Hard sums

God knows what possessed me to make the hero of my next book a mathematician specialising in logic. But there’s nothing a bit of research can’t fix, and so this weekend saw me scampering off to Cambridge to talk to my friend U.

When I first rocked up there in 1992, U was a top Barbara Cartland combo, the product of a passionate love-match between a Nobel-prize-winning mathematician from Pakistan and the daughter of an English Duke. Educated at Eton – natch - he was not only frighteningly clever but also one of the most beautiful men I have ever seen.

I was a Cumbrian pit pony, still stunned at the fact that they’d let me in.

We bonded IMMEDIATELY over cheap fags, red wine and a shared love of Leonard Cohen.

Late at night, after all of the above, I used to plead with him to explain the theory of relativity, just for the pleasure of watching him speak. Of course, I never remembered the explanation in the morning.

U. never left Cambridge. Luckily he was saved from becoming too much of a crusty academic when, he accidentally impregnated the Head of Gender Studies with twins.

Said twins are now aged 2 and delightful, if somewhat hyperactive. On arrival at the house, he answered the door looking haggard and muttered ‘We’re going to the pub. Now.’

And so we did, leaving the Head of Gender Studies holding the babies.

Over a pint of lager, he asked the very question I’d been hoping he wouldn’t.

‘Why are you making this character a logician?’

The one thing a Cambridge education does is teach you how to bullshit at short notice. I banged on about Lewis Carroll and Alice in Wonderland, Bertrand Russell, romantic poetry, Greek tragedy, Wittgenstein, cause and effect and probability for a good minute of so.

‘So it’s not about your dad, then?’

‘Er, Lewis Carroll, Bertrand Russell, Wittgenstein, Aeschylus, lager, lager, umpf’

Clearly I am no better than I ever was on the bullshit front. But the great thing about U. is that he always takes questions very seriously, and usually knows the answers. We spent the next 3 hours discussing all the above, chucking in a bit about probability, the paranoia of maths departments, the difference between good and important, the difference between profundity and cleverness, and why most of the best maths is done before you’re 40. Well, I say discussed. He spoke, I took notes, and said yerrrs a lot, nodding sagely at appropriate moments.

When it was time to go, I asked him to explain the theory of relativity one last time, for the road. He kicked me under the table and told me to bugger off.

We left, laughing at our own pretentiousness.