Category: General

A few days ago I proposed that corporal punishment was pointless as correction had to come from self-control. I arrived at this decision through my own experiences. This led me to consider our inadequate penal system. Locking people up en masse, irrespective of the reason they are there, controlled by an over stretched and consequently resentful staff, must patently be wrong especially as they seem to be locked up for incredible periods of the day and to have very little worthwhile occupation. This in itself must have a derogatory affect on any hope of rehabilitation. For a start off, the reasons for antisocial behaviour are numerous and disparate, so surely the solutions should be disparate also. France’s ‘Devil’s Island, I believe, had some of the right ideas, even if it was extreme and barbaric. Make life so miserable for the serious offenders that they are forced to rethink. However, always bear in mind that some thrive in these conditions as toughness and roughness can be a badge of excellence, a route to a subversive leadership, as I discovered in the Service. I have previously reported that, for a weekend I was a jailer responsible for two men held for attempted murder, and part of their punishment was picking rope into oakum – a total waste of time, energy and finger nails.

It would seem therefore, that hardship, coupled with a comparison, might be more effective. Assuming home is preferable to incarceration, if we also agree that minor offences should be dealt with mainly by community service, we have a situation which can be used in order to differentiate between home and prison. Those on community service, if placed in jail at every weekend, might be given pause for thought. The slightly more serious, selected offenders might be allowed home at weekends, tagged. This too would give a comparison, and would not require additional prisons. I can envisage logistical problems with cells used by long stay prisoners having personalised their cells, but I also believe these problems are not insuperable.

To those very serious offenders, I believe from my own experience, in the Navy, of hunger, discomfort, bad conditions and being divorced from home and family, for long periods, that one greatly appreciates the other life, and while this period is toughening, and just about acceptable under service conditions, there is no doubt that one looks forward to improvement ASAP. It would then seem logical that in serious cases the punishment should be hard work of a physical nature, preferably outdoors, causing fatigue; nourishing but totally uninteresting food of a repetitive nature, hours of solitary confinement for contemplation, no TV, rare visits and only reading matter to while away the time – illiterates would be taught to read and write. Intercommunication between the prisoners should be severely controlled in order to avoid building up the hierarchy and influence of the wrong sort within the prisoner community.

A stick without a carrot is ineffective, comparison between comfort and being ground down is essential, so there must be rewards which can legitimately be withdrawn. Small relaxations in the regime, such as the TV, periods of socialisation and so on could be expanded on an exponential basis. Essentially also, there must be an honest and unequivocal system of control. Any preferential treatment, or selective abuse by authority, would negate the system.

The whole purpose of the ‘punishment’, must be rehabilitation, the revitalisation or the introduction of social standards which the rest of us accept as the norm. Some people unfortunately have a quirk in their nature, and perhaps there is no cure for them. They, though, are in the minority, and the rest have arrived in their current situation through environment, association and circumstances. Therefore it is reasonable to assume that one can amend these trends, particularly in the young, by showing them and offering them a better way of life. This can only be done by example and education, not incarceration for hours on end in a sterile environment.

Having read this you will appreciate that I am no specialist in the subject but that does not prevent me from thinking reasonably about a subject which seems to have defeated our leaders. What I propose will cost, especially the retraining. However, this system might slow or reverse the ever bourgeoning prison building programme

Livingstone, N.Rhodesia I write this to draw conclusions about psychological reactions in children, they and their adults are not aware of, but which have damaging long term consequences; not making a criminal, but disadvantaging and imprinting a permanent lack of self-respect on the child. The final paragraphs are extracts from a previous, general comment on my African experiences. I am not whinging, I’ve had a wonderful life, but those two years altered my outlook and potential, permanently. In retrospect, I can see the experience damaged my outlook, especially regarding my personal assessment of my intellectual standing, until I was 28 yeas old. This is not psycho-babble, it’s an awakening in old age of an experience which should not be repeated on anyone. I was dropped into a totally strange and false environment

It was false, it was play-acting, totally unreal, and unrelated to my previous six years. Some of the Civil Servants came from the landed gentry, with Oxbridge degrees and they set the tone. The rest, like my father were educated, but making their way, not backed by old money. With cheap labour; the housing, local schooling and welfare, all included in the contract, they lived miles above that required with a ‘Home’ posting. In consequence, from observation as a mere child, added to later analysis, based upon Imperial Civil Service experience, I realised that those on the lower rungs of the ladder were aping, or having to fall in with, the protocols of their richer masters. This was inevitable as the number of whites in Livingstone in 1928 was pitifully small, and this was borne out by so few who met together socially.

School, in Livingstone started very early and finished around midday to permit all to enjoy a peaceful siesta when the sun was at its zenith. I personally found it irksome to have to rest for at least an hour and often more. I have since discovered to my cost that those educational standards were very low, and this was probably the reason children were sent to the Cape – Capetown – or Bulawayo to be educated from about the age of eight until they were old enough to be sent even further afield, to boarding school in England. The poor wretches might not have returned home for years as the journey took so long and commercial flying was not the norm. I spent only two years in Livingstone. By the time I had returned to England, I had lost at least one year’s education and probably more, and this, above all else affected me for the rest of my life

My loss of education resulted in my appearing retarded. My self-appraisal was coloured by the comments of others and seemed, by test results to be irrefutable. When I came home and was judged by those doing the assessing in England, my capabilities were related to my age and size rather than to my intellectual ability. I was deemed backward and placed in a class accordingly and, indeed, I was 21 years old before I reached my full potential, and sixty before Sophie brought the logic of this train of events to my attention. It’s easy to believe you’re stupid when enough people indicate you are, either outright or by all the subtle implications which offer themselves in an academic career, starting from the beatings for not being able to attain certain standards, to being left behind when all your friends move on up the school, leaving you to lick your wounds and adjust yet again.

I sincerely believe that often the signs are there if only people will take the time to read them, and that misinterpretation is the scourge of doctrinal preaching and half-baked philosophy. For example if less attention was paid to the fact that a teacher gave a cuff round the ear and more to why it was needed in the first place, we might progress. I should know, I’ve been thrashed more than most for less than most. Bad behaviour within adolescents can often be due to reasonable frustration, or anger at one’s own deficiencies, which again is frustration.

In spite of what follows, I still stand by what I have previously said, working for the Council is still preferable to direction from Central Government. Not only for the worker who has immediate contacts and sees the work in detail, but for the public he serves

When I was looking for my first engineering job I had taken part in an interview at the City Hall where I was faced by a phalanx of councillors, probably about fifteen. They had asked a number of questions without getting to the meat, when I decided I would ask the question in the forefront of my mind – How much? The answer appalled me, they were only offering two hundred and fifty pounds a year for a graduate, aged 28, with a wife and two children to support. I refused and went and took a job with a consultant at two hundred and sixty. Those were hard times.

Thinking of the phalanx reminds me of when Sophie was looking for a teaching job and the occasion when I tried to help my boss-of-the-day to get a job in a rural County Council. In Sophie’s case we had to write out her application, her CV, have her references photocopied and send copies of everything to twenty-six councillors. We were not so much surprised as astounded, but even that was nothing to the indignity suffered by John, a friend, and my boss at one stage. He had never learned to drive, or if he had he had allowed his licence to expire. For whatever reason he had no car and so he asked me to chauffeur him around from councillor’s house to councillor’s house. The councillors were mostly farmers and their homes were scattered over a whole county. The weather had been wet for some time with the result the lanes were like scrambler tracks.

We started after work and finished in complete darkness with the humiliation of sliding into a gate post and damaging the car. That, however was not the real humiliation. At each house we came to, he went and knocked the door while I stayed in the car. As the evening wore on, when he returned to the car he became progressively disheartened at the berating he received from some who resented being canvassed and said that they were totally against it, while others told him it was a good thing he had come because they would not have voted for him if he hadn’t. The only way he could have succeeded was to have learned more about the system and done his homework better. He should have sought out someone on the Council to advise him of whom to canvass and whom not to, all he had been told was that if he hoped to get the job he should canvass all, which he did; but then he was English, with the mistaken idea that professional people were employed purely on their merits and that interviews were above board. He didn’t get the job.

I remember a case where the engineer to a road contractor fell out with that contractor and resigned. A while later he answered an advertisement for a job with a Council and was told by a senior member of the staff that it was a walk-over as he was more experienced and better qualified than the other candidates. When he asked later why he had not been successful he was told, in confidence, that the contractor had objected to his candidature, saying he, the contractor, would not get fair treatment from the engineer in future dealings, and the Council then appointed another candidate. As I have said before, such is the way of the world. I remember when a senior member of staff canvassed the liftman, because the latter had political influence. Everyone knew – they tend to in a council, and probably in consequence, that was why he was not appointed.

These days there are rumbles in the jungles of local authorities on many accounts, Water tax at the head, but those Councils are no longer as autonomous as they were until the 70’s. It was then Central Government lived up to its name and took over most of the powers and things have gone down hill ever since. Local Government means by the people for the people, if you have a beef about something, you can actually hammer on the Councillor’s own front door, or vote with your feet at the next election. Central Government is remote, can’t see the local detail, can’t address local problems – paints with a broad brush. There is the iniquity of the Manifesto, which few read for National Elections and is a license to do anything, as voting is on Party lines not policy; but is devoured for local ones because it is local.

Fishcake McKay

First published in August 06. Requested by my Dutch friend, Jan, in Holland

In the sailor’s induction course we were taught to handle a whaler, a thirty-foot, double-ended, clinker-built life-boat,. We rowed in unison with cries like ‘Give way together’. Our instructions were laced with colourful language by, the Coxswain, or ‘Chief’, and there was swearing in the body of the boat as the blisters began to build. Tethered in Butlins’ swimming pool, the oars with holes in the blades, instead of us passing through the water, water swirled past us and we were rock still. We were preparing, for abandoning ship – a worrying thought – not for shopping for fish,

The rank of the Captain decided which Naval ship in a convoy was Flotilla Leader, a cache which carried privileges, not least the convoy Doctor. The other ship, or ships were the sheep dogs of the convoy – in Naval terms ‘tail-end Charley’, the canteen boat – whipping in the stragglers. When our Captain was promoted, we inherited a Scottish, ex-Merchant captain, RNR whose rank sent us to the rear of the convoys with all that entailed. There was considerable muttering aboard.

The new Skipper played the bagpipes, liked fish and when he played, usually in the small hours, his personal hound would howl like a banshee. The new Skipper was as popular as an outbreak of bubonic plague. However, fresh fish was a rare luxury, so his antics were a welcome respite. Sailing along in home waters in daylight, at six knots, if the Skipper spied a couple of trawlers plying their trade under very tricky circumstances, his attention could be distracted. The Bosun would pipe ‘whaler’s crew fall in’ and we, those who could be spared, would climb into the whaler and were lowered over the side of the ship, which by now had swung away from the convoy and was heading at a rash 20 to 25 knots for the trawlers, with us clinging to the boat and the boat whacking against the side of the ship. Who needed a fairground ride when we had him to guide us? Approaching the trawlers, the engines reversed to bring the ship almost at a standstill, when we would be dropped onto the waves, literally, with the sudden release of the falls, and then we would be rolling in the ship’s wash as it shot off back to the convoy. We, alone and abandoned, rowed sedately over to the fishing boats bearing our cargo of cigarettes, tobacco and rum from the Lower Deck Messes and the gin and cigarettes from the Wardroom. There was banter with the fishermen while we were passing up our bribes and they were sending down baskets of fish which we stowed in buckets, the surplus had to find a place at our feet. With a final flourish of cross-talk, the fishing boats would rapidly head off, not wanting to be associated with the convoy and within minutes they were over the horizon. We, out of sight of anything, wallowing in a rolling sea., would one minute see the horizon, the next we were beside a huge wave which seemed to be falling down on us, but actually rolled under us. With a full crew plus the fish, our gunwales close to the water, time past slowly.

With the sea empty, the look-out would ultimately see smoke on the horizon, the ship would be steaming towards us with a bow wave like a typhoon, a greyhound of the sea.. Momentarily it came almost to a stop and then, once we were hooked on to the lines and pulled just clear of the water, she would be off, accelerating back towards the convoy, while we were being hauled in foot by foot until we were swung inboard and lashed in place. Meanwhile the Messmen had been gathering in the waist of the ship. The skipper left the bridge and came to the well to inspect the prize emptied on the deck, and always said, ‘All flat fish into the Wardroom bucket.’, hence his nickname, ‘Fishcake McKay’. Then he would march off back to the bridge because we were in sight of the convoy once more; The Wardroom Steward collected flatfish for his bucket, but while he was gathering more, others would be taking then out of his bucket for their own, As a member of the boat’s crew I was not involved in divvying up so I was well placed to stand and watch this hilarious pantomime.

PARIS, on the way south we had stayed for a couple of days in Paris. Sophie’s friend had told us of an hotel in the Rue Du Caire, the red-light district, which was closer to our budget than most. Being on a B&B basis we had to take our meals elsewhere. We tended to buy the food near the hotel, to leave the rest of the day free. Sophie would go into the shop and I would stand outside with the girls. One day Linda and I had been watching the Ladies plying their trade, they were standing row on row in tight satin dresses, disappearing with men from time to time into a small hotel opposite the shop. I was quietly timing them and being amazed at the through-put, when Linda, aged 12, hit me with a question I should have anticipated. ‘Daddy, why are all those ladies standing there?’ she asked innocently, staring with interest at the ladies in question. ‘Ah’, I said floundering, then I decided to give half the truth, she would learn the rest soon enough. I explained they were waiting for their men friends to take them into the hotel. Mercifully Sophie rejoined us and we went off sightseeing.

I suffered one culture shock at the Notre Dame. I might have been lethargic about religion to the point of rejection, but old teachings die hard and I had been taught to respect the worship of others. We visited the Cathedral on a Sunday, and found a stream of people going in and out. It was only when we were inside, in the middle of the noisy scrum consisting of excursions, sightseers, people leaving, assumedly having worshipped, people going in to worship, that we found a service in full swing. It left me with a recurrence of the vision of the inside of the Temple in Jerusalem as I had imagined it when as a child I had been told the story of Jesus and the usurers. I had expected the calm and hushed atmosphere of St Paul’s, augmented even, because it was Sunday.

Brush With The French Police In the 50’s we were on our way home. I had looked at the map and knew I was on the main road.. I drove along it, and passed another, angling from the right, giving a cursory glance because of ‘priorite a droite’ , when a Gendarme stepped into the road and made us go into a lay-by. It was cleary a regular occurrence – he had that practised air about his arm-waving. ‘Now remember,’ I said to the family, looking meaningfully at Soph, ‘we don’t understand French, and I’ll do the talking’.. The policeman told us we had breached the highway code and he was going to fine us some astonomical sum. I explained in pigeon French – what else? – that we were on a main road and showed him the map to make the case. No sale. The argument went on for ages as I had no intention of paying a fine and he was steadily getting more heated and Sophie was getting more worried, especially when he threatened to take us to the next town and impound the car. The fact that there was no ‘Halt’ or other sign obviously meant nothing to him, he was probably on a percentage. ‘Say nothing,’ I said to Soph, ‘Let him bloody well take us in, I’ll make an international incident out of it.’ That went down like a lead brick, but just when a real decision was about to be made, along came another miscreant in a Deux Chevaux, who had to be stopped.

The copper was having a field day – that was until the car door opened and a shapely, long, silken clad leg issued, attached to a beautiful, blond dolly-bird – then it was he who had a decision to make. She had a mate who was even prettier if that were possible. Oh! La la! Poor Frog!! He remonstrated to them next, explained; they smiled and she moved the leg, he looked back at us, we looked innocent, and, believe it or not, straight faced, he capitulated, we went on our way. The last we saw was him leaning on the roof of the car breathing garlic fumes into the little Deux Chevaux.

I realise several things. Having been employed in six different fields, and each time I applied having only a vague idea what the work involved, I believe young people are still in the same predicament. Did the soldiers joining, and more, their wives, ever think of them fighting in Afghanistan in extreme conditions? Do young shop assistants think of the stress and hours Christmas can produce, or the boredom of an empty shop? Do young dental students realise, like watchmakers, they will sit or stand in one position, operating in a small area, with meticulous skill for most of their working life? I have known a few dentists outside work, and they talk!

Civil Engineering, for those with the temperament, is a most varied, interesting and intellectually rewarding profession. Some will have read that towards the end of the war I was an instructor. I taught highly technical complicated subjects to recruits, WRNS, officers and old lags. When once I had got the hang of it, the repetition nearly drove me mad. My wife, who taught all her working life, on the other hand, enjoyed every minute, and was never bored. In civil engineering you will work in adverse conditions, sewage, compressed air, up pipes and tunnels, in extremes of heat, cold and rain, get filthy, often with hazardous implications if care is not taken, go anywhere, from the bottom of the sea to the top of a factory chimney. You are going to design, price, go to contract on, supervise and account for projects ranging from a few thousand to millions, be prepared to work abroad for a period, and you will have to deal with the Public, your contractors, your employer, consultants and the workforce. To start with you will be learning at a cracking pace, required to do as you are told, but within a short time responsibility will be yours and then the buck stops with you. You may or may not earn as much as some who started university on the same day you did, but you will have had a very varied working life. While much of the work may be similar, the problems will mostly be different. As you rise in status, so the work and the problems will change. It will only be when you are just short of retirement, that deja vu will take over, but even then old habits die hard.

For example, in the 50’s I had to learn Wave Modelling at a hectic pace. I was taking over one harbour in progress and later tested another. At the same time my innovative faculties were being taxed for the first time. I was designing wave height gauges, applying stroboscopic, photographic analysis, and putting in place much which I was reading up. Wave models fall into two categories, those only dealing with current and wind generated flows, and waves. Those which take into account the movement of the materials of the sea bed as well are siltation models. The models are built in a tank, with a wave-making paddle at one end which can be controlled to produce waves of any height or wavelength. Records of temperature, wind force and direction, sea bed formation, and any physical peculiarities such as sand banks, submerged impediments such as rocks and wrecks, are collected all over a number of years and seasons When the parameters of the physical conditions have also been copied within the model for a given occasion, then, by turning the model, or the paddle, the waves can be made to arrive at the model from any direction needed, exactly to scale, to what has previously been experienced,. The models are then required to replicate, in every way instances from the past to prove their accuracy. Only then is the model deemed accurate enough to prophesy the future reactions to physical modifications to the harbour. The models are made and remade in the future proposals and tested to see the outcome, remodelled to overcome problems, until all are satisfied that the scheme is worth pouring millions into. >From then the outcome is designed and built.

There are so many facets to civil engineering. There is marine work which involves working either below the sea, or dealing with tidal effects. Tunnelling has its own problems depending on the nature of the soil, from rock to silt. Shops and flats have problems of weight and expansion, depending on the architectural design. For a very long row of shops, the design factors for the expansion and contraction of the building, longitudinally, can be quite excessive. Sewage works and reservoirs, often relegated to poor ground, may have to be piled or supported against slippage of the retaining walls, and the piping to and from the works can also be difficult. One can be dealing in areas of half a city, at other times just one building. In today’s environment, roads and airfields have greater loads and traffic to deal with, which means that they too are becoming more complicated. One could say that there is little time for an engineer to become bored if his interest is in the work.

Garden Design

I am not trying to compete with those brilliant people who run gardening programmes both in the press and on television, but as I have remodelled and rebuilt gardens on at least six different occasions I would like to pass on some of the problems I had to deal with and the solutions that I found. One of the biggest misconceptions by people new to gardening and possibly starting from scratch, is they forget that trees can grow and grow. How often have you seen a garden totally enshrouded in shadow, because the trees were never pruned or kept within bounds, and had arrived at a point where it would cost a fortune to bring them under control. I only have to look out of the bedroom window to see trees between houses where the actual space is only 12 feet wide, and the trees, growing in clay, will ultimately cause settlement; and in gardens where they have grown so large that any idea of planning has long since been lost.

The first garden I had was little bigger than an allotment, and so, instead of filling it with perennials, I used old glazed cupboard doors, built cold frames and brought on annuals – cheap, interesting, allowing experimentation, regular weeding, and not a great deal of work.

We moved into a house standing on a quarter acre of land, with copious flowerbeds containing specimen plants. As time went on, as our lives grew more complicated it became necessary to reduce the work. In consequence I replaced some of the beds with lawns, decorative paved areas, and beds of mixed shrubs, that would form a stepped background, not grow too large and whose foliage would be complementary and seasonal. I cannot stress that a good deal of research was necessary both in the selection of the shrubs, and the plantsmen selling them, as the latter are often as ignorant as the purchaser, and it is a disaster if you plant a complicated bed with shrubs not to the habit you had expected.

In what amounts to the last garden we have designed, we started with a virtually clean slate. The predecessors were only interested in sunbathing and so the rear garden was purely an oil tank sitting on a patch of grass. Both of us suffer from arthritis, I cannot pick things up off the ground – even money on the floor of a supermarket. So we designed our garden with very few beds along the periphery, which we trellised with shaped trellis to support climbers of every sort. This meant that we were able to plant a selection of seasonable shrubs and perennials, as well, at intervals in the rose beds, such that weeding using long handled tools was easy. Needless to say the trellis suitably masked the oil tank.

I found later it was a struggle, with all that was contained in a small garden shed, to keep it tidy enough that one could easily take and replace the long handled tools. With the result I built a lockable annex to the side of the shed, out of 6 foot by 8 inch fencing planks, one plank deep, and in there stored the long handled equipment successfully. In addition we found during the winter months that Sophie could not see the plants in the garden, due to the high level of the kitchen window. I therefore made suitable brackets attached to the trellis supports, which now hold, safely against the gales, bowls of winter pansies, snugly held within the framework of the brackets, at a height that she can see from the kitchen. We have colour all the year round, through annuals, perennials and shrubs in pots which are easy for us to maintain.

Both are faces of the same coin, derived through necessity. We all design and invent, it is natures way of progress, but what I wish to lay before you are the difficulties, snags and problems in designing and inventing for profit. My own experience. So you can evaluate the advice, in short I quote my own experience. I have been a designer in Heavy Engineering in most branches from tunnels, airfields, water, sewerage works, docks and harbours, shops and flats. After retirement I was a design consultant to people wishing to promote their own designs and inventions, including patenting and protection, culminating in a joint British Design Award.

The friends and relatives of the client are the bane of the design consultant. Generally, neither they or the client have any promotional experience and often a limited technical knowledge, but after seeing the invention, they are all so mutually proud, so sure it will make a fortune, they have imbued the client with such a positive attitude he is not prepared to listen to advice and, believe it or not, he is convinced the consultant will steal his design. This was so prevalent I made a statement I was prepared to put in writing – it stated that his material would be treated with the utmost confidence, not only would I not copy it, if as a result of our discussions I could see improvements, additional uses, or should the design be unworkable but another version saleable, all would be his in total and I would have no claim on it. Even this on occasion was hard to convince.

Protection Patents, Copyright, Protected Designs, and Trademarks, all come under the auspices of the UK Patents Office and are referred to as Intellectual Properties. Things have moved on since my day, 14 years ago, so I will only generalise. If you have an interest in protection, start searching on the internet. I was involved with a design which seemed to have tremendous potential, worldwide, but was received in some quarters with scepticism. Patenting would have to be worldwide, especially with so many countries now well versed in manufacture, and patenting alone was going to cost tens of thousands of pounds. One aspect of protection is that the details of the design and/or the manufacturing process must remain secret until a preliminary patent is obtained, any breach could invalidate the ultimate patent. Hence the design must be protected before seeking a manufacturer.

Manufacture – Costing. Designs from the humble milking stool to the Rolls Royce require to start with a prototype stage to iron out design, drafting and manufacturing problems. Often these can be done in other materials more cheaply and more conveniently, but they are essential as it is rare to consider all aspects without modification.. Once this is done a manufacturing consultant – ranging from a friend to whatever – is needed to decide on the best economical process and hence the anticipated cost. Only at that point should the product be promoted.

Promotion and Prospects To make the point I will quote the above instance. We had a prototype, photographs, a reasonable stab at the manufacturing process, and the cost of the moulds necessary to produce the product in plastic. To this was added printing and packaging – all assessments to be hardened up when a manufacturer was found. The first manufacturer was very enthusiastic, but he was part of a conglomerate and the product would need next stage approval. This stage was a duplicate of the previous one. The decisions came back in a few days. Then the product was sent to the top of the heap in the US and we heard nothing for at least a month. Our Marketing Consultant believed from experience that the people in the US were assessing it in the hope of breaking the patent, hence the delay. Ultimately the client found a manufacturer, the product was put on the market but never achieved the sales to even clear all the overheads. There are books in libraries on marketing and details of the various methods used to gauge the potential, like simple mass questioning, with a pen and clipboard, and product evaluation seminars, where selected cross sections of the intended market are brought together in groups to examine and discuss the product before analysts – and there are still other methods. One other hurdle is the state of the general economy which is mercurial.

The percentage of designs from the general public, which reached the stage of being considered for manufacture was about 5% The successful ones were less than 2%. It’s a tough, costly road and there is only room for hard-headed common sense. Check before spending time and money, someone else, with your skills and reasoning may have had the same idea, it happened to me. Check patents, on the Internet or, possibly, through a government Quango.

I can’t remember, but I don’t suppose that the word chauvinism featured very much in the vocabulary of the man in the street, in the 30s and 40s. There used to be a silly story, which had more truth than humour, about an Italian who was asked his views on life, and he answered ‘ I digga da pit, to earnna da mon, to buya da bread, to getta da strength, to digga da pit!’ As I was brought up by women, it was only after the war that I lived in a house where the head of the house was a man. None of us at that time took exception to the fact, that he and I contributed very little to work in the house, other than maintenance and gardening. One came home, read the paper, ate the evening meal, and spent most evenings with the family. Occasionally, at times of pressure one might help with the washing up but it was rare. Similarly, we wouldn’t have dreamed of attending a birth, let alone participating.

Recently, Sophie, my wife, has been so ill she was incapable of doing more than sitting still, with the result that I found myself as a carer, with all that entails. I’m not suggesting that I found it irksome, merely time-consuming, in many cases time wasting, and very tiring. I of course, in my 80s, would be more tired than most. But what it did do was make me realise, in the past, just how much we had denigrated the work of the housewife as being ‘ woman’s work’, something simple and easy, and I suppose, beneath us. Over the years things have obviously changed not only in my own household, but even more with the younger people where it seems, the roles have no clear definition, they are certainly interchangeable. In those ancient times the head of the house, was exactly that, what he said went, and the fact that this was only superficial in many cases, and those laws were modified by those carrying them out was never discussed. Today, chauvinism seems to be to be found more in the workplace than in the home. You never know, it might just disappear from there too.