Ken and Sheila Jolley

One of the great things about having a health problem is the renewed contact made with dear friends. Here's a couple, Ken and Sheila Jolley, whom I have known since I first arrived at Massey University in late 1974. The picture of them with me in our lounge last week isn't too flash, but still, just fine to me.

Some background. Ken and Sheila are from Lancashire, parents of three wonderfully talented young women, and longstanding friends of mine. On the day of the photo, I made scones under Sheila's expert guidance. They turned out to be fantastic.

Ken Jolley was the NMR expert in chemistry at Massey. A physical chemist who trained under Les Sutcliffe, Ken had just acquired a JEOL FX60 when I arrived, and was extremely generous to me in inviting me to share in its use. He taught me so much about NMR in those early days. We published a few papers together, but mostly Ken had his own research (beautiful work on lyotropic liquid crystal phase diagrams amongst much else besides) and I had mine. Eventually Ken got a new superconducting spectrometer, another JEOL (GX270), and my group kind of "took over" the FX-60 until we eventually acquired a Bruker AMX-300 in about 1993.

Here is a picture of a much younger Ken and Paul standing by the GX-270 after its installation. We must be holding some Japanese gifts from the manufacturer.

Ken is now retired and he and Sheila spend much of their time in choral singing, while Ken also enjoys riding a very powerful motorcycle.