Tim Radford, just-retired science editor of The Guardian, was scheduled to be a competitor in the Great Intelligence Debate, a featured part of the Ig Nobel Tour of the UK. This note explains why he was unable to participate:
I’m really sorry to have missed the great Ig roadshow. I was wrestling with the intricate problem of getting my wife to accept that she was going to mark her birthday with dinner in a restaurant with the family and then - because the restaurant was a long way a way - rest the night in a hotel. The trouble was, the restaurant was one of a chain, and rather so-so, the town was a notorious no-no (a commuter dormitory for smug merchant banker’s chief clerks) and I had to smuggle into our baggage a pair of walking boots, a peaked cap and a set of overalls in her size. We managed it: when we got to the restaurant my daughter and family sprung it on her: for her 70th birthday she was going to learn to drive a steam engine at 8 am the following morning.
Okay, most women I know would call for divorce papers immediately. My wife, however, is a frustrated engineer who falls in love with preposterous objects like Mack trucks and high speed trains. The day at the Bluebell railway - one of those preservation societies with period station equipment so perfect that Renee Zellwegger was there the day before, filming Beatrix Potter - was a howling success. Maureen can now start, check steam pressures, regulate, start, accelerate, stop, reverse and finally brake a steam engine so effectively that the footplate came to rest three times precisely parallel with the correct discreet chalk mark on the platform. It was only a tank engine - as in tank engine Thomas - but they look bloody big when you have to start them yourself and doing anything requires colossal physical effort. The imminent septuagenarian status had been an occasion for acute depression and alarm. Something improbable, positive and - yes yes, empowering - seemed to be just the right prescription. She’s keen for a five day course, including shovelling coal, that will entitle her to drive one of those really big engines that tamed the American west. She’s talking about trying out paragliding in France in the autumn. Uplifting or what?
So: now you know why we weren’t at your gig. My apologies.
Posted
Sunday, March 26th, 2006 at 10:40 am
under Arts and science, Ig Nobel, Letters from readers.
