Examining over for another year. Thank goodness. I don’t particularly mind the process of marking tripos papers itself (though there is that inevitably huge and always rather dispiriting gap between what you tried to put across and what comes back in the generality of scripts). But having to run the show has its tense moments. But justice, of course, was perfectly done to everyone, as we all retained our immutable grasp of the Platonic form of the first-class script and marked accordingly.
Off to London on Thursday to the annual meeting of the Analysis committee. It seems a very long time ago that I was editor, and I can’t really recall why it then struck me as such a bright idea to spend twelve years at so time-consuming a job. But the journal continues to flourish, which is good. And there was time for a quick detour to visit my favourite Nereids nearby. So now, back — at last — to full-time Gödel!
A point of pedantry: the statement “we all retained our immutable grasp of x” is tautological, because if we have an “immutable grasp” on something then we cannot help but retain it.
Perhaps a better phrase would be “we all retained our grasp of the immutable Platonic form of the first-class script”, although in this case “immutable” is redundant, because Platonic forms are (for Plato) immutable by definition.