The birthday present

It was 21st January 1981, I was 15 years old. My brother Adrian and I were celebrating our birthday. I know exactly what I was doing that day, not because of any powers of recall, my memory can be selective. No I know exactly because I wrote it down and the reason that I wrote it down is that amongst the gifts I received that day was a diary. I've been keeping a daily journal ever since and that particular birthday present has become an intregral part of my life.

It was a simpler time we lived in. - Just look at what passed for birthday presents for 15 year old boys in 1981

My brother Adrian who, until his recent decision to "get healthy" I had the self-satisfying pleasure of always referring to as the before twin, on that day received;

-A bright orange 'space hopper' -  from mum and dad
-Various socks and trunks- from siblings and aunties (we called boys underwear trunks in those days)
-A pair of light blue short legged trousers. My brother didn't own a pair of long trousers until he was 16 and then only at the insistence of the school headmaster, but that's a story for another day.
-A flashing yo-yo that would light up when spinning. I secretly wanted this for myself.
-A bunch of bananas- if at any point between the ages of 5 and 18 you had asked my brother what he wanted the answer would have unswervingly been 'a banana'

 This was my brothers favoured mode of transport, he would regularly go to school on one just like this. After a neighbour ask my father if my brother was 'simple' the space hopper mysteriously disappeared.

For me it was;

- An action science chemistry set - from mum and dad.
- The big book of facts - from my siblings.
- A Dick Francis murder mystery jigsaw puzzle ( when you completed the puzzle you could see who shot the jockey, it was a TV camera man who'd done the foul deed) - from an auntie
- A diary - from Elaine; a girl! My mother was desperate for me to 'bond' with Elaine (or perhaps with any girl) Elaine was considered to be 'a plucky girl made of the right stuff'. Mother thought the diary was to herald the start of 'a beautiful friendship'.  Elaine, my beautiful friend, now lives in New York with her husband and two children.

Various 'malodorous' experiments seen me and my chemistry set banished to an old shed and gained me the nick name Smarty McStink Pants.

I think everything you need to know about the difference between my brother and I are summed up in these gifts, he was outdoorsy and fun, I was serious and nerdy. We haven't changed much in the last 30 years. The diary I received that day, wasn't the start of the beautiful friendship my mother was hoping for but it was the start of what has been a life long love of journal keeping.

Meeting your heroes is never a good idea.

I've blogged here about never meeting my ultimate hero; Jacques Cousteau perhaps that is why he has, for me, retained much of the mystique that is central to hero worship.

I have however been lucky enough to meet a few of my heroes and in some cases unfortunate enough to meet others.

By the time I got to meet David Bellamy (above) he had largely discredited himself as a scientist and had become the character he created. As we chatted over dinner the remaining vestiges of respect evaporated in a cloud of pompous nonsense.     

My mild obsession with David Bellamy OBE was instigated by my father, mostly as he was desperate to replace Jacques Cousteau in the hope that I would stop talking in a silly French accent. Given my penchant for imitating my heroes this was probably not as clever a move as he thought it was. I can still do a pretty good Bellamy impression.

When I was a kid Bellamy was pretty big, a serious botanist loads of publications and a string of successful television programmes behind him. He'd even done a superb underwater series looking at the native flora and fauna of the British Isles. I think it was this series that my father thought could be used to wean me off Cousteau.

My adulation for Bellamy took a bit of a tarnishing after he went and did this.



I'm all for promoting science education amongst kids and was a science teacher myself for a number of years but there's just no call for this sort of thing. David Bellamy had quickly become a caricature of himself and increasingly he became the bumbling, air groping, hairball character he created. I still think that his impression of Bellamy was the best and funniest thing that Lenny Henry ever did and quite possibly the only funny thing he did.

My positive childhood memories of David Bellamy probably have lingered on in my subconscious; what other explanation could there possibly be for the picture underneath!!!

lets never speak of this again!

Having fallen out of fashion Bellamy disappeared off our television screens years hence although in recent times has sought and gained notoriety as the, in my opinion badly chosen, face of the climate change sceptics, touting pseudo-science and fraudulent claims to anyone who'll listen. These days he's known for his bad hair, bad singing and bad science.



Now people who know me well, and those of you who have seen the picture of me above, will realise that I, more than most, need to be able to forgive bad hair and bad singing, which I think I can do but forgive bad science; Never, never, never.

A good slap

There's a couple of great Ulster Scots words that I want to share with you, they are;
'thaveless' which describes being no good at practical things especially working with your hands.
and 'skelp' to roughly strike someone especially a naughty child.

You can probably tell where this is going?

When I was a kid I was known for being thaveless, as in "gimme thon ya thaveless edjot, I'll dae it masel' And then when I was 11 years old, all of that changed, when I made an iron poker in metal-work class at school.

You should have seen it, it was a beauty. I recall the immense sense of pride I had, looking at the finished article. No more the thaveless edjot I was practically an ironmonger.

It was a thin straight metal rod with a twist at the top, the handle made of a stack of glued together red, white and blue Perspex discs that I'd shaped on a lathe. It was a really well made, good-looking, poker.

I gave it lovingly it to my Grandmother for her birthday. The irony is not lost on me that less than six months later, Granny would be beating the legs off me with that same poker. (yeah that's right I grew up in an era where you could beat a kid with an iron rod and no one thought anything of it)

My Grandmother: Margaret Carlisle nee Spence

My Grandmother was what could best be described as a strict disciplinarian. She belonged very much to those generations before modern childrearing practices who firmly believed that children should be seen and not heard. For her, like everyone of that era, love came in one flavour only; tough.

I'd been farmed out for the summer holidays and having drawn the short straw was to spend six weeks with Granny Carlisle. Her house was practically a museum, all leather and linoleum, it smelt of liver and dust and sounded of the slow tic-toc of long clocks. Nothing was to be touched, everything was an heirloom and my every move was under constant surveillance.

Granny's parlour was out of bounds to all but a few

I'd managed on one rare occasion to give her the slip and slid unnoticed into the parlour, the one room I was strictly prohibited from. Telling a very inquisitive 11 year old that he can't go somewhere is a sure fire way to ensure that's the one place he ends up. So what happened next is really all Granny's fault.

She had one of those spinning globes, which at the time, seemed to be as big as the world itself, now however looking at the picture I can see it was a modest affair. What's the point of having a spinning globe if you can't give it a spin, so that's what I did. I spun it fast enough to turn the world into a blur of green and blue and I recall it making a very satisfying rickety hum that was begging to be accompanied on the piano. Timorously I tapped out a high note "tink" and more bravely another "tink, tink" before forgetting where I was and launching into a full blown keyboard bash all low notes and ominous.

It was as if the notes, that were still reverberating around the room, had heralded the appearance of an evil witch in some bad movie. There was Granny, glaring gruesomely at me from the doorway. "ya dirty wee heathen"; heathen being the worst swear word that Granny knew. "I'll skelp the legs aff ye"

After a bit of a Benny Hill style chase I was roughly caught, wigged about a bit and then as if by magic the poker, my poker, appeared in her hand and I received three or four good skelps around the back of the legs that would hurt for a week.

As I limped from the parlour the dying notes from the piano were still ringing in my ears along with the slowing rickety hum of the globe.

Ten secrets of Health and Happiness

2011 has been a difficult year for me; broken ribs, suspicious lumps, stress, heart problems, blood pressure issues and hospitalisation in three different countries, and thats just January. The low point was being stuck in a hospital in Mumbai not knowing if I'd ever leave, which incidentally gave rise to my favourite quote of the year so far; "you fly you die"

Most of the rest of this year has been spent finding my way back to good health. From hospital to herbalism and every quack idea in between I've tried them all. Having stripped away all the batshit craziest of these "remedies" here then is my top ten tips for health and happiness, in no particular order.

1. NOWNESS: Lets get this one out of the way first as it sounds a bit wanky. Now and what we're doing now, is all we truly have and yet so many of us use up now worrying about some other thing, some other time. Learning to be aware of now and more importantly enjoying it is a fundamental part of H&H.

2. MOVE: Your not going to find health or happiness sitting on your arse. With over 200 joints in the human body we were certainly not designed to spend our lives sitting on the sofa. Animals stop moving when they are ready to die; what are you waiting for?

3. EAT RIGHT: Treat your body like a dustbin, fill it full of garbage and guess what; it'll stink! Unprocessed, home-cooked and in sensible amounts is the only way to eat. Eat because your hungry, use 1 & 2 above to deal with all the other stuff.

4. REACH OUT: Doing things with and for others is a great way to incorporate all of the above but it also brings focus, direction and purpose. Love your friends and family, don't be afraid to invite new people into your life. Think of it as selfish altruism; the effort will be worth it.

5. SIMPLIFY: The more complicated your life is, the less likely you are to be happy or healthy. Simple foods, simple pleasures, simple honest relationships are a good place to start. All that stuff you've got; the latest this, the next that, how much of it do you really need and how stressful is getting/keeping it? Getting the right balance between 'need' and 'want' is fundamental, so is getting them in the right order. Need is always first.

6. HEAR YOURSELF: I'll tell ya what I want what I really really want, I want a, I want a, I want a.....stop listening to shit like this for a start. Usually we're so busy either doing stuff or avoiding doing stuff that we forget or don't know how to listen to ourselves, to what we need. Modern life has very little silence in it so make sure that you know how to turn the volume down, so you can hear yourself think; how else will you know what you need.

7. TURN YOURSELF ON: There are lots of things that we have to do; go to work, pay the bills, do the dishes, it's endless and if 'have to' is all you do you're heading in the wrong direction. H&H are not given they have to be earned. Nurture your interests, follow your dreams, become passionate about them, make time for them, don't ignore or suppress them. Make sure you spend more time on the things that make you happy than you do on the things that bring you down.

8. DO NO EVIL: We're here for a short time and we're all in the same boat; together. Don't fuck the planet up, don't fuck anyone's life up (including your own), take no pleasure or benefit from someone else's misfortune, try to be the best person you can be, avoid horrible people, be generous in all things and respect the rights of others, especially those who are different from yourself.

9. BE A STUDENT: Accepting that you don't know everything and that you never will opens up the possibility of learning from others. If something doesn't work, learn from it. "why does this always happen to me" is the mantra of fools. Be an active student of life by taking responsibility for what you do and how you do it.

10. LIGHTEN UP: Laughter born out of shear enjoyment is the fullest expression of happiness there is. Lighten up; laugh a little now and then, enjoy your life.

Ultimate Heroes, bobble hats and aqualungs

Literally I'd be bouncing on the sofa in excited anticipation. The living room  abandoned, as it usually was, by my siblings who were only too aware of what was about to happen. With bright red bobble hat jauntily atop my head I'd wait alone for the adventure to begin.

The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau was my childhood obsession. From age 7 till about 13 I don't think there was a single photo of me taken that didn't include a turtleneck jumper, rolled up jeans, bobble hat and deck shoes. My mother recently and painfully reminded me that I also spent most of that time talking in "a put on" French accent.

Mother is snail mailing a picture of me complete with bobble hat until then you'll have to make do with the real thing. 

Perhaps it was the exotic French accent or the otherworldliness of the undersea, perhaps it was the weird sounding names and places; Calypso, French Polynesia, the Coral Sea but to a 7 year old boy from bog standard Cullybackey it was like looking through a porthole to another world. A technicolor half hour in a black and white life.

My model of Cousteau's ship the Calypso was perhaps my parents all time greatest christmas present. I say perhaps as a proper microscope was right up there and I also live in hope that mothers knitted jumpers will cease and I'll see a return to form.   

Cousteau is my ultimate Hero, long before Attenborough he was making scientific discovery popular and accessible. His contribution to science is immense his contribution to humanity immeasurable. So many of my interests and passions can be traced back to those happy half hours in the undersea world of my parents sofa. I never would have studied science if it weren't for Captain Cousteau, my wanderlust is attributed to him as is my curiosity will all things foreign and exotic. I joined Greenpeace as a direct result of watching his documentaries, went on the first ever whale walk, got arrested for animal rights activism and now that I think of it he's probably the reason why I've never lived more than a mile from the sea in the last 27 years.

TV doesn't get any more adventurous than this  

I never got to meet Jacques Cousteau, he died in 1997 but I have been a member of the Cousteau Society for the Protection of Ocean Life since I was 10 and heartily recommend it to anyone. Jacques lead a life full of passion and scientific curiosity and left a legacy of discovery and hope this is why Jaques Cousteau is my ultimate hero. Who is yours?



Lesser childhood heroes to follow.

My life as a frog expert

These days I manage some of the country's most innovative homeless hostels and work with people who are among the most socially excluded in our society, but it wasn't always so; in another life I had one of the most unusual jobs imaginable.

During my PhD. I spent a lot of time in the "frog room". As an aside to my research I set up some highly successful breeding programmes for critically endangered frog species. The programmes are still running today.

Pharmaceutical biotechnology was the subject area of my PhD and I studied the skin secretions of poisonous frogs.

The Chinese "smelly frog" has skin secretions containing natural antibiotics 

My research caught the interest of Brian Black a Northern Irish film maker and he was commissioned to produce a number of short segments on my work. After a week long series of three minute segments on Ulster Television I became known locally as "the frog expert"

My short-lived fifteen minutes was the cause of some embarrassment. For a few weeks people would shout "hey your that frog guy off the news" and around the University of Ulster campus I became known as Dr. Frog.

A small team of us had planned a field trip to South East China and the news segments were done as part of the build up to this, to raise awareness of the work we were doing. Brian the film maker joined us on the trip to Fujian Provence.

Documentary film maker Brian Black, Prof. Chris Shaw, Prof. Dave Greenwood, Dr Rob Robinson, Dr. Abo, Chen Lee, Dr Le long on arrival at Fujian airport.  

Once we had arrived in Fuzhou city there were endless meetings and dinners as we negotiated access to equipment, facilities and the parts of the country that we wanted to visit. Many of the meetings/dinners involved drinking and drinking games all of which were paid for by whoever was deemed to be the most important person in the room, luckily that was never me.  Initially we were bewildered by this and tried not to take part, then it was explained to us that in China a good way to pay respect to the host would be to get drunk. Once I realised that we could win favour by getting drunk I knew we were onto a winner. The Chinese officials would cleverly put us into drinking competitions with girls who were trained and hardened drinkers. We always lost, I've never enjoyed loosing quite so much. 

   

The intrepid and ever macho Brian (above left) was first to take on the challenge, but a nearly tea-total lightweight he ended up falling by the way side. The honour of the team fell to the youngest member; me. At this dinner I drank so much that I ended up singing and dancing on top of the dinner table before falling off, slam-dunking the provincial governor breaking his glasses. The next day the governor (who everyone called Mr Big) sent a messenger to say that we could have whatever we needed and to convey his personal thanks to the dancing Irishman who made him laugh so much. 

   

left: walking along the riverside in Wu Yi. middle: Wu Yi train station. right: Wu Yi cloud forest we were either above or in the cloud line for weeks at a time. 

We travelled to some of the most remote parts of South China often along roads that were little more than dirt tracks but eventually made it to the Wu Yi Mountain Reserve the first westerners to be permitted to enter the area in over a hundred years.

Often we would have to get out of the vehicles and walk behind due to the risk of land slides. On the right is the government research station deep in the heart of Wu Yi seen here on one of the rare times when the rain clouds lifted. 

  

We made many trips into the cloud forests and I had some amazing adventures there, I was stalked by a wild tiger, got lost for six days and had a giant gliding tree frog fall about 100 feet onto my face!!

There was a 300ft cliff on the left and a 300ft drop on the right. 

sometimes the river was the best road to be found

Brian's film was made into a half hour documentary called "one giant leap" shown as part of The Edge. The Edge was a series of cutting edge science programme's commissioned by the British Government to showcase the work of world class British scientists. My research was the focus of one of those programmes.

More on my misadventures in South East China coming soon.

Relative value

Every family has a few skeletons in the closet and mine is no exception, madness for example runs rife on my fathers side of the family though we don't talk about that. On my mothers side it's tragedy. This is polite speak for all manner of unfortunate ends; suicide, electrocution, deportation and imprisonment to name but a few, and we talk even less about those.

Many of the past generations of Robinson's had a look of madness about them, this one's tie pin hints at a musical bent. 

I am the result of a mixing of two of the great north Antrim Protestant families, the Robinson's and the Carlisle's. Like many Irish families we've been spread to the far flung corners of the earth. My mother used to say that the Robinson's spread faster than fleas and my father would whimsically retort that if the Robinson's were like fleas then the Carlisle's where like the black death.

The Carlisle's were an altogether better looking bunch but no less eccentric. This is my great uncle and namesake Robert Carlisle in about 1902 aged 10.    

My mothers side of the family tree were certainly the more glamorous of the two. Old Irish and before that Scottish with a thousand year old history. The Carlisle's were in Ireland eight hundred years before the Robinson's though my mothers generation saw the last of them in Ireland.

My Mother (middle) and her two sisters Nancy (right) and Jane (left) who died of cancer some years ago.

What remains of them now is down to my grandfathers brothers, John, Tom, William, Jim and Robert Carlisle (whom I'm named after) all of whom left Ireland before world war one. My great uncle William moved to America, married and had at least one daughter, Mary, who at 99, is still alive.

between 1930 and 1943 Mary Carlisle acted in at least 67 movies

Mary, my first cousin once removed, and a glamorous Carlisle if ever there was one, is one of only two surviving members of WAMPAS Baby Stars of 1932 she made a string of movies in the 30's and 40's and enjoyed a decade of stardom before retiring from the screen to work for Elizabeth Arden, managing the famous Beverly Hills salon for years. She was given a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame in Feb 1960.

Mary Carlisle top billed in the 1933 smash hit "girl of my dreams" titled here for the American market. Her co-star Buster Crabbe would go on to find fame in the role of Tarzan and later as Flash Gordon.

A couple of dozen bit parts (she played a honeymooner alongside Garbo and  Joan Crawford in Grand Hotel)  lead to a handful of staring roles and although cast alongside some of the leading actors of the day Mary would remain a star of the B movie. She worked with the legendary Cecil B. DeMille and made three movies with Bing Crosby, often cast as the pretty blonde she would become the original Hollywood dumb blonde.

In the heydays of Hollywood, collecting postcards of the stars was a popular pastime, here is my favourite of the hundred or so produced of Mary. Its a copy of the picture used by studios to promote her. 

These days Mary lives in almost total seclusion in Santa Monica and hasn't been seen in public in twenty years; something which is much more a Robinson trait than that of a Carlisle.

Sleeping on the edge of history

My sister has a small piece of history in her house. Mounted on a wooden plinth, the size of a matchbox (remember matches?) sits a concrete example of the power of freedom. A prized possession; she and I were recently discussing how she came to have it. It was 22 years ago on November 9th 1989 that the Berlin wall came down. At the time I was 23 years old, in love and in Berlin.

Earlier that summer I had been living in a student house in Portrush on the north coast of Northern Ireland. I was the only boy in a house with eight girls. As a bit of a science geek I didn't really notice the girls much beyond the mess and general lack of bathroom facilities.

Having completed my first degree I was contemplating taking time out before embarking on a masters. I recall the landlord, James, an archetypal Northern Irish protestant Christian; all hard work and money but a decent sort, popping in to ask me if I'd show a German girl around who was thinking about taking a room over the summer. Ever the obliger I agreed though I was thinking that another girl was hardly what the house needed.

Jenny the German as she became known was old beyond her years and had a melancholic air about her that I instantly liked. I'd frequently find her brooding in the living room, she often found the other girls to be foolish and generally avoided them. She was amazed at how little they knew about life and I was amazed at how much she knew.

The daughter of a high ranking German army officer, her mother a Russian dancer Jenny had come to Ireland because she wanted to be somewhere as cold and as grey as she felt inside. She'd picked well. Her parents had separated, unusual at that time, at least where I came from, and her mother had recently introduced Jenny to her new boyfriend Peter. It was too much for Jenny and she fled to Ireland, to Portrush, to my house.

I think the immaturity of the girls in the house drove her to strike up an awkward friendship with me and free from lectures and lab classes I found myself spending more and more time with the enigmatic German. I'd love to tell you that I swept her off her feet all debonaire, suave and charming but nothing could be further from the truth. Ours was a slow cooker love affair driven by circumstance, longing, boredom, loneliness and need. I was lost between the anticlimax of finishing my degree and not knowing what to do next and Jenny, well she was just lost. Even when she was laughing she retained an air of sadness. I loved her for it, I longed to understand and ease her pain and she loved me for trying.

By the end of that summer we'd found an uneasy comfort in each other. There were lots of long silences, walks on the beach, staring at the cold north sea. Nights spent in Jenny's room, Simple Minds; Belfast Child seemed to be on constant loop and Jenny smelling like orange blossom.

September came and summer ended and along with it Jenny ended her time in Ireland. We could feel it coming, in those last days, like the poison of a snake bite, ending us. We spoke in solemn hushed tones. "I'll come to you in Berlin" "yes do, you should"



And that is how I came to be in a flat on Summerstrasse two months later in November 89. Sadly those two months might as well have been two decades, we had changed, everything had changed and the world around us was changing. The claustrophobic isolation of the north coast that Jenny had felt so strongly was gone and so was her need to run away. Her mothers relationship with boyfriend Peter had become the norm, Jenny liked him, so did I.  I learnt also that there had been another relationship that Jenny had ran away from.







Frank, she told me, was the opposite of everything I was. He was no good for her, but she loved him, what could she do. I was oddly relieved; to be released from the weight of Jenny's sadness was some small consolation. She went to work, I walked in the parks, we dined with her mother, with Peter, alone. Alone in the flat we talked about the girls from the student house, the beach, James the landlord, the relentless cold but we would never listen to Belfast Child again. We wandered the city and I fell in love, this time with Berlin. Jenny seemed happy.

In the days that followed we created something new, in her flat at night when it was her and I. We tore down our sad old world and built a new one, full of laughter, full of trust, full of love. "Will you hold me?" "Always" I said and I meant it. Jenny and I had found our rightful place in the world; friendship.

Outside the city was erupting, our normally quiet street was a constant blare of car horns. People were shouting, yelling, dancing. Jenny's mother was on the phone, "The wall is broken, the wall is broken" Jenny cried. I asked her "Do you want to go; to the wall, to see what's happening?" "Tomorrow, we can see it all tomorrow. Tonight is your last night here and I don't want to spoil it, let's go to bed." I have no regrets, sleeping as I did on the edge of history. Jenny and I were rarely together again after that but even after all these years every time I hear Belfast Child or smell the soft orange scent of calendula oil I think of Jenny the German and the broken wall.

Give a kid a book

Having long ago run out of book shelf space I now have several stacks of books piled about my Kemp Town flat and I am fast running out of floor space. What started as pondering on where the latest additions to my burgeoning collection could possibly go, ended upon recollection of my first ever book.

My mother assures me that the book in question was a red, leather bound, revised standard version of the bible given to me as a gift from a great aunt who was known more for her spirit than her spirituality. A quick check and wouldn't you know it I still have that bible in my possession and I have to say for something that I've had for forty years it looks remarkably unread. 

My mothers memory alas is filled with unrealised hope and promise for the first book I can recall as being mine was not the bible but a large, green, canvas backed, hardback, encyclopaedia of animals given to me by my father. It was to be the beginning of a life long love affair with science. 


I devoured the book, memorised it, quoted from it with annoying frequency and to this day know more about the habitat, distribution and breeding habits of everything from the Kakapo to the Ocelot than I do about almost anything else including the bible. 

So how come that great green font of knowledge is gone and the red leather bible remains? Well I guess I like the smell of leather and that particular story is told and unchanged whereas the encyclopaedias keep having to be replaced as our understanding evolves