Lucky Bad Boy Arthur B Gibbs

Or is that Arthur Godfrey Fossett Gibbs?

Altogether there were 247,061 officers in the British army in World War I; 164,255 survived.  There were probably a good deal less who survived three years. Arthur Gibbs did not shirk his duty. He could not even shelter behind his bath because some other lucky chap was carrying it.

So he was very lucky. But why was he never promoted?
And oddly he remained a lieutenant all that time (1) when officers were famously dying like flies, . (What was the life expectancy of a junior officer?) I have only found one point in his letters (p 207) where he ever sounds disgruntled. He wrote: "Perhaps it is just as well that I don’t write much on those occasions: if I did you might get permanent depression from reading what I should write, and I might be court-martialled for writing exactly what I thought about the staff and all their work."

But I reckon he told the staff what he thought of them and all their evil stupid work and the grand children of Queen Victoria, the Russian tsar, the German kaiser and the English king were evil and stupid (2). What cousins would slaughter their friends and countrymen for a ridiculous theory of attrition?

So he never got promoted. My opinion of the Gibbs branch has up-ticked enormously. They make the Keeling lot look like pussies.

Arthur Gibbs knew and did what was right, even when everybody was against him.  I followed his example all my life. I'm very proud and pleased that I have found a new hero and that he's my grandfather.

Here's the plate he somehow gave me after he died. I suppose that is something heroes can do. Cool.

Robert and Trevor have or had similar plates to these.

I will give mine to whoever of AGB's descendants does as well as him. I might have to leave one of you to be the judge.

Notes
1) Brave Lucky Boy Arthur Gibbs was temporarily promoted to Captain for four weeks, then demoted. He was quite annoyed about that. (p 393 of the letters, he was sort of promoted Aug 16 1918)

2) From 'The Better Angels of our Nature' by Steven Pinker & Wikipedia. The Flynn effect the substantial and long-sustained increase in both fluid and crystallized intelligence test scores measured in many parts of the world from roughly 1930: "If a teenager now went back to 1910, he or she would have an IQ of 130". Reversing that, the Russian tsar, the German kaiser and the English king as measured now would have IQ's of about 70. They would have to be kept in special care.

Comment
My own take is this – an educated guess and no more:
1) Survival: I am nor sure one can approach the likelihood or otherwise of survival of an individual purely on a statistical basis. There will have been plenty of lieutenants who were on active service in France who had relatively safe jobs, such as ‘embarkation officers’, lieutenants in charge of transport animals, and those in the artillery to take some examples. In Arthur’s case I believe that his job in charge of the proppers, repairing trenches night in night out, was undoubtedly dangerous – the march up to the front line was itself hazardous and being in the front line trenches in need of repair must have had its own separate hazards in addition to the normal ones of sniper and artillery fire. However, I would expect an analysis to show that his job was relatively safer than that of his colleagues who had to lead reconnaissance missions into no man’s land and also assaults ‘over the top’. If one looks at the History of the Welsh Guards by Dudley Ward one sees that most of his contemporaries in the Battalion were very severely wounded or killed in the typical manner of the slaughter – shrapnel from high explosive and whilst carrying out some form of reconnaissance or assault.

2) the lack of promotion (he would have started as 2nd Lieutenant and been promoted to full Lieutenant) I think reflects the size of the body of men under his direct command. Therefore, insofar as he continued to do the same job of commanding the proppers on their nightly visits to repair the trenches, promotion was not going to come his way. Also, presumably, there would have been an expected quota of 2nd Lts., Lts., and Captains within a Battalion. I cannot recall the circumstances of his temporary promotion to Captain, but it often happened when there was simply a shortage of survivors to occupy the relevant quota.


Posted by: Howard Palmer QC | July 29, 2013 at 01:52 PM

Immigration advice please!

Hello

Does anyone know anyone who works in immigration law or might know anything about the workings of the Canadian visa system?

I'm moving to Canada for a year in September (if all goes to plan) with my boyfriend who's got a job in Montreal and we have a couple of questions about the visa application process that we cannot seem to get answered by the internet - or by the infuriating automated Canadian embassy helpline service.

If anyone knows anyone who might know anything, we'd be really grateful for some advice.

Thanks, and love to you all

Poppy

xx

Ralph Keeling and Dad

Paul spotted this branch of the family first, in the Economist yawn and David said he had "heard of Charles David". The clan lives on!

I would have picked it up sooner if I paid more attention to my beloved New Scientist and if it came by Transporter Beam.

Atmospheric scientist Ralph Keeling explains the importance of measuring a CO₂ concentration of 400 parts per million at the observatory his father set up

The Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii has reportedly recorded a carbon dioxide concentration there of 400 parts per million for the first time. How significant is that?
It's a psychological milestone. Every year in the last few decades, CO₂concentrations have been going up by about 2 ppm per year. Those changes go unnoticed but people pay attention to round numbers. It gives you a bit of perspective on how far we've come – a bit like turning 40, or 50.

So how far have we come?
Before the industrial revolution, we started at about 280 ppm. 100 years ago, levels had risen to around 300, and they crossed 350 in the late 1980s. We think the last time concentrations were as high as 400 ppm was between 3 and 5 million years ago, when the world was much warmer.

What did Earth look like 3-5 million years ago?
It had much higher sea levels, forests extended all the way to the Arctic Ocean, and there was almost certainly a lot less sea ice. Today, sea ice is melting rapidly, and in the last decades we have seen the tree line moving north into the Arctic tundra.

Are we in a climate danger zone?
In my view, yes. At 400 ppm, we've perturbed Earth enough already that things could unfold that will be catastrophic.

We passed 400 ppm for the first time last year, above the Arctic. What is special about the Mauna Loa record?
It's the one record that has high resolution going back to the late 1950s – when my father set it up.

Why did he start tracking CO₂ at Mauna Loa?
In the early 1950s, he was at the California Institute of Technology studying carbon in rivers. As part of that, he developed a way to measure CO₂ in the air. He discovered that if you measured concentrations in a sufficiently remote place, you almost always got the same number. That was unexpected. Previous work suggested CO₂ levels were more variable, making measurement very difficult. The realisation that there was a stable background level meant the challenge of measuring the increase might not be so great. You simply had to go to a place far enough from contamination and track it over time. The Mauna Loa measurements came later, beginning in 1958.

When did he first see a steady rise in CO₂ – what is now known as the Keeling curve?
The early days at Mauna Loa were fraught. Power outages meant the measuring instrument had to be shut down for weeks. It would come back on reading a different level. He thought there should be a stable background, but concentrations were fluctuating. It was only when he'd gathered a year of data that he realised there was a seasonal cycle.

So levels may drop below 400 ppm again?
Crossing from below to above 400 will play out over years, partly because there is a natural up and down with the seasons. But this time next year it will be higher still. In a couple of years we'll never get below 400 again.

This article appeared in print under the headline "One minute with... Ralph Keeling"

On New Scientist here: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21829180.300-weve-reached-a-troubling-carbon-dioxide-milestone.html

LIONBOY four star review in the Guardian

Click the link: Review in the Guardian

Lionboy in Bristol - EXCELLENT

Three cheers and more to Poppy!! Last night Siobhan and I took Imogen and Flora with two of their friends to see Lionboy in Bristol. It was EXCELLENT and we all had a wonderful evening. The show was great fun and brilliantly produced by the Assistant Producer (Poppy). The evening was all the more fun because Poppy was able to meet us with her boyfriend Rob and after the show took us all backstage and let us walk the boards and rub shoulders with top members of the Complicite team. This was in spite of the fact that there was a press evening with all the national newspapers there. Thank you very much Poppy and keep making shows and entertaining the crowds! xxTom

Belated cricket news

Captain Paul tries to put the blame on George:
"My deepest apologies for not having provided a live feed direct from the pitch in Sedlescombe straight into to your [George's] apartment in Berlin.  I would have called of course, but what with you opting to drop off the grid in terms of telephones, I was foiled in my efforts!

As Simon said – we won.  In fact we won handsomely.  After a fine lunch provided by Mum and Dad at the the Brickwall hotel, and with a much missed sun burning high in an extraordinarily (for recent UK weather) clear sky, we won the toss and put the village into bat.  After some early stubborn resistance, the village fell apart under a sustained seam attack from our very professional and disciplined line up of attack bowlers.  They were all out for 137.  In response and after a small wobble right at the top of our order, the Keeling batting held firm and we raced past their total with the loss of only 3 wickets and with more than 15 overs to spare.  All agreed it was excellent to be able to repair to the pub early, for general merry making and celebrations."

Did anyone else see this? Has anyone heard of him before?

From the Economist May 11th:

Environmental monitoring
Four hundred parts per million

The only good news about the Earth’s record greenhouse-gas levels is that they have been well measured

CHARLES D. KEELING, mostly known as Dave, was a soft-spoken, somewhat courtly man who changed the way people and governments see the world. A slightly aimless chemistry graduate with an interest in projects that took him out into the wild, in 1956 he started to build instruments that could measure the proportion of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, a scientific topic which, back then, was barely even a backwater. In 1958, looking for a place where the level of carbon dioxide would not be too severely influenced by local plants or industry, he installed some instruments high up on Mauna Loa, a Hawaiian volcano. He found that the level fluctuated markedly with the seasons, falling in northern summer as plants took up carbon dioxide and rising in northern winter as dead foliage rotted. And he found that the annual average was 315 parts per million (ppm).

62 years and they still love it!

Happy anniversary Mum and Dad.

Comments

Thank you George! We have had a very happy day with Trevor and family, now we are on our own again and returning to our normal routine of sleep! Lol Mum, (Dad is already in the land of Nod)

Posted by: jenifer Keeling | April 21, 2013 at 03:43 PM

Mid Life Epiphany?

When I told Ruth that quite a few amazing things had happened to me recently she kindly wrote, "Wow. Mobile phone, German, food, hearing. Are you having some of mid life epiphany?" Maybe an old age epiphany ....

In the last few months I have

• Discovered I am not going deaf, the ear doctor plucked wax slugs out of my ears.
• Simultaneously become much more interested in food. I quite often make myself a three course lunch. E.g. this afternoon: avocado, pear in mustard pickle (delicious secret old German recipe), cheese and biscuits.
• Found German very easy to speak and understand. The border is down, it's so much fun.
• Got totally relaxed without a mobile phone*.
• Experienced a creative and inventive surge. I now have six projects cooking.

Could food appreciation and being able to hear be connected? I will ask the ear doctor when I see her in September.

(*) Camilla said.
"I was remembering going to the Isle of Wight festival - sometime in the 1780s [sic]....and spending four days looking for the people I was meant to be meeting. Never happened, but I met lots of lovely new people. Your mobile free life will be full of such pleasures."
Thanks darling!

Casewise Burns

That's the Casewise office in Watford where I used to work all day. I am still a director. It caught fire Monday April 15, nobody was hurt :-)

FD Mike Hodes said, "That will take care of the dilapidation costs." He then told us that Casewise made a good profit in Quarter 1.

MD Alex Wentzo writes: We have already moved into a new office on the same street: 54 Clarendon Rd, Watford, Hertfordshire, WD17 1DU. Our new temporary phone number is: +44 (0)115 966 8111.

Our internal IT team has been working all day to set our internal network up. It would probably take this week to be back as normal. Concerning the UK employees, you will be contacted by your manager today to confirm when you can come back to the office.

On the phone he told me: It's cheaper thatn the old office. Extra profit in Q2!

More in the Watford Observe here.

Comment
Glad to hear they're doing well. Maybe we'll get a dividend, once they've claimed on the insurance.

Posted by: Carrie | April 17, 2013 at 02:16 PM

Pestalozzi tournament Sunday 23 June

Pestalozzi tournament to be held here on Sunday 23 June .   Please pass this email on to your wives, ex-wives, children and children's boy/girl friends.  It would be nice to have a Keeling final!  Entry forms on request.

Lol  Mum / Granny

LIONBOY

David Camilla Granny and Granpa are going to the Lionboy show (see two posts earlier) at the Unicorn Theatre in London at 2pm on Saturday 13th July. Please come and join us. Tickets are £16 with concessions for the old, the young and students. Seating is not numbered so we'll all be able to sit together. Half the seats are currently sold.

Though the show is billed as a "family" event, it is staged by Complicite and should be dramatic and interesting for adults.

If you can't make this date but want to go it's on for 2 weeks in London; if you can't get to London it's on in various places around the country - Bristol and Oxford being particularly of interest to some.

This is Poppy's big show at the moment - don't miss it!
Comment
It's on 11–15 June in Oxford. If anybody else wants to see it here, let me know.

Posted by: Carrie | April 04, 2013 at 02:02 PM

Happy Birthday to Trevor!

LIONBOY

A major production for Complicite
Assistant producer Poppy Keeling

Showing in London at the Unicorn Theatre from July Tuesday 9 -Sunday 21

Also at
Bristol Old Vic May 29 - Jun 1
Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse Jun 4 - 8
Oxford Playhouse Jun 11 - 15
Warwick Arts Centre Jun 18 - 20
West Yorkshire Playhouse June 25 - 29
Wales Millenium Centre July 2 - 6

Charlie Ashanti is eleven years old. He’s a perfectly normal boy, except for one thing: he can speak to cats. When Charlie’s parents are kidnapped, he sets off on a rescue mission – with a little help from a floating circus and its pride of performing lions.

‘Complicite produces the most imaginative theatre to be found anywhere.’ Independent

‘Since 1983…Complicite has been helping us make sense of the world, making us laugh and weep and making us see things we would otherwise have missed...It is the reason I go to the theatre’ Telegraph

From the novels by Zizou Corder
Directed by Annabel Arden
Assistant Producer Poppy Keeling (shamefully not on the main flyers, but it's true)
Adapted by Marcelo dos Santos
With Annabel Arden, Louisa Young, Mike Kenny and the Company

Award-winning theatre company Complicite presents its first show for families and young people, inspired by Zizou Corder’s best-selling Lionboy trilogy and with a cast including Adetomiwa Edun from BBC’s Merlin.


An adventure that will inspire and entertain, don’t miss this new play at the Unicorn on its only London tour dates.
Comment
Or see it at the Oxford Playhouse first. I will.

Posted by: Carrie | March 05, 2013 at 01:32 PM

Cabaret Fantastique

Chief reporter on Radio 4

Chief Reporter Ruth Keeling of the Local Government Chronicle was interviewed today on the BBC's World At One. The World At One is the most listened to program in my flat. She had found out the plain truth about local council tax rises and subsidies and told us.

You can listen here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01qkmp4
The interview with Ruth starts at 22:40
The recording says it is available for seven days - to 21/2/2013. But the archives say they go back to 1970.

Posted by a proud Dad
Comment
The next Pulitzer prize winner! - never doubted it for a second

Posted by: Paul & Van | February 15, 2013 at 09:40 AM

Win Gibbs, 1898-1988

Win Gibbs

Win Gibbs was born 30th July 1898 and she died 10th November 1988 at the Clarence Nursing Home in Tunbridge Wells. Her parents were Arthur Gibbs and Ena (nee Ladd) whose children were Arthur (1894), Brian (1896), Win (1898) and Marjorie (1905). Arthur the son became Barbar's husband. Arthur and Barbar are the maternal grandparents of the 8 brothers.

Win's parents lived in Bramley Surrey, Win lived there too. Earliest known fact: She quarrelled with her father and left home 'penniless' to work and live in a cake shop in Rye or possibly a tea shop in Windsor,  where she discovered the warmth that newspapers could provide. Apparently her father fell out with quite a lot of people. Win was also no easy companion. Sue Goodsir (who started this enquiry) tells us that Win founded the ladies section at Bramley golf club, presumably before the falling out with her father.

She had learnt golf in Scotland in very windy conditions and usually went there when young for the shooting. She was always travelling for that, so never had proper birthday parties.

She moved to a Brit colony in South Africa. Possibly SA itself, maybe Rhodesia or another colony. There in the 20s or 30s she became ladies golf champion. She got to the finals and was matched against a well known and very good player who was the hot favourite. On the day of the competition it was very windy. The Scottish practice told in her favour and much to the surprise of all she took the cup.

She married Arthur French from Johannesburg on 25th June 1927. We do not know if that was the reason for migration. He was 28 years older than her, born in 1870, and he died aged 65 on 24th September 1935. She then married Robert Stewart Munn on 4th December 1940 in Johannesburg. She later changed her name back to French. Her only child came from the first union. He was Phillip Arthur French, who became a doctor and died of suicide age 35. There is a Capt. P. A. FRENCH, M.B. (478966) recorded in the London Gazette. We do not believe this is him. Win outlived her second husband as well and returned to UK in the 1960s.

Win died on 10th November 1988 in the Clarence Nursing Home in Tunbridge Wells. Mum (Jenifer Keeling, Win's niece) tells us that Win met her brother Arthur's great grand daughter Ruth Keeling in 1983. Mum often visited Win in the nursing home.

Win's full first name was Winifred, nickname Winsome. Mum said she was 'very good looking' - a common failing in the Gibbs family.

Jenifer Keeling (niece), Howard Palmer (son of other niece) told all this to George.

Click for more very old Gibbs photos and comments

More shows from Van - and this time it's family, so you have to come!!

Your cousin Tom Palmer will be working with Van.  DO NOT miss it!!

JV Productions present TOTALLY TOM - at the St James' Studio Theatre on Thursday February 7th - ticket price £12.50 - £15.00 - to book contact www.stjamestheatre.co.uk or telephone 0844 264 2140

or, if you can't wait that long to get your comedy fix, how about 24th January?

Comment

Do you think I will get Cherry to join me there? !!! I'm afraid not, but we will certainly have some fun talking about it!!! Lol Jenny

Posted by: jenifer Keeling | January 11, 2013 at 10:36 AM

The Scottish Play at the Camden People's Theatre

Well who would have thought it was by Will Shakespeare himself? But most importantly my lovely girlfriend, Louise, will be playing the part of Lady Macbeth. Yes, that's right Lady M. The theatre is just by Warren St./ Euston Station so you don't even have to travel to Camden proper.

Anyway, if you fancy a night out in February please come along. I work just around the corner, so it will be very easy for me to drop by for pre/post performance drinks, so what more are you waiting for, well we could try and get Poppy roped in (and don't forget Ruth is now floating in the vicinity).

All the best

Trevor (the younger)

Comment
ooh definitely
Posted by: Carrie | January 04, 2013 at 12:53 PM

Who knows? Feb 24 being my 84th birthday we might turn up! All the best to Lady Macbeth.
Lol Granny and Grandpa
Posted by: jenifer Keeling | January 04, 2013 at 12:21 PM

Than sounds great. Congrats to Louise, break a leg etc. Would love to come along. Count me in. Jo
Posted by: Jo Keeling | January 04, 2013 at 11:45 AM

How exciting. Definitely ... C on hol first two weeks of Feb, so last week for us. Well done Louise!

Posted by: David | January 04, 2013 at 10:44 AM

Ahoy there!

As my previous post said, I have moved onto a canal boat. I have been on board a week so far and it has been very different, a lot of fun and - at times - extremely vexing.
Moving house is always a royal pain and the unpacking just as much - you can't find anything and you come home each evenig from work to a whole evening's work of wandering around finding that the place where the thing from box A needs to go is cluttered with boxes B and C and things in box B and C need to go where boxes E and F are stacked up, so on and so forth. Imagine that in a space 58x7ft. Chaos.
The boat was also really cold the first week. It had been empty a month, so the cold & damp had claimed squatters rights. Plus the wood/coal burner was missing a pane of glass and I couldn't get the new one in place due to a bolt which had become fused to the bolt I needed to take off first. And the timer on the electric heater failed the first two mornings (human error).
The whole idea of renting this boat was to test a long-held romantic notion of life on the water and see if I might buy my own one day, but by Friday night I hated it and thought I had made a massive mistake (as predicted by many friends and acquaintances in recent months).
But, Dad's lovely friends Alex & Gavin visited on Saturday and fixed the burner (Alex) and taught me to make a good fire (Gavin). I have spent the rest of the weekend as snug as a bug in a...boat - and unpacking. There will be more challenges - today I clambered down the side of the boat to fill up the water tank and tomorrow the fuel boat arrives so I need to make sure I don't miss the ;ast delivery of gas & coal until after Christmas - but right now I am back in romantic boat loving mode.
I'm moored just behind Kings Cross, so pop in if you're in the area xxx

For these two photos I am standing in the middle of the boat where the bathroom is. Above is the front of the boat, where my bed is. There is a window/door above the bed to get out to the very front of the boat.
Below is looking over the back of the sofa into the kitchen and the 'front' door where I come in and out. Behind the front door is the engine room and steps out to the wharf. You can see my cat Sasha on the kitchen floor.

This last picture was taken by Mr Alex 'Hero' Galli just after he fixed the burner. You can see how happy I was.

Comments
Apologies, 07939 then the rest. Fooled by my own anti phone bot cleverness
Posted by: Ruth | December 10, 2012 at 11:37 PM

They should! It's the only thing that's going to sort out my housing crisis, and demand already outstrips supply on moorings in the same way it does on houses in London. I'm zero seven one three nine 522355 xxx
Posted by: Ruth | December 10, 2012 at 11:36 PM

FANTASTIC!!! Maybe they'll start building new canals to sort out the housing crisis. Next time I'm up in London I'll phone to see if I'm invited. What's your phone number? xx David
Posted by: David | December 10, 2012 at 04:57 PM

It turns out I do have a postal address! I'll email it to you xxx
Posted by: Ruth | December 10, 2012 at 02:01 PM

I had no idea that you were moving into a canal boat! You are adventurous ! No wonder you didn't want the wing armchair !Hooray for Gavin and Alex fixing the heating! I daresay that you haven't a POSTAL address..... Lol Granny and Grandpa.
Posted by: Jenifer Keeling | December 10, 2012 at 01:00 PM

Wow! It looks very cosy and I hope it proves a great success and everything you hope for. I've arranged to collec the armchair and little table from Carolyn, so that is in hand. Tom

Posted by: Tom the older | December 10, 2012 at 10:24 AM