I am just continuing the discussion of how the wearing of my UMIST scarf is a conversation opener. The day before yesterday when I went to church on Sunday morning, at the conclusion of my ‘tea and biscuits’ refreshment I got into conversation with the priest (or rather he with me) on the subject of the scarf. The stand-in priest (whilst our regular priest is taking a holiday after the funeral of his brother) recognised the scarf as he was an ex-University of Birmingham chaplain and thus provoked an interesting conversation between us including the news of the untimely death of one of my contemporaries who we both happen to have known. Later, when I was at home,I wondered to myself in a ‘quasi-legal’ sense whether I was legally entitled to wear a UMIST scarf so I enlisted the aid of AI to help to answer the question. What I received back was a most ‘lawyer-like’ judgement as follows. Yes, you are fully entitled to wear a UMIST scarf. While you may have considered yourself a student of the Victoria University of Manchester (the ‘Owens’ Oxford Road campus), the historical relationship between the two institutions directly connects you to both. Here is why your time at the university (1965–1968) solidifies your right to wear it. The Faculty of Technology Relationship- From 1905 until 1994, UMIST (which officially transitioned from the Manchester College of Science and Technology to the name UMIST in 1966, right during your studies) functioned directly as the Faculty of Technology for the Victoria University of Manchester. Shared Graduation and Heritage- During your years on campus, UMIST did not possess independent degree-awarding powers; all of its students were formally awarded degrees by the Victoria University of Manchester. As a student of the university during this shared era, you are an alumnus of the combined ecosystem that ultimately merged into the modern University of Manchester in 2004. Academic and college scarves are traditional items of campus identity rather than restricted legal attire. Anyone with a historical, familial, or nostalgic connection to the institution is welcome to wear one. Well, all of this is most interesting and not quite what I was expecting but both gratifying and reassuring at the same time. After I made a light lunch, I was idly flicking through the TV channels using the remote until I came across another showing of the film ‘Hidden Figures’ which was the story of how the black, female mathematicians had to fight through the prejudices of their day and had collectively made a brilliant contribution of the Americans launch into space who, at the time, were desperately in a ‘Space Race’ with the Russians. Now I have seen this film twice before and the last viewing was within the last month but this time I joined it about two thirds of the way through into what a thrilling climax in which the exact trajectory of John Glenn (the first American to successfully orbit the earth) needed to be successfully calculated in order that the spacecraft and its occupant did not burn up during re-entry. To be honest, I was really enthralled by another viewing of the film and Katherine Johnson has rightfully become an American hero. What I have learned today that the film did not exaggerate was that in 1962, astronaut John Glenn refused to fly into orbit until Johnson personally re-verified the electronic computer’s math for his trajectory and splashdown coordinates. She calculated the flight paths and trajectories for the historic Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969 and in 2015 President Barack Obama awarded Johnson the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She died in 2020 at the ripe old age of 101 – to which one can only remark ‘What a life!’
After the film was over, I decided to start to dip into the book I had recently ordered and received which was Kasley William: ‘The Art and Science of Connection’ in which she argues strongly for the acceptance of ‘social health’ to complete the triad of physical health + mental health. She writes clearly and unemotionally but with a great deal of conviction and her assertions of research findings are backed up by the appropriate scientific references. I really enjoyed reading the Introductory and first chapter of the book and will let the pleasure of reading the rest of it unfold one day at a time as I read it chapter by chapter. It is one of those books which immediately makes you want to discuss and share the contents with friends and acquaintances, which I am sure I will do in the days ahead. In the late afternoon, I received a welcome call from my next-door neighbour. She works in a nearby large garden centre which also has a cook-shop and delicatessen area, and she occasionally brings me little bits and pieces from the delicatessen that would normally be thrown away, and these are always welcome. We discussed some items of joint culinary interest soup making and the family meal shall be preparing on a fortnight probably featuring a lamb stew which she knows all about being brought up on a farm in Wales) In the late afternoon and early evening, I watched the last two conjoined episodes of ‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles’ which is both gripping and poignant. I have a slight connection with the ending of the book which I read as one of collection of ‘free’ books in one of the Saga hotels in which Meg and stayed in Southern Spain. After stabbing her abusive lover to death, Tess and Angel flee but realise that it is only a question of time before Tess is caught. But whilst they were fleeing, Tess makes Angel promise that after her execution Angel would marry her sister, Liza-Lu. The final scene from the book (and the film) show Angel and Tess’s sister, Liza-Lu, climbing West Hill, Winchester which affords the view of the prison just as Tess was being hanged. Now when I worked at the University of Winchester, I used to walk through the West Hill cemetery which is now a public park with a footpath giving access to the University. Now I used to walk through this cemetery practically every day when caught the train to Winchester and then walked the mile to the University and there is indeed a point along the route which overlooks Winchester prison, just as Hardy had portrayed. Wondering from whence Hardy had drawn his inspiration I found that he, too, had a tangled love life which is too complicated to summarise here. But at one point he was infatuated with an actress who played the part of Tess in a play as he thought that he daughter was the embodiment of the woman who had formed the inspiration for Tess. Another of his amorous episodes involved Hardy installing a woman as his ‘secretary’ whilst his own wife was confined to upstairs rooms. For the faint-hearted, these emotional entanglements seemed to be more associated with infatuation, and a more spiritual type of yearning rather than a more conventional male lust and, incidentally, Hardy seems to have a penchant for women some 35 years his junior.