Hobson suffers the greatest indignities because he wants to understand rather than grudgingly accept. (The true Yorkshireman asks no more than that - he’d be seriously worried if you were not found to be defending your own part of the country, at least on important occasions!)

I grew up between the age of eighteen months and eleven years three months close to Newcastle, then my father thoughtlessly took me away a second time, to somewhere where no one understood what I was saying - Devon. But, ‘we adapt’. Throughout childhood l was his ‘general dogsbody’ and unpaid ‘deputy assistant under-manger’ whenever it came to DIY, gardening and navigating in the car. With all this came a certain amount of park-bench philosophy; ‘We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it’, ‘more haste less speed’, ‘a poor craftsman always blames his tools’.

In retrospect, and with the benefit of hindsight, the greatest frustration was his decision-making process. One learnt to ask a question a good two weeks before one needed a reply. One work colleague often reflected that she was always finding father simply staring out of the window, concerned this might be a sign of distress she would enquire how he was and get the reply; ‘I’m thinking’. What he meant was he was ‘thinking through’; everything had to be thought through. Impulses and spontaneous reactions were always suspect, but if you waited long enough the ‘right’ answer would emerge. But it was an active process of contemplation, something more than setting aside to consider in a calmer mood (he always endeavoured to be in a calm mood). And it is at this point that we arrive at a particular kind of Yorkshire-ness, and perhaps at a particular history.

‘How do you feel about tin churches?’ Lyn Turtle, the body language specialist asks at one point in Andrew Davies’ A Very Peculiar Practice (BBC TV 1986), and the heart sinks. Father’s family were Chapel to varying degrees (non-conformist Protestants). He confessed to me once that despite the landscape of his childhood being dominated by York Minster he never got inside it until he was in his early twenties!

Separating the emotions and cognitions of the man from the upbringing or cultural environment is particularly difficult in close family relationships, however one breakthrough in understanding came to me when Alan Bennett (truly a lad from the outer reaches of Leeds) wrote and presented the documentary Dinner at Noon, filmed almost exclusively in the Reception area and front Lounge of a Harrogate hotel.

‘The real solvent of class distinction is a proper measure of self-esteem. A kind of unselfconsciousness. Some people are at ease with themselves so the world is at ease with them. My parents thought this kind of ease was produced by education: “Yer Dad and me can’t mix, we’ve not been educated”. They didn’t see that, what disqualified them was temperament. Just as, though educated up to the hilt, it disqualifies me. What keeps us in our place - is embarrassment.’ Alan Bennett (BBC TV 1988) Dinner at Noon.

I may be reflecting on a quite specific time in Yorkshire history too, which just happened to have a broader cultural appeal because of its oddity and therefore potential humour! A time in fact between the reign of Queen Victoria and the final disenfranchisement of the Yorkshire male by another Victoria, that is the Lancashire lass Victoria Wood!

But much of that ‘have-a-go at Yorkshire’ humour centred round buttoned-up emotion and suppressed sexuality. Now that could only succeed as humour if it was restricted to a minority. I well remember the last time I got a belly laugh out of my father. It was when I repeated an old joke from season two of Last Of The Summer Wine (BBC TV 1975?) written by Roy Clarke – one much reworked and watered down later over the years of what was to become the world’s longest running ‘sitcom’. The show began as a tale of men made redundant in late middle age trying to recapture childhood play, and in the process reconstruct the reality of their lives. They made relative, the taken for granted reality of the other members of their community. They made themselves a disruptive influence. Anyway, without context, the joke reads thus;

(Nora seen showing Compo off the premises with aid of broom.)
BLAMIRE:  Why does that man keep chasing that woman?
CLEGG:  Probably because it’s more fun than actually catching her!

In time, as the reader may know, Nora’s husband dies, but Compo never gives up in his pursuit of her, which we are always led to believe began when they all came of age around the time of WWII. When Compo dies, Nora is devastated. Compo was always tramp-like and unwashed and rejected by Nora because of it. She was a woman who naturally enough took a scrubbing brush to her front door step once a week. But Compo, without a thought to what others thought, was as devoted in his admiration of her as was humanly possible, he had paid her the greatest complement he could. That is the context.

But the line is actually spoken by Cleggy, the only one of them who was ever married for any length of time, and is now a widower. She was strict Chapel and he had realized there was no escaping from her from the moment their eyes first met at a chapel tea. Compo naturally was the only one uninhibited enough to approach the subject of sex with Cleggy. He in turn confesses that they had indeed had their moments but that the chief difficulty had been the necessity to negotiate so many layers of flannelette even on a summer’s evening. He now found it a great relief not to be married.

Roy Clarke was also the author of Open All Hours (BBC TV) about a corner shop, somewhere in the suburban streets of somewhere like Doncaster. Again the humour is of a time and a place which chimed with my father. My favourite line is uttered by Arkwright the owner, when describing a customer; ‘That man has the silent tread of a Yorkshire county cricket supporter’. Which kind of places it in the early 80’s when it was possible a fan might need to hang his head, and skulk home, hopefully unobserved. Arkwright despite his cynicism and often appalling treatment of others is a passionate man, first - it has to be said – for money, and second for the largely imagined delights of marriage to the community nurse living across the street.

Now then, my father enjoyed classical music, but like everything else, ‘passionate for’ or ‘passionate about’ were never phrases that sprung to mind when you heard him talk of the people who interested him. He knew perfectly well that down the road from Doncaster was Thorn the birthplace and childhood home of singer Lesley Garrett, famous for finding her voice whilst sat on the outside privy as a child. He considered it a fault that her passion appeared at times to overwhelm her technique, whilst I was feeling, that’s the point – passion must lead.

I believe myself to have been, partly at least, saved by the ‘television age’ bringing me a broader education than my prescribed environment contained, and later by the Web offering an explosion of alternatives.

'Do it on the radio'

FRANK  (looking up) What?’

RITA  I’ve done it.

FRANK  You’ve done it?

She hands him the essay. (Reading aloud) ‘In attempting to resolve the staging difficulties in a production of Ibsen’s Peer Gynt I would present it on the radio because as Ibsen himself says, he wrote the play as a play for voices, never intending it to go on in a theatre. If they had the radio in his day that’s where he would have done it.’

Willy Russell Educating Rita 1985 (First performed 10.6.1980)

BBC (1946?) and Heart South West 2014

‘I had two years of psychiatry. And I learnt a great deal from old man Freud. One of them was - trust your unconscious. It has a logic all it’s own. The second thing was, all motives are quite simple, there’s one motive to do anything, intellect is the great rationaliser, the great excuser. It gave me the courage to devise a form of doing the talks which was to sit down and write them - whatever came to mind.

They were supposed to be thirteen minutes, thirty seconds; sometimes they were eighteen minutes, seventeen, fifteen - then slash them, then censor the more outrageous thoughts, in the interests of domestic tranquillity. (Laughter) And so on. Don’t censor yourself as you go, don’t pretend, don’t try to be somebody else, and this great line of Freud’s - the intellect is the great rationaliser of simple motives, all motives are child like, anger, greed, the wish to be liked and so on.  …a broadcaster, especially radio, must be somebody talking to two friends, no more, in a room.’

Transcribed extract from Writing for Talking Alistair Cooke speaking at the Royal Television Society 3.12.1997

The last roll of film

Once upon a time I was going to be a photographer, but that was forty years ago.

Below are a few pictures from my last roll of 35mm film taken a couple of years ago. The Olympus OM1 with which they were taken sits in the cupboard alongside the rest of our family camera collection dating back more than a hundred years. There is also a digital camera too, now only used when a smartphone camera won’t do!

In 1977 I gained an ‘A’ level in Photography, one of the first few hundred students in the country to do so. The exam had a history paper, as well as a technical one and of course there were the practical assessments. Back then it was a popular cliché to call photography ‘the art form of the 20^th century’. The technology has changed since then, but have the attitudes, motives and actions of photographers - the decision making process that leads to the release of the shutter and the fixing of a moment?

Equally the product, do we still believe the still image, does the illusion which everyone recognises, still appeal as curiously realistic? The apparent realism of the medium seems to have always been at the heart of arguments over its value. Do commercial users still depend on the perceived representation of reality, whilst artistic users merely take reality as a point of departure?

The subject, viewpoint, content, colour, tone and mood are all at the total discretion of the photographer. The greater the belief in the realism of photography, the greater its power to deceive. Whatever the application, the nature of the medium remains the same.

Perception, interpretation and manipulation is a technical process which must be learnt but which may, given enough time and practice, come to feel seamless and instinctive, leading to the release of the shutter at Cartier-Bresson’s ‘decisive moment’ or the decision to fix a print. Only once the craft skills are achieved, do questions about motivation and freedom of expression come to the fore. The loss of such a craft perspective led Lord Snowdon to comment; ‘To the untrained eye it is muddling to distinguish between what is acclaimed at art schools and rejected at Kodak.’

Equally it is possible to believe absolutely in one’s own version of reality, leading Andre Kertesz to assert; ‘I don’t create anything. It is life that creates what I am photographing.’ I think I’d rather stick with Ansel Adams; ‘There is no such thing as reality in graphic expression. ..What is important is how the photographer saw the subject and how he visualised the final print.’

Kodak alas is no more, it was their introduction of the ‘Box Brownie’ in the 1880’s which put a camera in the hands of anybody. Whilst the miniaturisation of high quality cameras in the 1920’s and 1930’s allowed for the apparent realism of the social document. Now the great picture libraries are in the hands of corporations who mine them for prints by the star names which can then be sold for thousands of pounds as art - once they appeared in mass circulation magazines seen by almost everybody.

Although today the technology of stills photography is handed out free to almost everyone, the ability to add value still depends on individual skill. Mobile devices give us the ways and means, but not the eye to see. If done well, it can still have the power to change what everyone sees!

(To see the result of my efforts with a smartphone camera visit my Facebook Albums.)

So some highlights from the last roll of film…