July summary: a good month to be out of Europe

Our brief visit to Birmingham at the beginning of the month was of particular interest for its social history. Birmingham was the first major manufacturing city in the world and its many inventions fed the industrial revolution. As the city grew, however, many of its workers and their families lived in poverty and it was sobering to visit the remaining back-to-back terraced houses and to spend a whole day in the Black Country, so named because of the smoke from the many thousands of iron-working foundries and forges in the 19th century and the working of the many coal seams in the area. Dudley is in the heart of the Black Country and I would highly recommend a visit to the Black Country Living Museum, the highlight of our few days.

The early 20th century village in the museum

From Birmingham we took the long train journey back to Cornwall, in time to finalise and publish the provisional programme for Flotation '23 which is shaping up to be the biggest flotation conference ever. The conference programme contains four high profile keynote lectures, beginning with Prof. Graeme Jameson, the only member of our profession who is a Fellow of The Royal Society. He is 87 years old this year and will be speaking of his lifetime in flotation research and innovation. Early in the month there was a flotation symposium in his honour at the University of Newcastle, Australia, with many eminent speakers, seen in the photo below. The conference was attended by 130 delegates from 10 countries and we are pleased that many of these will be at the MEI Conference in Cape Town. 

July was the first month in seven years when we could say that we were pleased not to be in Europe! Record high temperatures and wildfires brought misery to locals and tourists in southern Europe, particularly Greece, Italy and Spain and while those countries suffered temperatures in the mid 40s, here in Cornwall the temperature rarely soared above 20C. Jon and Kathryn and family paid a brief visit late in the month, and the children witnessed a gigantic cruise ship leaving Falmouth Harbour on a balmy evening. The Spirit of Discovery is, at 236m length, the longest ship ever to dock at the harbour's County Wharf.

On the day that they returned to Luxembourg Amanda and Richard left for a short break to celebrate her birthday on the Isles of Scilly, arguably the most beautiful area of Cornwall, arguably the most beautiful county in England. And all the time the fires and temperatures in southern Europe remained unabated.

Finally it was good to see Anna Vanderbruggen with her 2022 MEI Young Person's Award, which she was not able to receive at the recent Sustainable Minerals '23 conference. Thanks to her nominator Martin Rudolph, who collected the award on her behalf in Falmouth.

@barrywills