Skip to main content

Preparation

Yesterday I wrote about preparing for the week ahead. Now we have just completed the last meeting of the Environment Committee before recess. That too was forward-looking.

We have about 25 more weeks sitting before we depart Parliament for the 2021 election which will determine who will serve in Session 6. I have had the privilege and enormous pleasure of serving in the first five sessions since we resumed after being prorogued in 1707. But now my mind turns to reviewing the past and planning for the future. As I will be 75 next year, I will be handing over to a successor.

But I also need a short term plan for our much-abbreviated summer recess. We will come back when the schools resume in the week starting 11th August and will have a Parliamentary meeting every week until then. But no Committees.

So a wee bit of space to pick up some much neglected personal interests. But no vacation booked.

The first of these has to involve my main hobby - family research. There's been quite a flood of emails from people all over the world with queries and suggestions relating to the 12,755 people in my published family tree.

Now since any living people have their details redacted in what I publish, many contacts are speculative based our shared surnames. With my having 304 Stevensons in my tree, the odds are that a familiar name may be among them. And there were 3,742 Stevensons born in Scotland this century. It's not a rare name.

But more to the point is the Mains of Nairn. That's the family of my spouse. Her great-great-grandmother, Isabella Main Callie, was born in 1805 and died in 1883. But surely she's a "Callie" you might say? No, she's a Main. That's because there are so many Mains in Nairn, our family tree has 400, that they need a qualifier to distinguish the different strands of the family. That is a "tee name" that follows the surname. So "Callie" tells you which Main family she's part of.

I have discovered over a hundred people called Main, who married someone called Main, and in addition, where all the parents of both are also called Main. And that's just in Nairn, a town with a population of about 4,000. So you can see the problem.

I have gathered in a lot of the records that I need to undertake research. I now just need some time to make sense of it all. If possible.

The fact that Register House in Edinburgh is currently closed is a bit of an impediment. But there's plenty to do before I need to visit.

As I write, we have had two days without a COVID-19 death. So we may reach phase 4 of plans for a recovery faster than I imagined a month or so ago. And may make my being able to access many of the records I need, somewhat easier.

I receive each month magazines from bodies of which I am a member; The Association for Computing Machinery [ACM], The Institution of Engineering and Technology [IET], The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce [RSA].

All are sources of properly researched and peer-reviewed papers. I have a lot still to read.

With the worldwide pandemic at the forefront of public policy and private concern, it's no surprise that their publications are chock-full of interesting information. But given the novelty of the COVID-19 virus, most papers are pre-peer. In other words, yet to be formally reviewed by other academics.

So even in esteemed journals, one must read with caution. Even the long-established "Lancet", the house journal of the medical professions, had to withdraw a plausible but deeply flawed paper they had published.

The ACM has trodden safer ground and looked to identify existing research and techniques that might find a new application in our dealing with this new bug.

The Chief Internet Evangelist at Google, wow! - ain't that some title, Vinton Cerf, writes this month in the "Communications of the ACM" about computer techniques that may assist in understanding the DNA and RNA of the virus. He talks of billions of pieces of information that need to be analysed, compared, matched. In particular, the "docking" mechanisms by which the virus attaches itself to cells in humans. We've never needed raw computing power so much. And appropriate algorithms with which crunch the data.

He starts, however, by making the very important point that he is writing his article in late April. I and others are reading it nearly two months later. He acknowledges that much may have changed over that time.

In the same publication, Jeremy Roschelle who, inter alia, is a Fellow of the International Society of the Learning Sciences, writes about remote learning. His writing (http://bit.ly/2UzlwPI) was particularly interesting for its insights into an electronic blackboard which could be used to teach, challenge and promote collaboration. That latter point was, for me at least, the most important, as I had been worrying about the potential loss of social skills because of solitary learning.

See; haven't even got to recess quite yet but still finding a little time to catch up on my wider reading.

But the next month will also be a time for my reflecting on a new skill related to writing.

My professional life before politics had always involved a fair bit of writing. But looking through the filing cabinets of my life's work, few documents I've written are much more than about 15 pages.

I now look at the diary recording my life and thoughts over the last three months and gaze with some astonishment at the 110,000 words which fill 322 A4 pages. With only the commitment to set aside about 60 to 90 minutes each and every day for writing, I have written what would constitute a book. That's not a skill I imagine I had at the beginning of this year, or of any year.

It's kind of back to the Mao Zedong aphorism; "How do you make a journey of a thousand miles? One step at a time".

Logically I should have known that if I could write 15 pages, I could write hundreds.

The bigger question, however, is whether a collection of largely stand-alone essays equate to a book when their only linkage is their single author and a timeline.

Another task for the five weeks.

Do they?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Not always "right, right, right"

It's been a cracking week for home-working, and a wee bit of socialising. Sixteen online MSP sign-ins for meetings. And one for a social get-together. There has been some exercise as well, with my weather-beaten look being more than adequately topped up in the bright sun we have experienced over the last few days. I splashed out and bought a new gilet. It replaces one I purchased at the Turra Show more than ten years ago. And its replacement might have been acquired from the same stall but for the COVID-driven cancellation of one of our most important local events. It's a particular shame not have had our usual meeting of Parliamentarians and farmers at the NFU tent. The term hybrid is now most used by your Parliamentarians to describe meetings where some are physically present and others dial-in. But until this year, this term meant in one part a delightful combination of a formal agenda, speakers and question and answer at that gathering. The other half, justifying th...

Weighing in

There is excitement in my god-daughter's household. This is the week when school's back. When you have spent months only in the company of adults, a return to having a good gossip with your peers is like having a hod of bricks taken off your shoulder. You can learn how to carry a heavy weight but not necessarily welcome the opportunity to do so. As a student, one of my summer jobs was as a van driver for a laundry company. I previously wrote about my visits in that role to our local GCHQ outstation. But every day was a different round. But almost every day involved heavy-lifting. It was one of the first things I got taught before being sent out on my own with the van. For the first week, the foreman came with me while I learned the routes I would be following each day. The pattern of the routes was straightforward. From 0900 to about 1100 hours, I called on domestic dwellings. Returning the freshly laundered items which had been given to the van-man a week ago. And coll...

As we sow, we reap

Not everything changes because of the pandemic. The spring barley was planted on schedule earlier this year just across the road from the entrance to the track down to our house. And this week the combine is in the field harvesting the results. This layman's eye reckons it looks a good crop. No rain had flattened any of that field and even the damp hollow on one edge of the field showed no lack of growth. By comparison with a farmer who tries to earn a living from milk and therefore is tied every single day of the year to the needs of their beasts, the arable farmer seems to have an easy life. Not necessarily. While it is possible to lay-off some of the risks from weather, disease and variable price for one's crop, that simply means sharing the income with others who take on your risk. The field near us was cut in two days. The stalks became neatly bound rolls of straw and the grain had been carried away. Speed is of the essence and mechanisation the key to that. The mo...