The evening before yesterday, I settled down to watch a couple of re-broadcasts of ‘Yes,Prime Minister’ all of which I have seen before, but which still retain their appeal after all of these years – it was said to be Margaret Thatcher’s favourite TV programme. As it happened, I watched the first of these but fell asleep before the second was shown only to wake up to a programme which had just started on the life and work of John Logie Baird, the inventor of television. What was so amazing was that Baird invented the essentials of TV single handed and practically with all of his own self-funded equipment. The BBC were actually very ‘sniffy’ about the Baird system and the first TV commissioned by the BBC was that of a rival system ‘Marconi-EMI’. The Germans, Americans and probably the Russians were all thinking about and learning from each other about the rudiments of TV and one of the things that I learnt from my study of the Sociology of Science for my MSc programme at Salford University was that many discoveries in science are actually ‘multiples’ i.e. with the same technology and knowledge-base many investigators in different countries might be striving for the same goal but in the end only one person is credited with the discovery. In fact the Americans were developing systems which paralleled those of Baird but they had thrown huge amounts of money into their efforts whereas Baird worked single handed. Another thing that I learnt was that Baird himself cracked the problem of transmission in colour by using revolving disks that shot in the primary colours of red, green and blue and then combined these into a colour image. So the programme was a fascinating one and Baird probably has not received the credit due to him which the TV programme was trying to restore. Baird’s original equipment was either destroyed in a fire or has mysteriously disappeared. So having watched the programme, I had a quick look at my emails before retiring and was delighted to received one from an old friend who has been very ill but who now seems to be on the road to recovery. There is some way to go yet and further bouts of treatment have to be undertaken in February but she and I are both hopeful that a good end is in sight and then we might soon meet to exchange all of our bits of news. This week the ‘hobbit hole’ clearance programme is in abeyance whilst my son and daughter-in-law are paying a family visit but it is satisfying that the two biggest have been cleared and all of the contents successfully thrown away, found a good home or recycled. We are now due for a period of wet, cold and windy weather which does not make for pleasant walks into town but I have generally been going down into town by car anyway as I had things to carry. According to the readings on my calendar, the days are getting longer by about a minute and a half each day but we have such a thick layer of cloud recently then this is hardly noticed. The world leaders who have assembled in Davos, Switzerland, last night have all been speaking in their own ways about what they consider to be a ‘rupture’ of the system of rules-based international trade and the necessity to construct a new world economic order. Mark Carney, ex-governor of the Bank of England and now the premier of Canada, gave a very intelligent and thoughtful speech in which he tried to map out what a new economic order might look like. In the meanwhile, Trump is due to arrive with a huge American contingent and he is breathing all fire and brimstone and continuing to issue blood-curdling threats about what he intends to do about Greenland. But there is now an understanding that the days of trying to humour Trump are over and he must be confronted, which he will be. But in the strange, Trumpian view of the universe, the more other world leaders tell him he is mistaken, the more convinced he is that America does not need the rest of the world and that he needs to make America ‘great again’, I think there is a realisation, though, that even when Trump has gone (and that might be sooner rather than later given the state of his health) the world is now a very changed place and the rules-based order of international trade has to be replaced by probably a whole series of bilateral agreements between large trading blocks.
As I sometimes do midweek, I decided to go and frequent the Methodist Centre to have a mid-morning coffee. I got chatting to a lady on the ‘Chatty Table’ which was interesting as she was originally from Halifax in Yorkshire. We remarked to each other that it always a bit strange when you see, for example, route direction signs to a town in which you used to live but no longer visit because all of your connections to it have been cut (largely as family members die) She and I had experienced similar events in our lives where the friends and relatives that you knew in your you have not moved away and keep within the environs of the town in which they were brought up. But our conversation was cut short as her balance and exercise class was due to start shortly so I left as well to collect a copy of my daily newspaper and to get some cash out of a nearby ATM. Then I returned home and made myself with rice meal enhanced by bits of ham and petit pois which was sufficient for me today. I then decided to go shopping and my local Aldi was very quiet at this time of the day/week. I did succumb to the temptation, though, to buy some fur-lined cloggies which were being sold off for £7 but the original articles upon which they are modelled sell for about seven times this price. Then I needed to unpack the shopping and get the bins out ready for collection and that is most of the day gone. There is a treat in store for me though as there is going to be a Wainwright programme describing the ascent of Catbells which is a beautiful little mountain outside Keswick which overlooks Derwentwater – in fact, I have an oil colour of this in my main lounge. I sent an email to a fell-walking friend of mine who I am pretty sure will have climbed this mountain in her youth. It is only 1500′ rather than the more typical 2500′-3000′ feet but has quite a demanding final section in the approach to the summit.