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November 2001 |
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Monday 5 November Guy Fawkes Day This time last year, our American friends Pat and Stan, who were spending a sabbatical semester in Leeds, phoned us from their apartment in a state of great alarm to tell us that a fierce gun battle was raging in the neighbourhood. Nobody had thought to tell them about Guy Fawkes Day, poor things, and they jumped to conclusions when they heard the fireworks going off all around. We had to explain to them that this is the way British kids commemorate the day in 1605 when Guy Fawkes led an unsuccessful conspiracy to blow up the Houses of Parliament. In fact, this was an early case of urban terrorism inspired by a perverted form of religion (the conspirators were all Roman Catholics). Ever since then, the Fifth of November has been marked by firework displays and bonfires. I wonder whether, 400 years from now, American kids will celebrate Bin Laden Day by burning an effigy and letting off fireworks (without, of course, having the faintest idea of what it was all about). We don't have gun battles in Leeds, by the way. Just in case you were wondering. But there are fireworks going off all around as I write this.
I don't seem to have time to write journal entries at present. All my evenings are taken up with other activities. This is partly because I agreed to be the external examiner for a Cambridge PhD thesis. The oral examination is on Wednesday next week, and I have to finish reading the thesis, write a report on it, and think of some searching questions to ask the candidate, before then. It is a particularly difficult, technical thesis, on a topic that I know very little about, and I am struggling with it. It means that I probably won't be updating this journal for the next week or so. The other thing that is taking up my time in the evenings is that I have been watching the World Series on television. I love baseball, and during the five years that I lived in Philadelphia I got to be a big fan of the Phillies. There is practically no coverage of baseball at all in Britain, and I feel very deprived. So I was pleased to discover that Channel 5 (a totally trashy channel that I wouldn't normally think of watching) is covering the whole series live. The games start some time after midnight UK time and run into the early hours of the morning, so I tape them and then watch them a day or two later. This has the advantage that I can fast forward through the commercial breaks and time-outs. I don't have any allegiance to either team, but I have found myself rooting for the D-backs (that's probably just the traditional British tendency to support the underdogs). Yesterday evening I saw the amazing game six, where they levelled the series with a crushing 15-2 score. I taped game seven last night but I haven't seen it yet, so don't tell me the result, okay? I have found that it is not easy to concentrate on a highly technical mathematical argument in a PhD thesis and watch a baseball game at the same time. But I shall persist in the attempt.
Phew, I feel a lot more relaxed now that's over with. For the past couple of weeks, I have been struggling with the PhD thesis for which I was the external examiner. I didn't even try to read the whole thing (200 pages of closely argued mathematics), but I checked enough of it to be more or less convinced that it was basically correct and sufficiently original to deserve a PhD degree. I read the last chapter on the train journey to Cambridge yesterday afternoon, and thought about the questions that I was going to ask the candidate. The exam went fairly smoothly, with neither me nor the candidate making any embarrassing errors. After an hour or so of questioning, we congratulated the candidate on getting his PhD, and sent him happily on his way. I stayed for a good dinner at the High Table of St John's College, followed by an evening of drinking the College's very fine claret and port in the Fellows' Combination Room. The internal examiner for the PhD student was the Master of the College, and I was invited to stay overnight in the guest suite at the Master's Lodge. I was sleeping very soundly after having drunk a lot more than my usual alcohol intake, when I was woken up at about 2 a.m. by my host banging loudly on the bedroom door. He wanted to know if I had left a tap running in the bathroom. Apparently he had discovered water dripping through the 16th century oak panelled ceiling in the hallway below. He wanted to come in to investigate where the water was coming from. This was a bit awkward since I was wearing nothing, and I had to grab a towel from the bathroom in a hurry. But there was no sign of a leak, and he went away to look elsewhere for the source of the trouble. I came down for breakfast soon after 7.30 a.m. to find that there was a plumber already working on the leak, which was not in my bathroom but in a nearby shower room. One of the benefits of being Master of a Cambridge college is that the college has its own plumber, who is on tap (so to speak) at a moment's notice. So the leaky pipe was repaired before the priceless oak ceiling, or the equally priceless carpet below it, suffered any serious damage. Back home, the good news is that Mary's allergies are continuing to respond to treatment and we are now able to turn on the central heating without her having a bad reaction. We were very fortunate that this October was the mildest since records began in 1652 and we hardly needed the heating at all for the entire month. This gave Mary's immune system time to come back to a slightly more normal state before we needed to turn up the heating. I mentioned in the previous entry that I was looking forward to seeing the final game of the World Series, which I had taped. Ho hum. Wouldn't you know it, I only have a three hour video tape, and of course all the exciting action was in the final inning. So I sat through eight innings of baseball and then the tape gave out. At least The Guardian carried an account of the game, so I was not left in suspense about the outcome. Next year, I must be sure to buy a four hour tape. (But then the game will probably go into extra innings and last five hours.)
I went for my usual Sunday afternoon swim yesterday - except that there isn't much "usual" about it these days. This was only the second time in the past six months or so that I have been swimming. It is an ideal form of exercise for me, because I am such a poor swimmer. I can only swim a single length of the pool before having to pause to get my breath back. This means that I get a very thorough workout, and a significantly raised heart rate, in a very short time. A total of ten lengths is quite enough for me to feel that I have had all the exercise I need. In fact, I was only in the pool for 20 minutes, and I spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing in the sauna. After not having had any exercise for so long, I thought that I would feel the effects of it today. But apart from a bit of stiffness in the upper arms I haven't noticed any ill effects. I can't say that I have noticed any good effects either, although I suppose it must do some good to make an occasional effort to keep physically fit. I can't quite figure out why I have had so few free Sunday afternoons for swimming this autumn. For the past couple of weeks I was struggling with the Cambridge PhD thesis that I had to read. On top of that, we had Mary's brother and sister-in-law staying with us last weekend. Apart from that, there really hasn't been any excuse for not getting my regular exercise. I must make a bit more of an effort in future.
There are a few changes to the "favourite journals" on my links page. It's strange how one gets caught up in the lives of other people through their online journals, and I hate it when a favourite site disappears altogether without any explanation. I have had to delete the link to one site which no longer exists. But by way of recompense I am very glad that another site, which disappeared last year, has come back under another name. Keith, who previously had an online journal under the name of Snow, has re-started it at the address mortsleam.tripod.com, and I look forward to being able to read his thoughts again. I hope that the name of the new site doesn't indicate that his life is a maelstrom in reverse. Another new link is to Dave, a gay Republican native American with a baby son. I usually keep newly discovered journals on a waiting list for a while before putting them on the links page, but Dave writes so well that he has gone straight there without a probationary period.
I have been in London for the past couple of days. On Thursday I was chairing an interview panel for a job in our publishing business. There were over 60 applicants for the job, but three of them were far better qualified than the rest, and those were the only ones that we interviewed. I think I have said here before that I hate chairing these panels. The chairman is supposed to be relaxed and friendly, to put the candidates at their ease before asking some more probing questions. But I am usually more nervous than the candidates, which certainly doesn't help to create the right sort of atmosphere. I don't feel that I have the right talents for this job, and I have never had any training at it. So I wasn't looking forward to Thursday's interviews. But in fact everything went very smoothly. Maybe I am learning by experience. At any rate, I think I gave all the candidates a fair opportunity to present themselves. Two of them were clearly better than the third, and at the end of the afternoon the panel was unanimous about which of the two should be offered the job. I spent Thursday evening at Chariots, where I met an American called Eric, a black Californian, very friendly and tactile. He was huge (XVWE, I believe the expression is). When we gave each other a back rub I could scarcely get my arms around him. I totally forgot that it was a holiday in America that day—I should have wished him Happy Thanksgiving. He couldn't stay long because he had another appointment somewhere, so I went back to my hotel for an early night. I was staying at the Imperial as usual. It is a large hotel (448 rooms according to their web site). The breakfast room seats about 120 and it is usually hard to find a free table in the morning. But when I came down for breakfast on Friday morning, I counted a total of 15 people in the room. A few more had arrived by the time I finished, but even so the room was practically empty. It seems that the London hotels are suffering disastrously from the 11 September effect. The clientele at the Imperial is usually fairly evenly divided between tourists and business visitors, but yesterday morning the few people who were there all seemed to be tourists. I didn't see anyone who looked as though they were there on business (except me). If you're thinking of visiting London, there couldn't be a better time to come—plenty of room in the hotels, seats available at all the West End shows, and no queues at any of the tourist attractions. [I am not paid by the British Tourist Authority for saying this.] The first meeting of the day was at 9 a.m., and when I got there I learned that the candidate to whom we had offered the job had turned it down, on the grounds that he wanted a position with more responsibility and autonomy. I think he's daft. Our job offers much more scope than his current position in Sheffield. But that's his loss. We offered the job to the second candidate, and he has accepted. After a day of meetings and lectures, there was the Math. Soc.'s Annual Dinner in the evening. Mary usually comes to these dinners. We share a table with a gang of old friends and have a good time. But this year Mary couldn't come because of her allergies, and I found that I had been assigned to sit at one end of the top table and make polite conversation to the wives of two of the Society's distinguished guests, who were sitting on either side of me. Not my idea of fun. There was a time when I could scarcely have coped with a social situation like that. But in fact both the wives were quite easy to talk to, and the evening passed fairly pleasantly, without me having a panic attack or running out of conversation. I was quite proud of myself. The dinner took place in the Court Restaurant of the British Museum. This has a spectacular setting, under the curved glass roof of the Great Court, looking down into the famous Reading Room. They served a very good meal, starting with a salad of mozzarella, tomato and aubergine (that's eggplant, if you're American) in a pesto sauce, followed by chicken in a mushroom sauce, with apple pie and cream for dessert. I couldn't see what the wines were, but there was a very good white wine with the salad and an equally good red with the main course, and the waiters were quick to refill empty glasses all evening. I slept very well at the Imperial after that, and took the train back to Leeds this morning.
It looks like there's a great weekend coming up. I spoke to Nick earlier this evening. He is staying with his friend Simon in York for a couple of weeks, and we have arranged to go for a day's walk in the Lake District on Saturday. Nick and Simon are driving over there tomorrow and are planning to camp there for the weekend. I wouldn't dream of camping out at this time of year, but it's not much more than two hours' drive from here. So I can get there by 10 a.m. if I make a reasonably early start on Saturday morning, and the plan is that we should climb Helvellyn via Striding Edge. This is one of the best climbs in England, and I have only done it once before. The forecast is for a cold but sunny day on Saturday, and I'll take my digital camera with me. So I hope I'll have some good photos to illustrate the next entry.
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