Voices of Science

I retired in 1981, you see, so I’ve had a lifetime of retirement. I did all – I did five years at Southampton on a fine arts course, you see. You have to get through an interview and you have to show that it – the interviewers what you’ve done. They eventually accept you and of course it’s – it’s marvellous. All of a sudden I was plunged into a group of people, groups of people, who were artists, having spent all my life amongst engineers. And I was the worst – I thought vertically all the time, solving the problems if it killed me. If it went out sideways I’d bring it back, you know. I thought vertically was the way – then suddenly I found with people, they were thinking out this way. And I – I suddenly found I saw things that I had not seen before. And I found myself keeping mighty quiet because I hadn’t got a viewpoint at all on what they were talking about. And you have a lot of lectures on art courses, not – you do a lot of other things, but I found them absolutely enthralling and as a result I think I changed as a chap for the better. I think I became more interesting to myself, let alone other people. And – even if it’s not evident to anybody else, it meant a lot to me because I – I am interested in so many things that I would not have been interested in.