Mrs Gandhi and an Englishman Abroad.

 

I once met Mrs Gandhi; now if you knew me you would wonder how some bum of an actor with only one TV credit in the year of 1983 could get to meet the leader of the world’s largest democracy.
It had, indeed, started off as a bad year which I had inherited from the year before; in February I was offered one episode of The Angels – a BBC hospital soap – playing the role of a cop in one scene; I jumped at it; we had three kids to feed.
On the first day of rehearsals I bumped into a BBC producer, Innes Lloyd, in the lift at the BBC rehearsal rooms in North Acton – fondly known as the North Acton Hilton because of its size - and he told me that he had tried to get me for his John Schlessinger film An Englishman Abroad, with Alan Bates, but that my agent had told him I was unavailable.
As I was a big fan of John Schlessinger’s films, I wasn’t very pleased; surely we could have come to some arrangement after all I was only in one scene in ‘The Angels’ and we could have…..oh it doesn’t bear thinking about.
I did my one scene – filmed at some hospital in Coventry and started to look for another agent.
When I got home one day my wife was buzzing with excitement; I couldn’t calm her down.
She had received a telephone call from The Guardian newspaper: our fourteen year old daughter had won an essay writing competition and the prize was a couple of weeks in India for two.
The trip would include staying in New Delhi, Jaipur, Agra, Bombay and Lonavala staying in the best hotels and included £250 spending money - each.
The essay compared life in The Himalayas to life in England; of course she had never been to The Himalayas and her observations were taken from her geography lessons and her reading of Victor Zorza’s Indian columns in The Guardian under the title The Village Voice – which was about a village north of New Delhi and not The Himalayas at all.
I have to take the credit for pointing out the columns to her and telling her about the competition.
My wife was adamant that I should accompany our daughter to India; it was a world away in those days – it’s a world away these days but we have seen live cricket from there – and my wife felt our daughter needed her father; as it happened she was right but that’s another story.
So we set off for India: the trip was sponsored by Air India and The Guardian and judged by the editor of The Guardian, Peter Preston and my favourite Guardian columnist James Cameron – no not the Titanic/Avatar creator.
There were two other winners: a fourteen year old girl from Bristol and a nineteen year old boy from somewhere in the home counties; his father accompanied him and the girl from Bristol was accompanied by her female English teacher.
We had to have injections for cholera, typhoid and polio and took pills for malaria.
The evening before we were due to fly out to New Delhi we met and were entertained by the Indian High Commissioner and his family at his London residence; they gave us tea with warm milk and samosas; the High Commissioner and his family were charming – as it turned out it was a taste of what was to come – and when they spoke to us they shook their heads, Peter Sellers style, which was something else we saw a lot of in India.
Later that day we were installed in a really nice hotel near Gloucester Road tube station and went out to eat at a posh Indian Restaurant close by; ‘Princess Margaret comes here often’ we were told and we felt really important.
The following morning we emerged for breakfast and it seemed the father and son, from the Home Counties, had never eaten Indian food before and were feeling a bit green around the gills; they hadn’t even tried it as an experiment when they heard they were going to spend a little time in the sub-continent; this was also a sign of things to come: on our second day in India they didn’t even make it out of their room and had to postpone their trip to the Taj Mahal so we went ahead without them; I had wondered about the title of the John Schlessinger film An Englishman Abroad but in India it was slowly starting to make sense.
Their Delhi Belly, or whatever it was, deprived them of one of the greatest train journeys I have ever taken and the wonderful experience at Delhi Railway Station; it was such a huge exciting culture shock that I can still smell and taste it now: everything out of the story and picture books came to life; porters with four or five suit cases on their heads, a blind beggar and a beggar with no hands; crowds of people asleep on the platforms; bikes, rickshaws and more bikes.
There was a certain smell about the place; a smell not unpleasant although it might have been to some; a smell I got to like even though it was probably a mixture of faeces, urine and spices; the father and son missed the first class travel on that train, and from New Delhi to Agra, we were extremely comfortable in individual reclining seats – I remember thinking ‘you don’t get this in Britain!’
The food was freshly cooked and the staff on the train was at our beck and call.
The lavatories on the train gave an introduction to the Indian way of life; there were two lavatories in each cubicle: one for the western way and one for the Asian way; the Asian way was just a hole in the floor as the Asians squat whilst we, the westerners, sit on the loo.
As we looked through the windows on the train we saw plenty of evidence of this as it was early in the morning and people were going about their daily ablutions – in public; they were standing under stand pipes washing their bodies and if we saw one man squatting for a crap we saw a hundred.
I still have the image now of men in the distance squatting with a tail going from their bottoms to the ground.
We learned that they wiped their arses with the paper in their left hands and ate with their right.
Our daughter had never flown before and the journey from Heathrow to New Delhi was a good way of getting used to it. I don’t know how long the flight was but I remember eating, drinking, sleeping, eating again and still being in the air; the flight wasn’t very full and I appeared in the ‘in flight’ movie on that flight and also on the way back; an embarrassingly small role, I have to add, and nobody noticed me in the movie but they all saw my name in the end credits.
Stepping off the plane the heat and humidity hit our ankles even though it was April and dark. It was something like five in the morning UK time but we were raring to go.
We lived in Northampton at the time – maybe that was why my acting career was going south – and whenever we told anybody in India where we lived in England, their eyebrows would lift in confusion and then they would give that charming shake of the head we had seen at the High Commissioner’s Residence; they had never heard of Northampton so we would quickly add ‘sixty miles north of London.’
Even though it was late we needed to rise very early the following morning as an extra trip had been arranged; so at five fifteen I had my first Indian breakfast: masala omelette, toast and tea with hot milk.
Two Ambassador type cars picked us up at the front of our hotel and we were whisked off to Mrs Gandhi’s residence.
Yes we were going to meet the formidable Mrs ‘G’; her official residence seemed to be in a residential area, and we were led into a huge garden; there must have been two or three hundred other people there as there was some rule in India that anyone could show up to meet the Prime Minister; whether she actually met any of them I don’t know.
After the cold and dark of Britain, we were suddenly in a heat wave and hit by extreme brightness from the early morning sun; I had my white jacket on and even wore a tie; the local inhabitants wore very loose clothes, huge bell-bottom trousers or flairs and nearly all wore hats.
Parakeets and monkeys roamed freely as we followed a smiling official towards the main building; there didn’t seem to be a lot of noise but a kind of hum about the place accompanied by the whirls of cameras, the odd call from a human in the distance and then lots of squawking from the parakeets.
Over one side of the garden was a party of people huddled together; I got the impression that this was a whole organisation that had shown up to see the premier and not just their duly elected representatives.
We were shown into a kind of outer room and the others waiting in there seemed very nervous.
I suppose as an actor I had worked, and have worked since, with well known people; well known people in show business world, that is, not world leaders who go down in history; well known people so full of themselves, sometimes, that they are very unpleasant and sometimes when these well known people suddenly become unknown people it’s a bit of a relief.
After about five minutes or so we were called and led into another room; the room didn’t seem to have any aesthetic qualities at all, the furniture was functional: a sofa, an occasional table and a few chairs; behind the table was an open French window, which led to a quiet part of the garden, and another doorway was covered by a curtain.
When Mrs Gandhi entered she did the full theatrical bit through that curtain; she walked in as if she was the leader of the biggest democracy in the world, she walked in like a world leader, an important member of the Gandhi-Nehru dynasty and a figure of history.
She was accompanied by a few bodyguards; I have often thought about those body guards as it was her private bodyguard that turned and killed her eighteen months later in the grounds of that very building.
Everybody stood up when she entered and she sat down between the two girls on the sofa; our daughter and the other fourteen year old girl.
Straight away it was obvious she was very comfortable with them; she started to chat informally but I noticed she didn’t have any small talk at all; she asked them about their essays, how they liked India – even though we had only been there eight hours - and would they ever consider coming back again; then she asked them where they lived; when it was our daughter’s turn she said she lived in Northampton sixty miles north of London: “I know where Northampton is” Mrs Gandhi snapped “I was at Oxford.”
At one point I noticed Mrs Gandhi ring a bell she had secreted in her hand; through the curtain came somebody and before we could see them she asked them to get a photographer; this was the cue for us to stand behind her but it was also the cue for the bodyguards to push and shove each other to try and get into the shot.
I was standing at the end so didn’t think I had a chance of being included because when the photographer got ready to take the photo he seemed to aim it over to the other side of the room; but one of the body guards tried to get his face in to the shot and gave me a little push; I shoved gently back and in the subsequent photo he disappeared totally behind the person standing next to me; serves him right.

See above.

After the photo Mrs Gandhi shook hands with a couple of us and swept out as sweepingly as she had swept in.
I often think about those body guards.

My Favourite Smell

Wrekin College

If I was to ask you what your favourite smell is – what would you say? Your favourite after shave lotion? Some expensive scent like Chanel? 

Let's think of something else like the smell of rain; smells good doesn't it but what if it was from an aerosol!! The smell of lavender from a fabric softener? What about the smell of shit from an aerosol. Smells just as good to me as anything from an aerosol like rain or lavender.

When I was a student I worked as a milkman for a short while, and oh how it sent me round the twist. I was at a dairy in Wellington, Shropshire; I had to cycle on a old bike for half an hour every morning at the crack of dawn, get to the bakery, load my van and go out to deliver milk.

It was an electrically controlled vehicle powered like the dodgem cars at a fairground, which I have written about before on here. It had two pedals, like an automatic car, but we used our left foot on the brake with the right on the accelerator which is not recommended in cars.

Each house I delivered milk to had its own smell; the the big posh school, Wrekin College, had it's own smell too; the masters and mistresses and the professors lived 'in house' and when I delivered I discovered my favourite smell, a welcoming smell the greatest smell in the world . . . .. well bear with me, indulge me for a little while and see where this goes. Believe me I don't know at the moment which, I think, is the reason I write this blog, which is to discover what's going on in my mind.

After I delivered to the school – which was to various staff members as well as the place where they cooked for the pupils – I went to private houses and as usual I formed impressions of each of them. 

I could kind of tell who were the clever people, the people who were newly rich (the nouveau riché), the pretentious, the thoroughbreds, the educated and the people I envied, at that time, but no more.

For instance, there was a big house called 'Mad-hatters' another called 'Karjohn' and it became obvious to me that Karen and John had named the latter and didn't have much of an imagination – okay, okay they couldn't call their semi-detached 'Grey Gables' or anything like that, but why not leave it just to its number? 

Mad-hatters had my favourite smell and every time I went there I could tell that they were a warm family – and indeed they were – with their multitude of children (or what seemed a multitude) and great taste in cars, clothes, furniture and the very building itself. 

Each time I opened their gate, carrying three bottles of Jersey Cream milk (in one hand I venture to add) the smell would hit me the closer I got to the kitchen – of course you can guess what it is by now! 

As this Wellington was in Shropshire, which is in the West Midlands, and where sterilised milk was and is also available, meant the people who bought it didn't have a fridge or were brought up in a household who didn't have a fridge, and if you have never tasted sterilised milk you have never suffered. 

Of course if you haven't tasted Jersey Cream Milk you've never tasted milk.

By the way everything in America is homogenised; you get skimmed, semi-skimmed and full cream milk but it's all - - - homogenised! 

But that's America; let's go back to Wellington: there was a big house on the corner of a very big street – in fact I think it was actually on a roundabout; it had a wide gateway, which was surrounded by a high privet, and I could drive the van – hang on it was called a milk float – I could drive the milk float, and the drive had enough room for me to get in and turn around quite easily.  

Living in this house was a very tiny woman with a very high squeaky voice. I don't know what kind of house it was, but there were loads of teenagers hanging around all the time, and sometimes, I could smell dope – yes I knew the smell of dope I was at drama school even though I never smoked any. 

I think, in retrospect, that it might have been some kind of half way house, with the tiny woman working for some kind of rehab organisation; I had to deliver all kinds of milk to them, apart from the expensive kind, and I figured that the inhabitants were from broken homes and dysfunctional families, because of the large order of sterilised – or sterra as they called it – I delivered.

Okay so I generalise, but sociology generalises too, otherwise sociologists would never have anything to write about!

On Friday evenings I collected money from the customers, which meant calling around at their houses; some people would leave their money on the doorstep, in the mornings, but one particular man would invite me in to his house: as soon as I went in, it was quite obvious he was anticipating my visit. I followed him to the back part of his house to a tiny room. In this room there was a table, with nothing but an exercise book laid open to a particular page. Next to the page, was a little bit of money; enough for the seven pints of milk I had delivered that week; I had to take the money, but not before I signed for it.

After that he walked me to his door and got on with his oh so busy life – I don't think!!!!

Now let me tell you this – I was going to write this post today about something else – and it was this:

When the nuclear accident happened in Chernobyl, the population were told that they had to leave - every single one of them. They were told they could only take one thing away with them, and the people scurried around to choose and find, find and choose and take it to their new life, wherever that might be. One man chose a door – a single door; the door had been used to lay out members of his family when they died. . . . and I got to thinking what would I take – what would it be? I thought about it for some time and was disappointed that I couldn't think of anything so what would yours be?

But back to my favourite smell – bacon. The smell of cooking bacon and indeed the smell of cooking and food, when going in to people's houses, is so welcoming that any attempt to cover it with aerosols or fresh air is to be discouraged.

But the smell of bacon and the taste of it – to me – are two totally different things: It's nearly as disappointing as the taste of coco cola.

 

Los Angeles to Chicago by train: including a death in Fort Madison, Iowa. 2.

                                      Our train resting in Chicago.

                                                        .

This is an entry from 2011: we were returning from Los Angeles to London. I find it hard to believe it was thirteen years ago and I read it again just now.

We are on a train and stopped in Albuquerque, New Mexico where the temperature between the inside of the train and outside is vast. We were out walking along the platform, looking at the array of Indian trinkets, blankets and the like and, as we were doing this, it was over ninety degrees Fahrenheit.

The journey, so far, has been entertaining. The priority of time on this train has taken a back seat to the attention to detail, the running of the system, and the pleasure of travel.

There is no wi-fi on the train, so I will write in bits over this journey through America from Los Angeles to Chicago; unless anything extraordinary happens between Chicago and New York, I won't write about that part of the journey as I've already written 'On a Train in England' in March, 2011.

The first thing we heard last night, when we got on, was a message over the speaker system from Chip the lounge car attendant, telling us he was delayed slightly getting his groceries, and had a problem with his fridge, and asked us to give him a break, and that he would be starting shortly with a bill of fare which includes coffee, beer, pizza, burgers and potato chips.

After a little while he came on again to say, he was open which meant that everybody on the train went to Chip the lounge car attendant and lined up; his little lounge car is like a mini Seven Eleven – maybe about 30 feet long, with passengers seats on either side – so you can imagine the hustle and bustle.

On the menu it said that they had 'freshly brewed' decaf coffee but when I went there afterwards he told me they were out of decaf!!!

NB: in those days I didn't take caffeine.

After that we heard from 'Jackie in the Diner' – she was asking people if they wanted to make dinner reservations; she would say 'this is Jackie in the diner – would anybody wishing to book for dinner make your reservations now.' This voice would come on at various intervals asking people to come in for dinner, lunch or whatever.

Then Chip from the lounge car would come on again telling us he was going on a break, so if anybody wanted anything they needed to hurry up and come and get it.

Things were swinging along and we were travelling, then Jackie came on the speaker system again, and wanted to know if people could hear her, as the system didn't appear to be working. Chip from the lounge car came on to say he could, in fact, hear her.

When he said this a woman, sitting close by, using her cell- phone, and speaking quite loudly in a New York accent, said 'This is Dolores from Delaware; I need to speak to Mr Jefferson.'

This sounded interesting but then Jackie came on the speaker system again saying 'I can't hear you at all, Chip; you're not coming through.'

Then again 'This is Delores from Delaware! Can you put me through?'

'This is Chip from the lounge car – I am back from my break; if you want bagels or drinks now is the time to come.'

Whilst this was going on over the speaker system, a ticket collector interrupted all by saying he was coming around for tickets and 'don't forget to sign them in the top left hand corner.'

Each time he took a ticket from someone who hadn't signed it he would say 'I need you to put your autograph in the top left hand corner.'

Jackie came on again 'This is Jackie in the diner – am I coming through?'

'I can hear you, Jackie' said Chip from the lounge car.'

'This is Delores from Delaware – is Mister Jefferson there?”

The ticket inspector approached us puffing and blowing after climbing some stairs 'those stairs are killing me' he said; we're on the top deck.

'This is Jackie from the diner; I will be coming around to take dinner reservations, starting with the sleeping section and then coach.'

I sat reflecting about my years in America, seventeen of them, knowing that they are contemplating an all electric super duper rail system which will get you from point A to point B faster than a speeding bullet, and wishing they wouldn't do it, as it would spoil this lot.

The food in the lounge car was ropey to say the least, but the food in the diner was excellent and reasonably priced.

There are four seats at each table, so you are forced to face the other two people, which more or less forces you to communicate with them.

On the first evening at dinner we sat with a Navajo professor and his wife; he was quite famous as he was the first Indian professor – I don't know if he was the first in the state or the country, but he told us he had celebrated his 67th birthday recently by walking down one side of the Grand Canyon, along the flat bit, and up the other side; he was a very fit looking guy, for his age, and he told us he does 10K runs, and was formally a baseball pitcher. I don't know if he was a major league pitcher or just played at college level, as we never got that far, but they were getting out at Flagstaff, Arizona the following morning at 4:30.

The next morning, at breakfast, we met Tom and Jenny from Victorville California; famous for the place where Roy Rogers used to live, and have his western museum; I remember his horse, trigger, nearly stepping on me at the stage door, after I saw Roy Rogers live at a theatre in Birmingham, England. I have to say that as there are quite a few Birminghams in America apart from the one in Alabama.

Tom and Jenny were also an interesting couple having cycled the world, by all accounts; regular train travellers.

In the Observation Car I met another Navajo Indian, this one lived on the reservation. As we sat watching New Mexico flash by, he pointed out lots things about the area, particularly some black stones, in the distance, which he said were from the top of 'that mountain' which exploded with the help of the volcano hundreds of millions of years ago. He went on to say that they used the black stones (he had a name for them which I have forgotten) in their sweat lodges.

He was going from Gallup, New Mexico, to Albuquerque, to meet his son; he was sending his son a message using the modern equivalent of the 'smoke signal', he joked; his Blackberry phone.

He said he was proud of his son as he took the decision to leave the reservation and set up by himself 'abroad.' He said he had lived 'abroad' for a short time – abroad was anywhere off the reservation.

Indeed it is abroad as the reservations have their own sovereignty.

Later that day, Saturday, we had dinner with two people on their way back to live in Chicago from Los Angeles – we wished them well on their journey and they did the same for us.

Before we met them for dinner – in the usual accidental way – a man two seats in front of us was getting leery; he had been drinking all day and his voice was sounding very horse.

Whilst we were away, he called everybody names and started shouting; someone called the conductor who came and told him off; he sat in his seat for a moment but when the conductor went away, he started again. Saying the same things, but this time he was really screaming, so the conductor, a young woman, threw him into his chair, called the cops and they threw him off the train at the next station, and into gaol somewhere; we were oblivious to all this as we were at dinner with our bicycle travellers.

Chip in the lounge car came on the loud speaker, as we pulled in to Fort Madison, Iowa, to say that he was running out of food in the lounge car; he was out of bagels, pizzas and most of the cheese and ham sandwiches.

As the train pulled out of Fort Madison it stopped; we had run over somebody. We were travelling at about 15 - 20 mph and apparently the person was killed. We don't know anything about it at the moment but within two or three minutes I saw a cop car outside scaling a six feet fence; then he was told where the body was by some kids outside.

The latest news is a few young guys tried to cross the tracks and the last one was hit and killed by the train; there's no need to describe what we know or what I saw but you know what train wheels are like; the young guys were all in their early twenties.

As we sit here waiting to move a voice in the background is heard: 'This is Delores from Delaware; I am just north of the train station in Fort Madison, Iowa. Today a man was killed . . . .”

As if oblivious to everything, whilst this was going on, another voice was heard ' this is Chip in the lounge car – I'm just back from my break.'

               Cops look at the body (out of shot) as paramedics call the coroner.

Yes - The Guardian, Private Eye, etc and The Post Office.

This is not going to be a long hi falutin essay about the rabbiting of Farage (the) Cabbage or Trump (the) Hump on our backs, but the whole world by now must be aware of the goings on concerning the post office here.

I used to work for the post office before I went to college. My mother always wanted me to be in a safe job at the age of 15, would you believe, for that is when we left school in my day. When they fitted me out in a uniform with a stupid hat, I felt like a bell boy at an hotel – an hotel? it is correct.

My job was to deliver telegrams and I was offered twice the money I was earning at an 'army and navy' store nearby. I used to hide the hat, I have to say, and I remember the guy who was fitting me out in the uniform saying to me 'oh you'll have all the girls after you when you wear this' – well there are uniforms and uniforms and this was not one of the attractive ones.

But there was a chance of riding a motor bike when I was 16 so that was something to look forward to. Geoff Duke, the great motor cyclist was one of my heroes so I looked forward to it.

All around the offices were big black windows, just below the ceiling – this was in every office – and behind the black windows were people spying on the workers down below. Somewhere on the outside of the building was a secret door where the spies would come in and go out. They were called the I.B., the Investigation Branch.

When I started the job I had to sign The Official Secrets Act – we were civil servants. In fact I signed the Official Secrets Act again, later when I was part time with the SAS which in conjunction with the post office, I was also paid.

That was when I was 18. A lot of the time I would go to the SAS at the weekends, sometimes to a firing range or other outdoor activities.

It was fun - 23 SAS, look them up.

If we had an accident on the motor bike we didn't carry any papers, just our driving licence. If anybody wanted to see proof of insurance we would say 'it's handled by the post office.'

The mighty post office.

The mighty post office with its own laws it's own police (the I.B.) and was a law unto itself. Where was I heading?

Needless to say I got out as soon as I could.

In those days it wasn't acceptable to be out of work – factory fodder and every other kind of fodder when bosses and gaffers talked down to you.

I heard some of the inquiry the other day when the post masters and post mistresses reported that they'd been given the third degree by mafia like interrogators.

The post office sent a guy with a black shirt and jacket in as a witness – nothing like playing the part.

Lots of people in this country for some strange stupid reason, think that anybody who reads The Guardian, is some kind of lefty revolutionary. 'What do you want that for?' I would hear when I was younger, well it was The Guardian, Private Eye, the BBC and their programmes who did all the work to expose the scandal at the post office. It was initially started by an ex postmaster called Alan Bates, no not the late movie star, writing to Computer Weekly Magazine and taken up by a reporter there called Tony Collins, that was in 2004 and the next person was Rebecca Thompson in 2009 – so you can see how long all this has been going on. She hunted for other people accused and charged and eventually a guy at the BBC did a radio series about the whole business and at the end of the day, after all these years, ITV commissioned the series.

Now you may ask why ITV when a lot of other people did the ground work – I don't know, but would as many people have viewed it on the BBC? It had already been on Panorama and loads of times  on Radio 4.

So don't criticise The Guardian and the Private Eye with the brilliant Ian Hislop – we need them.

The Fibonacci Sequence, again.

This Post was viewed the other day by forty odd people. I often wonder how they find the posts so I read it, found it interesting and here it is again. It was up here on November 26^th 2014 which will explain references to the film about Alan Turing (above).

This is going to be a strange old post but I was thinking of something so let's see how it goes.

Everywhere you look these days you will see the name of Alan Turing; this is for a number of reasons. One may be because there is a movie on release starring Benedict Cumberbatch – yes of course that's his real name and we will all remember it just as we remembered Schwarzenegger.

In the film Breaking the Code, Derek Jacobi played Alan Turing and he is seen staring at a fir cone; here:

If you look at it you will see that there is a distinct pattern. What we see when we look at it is the same pattern but when a mathematician looks at it he sees a pattern of numbers. 

That pattern is called the Fibonacci Sequence and was spotted nearly a thousand years ago by someone called, would you believe Fibonacci. 

He didn't invent it as it was used by Indian mathematicians in the 6^th century.

What do the numbers mean?

Well the Fibonacci numbers are the sum of the two previous numbers and so on so 1, 2, is followed by 3. 

Simple?

So far.

Then 3 is followed by 5 and 5 is followed by 8. What does this all mean; how can it be useful.

It's supposed to be  a way of predicting how many rabbits two rabbits will begat in a year.

But.

Somehow it is the meaning of life when it comes to a computer.

There is line in Breaking the Code when Turing, quite well in to middle age by now, says 'look at this cone; a Fibonacci sequence.'

Great piece of writing aye? Engels, meet Marx, Rolls meet Royce!! (you know what I mean).

Well look at this:

That is the pattern created by a Japanese Puffer Fish; the fish is about two inches long and in order to attract a mate he makes this pattern in the sand at the bottom of the ocean. When the female arrives he flattens the middle. It was on TV the other day in the David Attenborough series.

Isn't nature wonderful?

Here are some more patterns from nature all with Fibonacci numbers.

Amazing aren't they?

So how does the Fibonacci sequence lead to a genius inventing the computer?

That's why the genius who invented the computer invented it and not me – nor you.

Unfortunately Alan Turing was born in the wrong age: as with Leonardo da Vinci, Alexander the Great, Michaelangelo and many more he was homosexual; gay.

But in the time he was active the practice was against the law; it was never against the law for one man to love another man but the actual practice was.

In Britain that is; in some countries it still is.

Gay marriage is legal in lots of states in America and lots of other countries but in Uganda and really backward countries homosexuality is still against the law.

So instead of praising Alan Turing the authorities persecuted him; they chemically castrated him and he eventually committed suicide.

At a time when people knew very little about genetics or DNA, Turing used the early computer to try to crack how a soup of cells and chemicals could transform itself and grow into complex natural shapes - a subject known as morphogenesis. In an incredible article published in 1952, Turing suggested that everything from the spots and stripes on animals to the arrangement of pine cones and flowers could be explained by the interactions between two chemicals. Turing’s work in this area is intimately connected with the timing of his trial and conviction for homosexuality, and his subsequent ‘treatment’ with a course of chemical injections.

Hope you like the patterns: