How Mary and I Met

February 14, 2018March 2, 2018davidohodgson 2 Comments

Mary & David in Scarborough, 1990

The photo above, which is one of the earliest of my wife Mary and me together, was actually taken in Scarborough, England, in 1990, during the occasion of our first joint visit to my family there. At that time, we weren’t yet married, or even engaged, but that all was to change within a year following the visit.

Given that Valentine’s Day occurs this week, it seemed like an appropriate time to post an article about how we came to meet. Since posting previous articles about how I emigrated from Britain to California in 1987, there seems to have been some interest in how Mary and I got together. One event definitely did not follow immediately from the other, and I certainly hadn’t come to California with any expectation of “finding love”.

Resources for Dating

In a previous post, I described how, having moved from Britain to California to live and work, my new answering machine message began to attract completely unexpected attention from anonymous women, who apparently liked to call and hear my “cute accent”. I’d never really considered my accent to be of much interest to anyone, although my original Yorkshire cadences had changed somewhat as a result of having lived for a few years in Southern England.

Those expressions of possible romantic potential eventually led me to think that it might be worthwhile to try dating again, which was something I’d given up on several years previously. However, that was easier said than done in a new country, because I had been sponsored to come to California by my employer, and I knew absolutely nobody in the state except the people I worked with.

Although there were some young women working for my employer, most of them seemed to have the (probably wise) attitude that they didn’t want to date men with whom they worked. For their dates, they seemed to rely on their own family contacts, or friends with whom they’d grown up at school, and of course none of those resources were available to me.

I began to look at various “dating agencies”, but in general these seemed overpriced and of questionable value. Some seemed to be outright “rip-offs” that tried to employ high-pressure sales tactics to get what they seemed to regard as “losers” to part with their money! (I’m pleased to say that such tactics didn’t work on me.)

There was, however, one relatively cheap service that, in my case at least, produced a spectacular result, albeit via a rather roundabout and initially unpromising route.

Yellowphone

There was no internet dating in those days, of course, so I eventually found and joined a San Francisco-based telephone dating service called Yellowphone (now long defunct). When using this service, I called in to a central number, entered my personal ID, and then listened to voice messages from prospective partners who were “compatible” with me. (Mary said that her experience of using the service was different, but that was what I did.)

You couldn’t see a picture of the person speaking (which might actually have been a good thing, since it prevented people from making snap judgments based on looks), so all you had to go on was their voice and their descriptions of themselves.

I did contact several of the women whose messages I listened to, and, although I had some pleasant dates, I felt that I just didn’t have enough in common with any of them to make a successful relationship. I’ve sometimes wondered whether I may have been giving too much emphasis to that factor, because my experience of the opposite sex at that time was very limited (and spectacularly unsuccessful). On the other hand, maybe my emphasis was correct, because when I did finally meet someone who seemed to have some views and interests in common with mine, it worked out well.

Not a Match

One morning in early 1989, when I would normally have been at work, I was instead lying in bed in my apartment with some kind of flu. The phone rang. It was the lady who owned Yellowphone, calling to tell me that she had a client who would like to meet me, but was not really a match for me, so she wanted to get my permission before giving out my details.

The problem, apparently, was that Mary was a few years older than me, which wasn’t considered a match for my preferences. Nonetheless, her description otherwise sounded interesting, so I agreed that we should meet.

It turned out that Mary had been told the same thing; that I was not a match for her! She had been a member of the Yellowphone service for a while, without any particular success. Finally, the owner asked her if there were any particular types of men she’d like to meet. She mentioned that perhaps a British man would be interesting, because she’d visited England a few times and liked their sense of humor. The owner responded that I was a member of the service, and offered to contact me to see whether I would permit my details to be given out.

A Great First Date

Mary and I did exchange details, and we got together for a first date. It all seemed to go very well; we went for afternoon tea at the King George Hotel, then to the Champagne Bar at Neiman-Marcus [Edit 3/1/18: Mary tells me that the Champagne Bar was at Nordstrom rather than Neiman-Marcus; I don’t remember!], and finally ended up going to see a particularly appropriate movie (“A Fish Called Wanda”).

I mentioned in a previous post that I had interviewed one of the stars of that movie—Michael Palin—while at university, and of course I told Mary about that at the time.

The Scene of part of our First Date, much later in 2014

I think that, by the end of our date, we had both decided that we’d like to see each other again, although I think we both had some reservations. One very good sign was that, during our date, conversation didn’t seem to lapse, as it had often done for me on other dates. The two of us seemed to have many experiences and pastimes that were of interest to the other.

The photo below of me was taken in a famous (albeit foggy) location by Mary, during one of our early dates.

David at the Golden Gate Bridge – with hideous Mullet!

We dated for over a year before deciding to get engaged, and we were married in early 1991.

We chose a date in early January for our wedding, which I realized in retrospect was a poor choice, because it was so soon after the holiday, and the weather in more northerly climates was too severe for some of our family members to be able to attend.

Making It Last

So that was the start of what has to date been a twenty-seven year marriage.

Of course, it hasn’t all been “smooth sailing”, and we’ve had our share of problems. Nonetheless, through it all, not only have we both continued to love each other, but we are also friends, and I think that those factors have helped to preserve our relationship during difficult times.

Lessons to be Learned?

Incidentally, I’m not offering this article in any way as “Dave’s Tips for a Lasting Relationship”! My experiences of relationships are quite limited, and my personal history has been relatively unusual, so I doubt that my concerns and decisions would be applicable to the personal situations of others.

However, one thing that has become obvious to me, in retrospect, is the importance of not being too restrictive in advance about who may or may not be a “match”. In our case, not only was the owner of the Yellowphone service wrong about our suitability, but I myself would have had serious reservations, earlier on.

I explained in a previous post that, if someone had accurately predicted the course of my life when I was a teenager, I would have laughed at them and dismissed their claims.

Similarly, if someone had told that young undergraduate engineer entering Imperial College in 1981 that, within 10 years, he’d be marrying an “air hostess” (as they were then called) who lived in San Francisco, he’d have laughed at that too! After all, engineers just didn’t do that, and what would we have in common anyway? (Mary would probably have felt the same way about the idea of marrying an engineer!)

Happy Valentine’s Day

I hope you have an enjoyable Valentine’s Day this year, wherever you are, and whomever you’re sharing it with!

Another Balloon Landing in the Park

February 11, 2018February 11, 2018davidohodgson Leave a comment

Hot-Air Balloon Force Landed in Village Green Park

The photo above shows the view from our bedroom window at about 9am yesterday morning. Once again, a hot air balloon had just made a forced landing in Village Green Park. When it first came down, the balloon was actually much closer to the trees in the foreground. By the time that I’d fetched my camera, its occupants had maneuvered it to the car park near the church.

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, then you’ll know that this isn’t the first time this has happened; I reported a similar incident last year. Fortunately, this time they managed to land the balloon without hitting anything, and began deflating it as soon as it had been moved to a recoverable position, as shown below.

Deflating the Balloon

There was actually a second balloon, which didn’t land, but hovered for a while behind the houses, as shown below.

The Second Balloon between the Houses

The balloon operators are required to report these unplanned landings to the FAA, so I trust that they will be doing so again in this case! Given the number of people who were walking in the park at the time, there were certainly many witnesses to the landing.

I assume that the reason they like to make these landings on Village Green is because there’s a car park next to it, which makes it easy to bring the recovery vehicle up to the balloon. After all, there’s an abandoned Naval Air Station just a few hundred yards away, which would make a much clearer landing ground, but I suspect that access to that is more difficult!

Hot-air balloon rides are a popular attraction in Wine Country, so I’m certainly not against them. However, I am becoming concerned about the number of apparently unplanned landings, such as this one, and the fact that they choose to land so close to buildings (which seems obviously unsafe).

The Invention of Wheeled Luggage

February 4, 2018February 9, 2018davidohodgson 2 Comments

Luggage As It Was: Pencil Drawing, 1977

The pencil drawing above is another example of the weekly homework assignments that I completed when studying for my Advanced-Level Art qualification during the 1970s (as described in a previous post).

It’s obvious that the topic of this particular assignment was “luggage”, and the image would be extremely mundane, but notice something that none of the luggage items in the picture possess: wheels!

In retrospect, it seems incredible that the idea of adding wheels to suitcases took so long to develop. The first patent for the idea wasn’t granted until 1970. These days, most people wouldn’t consider buying a suitcase that did not have wheels and a handle, but, only 40 years ago, the lack of those features went completely unnoticed.

Learning the Hard Way

My family were anything but “seasoned travelers”, so, growing up, I had very little experience of packing and of taking luggage with me on journeys.

My parents also felt that buying new suitcases was an unnecessary extravagance, so they made do with a few decomposing leather examples, most of which probably dated from before World War II. These were typical cases of the time; strong, but with soft sides, one handle on top, and definitely no wheels or even sliders.

On the few occasions when we did pack suitcases to travel somewhere, we typically traveled by car, so loading the packed cases into the car, and unloading them at our destination, didn’t present any serious problems.

Coventry Railway Station 1979; scene of my luggage struggles

When I began attending Warwick University in 1978, therefore, it was effectively my first experience of having to transport myself and any significant amount of belongings from one location to another without benefit of a car. Naturally, we didn’t buy a new suitcase, so I inherited one of my parents’ ancient leather ones.

A few weeks after the start of the Autumn term, I decided that it would be nice to spend the weekend at home, which was only a few hours away by train. I also thought it would be a great idea to bring home with me a few of the new books that I’d purchased in Coventry. So, one Friday morning, I loaded up my suitcase and set off from my room in Coventry towards the railway station.

Needless to say, it was a disaster, because I couldn’t carry the heavy suitcase for more than a few hundred yards without having to stop and rest. Even getting from the University to the bus stop, to catch a bus to the railway station, became a Herculean task. I was saved only when a passing motorist took pity on me and offered me a ride in his car to the station.

Here was a problem that I’d never previously considered, and it became obvious that, as I acquired more possessions, the problem was only going to get worse.

Let’s Add some Wheels

As a result of my journeys, I soon noticed that more seasoned travelers had solved the problem of transporting suitcases by investing in sets of folding, add-on wheels, to which bags could be attached using bungee cords.

I quickly purchased such a set myself, which made a huge difference to the portability of my suitcases. In fact, you can still buy “luggage carts” like these, but the availability of wheeled suitcases means that they are less popular than they once were. I continued to use those wheels, and those suitcases, for many more years. I didn’t buy a suitcase with wheels until after I’d emigrated to California.

The final significant advancement in wheeled luggage, which everyone who flies now takes for granted, was the “Rollaboard”, which wasn’t invented until 1987, by a Northwest Airlines Boeing 747 pilot.

Making the Drawing More Interesting

Returning to the details of my drawing above, even at that time, I considered the subject of luggage to be extremely dull. Therefore, although the bags and cases in the drawing are themselves based on real objects, and were drawn from life, most other items in the picture came strictly from my imagination.

For example, the young woman standing behind the suitcases certainly wasn’t anyone known to me, although the clothes she’s wearing are quite typical of those worn in those days by the girls at the Scarborough Sixth Form College.

The man walking by in the background is also pure invention. I’m not sure whether my art teacher realized that I had actually invented much of the drawing, but I didn’t really care!

Derwent Valley Light Railway: the Blackberry Line

January 28, 2018February 2, 2018davidohodgson 3 Comments

York Layerthorpe Station, 1979

My photo above shows York Railway Station, as it appeared in 1979. In case you’re now feeling that there must be some mistake, I should clarify that it’s York (Layerthorpe) Station, the terminus of the Derwent Valley Light Railway (DVLR), which was still operational for freight at that time.

The DVLR acquired the nickname “The Blackberry Line” long ago, because of the trainloads of blackberries that it once carried, but the most remarkable aspect of the line was its survival as a working independent railway, from its construction in 1912 to final closure in 1981. Bear in mind that almost all other railways in Britain were grouped into the “Big Four” in 1923, then nationalized in 1948, eventually all becoming part of British Railways.

A Successful Light Railway

In 1967, S J Reading, who had been the line’s General Manager from 1926 to 1963, wrote a book describing the history to that point. Full details can be found in that book, or the 1978 revised edition.

By the end of the nineteenth century, the railway system in Britain was largely complete. There were simply no further lines to be built that would be economically viable under existing laws. To try to stimulate further growth, the government set about specifying laws that would allow so-called Light Railways to be built more cheaply.

Among many other provisions, the Light Railways Act 1896 empowered local authorities to build new lines, and the DVLR was the only instance where local authorities took advantage of those powers and actually built a line. The DVLR was promoted and developed by the Escrick and Riccall Rural District Councils.

Soldiering On

Passenger services on the DVLR were never particularly successful, and, following the end of the First World War, the growth of bus services, spurred on by the cheap availability of military-surplus trucks and buses, led to the end of all passenger service in 1926.

Nonetheless, freight services continued robustly for many decades more, peaking during and after the Second World War, when the Ministry of Food established warehouses near the line. It wasn’t until 1981 that the DVLR’s last major customer, Yorkshire Grain Driers, switched to road transport, which spelled the end of rail operations.

The Final Steam Specials

When the new National Railway Museum opened in York in 1975, the DVLR saw an opportunity to work with the NRM to offer steam train rides along its remaining tracks. This seemed like a great idea at the time, but it was soon to be overtaken by events.

Since the end of steam locomotion on BR in 1968, the nationalized railway had refused to allow operation of any steam locomotives on its tracks, so the only way to travel on a steam train was to visit one of the preserved lines that were springing up around the country. However, BR’s ban was reversed in 1971, and specials hauled by preserved steam locomotives gradually began to make a comeback.

That was bad news for the DVLR, whose small trains ambling along a few miles of rural track couldn’t compete (in the view of the public) with expresses roaring along main lines. The DVLR’s steam specials ended after the summer of 1979.

Sadly, I never took the opportunity to travel on one of those steam specials. I think we just it took it for granted that the DVLR would always be around, until suddenly it wasn’t any more.

The Bus Route to Knowledge

After returning to live in Scarborough, and beginning my first full-time job at Swifts of Scarborough, in 1979, I got into the habit of traveling to York by train almost every Saturday. There was more happening in York than in Scarborough, and York was also the closest place that had a real university!

The University of York is actually in an attractive suburb called Heslington, and during my visits I would often take a York-West-Yorkshire Joint Services bus from the City Centre out to the bookstore there. In those pre-internet days, university bookstores were my only real antidote to the intellectual wasteland of Scarborough, so I was a frequent visitor.

It so happened that the bus route to the University partially paralleled the DVLR’s rail route, so the bus recrossed the railway several times. I remember the overgrown rails at those crossings, as the double-deck bus swayed over them, but again I never gave it much thought, because I just assumed that the DVLR would always be around.

A York-West-Yorkshire Bristol VR (right)

Another blogger wrote a post describing how he too saw the DVLR’s tracks from his bus, on the way to York University.

The Preserved Remnant

The DVLR terminus at York (Layerthorpe) was demolished during the 1990s, and there is now no trace of the railway there. Fortunately, however, not all trace of the DVLR has disappeared. A small portion of the route has been rerailed as a preserved line.

Part of the former rail route passed through what is now the Murton Park site of the Yorkshire Museum of Farming. When the Great Yorkshire Railway Preservation Society had to move from its former home in Starbeck in 1990, the group negotiated a transfer of its collection to Murton Park. They relaid about ¾ mile of track, and even moved the former Wheldrake Station building to the site and rebuilt it there.

Where sheep may safely graze: the Preserved DVLR at Murton Park, 2008

I paid a brief visit to the preserved DVLR when traveling between York and Scarborough in 2008. It was heartening to see that not only was something left of the Blackberry Line, but also that the remnant seems to have a secure future.

Delusions of Potential?

January 22, 2018January 22, 2018davidohodgson Leave a comment

Wadham College, Oxford, during my Interview in 1980

The photo above shows Wadham College, Oxford University, while I was staying there for an interview during 1980.

During the period 1977-81, I visited and was interviewed by quite a few universities in England, but Oxford has the unique distinction for me of being the only university that interviewed me without my having ever applied to them.

Deluding Myself?

At that period in my life, I was painfully aware that I could reasonably be accused of being a “habitual university interview attendee”. I realized that I was spending much of my free time traveling to and attending interviews at universities, with no assurance that any of that effort would lead to anything. Was I simply deluding myself, tricking myself into thinking that I had the potential to graduate from one of these institutions? Should I not instead be spending my time in looking for a better full-time job than the one I was trying to escape from?

I was nagged by doubts about what I was doing, and whether I was really just being a conceited fraud.

As I related in a previous post, having dropped out of the University of Warwick after one year, I was working full-time as an Accounts/Sales Clerk at Swifts of Scarborough. I applied for many jobs, and repeatedly received the same advice; to go back to university and obtain a degree.

By the Spring of 1980, I had essentially decided to pursue the university application route, despite knowing that, if I did so, there would be no chance of my starting a new degree course any earlier than the Autumn of 1981. That meant that I would not be able to graduate any earlier than 1984 or 1985, depending on the details of the course.

Taking a Leap of Faith

My decision seemed a particularly difficult one, because there was no guarantee that any university would consider the application of a student who’d already dropped out of another institution. Even if some university did offer me a place, how would I finance my studies? There was no guarantee that the North Yorkshire Education Authority would award me a grant (for the first year, at least), and my father had died in 1979, leaving my mother to support the household.

Having decided to study Electronic Engineering, I hoped that I might be able to obtain some kind of industrial sponsorship, whereby an employer would provide me with an apprenticeship and some kind of paid employment to complement my studies. The reality, however, was that such sponsorships were even harder to obtain than university places. In those pre-internet days, even finding sponsorships that might be available was a difficult task, requiring research at reference libraries.

I also looked at the possibility of obtaining some type of scholarship to help my finances, but that also seemed to be outside the realm of possibility. Such scholarships were intended for exceptional students who were applying from school, not for someone who had already had “one chance”.

Even if I was able to overcome those obstacles, there was still a significant risk. Unlike the case in some other countries, the award of an undergraduate university place in Britain is no guarantee that you’ll get a degree at the end of it all. What if, after all that, I went back to university but had to drop out again without a degree? What a disaster that would be, and what an immense waste of time.

The Oxford University Mystery

The Carfax Tower, Oxford, 1980

The City of Oxford is, of course, now internationally famous because of the Inspector Morse mysteries, written by Colin Dexter (who died in 2017). In those days, Oxford was already famous for its renowned university, but Oxford was not one the universities to which I applied, so how did I come to be interviewed there?

After I dropped out from Warwick, word eventually got back to the Scarborough Sixth Form College, where I’d taken my university entrance exams, about what had happened to me. By that time, the Sixth Form College had a new headmaster, who seemed keen to try to rectify the problems left by his predecessor. The new headmaster was a graduate of Wadham College, so he set up an interview there for me, with the idea of encouraging my efforts to return to academia.

Unfortunately, though, at that time Oxford did not have a particularly good reputation in engineering, so, weighing up the pros and cons against other institutions, in the end Oxford simply didn’t make the list of universities to which I applied!

Potential or Politics?

On the whole, I found that universities responded to my application more positively than I’d anticipated.

Chapel of Kings College, Cambridge, 1980

The University of Manchester Institute of Science & Technology (UMIST) made me an offer quite quickly after interviewing me, as did a couple of other prestigious institutions. Oddly, Cambridge University initially seemed interested, but then declined. I’ve never understood that, because I sat both the Cambridge entrance exam, and the supposedly-tougher Imperial College Scholarship exam, and obtained one of the top prizes in the Imperial College exam!

Nonetheless, I came out of the process with several offers from prestigious institutions.

An Abundance of Rewards

As I mentioned above, given my concerns about how I would support myself financially during my years of study, I had pursued several possibilities to supplement my income. In the end, amazingly, all those efforts paid off!

I had struggled to obtain an industrial sponsorship, and succeeded in obtaining a Student Apprenticeship with Ferranti plc, in Manchester. Ferranti would provide me with employment during the summer breaks, and also gave me a small annual bursary to help with my living costs.
I had sat several optional examinations in an attempt to win a scholarship, and I obtained a Royal Scholarship from Imperial College, London. The award was only for my first year there, but that was the year for which I’d been concerned about obtaining a grant.
In the end, the Local Education Authority was convinced of my bona fides, so they did award me a full grant for the term of my studies.

My Employer’s Misplaced Concerns

By May of 1981, everything seemed to have fallen into place. I had an apprenticeship set to start at Ferranti, and an undergraduate place at Imperial College waiting for me that October, so it was time for me to give notice to my employer, Swifts of Scarborough.

As we discussed the termination of my employment, Swifts’ Managing Director claimed to be quite concerned for my financial future. Had I considered, he asked me, that I’d be giving up a full-time income and would be forced to live on a student grant, and in London too!

Yes, of course I had considered that, I explained. I went on to explain to him that, with my full grant, my Ferranti bursary, and my Royal Scholarship, my “take home pay” would actually be higher than it had been working for him! That was the last I heard from him on the matter of my future…

You Have to Stay in it to Win it

The decision to commit to re-entering university was, at that time, the hardest and riskiest that I had had to make in my lifetime. Nonetheless, I’m really glad that I rejected the warnings of the naysayers and stuck to my own “gut instinct” that it was the right way to go.

There have been other occasions since then when I’ve had to make similar decisions, without any assurance that I’m going to be able to meet the challenge that I’m setting myself. As I see it, there is no choice but to accept the challenge and face the risks. After all, if you back down, you are absolutely guaranteeing that you will never succeed; you have to “stay in it to win it”.

Demise of the Typewriter

January 15, 2018January 21, 2018davidohodgson 1 Comment

My Pencil Drawing of our Typewriter, 1977

I produced the pencil drawing above in March 1977, while studying for my Advanced-Level Art qualification at Scarborough Sixth Form College. Back when I produced it, I could never have imagined that, some 40 years later, I’d be using exactly that image to illustrate an article about the demise of the typewriter!

As weekly homework, our teacher (Miss Mingay) required us to draw some object or scene in pencil, in a sketchbook. I considered the task very boring and tiresome at the time, but, fortunately, my mother hung on to the sketchbook, so some interesting drawings have survived (albeit now very smudged).

On that particular occasion, my chosen subject was a typewriter, which had originally been used mostly by my mother. (This was our second typewriter, and I think that it was an Olivetti). By that time, however, I was getting ready to use it myself, to type out the content of my A-level Art study in Architecture.

(The following year, Miss Mingay retired, and the onerous weekly homework requirement disappeared with her! That confirmed my suspicion that it was not a requirement of the A-level course.)

My Mother’s Career Plans

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, my father was a teacher, but suffered his first stroke when I was about two years old. Given that he was the family’s sole breadwinner, my parents began to fear for their future financial security, and considered alternative plans for generating sufficient income.

One idea, which my father seemed to favor, was to buy a Guest House or Hotel, then generate income by letting out rooms. Given Scarborough’s status as a seaside resort, this was a reasonable idea, although the sheer number of such businesses in the town meant that it was highly competitive.

The other idea was for my mother to learn typing and shorthand, with a view to becoming a secretary. In those days, that was still one of the few career paths open to women without specialized qualifications.

My mother did start taking secretarial classes at Scarborough Technical College, and that was what initially prompted their purchase of a typewriter. She also decided that, to be effective in her new career, she would need to learn to drive, which she also achieved. My father’s concession on that count was that he sold his large Humber Super Snipe, and bought a smaller Austin 1100 (shown below, with me in the back seat), which my mother was more comfortable driving.

Our Austin 1100, c.1968

I was particularly excited about that car, because it was the first time that my father had bought a brand new car rather than a used model.

Change of Plan

Eventually, though, the Guest House plan won out, and we all moved to a suitable building on West Street in 1970. My mother seems to have abandoned her secretarial aspirations at that point, but she did continue her studies with some Open University courses, and the typewriter was useful for those.

From Typewriter to Computer

While an undergraduate student at Imperial College in the early 1980s, I decided to invest in an electric typewriter, since I was noticing that typewritten papers were better received by our tutors than handwritten ones.

That typewriter saw much use for a few years, but it was the last one that I ever bought. I brought it with me to California in 1987, but never used it again. Why bother, when a computer+printer was so much easier, more productive, and more powerful?

We Don’t Get Much Call for Those Now

I was by no means the only person who realized that the typewriter had been superseded by computer technology. In fact, should you wish to buy a typewriter now, you’ll have to find a used example, because the last new machines were manufactured in 2011, in India.

Just as digital camera technology swept away film cameras, so computers and printers have swept away typewriters. I sometimes find it sobering to reflect on how different the world is now from that of only 30-40 years ago.

Our Twenty-Seventh Wedding Anniversary

January 9, 2018January 9, 2018davidohodgson Leave a comment

Mary and Me in Yosemite, January 2001

On January 9th Mary and I celebrate our Twenty-Seventh Wedding Anniversary. The photo above shows the two of us celebrating our tenth anniversary, in Yosemite, which was also where we spent our honeymoon.

Meeting Mary was undoubtedly one of the best things that ever happened to me! I love you, Mary, and I look forward to many more happy years together!

The Inheritance of Dysfunctional Thinking

January 5, 2018January 5, 2018davidohodgson Leave a comment

A Bracing Walk on the Cliffs, Filey, 1963

The photo above was probably taken some time in 1963. It shows (from left to right) my mother’s parents, my mother, my younger brother (in the pram) and me, all apparently out for a “bracing” walk on the sea cliffs. A book that I’ve recently been reading caused me to think about how I “inherited” unhelpful ways of thinking and reacting from my parents, without even realizing it.

Based on the background details, the location of the photo definitely isn’t Scarborough, and in fact I believe it’s the nearby town of Filey. Given that he doesn’t appear in the photo, I assume that my father was behind the camera.

At that age, I could never understand the attraction of these walks, in cold and windy weather. If you must go walking on a cold day, then why not at least choose a sheltered place in which to do it? Why walk along the top of a sea cliff? I went along only because I was given no choice in the matter. Now, of course, in retrospect, I see the exercise value, and understand the fact that my parents and grandparents appreciated the clean seaside air, which must have been such a contrast compared to that of the dirty industrial city in which they’d grown up.

As is probably the case for all families, the scene of calm in the photo above hides all manner of inter-personal tensions and frustrations, many of which were never even discussed, let alone resolved. It wasn’t until I myself became an adult that I began to realize that I had unconsciously inherited some of my parents’ dysfunctional ways of interacting with the world.

The Dysfunctional Parents of H G Wells

Wells Aspects Of A Life: Cover

I’ve just been reading the book H G Wells: Aspects of a Life by Anthony West, and biographical details in that book prompted me to compare the dysfunctionality in Wells’ family with that in my own.

West, who was Wells’ illegitimate son by author Rebecca West, goes into considerable detail concerning the lives of his father’s parents. Although I knew the broad outline of their history from other biographies, it is clear from the additional details in this book that both parents not only had serious personal shortcomings, but also that their marriage was a complete failure for most of its existence.

Wells himself found it necessary to defy his mother’s wishes, knowing that, whatever direction he took, she would be unhappy with him. His mother was quite determined that he was not to “rise above his station” in life, and tried to force him to become a draper’s apprentice. She did nothing to support his efforts to forge a career in teaching, and then in writing. She remained unreasonably critical of him, even after he rose to international fame.

Our Parents Made Us in Their Image

I’ve come to realize, over the course of my life, how we all inadvertently tend to inherit both successful and dysfunctional coping mechanisms from our parents. We all grow up assuming that the way that our parents behave is the way that all adults behave (because what other reference do we have?), so we tend to adopt their approaches to problems, without even being conscious of what we’re doing.

Nobody is perfect, of course, and that’s as true of ourselves as it is of our parents. The problem here is that, by unquestioningly inheriting our parents’ ways of dealing with the world, we may unnecessarily condemn ourselves to repeat their mistakes and frustrations.

I suspect that this inheritance creates many problems that are sometimes claimed to have a genetic basis, when in fact the children simply learn the flawed responses from their parents. For example, is a tendency towards optimism or pessimism, or to “addictive” behavior, really genetic, or is it just learned behavior, based on observations of our parents?

This Be the Verse

The British poet Philip Larkin, who spent much of his adult life in the Yorkshire city of Hull, described this phenomenon very succinctly in his well-known work This Be the Verse. For the most part, the parental curse is by no means deliberate; as Larkin says, “They may not mean to but they do”.

City Hall, Hull, in 1981

A Ray of Light

This may seem like rather a downbeat topic, suggesting that we’re all trapped by the shortcomings of our parents, but it really shouldn’t be seen that way. Surely, the key to breaking the chain of “inherited dysfunction” is first to realize that that’s what is happening.

Once you realize that you’re automatically copying your parents’ coping mechanisms, instead of considering whether there may be alternative approaches that would work better, you’ve taken the first step to escaping from this trap.

New Year’s Eve: Then & Now

December 31, 2017January 1, 2018davidohodgson Leave a comment

New Year’s Eve, 1977

The photo above was taken exactly 40 years ago, on New Year’s Eve, 1977. The location was the War Memorial near the summit of Oliver’s Mount, in Scarborough, which as I’ve mentioned in a previous post, was a prime spot for sky and cloud photography.

According to my records, this particular photo was taken at 3.05 that afternoon, indicative of the shortness of days at that time of year. The sky that afternoon seemed to me to be heavy with a sense of foreboding, which turned out to be appropriate, because many tumultuous events were about to occur in my life during the ensuing few years. In retrospect it seems like an incredible and very scary roller-coaster ride, ending only ten years later, in 1987, when I found myself spending my first New Year on a different continent, here in California.

The Birds Just Won’t Pose

Yesterday, a flock of Robins and Waxwings appeared in the ornamental pear trees in front of our house. This is a fairly common event here during Winter, but it was the first time this year that I’d noticed the two species together in the trees.

Robin & Waxwing in a Pear Tree

I mentioned in an earlier post that these scenes formed the inspiration for the design of our 2017 Yuletide Card, titled Sonoma Winter Birds.

One advantage of being able to draw, and so create my own artwork, is that I can pose my subjects in whatever way results in the best composition. For the card design, I was able to position the two birds close to each other, striking exactly the poses that I wanted. For the robin, I knew the pose that I wanted, but was unable to find any reference material showing one in that position. Nonetheless, understanding something of the anatomy of birds meant that I could create a convincing pose from my imagination, aided by images of similar species, as below.

Sonoma Winter Birds

Back when I was learning to draw, the usefulness of that skill in this age of photography was sometimes questioned. Why spend hours creating a realistic image, when the camera can achieve equivalent or better results in a fraction of a second? It has since become clear to me that natural history subjects are one area where drawing skill continues to offer an advantage over photography.

No matter how good their equipment, photographers do not have the luxury of being able to conjure up a scene from their imaginations. When shooting natural history subjects, they must be content with whatever poses their actors choose to adopt. My own photo above shows that, even though the birds were together in the same tree, they were never close enough to each other so that I could capture them in the same frame. Instead, I simply created a composite bitmap of 2 photos.

Even so, there’s no doubt that the abundance of photographs of any desired subject provides a treasury of reference material that was simply unavailable to earlier generations of illustrators. I’ll have more to say about this in a future post.

Happy New Year 2018!

My best wishes to all of you for a joyous and prosperous 2018!

Happy Holidays: at Home or Away

December 25, 2017December 25, 2017davidohodgson Leave a comment

David Hodgson and Nikki, at the Cypress Inn, Christmas 1994

Me and Nikki, at the Cypress Inn, Christmas 1994

The photo above shows me spending one Christmas/Yuletide away from home, but nonetheless with all our cats! It was taken in 1994, on one of several occasions when we were staying at the Cypress Inn in Carmel, California, along with all three cats. The cat shown is our eldest, Nikki, who was hanging out with Mary and me at the hotel bar. The bartender eventually served Nikki a saucer of milk, as shown below!

Mary, Nikki & Me at the Cypress Inn bar, Christmas 1994

The reason that we were able to have our cats stay with us in the hotel was because the Cypress Inn is owned by movie star Doris Day, who has been a life-long benefactor to animals. Pets are thus welcome to stay at the Cypress Inn, and, for several Christmases, Mary and I transported our three cats with us to stay at the inn for a few days.

Waxwings with Happy Holidays Message

At this time of year, I’m often asked whether I’ll be spending the holiday “at home”, or “going away”. I’ve enjoyed both alternatives in the past, but then of course that brings up the question of where “home” actually is. If my “home” is where I was born, then in fact I spend every Christmas away from it, and have done for decades.

Nonetheless, recent events have made me realize that I shouldn’t necessarily take it for granted that I’ll always have the luxury of being able to spend the holidays in my home.

My First Independent Christmas, in a Rebuilt City

As I mentioned in a previous post, the first time that I lived in any location away from my birth home in Scarborough was to attend university in Coventry, in the West Midlands of England.

Until then, I’d always been a child who was very nervous about the idea of living away from my parents, even for a short time. I was extremely distressed when it was suggested that, due to the difficulties that my mother was facing with my invalid father and grandmother, the local Social Services felt that I might need to be moved into a care home, but, later the same year, I did indeed find myself living independently for the first time.

When that day came, I quickly came to wonder what I’d been so worried about. I loved living independently, and was very excited about my new freedom and the possibilities that it seemed to offer.

Of course, I suppose that the desire of children to be close to their parents is an evolutionary adaptation. Children who preferred to wander away from their parents’ protection would be less likely to survive than those who stayed close, so an instinctive desire to remain with parents has been selected. Nonetheless, there comes a day when every well-adjusted child must make the decision to leave home and live independently.

In December 1978, I found myself wandering around the streets of Coventry, doing my Christmas shopping. The photo below shows my view of the “Upper Precinct” shopping centre in Coventry, suitably decorated for the holiday.

Upper Precinct, Coventry, December 1978

Coventry is of course internationally famous because its city centre was almost completely destroyed during the Blitz bombing of 1940. On one night in November, 1940, some 4300 homes were destroyed in Coventry.

By the time that I lived there, most of the city had been rebuilt. The Precinct shopping centre above was part of the redevelopment, although the spire of Coventry Cathedral in the background is medieval, and survived the bombing. (The remainder of the cathedral is a ruin, with the modern replacement cathedral alongside.)

New Horizons

I lived in Coventry for only about one year, then returned to Scarborough, where I ended up working at an engineering company for nearly two years.

Nonetheless, that first taste of life “away from home” set wheels in motion for me. I finally realized that there was a whole wide world out there, beyond the limited horizons of life in a small Northern town, and I couldn’t wait to begin exploring it!

Don’t Take “Home” for Granted

I mentioned above the mass destruction of homes in Coventry many decades ago, something which I hoped I’d never have to experience during my lifetime.

However, the events in Sonoma County during the past few months have been a painful reminder that we can’t necessarily take it for granted that we will have a home in which to remain. Tragically, even now, some who lost their homes to the fires here nearly three months ago are still living in hotels, as described in an article in today’s Press Democrat newspaper. It’s a Christmas away from home for them, but not one that they wanted.

It seems appropriate that those of us who are lucky enough still to have homes to stay in should try to make the most of them this holiday season.

Whatever your reason for celebrating this season, we hope you manage to have an enjoyable time, wherever you stay.