A native of Liverpool, U.K., now a U.S. citizen and resident of the Chicago metropolitan area. Scientist by training, artist by nature. Just blogging about the world of miscellany that fills our lives for no particular reason except that it is enjoyable.
My Gut Microbiota: Check this out, and if you can interpret it, please let me know. I am a Ph.D. Pharmaceutical Microbiologist, so I should be able to understand what you tell me…
My Genetic Ancestry: These are AncestryDNA results, but similar results with Family Tree DNA and 23 and me.
HankinsonHolmes 
Hello, Charles Bristow here. That’s me sitting on the front row, between Tillman(?) and Rimmer (?) right in front of Dave Bennion. Lost contact with my only contact David Hughes, 10 years ago, on his death in York. Is there anyone else still around. Best wishes.
Hello – I am Paul Cotter, front row, fourth from right in your Quarry Bank picture. My ADD means I was looking elsewhere, oblivious to what’s going on. It was called the Headmaster’s lawn. Remember Pobo, best we could do with a name like Pobjoy.
We all knew each other (at least initially)
by our last names. Didn’t seem in the least strange.
I helped look after those bees, in that triangle of land between the school and the field. Some were afraid to walk through. I remember Killer, puffing his pipe and blowing into the hives. Always wore tweeds. He was my physics teacher in the fifth and lower sixth. As I remember it, his skin was disfigured by smallpox. I recall him talking about convex and concave mirrors and lenses, saying how a shaving mirror could be used to magnify one’s chin. Me then chirping in ” Who’d want to magnify your chin?” Actually, he did have a sense of humour, but that only came out in the smaller sixth-form classes. He was talking about Young’s modulus and stretching wires. The elastic region where the wire returns to it’s original length. Stretch if further then it will not return … the plastic region. Couldn’t resist. Piped in … “stretch it a bit further and it breaks. That’s the spastic region.” Probably not acceptable in current classrooms. It did raise a smile from him.
A few memories: The teacher’s common room on the minstrel gallery and the smell of smoke as the door opened. The bomb-shelters on the field. The spiral staircase to the minaret where you could still see the outlines of where a tennis court had been on the HML. The Bailey house toilets. Cold in Winter. No seats. Looking over the sandstone wall and the forbidden fruits of Calderstones. The Maths Block. Last day of summer term – the cricket match. The ‘book of the dead’ – those that had died in the wars. The announcement of the death of Richard Shears … his father was a teacher. 1R, 1F, 1B. The eight houses. Prep after classes had ended. Cook, the metal-work teacher. Woodwork teacher – always in a brown ‘boiler suit’. The Office. Waiting outside The Headmaster’s office for a long time, just so everyone knew you had been there. Jumping down the stairs in the long corridor. The longs ‘gaffs’ to close the windows with. The freezing changing room on Mather Avenue in February. And finally cross country-running.
Oh, happy days.
Strangely enough, they were.
It was the death of Derek Moss that shook me. Just before his death David Hughes and I, with John Kidd(I think) went to visit him in hospital on the Wirral. A real night time adventure! When did Richard Shears die? I used to spend football matches talking to him for company, neither of us had any interest in games.
My apologies – I may have been getting Richard Sharp and Richard Shears mixed up. He died in the holidays between our first year and second year. (I think) His father was a teacher at Quarry. Derek Moss – I’m trying to remember him. I remember you – not as a friend, just someone in my year. Where is he in the photo?
FYI, I live in Canada, post Nederlands, France the USA plus work excursions elsewhere. Thinking of going somewhere warmer.
Tillman was the right name – known as Titch.
The only person I know to be alive is Ian Jennions (Onions) who is a professor at Cranfield. I went to Imperial College with him,
What a Renaissance man you are!
Love your blog…. I need to remember to look at it more often. Can’t you send out reminders??!!
Love the blog Cliff! Keep it up.