"Interesting Things" :- Microtubules, L- Functions and P- adic numbers among them...

 

The variety and depth of subjects that you can find on YouTube these days are remarkable. I came across these two series while generally surfing for ideas about what consciousness might be, and then separately while trying to understand the math behind, counter to all common sense, the result that the sum of all numbers from one to infinity is in some way equal to minus one-twelfth.

While watching the videos on consciousness, one idea came up, that Quantum Processes might be the means for it to happen. Roger Penrose contended it couldn't be purely algebraic/mathematical and that it must involve a Quantum Process, such as the collapse of the wave function. Stuart Hamerhoff, an anesthesiologist, suggested that one place where quantum effects could occur within a cell was within structures called  microtubules.

If so, these tiny tubes within cells might be working below the level of the trillions of neurons and synapses processing and predicting information, adding even more complexity to the nervous system and also explaining how single cells could exhibit some signs of consciousness and memory. 

Another YouTube video about infinite sums told me more about the Langlands program, L-Functions, and alternative number systems like the P-adic numbers. 

It struck me that evolution was only looking for things that worked reliably to represent, process, categorise, and predict, and it may well use forms of mathematics that are not what we are used to in everyday life. 

Conventional ideas about how neurons and synapses work could be undercut by how great long tubes of resonant carbon rings could store and calculate "data" in various forms - as well as set up Quantum states that collapse to create"consciousness". How could complex information get into systems like these? How would the processed data to be acted on, or remembered, be stored, or get out to the wider organism?

So, to trying to explore these ideas further, first of all, what are microtubules?

The strange tubes in cells are Microtubules. You can follow the link above to see what Wikipedia has to say about them, but to summarise, they are responsible for many things. They act as a cytoskeleton and "muscles" to move or shape a cell, and they provide "pathways" to move things and signals around the inside of a cell. They are what move a cilia or flagella that propel cells about, and when a cell divides, they are the scaffolding that assembles and then pulls the chromosomes carefully and exactly apart into two halves. 

In single cells, at least, they seem to be involved in memory and in choice of action... and yet they are just hollow tubes of two different protein subunits, Tubulin A and B (which are 50% the same). They link together and come apart with ease, but can stay coupled indefinitely. They come together to form tubes made of 13 strands, and even in a hot, wet cell, they can exhibit quantum properties inside the tubules. 

Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff have advanced a theory that a quantum collapse that occurs within the microtubule  and that "IS" consciousness. They call the theory ORCH-OR (Orchestrated Objective Reduction)

Here is Roger Penrose talking about it , and here Stuart Hamerhoff gives his ideas.

Other ideas I have been interested in, very much as a layman, is the maths around infinite sums and expansions of the idea of what "number" is. The until now rigidly defined way of dealing with combining and calculating with them. Whole new number systems are out there, even the concept of number is up for debate.

The everyday numbers we use have "prime" numbers only divisible by themselves and one, and there are also equations that are similar and can be manipulated mathematically like numbers. They have been called L functions.

The simplest case of an L-function is the Riemann Zeta function, an infinite sum, and central to an understanding of much of the maths we rely on.

In P-adic numbers the conventional ideas of bigger and next to cease to apply - in some P-Adic systems you can even show a square root of minus one.

So thinking about things like modular arithmetic and watching the PEAKMATH videos on the surprising underlying connections between different areas of maths I found myself noticing how the various operations on L- functions seemed to operate on long (in theory infinite) strings of related information and the thought occurred to me that something like a microtubule could hold information in the resonances of individual tubulins that could be operated on in a similar way to the operations on l-functions, in addition to them being in quantum states of possibility. 

It also seemed possible that the Tubulin could hold "information" in more than our usual binary, on/off or 0/1 way - for example +/0/- that would be very different from our way of working in computers, ven without having to resort to quantum strangeness.

 L- Function videos

This series of Videos from Peakmath is about some of the mathematics of L-functions, I linked to one above to explain what an L-function is and what they represent and can do. The Langlands program that also studies them as the bridge between so many areas of Maths.

It occurred to me that as Life has been constantly evolving, one of the things that can help survival is efficient processing of information. 

Why should it just be the sort of maths and software that our brains have so far understood or discovered? 

For evolution, it only needs to work better and better to flourish, and perhaps it has therefore discovered a few tricks in processing, comparing, and predicting that we haven't learned yet - even our clever AI.

Quantum Conciousness Videos

Then we come to some ideas that were mentioned above that try to explain actual consciousness. The "Hard Problem," as stated by David Chalmers, is more than just information processing at a massive scale it is, they say, not computable. Penrose posits it is actually a collapse of a wave function or a "Quantum event". 

A gentleman called Justin Riddle has been working on a series of videos about this and all of them are worth watching. He talks of the philosophy, mechanics, ideas, and systems and so much more. They are developed from a lecture series he gave at Berkeley.

So that's a brief summary of some ideas, put down imperfectly on this blog as an "aide memoire" to try and make sense of them - I expect to be constantly rewriting and expanding on it - but if you get a chance, if indeed anyone reads this, check out at least the first few videos in the series above.

PS - I forgot P-Adic numbers, that's for another day.

Auntie Ruby!

 Doing some Family history. Looking at Auntie Ruby. (and her Stepfather)

a work in progress

Auntie Ruby, Uncle Vincent, Jayne Garner, Auntie Elsie, David Garner

In my youth, I was always slightly scared of Auntie Ruby. We met rarely at the great "Garner Christmas" party held most years in Cranleigh, the old Garner Family home. Occasionally we had an invite to her and Vincent's home in Wallington. She had what I would call a very "affected " voice and had a VERY "affected" manner. Their house was traditionally English with so many china and chintzy things and it was a rather boring place for a young boy. I do remember that birthday cards would arrive from them, often with a ten-shilling note or postal order.

I recall my mother saying Ruby came from an "Irish showman's family", which seemed surprising, and that Uncle Vincent had not worked since the war because of the eye injury sustained.

So that's what I had to start with - and it took a long time to get any further, and once I got a little more information it began to be more about her father and his "showmans" background.

The complication was that the first searches on the family history databases brought up a possible name as "Ruby Mae Halton De Vere Hunt" and nothing brought up a birthdate plus foolishly the death date I was working with was wrong....

After a lot of searching, I did find an Irish newspaper announcing the date of her wedding to Vincent which was in Dublin in 1948 and from that I found that her father was Francis DeVere Hunt. 

His name and a more correct version of hers featured in the 1911 census. The family was living in Hove at Marine View, 10 Kingsway. The house is either not there now, or considerably enlarged to become a care home but the illustration below shows the sort of property it most likely was.

They had two servants Eliza Grace Hylands (19) an Australian and Leonard Percy Webster (18) from London.

Living there was Francis himself  29, married to Lily Elizabeth Jane (28), and they had a daughter aged three called  Dorothy and what had been frustrating me, and in fact confuses me still, was his stepdaughter Ruby May Hatton aged four who had been born locally in Worthing.

Initially, the census showed Francis was working as a commission agent with his wife "assisting him in his duties". Apparently, a commission agent buys goods from a seller and then finds a buyer for them, usually this is accomplished between different countries. So my assumption was that he is either selling Irish products to England or English products to Ireland. Whatever it was, it allowed him to prosper as he lived well and as we shall see went on to great things in later life. 

In fact, this assumption is now likely incorrect as I later found this notice in The London Gazette.

If he was trading as a Turf Accountant and Commission Agent he was more likely a Bookmaker who worked with professionals in horseracing placing bets on their behalf. 

16 Powis Road is a residential address, but these pictures show a Turf Accountants in London with visiting clients and a telephone room that is busy receiving phoned in bets. 

Amazingly, a chance find in the local Salvation Army Charity shop was a history of Gambling in Britain. I didn't buy it but did skim the relevant chapters and then looked a few things up online.

Betting on sports and especially Horse Racing with cash was not legal till 1960 in Britain, but for those who were "well to do" there was the possibility of betting on credit. After providing proof of wealth you got an account with someone like Francis a "Turf Accountant" you placed your bets, usually by phone and a note was made of the amount, then any winnings were added to the account and at month end the Turf Accountant worked out how much you owed or how much he owed you. This tended to mean some sort of pressure might have been needed to persuade errant debtors to cough up. It should be stressed that in both Britain and Ireland, cash betting, though illegal was incredibly widespread and popular.

The new Free State of Ireland legalised cash betting in 1926 so Francis saw his opportunity to operate there even though there was fierce competition from the former ileagal guys now operating in the open. He prospered and diversified into all sorts of other entertainment:- Pubs, ballrooms, music venues and a roller skating ring amongst them.

A background like his in Brighton helps explain him having more than the average wealth to invest in opportunities in Ireland and  how he came into the "Amusements" business - which is shown in this comment about the new tenant at 7 Eden Quay, Dublin in 1926 right after the new law came in.

Of course, there have been some other major Irish events since 1911. One relevant event for anyone involved in "entertainment" in Dublin was the Anti-Treaty IRA's "War on Entertainment" in 1923.  During the Irish Civil War, with many executions of suspected members of the IRA, their leader, Liam Lynch, made a declaration that all sports and entertainment venues and sporting events were to close to "mourn" for these dead IRA members. 

The threats were backed up by attempted bombings and arson, which, for the first time, targeted innocent civilians. Many cinemas, dance halls, and pubs were caught between closing due to the threats or facing stiff fines from the authorities if they obeyed the IRA and did so. 

Another relevant event had been in the Easter uprising when British troops (or a gunboat on the Liffey River) had demolished several buildings on Eden Quay with artillery fire, and they were recently being rebuilt.

I believe this left many businesses in a bad state financially, so that someone wealthy like Francis de Vere Hunt could cheaply  purchase or rent somewhere on Eden Quays, an area rapidly evolving into an entertainment centre with bars, a cinema, and a ballroom. 

In 1940 he also applied for a license for a roller skating rink in Duke St in Dublin, I wonder if it was as grand as the one I saw in Norwich which is now an antique market. Here we see two happy patrons...

His company was called Irish Amusements Ltd and in various newspaper notices they are shown applying for other music and drinking licenses, initially from the fairly grand Albert House, Merrion Street in 1938, then in the late 40's from Richelieu, a huge house in the very posh Sydney Parade. Interestingly, these places are to be found mentioned in James Joyce's Ulysses along with Mooneys Public House at 7 Eden Quay.

It is from Richelieu that the wedding announcement for Ruby May Hatton de Vere Hunt to Vincent Garner of Waddon is made in 1948. In 1947 a similar announcement had been made for another daughter Shelia Francis to Morton McClintock. I notice that the report for the weddings in The Tatler says Ruby is the daughter only of Mrs De Vere Hunt, while Shelia is said to be the daughter of "Mr and Mrs" 

And now came the help needed to discover the slightly obscure details of her birth. My good friend Dave worked it out using the free online database of births and deaths, and my cousin Jayne gave the same information.

Ruby was born in the last quarter of 1906 to Lily Elizabeth Burchell, who was unwed. Jayne believes the father was someone Lily met at University, meaning she was one of only about 500 female students at the time.  

Two years after the birth, Lily married Hubert Easton Hatton in the December quarter in Steyning and a late entry was made in the birth register to give her father as Hubert Hatton. 

Hubert was born in 1871 in Manchester and at age 30 was a medical student at Edinburgh University, so it seems possible that he was Ruby's father, and Lily had been at Edinburgh University with him.

Sadly, Hubert died soon after in the March quarter of 1909, and then in the December quarter of 1910, Lily married Francis De Vere Hunt again in Steyning. 

Francis continued to support his stepdaughter Ruby, throughout his life and a trust continued a payment to her monthly till her death.

Vincent was badly wounded in WW2, losing an eye, I believe this was in the desert, but I also have a memory of my father saying he "bumped into him" while he was serving in Normandy. I wonder how he came to meet Ruby, perhaps she was in England, maybe nursing or did something take Vincent to Dublin?

Francis died in 1950 and is buried with his wife in Mount Jerome Cemetary he left the sum of £48,000 in his will, the equivalent of 1.3 million pounds today. 

 

Sadly Ruby died in Sutton in June 2000 and her beloved husband Vincent in April 2005 in a Care Home in Brighton.

Things to discover:-

When Francis and his family moved back to Ireland and founded Irish Amusements.

What building was it in? Liberty Hall?

Vincent's war history, their house, and the B29 Liberator crash that demolished the next-door neighbours, the one interesting thing I remember hearing when visiting them....

Francis and Lily's history and connection to the famous de Vere Hunts, how many half-sisters has she got?

Pictures of Albert House, Richelieu, and Marine House.

Was Richelieu demolished to make Richeleau Avenue?

Other than that I think I always got a 

Random memories of my old pal Rob

 Memories of Rob Steel - which is still a work in progress.

Sadly missing most of his last twenty years when I was living in America. 

Abstracted from the memorial website Robsteel.uk

which will tell you more about that, and has many other folks memories.

I first came across Rob at the John Fisher School in Purley, our old alma mater. I say “came across” rather than “met” because I don't recall much of, if any, interaction at school. He was in the same year as me but a “stream” above. While I was in the middle stream, he was in the top stream. He was also a member of “The God Squad” a small group of boys who were much keener on the Catholic faith than I ever was. He was also fairly Conservative in his political outlook, and at one point chairman of the YC’s. He was also an ace chess player.

At school, he would have been exposed to three of the school's best teachers - all Geography masters. The meticulous Norman Rice, the amusing Ben Weston, and the very young Mick Legg.

Mr Mogford and Mr Potter

I  remember him especially with several others reciting many “Moggerisms”, amusing words uttered by our eccentric French Teacher Mr. Mogford - I can still hear Rob imitating his voice in phrases like “Every time I open my mouff some damn fool speaks”...  Of course in that school, we only used surnames so he would have been Steel to me and because Rob’s voice broke rather late he actually had the nickname of Squeal...

Chris Gallagher, Mick Salmon, O'Neil, Mick Giblin and Philip Eaton

After the 6th form I don't remember seeing Rob for some years. I mostly kept in touch with John O’Gorman and on breaks from university we would meet up in the Cricketers in Croydon or the Greyhound in Carshalton. Sometimes in the Greyhound John would turn up with Rob and I  know I wasn't always that happy to see him. He was fairly opinionated and rather dominated the conversation. He had a holiday job in an industrial laundry and had tales of rooms full of steam, folding sheets and towels which sounded awful until his father got him a summer job at the Ministry of Defence (where his dad worked). I believe he was a sort of janitor there, moving desks and maybe missiles about in Whitehall.

It was around this time while at the University of Southampton that I believe Rob had his “epiphany” and left the young conservatives. He told me that he saw a report in the “Daily Telegraph” about an event he had attended and the report was so inaccurate and the editorial so biased against it that he had to rethink everything.

At this time Rob was famed for his unique “Handsweeping” gesture, used when speaking of a politician or other miscreant. It could very easily knock over any beer glass on a table that was within his striking distance and happened more than you might think.

After the pub - Rob, John, maybe a few others and I would head back with him to his parent’s house on Acre Lane. While John and I listened to records upstairs in his bedroom, Rob would prepare on a tray a neat mix of honey and marmite sandwiches and dreadful coffee. I always hid his hairbrush (did he ever use one?) in his bed to irritate him.

Evidently, I got used to him as when I finally moved down from York a year after finishing my degree, the Greyhound and Rob was somewhere I always went on Friday nights. Along with Patrick, John, Paul Nicholas and his “interesting” friend Jon (“what's your favourite car? have you got a sister?”) as well as mad Mick Crowley. Rob had also been away an extra year at teacher training in Nottingham and doing his practice in Long Eaton. He was undoubtedly the central figure of the meeting.

That was about when he introduced me to Youth Hostelling. We traveled up on a National Express coach to Bakewell and Rob got us let off at the start of the road to Youlgrave. A very long dark walk up a lane next to a river saw us get to the hostel just in time to check-in and then get to both a pub and the chippie. The first of very many “just made it” moments on trips with Rob. However it was an excellent trip confirming me in hostelling and giving me the same love of the Peak District as Rob.

Soon after this was a hostelling visit to Ironbridge where his geography, history and love of vernacular architecture were clearly on display in a foggy, autumnal landscape with constant coal fire smells in the air. 

We arrived at the youth hostel on a pitch black night - situated appropriately on a road called Paradise - so we woke up the next morning to find ourselves literally transported back in time to the beginnings of the industrial age.

Rob was now teaching at Wallington Boys and other teachers would appear at the pub - notably Rob Scales and Neville Lane who he had met on a training course. 

Also, as Gay has so well documented, at age 23, Rob took note of something called the Ecology Party and together with elderly Quaker Richard Allen and a few others started the Sutton branch. This was the source of another vast bunch of new friends. Jan Skelton, Milly Price, Nina Dodd, Mark Brett, Nick Greaves and Karin Andrews...with this influx the drinking venue changed - and we met at the Sun pub late into a Friday night with landlord Dennis. “Come on you Greens” - his cry at the eventual closing time, and there were regular meetings in the room upstairs for party business (yawn).

Dennis,? ?,Nick and Gay, Richard Allen

Rob rented a room in a large house on a road just above Sutton Station. I recall the amazing exploding compost bin in the kitchen from which escaped an enormous number of writhing maggots, a very notable all-night party was held there, and it was the inspiration for  Rob's classic quote “ The trouble with women is they use all your bog roll.”

I think it was about this time that he purchased his Morris Traveller, I went with him to somewhere near Redhill where it was for sale and the deed was done. It was a great car, but as Patrick mentions, prone to mushrooms and moss in the woodwork and with a non-working petrol gauge and only occasionally functioning starter motor. He had something against putting petrol in the tank so it was always running out of juice. He carried a small reserve in a can, so after stalling it was topped up and then he had to hand-crank it to start it again, usually and embarrassingly this happened in the middle of a junction - and he would go to absoloutly any length to avoid paying for parking.

Rob sailed quite close to the limit on drink and driving, one trip to visit Dave Fryer near Redhill was particularly bad. Both of us had more than a few pints and he put the pedal to the metal to get back to Dave's house, executing a fine emergency stop to screech into the driveway - it could have been a scene from one of Rob’s favourite films (and mine) “Vanishing Point”.

After a few years, the dry rot in the woodwork got a little too much even for Rob and he purchased a kit of all the bits of wood needed to rebuild it. With incredible patience and diligence, he eventually managed to complete one side and a rear door, but it was never to take to the road again..

It was a permanent fixture on his parent’s driveway for some years much to his father’s delight.

I forget when it was exactly but I got a job at Websters bookshop in Croydon. This had many benefits. Some incredible work mates, a place to leave bikes on evening trips to London by train and an ever open coffee shop at all times of night …There were many nights spent with Rob and others in the “staff room” after a London gig, or a bevvy in one of Croydon's pubs, drinking coffee and talking, listening to music way into the early morning…

The recommendation of one of our more trendy Saturday boys, David (who cut two trousers in half lengthways and stitched them back up so as to have different patterned trouser legs) - a fashion trend I have never seen repeated, was to go to see a group called Doll by Doll playing in East London. We arrived in a very sweaty pub and settled at the back next to some scaffolding. Both of us realised quite soon this was no ordinary gig and was a life-changing experience, hanging on to the scaffolding and watching them perform. 

Wherever Rob lived after that he had their iconic image of Antonin Artaud and the word “Remember” on his wall and whenever we could, we saw them live - later we made every effort to go and see just Jackie Leven, the singer, songwriter when he came back from illness and began a solo career.

Other groups we followed all over London were Nine below Zero, The Marauders (and their number one fan “The Merchant Sailor” who never spilled a drop of his beer, dancing, while more than three sheets to the wind), Gerraint Watkins and the Balham Alligators, Dr Feelgood, Brett Marvin and the Thunderbolts, Queen Ida, Rockin Doopsie…. We went to the Croydon folk club and saw Mike Moran, Rob's beloved Dick Gaughn and on almost every visit a guest song from “The Incredible Singing Robin”. (the only person I know with a worse singing voice than me)

Soon after that he started looking for his own house and eventually settled on one in Tharp Road in Wallington. In need of a tenant to help with the mortgage, it was me who fitted the bill. The house did not completely suit Rob's taste or style and he immediately had plans to, not exactly modernise, but Rob’ise it. The wall between the kitchen and the downstairs toilet was demolished long before the new one was installed upstairs, so the toilet sat right next to the oven when I moved in. Soon, with his football friend Andy’s help he had a fine new bathroom in gloomy green, his favourite colour, upstairs and a cosy fireplace and monumental mantelpiece above it in the front room. 

I know one abiding memory for him living there was my alarm clock- set to go off at 6:00 am every day. I would always forget to turn it off on the occasions I was not going to be present overnight and Rob would be roused, untimely, from his sleep by its steadily increasing noisy buzz. It never stopped until turned off...so he had to trudge round from his room to mine and unplug and fling it across the room.

The very same dreaded alarm clock in America

He  kept it for me after I moved out and kindly presented  it back to me in America at my wedding to Lucy… I had already wrapped it to  give back to him on my return from America twenty years later - just before I heard the  news of his death.

A very sad moment in Rob’s life was the sudden death of his mother just before Christmas in 19?? I remember sitting with him and his father and Patrick on boxing day struggling to find words to say.

Rob and a very young me, preparing for the Ireland trip. Rob was very amused at the thousands of Websters Bookshop carrier bags I packed everything in.

So many things happened around this time it's hard to keep them in sequence, but there was a fantastic cycle tour of Ireland made during a petrol strike on the unusually quiet Irish roads. Rob persuaded Neville and I to cycle with him to Reading and pick up the boat train there at about nine pm. When he saw us the train guard said - “you'll be lucky” and opened the door to a van crammed with forty or fifty bikes. In fact it was lucky as we threw ours on top of the others and thus at the ferry port were first to get our bikes out. 

Rob had a full itinerary planned, the lack of real ale on route only troubling him as Neville and I coped well with Guinness or Murphys. 

There were the usual Rob “short cuts”, one of which saw us crossing a salt marsh at high tide with brackish water a foot deep, only to find quite a sizeable river blocking our way that had to be crossed on a lot of stepping stones - not the easiest thing to do with a loaded touring bike. Just when we thought it could get no worse we entered and then got lost in a very large rhododendron forest. This trip was what caused me to often

call him “Rob route march Steel.”

Other classic memories of that trip are arriving in an Irish town at lunchtime, walking up the length of the street with Rob rejecting each pub or cafe as we came to it for some reason. When we ran out of village and turned round with Rob now prepared to settle for a less than perfect meal, they had all closed (early closing day - remember that?)

In Cork we stayed at Rick O’Sheas pub, a very spartan place with literally curtains on the bed as blankets.

Rob also cycled a Lands End to John O’Groats run with James Deane and Derek Coleman.

Rob, Neville and I also tried to walk The Pennine way. Starting in Edale we trudged from Youth Hostel to Youth Hostel.  Rob was scathing about my very old trainers that I was wearing and as always he had top of the range rather elaborate boots and walking trousers and cagoule . However by day four at Malham he was absolutely crippled with a “wet corn” and we had to abandon our attempt, albeit in a lovely spot. 

Palmerston Road was Robs choice of abode after the rather cramped Tharp Rd, again I was a tenant though now commuting up to London to work at Friends Book Centre and soon to spend a lot of time in Tunbridge Wells with my young lady friend Wendy. It was a wonderful cosy semi detached cottage with a small garden in a cul de sac and luckily noise tolerant neighbours.

Many years passed - I soon moved out of Palmerston Road and spent much time in Tunbridge Wells, but many Fridays I came back to whatever pub was in favour, The Sun to start with but after a while, it was The Railway, The Racehorse  (especialy at closing time and to catch the last songs of Bongo Bill and his rhythm machine), The Windsor Castle, and lastly the pub, many years later Rob helped save from closure,  The Hope.

When Rob flew over for his only visit to America to be best man at my wedding you could still wait by the gate and look through a window as the passengers left the plane and headed down to immigration. Rob had bought our wedding gift which was a heavy Le Creuset Dutch oven, as hand luggage together with Gay’s gift a set of cutlery- both would now be banned in our less innocent age.

I wish I could remember the speech he gave at both our pre-nuptial or the wedding itself as they were both very clever. He did as aforementioned, present me with my old and very irritating alarm clock.

Rob borrowed a bike to see a little of Philadelphia and was not I think, vastly impressed by what he saw, though “our” bit of West Philly was an anarchist paradise. He stopped off in New York to visit Heather on his way home and I know went to the top of one of the two towers - he was subsequently a believer in many conspiracy theories about 9/11 from this visit.

He got on very well with Lucy’s brothers, Guy and Barnaby, and subsequently gave them both guided pub tours of London, taking in curries on Brick Lane and many architectural delights of British pub architecture.

Rob was also best man to Paul Nicholas on his wedding to Megan, my main memory of that is of Rob and I watching as Paul tried very ineffectually to iron his shirt on a contour seated chair, wish I could remember more (or any) of that best man speech as well.

Wardlow Mires: The Stags Head here was for a time Rob’s favourite pub, very small and run by two hippies, Geoff and Pat. Geoff was a potter and made the very large plates that the very large meals got served on, if you could keep the very large lurcher dogs they owned from eating it. 

Rob would stay in nearby Tidswell and make the trek to this pub in the middle of nowhere several times a year. Patrick relates one notable night when he headed back sober and driving to the “gaff”, while Rob and I stayed late and slept in the barn across the road with “Animal” and his motorcycling friends. What a noisy, uncomfortable and sleepless night that was. It was also here that I cycled down to the pub between Christmas and New Year with Rob and came off my bike, breaking my elbow. Rob was not very sympathetic at the time as I was on my folding small-wheeled Bickerton, but some potholers who were about to leave the pub drove me to Chesterton Hospital. When it turned out I needed an operation Rob was much more sympathetic. 

Also at that that time he had met Caroline, a doctor from Lancashire, through “Natural Friends” and she joined us on several walking trips with her rugged 4 wheel drive Lada and her adventurous dog. Also remembering one very wet trip to Yorkshire with Rob. Steve Gove who I worked with at Websters and a friend of Rob’s from Red Rope headed off to Yorkshire in a very nice old VW bus.

It wasn't the speediest of vehicles till Rob took over driving and we fairly whizzed down country lines till we finally arrived somewhere Rob thought suitable for wild camping. Steve and I were in an old tent I bought in a jumble sale for three pounds and Rob in his super new lightweight three season tent. ?? stayed in the VW . At about 3:00 am Rob’s tent blew down and he moved into the VW which then started leaking through the roof canopy - amazingly my cheapie tent survived OK.

Next morning we walked along in steadily increasing rain. Rob took to walking on top of a drystone wall to get us through some floods till we got to the village of Clapham where we had booked accommodation in the pub that night. We arrived absolutely soaked through and, luckily it turned out, ordered a meal before heading up to our rooms and drying off. When we got back down we found the pub bursting at the seams - not just the bars but the hall and every bit of space - the train line had flooded and a full train of passengers had subsequently decamped from it and arrived in the pub for shelter. 

We got to eat before retiring to our room and out of the maelstrom.

When I was clearing up Rob’s house after his death, I found lots of diaries and letters and photos from his father. It was odd that though Rob would always see his father a few times a week or send him a postcard on his trips away that it was on the odd occasion that I met him that he found out most about what Rob was up to. I guess my mother might say the same sort of thing.

He served in the war on the aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious (that launched the famous Taranto raid) but was badly injured in an accident, (not in action), when his arm was broken so badly it had to be removed below his elbow. He then had a desk job in London. Rob had both his mother's and father’s diaries from the war years and it was so poignant to see how he was recording the times they went out together in his, and her recording the same in hers.

There were lots of photos, Anne, soon getting a car, with lots of snaps of the family at the seaside and on trips to Anne's native Scotland. (Rob’s dad subsequently learned to Drive at 70 with just one arm!) and every year a holiday to Selbourne. 

Rob's father was a true Daily Telegraph reader and there was much political banter between him and his “Green Son”. Interestingly his father's best friend was Stan who was an actual communist party member - but they regularly drank together and put the world to rights.

Rob's parents are buried together in Bandon Hill Cemetery in Wallington in grave I 71, I found Rob kept a small trowel there to keep the sedum groundcover neat and in order.

Robs career after teaching included leading tourist trips around British pubs especially in London. I helped him out by recommending his tour to Rick Steves. Rob himself says:“I think it was your goodself who first alerted me to this guy’s popular guide books. Well, believe it or not he rang me up tonight. He is in London. We have arranged to meet up next Thursday (14th) and have a two-hour shimmy around a few pubs and I think he is going to do a write up on my walks in his next edition! “

He then began to write many pub walk guides for CAMRA which went into several editions and used the expertise he gained from writing them, the photography the mapping and most important skills in editing and layout to write his history and guide to The River Wandle, with his friend Derek writing about the wildlife along it.