Thank you

I would like to sincerely thank everybody who spoke sympathetically of me after my fall. The pain lasted for 15 days and I was delighted when it subsided. The wound has not healed yet but I am relieved that the pain has almost disappeared. I was very touched by the number of people who sympathised with me. I would like to particularly thank Tammera Vaux, Lynn Dodds, Gordon Meredith and Richard Avery, who gave their time to help me. I am only sorry I could not express my gratitude to them earlier.

Thank you to my wife Jane, my sons Walter, Warwick and Simon, my daughters-in-law Dr Nuala, Fiona and Lyn, my grandson Neil and my granddaughters Eleanor, Rebecca, Judith, Ruth, Siobhan, Lucy and Hannah and Irish friends like Catherine Fallon,Tony & Bridie Doohan and the many other friends from the greyhound world.

Family update

Walter is of course our eldest son. He lives here in Beverley with his consultant radiologist wife Nuala from Dublin. She works for the local hospital Castle Hill. They have restored a fine Georgian house here and Walter continues to keep up his legal work even while running a 5 Star B and B. Their eldest children Siobhan and Lucy are both at Durham University studying languages. Siobhan is currently in Italy for a semester and then will take a work placement in Paris. Hannah is the only one still at home and working on her exams at School.

Warwick is a freelance photographer in London where he has lived for over thirty years with Fiona who works in a restaurant and cafe as manager and chief cook. They have two daughters. Elle is a Programme Leader for English First in Bristol. Their second daughter Rebecca lives in Los Angeles in the USA where she is married to Zac Russell. Zac works for Red Bull. Rebecca is a fashion stylist for an LA magazine, C magazine.

Simon is a lecturer at the University of York. He got his PhD from Leeds with a study on EU defence and security policy. He travels a lot for the university giving lectures and was recently in India. He teaches political economy in York Management School and is Director of Postgraduate programmes. He is married to Lyn who has worked in the arts and in community theatre for many years. They have three children. Jude works in Geneva writing reports on humanitarian crisis management, with a special interest in the Balkans, Palestine, South Sudan and Colombia. Ruth lives in Amsterdam with her partner Mark. Ruth did her MA in the University of Amsterdam on preservation and presentation of film and related media. Mark is a digital designer. Simon and Lyn's youngest, Neil, is studying technical theatre at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London.

The Gang Leader is my 96 year old Jane, the greatest woman in the world. I met her in a cow shed in 1947 in Wolston outside Rugby. She was manager of a herd of Friesian milch cows, one of them giving ten gallons a day. This is the one for which I was called late one evening to treat when she had suddenly stopped giving any milk. I operated on her with the help of that woman. Within a month I asked her to marry me.

Charles Darwin

      But for Charles Darwin  (1809 – 1882)  I might still be a believer in the Creation.

My father-in law Doctor John Dent was a great believer in this great Charles Darwin.

 He was the originator (with Alfred Wallace) of the theory of evolution by natural selection.

 He studied medicine at Edinburgh.  At Cambridge he became interested in botany, zoology, & geometry   He was born into Anglicans - Dr Robert Darwin and Susannah (nee Wedgwood).   His mother died when Charles was eight.  While on holiday from Shrewsbury boarding school he helped his father treat poor people.  Hoping he would study medicine his father sent him to Edinburgh university.    But being only interested in natural science he moved to Cambridge to study wildlife, biology and geology.  He also took an interest in fossils from marine invertebrates.  He became sceptical about creatures being placed on earth by a God.   He speculated that over long periods of time live organisms could change and adapt to their environment and that diversity of life could take place gradually.

     In order to support his theories he decided to travel abroad and search for evidence.

In December 1831 he joined Captain Robert Fitzroy on H.M.S. Beagle for the voyage from Plymouth that was to become historic.    They went south as far as Natal on the East coast of South America and then eastwards below South Africa  making  Zoological discoveries, and fauna on coral reefs, volcanic islands, fauna, & flora.  They continued below Australia and then northwards and across to the volcanic Galapogos Islands near the East coast of South America.   He learned much there and at neighbouring Santiago, Santa Cruz, & San Cristobal and later during his studies on Tierra Del Fuego.  Then they sailed further south to reach the Falklands before turning north to return to Plymouth with a great collection of specimens.

 They had been exploring on land for 3 years and 3 months and at sea for a year and six months.

Darwin’s conclusions were too controversial to be acceptable to many ordinary people.   He was slow in publishing them because he knew they would offend his wife and most devout Christians.   Queen Victoria was interested in his studies and had an open mind about his theories.  While studying the expression on the face of an Orangutan on a visit to a zoo she said    “ He is frightfully human`-looking.”

In 1858 Alfred Russel Wallace published an article praising the research carried out by Darwin.  Within a year Darwin was brave and confident enough to publish his “Origin of Species”.

Benjamin Disraeli in a debate in the House of Commons asked “ Is man an ape or an angel ?  I am on the side of the angels and I repudiate these new-fangled theories .” 

But the leading thinkers of the time were impressed.    The  first 1,250 copies were bought immediately and changed the thinking of millions of people.

The book showed that in the War of Nature most creatures died young and survival was largely dependent on smell, sight & speed.   

  Darwin established that all species descended from a common ancestry  and that a branching pattern of evolution resulted from natural selection.  It was said that he opened the door to our knowledge of genes, DNA and mutations.

Darwin was not just interested in living things ; he admired them.     He wrote :-

“ Sympathy with the lower animals is one of the noblest virtues with which man is endowed.”  His daughter Annie died in 1851 at the age of 11.  He cried whenever he remembered her.  He kept her hair and her shells.

Darwin was not aware of Gregor Mendel’s research on Plant Hybrids in the garden of his monastery in 1866.   That was the foundation of genetics but it was not reported for some years.

     On another voyage in the Beagle while exploring the ocean north of Australia he landed in 1839.  His writings on evolution were more acceptable than those of his grandfather Erasmus Darwin who died 7 years before he was born.   Two of his sons became famous – one as an astronomer  and the other as a botanist.

On my three Aussie trips I never did get to the northern territory.   I remember thinking about it while I was in Port Augusta.    Approaching an entrance to the great Stuart Highway I caught sight of a sign “Darwin  2,200 K”.   Something magnetic in the name tempted me for one brief moment.  But in the next the 2 before the comma told me it was just too far.   So I steered Eastwards around the town until I saw a sign saying Broken Hill 430.   It led me on to a flat monotonous road out into the outback.   Three hours later the skyline was broken by a hill.   It loomed  larger and taller as I got nearer to it.   It turned out to be what Australians call the “hog’s back”.  It is actually a giant slag heap that towers over one of the world’s most famous mining towns.  The rich strip about seven Kilometres long and over two hundred metres wide was claimed in 1883 by a German called Charles Rasp.  With six mates he formed a syndicate that mined millions of tons of lead.