Entertaining Academics
Things started to go wrong when I slipped the bottle of red into the fridge along with the rosé. I should have known better but wine’s not my thing. The fine wines of Lac Leman flow in Thierry’s veins and I rushed to Ronnie for help when Thierry realised my incompetence. Soon Ronnie had the chilled red rewarming in the hot August afternoon Argyll sun.
A while later I asked our distinguished guest if he had been making wine for long. Another faux pas, ‘my family has been making wine on our estate since 1839’. Quite a while then!
Ronnie followed up with a science question betraying his vast knowledge of astrophysics.
‘So Thierry, what’s new in astrophysics?’
The distinguished professor thought for a nanosecond before responding along the lines that what he would really like to know is what the universe is made of. He knew what 4% of it was made of but looked to Ronnie for inspiration with discovering what the other 96% was. Ronnie was clearly suffering from my red wine in the fridge moment and, for the first time in his life, was completely lost for words. It’s safe to say that astrophysics isn’t Ronnie’s thing and we were clearly making an impression on the President of the Academy of European Sciences!
For the rest of the evening Thierry and Barbara were appreciative guests loving the food, the view, the company, our house and, of course, the now tepid red wine.
On Sunday morning Sally and I boarded the space capsule for a guided tour of its splendours along with a splash of the finest Swiss roast coffee drunk, as only the British do, with milk. Whilst we chatted in the cockpit I spied an uncharacteristically, Heath Robinson box fixed on the pushpit sprouting an assortment of twisted wires.
‘Thierry, what is the box?’
‘Ah, it is a little science project. I am counting particles as I sail north’
Sally chimed in, ‘particles of what? Plastic?’
As ever Thierry was too polite to tell us whether he was counting neutrinos or antineutrinos but quickly changed the subject to safer territory and the conversation flowed from watch keeping in ice infested water to sailing through the Russian Canals and onto the White Sea and, finally, to the pleasures of in-mast reefing. It goes without saying that particle physics isn’t Sally’s thing!
We all learned a lot that weekend. Surprisingly, Thierry took our advice and sailed off into the fast flowing waters of the infamous Corryvreckan before turning north and beginning the long hunt for neutrinos.
