Catherine's 40th

Saturday 23 July was the day of daughter Catherine's 40th birthday. We celebrated it in style, starting with lunch at Bistro Bruno Loubet at the Zetter Hotel on Clerkenwell Road. Who says the English don't do food? The food here was extraordinarily good, even as good or maybe better than the best one finds in New Zealand (high praise indeed). The evening was spent at Café du Marche, also in Clerkenwell, the part of London where Catherine lives. She had booked the entire top floor, for her 24 guests, who were treated to Champagne and canapes followed by an extraordinary three course meal. The Portuguese Maitre de claimed that the steak was the best in London, and I have to say, having chosen that option, I have no reason to doubt him.

Catherine suggested "urban glamour" as suitable attire. Miang joined Catherine for hair styling in the afternoon and you may judge here whether the result was worth the salon's efforts. I have to say that Catherine looked rather chic in her long dress (the massive gold bracelet was our gift). Chris and I (he with the green tie and me the Kia Kaha) opted for the conservative, namely the smart suit. But I have to confess, all attending looked pretty good.

I could not resist the chance to speak, the opportunity to tell stories of Catherine's beginnings to her astonished London friends and colleagues was not to be wasted. But it was also a chance to speak a little more seriously of what both Catherine and Chris, and in his case his lovely wife Hiva and their Children, James and Thomas, mean to my life and to Miang's.

Most of us left by about 12-30 am, but a hardy few, including Catherine, partied on for a while. Next morning it was Catherine's job to open all the wonderful presents brought by friends the night before.

It was a brilliant occasion. Everyone present had a wonderful time. Miang and I felt so fortunate to be able to take part.

On Sunday we headed back to Cambridge, with another visit to the grandchildren and then a meal at Trinity High Table in the evening. I have still not quite mastered the rituals, when to stand, in which direction to file out. Miang and I sat with Lord Rees, the Master, a charming man, another brilliant physicist in the history of brilliant Trinity physicists.
I do like sitting with Rutherford's portrait overlooking the table, knowing that he must have been seated many times, in the same spot at dinner. And for that matter, so of course had Isaac Newton, James Clerk Maxwell, John Joseph Thompson, Byron, Tennyson, Wittgenstein and Huxley. Such is Trinity College.

Treatment in the UK

Cancer is a time consuming and expensive hobby, especially when travelling. I have inflicted part of the problem on myself, with my decision to undertake some medical experimentation of my own. Given the positive response of my CEA following a three week course of intravenous vitamin C coupled with traditional Chinese herbal medicine, I was condemned to find a way to continue this "treatment" now that I am in the UK.

In my first few days here I had to find a GP who would provide me with intravenous vitamin C, and a Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) practitioner who could provide me with a continuation of the herbal magic previously obtained from the Ngee Ann clinic in Singapore. After much web searching and persistent telephoning, I finally found a clinic in London which could provide the former. Dr Rodney Adeniyi-Jones is indeed probably the only such GP in London, and one of just a handful in the UK. Wellington by contrast has two such GPs. Dr Adeniyi-Jones is a thoughtful and intelligent man who persuaded me, after some discussion, to stay with 75 g doses once per week, rather than the 100 g maximum I had taken in Wellington (the latter, I have to say, with some spectacular side effects, in non-linear excess of that expected for a 1/3 increase in dose), and I have travelled to London twice for this treatment, the second being on Monday, at which time I had a blood sample taken for CEA measurement. The result was 17.2 ng/ml, a small increase, but clearly showing that the three-week doubling of May and early June has been arrested.

And so I hover on a plateau. Will the cancer recede or rage? Why has the CEA gone slightly up rather than consolidating a downward trend? For the last three weeks I have not had access to the TCM herbal formula, since I was able to obtain only a two week supply from Ngee Ann. On Monday morning I travelled to Cheam in southwest London to consult with Professor Bo-Ying Ma, one of the leading TCM practitioners in the UK. He informed me that many of the ingredients from my Ngee Ann recipe were not available in the UK because of import restrictions. He prescribed instead a herbal extract capsule treatment obtained from China before the restriction came into effect. I have started that as of yesterday.

In fact I feel remarkably well. In three weeks time I will take another test. Let's see what that says. I must say, I greatly prefer it when experiments show definitive answers. These latest can best be described as "possibly interesting."

PS: I am grateful to my good friend Yang Xia and his London-based cousin Ze Xia, for putting me in touch with Professor Ma. Bo-Ying Ma is a delightful man with a fascinating background, trained in scientific medicine, and then sent, during the cultural revolution, to a remote village where medical resources were non-existent, and where he learned how to treat using TCM. Later, Ma worked with the legendary Joseph Needham the "Man who loved China", a great British scientist, historian and sinologist based at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where an Institute is named after him. Professor Ma proudly displayed a photo of him and Needham on his surgery wall. I was suitably impressed.

An appointment at Oxford University Press

On Tuesday last week, Miang and I made a special journey to Oxford. My first experience of this place was as a new graduate student in 1970 as shown in the matriculation picture attached. The latest photo shows that I have aged somewhat.

The primary reason for my visit was to call on Oxford University Press, who had, for some inexplicable reason, failed to meet the June publication date for my book. But it was also a chance to catch up with Oxford friends Milo and Irina Shott, and with previous graduate students, Daniel Corbett, Sasha Khrapitchev and Ed Crossland, all of whom are postdoctoral fellows at Oxford University. The photo shows Daniel, Sasha and Ed at lunch in the Lamb and Flag pub in St Giles. Afterwards, Daniel and Sasha joined Miang and me for a walk back across the University Parks to Wolfson College where both are Research Fellows. This was a walk I had done hundreds of times when I was a graduate student and then Junior Research Fellow, at Wolfson, from 1970 to 1974. Little had changed.

My copy-edited book files were returned to OUP for the generation of proofs, back on 15 March. These days, authors like me do all the work that used to be carried out by typesetters, by writing our book in a source code language known as LaTeX, using a style file that automatically generates exactly the layout required by the publisher. All equations are beautifully set, diagrams placed correctly, and even the publishers logo appears in the right place. For the publisher to produce proofs simply involves taking the LaTeX sources files and eps diagram files and running them through a standard programme, a process requiring possibly ten seconds.

Why then had I received no proofs by July 5, the date of my departure from New Zealand, and one month after publication date? The answer lies in "widow and orphan lines". These are the lines of text that appear all alone on a new page and which, by a manual instruction in the source code, can be manipulated to join their companions. That is the final step, and it is one I delegated to OUP, since I believed that this simple step deserved some publisher input. In all, I estimated widow and orphan line fixing to be maybe one or two hours work. What I had not counted on were the exceptional qualities of the the production manager allocated to my book, a man whose name I must necessarily protect and one who has since mysteriously "left the employ of the Press". This fellow was, to my misfortune, exceptionally polite and pleasant in his communications, but kept informing me of unforeseen problems which were on the cusp of solution, and which would result in proofs being sent within the week. After about six weeks I became suspicious. Then began a flurry of enquiries, which eventually involved more senior staff plumbing the black hole into which my book had apparently fallen. The subsequent demise of my production manager appeared to be coincident on my saying "I am coming to the UK to sort this matter out".

Of course you, dear reader, will realise that there were other reasons for my coming to the UK. But I hope you will forgive my crime in not making clear these other reasons to the fine people in Great Clarendon Street, the home of the world's greatest publishing house, the source of definitive dictionaries, Bibles, "The Principles of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Microscopy", and who knows, maybe one day "Translational Dynamics and Magnetic Resonance".

I have no clear idea why I might be smiling in the photograph. Perhaps it is a smile of relief, having met the new production manager, a highly competent and pleasant young woman called Emma, whose apologies knew no bounds, and who promised to have me my proofs within 24 hours. Indeed, I have now seen them. They are exceedingly pretty, and the book will be now published, 3 months late, in September.

Adventures with grandchildren

The first 10 days here have seen us in a whirl of activity, organising bicycles, cellphones, London medical treatments and other necessities of life.

Our first excursion with the grandchildren was to Wimpole Hall (Grandad and James on tractor and Grandad holding Thomas in the garden)

Then, on Sunday 10 July, it was the Duxford airshow. This we did in style, Chris having purchased a "Gold Pass" which gave us free access to a number of displays, as well as seats, and lunch, in a special viewing enclosure. Both Chris and I did our best to infect James with our admiration for the aircraft. I think we certainly made some headway with the Chance-Vought F4U Corsairs (with folded wings). I had the thrill of seeing Spitfires, Hurricanes and ME109's, all of which took to the air in a flying display. There is nothing like the sound of a Rolls Royce Merlin engine, or better still, six Rolls Royce Merlins all at once, to bring tears to the eye.

Duxford was also a chance to catch up with Chris's longtime friend, Kent Roach, and his Dad, Arthur, who as it turned out, attended Wanganui Technical College about 5 years before me.

The outing to Duxford was assisted by Miang who stayed at home to look after baby Thomas, his Mum Hiva being away in the US on a week-long attachment to NIH in Bethesda.

I have managed, after some considerable effort, to find a clinic in London to give intravenous vitamin C treatment and had my first infusion last Monday. I head down to London for another treatment tomorrow. Meanwhile, trips to London have given Miang and me the chance to catch up with Catherine. On Friday night we dined with her at the Anchor and Hope pub, then headed round the corner to the Old Vic Theatre to watch Kevin Spacey in action as Richard III. His performance was electrifying, and I have to say it was the most riveting Shakespeare I have seen in a long while. The audience spontaneously rose to its feet in wild applause at the end, something that London theatre-goers seldom do.

While in London we joined Catherine at her Temple Chambers (Blackstone), met some of her barrister colleagues, and got this picture taken of the three of us outside the Royal Courts of Justice, just a short walk from Catherine's office.

Trinity College Cambridge

Miang and I are now in Cambridge, living in a Trinity College flat on Bridge Street. Its an old half-timbered Tudor building. We are on the first and second floors above the shops. The interior is delightful, with sloping floors and beams at every angle. It is beautifully appointed with all the modern essentials.

Daughter Catherine met us at Heathrow yesterday afternoon and drove us to Cambridge. Top priority, after sampling ale again following a two year drought, was to go and visit Chris, Hiva and the children, James (3 yrs 9 months), and Thomas (9 months). Next priority was the essential purchase of a bicycle. Already Miang has explored the market.

This afternoon I took James to a local park to do some water-rocket launching. This is a system I have borrowed from the 100 level teaching laboratory at VUW. Its liftoff to a maximum height of around 50 metres is so fast that James couldn't keep track of it, until he managed to glimpse it in the final descent phase. Here you see him running back following retrieval, ready for the next launch.

It is wonderful to be back in summer, and to be in this beautiful town again. My project here requires me to read and write. I cannot think of a more pleasant environment in which to indulge in these activities.

Another entertaining week

On Tuesday next week, Miang and I leave New Zealand for a couple of months. We will be based in Cambridge UK. Our departure comes after a hectic flurry of activity, which culminated in a dinner at Government House last night, at which Andrew Coy was honoured with a Blake Emerging Leader award. The picture shows Andrew, his wife Mel, and me (wearing my 2007 Blake medal). In the NZ Herald story this morning, the report read
"A technology explorer of sorts, Magritek CEO Andrew Coy is turning a "physics phenomenon" into a successful business product.
Earlier this week I addressed the "Peter Cullen breakfast", at which Wellington movers and shakers turn up to be entertained at 7-30 am. On Wednesday I flew to Gisborne for the day, to address business and community leaders at a forum run by the Eastland Community Trust. Thursday brought addresses to the Economic Development Conference in Wellington and then Federated Farmers in Rotorua in the afternoon, after which I flew to Auckland to overnight before a TVNZ studio interview early Friday morning. By lunchtime I was back in Wellington to join Miang at a special lunch organised by Wendy McGuinness, at which I was given the task of setting out some of my ideas over lunch so that the 16 or so guests could engage in a wide-ranging discussion about New Zealand's future. Wendy is probably New Zealand's "most connected" person and the people she had managed to assemble were all extraordinary achievers. Amongst this group were Jeremy Moon, the founder and CEO of "Icebreaker", Lloyd Morrison of Infratil, and Fran Wilde, chair of the Wellington Regional Council. Needless to say, the exchanges were stimulating and insightful. One of the big issues was whether New Zealanders are just too gloomy and pessimistic to buy in to the sort of change we seek. Wendy asked me for comment afterwards. and my response was:

"We simply push on, ignore the pessimism, and lead by example. Then suddenly we find ourselves surrounded by success and telling ourselves that it was always meant to be this way. We often do not notice the dramatic changes that are taking place when we are in the heat of the battle. It is only afterwards that we see predestination."

Today, is time to pack. But I do want to finish this posting with a delightful image, one from my childhood, and sent to me by Chris Clark, whose persistence in the National Archives has paid off. Take yourself back to the 1950's, with the influence of the war still apparent. Bertie Germ was rampant and needed sorting. Fruit and vegetables were the weapon of choice.