Tree Disease in Snow Gums

 I heard some very sad news today and I found myself surprisingly quite emotional about it.  Apparently (it was Breakfast News after all), one of the key features in the Southern Uplands, the Snow Gums, are in trouble.  (You can tell we're in a different hemisphere, can't you?  We have Southern Uplands and you have South Downs, both of which are elevatory land structures.  (Hills and Mountains)

Anyway, (distracting thought over), I heard that the beautiful snow gums are dying, and they are dying because of a disease caused by beetles, and also global warming.

I originally come from North Gloucestershire, in the UK, and in my youth I used to play in the fields.  These fields were bounded by hedges.  They've worked out that a new plant variety grows in a hedge every hundred years, so if there are four or five main species of plant in a hedge, it's probably round about 450 years old.

Our hedges contained blackberry briars, dog rose hips, haws and elms.  The elm trees stood out because they were two hundred years old and up to a hundred feet (33m) tall.  They were magnificent trees.  I used to wake up as a small child, and look across a couple of fields to a group of about ten of these giants.

From 1970 to 1974, I went to Bradford University, which entailed a lengthy 200Km long train journey.  Coming south at the end of term, once we had passed Birmingham, heading south, we went through "my" country, the wooded country I knew and loved, where the hedges held the giant elms.

It was 1971 when the Dutch Elm disease reached Gloucestershire.  I don't think it was particularly Dutch, but it was caused by beetles that turned these elms into Edam cheese.  There was no cure.  The affected trees had to be felled, and then all of the timber, every twig, had to be burned.  You killed the beetle, but you burned the tree.

At that time, there was no "Global Warming", but the beetles were real enough.  Every twelve weeks or so, as the train headed south from Birmingham, the country had changed.  Gradually, the trees where I had played were fewer and fewer.  After a couple of years, the land seemed flat.  And empty.

I have never been to the Southern Alps.  I have never seen a snow gum.  But when I heard that it was a beetle-borne disease, I feared the worst.  The elms, for all their magnificence, were only a fairly small part of the mixed ecosystem.  The snowgums are in a virtual monoculture with its own small ecosystem.  I don't know what has developed in Botanical Research over the last fifty years, but my guess is that the infestation is uncontained, and the wood will have to be burned.  A couple of years ago, we had terrible wild fires, which pushed several species of plant and animal almost to extinction.  This time, the disaster is in a small alpine ecosystem that exists in wild country.  Sadly, how many animals and plants will survive the almost certain destruction and burning of the Snow Gums?

A statistical approach to Corona virus

You know that from a previous post, I surveyed different pandemics and found that the second wave was larger than the first wave.

This was true right from the Black Death right up to the Spanish Flu

First, if you don't know about graphs, this is the terminology I use.

The horizontal axis (X) measures the wavelength in days which can be measured  either peak to peak or trough to trough.

The vertical axis (Y) measures the amplitude which is the number of cases discovered each day.  We do not know the true numbers of cases, because they are governed by the number of tests, the number of people who recovered and the efforts to minimise the number of cases.

The time taken to germinate is fourteen days, therefore I smoothed the curve by graphing the AVERAGE of the last fourteen results, each day.

My thoughts are as follows:

I have an X value smoothed by 14 points.  The shape is identical to previous historic pandemics.

If you have a medical event, it will have to be a wave of infection and healing (or death).  There is no time for a standard wave to form, and so the second wave is added on top of the first wave to form the largest wave.  This is why it is so important to attack the  pandemic as early as possible, so that the second wave is minimised.

Think of a pebble dropped into  a pond each ripple gets smaller as its amplitude is spread over a wider circle.

I've calculated that REGARDLESS of what is done (the smooth amplitude wave will vary depending on what treatment is available) the time of variation (i.e. the wavelength) will remain constant at about four and a half weeks from trough to trough.

There should be a gently falling line along the top of the waves which will cut the X axis after the fifth wave at about mid-September this year. We shouldn't even think of crossing international boundaries until early August, mid September and the end of October, but not in between.  "Normality" should return at Christmas.

So, sadly, it looks as though I shall miss the Fair, Abbey 900, and Florence, my favourite city.  Perhaps 2022, but I shall be 76, buut at least I shall not die of the pestilence :) 

Can anyone tell me why it's never done?

Back in 2008, when we had the previous depression, our government wanted to have financial stimulus.  The idea being that if you GAVE people money, they would spend it, so there would be a stream of money going through a multitude of businesses.  This would make the businesses more viable, and unemployment would drop.

Unfortunately, people didn't spend it.  Just the opposite, in fact.  They saved it for a rainy day.  After all, they, too might lose their jobs.  Or being a nation of immigrants, you sent this windfall back to your family overseas.  Either way, the money didn't pass through our economy, and the unemployment and bankruptcies continued.

And guess what?  The 2020 stimulus package is doing exactly the same thing, and people are going to save their windfalls.

So here's an idea that I think is a good one, but I've never even seen discussed.

Instead of giving Australian people Australian dollars, give them their stimulus in special Aussie dollars.  They would have the same value as a regular Aussie dollar, but they could only be spent in Australian businesses.  They would be useless overseas.  Furthermore, they would be dated, actually on the note, we'll say, three months after issue, when they would become valueless.  If you wanted to use them, you'd only have three months to spend them in Aussie businesses.

They would be cash only, so that if you banked online you would lose the cash when you tried to redeem it.  You would be forced to spend the cash, and the cash flow would help the economy.

I don't see why this woulld not work, or why it isn't done.  Can anyone tell me where the fflaws are . . . or whether I have had a truly brilliant idea? 😀😀😀 

The Iron Bridge over the Swilgate

[Excerpt from “Green and Pleasant” Sidebotham 2018]

The third bridge is the “Iron Bridge” over the Swilgate.  It never appears to have been given any other name, and its history is obscure. It must always have been a foot bridge, because of the comparative narrowness of the bridge, and it may be “about 1850”, as suggested by Verey.   (Buildings of England Gloucestershire: The Vale and Forest of Dean) ed. Verey) in the Pevsner series.

It depends on what you consider is “about”! 

1 Orientation If the bridge were to be routed from the town, via an alley to Perry Hill, there would be no need to site the bridge at an angle.  There are several sites where the bridge could be positioned north-south rather than north east-south west which is its current orientation.  This suggests a path straight from the end of Orchard Court or one of the alleys, to Lower Lode Lane, across what is now the cricket field, to the junction of the old main road to Gloucester, and also the Gupshill Road, the route to the relatively new town of Cheltenham via Tredington or Combe Hill.   Why was it built?  Now it serves as a way of reaching a Housing Development (Priors Park, 1946), but in 1850 there were no houses there, and so it is more likely to be heading towards Lower Lode.

2 Method of Construction Secondly, its construction is primitive.  It is almost as though the builders weren’t aware of the properties of iron and built it like a stone or brick bridge. (The very first Iron Bridge, built by Abram Darby in Coalbrookdale, which was opened in 1781, was constructed using methods used in wooden bridges). 

3  Primitive Design  Thirdly, it consists of two very short primitive spans and it is reminiscent of any clapper bridge found in the West Country, where there are short spans because of the lack of strength of the stone walkways.  Clapper bridges are ancient, and like this iron bridge, the spans are not archlike.


4 Elliptical Arches in Abutments The fourth item of interest are the abutments with their elliptical brick arches.  They are brick and not iron, and they are elliptical and not circular.  I.K. Brunel built a large elliptical arch in brick over the Thames at Maidenhead in the mid-1830s.  He was probably familiar with small elliptical arches like these, where there was a small load, because although there would be a slight increase in sideways thrust compared with a semi-circular arch, it would not be significant, and the arch would have fewer bricks in it.  The central pier with its cutwater probably causes more sideways thrust on the bridge through water resistance from debris, than it would receive from water currents. 

5 Fixing of Railings/Parapets
Also, the iron parapets/railings are joined to the decks by reinforcing scrollwork in common use from about 1780 to 1810, as railings and balconies in the new town of Cheltenham.  The ends of the hand rails have been shaped. 
6  Previous Comments
This might suggest the work of a skilled blacksmith at the end of the reign of King George III, maybe working to crude drawings not prepared by an engineer.  It is as though the person responsible for this structure had never seen an iron arched bridge, which would mean that its date of construction would predate that of the Quay Bridge by several years.
The bridge walkway is made of four sections.  Only the inner two are made of wrought iron plate.  The outer two sections taper inwards to the narrower iron sections, as though the designer were a little suspicious about the new material., or else there wasn’t much of the “new” material available
And finally, why is it such a substantial structure, when a simpler form would have sufficed?  Why is it not made from wood or stone unless it were important?  Did the Iron Bridge have an importance which has been lost in the last two centuries?

My opinion maybe incorrect, but speaking as a Chartered Materials Engineer, I would estimate the date of the bridge to be not Verey’s “about 1850” (however he came to that year), but about 1800 to 1810, at the latest, which, if accurate, would make it a very early iron bridge indeed, and almost half a generation older than the Quay Bridge and the Mythe
Bridge of the 1820s.   My deductions are necessarily subject to confirmation by someone on the spot, because I am hypothesising using photographs only

7 Dating of Bridge Since I wrote the above, I have come across a map of 1811 in the British Library, and the bridge is marked on it.  This makes the Swilgate Iron Bridge Tewkesbury’s oldest iron bridge by at least eleven years and it is well into its third century! 

8 Reason for just calling it the Iron Bridge Might the simple fact that it was, and always has been called just “The Iron Bridge” suggests that it was the iron that somehow made it different from all other bridges in the area.  That it was the very first bridge made of iron anywhere in the vicinity.  There are comparatively few river crossings in North Gloucestershire.  There were no railways at that time.  Canals had brick bridges so might it be the oldest iron bridge in the Three Counties?     Might it be dated back to the end of the Eighteenth Century?

Comments would be welcome please so that they may be incorporated into my booklet “Green and Pleasant” soon to be available in .pdf form free of charge (voluntary donation to THS) from sidebothamjohnATgmail.com (change AT for @)

POSTSCRIPT

As Kevin Cromwell has stated elsewhere, the Iron Bridge is a listed structure.  However, listed structures have been known to be accidentally damaged and/or destroyed.  I do not know how many times this bridge has been repaired/refurbished, and having seen it again since I wrote the above, it might just possibly be of a slightly later date than I first thought.  I still think it is earlier than 1850, but probably later than my first estimate of 1810 (the bridge on the 1811 map might have been wooden, for instance).  But it IS early, and probably much the same age as the Quay Bridge (1822).  Tewkesbury is certainly lucky to have it, but two things are important:

1)      The bridge must be refurbished/rebuilt/repaired with PROFESSIONAL archaeological advice

2)      The bridge should be signposted down one or more of the alleys from Barton Street, and "Out of the Hat" given information for tourists.



ALSO  There is the remains of a hinge at the end of the bridge.  What was it for, and why is it there?

corona

Different Pestilences, how they progressed, and evidence of how they died out

1  The Black Death 1300s in Europe

This pestilence came to Western Europe and was particularly virulent.  If you look carefully at the stonework in the Nave of Tewkesbury Abbey, it gradually deteriorates as you go towards the back of the church.  The reason is that the good (and some of the bad) masons were dead.  The doctors were dead, the farmers were dead.  There was no treatment and therefore the death rate was huge, and the curve didn’t flatten out until the susceptible people were dead and buried.  Then the plague disappeared because there were no susceptible people left.  The population were not at all mobile.

2  The Plague of 1665

 Generally the bubonic plague that devastated London in 1665 had a very similarly shaped mortality graph to the Black Death.  Lots of Deaths early on, and when they were all dead, the resistant people survived and the number of dead decreased rapidly.  The final disinfectant in London was the Great Fire of 1666 which burnt down about one third of the City.  Again, the population was not very mobile. The other interesting episode in that plague happened in a village called Eyam in Derbyshire.  A contaminated bolt of cloth from London arrived for the tailor in the village and he got the plague.  The Vicar, the Rev. William Mompesson was very highly regarded by his parishioners and he told them to stay in the village for as long as it took. Neighbouring villagers brought food and left it at the village boundary.  Eyam paid for it with money that was left in a container soaked in vinegar.  This went on for several weeks.  Almost half of the villagers died, but nobody ran away.  Mompesson’s wife died. Whole families were lost.  But two interesting things came from this: The undertaker survived, and no plague broke out at all in neighbouring villages. The undertaker must have been immune, and thanks to the inspiration and trust felt by the villagers for Mompesson, everyone stayed in the village.  Isolation works.

3  The Spanish Flu of 1918 

This was the first recorded pandemic, because by 1918, people were mobile, and many were under orders.  There were no effective drugs, death was commonplace, (although war injuries and TB were more common and more expected.  Huge numbers died because most people were under orders, there was therefore no isolation.  Conditions were appalling - e.g. trench warfare, and not surprisingly anxiety was high.  There was a lot of mobility which spread the disease and made it worse because it lasted longer and affected people over a larger area. These three pestilences had tall but narrow graphs.  The numbers dead/day shot up until the affected patients were mainly dead, and then the graph dived as the fewer and fewer remaining victims died. The graphs, (because they are straight up and straight down) record fairly few deaths, but as they all happen over a short time, they far exceed the level of medical intervention available.

4  The current Corona Virus 2019/20 

There are certain actions which look as though they will be necessary in overcoming this particularly insidious pandemic.  It is particularly serious because it is impacting a mobile peacetime society with little or no personal knowledge of extremely high levels of disease, high unemployment, or anything other than the freedom of peacetime and relative plenty.  We need to take our actions seriously, this is not a game. This is not just a struggle against a disease. It is a WAR. Also, the symptoms of this virus are not as dramatically distinctive as earlier plagues, and the disease is taking place in times when we: go to supermarkets to buy our food, we don’t grow it; we live in a “replace not repair” community, and we take personal transport for granted and have jobs many kilometres from where we live.  Very few people walk from their home to their place of work. We are also used to a great amount of personal freedom.

What we must do medically, as opposed to economically. 

We need to know how many cases there are of corona virus We must test as many people as possible to find out. We need to plot this information to establish the shape of the graph.  “Flattening the line” The least lethal and quickest way to deal with this pandemic is to allow it to kill off all people who are susceptible to it.  Unfortunately this would scar our society as we know it, and completely overwhelm our medical facilities.

If we try to “flatten the line”, by using certain draconian precautions, the graph may get flattened, but in doing so, it will take longer to revert back to zero, and therefore, ironically, more people will be killed than if nothing were done.

Consequences of flattening the line Many businesses will close.  Many people will suddenly find themselves out of their jobs.  Most of us have lost our basic freedoms.  Many of us become perturbed or frightened by our new circumstances.  It is important that to keep money flowing, people need to earn a living wage. This is where we get contentious. 

We are at war with an enemy which we cannot see, and which does not share any of our objectives, other than to reproduce as much as its “food chain” will allow.

Because we are “at war”.  we need to act that way.  Miltary hospitals should become overflow hospitals, preferably away from hospitals where corona virus is.  The armed forces have much they can do.  Where, for instance, are our two new disaster relief ships, HMAS Canberra and HMAS Adelaide? 8000 people are being stood down from one airline alone.  Could some of those personnel e.g. cleaners, have minimum retraining and clean hospitals?  This keeps an income in the family and money flowing which can be spent in businesses that will otherwise close.  On a large scale it would help to steady the stockmarket where “ordinary Mums and Dads”, and “extraordinary Grannies and Granddads” have their super in the form of shares.

PROGNOSIS

At the moment, we have severe restrictions on what we can and can not do.  These will, in time, let’s say three months, give or take, reduce the number of obvious corona virus patients almost to zero.  That would be the end of June. However . . . At a given point, restrictions will be eased, perhaps even lifted.  The coronavirus will come back, because it was never totally eliminated.  The line will go up again, not as high, and then decrease.  As restrictions are eased and tightened and eased again, there will be a “ripple effect” of maybe five cycles.  This would mean that normal life (as we knew it a few short weeks ago) will return in about eighteen months, which will be September 2021.

And I already have an engagement in October 2021!

Teddy's Life. A Giant of a Man

The year was 1968, and about four months before Christmas I moved into my furnished bed sitting room.  My first time away from Mum and Dad.  Of course I still saw them once a week when I went for Sunday lunch and did my washing.  (I know what you are thinking.  No, I used the Launderette next to my watering hole, The Sudeley Arms, where I could be sure of bumping into friends while my smalls were tumbling and spinning)  Some of my friends had that effect on me when I was twenty-two!

Christmas approached, and I imagined the feast that Mum and Dad would put on for us.  Turkey and all the trimmings, Christmas Pudding, and Trifle for Christmas Tea.

Calamity!  A couple of days before Christmas, my parents phoned to tell me to stay away.  They had both got flu.  They would be staying in bed.  I was not to go anywhere near them.

So I went shopping.  A powdered curry reconstituted with water, a half bottle of German Riesling, and an individual fruit Christmas Pudding.

I should mention that my bedsit was in a very large 200 year-old house overlooking the Park.  My ex-Polish landlord Teddy, and his family, and his wife's family and children, and two other people of my age all lived under the same roof.

One other thing about Teddy.  He had a tattoo on his arm.  It was a number.  Once, when we were by ourselves in the house, he explained that he had been a slave worker in Auschwitz for six months at the end of the War.  He told me a lot more, too, but it wasn't the sort of thing I'd want to write about here.  He was a lovely man, the sort of person you feel better for knowing.

Just as I was serving up my Christmas mini feast, there was a knock on the door.  In came Teddy.

"What are you doing here?  Why aren't you at home with your parents?"

I told him what had happened

"Oh dear!  I'm afraid I need your chair" he said, as he took my only dining chair and disappeared down the stairs.

I was destined to have a Perpendicular Christmas Dinner.

The door opened again.

"Well, come on!" he said, "I need someone to sit in it!"

So I followed him downstairs into the very elegant dining room, and he directed me to my chair.  There were three in his family around the table, as well as another four in his brother-in-law's family, two or three cousins, two or three friends, and four people from off the street.  Including me, about seventeen or eighteen of us sat down to a full Christmas dinner featuring a large roast goose.

It was quite remarkable.  I was reminded of it a few weeks ago, when I had a signed print reframed.  He gave it to me when I left his house to go to University.  He did not want it, and it was a good luck present from him to me.  Whenever I see it I am reminded of a very kind man who lived a very different life to my way of life at the same age, and his wife Renee, who both gave me such wonderful memories of a very special and unusual day!

Last Night I had a Dream

Last night I had a dream.

I was a boy of eleven again, and I was with my parents.  After our teatime picnic somewhere in the New Forest, Dad suggested that we head for Southampton Water as he had read that there were lots of ships in the Port of Southampton that evening.

Just as the Golden Hour was upon us, at about the time of sunset, we joined a friend with a small boat at Totton, then sailed down to Hythe Pier and back.  Back in 1957 there were no container ships and no container terminals.  There weren't many planes, either.  Those that had to travel, travelled by ship.

A series of ships with white hulls and yellow funnels were moored one behind the other in the New Docks.  These were vessels of the P&O and the Orient Lines.  All of them were moored in a straight line, bow to stern along the mile-long quay.

In those days, the local papers used to have a column giving dates, ship names, shipping lines, destinations, and sometimes even cargoes, so a small boy had much to dream about as he read the Shipping News.

Our little boat sailed down the River Test, past these huge liners, some of which were preparing for six- or even eight-week voyages.  The Chusan was in-bound from Singapore via the Suez Canal, while the sharp-eyed would notice the little blue flag with the white square flying from the bridge of the Orcades that denoted she would sail within the hour for the Mediterranean, Suez Canal, Aden and India.

Also outbound, but not until after dark, the Ocean Monarch of the Shaw Savill line made ready for her long journey through the Panama Canal and across the Pacific to Sydney, Australia.

The light was fading quite rapidly now as we passed two Union Castle Liners.

The Durban Castle and the Edinburgh Castle were smart as paint with their lavender hulls twinkling with the fairylights of the portholes, and their large floodlit red funnels with the black tops.

A Red Funnel ferry fussed out of the Town Quay on its way down Southampton Water to Cowes on the Isle of Wight.  Red Funnel was also the company that supplied the tugs at Southampton.  In the days before fancy devices like bowthrusters were invented, tugs had to manoeuvre the large vessels until they were going fast enough to steer by themselves.

Easily larger than the others, the Queen Elizabeth, of the Cunard Line was at the Ocean Terminal.  There was a deep sonorous note from her foghorn and she began to move!  She was outbound for New York, and would be there in about six days time.  She, too, had her two red and black funnels floodlit, and twinkles of lights in her black hull and white superstructure.  Soon, her passengers, film stars, politicians and businessmen would take their places at some of the many onboard restaurants as the ship sailed round the Isle of Wight.  She had four tugs round her, like a mother hen and her chicks.  There was a tug at the front, one at each side, and one at the stern, facing the other way to keep her straight.  They were soon discarded.

It was now dark and we were below Hythe Pier, almost as far as the huge Warsash Naval Hospital.

A wonderful sight!  The two-funnelled Queen Elizabeth, having discarded her tugs, disappeared down Southampton Water, and as she did so, the three-funnelled Queen Mary, inbound from New York, passed each other.

We turned round and headed back to Totton, past the "Mary", which was berthing at the Ocean Terminal.  Past the Orcades as she began her long voyage to India.  We passed the other liners, everyone a mass of lights, until we got back to Totton.

I remember it as if it were yesterday.

Thinking about it, it was, when I was fast asleep.

What a shame digital cameras had not been invented when I was a boy.