SC1 Who am I?
First Written in 1992
This, the first note in the sequence is not going to be a set of deep thoughts about my existence but a few simple facts to give others an image of the person behind these words. I do not consider myself special in any way but I believe that everyone has got something to say that is worth saying and the sad thing about life is that so few of them actually do say it. There are many ways a one page note like this could be written. I have tried to indicate some of the influences that have formed my ideas from a personal and religious point of view.
I am male, white, just 48 years old at the start of this exercise, just over six feet tall, and with a brownish complexion and hair. I am a scientist and an engineer. I am a practising member of the Church of England. My deep family roots lie in Sussex and Wiltshire but I was born in Leicester of parents that had strong associations with West London. I spent most of my childhood and youth in Bolton Lancashire where I attended Bolton County Grammar School before going to University College London to take a degree in Physics.
My father died when I was 8 and my mother took over the shoe shop he ran. My father's parents moved in to look after my sister and I when my mother was out at work. My mother married Ernest when I was 15. He was an archetypal dodgy scrap dealer!
My first job was in Liverpool working for Plessey Telecommunications on the designs for the first digital telephone exchanges. Two years later I accepted a job at EMI Central Research Laboratories in Hayes Middlesex (near Heathrow Airport). This is where I still work, more than 25 years later. The reason for this is not lack of ambition but the fact that I have been very lucky to be allowed to do work that is very close to the sort of things that I would chose to do if I had a free choice. My job title "Senior Staff Scientist" indicates that I fall into the wild boffin category!
I had been in Middlesex for about five years before I got married to Helen, a vicar's daughter from Bridlington. She introduced me to the Church of England. I had until that time been a lapsed Methodist. After seven years and two children, insoluble communication problems that were affecting the mental health of Helen forced separation and divorce upon us.
Within a few years we had both remarried people who had similarly failed in their first attempt at marriage. Both of these marriages seemed much more successful and we are all on reasonably friendly terms. Our children Jane and Mark are now 19 and 20 and at University and training for nursing respectively.
My second wife Jose was born in Scarborough and also has strong associations with Leicester but spent most of her formative years in Wellington Somerset. She is a career businesswoman working in the area of commercial management. This involves negotiating and agreeing contracts and assessing and controlling the risks of large and complex projects.
Among the many things we share in common is a great delight in debating all sorts of topics including religion and politics. She is currently unable to forgive the Church for all the sins that are committed in the name of religion and prefers to maintain independence. She doesn't get on with mystical mumbo jumbo either, preferring a rational, take things as they are, approach. However she does have a deep-seated feeling that there is "something behind it all".
I too have misgivings about the failings of religion, particularly fundamentalism, but that does not prevent me being involved. Jose however will however nail her colours to the mast politically having strong Tory leanings but wet and dry in patches so to speak! My approach is entirely the opposite because I am the true floating voter and have voted for all the main political parties in my time frequently voting for the side that loses because I strongly believe in consensus politics rather than conflict politics.
My current church involvements are quite complex. This is because although we work in the West London area and live during the week in Bracknell we both love the west country and spend as much time as possible in and around what we think of as our real home at Tiverton in Devon. Our joint passion for Wave Ski Surfing has something to do with this.
I currently prefer to attend quiet early morning services. This results in me attending three churches on a moderately regular basis. It also results in me being unknown to all but a small number of people in any of them. As well as attending services I am involved with a Christian Fellowship group at work and a regular Christianity and Science group in association with my church at Bracknell.
January 2000 Update.
At 56 I have now after 32 years retired from my job at CRL and taken a reduced pension early but I still contract some of my time back to them as an independent consultant. I did this with the deliberate intent of being able to put more effort into wider areas of interest that I would not expect to be paid for (including this one).
Several significant changes have taken place over the eight years since I first wrote this note. Firstly the CRL I retired from was an independent Intellectual property and research organisation. It had bought itself out of EMI although internally it still has the same innovative flair. Secondly my wife is now reasonably happy with Tony Blair's "conservative" politics and totally disillusioned by the extremist deathwish of the current Conservative Party. Finally my first wife Helen's second marriage broke down but she is now with what looks to me like a real soulmate Robert when we all met amicably at my son's wedding in January 1999.
March 2009 update.
I am now 65 and a real pensioner and so is my wife Jose who has just had her 60th birthday. We are now living permanently in Tiverton and I am very much involved with the local U3A. We have recently given up surfing and taken up indoor bowls a more sedate sport. I still attend church regularly at 8am. My son and daughter in law have produced three grandchildren. My daugter is still single after her long term relationship with a university friend broke down a few years ago. My first wife is also back on her own again after her third marriage failed she is nearing retirement too. The arrival of the Virtual U3A and the finding of Wikis has been a spur to improve and develop these writings.
August 2017 update
I am now 74 and still going strong on ideas although I am getting a bit "frayed around the edges" physically. Still very involved with the U3A and Indoor Bowls I am also very involved with the vU3A or virtual U3A which aims to give a "U3A like" social and educational experience in writing online. Jose and still enjoy walking and exploring and are using coach trips around England and Europe as well as driving ourselves. we have recently got electric bike which has renewed our interest in cycling. Faithwise I describe myself as and Atheist who believes in religion. This is because I see that the basic concepts of recognising a compassionate all aware higher authority or "god" who is bound by the physics of our universe is a good way of understanding the evolution defined universe in which we exist.
After some 25 years of deep thinking on Evolutionary philosophy I have reached back right to the depths of cosmology and feel I have a model for the origin of our and orther universes that lives within the range of current theoretical physics and is disprovable. I also feel that the climate of deep thought is coming round towards a lot of what I have been thinking about for many years in many ways and I should put more effort into making others aware of my ideas before I die and they die with me.
May 2021 Update
Coronavirus lockdown has given me much more time for research, thinking and writing and amazing progress has been made on my evolutionary cosmology work so much so that I am currently writing a serious paper for publication recent ideas published by Neil Turock of the Perimeter Institute in Canada on the two part universehave enabled me to create the concept of an Episodic Cyclic Cosmology where a simple stellar mass black hole creates a universe similar to ours bit consisting of antimatter with a reversed time flow. This is totally natural and far simpler than current ideas, complies fully with CPT symmetry, thermodynamics, Noether's Theorems also it fully explains quantum theory in simple terms and gets rid of a lot of awkward "fudges" like inflation fields and Higgs fields which appear as a natural process in the conversion of the energy created during gravitational collapse into a new "big bang" universe dominated by antimatter. Conversely of course our universe originated in the collapse of a stellar mass black hole in an antimatter dominated universe. There are several anomalous observations and predictions that also support this concept.
Comments (4)
rosemary Titterington said
at 4:58 pm on Mar 13, 2011
Thank you for a fascinating account of your gradual development through life, work, marriages, children and religious feelings. Impressed by your simplicity and honesty. Quite humbling. Do you regret any actions or - do you put them down to experience and evolve. Very important that we leave some written accounts of our lives for our grandchildren. David is doing this at present as it keeps him from fretting about being inactive. He was astonished at how fascinating our grandson finds it, as it opens up 'real life' to place against the cleansed history books.
Fran said
at 8:52 pm on May 10, 2011
I have just come across this group and am presently reading through all the comments, I personally keep a daily diary and have done for many years, I first started writing a diary when we moved to Germany so I could make my letters back to Mum interesting. I have kept up the writiing but now it is contained on a memory stick and not hard copy, much easier to keep up with. My grandchildren are also interested in things I can tell them about my own childhood and also things I can tell them about my parents although not my grandparents as I didnt know them. The diaries have also proved to be easy access when trying to remember certain events,.
Ian Kimber said
at 9:24 pm on May 10, 2011
Thank you for your comments Fran however this is not a group or part if the vU3A it is my own personal webspace that is open to all to read hosted by PBworks at http://iankimber.pbworks.com and accessed from the main web via http://www.iankimber.org.uk this is because the PBworks sites are not recorded in google and cannot be searched for using normal search engines. You are however very welcome to explore and comment. My wife keeps a daily very detailed diary and started this as a retirement project. I have never managed to have the discipline to do this. I also wish that I had asked more questions of my grandparents when I was young. Looking back at the vU3A site there is an area. called living history where I encourage people to reach as far back into the past as possible and talk about what their grandparents told them about what life was like when they were young. My son has given all his older relatives a book called "grandparents memories" for us to fill in to record these things I have done some of them
Ian Kimber said
at 9:43 pm on May 10, 2011
Rosemary I don't think that I replied to your 13 March comment on my "who am I page" http://iankimber.pbworks.com/w/page/10732338/SC1--Who-am-I#cr1305060767 in my personal webspace. Sorry for the delay. I have no reason to regret any of my actions, In fact I feel that I have been very lucky. We all face sadness in our life and the death of my father when I was young was such an overwhelming sadness that it erased almost all of my memories of him and I have only in the last ten years or so been able to properly try to explore and write about this area in my life. It has also made me I think somewhat less sensitive than I should be to other peoples sadnesses or sensitivities.
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