Voices of Science

Partly. It was partly that all kinds of things then. I mean once [laughs] once the problems which I was talking to you about earlier, the solutions to those became clear, a whole lot of other things became clear. So that an enormous chunk of the earth sciences suddenly made sense and fell into place. I thought that this was really the opportunity of my lifetime, was to take these things and go everywhere that this stuff led. And, you know, worked very hard, had essentially no social life at all and very few friends. You know, I was just never there, and when I was there I was, you know, twelve hours a day on the computer getting things to work, which things were much harder to get things to work then than it is now. But, you know, I had always wanted to do scientific research and given this sort of opportunity and both, you know, institutional and I had support, I wasn’t – I had no teaching position, I was still a Research Fellow at King’s, you know, I had something. I had something here I could come back to if things went wrong, which meant I could pick up – if anyone just had sort of, you know, a couple of months postdoc left at the end of a grant, fine, I’ll come for a couple of months and I’d stay for six, you know, ‘cause I lived cheaply and wanted to do it. So, I mean, you know, I just simply – I was absolutely unconcerned with any of the things that bother people now about, you know, a career structure and thinking where I was going. I didn’t care a damn, I thought I was employable, right [laughs] I just [laughs] wanted, you know, I’d been given this opportunity, I was going to take it with both hands.