22nd April, 2005

I haven't talked about Cambridge's rarified atmosphere for a while. The Americans didn't manage to do it to me the other week when I was in New York, but I am quite happy to concede that I have seamlessly assimilated into Cambridge society. That said I was taken aback somewhat the other day. We were having dinner with friends of ours. He is a professor, the Head of Maths at Trinity no less. We were casually tossing about some intricate algebraic geometric theories, when his wife noted, as an aside, that he seemed to have been hanging around the house a little more than usual. It was at this point that he revealed to her he was on a 6 month sabbatical....which had begun two months earlier!! Mouths dropped open.