https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/corrupt-system-of-family-law-1.1138391
Paranoia My father’s autobiography. http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/776.htm
To further autobiog., my career. http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x0357.htm
Ivorcatt.co.uk/rh25cbl
http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/9521.htm
http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/ivor.pdf
http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/wbnhs31.html
Autobiography
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Ivor Catt |
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I was born on the 19th December 1935 in the
Married Families Hospital in Mount Batten Air Force Station near Plymouth.
T.E. Lawrence had died less than a year previously. My father Syd had
known him in Mount Batten several years before, and in other locations.
My father had served in the army and then for many years in the R.A.F. When I
was born his rank was Warrant Officer, the highest non commissioned rank. My father's autobiography
deals with these matters. I know that we then had some time in the R.A.F.
Station at Abingdon, near Oxford, and Kenley, south of London. I have always
thought that at the age of two we moved to Singapore, but that cannot be
true, because I believe we spent only three years together in Singapore. This
would mean we went to Singapore in 1938 or 39, when I was four. My sister Margery is 29 months older than
me. I have some memory of an hotel where we first
stayed in Singapore, and a lot of recollection of our house later at 15
Tanglin Road. There was a dip in the road which we could see from the back
windows. The annual rainfall was 200 inches. When the rain fell, first the
cars got stuck, but the last thing to get through was the rickshaws. I
remember the bats flying about in the house, and later the bombing by the
Japanese. One landed quite near to our house, and shook the paint off the
walls. A Chinese family worked for us, and lived in the back of our house.
There were three generations, the youngest being A I. The grandmother was A
King, and I also remember A Heyah. I remember my
school, King's School, and the trench they dug in the garden as air raid
shelter where we went during the bombing. Two weeks before the Japanese captured
Singapore, my father got a place for my mother, sister and me on one of the
last boats to get away from Singapore. The ship had been bombed before we got
onto it, and five Australians killed. For this reason, it only went to Colombo,
Ceylon. Here we were put up in a requisitioned hospital up in the hills. My memory tells me that our ship was one of
the last four, two and two, to get away from Singapore. One of them (from the
other two) was sunk with one survivor, or perhaps none. My sister recently
said our ship was bombed while we were on it, but I have no recollection of
that. From Ceylon, my mother had the choice of
England, Australia or South Africa. Since my father had been so well received
in the first world war when torpedoed off Cape Town, she chose South Africa,
and a second boat took us to Durban. We were put up in a hotel 100 miles
south down the coast in Margate. We spent six weeks there. Before leaving the
boat from Ceylon, my mother saw an advert in the paper (which a sailor
dropped – we were not allowed off the boat because of an epidemic in Durban)
for a job in Cape Town University, and she got the post by letter. Some of
the lecturers had gone off to the war. It was easy for the University to hire
her without interview, because when in London University she had gained the
top of the First Class degrees in mathematics. We got on a train which took three days and
two nights to get to Cape Town. The train stopped for us to have meals, but
we slept on the train. Professor Brown, head of Mathematics Department, was
at Cape Town station to meet us. My mother Enid was the first woman lecturer
to work in the university. He put us in a boarding house, Rosendale (now
gone), in Rondebosch, on the main road in Rondebosch below the university.
Every Sunday we would take the train to Cape Town and visit the forces'
Married Families Club. On one side of a door was a notice; "Missing,
reported killed". On the other side of the door was a notice
"Missing, reported prisoner." The strain on my mother must have
been enormous. After a year, but later my mother said it was two years, my
father appeared in the list of reported prisoner. That day was a very happy
day. My sister and I went along the road to Rustenberg Girls' School, which took a few boys in the
first form. Problems developed, because I would give my sister the slip on
the way home along a busy road, so I was transferred to Rondebosch Boys'
Preparatory School (RBPS, Roast Beef Pork Sausages), where I spent three
years. I learnt Afrikaans every second day. We took holidays in Montagu and
French Hoek, both of which I returned to visit in around 2000, 56 years
later. (I have also returned to and again slept in the train which took us
from Durban to Cape Town, now owned by the Kulper
family and stationary in Robertson.) We lived mostly in Rondebosch,
in the Ormonde Hotel (now gone) by the station and
in the home of Sister Botha, but also for a short while in Claremont. I had a mastoid problem, which had been
lethal only a few years before. However, now we had the miracle drug M&B , the precursor of penicillin, which made
survival possible. M&B had only arrived a little before, in 1938.
Operating then was dreadful. A mask was put over the nose and chloroform
poured on. I had dreadful nightmares of a certain kind for years, and found
that others under chloroform had a similar nightmare - horrible music and
dancing, lighted figures. Nowadays anaesthetic is so much better. The first
time the wound was dressed, I was put under again. Then not long after I was
again put asleep to take my tonsils out, which was often done at the time.
They were partly blamed for the mastoid. The strain on my mother must have been
enormous, risking having only one child, not two, for her husband to come
back to. One day in 1945, when I was nine, my mother
told me we were getting on a ship to England next day, but I must not tell
anyone. Cape Town was full of notices saying "Don't talk about Ships or
Shipping" http://www.fad.co.za/Resources/memoirs/nicholson.htm . I
sat next to another boy in class, knowing that my desk would be empty next
day, and the children and the teacher didn't know. We got on the Mauretania,
one of the four largest ships in the world. Two walks round the deck was a
long walk. I was put with boys, away from my mother and sister, in a cabin
for two but now with ten bunk beds. I tried to go around with the others, but
they were older than me and I became isolated. My sister's birthday, May 20,
as on the boat. It was between VE Day and VJ Day. Even after VE Day we still
had to have the porthole closed in stifling equator weather for fear of
Japanese submarines. We stopped at Freetown but were not allowed ashore
because of yellow fever. We saw the west coast of Ireland, and finally docked
in Liverpool after ten days at sea. England, the first time I saw it, seemed
very primitive to me, with men manually handling barges on the canals. Mother, sister and I went by train down to
Brighton, and lived with my mother's parents in the house they had had built
some years before, Brynelen, 59 Withdean
Crescent, Brighton. My grandparents were new to me, as were all my other
relatives, since we left England when I was three. I was sent to school
nearby at Loder Road Primary School, while my sister went to Varndean Girls' School. My grandfather, and later my
mother, both taught at Varndean Boys. The boy next
to me in class asked me where I had come from. When I replied; "Cape
Town," he said; "You haven't." The boy next to me at lunch
told me he and his dad had lived in Cape Town in a shack in the jungle. He
regaled me with all their adventures in the jungle, including snakes. The Brighton schooling had suffered from
the bombing, and I was way ahead. Also, the children were from a poor area.
So soon I was transferred to the higher, top class in the school. Thus began
my schooling with children a year older than me, which continued. After two or three months my father arrived
in a taxi early one morning. We had not seen him for nearly four years, since
I was six. We welcomed him, and then went off to school. When I told the boy
next to me in class that my father had arrived home, he asked me why I had
come to school. It had not occurred to me or my mother that I might stay at
home. Stories on the Japanese atrocities were
coming out. For ten years my father did not talk about Japan. My father went
with us to the sea front, and he would dive into the requisitioned hotels and
tell them he had just arrived from Japan, and had they any chocolate? He
would then come back across the road and give us chocolate, which was
rationed. He himself was on double rations in his ration book. As I remember,
I don't think we could go on the beach, which was still covered in barbed
wire to repel an invasion. I know that when my father was sent on a
"refresher" course at Cranfield, we went to Sleaford nearby for a
time, staying at an hotel. In 1942 he had been Signals Officer in Seletar
Aerodrome, Singapore, but due to the war he didn't know about radar. He
obviously needed a crash course. As always, life was not good with the
grandparents, and we were glad when my father was "posted" to
Middle Wallop Aerodrome, Hampshire. There our family life returned after a
five year gap, in No. 5 OMQ (Officers' Married Quarters). My mother pressured
the headmaster of Andover Grammar School, Mr. Denyer,
to let me take the 11+ entrance exam a year early, rather than spend a single
year in an interim school. Since the 11+ exam had already taken place, my
mother Enid took me from Brighton to Andover for a special, late exam. It was
invigilated by the headmaster. I suspect that my mother's impressive academic
credentials carried me through this tortuous path, rather than merely my own
efforts. Thus I carried on, small for my age, with children a year older. I was put in the A class, there being also
a B class. Roy Palmer was better at maths than me. He would score 96, I 86,
and the third pupil 76. I think it was very useful for me to encounter a
pupil so early who was better at maths than I was. I wonder what happened to
him? I performed reasonably but not remarkably in all subjects. One winter during our stay in Middle Wallop
was extremely harsh. The water froze in the underground pipe leading to our
house. My father Syd dug a trench and lit a fire by the outside wall along
its path to unfreeze it. During the night, pipe after pipe in the roof would
burst with a loud report. Every blade of grass had ice collected round it to
a radius of half an inch, making the countryside look like fairyland. The
road to Andover broke up and the buses stopped going, so I cycled the six
miles to Andover to school. I don't know what my sister did about it. I
remember that she did not cycle with me, but I went on my own. I played right back in the school under 14
team, which involved travel to local schools, including, I believe,
Marlborough School. Our Latin teacher was so strict it was
dreadful. A pupil did not dare move an arm. So I dropped Latin when I transferred
to Holyhead County School, only to have to take it up again there in the
sixth form when I decided I wanted to go to Cambridge, who demanded Latin
nearly up to O level standard. Half way through the sixth form I took and
passed O Level Latin. Mr. Ossipov was a
refugee from Tsarist Russia, and taught us mathematics. He had a totally
wrong attitude to maths, and I reported the problem to my mother, who had
passed top in her maths finals in London University, gaining the Lubbock
Prize. Her name at the time, 1924 and 1925, was Enid Jones. Among his other
errors, Ossipov bullied pupils so that they spent
most of their time on maths, thereby getting good results. The head, Mr. Denyer, a classics scholar, would be unable to see that
anything was wrong. However, I saw that I was going to become Pig in the
Middle between my mother, a talented mathematician and a qualified teacher,
and Ossipov. So I was very relieved that after
three or four years, in 1950, my father was "posted" to Valley RAF,
in Anglesey. We looked on the map in the encyclopaedia, and saw that Anglesey
was empty, which it more or less turned out to be. First we rented rooms in Mrs. Williams'
house in Caergeiliog. She always had the radio
blasting out downstairs just below my bed, so it was a relief when my father
"requisitioned" "The Bungalow", Bodffordd,
on the main Bangor road 12 miles from Holyhead. My sister and I had been put into Holyhead
County School, the first ever comprehensive, with 1,000 pupils after the 350
of Andover Grammar School. Instead of classes A and B, they went from A to F.
Thus, half of my secondary schooling was in an ancient grammar school,
founded 1569, and the second half in the first comprehensive (all calibre)
school. The school was not good, with many teachers who I think were
unqualified. I was a year young, and the Labour Government decided that
under-age pupils could not take O Levels (Ordinary Levels) until they reached
16. So I went into the sixth form knowing that a year later I would have to
take exams in a variety of subjects. I could not make head or tail of the
Chemistry teacher, or of my text book. I could not find out what a "gram
mole" was. I felt I was heading for trouble if I took the usual Maths,
Physics, Chemistry for A level (in the sixth form, usually from age 16 to
18). However, fortunately it was discovered that one could take Pure Maths,
Applied Maths and Physics, so I avoided Chemistry. Sam Richardson, my maths teacher, gained
the third from top first (as against my mother's top) in Nottingham
University, who took London exams. He knew what he was talking about.
However, I decided that I must not listen to the Physics teachers, who were
no good. They would not give me the syllabus, so I resorted to working my way
through our three Physics text books. However, most of my time was spent on
maths. During my second year in the sixth form,
Sam Richardson gave me a total of fourteen lessons in the week. On Monday,
when I think I had five, I always went home with a headache. For maths, I had
Sam, whom we called Dixie, an excellent teacher at school, and my mother at
home. To some degree my father, a Signals Officer, could help me with
physics. So in spite of the poor school, I was very well served. This led to
my gaining a State Scholarship in a year when 2,000 were granted nationwide.
This was an entree to any university in Britain except Oxford or Cambridge. I liked ball games, but not racing.
However, each year I would enter one race. One year, Bassett, a great gorilla
of a man, discovered that I was the only person entered for the 440 yards
race. Aiming to be Victor Ludorum, he inveigled
himself into the race. On the day, with the whole school watching, I was
pitted against Bassett. At that age, the 440 was not a sprint. I started off
on the outside lane, running a planned race, and Bassett came storming past
me. I then sprinted, but could not catch up with him. I trailed in long after
him. This was a terrible blow to my self esteem, and I began training. I had
already been doing a lot of bicycling and mountaineering - Snowdon being only
20 miles away - but now I exercised in earnest. I carried on for sixty years.
That is why, when disaster struck when I was 72, I was over-fit, and
survived. See
"17 months" . I asked the surgeon why I had not died, and he
replied; "Because you were so fit." My G.P. said I had the
constitution of an ox. On my sit-up-and-beg bicycle from Middle
Wallop I cycled from Mona, in the middle of Angeley,
to Bettws y Coed, down to
Llandudno, and home along the coast - 110 miles I think. I dreamt of a racing
bike, however. One evening I came home to find it in the hall; a Raleigh Lenton. My father had got it for me. Next Saturday I
cycled 135 miles, but everything on the brand new bike kept working loose
that day. However, the most I did was when I was about 20 - 169 miles. I
finally lost the Raleigh when I returned from the USA in 1968. Many years
later, when I was 59, I wondered if I had deteriorated, and so cycled 206
miles (on another bicycle), showing that I was fitter than when 23, when the
most I cycled was 169 miles. Disaster hit me 13 years later, but I survived. All my
life I told doctors I was outside the normal range for fitness. That was
thanks to Bassett. We could see the Snowdon range from our
house, and the perfect day for me was to cycle from Mona to Idwal Cottage, do the Idwal
Skyline - Y Garn, Glydrs Fach
and Fawr and perhaps Tryfan,
and cycle home. I think I got the Idwal skyline
down to four hours. If there were three of us conversing at
school, the other two would speak to me in English, but to each other in
Welsh. I later came to say that I was more at home in the USA than in Wales.
However, paradoxically, the school reunions I went to were Holyhead, and I
found I was very welcome. I then learnt that they were on the defensive,
because they lived in Holyhead, but I had been all over the world. Because of Bassett, I later won the 440
yards in the Anglesey County Sports, and the 880 yards in the two county
sports in Bangor. The first win meant I was in the county team to race in the
Welsh National Sports in Aberystwyth. The coach took us to Aberystwyth, where
I was outclassed. The masters had told us we had to leave early because a
member of the team had to catch the last bus to Amlwch.
However, he himself told us that that was not true. So all the boys,
including the captain, hatched a plot to arrive some two hours late. I was
not keen to do so, but showed solidarity, and went off with two younger boys
to play clock golf to get through the time. When we came back two hours late,
we found that everyone else had arrived on time, and waited two hours. That
meant that I, a prefect, had misled two younger boys. I think I found out later that on a
previous trip to the National Sports, a student had got out of the coach for
a walk and fallen off a cliff, ending up dead. So misbehaviour on these trips
was not regarded as minor. Next Monday I went to the Head, and
received little sympathy. Then at Assembly, I took the precaution of removing
my prefect's badge. The head called me up in front of the school, and told
the school what I had done. He told them he was withdrawing my references to
Cambridge etc. In the event he did not. After all, I was the chance for the
school to get someone into Cambridge for the first time. The other main scandal I got involved in
was when we were in a little room on our own "revising". There was
a trap door into the roof, and I went in there and along the rafters. The
others shut the door on me, and in the dark I put my foot through the ceiling
into the Domestic Science classroom. The teacher got very excited and ordered
all her students out of the room. We went round the corridor, and I said I
had not done it. But then I looked down and saw all the white on my trousers.
The Head turned up and said I would pay for the damage. However, I suspect he
saw it all as funny, and I never had to pay. The teacher was a large woman,
and excitable. Miss Bullough, our English teacher,
convinced me that I could not write. (Similarly, art teachers convinced me I
could not do art, so I never did.) It took me decades to get over Miss
Bullough, and realise that I wrote well. During "Speech Day", the head boy
and head girl would give a speech/vote of thanks to the guest speaker, who
was Cledwyn Hughes, the Labour MP for Anglesey. Our
year we did not have a head boy selected, and the head asked me to do it.
Miss Bullough asked me to give her what I proposed to say, and then altered
it massively. One key point was that I thought the speech should be short,
and she insisted on it being long. I also thought the teacher should not have
written it. I asked the head to support me in this, but he refused to. I dug
my heels in, and avoided her for the critical days, ignoring messages telling
me to go and see her. On the day, she could not stand the worry about what I
might say, and left the hall - a local chapel. My brief speech went down very
well. I think everyone except Bullough and the deputy head preferred brevity.
The deputy head got at Jean Davies, who seconded my speech in Welsh, and it
was much longer. My father having retired in February, my
parents stayed on in Anglesey until June so as to facilitate my taking A
level exams. They then went back to Brighton, where my mother's father begged
them to look after him in failing health. At the end of Anglesey, my sister and I
cycled up to the Lake District, then across to the east and then down to
Barnsley, there to visit our great aunt Hope, who was on her death bed. We
met her walking down the road. My mother had gone to look after her, and
her mother Edith came too. She had snubbed Hope her sister for decades, ever
since the third sister, the peacemaker, Louie, died. They soon had a blazing
row, which revived Hope. That was why we met her in the road, not in bed. It
was thanks to her hated sister. The Welsh results came out before those in
England, and gave me an advantage. I immediately applied to every college in
Oxford and every college in Cambridge. Pembroke College, Cambridge, gave me
an interview and then rejected me. Then Mr. Sandbach at Trinity College,
Cambridge, accepted me without interview on condition that I pass another
minor maths exam, which I fully expected to do. The entrance was for three
years later, the idea being that it was better if students did their two year
National Service before going up to college. I was too young for National
Service, having left school at seventeen. So I began a course at Brighton
Technical College to cover the first year or so. However, the Principal of
the college came to the workshop where I was doing Engineering Workshop
Practice, and told me that it was possible to get early call-up, so as to be
ready for Cambridge a year earlier. So I left his college and went into the
RAF before the prescribed age of 18. My intake were
some of the last to have to do National Service. Although I had lived on RAF Stations in
married quarters, I was shocked when I myself became an airman. The
instructions told us to bring minimum civilian clothing, so I did. Then we
were left standing in formation in the rain for long periods each day. This
was at Cardington, the induction centre. You could see the enormous hangars
for the airships. After a few weeks we were moved to Basic Training at
Hednesford, north of Walsall. The eight weeks there were appalling. The drill
corporals were sadistic and covered their behaviour as supposedly being
disciplinarian. However, they were so rude to their officers that this was
obviously not true. I further deteriorated, trying to get fit enough to
report sick. Finally I succeeded in going through the arduous process of
reporting sick, and was put in hospital. So I "passed out" from
hospital, and went home to Brighton for two weeks. However, it took me more
than the two weeks to recover from the experience. At Hednesford, the food
was appalling. The NAAFI was always closed. We were out in the country, with
no other way to get food. One day I was on cookhouse duty, and 200 rashers of
bacon were cooked. Airmen were at the counter asking for more food, and
refused. I was told to take the rashers and give them to the pig swill man. A
decade or two later, I heard about scandals in other basic training camps,
where the food had been sold off, but not about Hednesford. One meal was
potato mash and cheese-and-potato mash; nothing else. The officer came round
asking for complaints, which was ridiculous. In interviews, aiming to be an engineer, I
said I wanted to be a tradesman, not an officer. The two possible officer
positions were Stores or Education. My interviewers could not understand
someone preferring to stay in the ranks. A mistake was made by the bureaucrats in
RAF Cheltenham. Those adjudged capable of taking the radar or wireless fitter
course were wrongly sent to St. Athan, Glamorgan,
on the Airframe Fitter course. I was one of them, and began a six month
technical training. Towards the end, a senior officer came round and was
given one airman to interview. It turned out that this airman had been
studying aeronautical engineering at Imperial College. He said he had wanted
the Radar course. When the officer asked if there were any more like him, he
replied that the whole class were. However, it was too late to transfer us
all. After a couple of weeks on leave after St. Athan, I was transferred to Fassberg,
near Goslar, in central Germany. This was because I had asked for a home
posting so that I would be able to take the outstanding maths exam to get
into Cambridge. My father told me afterwards that it was often the case that
the (Cheltenham) clerks would transfer airmen to the opposite of what they
had asked for, when they were themselves asked for a preference. The trick
was to not ask for what you really wanted, and then you had a chance of
getting it. [16.8.2019 This is wrong. I wanted to be able stay in England in
order to take the Trinity Cambridge Open exam so as to get to college a year
earlier than the place I had won, not to take a maths exam. However, I did
get back from Germany for the exam. - IC] The boat took me from Harwich to Hoek van
Holland, then on by train to Fassberg. It had been
a German air station, very important during the Berlin airlift, and I was
buried in the forest Luneberg Heide.
The forest was flat, so there were no views. I was there for a very
depressing 15 months. On arrival, I promptly bought a Deutsche Fahrad, and cycled through the forest a great deal. I
also took my bicycle to the West Hartz Mountains and stayed at Youth Hostels.
The border with the Russian zone went through the middle of the Hartz
Mountains, so I saw the sentries at the top of high lookout towers. My own
station, Fassberg, was the nearest to the Russians
except for those in Berlin. There were three parallel fast roads 20 miles
direct from us to the border, so I was very concerned that there seemed to be
no preparation for a move by the Russians, although 1955 was a tense
international period. There was no loudspeaker system to say the Russians had
attacked. I decided to wait for 20 minutes for instructions, and then cycle
away. The trouble was, the tree trunks in the forest were too thin, and I
would be seen from a long distance. I was put into the bays in ASF, where we
did the second line servicing. Ejection seats, wheels and fuel tanks were my
personal responsibility. I was always fearful that when I cut the locking
wire securing the ring on the wheel hub, a piece might fly off into a tyre
nearby. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nO9wyWo4J0w . Extraordinarily, under the noses of the Soviets, we upgraded our Venoms when they were sold to New Zealand and we moved on to Hawker Hunters, but I left before the move. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pzOXPOT2AE Standing outside the ASF hangar one day, I
saw one of our planes passing by explode. Two planes, Venom fighters, caught
fire that day, but the other one managed to land. The other pilot died. There was a panic in ASF, everyone wanting
to know the number of the plane that exploded. I went to my records and found
that apparently I had just installed the main fuel tank. It was a relief when
I later found that the plane had another number. I was one of those detailed to go out and
collect the pieces of the pilot, but I was withdrawn from the list at the
last minute. My replacement, who picked up a glove and found a hand in it,
was resentful, believing I have manipulated my way out of the detail. It was investigated, and found that when a
Venom did a roll, a pint or two of fuel was released from the main fuel tank
because the pressure relief valves were set wrong. Fuel tank, engine and
pilot were all close together in the Venom. Finally, after a miserable, dreary fifteen
months, my demob date came close. We had paper 2nd TAF (Tactical Air Force)
money, so I had to go to HQ to get it changed into real money. However,
Accounts had lost a lot of money in their accounting, and were not
interested. I sat on the floor in the corridor reading a book. The SWO
(Station Warrant Officer, in charge of discipline) came and stood over me. He
told me to go into his office. In the resulting interview, he held his
bloated face inches from mine, which was repulsive. I did not think of
shutting my eyes. "What were you doing sitting on the floor in the
Queen's uniform?" - "I had been waiting a long time, and that was
the limit." - "A serving man knows no limit. What would your father
think? He wouldn't forgive you." – “My father is a Squadron Leader. I am
sure he will forgive me." - "What were you in HQ for?" I
recounted my need to convert into real money. - "You are being
demobilised then." - "I had intended to, sir." - "Here am
I, up in the air." I expressed astonishment. So he said it again and
again, more loudly. Then; "Are you deaf?" - "No, sir." The trick was that in earlier days I feared
going "over the wall" - being punished by incarceration - but now I
didn't, because after incarceration there would not be time for me to be
sentenced to more punishment. So it was the one time I could have fun, just
before demob. He finally said; "We will see you tomorrow, then." I knew he was likely to lie in wait for me
and delay me so that I would miss my train home to demob in England. As a
result, I had to farm out my paper money at Hoek van Holland, and collect the
real money back from other airmen in Harwich. Fortunately, it all came back. Customs were wise to the idea of hiding a
diamond ring, which was taxed in England, inside a bottle of Brylcream hair cream. One man I heard of had a bottle of Brylcream, and after passing through customs he found a
diamond ring in his new bottle, after a swap by Customs. I carried three big kit bags, which was too
much for my slightly injured leg, injured during a football match. Later it
became clear that internal bleeding continued in the lower calf. I registered
sick, and so was allowed to hobble along on my own rather than in formation
in RAF Innsworth, near Cheltenham, during the
lengthy demob process. When I got home to Brighton, our family doctor sent me
to the hospital. I believe someone had recently died from a growth in their
leg, so they took no chances, and made a long cut more or less from knee to
foot, which is still very clear. Before the operation I had a lot of doctors
at the bottom of my bed. However, then they found only a clot of blood, they
lost interest. I saw no more doctors. It was wonderful to be home after three
weeks in bed. Although I could not walk, I could cycle, and went cycling up
in the South Downs above Brighton to Ditchling Beacon, 800ft. The cut began
to open up. Extraordinarily, our doctor pulled the sides together with
sticking plaster, which worked. I failed to get Trinity to accept me a year
early in 1955, so I had a year on my hands. I was going to study Engineering.
After graduation, a graduate engineer was then expected to do a shortened two
year "apprenticeship", as opposed to the usual five years. So we
got the idea of my doing one of those years immediately, before college. My
uncle Canon Stevens was Industrial Chaplain to the Bishop of Birmingham, and
had very good links with the Birmingham firm Lucas. He got me into Lucas for
the year. He also found a room for me in the Snow Hill Y.M.C.A., now a doss house
for the homeless. So began a year attending one or other
Lucas branch or workshop in the company, which was the largest in the auto
industry, making all the electrical equipment for all brands of cars. One
month I was in the machine shop with all the automatic capstans. They had oil
pouring over the cutting took, and it evaporated. I was appalled at the pall
of oil fumes over the whole place. The men wore clogs and no socks, because
shoes were wrecked by the oil. I wanted to get those men away from the fumes,
and became interested in the idea of automatic control of machine tools.
Later, while at college, I spent six weeks in Edinburgh in the Ferranti
branch that was developing just that - the first in the world. At that time, 1955, city smog was appalling
in British cities. I remember one day I decided to cycle to visit my great
aunt a few miles away, I nearly reached her, but towards the end I had to
cross a cross roads. Even though I used to cycle standing up with my head
poked forward, I could not see enough of the kerb to be able to see whether
it was straight or curved, so I could not go out and across the crossroads. I
had to turn round and cycle back to the Y.M.C.A. I thought that by taking up engineering, I
would have to spend my life in cities, where engineering was. In the event, I
went into electronics, and electronics companies took over stately homes in
the countryside, so I had a much better life than I had expected. However,
the prospect of having to attend work for 49 or 50 weeks of the year for the
next 40 years was not pleasant. The working day for staff was 37 and a half
hours per week.
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ In 1959, on leaving Cambridge, Gordon Scarrott
, head of R&D, gave me a job at Ferranti, West Gorton, Manchester. The
first computer I worked on was the Ferranti
Sirius Computer . (Also here
and Wikipedia .) I
did some of the design, including the “divide” instruction, which was
achieved by successive subtraction. It had magnetostrictive
delay line memory, and I designed the replacement, the magnetic toroid core
memory, which was never actually used. Each bit of memory had a tiny toroidal
magnetic core which was magnetised in a clockwise direction for a “one” and
anti-clockwise for a “zero”. This was much better than our delay line memory. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Publish
or Perish or Both. http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x435.htm http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x3341.pdf @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ This section was written in 23 August 1992. The telephone rang. "This is Clive
Sinclair. We have received a letter from you about your invention, and I
would like to talk to you about it. When would it be convenient for me to
visit you?" It was ten years since I
had patented Spiral, and many years since government funded projects had
proved its feasibility. These projects had been at Brunel University,
Middlesex Polytechnic and RSRE Malvern. No hi-tec company had taken it up
except Burroughs, now called Unisys, who had spent a third of a million
pounds proving that it was viable. At that point, high-level politics at
company headquarters in Detroit had blocked further work. Fortunately they
had undertaken the work without securing my patents in any way, so I had a
clean property to offer Sinclair, and with it a world page 2 stumbled on it. My career development
required that Heaviside be revived. The discovery of an unpublished biography
written in 1950 by his best friend Searle would be a major element in the resuscitation
of Heaviside. I had completed editing this biography with Freda's help some
years ago, but then she had blocked its publication giving specious reasons.
This was the first clear evidence that she was attacking my career, which had
begun to nourish her envy. [It is now called “coercive control”, a form of
DV. – IC aug 2019] page 3 Selling the Crown Jewels "Would you buy a diamond from a man
who came to the back door and offered it to you for two pounds?" I told Sinclair that I must have royalties,
and that was my main interest. Once I had said that, he knew that I was not a
con artist, and he could go for buying me out, a course which would give him
a much cleaner situation later on. So this is what happened, leading to my
offer to sell out for two million pounds plus a job at a salary of thirty
thousand pounds a year, this last having been suggested to me by Bill Miller.
[At the time my salary elsewhere was £5,000.] These ideas are partly proved by the fact
that, when later on I walked out from our contract and a £100,000 cheque on
the table, leaving Sinclair and his Managing Director empty handed, Sinclair
next day was very happy when he signed an increased deal giving me £150,000
in cash up front, the total deal being £500,000 – ten times the value of my
large home. By walking out, I had enabled him to demonstrate the importance
of the matter to his staff. 2007 http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/9991.htm page 4 [written by Ivor Catt in 1991 about events
in the early eighties.] The Negotiation This was the biggest prize of my life. It
was my chance to make a major impact on the industry and also make a lot of
money. The latter was unimportant, because if Spiral achieved its potential I
would be wealthy anyway. One does not create a multi-billion dollar industry
and remain a pauper. However, the very process of appearing indifferent to
financial gain for myself could scupper the project, in the same way as being
too grasping could scupper the project. I had to walk the broad path between
these two dangers, this broad path probably being flanked by two hundred
thousand pounds on one side and two million plus royalties on the other. First I went for two million plus
royalties, and Clive Sinclair argued for less. Then I used Bill Miller as
adviser. By good fortune, David Simpson, the Scottish President of Gould
Corporation, a four billion dollar hi-tec American company, was friendly with
both Bill and Clive, both of whom were trying to get him onto the board of
their companies. Bill in his turn used David Simpson as honest broker between
himself [actually myself] and Sinclair. In a negotiation, if both parties
have access to an honest broker, their difficulties are more or less over. We reached the point where Sinclair had
upped his offer to two hundred thousand pounds plus stock options, giving a
deal worth half a million pounds at that time. However, Simpson told Bill,
who told me, that Clive was willing to go to double, and that I should hold
out for a couple of weeks. It was at this point that the enemy within
played a crucial role. [My son] Malcolm told her [my wife] that he was only
pretending to support me, and by this means and by eavesdropping he
discovered that Freda [my wife, whom I later divorced], whom I had totally
cut off from the negotiations, was about to approach Sinclair with
information that I was mentally deranged, and that he should negotiate with
her. Malcolm said I would have to close the deal immediately, and forego the
second half million pounds. So I closed the deal at two hundred thousand
pounds cash plus stock options. In this one episode, Freda fended off half a
million pounds which was about to flow into her own family. However, from her
point of view, control of the family was perhaps more important than half a
million pounds. [oct98 In the
event, the judge confiscated all my assets in the divorce action.] [oct98. See a very similar situation in
Lillian Hellman's play "Toys in the Attic".] http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/9521.pdf In July 2009 I stumbled on material in my
files which show how dreadful was the "conspiracy" evolving around
me. My then wife Freda kept inviting a psychiatrist called Dr. Brian
Robertson into our house. Sometimes he would be there at 2am. He was
convinced that I would become violent unless I took one of two drugs. He kept
pressing me over these drugs. I could not throw him out, because that would have
been violent. Previously, because of Freda's persistent fantasising about
violence in the family, which a self-respecting radical feminist has to be
experiencing, she one day asked if she could do anything to improve the
family situation. I replied that she could stop this groundless talk about
violence. She agreed. Rather than sign a document saying "There is no
violence in this family," she rather signed the statement "Violence
is not an issue in this family," counter-signed by our adult children.
[Blow me, some years later she went to the court secretly and had me ousted
from my home on a perjured charge of Domestic Violence. http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/952.pdf ] . When
I showed the signed and countersigned document to my lawyers, they took no
interest in it, and did not use it in the divorce proceedings I later
started! Of course, I was later to learn that the secret Family Courts were
surreal. I edited a
journal on the matter for four years. [There is a story that the then Scottish
puritan Lord Chancellor, in a secret meeting, told lawyers that when a
divorce is pending they must get the husband out of the home on some pretext,
or there may follow violence.] Dr J W Ferguson (my GP) 24.7.84 etc. etc. Dear Dr. Ferguson, Following a meeting between Freda, myself
and Dr. Robinson, Dr. Robinson asked me to send this note to you. - Ivor Catt I have found a letter by him; Copy of a note from Robinson, Consultant
Psychiatrist, to I Catt's GP Dr. Ferguson "19.7.84. I suggest a general
psychiatric opinion from a senior Consultant from the Maudsley Hospital as to
whether Ivor Catt is or is not suffering from any form of mental illness. In
particular, is there or is there not evidence on
clinical examination of paranoid mental functioning? If so, does this amount
to psychosis, or is it in keeping with eccentricity commonly found in
brilliant people with the accompanying temperament? - Dr. Brian
Robinson." Dr. Ferguson then left a message on
Robinson's answerphone, asking him to call back. Instead, Robinson 'phoned
me, saying that he thought his note was self-explanatory. I agreed. He then
said that he would not do anything further (i.s.
not call Dr. F back.) Dr. F asked to see me, and enquired as to
how I felt about such a note being written about me. I was non-committal, but
tended to imply that it was fine. (F did not appreciate that had I objected,
this would have been evidence of paranoia!) The interview lasted some 20
minutes, and I agreed to pursue the matter now that, as he put it, the issue
(of my mental illness) had been raised. Dr F wished to defer to the greater
expertise of a specialist of his own GP status. Dr. F 'poned
later, and asked if Clare, late of Maudsley and now of Barts., was O.K with
me. I said yes, so an interview is going to be arranged between Catt and
Clare. [This contradicts my memory, which says that Robertson selected
Clare.] This document shows that my memory is
correct when it tells me that at the time I felt that the institutions being
orchestrated around me by my wife, who had a degree in law, were likely to
end me up in jail or in a madhouse. I joked with my work colleague Dr. Bernie
Cohen, who was involved with my invention, that I had come up with an
invention leading to a multi-billion dollar industry, and Society's response
was to put me in a madhouse. He told me that it was no joke. He said the work
on the invention I would do in the next few years was very important, and it was
important that I should not risk my freedom. He said he knew a friend who
joked on these lines, and ended up in a madhouse. Once in, he could not get
out. That is the background to my action over psychiatrists Dr. Asen and Dr. Clare. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9780429484018 “Eia Asen from the London Marlborough Clinic (with systemic and mentalization-based family therapy working on a dependent attachment pattern)” My wife
said she would divorce me unless I went to see a psychiatrist. I said I would
if she came too. We went to Dr. Asen of Marlborough Clinic
in North London. At one stage he had me, my wife, children and grandmother in
the room with a one-way mirror. After some months he said there was nothing
wrong with me. Freda reported this to Brian Robertson, who said Asen was not well qualified. (I checked on this, and
determined that Asen's relevant qualifications were
of the highest order.) Robinson told Freda that in a case like mine, of a
brilliant person, they needed a super-shrink, and recommended the famous Dr.
Anthony Clare. I agreed to see Clare, but then played for delay and more and
more delay, so the interview never happened. [It’s unbelievable that I was
having to fend off this nonsense rather than be able to concentrate on the
biggest deal of my life. I was being harassed in order to obstruct the
negotiation, which could lead to a loss of control of the family.] (I know that a social worker from Brighton
assigned to the case of Corinne wrote in his report that Catt was "near
to genius". Obviously then a danger to children!) Corroboration of my memory is in the letter
from me to my son (who shortly afterwards died) I have found. 9.9.85 Dear Graham, Your contribution last month was very
valuable, and I look forward to seeing you at the meeting at [Asen’s place] 38 Marlborough Place, St. John's Wood,
London, at 2 p.m. next Thursday sep. 12. - Yours sincerely, Ivor. Obviously my idea was that with the whole
family there, it would be obvious that the idea of mental illness was a
fabrication, as apparently Asen decided. All this
nonsense was going on while I was trying to do a million pound negotiation
with Sinclair, the biggest deal of my life. I have always said that 90% of my
effort when trying to bring in a million pounds into our family [equivalent
to £10,000,000 today 2019] was devoted to keeping Freda off my back. At about that time I was technical
(electronics) consultant to the Greenham Common Women. At Greenham
Common . I said to one of the leading ladies that there was a mad shrink
in St. Albans desperate to drug me. She said; "Is his name Brian
Robinson?" When I said “yes”, she said that he came down to Greenham
Common and caused a lot of trouble for them. www.ivorcatt.uk/mzap.htm I phoned Dr. Asen
and asked him why he had said there was nothing wrong with me, because surely
he knew that if he did that he would be fired. He said that he knew this, but
"sometimes it can break the log-jam." Freda continued to see Asen on her own for a year. The central point was that my
personality had to be rubbished so that Freda could take over the million
pound negotiation with Sinclair. She did not realise, or did not care, that
if the inventor himself were discredited, all negotiations would be off. From
the point of view of the radical feminist, it was important that successful
negotiation should be credited to a woman, or be sabotaged. Robinson had said he was convinced that if
I did not have one of his two drugs, I would do violence on myself or someone
else within six months. Six months later, Freda said he had not said that! www.ivorcatt.co.uk/dana.pdf oct98.
(Sinclair Research's WSI wing came to be called Anamartic.)
Catt Spiral was designed to exploit the Array Processor market. Catt Spiral
Memory was intended as a taster, because array processing was unintelligible
to those who needed to be involved. However, memory was the cuckoo's egg,
which took over and went down with the normal RAM, as I always predicted. A
large proportion of the time RAM memory was (and still is) sold worldwide at
well below cost. From the start, I told Sinclair that semiconductor surface
could not compete with magnetic surface for storage, but in around 1984, in
our first discussions, he saw a short-term (9 months) window of opportunity
because Winchesters (the then name for rotating disc memory) were
over-priced. He said he thought he could come to market in 9 months. The
first array processor, worked on in Anamartic, was called
"Property 1a", which was starved of funds. This, and also Catt
Spiral, were obsoleted by my later patent Kernel, which invention I stumbled
on seven months after Anamartic, who were
developing Spiral, had fired me for the first time. Long after Spiral memory
was obsolete and I had been fired, funding continued to be poured into Spiral
Memory. This continued many years after Kernel, the invention which obsoleted
all that went before, had been published in Wireless World and the Sunday
Times. http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/spiral2.pdf
. However, Kernel caused Anamartic to hire
me back, only to fire me twice more, each time paying me massive financial amends
after brief court cases, one of which was Summary Judgement (= a ten minute
hearing) in the High Court. Here
is the agreement reached in the middle of the turmoil; http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/sinclair.pdf
. These letters to my bank
illustrate the enormous pressure I was under. http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/bank.pdf
. My bank manager agreed to deal gently with me, but then let me down by
bouncing checks, increasing the pressure further. I got out of Natwest. Four children; the biggest deal of my life, and
my wife stopping at nothing to sabotage it, bringing shrinks into the house,
desperate to drug me. The Attacks. A number or times during the last years of our marriage, 'Freda said to me; "If you are very successful, you will leave me." I dismissed such remarks, as I had to. Coupled with complaints about our lack of income, capital and so forth, they led to a dead end. They demonstrate a combination of deep intelligence and insight, and gross stupidity. On the one hand, such a remark was an Ace of Spades in the game of controlling through imposition of guilt, which was the controlling feature of my marriage, as it probably is of many, many others. In general, it can be safely assumed that the husband will not achieve spectacular success, so he can be safely controlled through complaints that he has failed to succeed, that his wife has to go out to work and generally struggle to keep the family going', in particular to keep up payments on private schooling. However, in my case there was always the threat of spectacular success, and resulting loss of control. This threat had to be faced. Initially, it would not be obvious to Freda that she would fend it off by sabotaging her husband's career, since such an idea is unthinkable, even among her more radical militant feminist coterie. So some sort of groping indication of fear of success was all that we had, make of it what we might. In my case, the need for Freda to control, and control absolutely, was so strong that she could not give up the power bestowed on her by guilt in her spouse for his failure to succeed, probably far more than most power-crazed wives. Also, the scale of my success was very great. It is this combination which led to catastrophe on such a grand scale, spreading out and damaging everyone with any link with Freda and her family. However, the very scale and comprehensiveness of my successes gave her unprecedented opportunity to attack and destroy, because they isolated and alienated me from everyone else, in the manner of Madonna and the superstars. It remained to Freda to work on those of my associates who could live with my successes and relate to me as they had always done in the earlier, quiet times, and this she did with gusto. For instance, she spent twenty minutes on telephone with C.P., the gist being that all Ivor's friends had left him, and that this proved how impossible he had become. A mixture of slander, fact and myth was woven around me which was very effective:, particularly with people who, friendly or unfriendly, had other problems in their lives than to sort out fact from fiction surrounding their erstwhile friend Ivor; someone who their own experience told them was hard to handle in any case, being larger than life. @@@@@@@@@@@@@ "Toys in the Attic" by Lillian Hellman. A play published by Dramatists Play Service Inc., 1960. Lillian Hellman; "The idea was that a man who has never been successful and honestly believes that that's the way everybody wants it for him in the world. It had nothing to do with sisters or family, only with discovering that, of course, nobody has wanted it for him. Nobody wants success for anybody else, basically. I tried this because it was a very interesting idea, and realized I couldn's do it, but there was the genesis of something and the kernel of something. It became to me a man who had a momentary success, brought up by women who certainly had never wanted him to have that minute of success. That wasn't the way they saw him and they ruined it for him. I don't think that is an uncommon situation." – 1968 @@@@@@@@@@@@@@ The Lost Cause In 1962, when I was about to
leave Ferranti Ltd. in Manchester England, to take my family to the U.S.A.,
the company held an in-house conference to discuss the implications of the
coming of integrated circuits. Previously, after graduating in
Engineering from Cambridge in 1959, I had been working on the logic design of
the first transistorised computer, Sirius. It had 2,000 logic gates and
40,000 bits of memory (= 5,000B), and sold for £25,000. I also attended a
course in programming the earlier, valve computer, called Pegasus. Ken Johnson (KCJ) pointed out that
if one component was added to a (static R.A.M.) memory bit, which comprised
about ten components, then a column of words in memory could be searched in
parallel. I was dumbstruck. This meant that the whole world of digital
computers changed. The Content Addressable memory (also called Associative
memory) was upon us. We could ask a memory to deliver to us words with a
particular characteristic, without reading them out of memory one word at a
time as we had had to do with previous memory technologies, for instance the thenn fashionable magnetic core memory. This would
massively speed up the digital computer. Obviously, since the new technology
for memory was the same as the new technology for processing, we would, later
on, be able to instruct all words in memory with a certain characteristic, to
be modified in a prescribed way, in parallel, without even reading them out
from memory (parallel processing). This would further speed up the digital
computer. I departed for Los Angeles and
my new job, in Ampex, with high expectations. At
the time, I predicted that digital electronics was set to take 10% of G.D.P. In the event, the world stuck
to Von Neumann, machines with only one processor, and processing within
memory was taboo for the next 40 years. Deviation from Von Neumann, will
probably be banned for another 40 years, until at least the year 2040. The
implications for digital electronics are disastrous, limiting it to much less
than 10% of G.D.P., today make it impossible numeroous
applications impossible, for instance the simulation of global warming, a
feat easy to accomplish with the Kernel Machine (see this website), with its
one million processors (or even better, using a special, larger Kernel
machine for the particular application of global warming) 10 to 100 million
processors, working in parallel. This would be a machine mostly working as
S.I.M.D. with one processor with its own memory dedicated to each square mile
of the earth's surface. (Successful delivery into the marketplace of the
"Catt Spiral" memory machine proved the viability of the approach.) For a list of applications
which are frustrated by this worldwide commitment to only one processor, see
E. Galea, Supercomputers and the need for speed, New Scientist,
12nov88, p50, or I. Catt, The Kernel Logic Machine, Electronics
and Wireless World, mar89, p154. Ivor Catt 5jan01 http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/9521.htm @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ 20.4.2021 To
Dana, the dynastically interested. (RSO) Ralph’s wife Gwen, my blood
relative, came of my grandfather John Stephen Jones’s stock from Llanfair
Caereinion, who married my dreadful grandmother Edith of Barnsley. My mother
Enid was their only child. Ralph
and Gwen admired my father Syd enormously, as I did. https://stkatharinecree.com/what-is-on/371st-lion-sermon-recorded-thursday-15th-october-2020
1972.
Canon R. S. O. Stevens.
Vicar of St Paul, Birmingham & Chaplain to the Queen. Ralph
was my mentor, more intellectual than my parents. He told me what to read.
Once he took tea with Michael Polanyi, who once wrote me a letter, which I
lost. He will have directed me to Popper, but I found he had not heard of
Kuhn, publishing at that time. Kuhn, T. S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962. My
uncle Ralph was chaplain to the Queen. In Birmingham (I sang in Ralph’s
choir) I was very much involved with my aunt Gwen and Ralph’s only son
Andrew, who died of leukaemia. After school I spent a year in Birmingham,
1960. In the smog, visibility was one yard. On my bicycle, I stood up on the
pedals and looked down to see the kerb, about a yard to my left. Today people
have no grasp of what the yellow smog was like, visibility one yard. Everyone
had a little coal fire in the drawing room. http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x41c.htm @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Catt Spiral I wanted what is now called
“Catt Spiral” developed in Britain, not in Nixon’s USA. The companies
involved in Britain, Ferrnnti, Plessey, GEC were
not innovating any more, determined to die. So, I went to the British
government. The appropriate branch was the NRDC. My travails with them are
discussed at ivorcatt.co.uk/spectator.htm . Nobody
else would touch it if the NRDC decided against it. However, once I got
£1,000 out of the NRDC (perhaps like £10,000 today), I could walk away and
say they were incompetent, and demand another government organisation. After
a delay of a few years, ACTP changed its rules to accommodate Catt Spiral
100%. They put in £50,000, the equivalent of perhaps £300,000 today, in two
universities and in RSRE Malvern. Prototypes were developed which proved the
technology. Wolski and Ted Newman of ACTP said it was now up to British
companies to take it up. I said they would not. I said that all the British
companies – Ferranti, Plessey, GEC, were not innovating, and were determined
to die – and did so a few years later. The Scottish branch of a US company,
Burroughs, took it further, proving the technology. However, it ran into the
“NIH” problem with the US HQ of Burroughs. The Burroughs chief engineer in
Scotland told me; “You don’t develop this with the permission of HQ. You
bootleg it.” After a delay of a few more
years, the self-styled “pirate”, Sir Clive Sinclair, took up Catt Spiral and
hired the Burroughs men. He brought “Catt Spiral” to market – too late. Ted Newman and Wolski were
the driving force in the ACTP. Ted got involved in my electromagnetic theory,
and wrote me letters about “Theory H”. In particular, on 1.5.88 he wrote; “2
The energy is dynamic. i.e. that when energy is
trapped – say in a condenser – it is flowing to and fro.” Ivor Catt 11.6.21
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